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The Writing Disorder is a quarterly literary journal. We publish exceptional new works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and art. We also feature interviews with writers and artists, as well as reviews.

Countercurrent Me

by Mike Yunxuan Li

 

 

Movement I: Pre-Industrialization

 

1

After coming to Higher’s Private High School for just a few days, I noticed people here were essentially the same. Although they looked different, dressed different, came from different backgrounds, they all became indistinguishable from one another under the directional selection of job security. They were all “chill” and “easygoing”, they all laughed at the same memes, they all pretended to care about stuff, they all had this self-centered image of themselves, and most importantly, they all desired similar futures. Sadly, the things I thought were important for individuality, especially in this country: ability, self-actualization, and the courage to execute risks, were simply not visible in them. And yes, personality was not on my list. To me, personality was like DNA. Every cell in the body has the same DNA, but not all cells necessarily express all of their genetic information.

Then there is Epigenetics.

However, I couldn’t really judge these young adults too harshly because I was just like them, in a fundamental manner—well at least, until one day, something reminded me of that morning in the Pacific.

Kien was perhaps never as developed, and probably would never be as developed, but there was an inherent herby essence to it, a taste unique to Kien and me. The night was always filled with the brightest and loneliest stars, and from the top of our Kraser hills, we could see them twinkling above our heads, as if telling us they would always be there and our time together would forever lag. The walk from school to the mall and from mall to the subway station always felt sweaty in the breezy summers when lightning was imminent amidst the humid air molecules. The streets in the village were always lit with something. The areas that were dark felt just as creative because someone was with me, and together, the night transformed into a stage that simply served to highlight lights. Someone was always with me, and together we would look up to the blue ceiling, peek through street lights, explain road directions to foreigners, converse about anything, and through moments like these, memories were created, and now it hurt. It didn’t hurt because they were memorable. It hurt because they were only memorable.

That morning, 5 rows of Pexler tanks vacuumed our plantation. Pexler was like Ford. You knew where it came from just by looking at it. Our neighboring island, Kurston, wasn’t simply declaring a war on the state of Kien. They were sending a message—a message of completed industrialization and initiated New Yorkrization (westernization on steroids). I knew it would happen one day. The strong would be foolish to not swallow the weak.

Before the sun fully resuscitated from the seals of morning frosts, father jetted into my room. He had to be worried. Father rarely ran. He took my hand, and together, we scuttled out the back door into a nearby Kan forest. When we looked back, our mansion was gone. Bricks of black and white subordinated under the wheels of Pexlers. 20 acres of cash crops microwaved on the spinning plate of Kurston advances.

He put his hands on my shoulders and confronted my pupils with that once in a lifetime father to son seriousness, “We didn’t lose everything. Half of my wealth is in your mother’s house. Remember I’m the wealthiest farm owner in Kien? They only want me.”

The scent of his vinegary sweat, our kind of medicine boiling on stove, titrated by dirt in the smoke, was for a second the only vision of home and for a while, the only thing I could remember.

Bullets started raining down the forest. Long-tailed widowbirds woke up from their bowled nests and flopped into the air. Some got shot and fell to the forest floor. Others got injured and screamed like cats. Most escaped the forest only to be vaporized by the blue sears of Kurston flamethrowers, so horrifying yet hypnagogic, almost like a nightmare in a VR video game. Seconds later, the remaining strands of black tails realized their disconnections from bodies that no longer existed, and drizzled down one by one like kites whose strings had been cut—things that one would only see falling from the clouds in the obsolete tales of 2012 and the like. The volume was a long blackness that slowly encased Kan. Lines of professional K soldiers marched towards our direction.

He pushed me west.

My legs moved.

They paused behind a coconut tree.

He stepped out from the pile of banana leaves. The leader, dressed in grey cotton cloth, holding a fencing sword on his left hand, holstered his revolver and took out this photo from his front pocket. He placed it next to father’s face and smooshed his face with a magnifying glass over to the photo.

The first ordinary person that actually had an interesting story to tell was unfortunately not part of my first week at Higher’s. And that was a major problem. The seat across from me in chemistry class had been empty for days—the consequences of which was our group only had three members, a big reason for our snail-like progress on the project.

Just as I thought the seat would be empty forever, the unexpected happened. Ten minutes into class on Monday, the chemistry teacher spoke up for the first time since the initiation of our projects. “Guys, I want you to stop whatever you’re doing for a second.” His voice was extra smooth, like a mellow drumstick on timpani, which surprisingly produced pitch, which made me expect something. The classroom returned to its orthodox organization. I placed the periodic table in front of me in its default setting. I took off my steaming goggles and pushed the beaker aside with extra caution.

Inside the beaker was the essence of our project, the subject worthy of a Nobel Prize, the 7 inch Aplysia, a ditto looking sea slug, which I named Innocencie. Nobody really cared what it was called. It could be dabplysia and no one would give two dimes. Apparently, a professor from Columbia named Eric Kandel had done some extensive research on Aplysias half a century ago and used this little creature to show how memory and learning worked. In the past few days we’d been squirting water relentlessly on its siphon and repeatedly shocking its tail with voltages that were oftentimes uncomfortable even for us in order to examine the degree to which collateral axons had retracted or reframed. Long story short, the whole project was basically about torturing Innocencie on a daily basis to gauge out some numbers on a grid that had already been figured out by the Eric Kandel guy 50 years prior. I poured in a cup of sea water to keep Innocencie strong.

“I almost forgot, today is Remembrance Day. Let’s all close our eyes for a brief moment and remember all the loved ones in our lives,” he announced.

Someone raised a hand in the back. “When is the next legit holiday, like a day when we actually don’t have school?”

“The next staff development day, Justin,” he responded, which was basically a nicer way of rephrasing the legendary “furlough day.”

Tony shot me a glance from across the table.

Anna covered her face with her slender fingers.

Innocencie crawled a few inches upward like a slimy Virginia Creeper, his head breaking open the water surface, as if he wanted to participate in the remembering of someone too. Another cup of seawater went in and he retrieved to the bottom. Sensitization got him.

I closed my eyes. The taste of the ocean was at the tip of my tongue once again as Innocencie continued to exhale. Bubbles jazzed inside the beaker.

It was dusk when I reached mother’s place on the southern end of Kien. News of Kurston’s temporary occupation of the north had already spread like wildfire across the waterways of the commercial south.  The government was actively setting layers of defense lines near the Kranel Strait that divided Kien into palpable halves with the capital, Kannonbalver, situated conveniently on the southernmost tip. As our boat lumbered through the floating bellies of random carps, scratching foams against mountains of dying Warty Venus clams—a perpetual noise that could be felt through the vacillation in my shoelaces, I remembered seeing bridges incinerating in rainbow, from lipstick red to pumpkin orange, aloe green to death charcoal, the smoke overlapping all natural scents of sea urchins and abalones in the thin ocean breeze, boiling a family of seafood raw like a damn steam pot. The water was completely drenched in oil as if it was never an ocean to begin with.

The officers escorted us, the northern refugees to their main camp in Krunen, where we would sign a few papers and stay until jeeps could be arranged for our departure. While waiting for our rides, they greeted each of us individually, assuring that Kien would fight until its last soldier to preserve the holy capital from Kurston contamination. The president even burned all of Kien’s 132 steamships to manifest his determination in defending his citizens, whom he called sons from a different mother. I felt secured. In fact, most of us did. The Kranel Strait had been an insuperable natural barrier that coated the heart of Kien for the past however many years that Kien had remained an independent state. There was every reason on earth to believe we still had a decent shot. I mean who would not be optimistic when lines of blue-coated soldiers aligned the strait, converging Russian machine guns on that one port the Kurstons could possibly board from, when imported cannons dotted the shore, determined to dissect the bastards that took father into their atomic components, when the waters had been trapped, stockpiling potential energy to repeat the glory of the Battle of Red Cliffs, when the president was dedicated, ready to sacrifice his own life for ours?

I could still recall that moment of astonishment when I opened the door to her apartment. A man in grey uniform shoved a booklet up my face. “Passport United States of America,” it read. Before I could grasp it, something thunderous went off in the distance.

It came.

I dived forward, landed flat on the cold concrete when a zoom of light skidded down the lane, blowing a neighboring bungalow into ashes of rusts. I braced myself as a second rocket zipped along the adjacent driveway, liquidating the already rotted ashes into protonic particles of invisibility, as if killing a house once was not enough. The cochlea were unwiring their snaily shells, pupils in my eyes bleeding from the lights, and every major lobe in my brain hallucinating, and yet I remembered the lady in that house, who was no more innocuous than a single mother working 4 shifts for the sakes of 4 children, half of whom probably would have graduated from middle school next year. A wind blew, dusts whirled, rearranging shape of the bungalow, and a moderate photo of purple and yellow managed to escape into the open air of brown snow. It must’ve been her graduation photo—her smile, wide and innocent, as if she’d already found the media naranja of her life.

And then, it deteriorated in the already microwaved air, the air doing nothing.

The sky had its belly cut open by then. Blood falling, in sheets, clotted the only layer of ozone visible from here. Missiles and meteors and objects beyond recognition showered down the village, a tad syncopated, captured through the retinas like lenses of a slow motion camera, as if meant for Kien to witness the bullet down its own throat, through the esophagus, across some tubes, into the capital, and death. It was tragically beautiful like those constellational portrayals of heavens in animes and tear-inducing like those technological depictions of air-strikes in Hollywood films with melancholic orchestral backgrounds, except minus the melancholic orchestra in Kien. In the horizons, rows of familiar dots treaded over the sun-set plastered cornstalk shadows. They were headed for the capital.

I felt a tuck on my shoulders. Tony gave me a quick wink and closed his eyes and the guy in uniforms was still standing there with the Passport United States in his hands with his hands still on my shoulders. A scent of feminine pheromone brushed my cilia as the footsteps of milk dabbled inside the dark hallway. Go, she said. I looked up.

Precisely a week ago we were having coffee by the Kinanel Beach with me complaining just about everything in life, and a week later she still appeared calm and contained when our nation was literally on the countdown to death, when father was literally—

I hopped forward and clenched her legs. Father, I breathed. She stopped me. She told me she knew. The president was still here, the capital was still free, the thousands of blue coated warriors were still willing to die for us, and the Kraner Strait was still intact. Yes, the president had boarded Helicopter Plasma 1 for Keren, yes the capital was captured, yes Kien soldiers could not fight for us, because yes the Kraner Strait no longer mattered. The Kurstons had boarded from the south sea.

The smell of Innocencie’s jizz returned. The past, not in complete scenes, flashed through cortex like car lights through freeways captured from space.

“Mansen?”

“Sorry guys I forgot my makeup this morning. I look like complete shit right now,” she said. A sweet scent of perfume blew in our faces. The smell of the sea faded.

Every syllable in her voice was the Earth—distinctively feminine at the core and gradually more Justin Bieber masculine as it echoed to the crust. Lights and periodic table stood nice and firm in front of my fovea. Something, either the direction of the voice or the unforeseeable activities beneath the table, told me that the seat next to me had been filled. Our fourth member was here.

My eyes focused on the periodic table, zoomed in on H and He like they were her eyes. They frowned with such sorrow, pronouncing curls of eyelid doubles, as if I’d just heard the most Hollywood memory-loss tragedy. “Well, if you look like shit without makeup, then maybe that means you DO look like sh—” words found their ways out of the memory.

There was a second of silence. Actually no. There was a sharp inhale (indicative of speech), but she didn’t let it out. I understood. It wasn’t that she wasn’t mad, for she had to be mad. It was just not considered “chill” to be argumentative in a place where 30 self-conscious young men and women aligned themselves for judgments.

Tony nudged me from the side, “Bro, I think you went a little too far. I don’t think that’s…”

Seriously, she’d let us down for two whole days, and yet the first words she blabbered out had no “sorry” in it? Nobody cared about your little looks; we just needed your beautiful mind to contribute its beautiful worth. Plus, I didn’t even say shit! And also, people here are more sensitive than rabbits. Any comment slightly out of the ordinary will raise eyebrows, implying the typical “Huh? That doesn’t make any sense” in such a sassy and judgmental manner, as if they’re the ones that founded the magical wonderland of common sense itself.

Then there are only 3 forms of young people English: American’s sassy tone, English’s classed sound, and just the bleak inferiority of everything else.

Tony wasn’t a bad person, so I let go of the periodic table and said, “OK.” This little feud wasn’t really between us anyway. However, I was wrong about one thing when I turned to face this girl for the first time.

 

NOTE: This self-contained excerpt is from his novel, Countercurrent Me.

 

BIO

Mike Yunxuan Li is a rising junior at Cornell University majoring in Neuroscience and minoring in Creative Writing and Spanish. he wrote his first YA novel, which is still in progress, right after graduating from high school. His poem, “Borrow,” recently appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily and Better Than Starbucks. Through writing, Mike hopes to break down what we think of as “human nature” and “common sense” under the microscope to explore what’s actually logical from the habits we inadvertently exhibit as humans. Outside of writing, he loves playing Go, an ancient strategic board game, and classical music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unconscious Authorship Inc.

by Cal Urycki

 

 

The rattle of fingertips on keyboards echoed in his head, like the pitter of fat raindrops against a window pane. He could tell by the tempo of the quiet clicks what sort of sentences were being typed: a long one filled with clauses, with short miniscule pauses whenever someone hit the comma button, followed by rapid rat-a-tat’s as the rest of the sentence materialized on the imaginary page in his head, one letter following another in quick succession. He could hear the lack of surety behind others, with long, languid pauses followed by even faster key strokes, trying desperately to make back up the time lost contemplating the next few words. His own sequence was a well-oiled machine. He had long ago eliminated the small pauses after periods, instead pushing onwards as if the sentence. had never actually stopped but was all one continuous thought one line of consciousness that could not be halted. by any amount of punctuation.

His only pause was a brief breath in and out after an indented line, a quick moment to refresh and then continue. He sat in a cluster of workspaces, each one only 5ft by 5ft, just enough room for a chair and desk with a keyboard, surrounded by high walls that prevented him from seeing anything beyond his square area. He had no screen to see the words he typed, he was only to continue and not stop until he was told otherwise, and he was good at it. He had found that special trance state in which his fingers moved without any thought. The movements had become completely involuntary and unconscious; his eyes would dart across an imaginary screen before him, looking far beyond the gray wall of his workspace.

Sometimes he imagined what sort of art he would create, was creating. He would, of course, never know if it was him or someone else that wrote the words that were eventually assembled, but he held on to the belief that he was responsible for some of the words, some of the bits that were called especially extraordinary by critics. It was April 27th, and a new text was due out in three days. He resolved to pick up his already blistering pace in hopes that some of his words might make the final cut and find their way into the text. He pushed his dexterity even further, eliminating punctuation altogether at times in hopes that maybe by producing a large volume of words he might increase his chances that one of his would be selected and eventually he heard a steady tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap and he knew he was repeating words which happened sometimes but he was never supposed to do on purpose in fact he was never supposed to type on purpose at all just move his fingers however they felt like moving and leave his brain out of the equation completely but he thought maybe now if there was a tap in the April text it might be his and he might finally have some proof that he was contributing more than the monkeys around him that just typed aimlessly without regard for pace or structure or beauty. He finally caught himself and stopped for a brief moment and shook those thoughts from his mind. He was supposed to leave the thinking to the Assemblers.

The texts each month were said to be amalgamations of all the sequences being created in the warehouse, but he had no way to really verify that, as neither he nor his coworkers knew what they typed, unless they tried to remember. Trying to remember often made one type with a purpose, which was one of the first rules of the job: don’t think. The Assemblers cut up long transcripts of endless walls of text that he and his coworkers created and stitched them into the most beautiful, definitive texts that he had ever seen. He read most of them, that is, he skimmed them enough to see that none of his passages had made the final cut and then put it up on shelf, never to be opened again. If he were being honest he hardly understood anything that came out in the publications. The punctuation was sometimes in odd places, thoughts seemed to run on forever, and there was never a concrete grounding, nowhere that he might find some footing as a reader. As has already been mentioned, even remembering what one typed was a dangerous proposition, given the chance that the text might become too self-aware. Each day a section of text was selected randomly by the Checkers, and should your text be found in violation of company rules, your job was the least of your worries.

He had seen employees removed from the typing floor by Checkers, and the looks of dread he saw on their faces were all that he needed to understand the dangerous risk he took by remembering his words. He thought they could never prove that his text was aware if he never admitted to it. What could they possibly point to in any of his texts and prove guilt? He was typing unconsciously for all they knew, and even unconscious words can become aware on their own, it didn’t mean that he did it on purpose or that he even knew that it happened.

Maybe the point was moot. Even if one day the compendium contained his words and his words alone, he could never take credit for his creation. He could never admit that he knew that they were his words, or how he knew them to be his. He wouldn’t even receive a pay raise. Many of his coworkers speculated that the monthly texts, given their continuity, were taken from the same handful of Typists each month, but giving out a pay raise would alert them to the fact that their words were being selected, and the knowledge that their words were being selected would spoil the magic of unconscious typing, a magic that the company was founded upon, a magic that had eliminated nearly every other mainstream publisher. The monthly compendiums contained more truth, more insight, more experience than any one author or group of authors could hope to muster on their own, even when working with a purpose. The numbers alone were too great to overcome. He slowed his pace back to its normal humming drone and continued, working hard to switch his brain back off and just type mindlessly, to ignore the record of text he knew he had just created and the danger it posed to his job and his well-being.

As the rattle of keys lulled him back into his comfortable trance, he heard a small discordant change in the sea of keystroke sounds. It started with a sudden stop in someone’s sequence, followed by rapid typing, panicked typing, typing that didn’t even care if it formed words anymore. That change sent waves across the sea of noise and others began moving more frantically, their pace desperate, pleading for something to rescue them from- he heard a noise that was not the deep methodic breathing of his coworkers or the chatter of keyboards. He heard the soft footfalls of rubber-soled shoes on the cold concrete floor of the warehouse. The same panic found his fingers as well. They moved as frantically as the others around him, trying to blend in with the others, give those shoes no reason to enter his square. As the footsteps grew nearer, their pace slowed, and he knew they had come for him. He had gone too far, and his remembering had finally caught up with him. The footsteps finally stopped, and he knew they were standing at the opening to his square, but he did not dare look behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut and continued to type, praying, wishing that they would just move on and go away, that they would see how quickly he typed and how many words he produced even if they were never that good and decide that he wasn’t worth the trouble.

He felt a cold hand on his shoulder and froze.

“I’m with the Checkers, you need to come with me.”

It wasn’t a question or a request. It was a precise command to be followed. He stood from his chair and turned to see a tall man in a dark suit standing behind him, stone-faced, eyes obscured by thick black glasses. He felt a lump in his throat and nodded. The Checker turned and walked back the way he had come, errant Typist in tow. The Typist peeked into the long rows of squares they passed while they walked. Everyone sat perfectly still, typing less frantically now. To those attuned to the tempo of keystroke clicks, an allegorical sigh of relief could be heard in the light taps as their fingers flitted from key to key without a care in the world. The Checker had found his mark, and it wasn’t any of them.

The Checker led him to the western wall of the warehouse, to a small inner building sectioned off from the rest of the warehouse floor: The Checkers’ room. Inside it was painted the same gray as the rest of the warehouse, but the desks didn’t have the same tall walls surrounding them. Men dressed similarly to the one that had retrieved him sat at the desks and pored over wide sheets of paper covered in miniscule letters. The men at the desks read the letters with apparent ease. He guessed that the thick black glasses they wore magnified the words somehow; no ordinary person could read words that small without straining their eyes.

“Go to Room C, I’ll be there in a moment,” the Checker said, pointing to a large ‘C’ painted over a doorway at the far end of the room. The Typist walked past three rows of desks towards Room C. It occurred to him how few Checkers there were. He thought there must be at least half as many Checkers as Typists, how else would they check all the words that were typed? Especially if his coworkers typed anywhere near as quickly as he did.

The door to Room C was open, and he walked inside, where he saw a metal table and a chair on either side. He took a seat at the far end of the room. It looked like the interrogation rooms he saw in crime dramas. Two Checkers would come in and do the good cop bad cop routine but as long as he played dumb he would be okay. He might still lose his job, but maybe that would be the worst of it if he didn’t reveal anything incriminating.

The Checker that removed him from the warehouse floor entered and pulled the door shut behind him. He had a manila folder bulging with papers in his hand. He dropped it on the table with a loud thud and sat in the chair across the table.

“You’re pretty quick, aren’t you?” the Checker asked, staring at the Typist with those impossibly dark glasses. Those glasses made the Typist squirm. In obscuring his eyes, the Checker appeared to the Typist something inhuman, separate from him, indifferent to his troubles. The rest of the Checker’s face betrayed no emotion, the Typist felt as though he was speaking to a machine, a vessel that was there to do a job, that never wondered or dreamed of creating art, of doing anything other than checking long pages of text.

“I don’t know how fast I type. I don’t really think about it,” the Typist replied. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for his response. He had to be extremely careful- revealing that he had any inkling of what he produced could be the end. The Checker stared at him for another long minute with a perfect poker face. He reached into the folder and removed the tall stack of papers. He glanced over the first one, following the lines with his finger.

“Sometimes he imagined what sort of art he would create,” the Checker read aloud. The Typist held his breath, trying to conceal any expression that might betray his recognition.

“Who do you think wrote that?” the Checker asked.

The Typist thought for a moment and then shrugged. “I guess it could have been anyone. That’s the point of unconscious writing, right?”

“So it could be you?”

“There are hundreds of us in that warehouse. It could be anyone.”

The Checker offered him a half grin and put the paper down. “I’m gonna level with you, if that’s alright.”

His breath smelled like a freshly burned cigarette, it reminded the Typist of smoldering ashes. He nodded.

“This sort of thing happens. It’s natural. We understand that. Our job here isn’t to hurt anyone or get people fired.” He rose from his seat and slowly paced from side to side as he continued. “I have a pile of proof in that folder there, and it doesn’t look good for you, buddy.”

The Typist squirmed in his seat.

“There’s two ways we can do this. You can refuse, and the company will sue. You’ll never work here, or anywhere else again.” He turned and leaned over, his hands on the table, his smoky breath less than a foot away from the Typist’s face. “Or you sign a confession for me now, and we make this problem go away. You go back and do your job, and don’t cause any more trouble.” He finally pulled away and sat back down in the chair. “It’s your call, bud.”

He removed another paper from the folder: a long, small-font legal document with a red ‘X’ beside a line that the Typist knew his signature was expected to appear beside. The document text was around the size of the pages he saw Checker’s poring over in the front room. He couldn’t have read the words even if he tried. The Checker handed him a red pencil, something that he had never seen in person. He took the pencil and clutched it clumsily, staring down at the document. He would be forfeiting his innocence, but in a way the document asserted his ownership of his words. They legally belonged to the company, of course, but he would have some sort of final proof that they were his words. Maybe they’d even appear in the Compendium. He wanted to ask if the confession excluded his work from publication, but decided against it. He pressed the pencil into the paper and scrawled an ugly squiggle of a signature, or what was meant to be a signature.

The Checker took both the pencil and the document from him and packaged it all back up in the folder.

“Is that all you needed?” the Typist asked.

The Checker reached into his jacket pocket and removed a thick set of black glasses and set them down on the table. “Put these on for me. I’ll be in to check on you in a few minutes.” The Checker turned and left Room C, shutting the door on the way out.

The Typist gingerly picked up the glasses and stared at them. They were impossibly black, and heavier than he expected. They weren’t made of plastic like other glasses, and he could hear a slight whirring of mechanical movement coming from inside them.

He took a deep breath and put them on. The material grew colder when it touched his skin, and all he saw was blackness. Eventually a small light grew in the corner of his vision and images flashed rapidly before him. He saw dozens of warehouses like the one in which he worked, all slightly different than the one before. He saw endless rows of square writing spaces, and then he rushed past them all, soaring just above the ground. He looked into each square and saw himself staring back, sometimes waving, sometimes smiling, sometimes crying. He felt his head throb as the images continued to flash across his eyes. He cried out and tried to pull the glasses off his face, but to no avail. They had fastened themselves the moment he put them on, and they didn’t so much as budge as he tore at them. He saw torrents of words, line after line of words that made sense, words that meant nothing, words that belonged together and words that he didn’t even recognize. They flew past him before he could read them, always averting his gaze just enough that he couldn’t see what they said, what they were trying to tell him. His head throbbed, and even when he tried to shut his eyes the images persisted, refusing to leave his senses alone. The pages eventually returned to black, to the nothing he saw when he put the glasses on. He sat, slumped in the chair, unconscious. The glasses slowly slipped from his temples and fell to the metal table below with a loud clatter.

***

            His heart raced as he typed faster than he ever had before. The words just came so naturally to him that it was as if he was transcribing something that he had heard a million times before. Each word knew which word was to follow, and so did he. He sped along, filling up imaginary page after imaginary page. He was sure he was finally creating something worthy of the Compendium, something he would be able to say was his own creation, even if only to himself.

He broke off the thought and during the pause he heard something he had never once heard in the warehouse: silence.

He paused again to confirm and indeed, it was completely quiet in the warehouse when he stopped typing. He thought to stand up from his chair and look around, but knew how obvious it would be that he was violating the rules if someone saw his head poking above the barriers. He glanced around his square and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but felt a paranoia creeping in. I appeared, for the first time since he had started the job, that he was actually alone. The calming drone of keystrokes was gone, like a white noise that had suddenly stopped. He heard soft footfalls on the warehouse floor. The footsteps finally stopped and he knew they were standing at the opening to his square, but he did not dare look behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut and continued to type, praying, wishing that they would just move on and go away, that they would see how quickly he typed and how many words he produced even if they were never that good and decide that he wasn’t worth the trouble.

He felt a cold hand on his shoulder and froze.

“I’m with the Checkers, you need to come with me.”

 

 

 

BIO

Cal Urycki is a young author from Central Illinois. He is currently attending Southeast Missouri State University where he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. He enjoys reading and writing fiction, as well as competing and training on the SEMO Track and Field Team. After graduation in 2019, he plans to attend an MFA program and continue writing.

 

 

 

 

Truce Poem

by Anthony Isaac Bradley

 

doggone goddamn
this sundown is yours

right now I want to study my shoestrings
all the way back
to the campfire we pushed together

with YouTube instructions while on
pills and Coca-Cola

dirty from the ingredients
you said we couldn’t agree on anything
but look at us

in a behaved moment
we built something
who cares if it’s temporary

 

 

Blueprint

 

Crush is what to do with girls and other boys. Crush before
taking someone home for a few tragedies, press down
until their bones make room.

Crush is what to trust.
Is the name of a book, the name
of a poem. Realistically, Crush is the name of two, possibly more.

This poem is named Blueprint. Crush,
follow the steps and make diamonds, make like hell-bent teenagers
and Crush close enough to listen,

close enough to hear every muscle pop and Crush
for glitter from a high-rise, confetti
on the ground. Crush on Jessica Glover,
on D. Gilson, on Natalie Byers for days.

Crush talk into rhythm. Crush open mouth into armpit.
Crush but stay on point, now relieve

the pressure. After the excitement comes strawberry jam—lift
for sunlight. Begin Crush where you stand. On the drive
home from St. Louis, Minnesota,

San Francisco. Sketch a life
like one could prepare. Crush a house
on Weller Street, Crush a family pet with a back yard.

A fountain in the driveway. Crush bliss
with impatience but keep safe, because Crush
is the word to drop when there is a need to fall in love but no chance

for a boy with smarts, or a girl with a mean streak. Crush this temporary body
and leave no instructions for the left-behind, the coming lonely.

 

 

Really

 

I never wore my mother’s lingerie
I stole from the neighbor’s wife instead
Plucked a red velvet brazier
I was a boy
Soft from long baths
Pretending the hands weren’t mine
What could happen in another man’s grip
I heard what happened
How a fag was beat to death
Near our busiest highway
Heard he deserved it
I hid my red velvet under the sink
Under the rubber plunger
I kept living
Took a lover
I said no kissing but yes
To the rest
I asked if he liked dress-up
And he said No fems
I fucked him
Pretended his hands were mine
I was delicious
I said I
Said I love you
I wrote for him and about
Made his bed
I was his red velvet
Ruby stockings rolled up and rolled down
Flung myself over him
I hid from all of you
Bred then bored him
I don’t blame him
I knew who I was

 

 

Three Extra Dry Martinis in Boston

—with Sexton & Plath

 

I will say this: I’ve worked to outgrow the kind of boy
who knows every gory detail,
even if their nonsense makes me
feel young. Boys who will lead anyone interested

to the body. On empty farmland, or rolled somewhere
in a ditch—a favorite hangout

for your boy, Death. Anne, would you believe
avoiding this romanticism
gets easier with every man-made wonder?

Hot take: your boy, like the rest of us, same
as an afternoon table for two on the coast,

was a bore. Guilty of legend-building
and conspiring with gods. Butting into every narrative
with a tired agenda and need

for attention. Perhaps you knew, felt sorry
for him and offered a cuddle, like Sylvia did. Does she
know I can take Google for a drive,

find the child’s body
of work? There are no secrets left
since your boy’s CV is public access: Automobile,
alcohol, gravity. Yes, love. Overexposed

on Subreddits, Dark Web. Nothing new
and all the blood looks staged. Your boy is no good
at realism, and I’m hard to convince.

I mean I want to outgrow a boy who lies about dignity

when there’s no evidence. Yet, like you two,
I’m desperately in the entourage.

Memorizing keywords
for every mood that falls, just to remind myself
how going all the way on a livestream

might not garner enough upvotes to make it
worth the trouble. Search Doorknob

plus Tie, Plastic Bag plus
Garden Hose plus the voyeurism
of your goddamn boy.

Choices that either age with me
or against. I don’t look good in purple. I don’t
want to be filling skinny jeans at forty, holding
my ticket for youth’s great closer.

Look, it’s late, and I’m pretend drunk.
Your boy is—again, predictable—out all night,
past my bedtime. Maybe I’m just jealous.
If I could afford a martini in Boston
I would surely order three, throw

my head back for a good pipe cleanse. Honestly,

I’m over it. I went to meet our boy
once, but grew tired on the long walk there.

 

 

 

BIO

Anthony Isaac Bradley is an MFA candidate at Texas State University. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Gargoyle, Cimarron Review, and other journals. He lives with his cat and the ghost of another.

 

 

 

How Author Eddy L. Harris Changed My Life

by Patrick Dobson

 

My favorite travel writer and friend, Eddy L. Harris, wrote books that changed my life. Maybe I read them at the right time or his messages hit me in the heart for who I am. Perhaps parts of his stories resembled my own life’s narrative. I think, at bottom, his writing affected me in these ways and many more.

I first ran into Harris’ second book, Native Stranger: A Black American’s Journey into the Heart of Africa, while poking around in the travel narrative section of a book store in Laramie, Wyoming. At the time I attended the University of Wyoming. I took grad school so seriously I contemplated suicide and nearly put myself into the mental hospital. I was only sober a year after having alcohol in my blood constantly for the previous sixteen years. My girlfriend had a baby, my daughter, just three months before I took off for Laramie. And there I was, a single father, baby in Kansas City, son of working-class people who prized a regular job over education, convinced I was a failure before I even started. I was frightened all the time. But I had to prove myself. I sought redemption like starved animals fight for food.

So, I overcompensated. I read hundreds of books for my studies—326, actually. “A” grades weren’t good enough. I needed to shine and I pressed myself. I was not a decent student. Focus escaped me. I gobbled text after text, absorbing vast amounts of information. But I lacked and missed the importance of the contemplative moment, that time when a scholar sits back and thinks about what he or she has read and organize it into a digestible narrative. I was like a library without a filing system.

Along with all the books I read for my studies, I read travel narratives and travel memoirs. I took stacks of them out of the university library. I swallowed them whole, one after the other. I dreamed of far-away places. Bruce Chatwin took me to the Tierra del Fuego and Australia. I learned the beauties of Afghanistan from Robert Byron. Brian Newby ushered me through Waziristan and down the Ganges. I rode the Blue Highways, traveled with Charley, and floated the Missouri River with Apikuni. Paul Theroux, that snotty and dismissive bastard, impressed the hell out of me—and I read all his books.

Then, Eddy Harris took me to Africa. It was a pivotal moment for me. Fear soaked my being. The weight of my dissolute past smothered me. Learning what adults are and what they do proved harder work than anything I’d done before. In Native Stranger, I accompanied Harris as he went from the north coast of the continent to the southern tip. Between these points, he encountered all the heartbreak and love of a place that is not one but many—lands, peoples, and, unfortunately, oppressive regimes. More importantly for me, he showed himself becoming a different, more mature, and loving person.

I burrowed into the library shelves and surfaced with Harris’ first book, Mississippi Solo: A River Quest.  The river intrigued Harris, a St. Louis native, not merely because it was the river of his youth but because it was also the river of his history. He began his trip as the Mississippi does, in the small waters in the north. The river took him into the heart of the South, where black men don’t travel the river, where white men carry guns and grudges deadly to black men. The river, he writes, carries “sins and salvation, dreams and adventure and destiny.” If Harris’ story isn’t about facing fear, doing penance, and seeking oneself, I don’t know what is. And that’s what I thought when I read the first page of Mississippi Solo. This was a book about me

Yes, I understand Eddy is black and I am white. Our upbringings could not have been more distant from one another. Our family pasts were almost opposites. I grew up in the suburbs, Eddy in inner-city St. Louis.  I possessed some advantages that Eddy did not. Eddy grew up in a gentle, loving house. Despite the violence of my childhood and the depth of my despair, I still had the privilege of degrading myself. Eddy’s relationship with his father carried him through difficult and dark moment. I don’t speak to my father. No one ever saw me at night and crossed the street.

I read as much of Harris’ work as I could get my hands on. His books South of Haunted Dreams: A Ride Through Slavery’s Old Back Yard and Still Life in Harlem, speak to me as Native Stranger and Mississippi Solo do. Here is man afraid but courageous, who knows that salvation comes only to those who seek it. They only discover they been saved by hindsight: They were delivered in the moment they stopped seeking and started living.

I’ve been lucky to meet Eddy, and I now associate the writer and his written messages with his personality. He is a good man, a kind soul, and gentle person who knows how to stand up for himself, be assertive, and command attention. He breaks through stereotypes, confounds his critics, and works all the time to remain true to himself. If he is scared, he is also courageous. He’s no one’s patsy. These things, all of them, that attract me to him. I have faith in Eddy Harris and know that his quest is a good one; not just for him, but for me and the rest of us, as well. I can call him a friend.

I am just as guilty as any white person about asking the only black guy in the room about his experience being black. To my knowledge, few Black Americans have asked white people for an all-encompassing assessment of their racial experience. In our first long conversation, I apologized to Eddy about asking the him black-guy questions. I wanted to know about him and how people treated him as a black man. Through the trials and errors of being a well-meaning and basically decent-hearted soul, I learned long ago, back in my drinking days, that a person—white, Black, Indian, Hispanic, Asian—can only tell me their experience and not that of the race. Eddy’s very conscious of being Black. He also doesn’t pretend to speak for Black people. He understands that he shares common racial experience with other Blacks, but he knows and is confident of himself as an individual struggling, working, and trying to make it on his own.

He was very understanding of me when we spoke about his Blackness. He knew that I could never know what it meant to be an outsider, the invisible man. But he entertained my questions and treated me like an equal, another writer seeking experience that would one day affect his writing. He taught me that messages of redemption, fear, sadness, melancholy, and joy, while coded differently along American racial fault lines, are universal. Being Black plays an important role in his writing. His books entail a Black man’s experience. But Eddy’s mastered the storyteller’s art. He relates tales of human emotion. His tales are American stories. That’s why his books say so much to me.

Long before I met Eddy, his writing played an important role in my life. It’s in part due to Eddy that I took off twenty years ago to walk to Helena, Montana, and canoe the Missouri River back to Kansas City. I’ve traveled extensively with my kids with the knowledge that whatever happened to us would bring us a little closer to our own redemptions. Due to his example, I wrote and published two books about my long trip and many shorter pieces about the journeys my kids and I have made. Due to his writing, too, I had the pluck to enter Ph.D. studies when I was 41, and due to his encouragement and goading, I earned that Ph.D. after long years working in other fields and doing dissertation at night when I was 52. I teach now, and often think of Eddy when standing in front of a classroom. Eddy’ example of not letting things bother him before their time has motivated me when I have had the duty and opportunity to speak in front of large crowds. Eddy doesn’t worry. He just gets up and does it. I can’t tell you how often I’ve “Eddy Harrissed” a presentation, interview, talk, or workshop I’ve led. When nervous or upset, I remember Eddy, his steady demeanor, his confidence. I take that on for myself and don’t worry about what the crowds think. I give it my best. That’s all I can do.

Eddy went back to the Mississippi twenty-five years after the journey he wrote about in Mississippi Solo. He rightly believed that his voyage would tell us more about our country, our rivers, and about being Americans. He took a talented people with him on his journey this time, including Emmy-winning cinematographer Neil Rettig, whose work has featured prominently on National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, and BBC. Joining Rettig is Emmy-winning documentary maker Mary Oliver Smith and National Geographic WILD editor, John Freeman. With their help, he produced a full-length feature about how an American man changes with time, how his perspective shifts, and how the people and the country around him transform but remain the same.

I have not seen the documentary but in snippets. Eddy’s attempting to sell the feature to a distribution company or television channel. His efforts on the film have run him to the edge of financial ruin. But he put his money to good use. The excerpts I’ve seen are professional and personal. The experts he employed on the film did their work the best they knew how. Every day, I think, this is the Eddy will sell the film and it will be available to the general public. Perhaps, some of the viewers will learn what I have from Eddy Harris. They will be better people. They will know more after the watch the film who they are, who we are as Americans.

Eddy lives in France these days. He has been able to publish in Europe, in the French language. Years ago, he found that his outlook doesn’t fit the typical Black American narrative American readers have come to expect. His success in France parallels those who have gone before him: Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. Like these Black Americans, he finds France a place where he can live outside the American racial experience. He seeks to be read as a writer and not as a Black American or merely as a Black writer.

Not only that, the French celebrate writers. He’s considered somebody because he writes. That’s all any of us can hope for. I keep thinking, well, maybe I should move to France, find myself a small village, and enjoy my status as someone who’s respected because he writes.

Eddy makes frequent trips to the United States. He still has close friends and family in his native St. Louis. He’s done residencies at prestigious universities, most recently William and Mary. He’s made speaking appearances in Kansas City and I’m arranging a workshop for him at the Writers Place, a Kansas City literary arts center. Whenever he’s in the states, he comes to Kansas City to visit me. It’s always a pleasure to have Eddy in my home with my family, for whom he has a great deal of affection. Due to our long acquaintance, he has lost his celebrity sheen with me and become a man, something I think he seeks to be with everyone.

When I think of Eddy, I can’t help but think just how he has changed my life. He encourages my literary efforts more than family, other writers, and my friends. I have the courage now to plant my ass in a chair, remain stoic, and fill the page from top to bottom. I am bold enough now to take the risk and put my writing out there for public consumption and criticism. I am braver and more spirited, not just in my writing life, but in my everyday activities. I am a better person for having Eddy Harris in my life.

 

 

 

BIO

Dr. Patrick Dobson has worked as a journalist, book editor, and union ironworker in Kansas City, MO. The University of Nebraska Press published his two travel memoirs, Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains (2009) and Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer (2015). He teaches American History, Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in nearby Overland Park, KS. His essays and poems have appeared in New Letters, daCunha, Kansas City Star, Indiana Voice Journal, Garo, JONAHmagazine, and other newspapers and literary magazines. His essays and travel pieces can be viewed at http://patrickdobson.com.

 

 

 

 

Invasions

by Robert Douglas Friedman

 

 

I started my first real job the same year that Argentina invaded the British Falkland Islands.

My own invasion of New York City had thus far been a spectacular disaster. Base camp was the crusty kitchen table of a sublet apartment in Hoboken, where I sat circling want ads with increasing desperation. Every morning I would rise and prepare for a fresh assault across the river, my target visible beyond the sagging rooftops and rippling clotheslines of that scenic slum.

The defeats were piling up and a full retreat was imminent. Then I had one of my rare moments of luck. Which my new boss, Jonathan the news director, enjoyed pointing out.

“Know why I hired you?” he asked

We were in Jonathan’s office. It had glass walls that looked out over the perpetually frantic newsroom. A leather bullwhip hung on the wall behind Jonathan. He sometimes swung it above the heads of staff writers and editors.  More often, he cracked it against the door that led to the business department.  Jonathan didn’t like the business department.

He straightened his tie in the mirror behind his office door. “Because when I threw all three hundred resumes in the air, yours fell on this side of my desk.  Hand me that tie clip, will you?”

I tossed it to him.  It was a Mickey Mouse tie clip.

“What do you think?” he said as he fastened the clip. “Does it make a statement?”

“A clear one, yes.  It’s crooked, though. So you were swayed by my impressive qualifications?”

He straightened the clip and settled back down into the big leather chair behind his desk.  “Good.  Then I’m ready for my meeting with the advertising department.  Your qualifications?  Absolutely. I studied them day and night. What’s your name again? Ed?  Ted?  Fred? Doesn’t matter. You lost Dickensian waifs are a dime a dozen. We pay you with loose change from the vending machines.’

“Speaking of which, can I have a raise?”

“Yes – on the day after the day hell freezes over.”

“Sounds reasonable. Thank you for your continuing cooperation.”

Jonathan was the best part of the job.  He seemed more fictional to me than real, a New Yorker character brought to sudden life.  Jonathan ate at the Algonquin Hotel and the Russian Tea Room, was married to a beautiful French woman, commuted daily to his Connecticut home. He spoke fluent Russian and French, the result of his years spent as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Paris.

Most amazingly, he liked me.

“Stay on top of this Falkland Islands thing for me,” he said, suddenly serious, his sharp gray eyes fixed on mine. “Monitor the newswires, keep an eye on all the telexes, read every newspaper and magazine. You’re my point man on this thing.”

A glorified copy boy was more like it. But it didn’t feel that way.

“This is a hot story. Pay close attention and learn, Douglas. It’s a great opportunity.”

 

Opportunity: that was the word I kept hearing. Mindy Lowenthal used it as she showed me around the newsroom. Mindy, an office temp, was in her late 20’s. She had long black tangled hair, a warm smile, and wore subtle perfume that lingered.

“Okay, listen closely,” she said. “This is your opportunity for a grand tour before everyone else starts showing up late as usual.  Over to your left are the clocks.  It’s part of your executive position to make sure they’re all on time.  You know, like when daylight savings comes.  Assuming you last that long.”

I looked at her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

She shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first person bounced out of here.  Or the last.” She pointed at the wall. “As you can see, we’ve got clocks for everywhere there’s a Global News bureau or correspondent. London, Tokyo, Moscow, Sao Paulo, that’s in Brazil in case you don’t know, Mexico City, Paris, and Geneva. I was in Geneva during my junior year abroad. Did I mention that I went to Vassar?  I’m beautiful and bright.”

“You forgot self-effacing.  What’s that window under the clocks?”

“You’re quick. I like that.” She leaned over and slid the little window open. “That leads to the telex room. The telex guys pass messages and news from the Associated Press through it all day long to Marcia and Tim, the domestic and foreign editors, who edit and rewrite the copy. You met them on your interview.” Mindy looked around and dropped her voice.  “Marcia’s a sour mean old witch and Tim’s a prissy little wuss.”

“Is that in their personnel files?”

She laughed. “It should be. You see that weird looking door in the wall behind your desk?  Under the big map with all the pins?  By the way, the map shows where all two hundred of our correspondents are located.  It’s been there forever. Some of those guys probably died during the War of 1812. That door is for the pneumatic tube system. Part of your job is to take the copy that Marcia and Tim churn out, stuff it into tubes, and send them through the system to all the different magazines in the building. You know – Business Day, Chemical Monthly, Aviation News, etc. And, of course, since your title is research assistant, your job involves a fair amount of research. The company library is downstairs on the 7th floor. You’ll get very familiar with it.”

I sat down at my desk. “How come you know all this stuff if you’re a temp?”

She fluffed her hair and noticed me noticing. “Oh, I used to work here.  I was Jonathan’s assistant. I quit to work on my Master’s at Columbia. I told you I’m bright. I come in whenever they need me. Like this week, they wanted me here because you’re starting.  Jonathan’s secretary, Debra, doesn’t have the time to train anyone, but really she doesn’t have the personality. You’ll see.

“Who else do you need to know about in this place?  Lisa is sweet but very conservative. She turns bright pink if you swear around her or talk about sex, so I do both. Victoria, she’s friendly but ambitious, though I think her main ambition is to snag herself a lawyer from the legal department on the 15th floor. She gets off on that floor by accident at least three times a day. Barbara, their boss, is a little ogre. She runs the business department like a feudal lord. Jonathan hates her. And Judy is her right-hand henchman.  Befriend them at your own peril, young knight. Did I mention that I’m in a Renaissance group?  I’m Lady Jane. No need to bow but please remember that I’m royalty.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Barry the photo editor is out today but you’ll meet him tomorrow. That will be an experience.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Barry is unique. That’s probably all you need to know for now, except that if you ask me out for a cup of coffee after work, I’ll say yes.”

“I see. Well, thanks for the tour. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to that cup of coffee.”

She smiled. “Me, too. Glad to be of service. It’s always interesting to see how long the next one is going to last.  I give you maybe six months.  Possibly eight. Welcome to Global News.”

I had a new job and a potential date. Maybe my luck really was improving.

 

Debra also used the word opportunity during lunch.

“You’ve got a real opportunity to prepare for your retirement here,” she told me.

“But I just turned 22.”

“You’re right.  Maybe it is a little late. But you still have some time left.”

We were sitting across from each other in the break room eating Japanese food. Debra, who was dressed in black, had a Yukio Mishima novel in one hand and a pair of chopsticks in the other. She had barely finished the tiny portion of noodles in front of her. But then Debra looked like she rarely ate very much.

“I only read Japanese literature,” she said, “because their stoic sense of fatalism appeals to me.” She absently straightened her short brown hair.  “And my own highly developed sense of fatalism tells me that one day you’ll be old and sick and unable to work, so you should begin preparing for it now.”

I took a bite of my chicken teriyaki. “Can I finish lunch first?”

“Sure.  Don’t let me bring you down.  I always see the cloud inside any silver lining. And don’t bother to joke with me. I don’t have much of a sense of humor. Jonathan always tries to make me laugh but it never works. By the way, sooner or later, Jonathan gives everyone nicknames.  Want to hear mine?”

“Sure.”
“Charon. You know, from Greek myths.  The one who ferries the dead across the river Styx. Speaking of Jonathan, he wants to see you right after lunch. Remember to start your pension plan as soon as possible.  You’ll thank yourself later.”

 

Jonathan was hanging a basketball hoop on the wall as I entered his office.  It was a genuine hoop. A regulation-sized basketball sat on his desk.

“There he is.  Thank God I brought you on board. Your assistance in our organization is critical.  How are you at drilling?”

“I’m quite expert, sir.  My father is a dentist.”

“Excellent, Jeeves, excellent.  Drill me a fresh set of holes, will you?  I’ve never been good at these menial proletarian tasks.  I think I hit some wiring earlier.  Be careful, though.  I felt a distinct shock. I’d hate for you to become collateral damage on your first day. It could take hours to replace you.”

I drilled. We hung the hoop.

Jonathan stepped back and ran a hand over his balding head. “Looks good.  Looks straight. You may turn out to be invaluable. Now talk to me about the Falkland Islands.”

I sat down in the chair across from his desk and gathered the notes I took earlier in the library. The basketball flew past my head.  It made a satisfying swish and fell into the open file drawer beneath the hoop.

“First sighted by Spanish and Portuguese seamen in the 16th century,” I began, “the Falkland Islands were visited by a British expedition close to 100 years later and claimed for the crown.”

Jonathan closed his eyes, lowered his head, and pretended to snore. “Fascinating.  Wake me when you reach this century. Always remember that nobody wants old news, Douglas. Hence the first three letters of the word ‘news.’ Pass me that ball.”

He caught the ball one-handed, spun his revolving leather desk chair around, and tried a backward shot over his head. It bounced a few times on the rim and then went through the hoop.

“Nice shot.”

“Of course. Continue.”

“On April 2 in  this year of our Lord, 1982, the Argentine navy landed on the Falkland Islands with thousands of troops and seized control.  The underlying goal may have been to distract everyone in the country from their economic troubles. Inflation is over 600%.  Manufacturing is down.  Jobs are impossible to find. There’s growing civil unrest, mass union demonstrations, etc. For obvious reasons, the military junta is not very popular, and their political opponents seem to disappear on a regular basis.”

“Not the site for my next vacation, in other words.”

“Seems like it might be an acquired taste.  On April 3, the Argentineans seized two associated groups of islands, South Georgia and the Sandwich group. Also on April 3, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 502, which calls for the withdrawal of Argentine troops from the islands and an immediate end to hostilities.”

“Which ain’t happening.”

“No, sir, it is not.”

“And that’s where we stand today?”

“It is.”

“Your assessment?”

“Imminent war.”

“I agree.  You’ve done your homework, Douglas, and quickly.   Good job.  I’m quite serious. I’m impressed. I’ve already dispatched one of our most experienced correspondents, Dan Burke, to cover events down there. Your research confirms that I made the right decision.”

I felt like cheering, or at least grinning from ear to ear.   I did neither.  It would lack coolness. Instead, I  picked up the basketball and took a shot from the corner of the room.

I missed, of course. I was not Jonathan.

He shook his head and frowned. “Better practice that jumper, Corporal, or we’ll never have a chance against Navy next week.”

“Will do, sir.”

 

Marcia, the foreign desk editor, was not pleased about Jonathan’s new pastime.  She and Jonathan shared an office wall.

“What the hell is he up to now?” she asked.  Her voice held the raspy memory of many cigarettes.

The wall shook as Jonathan took another shot.  “Jesus Christ,” she muttered.  “The shit I have to put up with here.”

She turned to me and forced a yellow smile. Marcia was probably in her 40’s but looked 60. She had bad skin and a worse dye job.

Spread out on her desk were dozens of index cards with contact information for foreign correspondents. Marcia had indecipherable handwriting so she was the only one who could read whatever she wrote. I believe she viewed this as a form of job security.

“Well, Douglas, how are things coming along?”

“Fine,” I replied.

“Are you enjoying your first day here?”

“I’m glad for the opportunity.”

My answer seemed to please her. “Keep in mind that you can learn a lot. And not from Jonathan. It’s people like me in editorial who can teach you what you need to learn.”

“Sounds great,” I told her.

“Here’s the first thing you should learn.” She looked around to see who might be listening and gestured me nearer. “I don’t like Tim,” she whispered, “and he doesn’t like me. So even though we sit next to each other, I’ll need you to deliver the notes I write him. Just take them from my outbox and put them in his inbox. That way he and I never have to talk.”

Amazing. “Okay. No problem.”

She looked pleased. “You’re adaptable. I like that. I think we’ll get along just fine.”

 

Barry, the photo editor, did not feel the same way. He looked me over from head to toe the next morning as I entered the office and hung up my raincoat, an expression of angry contempt on his bearded face.

Barry was about a foot shorter than me and at least fifteen years older.  He looked like an outraged leprechaun.

He continued staring as I sat down at my desk with my morning coffee and bagel.  You could buy both from a café called Fritzl’s on the first floor.

“How old are you?” Barry demanded.

I unwrapped the aluminum foil around my toasted bagel. The cream cheese was nice and creamy.  “Twenty-two.”

“Nobody’s twenty-two.”

“Okay, fine, I’m not twenty-two.”

“Glad to see you have the courage of your convictions.”

I took a bite of the warm bagel. “Hey, I’m just being agreeable.  I don’t like to upset my feeble elders.”

He glowered at me and then grinned, running a pale hand through his ginger beard.  “Heard you were a smartass.  Okay, I like smartasses.  Even if I do have socks older than they are.”

I washed the bagel down with some coffee. “You might consider shopping.”

He snorted. “And you might consider where I was when I was your age.  I don’t like you for it.  I resent you.  I truly do.  You’re a smartass, I like smartasses, but I resent you. You might as well know it.”

I wiped some cream cheese from my face. “Thanks for the update. Where were you at my age?”

“I was hauling my skinny ass through the jungle while the Viet Cong tried to kill me in fifty different ways.  Bombs, bullets, bungee stakes, you name it. I was infantry. No college deferment for this poor boy from the Bronx. Nossir. Just basic training and then a swift trip to the heart of darkness.”

“Conrad.”

“Yeah, you’re right, Joseph Conrad. A reader, yet.  Probably have a friggin’ English degree. I used to read a lot, too. Sometimes I’d even take a day to read when I was on R&R.  After all the drinking and whoring I’d sit down and make my way through Tolstoy, Hemingway, Crane. I read about war.  Then I lived it.”

I finished the first half of my toasted bagel and started the second. They’re best when still warm.

“One time,” he continued, staring into the distance, “I went back to base camp, and I was all clean and shiny the way you are now, fresh from my time off, relaxed, you know, I’d had my ashes hauled and had this calm demeanor, and I saw this guy, a buddy, Earl was his name, we were in basic together. Earl. Earl from Alabama.  Fucking Earl. He was sitting there drinking his coffee, just like you are right now, and eating something, just like you’re munching on that bagel, and we were talking, and the next thing I knew old Earl’s head had blown up and his brains and skull and blood were all over my clean uniform, it was some sniper out there in the shadows and no more Earl.  So long Earl. Dirt nap for the Earlster.”

I put down the bagel. My appetite was gone.

Barry grinned at me as the rest of the department started arriving.

“Remember, I don’t like you,” he told me.

“Got it,” I replied.

 

What did I think of these people?  Like Jonathan, they all reminded me of characters I had met before in a novel or a movie. So did the other residents of our 50-story midtown building. Global News was just one department in a huge multimedia conglomerate that was more like a Wall Street firm than a publishing house. I was surrounded by carefully groomed executives wearing custom-made Italian suits, elegant women of independent means who worked just for the fun of it, scruffy foreign correspondents with their ties undone and rumpled Burberry raincoats casually tossed across their shoulders.

The correspondents would visit from Nepal, Burma, Egypt, Peru and other exotic locales and sit in Jonathan’s office sharing news and gossip in equal measure. I would watch as he smiled, shook their hands, and sent them off to cover breaking stories in Rome, Jerusalem, or Helsinki.

I was nothing like any of these people. I was from a small town and had attended a small state college. If they thought of me at all, it was as a  recent graduate with a typical corporate future. But I knew that I was different, and young, and that my future would be my own. Meanwhile, I studied them like an anthropologist doing field work in the wilds of Borneo.

 

Mindy was right about Tim, a slight, fastidious man who seemed frightened of Marcia despite his earlier experiences as a foreign correspondent in war zones. I didn’t blame him. Marcia scared everyone but Jonathan, who delighted in annoying her.

Mindy was also correct about Barbara, who ran the business department with an iron fist and was prone to sudden bursts of rage. “A thousand dollar expense I can hide!” she shouted at her assistant Judy one day. “But not five thousand dollars! What the hell was Jonathan thinking?”

I knew what Jonathan was thinking because he told me. We were in his office during this outburst and overheard every word.

He shrugged. “What can I say?  It costs money to cover a war. The bribes alone are a fortune. Burke is doing a great job and we can’t leave him high and dry.” He took a deep breath.  “Okay, bring me up to date on this nasty little confrontation, Steinbeck.”

Jonathan had learned that I enjoyed the novels of John Steinbeck. My official nickname was now Steinbeck. I admit that I kind of liked it.

Every day, I reviewed the Associated Press newswire stories as they printed out from the teletype machine – literally hot off the presses – along with dozens of newspaper articles and magazine stories in the library downstairs.

I also read Dan Burke’s informative dispatches from Argentina. I was really starting to like Dan, who wrote with clarity and compassion about both sides of the worsening conflict. Dan had a feel for everyday people and how traumatic events affected them. He was only five or six years older than me and taking risks that I wasn’t sure I would ever be brave enough to take.

I cleared my throat. “On April 25th, British forces retook South Georgia Island and captured an Argentine submarine. They also sank an old Argentine battle cruiser, General Belgrano, with a nuclear submarine. Fierce battles broke out between the British navy and the Argentine air force. On May 4, yesterday, the Argentine forces sank a British destroyer, the HMS Sheffield, but Dan estimates that Argentina has lost 20-30 percent of their air force. The main British forces are on their way across the Atlantic.”

“In other words – escalation,” said Jonathan. “Prediction?”

“Argentina is about to get its ass kicked.”

“Agreed. And so are you if you don’t get out of my office. I need some alone time for my afternoon nap.”

“I’ll try and keep it quiet out there.”

 

Hoboken’s future looked a lot brighter than Argentina’s. Gentrification was in the air. Old brownstone buildings that you could buy a few years earlier for $20,000 were  getting snatched up for six-figure sums. The fruit trucks selling fresh produce on side streets and the old Italian delis and the barbershops and the shoe repair stores and the pizzerias were disappearing as law offices and condo developments sprang up. On Washington Street, which ran through the heart of town, sleek late-model Saabs and Honda Preludes were replacing the clunky American junkers that once filled every parking space. Maxwell’s – a hot new club where you could eat a bad meal while listening to indie-rock bands like the B52s, REM, and the Feelies – was turning away eager customers.

Even the drug dealers who did business around the Steven’s Institute campus every night could feel the change as a flood of new customers increased demand and diminished supplies. My downstairs neighbor, a drug dealer named Raymond, was not happy with the situation.

“Those yuppies are a pain in the ass, man,” he told me, scratching his neck. “They want designer goods and the profit margin on that product line is minimal. I’m starting to wonder if I took the wrong career path.”

“It’s a possibility,” I told him.

In the mornings, I would walk the cramped Hoboken streets from my apartment to the bus stop as the intoxicating smell of chocolate hung over the city. Sometimes I followed my nose to the source, Lepore’s Home Made Chocolates, where they crafted delicious candy fresh every day and you could get a warm breakfast croissant with dark chocolate melted inside.

My regular bus driver was an aspiring stand-up comedian who tried out jokes on his passengers every morning. We would boo or cheer each joke as he took notes on our responses.

“Thanks for your help, everyone,” he would announce over the sound system as we arrived at Port Authority Bus Terminal. “Come by and see me this Saturday night at the Improv.” But we already knew his whole act, so why bother?

 

Hoboken was changing and so was I. Within a month, I fell into a work routine that felt like I had followed it for years. I would hop off the bus and walk across town past the porn shops and bait-and-switch electronics stores to our building at Sixth Avenue and 48th street, weaving my way through the sidewalks crowded with other morning commuters. The women all wore sneakers and carried their dress shoes in shoulder bags, and the men all had newspapers folded under their arms. Homeless people rummaged through garbage cans, waved their arms, muttered, shouted, and begged for cash. Cabs accelerated into turns and pedestrians scattered like schools of frightened fish.

I would pass the High School of Performing Arts, where students often danced and sang for passers-by just like their fictional counterparts did in the movie “Fame.” Then I would march north through the perpetual wind tunnel of Shubert Alley where bright playbills left behind after last night’s shows fluttered and circled in the breeze like lost tropical birds.

My work day began at 8:30 am and ended at 4:30 pm, and every day was pretty much the same in our dysfunctional office. I now understood why nobody lasted in this job. It wasn’t the work. It was the vicious bickering. On Fridays, the staff would adjourn to a local Irish pub called Molly Bloom’s for drinks and more drinks, but I always politely declined the invitation. Eight hours a day with this crew was more than enough.

The stressful daily grind that had become my life was disrupted one Wednesday afternoon when my parents dropped in from New Jersey for a visit. They were the last two people I expected to see strolling into the lobby. I was on my way back from delivering a package to the basement mailroom when I spotted them, my father towering over everybody else and my mother smiling beside him. My mom wore a new black dress and my dad a blue blazer with gold buttons. They were holding hands.

“Hello there, young man,” my father said. “Surprised to see us?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Shocked, actually.”

I was also shocked by how glad I was to see them. “What are you guys doing here?”

My mother’s smile grew bigger. “You look so professional in your business clothes. So grown up. We’re going to see a matinee of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Your father thought it would be nice to see where you work.”

“How about it?” my father asked. “Embarrassed to be seen with your old parents?”

“Speak for yourself,” said my mother. “I’m not old.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” my father said.

“Well, you figured wrong,” my mother said.

I laughed. Surprisingly, I was not embarrassed by them at all. Maybe I really was grown up.

“Come on,” I said.

We rode the elevator to the 37th floor while my father rattled off statistics about my employer. He was a business teacher and always did his research. My mother the nurse was fascinated to hear there was a fully staffed company medical office on the 12th floor.

Everyone was very gracious in the newsroom and my parents were duly impressed by the clocks on the wall, the big map, the constant clattering of typewriter keys. Jonathan, who was taking a phone call in his office, waved through the glass and then finally emerged to shake my father’s big hand.

“We’re very lucky to have Douglas here,” he said. “I just wish he’d stop stealing from the pension fund.”

My father laughed. “I think I like this guy.”

My mother turned to me. “I’m very disappointed in you. Didn’t I raise you not to get caught when you steal?”

This time Jonathan laughed. “I see where Douglas gets his sense of humor.” He gently shook my mother’s hand.  “Your son learns fast, gets along with everyone, and will go far.”

My parents were thrilled with this glowing report and went off to their matinee in high spirits. I sat down at my desk feeling better than I had in a long time.

Barry looked up from the photographs he was reviewing and grinned. “Your folks seem like nice people,” he said. “I’m adopted and never knew mine.  And I still hate your guts.”

“Understood,” I replied.

 

I didn’t feel good for very long. Dan Burke was missing.

“Needless to say, I’m deeply concerned,” said Jonathan at our weekly staff meeting.

British forces had landed on May 21, which was also the last day we received a dispatch from Dan. It was now May 23 and the ground fighting had grown intense.

“There goes five thousand bucks down the drain,” muttered Barbara.

Jonathan turned to her. “Excuse me, Barbara? Did I just hear you correctly?”

She hesitated. “I certainly hope Mr. Burke is alright. But the cost remains an issue.”

I’d never seen Jonathan angry before. “I sent him down there and I hope like all hell that he’s okay. So please spare me the callousness and sarcasm. This is a man’s life we’re talking about here.”

“And spare me the condescension,” said Barbara. “I’m trying to do my job and keep this department financially solvent despite constant undermining. I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.” Nobody else said a word as she slammed the door behind her.

Jonathan stared at her closed office door for a long moment and then shook his head. “Marcia, please reach out to our contacts in Argentina and see if we can get any word about Dan. Ask them to check all the local hospitals. Meanwhile, we have a coverage vacuum. Any suggestions?”

Marcia frowned thoughtfully, although it was hard to tell since frowning was her usual expression. “I’ll look into it and see if anyone is available.”

“Please do. Thank you. That’s it for today’s meeting, everyone. I’ll keep you all informed as we learn more.”

 

Dan Burke wasn’t the only person missing. Also off the grid was the woman who sublet me her Hoboken apartment, a former NYU business major and apparent criminal who was nowhere to be found.  Unfortunately, she had not forwarded my rent payments to the landlords, Ernest and Catherine, who lived on the first floor and until now had been very friendly. They were so friendly that I always snuck past their doorway to avoid getting dragged into a conversation with this pair, who addressed me endlessly about different exciting topics like the weather while ignoring each other.

Ernest and Catherine were no longer friendly. In fact, they were now threatening to evict and sue me.

“That’s rough, man,” said Raymond the drug dealer when I ran into him one morning. I was on the way to my job and he was on the way home from his job. “But I’ve always liked your apartment more than mine, so it could be good news for me.”

“Thanks a lot,” I replied.

He smiled and yawned. “Hey, I’m just busting your balls, dude. The rumor is they want to sell the place fast and cash in on the big real estate boom. That’s pretty funny since they had seventeen fire violations the last time the building was inspected.  It’s even funnier since Ernest used to be the fire captain. The point is, they’re eager to get rid of us both. If I were you, I’d use this information to arrive at a mutually satisfactory resolution to your dispute. I plan to do the same.”

“I appreciate it. I will.”

Mindy was missing, too. We never got together for coffee because she met someone in her Renaissance group who quickly became her new beau. He was an earl or maybe a duke. Whatever his title, he swept Lady Jane off her feet and they were now probably living somewhere in a drafty castle on the Scottish moors, or maybe in a one-bedroom coop in Flushing. Who knew?  Who cared?  I was worried about Dan Burke.

The Falkland Islands war was no longer a distant geopolitical event with a wide range of contributing factors for me to research and discuss with Jonathan. It was real. Dan could be horribly wounded or dead along with thousands of others. I hadn’t given mortality a whole lot of thought before but I was starting to understand the brutal fact of it. Dan’s parent’s phoned every day and Jonathan took those calls. He looked somber and drained every time he got off the phone with them.

Mortality didn’t seem like much of an issue to Tim the domestic desk editor, though, who had volunteered to replace Dan in Argentina and was now winging his way south. Tim was an experienced correspondent, spoke fluent Spanish, and was willing to report from a war zone rather than continue working with Marcia and the rest of us here in the main office. I didn’t blame him.

Jonathan asked me to help cover the domestic desk until he could find a replacement for Tim. This new role involved greater interaction with Marcia. Her limited tolerance ran out almost immediately and it wasn’t long before she was sending me notes via her outbox rather than talking to me. This was not a great loss.

Finally, after some very long weeks, word came about the fate of Dan.

 

“I have some great news to share,” announced Jonathan as he emerged from his office with a big smile. “Dan Burke is alive and well.”

The office erupted in cheers. Even Marcia looked happy. I was surprised to feel tears in my eyes and roughly brushed them away before anyone else noticed.

“He’s currently being held in a British detention area,” Jonathan continued. “Apparently, he lost his press credentials in the middle of the fighting and was captured along with thousands of Argentinian soldiers. He suffered minor injuries but is otherwise no worse for wear. The U.S. State department has contacted his family and is arranging for his release.”

Jonathan paused. “While I have everyone’s attention, I’d like to make another announcement. As some of you know, I was recently offered the opportunity to take over as the editor-in-chief for one of our magazines, Business Management News, which is headquartered in London. I’ve accepted the offer and will be leaving at the end of next week. It’s been an adventure working with you all. Thanks so much for your support and hard work, especially during this difficult time. Douglas, do you have a moment?”

I followed Jonathan into his office and closed the door behind us.

“I know my imminent departure comes as a bit of a surprise,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “it sure does.”

My tone of voice gave me away and Jonathan looked at me. “I was sworn to secrecy, Steinbeck. Only a few people in the business department were informed.”

“Okay. I understand.” But I didn’t really. He had hired me while knowing that he was about to leave. That wasn’t exactly a crime but he could have told me the truth. I was trustworthy. Besides, I thought we had a mutual respect thing going on.

“Good. The reason I asked you in here,” he continued, “is that I’d like to make you an offer. You’ve done an excellent job filling in after Tim’s departure. So how would you feel about taking over the position of domestic desk editor?”

“You mean keep working with Marcia? How much of a raise are we talking about here?”

He didn’t smile. “Unfortunately, our budget doesn’t support a raise. But, of course, a promotion like this would put you on a great career path.”

“And what if I chose to remain in my current position?”

“It’s no longer an option. We’re combining the two roles.”

“I see.  Twice the workload, no extra money, and I’d have to work closely with Marcia? That’s quite a path.”

“It’s still a great opportunity, Steinbeck.  And, yes, you would work closely with Marcia. I know she can be difficult but Marcia is really rather knowledgeable. You could learn a great deal from her.”

I couldn’t believe he was saying this stuff to me, or that he was handling me in the same smooth way I’d seen him handle other people. But then Jonathan was a company man and leaving behind a fully staffed department would make him look a whole lot better to upper management.  So would the cost savings of using me at the domestic desk instead of someone more experienced and expensive.

“Yes,” I said, “her people skills and patience are legendary. Maybe I should have gone to the Falkland Islands with Tim. A war sounds like more fun.”

Jonathan frowned. “Think seriously about this offer, Douglas. You have a few days to decide. Bear in mind that it’s career suicide at this company to turn down a promotion.”

“Understood,” I said. “I’ll give your offer all the consideration it deserves. Thanks very much for thinking of me. I really appreciate this potential opportunity. And congratulations on the new job.”

Jonathan wasn’t the only one around here who could handle people.

He grinned. “Thanks. This has been in the works for a long time and it’s a challenge I look forward to taking on. Plus, on a personal note, my wife’s family is in Paris so we’ll be just a hop, skip, and a jump away from them. Happy wife, happy life, Steinbeck.”

“Good to know.”

What could I say?  Don’t go because it’s been great fun working with you despite the fact that you were playing me the whole time?  Stay here because Marcia is the midnight spawn of Satan and working with her will destroy my mortal soul?  Life was too damned short to worry about any of it.

I picked up the basketball and took a final shot at Jonathan’s hoop. The ball swished through the net. It felt good to be on target for once.

“I’ll get back to you soon,” I told him but I already knew my answer was no.  I had been invaded. It was time to beat a hasty retreat before I got captured.

 

 

 

BIO

Robert Douglas Friedman’s short stories and humor pieces have appeared in Story Quarterly, Narrative, The Satirist, Boomer Lit Mag, Jokes Review, Penny Shorts, Literally Stories, and many other publications. He is the founder and president of Raising the Bar Media. Robert lives and works in New Jersey.

 

 

 

Life Rising

by Colleen M. Farrelly

 

Half-dead plants grasping
through a broken,
wood-checked screen
to the basic-build
church chair strangled
by fingers
and leaves,
fallen cold and dead,
to the dirt caked
over knotted roots
of the lumbering tree like
the clackity-clack of the track
and catching bridge joints
beyond the sleepless hollow.

Dawn drowns
the split snow.
A lone lily
pokes through
the thistles.

 

 

Wildlife Haiku

 

iguana lazing
in summer sun—a shadow
and a sudden splash

a green flock squawking
soaring chasing and settling
swiftly on phone wires

speckled lizard
scurrying across afternoon
parking lot rivers

ibis creeping low
in spring’s oasis
before jaws snap shut

 

 

Art Walk Past

 

Smaller
than I had expected,
no pool
reflecting rolling moonlight
as we sit atop the roof
after the resounding
bass readied itself for bed,
the last revelers
drinking in Warhol-esque sketches
and scrambled Mondrian cityscapes—
or the urban Kandi Kids’
handprints
lining the siding—
like a childhood chalkscape’s
older cousin—
and slinking into the shadows.

Darkness veils
the pinks and purples,
creeping
towards the fence,
a fog furled
over a lone two figures
staring at the sliver of silver
beyond the horizon.

 

 

Grandma’s Porch

 

Bare feet
pitter-patter
across grandma’s front porch
with an urgency unique to
childhood,
abandoning toys and cool-aid
to catch this new play-thing—
green, croaking—on
her porch.

 

 

 

BIO

Colleen M. Farrelly is a freelance writer from Miami, FL, whose works have recently appeared in Spank the Carp, The Recusant, and KDNuggets, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, Places and Faces. When she isn’t writing, she is a mathematics researcher and avid swimmer.

 

 

 

Lightning

by Cleo Egnal

 

7 September, 1940

She drummed her fingers softly on the worn oak of his writing desk. It belonged to his father, he had mentioned that once, but the details and context of the conversation were lost to her. She tapped rhythmically, playing out a tune that got itself stuck in the recesses of her mind. A sharp pinch of memory reminded her that he hated when she did “that blasted thing” with her fingers when she was nervous. Out of belated courtesy she folded her hands together and rested the shape in her lap, trying to keep her buzzing body steady. He wasn’t there, of course, to reprimand her absentminded habit, but she thought it polite, regardless, to cease her nervous tapping. Maybe she was worried he could hear it, wherever he was. Maybe they were that connected.

The tune, faded and distant and blurry, somehow, continued to dance around in her head; she tapped (her foot, this time) in time with the nonexistent music as she blocked the sounds of sirens and checked the clock again. He was late. And bombs were falling.

They had spoken earlier that afternoon about what to have for supper, but never decided. The thought, when it occurred to her, prompted her to move from where she had been sitting, sorting through mail like she always did right before he came home to her, and make her way to the kitchen. The sirens grew louder (or had she just started really paying attention?) as she made her way without thinking through the flat.

As she stared at the empty plates set out on the small square table in the corner of the kitchen, trying to orient herself and remember what exactly it was she came into the room to find in the first place, she thought about whether or not he was hungry. They usually ate together at six-thirty; they were both punctual about things that way. Well, she only was when it came to food. He could have been made of gears and ticking clocks, though, the way he navigated time effortlessly and always managed to arrive exactly when needed, or intended. She constantly found herself wanting to be somewhere and only arriving when the odd workings of the universe finally allowed her to find her left shoe. He wasn’t like her in that regard. So it was odd, terribly odd, that at eight-fifteen the plates were empty and the kettle was screaming and her reliable clock was broken.

She snapped her fingers as she recalled her purpose for venturing into the kitchen; she meant to turn the kettle off before heading down to the shelter. It was shrieking, the kettle, that was what reminded her; it was a miracle its voice didn’t get lost in the droning sirens. She wondered why the sirens had to blare on so incessantly. Surely one or two warnings would be enough. But no, it had been going on too long and her ears were ringing and as she turned the knob on the stove all the way to the right, and as the kettle began to quiet and all that was left was the slight sizzle of boiling water, she wondered what would happen if she just stayed. He would be confused, after all, if he wandered in and she was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t very well duck into the shelter without him, he wouldn’t know where she’d gone. He’d be standing in the foyer, absolutely muddled.

Of course, this was all fanciful thinking. He could hear the sirens just as clearly as she could (although she wished sometimes she couldn’t, they were completely bothersome at times) and would know immediately where to find her. But something about him coming home to an empty flat made her incredibly sad, she didn’t know why, and so she contemplated staying. She could make them both some tea — after all, the kettle had been prepared — and reheat dinner and he would come home to a warm meal instead of wondering if she was still in one piece. She supposed that was what she was wondering, at the moment. If he was in pieces somewhere, bits of him scattered throughout the city. She imagined a corner of his ear carried by the wind through Trafalgar Square, right by his office, while his ring finger headed south along the dusty streets toward Whitehall. She imagined his pinky toe sauntering off to Charing Cross to catch the train home, unaware that it had lost the rest of him. She imagined this all somehow detached from the idea that it was entirely possible he wasn’t, at the moment, whole.

Her instincts for self-preservation proved stronger than her worry at him coming back to an empty flat. After a few more moments of wandering around, waiting for him, she grabbed the basket filled with snacks and knitting and old magazines she had begun keeping by the door, threw the first thing she saw on the coat rack over her shoulders, and headed out toward the building’s air raid bunker. She brushed aside the creeping heat of fear that was making its way up the base of her spine and turned her thoughts instead to whether or not she would be able to carve out a comfortable spot for herself among the thirty or so others she predicted were already there.

The sirens continued and the night wore on, seemingly endless, occasional shudders racking the brick wall against her back. A single bulb rattled overhead, swinging ever so slightly, a present reminder that the earth above them was turning to rubble. She passed her time knitting the beginnings of a scarf and tapping out music on the concrete floors. No one asked her to please stop doing “that blasted thing,” and somehow the lack of reprimand struck her harder than if the action had been met by communal disdain. The quiet of the bunker, louder almost than the sirens, hummed like electric lights, the very outsides of it electrified by such intense fear she wondered if they would all simply perish from that. The inside of the silence was vast, dark, terrifying. It was so loud, all that quiet, she pressed her hands against her ears to try to block it out but all she heard was muffled sirens screaming from all corners of London and some occasional sobbing. She couldn’t tell from whom it was coming; it might have been her.

For seventy six more days, each time she made her way to the bunker, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he would suddenly walk through the door, expecting his tea and supper, and she would have to explain that she was terribly sorry, but preparing a meal had slipped her mind in all the chaos, and would he be opposed to eating out just this once? He would wrap his arms around her and say no, he didn’t mind at all, and he would take her by the hand and they would walk together through an unbroken city, without worrying about anything but rain falling from the sky.

 

BIO

Cleo Egnal is a fiction writer with a B.A. in Written Arts from Bard College. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she spends her days dreaming of the English countryside and working on her novel. She has been published on The Other Stories and Ranker. Besides writing fiction, she is also passionate about Victorian history, fashion history, and music.

 

 

 

 

 

BookStop

by Susan Lloy

 

BookStop is a small independent bookstore on the main drag of an Atlantic city. The citizens are proud of it and boost that it is their only haven separate from the other conglomerates. So, when I came to sign copies of my recently published collection, I was looking forward to it. The region is noted not only for its beauty, but also for the warmness of its citizens. Still, little did I know what menace lurked within the confines of the BookStop’s compact rectangular walls?

The day was drizzly and I had consumed many cups of tea prior to my expedition. When I arrived a somewhat friendly attendant greeted me and to our surprise she had recently vacated the city which I inhabit. We discussed the power of the sea and like the tide it pulls you back. She mentioned she was happy to be back in the bosom of her kind.

I was informed they were in possession of three copies. However, the male assistant was only able to locate two. Making light of it, I made a joke and suggested someone must have pinched one. Neither of the two salespersons cracked a smile.

The two copies of my book were finally signed and the female clerk stuck author-signed labels on the front covers. I then did an about face enthusiastically awaiting the eager book browsers. I sold one copy almost immediately, yet, unfortunately the second copy was a harder go. All the while the buckets of morning tea were weighing heavy on my bladder. So as the hour ticked onward I attempted to converse with the staff,

“Gee … this second copy is a lot harder going.”

Not a word was returned and when I asked if I could use the staff bathroom as I was ready to burst, the answer was,

“It’s not for the public!”

 

I had brought along several colored copies of my book review. The review hosted a photograph of myself and generous ins and outs of this christened – successful collection. When a snooty South End lady sauntered in, I inquired if she had an interest in short fiction?

“Why yes.”

Half way down the first paragraph she tossed my review back with disgust.

“The inner lives of the lost, the lonely, and the mentally ill. I don’t think so!”

Another staff member rushed through the door of this tiny shop with a scowl that could strip paint off the wall.

 

She came barging up to the counter and growled that I never OK’d this with the manager. I replied that he had invited me to casually drop in to sign copies.

“YES SIGN NOT PROMOTE.”

“Well, isn’t that what you expect from me? To sell my books for you?”

“NO. We sell the books! If you want to promote you have to rent a room.”

“Yeah, but, there’s only one book here.”

I left with my full bladder thinking that BookStop is aptly named. These handlers of words and slayers of hearts don’t respect authors and will stop a book dead in its tracks.

“Oh hear ye fellow authors. Beware!”

 

 

BIO

Susan E Lloy has published extensively in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom. A writer of short fiction her short story collection, But When We Look Closer, was recently published by Now Or Never Publishing. Her forthcoming collection, Vita, will be released April 2019. Susan lives in Montreal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A million years

by Fabrice Poussin

 

I loved you a million years ago or more
my girl, my child, beautiful daughter of the universe
I loved you when I first set eyes on her
blue-eyed in her spring dress of fragrant tomorrows.

I loved you eighteen years ago
my child, my girl, daughter of a wondrous dream
as I adore you today while you walk away
with your own set of everything you are.

I have loved you both since the dawn of days
my child, my girl, woman of an electric life
I will cherish you until all energies perish
and then patiently I will wait for your return.

 

 

Half past life

 

It is late at life
days have gone to bed
under the shroud of light
left behind by a careless father.

A quarter of a time ago
blood flowed warm, thick
carrying a taste of iron and berries
now frozen in cracks in minimalistic crystals.

Too early into another month
the body refuses to chase a soul
emptier like the blinding hour glass
marbles drop in thunderous crashes.

Middle of nevermore thrice again
senses have parted ways onto the dial
making so many hands on the palm of eon
seconds, minutes, hours, and new dimensions.

Darkness is no longer
all stand still in agony
she exhales her very last hopes
it is a moment past death.

 

 

Innocent

 

They always talked about it with a chuckle;
a victory small and simple, great pride to them.

Occupied, they heard the thunder and whistle of
metal loaded with an explosive chemistry.

Yet, they worked, walked, sowed, and harvested
even when they came, in uniform, wearing double s’s.

Far from the city, free in war, powerful in meekness,
the innocents with rattling machines at a loss.

Families of four, ten and twenty, surrounded by farms,
feeding on idle courage, irony untranslatable.

When they came in pairs, hungry, begging for food,
their copperheads were as noodles in a straw.

Ragged stray puppies, pitiful in a stench of wet fur,
beaten, by a mere refusal in the face of abundance,

they went home to the camp, carrying empty guts,
pained by a hatred not understandable to them,

innocent, working for pennies, on a life borrowed,
stolen by evil, far from love, care, comfort and warmth.

Their years high-jacked in the flower of age, men,
looked with sadness, at these families, temporarily

their prisoners, busy with a meal not to be shared,
conquerors, their only right, not to die just yet,

but for the potato, the leg of lamb, or the apple,
no treasure could be traded, and famished they remained.

 

 

In Black and White

 

The image, odd reflection on faded paper
of a somber gaze, on a day so young yet;
November again, reminder of a birth,
just a toddler, still in monochrome habit.

The market place, desolate, near the sounds
of the same old merry-go-round, sad again;
what are they thinking these deep browns?
Perhaps of the next snapshot a year too soon!

Seven against a gray wall, laughing at the world,
mirror of surroundings so long forgotten,
no color in this domain, no joy in the smile!
Who were they seeing those eyes near tears?

Just black in a suit, and white in the heavens,
he seems to long for the days of freedom,
a happiness in scenes of tones and scents,
where at last, he may dance into the dark.

 

 

BIO

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Defenestration

by Martin Kleinman

 

Sarah and her friends come from affluence, which is why she said “defenestration,” while I simply said that Glenn jumped out the fucking window.

To me, at that stage of my life, there was no excuse for that.  It wasn’t like the souls who had flung themselves out of the North Tower and into a clear blue Tuesday.  You do remember that day, when school kids scurried, hair dusted with destruction, and squinted into morning’s glint.

And it wasn’t like that time in ’41 when Abe Reles, aka “Kid Twist”, flew headlong out of Room 623 of Coney Island’s Half Moon Hotel while under police protection.  Murder Incorporated’s master of death-by-ice pick landed on a restaurant roof the night before he was to testify against Albert Anastasia, and thus transformed from short psychopath to spin-art corpse.

No. To my way of thinking, there was no excuse for what Glenn did.  None.  Sarah and Glenn grew up on the Upper West Side of New York, well after the “Panic in Needle Park” days, and before today’s calamity of condos.  A guy like that? He should have jumped for joy, not out of a building.

I would later learn that Sarah and Glenn had been inseparable theater conservatory stalwarts at SUNY Purchase back in the day.  After a few years of audition rounds and regular rejections, Sarah shed her ScarJo dream, and drifted back to her fallback career, graphic design.

Glenn’s theater career lurched like Chutes and Ladders.  He earned just enough positive reinforcement to keep him good and hooked on the acting profession.  After winning a couple of lucrative TV ads, he moved to Chelsea.  The checks rolled in.

At that point, I came into the picture.  I met Glenn’s sister-from-another-mister at a concert in Prospect Park and, in short order, Sarah moved in with me, to the upper upper upper upper West Side of Manhattan, 214th Street and Broadway.  “Soooo convenient,” she’d tell her friends, throwing serious shade at my down-at-the-heels Inwood pre-war apartment, two floors above Liffy II and the Dominican cigar makers.

 

I asked Sarah about that angry four-inch scar on the underside of her left forearm, early on in our relationship.  I couldn’t help but notice that this wasn’t a half-hearted pass, an across the wrist swipe.  This was a vertical slash, a deliberate ditch.   “It’s an old cat scratch,” she said, the first time I mentioned it.  We were in bed, aglow.  I ran my forefinger down her arm, gently touching the injury’s ridge.  Her arm recoiled.  Her face tightened.

“It’s an old gardening accident,” she told me another time.  I leaned in to kiss it.  She turned her back to me, then sat up in bed, then left the room.

 

Just months after he moved to Chelsea, Glenn’s parents divorced. His dad was a Hollywood movie producer and the mom – have you heard of her? Belle Taylor? – was a cabaret singer of local renown, with a residency at the Carlyle.

The divorce was contentious and Glenn needed Sarah’s sympathetic ear and that meant daily, late night phone calls and emergency visitations.  “Gotta go – gonna talk him down off the ledge again,” she’d say, no matter the hour, or day of the week.  Her tight smile that told me my permission was not expected, needed, or wanted.

And, time and time again, I’d amble down to Liffy II for a pint or seven while watching the Yankees.  And I’m not ashamed to say that I’d stew about being a third wheel, left out of this tightly knit childhood army-of-two.

Six months after Sarah moved in with me, Glenn called to ask if Sarah and I cared to join him at the Carlyle to see his mother, Belle, perform.  Comped.

What I remember: our Stoli martinis were very dry. Very large. Very potent.

What I remember: warm waves of applause lapped the bandstand. The crystal clink of highball glasses.  Stunning young women in red-soled Louboutins, squired by greying guys who flashed gold cufflinks.  Snappy bow-tied waiters, hair slick with pomade.  Gold-rimmed plates of Dover sole.

What I remember: Belle’s wisp of a smile. Red fingernails that caressed an onyx Neumann microphone.  A sultry slit skirt. Tired kohl-lined eyes turned heavenward to receive her spotlight sacrament.

What I most remember: Belle’s encore, Jobim’s “Waters of March,” its playful melody a bikini bursting from lyrics ripe with life.

And so she sang: “A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road; it’s feeling alone, it’s the weight of your load…”

Backstage.  Belle’s dressing room.  Her generous fuss over our bodega bouquet of red roses. A barren jar of Noxzema, the centerpiece in a coronation of crumpled tissues.  Vise-tight hugs for Glenn and Sarah.

What I did not know: Belle was drowning in a confluence of indignities.  Her divorce had become final.  She had been dropped by her third record label in six years.  Days after we saw her perform, Carlyle management called her agent.  They were going in a “different direction.”

Upon hearing the Carlyle’s news, she opened a Provençal rosé and began to drink.  She slipped Billie Holliday’s version of Arlen’s “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues” onto her turntable and, after the Barney Kessel guitar solo, opened her tenth floor living room window, inhaled sooty summer as it swept past her sheers, and leapt onto 86th Street in the pink silk kimono she bought in a Le Marais shop during her last Paris engagement.

 

The late night calls between Sarah and Glenn continued, fervent, now that Belle died.  Summer passed its sunlit torch to autumn.  The leaves fell.  The temperatures plummeted.  Without the promise of holidays past, joy went absent.  New York was encased in January.

One Saturday, a snowstorm blew in from Canada.  Twenty-six hours later, more than two feet of snow blanketed Broadway.

It was then that Glenn’s calls stopped.

 

“He’s in trouble,” Sarah said.  “I just know it.”

What I remember saying: he’s a big boy.

What I remember thinking: baseball’s spring training is only four weeks away.

What I remember feeling: hope, which came from my childish, vestigial, sense of renewal each new season of baseball brings.

 

I am old enough to remember the old Meatpacking District.  Pools of blood from primal cuts once coagulated on cobblestone streets.  Trucks spewed hydrocarbons into what that passed for air in those dirty days.

Today, the area is overrun by establishments that attract the rich and mindless, including predatory bros from Jersey, who careen about in Cayennes.

Glenn’s broken body was eventually found by city snow plow operators on Ninth Avenue.  As the thin sun of winter rose, a viscous river of red seeped from his mouth onto winter’s white, icy street.  His face, still now for all time, looked startled, confused.  His unseeing eyes fixed heavenward, as if to receive his final sacrament.

 

A detective in a belted, full-length black leather trench coat filled us in.  Sarah collapsed in my arms.  My knees buckled and I felt my eyes float.  The detective noticed, and snapped at me.

“Stay strong for your wife,” he admonished. I held her close now, gently rubbing the underside of her left forearm.  She stayed by my side this time, and sobbed.

This is what we later learned: A Jersey bro, drunk, lurched past our fallen friend.  His entourage-of-the-entitled laughed as their drunk friend nudged Glenn with his foot.

The drunk lunged for a mailbox, to steady himself.  He pulled himself upright, staggered towards his friends and, for no apparent reason, punched one of them in the cheek.

“Fuck you,” the guy spat, stunned.  He rubbed his reddened face with his left hand and clenched his right.  A woman tried to stay his arm, but the drunk’s jutted chin was too tempting a target.  The force of the blow spun him into a parked Uber and onto the snowy sidewalk, beside Glenn.

At that point, he noticed the white ear buds Glenn wore.  Oblivious to Glenn’s condition, he pulled out one of the buds and music blared into that frigid Sunday morning.  The men and women in the group laughed and helped their friend to his feet.

“Shhhhhh!  He’s sleeping,” one of the women slurred as they ambled down the block, laughing with the abandon afforded the careless, as pigeons parted for a skidding Escalade, as a  furious wind whipped off the river, unable to silence that playful Jobim tune:

“A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the road; it’s feeling alone, it’s the weight of your load…”

 

 

  

 

BIO

Martin Kleinman is New York City story teller.  He has told his tales of real New Yorkers in his short fiction collection, “Home Front,” (Sock Monkey Press 2013), in fiction anthologies and literary publications, in www.thisisthebronX.info, and on his blog www.therealnewyorkers.com, as well as in the Huffington Post, and in venues all around New York City – from KGB Bar to Union Hall.

A native New Yorker, Marty has written two books on workplace innovation trends, and is finalizing a second collection of short fiction.  “Defenestration” is from that new short fiction collection.

 

 

 

 

 

by Simon Perchik

 

These gravestones left stranded
warped from sunrises and drift
–they need paint, tides, a hull

that goes mouth to mouth
the way seagulls come by
just to nest and preen

though death is not like that
it likes to stand and lean
scattering its brilliant feathers

–look up when you open the can
let it wobble, flow into you
till wave after powerful wave

circles as face to face
and your own loses itself
already beginning to harden.

 

 

 

 

You need more, two sinks
stretching out as constant handfuls
though each arm is lowered

by the darkness you keep at the bottom
–a single cup suddenly harmless
not moving –this rattle you hear

is every child’s first toy
already filled with side to side
that’s not the sound a small stone makes

trying to let go the other, stake out
a cry all its own, fill it
on your forehead without her.

 

 

 

 

And though this stone is small
it has more than the usual interest
in the dead, waits among tall grasses

and water holes, smells the way dirt
still warms the afternoons
that no longer have a place to stay

–you leave a nothing in the open
letting it darken to remember
where you buried the Earth

as if the sun could not be trusted
to take back in its light
and by yourself turn away.

 

 

 

 

You read out loud the way this bed
listens for the makeshift seam
loosening each night down the middle

and though there is no sun
you peel off page after page
as if underneath what you hear

are her eyes closing –word by word,
louder and louder –you think it’s air
that’s falling –everything in your hands

is too heavy, becomes a shadow, covers her
with a single finger pointed at the ceiling light
what’s nowhere on the pillow or closer.

 

 

BIO

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems, published by box of chalk, 2017. For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

 

 

 

The Art of Stephanie Garber

 

Houses of the Holy

 

Wild Horses

 

Fate in Bloom

 

River’s Edge

 

Iguana

 

Puppet Master’s Dance

 

A Breezy Kind of Day

 

Hanging On the Moon

 

Days Gone By

 

 

 

ABOUT

Stephanie Garber is an intuitive abstract artist. Her prolific art is an expression of her life’s experiences. She uses gestures, texture, color and storytelling to relate to the viewer through common ground. She has worked in Watercolor, print making and currently is exploring the freedom of abstract painting. Stephanie is self taught and credits her mother’s life as an artist as her earliest influence in art.

Stephanie Garber on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UP ABOVE and the DOWN BELOW

by Linda Leigh

 

 

In April 2013, I was awarded a scholarship to SAIC (School of the Art Institute in Chicago). Unfortunately, I developed breast and lymph node cancer which I called The Blimp. School started in August, so I put off going until my treatments with chemo and radiation were complete. The school was very accommodating with this arrangement.

When 2014 rolled in I was ready to begin my life in the windy city of Chicago, and really excited about beginning a new and adventurous life. I started having large yard sales and sold most of my worldly goods and the rest went into storage. I said my goodbyes to apartment, family, friends and my cat Isabella, whom I raised from a kitten and thought was going to a good home (more about that later). After my train trip to Chicago I found a place to stay while I took care of my paper work at the school. Everything was verified that I was indeed ready to start the following week. Then a snag came the very next day. I was texted to come to the school immediately. It was discovered that my high school transcript did not have my graduation date on it and I was told without that document I could not attend. Unfortunately my high school in New York is now defunct, and the school now has an office for graduates to call and request their transcripts. At this time the school was closed and would not be open until September. Also the office would have to request info from the state to get that information for me.

Needless to say I am now homeless. Now I live in the elements. What does that mean when you don’t have immediate housing and may have to live on the streets? Actually, when I was asked by my granddaughter if I was homeless I looked at my daughter who was about to cry and said, no, I live in the elements. I then asked my daughter if this sounded better? She replied, yes. The journey will be memorable from how I got here to wherever it takes me.  Family and friends do not keep in touch nor have they come to visit. Lots to think about. But I am a very resourceful person and will definitely make the most of the situation I find myself in.  I will dance through these mirrors and windows and come through stronger and more informed.

•  •  •

A  Good Day

As I listen to a young girl’s poem or spoken word about how she got over her depression, and it being a good day, I thought back to a time that I rarely talk about — the moment I had a dark day.  Although I have never gone to the point of harming or killing myself, I do remember back in the fall of 2012 when I fell into a dark hole and could not climb out.  I actually sought help at a facility in downtown Los Angeles that a friend had recommended.  They had me do different tests and some talking and found that I was basically okay — nothing more, nothing less. But I knew it was something.

I remember it was a Tuesday in November I decided I would Love my depression, yes, I said love it like I did chocolate or a friend or a lover. When it descended upon me I told it, good to have you.  I love you, thank you for being here.  After taking a shower and getting dressed for class I walked to the door and could not open it to go out. I walked back into my room, got into bed and said, I love not having to go out, and I love you warm, cozy bed with my covers and sheets and pillows, thank you, I love being here.

I thanked my apartment and rejoiced in the fact I was in a dark hole loving it as much as I could. And finally one day after two months of this madness I realized it was gone almost as quickly as it came and that was a very Good Day.

•  •  •

Women in the Down Below settle their disputes by being overly aggressive, loud, and squabbling up in each other’s faces.  They put hands on one another.

In the Up Above angry bursts are not as confrontational but are settled by nippy, hurtful and sarcastic statements.

I listened to two young women while I was waiting for my train to arrive.  The women were both Asian and a Caucasian man.  They started talking about a co-worker who had cut and colored her hair.  Their conversation went like this “Did you see her new do?”  Asked one of the women.  The other replied,” Yes, and she was so proud of it.” First woman: “I know. I didn’t know what to say.  So I said, you got your hair cut.  I just couldn’t tell her how bad the color and cut was.” “I know,” replies second woman, “she was so enthused and happy about her hair.”  They giggled and seemed to be enjoying the moment in all its dishonesty.  I watched them and listened intently to them the whole time not caring if they noticed me watching them. I thought, what a sham.

In the Down Below, people are more intense, their anger is explosive but they are very honest in their opinions.  They may be quick to strike out at anyone at any time. At the same time there is so much more living than I’ve ever seen clothes, food, advice to get help and services.  Everyone seems to have a hustle; selling one cigarette for fifty cents, clothing they may have gotten for free goes for one dollar or more; candy and sunglasses even food … Cooking in covered and uncovered skillets. The side of buildings are used without thought for a bathroom while drugs are peddled freely on almost every corner and in front of buildings including the Police station. And trust me, no one does anything about it.

Everyone has a story, some are more horrifying than others. Like the women who’ve told me about their mothers and/or fathers that molested them as children, then put them on the street at eleven years of age for prostitution or the mother that gave her daughter up because she was too dark. All types of people live on Skid Row — educated college professors, business persons, chefs, lawyers, accountants, singers, actors, and of course the Vets, as well as the less educated or non-educated.

At the URM (Union Rescue Mission) where I now reside, I am treated with respect by the other women and the director. Actually, she did something for me she never did for anyone else. I had some boxes that needed to go into storage, and she let me leave them in her office and she personally put them in storage for me.  The women who ran the storage area also made sure my things were not rummaged through, and because my hair was starting to grow back from the chemo they would call me Mrs. Cosby (because of the color). I sleep on the fourth floor. It is like a large dormitory for women, about one hundred fifty, and you are assigned a bed which you get to sleep in every night if you follow the rules.  At night I had women who would ask to sit on my bed and tell me stories about how they were treated as children. Like the mothers and fathers who raped them at very young ages and then put them on the streets to sell themselves at eleven so their parents could have money for the Candy Man.  This revelation was shocking for me because I grew up in a very loving neighborhood where the children were monitored and loved. So this information was new and I began to look at black people in a different awareness always thinking we as a people would never treat our children with little or no respect or regard for their welfare. Another woman revealed to me that she was given up at birth because she was born too dark to a mother that was very fair and had three children before her that were the same color as her mother.  She told me how they were reunited when their mother was dying and asked her to help with the funeral cost and for her church to bury her mother.  And she did even though they, her siblings never communicated with her except at this time.

This is a humorous event that took place at URM, I think so anyway. A young woman comes in and announces she is going on a date with a gentleman she just met and who is really fine, well-mannered and dresses really nice. This young woman is getting ready for her big hot date. She puts on a beautiful frock (the women here have great taste and are very fashionable) and stilettos — yes, they do wear them in The Down below. Her face is made up to perfection, as well as her hair, set in long waves that cover her back, looking like a movie star. She adds one final touch, some bling earrings that dazzle and blind the eyes, then picks up her purse and exits the room. To our amazement, and it’s only been one hour, she is back at the URM taking her shoes off. A friend of hers asks what happened? The young woman starts to tell us that this guy gave her his address, and as she is walking by the tents on Skid Row, she finds it. A Tent, she exclaims, with an address and he is there waiting for her.  With a flourish, he flips open the flap and invites her in where to her amazement are two lawn chairs which she commences to sit on.  She notices that he has two coolers. He asks, “would you like something to drink?” She replies, “yes.”  He opens a cooler with drinks and offers her one which he opens and gives to her.  He then asks her ,“are you ready for dinner?” She hesitantly says yes again, and he opens the other cooler and offers her a sandwich (I don’t know what kind because she never says.) So she eats and drinks and thanks him for a lovely evening and leaves soon after.  After she has lamented about her tale of events she exclaims, at least he lives in a luxury tent and not a pup tent.

There is a white woman that lives on the streets and comes to the DWC called the Judge.  She is filthy and is foul smelling and even more foul with her mouth and manners.  When she enters the building the woman in charge of showers that day immediately takes her and allows her to have an emergency shower.  The shower monitor then rummages through the bins of clothing donations and finds her decent clothes to put on so she is ready to have breakfast.  This woman I am told was once a judge in New York and that someone had killed her whole family while she watched, and then they raped her and left.  I often wonder what she had done to make someone that crazy to do that to her.  I see her all the time now and she looks worse than when I first saw her, almost sickly.

Another white woman that comes in is from a very wealthy family. Being here is an eye opener to say the least, everything takes longer to get done, whether it is housing, medical, or transportation etc.

•  •  •

I am really tired today. I was up at four o’clock this morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but now it is five-thirty.  I take a shower, which I do every morning and evening, especially down here. The filth is so appalling that I feel grimy from walking in the streets of downtown. It’s like if I don’t get that energy off of me I will drown in it.

I am dressed and skipping out the door to the Downtown Women’s Center where I volunteer cooking for over one hundred and fifty women, and I can boil three hundred eggs perfectly with a golden yolk. Actually I went through their Set to Bake program. A group of us baked the goods that went into the DWC’s café.  The program got cancelled and Chef Carlos, told Miss Faye, the director of the day center, that he wanted Theresa, Briana and I to work with him.  When breakfast is over I will catch the bus to The Up Above, Alhambra is where I used to live before coming down here.  I will put some items in my storage so my room at the Russ won’t be overcrowded.  I try to keep things minimal, so far good job.

It is November the weather is still warm on my way home from the DWC.  I can’t believe how time has flown. There is a wedding taking place this evening at the San Julian Park. The cleaning crew has been here all day preparing the park for this momentous occasion.  I guess when you are in a community it can become your home.  My understanding is that the bride and groom met here on Skid Row.

It is seven o’clock at night, the festivities are about to start. I am watching out of the bathroom window of the second floor. A real minister is going to perform the ceremony and the guests are strutting into the park and take their seats at tables set up for this special day.  The groom has arrived with his best man, and the music has started playing. It is soft and mellow.  A songstress steps up to the stage to sing. She has a beautiful voice, full and rich.  The song ends and a pause is felt and walking music for the bridal party begins, six bridesmaids with escorts approach, very elegant.  I wish I had a camera, no one would believe this.  Oh, how sweet, two flower girls with a ring bearer come forward.  A long dramatic pause as the bride arrives and makes a spectacular entrance on the arm of a fine looking older gentleman. It could be her father, uncle, brother, or could be a friend.  Does not matter she is glowing and exquisite — yes exquisite.  It is nearing the end of the ceremony. Bride and groom exchange vows and kiss… The food is catered and smells delicious. The band is setting up, yes, a real band. The party is about to begin.  I whisper to the couple, may God bless you and may your marriage be strong especially in the Down Below. All I can say is this bride has marvelous taste.

•  •  •

This morning I got myself ready — went to the beach. While there I studied for the Food Handling test that was to take place later this week.  It is warmer than I thought it would be.  I saw a beach chair by itself and took it.  The owner, an older woman in her eighties, came back and claimed it. She was really miffed.  I laughed to myself. I knew it was wrong to take that chair.  Saw a sea lion and heard its cries.  Were the waves too harsh?

•  •  •

It is Saturday, February 28, 2015.  This is the last day of the month. This is my six month anniversary for being in the down below.  Still waiting for housing I was promised to move from the Russ to the Rosslyn Hotel.  Leslie, the SRO coordinator, told me that I am moving on January 23.  She informed me that my background check had been lost and they have to submit a new one.  I have waited three more weeks and now it is February 24. Finally, I have met with the  Housing Authority and I am told everything looks good.

I cannot believe that I have been living in the Down Below for two years, so much has happened in a short span of time. People come and go like soft waves, whispering as they touch the sand on the beach, or the touch of fingertips that barely meet.  Here in the Down Below life appears to be tenuous at best. I have my apartment at the Rosslyn Hotel. It was such a big deal to move in here and it turns out not so big.

Walking the downtown section of Los Angeles CA, from Fifth and Main streets to Fifth and San Pedro, can be an experience unto itself which I try to do very Monday, Wednesday and Friday on my trek to the L.A.M.P. On any given day the streets from San Julian to San Pedro can be clean or littered with garbage, urine and or excrement and the odor can knock you into space. Hell you might even see a person you thought was asleep but was really dead.  Sometimes the streets are overcrowded with tents with more women and families are moving in every day and Asians soon will be the new majority in the Down Below.

•  •  •

This morning my sister-in-law Nellie, died from a rare form of cancer, she was sixty-four years of age.  She leaves behind my brother, her husband Albert g. Leigh III, her son Albert G. Leigh IV, his wife Olga and their three children Dyanna, Albert G. Leigh V and Peter. Christina Leigh Rueckner her daughter, and her husband Franz their two children Karsten and Liezel and her youngest son Brian Leigh, his wife Charlotte and their two children Tatiana and Tyler

When my father Albert G. Leigh, Jr.  made his transion, his six children realized we were now the front line — meaning, the next to go.  We also speculated on what would happen if one of us made our transition.  And what it would feel like.  Never did Nellie cross our minds. She was not even on the radar.  She being always healthy and in control. it took all of us by surprise.  How appropriate (relevant) she left on Valentine’s Day with her loving family surrounding her.  Good bye Nellie you are much loved and in our hearts you remain.

My heart is sad.
I missed you before you even took flight.
I knew it was inevitable,
But I prayed for a miracle.
But the heavens wanted you more.
Your job for now was through maybe a lesson or two.
You have made me wake-up to the fact that
tomorrow is now.
Living in the moment and doing what is needed for
me right now—not then, not later.

•  •  •

                                          Nellie
My heart is sad
            I missed you, before you even took flight.
                        I
                                    Knew it was inevitable.
            I prayed for a
Miracle.
                        But the heavens wanted you
                                    more.
            Your job,  for now is through.
Maybe,
                        a lesson too.
            You
                        made me wake up to the
                                    fact
            that tomorrow is
                                    now.
                        Living in the moment
            doing
                        what is needed
                                    right now
and
            Certainly not later.

(poem done two different ways)

 

For the past three weeks I have been sick with a bladder infection. The first two weeks I had no idea what I had.  Week one could not get out of bed, and the mere energy of the television made me weak as if my energy was being pulled through it.  My favorite shows on PBS are the mysteries and they were a no go.  Very interesting those electrical currents from the television and what they can do to you.  The second week I thought I had contracted African trymarosamiasis.  I somehow mustered up all my strength and dragged myself to see the doctor and found out I had, a bladder and intestinal infection.  Antibiotics were prescribed and the infection cleared up.  I could not even visit the L.A.M.P. and work on my projects which is where I had my first attack of being sick.  The second attack occurred at the Star Apartments’ art show.  Interesting, in this condition I could not see anything surrounding me in this environment — not clutter, dirt, grime or the people piled up in their tents. They are all a blur on my lenses.

In my listless state of consciousness all I thought about was what is really important to me and realized I really wanted to teach meditation. o I proposed this idea to Hayk at the L.A.M.P. and to La Shalle at the Rosslyn where I live. Both classes are scheduled to start very soon. I have recovered from and have a clearer vision and more vitality to do this work.  I am encouraged to move forward and to perform the Forgiveness Meditations to the Earth at the beach.  I have schedule one for the 26th of June at nine o’clock in the morning. Posted it on Facebook. I’ll see what happens.  I am really looking forward to this event.

•  •  •

Another thing that has taken place in my coma-like-state is that I realize my family has never supported me in my endeavors, although I have been there for them.  I am the constant one that makes arrangements to go to everything, including things that their friends might be involved in.  Well, I vowed that I would not attend my sister’s birthday party since she has not come to visit me — not one time.

Saturday, June 18, has arrived. I’m going to the party dressed and heading out the door to catch the Gold Line to Pasadena.  It is somewhat overcast today but warm.  I arrive in Pasadena. It is sprinkling. I’m cheered up even more.  My sister sent Uber to pick me up. We make it to Altadena and it is raining. She lives next to the mountains.  I walk into her house and the setup is magnificent, and my niece has catered the event.  There are so many people I haven’t seen in twenty to thirty years, and they had their children and grandchildren with them.  I had the best time. I am glad I did not sit this one out being stubborn and missing this glorious day.  There were tents set up in case the sun was beaming on us.  It turned out very useful for all this rain.  A trio played music from the ‘70s and ‘80s. People danced while the children got in the pool on huge swans and flamingos floats.  Close to two hundred people came to wish Gloria a happy birthday.  It really shows how much love she has given over the years to so many people.  Thank you for a wonderful day and evening.

•  •  •

Another busy day.  Arrived at the doctors’ office at 7:35 this morning. I hope to be out of here by eleven I have a poetry class in the building next door.  It is now 8:30. I came early because if you don’t you may never be seen by the doctor.  So many people in the waiting room, which is too small for the amount that are here today.  Oh, God, kids are crying and cell phones blare their crazy obnoxious sounds.  There’s a sign that says, no cell phones — turn them off. Otherwise, you have loud and argumentative conversations clamoring all over the room, especially here in the Down below.

Finally, numbers are being called. Oh, yes, you are given a number in order to be checked in.  Of course someone will come and get you take your vitals.  Hoping my weight reflects how my clothes are fitting a lot looser.  It is nine o’clock and I am still sitting, waiting, hoping I am out by eleven. I will be fine. Cheeze they have only called one person’s number and I am number 13.

•  •  •

On July 4, 2016, I awaken several times during the night. Damn those folks with their fireworks. Wasn’t it enough that City Hall had a big splash?  I tried going back to sleep and awoke at 8:30am.  I am late. wanted to leave house at 7:00am to go to the beach.

Oh well, slow start should I go or should I stay?  That is the question. Go get ready open the door step into hallway.  Door closes and locks. That settles it. I make way to the elevator today. It is the express, no stops to other floors.  I have to get out of Down Below, it’s smothering. Up Above is cleaner and cooler.  I make my way to Metro 7th street station and find I have to wait twenty-two minutes for Santa Monica train, and this is not even the weekend. It is 10:00am, and wait, oh good, they are changing the Long Beach train and changing it to Santa Monica, now all those people have to leave the train. Too Bad.

How am I feeling? Not sure I am ready for this. Great, a young black man is arguing with his sister on his cell phone … who wants to hear this crap? Not me! Who cares? He doesn’t have a car and wants someone to watch his children, and man, is he giving this person hell.  Thank God, he and his girlfriend finally depart and it is QUIET!

Okay, here you are — end of the line — Santa Monica Pier. New question: Do I stay here, or catch the 534 bus to Will Rogers Beach? Okay, stay — experience something new in this part of the world. Found a spot to enjoy my time here.

Wow, it’s getting crowded already. Did I make the right choice?  I am finding I do not want to be around a lot of people today, and it seems they are all in this one space near me.  This is a big piece of seashore, why are they converging here?  I am trying to relax and enjoy this moment, but it is busy here. A Mexican woman, brightly dressed, shouts in a  sing song voice — Mango, Mango. Oh man, another vendor, this time it’s a man shouting buy his umbrellas and beach pails and small surfer boards.

What time is it — can I really stomach this?  Relax and breath, that is what I tell myself. At least you are not sitting in that heavy energy in the Down Below.  What’s going on with you? I have to ask. Reflect on what you are feeling. Do you feel like your space has been invaded? I chuckle. Okay, look at all the people arriving now.  Wow, the waves are bigger and people are having fun and enjoying the waves thundering over them, laughing.  The children’s laughter washes over me like the waves they gleefully jump into.

I notice this woman whom I saw earlier with her partner.  The toddler with her is tentative going into the water. She gently leads him in and smiles.  I watch. She is heavy in weight with many tattoos.  Earlier I think, did I judge her? I watch her now and feeling much emotion that the people here are just in the moment not caring about what the television or other media say they should look like or be.  Somewhere deep I feel a connection with humanity so profound it moves me to write, least I lose this ennui.  How beautiful we are when for a few precious moments on, one is thinking about how we are big booty and bust; at this time with the waves thundering against their wonderful bodies they are in the thrill of the moment. I need to get away from the Down Below more often. The reflection they generate is not full and complete. Ha ha, my imposed deadline to leave the beach at 12:00pm has now come and gone.  I am more relaxed now and not ready to leave.

I walk on the sand, happy that the sun is not bearing down and scorching the earth. I walk-on.  Actually, feels kind of cool.  On the train ride back I watch my thoughts and I really don’t want anyone sitting next to me, so I scoot my bag over just enough to make it uncomfortable for someone to sit. Space issue again?  Finally arrive at 7th street. Why am I rushing almost like? (Need to find word).

Trying to get home out of the streets of the Down Below.  Hush, hush, your minds take your time breath.  I noticed the streets are cleaner; what, no urine smell? I glide, taking in my environment.  Today is a good day.  There is peace inside of me.  Lunch is calling what should I eat.

 

Children run to
Thundering waves
Their laughter and the sound of the surf
Are One

•  •  •

Children rush to the water
            Thundering
         Waves washes over their
            Bodies
         Resounding laughter mingles
            Laughter
         Rushing sounds of the waves
         children’s voices become one
            and
         there is tranquility
         inside of me

 

 

 

BIO

Linda Leigh was born in Queens, New York. She enjoys creative writing and poetry. Ms. Leigh now resides in Los Angeles and is an accomplished artist, her works are displayed throughout California. She is also very involved in Social Justice in her community.

 

 

 

 

 

—————————————————————————————————————————

NEW SERIES FROM

The Skid Row Zine Writing Group

Ivy Pochoda Introduction

 

In 2009 I moved from my hometown of Brooklyn to Los Angeles, a city that is still both familiar and unknowable to me. Accustomed to walking or riding the subway, I found I couldn’t visualize the city’s shape even as I moved along its streets and freeways. I still can’t. But driving to and from my Echo Park apartment back then I was struck by something else that surprised me: all the ways in which people lived out of doors—the tent encampments, permanently parked camper vans, makeshift shelters of many materials all improvised for living in the elements. They made Los Angeles, amidst its evident wealth, even more mystifying, gave it a texture I hadn’t expected, a secret soul.

Two years later I moved just east of Downtown to the Arts District which was just beginning its rapid gentrification. Skid Row sits between Downtown and the Arts District. As I drove or rode my bike past its sprawling community of tents, shelters, medical and social services, murals, missions, and churches the initial impression of chaos eventually gave way to a pattern of communities each with its own character. Here were activists; here were artists; and here were the hopeless and the helpless in various associations of their own. I began to see the shape and depth of the neighborhood though I could not have imagined how much more it would mean to me one day.

One evening I emailed the Lamp Arts Program, a multi-discipline studio affiliated with The People Concern, one of Los Angeles’s largest social services agencies, and offered to give a course in creative writing. I did not know what to expect when I turned up for my first class. Would the participants be lucid, intelligent, capable? The truth is they were all of these things and more. Each of them was on a journey and they each showed up with a story to tell whether it was drawn from experience or summoned by wild inspiration. Their work is remarkable—it’s profound, smart, and quite often funny.

We meet once a week. (I am not always in charge of the sessions these days as some of the participants have stepped up to run the class.) We do warm up exercises and in class writing assignments. Some participants are working on longer projects: chapbooks, one-act plays, essays, and short stories. And out of these meetings, we formed Skid Row Zine—an independent magazine dedicated to the voices and stories of people living in and around Skid Row.

 

Our first piece from the Skid Row Zine writers group:

UP ABOVE and the DOWN BELOW by Linda Leigh

 

The Carousel

by Maggie Herlocker

 

 

I stared at the wall behind his head, examining the yellowing spots on the once white wall with great intensity. I think I wanted to find shapes, images, anything to distract me from the conversation I knew was coming. I could hear the whir of the air conditioner, but it did nothing to temper the dry, triple digit July air. That whir was the only thing I could hear in the deafening silence.

My father leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands folded. I thought of how my mother always scolded me for having my elbows on the table.

“I’m so happy you came.”

I looked at his face, light from the window cutting his face into two. He looked tired, the lines in his face deep with age and weariness. I wondered if he hadn’t slept well, nervous for our meeting today. This was our fourth meeting in the last couple months. He had contacted me back in May. He was going to be doing some business in the Sacramento area and wondered if I wanted to meet up. We got coffee the first time, awkwardly recounted our lives over the past decade.

“I know that I wasn’t really there for you much growing up, and I want you to know how much I’ve regretted that.”

He fiddled with his straw wrapper, rolling it between his fingers. The sound of silence was all that was between us anymore. The screeching of a chair being scooted against the linoleum floor broke our silent battle.

“Samantha?”

“Dad?”

He dropped the straw wrapper and folded his hands again. He sighed. Eyes cast down, he looked almost childlike, a child who knew they’ve done something wrong and are about to be reprimanded.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

⠂⠂⠂

“Come on Samantha, you can do it!”

I thought about this day often, the day at the pool. Pictures from that day show a three-year-old me standing on the edge of the pool, my inflated floaties around my small arms, my red, white, and blue striped bathing suit already giving me a wedgie. It was a hot August day in Roseville, and my mom and dad took me to the community pool to get out of the house and cool off. The pool was crowded. It appeared that many families had the same idea. Other children were splashing around in the pool, many mothers sitting around fanning themselves, tanning, gossiping with each other. My mother was among them, sipping a cold Coca-Cola she had gotten from the snack bar, like she did every time we went to the pool.

I had been to the pool before, but usually stayed in the kiddie pool. My dad had decided that this time I would go in the regular pool with him.

I was scared. That is one thing I distinctly remember.

The water looked so deep, my dad looked so far away. How could I, a very small child, jump far enough to be caught in his outstretched arms? I questioned the buoyancy of my floaties, could they actually save me from drowning?

“Samantha, don’t worry about it, I’m right here. I’m going to catch you, it’ll be okay!” my dad called over the yells of the children playing in the water. He always called me Samantha, never Sammie like my mom did, and definitely never Sam. He was grinning, his tanned arms stretched out to me, his curls of hair sparkling with water. Finally, the three-year-old me took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and jumped.

The water was cold and all around me, but only for a quick second. The floaties did their job and stopped me from going under, and my dad did his job and caught me. My hero.

“See, it’s just fine!” he laughed and I couldn’t’t help but squeal with delight and splash my arms in the water.

At that point, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that my father, the one who should have always be there to catch me, would disappoint me the most.

⠂⠂⠂

I didn’t know what to say. I knew my dad was sorry. I could tell he was genuinely upset with himself for all that he had missed in my life. Since the first time we met for coffee, I wondered if and when he might try and apologize. He’d been trying so hard, asking all the right questions about my schooling, if I had any boyfriends, what my plans after graduation were. But it’s not like one apology and lunch at a burger place was going to fix it.

I knew he had picked this place on purpose. It was our little secret spot. I’d only been here one other time since I was a kid.

It was right before I was leaving college, moving to southern California, going to UCLA on a full scholarship. My dad had sent me a card, congratulating me on graduation, the check inside showing just how much he cared. Part of me wanted to tear up the check and never deposit it. But I didn’t. Instead I deposited all five-hundred dollars into my special savings account that I couldn’t touch until after my college graduation.

I almost turned around that summer day and didn’t go in, but I was compelled to move forward, pushed by some force determined to dredge up old feelings. The food was exactly the same as I remembered it: good but not that special, kept in business because of people like me, desperate for feelings of nostalgia and the past.

Finally, I spoke. “Do you remember the carousel?”

⠂⠂⠂

The California State Fair. We went every year, driving from our home in Roseville to the fairground in Sacramento for the event. But this year was different, I was nine years old, and it would be a day I would remember clearer than any other. My mom stayed home with a headache, I later found was faked. It was just me and my dad and I was so excited. My dad had been away a lot lately, I was told on business, so I hadn’t spent as much time with him as I had become accustomed to.

I was too young at that point to see the subtle changes in the way my parents acted around each other. The walking on eggshells, the fighting coming from another room, the days my dad didn’t come home until much later than work would have kept him, if at all. He didn’t want to be at home. At that point in a child’s life, our parents are our whole world, our example of what a happy couple are, what we should aspire to become, to meet someone and fall in love just like your parents. But no one is perfect, especially not your parents.

On that day, at the fair, it had all seemed perfect. We headed out mid-day, blasting the AC in my dad’s car, the temperatures already in the 90s. We listened to a classic rock station on the radio, my dad beaming with pride as I belted out the lyrics with him.

When we got to the fair, it was obvious my dad was spoiling me, but I wasn’t about to complain.  He bought me whatever fried foods I wanted, sharing in the plethora of goodies laid out in front of us that I would have never been able to eat on my own. Corn dogs, fried crispy and perfectly browned, funnel cakes covered in powdered sugar, my fingers sticky from the many times I licked them to relish every last bit of sweet. We shared a large lemonade, the freshly squeezed juice with just the perfect amount of sweet and tart, quenching our thirst.

It was getting late and the hot day turned into a warm evening. Summer in the San Joaquin Valley was always this way, hot and then warm, begging children to keep playing outside, past when the street lights had turned on. My dad and I were both sweating buckets but I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. The sun was setting, a beautiful orange sunset. There were a few clouds in the sky, turned pink, looking like the cotton candy I had consumed earlier in the day.

Stars began to pop up, demanding to be noticed through the electric lights of the fair. They provided a natural magic to the night.

“Alright Samantha,” my dad said, looking at me from across the picnic table, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “We have time for one more ride. What’s it going to be?”

I sat there thinking long and hard. It’d be another whole year before I’d get to do this again, so I had to pick just the right ride.

“The carousel,” I decided finally.

He grinned. “Carousel it is then.”

We walked across the field, my sticky hand in his, to the carousel.

It wasn’t the nicest carousel in the world, the paint was chipped on most of the horses, the brass poles tarnished. But I thought it was beautiful. I’d always had a love for old, broken things.

We waited in line behind other fair goers, ages varying from newborn babies to grandparents. Everyone loves a good carousel ride, though no one can really express why. The feeling of being a child, just in the moment. When we finally got to the front of the line, I tried to pick out which horse I would choose to ride. There were many options, but the one that caught my eye the most was one of the more beat up horses. No one was riding it this go around.

The girl operating the ride asked my father how many would be riding and he replied that there were two of us. I was so excited. Something about riding this with just my dad made me feel giddy. Finally, the gate was opened.

I rushed in, making a beeline for my horse.

“Walk, Samantha,” I heard my dad call from behind me, a laugh in his voice.

I approached my horse and got up on the platform. She looked quite disheveled, the paint falling away to reveal the wood underneath. I felt bad for her, this inanimate horse, I’m sure she wasn’t chosen as much as the others. I was relatively tall for a nine-year-old, so I was able to climb up on the horse without assistance from my dad.

He had caught up to me and was getting on the horse next to mine.

“Guess you don’t need your old man’s help anymore.”

He was smiling, but I should have seen then, he was sad. But how could I have noticed in the magic of the fair?

Once everyone else had mounted their horses, the ride began with the classic ring of a bell. As the speed increased and the horses began to rise and fall, I was transfixed by the joy of this, the joy of pure childhood. I looked over at my dad, he was watching me, a smile across his face. I tipped my head back and laughed, the world turning upside down and sideways. I watched the world spin by, the lights of the fair smearing together. The song that was playing was the perfect mix of circus and delight, the old organ music ringing out of crackling speakers. Some of the bulb lights were out but it didn’t matter to me. I was so happy in that moment.

The horses began to slow to a trot and then stopped. My father dismounted first, then helped me down, even though I didn’t need the help. We walked towards the exit with the rest of the elation filled equestrians. Outside the gate, my father took me over to the side. I looked at his face in the light of the carousel. Something in the way his eyes looked at the ground told me something was wrong.

⠂⠂⠂

I looked my dad dead in the face, his eyes looking the same way they had the night of the fair. I knew he remembered it. “The carousel at the fair when I was nine,” I reminded him. “It was the last time I remember being happy with you.” I dropped my eyes then. It was too much to look into his deep brown eyes in that moment, they were so full of memory and regret.

He was quiet. I wanted so desperately to know what he was thinking, to know if he realized that I would never feel as joyous as I did that night on the carousel. I still wish I could have stayed on it forever, spinning through life, laughing at the world as it changed but I stayed the same, forever a child and her father.

Finally, he spoke. “I remember that so differently.”

I looked up, surprised. He was staring at me with his sad, brown eyes.

“That night, the carousel, you and I together, I remember that as one of the saddest nights of my life. I knew I was going to break your heart.”

⠂⠂⠂

“Samantha, I need to tell you something important.”

I looked up at him expectantly. He kneeled down in the grass to get on my level, to look me in the eyes. A random, cool breeze blew past me and made me shiver.

“Your mother and I, well, we’re not getting along anymore. She wants me to leave. She wants a divorce.”

I was quiet. What was I supposed to say?

“You understand this doesn’t change how much either of us care about you right?”

“Can I go with you?”

My dad looked surprised by my question, but then his eyes softened, his brows coming together, sad and concerned. “No, honey. You have to stay with your mom. I’m moving to Ohio, and I’m going to be on the road a lot for work. You have your school here.”

That’s when the tears came. My world was spinning, the carousel next to me becoming something else, showing my confusion and devastation as a swirl of light and sound, unable to focus and separate my thoughts. Of course. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to go with him. It made sense, but it didn’t make it easier.

“I’ll still be around as much as I possibly can!” Lies. “I’ll call and see you when I’m in town and I’ll take you to the fair next year if you want.” More lies.

I couldn’t stop crying. I remember not being able to breathe, my sobs racking my entire body. Eventually my dad picked me up, even though I was much too big to be carried, and he took me out to the parking lot, to his car, holding onto me tightly the whole time.

⠂⠂⠂

Nothing was the same after that. He was gone in the morning when I woke up, gone without a trace.

“Honey, you need to come out of your room, you can’t stay in there all summer.” My mother’s voice came in through my bedroom door. I didn’t want to talk, but I was glad she respected me enough not to come in. It had been a few years since my dad left. I was thirteen now, already an angsty teenager, a stereotypical child of divorce. Over the years, I’d retreated more and more into myself, barely even talking to my mother. School was the only thing that mattered to me. I knew the only way to get out of this place was college and I wanted a scholarship. I didn’t want to owe my parents anything.

“Sammie, please,” I heard a new pleading in her voice. “At least come with me to take the dog on a walk. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, but you need to come out of your room.”

I sighed, but lifted myself off of my bed. “Fine, I’ll come,” I called to my mom, still from inside my room.

“Okay!” I heard a new joy in my mom’s voice. “I’ll meet you downstairs in five!”

I lethargically put on my tennis shoes. I wanted to make my mom happy. Maybe she was still hurting too.

I met her downstairs, she already had our dog Timmy on his leash. She was dressed in her trendiest workout clothes, even though we wouldn’t really be exercising that hard.

“Ready to go?” she asked, smiling.

“Yeah, sure.”

We headed out, going down our block to the park that Timmy loved. My mom handed me the leash.

“You’re really much better at walking him.” My mom had never been a huge Timmy fan, she hated how big he was, how much of a nuisance he was. When my dad had first brought him home from the pound she was horrified. Not only was she worried about his size, I was just starting to walk at the time, but of course his fur and drool got all over her pristine house. The real offense. But I loved him so she gave in and let him stay. I realized as I was walking him that my dad easily could’ve taken Timmy with him, but he must have left him behind for me.

“You okay, sweetie?” my mom asked, noticing that I was deep in thought. “Sorry, that was probably a dumb question.”

I didn’t really answer, just kept walking.

“I know things have been hard for you, things that you don’t quite understand. I know I’ve never really explained the divorce to you, but your father and I just could not be under the same roof anymore. And with his job, there’s no way you could’ve gone with him. Plus, I wanted you to stay, even though I know how close you two were.” She looked at me sideways, a small smile on her perfect pink lips. I tried smiling back, but I’m sure I failed.

My mom stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to look at me. “Samantha, I need you to listen to me.”

I stopped, Timmy sniffed some of the bushes nearby as I turned to face my mom.

“I don’t want you to be mad at me or your dad, this isn’t something that either of us wanted. Besides honey, it’s been a few years now, I thought things would be better between you and I.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Don’t you look at me like that. I know this has been especially hard for you, but I need you to stop being angry.” Like that was so easy to do. “It took a lot for me to ask him to leave, it was not an easy decision.”

“You asked him to leave?”

“Yes Samantha, I asked him. It was just not working, I needed him to go.”

“I still don’t understand, what wasn’t working?”

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes at me. “It’s hard to explain, you’re too young to understand.”

“Try me,” I said crossing my arms across my chest.

My mom let out a sound of frustration, but then took a breath with her eyes closed. “He just wasn’t around enough, with his job, his insane amount of travel was just never what I wanted. I wanted someone who would stay and be a part of the family. And I just couldn’t take it anymore and he wouldn’t budge. This was my only option.”

I listened to what she said, unsure if it really was her only option, and it didn’t stop me from being angry, at her and my dad. Neither of them seemed like they wanted to fight for each other, to fight for me.

When we got back to the house, the phone was ringing. It was my dad, but I didn’t want to talk to him. I was still devastated and now I was angry too. When I did talk to him, it was awkward and sad, neither of us knowing what to say to the other. He stopped calling as frequently after a while and I never called him on my own. All I wanted was to get back on the carousel. I wish I had never gotten off.

⠂⠂⠂

I didn’t break eye contact with him as I felt my own brown eyes, identical to his, fill with tears.

“I remember how much you cried, knowing that I was leaving your mother, leaving you. I knew you didn’t understand it, how could you? It must have seemed like it came out of nowhere.”

Now it was my turn to sit quietly.

“I already said I was sorry for not being in your life more. It wasn’t what I wanted.”

“Was it what she wanted?” I said, glowering, my pain turning to anger.

“Who? Your mom?”

“Nancy.” I spit out her name like venom.

My dad looked taken aback. “No, of course not,” he said quickly. “My job is why I moved to Loveland all those years ago. Nancy was just why I stayed.”

I looked at the wedding band on his finger. It was foreign, nicer than the one he had with my mom.

He met Nancy in Ohio and moved in with her only a few months later. I felt betrayed. But he sounded happier than I had heard in so long that I kept those feelings to myself. I was invited to the wedding, but I refused to go. Also, it was in Loveland in October, so I had school, but he didn’t seem to think about that. He seemed hurt that I couldn’t go but I didn’t care. It was my own little act of betrayal.

But that wasn’t even his biggest betrayal, not by a long shot. I could handle Nancy, I got over it, I even met her over Skype once, an awkward affair, all of us strangers. No, it wasn’t Nancy. It was Charlotte. The other daughter.

“Why did you miss my graduation?” I demanded, desperate to make him feel some of my hurt.

“Charlie was in the hospital with pneumonia that weekend, you know that. I couldn’t leave her or Nancy then, she was only five. I thought I had explained all that?”

Charlie. I almost laughed. Of course, she could have a boy nickname from my dad, but I could never be Sam. Over the years I tried the name out, seeing if it would catch on in high school or anything, but I never responded to it when people called out at me. Samantha was my name and there was nothing I could do about it.

I didn’t laugh at him, but I did allow myself to roll my eyes. “Of course,” I said dramatically, “the other daughter needed to be taken care of.”

“Come on Samantha, that’s not fair. You didn’t come to mine and Nancy’s wedding.”

“Yeah but I was twelve and in school. I couldn’t leave to go out of state during the school year, not when school was the only thing I really cared about.”

He was quiet then. “I know. It’s not fair for me to be hurt by that, not after all I’ve done.”

I didn’t answer, unsure what to say at that point.

“Look,” my dad began, “I can’t change what I did or didn’t do, but we can change how we move forward. I want to be back in your life, I’ve already missed so much. But you have to let me.”

I sat there wondering what it was that I wanted. Did I want him in my life? It had been kind of nice seeing him recently, even though we were both shy and closed off. I thought about what it might look like.  He had covered me in so many silly little wounds that I often wondered if they may ever heal. Was he worth opening all of those up again?

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes, okay. I’ll give this a try. Just know some days will be easier than others.”

My dad grinned. “Of course! We can take all the time you need!”

I gave him a small smile back.

“Would you be interested in meeting Charlie?”

My smile wavered.

“I think you would get along really well, if you’d give it a chance.”

“I– I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.”

My dad’s smile dropped. “I get it. No, that makes sense. I was getting too ahead of myself.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I just think we need to work on what’s going to happen between us first, before I can do that.”

My dad’s smile returned, smaller this time. “Of course, honey.”

“You should come visit me in San Francisco sometime, see my apartment.”

My dad grinned. “I’d love that. I always had a soft spot for that city.”

“Who doesn’t?” I said, grinning back at him. Something felt so right in that moment, us agreeing on something so easy.

A waitress came up to the table. “I’ve got two cheeseburgers, two chocolate chip shakes, and an order of onion rings?”

“That’s us,” my dad said, and she placed the tray on the table and walked away. My dad divided up the food and placed the onion rings in the middle. It was what we always got when we came here.

Watching him, tasting the food, being there, I couldn’t help but smile.

 

 

BIO

Maggie Herlocker is a first-year fiction writer at the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop, on her way to a Master of Fine Arts. Maggie moved from her home state of California to New Orleans in the summer of 2017 and is still suffering from In-N-Out withdrawals. A young woman who never quite grew out of her goth phase, Maggie’s work tends to have a darker side, often disguised in humor. Her short story, The Carousel, won first place in Chico State’s yearly creative writing contest in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

35

(for Emily)

by Susan Richardson

 

She is arriving at her age with graceful
brushstrokes that follow the curve of
mended wings and resilient backbone.
The years that wore her down are diminished
by a new love that soothes her aches
with the fragrance of safety.
She peels away layers of a cloak,
stitched from threads of self-preservation
to hide the vibrancy of abandon.
Diving into the center of her quickening pulse,
she glories in the textures of feeling alive again.
Paint and ink saturate her fingertips,
offering up images on parchment and flesh,
a spark of rapture alight on storied skin.
Sharpening the robust tones of her voice,
she reclaims the fabric of her words and opens
her eyes to delight in the awakening
contours of the landscape.

 

 

 

Travertine

 

She blunders toward me, wearing
her topiary face and a trench coat she stole
from the coat check of an upscale bar.
Searching for Irises and Haystacks,
she slurs her opinion of Impressionism
against echoing marble, her voice
rising with a cadence commanded by tequila.
She stumbles, biting into red parchment,
grunts and crashes into travertine walls.
She can’t feel through the bitterness and the booze.
Her imprint stains my day.

 

 

 

Where Sound Disappears

 

She has the graceful hands of a dancer
and fingers that clutch her fountain pen
as if it were a weapon, razor sharp
and lethal to the weak minded.
Veiled beneath the heavy cloth of madness,
her language scalds my lips with
maniacal rhythm, sensibilities smoldering
in the wake of her incendiary heartbeat.
She offers me the gift of her wounds and
moves into a world where sound disappears.
She believes she made me up along the way.

 

 

 

Breath

 

The dangerous nectar of brandy dulls
the gaps in my vision, turning
me into something whole and beautiful.
I swim in the smooth burn of baptismal waters.
Fingers, thick from intoxication, glide
across sultry water, linger in anticipation.
I melt into amber and sweltering tiles,
caught beneath the breath of a liquid center.

 

 

 

Legs

 

Mad women and
sane women
all cross their legs.
They long to be touched
in secret places,
kissed hard on the
mouth and adored.
One glance from a pair
of scorching eyes will have
your bones shaking,
inviting the rough
crack of leather.
Obediently, you will
drop to the concrete floor
and lick salt from
behind hot knees.
They will borrow your soul
for just a little while,
and return it intact.
They promise.

 

 

 

BIO

Susan Richardson is living, writing and going blind in Los Angeles. She shares a home with an Irishman, 2 pugs and 2 cats. She was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa in 2002, and in addition to poetry, she writes a blog called Stories from the Edge of Blindness. Her work has been published in Stepping Stones Magazine, Wildflower Muse, The Furious Gazelle, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Foxglove Journal, Literary Juice, Sick Lit Magazine, Amaryllis, The Anapest Journal, and Eunoia Review, with pieces forthcoming in Ink Sweat & Tears.  She was also awarded the Sheila-Na-Gig 2017 Winter Poetry Prize and was featured in the Literary Juice 2018 Q&A Series.

 

 

 

 

The Swamp Witch

by Megan Parker

 

 

It began with a question, a deal, a wish.

A child’s barter—a promise of acorns, of berries, of stolen coin.

It ended, as we never thought, with a sacrifice squeezed of words.

#

On the hem of town, where dirt married water and clung clay-thick to our bare feet— where years of toes and heels stitched paths through swamp grass atwitch with creatures unseen, and zephyrs green with gas slipped through our hair greasy from unwash, where roots unfurled in secret knots, and fawns flicked their velvet ears against our cheeks—there would we find the swamp witch.

She is magic made flesh, a crone of gator skin and boar resolve, who, long ago, was as human as the rest of us. Her magic shaped destinies, her lips spelled fortune and downfall alike. She was fox-clever, and for generations the town sought her guidance, her destinies of scattered salt and painted cards, until her hair wrung silver.

But time is a giving thief. It cut her tongue sharper, and her spells lost their soft edges. She peered into soul-kept secrets and offered the town truths only guilt would nourish. She became devil-kissed, our parents said, and so the town cast her out to the coniferous muck.

Her bones turned to alder branches, her fingers calcified to cloven hooves. She broke teeth on pebbles in her bread, and animal hide furred over memory too human to preserve. She grew into whispers personified, into bedtime stories told to us by mothers who dried their tears with faded Tarot cards, by fathers whose futures were lost in mirrors of moon and gun smoke and blood.

To our parents, she was as ghost.

To us, she was as real as the wishes we carried.

For that is what we brought her. Our wishes, plucked and braided into wreaths of juniper brambles, into quilts woven with anhinga feathers. These offerings we would present to her in exchange for answers, for truths and salvations only magic could have wrought.

On winter solstice nights, we trekked the forested wetlands to find her lair. Each year, her hollowed tree would move to a spot yet discovered. We used to tie ribbons around pin oaks to guide us between seasons, hoping to see her in spring or fall. When they unraveled on a breeze, the youngest of us would drop painted stones from their pockets to mark the path. These too were lost, consumed by hungry water lizards. The stones rattled in their swollen bellies as they darted through the bog like otters.

The swamp witch had made this covenant with us. Only on winter solstices could she re-form as human and ripple the water for our futures. Only on these nights could we pay her in gifts cast from our own hands, in wishes shaped from children’s dreams. If we were worthy, the swamp would lead us to her and home again.

We safeguarded her secret from our parents, who hung nets of sticklewort across our windows and splashed angelica oil on our door lintels to ward away her ghost-spirit. Devilry, they said of her. She’ll trick your soul from your body. She’ll stitch her lies into your tongue.

Each season our numbers dwindled as the oldest of us stepped into adulthood, and magic was snuffed from memories. Superstition then took root in them, a ghost-chill pimpling grown skin. For that, said the witch, was the cost of adulthood.

The grown were blinded to what they did not want to see.

But we knew better.

We have huddled with the swamp witch around fires dug into silt and clay, flames of blue and green leaping skyward from burning, brackish roots. We have rubbed our fingers over the fleshy undersides of skinned raccoons and rabbits, circling oil with our thumbs to preserve the pelts. We have split the fans of gator tails with stone knives to feast on spines of meat. We have mixed moonbeams with swamp water, have drunk the sky of stars.

We could never tell of these moments.

At dawn, the swamp witch would whisper our wishes against the flat of her hooves and cast them into the vermillion glow. We would follow the rising sun through muck and grass, past trunks of dappled maple and calloused blackgum, until our town shed its foggy cloak. And we slipped between the anointed planks of our homes and into bed, our parents still adrift in dreamscapes.

When breakfast hearths blazed heat for salted pork and porridge, we would hear her on a sigh of wind and knew it was done. Our wishes answered in dried stacks of firewood in wet winter, in fathers returned home in summer from the war, in grandparents’ painless dips into the eternal. In bodies free of bruised beatings when magic slips from our lips.

For years, it had been so, the oldest of us raising the youngest of us in stories of the swamp witch, teaching the tots to seal their lips. And we would have kept our promise always, had the swamp witch not broken bond instead.

#

On our final swamp solstice, the winter night stretched long as a cat against its bones, and we took turns leading each other by lantern light through the rot-ripe mire. We trailed our palms against the prickled skin of black ash, let beards of moss tickle our shoulders, listened to the hiss of wind-washed grass. The littlest among us sang in nervous whispers behind cupped hands:

Thither flies the chickadee

With a wish for you and a wish for me . . .

Around our necks and within our pockets we carried our gifts for her, little treasures made with hope. We listened for her voice in the rattle of branches, in the reedy clack of cattails against our cottoned thighs.

Suddenly, a fox appeared on the path ahead, brown as dried blood in moonlight. He tilted his head as one does to hear a question. His bright eyes, swollen yellow, never blinked from our faces as he spoke his greeting:

Riddles three answer me,

And I will show you in.

Riddle poor, go forth no more,

Else tricks you’ll find herein.

It always went like this. The swamp witch loved her tests, for how else might she trust us? How else might we prove we were not yet grown, had not swayed in our belief? That we were worthy of her gifts?

The cleverest of us had never failed to solve the fox’s riddles. The first two questions we answered true. But the fox showed us his sharp smile on the last.

I walk afore you every day, but you cannot see me. What am I?

We hunched our backs to him, loomed together our fingers as though we could share our thoughts through touch.

Dreams? we wondered. The wind? Might it be the witch herself?

You are the stars, we said at last, triumphant, who are yet unseen in daylight.

Incorrect, replied the fox. His teeth lengthened like knives. But since you answered the first riddles in truth, I will claim but one of you, and still I will show you the way. Otherwise, return home now without spent wishes. Do you accept my bargain?

The smallest girls and boys, still young enough to feel afraid, shed tears in silent drips, but we nodded our heads. This was the way of things. This was sacrifice. The fox walked up to a girl who had not yet grown into her dress. Her hair, bowed with blue ribbon, curled in a red tail down her back, and when the fox nipped her palm, she didn’t startle.

Wide-eyed, we watched her transform in the shadows of the cypress. Her ears shot past her head in twin points. Her muzzle lengthened, her lips drew thin and black. She shrank until her dress belled like a lily around her, until she pulled herself from the seersucker bodice with four paws. Together with the fox, she trotted the path ahead, and we followed the brush of her tail through inky shadows.

Noises collected within the swamp like fat on milk, thickest on that, the longest night in winter, for the swamp never saw a cold December, and all living things rejoiced in its warmth.

When we came upon a tunnel of trees, the foxes stopped and sat back on their haunches.

This is as far as we can lead you, said the he-fox. Do not tarry within this stretch of wood. Do not let the thorns prick you. And whatever you do, do not eat of the fruit. And he and the she-fox darted into the bristly brush.

Let us link hands, we said, to withstand temptation.

We walked single file on our toe-tips through the soft squish of earth, arms stretched taut as bow strings. The night-creatures’ sounds extinguished as the tunnel folded around us. Nameless trees coiled over our heads, twisting their spiked iron boughs toward our faces. Pricked on their spindly fingers were orbs of fruit, glowing gold and bronze in the shadows of the trees. Punctured on spikes, they dribbled honeyed juice in our hair, slicked our joined fingers.

We are nearly there, we whispered to each other. Steady.

But for the hungriest of us, for him whose father came home from hunts empty-handed, this test proved the most difficult. My wish, he had told us earlier that eve, is for a belly full year-round.

From last in line, he stretched out his unheld hand and captured a palmful of golden juice. We turned to warn him, to remind him of the meat the witch would grant to slake his hunger—but his lips were already aglitter, and we could do nothing as a tree bent toward him. It wrapped him so completely in iron limbs as to make him invisible.

It was not until a strange light burst between the branches that the tree showed us the boy, transformed into a glob of fruit, bronzed and shimmering and too dangerous to touch. Trembling, we left him captured on the bough and slipped from the mouth of the forest onto the lip of swamp.

Whoops and chitters of nocturnal creatures exploded around us once more, and in between their night howls, we heard her speak. Now, for courage. Consume but one, and all may enter.

On a log green with ferns, we found three items with our lantern’s glow: a toadstool of slime, a flower of barbs, and a vial of glass.

We gathered our heads together. Our tongues withered as we deliberated, curling away from taste of slime and prick of barb. We debated so long that the moon slipped in the sky.

Surely, we said, we must choose between the toadstool and flower, for what bravery lies in an empty vial? Besides, what if death pours clear and we make it visible?

Ah, spoke the most audacious, but what better way to test our mettle than with mystery? For what courage can be found in reluctance? And despite our protests, she pressed the glass vial to her lips.

Hands over mouths, we waited for her to wilt like a rose or disappear into nothing. But she bloomed instead, beautiful and unscathed.

A tide of wind gushed through our ears and hair and noses in a torrent, bearing the carrion smell of rotting plants and rodents, the sweet laugh of the witch rising above.

Beside the quiet lap of swamp water, where shadow bent solid and moonlight painted all to bone, we found a massive hollowed tree. And before it stooped the swamp witch.

She had wrapped herself in the quilts and sashes we’d sewn for her from wool and feathers. Her cloven feet churned the muck, and her skin overlapped in iridescent black scales like plates of oiled armor, rippling between patches of silver fur. Horns spiraled from her matted skull, and her hair fell in coarse braids to her feet. As we approached, she watched with eyes elliptical, pupils splitting the blue irises like arrows.

My darlings, my darlings, she crooned through jagged, mossy teeth, Worthy of the world’s wishes.

We slipped our acorn beads over her head, tucked sprigs of lavender behind her tufted ears, and placed rocks of sugar beneath her dry tongue. Two coins of gold the richest of us dropped into the folds of her sash, a request she had whispered to us on yesterday’s wind. She kissed our brows each in turn, her humid lips smearing stardust.

I am afraid, my dears, that this is the end of us, she said, bowing her head. My magic is far too aged. My bones are breaking, my lungs are emptying. I use these coins soon to seal my eyes as I journey to lands unknown.

All of us wept and clung to the folds of her feathers and scales. Do not leave us, we begged. Never leave this world. For what is this world without the magic of you?

I must go, she said, stoppering our tears with her hoof tips. I was never meant to live forever. Your offerings have sustained my magic these years past, but no longer. You must understand.

The swamp lamented with us—the wind a serrated screech through our limbs, creatures keening as we sobbed. She embraced us each in turn, inquiring as to our wishes. But we no longer had wishes to offer. Even she could not undo our misery.

Please, we begged. Is there no magic that can spare you? Is there no wish we might make?

The witch paused, and something unfamiliar flickered in her eyes. There is one way, she said, drawing out each word as we drew breath. One way that your wishes might yet be preserved. And then, as if to herself, But how could I ask this of you?

She gave herself a little shake and halted last before the bravest of us, the lovely girl who drank of mystery. The witch lifted her chin delicately with a cloven toe. An exchange.

The girl frowned. Of what?

We all stood in silence, hearts thrumming like wings in bone cages. Beating, beating with trepidation, with fear that felt like hope—

To preserve magic, the witch said, marking us each with her stare, we must nourish it. Dress it in pure belief, in brazen courage. She looked to the brave girl once more. As I once was called to do, and many before me.

And what part do I play? asked the girl, jaw tight but eyes wide. Willing.

The witch offered a sad smile. The worthy sacrifice.

#

In winters past, we trapped rabbits for the swamp witch. Sliced the delicate membrane between hide and meat, thumbed gore onto each other’s faces as we laughed. We stretched their hides between branches, watched blades of fur bend like grass in wind.

We had never skinned a fur-less thing.

We had never seen the hidden side of human flesh.

It stretched in the most unexpected way, the skin, at once supple and delicate. We didn’t watch what the swamp witch did with the rest, a ritual of bone and veins and muscle. The swamp erupted in a chorus of howls and hisses, and we squeezed together like fingers around a knife, cutting our pain against each other’s shoulder blades, watching dawn rise like a bloody fist.

Sheaves of light poured over the murky water at our feet, the gold rippling past knee-bent cypresses, floating pads of lilies, the graceful leaps of frogs. When the light shimmered over the horizon and night’s wild threnody died on a breath, we turned around.

The swamp witch stood as beautiful and terrifying as she always had, yet something seemed to stir the air around her. Her scales and feathers glistened with an incandescence we had never seen. We looked at her and felt magic rise like bread in our stomachs, warm and full and sweet. She smiled. Her teeth dripped red.

With purpose comes sacrifice, she said. For youth is but a dying ember, its warmth a temporary balm. But magic— She hesitated, meeting our gazes one by one. Magic ignites. It is the lifeblood of the world, the heartbeat that orchestrates our every breath. It is the dream that soothes nightmare, the hope that launches a thousand wishes. Without it, we drown in mundanity, in hopelessness.

She ran a hoof over her newest hide, sunbeams highlighting its tiny hairs. We felt our skin prickle in response. Do no grieve for what is freely given.

And what of our wishes? we asked, trying to summon bravery. We had never felt fear in her swamp, and now our lungs were wet with it. Might we wish for her return?

Magic may never undo a wish, said the witch. And a sacrifice rejected is an insult to truth.

Her words hummed the air around us like a spell. The witch plucked the golden coins from her sash and returned them to the giver. Your wishes have gone stale, she said. Return home. My creatures will guide you safely from the swamp.

As if summoned by her words, the he-fox appeared at the tree line. He sat in silence, his eyes full of ghosts.

She turned toward her hollow tree, looking once more at us over her shoulder. Remember what was lost tonight in pursuit of desire, and likewise what you have gained. Remember that wishes can destroy as equally as they can save, that to find joy we must be willing to bleed. This shall be our new covenant.

And she vanished on a breeze of fur and claws and feathers. A moment later, the hollowed tree winked out of sight.

We traipsed to the edge of the clearing toward the fox, hand in hand and tongues sour with unspoken words. When we turned around, we saw that the brave girl’s skin was gone too. We tried to ignore the way our shadows stretched with lanky fingers and longer legs as we walked beneath dappled boughs.

We tried to ignore the feast of sorrow that gnawed on our spines, the bodies we stepped out of and abandoned to the moss.

Our last refuge of permanence.

 

 

BIO

Megan Parker is a mom and freelance editor by day and a devourer of worlds by night. She loves weird stories, especially those spiced with dark and creepy twists, but she’s always amenable to happy endings. Her fiction and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, The Sonder Review, FLARE, and Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism, among others, and her story “A Good Thing” was the tertiary winner of SNHU’s 2016 Fall Fiction Contest. Currently, she resides in San Angelo, TX, with her husband and daughters, where almost nothing of note occurs. You can find her exploring the world via twitter @MegsMcSparren.

 

 

 

 

Blythe Smith Artwork

 

New Dawn

 

Blue Bird

 

Ex-Smoker’s Dream

 

Recess

 

Collector’s Pride

 

The Girl with the Red Shoes

 

Feeling Christmassy

 

Saintan

 

 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

My art starts from the private but often ends up being generally applicable. It starts from small, seemingly unimportant incidents and often ends up being political.

My themes are (megalo)maniac: power, gender, addiction. I see meanings related to these themes everywhere.

I am interested in studying what meaning is, how meanings change, merge, and dissolve.

I think it is useless for an artist to declare truths, since they are scarce. In the best possible case, the meanings of the author and the experiencer enter into a dialogue with each other and nurture each other. Although art can never convey the truth, I hope that, when experienced, my art becomes true and that its meanings turn meaningful. That my art can influence and, whilst influencing, generate new art.

My art is multimodal, it is meant to appeal to all senses: I make use of language, puns, humour, irony, moving images, sounds, paintings, installations that you can touch, taste, hear, and smell.

I’m currently studying in Art Education in the Masters Programme at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland.

www.blythesmith.com

 

BIO

blythesmith1Blythe Smith is a Finnish visual artist with a strong background in linguistics and literature. In her work, she explores meanings: how meanings emerge and merge, how they change and dissolve in human interaction.

Blythe Smith’s work ranges from drawings and watercolor paintings to experimental video art. She is a graduate of Art School MAA and holds an MA in English and Romance philology.

 

 

 

In the Kelp Forest

by Rosemary Harp

 

 

 

Tess Chen is in high demand as a pet sitter around Arriba Circle. She can be trusted with feeding schedules and keys. She does not snoop or help herself to popsicles. Since summer vacation began, she has looked after a middle-aged cat, a clutch of frantic and incestuous hamsters, and Jorie Wexler’s black and yellow ball python. The python job was the easiest and the hardest: the snake only needed to be fed once a week but it ate frozen mice the Wexlers kept in a Ziploc bag in the spare freezer in their garage. One week Tess dropped a frozen mouse and the tail broke off the rigid body when the corpse bounced on the concrete floor. Tess didn’t mind picking up the mouse so much—after all, she’d just plucked it from the freezer bag—but touching the lone, fleshy tail filled her with dread, as if the tail might somehow reanimate and begin wriggling between her thumb and forefinger.

Her current job watching Cricket, the arthritic spaniel across the street, is her best yet. At ten dollars a day for three days it’s the most lucrative, and she really needs the money: if she earns $100 by August, she can enroll in the junior scuba course at Sacramento State. She has $60 so far. Tess is going to be a marine biologist. Underwater everything is softly muffled and diffuse; on land, under the pitiless sun, life feels to Tess jarring and amped up. When she can’t sleep at night, she imagines herself swimming through a kelp forest. Scuba lessons are the first step to a refuge among the gently waving kelp and glimmering schools of yellowtail.

Plus, taking care of Cricket gives Tess a legitimate reason to walk past Sven Ragnarsson’s house three times a day. Three times a day she crosses the tarry asphalt in an agony of wondering. Will Sven be standing in his front yard swinging a tennis racquet at nothing? Swimming quiet laps in the backyard? Practicing? When she hears the reedy strains of his oboe seeping out his closed bedroom window over the diligent hum of a hundred neighborhood air conditioners, she knows she will not see him and goes about her business with Cricket more quickly, while still being careful to follow Mrs. Kipps’ instructions.

Stacey Kipps, in Tess’ class at Sutter Middle School, is a cheerleader, but not the kind who shakes a couple perky pompoms and chants, “Be aggressive! Be, be aggressive!” in the direction of a twelve-year-old quarterback. Stacey competes throughout California doing harrowing routines where she tops human pyramids and gets tossed skyward by other tiny but startlingly powerful girls. Tess has seen the cheer team perform on the local public access cable channel.

For years Tess and Stacey scrambled across Arriba Circle, drank lemonade from each other’s refrigerators without asking, whispered urgent secrets into each other’s ears, and once whipped each other into such a fit of hilarity Stacey peed her pants and they were asked to leave the public library, which they did without a trace of shame, still laughing and clutching each other, a faintly swampy scent coming from Stacey’s damp Guess jeans.

Stacey doesn’t invite Tess over anymore. There was no falling out, just a slow attrition Tess had no control over that lasted all of sixth grade. Stacey declined most, then all, invitations from Tess, but for a while returned about half of Tess’s phone calls—a maddening pattern Tess could not decode. After each of these infrequent conversations, Tess lay on the floor in her bedroom trying to identify what she’d said that was stupid or objectionable. When she finally worked up the courage to ask Stacey if she’d done something wrong, Stacey replied in a bright, hard voice that, no, she’d just been really, really busy. Then came the day in seventh grade when the two girls passed each other in the halls of Sutter Middle and Stacey looked away. It was around that time Tess started thinking about the kelp forests with their dappled light.

 

Stacey cried when she said goodbye to Cricket: apparently this parting was hard on her. She did not acknowledge Tess’s presence in her kitchen.

“You be good while I’m gone, Crickety-crick,” Stacey said and buried her face in the old dog’s liver colored neck while Tess reviewed the details of Cricket’s care one last time with Mrs. Kipps.

Tess wants to be the kind of girl who likes dogs, but she isn’t. Girls who like dogs, Tess believes, hug their friends whenever they meet, even when they just saw each other a couple hours ago. They make colorful bracelets of complexly knotted string, exchange them with each other, and wear them on their bare ankles. They play soccer and have matching shin guards. Tess does not make or exchange—she can hardly bear to call them by name—friendship bracelets. Tess likes making odd little sculptures out of feathers and glue and glossy hard candies. She likes Trivial Pursuit. Tess reads the game cards to herself at the kitchen counter. She is careful to slide the cards she has read into the back of the box so they will not appear during a real game, which would pose an ethical problem.

The air shimmers above Arriba Circle’s asphalt surface. Tess can feel the heat through the thin rubber soles of her sneakers. No Sven. She keys into the Kipps’s house, which is an exact copy of her own and Sven’s and every other house on Arriba Circle: three bedrooms, a combined kitchen-dining room, and a living room, all one on floor. And every house has its own small pool. If you were to fly high above the neighborhood, it would look like that monster from Greek mythology, the one with a hundred watery blue eyes.

Cricket lifts herself one shuddering leg at a time to a standing position, trembles with pleasure, and limps over to Tess. When Cricket approaches Tess with her eager tail and dripping smile, Tess’s limbs go stiff, but not with fear. In the syncopated rhythm of panting and wagging, she hears, “I want, I want, I want.” It is for this open, exposed wanting that Tess cannot forgive dogs.

Tess refills Cricket’s water, places four ice cubes in the bowl, and portions out exactly half a cup of dry food. The dog eats and drinks gratefully. Tess removes Cricket’s leash from the hook by the kitchen door, but does not take Cricket out right away. Instead she walks through the Kipps’s living room and down the long, thickly carpeted hallway to Stacey’s room.

Stacey’s room is pristine. Tess’s room, though architecturally identical to Stacey’s, is always a disaster of shifting piles of books and half-filled diaries to which she has lost the key. Stacey’s Cabbage Patch Dolls and stuffed Care Bears are gone, Tess sees. So is Stacey’s rainbow bedspread, which has been replaced by a grown-up looking mauve one. Lying on the bedspread is one of Stacey’s green and gold cheer team uniforms. Tess holds up the sleeveless pleated dress and for an instant has a wild, un-Tess-like urge to try it on in front of Stacy’s gold-framed full-length mirror. But no, the dress will be far too small. Not for the first time Tess feels the genetic injustice here: she is Asian (half), but it is Stacey (“we might be Irish, maybe?”) who is tiny and lithe.

As she lays the dress back on the bed, Tess sees a matching mauve telephone on the nightstand.  A roaring whirlpool of white noise fills her head as she wonders if the telephone has its own line. The idea that Stacey has her own phone number, one she has never shared with Tess, provokes her to a rage that gets its power from grief.  She lifts the receiver and dials the Kipps family’s number, which she knows as well as her own. She can hear her breath amplified back to her. Sure enough, all the other telephones in the empty house cry out. Tess places the telephone back on its cradle slowly. The urge to destroy something, maybe the phone itself, rolls over her in waves, but as always she swallows her rage, forces it down, down, down until it sits like a sick animal in her stomach.

But then the Ragnarssons’ back door swings open and Sven stalks outside barefoot, wearing white shorts and a t-shirt that says FILA. For the moment, Tess forgets the private phone. Half-hidden behind gauzy curtains, she watches Sven sit on the edge of the pool with his legs dangling in the shallow end. His back is rounded over something. When he shifts position slightly, what Tess sees makes her breath trip in her lungs: the telltale, oblong blue box of Trivial Pursuit game cards. Sven pulls one. Reads. Flips the card. Reads. Flips it back. Here is method—ritual, even. Clearly he has done this before. The sickly weight in Tess’s stomach eases then morphs into a mad flutter.

“Cricket!” Tess calls. “Cricket, come!” She runs down the hall and back into the kitchen where Cricket snores raggedly on the tile.

“Let’s go out!” Tess jerks open the drawer under the microwave and there is Cricket’s supply of chewed-up tennis balls, same as ever.  She shows Cricket a greenish-gray specimen.

“Look! Ball!” she says. “Do you want to play?”

Cricket gazes up at the ball, and at Tess, with a love that is limitless. She thumps her tail twice then stands.

“Good girl!” she trills. She sounds a bit crazed even to herself.

The Kipps’s back yard is shadeless and mostly devoted to cement pool deck, but a strip of grass runs alongside the chain-link fence that borders the Ragnarssons’ yard.

Tess tosses the ball. Cricket hobbles after it and plops it at Tess’s feet.  After a few runs, Cricket warms up and moves more nimbly, like she’s tapping into reserves of youthful zest. When she drops the ball at Tess’s feet, Cricket tosses her head to request another round of the game. Tess looks over at Sven with each toss.  He cannot ignore her forever.  Or maybe he can. He reads and flips more Trivial Pursuit cards.

After fifteen tosses she calls, “That’s cheating, you know.”

Because Tess Chen is innately unable to flirt these words come out sounding less like cute teasing than the scolding of a disappointed librarian.

Sven looks up. He is not a kind boy, exactly, or a warm one, but he is honorable, and any questioning of his honor angers him.

“It is not. I put the cards in the back after I test myself. It’s no different than playing a real game.”

Tess tosses; Cricket runs.

“It is different,” she says. “In a real game you only see one question per card. You’re seeing all of them.” This has just occurred to her and she knows she’s in pot-kettle territory.

Toss. Retrieve. Cricket pants harder.

Sven stands. He crosses his arms over his chest and his legs drip on the patio. The water evaporates so fast it’s as if the dark circles on the pale cement were never there. Almost everything makes him mad, Tess thinks. It’s fascinating to her that such a quiet person should also be so stormy.

“Come play me, then, if you’re such an expert,” he says.

“Ok,” she says, as though this isn’t the single most amazing thing she could conceive of. She walks around to the gate.

Here are the things Tess loves about Sven Ragnarsson: everything. To be more specific, she loves his blonde curls. When they loop down around his ears he will get them shorn off and start all over again. She can predict within thirty-six hours when the haircut will happen. She loves that he wears shorts even on the coldest days in January. She loves that he is descended from Vikings. She loves that he can build or fix absolutely anything. She loves his oboe. She even loves, or maybe she especially loves, that he isn’t very nice to her. Although, and she treasures this memory, when Trevor Dixon called her “half-breed,” Sven clenched his fists and said, “shut up!” with a fury that surprised everyone on the school bus—Tess most of all.

Sven’s parents are a matched set of large, blonde, NPR-listening Minnesotan transplants, the only other people in the neighborhood, besides the Chens, who compost. Her parents privately poke fun at the Ragnarssons for being such square, solid, Midwestern-type citizens.  The Chens pride themselves on being old Berkeley hippies. Like her parents, the Ragnarssons are Democrats, rare in their Sacramento exurb, and this gives Tess a safe feeling of solidarity in this Orwellian election year. Whenever Tess sees Mrs. Ragnarsson she feels a shy, semi-hysterical compulsion to confess: I love your son, have loved him my whole life.

Sven sets up the board on the table by the pool.

“What color do you want to be?”

“Blue,” she says. Sven pauses like he’s about to object, like he wants to be blue or maybe just wants to fight her for it on principle, but then closes his lips over his braces. He selects yellow for himself and they begin.

“What is the capital of Yugoslavia?”

“Who sang ‘My Way’?”

“Who was executed by burning on May 30, 1431?”

“Who created the character Tom Sawyer?”

They move their little pie pan-shaped game pieces around the board. When Sven thinks a question is too easy, an affront to them both, he clutches his stomach and rocks forward groaning. Tess is so charmed by this gesture she considers making up questions like “what color do you get when you mix yellow and blue?” or “what country fought in the American Civil War?” so he’ll do it again.

Sven pushes play on a portable cassette deck and Tess recognizes one of her favorite albums. Tess believes only obscure bands from England with gloomy young frontmen and a heavy dependency on synthesizers are valid. It’s interesting to think that maybe Sven shares this view.

“You’re dogsitting Cricket?” he asks.

“Yeah, they’re away at one of Stacey’s cheer competitions.”

Tess realizes as the words leave her mouth that it was a tactical error to put Sven in mind of Stacey and cheerleaders.

But with a noise like “Mhhh” Sven dismisses all cheer-related activities, rolls the die, and counts out spaces.

“Ha, I can get the green wedge,” he says. But he doesn’t know the name of Jacques Cousteau’s boat and the game goes on. When Tess rests her forearms on the surface of the table, she has to pull them away quickly because the metal is so hot. The needle on the Ragnarssons’ big, round-faced thermometer claims it’s 137 degrees, but the thermometer sits in the direct sunlight and can’t be correct.

“Hang on. My brain is overheating. Ozone layer depletion,” Sven says. He slides out from the table, kneels by the pool, and dunks his head. He rises and gives his curls a doggish shake, intentionally spraying needles of water at Tess, who does not give him the satisfaction of squealing.

She decides to dunk her head, too. She sets her glasses by the pool’s edge and submerges her entire head into that womb-warm, chlorine-blue world. She used to swim here with Sven when they both needed inflatable water wings and he still had an older brother. Tess remembers Mats Ragnarsson only hazily:  a bigger, darker, sweeter version of Sven.  In her memory, he stands on his hands underwater and his long, upturned legs wave in the harsh sun.

“Let’s go,” Sven calls. Tess hears him above the soothing hum of the filter and yanks herself back into the blinding world. In the Kipps’ backyard, Cricket wheezes. Tess sticks her head over the fence. Cricket lifts her head then lets it sink again. Her ribcage rises and falls.

“Come on,” says Sven. Tess turns from Cricket back to Sven.

Three to three, they play on.

In her newfound ease, Tess sings along with Sven’s music, which is also, amazingly, her music.

“You like Echo and the Bunnymen?” he asks her. She detects an incredulous note in his voice. Maybe some grudging respect, too.

Tess nods.

“Most people only know their one hit,” He says.

Tess rolls her eyes to signal her disdain for hits and the people who like them. She is not a habitual eye roller and the operation makes the tricksy little muscles around her eyes ache briefly.

“Who directed the classic thriller ‘The Birds’?”

“What is the chief export of Nicaragua?”

“Who is known as The Belle of Amherst?”

With the Emily Dickinson question, on which Tess doesn’t skip the merest beat, she earns the brown wedge and pulls into the lead.

“Ugh!” Sven says.

In frustration real or playful—he is not a gracious loser—Sven reaches over and yanks her ponytail as he often did five years ago or more. First there is pain and then her body lights up with a million pricks of electricity that surge from her scalp down her spine then fizz like a Fourth of July sparkler in her toes. The pain is like the sudden, flooding memory of an old dream.

Hurting her, she somehow understands, has always been his excuse to touch her. To touch her gently would be against unnamable rules, but to pinch her, pull her hair, shove her is allowed. And to be touched by him is to know why she has skin.

“You have a lot of general knowledge,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twelve,” she says. “but my birthday is in three weeks.”

He should know this, she thinks, because his birthday is exactly two years and ten days before hers and he attended her first eight birthday parties. Sven was born the day of the first moon landing, which seems to Tess cosmically apt—his birth a starry phenomenon, a giant leap for mankind. She wonders why he is asking her age and wonders if maybe he is doing the math on how soon they can get married. If they got married, they could play Trivial Pursuit every day.

“What are you going to do with the money? From all your pet sitting?” he asks.

So he has noticed her, she realizes, going around the neighborhood, unlocking doors, punching in alarm codes, steeling herself for frozen mice. She wants to tell him about the scuba course, maybe even the kelp forest, but also wants to keep it safe and private in case it’s contemptible. But Sven shrugged at the mention of cheerleading, said Tess knew a lot, and asked her age for mysterious reasons of his own. She has known him her entire life. So she goes ahead and tells him.

He rearranges the colored wedges in his game piece.

“Wait, but, are you good at math?”

Tess is not.

“I thought you were more like, I don’t know, creative,” he continues. “You need to be really excellent at math to be any kind of scientist.”

Tess is sinking now; the roaring white noise from Stacy’s bedroom is whirlpooling back into her head. Marine biologists are biologists. She knows that, of course, but at some point the image of herself suspended in the perfect peace of the kelp forest overrode the reality of science, with its calculations and data. Would she really want to study kelp? Or even marine animals?  She’s not that interested in animals.

Then she thinks: Cricket.

She runs to the gate in the side yard that adjoins the Kipps’s yard, where Cricket is lying on the cement a foot from the pool. Tess recognizes the heaviness of Cricket, the way gravity is working on her, and knows the truth. Panic hits, then guilt, then more panic. She wants to call for Sven, but to address him by name, urgently and in need, is impossible.

Without being called, he comes over the fence. A hand flies up to cover the lower half of his face exactly the way her hand is covering the lower half of her face. They stand side by side.

“It’s not your fault. Cricket’s older than me, even. That’s almost a hundred in dog years,” he says.

But Tess is thinking about Cricket’s position by the pool and knows Sven sees what she sees: Cricket died trying to get to water.

“When do they get home?” he asks.

“Late tonight.”

“We have to move her.”

Cricket is not heavy between the two of them, but there is the problem of limbs, the problem of tail. They find their stride. Cricket’s fur is warm against Tess’s bare arms. She remembers the pallbearers at Mats Ragnarsson’s funeral.

“We’ll go through the garage,” Sven says. But the garage door is locked. They shift Cricket’s weight and start again, this time for the back door. Tess slides an arm out from under Cricket’s midsection and tries the knob.  It too is locked. In her excitement to get outside to Sven earlier, Tess locked herself and Cricket out of the Kipps’ house.

Sven swears. Tess has never heard him curse before and it’s a terrible and violent thing, a man’s anger rather than a boy’s. They set Cricket down.

“I can break in through the laundry room window,” Sven says. “I do it at home when I lock myself out. These houses are all the same.” He says the last part in disgust, like the sameness of their houses is a moral and aesthetic insult to him personally. Tess finds that sameness comforting.

He goes to the laundry room’s exterior wall and Tess follows. Sven rattles the window in a series of small, swift jerks until they hear a click. Sven slides the window open horizontally and pops out the screen.

“Cup your hands and boost me.”

Tess does. The weight of him, concentrated in one calloused and dusty bare foot, tugs at her hard. Then the weight disappears; Sven is up and through. He replaces and locks the breached window and reemerges from the kitchen door. They take Cricket once again.

“She usually stays in the kitchen, right?”

“Yeah.”

They lay Cricket on the cool tile by the refrigerator and survey. There is a crime scene grimness to the whole scenario.

“Maybe you should put some food in her bowl so it doesn’t look like you forgot to feed her,” Sven suggests. “No, don’t.  It should look like she ate well. Stacey will freak out if she thinks Cricket died hungry.”

The mention of Stacey sends all of Tess’s blood to her feet. Dizzy, she plays out the scene where the Kipps family returns home, sleepy but happy, balancing multiple cheer trophies, to find Cricket inert on the kitchen floor. Stacey will gasp then sob. Blame will be promptly assigned. Stacey will never, ever phone her from the private line.

Sven interrupts.

“I won’t tell,” he says.

“I know.”

She does know. That is the sort of boy he is. But she also knows that they won’t ever play Trivial Pursuit again.

“If they don’t pay you I can loan you money for your scuba course.”

“Thanks, but that’s ok,” Tess says. She is genuinely moved by this offer, but the scuba plan feels like something a stranger, or a much younger child, dreamed up.

Sven stares down at Cricket with his fists clenched.

“It’s their own fault for leaving the dog with a little girl,” he says to no one.

Tess wants only to get out of that kitchen, out of that house, but at the same time she knows that once she leaves there is no going back, ever. Sven goes first and Tess locks the door behind them. By the time she pockets the key, Sven is beyond the fence, in his own yard. He disappears through the door, identical to the open door Tess is standing in, identical to the back door to her own house. It’s like he was never there.

 

 

 

BIO

Rosemary Harp is a Chicago-based writer of fiction and essays. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from The University of Michigan and an M.A. in English Lit from the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared in Mid-American Review, Motherwell, and other journals. She is working on her first novel.

 

 

 

The Table

by Robert Klose

 

 

I first saw the table about ten years ago, while driving in my pickup through Wiscasset, Maine, along the coastal route.  It was autumn, the air aflutter with falling leaves, and I spotted it at a yard sale, off to the side, suggesting it might have been spoken for.  Nevertheless, I stopped.  The table was simple but elegant, its round top made of laminated oak and fastened to a slim, four-sided stem.  The stem itself was supported at its base by a pedestal consisting of four curved buttresses, one attached to each face of the stem.  (Three of these buttresses were in excellent condition; but the fourth was damaged, as if a portion had been chewed off by a dog.)

As it turned out, the table was still available.  The seller was a husky, middle-aged man who blurted, “One hundred dollars.”

“That’s a lot for a yard sale item.”

“It’s hand-crafted,” he said, more in afterthought than an attempt to sweeten the deal.

“Still…”

“Yes?”

“I’ll give you seventy-five.”

He was aghast.  “I’d rather burn it than sell it for that price.”

“In that case, I’ll take it.”  After paying the man I threw the table into my pickup and headed north again, ahead of a threatening rain.

I brought the table to my still-almost-empty house and set it down in the middle of my empty kitchen, under a circular fluorescent ceiling light from the fifties.  (The realtor had touted the house as having “charming mid-century touches.”)  Then I surrounded it with what I had for seats — an aluminum lawn chair, a windsor chair, a metal folding chair, and a lobster crate.

I sat down in the lawn chair, looked out over the table — now the only piece of quality furniture in the house — and said, “There.”  I felt that in delivering the table to its appointed place, I was, in a way, inaugurating my new home.

As time went on, the inevitable accumulation of “things” progressed.  Beds, more chairs, night stands, book cases, end tables, dressers and a sofa.  The table, though, remained my home’s stillpoint — a neutron star whose gravity gathered everything unto itself.  In the morning I ate breakfast there; in the evening I opened my mail and paid my bills upon it; when I had guests, we sat around the table; and when I found a baby robin in the backyard, I put it in a shoe box and set it upon the table, where I could observe its return to health under the steady glow of the overhead fluorescent, which bathed the table in a continuous, soft light, like a museum piece.  Finally, in a delicate balancing act, I made love to a now erstwhile girlfriend upon the table, calling out to her in my moment of ecstasy, “My flower!”

In short, I loved the table and sensed that, no matter how my station in life might progress and improve, I would never part with it.

 

 

Winter came.  Waterways froze, icicles descended from the eaves, and chimneys puffed peaceably along.  That’s when I saw her.  The Russian woman.  I was driving along the main road through town.  The snow was flying about in periodic gusts, and had been coming down since early morning.  Enough had fallen so that the plows had rumbled it into long, high ridges on both sides of the road.

She was hobbling through the drifts, hunched over old-womanishly, clutching a large paper bag of groceries against the front of her gray wool coat.  She was wearing only flats, and every so often one flew off, so that she had to pause, backstep, work it back onto her foot (along with a dollop of slush), and then press forward again.

I pulled over and rolled down the window.  “Do you want a ride?”

I had startled her.  She threw me a desperate look and barked, “What!”

“A ride?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if she had been expecting me.  She got into the truck and I could feel the cold emanating from her body.

“Where to?”

“What!”

“Where can I take you?”

“Home.”

I knew the accent.  “You know…”

“What!”  (It came out as “Vaht!”.)

“We have a growing Russian community here.”

“I know,” she said with something resembling disgust.  “I am part of it.”  And then she asked, crossly, “How did you know I was Russian?”

“Your accent.”

She examined my face, as if I were joking.  “I have no accent,” she said in broad Slavic vowels.

I followed her directions, down poorly plowed side streets and around corners banked with snow.  She revealed herself in snippets.  St. Petersburg.  A research chemist.  A husband, Oleg.  America.  Two sons, Sasha and Timur.  Then no Oleg.  Lost to a designing American woman.  Oleg took Timur.  Now she cannot leave America.  She is here.  She is stuck.  She has Sasha, but other than him, nothing.  Nothing!  “My name is Ada,” she said after taking a breath, as if to punctuate her tale of woe, giving each syllable desperate weight.  Ah — duh.

“Here,” she commanded, and I stopped the truck in front of a three-story, peelpaint apartment house.  It must have been frigid inside, because the windows were frosted over, icicles hanging in front of them like bars.  In a second floor window there was a clear patch, framing a pale face, round and searching.  “Sashinka,” said Ada, softly.  Then she turned to me and ordered, “You will come in for tea.”

Having time on my hands, and hounded by curiosity, I followed Ada up the icy front steps and into a dim vestibule which smelled like old blankets.  The wallpaper was from a distant era, scaling off in broad swatches.  I watched as she stepped out of her flats and planted a wet foot upon the first step.  I followed.

Halfway up the stairs there was a thundering from above.  Sasha made a raucous descent, jabbering in an insistent ragtime of Russian.  “Da, da,” said his mother.  “Da.”  They embraced as if the boy had just arrived from a distant journey.

Sasha looked me over, and I him.  He was ten or eleven, blond, with a broad forehead and wide-set, light blue eyes, a narrow chin.  He was, in other words, a Russian.  He put out his hand and I shook it.

Ada shed her coat and threw it over the wooden railing.  Her figure confirmed that she was younger than I had at first thought.  Perhaps forty.  When she took off her knit hat her light brown hair fell forward, plain and straight.

Their apartment was spartan, and cold.  A shoddy card table its centerpiece.  Two wooden folding chairs.  A foam chair/bed occupied one corner, and a canvas cot stretched along a wall, its only gloss a neatly folded, red and yellow afghan.  Between these was a small, overladen bookcase.  The whole scene was austere, Soviet.  Sasha, in anticipation of his mother’s arrival, had already set out tea and a platter of small, plain cakes.  Ada and I sat in the two chairs with Sasha squatting between us on a stool.  She watched as I took my first tentative sip.  “Do you like the tea?” she asked.

“Superb,” I said, my breath visible.

She hauled out the box it had come in.  “Five hundred bags,” she proclaimed.  “And only two dollars!”

More snippets.  She walked everywhere.  No car.  Little money.  Tutored Russian and cleaned the public library at night.  Sasha got straight A’s.  Spoke English like a native.  No, better.  If only Timur…

“Are you cold?” she asked.  This was Sasha’s cue to jump to his feet and scrape an image in a pane with his fingernail.  “It’s colder inside than out,” he announced with a smile, as if to show that they could take it.

“Oil is expensive,” remarked Ada as she cupped the tea in her hands.  Sasha ran back to the table and bumped it with his knee.  A leg collapsed.

“Jesus!’

I was on my feet, dancing to dispel the pain.  Ada rushed to my assistance while Sasha tried to right the table.  “Go in bathroom and put cold water on it,” she commanded.

“The tea…”

“What!”

“The teapot,” I managed, still fanning my lap.  “It’s still pouring out.  On the floor.”

Sasha was already there, mopping and straightening while trying to hold the table up with his shoulder.

“Some day,” said Ada to my back as I hobbled to the bathroom, “I will have a real table.”

 

 

The first day of spring.  Maine looked as if it had the potential for warmth once again, its ice and snow having been cashiered into rushing rivers and streams, its front yards and fields awash in mud.

Galina Sergeivna called.  She was the linchpin of the local Russian community.  Eighty years old, she had the broad, nesting doll expanse of the older Russian woman, but, having survived the siege of Leningrad and then a trek west with her family into Nazi arms, she also had a broad expanse of will.

Her voice was insistent, urgent.  But this was normal.  Even when she was proffering borscht, her voice was insistent, urgent, as if the fate of the world depended on my lifting a small, red, shriveled beet to my mouth.

“Listen,” she told me, breathlessly.  “Ada…”  The news took wing from there.  Ada’s situation was desperate.  As if I didn’t know.  I had spent the better part of the winter chauffeuring her about and leaving anonymous packages of groceries at her door, which, one day, brought the rhetorical cry:  “If I knew who it was, I would kill him.”

Pride.

Now her poor situation had worsened.  As a foreigner, she was not entitled to public assistance.  Her tutoring brought her pin money, and the cleaning job in the public library was enough to pay the rent and insure that Sasha always had clean underwear.  But that job had been a risk.  Even in a small Maine town, one can get away with paying someone under the table for only so long.  The director of the library, having visited and fallen in love wth Russia, was willing to do this.  But the new town manager — an old cold warrior — was not.

Galina recited refrain after refrain.  “She doesn’t even have…  She doesn’t even have…”  And then, like a bolt from the blue, it came at me:  “…a table.”

I swallowed hard for the two of us.  “Yes, she does,” I countered, lamely.  “She has a card table.”

“No,” said Galina Sergeivna, rushing to Ada’s defense.  “It broke.  One of the legs bent.”  I could feel her leaning into the phone.  “It broke off.  Gone.”

Did Galina Sergeivna think I had a table to spare?  Did she know that I was the one who had left all those groceries at Ada’s door?  If so, was she now trying to coerce me?  Impossible.  She was the soul of altruism and honest intent.

“I don’t have a table,” I told her by way of preemption.

“You don’t have a table?” she echoed, astonished.

“Well, I do have a table, but…”

“Oh, so you do have a table.  Well, maybe you could give it to poor Ada.  I would give her mine, but one of the legs is bent.  It is only a matter of time before it…”

“Breaks off.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to say, yet I knew that any pause with Galina Sergeivna was pregnant with the chance of her inserting a paragraph of design.  This she immediately did.

“Listen,” she said.  “I have an idea.  My son Misha is going on sabbatical.  He’s going away.  In his garage he has a table that his mother-in-law gave him.  He can’t bring it inside yet because he has to get rid of his own table first.”  Galina Sergeivna breathed hard for a moment, considering.  “Well, I could see in my mind’s eye that neither table would fit into Ada’s apartment.  By the way, it’s solid bitch…”

“You mean beech.”

“Yes.  What did I say?”

“You said ‘bitch’.”

“Did I?  Impossible.  Why would I say that?  Anyway, you could take this table and maybe let Ada have your table for a little while.  I was at her apartment the other day and thought that a small round table would be perfect there.”

“Well…”

“Yes?”

“Is it really made of beech?”

“What?”

“Bitch.”

“Yes, go to Misha and have a look.  The garage is open.  This could work for everybody.”

I went to Misha’s.  The garage was open.  The table was beautiful — a broad, finely finished surface of immaculate bitch.  It would look perfect in my kitchen.  And who knows?  The way these things work, Misha just might learn to live without it.  I made the necessary arrangements with Misha and within the hour the table was standing in my dooryard, waiting.  Fifteen minutes later I was hauling my round oak table up Ada’s creaky, winding staircase.  Five minutes after that, she had adorned it with a lace tablecloth and was filling my cup with steaming black Russian tea.  It was curious that she resented the gifts of groceries but welcomed the table without so much as a thank you, as if she had been expecting it.

“I’m happy to lend this table to you until you can get a decent one of your own,” I said, staking my right to reclamation should it become necessary.

“Oh, yes, yes,” she said, nodding.  “We will take good care of it.”  As she said this, Sasha clapped the remaining three legs of the card table together and brought the shabby thing down to the curb.

That evening I ate supper alone, seated at Misha’s lovely table.

 

 

In time Ada’s situation improved.  In a desperate maneuver to remain in the States, close to Timur, she registered as an undergraduate at the university, majoring in political science.  This secured her a student visa and also granted her the privilege of sitting in a classroom with forty American eighteen-year-olds wondering what on earth the course had to do with sex.  By virtue of her Russian Ph.D., she was also awarded a tuition waiver and a stipend of four hundred dollars per month.   In addition, she had five private Russian language students.  On the weekends she and Sasha collected bottles and cans.  During one of my visits she opened a closet packed with plastic bags of returnables.  “Forty-three dollars!” she sang.

“In Michigan it would be eighty-six,” I remarked

“What!”

“In Michigan they pay ten cents per bottle or can.  So you would get double the money.”

“What a country!” she said, slapping her forehead.

I visited Ada and Sasha often.  Every time I did, Ada waxed poetic about the table.  One day she told me to close my eyes when I came through the door.  “Now open them,” she said, and I beheld my table, but it looked somehow different.  If it were a living thing, I would say that it had been rejuvenated.

“I refinished it,” said Ada, clasping her hands.

“Oh.”  In truth, it looked wonderful.  She had removed the old finish and restained it.  Darker.  Fresher.

Sasha threw himself over the table and draped it with both his arms.  “I love this table,” he said.  “Do you know how to say that in Russian?”

“I had only a year of Russian in college,” I told him.

“That should be enough,” he said, chastising me.  “Try.  Try to say, ‘I love this table.'”

“I can’t.”

Ada chimed in.  “Then say, ‘Sasha loves this table.'”

“It’s no easier.”

“Start by saying ‘Sasha.’  You can say that, can’t you?  It’s the same in English.”

“Sasha,” I said, blankly.

“Now say ‘lyoo-bit.'”

I repeated the word.

“Now ‘etot stoll’.”

I repeated it.

“Now the whole thing.  ‘Sasha lyoo-bit etot stoll.'”

I did as I was told.

Sasha applauded while his mother went to fetch the tea and I sat down at the table, which was redolent with the aroma of fruitwood stain.  As Ada set the tea down, I accessed my dormant Russian.  “Ada, ” I volunteered.  “I think I can say, ‘I love this table too.'”

“Good,” said Ada.  “But first tell me if you want sugar or honey.  And drink the tea before it gets cold.  How are things where you work?”

 

 * * *

 

I stayed late into the evening.  When I finally left, toward ten, it was dark.  A solitary streetlamp shed a paltry light.  As I approached my car I caught sight of a moving shadow off to my right.  Who was this? A mugger?  In Maine?  Alarmed, I quickened my steps, but too late.  It was upon me.  I turned and cowered.  “Get away!” was all I managed to cry before a hand grabbed my arm.

“It’s all right,” counseled a man’s voice, heavily accented.  “It’s me.  Oleg.”

I lifted my eyes and squinted at him.  “I don’t know you,” I said.

“Yes you do, although we haven’t met.”

This, then, was Ada’s ex-husband.  As my eyes adjusted I could make him out.  His youngish, boyish face and thick, brown, blow-dried hair brushed straight back.  Like Stalin.  He even had Stalin’s tiger eyes.  “What do you want?”

“I’ll be brief.  I see you’re spending time with Ada.”

“Not the way you think,” I was quick to answer.

“No matter,” said Oleg.  “Things take on a life of their own, even when you think you have control.  I know you gave her a table.”

I relaxed a bit, calmed by his quiet manner, although I remained on my guard.  “How would you know that?”

Oleg shrugged.  “How did I know you were here this evening?”

“Good question.  How did you know?”

He shrugged again.  “Don’t worry about it.  I’ll bet she told you that I am some sort of monster.  If not a monster, then maybe a Bukhara from Brighton Beach.”

“She didn’t tell me anything.  And anyway, it’s none of my business.”

Oleg smiled.  “That’s a very American thing to say.  In Russia, everything is everybody’s business.  Don’t you want to know why I left her?”

“I’m not the least bit interested.”

Oleg narrowed his eyes.  “That’s a lie.  You’re really dying to know, so I’ll tell you.  We came here with Sashinka and Timurka — our boys — two years ago.  I found that I wanted to stay.  For a man like me, there are more possibilities here.  But Ada longed for St. Petersburg.  What could I do?  We separated and I found an American woman.”

“For the green card,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

“Don’t worry,” said Oleg, sensing my alarm.  “I’m not going to kill you for speaking the truth.  Of course, for the green card.  I don’t love this woman.  She’s too old for me.  And now Ada feels trapped here, because of Timurka.”

A silence settled over both of us.  “All right,” I finally said.  “Now I know more than I knew before, but I don’t see why you had to tell me this.  It doesn’t change anything.”

“I love her,” said Oleg matter-of-factly.  “I just want you to know that.  If I knew she needed a table, I would have given her one.  I build houses, you know, so I could have made her one.  From cherry.  Very expensive.  So then, your table is harmless, but please remember what I said about things taking on lives of their own.”

Having said that, he turned and disappeared into the night.

The next morning, while reading the paper, I was stunned to see Oleg’s name in the police blotter.  He had been summoned.  For assault in a local bar.  Only an hour after approaching me in front of Ada’s house.  He was free on bail.

 

 

I didn’t tell Ada about my meeting with Oleg.  Instead, life went on as usual.  I visited her on a regular basis and began to get close to Sasha, who became interested in me when he learned I was a biologist.  I took him on field trips to the coast and found him to be a quick learner with a keen eye for detail.  Between my normal visits for tea and my relationship with Sasha, I found myself at their apartment more and more.  As the weeks and months passed I made fewer references to the table being mine, that concern having been supplanted by a subtle but persistent fear that Oleg was lurking in the bushes.

Still, I felt at ease with Ada and Sasha.  The simplicity and quiet of their small apartment made it seem like some distant place divorced from both Ada’s and my preoccupations.  Now and then, as we drank our tea, I caught her peeping at me.  When I did, she blushed.  Her manner of serving tea was usually brisk and antiseptic, but on one occasion, as I took the cup from her, her hand brushed mine and I caught a flash of heat from her.  She quickly left the table, scurried to the kitchen, and gazed out the window.  For my part, I continued to sip my tea and nibble at my cookie.

One day, Galina Sergeivna called.  As usual, her message was urgent.  Misha had returned from his sabbatical and wanted his bitch table back.  Could I bring it to him that evening?  I asked for a little time to arrange things so that I would not be without a table, but I could hear Misha in the background, whispering to his mother, “Tell him tonight.  I must have it tonight!”

What could I do?  I agreed and delivered the table to him, trucking it over in my pickup.  I returned home to a void in my  kitchen.  Girding myself, I called Ada.  “Do you remember the table I loaned you?” I asked.

“Remember?  What do you mean?  I eat on it every day.  I work on it.  Sasha does his homework on it.  It is the center of our lives.”

“Yes, but do you recall that it was a loan?  The time has come when I need to have it back.”

“What!”

“Not right away,” I said, wincing, as I did not feel comfortable making the same unconditional demand as Misha.  “Please keep it while you look for a new one.  I’ll even help you.”

I could sense her panic at the other end of the line.  “Oh,” she moaned.  And then, “I’ll give you anything you ask for the table.  We have gotten used to it.  Two hundred dollars!”

“Ada,” I pleaded.  “I’m not looking to sell it.  It…it has sentimental value.”

“Three hundred!”

“Ada!’

She slammed the receiver down.  What did that mean?  Was I getting my table back or not?  I called her.  After five rings she picked up.  “I’m comforting Sasha,” she said.  “He loves that table.  He’s used to it.  He’s devastated.”

“Ada,” I insisted.  “Put Sasha on the phone.”

She hung up again.  I decided to go to bed in the interest of letting tempers cool.

In the morning the phone rang.  I steeled myself for Ada’s next assault, but it was Galina Sergeivna.  “Listen,” she said, “we know about the table.”

“We?”

“All of us,” she said, cryptically.  “And we want you to know that we’re on your side.”  After a pause she added, “You did tell her it was only a loan, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, then you have every right to ask for it back.  I mean, if this were Moscow…”

“What do you mean?  What if this were Moscow?”

“Well, in Russia we help each other like this.  It’s not unusual to give someone furniture.”

“But I didn’t give it to her.”

“Yes, I know.  But you went there from time to time and had tea on the table, and you reminded her that it was yours?”

“Yes,” I said.  “But were those things I had to do?  Ada says it’s killing Sasha.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Galina Sergeivna.  “He’s a big boy.  What is he, eleven?”

“Twelve now.”

“Twelve then.  Children that age recover quickly.  Well, I just want you to know that we’re on your side.  I had friends here last night and they’re all from Moscow and they all agree that this isn’t St. Petersburg.”

“Ada’s from St. Petersburg.  Maybe your friends could talk to her.”

“No,” said Galina Sergeivna.  “They won’t.”

“But why?”

“Because she’s from St. Petersburg.”

I hesitated to call Ada.  If I followed through and took the table, I would be thought of as cold and uncaring, at least by Ada and probably the other St. Petersburgers in the community.  Perhaps it was best to just let her keep the table.  Could she live with that?

By evening I was still mired in indecision.  I decided to go over and speak to her personally.  I got into my truck and pulled up in front of her apartment, but didn’t get out.  As the vehicle idled I once again considered simply not mentioning the table again, and perhaps the situation would resolve itself over time.  Suddenly I was startled by a tapping on the window.  Oleg.

“You scared me half to death!” I said as I rolled down the window.  “What do you want?”  Then I noticed his bruised forehead and a gash across his left cheek.

“I was in the neighborhood and I saw you sitting here,” he said.

“I’m thinking about taking the table back.”

“Yes,” he said.  “I heard.  The arrogant Muscovites are all on your side, except for Ludmila in the bakery, who remembers the old days and feels that a loan is as good as a gift.  Russian and American cultures are very different.  This is what happens when you get mixed up with a Russian woman.”

“Look,” I said.  “This whole thing is crazy.  I’m not mixed up with Ada.  But now I’m thinking that maybe it’s best if I let her keep the table.”

Oleg grabbed my arm with alarming force.  “No.  You can’t,” he said.  “Then you’ll give her an opportunity to play the martyr.  You must take the table back.”  I tried to avert my eyes, but they became stuck on a black object shoved into his belt.  My God.  A pistol.  I began to stammer.

Oleg smiled, then pulled his jacket front together.  His expression dropped and he glared at me for one, long moment, as if to say, “Now you get the message.”  And with that, he went on his way.  I didn’t go in to see Ada.  I drove home and ate a TV dinner while sitting on the floor.

That night, as I lay in bed, I thought of Anna Karenina.  What was it about these Russians?  In America, people got splinters, hit their thumbs with hammers, and stubbed their toes.  In Russia they rolled under locomotives.  Could an entire country have such an insatiable appetite for drama?  And why were they always at each other’s throats?  Why couldn’t the Muscovites talk to the St. Petersburgers?  Why did both these groups hate the Russians of Brighton Beach?  I could only surmise that, as a result of historical deprivations, they always perceived the pie of opportunity as being too small, even in a land of excess like America.  This made them suspicious of each other.

This led to more questions.  Why did they treat ulcers with vodka?  Why did they curse the lives they left behind, yet weep at the thought of their country?  I was reminded of something Paul Theroux wrote about riding the Siberian Railway.  He reported the grinding monotony of day after day of a featureless, snowbound landscape as the train crawled westward toward Moscow.  And then, after an eternity of unbroken whiteness, the passengers saw a wisp of black smoke on the horizon, emanating from one of Russia’s industrial cities.  At which point a man, a peasant, stood up and recited a poem that went something like, “Even the smell of our industry calls us home to Mother Russia.”

I suddenly felt that I understood why the table meant so much to Ada, as it would to most any Russian.  In a life which offered little variety, much grayness, and little hope of improvement, any gloss whatsoever was a pearl of great price.  As I dozed off I felt that I had reached my decision:  I would let her keep the table, even if she crucified herself as a result.

That night I dreamed.  The image was stark, threatening — Ada with the table slung over her back, Christlike, stumbling along the main road in a driving rain, determined to throw it down at my doorstep, but not until she had fallen three times.  Or was it two?

I awoke in a sweat.  And then I laughed.  Was I becoming Russian?  I rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next day, after work, I stopped at Galina Sergeivna’s house to drop off the quart of milk she had asked me to pick up for her.  I pulled into her gravel driveway and regarded the small, rundown abode which still managed to look fanciful, like a dacha.  It was painted brown and yellow, with a low peaked roof and filigrees about the eves.  Flower boxes brimmed with marigolds.  The shutters had cutouts of daffodils.  As I went up the steps, Glinka, her porch cat, meowed and ran through my legs.

“Oh, come in,” she said with the hint of insouciance that belied, I was convinced, some intent.

I had long since grown accustomed to Galina’s flame red hair and the prominent mole, as big as a marble, that sprouted in the middle of her forehead.  Her fruity perfume wafted in her wake as she moved to the sofa in her tiny living room and motioned for me to take the easy chair opposite her.  It was the perfect old person’s home:  four small rooms, all on the same floor, yet with space for a piano.  Knickknacks abounded, a lifetime of work for a dust rag.

Galina Sergeivna, normally composed and cheerful, seemed uncharacteristically nervous and preoccupied.  “So,” she said, “have you decided?”

“Yes.  I’m going to forget about the table and let her keep it.”

Galina Sergeivna laid a hand across her neck and sat bolt upright.  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”

“No, I’m not.  But when I considered all the options, this one made me feel the best.  And it will preserve the peace.”

“Yes,” she said, looking first at the floor, and then heavenward.  “Russians prefer peace above everything.  Even freedom.”  Then an almost beatific smile broke across her lined face as she turned to me.  “But maybe not more than love.”

I thought that an odd comment.  But I disregarded it and continued.  “I think I know how to handle this in a way that will allow Ada to accept the table.”

“Oh?”

But I said nothing else, and Galina Sergeivna suppressed her curiosity.  I nodded and got up to leave.  As I opened the door she said, “Please come by tomorrow evening around seven.  There’s someone I’d like you to meet.  It’s very important.  We’ll have tea.”  She would not let me leave until I had promised.

From Galina Sergeivna’s house I went to the florist and bought a lush bouquet, which I brought to Ada’s apartment.  I knocked on the door and it swung open.  When I called out there was no answer.  But there, before me, was the table.  It had been taken apart, its top standing on its side against the pedestal.  Using a coin from my pocket, I screwed it together again and laid the flowers upon it, my peace offering.  Then I scribbled a note:  “I’ve found a table that’s better for my house.  Please enjoy this one in good health.”  Then I left the apartment.

As I came onto the street it occurred to me that Oleg, if he was still lurking, may have seen me.  My God, what would he think now?  And what about that pistol?  But when I went outside all was clear.

The afternoon turned to evening, and still no call from Ada.  And no one answered when I tried to call.  Curious.  The silence persisted into the next day.  When evening came I went to Galina Sergeivna, who was waiting in the doorway, kneading her hands in her house dress.  “I thought you’d never come,” she said.

Galina Sergeivna introduced me to an older Russian woman named Zinaida, who looked to be straight out of the days before glasnost:  her thick, salt-and-pepper hair was held back with bobbie pins; her stockings were as thick as cloth, with a visible seam; she wore a plain beige blouse topping a brown wool skirt.  All of this was in contrast to her brilliant, welcoming smile as she took my hand and rolled it in both of hers.  She spoke no English.

We sat around a card table and had tea and pound cake, Galina Sergeivna translating my every word for her friend.  When the subject of the table came up, Zinaida’s eyes flashed with intense interest.  She asked many questions.  Did I give the table or lend it?  Did I show continuing concern for it during the course of its absence?  Was Ada from St. Petersburg?  Finally, Galina Sergeivna threw me an imploring look.

When I told her about the flowers she put her tea down and swallowed audibly.  Then, clearing her throat, she translated this conclusion for Zinaida, who immediately clucked and then emitted a dense paragraph of rapid-fire Russian as Galina Sergeivna repeatedly chirped, “Da, da, da.”  Then she turned to me and said, “Then you do understand.”

I looked blankly at the two women.  “Understand what?”

“That Ada is in love with you.”

I was speechless.  Of course, I had suspected something, but I was sure I had done nothing to encourage Ada.

Zinaida took a tissue from her bosom and blew her nose.  Her eyes were brimming with tears.  “Zinaida is happy for you,” said Galina Sergeivna.  Then she leaned across the table, not translating, leaving poor Zinaida to fend for herself.

“It was the table,” said Galina Sergeivna.  “Ada told me, very early on, that it was the greatest act of kindness anyone had ever done for her, especially since enduring the hell she has known here in America.  Oleg, Timur, food, money,” she enumerated on her fingers.  “And all the attention you paid to little Sasha.  Now you see why she couldn’t give it up.”

“To guarantee my visits?”

Galina Sergeivna nodded.  Zinaida honked.

“I’ve been trying to call Ada for several days, but there’s been no answer.”

Silence.  Galina Sergeivna’s eyes grew soulful.  “Are you saying that you love her?”

“No,” I clipped.  “I don’t.”

There was a cry like a wounded animal, from another room.

“It’s her,” said Galina Sergeivna, searching the pockets of her house dress for a tissue of her own.  “Ada.  She told me everything.  She came here to seek refuge.”

“From whom?”

“Who do you think?”

“Oleg?”

Galina Sergeivna nodded.  Then she turned to Zinaida and assaulted her with a tidal wave of Russian to bring her up to date on all that had transpired since the last translation.  Zinaida wept anew into her sopping tissue.  After confirming that her friend would survive, Galina Sergeivna turned back to me.  “Ada told him everything too,” she said.  “Finally.  Just the other day.  He exploded.  Did you know that he has a gun?  He threatened to take Sasha, so that she would be left with nothing!”

I swallowed.  “Where is Sasha?” I managed in a bare whisper, while Ada’s howling continued on the other side of the door.

Galina Sergeivna steeled herself and leveled her gaze at me.  “He took him.”

I splayed my hands out on the table and regarded both weeping women while, in the next room, Ada continued to vent her grief.  “Did she go to the police?” I asked.

Ada looked at me as if I were a moron.  “Police?  What police?  What rights does she have?  Oleg has a green card, a job, an American wife, a big house.  Ada has nothing.  If this was Brighton Beach she would be sitting on a subway grate with her hand out.”

Ada’s cries had become deafening.  I could hear her pacing the floor.  “My heart is bleeding for her,” I whispered to Galina Sergeivna.  “But I just don’t love her.”

“Ach,” she said, sniffing and looking off into the distance.  “Ach.”

“Let me talk to her,” I volunteered.  “I can’t leave her like that.”

Galina Sergeivna waved me off with her tissue.  “No,” she said.  “She has to understand that this is America now and things are different here.  It’s a woman’s job to talk to her, and I will do it.”

“Then I have to go,” I said, excusing myself.  I reached out for Zinaida’s hand, but she was using both of them to clutch the tissue to her nose.  I left the house feeling as if I had committed a murder.  As I descended the steps, I caught sight of a distant figure, a man, coming down the street at a rapid pace.  He was carrying — or rather, swinging — a bouquet of flowers, while inside, the women were squawking like hens.

 

 

 

BIO

Robert Klose teaches at the University of Maine at Augusta.  He is a regular contributor of essays to The Christian Science Monitor.  His work has also appeared in Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Exquisite Corpse, Confrontation and elsewhere.  His books include “Adopting Alyosha — A Single Man Finds a Son in Russia,” “Small Worlds — Adopted Sons, Pet Piranhas and Other Mortal Concerns,” “The Three-Legged Woman & Other Excursions in Teaching” and a novel, “Long Live Grover Cleveland,” which won a 2016 Ben Franklin Literary Award and a USA BookNews Award.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tenth Nerve v1

by Deborah Saltman

 

 

Three nerves control my eyes
My pupils shrink
In the lightness of your skin
And grow in the darkness of our nites
Take a look if you dare
No need to question the colour of my eyes
They are filled with the calling cards of the seasons
Or does the blue-eyed octopus want to hide behind her ink?

One nerve relays the soupçon of smells
That cross the tendrils of my trunk
Still it is the magnolia that moans a scent
As ephemeral as its Messenger Hermes
Five nerves form the movement of my lips, tongue, words
Yet only one controls the index finger
That types to you

Is that not risky?

But is the vague Vagus – the perfect ten
That can move the four chambers
To heartstop
And now sits behind the drawbridges
We helped each other raise

There are only twelve nerves in the cranium
The last two can make my shoulders shrug
And help me swallow pain

That is why I want to stop at ten


 

Stop and search

 

Stop and search my emotions
I gave you reasonable grounds to explore my interior
Do not suspect my engaging in the crime of love or even liking you
Remains
Place your hard metal heart against my scarred chest
Hood my lips, cuff my arms, restrain my legs
My spittal is distinctive
You will taste the perfumed bile for centuries

I’m grateful

Wherever you go
My mistress of the inquisition
Will you always remember
Searching the bag of my body
Never asking for my consent
Travelling eternally and internally
On the passport you renewed
After I ran out of time

Handcuffs, leg restraints, batons, pepper taints
Little more than glorified sacks, racks and nick knacks

After all she says
You doctors don’t apologise
When the short sharp needle
Filled with measles enters my buttocks.


 

The underground

 

After decades
I think I hear her familiar breathing again
That click of her rusty diaphragm
Wrestling under the diseased heart
Air always struggling to draw in and out
Beyond the cardiac space
No explorer would dare to enter
Or was it just
The conductor’s raspish call
Express stop to exit only?

Pretending to put on the lipstick I never wear
I took a selfie
Just to get a glance of her
There sitting behind me
In the disabled seat

I long for her caved chest to rise up and lay down
Next to me
Deep with laboured inhaling
The rhythm section of her tired ribcage freed
From our past hiccupping
Could we ever breathe the same air again?

My station calls
Now in the long corridor exit to fresh air
Walking over the top of her departing carriage
My tunnelled vision unfolds
If she was the one
I’m glad she didn’t look up

 

 

 

BIO

Deborah Saltman is a physician and re-emerging poet living across the hemispheres and the Atlantic currently enjoying her London landing. She has had 6 poems published in reviewed US publications in the last year (one in Poetica, one in Off the Coast, and four in BLAZEVOX. After twenty years of scientific writing, she is enjoying her return to her calling.

 

 

 

 

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