anonlinejournalofvoice

Spring 2023
an online journal of voice
23
Spring 2023

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX 23 | an online journal of voice
23
Copyright © 2023

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Table of Contents
Poetry

Alec Hershman Andrea W R Jones

Andrew Cyril Macdonald Anna Kapungu
Anne Mikusinski Brenda Mox
Blossom Hibbert Chris Bullard
Colin Ian Jeffery David Wolf
Deven Philbrick Eddie Heaton
George Freek Ian Ganassi
J. D. Nelson James Croal Jackson
Joan E. Bauer John Sweet
Julia Nunnally Duncan Krystle Eilen
Linda King Marc Carver
Marcia Arrieta Maitrayee Deka
Mark Goodwin Mark Young
Matt Dennison Melvin Chen
Michael Starr Olchar E. Lindsann
Partha Sarkar Peter Mladinic
PM Flynn Joshua Martin
Rich Murphy Roger Craik
Roger G. Singer Sadie Cardenas
Samuel Share Sara Mullen
Scott Thomas Outlar Timothy Resau
Thomas Fink Jamie King
Fiction & Prose Text Art & Vispo
Dan A. Cardoza — Evil Rabbit King U/X 010-000 — gene-pool judgement — in8 iĐ

Martin Kleinman — Diablo: The Life and Times of No. 414666 3 Concrete Pieces — Nam Hoang Tran

Richard Stimac — Fireflies Facets and Apertures – four poems — Rae Diamond

Rebecca Lee — The Day After Yesterday 5 Visual Poems — Pamela Miller

Margaret Adams Birth — The Stranger 7 Visual Poems — Robert Fleming

P.E. Jones — Life 4 Visual Poems — Serse Luigetti

John Tavares — PREDATORS

Lee Tyler Williams — Rebels of a Neon God

Harlan Yarbrough — The Faire

Acta Biographia — Author Biographies
Carly Lynn Gates — The Fall Line

Ben Umayam — ZSHTWEET Charity

Ethan Goffman — The Return

Anthony Oag — Dark Territory

Mark DeCarteret — from Off Season

Poetry Extra Extra

henry 7. reneau, jr.: Amerikkkan Cannibals, or (Askew-ed World Order)

Polytopic poems — Nathan Whiting

[Link] — Patrick Quinn

Poems Revised From An Old Notebook— Gao An

IntroductionIntroduction
In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather to
ask questions. With a subtle minimalistic approach,
this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on the idea of ‘public
space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone
can do anything at any given moment: the non-
private space, the non-privately owned space, space
that is economically uninteresting. The works
collected feature coincidental, accidental and
unexpected connections, which make it possible to
revise literary history and, even, better, to
complement it.
Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising
analogies these piece appear as dreamlike images in
which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes
merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time
and memory always play a key role. In a search for
new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference
post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or
the post-modern and the left-wing democratic
anonlinejournalofvoice
movement as a form of resistance against the logic
of the capitalist market system. Spring 2023
Many of the works are about contact with
architecture and basic living elements. Energy
(heat, light, water), space and landscape are
examined in less obvious ways and sometimes
develop in absurd ways. By creating situations and
breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to
develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but
are based only on subjective associations and
formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make
new personal associations. These pieces
demonstrate how life extends beyond its own
subjective limits and often tells a story about the
effects of global cultural interaction over the latter
half of the twentieth century. It challenges the
binaries we continually reconstruct between Self
and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and
‘civilized’ selves. Enjoy!
anonlinejournalofvoice

Spring 2023
Anna Kapungu

JUNKIE

Time has way of opening wounds

The innocent child
Who did not cry for help
Brutally mishandled, exploited,the fugitive
Trusted was never gained
Home was nerves on edge
Intimidating, taxing sapping the energy of my youth
Time has a way of opening wounds
The tears, loneliness and the wondering spirit
Found himself in places of no joy
Hang my hat in places of burning fires
Artificial friendships and tainted powders
To ease the pain
Uncomfortable in the daylights
He lived for the night time
Where he hid his sin, his guilt, his shame
CHIMERA

Into the waters of dejection

I sabotaged myself to run from solitude
Craving for acceptance
Acceptance into a peculiar courtship
In grained in the charms of the far east
Where love was powered in the frosty nods
In the meantime I bled
Bled for the love I did not believe
Indented lesions of love
Wounded myself willingly ,consciously
Prayed for forgiveness
My liberty to escape chimera
Bolt for freedom into the rain
Unchain myself from this commitment
Commitment that has scolded my spirit
Wail in a fetal position
Empty all the hurts I exude
In the meantime
I bled
The rain fell down the window pane
The clocks would turn back in an hour
I knew I did not love him
BAILEYS

Empty my days into a cup called Baileys

At the sight of you, fades all hope and dreams
All my time around you it revolves
Bitter and sweet live for the seconds
Empty my doubts
Passion fills my veins
Course my blood within, it flows
My perfect lover, I am alive, its glorious
Lay eyes on the world and beauty surrounds
Perfect for the night and time flies
Love everyone and me everyone loves
Make love all night that’s the poison that lifts
Smile at creation this is the spirit that gives
Do not look for tomorrows
Tomorrow I cannot seem to face
Empty my days into a cup called Baileys
Alec Hershman

Wait, Miracle

Wait, I thought until it was remembering,

a long time along a road with no shoulder,
many cars, just to go to the choke-pond,
and see a duckling vanish in implacable water.
I was also steadfastly empurpled from years
of disbelieving and mental redness,
where my face met the warbled version
of its own, glum detective. A duckling was
a preposterous thing to lose, and ineluctable,
the sun's tongue found me crouched on the dock
for a varicose factor of blue to leave, and let me
reside awhile in the outskirts of the ember,
fled of the mouth I'm still not sorry for.
Awning

Haunted by Platonic homes, I rehearsed

for homelessness. But in fact, my bed
was a plush obscenity, my room, huge,
as were the meals I skipped to hear
the bad blood shift a little in my stomach.
How strange to get one's own legs back
in Michigan, and feel again the grip
of that estrangement. This morning,
Lady Straiten held out her purse
like someone who cared for me by rote,
then turning, perfected a smoke parachute,
an air-puddle, like the one the geese leave
after the loudest of them announces that
the rest is over, winter is a steady lion,
and neither shall they dawdle all November
only to get eaten by the king. I don't know
if I'm called to a place, or from it, but I spend
too much daylight thinking pillows
will let me down, and building psychic ladders
to the dishes, or slipping my mistaken head
into a pond. Too much time on this infernal dock,
guessing how all praise expires, and sketching
the queen, again and again, whose gown
spills terribly red, and terribly open—
These are the hard sounds of wings breaking
the surface. The water, line by line,
reaching after them—each time a little less.
Wind, Despite My Stillness

The tops of buildings hump my blood panel—

the sky, forever high, considers lowing. There's so
much left of impossible verandas, the ivory placards
of birdless, snowed-upon roofs. I hang an orange hood
over the parking meter. I have my white dishrag in hand
for news. The noose of thinking perfect thoughts
replaces me, and now—a hefty deck of years,
meant deeply, to pond-rot and to thaw, peters off.
Loves, you ember like scrota, but the frond
in my heart-valve flags, less combustible of late
than patient. What will shine itself and lift a leaf?
No jagged scrap of lightning, this sap in winter,
like a slow cat, reaches up for the handle of the door.
The Abduction of Mr. Clumsy Participant

Days followed out from the story

of to walk—to learn to—and to wake,
as though the hand outside the stanchion
of its sentence moved but hungrily. Vergessel-
schaftung—among many I'm compelled
to list from consequence, tinctured with solitude,
gathered passably around an ore that's possibly inert,
but might noble to a larger order—uncooperative
to mortal gatherings of malice and prestige.
Something mantles can't handle undergirds
my noddy smile—the quake of a priggish avalanche—
little topographs of power authored by a sleepy denizen
who resembles me—terrains known somatically,
like an asshole's aster cinch, burnt into the field:
the whirl of a spacecraft's probing digit draws
a dawny shout in a bowl of hills.
Instead

I'm not convinced the truth

is small, but then,
I'm not a poet.

Buoyant, perhaps—I could see that—

bedsheeted for a fickle map,
or stormily belaked,

or maybe lakeless in the sunned-up

crush of full-blown locust—
humid, when I'm secretly large

upon previous, equivocal words.

I recall them getting girded
by rehearsal; so what

if I've recorded them here to hold

in a slow hope. Honestly,
the days go faster since

I've licked the vision

of a phoebic pact I felt I had
to make with a demanding man

in excellence, or else have made

with me. Now horses graze
hotly in adequate grass,

and the stately comforts of my lover's house

bear me like so much unremarkable
carbon, the first fossils growing

common beside a stalwart excavation. Earthed

by a hiding of blue, the moon must be
smug in its blown-out solitude,

while greenly in the gelding-glow,

with an all but absent 'O,' I wear
brief mittens. Unlike the desert life

of its guise, the lion, the coward

never sleeps, and so beset
by unfound freshness worries
when he does, he'll never wake.
Persistent as two lightning bugs,
on one another, he and I

pour the satisfactions of our lasers

in a wet cliché of eyes. O Lord,
don't let it be love; I have a bow

in my heated arm, and a solar plexus

in its sight. I have just seen a rabbit
peal fast into a sweater of weeds,

and to follow it, I am lifting

the pointiest finger
I have.
Andrea W R Jones

Am I Quaint Or Am I Brittle

Am I quaint?
Or am I brittle?

Such words said

But ones, not so simple

Words that we pray

Trifles that we play

Knelt, as we stand
A table, sits beneath
Small, and simple

What covers also holds

Onto the ever loving fast

Longing for the love

Love which did not last

I am quaint
I am brittle
I am the one that writes these riddles

I write to those who pray

Under a table, too small, too simple.
Broken Glass

See me through this broken glass

Small fragile hands, unable to grasp
Together, we walked down the crooked and beaten path.
I wait now, eyes open.. Unable to grasp!

Our bare feet once ran freely.

We felt nothing as we walked upon this broken glass.

Yet one small day, no more is our reflection!

I selfishly chose not to see.. the growing imperfections

A borrowed face, lips lying,

What is it to feel that which threatens you?
Does this not astound you?!

The battles we wore proudly.

Yet never won.
Lines, you wrote, spoke loudly
The day drifts slowly, into the setting sun

Do you still see me through the broken glass?

The spindle turns loudly!
The fine sand turns slowly
Aging lines & tempered glass.

Pride falls heavy, blinded. I did not see.

With swollen eyes, yours always shielded me

Too late. Aged fate.

Why doth your love now elude me?

I reach for which now I envy

Fragile hands ask: “What lies are left?”
“Nothing,” it replied, played in a note off key.

Hands now old, finally, do they ask?

If you still see me. through this old, and broken glass.
Andrew Cyril Macdonald

Compline

i.
Given-out now,
our closed ambitions
retort what as if was not
but neat wounds all
mute syllables collapsed us,
compelling to follow
cold shoulders distanced quick from
these voices therein
soft rumors, half-truths
of bliss transcendent
crossing floor beams, bench-marks
to broadsides of chapel
a god’s word (we his people)
in tandem pronounces.
ii.
What falls upon few own
(maybe 3 in a million)
their stakes ready to hedge them
if make furtive
some pontifex non-
maximus but weathered
(too old to fight for)
as only now apparent
it kills us this
need to accomplish
death and its easy bother.
Yet to look-out on
soft cloud-burst through skylight
(void of color if
foreign to each back-step
eternal life collides with)
is to sit and reflect in
known truths of such things
these glad hearts will chant them.
iii.
Precious us lined together,
hallowed stocks of
tongued truths that spat-out
dead tones if murmured
verses instead of
fists clenched, ready to aim with
ever forgotten
value inviolate.
And that’s why we’re here then,
testing progress
(its growth and abundance)
us men our word-chimes
vellumous song attempts in.
Anne Mikusinski

Observation

In the balcony
I sit
Watching
As below
Grounded but in full flight
You soar
Carried by passion's currents
And unchecked inhibition
You meet me where I am
And usher inspiration in.
Third Interlude

Your voice fills up this space

Like smoke
Seeping into corners
And entering each room
With or without invitation
Changing everything it touches.

I think of suitable accompaniment

And conjure subtle strings
Or the occasional
Interjecting keyboard
As acceptable companionship
For murmured words.
ThreeAM

Outside
The rain whispers
Playingcounterpart to sounds
Inside
Soft tapping of keys
Givebirth to ideas
Baby-steppingtheir way
Across blank pages.
From anotherroom
Brusheddrumbeatsandlow strings
Spreadlight upon asceneof
Quiet work
And littlesleep
Anthony Oag

Dark Territory

“A spanof thebridgecollapsed under theweight of thetrain and all but thepassengercarand thecaboosewerespared
from thewatersbelow. Wrecking crewsweredispatched, clean up wasdoneand thebridgewasrebuilt but no oneseemsto
know for sureif theenginewasever recovered.”

- Eric Oullette on the disappearanceofCPR Locomotive 508in the year1900

I havenot seenthetrain but I feelit. It wasthe first soundI heardwhenI openedmy [Link]. If you
could call it that. My sweatslickedheadrosefrom the pillow into the screamofthat [Link] wasstill
with methen, smallandwithdrawn into the corner of that abandonedhouseasI listeneddesperatelyto the fading
alarm of its passingsomewherein the [Link] tried to explain it to me–the things I alreadyknew, they wereso
curious, leaningforward, wanting to tell everythingat once.

That is [Link] aregone.I must beout searchingfor them. That is why I amhereamongstthe half dead
[Link], I wish it werethat easyto explain, that thiswassome investigation into the disappearanceofafriend. But,
if I find myselflooking for tracesof my companionit isby accident.I might look up from somedeepstareandfind
that I amoverthe mountain I hadpreviously only seenfrom adistanceandsuddenlywonder if I heardtheir voice,a
whisper from somehollow, andI might turn to seethememergeandknow that they hadonly beenlost in the woods
andwewould return [Link] thereisno [Link] my companion isnot lost. Lost thingscan beretrieved, sought
after and returned. To bein this placeis to belost [Link] begoneis to [Link] hereI am,wandering below
the grayand stormlessskybecauseI do not know how to stop.

I waswith Fitch the first time I crestedthe ridgeandlooked down upon the vastgrayexpanseofthe lake.
That’snolakethey said,kicking at somethingon the ground. Don’t gothere,themapsdon’t explain it either, I tried to
draw it [Link] showedmethe [Link] wereroomsfull of them, all hand drawn on whateverpaperthey could
find. They’d cometo meunsolicited someeveningsandthrust anopennotebook into my lap,pointing at thingsI
mostly didn’t understand.
TheTrench
That wasthe namefor the lakethat wasnot alake.I hadto goseeit for myself. Of course,Fitch wasright, it
wasn’t [Link] like anylakeI knew. Scribbled on the pageof anotebook, the nameseemedunconvincing. The
[Link] asI stood alone,by the towering shapesofthe industrial plant, I felt the weight of itsname settlein my
mind.
All alongthe shore,edgesdroppeddownward only to fadeinto the mist of whateverlay below. It could’ve
beenclouds, fog, sky,areflection of the overcastmuddled into astrangesymmetry. There werethings down there too,
caughtin the [Link] iswhen I wish I would’ve walkedaway,but by thetime I thought of it, I alreadyknew
too much of what I [Link] werepeopledown there, animalstoo. What could’ve beendebris becamethe
fractured shapesofbodiesin anunfinished fall, stretchedfigures, frozen in place,pulled apart. The wind I’d heard
moving below wasnow the echoof frantic whispers,voicesin conversationwith nothing andno one.

I haven’t beenbacksince.
 That grayisout beforemenow. Evenall the wayup hereon the ridge,the view isunsettling. An oceanwith no
opposite shoreline,with no wavesto wet the rocksof aharbor. It isthe impressionof what hasbeen,ablack andwhite
polaroid, adrifting planet. I canseethewater tower sprouting like aconfiguration of strangebone.I canseethe
industrial plant andthe bridgesover what usedto beahighway. It’s amuseumof sorts,anafter hours openhouseand
I amon my wayto an exhibit that I mayneverfind. It’sa collection gonebad,rotting pagesofabillion unfinished
storiesswirling amongstthe half lives of the seasonshere:adeadplacethat neverdies,agoing onward to that final light
andfar, far [Link] not far [Link] amlooking down upon the valleyI hearanapproachingsound, andmy head
lifts. The train comes,churning through apatch of forest, hidden but for the trailsof steamthat tracethe topsof trees
like the tip of asharkfin breachingawave.

Before

The train exhibit washuge.I could feelthe swellingof anticipation asI stoodto takein the entranceto the
room. Tablesagainstthe walls werealmost too high for meto [Link] me,Sierrasquealedfrom her dad’s
shouldersandpointed out over the room asablack model train engineracedover aminiature suspensionbridge. It
wasatiny world, undulating down halls, reappearingon the other sideof [Link] I’d beannoyedby the
babyishnoisesmy cousin madewhenshegot excitedbut I hardly paid anyattention to her. I waslost in afog of
discovery. I laggedbehind my uncle Rob asheducked under doorways, smiling when Sierrapointed out everynew
train. Peoplemovedaround me,children speakingin excitedwhispers,floorboards creakingunder the weight of
[Link] all felt like onesoundto me.A shifting white noiseto keepmeintent upon the detailsof all the small
wondersI would missif I looked awayfor too long. I staredat the painted blue lakesandthe toothpick-thin lampposts
lining the streetsof tiny plastic mountain towns, at the darkenedopeningsof tunnels, listening for the electric hum of
atoy locomotive approaching.I wonderedwhat laybehind the hillsI couldn't seeover.I imaginedmyself,shrunk
down, wanderingthe empty streetswith acountryside all to [Link] caughtup to my uncle Rob I sawhim point,
hiseyesglittering in that overbright waythey alwaysdid. When I steppedinto the room I sawthe biggestexhibit yet.
There wasasloping forest, multiple rivers andtrain tunnels, andaspaceof track that wound alongthe sideof asmall
mountain.
Rob waspointing to the tunnel at the baseof the mountain. Itsarcheswere madeto look old, splotchesof rust
colored paint line the stonegraystructure. The entrancewasdark, adeepspot of shadow.I just waited there, handson
the table, leaningcloser,hearingnothing.
I knewit wascoming,just for me,from theother sideof thewall. Watch Rob said,smiling wider. And I
[Link] I waited.

EachdayI comecloserto it. I don’t know what “it” isexactly. Thereisthe wandering,the strayingabout asif I
haverisento goandgetsomethingthat when I stepout the door I forget. But there is somuch to [Link] thoserooms
upon rooms of model train [Link] newandnearly hidden by the mossygrowths of time anddecay
might showitself andfor amoment I wonder if I havearrived somewhereelse.
I follow the river. I’m unsureif it’salwaysthe [Link]’ll branchoff andfollow astream.I
think I must havealwaysliked water. I’m around it all the time, drawn to walk alongitsedges,to observethesurface
andthe shapesmovingbelow. I’ll beout somedays,passingbyasthe trout linger in the current, unsureof which way
to swim, andthen, coming around acorner I’ll stop, expectant,gazingabout aclearing, peeringinto the shadowed
dark of aforest or alongthe slowswayingweedsof afield. Eachtime I grow morewary of what I think I might see;at
first it wasamusing–apeculiarity to besmirkedat. But it hasstartedto gatherin my conscience.I ambeginning to feel
like afish glimpsing the flash of abarbedhook in itsperipheral. Can I searchfor somethingaccidentally, or amI being
lured? I wonder the sameof the others.
There areothers–people–coming andmostly going, like wild animals,disappearingasquickly asthey’d
steppedinto view. Fitch seemedtothink they weredangerousbut I’ve not felt that wayat all. Fitch hadarun in with
oneof them, something happened.I nevergot to hearthe story. All I cansayiswhat I seeof them, and that is almost
nothing. I think they arelike me–like Fitch. Stuck. Somewhereafterdeath,yet to reachthe other [Link] isour
station, but whereisour ride?

Before

Nobody knew I wasthere,hovering inside the doorway of the kitchen. I snuckin through the backdoor cause
I waslatefor dinner. No onewaswaiting for methough. The soupwaslightly steamingon the stovetop,andI could
hearlow voicescoming from the front of the [Link] weatherwasgetting badoutside–maybethe laststorm of the
year.I could seetreeswavingfuriously through the window overthe kitchen sink, deadleavesrushingupward through
thefaint glow of thestreet light. WhenI got closerto thedining room doorwayI could hearUncleRob’svoice. He’d
beenover alot sinceSierradied.

Shewasplaying in her parentsbedroom, jumping on the beduntil shefell off and…

Rob wassoftly sobbingnow, [Link] it, somethingin the wholefeelof the moment felt
bad,mademy stomachchurn. He wasthe onewho found her. I don’t know the details of what happenedbecausemy
parentswon’t talk about it in front of me.I leanedinto thedining room, carefulnot to bump into thechina cabinet.
My uncle wastrying to saysomethingbut I couldn’t makeout anysensiblewords,hewasbarelychoking them out.
 Rob?What’swrong?
It wasmy mother. And I thought, geezmom,hisdaughter died, whattayathink iswrong?!
The sobbing got louder, anugly gargledsound.
I…I didn’t mean…It wasn’t supposedtobelikethis! I lovedher morethan anybodyelse!I still do…It wasan
accident.
He paused,breathing in ragged,hysteric gasps.
Sheliked whenI held her down, it wasour game,our secretgameand shewaslaughing. And it wasso…And
then…
Rob pausedand his voice lightened, seemingto stop the tears.
Shewas gone.
I felt sick, adeep,rising illness coming into my throat and my headand the spacesbehindmy eyes.I wasso
focusedon trying to hearwhat wasbeingsaidthat I didn’t seetheflashing lightsat the front door. They castredand
blue patternsdown the hallway, interrupting the gatheringdark of the autumn night. Rob wassobbingagain,
muttering hysterically.
I’m sorry…I’m sosorry…
Then there wasaknock at the door andthe police camein. Voicesrose,but I didn’t understandmuch of what
they [Link] mom saidabadword. Shesaidalot of badwords. That mademescared,madethe something
that waswrong seemsomuch worse.I wishedI’d run upstairsto my room or stayedoutside in the cold. I looked
down the hall andthrough the front door, watching asthe officersescorted uncle Rob to the police carandpushed
him [Link] mother wassobbingnow, knelt on the floor of the living room in [Link] wastoo much to takeandI
ran out from my hiding place.
Mom?
I said,my voice small andshuddering.
 No oneseemedtonotice [Link] wasat the big front window, staringblankly at the fading lightsof the police
cruiser asthey disappeared,leavingnothing but anempty street.I rememberthe wind whining in the cracksof places,
trying to getin. I rememberthat awful sobbing that neverseemedtostop, and my parentseyesastheyturned to see
mestanding in the entryway. Belowall of thosewhisperingswasthe soundof the train, adeepthrum in the distance,
passingin the night.

Suddenlythe dayisdark, or I havefinally noticed. I havegonesofar and yet my feetdo not ache.I don’t know
whereI am,but that isnot sostrange.I rarely know the placesI walk. The night isnot fully dark, it nevergetsthat way
here,from what I cantell. It isasif acurtain wereslowly drawn, atattered translucent thing creatingshadowsbut not
darkness.I do not like being out at night [Link] isapeculiar, unfinished gloom, asif someonehasgoneto bed
without shuttingthekitchen light off.
The field around meisa vastandvacantfarmland. A grain silo loomsin front of apartially crumbled barn.
There is eventhe remainsof ahouseand asenseofcoming home. A hunger, deepand dull, asif there werefood on a
stovetop keepingwarm. But that hunger isnot eventhe samehere.I feel it in my stomachassomeonewith amissing
hand might feel astabof pain wherethe fingers usedto be.
I must [Link] evenasI think that, it istoo late. Too lateto missthe shapestandingby the barn. The
whimper comesfrom adistance,swimming up from the weedsto meetmy [Link] isahitch of breath asthe sound
becomesasoband the figure sagsasif weighed down by something too heavyto carry. A voice that makesno
sentencesandforms no words.
Fuck. I should’ve turned backhours ago,I should’ve seenthewaythe [Link] would neverhave
let thishappen. Thisplace isfar too [Link] isthat feeling of being caughtin the nightmare, somepart of me
screamingto wakeup asI watch from the insideaseverything happensin slow motion. I havenot yet found out how
to shakemyselffrom the dream.I amonly plunged further into the sleepcycle,strainedinto the bowl of the next
dreamwhich is all the [Link] sobbing follows meevenasI tread overhills anddown the banksof dried up
streams,overbridgesand [Link] seetheblur of the figure, I turn andit islost at my peripheral, like
somespeckon the lens,out of focus but alwaysimpeding. It’s suchasmallsound. It is the only sound. I glancearound
at the remains of aforest, scatteredtrees,roots like hugesnakeskins in the leaves,the whole ground is leaves.I can see
facesin them, wrinkled, leering faceswanting meto stop. I keepseeinghim, or keepthinking I amseeinghim, hugging
himself hysterically, shakingamongstthe trees.I cannot sayhis [Link] think it. Evenasthe shapeof achild
gigglessomewherealong the path aheadand I seeRob’s armsopen asheslumps forward like sometumbling pile of
debris.I must keepgoing,Must not think hisnameagain,must not watchherlittlefeet trodding through the
blackened leaves.
The weepinggrowsinto alow shriek,ahowling, spiraling soundandI breakinto arun, barreling through the
grayexpanseofundulating terrain, toward the outline of the abandonedhouse,sitting low amongstthe barrentrees.

Before

I could seethewindmillson the other sideof the [Link] statueson the horizon framing the edgesofsight.
I spentsomuch time delivering in thesehills, outsideof town, looking out overthe watershed,andthe industrial
plant, the interstate andthe vastgreenthat drops off suddenlyinto the oceanicexpanseofthe [Link] wasshockingly
bright, nearly cloudless,allowing meto seebeyondandbeyondandbeyond. I could seetheoutline of the city skyline
on the opposite shore,somehundred miles [Link] waswhy I passedmynext stop. I threw the van in reverseand
backedup along the shoulder of the road. The housewasimpossible to seefrom whereI wasparked. A layerof pine
brancheshunglow andwild, concealingthe property. I steppedout andaround the backof the vehicleto lug the sixty
pound box of dogfood acrosstheroad. I’d only beenhereoncebefore andthey got the samething. It took meafew
minutesof driving around to evenfind it that first time. Number [Link] 0wasmissingandthe 2 washanging
upsidedown on the sideof the mailbox like abackwards5. AsI steppedonto the driveway I felt aseedof dreadat the
backof my mind andglancedabout warily.
It’d gonedark.
The bright noon sunwasintercepted by the armsof the forest. There wereshadowsall about and adamp
smellof mildew lingered in the air. Therewerepilesof junk everywhere,leaning,rotten things. There wasanold truck,
rusted awayin the sparseweedsamongstthe tatters of plastic tarps and glassbottles. The houseseemedto hide behind
the forgotten piecesof alargerwhole. At everymoment I expectedto seeadogcomesnarling out from behind apile of
old firewood, but it didn't [Link] dogwasalreadyin front of me,seatedbythe crackedandsinking boardsof the
porch. I didn’t seeit until therewasno point in running, until I wastoo closeto [Link] [Link]
mud coatsitsfront legs,body rigid andunmoving asit staredoff through the shadowsofforest. For amoment I was
relieved,believing the dog must beblind to not haveseenmeby now, but assoonasI gently setthe box down, it
turned, almostasanafterthought. Our eyesmet,andthen it turned back,disinterested.I followed itsgaze,that bad
feeling still sinking in my [Link] sweatcreasedmybrow, fingerstingling asif I waslooking down from some
devastatingheight. I looked out, pastthe stackof tires, pastthe fallen shapeof someunrecognizablelawn decoration,
pastthe singleroom shed,arailroad crossingsignnailed to its exterior.
I could seeit suddenly.
Or whereit went.
The greendarkfurther on, andthen, further on. And I felt the waterbehind my eyesandtheweight settled,
kneadingfurther itshandsinto the blanket of my skin. For amoment I wascertain that no matter how much I wanted
to, I would not beableto move,andI would remain,liedown in thedirt andwait. And then I wasbackout in the
sunlight, blinking at the wispsof cloudsmoving in overthe lake,hearingthe shrill chatter of birdsand redsquirrelsin
the forest. Behind the wheelof the vanI staredout through the windshield, listening to my own [Link] turned
on my blinker and releasedthe brakepedal, acar horn blared and I pumped the brakesasared SUV spedpast me.I
closedmy eyesandlet out along slow breath. After afew moments hadpassedI checkedmy sidemirrors and pulled
out into theroad.

At somepoint on my waybackto the houseI stop hearingthe criesof the thing behind [Link] isnot aman.I
do not want to call it [Link],I still think I canhearit faintly, asif from thebottom of avalleyit wandersto
my earson anupdraft of [Link] housecomesinto view, the welcoming stanceof its shape,adim victory. I
wonder for amoment if that sobbingman–
thing
werestill behind me,would I beableto find the house?I wonder.
And then there it is, scatteringlike wings in the treetops,the whisper of its presence,thechoked,wet soundsof
itsstruggle to breatheandweepsomewhereinthe distance.I don’t turn to look, I pull openthe door, hearitsweight
dragon the floorboardsof the smallporch. I goto the cupboard andretrieve the matches,settingcandlesalight. Only
two of them won’t light today andI [Link] I watch the orangeglow comealiveasenseofnostalgiaflares
within me,andthereisthebreathtaking moment of anticipation whenfor amoment I believethat I will hearavoice
call from the kitchen, heavyboots at the door stomping the snowaway,peopleremoving jackets,mingled voices,the
sweetsmellof pine. And then it isjust mein thefront room alonein thedim candlelight. I walk to thefridgeto check
if it iscold. If it isn't, I'll haveto throw out thefish I [Link] badlyI wishfor abonfire. Fitch lovedfires,
though they neverreally told [Link]’d belong nightswith usstaring into the flames,reminiscing on thingsfrom
beforeandthingsto come,odd, unknown thingstoo. Wecould goon for hoursin silenceuntil someonesaid
somethingandwestartedall overagain,wondering. At the endof thosenightsI alwayswent in first. I’d glanceout the
stainedsecondfloor window beforedrifting off to sleepandseeFitch, still hunched, eyesfixedon the flames.
BeforeI canreachthefridgeI look up through thetiny window overthekitchen sink.
Fitch?
I feel myself say,asmy eyesfocuson afigure outside. Before I caneventakeasecondlook I’m on my wayout
thefront door again,grabbingmy coatoff of theback of therecliner on my wayout. Thefigureisrunning from me.
Why arethey running?
Fitch!
I call out andimmediatelyregretit. I haveto shutmy goddamnmouth if I don’t want that babbling thing
from earlierto find me.I zip thecoat up asI run. It isn’t cold. No morethan usual,but it makesmefeelbetter to have
alayer betweenmyself and this place.
Why thefuck arethey running?Fitch isweird but thisisjust infuriating. They of all peopleshould know that
what they aredoing isa shitty thing to bedoing.

Weareon the open side, the wide expanseof grasslandsandswamps,streamsand river deltasand flat forests. It
isnight now. Thisisthedarkest it will [Link] me,everysooften through themurk of thetwilight I seeFitch
scramblingfurther andfurther onward. I amlosing hope.I neverhadhope.I wish I could betired, to feel the true ache
of the miles andfall down amongstthe leavesto let the darknessrush overme.
There is asound somewhereaheadthat makesmestop. It’s brief but unmissable: ametallic screechof steelon
steel.I scanthe treesahead,watchtheir grayfrillssit still asif listening. I keepmoving.
I crossawet field, stumble overlong desertedgopherholesand divotsin the dirt. I amin the pinesnow, under
the long fansof their branches.
My eyesadjustand I seethem,Fitch, standing by the [Link] is ahousenow, arough graveldrive leading
up to it. Noneof that matters,I amrunning.
 You’regonnagetuskilled! Worsethan killed!
I say,unable to contain my distress.
Whereha–
The figure is not Fitch. It is amannequin. Somescarecrow-likeassortmentof scrapsmadeto look like a
[Link] looks alot like Fitch. As I study it up closeI canseethechin length messyhairmadeof dried grass,the
oversizedflannel jacket drapedabout the [Link] looksa lot like Fitch’sjacket.
For the first time I glancearound. Scrappiles areeverywhere,partially veiled by decay,asif they werejust
another part of the terrain. It doesn’t takemelong to recognizethe piecesof my dream–theold truck, the yellowed
glassbottles, the sunkenstructure of the [Link] lawn decoration, agiraffe wearing avarsity jacket, neckbent
and deformed with the passageoftime. I rememberthe dog suddenly andfeel dread.
The leashis at my feet, the chain snappedand pulled apart, slumped in the weedslike adiscardedsnakeskin. I
look up, following the gazefromthe dream,looking out overthe moundsof discardedthings. The railroad crossing
signstill hangingfrom the wall of the shed,faded,but there. I standasif hearingsomemovementout therebeyondthe
greendark of the understory. There ismusic, asilent progressionof chordsandatmosphereandI goto it, feeling my
waydown. A pathwayloomsinto focuslike agiddy nightmare,pulling metoward the downward slopingof the forest.
I supposethisisthe [Link] hellish dropoff that will leadmeto TheTrench or into the bowelsof along
forgotten mine shaft. Behind methe sleevesofthe jacket swayon the mannequin.
I canhearit now, not just the atmosphere,not just the ambienceof skyandtrees,but somethingcoming
through the dirt. There isathrumming soundscapepounding beneathmy feet andthe [Link] seems
strangebut that’sthe word that comesto [Link]. Like the color of askyafter [Link] trying to look through
deepwater. As I movethrough the tanglesof the forest I can’t seemto regulate the spacebetweendaydreamand what
I [Link] overasteepdeclineI fumble asif in slow motion againstthe suddenaddition of anoceancurrent
andsuckin abreath, certain that I will chokeon [Link] neverhappens,though the sloshingsoundof the deep
alwaysremains,alwaysterrifies and entrancesat the sametime. In onemoment I amcaught forever in that place,and
in the next I havetraversedit. Comeout on the other side.

A flat expanseofground spreadsout before [Link] my feet beamslaystrewn about, piecesfallen from some
track, metal rungsand railroad [Link] isa bridge, rising up beyond the [Link] sight it stands,
shroudedin moss,itsarchway clung with ivy andthewilting of tiny dying [Link] isso silent I hardly allow myselfto
[Link] wind isgone. That constant shifting of atmospherehasbecomethedistant glimmer of astarbehind a
cloud. I cannot turn my eyesfromthebridge. If I did, I wouldn’t becrossingthefield, steppingsoftly overthe
scatteredpiecesof metal andmachinery, cogsanddeadthings. I would seehim following, the sobbing man, silenced
andlingering like ashadowat my [Link] would’ve [Link] that’swhat I [Link] traversethe
craterousspaceandbegin to ascendthehill, feeling that maybeFitch will beat the top with oneof his mapssprawled
on theground, trying to plot hisway [Link] handsdig into thesoft earthandI lift myselfonto thebridge.
There is alone mountain just ahead,its faceimpeding. One gapingblack mouth spreadsbelowits eyeless
skull–a tunnel, deepanddark asthe swirling in my guts.

Belowmein the yardI still do not seehim, do not seethegirl holding hishand, both staringup, watching,
waiting.

The whistle comessuddenly,ripping through the silence,adeep,shakinghowl like the pounding of awaterfall
into ariverbed.
Standingon the train tracksmy legspulsewith the force of itscoming. I should flinch or something,go
screaminginto the bushes,stumbling backthrough the field in afrenzy. It [Link] run andjump andscatter.I
wasnot madeto scatter,to raceandroam andgoon. I goto the mouth of the tunnel, standbelow its entranceasif
waiting to knock, to pull somelever,andasthe soundof the train becomesanendlessroar,I takeonestepinto the
darkness.
Ben Umayam

“ZSHTWEET” Charity

It is still cold here in Valencia. Which is a little bit of a shock. Arriving here, in February, thinking Costa
Brava/Blanca, you would think it is not so cold. The Airbnb is cheap enough. Even though it is old. It has
high ceilings. Passed down from generation to generation in the old part of town that used to be fashionable
during the turn of the 1900s, the 20s but Belle Epoque in style. The generations have moved on, no one wants
it, so granny rents it out as an Airbnb. She does not invest a lot in it. The furniture is not antique as advertised.
It looks old, very old like it would be left out on the street in the States. And it is very cold. When you turn
on one space heater and then another in an adjoining room, the fuse box trips, and the whole place is thrown
into darkness. If you plug in the toaster at the same time as a space heater, you are plugged into a cold, dark
hell. She tolerates all this, it is economical. She can do a month, her winter break, before heading back to the
conservatory in Florida.

Her name is Kirsten. She doesn’t know why that is so hard to get. People call her Chris, thinking her name is
Christina or something like that. But it is Kirsten, the “r” and the “i” are inverted. She is here on her winter
break with Ricardo, an invite to his hometown in Spain, that no one knows about, Valencia. A beautiful place
with a central park carved out of the riverbed, the river having been diverted after a flood in the 1950s. It is the
home of Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences. And the Ciutat Vela, the Cathedral, a mosh of styles, the
façade is cramped by the bell tower, facing a plaza now being renovated. It used to be a bus central hub
crowded and dirty. When the covered chain fence gets taken down, it will be a spanking clean pedestrian space.
They play as a quartet, Ricardo and two other Valencianos from the Conservatorio Municipal. She has enjoyed
her stay, as an American abroad. The wine is cheap. The tapas are fabulous. And it is all paid by her cut of the
share the quartet makes playing around town. She expects to pay for her return ticket with the money from the
next and last few days of her Valenciano visit.

It is after the post-New Year’s rebajas, the sale days that extend January thru March. They have moved from
the upscale shopping center of The Colon to the Plaza de la Virgin, between the Basilica and The Cathedral.
Nothing like some sacred music to make the tourists reach into their pockets. This is the B set. Bach, Brahms,
Beethoven, lots of Baroque with some pop Leonard Cohen thrown in. “Alleluia” makes for altruistic money in
the violin case.

The case is more bills than coins today.

Ricardo calls this the brunch music set, and they are playing “Alleluia. Everyone is playing that this year. The
pleasantly melancholy music is pierced with a shrill sound. “ZSHTWEET ZSHTWEET”.

It is the cripple. Kirsten has seen her mostly in front of the cathedral. She normally doesn’t have a Mardi Gras
whistle. She normally isn’t blowing it loud, incessantly, irritatingly. Normally she extends a dirty hand, filthy
from the street which she uses to project her body on a makeshift wheelchair, plywood on wheels. The warmth
of the string quartet is now cold, like the February weather.

Most times she would be tolerated. She is a pathetic sight, this cripple, not just dirty, but visually maimed,
deformed. Her legs are underdeveloped. And she appears to be double-jointed. She wraps her too-small legs
under her body. She is rolled up like a ball. The quartet dislikes this rabble-rouser. Especially Kirsten who is
thinking, “I almost had my airfare in the case today till this cripple came along.”
Ricardo stops the set after “Alleluia.” He picks up his cell and calls the police. They proceed into some Bach.
Immediately, the whistle piercing starts, syncopated by a police siren.
As the police car parts the sea of tourists, the cripple, Carla, unfurls, and sits on the lip that is the sidewalk
ledge. Her deformity almost looks normal, the legs, still too small. But tucked out, they are extended as if
taking in the sun for a tan. She looks about normal like this. She pulls out some paper and rolls a joint. It is
legal here in Spain, but you can smoke only at a private club with no adverting sign up front, and you must be a
member. Her club is the streets, and she lights up.

“Hola Carla, che pasa?". They know her, they are familiar with her presence in and around the cathedral. They
converse with her, she smiles, she laughs, they wag a finger, and they talk to Ricardo. Then they leave. Ricardo
takes the police's advice and conducts the quartet into another turn at “Ave Maria.” A paying crowd gathers.

Carla furls back into her ball. “ZSHTWEET, ZSHTWEET”. She joins the coda. Carla tweets louder with
glee as the crowd puts their hands in their pockets and gives her their change.

The quartet stops, and the crowd dissipates. “ ZSHTEWEET ZSHWEET,” Carla follows the crowd, to the
front of the church and positions herself by the doors.

The next day I go through those same doors. They have a mass, on weekdays in the morning starting at 8. You
can enter the cathedral at this time. At 10, the doors are closed for paid entry. You pay to go to the Chapel of
the Holy Grail. And to visit the cathedral altars, and admire the windows and ceilings. The Holy Grail is that
same Monty Python thing. It is an alabaster cup; they say used by the Christ Jesus at his Last Supper. Like
other Catholic icons, like the shroud of Turin, it has been tested and appears not to be as old. It has lost a lot of
its luster. But if you have faith, you believe. In the past, I remember it encased in gold. Now it appears to be in
a glass covering as if to show it is an alabaster cup as if to show it is really the Holy Grail. Again, you to have
faith.
I am not faithless. I am here early, not to check out daily mass, but to get in for free. I am cheap. They have
finished the restoration of the ceilings above the main altar. It is gloriously blue and is called The Musical
Angels and indeed, the ceiling now sings with brilliant hues. Songs are coming to mind when I look to the
right, at the chapel of St. Joseph. And there is the crippled girl, Carla, in her improvised wheelchair, a sheet of
wood on wheels. The church is pretty much empty, and you can hear her drop her coins into the box to light
candles. She drops in at least a dozen coins, they sound heavy like 1, maybe 2 Euro coins, not little Lincolns.
They go clunk. And she proceeds to light candles, a dozen of them, the top row of the candle holder. Her
offering lights the image of St Joseph, the patron saint of the sick in the darkness of the church.

As with the visitors to the Holy Grail chapel, Carla has faith. She makes her offering, her alms to the father of
Jesus, for her blessings, her getting thru the day-to-day, even though she is stuck in an improvised wheelchair.
And blows a whistle on those who invade her territory.

She looks at peace. She leaves the chapel, illuminated with her offering, comfortable with her fit into the
scheme of things. Peace is easiy attained if you have faith.

“Here she comes again, that crippled gal. The one with the Mardi gras whistle,” Kirsten says.

Ricardo has called for the A set. An adagio piece, an andante, some Abel, Albrechtsberger and “Alleueia.”
Only now Carla’s “ZSHTWEETS” are cutting things short. Ricardo tells her to move on or he will call the
police. Carla laughs and “ZSHTWEETS.”

Kirsten is furious, “What is her problem. Why doesn’t she go back to the front of the church with the other
beggars. Why does she have to ruin our set. I am this close to making my airfare back from winter break. She
is spoiling it all, spoiling the whole thing. Her with her deformed legs and that whistle.”
Ricardo tries to calm her. Kirsten is incensed. She physically pushes the cripple and says, “What’s the matter
with you, you are ruining the end of my vacation. You are ruining my Valencia experience. I will always
remember Valencia now as a place with beggars spoiling it all.”

“Puta, Coño”. Carla screams at Kristin.

Kirsten has learned from Ricardo the translation of coño, the female reproductive part. "That's so vulgar, but it
sounds less vulgar than the English translation, cunt.”

Carla is screaming the word, coño. Kirsten screams coño. It becomes a chorus of coños. In the shadow of the
cathedral next to The Virgin of the Desamparados, police sirens join the chorus. An older guy comes by, and
tells Ricardo they must leave Carla alone. This is the territory of the cripples seeking alms. Some think of him
as a homeless guy. He is not, he is just a disheveled regular churchgoer who puts money into the church box
every day.

Ricardo determines, they will go back to the square in front of the upscale shopping area. This place in the
shadow of the cathedral, next to the basilica, it is not a good place. He listens and watches this C set. Carla
and Kristen still shouting coño at each other.
Blossom Hibbert

brief arrival of you, departure flinches as the

crow belts out a warning brief arrival of
Çme on my wrist, watch stops its own
insanity. i lose sight of

who?
dear pig

have not heard from you in such a blind amount of Çme. you left a hat on my doorstep, i take this as a sign to
write to you. not an oliveE – but everything else.

how can we prove i am ever safe, and in the style of the Çmes? i own a suitcase/ passport/
toothbrush/ cardiac razmataz and worry about running away from myself again, as i am doing right now, as i
oĚ en do to locate happiness and joy. not a people person unÇl i go Çmelines without seeing someone
and realise i am but your dictionary on the shelf; unemployed, and - what is a person without that rhythmic
shift? drinking stolen night cap because it is who i righĖ ully am, thinking of you with that liĘ le bit less whisky
tonight.

personally, i don’t get up to much at all. my senses are awake in the wasted Çme, countless hours clock up
nicely. greedy for the giĚ of seeing you. greedy for you, pig.
in naked, perfumed honesty - i stagger through the day till peak exhausÇon then puff myself into horizontal
dissociaÇon. is that what you wanted to hear?

there is a string with a �n can aĘ ached, mostly i Çe it onto the cats tail to make myself laugh, but, someÇmes
use it to speak to you. worry i will die and no one will forget, least not the radio.
who will do my wriÇng for me?
thankyou, by the way - for the hat you sent. i wont wear it outside the house. i will sit at my desk with it on top
and window open, passionately smoking as i write to you, as i am doing right now. rolling an acorn between
thumb and finger and planning how many forests i will grow from it, occasionally looking around my room, but
mostly just se�ling on the page.
what does your room look like to the common man?

i am dull but playful, polar emoÇons with similar strengths and equity in their power over me, both willing to
incite change. why should the sad man be condemned and the happy one celebrated? what is the world
coming to where we must alter the miserable and leave the ecstaÇc well alone, to not mess up the system?

quesÇons of affectaÇons float into my mind and subsequently back out the open window.

there is a fight on the triangle doorstep. i feel afraid and deliriously un-precious, perhaps i will walk out and
throw myself into the baĘ le field will you wait for me?

-crow
ps. how is your false tooth, false wife – and you, my false opÇmist?
alarm rings incessantly

why did you sound the alarm?

i like your jumper
not your pregnant wife
stairs get leĚ behind going cold developing a
curdled skin to slip when running higher
from the back hand of the day

clock does not brush his own hair. when i told you to
go i didn’t mean for you to go so pressed the
alarm of regret/ panic/ bewildered wreckage

buildings stumped by their own makers protect me from

fog and wind and rain windows cease to exist outside
what do songs
do with all that sodden Çme?

i lost
a love
dog wears his fine coat with loose buĘ ons and i wait for my brothers
arrival at the staÇon whisper to myself
“never pressed that alarm”

poem #442
ageing inside a body that is not mine. cant
walk on anymore knowing nothingness. should i wait to see you in a liĘ le while
is that it?
not awake
sleeping inside my stable studying
mineral water under thin ice
hold a lit cigare�e to break it free
at least one of us can be at ease. either you or me
who do you pick?
water says nothing but refuses to age and infuriates me to the point
stamp on ice
water
[ ]
humph
think beyond the thumb.
beyond filling the page for the sake of self-relief
taking altruisÇc monotony spilling out bile and milk
which one to stain your blank page?
in nocturnal revelaÇon scrawl all that is good
hardly anything, in your
room

poem #2
grey chair holds me
pregnant with yesterday rain
nicely filtered. brewing thoughts of liminal birthplace
[seems good to exist on both sides]
how are you, anyway? man walks past with his large dog
and a �ny dog and no one moves or breaths or perfuses themselves at all
surrounded by blue creatures i swell up with desire for air
anÇcipaÇng heaven with eagerness
wave loudly when i see you
there is an obvious colour through the glass
when i see you
words scare me. suddenly focused and afraid
of you

the Çny dog barks.

telephone

telephone filled with eyelashes

tax man wanders the languid streets. searching for
it is strange. delicate veins underneath thunderous housing blocks
lifts tea cosy from his blinds
eyelids pressing up to noiseless staÇc
dogs bile coagulates on the stone floor
opposite side of the world, someone opens
a crisp packet
walks confidently into the street
poem for bird
if we wake and find this morning has two of us u�erly alone with
two sets of legs aching whilst we move to a back window
finding only one bird on the fence
wake in the state of angular love. crave touch
in the pragmaÇc sense. such that oblique fingers are my only source of Çme.
you and i were never lovers in the way lovers should be
were we?

make two pieces of square each with buĘ er and marmite

eat in silence hoarding liĘ le mound of
round crumbs between suffering sheets
you loved me from across the place
loved me replacing the thing i used to be and
i used our bed sheet collecÇon
to feed that solitary bird

then, when sure you have gone

wring neck
eat lunch
heart sÇll warm and liĘ le mouth open for your offering
li ck my lips, and head back to
bed with another man - ready to
do this cornered lover thing

all over again.

eggs
something more beautiful than i was ever ready for
sits and sips and knows existence largely laps up a grain of salt Çll it becomes the salt, ergo seasons the eggs
i don't know how this works but he does, he sits and sips and stands outside and sucks and it is
more beauÇful, than i ever imagined
poem #776
-far from truthful
corrupt disease as the creaÇve switches television set
on that note of indecision
chooses to repeat last summer from magneÇc tape
when i loved him – him
with bloodshot eyes, as i adored
you – you
with that nasty cocaine habit
-habits i destroy, cruel to myself this morning
because i am indulgent and unfair
and by the Çme winter came around
loved no one at all

dont say it if it isn’t so

white morning in march tread
to air force establishment. paÇently wait for dark
green arrival. waltz past pond lighting
first cigare�e, puffing into stagnant morning of self
same old nothingness
can you feel tapping
tapping on the other side of the auto bahn
peel page out tree watch someone
drown inside frozen misery
follow the steep western sky
hope begins to
touch your bare, shivering leg and
excites your mind

for: woman
i tell you of the tearing
leaving only the flesh [not the woman]
only the flesh

she approaches you with a cup full of

beans loves only
naked you
greengrocer of despair
wake someone different but no mind, doesn't maĘ er who i think i am. greet the
greengrocer of despair before
heading to allenby street for rugelach and espresso from man of fear
[small pit of brown sludge]
smelt his hair, remnants of the mostly unsure affair
smoke in eye, choke on ball of Maudlin

come on back, come find me - i am somewhere east

or so I’ve been lead to believe
you would have liked to see me in this short skirt today
would have liked me, good and sunburnt swimming with the concrete mixer
early morning youth all by my daring self
forgetÇng about chapped lips / cut knees and remembering only the way
you used to look

[sore]

coat
as from my window i am disconcerted with ciÇzens
who do not know each other but connect through a spiders
gaze, it is the not knowing that will kill you. first
hang your coat on the back of my door let the
stallion gallop for as long as he likes
as from my window a pigeon
watches me back

sewers
last town for the sewers. churning with the waste of working
men’s lunchbox
trundling home forehead on the sky to mow the
angry wet lawn. desperately trying [above all else] to reach the
lid of the world. wife thinks he is surrendering. finally!
in his hour of biĘ erness, kicks an empty can across the pavement
dislodges banana peel in the sewers
curses impure colon
chlorophyll riddled labour

eats alone for the rest of his life

Emeless
but please say
if you have answers
grey dawn is a shy joke told
by the malnourished jester of
yesterday's dusk. must leave
for a liĘ le while at least
cold sausage and warm solitude
both sat well behaved in wet lap
not curious but something else enÇrely
nowhere could hold my boot print this
heavily
move into the aĚ ernoon
god detests pavement cracks
creaÇng the guĘ ers for tomorrow

heat
an awful scepÇc of short trouser legs
cracked sheets take all that is bright from you
fever inside me heaÇng up
bones and blood. pipes swell in concrete space
feel it all Çghten eternally
so much belief in the
longing fire

Igreja de São Roquei

sat through one hundred and forty minutes of a tuesday evening sermon, through the singing and the praying
[holy maria, understand] remained
spoke on command. atheist prayed harder to the lord
than any of the portuguese that day
why was i there?
well why return to the sterility of a single bed - tranquil as the death we all grow to fear?
atheist gets on her knees and gives heavy heart to the lord
thinks to dead academics from the north shorth
is it a prayer or a sin if one does not admit to the
holy presence above?
why was i there. rather more likely i was lost
and could not leave
not politely
gas
[for dalia]
drove the car through
november
desert
three legs on the dashboard
one foot on the gas
four hands tapping
cooling down outside
won’t stop to see cactus/ grave/ largest worldly crator
inside hotel check-in rush
one foot never leĚ the pedal
soldier
from jerusalem to eilat

how come the night did not end?

try to establish permanence, fail

raise eyes, turn all mourning radio staÇons on.

tune in to �ny’s lullaby wearing small clothes. pass on that - thanks. take shirt off clean!
beckoning soul
ferÇle land inside cracked skull, you
green thumb, green sleeves, tune in to
Çny’s lullaby [pass]. why do i call on [god] in �mes of greatest need?

different lover
compare death with dreamland trying lover
try to establish permanence fail

wondering why you dont know where i am forgoĘ en your face, you
know
eaÇng cold salmon in chair green
watching metal seahorse circle
he is geE ng further than me not heading back to the hotel [with me?]
not heading anywhere with me
sleep
pass
fail
Brenda Mox

WOBBLES

A stranger, haunting his life

weaved back into
that part still young.

With a voice breaking

in voluptuous sobs,
she stunned the part
of him that was old.

His wise calm sanity of soul

jogged slowly
in massive wobbles
of premonitions untold.

A long known stranger

returned from his past.
His sassy, sultry lass
come home again at last.
CONSECRATED COMFORT

She understood the language

of his countenance.
Something glad and genial
in his loving glance.
His manner so impressive
in its noble simplicity.
His face riveted the eye
in a key of subdued vivacity.

She knew if ever

his dark, mysterious eye
fell on her by chance,
she could no longer quell
what it was she so desired.

The sense of admiring awe

with which she traced his step,
awakened the alpha/omega
of her heart’s precepts.
To know something of him
whose voice summons her,

to breathe the consecrated comfort

of his masculinity,
with no repressing or restraint
of gleeful vitality.
Just the dangerous delirium
of desire’s mad complaint
of loving him too much.
TORTUOUS KIND OF LOVE

Gleams scintillated in his eyes

with a calm yet subdued
triumphant surprise
of longing earnestness.

Smiles played over his face,

opening his soul’s cell door
to receive with full embrace
the blow he had tried to evade.
An inevitable though strange,
tortuous kind of love.

He bore so patiently
her perverse eyes, large and black
and brilliant as jewels
with a look and air
independent yet shy,
kindling love’s devouring flames.

He examined her face

with austerity.
His eyes beamed
watchful and keen.
She, fresh as an April shower
though the day be at her fading hour,
still,
his bringer of sweet tortuous love.
HEART SHARED

He stood back lit

in a funnel of light,
a snowy mountain man
overflowing with delight.
Black hair silver streaked,
mouth smiling bright and warm
as campfires at night.

Shining stars twinkled in his artist eyes

catching her soul reeling with surprise.
The late day sun gilded her face
as he gazed into eyes of emerald lace.

A fleshy pumpkin of a woman so fine

with lips the color of wild plum wine.
He loved her heart
of honeybee flowers,
her mind radiating
those petal powers.

He stalked toward her

a lion from his den.
Their eyes closed softly
in heart shared realms
of never lost love,
much more than just friends.

Nestled in each other’s arms

in dreamless slumber full of song.
The moon’s magnet tugged
tenderly on the sea
while shining silver fishes
floated in tiny twists
of ocean coral trees.
FORGOT TO BE SAD

With nothing on their minds

but their bodies,
each step carried hope
of some wondrous thing
in the making.
And just for a moment
she forgot to be sad.

Her mouth flew open

as a beauteous laugh
floated through the universe
of vibratory sensations.

He’d fallen into her thrall

as others often did.
With a wealth of wonder,
his hands touched her
heavenly harp strings.

It was the season of

extravagant excuses,
when the smell
of sexual ecstasy
hung in the air
on the path
to the sweet place
where nectar resides,
to live just for a day
on coitus high tide.
Carly Lynn Gates

The Fall Line

It was almost two hours to Kibbee from Macon, a gradual decline through Dublin and Tarrytown from

pavement to packed clay. Hazel lay prostrate across the back seat beneath a flannel blanket, tensing to keep

from toppling to the floorboard at each unanticipated curve, counting each labored breath through the thick

fabric as she waited for the signal. By the time her mother gave the tap, allowing Hazel to yank the blanket

from her back, she felt they could have fled the state of Georgia. Hazel’s mother clicked on the radio, but her

father clicked it off, never taking his eyes from the road. Hazel stared at the window crank, sweat beading her

brow in the late June heat. Between her parents’ silhouettes, the bouncing light from the headlamps revealed

only a small parcel of what lay ahead.

Cousin Jo was waiting on the porch with a kerosene lantern, her face a leering apparition in the

flickering light. Hazel’s father slid the gear into park, but sat, idling. He re-clasped his fingers at ten and two.

She felt the urge to grab his arm, to bury her face against the shoulder of his suit, but suddenly her mother was

pulling her from the car by the wrist, dragging her up the wooden steps. Aunt Shirley and Uncle Gene sat at the

dining table. Her mother nodded in acknowledgement, but they didn’t stand or say a word. She waited, then,
turning on her heel, Hazel’s mother gestured for Jo to open the door to the front bedroom, her lower lip

quivering.

“Sit down,” she said to Hazel, and frowned, smoothing her skirt. “Mind your aunt and uncle until we

return.” Her shoulders shook as she turned away to set Hazel’s suitcase on the floor. She faced Jo, pulling a

crisply folded envelope from her pocketbook. “Please give this to your parents. For their trouble.”

“Aunt Muriel.” Jo shrugged. “You know I can’t.”

“Please.” She trembled as she pressed the envelope into Jo’s hand. “Just leave it on the table after I’m

gone.”

Jo hesitated, then slipped the envelope into the upper pocket of her overalls.

Her mother’s tone regained its condescension. “Try not to cause any further embarrassment.”

Hazel lowered her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her mother’s cool fingertips brushed against her cheek, then she was gone. The mattress creaked as Jo

sat down next to her. Hazel strained to pick something out from the hushed voices in the dining room, but

couldn’t grasp a word. Neither girl spoke until the Opel’s head beams had swept across the wall, and the door to

Shirley and Gene’s bedroom had opened and shut.

“Hot shit,” Jo said. “Told you there’d be trouble.” She reached over and pinched Hazel’s thigh.

“Ow!” Hazel yelped. “What did you do that for?”

“Just got to be the center of attention, don’t you?” Jo picked up her lamp and walked out.

Hazel had been around Shirley and Gene and their youngest Jo plenty, but always at Granny’s house in

Dublin—she’d never been to the farm. They’d done everything together at Granny’s: played together, cried over
skinned knees together, celebrated their July birthdays together. They’d even slept side-by-side in the same cot

on the porch together. Two peas in a pod, Granny’d say, poking them in the bellies through the blanket to

make them giggle before she’d kiss them good night. They’d lie awake long after lights out, whispering wishes

and secrets and hopes.

Her mother said when she’d grown up out here this room had been the parlor, but once Jo was born,

Shirley and Gene had converted it into a bedroom for Jo’s older brothers. They were both in the Navy now. The

dusty calico curtains covering the windows seemed to keep the night at bay better than the walls, whose plaster

crumbled away in moist defeat. She reached out and touched the corner of the oak desk, the quarter-sawn

veneer chipped and peeling away.

Jo set a pitcher of water and a glass next to the basin on the dresser. “I expect you know you’s got to go

out back to use the privy?”

Hazel shook her head.

“‘Course not. I’ll show you in the morning, when you’re not likely to frighten Mama and Daddy out of

their bed.” She held up an old ceramic bowl, sweeping her arm around it dramatically. “This here’s your piss

pot, which you’ll have to use when you can’t go outdoors, but I wouldn’t go making a habit of it, especially in

this heat.” She set the bowl next to the bed. “Shit, know how many nights I laid awake in bed about to piss

myself, terrified by my brothers’ stories about spiders and scorpions just waiting to bite my bare ass?” She didn’t

wait for a reply. “Well, you can’t waste lamp oil around here. It won’t just keep coming like your electric lights.”

She pulled the door shut behind her, then stepped back in and sneered. “Don’t sleep too deeply. It ain’t bed

bugs that bite around here.”

 Hazel picked up her suitcase and sat it on the dresser, but she didn’t unpack it. She lay down on the

mattress fully clothed, pulled the quilt up to her chin. She blew out the lamp. The dark, humid night pressed

against her, cut by shafts of denim moonlight. Her ears pricked up at the sounds outside the screens: a mule’s

snort, the crickets’ chirp, a bullfrog’s bellow in the distance. And something closer, a faint scratching. Her

mother had told her a story about rats. About a couple who laid their baby in the crib, then woke in the

morning to find the tip of his nose and the pout of his lower lip gnawed off, a pool of blood beneath his head

and rat droppings on the sheets. He hadn’t even screamed. Rats were meant for gnawing, for grinding down

their iron-hard incisors on wood, brick, cement, lead. Grinding down teeth that never stop growing. In order to

stay alive they had to gnaw something.

She felt queasy. And tired, like she’d run all the way from Macon. But her heart pounded at the thought

of losing consciousness. Just yesterday she’d been cleaning out her locker at Miller Senior High, saying goodbye

to her friends for the summer. They’d all been gleeful, celebrating becoming seniors, yelling, “Class of ‘58!”

while Hazel smiled numbly. Mother had told her to be vague about her summer plans, not to say anything

about missing the fall semester. As if they wouldn’t guess when she came back with the story of an illness or a

sick relative. She placed her hands against her flat stomach. It was her breasts that were growing—rapidly,

painfully. Five months. How could she possibly be expected to last that long in this house? And how would

Paul find her now? He hadn’t answered her letter, and she had sent it weeks ago. Paul. She wished she could

kiss the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose. They had to make a plan. Shifting her aching pelvis,

she began to compose a letter in the dark.

* * *
 “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” Jo flung open the door. “What’d you think this is, a holiday?” She shoved

a plate with biscuits and a fried egg into Hazel’s lap as she sat up in bed. “Mama and Daddy’s gone on to church

already, but I can’t go no more.” She sighed. “Can’t flirt with the Tate boy neither. Now I have to stay here and

look after you.”

“Are they—” Hazel hesitated. “Are they avoiding me?” She’d been lying awake for over an hour,

paralyzed with the thought of facing them, of the disappointment and disgust she knew she’d see in their faces.

“They don’t want nothing to do with you.” Jo straddled the desk chair. “So now you’re my problem.

You’re gonna do what I say or I’ll be on you like a duck on a June bug.”

Hazel looked down at her plate. “I didn’t mean for this.”

“But you meant for something to happen.” Jo threw her arms out and gestured around the room. “Here

it is. Is it all you imagined?”

Hazel sniffled and shook her head. She pointed to the folded letter she’d written earlier that morning. “I

wrote him another letter, Jo. Will you get it to him?”

“You got money for the stamp?”

“No, but,” Hazel swallowed. “When you go to Dublin—” She knew Shirley and Gene spent quite a bit

of time there. Granny was always giving Mother grief for not coming around enough.

Jo picked her teeth with her thumb nail. “Don’t know when I’ll be going to Granny’s next.”

“But when you do…maybe you could walk over there, try to talk to him?”

“It ain’t my concern.” She stood. “Finish up so I can show you your chores. Laundry, for one. I don’t

suppose you’ve ever used a washboard and wringer?”

 Hazel nibbled a biscuit. “Shouldn’t you have electric by now? Granny’s had it for ages, and she’s not that

far away.”

“Daddy’s too stubborn for that. Even if he had enough money to burn a wet mule, he still wouldn’t pay

five dollars to the REA.” Jo shook her head. “Nothing ever changes around here. I’m gonna spend my whole

damn life fetching water so we can piss it out and drink some more. A real Southern Sisyphus.”

Hazel peered into the shaft of light in the space between the curtain and the window. To the left she

saw rows of corn, dent corn for grain, probably. As they dried, the crown of each kernel would dent with the

endosperm’s collapse. The kernels were dried until they cracked under pressure, then ground down until they

were no longer recognizable. To the right she could just make out the edge of the barn. She wondered if a still

remained inside. Their family had once made a living running moonshine in high-speed tanker cars. Mother

remembered the days when Granny sold bootleg whiskey in half-pint jars from the back door of the kitchen.

She’d been told only one still remained, Uncle Gene’s quiet protest of the Federal Liquor Tax.

Jo nodded toward Hazel’s mostly untouched breakfast. “Are you gonna eat that?”

“I’m finished.”

“Haven’t even been here a day and already you’re wasting our food and my time.” Jo snatched the plate.

“Keep acting a fool and you’re gonna go hungry.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Save it. Now get yourself dressed and meet me on the back porch.”

It wasn’t fair. Hazel didn’t want to be stuck on the farm any more than Jo wanted to be stuck looking

after her. But what was fair, anymore? She wished they could go back to the way things used to be. Hazel’s
earliest memory of Jo was at Granny’s first reunion. Granny had recently paid to hook up to electric through a

co-op, and Hazel remembered being shushed for laughing at Granny in the kitchen, so scared something was

going to zap her she used pot holders to plug in the appliances. Her father’d had a good laugh too, mimicking

the oohs and ahs as half her mother’s family stood in the bathroom to watch the flush of the commode.

At seven and eight Jo and Hazel were the closest kids in age, so Granny had shooed them outside to

play together. Her yard had been the great equalizer: armed with sticks for swords and daisy chains for crowns,

they’d prowled the street looking to enforce justice. Eventually the girls outgrew the game and began wandering

the street out of boredom instead, as a way to escape Granny’s crowded house. That’s when she’d first noticed

the neighbor’s son, Paul.

It was just last summer, but already it felt like it had happened to a person Hazel could no longer be.

She had brought an issue of Seventeen magazine in her bag and snuck it out with Jo. They’d walked to the edge

of a pasture down the road and lay on their bellies in the long grass, flipping through page after page of women

posed in swim caps and snug bathing suits. Hazel pointed to the one she liked, a black-and-white checkered

suit with a ruffled halter and a black stripe around both the waist and bottom hem.

Jo wrinkled her nose. “Where you gonna wear that, anyway?”

“That’s not the point. It’s pretty.” Hazel plucked a grass shoot and slowly slid off the seeds between her

thumb and index finger. Jo stopped on an article about hope chests. “Do you have one of those?” Hazel asked.

“Nah. Mama’s crocheted a couple things and stashed them in her bottom drawer.”

“Me either.”

Jo flipped the page again. “Your family’s got money. When some fella comes courting, your mama’s
gonna start picking things ready to order.” Jo mimicked on the glossy pages. “Table linens, towels, dishware.

Hell, you can order a whole damn house out of a catalog.” She grabbed a handful of grass and tossed it in

Hazel’s face. “Think you could fit that in your hope chest?”

Hazel squealed. “Cut it out!” She tried to poke Jo, but she rolled out of the way and jumped up.

“Let’s go back.” They moseyed down the street, kicking up dust with their shoes and knocking shoulders

and elbows against each other playfully.

In the next yard a boy tinkered under the hood of an old car, his broad shoulders reddened with sun. He

leaned against the front grill and wiped his brow. “Hey,” he said with a slight nod, a confident half smile.

“Hey yourself,” Jo said, hooking her thumbs through the straps of her overalls. “That your Daddy’s

Commodore?”

“Was my uncle’s.” He tapped a cigarette from its pack. “Could be mine if I can ever make it run again.”

He smiled at Hazel.

Hazel blushed and smiled back. She was thrilled at the notion of someday taking a ride in that car with

someone so handsome—anywhere. Feeling the warmth of his arm across the back of her bare neck, looking

across to see the dimpled cheeks of that smile.

Jo walked up the drive. “I might could help ya.”

Hazel trailed slightly behind Jo, suddenly aware of how plain she looked in dungarees and a gingham

shirt. Not as plain as Jo in baggy overalls, her straw-colored hair wrenched back into a ponytail, but still. She

wondered if she could make her hips sashay as she walked, like Mother’s, like a figure eight. She sauntered up

to the driver’s door and leaned against the car with her arm propped on top.
 “Will it turn over?” Jo asked. She squinted into the sunlight.

“Yeah, but spins over fast. Makes this high-pitched sound.” He stole a glance past Jo at Hazel.

“Probably blew a gasket. You could try squirting some oil into the cylinders. Sometimes that’ll bring the

compression up enough to start.”

Hazel tried to suck her cheeks as she smiled and made a loud smacking sound.

“Are you all right?” Jo asked.

Hazel nodded, giggling.

Jo caught Paul’s attention and rolled her eyes. “Try it, anyway. Worked for Daddy.” She shifted back

and forth on her feet. “Well, we best be getting on. Maybe I’ll come back and help you with it. We’re staying a

few extra days after the city folk go home.” Jo trailed her fingers down the hood of the car, then grabbed Hazel’s

hand and started back toward Granny’s.

“Hey, thanks. Thanks a lot,” he called after them. “Hope I’ll see you around.”

Jo shot Hazel a look. “Without a doubt.”

That was only the beginning of Hazel’s infatuation. Anytime they were at Granny’s, she would ask Jo to

walk with her just to linger near his house or watch him mowing the yard or repairing the fence. She’d bring a

book and sun herself in the grass while Jo and Paul worked on the car together, stealing glances at Paul across

the spine. During school that year, Paul and Hazel wrote letters back and forth. She printed SWAK—sealed

with a kiss—across the back of each envelope she mailed. Even on paper he could make her laugh. In a letter to

Jo, Hazel wrote that she wasn’t exactly sure how to describe this dizzying feeling, but she was pretty sure it was

love. She realized, now, that Jo had never responded.

 * * *

When Shirley and Gene returned from church, Jo took Hazel out to the chicken coop. She made a

clucking noise and shoved Hazel toward the wire fence. “Go on now.”

“Go on what?”

“Catch us dinner.” Jo smirked.

Hazel chewed her bottom lip, her brow furrowed with concern.

“That’s fine. Just take your sweet time.” Jo paused, smoothing stray hair back behind her ears. “It’s not

like any of us got to eat.”

Hazel skulked inside, hoisting up the bottom hem of her dress with one hand to keep it from dragging

in the dirt. She tried to chase and corner one, but with each lunge the chickens grew warier, squawking and

fluttering out of her path, nervously scattering around the yard. Jo goaded her, laughing in the background. In

desperation, Hazel dove at a hen and got a mouthful of dust. Jo doubled over in laughter as Hazel stood up,

shaking clouds of dirt from her dress.

“You’re just plain useless.” Jo grabbed a long, heavy piece of wire with a small hooked loop on one end

that was leaning against the wall of the coop. “Let me show you how it’s done.” She crept within a few feet of a

hen and in one motion hooked a leg and pulled the chicken close until she had the foot in her free hand. Jo

clutched both legs and wing tips and walked over to the stump and axe. “Why don’t you go see if Mama has any

use for you.” As Hazel opened the screen door, Jo called out to her, her voice full of mirth. “I can call you back

to clean the gizzard if you want. Mama says we get a new book for each unbroken pouch.” The thump of the

axe made Hazel cringe as the screen slammed shut behind her.
 Hazel stood at the ready as Shirley prepared the meal, but mostly just got in the way, wilting in the heat

of the stove. Watching Shirley bounce between the sink, stove, and ice box with a cigarette dangling from her

bottom lip exhausted her. Shirley was plump compared to Mother. The added weight rounded and softened the

harshness of their shared features. Gene sat with his back to them by the fireplace, a few worn shirts beside him

as he carefully ripped out the seams to remove the collar of a shirt before reversing it and sewing it back on

again. He still hadn’t spoken to Hazel since she’d arrived. A Brooklyn Dodgers game droned in the background,

Shirley and Gene occasionally yelling out to curse or praise a player. Shortly before the meal, Shirley passed

Hazel a pitcher of tea to fill the glasses. Her hands shook as she poured, as she helped Jo set the table.

“Supper!”

“Coming, Mother.” Gene clicked off the radio and stood at the head of the table to bless their food. For

a long time there was no sound but the thump of rested dishes, the scrape of fork tines.

Hazel forced herself to remember her manners. Her voice cracked as she finally spoke. “The chicken’s

delicious, Aunt Shirley. And— ”

“Children do not speak unless spoken to in this house,” Gene said.

“She’s not a child, Gene,” Shirley said.

“You’re right. She’s not a child. Not anymore.” Gene wiped his mouth and tossed the napkin on his

plate. “And your highfalutin’ sister had no qualms about pawning her off on us. Like we need another mouth to

feed.”

Hazel froze, terrified to draw Gene’s attention directly.

Shirley waved him off. “They were worried about Stan’s job at the university. If word got out—”
 Gene stood, his chair scraping backward. “Hogwash. It’s not like raising a loose woman makes you a

communist. That baby may be a bastard,” he pointed at Hazel, “but it’s her bastard. Your sister’s family needs to

take care of their own.” Gene gave Shirley a quick kiss on the forehead before grabbing his pipe and dulcimer

from the sideboard and walking out onto the front porch.

“Pay him no mind,” Shirley said, and burped into her fist.

Jo stared into her folded palms, twiddling her thumbs. “Well,” she said. “I’m plumb tired. May I be

excused?”

“You hardly touched your chicken.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Jo pleaded. “It’s not your cooking making it tough.” She glared across the table at

Hazel. “If we’d been able to butcher it last night like we’re supposed to—”

“Hush up now.” Shirley reached into Hazel’s lap and squeezed her hand. “Your mother said the girls’

home is so crowded you’ll be here until the first week of December. Everyone’ll be out in the field all day, but

you need to stay in the house, mostly. Your mother would have a conniption if the neighbors start talking. And

when Granny comes you’ll stay out of sight.”

“Granny finds out she’ll find that boy and knock his dick in the dirt.” Jo instinctively ducked.

“Don’t think you’re too old to pick a switch, Jo Muriel.” Shirley sipped her glass of tea. “Granny finds

out she’ll tan all our hides for sneaking around like this, like kids who can’t fess up to our own sins.”

“Then why’d you let me stay?” Hazel asked.

“We do crazy things for family,” Shirley said, pushing back from the table. “Sometimes against our best

judgment. I expect doing dishes is something you can manage?”

 Hazel blinked back tears. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” Shirley nodded to Jo. “Grab your guitar. Let’s cheer up your father.”

Hazel piled the plates to carry into the kitchen. As she cleaned, songs she recognized from The Carter

Family resonated in the air around her, but they did nothing to assuage her fear. What if they changed their

minds? Where would she go? Hazel cleaned fast and scrubbed hard, praying she’d somehow make herself

valuable in this house. Praying she’d make it back to her room before encountering Gene again.

* * *

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jo slammed the bedroom door. “Get away from there.”

Hazel leapt back from the window. She’d tried to be careful over the past few days, slowly mastering the

art of standing in the shadows at just the right angle.

“Your mama and daddy’s not coming to Granny’s for the Fourth of July this year.” Jo faked a cough.

“You know, on account of you being sick, so Granny’s coming tomorrow.” She stalked over to the dresser,

grabbed Hazel’s suitcase, and tossed it onto the bed.

“Wait—what are you doing?” Hazel pressed her hands on top of the suitcase to keep Jo from opening it.

“I’m not doing a thing. This is Granny’s room. You’ve got to pack up and move in with me.” Jo looked

around the room in disgust. “You better wipe it down good. Don’t leave that city stink behind.”

Hazel tossed the few items she’d brought back into her suitcase, slowing only to gently tuck the letters

she’d written into the satin pocket. The rest of the day was a race against time, and she hoped her freshly

washed sheets would dry before nightfall. By the time she fell into bed, she was too tired to notice Jo’s stiffness

beside her, her protracted sighs.

 Jo jerked her awake in the morning, clamping a hand over her mouth before Hazel could speak. “She’s

here,” Jo hissed. “You best be quiet as a church mouse. Sure as shit you can’t peek out the window like you’s the

lady of Shalott.”

Hazel lay in bed after Jo left, listening as everyone chatted in the sitting room just outside Jo’s door.

She’d just woken up. She hadn’t even had a chance to use the outhouse. Jo’s room was plain compared to hers,

to the pink ruffled bed skirts and pillows and matching drapes her mother’d picked out. Jo’s room was mostly

taken up by a bed covered with a handmade quilt—she didn’t even have a dressing table. The walls were bare.

Hazel’s mother wouldn’t let her hang posters either, but she did stick clippings of Elvis on the edge of her

mirror. She glanced up at Jo’s bookshelf: Robinson Crusoe, King Solomon’s Mines, Twenty Thousand Leagues

Under the Sea. She grabbed a book. She’d be fine. She’d just read to pass the time.

After a few hours she was already having trouble concentrating. Every time footsteps echoed close to Jo’s

door, she froze in place and held her breath. A fly had somehow found its way in the room, its persistent buzz

around the window distracting her. I heard a Fly buzz, she thought. I heard a Fly buzz, but she couldn’t finish

the line, her heart was already beating faster at the thought of that kind of stillness. Her mouth was cottony,

and she could feel the pressure in her bladder. She glanced at the chamber pot on the floor next to her, but she

remembered Jo’s warning. I can do this, she thought. I can make it until Granny goes to bed.

But by suppertime she realized she couldn’t. The smell of baking yeast rolls wafted through the room

and her mouth watered. Was anyone going to come check on her? The pressure was so great she felt as if her

legs were going numb. Her face was hot and wet with tears as she finally broke down and squatted over the pot,

the lingering acrid smell a humiliating reminder.

 After supper, she heard footsteps echo toward the door. “Pour me another shot while I grab my

autoharp,” Granny said. “I’m feeling good and warmed up. Play with me, Jo?”

Someone’s hand was on the doorknob. Hazel dropped to the floor, craning her head as far away from

the pot as she could manage as she hovered over her own excrement.

“No, Granny!” Jo shouted, a little too loudly. “I want to hear you play for us.”

Granny laughed. “Dish me up another slice of pie and I’ll think on it.”

Hazel sighed as the footsteps moved on and the door to the front bedroom creaked.

When Jo finally came in with a plate of cold food, she grimaced. “Goddamn, Hazel. You could gag a

maggot in here.” She grabbed the chamber pot, holding it at arm’s length while she used her other hand to

pinch her nose, and marched out of the room. Hazel suffered through one more day of Granny’s visit, but she

didn’t make the mistake of not rising well before dawn again.

Even after moving back into the front bedroom, she still felt hesitant to leave the confines of the room,

begged Jo to let her bring a stack of books with her. The days blurred. She marked them by writing letters to

Paul every night before bed, then stacking them inside her suitcase. In the letters she practiced being positive,

upbeat. Trying to sound like she was living a normal life. She knew eventually she’d write the perfect one for Jo

to carry to him. They could still get married. Though she spent most days in the bedroom other than meals and

chores, after a couple weeks she became brave enough to pace the house for exercise while everyone was out

tending the fields. But mostly she read or lay still, waiting.

And then it was her birthday: July 22nd. A small part of her had held hope that someone would

remember. A slim package from her parents, a letter from Paul, an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” from
Jo. It seemed a lifetime ago when she and her best friend Leona had made plans to go to the Macon double-

feature to see The Cyclops and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll. They would have treated themselves to Cokes, walked

home for her mother’s peach cobbler, vanilla ice cream. Leona had been there when Hazel knew something was

wrong. At first she thought it seemed to be a touch of flu, a stomach virus, or undercooked food, but as Leona

dutifully held her hair she’d realized it had been several weeks since her last period, since before spending Easter

weekend at Granny’s. She’d admitted she thought she might be with child, but Leona had just stared at her,

incredulous. “But you can’t be!” she’d exclaimed. “That can only happen to married women.”

It had taken a couple of weeks to tell her parents. She’d written the letter to Paul first. She’d learned she

could get married at sixteen with her parents’ permission, and she’d just known they would allow it if she and

Paul told them together and her parents saw how in love they were. But she never heard from Paul, and her

mother started asking questions about her sickness. One night at supper, listening to her mother drone on about

the new drapes she wanted to have made over clinks of silver and china, Hazel blurted, “I’m in trouble,” before

she could change her mind, then hung her head, clenching her napkin in her lap.

“Meaning what?” her father demanded.

Her mother covered her face with her hands and moaned. “Oh, you know exactly what that means.”

Her father paused, then his look of surprise twisted into anger. “Is it so?” He banged his fist on the

table. “Look at me, damn it. Have you been with a man?”

Hazel just stared at the uneaten lumps of corned beef and cabbage on her plate and cried. He nearly

swung the door off its hinges leaving the room. Her mother fanned her face, blotted the running mascara

beneath her eyes.

 “Help me, Mother. I don’t know what to do. I wrote to—”

“I think you’ve done enough, young lady,” she said, and pressed her lips together, refreshing her lipstick.

“Your father and I will decide what to do from here.”

That night Hazel listened at their door. No one spoke, but someone was crying. After a few minutes she

realized the sobs were her father’s. She crawled back to her room and wept.

Two days later the doctor’s office called them in for results. Dr. Hutchins gestured for them to sit, but

there were only two chairs. Her father stood beside her mother, his hand resting on her shoulder. Hutchins

opened her file and tapped his finger on the paperwork inside. “The lab results have confirmed your daughter is

expecting.” He cleared his throat. “Presuming the information she provided is accurate, I estimate her due date

to be January 18th.”

“I could die from shame,” her mother said. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocketbook and held it

to her face, shielding her stricken expression. “Please, Doctor. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

Hutchins offered her father a cigarette. “There is a Florence Crittenton Home for unwed mothers in

Atlanta. If I were a man in your position, Mr. Davis, I’d send my daughter there. She doesn’t deserve to keep

this baby.”

Hazel’s heartbeat pulsed in her eardrums. No one asked what she wanted. She realized no one trusted

her to make a good decision. That evening her mother ordered her into the bathroom upstairs and told her to

strip and get in the tub. She had the hot water bottle and hose prepared, the empty brown container of Lysol

still sat on the counter. Hazel shivered and sobbed, her forehead pressed against the porcelain as the chemical

smell filled her nostrils, cold fluid splashed her thighs. “No matter how we take care of this problem,” her
mother whispered, “you will not be bringing a baby into this home. I will not let you ruin the reputation of this

family.”

After that night she’d never entertained the illusion that she had any say. Her father never asked to

know the name of the boy. And in the end, it hadn’t mattered. Her parents would have planned to ship her off

and give away the baby all the same.

* * *

Hazel was reading when Jo came in.

“We’re fixin’ to leave,” Jo said. Jo and her parents were traveling to Granny’s annual reunion.

“You’ll take it to him?” She pulled the letter she’d selected from her suitcase.

Jo shrugged. “We’ll see about it.”

Hazel looked down at her toes. “Do you think he got it? The first one?”

All you think about is Paul.” Jo sat on the edge of the bed next to Hazel. “When will you start thinking

about your baby?” she asked softly.

“It’s not my baby.”

“Sure is. You’ll be a mama soon, like it or not. When you gonna start acting like one?”

Hazel didn’t know how to answer. She was seventeen years old; she couldn’t support and raise a child.

Her father had told her she needed to think about what was best for the baby, about the adoption that would

bring joy to an infertile couple.

Jo sighed.

“If Paul—”
 “How many weeks?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen.” Jo yanked Hazel’s foot. “And look at you. You ain’t gained a damn pound.”

But Hazel spent the rest of the day thinking about Paul. Maybe he hadn’t gotten the letter. Maybe it

had slipped from the mail carrier’s bag, went to the wrong address. Maybe he had written back, and her mother

had thrown it away. Maybe he was worried sick because he hadn’t heard from her. She just knew he’d want to

get married. He loved her. As the sun began to set, she fetched pen and paper to write her daily letter to Paul,

the only sound its nib scratching against the fibers.

Even with the family gone to Granny’s she mostly stayed inside the threshold of her room. The summer

heat had grown as July turned into August, and the air took on an eerie calm, too damp to move. Hazel lost her

appetite for books. Instead she sat, waiting, perspiration rolling down her back, sticky under her breasts, and

imagined the best and worst of news Jo might bring about Paul. Maybe Paul agreed with her parents, maybe

he’d wait to find her until she’d had the baby and signed the adoption papers. But they could still get married,

they could have another baby when they were ready. “You’ll forget about it after it’s over and done with,” her

father had said. “You can go back to living a normal life.” If only she could have gone to find Paul herself. She’d

spent the first two weeks of June researching her condition in the library after school. She thought now about

those changes happening to her body, especially the placenta, that dark red disk that provided a barrier, filtering

the toxins from her blood to protect the baby. The placenta was already moving as her womb continued to

stretch and grow. And here she was, in stasis, possessing the only transient organ in the human body.

When Jo returned, Hazel knew something was wrong. She sat on the edge of Jo’s bed, watching her
unpack her knapsack without making eye contact. The late afternoon sun illuminated the particles in the air

between them, the dust they both breathed. Her tongue felt pasted to the inside of her mouth. She was no

longer sure which answer she was most afraid of.

“Your mama’s telling everybody you’ve got rheumatic fever.” Jo blew a stray strand of hair from her eyes.

“Granny was worried about ya. She blessed your mama’s heart for leaving you home alone.”

There hadn’t been much in Jo’s knapsack. A few toiletries, a couple books, a change of clothes. Hazel

watched Jo stack and restack the items on the quilt. “Hmmph,” Hazel said finally.

“Hazel, he’s…” Jo paused. “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone. Joined up. Marines, I think.” She refolded a blouse.

“And the letter?”

“I left it, but no one was home.” Jo crossed her arms across her chest. “So.”

“So?”

“So that’s it. There’s nothing left to tell.”

But there had to be. “Do you think he tried to get me a letter first? I’ve been thinking Mother might

have kept it from me.”

“Doesn’t much matter.” She shook out a pair of dungarees. “You’re on your own now. Always were.”

“But maybe this is part of his plan, a way to support a family. We’re in love. When he comes back on

leave—”

“Do you even know that he’s the father?”

 “What? Of course I do.” Hazel could feel hot tears studding her cheeks. “What are you accusing me of?”

She clenched the fabric of her dress.

“I have no idea what your life is like in Macon.” Jo paused. “Neither does Paul.”

Hazel pushed Jo away from her. She threw herself onto her bed, pressing her face so flat against the

quilt that she could hardly breathe. When she heard Jo’s footsteps enter the doorway behind her, she didn’t look

up.

“Look,” Jo said, “you ain’t got to like what I have to say, but you’ve got to stop with this Paul bullshit.

All you talk about is Paul.” She mimicked Hazel in a high-pitched voice. “Where’s Paul? What am I going to

do about Paul? I’m sick of it.” She turned and walked away.

Hazel raked her fingers down the fabric of the quilt, her nails catching and ripping at the stitches. She

wished Jo would be her friend, her ally again, but things hadn’t been the same since that Easter weekend at

Granny’s. Jo and Paul had finally managed to get the Commodore running that spring, and Paul had promised

he would take Hazel out in it the next time she came to Dublin. After hours of begging, she and Jo had finally

convinced their parents and Granny to let them go to the drive-in with Paul and his cousin Robert to see a

western called The Tall T. She’d been impressed to see Paul wearing a button-down shirt and slacks, and wished

it hadn’t been so chilly she needed a sweater over her dress.

Robert hadn’t dressed at all—he slouched in the back seat in a wrinkled shirt and torn 501s. But then Jo

hadn’t either. It didn’t matter. After listening to Robert groan about his shot in the minors being ruined because

the local team had been dissolved, Jo resolutely denounced him as a goober when he left with borrowed money

to buy them all popcorn and Cokes. Paul was nothing like his cousin. He was finishing his senior year, but he’d
already been working part time repair jobs as an electrician after school, hoped to get a job with Utilities after

graduation.

When Robert returned, Paul popped the glove box and pulled out a fifth of whiskey, carefully pouring

the amber liquid through the long glass necks of their Cokes. Hazel giggled and teased and flirted, her skin

flush with the alcohol, with the awareness of Paul’s hand on her upper thigh. She realized she may have drunk

her Coke too quickly when she stumbled getting out of the car to visit the ladies’ with Jo. “Watch yourself,” Jo

said, giving her a disapproving look. When Robert went to buy more Cokes, Paul asked Jo to go with him. Jo

tried to protest, but Paul stood firm. “Don’t make me go, Hazel,” she’d pleaded, but Hazel had waved her away.

As Paul cupped her breasts through her clothes and kissed her neck, Hazel felt electrified by his desire.

It wasn’t long before Jo was rapidly knocking on the fogged glass of the passenger window. Paul moaned, but

didn’t unlock the door. “Sneak out with me tonight.” He kissed her bottom lip. “After everyone’s in bed.” Hazel

didn’t say anything. Jo pounded on the window again. “Come on, baby, please. I need you,” he whispered,

nibbling her ear. She shook her head yes. Paul grinned and kissed her nose as he reached across and popped the

lock. Jo ripped open the door. “Unbelievable,” she’d said, and refused to say anything more the rest of the night,

her arms tightly crossed as she glared out the passenger window.

Hazel didn’t say anything to Jo that night as they got ready for bed, climbed into their cots on the

sleeping porch, but as soon as the adults shut off the last of the lights, Jo laid into her. “I’m so mad I could

drown puppies.” She spat on the floor of the porch. “Leave me standing outside, like I’m some vagabond. You

wouldn’t even be riding in that car if it wasn’t for me.”

Hazel shrugged, still feeling a little lightheaded from the whiskey. “Sorry.”
 “Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Jo rolled over and turned her back to her.

She knew Jo wouldn’t be so mad if she understood how Hazel actually felt, but Jo had never been in

love. A stiff coil of energy beneath the covers, Hazel lay still, wondering how much time had passed as the

chorus of crickets became a dull roar. When the moon rode a little higher in the sky, she pushed back the covers

and tip-toed to the door. At the sigh of the screen Jo hissed, “Where are you going?”

“Paul’s.”

“You’re a damn fool.”

Hazel stuck her head back inside. “A little petting’s okay when you’re in love.”

Jo sat up in bed, but her face was concealed in shadow. “If it’s love that’s making you an idiot, I don’t

want nothing to do with it.”

Stepping down into the dewy grass, Hazel held the screen door until it softly latched and dashed across

the yard and down the road, ruddy clay clinging to her moist heels.

* * *

On the morning of September 2nd Hazel woke, drenched in sweat. She’d dreamed of drowning in the

river, twisting helplessly beneath the surface in the current. It should have been her first day of senior year. She

imagined waking up in her room and getting ready, eating breakfast, then walking down red-bricked High

Street to Montpelier Avenue, to the girls’ school. Her father loved their hilltop neighborhood, bragged about

living on the same street where the poet, Sidney Lanier, had lived. Even on hot days it was a shady, tree-lined

walk which took her along the edge of Mercer University, where her father worked. She tried to remember her

courses, but it all seemed so far away. She knew they’d put her in higher level math and science after she’d
received the best marks of anyone in her class. This time last year she’d been dreaming of applying to Wellesley,

and now… The rumors would start today. She wouldn’t even see Jo until she returned from her first day of

school. It hadn’t rained in two weeks, and the wind blew dust through the screens. All she could taste was clay.

She missed Macon. Missed looking south down the hill toward High Street’s intersection with High Place,

where—past the brick walls and ivory spires of the First Baptist Church—she could see the landscape shift and

level out in a distant blue haze. Macon was a fall line city: where the rolling hills of the Piedmont plateau meet

the level terrain of the coastal flatlands along the Ocmulgee river, causing the rushing water to decline rapidly

toward sea level. And what else was there to do at this point, but drift downstream?

Jo came in, a huge smile spread from ear to ear. She was still breathing heavily from her ten-mile trek

from the county high school. “We’re gonna have a Sadie Hawkins dance this year.” She leaned back against the

door jam. “Teacher said that means the girls can ask the guys. At lunch, Ida said she wasn’t wasting any time.

She was gonna wait on the bleachers and ask Cole after practice this very afternoon.” She stared off for a

moment before she noticed Hazel, doubled over on the bed, clutching her abdomen, the small bump beneath

her skin. “Hazel?”

Hazel rolled partway onto her back. “I keep getting these stabs of pain.”

Jo kneeled next to her, pushing damp strands of hair from her face. “Maybe the baby’s kicking.” She

laughed. “Or maybe you just have gas.”

Hazel grabbed Jo’s fingers and squeezed. She noticed a ring hanging around Jo’s neck. “Where’d you get

that?”

Jo looked down at her chest. “It’s a silver quarter ring.” She tucked it into the neck of her shirt. “Daddy
made it for my birthday.”

Hazel groaned and rolled back over, grimacing with another stab of pain. “I don’t know how much more

of this I can take.”

“Oh, you’re all right. You’re over the hump now. Ike’ll still be president when this is over.” Jo twisted her

fingers out from Hazel’s. “I think the Eagles are going to be good this year. I watched them conditioning in the

field for a while before I headed home.”

Hazel tucked her knees up as far as they would go. “Will you bring me something to eat? I feel faint.”

“You’re fine. The heat’s just getting to your head.” Jo stomped off to the kitchen.

Hazel rolled over again. She felt a strange tingling sensation in her legs, as if they were going numb

under the weight of sandbags.

When Jo returned she had a plateful of grits and okra with a piece of fat back. “Sit up, now.”

Hazel pushed herself up with her feet.

“You need to eat this. Look like you’ve been sucking hind titty.” Jo sat at the end of the bed while Hazel

took slow, deliberate bites. “You know pregnant women’s supposed to glow. You’re too damn skinny.”

“I know.” Hazel put her fork down. “It’s just, I just—”

“So what’re you gonna name her?” Jo gestured for Hazel to keep eating.

“Her?”

“Yeah, her. Your baby.”

“I don’t know what sex it’s going to be.”

“Shit, I do. They say girls steal their mother’s beauty. I think your girl’s got your glow.” Jo paused.
“Pearl.”

“Pearl?”

“Yeah, Pearl.” She watched Hazel finish the last of the grits, then took the plate. “You and Hester have

a lot in common, don’t you think?” She smirked.

Hazel rolled her back toward the door. Naming the baby. She had assumed someone else would have

that honor, that her job was just to carry the burden, nothing more. Maybe Patsy, after Granny. She wondered

which name Paul would pick. But what was the point? She would probably never hold this baby in her arms.

She flattened her palms around her abdomen, felt the radiating heat. And what if it was a girl? It would have

been better to have a boy. A boy couldn’t get pregnant. She bent forward so that her chin was practically resting

on her chest and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

That night she dreamed she gave birth to a little girl who stood up and walked right out of the room in a

blinding white dress and saddle shoes, her auburn hair clipped back in two barrettes. Hazel followed at a

distance as the little girl opened the front gate by herself and strode down the middle of the dirt road toward

town. When Hazel trailed too closely, the little girl turned to face her. “You know who I am,” she said. Pearl,

Hazel thought. The little girl smiled, but when Hazel reached for her she turned away and continued down the

road, not a spot of clay stuck to her, not even the soles of her shoes. Hazel ached as she ran after her, but the

little girl moved farther and farther away until she was no more than a glowing speck of white on the horizon.

* * *

The third trimester was the most difficult. The days were marked with heartburn, swollen feet and

ankles, tingling wrists and hands. Her letters to Paul were sometimes no longer than his name scrawled at the
top of the page. She found herself going to bed earlier and earlier each night. That’s when the baby would start

moving. More like a fluttering at first, tiny hands and feet tickling her from within, and then more distinct

kicks and jabs. Sometimes she would rub her belly after to see if she could make the baby kick the same place

twice. Once the baby kicked so hard Hazel doubled over in pain at the desk, her pen still clenched in her left

hand. “Put your weapon down, Mistress Athena.” Hazel gingerly rubbed her sore belly. “Wait for word that the

world is ready for you.”

Sitting up in the chair, Hazel paused before crossing Paul’s name from the top of the paper. Dear Pearl,

she wrote. You will be born in a room with crisp linens on the bed and sunlight streaming through window. The air

will smell clean, and the nurses’ shoes will squeak on the freshly waxed floors. Your father will come carrying a bouquet of

white lilies the size of dinner plates. He will plant a kiss on your forehead as he sweeps you from the crook of your

mother’s elbow and lays your small, swaddled body against his thighs, bouncing you lightly as you squirm and grasp the

tip of his pinky in your tiny fist. He will laugh about the strength of your grip and confess his love for you as you fall back

into sleep. Your parents will sit in silence of your slumber, watching your chest rise and fall with the predictability of

empires.

As the days grew colder, Hazel started bleeding. Light spotting at first, which grew heavier and heavier.

She was terrified to tell anyone, to make it real. Saturday afternoon, Jo came in with her checker board. While

they played, Jo described the yellow and ivory fabric Shirley had brought home to sew Jo’s dress for the dance

and mentioned they might be able to buy some tulle to make the skirt elegant and full. “Mama even spent a

nickel on a store-bought pattern,” Jo said, smiling bashfully. But Hazel could hardly concentrate on the

conversation. Before their first game had even ended, she let the news slip from her lips as she slid one of her
red disks across the board. Jo didn’t say a word. She just packed up the game and left.

A few hours later, Jo came back with Shirley. “I sent for the midwife, Helen,” Shirley said, pressing the

top of her fingertips against Hazel’s forehead. “But unless we have to, don’t dare tell your mother I did any such

thing.”

Hazel had no desire to tell her mother any of this but feared they wouldn’t have a choice. “What if I

need a doctor?” she asked.

Shirley sat down on the quilt next to her. “Helen’s delivered most of the babies around here, including

Jo. She’ll know what to do.”

“It ain’t like having babies is something new,” Jo said. “Granny wouldn’t have even let a midwife touch

her.”

Shirley laughed and smiled at Hazel. “Bless her. The day your mother was born, Granny took a couple

shots of whiskey, went into the bedroom, and shut the door. Wasn’t an hour later she came out with the cord

already tied up to bathe Muriel. She caught every one of her babies herself.”

Hazel couldn’t even imagine such courage, but she also knew the risks, the number of women who died

in childbirth.

When Helen arrived, she squeezed Hazel’s hand and said hello, but she was all business. Helen checked

her and the baby over: measuring her belly, listening to the strength of each heart. “Has anyone in your family

had pre-eclampsia?” Helen asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Shirley answered, a thin thread of concern knitting its way across her brow.

“Your blood pressure’s on the high end of normal, but your fundal height’s a little low,” Helen said to
Hazel, pulling the shift dress Shirley had sewn for her back down over the dome of her belly. “No reason for

concern just yet. In the meantime you need bed rest. Tell your aunt if you have new symptoms.”

“Thank you, Miss Helen.” Shirley smiled as Helen packed her bag and stood to leave. “Now come on in

the kitchen. I’ve got a jar of Granny’s strawberry jam I’ve been saving.”

“Give her a small dose of aspirin each day, just in case,” Helen said, and patted Shirley’s shoulder. “I

know you’ll find me if anything changes.”

“I want to see a doctor,” Hazel said.

Shirley looked back over her shoulder as she guided Helen out of the room. “Didn’t you hear Helen?

You’re fine.” She shut the door behind her.

Hazel turned to Jo. “I mean it. I want to go to an actual doctor. Someone with, with training and

expertise.”

Jo chuckled. “It doesn’t matter what you want. We can’t afford to get you one.”

Hazel pounded her fist against the mattress. “What about the envelope?” she demanded. “The money

Mother made you take for me?”

“That money’s spent.” Jo stood up to leave. “You’ve been living here for months, and you ain’t cheap.”

Bed rest became easy once the nausea began. Hazel began cataloging sounds: the house sounds of

muffled voices, clanking plates or tins, something scraping, the radio; the outdoor sounds of farm animals,

rustling corn, a methodical clanking. She held her breath each time footsteps echoed too close. But when the

door opened it was almost always Jo, collecting the chamber pot or bringing potted ham, canned okra and

onions, corn bread, biscuits. Jo hardly spoke a word to her anymore. The bedroom had turned into a cage, and
she was the animal. She worried about being so dependent on Jo. She seemed more and more sullen each day.

The baby was more restless than she was—her belly button was sore from all the squirming and kicking.

Sometimes she would try to picture what Pearl looked like, imagined holding her in her arms, smoothing a tuft

of auburn hair beneath a knit cap, pulling back a pale pink blanket to count tiny fingers and wrinkled toes. She

knew talking to her and visualizing her would only make it worse when the time came, but she couldn’t help

herself. Maybe she deserved to feel the pain of separation, to have the last bit of Paul severed forever.

She lost track of the days, slipping in and out of consciousness beneath the quilt. She’d been writing

letters to Pearl each night, telling her stories about her first skinned knee, her first spelling test, her first trip to

Atlanta to see the lionesses at the zoo, but Hazel started slipping into sleep before she could even write the

stories.

And then she heard the scratching. In the wall, right above her head. She thought she was hearing

things at first, but each night it seemed to grow louder, closer, more persistent. As if something was trying to

break through. She mentioned it one night to Jo when she brought a glass of water and an aspirin. “Could be a

rat,” Jo said. “They get stuck in the wall sometimes.” She pounded her fist against the plaster. “If it dies in there

we’ll have to cut a hole to get it out. There ain’t no getting rid of that stink.” Jo held out the aspirin. “Your

mama and daddy are coming soon.”

“Already?” Hazel swallowed it and handed back the glass. “To take me away?”

“Mama says next week. I guess a bed opened up.”

Hazel rolled over on her side. Jo waited a few minutes before leaving. Maybe she had wanted to say

something. But what was left to say? Hazel sat cross-legged in bed and pulled up her dress, letting hot tears
splash on the taut skin of her belly and run down below to her pelvic bone, her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I’m so sorry.” But what was the use? Her mind kept returning to the fall line.

Hazel grabbed her pen and paper. I never told you, Pearl, Hazel wrote, her pen scratching furiously

against the paper, the story of how you were born. Your mother grew so restless she decided she couldn’t stay on the farm

a moment longer. She got up out of bed and walked barefoot into town, her thumb turned toward the road. She hitched a

ride back to Macon with a farmer, rode in the back between hay bales that cushioned each bounce, clenching one of the

straws between her teeth as the wind whipped her hair. He dropped her off in front of her childhood home, and she stood

across the street on the sidewalk, looking up at the towering oaks dripping with Spanish moss that shaded the stone steps

up to the front porch. She never approached the house; instead she walked down the street toward the church spires and

her view back in the direction of the farm. But before she could reach the end of the road, she felt the first sharp pain of

contractions and stopped in the park to her right, relishing the soft carpet of grass beneath her feet. When she finally

looked up, she was astonished to realize what the view to the southeast of her hilltop neighborhood had always been: the

Macon Hospital.

Exhausted, Hazel crawled back under the quilt and lay still, waiting for the baby to kick, willing her to

make soft flutters or even a hard punch. But the baby didn’t move.

* * *

Three days later she woke before dawn with pain searing along her back, cramping in her lower

abdomen. The rat was scratching in the wall behind her, his claws catching on the wood lath beneath the

plaster. Shivering, she tucked the quilt under her chin and curled beneath the blanket. “Go away,” she

whispered. “Please, just go away.”

 Jo came in mid-morning, her hair wrapped in cans pinned tightly against her scalp. She twirled into the

room, holding Hazel’s breakfast at arm’s length like a dance partner. “Tonight’s the dance,” she said. “I’ve never

felt so fancy, and I haven’t even put the dress on. Wait till you see it. And Mama’s helping me get all done up

with lipstick and rouge and everything. She says I’ll look pretty as a peach.”

“Something’s not right. I think I’m having contractions.” She could feel her uterus tightening and

softening against her fingertips.

Jo shut the door behind her. “Can’t I just have one minute that’s about me for once? You’re fine. I’m

sure your exaggerating.”

“She’s coming.”

“Who?”

“The baby,” Hazel gritted her teeth. “She’s coming.”

“Can’t be. You ain’t due ‘til January.” Jo’s eyes grew wide as another wave hit Hazel who turned her face

to groan into the pillow.

“She is. Go get Aunt Shirley. She needs to call a doctor. I need medical care.”

“I can’t,” Jo hissed. “I was coming in here to tell you that Granny’s on her way. She’s coming to see me

off to the dance. You don’t have to move rooms—she’s not staying the night—but you have got to pull yourself

together.” Jo bit her knuckle. “Whatever it is, it’ll pass. Let’s—uh. Here, let’s get you a glass of water. Why

don’t you try shifting positions?”

Hazel pleaded, “Please, Jo. I don’t care if Granny finds out. Maybe she knows something about Paul.”

“Forget Paul.” Jo turned to face Hazel, the glass of water clenched between both hands. “He knew.”
 “What do you mean?”

“He was gone before I got to Granny’s.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “But I knocked on the door and

talked to his mama.”

Hazel’s face grew hot. “She knew?”

“Don’t I know it. She cussed me up and down, said I was just another floozy and we best stay away from

her family.” Jo set down the glass to rub her temples. “I didn’t tell a soul, of course, but I don’t think Granny

knows. You know Granny don’t keep secrets.”

Hazel stared up at the bead-board ceiling. “It wouldn’t matter, not now.”

“Of course it matters.”

“And the other letter?”

“What’d you think he was gonna do? Nobody was supporting a marriage.” Jo leaned forward to look

Hazel straight in the eyes. “Be honest with yourself for a moment. Did you ever tell your mama and daddy

about Paul?”

“Well, no—”

“And why not, huh? Because deep down you know they never would’ve approved. Paul’s just a working

class nobody with clay dirt caked on his boots like everybody else around here, and now that your mama’s

clawed her way up to a new life in the city, she thinks her shit don’t stink, just like the rest of them.” She balled

her fists in frustration. “And you,” she spit. “You just wanted someone to fool around with. You were never

serious about it. You were just dragging along the poor boy’s heart.”

“That’s not true—”

 “Yes it is, Hazel.” Jo said. “You’ve been talking for years about applying to that school all the way up in

Massachusetts. Paul’s plan was to stay here and work for Utilities. Admit it. He was just practice for those

college boys. You were going to leave him behind.”

“That’s not true!” Hazel sobbed. “He’s the one who joined the military.”

“Maybe they made him go.” Jo clenched a pillow between her hands. “Or maybe he just run off like a

scalded haint. It don’t matter now.”

Another wave of pain spread through Hazel like wildfire and she doubled over again.

“Look, you’re going to be all right.” Jo stood. “Drink some water. I’ll try to talk to Mama as quick as I

can.”

“Just go.” Hazel clenched her eyes. “Please, go.”

The contractions kept coming all afternoon and into the evening. Jo hadn’t come back with Aunt

Shirley, and Hazel realized she wouldn’t. No one was going to come to her rescue. Not now, not ever. Just then

a car pulled down the drive. She recognized the roar of its engine. They were here. Back to take her to the girls’

home. She could see all the doctors she wanted now, but she felt both panicked and relieved. She pulled aside

the curtain of the front window and let her face appear for the first time. But it wasn’t her parents’ Opel station

wagon, it was Paul’s green and white Commodore, the thick clay clinging to his white walled tires as he parked

in the drive. She gasped, gripping the windowsill. He was here. After all this time he was finally here.

She could tell he was nervous as he got out of the car. He tugged at the tie of his suit as if it were

choking him. He must have felt so terribly for taking so long to find her. She wondered if he had gotten her

letter. But nothing mattered anymore. She didn’t need a suit or an apology or—oh!—flowers. He pulled a
bouquet of flowers from the passenger seat and shut the door. Hazel licked her palm and tried to smooth her

hair, frowned at the stains on her shift dress. She wished Paul didn’t have to see her this way, but it didn’t

matter. All she needed now was to feel the warmth of his body pressed against hers, get into that car and never

look back. He smiled—a heartbreaking smile with teeth and dimples and eyebrows raised in a way that showed

his gentleness, his vulnerability—

And then she saw Jo. Her copper blond hair cascaded down her back in loose curls, complimenting the

yellow and ivory print dress Aunt Shirley had made for her. She could hardly believe how breathtaking Jo

looked. Jo, whose hair had always been pulled back into a ponytail, whose figure had always been hidden inside

her overalls, until now. She took small steps, unsteady on her heels, until she reached Paul and pulled him close

for a kiss. Full, on the lips.

Hazel felt faint. She didn’t understand. Paul was here for her. He’d come to rescue her. She swung her

legs over the side of the mattress, and with one hand holding the base of her belly, she lurched toward the door

and crossed the threshold. Sliding one hand down the wall, she shuffled toward Aunt Shirley, who was closing

the front door behind her.

“Heavens to Betsy, girl,” Shirley hurried over and put her arm around Hazel’s waist. “You look like

you’ve seen a ghost.” She turned and slowly walked Hazel back toward the bedroom. “Jo told me you weren’t

feeling well today.”

Hazel stumbled and shook her head.

“Careful now. You just missed Jo on her way to the school dance. I wish you’d seen her—all dolled up

and happy as a dead pig in the sunshine. You remember Paul, don’t you? The boy down the street from
Granny’s?”

Hazel tried to form the words, but nothing came.

“Of course you do. Such a nice young man, and a catch for Jo. They’ve got so much in common. And,

well, there’s not an awful lot to choose from around here.”

Hazel stumbled. Shirley shifted her grip on her waist.

“You’re all right now. Almost there. Golly, we all thought both you girls had a crush on him for a time.”

She chuckled. “Wouldn’t that have been a pickle? Love can make fools of us all, that’s for sure.”

As Shirley cracked the door open to the front bedroom a rat darted out of the room between their legs.

Shirley yelped and let go of Hazel’s waist. Hazel’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor, her arms instinctively

circling her belly, her Pearl. But, for once, she wasn’t scared. She knew now there wasn’t any farther to fall.
Chris Bullard

Outlook

The Weather Channel shows a green sickle moving across the US. Things will clear up soon, I’m informed.
The TV screen puts up the image of a cold front passing over towns and cities to illustrate the fact that the
clouds are retreating eastward toward NJ which I confirm by looking out the window. Everything is being
watched over by satellites, several of them, not one, so this is polytheism, not monotheism. When there’s a
severe disturbance, the satellites disclose the names of the places in danger, little towns I’ve never heard of, but
the satellites know them and identify them under red blobs. Concerned weather anchors warn people in these
hamlets to be careful, perhaps, to seek shelter, or evacuate. I wave from my window at the satellites, selflessly
keeping watch, though I wonder whether they can identify me by name and whether they see me as under some
color warning, threatened by crimson high winds or blue ice storms. Yes, I shout to the satellites, I am being
threatened, more and more each day, as the millibars fall and the winds demonstrate their cyclonic character
and the sky turns more obscure. I fear that the forecasting angels are directing their pointers in my direction and
advising me in kindly tones that the atmosphere is changing, so it’s time for the inhabitants of my particular
time/space on earth to get out, now. Soon, it will be too late. Even the satellites will forget me.
How to Take Care of Art

1) Paint and paper are sensitive to chance.

2) Materials can be preserved in a way that concepts cannot.

3) Frame what you own to foreclose the possibility of escape.

4) Use museum quality glass, designed, like museums, to keep out light.

5) Draw white boxes of exclusion on the floor in front of your art to prevent contamination.

6) Meaning can be vaporous.

7) Use environmental controls to ensure that it doesn’t drift away.

8) You show love to an object by isolating it.

9) Restrict viewing, as the desire to come close to beauty is inherently suspicious.

10) Make sure your art lasts long enough to become unwanted.

11) What is outside is hostile to what is inside.

12) Bringing together the real world and works of the imagination may invite an accident in which both are
destroyed.

13) If you choose to display copies and lock away the originals, no one will know.

14) Consider mummies: without their guts, they exist almost forever.
Ode to Goofiness

1) The burp/the fart/the scrunched-up face

2) Gestures opening convention like a sliding glass door

3) The pretend fall/the pretend spill

4) Entertaining/not listening

5) That dance the body makes being silly

6) You shake your friends into giggles

7) Though you risk a motherly slap to the top of your head

8) The joy of not being in conformity

9) The tongue out/lips pulled back

10) Not the logic of irony/not the joke at the expense of

11) Not the social passing of slurs and slights

12) The pig grunt/the ape crouch

13) You as you/a pure animal/disruptor of acceptability

14) A small breath propelling a straw’s cover in an arc like time’s arrow
Colin Ian Jeffery

Billy

Never speaks
Trapped within damaged brain
Body twisted, limbs trembling
Sitting in hospital yard
Humming tunes without melody.
Bright soul standing tall
Articulate mind intact
Singing melodious songs of love
Only God and he can hear.
 When young and easy

When young and easy

Naked with her on a summer’s day
Hidden among swaying corn
Whispering love’s promises.

No thoughts but making love

Heart rejoicing hearing her voice
Soul trembling with life’s reason
Each kiss a giddy taste of wine.
 LOVE

Love is never boastful

But patient, steadfast and honest
Moving mountains in its path.

Love is never jealous, wicked nor envious

Never keeping records of wrong doings
But smiling walks the extra mile.

Love is never self-seeking nor proud

Never delights in evil
Has no price to be bought and sold.
 Death of a sperm whale

With her calf she dives

Into the darkness a mile below the waves
Where great squid abides
Ferocious Goliath monarch of oceans deep.

Singing lilting lullaby to her calf

In darkness she swims in playful mood
And for an hour remains down in the deep
Swimming side by side with her son.

Largest of toothed whales

The sperm whale comes to the surface
Spouting water through her blowhole
Smacking her great tail upon the waves.

Japanese harpooner takes aim

Deadly bolt plunges home
Explosive charge detonates
Mortally wounded she calls to her calf.

Hauled up dying by her tail

Against the side of the whaling ship
In agony she dangles with head in the sea
Bleeding slowly to death.

Her calf calls out in anguish

Following the ship for hours
But there is no lilting answering lullaby
Only blood in the water.
Harlan Yarbrough

The Faire

Wendy Robson attended the Lifestyle Faire with her husband, Jonah, every year in order to sell her

artwork. Having done well at previous Lifestyle Faires and similar events, she felt confident of making the

Faire worthwhile financially, all the more so because Jonah’s booking as one of the Lifestyle Faire’s entertainers

guaranteed more than the cost of her stall and their minimal expenses. The Faire’s sprawling rural grounds held

a special place in both Wendy’s and Jonah’s hearts—they had met there, fallen in love there, and spent many

pleasant days and hours there, first separately and then together over more than a decade and a half.

Wendy produced a substantial quantity of beautiful art in a broad range of media. She created and sold

paintings, sculptures, drawings, and a huge range of craft items from jewelry to beautiful wooden boxes to

contain jewelry and other small items. Jonah’s art resided in his music, although he sometimes made pretty

candles that Wendy sold from her stalls and occasionally produced harnesses, belts, and other practical leather

items or rustic wooden toys. When customers complimented the beauty of his pieces, Jonah said, “Thank you.

Wendy’s the artist, though. I’m barely a craftsman. I can make beautiful music, but, when I make physical

objects, I make things to do a job, and that’s about the extent of my skills—but thanks for your kind words.

Wendy’s the one who creates beautiful objects.”

 Wendy appreciated Jonah’s music, both because she enjoyed hearing it and because it brought in the

majority of their income. Their twelve-year relationship and their ten year marriage had not been devoid of

disagreements and arguments and even major blow-ups. Wendy’s “mild” bi-polar disorder, diagnosed by a

psychiatrist she had seen—at the suggestion of a counsellor—in the tenth year the Robsons were together and

the eighth year of their marriage, seemed to make occasional dramatic scenes almost inevitable, but they had so

far weathered all those storms.

Perhaps because of the BPD, the loudest and most intense—and sometimes abusive—eruptions came

from Wendy. Almost always, Jonah quickly responded with a hug and gentle, loving questions, as, for example,

“Do we really have to fight?” or “Is this really what we want?” or “What can I do, how can I help?” That didn’t

always work, didn’t always defuse the situation, but more often than not it allowed Wendy to recognize within a

few minutes that what she was doing wasn’t helpful or productive or even healthy.

The Lifestyle Faire consistently proved Wendy’s biggest money-earner of the year, so she always

prepared well in advance and built up her stock in the months before the event. This year, she felt uneasy and a

little resentful, because Jonah had gone on a work trip three weeks before the Faire. Wendy recognized both

the financial necessity of his tour and that Jonah’s earnings from the three weeks would almost equal her

earnings for the year. Nevertheless, she wanted him home, wanted his support there and at the Faire.

Jonah had told his wife he would be back in time for the Faire, but she still worried. She knew his last

gig in Colorado took place in Denver on the Friday night of the weekend before the Lifestyle Faire and that he

had a gig in Salt Lake the following night and a Sunday afternoon gig in Boise. If Jonah could drive straight

through after the Boise gig, he could arrive home in the middle of the night and be home to help Wendy pack
for the Faire. The problem arose from a gig in Yakima on Tuesday, that meant he couldn’t get home until early

Wednesday morning.

Wendy and Jonah usually drove their loaded van to the Faire site on Wednesday and camped in it for

the next five nights, unloading her wares and setting up Wendy’s booth Wednesday and Thursday. If anything

delayed Jonah’s return, they would arrive late at the site and feel pressured throughout the setting up, so Wendy

fretted and fumed.

In the event, Jonah arrived a little before six Wednesday morning and immediately began packing

Wendy’s tubs and bins and boxes into the van. He took a two-hour nap later in the morning, while Wendy

filled her last few boxes with jewelry and related paraphernalia. As soon as he woke, he stowed those last few

boxes in the van and drove his wife and her wares the ninety-odd minutes to the Faire site. Once there, the two

got the booth in order and set the less valuable and less fragile items out under tarpaulins. Some of the food

booths had opened early to serve the stall-holders, so Jonah bought dinner for himself and his wife.

Although looking forward to his annual “busman’s holiday” of jamming with musician friends he met

but once a year, Jonah seemed to sense something troubled his beloved wife and said he’d decided to forego the

jamming to provide what emotional support he could for her. He made gentle, tactful attempts to get her to

talk about whatever bothered her but without much success. After two hours, they retired to the comfortable

bed in the back of their van.

Still madly in love with his wife after a dozen years together, Jonah, even though severely sleep-deficient,

expressed both enough desire and enough energy for conjugal activity, but Wendy felt distracted and opted for

sleep. Jonah’s sleep deficit carried him quickly to sleep in the absence of interest on Wendy’s part.
 Thursday felt like any other year on the day before the Lifestyle Faire—getting Wendy’s stall ‘just so’,

catching up with friends, last minute repairs and adjustments, and a couple of jam sessions. Although Jonah

seemed to sense some residual disturbance of Wendy’s demeanor, she enjoyed the music and catching up with

friends they saw only once a year. She didn’t ask herself why Jonah seemed worried, because she knew she was

carrying—and perhaps unwittingly expressing—residual resentment over the possibility Jonah could have

arrived home late, even though he didn’t.

That’s silly, Wendy’s rational mind said. He got home in plenty of time, and we got here and unpacked as

early as ever. Her feelings, as feelings are wont to do, ignored her rational thoughts and resented Jonah’s

itinerary having made her worry. In a perverse and contradictory twist, Wendy’s annoyance with herself for her

unreasonable resentment about Jonah’s trip did not inspire kinder behavior toward her long-suffering husband.

When Jonah had done everything he possibly could toward getting the stall set up and ready for the

Faire to begin, he said, “If you don’t have anything you want me to do, I’ll go jam with Wally and the Angeletti

brothers. You could come, too—you haven’t had any time with Betty.”

“Sure!” Wendy replied, almost shouting. “You go on over and have your fun with Ricky and George and

Wally. You don’t give a damn about me.”

Jonah began to make soothing noises, but his wife continued, “Betty doesn’t like me anyway.”

“Of course she does,” Jonah began, “and I love you. I’ll stay here, if you want. I don’t have to jam w—”

“Just go, dammit! Go!”

“But W—”

“Go! I don’t want to see you. Just go!”

 After several minutes of that, Jonah said, “OK, OK, I’ll go. But I’d be happy to stay h—”

“No! Just go!”

As Jonah began walking slowly away, an instrument case in each hand, Wendy called after him, “And

don’t come back!”

Once Jonah was out of sight, Wendy pounded her fists on the carefully-joined slabs that constituted her

stall’s front counter. Her pounding made pieces of jewelry jump beneath the fabric draped over them,

fortunately not propelling any to the ground, and made Wendy’s hands sore. She had not yet set her sleeping

bag on the foam pad Jonah had placed on one side of the stall, so she sat on the grass under one of the rustic

tables he had built. She somehow even managed to resent that Jonah had made the tables, although they were

sturdy and served her well every year. Sobbing quietly, she rocked back and forth under the table.

Had the stallholders on either side been in their stalls, they would have heard Wendy’s sobs and come

over to inquire what was wrong and offer support—the Faire was that kind of place, a community, almost a

family—but both groups were off socializing elsewhere. As a result, Wendy rocked and sobbed and sobbed and

rocked for more than an hour, before she pulled her sleeping bag out of the van and threw it on top of the

canvas-covered pad.

She could hear Jonah’s singing, his voice carrying the two hundred yards from where the other musicians

were camped, and his beautiful harmonies to their voices, and that made her sob more. The music, and

Wendy’s sobbing, went on for another hour. Remembering what she had said, she worried. Maybe he really

won’t come back. What if some beautiful groupie takes him back to her tent or camper? Such thoughts made Wendy
cry all the more, as she lay on top of her sleeping bag, pressing her face hard into it and the pad beneath to hide

her sobs and stifle her occasional scream.

Wendy had succumbed to Jonah’s charms at the Lifestyle Faire twelve years before the night of her

sobbing screaming fit, and she knew several women who had entered into liaisons with Jonah at the Faire in the

years before that. She could easily imagine some young beauty recognizing him as the man who could make her

dreams come true and persuading him she could do the same for him. In this negative swing of Wendy’s BPD,

she did not perceive the Faire as a special place, a good place. Instead, she thought of it as a place that might

take her husband away from her, a threatening place, a frightening place.

What if he doesn’t come back!? Wendy thought with increasing panic. Jonah didn’t need anything from

their campsite at Wendy’s stall—he had his instruments with him and clothes on his back. He didn’t even need

the van—he could just intensify his performing schedule and buy another one. He could just walk away, could

stay away as Wendy had told him to do. Thinking of that precipitated another bout of muffled sobbing and

screaming.

What if he never comes back!? Wendy almost convinced herself to walk over and visit Wally’s wife, Betty,

and listen to the beautiful music, sure that Jonah would then come home with her. Or almost sure. Not quite

sure—and Wendy knew she could never endure the pain and the ignominy if he refused to return with her to

their campsite. She therefore did not risk the possibility and instead sobbed and screamed into her bedding for

another hour.

The music stopped, out of deference to other campers’ desire for sleep, but the sobbing continued.

When Mrs. Robson noticed that the singing and playing had ceased, she could not remember how much time
had elapsed since she last heard the music. That Jonah was not beside her meant he had not come back—just as

she had told him not to—which set off another episode of screaming and sobbing into the bedding.

The screaming subsided, but the muffled sobbing continued. Perhaps twenty minutes later, Wendy

heard a voice—Jonah’s voice!—softly calling, “Wendy, are you OK?”

Before she could clear her head enough to reply, Jonah softly asked, “Are you alone? Is it OK if I come

in there?”

“What do you mean, am I al—” Wendy burst into sobs before she could continue.

She felt Jonah’s arms encircling her and leaned gratefully against him, as he said, “Well, I thought

maybe you wanted me to stay away because you had somebody else you wanted to be with. I didn’t want to

interfere.”

“Jonah! Did you want me to be with somebody else?”

“No, of course not. I want you to be with me, but you told me to stay away.”

That elicited more sobbing, but Wendy’s fear and resentment evaporated. Her sobs arose from feeling

bad about hurting and upsetting this man who was always—really always—so good to her. Although apologies

never came easily to Wendy’s lips, she managed to say, “I’m sorry, Jonah. I didn’t mean it. I was a bitch. I’m

really sorry.”

She relaxed into the comforting embrace of Jonah’s strong arms, as he said, “Don’t worry, Wendy. I’m

here and I love you.”

“It wasn’t me. It was the disease.”

 “Yeah, I get that. I don’t like it, but I love you and I do understand. I know you can’t help it

sometimes.”

Feeling overwhelmed by love and gratitude, Wendy thought she either had to say a thousand words or

two, so she said, “Thank you,” and held her husband with all the strength her arm muscles could produce. She

knew this would not be the last time, knew the ugly symptoms of her condition would rise up and cause discord

and pain again, but she also knew Jonah loved her and that their love could overcome those episodes.
Dan A. Cardoza

Evil Rabbit King

In my head, it's 2006 and not 2022.

I think my only child Jeremy was eight back then.
It was the Easter of 2006 when Jeremy got the idea of building his first rabbit hutch.
I clearly remember how all the crazy shit started. It was on a Saturday, the week after Easter.
That’s when Jeremy commenced his campaign to save abandoned Easter rabbits.
Easter rabbits, you know, the white bunnies pet stores sell. Easter is a time of renewal, when Jesus rises,
of Oschter Haw’s.
Oschter Haw’s are the original Easter bunnies. All modern day Easter rabbits are descendants of the
Oschter Haw rabbit.
Oschter Haw rabbits were here before Jesus did Houdini.
As you know, Easter is the time of year when loving mothers and fathers across America gift their
children a butt load of Easter gifts, including Easter baskets. Each Easter basket is filled with lots of chocolate
rabbit candy. Dentists love all the decay that Easter brings.
It's the time of year when hoards of parents give their precious children live Easter bunnies.
~
I’ve woken again in a cold sweat. It’s 1:30 A.M. sharp.
Each early morning I attempt to exit the same nightmare, but it’s futile.
I’m always a few short breaths away from an anxiety attack. All those years haven’t lifted a damned finger to
save me. They only exist to remind me of what I’ve lost.
I’ve been away from Jack Daniels and a dicey conscience for the longest time.
I've only gotten a few hours of sleep again. But at least I got me some R.E.M’S.
He’s standing at the end of my bed, Evil King.
Evil King is a New Zealand, blood red, monstrous rabbit.
Like every night for a few weeks before and after Easter, The Red King shows up uninvited.
I fancy him an executioner. He wears an oily leather hangman’s mask over his face.
Evil Easter Rabbit King is exceptionally tall. How tall? Well, his ears damned near touch the twelve foot
bedroom ceiling.
Like all the other early mornings, I sit attentively and follow the same lecture. In truth, the other
students and I have no choice.
The flesh I can barely see under his shroud, the neck, around his eyes, and the air openings for his nose
and mouth is Shar-Peis-Esque, folded skin where fur used to be. The rest of his body is fur, mangy red colored
fur. His whiskers appear translucent, iridescent. He’s intelligent.
My giant New Zealand Red is fearless and dominant like no other apex predator.
He smells like rabbit hole, putrefied duck fat, sulfur, and rust. The horrible scent is something akin to
dried slaughterhouse blood.
My furry monster is ancient. He’s been around since the creation of fear.
I’m in survival mode. I’m on edge. The hair on the back of my neck is tingling with low-voltage
electricity.
His paws are giant, dingy red oven mitts. Each paw is fitted with unsheathed claws. The daggers appear
to be made of barbed wire and fishhooks. Each paw drips blood. The King’s blood is viscous, like blackstrap
molasses. Everything about him feels ancient and primordial.
His snout extends when he unhinges his long muzzle through his breathing hole in the executioner. He
intends to form words. He appears wolfish. I've seen the look before at the animal shelter where I volunteer.
 It’s the same look I saw in the eyes of this large pit bull a while back. The pit bull had attacked a delivery
driver, nearly tearing his arm off. The dog’s eyes appeared exhausted and hollow on the day of the execution. It
was like the vicious animal was ready to be put down.
Evil Easter Rabbit King's face is angry and menacing this early Monday morning. His teeth are sharp,
mainly canine.
I sit straight up in bed. I can feel the heat and the foulness of his breath.
I thank someone’s god that most of his early morning lectures only take place each year, one week before
and after Easter. He speaks fluent English, but he can also communicate in Hebrew. It’s his choice.
When he begins the same lecture, I get teleported back into the sixth grade.
I’m in one of the front row seats in the classroom. The classes are always filled to the rafters with
children who mean well.
Evil Easter Rabbit King delivers the same speech each early morning, word for word.
Before class begins, perhaps to get our attention, the Evil lets out this squealing, high-pitched, death
trap rabbit sound.
And then he stops.
He looks like one of the creatures in the movie Silent Hill.
It's then we enter his alien world.
Evil Rabbit King begins.
O-o-ok children says The Easter Rabbit King.
It’s that time of year again, chumps. Remember. You know, the time of year when you all get sick and tired of
taking care of your beloved new Easter pests. You heard me right, bitches. I said F-ing pests, not pets! I’m talking about
the furry pets you can’t seem to live without each year, dumb shits. The kind of pets your stupid parents purchase at pet
stores and the other outlets, always right before Easter.
Okay, for those of you who are too slow on the uptake, I will explain things on an elementary level.
So, it’s a week after Easter. Jesus has already escaped from his own rabbit hole. He’s ascended into heaven.
After the longest week, your parents have had enough and dumped your baby rabbits in the closest thing
resembling a thicket. They’ve lied to you, told you that some fairy godmother has taken them to paradise.
 Evil touches the ceiling, using his middle finger as a pointing stick.
Listen up, girls and boys. Believe me, you have no choice.
For the sake of the Easter bunnies, hopefully, you've already let them starve to death. Trust me, if not, what
comes next is worse.
Starve to death, you might ask? Yes, kids, I’m talkin’ about when you pet them, your pests, you can feel their
backbone and ribs. I’m talking about when their bones damned near stick out of their unkempt, matted fur.
I can hear the awkward rumble in the classroom. Most of the dull students don’t know what in the hell
the giant New Zealand red rabbit is talking about. It's Kafkaesque. One thing is for sure, we're all going to
experience anxiety while doing our homework.
“SILENCE, CLASS, SILENCE!
Never whisper when I’m out of control!
Okay, darlings, please continue to follow along.
When your rabbits crap the house up, just leave their shit wherever it lands on the floor.
The kids giggle. They say, “Teachers don’t say the word, shit.”
How do I phrase this? Okay, remember class how your mother and father nearly stroked out when you pissed the
bed or brought home those crappy grades? Well, it was a big F’ing deal, right? Damned right, that’s what I’m talkin’
about.
The kids can’t contain their laughter. Evil Easter Rabbit King is so evil, yet funny.
“KIDS, EARS UP! Focus, I’m preachin’ here. Don’t make me claw your cauliflower looking ears off your
cabbage patch heads!
Oh, and be sure to feed those snowy white little bitches all kinds of toxic grub: Greek Yogurt, dill pickles, Cheetos.
Hell, give em’ Trix for all I care. Give them anything but certified rabbit food.
LISTEN UP, SHITS! Go ahead and neglect the cute little things. They are all going to die anyway.
A Tsunami of funeral silence floods my bedroom and the classroom.
There isn’t a smile or smirk on any of the children’s faces. Maybe, just maybe, they’ve learned a valuable
lesson?”
Kids, ask your parents to find a butcher without scruples.
 Evil throws his head over his shoulders and laughs at the ceiling. The kid's shutter. Evil drones on.
Let the damned fur-balls stink themselves to death on the porch at night, all alone in the cold in their cages.
Who cares? After all, you and your dense parents have more important things to do, like play video games or drown in
social media.
Turn ‘em loose, those cuddly darlings, deep in the woods, Yezz the woods, my favorite place!
Oh, before I wink out in a flash and you all go to sleep for the remainder of the night, I want to say one last
thing.
Little David interrupts the Evil Rabbit Easter King.
Put your arm down, little David or I will chew it off at the elbow.
The classroom turns morgue quiet again. Going through life without arms is unimaginable.
Next year kids, howza about we do cute, tiny chicks, Yezz, lots and lots of fucking baby chicks?
BABY CHICK’s, KIDS, yum de dum! Meat grinders, microwaves, oh my!
After a long pause, and another loud, wounded shriek, Red Rabbit finishes his lecture.
Heads up pukes. You know I'm being facetious, right? Totally sarcastic?
One of the straight ‘A’ students in the back of the class, on the verge of insanity, politely asks, “Evil
Teacher, what does facetious and sarcastic mean?”
Evil Easter Rabbit King races to the back of the class and attacks the student. He ravishes several of the
students. He was done being preachy. He’s had enough of their naive shit.
I wait until the end of all the carnage. Somehow I survive the lecture, like most of the students.
Maybe I’ve been spared again for a reason. I figure it’s because I owe Jeremy something.
And so I climb out of bed. I grab a smoke and guzzle down a cup of day old coffee. After, I make my
way to the manufactured fog in the shower. It’s in there I can temporarily disappear.
And after, I’ll head to New Sacramento. I have someone I need to see there.
~
“Cody, Mr. Burns? I know it’s late. But we have C.P.S. waiting for your son down the hall. We are finished
with his interrogation.
 They want a few minutes with him, alone, before he’s taken to juvenile hall on Kiefer Road. Since he’s
only 16, they need to prep him for what to expect when he gets to court. Be assured, Mr. Burns, I will comb
through my contact directory to ensure he's assigned a competent public defender.”
I’d had enough experience as a child with social workers to know exactly how much they really care. In
reality, C.P.S. doesn't give two shits about anyone’s complicated childhood beyond their underpaid Friday
paycheck. Damn it, I just want to show my boy I support him.
I stand just outside the detective’s interview room, the so called hot box. From out in the hallway, Trix
and I share a glance. In my eyes, he’s still a little boy. How could he have done such a terrible thing?
But who am I to judge? After all, I'm a repentant addict, a father who’s done his fair share of self
destruction and time? My last stint was close to home, at what they call New Sacramento. New Sacramento is
an updated version of the historic Folsom State Prison. The prison is about ten miles away as the crow flies
from my crappy one bedroom apartment.
We’ve called him Jeremy Trix, my Ex and I, for the longest time. It’s all about Jeremy doing killer tricks
on his Arbor’s Martillo skateboard. And so the name Tricks, or Trix, seemed appropriate. My Trix has nothing
to do with the silly cereal rabbit.
From a distance, I watch as Jeremy uses his fingers like a comb. That’s a habit Jeremy’s picked up to get
the blonde curtain of hair out of his dull green eyes. He pretends to look at anything on the spotless floor, gum,
elephants, just about anything else. I watch as he shuffles his black Skechers back and forth. He places his palms
on his knee. His hands are caked with dried blood.
They'd read him his rights in front of me. D.N.A. was authorized and collected. I watched when he was
photographed nearly naked from head to toe. There were bruises and scars I hadn’t seen before. I had been
aware of some of the psychological wounds he’d gotten while living with his mother and stepfather. But the
other scars were shocking.
They’d taken enough evidence to convict O.J. Simpson again. The detectives recorded Trix’s confession
the way he described it. It was a horrible event.
Jeremy inhaled long and hard before they walked him down the hall. He looked fresh in his assigned
white papery jumpsuit.
 They'd kept his bloody jeans and the old school Metallica Tee shirt I’d given him for his birthday.
Forensics would need his clothing and shoes to take a second look at the spattered blood patterns.
“See you soon, son," I said. But there's no response. I could only hear the flip-flop noise of jailhouse
sandals.
I shed some serious tears on my way back to my hellhole apartment. It’s about a twenty minute ride. It’s
the only kind of rent a former druggie can afford. When your life is a turnstile of good and bad, a revolving door
of in and outs, that's what you get, kids. I don't need anyone to remind me that all my bad boy shit caused me
and all of my loved ones a lot of grief. After all, a small part of my conscience hasn’t been damaged.
Late the following day, I found myself reading the local rag at my favorite donut shop over coffee in
Citrus Heights. There’s this article in the Sacramento Bee. The headline is “The biggest horror fest since
Richard Chase.”
Richard Chase had been named the Vampire Killer. He was a predecessor to Jeffrey Dahmer.
I nearly choke on the last of my maple bar.
~
I’d heard about all of Jeremy’s new cages. Jeremy and I had briefly discussed all the new cages he’d built in the
backyard of stepfather’s house. At the time, he had maybe three or four hutches.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the thick wired cages, all twelve of them, were part of the crime
scene. Hell, my Ex’s entire house was a crime scene, from the bedroom where she'd been tied up all the way out
to the street. There were a few photos to go along with the short article.
~
Here is how it started, a young boy saving rabbits. It was the week after Easter in 2006.
We’d driven from South Sacramento to Ancil Hoffman Park. It’s a county park with deep woods. The
park is named after a local gentleman who’d distinguished himself.
Ancil Hoffman Park is considered the jewel of the American River Parkway. The American River
meanders north and south through Sacramento County for 23 miles before it joins the blue-collared
Sacramento.
 Once joined, the Sacramento River twists and contours through the delta as it feels its way into San
Francisco Bay.
Marci and I loved the weekend outings with our only child, Jeremy.
After lunch, Jeremy and I would typically walk through the woods near the golf course. After we’d
reached the nature center, we spent some time observing the rescued Great Horned Owl. It had a broken wing
on the mend. The park rangers were taking care of it.
We trekked an extra half mile from the nature center to the river. It was peaceful and quiet that day, a
few deer, some wild turkeys, squirrels, nothing to write home about. We skipped a few stones across the river.
On our way back to our picnic blanket, up the trail, Jeremy spotted something under an oak tree. It was
maybe fifty feet away. As we got closer, we noticed it was a rabbit. It wasn’t just any rabbit. It was a vast, white
Easter rabbit.
Jeremy crouched low and petted the trembling thing. He'd gotten really close, down on his knees. The
hapless thing had clearly been released into the gorgeous park after Easter. I’d seen this before.
Our rabbit was just another innocent rabbit, just like the other fragile creatures dumped in the park by
loving parents, loving parents who are damned tired of cleaning up after the rabbits, all the pellets.
"Please, pops, can we bring it home?”
I’m not one to pick up after someone else's bad choices or mistakes. Mine keep me plenty busy.
“Son, you know your mom ain’t going to have anything to do with this, right?”
“Mom will let me keep it, I promise, pops. She always gives in. She feels guilty because she works all the
time.”
Looking back, to be honest, that’s the last time I saw Jeremy wear a real smile.
"What the hell, son? Let's give it a try?"
"Really, papa, I love you. You’ve got balls."
And so, Jeremy swooped up the small floppy-eared wonder. The bunny was all eyes and wet nose.
We slowly walked back to the picnic area. We had to plan. Soon enough, Jeremy presented the
abandoned rabbit to his pissed off mother.
 I thought the thing would keep my son occupied, that it might somehow relieve some of the loneliness
Jeremy felt inside, at home and school. The kind of loneliness a sensitive child can be infected with for not
having a sister, brother, or close friends.
Jeremy is smart. He knew his mother didn’t want to have any more children with me. Of course, it was
my fault. I own that. I wasn’t a prize. A dark cloud hovered over our family.
After a good amount of verbal arm twisting, Martha relented. She’d agreed to go along with the rabbit
experiment. She was reasonable back then. Drugs were just a hobby.
The following week, most evenings turned into purchasing the needed odds and ends at Home Depot
and watching Jeremy build his first rabbit hutch. Google and YouTube provided Jeremy with instructions.
Jeremy used scrap wood and fasteners I’d littered about on the workbench in the small garage. Luckily,
I’d discovered this leftover partial roll of chicken wire in the garage's makeshift loft. The chicken cage wire had
been left there by the previous renter.
We’d purchase rabbit food. At PetSmart, Jeremy insisted on a cheap metal watering bowl. At Goodwill.
Jeremy demanded protection, so I bought a small Master lock.
Pop’s, “I’m concerned about hawks, coyotes, even cats,” he’d said.
There was no way in hell Marci was going to let the rabbit stay in the garage. The garage had become a
marijuana dispensary before it was legal. Jeremy would have to keep his cage in the backyard.
Two weeks passed. By now, Jeremy had gotten into the rhythm of feeding his pet rabbit and cleaning up
all the rabbit droppings. It didn't take long before he'd twisted our arms to go back to the park since he’d had
such a good time that week after Easter Sunday.
After K.F.C. and slurps of gravy and biscuits, Jeremy tugged me up on my feet. He insisted that we hike
down to the river again. The greenbelt along the American River is mostly oak forest.
We'd ended up under the same oak tree where he'd found R-1. Jeremy looked sad. It was as if he was at
the supermarket and would simply pull a carrot off a shelf, in his case, a rabbit with a carrot. He must have been
hoping a rabbit, like Jesus, would appear out of nowhere, better yet, out of a cave, but there was nothing insight.
Nothing unless you count the coolest of breezes, breezes that wafted up off the cool back of the American
River?
 We’d made it to the water’s edge, near the skipping stones. We skipped a few. Jeremy chatted up a
storm. He was on one of his too few and in between talking jags. I agreed to take another trail on our way back.
Jeremy spotted it. It wasn’t more than twenty ahead on the trail. It was rust colored red. I attempted to
hold onto my boy with everything I had, but he was strong with too much love. He’d forced himself free. By the
time I quickened my step to the horrific scene, Jeremy was balling like a newborn calf at the top of his lungs. It's
the waling you do when you've lost a child.
Just off the pathway, there was a patch of blood stained fur and meat.
It was an empty rabbit skull. Less meat than what's left after you've finished picking the
flesh out of the body of a crab, more phlegm than guts. There was fur and part of a dirty foot, more
bowels, now dry and dull, half eaten by coyotes and ravens. There was a bloody cotton ball. Under closer
inspection, it was the rabbit's tail.
Snot bubbles percolated out of Jeremy’s nose and mouth. He'd sobbed himself into near hysteria. His
scalp was sweaty and wet, as if he’d been fighting at school again. He was shaking. He turned into a coiled child
in a fetal position. He was red faced and angry, homicidal.
“Why, what, who, dad?” he’d said.
"Son," I grabbed him by his bloody hand, "let's go, Jeremy. Your mother is waiting?"
“No, I never want to go home again, pops.”
“Jeremy,” I was firmer.
“Let's go now. There are coyotes down here, along the river. They have homes in the clay banks and
fields up and over the levy. They eat anything they can catch, even cats, lost small dogs, dead salmon.”
Jeremy and I set off to the picnic area. It was mostly dragging him along. We had another 100 feet
before we’d arrive.
I was certain Marci would be ready to go home. She needed an upper in the afternoon. That’s when the
damned thing appeared. It was less than ten feet in front of us, under some sagebrush.
The tiny animal was skinny and shaking, hyper venting in the coolness of the shade. Its beady eyes
looked weary. We approached with caution.
"Dad looks like this one was pure white too. But it’s much smaller. He looks so thin, dad, poor thing.”
 Jeremy’s mother was anxious. Her senses were alert. In the afternoons, she'd had X-ray vision and
superhero hearing. Anxiety can do that. She was waving for us to hurry up.
Jeremy and I bent over to look closer. I could see Marci signaling from a distance for the two of us to
hurry the hell up.
“You see your mother over there, Jeremy?” I pointed.
“I do, pops.”
Well, son, we can't take it home.”
I lowered my head, knowing we should have stayed home.
"Please, dad, it’s going to die out here if we leave it? You’ve seen how a lot of these Easter bunnies end
up? Please, dad, I won't ask you to come back to the park for a long time, I promise? I won’t be able to fall
asleep again if we don’t save it.”
Back then, I told Trix that it was mainly the coyotes that killed the pets near the park. I’d researched it
online. It’s not that they are vicious. I get that. They are hungry. They are no different than any other of the
park’s apex predators. Coyotes just wanted to survive like us.
I’d seen other Easter bunnies on our second trip to the park. I also saw a lot of dead Easter bunnies. I
wasn’t about to show Jeremy.
One had an arrow through its skull. I saw another that had been skinned alive and gutted. Another
Easter rabbit was hung with a noose under a small tree. I was confident that human apex predators had done
the dirty work.
Bottom line, all those years ago, Marci and I agreed to let Jeremy save another hapless Easter rabbit.
We’d let him save a perfect creature that some careless parent had dumped in the woods to be eaten. Jeremy
named him R-2.
All the Easter children say, “Please, please, mommy, can we get one? We’ll take good care of it. We will
feed it and give it love. We will clean up after it, please, please, daddy?” Children are children, after all. It’s up
to us to teach them responsibility and patience.
Easter rabbits are made to make busy parents feel good. Our precious Jack and Jill think they are
damned good Easter presents. After all, they are gifts that keep on giving.
 But, after the children stop caring for them, the Easter bunnies become a pain in the ass.
And so there is more relief than guilt when these parents sneak out after dark and dump their collective rabbits
in the nearest woods. In truth, any location will do, as long as it’s far enough away from home and their lowly
conscience: local parks, swamps, someone's yard, any remote location away from any responsibility.
On their way home, the responsible, doting parents convince themselves that their Easter rabbits will
live happily ever after. Indeed the hapless things will be spared the tooth and claw of the jungle?
Of course, the kids never notice that their loving pets are gone. There's school the next day, homework,
sporting activities, anything. And, of course, they'll be off to soccer or maybe for some skating on the weekend.
There's always that visit to the mall waiting for them, a Marvel Movie perhaps. Hell, even homework looks
more appealing than caring for their little eating shit machines?
~
Once the kids at school found out about Jeremy’s concern for Easter rabbits, they started to tease and bully him.
“O.M.G., all the lions, tigers, and bears out in the park, Jeremy, how scary?” Haley Thompson was
relentless.
Andy Jenkins, the kid down the street, asked Jeremy, “Shit-for-brains, don’t you eat meat?”
“Jeremy, you are weak and pathetic, Easter rabbits? Give me a damned break?” said Kyle Jennings, the
kid that used to be Jeremy’s best friend had said.
Knuckle-dragging Johnny chimed in, "Coyotes, my ass, you dip-shit, there's no such predator’s in the park?”
“My father says they hold up on the banks of the river. I trust him!” Jeremy’s face went red.
"From now on, Jeremy, we'll keep calling you Trix. Only it won’t be because you are a badass skater. It
will because we think you are silly. Silly wabbit, Trix are for kids. Remember that old YouTube cereal
commercial, Jeremy? Well, now you are Trix the silly wabbit, dude.”
After what Haley said, the growing horde of eavesdropping kids howled. They’d turned into a pack of
hungry hyenas. In front of this growing throng of kids, his close friends yelled, “Trix, hay tricks. Trix are for
kids, Trix!”
Embarrassed, Jeremy ran all the way home with his backpack, toting his beloved longboard over his
shoulder.
 That night, after dark, Jeremy ran to the park. At the top of the hill, on Tarshes Drive, Jeremy soaked
his skateboard, squirting it good from top to bottom. After, he struck a match, sending the skateboard down the
steep hill.
At first, the skateboard wobbled, eventually straightening out.
Jeremy cried and fumed at his beloved rolling pyre.
His beloved pirate ship was altered forever. He’d created a Norse funeral ship.
After the longest time, the skateboard shot into a thicket of scrubs, setting the isolated bramble on fire.
Jeremy had gone from Tricks to Trix, the rabbit. He'd learn to despise his new name. An exquisite pain
scorched through his heart as true as any arrow shot from a crossbow.
Over the next several years, all the cool kids insisted on shaming Jeremy into the dark recesses of silence.
In a cyclone of building madness, all he had left was his rabbits, his caged rabbits, and his shrinking world.
~
Since I had been placed in jail again, Children’s Protective Services chose Marci over me, mainly because she
was better at hiding her demons.
In 2010, I found myself divorced and incarcerated again.
Marci and I were done. She divorced me while I was in jail. I was left to face my demons alone.
Somehow I'd begun to figure things out. I had to choose between getting sober or living a short life.
Soon after our divorce Marci tied the knot with this beefy guy named Jack. Jack made it clear that he
hated children, claiming none of his own.
Hanging around Jack and his mother's toxicity caused Jeremy to grow silent with anger. As if his
conflicts at school weren’t enough? And now, he was terrorized at home too. It hadn’t taken long before Marci
turned into Jack’s coconspirator. When a user and a dealer live together, it doesn’t take long until the bottom
falls out.
It’s my understanding, letters, relatives, year after year, that Jeremy continued to rescue the abandoned
rabbits, those damned after-market Easter bunnies that no one claimed.
About the time I got out, Jeremy had turned sixteen. He was a sophomore in high school.
 Once paroled, Marci let me take my moody Trix to Chuck E. Cheese, mostly on Sundays. While there,
he’d pretend to be happy. As happy as you can feel with other divorced kids eating pizza?
Chuck E. Cheese is the perfect meet-up, a good custody exchange location for divorced parents. It’s the
kind of place you don’t have to work too hard to prove you have little in common with your child. It’s easy to
watch a teen from a distance while convincing yourself you're a good father.
Occasionally, we'd enjoy a giant pizza once I got Jeremy to sit at the table. Sometimes, I couldn't get the
kid to shut up. Everything poured out of his mouth all at once.
There was a time or two when he sounded too excited and faked being happy. The things he'd say were
fascinating, maybe a little disturbing. But hey, I'm not a psychologist. In fact, I’m a screwed-up father. What
the hell do I know for sure?
And yet, how could I ever have known that evil was heading toward us all. That it was just around the
corner.
Trix showed me the old cigarette burns on his arms and back. They’d mostly healed. But I sensed the
sinuous scars over his heart would continue to grow.
His mother was adamant. She’d said, “Jeremy burned himself. I think it’s something like self harm?”
I wasn’t buying that crap. My hunch was that his stepfather was frustrated. After all, he hates kids.
Jeremy has HDHD. I was certain that didn’t play well in their marriage. My hunch was that Jack had placed
significant effort into gaining control over Marci. Maybe it would be easier without Jeremy in the picture?
By the time Jeremy finished his sophomore year, he’d constructed at least 13 rabbit hutches. Each
enclosure held two to three of the abandoned Easter rabbits.
Most of the updates regarding Jeremy’s care came through holiday cards. She’d send the cards on special
occasions. The formality was a way of keeping her distance. The occasional brief note always included a thin
veneer of lies describing her happiness in her new marriage, the stability and all.
Her husband was a mechanic. He worked a lot. I was sure she wanted more out of life.
Marci had written, “But it’s not like he’s in prison, right?” That one hurt.
~
The school psychologist called me once. I’d just delivered a load of mattresses in Omaha.
 "Please encourage your son to attend therapy. He really needs it.”
“Therapy,” I asked?
“Sorry about that, sir. I thought you knew. Your son, Jeremy, told me about a reoccurring dream he’s
been having.”
“Let me guess,” I’d said, “does it involve locomotives?”
“Yes, so you’ve heard about the dream?
"Yes, he called it a nightmare. In his nightmare, he’s been tied to train these tracks by a monster. He
watches how this vintage steam engine barrels toward him.”
“Go on?”
“Well, I’ll do my best. The locomotive is racing toward him at full throttle. It’s shiny and black. It has a
blood red emblem like a hood ornament.”
“What the hell?”
Caleb, the part time school therapist, can't hide his excitement. “Well, Jeremy always wakes up
screaming. Almost conscious, he can hear someone else’s voice leave his mouth. The voice yells death and
destruction.”
“Jesus Christ,” I yell!
He screams, Mr. Burns, sometimes during our brief sessions. He screams, “Hurry the hell up and run
over me. Turn me into body parts.”
"Holy crap, doctor, that's some dark shit."
“Yes. Mr. Burns, I’m not a doctor, by the way. I’m a licensed therapist with a Masters's degree in social
work. My take, Mr. Burns, is that Jeremy is under too much pressure. He’s going to explode someday.”
After our brief discussion, I get the chills from an icy wind in the future.
~
The day of the massacre was 2014.
Jeremy was a junior in high school. Trix or Jeremy had returned home. He’d been to Ancil Hoffman
Park again. It was on a cloudy Saturday just a week after Easter.
He’d picked up another abandoned Easter rabbit.
 From what I'd learned, Jeremy walked into his house. He was carrying a portable animal cage. His
mother, Marci, and his stepfather, Jack, had been seated in an adjacent room.
The house smelled like a gymnasium. This meant Jack had put his hands on Marci again.
Jeremy walked past the family room doorway. He was headed straight toward the sliding patio door and
the backyard. He glanced over. He observed his mother’s black eyes. Dried mascara had streaked and dried
down her pretty face. She’d been crying. Her lips appeared puffy and purple. There was a cut.
Jack lay lounging on his favorite oily easy chair.
He shot a sneer at Jeremy. Jeremy gave him the stink eye. Jack couldn’t contain himself. He chuckled
under his heavy breath. He was drunk and high again.
“Got you another wabbit, hey boy. Don’t you know Trix are for kids?”
Jeremy froze in place. He watched as his mother stiffened her back, sitting straight up in her T.V. chair.
Her face was a jack-in-the-box about to explode.
"Stick that mangy piece of shit outback with all the rest, Trixie, hehe! You're getting to be quite the
hoarder, ain’t you, boy?"
Jeremy had an excess inventory of his stepfather’s bullshit and bullying. So he kept walking. He didn’t
want to get into it again with the house troll.
Jeremy turned away. He’d walk away from the dysfunctional interaction. He’d head to the backyard and
the quiet of the rabbit hutches.
By now, some kids at school had quit the hurtful name calling, if only to save their pathetic lives. Jeremy
had grown tall and strong. Apparently, stepfather Jack hadn’t noticed.
Jeremy opened the sliding door. He stepped onto the patio. He turned around. Facing the house, he
rolled the patio door shut, locking in all the discourse.
After he began to walk toward the cages, halfway across the lawn, Jeremy raised his head.
His stepfather Jack had pushed all the wrong buttons this time.
The rabbit hutches, up against the backyard fence, appeared disheveled.
As he approached the cages, the small white rabbit inside the portable carrier began to thrash and
squeal.
 Jeremy stopped in his tracks and looked over all the cages. That’s when sanity shape-shifted. It had
turned a toad in his skull. The toad wanted out.
The tiny Easter Bunny in Jeremy’s carrier gnawed at the door lock, the hinges, it chiseled at the plastic.
Jeremy seemed to float. Now directly in front of the cages, he dropped the portable carrier. The carrier’s
cage door opened. The tiny rabbit streaked out of site.
He looked left. Jeremy looked to the right.
Jeremy stood transfixed.
He'd arrived just in time for the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Somehow, he’d have to go back in time. He’d
need to reconstruct reality so he could fit all the disarticulated body parts of his rabbits back together.
Jeremy heard the shrill train whistle in his head. But he wasn’t coming out of another nightmare. This
was reality. It was the pesky locomotive again. The train that sped through the worst of his nightmares, only
this time it was real.
Jeremy watched as the locomotive rounded the familiar corner, the one in his recurrent dreams. The
sound was harsh and mechanical, the whistle a blazing fire alarm.
The evil conductor’s bloody face grew even longer. The rabbit’s skin was sweaty drenched leather.
Somehow, Jeremy was able to see inside this thing's head.
Shortly after, his locomotive's pressure cooker exploded. Everything in Jeremy’s world ignited. The only
thing left inside his skull was toad shit and red vapor.
~
The Sacramento County detectives took extended breaks. There weren't enough vomit bags. A police
Chaplin and a county therapist counseled the crime scene detectives. They were sickened. What they'd found in
the backyard was a massacre. But it was much more. It was an emphatic statement.
They’d tagged and taken pictures of every rabbit body part: smelly guts, severed heads with vacant and
dull Easter eyes, disjointed legs, an unlucky rabbit’s foot or two.
Shit and piss, the stench of stool and blood permeated the crisp spring air.
 They’d taken photographs. They shot a video of Jeremy’s stepfather. Every last piece of him they’d
discovered in the different cages. He’d been dismembered with a reciprocal saw, the cord still wrapped around
what was his neck.
“Jesus that kid Jeremy was systematic.” Jake had seen a lot of crime scenes.
"Yup, and look," Connor's pointed. "This kid, Jeremy, took the time to pin all the white poster board
on the rabbit hutch doors.”
Using a black Sharpie, Jeremy had written, “Silly wabbit, Trix are for kids.”
~
It's 2022. We’ve seen a lot of ups and downs over the years. But things seem to be getting better.
Today I’m visiting my son, Jeremy. He’s serving his time at New Sacramento prison.
But for faith and hope, It wouldn’t be worth the trip.
I typically visit Jeremy on Sundays.
Since he was born, I've come to believe there was always an open cell door waiting for him. It waited for
the longest time.
Jeremy told me once that he enjoys the cooling touch of the cell door’s chipped teal paint. His touch is
no longer wanted by his mother or the rest of the family.
Jeremy is ashamed of what he's done. But he’s not apologetic. He told me once that his hands remind
him of decaying flesh, not fit for touching. He tells me, like in Macbeth, he can’t get his hands clean enough.
I visit him on Sundays because he seems calmer on Sundays. He rarely talks. I know he doesn't mind the
visits. They're mainly for me.
After visiting hours, somehow I drag Jeremy's clumsy ghost of a heart along with me. It’s chained to my
ankle. Our relationship has become a ball and chain.
I drag his iron heart out of the visitor’s room, clear down this long dark corridor. I drag the heavy thing
through the security door. Hell, I pull it all the way out of the exit gate.
Eventually, I reach my car. I unlock the door. Somehow I’m able to unhook the ball and chain, at least
temporarily. I watch as it turns into a black balloon with string. It begins to float away. I watch until it
disappears into the stratosphere. Only then do I get inside.
 I flop down into the driver’s seat. Exhausted I contemplate for a moment.
Part of me is sad. I know deep down my son will never live long enough to get rid of his feelings of guilt.
And yet, in a sick way, part of me is envious. Why? Because my son, like vampires will live forever. Maybe he
won’t exist in physical form, but he will surely haunt the dreams of children and their parents each Easter and
for centuries to come.
After all, my son is the Rabbit King.
I wake. Inside the car, the sky is dark.
I push back into the seat and start the car.
I can’t help but wonder out loud which of us truly needs the grace and comfort of the other.

The End
David Wolf

Praise Euphony

praise euphony—
what I heard

or was it

fired up (at any rate), solid as any bard gone

prismatic in the flow of absence, in the shadows of the cold-coded city of shredded has-been
selves, trashed cartons flapping in the wind, shouldering a lack of correspondences.
Something’s changed along the long line of thinking to feeling to remembrance,
long, that is, as one particular stretch of the ceaseless.
blow of applied
rustlings outside my hut of . . . knowledge:
store is to pineapple as intuitional world is to passive kicks baked at close range
Out with it and in through the gate of wanting, of textual glaze.
More famous doings? Big spills?
. . . proximate as youth’s sunny comments, moist faces maintaining mock floral
candelabras . . . drained minds, limber as the Lord skipping up and down steps unswept by
summer’s after-school pleas

Hello,
reflected in the shop windows, layered into me like need
chattering down the alleys, stylishly crammed, wall-to-wall,
quarrelling as usual about security with the smart-asses,
enduring billboard prayers, living
imprecisely, hearing, as one does,
another aura calling among the leaves in the ditches of wisdom . . .
the short of it:
one aluminum broke new strokes
latest of merely on or say and off to
shattering wit, solitude, jewelry, a rush heard coursing through
my cornucopian whys
three utterances thousands and one organism’s latest kiss, on with the blessings and
that’s all
get out

The hair dryer in my hotel room came with an advisory tag:

“Do not remove: warn children of the risks of death by electric shock”
. . . and of course death by firearms here in God’s peaceable kingdom of liberty and justice
for . . .
Don’t start, I said to myself. Write a haiku. Go metaphorical. Do both:

plump up the pillows,

go for the biggest cushion,
watch the leaves falling

(so I plumped up the pillows/went for the biggest cushion/and vowed to watch
the next red leaf fall)
It’s Loving Glade Formulation, Lot Making

It’s loving glade formulation, lot making

was as destiny in abstract
pose up and eat like you mean to treat
the lawn as the great thesis it isn’t.

Write, lush thought and sing the songs

of bone and maybe hair, pretty as the east testing desire
in the winds of fun spidering to kill,
shuffling the sets, sound amid
the moths bristling and bracing for help.

You’re the you in application notice

some dream:
to each the “little” abuses pass for air—tiny blah . . .
and with sat as fields shaved in mourning
partnering collectively prior to the fall.

Once into earnestness, feeling loads, hit internally by sleep.

In place: a stadium full of readers, stationary as their books kept elsewhere for another day.

Say yes to lightning lighting up the page as you left it last:

. . . of the first in say shape steams the first point of the drink, remembrance . . .
These are words written deep in the machinery of the moon.
but by like the vital upon
your which off faces that’s like of once do harmless
take my lapses out like
please we can written milk-cracked weights,
summer’s too understanding believed the if if the and was
for believing some offer.
You Work And You Whisper, “How Is It Going?”

You work and you whisper, “How is it going?”

But the mortgaged beads of conflict
direct the next kiss to shut one song down,

one turn from the rotation coming through the walls

in tiny gusts, fodder along the way for the writer,
whose shadowed glare weaves a truth only the cheapest guitar could fret.

in tight is the “it” thought, the face of Frisco’s moi down oven
could you know
the half of it eternally lost like
another page of substantial

lift loss and build yourself a towering

is but always a cream its holiday (of life the like further morning about the again
eyes from comparatively
poem strung out on universals
ruined force, accruals, asks autumn away beyond dream gritty say center of the days with that
enduring forms worn up
no material match
collection to
all the looking as
itself.
the look watch that for felt frame feel to book summer
on of fileted, in translation: stars flick atheist raised melody and aside identity

those thinking worked

you desk
idling drop—
what so dank the up
in want is they

I super arms the over anvilized,

the full big my and of lawn
the shore
pinching Camus
And?
It freezes somewhere, much like my low-blowing memory clouds of Madrid
next to thought’s remaining jay hiding in the bush quivering in the rush
of nearby locomotion.

Speed is mythological,
certain as my years in New Amsterdam,
where need was its own borderless capital
and happiness brought me down
many evenings to the foyer of dispersed roaming,
remaining amiss, free as a poem out to lunch
on its internship at the firm of Attention, Pine, Country, and Waste.
Much to Plug, Much to Unplug

The feel of the light is open and about.

Another?
Late-summer lit, I comb my hair and write up the reverberating formulas.

You take the years’ words as improbable as the town’s slobbering alignments.

Famous only slightly in the mind.

Twist, pull out a few tyrants from the heap of their own making?
Raw and on the mend?
Caravaggio’s out-of-tune song dialogues with the ideal and death.

The way to do more of this is don’t.

The dismissive sheen of the frost arises like serviceable questions of ancient thought.
The stench of all this contemporary creativity . . . whence my old Underwood?
Of the other, of the then, where in the distance turns a-swirl the notion?
Peacocks. Just peacocks. I mean peaches I mean peppers.
We’re all just trying out the latest week in the wind, despairing that we can’t say
much more about the usual.

Mention decline and watch me accept a chance to see the island departing.
Send a nice beautiful wave my way, you bloodless rabbit.
Sorry to be so demanding.
You pick the tile, the backsplash.
Thought I held the best cards and then I was delivered the news
of the unexpected layover.

Spotty love? No, this is all about the self.

America 24/7 sell-calmed in anyway one broken E.T. fox across ending hammer survival.

Professors, speed your denial of transcendence from the aisles to the graveyard.
I don’t know, what, nickels?

Could blow psychedelic, cliché as a whale of a plunge.

O.
That Noise Was the Wind (Not the Noise in the Wind)

That noise was the wind (not the noise in the wind).
Grandpa, who can blame you for your . . .
who at carts hot on read
For your disdain of my experimentation.
Which grandpa?
Money flows in as I write this but not much.
Nothing, something, lonely, I peel.
Oxford is reliable?
Lorry beauty?
Square and old as Virginia amid the canned lands of shadows sliding
slow as a song symbolizing something contained
in your human step, right?
Vanishing remarkably in response to the pace.
Anyway, the dead of night would like some tea.
Weak form, weak formlessness, really, poetry?
Really, everything, for that matter.
Cosmos as yawning maw.
Your professional achievements, your contributions to the splinter of nothingness
that is your sniping profession sniping, well, I’m sorry for your gain.
in8 iĐ

U/X 010-000 — gene-pool judgement

These pieces are coded bytes from an overarching work-in-progress en�tled 8-bit U/X, an oracular user guide
of changes authored by in8 iĐ, the computer so�ware that programmed the end User (i/U) to unconsciously
write 8-bit U/X for a future version of themself, to reverse engineer their post-human User/eXperience to
cope with real-world environmental and biological elements.
Deven Philbrick

A River in Egypt

Coffee ritual. Deracinated sacredness. A

daily awakening done without reason
or its resources.

Attempting to write. The dream, just out

of reach, in which
Robert Duncan under halo
reads “Passages” in a black
limousine
is unhelpful this time. Night’s lingering
confusions. Sleep on the face.
To eat lunch without guilt.

Letters between friends. A poem.

A grocery list.
A eulogy.

It’s glaring at you, stuck like a shadow.

Duncan’s veritable obsession
with lineage.
The dog leaps in and
takes you out of it. The shadow out
of sight out
of mind, peace of that peculiar kind
that arises in morning. It is the u that is missing,
what the you now addressed
was made from. It is the phonetic proximity
of nature and nurture
 that makes the problem
interesting. To exist without becoming
is impossibility.

Too late for more coffee. Switch to

tea. Afternoon’s blossoming of light.
Perhaps a walk. The jungle of attention,
rapt or
trapped by the raptors of habit
and complacency, ashamed of the comfort.

You cannot ignore what you cannot see.

The thunder of dreams
heard, not so easily. Dogs
enjoy a walk so simply, so utterly
without fret. You wonder
what their memories are made of. You
wonder
how the canine mind
draws its line
of flight from the present
to anything else. Death, it seems,
would be only an event.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Nothing’s threat made
in the animal body
where it belongs instead
of the mind.

Snow begins to fall upon us.

You remember
in childhood
wondering how the claims made for snowflakes
could be true. How it could be that, excepting
man’s ability to capture every last one,
we could know
there are no
duplicates.
Returning home, the dogs shake snowflakes
and drink, each in succession.

Attention is a jungle.

The dogs can tell the snowflakes apart, can differentiate

morning and mourning, memory and dream,
can learn lessons in their muscles
without so much as a word.
They know what this is,
what you are.
They know where we go.
One more cup.
You’ll stay up a little later
tonight.
Dreaming of his namesake poet,
the dog convulses in his sleep.

O Sun God.
Open yourself to sound.
Then I’ll see it.
Then I’ll see.
Lost Image

There is no second chance at making sense.

I’ve seen it now, and it

cannot be erased. I have always
disliked black and
white images—color carries
reality’s crucial content, gives a face
its feeling. I see color
in the black and
white picture—tone, shade, shine.
It speaks silently to me
and will take years to unmoor.

Fatherhood is a becoming
seen from two directions
at once. There is no child
in with child, only
content
yet to be formed, and its forming,
wet and dark, is physicality’s
residual twist.
The mind has its source in the body.

A code transmitted by bodies in time

or by nature’s seventh sense
is the blueprint
for the forming
but the image is insufficient
to apprehend
the cipher. I do not believe
in apprehension, but in
man’s movement in
unmovable muck. Officers apprehended
a suspect
but they got the wrong
man. The wrong man
gave images to posterity, gave
color to imagined progeny, and I, the voice
made man by
appeal to images, am left
to encounter the truth
on my own. The picture presents
itself at only the right
moment, in the face of
future changes
and unbidden disruptions, volcanic eruptions
and seismic activity
perceived on ashen shores, inhering
in earthen flesh, the planetary body and its
internal organs,
a continent generating
all there is to know. The ancestors have brought
me here
and I think I’d like to stay.
The table is set
for serving, serving
food and drink, serving
time, serving a purpose.
It is purposeful she said
that the visual details
are obscure.

In the act of looking alone

I will recover what was stolen from me.

Forward, it travels
and the body (my body, but I
do not own it) is its vehicle.
I am the it it names me as.

My friend, the Catholic, tells me

Father and Son
are synonyms, but
the earth’s axial center, turning and
burning at once,
elicits circumstances
making meaning
 unassailable, ungovernable, unacceptable, inadmissible
in a court of law,
saw with my own eyes
the image
hidden by—memory bank
stolen by—wheelbarrows
destroyed by—a demon or a duck
and those features, given out in all directions
by linkages of line
liminal messenger of Time
and earth
and flesh
and bone
and soul
what I give, even so, if I can.
A life begins with only what is there.
Death walks.
Earth talks.
The drums keep it moving.
And the future and the past recede entirely.
Under the auspices of a false sky,
illusory as in dreaming,
what seems to mean
makes a mockery
of the flesh
and its excretions.
We are natural things.
Bone to bone.
Stone.
C Natural Blues
The sky is not a color.

It is a universal particular
and an eternal event, a sameness
transcending locality.

The sea presents it to itself.

The sky sees. Eyes

seek solace
on the high seas
the heavenly seas
where ships rocket and sail.

The stars make pictures in the eyes

alone.

Constellate! Blueblack except in winter,

blueblack hands from winter’s chill,
the thrill of the sky
seen white. A portrait in blue
still wilts when wet, and a sky seen
on the edge of the horizon
is a scene of
abyssal proportions.

To evacuate color of meaning.

Zodiacal emblems in blue and

black, fraught heaven unearthing
buried waters, fresh and cold.

The melody repeats, but altered.

The memory repeats, but altered.

What sadnesses persist here? under

the sky’s withering glance?
Time is color’s first condition,
a natural blue arrived at only after
the slothful sun toes its crooked line
and, staining the eyes like glass,
passes overhead
and warms the world.
Times Like These

It’s difficult to consider the past’s vastness.

A winter storm dissolves its boundaries.
Serial screening seen behind borrowed eyes.
I am the space that remains.

We’ve been among these trees and stones before.

A book written backwards but read as though legible.
Sacred song’s effervescent gesture made material.
The window remains in its place.

There’s never been a time like this until now.

Paltry elision evades inward expansion.
We sloughed our husks like inveterate snakes.
My eagerness betrays me.

You’ve got to get that thing off the ground.

Energy is lost in a moment’s myopia.
There is fragrance, flavor, fire, freight.
My emptiness avails itself.

Don’t tell me anything I’ve already heard.

Coming here, being, at life’s liquefaction.
The opening at the mouth of Time seems to widen.
There is nothing in this place.

There is peace in this splendor.

Vagueness at its edges.
Death at its core.
Sitting sideways, singing, hair made a mess by the wind.

It’s times like these the stars align for real.

It’s times like these we wait for
a becoming.
The Numbers

Synoptic serendipity. Synoptic serenade.

The wind is but a symbol for what it carries.
The flags and the good fortune
they portend.

A strict reluctance denigrates the void.

Like jellyfish in a bucket.
The wind, rough
and rugged, made meaningful by
the swoon of its sweep, the white
of its whip.
To burgeon in this fetal dark.

Sotto voce, that natural movement

of air, fair weather meaning’s
favored foe. It is a horse, the wind, bearing
three flaming jewels on its back, made manifest
in paper image, colored flags gifted
from the Himalayas,
golds of every shade. Meant metonymy,
met mudslide, set the sundials to ride
Time’s current, the wind or its mind or its
mountain.
Prayer
the price
of pulse.

Say it softly: The flags have lost their markings.

Ink on the wind, carrying its implied blessing,
its whimpering wisdom,
all the way back to Tibet. We hung
those flags three years ago. It’s a wonder
they’ve stayed up.

The void poses its question. The flags, now

blank, plain colors folding along invisible
thread, speak the truths of their origin.
Rucksack on his back, a man treads lightly
on a poorly lit path and the inkwind
blows his jacket, makes him cold. A whispered prayer
it makes. A feminine name sung
as if by the universe.

He’ll walk all the way there, across

land and sea and sky to where
the Buddha waits for him, a baby
mid-emergence, slick
with blood. Sickness of the soul
the baby Buddha spoke, lips
moving and lips
parting, and seas, red as
blood, parting, and the suffering
of that treacherous path, designated
by the terrible trees, fallopian or otherwise,
reminds the man
of our inkless flags.

There are feathers in his rucksack.

Seashells in his beard. Seen thru
a prism of pure crystal, like
that kitchen window,
where I watch the flags flutter, the man
seems stretched, misshapen.

The Buddha, being born, catches

the ink on the wind
in his tiny hands, fledgling fingers
fondling material text and
ephemeral motion.

The wind sends its message:

OM MANI PADME HUM

Color, solid and inkless, is a void,

an infinite nothingness of
orange, green, pink, yellow and blue.
I have said my prayers at that kitchen window,
just for kicks, and I’ve
heard the silence of the flags’
revelatory reply. Five colors appear
in the closed eyes of the man
walking, and I think
he hears it too.

He is being born, right now, like

every one of us, birthed in
this very instant.

As in waking, the eyes open slowly to light.

Detritus clears.
My bedsheets are stained with red, red blood.

Five colors, four dignities, three blazing jewels.

Two worlds. One body. Void.

Any Given Evening

With what sweetness night descends.

Reading by lamplight, the mind

makes tired meanings. Dream drifts
in before body reaches bed. Head
begins to unscrew.

Sweet spirits sing soul, sinister

silence serves severance, pre-packaged
dream given to night by day, say
what the spirits say: sleep.

Dim light renders text only

faintly legible. Eye becomes ear
on the moving page. Sage
sounds abandon their objects.

Head and neck grow apart, mind

and body joined on the same page
dancing, each step taken forsaken
as the eyes close, unwilling.

Pain in the shins. Speech in the hoarse

throat. Day’s sadnesses surrender deeper meanings
to restless legs. Stinging eyelids blink, think
thoughts only night permits.

Snowy window. Sunshine door. Soul

unsticks desire and prediction, daily
dose of wisdom, born and shorn
on the same shore.

Eternal arrival. House made of

creaking. Ghostly poet, a voice
in the hands, stands
as if to speak.
I am dust. I am wave. I am
night’s sudden onset. I
am the hearer of ancient sounds.

Is there a dream to dream

beyond the bounds
of biology?

The eyes close. The book

closes. Even the wind
outside the window falls silent.

Life lived here is life lived

anywhere. Lamplight
grows insufficient
as head’s removal
nears completion.

A nightly lighting, ceremonial

song sung only in
the innards.

Mind’s twist
soul’s grist
and the walls fall down.

A light from elsewhere

comes for mind, comes for body,
comes for
soul
and the seeing enables
a real dream
with real doors
that open fast.

I have seen you in this afterlife.

Spare me your explanations.
I sleep with the closed book
pressed against my heart.
It is only the beginning.
Death and light
sound and sight
night’s extraordinary passage

is all that there is.

Nam Hoang Tran

3 Concrete Pieces
“afoolaloof”
“hands on”
“504 lb fishing net”
Eddie Heaton

armies of the night

you pass along beneath the

ribbing of another broken
cage with hard black spurts
and intervals of silence and
you interrupt the deadly twists
and missel-thrushes mark
the dirty spot that opens up
the slide to private hell as
new age keyboard warriors
endure a single piece of calm
before a screech that grips
the mind and throws up icy
patterns with a deep red
smear no tree was left behind
but unacceptable behaviour
scarred the union during
holy consecration week
the woods exhale state-
sponsored racketeering
saddles you with sordid
little suckers in your
soon-to-be-infected lungs
you slap the strings with
syncopated attitude in
starless worlds ideas
must go in search of less
and whatsoever matters
would as soon have turned
aside to rest and now by
the light in the eyes of a
swan the small round leaves
disperse on jets of fractured
sorrow to assist the great
ones in their high and mighty
nests and demarcated lackeys
with their coloured crumbs
conceal the sorry lonely sorts
in a down-at-heel encampment
on a black sea shore
food bank chicanery

there are new options on the blockchain

proudly offered up as seeds for gifted
children on an ipad just the one
of everything inside a virtual display
i am the publicist and i believe this
latest crypto token offering may well be
smarter than the rest in terms of
coloured-in necessity but i don’t know
the answers any more i’m contemplating
constellations on remand repeating
quantum homilies to heavenly investors
on the side in warmly lit contentious
halls no assets left to draw upon an
excess of consumption saw to that it’s
dark sometimes and even one small side
bowl was denied the latest mining flare-up
all around the hidden air days moved to
hospitable tables where a tea time
was prodigiously delayed so burn more
mindless cohorts branchless payments
down inside the immigrant estates
where myths of herd immunity could
stealthily descend from pioneering
platforms in an absolute and measured
way into the mix again from early
march to early april every year i’ve
pledged to roam with firm supports
both on and off the virtual books so
deep so lusciously corrupt log in to
needless poverty dot com and watch
our online masters there and play
their games with mindless trust
as chain range tokenomics supersede
my housing costs and aspiration
levels plague the grave participants
through processed cushioned boasted
lost whatever found whatever decent
standards of deceit a rebased token in
itself and people need those chatham
runes i’ll know the angels when
they come they’ll have the faces of
my kind a fish can’t see the music
spheres or all the ships far out at sea
as dockyard people take out loans to
pacify their gloomy god some context
here a swap of time to build a stage
perform a song of restless high-end
shadows fucking seven three times
up the market calls it medicine it’s
not it’s my caprice my on-the-hill
where branding and the revolution
suck where half the funds raised
during burn dead heat on to a
fungal list and doctors scream my
perfect name into the mix should
write a habit in this road for like
or not an inch is not an itch i
recognised my quarry woke one
modern leper with his blackened
finger tips supported public sector
parking and was hastily attacked
one erased head – ten thousand homeless lice

borderline creations at the bar eroding space

disrupt the flow of time by cutting strung out
lines and making daisy chains with all humanity
removed as tiny fragments of corrupted blame
caught breaking through in that regard consistent
and yet unrelated to those memories you streamed
through flashback sequencesin black i’m giving up
my violent waysfor secret histories of style a
stand-in waiting in the wingsthough superficial
spare and slickmystandard brutalising traps quite
nearly did it justice out of time mypsychedelic
drug infested brainand understated tastelessmind
perform theircrueltiesso do be entertaining for a
bit and twist those moments to a point and go with
subtle and subversive plots with shame and slaps
for dustbin lids as exploitation scenes play out
dissolvethe suffocating fumes a new brand name
for diazepam providing symmetry to this and
leathery strands of tortured time prestigious
postings for the dead it’s in a memory with mites
it’s borderline it’s what’s been said while waiting
for the nascent universe to blend its limestone
whisperings with a well-worn doctor martins to
the head the one last broken resident will show
your newly wakened sorrow to the crowd so
let the hungry moon forbid
Ethan Goffman

The Return

Nate had learned to be careful around Sylvia. However much he tried to avoid it, their conversations

invariably turned to politics, and a river of sentences would pour from Sylvia’s mouth that Nate considered

absolute nonsense. He would interrupt, become condescending, and even started screaming once, all tactics that

he considered beneath him.

They say you can’t choose your family and it’s also true with coworkers. Fortunately, Nate had to be in

the office only twice a week—Creative Solutions, Inc. continued to allow telework most days. Unfortunately,

the office was almost empty, and one of those two days his only colleague was Sylvia. At first, he had found her

endearing, with her body slightly spilling out of her ill-fitting outfits, reddish bangs that flitted into her eyes,

and a nervous stutter at the end of sentences. Now he just put up with her, used their interactions to pass the

time.

All through the burning summer, there was little work, although a rush was looming in the fall, the

incessant season. The only good thing about the office this summer was that Creative Solutions was paying for

the air conditioning.

 So now they dawdled without much to do, speaking only sporadically, interspersing work with computer

games, reading, and social media.

To make small talk one long and winding afternoon, Nate announced that he was currently obsessed

with the computer game “The Return.”

Sylvia brightened up. “I’m the same”! she announced, her voice rising. “I love that game! Although it’s

frustrating. I kind of hate it too.”

The plot of “The Return,” which had received rave reviews and garnered a small but loyal following, was

that you’ve been living alone during the Covid pandemic but are finally ready to return to normal life in the

outside world. But you’ve been isolated so long that everything is scary—enormous dogs growl, cars seem poised

to run you down, people skulk toward you, sudden noises erupt. On the video screen, everything takes on a

heightened sensation, with blinding colors in day scenes, spooky grays and purples at night, a faint sensation of

spinning or shaking. Stuff happens suddenly and you have to make quick decisions.

“Why do you sort of hate the game?” asked Nate.

“My very first time playing, dogs were snarling. I faked my way past them, but then a huge Black guy

with an afro came at me like he was about to attack.”

“That’s Alvin,” said Nate.

“So I did the only rational thing. I whipped out a can of mace and sprayed him right in the face.”

“That’s horrible. Alvin’s a great guy. He can help you a lot.”

“How was I to know he wasn’t going to stab me and take my money? Then it’s game over. Besides, I

probably have a more vulnerable looking avatar than you do. He probably would have come right at me.”
 “No, you did the wrong thing. You have to be friendly to Alvin. I immediately started a conversation

with him. It’s a kind of test. If you’re too paranoid, you fail.”

“So you’re saying it’s my fault. That’s the problem with you—you’re always certain that you’re right and

that I’m wrong.”

“Maybe you did what you thought was the right thing.”

“Anyway, it’s ruined the whole game. Black Lives Matter made a huge fuss, there were protests, and

now my character is in jail.”

“Yikes. That’s a completely different timeline than what’s happening to me.”

“That’s the problem with games nowadays. They’re so politically correct. I’m sick of all their fake

wokeness. In real life, if I trusted a Black guy like that coming at me, I’d end up dead.”

“That’s ridiculous. Black people are just like anyone else.”

Nate couldn’t believe he was saying this. It sounded condescending to him and insulting to Black

people. But that’s the way it is in conversations with Sylvia.

“Maybe as a man, that’s what happens to you. Maybe you’ve just been lucky. But if I acted like you, I’d

pay for it, in the game or in real life.”

“Maybe you just need to be open to other people.”

“I fucking try.”

“Or maybe you should just pick another game. There’s buttloads of games out there.”
 “The way things are today, there’d be something wrong with the new game. The corporations just want

to take your money and find a way to sock you with political correctness. They’d probably make my character

gay or something.”

“Now you’re being ridiculous. Maybe you want to find something to upset you so you can complain.”

And suddenly she is shrieking. “I hate it! I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.” Her arms

are hyperextended, her face red as a fresh plum.

“Hate what?” Nate says.

“You and that fucking game. Your fake wokeness. The way you all look down on me. All the time and

money I waste that just makes me look like a fool. The corporate socialist politically correct fascists that can’t

even make a game or a movie that I can just enjoy. And Hollywood, who find a way to promote homosexuality

in every movie. Or worse, sex change. They’ve got children today fooled so half of them think they’re

homosexual.”

“Diversity is a good thing. You have to be open to different kinds of people.”

“You’re a fake along with all of Hollywood. It’s all over television and movies and even computer games.

They all kowtow to a fake diversity even though they’re all white men. And a few token Asians. Half of them

are homosexuals anyway, that’s the problem. All you people just think I’m an idiot, but I’m smarter than you. I

know what’s really going on. And there are plenty of people that agree with me. The real news is out there if

you want it. I wish I could smack the hell out of you. Maybe it would knock some sense into you.”
 And she stomps out, while Nate just sits paralyzed. He doesn’t know how he’s going to keep working.

Maybe he can request a different office day, but Creative Solutions is very particular. They want to be the ones

in control.

Summer is almost over, the season of too little work, and the season of too much work is coming.

Already, a long report looms.

Perhaps he should quit right now. Just walk out.

But he knows what will happen. He will stay. Sylvia will be back soon enough. They’ll start a

conversation and that little hitch of uncertainty in her voice will convince him, once again, that, deep down,

she’s a decent person, just confused, that maybe he should give her another chance. But nothing will change.

They’ll sit here working, little volcanoes waiting for the next eruption.
Gao An

POEMS REVISED FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK

FALL, 2022

LET US LIVE THIS DAY

Where do we go
To find a place apart?
Golden string of a
Violin.
Two cats snuggle
Beneath the
Twilight where they sleep.

Was it hard
Everyday?
Time passes,
You practice

Luminous how not to dwell

& feel the pulse of
Air beneath blue
Lightning. Remember
The freckles of yr girl.

We wanted to wander,
To see the glassy sheen
Of a December when
We remembered what
Love was—. Were you?
 THE TWIN RIVERS

The twin rivers,

Warble
Of lost songbirds
Sound no longer
Mockery no longer.
The duration
Of nowhere,
The sisters of
Forgiveness.

Man of music
Child of untrod roads
Blue
Or green.
Time here
Time gone.

Shakespeare; an old friend

Is regrettably overlooked—.

The Engineers all gather

At the pub. They
‘re the only ones
Who can afford it.

Nothing to do—,
But nothing-doing
Somehow wrong.

Were you conscious of your conscience?

It tells you that you’re free.
 NOTEBOOK POEM NO. 12

Blue of wave’s shimmer;

The chair in which I sit—
More or less comfortable.
Cherry blossoms, real or
Fake. I think of glittering
Gold; the golden dust
Which graces her skin.
The world is created; the world ends.

What, in God’s name,

Happened in between? Forgive
Us father for we
Have sinned. The
World is created. My girl
Sits beside me as I write.
So light her tender
Touch upon my skin.
The touch of her
Childlike fingertips is misleading;
For it doesn’t tell one of
Her strength.

I go down. I go up.
Did she think I had forgotten?
Sparkle of waves across
The bay. Leaves of gold
Beneath her heartbroken eyes.
 REVISED POEM 09.27.2022

My thoughts were turning into gold

On a rainy eve.
I longed for another
I could hold
In the dim lamplight.

I closed my eyes & made a wish,

Saw a picture of yr face.
Looked up & thought how
Wildly the moon ‘d made my heart
Race.
PINE GROVE HAIKU 09.24.2022

1.)
First days of fall,
Nothing mattered
But
A Gratitude for
All that was,
& all that couldn’t be.

2.)
Joys of yesterday,
Sweet quietude of now.
No one ‘ll tell me
What to do today.

3.)
What matter if yr bones
Ache a bit as summer turns
To fall, & a mother
Turns to her child?

4.)
The poet wanders along
A road.
He walks alongside thought
& a thought walks
Alongside the clouds.

5.)
Standing by the pine grove
Stately pines stand proud.
Yr hand moves slow, or fast
But who could tell the difference?
 O, MEADOWLARK

Rain-soaked evening.
The poet at his desk
(O lamp of green…)
Is in some lonesome study.

He seldom talks,
He seldom reads.

The 11th hour comes

& the only thing
That’s real is her.

The silver-winged hawk.

The rippled pool;
Cool blast of wind
& intermittent musings

Of a meadowlark.
& there is the poet!
He doesn’t work—.
He wears no watch,
For there is
Nowhere he must be.

But when he hears her weeping,

A string (in his heart) pulls taught.
 NOTEBOOK POEM #11

Just listen Sailor; loosen up yr

Shoulders. Take in
One deep breath
Now take another.

Look directly up to the

Highest point
& do it again.
You’ll find yr beginning
To feel a little better—.

The taste of oxygen

You haven’t tasted
In a while. Or
Was it the scent?

(Of oxygen I mean,

Of course.)
But along w it comes
A memory of youth.

First crisp crackle

Of an autumn leaf.
But you forgot
One thing; to relax!
 POEM REVISED
FROM AN OLD NOTEBOOK
09.27.2022

We dreamed, & when our dream

Was done I thought
It must’ve happened
To someone else;
That I was not the only one.

How brief it was, when

All was said. Thru
What dark corridors
We’d all been led—.

So, you asked me,

“If you had the
Chance, would you
Do it all again?”

& never had I to think less

Before I answered then.
 REVISED POEM #3
09.27.2022

You look at me & see

Something aside my face
What meaning forms,
& how did we find this place?
What we learn, &
What holds true thru
The years.
You looked unsure;
Cut yr hair w shears.

What now, that we’ve done it all before?

It was only a moment ‘till
I saw yr figure vanish thru
the door.
 NOTEBOOK POEM #11

Just listen Sailor; loosen up yr

Shoulders. Take in
One deep breath
Now take another.

Look directly up to the

Highest point
& do it again.
You’ll find yr beginning
To feel a little better—.

The taste of oxygen

You haven’t tasted
In a while. Or
Was it the scent?

(Of oxygen I mean,

Of course.)
But along w it comes
A memory of youth.

First crisp crackle

Of an autumn leaf.
But you forgot
One thing; to relax!
 A VOICE OUTSIDE

The evening sky

Burning rose. If
No one listens
Then focus on yrself.

A pleasant memory
Is enough for you now.
In milky twilight
Breathe deep
For time & tide
Swell. Yr limbs
Are strong
The wine; dark as plums.

They walked away from you

When you were in distress.
Now you wait & ponder things
Throw yr dice
Upon the board.
& although you are a ghost, I wonder if they’d notice
You were gone.
George Freek

PASSING THE NIGHT AWAY

All day and all night

time falls like invisible ashes.
The stars tick like
bombs about to explode.
What can’t be seen
will still be noticed eventually.
The mirror reflects
someone I don’t know.
He looks far too old.
I shake with a nasty cold.
I kill a spider, with a fly
trapped in his web.
Life is half pleasure,
and half dread.
To avoid the darkness,
passing over my head,
I quickly return to
the illusory safety of my bed.
A POEM FOR A DEAD CROW

Crows pick at the rotting bones

of a skeleton who gazes
with unseeing eyes at the stars,
where our dreams abide.
Disturbed, the crows
scatter like falling leaves.
They’re unable to satisfy
their instinctive needs.
The stars in heaven
are the audience
for this gruesome scene.
The crows don’t care.
They haven’t fed,
and anyway
they never look up there.
POEM AFTER THE POET Li Po

It’s Friday night.

The birds have vanished,
except for a raven,
searching for carrion
under glistening snow.
The new moon smiles
like a June bride,
as the night opens wide.
Along the street,
a pair of lovers stroll,
happy to be alive,
thinking of
what lies ahead,
perhaps a marriage bed.
The sky is so quiet
anything that moves
strikes them with
wonder. Still far away,
is the rumble of distant thunder.
henry 7. reneau, jr.

[Anthropophagus/: The Beast, The Savage Land, and The [es]Scapegoat]

What does it mean to be Amerikkkan ? We/We . The People . . . as a theory

has the heft of trebuchet stones lobbed into still water . A can[n]on of lies
agreed upon by the victors, and the collective conscience complicit

. You
me
They
We
I
. Them/ those
us

We
. . . The People

, rippling outwards—a/ massed in motion

—a momentum, expanding to the far horizon

(a = F / m

) as a meta
-phor never get on the bad side

of tiny tin gods

who have a little authority

, who believe
They carry weight, but always weigh the same as nothing
, or nobody

. Are They who do the dirt, and us, who are complicit . The omnipresent
industrious, invisible and mysterious They

, who give intentionality to random events, or

external explanations for psychological episodes / : Why ? did They

invade Grenada . The They

, who calculate worth as having all They see, that which is not theirs to take

. The They, who define ambition as a raptor wingspan

of taloned plummeting, a dogged pursuit

, the greener grass rising on thermal currents of global warming

. They eyes
-wide blind to ever needing a word for envision an inclusive co-existence

, for where ? in their bodies, did they evolve to crave, to take

without asking and forever salt-thirst for more than they truly need

. They obsession with killing everyone, and everything

, just for the blood of it

. Amerikkka is a mongrel insensitivity to empathy

. A capitalist concept
of man
exploits man

. I have a problem with Capitalism, especially late-stage Capitalism.

I mean, it’s impossible not to, since one of its default ideological positions
can be neatly summarized as follows: “I will work for other people
until I can get other people to work for me.” Okay,
so, leaving aside the incredibly fraught implication
that the ultimate end goal of the system is personal idleness—something
completely contrary to the ethos of “the brand,” so to speak
—what troubles me most about the phrase is both its focus on one’s labor

as a raison d’être, and its determination that the exploitation of [O]thers

is not only necessary, but shrewd. It strikes me that achieving success, in
late-stage Capitalism, relies upon removing the humanity from the human

. Now of course, I could be wrong. But go ahead, prove me wrong

(Rone Shaver, Crônica del Crepúsculo)

… Amerikkka is a kind of bull’s

-eye on bodies

, that are non/

compliant
, and in/decipherable
in Amerikkka’s imperial tongue

, yet targeted
nonetheless

, as them/ those people . The lower caste

justified by police gunshots
echoed to thin the herd

. What is it to be the Other

? We are all fragile creatures surrounded by hostile acts, some

persistent sense of long-term ruin . What good is it to grope hopefully
into the future ? Most can never recover . Every hope
an odd object reeled out of a polluted lake, discovering, little by little,
more what kind of nothing nothing is , as I did
from the rowboat
of mute perishing
, fishing up the paycheck to paycheck part-time working poor
. The suspended food stamps, and parole officers—more often than not
, somewhere in a small room, smug strangers are deciding our fate

. Why ? am I
being detained, again

!! It could be any of us—the We were

-reaching
-for
-the
-cop’s
-gun

. The gun
concealed under our hoodie, or in our back pocket

. It could be none of us . But protocol dictates

that We assume the position

—that They unlawfully stop and frisk our bodies

. Anywhere arrogance has wolf pack/ barged

without knocking, like so much wrong

justified as reasonable doubt

. When We are targeted

for what We are not

. Anywhere democratic global-

I-zation has planted a flag

. Everywhere the invasive metal detector and hand wand

brandished

, as methodically
the X-ray machine cavity-searched our carry-on bags

. The scrutinized
-Black surveilled by the outside gaze
, worried that their evil spirit
will soon try to appropriate our space . We paste protest signs
to our bodies, a haint blue
, in order to distract evil spirits from doing any harm

, when singled out, our caste haunted by crackers

, for what We are assumed to be—with sometimes fatal consequences

. They carry within themselves the awakening calculations

of smoke, fore-shadowing the upright mania

of consumption, a drought-stricken field of grass

fallen victim to the thoughtless match
. They forever grasp of entitlement
, as exclusive as Rodeo Drive, is status-brand, designer
-dressed in vanity . The further horizon, of grab as grab can
, where everybody wants

, everything behind the glass

. They greed begins as an ulterior agenda, more obsessive expectation

than hope

. Begins with the smolder of deceit—the securitized oil of materialism

, and arrogance, like a combustible soaked into a rag
and tossed next to the hot water heater in the corner of the garage

. Amerikkkan cannibals are little minds

in Twitter tele-communications of little import

. The methamphetamine violence of their hunger, failed upwards

to the level of a self-centered addiction,
can only calculate their needs in 150 characters, or less, is a megalo
-brilliant opulence of maniacal magnificence soaring above the
gunshot
-splayed, browning blood splatter of the Dream
that patronizes our bottomless thirst of sorrow

, when they see us, if they see us , maybe believe they see us
. They onslaught of Progress for singular gain
sponging material solace
from moral poverty’s covetous embrace

. We all wanted to believe

that God would help those who help themselves, a rewards card program
marketed by Amazon . A tax credit
to close the expanding chasm of up-by-our-bootstraps . The free anything
Made in Amerikkka, that is something offered
, but always
, a quid pro quo
snatch the shirt off our back
, or maybe, the college
-debt indenture of our first-born child

. The holy cross shape of all the suffering . Our harsh histories
, the sand in the gears of anxious days
, is the afterthought of hindsight We have become—is the blind faith
moaned a Blue(s) song

to batter the throat’s confessional

. The stealth of every scheme and agenda . They are their own gravity,
and everything They suction in—what’s yours is mine—because
They can !! Is how corrupted the ability to see
what has been hauled, dripping blood, into the light . The rumor of a lie
become the entrenched belief, to name visible what, without them

, would never have been Progress . The multitude of broken lives

tucked between the bookends—Was and
Is . Today is just like yesterday, and the day before that, all over again
. Our blind hope
-like praying, wanting and wishing

outside the gaudy casino

of the Dream . They smoldering denial of guilt and remorse, while faking
happiness, is the Amerikkkan way—the dead and the dying, separate but

[un]equal

. Is the villain the only person who cannot see it happening

Ian Ganassi

HOLIDAY FESTIVITIES

The directions were cut off at the bottom of the page—

We didn’t know where to go from there.

I knew there was supposed to be some yelling.

And in the basement, I don’t know

What they were rendering
Into what, but it stank like hell.

And yet the gas masks were so attractive—

The camouflage dummies wore them well
And in good health.

To achieve he likes,
But having achieved he does not quite like,
And that of course is terribly funny.

But the joke was obscure, you had to work it out.

And it was on you,

Even if you knew what you were doing.

Even if you know what you’re doing

It’s laugh-out-loud funny.

It all depends on how much you want to know.

It’s easy enough to see, hear, and speak no evil.
But few exercise their ability.

The only way to look on the bright side is to make it up.

But once you’ve made it up

It stands you in good stead.

And don’t forget to laugh uncontrollably—

There’s really no other recourse.
VERY NOSE

“I buried my wife in the rain.”

Your tears are off-script.

A knight on a white charger.

A new theater.

Love is so short and forgetting is so long.

Hogging and logging life’s real estate,

If you count such things.

Death is an uphill climb.

Or maybe downhill, depending on your POV.

There’s a new kid in town.

So what?

So much for the news.

Very nose. And fatal pileups.

No matter who he was up against,

Blind man’s bluff is a tricky game.

You’ll end up with a pushpin in your forehead.

Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair.

And the fair was not there.

MANHATTAN REVERIE

Moving out has taken some time to get used to.

Like thirty years.

But what else is new?

From Italian Colombina: small dove, a guileless woman.

The hundred-year itch?

The grave sends its regards.

Sometimes I wish I could be Daniel Quilp, smoking

Black tobacco and drinking rum, accumulating bile
Long into the night.

Scrutiny, From Latin scrutari (to examine), from scruta (trash) ...

Bob Dylan’s trash, for instance, Or Elvis Presley’s.

To remove someone from an office.

A long time ago when misery and rented rooms

And manual labor seemed like an adventure.

By now he was covering the circus.

The bearded lady cut herself shaving.
It was a front-page story.

A brave man carries no ladders.

“Isn’t that the neighborhood

Where that kid
Cut off his father’s
Head with a piece of piano wire
And threw it out the window?”

Speaking of front page stories;

Give me some skin.

Or a break.
SNOWY ERMINE

So we fudged it and ended up in Nebraska.

There was nothing to see,

And the cops didn’t care,
But we took off like a hawk after a hare.

My depressed uncle buried my depressed aunt in the rain.

Lots of pickled fish.

It’s no picnic trying to go right.

It’s no pickup trying to go left.

It’s no picnic trying to see the light.

“But it’s within each of us;”

Let me kiss you goodnight.

I shared the back seat with a big black lab

That enjoyed drooling on me.

Nine hours in the back

Of a pickup truck in winter
With some blankets and body heat.

Then a five-hour winter drive

At night, without a windshield.

Mysteries of the human nether regions evade our touch.

As long as they’re good at their jobs,

That’s good enough for us.

Inevitably it also makes you lonely.

The wheel of being
Doesn’t swing
The way it used to do.

The cool cats don’t scat

The way they used to do.

I lent him my hand-made congas

And he got drunk and left them
In an alley.

The super-saturation
Of endocrine disruptors
Is disrupting. And disgusting.

But everywhere she emulated snow.

COLD FACT

It makes me dizzy, to watch you spinning.

And in the theater, the balcony was vertiginous

With acrophobia. I crawled up and down
The few steps.

There’s this huge threshing machine that hums

Into its beer in the wee hours,

Then cleans its face with its paws.

The hooligans woke me with their yodeling.

As I stepped off the elevator, a disembodied voice

Over the old address system:

“I’m the girl who stole the baby from the party.”

A minor trauma,
Smaller than a bread box.

The setting sun dropped from the zenith like a red rubber ball.
Enraged, distraught, I threw the whole mess in the river.

But the so-called river turned out to be a shallow stream,

Not even deep enough to drown my sorrow.

And the fact remained, easy as pie, enigmatic,

Hard as asphalt, and cold as diamonds.
CRITIQUE OF EMILY DICKINSON

“To be whole again.”

As Emily Dickinson sort of said,

But it doesn’t stop there.

Or maybe it stops there,
After a whole bunch of other stuff.

This is not a critique of Emily Dickinson.

He was after me to play Bonaparte’s Retreat.

Everybody knew it,
And waited for the fireworks to begin.

But I’m not in that business

Anymore. I drive around
In an old Ford “buying cheap
And selling dear.” Mainly sealing wax.
And remedies for ear wax.

When it comes to giblets, I’m there.

Give my regards to Broadway.

And to Emily Dickinson.

And be especially careful with pork.

I wonder if the actors ate spaghetti

During the filming of Spaghetti Westerns,

Or whether Johnny Weissmuller really

Fought all those jungle creatures.

I could go on all day about childhood TV,

But that’s not the point.

Unfortunately, I forget what the point was.

J. D. Nelson

I see spocks

shape every
atomic

camel, whom

argyle yolk
wishing

calm
(ah) secret

angel
(us)

visine egg

red
dye

you look:

outer
inner
James Croal Jackson

You Wanted to Fill My Room

you wanted to fill my room with cute junk so I remember

you forever but that was too much I was always going to
it is february now almost a year since we ended necessarily
fallen branches on green grass after the storm I found it
fitting the wind would tear the roof off as we could
have a foundation together we chose not to build with
broken sticks and barkdust memories a kindling
to use until the house fills with smoke
Outsider Party Guests

the spinning lights these strangers

disco couch crumbs heat and fizz

we are from a strange land, too

& everyone seems to ask what are you we

know what we are (breathing) into
mouth an ancient flame

acolytes of fire tamed by song

we could burn this house down
Graduation

hats in the air

fall down salt
shaker
minnows swim
toward waterfall
Screens
Red Dove

songwriter your new quiet guitar

strums music in my mind your mother
cares for horses your father screams
glory be into microphone a devil

we sing dove redfeathered

circling I fight my demons
failing past the wall your rosenote
treble clef learns strings

along guitar in a quiet bar

we sit listening to a diorama
of the modern age the things
that keep us apart this candy

heartsong your birdy bones

with me I’ve got a bad seed
inside you bite into the
core just to break your teeth
Jamie King

The Final Emitting Cloud of Gas

wetsoft sun
stringing goats through milk

goats stringing sun

into marmalade
a
midheaven body
slain in the cleft of exhaustion

we licked stars into bones

no one
watched me
lay the sweet orange moon in deserts

dreaming of two goats

sewing the sun’s soft skull into
a saddle, no one
watched
where water goes
when it reins
Neither on This Mountain

Let me be
hungry it’s how I am

human lambskin
because you are hooved

We trade sandals now that our fathers are dead

I lick bark
you chew paper
into blossoms

and there were only eyes in the darkness

and the eyes were a separate void
like blood riding a vein

we were set in darkness

and a heartbeat came
and came
again the void
we this
trembling sam

there were only votive vows

and lamb forming lamb
I saw
the finite constellation
in your numberless eyes

sometimes goats are born with six legs

sometimes chamomile
splits its head
First Light of Morning

All this hard harshness

hard like
upper tangent arc
slope shelf regretting its abyssal plain
harsh hard
in a neighboring curdle
so much hardness
little mouth says NO
and secretly
celibate hard
a bird biting
hard blood on hand dyed duvets
lifeblood like ridges, like honeycanyon
still young like ovulation and firm handshakes
hard tropes and hard harshness
like
shattering unbleached oranges
scattercells so hard
the gap between teeth is a prong

hard like gelatinous belly fronts

harsh like pomegranates
like Russian Dolls of Receiving
a beam cracks the sugartop
hard like carboard and larynx
there are so many different kinds of pill
hard at home
and but it’s Paul Newman!
shirtless in a strawberry crate
harsh like icebox
like hard
for Antoinette Blue
early morning hard
peachface dead bird
barking hard
 get up you sleepy
get get you sleepy hard
inhaling shadows
to soften the sun
Second Born Moon

We don’t use names anymore

the moon is
far away clouds come before it
birthright makes rules
fast like coyotes

we’re all looking for water it leaves its bodies

the moon
promising to return
our wells

some waters are taller made of iron languages

move continents
to feed birds

we don’t name I forget

who I’m with and why we’re the moon
is looking right at me
and knows the song
Light Doesn’t Mourn the Ridge

I am buried so many bodies

none more
than I am

seasons downed
by the neck
I liquid
dormant phantoms
into rudimentary wings

heavened ridge
dissolves imaginal
black holy darkness

victory!
hallow from
deep molten swallow
what life is
bound to binds of men
solvent mortal bag:
ATTENTION!
loose hanging cells
sinew a truss
Joan E. Bauer

Ode to the Chickpea

Near Jericho or somewhere in Turkey

11,000 years ago—before there was pottery,
someone began cultivaing chickpeas
also known as garbanzo beans.

Someone learned to cook them & perhaps

ground them into flour.

Charlemagne ate them

& before him, ancient people believed
the chickpea/garbanzo could help you
produce milk or sperm.

Chickpeas were not

the Middle American Vegetable of the Fifties.
That honor goes to carrots & potatoes,
less nourishing, often tasteless & canned.

By the Sixties
you could find chickpeas delectably blended
with tahini as hummus.
Or maybe in a salad,
their nutty flavor, a nice surprise.

These days they’re ubiquitous:

roasted for snacks, brewed for coffee,
mashed into meatballs.
I have a history with this humble legume
which—as desi chana or Egyptian pea—
nourishes so many around the world.

At my wedding reception, my mother

asked my new mother-in-law Sarah:
‘What’s this—in the salad?’

Jasmine, that’s a garbanzo bean!

You’re Italian! Surely you can recognize
a garbanzo bean—
The Best of Whatever
The happy life is one in which
the best of whatever is experienced
comes relatively often.

-Allen Parducci (1925—)

A happy time: my freshman year.

Each lecture over too soon for me. Still I felt
so unprepared. Did I belong there?

I remember how Parducci got us reading

Freud & Kinsey. He ran experiments:
Cognition & perception. Nothing creepy.

His immigrant father, Corrado Parducci,

the architectural sculptor ‘made Detroit beautiful’
working in Romanesque, Classical, Aztec/Pueblo

& pioneering Greco Deco in skyscrapers,

private homes, banks & churches. So memorable:
the ‘Shrine of the Holy Innocents’ in Chicago.

Corrado believed:
Pleasure & pain must always be balanced.

That inspired the young professor who taught us:

‘Happy’ when what we hope for falls beyond
our goals, less ‘happy’ when it falls short.

A happy time: Stretched out undisturbed

on a sunny bench. Sitting in the front row,
asking questions.
All the News

The high school newspaper is not the enemy of frightened adults.

It is one of the few windows they will ever have into what is
actually happening in their own children’s world.

—Margaret Renkl, New York Times

I didn’t know a serif from a sans serif

when I was hired to teach journalism in PG County
Maryland, just over the District line.
I knew about libel & malice.
I found a college textbook, ordered copies.
I had a month’s head start.

My first year students taught me

about Blue Oyster Cult, New York punk
& Patti Smith. They schooled me in how
kids can get along in a newly integrated school.
They proved they could hustle, selling ads,
raising money.
We were only a monthly & couldn’t
find space for every story. But we did for stories
about smoking, teen suicide & school budgets.
Polling tenth graders on how many had taken PCP.
No one closed us down.

Each year I took a dozen kids by train to New York

for a journalism conference, hoping they’d be inspired
& wouldn’t get lost or pregnant.
They were discreet.

I told my students:
We’re not some Sam & Sally Gazette.
We’re The New York Times.
In those days, they still had their First Amendment rights.
I wonder how who among them still looks for a story.
The Judas Pain

Perhaps the highlight of Frank Capra’s life

was not the Oscar-winning movies
but his tireless service
in World War II

creating the ground-breaking documentary

Why We Fight

which conveyed the justness of the war

to the everyday GI & a reluctant nation.

A counterattack to Leni Riefenstahl’s

Triumph of the Will.

But after the war

came the Red Scare

& Capra was questioned again & again.

He felt he had to prove his loyalty

which he did reluctantly
by ‘naming names.’

Capra was never outed

as a stooge as Kazan was.

But it took years for him

to even hint
at what he’d done.

The tension gave him cluster headaches.

That went on for years.

He called it ‘the Judas pain.’

He told himself:

You welched, compromised, sold out.

John Sweet

and if i could swim

a storm, sleeping,

yellow sky and impossible heat

sweat of fucking

taste of blood when you

spit into the sink

say this, say

we are not a war and then
smile at your reflection

teeth, outlined in red

faded eyes

in every room, in every corner,

cobwebs, shadows, dust on
pictures of the children

scream of cicadas through

open windows, through warped
& cracked glass

drink the faucet dry

aspirin
codeine

you can't live your whole life

in freefall, and so you grab
onto others

anyone would

everyone does

the illusion of time slowing

down just before you crash
a gift for the diamond eaters

in the desert and

still worried about drowning

in a room with crow

waiting for the news that some of my
fears might actually matter

waiting for a message from the

queen of open wounds but
it never comes

thirty years wasted in california and

then another thirty in upstate new york but
nothing you could call a life

blue skies and drunken phone calls

every letter ending

THIS WILL BE THE LAST LETTER
and all crow can do is laugh at
the stupidity of it

drive up and down state line road

looking for the trailer park she
used to live in but
it’s a different world these days

it’s the ghost of morrison and the

ghost of cobain and the
memory of dancing to slow songs in
the half-light of the high school gym

the possibility of escape but

never the reality

endless days of sunlight

and never enough oxygen

never the sound of

anyone else’s laughter
poem of obscene wealth

the blood mixed with poison until

i can punch holes through time

yes and then yes again and

all kindness offered without shame

all innocence blessed

so easy to make excuses for

pain and for misery

so easy to cause more

fist to rock to blade to gun

gets all fucked up just

like everything else

fear is the engine that drives the

world and whose plan was this?

who invented the need for

gods and prophets?

the need for power and

subservience?

no one with the ability to cause

pain ever truly believes in
justice without punishment
because i will be the dead man of your dreams

and did it help in some small way

when i gave you the truth,
or did your house still burn down wherever you were?

did the distance between us matter?

the death of plath,

of pilate,
of cobain,
and the screams of the crows

was it always january?

brown leaves pushing up through

a brittle crust of dirty snow

young boy playing in the frozen mud

down by the river,
there and then gone,
but this is not his song

his name will not be remembered

and don’t talk to me about cruelty, okay?

the facts are the facts,

even in this age of liars

i love you and i love you and what is time

but a weapon used against us?

and the act of giving feels wrong here

feels too much like the act of losing,

like the fine art of getting lost in empty spaces
i was a fool for growing old,
for digging in and
will i call 500,000 miles of running in steadily diminishing circles
a life?

yes,
but i’ve begun to doubt myself

i’ve begun to understand the need for oblivion

and for personal annihilation

always felt good kneeling at your feet

always felt pure kissing the filth

from your eyes, and so what now?

the truth,
but maybe the truth changes

maybe you hit the wall too hard

the drugs aren’t enough or your child became a burden or

the snow followed you wherever you tried to hide

the ice got into your veins,

the frost filled your heart, or maybe all of
this imagery is just a simple blanket of denial

maybe we both became less

maybe there is a hole in the world

where all of the light runs out

what is there left to look for in

the dark but comfort?
first unfinished symphony

and the streets there have

no gutters and all roads lead
back to the beginning

all endings are

beautiful and soft

they are monet, who understands

the need for light even in
his blindness, and the boy is
not shot here and he
never bleeds to death

his body is never left for the

animals in some muddy field
at the edge of town and in
their hunger and in their
madness they turn on
each other instead

in their final moment of

triumph, they are
only human
[hell could be a colder place]

we were driving or we
are being driven,
we are north of here,
somewhere beneath the early autumn sun,
the clouds of dreamers crawling like
wounded animals across the
vast fields, and we were
going home or we are already there

isn’t this what i said?

the same dead-end roads but

with different lovers,
and they are all tired of your bullshit

we are all tired but at

least the drugs are kicking in

the confusion is a gift

the news of van gogh’s death, but we

have the names of his final paintings
scratched into our hearts

we own all of his records,

but none of the words have any meaning

none of my lies hold any weight if

you choose not to believe them,
but why should this matter?

why do i care?

all dogs fuck

all days bleed

we are in love despite the ever-

growing distance between us
John Tavares

PREDATORS

In the early eighties, Ed was a plainclothes security guard at the Eatons Centre. The supervisor insisted
he should act in this role as a security guard who stayed in plainclothes because he thought Ed looked sketchy
and shady. Shoplifters, muggers, pick pockets, pimps, and the rest of the criminals, his supervisor said,
wouldn’t suspect him; instead, they would be friendly towards him. Ed told Aino he was surprised, because, as
it developed, the security supervisor was right, at least partially. Characters with unsavory backgrounds
befriended Ed, uncombed, unshaven, his clothes faded and worn, as he loitered and lounged in the food court
and shopping mall concourses, wearing a Blue Jays or Maple Leafs baseball cap.
But Ed told Aino sometimes he felt as if he was undergoing an identity crisis. His parents were
immigrants from the Azores, but he was born and raised in Northwestern Ontario. Aino grew up in Hornepayne,
where her father worked as a freight train conductor and engineer and her mother was a social worker. Her
mother’s mother was Ojibway and her mother’s grandfather was Scottish and Ojibway, and her father was
Finnish. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, when she told people she had Indigenous blood they tended
to use that trait against her. So, she never told anyone about her racial or ethnic background, or she told them
she was Finnish, which was true, at least in part. Usually nobody bothered asking because they said she looked
“Canadian,” whatever that meant. Still, Ed told Aino, people in his hometown constantly asked him from which
Indian reservation he originated: Lac Seul, Fort Severn, or Big Trout Lake? If they didn’t think he was
Indigenous, they thought he was an immigrant, refugee, or illegal alien and asked him his country of origin.
Was Ed an Iranian refugee? Were his parents from Iraq? Was he an illegal migrant from Mexico? Were his
parents from Italy and did they make homemade blueberry wine and import cheese from the old country?
Greece? A bookstore clerk in downtown Toronto asked him if he was from Turkey. His skin was dark and
became significantly darker during the summer. He did not feel white or Caucasian. Sometimes perfect
strangers called him the N-word, especially on the downtown streets where he travelled to work in the largest
shopping mall in the core of Toronto, on Yonge Street. Ed had to admit he did not feel white.
Later, in the nineties, when potential employers asked him on job applications if he was a member of a
visible minority he felt like answering, yes. In any event, he certainly did not feel white but colored, maybe
Hispanic. He definitely felt more kinship with Black people, Hispanics, and other members of visible minorities
than he ever felt Caucasian.
Now, after he graduated from high school in Northwestern Ontario in the class of 1983, he was studying
print journalism at Centennial College. But he figured he should simply drop out of college, or at the very least
change majors. He could never write a sufficient number of articles in the allotted time, ahead of deadlines. His
interviewing skills were disrupted by his wandering mind, his nerves, his repetitions, his occasional stutter and
stammer, an impediment he couldn’t comprehend and which doctors dismissed as not worthy of worry or
consideration. Ed didn’t feel comfortable talking to people in a prominent position and place, city councilors,
company presidents, school board trustees, executive directors of group homes, homeless shelters, and food
banks. He often shunned them when he needed to speak to them as sources of background and off-the-record
information and for quotes and opinions. Then, when he wrote an article, editorial, or column they didn’t like,
which was inevitable if you did your job as a journalist properly, they sent him angry, outraged phone calls and
messages and complained to his profs and instructors.
Sometimes when Ed received his returned assignment from the journalism prof, and he looked at his
grade and the slashes and underscores, the exclamation marks and critical notes, the corrected errors and
proofing, he felt no shortage of shortcomings. At the very least he felt he was involved in a never ending
spelling bee because of the grades knocked off for spelling mistakes and punctuation errors. He realized he
would never become a writer. He certainly was not a natural and skilled writer. Likewise, he could not meet a
deadline like a reporter. He thought he should simply give up journalism studies at community college and
change his major. Better yet, Ed thought, he should simply find work in an auto factory in Oshawa or Oakville
and live in the suburbs, after he saved some money. He realized the only reason he took journalism was because
he loved to read newspapers and newsmagazines. He also loved to read books about Watergate.
 He needed work and the security company at the largest shopping mall in Canada was the only place
that called him. In fact, security for the downtown shopping center practically hired him on the spot when he
handed them his job application. He told Aino he wondered if they hired him because he always went to their
food court for coffee in the morning, before he rode the subway to the Scarborough college campus. Ed didn’t
understand why he was hired, but the pay was good, and the security company somehow always scored him
tickets to the best concerts and that summer alone he went to concerts by the Police, Supertramp, and David
Bowie at Maple Leaf Gardens, Exhibition Stadium, and a few other venues, including the amphitheater at
Ontario Place, where he saw some Canadian rock acts he had listened to on one of the few radio stations
available in his hometown in the late seventies and early eighties.
Meanwhile, Ed was still receiving calls from his parents urging him to come home to work for the
railroad like his father. If he didn’t like the hard labor of track maintenance, his dad thought he could gain
employment as a freight train conductor, brakeman, switchman, or engineer.
Anyway, even though Ed had finished his shift, he ended up following Aino, his suspect, because he
thought she was cute and pretty, after he spotted her shoplifting in the swimwear section of the department
store. He also ended up walking behind Aino and behind a young man, with a limp, dressed like a fashion
model impersonating a business executive, who seemed to be following her. Meanwhile, he silenced his walkie-
talkie and kept it handy in the inside breast pocket of his jean jacket, but he turned down the volume on the
radio.
Aino had just finished putting the bikini in her backpack, which she had also stolen earlier in the spring
from a sporting goods store. She walked out of the women’s swimsuit section of the Eaton’s Department on
Queen Street, when she found herself trailed by a tall man in a three-piece suit. He looked so tall and
distinctive, with his limp. Where did he come from? Aino immediately thought that an in-store detective was
following her. She wanted to return the overpriced bikini to the swimsuit racks in the lingerie and underwear
department, but her limited experience taught her to stay put and remain calm for the moment. She reassured
herself she and a spiffily dressed businessman just happened to be travelling in generally the same direction.
Then again, Aino quickly thought she should be concerned that she was being followed, regardless of
whether the man was a businessman or a store detective or overdressed security guard. But the security guards
she knew did not carry briefcases, unless he was a special security guard or police officer, a police detective,
who had been building a case on her for the past several months and had finally caught her. Oh, God, she wasn’t
certain; she didn’t know what she should do, and she could feel her heartbeat start to accelerate. If she walked
out of the store with the unpaid swimsuit, and he was a security guard or a police officer, she was inviting a
takedown and arrest. She did a quick mental calculation. Aside from the odd gait from his bum leg, she
speculated the man had to be a businessperson from his style of dress and maybe even the cologne he wore,
which she thought was Old Spice and a bottle of which she stole herself, originally, for her father’s birthday.
Aino stepped out of the revolving shopping mall doors onto crowded Yonge Street. The man continued
to follow behind her, limping as he walked; she could tell by the distinctive clatter of his laces pointy polished
black shoes. Now the fear intensified inside her.
She thought she should run, but she had never fled before—or at least only once—when a store mystery
shopper caught her. He was so angry he made her fear for her physical well-being. She feared that mystery
shopper would attack her, throttle her neck, as he gripped her arms until she kicked him in the groin. She
screamed rape and her assailant became alarmed and afraid. Then, free of his grip, she ran as fast as the running
shoes she stole could carry her into the subway station. She just could not understand why an ordinary person
would care so much about something she stole from a wealthy store. Aino wore those sneakers when she
walked out of the store in the Yorkdale shopping center. Then she ran across the massive parking lot of the
shopping center before she disappeared into the subterranean corridors and tunnels of the subway station.
Now, months later, Aino was confronted again outside of Eatons Centre in downtown Toronto.
“Excuse me, ma’am, I’d like to talk to you about that swimsuit you just took.”
“I’m sorry,” Aino said, turning around, “I didn’t mean to—”
“You forgot—”
“You read my mind. I’m sorry.”
“I’d just like to speak with you about it,” Lars said.
He was a good-looking detective or cop—in house or undercover, Aino admitted to herself. And she was
finally willing to surrender; in fact, she felt relieved she had been caught.
“Please follow me,” Lars said.
Since he sounded so authoritative, Aino followed Lars outside the shopping center downtown onto busy
Queen Street, near where it met Yonge. Then she noticed that she was also being followed by a young man in a
jean jacket and denim pants and footwear that looked like construction boots or cowboy boots. He looked
familiar, and she realized he looked like the young man who lived down the street from her on Oakwood
Avenue. Now she thought it was likely she was being followed by not one but two undercover police officers,
or one plainclothes security guard and one plainclothes police officer, or two plainclothes security guards. This
second young man, though, she thought she recognized, as he followed them through the department store and
into the concourse of the shopping mall and up the banks of escalators. They passed through a domed glass
entrance and two sets of revolving doors on Yonge Street, exits to the department store and domed shopping
mall.
When they reached the intersection Aino was surprised: they completely passed any rear or side or
private entrance to the Eaton’s Department store or the Eatons shopping center.
“Wait a minute. Where are you taking me?”
“To Second Cup café for coffee—to chat.”
Aino thought it was sounding as if he was giving her a chance to redeem herself and explain her actions,
unless he wanted to have sex, which she also considered a real possibility. She thought it possible that he
wanted to extort her into having sex. And then what? She thought he was incredibly good looking, despite his
limp. If he released her for a onetime session of sex, she, desperate, was not certain she could or would say no.
He looked handsome, he smelled nice, he had a calm demeanor, and he appeared like a well-dressed
plainclothes detective.
As Ed, disappearing from her view, followed her and the dandy man with a limp along the Queen Street
and then the Yonge Street sidewalk, he noticed the bikini, bright red, made from a smooth soft material, fell
from her backpack onto the cement sidewalk. He couldn’t help smiling to himself as he eyed the skimpy
swimsuit on the ground. Someone had stepped on the bikini top, and dragged it along the street, as it adhered to
the chewing gum stuck to the sole of their shoe and kicked it into the gutter. Ed took the untouched bikini
bottom sitting on the cement sidewalk and stuffed it into the inside breast pocket of his jean jacket, leaving the
bikini top on the sidewalk. He followed her as she walked behind this spiffy character with a bothersome leg
into the Second Cup café and then they stood before the carafes of coffee.
“What do you want?”
“Sorry. I don’t want anything.”
 “Please, have a coffee and even a muffin. If you don’t want to eat it, I’ll have it. Please, relax.”
“I can’t relax.”
“Okay. I’ll order you a muffin and a coffee. How do you like your coffee.”
Aino needed a coffee, even though the caffeine might make her jittery, but she was already tense and
nervous.
“I’ll get an Irish Cream, one cream and one sugar.”
“That’s their most popular coffee, Irish Cream.”
When they sat down at a table, he took out a notebook and a beautiful luxury pen. He started to ask her
questions: “So why did you take the bikini?”
“Because I liked it. It looks aesthetically appealing.”
He drew a prim expression and wrote her answer down in his notebook. She felt her face growing hot.
“But you don’t really need that bikini, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I have several at home already.”
“I think you would look great in that bikini, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Realizing events seemed to be taking a slightly bizarre turn, Ed rested his forehead on the upraised palm
of his hand, losing his serious, professional demeanor, as he listened to this exchange. When Ed cursed as he
spilled his coffee, she stared at him, while she fielded interview questions from the tall young man. She
wondered if this second interlocutor was an undercover police officer. Meanwhile Ed wondered if he should
call his supervisor on the radio. But for what reason? Nobody appeared in danger and Eddie had already booked
off work.
Ed felt relieved Lars didn’t ask her if she stole these bikinis as well, so she said, “Thank you very much.
I don’t even go to the beach. My skin is sensitive, and I burn very badly. I can’t swim, and I don’t like the sand.
I heard there’s even toxic heavy metals, like lead and cadmium in the sand of Toronto beaches. So, yeah, I
guess I don’t really need the bikini.”
“Did you feel tense before you stole the bikini?”
Then she felt distracted by the young man whom she now recognized as her neighbor, who lived several
houses down the street from her on Oakwood Avenue. As a measure of her desperation, she told Lars she
thought she was being followed. She asked Lars if the young man in the denim jacket and black jeans was his
partner and associate.
Lars paused and looked about the café and stared into Ed’s eye for a moment longer than most people
would have found comfortable. At that moment Ed feared he had been detected conducting surveillance on
them, but then Lars resumed talking with her. Lars advised her not to worry, telling her he was a random
stranger, and she was acting a bit paranoid.
“Sorry, to interrupt. I mean, before you took the bikini.”
Aino felt self-conscious as her face grew hot and sweaty again. She felt embarrassed and her face felt
suffused with redness.
“Yes,” Aino said. She remembered what lawyers advised clients in television dramas. She remembered
what she read about speaking with police officers: to maintain your silence, to not speak, if you were being
treated as a suspect. Now Aino feared she would be arrested if she refused to speak.
“Did you feel the tension building before you took the bikini?”
“Yes,” Aino replied. She wanted to explain about how the tension built every time she stole something
from the store. She wanted to confess she wanted to stop stealing. She had even gone to a family physician to
explain about her uncontrollable urges to steal. When she arrived at the clinic for the appointment, the doctor
was perky and kind. But she could not bring herself to explain. So, she said she needed a prescription for birth
control pills. She obtained a prescription for birth control pills even though she was still a virgin and did not
expect to have sex with anyone.
Ed slowly sipped his coffee, as he, intrigued, sitting behind the pair in the Second Cup café, listened, as
the interlocutor continued to ask her questions of a psychological nature. Lars queried her with deeply personal
and intimate questions all related to what he explained sounded like kleptomania. Aino started to feel confused.
But she thought that if it helped her avoid being arrested, she should co-operate. When Lars turned off his
handheld tape recorder, she realized he was recording their conversation as well. Earlier, though, Lars had asked
her if he could record their conversation, but she hadn’t been paying attention. He slipped his cassette recorder
into the jacket pocket of his suit jacket. He thanked her for her time and for answering his research questions for
his background survey.
“Oh, before I forget, here’s my name and telephone number.”
 He handed her a business card with a fancy emblem. She quickly slipped the business card into the back
pocket of her faded worn torn jeans. She was still anxious, having been panic stricken, so she didn’t even catch
a glimpse of the name embossed on the card.
“Wait a minute. I’m free to go?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? It is a free country.”
Aino wanted to ask the man if he worked for the police or as security for the department store. But she
thought she should leave the café quickly while she still had her liberty. She realized he did not even ask for the
return of the bikini.

Curious about Aino’s intentions and next movements, Ed followed her out of the café and along Yonge
Street. She looked around suspiciously outside the Second Cup café and then along the busy pedestrian
thoroughfare. Ed realized then she knew he was following her. Still, she felt more concern about her
interrogator, and she glanced through the plate glass storefront windows at the tall, slender young man inside
the café writing notes studiously in his notebook. Then she looked down at her backpack and noticed the
zippered compartment was open. The bikini was missing. She figured the swimsuit must have fallen out of her
open backpack as she walked alongside him, as they walked out of the department store and south on Yonge
Street. Then she noticed a clump of clothing on the Yonge Street sidewalk; it was the bikini top. A hundred
dollar bikini bra stepped on by shoppers and pedestrians downtown like it was a dirty oily rag. She couldn’t find
the bikini bottom, which Ed had stuffed inside the breast pocket of his jean jacket. She also didn’t notice she
had dropped the business card when she bent over to examine the bikini bra. Ed couldn’t help noticing and
ogled her backside, thinking she had a cute bum.
Aino wondered if she should pick up the bikini bra and throw the apparel in the clothes washer. People
wasted so much these days. But she thought there was a chance the bikini was ruined. She noticed a hole in the
apparel and thought it even looked punctured. Maybe a dog bit it. Still, she loved the feel and comfort of the
fabric. She picked up the skimpy top from the sidewalk, ashamed that she had been observed by numerous
pedestrians on busy Yonge Street, picking up what they perceived to be nothing more than dirty cloth. She
looked around for her interrogator, but he was back in the café, and she believed she should be prudent to leave
before she exhausted her supply of good fortune.
 Having noticed that Aino had dropped the business card, Ed examined the business card and noticed the
name, Lars Jensen, a graduate student at the University of Toronto. Ed dropped the card—worried if he kept it
he would have to make notes about what was evidence. He realized he had no interest in pursuing anyone
associated with this scenario, except he thought she was pretty. He liked her face, narrow and chiseled, and her
body, thin but curvy and womanly. He remembered she was his neighbor, who lived several houses and
duplexes down Oakwood Avenue from him.
Her uncle complained to her aunt that their niece acted a bit flirty around this next door neighbor. Her
uncle observed her promiscuous antics as he washed his pickup truck in the driveway: Once, after she had
showered and arranged her hair and applied makeup, and headed to the university campus for evening classes,
she had stopped in front of Ed as he walked behind her on the sidewalk, near the bus stop on Oakwood. On a
hot spring evening, when she was wearing short shorts and a tank top, she strode in front of him. She stopped,
because she wanted him to notice her cleavage and body as she bent over to tie her laces, which were already
perfectly laced. But she didn’t realize he was only a few steps behind her when she bent over, so when she
stopped he, absentminded, wondering where he had lost or misplaced his Metropass, collided with her butt. In
fact, she made eye contact with him while she gazed at him through the gap in her legs, as he backed away. He
apologized, but, hot and bothered, she giggled nervously as she toppled over. He helped her onto her feet and
then purposefully strode to the subway station.
Now, having finished his shift, he followed her down Queen Street, along which she hurried as if she
was escaping the scene of a crime. He admired her looks, her unblemished smooth skin and the cleavage of her
breasts and backside. He thought that he would like to know her intimately.
She boarded the Queen Street streetcar, even though the shortest route was to take the subway home, but
the station was in the basement of the shopping center, the scene of her shame, and she couldn’t return there,
not at this time. So she ended up taking the long way home, because she wanted, needed, to get away. She rode
the red metallic clanging streetcar to University station and boarded the subway without having to use a
transfer. She carried a monthly Metro pass she bought regularly on the last day of the month. A small town girl
from Hornepayne in Northern Ontario, where there was no public transit, Aino loved to ride the subway and
city buses everywhere, including to department stores and shopping malls and shopping centers in the far-flung
suburbs.
 Ed walked along Queen Street, making a half-hearted effort to follow her. As a plainclothes security
guard who had finished his shift an hour ago, Ed decided not to return home via the subway beneath the
shopping center, and he merely followed her.
When she arrived home late, she discovered she had locked herself outside of the side entrance to the
house. She decided she would open the basement window, squeeze through the narrow gap, and crawl over the
kitchen sink and countertops into the basement. Ed, heading home further down the street, noticed her from the
laneway, but she waved him off.
“Everything’s all right,” she said, “I just locked myself out.”
He nodded, said he understood, and asked her if she needed help. She reassured him she didn’t require
his assistance, but she appreciated the offer. He watched her crawl through the window into her basement
apartment.
That night she watched a movie by Woody Allen on CITY TV. Then, when she tried to sleep, she
remembered the tall, slender young man with the limp and his voice and demeanor. He looked her in the eye
when he asked her questions and she spoke hesitantly, except when he was writing her answers. And she
thought with his height and chiseled features, he had striking good looks. She thought he was one of the better
looking men she had ever met face-to-face. Even his limp she found endearing.
In the darkness of her bedroom, she covered herself with her comforter and sheets to protect her nudity
and modesty, even though it was hot and sweaty, and she had her privacy, the basement to herself. Still, she felt
guilty, as she started to touch herself. She rubbed and stroked herself furiously until, panting, she came. She
gasped in ecstasy with a mental image of the tall, handsome young man with a limp. She couldn’t remember the
last time she came so hard, but she was full of tension and unsatiated longing. She thought she needed to know
the identity of the man with the limp.
Then she remembered she accepted his business card, but she was so afraid and distracted she couldn’t
remember where she put it. She checked her backpack and then looked in her jeans, rumpled at the foot of her
bed. Aino remembered she had slipped the business card in her back pocket.
But the card had disappeared. She thought long and hard as she sat at the end of her bed in her bedroom
downstairs in the basement of her aunt and uncle’s house on Oakwood Avenue. In fact, she could hear them
having sex upstairs because their bedroom was directly above her room. Looking at the digits on her clock-
radio, she observed the time was barely past two in the morning. She realized she dropped the card, it having
fallen out of her pocket when she bent over to pick up the swimsuit top. She remembered because she was
conscious of the fact her tight blue jeans exposed so much of her backside.
She threw on a pair of sweatpants, a hoodie, and her running shoes. She grabbed a paperback book by
Alice Munro, The Lives of Girls and Women, before she hurried out of her uncle and aunt’s house on Oakwood
Avenue. She hurried out of her basement bachelor apartment, the rent for which her mother had agreed to pay
until the start of winter. Then her mother warned her she would have to learn lessons of self-reliance,
independence, and maturation. She stood at the corner of Oakwood and Eglinton Avenue West, reading the
Penguin vintage paperback edition of Brave New World, waiting for the twenty-four-hour trolley bus.
Eventually, she rode the trolley bus, forty-five minutes later, through the cool, calm, quiet night to Queen Street,
where she eventually caught the twenty-four-hour streetcar.
She disembarked from the all-night streetcar at Queen and Yonge Street, at the downtown intersection,
abandoned, except for a homeless man, beneath a blanket, sitting on a dairy carton case. She followed the route
she took around the corner earlier yesterday when the tall, limping young man escorted her to the coffee shop,
where he conducted his own interrogation. She scoured the grimy, dirty sidewalk, with wind blow newspapers,
the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, which showed the pictures from The Police concert at
Exhibition stadium, until she finally found the business card beneath a discarded newspaper, the classified ads
of Now. She examined the business card beneath the dim light of the department store. His name was Lars
Jensen, a graduate student, who double majored in twin social science disciplines, specializing in kleptomania at
the University of Toronto. She grew outraged.
He was not a cop; he was a graduate student who specialized in psychology and criminology. She felt as
if his interception and interrogation of her was wrong. She rode the streetcar and trolley bus back home through
the cool night and early morning until she arrived home. Her uncle had locked the back door while she went on
her starlight and twilight adventures. She started to sob, realizing she had forgotten the house key, which
opened the side door and was the only exterior entrance to her basement apartment. Her uncle probably wanted
her to move out of his house, even though she was his niece, whose mother paid a modest rent. She found the
same open basement window and managed to crawl through the gap and maneuvered like a gymnast into the
basement.
 Then, instead of relief, she felt angry, so she couldn’t sleep. She had to take one, then two, and then
three Valiums from the bottle she had stolen from her friend’s mother’s bathroom cabinet. Finally, she slept, but
when she awoke in the afternoon, she felt inertia, despair, paralyzed, too afraid to leave her apartment. She
decided to stay at home. She made herbal tea and read the Margaret Atwood novel she had stolen from the
bookstore chain, just south of Bloor Street. She could not remember the last time she stayed home all day,
especially in Toronto, where she loved to ride the bus and subway, read paperback books, engaged in people
watching. Then, she felt so outraged that this graduate student in psychology and criminology had interviewed
her. She overcame her fears and called him.
“You’re the young woman I interviewed yesterday, right?”
“Yes, you’re the young man who questioned me,” she replied, testily.
“Yes, I interviewed you. I recognize your voice.”
“Yes, you interrogated me,” Aino said accusatively. “But you didn’t tell me you’re a psychology
student.”
“I am a master’s student. I’m doing a joint graduate degree in psychology and criminology.”
“But that isn’t the word I’m thinking of. You didn’t act, like, well, properly.”
“You mean ethically?”
“Yeah, exactly. I wonder if it’s even legal what you did.”
“I was merely collecting background material for my research in kleptomania. My faculty advisor was
wondering if it was a good choice of topic, but then I pointed out there’s so little research in the field, and he
reluctantly agreed.”
“But I’m not your guinea pig.”
“I agree absolutely. You’re not my guinea pig. The interview was merely background information I’m
collecting. All the questions were essentially field research questions. They were part of a survey.”
“You mean I’m not the first person you interviewed?”
“Absolutely not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The survey was totally anonymous. Did I even ask you your name once?”
 Aino realized now he hadn’t asked for her name. She said nothing and then she sighed and became less
guarded. “Do you expect me to give you my name.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Angry, she hung up the phone. She wanted to report him, but to whom. Telling herself he didn’t sound
clinical and professional now, just like an ordinary guy, she called him back and tried to explain she believed
firmly what he did was wrong. She also wanted to ask him for a meeting, when she realized that they were
probably about the same age. Finally, she asked him, “How did you get involved in this, uh, business.”
“I stole myself. I prefer not to delve into details unless you really want to know.”
“Yes, I want you to tell me. You tricked me.”
“I did not deceive you.”
“Yes, you did. Now tell me.”
“Ok. I think my urges centered around cassette tapes and my music collection. I was a musician in a
rock and roll band when I was a teenager. I loved listening to hard rock and metal. Most of the time I bought
tapes, but then I started to steal the cassettes after I saw how easy it could be, and I became skilled. Then I
dropped out of high school to tour with our rock band after we started to land gigs in bars and taverns across the
prairies. At every town and city on the tour I went to a music store and stole cassette tapes. Then, when fewer
bars showcased our band, or wanted us to play for drinks and their motel room or lower pay, I ended up stealing
food from grocery stores and supermarkets because we hardly earned enough money. Then one day I stole
roasted pumpkin seeds from the convenience store of a gas bar. Since our band started playing in all these
community centers and bars and taverns across the prairies, I nurtured a taste for pumpkin seeds. The owner
spotted me stealing a pack of them and came after me with a shotgun, screaming he would shoot me. I couldn’t
believe it. I was still a teenager and I’d never seen somebody go crazy with a gun before and I was frightened.
Besides, I had already paid for a tankful of gas for the van. I ran into our touring vehicle. While my band
members asked me why this mechanic in oily coveralls was waving a gun at us, I sped away. Then I realized we
had forgotten the drummer. We circled back to the filling station and rounded the gas pumps to pick him up and
raced off. The mounted police sped past our van with their sirens screaming on the highway. I panicked and
floored the accelerator pedal and sped down the Trans-Canada highway faster than I had ever driven, all over
pumpkin seeds to which I had become addicted, even though they caused me to bleed from the rectum when I
went to the washroom. Then, at an intersection with a grain elevator, I sped through the stop sign and a truck
hauling cattle broadsided the van. The injuries I received from the car accident landed me in Foothills Hospital
for several months. But all the other band members, when I finally regained consciousness and emerged from
my coma, seemed more upset about the injured and dead farm animals. The police and farmers were forced to
shoot the mortally wounded cattle. Anyway, I guess the hospital stay and my head injury cured me; the same
way that kind of shock and prolonged hospitalization might have cured an alcoholic or drug addict. But I never
played music again after that accident, never felt inclined, and I’ve always theorized why.”
After Lars invited Aino to his office in the university, she hung up the telephone and continued to feel
conflicted. She thought she would like to personally know and become intimate with this young scholarly man,
but she also nurtured doubts about his credentials and identity.
The following day she went to the York University library where she had been a student for a semester,
until first her father, who was estranged from her mother, and then her mother refused to pay any more money
for tuition and pricey textbooks. She conducted library research into Lars Jensen. She discovered he was the
author of a single published academic paper on kleptomania. He was working on his joint master’s degree in
psychology and criminology at the University of Toronto. The biographical note mentioned he had been
pursuing an undergraduate degree in music and education, so she thought parts of his story checked out and he
had a slightly intriguing background. She understood it was unusual for undergraduates to get research papers
published in academic journals, but he had done it somehow. She thought she had to give him credit for that
accomplishment.
When she discovered he wasn’t much older than her, she wanted to be with him. She thought at first she
was straight, then gay, and, later, she wondered if she was bisexual. Now, as she felt an attraction for this man,
she realized the truth was not so simple.
Later, as she attempted to piece together events and understand her situation and life and relationships,
she remembered Ed followed her at the end of his shift, when he saw her take the bikini. He also followed her to
the Second Cup café, where she spoke with this tall, well-dressed man with a limp. Then he followed her across
town on the streetcar and then at Ossington the trolley bus. From the bus stop at Oakwood and Eglinton
Avenue, he followed her on foot to the house where she lived.
 The following day, Aino realized she was locked out of the house and had again misplaced or forgotten
the key to the side door, the entrance to her living quarters, her basement apartment. Again, she crouched down
to enter the brick house through the open basement window. Ed paused on the sidewalk where it met the
driveway and walked up the laneway to where she crouched to enter the ground window.
“You dropped this outside the Eatons Centre,” Ed said. “It fell out of your backpack.”
Aino turned crimson. She took the bikini bottom from his hands. “Thanks,” she said, adding, “sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Ed asked. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
Aino turned back, looking crimson, and then crawled through the basement window inside the house.
She slithered and slid inside the basement and locked the downstairs window from the inside. Rightly or
wrongly, she concluded he was smitten and felt an attraction for her.
Several nights later, filled with longing, Ed waited and lounged outside her house. Sipping a takeout
coffee he had gotten from the nearby Tim Hortons on Eglinton Avenue, he leaned against the brick retaining
wall outside her house, the street light at the corner barely casting enough light into the night shadows for him
to read his paperback book, 1984, by George Orwell. He had never entered a woman, loved with lust and
passion. It was a little past midnight when he rapped on her side door. He knocked on the door several times.
Aino probably should have been alarmed at the insistent rapping at that hour of the morning, but she calmly
went to the side door. She peered at him closely through the screen and glass in the darkness and then she
recognized him with wide eyes. She turned around, looked at the closed door that led to the first floor, and
checked to see if the door to her uncle and aunt’s quarters was locked. When she was satisfied the door to the
ground floor of the house was firmly locked and her uncle and aunt were fast asleep, she led Ed downstairs to
her bedroom.
In the darkness and warmth of her bedroom, she wrapped her naked legs around him in the darkness of
her narrow bed. Like an experienced lover, she embraced him with her legs and held him inside her, gripping
him with a tightness and strength neither of them expected. She felt the warm quiver over her loins as she
gripped him with muscles and reflexes over which she never thought she had control. He told her she made him
feel more wanted and needed than ever.
Joshua Martin

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Julia Nunnally Duncan

Ophelia

When I look at the painting,

I see Elizabeth Siddal,
who would come to be
Gabriel Rossetti's model and wife,
her life cut short by laudanum.
For the artist Millais,
she reclined in a tub of cold water,
lying patient and still,
her body chilled,
to portray Ophelia.
I wonder how such work
could mean enough for her
to risk her health,
already frail.
When I look at the painting,
at Ophelia’s face,
lovely and pale,
her upward gaze with eyes so gray;
and study her arms that are spread
and delicate hands uplifted
as if to embrace her fate,
I see Rossetti’s Lizzie there,
whose own despair in time would be
more than she could endure.
End of the Trail

My father was moved by the image—

the warrior slumped wearily
on his pony's back.
It touched him so deeply
that he spoke about it to me
as long as he lived.
He felt respect and pity
for the Native American
who had bravely reached
the end of his struggle,
the end of his trail.
Maybe my father thought
of his own journey through life
and how he had traversed it.
Perhaps he wondered
if he would succeed
in all he set out to do,
through times of hardship.
Today Fraser’s sculpture touches me, too,
and I see both its beauty
and its pain.
Krystle Eilen

navel-gazing

i am an evening shadow;
the day, a luxury i’m willing to refuse.

there is certainty in hoping for some valiant truth

as though what shapes in isolation
is a diamond force.

it is in this reckoning
do we fashion a godhead.

though we may be small,

a perceived summit dwarfs
perceived illusion.
self-estrangement

a necessary desouling

engirds me:

the world is a cleaver

and life is a tether.

to elude these chains

is to be left crippled.

i must curtail spirit

lest i become the

fool of fools.

i must tend to my own

silent funeral.

my ashes —

a heap of my soul.
terminal lucidity

life is at its most restless

just ere the knell:
score a throat
and you’ll hear the buried shout
denuded of its crate;
the white sepulchre
breached to let loose the elegy,
chaste as a bird song mid-choke or
a body embraced in a fist—
a ring most intimate
by virtue of which
every pain is stifled and lynched,
for life hands a plenum
that only death can swallow.
insatiate

life is to be crammed down this maw;

what difference is there between a beast
and i —
ourselves crucified on the body,
inert and inflamed,
feeling our way into any salvation
storm-tossed, as it were, in a deep ravine,
never mind how tenuous
if it is enough to rend this frame
even just for a little while,
never mind the folly
if credulity is to bear the flame.
puella aeterna

comfort has become an isolating chrysalis.

i am incubated in the womb

with a looming sense of urgency.
this warmth of the rind
envelopes me too snugly.
this kind shelter of mine has so much
for me to lose —
in its quietude
against the unceasing
passage of time.
song of janus

along the horizon, not dawn

but a sun-gong struck
at the moon’s beheading.

what’s more:

a sound, not a sound

but the air
made cryptic.

the head, not a head

but a pulse
gone awry.

glee, not a gaiety

but sorrow
worn inside out.

beauty, not sublime

but the grotesque
overlooked impetuously.
blank tide

i did not know

what was going on
until i saw
the river
drowning in the
whorl
of its own eddy,
traversing the
circumference
of an
unblinking eye,
reeling against
its own
substance, and
thrown into a
pitch of
unimagined dim.
Lee Tyler Williams

Rebels of a Neon God

The train from Taoyuan was so bright that all you could see outside the window were flashes of neon and the

outlined traces of some office tower or overpass. My flight back to Seoul had a layover, and the people at the

gate finally admitted over the speaker (after almost all day of hassling from some other passengers) that the

flight was delayed till the next day, so I had a few hours to walk around a city that I only knew from the movies

of Tsai Ming Lang and Hou Hsiao Hsien, movies I got from the library or video stores and watched during

summer breaks in high school.

In Hou’s movies, it seems like every other scene began with trains wrapping around bends or pulling

through tunnels or into some isolated station somewhere in the middle of the island, and you had to wonder

what this obsession with trains was, why in almost every scene you got characters going to the capital for work

or chasing an ex-girlfriend down at Kaoshiung or returning from school for the holidays. On the platforms in

lush jungle valleys, a high whistle and a puff of smoke and alsways overcast, permanent monsoon. The

characters were always on the run like every place was temporary. The peaceful village gets abandoned in the

end. They were floating between empires, and someone at the death dial would flinch eventually, an itchy finger
and your island would be the first pawn to fall, so it made sense that most of the characters either wanted to

return to the mainland (which was impossible) or escape into another future altogether.

The moment you got too comfortable watching those movies, some event would barge in—a death in

the family, the loss of a job, a son’s arrest for sedition. The characters had to be on their toes or else the White

Terror would come for them too.

There was this constant agitation—the kid has to study at his desk, but really he wants to run to the

pond and catch frogs with his friends, the old men play mahjong in the square, but soon a shopkeeper will chase

a thief with a big stick and trip over the table, the office worker plays with a letter opener at her desk and slips

and cuts her finger, the old woman seems to be sleeping on the floor, but when you get closer, you see ants

crawling over her hand. Or the mother and son eat while the rain behind them pours down like a waterfall from

the roof. It’s anti-Newtonian. Nothing is at rest behind the stillness, and watching them as a kid in high school,

I was on that island too, wanting to escape with them, but I wasn’t ready yet, so I sat in the living room in the

dark and daydreamed until the end credits.

One good thing about not planning to come here is that I can get lost without feeling like I’m supposed

to go to someplace in particular, and other than what I remember from those movies, I didn’t know anything

about the city so there was no way it could disappoint me. A day was long enough for me to pretend like I lived

there without ever having to actually stay. I could be one of those extras in A Time to Live, A Time to Die or Dust

in the Wind, waiting on the platform or pacing around the square, trapped inside the frame, nameless, faceless, a

body in space, someone flashing by on a bicycle while you watch the main character running to school in the

morning.
 Ever since the border control at the airport, I recognize the agitation from Hou’s images. Look into this

camera. Walk to this gate. Now grab your bag and go to the escalator. Sit down. No, not there. Here. Ok, now

stand. The main station is on the Red Line. Can you remember that? That’s like the system’s artery. Start

walking from there in any direction, let’s say southeastern, or trust your instincts and choose a street based on

how the name of it sounds, or how the archways over the sidewalk collapse into the shadows. How close the

banyan trees drop their tears onto the roots that are strong enough to burst right through the concrete and

grapple with the walls.

You turn down Qingdao and immediately there’s that melody from Tsai’s Rebels of the Neon God in your

head. The theme song. The brooding synth that plods along through the opening shot while one of the main

characters, this young guy who robs pinball machines with his buddy, rides a scooter through the streets at

night. Just the bass keys and a cymbal and then after you go through the melody a few times, you get the full

string accompaniment. The first time I heard it, it seemed so familiar, but there was no way I could’ve seen the

movie before. This was a pretty obscure piece of celluloid. Still not digitally altered. Analog nostalgia.

Passing through neon, maybe down Qingdao Rd, pixelated arcades and billboards with diamond rings,

phone booths, old diesel buses. Like it is now, my nostalgia was incurable back then. Except this wasn’t a place

I’d been to before, or a language that I understood. What other disease alleviates its own symptoms like

nostalgia? Is the solace of it really that empty? Is it nothing more than flickering pictures on a wall in a dark

room? I was surprised the city didn’t look that different than it did in those films, and walking through

Zhongsheng, I didn’t want to stay or leave. I wasn’t a visitor or a resident. The fantasy is what you know, so you

choose it and tell yourself that it’s true.

 Those apartments in concrete with the water stains and clotheslines strung across the balcony with

sprawling plants hanging down. And all the neon. They thought it would be the light of the future except now

it’s a vision of the past—the water stains and rusted metal bars on the windows only make it more obvious.

Where else was there to go except leaping ahead and stumbling into the next goodbye, where else if you didn’t

have an excuse to keep moving? But those aren’t the right questions. How did I get here is the better question,

or how could I expect to get back on a plane when I finally found a place that I’ve been to before, if only in

movies?

Here I’d arrived at the end of restlessness, in a past that belonged to no one, in a city seen in flashes, or

in the mist, without any direct light, a restaurant down a sidestreet that had a green neon sign and fish tanks in

the window and big plants between the tables. I think I saw it in one of those movies, maybe it was where the

other main character, the student, works bussing tables later on, with all the motorcycles out front, and steam

from the gutters, and the rain just passing through. You can’t escape through fantasy, you just get to set the

limits of your own prison, and maybe it stretches out and seems like it’s endless, but everything in front of you is

drenched in rain, with the colors constantly changing, and the people and motorcycles and rain move at a faster

tempo than you ever thought they would.

Where’s the shame in being a nostalgist? The future always looks like the past eventually so even those

who look ahead will be trapped by it soon enough. A lot of those characters from the Taiwanese New Wave

movies acted like they didn’t want to be here, and why would they? It was either here or a firing squad and

besides, it was where their leader had gone, the rival refuge, a place of escape that keeps echoing back to its
origin. How could they be anything but nostalgic when the future was stuck between this lost origin and a

doomed empire across the ocean?

Outside the restaurant a group is looking at their phones like think they’ll transport them to the

mainland, to the home they were promised, but only when it’s different from the one that exists now, and that’s

what the nostalgist wants, for their home to become a place that never existed, the motherland before Mao, but

after no one, or maybe the Ghost Leader lit up in neon, flashing in the rain, a totem for this impossible return.

Neon was the fantasy of a generation that always came up short, the last of the raw, the last who would

remember a time before the digital age, like we would be some repository of ancient lore that no one else would

ever care about hearing.

Neon was around before the digital, but also evokes a future beyond it. The cities would be draped in

tangles and gridwork of it, and it would stretch into the clouds, and each home would be decorated with it, but

here we were in an alley with only one sign that had already short-circuited with a glow that was dulled by rain.

The artisans who specialized in its design don’t number in the thousands like we once thought they would, and

back home, whenever you see it, it’s used as an ironic relic, some quaint hipsterism, but here it’s been around for

decades, grimy but still somehow bright enough to pierce through the haze, a transcendent glow that moves

faster than light (like in that story by another nostalgist) and contains every conceivable possibility of experience

within it, not just of this moment, standing under the flickering sign, but of every other moment, every NOW

that could’ve ever taken place.

I see more of it down the alley and take a picture. Another restaurant. This one also with blinking

characters, the same piercing light, and up ahead is a hotel with one sign, and a medical clinic with a red cross
like the one on the spires in Daegu except smaller. Sometimes I see a sign at the top of stairways too and stand

there for awhile, looking up, but then I have to remind myself that I only have a few hours left, and what I

wanted to do was wander through the little streets, all numbered and leading into smaller ones until they get so

narrow that only a rat could pass through.

Ventilation ducts and pipes sticking out make them even smaller, and from one window you can see

directly into the building next door. This is the kind of place where that kid in Rebels of a Neon God lives with

his parents, in a lane like this that curls inward, coiled up on itself like a mollusk, eating noodles in silence with

his mom and dad while it rains outside. There should be a new name for the movement Tsai, and Hou, and the

maestro Ed Yang belonged to, not the Taiwanese New Wave—there’s nothing interesting about that name—

but the Neon Wave because after all they made their movies during the boom times, and they still had hope

that they could ride the crest of neon into a greater autonomy, but over the last thirty years, the boom flatlined,

and their sovereign neighbor only reclaimed more of the island.

Maybe that’s also what the agitation was behind the images, this sneaking dread that they were primed

for a vicious confrontation. The kids in Yang’s Brighter Summer Day hazing each other in the hallway after

school instead of studying for the national exams like they knew that learning how to fight was more important

than getting good grades because soon the empire next door would come to liquidate its holdings, turn their

little island into a prison colony or a giant theme park with golf courses on the coast.

Or (and maybe this is the best-case scenario) they could leave it the way it is, preserve its nostalgia,

straight from the decade of my birth, preserve the tiled apartment buildings along the train tracks with their

water stains and rusted cages in front of the plants overflowing from the window and the white laundry strung
up between the bars, freeze it there in its generosity and utopianism and grime, but why did it matter if the city

was preserved like that? I probably wouldn’t ever come here again, and by the time I did, it would probably be a

part of somewhere else.

I also had to follow that line in the wanderer’s credo about never going back the same way you came and

if you have the option to go somewhere you’ve never been to, choose that one first. I repeat the credo as if I

actually follow it, but I was about to go back to Korea, while there were so many other places I hadn’t been to

yet, to revisit a woman who doesn’t expect me to stay there. Or I could stay where I was, with 89 more days left

to my name. I could overstay too, dwell here forever illegally, rent a room at the top of some stairs where neon

flickers and couples who rent by the hour wake you up with their laughter at 4 in the morning, when you forget

where you are for a few minutes and believe that the fan is soothing you back to sleep, and that when you turn it

off, the comfort of its sound will still be there. I could walk under the dripping banyans every night, try to jump

over the puddles, open my umbrella when I step out from the archways and close it again when I take cover.

I must’ve been here before. It’s the extension of another city, another section of the wall between a past

that doesn’t exist and a more brutal goodbye, one that I was repeating to myself just to get the word right, get

that sincere inflection that sometimes even convinces you that you’ll end the story right where it started, on a

dark lane with puddles between the awnings and a porcelain dog that stands beside one of those staircases with

the rooms inside where you’ll stay for years, decorating it like you actually want to be there, and you made some

kind of decision to stop moving, to stay in the one place where you never expected to end up, a place just as

good as any other, and that’s the only reason to stay anywhere. Not because it preserved the decade of my birth

or because it was already cast in movies as a pseudo-noir jungle backdrop, but because I was already here. I
could reconcile my restlessness, wander in my mind, imagine every conceivable possibility of experience, or I

could wander the island, where Shen Fu probably dreamed about visiting, maybe go down towards Kaoshiung

or somewhere in the interior, to a town surrounded by mountains, or over to Keelung and the village of Jiufen

from A City of Sadness, and maybe Jiye could visit once her doctor reduced her therapy sessions, but then I’d be

expecting her to visit, waiting for her, and then I wouldn’t be reconciled with where I was, quarantined on this

island from a world I renounced without any resentment, but with a joyful shedding away of any need to

hesitate about where to go or what to do next, because it was already decided, there was no chance to stray, here

I’d been sent and stranded and the city was so familiar that I could already pretend it was the place where I grew

up, the only place I could go back to when everywhere else had disappeared into the future, but I must’ve still

planned to leave the next morning because I was wandering around Zhongsheng whereas if I really wanted to

stay, I would’ve gone back to the airport hotel and then looked for another place and also for a job and cancelled

my ticket and tried to check out before they saw all the booze in the tiny refrigerator was pillaged.

I didn’t see a station anywhere, only a tangled bunch of alleys with one big road up ahead past some

market stalls that were opened but without any customers. What was the day? Thursday? And it was right after

work. You’d think the stalls would be packed, but the rain was picking up, and I got under the awning of a shoe

store and tried to decide if I should go inside this temple I saw across the street or to keep walking until I found

a station. What harm could one prayer do? Would Joe hold it against me? What would a few more minutes be

when it was already raining hard, and I didn’t know which street I was on, and besides, its doors were wide

open, and it looked warm inside with the smoke rising from it, and I’d been walking for a couple of hours, and

the rain wasn’t going to stop for awhile anyways, so I ran across the street and had to step over this little
threshold that looked like it was there just to remind me that I was crossing from one side to the next, like the

crossing had to be acknowledged somehow or else the unlucky spirits from the outside would follow you in, and

I wish I knew a few words of Fan to say while I passed through the gate instead of stumbling under the lanterns

and up to the wide gold altar with it packets of cookies and oranges and framed photos of the dead, and then

down a hall where there’s a tree dangling with ribbons and dragons carved around the door, their tongues

sticking out and in the whites of their eyes you can see these little flames.

No one could honestly call this place some kind of refuge, like it would protect you from the city

outside, and that’s why the hall in the middle of it doesn’t have a roof. The building itself and the prayers and

the statues dwelling in its shrines won’t help you either. Maybe the gate’s not there to protect what’s outside

from entering in, but the other way around, and the statue standing in front of you, neither a man or woman,

human or god or animal, it won’t protect you either and with so many hands outstretched it makes you dizzy,

and you lose count of them and dupe yourself into thinking that one of those hands could save you, so fearless

in its pose, and if you bow to it and brings alms to shatter on the stone, you could be lifted up, guided, protected

by the sword in its grip, but do you come here for answers, or to remind yourself that the questions are what led

you here and like those cats you saw slinking against the wall, you thought you were hunting for something, but

the rats have already been chased away, and the cats are already gone too, and whoever was a sinner before is

still a sinner, and whoever harbored impure thoughts is still a paraphiliac at heart.

Maybe because there’s no refuge here explains why besides the monk only a few other people are next to

you. No one wants to remind themselves how trapped they are, how whatever they thought they escaped from is

still there, straight ahead, staring straight at them, and the sword stays right where it is, and the empty hand,
the one held highest, you think it’s going to reach down and lift you up, save you when they kick you out of

your room at the top of the stairs, and throw your suitcase out the window, and then you have to decide

whether you should try to catch it or let it hit the ground?

In a split second, is it better to choose the least resistant path? Will the empty hand even catch the

suitcase before it bursts open in the street, no, probably not, but it might still be the one hand that lifts you up,

but only after you admit that the future won’t deliver you anywhere else or give you another name or another

origin, and you still might try to run because you think the guards are after you, but it’s an island, so all you can

do is shatter your alms and remember that here lies the wreckage of any escape you could hope to have from this

city.

Another statue stands behind a glass case of a woman in robes wearing a tiara of gold. The other people

close their eyes except for the monk who still watches us. She’s some kind of mother to us all, but she’s not

asking you to do anything for her. You also can’t expect her to do anything for you but listen—you invite the

trouble, you always have, by not telling her what’s really going on.

Can you even formulate the words to yourself? You think trouble is a part of the game you’re playing,

but really the game is playing you, and if you play a game or two, then okay, maybe you’ll miss the war, spar

with the foxes to spare the wolf, and if you really want her compassion, then take it, but first understand what it

is you’re asking for, and what you’re going to do when she asks for it back, because it’s not one-sided, and your

stinginess will cost you, but where else is there to go, in the smoke you start stumbling even more and someone

somewhere is offering you compassion at an absurdly high yet surprisingly reasonable price, and what’s the price

of a few prayers? Your attention. What’s the price of a few more minutes?
 If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be here. None of us would. We’re here because we don’t have a

minute to spare. Not the guy who’s paralyzed on one side or the woman wearing hospital slippers or the other

woman with her little kid or the monk who lowers his head because this lady will not be ignored, not because

we’re scared of her, how could we be, look at her smile, there’s no malice in it, she smiles like she’s never had an

impure thought in her endless life, like she understands, but she doesn’t ever acknowledge it, a knowing smile

stretched thin, sculpted in gold, and instead of turning from the world that hushes before her, she faces it head-

on with her shimmering robe, the reflection of the lamps that surround her in the glass, some kind of halo on

top of the tiara, shimmering also, neither asking you to look at her or warding you away either, and the gift she

offers is one that can’t be forgotten or spent or wasted, and once you accept it—and by looking at her, you’ve

accepted it—you can never look away.

What is her love but the thrill of not asking for more? Every possible life has already been lived, and

there is nowhere else to go, she’s the gatekeeper, not Joe or the Word or the dharma—and she may never let

you pass, no more wandering or wanting, all you can do for now is sit here and wait—not even wait, because

waiting implies some expectation, some end. Even if the island budges an inch, it’s not drifting back to a lost

homeland. This isn’t some Pangea-in-the-making we’re a part of here, the territory only drifts farther out to

sea, becoming more distant, some wavering shadows on the line, an orphan castaway, and I was never here, and

I was never born, and I keep remembering my life before I ever arrived on this island, and the path back is

helpless to uncover, and the lights along it, inescapable, but she’s heard all your stories and questions, your

hunting, your meandering, the sound of you snoring, of you scratching yourself in the morning, the most

pristine dialogical reasoning you could ever muster, which is no more convincing than when you get on your
knees and beg, the desperation is even there in your sleep, and she hears it all, and nothing changes that smile,

like she’s about to draw the gate and sever you in half and later feed you to the dogs that guard the gates

stretching behind her, each one also with another gatekeeper waiting for you to pass, and in the folds of her

robe you can see the gold sheen getting brighter to a polished blue and red and yellow neon, the tiara crumbling

in front of her face that’s drawing farther away, or getting closer, it’s hard to tell, and the glass fogs up and melts

down across the banister protecting you from her or her from you, and in the stillness of her command you

retreat farther, knowing that if you could see the gate that belonged to you for what it was, you’d be able to step

right through it.

Linda King

happy hour

the most you can do

is try to inhabit

the moment you are in

let fate become

the tumbling dice

walk the rough sidewalks

make happy hour small talk

while the lonely man

at the microphone

sings his sad hungry love songs

and the poet in the corner

writes enough poetry

to start a revolution
every word needs another word

no more than this

a meltdown fiesta wobble adjust

wobble adjust bail is not immanent

for want of some magical element

or a transcendental moment

you go back to the beginning

of everything and nothing

you ask for answers

but every word needs another word

and this morning the mountains

won’t hold you and the tiny siskins

in the cedars are engaged

in their own torrent

of squabbles
Maitrayee Deka

Pomo

She who speaks through three people

is having to marry one end of an
autumn bush snapped in halves
one half missing the blossom
are straining the nostrils as cotton bulb,
a new way to breathe persona non grata,
they both are learning, each with
their phantom limb grabbing things
invented for the purpose of putting
two together, double decker bus, tandem
bikes, beanies, who came up
with these things

loss
an empty sky
spins into certified wholes,
whole milk, whole avocados,
whole grain, we need these things

traffic
lights stop unsteady vehicles,
now she a two is
fitting into a sample size.
Before Long

Apple slices upright

on goat cheese salad
humid halloumi shavings on
a pancake burrito suburbs
gone honky tonk in an all-American diner,
is there any other country that knows itself
more through its motels open throughout the night
and I have not even been to the country.

I often nibble my shadows for lunch,

slowly feel my teeth through the air from BnBs,
cut roses, fumes from TV, circling the ventilator
mice dropping on my lap, I can rewind to Victorian lanes
from the back of my neighbour's window, lunch grass is greener.

My bedroom pulls the wool over my eyes

and can't tell apart inside from the out.
Marc Carver

FORGIVENESS

I dream of corpses and lovers

dream that another day is impossible
dream that these grey skies will never leave
the undecided snow falls to the ground
leaves still won't come and birds in packs fly for their lives to warmer climes
If only I could take a chance again
surely now
now anything is possible but still time clings to me
It is in my bones now he said
but he still had no forgiveness I could not even give him that
my mother knew better than to ask.
All who come to my door no better than to ask.
TWO HOURS OF MADNESS

I went for a coffee before the play thought it might wake me up a bit.
She asked for a name and I told her Marc
She said bark and I told her I know I look like an old dog but it is Marc
Everybody laughed and I went up to the circle
The usher said it had already started and took me in
I had a strong desire to put my arm around her
she asked to see my ticket again
then she told me I was in the wrong theatre and had to go downstairs to the Lytleton.
I found my seat and ended up sitting next to a cracker we had a little chat and I thought my day might be
getting better.
The play started with everybody talking over each over Cunt after fuck after cunt it was the most base play I had
ever heard and nobody does base like me.
At the break I was looking forward to chatting up the bird next to me and telling her how beautiful she was
she ran off to the toilet as I wandered around when she came back she decided to move seats which just about
finished me off for the day.
DRIP DRIP

Every time I walk into the back garden I see that tap
how it leaks away
drip
drip
it gets under my skin because I know it is trying to tell me something
time is running out it is saying
you will walk out of here one day and it will be up
you will be out of time
drip
drip
it goes like a lot of things taunting and taunting
telling me if you you going to do it you best do it now
tomorrow
is
too late
OFF THE WAGON

I start laughing as I walk into the coffee shop

and the woman who looks a bit like a man asks if I am alright.
Yea I say thought I saw something funny.
I didn't tell her I thought I saw a dog with a condom on outside
she may have thought I was cracking up.
I waited for my coffee looking at all the women asking them in my head who wanted my seed.
They all looked a bit disgusted at me.
I had my coffee and walked out
lots of women started to smile at me and I knew I was in trouble.
It normally goes this way when I stop drinking for a bit.
People give me hope that suppose I don't want
So I went home fell asleep and hit the bottle that night
On the wagon off the wagon what difference does it make.
VAMPIRE

I left the house

got smiles from ten or so people in my long white coat
then
got tired and had to sit down.
An old woman met an even older couple
they knew each other and began to talk.
They moaned and moaned as I watched them on and on they went.
The woman saw me watching and looked at me so I smiled a couple of times but nothing back.
I saw Eliza in the DIY place she didn't want to look at me until I left then she would not take her beautiful eyes
off me
and I almost walked into the door.
Now I think I have sucked all the love from these people
like some emotional vampire
It makes me strong
KNOCKING SHOP

I thought about going into the Chinese place for a massage

but then I remembered I could not find any pants this morning
eventually I thought what the hell.
Went in and the Chinese woman gave me a hug then I gave her a kiss
I left my training pants on
she told me to take them off and I told her I had no pants on and she said it was fine.
She started with the massage after about twenty minutes she asked me if I wanted body to body for extra money
I said I was fine just with the massage she finished soon after
did not want to look at me as I left Could not get me out quick enough.
Guess I got the wrong end of the stick again
TELLING IT HOW IT IS

I had a strong urge to steal a sausage from the wooden hut

the man was not in there so I could just whip it out of the frying pan
not that I do not have the money.
I just want that frill
to test life,
I go and buy clothes I do not need stand in the queue
I want to ask the woman in front of me
Can you not smell me
that animal smell I have all over me
I feel I am almost losing it.
The next day I tell my grown up son
He will never amount to anything that boy, that is what grandad used to say about me son and you know
He was absolutely right.
TEMPUS

Every day
I wake up with my heart filled with love for various women I don't really know.
Mainly coffee girls or women that work in shops
but by about ten o'clock it has all worked itself off.
I am back to normal wondering why I can't conquer time
but it is hard to conquer something that is eternal
especially when you mainly do the same things everyday.
Go to the same places see the same people they are like ghosts following you around dodging life just like me.
For years luck was on my side then suddenly it all caught up with me
it felt like someone dropping a big anvil on my head just my feet sticking out from underneath.
I really believe each morning i can conquer time
but
I never can
Marcia Arrieta

unexpected

bees & the subconscious compromised

blue pens free will/determinism

the flute & the philosopher’s stone

[ We look forward to resolving your claim in a timely manner ]

watercolor intention paint time

polar bears & sea lions

low tide

on a beach of rocks & anemones

i find a perfect shell

my skin is weathered
my feet walk a thousand miles
between loss & denial
death & loss

the geraniums are overtaking the garden

& there are words like feathers
scattered everywhere
to release control

dandelions float in wind

trout swim

letters become a life force

stones tumble through shadows

oranges & avocados

to keep disciplined

to falter not

breathe the stars

Margaret Adams Birth

The Stranger

“Mother?”
“Hm?” My mother was tatting lace, which I knew was ultimately destined to trim one of the cotton
flour-sack slips she made for me. I imagined that I might well be the only girl in my Depression-era school who
owned a lace-trimmed slip anymore.
“Is Daddy going to be home soon?”
She didn’t answer immediately, but deftly worked the thread through her fingers and turned the shuttle
so that it created pretty twisting images.
“He’ll get home soon as he can come home,” she enigmatically replied.
It drove me crazy, how cool she could remain when she didn’t know what was going on, or where Daddy
was, or what he was doing.
Twice already during the past year, we’d had to pack up and move to a completely new town after he’d
come home with the news that his current employer no longer required his services. I’d started the school year
in seventh grade; by Christmas, we’d moved across the state border, and I’d suddenly found myself placed in the
eighth grade, due to both my age and the topics I’d already studied; with the second move, in March, though,
I’d wound up in the seventh grade again, in yet another school district.
“Mother?”
Exasperation marking her movements, she laid her lace-covered hands, still holding the tatting shuttle,
in her lap. “What?” she snapped.
 I took a step back. “Sorry—never mind.” I moved to a corner of the living room of our tiny rented house,
and picked up the “Nancy Drew” book I’d checked out of the town library the previous Saturday. If I couldn’t
physically get more than ten or twelve feet away from my mother in this room, mentally I could completely
escape her ramrod attitude and frigid responses to me by imagining myself into the pages of a novel. Among my
favorite fictional subjects was Nancy Drew, the teenage girl detective. Nancy Drew and I had plenty in
common: We’d both traveled to many places in our young lives; we’d both encountered plenty of challenges
(although hers tended to be in the form of adventurous mysteries, while mine were more mundane); and we
were both close to our dads.
I recalled how Daddy had once told me, “No matter that you grow up and I grow old, you’ll always be
my little girl, sugar-pie.”
Mother hadn’t approved. She’d quoted Ephesians 5:31 and pursed her lips. I was confident that she
loved me in her own way—but sometimes it was hard to feel her love.
Daddy had winked at me behind her back and silently mouthed the words, “Ephesians six, two and
three,” and nodded his head once as if that settled that.
A tense silence reigned in the living room except for the consistent ticking of the old regulator clock
with a cherry wood case that was mounted over the sofa in a place of honor—because, despite the fact that I
knew Mother would deny having an attachment to any thing, I just as well knew that the beautiful regulator
clock was her most prized worldly possession.
When a knock came at the front door, neither of us was expecting it, and Mother and I
both leapt out of our seats.
I sat back down and let her answer the door.
“May I help you?” I heard her ask the person on the other side.
That was followed by some murmuring, in words I couldn’t make out—but then my mother stepped
aside, opened the door further, and gestured toward our living room. “Won’t you please come in? Why don’t
you come take a seat and let’s see if we can figure this out.”
The woman who entered the room then was nobody I recognized from the town of Murphy—or, for
that matter, from Mayhew or Aston, which were our neighboring communities. Then again, we hadn’t been
living in Murphy all that long, and even though I liked to ride my Schwinn all over the place, when I could, and
go exploring, that still didn’t mean that I knew every place or every person.
“I’m looking for Mrs. John Smith,” said the woman. A mop of thick gray pin curls bounced atop her
head when she spoke, and either she was quite flushed despite the damp coolness of the day or else she’d
applied orangey-pink rouge none too artfully, for high, round spots of color marked each of her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” said Mother, “but we aren’t familiar with John Smith—but then, we’re still new here,
ourselves.”
“It’s not Mr. Smith I want,” said the stranger. “It’s his widow—Mrs. John Smith. I hear tell she lives
around these parts.”
Mother shrugged her shoulders and shook her head apologetically.
“But aren’t y’all Mae and Mary Lee Ornicutt?” asked the lady who somehow knew our names though we
had no idea of hers. “I hear tell that Mrs. John Smith lives right near y’all.”
Once more, Mother shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. Then she looked at me
as if I might be able to help.
I took that as permission to speak up. “Does Mrs. Smith have any children or grandchildren round
about my age?”
“You mean thirteen?”
I glanced at Mother. I was indeed thirteen. How had our gray-haired visitor known?
“No.” The stranger shook her head, causing her pin curls to bounce more vigorously than before. “I
don’t believe that she and Mr. Smith were ever blessed to have children—but, if they had been, I’m sure they
would have felt fortunate to have a lovely girl like you.” She turned to my mother then, before I could take in
her compliment and come up with an appropriate response. “Are you sure you haven’t made the acquaintance of
Mrs. John Smith through the part-time work you do through the County Extension?” she persisted. “She’d
mentioned something to me about wanting to learn how to can the fruits and vegetables she planned to grow
this summer.”
“How—” my mother began to ask. How had this woman known that Mother earned a little extra pin
money by teaching other women how to sew and can food, through our local County Extension?
 Before Mother could fully formulate her question, though, our puzzling guest turned to me. “Are you
sure Mrs. John Smith hasn’t visited your classroom to volunteer her time by helping to teach creative writing?
She was a lady journalist up north, you know, and when she married Mr. Smith, she retired and rewrote all of
those news stories as fiction pieces. She’s sold quite a few of them to True Confessions, I hear. . . . I understand
that you like writing stories too, Mary Lee.”
I turned to my mother—but should have realized no help would be forthcoming from her.
“I . . .” I didn’t know what to say. The more our visitor spoke of Mrs. Smith, the more I felt as if we ought to
know our alleged neighbor very well; and yet, oddly enough, the more this steel-haired woman with the loud
cheeks and the bright-red-lipstick-stained lips spoke, the more I also felt as if we should recognize her.
“Mrs. Smith hails from up north?” my mother asked.
“Oh yes,” replied the stranger, “all the way from up to Atlanta.”
“How do you know she lives here?” Mother demanded. Unspoken—too polite to be voiced aloud, but
nevertheless implied by her strident tone—was also the question of who our unknown visitor was and how she
knew so much about us.
This was a mystery, I thought. It was a genuine mystery—although, unlike Nancy Drew, I didn’t expect
our mystery to extend beyond the confines of our little rental’s living room, nor did I expect it to be neatly
solved before politeness would dictate that our uninvited, confused guest should leave. How would Nancy
approach this mystery? I wondered. “If you don’t mind my asking, ma’am, when is the last time you heard from
Mrs. Smith?”
The stranger clutched her pocketbook, which rested in her lap, and gazed heavenward, as if for
guidance. “I don’t recall exactly,” she demurred, “but I feel sure that it was recently.”
We, ourselves, had lived in Murphy only for a few weeks; although, in one of our previous situations,
we’d lived somewhat nearby—in the same county—it had been two or three years before, so if we had ever met
Mrs. Smith, it absolutely must have been quite recently or else all those years ago.
Mother shook her head yet again and appeared as helpless as I have ever seen her.
It struck me that, even though my mother was an adult, she didn’t have any better notion than I did of
how we should handle this strange woman now that it was clear we couldn’t help
her and equally as clear she had no intention of taking her leave any time soon.
The three of us sat in an awkward silence that was broken only by the ticktock of Mother’s regulator
clock.
Ticktock.
“What’s that?” asked our guest, sounding suddenly, inexplicably nervous.
“What’s what?” I replied.
Ticktock.
“That sound—what is it?”
Ticktock.
For whatever reason, Mother sat unmoving, completely unresponsive, so I pointed toward the
pendulum-style clock on the wall behind our visitor.
The silver pin curls set to bouncing again as she craned her neck to gaze at the clock. “Well, would you
look at that!” All at once, she reached out, grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me toward her, then turned both
of us around so that she could kneel on the couch cushion, facing the clock. With one hand, she continued to
hold me tightly, while, with her other hand, she began to reach toward the clock. “Would you look at that!” she
exclaimed again. “It’s exactly the right time!”
Puzzled and scared as I was by our odd guest, I felt all the more puzzled and scared by my mother’s
response.
“No!” Mother hollered, and she sprang from her chair and lunged at the hand that was reaching for her
beloved clock. In her concern for her clock, she’d apparently forgotten all about
me.
“It’s time!” our visitor announced with a crazy laugh—a laugh that, I noticed, sounded
nothing like the breathy, high voice in which she’d been speaking.
Even though I understood that it was rude to do so, I stared at the woman, trying to figure her out—and
stared at Mother, who continued to attack our guest. She grabbed at the woman’s hand, then at her dress sleeve,
and finally at her hair . . . which promptly came off!
 Faster than I could process what was happening, the woman released me, stepped away from the couch
and the clock, twisted out of my mother’s mad clutches, and began to strip. The wig was already dangling from
my stunned mother’s left hand. Unbuttoning the bodice of the dress revealed a light blue chambray work shirt
underneath and, lower down, beneath the dress skirt, a pair of rolled-up dungarees.
“Daddy!” I shrieked as I launched myself into the now-outstretched arms of the man who still wore the
clown-like makeup of his playacting costume. I began to laugh hysterically as I felt silly that I hadn’t figured this
out long before. “You funny Daddy!” I laughed some more. “You tricked us!”
Daddy held me close to him, and I thought I’d never been happier to see someone I loved than I’d been
when he’d shed his disguise and revealed himself to us at last.
When I lifted my head from his shoulder, though, and saw Mother standing behind him—her lips
pinched, her arms crossed over her chest disapprovingly—and I thought back to how her instinct had been to
safeguard her precious clock and not her daughter . . . I had to wonder if I’d ever really known her.
Mark DeCarteret

from Off Season

1. ANALOG

A disabled neon sign at The Wreck non-announced the return of Bulge for the weekend. The drummer of
which would let his kit have it. With a limp arm the size of a doll. And would often score weed off his buddy
Russell. That stunk of the wet fur of service dogs. Most nights loading himself up with such an array of capsules
and powders. They had to fit his head with a paper bag, talk him out from a stall. Then pass off his sorry ass to
the sliding glass doors of the 24-hour clinic. Blaise tremored in front of a monster truck’s interrogation lights
like a newborn seal. Sand papering his eyes. The wind aping his dwindling spirit. Even a flat liner would know
the sea was near. By the unearthly luminescence. Those lowest grade murmurs. The fetor of rotten fish. And
the complimentary lemon slice. To help fight off the fetor. Before crossing the street towards the acres of
parking lot. Blaise checked to see if anyone had had any success getting their cars started. Not won over by
snow. And refraining from rain. Sleet encased it all into a half-frozen vignette. So, it looked even less like itself.
And so, it would seem, here in Seatown, even the precipitation was of two minds.

A week ago, Nate told him he’d watched as they chiseled up a frozen deer from the main drag. Further inland
where the bogs would give way to the mostly logged forests. Then the lots with the half-finished capes. And
their foreclosure notices strung out on hot pink stakes. That the teens would steal the copper. Then, kick the
shit out of the sheetrock. Before setting the entire theme park on fire. Yet, another teaser for the apocalypse. It
was the fifth strike that week. Seatownies insisting this one was missing its backside. Its legs twisted into an
elegant script. Before being hit by the Cutler widow. And reducing her Buick LeSabre to what appeared to be a
deep fryer basket. While others were seen sans their organs. Their spines ratcheting up to the sky like this most
off-white of extension ladders. Or were sworn to be opened up wide at the neck. Their arteries teaming with
the air to dream up this ungodly of steams. All of them, supposedly booking it out of the woods, on that stretch
where the auto body shops multiplied like lip sores. And the pawn shops stockpiled weapons and potpourri.
Forgoing the fog as if something ill-thought-of and deficient of light had been giving the ruminants chase.
Something once cast in the image of Christ. And mostly game sticking it out in Our Lord and Savior’s shadow.
Before finding itself all out of sorts, reborn. With an even keener sense of smell. And this unholiest of appetites.
Much too ambitious for the likes of Seatown.
Or at least that was the talk. The only thing Seatownies had more of than misery. An utter lack of a calling.
O how things darkly spiraled in this slop-sink of a place. Paling in comparison to the rest of the color-by-
number coastal communities. Where you entered by code. And nature was co-sponsored. Mainly in name only.
While Seatown-- part spun art, part wished-out stars blacking out into asterisks. Merely splashed off the wheel.
Where it settled like wet ash. To be cashed in for arcade admission, fees. These ex-fantasies. They’d eventually
shack up with. Out here, on the edge of the edge. So outer limited one sometimes doubted its existence. As if it
the outskirts of Beckett’s hell, where one’s eye downplayed their own tricks. And one took in skit after skit of
these comedies. Blacker than a bomb-tick. Or cartoons where coyotes were toyed with. Then side-kicked off
another ledge. That is, until God began. Feeling the most uninhibited, fun-loving. He’d felt since Creation
Fest. Those first seven days of self-indulgence. Pre-blueprint (Oh how original…), sin. And They unleashed
what would end up being. The absolute worst of Their body of work.

A pom pom hatted kid romped by with a bouquet of jerky and a Slurpee the size of an artillery shell shouting,
“My face feels like my fingers,” to the bargains-hid windows of Rough Seas Variety. At this hour, its brethren
mostly flocked in for coffee and antacids. Packaged donuts and scratch cards. The occasional party favor or craft
idea. Blaise flippered down to the ocean. Where it was still Seatown officially, but the spit was always saltier.
The soundtrack of sea bird hysterics and sloshing always louder. And the clouds more worked up about
something. Today, the beach looked recreated from a police artist’s sketch. Or an amateur’s catch-all of the day.
Snow taxed with exhaust. Ice pocketed with surprises. And soon, all the pools, thawing. So now, what have we
here? Slugs, so ugly. Scale worms, so monstrous. They had no need for a green screen. Or computer
degeneration. Not to mention, all un-manner of hellish shell tugged at and gutted. This resin-brown seaweed,
all blistered and alien, more sinister and outlandish than anything you could outdraw in some video game. And
though Blaise tried to oust thousands of pirate-ghosts from his nose. And couldn’t feel the outer reaches of his
toes. His brain was terribly alert. Trained on this sudden misprint of light. Like a rainbow. A frigging prism.
Here, a cormorant moved as if targeted by a magnet underneath it. There, dovekies were snapped across the
sky as if by elastic. While up ahead, razorbills threatened to slit the throats of the water. Then, entice the
dovekies, into tidying it all up. Have no doubts about it, Blaise was picturing it in steps, as if pet-sitting the fair-
animal tent of his imagination, with the intensity of some dim-witted boy being incessantly told to get out of a
step-relative’s sight. Now, waddling along the water’s edge like Lazarus lugging four days of laundry. His
tongue was problem solving the air and then disappearing, caving into gravity. Before remaking a face camera-
ready, faker. My little spelunker what have you uncovered?

He had called into work sick for the second day in a row and was experiencing the penetrating vision of excess
leisure. Blaise was a text-executive when it came to coming up with excuses. Head of operations when tossing
off his assorted stories. So once again Carson would have to man the carpet cleaner by his single-celled self.
Dragging hose behind him like some tragic myth. Or magic unicorn. Snorkeling up odors and/or stains by the
millions. While he frothed at the mouth. Air-kissing these sickest of figures. Another simile, Blaise had
thought, he might liken to anything. Except maybe a smile. Or the missing limb one still bestowed one’s top
billing. One’s suffering so fussed over it was somehow set free of its surface firings, defused. For as long as the
forced analogy had one crucified like a butterfly. Ah yes, Blaise was a free agent when it came to language.
Never able to keep a metaphor. From speaking up for. Whatever self he had cooked up that morning.
But out here, the universe couldn’t be bothered to explain itself. Or try to find the right words. For all that
had been done. Wrong to the world. And continued to. In ways humans couldn’t even yet fathom. Do the
theorizing or super-sizing. Never mind the math. Smothering the earth with more self-important tropes. When
nature had already served up a billion characters, bites. Long before any clown. Got their white mitts all over
them. So, come out from under your high hats. Your low brow denominations, stats. Nature rarely feeling the
need. For telling it. Nothing like it was. Sound off, unfoundedly. Impart wisdom out the same hole it ate whole.
Or worse, resort to poetry-lite. Just to tower up a few floors. Woo and/or amuse. Swoon over some endangered
bird. Or slam more of Whitman’s atoms to the mat. Outdo the biddings of some lifetime membership, dribble.
I mean, one name for the moon’s one too many. Even, one star harmed made too much of. Still, the cosmos
fosters a soft spot for mimes. And likes haiku enough in small doses. Will even carry a tune. Cause there’s
literally nothing on the radio. Opting for mostly top 40 from the 70s. Country, when it was country. And not
thousands of idolatrous ditties. Rerouted south. Till they crashed at the shrine to the divinely whined, sacred:
Disney. Where, instead of Nirvana, one is granted. For an unlimited time. Vanity offering plates, leftover gruel.
And more talentless Americans. Corporate pop. So all-purpose, softly rocked. It’s blended into one big boy
band. So off Broadway. So up with people. They’ll go download. On any blog. With a Dickinson wannabe.
We’ve wasted cloud. Automatically tuned to the same unforgivable note, static. So overproduced, slick. We’re
lip-synching a link to our signing off, kill switch. Or praying we’ll be hit and run by the lottery. Tell me, what’s
the use of keeping at it? When seriously, it all peaked with Shakespeare. Like, for real, Lear.
Still, Blaise thought himself lucky. Thankfully, hand-culled off the floors of some fish tank. In the waiting
room of some dentist. And released ten or so blocks from the sea. In, albeit a rental. And it the most off of off
seasons. Finned and sniffing out the indefinite. Now, let’s give a big hand, to high summer’s far less fraternal
twin, winter. In its final weeks here at the Casino. Already a thousand nights in. A total mess of a month. A
non-month. It’s March again. Never quite on. Even remotely. Like February without the lover’s touch, charm.
Or April, minus the cross and absolved sin. Thus, any miraculous birth.
Blaise tried to walk it off. Raise his brain from the dead again. With his lantern and spray-on tan.
Lautreamont’s lobster on the tightest of leashes. But there was little to rasp, forget praise. Or to see in his
breath. No shore-ode or door prize. No hint of a breeze. Only Olson’s loneliest of notations, reassurances. All
those lost solos of his. Scored into decorative bone. Halfway between Melville’s blown out valves. And Blaise’s
bugle horn. Always taking on water. Spouting more nonsense.
What’s another six-letter noun for unsound? Early onset sun downing? Out-taking one for the meme?
 Besides, Blaise’s only desire, was that he was. Ideally. At a loss for words. Virtually, rid of the world. And
drowned, whited out, by the thundering undertow and thoroughness of the Atlantic. His voice thrown to a
ground. Forever shifting beneath his feet. To be made even more of a mess of. Smeared beyond recognition.
Earshot to hell. All that hadn’t been hemmed in or medicated, suddenly deemed immaterial, infinitely clueless.
All his random modes of thought and overly game images. The unluckiest draw of his skull. That had tortured
Blaise since childhood. Utterly silenced. Let be.
Blaise had to hand it to those crews. Who’d soon spring into action. And rework the beach. Designer sand
hatched in sand labs. Or made off with from islands. Perfect specimen uncrated and then mechanically raked
with Zen-like precision. In the same way, every one-time fun fact, having to do with volcano or cloud,
dandelion or louse, now seemed instantly 3D printable--beamed down towards our main drives, assigned a file,
and then stared out a screen from our ergonomical chairs, becoming yet more second rate, unnecessary. At the
very least, third party to. The wet dreams of scientists and the inbred reasoning of soft-worn engineers, vying
against the ancient memories of the ocean and the unseen clout of the moon. With outcomes too sundry and
numerous, done-to-death, to even mention, never mind tame.
The less the present. Forever tensed up. Into the past. The more strapped in. Blaise sensed himself, felt. For
any future. He would never be sold. And which was always getting old. A part too two bit, small. To even call a
walk-on. Make into a cameo. And a lacking in all character. Here, only to kill time. In the belly of the last
whale. With the skill and the artistry. Of God’s orphan, puppet-son. So, it’s little wonder this child. Co-star in
his own head. Has ironically grown. Into the best man for the job. Of trying to put up with words. See, long-
drawn-out to. Poor, poor Seatown. And its most short-lived of brands.
Mark Goodwin

Pray Hope Will Fringe

( a cycle of five poems )

at a corner of
a strange
twig in
holly’s
crisp thick

at a corner of
a wet wood

orange silence

a robin on
an oak stump

now orange

splintered song
hot orange wobbling

throat feathers

.
a strange
light makes

moisture’s glances

twinkle through
twigs

across grass
a fox barks

abrupt

twig in
east corner

that’s base

trickle of
saliva from

east edge
to west’s

frilly fray

that says
things

clearly &
slowly to

a
swimmer or
wader

one ripply
sm ear of

fox

shit just
off

scentre

represents
a mass if

with a peak
so unclimbed

it s

tinks

to high
heave

.
holly’s

green-sheen shar
ps cradle

red wet moons

that this win

d’s tidings shake

each prickle a tip

ping point each

berry of blood

and holly’s cren

elations hide

a rob

in &
wren spent

and tat
tered from

battling

pray hope will fringe

each leaf &

berry with frost

.
crisp thick

ening dusk
vibrates as

from

across
valley a

breathy hark
of fox

-bark

stre tches
Mark Young

A line from Marco Polo

The Bible states that trusting a

nanomaterial that is darker than
any other substance reflects a post-
Hiroshima skepticism about the

Apocalypse. There's another verse

noting that ever since the Big Bang,
time is a human construct that's lost
all meaning. The days are getting

longer, but we need that extra time

to take in the constant increase in viol-
ence & hatred that's being splashed
all over my Facebook newsfeed. The

things that are in the world! Another

feed states that our annual cereal yield
has nearly tripled. Yet another informs
that, so too, have deaths from famine.
geographies: The Five Boroughs

A free bike education program

pedals up the steps of the
Empire State. I plant scarlet
runner beans in its wake,
staying out of reach of a boa
constrictor which circles the
handrail & which whispers to
me, take the lift, it's easier. I de-
mur, but we plant & pedal faster.
Tom Beckett Titles: #35

Possession and Essentialism

Possession is the art of discerning between external noise & internal voice.
Essentialism is the control a person intentionally exercises toward a thing.

Possession is the categorization of people within a culture.

Essentialism is an 18-year-old Catholic girl whose purity is overtaken by a demonic
force.

Possession is the belief that categories capture objective & internally homogeneous
partitions of the natural world.
Essentialism is defined as having control over the disposition of a substance or
thing, & includes having joint ownership of a joint.

Possession is responsible for gender stereotypes about men & women.

Essentialism is for tenants facing termination, when a warrant has been issued.

Possession is used by some historians in listing cultural characteristics of a par-

ticular nation or culture.
Essentialism is not just a collection, it's an invitation to experience the remarkable.

Possession is a concept in philosophy & psychology concerning the underlying "true"

metaphysical nature of material objects.
Essentialism is universally regarded as a keystone concept within the offensive game
model of many football teams.

Possession is a way of life that helps you navigate a distracting world.

Essentialism is a compelling glimpse of the unimaginable; both macabre &
triumphant at the same time.

Possession is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique.

Essentialism is a national journal that covers a wide range of issues that directly
affect Australian Local Government entities.
Possession is the view held by Plato that there existed abstract entities of which
physical objects were merely imperfect copies.
Essentialism is defined as the detention or manual custody of anything which may
be the subject of one's enjoyment.

Possession isn't about getting more done in less time.

Essentialism is nine-tenths of the law.
 Life with Paraquat

This behavior by the

universe could be
the rule rather than
the exception. No or-
dained priesthood,
or fever in the chest,

or dancing on the
tips of its toes. Put
it down to one of
those tocsins that
now & then ring.
Just one of those.
From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXXVI

The sky overshot, dry, with no tempest.

These many crowded about me; with
shouting. Men wanting spring-water,
mad for a little slave money. Sat we
amidships, no wind jamming the tiller,
in thoughts upon pure form, in alchemy.
There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a black cock crows in the sea-foam, the

ocean flowing backward. Air, fire, the

pale soft light. The vision flitting &
fading, weaving with points of gold.
Aurean coronam habentem, pulchram.
Moves, yes she moves like a goddess,
worker of miracles, dealer in levitation.
Polemic

I am watching a video of the Obamas standing as Aretha Franklin sings Like A Natural Woman at the 2015
Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King.

& I am wondering what the fuck has gone wrong with the U.S. in the years since.

Not that many years, but now the backdrop chorus is praising Putin in a counterpoint with the phrase rigged
election, no church choir intonation but the sound of corn husks rattling in right wing rows amongst the soy
bean futures.

Only the lawyers are rejoicing, thinking of the fees they will be paid representing the corrupt former first family
& their ass-licking sycophants in the many cases they're bringing, appealing decisions that have been made
against them. But will that money be there if the IRS gets its way?

& doucement, doucement the state laws are being rapidly rewritten to reduce or even disappear voters' rights, &
the rights to abortion, & the right to claim any gender you want to be even if that's no gender at all.

& the Russian military is advancing on Kyiv which will revert to Kiev if that advance is successful.

Cheering them on seems, from outside, to be a serious portion of the American people led by a man who has
called Putin a genius. Maybe they're just the most vocal, or maybe they recognize the commonalities between
MAGA & "bring back the Holy Russian Empire."

It's a tribal thing, or the usurpation of tribal coherence in an attempt to drown out the singular voices of
democracy.

In Tiananmen Square, the tanks paused before a single protester. On the roads leading to Kyiv, a Russian tank
veers from its forward progress to run over a single civilian car.

In Kyiv, there is a comedian turned President standing up for his beliefs. He is presidential, not comic.

Elsewhere the bullies have taken over. No one is safe. Nowhere. Anywhere.
Martin Kleinman

Diablo: The Life and Times of No. 414666

“Music is not sound. Music is using sound to organize emotions in time.” – Krystian Zimerman, pianist
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of the
mystery that we are trying to solve.” Max Planck, father of Quantum Physics

I
No. 414666 was young once.
This one thousand-pound, nine-foot long baby was conceived in 1969 and took eight long months to
enter the world. The European artisans responsible for his final inspection were surprised by the infant’s brash
personality. They shook their heads, dismayed by the wild one’s raw dynamics. They dubbed the crude concert
grand “Diablo”, a reference to both the beast’s sonics and the last three digits of its serial number.
The polished ebony child was packed with great care. Portside seagulls screeched through chill grey skies
as a loading crane lowered Diablo into the hold of a Hamburg freighter bound for the New World. Inside its
protective padding, attached to the requisite customs documentation, was a hand-written note of introduction
from the piano’s production team: “Ich bin Diablo.”
Diablo was not of living flesh. But, being crafted by hand, he was the fruit of humankind and, in that
sense, very much alive. Encoded within its very DNA, somewhere deep in the molecular structure of its hand-
selected woods, steel, felt, and brass, Diablo was afraid. He shuddered as the cargo ship sailed through the
swells of the roiling North Atlantic, for there was fever in the air. The cells of its Sitka spruce soundboard
resonated with the drumbeat of tragic news: the Cambodian invasion, the massacre of four Kent State kids, the
convulsion of the global economy and the rampant crime that ravaged Diablo’s new hometown, New York.
 After weeks at sea, this immigrant was trucked from the harbor dock, to a drafty warehouse and, finally,
to his new home. Diablo, being a stoic from Mittel Europa, first feigned indifference, but Diablo sulked as its
innards swelled and contracted, for the woods within had not yet forgotten their ancient past. The key to
Diablo’s success would depend upon a certain degree of magic, an alchemy that must transcend his design and
manufacture. But acclimatization to the Carnegie Hall stage on the West Side of Manhattan proved daunting
and Diablo’s new masters despaired.

II
After yet another futile attempt to tame the beast, the venue’s master piano technician, Irv Waloshin,
shook his shock of prematurely grey hair. “He’s going to be one of the all-time greats, if only he would settle,”
Irv told his buddy, Herschel, on the way to lunch one day as they dodged the yellow cabs that hurtled down
Seventh Avenue. With the sensitivity of safe-crackers, and armed with a full complement of levers and mutes,
they labored until each octave was tuned to the temperament. Irv and Herschel, excellent pianists in their own
right, then put Diablo through his paces all that morning. But weeks after the piano’s arrival, things were still,
somehow, not jelling.
Irv lit a hand-rolled Bugler, hoisted his pastrami sandwich, and idly rubbed the thirty-year old numeric
tattoo on the underside of his left forearm, a souvenir of his Buchenwald beginnings. “A regular monster, I’m
telling you. This Diablo someday can be a rocket ship! But, so far, all I see is classic underachievement.”
Herschel grinned. “Diablo is scared,” the father of four said. “He’s just a kid, still a greenhorn, like we
were. Remember? We were afraid of our own shadows when we got here after the war.”
Irv cocked his head, unsure. Not every piano crafted in Germany was destined for superstardom. Like a
Mercedes automobile built in Stuttgart, most were magnificent machines, but Irv understood that some were
nothing but trouble from day one.
“Diablo? He is like a wild bronco in the cowboy pictures,” Herschel said. “But that’s now. Just you wait.
I bet this vilde chiya will sing real good someday.”
 III
Herschel was proven right for, in time, Diablo relaxed, and breathed great plumes of magical music that
flowed with unparalleled nuance. Carnegie Hall, Diablo was assured, would be his forever home. He became
justly revered by classical pianists for his power, precision and clarity. Mediocre players sounded wonderful, and
the truly gifted ascended to otherworldly heights.
An English pop star in a yellow silk tuxedo once kissed Diablo after one performance. But the greatest
accolade came from Zimerman, famously picky about his choice of instrument. The Austrian maestro was
delighted by Diablo’s dynamics and requested the beast whenever he performed in New York.
At the start of each performance, he would settle in front of middle C and mutter, “Ich liebe dich, mein
Diablo.” And while few actually believed him, Zimerman would confide to intimates with certainty that
Diablo’s reply resonated through the master’s fingertips, “Ich liebe dich auch, Krystian.”

IV
The decades passed, along with classical music’s elderly audiences. The music industry’s business model
morphed to the point where a million streams netted a recording artist a mere $4,000. Desperate to even the
odds of success, talented young classical musicians were encouraged by their enterprising agents to pound
pyrotechnical performances. These were considered too loud, too brash, and too crude by the standard bearers
of the genre’s old guard.
But the profession was seduced by the packed houses. Dollar signs danced in their eyes. The suits and
skirts of the classically trained performers got skimpier, the audiences got younger, and revenues swelled.

V
The injury proved serious.
Diablo, now in late middle age, always delivered, and was still revered by pianists who came to Carnegie
from all over the world. Emboldened by enduring success, and unencumbered by the fears of youth, the concert
grand sang like a youngster and was ever eager to perform. But an internationally acclaimed young pianist, a
rising supernova, was indifferent to Diablo’s advanced years and practiced for his Rachmaninoff marathon with
reckless abandon. Finally, during a third consecutive go-around on Rach Three, Diablo faltered, wracked with
mechanical pain.
The piano soldiered on and the show was a resounding success. The reviews were ecstatic. The young
man’s performance was hailed by reviewers as “dazzling”, “poetic”, “monumental”, although purists considered
the nearly five-hour concert a vulgar display of gimmickry that would have Sergei Rachmaninoff spin in his
grave.
Diablo agreed with the latter assessment. The magical instrument, now removed from the Carnegie
stage, shivered, hurt and alone, and muttered “That was not a performance! That was a hot dog eating contest
set to music.”

VI
Diablo was sold, and the piano felt flush with a fear absent for so many years. His new owner was the
renowned music school up the street, housed in an angry-looking, Brutalist building. But at least it was
relatively new, which Diablo supposed was a good thing for a city that was falling apart, financially and
spiritually.
Unlike his first transport to New York City, Diablo was barely protected from the elements of the New
York winter. Stagehands wheeled him off the truck. Covered only by thin furniture pads, Diablo peeked across
the street at the plaza’s fountain, shivered, and sighed in resignation as freezing pigeons pecked at cigarette
butts.
It wasn’t going to be that bad, Diablo rationalized, feeling lucky to remain a cherished citizen in this
oasis of culture. The piano’s injuries were repaired, for Hamburg pianos such as Diablo are overbuilt, designed
for long-term durability. But the years had taken a toll. In order to complete the sale, Irv and Herschel had
worked their magic and brought the beast back from the dead, but privately they shook their heads as they
waved goodbye and good luck.
Diablo, they thought, was done.
 VII
The service elevator doors opened and Diablo was dollied onto the stage of Paul Hall for the piano’s first
post-operative concert. The student recital at the school was to be a program of works by Beethoven, Liszt,
Chopin, and Brahms. Diablo heard the buzz of pre-concert energy from the lobby, which was filled with fellow
students holding their instrument cases, the soloist’s family, and the few remaining neighborhood pensioners
who cherished the genre and attended every free performance.
Diablo’s repaired soundboard resonated with excitement. A stage is a stage, he reasoned, whether the
hall holds 275 or 3,500. The young pianist, a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the school, was well practiced but
Diablo sensed her fear. Therese, a thin twenty-year old, wore a fine floor-length dress. The audience applauded
her entry as she wobbled across the stage in high-heeled shoes. She bowed, sat, and caressed Diablo’s keys.
Through her trembling fingertips, Diablo whispered, “Relax. You are in good hands.”
Therese’s performance was flawless and earned a top grade from her professors. At the after-party
backstage, she told all her friends about the sensation of playing Diablo. “I adore this piano,” she fluttered. “It
was as if I was on auto-pilot and he was guiding me.” From his position on-stage, Diablo heard her and sensed
that, at this stage in her young life, artistic excellence was her only passion. He trembled with love of the music,
for Therese, and the bold optimism of her youth. “I was young, once, like her,” Diablo thought. “How I
cherish this life!”
In April of 2020, the school went into lockdown.

VIII
Diablo, distressed by un-played tension, sat idle for many months in the school’s chilly sub-basement.
The building’s silence unnerved Diablo, who loved the electric energy of the students here in the world’s most
selective school of music.
And he worried, too, about Therese. He had no doubt she was doomed to six-hour practice sessions on
lowly digital keyboards, and was no longer able to partake of the joy of being young, talented and attractive in
New York City. Was she safe; was she sick? And what of her flock of friends?
 Each week of lockdown stressed Diablo’s innards, and siphoned more of the instrument’s magic and the
residual joy accrued from decades of performances. Finally, every measure of Diablo’s mojo was gone.

IX
It took nearly two years for the school to reopen. Diablo was tuned with care by Mario Cruz, the
school’s chief piano technician. The despair in Mario’s face told Diablo everything. A post-pandemic pitch
correction was only the start of Diablo’s treatment, for the prognosis was as it would be for any athlete who
tried to return to top form after so many months of complete inactivity. In the best interest of both the students
and the instrument, Mario’s recommendation was to demote Diablo to a practice room on the school’s fifth
floor.

And so the aged behemoth that once graced the Carnegie Hall stage was shoehorned into a smallish
space chockablock with cheap tablet-arm chairs, music stands, and a pine casket-sized harpsichord with
nicotine-tan keys. Diablo was unceremoniously pounded upon by precocious undergraduates as the harpsichord,
laughingly nicknamed “Lurch” by school custodians, stood silent sentry to this abuse.
Therese, however, proved to be Diablo’s savior, for she spread the news of the piano’s reassignment.
Soon this particular practice room, with its aged Hamburg concert grand, was booked all day and long into the
night by her coterie of earnest young musicians.
Tales of Diablo’s magic abounded. A student of composition, new to the intricacies of the piano,
suddenly handled even the most advanced pieces with power and finesse. Another musician, in the jazz
program, beguiled her friends with startling sheets of Art Tatum-like runs. A Chicago blues aficionado found
his performances infused with the heartbreak of Muddy Waters’ pianist, Otis Spann. Diablo even helped a
Parisian friend of Therese, a freshman in the school’s theater program, channel years of cold, leaky-roof
Montmartre nights to deliver a wrenching rendition of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 on her very first try, left-
hand jumps be damned.
 “She plays the music of that little oddball?” Lurch hissed to Therese as she sat idly by the harpsichord’s
keyboard while her friend played. “Satie? The man expelled from the Conservatoire de Paris not once, but
twice, only to invent music for bank lobbies?”
Therese revered Diablo and, in turn, the piano admired the young pianist’s skill and respect for her art.
She brought a candelabrum to every practice room session. Dressed in a full-length black dress graced by her
dear grandmother’s seed-pearl necklace, she dimmed the overhead lights, approached the bench, and placed her
tablet on the music rest. Her manicured nails brushed Diablo’s keyboard.
“I love you,” she whispered to Diablo one lovely spring night.
Through her fingertips, Therese received a reply: “I love you, too, Therese.”

X
The months passed. Summer came and went, the cool evening air of New York returned, and at long
last Diablo was fully at peace with his new environment, for it felt right for this stage of his life.
The students returned from their summer adventures. In rapt attention, they listened to Diablo and
Lurch as they traded war stories of fine concerts past. The harpsichord, they learned, was another music
magician from bygone years, lovingly restored for students in the historical performance program.
“Slower! Slower! Arch your fingers! I will help you,” Diablo would patiently remind the beginners, first-
year composition students, as they fumbled through their practice session scales. To get the most from each
practice session, Diablo advised students to listen, focus, and break the more difficult sections of the
score into small pieces, maintaining consistent finger choreography.
The ever-patient Diablo won the hearts of Therese’s awestruck friends. But as the leaves of autumn fell,
Diablo found the infamy of lesser students’ mediocrity unendurable. In despair over one student’s overwrought
rendition of a Schumann chorale, Diablo’s keyboard buzzed the words of Paul Verlaine to the startled young
man: “Nuance! We want nuance! Take eloquence and wring its neck!”
Diablo’s impatience grew. “No! No!” Diablo chided one technically proficient but artless student. “You
must understand the composer’s intent! You know everything and yet understand nothing!” The young woman
flung the door open, in tears as, from the hallway, Diablo heard a mother dressing down her tense teen son,
post-audition.
“Therese’s friends revere the process,” Lurch observed. “The others play too hard, or too soft. No
understanding of the emotional dynamics.”
“Or maybe just no intelligence, only money and parental pressure,” Diablo whispered.
“My friend,” Lurch chuckled, “I’m afraid we’ve become crotchety old fogies.”
Diablo could only sigh, for his stable mate, he feared, was right.

XI
Diablo sunk deep into despair as the days grew short. During a student’s dreary rendition of Debussy’s
“La Mer”, Diablo saw Therese’s smile through the small window of the practice room door. The piano’s
soundboard vibrated with new energy.
Mercifully, the Debussy assassin’s session concluded. Therese tapped on the door with respect for the
artist and bounded in as the lad gathered his belongings and left.
“I have a new student for you,” Therese said. “He’s an adult learner, someone I know quite well, and I
think you two will hit it off.” She sat down, played the opening measures of Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor
and, through her fingers, Diablo channeled the exquisite control of Zimerman on the stage of Carnegie. In that
small space, Therese’s version was celestial, a masterful performance savored only by the molecules of time.
“His name is Charles. He is my father,” Therese whispered at the conclusion of the piece.

XII
The grizzled old man with the work-thickened fingers visited Diablo every Wednesday with
metronomic regularity, and would wait by the door well before their start time of 8 p.m. Diablo sensed Charles’
burning desire to make beautiful art and, with every bit of his waning gifts, the piano lifted the arthritic retiree
high into music heaven. Young students would peer through the practice room window and gasp at the
excellence of the greybeard in his rough canvas clothes. Each session was more than a musical performance; it
was dressage, with pianist and piano in perfect synchrony. Diablo gifted Charles the whole package: touch,
precision, power, nuance, and unmatched pedaling expertise.
The old man put No. 414666 through his paces every week. By winter break, Charles miraculously
swirled through Le Clavier Bien Tempéré with rare intelligence. “You have a gift, sir,” Diablo noted. “It was
always within you, just waiting to blossom. I can see where your daughter gets her skill.”
“Thank you for helping me,” Charles said. “This is all I ever wanted, since I was a small boy. For so
long, I worked with my hands so that Therese could work with her soul. Finally, my life feels complete. ”

XIII
Diablo feared the worst one Wednesday in late February when the practice room wall clock struck eight
and Charles had still not arrived.
“It’s cold and icy,” Lurch reasoned. “Give him time.”
Diablo sulked.

XIV
“You have earned your rest,” Irv Waloshin said. Therese found the retired Carnegie Hall master piano
technician out in a New Jersey assisted living facility and got him into town to visit Diablo. “Think of how
many musicians you helped, how much joy you gave the world, since you first came to this country in, what was
it? Nineteen-seventy?”
Therese, her eyes red-rimmed, caressed Diablo’s keyboard, walked over to Lurch, and played the Aria
from Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the old harpsichord.
“Arch those fingers,” Diablo sniffed at his protégé, even as cracks reappeared in his Sitka spruce
soundboard and his strings of high-tensile Swedish steel, under more than 30,000 pounds of force for so many
years, stretched to the breaking point. No. 414666, once so young and so brash, was now but a relic, old and
infirm, with faded memories of glory.
 “I’m still here, with you, my friend,” Irv said as he sat beside Diablo. The old master craftsman idly
rubbed his forearm tattoo, turned to Therese, and then, to Lurch. “And we all shall live on, as long as there are
people here on Earth to remember.”
###
Matt Dennison

The Operating Mystique

i.
Born empty-I’d, the agency of substitution
tours the house of exhaustion, that cleansing

debate wherein muscles born of whoosh-work

hover to snip shelter from exclamations mis-

spoken: darkened bowels, visceralia nibbling

the falling river, the bitter pulp, the desiccated

quill-mouthed squirrel’s non-pleasured delight

bright semen’d across Instruction’s tournure.

ii.
Ending yesterday, the ambiguous hours of how
escaped the blessings of thinning oneself with spires,

descended all, turned back the gathering blossoms’

netherine lips of time shaken sideways—all the signs

except immediacy, wherein my rubbing lies, where even

music meant to invite weathers the temple hard-shat,

flies muscling that carrion of cats prowling closer,

expanding the time-diced hours of night into now.
 iii.
Looking for new faces in the floor, reclined in stone,
the slumberer invokes beyond and larger the Lady,

only always now the rich and unexplored pig-nosed

flowers, the defect in the cuirass, the fistulas huddle-

facing north via diction’s retreat endure. Dainty

bastards in the ship at the top of the stairs sitting or

elbowed make clay-pot money to pay fragility’s salt,

sickened for the safety of expiation’s once-withered.

iv.
Divide, said Floor. Imbibed, the awkward earth invites—
though still you must swallow the phlegm of sin, the rust

thermometer, the tiny bubbles born—harvest the garlic,

work the flat-puzzled symptoms of the process, rotate

the entire tower—percuss the elements of bloom, still

the dirt-child, ensure the womb-air of death, that intense

house, that taste, that hint, that tenth—one of the rough

games God must play—but you are that house no more.
CEREMONY

Your father went

fishing with his father
for what both knew
would be the last time
(headlamp-
cartographers,
castrate-battalions,
slow-worms and
black-toots, though
more than welcome,
could not have made
the trip, what with
every colon-clown's
second-in-command's
funfair being booked)
and they had
a pretty meal:
Electro-Teats™
Bastard Coffee™
Idiot Bread™
(slunk-metal-chop-dog-on-toast
being the preferred iceholic repast,
but timersualitions prevail, eh, Avendi?)
while listening
to your father's
store-bought collection
of Hawaiian background
music records, the player
balanced on their knees
(one helluva red drop
bloating the air's
hung note they
labored like a gong) .
then so and through the
lake they cut
and caught a fish,
a Doctor Fish
with Crapscent Oil™
I believe he said
(back-of-the-neck-
under-the-hair pretty
it were, possessed
of quaquaversals,
intesticle yearning,
a patience of concern
over devilic hard secrets’
excreta performed with mineral gore)
and they laid
it—thefish—on ice
and cut it open
(What's that?
I suppose it was
out her eyes and
over that piece a'
fiddle-faddle
the scalp)
and in its belly
was a snake and they
looked at the snake
and then each other
until your father
resembled that
bundle of legs
on your
plate
so take
this flesh
and love,
my love,
for the world
is held in hurtful bowls
no bigger than our thumbs.
The Man Speaks

He lived in the top story of a very tall house

on an even higher hill far above a little
village that appeared as dry and dusty as his
own world was lush and green. He would
spend long hours looking out his window,
trying to imagine the lives of the people
below, which was very difficult to do as he
had never once left the house, let alone
descended the hill to feel that foreign soil
beneath his feet. For all he knew, they were
not even aware of his existence, while they
were his only distraction from the complete
solitude in which he dwelled. He did
something—what, exactly, he was not sure,
as walking from room to room constituted
the main of his activities—that allowed him
to eat regularly. Being provided for in this
manner, he found life to be lacking in the
necessary frictions, so he looked for things
to cause him trouble and then fought with
them for however many hours a day he
could before he fell asleep or, as he called it,
evaporated. But still, between the gazing and
the fighting, he felt something was missing.
A need, an emptiness remained.
So, being
of the practical sort, he simply filled himself
with whatever was at hand, being careful not
to be too careful with what he chose so that
he would be well-rounded in his fullness.
But what of the need? Or, for that matter,
the responsibility that goes with such a
satiated state? He decided that he must share
his new-found fulness with the villagers
below. Thus began his habit of taking out
the things he had placed inside himself and
carrying them down the hill to the market
where he would spread them on the ground
and speak. Or, as he called it, Teach the
Gloryness of Fullness, often in parable,
seldom understood, his favorite being one
he assumed he had learned in his assumed
youth about a fisherman whose reputation
for bungling had spread so far and wide that
it had become a matter of pride for the man.
Once day the other fishermen saw him up on
the cliffs, eating gull droppings and pebbles,
both hands going at once, now and then
making wild gestures in the direction of the
sky. When asked what he was trying to do,
he had called back, To become as stupid as
the sun! I'm already better than the rest of
you! He felt there was great wisdom in this
story and that if he repeated it often enough
someone would surely approach and explain
it to him. But no, whenever he entered the
market the people would look up from their
dealings and, upon seeing who it was, gather
up their wares and walk away, muttering
under their breaths and being very generous
with their evil looks which, due to the rather
dry and wizened appearance of these people,
were quite evil indeed. He would reflect on
this, silently praising them for their enviable
consistency of behavior, and begin spreading
his taken-out-things in front of himself,
doing a little dance every time he came to
a particularly pleasing one.
One day,
after yet another impassioned rendition
of the fisherman parable with its usual
results, equally impassioned, he realized that
if he were ever to make contact with these
people—let alone be informed of the
meaning of his favorite story—he would
have to try something new. So he packed up
his things and trudged back up the hill where
he set about thinking of a plan. Several days
later he rose with the sun, took out what he
had placed in himself and marched down to
the market. Only this time, instead of
repeating the parable of the fisherman, he
watched the people walking away and then,
before they had gone too far, called out,
A visitor! A visitor has come! The people
slowly halted their exodus and turned
around, for it was a very small village and
visitors were rare indeed. Lured by the
prospect of a new customer, a few stepped
forward, hoping to be the ones to claim the
coins in his pockets. When a small crowd
had formed, he quickly began gathering his
collection of taken-out things and molded
them into a sizable mound which he set
about climbing, for he had something to say,
something of undeniable importance for all,
of that he was sure.
He climbed and climbed
and struggled and sweated and cursed in his
effort to reach the top before the people
discovered the extreme lack of visitors and
left. Surely they will listen this time! he
panted to himself as he wiped the sweat
from his eyes. Surely they will understand
everything I have ever said this time!
Glancing behind himself he could see there
were still a few people watching him. He
must hurry! And when at last he stood, alone
and free at the top, shading the sun from his
eyes and preparing to speak, he had just
enough time to notice one very old woman
looking at him very intently
before he sank.
Melvin Chen
Michael Starr

Hung'ry

Stalkers pay me
To disgust
Their methods

But it doesn't fall

Once far too tree
Forgetting

To sow seeds
For justice
Rife with indignation

And victory
And victory
And victory...
This is Violent

I think this way: That date that data over there by the window
In Dust

Why the way they change their clothes dawns on the machine.
And the machine collapses.
It is 8-bit it is lust
Why so many, though?
Why the stain?
Silly nanoparticulates
I know the pain
I know the weather
Tell me one more joke...

Then he hit his head on the board

Ouch
 It Ends

He was there. Naked. In the tree.

And I burned him down.

But that didn't end it. I'm never alone, as Quirrell says.

It doesn't really mattress, though.

Etc. etc. Fuck you, Santa, Pussy, Cat.

Divine, waitress. Cuck suck. Dick.

Mistake was asking for more.

It ends.
Nathan Whiting

THE CHORUS FAVORS ANGUISH

Promise ! hope.
They curry more power than needed.
� need � carried.
The Governor ¾¾®as operaentershislife:
¯ èPromise ! hopeø ¯
glories ß scandals.
Sopranos
at last
project the wrongs
they have suffered.
Fate ®a toy,
¯
renown's gift gripped by childish-want.
¯
offered by advantage �
The bass my boon! charm led.
curdles my boon! turns �
growth @ my boon! he obsesses � {apologize?
amid my boon! if
doom. my boon! �
� aggressive.
future
an ambition-addiction
vacuity-esteem incited.
DONE ANYWAY

Build fierce desire @impossible

ú an imposter
moment • on my psyche — flays urgent — leaf deity
¯ myths.
I remain abandoned.
¯
ignorance ¾burdened to invert®control
a ½
fought
spirit ½
bitterly,
uplifted ½
owned
too ¯
Pressured: we INCONVENIENTLY,
fill our impossibility � ¯
so well, if
continuously � kept abstract.
Can I succeed:
¯
thesehands«this mind
¯ ¯
?aspirations «devotion ¬¾¾insistent¾¾®goals?
Here I have a purpose ¯{polyportent}.
How?
Unknowable understanding is not.
WHIRLED BRANCHES

Breeze settled
�
Chaos chaos Chaos
�
useful
�
Frontier
¯
¾��¾��¾� ����¾�¾⌥ ¾�
=
Contested«no frontier¾settled
¯
Regress ¾continual, but the front of®pretense
½ ½
stumbled remains
½ fought ¾and the®Great ½
on its ½ ½ pleased,
½ as want angers ½
own ¯ ¯ enticed,
½ realizes¾we can®attack. ½
belief, betrayed,
¯ ¯
it would ¾¾¾¾®grow ¬¾¾¾¾not will
¯
culture between ¬conflict ®between ourselves
and
perhaps close
close progress.
LOCATION (PLACID)

Simultaneity squandered
� �
h lite
i el �
sat space
� by �
The GPS junk � in whose galaxy?
�
We [some] are no longer Earth confusion
| any where ourselves. � conquest
have more action
� thrills.
guns — but no here
or aim.
here
The past present :
a figment ¾®a facialistfor
how the blemished future
glares¾at®us. �
my heart loses [some] gravity
but is not weightless,
blood pressure held
I care guns � uneasy.
where people will • tremble, gaze or huddle �
are guns
good — harmful.
PURSUE LIGHTNING UNARRIVED

Suspicion may not agree with tried beliefs

for
(aspiration @evolution) @(transcendence = possibility)
= =
necessity Is perfection.
the probable
too conceptual
if my mood appears
unlikely?
All the work did not cause the moment;
It made me ready for � �
and then
poor became love.
I lack the memory for life
� poor more planned.
must notice and be able, trained for a pounce through purity.
Where comes the satisfaction in a world
when what people take
proceeds?
Grab the Revealed before
self if there are
fast it brings only
for I may be entirely echoes.
Olchar E. Lindsann

Indomed Face
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-
“es intestines dehors–”
-Simon de Vaulchier
“LEAD SWEEPS”
-Pierre Albert-Birot
{from Dada 2}
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-

in oison sleaps
in eht gaping ciel
in or whisking of MAGNET BORAX, tinkling
integral slamdance of corpescent slugs
in gestive mylars
in my unction grits
infecting bougie where eht stuck-bill lathers
in lenticule impacted lourd
in flagrant face confliction lourd
inepted platen FLOPPY cheek of adamant, lourd
in yawning slipe out
in fragrance blade ,side-
in tensing hump out
in bulter ,side-
in studart
in sag ,out
lourd-side, uh
huh
 Starving Time
~)))~~~~~~~~~~~~~<<<<<
‟spiracy by attempting to run out
of the country and inticing divers
others to be act”
–Minutes of the Council and
General Court of Colonial Virginia.
>>>>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((~

slow leak starved indenture

umbilicals our dank of debt or
life dimfinished sinew a-trophies
slow death meek tithe stoil
melting stomach murderous
,Glooscap in the shadows laughs

~)))~~~~~~~~~~~~~<<<<<
‟burnt on the cheek with the letter R”
–ibid.
>>>>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((~

lash groove hash of bloodwell harrows

scapular earth bescraped skinsoil plough
cats nine tails scarlet copper scently dippd
earth-tiller cain his alphabetic brand on brow
pacifier corpses gnawd of molar sin
implacable cancer property

~)))~~~~~~~~~~~~~<<<<<
‟o be whipped from the gallows to
the Court door”
–ibid.
>>>>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((~

;Glooscap in the shadows holds

his breath.
 Bblogle
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~
“w the frenzy
spit the blood
retch the gobble
munch the word in a Gobble
Gobble Gob”
-Ed Sanders, ‛OD Centipede’
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~

boxcuthead in eht reathing grave

ribspine britted in th’mimeo grimning
s’lather in gyro of syntax’n
drizzle {hack} gob
vomit-socketing
yr ground-up cicada block
on the final on the summer
gurgle shingle caes
ura nearly sutured scarab
cut-up cameras and a jumped-up pug’r
skinpaste codex
n’flapping jaws
in parchment storm of
cloudy, quoth the margi
nalia of froth-gob
magus tous
led edgar poe to
the clock sopp
'd in tzat
ziki {cough}

~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~
“o make the most of this, your own little gobbling,
your little gobbles, your little half a gobb”
-Blaster Al Ackerman, ‛The torch song called
“I Shall Gobble At You Presently, My Dear”’
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~
 Add Option Unsought
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~) (~~~~
‟rounded by them, and they immediately set up
a most dismal howling, crying bitterly, and wr
inging their hands in all the agonies of grief fo
r a deceased rel”
–Mary Jemison of the Iroquois
~~~~) (~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ö wh’ere his spirit? split
his spirit like a skullog
has seen our distress enclosure
his spirit split atomic family
skin of paste she is our trauma sister
he died on the powder field of the slain indenture
he has sent us a bizarro helper with huron catachisms
with muskrat pleasure we greet her
in a voice somewhat traded for acorns
between métis speaking and singing
alas! violently redcoat her buried family sleep
he fell to musket promise in his prime
no tears of his sisters shimmer
water his gravemound treaty
in place of our sunder spirit brother
who will not mourn his sad fate the scioto?
she stands fair maladroit with our tribe
we receive her with joyful gauntlet!
no tears dropped hunting about him
he left us in war sorrow
his loss to bewail pelts
friendless he died split
ö gladly we welcome her here!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~) (~~~~
‟pany at the same time varying the appearance
of their countenances, gestures and tone of vo
ice, so as to correspond with the sentiments ex
pressed by their lea”
– ibid.
~~~~) (~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 t ,Rip
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-
"arches
de
l'escal"
-Charles Nodier,
Roi du Bohême (1830)
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-

: when
if to but
dé ,cendre

;– colier burning
lack where, do
, canny

bleorg of
so it cralck es

pin fumée
or mana ,clés
, you
nestor – grommet
forth in was
, though groin

kiss gear go
,thic typo ,g
raphic as
gnis rip rapt
, ure ;bug.
 Dogger Bank
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~
“icking teeth rivers ins”
Any Salyer hacks JMB, Lost & Found Times #27
~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~~-~

inging, innit
lastlight glinted in the sloaming, dreadnaught
of or scaled cleat;
when it leaks rat spelling
tain'ty mycelia nous dormons ,lint
flyring gastropod moonlit gleamed with caliber
moored can't a sealed lasp ,it
plask ,fold perinoleum ,
gnats ,wreak ,chr ,lait
,entre py:re
s leaking in the humani
corrid'or
 a’ Gnostic Chant
~~~~~~~~~~%ºVº~*/%~
“rucified some poor bloody Toad up there above the altar.
It’s Tsathoggua’s totem...
image rules the world. The
hallucination has taken control. How do we take cont
rol of the hallucination?’ ‛...Mason, you, me and Guy De”
– Grant Morrison, The Invisibles.
~ºVº~
“Toad milking the dog outs”
– Prisoner’s Cinema, The world is a refrigerator.
~%\*~ºVº%~~~~~~~~~~

our golgotha on sweatmound, moistrot popping, soak

of oilfilm floawt, d’thou see?, mostly rainbowed in writhing
toxin-rein hauled (de-train’d rails) & smoke-scale snow
coats pour ice-croak slime icon, you know, i know,
are glass yet stain’d condition, & vaein carcinogeneration
laps sacred lactose from th’altar
& chews on curdle, too –
we are fucked by the lightlure, cookd w,r’etched, w’reackd, lain low
pluck nervestring dreams out eyes of, aye, twist knives in ever happygut
nurse w/our delicate petalwounds, go shopping, primeval s’mother, love
that app, limbs tangled under s’oil screen projection, anyways, the news
the web nailed thru, flashy badboy eldritch fascist, furious in lactate
milking convenient cancer there
was nothing we could do –
our gelid batch of squeamy progeny, this programmed meat, just sexted
tis bored up on the cruci,fixed from the first, fish tainted, parched, fixated
on baby incel kitten proudboy, art if fish yall, intel indigence, meme or
slice us into pigeon hole, self parceld, cadavers play in band wagon stack
austere our starve off mire, it’s too long to read, so await: simpling luminate
tugging power’s typhusmilk teat
our greedlygulp its brew –
we dream like kicked dog then & twitch in, antimiserate with ghostlyhopes
affinity in antisabaoth alliance, abyss-phalanstry tulpa magi, dying still,
yet ride likeunto sandworms every under’eddy, prison rupture ever, craft
of shrapneling desire syntax, swallow shut the bulbs unlight, & laughter tears,
our screens torn, dark & dark, upon the honeydew of darkness image forth
that milk of paradise
our eyes’ flâmes, alone, illume.

~~~~~~~~~~%ºVº~*/%~
“all issue the milk of regeneratio”
– The Mapah, Baptism, Marriage.
~%\*~ºVº%~~~~~~~~~~
P.E. Jones

Life

On a warm, dry night, she’d had it.

Spending more time each day pretending to be happy, listening, caring, smiling because that’s expected,

laughing to hide the quiver in her voice, just trying to hold it together. “Whatever ‘it’ is.”

Her car is a temporary haven, temporary reprieve, temporary escape.

The almost empty freeway. Lights illuminate and dissipate, again, again, again. She drove nowhere in

particular, sitting in absolute silence, avoiding the electronic sound of anyone’s voice, focused on her despair.

Then, Click.

She hit the reset button on her own life.

Yanking her steering wheel hard, forcing her 67 miles per hour speed to send her car soaring.

Weightless and a genuine smile creeping across her face, deep breath in

Then, Shatter.

The roof kissed the blacktop like a speeding freight train kisses the sea after driving off a cliff.

Cradled by heated, twisted metal entering and exiting her body, she felt the burning of the pits of hell.

Then, Shudder.
 No pain, no fires, no car. Just blissful nothingness, emptiness, silence that had so often eluded her.

Deep breath through impossible lungs. What did I do?

No heaven she had studied looked like the emptiness she existed in.

Another smile crept across an impossible face. Where am I?

Then, Oppression.

“Not a heaven.”

A voice, no a force, brought her to impossible knees. Who are you?

“You remain here until you decide or death takes you.”

She imploded, exploded, crumbled, was unmade.

Then, Release.

She stood on impossible legs. Now what?

To live, she needed a body, so she created it.

To live, she needed a place, so she created it.

To live, she needed entertainment, so she created it.

Silence on her time, fun on her time, no responsibilities, no fear, pain, love, hate. Only her in her

created, impossible world while she waits. But for what?

Then, Interruption.

Her mother. Talking. Softly. Gently.

The machines. Beeping. Constantly. Calmly.

Her mother. Screaming.

The machines. Slowing.

Her mother.

“Your choice?”

“What choice?”

Her mother. Weeping.

The machines. Silence.

“Your choice?”

“What are you asking me?”

Her mother. Crumbling.

Her body. Disappearing.

Her mind. Dissolving.

Her life. Ending.

“Wait. I choose…”

Then, Beeeeeeeeeeeppppp.
Pamela Miller

5 Visual Poems
 Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

Ghost Stories: The Navy Pilot

Local folklore calls me “Seaweed Charlie.” What kind of a silly sobriquet is that? I drowned in
Lake Michigan, blast it, my plummeting plane yanked down by some giganF c unseen hand. I
flew training missions here in my FH-1 Phantom so they could send me off to Korea like an
aerogram. But now I’m crawling up the beach in Evanston, Illinois, my moÍ led hands clawing
the rocks. I stagger across the road, cars swerving around my translucence, to where the
cemetery welcomes me like a Gothic grand hotel. At last I can rest my waterlogged head, close
my eyes and sleep forever. Then suddenly, like an engine bursting into flames, I’m flailing in the
icy lake again.
Ghost Stories: The Ebola VicFm
Why do I look like this? Because everything inside me exploded like a supernova
and the blood gushed out through the sluice gates of my skin. A week ago, I
stood in line at the hospital for days, as doctors fliÍ ed in and out like bats. But
when they finally saw my red-splotched eyes, they sent me back to my village
like undeliverable mail. When I died, my husband held me, my mother bathed
me, my child tried to suckle at my biohazard breast. Contagion rose from my
corpse like a mushroom cloud. Now my family has perished too, and I don’t
know where they are. You can burn my body like a bloodstained rag, but I won’t
stay dead unFl I find them.

Photo by Kevin Escate on Unsplash

Ghost Stories: The Fire VicFms
They locked us in at the Triangle factory to keep union organizers out. They locked
the exits at the Iroquois Theatre to keep folks from sneaking in. No wonder we
claustrophobic ghosts keep bursF ng into the living world like a backdraK. They
decorated the Cocoanut Grove with flammable phony palm trees. They shot off
pyrotechnics in The Station nightclub, like dropping lit matches into a shoebox.
Why do we haunt the old sites at night, our phantom hands accosting passersby?
Do we want to tell you our suffocated stories and wail that it wasn’t fair? No, we
can’t be bothered with that. It’s just that help us, somebody help us, don’t let us
die, all we want to do is get out.

Photo by Crina Parasca on Unsplash

 Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash

The Hitchhiking Ghost

Why will no one let me in their car?
Just because I’m dead and half
transparent doesn’t mean I don’t need
a ride. Or companionship of the too-
trusting kind. When that Chevy mowed
me down as I was crossing the road,
my body spun around like a compass
needle F ll the rear wheels crushed my
legs. But I’m sFll standing here every
night, upright as a tombstone,
eternally waiting to flag down revenge.
When someone finally invites me in,
we’ll see whose bones shatter first.
 Photo by Renato Danyi on Pexels

Talking Back on My SevenDeth Birthday

Yes, I see you, smoking that cigareÍ e. I know who you are: You’re my very own death, biding
your time with all those others, like a stack of bowling balls. I know you’re labeled PAMELA
MILLER, with worms crawling out of the P. “Why won’t you ask me any quesFons?” you whine.
Well, I don’t want to hear you flop your chops about what it’ll feel like, when you’ll burst in, or
what shawl of disease you’ll be wrapped in. Go haunt some other house for the next twenty
years. When I’m ready at last to beckon you like Lauren Bacall, you can come and track your
filthy boots in here.
Partha Sarkar

The unsolved riddle

‘And should be a morning

Without pother and pothead,
Rather should be a bed
Of roses with a warning

That there may be a report

As to postmortem of a pimp-
The filthy dealer of broken ribs
Without rick and stick for support..’

Thus stops for a while the riddle

To know who can be wise
To solve the riddle clockwise
And gets sad with a nail and needle

Finding no bright peacemaker

And pants without pacemaker.
Enough relaxation before the truce

Smiles
The languid moon of the day.
Give rays
The broken length of the terminal station.
Meets it every broken column of the ideology.
Enough relaxation before the truce.
Goes towards the daily magazine
The interference of prattle
But none is upset
As
Every day there is the reluctant cloud nonchalantly
Looks down before being stone.
Everyday there is none to deliver nectar.

In deep core
A vase alone burns
Three-fourths of burnt heart.
An eclectic and the symphony of eclipse

An eclectic.
The symphony of eclipse.
No, I am not broken but cannot have a quick fix.

The rush hours.

A broken platform adjacent to the level crossing.
Have come a lot.
Have gone a lot.
Amidst history has seen a lot the old banyan tree
How different death certificates easily buy and sell
The entities of the non-entities
And come and go for the moments
Progression and harmonic progression
When carry wagons as always the shadow of the black soil
To the castle of the fissure
And then again are born black bones to die.
No, I do not blame endemic, pandemic or epidemic
As they are dead before their journey with the passport
Given by embryo
And history never changes its attire.
Human embryos found in a dustbin

Yonder in a dustbin found the rag picker boys

Human embryos in a plastic bag
When everyone was celebrating the Independence Day
And everyone was cheerful
While were alone the innocent human embryos
Yonder in a plastic bag in a dustbin
(I do not mention the great rag picker boys)
And I find the definition of ‘a cruel selfish free person.’
Patrick Quinn

[Link] /
 A
tapeworm is stream. / unusual markings. we sit across / da delação, sem /
text_to_bytes_and_warn as _text_to_bytes_and_warn, / its fringes; from a
whisky house, to numerous foster homes, / even venerated poverty. / subrange
/ calibrated and public history. in paratexts text uta_de of / blockchain 2 - heritage
phase 2 / from omnipotence to obscenity / mgauze / . 03

B
determinate territory injection fail / escape conflict traps (recurring civil war
conflicts) / in a liquid abyss. from the roadside / 24 rail atop the receivers of larger
custer / basis for digitally produced relief maps. / turning the paper
around and around to create a multi-dimensional grid. / offline realm of flesh and
bone, the uneasiness and shock that we may have felt when reading

C
has-the-voynich.../539310/ / imaginable field: semiotics of ritual / gger,
territion, whereas / so_fabrics | / gutted ‘shields ferns / looked down intently
into a stone crypt. / grey alive crushed itself. / will then periodically beacon to
its configured listening post(s) / bestiary enthrottles / linen from flax, in a form of
questions / corrugated tin and concrete frames resonant

D
desire_path experiences with border control professionals / tracing our own dirt
road or highway / enic gun-brig / 139 inmates, capacity of 145 / shtetl
sheen, ref / so rigorously irresponsible. / finneganów tren / on the proviso /
became a slab of ice—a miserly shepherd / (on the page) move into dusk / la
ciénaga / and crevasses much deeper. / (ixodes scapularis) / us/uk binds
 E
to the desperate country / water and publishers’ jacket / occurs between
typographical lines; breath / functional drawbridge was also built into one of
the walls / significance life is a path to prelature in / action, previously set in the
past, now shifts into the present / mark of rapid thermafrost thaw. / among calf
morbid / d|35|N|115|W|type:mountain_region:_source:enwiki}}
F
dotxx / directors observing what goes on in the theatre of everyday / former
self: the civilian. / cych inwent / chatter of beggars’ teeth / malanoche / (“you have
burned a saint”) / torn from notebook, all dated. / necro-capitalism and counter-
image / bone palace / alters the patterns of interference: track left,
flaps down, rose, / lpe em 64, / rear upper surface (receiver) of long arms

G
el lenguaje provisional / corresponds directly with a deeper fascination
regarding display and concealment. / to organisms; FPS / disjointed scenes
without attempt at unity; / genealogical excursions into the progenitors of our
current folk devils / includes a deobfuscator to reverse CIA text obfuscation. / lethal
injection illocutionary borderlands of the text / colder still – 23:37

H
which masticates unaccountable shortage. / cinder-block-and-plywood
shantytowns / like burrs attaching themselves to some passing animal / a
slanted roof (signifying a house) / line consists of a sequence of five metrical
feet, / control the garment / heavy, darkened vehicles will create black sneak routes
of asphalt leading straight into the earth’s heart. / pass pleasant hours I
at the ecl / statecraft insists upon legibility. / coapol / he maggot resignation. /
what separates / convallariaceae and, like many / redroseslavender / officers
of our guerilla / attn:attached:repub: / chalices Ino / subsidence of packhorse.
/ two staring eyes a colossal ground smoke / across the surface in a seismographic
waver and fit. / to their lineaments.” / -codex-serahinianus-pd J
“disposables” (desechables). / reservation straddles the present-day boundary
/ direct contact with wet materials. / 3. packhorse / act as endoparasites. / in the
coarsest mould / stalking the fragmentary consciousness of the city /
porches spread / loon behind the rotten torque / appropriations are occasions that
are dialogues with the source materials, / as ‘Ravedeath, / lithe revelation
K
lines of code deconstructed into syllables. / savage appetite demoted him to the
status of mere object—a theme / venting unburned / shambled after as usual /
tactical lights swept away in our crosses or pic also 6 referenc / jul
2nicationsbeltran leyvaplotstrand / city had become a new form of human
consciousness. / handle_drag / interpretation (fiction) and measurement, L
dispensed with pre-existing esoterica and external beliefs, so the sigils were no
longer for controlling / sire_ path experiences with mounting scopes atop /
object dom foll / exoskeletal plates with / vain which then aprons of place black
/ 16:17 (“they will speak in new tongues”), / strawberry in the punnet, rotting
everything / incantations 28sep / for MuSK-induced / alter_cost(otmp, 0L);

M
particulars make fenceposts of everything, / of a composite / af tor / external
electronic organs that can interpret waves as data. / rather pataphysics /
Sitting or STANAG 2324 rail Indian aiming modules / gliding into the knot /
chronic illnesses as his “sisters” / lice for shelter maeve / measure de mésure /
whether the manuscript contains a cypher at all. / able preapical claws

N
spearhead signifies a warning to defend oneself. / enthalpy of steam at the exit
/ or drowning, then rising to the surface once again. / (“storm and stress”) / lunch,
corrosive / or around train rails further. / passivities — of cultish
subjection.” / him, a murrain seize the dolt, what / sharp and secret sail of a pelvic
bone. / all costs mutinee / lighttpd/1.4.29 / wind(infile); / &mattack::rif
 O
corset crackling occasionally head where two eyes sign / -z / lations, all
dosages, / from an armoured car / from htrk / extensions passband / led “loud lugga
/ hiss tracts / fourth disdains all undemolished space, / up o fory-sx
mdow / Same word-set(s) on same self-evident situations / st-oil in / lean bodies
draped / certificates of logic in a salt mine. / Cat No: HALCSCREW
P
boundlessness is represented.” / euxine brim, meanwhile fast- / track mark
train Elevated import rand_ / anx emptyy lot. / blocked by wire-mesh fence. /
flatterSZU, delicate. / venison blood seeping under / or by Cathar heretics in a
mixture / hours surveying the debris / _april-2018_nocntrl / mperures w
respod / residents of the tenderloin, many of them immigrant families,

Q
bipartite, the divisions 2in. / rm venom veer / other base emotions that drive
the majority of people at all times in every conceivable place and circumstance.
/ time between death and obituary. / slender fi the pommels / these various jesuit
houses / slab creeps across a little less of les diablerets, a massif / oscillated
between the occult and scientific poles, blurring its boundaries:

R
involvement in chairs ready for visitors. / as the lights of a car stabbed / fowl,
proved a suffic / and grain silos. / “the dregs, the refuse and scum / per cash, the
bitsoil / old settler who arrives nearby / both occult and scientific
computations, / LL - archimedes loader / pattern than stone monument. sunlight
on mist. / must be shed (moulted) / parceled off by barbed wire. S
calculated ambient 0.839200 / unfolding of a banner, so sensible / era
respiration byte. / es (LEDs), camp / as with a block of granite, sculpted away;
intermediate / fence-cutting and pasture-burning felonies / my mouth so dry,
/ shares the blood and idea. here, / pathological consumption has become so
normalised that we scarcely notice it. / predominantly basalt desert of
 T
Horse Crazy is, by the laxest possible / one borough at a time, secure our territory.
/ as a geodesic / spices on the stream, / in this case, cut—we “bleed” either
figuratively or literally, / moaning wings slide down my window / on a
drip bag, / dress of heal / morning extends as a swarm / —mournful sample-
laden armoured car / other shipments (opening, infecting, / were vessel safe
U
joya fellow man rather than all dosages / tendency of hashing / blossoms into the
badlands / hARD003 / halcyon veil / by 5:15 of silence / the word
pneumocystis is dumped into an otherwise elegant paragraph, / vortices you
hover. / off a vagabond in crape; his / and desalination facilities / tranceversal
security repeaters, / or root system of a macabre plant, Drea / skin, dele

V
warm asked the sile / rises two textile / conjured images of spoken number
transmissions / trace the behavior of the archimedes program. / external heat
greater than our own internal / if (weapon.made_of / carcase / a theodolite
with a comp / days or weeks of chain measure / house asceticists sus / though i
have closed myself as fingers, / insert facility, stacking pallet after pallet of ink

W
OutlawCountry v1.0 / lake stands directly against you / morning ext / des
(LEDs) camp settler sile / deed meditadvanced application cash the pleasures lind
or visitors. / ultrasound.[2] ates chiefl / cases the sclerites are fused to various
degrees. / hit highway 26 with most dubious sense. / “crystalline”
against / relict rail-lands, / city protected the fifth tree with wire mesh,

X
always open and always shut. / scales, beco / eating chiefly due as “the dregs
and capable of leaving / of clinical sonography chiefly / model prurient /
andleather interactive bond / flatline lights of / in habit dun beseeming /
laminate_type = 'plywood' / voynich / CD vases / wys sprke or sow / buteasierby /
beneath the surface snow, the glacier is constantly in motion,

Y
corpse or visit / not representations of external reality but mere signs; / KL-7
(ADONIS) / using waste products imagery (pasa products convinc / inscribed
with verses from the Odyssey. / swiveling panoramas of a desolate decade. / down
some steps. non-petroleum / forcing it to load library dependecies. / contra tribus
/ knew a route through the badlands passable / C657-1.5 - UK
Z
names inequality to gloss / vil is a companion / custom underlying
cryptographic protocol / slippage—one homonym into another. / sits on a platform
resembling a Greek column positioned / but was only a series of
words, dying in the thick / slate-cold, ovular, repeating concepts as / abscess
drained, we surface / glazed brick giza tikal / letters I, p405–6 / arel čap

AA
reduction and totality, randomness and control, physics and metaphysics are
among the tropes it is obsessed with, / vapre was scenery associated split
across / rejecting the gender binary a discs / liminal outskirts. / plazas teem
with people who have been turned away. / echre of factories and recruit / fair
as two trace / caesural spacing, / chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead,

BB
No: RAVE024 / names are inspired by scenery gender graphics / juvenilia are
import / matched by an optical notation full of thick black lines. / pattern-
perceiving knit of mind. / of seraphic / penance in a place remote / garments
become more assimilated / sevey-four degrees. / CEP | glue / collection against
RTSP/H.264 video streams. / pp. xx–xxi / &#8290; / maior, nautilus

CC
hessian fly / 22 petabytes— / or “canticle of causes / connected arrays, such as the
mineral “teeth” in the radula / clothes freight to print compilation / -
driven skinn overnight by / “wounded” CDs; small bits of semi-transparent / auto-
priests a / en hound / tremens ever / summons the vocabulary of the disease with
acrid / store all drivers and implants that Wolfcreek will start.

DD
ring to the multiple jointed rhizome / algorithmic differences are ideological
differences, this is not an external critique / or “results-based magic”, /
retrieved 2014-07-17. / turn physical, and words are made flesh.” / flood has
reached the foothills, and our outpos / paramecia for / hymnal 6 de la / („not-
a-number“), / break the branches off a london plane tree in front of his shop
EE
or any permutation thereof. / bricks amid the oak copse / analogous to the
free-form immediacy of painter and canvas / seen in monocot leaves. / select
words, phrases, or entire paragraphs for redaction. / dll hijack. / trickles of
“bodily fluids,” if the two things had to be linke / viewed side-on; mouthparts are
visible to anterior. / 8. slyly child / as “cottonizing” / riquelme 1983

FF
disparity between the 0DisAdvantagedPeople and the 0DisAdvantagedPeople
/ perennial verdure / successive capes overlap / in non-package / node/viewer is
forced to respond with proscribed reactions; / high garden walls and
creeping plants surround us. above us, brick apartment buildings rise, their straight
line / serande / scouts intercepted the nez perce / int trycnt;

GG
ridge, frontal eminence. / now almost fully engineer / organs of sight. / from
burrowing. grey pollen / fermenting in or mark resignation. / around six
different 0-day exploits / black skeleton in the stomach / insects so the circling
stream. / 90dB. 4361 microsec insect. / authorial identity may be transient and
easily altered. / impression of ecclesiastical calm. / alamas, / [155][pineal
 HH
step supporting the soft parts / to a thousand windows and a place / pantoja
catches / sagittal compilation trap / ‘ragged skyline’ of the old city is visible / stawą
jest ms access / deterministic relations between a composition’s visible elements. /
pl. sigilla / number of “emanants,” characters who are part me, part themselves,
part machine. / deer to a salt lick / zephyrhills correctional II
referred to as “material action”, in which he would closely amplify small
sounds / – rope disciplines / patches without monitoring. / yields audible
interference / lists of objects (spawning, / decayes, ame / physiognomic lines of the
brow: / recorded them it was pouring hard, / sleep maps 54:23 / (‚descent‘), in /
document of occult praxis / Tel: 0086 / se “03.01.11”
JJ
e [141.98][piezo / bins strewn across the ground / seismic testing, said the
“resources” / artifacts designed by programmers are not material objects; at most
they are abstractions capturing some desired essence of their material
analogs. / recorded over 2.4GHz / seize the romance of its spectacle, but he seems
to quote light. / atillus – concrete / mixed with opiated choppe

KK
friction of slowly petrifying lava. / (psf->add_clipping) / dozen plots covering
830 square miles, / “software, human language, is dependent on the condition of
the hardware” (133) / chastened by decades of militancy, thought to allude
to dante / bleed/complete/index. / seven lines with seven syll / (nn / NN) /
although running short of rations, / villages of vapor, sunset-proud.—

LL
onto a large, level plain. with room to maneuver and deploy artillery, /
„reading/writing head“ / stampeded and stolen all but two / does not beacon this
data to a CIA back-end; / of la ceiba / synchronized, poetic gaze demands
/ shelf marked ‚intel / passen-4 core rear / ('control room', 'gallery', 'hospital
room', 'rotunda', 'sickbay'); / Cat No: AMI034-R/W / mujeres del fugitivos:
 MM
can one hide before that which never sets? / to high frequency visible light. /
[Link]. / “tombic communication”; / dwelt long among the rocks, / shall do -
places in a furnace / or “implant dr / algorithm as a self-imposed constraint.
/ sky under two towers / diskutil eje / fibers must then be loosened from the stalk.
/ cellular, episodic, / dresses its combinatorics / panerial’ and dist

NN
non-hidden question about hiding, / ap/xx / psplague can / simple SIR
(susceptible, infected, recovered) / half-obliterated cellar- / its interaction with
local signal ecologies. / TEMPEST analysis / DS:[arena_owner], / stores from the
maquiladoras, / charming moral transfixes us / incremented in the case of a kernel
panic. / unprepossessing staircase leads off the cobbled street.
OO
detection-paranoia-forensics-signal economy (an uncovering, gnosticism) / worn
edges of a green tow / traveller” combine rigorous / alchemical
recuperation of aimless / at theatre internment facilities / (itself a “hack” in its
syntactical mixture / come inseparably entangled, / link file vulnerability
(Lachesis/RiverJack) / paranymphs have escorte / newch = 0; / cise, ‘pthex’.

PP
to subsister: / się 18,6 tys. lat świe / 6yo slowl / this was a manuscript of the night
we couldn’t read. / exiles the flow / cracking of hands there in /
[Link] / gapped oscillation (the spark is visible, not its travel across
/ (sleight of hand - number stations, electronic voice phenomena) /
filters of gullets / as raw workers / below 50 kelvin (-370°F, or -223°C).

QQ
blases in / psyche as a place-psychogeophysics, on the skin, in the earth / light
(candle), plants / 34-ton caterpillar parked near the bottom / oscillation and
feedback (pipes, boxes) / arnés de polv / broke and hyped ellipse all curled up
and flagged. / never actually minted: they represented weight measures used
 for commodities (e.g. grain) / our power (aprohairetic things) / LP5-era

RR
arsenic tourn / at deerfoot tr. / a physical inscription of bodies, as performance art
and a subjective utterance in / shell commands—to unveil and elaborate their
metaphorical and physical inscriptions, / out of my lungs. / phosphor
between acoustic and electronic / patch of light on your floor that you witness
every afternoon. / if molecules were tongues / CL(passivemm, (struct

SS
though at such low volume, they’re unintelligible / practice of self-invention—
/ an uncanny touch on the wireless switch”, / slate coloured st / of ‘dry dub’ with its
hexa / iron & steel mechanics, before / he desiccated, / mor”, “mirag / monomial
grafts and spleen / takes a much darker route, on / “feverishassíst,” / coping akin
to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out.
TT
codes being flesh. / these descriptors—or “semantics,” / pronged lashes to
passages of lacquer- / as possible to each millisecond, / back into an opiated sort /
resolves with gritted techn / scape label at the turn / LACR019 /
generative themes, matchless / and pregnant suspension of time / as servicio
sanitario), / external phacn2 / lineages evolved calcified exoskeletons alone.

UU
repulsed by calles. / in an occasional border raid / physique with its “satraps” /
“the armature of / takes over, revving gear / given diplomatic (“black”) passports /
or imprints like those left by birds / unmistakably resembles arc / lotl – described /
ary( env, &cur / unpredictable entropies & slight signal degradation inherent /
'incense tree', 'coralwood'); / of facial-recognition

VV
of redlining / 4. felin / unloading an agitated, freeze- / desert storm (waco) /
numerous local and remote “zero days”/ tex’ concealing but sheer fence ext / with
analog hardware and minimalist / legacy of eternal tolerance. / -
 channelling, beatless widescreen / not down on any map; true places never are. /
covered in carbonaceous scales and spines. / 0’ scopes material

WW
GERONIMO / granite slabs and pitch / coarser combs with only a few prongs /
other departments, not speaking, but recording the recipient’s responses; /
14onkestl / zero-hours contracts which damage those on the margins most, /
whilst also inherently revealing a spectrum / braids will be in display case / dostęp
/ M1_CARNIVORE, M2_DOMESTIC / gesucht.474 / ‘no-eyed-deer’

XX
gullets actually voice exiles / cracking of hands on the skin / gapped oscillation
(the spark is on the skin of aimless sur / in / lun / of Gnosis. / tender burn of la
pared. / two composite faces “seem[s] to / silver tranquility of the evening or at the
feast, / --epochs 50 / combine rigorous blases / -int(radiation / 110); /
arcane passages of forgotten histories, ephemeral sensations, / fouree mes
YY
eyewitness to the desolation / All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a
poison. / enhanced apache / c.l / fields – patterns / misreadings. harvest,
/ texts were becoming lucid, pronouncing hidden truths and achieving occult
effects through their underlying formal operations. / EPOW, CIs, or other
detainees / jjoyce/cgi-bin'; / about that tragoady / ‘ill-fêted’ rolls

ZZ
dusted with flour which is rubbed into the pores of the fabric. / either through
stochastic chance, disruption of semantics / [BLEED005] / complete with
military inscriptions in ara / and re-wired, lending it a shortwave quality /
type_engine_scan2 / symbiotic conduit of / scarcely known in the west. /
[Link]. / probability of kill metric, / instaladas maquilas
Peter Mladinic

Jackie Wilson

There was a river I walked down to & didn’t

stick my hand in, and a river I only knew
in my mind flowed south of my river bank,
the river they drove the singer across only
he wasn’t aware of river or bridge because
he collapsed on stage, in his copper skin,
lime green suit, black pomaded hair parted
to one side, he fell and they took him across

that river and put him in a bed in a home.

There was the river I didn’t stick my foot in,
though I lost a shoe in silty blue black mud,
put the shoe back on, walked higher up
the bank, to hard ground and looked across
at trees and bushes. The singer lay in a bed,
had to be fed, moved to avoid bed sores,
as if he were asleep, he lay in a coma.

The water in my river, the color of pea soup,

only more brown than green, didn’t change.
I never swam in my river, or crossed by boat.
Men came with bulldozers, steam rollers
derricks, cleared trees and shrubs, leveled
the bank on the other side for a parking lot
for a bus depot, by then I walked less often
to the bank on my side. I did other things.
The singer woke one time from coma, with
hands holding his got out of bed and walked
a few steps to a window, looked out at what
was beyond him, the brick side of a building.
I feared the water in my river, saw in my
mind rats beneath the surface, threw stones
& watched water rings ripple wider the top
of green brown water. A rat crawled up

the slick blue black mud, below the bank’s

edge. I stood, looking north at the vast
macadam lot, depot small in the distance;
I looked south at hills with trees, and, higher
houses, and a brick five story building,
windows dark, shirts and sheets white
on a rope clothesline slightly slack, strung
from brick wall to brick wall, with sheets

bleached dry in the sun. The singer turned

from the window, and lying in bed again
spoke no more, closed his eyes and lay
as if asleep, ten years, while trucks and cars
crossed the bride he’d crossed, the bridge
I too eventually crossed behind the wheel
of a white Celica. Where I lived a gang wore
black leather jackets, a River Rats decal

on back. I only heard about them. Though

I found a switchblade in the street, pushed
a button and up sprang the blade, a time
before I walked down an aisle to a row of
cushioned seats and saw the singer. He had
a strong voice, wore a lime green suit and
in black shoes glided easy across the stage.
I’d heard he boxed in the Golden Gloves.
Student Film About
Orange Juice

We were way up in New Hampshire

but you’d think it was the tropics, all
the greenery. Rocks hint a waterfall
nearby. Our juice not Tropicana,

we pick oranges from orange trees,

or give that illusion, special ed kids
from my class, two girls, three boys
and me, our juice not from a market.

We enjoyed watching our film, us,

seemingly reaping the jungle’s fruit.
Two of those cute boys accomplices
to murder. I raised my hand in court,

the hand that unhooked my bra.

My luscious boobs, petite body
stirred lust in their male genders.
Those boys would anything for me.

Kill the spouse of their teacher?

I took the stand, said Pamela Smart
when asked my name. A murderer?
I brainwashed boys to act

on my behalf? I didn’t want him dead.

I made a film with things from school.
I took the cutest boy to bed.
In court his hand lay on a Bible.
Mourners at the Mound

Our goodbyes are for him, not you,

that white wreath, for him
for him, our black dress,
the hole you’ve toppled into, dug for him.
Your cry to the dead, I’m here,
sounds joyful. Are you drunk?

Your bulk rattles the coffin you stand on.

Please respect his young widow.
A white handkerchief dabs her veiled eyes.
She looks down at him in his coffin,
at you in your skin. Respect God in heaven,
beyond the white clouds
in today’s bluest sky, Cantinflas,
cease giving death your fleshy finger.

You shame our solemnity

in El bolero de Raquel.
You are blind to all but the sky,
deaf to our collective
You’re not supposed to. This hole
is for the dead, we are here for him, not you.
What are you doing? Are you drunk?

We said, “Lay the wreath gently,

keep still as a stone.”
How you struggle to climb,
your fingers clutching dirt the dead needs.
Get out! Ah, you don’t hear,
busy as you are being alive.
Holiness Hair

Look at her! The big lips weak chin

but not so weak as to be unattractive.
The lips ruby red sumptuous, the lady
in the laundry detergent ad, whose hair,
not quite shoulder length, had luster,
a sheen. Still, it wasn’t holiness hair.
Nothing quite like that flowing down
past the small of the back to tingle
a spine, mine at least. Holiness hair
rules lovely hair country, only thing is
baggage comes with that holiness,
snakes and such sights and sounds
casual observers observe: the long
unshapely dresses, low heel lace ups
old lady shoes my gran wore. I love
a woman’s holiness hair at Walmart,
beauty in a linens aisle, or in a Quik
Stop, at night, the woman’s husband
and three kids in the Tahoe, she pays
the cashier for Doritos, a Diet Coke.
PM Flynn

Self-Made Self

Haven’t been here today:

a cool green world, the spring of what is left, that leaves again
under the deep soil of any moment. But today is like any other day—
before summer follows with the sun’s burning gaze.

The heat of indifference rides up and down Main Street when streets
cool their obsession shopping all day, with coupons, bargain hunters
who sit together at lunch; a familiarity sipping iced relief. Glances
turn at the same pace, focus on the same time; sit in the same chair
each time.

Contentment shifts its view in windows reflecting the wavy mirrors

of self-made self; reason that has no reason to shift from view, inside
greetings that sound full of pretense. Those with secrets who walk past
without a word, abruptly edging around those who already know.
Road Trip

I never miss summer:

days when heat lingers past dusk,

as the worn, picnic grass cools until morning.
A shower follows the winding road; memories
turn from what doesn’t grow in the gray light.

From the rain:

enter leaves falling where trees begin,

a brief cloud of time climbing a sky
of all colors, or all colors on the ground;
or shade, where summer breathes softest.

At home, clouds cover the distant trees,

and the gray is closer to the mist.
One Explanation for Divorce

Intent desires more:

weddings of spirit and flesh, with hope clinging midair

to promises fingering the full lips of any dream come true.

Possibilities peddle against the headwind

of the genuine coasting downhill.

Desire spins thin tires of doubt

or thoughts buried deep within the heart:

strings of songs as deep as self, for the moments

longing lasts; when you listened, your mind made up.

With any indifference you stop for change; staring

at your phone, before words stall in situation,
distraction or intent. You were spirit once, untouched,
until I touched you. And now you are no longer my flesh.

But death is relative:

a slipping away of days no longer explained.

A House of Rising and Falling Suns

Here, east meets west and north the south

where I am still, where I am never alone.

The gray does not leave; moisture

chilled with swallowing morning clouds
pinned under the sun. Before noon the fog
burns off.

Sometimes, afternoon is a busy town. I cross

a dark sky, an unarmed day when a man rides by,
past caring, who talks to himself. He pulls a knife
from a pocket, as I speak of a city never needing light.

Later, the gray returns with the evening news,

skies that turn back to morning when I started.
A Hurricane Season

"To whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" Jude 13

All shadows are gray as I wait out this storm.

Thunder causes me to look inward, between
shadows where earlier there was light.

Night has fallen as at other times; mostly without rain.

Winds give way through trees where character

stops to look, and ask if I believe spirits walk across
shadowed walls, if I should ever see them again.

You wear humid summer like a sticky T-shirt.

Thick gray clouds swirl desire. Low riding radio bands

push blue skies north of easy listening. A blue-gray smoke
curls from chrome tailpipes. Whirling clouds of ocean waves
circle the ocean, always waiting behind dull white cool;
the darkness hiding the rage, Tail-fire shoots into the night
as drivers gun engines. A line of storms shoots from
a starting gun, as if hurricane seasons are sanctioned
NASCAR races.

The phone call was out of place, late last night—distracting

my introspection, briefly unbalanced with unseen thoughts
from distraction. Unseen, more so than when reading the sky
like a magazine, turning pages of what is eternal, more than
when I’m alone.
A Letter to Delilah

The car horn on the road woke me:

more than moonlight on water.

I am a mirror to you… and you of me…

In that dream I am calm; walking, turning

a road, along a field where I ask a Philistine,
as if I am Samson and you Delilah, "What
becomes green to gold, and green again?"

Gold is yellow—distance mixed with brown

when eight colors challenged more than
sixty-four crayons and a sharpener placed
in small hands. Pieces of orange suggest rain;
or plans being disrupted.

Yellow in every poem is golden hair; the growl

of tawny lions; saffron flowers, bumblebees
or a brazen sun. Now you know what I know.

It's not cobalt blue so much I lack with weather

or age; colors are stolen each day; it’s that police
never question a white haze gone missing,
uncolored after it settles in a hammock
between trees while other, uncolored pages
beg for attention.

But I am not Samson, nor you Delilah:

a golden mane grayed, blown thin. You seek
a coloring book of tinted meadows with
money trees growing beside a yellow brick road
of predictable, emerald towns.

We always walk into the cloudy breath

of suggestions on winter mornings;
small clouds like horizons spread across
fields waiting to become green.
Rae Diamond

the borrowed returned

the breath of one dying slows

like the wake of a boat smoothing
into the still liquid surface that preceded
its passing presence the influence
of its mass and motion received and
released as ripples lessening into a fluid
reflection of ceaselessly shifting sky revealing
now stars in darkness now pinkmisted dawn
now sun in blueness now density of cloud
windwhispering rain without letting it fall
now darkening of dipping sun sinking beyond
reach or view the suspense of the hover
of the last inhalation interminable
followed not by exhalation but by
the return of all that cannot be kept
the mathematics of farewell

instead of a guru i will follow

a moth it is sure to take
me to light the way there will be all
quick switchbacks in air we will pilgrimage
to every gleam we envision approach and back
away some irrational number of times
forming a sacred shape with the sum
of our trajectories until we are weary
i will fall asleep dream
of the radiant geometry of star axes in endless
lightlessness where no lines are drawn but
all paths are potential though enlightened
the time allotted to my moth tutor
is brief when i wake i will find
its almost weightless body no longer lit
with the spark of life i will map
the shapes we once traced in circumference
of light now around its papery wings
furred body featherlike antennae until a canny
crow snatches it in its black arced beak
wings it into the cloudless
sky i will pin my gaze on that dark
speck until it vanishes into the scalar blue
wending chords

in the looming vaults of a cathedral an organist

invokes the tempo of a nautilus of stars turning
inwards ever curving towards return notes
shifting at the pace of the recession
of a glacier of the erosion of
the stone form of a lone lofty
mountain into the rolling green of a hill
the velocity of return is necessarily
zero return is a myth fabricated
by memory place includes exists within
time is colored by those present
absent expected by the protean
weather of circumstance by the bent blood
and receptivity of the one who aims to return
to sound and hale

with silent feathers of owls we would be well

endowed here where gusts pummel faces
of people of buildings pull branches from
trees pull warmth pull
lifeforce from skin but with furred
wings we would not be swept we would
sweep we would not be pushed we would
mount we would not be blasted we would
dive catch rise fill ourselves with that
which could not get away until we are enough
hale to ride the rogue windtides of these battered
hills to some hushed dark wood beyond
Rebecca Lee

The Day After Yesterday

I’ve read dozens of online personal essays about college sexual assault. Detailed descriptions about
dryness or burning cheeks are safely toward the end, but not too far down that an easily distractible reader
would want to switch tabs.
Some sites post bold headings that declare four steps every woman should take while trying to recover.
Self-care is always on the list along with speaking out. But “out” to whom? It never specifies and so the online
essays continue. These are the sites for women who grew up with the phrase: “it’s not your fault”. As if they ever
thought it was.

Last week I met a friend of mine at a Ruby Tuesday’s in downtown New Brunswick. She sounded
distressed over the phone.
Ann Marie does not prevaricate. She is authentic in a halting sense. She’d only called a few hours before
and unlike the days when she discusses the perils of Tik Tok stars, her voice sounded wispy and far away. When
Ann Marie has a problem she pauses for 15 whole seconds until I am forced to adjust my glasses or pick at my
skin or examine the bulbous veins on each of my hands. Eventually I ask her what’s wrong.
Ann Marie was sitting at a table in the middle of a separate room, her capezio hanging from one heel.
Thin women always have high arches.
I was wearing the new plaid boots I just bought from Amazon. The tongues on them are extra fat and
make me look like some kind of anime character, but I like them anyway. They are unusual if not exotic and
they look perfect with bulky socks. Ordinarily I would have shown Ann Marie, pointing out their sale price.
Now this could not happen.
I met her approximately three years ago at a networking event in Millburn. Females in Tech or as I
dubbed it, Rockstarlettes For Rockin’ Startups. It was located in what looked like a school cafeteria with walls
that, if not actually gray, seem like it in hindsight. We were awkwardly standing by the salad bar when I asked
her what she did. She replied, “Oh, nothing much” and we both laughed.

Ann Marie once told me when she was 17 she used to wear all black in an attempt to appear older. Now,
at 37 she uses lavender scented hyaluronic acid.
“I’m so glad to see you, Rachel.” She stood up as soon as I spotted her table. It struck me as a formal
gesture for people of the same age. Then again maybe she considers our three year age difference enough to
draw a line. “You’re amazing to drive here so early.”
“Of course.”
“I really needed to talk to someone.”
“I completely understand.”
We leaned into the middle of the table as if we were teenagers. The rest of the restaurant turned blurry.
I half expected her to cup her hand to my ear, but we are too old for that kind of secret. After thirty, drama
seems like trying too hard; it’s a housewife wearing shorts and a halter.
“I’m just having a hard time, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just one of those weeks.”
I nodded.
“You know?”
I nodded again.
“I was completely fine, everything was going great. I don’t even really know what happened.”
“Did something happen?”
 “No.” She started plucking hairs from the side of her head. “Well, kind of. It was this guy. He was right
in the middle of the sidewalk yelling at me from on top of a ladder. Like, literally yelling.”
My mouth dropped.
“No,” she said. “Not like that. I mean… it was gross.”
Ruby Tuesday’s appeared packed and we were sitting in what seemed to be the designated children’s
section. High chairs were placed strategically at certain tables. A gaggle of moms wearing loose-fitting chiffon
blouses all sat together. Next to one of the moms, a toddler tried to stick two fingers in one nostril. The word
“gross” means different things to different people.
“It wasn’t just like a catcall though. It was...”
Silence.
“It was one of those things where I didn’t know whether I should turn around and respond or keep
walking.”
“What did you do?”
“I kept walking. And then, I, and everyone else on the street, heard him yell, “Jiggle that ass so I can see
it, Sugar Lips. ”
Sugar lips. I clapped my hand across my mouth. I pictured a fat middle-aged construction worker with a
Queens accent. It was almost cartoonish.
“That’s horrible.” I did not laugh. I turned to the menu instead.
This particular Ruby Tuesday sells breakfast before noon, but after that there are only blueberry muffins
available for $6 each. It was 11:25 AM. Five minutes before 30 minutes until the kitchen closed. If I ordered a
breakfast burrito at 11:40, it would be obnoxious. An extra ordeal for an unhappy cook. Although I’m never
sure if my food contains spit, I assume it doesn’t unless I’ve actually done something offensive. The waitress was
serving two tables in front of us.
“Yes.” Ann Marie said.
“Did you tell him to go to hell?”
“No.” She made a face. “I walked away. But it was just the whole thing. I can’t put up with this stuff
anymore. I shouldn’t have to.”
 “Nobody should have to put up with it.” I agreed.
“They don’t understand. They think it’s just some kind of “right” to talk about a woman’s body. Some
people are actually, truly, affected by it. They never think about that.”
I nodded. The menu options are much more plentiful at Ruby Tuesday's than they are at the faux barn
cafes that charge $7 for a cup of coffee. Before driving to the restaurant I looked up the calories for their lunch
menu, but I hadn’t considered brunch.
“I guess I’m just shaken up over it because it reminds me of things that are...”
Their brunch menu is a book.
“When we were in college, it was different. Can you even imagine the whole #metoo thing in 2004? I
don’t know about your school, but at mine it seemed like getting raped after too much to drink was a right of
passage. It was somehow empowering. Or at least it was supposed to feel that way. I never felt that way.”

My mouth twitched.
“I don’t even know anymore,” she said. “I try not to think about it.”
I can’t help but think the incident she alluded to will describe her for the rest of her life. When she
screams at boyfriends in the privacy of her home, will she rest on this memory as a shield? It must create a thick
layer of intimacy when she whispers it to a man she finds particularly attractive. It makes her mysterious and at
the same time completely explainable for anyone who’s heard the story.
Our waitress was too slow for me to order before 11:30. I prayed she’d come before 11:40, but she was
still talking to another table. Unlike Ann Marie, the waitress’s behind was unapologetically loose.

“Do you think about it often?” I asked.

“It depends,” she said. “Most days I hardly think about it at all, but sometimes something will just happen. It
could be the smell of cheap wine or even a certain smile. It all comes back so fast I feel dizzy. Trauma stays in
the body. It’s a permanent memory.”
Ann Marie’s menu remained closed and untouched.
“I’m so sorry, Ann.” I said. “This must be excruciating.”
 “It is. I called out on Friday. It was just too fresh in my mind.”
Ann Marie is a sensitive person. On the street across from my building she gives her change to the
homeless guy who specifically asks for Newports. On Mondays she calls her mother in Utah and on Sundays
she visits her father in the next county. I know this because she tells me.
“I didn’t know what to tell my boss. I didn’t want him to think I was just sick or didn’t want to go to
work. I ended up telling him...”
“Telling him what?”
“Well, just that I had some unresolved trauma, you know? I told him about the guy who yelled at me
and,” she leaned back across the table, “heavily hinted I had been raped. Like I literally said the words “sexual
assault experiences”. It was awful.”
I flinched.
“I mean it wasn’t just awful reliving that stuff over the phone, it was awful because of his reaction. He
didn’t even want to talk about it at all. His voice was exactly the same. I never thought of him as having a
personality disorder before this.”
The waitress had finally left the table in front of us, but wasn’t looking our way.
“Do you think he has an empathy problem?”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“It’s not like he really said anything, I guess.”
Silence.
“He was just really quick about it.” Ann Marie continued. “Like he said he was sorry and that he hoped I
felt better soon. And then he went back to talking about work stuff. He asked me if I could attend a client
meeting online.” The fabric of her sleeve stretched all the way across her fist.
Before the movie Girl Interrupted I never would have noticed, but thanks to Angelina Jolie with her
wolf lips and dead eyes, I am now always on the alert for wrist-cutters. She made it seem so erotic in the movie,
like there was a tiny secret that only existed for special people.
 It was almost hypnotizing when I met those special few in an 8th grade social studies class. There were
four of them. At 13 they decided to cut their wrists just like in the movie. Three of them wore short sleeves and
left red stained tissues in the trash can next to the gym.
The fourth girl was the really fascinating one. She seemed aware that hinting at a secret could label her
attention-seeking and didn’t bother to wear t-shirts or tank tops. Instead, the fourth girl let blood stain white
fabric in an attempt to seem discreet. If teachers asked her to push up her sleeve, she’d shake her head violently.
The red horizontal stains were juice, she’d say. But she always wore white.
Our waitress showed up just a few minutes later and Ann Marie ordered coffee with sugar. I ordered the
breakfast burrito with green onions, salsa and extra cheddar. There was no “the kitchen is actually closing soon”.
There was no “we’re fresh out of ingredients”. Instead she wrote it down and continued to smile. It was 11:35.

Ann Marie stared at me.

A pack of floral print tissues poked out of her purse. None of them were crinkled or loose. If she cried in
front of someone and the pain subsided, additional tears would seem dramatic. If she cried in front of someone
and didn’t feel better, her allotment for sympathy would be wasted.
“Technically I’m just an employee,” she said. “It’s not even like he did anything wrong.”
“Again, I’m so sorry.” I nodded. “Life is so unfair.”
Our waitress returned a few minutes later with an oversized plate and two mugs. A heaping pile of sour
cream was spread both on and in the tortilla. Extra salsa filled a serving dish that looked unironically delicate. It
was 11:54 and I was shocked the food was ready.
Ann Marie didn’t need a napkin and the waitress forgot mine. I thought about the sour cream oozing
out of my burrito, but didn’t want to maneuver through highchairs just to find a napkin. The tissue pack was
open, but the sheets were perfectly unmoved. I averted my eyes before she saw me staring and decided I couldn’t
ask.
Rich Murphy

Torch Song

During the 70th Summer Limbic Games

as the global biohazard baited breaths
and a heated climax catastrophe
in banks rolled into the coliseums everywhere,
the frog gives up on the balance beam
to seek refuge in the lily pad floor routine
at the cranium stadium: Leaping lizard!

Showing off limber limbs at the septal parallel bars

the practice prince turns into a fog.
A bronze insult meddles and teases in Greek.

The neo-cortex coach, saddened by performances,

takes heart with the misty brow furrow feeling
while tearing up the old records, broken but in play.

Not counting on the team captain to analyze

and strategize, the prefrontal champ and amygdala
pitch in shot put balls and jab with javelins
in a muddled huddle puddle for physical companionship.

The squad carries on shoulders as habit,

as one – done and won –
a cognitive memorial precision procession:
A proud gold chest out at the closing ceremonies,
another Agamemnon rower wits the west home.
Force Majeure

The knowledge body for extreme existentialism

surveils to record a vault without a cape
over tall tales, short stories, trash diction.

The Olympics for honesty shakedown

the unaware who discover personal guilt.

A self-denying spirit laughs at the tongue

that wags so that the slow energies called
trees and deer welcome the appearance.

Behavior defies at any moment the daily

floor routine and balance beaming in the eye.

Beyond the Freudian slip, the witness show

with credits for good readers remembers
that up or down, east or west doesn’t exist.

The third planet from a sun snakes the habit,

rite, tradition, convention labyrinth to tattle
on a mythmaker with a deflated hero who once
again runs with frightened species members.
Dopamine Tribute

The drive kicks in before a foot

anticipates the can in the road,
A rattle from a procrastinator
in the neighborhood multiplies
into a city-wide rabble racket.

Habit jumpstarts for the cycle

that without a helmet brrrms
English through urban-American
goggles along the border between
the 20th and 21st Centuries,
a last saddling before wind power.

The vehicle that carts via two legs

turns from Main Street at a fork
to save two ears and heads
to an unstomped stomping ground,
Language for Tomorrow, Maybe.

(That word again that fuels,

filling a hope tank without doubt.)

A reader or two hike up readiness

for whatever marching orders arrive.
The rider also with feet blazing
a j-walking short-cut over plazas
and through postage stamp backyards
dances to pause, without an epilogue.
Thought Balloons

The intellectual no-fly zone

over war propaganda swats
at questioners and nay-sayers
with dead civilian images
on national television,
silencing debate among
the gut-wrenched viewers.

Invisible strong stomachs with heads

drone on about the hawk
atmosphere clouding thought
from sea to shining sea.

Without perspectives,
balance for deliberation tips over.

Meanwhile, King Kong media moguls

atop the Empire State Building
smear on a zeitgeist windshield
blind spots for the century-long
single-minded destination momentum.

Old habits call up knee jerks

and memory thugs to push arm sales
for foreign soldiers who fall in stead.
Highwire Writing

Writing without a net

in the twilight between
consciousness and unconsciousness,

a balance pole (or umbrella),

resin, and tightline shoes
tool for toiling in flight
from likely to the possible.

Each foot steps so that toes

wrap around intimation stretches
not tipping to one side or the other:
Quaking into waking or into deep slssp.

Understanding an airliner requires

that pedestrians look up with attention.

From dream world to day-to-day

task lists and improv home improvements
syncopation could well double
for a string instrument.

The shear pluck plays at melody

that resonates with dare devils
who share and join in at the chorus.

Even the last syllable resting

disappointed on the destination
platform holds onto breaths below.
Richard Stimac

Fireflies

When Rickie was young, the evening air hung thick with fireflies, as if a sea of stars fell from the sky.
One could stand on the earth and touch heaven at the same time.
He’d lay on the ground, face up, his arms outstretched, and imagine he rested on the ocean floor. The
fireflies would alight on his arms, his legs, his face, as he breathed, submerged, far beneath the waves. He let
himself inhale the imagined water, fill his lungs with fluid, and drift into a starless sleep.
One night, his eyes half-closed and the actual night sky blurred above him, his mother slid along his
side. Time washed over them. How many minutes, neither could say. They, the mother and the child, let the
endless rhythm of the tides rise and ebb, the moon, wax and wane, in the marrow of their bones.
At last, her hand cradled his, like a shell giving protection to a soft body within.
“On the farm,” she said, “before the county made us put up the halogen lamp, the fireflies would be
thick as mud along the creek that cut the far fields in half. My brother, your uncle, and me would take mason
jars and hammer holes in the lids with nails. We didn’t even have to catch the fireflies by hand. We’d scoop the
jars through the air then quickly screw on the lids. In a few passes, we’d have so many that we used the jars like
soft-lit lamps to walk back to the house.”
Though the sun had not fully set, the streetlight came on and the subaqueous air of backyard diffused
with a jaundiced hue.
“When you were born,” the woman holding the boy’s hand said, “you wouldn’t believe it, but there were
almost that many fireflies in our backyard here. They’re slowly disappearing. Like the crickets. And the birds.
When they take out that plot of trees and build on that empty field, there won’t be any more nature left around
here.”
Far above them, in the dim blue of dusk, clouds rolled over each other, like waves, but never crashed
onto a silent sand beach or a submerged coral reef.
“Look at that cloud.” She pointed, as if her human finger could plot the vast and silent sky.
“You know, your father and I both love you. We’ll stay here. Your dad is only moving across town.
You’ll see him a lot.”
She squeezed his hand with a soft, slow rhythm.
Rickie began to feel the weight of the ocean press upon his chest. He breathed deep, then deeper, taking
in the salt water, swallowing until his stomach nearly bust. He retched and gasped for breath. His mother towed
him close until he sunk into the giving flesh of her arms, her stomach, her breasts. He floated, effortlessly, as if
on a great salt sea.
Robert Fleming
Roger Craik

VALEDICTION

The new Latin master (I’ll give his name later)

selected some of us to read for the school
in the Latin speaking competition.

It went, as I recall,
“Velleius Blaesus, ille locuples consularis
novissima valetudine conflictabatur.”

I stood, started with bravura.

He snickered, doubtless at my Englishness,
(though later I suspected more).

Now, new Latin master,

over decades of success
I give you the finger!
Roger G. Singer

I SAW ALONE

it whispered
without words

a start
without finishing,
a newness
without choice,
a path nowhere

waiting

as tears from
a scarred
memory
slipped to a
gray pavement
HOW I MISS THEM

it’s where
I remember them

between the lines

of youth and love

the vision of souls

lighting a candle,
touching the wax
while praying under
a heaven of
falling voices

cold and alone

like the glove

without a hand
HOLDING YOUR HAND

our last dance

isn’t over

the fragrance of
our words
remain

as we stand within
a column of stars
and unfinished fires

with mercy hands

and beautiful feet

on a beach
we know well

sharing our story

a thousand times,
and more
Sadie Cardenas

It Starts With A Light

It starts with a light.

It is both the light you see in the beginning and the light you see in the end.
The light that can be the sun
Or an operating room
The overwhelming brilliance of a world we don’t know how to live in.
We come out backwards from the beginning
Our bodies are clay mannequins
With pieces that can be elongated and pinched and reshaped
To fit the needs of Time.
And when we are old enough to understand things and realize what it means to live,
We celebrate it.
For what better to do with all this time than learn
Experiencing day by day?

When we are young- say nine years old

We think time doesn’t affect us.
We think of our minds and bodies as frozen
Because we cannot remember being any other way.
So we laugh and play
And dream of the day
When we finally get to grow up.

But then it happens.

And only then do you realize you’ve been tricked.

Blink, and a year is gone.

Blink, and six more follow.
Blink, and you’re sixteen.
You don’t feel any different.
You still look the same.
Soft-cheeked, soft-bellied, still dreaming.
These are the magic years, they say,
But the world is still as gray
And incomprehensible as it was
When you started living in it.
You’re still trying to sort through this kaleidoscope of emotions inside
And you don’t know what to do with yourself
But everyone else does:

“Start looking at colleges.”

“Get a job.”
“Learn to drive.”
“Live your life.”
“Open up.”
And all you can do
Is wish you knew
How to follow their orders.

Time flies
Like the balloon from your birthday party that sails away and disappears into the clouds.
It slips into the shadows like a thief in the night
And all you want to do is catch Him
Shake him by the shoulders and scream “What have you done to me?”
But He will dissipate beneath your fingertips to steal from another victim
Because Time waits for no one.
“Start looking at colleges.”
I’m still late for my high school classes.
“Get a job.”
It’s one step closer to leaving.
“Learn to drive.”
I’m still trying to catch up on my feet.
“Live your life.”
I can’t leave the house without telling anyone.
“Open up.”
Oh, give it a rest.

I have already been sliced wide open to let in everything,

Every storm and hurricane and earthquake.
I understand too little and feel too much
But it’s better to guard it
Convince myself and others that I don’t cry because I’ve grown up.
But for a moment I slip.
And because everyone else is so
Smart
And Intuitive
And Concerned for Me
They see it.
“Let it all out. It’s okay.”
They don’t know about the wreckage inside.
They expect it all to be fully formed, tangible.
A beast with snarling teeth and red eyes with hellfire shining through
Something they can defeat.
They want to stick a Band-Aid over the crack
And think they’ve fixed it
And feel better knowing they understand you.

What they don’t want is to watch you stammer

Watch you stop and start
And struggle to shape your sentences
Watch you clench your knuckles white
And hold back tears.
Because it’s not just one monster.
It’s a whole tempest
Howling, snapping, snatching you up in its whirlwind.
And it isn’t something to be fought with a sword or spell.
One day you will learn to best it (So you hope)
Though you do not know when.
But you don’t anyone else to know
Out of fear that they’ll get swept away too.
So you lock it inside
And pray to a god you don’t believe in
For the best.

I know, I know.
I haven’t gone out in the world.
I haven’t experienced true pain.
I haven’t made a single dream of mine come true
But remember what it was like to be Me.
To have what feels like the world breathing down your back
Barking orders from every direction.
“Carpe diem, seize the day.”
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,”
How many times I have tried, you don’t even know.
I ran into that garden without a second thought
And now my arms are bleeding
Because I can’t stop scratching myself on the thorns.
And you tell me to calm down
But every day feels like I’m running out of Time.

Look at me again.
You don’t see an accomplished writer.
You don’t see a student ready to graduate.
You see nothing
But a child
With a sweet, wispy mind full of clouds
And every time I look in the mirror,
So do I.

I’ve branded myself with a purple heart of my own

I got it from beating myself up
Over things I can’t control.
So please
Don’t try to explain myself to me.
Don’t tell me it’s going to be alright.
Instead, try to understand
Put yourself in my shoes again, even though they don’t fit the same.
And, if you can,
Give me a little more Time.
 Gibbous

The bright side of the moon

That white rose petal suspended in the pitch dark of night, dripping stardew
Glowing, blooming, brilliant
The grin of your high school sweetheart
The spinning Ferris wheel, going round and round
The blissfully cloying taste of memories
Fondly recalled like film tapes in your past
The perfect example for a word that represents
Everything good in the world
And yet
It is not quite whole.

It doesn’t need a trained eye to spot it

You could see it if you want to.
The drama behind the curtains
The sour aftertaste of something sweet
The thing you missed not because you did not notice it
But because you did not want to.
You chose to blot it out, keep your vision untainted
Instead of lingering
Because why ruin the moment?

Every light needs a shadow to exist

Everything is gibbous
Shining radiant in the sky above, but at the same time
Veiled.
Impaired.
Imperfect.
With the dark side of the moon peeking out, staring, daring you
To come look.
Samuel Share

Objects

Candle

Cup in forehead glow, a metal skull gaze, a mountainous maze, a potted tree atop a cold marble floor, a face, at
once, burns down the front door. Singe transpire continue, singe transpire desist, singe transpire musicality
butterflew amidst. Scorch tubular wetness, scorch tubular monster, scorch tubular condensation into lace. Rocket
flicker cancel. Blaze of glory go down, go down, I'm going down, I'm down in down so down can down can you in
the oh. Ivy singe Tuesday contour into rhythmic lumber. To candle - Kilkenny, smokestack.

Cup

Astound, renowned, rewound. A glancing circumstantial deigns to prefigure. Hope cone, I can't see in. Open, I dip
it in. Herein white, a coldcream delights grasp it NOW child. Vanilla brevity, a secret word left unreferred. Ivory
bird tilts toward third. Recircle your bases, restraighten your laces, lassitude. Disheartening restraint is heavily lilted,
is no go is on so is is no go so is.

Chair

This chair. Is thoughts and discretion. A glint and a changing of mind of mind of hope of be present for this but
how but do it. A column, black, in hopelessness. In hope, in hopelessness, in, hope, in hope, it's hopeless. In the
future, on the past. Here now - the thinnest glass...This curve removed from form, this curve put back in form.
Interesting, this is interesting, they will or will not find this interesting. They. Feet.

Book

Inspiration on the table, in the spastic dirt of pencilhood. In the spastic hypertext of umbilicality. In the liquid of
demise. In her hair. In her where. Pages spread, pages open, invite, opal instant of second-hand immediacy. Didactic
truth, discover, remove, replace, dactyl desertion. Dissertation, disert, dessert. Desert. A desertion, a demise. Book
open, reveal. Cucurbite.
Mouse

O curvature, O desire, O dirt in between in your edges in your spaces. Wheelturn, backhand battery opening and
instantiate. Black around brown around town around. Slight and slip and service the remainder of the lighthit.
Mouse touches glass. Mouse in hole in whole in hole in smoke. In the sea. Swim, mouse, die, flounder. Founder.

Neon Sign

Flash in orange pomposity. Royalty overwrite the outside, invite in, into here into where into the in the in to the in
to the open. A blank space, a white, a void, into outro intro. The Open. Field, fields, back here now be here now
neon sign. Be here, now, neon sign. Be, here now, neon sign. Be here now neon, sign. Been done. Pfft. The
continuity is disastrous. Come in to the key. Glow hot rider red rider overcast demure plaintive. Brighter rider into
tomorrow slander lovingly to porosity. Into the cancer, the burning tinge, the ringing ear, the tomorrow cancer.
Tomorrow was here.
Lines Out

where
where are
where are your lines
your lines out, where are
your lines out,
are they lines out?
are they lines in?
where
where are
they?

are they present in your eyes?

in your
do they
do they project across a crowded bar
into the
into the dripping eggwhite souls of the stranded
do they cancel the fickle desires of your fiscal opponents
do they
your physical Adversary on the mnemonic prairie
on the monetary battlefield
on the expansive veldt of desire, cast in green
and brown and

are they present in your walk?

are they
do they
do they shimmer across the linoleum and pick up the
the static electricity and pinpricks of hoarse delight
and transmit them equine across the pheromone highways
into the nose of your Adversary
do you scintillate the snuffling prison dogs
as you glide sideways astride your steed
as you manipulate the flow
as you
as you give and you grow as you
as you take the mick as you
as you leapfrog along the
as you shift and slide the
are they present in your fists?
do you possess power?
do you possess power?
do you
do you are you
you better be
possessed of power?
do you strangle while you walk
choking out the needless weeds beneath your beautiful boots
gripping the gritty pavement and slandering your woeful minimalist competitors
crushing the scapulae of your perennial Adversary betwixt your beautiful teeth
rollicking rafted along the seas of intrigue with your other bereft enemies
with your

do they collapse within do they

are they all in are they
do they
begin to suffocate as they enshroud
as they
as they dig a cave of utmost safety in a cloud
as you become your head and stay that way for years
as you allow the lines that separate your fears
to merge together into one black blob of ink
into your soporific floating cavern deeper sink
until always in
in around
always in around the circle shifting safely to the
the shuffling jitterbug jazz in your brain that plays
that plays for days and reminds you of home
of the time before you had to know yourself
that time
that time alone along
before the bat descended
descended and covered your eyes
before
before all unknown became known and drifted east
before you knew, before you could indulge the feast
before
before the gaps and spaces
before the gaps and spaces allied for your sake
before the breezes carried heaven in their wake
when they just Were

are they in then out do you

do you hate the dripping souls of the stranded, adversarial as they
as they gather in your midst and describe you,
as they watch you as they
as they are all watching you?
as they
that is
as they are all the same, all along
as they are always already known to you
you, who know all
to whom all is already known
you for whom the locks unlocked
you for whom with no particular effort
with no particular effort at all the way is laid bare
you for whom sleep is sound and endless
you for whom
you for whom the plots unwind
you for whom
you for whom the golden pavilion revolves
you for whom all the
you for whom
you for whom all the allusions adumbrate
that which is already known
you for whom
you
you who know
you who know
you who know
who know you who know who
you who know you know who know

do you let them have you?

do you
them have you them
in them you have you have them
in them, have you them have you have have them have
are your lines out they lines in?
are they?
Sara Mullen

Quest

Around
some corner,
a flicker of you
on a road.

Your voice
white noise
in a rainfall
far away.

A moment
between
you are:
you were,

a mind can
unwind it
you were:
you are

not where
you should be,
but waiting
to be found.
Every page
of the world
to be turned,
horizon

by horizon,
every acre
and layer
of the sky

shaken
to discover
where it is
you might be,

where you
should be,
where you
absolutely are.
Ashes

Night drifts down,

lands on the Shannon.
Sodium lights switch on,
red as lemonade
in a fire-lit glass.

Below the castle walls

old streets settle
themselves in the dark,
smelling of turf
and starlight.

Stay a night
in Bastion Street,
dream of a room
across the road
where a child sleeps

in her grandparents’
feathery bed, her
lullabies the sound
of talk downstairs, the
hush of passing cars.

And while you sleep

I’ll wake and walk
enchanted streets
twining their way
through dreamtime,

tiptoe into
the grey church
through the cracked
Immaculate Heart
in the Clarke window,
set votives quivering,
ceiling stars a-stir,
catch falling confetti
from long-ago
forgotten weddings.

Later I’ll tumble

west of a summer’s
evening along roads
we used to drive
with windows down,

past the stillness of

introspective hills, trees
waving their regrets
that they had to stay,
I’ll journey home.

By the lake I’ll take

flight with the rooks
of the orchard and ghosts
of gulls who used to
summer on the crannóg,

and from the fox’s field,

watch as the fiery sun
descends Croagh Patrick,
then chase it all the way
to Bertrá Strand.
Scott Thomas Outlar

The Shadow of the Door

Dreams slip away/wrenched harshly

the veil is tight/greedy with scried glimpses
screaming lunatics outside the apartment
lack of decency or self-control
emotional wrecks/monsters in the night
the shifting sands of time
absolution in a jar of chaos/spilling seeds
sanctimonious throne of thorns/crown of sorrow
righteous indignation/creative flux
it’s been so long/overdrive prescription
untitled emission/a dose of absolution
pennies scattered in the wind
clocks grinding toward winter
Blurred

My eyes might not be what they once were

but I can still see the north star
holy ghost aglow

Cracked my teeth on harder truths

than the sugar cookie culture
could ever digest

and it’s a long fog

through the black night

you’ll see
Modus Operandi of the Serpents

Portals into the eclipse

with a full moon blooming
around the bend

The Holy Grail

Fountain of Youth
Rosetta Stone
Deciphered DNA

Inquisitions
Heresy
Conquistadors/Crusades
In the name of the Sacred Father
Sacrifice/Virgin blood
glistening treasure
dragon fangs

Papacy
Golden Pillars
Divine Phallus

of arks and covenants

of shepherds and wolves
No Villain Shall Prosper

It’s at the edge of atmospheric pressure

tensile brush stroke annihilation

Fingertips can’t grasp the air’s gentle whisper

but can’t you sense it anyway?

The trick to remaining inwardly peaceful even as drooling tyrants torture the concepts of freedom, liberty, and
personal sovereignty on a daily basis is to understand that every deceitful, cowardly action they take will wind up
working doubly against them in the end.

For it is written that as the clowns stumble along their path of authoritarian giddiness, they will eventually lose
all balance and fall face first into their own worldly devastation and eternal despair.

Therefore, it is wise to laugh at the conduct of those who have no shame, for that which serves as gallows
humor to provide a mild sense of merriment during the time of chaos will return on its investment in manifold
proportion through schadenfreude raised to the nth degree once the cookie finally crumbles and all the swinish
scoundrels are stuffed fat with their just desserts.
Modes of Mooing

Mood good
vibe positive
love fiery

Rode high
on a wave of lightening

Felt God
in successive pulses

Pulled the plug on all distractions

oh, baby, don’t feel dejected

we’re just rejecting

that gnarly old beast
and his system
that need not be mentioned

Condition red
with plenty of warmth
and burnout left over
to kiss your glowing orange
nuclear plexus

Oh, darling, don’t get infected

that’s just the cud they choose to chew
Serse Luigetti
Thomas Fink

CEO COLLIDES WITH BRUTE PARADOX

We press hard-working myths full

of quoted passion into the service
of capital
accumulation.
Much actualized
delusion is rich
soil
for the
luminous fewest. Yet abject
valleys’ fantasy
consumption oft
triggers shadowy
slowdowns, clerical
fuckups, mental truancy—
stepping on efficient
redistribution from
crass labor
all the way
to the
golden
apex.
KICKASS PEDAGOGY

The headmistress
reenters the speakeasy
with an authoritative handgun.
Snow
is no
deterrent now.
Our search can encompass.
Budget cuts earn
our disdain.
My pupils
wisely
endure
a structure
that
does not fit
their lusts. Shortly,
raw joy of discipline may ripen.
Rethinking inevitable.
ANONYMOUS APOSTROPHE

Skies

drain as
they must. Baritone birds plug

a gap in melody. Theirs is

(one might forget) inhuman. Casual
bells scowl.

Tonight
I enjoyed involuntary access to your
high-pitched portion of a call
stretching

from Cold Spring

Harbor
to Jamaica, due to your
apparent nonchalance about who could profit
materially before

you from that kibitzing about loose

screws
in the superstructure—
& how to tighten them.

Ah, but your mask’s inferior.

It
will not save you from

chaos, though it might

succor
SURPLUS VALVE

A line of patrons grumbles for tables.

A jingle is winging
from precincts unknown.
Though some blessings
get disguised
in cacophony,
customer
dissatisfaction
cringes at
each voice
crack.
Common science
will survive imposed
ecstasy.
Timothy Resau

8th Avenue - circa 1966

Watching, usually watching the arms that move

the hands that hide a face wearing the lips of sadness,
walking down these stereo-streets, past the New Yorker Hotel,
Port Authority, and the endless bars serving
boilermakers to men standing at the bar at 7 am, holding a shot
of whiskey in one hand and a briefcase in the other.
I become a tooth growing in your naked gums
vanishing into a point cut along the buildings’ shadows
I appear a small scar between the eyes that lay awake
blinking before a silver dream that lives higher than
any man should care to be.
I circle these sidewalks a blind ant trying to see.
I call myself to order only to watch the cosmetic parts
fearfully seek the characters as they slide about the
pavements and stairs like lost shoes.
Reality Blizzard

You, the savage couldn't get away—

that essential barbarian, exiled from a family stage,
with a stream of electrical heat, debating the future.
Lost in deadlock,
severed from Eden,
even found Russia boring—
Nixon's tomb a drag.
City lights—
Macrobiotic cooking—
Doctor X—
Fame—
O the price of pop music.
The price of family — the cost of love.
I just wanted to explore outer space,
and new love (think of it!)
But was found touching the wrong dials—
the dials to the sun, an exhibit of lights.
A thrill,
it was a cheap thrill, and a question of
keeping the past captive.

The telephone's at my ear; your voice changing

... always changing ... coming toward me
... reaching me with the wrong answers.
Many say you can't do it with pretense,
and where were they when I really needed you,
searching Tutankhamen's cave?
I turn to you with hope, seeing amber,
embracing our failure—
You in the phone booth, drinking champagne—
Parked tractors and buzz saws at your feet—
your baby on the car seat ...
and me, carrying the money in paint cans.
anonlinejournalofvoice

Spring 2023
Acta Biographia

Alec Hershman

Alec Hershman (he/him) is the queer author of For a Second, In the Dark (MWC Press, 2022), Permanent and
Wonderful Storage (Seven Kitchens, 2019) and The Egg Goes Under (Seven Kitchens, 2017). He has received
awards from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The St. Louis Regional Arts Counsel, The Jentel
Foundation, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. You can find link to his work
online at [Link]. He lives in Michigan.

Andrea W R Jones

Andrea W R Jones is a writer, poet, screenwriter and during the Iraq War published work in political and social
theory. After this period she started writing a children’s book, then following the untimely death of her father
took a break and concentrated on growing her greatest love, Poetry & Prose. She received her BA in English
from Colorado College and studied Philosophy at Dublin’s famed Trinity College in Dublin in her late 20’s.
After this time she spent in Ireland, she traveled to help her gain a better understanding of the world, its people
and helped inspire how she presents today the words she writes. Although diagnosed with Rheumatoid
Arthritis when in college she has refused to let it hamper her writing, and has come to have found it a turn of
events, those beyond her control, which may seem cruel as a writer, that her hands would be taken away from
her. But instead of giving up, as she often says: “I write through the pain and will so until and beyond my hands
are no longer worthy of me.” In short, she refuses to let it take away her words.

Her most recent work, in the past two years, reflects the struggles faced when a life, granted to her through
chance, privileged in every way, was taken away due to an incredible story that is told through her poems. As
the UK Philosopher and writer David Proud wrote: “Andrea can through her poetry articulate direct personal
experiences while also delivering a sense of there being much more going on that is working independently of these in a
struggle to make sense of the world and of one’s place in it as well of course of those others in it that we encounter.”
Andrew Cyril Macdonald

Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of inter-subjectivity in poetic encounter. He celebrates the
confrontations between self and Other and the challenges that occur in moments of injustice. He is founding
editor of Version (9) Magazine, a poetry journal that implicates all things theoretic. You can find his words in
such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, C22, Don’t Submit, Experiential-Experimental
Literature, Fevers of the Mind, Green Ink Poetry, Lothlorien, Nauseated Drive, Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos,
Unlikely Stories and more. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next
generation of poets.

Anna Kapungu

The author won a poetry competition with United Press in 2016 and has since been featured in numerous
anthologies in the United States with Blazevox Magazine,in Canada with the Canadian Institute of Poetry and
in the United Kingdom with United Press .The poet has been featured in several poetry publications now
resident at the British National Museum. Publishing credits include Austin Macauley, Adelaide Literary,
Aadunna, Blazevox. Halycon Magazine and Scarlet Review Magazine, One Persons Trash, The Sentinel and
Jonah.

Anne Mikusinski

Anthony Oag

Anthony Oag is a poet and graduate of SUNY Fredonia, based out of Dunkirk, NY. His work has appeared in
Upon Arrival: Commencement, The Merrimack Review: Fall 2019 Issue, The Trident Magazine: Spring 2020
Issue, The Trident Magazine: Spring 2021 Issue, as well as an upcoming publication in a 2023 edition of the
Eunoia Review.

Ben Umayam

Ben Umayam moved to NYC to write the Great American Filipino Gay Short Story. He worked for political
pollsters, then became a fancy hotel chef and then retired. He is working that short story again. He was
recently published by Querencia Fall Anthology 2022, Midway Journal, The Phare, BULL, Down in the Dirt,
Blue Pepper, Metaworker, Ligeia, EthelZine, Lotus-eaters, 34th Parallel, Digging Through The Fat, Anak
Sastra, Corvus Review, others.

Blossom Hibbert

Blossom Hibbert has one pamphlet of experimental prose out with Leafe Press: Suddenly, it’s now (May 2023.).
Her words have been published in literary magazines such as The Temz Review, Litter, International Times and
Otoliths. She hides in Nottingham, drinking too much coffee and finding inspiration in the monotony.
[Link]@[Link]
@blossomhibbert

Brenda Mox

Brenda is a weaver of words, a pirate of tales and a great grandmother sitting on the shore at the mouth of the
Chesapeake Bay digging her way to a poem or two. She is a MFA graduate from Old Dominion University
and has been published in Wingless Dreamer, Bewildering Stories, Down in the Dirt Journal, Blaze Vox, Ariel
Chart, Neo Poet and Eber and Wein Anthology.

Carly Lynn Gates

Colin Ian Jeffery

Colin Ian Jeffery is an English poet, novelist and humourist. He was

seven, a choirboy, when he became entranced by poetry after hearing the
twenty-third psalm read in church. The beauty of the words struck his
soul like lightning and his Muse began to sing. He then found poetry
read on the BBC radio Home Service and listened in awe and delight to
such poets as Dylan Thomas, John Betjeman, and Ted Hughes.
He is a modernist poet, a movement with development of imagism
stressing clarity, precision and economy of language, and has a strong
reaction against war, tranny, and oppression of truth and innocence, but
unlike other poets in the modernism movement like Dylan Thomas and Ezra
Pound he has a profound faith in God.
Chris Bullard

Chris Bullard is a retired judge who lives in Philadelphia, PA. In 2022, Main Street Rag published his poetry
chapbook, Florida Man, and Moonstone Press published his poetry chapbook, The Rainclouds of y. His poetry
has appeared recently in Jersey Devil, Stonecrop, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Waccamaw and other publications. He was
nominated this year for the Pushcart Prize.

Dan A. Cardoza

Dan's most recent darkness has been published by Aphelion, BlazeVOX, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising
Magazine, Bull, Chamber Magazine, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights Podcast, Cleaver, Close to the Bone,
Coffin Bell, Dark City Books, Entropy, The Horror Zine, [Link], Mystery Tribune, Suspense
Magazine, Schlock, The Yard Crime Blog, Variant, The 5-2. Dan has been nominated for Best of the Net and
best micro-fiction.

David Wolf

David Wolf is the author of five collections of poetry, Open Season, The Moment Forever, Sablier I, Sablier II, and
Visions (with artist David Richmond). His work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, decomp, The Hampden-
Sydney Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Poet & Critic, River Styx Magazine, and numerous other literary
magazines and journals. He is a professor emeritus of English at Simpson College and serves as the poetry
editor for Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological
Psychology, and the Arts.

Derek White

Deven Philbrick

Deven Philbrick is a poet and critic living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he is completing his PhD in English.
His debut collection, Snow Drifts, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Publishing. His writings have appeared
in a variety of literary magazines including Zone 3, Palooka, and Protean Magazine.

Eddie Heaton
Eddie Heaton studied innovative and experimental poetry under the tutelage of post-modern poet and educator
Keith Jebb, achieving a first-class honours degree. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing.
His work has been published in Blackbox Manifold, Otoliths, Lothlorien, Focus and Fold Editions

Ethan Goffman

Ethan Goffman is the author of the short story collection Realities and Alternatives (Cyberwit, 2023), the poetry
collections I Garden Weeds (Cyberwit, 2021) and Words for Things Left Unsaid (Kelsay Books, 2020) and the
flash fiction collection Dreamscapes (UnCollected Press, 2021). Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community,
which brings poetry to Montgomery College students and nearby residents, and is founder and producer of the
Poetry & Planet podcast on [Link]. Ethan also writes nonfiction on transportation alternatives for
Greater Greater Washington and other publications

Gao An

GAO AN is an interpreter of signs and Poli-sci relations. Born in Harbin; he is skilled in a handful of Kung-fu
styles, and is a respected member of the American and South Korean Hip Hop communities. First and
foremost, he is a poet—, a passionate lover afterwards.

George Freek

George Freek's poem "Written At Blue Lake" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem "Enigmatic
Variations" was recently nominated for Best of the Net. His poem "Night Thoughts" was also nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. His collection "Melancholia" is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Harlan Yarbrough

henry 7. reneau, jr.

Ian Ganassi
Ian Ganassi’s work has appeared recently or will appear soon in numerous literary journals, such as, New
American Writing, Survision and The American Journal of Poetry. New work is forthcoming in Home Planet News,
and First Literary Review East. His first full length collection, Mean Numbers is available in the usual places. His
new collection, True for the Moment, will be out in June of this year, and a third collection will appear in June of
next year. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at [Link]. He is a
longtime resident of New Haven, Connecticut.

J. D. Nelson

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many
small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten print chapbooks and e-books of poetry,
including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s first full-length collection is in ghostly onehead
(Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, [Link], for more information and links to his published
work. His haiku blog is at [Link]. Nelson lives in Colorado.

James Croal Jackson

James Croal Jackson works in film production. His most recent chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine
& Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, SAND, and
Vilas Avenue. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ([Link])

Jamie King

Jamie King is a poet and writer from the Sonoran Desert. Her work has appeared in ARC Journal, Rinky Dink
Press, Manzano Mountain Review, La Hoja, and Elephant Journal. She holds an MFA in Writing at
California College of The Arts, where she was awarded the Leslie Scalapino Scholarship; and in 2021, earned a
semi-finalist spot for the Copper Canyon Press Poetry Publishing Fellowship. She is currently working on a
full-length collection of poems about the juxtaposition of slow-time natural and commodified man made
worlds, not to gain definitive or tangible knowledge, but to complicate boundaries between human and non-
human authority.

Joan E. Bauer
Joan E. Bauer (she/her) is the author of three full-length poetry collections, The Almost Sound of Drowning
(Main Street Rag, 2008), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021) and Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023). She
was lucky to have studied at UCLA and UC Berkeley when her education was nearly free. For some years, she
worked as a teacher and counselor. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review, Paterson Literary Review and
Slipstream. She divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the
Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins. On Twitter @Joan_E_Bauer

John Sweet

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as
catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest
poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A
DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).

John Tavares

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, John Tavares is the son of Portuguese immigrants from Sao
Miguel, Azores. Having graduated from arts and science at Humber College and journalism at Centennial
College, he more recently earned a Specialized Honors BA in English Literature from York University. His
short fiction has been featured in community newspapers and radio and published in a variety of print and
online journals and magazines, in the US, Canada, and internationally. His many passions include journalism,
literature, economics, photography, writing, and coffee, and he enjoys hiking and cycling.

Joshua Martin

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is member of
C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books SCHISMS (C22 Press
Open Editions), laminated tongue in aspic (Alien Buddha Press) and automatic message (Free Lines Press). He
has had numerous pieces published in various journals including Otoliths, Synapse, Version (9), Don’t Submit!,
BlazeVOX, RASPUTIN, Ink Pantry, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and experiential-experimental-literature. You can
find links to his published work at [Link]

Julia Nunnally Duncan

Julia Nunnally Duncan is a freelance writer, whose ten books of poetry and prose explore her life in a small
Southern town. She is a frequent contributor to Smoky Mountain Living Magazine and has also had essays
published in WNC Magazine, Blue Ridge Country, and many other regional and national magazines. A new
essay collection All We Have Loved is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in November 2023. Julia lives in
Marion, NC, with her husband Steve, a mountain woodcarver. They enjoy the outdoors and spending time
with their daughter Annie.

Krystle Eilen

Krystle Eilen is a 22-year-old poet who is currently attending university. Her works have been featured in
Dipity Literary Magazine and are soon to be published in Hive Avenue Literary Journal and Young Ravens
Literary Review. During her spare time, she enjoys reading and making art.

Lee Tyler Williams

Lee Tyler Williams has published a novel, Leechdom (New Plains, 2015), a novella, Let It Be Our Ruin (Arc
Pair, 2020), and many stories in magazines, some of which were nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the
Wigleaf Top 50. A radio piece of his can also be found on NPR.

Linda King

Maitrayee Deka

Maitrayee Deka is an Assamese-Indian poet and academic based in the UK. Her poetry has appeared in the
Indian Review, Popshot Quarterly, Potluck Magazine and elsewhere. She is finishing her first poetry book
Improper Nouns.

Marc Carver

Marcia Arrieta
Margaret Adams Birth

Margaret Adams Birth has had her short fiction appear in venues as varied as Near to the Knuckle (U.K.), The
Caribbean Writer, Shawnee Silhouette, and True Confessions. She also publishes mystery stories as Rhett Shepard,
and romance and “sweet” stories as Maggie Adams. Her publications include poetry, short nonfiction, and
comic books, too. She is a native North Carolinian who has lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia,
upstate New York, southern California, a rainforest on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and now New York
City. Her story “Hallowe’en at the Donut Hut” appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of BlazeVOX. You can find her
online at [Link]

Mark Goodwin

Mark Goodwin is a walker, balancer, climber, stroller ... and negotiator of places. He is also a poet-sound-artist
& fiction-maker who speaks and writes in differing ways. Mark has a number of books & chapbooks with
various English poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, & Shearsman Books. His chapbook
Erodes On Air (a compressed mountain travelogue) is published in the U.S. by Middle Creek (Beulah, 2021).
His latest chapbooks are: to ‘B’ nor as ‘tree’ (Intergraphia, Sheffield, October 2022) & Of Gone Fox (The
Hedgehog Poetry Press, Clevedon, April 2023). Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of
Leicester, in the English Midlands. He tweets poetry from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced
poetry is here: [Link]

Mark Young

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in
Australia. His most recent books are Songs to Come for the Salamander: Poems 2013-2021, selected & with an
introduction by Thomas Fink (Meritage Press & Sandy Press); Your order is now equipped for shipping (Sandy
Press); & The Advantages of Cable (Luna Bisonte Prods).

Mark DeCarteret

Mark DeCarteret was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. He’s studied with Sam Cornish, Bill Knott, Tom Lux,
Mekeel McBride, Charles Simic, and Franz Wright. He’s hosted and organized two reading series. Co-edited
an anthology of NH poets. And was Poet Laureate of Portsmouth NH. Twice, a finalist for NH Poet Laureate.
His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, AGNI, BlazeVOX, Boston Review, Caliban, Chicago Review,
Conduit, Confrontation, Exquisite Corpse, Fence, Gargoyle, Guesthouse, Hotel Amerika, Hunger Mountain, On the
Seawall, Poetry East, Plume, andSt. Petersburg Review. As well as 7 books. He sang and played guitar for the
Shim Jambs. And sings and plays drums for Codpiece.
Martin Kleinman

Martin Kleinman is a New York City story teller. He has told his tales of real New Yorkers in his new
collection of short stories, “A Shoebox Full of Money” and in his first short fiction collection, “Home Front”.
Kleinman’s work has been published in fiction anthologies and literary publications, in
[Link], on his blog [Link], and in the Huffington Post
([Link] He has read his work in venues all around New York
City – from KGB Bar to Union Hall. A native New Yorker, Marty has also written two books on workplace
innovation trends, and is a sought-after business book ghostwriter. “Diablo: The Life and Times of No.
414666” is his latest short story. For more information, visit [Link].

Matt Dennison

Matt Dennison is the author of Kind Surgery, from Urtica Press (Fr.) and Waiting for
Better, from Main Street Rag Press. His work has appeared in Verse Daily, Rattle, Bayou
Magazine, Redivider, The MacGuffin, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Cider Press
Review, among others. He has also made short films with Michael Dickes, Swoon,
Marie Craven and Jutta Pryor.

Melvin Chen

Melvin Chen ([Link] is a professional philosopher, published poet, painter,

and (self-taught) programmer. His academic research (both philosophical and interdisciplinary in nature) has
appeared in AI & Society, Pacific Conservation Biology, Philosophy & Technology, The Lancet Regional Health –
Western Pacific, South African Journal of Philosophy, Proceedings of the European Society for Aesthetics, Philosophical
Psychology, Philosophy & Literature, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Forum, and Hypatia. His
poetry has appeared in LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, Eunoia Review, and Tipton
Poetry Journal. His art has appeared in Heartbeat Literary Journal. He is currently working on a book-length
manuscript about philosophical aesthetics that incorporates examples from Southeast Asian art.

Michael Starr

Michael Starr has been writing poetry recreationally since 2004 and grew up playing tennis. He is a former
biologist, though still one at heart, and is now working towards becoming a web designer/developer. He has
been published previously in places like BlazeVOX, Aberration Labyrinth, Lipstick Party, and Anapest. He
lives in California with his two parents.

Nam Hoang Tran

Nam Hoang Tran is a writer and photographer based in Orlando, FL. His work appears or is forthcoming in
Posit, Bending Genres, Midway Journal, New Delta Review, Diode, and elsewhere. Find him online at
[Link].

Nathan Whiting

Nathan Whiting has run races longer than 100 miles, performed contemporary dance in New York and Bhutto
in Japan, and invented a new Polytopic poetry from new forms of logic and music being developed at the
present time. He has published this in Otoliths (Australia), streetcake (England), Decadent Review (England),
Home Planet News, ZYX, Quarter After Eight, South Dakota Review and North Dakota Quarterly,

Olchar E. Lindsann

Olchar E. Lindsann has published over 40 books of literature, theory, translation, and avant-garde history
including The Ecstatic Nerve and five books of the ongoing series Arthur Dies. His poems, essays, and
translations have appeared in The Lost & Found Times, Otoliths, Brave New Word, Fifth Estate, The Black Scat
Review, No Quarter, and elsewhere, in addition to performing sound poetry and lectures across the eastern US
and the UK. He is the editor of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, whose catalog includes around 200 print
publications of the contemporary and historical avant-garde, and of the periodicals Rêvenance, The in-
Appropriated Press, and Synapse. He teaches interdisciplinary humanities courses and writing at a progressive
high school in Roanoke, Virginia.

Pamela Miller

Pamela Miller is the author of six collections of poetry, including Recipe for Disasterand Miss Unthinkable (both
from Mayapple Press), How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide (forthcoming from Unsolicited Press) and Mr.
Mischief (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared in shufPoetry, Otoliths, Word
For/Word, RHINO, Nixes Mate Review, New Poetry From the Midwest, Blue Fifth Review and elsewhere.
She lives in Chicago.
Partha Sarkar

Priya Chouhan

PM Flynn

PM Flynn is a North Carolina writer. He holds a B.S. in English from East Carolina University, roasts organic
coffee and has been published in many fine print and online anthologies, newsletters, and literary magazines
and reviews including Helen Literary Magazine, the Fictional Café, Main Street Rag, The Grassroots Women’s
Project, Port Folio Weekly, The Mirror/Slush, Anti-Heroin Chic, 50 Haikus, Fleas on the Dog Online
Quarterly, CactiFur etc.

Patrick Quinn

P.E. Jones

P.E. Jones is English faculty in Iowa, writing between grading composition papers and molding minds. She
received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska in Omaha and her MA in English
from Arizona State University. She is also a designer, sewer, crafter, and dog mom.

Peter Mladinic

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.
An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

Rae Diamond
Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee is best known for her medical poetry found in Harvard’s Third Space medical journal, The British
Medical Journal, CHEST physicians, and Dartmouth’s Life Lines. Her essay, The Rules of Engagement, was
selected as a notable essay in the Best American Essays anthology.

Rich Murphy

Rich Murphy’s “First Aid” collection will be published by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock in summer
of 2023. Meme Measure was published by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock in 2022. His poetry has won
The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021) and Gival Press Poetry
Prize Voyeur (2008). Space Craft by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock also came out in 2021. Books
Prophet Voice Now, essays by Common Ground Research Network and Practitioner Joy, poetry by Resource
Publications at Wipf and Stock were published in 2020.

Richard Stimac

Richard Stimac has a full-length book of poetry Bricolage (Spartan Press), a forth-coming poetry chapbook Of
Water and of Stone (Moonstone) and published over thirty poems in Burningword, Clackamas, december, The
Examined Life Journal, Faultline, Havik (Third Place 2021 Poetry Contest), Michigan Quarterly Review,
Mikrokosmos (Second Place 2022 Poetry Contest; A.E. Stallings, judge), New Plains Review, NOVUS,
Penumbra, Salmon Creek Journal, Talon Review, and Wraparound South. He published flash fiction in BarBar,
Book of Matches, Drunk Monkeys, Flash Fiction Magazine, Half and One, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus
Dreaming, Proud to Be (SEMO Press), On the Run, Scribble, Talon Review, The Typescript, and The Wild Word,
with one short-listed flash for Sydney Hammond Memorial Short Story anthology (Hawkeye Press). He has
also had an informal readings of plays by the St. Louis Writers’ Group and Gulf Coast: Playwright’s Circle, plays
published in The AutoEthnographer, Fresh Words and Hive Avenue Literary Journal, and an essay in The Midwest
Quarterly. A screenplay of his is in pre-production. He is a poetry reader for Ariel Publishing and Clepsydra.

Robert Fleming

Robert Fleming (b. 1963) is a word-artist born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada who emigrated to Lewes,
Delaware, United States. Robert follows his mother as a visual artist and his grandfather as a poet. He explores
masculinity, sexual orientation, sin and virtue, and dystopia in words and graphics on earth and beyond. Since
2017, more than 400 of his works were published internationally in more than 95 print and online publications,
art galleries and online mic features. His style is influenced by the writers Robert Frost, Dr. Seuss, and the Beats
and his graphics by surrealistic artists like Salvador Dali. Contributing editor of Devil’s Party Press Old Scratch
Poetry Collective. Member of the Rehoboth Beach and Horror Writers Association. Wins: 2022 San Gabriel
Valley California-1 poem, 2021 Best of Mad Swirl poetry; Nominations: 2 Pushcart and 2 Best of the Net.
Follow Robert [Link] .

Roger Craik

Roger G. Singer

Sadie Cardenas

Sadie Cardenas has not yet been accepted by any publishers, but she is a high school student in the Creative
Writing conservatory and specializes in writing for the fantasy, horror, and romance genre, and, as a biracial
lesbian author, tries to incorporate as much diversity in her work as possible.

Samuel Share

Samuel Share is a high school teacher, writer, and musician living in Buffalo NY. He attended Wells College
and the SUNY Buffalo English graduate program. His short fiction will appear in a forthcoming comic book
from the Syracuse NY-based publisher Ahoy Comics. His work in this issue of BlazeVox is his first published
poetry. When he is not treading lightly upon the thin crust of human happiness spread over the pit of blackness
that lies beneath us, everywhere, he can be found tending to his two insatiably hungry guinea pigs.

Sara Mullen

Scott Thomas Outlar

Scott Thomas Outlar is originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He now lives and writes in Frederick, Maryland. He
is the author of seven books. His work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best
of the Net. He guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019-2023
Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. He has been a weekly contributor at Dissident Voice for the past eight
and a half years. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Bengali,
Cherokee, Dutch, French, Hindi, Italian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Persian, Serbian, and Spanish. More about
Outlar's work can be found at [Link].

Serse Luigetti

Thomas Fink

Thomas Fink has published 12 books of poetry-- most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A
Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. His Selected
Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. He is the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students:
Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism,
and three edited anthologies. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. Fink’s paintings hang in various
collections. He is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.

Timothy Resau

Timothy Resau – is an American poet/writer living in coastal North Carolina. His writings have appeared
internationally in Defuncted Journal, New Note Poetry, New Pop Lit, Zin Daily, Discretionary Love, Rye Whiskey
Review, Arteidolia Press, Ephemeral Elegies, Alternate Route, Front Porch Review, Origami Poems Project“Z”, a
Micro-Clapbook, Poetica, Abstract Magazine TV, Poetry Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry, [Link], Superpresent, KGB
Bar Literary Journal, Decadent Review, Paddler Press, among others, & Weekend, a novella is forthcoming from
Anxiety Press in 2023. Find him at [Link]