The words you are searching are inside this book. To get more targeted content, please make full-text search by clicking here.

Adelaide Literary Magazine is an independent
international bimonthly publication, based in New York and Lisbon. Founded by Stevan V. Nikolic and Adelaide Franco Nikolic in 2015, the magazine’s aim is to publish quality poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and
photography, as well as interviews, articles, and book reviews, written in English and Portuguese. We seek to publish outstanding literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and to promote the writers we publish, helping both new, emerging, and established authors reach a wider literary audience. We publish print and digital editions of our magazine six times a year, in September, November, January, March, May, and July. Online edition is updated continuously. There are no charges for reading the magazine online.

Discover the best professional documents and content resources in AnyFlip Document Base.
Search
Published by ADELAIDE BOOKS, 2017-09-20 19:24:36

Adelaide Literary Magazine No.9. Volume II, September 2017

Adelaide Literary Magazine is an independent
international bimonthly publication, based in New York and Lisbon. Founded by Stevan V. Nikolic and Adelaide Franco Nikolic in 2015, the magazine’s aim is to publish quality poetry, fiction, nonfiction, artwork, and
photography, as well as interviews, articles, and book reviews, written in English and Portuguese. We seek to publish outstanding literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and to promote the writers we publish, helping both new, emerging, and established authors reach a wider literary audience. We publish print and digital editions of our magazine six times a year, in September, November, January, March, May, and July. Online edition is updated continuously. There are no charges for reading the magazine online.

Keywords: fiction,nonfiction,poetry,book reviews

“If it’s a musical, it’s an automatic yes.” Miranda your life,” he stated after a nightcap and after I
faced me again. “You need to be caught up on had a (sort of) breakdown about feeling inade-
some modern pop culture.” quate in my relationship, “so that you don’t have
to go through it alone.”
“I did better than you on cult movies,” I retorted
futilely. “Doesn’t being an adult require you to
handle situations on your own?” I asked.
A remembrance of movie posters turned into an
inside competition as to who was the more “That’s grown-up of you, but even adults
versed in movie trivia. I barely won. need their loved ones from time to time.”

I’ve read and remembered a majority of the as- “Okay.”
signed reading throughout my academic life—
advanced English from high school to some of How do I prevent myself from breaking down
college. I was once told that I read too much by under the pressure of wanting to be as perfect as
an idiot that failed two of his tests and made it his humanly possible?
mission to make me repress a scream of frustra-
tion. A teacher that took my book from my desk I want to be as close to perfect without becoming
gave me the same impression. I came back with a solitary artist. I want my work to be appreciat-
another book in response. ed, to show my parents the tuition they pay isn’t
going to waste, to be the polar opposite of the ex
The number 1,369—the number of light bulbs in Devin had before me, do well in my jobs so my
the protagonist’s basement home—is significant employers can give me stellar letters of recom-
in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The unnamed mendation when I enter the world. I don’t want
narrator is the third generation since slavery was to fail.
abolished. It’s mentioned that 87 years have
passed since slavery. Ellison’s novel was published I want to drive and have a license, but my
in 1952. parents are using that money to pay for my clas-
ses and Jan Term. I can’t criticize them. I hate
1952 – 87 = 1865. The end of the Civil War. putting Devin through so much; making him drive
after work or asking his mom to. I’m an adult.
The number three is also important, but I have to Twenty-one. But I’m still such a child. I depend on
finish Invisible Man first to better comprehend it. my parents for tuition, my Netflix account, and to
schedule most of my doctor’s appointments. Part
Currently on chapter 15. Currently doing two pa- of me wonders if I’ll ever have control of my life.
pers about the book.
Devin slammed my laptop screen down, put it
“How many copies of Invisible Man you need?” aside on my desk, and kept me between his arms.
chuckled Devin. “You need to stop studying for a minute.”

My dad sat with me over during the past Winter I tried grabbing my Ecology flashcards, but
Break watching various episodes of “Mork and he picked me up, placing me on the high-rise bed
Mindy” and “Daria” in the living room. We had a in my dorm and in his arms again.
debate over whether or not the writers for “Mork
and Mindy” wrote actual lines for Robin Williams Away from my study material. Away from an up-
considering how much he tended to improvise his coming final.
lines only for them to end up in the final product.
When I turned on episodes of “Daria”, my dad “I’m far behind. I need to know this.” Tears hot
often told me how I was like her, and by that ex- with anxiety trail down my cheeks.
tension, him; distant, quick with a cynical remark,
too smart for my good at times, yet aware of how “You’re going to be fine,” assured Devin,
some of the things that interest me result in me wiping away my tears with his thumbs only to see
isolating myself with a majority of the world. Or them multiply. “You’re my insufferable little know
at least parts of the world that confuse me. -it-all; you’re going to pass.” He kissed away a
tear.
“I at least want to know what goes on in

149

My veneer cracked. I broke down in extended though many were; investing in handmade full
bouts of sobbing, my face buried in the familiar body costumes of various earth pony, Pegasus,
scent of Dove for Men lingering on his K-9 unit t- unicorn, griffin, and alicorn characters. And I must
shirt. Devin kept me close, ignoring my apology of not forget John de Lancie’s trickster and ally dra-
staining his shirt with tears and snot. It wasn’t conequus—part dragon, part lion, part pony, and
until another hour when I was calm enough to part snake with deer and goat antlers—Discord.
speak.
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be
“I don’t…want to fail. If I fail…then I’ll be behind… childish sometimes?
and my parents will be mad at me. I’ll be mad at
me. I don’t want to…let them down. They’re giv- --The Doctor.
ing so much for… me to be here.” Devin handed
me a tissue. “I’m so scared. I want to succeed.” Houston’s “I Like That” showed up on a throw-
back Facebook video. It was a song I remember
“You already have in my eyes,” Devin whispered dancing to. Thirteen years ago. I’ve been listening
against my lips, carrying me down my bed. to it for a few weeks. Why am I analyzing the lyr-
“You’ve gone further in college than I did, and I ics of this song and others like it to reveal it as
can see how hard you’re working. That’s not be- empty beats, superficial, and possibly misogynis-
ing a failure, babe.” tic? (Don’t get me started on “Candy Shop.”) Why
am I acting surprised about this? Sex and the
“But what if…” glamourizing of shady dealings (i.e. drugs) is noth-
ing new in music. In the permissive and repressive
Devin silenced me with a gentle and promise- 50’s and 60’s, songs were written in code, a trend
filled kiss. “Even if you do, it won’t make me think that still occurred as decades and other trends
less of you. I won’t disown you, and I know your changed: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Tambou-
parents won’t either.” rine Man, Ridin’, The A Team, and Milkshake to
name a few.
I cracked a long awaited smile. “Insufferable little
know-it-all.” Without realizing it, Houston was an artist my
friends and danced to before age and lunchroom
“Takes one to know one.” banter would corrupt our ears. If the beat was
right, I’d dance (maybe) all night. Hardly any song
I got a B on the final. I won’t have to take Ecology I listen to and have found fond memories of
again! comes out squeaky clean. Why did my parents let
me listen to this “garbage” if they knew it was
I have my own little club now; my mom can long- glamorizing drug use, washing over abuse, laced
er think of me as weird. During my summer vaca- with not-so-subtle propositions of magical man-
tion after high school, my mom buys me a pass to hood, and misogynistic? Why did I have to find
Ever-free Northwest in Seattle. In laymen’s terms: out on my own through lunchroom banter and
My Little Pony-Con. Once inside, I was welcome the Internet? Curiosity always kills the cat.
to a woman in her late twenties dressed as Pinkie
Pie, party cannon included of course (made out of Looking into Houston’s history and lack of pres-
cardboard and painted to look accurate), passing ence after his first single, he suffered an emotion-
out plastic leys to members. Decked in pink from al breakdown and tried to commit suicide by
head to toe with cupcakes made of Styrofoam on jumping from a window while on PCP. When Hou-
her belt, she recited lines from the show and con- ston was stopped, he was restrained and locked
tinued on. in a first floor room. While in that room, Houston
gouged his left eye out with a plastic fork. After
Part of me was out of place as I wore a the incident, he was arrested by London police
cartoon t-shirt and jeans, but it didn’t matter. I’d and put in rehab for a couple weeks. He’s current-
buy a unicorn horn and tail later from one of the ly making a comeback and hoping to find a new
booths. Maybe I’d even stay for the panel featur- manager. Hope to hear more from him.
ing some of the voice actors, if they didn’t charge
for autographs. I was one with my fellow geeks— “Seriously? I feel so old.” The commonplace
young, old, veteran members, first-timers—
though not as willing to part with my money,

150

phrase of my circle of millennial friends when we The flower that blooms in adversity is the most
watch any video with the title “fill in type of me- rare and beautiful of all.--Mulan (Disney)
dia turns fill in double-digit number this year.”
I have a good enough head on my shoulders for
Matilda and Disney’s The Hunchback of being a fairly sheltered military kid. My dad was
Notre Dame are the same age as me. overseas a majority of the time, so it was my
mom and me. When he did come back and retire,
I want to have Matilda’s smarts; the ability it was an adjustment for all of us to know he’d be
to read any book in the world and understand it home at night. Being an only kid I enjoyed soli-
without the aid of the Internet and Sparknotes. I tude when I had it, which grew, as I got older.
doubt I’ll ever be as smart as Matilda; doing com- Sometimes I got calls from my mom asking if I had
plex math in my mind and the prospect of going any weekend plans when I first came to college.
to college at the start of puberty. None of it is At first, I went to parties. Now I lay in bed with
real. No matter how many times I dress up as Es- elastic waist pants watching Netflix with a bowl of
meralda for Halloween, even in accurate cos- popcorn or dry cereal. My dad gave me a long talk
tume, I won’t be as beautiful as her. I won’t be about the dangers of being out late at night and
beautiful enough to have multiple male interests, to always fight back when I first moved in. We
turn someone away from the enemy, and become both cried during the first goodbye. He was proud
a symbol of hope. Part of me identifies with the of me. I’m glad he is, and still remains proud of
disfigured and abused Quasimodo. But maybe me.
there’s hope for me. Both get a happy ending.
About the Author:
Eminem started in the music industry in 1988. He
wouldn’t achieve mainstream notoriety until My name is Idalis Nieves and I am a Linfield Col-
1992. lege student class of 2018. My field of study is
Creative Writing; a major I decided on back in
My dream is to be published. I went high school. From age ten and onward, I’ve en-
through seventeen rejections before I got a letter joyed writing stories and poems for my friends
of acceptance. Part of me was grateful a maga- and myself. I was never told by my family I should
zine said yes, but another part of me realizes it’s stop reading, though sometimes my love for
just one magazine. One magazine doesn’t equate books had gotten some unwanted attention from
to success and fame. Like Eminem, I have to work past teachers. As a writer, I enjoy molding and
harder and keep getting my name out and my shaping my words to design characters, settings,
version of Dr. Dre will find me. Like Eminem, I and one’s innermost thoughts. I’m greatly hon-
won’t be automatically favored and parts of the ored by the opportunity to have my work being
world’s demographic may even hate me. Like read by more people on a greater scale. I aim to
Eminem, I’ll use it to create my anthology, my keep conducting more of my words into relatable
future empire. characters and build stronger language.

What will become of my world? What will Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/
become of me? idalis.nieves.946

Now is a time I feel like I need to fight. There are
still hurdles I need to jump and a race I’m no-
where near finishing. There is no one around to
coddle me and tell me the evil in the world will
automatically disappear through a wish on a star.
I’ve given up on wishing stars, special times dur-
ing the day to make a wish, and a cootie-catcher
determining my future husband.

I’m not giving up on hope, my passions, my
family, and myself. There is so much more I have
to conquer. Growing up may knock me over, but
getting up from them will define me.

151

THE WORLD’S SEXIEST
TIME MACHINE

by Dominic Laing

1. Imagine my love as a piece of string, adorned with
stones of amber.
Imagine my love as a piece of string. As a time-
line. Imagine my love, frozen in time.

Hold out the string in front of you. Your 2.
right hand marks The Future; your left hand, The
Past. Pick out a spot on the string for our relation- My existence consists of an infinite copy-paste of
ship, a specific point with coordinates of space the past, ripping up old bricks behind me, turning
and time. This point marks The Present, close to back and quickly laying out the ‘new’ path before
the far right-hand side of the string. me. When faced with something (or someone)
new, I choose what I know — not because it feels
Before you and I were “you and I”, at spe- better than what I feel now, and not even be-
cific coordinates of time and space, I was with cause it feels, in any sense of the word, “good.”
other girls. Plot out my previous relationships on
the line; each positioned further back on the I choose what I know because it is what I
string, closer to your left hand. Examine the time- knew.
line and the relationships strung on it, like pearls
on a necklace. I know WHAT and HOW I will feel.

When those past relationships ended, the I know WHEN, WHERE and WHY.
girls moved on to develop new feelings with new
men, and the freshness of our relationship faded. Because I know each contour, scent and
I, however, chose to freeze those moments. What taste.
I felt with them was genuine, and true. And, I
thought, if I froze those moments, I’d always be Because I can wholly love those moments
able to revisit and repeat those finite times with of amber, and they will wholly love me in return.
Other Girls — heartache mixed with rage mixed
with laughter mixed with mystery — where I’m Because all my life, I’ve never wanted to
more alive than I ever was — be Here, in the present.

And ever will be. Because all my life, I’ve wanted to be
there, in Love.
Instead of being present, rather than risk
hurt and pursue the future — I can choose the Because all my life, I’ve wanted to be a
past. Always. Here, I can examine and reexamine time traveler.
and reexamine my heart at its most luminous and
vivid. My heart, unchanging — over and over 3.
again, over and over again.
In the Summer of 2011, Playboy made every
single edition of its magazine available online.

152

Jimmy Jellinek, Playboy’s chief content officer at is kept track of in this room. There is no acknowl-
the time, announced the news by saying, “They edgment of NOW — only an embrace of THEN —
no longer have to store 57 years — 682 issues — and of what COULD BE.
of Playboy under their mattress.”
It begins with a picture — she’s nameless,
(Side note: That…is a huge fucking shapeless — but within seconds I imagine a cos-
mattress.) mos-full of love and memory between us. I create
a name, and I craft her form, and I pick out for her
Jellinek called the website “An anthology a place on my string of time. She, whoever she is,
of cool…The World’s Sexiest Time Machine.” exists in this shaped form forever. Unchanging.
Meaning whenever we feel like it, Jellinek stated, She is constant throughout all past, present and
we can travel back to July of 1987. Or September future. And in that moment, that lovingly created
of 1974. Or January of 2006. We can, if we so de- fiction, I am never alone. As I am loved now, so I
sired, reach back and re-discover ourselves all always will be loved.
over again at that point in time.
Perhaps this is exactly what Osama Bin
Again and again. Again and again. Again Laden needed.
and again…
By now, you’ve read that large stashes of
4. porn, hard drives full, in fact, were found at the
compound where U.S. Forces shot and killed the
Bill Lawrence, the creator of TV shows terrorist leader.
such as “Scrubs” and “Cougar Town,” was asked if
there was ever a TV show he pitched that he Now, why would a terrorist leader keep an
wished had made it to air. He responded with a enormous stash of porn in his bedroom?
story about a guy who time-travels whenever he
masturbates. Maybe he wasn’t as adherent to the ex-
tremist views he espoused. Maybe, in his mo-
So, if I understand this properly — say our ments of panic, he sought comfort the only way
lead is in his dorm room doing the five knuckle he knew how. Maybe he just didn’t want to be
shuffle on account of a Hooters calendar. Sudden- alone. Maybe, amid all the chaos, bloodshed and
ly there’d be a huge flash of light and BOOM — sleepless nights, he burrowed deep into his own
he’d wind up face-to-face with a T-Rex. But, heart and found a Constant.
should he find himself in such danger, all he’d
need to do is Wax his Eloquence once more and And that’s one of the many lies of addic-
POOF — he’d find himself in the Victorian era. Or tion; that using is the only way to know my au-
the Gold Rush. Or the Black Plague. Or yesterday. thentic self and protect myself from the present.
Addiction deceives into making one believe that
“This,” in the immortal words of Doctor by giving into your craving, you show yourself for
Emmett L. Brown, “is what makes time travel pos- what — and who — you really are. But addiction
sible.” occludes one from facing one’s true identity or
their present reality. With addiction, I don’t have
Wanking with the one-eyed wonder wea- to face facts — I don’t have to face anything or
sel. anyone.

Arguing with Henry Longfellow. When I wake up and feel the world overtaking
me, addiction provides an escape. It pulls the co-
One-point-twenty-one-jizz-a-wattsof space and vers over my head and drags me under the sur-
time. face. From such a vantage point I can imagine any
number of futures. Because Here, wherever that
5. is — August 1987, February 1971, two weeks ago
— the present doesn’t yet exist.
Playboy’s online library is not the world’s sexiest
time machine. It is, however, a place without mir- Here, in this crooked and adulterated line,
rors. It’s an ambivalent room void of ‘yes,’ or ‘no’, I can make myself infinite and untouchable.
absent of acceptance or condemnation. No time

153

Here, in a Present made up entirely of Past, I for- Addiction gave me a false sense of time and
sake my future. place. There and Then masquerading as Here and
Now.
6.
I believed the lie because it was conven-
Addiction gave me the ‘courage’ to reject my own ient. Because it didn’t ask anything of me. Be-
reflection. What I saw didn’t have to be me — not cause there was no challenge or confrontation.
if I didn’t want it to be. I dissolved and reconsti- Addiction was an all-encompassing embrace, and
tuted my own image, over and over again. I for- that’s all I wanted — to disappear into something.
feited all manners of God-given vibrance for what I wanted to love and I wanted to vanish. And if it
I thought would be palatable and presentable and couldn’t be a relationship then it might as well be
preferable. porn. More than anything else in my life, my ad-
diction gave me everything I wished for — addic-
Without any anchor or any marker outside tion offered me the chance to be consumed by
of the addiction cycle, seconds slipped into something and disappear.
minutes, slipped into hours, slipped into days and
weeks and months and years. Cycles of addiction Now you see me, now you don’t.
and white-knuckle recovery. Cycles of sobriety
and relapse. Cycles of shame and peace. Seconds I was consumed by addiction, and all of
into minutes into hours into days into weeks and time and space was consumed along with me.
months and years.
7.
I wanted a time and a place where I’d be safe and
warm — Here and Now. But “Here”, for an addict But I swear I’ve gone clean now, I swear
isn’t “Here” — it’s “There”; Old disguised as New. this is the last time, because the future will not
Old Habits with new names, with new faces, with repeat the past — I swear I’m better — because
new tools. But same fool. Moreover, “Now” isn’t the future will not repeat the past — just you wait
“Now” — it’s “Then.” It’s the past in present’s — I’m cured — because the future will not repeat
clothing. — the future —

Addiction provided presence without con- — will not —
sequence. If a situation in my day-to-day arose —
a breakdown in a relationship, anxiety via work, — I’m cured I can FEEL IT —
school, spirituality, politics, money, reputation,
public opinion — I could choose not to address it. — And I can click my ruby red work-boots
I could choose to make that stress insurmounta- until my heels bleed, but I won’t ever — ever —
ble and controlling force in may life, and then I find my way home.
could choose to medicate and numb my anxiety.
There I’ll be — a coffee shop, perhaps —
Because Jenna Jameson isn’t thinking and I’ll see a beautiful woman who’s just come in
about stock market investments, not when she’s from a jog, and it’s warm outside so she’s glisten-
looking at me as she’s double-penetrated by two ing, and she’s been running for a while so she’s
muscle-bound, hung-as-fucking-horses men. tan, and her shoulders look so dark and warm,
and then my eyes’ll travel down her body…and I’ll
Because Christina Aguilera isn’t thinking see her wedding ring as she cools her hands on
about the Antichrist and the Book of Revelation the iced latte. Then, I don’t want to talk to anyone
and the End Times, not when she stares at me as — least of all her — and then I don’t call my fa-
her naked frame holds fast to a Paul Reed Smith ther like I planned, and then I wind up mastur-
guitar. bating to a picture of a woman in a wet t-shirt
writhing on a beach, a woman who’s long-since
Because Carmen Electra can give two shits moved on and is no longer wearing a t-shirt and
about climate change, not when she’s locked on writhing on a beach, but in my ‘Here and Now’
me and only wearing a pink feather boa. Not she is eternally writhing in an eternal wet t-shirt
when she’s looking back at me as she’s bent over on an eternal beach, and when I ejaculate, there’s
a patio table. a flash of light and BOOM — I’m front and center
before King Charlemagne.

154

But Charlemagne’s boring, so I’m back to jerking About the Author:
off, and there’s another flash of light, and I’m in
the throes of the Industrial Revolution. I crank the Good stories are, for me, good campfires. They
love pump, and then I’m watching Kennedy’s fu- are communion; how we are revealed to another,
neral. I flog the bishop, and I’m fighting Genghis how we grow to know one another and become
Khan, signing the Magna Carta — I’m in the mid- known in return. I'm fueled by the dual euphoria
dle of a pasture, and the sky is clear, and the of Story -- it is something that simultaneously
moon illuminates every stalk of tall grass, and as I makes me levitate and press my face to the
turn to take in the vastness of creation… ground in gratitude. Storytelling rattles my win-
dows and fills me with joy. In the midst of panic, it
…there’s Osama Bin Laden; his mouth stops me in my tracks. And when I seek to bury
agape, pants soaked in cum. myself and hide, it gives me the strength to walk.
Storytelling teaches me how the constant exer-
“You too, huh?” He says. cise of imagination is a courageous, humble ex-
pression -- rebellion and affection intertwined
8. and shining. I grew up in San Jose, California.
After college, I lived on both coasts; Pasadena
And this, Doc, is really what makes time- first, then Philadelphia. I currently live in Port-
travel possible; believing the lie that I am more land, Oregon.
known in darkness than light. To believe that in
the light, I am isolated, but in darkness, I am sur-
rounded.

9.

Hello, my name is Dominic, and I am an
addict, not a time traveler.

Hello, my name is Dominic, and I’ve got
ten broken toes from trying to fit into those ruby
reds.

Hello, my name is Dominic, and this is me
— Here, Now.

Good stories are, for me, good campfires. They
are communion; how we are revealed to another,
how we grow to know one another and become
known in return. I'm fueled by the dual euphoria
of Story -- it is something that simultaneously
makes me levitate and press my face to the
ground in gratitude. Storytelling rattles my win-
dows and fills me with joy. In the midst of panic, it
stops me in my tracks. And when I seek to bury
myself and hide, it gives me the strength to walk.
Storytelling teaches me how the constant exer-
cise of imagination is a courageous, humble ex-
pression -- rebellion and affection intertwined
and shining.

I grew up in San Jose, California. After college, I
lived on both coasts; Pasadena first, then Phila-
delphia. I currently live in Portland, Oregon.

155

BREEZE FACE

Ape Biggles

When I was twelve years old, I was sitting behind tree that grew right in the middle of one of the
my mom in my parents’ Cutlass Ciera on a deli- grape rows. I’d often scale the horizontal wires
cious summer day, my father driving, the three of that supported the grape vines and pluck one of
us cruising down our semi-country road towards the small, sun-hued fruits straight from the tree.
home. My window was down and the wind was The perfect apricot never spews juice over your
blowing in my face. Long and straight and paved chin. You can more often than not pry it into
in tarmac, that road is a portion of the border halves by forcing it apart with your thumbs to
separating the city of St. Catharines from the farm remove the nestled, rather than embedded, pit
town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The de facto bor- before popping each half into your mouth. Its
der in that area is the Welland Canal, our farm consistency is between fresh and dried fruit.
sitting within the half-kilometer or so of canal Eating one, straddling one of the branches of its
property bordering its north shore, but I still al- tree, surveying the tops of the rows and rows of
ways enjoyed the idea that when I crossed the grapevines as if my own domain, is the closest I
street from my house, I was leaving the city I lived have come to an experience of royalty.
in. My parents called our ten acre plot of land a
hobby farm, but in the summers it was early to Over the years, rows of grapes gave way to acres
rise for my mom to plant, hoe or pick one of the of tomatoes that then, in an unconventional foray
various fruits or vegetables we grew over the for the fruit belt of Ontario, gave way to aspara-
years. My dad would work into the night after gus. By the time the planted asparagus crowns
returning from a day of laying bricks, the tractor completed their three year maturation period, my
lights disappearing and returning as he drove up fellow grade sixers and I were old enough to be
and down the field spraying the insecticides and hired by my parents to operate the pedal-steered
pesticides that the government would later say picking tractor, custom built in Simcoe, true as-
require ventilated protective body suits. My earli- paragus country. It sat low enough to the ground
est memories take me along rows and rows of that the person in the driver’s seat could bend
grapes, uncles and aunts- or zios and zias as I over and cut asparagus spears out of the ground
called them- helped with the pruning or har- with a knife and drop them into the basket beside
vesting, still dressed in remnants of the old coun- him as the small Honda engine moved it slowly
try with kerchiefs covering their heads. I would over the row. Two wings folded down with a seat
ride along on the back of the flat-top trailer on each, to hover the passengers over the adja-
hitched to the tractor, legs dangling, feet soaring cent rows with their own harvesting basket be-
over and through the wild grass. My dad stopping side them.
at the end of rows and me helping to collect the
full bushels of freshly picked grapes and dropping It was during one of our after-school shifts that I
off empty ones. was fired by my dad for having an asparagus fight
with my friends, trying to hit each other with a
My love for apricots is rooted in the lone apricot well-aimed spear when we were supposed to be

156

following behind the machine, knife in hand, hair, the air just disappeared. The windows
cutting the asparagus that was missed. I was with stayed down and the car continued to move at
all of my friends back in our driveway after our the same speed and I hadn’t changed the position
shift, when he looked at me with disappointment of my head. There was no change to the physical
and told me I was let go. There have not been a circumstances that should have stopped the wind
lot of those moments in my life, my parents being from pouring though the car window. The wind
disappointed in me. I recall my dad spanking me just ceased blowing. No, wait, I can’t say for cer-
once, though why I can’t recall, and my mom tain that it stopped. What I mean to say is that for
washed my mouth out with soap another time, a moment the sensations on my face and hair
though I don’t remember what I said to deserve that I had previously attributed to the wind
it. There was another incident that was of great turned into a sensation with no cause. Again, that
distress for my dad. When I was a teenager he is not quite right. The necessity of cause and
found a cigar in his Safari van that I used to drive effect did not disappear from my reality, the
to school. He felt that the obvious hurt he dis- cause of the sensation I was feeling on my face
played that I should smoke anything was punish- was no longer the wind itself. The wind may or
ment enough. Decades later he asked me to re- may not have been there in that moment. The
write the letter of apology I’d given him at the cause of the sensation was my body itself, while
time because he regretted not keeping it, the the sensations remained identical. Maybe there
value of the letter ending up exceeding the disap- was an electrical charge in the air, or my thoughts
pointment in the action that sired it. at the time were concentrated in just the right
way in a quadrant of my brain, or perhaps the sun
My memory of these moral shortfalls exist in my was just at the right angle and I in precisely the
mind rather than my heart. My parents’ judge- right location. How or why this moment hap-
ments rarely struck at my conscience, for I gener- pened will always be conjecture until I am able to
ally interpret my intentions as pure. No matter replicate the experience consistently, and I have
what I do, no matter how ruthless or inconsider- yet to repeat it even once in the decades since.
ate I appear to be, I’ve painted my actions with an But the reality of the experience itself shook the
altruistic brush and proved to myself by a direct foundations of my understanding of life. For, if
chain of arguments that should others just think the physical sensation of the wind on my face can
differently or if circumstances had transpired in a be reinterpreted by my mind as originating in my
different way, then my good motives would be body itself, could not my body create the sensa-
obvious. Much more frequently than not, in fact, tion of the wind on my face independent of it
reality has eventually aligned with my magnani- actually blowing? And if my body can do that,
mous projects, and I would be deemed by all that doesn’t that put in the same light every sensation
they touched to be more generous and positively I have in my life? The bath water cooling down
influential than most people. In this way, the sum against my skin, the pain of a hard run, the sor-
of my acts taken holistically, just as I took them row over lost loves. What if I could see only what
individually, have been redeemed by the ultimate I willed, my eyes self-stimulating its cones and
results despite the hiccups and casualties along rods to paint the world in my own image? This is
the way. Others may disagree with me. No, others not a call to mind over matter, subordinating the
will disagree with me. Like the thief that contin- latter to the former. Instead, the experience sug-
ues to press his luck with greater and greater ca- gested to me that neither might have precedence
pers, they say my luck will run out. But that is a over the other, and it has been a touchstone in
debate that can’t be decided until I am ushered my life when reality feels oppressive or my per-
through death’s door and the totality of my ac- ception of it fills me with anxiety. I’ve since
tions are finished and the effects can be judged. coined this touchstone, Breeze Face.

Even so, there were no thoughts of right or wrong I can’t say my actions from that moment have
in the back seat of the Ciera, at least not on that been different than what I would have done if it
particular day driving down our borderline. Sitting never happened. I don’t recall if my attitude of
behind my mother, with my window down and benevolence towards my parents’ disappoint-
the wind pushing against my face and through my ments in me preceded it or if my memories of

157

those moments were reinterpreted upon the ex- epitomize the experience of the world I had al-
perience. It may not even matter. That moment ready built. Maybe the lesson it teaches me is not
might just be the physical representation of how I to show me what the nature of reality really is,
already interpreted the world. That is why it is but rather what the nature of my reality really is.
impossible to write a manual for life that can be It may be that one’s Breeze Face experience is
passed on to each generation. Every life is unique unique to their own origin story. It might be real-
and personal, and the circumstances into which ized in the lick of an ice cream cone or in the inti-
they are born are wholly separate and singular. mate stroking of another’s back. In the moment,
There is no way of conducting any sort of con- you might not place the experience in the nexus
trolled experiment to assess the results of the between sensation and perception, but some-
same life being lived differently. Even then, a per- where on either side where your life’s manual has
son’s experience is a black box. If I existed in two taught you is the royal seat of reality. The Breeze
parallel timelines, in fact, each world identical to Face moment, then, lies not in the actual circum-
the other but my motivations and intentions dia- stances of the experience but in its pure returning
metrically opposed, it is conceivable that I could to your personal calibration to how you organize
execute identical actions resulting in the same the world. It is the self-evidence of your truth.
physical outcomes though my perception of those Taken this way, it can be a tool in your life’s man-
actions and outcomes would be different. On ual along with the Golden Rule, at once re-
what proof in such a circumstance of reality can a specting the existence of others and their individ-
guide to life be written? There is a metaphor for ual calibration to our shared reality.
this, when you consider a murder trial. The prose-
cution and the defense apply opposing intentions I don’t know where we were coming from or
and motivations to the same actions of an ac- what I did when we got out of the car after that
cused to prove or disprove motive. They each Breeze Face moment. Those details have gone to
paint a different person, outwardly identical in wherever forgotten experiences go. They are not
every way barring their intentions and unseen important for the Breeze Face. I think the Breeze
actions. The best that has been agreed on gener- Face could have happened years earlier or later or
ally across multiple religions is to treat others as never and I would be no different or have acted in
you would like to be treated yourself, sometimes any other way. Oh, who can tell, really? It has
known as the Golden Rule. Still, that makes a shown me what my heart already knew, that for
huge presupposition about how people want to me, life exists on the borderline, in the moment
be treated. Ask any sadist. when the tractor headlights are just about to
come or go. That all one can do is try to listen to
In my later years, but still a long time ago, I de- one’s instincts and follow their lead. If you’ve
scribed the difference between my mom and dad failed to do that, you may need to recalibrate
as part of the material I’d written when asked to yourself and get back on the path. Those times of
host a fundraiser for the campus radio station I readjustment will probably disrupt the lives of
participated in. I said my mom was spiritual and others who could only have assumed that how
my dad was practical, and to illustrate these you were living up until that point aligned with
traits, I recited the life lessons each had given me. your life’s manual. If you don’t like to be the
My mom would often tell me to let the universe cause of that kind of disruption, then try to stick
know what I wanted and then let it go. My dad, to your Breeze Face. Then you will be consistent.
more than once, even in the thick of hot summer Then people will know what to expect from you.
days, would remind me never to walk on ice with Even if your natural calibration is one of an un-
my hands in my pocket. As the constant back- pinned setting on the reality-perception scale,
ground to my life and first example of a life manu- sliding errantly left to right. It takes all kinds to
al, I’ve often thought that this dichotomy be- make the world, and you are one step ahead if
tween my parents placed me somewhere in the you know what kind you are.
middle between spiritualism and practicality and
that I’ve since infused everything I touch with an
equal mixture of reality and perception. In this
sense, the experience of the Breeze Face may

158

About the Author:
Ape Biggles has written one self-published novel
and multiple short stories rejected for publica-
tion. He has written over 2,000 Waths, a poem
form of his own invention. Breeze Face explores
the circumstances surrounding an epiphany he
had when he was twelve and its significance to
the life he's had. www.apebiggles.com

159

NANCY MOREJON’S
POETRY

Translated by Connor Simons

Wind

A circle. A spirit. A mirror. Gate Bridge
Immediately myself.
From that torturous seat, If the subterranean gatebridge closes
you come in pursuit of me. we would stay buried

What do you search for here on the surface.
under my black figure The doors on this side close themselves
that hides itself, and they all smell like the wet grass
even though it would like to hold itself up? of crying and of work.
There is no hope. There is no pain. But if someone has placed their pleading
I am without myself. I fly against you, inside of each door
wind,
as you carry away the unspeakable they destroy the seas
towards your noise. the lands the species the classifications
the sources of a subterranean rumor.

I remember…
If the door closes…
we would all stay buried.

160

My Wolves and Your Birds About the Author:

You, could you suddenly feel Nancy Morejon was born and raised in a district
what we allowed? of old Havana to working-class parents, Angélica
Would you know to interpret what you are? Hernández Domínguez and Felipe Morejón Noy-
ola. Her father is of African heritage and her
(it suits you to say goodbye to your conscience mother of Chinese, European and African extrac-
my wolves and your birds tion. She graduated with honours at the Universi-
in a starving and voracious impulse…) ty of Havana, having studied Caribbean and
A dry glass of water boils French Literature, and she is fluent in French and
and forms a tepid lake English. She later taught French. She is a well-
regarded translator of French and English into
equal Spanish, particularly Caribbean writers, including
to your eyes Edouard Glissant, Jacques Roumain and Aimé
equal to your eyes that freeze Césaire, René Depestre. Her own poetry has been
and form a white iceberg translated into English, German, French, Portu-
like the sea at twilight. guese, Gallego, Russian, Macedonian, and others.
She is as of 2013 director of Revista Union, jour-
nal of Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (the
Union of Writers and Artists; UNEAC); in 2008 she
was elected president of the writer's section of
UNEAC.

About Translator: She has produced a number of journalistic, criti-
cal, and dramatic works. One of the most notable
Connor Simons is a poet and translator who lives is her book-length treatments of poet Nicolás
in the Pacific Northwest. His poetry has appeared Guillén. In 1982 she was awarded the Cuban
in The Santa Clara Review and Manastash "Premio de la crítica" (Critic's Prize) for Piedra
Literary Journal. He has also participated in Pulida, and in 2001 won Cuba's National Prize for
readings at the Havana International Poetry Literature, awarded for the first time to a black
Festival. woman. This national prize for literature was cre-
ated in 1983; Nicolás Guillén was the first to re-
ceive it. She also won the Golden Wreath of the
Struga poetry evenings for 2006. She has toured
extensively in the United States and in other
countries; her work has been translated into over
ten languages, including English, Swedish and
German. She has lectured at universities through-
out the country and has served as teacher at
Wellesley College and the University of Missouri-
Columbia, which, in 1995, conducted a two-day
symposium on her work and published the papers
in a special issue of the Afro-Hispanic Review.
Howard University Press at Washington D.C. pub-
lished in 1999 a collection of critical essays on her
work: Singular Like A Bird: The Art of Nancy More-
jon, compiled and prefaced by Miriam DeCosta-
Willis, Ph.D. An ant collection of her poems enti-
tled Richard trajo su flauta y otros argumentos
(Richard brought his flute), edited by Mario Bene-
detti, Visor Books, was published in Madrid during
the Spring of 2005. (Source:Wikipedia)

161

PLATONIC
LOVE

Ray Fenech

This Will Never happen to me Syndrome

There is Christmas, Easter and Valentine but also depressing advertisements about cancer. Outside - the
slime and sleet - endless winter. Never before had I seen all this from the current perspective. Yet, I’m
weighted down moving forward, backwards, dropping on my knees struggling to my feet, trying to stay
up, only to be knocked down again. It all started when I began losing weight. I tried to emulate my hero
Rocky Balboa, his joy of living, winning against all odds. But how can one train to fight cancer? I wanted
to wake up people who worry about trivialities, make them realize health is never a sacrosanct right. But
they all suffer from the, “This will never happen to me syndrome!”
Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and a stroke broke me down into shards, like a fallen porcelain moon. I thought I
was safe on my way to a new red summer dawn - could already feel the warmth. I was derailed, impaled
by the sword of fate. Now, I stand again, shrug off the pain trying to regain, to seize, to feign, change a
sorrowful sunset, into a happy refrain. My heart sinks at every passing day, be it summer, the fall, winter
or spring. When it’s freezing, I grit my teeth, uplift my frightened heart and try to smoulder its weak-
ened beat.
The day dawns with difficulty to breathe, gelid cold, incontrollable shakes and profuse sweating, the
endless rest in hospital. There are plastic flowers in the vase, which I envy for their immortality - the
stench of surgical spirit. Fourteen hours of painful chemotherapy: dripping orange liquid and a torturous
injection that lasts five minutes. I am forced to listen to my heart beat, stare at the blood stain on the
carpet from my punctured arms whilst doctors try to find a non-thrombosed vein … Should I immerse
myself into a sob story no one wants to hear, start over standing tall, even if I fall, wait for another
dawn? Time has clipped Pegasus’s wings, his unicorn trimmed. So I will call out my fearsome 300 Spar-
tans to turn this scuffle into a last spectacular tussle.

162

Platonic Love

Beautiful as a Greek statue,
Her jet-black hair hung in satin long curls
Eyes beaming wide like a black onyx.
Only her voice spoilt the synchronization
Of this artistic creation:
It was coarse, masculine.

Married but naïve,
She was a virgin in more ways than one.
Never had a proper orgasm,
Simulated in a forced effort to express
Pleasure merely from a sense of duty.

She was stuck in stagnant boredom,
Often reflected in her nail biting habit,
As she watched with dreamy eyes
A colourless world go by
Beneath her confined balcony.
It was at times like this, their eyes met,
Fleetingly, in one single passionate glance
That often took their breath away.

That was all there was to their love affair.
It was enough; their eyes said everything
From poetry to pornography.
When she parted her lips, he parted his
And their tongues spoke in flicks
Triggering silent conversation.

Their love was condemned to make-belief,
Turning their heads away
When their eyes were about to speak;
When their smiles almost risked
Their hands waving kisses,
And their sighs were about to become
Too loud and clear to hide.
This love was different from many others,
A love so perfect, it could not survive.

163

Our Maid Claire

Her long smooth legs were to die for.
When she came home, she always sat on the sofa
Crossed her legs and sipped her lemonade.
August then became even more of a sizzler:
As her tongue licked her sensuous lips
I imagined her every body language move
To be telling me silent sweet nothings;
And the rest of the world around didn’t exist.
In contrast to her worn out hands and nails
I imagined her bare elegant thighs
In lacy black lingerie on our first wedding night.
Each time my thoughts made me drool,
She seemed to notice my lustful stare
And in exchange she crossed her legs again
Slowly, so I could define the details in between;
Stark naked like my soul, I felt my heart was laid bare.
Every week until she came, I dreamt about her in my sleep
As often as I could closing my eyes to imagine
And each time she was unmistakably there,
Voluptuous as ever, looking straight into my eyes.
Then one day my dreams became reality:
Claire came early as it was shopping day for mum.
I was in my bath gown still shaving before breakfast;
There was a knock on my door - it was her.
She came in and asked me for a cigarette, then a light;
Next, she was in my arms on the longest kissing quest
Our tongues needed not search for words;
As my hands explored her body, we fell back into reality.
Claire was supposed to be married within two months
We thought our love for each other was only lust:
I was a dreamer and she was young, both naïve
Building our castles in the air aspiring for a miracle.
As we slipped out of each other’s arms we learned
We lived in an unforgiving world that discriminates
Between race and class. Claire was just our maid.

164

The Dandelion Seed

(Petrarchan sonnet)

This single parachuted seed descends
softly swiftly in the parched garden soil
to flower, live, die, join the earthly toil.
This single parachuted seed transcends
all meaning of existence. Freshly blends
into a coloured world full of turmoil.
It defies all odds, makes the mind recoil
from its amazing and resilient strength.
It will grow then inevitably die,
to leave little or no trace on earth
of it ever having been. Just like us,
that strive until our demise.
Within this seed there is no pain of birth
at death, it simply turns to dust.

Fleur

(Shakespearean sonnet)

I was a child when I first fell in love
though immersed as you were in vanity,
I had visions of magic and mystery;
vivid full of illicit desire.

But now time has fled, and I know not where
our promises – castles in the air,
made in the bedroom, when trembling fingers
explored our naked shame – we lingered.

I traced your curves with breathless lips and called
your sexy name a hundred times in vain.
You only used to laugh at me and feign
not to hear when I asked you to marry me;

you dipped your fingers deep in me unfazed,
yet your cold blue eyes could not meet my gaze.

165

A Mosquito’s buzzing Birth Straw Hat
(Remembering mum 1925-2014)
Buzzing it slipped out almost transparent
from beneath azure space; Decades seemed to burst
razzing at its inability to fly from each crevice in the attic,
where the straw hat lay
it fizzed with long proboscis, on a dusty rocking chair.
beyond the day’s quivering laze,
dazzled by cascading colours: Steel cobwebs chained
to breezes swayed,
its vibrant jazz increased like mama's hair
it zigzagged threads of shiny silver grey.
like a Harrier jet racing its engine:
I remember her wearing it,
then, as if it remembered to hide from the sun;
it zipped above water, now in permanent shade,
never to be worn again.
zapped out into space
with a fulminating blaze, It's of sentimental value,
that was soon part of an orchestrated buzz. but who will care?
When I'm gone someone
will stuff it in a garbage bag.

And winds will howl
through fissured walls
like lone wolves,
that vanish in cotton mists.

166

Light after Dark

For us light after dark is not
like the aurora borealis;
it’s not the day’s beginning
on the edge of the horizon or on
a windowsill: an eye peeping over
a mountain, bloodshot from
too much opening and closing;
it’s just a light within
that does not light up a room
but lights up a world
like no other light can do.

Light after dark is seeing
life’s vitality through luminosity.
We are all children of light or darkness
born after sunset, or sunrise
when the day is on its way,
it’s no matter we are blind
there is always a shade of grey.
It’s all in the mind – if we lack one sense
it’s likely another is sharpened instead,
and darkness is cut by a sword
that flashes in the night,
illuminating the mind from behind.

Light after dark is clean,
like cutting an eye-ball in half
without inflicting pain;
we cannot feel what we cannot see:
in one’s life there is only one light within
bathing in a moon-filled pond,
that we see better with eyes tight shut.
But it doesn’t matter, not really -
we recognize all truths far better
like they were written on stone
and we can see with touch,
all’s hewn in our other senses;
therefore we do not crave for vision -
it comes to light after dark.

167

Paul the Meticulous Fisherman

Pawlu is-Sajjied, as he was nicknamed was a quiet lad.

Every Sunday morning he would clad in a beige suit and tie,

shine his shoes with spit, like soldiers in the army.

He was neat, in fact his other nickname, Pawlu l-fitt.

Meticulous in his work, he considered life was ridiculous.

His walk was a rhythmic sway of self confidence

stopping to observe the weather like all good fishermen.

It only seems like yesterday,

Pawlu was shouting himself hoarse: Lampuki friski, hajjin hajjin;

no one realized he was in deep crisis, deeper than the sea

from where he caught us fresh fish every day.

His luzzu, Santa Maria was berthed at Spinola Bay,

now it’s gone just like him leaving an empty space

with only a lonely buoy to mark its place.

Pawlu no longer shouts, Friski, hajjin hajjin:

and the mornings are drear without his yellow smile.

When my dog ran out into the street last year

Pawlu gave chase and brought him back safe.

The Santa Maria was red, black and yellow,

painted in honour of St. Julian the village Belgian saint.

It would chug out from the bay, sometimes moon rising

every evening for summery decades, as many as I can recollect,

rippling through the reflected white light of a dimming sunset.

Then, he would whistle an unknown tune

until his silhouette became one with dusk.

He lived with his old widowed mother, Giuzeppa;

everyone knew she dotted on him, her only son.

One day she came back from early morning mass

and found him hanging from the neck.

The rope was tied by a fisherman’s knot from the stairs’ railings.

The doctor came first, then Dun Karm, the Parish priest.

Pawlu left us suddenly without a warning sign;

now, he is only a ghostly memory

as the moon rises on an empty quiet bay. Pawlu is-sajjied il fitt (Paul the meticulous fisherman)

Pawlu il-fitt (Paul the meticulous man)

Luzzu (traditional colourful Maltese fishing boat)

Luzzu, Santa Maria (the boat is named St. Mary)

Lampuki friski, hajjin, hajjin. (Fresh Dolphin fish, alive alive)

Friski, hajjin hajjin. (Fresh, alive alive)

Dun Karm (Fr. Charles)

168

The Swing in the Garden About the Author:

The swing hangs creaking on the broken chain Raymond Fenech embarked on his writing career
screeching loudly in excruciating pain, as a freelance journalist at 18 and worked for the
rusty, dribbling red blood and hanging lame leading newspapers, The Times and Sunday Times
on winded years, day in day out the same. of Malta. He edited two nation-wide distributed
magazines and his poems, articles, essays and
How many a child has sat here and played short stories have featured in several publications
how many on its wooden bucket swayed in 12 countries. His research on ghosts has ap-
before with age its outer skin was flayed; peared in The International Directory of the Most
time flew, children grew; all to rest were laid. Haunted Places, published by Penguin Books,
USA. In 2009, Ray graduated with BA first class
Just memory of all those years remains honours in creative writing and later obtained his
like photos shot in some special time frame, PHD. In the same year, he was awarded a scholar-
sparked from an urge or mania to maintain ship in writing therapy by the Creative “Righting”
this life immortalize, or so we like to feign. Center, Hofstra University of New York. He is a
visiting professor (creative writing and parapsy-
The swing hangs creaking on the broken chain chology) for an online university and conducts
as summer breeze wistfully speaks in pain, creative writing classes for both adults and chil-
whispering about our joy and strain dren.
like conscience when it pokes us hard in vain.

The swing squeals contemplating on the rain
joining chorus with time’s tick-tocking refrain
of life that’s been: will never be again,
while our dreams flee on a choo choo train.

169

BALM

Gale Acuff

After Sunday School I came home to sin I got to class and she proposed that we
again, my folks smoking in the kitchen run away together and leave it all
and gulping Yuban and not even dressed behind, not only sin but how we try
and Father unshaven and dishes in to rise above sin, piano and hymns
the sink for me to wash later and no and Bible stories. We got in her Dodge
makeup on Mother and nothing left for and I asked where we were headed and she
me to eat but what I make myself. I said, To my place, and when we got there she
go to church because I need the morals showed me in and we sat on the sofa
is what they tell me. They don't go themselves. and held hands but innocence is easy
Maybe we should all go together but to turn to sin so I said, I'm sorry
they like to sleep late, It's my only free ma'am, but I'd better go home, but she said, Well,
day, Father says, and Mother says, That's so. I'm not going to drive you, so I said
So I walk the half-mile there alone and That's alright, ma'am, I'll just walk, and I did,
try to be the first in Sunday School so five or six miles, and when I got there my
I can see Miss Hooker, my teacher and parents were at the kitchen table as
beautiful but old, 25 to my usual with the big Sunday paper
10, so whatever becomes of love for between them so I sat down and Father
us it won't include marriage unless she asked without looking up, What did God
waits until I'm old enough for her, say say today, and Mother said, Yes, tell us.
16, when I guess I'll be ready, more I said, There is no balm in Gilead.
like Father and less like me but by then Then Father handed me the front page news.
she might be more like Mother and less like And then I woke in time for Sunday School
what God now has her as. Last night I dreamt but fell back to sleep. That's how I got saved.

170

Flora

I brought Miss Hooker flowers this morning,
wild ones from the bank of the road I walk
to Sunday School and back. They were drooping
by the time I made it to class and though
I prayed and prayed as I walked toward church
that God would pull off a miracle and
resurrect them, which means bring them back to life
again, no such luck. I'm glad I was first
in the room--well, first after Miss Hooker
--well, the first student, anyway, because
the other kids would've laughed at me and
I might've told them all to go to Hell,
at least after class was over--I mean
after class I would've told them that, not
that I would've cared when they went, just so
they did, maybe the sooner the better,
but I'm patient and that's a virtue though
wishing them to Hell, that's likely a sin.
Life's just as confusing as religion.
And there she was, Miss Hooker, behind her
desk and sitting in her big blue chair and
with her glasses off, the better to see
her green eyes and freckles under all that
red hair--no wonder I'm in love with her
and pray every night that God will make us
the same age by the morning and tell us
in a dream, too, why He's done it, so that
she'll be expecting me to call on her
and we'll see each other for the first time
after our change, I wonder if it's called
a resurrection, too. I'll bring flowers,
the kind you buy in a store or can grow
in your own yard if you've got a green thumb,
the kind you sometimes have to buy cold so
they'll stay fresh, the kind sort of expensive
so that she'll know I'm not a tightwad but
still affordable so she'll know I'm not
extravagant--the kind you buy that are
balanced like that, like a husband should be.

171

But while she was cleaning her glasses I choked, but after class, and her glasses on
went up to Miss Hooker with wildflowers again, of course, they looked as good as dead.
inside my right fist and held them out and I couldn't say I love you so I said
cleared my throat and thrust them farther. She looked Beauty's in the eye of the beholder,
across the desk, where the Bible lay, and which I got from a TV commercial,
looked up at me, making me taller though those ugly little Volkswagens, maybe,
I'm short for my age, and young, 10 to her and she looked at me and said, Bless you, you're
25, so she's pretty old right, aren't you? What could I do but smile
but she's still in bloom. Oh, is that you, Gale, but when I did damned if she didn't start
she asked, I guess out of almost-blindness. to cry, so I did, too, she's my teacher,
Yes ma'am, I said--then, I brung you flowers, I learn a lot about the truth from her,
I hope you like 'em, I picked 'em myself. whatever that is, I don't have it all
She reached for them and I felt like Adam yet. When I do I guess I'll be like seeds.
when God gave him the touch of life except
I wasn't naked, of course, like he is
in that painting. Michelangelo, he's
the guy who did it. Before I was born.
Oh, they're beautiful, she mewed, and rose
to smell them, which made me feel guilty because
I already tried and they didn't smell
like anything. Maybe that means they would
smell like anything you wanted them to,
watermelon, say, or bubblegum or
even the baseball cards that come with them
or a new comic book or sauerkraut
on a hot dog or Mother's hairspray or
gasoline when it spills on the engine
when Father's getting ready to cut grass
or trout frying on a barbeque grill
or underarm deodorant for girls.
Anything. Anyway, Miss Hooker
pulled back her head and said, Let's find a vase
to put these in but we had to settle
for a Sprite bottle which she filled with
water from her coffee pot, then set it,
the vase I mean, on the windowsill so
they'll get enough light, she said. I wanted
to say I love you, Miss Hooker, but I
couldn't, I just couldn't, I had to let
faded flowers say it for me and they

172

Good Sport

Here at the church picnic Miss Hooker
sits on a bench and sips an orange Nehi
--I wonder what she's got against grape--with
her legs together and one ankle locked
behind the other and that's how I know
she's a lady, especially because

it's windy today and I'm up to bat
and hope she's watching to see how long
I can hit one even though I'm little
for my age and never hit homeruns but
I'm still in there swinging and there are men,
boys and girls, actually, on second
and third and two outs and we're losing by
one run and I haven't had good wood yet
but then Miss Hooker was at a table

serving lemonade and cookies and cake
and pie and probably wasn't watching
and isn't really watching now, she's like
Mother, who doesn't give a fig for sports
but can act as if she does and that's fine,
that's what Father's for, I guess, and they seem
to get along otherwise, after all,
they're married to each other, and if I
can at least loop one into right field then

we win here in the bottom of the ninth
even if it's really the bottom of
the sixth, we're just Sunday School kids and she's
our teacher, or teaches some of us, but
she's more mine than anyone else's since
I'm in love with her and when I'm grown we'll
marry, I learned it in a dream last night,
which was Saturday, so it must come true,

I never miss at Sunday School and I
read the lesson in our workbook before
I get there and I mean the night before,

173

I don't wait until breakfast on Sunday
and try to cram those Bible stories in,
and when we sing a hymn I always sing
so Miss Hooker can hear me and if God
can hear me, too, way up in Heaven, it's

a bonus. Of course God is everywhere,
I know it's so because Miss Hooker said
and she would never lie or there's a damn
good reason for it, darn good one I mean.
In my dream we were at the picnic and
giant ants invaded and tried to take
her away but I stopped them with some holds
I learned on wrestling on TV and though
everyone ran away, and I mean men,
women, and children, I fought the ants off

by myself and rescued Miss Hooker from
real peril. She was so grateful that she
kissed me and said, What a man, though you're still
a boy, and I said, Thank you, Miss Hooker,
I was just doing my job, defending
the weak against the strong, like Jesus did
although He died for it, and painfully,
up on the Cross. And Miss Hooker said, True,
but He rose again on the third day, and
I thought, She sure knows her Bible and if
we get married one day she'll tell me tales

from the Good Book, a story every night
before we go to sleep and make babies
and I'll bet she knows how to do that, too,
and will teach me. So I asked, Will you wait
for me, Miss Hooker, 'til I'm old enough
to be your lawfully wedded husband,
but it wasn't really a question, I
was showing leadership ability
and girls like that a lot, or TV says,

174

and she said, Yes yes O yes, count me in,
and then I woke and the sun had come up

and that's always a good sign--the future,
it means, and not the end of the world quite
yet and me just nine years old and ready
to live forever even if that means
just one more day. I've got two strikes on me
because I've been thinking and not acting
and here comes the next pitch and I smack it

right back to the pitcher and soon I'm out
and we lose by a run but I hit it
hard, their pitcher tells me so and shows
the red spot on his palm where he stopped it,
and we lost fair and square so I decide
to be a good sport and not care too much,
and when I walk over to Miss Hooker
to ask if she'd like another cool drink
she says, That wasn't your pitch, was it, so
she was watching me after all. I guess not,
ma'am, I say. Then she gets up to have her cup

refilled and I watch her, then start to cry.
Sometimes that's how the weak protect the strong.

About the Author:
Gale Acuff’s poetry has been published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa
Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review,
Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art
Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He is the author of three books of poetry: Buffalo
Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives
(BrickHouse, 2008). He taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

175

WALKING

Patrick Hurley #
one night in spring
# jupiter appeared as
categories collapse in upon themselves three arced bands
strange instruments reshape with a hollow center
the structure of space
this was a circle
random interpretations of irregularity broken in three places––
will hold meaning if each equidistant
one seeks it from the other

vague constructions are part of the observers cried out
additive art but who shaves away “what can this mean?”
superfluous matter?
and i heard a voice
and the voice said
“black water”
and the rains came

what is tritium and
what is deuterium?
what is plutonium?

traces of dense silvery terror
can always be augmented by
dark ingenuity

the voices said
“what white fire
could nullify
this water?”

176

# # #
dense lacunae textures disturbed by
the sound of flux an elemental imbalance
forces press in rejects fixed forms
from all sides and dead ends once again the ink runs
compressing
this void but words produce words could these letters be
intensifying the whose patterns are frozen into some
potency of ever shifting semblance of meaning?
its energies
dull minds cannot slow motion smears and
a walker may fathom our mystic smudges mock by
access these energies consubstantiality almost meaning
she may pass with the elements
through the void droplets of liquid
absorbing energies this is the sound of adhere to almost
and transforming them everything merging every surface and
into pure color and things have slowed
shifting shapes almost to a halt

particles and waves scan the horizons
might pierce the for incremental movement
opalescent skin of for some sign of life
this infinite emptiness
made small

they too will be transformed
nothing may pass through
without being altered––
a part of itself absorbed and
purified by the emptiness

Patrick Hurley was born in an unimportant midwestern American city in 1969. After wasting several
years in graduate school, he published a book on Thomas Pynchon and taught writing and literature at a
few colleges in Saint Louis, Missouri. He is now a full-time bartender and poet, currently obsessed with a
long poetry collection in progress called Walking. He lives and works in Saint Louis.

177

LOTUS

Martina Reisz Newberry

LOTUS

On the other side of the mountain, When the palm fronds rustled anxiously,
my wealthy friend has built a castle. nervously, I walked toward the water,
It was a long project but now sits, pellets in hand. “Throw them in. See what

quiet as a profound thought, complete. happens,” she said. Palms nattered again
The day I visited her, we had and I tossed the pellets.The water cried out,
coffee and Red Velvet Scones behind had a seizure. Open mouths—orange/white/

the castle near the Koi pond. Smell of gold—shock and awe—fought for space, a riot of
gardenia, petals stiff with infirm open mouths. They swarmed toward the food
hateur and, near pond’s edge, a lotus— while I flinched, stepped back. “I have

the real thing. I was impressed with it. Sarasa Comets, Shubunkin, Butterfly Koi,
“It’s called Nelumbo Nucifera,” and some Domestic Koi,” she said. “I love to
my friend said. “A strong name for such a feed them.” I left shortly thereafter

peaceful bloom, don’t you think?” Yes. Oh yes. and drove carefully down the mountain.
Scent of water, sound of water, shade My mind repeated Basho’s sly words:
on the water. So much silence, beauty. “Learn to listen as things speak for themselves.”

My friend's secretary came out with
more coffee.We sipped and blinked, and watched.
I was happy as I should have been.

178

WHAT TO DO IF HAUNTED ACCURATE RECALL

When the broken spirits come Did you know that dreams are the scars of recall?
into your dreams and cut your hair, They prompt us to take one more look at the houses
turn you on your back and whisper of our childhood, the graves and the hiding
complaints in your ears, fight back. places we believed we grew out of. Remember
the things you said you’d never do again? You
Fight with the sounds of pots and pans will do them in your night terrors.You will do them
in someone’s kitchen, in the dreams of past lovers.You will do them
with strong winds below the canyons,* in the presence of your dead parents. It is
with laughter and clinking glasses the nature of dreams to tickle and torture
your sleep with regrets. My mother would say
from the gathering next door, she died of loneliness which I supported by
with the cat’s lapping water never being there. After a while, in fact,
from the stout green tumbler I could hardly bear to pass through the town where
on the floor next to the sofa. she lived. My father would say the same—that I
stayed away, did not call, did not care.
Take sleep as it is supposed to be: I don’t know why any more than they did.
a baptismal font. It is the gift I dream of them almost nightly. I swim
that should soothe and cleanse, clumsily through a thick, salty sea of regret
the cup we drink from that lets us to live once again in their house with them.
In dreams, as in accurate recall, seeing them,
wake to wonder into a dimension depending on them, scares and saddens me.
that no longer invites wonder. In my dreams, unlike accurate recall,
There will always be sleep and, I cannot leave.
when the broken spirits visit,

we’ll wake. Oh yes! Eyes wide,
mouths parched, bellies and brains
starved for words that will dance
and music such as will make miracles.

*RIP 2001 Larry Kramer

179

“RACHEL IS WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN…”

Jeremiah 31:15

I imagine I can see
the scratched and scarred places on
my children’s bodies.
They are the places where I
used to live. Look carefully

and you’ll see my ghost, looking
for the rest of my family,
for that other life
I thought I would have. Careless
dreams—curious larceny.

I read them like books, thumbing
through their pages that did not
love me—loved others—
but not the smiling, passive
woman who seemed only to REact

instead of grabbing the bull
by its proverbial horns
(a pithy observation),
and running for those famous
hills, their little hides in tow.

Oh, I have been penitent
all my life— all of their lives—
far from paradise,
further still from lenity,
landed under the spaces

in their memories, waving
Calling out to their bodies
“Here I am. See me.
In spite of your memories,
I am more than your laments.”

180

IF YOU WILL About the Author:

If you will forgive me my darkness, Martina Newberry’s books: NEVER COMPLETELY
I’ll channel the winds that come through AWAKE (Deerbrook Editions), TAKE THE LONG
the canyons and I’ll breathe them WAY HOME (9/2017, Unsolicited Press), WHERE
into your hands. IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions), RUNNING LIKE A
WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE (Red Hen
You will be protected from the void Press).
that sits at the sides of fucking and fasting
and numerous other bluffs that could Her work has been widely published in the U.S.
come your way. and abroad. She lives in Los Angeles.

If you will absolve me of my excesses,
I’ll see to it that the unjustness of this world
stays to itself and Magic––as it is wont to do––
will bear you no malice.

At supper, I will fill your plate
with undreamt dreams and pour
lightning into your cup. At bedtime,
I’ll turn your sheets down

with fingers like song lyrics and give the gods
of rest your full and true name. I’ll lay
vagueness over your esculent body and
Comb elixirs through your hair.

All this for forgiveness, for the exculpation
of everything I cannot be or do…
We are far from paradise. An apple
you accept from a naked woman

could explode at any time. Believe me,
you are better off waving away my sins,
smiling wisely at my weaknesses
forgiving me my darkness.

181

MORE

Chris Fields

More

Why seek anything more
than a life that slips frictionlessly by?
I want more. I want a life that lashes;
I want a life that grinds and scrapes,
that prunes away weak pieces
exposing lurid truths beneath.
I want road rash-mottled arms
proclaiming how closely I knew my way.
When I go, I want my body to be a map, every worn inch a symbol.
My skin, my scars, my story.

Amplification

Trade your future in for a past,
the heaviest one you can find or make.
The ones who don't know better
let the lightness of their burdens
assure them
the future is theirs
and brighter, eyes always
on the light at the end of the tunnel
but nobody told them that a ray of light is massless
that even though some people
will burn right through you,
just by the force of what sparked them,
the rest just hit their mark and scatter
leaving no more a trace than dust.

182

Verge Prosocial

the Perspiration percolates
office when I think how coffee-dates
is and meetings play along
my hell the fringes of my life.

though Elocution calculated
strangely might construct a reputation,
electrify some peers and win
I leave home their love and adoration--
the cloven hooves
but I'll never say a word,
that fill and while I daydream, little talks
my fancy in streets and bars and coffeeshops
shoes stock friendly wealth by penny-drops.
when
Just as lonely people
I never seem to find each other
am like they're content
to let living lie,
sleeping
and wonder
later, middle-aged,
in the graveyard of their friendships
how it is they came to die.

About the Author:
Chris Fields is a physical therapist residing in western Massachusetts. His poetry nucleates around single
resonant words and phrases, usually while driving. He advises pulling over if like inspiration strikes you.
His work may be found in Blast Furnace.

183

ON THE SANDS
OF LIDO

Bob Varghese

Knowing Being a Poet

It was enough They say we are all of one source,
knowing he was there all being poets by virtue of being human,
his presence like an army of giants every person, even if one cares
baritone voices encouraging for written lines of intensity or not,
along the battle line everyone on this terrestrial ball
strong hands behind me is capable of uttering profound truths,
guarding guiding inmost expressions of emotions,
plunging me forward to my future man measurements of humanity,
yet when I look back though I am unsure where I fit.
I see only the barren field Or can these be lies from those
where once he stood who understand but a feeble shadow.
my knowing lost Like little children who play
among the footprints with words, delighting in sounds,
of giant men. making their own language,
foreign tongues for elder ears,
and who are not hindered to enter
the kingdom for it belongs to them,
poets cannot be in everyone,
for lines of rhyme, rhythm, or meter
are not written by men or women,
but by little gods who play,
yet I am on the verge
of nothing.

184

On the Sands of Lido Bacon Tree

The white sands stretched Sound out the air sirens,
till it sat beige under the waves it was found in Florida Keys,
inching along the shore. a decadent pursuit of happiness
to find such an indulgent treat,
The droning of the surf so leave your work and tell your spouse
muffled the wind’s moan to spare the kids from school,
along the foam in the chops for lifelong labor is the price
of seawater. to own and enjoy such a thing.
No greater joy than to stand
There by the shore she sat in view of friends and family,
staring into the blue beyond underneath the branches of the delicious bacon tree.
the white, beyond the bright
pale ocean rippling under Such a fruit is worth the chase,
the sun. like toiling over poetic lines,
or working for kingdom keys,
She sat with her hand when possessed its luster never dulls,
on her hip in her red ever after gratifying the soul,
soft swimsuit, belly for where your treasure is, there your heart
exposed, playing will also be, so now our sides grow bigger
with ties that came undone. with every heavy breath we take.
We’ll smile and close our eyes, forever
She is like a streak of red lying, you and me,
against the white and the beige underneath the branches of the delicious bacon tree.
and the pale;
a smudge of crimson
on an empty canvas
waiting for the artist
to finish his deep stare.

About the Author:
B. A. Varghese graduated from Polytechnic University (New York) with a degree in Electrical Engineering
and is currently working in the Information Technology field. Inspired to explore his literary side, he has
earned a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida. His works have appeared in Cleaver
Magazine, Apalachee Review, Prick of the Spindle, and other literary journals. (www.bavarghese.com)

185

TAPESTRY

Natasha Zarine Tapestry

Incarnated You stare at my scars, I see art.
Crevasses of longing, terror darts
Clutching the rolls of you Which have shot expectations
Drip latent constellations And desires for healing
Enchained by taboo. Mutating into becoming better.
But when I howl of pleasure
I never think of you. My skin is a tapestry of you
Sown onto me.
Raping myself, I caress The needle aches in places
Every tingling motion I didn't even know existed
Feeling what will not exist. But at least I now have threads
Like a harp, I pluck Of scarlet red and peacock blue
Myself to devour every Which playfully mingle with my veins
Shred of guilt, disgust To form an ingrained me and you.
Folded in my very nature.
My skin was honey innocence but now it's orient deep
I claw the dank inside Blood trying to float amongst the tidal waves
Knowing you never will Of Saturdays sinking sofas of
Dirt burns my bedtime sheets The flesh of you and me.
My soul an orphan still.
Sour kisses tinged my sheen
Into a quench for pleasure
But its very mundanity and routine
Allowed beige lips, in equal measure.

A tapestry is unique but I understand
That most art-makers possess a band
Of ideas and so it was to be
That you took inspiration somewhere else
Leaving an unfinished art form in me.

186

Hearth

Chiming in the corridor, there are sighs
Of what was or might have been instead of parallel lives.
Dizzily I explore exhalations of your darkened, deadened breath
Inviting me to fall tangled, plunge deep inside my breast.

There was a cloud that day, or maybe sun
I can't remember because the memories are so raw
Of the steel coffee shop door
The English heavy air
And the nuzzling warmth of just being there.

You were so cheesy. I guess, you winked dreams
Which you have since swum and although I doubted
You could excel, wondered the injustice at how, it's confidence
A thirst for recklessness, I lick in your minerals now.

Biting pomegranate lips, flippers magnetised like compasses clocked at North
A literature intruder unlocks sights
That I only unscrambled after curtains of nights.

Like a maze, I venture two roads down
To acknowledge your presence,
How you laced life to throttle it with a crash, extracted my charms.
I discovered adulthood in your arms
Bursting prehistoric rationale of how I used to seek
Understanding of how two people meet.

I'm sorry that sweet butter at Morrison's or an orange skirt's glow
Couldn't soften the blow
Of muted longings that frame my mind.
Crooked legs, I crouch in shades of blue
I mutter it only takes wanting
To remember you.

We are not spiritual, just empty spaces
For webs that etch infinite footprints of hope...
I smile knowingly at this rancid fantasy
Yet when you stray with me in the under earth decayed
Finally I will know, we always stayed.

187

Loathing Lover

Let's face it, lay it on thick:
You arrogant, stuck-up, loathsome prick.
Tuberculosis is far sweeter than you
Oh my hideous dear, how I loathe loving you.

How I hate using that old cliché
That 'you took my breath away'
How I can't deny that you did
Locate my desire and open the lid.

This trite form of poetry so yet captures the glint
That left my head lobotomised, made my heart flint.
Sure. I felt light, unaware of the fit
Of terror, anguish, passion
Belying flirtation and wit.

I could say he was a god, a beau, a chéri
A muse like Edgar's Annabelle Lee
Yet self control was perverted by some adolescent bloke
Acne ridden, poor dress sense, an aficionado of the dirty joke
As hopeful I was of whom to please
This was the guy who left me stumbling to my knees.

Obsession turns into obsession.
Tumours made me kill Mr Right.
Garrotted him straight, for want of a bad boy fight.
A goody-two shoes little Cinderella
Ultimately enjoys the ugly brother.
A saccharine, fulfilled love lies in vain to the fiestier.

The innocent soul turns to venom inbred
My lust for bodily intrusions to rip off my head.
Elevated by anger, jealousy and dread
The path to romance has been grossly misled.

188

For him, I'll be 'that girl', whose blood would alight
When their lips did collide in that Trojan fight
He did like her, sure.
She was pretty alright.
Funny, nice - the wrong for the right.
Penetrated by Satan, his body did plough through
What was once me, the less hateful girl I knew.
My orgasmic-sized hurt just loves to loathe you.

About the Author:
Natasha Zarine just graduated high school in Guildford, United Kingdom and is hoping to enrol this
upcoming year for a BA Spanish and ab initio Russian at University College London; She is enthusiastic
about the prospect of exploring Hispanic and Russian literature.

189

FALLEN SEEDS

Donny Barilla

Dreaming in Autumn

I loosened her garments.
Leaning forward to the window, she showered
in the fabrics of the Autumn sun.

Maples shred each leaf
and quivered the loss of sapling and buds.

Softly, I placed my lips on the nape of her neck
and gently her fragrant scents stretched across
the bed, sheets, and pillows of down.

She livened the emerald moss as we walked
deep into the thick of the woods
which bathed us in mint and humble jasper.

Paused, we lay on the carpeting of leaves, reds and browns.
I fell upon her in the creams and milks
which fell on the ripe fruits of thigh and abdomen.

~

I awoke to the scents of coffee.
The window rattled as a tea kettle.
Fog dripped in grays and fallen beads.

190

Sweet juices pooled about the floor of my mouth.
I snapped the apples skin and felt the floods slap across my tongue.
Pulps sauteed the parchment walls of my throat
as I opened this rivulet as a gash only to thicken its way
down the beard of my chin, neck. Walking through the grove, I
sat beneath a tree which offered a gown. Quiet shadows of the Autumn
burgundy sun flickered calm dancing lights which rested upon my eager skin.
I wandered through the nearby pasture.
Glazes of fallen leaves and chipped acorns
pressed in anticipation under the thick of my boot.

Stooped to the Lilac Bush About the Author:

The sky was a cotton shroud of thin grays Donny Barilla writes poems daily as is his
and ribbons of the glancing moon. custom for many years. Common themes
are: nature, love, sexuality, mythology
I walked through the yard and felt the velvet and spirituality. He has recently
jade colored grass stretch around my hooking toes. published his first book titled 'Treasures'.
Proudly, Donny, is a native Pennsylvanian
I stooped to the lilac bush. I smiled. and tends to draw inspiration from the
Dew droplets gleamed upon each flickering leaf beautiful surrounding his great state
offers.
which cupped as a endless ocean cove
aware of salts and white rippling waves.

A thin patch of grass and a neighboring crouch
of slender onion sprouts fondled the rushing winds.

I turned, faced the gushing scents of mint,
sweet the pressing gusts from the north swabbed across

my limbs and wavering silky hair.

Straight into the thick of night
I wade through blades of green and pausing dew.

191

ICE CREAM
TRUCK

Alicia Cole

Ice Cream Truck Paper Butterfly

The cone is always the cone. a found poem
The rhyme scheme, the metric oomph:
these hold the dripping words. Fortune smiles
smirched with the gossip
They're always melting. The sonnet, in the community.
the sapphic, the prose poem, the cento. On your white jacket,
Melting into the readers' mouths. her perfection.

Grab one. Pay for it. Grab another.
Cough up the money. All this frozen
glory never comes for free.

About the Author:
Alicia Cole lives and writes in Huntsville, Alabama. She is also a visual artist. Her work is forthcoming in
Breath & Shadow, Star*Line, and Anima. She runs Priestess and Hierophant Press at
www.priestessandhierophant.com. She has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Dwarf Star
Awards, and won Honorable Mention in Hermeneutic Chaos' Jane Lumley Prize for Emerging Writers.
She like NPR, silence, nature, boxing, and religion.

192

WHEN I REALIZED I

COULD BE UNSEEN

by Lisa Favicchia

When I Realized I Could Be Unseen I Think I Might Be a Birch Tree

It was a fishing rod, Don’t break my roots,
one I waved to go home. my ruptured feet, snap them
It was also a log I became from the ground. I might bleed
trapped under, ferret hole milk and if milk bleeds out
cradling my lungs. so must I. Head is not
My father said not to walk laurel-crowned, just tired
on water-rot wood— living inside all these eyes.
I ignored him, and lay I cradle, or am cradled
along the scorch lines by awakeness, or too many
of skipping stones visions, but maybe not
as he laughed, foot heavy divinable visions, maybe
on the bark. just me looking at me,
birch-bark arms and lungs
Where I had once gulped only leaf-cough. Something
I now allowed myself lives inside me sometimes
to become blue-gilled, in my owl hollows,
ignored his tug now twisted knots
at my lip beneath where I once tried to heal
the silt-stirred water. hair from hair.
I even made myself bluer
until I was satisfied
no eyes would see me
through saw-grass.

193

Wishing for a Tooth Fairy A Study in Common Terns

She picks at herself You keep so much in hiding
in the dusk-filled garden yet forget your own
where sharp teeth gnaw quaking margin and slip
paper wings. She kneels on silt. The sound is the same
down, twigs peppering in every direction; I mean
her hair, and slaps a tiny body plum pudding, the trudge
against her arm. As blood of your feet the same
and twitching limbs dry, her hair sticks as sludge-slow salt marsh
and pinches her irritated skin. or a feather caught
in the under-grist.
She picks at the bites and mixes
the animal blood. You can leave yourself
At the sound of her name where you fall, though, dwell
she rises, snaps a stomach tooth in swamp and half-rot fern.
from her gums, adds it Just lie in this frog slough;
to the mound of shining molars. soon enough your skin
will be the same color
She makes her way back and you’ll no longer have to fear
to the door where she knows the loss of feathers,
she’ll find only shriveled skin no longer have to wade
and blanched collar bones, through open water.
though she’ll always try to listen
for calcified knuckles
under the floorboards.

About the Author:
Lisa Favicchia is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University and the
former Managing Editor of Mid-American Review. Her work has appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal
and Wordpool Press, among others, and is forthcoming in Rubbertop Review.

194

TRACK 18

Benjamin Schmitt

Sophie bears me to ill will Track 35
she cannot bare
the weight of her own heart They say it rains here in Seattle,
she-bears have robbed her but all I’ve ever felt are dreams dropped by clouds
with their raw fish breath
and den scents as they decided to stop wandering the skies,
of the inquisitive breeze entering military academies in attempts at practicality.
that once scattered
organized leaf piles of religion Body builder sidewalks pump irons and people,
laughing at soaked shoes. A few hundred tourists
But maybe she just kept running collectively embrace these discarded dreams, forgiving them
from everyone until
there was no one left to ask by calling them rain. But a voice proclaims,
the inquisitive breeze
lost in mind’s hurricane “I need an umbrella to stop the demons.
We’re all dead. The show Home Improvement
Then she was handed
the wreckage of the mundane was real. The Democrats are really donkeys
shards of a house and the Republicans are really elephants
unaware of its own boundaries
and we are trapped in Roman times watching these beasts
Now she can’t see us fight it out in the Coliseum.” I move towards the voice.
because she’s looking for Jesus Standing there is a well-dressed woman,
she calls a plumber and I know she is a cloud with a degree in business.
for fear he’s stuck in the drain
she swears she hears him crawling in
there
and no one can ridicule
the kind of religious eccentricity

195

Track 31 John was kind like an island
breaking a river
In one of my first jobs just to feel surrounded
I used to stare out his husband Richard
the long windows of the Osiris Theater was some sort of mad projectionist
at the girls passing by body stooped from
the windows were so long handling too many reels
my love affairs nobody liked him because of the way
would begin at the first window he awkwardly rubbed his hands
and end at the last and licked his lips
the bosses would always call me away as if he were planning
from these libidinous silent vigils to smother us with butter and salt
their punishment for these daydreams for a movie snack
was to make me change the marquee but oddly I think he saw all the kids
a blistering swirl that hated him as his children
of lights and personalities sometimes at the end of the night
as I stood with a pole they would gather us together
spelling movie names in the street and accuse us all
I stole so many Reese’s of taking money from the register
Peanut Butter Cups from that place later I found out the bosses
hiding in the dark had been embezzling
as silver bullets struck dying fires money from the theater all along
bleeding exposure on the screen all the workers stole candy so
but I liked the bosses I suppose it’s funny that all of us
an interracial gay couple were stealing from each other
somehow living in Idaho while ushering patrons
my favorite was John to their separate fantasies
whose father had moved
his family from Chicago
and abandoned them out west

196

Track 51 About the Author:

The porch light reflected on the concrete Benjamin Schmitt is the Best Book Award and
is a skeleton Pushcart nominated author of two books, Dinner
that only comes alive in the rain Table Refuge (PunksWritePoemsPress, 2015) and
flexing its fingers, grimacing, The global conspiracy to get you in bed (Kelsay
haunting our hypocrisies. Books, 2013). His new poems have appeared or
are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, The Co-
The whole wild horror begins with this, lumbia Review, The Summerset Review, and else-
faces of the undead pressed against windows where. You can read his scary stories for kids in
the Amazon Rapids app. He lives with his wife and
dripping cloud gore. A million banshees crash daughter in Seattle where he also reviews books,
and wail through headlights. The streetlamp curates a reading series, and teaches workshops
phantom gnaws at the black abyss. to people of all ages.
Goblins eat raw cat in the bushes.

Ghoulish rain death gives life.
In six months,
green will come again.
We will forget the terrors
of foggy werewolves pouncing on cars
and vampires falling from dying leaves
in hunger. And those nights

will be still, with no
surreptitious slitherings. But first
we must survive our warmth inside
cold reaches of isolation
as dry carpets murder us one by one.
It is elementals we fear
yet we lose our souls in hiding.

197

MY NOTEBOOK

Charles Dutka

Cafe’ in a Basement

This green tea
tastes like cadmium
or is it stardust
and raspberries?

Its glass container the texture
of music
and the color of
runic magic
performed on a stage
of frozen salt.

It was the temperature of that bluish light
from the lamppost between contentment
and elation. And it had the weight
of unformed rain, inside a cloud.
Or of a fly after a feast
of roaring shouts
and journal entries.

That is,
until Karen slammed the door.

198


Click to View FlipBook Version