Censors
by JILLIAN OLIVER
It’s better to let the past lie clean and cold,
yet memories swallow us up,
like my older brother’s clothes on me.
I remember his set of Civil War encyclopedias
framing his bed, tombstone-gray.
Hamlet, Goosebumps, and Britannica signaled
a bright boy of twelve who was well read.
Blood now peppers the wall above his bed, caked and oxidized,
while we’ve forgotten that at one time
his mind was more than just a piece of paper
that had folded in on itself too many times.
Before the voices took hold
and doctors took charge to tease apart the folds,
I was invited inside,
as if he wanted to walk the creases of his origami.
On one such night, we tossed glow-in-the-dark stars
on his carpet at dusk
then we leapt from the bed into space, again and again
to recapture the split second of levitation.
Then hesitation. His blue eyes drifted down.
Lips muttered something quiet yet exasperated.
I stood helpless outside his paper walls
almost hearing them crinkle
and seeing them bend closed
meekly like a flower after the sun’s gone down.
His left eye twitched, with its lopsided iris,
soon to become a symbol of his distorted mind.
Have we forgotten that his babysitter once said
he could be a professor? Does it even matter?
we see him now crouched on a street corner
beastly like a bugbear, upper incisors gone,
canines bold and sharp.
Prepare, his teacher had said, for his academic future.
Words that might as well have fallen in a storm drain.
He now holds out a meth-shaken hand for change.
And by necessity, we’ve forgotten
that this wasn’t his choice.
The encyclopedias were donated.
His aged books were long gone.
And like a censor with her tool of erasure,
I scrub with a blind sense of duty
the last flecks of blood from the wall.
Ω
Jillian Oliver is a writer from New Orleans. When she’s not working at the public library, she’s dabbling in poetry, essay writing, and watercoloring. Her work has appeared in The Dunes Review, Gargoyle Magazine, and the Quell Bell Magazine.
Sophie Avery is an undergraduate student at Smith College who dabbles in film photography.
The Walkers
by REX BROOKE
It had been over three months since Emmet had come home from the hospital where the doctors had reset the clock to his heartbeat. Against the advice of everyone except his bar buddies at Dick’s at the Bridge, where Emmett was a regular patron, Emmet went right back to drinking and losing money in a myriad of online gambling venues. He was tired all the time, and his heart would frequently thump like a tuba, and he spent his days sitting in his recliner doing crossword puzzles, thumbing through the internet, and planning his return to his acting career, which, truth be told, had never been much of a career.
Then spring arrived. The days were warm enough for the sun to transform the snow drifts into small blue tendrils of water that snaked down the sidewalks. Trash that had been buried in the long winter’s snow emerged like deformed tulips. The elms began to leaf out, and the songbirds returned, and Emmet felt for the first time since his operation the urge to try and get into some sort of physical shape. He was beginning to look like a water balloon. He thought about joining a gym, but decided there would be too many self-absorbed people. Yoga classes were out of the question. Emmet could barely cross his legs. He finally settled on the idea of starting a regime of going on walks. He would start slow and work his way back up running a 10K. The best part was it wouldn’t cost a dime. Maybe exercise would help with his lack of energy, and with his constant headaches.
On the first Monday in April, he got up from his afternoon nap, put on a clean T-shirt, pulled on a pair of blue jogging pants with a white stripe down the side, and laced up a pair of blue jogging shoes. Finally, he donned a black, zip-up hoodie, topped it all with a grey knit beanie that an old girlfriend had given him, took the elevator down to the parking garage, got into his 22-year-old Cadillac, and drove to the All Saints Cemetery. This would be the first installment on his promise to walk, every day, on the sidewalk around the perimeter of the cemetery.
The cemetery was nestled on a hump of earth, and was girded by an eight foot high chain link fence which was embedded with vines of ivy which, once they had leafed out, would provide privacy for the dead and for the various groups of mourners who cued up daily to witness the post script to the final act.
The chain link fence also deterred the teenagers and other romantics who liked to sneak in at night and make love on the graves.
Emmet parked near the front gate, where a uniformed bulldog of a guard, who looked like Cerberus himself, was sitting in a small kiosk, watching an array of live cameras on a computer screen. Emmet sat in his car waiting for break in the steady stream of pedestrians flowing past: there was a group of four joggers followed by a woman trotting behind a rather aerodynamic pram, who was followed by a middle aged couple with walking sticks, who were followed by two skate boarders doing all variety of tricks which were being videoed on a third youth’s cellphone. Finally, Emmet got out a of his car, retied his shoelaces, and began to walk slowly down the sidewalk, counterclockwise to the odd parade.
The four joggers and the pram lady passed by twice before he had completed one lap. He was exhausted. Panting, with his back aching, he was approaching the entrance gate again when he noted a woman coming toward him. He glanced at her ever so briefly. She was tall, full of right angles, and was wearing a beige, full length, down coat. Her black hair was pulled back into a short ponytail under her blue visor, showing her small ears, in which were embedded a pair of noise canceling earbuds. She was wearing dark glasses and black leather gloves and was swinging her arms like a drum major as she glided past, almost as if she were on wheels. She did not seem to look at him.
Emmet continued to his car and opened the door, but before he got in, he looked in the direction in which she was walking and watched until she had gone around the corner.
That night, Emmet lay in bed thinking about her. She reminded him a girl he had once dated, 15 years before. The one who gave him the beanie. But still, there was something in the way she moved. He began to hum an old Beatles song: “…attracts me like no other lover…”
Every day, for the rest of the week, at three o’clock, Emmet would put on his blue jogging pants and blue jogging shoes, drive to the cemetery and park as close to the gate as possible. He would then walk in a counterclockwise fashion, one time around the cemetery, silently counting his steps. By the fourth day the walk was not any easier. Every day he looked for the woman in the long coat. But she was not there.
The following Monday, however, as he ended his lap and was leaning on the trunk of his car, he saw her, coming toward him, wearing the same outfit: an ankle-length down jacket, blue visor, red shoes, dark glasses, black gloves. This time Emmet did not lower his gaze as she approached, noting her angular shoulders, her clavicle, thin as a birthday candle, and that walk, which reminded him of a square-masted sailing ship. She strode by, looking straight ahead, pumping her arms, her swinging like a seal’s flippers, counterbalancing her stride while she sang off key in a low voice what sounded like an aria from La Traveatta. Once again Emmet stood with his car door open and watched her disappear around the corner. “She has a very unusual stride,” he thought. He got in and started the car.
That night, as he lay in bed, he replayed her image in his mind—the way she swung her arms, her self-conscious gait, her red shoes. And he rehearsed how the next time he saw her, he would say something—exactly what, he couldn’t decide upon. He didn’t want to seem like a sleazy pick-up artist. “Do you mind if I ask you a question? What is your name?” No, that was too aggressive. Something more non-committal. A simple “good afternoon.” With a smile. Without a smile. But what if she wasn’t looking at him? He couldn’t just interrupt whatever she was concentrating on. Maybe he would just nod if she looked his way. No smile. Definitely no smile.
It was raining the following Monday. Not hard, but enough to require windshield wipers when he drove to the cemetery. There were very few people out. Emmet parked in his usual spot, got out, and commenced on his walk. The sidewalk was wet, but the light rain had stopped. As he turned the final corner to his lap he saw her in the distance, striding toward him. It seemed like she was looking at him, but he couldn’t tell, and by the time she passed, she was definitely looking straight ahead.
“Wow, déjà vu!” he said as she passed, but she either ignored him or couldn’t hear him through her noise cancelling earbuds, because she did not acknowledge his comment. “Don’t try to be ironic, idiot,” he said to himself.
He continued with his exercise routine for the remainder of the week but never encountered her. Monday must have been the only day she walked, he concluded.
The next Monday was the third day of a gradual warming trend. The snowbanks lining the street had now completely melted, and the vines on the chain-link fence were beginning to shutter the view of the graveyard. All morning Emmet had sat thinking again of how to approach her. Because of the way in which she walked, he had thought about asking her if she was a dancer. Maybe she had injured herself, which caused her gait to be so deliberate. He tried a few lines. “Are you a dancer?” Or “You move like you were a dancer.” Or “You move so gracefully. Were you a dancer?” Better to ask in the present tense. They can be so sensitive. Not were. Are. “Are you a dancer?” All of his questions seemed to be so obnoxious. “Don’t intrude,” he said to himself. “It will just irritate her when she is obviously concentrating on her exercise routine.” Still, what was it about her that was so intriguing?
That afternoon, Emmet dressed for the first time without his hoodie and beanie and waited by his front door until it was time to drive to the cemetery. Finding his regular parking spot taken, he had to park two blocks away from the entrance. He hurried back to the gate, and, already out of breath, began his walk, fearful that being ten minutes late would ruin his chances of an encounter.
However, when he came around the final corner, there she was, as regular as a utility bill, at the other end of the block, wearing the same uniform—the long coat, the gloves, the Jacqueline Kennedy dark glasses, moving toward him, on red shoes, arms swinging counterpoint to her stride. As they approached each other from opposite sides of the entrance gate, they had to stop and wait for the river of cars that was entering the cemetery. Between the vehicles flashed the stroboscopic image of her on the other side. She was walking in place. And she was looking right at him. Finally, the last of the funeral procession entered the gate, and Emmet and the woman resumed walking toward each other.
“Must have been a big shot,” Emmet blurted out as she passed.
She smiled over her shoulder as she continued on her way.
“Not anymore,” she said.
Dark humor, he thought. A good sign. And what a smile! Surely it was some sort of invitation. Right then, Emmet decided that the following Monday, if they crossed paths, he would ask her name. How hard could that be? He would start with something clever. “I can set my watch by you, but I don’t know your name.” Or “We can’t keep not meeting like this. I’m Emmet.” At night, he practiced these lines, over and over, and wound up admonishing himself to not try to be clever, or witty, and to just be straightforward. Whatever that was.
The next Monday arrived. The spring day seemed promising. In spite of not feeling well, Emmet started his usual walk at precisely the right time, stopping only once to watch a flock of ravens tumbling across the sky. Turning the last corner, he scanned to the end of the block and felt his feet get very heavy. There she was, standing still, looking through an opening in the ivied fence. He adjusted his gait and pressed forward. As he got closer, he could see that she was watching a group of mourners gathering around an open grave. Emmet passed her, then stopped and, rather too loudly, said, “Hello.”
“Hello,” she replied, glancing quickly at him before continuing to watch the internment.
“Nice day for a funeral,” Emmet said, and immediately regretted saying.
“Yes, it is,” she answered.
“Yes,” was all Emmet could think of saying.
“I’m Angela, by the way,” she said suddenly.
“Perfect. Of course. Angela. Emmet here,” he said, pointing to his head.
“I know, Emmet.”
“That’s me.”
They stood looking at the burial ceremony for a few awkward moments. Suddenly, she looked at Emmet. “If you could,” she said, “would you want to know exactly when you were going to die?”
“No,” he laughed. “No way.”
“That’s what most people say, Emmet.”
That was it. She looked away, put her earbuds back on, and resumed her walk.
That night, lying in bed, he wondered how she knew his name. Maybe it was just something she said. “I know, Emmet,” meant “I know someone named Emmet.” But maybe she was really interested in him, and had somehow looked up his name, from his car license plate, probably. You could find anything on the internet. He said her name. “Angela.” She had pronounced it Aun-hel-la, with a foreign emphasis. So, they were on a first name basis. Great. Finally. He then began to think of all sorts of answers he should have had for her question about knowing when he was going to die. “It is why capital punishment is so wrong.” Not a very intimate topic. How about, “I wonder what my last thought will be.” Better. He decided he would use that as an opening the next time he saw her. He would then invite her to coffee.
The following Monday, Emmet arrived early at the cemetery and waited nervously in his car until it was 3:15 p.m. exactly. He leaned forward and looked in his rear-view mirror. He arranged his hair, several times, and then got out and proceeded on his walk. There was a tingling in his left arm, and it was harder than usual to breathe. He looked at his watch. It had stopped. He shook it, hoping to jar it into life, but it was still frozen at 3:23 p.m. He started walking again. He was dizzy. He thought about turning around and going home to bed, but he had to see her. He continued, with difficulty, down the sidewalk. Before he reached the first corner, there she was, coming toward him. She was walking with her characteristic stride. Her long coat was unzipped and was fluttering like a pair of wings. He stopped, held his arms out wide, his feet suddenly light, his heart beating rapidly. He was going to embrace her. She slowed to a stop before him. She took her earbuds out.
“I am so glad to see you,” she said. She peeled her gloves off and stuffed them into her coat pocket. Her hands were the color of uncooked bacon, with talonlike fingers. She looked at the silver watch on her wrist. “3:23,” she said. “On the dot.” She removed her dark glasses. She had dark purple bruises under her eyes.
“Oh shit,” thought Emmet as he let his arms fall to his side.
Angela reached forward and with a long fingernail and touched him lightly on his shoulder. “Emmet,” she said with a slight smile, “It’s now.”
As she dragged her fingernail from his shoulder to his neck Emmet felt his heart bang against his sternum. “Déjà vu,” he said out loud. His eyes rolled back, his legs gave way and he fell forward. He was dead before he hit the ground.
Angela stepped around the body, zipped her coat back up, pulled her gloves and dark glasses back on, and, swinging her arms, strode to a long, black sedan that was parked near the entrance to the cemetery. The back door swung open. She folded herself into the back seat, pulled the door shut, and without looking back, pushed the button that rolled up the tinted window. The car slowly pulled out of the parking space, merged with the traffic and disappeared down the road.
Ω
Rex Brooke, a graduate of University of California San Diego, is recovering from twenty-five years of teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Tracy Whiteside is an award-winning, internationally exhibited fine art photographer specializing in dark art and fantasy images. Her work has been printed in fashion magazines, art editions, book covers, and literature journals. Tracy’s art primarily focuses on women’s issues and mental wellness. Learn more at tracywhiteside.com
The Land-Locked Woman Finds the Sea
by PHOEBE REEVES
I will go to the beach and touch my toes to the Atlantic.
I will become the goddess of bougainvillea,
fingernails raising the gooseflesh on every man I run
my hands over as I pass them by.
under a trellis of night-blooming jasmine,
and the flowers’ voices both opening
out of our pale throats as the moon rises.
magical, timeless,
taxes, or indigestion.
whose motion I cannot decipher from where I stand.
I will lay under a bier of white roses and float
out to sea,
into pure salt—
a block of perfume and bitterness.
that recedes and never returns.
sung by a whale in its deep loneliness where no answer
will ever come,
a hand that has never touched another’s face
in tenderness.
I will go out and never come back,
my voice and hips passing into the unadulterated
antihistory of the ocean
my memories and my fingerprints become seaweed
and salt water
and my lips turn into one last
blossom from the shore,
the horizon,
like a half-remembered line of a lost song.
Ω
Phoebe Reeves earned her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and now is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has three chapbooks of poetry, and a full-length collection, Helen of Bikini (Lily Poetry Review). Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Best New Poets, Grist, Forklift OH, and The Chattahoochee Review. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband Don Peteroy, amidst her unruly urban garden.
Discover Radoslav Rochallyi at rochallyi.com
Unboxing My Grandfather
by KIM HAYS
He left you a box,” my mother says.
“. . . who?” I’m outside my college dorm room in pajamas.
“Your grandfather, Riley,” she says. “Who do you think? He left a thousand dollars to a church he never attended and a small wooden box for you. That’s it.”
“What’s inside?” It’s been a few years since I’ve seen him.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I tried to see, but it has a special seal…just for you. The next time you’re home, go to the lawyer’s office in town.”
She hangs up.
June 1989
I am seven and the smell of alfalfa clings to my grandfather and the entire farm from the morning cuttings. We walk up a long dirt road to retrieve the mail and give my mother time to cool off.
As the farmhouse gets smaller behind us, I begin to panic. My mother seems to have shrunk away, along with the house. He takes my hand.
From inside his front pocket, I hear a bullfrog croaking.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a magic frog.”
“Can I see him?” I ask.
“No, but you can touch him.”
We stop in the middle of the hot gravel.
“Reach inside my pocket,” he says.
I slide my hand inside the front of his coveralls, checking his eyes to make sure it’s not one of those tricks adults like to play. As I go in deeper, my fingertips strike something sharp. I pull my hand back.
“It bit me.”
He doubles over with laughter. His ginger hair pushes out from his corn seed cap. From his pocket, he pulls out a long metal hair comb and shows me how to flick the tines in a special way to make the noise of a frog.
On the car ride home, I tell my mother about the magic frog in grandfather’s pocket. We don’t see him again for many years.
Item no. 1 in the box—a silver-plated hair comb.
October 1998
By now my father has fled our house, leaving me alone with my mother. From my bedroom, I hear her screaming into the rotary phone in the kitchen, “She just learned to drive Chet, and you know I won’t ever get on a tractor again.”
Chet is her older brother who lives in California. I’ve never met him. He and my mother don’t get along because a diamond ring went missing after their mother’s funeral. I see my mother wear the ring on special nights out. I find out my grandfather is sick and what is to be his last corn harvest is going rot in the fields.
We make the four-hour drive on two-laned roads to New Hope, Missouri. My mother’s cheeks flush from the wine in her travel mug. She spits fire about my grandfather as we go down the highway,
“…and he’s still ruining my life at forty-six,” she shouts.
I know I shouldn’t, but I need to know,
“Mom, how is helping your father…ruining your life?”
Her eyes go small. She cranks the wheel to the right and takes aim at a tree on the side of the road. I hang on tight to the sides of the seat. The clay dirt is softer than expected and we slide off the shoulder, spin tires, and come to rest on a slope.
“You need to shut your mouth about things a sixteen-year-old can’t know.”
When we arrive at the farmhouse, the windows are dark. We find my grandfather bent over the kitchen countertop eating chicken soup. Coughing after each bite.
Early the next morning, he promises my mother he will show me how to work the tractor and get me started. We both squeeze tight into the cab of an old red combine. He stands next to me, leans his sharp shoulder into mine. His reflection in the windshield is gray and drawn. I crunch the first few gears and lurch the tractor down one of the rows.
As we chug away in the field, we watch the harvester in front of us make the corn disappear. I keep the combine straight. His sun-cracked forearm lies touching mine on the steering wheel. Just below his left wrist is a deep oval scar in the shape of an egg. He catches me looking at it and speaks close to my ear,
“German mortar landed ten feet from us in a field in France. It was so quiet one moment I could hear bird songs from the hedges. Then so loud everything went dark. I came awake looking at my buddy Cooper’s forehead split in two pieces. Lucky.” My grandfather turns his arm away from me.
I keep focus on the rows ahead and the wide turn I have to make in a hundred yards. Nobody told me Grandpa was in the war. Was he? Or was this one of his “exaggerations” my mother always talks about?
He shows me how to dump the corn into the grain truck, and I drop him off back at the house. I watch him, thin as a cattle rod, climb back down the iron ladder.
Item no. 2 in the box—a WWII purple heart.
The third and final object in the box is problematic. It’s a key to a safety deposit box at the local bank in town.
I follow the teller down a red-carpeted hallway to a room in the back of the building. She puts a long gray strongbox on a metal table and leaves me alone.
I stand for long time in front of the box rubbing the little key between my fingers. The key makes a snap in the lock that echoes in the small space. I raise the lid and find a cashier’s check made out to my name for $800,000. Underneath the check, there’s a small handwritten note: Forgive us.
Ω
Kim Hays teaches English in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has published works in The Mid-Rivers Review, The Green Fuse Literary Journal and upcoming Fall issues of BODY and Line of Action. She is a veteran of the U.S. Army.
Rebecca Dietrich is a photographer from Woodbine, New Jersey. Her work has been featured in Welter, Seaside Gothic, Third Street Review, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Noyes Museum of Art, where two of her photographs were featured in the exhibit Homegrown Expressions: Art Members Unveiled. Rebecca holds a BA from Stockton University and is currently pursuing an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. You can follow her on Instagram @limericks_and_asphodels
Turning Forty
by RICHARD TAYLOR
My brain has turned the way a piece of fruit
turns from ripe to rotten—not on a point, a true point,
a window that sits on a dull ledge with beveled edges.
Today I read about a new therapeutic drug that may
stop our cells from aging—stop the fruit of my brain
before someone in the kitchen looks at it and says,
no one is ever going to eat this, and tosses it
into the compost bin. Truthfully speaking, this is
just the beginning for the fruit, for a rotting
apple is more biologically complex than the one
I desire. So what is consciousness other than a question
I am never supposed to ask directly, if I care to be poetic.
This evening I do not. Care to be. And many evenings
the crickets are louder than the creek, yet I can hear both.
I am also old and young, like the obscene “Congrats, you’re 40!”
grocery store birthday card. Too old for this, too young for that.
Down in the culvert a wild animal, probably a cat,
yowls and hisses, silence. Animal sex. I walk to the street.
There are no glowing eyes in the woods, no mystery
in the dark but the rubbed-out stars above
in this forsaken desert that craves rain—dirty starlight
polluted by my porch lights and all my neighbors’.
Dust to dust, so it goes, which unfairly suggests
that more than dust will linger—but not in the air.
In the desert instead, forty years waiting
for a promise that we made to ourselves.
Ω
Richard Taylor is a poet and visual artist who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. After three advanced degrees and a stint teaching at MIT, he still believes that poetry is the most compelling tool we have to understand the universe. A Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in various publications including Orchard’s, Poor Yorick, BarBar, Public Poetry, and others.
Frederick Dasinger is a transgender artist based in Arcata, California. He is currently a student at Cal Poly Humboldt studying journalism. Dasinger and other artists created Planet Zine, a magazine dedicated to celebrating the art of LGBTQ+ Sacramento artists. Dasinger’s work uses a lot of bold, contrasting colors and simple shapes contrasted with detailed forms. He is a mixed media artist who has created artwork using paint, photography, film, music, poetry, ceramics, fabric, and more.
Now Try Coughing
by KEVIN PARKS
The last time I saw my father, he entered feet-first through the bathroom window. A clumsy, uninvited—though, to me, not unwelcome—outlaw eyeing one last score.
“Jimbo! Shit, son,” he caught his breath and dusted window debris off his pants, startled at his own surprise. “Didn’t expect you!”
“At home?”
“Well, sure, on a Saturday afternoon.” He shut the window and gathered the remaining particles, scattered evidence of his intrusion. He walked past me and into the kitchen, wiping his hands together over the sink. “Say, what’s with the tux?”
“Talent show is next week,” I said. I kept a few feet back, not sure where he was bouncing to next. “I was waiting for Burt to call so we could rehearse.”
“Dress rehearsal? Over the phone?”
My father squinted and jabbed a nail-less pinky into his ear, digging deep to cleave some wax off his brain and regulate his thinking. Hard of concentration, my father was sensitive to sounds and distractions of any kind, and he turned the volume down on the TV, sneaking in a quick chuckle at the Muppets. His valiant Kermit and my relentless Miss Piggy. His Statler and my mother’s Waldorf.
“Your mother at work?” He knew this.
“Yes, only for another hour or so.” I tried to hide the warning in my voice, but my slouched posture yelped discomfort.
Moving through the parlor, wordlessly but with an eyebrow raise and wink at me, my dad inched toward the bedroom, his back pinned against the wall, mimicking a stealth criminal. When he knocked cautiously on the bedroom door, though, it was a defeatist’s gesture, simultaneously acknowledging his marriage’s failure and utter absence as a parent. I turned away and scoped out the living room, giddy to assume the role of a lookout, a complicit partner in his swindle. Outside, he’d parked his sad, gray car on the sidewalk, signaling his infrequent visitor status. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in months, and I hadn’t asked my mom, not for fear of upsetting her, but because she might confirm my worst fears.
“A-ha!” my father shouted from the room. “This’ll do.”
“Sharp,” I said. I sized him up, his short-sleeved Tommy Bahama shirt appropriate for the September climate, yet for what this’ll do meant, I had no idea. He stepped into a pair of pleated Dockers and grabbed keys from the front hall closet.
“Well, I’ll have to settle for second-best dressed in the house today,” he said. He stepped out the front door, lunging towards the finish line, his victory—an efficient escape—now in his grasp.
“See you next week?” I asked, and he saw through the innocence of the question, interpreting it as a provocation or a needling reminder.
“Birthday lunch!” he cawed after a meaningful pause. “You bet, pal. Ribs, appetizer samplers, and all the friggin’ soda you can guzzle.”
We both froze, silently communicating our disappointment: mine because he was leaving, and his because I wouldn’t leave him alone. I stood taller, my father’s shoulders bunched up, and he extended a hand, yanking me outside.
“C’mon, fancy guy,” he pulled my other shoulder and rustled my bowl cut. “I gotta greet our new neighbor. Be my wingman, k?”
On the walk over, I kept pace with my dad’s hurried, ambitious strides. The house was diagonal to ours, less than a football field away, but the new-money sheen glistened a tacky, haughty glow. Since closing on the home in the summer, the Builder family’s front lawn and driveway had seen a constant flow of contractor activity during the weekdays, and especially on weekends. Tree stumps and wheelbarrows of cement led from the curb up to the front steps, all evoking a brand of superiority my father found disgusting: pre-renovation, the modest split-level had been identical to ours.
Granted, my father hadn’t been around to notice this. And his tucked-in shirt, cupped hands, and picture-day smile to greet the Builder patriarch suggested an artless dodger on the make, in pursuit of a favor or a friend. I clenched my sphincter, frightened at how my father might approach this hulking, handsome man with effortlessly coiffed hair, an upwardly mobile WASP who might’ve found employment at an investment bank after a brief stint modeling underwear.
Some people rise to the occasion, summoning grit and gusto to meet the moment. Others wither, succumbing to intimidation and the gravity of a charged encounter. My father told jokes. At his father’s funeral, he batted away any grief and sincere emotional outreach with a protective war chest of old-timey zingers (“So he says to me, ‘I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith.’ Then I says to him, ‘what’s the name of his other leg?’”). Leaving our house that summer after a wicked verbal brawl with my mom, he called me out to his car and shouted the very punchline he was about to deliver to Roland Builder.
“Now try coughing!” He cued a stolid Roland, and I giggled to erase the silence. My father’s next move was to explain, which only widened the social distance between them. “That’s the joke the husband told. While he was dying! Smacked into a tree—wham! Killed him and his daughter instantly. What a movie! What a joke.”
“Oh, I love comedies,” Roland said, glancing at his watch. “I just don’t go to the movies much these days. Kids keep me pretty busy.”
“Kids, plural! That’s fantastic. Alls I got is my boy Jimbo here.” My father uncrossed my arms, guiding my right hand towards Roland’s.
“Jimbo,” Roland said curiously. “You’re in Dora’s grade, yes?”
“Uh huh,” I shook his hand and returned to my father’s side. “Same homeroom.”
“Yes! That’s it. I swear I recognized your last name. Not your first, though. You go by a nickname in class, yes?”
My father’s face turned down, then twitched toward me, channeling and repressing disappointment that should’ve been directed inward, but instead, shot like a laser at me. And yet, a simple explanation would have cleared any tension: ahead of the talent show, Burt and I insisted that our peers call me “Statler” and call Burt “Waldorf,” the bickering curmudgeons we had been rehearsing and would be performing as in front of the entire school.
“Nicknames, what a phase,” my dad said. Wounded but resolute, he turned back to Roland. “When I was young, I wanted my parents to call me Catfish! Like the pitcher! No dice. My mom was so upset, she started to call me by my middle name: Winston. Ugh!”
“Nice to meet you, Winston.” Roland extended a hand.
“Jimmy,” my father’s chubby, hairy hand swaddled Roland’s sleek digits. “Duh, fucko I am. I gab so much, forgot why I came over here at all! First step: introduce myself. Check! Second step: welcome a new neighbor to the block.”
My father fondled his back pocket, uncovering his slender wallet, the aging brown leather worn, bereft of currency and character. Roland peeked overhead, sensing the improvisation at play, anxious for the charade’s big reveal. Working against the clock ticking in his head, my father retrieved a slip of paper in comparatively acceptable condition, surprising himself when he unveiled a Chili’s gift card.
“From us,” my father said. He pointed at me but avoided eye contact, a tacit admission that he was giving away something intended for me or for our phantom future meal.
“Kind of you,” Roland saluted me and smiled down at my dad, looking like he tasted throw-up. “Apologies, I really must be going.”
“Say, can I ask a personal question?” My father asked. He accepted Roland’s pursed lips as an affirmative response. “What’d you pay for this home? Gah. No, no, no, no. Throw the flag, ref! Fuck me, right? Sorry, Rol. Not cool.”
“Quite all right,” Roland shielded his discomfort with a giant, toothy smile. “All part of the public record anyway, right?”
“Reason I ask?” My father stepped down from the steps, guiding Roland’s eyes towards our house, still in the line of sight but a sad pittance compared to Roland’s shrine. “Would you believe that your house and mine looked exactly alike?”
“You’re kidding,” Roland said, but not in the conversation-filler tone. My father flinched, unmoored at the sudden shift in tone. “Oh, maybe you forgot. It was a long shot anyway. I reached out this summer, offering to buy that house of yours!”
Another blow to the old man’s moxie, and my father couldn’t hide the confusion, the unbridled loneliness of a caregiver willingly kept out of the loop, fitfully insisting that he doesn’t care anymore that the loop sealed shut. I picked a patch of dirt to stare at while Roland squished his cheeks, wincing and processing that he might’ve said something he shouldn’t have.
“Hey, that’s marriage for you,” my father said, gathering the rubble of the conversation, daring to reroute it. “It’s an open, transparent partnership until it ain’t!”
“Preaching to the choir,” Roland said. He rubbed two hands together, and my father stared at his ringless left hand. “Practically had to beg my ex to let Dora spend an extra day here.”
“Crock of shit,” my father lamented, and then covered his mouth, an exaggerated oopsie. “Language, forgive me. Blame the day job. I cuss like a friggin’ sailor.”
“Not to worry,” Roland said. His demeanor softened at his brother in spousal grievance. “I work on a trading desk. You have no idea the crap I hear there.”
“Trading desk!” My father perked up, tempering the devil-may-care smile which betrayed the secret that of course I knew you were Wall Street! “Now I’m worried we might have too much in common, Rol!”
“Yeah? Buy side, or sell?”
“I’m a hunter, Rol, not a gatherer,” my father said, grabbing Roland’s wrist. Sensing that he overreached, my father released Roland and backpedaled onto the lawn, nearly tripping into the wet cement of the walkway. “Man, look at this house. I know it’s a work in progress, but what a work, what progress!”
Roland bowed his head to thank my father, then looked over his shoulder, hoping Dora was passing through so he could excuse himself. Undaunted, my father continued.
“That house? I bought it during the S&L crisis.” My father paused, then smacked my back, connecting with my shoulder blades. A bitter, unloving blow. “No, junior, not Saturday Night Live.”
“Great timing,” Roland congratulated my father, sparing any hint of irony.
“You bet. Best investment I ever made. Ten years later, what do I have to show for it? The equity, up two-fold, maybe three-fold, and it’s trapped! My share of the house is being held hostage. Pleading, begging for oxygen, a little liquidity. And I’m like, please, equity, talk to my soon to be ex about that!”
“Golden handcuffs,” Roland said. He clapped his wrists together. “When the Nasdaq sold off last year, I tried to tap our HELOC so I could buy more stock, but of course, no bank would lend to the splitting half of a marriage, no matter how punitive the rate.”
“Vultures!” My father’s head whipped at the indignity. “Meanwhile, the market’s fully recovered, and still, credit’s tight and rates are up.”
“The easy money has been made.”
“Crooks,” my father offered, an empty grievance leveled out at the world, ready for any culpable party to accept it. “Can I level with you? When I saw you move in, I had my mind made up about you. All the renovation, the nice new car, the friggin’ Port-o-John for the hired help. I figured: Wall Street. So, my plan was—was!—to waltz over here and axe you for a job.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not so sure.” My father paced the finished brick walkway. “Instead of a favor, I’m wondering if maybe we could help each other?”
“Sure, Jimmy, maybe we could talk about it all another time?”
“Pardon the sales pitch. And beware the sales guy promising an investment, not a loan! An opportunity, not a favor! But for real, Roland. We met today for a reason. I’m not gonna say it’s fate, but it’s something like it.”
“Huh?” Roland yelled upstairs, where I saw Dora peeking through blinds. “Okay, sweetie.” I hadn’t seen her lips move. There had been no audible sign she was trying to wrangle her father.
“Think about it,” my father continued. “Instead of borrowing at Prime plus to buy into a rigged stock market, how about you lend at Prime plus against an asset you know? An asset you tried to buy? An asset which is set to jump in value since, hello! A savvy new home buyer just printed an identical comp months ago. And a couple of dozen grand above market!”
Roland pondered the offer, giving it the minimum level of feigned interest. He put his hand on the side of the door and reached for my father’s, a universal signal that he would think about it.
“Yeah, no need to answer now,” my father said. “I mean, really, this is kind of like insider trading! You make the loan to me against my half of the house, and then, plop—you see a realtor sign out front in a few months. Divorce clears, house sells, I repay the loan plus interest, and a kicker, maybe? Ah, I dunno. Anyway, Rol. Welcome to the block. Chili’s on you next time?”
My father pointed at Roland’s pocket, where he might’ve stashed the gift. Then he took off towards the house, and Roland waited until we were in the street—seeing us off not as a courtesy, but a precaution—to shut the door. I jogged to catch up, nearly tripping over my father’s back feet when he stopped suddenly in front of his Oldsmobile.
“What was that about?” my father shout-whispered, opening the car door and keeping his head down.
“I know, right?” I said. I waited for him to turn around so I could interpret his ambiguous question. Instead, he sunk into the seat, pulled the door closed and begrudgingly penetrated the ignition with the key.
Poor me! He must’ve thought. Poor him! I can grant him now, at some remove, an inability to articulate his fears, to attach words to feelings that don’t so much boil over as they do swirl around inside his stomach, until he finds a tail he can chase long enough to forget the litany of injustices waged against him. Still, my love for him swallowed any self-pity or clear-headedness about his juvenile behavior. And so just as the car was about to putter away, I hopped into the passenger seat, clutched my father’s hand, and grinned like a maniac, the piercing blue sky ahead of us an on-the-nose symbol of our future.
What actually happened wasn’t that at all. My father gave one last disapproving look at my tux and imitated my “I know, right?” in a pitchy squeal. And then he sped off as fast as his decaying clunker would allow. Frozen in that moment, I thawed out and approached the front door and could hear the phone ringing. Burt or my mom. It could only be them, but I couldn’t get in. I faintly remembered my father snatching the back-up keys. I would have to enter the same way he had come in earlier, through the bathroom window in the backyard.
On the slow walk back there, I labored to declutter my mind of its surfeit of teenage angst, ennui and overall suckiness. Despite my effort to keep my dad’s antics out of my skull, I heard his voice in there, retelling the same joke he used—in lieu of an introduction—on Roland earlier.
A patient has a chronic cough. She visits a doctor, telling him she’s tried everything! Nothing works! The doctor pauses, scribbles into a notebook, then holds a finger up. A-ha! Doctor picks up the phone, and in minutes, a nurse walks into a room and hands the patient a folded brown paper bag.
“Voila,” the doctor nods his head.
“A laxative?” The flummoxed patient asks. “For a cough?”
“Yes,” my dad’s voice shouted into my ears. “Now try coughing!”
At this point, my mind had redirected my body away from the house, willing it towards Roland’s yard. A bossy autumnal wind ushered me past the Builders’ home, where both Roland and his daughter stared at me behind curtains. That same gust vaulted me away from the cul-de-sac onto the side of highway, and into a strip mall parking lot three miles from home, where my father’s car was double parked amid a bevy of open spots.
The Chili’s logo lit up, blasting garish green and reds, serving as both invitation and warning. The pre-dinner crowd was sparse and predictable, mostly older couples and bargain-seeking solo diners. I scanned from the inside for a table where my tux wouldn’t single me out, until I saw my dad seated alone, a polished plate in front of him, alongside an untouched glass of cube-less water.
“Just one, pal?” A multi-tasking server breezed past, but I was focused on my father.
“Sure, just me,” I responded, watching my father gather his two sets of keys, dab a napkin to his lips, and sneak out the restaurant’s back door. The bill lay unpaid on his table, a final grift complete, while the waiter disappeared behind the kitchen’s saloon-style doors. That was the last time I saw my father.
Ω
Kevin Parks is a freelance writer and film critic whose writing has been published on Drunk Monkeys and The Movie Buff. He is also working on a debut collection of short stories. Kevin lives in New York with his partner, their daughter, and their dog.
Enrique García is a proud (dis)-abled person of color who has persevered despite many mental and physical health complications. He recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His photography, poetry, and prose can be found in various issues of Transfer Magazine. Overall, his artistic style gravitates towards the surreal, undefinable, and absurd nature of living in a paradoxical world, where hope is minimal and pain is in excess.
IOU
by HUNTER PRICHARD
By the time I’d gotten to the restaurant, waiters were loosening their neckties. A hostess sat at the bar having a glass of wine and busboys snuffed and removed candles from the emptying tables. At a table in the back of the dining room, my grandmother grinned and waived her hands about. Besides her, Chipper bobbed his head, like he was having the time of his life. The table still contained the remnants of what had been a lavish dinner—a manager stiffly lingered to clear the plates, despite Grandma shooting him hard looks. I saw this from the front, as I paused to exchange apologetic words with the maître ‘d. I watched Grandma motion Chipper towards the bottle of wine, demanding that he pour another glass.
Chipper willingly did so. He hadn’t any idea how to refuse her. I knew little of him, only that he was a happy-go-lucky man who’d wanted a life in the theatre, but hadn’t talent to make it, nor the wisdom for ordinary employment. He liked talking of various “projects” he was involved in, but he hadn’t much going on except a role as my grandmother’s personal assistant and driver. She was a producer with esteem, and maybe he thought she would give a chance someday. Who knows? I was taken to shows as a child, but never could I make heads or tails of art. I eventually settled in a more practical line. The only thing I knew was that gullible failures like Chipper depressed me. All my life, Grandma had been collecting and discarding such people. I doubt she paid Chipper much for his effort. Never for a day had she ever respected him.
Neither did I. Nobody much could. There wasn’t anything to dislike about him, but the way he spoke about his life was much too optimistic and cheery for a man who hadn’t much in life but a car and a working body and a shelf of scripts left unread. When I was in an all right mood, I could muster enough graciousness to chitchat about whatever he was up to. I used to waste my time getting bitter when Grandma insulted him in front of others. But that was pointless. Chipper hadn’t any nerve and whatever distress or embarrassment he felt he kept well hidden. He stammered and often cleared his throat.
He’d called me as I was getting ready for bed. There was much for me to do tomorrow, and I wouldn’t have picked up any call if it not him. Like usual, he acted like nothing was up and stammered out some small talk about some French bistro that’d recently opened and how his girlfriend wanted to try something called andouillette.
“How was the premier?” I asked to cut the chatter.
Yeah, Chipper told me. Grandma had had a wearing day for a woman of nearly eighty. There’d been a luncheon in the morning with the players, then interviews with the press. Grandma drank two glasses of beer with lunch and had a brandy during the show. She’d taken the whole lot of them out to dinner at an old-fashioned steak restaurant down by the harbor and ordered every dish off the menu. Now, the actors and the theater director had shoved off and it was just him and her sitting there, and would I mind coming out for a drink?
I now stood with the maître ‘d, nodding an acknowledgement toward Chipper’s raised hand. Around us the final patrons were wrapping up their evenings, and I sensed the tense impatience of the staff as they removed tablecloths, stacked chairs, and polished silverware for the following evening. As I quickened to the back of the dining room, my grandmother was instructing the manager with a crooked finger.
“Good to see you, Billy,” Chipper said with a stretched smile.
I bent over Grandma with the best smile I could give her. Her eyes were grey and her thin, veiny hand desperately clung to the stem of the wine glass.
“We’ve had a big day,” Chipper said. “Haven’t we?”
“Thanks for sticking around,” I told him, staring down at my grandmother and then shaking out a little, comforted that she wasn’t as bad off as usual.
Grandma asked me what I wanted to drink and rolled her eyes when I shook my head. I tried taking the wine from her, but she kept too sturdy a grip that I would’ve broken the glass. She cursed and then, a moment later, she was cuddled up to me like a kitten.
It’d been a good show, she told me. Everyone had stomped and shouted with joy. The more she talked, the more she had tricked herself into believing she’d been the play’s writer – that she’d not only been one of the actors, but the very lead – that she’d directed it too. I let her go on with it. Gradually, her hand rested on my knee and moved up the inside of my leg.
“I can spot a hit from a mile away,” she whispered into my ear. “Been in the business long as I have, you know a hit. I know everything in the world about a hit.”
“It sure is late,” Chipper sighed.
“Maybe for you,” she told him. “Go home to your mother then.”
“No, no,” Chipper said, his smile tight. “Probably should get home to my girlfriend, you know? Better apologize for cancelling our date.”
“Shut up, Chipper.”
Chipper laughed a little. “Maybe I’ll take her out tomorrow.”
“Shut up, Chipper,” Grandma said again. Then she giggled. “Your girlfriend? I thought I was your girlfriend. You have a girlfriend other than me?”
“Well, I don’t –” he stuttered, not sure how to proceed.
“Kidding!” Grandma shouted. “What? Chipper, did you believe me? You sure are gullible. I bet I could tell you this glass of wine was water and you’d believe me.”
“No, of course, I wouldn’t,” Chipper said, trying to keep his grin.
“You probably would. You believe everything I say. Chipper believes everything I say.” She drank the wine delicately, bringing the glass up to her mouth with both hands like a child would with hot cocoa. “I got plenty of boyfriends myself. Always had and always will.”
“You’ve lived quite a life,” Chipper said. “I sure love your stories.”
“Stories? Yeah, I got a lot of them.”
“I love hearing them,” he said, trying to regain his spirits.
“I can’t tell, Chipper, not to a nice little boy like you.” She winked at me. “All he does is stand around waiting for me to tell him what to do.” This amused her and her face swelled. “You’re a handsome boy,” she mumbled, patting down my hair. “Want an autograph?”
“It’s late,” I told her. “The restaurant is closing now.”
“Bet they want an autograph. The help.”
“The waiters only want to go home,” I said. “I say we go home too.”
“I’m sure tired,” Chipper sighed in agreement. “Got to see my girlfriend –”
“Shut up, Chipper,” she told him. “You go see your girlfriend. But I’m not ready to go yet.” She rested her head on my shoulder, and again, her hand rested on my knee. “I’m having a good time. I worked hard to put on that play, writing the whole damn thing and playing the parts and they better celebrate me for it. You’re celebrating, aren’t you?”
“We’re celebrating.” Chipper looked about. “Looks like the party is about wrapped up. Don’t you think?” He paused, then wheezed, “I believe it is.”
“Chipper needs to be going home,” I said. “Everyone does.”
“Not everyone,” Grandma said. “Don’t you want to celebrate?” She sighed, as she pushed herself closer to me. “Handsome boys like you better enjoy themselves, or else they’ll get all lame and boring. Like Chipper, you know?”
“Chipper has had a long night,” I whispered. “We all need to be going home.”
“Home?”
“Home. That’s right. Aren’t you tired?”
“Why would I be tired?”
“You’ve had a long day,” I said again. “You need to be up early for the show tomorrow.”
“I could stay out all night. Couldn’t be less tired if you paid me. Not unless you paid me well.” She laughed. “You should hear some of my nights from when I was a kid. A kid like you. Don’t you want to hear them? All the trouble I got myself mixed up in?”
Chipper should’ve gone to get the car, but he was too timid, and only sat tensely, giving me frantic looks. For a moment, I was too preoccupied plucking Grandma’s hand off my knee. She wriggled like a leech, her eyes intent and mischievous.
“Let’s get going home,” I told her, my voice clear and cold.
“Only if you’re coming, too.” She yawned. “Night isn’t over yet.”
“You need to be up early tomorrow for the play, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Chipper said. “It’ll be an early morning tomorrow. Won’t it?”
“Shut up, Chipper,” Grandma said out of the corner of her mouth. “You look like you have a lot of things on your mind,” she whispered to me. “Why don’t you tell them to me.”
“Not tonight,” I said. “I can see you for breakfast in a few days.”
Her hand felt large and sanctioned on my leg, and she took a deep breath, as if she were to say something profound. Then the last of her nerves snapped, and she folded over, her head flat on the table, a soft sound whirring from her nostrils.
“Sorry about all this,” Chipper told me.
“Why’re you sorry?” I said, and awakened Grandma with a soft shove.
We stood Grandma to her feet. She was willing, though her feet lagged as we walked her across the room towards the door, and often she would stop and stand frozen, as if slapped across the face, and look about with a wild, fearful expression. There were only a few tables left of people, and they turned away from us. The waiters, too, gave us wide berth. When Grandma stumbled, it was only due to Chipper’s attentive grip around her waist that kept her from falling.
“Get the car,” I told Chipper once we’d gotten her seated in a small chair by the door.
Chipper did so without response, and, as I settled myself in a small crouch beside Grandma, I shook my head, annoyed at his obedience. I looked out the window for him, but he’d gone around the corner, likely down to the nearby garage where the car was.
“Where we off to now?” Grandma asked me.
“Getting you home.”
“Coming home with me, handsome boy? You’d better. For the after party, you know?”
“I don’t think there’ll be any after party tonight,” I said.
“There’s always an afterparty. Isn’t there?”
“Chipper is getting the car. He’ll take you home.”
“Coming along, I bet.”
“Not tonight,” I told her, sensing the perceptive eyes of the maître ‘d. “No after party.”
“Handsome, rich boys like you always liked the after parties the best of all. I know so.” She grinned a little. “After all the squares and losers go home to their mothers.”
“There won’t be any more parties tonight,” I said, peering deep into her face. Then I whispered, “You had a good day, didn’t you? It’s an amazing success, your play.”
“Success calls for a little amusement,” she warbled. “Want to come celebrate with me?”
“Not tonight.”
“Have to get up early tomorrow?” Grandma burrowed her head against my shoulder. “Busy people need to be in the morning, I guess. Busy, important people. Me too, you know.”
“That’s right.” I stood her up, seeing Chipper’s blue car coming cautiously down the street. “Chipper was nice to have stayed up so late for you. Make sure you thank him.”
“Chipper?”
“Chipper. That’s right. He was good to stay up this late with you.”
“Oh, that Chipper hasn’t anywhere to be.” She laughed, expecting me to join her.
“Chipper was going to take his girlfriend to dinner.” I helped her up. “He was kind to have stayed out with you, and to make sure you’re getting home safely.”
“You come home with me,” she mumbled.
“Not tonight.”
She paused in motion and gave me a long look. Her eyes expanded from vague amazement into that of a pierced concentration. “I’m not so old, you know? Not so old at all. People think so. I’m not. You come home with me. Why don’t you, handsome boy?” She tried to grin, but already, sobriety was cracking through, and hardening. “Guess I’m tired though. Too late, isn’t it? Too old or something?” She looked away.
Chipper stood beside the parked car, scrunching his hair back and forth with his fingers. He looked about as old and tired as Grandma as I brought her out to the street, but he hopped awake and rushed to help her into the backseat. I stepped back a little, watching him hustle and bustle to get her belted and comfortable.
“I guess she’s feeling better,” Chipper said, smiling naturally as he stood up.
“That’s right.”
“She was sure drunk when I called you. Making a bit of a scene, you know? Sorry about it, making you come down to take care of her.”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.” I stepped away from him, not liking the smile he gave me. Then I turned back, my hand reaching for the wallet in my pocket. “I don’t have any cash on me,” I mumbled. “If you wait here, I can go to the ATM.”
“That’s alright,” Chipper said, turning his head.
“It’s only down the block. I’ll be back quickly.”
Chipper shuffled in place, refusing to look at me. “You don’t have to.”
“She’ll pay you all right for tonight?”
“Oh, I’m always fine for money,” Chipper said, a choke in his throat. “The money doesn’t matter to me. Well, she always makes sure to write a check.”
“Are you getting enough?”
“Of course, of course!” he said, almost desperately. “Sorry for bothering you about it. I mean, calling you down here. It’s gotten late.”
“I’m her grandson,” I told him. My arms were crossed. “I should be the one to help.”
“Oh, well,” he said with a little smile. “I owe you one.”
I stood there with my arms crossed and stared at her crumpled figure through the black car window. I almost thanked him once more and told him I’d get him some money if he needed it. But he’d started the car, and I only stood there, dumbly, until the car had disappeared. I suppose I’d figured it wouldn’t matter much, whatever else I was going to say.
Ω
Hunter Prichard is a writer from Portland, Maine.
Mike Callaghan’s work focuses on fragmentation, rearrangement and reinterpretation—considering the cycles of self-preservation and mortality—when frameworks of relationships are at once prominently visible and exhaustively hidden. Mike’s work has been published in ZYZZYVA, NonBinary Review, Rhino Poetry, and The Shanghai Literary Review. His work has also appeared in the Griffin Museum of Photography, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Soho Photo Gallery, and PhotoIreland. He earned an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Sustained by Faith
by RYAN CLARK
for the early settlers of Olustee, Oklahoma
Search the river for a sign of you
and find mud that shifts where a foot
fits to the bank. Our gods came
to meet us here, found the churches
we built among the rust we homesteaded.
There is a spiritual labor in
reforming land as we wish to see it,
a method of reason founded in a need
to hope for something after.
Greer held its head underneath the water
of the Red and its forks, returned to the day
a renewed breath unfrozen of doubt.
This assembled fort is a group portrait
where early settlers gathered among
edges of fear and rationed time,
holding each other with crossed buildings
hung over vast rivers of horizon.
The fish at the river move unbaptized
among the feet of a faithful stock,
of those in fellowship who reach
toward a mass swirling with a full love,
and here is a union trying to make a life
in a hard vice of drought. Here
among floodwaters a child talking
to a god directly above her. Such is the care
we need to feel safe in an uncontrolled day,
a vision against the crush of expanse.
Ω
Ryan Clark writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation. He’s the author of Arizona SB 1070: An Act (Downstate Legacies), How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press), and Suppose / a Presence (Action, Spectacle). His poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, Cherry Tree, The Offing, Interim, and Copper Nickel. A Texoma native, he currently lives in North Carolina with his partner and two cats.
Afiwa Afandalo is a NYC research-based visual artist from the Bronx and Togo. Through her art, she tells the beautiful and complex stories of Black girls and Black women from across the globe. Her work has been shown in magazines such as the Black In Colors Magazine at Lehigh University and the Furrow Magazine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Self-portrait as a backyard
by COURTNEY HITSON
Start with the slow cascade of helicopting
samara seeds, my unsprouted iterations eager
to maroon their source and start
elsewhere. Then, those rank and epic oopsies
of dogshit, their consolations of fertilizer.
The tight-lipped clothes line, waiting
to smirk in surrender to a family
of fat crows or flirting squirrels
or another invasive fleet of laughing, painfully
loveable parrots.
Aged shuttlecocks, abandoned by paddles
of debates, unresolved. Violas and their velvety
plies of petals, mom-hunting and soaked
in purple-want.
The entire place doused in soap-stick
remnants: daydreams. Sirenesque
stampede of bubbles, unrelenting
with their shells of iridescent film, to coax
me towards rainbows, not-there.
Ω
Courtney Hitson teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. She currently has work forthcoming in Kestrel Review and Flyway Journal. Outside of writing she enjoys history, freestyle unicycling, and philosophy. Courtney and her husband, Tom (also a poet), reside in Key West, Florida, with their two cats.
Gerburg Garmann is a former professor of Global Languages and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University of Indianapolis, USA. Her scholarly publications appear in English, German, and French in international journals. Her artwork and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies around the world. She specializes in creating art for women.
What Should Be the Goal?
By ALEXANDER BAKER
To rise, perhaps—yes, that is what we’ve said.
To climb from caves and carve our laws in stone,
to name the stars and feed the unfed dead,
to cast our voices far beyond the bone
of Earth, into the waiting void of night,
to build a world where none must kneel alone—
and yet, behind each age’s gift of light,
a shadow lingers, whispering the cost
of all we dreamed, and all that we made right.
Should it be joy? Or peace? Or reason’s throne?
To end the lash, the chain, the rule of fear?
To still the war within the blood and bone?
Yet even now, the same old gods appear—
new faces on the same corrupting fire.
And still we shout: “The better age is near!”
Each age burns bright with purpose and desire,
but leaves behind a ruin for the next
to lift, again, from ash and funeral pyre.
Perhaps the goal is not to seek the best,
but rather learn to bear what must be borne.
To give the child a sky in which to rest.
To plant a tree where tyrants would have sworn
the soil was dead and nothing good would grow.
To leave the sword, and mend what has been torn.
To shape a song from all we do not know—
and let it guide, not bind, the path ahead,
a flame we carry, not a torch to throw.
Or is it love, that old and quiet thread
that weaves through empires, famine, birth, and rain?
To hold another’s hunger in your bread,
to meet the eye and recognize the same
brief fire within the ribs, the same cold doubt.
To hold to good when no one speaks your name—
and find in that some sacred way out
of all the thrones we build, then burn again.
Could love be all this death is all about?
We do not know. But still, we rise and bend—
and write with blood what no one can rescind.
Ω
Alexander “Al” Scott Pearce Baker is a naturalist, painter, and writer based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His poems have appeared in The Lucky Lizard, Oddball Magazine, and Marrow Magazine; his short fiction has been published in Flash Phantoms and Dark Harbor Magazine. His academic work on philosophy, natural history and mythology has been published or is forthcoming with Routledge, Bloomsbury, McFarland Books, and Teaching Philosophy.
Asem Moustafa Ahmed is a New Jersey-based artist with Egyptian heritage born in Marrakech, Morocco. After moving to Jersey City at age nine, he developed a passion for art that led him to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and earn his MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Working across painting, portraiture, and sculpture, Asem creates expressive figurative works that reflect the textures, colors, and cultural richness that have shaped his life.