Black Fox Literary Magazine Issue #14 by Black Fox

Black Fox Literary Magazine is a print and online literary magazine published biannually.

Copyright ÂŠ 2016 by Black Fox Literary Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Written and artistic work included in Black Fox Literary Magazine may not be reprinted or reproduced in any electronic or print medium in whole or in part without the consent of either the writer/artist or founding editors. Issue 14 Cover Art (Shame) by April Mansilla ISBN: 978-1-365-31880-1

Editorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Note

We are writing to you after five years of publication history and six years of existence! A celebration indeed. During this reading period we were surprised, yet again, by the number of submissions in our queue. Never have we had a tougher time deciding on what work to include in the magazine. Our submission period in a snapshot: late nights, including a FaceTime meeting that started at midnight and lasted until 2:30 AM, hundreds of notes in our submissions managing system and an insane amount of coffee. It is always important to us to end our editorial letters on a note of gratitude. What we have learned on our journey is that we must always be humble. We cannot do any of this without the people who never waver in their support of our little magazine. That means contributors, readers, the independent bookstores that carry our magazine, and staff members who work tirelessly to make sure that we put out good work. So thank you to all of you. Thank you for believing in our mission, for taking a chance with us, for settling in for the long haul. We hope you love Issue #14 just as much as we do. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to five years and many more.

-The Editors Racquel, Pam and Marquita

Meet the BFLM Staff: Founding Editors: Racquel Henry is first and foremost a writer. She is also a parttime English Professor and owns the writing center, Writer’s Atelier, in Winter Park, FL. Racquel writes literary, women’s, and recently YA fiction in hopes of having a novel published sometime in the near future. She also enjoys reading a variety of genres, and is currently obsessed with flash fiction. She earned an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Blink-Ink, The Rusty Nail, Lotus-Eater Magazine, The Best of There Will Be Words 2014 Chapbook, and Moko Caribbean Arts & Letters, among others. You can follow her writing journey on her blog, “Racquel Writes.” Pamela Harris lives in Greensboro, NC and spent seven years as a middle school counselor. Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Counselor Education Department at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. When she's not molding the mind of future school counselors, she’s writing contemporary YA fiction (and has also recently started writing middle grade). Some of her favorite authors are Ellen Hopkins, Courtney Summers, Roxane Gay, and Stephen King. You can also find her at the movie theaters every weekend or pretending to enjoy exercising. She received her MFA in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2012, and her PhD in Counselor Education at the College of William and Mary. Marquita "Quita" Hockaday lives in Williamsburg, VA. She is an adjunct professor who has never been able to shake her love of writing and reading. There is always, always a book near her. Marquita is currently enjoying writing young adult (historical and contemporary)—and most recently wrote her first middle grade novel with co-editor, Pam. Some of her favorite authors are Laurie Halse Anderson, Blake Nelson, Cormac McCarthy, and Joyce Carol Oates. Marquita also graduated with an MFA in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2012,

and is working on finishing her PhD at the College of William and Mary. Copy Editor & Reader: Elizabeth Sheets is a freelance editor and writer, and Managing Editor for Population Research and Policy Review. Elizabeth received a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Arizona State University. Some of her favorite writers are Stephen King, Anne Rice, Aimee Bender, Dan Chaon, and Stacey Richter. Her work appears in Kalliope â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A Consortium of New Voices and in Black Fox Literary Magazine. Interviews Editor: Alicia Cole is a poet and fiction writer. She edits for Rampant Loon Press, and has interviewed for Bitch Magazine and motionpoems. Her creative writing is forthcoming in Vagrants Among Ruins, Torn Pages Anthology, Gadfly Online, The Dawntreader, and Lakeside Circus. She spends much of her time either freelancing or playing with a menagerie of animals. Readers: Donna Compton lives just outside of Washington, D.C. and recently graduated from the University of Maryland University College with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology. She began taking creative writing courses a few years ago, with a focus on short stories. Currently, she's reading and writing a lot of flash fiction. Her other favorite genres include literary fiction, mystery, thriller, science fiction, and fantasy.

Contents: Fiction Waiver by Gwen Goodkin (9) Aunt Peg by J.B. Howard (18) Hands Heal by Rebecca Bartels (40) The Things That Came with the Dress by Aracelis González Asendorf (88) Boy by Courtney Bird (112) Fairgrounds by Elizabeth Mastrangelo (134) Poetry A River’s Lament by Jordan Abbruzzese (17) Votive by Terri-Jane Dow (39) Pulling at the Edges by Julianne Berokoff (43) Fences by nv baker (45) 22,994 by Mel Xiao (46) Cockroaches by Shoola Oyindamola (66) When Red Isn’t Enough by Babette Cieskowski (68) Selected poems by Susan Cobin (84) Spare Key by Diana Conces (87) Selected poems by Caitlin Cundiff (107) Selected poems by Alice King (109) Selected poems by Tobi Alfier (131) Nonfiction The Skinhead Hamlet by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons (49) Trading for Diamonds by Julie Wise (70)

Cover Art: Shame by April Mansilla

Waiver By Gwen Goodkin Winner of the 2016 Black Fox Writing Contest

A guard hands me a box with the clothes Mom brought for me to wear out of here and, I don’t know if she realizes – they’re the same ones I wore in. If I didn’t have to touch them, I wouldn’t. I’d toss the box on a wild bonfire flame and walk away. Outside, there’s warm sunshine instead of cold fluorescent light. A breeze. The air smells like a dandelion ready for a wish. A dry kiss of wind moves like soft lips across my cheek. My mom falls into me, wraps her arm around the back of my neck and pulls me toward her by the elbow. “Jimmy,” is all she can say. Her tears wet the skin of my collarbone. Behind her is my little sister with her tight shirt and new boobs like a pair of bubbles in a stew pot. A sharp pain twists at my ribs and I realize what I should have known all along: I can’t protect her. Mom drives and we’re in our regular places: I’m in the passenger seat and my sister’s behind Mom so the two of us can trade looks whenever Mom says something annoying. But no one’s talking. We head into town and kids are outside on their bikes, a woman walks into the grocery store, the mailman reaches an arm out of his truck and opens a mailbox and what the hell is 9

going on? I feel like I’m on the set of a movie, like it’s all been staged so I can pretend the last two years never happened. We get out of the car at home and my mom and sister move so careful, I have the urge to shout. But I push it down because I’ll scare them. They’ll wonder if I’m dangerous now and it’s good for them to wonder because I’m not sure myself. They let me go in the house first, polite, like I’m a guest. Because I am. Nothing’s changed – the furniture’s in the same spots, Mom’s figurines are up on the shelf in the same order they’ve always been, my room’s like it was, except straightened. That’s what fucks you up in the end. Everything’s as you left it and no one’s changed. Except you. You’re the one who’s different. And, because you aren’t who you used to be, who they want you to be, you don’t fit anymore. I’m not able to sleep. Even my own bed seems dented for a stranger’s body. I finally get up at first light and go to my closet. Inside the toe of a basketball shoe I’ve never worn is a fold of twenties. I turn the shoe in my palms and trace the stitching with my thumbnail, then pull out the money. My clothes from yesterday sit clean and cool in the dryer. I put them on and push my heels into the stiff shoes. I take a small stack of the money for myself and leave the rest on the kitchen table. I write a note – “See you when I get back” – and ease out of the house. 10

In the driver’s seat of my car, it’s the first time I’m my full self. Old and new. I’m not out of place because the car’s mine and I can be who I choose. The engine takes a second to catch, but the car starts. If I could give it a hug, I would. Slap it on the shoulder and ask, “How’ve you been, old buddy?” Town’s still waking up as I drive the empty streets. Of course, the gas station’s open and McDonald’s. I pull into the Walmart lot and sit there until a blue smock opens the front doors. I head in, straight to the jewelry counter and find the best watch I can buy with the cash I left myself. Brown leather band, silver face with a ring on top that turns, notched for every second. I tell the woman at the counter not to bother giving me the box.

The office is in a strip mall with For Lease signs stuck in dirty windows on either side. I go through the glass door and stand there, not sure of what to do, so I study the posters hung straight and perfect on the walls, like they’ll give me the answer to any question I ask. A guy comes through the door from the back. He approaches me, hand offered. We shake. “Staff Sergeant Carroll,” he says. “James Kepner,” I say. He leads me to a desk and we sit. “What can I do for you, James?” “I want to enlist.”

He moves the mouse of his computer and the fan starts. “Very good. Have you given this much thought?” “A year and a half,” I say. He nods. “And you’re eighteen?” “Be nineteen in a few months.” “Let’s get started then.” He asks me my full name, birth date, address—all that. Then, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” “Yes.” He leans away from the keyboard. “That’s a problem.” “I heard there’s a waiver.” He slides back from the computer and sets his hands on his thighs, elbows out. No point typing any more. “Only in rare cases. Non-violent crimes.” My leg has a mind of its own and starts to bounce. I put a hand on my knee to stop it. “You’re in the middle of two wars and, from what I hear, you’re in bad need of soldiers.” “Not so bad we’re going to start using felons.” He’s wearing a watch. All metal. “The Army won’t issue a waiver.” He stands. “Thanks for coming in.” We shake hands and I turn to leave. “Let me ask you something,” he says. “Yes, sir.” “What do you think makes a good soldier? Someone who breaks the law? A rebel? A badass like yourself?”

I can’t figure out if he’s serious or not. “Sir. Do you really want me to answer that? Or are you messing with me?” “I want a straight answer.” I wait, but he doesn’t flinch. “My guess is: you’ve seen my kind before. The kind who has no clue what’s ahead. Because if I did have a clue, I wouldn’t be here. But the thing is: I know exactly what’s coming for me. I want what’s coming.” “And what is that?”

My dad hated sports. Which made it all the worse—that I was such a good hockey player. Every once in a while, he’d complain about having to come straight from his shift to my match and wouldn’t he just love to have a hot dinner at home instead of potato chips and pop from the concession stand? But I knew he only meant it a little. Last game of the playoffs, I was surprised he showed up. He’d been working swing shifts and it’d been his last night shift. I saw him outside the rink as they were announcing our names and I held up my hands, asking what was he doing there. He waved me off, telling me not to worry about it, he was there. After we won, he told me on the drive home, he’d switched shifts with his friend, so he could watch the game. I damn near cried, happy we won, happy to be with my dad. Mom and Dawn rode home separate because he’d come right from work.

We were waiting at a red light and he clapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed and I thought he was going to say, “Good job, son,” or, “I’m proud of you,” but what he said was, “I guess hockey ain’t so bad.” We looked at each other and sniffed the same laugh and then the car shattered. The dashboard and the windshield were coming to crush me. My knees rammed up against the dash and my head hit so hard my teeth slammed shut. I had a sense that I screamed, but I can’t remember the sound of it. Just that my mouth was open and something was coming out. I know it was open because later I pulled glass out of the soft part of my cheek. When the noise stopped and I opened my eyes, my dad wasn’t in his seat. The windshield was gone. The cargo van that’d hit us was upside down in the median, wheels spinning. My hands had glass in them and I was spitting out shards and my knees were up near my chest, but I unfastened my seat belt and found a way to stand on my shaky legs. I searched the dark for my dad and saw him lying on the cement, face-down. I went over to him and his face was all blood, but his eyes were open and his breaths were fast. “Dad?” I said, kneeling next to him. He just stared. I was afraid to move him. I got down so he could see me. His eyes were blank, like he was already miles away from his own body. “Dad.” 14

He looked straight at me and focused. The thing is: he was breathing—really fast. Like, huh huh huh. Then he wasn’t. “One thing the past two years has taught me, sir, is that in order to survive a place like prison or a battlefield, you got to be outside your own body. There’s you and there’s your body. And, if I’m the guy who gets smoked at least I’ll be my whole self for one last split-second.” I don’t care anymore about what Carroll’s going to do. I don’t care about prison, or what comes next, the military, the war, this office—anything, really. All I care about is that, right now, at this moment, someone is listening to what I have to say. And if Carroll’s the only one who ever hears me, so be it. “Maybe that’s what we’re all driving toward and we just don’t realize. One split-second of pure truth at the very end.” He crosses his arms. I’m making him uncomfortable, or impatient. Or both. “And you think that’ll make you a good solider?” “No,” I say. “What’ll make me a good soldier is that I take the hits in order to win.” I start thinking about hockey and my dad and my throat gets tight. “When I played hockey, my job was to hit first. That’s who I am.” I can see I’ve thrown Carroll for a loop. I know now that he asked me the question as a joke, but here I am making him think. He’s stuck in place. Can’t go forward, can’t drop back.

He’ll have to vouch for me, jump through hoops, form after form, phone calls, face to face. Will I be worth the fight? “If I’m killed, my family gets money?” “Death gratuity,” says Carroll. He cracks a knuckle. “What’s your name again?” “James,” I say. “But my friends call me Jimmy.” He exhales, rubs a finger across his bottom lip. “Jimmy,” he says, half-there, like he’s talking to himself. I can see he wants to usher me to the door, get back to his bagel and coffee—that he doesn’t want to bet on this problem hand I’ve dealt, wishes I was already a forgotten memory. But then, he pulls a sheet of paper from the desk and says, “We have to start over.” He uncaps a pen. “Last name?”

A River’s Lament by Jordan Abbruzzese Children’s feet echo on concrete Earth and I close my throat with mud. Could they recognize grass if it wasn’t planted? Do they know Orion’s Belt? I think of mothers sitting on edges of bed sheets, tracing constellations on their little boys’ backs, pictures that they will never know the name of. One day those boys will be men who walk on my backbones, placing plastic cups, socks, fishing line, a refrigerator into my outstretched arms. All I have are murky tokens that I will trade for a night for them to sit alongside me while I reflect Orion on my shining back for them to trace with their own fingers, then lift wet hands to their lips while they think of all of the sidewalk cracks they could fill with flowers and all the children who have yet to really see the sky.

Aunt Peg By J.B. Howard “Is there a table for my presents?” Peggy said. The ballroom was bare, illuminated by the pink light that filtered in through the French doors at the back. Honoria glanced at her clipboard and then pointed toward the entrance. “The gift table will be there, where guests walk in. You ordered a floral arrangement for it.” “I remember now. Orchids.” “The rentals are arriving at noon. Did you want to be here for set up?” “No, I trust you. I’ll be back at six, with everyone else.” Honoria glanced at her watch. “Was there anything else you wanted to go over?” Peggy stepped toward the center of the room. “What’s the final guest count?” “Two-thirty-three.” She moved toward the glistening rear doors, which opened to a patio overlooking the haze-softened lawn. “The quartet will be out there?” Honoria pressed her lips into a thin, brown line. “On the grass, yes.” “And the jazz band?” Honoria nodded toward the west wall. “There.”

She walked back toward the center of the room. “And the dance floor here.” “That’s what you decided.” “Good,” Peggy said. She faced Honoria. “Should I write you a check or would you prefer cash?” “We’ll settle tonight,” Honoria said. “And whatever is most convenient for you.” “Good woman,” Peggy said. She pulled her purse up higher on her shoulder. “Then, I will see you at six!” She walked quickly to the interior door and let herself out, passing through the dark foyer into the damp heat of the morning. Once outside, she hesitated on the steps of the club. Hers and Honoria’s were the only cars in the lot. The lawn rolled away from the patch of asphalt in every direction, meeting the woods at the bottom of a long hill. A cardinal flew down and perched atop one wrought-iron lamppost, a trick of color against the pale sky. The trouble with being seventy was that every moment was inundated with context. Every flavor, scent, color contained within it packages of secret meaning. To plan a seventieth birthday party for oneself was to mince up one’s life and serve the pieces on gilded platters. She hadn’t even been able to choose a date without unearthing bits of history. A calendar was a graveyard. She’d settled on a Saturday in July that would be the 27th anniversary of a beautiful dinner she’d had with Jack, her third and favorite husband, in Ibiza. Next Saturday would have been 19

the 55th anniversary of the day her father finally walked out on their family, and the Saturday after would be the 14th anniversary of her youngest sister’s divorce. So today had been the best option. Besides, a year from now she’d be looking back on this party, marveling, That was a year ago today. *** At eleven o’clock, she was getting out of the shower when she heard her phone ring. It was her youngest sister, Evie, the strapped-for-cash one, wrangler of their mother. Peggy ignored the call, but when the phone rang again, she reluctantly tapped the screen to answer. “Evie, I’m busy. What do you need?” “What do you mean?” Evie sounded tense, overheated, but she always sounded like that. “You’re home aren’t you? Your car is in the driveway.” Peggy lowered her voice. “You’re here? The party’s not until six.” “I know, but Mom’s appointment was moved earlier, so we were halfway here.” “Then take her to lunch.” Peggy scurried across her bedroom and peered out her window. There was Evie’s rusty van, and beside it their mother, Doris, in her wheelchair. Evie was out of sight, probably peering through a window on the bottom floor. Doris shifted positions. Through the phone, Peggy heard a garbled grunting that contained the words trying to kill me and take me home. 20

“Come on,” Evie said, straining. It sounded like she was lifting something heavy. “I’m bound to find your hide-a-key eventually.” “Don’t—” Peggy threw on her bathrobe. “Don’t tear up my garden. I’ll let you in.” She hurried down the first half of the staircase, but paused at the bend. The memory of her mother’s voice—caustic, derisive—made her scalp sweat. A year ago, it had been easy to believe that she would want her family around to celebrate this milestone. She’d imagined arms draped over shoulders, candlelight smoothing laugh lines, herself brimming with wisdom and verve, the center of the wheel. But was that likely? Right now she wanted to flee to Paris, spend the night drinking wine on the Île de la Cité, go home with a stranger who would know only that she was celebrating her birthday. L'âge n'a pas d'importance, she’d say. But that wasn’t the celebration she’d chosen. “You made this bed,” she said to herself, continuing down the stairs at a cautious pace. She held the door open as Evie wheeled their mother across the threshold. “It’s hot,” Doris said, each syllable nipping at Peggy’s skin. “It’ll be cooler at six, when the party starts,” Peggy said. “Why is she having a party?” Doris rolled her eyes toward Evie. “She’s seventy, not seven.”

“You know Peg,” Evie said, still tense, still overheated. “If she doesn’t have an audience, she spontaneously combusts.” Of all Peggy’s siblings, Evie resembled their mother the most. She had her features—pasty and square—and, increasingly, her temperament. They’d both been abandoned by their husbands when they got pregnant at 40, so they had that bond, too. “Thanks, Evie,” Peggy said. “You know I’m throwing this party for all of us.” “That’s funny,” Evie said. “Because I could have sworn the invitation had AUNT PEG’S BIRTHDAY BASH written on it in glitter.” “What are you wearing?” Doris said abruptly, the fleshy bunting beneath her eyes pulling upward. “A bathrobe,” Peggy said, drawing the collar up around her neck. “You’re seven hours early. You interrupted my toilette.” Doris leaned forward, her jowls quivering. “You always were a hussy,” she barked. “Just like your father.” “Okay, Mom,” Evie said, angling Doris’s wheelchair toward the kitchen. “I’ll make us lunch.” “Feed her something sweet, huh, Eve?” Peggy said. “See if you can get her blood sugar to spike.” She climbed two stairs, then leaned over the railing. “If you need anything else, I’ll be in my boudoir, combusting.” She went to her room, threw on a loose dress and a pair of sandals. 22

There were excuses for her mother’s corroding unpleasantness: diabetes, hemorrhoids, a collapsed vein in her left leg. But she’d always been like this. Peggy was 15 when her father left the family, but she’d never blamed him. She only wished he’d taken her along. *** Peggy ran her final errands. By the time she got back it was six o’clock, and several cars were parked in the driveway— Evie’s van, another sister’s Honda CR-V, and a silver truck belonging to Dave, Evie’s ex, who would have brought their kids, Megan and Ryan. Peggy opened her front door and heard Megan call from the kitchen, “Aunt Peg!” This was what she’d wanted. This was why she’d spent a small fortune on canapés and a chocolate fountain. She had good relationships with all her sisters’ children, but was closest with Evie’s. When Evie and Dave split up, Evie’d had no skills to sustain herself and no intention of acquiring any. Peggy had been the only person with the resources, time, and energy, to pick up the slack. “Hi, kiddos!” Peggy called, waving at them as she passed the kitchen. “Go to the party. I’ll meet you there!” In her room, she donned her party dress—shimmery, seagreen, strapless, reaching only to mid-thigh. She pulled on nylons to smooth out her legs, which were thin, but saggy around the joints in a way that diet and exercise could not ameliorate. Then 23

she put on her strappy, silver heels and twirled in front of the mirror. Whenever she’d imagined herself anchoring the golden spokes of her party, she’d seen herself wearing exactly this outfit, which she’d bought the day after she turned sixty-nine, a birthday she’d celebrated alone, in her pajamas, with a carton of Chinese food, a bottle of Cabernet, and an old movie. Tonight, surrounded by family and friends, she would shake her fist at the specter that had seemed to grow out of that Gong Bao Chicken. As she came down the stairs, she saw Evie and Karen, the second-youngest sister, standing in the foyer, flanking their mother’s chair. “What are you still doing here?” Peggy said. “You should be at the club.” “But you’re here,” Evie said. “You’re the birthday girl.” “No, no. I’m making an entrance.” “Of course you are,” Karen said. Their mother glanced up at Peggy and grunted, “You look cheap.” “Thanks, Mom.” She strutted past her mother. “I’m glad you like it. I think it makes my ass look fabulous.” She heard someone giggle and looked around the corner into the kitchen, where Ryan, Megan, and Dave were standing around the island drinking Cokes. “Wash your mouth,” Doris said. “I have been working out,” Peggy said, striking a pose. She grinned at her niece and nephew, who were cracking up. 24

“Thank you for noticing. Though, I can’t take credit for these.” She squeezed her breasts. “But Dr. Mitchell did a great job.” “You just make it worse,” Karen said. “You got fat,” their mother said, eyeing Karen. “When did you get so fat?” “Well, Doris, you look ninety-five, pushing twohundred,” Karen said. “So, I guess neither of us is going to be winning any pageants this year.” Peggy opened the door. “Okay, everybody. Let’s go.” *** Ryan and Megan rode with Peggy, who took the long way around, past the University, to give her guests a chance to assemble before she arrived. As she drove past one of the campus’s illuminated fountains, she looked at Megan and said, “That’s where you’ll be in a couple months.” “I can’t wait,” Megan said, staring out the window. “My mom is totally losing it. I need to get out of there.” Peggy had said almost exactly the same thing when she was 18. Instead of going to college, she’d married a marine who took her to Southeast Asia. When they couldn’t conceive, Peggy had been relieved. That’s when she realized he’d only ever been her means of escape. “I’m sure she’s trying her best,” Peggy said. “That’s what’s so depressing,” Megan said. “It’s just going to get worse.”

“She’s just like Nana.” Ryan leaned forward from the backseat. “She’s a bitch.” “Don’t say that about your mother, or your grandmother. Or anyone, really.” She turned up the radio. “Did I tell you that there’s going to be a chocolate fountain at my party?” Ryan rested his elbows on the center console, his face perched next to her shoulder. He couldn’t possibly have his seatbelt on if he was sitting like that, but Peggy didn’t want him to move back into the shadows behind her. Of all her nieces and nephews, he looked the most like her: tall and lanky; as soon as puberty really hit, he would have her long, sharp nose and pointed jawline. “How come you got all the cool genes and our mom got all the crazy ones?” he said. “Like Nana always reminds me,” she said, roughing up his hair, “I take after my father.” # It was nearly seven o’clock when they pulled up behind the club. Honoria was there, clipboard in hand, wearing a headset. As Peggy stepped out of her car, Honoria took her by the arm. “You’re late.” “Fashionably so.” Honoria led the three of them in through the side door, down a bare service corridor, to the foyer, which was now empty. All the guests had been herded into the ballroom. Megan hugged her. 26

Ryan gave her a one-armed squeeze and a, “Happy Birthday, Aunt Peg.” Then the kids ducked into the ballroom, and Honoria was speaking rapid Spanish into her headset. The music inside the ballroom stopped. Jerry the bandleader was speaking, though his words were muffled through the thick double doors. There was clapping, then more speaking. She heard a drumroll. Honoria placed a hand on Peggy’s back and said, “GO!” Peggy strode forward, down the red carpet, through the double doors, and into the glare of a spotlight, which she’d rented for just this moment. Everyone stood up and cheered as she entered. Between the light and the noise, she felt swaddled in sensation. This was what she’d wanted, exactly this. She spun on her heels, hoping that the hem of her dress lifted just a smidge. She’d rehearsed this a hundred times—the spin, the sashay forward, the short speech. She heard someone Whoop as she spun again, more slowly this time. She walked over to the band and took control of the microphone, waved for silence. “Thank you, everyone, for coming here to celebrate with me tonight.” Someone hollered, “Yeah, Aunt Peg!” It sounded like her nephew Jeremy, Karen’s oldest. She smiled, posed. “Many of you came from far away. Arkansas, California, Michigan, even London.” At least one 27

person cheered after she said each place. “This night is for all of us.” She grinned and lifted her chin. She’d practiced this, too. “Though, it’s mostly a celebration of MOI!” The room laughed. “Well, that’s all I have to say—” She lowered her voice seriously and said, “for now.” They laughed again. She’d expected to feel golden in this moment, but instead thought again of the Île de la Cité, where her second husband, Forrest, the musician, had sung love songs in French. That was when she was still enamored with his music, before she realized that he was really singing to himself. “We’re going to take some pictures before dinner, so everyone get a drink, enjoy the appetizers. Jerry, our MC, will call groups to come out to the lawn.” Everyone here probably imagined that Forrest had been the best sex of her life. He’d had that look, that swagger, about him. But really he’d been forceful and selfish. No one in this room knew her, not really. No one knew her life. She cleared her throat, and the room became still. “Thank you again for being here.” She lifted her right hand with a flourish. “Let’s celebrate!” The MC took the microphone and led the crowd in another round of applause as the spotlight faded and Peggy marched back along the red carpet, exiting through the doors and ducking into the service hallway. 28

Then Honoria was there, touching her arm and saying, “Ready for pictures? We’re doing the group shot first.” The band started to play again in the other room. Peggy recognized the song—“But Not For Me.” She and Jack had danced to this song three times, on two happy occasions and one sad. Though, the sadness or happiness of any moment was tempered, certainly, after a decade. “How did I do?” Peggy asked. Honoria looked at her watch. “You did fine. We better hurry or we’ll lose the light.” *** The photographer spoke through a megaphone, herding Peggy and her siblings into a semicircle around their mother, flanking them with the first cousins, then the kids and second cousins. The youngest grandkids and the great-grandkids huddled on the grass at the foot of the risers. Categories of people were dismissed as each portrait was completed. Finally, it was just Peggy, her five siblings, and their mother, who was parked in front, glowering at the camera. Peggy stood between Gene, who was closest to her in age and had flown in from California with his partner and stepson, and Evie, who held the back of Doris’s wheelchair possessively. After the group shots were done, the photographer offered to take portraits of the individual families. So while her brother and sisters went back into the ballroom to track down their

spouses and children, Peggy had her picture taken alone, standing in the center of the lawn, with the lush woods as backdrop. “I’m sure you’ve been getting this all night,” the photographer said. “But you look incredible for your age.” The camera flashed again, and Peggy shifted her pose. “Trust me, when you’re my age you cannot possibly hear that enough.” When her siblings returned with their families, Peggy stepped toward the photographer, placing her hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “Anything for a pretty lady.” She raised her eyebrows at him and walked away. *** “Peg, I need to talk to you.” She looked over her shoulder and saw Evie following her. “What is it?” She paused so her sister could catch up. “This is quite a party, Peg,” Evie started, trying to mask her anger. She looked so much like their mother in that moment that Peggy was almost transported. She felt like she was fifteen again, being scolded for what she was wearing, or not wearing, or how she walked, or how she spoke. “What do you need, Evie?” “You know Dave’s child support payments have gone down now that Megan’s eighteen.” “Because she’s no longer a child.” 30

“But she still lives at home. What am I supposed to do? Kick her out?” Her voice quavered, thin and tense. “How much do you need?” Peggy said. “Ten thousand would be nice,” Evie said. “Though, Ryan wanted to play soccer in the fall. I have no idea who will pay for that.” “Ten thousand?” Peggy said. The most Evie had ever requested at once was $1,500. “You’re asking me for ten thousand dollars?” Evie shifted her weight onto her other leg. “Well, you’ve clearly got it.” Peggy felt that knot forming in her chest. “But it’s my money. It’s what I live on, you know.” Evie narrowed her eyes. “It was Jack’s money.” The implication was clear: You’re lucky. Your husband died. Mine just left and took all his money with him. “It was both of our money,” Peggy said. She didn’t have the energy for anger. “We worked for the same company.” “You didn’t have kids to raise, to support.” That was her central argument, always: Peggy doesn’t have children. What could she possibly need her money for? Of course Peggy can afford a nice house. She doesn’t have children. I’d be thin, too, if I didn’t have children! It exhausted Peggy on every level. “I also don’t have kids to support me,” she said. “And what do you have that Mom doesn’t foot the bill for, anyway?” 31

“I’m the one taking care of her! I deserve something for everything I do.” She, like their mother, had perfected the martyr plea. “How much did you spend on the canapés tonight, Peg?” she went on. “Even better, how much did you spend on your boob job?” “That was twenty years ago.” But Peggy was nearing the point of not caring. Could she spare ten thousand dollars? “So?” Evie was shouting now. “You think we care about a group picture? How about next time you think about throwing a party, you divvy your budget between us and write a check?” “It’s my birthday,” Peggy said, wishing she had the strength to strike a defiant pose. “Oh, grow up,” Evie said. “Grow. Up. When was the last time you thought about anyone but yourself?” “If you despise me so much then why did you come?” “Someone needed to drive Mom.” Evie pressed her hands into her hips. “I need to know. Are you going to help? Or do I need to kick out my kid?” “Fine. Yes,” Peggy said. “But then we’re done.” She walked past her sister, moving away from the front of the building, toward the service entrance. Once she was alone, she fell against the wall. She had almost expected this moment to come. Evie’d been hinting for months, since long before Peggy sent out the invitations to her party. When she started planning the event, she considered limiting the scale of it, so people

wouldn’t get the wrong idea about her finances, but she’d decided she couldn’t live in fear. “You sure know how to throw a party,” someone said. She stepped away from the wall and straightened her dress. She looked toward the sound of the voice and saw the photographer standing next to his van. “Thanks,” she said. “My home economics degree finally comes through.” “Home economics, huh?” “It was a different time.” He pulled a piece of equipment out of the van. “You sure you’re seventy?” He looked at her. “I’ve got to say, in that line up back there I would have guessed you were the youngest, not the oldest.” Peggy laughed. “You flatter.” “I’d never,” he said. He stepped toward her, extended his hand. “I’m Jim.” “Nice to meet you, Jim,” she said. He lifted the lamp. “I better get back. I needed more lighting for the portraits.” He closed the van door and stepped passed her. “You sure do have a lot of family.” “Yes, I do,” she said. “Sometimes it feels like not enough, but today is not one of those days.” Jim laughed. “I can believe it.”

“How long have you been in the photography business?” she asked, even though he’d said he needed to leave. It comforted her to know that she could speak easily with someone new. “Oh, my whole professional life,” he said. “I was in Hollywood first. Moved here to be closer to my wife’s family, because I thought that would make her happy. It didn’t. Now I photograph parties.” “It’s a life.” “It is.” He nodded at her and then turned away. “Enjoy your party,” he said. “I will.” *** Inside the ballroom, the band played “Apple Blossom Time.” She’d requested as few ballads as possible, but this was such a pretty song. She didn’t even mind that it was slow. She entered the hall and ducked into the restroom near the entrance, expecting it to be empty, but Megan was in there, leaning over the sink. “Don’t tell me the canapés have gone off,” Peggy said, stepping into the closest stall. Before she closed the door, she caught a glimpse of Megan’s face in the mirror. She’d been crying. “Is it your mother, your father, your brother, or a boy?” Megan sniffed. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Of course you do.” She struggled to organize the seatcover, her nylons, her panties, and her skirt, waiting for Megan to speak. 34

“My mom says I have to live at home next semester,” Megan said, speaking over the sound of Peggy peeing. “She just wants to keep me at home because she’s lonely and doesn’t have a life.” “Universities are expensive,” Peggy said carefully. “I told her I can take out loans.” Peggy stepped out of the stall. “Loans? You really want to do that for undergrad?” She nudged Megan away from the sink. “Everyone does it. It’s not a big deal.” She pulled a couple paper towels out of the dispenser, then used the damp towels to wipe runny mascara out from under her niece’s eyes. If she’d met Jack when she was younger, then maybe she would have wanted children. But a part of her knew that wasn’t true. Becoming a mother had always been inextricably linked with her fear of becoming her mother. Or maybe that was a lie, too. Maybe she was just selfish, like everyone thought. “Would it help if you lived with me, so you’d be closer to campus?” Megan went still. “Oh my god, Aunt Peg, that would help so much. You wouldn’t mind?” “Of course not. You could have the room near the front. I wouldn’t need to know when you were coming and going.”

Maybe she’d had no need for the reciprocity of motherhood; maybe she just wanted to give and give, to be there for someone else when they needed an escape. She tossed the paper towel in the trash and smoothed her niece’s hair. “And I’ll do some tinkering on my accounts, see if I can help with that tuition.” Megan brought her hands to her mouth. “Seriously?” “You’ll probably still have to take out loans, but I’m willing to help however I can.” Megan wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hand. “I don’t even know—just, thank you so much.” “Now get your tuckus out on the dance floor. I didn’t throw this party so you could spend the night weeping in the bathroom.” A smile spread across Megan’s face, and Peggy thought that maybe the course of her life had nothing to do with plans or preferences. Maybe she’d never had any power over its trajectory. Maybe the only option, ever, was to live it and see what happened next. *** “Blood is thicker than water, but thinner than money,” Peggy said. Her mind was pleasantly fuzzy, her body deliciously warm. She pulled the sheet off Jim’s bed and held it tightly under her arms. She wouldn’t have minded sitting there naked, but the sheet was so soft, and Jim’s condo was cold.

He filled her flute with champagne. They’d brought bottles and bottles with them from the club, and she’d told him he could keep whatever they didn’t drink tonight, but he said he didn’t care for the stuff, so he just kept filling her glass. He was trying to get her drunk. He’d told her as much. He’d traced his fingers over her lips and said, “I want to get you drunk, Peggy. Would that be alright? Do you have any objections?” And she’d said, “I’ll have to work off the calories in the morning, but alright, Jim. It is my birthday, after all.” “Is anything thicker than money?” he said. She could tell by the way he said it that he was thinking of his ex-wife. She used the same tone when she talked about her first husband, the marine. “Pride,” Peggy suggested. “Dignity.” He scooted his chair closer to hers and slid his hand under the sheet, up her thigh. “You’re a beautiful woman, Peg.” “When I was younger, you would have seemed like such an old man, but you’re twenty years younger than I am. Isn’t that strange?” “Age is a number.” “Numbers are facts. Money is facts. Age is facts. You have adult children. I’m old enough to be your mother. These are facts.” “Facts are boring.” He lifted her champagne flute to her lips, and she sipped. “Will I see you again after tonight?” 37

“Would you like to?” The champagne was as warm and soft as the sheet. Everything about Jim was warm and soft except for the temperature of his condo. He was only about as tall as she was, but broad-shouldered. “Yes, I would. I really would,” he said. Peggy leaned in to Jim’s hand, let the sheet fall away from her shoulders. “Let’s just be here now,” she said. “Let’s just not plan a single thing.”

Votive By Terri-Jane Dow My ribcage is a cathedral. The bones a ghostly white, holding breath; hosting vigils in the dark.

Intercostal candles flicker among the full earth of my chest, where my lungs bloom like pygmyweed to the thrum of my pulse in the shadows.

A low, dull, beat.

Veins snake in a procession towards my heart. Arteries take root, looping into knots. And amid flames and false idols,

My heart ticks like a bomb. Threatening broken ribs, shards, splinters.

What is left in the ashes, in the end?

Hands Heal By Rebecca Bartels You prefer your heartbreak like a shot of liquor—quick and painful; all at once. But this one felt more like ice melting into a puddle at the bottom of the glass. It was long and slow, a different kind of drawn-out and painful process. Nothing like the honesty you crave. Even if the words are brutal, you’d rather they at least be true instead of mere pleasantries wrapped in cliché apologies. “You know, I don’t really have time for you,” felt like ice melting slowly, the remnants collecting into a murky puddle at the bottom of the glass, diluting the original taste to that of something terrible. “And you deserve someone who has time for you. That just isn’t me right now.” This lie—the dilution of the truth—left you questioning, analyzing, hoping, wondering, wishing, hating, overthinking. He is not honest with you. He is a coward. To realize that he has all the time in the world and that he just doesn’t want to spend it on you, that felt more like the shot of hard liquor, the burn of clear rum. This truth would have hurt more in the moment, but like the gulp of burning rum, the pain would have ended after the initial shock of the punch to your diaphragm. The burn would have lingered like a knot tight in your chest, pushing your heart slightly off kilter, but it would 40

have faded quicker than waiting for all the ice to melt so that you could see what he truly meant. He recycled scripted statements to “let you down easy” failing to see the lack of dignity that came with the lack of the plain truth. He has time, he just doesn’t want you. With rain falling down on your head, you stood in a crowded parking lot beside him. Blinking to see through the drops of water that collected on your eyelashes, you took his words in. You took this diluted puddle and swallowed it whole, letting the aftertaste make you sick for days as you tried to navigate the meaning of his words and his rejection. You stood with him in that parking lot with wet hair and wet clothes, the headlights of his truck illuminating the scene like a tragic amateur production that you wish you had seen coming. You should have reacted. You should have told him that he was damn right, you deserve better than this. Better than the diluted, convenient excuses he mumbled against the slanted sheets of rain. You should have raised your voice till the sound drowned out the pattering of the water droplets hitting the asphalt. You should have thrown your fist against the rusty metal of the hood of his old truck, creating a dent the size of a human heart, reminding him of the night he lied and made a girl believe poor time management was the reason he couldn’t be with her anymore. You should have walked away with a swollen hand and purple knuckles. You should have later washed the specks of rust from the creases in your fingers, grinding your teeth as the cold 41

water poured over your angry and disillusioned bones. Hands heal, pride doesn’t. Don’t let him offer you a watered-down version of the truth. Don’t let him walk away feeling pity for you because he believed you couldn’t handle his honesty. His version is soft and easy, easy on the eyes as it melts away like it never even happened. Heartbreak is painful and burns like fire. It sits in its shot glass, thick like mud.

Make him taste it with you.

Pulling at the Edges By Julianne Berokoff I The moth flutters only once before pins pierce his wings pale blue squirms into white, torn edges decorating with glints of sun drifting still; bound by the press of circling tides. II There was a door. Four walls, a ceiling, and a door - sightless black A prayer that stillness might speak of a wisdom my sixteen years did not know. His arm straining beneath my rigid body, my lips stifled against the mooring of his face, heavy and fumed, breathing with the cut of bones grated no falling Lashes crossed in fingers, painting my cheeks cold spins gyrate and shock unseeing eyes awake: one column of light across his lips, 43

into a hanging mouth. Sharp rings bleed in my head like a high voiceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; my body a distorted shadow bloomed with shards, heavy with stones. Four walls, a ceiling, and a whore. III Let these pieces settle like broken husks on the seafloor; let the currents bury until there is no bottom, only imprints. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll cut them out, one by one, naked in the plumes and choking on the pitch.

Fences By nv baker The fences around The Projects all look too similar to be mincers without openings or entryways only allowing you through if you have been through before and the fences say the same thing as fences have always said: We are here to swell our limbs with breath.

22,994 By Mel Xiao on day one you take a deep breath and scream. your mother is laughing, your father is smiling, and the nurse is holding you while thinking about her next break. you won’t remember the musty smell of the hospital hallways or the saltines that broke in your mother’s hands but i do. i will remember every moment as if i had photographed them. on day 284, nine months old, you scoot around the living room while the cat watches you from the bookshelf. someone is shouting upstairs, and i thank God that you don’t yet understand what they are saying. something shatters and you giggle. day 1523, four years old, your father slams the front door for the last time. mommy tells you he’s on vacation or that he’s visiting grandma but even then you realize that something’s wrong because half the things in the house are missing and there’s a bouquet of roses on the dining table.

the scent of cigarettes fades fast but not fast enough for you to forget. you’re 4003 days old, almost eleven, the first time someone tells you you’re useless. you’ve never heard that before but you know it’s not a good thing. you come back home and cry to me, your tears falling hard and fast, and i am the only one who listens. there’s a romance in empty rooms and poetry in silence that you discover at 4891 days or thirteen years and you seem to find solace among the ghosts that haunt your mind. on day 6570, your eighteenth birthday, your mother and stepdad want you to celebrate with them but you tell them that you can’t because you’re busy falling in love. i want to remind you that you’re afraid of heights. you’re in college for 1400 days with breaks in between and you work for another 11,026. and then you’re 22,994 days old, a day away from 63 years. there’s a plate of strawberries on the table, cut to look like flowers. a book is open in your lap, and a pen rests in the crease between the pages. i sit beside you. my eyes have already worn out 47

and i can no longer make out the difference between b and d but I can still see the cat that perches on the bookshelf and the saltines in the red glass bowl and the graying silver band around your ring finger. your life has been etched in wrinkled skin and aching joints and it is a story that you do not care to tell but i have been there for all 22,994 days, 551,856 hours, or 33,111,360 minutes. if you ever forget, i can remind you.

The Skinhead Hamlet By Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons You have exposed your bare bottom to the world twice in your life (so far), but the first time was by accident. It was “that time you mooned all of Shakespeare & Company” at the end of the sole summer you spent training and performing with them at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s turn-of-the-century estate in the Berkshires. The company members of this outdoor theater are legends in a world of their own making. For decades, they have lived and worked together, falling in love and marrying each other, then cheating, divorcing, and marrying different eachothers, until the plot of the place became harder to follow than any of the plays being performed on stage. An intern amongst Shakespearian Gods, you tell this story to remind yourself that you were once there. To reclaim what you missed in the moment. The story begins with a man and his dog. Actually, backing up a bit, it starts with you careening through the woods in costume behind the grand mansion the author of Ethan Frome once called home. Sliding down a steep hill, you kick up dust from beneath the heels of your thick black boots as your silvery cape swirls in the air around you. The degrees of love, pain, and beauty each of us are capable of submitting to in this world are uncertain, but you can say with absolute authority that there’s no greater glee to be found than crashing through the woods while wearing a cape.

When you burst through the trees onto the square wooden stage as Queen Alonza (a gender flip from King Alonzo) in The Tempest, he is watching. Perched in the grass with his golden retriever, Bill, at his side, the pair sit on a small hill next to the thin benches that host your meager audience for this midday show. On stage, you stand statuesque in an Elizabethan costume designed to be a cross between Darth Vader and the Wicked Queen from Snow White. The costumer cocked a pierced eyebrow when you requested this for your character but quickly got to work. The man’s eyes excavate the results of her labor— your floor-length gray dress, flowing but fitted in the right places, complemented by the aforementioned cape, and white makeup covering your face, causing your lined eyes and poisonous red lips to beacon forth. A tall, graceful man, he leans back on one elbow, casually chewing on a blade of grass. The superb Berkshire sun seeks out the wisps of blond in his brown hair. It also makes him squint, deepening his crinkly Robert Redford grin. His dog, Bill, pants next to him, gulping down the fresh summer air with his happy pink tongue. As the scene progresses, you turn your gaze away from the pair to stare out at the pet cemetery nestled deep in the woods on the other side of the audience. Skeletal crosses fashioned from sticks mark the lost souls of Edith Wharton’s beloved dogs. You imagine dead puppies in the ground to coax out a few tears over the assumed drowning of your “son” Ferdinand in the play. Acting! But even turned away, you can 50

sense him watching. At night, this man, this grown-up actor, stars on the main stage as Lord Berowne, the charming and witty, if somewhat narcissistic, second man to the King in Love’s Labor’s Lost. What is he doing here, watching the interns’ “class project” show? You don’t get it. You also perform in Love’s Labor’s Lost. In the ensemble. As a deer. Wearing nothing but a unitard and deerhead helmet, complete with antlers, you dart through the woods pursued by hunters. During your deer movement training, the choreographer instructed that you first turn your head and pinpoint where you want to go, then follow through with your body, adding in a majestic leap or two as you run. The director insists that at night, under the lights, and from the audience’s point-of-view, the deer hunt scene looks spectacular. But from deep in the woods, in your deer helmet, with wet leaves squishing in your sandals and mosquitoes suckling blood from your bare arms, you feel like a moron. Self-conscious in the skintight unitard, you wait until everyone else leaves the dressing room before donning your deer costume and racing for the dark cover of the woods. What you don’t know is that each night some of the men playing hunters hover nearby, waiting for you to emerge so they can watch you bound away. One night, you take an overly ambitious leap and wipe out on the landing. In an epic header, you skid face first across the damp forest floor. Deer head falling forward, the animal’s fake teeth (you hope) cut open your chin. Limping and 51

bleeding, you drag yourself toward where you’ve been directed to exit. Your fellow deer turn to look back, concerned about their fallen comrade. “I’ve been shot,” you croak out the words in a stage whisper not audible from the audience, “I’m not going to make it. Go on, save yourselves!” They prance away, giggling. From the shadows, you make the other ensemble members laugh. Under the stars, he sprints across the stage performing verbal gymnastics as Berowne, the only Lord daring enough to argue against the King’s plan to swear off women for three years and focus instead on academic study. Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks. Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books. These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, That give a name to every fixèd star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are. Night after night, a wonderland of words tumble forth from his lips that, even after weeks of rehearsals, you barely understand. Inevitably, Lord Berowne falls for a Lady named Rosalind, who not only holds her own with him verbally, but gives him a run for his money. At the end of the play, Rosalind is

suddenly called back to France, and she makes Berowne promise to spend a year as a comedian for the sick, because Shakespeare. “Are you going?” he asks you one night after the show. You are drinking with the other ensemble members at The Elephant, the company’s aptly named concession stand, and it is jarring to suddenly find him at your side. Despite having listened to nothing but dancing linguistics for the past three hours, you can only mange to nod, “Yes.” “Great, I’ll follow you guys,” he says. His broad smile deepens the lines on his face along with his resemblance to an aging Sundance Kid. What he’s following you to is a party at one of the other company houses where the interns, such as yourself, live for free. Handy, since you don’t make any money. Like Bill in the car behind you, you hang your head out the window. The golden retriever is enjoying the late-summer chill in the air. You are watching in wonder as his owner zig-zags his black sports car down the winding mountain roads. “What is he, like 40? I wonder why he suddenly wants to hang out with us?” your friend who is driving teases. “How should I know?” you reply, not realizing the question is rhetorical. You don’t understand why he is coming to the party. You still don’t get it. A few days later, he pulls you aside, chattering away about how he plans to put on a production of The Skinhead Hamlet in the company’s after-hours Fringe Festival. He is going to direct and play Hamlet. He asks if you would consider being 53

Ophelia. You have no idea what these words mean but say “Yes” before your next breath. Soon, you learn the Fringe Festival is when company members put on shows for each other late at night after the public has gone home. And The Skinhead Hamlet is a 10-minute version of Hamlet done in bad cockney accents where every other word is fuck. For example, (my apologies, especially to the Bard): GHOST: Oi! Mush! HAMLET: Yer? GHOST: I was fucked! (Exit GHOST) HAMLET: O fuck. You show up at rehearsal, held in front of Edith Wharton’s mansion, and find that the Ghost, Gertrude, Claudius, and all the other parts in this silly little play are being played by senior company members. You stand there dwarfed by the gaping maw of Wharton’s 17th century-style English country home and surrounded by your heroes, your mentors, and their children. These kids, who named themselves the Very Young Company, have been performing since they could speak and put on their own Shakespeare shows each summer. You laughed until you cried at their version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which still has the best play-within-a-play you’ve ever seen. These young acting prodigies will grow up to grace the stage in New York, write for television, and star in movies. Everything you dreamed for yourself the summer you bought them ice cream. 54

Ophelia only has three lines in The Skinhead Hamlet, so no big right? You figured this was all just for fun and, at the time, thought this was the closest you’d ever get to playing the role. In college, if you were even cast, it was always as matronly characters like Queen Alonza. Now, you are terrified Ophelia’s three lines means you have three chances to embarrass yourself in front of all of these important people. The man who brought you all here, yanking you out of the woods and onto center stage, bounces across the courtyard with an infectious energy despite the sticky August heat. Face and lips red with excitement, he outlines his master plan to drive his car right up to the entrance of the mansion, put it up on blocks, and perform the late-night show in its headlights. That is the coolest thing ever. Is your first thought. Jesus Christ, what the hell am I doing here? Is your second. The question is answered when he blocks the nunnery scene, which in its entirety is, HAMLET: (Alone) To fuck or be fucked. OPHELIA: My Lord! HAMLET: Fuck off to a nunnery! (They exit in opposite directions) Turning to you he says, “So, I’m picturing Ophelia coming in wearing a long trench coat and thigh-high boots. And nothing else. She’ll say her line, flash Hamlet, then leave. Your back will be to the audience, so you can be completely naked underneath if you want, or not. It’s up to you.”

Now, you get it. But unaccustomed to the attention, you pretend not to. You also opt out of going completely naked under the trench coat. Ingrained morality and his impending divorce aside, you never considered this a viable option. You simply do not have a “naked under a trench coat” type of body. Case closed. Instead, you rehearse in what you plan to wear under the coat, a tight tank top, short gym shorts, and high heels. Well, your version of high heels, meaning the only shoes you own with any kind of heel. You don’t own thigh-high boots because you are not a stripper. That you ever walked around in nothing but a tank top and gym shorts is as crazy to you now as going completely naked under the trench coat was then. The teenage daughter of two of the legendary company members, though you keep confusing which two, is the one who suggests you switch out the gym clothes at the last second. “The audience can’t see you,” she plots, “think of how surprised he’ll be. Maybe you can even make him break. How awesome would that be?” Her conspiracy is captivating. This girl hasn’t even started high school yet and is already way cooler and a better actress than you could ever hope to be. More than wanting to surprise an older hot-for-you Hamlet, you want this girl to like you. So, compromising, you agree to ditch the gym clothes in lieu of some sexy lingerie. You pick out a frilly bra and panty set purchased at a discount store in Florida while you were still in college. The best of your budding A team, the emerald green bra is 56

embroidered with hearts and has a ruffle of lace. The matching thong is edged with a thin strip of gauzy fabric that does an excellent job of masking your bikini zone. This is a confidence builder as you are over eight years away from getting your first Brazilian—a Hail Mary pass to save a relationship doomed to dissolve on a stairwell shortly after ripping all the hair off your everywhere. The long black trench coat is his and he doesn’t give it to you until moments before the performance begins. Your hands don’t touch when he gives you the garment. You make sure of this. You are so nervous that if his skin were to touch yours in any way your body would burst into unidentifiable pieces. You start to slip away to make the switch, but he is staring at you. “What?” you ask, because that is what you ask when someone is staring at you. “You,” he replies, eyes crinkling, “You snuck in under my radar.” You are a three-line Ophelia, and no Rosalind. Verbally, you cannot give this man a run for his money. So, hugging the trench coat to your chest, you back away slowly. What you flash him (for now) is a smile you hope appears mysterious. As all of Shakespeare & Company gathers for the show, and the men struggle to figure out how exactly to get his black sports car up on blocks, you wait in the small parking lot adjacent to the courtyard. You are wearing the long black trench coat, heels, emerald green bra and thong, and nothing else. You shiver 57

as the night air sweeps up under the coat’s stiff fabric and over your exposed skin. The multitude of windows dotting Edith Wharton’s mansion glow in the moonlight, giving these dark orifices a malicious sheen as if even the ghosts inside question the validity of your presence here. When you sat huddled in the back of your high school library freshmen year, reading Ethan Frome and eating your brown bag lunch because no one invited you to sit at their table, the notion that you’d end up as a nearly naked Ophelia in The Skinhead Hamlet was unfathomable. A million monkeys ceaselessly banging away on typewriters would never have come up with this story. My Lord! My LORD! mylord! You practice your pre-flashing line as you pace the stones. What you are really practicing is walking in heels. It is a long cross over the uneven gravel of the courtyard before you turn, flash Hamlet, and then walk back. Everyone will be watching. Interns, company members, their children, students from the local high schools who work in the costume shop or box office. Some of which you’ll end up teaching and directing when you stay on for the Education Program’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare. Even your Aunt Angela is in the audience. She drove up this morning from Gloucester to see you as Alonza in The Tempest, stayed to watch you deer-it-up that evening in Love’s Labor’s Lost and, spending the night at a Howard Johnson’s nearby, decided to make it a triple-feature by sticking around for the late-night show. You are petrified you are going to 58

trip and fall on your face in front of all of them. That is the most embarrassing thing you could ever imagine happening. At your cue, you totter out of the darkness on your heels and head toward the bright shafts of light emanating from his car. Faces float beyond the beams, their eyes track your movement. You transform your totter into a strut by adding an extra sashay to your step. But, in your head, you chant left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot as you walk. Pivoting away from the audience, you face your Redford-esque Hamlet. He stands with his back to you, the harsh glare of the headlights rebounding off his thin frame as if he were in a criminal line-up. He leans against the high stone wall enclosing the courtyard with one hand. With the other, he mimics jacking-off as part of his To fuck or be fucked soliloquy. My Lord! He turns to you, hastily zipping up his fly. This is it. You take a deep breath but fright constricts every inch of your body and no oxygen reaches your brain. Lightheaded, you straighten your shoulders, thrust out your breasts, and fling open the trench coat. His eyes take in your body as you stand there on display in your Florida discount store bra and panties. He doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t break. He doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even blink. Fuck off to a nunnery! He shouts as Hamlet and you exit in opposite directions. Closing the coat, you escape back across the courtyard. LeftfootRightfoot pounds through your brain. Elated the deed is 59

done and defeated by his lack of reaction, you unconsciously pull the trench coat tighter as you retreat. What you don’t know is that there is a slit up the back of the coat. As you hug the stiff garment around your body, you pull the slit open wider exposing the pale white flesh of your jiggling ass cheeks to the entire audience. You don’t fall flat on your face but you do moon all of Shakespeare & Company. The thin strip of your green thong remains hidden, making it appear as if you did go completely naked under the trench coat. Your greatest act of daring is, in fact, an accident. One you remain unaware of for the remaining few minutes of the show. It is your Aunt Angela who tells you what happened as faces drift past you in the darkness. Right before she does, a distinct Beavis & Butthead uh huhuhuhuhuh laugh of a future Fall Festival student floats through the air. Years from now, the same young man will take you off guard by chuckling under his breath, uh huhuh Skinhead Hamlet uh huh huh huh huh, right before a Festival show you directed. Reminding you that yes, EVERYONE, was there that night. “Honey…” your aunt says, leading with her standard soft opener for upsetting news. You stand there stunned when she asks if you knew everyone could see your naked bottom. No, you did NOT know! It’s fitting that your Aunt Angela is the one you share this moment with, since the two of you also share the same shapely rear end. And the same mantra, one that your aunt found

on a postcard picturing a little girl kneeling by her bed in nightly prayer. The thought bubble over her head reading, “Thank you God for the pretty face, but the fat ass has got to go.” Later that night, you meet your Aunt Angela at the Howard Johnson’s and, snickering under the covers of the twin beds like teenagers, you chatter about the shows today, about how he really does look like Robert Redford, and about an older man that she once dated. You are shocked when your aunt tells you how he would take her out for rides around Cape Ann on his motorcycle. But not in Gloucester, because she didn’t want to chance your Grandma Rose spotting her riding around behind some man. Back then, she worked as a waitress at a roast beef diner, a shiny bullet-shaped place you’ve walked by countless times over the years but have never been inside. Let alone known she once worked there. She was surprised when one of the other waiters at the diner mentioned that he’d seen her breeze past him on the back of a motorcycle when he was visiting his friends in Rockport. “Are you sure it was me?” she asked, not wanting to confirm the truth and taken aback by being spotted despite how fast they’d been going. “Baby, I’d recognize that ass anywhere,” he replied. It is the first story you remember hearing that was just about Angela as a person, as a sexual creature outside her assigned role in your family. Seeing you flash your ass in front of 61

an entire theater company has expanded your boundaries. Maybe it is when she started to see you as a person and not just her sister’s youngest daughter. You may be the only aunt and niece whose relationship was improved by an accidental mooning. You have never ridden on the back of a motorcycle, but sitting together in his black sports car your heart races as if you were speeding along instead of parked in front of the mansion. Everyone else has drifted home and your figures are etched only by the pale glow of the moon. The one in the sky. Yours is once again clothed and you’ve returned his trench coat. You sit together in the deep quiet of the Berkshires. The round silence you imagine Wharton spent hours composing her work by, her manuscripts lit by the flicker of a candle. He stares off into the distance in soulful contemplation. Of what, you aren’t sure. The moon, the stars, the after-glow of a successful performance? You are too distracted by the mixed elation and trepidation of is he going to kiss me? I mean, that’s what this has all been leading up to, isn’t it? Now you are here, in a dark car, alone. You have been cast against type so even though the upcoming plot point is clear, you remain insecure. And what if he wants to do more than kiss? you worry. He is married, technically. And you are Catholic, technically. Your Catholicism is genetically ingrained and hard to shake. Look how many years it took for your aunt to tell you about riding on the back of a motorcycle, and that was still all the information she disclosed.

Finally, he turns to you and smiles. He leans over and this is it, it’s happening. But then he talks, with a slight hint of alcohol on his breath, he talks, and talks, and talks. About his wife, who he is separated from. About the home they own together in Tarrytown and what’s going to happen to it. Will he have to sell it? Find a renter to share it with him? About Shakespeare and living in New York and even jumping in the ocean at Coney Island each year on New Year’s Day as part of the Polar Bear Club. About coming here to perform in the summers and where, if anywhere, his acting career is going beyond this place. And you listen, and listen, promise you will jump in that frigid water one New Year’s Day, and listen. Nodding when appropriate and noticing how thin his lips are when he talks. The vulnerability of the pale white skin under his eyes, which when he’s not flashing his crinkly Robert Redford grin, are etched with fine lines and wisps of blue veins. “You are so grounded for someone so young, so wise,” he says, “Here I am, rambling on while you sit there so stoic. How do you do that?” “Sometimes it’s better knowing when not to talk.” He throws his head back and roars with laughter. The sound overpowers the confines of the car. You swell with pride at having stumbled upon the perfect thing to say. In your face, Rosalind! Growing still, he looks at you. His stare is as intense as the stage lights and once again you are a deer caught. This man wants you. That thought so unbelievable, you never stopped to 63

wonder if you felt the same way. Now, the time for wondering is over and all you can see is the bright blue-green of his eyes. “How old are you?” he asks. “Twenty-two,” you reply, “You?” “There is no age,” he whispers, as he closes the last bit of space separating your bodies, “you are either alive or you are dead.” His lips are drier than you expected when they take over yours. At first, it is more like they are sitting on top of your face than kissing you. But maybe he senses that you are overwhelmed, shutting down. He stops, resting his head on your chest and you sit there breathing as one. And it is nice. To not be alone in the woods. You touch his hair. It is softer than you expected. It smells of trees, and shampoo, and experience. The comfort he finds in your silence isn’t you being stoic but naïve of the problems that plague him. He is in the middle of a life you are trying to begin. You don’t sleep together, but you do make out. Quite a bit. Unlike Rosalind, you don’t make him promise to spend a year as a comedian for the sick, but you do make him wait. As it turns out, he is the only one who doesn’t get to see your naked ass that night. There is age. And now, not only are you alive but you are as old as the man was in the car that evening. You think about that summer and The Skinhead Hamlet often. You have been waiting your whole life to be skinny, sexy, chosen. Then you will

be happy. But that summer you were everything youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always wanted to be. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a shame you missed it.

Cockroaches The ghosts of Rwanda By Shoola Oyindamola It is April again. The thumping rhyme of the rain Reminds me of the 94’s sound of war drums. The ones that beat up our existence. I can still see the soldiers. I couldn't tell if they were alive But they stayed still, with clenched palms On the sticks of death that hung on their necks. The “bold nations” had run away. Their holy bullets could not stand The filth of bloody rage in the eyes Of dark toned skins with machetes. Their eyes still hunt me. Fixed glare of children stripped of life Upon bodies that floored the streets As if in companion with the soil. The air of the streets dried out to stinks. Vultures had taken dominion over the lands, The lakes and pools were colored red, I have never seen nature so stiff. If you look closer, a little bit deeper, You too will see the souls of their carcass, As if to take a step away from the death That had taken a step into them. Can you hear them? The angry sounds of cocking guns, The shivering words of tortured mothers, 66

The morning groan of real men. Those were the times of war When we didn't run, we didn't hide, We simply sat and laughed as hard Till God decided it was our time.

When Red Isn’t Enough By Babette Cieskowski My shade for wine is writing. Pour, let it spill. Savor, strain, taste tannins, try again when you’re drunker. Tonight, Bacchus plays the voice of reason, fully imagined, yet unconsidered. Wonders where the magic’s found in these common corn-fed heroes. It lies in eyes like wells, more for falling than for thirst. Keep going, wait for biblical stains, that’s when you know it’s working. Magic hides in aged Eve’s mouth, waits for Cain to come home soon. Her fruit ripened, bound by glass, shows no regret for garden vices. She just needs someone to laugh with, maybe trade some Venus stories. 68

Hand me another, lover, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll explain her to you slowly.

Trading for Diamonds By Julie K. Wise Scottsdale, Arizona 1989 I’m pretty sure I’m in trouble when I see Dad’s black Suburban pull up in the church parking lot. Mom sits next to him in the passenger’s seat. Dad never picks me up from anything. I can see that their faces are serious as I walk up to the car. “Both of them? We’re in trouble,” Mandy says, echoing my thoughts as she flips her blonde hair out of her coat collar with a perfectly manicured hand. “They must have already called our parents. So fucking stupid.” I know Mandy’s worried too. Our youth group leaders are keeping their distance from us, shaking their heads, and talking quietly over by the church van. The ride home from the ski mountain was colder than snow. None of the other youth group kids would talk to us. We weren’t allowed to ride back to Scottsdale in the other van with the guys, which is fine with me. I’m pretty angry that Matthew and Darren didn’t get in any trouble at all, even though their room was the party room. Nobody wants to mess with Darren. His mom is the mayor of Scottsdale, and their family is one of the biggest donors to the church. The group leaders searched our room instead and found Mandy’s tequila. If they had gone through Matthew’s room, they would have found the epic stash of weed the boys were smoking on the ski lifts all weekend. Life is so unfair. 70

I’m going to be grounded for sure. We almost got away with it. We had been doing shots of tequila in the Jacuzzi and went up to the guys’ room to hang out. Matthew and I are almost a couple, and Mandy’s into Darren enough to hang out with him for the weekend. When Mr. Jonathan knocked on the hotel room door, the guys pushed us out the patio doors to hide us on the balcony. After a few minutes of freezing our asses off in wet bathing suits and bare feet, we jumped off the second story balcony into a snow bank and ran across the parking lot to the lodge’s front doors. How could we know that the other youth leaders were hanging out in the lobby? Busted. We had to give up our lift tickets and sit in the lodge all day. Dad gets out of the car and takes my skis from me. He loads them into the back of the Suburban. I hand him my bag and my boots, and after he sets them down, he turns and hugs me tight. Something is definitely up. I don’t think Dad has hugged me since I turned thirteen two years ago. “What’s up, Dad?” I ask, scared to hear the answer. “Get in the truck, honey,” he says. “We’ll talk on the way home.” Mom clears her throat after Dad pulls out of the church parking lot. “We need to tell you something. There isn’t an easy way to say it, so I’m just going to tell you,” she says. “Leif died this weekend.”

I laugh. Leif is my best friend Sunnihina’s stepdad. “No way. I just saw him the other morning. He drove us to school. He was joking with us.” Why would Mom say such stupid words that can’t be true? Leif didn’t come home last night. Mom thinks he’s going to kill himself. That’s what Sunni said on Friday morning. It was so out of the blue, I laughed, just like I did just now. Sunni laughed too. I didn’t see her for the rest of the day, and then I left for the ski trip. I forgot what she said until now. I feel punched in the stomach. “Did he kill himself?” I ask. The words are surreal coming out of my mouth. Mom takes a sharp breath. “Yes. How did you know that?” “That’s what Sunni’s mom said when he didn’t come home on Thursday night. We thought it was a joke. They always fight when Leif tells Pam she can’t have something she wants.” I stare out the window as we drive up Tatum Boulevard. It’s dark now, and light shines out of the tall windows of mansions on the rocky slopes of Camelback Mountain. We’re silent for a few minutes. “How?” “What?” “How’d he do it?” I ask. “He…” Mom stops. “How?” I can feel Mom weighing how much to tell me. 72

“With a gun,” Dad says, glancing over his shoulder at me in the backseat. “In their house?” I don’t know why it matters. “No. In the desert. After he dropped you girls off at school on Thursday.” Thursday. I was tired that morning. When Leif pulled up to our house in their green Cadillac, Sunni was sitting in the front seat. The shotgun seat. I’m shaking. I’m not cold, so it doesn’t make sense that I’m shaking like this. I look at the back of my hand. The streetlights shine on my skin through the window. Then darkness, then light again, a pattern back and forth almost like stripes, faster when Dad speeds up, slowing when he brakes to stop at a red light. “Are you all right?” Mom asks. “I’m fine.” I don’t know what I am. Dad’s profile shines in the light of the oncoming cars. My dad is here. He isn’t dead. Sunni’s dad is dead. I guess I’m not in trouble for the tequilaboys-ski-trip situation. My stomach turns. I grab onto the handle on the door. Selfish thought. How can I think about myself? Poor Sunni. Leif’s gone? “Can I call Sunni? Is it okay to talk to her?” “We can take you over there, if that’s what you want to do. Kimberly is over at her house right now. She’s been there most of the weekend.”

Of course she is. The three of us are always together. Church youth group is the only time when I do stuff without my best friends. Jess and Sunni aren’t into church. “I guess we should go over there,” I say. Leif. The only Dad Sunni has ever known. Tall, always smiling. Dead. You girls are quiet this morning. That’s what he said, driving us to school. When we pull up to Sunni’s house, her circular driveway is filled with cars. It looks like every light is on in the house. “Will you come in with me?” I ask my parents. “Sure,” Mom answers. “We were here most of the morning.” “It’s a circus in there,” Dad mutters under his breath as he climbs out of the car. We moved to Scottsdale three years ago from Minnesota. My dad thinks everything is a circus. The flash of the nouveau riche offends his Midwestern sensibilities. Besides, it’s always a circus at Sunni’s house. Her sister Jenny is the president of the senior class and a member of Zeta, our high school sorority. There’s always crazy stuff going on, like kids building the Homecoming float on the Lusby’s tennis court in the backyard or hot football players, friends of Jenny’s boyfriend, eating Leif’s BBQ by the pool. Their mom, Pam, is a socialite. She’s gorgeous but crazy, a total climber, and she’s making sure her daughters grow up in 74

the center of everything. She grew up on a reservation somewhere, but when she was a teenager, she ran away to California and married Jenny and Sunni’s real dad who made her into a model. He disappeared after Sunni was born, and Pam married Leif who’s richer than God and spoils everyone rotten. Spoiled, I guess. Past tense now. Dad doesn’t even ring the bell when we get to the front door. We walk into their large, circular foyer. Tons of framed family pictures sit on the round marble table in the center of the domed room. I can see into the great room that is filled with people I don’t know. Food is everywhere, and everyone holds a glass of wine or some other drink. It looks like a party except there isn’t any music, and no one is smiling. Mom leads me in by the arm. “The girls are probably up in Sunni’s room. That’s where they were most of this morning,” she says. “Go ahead. I’ll tell Pam that you’re here.” I’m heading up the stairs when a shriek splits the silence. Pam comes stumbling into the room dressed in a long black velvet dress. Her face is hidden behind huge black sunglasses even though it’s nighttime. She walks like she’s drunk or something, and she bumps into the table with all the pictures. When one of the frames falls over, she picks it up and holds the picture of Leif up to her face. She screams out a sob and throws the picture to the floor, crying.

“Fuck you, Leif,” Pam slurs as she cries. She falls into the wall. A bunch of people help her into a chair. Dad was right. This is a circus. I’ve only known loss once when my grandma died. Everyone was sad, especially Mom, but no one dressed in a grieving costume and slammed around the house. “She’s been like that since the police came on Friday and told her. She’s taking fifty pills a day,” Kimberly says from the top of the stairs. “Come on. Sunni’s up here.” “Is Sunni like that?” I ask as I follow her down the familiar white-carpeted hallway. “No. She’s sad like a normal person,” Kim answers. “Sorry. Is that bitchy?” “I don’t know,” I answer. “I don’t know anything at all.” When we walk in the room, Sunni is sitting on the floor by her stereo. Albums are scattered around her. “Hi,” I say, standing stupidly near the door. “Hi. I’m supposed to be picking out music for the memorial service. How about this one?” Sunni says, holding up AC/DC’s Highway to Hell album. “Just kidding. That probably wouldn’t go over very well.” I walk over to her and sit on the floor. “I’m so sorry about Leif. Are you ok?” I ask. As soon as I say his name, her face crumples into sobs. I grab her and pull her into me. Kim sits next to us and puts her

arms around both of us as we all cry. “I’m sorry, Sunni. I’m so sorry. What can I do?” I rush out the words through tears. “You can’t do anything. No one can do anything,” she says. “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand.” We sit like that for a long time, hugging and crying. Sunni pulls away first and dries her eyes on the sleeve of her pink cashmere sweater. “I don’t know where all the tears come from. You’d think I’d run out.” “I don’t think it works like that,” Kimberly says. “No, I guess it doesn’t,” Sunni turns to me. “How was the ski trip?” “Fine,” I answer. “Did you hook up with Matthew?” she asks. “No, Mandy and I got busted with tequila.” I look into her face. Her eyes are red and swollen, but she’s beautiful, my sweet, beautiful friend. Carat diamond earrings sparkle from her ears. Leif gave her those earrings for Christmas this year. I was so jealous. “We really don’t have to talk about my ski trip, Sunni.” “I’d rather talk about your ski trip than my dead dad.” Sunni had so many presents under her tree this year, each wrapped professionally with rich-looking paper and big velvet bows. Later, Sunni told me that most of those wrapped boxes were empty. Pam wanted to make sure it looked like they were all getting everything they wanted and more. Have a good day. See you tonight, honey. Those were his last words as we got out of the car. 77

What a liar. *** Mom makes me breakfast the next morning. She doesn’t ask me about the ski trip, which is rare. Mom always wants to know everything about me: where I go, whom I’m with, when I’ll be home. She’s not like Kimberly’s mom who throws money at her to make her go away. I have to really work to pull off as much crazy shit as I do. “Sunni’s going to be living with us for the next couple weeks. I’m going to pick her up soon,” Mom says as she puts pancakes onto my plate and sets the syrup on the table. “Because Pam’s such a mess?” I ask. “I’m surprised Pam doesn’t hire someone. Can’t she buy someone to manage her kids? She buys everything else.” “Don’t be rude, Julie,” my mom warns. “That family is going through the most awful thing I can imagine.” Mom clears her throat like she always does when she has to say something unpleasant. “There isn’t any money. They’re broke except for the insurance money, and there’s a chance they won’t get that either.” “What? You’re crazy, Mom. How can they be broke? They have everything.” Except Leif. Mom makes herself busy around the kitchen island. “They don’t have anything, actually. The house and the cars will be gone by the end of the week. Most everything was paid for 78

with credit that can’t be paid off.” She stops moving and leans back against the fridge. “Not everything is how it seems. You should learn that.” The house with the tennis courts. The Laura Ashley dresses. Vacations and toys, manicures and spa days. All the things that made me feel bad for how much I wanted my parents to be cool like hers. Mom continues. “And Leif thought that his family cared more about having the insurance money than having him alive. That’s the most tragic thing I can imagine, Julie. Think about that when you’re bugging me for new skis and diamond earrings.” *** A week later, I hold onto Kimberly’s arm as we walk down the aisle. Matthew, Darren, and the rest of the guys are sitting behind us wearing black suits and black Vans. Most of the school is here. Sunni and Jenny sit with Pam and the extended family in the front pew. Pam’s crying hard, but nothing can smudge the permanent makeup that is tattooed on her eyes. Mom and Dad, solid and serious, hold hands a few rows in front of me. Reverend Stanley waits near the pulpit. The sunlight shines through the stained glass and casts strange colors on the white cloth draped over the closed casket. When the service is over, I watch Sunni’s face as she walks down the long aisle holding onto her sister’s arm. I can usually read her mind, but I have no idea what she’s going through now. She’s tough one moment, even laughing. Then, 79

she’s on the floor, crying in my closet. She hasn’t been back to school yet, but she’s going to try next Monday. The service at the gravesite is a blurred, mind-numbing mess of tears and too-bright sunshine and hugs. Then, hundreds of people drive to Sunni’s house for the reception, one last party before the bank takes everything on Monday. The sun sets over the city view that stretches out past the back yard. Someone hired caterers who set up long tables of food outside, and a uniformed bartender stands behind the makeshift bar on the patio. People are eating and drinking, talking and laughing. Matthew goes to get us some drinks. I wander through the house, looking at more pictures of Leif that sit next to lit candles on every flat surface. Kimberly puts her arm around me, and she picks up a picture frame. In this one, Pam and Leif stand with Jenny and Sunni in front of the Eiffel Tower. Jenny’s sweet sixteen. She took friends to Paris for her birthday. Sunni’s been planning to bring me and Kimberly when it’s her turn next year. Kimberly and I hug and cry until the shoulder of my silk party dress is soaked with her tears. Matthew comes up behind us with tears in his eyes too. “Get a room, you two,” he tries to joke. We wipe our eyes, and he bear-hugs us too. We walk over to a huge picture window. “Check out the party,” Matthew says, staring outside as half of the high school and their parents mingle around the back yard, talking and laughing, or staring out of the city lights. 80

“Cheers, Leif,” he says, raising his glass before downing his spiked drink in one gulp and grimacing. “I’ve got to get out of here,” I say. I look across the yard to where Pam is holding onto Sunni to stay standing. Sunni looks down at her shoes as her mom points a long red fingernail in her face, berating her about something I can’t hear. “And we’ve got to get Sunni away from her mom. She’s totally out of control.” “Michael’s old place,” Matthew says. Michael is our buddy, and his house is just down the mountain. We all nod. “I’ll get the others.” A few minutes later, I’m in his truck. Michael follows us with Sunni, Kimberly, and Darren. We park down the street in the shadows of tall, old trees. Michael’s house isn’t really Michael’s house anymore. His parents sold it a few months ago when they went bankrupt and had to move into an apartment. No one else has moved in yet, though. “Is this a good idea?” I ask. “Probably not,” he answers. “But fuck it.” He grabs a plastic bag out of the dash and tucks it into the inner pocket of his dark suit. He waits as I climb out of his truck, and we walk across the shadowy street, my tall heels clicking on the uneven pavement. We’re all quiet until we walk through the side gate into the grass of the large property. I slip my shoes off and feel the cool yard under my feet. The only light is the moon. Matthew takes a swig out of a bourbon bottle.

“Did you steal that bottle from my house?” Sunni asks him. “Yes. Yes I did,” he answers solemnly. “I didn’t think your mom would miss it.” “Please. I doubt she’s missed me yet,” Sunni says. She reaches for the bottle, drinks, and passes it to me. I take a big swallow that burns my throat. Lying on the grass, whiskey burning my mouth and a cigarette in my hand, I feel like I’m breathing for the first time in a week. No more standing around in the crazy-town of Sunni’s house. No more stained-glass churches. Just cool desert wind that feels cold on my skin as lightning flashes against the mountain. The wind picks up, and I smell wet mesquite in the desert air. A winter storm is coming over the mountain. Sunni is crying. Michael and Kimberly sit on either side of her. She leans her head on Kimberly’s shoulder. I’m crying too. “What do you think happens when we die?” Sunni asks. “Do you think we go somewhere? Or do we just stop?” “What do you mean, somewhere? Like heaven?” I ask, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “Or hell,” Matthew says. I punch him in the arm behind Sunni’s back. She doesn’t need to think about places like hell. “Heaven? I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so,” Kimberly says.

“If there’s a heaven, do you think that Leif’s invited?” Sunni asks. Her voice is small and shaky. “If there’s a heaven, do you think any of us are invited?” I ask, trying to make things lighter. Matthew thinks for a second, and then, he answers. “Yeah, I think so, Julie. We’ve fucked up, for sure. But we’re kids, you know? It’s a long life.” “Or maybe it isn’t,” I answer. “Or maybe it isn’t,” he echoes. Matthew leans closer to me and whispers. “But it’s not our choice. And you sure as fuck can’t trade it for diamonds.”

Selected Poems by Susan Cobin The Man With Germs can't stop washing his hands bent over a sink papery long fingers collapse into a stream of hot water bubbles begin to sparkle like polished moonstones the man with germs always wears a powder blue mask breathes in so deeply he can't hear the wind blow debris across his eyes brown as dust he bends down and in circular motion wipes up pieces from his broken life even he can't see

The Man Who Loves Rain wrings out his blueâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; striped towels that squeak as though sparkling with sifted orange dust he loves everything about water how it streams down his back and up his arms in a whirlwind of broken glass swept with a tangled mop he places an eggshell white cup on the windowsill listens to rain sliding off the roof he counts the drops that glisten across his face in a dream sheep float above logs and vanish like 85

clouds that squeeze between his fingers

Spare Key By Diana Conces You let yourself into my dreams with the spare key tucked beneath the cactus blooming on the porch, casual-like and belonging. At home in the kitchen, you light a candle, and tilting back the chair two-legged, you speak across the oaken table words that might contain the meaning of life but float, ephemeral, past the red curtains, out the window like flies, forgotten as soon as their wings clear your mouth. At home in my bed, you sprawl half tangled in the quilt, fingers tracing a promise you never could make, lips lighting fires in the cold stone hearth, chasing out the shadows. You let yourself out, just before the alarm, and nothing is different, not one off-kilter towel or empty whisky glass names you, just lingering peace and the memory of vanilla.

The Things That Came with the Dress By Aracelis González Asendorf What impressed me most about Lili, as she sat by her mother on our living room couch, were her perfectly smooth round knees. My own twelve-year-old knees told the story of my childhood in scars. The most interesting one was a half-inch zigzag from falling on a piece of bottle glass in the woods across the street from our house. That one made my grandmother yell at my mother that I was being raised like una salvaje, some wild creature, instead of a proper young lady. I could tell Lili was brought up as a proper young lady. Here she was three years older than me, and her knees were as smooth as polished apples. “I like your hat,” I said to Lili that first time she came to our house. She looked like a model. She wore a short black skirt, a white, gauzy blouse that gathered just off her shoulders, black boots, and a straw fedora poised just so on her brown hair. Lili touched the hat with a finger. “Thanks,” she said. “My mother bought it at Target. You should get one. They had lots.” I nodded, knowing I wouldn’t. Over the past two years I’d stopped running around like a wild creature. I still went into the woods, but with books that took me to a world more exciting than my own. I’d become aware of my clothes and hair, and I already knew I wasn’t the type to wear a hat. It was a wearable exclamation mark: Look at me! For my elementary school years 88

I’d been one of a handful of Cuban kids in school. Now in middle school, I was only one of a couple in the advanced classes. I was tired of being different. Lili’s mother was Cecilia, that’s Lili’s real name, too. Cecilia and Mami were billing clerks for a company in town. Mami started working with Cecilia six months ago. They knew each other before, but only casually. All the Cubans in Coquina Shores knew each other, but now Mami and Cecilia were lunch buddies. Lili’s fifteenth birthday was six weeks away, and she was having a Quinceañera party with all the trimmings. Cecilia made countless trips across the Everglades to Miami to buy decorations, order dresses for the damas, the fourteen girls who would dance with their escorts around Lili at her coming-out party, and of course, Lili’s dress. I hadn’t seen it yet, but knew it was long and white, with a skirt decorated with pearl beads and sapphire blue ribbons. I’d never been to a Quinceañera before. It sounded magical. Lili would enter the party a girl and leave a woman. This was going to be the biggest Quince in town. The Cuban community was small, several hundred maybe, nothing like Miami. Big Quince parties happened there all the time. Lili’s father owned a small carpet-cleaning business. But, for four years he’d worked part-time five nights a week busing tables at the expensive Sea Drift Hotel by the beach to earn extra money for the party.

“What do you think?” Cecilia held swatches of ribbon and material out to my mother. “Don’t you think the organza matches perfectly?” Cecilia wanted Lili to enter the party wearing a floorlength cape that matched the damas dresses, but the ones in the stores were expensive. Mami was a talented seamstress. She could sew anything: all her clothes and mine, shirts for my younger brother, curtains and bedspreads. Mami offered to make the cape as a favor. Cecilia wanted it to be sapphire-blue with a white velvet collar. “The boys’ bow ties are the same blue,” Cecilia said. “It’s so beautiful.” “So blue is your favorite color, Lili?” Mami asked. She rubbed a corner of organza between her fingers. “No, yellow.” Lili played with silver bangles on her wrist. “Yellow does nothing for her coloring,” Cecilia said. “Lili, who’s your escort?” I was eager for details. “Robertico. My sister’s son,” Cecilia answered. “He’s tall. They’ll look elegant.” Lili kept turning her bangles. Cecilia took the material from my mother, and smoothed it with her palm. She had mansized hands, large and broad, with thick nails painted cinnamon color. “Too bad you’re so young, Carmen, you could have been one of the damas.” Cecilia gave me a thin smile. “But, your time will come.”

My time. Would I wake up one morning and know it was the day? That it was here, now? I heard the expression often from my mother, my aunts, and their friends. They talked when we got together at someone’s house. They talked about being fifteen, sixteen, eighteen; going to a particular saint’s day celebration back home and going to dances with first boyfriends who usually became husbands. I only knew about these things from their stories. I was afraid when my time came I wouldn’t recognize it.

*** Two weeks later I went with my mother to Lili’s house to deliver the cape. From the outside, Lili’s house looked like mine. Small stucco ranch houses dotted the east part of town. Since our houses were similar on the outside, I expected to find a living room like ours on the inside. We had what Mami called wash and wear furniture, a slip-covered sofa with matching arm chairs where my brother and I watched television, played video games, and ate grilled cheese sandwiches. When the slipcovers got dirty, she washed them; when they became worn, she sewed new ones. But Lili’s house had an emerald-green velvet couch with shiny curlicue end tables. Each table had a tall lamp dangling with glass prisms. Mami presented the cape to a delighted Cecilia who draped it over Lili’s shoulders.

“Ay, Berta, you did a beautiful job,” Cecilia smoothed the fabric. Lili stood still, looking like a painted porcelain doll, while her mother clucked around her. She wore perfect makeup: foundation, glossy lipstick, eye shadow, eyeliner; the works. “Ay, Lili, pero que linda. You’re so pretty, very grown up,” my mother said. “Gracias, Berta. The cape is cool.” “Isn’t her makeup wonderful?” asked Cecilia. “We had it done today at the Clinique counter. Tú sabes, so we can practice for the party. We bought everything, same as the saleslady used, even the lip liner. That one thin pencil cost twelve dollars, so you can just imagine what I paid for it all. That saleslady, real nice girl, she gave us lots of tips on how to use everything. Isn’t that right, Lili? Turn around again, let me see the back.” Cecilia gave Lili’s shoulders a twist, bent down, and tugged the hem of the cape. Stricter, more traditional families don’t allow girls to wear makeup, high heels, or go out with boys until they turn fifteen. I tried hard not to be traditional, because I knew traditional meant restrictions. Sometimes it was a hassle even with simple things, like the first time I wanted to go to a sleepover. “But,” Papi said, “you don’t sleep in the house of strangers.” Never mind that it was at my friend’s house, three streets over. “Perfect.” Cecilia’s square hands lifted the cape off Lili. She held it by the tips of her fingers, and gave it a loose shake.

“Really perfect, Berta, you have such talent. Have you thought of sewing for a living?” “When we first came to Florida, before we moved to Coquina Shores and I didn’t know English at all, I sewed for a shirt factory. But in this country there is so much opportunity. I’m taking a business class two nights a week at the Vo-tech school. I tell Carmen all the time. In this country, education is the most important thing.” My mother patted my hand as if that would make her words sink in better. Cecilia took a white satin-covered hanger from a bag, and carefully draped the cape over it. “Come, Berta, I’ll fix you un cafecito. Lili, show Carmen your bedroom.” Lili’s bedroom had white laminated furniture. The bedspread and curtains were pink, and lacey, and fluffy as puff pastries. Lili’s fancy new cosmetics were neatly arranged like small shimmering trophies on top of her dresser. Her Quince gown hung from the top of the closet door. I had a new dress for the party too, a store-bought dress. Mami made me beautiful dresses, but saying, My mother made it, held no thrill. I’d begged to go shopping. I wanted the excitement. It was lavender and silky, and we bought it at JC Penney’s. “Looks like you’re all ready,” I pointed toward the dress. Lili nodded. “Everything is planned. You having a Quinceañera, too?” “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” 93

And I wasn’t. My American girlfriends might think the dance and dresses were cool, but the boys would find the whole thing stupid. Lili had cousins coming from Miami to dance in her court, but I was the oldest in my family. All my cousins were younger. Where would I find fourteen couples for my honor court? I looked at Lili’s dress, and imagined myself wearing it. The bodice fitting snuggly against my ribs, the full skirt swirling around my legs, but something about the me I envisioned reminded me of those plastic figurines on top of wedding cakes.

Most of the Cubans in town were going to the party. It was the social event. It was something to talk about besides work, or who had the best price on chicken thighs, or who picked the right dog at last Saturday night’s races. The Sunday before the party, my mother’s sister, Tía Coralia, and her friend Ada came to the house. Mami was helping Tía Coralia make her party dress. We were in my parents’ room sitting on the bed, except for Mami, who sat at the sewing machine by the window. She was hemming Tía Coralia’s black dress. Ada was pinning her dress around the hips where she wanted it taken in. “I have to use what I have while I have it.” Ada threw her head back laughing which made her hair bounce, and her gold-hoop earrings jiggle. She’d bought the dress on sale at Macy’s. “Macy’s.” My mother arched her eyebrows. “That’s so expensive.” 94

“Not if you shop the sales, and niña, you can’t beat them for quality,” Ada said. “Sí, that’s true,” my mother and aunt agreed. “Besides, we can’t let Cecilia show everybody up, eh?” Ada had a throaty, raspy voice. “That Cecilia, mija, trying to spit higher than a frog can jump, putting on such airs. And el pobre Reynaldo, walking around for years with dishpan hands to make it possible. Miren, look,” Ada reached for her purse. “I brought you a picture of my Quince.” She pulled out an old photograph. There was Ada, looking the same, but younger, fresher. She wore a lacy blouse, and a long, flowered skirt cinched at the waist with a broad belt. Ada stood with a boy touching raised wine glasses beneath an arch formed by two palm trees. I held the photograph, staring at the small glimpse of her past. “That’s Luis, my best friend’s brother. Isn’t he handsome? After the toast we danced. It was perfect; it was at my godmother’s house. When the breeze blew, the palm trees rustled together. I loved that. What days those were, right?” Ada said. I listened. I always listened to all the stories, to everything they had to say about this place I came from, but really didn’t; this place I didn’t know. Sometimes I felt like a lost space traveler. I couldn’t go back to the home planet, but I was supposed to live a certain way in a different world. But, the way I lived wasn’t the old world’s way, and it wasn’t the new world’s way either. 95

***

On the afternoon of the party, my mother spent an hour twisting strands of my hair, stiff with hair mousse, around a fat curling iron. While she did that, I entertained my little cousin with Legos so Tía Coralia, who is great with flowers, could help Cecilia with the table centerpieces. Around four, it rained. The heavy thunderstorm that comes every afternoon during the Florida summer months left the air vapor-thick with humidity. I was glad Mami used all that mousse to make my curls stay. I was in my bedroom carefully getting into my dress without mussing my hair when I heard it. My father screamed, “Recoño!” It was bad. Whatever it was, it was bad. He didn’t yell coño, but recoño. I ran to my parents’ bedroom. “Wait, espera, wait,” my Mami said. “Don’t tug, you’ll make it worse.” My father stood with his arms at his side, and his pants falling to his hips. “Ay, Arturo, I told you to wait!” My mother knelt in front of him. “You yanked it. You broke the zipper. I don’t think I can fix it. You’re so impatient.” “I’ll wear something else.” “What?” My mother stood up, hands on hips, and chin pointed up at my father. “It’s the only suit you have. You have another pair of dress pants, and they don’t match the jacket. You have to wear these.” 96

“Well, what do you expect me to do?” “I’ll sew it shut.” “What do you mean, you’ll sew it shut?” “I’ll pull the zipper close together and stitch it up. With your jacket on, nobody will be able to tell.” “But, I’ll need to pee.” “Don’t drink too much beer. I’ll stitch it loosely. When you need to pee, we’ll go to the car. I’ll rip it, and sew it again.” “This is crazy.” Papi shook his head. With Mami perfumed, and Papi grumbling, and me sitting stiffly in all my newness, we drove to the party. It was at a hotel hall a few blocks from the airport. Papi’s zipper made us late. The parking lot was full of cars we recognized. “Find a spot near one of the light posts,” my mother said. “That way, when I re-sew your zipper I’ll have light.” “People will see,” I said. “Park as far from the hall as you can, Papi,” Mami instructed. “No one will come out except the smokers, and they’ll stay near the door.” Papi finally found a suitable spot at the end of the parking lot. He pulled the passenger side of the car, where I sat in the back seat behind my mother, close to a strip of grass that separated the lot from the street. I threw the door open, eager to get out, only to plop my foot into a puddle left over from the earlier rain. 97

The hall was bright, full and noisy. Two long lines of rectangular tables, covered with blue tablecloths, banked each side. There were center pieces of white and blue carnations, bunches of white and blue balloons, and tall fichus trees strung with white lights at every corner. At the very end of the hall was the dais table with thirty seats for Lili and her honor court. People looked up, some waved, Tía Coralia motioned us over to sit with her. When we walked to join her, I was sure everyone looked directly at my right foot which, although dried with paper napkins from McDonald’s Mami had in the car, made a faint sloshing sound when I walked. I felt my face burn. Tía Coralia and my uncle sat with Ada and her husband. Ada looked more like the girl in the picture she showed us. “Carmen, que linda, bellísima,” she said to me. “Watch out, Arturo, it’ll be her time for one of these soon.” “Bueno, a party when she turns fifteen, maybe, but one of these?” My father spread his arm out. “I can see working two jobs to feed her, but not for a party.” Papi squeezed my shoulders and walked to the bar. He returned strategically clutching three drinks between his hands. He placed a mojito in front of my mother, handed me a soda, and sipped the beer he’d brought for himself. I saw Mami look from the beer bottle, down to his zipper, and back to his face. “The night is young,” she said. My face burned again, as if people could tell about Papi’s pants. The DJ Cecilia hired who, she’d told everybody, came 98

highly recommended for his Latin music, came over the sound system. “Señoras y señores,” he said. “The honorable Reynaldo Mercado and his beautiful daughter, Lili.” Some old song I didn’t recognize about a young girl becoming a woman played. “Ay, que lindo.” Mami whispered. “De Niña a Mujer. That’s Julio Iglesias.” I mouthed who at Mami and she twirled her eyes. “Enrique’s father, niña.” Reynaldo and Lili entered the room from the rear and walked to the center stopping right in front of the dais table. Lili looked like a princess, her blue cape trailing behind her. Reynaldo looked nervous and freshly scrubbed—the whiteskinned outline of a haircut emphasized his ears. He smiled proudly, standing erect with his shoulders back. As the song trailed off, the instrumental version of the theme song from Beauty and the Beast began. You could sense Reynaldo counting: one, two, three, before he started moving Lili around the dance floor. Then, the honor court entered: seven couples from each side, undulating waves of blue dresses circled Lili and Reynaldo. The music lowered and the circle of dancers parted; seven couples to each side, covering the length of the hall. Lili and her father stopped in front of the dais table. Lili’s cousin, Robertico, stood waiting like an expectant bridegroom. He bowed. Reynaldo kissed Lili’s cheek, took the cape off her shoulders, and ceremoniously placed her hand on her cousin’s. 99

The passage was complete. The music picked up and Lili and Robertico danced to the center of the dance floor, the fourteen couples twirling around them. Robertico looked as nervous as Reynaldo, but not Lili. She never missed a step or a beat. She knew exactly what to do, what was expected, what was her place. After the dance, there was a toast. The DJ tapped a wine glass with a fork, and as the clinking sounded over the loudspeaker, he handed the microphone to Reynaldo. Cecilia stood with him. Her large hands, one covering the other, rested underneath her bosom. She smiled her tight smile, as if she were afraid to show her teeth. Lili was between them. Reynaldo thanked the guests for coming. He raised his glass of cidra and asked everyone to drink to his beautiful daughter on her fifteenth birthday. The buffet opened, music played, and the dance floor filled. Tía Coralia, swaying in her black dress, danced with my uncle, and near them danced Ada with her husband, and my parents. I watched them all rhythmically moving their feet, hips, and shoulders. When they returned to the table, I listened to Tía Coralia and Ada gossip. “Look at Beba,” Ada whispered. “Muchacha, in that tight dress she looks round as an onion, and with those little toothpick legs!” Tía Coralia snorted a laugh.

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“But, I’m serious,” said Ada. “She says she was too hungry for too long in Cuba not to eat here. And I say we were all hungry.” Tía Coralia and Ada were giggling when my parents joined us. “What are you girls doing?” Mami slurred her words. “No more mojitos for this one.” Papi said. “I’ll be right back.” She’d had too much to drink. Everything was funny to my mother, Tía Coralia and Ada. They reminded me of my girlfriends and me at the lunch table. When Papi returned, he had his hands crossed in front of his buttoned suit jacket. “Let’s go out to the car, Berta,” he said. “What’s wrong?” Tía Coralia asked. “He broke his zipper getting dressed. I had to sew his fly shut.” Tía Coralia and Ada howled. I followed my parents to the parking lot to act as lookout. At the car, my mother sat in the front seat, legs out the door, needle and thread in hand. Papi stood in front of her, one arm resting on top of the opened door. My mother fumbled with the front of my father’s pants, her hands unsteady. She’d put the needle through the material once, maybe twice, Papi teasing he was being sewn up like a stuffed turkey, when he yelped, which made my mother squeal. Mami had poked him with the needle, and his cry startled her, making her drop it. It fell off the thread and into the grass. We couldn’t find it. 101

It was time to go home.

***

I saw Lili sporadically over the next few years. My mother’s evening classes had paid off, and she’d found a better paying job at the offices of the Coquina Shores Hospital. If my mother and Cecilia socialized at all, it was usually at a party—a wedding or a baby shower—something that drew the Cuban women together for an evening. My age difference from Lili kept us at different schools until I started ninth grade. Lili was a senior and we were at the same high school. When we saw each other occasionally in the halls, we waved or stopped for perfunctory how-you-doings. One day in January, just after winter break, I was in the library on a pass from history class working on a research paper. I was at the very rear of the library, in a corner carrel I’d discovered during the first weeks of school. It was a section usually empty of students, flanked by tall shelves full of reference books no one ever used. I’d found it one day looking for a quiet place to read, and it became my escape place, like the woods across from my house. I was filling index cards with information notes, wanting to put them away and take out the novel I was reading, when I smelled nail polish. Curious, I walked around the shelves to the next carrel, and found Lili doing her nails. She startled when I said hi. 102

“Carmen! There’s never anybody back here.” “Yeah, I know.” “What are you doing?” she nodded toward the index cards I held in my hand. “Theodore Roosevelt—Honors History.” She made a face. “Revlon’s Hot Tango,” she wiggled her fingers. “Escape from Mrs. Nesmith.” “Who’s that?” “My Office Skills teacher. Honors History, that’s college prep.” The way she said it, I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. “Yeah, it’s kinda hard, but not too bad.” “Do you really think you’re going, I mean, they’re actually going to let you?” I knew what she meant. She meant college, a university, going away to school. Universities were hours away: Miami, Tampa, Gainesville, Tallahassee. I didn’t even dare think outside of Florida. Nobody in my family had gone to college. “I’m working on it,” I said.

***

One Sunday afternoon, in spring of that year, for reasons I don’t remember, Lili’s parents and mine sat around the table in our screened porch drinking rum and cokes.

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“We take her to Miami as often as possible,” Cecilia said, dabbing at the top of her lip with her paper napkin. “My sister brings her back tomorrow. There’s no sociedad here, I mean really, who does she have to associate with? We thought about moving, but Miami is so expensive, and Reynaldo and I don’t want to look for new jobs. There just aren’t enough Cuban kids here. Especially, young men.” “There are lots of nice kids at school,” I interrupted, louder than I’d intended. I didn’t want Cecilia going on and on. I’d struggled hard that year for my unsupervised privileges. I’d won trips to the mall with friends, and whole afternoons at the beach. “Yes, I’m sure, but they’re different, mi niña,” Cecilia said. “They don’t know our ways; there’s no respect. No proper supervision. You’re so young, Carmen. Your time will come, you’ll see, your time will come.” “It is my time.” “Carmen.” Mami used her warning tone. “That’s right,” Cecilia said. “I forget the years go by so fast. Why, your Quince is almost here. Berta, tell me,” she dabbed her lips with her napkin and licked them as if about to be served something delicious. “What are the plans?” “She doesn’t want any of that,” my mother said. “We offered her a party, not what Lili had of course, but something smaller, at a restaurant maybe. No honor court, but I’d make her a dress, she could dance with her father, and well, she doesn’t 104

want any of that. She just wants a regular party here at the house for family and some school friends.” “But, Carmen,” Cecilia patted my knee. “Why wouldn’t you want a Quince?” “It’s not me,” I said to Cecilia. And it wasn’t, at least not the me I was struggling to become. It wasn’t difficult imagining myself in a dress like Lili’s. I remembered that afternoon at her house. I also remembered Ada’s picture and how romantic it seemed. A part of me longed for that, but another part feared that if I accepted the dress, I’d have to accept too many things I didn’t want. “Looks like Cecilia has started shopping for Lili’s Cubanito,” Papi said in a singsong voice after Lili’s parents left. He was right. Less than three years later, mid-way through my senior year, my mother and I received invitations to Lili’s bridal shower. Lili had been making plans to get married while I was making plans to go away to school. My parents hadn’t put up much of a fight. I saw them swallowing their fears, especially, my father. They were opening the door and letting me go. Cecilia rented the Orchid Room at the Glades Restaurant, where the ceiling-to-floor windows faced a mangrove-lined canal that led to the bay. Once again tables were decorated with matching tablecloths and elaborate centerpieces, this time in rich burgundy colors. Every guest was pinned with a small flower made of burgundy lace that complimented the orchid corsage Lili 105

wore as her badge of honor. Cecilia was the conductor, and Lili, like a well-trained musician flawlessly followed every swing of the baton, and hit every note. She greeted each guest with a smile, posed by each table full of guests for pictures, carefully cut and served the first few pieces of cake. Then, with exquisitely manicured hands, she opened gift after shimmering gift. As I watched her, I wondered what it might be like to see my own hands, with perfect nails, tear through silver paper, knowing the only uncertainty before me was what might be inside the box.

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Selected poems by Caitlin Cundiff Home is in All Directions Again, the dogwood’s branches look like mother’s fingers, bony and crooked. No matter which way I move they point at me. Father likes to appear in the office on Tuesday afternoons. Sometimes, I tell the doctor about how he holds his body against the door. I can hear his breathing, aspirating maggots already populating his coffin. When I leave, I see him in the clinic’s waiting room, patting the chair next to him. I never take him up on his offer. Years ago crickets filled the silence by day, but at night they were another noise in the swarm of mother and father. One evening, mother noticed my open door found me twirling the stem of an aster. She crushed it under her shoe. Now I dream of thickets on fire, the crackling of insect’s corpses. The smoke chokes my lungs, I cough up purple blood, the wisps humming. Sometimes they are both sitting on my bed despite being buried in adjacent plots 900 miles away. I attempt to kill them off in lucid dreams, but they remain inches from my face saying come home, come home. 107

Aunt Ima Reflects on Her Decisions Harvest, pluck, and snatch the camellia. Somewhere, a scissortail whines in the oakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s branches. Somewhere, a cricket whispers a response. My niece quarters me with the window pane. Brother locked her in today. He caught her in the bathroom, half her right eyebrow gone, scattered on the countertop. When plucking the petals, she presses the panes harder and I expect them to shatter. Locusts drown the birds, swallowtails cover the screen and her barren brows. Niece knows that past rescues have resulted in confinement in bedrooms and books taken from shelves. In ten years, she will be free from this mortuary and this city. She will start college anew, like someone turning the page on a pad of newsprint for a new sketch. Until then, niece, forgive these eyes that turn from you and these hands that tend to foliage instead of wounds.

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Selected Poems by Alice King Tacenda We won’t talk about your druxy father or that bruise on your sister’s arm hidden by a jacket sleeve Why your mother loves birds kept in cages Why thunder pounds despair out of its lungs We won’t talk about the empty pill bottles stashed away in a trash bag behind your aunt’s door Her truck-driver husband who never comes home You friend’s suicide note she laughed about The answers twist themselves into frowzy, tangled knots buried with the ghosts of a dream Feathery wings on a bird we cannot catch Bubbles frozen in winter ice We conceal ourselves deep in our skin, the marrow of our bones, the whites of our eyes We don’t acknowledge the blood As it drips down our backs Fairy Pools High in the solitude of green mountains dotted with stone Beneath a sky that stretches beyond the reaches of the world Lie the fairy pools, glittering and blue and singing the song of the mountainside I dip my feet in and grace seeps back into me These waters have been here for centuries Wars have seen them, sheep have drank from them And men have cooled their hot, sweat-streaked bodies Emerald green and twinkling, diamonds sparkle below me Among crevices of admiral blue and time-smoothed rocks In the middle is where the dragon sleeps I dip my foot in the water and imagine that the current 109

Is the dragonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath Mystical and serene, nature beckons to me Touches my hands, plays with my hair And kisses my sun-soaked skin Smell the highlands, the wiss wiss of grass unstinted Untamed, like the fairies and their pools And the wild wild heart caged inside me I am seas away, still I remember the fairy pools And see myself still kneeling beside them Enraptured with the beauty of ancient lands Reds Marlboro reds. Always had to have a pack, full, lucky upturned. I knew you by the smell of your cigarettes. No money, it's all gone, but butts lay drained in an ashtray. Tired lungs sighed words of love in my ear, and I still smelled you after you left, the stench a ghost of you in my room. You loved them better than me. You loved them all the way home. Musings Give me to stone Give me to the art of eyes And the music of wind Shatter me into pieces of glass That shimmer like hair I want to reflect the stars And move like tides of the sea Gentle, fierce A contradiction Feed me colors Read me my soul 110

I hunger for anything That will let me know who I am Write me down Make words my skin I want to be immortal But still be able To die

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Boy By Courtney Bird The new boy’s name was Tutankhamun. On the first day of school, he raised his hand and said that he was having a heart attack but when he pointed to the place that hurt, Mrs. Izzo said that is not where the heart is. The heart is on the left side. “What if you’re upside down?” he said. “What if you’re backwards?” Everyone laughed. We knew our lefts and rights. We were learning to add Skittles and write in cursive. We taped copies of the Lord’s Prayer to our desks and we knew the words by heart. We wore plaid skirts and navy blue pants. Our shoes were made of leather and our laces were curled like slinkies. But the new boy wore shoes with soles made of rope. They might have been colorful once, but now the color was empty and old. Tutankhamun sat in the seat next to me. He arranged the pencil on his desk over and over again. He didn’t write anything down. All day I looked at him and willed him to look at me. I knew what it was like to have a heart attack. Every night my heart pumped wildly and I said to my father, help me, I’m having a heart attack. He said, heart attacks don’t happen to kids. I would lie with my face turned to my alarm clock and see how slow a minute was. He’ll regret it in the morning, I thought. He’ll scream and lock himself in the bathroom with my body, like the morning we woke up and my mother wasn’t breathing and no one 112

really understood how it happened because she had been so healthy, so whole. Tutankhamun’s head was bald, smooth, with a knob of bone at the back where his brain attached to the spine. His temple was mapped with veins. They stood out like blue tree roots, like the back of an old woman’s hand, and when he clenched his jaw, I could see the blood moving. His skin was dry. I wanted to touch it. I thought that if I did, it would come off like salt on my fingertips. It was the color of something roasted. A marshmallow. I wanted to press my fingers to his temple and feel the blood running under the surface. His eyes were set deep into his skull. It was hard to see where they were looking. At recess, I found him in the playhouse eating dirt. I picked up a half worm, writhing and wet on the floor. There was no other half. “Don’t eat these,” I said. “Haven’t you heard of intestinal worms?” I hated going into the playhouse. It was dank and dark and spider webs hung from the ceiling like ghost confetti. I was sure that something in there could kill me. “What’s intestinal?” Tutankhamun followed me out of the miniature house and shielded his eyes against the sun. I dusted the dirt from my knees and smoothed out my skirt. I rubbed my hand across my nose to distract myself from the smell of him—something feral and rotten, like the underbelly of an old log.

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“Your intestine is here,” I said. I touched him with my finger. “It digests your food.” “Oh.” He must have been hungry. His shoulders came to points like teepees. “If you eat worms, they grow to the size of a boa constrictor and eat you from the inside out.” My mother said that to me once, about the worms, and once she said that if you swallow something sharp it would cut your heart open. Those were the things I remembered. At lunchtime, we always made the sign of the cross and prayed together. Tutankhamun looked around the room and narrowed his eyes. He twirled his small fist in front of his face and moved his lips like a nursing baby. He didn’t know the words. He didn’t know the sign of the cross. When we started to eat, he stayed at his desk. He handled his sandwich delicately and took small bites. I pulled my desk together with Annika Fielding and Joe Sambo. Joe’s mother always cut his hair and the bangs went across his forehead in a violent diagonal sweep. He had freckles on his nose and his lips. I’d never seen anyone else with freckles on their lips. Once he’d said to me, stop staring at my lips! So now I always looked somewhere else. Annika’s mother cut her hair too, but Annika didn’t have bangs. Her hair was long. She wore it in frenzied braids, the ends curling in every direction. During silent reading hour, Annika always read out loud to

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herself in the back row. She whispered, but everyone could hear it. I was embarrassed for her. “It’s hard to eat when it smells,” Joe said. He nodded in Tutankhamun’s direction. “It’s not so bad,” I said. “He smells like yellow.” “It’s a sin to be unclean,” Annika said. “It’s in the Bible.” “He doesn’t know the Bible. He doesn’t even know where his heart is,” Joe said. At the end of the day, Mrs. Izzo asked me if I would be Tutankhamun’s tour guide. She said it was hard coming to a new school, especially a school like ours. Our town was nestled in a small valley, hugged in the crook of an elbow and all around us mountains rose like steam. The ocean was only two hundred miles away, but it was something foreign. In school, we drew waves on the chalkboard. We pretended we were great explorers. Mrs. Izzo read us stories about men diving into the Marianas Trench or trying to reach the Arctic Circle in a giant cloth balloon. Everyone wanted to be somewhere else. But I knew that the man who tried to float to the Arctic Circle had died. They found his body frozen. His toenails were cracked like old broken wood. And in the ocean, there were sharks and poisonous sea urchins and drowning. We were all together at the door, Joe and Annika and I. When Mrs. Izzo walked away, Joe wrinkled his nostrils and said, “Gross.” Annika said, “Serves you right, goody two shoes,” which I thought was unfair. I always did my homework and I 115

prayed every night, but it was Annika who knew the Bible. It was Annika who got to school fifteen minutes early and brought Mrs. Izzo a caramel apple that very morning. And last year, when we went on a field trip, it was Annika who sprinkled holy water on our heads before we got on the bus. I smiled at Tutankhamun but inside, I felt my little heart beating everywhere, my whole body like an echo chamber. I wanted to call Mrs. Izzo back, tell her that I couldn’t be a tour guide because my heart was just about to explode in a bad way, but Joe Sambo was still looking at me and Annika was standing there with her backpack on, waiting to walk home.

At the time, I was convinced that my spit was poisonous and I refused to swallow it. I would spit into bushes or the grass. If I was inside, I would let the mucus collect until my mouth wasn’t big enough and my cheeks grew bulbous, and then I would run to the bathroom and spit it all in the sink. By the end of church, my cheeks were always so full they almost squeezed spit out of my eyeballs and then I would run down the granite steps and around the corner ahead of my father and spit into a bush and breathe deeply. If times were very bad, I would wad up several tissues, pretend to sneeze, and spit everything I’d collected into the flimsy white paper. No one had ever told me that I would die if I swallowed my spit, but I knew it instinctively, the same way I knew the difference between the

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sound of my father’s footsteps on the stairs and the sound of a ghost. On that first day of school, I went to the bathroom seven times. Joe said, “You pee a lot.” I imagined my mouth as Streganona’s pot of spaghetti, the thin strands of mucus slithering out of the pores along my gum line until they drowned me. I always felt like I was drowning.

The next day, Tutankhamun wore a uniform but still he didn’t look like us. His socks were bunched around his ankles and ours were folded. His fingernails were long, the whites of them ridged and splintered. We only raised our hands when we knew the answers, but Tutankhamun raised his hand all the time. “Have you ever seen a bird who flew into a window?” “What are light bulbs?” “Is the ocean the same as the sky?” “Once I hit my toenail with a hammer and it fell off.” “Once I stared at the ceiling without blinking for a whole day. And then I did it again.” It was embarrassing to listen to Tutankhamun in the same way it was embarrassing to listen to Annika read aloud. I wished that no one else could hear him. It was like his thoughts were naked and we should close our eyes to him. But he barely noticed us. I didn’t speak to Tutankhamun at recess or at lunch. After we prayed, he asked me what I was doing with my hands. I 117

pretended not to hear him. I slid my chair back and ran to the bathroom. My cheeks were aching. After I spit, I began to shake. I held the sink and bowed my head. My mouth felt thick and gummy. After school, Tutankhamun asked me again. We were in the stairwell and everyone else was already outside. I took his hand in mine. I curled his fingers towards his palm, leaving the pointer finger and the middle finger straight in a blessing. “This is how you do it,” I said. I brought his fingers to his forehead, his belly button, and his chest. “It’s the cross of Jesus. From when he died for our sins.” “I like that name,” he said. “Jesus.” We traced the cross again and again until he could do it faster than I could. But then Joe and Annika opened the door, the sunlight pouring in behind them. They asked why I was standing with the new boy. I said I wasn’t, and I told Tutankhamun to stay away from me. His blessing hand fell by his hip and he said, “Oh.” He walked outside and over to the swing set. He watched Sally Lane pump her legs back and forth. The ropes bent in her fists as she rose higher. He climbed onto the swing beside her and began to pump his legs. He wriggled on the swing like a caught fish. And then he got it. He went higher than Sally Lane. He went so high I thought he might go all the way around the top pole. And then at the highest point, just before he began to swing forward again, he threw up. Sally Lane shrieked. She leapt off her 118

swing and ran towards the school building. Everyone followed. Tutankhamun stopped pumping. For a minute I thought he might be crying. I stood at the edge of the woodchips, waiting for him to come down. I had been a disappointing tour guide and I was ashamed of myself. I wrung my hands together. “Tutankhamun,” I said. “Do you have the stomach flu?” “This feels like a ship,” he said. “The rocking. Why was that girl doing it?” “Because it’s fun.” “I don’t like it,” he said. “You just need to get used to it,” I said. But really I was remembering the time that Elizabeth Freeman fell. She broke her forearm and her bone ripped the skin and there was blood pouring out everywhere. Our kindergarten teacher fainted and the teacher’s aide had to call an ambulance and everyone was screaming. Even her best friend ran away. Elizabeth crouched in the woodchips and held her own hand so that it didn’t fall off. “You’ve never been on a ship,” he said. “I have.” Tutankhamun’s mother picked him up from school. She was late and my dad was late too. Most of the kids were already gone and the teachers were sitting in the lobby. We sat outside on the stone pathway with the other stragglers. We didn’t say very much to each other. His eyes were tired and his body looked limp, like something melted.

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His mom had blonde hair and brown glasses. She tucked her shirt into her pants and wore a belt with turquoise beads on the buckle. Her face was impatient, but still she bent down and folded Tutankhamun’s socks. She licked her thumb and rubbed a smear of dirt from his collarbone. She said, “How was your day?” “I made a friend,” he said. “Her name is Clara.” I blushed. No one else was close enough to hear, so I said, “Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”

At night, my father told me again that my mother was a mermaid. She had scales brighter than new pennies and the only words she knew, she’d learned from a sailor. Sand. Sea. Moon. Goodbye. My father had hauled her up from the water’s edge and chopped her tail in two and taught her how to walk. “Do you know how much a mermaid weighs?” he said. “Those fins are not light.” “There’s no such thing as mermaids,” I said. “It’s just a fairytale.” “If you say so,” he said. We took the pillows from the couch and piled them next to my bed. We made walls of stuffed animals at my feet. When my dad kissed me goodnight, he had to lean over the pillows to reach me.

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Tutankhamun became my shadow. It got hard to spit without him noticing. He would ask me questions when my mouth was full and I would run away. Joe Sambo said I was starting to smell like him. Annika said, that boy walks funny. And he did walk funny. His ankle shifted to the outside of his body, so that his foot curled in and he walked on its edge. He demanded that I teach him hopscotch, but when I did he fell. He grasped his hip in his hands as if it might split open, as if he was kneading the skin back together. But he liked the chalk. The chalk, he said, was dusty and cool. He wrote his name in shaky block letters and the k looked like a lopsided flower. He wrote my name too and then he drew bugs all around it. This is a beetle, he said proudly. And this is a locust. “Do you ever think there are bugs crawling under your skin?” I said. “You know, when it’s itchy?” “When you have bugs under your skin, it doesn’t feel like itching,” he said. One afternoon, Mrs. Izzo asked us if we would recognize Jesus if we saw him in the street. She made us take out a piece of paper and answer the question in writing. We had five minutes. I thought I should go to the bathroom first, but instead I wrote. I said that Jesus would be wearing a toga and shining like a beacon. At the end, I looked over my shoulder at Tutankhamun’s paper and he’d written, “Jesus has the head of a bird and the eye of the moon. Sometimes it is an eye like a bitten nail and sometimes it’s a full circle eye. If Jesus is God and I am God, are 121

we the same?” I wanted to tear the paper apart before anyone could see it, but Mrs. Izzo was walking towards us and she said, “Clara, will you read us your answer please?” My mouth was full of spit. The class was looking at me, every eye on my face and my rounded cheeks. Joe Sambo was chewing on his fingernails, which he did when he was bored. All I could think of was the spit seeping out of my gums. Tutankhamun nodded at me and pointed at his throat. He gulped his own spit and I could see it working its way down the notches of his larynx. There were veins in his throat and they moved when he swallowed, shifting cords of blue. Annika was frowning. Sally Lane was biting on her pencil. Mrs. Izzo leaned over my desk. She said, “Clara, you wrote such a lovely thought. Why don’t you share it with us?” I started crying and suddenly it was too much. I was choking. I spit all over the notebook and the spit was thick with tiny, dense bubbles. It was on my hands too, webbed between my fingers. Mrs. Izzo’s mouth was open and I could see her mismatched teeth. Tutankhamun patted my arm and said, “I can read it for her.” To which Joe Sambo said, “The paper’s too wet now, you zombie.” Mrs. Izzo took me outside and I looked at the floor as I followed her, but I could hear Joe laughing and I could hear Annika say, “what’s a zombie?” and the other kids repeating the word, “zombie, zombie, zombie” and Joe saying, “someone should take that notebook and burn it.” In the hallway, Mrs. Izzo 122

touched my damp turtleneck. I’d been pushing my tongue into it all morning, releasing little batches of spit. She said, “Are you feeling sick?” She took me to the nurse and called my dad, but he was at work and work was an hour away. I lay on my side and watched the clock. I counted my heartbeats and every minute I got a different number. At home I had to explain to my father about the poisonous spit. We were eating macaroni and cheese from a box and oranges from a bag my grandmother had sent us. We didn’t have a TV. He said, “I swallow my spit and I’m still alive.” And I said, “But you don’t swallow my spit.” “I can if you want me to,” he said. “And what about when you’re eating? Doesn’t the spit go down with your food? You’ve been eating this whole time and you’re still here.” I went to the bathroom and spit a mouthful of macaroni into the toilet. I imagined my insides were aching and then they were. After my dad put me to bed, I pressed my tongue into the pillow. I liked it best when my mouth was dry.

The next day, Joe Samba called me the spit girl. Tutankhamun put a dead beetle on my desk and I said, “No, thank you” even though it was quite beautiful with its green shell. That was the only thing I said all morning except for the Lord’s Prayer. 123

I went into the playhouse by myself at recess. I said to Tutankhamun that I did not want to talk to him, that he didn’t need a tour guide any longer. I was tired of his questions and his strange breath, the way it smelled old and sandy. I was tired of the way that Elizabeth and Annika and Joe Sambo and the other kids avoided me because I was with him. He stood near the playhouse window. “I know how it is to be sick.” “Go away,” I said. I checked the corners of the house for spiders and stepped on them all. Then I closed the shutters and sat with my hood pulled over my head. I was tracing my fingerprints when Joe Sambo opened the door to the playhouse. The shadows were so deep with the light coming through behind him that I couldn’t see his freckles. He said, “I thought you hated it in here. Don’t you hate dirty things?” “I like dirt just as much as anyone else,” I said. “Oh, right, you love dirty things now.” He walked in, closed the door behind him and it was dark again. He said, “Do you want to play husband and wife? You do the dishes.” “There aren’t any dishes in here,” I said. “There’s not even water.” “Can’t you use your spit?” he said. He walked towards me, bending his head to fit inside. “Or is there something wrong with your spit?” “Don’t touch me,” I said.

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“Are you scared of me? Do you think I’m stronger than you?” “No,” I said. “I think I could scratch your eyes out of your head.” Joe Sambo and I used to carpool to kindergarten. He would put his fingers in the window of the car and roll the window up. At the last minute he’d take his fingers out but not before I screamed. After school one day, he told me what it meant to knock someone out and then he punched himself in the face and fell onto the floor. When we were even littler, there were times he sat on my back and pulled my hair. He pushed me against the boards of the house and said, “You’re a freak, you know that?” “Stop it!” “You can’t go crying to your mommy anymore, you little baby,” he said. “She’s not a mermaid, she’s just plain old dead and your daddy is crazy. My dad said so. He said your daddy’s lost it.” “My dad is a scientist,” I said. I swiped at his face, lashed my nails across his cheek. He tangled his fingers in my hair and pulled. I screamed, but he clamped his hand over my mouth and I could feel strands of my own hair on my lips. He said, “Don’t even try it.” Tutankhamun opened the door and saw Joe Sambo. His shadow stretched out in front of him on the dirt. He pulled his

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shoulders back and thrust out his chest, raised his skinny neck towards the sky. He said, “I command you to let go of her.” “You can’t command me to do anything,” Joe said. He looked at Tutankhamun and when he did, I brought my knee up between his legs. He fell to the ground and writhed like a snake. He said he would tell but I knew he wouldn’t. When he left, his hair was matted with dirt and he said to Tutankhamun, “You’re going to regret this.”

And then it was just me and Tutankhamun, me crying only a little. Tutankhamun opened the shutters and sat in the patch of sunlight across from me. He said, “Here, sit in the sun.” “About the spit,” he said. “You don’t have to worry so much. You’ll know when you’re dying. If you’re poisoned, you know it. You feel it in your gut like a great worm with razor sharp teeth. If you hit your head hard enough, you feel your brain pulsing and growing too big for your skull. It won’t be a surprise.” He killed a spider on the windowsill and dragged his finger through its web. “You thought you were having a heart attack,” I said. “You were afraid too.” He leaned against the door. He took his shoes off and then his socks. He dug his toes into the dirt. “I’ve never had a heart attack before,” he said. “It’s hard to know what the new ones are going to feel like.” 126

“Everyone laughs at me because of you,” I said. “They hate me. They say I’m starting to smell like you, that my skin is getting dry and sandy.” “I saved you,” he said. “But it was your fault! Everything is bad because of you.” He drew a locust in the dirt with his finger. He took the finger and ran it along my cheekbone. It sounded like gravel and crumbs. He held the finger up to me and the top of it, the part above the knuckle, the part that had touched me, was disintegrating. He’d caught it in the palm of his other hand, a small pile of dust. He said, “This is how it goes when you start to disappear. It hurts. You’ll know.” “That’s impossible,” I said. And then I said, “I’m sorry. I lied. Nothing is bad because of you.” He put his fingers into my hair and I heard them going, the sound of sand falling through an hourglass. He closed his jaw tight and his temple throbbed under the skin. He ground his fingers further into my head, until I knew the fingers were gone. His palms were two disks nestled into my scalp. I held his wrists and pulled his hands away from me. My father had shown me how to read palms. He’d said, “This is the lifeline, this is the love line, this is the line for happiness.” Tutankhamun’s lines were halved. His hands were disappearing.

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The next day Tutankhamun wore mittens and a thick white hat, even though it was only September and flowers still littered the lawn in front of the school building. When we prayed in the morning, he made the sign of the cross with his whole mittened hand and then he clasped his mittens together in bulky symmetry. During math, he raised his hand and the loose sleeve of his shirt fell down around his elbow. His wrist was bone thin with the mitten growing out the top like a boxer’s glove. He went to the board to write the number twelve and the chalk slipped from his hand. It broke on the tile floor and nobody said anything. When we practiced cursive, he sat at his desk and watched me. He didn’t even try to write. “Here,” I said. “Take this copy and I’ll make two.” “That’s okay,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter.” “What if Mrs. Izzo calls on you? Please, just take it.” I pushed my paper toward him, three minutes worth of p’s looping across the page. Cursive letters are supposed to be connected, but we hadn’t learned how to connect them yet. Later, I said to him, “Isn’t there something I can do?” He said, “Hold my mitten for a minute.” So we sat on the swings and I held his mitten and he closed his eyes, pointed his face to the sun. He said, “It’s only temporary. Remember the story of Jesus Christ?” “That’s just a story,” I said. “You don’t believe in it?”

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I could see that he wanted me to, so I said maybe. But my mother hadn’t believed in anything and I didn’t know what to believe either. My parents never went to church. In my house, they used to hold hands and hug and sometimes they would kiss. We used to measure the sky with our arms and say, “I love you this much.”

Tutankhamun stopped wearing shorts. He stopped coming outside during recess. Stopped following me around and eventually stopped talking to me at all. He said his prayers with his massive mittens. His eyes would close and his lips would move as he whispered the words to himself. I saw him staring at Jesus whenever we practiced writing and Mrs. Izzo didn’t bother him about anything. She would said, “How are you feeling today, Tut?” And he would shrug. She never touched him. Maybe she felt, like I did, that if she were to touch him he would drift away. At home I told my dad that my friend was disappearing. He tugged the covers up around my neck and said that people don’t disappear. He explained to me about physics, that the world is made of atoms and what atoms are and how they bounce around and come together, and how they come apart. I asked if my mother came apart, but he said, “No, she just grew wings and flew away.” After he left the room, I realized I hadn’t spit in days. I’d forgotten about the poison and I was still alive.

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When Tutankhamun died, we wrote cards for his mother. We drew stick figures of him standing in different versions of Heaven. We drew the Marianas Trench and air balloons and golden pyramids reflecting the sun. In mine, I drew the ocean with mermaids and Tutankhamun lying in the bottom of a deepchested ship, with the waves around him rocking gently, turning him upside down. After we sent the pictures to his mom, I remembered how he hated when the swings went too high and how he’d probably hate the ocean. I drew another picture with my winged mother sitting on a cloud. It looked nothing like her, so I ripped it up and threw the pieces away. Sometimes, I liked to stare at the ceiling and imagine how it was to be Tutankhamun. I was sad when he died—I thought my heart was broken—but the truth is, I didn’t know the first thing about him.

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Selected Poems by Tobi Alfier Coda She saw many a boat, some on the Lochs, some resting in the wet mud of outbound tide, some ruined and unworthy of any water, green growing up through cracks in the wood, beautiful and forlorn, a family’s livelihood reduced to flowering hulls and photographs taken by passing travelers. She rode the ferry, rain stinging her eyes like a thousand razors, cold biting through to her bones, counting the seconds to minutes to hearing the loudspeaker-voice, feeling the chunk of steel upon pier, walking to cover and warmth. She watched many a layer of cloud darken sun, sky and sea, bruised purple and angry, the definition of roiling and silent, a sullen topping of hills wishing to be green, reduced to angry gray. She never noticed any clear sky, it was always held hostage by mist. All she wanted was to make a wish. She looked down for beauty; wished on the tiny white flowers beside the road, pretended they were stars. Cello for a Quiet Morning Shutter your eyes. These notes define the word ‘still’. You can feel your heart beat but cannot hear it. Not brown, autumn leaves fallen upon the grass. Not texture, paving stones marking the path from the street to your door. Gray. Not fog, not cloud, not absence of sun. 131

A remote grief could come anytime and undermine you. But the morning plays its beautiful melody to match your composed spiritâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Gentle. The sedate stream of notes like a long exhale. Flowers before they bloom. Birds before they fly. A smile, played around the corners yet unwilling to commit, things you can recall only on the edge of sleepless hours. Like a dream not fully awakened from, the most wondrous dawn awaits. When the notes dim to whispers, the hour breaks into light.

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Fernando Finds Himself Grounded for a Bashed Front End Plaid shirt, beer gut, white woven cowboy hat— he walks around his truck bow-legged, hasn’t been on a horse in ever. Quick stop at the Quick Stop for two large malt liquors, one for before his secret date, the other under his seat for the way home, or if he’s lucky, for breakfast. Nothing better than a Lucky Strike in one hand, a Schlitz in the other, the steering wheel between his knees and the radio up loud. Unless it’s corned beef hash served in a diner out in Barstow by a waitress named “Angel,” her name and a big flowered corsage pinned over her chest to hide the spots of gravy and sweat, and run late once more and you’re fired. So he walks around, surveys the damage, looks like no one will be after him for a hit and run, but damn…he’d better be more careful, or he won’t ever get away from the house without her screeching in his ear the latest words from the newest reality show that he’s not on, but she thinks she is. And it’s exhausting, almost makes him miss Angel more than a cold one, but he’ll never get out there now. Damn shame.

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Fairgrounds By Elizabeth Mastrangelo Swinging into a prime spot in the Whole Foods lot, Jordan cut off a surly teen in a vintage Volkswagen Beetle who had nearly clipped a mother carrying her toddler. Bitch. In a town like Brimfield—where he didn’t live because he sure as hell couldn’t afford it—the young people strutted around in their Penny Persimmon yoga pants, typing on their devices and swinging the keys to their Beamers, expecting everyone else to part the seas for them. Maybe Bernadette was better off. Maybe if she had made it to high school she would have been shrunk into oblivion by the roll of a mean girl’s chambray-blue eyes. Maybe she would have sought too hard for men’s love, having never met her father, and wound up unemployed and pregnant, crouched in a corner with her hands over her bruised face, like her mother. Maybe these thoughts about Bernadette were too terrible. He would probably never have children. Jordan was going to Whole Foods for cotton candy grapes. His sister had introduced them to him two summers before when he had gone to Connecticut to meet the baby. Jayla had pushed the grape between his lips as he held Bernadette against his chest with both hands, petrified to let go of the tiny body as light as breath. He had never experienced something so foreign and familiar at the same time. The taste of the Morton County Fair stung his tongue, the taste of being thirteen, of 134

chasing girls with French braids and white cutoffs, of climbing ramps to the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Mechanical Bull, of cow turds, of the mud near the pony pens that threatened to pull him into an underworld where clowns took naps and ticket-takers played poker. The grape was cold, though, cold and hard. Cold and hard cotton candy: the concept didn’t register with him then, as he hugged Bernadette’s warm body. But tonight, years later, Jordan’s mouth cried out for those grapes with the longing of an inmate who hadn’t tasted anything sweet or kind for a decade. He called Jayla every day. She was coping, though she hadn’t gotten rid of any of Bernadette’s things since Bernadette had died. Jayla still slept with the toddler guardrails on either side of her bed. She drank her iced tea from sippy cups. She kept the car seat installed because it held shopping bags steady as she drove. She liked to squeeze puffs of baby powder into the air as she walked around the apartment. “It’s like having Bernie’s head under my nose,” she said, and then changed the subject. Jordan tried several times to steer the conversation back to her moving in with him, but she deflected his maneuvers with the skill of a child brought up in war, used to dodging landmines. In the parking space, the hood of Jordan’s car banged into a cart and it careened into the grill of the opposing Cadillac Escalade SUV. Jordan hated grocery stores. When he and Jayla were little, their mother would leave them in the station wagon at Star Market for hours at a time. After a while they’d go inside and find her wandering up and down the aisles, having forgotten 135

why she was there. If she became combative, they would leave with no groceries. During these incidents Jordan focused on the sliding doors leading to the parking lot. This way he could block out the gavelling stares all around them, as cold and flat as marble, fixed on the clusterfuck. If he’d had the balls he had now, he would’ve given it right back. Hey. You’re the one who kicks your dog when it shits on other people’s lawns. And you: you’re the one with the daughter who cuts herself. And you: you’re the police chief banging his partner, the Nazi with the tattoo, the hoarder, the backstabber, the stalker, the pedophile. You’re no different from us. After these episodes their mother needed a few days to work her way back into reality from the cave of her bedroom. Jayla would steal pre-wrapped roast beef sandwiches from Store 24 for Jordan to eat. Then she would fill out his fractions sheet while he played with his Pokemon cards. Jayla would do these things to the soundtrack of their mother berating the ghost of their father or shouting the top ten reasons she wanted to move to Puerto Rico. Whole Foods was teeming with people, stay-at-home mothers in moisture-wicking gym gear and men in suits whose wives had texted them to pick up pomegranates. This was where small-town neighbors bumped into one another, reminisced about their impromptu breakfast at Starbucks, and arranged playdates for the next day. Jordan couldn’t find the grapes. He hadn’t planned on navigating dozens of bodies arched over crates full of fruits and vegetables so terrifyingly vibrant that they could have 136

been picked in Oz. He wandered feverishly through pyramids of produce, knocking into carts, some with children in them reaching for moms who had walked off. Wouldn’t you hate yourself, ma’am, if your little girl was gurgling in your arms one minute, happy and safe as shit, and the next she was gone? Jayla had warned him that the cotton candy grapes were eight dollars a pound. Too bad he’d lost his shot at the fulfillment manager job. Fucking crock, by the way. Too volatile, Rick had said. Organized, ethical, but volatile. You know, because Jordan’s short temper had offended all those Baby Einstein Bendy Balls and hot pink vibrators that he’d been packing for years. He considered pairing some cold hard apple ciders with those cold hard grapes, but before he could change his trajectory in the store, he saw the tin tub he was after. His elbow bumped another baby and the baby cried out. “Sorry,” he mumbled. His body was warm and damp inside his clothes. The PA was playing Dylan—Subterranean Homesick Blues. The cashier held the bag up to her face. “Oh, cool,” she said. “I’ve never seen these before. Do they really taste like cotton candy?” “So the label says,” he said. The girl turned the bag over. “Do they, like, inject the grapes with syrup or something?” “They’re hybrids,” Jordan said. “All natural.”

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He was ready to rip the bag from her hands and make a run for it. For a second he thought she might ask him if she could try one. After a moment she swiped the grapes across the sensor and handed them to the bagger. “Enjoy,” she said. He had just pocketed his receipt when he heard the shouting. That girl took my wallet. That girl took my wallet! The rapid clicking of heels echoed out of a center aisle. Cashiers and patrons were glancing around with wide eyes, searching for someone else to help so they could keep moving toward their allnatural hangover pills or low-sodium wheat tortilla chips or whatever. When Jordan saw the baby in the abandoned cart, his body reacted with the slow but reliable start of Ferris wheel gears. The baby’s mother had taken care to protect her child from the germs of the suburban elite by covering the seat with a handsewn cart cover. So while her mother ran down an aisle after a pickpocket, the untaintable baby turned in her hands a felt pig attached to the cart cover by its tail. Jordan was now moving. Or maybe it was the floor moving. Or maybe it was everyone else. Everything spun and blurred around him except for the child. She would have to let go of the pig. Would she let go? She let go. She was soft and alive, flesh mottled and moist, diaper full, teeth delicate as the white seeds of a watermelon. She let Jordan lift her from the seat. “Let’s go to the car, okay?” he said. He focused on the exit. His mind was a fucking mess but he didn’t dare walk fast. This time he had no trouble weaving 138

through the pyramids of produce as he grasped both the grapes and the toddler, who hung onto him with trusting fists. Nobody stopped him. He’d just reversed everything in the world, and nobody had given enough of a shit to notice. Just in front of the exit he heard another shout. At first Jordan thought he might be the one who made the noise, but the toddler was still in his arms and freedom was ahead. A jolt in his shoulder pushed him forward. The baby’s head lurched away from him—he didn’t know how heavy their heads were. That was a lie. “Motherfucker!” A girl in a military cap was stomping on the rubber mat. The electric doors hiccupped open and then shut. “I said move it, motherfucker!” Startled, Jordan stepped off the mat. The girl slammed her body against the glass. The doors parted and she wrenched through the space and into the dusk. Two security guards jogged past Jordan and after the girl, and he and the baby continued through the vestibule in their wake. The asphalt glistened—had it rained?—and emanated steam, a burning smell. Jordan’s car was right there, a prime spot, but he didn’t have a car seat. The guards had already caught up with the girl farther down the lot and were escorting her back toward the store. Jordan contemplated his options. He could strap the baby into the belt and drive slow, but one asshole driver and he’d be slamming the brakes and pitching the kid through the windshield. He had a blanket that he’d 139

accidentally taken from Jayla last time he’d visited and they’d gotten drunk on the beach. He could wrap the baby in the folds of the blanket and tuck her behind the passenger’s seat. As the girl passed by him he was overcome by unease, the way he felt when he knew his mother knew one of his secrets but he wasn’t sure which. Was it the five-dollar bill he’d stolen from the tip jar at Ryder’s Candy Store? Or the underwear stained with shit that he’d been throwing away, burying under the coffee grounds and chicken bones? The guards, whose olive green uniforms matched the girl’s cap, yanked her along as in yeahI’m-fucking-serious-I’m-Whole-Foods-Security. In a strange moment of pity or curiosity or maybe contempt, Jordan wondered whether her mother would be bailing her out, or whether she had a mother at all. It occurred to him that if he’d let this klepto bitch have the parking space that he took, she’d be halfway to the highway by now. He slid into the traffic heading south on 95. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to do anything. The toddler was whining before they made it a mile. He tried to speak to her in a cunning voice but it cracked and sounded nothing like Jayla’s voice when she cooed to Bernadette, or when she broke it to Jordan that there was no Tooth Fairy, or no breakfast, or pulled him up out of the mangled mess of his junkyard bike and brushed the gravel from his knees. The child moaned in response, a distress call that ended in a sputter. Jordan looked at the cars to his left and right, the hunched silhouettes of drivers burdened by 140

tedium and normalcy. He felt a flash of arousal at their ignorance. At least he was doing something, taking action, saying fuck you to the people that needed to hear it. “It’s all right,” he said, and extended his hand into the darkness. The toddler’s wet fingers touched his as they grasped the fruit. Thank you, thank you, Jordan, my sweet little brother. What would I ever do without you? Come in and have a beer— oh! Cotton candy grapes, my favorite! He imagined the toddler’s mother, proud as hell for taking no shit from a 19-year-old waste of Brimfield space, clutching her Vera Bradley wallet full of Platinum MasterCards, walking in circles around crates of rosemary soap, eyes stunned open at her own stupidity, grabbing sleeves, have you seen my daughter, I must have left her at home, I don’t know where my head is, I’ve been so preoccupied with my mommy blog— As the last shimmer of dusk dissolved so did the volume on the road. The baby hadn’t made a sound since Timberley, two towns back. Jordan’s mouth smarted with the cloying tang of cotton candy. He had just started to cruise when he heard the sirens bleating. He knew they were for him and he knew why. He had cut off the bitch in the vintage Volkswagen Beetle at Whole Foods. He had cut off the bitch and then gotten out of his car. He had walked, alone, bare and cocky as the bachelor he was, into the store, and he had left with a child that wasn’t his. He was a motherfucker and the bitch had witnessed it all. 141

The Morton County Fair was only weeks away now, and the dates on the highway billboard gleamed in his headlights. “You ever been to the fair?” he asked the baby. “Or is it too dirty for your mama?” Jordan careened off the exit. He heard a small thump. The baby’s head, goddammit—the anvil of death. But she didn’t cry and he couldn’t yet see the fireflies of red and blue in his rearview mirror so he kept driving. Morton was as close to country as someone could get in suburbia, the streetlamps scarce and the houses a half-mile apart. The fairgrounds had eight entrances. Jordan picked the one that led to the stables. It wasn’t a public entrance but an entrance for the kids who were willing to walk an extra mile to sneak in for free. He parked the car behind a horse trailer. The grounds were gaunt and ghostly, nothing like the exhilarating circus of his youth. When he tried to shake the baby awake her head lolled back and her hands fell out of the folds of the blanket. He held her tight against his chest and ran. The earth sucked at his feet and it stank like shit and smoke. He tried to swallow away the acrid texture of grapes. Leaning against the wall just inside one of the stable doors, the feathery hair of the baby stroking his chin, he suddenly knew the limitless pain insulated in his sister’s heart. Jayla had never blamed him for anything. Her eternal affection for him, and confidence in him, made the whole fucking thing a million times worse. She shouldn’t have trusted him that day. The deck was in disrepair and that was partly why he was 142

there, to stabilize everything. What a fucking joke. She had gone inside to get the hot dogs and left him with Bernadette. Instead of protecting the child he’d only watched her from his folding chair in the corner. Her smooth but stumbling, grasping but grounded movements fascinated him...the grotesqueness and yet the loveliness of the creature, the ridiculousness of her existence, the close-set eyes of that abusive prick, her father, the upturn of Jayla’s nose, the garbled voice like a miniature madwoman’s, the tinkling laugh like a sprite’s. At the time, he couldn’t assimilate any of these things. Now he understood. Even after the shitshow that was her life, Jayla had found beauty in something completely illogical but natural all the same. The way Bernadette had gone down, her hands breaking through the rotted wood and her head pulling the rest of her toward the concrete, was oddly graceful. It reminded Jordan of the high diver at the fair who sailed off of a 75-foot platform into a pool in the middle of the arena parking lot year after year. He knew that the hearts and voices of the crowd swelled at the diver’s exquisite foolishness. All the fright was suspended in those moments of descent; the landing was the safe part. But Jordan always crafted an alternate ending. Jordan always envisioned the diver losing her footing, losing her faith, losing her life. Jordan looked into the toddler’s half-open eyes and saw what he had done. He had made the world in which he and his sister were destined to live uglier and more unbearable. He had 143

thrown himself between its already dysfunctional gears and choked up the whole goddamn system. The stables were empty. It was just him, cradling his own guilt, and the silent toddler, and the dry smell of wood and the cold soil and the silvery autumn air, the encroaching turnover of the season. Jordan thrust the baby from his left shoulder and over his right forearm and started pounding on her back. After a minute he flipped her and saw the milky blue froth on her tongue and flipped her again and pounded some more. Her body shuddered with the force of the strikes. By the time the cops found him, he was still trying to revive the child to the chant of his conscience: this is fair, this is fair, this is fair. He had vomited the grapes into the dirt. And he was thanking, out loud and in vain, the bitch in the Volkswagen Beetle.

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Contributors: Cover Artist: April Mansilla was born April 21st 1977. Creativity has always been a part of her life, starting first with dance, then poetry and eventually she found her home within painting. April has painted for the last 20 years, but it has been in the last five that she has been using art as a form of therapy, allowing the canvas to speak on her behalf. She lives in Hamilton Ontario Canada. On Shame When I first heard the words, â&#x20AC;&#x153;you have bipolar,â&#x20AC;? my heart sank deeply and I cried for my future. I was in the midst of a flourishing career, and I was a young mother and wife. All I could think of was that I was going to follow in the footsteps of family members before me and all the chaos being bipolar brought. For five years I sank into a deep suicidal depression. Hospital stays became longer and more intense. I secluded myself from many people. It was only when I stopped hiding and accepted myself that the shame dissipated and I could uncover my face. Jordan Abbruzzese graduated from Otterbein University with a major in English/Creative Writing and a minor in music. She has previously been published with Stigma Fighters, Beautiful Minds Magazine, and flashfictionmagazine.com. Jordan currently works as a Communications Coordinator for a nonprofit, binges 90's television shows, and blogs at hedgehogfiles.com. Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Current chapbooks are The Coincidence of Castles from Glass Lyre Press, and Romance and Rust from Blue Horse Press. Down Anstruther Way is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

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Aracelis González Asendorf was born in Cuba and raised in Florida. Her work has appeared in Kweli Journal, Puerto del Sol, The Rumpus: Letters in the Mail, Creative Loafing, The Acentos Review, and Saw Palm. Her short stories have been anthologized in 100% Pure Florida Fiction and All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color. She was a recipient of a New York State Summer Writers Institute scholarship, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. A former English and Spanish teacher, she is currently an MFA candidate at the University of South Florida. nv baker is a short story author, poet, and graduate of UC Denver in the summa cum laude tradition. His scribbles are inspired by the resulting confusion of existing as a stymie tethered between the imagined and the rendered. nv baker was recently selected as The Missing Slate’s Author of the Month. His latest work appears in The Contemporary West, Main Street Rag, The Crab Creek Review, Nerve, The Missing Slate, The Roanoke Review, Five 2 One, Straylight Magazine, Sheepshead Review, and many others. nbakerv@gmail.com twitter.com/nv_baker https://www.facebook.com/nathan.v.baker. Rebecca Bartels is a recent college graduate originally from Sycamore, Illinois. She is currently employed as a barista in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she lives with two roommates and a dying houseplant. Julianne Berokoff is a recent graduate from CSUF, and is pursuing a path in poetry and creative non-fiction. Courtney Bird's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Fairy Tale Review, The Masters Review, The Portland Review, and The Los Angeles Review. Courtney has an MFA from the University of Montana and a degree in art history from Princeton. She now lives in Portland, Oregon, where she writes, coaches lacrosse, and attempts to garden.

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Originally from Oahu, Hawaii, Babette Cieskowski has lived in southern Florida, Kitzingen, Germany, and Central Texas. She is currently earning an MFA in poetry from Ohio State University. Her poems have been published in Coastlines, The Rectangle, Black Heart Magazine, Arsenic Lobster, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Compose. Susan Cobin has published poems in many literary magazines. She has a poem forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review. Originally from CA, she lives in Lexington, KY. Diana L. Conces lives and writes near Austin, TX. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies, including Best of Austin Poetry (2 volumes); Tic Toc, Petals in the Pan, Secrets and Dreams, and Shattered from Kind of a Hurricane Press; Texas Poetry Calendar (2016 and 2017 editions); Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems; Blue Hole; and artlines2: Art Becomes Poetry. She has won numerous local contests and has had one of her poems appear on a Capitol Metro bus. Caitlin Cundiff obtained her BA in English and recently her MFA in Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University. Her writing is forthcoming in DUENDE and The Southwest Anthology in 2017. She will be moving to Tulsa and hopes to adopt a corgi and cats. Terri-Jane Dow is a writer and editor from the UK. She is the founding editor of Severine Literary Journal, and her creative writing has been published in Crab Fat Magazine, The Jellyfish Review, and Halo, among others. She can be found on twitter @terrijane, and Instagrams too many pictures of books at @terri_jane. Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons is a writer, teacher, and storyteller. Earning her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University, she combined her love for theater and writing to create the â&#x20AC;&#x153;switched-upâ&#x20AC;? storytelling series, No, YOU Tell It! Each NYTI storyteller writes a true-life tale and then flips 147

scripts with a partner to present each other's story. More info and podcast at noyoutellit.com. Follow her @KJ_Fitzsimmons. Gwen Goodkin's writing has been published by Fiction, Witness, The Dublin Review, The Carolina Quarterly, jmww, The Rumpus, and others. One of her stories has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and another won the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction. She is originally from Ohio and now lives in San Diego with her husband and three daughters. J. B. Howard studied theater, music, and screenwriting at the University of Southern California. She was a Creative Writing Fellow at Chapman University, where she received her MFA. Her stage plays have been produced in the Los Angeles area, and her short fiction has been published by The Saturday Evening Post and The Storyteller. She teaches Creative Writing at Chapman University and Orange County School of the Arts and is a member of both SCBWI and AWP. Alice King is currently a junior at Longwood University. She is majoring in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing. Alice began writing in middle school and has won two short story contests. Her poems appear in Crab Fat Magazine and are due to appear in The Paragon Journal. Alice enjoys music, art, and writing poetry and short fiction, and her favorite poets include Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver. Elizabeth Mastrangelo started writing fiction on her motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s typewriter at five years old. She grew up to earn an MEd and an MA in English from UMass, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Liz teaches literature and writing to ninth and tenth graders by day, ghostwrites nonfiction ebooks and website copy by night, and parents two young children yearround. Her work has appeared in Sheepshead Review, Burningword Literary Journal, and Bartleby Snopes, among other publications, and she blogs about womanhood and parenthood at her site, www.spurredgirl.com.

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Shoola Oyindamola was born in August, 1997 and raised in Nigeria. She currently lives in Bronx, New York. She is an author, poet, feminist, mentor, and blogger. She loves to write poems, essays, and her non-classifiable opinions. She mostly uses her writing skills with her feminist drive to discuss the gender injustices that need to be fixed. She is the Co-founder and resource manager of Sprinng Literary Movement—an online initiative by Kanyinsola Olorunnisola that gathers Nigerian writers and works to project the creativity in Nigerian literature. She published her first collection of poems titled, Heartbeat” in New York at the age of 16. She is currently working on her second collection of poems titled, On my case of not being normal; Not, nuts, Knot. Melody Xiao is a junior at Newark Academy in New Jersey. She has been writing since she was in third grade, but only started writing poetry very recently. Her main inspirations come from what she reads and the music that she listens to. Additionally, she likes to experiment with unusual writing structures. In school, she is a member of the honor choir and is manager of the fencing team. Fun fact: Mel’s favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate fudge, which, incidentally, is what her cat looks like. Julie Wise writes contemporary young adult novels. Julie studies Adolescent Literary as a PhD student at University of Arizona with research in young adult literature fandoms. Her writing is represented by Olga Filina at The Rights Factory. She teaches high school dance in Tucson, Arizona. When she isn’t reading, writing, or dancing, she tweets about those interests and more @jkwise1.

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