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March 2014, Issue 17
CONTENTS Fiction: Noha Al-Badry “ANTIDOTE” Christopher Allsop “To Feed It, To Bury It”
Poetry:
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Ricky Garni “Wartime” “History in Pictures” “Wangechi Mutu” “A Toy I Found On The Moon” Christopher Mulrooney “lakeshore” “cocksure” “the story of itself” “Mxyzptlk” “The Parnassians” Nanette Rayman “I Once Thought” “Ballerina” “The Station”
Editor’s Note About Us Submission Guidlines Bios and Credits
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20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 32
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UMBRELLA FACTORY WORKERS Worker in Chief
Anthony ILacqua Poetry Editor
Julie Ewald Copy Editor
Janice Hampton Art Editor/Design
Jana Bloomquist Nonfiction Editor/Web Developer
Mark Dragotta
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Umbrella Factory isn’t just a magazine, it’s a community project that includes writers, readers, poets, essayists, filmmakers and anyone doing something especially cool. The scope is rather large but rather simple. We want to establish a community--virtual and actual--where great readers and writers and artists can come together and do their thing, whatever that thing may be. Maybe our Mission Statement says it best: We are a small press determined to connect well-developed readers to intelligent writers and poets through virtual means, printed journals, and books. We believe in making an honest living providing the best writers and poets a forum for their work. We love what we have here and we want you to love it equally as much. That’s why we need your writing, your participation, your involvement and your enthusiasm. We need your voice. Tell everyone you know. Tell everyone who’s interested, everyone who’s not interested, tell your parents and your kids, your students and your teachers. Tell them the Umbrella Factory is open for business. Subscribe. Comment. Submit. Tell everyone you know. Stay dry
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hello there Welcome to Issue 17 of Umbrella Factory Magazine. Hello readers, writers and passersby, With great pleasure, we offer Issue 17 for your perusal. In our submission guidelines, we ask the poets and writers to tell us of their greatest revelation. Admittedly, when we started UFM back in 2009, we were looking for a revelations one might have in the arena of writing. For instance, my greatest revelation is “I am not alone.” It may seem odd, my revelation, but it’s true, I am not alone even if I thought so for so long. This issue, along with the sixteen that came before it, I know that we are not alone. At Umbrella Factory Magazine, we have collected our writers and poets and now there are more of us than ever before, and yes, we are not alone. Incidentally, when this magazine began, we thought we would serve the poets and writers of Denver, Colorado where we live. I know there are poets and writers in Denver, but we rarely meet any of them. Instead our network spreads much-much farther. In this issue our two writers of fiction come from Bath, England and Cairo, Egypt. I’m impressed by both Noha Al-Badry’s Antidote and Christopher Allsop’s To Feed It, To Bury It. If you ever have questions about what editors of fiction look for in short stories, I think I can sum it up with a description of these two pieces. Miss Al-Badry and Mr. Allsop have done two things: given us compelling characters and crafted good fiction. Each story has a beginning, a middle and an end complete with fictive arcs, conflict and resolution. As a reader I love characters win I want to see win (or lose) because I don’t think they are easy to write. As an editor I want to learn something. In this case, I learned new things: the Perro de Presa Canario and the power of personal revolution in the midst of external revolution. Poetry. There is revelation here too. An instructor at Goddard once told me that poets are at home tending the garden. I did not understand this at the time. I may not have understood this in the last 16 issues of UFM either. Still, the very notion that the poets are at home and quietly tending the garden has a few connotations. Those who think this is a diminutive view of a poet or the work of a poet, please reconsider. In the constant movement of nature and human nature, isn’t refreshing to think we have poets among us busily recreating the world in which we live. Perhaps this is not a revelation to you, but tending a garden is the fostering of creation in a potentially hostile environment. At Umbrella Factory Magazine we run 3 to 5 poems from each of our poets. I think it’s enough to get acquainted with a poet. It’s a way to get acquainted with a poet as the poet is right now. Much like this proverbial garden that the poet tends, the poet evolves and grows too. In this issue I am particularly taken with Christopher Mulrooney’s “The Parnassians,” Nanette Rayman’s “The Station” and Ricky Garni’s “Wartime.” On behalf of our staff and our contributors, I thank you for visiting Umbrella Factory Magazine. Read. Submit. Tell everyone you know. Stay Dry. Anthony ILacqua
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submissions
Submission Guidelines:
Yes, we respond to all submissions. The turn-around takes about three to six weeks. Be patient. We are hardworking people who will get back to you. On the first page please include: your name, address, phone number and email. Your work has to be previously unpublished. We encourage you to submit your piece everywhere, but please notify Umbrella Factory if your piece gets published elsewhere. We accept submissions online at www.umbrellafactorymagazine.com
ART / PHOTOGRAPHY
POETRY
Accepting submissions for the next cover or featured artwork/photography of Umbrella Factory Magazine. For our cover we would like to incorporate images with the theme of umbrellas, factories and/or workers. Feel free to use one or all of these concepts.
We accept submissions of three to five poems for shorter works. If submitting longer pieces, please limit your submission to 10 pages. Please submit only previously unpublished work.
In addition we accept any artwork or photos for consideration in UFM. We archive accepted artwork and may use it with an appropriate story, mood or theme. Our cover is square so please keep that in mind when creating your images. Image size should be a minimum of 700 pixels at 300 dpi, (however, larger is better) jpeg or any common image file format is acceptable.zz Please include your bio to be published in the magazine. Also let us know if we can alter your work in any way.
We do not accept multiple submissions; please wait to hear back from us regarding your initial submission before sending another. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your piece immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. All poetry submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter that includes a two to four sentence bio in the third person. This bio will be used if we accept your work for publication. Please include your name and contact information within the cover letter.
SUBMIT YOUR WORK ONLINE AT WWW.UMBRELLAFACTORYMAGAZINE.COM 6/
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NONFICTION Nonfiction can vary so dramatically it’s hard to make a blanket statement about expectations. The nuts-and-bolts of what we expect from memoire, for example, will vary from what we expect from narrative journalism. However, there are a few universal factors that must be present in all good nonfiction. 1. Between 1,000 and 5,000 words 2. Well researched and reported 3. A distinct and clearly developed voice 4. Command of the language, i.e. excellent prose. A compelling subject needs to be complimented with equally compelling language. 5. No major spelling/punctuation errors 6. A clear focus backed with information/instruction that is supported with insight/reflection 7. Like all good writing, nonfiction needs to connect us to something more universal than one person’s experience. 8. Appropriate frame and structure that compliments the subject and keeps the narrative flowing 9. Although interviews will be considered, they need to be timely, informative entertaining an offer a unique perspective on the subject. Please double space. We do not accept multiple submissions, please wait for a reply before submitting your next piece.
FICTION Sized between 1,000 and 5,000 words. Any writer wishing to submit fiction in an excess of 5,000 words, please query first. Please double space. We do not accept multiple submissions, please wait for a reply before submitting your next piece. On your cover page please include: a short bio―who you are, what you do, hope to be. Include any great life revelations, education and your favorite novel.
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ANTIDOTE Noha Al-Badry
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prose A It must seem odd to you that I would unexpectedly send you a notebook filled with my words. Perhaps even offensive, that I would choose to make a gift of my narrative rather than give you a space to put yours. I have been told often in my life that I was self-centered to an extreme. I don’t deny it. And yet, I am not giving you my words to boast or even impose. I am giving you this because I feel, even now, that it is you I can speak to. And because, later— amidst the endless cacophony of our chattering aunts and their colorful gossip doled out with portions of badly prepared exotic food at the annual gathering in grandma’s house—you will no doubt hear modified, highly subjective versions of who I was, am, did, said, disgraced, dishonored, demeaned… I don’t know why it is important to me that you know. We have exchanged little more than greetings the past decade. You have gone your way and I have gone mine. Do I wish we’d tried to maintain our friendship? I don’t know. Part of me thinks I can only speak to you frankly because you witnessed none of the occurrences of which I intend to speak. But that is not all. I guess part of it has to do with your recent marriage, and although it’s six months too late, although I hadn’t shown up at the ceremony, I send the best of wishes your way. What does your wedding have to do with any of this? Well, I suppose it was then that it struck me how far our paths have diverged. You have left your peculiarities with your teenage years. You have veiled your hair and quit smoking. You have gone to an engineering school like your parents wanted. I guess you have found a sort of peace; a comfort zone. I remember your face during your engagement party—pleased and serene. I once would have scoffed at your apparent yielding to what I perceived (and still perceive) as a misogynistic, puritanical culture.
I don’t anymore. It doesn’t matter which route carries you to contentment, it only matters that it does and in that sense, you have succeeded where I have failed. So who am I to judge? But, I digress. B I sit here, writing these words in the Arabic I have almost forgotten. My letters are awkward, my spelling in horrendous but it feels fitting somehow; another return to something long unused. A homecoming. In my mind, I see the both of us before the crossroads to a time when we were six or seven years old. All the family was gathered at uncle Maher’s house that year. The smell of lamb cooking and garlic tomato sauce for fatta rice boiling permeated as thick as the blood of sacrificial cattle ran in the streets of Egypt. Our mothers had dressed us both in full little skirts which we twirled ‘round and ‘round till we grew dizzy. All around cousins ran, aunts labored and uncles sat sipping strong red tea and reminiscing about their bachelor days. Then uncle Fareed, who was still kind and married to only one wife then, took us younglings down to the street where he bought us little rockets which—when lit—went shooting up into the air with a mighty clang. It had been summer that year, with many men pushing carts heaped with roasted corn or baked sweet potatoes to which kids flocked— dragging along an exasperated parent or older sibling—to gorge on more snacks. It’s amazing the amounts of street food you can fit into your stomach as a child, isn’t it? Lobna had been born two weeks earlier, and as we sat on our little patch of grass at the park—legs crossed, mouths lipsticked, chins upturned like, we thought, young women— that evening, I told you that your mother must have “done sex” with your father to get little Lo. Then I told you what Reem, from school, told me about
how adults made babies. You were mortified and denied wholeheartedly that your parents would ever do such a thing. I shrugged. Later you told your eldest sister Nourhan what I said, and she screamed at us so hard, her face turning laceration-red. I hope she’s kinder now that she’s got kids of her own. I hope she isn’t using religion to traumatize them into obedience… This story comes to mind now, as I think what it must have been like for you, marriage. For a year, you are engaged to this man, you go out with him most days, you shop for your future home together, you go to the movies. You hold hands. And then, one ceremony later, you’re officially his in the eyes of God and the state, and he is peeling off your clothes, your skin. He is waiting for the blood: a proof that he hadn’t been scammed, that you are as new as a recently acquired cell phone, not secondhand, not a slut, not…me. I wanted to ask you how you felt about it, during the henna the night before your wedding. I wanted to tell you not to be anxious. I wanted to tell you to speak to him. Your body isn’t his by a lease, you should share each other. I wanted to, but I never came to your henna. C The cops are chasing us—a carload of them. They are chasing us with their shiny black guns, aimed at us like a parody of arms-whereI-can-see-’em. Ramy and Hamada pass me all the heroin we’ve purchased a mere half hour ago; about ten grams. Cause if we get caught, the fact that I’m a girl is going to stop the cops from searching me. Yea, right! Then my panties are bulging with the plastic-paper wrapped drugs and Hamada—cursing fit to impress the meanest thug—is soaring down Ring Road and into Road 90. We don’t look behind to see if they’re still following. We just keep running because we can do nothing else. High, wryly amused and barely aware of the gravity of the
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prose situation, all I’m thinking is what a funny time this incidence has, happening just six hours before my graduation ceremony… But that part comes much later. D Further back. Flood-light in the kitchen. Three AM. The refrigerator yawns fluorescence on the ceramic tiles. The refrigerator purges neon beams on my tapping foot. The refrigerator tattoos my face on the parallel window: a mirror-world of possibilities. I look at my archaic face and think crow’s feet. I think nasallabial fold. I think I’ve wasted too much money, time and product because in that vague breath of treacherous light, I am all crease and wrinkle and antique. I wish to desiccate my history, push it under a stern microscopic eye, sharpie the flaws like a plastic surgeon tracing skin, wash vigorously, tumble, dry, fade, dilute it, then paint it by hand, turn it into the picturesque—as compact as a pocketbook, an antonym of life. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. I cannot sit still. I feel my blood sing in its veins. There’s a hum in my ears, quivering in my bones. A bee’s buzz rising like a sun or a lighthouse or a conflagration. In my mind a thousand voices bark wishes, demands and ideas. No two want the same thing. I want to do everything. Be everything. Become infinity. The one the earth quakes for. I want to move to a new country. I want to pack my car with bread and cheese and wine and music records before driving to the country-side to finally see the village our fathers grew in and told us stories about since we were kids. I want to write a book. I want to bake my mother a cake cause she’s such a lovely woman. I want to grow my own fruits and roll my own tobacco. I want to cultivate a taste for caviar, because it sounds so fancy! I brim with ceaseless, source-less excitement. I roam the house all night, like a watchful sentinel. I have conversations with the cat. I call my boyfriend, Ramy, a hundred times promising it’s the last
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time to tell him some small tidbit I just thought up. He is often cranky because he has work in the morning but it just feels so damn important for me to tell him this or that now now now. But that, too, comes later. E Why do I think of us in terms of the saint and the whore, Ekleel? Why do I ascribe virtue to your image, expect it like wedding attendants in Egypt’s countryside anticipate a white kerchief stained with the bride’s virgin blood as the ceremony’s culmination? Perhaps it’s the imprint my rearing left on me—a stain, a birthmark—which puts a depraved face on all forms of indulgent desire. I and so many of our generation try to convince ourselves we have been inoculated against the biases of our culture through our education. We stand before mirrors, painting on faces like “objective” and “liberal” so painstakingly so as to deceive even ourselves. And yet, a shadow or a variation of that which we despise, endlessly criticize and assign as the flaw in society’s intellect always lurks. In its most apparent form, you can catch it in our idea of “mother”: sacrificing, nurturing, kind and morally incorruptible. How many of us acknowledge lust and longing in our mothers? How many see it and accept it as the equivalent of that of our fathers’? You can see the glaring discrepancy now, can’t you? For even as I prance around from bed to bed, relishing my sexuality, I fail to regard it as a pure expression of instinct. It is the same as the hunger we took part in as teenage girls, Ekleel, desperately wishing to minimize the space we occupy, to shape it into a delicate form like petit-fours. Is there anything we fear more than formlessness? You have succeeded in mastering asceticism while I—ever the bulimic—remain buckled-in on the Ferris Wheel of binging and purging, shame producing self-loathing producing abstinence producing gluttony on loop. It may be that I set you up
on a pedestal only comparatively, because I see myself as the toxic, or it may be that I still look, yearn, to see someone who found the road to their light. Any success at all, Ekleel, whether holy or demonic. At my core, a need to hold on to even a hint of Utopian principles like selfless friendship and unconditional love struggles to survive. You are the one in whom I hope to find them. The log, the lifeboat, the lowered rope. F Let me take you to yet another memory: I’m lying in bed looking like a deflated balloon. I want nothing but to lose awareness. I want nothing. I haven’t left my room in days. I’ve missed classes, deadlines, phone calls. I’ve missed out on enjoying the “best days” of my life again. What does that even mean anyway? So much of media, literature and art is so intent on youth and everything you should, you have to, you’ll never reclaim if you don’t fucking do while you’re still young. But no one teaches you how to make compromises or pick specifics. Futile, I tell myself. Everything we do to make the spring of our life last longer will only amount to nostalgia keeping us company during chemo sessions when we’re old and wilting, I comfort myself. Because I cannot even contemplate the effort required to rise. Day turns to night to day. Mother comes in and begs me to get up, places her hand on the top of my head while reciting Quran verses: Muslim exorcism. Father tells me to stop self-indulgently sulking. He says I ought to pour my “dramatic flair” into something productive. I am conscious of nothing outside my being. How can I describe to you the immensity of such suffering? How it creeps in while you’re asleep and when you wake up, the world is devoid of all color and meaning. G I become fond of carrying water bottles filled with terribly cheap local Ouzo which tastes
like a mixture of anise and licorice tempered with floor detergent. Time moves quicker. The world glows brighter. I race through lectures, assignments, friends and paintings faster than tear gas spreads among protesters. I am the life of the party. I make more friends an hour than Bill Gates made money. Everything I touch blossoms masterpiece. I’m convinced I’m improving. I glug my antidote. Le dolce vita. Then the pendulum begins to swing. I become either very cheerful or very morbid. Alive or living dead. I kiss boys whose names I can never remember; almost delighting in ruining my reputation enough so as to be unmarriageable. Then, I meet him. His name is Omar and he’s an installation artist. We meet at a party and chat drunkenly. I steal his glass of wine. In support of local brands, we smoke Cleopatras which have more wood than tobacco. He likes an impromptu painting I sketch on the wall with my eyeliner and invites me to come to his place and show him more of my work. I go and show him my talent in giving blowjobs. We drink beer afterwards and he makes a point of telling me to please not kill myself in his house. Fast-forward a few weeks. His apartment again. He’s on his second bottle of wine. I’m on my sixth beer. He talks about his work, about how pretentious the downtown art scene currently is. I refrain from pointing out he embodies it. He talks about his Russian girlfriend who he wants to have a baby with just as soon as he divorces the wife he still loves. I smoke. I say nothing, too busy carving his image into my mind. He’s remarkably ugly: round belly, sagging flesh, missing frontal teeth and dirty nails. It gets me off, knowing how repulsive I find him even as I lie on his mattress. And I hate him well enough that when I manage to tolerate him, it feels like winning. Another afternoon he’s on one of his bad
moods. He slaps me around. I do nothing. Calls me names and shouts. I get up to roll a joint from his stash of hash. Smoke while he kicks a chair over, breaks a couple of plates, howls. I watch him—archiving every second—to make sure I can recollect every detail when he becomes nothing more than a memory. His face in my mind and a caption: this is rock bottom. Another day. I am shivering when he lets me in. He is naked and it disgusts me almost unbearably when he hugs me, rubbing up against my stomach. He makes me a sandwich I don’t eat and we drink beer and snort coke. I tell him he’s old enough to be my father. I tell him his age is more than double mine. He gets irritated and mean. Asks me why the fuck I hang out with him. I’ve nothing to say so I give him a hand job. Afterwards, he’s on the phone making plans with his girlfriend. I smoke cigarettes. I forget how to cry. I convince myself he’s the trauma that is a perquisite of becoming a “real” artist. H When the January 25th, 2011 revolution takes place, I’m having my own personal revolution. In Tahrir Square, a heady mixture of anger and hope spreads to coat the entirety of Cairo. Graffiti begins to tattoo the decrepit walls of downtown, reared as symbols of change, not knowing they would come to represent a bitter parody a year later, when every government proves itself a failure and protesting becomes a trend as opposed to anything meaningful. I wonder what the martyrs would feel if they could see how little their deaths amounted to: a slew of patriotic songs, their pictures on revolution souvenirs sold cheaper than water and a renamed subway station. I wonder what you think, Ekleel. I try to imagine you in one of the recent riots against the fraud of the Muslim Brotherhood. In my heart, I hope you really just don’t care. Caring has never benefitted anyone. The more things change, the more they
stay the same. History repeats itself. There are no new songs, just a single one on loop. Just as our gullible nation thought it had discovered freedom that bleak winter, I— too—naively thought I had discovered the Cure. In the form of a red pill of very questionable composition smuggled out of China and sold at half the price of a can of beer. How can I describe that first taste of opioids? How it feels as your consciousness seeps out of your body to levitate above it like a halo and all struggling comes to a halt. Peace in a pill. What more could I ask for? I A year later I am having bouts of suicidal compulsions and frequent panic attacks both of which I decide occur because I take my antidepressants with the opioids. So of course I give up the happy pills. Because obviously being high is so much better and more effective. My five accidental overdoses? Totally my fault, but they were an essential lesson for me to discover my limits. This is really completely logical in my head. It’s when the seizures start that I decide maybe I was being a wee bit reckless. By that I don’t mean—God forbid—I was worried about my own life; rather I was worried about my parents discovering the hidden half of my life. Then smack! How can I do justice to the magic of heroin? It’s free of that edge of detachment opioids had. No severe nausea. No days of forgetting to eat till you’re turning blue. No bad highs. No panic. Just a pure shot of animating life into my decomposing soul. Fairy dust. Ravishing daze. Sublime trance. Mundane turns magical. Euphoria sprouts like cancer, extends its flagella through every axon, courses through dendrites. My protoplasm quivers in anticipation of life’s forthcoming grandeur. My chrysalis lies in a torn heap on my bedroom floor. I am
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prose Prometheus unbound… I love the heroin. No, I worship it. I adore it with the blind passion Apollo must have felt for Cassandra or Hades for Persephone. It should come as no surprise, then, that I fail to realize it was slowly making me stark-raving mad. More than even alcohol did. As in a batshit, mad hatter, mental institution type of nuttiness. But I’m getting ahead of myself again. J It is often said no one knows the the geography of Cairo—main streets, side streets, narrow alleyways, little-known shortcuts and over-populated slums—like public transportation bus drivers. Experience taught me taxi drivers are usually almost as good. Specially if they’re mildly psychotic, long-term heroin addicts. Enter Mohamed, though everyone calls him Hamada. Picture a disturbingly skinny, short 40-something year old man with a squeaky voice, bug eyes and yellow teeth. He works as a school driver for kids of varying ages and has twelve years of work experience as a taxi driver. Hamada’s personality—much like his life—is an intense avalanche of kinetic energy heading nowhere. He has a high manic laugh which erupts as suddenly as his temper tantrums, carries numerous almost-empty packs of cigarettes, has seemingly endless anecdotes of dealings with prostitutes and often tunes in to English music stations on his radio, fervently singing along in a horrible accent which fails to distinguish between the letters B and P. To explain to you the use of Hamada in my life, Ekleel, you have to first know that I’ve never encountered a dealer who worked in a reputable area. They either operate out of dumps at the hearts of the ghetto or on desert roads just outside the circumference of Cairo; basically, spots where the occasional corpse of
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a junkie can be easily disposed of. Originally, the greater majority of dealers in Cairo hail from the Sinai desert, where “woman” can be roughly defined as: a) housewife, b) obedient, c) creature in a tent-like black cloak and a black headscarf, d) property of father, then property of husband. For those reasons, any city girl in tight jeans out on deserted highways to buy heroin essentially amounts to rape-worthy whore, in their opinions. So Hamada, in his beat-up blue car, and I drove all over the city, him blowing what’s left of his inheritance and I spending the ridiculous sums of money I made. For a while, everything seemed too good to be true. Morning—around 7 am—Hamada would pick me up and we’d drive out to some hovel or spot on the road which leads from Cairo to Fayoum where dealers dressed little better than the homeless sit in giant black jeeps, surrounded by their minions who kept their guns pointed at Hamada, at the car window behind which I sat, during the entire transaction. We’d leave quickly and find some secluded spot to park and take that first heavenly hit of the day. He’d then drop me off to work. I’d spend my entire seven-hour shift writing, editing, translating articles at an inhuman speed, taking only small breaks to smoke and text Ramy. He’d come ‘round to pick me up from work and we’d spend the evenings high as kites, cruising down dark streets where we’d make out or he’d listen to me chat endlessly. K Then I quit my job. I spend all my money on heroin and it isn’t even nearly enough to keep up with my gradually increasing dose. I sell an old laptop, two phones, and an mp3 player. I blow through half of Ramy’s bank account. The problem was—broke as often as not—I would have to spend a day or two sometimes with no heroin. Hell isn’t eternal burning. It’s the suffocating, intolerable panic
and pitch black depression of withdrawal. I’d lie in bed unmoving, not speaking, just crying while rocking back and forth. I would beg and pray to God for anything, any way at all to end the suffering. Mother would come in, sit next to me, brushing my hair back, feeding me cubes of chocolate and reading Quran for me. I would hold on to her like a baby, asking her to not leave me alone with the darkness, the ghosts and the unbearable flatness, colorlessness of the world. She’d sit with me for hours, as I drifted in and out of sleep, holding my hand, telling me it would be fine. She would plead with me to tell her what was wrong. Promise to not get mad, to not tell a soul, to deal with anything I had to say. She knew something was wrong, she’d tell me. I was like two completely different people, she’d say, and neither of them was particularly normal. I would only cry harder. Ask her to pray for me over and over. Ask her whether she thought I would ever be okay, if my head will ever quiet down. Then again racing down the stairs and into Ramy’s or Hamada’s cars, barely able to prop myself up, visibly malnourished and underweight, eyes tearing, nose running, shivering at the cold no one else could feel, pale as cadaver, not puking only because I hadn’t eaten since my last line. Prompt them to drive faster, come on, are we there yet? Was the line you just gave me the last of what you had? Why’s it taking so long? L I came home one night to find father and mother sitting absurdly upright on the living room couch, waiting for me. In front of father, sitting on the coffee table as though it was a mundane item was a translucent plastic cup with a white lid, looking smug and menacing. High a smidgen short of an overdose, I broke into a grin as though this was perfectly normal, asking casually, “have you been waiting for me?”
Some part in my intoxicated mind was aware the situation was bad. Danger, it alerted. Bolt for the door. Escape while you still can. Sirens and alarm bells rang in my ears. I could see Ramy standing in the corner next to the plastic rose bush, shaking his head. What was he even doing at my house? No one else seemed to hear or see anyone or anything unusual so I figured it was one of those times when life was occurring for me on a slightly different dimension than those around me. It happened sometimes. (Delusions? Psychosis? No, I had long decided, I was just an imaginative artistic spirit.) Clipped tone, steely and calm, father hissed, “we’re going to need a urine sample from you.” Behind my ribs, the muscles of my heart contracted so fast I thought I was dying. My smile fell off my face, crashed on the ceramic floor. “Why?” “Because you—you ungrateful, shameful curse of a child—are on drugs. Don’t even dream of denying it,” still measured and cool, but the contempt in his tired brown eyes lashed at me like a whip or a serpent. Fight or flight. “If you’re so sure I am, why do you want to test me?” Mother began to cry. “Because we don’t know what— exactly—you’re on or how much and because your mother wants to be 100% sure.” “Oh, but you already are, aren’t you? It’s so easy for you to believe the worst about me, right? Not depressed, rather an attention-whoring child. Not self inflicted cuts, but a tumble down the stairs. Nothing ever wrong with me which isn’t my fault. Cause you can never admit your own superior genetics and magnificent parenting could ever produce such a monster. Oh, no, you’ve done everything perfectly right because you’re so fucking perfect, right?” I guess he hit me, because suddenly
mother was standing between us, weeping now and repeating enough, enough, enough. Father sat back down and lit a cigarette. Two drags later, he informs me that back in his village, girls like me would be killed by their fathers, their bones thrown in a garbage dump. The honorable thing and all. Remember how we always had trouble imagining our fathers growing up in a small village at the heart of Mansura, Ekleel? How we could never reconcile their adult images to the mischievous boys who stole dates and grapes from their neighbors’ trees and spent their entire summers on the fertile farmlands of the northwest, picking bollworms out of cotton plants to help their widowed mother cope with the expenses of raising her eight children and two stepsons? How we could never fathom how they became so harsh? So cruel? Perhaps it’s these bizarre, inhumane practices— less like justice and more like rituals. I looked at him and I understood he loved me in his own complex way. And I hated him so thoroughly I wished I could torture him for whatever was left of his worthless life. The luxury of his denial came at the price of my suffering. If he had set his ego aside just once, maybe things would have turned out differently. “Well, good luck getting that urine sample from me because—unless you intend to force me to pee—I’m not giving you shit you ignorant, sexist bigot.” He didn’t even bother getting up, settled instead for throwing the T.V. remote-control at me. I dodged. Mother—now a complete wreck—tried to place her hands on my cheeks, begging me to be silent, telling my how afraid she was for me. “No, don’t touch me, you pathetic bitch. You disgust me. All you do is pray and pray and pray and has it done any fucking good?” I was shouting now but everything still felt very distant and muddled, as though I was watching
the scene and acting it out from two different angles. M What more is there to say? I have snuck out of the house with no more than a backpack stuffed full of clothes and my laptop. Broke my cell phone’s SIM card in half. The street was silent as it always is at 3 am. Hamada was waiting by the curb. I got in and lit two cigarettes, handing him one. We didn’t speak. His wife has left him last month so when I’d called him half a day earlier, I knew he’d agree. People like him, like me, are too scared to be alone. Misery loves company and all. As we drive, I think of Ramy. He’d probably just start fucking that blonde Lebanese smack-hound he’d been hanging out with lately whenever he wasn’t with me. Maybe he already was. Good riddance… All has come apart. Or come together. Hamada’s still got some inheritance money left and I have the ability to keep up with him. We’re heading east, into the desert. We plan on getting sober but I think we’ll die first. I write this to you, hoping for something, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the age-long need to leave a suicide note. Maybe I don’t want to only be remembered as this horrible, heartless bitch. I’ve suffered for so long and more than anyone else involved, doesn’t that count for something? Hamada has gone to score us some heroin. Then he will drive me to the post office where I will drop this and with it anything still tying me to Cairo. You are in my thoughts, though, Ekleel , just as Cairo is in my blood, and I hope you, at least, will be able to forgive me my shortcomings and think of me somewhat fondly.
UFM
issue17 / 13
To Feed It, To Bury It Christopher Allsop
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issue17 UFM
prose There was an ad on TV about a dog pound outside the city. At the end, the old guy who was the star of the ad left with a glossy black dog. They both looked pretty happy about things. I was tired of it being just me, over and over, so I thought: What the hell, and went to buy a dog. I carefully packed my small leather carryall: prescription bottles, toothbrush, a fresh bandana, map, Cheez-Its. The sunlight being hurled through the windows was end of the world bright, like the Bomb had dropped right in my front yard. Southern California. Twenty minutes went by while I tried to find my sunglasses. There’s crap everywhere: spilling off the breakfast bar, surrounding my wrinkled old brown leather recliner, stacks of shoeboxes lining the hallways. It’s mostly Mom’s—rest her soul. After the garage flooded everything had to come in. I gave up on my sunglasses and braved it, walking to the truck squinting. A powerful wind blew off the ocean just two minutes from my battered front door. The leaves of the palms clattered; sand flew in my eyes. I hurried to the truck. But when I reached it, I realized that I’d locked my keys in the house. As luck would have it, my kitchen has a broken window for just such occurrences. My truck was parked at the end of my road, near Crow’s. I hadn’t been in for a while, so I thought I should say hi to Rick, not for a drink, just to say hi, to be friendly, maybe ask how his daughter is, her ice-skating, and then I’d get on the road. I walked to Crow’s, which is apparently now called The Acapulco Inn. The roof is ringed in two strips of dark neon tubing and the sign is much, much more colorful than the old Crow’s sign used to be. Rick wasn’t there. Nobody seemed to know Rick even though Rick used to say that everybody knew Rick. They knew me, though. Hernando, Rick’s replacement, poured me a shot on the house. He’s okay. I’m not meant to mix my prescriptions with drink while operating machinery, but I took three tequilas from Hernando. I’m a big guy:
seven foot three and about five hundred pounds. It has been remarked that standing near me can make you remember what it was like to be five years old. The drinks were served in fluorescent plastic beakers, of a size similar to the ones you piss in at the hospital. Hernando kept patting my arm and saying to his other friends there drinking: The Colossus! Here! In my Inn! We took a photograph in which I have him in a chokehold. I did the same for the other guys too. They’re okay. I signed a printout of my face, the picture from the Legends of Wrestling site where I’m snarling, the one that Mom—rest her soul—said made me look like Elvis goddam Presley. Hernando stuck it behind the bar. The printout was too dark, more an outline of my head, like a guessing game, or my blackened skull with the hair still on. Hernando kept asking me about what this wrestler was like, what that wrestler was like. The names were familiar, but I couldn’t remember and began to feel dumb. Finally I said, the anger bringing a clearness to my speech: Those guys took drugs, beat up whores, and fucked up moves and hurt people. It was as good a guess as any. I was still pissed off by the time I returned to my truck, sweating hard. Back on the strip, the sun bounced off every available surface: windows, sunglasses, wristwatches, the cars shuddering in the street. I get wound up real tight real quick and just say stuff, can’t stop it. It wasn’t always like this. I think the first time was just over ten years ago now, when Tyrone came to the hospital to visit me after the Almighty Fuck Up. In his softest voice: How you feelin’, son? I said: Like you’re going to stop kissing my mother’s hand when you see her. He looked surprised, but the truth was nobody was kidding anybody anymore, and Tyrone had stopped doing this a way back. Well, after I said that, Tyrone said: What an almighty fuck up, Alex. What an almighty fuck up. He said this still looking at the floor, not
at me, and his bald spot looked round and new, like I hadn’t seen it a million times before. My truck is old, rusty, with bad brakes, but it’s got leg room. It creaks as I get in. There’s a metal gizmo, a frame for my bad arm, but it isn’t the important arm. It wasn’t my idea, the gizmo, it was Mom’s—rest her soul—but I’m used to it. As always, it poked me as I got comfortable. I attached the truck to the traffic pulling slowly through the city and turned on the radio. There’s a Bo Diddley song playing, but I don’t know the name. Mom programmed a lot of these stations, and hitting them I can see her sitting there, tapping her nails against the door, singing beneath her breath. And I am also reminded of the prostitute I picked up after Mom had passed, who punched the buttons as we drove to find a spot, smoking, red and black boots on the dash, high as an astronaut, laughing: Jesus! Oh, fuck! Are these the original pre-sets? Like, come on! And who I had asked not to smoke, and who I had to ask several times to be respectful. The sun was going down as I hit the highway heading north. Outside the city, the mountains slumped beneath the emptying sky, looked like a postcard you might buy in a pack of ten and write stuff like: Doing great. Growing a fine pair of tits. Visit any time. Your friend, The Colossus. I sent a few like that out to some friends, from the old neighbourhood. Sure, it’s too far for them to travel, things are slow, so on and so forth, but they remembered me alright: the tallest kid on any street. Six foot three at the age of twelve. Took up wrestling at fifteen. Not long after came the first bad injury, a broken wrist. Mom drove me to the hospital, with the air conditioning up too high the whole way there. When the doctor asked about giganticism in the family, Mom kept quiet. But I found out later that there’s history on my Dad’s side. We soon lost count of the injuries. Most of them were because of my condition. I didn’t stop growing until I started with the treatment, after my career ended.
UFM
issue17 / 15
prose Night was moving in when something sprang, WALLOP, and my right headlight went dark. I got out to take a look. My bumper was hanging off, and the side where it hit was all crumpled. I backed up to where the deer lay sprawled, its neck stretched long and slender like a woman’s leg kicked free of the sheets. It was perfectly dead. Half of its body was in the road, so I dragged it onto the dirt. Then I decided to drag it across to the other side of the road, where it was going. Its wide eye watched me. On the mountains the darkness thickened. When I got there, the shelter was closed, white and solitary like an abandoned fort. On a big sign bordered by cats and dog faces were the opening and closing times. I pulled into the car park. This would do fine—better than a motel. At the desks, they look at you, like: what the hell is someone out of my TV doing in a shithole like this? Well, it’s a long story, I could say, or it’s a short one, depending on how it’s told. It keeps getting shorter, the details are being snuffed out, like a field of candles and the wind’s picking up. Yes, we stayed in the best hotels when we made The Big Time. While we looked for an apartment for Mom and me, I remember standing out of the roof of a limousine, my tailored white suit flapping, a champagne glass hidden in my hand, while Tyrone sat below clutching my leg and shouting something I couldn’t make out. I think Mom was at the hotel that night. The lit up Las Vegas skyscrapers looked like great gold finishing posts and I only caught my breath when we slowed entering the Strip. I met Maria that night. Or was it later? She was sitting, smoking, always smoking, in a red booth with two other girls in the casino. She was six foot six, slim, wearing sandals that crisscrossed blue halfway up her long calves. Her shoulders were square for a woman. Her pale blue eyes lay at the bottom of deep eye sockets. Watching her stand up was the closest I ever came to understanding ballet. I tried not to think about what Mom was going to say. Maybe Maria’s sandals were red.
I popped the Cheez-Its and the smell
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filled the truck. A coyote howled, then another, close by, like it was beneath my feet. A wind threw sand and grit against the windows. I felt thirsty but there was nothing to be done about it. Tyrone or Mom always used to have a water bottle handy. The temperature dropped. The dogs inside were probably already in their little beds, sleeping, dreaming. The only light for miles around was on the pound’s alarm system, a spot of yellow beneath the overhang of the roof. The wind kept up, and the sand against the windshield sounded like ice cubes rattling in a glass in another room. I switched on the light. Insects began to appear at the windows. The wind was strong. A black moth with a thick body attached itself to the windshield, right in front of my face. Its big wings ruffled as easily as hair. Foot by foot, it wheeled around into the wind. It made it look real easy. I watched the moth for a while. It didn’t do much else so I gave it five more minutes, then I switched off the light. I woke up several times out of a dream. It’s a dream I’ve had before. Outside, the wind kept up; the yellow light shone beneath the pound’s roof. In this dream I have everything and everybody. My mother, Tyrone, Maria. My father is alive and my mother has forgiven him. She’s taken back his Greek name, my arm works fine, and I’m still wrestling: I’m number one. It all takes place on a cruise liner. In the dark of the truck, the dials on the built-in clock glowed white blue without interruption. I woke up the third time at 3:47. My vision was blurred, but the dials on the dash were still and clear. The wind kept on. I watched the dials until my heart slowed down, and my eyes closed. In the morning, the pound opened late, which is something I can’t stand. The windshield was streaked with dirt. The moth was gone. I opened the windows to let the breeze through. My tongue felt dry, scratchy. A small car, a real piece of shit—probably French—approached, turning up a tail of dust although going slow. The passengers were full of glances, but as the car pulled up alongside me they smiled, a guy and a girl, both wearing the
same shirt with a yellow collar, both young. The driver was a chick with straggly blonde hair, and she shouted: Five minutes. It was really nice of her to tell me that, but seven minutes went by until they were ready. The fresh bandana felt like a cool hand on my forehead. I jumped out and stretched slow and careful. Something popped inside my left knee and a dull pain started up. My mother said she’d help me. She said that she brought me into the world and she’d take me out, if the pain became too much to bear. But she got old and a hot summer carried her away. Then it was just me. I tried a couple of times, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. My will to live is as tall and as wide as I am. Inside, there were so many dogs, so many types: bright and snappy, trim fur, fluffy fur, slim tailed, long nosed, jumping up, with balls, with teats. They were in small, individual cells behind cage doors. Going in there felt like walking into the ring, the crowd going wild. Each took a turn licking Cheez-It dust off of my hand. Their eyes were all the same: that watery want, the trapped wolf spirit. Above all the barking, you can hear something at a higher pitch—a keening. People say you don’t choose the dog, the dog chooses you. I looked down at them and tried to imagine them in my house with me, in a life with me. Me hurling sticks to it on the beach, it retrieving and returning, dropping and yapping for more; it sitting at my side while I looked out to sea, its eyes blank and loyal; it trusting me to provide food and water for it, and to walk it, daily. To feed it, to bury it. It sounded like a lot of work. It had taken two people to look after me. But then I was once billed as the strongest man in the world: “The Unconquerable Colossus”. This was just a dog. I looked down at them and they looked up at me and we all waited for the magic moment. The girl—her name was Amber— came back and brought with her two paper cups of the coldest water. They were both for me, even though I’d only asked her for one cup. She stood by as I gulped down my pills. One dog was different. He didn’t whisk
his tail, jump up, or lick. He just stood and growled and his whole body shivered. This dog was all muscle with thin fur like motel carpet that is as cold and hard as the concrete beneath it. Amber said, over the ruckus, that it was called a Canary Dog, but she didn’t know why. The name didn’t seem like a good fit to me. The dog’s eyes were dark, hard to read. Amber said: This breed usually gets put down. Usually coming from a bad home and not exactly what good homes want jumping out of the present box at Christmastime. We’re not sure about this one yet. Doesn’t look good as we’re maxed out right now and needing to pair them up. The dog kept growling. It didn’t look like it wanted to play fetch. It looked self-sufficient. It looked reliable. It looked like it wanted to tear my throat out. We eyed one another. The passenger from the car turned up, holding a silver camera with the cord dangling. All the barking went up a notch. His name was Cody. His uniform looked a size too big. He pointed at me, shouting: You are. You’re The Colossus. I knew it! The tattoo! Unreal! The tattoo. It’s of machinery, pistons. It runs up my bad arm, and the idea was that I have a metal skeleton, or like my arm is a steam train. The tattoo was Mom’s idea, when I was still Talos, the Man of Bronze, doing the regional circuit. I hate needles, and she held my hand in the chair and the tattooist didn’t say one goddamed word about it. It was a good name that she came up with: I’ve always been swarthy, almost golden if I don’t get too much sun. I get that from Dad. Nowadays, my aging skin wrinkles the tattoo so it looks like machine parts lying in a stream. Amber took the camera and I moved around to put my good arm over him, to let the bad arm hang. It shows off the tattoo best that way. Cody smiled everything he’s got, making V shapes with his fingers. His shoulder was all bone. While Cody and Amber looked at the photograph, I looked back at the dog. It was still watching me. Then it barked—a solid thing, like
a punch to the gut—and I saw its teeth and I knew this was what I had come for. The only thing I could hear was my breathing. I said: I’ll take him. He said: Of course you will, badass. Amber just raised her eyebrows and smiled. Cody took me to the office and filled out the forms on the computer. He kept looking at me and laughing and shaking his head. He said: Crazy. Y’know, they still show that clip all the time--when the floor broke? They show that all the time. Crazy. Did you know? What the fuck was going through your mind when that happened, huh? Cody pushed the printouts toward me and showed me where to sign. This is it. I’m done. I waited in the truck while Cody and Amber wheeled the dog over on a flatbed trolley. It was inside a large brown carrying cage and I was satisfied by the weary heave of the suspension as they loaded the dog into my truck. The animal was quiet, just shifting around inside his box. They banged the back, Amber waved, and they crossed the parking lot and went back inside. I went to start the truck, but my hands were shaking. Pussy. I waited, holding onto the steering wheel. The smell of it began to fill the truck, a new, heavy smell that smothered out all the other odors. I breathed it into me. I watched the white hands of the clock. The movement was so smooth you couldn’t see it count time. Five minutes fell away. I was feeling calm enough to drive when Cody came back out of the pound and ran across the car park to my truck. I rolled down the window. His smile was kind of cockeyed. “I was wonderin’… you want to smoke a bone? It’s pretty mild shit.” I nodded, and he got in the passenger side. Never say no to a fan, and ten minutes wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference. A deep growl from the back. My car lighter popped and Cody lit up, took a couple of tokes,
passed it to me. I don’t like marijuana, but my hands were still shaking so I took puffs into my mouth, little tastes, whatever. I passed it back to him. In the rear view mirror the cage hulked up. He said: You’ve crushed it, of course. He laughed, smoothing it out, taking deep drags and blowing them out of the window. The white puffs ghosted away. He said: My bros are going to be so stoked that I smoked with The Colossus. And he, smiling, passed back the joint which was almost too small for me to hold now without burning my fingers. I puffed a little one, to help get this over with, to get out of here, to get home, and handed it back almost immediately. He finished it, crushed it in the built in ashtray. We sat for a minute, some of me wanting to get rid of him. He stuck one foot up on the dash, wriggling his leg, slowly stamping a zigzag impression of the sole in brown dirt across the clean black plastic. The dog shifted around, yawned, and settled. He spoke, staring out of the window at the pound: This ain’t a bad gig, y’know. Amber’s cool, pay’s pretty good. I like the work. But I could serve. Shit, I’m nineteen. He turned to me, squinting, his mouth uneven and ungenerous, like the top of a poorly thrown clay pot: I’m not afraid. Or I know some martial arts, I could open a dojo. Or be a bounty hunter. Not a fuckin’ cop. Fuckin’ pigs. But maybe a bounty hunter, huh? I’m small, sure— compared to you, right, who isn’t? But with a gun. Motherfuck crossbow. Tazer. Pepper spray. Make some money, do some good, right? Kick some fucking ass along the way! I returned his high five. He shook his hand like it hurt, but it wasn’t hard. Then he seemed to fall into a trance again, staring at the pound, wriggling his foot. My hands were sweaty, and the smell of the dog was overwhelming. It felt like Cody was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what would come out so I kept my mouth shut. Then Amber poked her head out of the pound’s door and looked over at the truck before disappearing back inside.
UFM
issue17 / 17
prose He said: There’s my cue. Bet you never had this problem, huh, career shit. Damn, you joined the army we would have won in the first day. Shock and giant, yo! I watched him get down carefully, as if he had brittle bones, and he turned and extended his hand through the window, smiling. I rushed for it, held onto it, pulled him forward a little in doing so. I tried to say something but it died in my throat. The kid’s eyes were wide. I cleared my throat. Then I said: Ask before you put your feet on someone’s dash. Cody looked dazed. He said: I did? Woah, sorry. I said: Forget about it. I let him go, put the truck into drive and pulled out of the pound. I kept the radio turned off and listened to the dog. He shifted against the cage, scrabbled, growled and barked, and then was silent again. The dog repeated this routine every few minutes as the city slowly flooded up the countryside toward us. I felt dopey, with the heat, the marijuana, the adrenaline, I don’t know. As we drove past the dead deer, two buzzards teetered backwards. They were like: Why do you disturb us? What can we do? We are what we are. And I knew that, because that’s the way it is, and I watched them return to the carcass in my mirror, bent forward as if they were considering the purchase of an old classic that someone was selling too cheap. And I listened to the dog shifting, shifting, shifting. I drove through downtown and thought about how far the shadow of the longest building stretched at sunrise, whether it’s tall enough to touch the ocean. Then I was home. I opened the back and the dog whirled around, showing its teeth through the grill. The cage was heavy. Pain shot up my spine, and I had to put it down in the shade of the porch and rest. After a while, I dragged the cage over the threshold, through the piles of clothes and pizza boxes, and up to the smudged glass slider doors leading to my yard. It’s a good size, with yellowing grass here and there pushing up through the dirt and a concrete strip to one
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side where spiders and rust make good use of my workout equipment. I took the cage outside, undid the lock, and stepped back inside the house, closing the glass door behind me. The dog burst out and just started running. He circled the high brick perimeter, jumped onto my weights bench, barked at the cage, growled at me (or itself) in the glass, dug a bunch of holes, and then settled in a corner, alert, watching the cage and me. I left him there and walked over to my freezer. I pulled out a frozen steak. I wanted to be hospitable. I cooked up the steak, took half for myself and threw the rest to the dog. It tore at the meat on the ground like it was a living thing, like it was trying to scare it back to life to kill it again. Watching that gave me pause. I walked to the shop at the end of the road and bought the most expensive tin of dog food. The flavour was turkey meatloaf. It was $8.50. The owner took the money, squinting up at me. I said: That’s a goddam rip off. He threw the money in the cash register and said: Please come again. Back home I changed into the outfit: green spandex underpants and bright red vinyl boots. The years had not been kind. My toes curled against the end of the boots. I padded into the kitchen and drew back the ring pull on the dog food. It smelt pretty good, rich. I dug the food out with my hand, catching the edge with my little finger. A ribbon of blood slipped down my hand. Should help. I smeared the dog food all over the front of my neck, all over my windpipe. If it could rip out my heart, all the better, but I thought the windpipe was the best bet for the both of us. Most of the dog food fell on the floor, but some jellied pieces stuck and the sauce soaked into my skin. It was cool and made my neck feel numb. The gamey smell made my eyes juice up. He was right up against the wall, shading from the high sun in a small angular shadow, his long pink tongue vibrating between his gums. I watched him through the glass for a minute, maybe two, and I thought about Maria, how she disappeared, without a word; about Mom, tucked beneath the bolted down table on the
bus, clutching her ouzo and ice and whispering how she had always known I’d be somebody. The slider clunked shut behind me and the dog swung his big head in my direction. I stepped into the backyard and he slowly rose up, growling, growling like he did in the pound, like he’s cornered. This time he really is cornered. The engine of a leaf blower started up somewhere close by. I took a stance with my good arm out, fingers bent like a monster, and stamped into the middle of the backyard. He stayed at a distance, growling, always growling, and moved out from his patch of shade. He seemed to get bigger as he stepped out into the sunshine. But I was still too much. I crouched a little, feeling the pressure in my knees. He stayed back: still too much. That big head opened and let out a bark as deep as it was wide—final warning. I fell to my knees and he jumped, knocking us both over. I rolled onto him. His sharp toes dug into my side. With the weight of my body on his, he couldn’t wriggle free, and he began to lick at me, this monster dog, scrabbling beneath me to reach my neck. I felt his short hair, the hot skin on his belly. His breath was scalding. I listened to the pain and eased my grip, just a little, and he licked me just like all the other dogs back at the pound, his tongue quick and wet. I rolled off him and onto my back and he jumped up onto my chest and licked me clean. I started to laugh: what a fool I’d been. But by the time the leaf blower cut out, all there was to hear was the keening. He doesn’t like the leash, so we go to the beach at night when he can run. Tonight’s crowded, 4th of July, and I have to keep him close. The leash cuts into my hand as he pulls me through the clumps of people sitting on blankets. A firework goes off about ten feet away—you can smell it on the breeze—someone screams and my dog jumps about a mile. Then a series of distant booms. I follow where everyone’s looking: there are fireworks exploding over the red smoke stacks of the Queen Mary. It takes a moment for the second hand sound to reach us after each explosion.
POETRY
UFM
issue17 / 19
Ricky Garni
WARTIME Chocolate Ices cost a penny during the war but because there was a chocolate shortage Chocolate Ices were replaced by carrots which cost a penny. Eventually there was a shortage of carrots, too, and all the munition factories were then filled with peanuts and the front lines were filled with thousands of young bodies filled with chocolate and carrot bullets and the streets were filled with the weeping of mommy peanuts and shells filled the air– the weeping costs a penny.
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HISTORY IN PICTURES It used to be a law that you had to wear a top hat in the subway if you were a man. One man wrote down the law. He put it under his top hat and forgot about it. Others say that top hat, of all top hats, was the only one that never existed. Some say women would frown at men without top hats in the subway. Others said the unclean air gave women a cross expression and made them cranky anyway. When the subway commenced, though, men and women forgot their differences and sorrows. Men would remove their boutonnieres and give them away to the women who were so cross. Men would doff their hats with great courtesy to the women would graciously acceptall kindnesses. The subway would off, guided by a team of horses. Now some say the horses never existed. Others say those horses can still be found. Some say the flowers appeared out of nowhere, but were quite welcome. Yet all agree that there was once a sound of some sort. Some put their ear gently to the ground, even today, and listen for the sound that a hat or a flower might make.
UFM
issue17 / 21
Ricky Garni
WANGECHI MUTU If a ball is suspended in the air, you can see its shadow beneath it. If the ball is cut from that suspension and falls to the ground, the moment at which it touches the ground it has no shadow. Or perhaps it has a shadow, and it is hidden. Since it bounces, the shadow returns until the ball touches the ground again. Eventually, the ball rests on the ground, and by then, the shadow is dead. It is as if the ball has strangled the shadow to death, and a murder has been committed. The identity of the culprit is different of course if the author of its suspension is known. It is of course different still if the ball is the property of the person who cut the suspension, and of course, one must ask whose knife it is as well. Was anyone in the room? Were there witnesses? Perhaps there was some sort of a confrontation? One must question the motive of the individual who cut the string. Statistically speaking, a majority of those who would cut the suspension on a ball in a room would have no clear motive, or at the very least, would not be able to articulate their motive in a way that is meaningful. Of course it is also possible that after years of wear, the rope finally just gave out as a natural consequence of age and vigorous use. This can also be proven statistically. Often in cases like this, it remains a mystery, and all things remain as they should be, at rest: the bouncing will cease.
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A TOY I FOUND ON THE MOON If you draw something with a black pen, the minute you pick up a red pen and draw anything people yell “that man is bleeding!” or worse yet, “fire!” Neither could be further from the truth. I met a man who was tired of black and therefore. I met a fire who only wore make up when he went outside.
UFM
issue17 / 23
Christopher Mulrooney
lakeshore marmalades in shades of jade green and blue and russet tan the ducks dividing gulls like galleons
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cocksure the tremblant willows and all such on the high prairie whisk all the brooms in the air it is Walpurgisnacht the midnight wind does this and nothing more fading into dawn on the silken oasis
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Christopher Mulrooney
the story of itself if we open the door and peek inside or better outside the newspaper and milk are there the flat outside like a background and the drive to work where we put together the thing we sell in turn to journalists and dairymen
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Mxyzptlk here we go shoveling shit in Louisiana again it makes the Golem power of the people in the shtetl says the scholar from Harvard College against those Cossacks big and manly on their horses with brass buttons
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Christopher Mulrooney
The Parnassians as I tiptoe in my garden they all write of pretty flowers dwelling there and bones a rare fragrance arises from all that whilst they loving stand there smelling in round tones
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Nanette Rayman
I Once Thought I’d never like rain anymore after the splashing with you at the tip of Manhattan: You bought me a lavender rose and we lay face up in the tinseled green grass, My halter dress wrinkling up my thigh, and we, so wet and homeless, dripping bodies of fire never saw the lady cop creep up behind us, the hungry mosquitoes drilling my breast. And I believed then when you tried not to laugh as she said: How old are you? that we were invited guests to this earth, when she let us go. And I believed when the rain came again too early too harshly and you whipped out an I Love New York umbrella that I could have the festival skin, the desire of an apple because you gave me a core—that cosmos kismet I could never throw away. I’d be free & a spirit who lived under stars, the globe turning for me and the police horses who bleed for a core. But you brushed yourself off to go buy me some coffee and I was left alone with the bodies of mosquitoes. Night took us; we slept on the bench, we stared blankly at branches. Just as the rain made pink buds my heart fell into a longing for home. There is always that ripper lover that cuts to the core when it rains, but rain is a lover, a pulse.
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Nanette Rayman
Ballerina Why do I bother to write after all that happened? Job-orphaned is not so bad as sleeping on sleet. I could drift on snow up to broken branches. Right? The street’s not so bad, a more staid light travels, places its eyes to my soul, so I know anything inside me won’t be blamed for some inflamed ragdoll forced to tongue subway grates. Mother-orphaned from day one and she’s still alive is not so bad. A crow drank the mouth of my quick-plucked nameless flowers and pink my heart, my heart! Rooms so dark. A pretty woman stays pretty even when light does not disclose that nothing ever returns. One single life— jammed between an airy window and concrete doors gummed up utterly. I have nothing to do with it. Slowly, I could lift my dress. What could happen? What could happen is you will try to make out theatre and say absurd. It sounds like a bird. You know you are looking at your self turned inside out. You know what hibernaculum means— protective cover in winter. Hibernating case. I haven’t yet considered that as an option. You are peering at the precipice naked as death here, sense memory, so put your dress back on, there is the other sigh of drama; it’s called mystery and air where directors tell you, honey, you have weight, tiny ballerina. The edge does not exist but for swallow, place your hair behind your ear & Laurette Taylor me to where birds dance with your body, your infinite light of breathing.
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What could happen is theatre wronged you into playing in traffic merely lost and tossed away from even meangirl jobs, with no one to call dearest one, no one to admit I’m desperate, I’m delicate, no one to ask Where is G-d except G-d. Disobey statues of angels, Alma did. In the end even dahlias become forecasts of the final curtain. Of how you bloom on, my pretty jobless motherless dramaful persona genuflecting on stamens, hilling a stutter in one hip just to entice a street-guy who loses his magic in that gimme gimme trite marriage, his hands hurting from hitting you. Inside, ‘bout time, but he’s your Newport smoking, knee in your waist prison guard. I write so someone will know I was here and coulda been.
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Nanette Rayman
The Station So someone visits you in dreams, Lost Woman. Repeat her name. Her face of dark flowers, cattleya! weaves in and out like a sienna photograph through train tracks at Cleveland Circle. Still don’t know her? Such denial. She has something to say to you. Really, orchids don’t bloom on subway cars. Such ungratefulness. Stop! Don’t tell me you heard voices in gravel? Your sole desire is to sleep on, and you, stars, light up your cold juice on rain’s too premature off-ramp. Modeh ani lefanecha melech chia vekayam, she-he-chezart bei nishmate b’chemla, raba emunatecha. I thank You, living and eternal King, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me. Morphing into the house after years of train track dreams, I am sure I’ve missed my stop and they’ve come: club-footed, orthopedic shod, stiletto pumped, kick-ass thigh highs, their snowy heads nodding, their raw red fingers clasping, their doe eyes suffering the slings and I vowing I alone am ready for the bare branches rattling against the train, so I wait like a bride arms open wide.
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bios
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Noha Al-Badry was born in the heart of Cairo and likes medical terminology, word-play, bad puns,
exploring the gaps between the English language & the Arabic and writing as a form of cooking. Currently an intern at Winter Tangerine Review and previously published in Prime Number, Otoliths and FailBetter. Visit her blog:http://hush-syrup.tumblr.com
Christopher Allsop is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at Antioch University in L.A.,
and recipient of the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award. When he’s not writing fiction, he’s reviewing cheese (https:// fromology.wordpress.com), and when he’s not reviewing cheese, he’s tinkering pointlessly with his website:http:// www.callsop.com/. He lives in Bath in the UK.
Ricky Garni
is a writer living in Carrboro, NC. His poetry and short fiction publications has been published widely in print and on the Web, in several anthologies, and he has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, most recently for a poem about Buittoni Butternut Squash Ravioli (in brown butter sage sauce.) His titles include THE ETERNAL JOURNALS OF CRISPY FLOTILLA, MAYBE WAVY, MY FIFTEEN FAVORITE PRESIDENTS, and IT’S JUST LIKE WHATEVER, slated for publication in 2014.
Christopher Mulrooney has written two books recently, Symphony (The Moon Publishing & Printing), and Jamboree (Turf Lane Press).
Nanette Rayman, author of Shana Linda Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies (Foothills Publishing) is
the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize. Two-time Pushcart nominee, a poem was included in Best of the Net 2007 and a memoir piece in Best of the Web: DZANC.
Fabio Sassi started making visual artworks after varied experiences in music and writing. He makes
acrylics with the stencil technique on board, canvas, or other media. He uses logos, tiny objects and what is considered to have no worth by the mainstream. He still prefers to shoot with an analog camera. Fabio lives and works in Bologna, Italy. His artwork, Outerspace is featured on our cover. He is a regular contributor to Umbrella Factory Magazine. His work can be viewed at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com.
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stay dry.
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