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C O N TE N TS Prose Danielle Bukowski “Participate”
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Sarah Clayville “Allegations” 13 Poetry
Holly Day “The Cannery” 17 “Good Old Me” 18 “Some Questions About the History of Medicine” “The Corner” 20 “Almost Real” 21 Richard Luftig “Disaster” 22 “When Nature Calls” 23
“First Signs of Spring”
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Editor’s Note 5 About Us 4 Submission Guidlines 6 Bios and Credits 26
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UFM June 2014, Issue 18
UMBRELLA FACTORY WORKERS Editor-In-Chief
Anthony ILacqua Poetry Editor
Julie Ewald Copy Editor
Janice Hampton Art Director
Jana Bloomquist
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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 Readers, writers, supporters of Umbrella Factory Magazine, welcome to issue 18. Once again, we are pleased to curate another issue of Umbrella Factory Magazine. I don’t really know why I find it so incredible every time we launch a new installment. I guess it’s simply that in every 90 day cycle we see so many submissions, and we try to build an issue. It is not exactly arbitrary and it is not exactly objective either. When we read submissions, there are some that are not ready for publication (for whatever reason) and there are submissions that are definitely ready for publication but not with us (for whatever reason). And then there is the game of simultaneous submissions. And these are just the small pieces of the incredible. There are freaky things that happen too. I remember two specifically. We once accepted a writer and never heard back, so we did not run the story. The writer sent an email over a year later—for some reason being indisposed for all that time—and wanted to know when the story would run. I once had a writer call me the night before a magazine launch begging UFM to remove her story. What a mess. Then there are the normal things that make a magazine issue incredible. Life. Life can get in the way of writing, as we all know. Life can also get in the way of editing, formatting, producing and marketing a magazine issue too. Things come up. I’m pretty sure everyone on the UFM staff has had to look for a job, had a move or some other frightening deadline that coincides with a magazine deadline. Believe it or not, putting a quarterly online literary magazine together is not a great deal of work, but it is a very pressing commitment. I suppose that’s really what life is when you get right down to it: many frequent commitments. It’s with a great deal of sadness that this is Julie Ewald’s last UFM issue as poetry editor. Julie has been with us since the very early days, issue five, March 2011. We are old college chums and have spent a good deal of time together talking writing, life and literary magazines. Alas, editors come and go, but literature will go on forever. In the meantime, please enjoy this issue. I love Danielle Bukowski’s “Participate” which is eerie and a little dark—two of my favorite things. And shoring up the other side of the fiction portion is Sarah Clayville’s “Allegations”. Our poets Holly Day and Richard Luftig complete the lineup for issue 18. When I say that it is not exactly arbitrary and it is not exactly objective either, I mean it. How a literary magazine goes together is just that—a mix of arbitrary and objective. The objectivity comes through with our submission guidelines, it comes through when we blatantly tell writers and poets what we want. And, of course, we have some standards like good storytelling and clean manuscripts. The arbitrary parts are very arbitrary like who submits and what. Until we meet again in September. 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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Participate Danielle Bukowski
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prose It is just an Idea until it isn’t just, on the day when Steven’s engineering friend comes over to set up the cameras. We stand around and munch on pita chips while he works on a makeshift ladder of record crates. He sets up three cameras in the corners of the living room. We don’t know whether Steven told his engineering friend what the cameras are for, so we don’t talk about it. We pay him in beer; he hangs around until it is obvious that we don’t know what to say to him and then he leaves. Cameras are vital to the Idea becoming more than an Idea but it isn’t until 9 that someone, probably Anna, says, “So this is really happening, then?” Since the cameras are up, we determine that it is, really happening. Next we determine that Participants are the other vital aspect to the Idea-as-Actual-Thing and so, with another batch of pita chips and a fresh new email address, we put the ad up online. “Read this book for $1,000.” We sit around the computer with the chips. After half an hour nobody has emailed us so those of us who live in the house go to our rooms, and those of us who live elsewhere go elsewhere. The Idea, which should now really be called the Event, was to write a book so utterly terrifying horrible fucked up, demented, and cruel that nobody would finish it. Couldn’t finish it. Even for $1,000. We would film people—the Participants—attempting to read the book. The one who could finish it (if one could finish it) would win. Then we’d put the film up online. When we reconvene the next day to check our email, we are surprised that many more people have responded than we had anticipated. Clearly the economy has not picked up. We decide we will pick six of these as our Participants. The absolute fuckedupness of the book was emphasized and forewarned in the online
ad, but that merely seemed to intrigue people. We do not want the merely intrigued. “We don’t want Participants who think this will be just like Saw or Teeth, fucked-up in a fascinating way that you keep watching because,” Steven says. “We don’t want crazy,” Ben says. Who do we want, we ask. “We need people like us,” Xandra says, “Artists so bored with the numbness of living that they need a sharpness, a terror, to just stay lucid.” Are we these people? We are actually pretty sure we are not these people at all. But we try to determine from the wide-ranging responses which six will be not-merelyfascinated and not-crazy Participants, and then send emails to those who have been selected with the address, date, and time they should show up. With that done we nod our heads. We’re going to be Artists, we realize, and that makes us smile. “We should probably write The Book soon,” Caitlin says. “I think we should write it in the kitchen,” Xandra says, smirking at us. “Some really grisly murders have happened in kitchens.” Anna frowns. “Don’t be so morbid.” “But we have to get into the mindset, right? That’s what actors do,” Steven says. “We’re not actors, though,” Anna points out. “No, but we’re Artists—same thing.” We decide that we will meet back on Sunday to begin writing The Book. First we decide that we should eat dinner, and so leave for a vegetarian tapas place downtown. We are not deranged people, naturally. Perhaps Xandra is a little odd, and Ben does too many drugs, and all of us orbit our own spaces slightly off an axis, but we are certainly not psychopaths. Ishan brings us movies to watch, “to get in the mindset.” Their covers are
wrapped in tentacles and teeth, blood snakes saws and bones tumbling over the titles and directors’ names. We watch for several hours. At one point Anna leaves to cry in one of the bedrooms. When we take a break from watching to order pizza we have speckles in our vision, shivers in the corners of the room, which grow into black spots when we close our eyes. When the doorbell rings, we all jump up and huddle closer; Anna leaves the bedroom after the second ring to pay for the pizza. The man, seeing us over Anna’s shoulder, asks her if we are all alright. “Yeah, just having a horror-movie fest,” she replies casually, and closes the door. We eat the pizza; peppers and onions. Ishan, his bottom lip red-dripping chunks of tomato sauce, says, “We should probably start writing.” We write for three days. We drink fourteen pots of coffee and nine pots of tea; we smoke five packs of cigarettes and eat eleven family-sized bags of Dorito’s. We write The Book in three days and when we are done, those of us who live in the house go to our rooms, and those of us who live elsewhere go elsewhere. * The Participants come to our address on the day at the time we told them to in the email. They have names but we give them numbers, one through six, randomly. The Book, bound with binder clips, is handed to each one of them, and we ask them to make themselves comfortable in the room with the cameras while they read. When they continue to stand around stiffly Ishan, frantically rubbing one side of his head, tells us we should probably leave them alone now. We go into one of the bedrooms, where we have set up one of the computers to play the footage live from the cameras. The
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prose Participants have only 12 hours to attempt to read The Book; we have other things to do with our lives. When we turn on the monitor, Participants Two, Five, and Six have sat down on the couches. Six looks very young to us; Five is probably as old as we are, wearing a pilled grey sweater and old Converse sneakers. Two has propped the book up on one knee and is fixing her long hair into a bun. Her socks are mismatched. One and Three begin lazySunday reading The Book on their stomachs, One with her feet in the air and Three with his socks burrowing into the carpet. Participant Four, a really lanky guy, is sitting with his spine scrunched against the wall. The first hour is very dull. At one hour and seventeen minutes, Participant Five is calmly reading The Book, picking at his sweater with his left hand. At one hour eighteen he flings the bundle behind him and stands up. Calmly again, he collects his coat, grabs a few chips from the counter, and walks out the door. The other participants watch him leave, and then look up to the cameras expectantly when he’s gone. We go out to remind them that they can leave at any time, but to keep reading if they can. Most turn their heads back to the pages, although Participant Four stares at the door a little longer than the rest, opening his eyes dramatically wide and then shutting them quickly. Xandra squints. “What the hell is he doing?” “I really expected Participant Three to leave first, he keeps shifting positions,” Steven says. “We should have taken bets on who we thought would bail first,” Xandra replies. Two and Six are still sitting on the couches, but Two has begun making rather violent expressions of disgust. Four is shaking from his shoulders, The Book’s mass of pages
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turned into feathers in front of his terrified face from the tremors reverberating through his thin fingers. At two hours and three minutes, he begins to moan. None of the other Participants acknowledge the noise. “Can we kick him out?” Anna asks, “I don’t want to listen to this anymore.” We don’t think we should kick him out if he is still reading, which seems to be the case. After three more minutes the moans turn to sobs, and he buries his face in the pages’ fold. “He’s not OK,” Ben says. We agree. Participant Four is Not OK. Participant Two notices the noise, suddenly, and beings untying and retying the bun in her hair. Every few seconds she looks back at Participant Four as if she is just noticing the noise for the first time again. Four’s moans have become rasping shouts; he doesn’t look physically distressed but he sounds horrific. “This is so weeeeird,” Lev whispers. He cracks his neck. “I can’t take it.” He stands up quickly and throws the door open, snapping to the Participants that they can leave at any time. Then he comes back to the room, looks at us as if he will say something, and instead sits down, cracking his neck. Participant Four finds his shoes and, still moaning and hiccupping, leaves. Two closes her book, opens it again, takes her hair down, flips through a few pages quickly and then follows out the door. Three Participants. One and Three have moved to the couch; Six is still sitting on the couch opposite, quite absorbed in The Book. After two hours and forty-four minutes Participant Three begins theatrically looking at the watch on his wrist every few seconds; he leaves a minute later. He mutters something about being late and is running by the time he gets to the front door. One and Six. They read calmly, on opposite sides
of the couch, for another hour and a half. We are bored, so we go into the kitchen to make another pot of tea. Neither Participant pays attention to us. Lev leaves to pick up some curry; all this work has made us hungry. As we stand steeping our tea Participant One looks over to us and seems to make pleading sounds, but we do not respond. When we return to the bedroom someone jokes that we might have to split the $1,000 and someone giggles. Caitlin notes that in the case of a tie we should give the money to whoever finishes first. Because she is lying face-down on the carpet, and has been for some time, her voice’s logical conclusion to the dilemma is difficult to hear. We think this is fair. In response, Lev cracks his neck. For over five hours, Participant Six calmly and Participant One frantically read The Book. Participant One must be at least four years older than Six, but she has begun crumpling into herself and now looks just as young as Six. At five hours thirteen minutes she shudders once, deeply, and closes The Book. She looks down at The Book’s white title page and looks up at the cameras, sadly. She is not far from finishing but her head drops to her shoulders and she wilts, heavily, onto the floor. The Book flops open next to her. We watch her, silently, for ten minutes; then she stands up, faces a camera for a teary “I’m sorry,” and leaves. Participant Six continues reading, then closes the book at the six minute mark, after six hours of reading, and looks up to the cameras. He has no facial expression. “I’ve finished,” he says. We go out to the room with the cameras, and tell Six that he has won. He stands up. “Was it disturbing?” Steven asks. Participant Six looks at him, blankly, then to the corner of the room as if searching for his answer.
“It was disturbing, yes, I suppose,” Participant Six says. He has a child’s voice but must be a teenager. We ask him how old he is. “Fourteen,” he replies. “That’s a little young not to be disturbed by that book,” Ben says quietly. Participant Six hears him and smiles in a small way. He does not look offended or proud. He stands there and we stand here and then Ishan turns quickly to get him his money. He brings out the $1,000 in sweaty lumps of tens and fives; Participant Six divides the money between his pockets, his shoe, and beneath his hat. He nods to us once, gives the small smile again, returns his face to blank and then leaves without saying a word. We gather at the window, seven heads above the sink with eyebrows raised, to watch him walk away. He looks like a normal fourteen-year-old boy but can’t be. “Jesus,” Anna says, “He didn’t seem disturbed at all. Well, he’s clearly disturbed, but The Book didn’t do that to him. It was as if we just asked him to read Moby-Dick, he looked almost bored.” “It’s scary to think there are people like that in the world, so completely unfazed,” Steven says softly. “And so young,” Caitlin adds. We nod. We frown. Our heads leave the window and someone heats the oven for pita chips. We vacuum the room with the cameras and try to forget Participant Six until we remember that we have to make a film. * We sleep or we go to work or we walk around outside or we don’t, and a few days later we come back to the house to edit the material to put online. Xandra has a blogging friend who has agreed to feature the film on her site for a week. Steven’s engineering friend comes over to take down the cameras and we pay him in more beers and a twenty this time. We rewind the tapes. Ben is handling this, in the bedroom,
and suddenly shouts. We gather in the room where we were watching the cameras (Steven’s engineering friend too) and ask him what is wrong. “It recorded us too,” he says. “What, in here?” “No, out there. When we were writing.” Steven’s engineering friend nods. “Yeah I’d left them running when I first installed them, so you guys could get used to turning them on and off when necessary.” We had not turned them off or on. They had simply always been on. “Well just delete it all, it’s just a bunch of 20-year-olds writing on loose leaf. Or do you think it’d be a good intro, Writers Hard at Work?” Ishan asks. We do not reply. We are staring at the footage. “Caitlin,” Ben squeaks out, “What are you doing.” The footage we are watching is from several hours into the second day of writing. We do not look well. The room is even worse. Caitlin is sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling one of the couch cushions on her lap. She has torn off the fabric cover and ripped through the lining and is now in the process of pulling out the foam stuffing. Half of her forearm is stuck in the cushion, searching for something; she pulls out large wads of yellowsick foam and then breaks them into crumbles which she showers on the floor, as if what she is looking for is microscopic. She is wailing. The Caitlin who is not in the film is shocked. “I don’t remember doing that,” she says. Anna, who has gone to check, reports that the couch cushion on the left is indeed nearly entirely out of foamy innards. We look back to the screen. The rest of us appear to be trying to melt into the furniture; our limbs are rolled over chairs and arm rests, catatonic except for the twitching fingers still scratching words
onto paper. We do not see Anna or Lev. Ben is trying to animal-crawl his way under the couch, slowly, shrieking once sharply every time he moves a limb. Xandra is writing on the floor. Steven is writing while sitting on the couch under which Ben is trying to crawl. The parts of Steven’s arms visible under his T-shirt are tickled with ink, trickling black between his fingers, vines writhing up to his neck. Ishan in the film is writing madly, the pen in his right hand, four fingertips on his left hand digging scratching into the side of his head. His shoulder has already accumulated tiny puffs of brown hairs. Ishan who is not in the film covers the side of his head quickly with his hand. We turn and stare as he takes it away. “What does it look like,” he asks us. “Size of a grapefruit,” Lev says. “Bald.” Ishan closes his eyes and puts his hand up over the side of his head again. “Why did I do that?” he asks us. Why are we doing this, we ask us. “Wait, look,” Ben says. Lev has come into the picture. He cracks his neck, twice, to the side. He is carrying something small and fragile, and places it in front of him before he picks up a pen and stack of pages to write on. Ben and Caitlin squint into the computer screen. “It looks like a bird,” Caitlin concludes. Only the legs and backside of Ben-on-film can be seen now, the rest hidden under the couch. He has stopped shrieking. “Where the hell did you get a bird, a dead bird?” Anna asks, disgusted. Lev frowns. “What time is it, 5? I was at work that day. I couldn’t have come home at five with a dead bird. Is this a trick?” Lev turns angrily to Steven’s engineering friend. “Don’t look at me, man, I don’t know anything about tricks. I just install stuff.” “Holy fuck,” Anna covers her eyes. “Lev you’re sick,” Xandra says, her
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face disgusted and impressed. In the film, Lev is eating the bird, slowly, systematically, his bottom lip reddripping with blood. He pauses only to pick tiny cracked bones from his teeth. He coughs once, loudly, and red and pink dribbles onto his shirt. The Lev who is not on the film runs to the bathroom and pukes violently. We know that we have to delete this, immediately. We watch for another hour. And then we are deleted from the tapes; the footage begins when the Participants enter the living room. * The footage becomes a film. We contact Participant Six about using his real name and identity in the film and he is ok with that. We call him at home; a woman answers, and when she calls to Participant Six to pick up the phone she covers the receiver poorly against her chest and we can all hear her call him “Henry.” “What have you done with the $1,000,” we want to know, to add to the end of the film. Participant Henry has not yet done anything with the money. He does not know what he wants. We are disappointed with this answer but add it in to a slide at the end of the film. Ishan shaves his head. We put the film up online but do not sit in front of the computer and wait to see how many people watch and comment. We turn the computer off and fall into chairs around the kitchen table, seven tired heads over mugs of tea. We are twice-worn sock smell and mottled under-eyes. We decide to take a break from thinking, from thinking of Ideas. We nod. Those of us who live in the house want to go to bed, and those of us who live elsewhere want to go elsewhere. First we decide that we should eat dinner and leave for a Vietnamese noodle place uptown.
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Allegations Sarah Clayville
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prose Old Estella drags her lawn chair three blocks to church every Sunday. She sits up front closer to the pastor than the Lord ever intended folks to get when he created the pews. “It’s like she’s trying to suck up all the righteousness with no regard for the rest of the sinners.” Mama passes out judgments like Halloween candy and can’t resist making the same comment every week as we follow the winding crowd inside. Appearances, particularly at church, matter to Mama. She spends two hours each Sunday morning redesigning the structure of her face with makeup, slipping on undergarments that unnaturally push and pull at her ample figure. Even if she could get really close to the Lord via Pastor Brodie who, when he doesn’t shave, looks vaguely like Brad Pitt, I doubt God would recognize her. She desperately wants to be noticed. I don’t. “If I let you stay home, she’ll see it as a revolution,” Greg, my new father, explains. He lives in his makeshift library in our home. He even sleeps on the leather sofa, and Mama comes down to join him on nights when she’s cold or lonely. If nothing else he’s taught me that the best way to weather my mother’s storms is to let her have her way. “My friends decided yesterday that they hate me,” I tell him. “I can’t face them in church. We’re all so exposed, and you know they’ll be watching me and not the Pastor.” He nods and reaches for a volume of Twain. Parenting through pages, he jokes. He tells me the authors know life better than he does. He didn’t learn to read until he was twenty-four and treats the skill respectfully; fragilely as if one day he might wake up and no longer recognize the words. When we moved from our apartment overlooking the ugly end of the river to a half-free, halfattached house, it won him over with wallto-wall oak bookshelves. Mama loved a
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stained-glass dove perched at the top of our front door. I found a room in the back corner of the house with baby blue and white skeleton wallpaper, and they let me claim it for my own. Really, the room claimed me. It seduced me with its simplicity and the offer of a place so secure and nestled in the heart of the home. I wanted to reach out and remove the bones from the wall like Operation. It urged me to investigate the inside of things. “You’re going to church. I’m not.” Greg softens when I sink down in one of the reupholstered armchairs and sigh until there’s not an ounce of air left in my body. “Mama needs company.” He’s so nice to me that I can’t bear to tell him Mama’s got plenty of male companions at the church. If he were my real father, maybe I wouldn’t sit silent. There’d be invisible, familial ties that wrapped around our waists and bound us together like slaves. I remember a time before Greg, and it wasn’t filled with books or leather couches or a house with its own three digits. I don’t dare say a word. “Mina, put on something nicer.” Mama calls to me from the kitchen where she simultaneously works on her makeup and scrambles eggs. She hasn’t even seen me this morning but is just guessing I’m done up all wrong, and when I leave Greg’s fortress, hanging from the stair railing is a matte gold dress and patterned tights. She’s loaned me one of her purses, pre-stocked with an enamel compact and yellowed handkerchiefs. Mama misses the Twenties and likes me more when I remind her of that era rather than the decade where I was conceived. Greg is old, too. His scalp shines through feathery blond hair, but maybe he reminds her of an older time and that’s why she plucked him from the local market with papayas and sardines. Changing in my bedroom everything appears clinical. When we moved to the house I felt my life subtly determined as
if future me was compelled to be a doctor. Now when I slip on the gold dress, it reminds me of the paper gowns at the family doctor, where my mother took me for precautionary pills and the nurses told me funny stories to make me forget they were inspecting me on the inside, like fruit, to tell if I was rotten or not. “Paying now is worth not paying later,” Mama told the receptionist as she handed over her grocery allowance Greg bestowed upon her each Monday. The church is always packed, and Estella drags the lawn chair like every other morning, the metal feet groaning along the ground. The congregation knows better than to offer help. It’s part of her Sunday ritual. Mama tsks and runs her hands through her black hair, finger curling the edges. “Mina, walk like I do,” she advises. Her hip swings out and shifts her body, but all I can imagine are the bones creaking inside of her, grinding like the metal against the pavement. When I try to walk that way, I fall over my own feet. She’s always there to steady me. “Too fast. We’ll practice.” My former friends aren’t angry with me, really. Their mothers are simply holding on to their husbands like clinging ivy, and it’s Mama’s fault. So the daughters have decided to snatch up their friendship in case I could somehow tarnish it, too. Loralee gives me a quick wave from her hand tucked at her hip, but I suspect she just needs to stay cordial with me for the Biology lab tomorrow. Osmosis. “Decisions, decisions.” Mama strips off her lemon-scented gloves and touches them against her lips. Where we sit will make all the difference in the world. Stacks of bibles are precariously placed toward us off like the Devil. No man in the room will look into her eyes. The wives, though, they stare with their lips parted and letters formed, ready. S…B…C…The first time I could read lips I played hangman, rearranging the alphabet until I recognized
what they were implying. I study the ties. It’s how Mama communicates with the men. My pills aren’t the only things she purchases with the grocery money because Greg loves letters and hates numbers and dotes on his almost wife. The men, who have been with her intimately and can’t go to work in the morning on time or focus their eyes on the computer screens, wear her gifts. She gravitates to them without their wives ever knowing the secret code. All Mama cares about is what decorates the outside, the handsome men. Their wives are too busy tending to the inside to notice the ties. But Mama has eyes like a hawk. “There. Mina you scoot in and make your hands pretty in your lap.” She slides her own palms into her bag and tags the back of my neck with her scented lotion so I am a living, breathing reminder of her presence. I’m next to Mr. Jenkins who wears a turquoise tie that looks like ocean water from Fiji. Greg took us there on our honeymoon, because he swore we’d all be married now. Mrs. Jenkins unbuttons the top of her blouse and whispers something to her husband that turns him red and makes his leg twitch slightly. “Please be seated,” Pastor Brodie begins. Mama crosses her leg and strokes her ankle, playing with the gold anklet lingering just above the bone. Mr. Jenkins isn’t biting. He leans forward, pretending to be riveted by the Pastor but really listening to his wife’s covert message. For the first time in church, Mama has lost control of her congregation. Whatever Mrs. Jenkins is doing, whether she’s promising him heaven or hell when he gets home, it’s working. “Excuse yourself,” Mama commands. “Pretend you’re ill and excuse yourself.” “But the girls…” My former friends are waiting in the back, hanging out by the banquet hall with intentions to rip me apart, and Mama is
serving me up like dinner. Today of all days she’s made me up in her image, a reminder that I can’t really be that different from her, can I? Not to them, anyways. “For me,” she wheedles. She has mastered these two words, and I grip my stomach and lurch past everyone, collapsing in a sweat in the empty children’s daycare room next to a stack of ragdolls. “She makes us sick, too.” Amanda Wheeler looks twenty by virtue of her size, not style. I worry that she’ll blink and be an old woman before she knows it. “We can’t do this here.” I fold my hands in prayer. “This place isn’t about her.” Mr. Jenkins son steps forward and spits on my dress. “I saw you sitting next to my Dad. You’re as dirty as she is.” He spits again, and a strip of blood travels down my arm. He’s bit his own lip in disgust. “I’ll scream,” I threaten. But there are six of them and their ugly silence is louder than any sound I could muster. “You’ll take all that off,” Amanda motions to my clothing. “The boys stay.” The Jenkins son and Kyle start to shuffle but obey her and freeze to their spots on the kaleidoscope carpet. “Underwear, too.” At sixteen my body is underdeveloped. There is nothing of note for them to leer at save a few pronounced spots where my bones, annoyed at the restraint of skin, jut out. I close my eyes and picture medical school where naked bodies will be purposeful. No one makes a noise, and when I open my eyes they are gone and my clothes are shredded on the ground. I start to pick up the old rotary phone in the back to call Greg to save me but think better of it when I realize he will ask questions I’ve got no answers for. The August morning is dry and warm, and for a moment I sit on the windowsill and feel every inch of me toasted hot. My body may not have inherited curves, but I am strong and solid. When I place one foot in front of
the other I feel like I am hardening. In fact I know that the second I set foot into the main area, I will be cool as stone. Pastor Brodie sees me first and crosses himself for the sake of my soul, not his. The only others who have walked down the aisle as slowly as I proceed are brides covered head to toe, ready to make a lifelong promise. I’ve got a promise to make, too. Mama is nearly touching Mr. Jenkins who has fallen out of his wife’s spell as he strokes his tie. Except now he can only look at me. He watches my face. To his credit he only watches my face and removes the tie from his neck, laying it by his feet. Small children giggle with one spouting out boobies before covering his mouth with a gummy hand. The women I feared are smiling at me, and Mama’s scowl is shrinking like a grape wizened to a raisin. For the first time I see the lines that surround her mouth, the passages of time creating tiny prisons around her youth. “Please turn to Psalm…”the Pastor instructs when he sees no one rising to stop me, and so I continue my procession. The carpet scrapes along my feet, and people shift and move Bibles to let me sit down. A few lay down their jackets. I keep walking because there is only one person brave enough for me to sit by. Estella twists as effortlessly as if she’s turning a page and smiles, motioning for me to sit with her on the ground next to her lawn chair. She wants me to come bask in the righteousness but more importantly to escape the darkness behind me. The service continues, and she places a delicate hand on my shoulder in case any of my resolve should slip away, I can surely borrow hers. Pastor Brodie lovingly describes the journey ahead, the thorny struggles we are all meant to fight, and the demons who disguise themselves in many ways. I will sit in my bedroom tonight and dream of being a doctor, knowing that I have managed to peel away the skin of the church and see for a moment what exists on the inside.
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POETRY
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Holly Day
THE CANNERY the heads line the wall of her basement like pickles or tomatoes in clear glass jars tiny strips of paper scotch-taped to the lids first and last names covered in a thin sheen of sticky dust, sometimes, she arranges the jars alphabetically, sometimes by last name, sometimes by first, a confusing mix of ancient and newer loves young faces mixed with old. Sometimes she lines the jars up by date, from the very first kiss to the last bad blind grope in the back of a car but that arrangement always makes her sad, reminds her of how hard it is for an older woman to find love.
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Holly Day
GOOD OLD ME the memories are scrawled in books, scattered all around my house, as if left by some drunk-ramblings, all of them! (Here’s one more faded scrap.)The first five minutes of a story about my favorite cat (she died painfully of lung cancer when I was four) here’s something about husband #1 (closet homosexual, came out soon after our son was born) here’s the first page of a hospital diary (with baby struggling for life because he didn’t know he would just end up coming home with me) who is this person leaving these things lying around for just anybody to read?
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Some Questions about the History of Medicine When a man is disconsolate, there is no uterus to remove, no ovaries to excise, no stubborn hymen to carefully pierce or sew tightly closed. When a man is discontented no one talks of removing his penis. When a man is unfulfilled, no one talks of shock treatment, a lobotomy, ice baths to bring on hypothermia solitary confinement. When a man is unhappy with his wife, his children, no one talks of drilling a hole in his skull to expose the diseased part of his brain to air to let out all the pressure in his head. When a man is despondent, melancholic, forlorn no one whispers of how he might kill his children of how he’s physically unsuited to parenthood, of how something must be profoundly wrong with him to not be completely satisfied with life.
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Holly Day
THE CORNER the beetle in the web clicks soft in time to the spinning of its body in the long arms of the spider that has made its home in the dark corner of my office. it clicks so regular I turn off my computer, my desk clock to make sure it’s really him the clicks speed up when the spider reaches out with one long, pale leg to spin the trapped insect another turn, they slow down fade to near silence whenever the spider pulls away
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ALMOST REAL she sings about the things air conditioners dream of, of the wants of a battered toaster as it sits rusting in an alley of the hopes and fears of a garage door as a new car pulls into the drive. she sings these things though metal lips lungs whirring and grinding as bellows contract jaw clicking and clattering open and shut brass skeletal hands reaching out to the crowd seeking empathy and sympathy for all the dead.
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RIchard Luftig
DISASTER From the Latin meaning against the stars. loneliness exists for him alone in order to lengthen the nights. a sky so full of nothing to say yet signaling in fits and starts disregarding the singular laws of gravity. these novae stories now taking place so many eons and the past about about him always present.
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WHEN NATURE CALLS The coyotes had a hoedown last night on my flat-shingle roof,
off-key the sweet song of a car alarm from down the street.
and the bluejays have burgled my avocados (again)
Today, I witnessed a deer trying to get a transfer on the crosstown bus
leaving me with only the pits. Hummingbirds
and I just learned that a family of skunks have made an offer
use my agave as their personal toilet seat and the blessed,
with their realtor for my house. As for me, I’ve booked
ground squirrels burrow my hillside into Swiss cheese.
a week in downtown Cleveland just to get away from it all.
A predawn mockingbird outside my bedroom sings
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RIchard Luftig
FIRST SIGNS OF SPRING The riverbank reveals last year’s crop of rusted cans and Styrofoam cups once filled with wax-worms and earth. Bullying rocks split the creeks like some bridge troll forcing recalcitrant water off to the sides. Soft smells of young orangewood with creosote sap laden the bee-filled air. And off in the distance, birch-bark dappled with sunlight like a Monet where footbridge and pond become one and the same.
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bios
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Danielle Bukowski is not related to Charles but has many other odd relatives if you’d like to hear about them. A reader, writer, and unreliable narrator, Danielle is a Vassar grad living in New York City.
Sarah Clayville‘s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, StoryChord, and Literary Orphans,
among other journals. She is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee and currently teaches American Literature and Creative Writing. In between moments of parenting the best toddler and teen in the world, she is finishing a literary mainstream novel.
Holly Day was born in Hereford, Texas, “The Town Without a Toothache.” She and her family currently live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she teaches writing classes at the Loft Literary Center. Her published books include the nonfiction books Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Guitar All-inOne for Dummies, and the poetry books “Late-Night Reading for Hardworking Construction Men” (The Moon Publishing) and “The Smell of Snow” (ELJ Publications).
Richard Luftig is a past professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio who now resides in California. He is a recipient of the Cincinnati Post-Corbett Foundation Award for Literature and a semi finalist for the Emily Dickinson Society Award. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States and internationally in Japan, Canada, Australia, Europe, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. One of his poems was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Poetry Prize. He and his wife recently celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary.
Fabio Sassi Is a
regular contributor to Umbrella Factory Magazine. He makes photos and acrylics using tiny objects and what is considered to have no worth by the mainstream. Fabio lives and works in Bologna, Italy. His work can be viewed at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com. His artwork featured on our cover this issue is entitled, The Paper Factory.
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stay dry.
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