Blue Mesa Review Issue 43

BLUE MESA REVIEW Issue 43

Blue Mesa Review | 1

Blue Mesa Review Albuquerque, NM Founded in 1989 Issue 43 Spring 2021

Blue Mesa Review is the literary magazine of the University of New Mexico MFA Program in Creative Writing. We seek to publish outstanding and innovative fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, along with compelling interviews.

Cover art by Albert Rosales

BLUE MESA REVIEW Spring 2021 • Issue 43

Editor-in-Chief

Mario Montoya

Managing Editor

Jennifer Tubbs

Associate Editor Fiction Editor Nonfiction Editor Poetry Editor Faculty Advisor Graduate Readers

Undergraduate Readers

Layout and Design

Mikaela Osler Rhea Ramakhrisnan Jennifer Tubbs Mikaela Osler Rhea Ramakhrisnan Lisa Chavez Lauren Betzen Jared Gallardo Tyler Mortensen-Hayes Evelyn Olmos Haneen Amer Isabelle Daikhi Kassandra Legarda Jared Mills Allegra Velazquez

Jennifer Tubbs & Mikaela Osler

Table of Contents Foreword Interview with María Teresa Márquez

8 10

Nonfiction The Bêbeda Carmelinda Scian 21 The Doctor Will See You Now Eliya Smith 28

Poetry Blue Jay Clare Banks

36

Recipe: Rhubarb, Ginger, and Chili Jam B. Tyler Lee

38

Recipe: Snowplow B. Tyler Lee

40

Fiction Navel Emma Wu

42

The Thousand-Year Dream Natali Petricic

45

Art Red Rust and Bolts Ernst Perdriel

27

Meltdown Michael Paramo

35

Vesperal Shiver Sève Favre

37

Landscape 8 Kate Birch

39

Landscape 7 Kate Birch

41

In the Hollow

K.A. Cummins

44

Tribute to Rudolfo Anaya

57

Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

66

Author Profiles 68 Artist Profiles 70

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Desert Foliage

Jennifer Tubbs

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Foreword

Welcome to Blue Mesa Review’s second issue dedicated to our founder, Rudolfo Anaya. I came to his work late, but his books were part of a larger homecoming for me. I moved to New Mexico eighteen years ago when I began work at UNM, and at that time, I knew Anaya only by name. I quickly remedied that--that first summer I spent my days settling into my house in the Sandias, hiking to get to know the land, reading to get to know the people and history of this place my ancestors called home. I read Bless Me, Ultima, and continued with Alburquerque and others. I knew little of my Chicanx heritage before I moved to Albuquerque, but I knew that my father and his siblings had been born in the South Valley, along with previous generations of family that had been born and died along the Rio Grande. I met family from my grandmother’s side, who lived in the village of Los Padillas for many generations. I still visit the cemetery, tending the graves of generations of ancestors. Occasionally I run into the caretaker, and we discuss family, pointing to handmade gravestones, claiming one or another. The names overlap; we are probably distant cousins.

Rudolfo Anaya’s work helped me place myself back into a family history I no longer had access to: my grandparents are dead, buried not in the quiet cemetery at Los Padillas, but in southern California, where they moved to find work in the 1940s. New Mexico is just a place that my father’s generation, raised in LA, have vague memories of and little contact with, except for the care packages of green chile shipped out once a year. But in Rudy Anaya’s work, I found a way to enter imaginatively into the life my ancestors here must have known, and felt I had finally come home. And it wasn’t just his writing about generations of Nuevo Mexicanos before me that mattered: his words also helped me make sense of who I am and brought me into a deeper understanding of the complex identity of the Chicanx people. In the pages of his books, I found others like me: those with a deep connection to this land and place, to both Spanish and Indigenous ancestors, and to the roots and history and magic of New Mexico.

The world lost something precious and soulful when Rudolfo Anaya left this world in the summer of 2020. It was a bleak year for us all, a pandemic raging, a year of loss and fear, and the loss of such a generous and kind man of letters was another blow in a year full of them. Now, as the mountains and mesas of New Mexico are regreening, turning toward the business of spring, perhaps the end of the pandemic is finally visible on the horizon line. My thoughts turn to Anaya’s words: “Always have the strength to live. Love life, and if despair enters your heart, look for me in the evenings when the wind is gentle and the owls sing in the hills, I shall be with you.” Those words are Ultima’s words but are also his own. Rudolfo Anaya will always be with us.

In spite of the pandemic, this year has been something of a whirlwind. As a magazine, we achieved a lot: we put out a beautiful tribute to Mr. Anaya in issue 42, with work that honored him, as well as our summer contest winners. We also read through an enormous number of submissions for this spring--literally thousands--and we’re proud to showcase the work you’ll find in these pages. I want to

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thank not only our small, dedicated staff, but also the tireless readers from the BMR classes, especially this spring’s class: thank you for all your hard work. It’s resulted in this beautiful issue.

I’ll leave you with more words of wisdom from BMR’s founder: “Writing helps me to return to mythic time, the time of dreams. To recreate from depths of darkness the world of light. This is the role of the writer, the shaman of words. To dare to be born with each story into a new awareness.” Isn’t that the magic of words, of story? We’re reborn in each reading, each writing.

Welcome to Issue 43.

Lisa D. Chavez Associate Professor, UNM English Department Faculty Advisor, Blue Mesa Review

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Resisting the Darkness of Boxes: A Conversation with María Teresa Márquez Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán

Introduction: On March 27, 2021, I had the honor of interviewing Associate Professor Emerita María Teresa Márquez (MTM) in her Albuquerque home. The purpose of the interview was to find out more about her friendship and work with Mr. Rudolfo Anaya. They met in 1974 at UNM when she was a librarian in Zimmerman Library and he was a faculty member in the English Department (1974-1993).

Mr. Anaya established the annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest in 2010, and I began working with him to select speakers and organize the series in 2015. The purpose of my interview was to document the Anaya Lecture’s “pre-history,” so to speak, and to acknowledge MTM’s ground-breaking labor in the library. I also thought it was important to hear her story, from one Chicana scholar to another. The original recording and transcript are being processed as part of the Rudolfo A. Anaya Papers at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections in Zimmerman Library and will be placed alongside documents related to Blue Mesa Review (MSS 321, box 22, folders 7-15). I have edited the interview for length and style and in consultation with MTM. MVA: Tell me about the speaker’s series you and Rudy organized together.

MTM: When I was at the Center for Southwest Research (CSWR) in Zimmerman Library, I decided that I would establish a speaker’s series and I called it CHIPOTLE. I made a list of people that I would like to invite to come to the library. One of the goals was to increase the number of people coming into the library, not only the students but people from the community. So, I developed the speaker’s series, reaching out to the larger community—because the community was ignored by the library—and then also to the students who really didn’t feel very welcome in the CSWR. I had a dual purpose for CHIPOTLE. Under CHIPOTLE, I invited speakers such as John Nichols and faculty members from UNM, and then I publicized the speakers. I invited students from the English Department classes and students from Chicana/o classes in the Spanish Department. I went out and asked for funds to buy pizzas and cokes.

Then I would also buy copies of the books by the speakers I had invited. I would ask the speakers to speak twice, once at noon for the students, and then in the evening for the general public.

MVA: In 1993, presumably after CHIPOTLE, you and Rudy established the Premio Aztlán?

MTM: Right, I don’t remember if he approached me, or I approached him. We talked about establishing Premio Aztlán and Crítica Nueva, and I said that I would organize, and so I did.

MVA: What was Premio Aztlán and what was Crítica Nueva?

MTM: Premio Aztlán was the award for best book published in the current year. I would go on 10 | Issue 43

the Internet and look up books by Chicana/ Chicano writers, which was very difficult because established publishers were not publishing many Chicano and Chicana writers, so I had to use alternative means of seeking out the books. I then would read them and give the list to Rudy. He would buy the books and read them, and then he and I would get together and discuss who should get the Premio that particular year. He chose the name Premio Aztlán, I had nothing at all to do with selecting the name. It was Rudy’s decision.

He also thought that the critics of Chicano and Chicana literature should be acknowledged for their work, and so he chose the name Crítica Nueva. Again, I would find out who was doing critical work, make a list for Rudy, he and I would get together and we would discuss the writers’ work. Then he would select who he thought deserved the award.

MVA: Tell me more about the Crítica Nueva.

Cover of Denise Chávez’s Face of an Angel, winner of the 1994 MTM: Rudy thought it was important to bring Premio Aztlán award. Reprinted with permission of the author. attention to Premio Aztlán and Crítica Nueva, Courtesy of Daniel Zolinsky both would be contributing to the literary canon.

We invited Diana Rebolledo, Francisco Lomelí, Juan Bruce-Novoa, and other critics. They worked real well together, and a staff member created some beautiful, beautiful posters to publicize Premio Aztlán.

The posters were so well done that they disappeared, they became collectors’ items (laughs). Then a new Dean from the East was hired; she didn’t know much about Chicano/Chicana culture, or New Mexico history, traditions, and culture. She thought that the library could not afford to support Rudy’s projects.

The previous library administration had provided space and the help needed to set up the room where the speakers spoke, the Willard Reading Room. The Dean did not realize how important Rudy was to the library. She cut off all funding.

MVA: But Rudy provided the prize money?

MTM: Yes, Rudy provided the prize money, the library did not contribute any prize money. Rudy and I got together and we talked about whether just to do away with Premio Aztlán and Crítica Nueva.

I said, “No, you can’t. You can place it at the National Hispanic Cultural Center library or in the English Department.” So, we went back-and-forth, and he decided that he would place it in the English Blue Mesa Review | 11

Department. Then we talked about the name. I said, “You have to name it the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Southwest Literature Lecture series.” And he agreed, and that’s how the lecture series was placed in the English Department.

MVA: That’s how the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest came about—a fascinating history. I’ve been organizing the lecture series for the past six years, and I don’t think I realized the connection to these earlier series that you and Rudy put together.

MTM: Well, the lecture series was organized in the library. Rudy and I got together to discuss how the series was to be developed. He provided the money and I did all the organizing. But the Dean did away with the programs, and that’s how the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest went to the English Department.

MVA: Tell me a little bit about CHICLE. In a recent article, Miguel Juarez calls it “the first Chicanx electronic mailing list created in 1991.” Is there a relationship between the CHICLE list and the work that you were doing for Premio Aztlán and the Crítica Nueva.

MTM: I used CHICLE to publicize the projects. In 1991, I attended the Chicano conference held in Sonora with the goal of building a relationship with Mexico and Mexican scholars. I attended one of the lectures, and some of the faculty, or the speakers, expressed frustration with how slow it was to

Front and back of program for the third annual Crítica Nueva lecture. Rudolfo A. Anaya Papers, MSS 321, box 23, folder 30.

Permission to publish granted by the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections.

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communicate amongst themselves. After the speakers’ presentations, I suggested to everybody that I could make it easier for them to communicate by using the Internet. I don’t remember if they agreed, or didn’t agree, or they didn’t know what I was talking about (both laugh). I went back to the Zimmerman Library and I developed CHICLE. I spoke with Tey Diana (Rebolledo) and Erlinda (Gonzales-Berry) and told them what I was developing. Erlinda came up with CHICLE, Chicano/Chicana. . .

MVA: Chicano/Chicana Literature Exchange. CHICLE is a clever acronym (laughs).

MTM: (Chewing motion) And it sticks, and it’s sweet, Mexican chicle is sweet!

MVA: Yes! I love the name, I love it.

MTM: Once I developed it, I invited faculty to join and was turned down. I kept trying and trying. I got an assistant to help me. Tey (Marianna) Nunn was one of my assistants, and there was another young woman mentioned in the article (Renee Stephens). They both really worked hard, and there was also another assistant who later became a professor (Janice Gould). I kept trying and trying, I didn’t give up, because I knew it was going to work, I knew it would work, the faculty were just behind the times and they were slow to catch up. One day, my assistant checked and about 800 persons had joined CHICLE. I said, “Oh! I did it! I did it!” (both laugh).

Program for the third annual Crítica Nueva lecture. Rudolfo A. Anaya Papers, MSS 321, box 23, folder 30.

Permission to publish granted by the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections.

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MVA: How long would you say it took to get the 800 people?

MTM: A year.

MVA: Now we can’t do without email and listservs. You were way ahead of your time. So, what happened to CHICLE? MTM: The library administration decided they could not afford to give me a work-study student, and I could not do it by myself. Additionally, what I was doing with CHICLE was not viewed as library work.

That I needed to stay—(indicating a small box)—and I was not going to (shaking finger)—no little boxes for me. I didn’t know my place as a Chicana faculty member. I decided it’s time for me to stop CHICLE, because I could not do it by myself, and I was not going to get credit for my Internet work. I did not get any support from my colleagues, so I stopped. People would ask me not to stop, but I couldn’t do it anymore. Various persons tried continuing CHICLE, but when they realized the amount of work required, they gave up the idea.

What followed CHICLE was La Bloga, and they’ve done a wonderful, wonderful job of publicizing, interviewing, reviewing—but it’s a whole team, whereas with me, it was just me (laughs).

MVA: CHICLE began as an international effort. Chicano and Chicana literature has an international appeal. Bless Me, Ultima, for instance, has been translated into a number of languages. Can you talk more about Rudy’s global influence?

Poster for the second annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest featuring a photograph of Denise Chávez’s mother, Delfina Rede Faver Chávez, also on the cover of A Taco Testimony. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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MTM: Oh, yes. Faculty and scholars would come to Albuquerque specifically to do work on Rudy’s books. I used to have a collection of his books and every book in which he had an article or an essay, but I gave all of my collection of Rudy’s works, including my other 2,000 books to the (National) Hispanic Cultural (Center) library. (Those books have not been processed yet, because the NHCC staff is working on a very limited budget from the State.) Scholars would come and seek me

out because of my working relationship with Rudy. They would come from other parts of the world to do their research, and I would help them because I was familiar with all of Rudy’s literature. I had read all the articles and everything. Then I would direct them, point them to the right direction. I would also print out articles about Rudy’s work, where his work was quoted, call his attention to MA theses and PhD dissertations on his work. I was Rudy’s personal researcher.

One of the major professors was Horst Tonn from Germany, who did quite a bit of work on Rudy, as well as Mario Materassi who came to Albuquerque from Florence, Italy, Michele Battalico from Bari, and José Antonio Gurpegui, among other scholars. I would get requests from China, India, Mexico, Russia, and Siberia about Rudy’s work. I was invited to participate in a conference in Chita, Siberia at the university. I also presented my work (not published) on the Chicano and Chicana mystery writers in Moscow, Russia, at the State University of Moscow. That was quite an experience. The professor who organized the conference in Chita came to Albuquerque because she was very much interested in Rudy’s work.

MVA: What about his work attracts the international attention?

MTM: It’s universal. Rudy’s work is universal: family, love, challenges, religion, beliefs, culture, tradition, language. The importance of language, the importance of keeping the language, because it is through language that we remember our history. You find those elements in all cultures, and I think that’s what Rudy has in his work. Rudy’s work is historical, social— MVA: Mythical, too.

MTM: Mythical, mythical. The storytelling is very important. You find storytelling in all cultures.

MVA: I think that might be the appeal of his children’s literature.

MTM: When Rudy wrote the children’s books, he wrote them with a purpose, to get children to read.

His point was: read, read, read, read, and learn! And this woman who I never had the pleasure of meeting (Mary Rose Montalvo, who sadly passed away in May 2020), she was very instrumental in establishing the Rudolfo Anaya Summer Reading Program, and also instrumental in getting the State to recognize Rudy’s work.

MVA: There’s now a State holiday on his birthday (I Love to Read Day on October 30). Since we’re on the topic of Rudy’s work, I want to ask about the adaptations of Bless Me, Ultima, the film and the opera.

The film came out in 2012, and the opera premiered in 2018. You say something about the film in an interview you gave to the Rudolfo Anaya Digital Collection, that you feel like the landscape is the main character. Talk more about that, because I love that idea.

MTM: Yes, I thought that in the film the landscape was the main character, overpowering all the characters in the film, because it was so strong, it was beautifully presented. Despite the harshness of that Blue Mesa Review | 15

land, it is full of life! Different kinds of birds, weeds, medicinal herbs, different types of grasses, different types of animal life. You don’t see that in the film, but they’re there, you know that there’s life. Once, I had a visitor from Los Angeles, and we were driving from El Paso back to Albuquerque, and he said, “The desert is so plain, there’s nothing out there.” And I thought, “How wrong he is, he doesn’t see the grass, the weeds, the bushes and grass growing by the road—that’s life! But he didn’t recognize that underneath those little bushes are little animals or insects, ants, or other desert life! But you have to be open to see what is there. I thought that [Carl] Franklin saw—even if he didn’t show the specific animal or plant life— you could imagine and see nature because it was so well-done. The colors of the sky painted a landscape that drew the audience and was full of emotion.

In the opera, I thought that no one character stood out. I thought that they were all kind of treated the same. The opera was limited by stage space—the stage at the Disney Theater is not large—but I thought the stage designer did a very good job with what he had, and the costumes also were of the period. There were a few little things that were a little off, but overall, I thought it was well-done—not as much as the film because you have two different approaches, and one with more limitations than the other. But I didn’t think any one character stood out for me, anyway, in the opera. The singers were just wonderful, they did a great job of singing. At one point, one of the songs nearly brought me to tears.

I developed a friendship with Héctor Armienta (the opera composer), and I met his mother, his sister, and his marriage partner. We would talk. He was very difficult to get to because he was so busy when he came to Albuquerque. Héctor and Rudy got together ten years ago to bring the opera to the stage.

I applaud Héctor for being determined and perseverant in pursuing his goal. He got support from the Hispanic Cultural Center Foundation; one of the conditions for support was that Opera Southwest would include an opera in its season that would appeal to the Hispanic, Hispano, Chicano, Spanish-speaking, bilingual audience.

MVA: I’m interested in knowing what your hope or vision is for the future of Rudy’s work.

MTM: Oh, I have a whole, broad vision! What I see on Rudy’s work is to have a course taught strictly on his children’s literature. I have a vision of holding a symposium and inviting scholars from all over the world to come and present their work. Invite graduate students who have done their dissertations on Rudy’s work, up-and-coming scholars who could consider doing dissertations on Rudy’s work, because not everything has been covered. Most important, the general public should be invited to a speakers’ series to present their experiences in reading Rudy’s work, their connection to Rudy through family. It would be interesting to hear how Rudy’s books have influenced their lives. There’s a lot there.

You asked me prior about Rudy’s attitudes towards women. I haven’t kept up with the scholarly work done or being written currently on Rudy’s views on women, but I don’t think that has really been thoroughly explored: women, cooking, and home life. Rudy loved women. He loved his mother and her cooking, and he loved especially his sisters.

MVA: Cooking in literature has a whole history in New Mexico, but it also appears in Chicana literature, 16 | Issue 43

like Denise Chávez’s A Taco Testimony, Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue, and Ana Castillo’s So Far from God. Rudy’s whole mystery novel series, with Rita, the restaurant, and the food in that book— MTM: I’m a character in Rudy’s first mystery novel, Alburquerque.

MVA: Which character are you in that novel?

MTM: I’m the librarian who’s never there (laughs).

MVA: Always behind-the-scenes (laughs)!

MTM: Rudy has a way of including some of his friends in his novels. That would be interesting to find out.

I think it would also be difficult to find out. But I am in his first mystery novel.

MVA: I think a lot of that would require these oral histories, or just talking and meeting people and connecting the dots in a way that would allow someone to see how Rudy incorporated his real life into these fictional universes that are universal. The dynamic appeals to people, the stretch to universal themes that people can relate to, but then at the same time being very local and specific to the place and the community—the food and the traditions that have developed over time here. I think that’s why people here love Rudy’s work so much.

MTM: One time I was told by another writer that he thought Rudy was not a good writer. He may not be as literary as some other writers, but he really reaches his people, his audience. Rudy knew how to write for his audience.

As for my vision, I would like to see the whole West Wing (of Zimmerman Library) named in Rudy’s honor. I would like to see Rudy’s books for sale, postcards with pictures of his medals and photos of the ceremonies held in his honor, as well as his children’s picture books. The Tourist Department right now promotes the culture, the outdoors, and the arts, but does not promote the writers and the literary arts that the State’s environment inspires. If the West Wing becomes the Rudolfo Anaya West Wing, then you can include books and other items for sale and work with the Tourist Department to include the Rudolfo Anaya West Wing as a point of interest in the State and internationally.

MVA: We’re celebrating our tenth annual Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture on the Literature of the Southwest (October 5, 2021) and we’re hosting Joy Harjo, who was also Rudy’s student.

MTM: I think she’s a wonderful choice.

MVA: But we’re also at the end. When Rudy made the donation, he said, “This is going to be a ten-year run.” We still have money in the fund and we can still do something else in the name of Rudolfo Anaya, it’s just—what’s the next step?

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MTM: This is where the university can work with the Foundation, the UNM Foundation, to give more support to the library and the Rudolfo Anaya West Wing. You need publicity, you need articles in the newspaper, you need articles in the New Mexico Magazine and The Chronicle of Higher Education. You need one person totally devoted to publicizing what the English Department and the library are trying to do. Once approved to raise funds, contact donors and former students, ask for small contributions from Rudy’s readers and large donations from more well-endowed donors.

MVA: You leave me with big shoes to fill, amiga, but I am happy and humbled to try and fill them.

Muchismas gracias! Thank you so much for your time.

MVA Note: UNM has officially approved the naming of The Rudolfo Anaya Sala in Zimmerman Library near the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections where Mr. Anaya’s Medal of the Arts is on display and where his manuscript collection rests. Carol Kennedy is the Director of Development for the UNM Foundation and has been instrumental in this effort. Please visit https://www.unmfund.org/fund/ rudolfo-anaya-sala-fund/ for more information and to donate to this important effort. Contact Carol at carol.kennedy@unmfund.org with any questions.

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Works Cited Anaya, Rudolfo, Alburquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

Armienta, Héctor (composer), Bless Me, Ultima, Opera Southwest, National Hispanic Cultural Center, 2018.

Castillo, Ana, So Far from God: A Novel, W.W. Norton, 1993.

Chávez, Denise, A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food, and Culture, Tucson: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2006.

Franklin, Carl (director and screenwriter), Bless Me, Ultima, Gran Via Productions, Monarch Pictures, Monkey Hill Films, Tenaja Productions, 2012.

Juárez, Miguel, “María Teresa Márquez and CHICLE: The First Chicanx Electronic Mailing List,” Medium, 26 December 2017, https://medium.com/@migueljuarez/mar%C3%ADa-teresam%C3%A1rquez-and-chicle-the-first-chicanx-electronic-mailing-list-521be58df9db.

Martínez, Demetria, Mother Tongue, One World, 1996.

Rudolfo A. Anaya Papers (MSS 321), Box 22, Folders 7-15, Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections, University of New Mexico Libraries.

Rudolfo Anaya Digital Archive, “Oral History Project: Maria Teresa Marquez,” interview by Sophie Elle, Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication, University of New Mexico Libraries, April 11, 2018, https://anaya.unm.edu/node/192.

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The Bêbeda

Carmelinda Scian

That August the scorching sun was melting the tar on the main highway, creating ghostly puddles in the distance that sparkled like midnight diamonds. The Bêbeda walked into Antonio’s Taberna dressed in a long sleeve black dress and thick black stockings. She introduced herself as Amelia Fortuna and ordered a gallon of red wine to be delivered to her lodgings across the street on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. A bit of soup, too, or fish stew, a few olives, a chunk of bread. Lone men sitting in the tavern, poor laborers without wives or families to cook for them, watched and listened with forks and spoons suspended in mid-air. It wasn’t often they’d seen or heard someone displaying such extravagance in our dusty town. Especially a woman. The story spread quickly, people hungry for anything promising escape from lives wedged between the evanescence of their dreams and the reality of their meagerness. By evening everyone heard about the Bêbeda—the drunkard—and laughed. Everyone laughed. I wondered what everyone found funny about a drunken woman.

The Bêbeda wore her thick black stockings that peered from under long black dresses and skirts for the rest of the searing summer. It was so hot even the stray cats and dogs were out of sight, likely taking refuge in some shady spot. To my mother’s thinking—and my mother was always thinking—the Bêbeda had to be mourning the death of someone close, perhaps a husband or a child. But the Bêbeda never said.

“A penance,” my mother would remind everyone, as though she had access to information no one else had. “Woolen black stockings in the sweltering summer heat has to be self-flagellation.”

“Stay away from the Bêbeda,” she warned me, finger pointing at my nose. “Who knows what she ran away from or what she might do.” I heeded my mother’s warnings. I had to.

But the following summer—I must’ve been seven or eight, old enough to be sent on errands—the Bêbeda spoke to me for the first time. The last time, too—I was never close enough to her again to invite conversation. Never dared.

In those days no one in town had refrigerators. Every morning, João, the fisherman, came selling fish caught in the night and Joaquim, the milkman, delivered milk to our door carried in a large aluminum jug he poured into a liter measure and then into our blackened aluminum milk pot. Bread was purchased daily from the two bakeries, wine from Antonio’s Taberna, and vegetables, fruit, and groceries were available in two places but bought mainly from one establishment with a store front during legal operational hours and a backdoor-counter after it shut down. Even the enforcing official was seen several times walking away from the backdoor-counter in the dusk, but no one said anything. Such rules were for the rest of the country, not for us.

The hamlet where we lived had no electricity. The five or six houses stood almost like an afterthought on the other side of the railroad tracks, running parallel to the highway. Behind the five or six houses was an orange grove, the river, farms and vineyards, and, a distance away, the Pinhal, the pine and eucalyptus woods where everyone picnicked on Sundays. Oil lamps lit up the night, food was cooked on kerosene stoves, and water (the same all over town) came from open wells where cats and, sometimes, unhappy souls drowned.

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The day the Bêbeda spoke to me, she was leaning against the counter at the small green-grocer in the housing complex owned by Vitoria, a distant cousin of my grandfather. The complex included the Esso station, a bar, a bicycle repair, and a series of small, windowless two-room units behind Vitoria’s second floor apartment facing the highway. The Bêbeda lived in one of the small units. I asked the grocer for a cucumber and two green peppers my mother would later grill for supper, along with fresh sardines. The Bêbeda said, “Cucumbers are bad for digestion, queridinha. They shouldn’t be eaten.” I was taken aback by the way she pronounced each syllable fully and clearly, so different from the rest of us who spoke in half-pronounced words, as though we were in a hurry.

She called me queridinha! No one had ever called me little darling before. In a town of cork-factory workers like my father, brick-layers like my grandfather, shoe-makers like my uncle Manuel, unpaved streets, open sewers, stray cats and dogs, gossip, debt, scoundrels and whores, there was no place for endearments. No one was rich enough to escape the derision afterwards.

Even at that young age, I recognized that the Bêbeda was a person of higher education and class. She didn’t belong in Amendoeiro. She wasn’t one of us.

She came close to me and reached out to touch my ringlets my mother made that morning using a hot iron she heated on the kerosene stove. My mother liked me well groomed, better than other girls.

“You beautiful child,” the Bêbeda said. “Do you like butterflies?”

I stepped back.

The Bêbeda’s face was red-patched, bloated, like the stray cat my grandfather pulled out of his well one day, swollen to double its size, a grin on its stretched little mouth. The Bêbeda’s arms drooped like a rag doll’s, as though they’d long ago given up the doing. Her breath smelled of mildew and vinegar, the same smell as the rotting wine barrels Antonio threw out onto the street each September before making the new wine he served on November 1, o Dia dos Santos. All Saints Day, when the dead were honored.

Her dark eyes didn’t seem to belong to her face. Dark swans amongst the white ones. They were clear, eager, restless, the eyes of a frightened child. I remained at a distance, thinking of my mother’s warnings and fearful of what the Bêbeda might do. I hurried out of the green-grocer with the brown-paper package without answering the Bêbeda’s question as to whether I liked butterflies.

“Why does the Bêbeda drink?” I asked my mother, as I walked into the house and handed her the cucumber and peppers.

“She’s a bêbeda, that’s why she drinks. She was born that way. Or maybe she’s cursed, who knows?

The devil sometimes has his way.”

“I thought only men drank?”

“Some women do too. Just stay away from her. She’s dangerous.”

My mother pivoted away, putting an end to my questions.

But every day on my way home from school or on an errand for my mother or visits to my cousin Ana, I’d look out for the Bêbeda. I pitied her, having no family or friends, couldn’t imagine her aloneness. I had my grandparents next door, my uncle Rafael, other uncles and aunts, and cousins, friends of my parents and mine dropping in any time of day.

“How come the Bêbeda has no family?” I asked my mother one day.

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She said that Anastasio, the mailman, told her that letters came in every month in expensive beige envelops from Lisbon and Sintra with money but no return address.

“He figures her family is rich, living in such places. They’re likely ashamed of her—why they sent her here where no one knows her.”

I didn’t tell my mother I pitied the Bêbeda. I pitied her in the way I’d pitied the stray black cat caught by the boys next door last summer. They tied a piece of newspaper to the cat’s tail and lit it with a match.

It was evening, night approaching, the cat leaped and screeched, leaped and screeched, the flames zigzagging in the humid air under the purple-black dome of the sky, like fireworks. The cat went silent, crashing onto the dirt road, like a spent firecracker. The smell of burned flesh and fur sent me indoors. I never told anyone what I’d witnessed; I was too ashamed. I’d watched and said nothing.

Now I’d do the right thing. I was sure of this. I’d look out for the Bêbeda and tell her I loved butterflies.

Talk to her as if she was one of us and not a drunkard, not a despised creature. I’d be careful so my mother wouldn’t find out.

Some afternoons I’d see the Bêbeda sitting at the rusty iron table in the side yard of Antonio’s Taberna. She sat close to the climbing grapevines, entwined in them, as though trying to hide from view.

I wouldn’t dare enter. Only drunks, often spewing out obscenities, and the filthy homeless grey bearded man with the melon sized growth on his throat sat there. Other times the Bêbeda passed by my house, along the dirt road behind it, mumbling and alone. The dirt road led to the river and the salt marshes and I wondered where she was going, there being no other hamlet besides ours along the way. One time, she was carrying a doll—or was it a kitten? It was hard to tell. She held it in her arms like a baby and was talking to it. Talking loud. Some people believed she was possessed by evil spirits. In our town, people believed in evil spirits and evil possessions more than they believed in God. By evening—every evening, summer and winter, rain or shine— the Bêbeda was seen standing at the corner of Antonio’s Taberna, no shawl or sweater covering her slumped shoulders. “The wine in their veins keeps them warm,” my mother said. “They don’t feel the cold or pain. That’s why they drink.” The Bêbeda hurled slurred words at passersby, like carefully chosen stones, words no one understood, her arms animated then, reaching out. It was clear to me: she wanted people to stop and listen to her story.

The story no one knew. But no one stopped.

Neither did I. I’d walk by quickly, even when my mother wasn’t with me, staring straight ahead, as though my head was held in place by a medieval iron mask, pretending I didn’t see or hear her.

Afterwards, I’d ask myself why I didn’t stop. Why? Why? I felt like a caged animal trapped by thoughts I couldn’t control, thoughts making me wish I was someone else. I wanted the Bêbeda to know I was different from the others, kind and valiant, unafraid of my mother’s beatings. But next I’d think of the bruises that lasted for days and I wasn’t sure that talking to the Bêbeda was worth the pain.

Then there was my cousin Ana. A year older and smarter, ending up first in class every year. Twelve at the time, she was the one who discovered Elvis.

“It’s not the Bêbeda’s fault she drinks,” Ana said one day, as the Bêbeda appeared at the bottom of Blue Mesa Review | 23

her street. “It’s the IN-CU-BO.” The afternoon sun had been fiery orange for weeks on end, scorching crops, animals, people’s gardens, and those daring to walk under it. Ana and I were standing in the shade of her house, the street empty at that hour with most people indoors having a siesta. The Bêbeda walked by, so close she almost touched us. She was bareheaded, disheveled and wrapped in her black mantle, stumbling with each step, eyes fixed somewhere beyond us, beyond Amendoeiro. She didn’t seem to see us.

The swelling was gone from her face, leaving deep wrinkles and skeletal cheeks, so caved in, they seemed ravaged by something other than human endeavor.

“The IN-CU-BO comes in the night while you sleep,” Ana continued, her round cheeks dropped to show the seriousness of her warnings. “It has sex with you, without you knowing it, and possesses your spirit. Never get too close to the Bêbeda. The IN-CU-BO can easily jump from her to you.”

Ana pronounced the word slowly, firmly, lips pursed, head nodding, making sure I understood the threat lurking above my head. IN-CU-BO. I’d never heard the word.

I thought about the Bebeda’s ghostly face for the rest of that summer— her unwashed body, uncombed hair, foul smell, her behavior. I’d once seen her fall in the middle of town, rolling in the dirt of the unpaved street in view of all. Laughter everywhere. Then last week, the school’s custodian, an acquaintance of my mother, told us the Bêbeda squatted down and urinated in front of the school’s gate.

“Right there. She urinated right there by the entrance gate and the children about to come out.”

I’d grown up seeing drunken men. My grandfather had had to be carried home at closing time from Antonio’s Taberna by my father and my uncle Rafael several times through the years. No one questioned why he drank, why all men drank. No one laughed. Men drank, people said, when life became unbearable.

But women? Weren’t women supposed to stay home looking after their families?

It was years afterwards when I admitted to myself that it wasn’t the fear of the incubus in the night or my mother’s beatings that stopped me from telling the Bêbeda I loved butterflies.

The Bêbeda’s speech grew more slurred each year. It was as though the words wanted to remain inside her, her story hiding so deeply, it couldn’t come out. Couldn’t be shared. Her body grew more slouched, drool running down her chin, teeth missing, her mourning black clothes turning grey with dirt, her hair, longer, whiter, more matted, filmy eyes staring ahead, as though seeing but not seeing. Certainly not seeing what we saw. In time she became invisible to us, familiar but not noticed, not seen, like the stray cats and dogs roaming the streets. People stopped laughing at her or talking about her. Sometimes boys still taunted her as she passed by, pulling at her skirt and hair and jeering, “Bêbeda, Bêbeda, you live in a bodega.” No one reprimanded the boys and neither did I, though I was older than they and ought to know better.

The fall I was turning thirteen, my mother was taking me to Amelia’s store to buy me fabric for a new dress when we noticed the Bêbeda’s black figure in the distance. It must’ve been November 1. Avó was roasting chestnuts that evening that we’d eat as we drank Antonio’s new wine. My grandmother roasted chestnuts every year on that day. Christening the new wine, my grandfather called it, in celebration of the dead.

24 | Issue 43

The Bêbeda was standing in front of the whitewashed chapel. It began to drizzle; my mother opened her umbrella and I snugged up to her. The Bêbeda had no umbrella. A gust of wind lifted her long, black skirt, making her look like a scarecrow or an apparition in the distance. As we neared, we could hear her knocking on the chapel’s wooden door and shouting in an unusually clear voice, “C’mon, c’mom you bastard, come out. You, you… Show your face, you Almighty nothing, you son-of-a-bitch, you… You… Why? Why?” She began to wail.

As we passed, she turned around to face us, her pale face seeming to blend with the grey day. She raised her arms and punched the rain or some specter only she could see.

I stopped. My mother yanked my arm, “Don’t look. Keep walking.” She quickened her pace. I followed.

“Why is the Bêbeda crying?”

“I told you she’s crazy.” But my mother’s words didn’t sound as threatening this time. It was as if something inside her had softened, like chunks of stale bread when I pour sweetened hot milk over them for breakfast.

“Is she angry with Father Marques?” He was the new handsome young priest that came from Montijo, riding his red Vespa every Sunday, to say Mass in our chapel.

“No, she’d mad at God.” I couldn’t imagine anyone being mad at God when Father Marques told us He loved us all. But my mother did sometimes complain about God having forgotten her existence.

The rain grew heavier, pelting the umbrella, as if the Heavens were punishing the earth for all her sins. Rivulets of mud covered the street. My shoes and feet were wet and muddy. I started shivering.

“Can we go back home?” I kept thinking of the Bêbeda screaming at God in the rain. Thinking that, perhaps, she was right—that perhaps He had forgotten her.

“No. You-Are-Getting-A-New-Dress.”

The Bêbeda was found lying on the cold cement floor of her kitchen, face drowning in her own vomit, urine and excrement a week later. She’d been dead for days before the smell wafting under-neath the door alerted Vitoria, the landlady. She told everyone afterwards that, at first, she’d thought the smell was coming from some dead rat in the open sewer running along the cement courtyard. This happened often in the November rains. That no one had seen the Bêbeda in a few days was not surprising because she’d become a bit of a hermit lately.

There was no funeral, no priest, no flower wreaths, the chrysanthemums in people’s gardens saved for other graves. Vitoria explained that two gravediggers from Montijo came in a black car, wrapped up the body in canvas cloth, and took it to the Municipal cemetery to be buried in the pauper’s section.

Everyone waited for those who’d sent money in expensive beige envelopes to show up.

No one did.

As Vitoria cleaned up the mess, she found a small metal picture frame composed of tiny colored butterflies buried in the filth.

The damaged photograph showed only the outline of a small head. Everyone wanted to see it. Men and women came from all around. They wanted to know—to understand—who the Bêbeda was. Vitoria Blue Mesa Review | 25

displayed the photograph at the greengrocer’s counter, next to the scale, the greengrocer being the only person with whom the Bêbeda sometimes mingled.

Father Marques showed up one day and blessed the frame. Another day, the whores from Casa Rosa, at the top of the dirt road, came to look, leaving coins beside it for the destitute. Others followed, leaving money and prayers.

Vitoria placed the Bêbeda’s possessions at the curb, free for anyone to take. Sheets, towels, two long black skirts, a good iron bed, a wooden dresser, mugs, glasses, plates, forks. No one touched a thing. This, in a town of beggars and unemployed men, including my father, the three cork-factories in Montijo, where most of the men in Amendoeiro worked, having temporarily shut down due to a shortage of international demand on cork. After a few weeks, Vitoria carted all the belongings to the municipal garbage dump in Montijo.

I saw the photograph later. I didn’t pick it up, feeling, somehow, that it was impious to do so, the frame with the butterflies being the last thing the Bêbeda held. Ana saw it before I did. She said the Bêbeda’s spirit lived in the butterflies; they’d fluttered while she held the frame.

Some said it was clearly the photograph of a child. A girl with curls. Others argued that it was a man wearing a soldier’s pointed brown cap. I gazed at the photograph closely. All I could see was the shadow of a small head. Nothing was clear and the butterflies didn’t flutter for me.

26 | Issue 43

Red Rust and Bolts Ernst Perdriel

Blue Mesa Review | 27

The Doctor Will See You Now Eliya Smith

In my defense, I fall in love with Dr. Phillip McGraw a few weeks into the pandemic, when reality is slushy — months still from evincing any sort of pattern or logic, however cruel — and I am at my personal nadir.

I waste the days submerged in a vat of self-pity: wondering how my college analog would be spending her senior Spring, watching infection rates tick higher on my laptop, and logging into zoom school from the pink-bannistered twin bed I slept in for the first eighteen years of my life. I rarely sleep at night and books are gibberish but movies have plot, so I seek out the deathless glow of short clips. YouTube, obligingly, feeds me byte after byte of Phil. We share a look, he and I, and then, just for me, he points his morally unimpeachable finger at the morally impeached, facing down rabid children, neglectful parents, other womans and klepto teens until the sun leaks through my shades. And I am a little bit numbed and a little bit fortified and, finally, a little bit sleepy.

In the mornings I decide I no longer like Dr. Phil. His head is too conical to permit such baldness (or too bald to warrant such a pointy crown; I vacillate on this point). I think it is wrong to air people’s problems on national television, as he does, to take advantage of those who either covet attention or who grapple with problems so insurmountable — accompanied usually by a conspicuous lack of resources to surmount them — that their last hope is televised therapy. Not to mention the fact that on occasion, Dr. Phil interviews people who spew hatred, people he argues with but nevertheless amplifies, which makes me irate.

Then two, three, four a.m. hits, and again I am trawling his page for clips I may have missed. I feel bad and I want to feel better. Outside of my bedroom there is pain and disease on a scale I cannot process. No one can fix it and no one is trying. Here, where Dr. Phil is, there is healing and salvation. I am comforted

by Phil’s assuredness, by his unwavering certainty — you can see it in his body, hear it in his voice — that if wrong exists, right does, too, and that progress is possible for the people on his show, if only they follow his advice.

I understand, of course, that the show is a charade. Dr. Phil manufactures intimacy, but he is aware, always, of those to whom he performs. Really those people are the ones watching him months later from their television sets, but their avatars sit in the soundstage opposite Phil in the form of a small in-person audience. For me, it is this exchange between the performers (Phil and guests) and the spectators that makes the show, despite its obvious emotional fraudulence, feel so stirring. The more I watch these people — the watchers — the more obsessed I become. Phil’s powers of restoration seem drawn directly from the crowd, from their surging warmth in response to whatever he says. The troubled guests make silly defenses of their abominable behavior; Phil comments drolly; the audience laughs. I laugh, too. He is so funny. When Phil turns somber, the audience is dutifully appalled, or moved, or aghast; whatever the situation calls for. His eyes flit to his audience. He loves them for loving him. And how content they seem, in their escalating rows of chairs.

Initially, the clips YouTube feeds me are reruns, filmed in pre-pandemic times. In that vestige of a world I am already forgetting, crowded audience members share air, fight for armrest real estate, and 28 | Issue 43

respirate without compulsively attributing complex backstories to the particles they ingest. Eventually I notice a change. When Dr. Phil commences filming for its nineteenth season in September of 2020, his production team devises an alternative to the traditional studio audience setup. In place of dramatic cuts to dramatically arched eyebrows are three walls of screen mounted on the stage, behind the chairs set up for Phil and his guests, out from which smile rows of webcammed faces. Following this intervention, the show briefly seems off-kilter, hollow, but both Phil and I quickly grow accustomed to the adjustment. He seems able to redirect his awareness of the crowd backwards, into the screens, and in this way his salutary powers remain undiluted. I decide I don’t mind if he doesn’t.

At this point in the pandemic, when my Phil fix has become a nightly imperative, I go nowhere and see no one. I am always in my pajamas, croaking hello to the same three people. I miss the stupid squeakiness of smalltalk; of hearing myself try on personas; sensing eyes process my clothing, the way I nudge air through space. I had not previously understood that this routine contact with the world played such an integral role in shoring up my personhood, crafting an outer shell of my self, without which I feel blobbish and undefined. From my bed I click through clips feverishly, overriding autoplay because autoplay knows to intersperse Phils with non-Phils, and I am too greedy for judiciousness. There’s another clip, a smattering of new faces. Phil lectures, the guests cry, the audience thrills. He smiles, checking with his peripherals for a moment the screens behind him, those faces flushed with Philinduced glee.

I pull my screen toward my face, so close I might eat it. I want that. I want a flash, for even a second, of Phil’s healing gaze. I want Dr. Phil McGraw to rotate his gravity toward me for a moment in time and sew me back together, insist I exist.

It is in this state of woozy early-stage-covid catatonia at four a.m. that I, freely and of my own mostlyhinged volition, surrounded by the lavender walls and beady-eyed stuffed animals of my childhood, tap “go on dr phil” into the search bar on my phone. The show’s webpage is easy to navigate. Beneath “Contact Dr. Phil,” I find the hyperlink I seek. “Be Part of the / Audience,” it advertises. “Now,” says a graphic when the next screen loads, “you don’t have to leave your home to be a part of the Dr. Phil studio audience.” Huzzah.

REMEMBER HOW I AM DOING PRACTICE DR. PHIL TOMORROW? I say to my roommates eighty times the day before my producer-mandated “technical test.” (I have, by this point, relocated from my childhood home into a Brooklyn apartment.) I AM DOING PRACTICE DR. PHIL TOMORROW! I say. TOMORROW IS MY DR. PHIL PRACTICE, DID EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT THAT? My roommates make impressed noises. I know that I am very cool to them already, and that this undertaking has only made me cooler.

In the months since I first contacted Dr. Phil’s producers, my obsession has intensified, to the point of dubious rationality. I acknowledge this and do not care. Why should I? It is now mid-Fall; everything is batshit.

The technical test, I am informed via email, ensures Phil’s virtual audience members have adequate computer setup. The technicalities of my Dr. Phil audience experience beyond this are not yet clear, but as far as I can tell, there appear to be a finite number of slots on the large screens situated behind Phil’s Blue Mesa Review | 29

head, upon which the “audience” is projected. I have deduced this because in the YouTube segments posted after the show switched to its digital crowd, the configuration of faces appears to rotate between clips taken from the same episode. I figure that they — whoever controls the screens — feature the faces of those fans who appear most engaged, most moved by the action onstage. I am comfortable with this premise. I am good at getting teachers to call on me; I have gaunt Semitic features that emote easily. The Dr. Phil overlords will love me, I am certain.

Unfortunately, the night before my technical test, my usual insomnia is exacerbated by the team of child gymnasts that has moved into the apartment above mine, or else someone is having appallingly thumpy sex, or possibly getting murdered and then self-reviving and then getting murdered again. As a result, I remain awake until early morning and nearly sleep through my allotted practice time. I am apoplectic when I see the clock; I scramble out of bed to brush my teeth, put on pants, choke down coffee, etc., and at one minute past my designated slot, I am waiting patiently on the online portal. The email detailing requirements for the test specified a blank background, so I have somewhat hunched beneath my desk and created a makeshift underdesk-desk via a cardboard box propped on my lap which digs unpleasantly into my thighs, a sensation which I ignore. I freeze every muscle I have conscious control over so as not to nudge the screen. If I move my camera a millimeter in either direction, furniture will pop into the frame, which I know would be unacceptable. I have read the rules provided in the Dr. Phil Virtual Audience Setup Guide religiously.

After five minutes of complete silence facing a blank screen, my headphones explode with a frantic mush of noise, followed shortly by a louder, clearer, disembodied speaker who tells me I am connected and that she (Faceless Voice) will be with me in a moment. Faceless Voice begins to say something else, but she and the frantic background noise cut out. I understand that this is, objectively, a creepy sequence, what with the blank screen and abrupt, unattributed audio, but I am unbothered, because I know that it is the Dr. Phil show, a magical utopian realm where everything is so deranged that nothing can actually go wrong. I love it here. I wait patiently for the return of Faceless Voice. I cannot wait to meet more of my friends.

Faceless Voice reappears ten minutes later to tell me that my setup is excellent. I beam. I am so pleased. I love doing a good job at things. I wonder how long she has been watching me and hope my face has appeared sufficiently dramatic. I want the Dr. Phil overlords to see how well I can emote so that they will feature my face on the show, so that Phil will look into my eyes and fill me with light. Faceless Voice details the hours I am required to attend for the show’s airing the following Monday, of which I am well aware, as I have memorized the materials they sent me. I nod in a way that demonstrates both that I am listening and that I already knew all this.

Faceless Voice tells me the show I will be attending centers around motherhood, or something; she doesn’t really get it but is supposed to ask if I myself am a mother. I hesitate. I consider lying, but I know Dr. Phil in his righteous glory would sense my duplicitousness.

I clear my throat. I’m not, but. Do they... are they trying to get, like... only moms? in the audience? on Monday? My voice is squeaky.

Faceless Voice doesn’t really know. Obviously, I’ve been booked on this show for a while, she says, and then trails off. But they’re supposed to ask who in the audience is a Mom. So. 30 | Issue 43

My heart sinks. The implications of this exchange are clear. Obviously, the main characters in the show I am to witness are mothers. This means the Dr. Phil overlords will want to feature the reactions of people whose outrage is demonstrably, palpably personal. They’ll want moms sympathizing with the obligatory selflessness of motherhood; not me, face of the narcissistic youth. I know already that the video screen containing my pixelated face will not be featured on the Dr. Phil show.

Faceless Voice says goodbye. My technical test appears to have ended. I remain hunched beneath my desk for a bit, feeling droopy.

The next few days are a rollercoaster of Dr. Phil- related emotion. I prepare for my appearance in what features in my head as one of those sports movie montages of hot people getting hotter at the gym. I sit across from my computer watching archival clips and practice stretching my jaw, this is shock, furrowing my brows, this is distrust, making my eyes go big, this is alarm. I try to see if it is possible to convey visually an expression that says, this is disgust toward one party’s statement but feverish support for the thing the other person is saying, that other person being my savior, Dr. Phillip, I love him.

I am rehearsing my feelings in our living room when my roommate passes by. He peers over my shoulder at my screen and points to the faces hovering behind Phillip, faces of inferior audience members who are less good than I am at expressing emotion. Will I be one of those people? He asks.

I am solemn. I am guaranteed nothing, I say. I must earn my spot. I must claw my way over the insufficiently-aghast moms, proving my mettle. I will stop at nothing to crush my enemies in my quest for glory; I will keep my face frozen in an expression so terrifying the overlords have no choice but to feature me on the screen behind Phil’s head. The doctor will see me, heal me, make me whole.

Cool, he says.

All morning the day of my Performance the following Monday I am thinking about babies. As a rule, I love thinking about babies, but today’s fixation is tactical. My hope is to goad my body into giving off a maternal aura, an ineffable momness that will be palpable even across two layers of screen. Moms, I know from my experience as a former child, exude a sort of generosity, a softness in the eyes. Fortunately for me, I have been told I have nice girl energy, which is similar to momness. In reality, nice girl energy is really just when you aren’t actually nice but you’re definitely not hot and since you can really only be one they’ve lumped you into the first category; but for the purposes of the Dr. Phil show, I have decided that I can transfer my regular persona into mom vibes if I try hard enough.

The morning, in dutiful imitation of my practice day, does not go well. My oatmeal explodes in the microwave and the coffee I am making spills everywhere and it takes me one million years to clean off the placemats and as I am scrubbing, I get a call from an unknown number which I assume is Dr. Phil’s people who said they would call me if I did not log on. Oh god, I am saying very loudly, to both my roommates’ great annoyance. I am sweating. Fuck. I cannot disappoint Phillip. I worry if I do not log in immediately that the overlords will scratch me from the show; I sprint around overturning more food and drink items, arrive huffily back at my under-desk position, bumping my head on the way down, and log on, finally, to the Dr. Phil virtual audience portal.

The login portal greets me with a montage of Dr. Phil scored to Corinne Bailey Ray telling me to just go ahead, let your hair down! I massage my scalp. The reel transitions blithely between clips of Blue Mesa Review | 31

Phil pulled from appearances around the television universe: Dr. Phil is laughing with various guests on the Dr. Phil soundstage, Dr. Phil is making famous people laugh, Dr. Phil is visiting late-night television hosts, Dr. Phil is being the kind of conspicuously good man who plainly worships his wife, Robin, who frankly gives me weird vibes but maybe I’m just being sexist. Fifteen minutes go by. Why are they showing me this? Did I log on too late, and they’ve kicked me off the livestream, offered this as a consolation? Where are my peers? Did they move the Moms to a separate, superior Zoom room?

The montage continues, underscored now by a disturbingly quiet rendition of “Hey Ya!” My blood pressure is steadily increasing and OutKast is singing about Thank God for Mom and Dad for sticking two together like we—when a new, gravelly Faceless Voice welcomes me to the show, tells me to return in thirty minutes, and disappears. I watch myself on the screen for a bit, feeling slightly dazed.

Half an hour later, finally, the montage is replaced by a live feed of the empty Dr. Phil soundstage.

It’s — us! Me and assorted others smile up from the screens, cheering together for an empty stage. (The crowd is somewhat varied, but does exude a definitively maternal energy. In my head, they remain a conglomeration of Moms.) I monitor my face every time the cameras pan wide enough to capture the entire virtual audience, ensuring it is sufficiently animated. Soon an object for our applause materializes: A crewman tasked with warming up the crowd trundles out and begins making jokes. I am amused; I find it touching that the Dr. Phil entourage decided a virtual audience should or even could benefit from such cultivation. Then I listen to the words coming out of the warmup guy’s mouth, and I feel a tug of irritation. Warmup guy is sort of pathetic, actually. In fact what the words he is saying are worse than any standup comedy I have ever watched. This man, who clearly did ketamine prior to walking onstage at 9:00 am pacific time, claims he has “goosebumps” due to “excitement.” The majority of his punchlines center around his weight. None are funny. I try to make my face look receptive and generous, freezing in a smile. But as warmup guy continues to speak, I grow offended by the fat jokes and profound lack of comedic timing, and can see this registering on my tiny projected face.

I check the other faces, hoping to share my disdain toward this man with my colleagues. They seem unfazed. Most are chortling, apparently captivated. Warmup guy is approaching various miniature faces — some situated near his knees, others above his head — with whom he attempts banter. My peers are laughing so hard I am worried they will die. I try to manufacture a similar zeal, but warmup guy’s patent idiocy — underscored by the sycophantic response of the audience to it — has curdled my insides.

Warmup guy is saying that we are the chosen ones, that we are show enhancers, that we will “take for the rest of our lives the ability to enhance” from this experience. I hate him. I hate the Moms, too. I am embarrassed to watch; humiliated, suddenly, by the idiocy of this venture. He is telling us how special we are, but in the presence of the happy clappy Moms, I don’t believe him, and I resent him for saying this thing that I would like to be true in a way that so obviously clarifies it isn’t.

Finally, warmup guy announces Robin’s entrance. He says something like: “And now, the bastion of light and goodness, sweetness and loveliness incarnate” — something that isn’t exactly that but is about as gendered as you can get in trying to describe the feminized analog for Phil: if he does the thinking and the confrontation, she does the smiling and the emotional buoyancy. (Robin, I learn later, has a podcast that Phil promotes, the premise of which is essentially “girls telling secrets.”) Robin enters. Phil follows shortly after, striding to the center of the stage, where he beams at the camera. I join grudgingly in the 32 | Issue 43

applause. I am mad at Phil for hoodwinking me into this. I see on my screen that I am pouting and allow a wan smile, but I do not let it reach my eyes.

Phil begins speaking. He is making jokes; not awful manufactured ones, but spontaneous, charming asides. I hear myself chuckle. A graphic on the screen instructs us to continue applauding. The Moms clap and holler as the camera pans across the stage, blurring us into a mass of flushed grins and shrill cheers. I feel a warmth spread from my gut. I am clapping with them, although it isn’t for Phil, I don’t think. I had forgotten the way it feels, this experience of emotion magnified, siphoned through others and then returned, electric, to oneself. I feel a bloom of gratitude toward the Moms. I wish I hadn’t rolled my eyes at them earlier. It is nice, so nice, to clap together.

Phil is still center stage, feet solidly planted, looking into the camera. There’s a glimmer of something like need in his eyes. We continue to clap, though our arms are tired; we will not stop. What a sad little child he would appear without our noise, stood obediently on his mark with no one to cheer for him. We would never abandon him to silence. We are combining our gaze to confer personhood on this man who does not matter. We are happy to do this. We will clap as long as we are asked.

Phi finishes speaking and turns around, just once, to sweep his eyes over the screens. Some of the Moms wave. I am very still. I find, to my surprise, that I do not want him to notice me. For him I am a coagulation of pixels on a screen, indistinguishable from yesterday’s fans, from tomorrow’s. I find I would like to remain that way.

It occurs to me that what I forgot, in my drive toward attracting Dr. Phil’s salutary gaze, was the other half of the network of appraisals that I once relied on to feel like a person. There is a second component to those looks, those cobwebby strings that knit together a society, and in this way shore up the external shell of each member. There is being looked at — this itself is powerful, edifying — but there is also, crucially, looking back. To bear witness confers being on another, and in doing so, endows the looker herself with a power that feels like a simple reminder of existence. And isn’t that all the act of spectatorship asks? Sit in an audience, clap so you are heard. Active perception feeds the perceiver as much as the perceived. I forgot about looking. It is nice to look.

The Dr. Phil virtual audience experience is, it turns out, pretty dull. Such frenzied, careening shifts in feeling as comprised my morning have left me with a shallow emotional reservoir. Once the initial exhilaration wears off, I struggle to focus. I am bored by Dr. Phil’s advice, by the guests’ problems, by their feverish cattiness. (And the show, I am disappointed to find, isn’t even particularly mom-centric.)

I try to make the facial expressions I practiced, but I’ve lost the pressure I once felt to perform, and after a few hours, the muscles in my cheeks grow too weary to emote. I can see myself on the screen behind Phil’s head, but I can’t tell if the overlords have the ability to replace me if I underperform. I find that the prospect of my exclusion is unpleasant, but not lethally so, as it had once seemed. We film an episode, take a break, film a second. The show is over.

Weeks later, I am trawling Dr. Phil’s YouTube page and see that one of the episodes we filmed has been uploaded. I sift through the clips. Every so often, the camera pans out, and I catch my face, just identifiable, projected from my under-desk desk in Brooklyn onto the swath of screens behind Dr. Phil.

I watch with a pang as my tiny eyes stare dully ahead, or at my lap, where I am probably texting, scrolling, Blue Mesa Review | 33

reading. I worry that the producers played back the tape and noticed me and said, fuck that girl, she isn’t even watching. I worry they talked about me but not in a glowing way. I had wanted so badly to impress the overlords.

But my face, really, is tiny, so far away and subsumed by the other faces who are doing a better job of emoting than I. Probably you would not even notice my face if you weren’t searching for it. I play back the clip, I allow the pixels that comprise me to dissipate into spots of color. My face fades into the rest. It feels good, like breath, like motion. I watch the clip again and again. Eventually I’m not there at all.

34 | Issue 43

Meltdown

Michael Paramo Blue Mesa Review | 35

Blue Jay

Clare Banks

His poem printed with a Walter Inglis Anderson bluejay hangs on your son’s bedroom wall. That you measured the distance between door and window, pounded a nail into the plaster, and leveled the angle of the frame, that you allow it to remain there at all, quietly, a bird on a branch, a blue crest against cream paint, like feathers through the palest of leaves, is a kind of forgiveness. You might read it at night when your boy is sleeping, his light wings folded under his sheet, you might return to the indecipherable word. Flutter?

No: feather or fault. Your father’s tilted capitals blurred, crowded, his hand beginning to rush, his poem at the end in flight.

36 | Issue 43

Vesperal Shiver

Sève Favre

Blue Mesa Review | 37

Recipe: Rhubarb, Ginger, and Chili Jam B. Tyler Lee

3 c. rhubarb, diced 6 Fresno chilis, deseeded and chopped ¼ c. grated ginger 3 c. jam sugar (with citric acid and pectin) 1 orange, juiced 1. Fed well in darkened greenhouses, rhubarb can sprout so swiftly it speaks, a series of pops and bursts, firecrackers in its stalks letting you know it’s alive.

2. Something mothers won’t admit: No matter how much you cradle a child, one of you will never be swaddled enough. My tall son, my man-sized son, cannot be held too long, knows no such feeling as too cozy or tight—with him, I can only be too ginger.

3. Perched high, leafstems like tightropes, lightning menaces Valencias far more than any disease.

4. Nightmares boil you, propel you from your sheets to check for breath: Some blazed thing struck; something chopped or peeled your sons. You search their beds for heartbeats, silence as your own pulse slows.

5. He tests spices, the blackness at the tip of the spoon new to him: Peppers “goddamn” into his sentences, talks of the blood he mops cold on rebooted screens of Doom.

6. Listen: In the dark, you can hear him, bursting forth in fits and starts. He grows red and sugared, green and bitter. He’s still a child, still juice and pulp and pith. I can make no new mistakes; the old ones form his roots. I know neither what he will open to let in peril and light, nor how I will let him go.

38 | Issue 43

Landscape 8 Kate Birch

Blue Mesa Review | 39

Recipe: Snowplow B. Tyler Lee

8 oz hot chocolate, prepared 1 oz Bailey’s Irish Cream 1 oz Malibu coconut rum ½ oz Crème de Cacao Whipped cream Cinnamon 1. Begin low: Pow—right in the warm place within me. Powdered sugar, sweet even when I growl cold.

2. The only good plow starts with a request, a bow that says, Turn me over; make me new. I’ve never told you otherwise: Yes, I asked this of him. Yes, he and I both wanted him to, and he did.

3. I could douse you in a kind of tropic-drowsing: I picture you in coconut-shell bikini, opening cacao seeds in your hands, overflowing at a touch.

4. But come, let’s be more honest: With you a half-country away, my ground’s frozen, unplowable. I thaw only at the tips of your fingers—towel-clean, pleasure-cowed. Grown low.

5. Lead with whiskey; close with cream.

6. He and I, we whipped frenzy together, sprinkled it across our days like I’d never go fallow. As if we’d never eat a ploughman’s lunch and call it nouvelle cuisine, we’d open our days and blow.

7. Cold nights, I beg you to come sooner; plowed again, rum rattling across the line. But in my shame, I know the truth: All I want is my body to remain a field, soft animals prowling, year after year—moonfall, snowrise.

40 | Issue 43

Landscape 7 Kate Birch

Blue Mesa Review | 41

Navel

Emma Wu

And it is the crepe, plummed skin, sallow under her eyes. And maybe the twelve empty glass rice wine bottles that chime slowly in the wind outside of her cracked front window. In any case, The thin veneer of sun, here with us now, plated lazily between us. She laughs in bellied guffaws, her chest attenuated by the American great depression and hollow enough now to echo (can you hear it?).

The fragile alabaster of doily after doily, lace lily pads on every surface. The stiff syrup of red wine spills our laughter on the ground.

Does she mind that I walk her house like a forest?

In any case, the small jade statues and collection of snuff bottles, mounted eye-level, make me feel comfortable. She makes us chrysanthemum tea. This was my grandpa’s favorite. In some ways, she does remind me of my family: worn silk slippers and secret love for polyester, silver hair dyed pitch, vegetables steamed with a tablespoon of sugar, almond eyes and eyelids without a crease.

“Would you like another cup?” I indicate towards the tea, then the wine. She lets a gentle upturning of the lips blur her face, not quite happy but pleased. Her face beams scarlet and warm from the alcohol.

“Tea, please,” she says as she purses her lips, allowing the mass of her body to weigh her towards the back of her upholstered armchair, a hand outstretched towards me and the tea pot. She lets her eyes close for the second I pour.

Philadelphia doesn’t have much as far as an Asian community: a small enclave to escape Italian food, an even smaller arts organization. Occasionally, on the Market-Frankford Line, my small nod will be met, imitated.

Mary’s real name is pronounced Kuh-Ling, and we met at a Philadelphia protest for Black Lives Matter. Can you imagine it, the gritty city, the city of brotherly love, lathered in the rage and reformation effort of tens of thousands? And a Chinese woman perched on the curb of the Parkway, squatting flatfooted and drinking a chocolate protein shake from a plastic bottle. I smile at her, for the irony, but she identifies as American so who’s to say. Mary pocketed my smile. Or maybe, coupled with sheer cultural deprivation, it felt genuine enough to pursue. Mary and I took to weekly drinking.

And it is late last night when Liz comes home with her new and probably temporary man-friend who she probably met at the bar just a minute ago. And I know this story because I have seen it before. I wait for them to settle, clink an ice cube in each glass, to make my way to the bathroom, make my presence known to both Liz and visitor (I’m awake too, can you see? Just using the restroom. Totally casual.). Can I hear their whispers on the couch before dawn?

“Hi, enjoy yourselves,” I squeak awkwardly as Liz turns and winks at me, leading her suitor to the bed in the room next to mine. I notice the whites of his eyes have fallen to a pleasant hue of pink, his shoes smack loudly on the linoleum. Her door shuts.

To be this roommate in this shoot of patchy, incandescent light. I’ve seen her already: TV, movies, 42 | Issue 43

books – media has her pinned. Available, amicable, flexible. In seventh grade, Liz collected money from everyone in our middle school for six days before she got caught, “rent” for sitting in “her” cafeteria.

I envied her power and then her wit. She let me sit for free the last couple of days, called it an “owner’s special” and offered me the first look at her new signature wink.

Once, a few months ago, after hearing me say that yes, I do smoke the occasional cigarette, Mary clawed my arm sharply, leaving three deep, yellow marks. Her snuff bottle collection chuckled around me. “No drugs,” she said to me startlingly and I hesitated to recognize and then accept this guardianship. “No drugs,” she repeated, welling her directions at me for the first of her many rules.

After a moment, again, “No drugs.”

I don’t identify as a smoker: a Marlboro Gold outside a Saturday night party off Baltimore Ave, a quick Parliament with Liz on the cool marble stoop of our row home. In the muddle of wine, I decide to keep this promise. Why not keep this promise?

“Okay, no drugs.” Done. Because who’s to say wielding a promise isn’t supposed to feel righteous.

Mary’s list of rules is extensive and affects anyone in her sight. Her diet and routine are strict “to alleviate the fist of our big brother.” Some common: no carbs past 10 p.m., no feet on the table, no drugs. Some peculiar: no lighters in the house, cruelty-free makeup only, something fermented paired with dinner.

And no drugs. I don’t like conflict.

Because she doesn’t tire of sugared broccoli over rice and because once, when she was small, she followed the soft whispers (as we all do) and found, there, a fire somewhere between a crackle and a roar and left it: one person and two dogs burned dead. I prepare dinner on the stove, out of sight.

Academic woman that she is, unshaven armpits, always pees after sex with a man. No UTIs here. Can she see me still in the bathroom? Of course she can. Liz in her glowing grandeur, spying me still hugging myself. Me: perimeter of red, tie-dyed, raccoon-eyed, sat.

I can tell you ten different ways to know how to say no.

“Are you okay?” she asks me. And what she means is, did I do something wrong? Or maybe even, can I do something for you? And can I tell you then that something built in me like an enormous beached ship, and maybe I said “I’m sorry” when I pulled the soft bow of her robe, feigning to use it as an aid to stand from my crouch, revealing bareness. Kissed her navel.

And then a quick snatch, like a cat, securing the robe and a S T E P STEP step S L A M. oh what a bloom of redness. shame.

“Can you hear something end?” I feel the question slip from my mouth onto Mary’s lap. I’ve overpoured her tea. A bit has dribbled on the sunlight between our feet. “I’m sorry,” I add quickly.

“You can hear some ends.” Mary says softly, quickly, as if without intending to. And what she means is shame is shame, and an end is an end, and those two things are different.

I nod, knowingly, nod with such ardor. And then, a residual species happiness settles in, something like silence but so loud it thumps, so bright it gleams.

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44 | Issue 43

In the Hollow

K.A. Cummins

The Thousand-Year Dream Natali Petricic

The doctor informed him that he had, at best, a decade to live. Test results and “lifestyle changes” needed to be discussed. In spite of his moniker, the Stari Detectiv never really considered himself stari.

Old. He had had the nickname for over three decades. Amongst his people, it had followed him from the homeland to America.

Sitting on the examining table he felt more like a small boy instead of a towering sixty-two year old.

Typically in stellar health, he despised doctors, and rarely sought their help. Except for the occasional bullet wound or gash, he considered them useless. But lately he hadn’t been feeling like himself. With a full head of thick hair, peppered with silver strands, acquaintances often thought he was in his early fifties. The Old Detective narrowed his dark eyes at the learned man, looked him up and down with a quick sweep, noting the doctor’s scuffed and worn leather shoes. Humble beginnings, perhaps. “How do you know for certain?”

The doctor sighed. “Let’s begin with the symptoms: high-blood pressure, angina pectoris, diabetes, your liver…” The man continued, but the Old Detective didn’t listen. He had suspected as much. These suspicions had led him to this medical office on a sunny day in May of 1980, three days after Josip Broz Tito passed away in his sleep.

“Sir,” the physician said. “Are you listening?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He liked how the Americans accepted this small phrase for both large and little violations.

“You drink,” the doctor said while writing.

“A little.”

“It wasn’t a question,” the doctor said. “You have to stop. Your liver…”

There were days he liked to drink a little. Or a lot. But never to the point of puking like Grubić, never like some disgraceful drunk shaming the family.

The doctor gave him a paper with directives. Health changes he needed to make. The Old Detective folded it in half and placed it in his breast pocket.

He had expected more to come of Tito’s death—an explosion, a coup, the collapse of Socialism— something big. But as the days passed, his eyes scanning the Yugoslavian newspapers he acquired in Astoria, he learned of no revolt. His ears and eyes turned to the American news, and this also brought forth little information. He was tired of hearing about the Blue Train carrying the leader’s body from Ljubljana to Belgrade. He was sick of seeing images of weeping women dressed in black, lamenting the loss of their beloved leader. He wanted details, damnit. After all, wasn’t Tito the one artificially holding Yugoslavia together? Wasn’t the country already a frayed blanket, ready to come apart with one quick tug of the string?

His daughter and son-in-law had moved from Long Island to Washington state years ago, leaving Blue Mesa Review | 45

sorrow perched in his heart. The Old Detective and his wife called them every Sunday, May 4th being no exception.

He paced the kitchen, the receiver pressed up hard against his ear. A rustling over the phone lines, then Branko saying, “My esteemed father-in-law, kako si?”

“Did you hear? Certainly, you heard about him?” His heart pounded so fiercely he wouldn’t have been surprised if the angina took him.

“I heard,” Branko said. “And?” “What do you mean, and? And my ass. Something is going to happen. Something is going to change.

Soon.”

“Tata, if something changes in the next ten years, then I will give you every penny I have in the bank.”

“How can you say that?”

“How can I not say it? Nakon Tita bit će Tito. After Tito there will be Tito. You ever heard that?”

“Of course they say it, but how tightly could he have wound his tentacles around his subordinates?

Plus, there’s only one Tito. Believe me, I saw him numerous times. No one possesses his charisma.”

Branko sighed. “Ten years, Tata, ten years. Minimum.”

The Old Detective pursed his lips. He said good-bye to his son-in-law. Pouring himself a shot of rakija, he sniffed the pungent liquor. In the background, his wife rambled on about his liver, the diabetes. He looked at the transparent liquid. To hell with it. The hard living in the past, the parties, the smoking, the fights, all of this contributed to the state of affairs inside his body. But just this one, to calm the nerves.

If something changes in the next ten years. His son-in-law’s words replayed through his head. Ten years. Imagine: Croatia an independent nation again after almost a millennium! If he only had ten years left to him, he might miss it. He would miss his Hrvatska being restored. He would miss the thousandyear dream coming to fruition.

In the service he had been taught to compartmentalize his feelings. There were family, friends, home but nothing to interfere with duty to domovina. The homeland, SFRJ: Socialist Republic of Jugoslavija.

He fought in the war on the partisan side. A united Yugoslavia was still better than a central Dalmatia annexed by the Italians. Each time he was in Zadar, a wave of nausea filled him to see the Italian flags flying over the government offices in the People’s Square.

Once the war was over, he rose in the ranks. Eventually he was stationed at Brioni in the Coast Guard, patrolling the Adriatic for defectors. Brioni was Tito’s island. Yes, his job entailed roughing up people, interrogating them. It was complicated. It was for the safety of the nation. He swore not to discuss his work. Of course, many on his home island of Premuda whispered that he was Udba, the secret police. Even his own wife questioned his affiliations.

“Please, I need to know,” she had said one night on a visit home. Her lean body was turned toward the window, her back to him. It was a stormy night, the type of night that made their isolated location feel like it was the last station on Earth before heaven. With the village teetering on a hilltop, the storm blocking 46 | Issue 43

their view of the only neighboring island, it seemed like nothing but angry sea raged around them, the black water swirling below, slapping the cliffs.

He had her quickly, hastily, and then they spoke in the dark, not even a candle ablaze, the wind beating against thin panes of glass.

“Please, I promise I won’t say anything,” she said. “I need to know if what they say is true.”

“Who is they?”

“Grubić. When I go to the market, and he has been drinking.” She paused, as if afraid of him or Grubić, or both. Her body seemed so small to him, insignificant, as if he could roll on top of her and smother her in his sleep without the slightest struggle. He pushed these thoughts away.

“My dear, Grubić is a drunk and a second-rate informant at best. Why do you listen to him?”

“That’s what I figured. I shouldn’t let him affect me,” she said.

“No. You shouldn’t.”

Within minutes, he could hear her easy, even breathing, heading towards deep sleep. But he lay awake, eyes adjusted to the dark, staring at the white walls he had meticulously repainted over the summer vacation. The violent rain whipped against the house, and the waves crashed at the base of the cliff. The wind seemed to move the house. Windows vibrated. Floor boards creaked.

This house, the home he was born into, was the first and only house visible from the pier below, the pier built into a slight cove, where the ferry stopped twice a day—once going to the city before sunrise, and the other time coming from the city at dusk. It was an old white house, overlooking the water as if a sentry at the foot of the village. Long ago it was one house, now divided into three separate homes. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather—who knew how far back the tradition went?—they were all sea captains. So that’s what he became. Being on the boat was as natural as walking on land. But before the Seafaring Academy, there was the war.

He smiled, thinking about how happily he had entered the Partisans with his cousin at the age of seventeen. His four brothers were already in America, working. His cousin had become a brother to him.

Oh, how ignorant they were. He remembered the battles their rag-tag regiment won against the Ustashe and Mussolini’s black shirts. Until, of course, the battle. Every soldier eventually encountered the battle that broke all the illusions.

They were lying on their bellies, shooting at the devils. Bullets flew by too frequently; they were outnumbered. One entered and exited his arm, missing an artery by mere centimeters, he later learned.

Even as he agonized, winding a bandana around his arm, as he was taught during training, he spoke to his cousin, assuring him they’d find a way out. But his cousin was quiet, in the midst of the shouting and shooting and gunpowder stench and smoke filling his lungs. After securing the wrap, he nudged his cousin. Receiving no response, he rolled him over. His was unrecognizable. A bullet to the head: blood, flesh, brain everywhere. He blacked out. Days later he woke up in a makeshift hospital tent outside of Zadar.

Now in his white room, his gaze fell to the gold-framed painting of Jesus Christ, heart aflame. His wife insisted on hanging the icon. Christ peered down at him, hurt and beckoning. Why do you betray me?

Blue Mesa Review | 47

He came home from work, left his black metal lunchbox by the sink, and turned on the radio. His routine was to listen to the early evening news. Cleaning the elementary school a few blocks away was the easiest job he’d ever had. On weekends he painted houses for extra, making more in two days than he did during the week.

His wife brewed coffee, the scent filling the small yellow kitchen. “I was beginning to wonder,” she said. “Where were you?”

“Walked a few extra blocks,” he said, pouring himself a cup.

“Don’t tell me you stopped by Jeanno’s for a slice of pizza.”

He shook his head, sighing and sitting down at the table. How he missed biscotti. He watched his wife clean out the lunchbox at the sink.

“You’re quiet today,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about Tito.”

“I have a plan.”

She threw the thermos into the sink. “No. No more plans.”

“You’ll like this one. We go back to stari kraj. The old country.”

“I’m tired of your plans. It was your plan to quit the service, to open the restaurant, to emigrate. Your plans.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yes. I’m tired. I’m staying in New York.” She turned her back to him, faced the sink. Water gushed from the faucet as she washed, muttering to herself.

His daughters had dragged him to the western side of the island, where a villager had opened a café of sorts. Two beverages were available: soda or beer. A faded umbrella, along with a couple of splintering picnic tables and benches, had been dragged out. Of course, Vesna and Slavka ran off to swim as soon as they arrived.

His house overlooked the eastern side of the island. On this opposite side there was the old church, long abandoned and crumbling. Across from it, a horseshoe-shaped pier. He had moored the small Coast Guard boat there.

That afternoon he had three pivos, was just handed his fourth, the bottle warm from the summer sun, when Grubić spotted the skiff on the horizon. Leave it to Grubić, the village informant. The man not only garnered information about the citizens in the hamlet, he also enjoyed stirring up tensions.

The Old Detective had noted the vessel thirty minutes earlier, when it was only a speck on the horizon, well on its way to the Italian coast. In his head, he had wished the occupants well as they started their new lives. He was relieved he was nestled on the bench in the shade and on leave. However, by his third beer he watched the dot appear larger, his grip on the beer tightening. Idiots. They were heading for Premuda, mistakenly thinking they overshot Italy. Definitely not seafaring folk.

“Eh, Detective,” Grubić said, sneering. “I believe we have defectors approaching.”

All the men at the table turned toward him, awaiting a response. Through his sunglasses, the Old Detective caught sight of his girls diving off the bow of the Coast Guard boat he had arrived on yesterday.

Along with the other children, they laughed and yelled as they splashed into the sea.

He shrugged. “Could be tourists sailing the isles.” Earlier a pair of tourists came off their yacht, 48 | Issue 43

inquiring about a restaurant or store. The men at the table had held up their beers, and the foreigners had frowned; it was obviously not what they needed. “What’s the matter, Detective? If they’re tourists, so be it, but you’re not going to jump on that fancy government boat of yours and investigate?”

“Grubić, you wouldn’t know a defector if they socked you in the groin.” To this, the other men laughed, and he noticed their shoulders decompress. Perhaps he had averted the squall. In the distance the children squealed with delight, running in and out of the water.

“Wait a second,” Grubić said, “Isn’t it your duty to protect our homeland from this type of betrayal?”

“Tata. Tata, look at me,” as if on cue, Vesna called for his attention. The table of men paused as the small girl climbed on top of a pile of rocks close by and dove off, legs straight, as he had instructed her.

His eyes flickered between his daughters and the skiff. The small boat appeared to be going back toward the west, where it had come from.

The Old Detective clapped, smiling. “Can’t you see,” he said, turning to Grubić. “I am on leave, visiting my family.”

“There you have it, momci,” Grubić now addressed the men clustered around the table like figs on a branch. “Some take from the state, but feel no obligation. What would your superiors say?”

Putting out his cigarette, the Old Detective stood. “Come with me, Grubić. Let’s take care of this.”

He strode off toward the Coast Guard vessel, Grubić close behind. When they got to the boat, the children scampered in all directions, not needing to be told. In his periphery, his daughters stood on the white-washed pier, squinting at him.

The speedboat motor roared, and they were off.

“We’re not going to hurt those people, are we?” Grubić asked.

“Now you’re concerned for their well-being, are you? How noble. Let’s hope they’re not the militant type and open fire on us.”

They rode on in silence, only the whirring of the motor, his hands clenching the leather-covered steering wheel. When they caught up to the skiff, his heart plummeted to his feet, but he pushed aside all emotion as he was trained. Goddamn Grubić.

The vessel was weathered. There was an eerie silence as he came alongside the craft, killing the motor. The waves smacked against the boat’s side. Inside, there were two men and a woman, all in their twenties. Their faces were badly sun-burned, their hair and clothes disheveled. They must have been on the sea for days. He glanced about. The small group rowed by oar, bloodied bandages around their hands. Empty bottles littered the floor. They must have run out of provisions by the second day.

The Old Detective radioed in his position, directing a colleague in the area to meet them. He jumped onto their vessel, the wood creaking from the additional weight.

“Shoot me. Kill us right now. I don’t want to wait,” the woman screamed. The men shushed her. The Old Detective tied the skiff to his boat.

“Sram te bilo. Sram. Shame on you. Shame,” Grubić yelled from the Coast Guard boat, pointing his finger. The woman sobbed.

“Everybody shut up,” said the Old Detective, shooting Grubić a look. The men calmed the woman.

“Listen. No one gets hurt if you follow my directions.” The Old Detective looked back at the island.

Sun reflected off of the waves. A small crowd had formed at the water’s edge. He spoke quietly to the Blue Mesa Review | 49

three. “Where are you from?”

“Maspić,” said the woman. Her companions glared at her. The Old Detective shifted his stance, and the three backed away, cowering.

“I figured as much. Folk from the hills, not used to our sea. See that crowd there?” He pointed to the island. He bent down, so Grubić couldn’t make out every word. “Mainly children. A boat is coming to pick you up. Get on, without resistance. Tell them you’re glad to be saved, didn’t know what you were thinking trying to do this. Do not struggle. That is key. They’ll figure you’re idiots. You’ll get a couple of years in jail at most.”

“What are you saying down there?” Grubić asked from above.

The Old Detective used the ladder on the side of the boat to climb back aboard. “To hell with it, Grubić.

What do you think?”

“But what will you do?”

“I did my job. Now we wait. What, you want me to shoot people?”

During the wait, no one spoke. Within twenty minutes a larger boat appeared. The three people quietly were transferred on board. On the way back to Premuda, the Old Detective noticed his hands trembling as he grasped the wheel and adjusted gears. As he approached land, he spotted his girls jumping and clapping along with the other children. It might not have gone so smoothly. Next time…And then he stopped himself. Goosebumps traveled up his forearms. There was not to be a next time.

In spite of his position and membership in the Communist party, his wife had insisted the girls be baptized in the Church. It’s not that he hated the Church or had a gripe against the institution. It’s just that it didn’t put food on the table. In fact, with the protruding offertory basket circling each Mass, the institution demanded money.

But his wife loved the Church. “It gives me grace. By going to Mass, I can endure anything,” she had said early in their marriage. When a state apartment in the city of Pula was offered to him, he declined. In Pula, street lamps were everywhere and all was illuminated. At least on the island, their isolation played in their favor. The government didn’t bother with the peasants’ church habits. “If God helps them get through their peasant lives, then let them have Him,” he had heard officers say after a drink or two. Even Grubić didn’t bother informing on the church-going women and children.

It was their agreement, made early in the marriage: we stay on the island, so the wife gets the Church.

His military career eventually landed him in Brioni, with an apartment in Pula attached as a perk. Of course, the wife refused to move.

The Old Detective couldn’t brush away thoughts of return. Branko’s prediction about the breakup being ten years away could have merit. Branko’s brother was an officer and a Party leader.

Within a few days, the Old Detective contacted an old military friend from the Tito days. Arsen, a Bosnian who kept one foot in the east and one in Astoria. Jovial, bustling Arsen, who some said was born with a cigarette in one hand and a phone in the other. They had agreed to meet in a café by the Bosnian’s travel agency.

He waited for his friend outside, at a table underneath one of the Grand Café’s aqua umbrellas, 50 | Issue 43

watching the traffic on 30th Avenue. He hesitantly dropped the Swiss chocolate served with his espresso into his mouth. If his wife were here, she’d scold him. The diabetes. But she wasn’t here. He relished the sweetness as it melted away on his tongue. He picked up the demitasse cup, then turned it three times clockwise as he had seen the island women do in order to predict their futures. Peering into the cup, all he saw was the darkness of the espresso’s remains.

“My friend, the fortune teller,” Arsen said. “Ha, ha, ha.”

The two men shook hands, patted backs. They were comrades from their days on Brioni. However, since then, both had parted ways with the party. Arsen had opened up his own travel agency in Astoria, and played a hand in all things Yugoslavian now that they were in the new country. After small talk, The Old Detective settled into the purpose of the get-together.

“My son-in-law, Branko, says it’ll be at least ten years before it breaks.”

Arsen nodded, “My sources agree. They don’t call Croatia the silent republic for nothing. But they say it’ll be the Slovenians who run first.”

“I want to go back.”

“This is the third conversation I’ve had this week, my friend. I say go back.”

“You don’t think there will be…trouble?”

“I’ve been going back for years now, and so can you,” he said. “Remember that trip a few years back?

You didn’t have one inch of trouble.”

The Old Detective perched his sunglasses on his nose, peering at him over his spectacles. “Do you even travel as yourself? I’m talking about going back as me, to live for the days left to me. To the island, not as some gussied-up tourist.”

Arsen laughed. “You think you are their biggest problem? Silence is golden. If you don’t say anything, what will they care if you come back? Did you leave with some big fuck you, skip out on your duty?”

The Old Detective shook his head.

“Your accounts current?”

The Old Detective nodded. His daughter Slavka and her husband had been looking after the house and boat. Twice a year he sent her money for taxes and local up-keep fees on the island. As Arsen and the Old Detective spoke, his mind wandered. His plans were gaining formation, a full-figured form in his mind. What at first seemed like an impetuous instinct to return to his birthplace now seemed like a viable option. Still, his wife. How to convince her? He had already asked so much of her.

“So with that, you must have mentally left that door open when you left.”

The Old Detective had never thought of it that way; he had left in part to help his daughter, and in part because he felt the pressure of the past closing in on him. On Premuda, they never let him forget his party affiliation, thought him a sell-out for opening up a restaurant and quitting his military career. But they never found out about the woman in Pula, and his wife was spared embarrassment, and for that he didn’t mind what the others thought. The Party never forgave him bowing out. They made it hard for him to earn a living. Every year they demanded more in taxes from the restaurant. And in military and Party circles, he had lost all of his friends. Invitations had disappeared.

As they were saying goodbye, Arsen said, “I almost forgot. Branko. Tell him his friend from Brioni, Blue Mesa Review | 51

Milan, finally got out of prison.”

The Old Detective nodded. “He’ll be glad to hear. Shame it had to be this long.” He thought of Milan, envisioning a young man who would now be middle-aged like his son-in-law. Shortly after they had emigrated, Milan had reached the ranks of officer. One night at a party, thinking he was amongst friends, he had belted out a national Croatian anthem. Unfortunately, someone informed and Milan disappeared.

Later it was learned he’d been sent to a labor camp.

“Panti. Remember. Silence is golden.” With that Arsen entered the river of pedestrians walking down 30th.

He had trouble sleeping. The wife seemed to have no issues falling asleep, snoozing like a soft breeze stirring through the quiet room. But the past replayed in the Old Detective’s mind. In Long Beach, he was the innocuous janitor pushing a mop over linoleum, kindly nodding to the teachers who worked late and spoke to him in loud, slow tones, as if he were a nit-wit. He was glad to escape Tito’s Jugoslavija.

If he were to be honest with himself, lying in bed on those stuffy late spring days, Grubić wasn’t the real reason he left his position. He was used to assholes. No, he fled Pula. The day he appeared unexpectedly on Premuda, no one questioned his hasty leave from duty. If they had asked, he’d planned a nonchalant response. Something about having to be in Zadar on government business. Believable, given Zadar had been annexed by Italy until the end of the war. Tito liked to keep his eyes and ears everywhere.

The real reason he stopped by Premuda had nothing to do with duty and everything to do with his mistress in the city, Marina.

He knew better than to get involved with a woman. A whore is one thing, a mistress entirely another.

He had seen great men bitten on the ass by the lovers they took on, and he should have known better. The blossoming of folly.

Marina was too irresistible to deny. Not only gorgeous but educated and full of finesse. The way she removed her gloves, loosening one fingertip at a time while maintaining conversation with an effortless flow and a smile, that alone would bring him to his knees. Never mind the grace with which she walked into the ballroom of the Riviera Hotel, her patent leather heels clicking across the polished marble floors.

Men and women glanced up from their conversations to acknowledge her presence. She was neither an island peasant nor a city slut. Their relationship unfolded naturally, never forced as it had been with his wife. They had been so young when he married her.

He was only twenty, just out of the war. She was seventeen, beautiful, but in a less intense way than Marina, with her light eyes and ashy blond locks. She was a decent woman from a Partisan island family like his own. She knew how to farm, cook, and tend the house. She was humble and pretty, not a loudmouthed ballbuster like so many beauties. Women who knew the power of their beauty were dangerous.

His wife was oblivious to her worth, and this was why he chose her.

With Marina it was different. The courtship passed from drinks to coffee to dancing to walks in the dark streets of Pula, past the Roman amphitheater and into her tidy state apartment. Somewhere in there they won a dance contest doing the twist. Before long, they were having dinners together with his superiors, Marina eating alongside their wives. A woman like Marina by his side would be an asset. She agreed.

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They concocted the plan together. It was simple. He wrote to his soon-to-be ex-wife and divulged his devotion to Marina. There was someone else. He loved another woman now. He wanted to be with her, to marry her. What could his wife possibly do? Of course, he wrote in the letter, he would allow her to live in the island house with the girls and his mother, until his Mama passed away, in exchange for her silence.

Marina and the Old Detective mailed the letter together, on their way to afternoon coffee by the riva.

He received no response for over a month, and assumed the arrangement was understood. But one day he found a thick envelope awaiting him. The postmark was Premuda 57294. Certain of his spouse’s acquiescence, he stuffed the letter in his attaché case and went to Marina’s place.

They had finished making love in her darkened room, the curtains still parted, the sun just setting.

Marina sat at the vanity table, brushing her long, black hair. “Dear one, how long before the divorce papers go through?”

The Old Detective was already dressing. They were to meet friends at the Riviera Hotel’s ballroom that evening. He took his briefcase and sat on the edge of the bed. He patted the yellow envelope with both hands. Bulky. “There are many papers in here. Maybe she has already filed them.” He pulled out a letter opener from his case, slid it across the top. He recognized her handwriting. A smaller letter fell out of the envelope. It was his brother’s messy printing. Sram. Sram te bilo. Shame. Shame on you.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said to Marina. She peered at him in the mirror’s reflection. He remained sitting on the edge of that bed until the room was dark, the sun plunked over the horizon. He remained sitting, slumped, head bowed as Marina screamed insults, threw books, said she would not accept it. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said over and over.

He had underestimated the wife. True, a wife may not have much clout in this country, but the eldest brother who controlled his inheritance did. The wife had written to his brother in New York, and his brother had taken her side. You may not know God anymore, but I do. I cannot stand by and allow you to marry that whore while your wife and children and family suffer because of your whims. The letter was short but to the point. He had to choose: marry his mistress and be disinherited, or reunite with his wife and pretend none of this had happened.

As May melded into June, the Old Detective refined his plans. Each day became more than a day. It was another fraction of his life spent in a strange land. God bless America, he had always said, especially to his brother who had helped him emigrate. However, he yearned to be on soil familiar to his feet, soil where the roots that connected him to the earth ran deep. One month after Tito’s death, he approached his wife in the kitchen again.

“My plan is almost complete. I have put the properties for sale,” he said, not looking up from the oatmeal. It was quiet, with only the sound of cars passing on the street. The neighbor’s gate slammed.

She said nothing, so he peeked up from his breakfast. She had stopped working. Leaning against the counter, she glared at him, her graying ash blond hair loose.

“You don’t have anything to say?” He said, looking around the room. “We will go, then?”

“Go where?” She shrugged her shoulders.

“Hrvatska. Croatia.”

“Where? Where in Yugoslavia?”

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“Home. Croatia.”

“It’s not Croatia.”

“Home,” he said, pausing, pushing the bowl away.

“For me to work on the island?” She waved him off in disgust.

“And the city. We have enough for an apartment. Close to the cathedral. Close to doctors. Close to stores. No more work. We’ll be quiet, retired people. Pensionairi.” She had opened her mouth, but then stopped, lips still parted.

“And this apartment? It will be in the center? Close to Sveti Stošija?

He nodded, folding his hands in front of him. “You can go every day. You can pray in our language.”

She nodded, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Yes, yes. But you need to remember it’s not Croatia,” she said.

“It will be.” He stood and went to her.

It’s late at night, well past midnight, and even the Long Island bustle has halted. He likes this time of the day, when he can be away from work and people, and pray in bed with no demands placed on him. It is raining outside, so the street is quieter than usual. Raindrops hit the skylight above.

Through the blinds, the blinking yellow light from the auto shop across the way enters the bedroom, splashing against the cream walls in a rhythmic pulse. When they first bought the duplex ten years ago, he had hated that shop across the way and the annoying neon light announcing the owner’s name. Over the years he has taken comfort in the illumination it provides late at night, when he cannot sleep. Somehow, he feels not alone.

He watches his wife sleep. She’s on her back, mouth agape, snores escaping like distant train whistles. The crystal rosary beads glide through his fingers, his eyes focusing on the picture of the Christ on the opposite wall. He mouths the prayers in rote, without an ounce of concentration. His mind wanders and he cannot still it tonight. He looks at her. Her eyelids twitch, her small body lax. A car horn blares outside. Faint yelling. She does not stir.

He sighs, turning his attention to the painting of Jesus. There He is, staff in one hand, watching over a flock of sheep with that merciful look on His face. He puts the rosary beads back in their small box on the nightstand. “Please,” he says to the Christ, “Please help me be a proper husband.”

Their entire lives she has followed his lead. She has not questioned, even when it hurt, even when it caused her discomfort. When he decided to disentangle himself from duty, she complied. She never complained to the children or the neighbors. She never told them about Marina. She let them carry their illusions.

When he struggled with the drink, the women, the messy political alliances, she looked the other way, never scolding. When she had to deflect rumors of his infidelities or vicious ways on the job, she never made it his concern, containing the embarrassment within herself. When he decided to open a restaurant that required constant labor, she supported him, not sleeping more than five hours a night for years. When he decided to move the family to America to escape the regime, she nodded. This new announcement is too much. How much can a person endure? He understands.

They are approaching the end. He may be afraid, but she doesn’t seem to be. It’s as if she knows her 54 | Issue 43

place is with the Lord. Certainly, He has made room for her in the next life. The Old Detective isn’t so sure about himself. He attends Mass daily, rarely has a drink, and does not dance with other women at the functions they attend. He has become an adequate husband.

He had told himself America was the last stop. After this, no more new ventures. But ever since the dictator’s death, thoughts of returning to his birthland has haunted him. This is his dream. How can she not accompany him at this point, after fulfilling four decades of the promise she made to him in God’s house?

A tuft of light hair falls in her face, covering her closed eye. She startles. He carefully moves the piece, and she stays asleep. He wears a white undershirt, a gold necklace around his neck. In the semi-darkness he rubs the dark gunshot wound on his arm, an array of healed cuts and gashes around his exposed neck and upper chest. She understands his hard life. He sighs, glancing again at Jesus the shepherd, a halo around His head. Leaning over, he takes the rosary out of the box once again. Outside a car speeds by, tires sloshing against the wet pavement. As he has done a thousand times, and will do a thousand times more, he clutches the small cross, asking Him for strength and help.

He tilts his head back onto the pillows, inhaling. Yellow light flashes across the room. He closes his eyes, imagining the wide expanse of his sea at home. The blues of the water and sky melding into one.

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Blue Mesa Review 2021 Summer Contest June 1, 2021 – August 31, 2021 $500 prize per genre

FICTION JUDGE

NONFICTION JUDGE

Zeyn Joukhada

Kim Barnes

POETRY JUDGE

Natalie Scenters-Zapico For judge biographies and information on how to submit check out our website: bmr.unm.edu/contest

El Caldo de Los Años: For Rudolfo Anaya Denise Chávez

I met Rudolfo Anaya in El Año del Caldo. In the Way Back of my Life as a writer. In the before of my declaring myself to the universe. Back there in the murky stew of indecisive living that is called youth. We met in Santa Fe, where I was living and working as an Artist in the Schools. He came from Albuquerque to go over my submission, “Willow Game,” for an anthology called Cuentos Chicanos.

I do not remember where I heard about the anthology, or how I decided to submit. Prior to this, I was living in Española and teaching at Northern New Mexico Community College. It was my first teaching job. It had been a big move for this Sureña, more monumental than I could ever have imagined.

My uncle, Sammie Chávez, made light of my job—”What are you going to do with those hicks up there?” I would later say to him that it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I first became aware of Bless Me, Última, when it was published by Quinto Sol in 1972. I was a student at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. I could not believe that a Chicano Nuevo Mexicano had written a book that wasn’t a cookbook or some laborious family history. I had never seen myself or anyone I knew in a book that wasn’t some self-published tome with elementary pen and ink drawings by some sobrino or friend who thought he could draw and was there to help with free artwork.

The earth shook metaphorically when I read Bless Me, Última. I said to myself, “I am going to meet this author.” He was a handsome man, that I noted, but also, he was a New Mexican. Uno de Nosotros.

He belonged to us, to me, to my land, and to my people. There was a great sense of joy and pride that accompanied knowing Bless Me, Última existed in the world.

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It is important to know of the creative energy that was happening in New Mexico in the 70s and 80s. La Academia de La Nuevo Raza was thriving in Northern New Mexico, founded by Estevan Arellano, E.A. Antonio “Tony” Mares, Tomás Atencio, and others. The Concept of La Resolana was developed.

What was the Resolana? It was the warmest sunniest place in the house in the winter, where one sat to talk and share, to imagine and dream, conceived by its founders as a vehicle to mine “el oro del barrio,” which was the stories, art, and folklore of our people.

Running parallel to this outpouring of literature, folklore, music, and writing was La Cofradía de Artes y Artesanos Hispánicos—The Confraternity of Hispanic Arts and Artists in Santa Fe. I met Luis Tapia, the sculptor, and participated in events sponsored by La Cofradía. Later La Compañía de Teatro de Albuquerque, directed by José Rodríguez, came to life. Rudy was at the center of this outpouring and at the forefront of Chicano arts and writing.

I became a Chicana when I moved North. It was my awakening to the political side of my being that was lacking when I was a student at New Mexico State University and studying in the Drama department.

I was hired as a Drama Teacher at Northern New Mexico Community College and it was the greatest leap of faith in my life. I was terrified. That first day of teaching was memorable. I had moved into a small guest house apartment and noting my needs, I told my students I needed a cheese grater. Not only did three cheese graters come into my life, but so did the whole of El Movimiento Chicano in Northern New Mexico. I met pivotal figures: Estevan and Elena Arellano, writer Stanley Crawford, his wife Rosemary, John Nichols of The Milagro Beanfield War, writer Jim Sagel, from Española, and his wife, weaver Teresa Archuleta, Tomás Atencio and his wife Consuelo Pacheco, Vicente Martínez, descendent of Padre Martínez, Facundo Valdez, Alejandro López, Eduardo and Juanita Lavadie from Taos, E.A. Antonio “Tony” Mares from Albuquerque, Cecilio García Camarillo, musician Cipriano Vigil, storyteller and artist Cleofas Vigil, members of La Academia de La Nueva Raza. El Grito Del Norte was being published

by Enriqueta Vásquez in Española. It was an incredible time.

Española was the epicenter of creative life in those days, along with Santa Fe. There was an overlapping and folding and blending of talent there that led to so much creative energy and the formation of many artistic careers. Artists came to Española to teach, to read their work, to visit with members of La Academia de La Nueva Raza, and to share their vision at gatherings on campus and in private homes.

And it was there in Española, in that small out of the way place, a place dismissed and denigrated by members of my family, that I, a fledgling writer, came to life. I will always be grateful to the people who came into my life at that time, as well as all my students, who were just a few years younger than I. They gave me the hope and spirit and belief that I could be an artist, that I could be a writer.

Things were very different then; there weren’t token and designated popular writers, there were simply groups of enthusiastic, loving people creating and expanding the canon of Latino Literature.

There weren’t the chosen few being published, as is today. It was a different and exciting world.

I turned down a year in Japan teaching, to get my Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of New Mexico. I was awarded the first Chicano Fellowship in Creative Writing through the English Department. Rudy had recommended me for this honor. Japan or a year of study with Rudolfo Anaya?

The choice was easy. This was the year I had walking pneumonia, innumerable parking tickets, and wrote 58 | Issue 43

my first book.

I got a Master’s degree in one year. I was living in Santa Fe and commuting to Albuquerque. My parking tickets were mounting up and finally I moved in with a friend. With my fellowship I bought my first new typewriter, a powder blue IBM Selectric, that was like a tank with interchangeable font heads. I still have it and it still works. It was on this typewriter that I wrote my collection of short stories, The Last of the Menu Girls, and handed it in to Professor Anaya as my Master’s Thesis.

Rudy recommended that I send my thesis manuscript to publisher Nicolás Kanellos at Arte Público Press. I heard back from them right away. I was shocked. The book, a collection of interconnected short stories, was published in 1976 with Rudy as my Padrino.

That year was a very hard year in so many ways and like many experiences of my life, it was a pivotal and major time of growth. I was a student of Rudy’s at that time and also studied with Tony Hillerman, that grand man who was a wonderful and kind and loved professor. I also studied with Dr. Hugh Witemeyer, a model of what scholarship could be and who later became a good friend. I was a poor scholar and yet, I kept going. Ni Modo. Así es. That’s how it is and was.

We Chicanos live by the Ni Modo Philosophy and it is a good thing. Ni Modo. The car won’t start, the plumbing isn’t working, the roof is leaking, the rent is due and more. . .Ni Modo. Let’s do what we can with what we have and do our Best. What can be done? Ni Modo. Whatever. No Big Deal. Accept it.

Deal with it. It’s okay. Ni Modo.

We are a people who Endure, a people who have Orgullo, Pride. And it comes from a history of struggle and work. We have a legacy of suffering and we continue to move away from the role of victims of that suffering. And yet, we still live and try to understand and heal the world where the Other is made to suffer. And who is that Other but those of us who are confused, distorted, lacking love?

It was in those years of my struggle to become a writer that I was supported and bolstered by my role models and mentors, most especially Rudy.

I got to know him better when we worked on a series of plays for La Compañía de Teatro in Albuquerque. It became New Mexico’s primary Latino theatre company. My play, Nacimiento, was produced alongside Lola’s Last Dance by E. A. “Tony” Mares and The Season of La Llorona by Rudolfo Anaya in a three-play performance called “A New Mexico Trilogy.”

In Albuquerque, Rudy confronted me and asked me point blank, “So, what are you going to be, a writer, or what?” Again, I was terrified, and yet I had the strength to say to myself and to him, “Yes, I am a writer.”

My mother gave me my first Thesaurus at age ten, in which she had inscribed “To A Future Writer.” I have that book and use it still. I also had a little journal in which I had written that my secret ambition was to become a writer. I remember writing my first little story for Sister Monessa at Holy Cross Elementary School. It was about the willow tree in our front yard. I was eight years old. I still have that piece of paper with the story. Later, the story of the tree became “Willow Game” in my collection of stories, The Last of the Menu Girls.

“Willow Game” was the first major story I’d gotten published other than MADA—backwards for ADAM—about the last man on earth – published in the Madonna High School Mantle, our all-girls high school publication.

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Rudolfo Anaya was my first editor, I am proud to say. As we worked through his notes on “Willow Game,” I was more than thrilled to be sitting in his presence. I could not believe I was sitting with the author I first met on the page in my small insular Las Cruces world. To be a Chicano/Chicana in those days was an experience that was life altering and the greatest benediction. I was formed by greatness all around me. It was my abundant fortune to have met so many people in those early days of El Movimiento, that led to my awakening life as a Chicana. Now not everyone was a Chicano or a Chicana. To be Chicano means that you have a political and social awareness and consciousness and understand La Lucha. As the generations identify themselves as Mexican Americans, Latinos, Gen Mex, Chicanx, so I identify with the term Chicano/Chicana.

If I ever met anyone who embodied the word Chicano, it was Rudolfo Anaya. He was the standard bearer of belief in all things Chicano I held sacred. He knew the sacredness of La Familia, held family close, and revered his roots. He honored his Ancestors, most especially his parents. He was a Compadre to so many. He knew what Compadrazo truly meant. He did not have to be related to be related. He was like a Tocayo or a Tocaya, automatically claiming that brother/sister/relationship with someone who has your same name. His name was spelled Rudolfo, not Rodolfo, as is more common. My mother, Delfina, a Spanish teacher, questioned him about the spelling of his name and he gave her the answer she needed.

Rudolfo it was.

Rudolfo, not Rodolfo, knew our Cultura inside out. He knew La Lucha, the Struggle, the tradiciónes, the traditions. He knew La Tierra, the Land, and how our Querencia was this land, whether North, South, East, or West. He knew what the land meant to us, family land, lost land, as he knew our connection to our Antepasados and all who came before, our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and what land meant to all of us who are a Mestizaje, a Mezcla and a Mixture of Blood. His Female Face of God was Our Lady of Guadalupe, who represented those forgotten, abandoned, forsaken, and neglected. The Guadalupe is who we turn to in prayer, for who knows us best than the Mother?

Rudy knew La Malinche, La Llorona and El Cucuy. He knew what a good plate of red enchiladas was, and he loved pan dulce with Cafecito. Those last visits of mine to see Rudy at his home were always filled with me carrying bags of pan dulce from El Super on Central Avenue. I have wonderful food memories of my husband, Daniel Zolinsky and I eating with Rudy and his wife, Patricia, all of us who enjoyed our New Mexican food.

To write about food and language is to know about a culture and Rudy did. The fluidity of moving back and forth from English to Spanish is a trademark of who we are in New Mexico. Ours are the urban stories of life in Albuquerque and the bigger cities, just as much as our stories of life on the farm, the llano, las montañas and el desierto of this incredibly beautiful state.

Rudolfo was a man of faith. He believed in the Beauty and Spirit of Men and Women, in the Sacredness of Animals, and the Magical Realm of the Ancestors that lingered and existed side by side with the everyday. His was a Spiritual life, a life that elevated the Sacred and understood that it was our deepest core, our solace in all things. There is no greater blessing than that of the Antepasados, que rodean siempre, those spirits of our Ancestors that move in and out of our lives, giving untold grace and blessing to our existence. Who would we be without the Blessing of Mother, the Wisdom of our Father, the insights and hard work of our Grandmothers and Grandfathers?

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And yet, Rudy was never sanctimonious or preachy. He loved to laugh and was always one to see the humor or absurdity of any given situation. Once after a reading and during a Q and A session, a young man asked him how much money he made, to which Rudy replied with a stern reproach, “None of your business.” He was never one to suffer fools.

He would sometimes stop me in my tracks, and it was good. I could go on and on. The very first time we read our work together was in Santa Fe at a museum and after I finished my theatrical walk-about, I got off the stage and he looked at me with that incredulous expression of his and said, “What was that?” I think I surprised him with the exuberance of my reading, but from then on, he was fair game, and I often singled him out to read to and he would answer back. He was always willing to play along, sometimes at his expense, and I was grateful. Lo siento, Rudy!

Rudy knew that freedom was to be found in life through hard work, through perseverance. Our homeland, Aztlán, is always carried within us. Life is our Celebration of who and what we are. Our Vecindad, our neighborhoods, are sacred. We may live in the Land of Nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning “The land in-between,” in that liminal space that is La Frontera, in the break between the worlds as ordained by maps and powers that be, but we have seen and will see the demagogues come and go, like the hot breeze of our long-lasting almost interminable southern summers, and the northern arctic winds that bite and then are gone, the dust and wind having carried them away to the land of the Ancestors, up to the sky of Knowing. La Calaca is our friend, our sister who stands to our left, her hand on our shoulder, but we are not frightened. Her touch is light, merciful.

It is in the Power of Naming, in the Ability to call Out, to Call Forward, that we lose the Fear of Death, La Sebastiana with her arrow resting now, La Huesuda, with her haunted bony face turned toward the sky of possibility and hope. We are a people who know and will survive the onslaught of the dark lives that subjugate and harm. Rudy was always there fighting for the innocent, the maligned, and the oppressed. He suffered greatly with the plight of our Refugee families. Through the years, Rudy often sent me articles, stories, poems. One of his last messages included a poem about the Refugee children.

I was fortunate to become a friend to Rudolfo Anaya. Believe me, I worked it. I knew he was a great and blessed part of my life, and although he was my Editor and Professor, I also wanted to be his friend.

I never let go. I knew his home phone number by heart. I would check in from time to time. I would write notes, send cards. When I moved back to Las Cruces, I always kept in touch. And it was my great blessing that Rudy and his wife, Patricia, were there and as busy as they both were, they made time to see me and to share a meal. And more. I spent time at their lovely and beautiful home, petted Chamisa and Oso, their beloved dogs, had breakfast at the little island in the kitchen. I slept so peacefully in that basement guest room with the glow in-the-dark star, planets, and constellation stickers placed there by their granddaughter on the ceiling. I loved Rudy and told him so many times. And for that I feel no embarrassment. I think more than once I may have caused him pause with my exuberance and flailing about, surely, he winced at my antics, but I was undaunted. I loved him and told him so.

In 2011 I was awarded the Premio Aztlán, an award for Chicano/a Literature founded by Patricia and Rudy. It was a great honor to go to Albuquerque to receive this award from them. It was only one of the many blessings and opportunities that were given to me by them. I never stayed in their writer’s guest house in Jemez and wish I had. The invitation was always there. I am a homegirl and it’s always been hard Blue Mesa Review | 61

to leave home, no matter the season.

The only so-called fissure in our relationship happened when I sent him the manuscript of my novel, The King and Queen of Comezón. I decided to send Rudy the novel to read, something I have never done.

Sometime shortly after that, I got a call in which he proceeded to tell me how bad the book was and asked me what in the world I was thinking about and that he was sending it back. I was hurt and upset. I was so mad that when the manuscript came back, I threw it into the recycling bin. Oh, how I wish I’d saved it!

This caused a tension in our relationship for a little while and dented our friendship. I apologized for yelling at him. He never apologized to me. He did something better; he finally read the finished book and wrote me a wonderful note in which he said it was a great book and that it stood for the New Mexico he loved. I wept when I read his words.

I have taught most of Rudy’s novels and always come back to Bless Me, Última. Oh, if only my novels had been banned like his! It was burned in 1981 in Bloomfield, New Mexico, named one of the “Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books” in 2008 and 2013.

The measure of the greatness of Bless Me, Última is its quintessential humanness. It is the story of our coming to understand the nature of Good and Evil. The young boy, Antonio Máres y Luna, epitomizes us as we peer into the Garden of Understanding where both light and dark reside.

I have written papers on Rudolfo Anaya, represented him in towns small and strange, large and overwhelming. I organized a PowerPoint on Rudolfo Anaya’s New Mexico, which includes a photo of our beloved Lotaburger Restaurant, with its green chile cheeseburgers that all New Mexicans love.

Sometimes there are tears. They come now and again when I think of Rudy and Patricia and how very much I loved and still love them both. I miss Rudy, his wit, his leveling comments to me when I got beside myself and was over the top, when I was lost or confused or just downright too busy flapping about and carrying on.

And in speaking of Rudy, I need to speak of his wife, Patricia. She was a lovely woman who was Rudy’s muse, fortress, strength, and partner. I don’t think I’ve ever sat in the presence of anyone who was so present. When people spoke, she listened. When she asked questions, she truly wanted to know the answers. She was a wonderful listener, a great conversationalist, a faithful friend. And kind. She generated goodness and this was her gift to all of us. I will always treasure my times in that great kiva room of theirs in the center of their home, the light streaming in the windows. I would glance out to see Albuquerque laid out below us—that resplendent valley below where so much miracle took place for me, for all of us. Those were magical times that I will always hold sacred.

Rudy forgave me for backing up into his mailbox, literally mowing it down, and for other lapses, no doubt. The last time I spoke to Rudy was on the phone. I called to say hello and check in. I was surprised that he answered the phone as in those later times he might not. We talked for a very long time. And when we said goodbye, I told him, as I always did, I love you. Silence on the other end of the line. Ni modo. It didn’t matter. I loved him.

There are dichos in Spanish that say many things in a very succinct and powerful way. Rudy was a man of dichos. He would be happy to know that I have called him and the Antepasados out with a dicho.

El Caldo de los Años. The Stew of the Years. Our Stew was Rich. Hearty. Full of Nourishment and Love. Gracias por Todo, Rudolfo Anaya. Toditito.

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Photos by Daniel Zolinsky

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New Mexico: A poem of the senses Denise Chávez

For Rudolfo Anaya Maestro

The pito of the cotton gin The sound of the nearby train at two in the morning No one calling me & me hearing the no one call & hearing what they say even if there are no words * Our mothers combing their long dark hair and rolling it into a bun a little askew but oh so strong The purple blue Organ Mountains at sunset The View from La Bajada coming into Santa Fe Crossing the river near Albuquerque near Jemez Pueblo La Sebastiana and her Cart, La Catrina & her beautiful hat La Huesuda & her bony elegance * Spanish English Navajo all at once and wanting to hear more The wind coming from the north east now the west the gentle wind the soft caressing wind the hard male wind blowing the trees and bringing lightning & rain Oh, rain please come rain, let me hear you again La Llorona calls for her children. . .Mis Hijos. . .mis hijos. . .¿Dónde están mis hijos?

A child runs on the hot sidewalk laughing An old woman in church sings: Bendito Bendito Sea Dios. Los angeles cantan y alaban a Dios Interminable rosaries in Spanish: Santa María de Dios Ruega por Nosotros pecadores. Ahora en el hora de nuestra muerte. Amen. * Red chile sauce that stings & cooks & boils & beats inside of me its hearty blood its lifeblood that runs through me my chile my chile my lovely mother chile Cebolla & lettuce, chile & melón, sandía & ajo, picking your own & growing your own.

Your mother’s face now & in memory your face now & how it is & how it was you remember how it was & you remember you are the many faces now & in dream Dichos a life full of Dichos: No hagas pedo y la gallina es tuya Cada Chango tiene su mecadito y yo el mío Honor, Privilegio y Placer El que no conoce a Dios, ante cualquier güey se hinca 64 | Issue 43

* Your little legs dancing & your voice singing Oh, María Madre Mia O Consuelo del mortal Apararme y guiarme a la patria celestial * Frijoles de la olla café de la olla anything de la olla Fideos secos o agüados Navajo tacos The sacred albóndigas the holy meatballs at Tortugas pueblo macarón y chicharrones & a shot of whiskey to brace you for the cold before you go out to see the dancers on the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe December 12 Marranitos Pan de Huevo Conchas Elotes Semitas Agua de Melón Sandía Limón Horchata, ay, Horchata Huevos Rancheros Huevos Mexicanos Chile Rellenos Chacales Posole Champurrado Chocolate de La Abuelita Bar-B-Q from the pit your family made Cotton candy and Fry Bread at the State Fair Apples from New Mexico Pecans from New Mexico Green chile from Hatch Red chile from Chimayó Your mother’s sopaipillas, sopa, pan & her wonderful arroz & whatever you have for me right now because I’m really hungry. . .so let’s eat, let’s dance, let’s remember.

Remember the stories the people the land Remember those people we love Let us honor them Dance for them Sing for them Remember Our Mother Our Mothers Our Father Our Fathers Nuevo Mexico ¡Qué Viva!

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Letter from the Editor- in-Chief Dear Readers,

Over this past year, we lived through ground-shaking history. Right in front of us, we witnessed the world change. It started with COVID, a global crisis claiming the lives of many, forcing worldwide lockdowns and in-home quarantines. Then there was the US Capitol insurrection, for which people are still being charged, months later. There was the other national crisis, the “other pandemic,” the racial struggle for institutional equality that people of color face. Yet, there were also moments of justice and triumph: a biracial women Vice Pesident, vaccine distribution, the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. The assault on an unarmed Black man took me back to the early nineties, when the country witnessed the LA riots and Rodney King assault. But this time, police were held accountable, an officer sentenced to prison. It might not feel like equality or justice, but the historic decision was unparalleled, and long overdue.

Yet, despite the world turning upside down, we at BMR somehow prevailed. We navigated through new digital territory to produce two great tributes in memory of Rudolfo Anaya. We emailed, Zoomed and texted. Blogged, Facebooked, tweeted and Instagrammed. Through it all, we read your submissions and collected images while remaining social-distanced, designing a couple of issues that I hope carry-on Mr. Anaya’s vision, regardless of the lockdown.

I’d like to thank our leader and faculty advisor, Lisa Chavez. Her support and overall guidance throughout all of this has been a blessing. Also, a huge thank-you to Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán for providing photos, giving an interview, contributing writing and networking on BMR’s behalf. Because of Melina’s vision and professional connections, we’ve had the privilege of working with acclaimed writers like Joy Harjo and Denise Chávez. I’d like to thank María Teresa Márquez, for her warm, informative interview, covering what Mr. Anaya meant to our literary community in New Mexico. To Denise Chávez, for helping with two consecutive issues, along with her husband, Daniel Zolinsky, for providing photos.

A special shout-out goes to our editorial staff, Mikaela Osler and Jennifer Tubbs, for design, and Rhea Ramakrishnan, for managing our website and blogs. Huge thanks is owed to our team of grad and undergrad readers as well, who read over 3,000 submissions in three months. Amazing! To incoming staff, Tyler Mortenson-Hayes, Cyrus Stuvland, Evelyn Olmos and Ruben Miranda-Juarez, good luck carrying the torch. Guided by Editor-in-Chief, Rhea Ramakrishnan, I look forward to great creative work out of our literary magazine.

Recently, I returned to the BMR office for the first time in fourteen months, to check on things.

Located on the UNM campus, the facility was empty and dark, a few ceiling lights on, for housekeeping.

The floor buzzed with an electric hum I’d never noticed among the regular clatter and conversations.

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Inside our office sat three messy desks collecting dust, books and boxes piled to the ceiling. A neglected bookshelf ran along one wall, not housing a single publication. With new staff coming in, it was my duty to give organization to the chaos. I unpacked the first few boxes, discovering print copies of past issues, dating back to 1987. There were four copies of our premier issue, simpler artwork on the cover. I found five copies of issue three, and a small stack of issue fours and fives. What happened to issue two? Did Rudy have a copy of that somewhere? Because if not, there was no record of it. In numerical order, I placed the backstock neatly on abandoned bookshelves, reaching up to issue 25.

Then they stopped, likely because we moved to a more accessible, cost effective online digital format, consistent with modern trends. Blue Mesa Review had come a long way since its inception in the late 1980s, before the internet, our full history laid out in front of me. Thirty-four years of Southwestern literary production, produced by UNM students and staff. It was only a minor part of Rudolfo Anaya’s lasting legacy. I thumbed through Issue One. I reread BMR’s original mission statement declaring that BMR was “a new literary magazine designed to serve the writers of our region.” Like Denise Chávez, Joy Harjo and Jimmy Santiago Baca. But Anaya also states “our focus is the Southwest, but we publish writers from any area.” Our history proves it.

In Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview, written by Chicano Lit critic Juan Bruce-Novia, Anaya explains how he worked for the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines in 1979, eight years before BMR. “I have seen changes,” he says of the publishing world. “Writers have become more interested in what Chicanos, Blacks, and women are doing...I see a great new generation of Asian American writers...

We do have a lot in common with many groups and we are beginning to work together.” Was this the same line of thinking that created Blue Mesa Review?

I’m not sure, but I know that I’m proud of BMR and all that it’s accomplished throughout the years. I’m also proud of what we accomplished with issues 42 and 43. And I’d like to think Rudy would be proud, too.

Sincerely, Mario Joseph Montoya Editor-in-Chief, Blue Mesa Review May 3, 2021

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Authors Carmelinda Scian Carmelinda Scian is an award winning author who has been published in the Malahat Review, Litro, Belletrist, UofT magazine, Prairie Fire, Accenti Magazine, the Fiddlehead, the SanAntonio Review, Magnolia, the Antigonish Review, and the Hong Kong Review. “Yellow Watch” was nominated for the 2018 Journey Prize. She was judge for Malahat’s Open Season contest in 2018 and is presentlya reader for the Fiddlehead Review.

She emigrated from Portugal to Toronto where she lives with her husband.

B .Tyler Lee B. Tyler Lee is the author of one poetry collection, With Our Lungs in Our Hands (Redbird Chapbooks, 2016), and her essay “A large volume of small nonsenses” won the 2020 Talking Writing Contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Puerto del Sol, Qwerty Literary Journal, Acting Up: Queer in the New Century (Jacar Press), and elsewhere. She teaches in the Midwest.

Emma Wu Emma Wu is a queer writer of color, environmental activist, and crossword enthusiast living in Philadelphia, PA with her partner and cat.

She is currently attending Rutgers-Camden University’s MFA program in fiction writing and holds a BA in Geology from Bryn Mawr College. Born into a bi-racial Asian American family in Texas, Emma’s literary practice is steeped in the dissonance between cultural reverence and dissent.

She writes to understand how we pass on and reshape memory, how it affects desire, and if we can ever really let it go. Emma was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and received the Katherine Fullerton Gerould Excellence in Writing Award in 2018.

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Authors Clare Banks Clare Banks is associate editor for Smartish Pace. A recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Hopkins Review, Mississippi Review, and Boulevard, among others. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland and lives in Baltimore City.

Natali Petricic Natali Petricic’s stories have appeared in Joyland, CALYX, Santa Monica Review, The Fem, The Common, and others. Recently, her linked short story collection was a finalist for the Restless Books 2020 Prize for New Immigrant Writing. Her novella, Leaf Boats, is part of the Running Wild Novel Anthology. She is a former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and PEN America Mark program participant. When she isn’t writing, Natali enjoys long walks, baking, and spending time with her husband and son.

Eliya Smith Eliya O. Smith is a writer from Ohio.

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Artists Sève Favre Sève Favre is a visual artist, originally from the French part of Switzerland. In 2005, she created her first modular artwork. She has exhibited in Switzerland and abroad. In 2020, Sève Favre was nominated for the Arte Laguna Prize in Installation and Sculpture. Passionate about the concept of integration, she concentrates on transcending the classical boundary between the artwork and the viewer. The main feature of her art is interactivity. The key words that support her concept are interaction (be together), variation (be different), and activity (be active). Her name for this experience is “intervariactivity.”

Michael Paramo Michael Paramo is a Queer Mexican-American artist and researcher from the suburbs of north Orange County (which occupy the stolen territories of the Tongva/Kizh, Acjachemen, and Payómkawichum).

They created AZE journal (azejournal.com) in 2016, where they publish journal issues on topics intersecting with asexuality, aromanticism, and agenderness. Influenced by their mother and artist Martha Guillen-Paramo, Michael has created art since they were a child. In 2018, they began creating digital self-portraits as part of a journey toward self-discovery. They are currently studying the intersections of aesthetics and decoloniality as a PhD student at the University of British Columbia.

Ernst Perdriel Ernst Perdriel was born in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He is a multi-field artist (visual art, photography, writing - French), designer and horticulturist.

He participates in solo and group exhibitions in visual arts since 1995. The artist uses mosaics, collages, landscaping, photography to talk about our complex era. Perdriel has contributed in numerous publications since 1992 as a writer, illustrator, artist, photographer and in self-publishing. His works have appeared in Sunspot Literary Journal, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Kolaj Magazine, Into the Void, The Healing Muse, Iris Literary Journal, 3Elements Literary Review and others. Learn more at www.ernstperdriel.com

K.A. Cummins K.A. Cummins explores storytelling in a variety of mediums, blending reality and imagination. Her artwork has been featured on the cover of Rattle, her writing has appeared on Havok Publishing, and she’s a Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards silver medalist. Cummins lives in Alabama with her husband, their youngest son, and cat named Spot. Connect with her through her website at https:// authorkacummins.com.

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Artists Kate Birch Kate Jarvik Birch is a full time visual artist, author, playwright, and daydreamer. Her art has been featured worldwide in stores like Target, Pier One and World Market, as well as in television series and major motion pictures such as, Transparent, Medium, Glee, Twenty-One Jump Street and Looper. Her essays and short stories have been published in literary journals including Indiana Review and Saint Ann’s Review. She is also the author of the YA novels PERFECTED, TARNISHED, UNRAVELED and DELIVER ME. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Daniel Zolinsky Daniel Charles Zolinsky was born in 1946 in Paris, France, to a French mother and Russian father. He moved to San Francisco at the age of ten. The age of 20 makes the beginning of many solitary voyages throughout the world—Europe, Africa, México, Asia, always with a camera. He settled in New Mexico in the early 1980s here he met his future wife, writer Denise Chávez and writer, Rudolfo Anaya.

The Himalayas marks the beginning of long-range photographic treks on foot. The discipline of photography and walking is a way of living as well as working. In Paris, he began his collaboration with Michel Fresson, the master printer of the rare archival Fresson color process leading to many exhibits of the work in Europe.

Currently, the primary focus is on the Río Grande and the Border as well as working on a book on a Ulyssean theme on the Greek and Italian Islands.

Stendhal said that “A novel is like a mirror carried along a road, so it is with photography.”

Albert Rosales Albert sold his first art piece in 4th grade, to the Albuquerque Children’s Museum. By age 13, he was airbrushing and selling t-shirts, learning graffiti techniques with both airbrush and spray can, allowing for quicker application and more realistic effects. At 18, he learned composition and mural creation at the Mayor’s Art Summer Institute. Since, he’s done art for various city and community projects, namely, the Albuquerque BioPark & Zoo, as well as restaurants Annapurna’s, O Ramen, and Poki Poki. As a native New Mexican, he hopes to bring awareness and change to the issues that face society through art and teaching.

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