Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine

Fall 2018

(noun): one who sings, or, the part of the bagpipe that plays a melody

Fall 2018 Macalester College Literary Magazine St. Paul, MN chanter@macalester.edu

Chanter would like to thank the following: All the incredible writers and artists who submitted their work Matt Burgess Iovanka from Custodial The Mac Weekly, clean your office The Macalester College Student Orgs Wikipedia page The Hegemonocle, for their Weird Al playlist All the bags we slapped along the way

Cover art: Untitled (Fallen Angel) (water color and gouache), Kai Arnone

Editor-in-Chief: Claire Grace Literary Editor: Miriam Moore-Keish Associate Literary Editors: Maya Crowl-Kinney, Brooke Leonard

Art Editor: Ema Erikson

Associate Art Editor: Maria Bodansky Submissions Manager: Shine Chin Associate Submissions Manager: Asher de Forest

Staff:

Cynthia Aguilar Alice Asch Lily Duquette Cole Galando Liv Gigliotti Teddy Holt Krysta Limin Xochitl Quiroz Anisha RajBhandary Aron Smith-Donovan Margaret Straw Estelle Timar-Wilcox

Writing •

september prayer 7 Jesse Claire End of the Road with No Name 8 Maija Hecht The Hermit, A Major Arcana, And Why It Is Upside Down 9 Katia Sievert Almost Still 10 Asher de Forest Still Life of Desire 11 Teddy Holt Poetic Sequence 12 Angela Nguyen New 14 Sam Knego A Poem for Schizos 15 I. Malachy Ward Sun 16 Alice Asch Emergency Room 18 Abraham Asher Hometown 19 Ben LeBlanc The Must 19 Ben LeBlanc silence 19 Anisha RajBhandary Monday on the Metro 20 Julia Carpenter what my mother taught me 21 Aron Smith-Donovan Yosemite 22 Teddy Holt The Mess 43 Adelaide Gaughran-Bedell Hospitality 47 Emma Daily Meow 48 Koada Heacock The Chair 50 I. Malachy Ward A.M. 52 Maija Hecht Your Mother’s Wedding Night 53 Claire Grace Human 54 Shine Chin

Pondering God and Other Abstractions Broken Bells Ringing When Cleveland Was Carnival body driving home from the Ozarks

55 56 58 59 62

Elyssa Cook Alice Asch Abraham Asher Ruby Elliott Zuckerman Katie Woodhouse

Art • The Flowers in the Radiator 23 Anjali Moore My Cups Runneth Over 24 Lily Freemond You are What you Eat 25 Holly Ellingson Untitled 26 Kai Arnone Thursday 27 Ema Erikson Untitled 28 Lara Knopf Morning at Como Observatory 29 Ruby Elliott Zuckerman Ellie 30 Emerald Thole Mark 31 Marissa Mohammed Gold Sea 32 Kelsey Rodriguez Maybe That Will Do 33 Panje (PJ) Nambao Parts of a Whole 34 Malini Basu And One Besides 35 Ema Erikson Reach 36 Panje (PJ) Nambao Violet Storm 37 Kelsey Rodriguez Self Portrait 38 Zoe Biel-Haas Dunn Regulars 39 Sydney Petersen Portrait of the Artist Holding Her Own Head 40 Lily Freemond Meshes of the Afternoon 41 Sydney Petersen Untitled 42 Lara Knopf

september prayer Jesse Claire after Beverly we have been scumbled into raining season. last night’s lightning is still humming in my teeth, rattling my jaw, shaking up those peanut butter gums a bit. now my grandmother is strawberries and burning meat (immolated, was her word, which i will borrow like an incantation) i have scorched a lot of toast these past few days. i watch the burner tickling the bottom of the pot like sea kelp in time lapse, black enamel kisses that i scrape off with my thumbnail and then under my thumbnail is dirty all day, you’d think by now i’d have an understanding: what they mean by cause and effect. i wake up dry as a bone but i touch myself anyway (call it optimism), i forget my umbrella on purpose so if it rains tonight at least i’ll get clean coming home, call that optimism too. i forget my lunch for a whole week straight, but that was just forgetting, so mark it down as good old-fashioned negligence i guess. dear god: may i be a comfort to myself. may this sore on the left side of my tongue work some things out and get a little less angry. may a beautiful butch rub me all the way down. may i sleep eight hours and get my fill of rest, and may i wake up tomorrow in my childhood bed talking out loud to the sun. 7

End of the Road with No Name Maija Hecht We’d found a hollow hill in the woods. We were all under ten years old. All scrawny armed and scratched skin, running with bare feet. Tall grass, past the knees. An afternoon spent binding tree limbs with twine, slung over shoulders. A low tunnel and a room riddled in spires. I asked the woman if the grass we ran through was the kind used for baking bread, and she laughed. Pulled a long stalk between her fingers, peeling seeds from the cusp. Soft, handed them to me. Asked me to tell her how they tasted. We strung our wooden hollow with plastic beads and drawings on soggy paper. Argued over who slept in the larger room. Didn’t really sleep, just pretended. We were playing house but no one wanted to be the mother for long. We wanted to pretend to stir soup and sleep and fight and guess at what love could look like. We decided to make our house real-life. Prepared for a trip overnight, provisions secured in bedsheets. Wobbling flashlight beam and low moon glow, somewhere distant. Wooden beams shuddered and our hollow seemed to hum. Playing sleep and pretending not to fear the dark. We had no mother. We had a father instead because he could be stern and had no responsibility to comfort. Didn’t make it through the night. The woman told us we weren’t allowed to live in our wooden house anymore. We shouted at her. Didn’t understand until we watched twin black bear cubs tumble through the tall grass. The woman said they had a mother, and that our parents wouldn’t like her much. That she was too much like a father, and too close for comfort. We watched her lumbering home in the morning under the scope of a metal gun. The woman’s son was learning to be stern but still looked away after setting the sights. We were pulled back by the elbows and screaming, silenced by the shot. I lifted my hands from my ears. Red from fingernails. Stinging. The wind swayed through the grass. She’d collapsed out in the field, heavy and black. I pulled seeds from the stalks and held them out to the wind. Watched them float away. 8

The Hermit, A Major Arcana, And Why It Is Upside Down Katia Sievert I didn’t mean to get my cards read tonight, perched in gray sweatpants in the corner chair on the fringe of all the mysticism but here I am, asking a rectangle stack about my future. I know she bought this off Amazon weeks ago, she’s still reading the manual they came with. Shuffle, cut, stack, splay; me, curled up into myself. It is too late at night, or maybe I am too quiet for this ceremony. Later this month I will shuffle alone around the bowels of this building, ducking into old haunts, padding through cinder block mazes in my socks. It will be too late to be awake and someone will stop me in the hall and I will tell her that I feel weird, and she will say same, and I will walk away wondering how many of us tonight are resurrecting dead memories or crawling through the past. Or maybe just trying to find the way forward because no one tells me anything anymore. I want her to tell me what’s going on, or the cards, or fate, or Amazon. It is 12:30 in the morning as she turns them over and I am at the mercy of these hands. Two of the cards are upside down and she is looking up at me, she is asking me how many of my problems I’ve created by myself. 9

Almost Still Asher de Forest After the unveiling in Los Angeles, where family and close friends placed rocks on stones (1927-2017, 1959-2016), Godmother Elizabeth drove. It was just her and I in a car driving on and through and under L.A. concrete, traffic, blue skies. I want to be better at lying, tell you we discussed God and whether death is an illusion or how in the car I discovered the most elusive secret of grief. If I were a better liar I might reveal the drive was a dream through traffic, under concrete, on blue skies. At the end of the dream, I might say, I saw my dad and nana, young boy and mother playing, or just as old as they were, or just my dad. Godmother Elizabeth drove and we talked about loss, school, Dad, books I’d read that summer, how my mom and younger brother were doing. I know there were clouds, cars and roads, bus stops and delis and billboards advertising ABC’s fall lineup. I know I was there in the car with Godmother Elizabeth, even as I start to remember it all moving slowly, almost still like a dream. 10

Still Life of Desire Teddy Holt Tell me about the man who lived underground. About how winter dissolved off of him into your arms. Tell me how you buried him alive again and again, his arms coming up for air like a breaching whale, his pupils blown absolutely wide. Death or lust. But he lived. So what. You’re just going to bury him again. Keep going. Tell me about the night you offered him scotch, two figs, your bed. How the bulb was dying so you could barely see him. Only feel him. Tell me about the many small deaths: yours, his. About the way his mouth moved. Warped. Told you that you were good. Lied. Tell me about how he was asleep and you were just waking up, and how you took the shovel and scooped him out piece by piece and prayed that he would never come back. Tell me about how he always comes back: the one living thing in a kingdom of worms and muck. Tell me that you wanted him. Do not let me forget.

Poetic Sequence Angela Nguyen I. Love “The Kiss” Kneeling on the shoulder of nature, he steals the Kiss. Manipulate love through man’s Achille’s heel, the Kiss. Morticians’ bodies yield an unwanted embrace, while Petri dishes of bacteria conceal the Kiss. His dead hands hold me hostage; as the artist puts up Censor bars and gold ripples to hide this ordeal, the Kiss. Placed in front of a Hamilton backdrop for many Bystanders’ eyes that don’t mind to third wheel the Kiss. His charcoal hair embellished with moss has rusted mine. We’re inseparable by A’s golden seal––the Kiss.

II. Sex “The Virgin” Objectified, held in a man’s fist: compile the Virgin. Why do men find it appealing to defile the Virgin? Purple fossil shells and Purple Rain vinyl of old men Disguise the intentions of the pedophile––the Virgin. Porcelain dolls mask their emptiness with a painted smile; They cannot long or lust in fear we exile the Virgin. My voluptuous body obscured by graceful models, Never beautiful, hidden, forever profiled the Virgin. This molten golden crown kills my sexuality. Angela––the lewd and once in a while the Virgin.

III. Drugs “Beethoven Frieze” Mary Jane eyes inducing a chaotic Beethoven Frieze. Stuck in this ruthless world, we crave narcotic Beethoven Frieze. This haven of Persian goddesses stepping on PAC-MAN ghost, Lay waste to innocence. Hello, erotic Beethoven Frieze. I see zombies sulking in the back for their “Thriller” moment; Attention is my addict’s idiotic Beethoven Frieze. Poison Ivy’s giggling friendship with Regina George leaves me Envious of affection... what quixotic Beethoven Frieze! Am I destined to be an outcast in blue rolling mooncakes? Angela Nguyen, this is no despotic Beethoven Frieze.

New Sam Knego The new cars sound like jet engines, they said And it’s true. I watched for a moment and listened. I muted it (it sounds best loud, too loud) but it’s okay I could still hear it The same way I can still hear my friend exclaiming but that’s So Fast As if that’s not how race cars are supposed to be (but to say so seemed uncouth) I wonder if she knows How the new cars sound Not firsthand, or even from video just as a sort of feeling Because everything is getting better (I think) as time goes on Better, and faster. And probably shinier at least on reflection You know [no?] I don’t think I would have been the first person To go on a jet plane It’s not that I’m not brave (I’m not) I just don’t know how I feel About the future And I don’t really know if fast, shiny cars Are a thing of the future or past [passed?] I can’t see the future But I can see that the new cars sound like jet engines and here [hear?] Is something. (new) 14

A Poem For Schizos I. Malachy Ward Schizophrenic on a walk in city rivers, for heat and steel’s his God: Lobsters are his only friends, but any-body, organs lacking, loves he, smashing by his dual pincers—You, o Man of too much Faith, believe in dirty August dogs whose Church will fall, whose shell will crack in bleeding piles of twine, it lays in gutters like trash even now, for Oedipus is dying, Schizo-futures eat the past alive

Sun Alice Asch Frances had nimble fingers that moved with the sureness of a piano’s easy melody, hair that frizzled into mango-colored waves, a laugh that made everything funnier, and a knack for poetry. We met at eight years old, in art class, when she exclaimed from the desk behind me, “Lily! That’s so pretty!” My cheeks warmed in the sudden spotlight, but I returned the compliment with a small smile, grateful that someone had noticed my curly pastel daffodils. At lunch that day, she traded her avocado for my vanilla yogurt. Once, in fifth grade, Jeremy Wilkins confronted us wearing dirty flannel and a smirk. “Why don’t you ever talk to anyone other than Frances, Lily? I thought you were mute until I heard the two of you together.” “She talks to me because I’m not an asshole,” Frances spat back, and I couldn’t help thinking that she’d thrown a dart at this boy’s rubber balloon skin and it was now crumpling before our eyes. “Thanks,” I said as we laid under a tire swing that afternoon. I was crying even though I was glad to have her around to pop mean balloons for me. She shifted onto her side and propped her chin in her hands. “Look at the sun, Lily. Isn’t it nice to know that its only job is to keep us alive? To burn and burn so that we’re always warm enough, no matter what happens?” The summer before our junior year of high school, Frances worked the cash register at a Baskin-Robbins and I sold fresh raspberries at the Farmer’s Market. In the evenings, the sun still blazing stubbornly on, we’d lounge on the strip of lawn behind the swing set and she’d narrate her daily endeavors for me. In June, she said she had kissed a boy in the room where they stored the plastic spoons. I asked how it felt. Like she was a strawberry in a thunderstorm, she said. Like someone was picking each of her seeds off one by one, until her fleshy red skin was soaked with rainwater and she had quenched a thirst she never knew she had, and when the clouds dried, she was a tangled patchwork of pink and white. And I wondered how it would feel to be plucked at and drenched in rain. In July she taught her little brother how to ride a bike. “It’s like I build the world for him,” she said. “Like when I’m murmuring 16

bedtime stories in the amber glow of his nightlight, I’m stenciling graphite buildings against a blanket of blue sky. Like I’m swirling green watercolor into leafy trees. Like I’m pouring concrete into squares of pavement for us both to stand on with firm feet. Because he’ll always believe me. I’m the older one.” And I, an only child, wondered what it would be like to draw someone’s universe for them. In the middle of a lazy August day we laid under the tire swing and she told me that her father had hit her seven times that morning, then thrown her against the kitchen table. She’d torn her lip on one of its wooden corners. When she opened her mouth wide for me, I could see the beginnings of a scar. I asked if it had happened before and she said yes, twice last week and many, many more times before that. As she yanked grass from the hot soil until the dirt was crunched under her nail beds and imprinted on her thumbs, I saw the poet inside her retreat quietly into the seam of her ripped lip. “I’m afraid of my dad, Lily,” she whispered. “He doesn’t like me.” And I wondered what it would feel like to be afraid of my own father, my father who still sang me rhyming songs we’d made up when I was a child, my father who had once driven across the city for hours searching for a stuffed purple-horned snail that I’d lost. I held Frances’ hand and thought about how on weekends, when I awoke in the late morning, hair matted with sleep and eyes squinty, I’d greet my dad in the living room, and he’d stretch the syllables of my name like dough, “Lil-y.” No one else said it quite like that, with so much relish. I stared up at the pulsing orange ball that is supposed to keep us alive and imagined wrapping my fingers around it until its heat peeled the skin off my palms and then hurling it overhand like a baseball, snickering as it spiraled through the milky way, You failed. We’re not alive. We’re breathing and coughing and bleeding but we’re as good as dead, so you may as well do us all a favor and blow up already. “I like you, Frances.” I said. When I got home, I called DCFS.

Emergency Room Abraham Asher you can’t help me, the sick man bays, as the adamance flees from his face with every crutched word. the doctor’s brown skin is taut as adrenaline glows in her eyes– and smiles in her calm, distilled voice. if you do not want me to treat you, she says, i will not treat you. the night is fire-and-blanket cold. coffee sits in a glass pot on the waiting room table, unnoticed by the bleary, untouched since 7. i have been practicing for two decades, she tells him. i know these nights better than you know your own terror, and, believe it or not, i know your terror too. but if you’d rather be helped by our intern, i will leave you pinned to your cross and let her know. if you do not want me to treat you, i will not treat you. in fact you are free, my brother, to leave. to rise from this hospital bed, to step out of your hospital robe into the black & the white. 18

Hometown Benjamin LeBlanc A scalped carpet flaps In a new ruin—snowfall Feeding through the roof

The Must Benjamin LeBlanc Hungry Jack Pancake Sliding down the metal door —I hate this bunker

silence Anisha RajBhandary the words sit in my throat, a sack of eggs, pastel and sad. I swallow one egg at a time––egg shells cracking.

Monday on the Metro Julia Carpenter Rainy days drip wet Renoir paint into puddles collecting in the morning metro, gazes stuck on the ground like gum— I sit in an unfolded-up fold-up chair warm from a remembered commute, frozen inside with chipped red nail polish on pinky finger tapping on loose brown button, misplaced bobby pin bouncing over molded Monday rhythm— outside is fluid, river rising thick with history over a train-tracked future and metro speeds up sucking seconds like bubbles through a straw out the window—I lean back in plastic chair and try to save details from the blur, fading taste of minty Trident gum and wavy nose reflection but find my feet torn across two continents drifting apart from a ruined Pangea at a fast pace too slow or a slow pace too fast— sitting elbow to elbow and very alone, I try to smell the color of my sigh mixing with the smoke in silver-ringed fist beside me feeling seconds slip through fingers like sand, counting down metro stops and months to let the unfolded-up fold-up chair snap—slowly—back into place.

what my mother taught me Aron Smith-Donovan i have found the answer, i think, to what ails me it lives in the back of my throat nowadays cherry, sugar free, extra menthol cough drops never did anything but sweeten the deal my mother tells me often, she says she knows what she wants and she gets it, but she pops her red candies and brews her sweet tea and i can hear the way her throat whistles in C minor she tells me, she says, she can see what i do. but she forgets that i know all the secrets she won’t keep so we cover our throats while we’re in the house and no one sees but each one knows it we keep green tea in the cupboard and a kitchen scale on the counter and the bisacodyl pills hidden neatly in our drawers i hear some people inherit jewelry instead every day or so i feel it worsen behind my tongue again and after dinner i sit and i reach for it with wanting fingers and through the walls, two worlds away, my mother sits and does the same you have your father’s nose, and i am jealous of its simplicity all my mother ever gave me was her bruised knuckles, rotten teeth, and heady taste for vomit.

Yosemite Teddy Holt Give me existence, I said. So Mother spit me up onto land’s open palm, and land deposited me into the cold mouth of Father. His tongue was a bezel fitted imperfectly to me, but not for long; anyone who came before me told the story without saying words. Round they were, round and smooth, perfectly shaped. Like teeth. Little gravestones for a past that burns. I burned. I loved my Mother. But Father took me in his many teeth like a walnut, and so I became a tooth, round and smooth. Tumbled headfirst towards deeper water. A fish that lived underground, a deer with no legs and no Mother. Mother, where are you? All I feel is cool. I need Father to be eaten, need him alive but burning. And I know you are just waiting. Please. Open your mouth. Melt me.

The Flowers in the Radiator oil on canvas Anjali Moore 23

My Cups Runneth Over oil on panel Lily Freemond 24

You Are What You Eat black and white photography Holly Ellingson 25

Untitled watercolor Kai Arnone 26

Thursday digital Ema Erikson 27

Untitled pen and watercolor Lara Knopf 28

Morning at Como Observatory pencil and color pencil Ruby Elliott Zuckerman 29

Ellie graphite with digital color Emerald Thole 30

Mark charcoal Marissa Mohammed 31

Gold Sea acrylic on wood Kelsey Rodriguez 32

Maybe That Will Do ink on paper Panje (PJ) Nambao 33

Parts of a Whole copperplate etching and digital collage Malini Basu 34

And One Besides digital Ema Erikson 35

Reach ink on paper Panje (PJ) Nambao 36

Violet Storm acrylic on wood Kelsey Rodriguez 37

Self Portrait digital Zoe Haas-Biel 38

Dunn Regulars pencil on paper Sydney Petersen 39

Portrait of the Artist Holding Her Own Head oil on canvas Lily Freemond 40

Meshes of the Afternoon ballpoint pen on cardstock Sydney Petersen 41

Untitled oil on masonite Lara Knopf 42

The Mess Adelaide Gaughran-Bedell I am David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide. I apologize to you for the mess. Sun slips through tree branches And the pavement is dappled with light If green had a smell it would be the smell of here: this park I used to love this park Immolation is what they will name him When they intellectualize this act When they immortalize this life in paper in ink Immolation is how they will know him The People with the Stories, always hungry for more they will carve up his body with knifelike pens, penlike knives they will sell him for parts I have never wondered what it would be like to burn There are five blocks down from her house to mine Five blocks make up The one hill in the one park That used to stain my legs With pulpy-pink scrapes purpley-blue bruises Once, with a flowered helmet buckled-snug under my chin by her father’s hands (he had steady hands) I let the wind rip my hair from its place on my collarbone For five blocks I flew There are parts that are lost within the paper the ink 43

Did he use a match or a lighter? Did he hesitate, a little? Was it triggered— the snow in April? Was it slow burning? purposeful? planned? Was he the same man who played pretend? Where was Albus Dumbledore in the basement, cloaked in laundry? Where was David? Was it quiet in the park that morning? Could you hear him scream? In Spanish today we talked about the last article we read and we conjugated verbs: Me incendio Te incendias Nos incendiamos Your friend will tell you it is a noble way to die As she crunches tortilla chips He died for what he loved A crumb brushed off her lip punctuates the sentence She reaches her hand back into the bag And plops another one into her mouth Before I went away, We hurried our goodbyes Because eighteen years is a long time Because one-thousand-two-hundred-and-eleven miles is much more than five blocks sloping down This year was the first, Out of eighteen That we spent Halloween apart We walked four paces ahead of her father down the hill From her house to mine Our hair curled us into two Hermione Grangers Our stomachs as full 44

as the pumpkin-orange bags clutched in his hands (he had steady hands) My acrylic-painted, sequin-ladened stick paled in comparison to her real wooden wand, Her dad had given it to her, a blue bow tied around the black box with velvet lining the inside It was made of sandpaper-smooth wood with a carved crevice for her to put each of her five fingers; it tapered gracefully where mine splintered abruptly off I had never wondered what it would be like to wonder what it would be like to watch my father burn We walked four paces ahead of her father And maybe we missed something Maybe, We did not see him eye the the field to our left, The one by the volleyball nets Or step over the bleeding rainbow on the ground; the oil-painted pavement Maybe we missed nothing at all, somehow we missed everything Burnt blood turns the green grass black, I have never wondered what it would be like to bathe in gasoline To bathe in gasoline and suffocate in the smell suffocate in the smell of your burning the smell of your burning flesh your burning flesh and a little green, if it had a smell it would be the smell of here this park, I used to love this park Sun slips through tree branches And the pavement is dappled with light Five minutes time until his husband arrives, Two joggers open the note intended for the Times hidden in a glad garbage bag In the grass by the volleyball net The words written with purpose, 45

in neat, curling letters by her father’s hands, (he had steady hands) I am David Buckel and I just killed myself by fire as a protest suicide. Most humans on the planet now breathe air made unhealthy by fossil fuels, and many die early deaths as a result — my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves. I apologize to you for the mess. There is only one place in my city where you can’t see the buildings watching you Where you can smell the smell of air not cigarette smoke and hot dogs; not gasoline and pollution; not garbage and dust; not burnt rubber from car tires; not burnt bodies of men you thought you knew Just air, clean and dewey If green had a smell it would be the smell of here: this park, I used to love this park.

Hospitality Emma Daily So the sun keeps setting and rising, and you’ll learn to be asleep for one of them because it gets cold here, and you’ll need your strength to do what you have to do to stay here. You won’t have thought of little things, like how the air will take the warmth and moisture from the membranes of your fingertips. You’ll need good gloves. Every morning you’ll go out and tend the cattle, because although they are ancient and knowing and strong and warm and have visible breath like hot sulfur, they’re mortal too. This will go on a while, we reckon, and you might as well stay with us because we will learn to take care of each other. I see a head atop your shoulders. When we were your age I can’t say the same. Remember, dear? Oh yes, we were ungrateful and petty. You see the world. You don’t know, do you? About those old things? How we took and took and took and took? Nothing to it now, dear. You’ll see the soil turn from dark and rich to dry and loose, and caked onto the hills and back again. Your hands will soften to our furnace, but this land will never thaw for your shovel. Your skin will become rough and chapped. It may bleed. For a while, you’ll taste the snow in the back of your throat but then you won’t notice again ’til next fall. You’ll need good boots. Your snot will freeze. You’ll learn that to be still is to forfeit your warmth. You’ll learn how much heat is in your torso. We will share with you everything we have. We think you might just like it here. 47

Meow Koada Heacock I wheel him out of his cedar room, nursing home moose patterns, the linens forest green. Green like you’re not dying, green like it’s not a hospital, green like a fading mind. People here might last. They might not, Patricia, the head nurse, files her nails at the front counter. Calls me sweetie and offers me huckleberry pie. He’s sitting there, a wad of crumpled flesh paper, wheels becoming legs, drool becoming breath, wills turning sundried and wary. His eyes have become golden, bright yellow like a coyote’s. Depthless. On the patio I light two cigarettes for him, place them on his withered lips just so that I won’t have to watch him rattle. “They steal my DVDs.” Farm cats doddle by, the valley chirps and glows, mountains and clouds seep into one another, a fat sun casts long shadows. He flips off a plane, roaring over the wheat, dipping and twirling. His fingernails are too long. Trying so hard, I can see how hard it is, 48

to pull himself out of that debris. The mess of missing cells, craters in a nerve wire, in every cranial lobe. How much of your matter can you lose before you aren’t you? I reckon he’s almost there. Already there. He used to hate cats. Gave me a sawed down BB gun to keep them out, shoot at their feet. Them cats will fly. Kill some birds too. I shot one through the eye, flung it at his battered boots. His eyes ask me to remember someone else, while he speaks nonsense, I am afraid. “Is it bad?” he’s looking at me and looking nowhere, choking and gasping. It is nothing. But I tell him it isn’t bad. He’s relieved when I leave, left to his westerns and his bible. Cats don’t mind the dead and the dying. So he likes cats now.

The Chair I. Malachy Ward “You damn degenerate, Tim, get off my chair!” I shouted to him. God, how beautiful! I began to sweat. O the wondrous mahogany! My eyes met molasses wood with fine engraved features, with expert handworked curvatures of arms to rest your hands upon and a bent back to ease your spine—yes!—so smooth, so tactile, so couth—now defiled! Tim looked at me perplexed (as my face was so wet), and he couldn’t tell if it was my crying or thick sweat. And yet, I saw him true and saw his dirt, his grime, his gruel all fall with a force of a shadow on the saintly relic of mine. Did he not see his crime? Could he not see the divine beauty of my chair? Or could he not see his own depravity? Or did he see it all? And otherwise not care? In throes of panic I blotted my face with Italian silken drapes that hung from the office’s only window. Drier, and no more a crier, a face then looked to me. Who are you? Oh it’s me! And I held in my hands the drapes, and a sweaty impression of my face looked back, an immaculate shroud of pain and terror; yet my painting of salt and earth I couldn’t bear—and so I threw aside the dirtied veil and held the knuckles of my fist on my head before I closed my eyes—then I could sigh. “Sigh!” said I. “Are you done?” asked Tim; only his lips were in motion—he was so unmoved. I went behind the desk between us in an effortless twirl, and then spoke, “Not yet. Not till you unseat my chair, you… you ignoble Eastern!” “Arthur, you…” he mindlessly searched for a retort without urgency and spoke lazily, self-assuredly easily, “you, you cantankerous Lebanese bastard, I’ve told you for the hundredth time that I must sit down for my health.” He gave a petit-cough. “What health you Armenian dreg?” I coughed back. 50

“Well,” now he WHEEZED and took a crinkled used hanky to his mouth, “Well, it is actually quite serious Arthur, as I’ve already told to you.” Another cough, fainter than before, escaped his fat lips, its expulsion so weak I swear I could see the rancid exhalation pulse its way over his knees, over the carpet, over the desk until it wrapped my eyes and nose and ears like filthy film. “Let me put this in simpler terms Tim: you are dirty and disgusting, and I don’t want you in my beautiful chair. You’re quite simply not worthy—not worthy of her! “Her?” said Tim—both his eyes floated up. “Yes, her,” said I, “what else for such a beauty? he? … him? … Tim?” Like a double barrel shotgun, air burst from my nostrils and kicked my head back in a self-delighted grin. “And as for your health Tim—Timmy—Timbo! If you insist your health’s so poor, then go and sit upon the floor! For so long as your wretched ass leaves the chair, it’s fine with me—what do I care? I don’t care in fact — I don’t care at all. All I know is I’ll win today—the time is mine, Tim—Listen! I’ll have the last say!” “I would not be so sure, Arthur,” replied Tim to me. And the tensed air snapped as a faint crack could be heard, and the chair whimpered. The valves in each pit and beneath the lips and ears and all about the neck of mine then bursted open. By God, I could see the end! the crying beast will live but a second before her craftsmanship is torn away! gone! and gone forever! and seen again after today yet never! All on account of only one man. “O wooden prince of Turkish fame on which I’d sit the day away — who now in two is cracking open — forget not your master’s face! and remember me above, if only so I can sit upon your padded seat once more in love! till death! till death, dearest friend! adieu! o adieu!” Now the foul and dim Tim did make his move and dig his ass deeper, he laughed, and the chair’s bosom fell in nearer towards the floor as her brownish flesh burst forth, and the chair was no more, only splinters, dust, and lastly the Armenian whore. 51

A.M. Maija Hecht Body of a little bird, She had. A metallic taste on the tongue that may have been Blood, but maybe something sweeter Sweetness, unwelcome at 2:43 A.M. A.M. of course, to make it easy You always tell people you love her but really you’ve just Loved her. She’s every summer night that’s blended accidentally into morning Under the calm of a warm Bottle of bitter red wine, hidden in the closet Holding dull scissors, Small scissors The ones your mother buys for kid art projects Dark hair in the sink She’s whispering into your ear as light begins to pour through blinds Not for the safety of secrets, Solely to save throats, too raw From speech, thoughts too much A mess To rise above their whisper. Who we are in waking is better Said, softly. And who we’ve been for months, And months, Apart Is better buried in the bottle now empty Things we’ll only say Just now, as the sun begins to rise Just with the pretext of I’m so drunk, and– We’re so tired, and– We’ll strip ourselves to trembling honesty And fall asleep, and wake up, just like every other day

Your Mother’s Wedding Night Claire Grace The night your mother met your father his breath spread a smoke against her cheek she hadn’t smelled since college. He told her to lighten up, to speak up, told her he was high that night to honor his college buddy who last week fired a bullet between his wife’s breast then turned the gun on himself. He laughed and your mother said a prayer in the bar that night. Pressed fingernail moons into her palms, felt the weight of his arm around her waist, rubbing into her skin like rope. Four years after when your mother married your father he told her falling in love with her made him feel something in his chest he had never felt and she imagined a bullet ricocheting off of his tuxedoed shoulder and going straight through her.

Human Shine Chin At five years old, my only sister accepted her management position over a new life with poise. In one of my early memories, she and I were on an unsteady raft when it abruptly swerved and threw us both into the ocean. I fell hard into the deep sea. I can still feel the salt sting my eyes and water rush into my nose. This is how I die, my underdeveloped mind thought, unable to grasp the concept of ‘floatation’, when my sister bravely fought the ferocious waters and pulled us both to the surface. I can still feel her firm grasp as I clung desperately. Her tight grasp could also be an iron-grip pinch. Discipline was her forte, she could strike down any and all irritating antics of a child with no sympathy. My fear of her wrath was so prevailing that our mom often threatened to summon it when I was misbehaving. The mere thought of her could straighten any attitude, but I never doubted her affection for me. Here’s a note she once left me: I know I said some terrible things today but always know that I love you. PS: Don’t tell mom about this note. Our mom still does not know about this note. For 9 years, I worshipped my sister’s divine character but my parents seemed unconvinced. “She’s struggling too.” I thought I could prove them wrong. After much whining, crying, and telling, I successfully gained a position in her heavily guarded base. I basked in the glory of being in her usually forbidden bedroom, almost forgetting my mission until my eyes followed her outstretched arm reaching above me. Her sleeve pulled back to reveal her thin wrist. Several fresh, clean cuts were carved into her skin. She quickly covered them up. Our matching brown eyes met. “Don’t tell mom.” My vision stumbled, unable to focus on my sister’s normally towering frame. The dull red wounds bore into my tender brain. I rushed out of the room. That evening I clung to our mom. I never told. 54

Pondering God and Other Abstractions Elyssa Cook I came across a church one night In the days leading up to summer’s demise Illuminated only By an immense stained-glass window Lit from behind So that its colors glowed softly Against the street far below. I wondered briefly If there was a God Sitting on the pews Or lighting the candles in the church Or watching from the window Looking down at the cars and pedestrians And the girl whose head hung out the window Who tried to sip the night air As though it were champagne. But my thoughts Were quickly directed elsewhere As my car passed the church, A ship in the night, And the God behind the stained glass sighed Wishing he were in the car Driving endlessly towards the open road.

Broken Bells Ringing Alice Asch In the graveyard, the soil is a scrubbed wooden floor topped with bits of frozen dirt and half cheerios Pencil shavings settle between the ridges Circles of grape bubble gum tattooed with tooth marks are twisted into cracks in the panels stuck to notes drawn in sneaky scrawl do you like like me? The tombstones are steel lunch pails and the coffins desks with their legs upturned Tell me why On the board, snowy chalk scratches and leaves a trail of blood The problem of the day 17 times 2 minus 8 The teacher asks for volunteers Sandy and Marjory raise their hands Tell me why Sandy watches as Ms. S reads The Cat in the Hat, and it is as if her teacher is a puppet master and the words are marionettes that she commands to dance by artfully tugging invisible strings She fingers the black dots and slashes and wills them to come alive for her, too Tell me why They are dangling on the blissful edge of Christmas Uneven trees are cut from lime green cardstock Twirls of rosy ribbon tickle noses and feet Tell me why She squeezes through clenched teeth “stop it” When her friend’s skin scrapes gravel cheeks aflame with childhood’s righteous indignation Tell me why She cups her palm on her mother’s stomach and a fetal heartbeat pumps against her earlobe Flashes of a brother who will be hers, all hers 56

flicker in a corner of her mind Tell me why And the calendar flips from December to February Now Marjory is taller and leaner she likes the way it feels to purse her lips and rub in the crimson lipstick until she makes a pop and smiles tenderly with red-stained braces Tell me why She snips her hair with kitchen scissors so the ends curl around her ears just because Tell me why She presses inky poetry into the blue-lined margins of loose leaf meant for calculus and slips into her history binder a dog-eared page of Little Women pockmarked with dried tear drops Tell me why And it’s Valentine’s Day I heard on the news they were making cards when the bells broke Tell me why They ring and ring but there is no sound to save the gunned down silence No blast to ripple through the echoes of prayer No ding to fill the bullet holes So the quietness pulls into itself clasps its hands around its knees face wet and lungs working too hard No one there to tuck quilted covers under its chin Only broken bells ringing nothing Tell me why Crackly mirages of Sandy’s brother and Marjory’s wedding ring smack the ground like dominoes and fan out into an accordion of graves Tell me why, goddamnit 57

When Cleveland Was Carnival Abraham Asher They once asked Ian Hunter, the British rocker, in the basement of some underground joint, black aviators and faux grimace strapped to his face, why ever would you write a song about… Cleveland? Bone-chilling wind whipping in off the lake, Republic Steel black smoke swallowing the gray sky, population-fleeing plant-closing river-on-fire 10-cent-beer-night broken-windows bomb-city sulfur-in-the-air end-of-the-line get-out-of-town Cleveland, O-H-I-O? Hunter drew a breath and grinned, and when he spoke, his voice came out splayed and low– and you were with him on the corner of East 18th and Euclid, drinking in Rock & Roll and mainlining the Moondog Show. Cleveland was ‘uncool.’ LA and New York were ‘cool.’ I didn’t see it that way, he said. Lotta heart in Cleveland, he said. Lotta heart.

body Ruby Elliott Zuckerman I had a dream about my paternal grandpa about a month ago. The dream was full of grey light. It was blue and blurred. It was the kind of light we’ve been having a lot here these past several days. Overcast light. Midafternoon overcast light. We were on a train. The train was very clean, with rows of seats facing each other in pairs. The cushions were blue. I was laying with my head in my grandpa’s lap. This kind of physical affection has faded between us, but even a few years ago would hardly have been abnormal. I have always craved touch anywhere I can get it, and crawled into my grandpa’s lap years after it normally would have been acceptable. In the dream, my grandpa was running his hands through my hair while we were talking. Every once in a while, he would slip into some sort of dementia. My grandpa, although being 87, doesn’t suffer from any sort of memory loss. He complains about being more forgetful, but it’s not something I can pick up on. In the dream, I was completely familiar with these lapses. They did not disturb me. Each time he slipped into his dementia, he was like a child, brand new in the world. He didn’t even know what a human face was. His hands would slip from my hair, and wander around my face, desperate to get at my eyeballs. He was curious about their wetness, wanting to explore their texture. I understood this implicitly, and would lazily push his hands away whenever they came too close to my eyes. He didn’t get frustrated, but he didn’t give up. Just kept inching towards and away from the wetness of my eyes. From the morning of the day I had this dream: Brigid’s grandma turned 100 recently. “She’s lived with me since I was 10.” “That’s crazy. So intimate” “Yeah. Mostly she just watches TV now. She doesn’t remember much, her short term memory doesn’t work the same.” “How so?” “Like, she just asks me the same questions. When I came back from being abroad, she didn’t act like it had been a long time since she’d seen me at all.” “Oh yeah, weird.” “She gets frustrated when she forgets birthdays. She goes into her room and pretends she bought the person a gift and gives them 59

something she finds there.” I dreamt I was napping with my head in Grandpa’s arms on a train. He was stroking my hair and asking about a friend of mine who works at a lighthouse. Every so often, he became a helpless child, his hands wandering around my face, trying to touch the wetness of my eyes. When I had the dream, I hadn’t spoken to him in months. This was odd for us - we are usually in quite close contact. This silence was unusual, and most unusual in his acceptance of it. In the past, when I have lagged on returning emails or neglected calls, I have been met with hostility. Like: I could have sworn I had a granddaughter out there somewhere..... Sent from my iPad This time, my silence was uncommented on. In my dream, the train felt European in its cleanliness. It was very blue. My head was in his lap, and he was stroking my hair. My grandpa’s hands are wrinkled, overexposed veins, long fingers. At the tip of each finger he has a thin scar about an inch long. These are from a surgery he received years before I was born. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m not sure what condition the surgery was for. I do know that it resulted in the tips of his fingers becoming entirely numb. I learned this at a very early age, because when he would read aloud to me, he would have to lick the tip of his finger in order to catch the page and turn it, unable to feel the distinction between pages with his fingertips. This gesture is very familiar. Lick the tip of your finger. Catch the next page. We were discussing this friend of mine, coherently and lovingly, but there would be lapses in our conversation. My grandpa’s eyes would dull. They would widen, they would become childlike. He would look at my face as if he’d never seen a face before. He would be 87 and he would be brand new. He would wander around my face with his hands and numb fingertips––this is what a nose feels like, this is what a mouth feels like. The eyes were the most fascinating to him. They were shiny and wet. He was dying to touch them. He wanted to feel their consistency, experience the change in texture. No, no, no, I’d say, calmly, definitively. You can’t touch my eyeballs. 60

(I don’t use quotes because when my grandpa became an 87 year old child we didn’t need them.) My smaller hands pushed his wrinkled, veiny, long fingered hands away from my eyes. Stop it. You can’t touch them. (I’m amused. I’m not scared.) “So what does your friend do at this lighthouse?” Blue rush of the train windows. Velvet cushioning. “He’s an intern at this lighthouse.” I could feel his fingertips lightly hovering across my face but he couldn’t feel me because his fingertips are numb. My grandpa’s fingertips are numb––he wouldn’t be able to learn anything about a human face by using them as exploratory tools. Every touch was very light. As a child, as an 87 year old child, he forgot about this numbness. He thought maybe at least he would be able to feel something if he got at the shiny wetness of my eyes. He just wanted to touch that wetness. Maybe if he tried this time. Maybe this time. Maybe this time if he tried.

driving home from the Ozarks Katie Woodhouse Three things, now, are true: There’s a ladybug on the dash I won’t be back to Arkansas and Stephen Hawking is four days dead. Strange, to be caught at such an intersection. Strange, too, to note the harsh and beauty of a flat horizon sunrise – how prodding light-slants find strip malls and black cows with twin creeping fingers. In the hours and miles ahead, I’ll keep the radio crackling, and lean against fogged rumble-glass, and watch the honey day rise, like yeast. Or try sleeping. Either way, it’s something like comforting to think how this steady world keeps keeping, no matter who’s left it or who’s coming along.

Chanter Literary and Arts Magazine

Fall 2018