CO N CRET E L I T E R A RY M AG A Z I N E
CON CRETE L I T E R A RY M AG A Z I N E
Concrete Literary Magazine is an annual print journal produced in downtown Boston, amid blue-tinted high rises and blackened train tracks, at the tables of crowded cafes and at the mercy of flickering wireless internet. Established in 1982, Concrete, like Boston, or New York, or London, or Shanghai, is continuously evolving to match its urban population. Within the journal’s pages can be found a collection of prose and poetry that represents the dynamic nature of city life. All of the work found within the pages of Concrete is original work published by undergraduates of Emerson College under the Student Government Association and the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. All rights revert to the authors and artists upon publication, and permission to republish must be gained directly through the contributors.
Submissions: Concrete accepts unsolicited submissions from registered students of Emerson College, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry and screenplays. Submissions should be delivered electronically via Submittable at concreteliterarymagazine.com/submit. Please also include a cover sheet that includes your name, Emerson ID, email address, phone number, and title and genre of the work submitted. Do not include your name within the document of the piece.
Emerson College 120 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02116
Copyright Š 2020 Concrete All rights reserved.
FALL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Johanna Stiefler Johnson MANAGING EDITOR Allison Sambucini POETRY EDITOR Brittany Adames ASSISTANT POETRY EDITORS Kayla Randolph Kelsey Pereira PROSE EDITOR Julia Stanton ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Alana Scartozzi HEAD COPYEDITOR Owen Elphick ASSISTANT COPYEDITORS Athena Singh Hailey Briggs Claire Christensen
HEAD OF MARKETING Brooke Dunn DESIGNER Sam Kiss POETRY READERS Michael Gross Theo Wolf Thomas Lee Katie Doherty Thomas Garback PROSE READERS Ojasvani Dahiya Cecilia Ysabel Tan Clarah Grossman Hannah Braden Isabella Rodrigues Julia Rouillard Mackenzie Denofio
SPRING STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Johanna Stiefler Johnson MANAGING EDITOR Allison Sambucini POETRY EDITOR Kelsey Pereira ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Kayla Randolph PROSE EDITOR Julia Stanton ASSISTANT PROSE EDITOR Alana Scartozzi HEAD COPYEDITOR Claire Christensen ASSISTANT COPYEDITORS Athena Singh, Hailey Briggs MARKETING ASSISTANT Lauren Licona
HEAD OF MARKETING Brooke Dunn DESIGNER Sam Kiss DESIGN ASSISTANT Marianna Poletti Reyes POETRY READERS Brittany Adames Michael Gross Theo Wolf Thomas Lee PROSE READERS Cecilia Ysabel Tan Hannah Braden Julia Rouillard Clarah Grossman Mackenzie Denofio Isabella Rodrigues
3 Hydrangeas Emma Bruce
5 Notes on the Upfall Thais Jacomassi
7 Croodle Ana Hein
9 Old Soul
Julia Rouillard
19 It’s Your Brain, Not Your Heart, that Falls in Love Rishona Michael
CONTENTS
Garrett Speller
TABLE OF
1 Amalavijñāna
21 The Ashtray’s View Garrett Speller
23 Floodwater
Jack Andrew Ferry
35 An Imitation of Art Ana Hein
37 Smokejumpers Andi Smith
51 Pagan steals Christian imagery ASMR Jay Townsend
53 I watched Good Omens while I was dating someone and you won’t BELIEVE what the result was **NOT CLICKBAIT** Jay Townsend
Garrett Speller
AmalavijĂąÄ na A Moment of Memory I slumbered awhile, Floating in the darkened nighttime sea. The new moon cast only shadows, And the world was silent. My twenty-one voices spoke as A whisper not quite heard, As the far-off mountaintops Stood idly by. I do not fear the sun Nor her oft-cloudy face, And the tempest of thunder Is but roaring silence. I stayed awhile, Enshrined in dreamless sleep; Those final moments before Life begins again. 1
I am alone, but not lonely. A simple mind—born stillness And deep, peaceful quiet. I am the nature of the soul. I do not believe That we shall ever meet, For your existence has never been mine, Full of echoes and ash and sin. But if we ever did, I think it would be on A snowy, moonlit night long after the world has gone to sleep.
2
Emma Bruce
Hydrangeas If we walked to the edge of this clear lake, Enjoyed the burst of blue flowers underfoot, I could be whole again. Sky bathing my breastbone through my skin, Through the deep navy of your woven shawl. If you are root and aster, I am hydrangeas. Mint to me tastes blue, like beads of water Caught in your hair— The kindest thing I have seen. You in spring are my antidote, Laughing clear across this field. Let’s be pastoral, build a house, Care for goats at the edge Of this lake, You can read me Wendell Berry And I’ll embroider onto flannel 3
The way you are sprawled Among the hydrangeas. Blue eyes, blue sky, blue— Like the speckled shells of eggs My mother gathered on farms In central Texas, blue Like the sky I’m learning to live without, Widespread without an end. One day I’ll give you the blue dress With the hydrangeas, Let fabric fall over your ribs And we’ll go dance in a creek of starlight. Can you tell I am tired of roaming?
4
Thais Jacomassi
Notes on the Upfall A place in the deep countryside where the fisherman’s song plays and the leaves are forever floating in the sky
I. The air tastes of languages unknown. The unfamiliarity of every culture and the traditions they uphold leave me second-guessing each step. The weeds relentlessly grow between the cobblestone streets reminding me of the deep-rooted history of the places I visit. Both the sweet and the bitter. I never knew wet concrete could smell of pine cones and salt, depending on how far you are from the Atlantic. II. Mosaic tiles line the walls in blue and white. Colors rattle and blend into one another as trains approach and leave as quickly as they came. The air is thick and difficult to swallow, so our lungs grow heavy and a white veil is thrown over our heads. We are propelled into black holes with a force that leaves us breathless, but our eyes skid across words on a page because they are the only offer to life we will accept. Beware of the sliding doors. 5
III. The streetlights illuminate the town in an orange glow. By two in the morning, the townspeople have already retired to their homes to forget the day’s troubles. We discuss our own. He talks about his family as if they were not his own. The weight of a culture ripped from him takes its toll and the Spanish syllables don’t taste familiar anymore. I tell him I know the feeling. We talk of our undetermined futures. He speaks with such confidence and certainty that I feel my doubts being put to shame. By three in the morning, there is hope lingering in the air. “Let’s go for a walk.” IV. The shipyard grows quiet as the fog thickens. It looms over and around our bodies. Someone makes mention of a snow globe. The fog is so dense that the river is no longer visible, but we can hear footsteps on the water. The universe here, within the dome, is yet to be defined; whichever idea we hold will have its own sense of home attached to it. V. On the bus ride back, I lean against the window and stare at a spot on the horizon. Eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed, and eyes flitting over the trees, I try to pierce through the space between the branches. Enough so that I might crawl through, capture the beams of light as the sun rises, and push them back. An attempt at slowing down the passage of time—perhaps stopping it indefinitely. But the birds fly overhead, the alarm clocks go off, and the bus makes its final stop. I remember the air smelled like salt.
6
Ana Hein
Croodle To cuddle or nestle together, from fear or cold; to make a noise like a dove
The texture of skin makes me shiver. It’s a reminder that
(Oh—) there’s a body here.
I’m not used to lying alongside another, legs intertwined, breath swapping lungs. A figure exists to be traced and probed,
7
My hip is jammed into its opposite, and I am about to be pushed to the floor.
to be discovered and understood.
Hands extend over ridges of rib, the cleft between shoulder blades, the cavern forming beyond lips. This dramatic ritual is dutifully performed. We should be commended on being alive. You coo in my ear— soft and primal. the sound. Sheets and heat
I don’t recognize
are left behind.
8
Julia Rouillard
Old Soul “Do you believe in past lives?” I ask Talia, feigning nonchalance by scrolling through my phone. Sam Smith plays through the speaker on the wall. “I’ve never really thought about it.” She pauses and stares at the corner of the ceiling. “I mean, humans are wrong about pretty much everything so if the popular opinion is no, I’m inclined to think otherwise.” I put my phone down and pick at the comforter. My nails scratch against the fabric. “Have you ever thought about your own? If you had them, I mean.” “In passing, sure. Like, I can’t walk up the stairs if someone’s behind me. I have to run. And no one’s ever, you know, chased me up the stairs and tried to kill me, but that’s all I can think about.” I nod slowly. Do I tell her? Will she think I’m crazy? I run through the same thoughts until they blur together and my vision slides out of focus; the gray flowers on my comforter blend together. 9
“I remember how I died,” I blurt out, sitting up. So much for subtlety. Talia snorts, then looks up and sees the look on my face. “What do you mean?” she asks. Her eyebrows are furrowed but she’s still sprawled out on the bed. She’s trying not to react. I start to backtrack. “Okay, maybe that was dramatic, but I remember my past lives.” I’m wringing my hands together and Talia brings hers to rest on my shoulders. She gives a little squeeze. It’s how her mom used to calm her down when she was little. She sits back and looks at me. “What do you mean when you say you remember? How do you know it’s real?” She doesn’t believe me. “It’s like when you remember something from when you were a kid. It isn’t there and then it is. You just know.” I take a shaky breath. “I looked into it a little while ago, and I found one of the people in the archives of some small-town newspaper.” “Okay,” she says, nodding. I interlace my fingers and flip my hands upside down in my lap to keep them from fidgeting. I’m holding my breath waiting for her next question. She doesn’t say anything for what feels like minutes. She’s chewing on her cheek. “Do you believe me?” “Honestly, dude, I don’t know. But it’s really messing with you, and that’s the part I care about.” Neither of us says anything for a minute. I can’t look at her. “So,” Talia ends up saying, “what are we going to do about it?” ∙•◊•∙
My parents knew I was afraid of the water the first time they brought me to the beach as a toddler. When I turned twelve and barricaded myself in my room at the 10
potential of going on a family cruise, they thought they had an overly angsty preteen. At twenty, I knew that at least one of my past lives ended in the depths of the ocean. I knew because I remembered them. The first memory came right around my eleventh birthday. I’d finished a standardized test early, and having finished the singular book I was allowed to stow underneath my chair, stared out the window watching the third graders at recess. I couldn’t tell you what occupied my mind in the moments leading up to it, but I saw a boy standing in the middle of the soccer field, searching dejectedly for his friends among the running bodies. Out of nowhere, I had a vivid memory of being lost at sea. I sat alone, clutching the edge of a bright orange life raft and watching an orange speck floating farther and farther away. The bottom of the raft was strewn with water bottles, food, and the contents of the emergency packet I’d torn apart while looking for paddles (which I’d subsequently dropped into the water during my panicked paddling). I didn’t remember how I got there, just the immediate isolation and fear of being utterly alone. I got home from school that day and stomped straight upstairs to my room. I shut the door and pulled my diary out of the box of winter clothes under my bed. I wrote about that memory all afternoon. In my eleven-year-old vocabulary, the only word I could come up with was “flashback,” but it never sat right. The memory never played out in my head. All of the information came tumbling in at once, as if it had always been there. ∙•◊•∙
“Come on, Sydney! We’re going to cool off in the water,” Talia and our friend Emma plead as they stand up and brush the sand off their legs. “I’m good, really. Go ahead,” I reply, looking down and burying my feet. 11
“Will you at least come stand at the edge? I don’t want to ditch you,” Talia says. Emma’s already halfway to the water. I sigh. The thought of entering that abyss causes my entire body to tense up. I don’t understand how people use ocean sounds to help them fall asleep. Rather than calm me, the crashing waves feel like a warning, a constant reminder of the tide creeping closer. If I get too near the water that inches toward my feet, its rhythmic taunt sends my brain in a million different directions, most of them involving suffocating darkness or giant squid. “As long as it promises to respect the fact that there have to be two feet of sand between us at all times.” “I’ll pass the message along.” Talia grins and grabs my hand, guiding me towards the last bits of sand by the water. She’s wearing a floral bikini she bought for today’s trip. It’s dangerous to set her loose in a store after payday; she probably spent more than half of it on the suit. The closer we get, the slower I walk. She gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. Eventually we arrive, and I plant my feet a safe distance away. The wet sand shows clear footprints, and I crave the unsteady shapelessness of it at our blanket, dry and decidedly unthreatening. Talia looks at me, giving me one more chance to keep walking before she wades in, yelping at the sudden chill as she catches up with Emma. The two of them thrive in the water. The farther out they get, the less I feel like a friend on a trip and more like a mom watching my kids play. Why did I even come? Why did Emma even invite me? I know it’s her birthday, and I’m trying not to kill the mood, but I’m not sure I’m doing very well. I want to like the beach, want to enjoy being pummeled by waves and coexisting with crabs, but it feels impossible. I cross my arms. I’m not brave enough to overcome it. I’m not even brave enough to tell anyone about the memories. I wave at Talia and Emma and hike back up the 12
beach. Best-case scenario, they get hungry soon and we leave to get food. If not, I came prepared with a 400-page book. I walk back in the opposite direction of our blankets, making a pit stop at the car to grab a second water bottle. I people-watch on the way back, my eyes scanning the masses, hopping from group to group every few seconds. I settle on the water as I get closer, making sure I can still pick out Talia and Emma’s figures. I reach the end of the boardwalk and take my shoes off, breaking eye contact with the water for only a moment as I bend down. The sandals dangle in my fingers as I look up and see the yellow flag flapping in the wind. There’s supposed to be a storm tomorrow; people have been flocking to the water to take advantage of the huge waves it’s causing. The edges of the flag are fraying, and someone has wrapped an American flag bumper sticker on the pole. “Here’s your gear, dude. It’s all checked and ready. Knock yourself out,” the other man on the boat says as he points to where my scuba gear sits. I suit up in silence, inspecting the weathered American flag sticker on the wall of the boat. I dive enough that we’ve settled into a comfortable routine, and I’m pretty sure the insane day I had doubled my blood pressure, so I’m not really in the mood for small talk. I get in the water and descend without much thought, my mind clearing the deeper I go. I hit almost thirty feet down and stop for a moment, letting the colors of the ocean life wash a sense of calm over me. The pollution has gotten worse over the last few years, but this is a relatively clean area. I’m glad for it—I don’t need another thing to depress me today. Everything is normal for the first few minutes. Then suddenly, I lose the flow of air and can’t breathe. I try a few times, but nothing works. My tank has enough air in it, but it’s not reaching me. A brief panic waves through me, but I keep my head; this isn’t my first dive and I know what to do. Silt probably just got inside the machine. I reach 13
for my backup airflow but run into the same issue, which is quickly becoming a fullblown emergency. The air in my body is running out faster than normal as my fear increases. It’s dangerous to ascend without breathing, but if I don’t, then I’ll definitely die. I pull on the line to signal that I’m in trouble. I’m fully panicking, and I’m not sure if I can make it back up. At this point, I only have one choice. I begin my ascent. ∙•◊•∙
I spend the last half hour of the flight pressed against the wall of the plane, waiting for the first moments where the city lights reach us in the sky. It’s the first flight I’ve ever been on; I spent the first hour after takeoff doing the same thing until we’d been above the clouds for a while, and not even I could be interested in the nothingness out the window. As soon as the view begins to take shape again, I close the last inch of space between me and the window as if the distance had been standing in the way of me and an unobstructed view. From there, the skeleton begins to take shape, and I have my first glimpses of the city at night. It’s incredible. I’ve done enough hiking that I’m used to being above civilization, but this is on a different scale. It feels like floating in the middle of the ocean and being able to see for miles in every direction. I lean against the railing on a huge wooden ship. My clothes are making me claustrophobic. The corset is the source of the issue; it’s cinched alarmingly tight. The collar of the pale blue dress comes all the way up my neck. I feel like I don’t have room to exist. The wind blows hard enough that I have to hold on to the side of the ship. I notice I have a death grip on the railing, but I refuse to go back down below. Another memory 14
hits me: the smell, the crowded bodies, the lack of sleep. I barely have room to stand, let alone think down there. The sky had filled with clouds earlier in the morning, but they’d gotten progressively more menacing as the day progressed. They’re a subdued gray where we sail, but from my perch, I can see black ones closer than I’m comfortable with. The waves grow as the clouds surrounding us darken, jostling us around and making it abundantly clear that we’re just a tiny boat on a big ocean. I’m one of the last stubborn people still out on the deck, the last of us holding out as long as we can before we have to go back down below. Descending into the belly of the ship feels too much like walking down into the ocean itself. At least up here, I can see the sky, however dark it gets. ∙•◊•∙
Talia comes around to my side of the car and links her arm through mine. She decided after we talked that I need to face my fear, which is why we’re at the beach again. Even if it means being able to just sit on the beach comfortably, she says I might be reading too much into the whole “death and destruction in the ocean” thing. I find it a little ironic that the girl who spends six days a week telling me to listen to my body is spending her seventh telling me it’s overreacting. At least she’s here with me. It’s a rainy day and uncharacteristically cold for the season, so we park next to the boardwalk. I leave my shoes in the car. When I step off the wooden planks, my toes scrunch up reflexively, recoiling from the tiny grains of ground-up rock swarming onto the tops of my feet. Breathe, I tell myself. Normally the sand doesn’t bother me this much. I think my body knows what I’m about to do and is sending out panic signals as early as possible, trying to outlast whatever fleeting convictions I have that this is a good idea. 15
We walk towards the water. Talia’s next to me, more of a supportive presence tha anything. I need to do this for myself. My feet sink with each step as if the sand is grasping at my legs, trying to hold me in place and stop my march forward. The tide is far out, and I stop when I cross over the line where the sand changes, and I can see where the water used to reach. Talia matches my movements. “You still okay?” she asks. “Oh, you know, just admiring the view,” I respond, my voice full of sarcasm I don’t feel. I inch my way forward until I’m close enough that when the next wave comes in, icy cold water pours over my feet. I tense up. Talia goes to reach out her hand but hesitates, and I don’t close the distance. Half of me is still terrified, but the other half isn’t oblivious to the fact that every few seconds I’m touching the water, and nothing bad is happening. The two battle with each other. Either the calmer side wins, or I convince myself that the worst part is over because I start walking farther in, staring straight down at the water in front of me. It’s spotted with foamy bubbles along the surface. It’s strange to experience the ocean outside of a memory; I feel like I’m entering another world. My body is still tense and my brain is running a loop of every past life I remember, but I’m doing it. Talia makes to follow me, but when I don’t stop, she hangs back. I make it up to my knees and keep going, ignoring the fact that it’s chilly outside and I’m in my clothes. Now that I’ve done it, I have to see how far I can go. As the water reaches my waist, it feels like it’s tugging at me, urging me to keep going. I turn around. “Do you see this? I’m freaking out, but do you see this?” I shout to Talia. I let the tug of the water guide me out farther, taking steps backward. “I’m so proud of you!” she calls back. 16
Suddenly, the tug gets stronger, and I lose my balance, plunging beneath the surface. When I come up again, I’m in too deep to stand. I start kicking, trying to get back to where I was, but I can’t. Talia starts running toward me. “It’s a rip current!” she shouts. I can’t swim. I go under again with the same dread I feel in my memories.
17
Rishona Michael
It’s Your Brain, Not Your Heart, that Falls in Love My Psychology textbook informed me, “it’s your brain, not your heart, that falls in love.” But when there was only absence behind the pupils that had once held my tears, When your muscular grip liquefied within our impenetrable hand intimacy I could no longer grasp the logic behind that statement, as every tissue Every blood cell Every atom in my heart Slammed against a jagged knife and split open. Like the cut that never stopped bleeding no matter how many bandages my mom layered on top, while my sister continuously screamed like a baby being pulled away from her mother for the fear of my death. And as your footsteps soon became recollections in my head And the glimmer in your eyes soon became the shimmering glare of a thousand words I could not help but question my Psych teacher about this bit of information. With a sunset-intensified frown, she simply pondered the counterargument, then replied 19
“I guess you’re just special.” I laughed because his deep vocal chords had once said that, each word gently gliding up my arms, bouncing down my spine Emitting not more brainwaves, but heartbeats, Jovial hums that compelled me to circle the B instead of the C on the test. And I failed it, because apparently I only thought I was in love.
20
Garrett Speller
The Ashtray’s View A year of November Stubs fall like autumn leaves among A daze of dust and cinders. The ashtray sits, Regret coating its insides matte black, Blighting whatever color within. And the world was gray: Gray-black, gray ash, stain of soot, Cough-hack, long-draw, emptiness. There was a photo nearby, once Propped up against the wall, but It had fallen behind their dresser and Never bothered to return. There were, as memory serves, Two faces—now old, then young— Preserved in its grimy antiquated film, Adorned with smiles, the likes of 21
Which are only found in blissful glee, when Bathed in the warm midsummer sun. It was a spot of June in this dreary November place, Fallen, forgotten, willfully ignored, and now the Old one sits, smoking his year away Swathed in smog and forgetfulness, Watching the ash fall like Sand, abandoning an hourglass. He came back more, stayed less. Eyes a soot brown, cigarette butts Littering the floor, a stain of sadness, Grief and loss eating away at the walls, Mixing with embers and smoke, And settling.
22
Jack Andrew Ferry
Floodwater When people heard that God condemned us, many started praying. The rest of us carried on as we always had. And yet, the rumors spread to every ear in the city, each one taking the words differently. I often found Selene in prayer. She would nervously jump when I entered a room, saying that she was asking for forgiveness after seeing a man. Ida would toss her head upward toward His sky and laugh aloud at Him. Ida took as many partners as she was told to. Her regret was never visible in the cracks of her cheek rouge. Yet this was not the way for many people, who fell onto the streets to pray at the first light of dawn. They did not stop until dusk. Ida called them fools. “Praying to the air,� she tsked. There was something beautiful about it; the masses of people with their arms facing the sun, begging for forgiveness from a God they had no proof was there. I could tell Selene wanted to fall next to them, to embrace them, and beg for salvation. Ida 23
and I would not. To us, truth rarely lied in rumors. Ida criticized those who believed in God. Selene’s face would turn red like clay when Ida spoke to her like this. “How can you be sure?” Selene would ask. “Because I see suffering and no mercy.” Ida said. We walked without speaking; it was easier than pretending to agree. At Tovah’s home, where we had lived all our lives, I could hear Ida and Selene through the walls on either side of me. Selene would squeal, sometimes giggle, and other times let out little bursts of pain. I heard the men moan and grunt. Ida was usually as quiet as she could be, except for deep moans she felt obligated to release, like a cat indignantly meows for food. I would wait in between them, my room unoccupied until Tovah decided to fill it. Men would peek their heads in through the torn curtain, to see if I satisfied them or not. If I did, I would join my sisters in a shared misery. Our fingertips running along the mud wall, outstretched toward each other. “Have you heard about the flood? About doomsday?” one man asked, his hot breath in my ear. It sent shivers of disgust along my spine, like a river carries driftwood. I only grunted in reply. It was what he wanted to hear; it would make him leave faster. I didn’t want to think. Not about anything at all. He left bronze coins on the bed, Tovah snatched them up quicker than I could change the sheets. ∙•◊•∙
The room was hot when I woke. I thought it was the heat that woke me, sticky legs under covers of wool. It came again though, leaking in through the window. It was still dark. A pale blue outside that let a calmness fall over the city. In the earliest hours, when the robbers had fallen asleep, there was a sense of peace. It usually comforted me. 24
A piercing scream came from the street. I moved from my sweaty position between Ida and Selene’s sleeping bodies. Toward the simple mud window, I crept. The rising sun cast elongated shadows across the short, square mud buildings. The dirt street was empty, except for a stray tabby cat. Then like a bird flying across the sky, a streak ran past the house. His voice cracking, his throat dry and coarse. “They’re going to kill me. Help me. Please.” I ducked low, low enough to watch the man run by, but not to be seen. Sure enough, as he said, three men followed not far behind. In their hands, swords gleamed like morning dew. He would die, that much was certain. Yet the city slept. We cannot all be good. ∙•◊•∙
Sometimes, when they asked for my name, I liked to lie. Tamar, Jochebed, Helen, Chava, Ruth, or Bilhah. Each day and night, a different name. They never seemed to care what it was though, they never called me by my name. I could be called Foot and it would be good enough. Ida questioned this habit, but I could never explain. I was not myself with them. I felt busiest at night, when it was cool out and the moonlight fell into the room. Light shone on the men’s faces, only lighting half of their features. It felt easier to love them in the dark. When the hours had worn us, our flesh still hot, and the last visitor returned to his wife, Tovah put us to bed. She collected her girls, pressed a wet cloth to the back of our necks and our foreheads, pulling thin sheets over our hot skin. 25
We fell to our cots exhausted before the sun could peek its face above the earth. We slept together, a mound of bruised and tired flesh. Selene liked to be held, so I held her. Ida would push away if she tried, so instead Selene turned to me. Ida was never kind after we had finished our work. She’d just ball herself up, cringe at our touch, and wrap her arms around herself. Neither Selene or I could pass judgement on her. In measures of pain, we were triplets. Tovah always fell asleep last. When the sun had faded again, and the air was cool and light, she would walk through our bedchambers, counting and checking. She promised lashings to any of us that tried to sneak away. I had never seen such action taken. But girls did not try to run away. Where would we go? If not her home, then another’s. With Tovah asleep, and Selene and Ida tangled in their own dreams, I would tear away from sticky skin and go out of the house into the cold morning air. When the city was still quiet, people still sleeping, I would see Base. Golden light sprouted upward from the horizon like flowers. I liked when it would touch my skin, and the way it looked against mud houses and the way it gleamed against glazed pottery. These were things I shared with Base in the earliest hours of the new day. His face would light up to see such beauty. His hair thick with dirt from sleeping on the floor, his body bruised and sore from labor. Despite the battering his body took, his eyes remained unscathed. Hazel like honey and mischievous like a fox. “Do you like gold?” he would ask. “Yes, I like gold.” “I will get you some today.” He often took my hands in his own. His hands were always cold from the night before. Mine were sometimes still sweaty in the palms. “What will Tovah think to see one of her daughters with fine things?” “Nothing,” he said, “because I will steal you away before she can notice.” 26
“I do not need gold things, Base,” I’d say blushing, “the morning light is my jewelry.” He would laugh at me. I would too. We both knew it was stupid to say. Perhaps dumber to feel. And yet, in some remote corner of my heart, I felt this to be true. ∙•◊•∙
Oftentimes, sometimes out of boredom, I would watch Tovah delegate chores to the other girls. My sisters washed clothes, scrubbed floors, or fell in love with men to pass the time. With my hands grinding against a washboard, soapy water lapping against my chapped skin, I looked at Tovah. A cloth pulled over her head, her robes cinched around her large waist, the soles of her shoes worn from scurrying around the house. She was a worn-out woman, but I could see that long ago she may have been beautiful. In the farthest stretch of my memory, I could remember the way she looked then. Thinner, calmer, her face not so pressed with wrinkles. Ida or Selene could not offer such information, they had not known her as long as I did. No girl here had been here as long as I had. One of the girls kicked over a bucket of water, its contents overflowing onto the dirt floor. Tovah cursed her, bending over to pick up the bucket. As she reached below her, her robe slipped down her back. In her skin were deep markings, red slashes, like tiger claws. And yet, I knew too well the way skin looks when it’s torn by rope. She placed the bucket onto the table, reprimanding the girl for her foolishness. Tovah smoothed her robe, walking off, toward the front of the house. Tovah, the subject of my earliest memories. It was she who taught me how to clean, how to dress, how to love. Despite it all, I could find a way to forgive her. ∙•◊•∙
27
When he was finished with me, he dressed himself. He asked me to tie his wool robe in place. He existed under a cloud of black hair, like a sheep. With nimble hands, I helped him. He left the chamber without another word, and I sat alone on the bed of straw. I went to the water basin to refresh myself. Before my hands could break the placid calmness of that tiny ocean, I noticed on my neck a coin sized wound. I gasped at the sight. Blood pooled beneath unbroken skin. I moved my fingers gently over that red and blue swirling bruise created of collapsed veins. Tenderness could not mend it now. I wondered what Base would say, if he would say anything? I wondered if I would ever see him again, the man who gave me this. Him, nameless, and me as Keturah. Probably not, but if so, it would be in passing as he visited another one of my sisters. Silently, and for the first time in years, I prayed: Dear God, please let this bruise heal quickly… And please let this man’s wife never know the pleasures he felt this afternoon. Thank you, amen. ∙•◊•∙
In time, almost accidentally, I forgot the prophecy of doom hanging over our heads like heavy stars. I went about as I always had. Selene, though, acted as though God himself had pulled her by the hair and scolded her to behave. “I feel guilty,” she cried to Ida and me. “I feel dirty for letting them touch me!” Ida was unsympathetic. Rolling her eyes and crossing her arms, seated in the chair by the doorway, while I comforted her on the floor. “Selene, you must forgive yourself,” I said, “None of us asked for this. If there is a God, he must understand that.” 28
“I am scared!” She shook like clothesline in the wind. “Are we not all scared, Selene?” Ida said. Selene cried louder. I shot a look at Ida, who groaned. I sent my hand along the back of her head and down her back. Her breathing seemed to soothe itself as I stroked her. She made me feel like a mother. “Tell me about your mother, Selene.” I said. She looked puzzled, as if she had to think about it for a moment. “She was sweet,” Selene said after a pause, toying with a strand of her hair, “she used to call me Kilba. But I don’t remember why. I remember her voice, her singing voice, and the lullabies I used to hear.” “Can you sing one now?” Quiet fell upon us for a moment, until Selene began humming. It was soft, slow, melodic like the way a bird’s song is pleasant to the ear. She could remember none of the words, but the feeling of comfort was there. Ida moved from her position near the doorway, coming closer to the floor where we sat. I forgot myself in the moment, wrapped so deeply in thought. “My father used to play with us,” Ida said when Selene had finished her song, “a game my brothers invented. He was jolly and always made us laugh.” She sat down beside us. Selene and I exchanged a brief side-glance. “What about your mother?” Selene asked me. I was blank. Not even the ghost of a face could appear. As if I had fallen from a tree like some ripe fruit. “She was smart,” I lied, “she always knew how to help me.” 29
∙•◊•∙
“A man came in today, talking about the flood, saying we were all dirty and doomed,” I said to Base as his finger ran over the etches in my palm. “Tovah had to remove him.” “That’s awful.” His eyes did not waver from my hand. It rested in his, his boney fingers tracing the riverbed in my skin. He saw the bruise on my neck. He knew where it had come from. He did not say anything. “Do you think it’s true at all?” he asked, breaking the silence we shared. I told him that I didn’t. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re good people.” I saw fine jewels, fabrics, spices, and foods in his goatskin satchel, open where he left it. I knew how he got them. I said nothing. “I think you’re good, even if you act against His word.” He smiled and we felt the sun warmly on our skin. ∙•◊•∙
My eyes were pulled shut, wrinkled, like cloth in a tight fist. My palms were open, outstretched and facing the sky. I heard clinking as Base rummaged through his satchel. He placed in my hand something cold and heavy. “Open now.” Light filled my vision. We were at our spot on a mud rooftop, overlooking the marketplace, and the desert off in the horizon. The dusk sunset was gold and pink. In my palm, curled like a sleeping snake was a gold chain. 30
“Base” I started. “Before you refuse me,” he said, “I know that you hate the idea of help. That bracelet is not for you, but for Tovah.” I cocked my head, ready for an explanation. “Listen,” Base said, running his large hand through his matted curls, “if Tovah has this, maybe she will set you free. This is worth more than anything those men will pay in five years.” I felt, just behind my eyes, the wet prick of tears. I did not speak, I felt my throat tighten and I knew if I tried to speak, I would cry. I said nothing but put my arms around him. In my hand, the chain was heavy. With his body close to mine, I felt an alien comfort. ∙•◊•∙
In the morning, I dropped the chain into Tovah’s hand. She looked at it was confusion written across her face. “Am I finally letting you go, daughter?” I shook my head. “No,” I said, “today you are letting go of Ida and Selene.” I left her room, marching to tell Ida and Selene. They would refuse to go without me, but I would force them. Base would hate me, certainly, for what he would see as a waste. And yet, whatever he may feel, I love him greater now than ever. I just cannot love a savior. ∙•◊•∙
By the time we knew the rumors were true, it was too late for salvation. Rain came down slowly at first, like little kisses on the tops of our heads, but it was odd 31
for rain at that time of the year, when the days were long and hot, the nights cool and pale. People knew right away. Panic filled the streets. There were shrill calls for loved ones, crowds of people on foot. Glazed pottery broken, bones crushed and splintered under racing feet. They knew when they felt the sting of cold rain droplets that this was it, that the rumors were true. Water bubbled from wells, pouring out over cobblestone onto the dirt roads. It funneled out of hearths and brushed against naked ankles and calves. I had not seen Ida or Selene in weeks, and I hoped that they were far away, perhaps somewhere safer, if any such place in the world existed. One of the girls from Tovah’s grabbed my wrist. She was scared, as she always had been. As we all had been. “What do we do?” Her face was white like death would be. I shuddered to think of corpses battered against rock, chunks of flesh stolen from once-pristine skin. The way we would all look when the water reached our necks and we couldn’t touch the floor any longer. Tovah says we are born alone; it is only the lucky who die differently. We followed rushing crowds, people lapping against each other. Rain drenched our robes. The weight made it harder to run. She leaned on me. I thought of Base, somewhere in this panicked crowd. Would he drop his satchel of goods? What use would they be now? I wondered what Tovah was cooing to the girls who huddled around her as water poured in every crevice toward them. My feet scraped against rough gravel. Rock crunched beneath my bare feet. Hundreds of people climbed for higher ground. Water came from every direction. Soon the entire mountain would be engulfed in salt water. The man with the boat would 32
be saved, the only among us God chose. The girl squeezed my hand. I did not even know her. If I had prayed more would it have been different for me? Was He watching now, or had He turned His face away from us? There was no use thinking of anything now. No use fighting at all. I thought of Ida and Selene, and of Base, while I held this girl’s hand until the waters pulled us apart.
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34
Ana Hein
An Imitation of Art I will love you with too many commas, / but never any asterisks. — Sarah Kay
My love poems are an unbridled mess—I will admit too much of myself to them, will sing their praises from the moment they are conceived, will love them far too quickly; in other words, you cannot find a person more opposed to killing their darlings. Sitting with a pencil in my lap that I can play with is too tempting; there are so many things I need to say so I leave no space for silence. Commas litter in abundance, fragments assembled but lacking subjects, objects, actions, or any meaning at all; I can never end anything happily; I always warp it into something appalling. Any sensation of joy must be stamped out—if I mention love, it probably comes with asterisks.
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36
Andi Smith
Smokejumpers
We live in a burning town. It’s all dirt dust and scratchy yellow pines that snap and spit in the fires, and every night the sunset glows red. We can see the bright spots of the fires, like so many stars in the sky, on all the other mountains and in the valleys, and we like to think we’re untouchable because we’re so high up. But the hot air rises, and so does the ash. It collects in the grout between tiles, empty cups on windowsills, our hair, the thin lines on our palms. The couches and beds are covered in a fine gray powder that flies up when we sit down, no matter how much we clean. Not even screens can keep it out. Most people call it autumn. We call it fire season. The radio warns us to move south. We clear away the dead brush and dig trenches around our homes. We keep the car full of gas and the family photos in the glove compartment, just in case. If someone has a bathtub, it’s filled with water. 37
Our town comes from a long line of cinders. The first houses here were wood and thatch, built by gold hunters whose campfires tossed sparks across the hedge, the burning Joshua trees and deergrass making the valleys smell acrid. Back then they didn’t know the land would only dry out faster, that the fire would come every year. Now we can look out and see the blackened bones of trees marching across the dying land. “Ain’t been a fire could make me move and ain’t ever gone be one,” our across-thestreet neighbor Warren says. He sits in a scrappy rocking chair and lights cigarette after cigarette. The butts collect at his feet like he’s shelling peas. I watch the smoking ends carefully; all it takes is a spark. When I was little, I used to go over to his house all the time after school. Now I go to the county high school, and by the time the bus comes around Mom’s back from work, but it used to be that I had two hours to myself. She’d send me over to Warren’s house to keep me out of trouble, and to ask if Warren needed anything, and he never did, and still doesn’t. He’s been the same my whole life—same liver-spotted skin and hunched back, gummy smile—and no one’s exactly sure how old he is. When I have the time I’ll go over, and he’s always sitting in the same place, smoking the same cigarettes. “The tallest trees around here, the Suh-koy-yas, they love the fire. Their bark is thick. Even their pinecones, they don’t open until it gets hot enough.” He takes a deep breath of smoke and blows it to the sky. “You and me, we are those trees. The fire don’t hurt us.” He makes a gesture over to the old stunted sequoia growing in his front yard. Every time I look out my bedroom window I can see it, the knotted branches twisting up to the sky. He’s named it “Muninn,” and somehow it survives fire after fire. Our town is dry. You can taste it, feel it, smell it. Everything starts to feel the same; the grit coagulates on our flesh. Even the fire has a distinct smell of heat. 38
The dust kicks up from the frantic wheels of cars leaving. I sit on the porch with Warren and we drink ice water and watch the fire burn through the valley. The main front is far enough away, but the wall of fire we’ve been hearing about is sending out smaller brush fires in advance. In the distance, a plane buzzes. They’ve been sending in the smokejumpers all week, and if we go out to where the road curves over the shoulder of the mountain you can see the whole valley. It’s all filled up with firetrucks and firemen, but they want to hit it harder, so some of them come in by parachute and try to fight that way. “Crazy folks,” Warren calls them. “Jumping straight inta the flames.” “That’s the way most of them go,” I say. The first time I asked him if he needed anything he said “friends.” I thought that was funny, so I stayed, and after three hours he began to work on building me my own rocking chair. Mom had questions when I returned, wringing her hands, asking if he seemed a little off, saying he had “PTSD” from a time before anyone knew what that meant. He always has lemons, in all months of the year, in a glazed ceramic bowl on his counter. They are perfectly yellow and we stand in the kitchen, squeezing two for me and two for him, adding three tablespoons of sugar to each. “Weatherman says this one’s gonna be real bad,” I say. “Weatherman says that errytime,” Warren replies. Today the north wind blows in our faces. No one expects it, the breeze, but it’s cold up here. The wind can steal your breath almost as fast as a wave of smoke can. Warren coughs. “So, where’s the fire at?” “Burning through Knoxville. They’re hoping the freeway’ll stop it.” 39
We started smelling smoke a few days back. Some people can tell how bad the fire’s going to get just based on the smell. I’m not one of those people. I know what we learn in school, that dry wood burns faster and that fire needs oxygen and that I should never forget Stop Drop And Roll. The schools around here teach us to run, smoked out like rabbits from their dens. From inside the living room I hear the song playing on the radio cut off and a scratchy message take over, the same kind of sorry tale we hear every week now. “Fire warning to those in the Greater Knoxville Area. Traveling at twenty miles an hour and expected to pick up. We suggest moving-” Warren has already begun moving in that direction, and he quickly shuts it off. He laughs while doing it. That same message has been playing all my life, and maybe even all his life. The only thing certain about all this mess is that the fire will come. If not today, then tomorrow. We know this is how we will die. The smoke slithering down our throats, garroting us with blackened tissue. That’s another thing no one expects. It’s not the flames that kill you, it’s the smoke, and the years of living with it. People like Warren play chicken with it, drinking it in and leaving bare matches offhandedly on counters and in trash cans. He hasn’t yet cleaned his yard and the dead brush is still piled up alongside the wooden walls. “Think it’ll stop there?” he continues. Small talk—a gift to me. He knows my mom worries. “Nope.” I toss the watery dregs of my lemonade onto the dust. We don’t have dirt up here, just dust. Everything is dust and the ground laps up the ice like a beast. I say the practiced words: “You coming down south?” 40
Again Warren laughs. “Old Muninn’ll see another fire.” Warren’s wooden home is a mystery—it’s the oldest building in town, and filled with so many flammable objects. Nowadays we build our homes with stone and asbestos. He refuses to do the same, saying his home has survived as long as him like this and that it’ll survive longer than him like this. He doesn’t have fire insurance. Our town is built on the paper backs of insurance contracts. If you want job security you go into insurance. Something is always on the verge of destruction. That night my walls glow red with reflected light and Mom comes in to wake me up. We know the drill. We wet clothes in the bathtub and tie them around our necks like bandits. We jump in the car and drive south, through a column of smoke into the valley. The firemen have a firebreak down past Lost Flats. We keep driving until we reach Coalgate and there we sleep in our car. After these sorts of things they always send in all kinds of help for us poor refugees. Years earlier, when the fires were smaller and less frequent they only gave us toothpaste and individually wrapped sanitizing napkins to keep the dust at bay. Now they hand out blankets and toothbrushes and canned ravioli, but we still have all of that stuff from last time rattling around in the backseat. They won’t let us heat it up over a fire, obviously, so we eat it cold, slurping down the wet noodles and watching our town spark up like fireworks at a Fourth of July celebration. We can’t have fireworks anymore. It’s a fire hazard. We sit in a ring of cars like a wagon train bedding down for the night. Someone pulls out a harmonica and hums a crooked tune. The whole scene is a perfect desert night, the kind the Eagles would sing about: the vast emptiness, the luster of robust stars, the roaring fire to keep us warm. We share room-temperature water and cookies, and the little kids are scared and everybody else pretends not to be. “When I was a kid we didn’t have a fire department. And as soon as we saw smoke we skedaddled.” 41
“Second time I’ll call up the insurance company on that home. And I just put in that new screen door, too.” This with only a hint of annoyance. “Y’know, I wish I’d brought some marshmallows. Coulda dangled ‘em out the back windows and had us some s’mores.” “Is old Warren still up there?” We’re quiet. “Y’know, old folks like that can just decide when they die. All they’ve gots to do is say it’s time. Doesn’t hurt ‘em a bit. They get on down to sleeping and don’t wake up again.” I’m quiet. Someone sings a cheerful song about dancing in the rain. Sometimes it’s better to be distracted, but I can’t be. I think about Warren, how he’s sitting smoking a cigarette on his porch and drinking whiskey now that I’m not there. He let me try some, once, and it burned my throat, and he laughed, but not in a mean way, when I couldn’t stop coughing. I imagine him laughing now, talking to Muninn. He doesn’t think I know about that, the conversations with the tree, but I do. Old Muninn. Old Warren in his warren, his den, his burrow, whittling away the hours and ferreting away his treasures. The first time I met him he still smoked Cuban cigars, before they got too expensive to ship up here. Then he learned how to roll his own cigarettes. We don’t wait long before we go home. By the time the night is through, the flames retreat, pushed back by the firebreak. They’ll come back soon, but for now, we’re safe. Our bones are weary as we trundle up the mountain, through the smoky freeway and to our cooked town. We can never stay away for long, even though we still have to stamp out some of the smaller fires. The ash hangs in the air and we cough, looping the surgical masks over our ears. 42
We touch the torched stone stoops of our homes. Main street is mostly untouched, but the houses on the outskirts of town are cooked dry like a Thanksgiving turkey. I feel like a medic in an ambulance, or someone who is the first to come to the scene of an accident. The twisted metal and charred ruins. Our house was on the north side, and survived better than most—the roof ’s held up, and if we sweep a bit we might manage to get some of the ash out the door. I walk around inside, touching all the things I thought I’d never see again. Unimportant things, like mugs and books and blankets. I take my quilt from the bed and shake as much of the dirt off as I can. Even though there’s a sort of heat to the air, like the fire isn’t quite gone yet, I wrap myself in that quilt and stare out the window. I can see Warren’s house from here. That luck he always claimed would save him had finally broken, and I see that the roof has caved in a little at the back. Muninn’s branches almost stretch over that bit, as though it is trying to hold up the old home. The tree’s bark is blackened and peeling away, the trunk nearly cracked in half from the heat. All the needles are brown and drifting off like used-up matches, and I wonder what Warren would have thought, to see his faithful friend so dessicated. Not that Warren would think anything, now. As we drove in I watched the firefighters carry his body off the porch. When I was little, I used to go over to his house all the time after school. Now I go to the county high school, and by the time the bus comes around Mom’s back from work, but it used to be that I had two hours to myself. She’d send me over to Warren’s house to keep me out of trouble, and to ask if Warren needed anything, and he never did, and still doesn’t. He’s been the same my whole life—same liver-spotted skin and hunched back, gummy smile—and no one’s exactly sure how old he is. When I have the time I’ll go over, and he’s always sitting in the same place, smoking the same cigarettes. 43
“The tallest trees around here, the Suh-koy-yas, they love the fire. Their bark is thick. Even their pinecones, they don’t open until it gets hot enough.” He takes a deep breath of smoke and blows it to the sky. “You and me, we are those trees. The fire don’t hurt us.” He makes a gesture over to the old stunted sequoia growing in his front yard. Every time I look out my bedroom window I can see it, the knotted branches twisting up to the sky. He’s named it “Muninn,” and somehow it survives fire after fire. Our town is dry. You can taste it, feel it, smell it. Everything starts to feel the same; the grit coagulates on our flesh. Even the fire has a distinct smell of heat. The dust kicks up from the frantic wheels of cars leaving. I sit on the porch with Warren and we drink ice water and watch the fire burn through the valley. The main front is far enough away, but the wall of fire we’ve been hearing about is sending out smaller brush fires in advance. In the distance, a plane buzzes. They’ve been sending in the smokejumpers all week, and if we go out to where the road curves over the shoulder of the mountain you can see the whole valley. It’s all filled up with firetrucks and firemen, but they want to hit it harder, so some of them come in by parachute and try to fight that way. “Crazy folks,” Warren calls them. “Jumping straight inta the flames.” “That’s the way most of them go,” I say. The first time I asked him if he needed anything he said “friends.” I thought that was funny, so I stayed, and after three hours he began to work on building me my own rocking chair. Mom had questions when I returned, wringing her hands, asking if he seemed a little off, saying he had “PTSD” from a time before anyone knew what that meant. 44
He always has lemons, in all months of the year, in a glazed ceramic bowl on his counter. They are perfectly yellow and we stand in the kitchen, squeezing two for me and two for him, adding three tablespoons of sugar to each. “Weatherman says this one’s gonna be real bad,” I say. “Weatherman says that errytime,” Warren replies. Today the north wind blows in our faces. No one expects it, the breeze, but it’s cold up here. The wind can steal your breath almost as fast as a wave of smoke can. Warren coughs. “So, where’s the fire at?” “Burning through Knoxville. They’re hoping the freeway’ll stop it.” We started smelling smoke a few days back. Some people can tell how bad the fire’s going to get just based on the smell. I’m not one of those people. I know what we learn in school, that dry wood burns faster and that fire needs oxygen and that I should never forget Stop Drop And Roll. The schools around here teach us to run, smoked out like rabbits from their dens. From inside the living room I hear the song playing on the radio cut off and a scratchy message take over, the same kind of sorry tale we hear every week now. “Fire warning to those in the Greater Knoxville Area. Traveling at twenty miles an hour and expected to pick up. We suggest moving-” Warren has already begun moving in that direction, and he quickly shuts it off. He laughs while doing it. That same message has been playing all my life, and maybe even all his life. The only thing certain about all this mess is that the fire will come. If not today, then tomorrow. We know this is how we will die. The smoke slithering down our throats, garrot45
ing us with blackened tissue. That’s another thing no one expects. It’s not the flames that kill you, it’s the smoke, and the years of living with it. People like Warren play chicken with it, drinking it in and leaving bare matches offhandedly on counters and in trash cans. He hasn’t yet cleaned his yard and the dead brush is still piled up alongside the wooden walls. “Think it’ll stop there?” he continues. Small talk—a gift to me. He knows my mom worries. “Nope.” I toss the watery dregs of my lemonade onto the dust. We don’t have dirt up here, just dust. Everything is dust and the ground laps up the ice like a beast. I say the practiced words: “You coming down south?” Again Warren laughs. “Old Muninn’ll see another fire.” Warren’s wooden home is a mystery—it’s the oldest building in town, and filled with so many flammable objects. Nowadays we build our homes with stone and asbestos. He refuses to do the same, saying his home has survived as long as him like this and that it’ll survive longer than him like this. He doesn’t have fire insurance. Our town is built on the paper backs of insurance contracts. If you want job security you go into insurance. Something is always on the verge of destruction. That night my walls glow red with reflected light and Mom comes in to wake me up. We know the drill. We wet clothes in the bathtub and tie them around our necks like bandits. We jump in the car and drive south, through a column of smoke into the valley. The firemen have a firebreak down past Lost Flats. We keep driving until we reach Coalgate and there we sleep in our car. After these sorts of things they always send in all kinds of help for us poor refugees. 46
Years earlier, when the fires were smaller and less frequent they only gave us toothpaste and individually wrapped sanitizing napkins to keep the dust at bay. Now they hand out blankets and toothbrushes and canned ravioli, but we still have all of that stuff from last time rattling around in the backseat. They won’t let us heat it up over a fire, obviously, so we eat it cold, slurping down the wet noodles and watching our town spark up like fireworks at a Fourth of July celebration. We can’t have fireworks anymore. It’s a fire hazard. We sit in a ring of cars like a wagon train bedding down for the night. Someone pulls out a harmonica and hums a crooked tune. The whole scene is a perfect desert night, the kind the Eagles would sing about: the vast emptiness, the luster of robust stars, the roaring fire to keep us warm. We share room-temperature water and cookies, and the little kids are scared and everybody else pretends not to be. “When I was a kid we didn’t have a fire department. And as soon as we saw smoke we skedaddled.” “Second time I’ll call up the insurance company on that home. And I just put in that new screen door, too.” This with only a hint of annoyance. “Y’know, I wish I’d brought some marshmallows. Coulda dangled ‘em out the back windows and had us some s’mores.” “Is old Warren still up there?” We’re quiet. “Y’know, old folks like that can just decide when they die. All they’ve gots to do is say it’s time. Doesn’t hurt ‘em a bit. They get on down to sleeping and don’t wake up again.” I’m quiet. Someone sings a cheerful song about dancing in the rain. Sometimes it’s better 47
to be distracted, but I can’t be. I think about Warren, how he’s sitting smoking a cigarette on his porch and drinking whiskey now that I’m not there. He let me try some, once, and it burned my throat, and he laughed, but not in a mean way, when I couldn’t stop coughing. I imagine him laughing now, talking to Muninn. He doesn’t think I know about that, the conversations with the tree, but I do. Old Muninn. Old Warren in his warren, his den, his burrow, whittling away the hours and ferreting away his treasures. The first time I met him he still smoked Cuban cigars, before they got too expensive to ship up here. Then he learned how to roll his own cigarettes. We don’t wait long before we go home. By the time the night is through, the flames retreat, pushed back by the firebreak. They’ll come back soon, but for now, we’re safe. Our bones are weary as we trundle up the mountain, through the smoky freeway and to our cooked town. We can never stay away for long, even though we still have to stamp out some of the smaller fires. The ash hangs in the air and we cough, looping the surgical masks over our ears. We touch the torched stone stoops of our homes. Main street is mostly untouched, but the houses on the outskirts of town are cooked dry like a Thanksgiving turkey. I feel like a medic in an ambulance, or someone who is the first to come to the scene of an accident. The twisted metal and charred ruins. Our house was on the north side, and survived better than most—the roof ’s held up, and if we sweep a bit we might manage to get some of the ash out the door. I walk around inside, touching all the things I thought I’d never see again. Unimportant things, like mugs and books and blankets. I take my quilt from the bed and shake as much of the dirt off as I can. Even though there’s a sort of heat to the air, like the fire isn’t quite gone yet, I wrap myself in that quilt and stare out the window. I can see Warren’s house from here. That luck he always claimed would save him had finally broken, and I see that the roof has caved in a little at the back. Muninn’s 48
branches almost stretch over that bit, as though it is trying to hold up the old home. The tree’s bark is blackened and peeling away, the trunk nearly cracked in half from the heat. All the needles are brown and drifting off like used-up matches, and I wonder what Warren would have thought, to see his faithful friend so dessicated. Not that Warren would think anything, now. As we drove in I watched the firefighters carry his body off the porch.
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50
Jay Townsend
I Watched Good Omens While I Was Dating Someone And You Won’t BELIEVE What The Result Was **NOT CLICKBAIT** 51
Beautiful, I love you Like the stars do love the moon: From farther than I’d like And a little colder too. Angel dear, I love you The way the demons do— Debating ’tween the two of us Which is heaven’s fool. I have breathed out nebulae And known the Devil’s grace, But infinity I’ve only seen reflected in your face.
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Jay Townsend
Pagan steals Christian imagery ASMR Tear my throat and save my soul, Drink my blood to make me whole, And pin the gods to my flayed skin: A butterfly collection of your kin, The holiest angels grounded in sin.
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CONTRIBUTORS: Emma Bruce is a junior creative writing major from Austin, Texas. She focuses mostly on non-fiction, and her work is often an exploration of the landscape and culture of Texas, religion, women, and nature. Jack Andrew Ferry is an Emerson Sophomore originally from Southern California, majoring in Creative Writing. He enjoys diary-keeping, candle making, genealogy, and enjoying endless cups of tea. Ana Hein is an undergraduate student at Emerson College pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing with minors in Comedy Writing and Performance and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been featured in Wack Mag, Concrete, Gauge, Generic, Emerson College’s Undergraduate Students for Publishing blog, and Black Swan, among others, has won multiple Editor’s Choice Awards from Teen Ink Magazine, and is forthcoming in Fearsome Critters and Terrible Orange Review. She can usually be found buying too many books, singing loudly, wearing red lipstick, complaining about the weather, staring into the void, and generally being very dramatic. 55
Thais Jacomassi is a sophomore Writing, Literature, and Publishing student at Emerson College. She has won awards for her short fiction stories and has had her poetry showcased at writing competitions including the Hidden Lanterns Art Festival. Rishona Michael is a junior at Emerson College majoring in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. She has a great support system including friends and family, and loves all things literature and traveling. She hopes to incorporate the two hobbies in her future career while constantly spending time with people she loves. Julia Rouillard is a third year Creative Writing student with a minor in Hearing and Deafness. She mostly writes fiction, but also enjoys personal essays and the occasional poem. She’ll read literally anything that’s put in front of her, but she especially loves young adult fiction. Her work has been published in Green Magazine and on the Society19 website. Andi Smith is a student at Emerson College in Boston, where she is studying creative writing and history. She is originally from New Hampshire and has published short stories in local newspapers and other Emerson publications. Her novella The Autobiography of an Unknown Soldier will be available digitally at the end of the summer through Wilde Press. Garrett Speller is a third-year Creative Writing student floundering in mediocrity and a severe lack of motivation. He’s taken up a love for teaching as it’s so much easier to tell other people to work instead of actually doing it yourself. When he does write, occasionally, poetry comes out. Much like life, he has no idea what it all means. Jay Townsend is a sophomore WLP major at Emerson college who wants to try every artistic medium they can get their little hands on. So far they’ve got animation, comics, prose, and now, poetry. 56
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SPRING 2020 ISSUE 38
