Crack the Spine Literary magazine
Issue 144
Issue 144 March 30, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Leafy Reflections” by Christine Catalano Christine Catalano Worked as a graphic designer for many years and is now able to concentrate exclusively on photography She has been published in Crack the Spine previously, is a regular contributor to Bella Online’s Mused magazine, and recently was interviewed for an article about her photography in Canada’s Front&Centre literary magazine.
CONTENTS Mary Renzi Trilobites
Deborah Wong
Ballad’s Under Construction
Scott Thomas Outlar Doctor, Doctor
Gabriel Lek PAWdale
Charles Hansmann
Contact
Darren C. Demaree
I Settle for Many New Things About a Very Old Man
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
The Way of Things
Mary Renzi Trilobites
Jake Callahan hadn’t slept through the night since the first week of September. Each workday stunned him with the blue glare of endless computer monitors. When he returned home, his blood hummed with kilowatts. His eyes were dry husks: When he closed them he only saw tattooed squares of light. He drugged himself into uneasy slumber with Benadryl and whiskey, but awoke each morning during the witching hour and stared zap-eyed at the ceiling until the sun rose. After work he wandered the streets in an insomniac daze. Downtown, Jake portaged through a dank alleyway between restaurants. It was there—muddled by the spent ash of his exhausted mind—that he discovered his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Birch. The woman sat among fish heads, trash, and dishwater,
sucking on a can of condensed milk which dribbled thickly down her chin. There was no mistaking her cleft lip, or her gunmetal eyes. "Mrs. Birch, its Jake Callahan." He squatted down beside her. "I had you for fourth grade,"—he did the math— "in 1990." She didn’t answer him. Her eyes were inert as taxidermy. "Trilobites," he told her. "I wrote the paper on Trilobites." The word—Trilobite—was loaded with power for him, an incantation which awoke something subcortical and deep in his fragmented psyche. It brought a rush of visceral memory. The die-cut image of the ancient Trilobites emerged sharply from his addled brain: Bizarre, dark-armored creatures without faces. He was struck next by the memory of the white, acetone school room,
policed by a much younger Mrs. Birch, whose deep- lined face broadcast the gray seriousness of the world to all of them. She had been provoked to anger by odd stimuli: the too-fast tempo of a ceiling fan, the slatted blinds which jammed each time, a fat fly buzzing her cola. She was despotic, and although Jake had worked desperately for her approval, he had not been one of her favorites. When she handed the science papers back, his was not among them. She called him into the hallway for a tete a tete. "These creatures, Trilobites," –the word seemed to disgust her—"are a product of your imagination." She snapped the paper into his hand. He looked down at it, red faced. Jake had taken time while the other children played to draw a detailed oceanscape, which he stapled to the back of the paper. The drawing showed, very accurately, the Trilobites' lobed and elliptical bodies.
He had articulated each jointed segment of exoskeleton with a black pen and his patient hand. The creatures did indeed look very bizarre--Lovecraftian, almost. He had drawn them ranging in a mighty herd over a tumultuous ocean, their epic wakes producing murderous and titanic swells. This is how he imagined them—as alien ocean kings. Or else he pictured them swimming through nebulas in space, because their bodies were shaped like the hull of the Starship Enterprise. In his paper he had written how Trilobites ruled the earth many million years ago, until the volcanic oceans boiled, which ended their mighty and unparalleled reign with all the sentiment of crabs boiled in a pot. "They were real," he told her, simply. "No," Mrs. Birch had decreed. "They were not real. I would have heard of them." While the other kids were at recess,
Jake had gone to the library. He visited Mrs. Birch at her desk with the encyclopedia. "You see," he said. His arms quivered under the weight of the volume. Although his integrity was vindicated, his tears flowed freely and he ran into the bathroom to hide.
Jake looked around him in the darkening alleyway. Everything in space was drunkenly abstracted by his muddled mind, as if fractured by waterfall. Frenzied, he emptied his wallet of twenties into the old woman's lap. The image of Trilobites was more insistent, however, than the molted shell of his former teacher in pigeon shit. Trilobites seemed very important. They were the key to, something. He did not know what. He rushed home, his mind a confused weather pattern. Jake poured a stiff drink and lit a cigarette.
Trilobites, he muttered. How did I forget them? He smiled. As a child he had created paracosms. He had absorbed everything, which in turn became fodder for his detailed worlds and gigantic curiosity. If not Trilobites, then black holes, ice ages, or Ernest Shackleton. Today, in the alleyway, he had momentarily regained that natural and absorbed order –the intense wonder of childhood which had been so easy, brilliant, and noncompulsory. But his heart sank as he looked at the impoverished room and considered the threadbare night. He thought of the technical manual and his latest deadline, and of the sleepless, crack-pot days ahead. Fuck it, work could wait. Jake opened the laptop and ran a search on "Trilobite." He clicked the hyperlink. He studied fossil records. He read about the great die-off at the end of
the Permian age. But it was no good. He could not will fascination. He saw blueprints and diagrams, and an ugly, insect-like creature with no face. He was grateful one would not greet him if he took a dip in the ocean. He no longer saw starships or ocean kings. He poured another drink. He thought of the vagrant Mrs. Birch, of her malnourished body and empty, crustaceous eyes. They had both fallen.
Deborah Wong
Ballad’s Under Construction
I’ll start typing our sex again, that if my mentality’s in working condition, Those letterings will to plaster on neon lights, transcending into those drawing chalks of Union Pay, MasterCard and Visa. Sound of tossing Cents; and Shillings in and out all through vary compartments, Dancing hard are the coffee machines, Juices roller-coaster-ing, archly tables and chairs in frozen carts. Ambience’s drinking emotion, while Oxygen has no vacancy for rent, Your picture on the dilapidated wall, I slide to unlock and applying passwords, We then resurfaced at the chrome backdrop.
Scott Thomas Outlar Doctor, Doctor
“The theory of the lyric is dead!” He screamed out (certainly not in a singing voice) to no one in particular, although there was a large crowd of over ten thousand men, women, children and extrasensory beings from all over the cosmos in attendance; a crowd that continued to grow, almost exponentially, as the organic vibrations of the speaker’s thoughts were cast outward from the little town of Plutarch, Crasanova. By the time he had reached the first rising climax in phase one of his speech, in which he bellowed, “And not only the theory, but also the practice of, the creation of, and the use of, as well- all dead,” over twenty two thousand organic humanoids were standing transfixed, looking rather perplexed, as they listened to the words being ranted by the man. A man who seemed to be blathering away in blasphemy. Indeed, was it not he who had, years ago, as a young burgeoning poet, announced that the lyrical form of artistic expression was on its way toward sparking a revolution? And he who had said that, soon, art would provide the foundation for a society based on the desire to connect spiritually through each other’s creative endeavors? Yes, it was the same man, in some ways at least. But many things had changed. After being on the frontier and riding the crest of a giant tidal wave of emotion that swept across Earth and then outward through the cosmos, this man had suddenly grown very weary and saddened, becoming completely
disenfranchised with the very cause that his life had been devoted to. That of unifying all living, conscious beings through collective, universal harmony. Of course, being a manic depressive, schizophrenic, bi-polar, nut job, head case, the man’s wig had eventually flipped. Just as the Renaissance Revolution was being ushered in with a rebirth of spirituality and art, the man altered his position altogether. Thus explains the context of what he said next to the expanding crowd that had now reached over thirty thousand of his followers, disciples and apostles, as well as many stragglers that showed up just to see what all the fuss was about. The gist is, they admired the man, and so his changed attitude shook their foundations to the core and buried their spirits ten feet deep. But what was it he said next? Oh yes, it went a little something like this. “I am not sorry, so do not expect to see me cry. Bah! Tears are for weeping poets and romantic humanists. I am not at all like these bleeding hearts. No! Never more! I am the antithesis of art. I am the enemy of nature and anything infused with aesthetic beauty. I see the shocked looks on your faces. Wipe them off. Do not be stunned by this turn of events. Trust me, I have seen the light, and it was bright, and it brought me a great illuminated sight- wait…damn it, I’m stumbling into that rhyming verse nonsense again. Anyway, as I was saying…uh…what was I saying?” The crowd, now reaching upwards of forty thousand strong, was in utter disbelief. Not only was their prophet renouncing the doctrine he had initiated and worked so hard to realize, but now he was reduced to a babbling fool, unable to even get out a coherent thought without stumbling over the clouded context that swirled through his disillusioned mind. Boos, hisses and angry chants began to erupt from certain factions in the crowd; while others, those
who had faithfully adopted the man’s doctrine of peace, love, truth, empathy and compassionate cohabitation, tried to use such spiritual tactics to quiet the restless onlookers. But things only got worse. My, how they got worse. “For art, lyrics in particular, are the main tool used by the powers of evil on this planet, in this cosmos, and across this galaxy. Spiritual expression is the work of the Devil. “Verily, it was spoken to me from on high just the other day that I must now lead my troops, my army, my forces, into a new battle. We must burn all the art that was created while I was possessed by the evil spirits that encouraged such awful stuff to come about in the first place.” The man went on like this for hours as the crowd continued to grow, eventually topping off at around two hundred thousand awfully confused spectators. “Is he babbling in tongues about Gods and Devils?” one onlooker asked another. “I couldn’t quite understand, what with the wild, fevered inflection he is wailing in,” answered the other, “but I do believe he has journeyed off into that superstitious language of dogma, piety and wrathful, righteous, angry deities.” No one could have predicted the turn of events. No one that is, but Dr. Mallory May, the psychiatrist who had worked with the man over the past sixteen years during the course of his wild paranoia and constantly altering moods. She knew very well about his pattern of having messiah-like aspirations turn into melancholic, devil-inspired revelations in the flash of an eye.
He had escaped her care during the past week, and at that time made the big announcement that huge changes were on the horizon. But she knew his mind well enough to realize he would try and pull a stunt like this one. Gathering a crowd of so many in front of the ancient, preserved tower, the Methuselah, which, to many, represented the beginning point for the previous Revolution of art. Yes, the doctor knew her patient would be here. She came prepared. Just as the man began to change his rant about blessed forgiveness from the Holy Triad for the sins of the artists if they would only just repent, into a topic of obscure references covering global warming, iceberg malfunctions, fault line collapses, titanic plate shifts beneath the oceans, solar flare fires from the sky, and other such apocalyptic nonsense, the good doctor rushed the stage. A collective gasp went through the gathered assembly. What happens now, they wondered. But not for long, because things happened quickly. The doctor injected a two inch syringe straight into the spinal cord on the back of the man’s neck. He wrenched forward, stumbled around groggily a bit, and then shook his head as if getting out the cobwebs. He then realized where he was and saw quite a few stunned onlookers gazing at him. “Oh, goody goody gumballs,” the now jovial man exploded. “You all received your invitation to the opening of the Utopiatic Center For Human Evolution. See, here it is right behind me!” The man waved his arms around manically, obviously still a bit confused and out of sorts. But at least he had been reverted to his former state of good-natured love and hope. He began to dance around wildly, singing melodies from the many lyrics he had created only weeks earlier. The audience was baffled.
The future was uncertain. But for now, art could begin to thrive once more. At least until the man goes off the deep end again. But that’s what the goofy drugs and hypodermic needles are made for. Yea, keep them all on the level through medication. Numb it all away and smile serenely.
Gabriel Lek PAWdale
Once a boy met a prancing grizzly, Energetic he was, like a lark he sings, Jumping up and down, bouncing his large round head. The boy treated him like his treasure, Feeding milk to his beloved. Then came a dark brown bear. His beady eyes gazed languidly, In a state of lost, His football face had a triangular mark Which made that patch on his forehead so Irresistible. There were times he favored, There were times he labored To choose between the two. Yet deep down he knew he loved them both The frog was a real charming thing. He stood erect, like a handsome prince, As my sister would call him Fool of zeal, he lazed around, Frolicking under the sun
Now this grizzly and this prince, Were brothers through and through. They shared the same fir, And were the most winning duo To bring sunshine into the house A bird flew in a graceful glide, A flamingo, I see, who loved to Beak those who roused her. Her best friend walked down the street, She patted her toes, she raised her hands, And sang her merry tune. Is she a cat or a bear? She’s only either If I choose her to be. Now these females were compatible to The two bears, the dark brown furball Juxtaposed to the pink bird, The golden brown cat-bear with the grizzly, And so I paired them And then came this voracious monster, That pink dinosaur, proclaiming her beauty, Her queenship, her royalty, An incarnation of all pomposity, Symbolized in that ginormous mouth,
With two front teeth that made her look Cute? She would ATTACK you with that Threatening mouth. Time passed with years gone No, our softies were not vanquished, They lived on, they grew, With a new intellectual superiority that Matched ours. They knew economics, geography, politics, literature, And all sorts of -ology. Particularly that grizzly with the big head Who earned 5 PhDs in the past year. They found a way to supersede humans, With all their knowledge of money Printed. Their wealth accumulated and We would sometimes joke that they Burnt them for fire in the cold winters, In the name of maintaining their inflation rates, To prevent an inflationary spiral. Their unlimited resources accelerated their growth. They did research that no human could. Extravagant were they, Buying all sorts of odd paraphernalia,
That they required professional consumers To consume enough before inflation rises. We delighted at this experimental society, To foresee and explore the cogwheels of Human society. Soon all sorts of inventions arose. Devices humans could only dream of, Devices that were possible to make but were Banned for safety reasons, devices that operated on Theory. Like witnessing light pass by in a counter direction To see the past. Concepts that are still in development by NASA. New theories came, when discoveries shook what Humans once knew. New elements, gravitational tractors that Pull space rocks, and Bruiny’s 5 Laws of Motion. 500th Century English was discovered by Kokie, While the cat-bear Tessie mastered advanced calculus And quantum theory Their next G8 meeting came, And they pondered the world’s problems, Criticizing the human movers and shakers Who chose to play politics than take action. So they took it upon themselves to act, And act they did, in a secret cabal,
That no human would notice. For even if they did, all they saw was a Ginormous pink mouth, before everything Blacked out. And perhaps they could have Sworn they spotted a brown grizzly. Pawdale has opened a whole new world, To shape my characters, Or rather, for my characters to Shape me. An insight into the human soul They provided, and gave me timeless joy as I bantered my opinions with my sisters’, All in the garrulous mode of storytelling. Like a childhood dream, It gave my imagination life. But it was not a dream, For it is an extension of us. And like a ‘softie’, I am capable of creating My own destiny, to craft My own story.
Charles Hansmann Contact
I go down to the esplanade and sit on a bench. As I put my arm across the backrest a woman sits down and leans into it. She jumps up from the touch, as if I have groped her, and I stand up too, equally startled. We smile to acknowledge our mutual embarrassment. Then she turns and walks off. It is merely an accident of timing. afternoon shadows tracking the sun-bather’s towel Flip-flops and sandals: the sidewalk’s applauded. When did the esplanade become so crowded? I feel a gnawing at my innards as if my stomach were teething on an iron tine. It is beginning to feel like hamburger time. gull cries and the seawall
exposing its rock I go over to the Hab-or-Nab to have a quick bite. “What’ll it be, Stranger?” I always sit at the bar and the barmaid always calls me that. “Medium rare, pepino solo.” “And an order of rings,” the woman who sat beside me on the bench says as she takes the next stool. She starts fumbling through her purse. “They have a beer menu here but I can’t find my glasses. Are those for reading?” sky before moonrise closing the kiosk I take the Cary Grant repros from the neck of my shirt as a strand of her light brunette hair slips down to her dark brunette eyebrows. “Two point five,” she says, adjusting the glasses
on her nose. “I’m an excellent judge of magnification.” sand at low tide, a placemat fading Our conversation is a series of overstrikes. By last call I feel imprinted in an old-fashioned way like paper slowly working through a typewriter. “Phyllis,” she says, “since you’ll want to know my name.” She takes me by the arm as if she were batting left-handed. “I knew you were nice when you jumped off that bench. I bet you open doors.” We turn up my walk and inside my apartment I drape a towel over the cage to keep the cockatiel quiet. Phyllis is thirsty, and as I give her a glass I wonder if she has to take a pill. banyan root, the wing-tucked leg of the wading bird She drinks the water in the bathroom and won’t let me watch.
When she opens the door dim light floats out toward the couch where I am waiting. She is wearing just a towel wrapped under her arms like a strapless dress. “I want to make love without taking it off. You don’t have to know why.” She pulls the bathroom door shut and goes over to the window to widen the blind. Partly blocked by the slats the streetlamp looks like a lunar eclipse. “A moon like this,” she says, stroking the bands of shadow and light.
Darren C. Demaree
I Settle for Many New Things About a Very Old Man Arms around a shell, I foam to give surf to a tremendous weight without the energy to darken into matter. Almost nothing but a replicate that lived through concentrated lightning, I have changed the name of all things to make him seem delicate enough to dance with us.
Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam The Way of Things
I wake to find that my hand has turned to steel. The arm stings where the metal meets flesh at the wrist, silver fading into gray like dead flesh then coloring back into the shade of my skin. My wife sleeps beside me. I do not wake her. To lift the hand is a chore. My wrist throbs as I pull it to my chest and hold it there like the child I've sworn I'll never have. Not with my genes. Not with my father's liquid curse lurking in the cells of the arm I cradle. At least the still human bits. I don't know where the steel came from or if it has cells that carry the past. But it feels right, that my hand should be this way. I gaze at the silver reflection of my twisted face. Some mornings, I do not recognize myself. In the steel, distorted, I am clear as the light outside the window blinds. I hope that the metal does not leave. I wish that the metal had come sooner. I wonder if it would have changed things.
My father's memory has been funneled through the fist-shaped hole he punched in the wall outside my childhood bedroom. He was trying, he said, to turn out the light. But when he came in every night to tuck the covers around me, he reeked of vodka. I never questioned the smell. It was the way of things. I was eight and did not know better. I was ten and wished I had the strength to take him out myself. I was twelve, crouching at the foot of the stairs, listening to a wife's empty threats. If he didn't stop, she would leave him.
I was twenty, and he was a glinting blaze in the middle of a field. Too drunk to drive. Pulled into a nearby farm. Fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. I was twenty with a phone clutched to my ear. They said the words: "Your father is dead." And I felt nothing. Would his son's metal hand have scared him sober? At least I could have closed it around his throat until he stopped yelling. There was an anger then that made me shake in bed at night. Now there is nothing. An empty feeling, like I haven't eaten in years.
When my wife, Jillian, sees the hand, she holds her hands over her open mouth. "What did you do to yourself?" she says. "Have you called the doctor?" I am eating toast with blackberry jam. It tastes like bread and fruit and leaves a sticky feeling on my flesh hand. The steel feels nothing. "No need," I say. "No need?" She grabs at the counter, as though she is about to fall over. In the dark of our kitchen, for I have not yet turned on the lights, she is a shadowy face and the silhouette of worry. It must hurt to worry so much. Inside her chest there must be pain like constant heartburn. When we met in college, it was nice to have someone to worry. These days it's just as it is; there is no nice or not nice. The bread tastes like bread. I take another bite. "I like it this way," I say. "It feels like it should have always been this way." For a moment we are both silent. "I'm going out," she says. It's been months since we spent a morning together at the breakfast table, spreading jam onto bread, like we used to. I think she got tired of the silence. I am okay with her leaving, if it means I do not have to pretend to care about the day's news or the
day's plans. I watch her go. At the door, she flips on the light. Then she is gone. I flex my fingers. They are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The next morning, when I wake, both my arms are steel. Three toes. A patch of skin around my navel is greying. I touch the spot with my metal fingers, and the surfaces clink together like a new music. The morning after that, my legs and feet are steel. They crash across the kitchen floor. "Do something," Jillian says. "Please, John, just do something." She waits with her hand on the front doorknob. "What can I do?" I ask. She says nothing. She stares across the room, eyes wide and wanting. What can I do? Soon I am all metal outside, though inside I still feel my heart beating. When I dream of my father, I do not wake with gasping breaths. When my wife leaves the house without explanation, I do not wonder who the other man is, though the thought of his hands used to fill me with a great hot rage. I do not go to work. I sit at the kitchen table and crush apples in my palms. Their gore is red and messy and human. When my wife returns and slides into our bed, I try to touch her so that I will know how it feels to touch skin with steel. She rolls away from me. "What is wrong?" I say. "I can't," she says. "Not while you're like that. Change back. Please." "I don't know how," I say, but that is not all of the truth. I can't change back because I am myself now more than I ever was before. I am everything I ever wanted to be.
Jillian and I were happy once. Once there was breakfast in bed and late nights laughing and homemade chicken soup when we were sick. Once there was her singing in the shower and dances she did with her fingers across my stomach and the sound of her typing in the next room. Now there is an empty house, and no drive behind her eyes. I was thirty-eight, and a father was resurrected in a fist. I hit the wall. The plaster caved around me. My knuckles bled. I shut myself down. There was no other way to keep us safe. I was thirty-nine. I could no longer tell her that I loved her. I no longer did. There was no love left.
The heart slows. The stomach does not growl. I open my mouth each morning and no breath comes out. I am solid. I am heavy. I am smooth and cold and perfect. There is no more dull morning sun; it is a prism of lights now that reaches through our bedroom window. Because the light is part of another world, because no one but me sees it, I do not belong beside a wife who sleeps when the sun is beaming bright. I wait at the breakfast table for her to wake. I want to know all of the world. Jillian stopped asking me to change. She stopped turning on the light. The morning of my solidness, as she comes down the stairs, I know that that there is something to her now that there never was before. She sits across from me. She eats an apple. She wipes the juice away with the back of her hand. "I guess I can no longer pretend that you're someone else," she says. "That you're warm inside, that you care about something, anything. I guess I can't pretend that you're someone you're not anymore."
"Yes," I say. "You are correct." "I knew when I married you that you were hardened. But I couldn't help it." She cries, and the tears run with the juice and drip on the table. "I felt safe around you. You loved me in your cold way, and it didn't scare me like other love did. I wasn't ready to be loved the way another man could love me." "Yes," I say. "You often smelled of him, when you crept into bed at night. I cannot smell it any longer. It is good." She turns her face and hides her eyes behind her hand. "Don't you feel anything anymore? Don't you love me? Aren't you angry? You used to get so angry. And it was terrible, but at least it was something. I could run from anger. I can't run from nothing." She looks as though she is trying to shrink herself down. I want to tell her that it is impossible. That there is nowhere for her mass to go. But it would do no good to tell her this. She knows. The apple core sits naked on the table, now. "You speak like one of flesh and blood," I say. "I cannot speak like that anymore. I do not know what anger is. But I should like to see if it still sleeps inside me. Take me to him. I want to wish you a fair goodbye."
My father hated other men. Once he attacked the next door neighbor for helping my mother bring the groceries in. He used to call when he was at work to make sure that she was home. I used to dream of other men. I dreamt of them running their hands over Jillian's thighs, kissing the fuzz between her legs, undressing her at the window as I watched. I no longer dream. I used to wake with sweat beaded on my forehead. I no longer sweat. I used to feel the urge to pull Jillian to my chest and squeeze her as tight as I could. There are worse emotions than anger.
"Remember," she says, as we drive down twisted roads in neighborhoods I have never seen, "when we used to drive, just anywhere we could? I would tell you to take me somewhere beautiful?" She grips the wheel. "What happened to us?" Once I took her to a river where my friends and I used to down whole bottles of vodka. Another time I took her to a rundown park where there were no more children. The last time we drove, I took her to the field where my father burned alive. "I remember," I say. "We don't have to do this," she says. "We can just leave it alone. I'll go my way. You can go yours. We tried." We drive past houses with for sale signs outside, past a kid's tricycle left in a yard. We come to a red brick apartment building. She parks the car. She looks at me for a moment. The seat is broken under my weight. When I open the door to climb out, I crack the handle in half. She opens my door from the outside. We walk together up a stone path to a red door. She knocks. "Are you sure?" she says. The door opens. The man is brittle thin and familiar, though I do not think we have met. "He asked to see you," Jillian says. The man holds his arms out to his sides. He is shaking. Jillian, too. Her hands are pressed together so hard they are white. "Here I am," says the man. "See?" "May we come in?" I ask. I do not wait for him to answer. I shove past him. His apartment is full of things. I stand while Jillian and the man she addresses as Michael whisper at the door. I hear what they say. He is angry, but it is not my anger. It is a brittle anger, full of cracks and holes.
I do not think that my anger lives anymore. To be sure, I step close and push them together. "Kiss," I say. They hesitate. I push them again. They kiss closed-mouthed. "Again," I say. They linger. "One more time," I say. They latch. Her arms wrap around his neck. They are both trembling of fear and glee. I watch with eyes unclouded by love. It is something, this coupling, that I have never known, not even when I was skin. They fit, the brittle man and the broken woman. It is good that they should have this. I leave the apartment. I walk. Somewhere, maybe there is this for ones like me, too. Maybe there are others of metal. Maybe I will find them. Or maybe I will wake one morning and be skin again. I walk. Whatever happens, it will be the way of things. Each step I take booms like a heartbeat.
Contributors Christine Catalano Christine Catalano Worked as a graphic designer for many years and is now able to concentrate exclusively on photography She has been published in Crack the Spine previously, is a regular contributor to Bella Online’s Mused magazine, and recently was interviewed for an article about her photography in Canada’s Front&Centre literary magazine. Darren C. Demaree Darren C. Demaree is the author of “As We Refer to Our Bodies” (8th House, 2013), “Temporary Champions” (Main Street Rag, 2014), and “Not For Art Nor Prayer” (8th House, 2015). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. Charles Hansmann Charles Hansmann is the author of 5 poetry chapbooks, most recently “Apostasy of the Wayless Poet” (Tebot Bach, 2013) and “Poem of the Ahead Places” (Kattywompus, 2013). He has recent fiction in KYSO Flash and Star 82 Review. Gabriel Lek Gabriel Lek is an emerging writer who enjoys nothing better than a good old classic, and a strong cup of Duchess Grey. Being one who loves to experiment
with style and language, he is now working on his debut collection of absurdist short stories, titled ‘Beyond Watchful Eyes’. Scott Thomas Outlar Scott Thomas Outlar survived both the fire and the flood – now he dances in celebration while waiting on the next round of chaos to commence. Otherwise, he lives a relatively simple life, spending the days flowing and fluxing with the tide of the Tao River, laughing at life’s existential nature, and writing prosefusion poetry dedicated to the Phoenix Generation. His debut chapbook “A Black Wave Cometh” is forthcoming from Dink Press. More of Scott’s writing can be found at 17numa.wordpress.com. Mary Renzi Mary Renzi’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in decomP, Short, Fast, and Deadly, theNewerYork, Spartan, One Throne Magazine, and many others. She also reads for One Throne Magazine, a beautiful literary arts journal based in Dawson City, Yukon. Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s fiction and poetry has appeared in magazines such as Room, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Goblin Fruit. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and curates an annual Art & Words Show, which was profiled in the March/April 2014 issue of Poets & Writers. She lives in Texas with her partner and two literarily-named cats: Gimli and Don Quixote. You can visit her on
Twitter @BonnieJoStuffle or www.bonniejostufflebeam.com.
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Deborah Wong Deborah Wong was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and grew up in Subang Jaya. She graduated from the University of London with a degree in law. She studied summer intensive creative writing at the University of British Columbia in 2010. Her poems and short stories are featured in ditch, Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, Three Line Poetry, Inwood Indiana Press, Anak Sastra, Coffee Shop Poems, Red Fez, Mad Swirl, Banana Writers, Vox Poetica, Wish Poetry Press, Eastlit, The Tower Journal, and Message in a Bottle Poetry Magazine. She is one of the editorial board members of Eastlit for poetry submission and is currently working on her semi-autobiographical novel. Find her on twitter @PetiteDeborah or at her website: www.deborahytwong.wordpress.com.
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