Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue 153
Issue 153 June 9, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
CONTENTS Marlene Molinoff The Late Train
Mark Belair
The Rooming House
Kristen MacKenzie
Milk
Faye Turner-Johnson
Life – You Untrustworthy Bastard
Daniel J. Newcomer
Saudade of Clay
John Grabski
Darwin’s Compassion
Hannah Mescon Clatter
Marlene Molinoff The Late Train
He waits for her the same way each time. “Marieta, it’s almost ten, get your stuff together; I’ve got your coat and scarf.” He looks at the wall clock; they have a little over thirty minutes before her train comes, and it takes a minute or so to get downstairs, and who knows how long to get a cab to the station. She’s usually not right there; had her shower and is putting on makeup or rearranging the bedroom. He calls again, “Marieta, come on, we’ve only got a half hour and we have to get a cab—taxis can be tough at this hour, so get a move on,” though a half hour’s generous and the 10:34’s usually late so she’ll have to stand waiting on the platform anyway. He shouldn’t care that she’s late. He’s the one who’ll be there alone when she’s gone. But he’s seen it time and time again—the anxiety on her face when there are no cabs in sight and he’s racing up and down the street yelling for one at the corner, her running to get in as he stops it. Marieta comes into the front room. “I was straightening up,” “…watering the plants,” “I couldn’t find my makeup,” “One of my earrings rolled under the carpet. Oh. There’s lots of dust under there; you really ought to get the cleaning service in again.” Her last comment catches him off guard and he’s stunned by the insensitivity; he foots the bill for all their evenings together without asking for anything, though it’s been over a year since they got together. She continues without noticing. “I forgot whether I wore my sweater tucked in or out this morning,” “I’m worried that Stan will notice even a small change like that,” “He watches every detail when I dress in the morning since the kids are gone,” and
so on; “I can’t decide what to say about tonight”—“Another late meeting,” “Working on an overdue project,” “Out to dinner with colleagues,” “You know how he hates for me to be away now that he’s not traveling so much,” and he usually helps her on with her coat, having taken the scarf out of its sleeve and saying about some of the things she’s auditioning: “You had a late dinner last week,” “You would’ve called him to bitch if you were caught up in a last-minute project,” “That’s the most likely, but be prepared to comment on the menu and some celebrity in a corner banquette you spotted on the way to the ladies room,” his coat or jacket is already on, and he picks up her briefcase or takes it from her if she already has it—that way they can get to the curb faster—and says, “Did we forget anything important—you have your earrings on and your other jewelry? And your reading glasses—” “Oh, my reading glasses, I’m sorry,” she says if she’s left them on the night table or runs to get them from the kitchen where she’s set them down while cooking something from Gourmet— “Because I don’t want you to call me from the train tomorrow while I’m out jogging, frantic, to bring them to your office, because it’s awkward for me to bring them there now that we’re not working together,” and usually she has everything and they go. He’s said a number of times as he walks her to her cab, “We should really have a checklist so we know you’ve got everything,” and she says, “I agree,” but they never have. To fast-forward, though, they’re at the curb. It’s down five flights and through the double doors of the modest lobby and across the street, which is one-way the wrong way, about twenty-five feet total. So it takes them—except when they stop to kiss in the stairwell or she clings to him and breaks down, saying she can’t go—at the most one minute and five seconds to get there, and he grabs her wrist and sees that she still has twenty-nine minutes till her train. He
never puts on his own watch because he’s going upstairs to shower when she’s gone, so he can go out for a nightcap and not feel the emptiness she leaves behind. A couple of cabs pass, some with their “Off-Duty” lights on or no lights, indicating they already have a fare, and he often says something foul about the taxi situation in the city, but this time he doesn’t. In fact several times he’s yelled obscenities that have called attention to them and she’s been embarrassed and once she said to him, “Don’t do that, Brian, you shouldn’t scream on the street, people will see us and remember us next time,” and he said, “Don’t tell me what to do. So what if people see us?” Tonight, she looks at the vanishing cabs and says, “How on earth are we going to get one?” and he says, “I’ll get one, don’t worry,” and races off down the street, shirttails hanging, and she’s sobbing behind him, “But I’ve got to make the 10:34 or what will I say when I get home?” Usually he starts the conversation while they wait. About when and where next time, what pretext, and once in a while they’ll go over the more difficult subject of where to go from here, and so on. But tonight, a taxi comes, he stops it, and she gets in. He watches her mood change as she directs the driver—shoulders collapse, brows unfurrow, she leans back and doesn’t think to turn toward him waiting there for her to meet his eyes one last time before she drives off, or to mouth “I love you,” or “Thank you,” as she’s done on other nights like this. Tonight, she stares straight ahead, intent on getting home on time. Home. That’s what she said, “What will I say when I get home?” He’ll go back inside tonight just like all the other nights, shower, dress, and head to Vini’s because it no longer feels like home without her there. It’s barely 10:45, a time when other couples sit close together in the shadows while he, alone at the bar nursing a Negroni, watches the Yankees drag out Mariano for the umpteenth time, then hears Michael Kaye croon, “The
Yankees win…the YANKEEEES win!” and realizes that something’s different for him. Maybe it’s the way she carped about the dust or visibly switched gears in the cab that’s got to him, the way she didn’t remember him there outside the window, the easy reference to going home in spite of her obvious efforts to play the role of live-in girlfriend at his place, to bring him plants and cook him elaborate meals that he’s shopped for from her emailed list of ingredients. Or maybe it’s the way she worries about Stan’s feelings and never his—her constant allusions to his health, his work, their children without ever asking about his own. Not his children, of course, because he’s never had any, never married, never before thought he’d want to. But somehow the loneliness that follows in her wake, the strength he feels in giving her the pleasure she’s told him she’s never felt before with any man, and the dependability of his own desire have made him ask, more and more recently, whether they’ve reached the point that they should be together instead of stealing these scraps whenever they can. He’s tried to figure it out, her reluctance to deal with what’s really going on. There is no question in his mind. He’s never been to this place before, but he recognizes how different it is from all the others. He’s been cutting her some slack because she says she’s never done this and never would have if she understood how serious things could get. It’s usually at the end of the evening that the subject comes up. It’s better when they’re still in bed and he can gently force her to look at him, accept the intimacy of the peace they’re sharing having come this far together, worse when she, suddenly aware of the time, flees, turning with a look of despair, collapsing momentarily into physical longing before pulling herself together and rushing off to her other life. He tries to understand that she’s married and has more to lose than he does, but he
doesn’t really, because to lose their love would be to lose everything. Tonight, it never came up—where to go from here—and this time he knows it’s nowhere, that they’ll ride the wave of her emotion until something scares her back into her careful life, that she does in some way he cannot understand still love Stan as she has so many times said because he’s the father of her children, she’s taken a vow, and because nothing has changed for Stan and shouldn’t have for her, and the million other excuses she has for not making a clean break and starting a life with him. Recently, he’s met a girl at the gym, not a girl really, she’s in her forties, but single and upbeat and really into him in a way that’s flattering. They’ve had a few dates and last night they slept together for the first time. It wasn’t anything like what he feels when he’s with Marieta, but it was OK—a start—a good connection. He was planning to bring it up with Marieta tonight, not as an ultimatum, but as a way of letting her know that he’s lonely when she’s not around, needs more of a life, or even that he’s out there in the world, desirable to other women. He’s never talked to her about what he does when he’s not with her, but he knows she’s assumed that while it’s all right for her to sleep with her husband, it’s not all right for him to be with anybody else. He’s promised her nothing, himself that he would tell her if he were, but now he’s not so sure he should. She’s the one who’d turn it into an ultimatum, and right now he’s feeling like he might call her bluff if she did. He’s on the fence. His gym buddy Rhona’s fun in the sack but nothing more. He knows he’ll burn through her in a matter of months as he has so many others. “So why tell Marieta?” Even as he asks himself, he knows. He can see her face tonight through the cab window, how composed, how safe it is, and he wants her to know for once that she can’t have it both ways.
Mark Belair
The Rooming House the wall between us was so thin / i could hear him pour his tea / in a basement room i rented in a rooming house on beacon street / boston / 1973 garbage cans stood outside my alleyway window / rats / big as cats / waddled past / i picked my mail up from a dark entryway table where / once a week / i left a modest check / cashed by the owner / whom i met only once / the desperate day i’d discovered that the decent apartment i thought i’d secured the spring before / had been let over summer vacation to a fellow musicconservatory student who’d offered to pay more my tiny room was so overfilled by its stained cot and poor-excuse-for-a-desk / that my friends stopped visiting / if three of us sat down to talk / all our knees touched / not that i could entertain anyway / a single-burner hot plate set atop a microfridge / my complete kitchen / along with a drip-stained corner sink my neighbor to the south was a young indian man / which was why i figured it was tea he poured / i glimpsed him in the hall / in a dark suit / only once / but i heard / despite my efforts to block them out / all the details of his personal life the most disconcerting moment was upon his arrival home / silent but for footsteps coming down the hall / silent but for the turning of his poor-excusefor-a-lock then / upon the closing of his hollow door / a burst of crazed
laughter like / as is said of it / i don’t know for myself / a hyena’s/ this weird / cackling laughter was so predictable i took / looking up from my book / the magic mountain that year / to miming him / then his jabbering began / thank god in dialect / so became just background noise to join the foraging rats / unless he was feeling especially discontent / in which case the human misery / behind the strangeness of meaning / brought his distress / distressingly home sometimes he competed with the room to my north / where an aging / pastyfaced blue-collar worker / tuned his radio to an angry 24-hour call-in talk show / i glimpsed him only once too / meaning he / the indian / and the owner / all gave me / as if in some vast rooming-house conspiracy / just one visual shot most days i was gone / busy at the conservatory / the tiny room just a crash pad / but sometimes / late at night / i’d lie on my cot / hemmed in by the dementia of the young indian / and the bitter resentment / expressed through his radio / of the old / solitary worker and find / as if all the hours of rehearsals and classes and of going to concerts and movies and restaurants and jazz clubs with my friends meant nothing / that i’d been singing a lonely / wordless blues / loud enough / were anyone listening / to be heard next door
Kristen MacKenzie Milk
He keeps smacking himself in the face every time he falls asleep. No wonder he’s beginning to cry like he thinks the world is an unfriendly place. “The books all say to stop swaddling at four months,” his mother says. There’s no use spending the cash on a night guard if I grind my teeth all day. I swaddle him when she’s out and don’t read the sleep cycle book she sets beside my coffee, unobtrusive. When he wakes he tucks his tiny face into my neck, even though I don’t smell of milk. I think he loves me anyway.
Faye Turner-Johnson
Life – You Untrustworthy Bastard
when I was younger I played as a child running throughout my grandmother's shotgun shack amid tall grasses somewhere on the edge of Eden banging the screen door shut/shrieking as sun and wind kissed the face of my star-burned skin when I was younger I dreamed as a child baking mud pies/reaching to touch angels in the sky/cupping butterflies in my hands begging to tag along with my big momma and auntie Val hair too wild/go look in the mirror spit-brushing/dashing back with the speed of Flo-Jo but the get-away had been clean/they were nowhere to be seen mud pies flying all over the yard sitting on the stoop waiting for their return pouting lips soon turning to smiles/gentle breezes warming my heart new baby frog catching my eye/trying its legs under heaven's blue sky off again I go/the end of summer's fair weather driving me in sitting by the fireplace creating baby dolls with coke bottles and straw hair thinking the fun would never end somewhere around the time of Christmas trees and Santa Claus shoe boxes filled with winter nuts, fruit and candy canes a lump of coal rolled its way into my life when two strangers stood at the door of paradise
I was pulled away from grandma's haven/not remembering just how or when the reel jerking to a stop/fear clouding out scenes in my mind reality spliced to shield the pain/an odd cinema jumping to shots of concrete steps many same-looking houses all in a row intruders that had to be called mom and dad/in a new place, far away from Eden when I was younger I learned fear as a child swallowing my voice with tears in my throat/becoming a mute who could not speak dreading the sound of voices I did not know petrified to run/nowhere to go cast from the garden/though it was not me who had taken a bite from the fruit of the tree when I was younger, I trusted as a child holding out hope the bad dream would stop rubbing my eyes/hoping to wipe the nightmare away begging to go home/but life, that most untrustworthy bastard insisting that I stay with finality and old age, I have put off the things of a child waxing mellow into twilight bliss 2 learning to have faith only in the hear and now never trusting that tomorrow's sun will kiss my brow remembering fondly the child who ran and played journeyed to find acceptance and peace with life always moving forward/never backwards taking her hand/weaving together fabrics to marry both new and old creating stitchery/making the legend whole harnessing the happiness/blending the r – age content to leave our conjoined heart/no regrets, on this page
Daniel J. Newcomer Saudade of Clay I. A little block of clay had three pointed corners and a rounded one somehow chipped at an unknown period from the time of its natural birth along the quarry down on Interstate 51. Imagine a lovely shade of brown, like the smooth shine of chocolate the second you tear back a shard of silver foil. It was a theoretical perfect cube being Buddhistly connected to a community of clay in that industrial quarry, and this chocolate moldable clay existed in un-animation bearing the pressure of its sisters above and being weight for brothers below. The 174th Zen Clay Exclusion and Interment that year, conducted by the ogreish bulldozers who frequented the area, tore the clay from its rocky home and sent it on a long journey to packaging and display at the art and gardening shop of a hippy street. This saudade block of clay, theoretical and connected no more, sat and gathered dust on the shelf with its one rounded and three pointed corners, next to a villainous handmade nutcracker. Boredom fell on the clay like pixie dust. It didn’t like the isolation. An unconnected aura surged through the clay, forcing it to accept its plastic wrap prison with the price tag sticker slapped on the front. Depressed and alone and turning bone dry upon the world, the clay thought it best to irreverently animate itself. So it did, to be saved. An artist came by that very same day dressed in blue jeans and junkie arms. He yanked the perfect square of animated clay off the shelf, and paid an old woman in pennies. A bell rang as the
artist pushed through the art and gardening shop’s front door and sunlight washed the clay’s eye, saturating the entire universe on a new adventure. Purposeful inexplicable animation doesn’t evoke intelligence, nor does considering one’s surroundings mandate one informed. Multicolored paintplastered walls. An infested cot being grouchy in the cobweb corner. The clay sat on a cheaply constructed dining table made from planks of wood found by the dock. A shirtless artist in those ripped jeans, boney ribs. A shirtless artist with its own clay-covered skin and hallowed cheeks desperate for a sandwich. A window displaying a lively maple tree. A chair. What pleasant stimulating surroundings the clay found itself in. It fostered optimism around the waves of incoming senses and left its sensory advisors to absorb and withhold. The artist rubbed his chin and leaned over the clay. A garlic aroma. “I wouldn’t have a clue wutta do with you, my precious clay. You’re going to be it, you feel that?” No, thought the clay. “I know here is that I do ya right, I won’t go back to Ma’s basement. That’s all. Just gotta do ya right,” the artist said. With yellowish eyes jaundiced of sadness, the hungry artist tore the plastic wrap and liberated the clay from its constricted compounds. Stale air brushed and padded, the clay beat its heart under the impression that heartbeats were much louder than words. Over in the corner, that infested cot did not beat its heart nor was it animated. The window and multicolored paint-plastered walls all the same. Poor chair did not animate nor beat its heart. No words came from the chair’s mouth, but perhaps the clay couldn’t speak Chairese or the language
of the maggot cot. Perhaps the clay only knew English, an interesting thought nonetheless. “What is it that sheeple buy these days?” The clay beat its heart: -- .- ... - . .-. .--. .. . -.-. . This didn’t work. But the artist nodded and answered, “Masterpieces.” He paced. “But commercial masterpieces. Commercial masterpieces that dumb people want to buy, use, and throw away, all without knowing it was ever a masterpiece.” He turned his head over his shoulder and looked at the non-moving clay. He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not selling out,” the artist said, “I’m hungry now and I don’t want to be not-hungry when I’m already dead.” Desperate Artisan flicked open his hands over the top of the clay, as if parting the gates to Sesame. “Abercrombie-data!” Nothing happened and the clay, poor confounded clay, feared for its life. The artist scratched his head. Voila! He flicked his hands as if to open the sleeves he didn’t have and expose the secrets of his tricks, also non-existent. “Magic words, magic words, magic words.” Nothing again. “Well golly-gee, what could you be,” he said, arms high and stretching to the left (the clay now feared for the artist’s frail back), “You could be beautiful. You could be cool. Interesting. Extravagant. You could be something people would
want to buy and to hold! Why won’t you be these things? Why can’t you just be something.” Paint-plastered words captured and then reflected his solemn stench, and the clay dwelt in wonder over how these phrases bounced off the walls and took the multicolored room with frequency. It was, so to come from a piece of clay, another day of the artist’s passing life. The heartbeat of the sun dimmed and dipped into the horizon like an apple in caramel. Silence as deafening as the roars of the apple when teeth bite deeply and sexually into it. The artist sits and covers his ears, and he rocks and sways and he murmurs, of which the clay cannot possibly hear. “I…I could be anything?” the perfect block of chocolate clay said. If little and lost clay had eyes, they would glisten like the twinkle of stars. “That’s what I’m saying. Anything at all and that ain’t not joke if I ever heard a decent one. You wanna be beautiful? You be beautiful. It’s easier than one might think,” said the artist, his head between his legs. Outside, a car alarm cut through the autumn chill as a thief scampered off with high knees and long, ass-clenching steps. Both the rhythmic beep and the piddle-paddle of the running thief put a considerable distance between the clay and the artist, a distance that augments a clarity unbeknownst in proximity. The artist watched his sole window, where a maple tree’s branches swayed in a swift breeze and an interplay of auburn light pushed through. Palpable artistic and sullen eyes moved from that window to the clay and back again. “Did you — ?” The artist paused and wondered if art could engulf in new forms of distorted wonderment and madness of a sensical nature. “Did you just — You’re — Are you a block of clay?”
The block of clay sat on the artist’s elementary wooden table. “I’m led to believe so,” the clay said quietly, “I’m not really sure what you mean. It’s an absurd question. Are you a block of clay?” A weighted concoction of facial transformations ebbed and flowed, neurons fired and muscles twitched, and the artist put on his best Cheshire Cat mask and slapped his hand on the table. An ashtray inexplicably animated and bounced in joy and enthusiasm before rattling back into place and dying. “A talking piece of clay!” the artist was now standing and his insecurity of body movements dizzied the clay, “It speaks. It listens. It’s a talking piece of clay. It’s a miracle of the first degree!” A boney and uncleaned hand touched the clay. The artist’s garlic breath returned and he didn’t bother to remove a spatch of saliva built upon his lower lip. “You’re my masterpiece,” the artist whispered, “I’m completely mad.” Now, the modest and quaint clay, a peaceful intrepid explorer of newly found and uncanny animation, fell into crevices of curiousness and asymmetric absurdity over this perilous predicament. If the wind blew with more seriousness through the cartoon maple tree outside while stars like champagne dripped through the ceiling, then the clay would find the artist’s dubious gyrations and his holy dance quite reasonable. Such was not the case. “Little talking clay. Totally insane. Little piece of talking clay clay hey hey clay! I’m totally nuts, totally buts and suts and wuts? I gotsa me a pisa clay.” The artist is singing and rotating his hips. But the song never endures, and while panting and after wiping a long line of snot on the back of his hand, the artist leaned upon his chair, his head cocked and resting comfortably on his junkie arms with a gleam in his eyes and a smile.
“Let me explain,” he said. The clay watched and listened, hoping at unknown ends. “Like all great insane artists, like myself who MUST CUT OFF MY EAR! I have my own living, breathing, and ho ho ho, talking block of clay. What science, and art and beauty. What…what — incandescence? Yes. My little masterpiece is going to be a masterpiece. And I can tell all those TOMFOOLERIES at the art shows how this masterpiece, which is you,” the artist pointed at the clay and shook his hand three times (one, two, three), “How this masterpiece actually told me what it would be. Oh, they will look at me with wonder. Yes they will. They will look at little old artistic me and say, ‘Insane. Tortured. Sexy artist creates masterpiece.’ They’ll throw roses and dog-pile hump me in parking lots. My clay, the light of my loins who wouldn’t kill a fly, my lovely clay who when in a glass house looks both ways, you are the wonderful twitch in my head.” “Is it really a twitch? Is that all I am, a twitch?” the clay asked. Close-up frame with telephoto lens. Artist looking slightly off center. Emotionless but curious. Test transmissions calling the soul. Neurons tweaking and facial muscles corresponding. The clay continued, “I feel quite alive to be honest. But it seems my words are louder than my heartbeats, which has confused me. I’m new to so much. It’s all so fresh. Are there other…things?…like me here? Should we ask the chair?” Dutch angle. Shadows under the artist’s eyes. Frantic left eye epileptic convulsions to the tune of Mississippi delta bluegrass, and he says, “What do you mean, ‘Is it really a twitch’? What kinda question is that?” Lanky and starving artist, hued by shadows from the sinking sun, placed both hands on the top of the chair. He was more graceful than the clay would have imagined. He was more cornered than the clay would have liked. The artist bent
his knees as a ballerina in plié, and moved in a jerky bouree, but executed well enough. Those small steps gave him the momentum to spin half circle and launch the wooden chair into the far wall. Poor chair never had a chance. “Ask the chair,” the artist had raised his voice and he hunched very primatelike, “As a figure of my own imagination you’re a damned fool to question your existence.” “I’m sorry.” The walls were thin between the artist and his neighbor, who now pounded madly from the other side and shouted in French as the artist clenched his fists and forearms and screamed wildly. “See? That’s just it!” the artist’s face was a sun-dried tomato with unwashed, garlic breath, “You can’t be sorry. You bein’ sorry is like my own imagination being sorry to myself. Of all that you could be, of all the masterpieces that’ll make me money, you decide to be sorry?” The artist walked to the window, breathless from his fit, “Let’s see what I want to be today. I could be the Sistine Chapel. I could be Greta Garbo or at least sleep with Greta Garbo. But nooooo, I wanna be sorry. And I’m a piece of clay.” He had an odd way of mimicking. Unknown to the clay who has been animated for so brief an existence, but a typical comedic mimic requires a silly face. This is true. The author of the mimic not so much mimics the person, but what the person would be if he or she had caramel apples for brains. A good mimic knows how not to imitate. But the artist did nothing of the sort. He stared out the window holding his hands behind his back. He watched the woollike autumn clouds with their fiery sunset illusions, and he spoke a gray monotone.
A humbleness paralleled the clay’s social emptiness, and the arguably callous clay was a great and unique specimen that cared or knew nothing of masterpieces. It followed the lexicon with dear attention, but a significant significance was lost. The clay would never even mimic properly. “A masterpiece?” asked the clay. “Yes, a masterpiece,” the artist whispered, a drop of temperature causing his breath to frost the ashy glass, “Anything.” “But, is anything a masterpiece? Or am I just confused,” the clay said. The artist looked over his shoulder, “Surely, but only if the anything is done the right way. Once it’s done that way, that no other fools think of first, then it’s a masterpiece. That’s why you’re important and sexy to me; blocks of clay and insane minds see masterpieces in anything. Thus, anything is a masterpiece.” “And artists don’t?” “Unfortunately,” the artist picked up the remains of the chair, three legs intact, poor chair, and returned it to its original empty place, “We are too tainted by being alive to see.” “Sad.” Outside, a dog barked and broke the artist’s abandoned jaundiced eyes. He returned his glaze to the window and sat on the creaky, struggling chair. Leaves of the maple tree rustled as the ambered speckles of sunlight saturated with the milk blue serenity of twilight, and along came another gust, a stronger gust, that blew a literal handful off heading east. The clay did not hear the simple and powerful rustle, but instead the deep rumble of wind-on-window humming in the sparse apartment. Arrested Artist was locked inside his mind, locked inside this room locked upon this Earth. Nothing was so connected as the clay once was in the quarry. Homesickness abounds.
“Why isn’t being alive a masterpiece?” the block of clay asked, “I mean, there’s a dog barking and the window is humming. The chair struggles but can hold your weight. Bravo chair, no? Maybe all this could be your masterpiece if anything can be a masterpiece.” The artist went red again, his adam’s apple shifted maliciously. He grunted and sent a flurry of little lively saliva speckles spreading across the dusty air. “O’ how short of an animation you are, my perfect insanity.” “Am I missing something?” “The devil.” “The devil?” He sighed, “Yes. Everything would be a masterpiece I’d reckon in the land of Eden’s gardens. You probably don’t know, being a piece of clay, but this devil of the world is a real pain in the ass to have around. You wouldn’t understand. You need more animation to know the devil.” The clay thought what a devil could be. Ogreish bulldozers of the Zen Clay Exclusion and Interments, perhaps? A lack of subsequent connection? Stark dismissals of sandwiches? “You’re right,” the clay said, “I don’t have enough animation to understand, and if I only had enough animation as you to successfully cross this breach, I would soon know the devil. Is that why masterpieces are so important? Do they counter this devil?” “It makes him scamper off like a little bitch,” now the artist smiled, and the clay felt a homogeneity glow in him. It glowed as if God was taking a photo. The clay thought and felt, and no inconsistencies arose with this space odyssey of religious proportions, of masterpieces and devils and God’s photo collections.
“Alight. I’ll be your masterpiece. I’ll be your masterpiece for sandwiches and the chair and bitch devils.” The artist stomped his foot, he slapped his knee, he smiled wide and gay and his shoulders got all tight. He stood up and pliéd and boureed and the poor chair went soaring to the wall. “Yes yes yes for it all and it all for!” the artist burst into great explosions of animation the same way poor chair exploded in madcap delirium. The artist continued, “You have no idea how happy this makes me. For a sec’ there, you sneaky sneak, I thought that my insanity had abandoned me. I’m gonna hug you. That okay? I’m gonna hug you.” And the artist hugged the clay. Darkening by two shades of brown, the ecstatic clay absorbed euphoria in droves. It blushed in the artist’s arms, a feat that it didn’t think possible. He squeezed and the clay hour-glassed just ever so slightly, a committable vulnerability. Almost all too quickly had the artist traversed interstellar distances physical and spiritual, and the unsuspecting and harrowed clay delved into the connection and a further disgrace of If. Stale stenches and garlic and dead chairs, so much heralding minimalism in such animation. A Beautiful Moment both a sprinkle of time and an infinity. A Masterpiece in Itself. “So, so very emotional and stuff. The devil’s anus tightens where we’re together and being emotional, you know that?” “I think I agree. So, let’s not put it off any further. What kind of masterpiece shall I be?” His gaily constructed features contorted and he looked downwards on the clay, shadows returning to his pale peach skin and isolated patches of facial
hair. Each rib casted upon the other, those deathly ravens of musical xylophones. “You’re asking me?” “I’m not sure.” The artist literally growled. “How should I know? The purpose of your animation, your animation inside my mind, is to be a masterpiece, and well, you need to be a masterpiece. FIN,” the artist blew his nose into his hand and flicked the semenesque snot on the ground, “This doesn’t make sense. You have to know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, then what does that say about me?” “Probably nothing. I’m a piece of clay.” The artist paced, “You don’t got no hands, I know, and that’s why my insane brain animated you. My hands, these hands, are going to shape you. But you,” he pointed and shook his index finger three times (one, two, three), “I know. I gotta pull it out of you, like it’s inside of you.” He inspected the clay with crazy eyes, searching around the three pointed and one rounded corners. Never had the clay felt so exploited and insecure. Insecure Inspection. Naked and under pressure. “Is it like my heartbeat?” the clay asked. “No, no that’s not it,” the artist inspected insecure clay, poked its top and a minuscule print remained, “I gotta be, like, your therapist or something. You gotta messed up childhood? Pappa do a little fiddly routine on ya? Is yo’ little bro dead cause of you. Did you kill your brother and become a junkie. Is that why the masterpiece is trapped in ya? Tell me.” “Come on,” the artist continued, “Tell me. Do you dream?” “As much as any block of clay.”
The artist bared his teeth, his vomit yellow-brown stained teeth and garlic odor radiating in sines and cosines. He caressed the clay and spoke sweet nothings. He dug a hole in the clay’s top and jammed a wilting hibiscus in it. This tickled the perfect square and caused considerable fiery pain, like when someone continues tickling you after you’ve messed yourself, and the artist clenched his teeth so that two apricots protruded along his jawline. He repeated “Tell Me” but with considerable explicative additions to uphold the novelty of the demand. Overbearing world brings no more torture to the clay, the pain and giggling and the artist’s clenched rotten teeth spitting out unpleasantries were too much, and the room itself was now animated and breathing in and out. Breath room, breath and respire. “I can be your masterpiece, I swear that I have it in me,” the clay paused, studying the artist’s sun-dried tomato face and the drop of blood bubbling in his nostril, “I’ve felt it.” Laughter may not have been what the clay had expected, but maniacal laughter was certainly reprehensible. If the clay was the artist’s insanity, which seemed sufficiently farfetched, then it would indicate the artist’s hatred for his own madness. That red face and popped nasal blood vessels, now maniacal laughter, couldn’t be interpreted otherwise. “I’ll be a bridge?” how the little, sweet clay was coy. It spoke like an angel. The artist laughed so hard that blood pressure-shot from his nose, and he sniffed and wiped the blood on his hand. He leaned on the wall and slapped his bloody hand on the multicolored paint. “I’ll be a fantastic bridge!” the clay continued. It was too much for the artist and his legs gave out in laughter.
“I’ll have huge drawstrings made from your own hair and colored mosaics that would make the market sellers of The Quarry jealous. Can you make that? That’ll be a masterpiece, that’s what I feel.” The phone rang above the laughter and the wind howled like a tangent coyote outside the rustling and ruffling maple tree. His words drowned in hiccups and the aftereffects of laughter spells, “No. That just won’t do. I don’t have enough hair,” laughter, “For drawstrings. That’s not a masterpiece. That’s just an idea.” Confused as to the difference, the clay continued, “How about a chair? A bright and sparkling chair with rainbow legs and magical platforms of mysteries past?” The artist shook his head. The laughter had stopped, the phone and wind quelled, and silence filled the room. In this haze the phone range yet again, quieter and echoic it seemed, the sixth or seventh time, and it ended with a beep as the answering machine kicked on. A women’s voice, soft and sweet and almond-like, smooth, lovely, “Are you there? Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone!” she breathed heavily and waited, “Gawh. You’re a terrible person. The worst person there is, you know that? I…I don’t even know where to start. How about here — You called my mother and told her I was dying of AIDS? Then you called Ron and said that he should get checked for granuloma inguinale. I didn’t even know what that was until I looked it up. Very mature, asshole. What is wrong with you, by the way? I don’t…you make me so damn mad I could vomit right now. Pick up the damn phone! I know you’re at home shooting your heroin or whatever the hell else it is you do. Yeah, that’s right. I know all about you mister. You drug addict. Thief! There were holes on your arm asshole! Look, I know it was you outside my house last night, and if I
ever, ever see you again, I don’t care if you see me on the street, if I see you I’m calling the cops. Fucker.” Then, she hung up and the artist didn’t flinch. Her voice was lovely and ethereal, even when it seemed she had a tomato face and blood bubbles of her own. She had to be an angel with a voice like that, so sharp and bright and sunshine-infused. The clay felt its heart beat and beat like a boxer, ashy gray dust erupting with each and every pump. Lovely. She sounded small, short, possibly a brunette with almond eyes. Her skin must be lush with a voice like that. An idea. No. A masterpiece. An angel to chase the devil away. “I think I know what I should be,” said the clay, hopeful and lovestruck. The artist looked out the window, picking at a nipple and taking in slow, deep breaths like the animated room before. “What do you think you should be?” “She’s your masterpiece. Make me her!” He turned, watched the clay ever so slightly, camera looking into his eyes, full-frontal profile. “I’m gonna kill that bitch.” “Wait? What? No,” the words sounded off, “No, don’t…don’t do that. That has no relation to anything. Hey, get back here. Where are you going? I have to be a masterpiece!” The clay called after the artist, but his ballet moves and jerky swiftness had a shirt on him and the door slamming behind him faster than — well, the artist could shock-start various emotions. The clay hadn’t seen anything as fast as that. I guess I’ll be a masterpiece tomorrow, thought the block of clay.
II. A little block of clay had one rounded corner, somehow chipped at an unknown point from the time of its natural birth along the quarry down on Interstate 51, a time forgotten as much as one forgets suckling at mother’s breast, or being connected to everything and anything in the clay’s case. The hibiscus was still stuck in its head. The clay’s heart slowly scrambled from the stem sinking deeper into its flaccid base. Dirt flew from a quadrilateral view of the blue sky and slow clouds moving overhead. The clay saw a perfect square border above him that separated this convivial sky and the earth, and four jerky walls extending downwards towards the clay’s peripherals. The frontier between beautiful blue sky and grim peripheral darkness was so far away, out of reach for the poor perfect square of chocolate clay. The clay had hardened at some point, but with a scrambled heart it wasn’t sure of its colors, or what chocolate or color even meant. Perhaps grayness was the existential next step in masterpiece training. It’s a trick. This is a test. The earth sneezed and shot a scattering of dirt into the clay’s field of view, brown and black spectacles silhouetting the bright blue sky beyond, before falling on the clay like raindrops. The earth sneezed again, and again. Each subsequent sneeze blotted the clay’s view. The sky was becoming less bright, less lively and gregarious. This continued and the clay could no longer see. This continued and the clay felt the weight of dirt upon him. Heavier and heavier, the darkness consumed and filled the clay’s crevices. The hibiscus must be crushed too. Moisture soothed the clay’s dry exterior. Dirt filled the clay. An earthworm drilled a hole in the clay and turned around. It was nice in the dirt. Such a good
test! Genius. The clay had become the earth once again. The clay was the Earth and the Earth was the clay, together. The Earth watched the Artist through the blades of grass that grew out of it, like a prickly beard, a prissy prickly wonderful beard. Laps of the animated oceans thousands of miles away in every direction soothed and roared. Billions and billions of earthworms and millions of moles, potatoes and corn stalks and rice fields everywhere. The Earth grew through the cracks of cement, not that it despised the cement, but instead considered a certain closeness and sexuality sticking through those cracks. Infinite sidewalk cracks and abandoned towns, oh how it would make Old Faithful burst into the air every 35 to 120 minutes. The Earth watched the Artist, its friend. He patched the dirt tight with the back of a shovel, yet shirtless, “We go from which we came. Masterpieces and all. Miracles too. Goodbye you good-fornothing clay, my own madness. Goodbye.” Thirteen clouds that looked like obscured rabbits, and one grossly realistic blanc de hotot, passed overhead while the artist remained over that patch in empty contemplation, emotionless and endearing, a sad sight with beautiful undertones, and saturated loneliness. He was lost and subconsciously dismissed the piddle-paddle of little shoes approaching from behind him. “What are you doing?” the crisp voice of an uncaring child said. The artist didn’t turn around, but rotated his head and eyes as far backwards as possible. He was a skeleton with a tight-fitting sheet on the brink of tearing, breaking. This young child had bright blue starry eyes, a multicolored helicopter hat, those sweet punchable rosy cheeks, and a lollipop in hand. His free hand already engaged in tugging at the artist’s torn jeans. Shadows floated down from the wool sky of bunny shapes, and several bunny shadows cast over
the artist. The animated sky formed a path of sunlight for the boy. He engulfed in the sunlight, not a shadow touching him. “Where’s your fat mother?” the artist asked. With a lick of that multicolored lollipop the boy coyly smiled and pointed, keeping an icy eye contact. Following a little sausage finger, a picturesque cottage rested on the pinnacle of a faraway hill. Smoke billowed out the chimney. Red door shrouded and obscured by rose bushes trapped by a small white fence. Two windows on the front, but an attic window a third eye. “She’s making sandwiches,” the boy said, “Do you like sandwiches?” Lankily and snake-like, the artist leaned over the boy, forcing the darkest shadow the clouds would never permit. “I love sandwiches.” The boy shrunk in the skeleton’s manifestation. “Do you know why I love sandwiches?” The boy shook his head, half out of fear, and snuck a lick on that oversized lollipop. “God once told me, ‘Why don’t you eat a sandwich?’ I didn’t know what to say, but the way he said it, it was framed like the setup of a bad joke. So I say, ‘I don’t know, God. Why don’t you eat a sandwich?’ And then God buries God’s face into God’s hands and I think God is depressed. But the hands move and God’s face pops right back up, and sticking to the middle of God’s face is a red felt clown nose. And God goes, ‘Voila!’ And I don’t laugh. The studio audience of angels is quiet, and God says, ‘It’ll be one of those jokes you’ll get in the middle of the night.’ So here I am. Waiting.”
John Grabski
Darwin’s Compassion In 1975 a farmer ups and leaves, takes a room at the bar Just up and leaves his cows, his dog and his barn He walks from his fields, his home, everything dear No money in this godforsaken place, he said Whether sound of mind, remains unclear Locked in their stanchions, the bovine wither Without water dehydrate, brine in their salt Shrink to the bone in their tented skins Sores, blister in urine, before they expire Turn now to present day Cambridge At the research lab the boys up and leave Just up and leave the primates under their care They walk from the lab, consciences clear By all accounts, the monkeys fell sick, a feign, sleight of hand to diffuse the ivy blight Locked in their cages, the monkeys languish One lacks water, the other a spout One hangs by her tooth, snagged in a thread Twelve dehydrated, all of them dead
An ocean away, a rhesus stretches her back, nostrils flare, her attempt to discern the sterile breeze she looks to the west, and shudders The taste in her mouth, metallic
Hannah Mescon Clatter
The chalky clatter of pills and plastic in her purse that might otherwise have camouflaged itself as white noise was, for him, a screaming rattle. It was a secreted warning, only perceptible to those unfortunate enough to have honed an ear for it- rendering it null to the innocents whom she generally preyed upon. But Finch wasn’t one of these gulls and they both were supremely aware of it. Lilah did prefer her saps for the most part, Finch knew. The malleable little flunkies who found her neurosis to be charming and her impetuousness exhilarating. Her fine-tuned manipulation cruising at an altitude above detection, Lilah would drag them through the sand, then lick their wounds with her deliberate tongue, just to pop them down again. Yet this process, which some might suspect she’d crafted into an algorithm, was so foolproof (well, maybe not for the fools) that a true shedding would require malice beyond reproach. Not beyond reproach for Lilah, of course, but for those who can be bothered by futile tendencies like warmth or perhaps even mercy. It was over the screaming rattle that Finch heard Lilah say, “I’m thinking of going dark.” Weighty connotations aside, Finch opted for his cue instead. “Really?” “Chestnut maybe. Or espresso.” Impulsively, Finch sipped his coffee. “I like the honey… blonde… whatever you call that.”
~~~ He had picked her up- believe it or not- at a Bank of America kiosk. It was impulsive bordering on crass, according to Lilah. And the real reason she agreed was not because she was impressed, or even because he had her father’s perfectly Roman nose. It was, like everything that motivated Lilah, deeply rooted in narcissism. (An insight Lilah herself lacked, but her therapist could tell you as much). If I say no, she thought to herself, that makes me a coward. ~~~ She was bothered by the nerves that pulsed under her skin when they arrived at the restaurant, and flat out irritated when they persisted through their second course. But as the dregs of the second bottle of Garnacha slipped down the curve of her glass and onto her deliberate tongue, the anxiety dissipated. She passed on dessert, as she always did. It was a rule she’d instated while juggling body dysmorphia and a shallow bank account during college. And just that quickly, she’d reclaimed her lordly spirit. ~~~ If there was one thing Finch did not expect from Lilah, it was that she’d play coy when he slipped the silk strap of her camisole off her shoulder. A wellconsidered maneuver, no doubt, it finally occurred to him. So instead, as it goes, they spent the night talking. There were no earth-shattering connections and no love-sick eyes until dawn. But it was amusing and pleasant and she left with a vintage Coca-Cola bottle, and she thought it charming that he offered her one for the walk to his favorite coffee shop.
~~~ A week later she saw him at a pharmacy near the kiosk where they met. He had- of all things- a leggy brunette on his arm. Not quiet hickory. Burnt toast, Lilah thought. What happened next she was sure wouldn’t- considering they were sandwiched between shelves of at-home Marijuana tests and laxatives. But without hesitance he leaned in with the softest kiss, his hand wrapped around the girl's lower back. “Camel Lights,” Lilah instructed the cashier moments later. “Do you have a Wellness Card?” Obviously not, Lilah thought. In her car, Lilah opened her purse and procured the translucent orange bottle that rattled about inside- a sound that always made her self-conscious. The label read: Atorvastatin. When her father passed away 10 months ago from a heart attack, her doctor suggested she start taking it. “Your heart,” he said, “is not something to take lightly.”
Contributors Mark Belair Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His books include the collection “While We’re Waiting” (Aldrich Press, 2013) and two chapbook collections: “Night Watch” (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and “Walk With Me” (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). A new collection, “Breathing Room,” is to be published by Aldrich Press this year. For more information, please visit www.markbelair.com John Grabski John Grabski is a distance runner that writes fiction from a farm in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Eclectica Magazine and Cyclamens and Swords. He is hard at work on his first collection titled Into the “Vertex.” Excerpts of his work can be found at grabskiworks.com and you can find him on Twitter at @GrabskiJohn. Kristen MacKenzie Kristen MacKenzie lives on Vashon Island in a quiet cabin where the shelves are filled with herbs for medicine-making, the floor is open for dancing, and the table faces the ocean, waiting for a writer to pick up the pen. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Rawboned Journal, GALA Magazine, and Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit.
Hannah Mescon Hannah Mescon is a writer and producer based in Los Angeles. Her work includes short and feature length screenplays. She is the lead writer for LA Lark and a contributor for Thought Catalog. Marlene Molinoff Marlene Molinoff completed her bachelor’s degree in English literature at Barnard College and received her master’s degree from Tufts University. She continued her education at George Washington University, where she earned her PhD in English literature. She received a certificate in business administration from the Wharton School. She studied with Rick Hillis, John Dalton, Andrew Porter, Amber Dermont, and Will Allison, among others, and have attended the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Rittenhouse Writers Group, and the One Story Summer Workshop. She is a former university literature teacher and is currently the president of MSM, LLC, a marketing and creative strategy consulting group to the pharmaceutical industry. She is an avid traveler and has trekked to Everest Base Camp, dived with sharks off the coast of Australia, and photographed animals in Kenya and the Galapagos. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Amarillo Bay, and Forge. Daniel J. Newcomer Daniel J. Newcomer and his brother used to strike fear in the babysitter by repeatedly riding their tricycles into the closed garage door of their Monroe, Wisconsin home. He hasn’t changed much in recent years, and instead uses words and books as opposed to a little red trike. Daniel has worked as an
English teacher and freelance journalist in Indonesia, where he wrote on everything from volcanoes to palm civets that poop coffee. His work on the 2013 Tunisia revolutions was published in 34th Parallel Magazine. He now lives in Southern Italy working on a novel and doing other things. He said his writing inspirations come from Holly Golightly and The Marlin from The Old Man and the Sea. Faye Turner-Johnson Faye Turner-Johnson is a retired elementary school teacher, who has a passion for theatre and writing. She is currently a freelance theatre director. Recent published works include “If Cancer Were A Monster” and “Things Southern,” published in Digital Papercut Literary Journal. She is a native of Memphis, Tennessee and now lives in Flint, Michigan, with her husband, Joseph. They have one son, Joseph H. Johnson, Jr., an actor living in West Hollywood, California.
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