Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue 182
Issue 182 February 10, 2016 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art by Fabrice Poussin Fabrice Poussin is assistant professor of French and English. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in France at La Pensee Universelle, and in the United States in Kestrel, and Symposium. His photography has also been published in Kestrel, is upcoming in Sand Pedro Rive magazines and more than a dozen other on-line and in-print publications.
CONTENTS Josef Krebs
And as the Ice Melts
Melissa Llanes Brownlee Tita
Harnidh Kaur
The Biography of a Bullet
Jim Conwell Enamel
Nick Adrian
Perfect From Far Away
Caitlin Springer Bluebeard
Josef Krebs
And as the Ice Melts And as the ice melts it falls from the upturned shaker to the wounded wooden bar top In a last attempt to be free and express its nature Sitting there stunned Blacks dappling its body Liquid leaking pooling As if nothing mattered Yet the fundamental processes of life Ice melting absorbing energy Breaking the bonds that kept it together That lead to heartbreak and seeming destruction Oblivious in the needs of other drinkers Until spotted silting it's swept back to rejoin comrades Sitting in the sink Legion Sharing their cold and ultimate fate As they join drinks Are exported into the waterway To become pure Once again Flow
Melissa Llanes Brownlee Tita
Our mango tree died the day Tita was born. It was not the slow death of starvation, but a quick moment of green, turned to scorched leaves and rotting fruit. Pulp blackened as foul waves filled the yard, strangling the soft, sweet perfume of tuberose. We believed the tree had died from blight, festering deep before bursting forth. As its neighbors, the tangerine and mountain apple, did not suffer a similar fate. A source of comfort, our tree had provided many a May Day pickle, filling bazaar tables with mayonnaise jars of green and pink. The time spent creating these pre-summer delicacies reinforced family bonds, smiles and laughter filling the warm air. Children climbed outstretched limbs. Less adventurous adults grabbed branches with hooks on long bamboo poles. Each reached for clusters of unripened fruit. “Watch out! Don’t fall! Don’t break the branch. Pull gently.” Branches shook as clusters quivered and fell, crashing to the dirt. Kids, too small to climb, dodged plummeting fruit. “Be careful! Stop running around! Help pick the mangoes off the ground.” Overflowing sacks sprawled on clean linoleum floors as we washed, peeled, and sliced. We treated ourselves to a quick bite of shoyu and vinegar soaked pieces, the tart saltiness filling our mouths. Jars and their blue lids waited, still hot from the stove. A gallon jug that once held sticky red syrup now carried pink vinegar, which we poured into mango-filled bottles, as stained fingers pressed down firm green slices. We’d line them up in the icebox out back, “Now, make sure you don’t touch any of the pickle mango.”
After a few days, we would pack them up and bring them to the school’s playground. Our table sat next to the royal court’s stages. Each stage, an island decorated in its royal color: red for Hawaii, yellow for Oahu, white for Niihau, upon which princesses sat, adorned in lehua, mokihana, and hinahina blossoms, their escorts dripping in maile leis, fragrant green vines brushing against knees. With people lining up to buy our family specialty, we prided ourselves on selling all of our pickles every year. Tita’s birth overshadowed our loss, for a little while. When she came into the world, she was a bundle of stillness, and she did not greet us with a hearty cry to prove her existence. When we took her home from the hospital, the nurses admired her silence, “What a good baby.” She never smiled. She didn’t even cry, her pink limbs flailing to be comforted. We could not bring ourselves to admit, to pierce the air around her with a suggestion of abnormality. We wanted a giggle, a gurgle, a goo. We searched for any sign of the ordinary. In her crib, she would stare beyond her tropical fish mobile, lazily spinning in the afternoon breeze, out the louvered window at some imperceptible point. We could sense her concentration, a palpable entity next to her once thoroughly examined, now unused and unloved toys. We wondered, and we waited. We hoped she would respond to our attempts at cajolery, distorted faces and high-pitched noises “Look at daddy. Smile at mommy. Who’s got cute little feet? Auntie’s going to eat those cute little feet,” all competing with an alien indifference. She did not acknowledge her bodily discomforts. She accepted our ministrations without compliance or complaint. When we changed her diaper, decorated in ducks and butterflies, she would shift her eyes and meet ours, briefly, no kicking legs, wandering hands, or urine-discharging arcs, just a
simple lack of acknowledgement. We never knew when she was hungry. A cry never woke us in the middle of the night. There were no struggles for who gets to sleep and who has to wake up. When she did eat, we saw her tongue, methodically exploring the bottle’s nipple, her hands moving over smooth sides. We wanted her to take pleasure in phenomena, in consumption and excretion, but she gave us nothing. Finally, we took her out into the world, her fine dark hair in pink bows. Her little feet in white frilly socks and black mary janes. Anxiously, we awaited some signal, a message of appreciation from her. Passersby would coo and tickle as we walked through a store. She would give each admirer a cursory scan, never consenting to demean herself with the expected giggle or hand grasp. “Isn’t she a cute baby? How many months? Is she alright?” We hoped. We began to avoid her. We didn’t want to hold her. We would walk past her room, denying her existence. No peek-a-boo. No sweet lullabies. No makebelieve. We were afraid. Then, one day, Tita began to walk. She picked herself up and walked out of her room. No wobbles. No suddenly swift sit downs. Just her little legs walking as if it were the easiest thing in the world, as if man had never once walked hunched over, knuckles dragging through the dirt. She strode along the hallway, through the bedrooms, intently examining each item. Her hands were not the clumsy tools of an infant but skillful instruments sliding along edges and around corners. They did not linger or pause. We thought what an exceptional child and welcomed her genius as if her actions were a result of our own manufacture. Deftly, she lifted and replaced the substances of our lives as if their nature were fleeting. “What is she doing? What is she looking for?”
At last, she walked into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the floor, her hands gliding along cabinets and the icebox door. She stopped when she saw the screendoor to our backyard. She stared. We could hear her breathing, deep and slow. We could not remember the last time we heard her breath, and we embraced its deliberate passage. We followed her gaze to the darkened remnants of our mango tree. The sickly sweet smell of ruptured fruit, littering the sparsely green ground, drifted in on the trades. We pushed the screen door open. “Do you want to go outside? Do you want to play? What do you want?” She turned around, went back to her room, and stopped walking, altogether. Her silence infected our lives. Still afraid to voice our fears, words drifted through our minds: aberrant, unnatural, odd. We needed her to be more than a confirmation of our genius. So, we began to question our own desires as we observed her. It was as if a bubble had formed around her, pushing outward from her being, encroaching on our lives. Unknowingly, we welcomed its empty embrace. In the night, an aroma floated through our house, and we followed its trail back to Tita’s room. As she lay in her crib, we stepped closer to discover that the smell came from her little body. Immediately, we identified the scent of mango flowers. We picked her up, but touching her released a stronger fragrance as if we had rubbed our thumb against a tiny petal, bruising it. Her eyes were closed and she did not open them when we placed her back in her crib. We prayed. Tita died the day our mango tree was born. It was immediate. One moment of careful consideration transformed into a release of pressure confined too long. Our mango tree sprung back to life the minute Tita took her last breath, spreading branches and flowering fruit, sprouting back into our existence.
Harnidh Kaur
The Biography of a Bullet A bullet doesn’t sound like you’d think, it’s not a clean snick against the sky, or the crack of a narrow whip, no, a gunshot sounds like incomprehensible angerfearpainsadnesshurtaches, a gunshot sounds like the violence that echoes in its creation a bullet shimmers in the air, wavering against the sky, moving so fast it’s almost quite still, a bullet is hot hotter than you’d think; boiling with the rage of intent and destruction but if you hear them often enough, and if you get past them being just gunshots, they sound like the drip of a raindrop on a corrugated steel roof, tinny and hollow, and echoing with the promise of instability, and today feels like the stormiest night in a long time, and every one of us is drenched.
Jim Conwell Enamel
I remember an enamel pot, chipped in places and shaped like a jam jar; grey in colour. and standing on a rock. When I touched it, it was unexpectedly cold. And it hummed as if it was singing. I quickly put it down again, not being sure I liked the song. It was chipped around the bottom as if it had been put down too hard or without care and also round the rim where some hand had let another vessel fall against it in pouring dark liquids. Some night when the moon rode high and someone, only a dark figure, stood there in that field. When I picked it up again It was still cold. But the song now was dull. And it was becoming warmer.
So, if I wanted to take it with me and return to the house, what force was it which kept my feet rooted to that spot and prevented me from lifting them? Over there, was only the donkey, carelessly chewing brambles as if fear had never touched the bristles on his back or threatened the velvet skin of his nose. Only Janie, with bowl wedged against her hip, scattering barley for the nodding chickens. Only the large, flat stone which stood above there, outside the granary, where I have strode, the captain of my own ship, urging sailors through the storm.
Nick Adrian
Perfect From Far Away
The young musician stood out on his parents’ front porch. He took a carton of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and searched for his lighter. He found it in the pocket of his flannel shirt and proceeded to light his cigarette. He inhaled as he stared at the countryside that faced the house. He exhaled, although it was more of a sigh, and turned around to look through the kitchen window. He watched as his mother sternly scolded his father. His little brother was nowhere to be seen and was most likely upstairs in his bedroom. The musician was staying home for a couple of days. He had just finished a small tour around New England playing different bars and clubs but had no money to show for it. His father was strictly against his career choice, insisting that he invest his time in a profession that was more stable such as a doctor or a lawyer. “Folk songs?” his father would say. “You’ll never get anywhere singing folk songs.” But the musician was getting somewhere. Though he wasn’t even making enough money to live on his own, he was becoming a popular name in Greenwich Village. He was hailed as the best of his contemporaries and many were surprised that he hadn’t landed a record deal yet. Folk music was popular in New York, but hadn’t quite taken the country by storm. The young musician knew that it was coming, though. His greatest hero had an album due in May titled “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”. He had a feeling that after this album would become popular, record companies would be searching for more folk talent. H was determined to be their first choice.
“Those are bad for you, you know,” said a female voice that seemed to come out of nowhere. The musician looked around until he found the source of the voice, a young girl about his age on her porch next door. He asked her to repeat her statement. “Cigarettes! They’re bad for you. Not many people believe it, but it’s true,” she replied. There was a silence before she spoke again. “I’m Molly.” “Jones Murray,” the musician answered back, quickly realizing that Molly had not asked for his name. “Jones Murray? The folk singer?” Jones was surprised that she had heard of him. His hometown was far from Greenwich and the closest place he had played was more than two hours away. “You’ve heard of me?” he asked. “Yeah! I saw you at the Moonsong Bar. You’re really good. Do you write your own stuff?” “No, they’re mostly covers. I’d like to try writing, though.” Molly looked at Jones’ parents’ house and then back at him. “Do you live here?” “No, this is my parents’ place. I’m just staying here until I book some more gigs,” Jones answered. “Oh,” Molly replied. “Is it good being home? After touring and all?” Jones stepped down from his porch and started making his way toward Molly’s house. He felt it was impolite to carry on a conversation from each other’s porches. Once he got to her porch and sat down, he explained to her his father’s distaste for music and how he wanted him to be something more professional.
“Well, why don’t you?” Molly asked. “You can’t play music forever.” “Why can’t I?” Jones argued. “Who says that musicians can’t play music forever? This is my dream and I plan on sticking to it. No matter what anybody says!” Molly nodded her head silently. “You know, my mother used to always tell me this story before she died. She told me of this group of birds that always flew around together. There was this one young, naïve little bird who would always try and fly far ahead and far above the others. The other birds would always warn him and say ‘You can’t fly too far! You can’t fly too close to the sun! You’ll get burned!’ One day the bird did fly too high. He flew too close to the sun and just like the other birds told him, he got burned. Everything looks perfect from far away but you have to be careful. You can’t just go after something without thinking about it…preparing for it. If you’re wanting to get anywhere, you’re going to have to write your own songs. You’ll never make it playing covers.” She invited him inside to help him write something. Jones was hesitant at first but decided to give in. The two walked inside her house where Molly introduced Jones to her aunt, Susan. They headed upstairs to Molly’s room. Jones was surprised to see that she owned several instruments; acoustic guitars, a piano, a violin, a cello. Molly expressed her love of music and how she had often dreamed of being a successful musician just as Jones had. She gave him one of her guitars and set a notebook and pencil in front of him. She helped him form chords and write down different lyrics. For the next two weeks, Jones stayed at his parents’ house. In the mornings he would come down to eat breakfast, only speaking to his mother. His father would read the newspaper but wouldn’t acknowledge him. After eating, Jones would go next door to Molly’s house to play music, work on songs, or simply
explore the small town they lived in. He felt himself falling in love with her and he knew she felt the same for him. One morning, Jones didn’t go to Molly’s house after breakfast. He had gotten a call from a club in town that wanted him to play there every weekend for a good amount of money. All they required from him was a rundown of his set. He said his goodbyes to Molly and drove off into town. He soon located the place and brought his guitar in. The manager showed him to the stage and asked him to play a couple of songs. Jones started with a cover and then played a song that Molly had helped him write. That song seemed to be the one that won the manager over. The manager expressed his admiration for it and told Jones that he had the job. Jones Murray would be a regular performer at the club, performing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night. Jones rushed home to tell Molly the good news. It had already grown dark. Jones wasn’t aware that he had been there for so long. He sped along the road, anxiously waiting to get home. As he drove along the countryside that led to his neighborhood he saw faint blue and red lights flashing along the horizon. As he drove closer, two police cars and an ambulance passed him. He started to grow worried. Was that one of his family members? He arrived home and decided to check inside. He burst through the front door, startling his mother, father and little brother who were all at the dinner table. Jones’ heart sank as he rushed out of his house and went next door. He frantically rang the doorbell and knocked on the door repeatedly. Aunt Susan opened the door with tears rolling down her eyes. Jones Murray sat in Molly’s empty room. He hung his head and didn’t speak a word when Aunt Susan came in. “I’m so sorry, dear,” she said with deep sorrow.
“I just don’t understand what happened,” Jones said, trying to fight back tears. “What happened? How did it happen?” Aunt Susan sighed. “All we know is that she was standing in the middle of the road when that truck sped around the corner…we couldn’t figure out why she was there…” Jones couldn’t hold it in any longer. He started to sob uncontrollably. Aunt Susan sat down next to him and held him. “You know she loved you,” Susan said, trying to calm Jones down. “I’ve never seen her so happy in all her life. I’ve never heard her talk about someone more.” Jones tried to pull himself together. “I loved her, too. She’s the reason I haven’t left home yet.” He scoffed at what he had just said. “Home! I call that house next door home. Susan, I felt more at home up here in Molly’s room than I ever had in that house. That’s not home. That’s just a free place for me to stay.” Susan didn’t add anything to the conversation. She merely nodded. Jones didn’t need an argument and he didn’t need anyone to tell him not to talk about his parents’ house like that. All he needed was for someone to listen. Jones had said good night to Susan and made sure she would be all right alone. He walked out the front door and stopped in his tracks. He stared at the road in front of their yard. That was where it had happened. He walked over and stood where he imagined she had stood for the last time. He noticed something on the other side of the road. It was a small object moving. He crept closer, trying to see it in the dark. It was a small bird with a hurt wing. It must have been trying to cross the road slowly and was saved just in time before it was hit by a car. Jones picked the bird up and brought it inside his house.
Caitlin Springer Bluebeard
The bones of ships hold stories too marriages on tenterhooks to cure a cyan ailment the sound a head makes when dropped upon the floor.
Contributors Nick Adrian Nick Adrian is an English major currently studying at Gadsden State Community College in Gadsden, Alabama. He is a submission reviewer and editor to The Cardinal Arts Review, the college’s literary journal. He enjoys writing fiction and poetry and has hopes of writing novels in the future. Melissa Llanes Brownlee Melissa Llanes Brownlee is a writer born and raised in Hawaii. She graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with an MFA in Fiction. She then moved to Japan to teach English as an Assistant Language Teacher, where she continues to do so. Her work has appeared in Issue 5 of the GTK Creative Journal, the Fall 2015 issue of Waccamaw, a journal of contemporary literature, and the Fall 2015 issue of The Jet Fuel Review. Jim Conwell With an original background in Fine Art, Jim Conwell has worked in mental health for thirty years. He has had poems published in magazines in the UK, Ireland, and North America and had two poems shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2015. He lives in London. Harnidh Kaur Harnidh is a 20-year-old student, currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy from St. Xavier’s, Mumbai. She graduated in History from Lady Shri Ram
College for Women, University of Delhi. She’s a debater, slam poet, and TEDx speaker. She likes purple, arguments, and is a junk jewellery connoisseur. Her first collection is called ‘The Inability of Words’, because, for all that she’s written, she hasn’t found the exact words she’s looking for. Josef Krebs Josef Krebs has a chapbook of his poems published by Etched Press and his poetry also appears in Agenda, Bicycle Review, Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The Corner Club Press, The FictionWeek Literary Review, andBurningword Literary Journal. He’s written three novels, five screenplays, and a book of poetry. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals. The past seven years He’s been working as a freelance writer for Sound&Vision having previously worked at the magazine for 15 years as a staff writer and editor. Fabrice Poussin Fabrice Poussin is assistant professor of French and English. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in France at La Pensee Universelle, and in the United States in Kestrel, and Symposium. His photography has also been published in Kestrel, is upcoming in Sand Pedro Rive magazines and more than a dozen other on-line and in-print publications. Caitlin Springer Caitlin Springer currently resides in a small coastal town in central New Jersey, where she is serving in the United States Coast Guard. Her latest published work can be found in the Fall 2015 edition of Origins Journal.
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