Crack the Spine
Issue Thirty-Two
Crack The Spine Issue Thirty-Two July 9, 2012 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2012 by Crack the Spine
Contents Michelle Yost We, Too, Were Children Once Dana Cera Worriers Dawn Montefusco Vantage Point Excuses Maureen Foster and the paintings blew wildly all over the dark street Tadhg Muller First Dreams of Pakistan Christine Catalano Large Purchases Gary F. Iorio The Senryu Marriage
Cover Art by Christine Catalano Christine Catalano is an English major who slipped into publishing through the back door as a graphic artist. She worked happily there for many years. Now liberated from daily deadlines, she keeps her muse satisfied with camera and Photoshop. Some of her work has been published in Fiction At Work, the San Pedro River Review, Mused, and previous issues of Crack the Spine.
Michelle Yost We, Too, Were Children Once The average-sized shadows of dogs crossed the yards that summer. The clouds traced themselves long and holy under the swelling sun. August loomed large and erect and there was something fierce in the crickets which had invaded the basement cracks and kept Tom up at night. Tom and Andy met under the maple which had suddenly burst that day. They swapped secret handshakes, slapping hands, pumping fists, snapping; it was the momentum of their friendship. They had been united several summers ago at the swimming hole, a crevice designed to rake in stout, ugly little girls in waders and themselves. They dived to the bottom so often that they had both collapsed in the grass, hungry, sore from the pressure in their ears, exhausted and laughing. They had bonded over the fact that their sisters, Maeve and Eliza, had grown up together, gotten tall, and stopped talking to them. Each of the boys begged for gross and fantastic details about the other’s sister, as if this would further their blooming understanding of the female species. Tom’s sister, Maeve, the dark, scrawny sister was obsessed with make-up and the computer. Eliza was her best friend and so they spent hours hogging the phone line. Tom and Andy, friends for what felt like so long, had long ago just decided noon was the meeting time during the summer, the maple casting it’s heavy shadow over them. They had no need of the telephone. Their sisters had both curiously entered the hormonal, adolescent phase of languishing in their rooms, held as if by glue to each other’s secret wire to one another. Tom didn’t understand them at all. He thought they both must have decided to become allergic to the sweet smell of grass which shuddered thick through their neighborhood. Suburbia grasped the wheels of their bikes and carried them ever onward like a siren call, through backyards, the familiar and peeling smell of Old Lady Malory’s cat piss quadrant, and out into the field that abutted the loving crisscross of street side curbs that sprawled across their neighborhood. They had lived side-by-side most of their lives and this was the depth of summer, naturally they planned to be out until just before dinner time. Becca, Andy’s mom, frequently made them cheese sandwiches with mustard and pickles, and they would hurry back and forth from endless adventures in the woods to taste the sweet, gravitational pull of Wonderbread clinging to the roofs of their mouths as if convinced that sensation alone could sustain them for the rest of their careers as juveniles.
Tom’s house was thick gray, almost Victorian, with white, gradually staining shutters poised on the windows, and a high turret stretching above the throbbing maple tree. Lavender festoons of African violets peeked out from the windows of Tom’s house. Birds picketed outside, whistling out frantic, erratic tunes. Andy’s house was plain, older, brick with no turret, but columns of heavy zinc white they used to try and climb until Becca once asked them to stop. They had often planned to take over the turret in Tom’s house and make it into their own personal fort, guarded heavily against their sisters. Tom always had to finally raise the objection that it’s his father’s study. “What’s he do up there?” asked Andy. “He collects trains.” “Trains?” “Yeah, like, antique trains.” Andy could not think of anything else to say but, “Why?” Tom has never thought about it and feels pungently annoyed. “I don’t know. Because he likes them, I guess.” Andy, not one to linger in any one subject despite tone, changed the subject. “Man, your sister’s like, hot.” “Nah. She’s wretched,” Tom said, quietly and with defiance. “You know way too many words, man. Wanna play basketball?” “Nah, let’s go to the field,” Tom said. “Okay.” They picked up their bicycles, Tom still confused about why the question had bothered him in the first place. Rather than thinking too long, he picked a spot down the street and decided to begin a race. They raced all the way to the edge of the woods, wounding each other’s pride, insulting one another, laughing and aching the while though the breeze fed the limbs a soft, splendid shivering. Tom and Andy laid down their bikes and thimbled through the weeds in the field. Thistles are light purple, sharp, and neither Tom nor Andy avoids them like they ought. They usually come home covered in burrs. “C’mon. Help me look for spiders,” Tom says. “There’s a pit, deep out in the woods, that’s filled with snakes and spiders. Anything that crawls in gets bitten,” Andy tried his scary voice he used whenever he tries to annoy Eliza. It felt a little off trying to do it to Tom.
“Nah.” “Yeah so,” Andy retorted, spitting. “You think there’s buried treasure in the field.” “Treasure is for six-year-olds. Let’s look for spiders,” Andy started sprinting toward the woods, but stopped abruptly, turning back to face Tom. “Coming?”
Maeve looked out the window, added another coat to her nail polish, and had to tongue a cotton ball. She wiped the smudged red off her big toe. Mom and dad were clunking around downstairs in the kitchen. She wished sourly, intently, that they would just stop. They should just get a divorce. Just stop. Robert wiped his hands, looked calmly on the messy kitchen and his wife, his smile growing at her busying frame. He held the tea towel a little tighter. He knew Jane was in her cooking stance, knew she would add to much salt to the soup, but he didn’t say anything. He watched, waiting. “Rob, why don’t you go work on your trains while I finish up here?” He knew she never liked it when he hovered in the kitchen, but knew she liked it when he did the dishes. “Sure, honey,” he said softly, careful not to be complacent, not too grateful, and put the tea towel down. He went to the stairs. Maeve was humming from somewhere inside her cave of a bedroom and it grew louder and more agitated as his footsteps approached her door. He walked down the hall, listening to her sigh, shaking his head affectionately. Tom was probably going around with Andy on their bikes. They had done that a lot that summer. The thought of his son, hair in the breeze, sustained him as he reached the turret stairs to the study, his office. The doorknob was colder than he expected and he quietly inhaled. He walked up the stairs, unto the landing, reminding himself that the distance seemed further every time. He slowed to enjoy the comforting ache in his thighs, the ritual. The room was quiet, still. Maeve’s humming was lessened now, but he thought he might have heard the dial-up fire, the lazy way of all computers and the warm cry of a methodic, rhythmic screech. The room gets so warm up here in August. The window which had been knocked out several years ago in October by a stray branch from the maple, had finally been replaced and made a hollow sound as the wind rolled against it.
Robert looked a long time at the long table. Filled with every imaginable cross-hatching of tree and telephone line, the train set was fully modeled after his own neighborhood as a child. The fierce reds and burgundies of the train cars caught his eye. He looked carefully and picked up the maple tree he’d just finished carving for the front of their house. It seems like some of the branches are brittle and the leaves have not finished drying yet. His fingers pulled away with a smear of red. He thought about how often Tom had come up there to play when he was truly little, never knowing. As was his custom, Robert sat down behind the desk in the catty-corned portion of the room. Reaching underneath, Robert plucked the cord from behind the inside of the lowest drawer and unlocked the compartment. He picked up the box. He looked down with the familiar fondness that he spent a lot of time fighting. Inside, the doll lay limp against the floor of the box, seeming very human next to the sharp grains of the wood. He kept his gun on the other side of this partition of drawers. A simple gun, not anything sentimental. He picked up the Barbie, one of Maeve’s forgotten treasures from so long ago. She had left it by the pool, abandoned it. Her hair has never been the same since. Robert had thoughtfully picked it up, but had never returned it. He made the Barbie walk, lifelike on his desk, which is decidedly difficult because Robert couldn’t seem to coordinate his own limbs anymore, let alone her rigid legs, as if her calf and thigh were one entire muscle. He felt something stir in his chest. He trembled and shook, trying to shake it off. That feeling, the familiar feeling of nauseating exhilaration. Robert cradled the Barbie in his hands, felt the weight of her plastic bones against his flesh. He moved the doll back and forth between his heavy, calloused hands, feeling slightly unsteady. He did not know how long he’d been doing this. He never thought how long his trains have been mere second consideration to visiting the box under his desk. He doesn’t think about the doll’s plastic head, being slightly squishy, like the bendiness of the human ear. He thought about how beautiful his wife could be, when she snored, how Tom would be running back home now. He thought about Maeve and Jane and why they both want to dye their hair. He spent a lot of time thinking about Tom as a baby boy. A toddler. He thought about the way Tom’s laugh pierced the air. He pushes the doll back in place, her unnatural form rigid and unlit with the qualities of children or bodies or flesh. Robert didn’t cry, even though he thought he might like to. He sat a long time. He realized he’d been twisting the threads of his sweater with some anxiety. “I’ve been a good dad,” he thought, in the
quiet of the turret room. He slowly closed the desk drawers, and with extra care, locked the compartment in place with the cord. Jane called, “Robert, dinner’s ready!” After a moment, Robert said, “Coming.” August light reached in through the turret windows. Suburbia was quiet and Robert heard Tom throw down his bike, laughing. “Coming.”
Michelle Yost has served as managing editor of Whetstone, Fairmont State University's student literary and art journal. She has been published in Lines + Stars and Holler.
Dana Cera Worriers Personal Essay
“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.” The essayist Montaigne said that. He was a worrier, clearly. You may not notice worriers right away. We’re not always as obvious as sitcoms and movies portray: Edith, that famous worrywart from All in the Family; Woody Allen, perfectly cast as Woody Allen’s nervous alter ego. Because of my outward personality, even I appear fun loving. At a recent dinner party, I’m sure I seemed positively exuberant, glass of red wine in hand, chatting with a friend—that is until I noticed the hunk of metal hanging above her head. Conversation stopped completely while my eyes searched for the mechanism that secured this antique fence fragment to the wall. “I’ve always taken you for the carefree type,” the friend said. “You don’t look like a worrier.” She doesn’t know me very well. If she did, she’d know that my trapezius muscles are pliable as stone. If she looked closer, she’d see that I have no laugh lines around my eyes, but plenty of creases on my forehead. “I come from a long line of worriers,” I said. That’s how I put it in social situations, using humor to deflect embarrassment. Not warriors, I often have to clarify. Worriers. In truth, the line isn’t so long. All I know about my great-grandmother is that she was adopted and sometimes put in the chicken coop. Her daughter, my mother’s mother, was extremely timid and wouldn’t pick a roadside flower for fear of persecution. (She had ten kids and didn’t get out much.) My own mother buys escape ladders for Christmas gifts and offers advice like, “Never park next to a van, you could get abducted.” Although, in Mom’s defense, to parent is to worry. Most parents say you’ll never stop. New moms worry about staircases, or that their child’s cough is whooping cough. Not abnormal. But worriers worry that their bad napper will grow up to be short because babies only grow when they’re sleeping. The first year of my daughter’s life, I visualized her death nearly every day. Later, I feared my own, inextricably linked to her wellbeing as I was. Now Madeleine is five and I worry that I will turn her into a worrier. “You’re going to fall and crack your skull,” I hear myself say, then cringe. At that dinner party, the kids hung out in the downstairs family room. When a little girl named Agatha arrived, Simon, an older boy, carried her piggy back toward the staircase. Don’t carry her down
the stairs like that, I wanted to say, and if either had been my own child I would have. The stairs were steep with no railing part way down. When I took Madeleine down them I said, “Be very careful,” sounding just like my mother. I’m not as bad as my mom, but the older I get the more I have to fight against my heredity. In fact, worry isn’t just a learned behavior; some people are born worriers. A study of hundreds of babies found a handful with a natural tendency for anxiety, and this had nothing to do with the infants’ parents. A calm mother could have a calming effect on her anxiety-prone baby and vice versa, but parents were not the cause. Worry is thought to be uniquely human. Some animals seem to worry, like lap dogs who suffer from separation anxiety, yet—supposedly—animals live in the moment, and therefore can’t be worried about the future. That means a lap dog isn’t worried his people won’t come back; he believes they are already gone forever and that life as he knows it is over. If you ask me, that kind of living in the moment sounds like hell, but perhaps animals are better off, because—as far as we know—animals don’t know they are going to die. Sure, animals will prick up their ears at the sound of a potential predator, but these instincts have more to do with Darwin than with death. Line up a pig in a slaughterhouse and I guarantee he will put two-and-two together by the time he’s next—but that’s not worry, that’s self-preservation. Worry is something altogether different. Worry is concern for what might happen, projection into a possible future. In humans, the survival instinct can become pathological when worries— imagined or real— trigger the fight or flight response but the extra adrenaline doesn’t recede, leaving one in a state conducive to further worrying. And cumulative fight or flight response, commonly known as stress, can be a killer. But let’s clarify something: what Mom and I have is not pathological. We are fully functioning, able to leave home each day; we don’t chew our fingernails down to the nubs or suffer panic attacks. What we have may be slightly debilitating but it’s not a phobia, a psychosis or even a neurosis. It’s just your garden-variety worry. Not something we can take medication for. Not even really something to worry about—unless you’re a worrier. Worriers can’t comprehend how an airline pilot doesn’t live in fear of crashing, or why a woman would choose to jog alone at night. Telling a worrier not to worry is like telling an addict to quit. It’s like telling the anxious to calm down. (They hate that.) Don’t-worry-be-happy my ass. Us worriers have a job to do! And yet… worrying is never useful. It only appears useful because problems are often solved after a period of worrying. Like the dog that barks at the postman everyday—he does it because he think it works. Everyday he barks and everyday the postman leaves, but there is no causality.
What are we worried about? My acupuncturist believes that if you follow any fear to its eventual end, you’ll find that you’re not really afraid of abandonment, failure, or melting ice caps, but Death. Stop for a moment and see for yourself. Choose something you worry about, then ask, what’s the worst-case scenario? Or take something I worry about: sleeplessness. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll get insomnia, become so tired from a lack of sleep that I’ll miss too much work, get fired, won’t be able to find other work—because now I’m really not sleeping—then I’ll become homeless, die of exposure, starvation or alcoholism, or I’ll get beat up and die from that. See? Sleeplessness = Death. I have plenty to keep me awake at night: I’m a single mom, over 40, in a custody battle, in graduate school, and hovering at the poverty line. Yet, for all of these troubles, the biggest worry is the mom part. Psychologists rate the death of one’s child as the most traumatic experience we can have. I recently spent several days worrying about my daughter’s impending road trip with her father. I know that most car accidents occur within five miles from home, however, my body soaked up the extra adrenaline like it was lifeblood. But once my daughter left, I felt a flood of relaxation. The road trip was no longer the future; it was now. I had to succumb. Let go. Mom has this God Can, a tin with a slit in the top. Let go, let God, the can advises. Because when you can’t, God Can. It’s dusty, this can, so I think she doesn’t use it, besides, what if it didn’t work? This is the reason I choose not to put faith in talismans. My mother gave my daughter a St. Christopher medal for her to take on her road trip. After Madeleine left, I found it in her bed. Had I believed the necklace had the power to prevent her death I would have thrown myself sobbing upon the mattress. Worriers and non-worriers alike may find solace in the Bible. I found this: God told Matthew not to worry about what to eat, drink or wear. “These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” Juxtapose that with Dorothea Lange’s photos from the Great Depression: destitute people living in tents, their shoes worn out, not enough work, money or food to maintain their threadbare livelihoods. They were post-worry: the worst had already happened to them. Had they not lived righteously enough, or were they unbelievers? No doubt humans are the only animals who pray. Though I don’t believe in God with a capital G, I do pray on occasion—like in airplanes. I always say a prayer on the way up and another on the way down. I pray whenever I’m in the back of a New York cab. (I don’t necessarily think anyone hears my prayers, but I figure why not try begging for my life.) What do these two situations have in common? They are ones in which I have zero control. Some say worry is control masked as vigilance. Worry and control may share a spectrum, but you can be a
worrier without being a control freak and vice versa. I can see how the Serenity Prayer might help—the one about accepting what you can’t change, courage to change what you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The acceptance that you are not in control of the universe, I get that. Perhaps prayer is a last ditch effort at doing something. To me, prayer in the face of fear feels instinctual. Since praying feels a lot like worrying, it’s easy to confuse them while you wear grooves in the floor beneath your rocking chair. Rather than ruminate, worriers would benefit from meditation, emptying the mind altogether. I’ve tried meditation when I can’t sleep, but the only way I can get my chatter-brain to shut up is by doing something—and this is where Buddhism offers more peace than the Bible. Thich Nhat Hanh says the present moment is a beautiful moment. He tells us to do the dishes when we do them, rather than hurrying off to the next task in our minds. The simple tasks of daily life can be a form of moving mediation. And since being present is the only way to “slow” time, it may actually slow the aging process! So take that power-walk around the lake, fold those clothes, play badminton ‘til the sun goes down, wash the dishes and do nothing but. You can’t wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time. I heard someone say worry is a vampire: it sucks you dry, but it can only exist in the dark. Similarly, my acupuncturist suggests we invite our monsters in for tea. I say honor the inner-worrier. She may not be any fun, but she makes some decent arguments. Sure, I’ll invite her in, and when I notice my heart rate going up, feel my shoulders creeping up around my ears, that’s when I’ll turn her out, send her off with a copy of Mad magazine. (If laughter isn’t a way to shine a light, I don’t know what is.) My mother doesn’t understand irony, and that’s where we differ the most. I asked her recently, what if we just relax, take a load off? “Somebody’s got to worry about this stuff,” she said in all earnestness. But she may be right. Worriers fill important roles in society, in jobs and even socially. We are likely to be safe drivers, attentive friends, and thorough workers. Caution, introspection, and the capacity to work alone can be adaptive qualities. I’m an event planner. Plan for the worst and hope for the best, Mom always said. We are the Felix Ungers of the world, paving a safe path for the Oscar Madisons . . . and surely we prevent little disasters every now and then? At that dinner party, I wasn’t surprised to hear Simon fell carrying Agatha on the stairs. Injuries were minor, and Simon’s foot whacked Madeleine in the head. “At least you didn’t crack your skull,” I said, to which she cheerily replied, “Yep. At least we didn’t die!” We can never know how many lives our worrying may have saved, nor can we factor the impact of a worrier heritage. There is no control group, no twin Madeleine given up for adoption and raised by another mother who is a lot more fun at parties. But more than our deaths, I worry about the quality of
our lives—cracked skulls, homelessness, nuclear winter. I prefer to be present for Madeleine, not dwelling in so many fictitious futures. I want a roof over us, and to remain cognitive and ambulatory until I die, to die laughing if at all possible. I have no control over any of this.
Dana Cera lives in Portland, Oregon, with her daughter and cat. Dana’s been in Portland longer than she’s been anywhere else. Careers in the film and toy industries sound more fun than they are. (She’s no stranger to hard work.) She has a master’s from a writing program and a day job. When not working on screenplays and novels, Dana posts shorter works of nonfiction on her website.
Dawn Montefusco Vantage Point He insists oil paint is more appropriate. They take longer to dry. Flaws will adjust easily. I stand naked with all imperfections showing. My lopsided breasts, the sag of my ass, the unevenness of my nipples and hips. I want him to paint my spirit but I don’t know where it lives. He calculates color. I think of everything I do not want to think about. I have no lover, no husband, no one to go home to, no one to be jealous or angry that there is a man watching me naked. A single woman without child, without abortion, without fame or faith. I want him to cut my heart open on the canvas and paint it into my hands, so I can finally hold it, tell it everything is okay.
Dawn Montefusco Excuses She hunkers near me, all legs and grace, smoking menthols, drinking whiskey. She’s from Texas, weighs about as much as guitar. Her black hair falls all the way down to her ass. “Being clean is not an easy choice,” she says, “when the choice is between friends and sobriety.” I ask her everything: about men and sex and holding on. She tells me I should learn how to fly. Literally. Become a pilot. I can’t imagine navigating a plane. How would I balance all that metal? What if I crashed into a mountain? Texas women are always healthy, sturdy. I’m from the Bronx, unsteady and explosive. I tell her something inside me is still broken. She says she is tired of excuses. Says I should do something scary. Even lie a little, fall in love, run towards a tornado, drive drunk. “You’re a hopeless poseur,” she says with a smile, blows a circle in the air with her smoke.
I love her too much to give her away. but she can’t risk being in one place for too long. I want our lips to touch, but they never get that close. I roll a cigarette and stall her, promise to learn the basics of aerodynamics. Promise to put spells on men, promise not to waver, promise to lie, and fuck, and kill things with my hands, anything to keep her from leaving.
Dawn Montefusco is a poet, actor, and life coach living in Portland, Oregon. She is originally from the Bronx where she developed a love for street poets and spoken word. Dawn is now an east-meets-west crossbreed that loves yoga as well as dropping the fbomb. Her poetic work has appeared in The Clark Street Review, The Bellingham Review, and The Minetta Review and is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine. She won first place in the Wordstock Poetry Contest in 2006. She received her BA in Writing from New York University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University.
Maureen Foster all the paintings blew wildly all over the dark street ** in the midst of the work the moment is inviolate the shapes emerge as if from hiding the colors bleed without consent collect like a gathering storm and the result is a surprise but not really a marriage of free will and serendipity where one ends and the other begins is a mystery unlike him she doesn’t allow visitors works only alone works in progress are never shown and failures are destroyed the clarity of water the eternity of bones the perfection of nature begging to be reinvented
** title from Roxana Robinson’s Georgia O’Keeffe, p. 220 Maureen Foster is the author of three novels, Beginners, Sparks, and Home Front. Her essays, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Pacific Review, Word River and other publications. Maureen grew up in New York, has spent most of her life in California, and lives in Santa Cruz, where she teaches film and composition.
Tadhg Muller First Dreams of Pakistan This dream occurred at the dawn of the new millennium. I was 21 years old and had just arrived in Pakistan. That night I slept just across the border in no man’s land, after travelling 10,000 kilometres overland on transport from Cairo to “the Quetta I had to get to.” The day before this dream, I’d made a rough and hasty exit from Iran, after staying there for a month, amidst much rambling. I left the Islamic Republic after difficulties with the police, as well as being tired of the relentless assault on my flesh by all the aged Persian queers thinking that I was a nice, fresh piece of arse just waiting to be fucked. I’ve tried to recreate the sense of this dream, which, technically, belongs to the sub-category of nightmare. I read somewhere once that twenty-five per cent of all dreams are nightmares, and that those who live in fear in their waking world are more likely to be gripped by the crippling effects of a nightmare. I don’t swallow that. Most of my dreams, actually, fall into the sub-category of nightmare. Failing that, they are invariably erotica, of one form or another, but oddly enough, never of the further sub-category: nightmare erotica. To be honest, I’m neither particularly fearful, nor particularly horny. The frequency of my nightmares (and the erotica of my dreams) is, I think, just the way my brain digests the old diurnal grind, the uncooked meat of my reality. Finally, a confession: this dream possibly was fuelled by a month of excess that was spent on a strict diet of high-grade Beluchi hash. And one more fact: the morning after this dream, I was asked to vacate the $1 a night hotel room that I was sleeping in. No explanations were given. I just headed for the train station. I kept on moving.
I am in Quetta. I am in Quetta. In Quetta I am? Am I in Quetta? Is this Quetta I am in, is this the Quetta that I have to get to? Beads were running down my head and onto my pillow. It is sweat formed from my horror and helplessness, the helplessness that sat like a beast at the core of my dream.
Is this a room in Quetta? The room has a low roof pressing down, a room with windows, but no glass? There is no glass. A door, but no lock. Certainly, this is my room. And I can see movement. Cockroaches, insects. (Or is this really the room of insects?) The walls are a dark, dark green. I ask myself a crippling question. Is this the room? Is this the room, which I must get to? From somewhere, in the depths of my sleep, I let out a cry. It is a cry on my first night in Pakistan. I am in Quetta. I am in Quetta. In Quetta I am? Am I in Quetta? Is this Quetta I am in, is this the Quetta that I have to get to? I become faintly aware of noises, then of someone starting to shake me. The anxiety of the waking world. I am in Quetta. How do I get to Quetta? Will I get to Quetta! Tadhg! Tadhg! Tadhg! I have to get to Quetta? How do I get to the place? I am in Quetta. I must get to Quetta. I must get into my room. Tadhg! Tadhg! Tadhg! And in this dream I suddenly have an urge to shatter everything, and I know I can’t, that I cannot shatter this immaterial monstrosity, this haunted, shadowy feeling that is fleeing through me. I have to get to Quetta Am I awake? Am I in the room? Am I in Quetta?
Hands are shaking me now. I open my eyes, screaming, and I grip those hands with all my might, and without knowing why, I drag their nameless owner towards me, shouting, “Who the fuck are you?” The reply is inaudible. So I force the hands and the face forward toward me in the grubby dark, and I find myself staring right into the face of the hotel receptionist, the hotel receptionist of the cheapest hotel, in the town that I have come to, the town that is Quetta. My body is covered with sweat, and I am confronted by that glistening beast, my own nightmare, and I still cannot quite fathom if this is a dream, or if I have, in fact, returned to my hotel (the cheapest hotel in Quetta). Am I here? Is this a place that I have reached? I fumble for a cigarette. The receptionist has left. My cigarette is a “47”, a small Iranian smoke I bought yesterday in Zahedan. I light it up and study the room. The door has no lock. There is no light, and one window is smashed. I breathe the harsh nicotine and inhale, indulging the sense of something real, of something that can kill me. I look to the floor: my boots and my pack are where I left them - five tiles from the right, two tiles out. Nothing has been touched. I grab my torch, and my Don Quixote. I stay awake until the dawn. It is an unholy vigil: it is as though I am staying awake forever, waiting for the devil to come and take me.
Tadhg Muller grew up in Hobart on the island of Tasmania. He studied in Tasmania before moving to mainland Australia. Tadhg currently lives in New Cross London where he writes, he is currently working on a play exploring the effect of our economic structure on the ethics of 'ordinary' life.
Christine Catalano Large Purchases
Starting out, veneer and particle board take up space that's meant to be temporary. Young, shaking hands fill out a check. Three figures! I've looked, but the store is gone. Those early choices, hard used, begin to break apart. I replace them with more cheap goods. This time, numbers over the internet embody invisible terms of exchange. The people before me bought real wood, paid cash, shook hands, took delivery. Everything was solid. Their large purchases were left behind, but they don't fit the small rooms of Diminished Expectations. The evidence of their existence is safe, though, locked in storage like cemetery memories. I reside semi-content among my past decisions. Not ready to let go of anything.
Christine Catalano is an English major who slipped into publishing through the back door as a graphic artist. She worked happily there for many years. Now liberated from daily deadlines, she keeps her muse satisfied with camera and Photoshop. Some of her work has been published in Fiction At Work, the San Pedro River Review, Mused, and previous issues of Crack the Spine.
Gary F. Iorio The Senryu Marriage
You are married-well, when your taillight goes out and the next day it works.
Gary F. Iorio was Crack the Spine’s Writer of the Month for April 2012. His work has also appeared in Issue Eighteen of this journal.
Visit www.crackthespine.com to review our submission guidelines or to subscribe