EAST COAST INK, Issue 008: MEMORY

east coast ink issue 008 | MEMORY

C O N T E N T S EAST COAST INK | Issue 008 | MEMORY

L E T T E r

f r o m t h e e d i t o r 2

P O E T R Y 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G h o s t S t o r i e s

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A l m a n a c o f m y G r a n d f a t h e r, 1 9 4 5 In Memoriam I R e m e m b e r Yo u r S m i l e Changing Back From New Orleans Untitled No. 2 Anatomy How to Reassemble Combating Memories Koi Fish/Rose Visions of a Former Therapist

F I C T I O N 2 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . U n d e r s t o o d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M e m o r y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y u k o n H o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C u s h i o n e d

M I C R O F I C T I O N 3 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S e t t l i n g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M o s s R o s e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F a r e w e l l s

.................. Glass and Steel

N O N F I C T I O N 4 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C o n s t a n t V i g i l a n c e

.................. The Boston Prayer

a r t i s t s p o t l i g h t : h i p t r i p 5 1 e a s t c o a s t E V E N T S , f a l l 2 0 1 5 5 9 r e v i e w s 6 5

.................. No. 4 Imperial Lane

c o n t r i b u t o r s 7 1

ISSUE 008 EAST COAST INK Fall 2015

“memory”

eci staff owner, editor-in-chief

Jacqueline Frasca

reviews

Laura Apperson

associate editor

Austen Wright

editorial interns

Danielle Behrendt

fiction editor

Erika Childers nonfiction editor

Jill Shastany

East Coast Ink Issue 008, Fall 2015: Memory.

Copyright Š 2015 East Coast Ink ISBN 978-1-329-58315-3

Cover image by Jacqueline Frasca.

Images inside front cover, inside back cover, and on pages 59―62 and 76 by Jacqueline Frasca.

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East Coast Ink magazine is produced four times per year and is an individually owned and operated publication. For additional content , please visit ecimagazine.tumblr.com and connect with us @ecimagazine. Pitch us your creative nonfiction and submit fiction, poetry, micro fiction, book reviews, mixed media artwork and photography to ecimagazine@gm ail.com. Copyright of all materials reverts to the individual artists and authors. No materials may be reproduced under any circumstances without written permissions from the editorial staff.

letter from the editor I’ ve n eve r b e e n a “le a f -p e e p e r,” as we from New E ngland lovingly c all tho s e wh o g e t i n th e ir ca r s fo r th e wild pilgrim age to Verm ont , New H am pshire , a nd M a i n e to s e e th e le ave s ch a n ge c olor in aut um n. I m ourn the sum m er se a s o n— eve r y l e a f th a t fa lls is a trave st y to m e. Give m e green foliage life, give me c o n s i s te n t h e a t , s pa re me wondering if I need a jac ket today and what k ind o f j a c ke t and h ow th ick o f s ocks I ’ll need with these boots. . . I t is t ruly p itif ul to mi n i m ize a s e a s o n into its sm all inc onvenienc es, espec ially when fal l is s o evo c a t ive fo r s o ma ny pe o ple .

I’ m no s tra nge r to p os itive assoc iat ions wit h this t im e of year, eit he r.

P u mp k i n ca r ving with h o a rd s of friends, pic king apples from real orc ha rd s t h ro u gh o u t Ma s s a ch u s e tts , ra king leaves into jum ping piles when I was s til l i n t h e s i ngle -d igits of my life . But for m e, t hose m em ories are pale, tenuo us — t h e o f fs e t is too h igh . I kn ow I have t hem , but t hey are not vivid. They co ul d b e l o n g to a nyon e e ls e . T h ey ’ re happy, m ost im port antly, and for som eone a s t u rbu l e n t ly nos ta lgic a s I a m they don’t hold a c andle to m em ories t hat a re p a i n f u l a nd s till s tin g. T h ey ’ re fully sat urated, and there is no m ist akin g tha t t h ey a re m ine a lo ne .

Ask my mot he r or my b e st f r iend and t he y ’ l l tel l you my memor y is, i n a word, at ro c ious , s o I’m a lways fas cinate d by w hat ot her p e ople c ar r y w it h t hem and how t he y re me mb e r pie c e s of t heir lives. Just li ke in our PORTR A ITURE issu e i n su m me r 20 1 4 , we’re s e ek ing re f uge w it h p otent i a l ly unreli able nar rators, but t here is a u n i que aut he nt ic it y to he ar ing a stor y f rom s ome one els e and honor ing t hei r p e rsp e c t ive. In t h is issue of Ea st C oast Ink, we dive he a df irst into t he memor i es of ot he rs and w hat t he c onc e pt of “memor y ” elicits for t hem , and I am over f l owi ng w it h fe eling to pre s e nt t he s e stor ies, p o ems, and ar t works to you. We s ent out a s e p ar ate ar t c a l l to inst itut ions, universit ies, and organizat ions t hroug hout t he E ast C o ast to t r y and ma ke t h is issue as v isu a l as p ossible for you, our re a ders.

Yo u ’ll a ls o f ind a b o o k review by Laura Apperson, events for write r s a nd a r t i s t s h a p p e nin g in s ta te s a ll down the At lantic , and an Art ist Spot ligh t o n Hi p Tr i p , o ne of B os to n’ s n e we st rappers. So when you’re done pic king appl e s , b a k i n g p i es , ju mpin g in le a f p iles, and trekking your sc enic hikes, read thro ugh t h i s i s s u e a ll co zy-like by th e first bonfire of t he season dec ked in all yo ur l aye r s , b eca u s e I g u e s s you ’ ve waited long enough for c ooler weat her.

En j oy,

Jacqueline Frasca

editor-in-chief

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“she remembers how to move,� Larry holland

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[ poetry ] ghost stories Taylor Bond

When my brother flayed his hand in the fire he had half-convinced me that the world lay between the folds of a shell, pink-scalloped and thirsting for a dryness to breathe in.

I did not remember the sound as much as the smell of the wetness evaporating, the fat peeling itself away and leaping to the air, the carefree suicide.

It seemed to me that iridescence from his words had spun hungry the heat of the Earth, his tales kicking wind at the embers. His scars boiled.

I knew better at the time than to believe anything in the world I did not see that I could not touch or taste, his lies cost him skin and a memory that is still

tender to the touch. A mouthful of hooks.

The ease of disappearing. Suddenly here and gone.

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almanac of my grandfather, 1945 Katherine Gibbel

It pushed 90° in Chicago when he resigned from his four jobs and left for Baltimore.

Gas was 21¢ per gallon, but he took the train.

To think he was once my age. “Any normal fellow would want to study theology and also want to go to Greece tending cows.” Late June, red tape.

The United States was At War, folks grew Victory Gardens, my grandfather refused to sign an oath declaring that he would bear arms for his country.

The S.S. Mexican was built in 1907; it was 599 feet long. They set sail on June 28. By July 4 they rolled eight dead, pregnant horses overboard.

On the mess walls they sprayed DDT to keep away the flies. For the third night in a row he turned his watch ahead 31 minutes. My grandfather held Sunday

services on the ship. He was surprised that men thought “in the likeness of God” meant a body. “I thought people forgot that or at least changed their minds” he wrote.

The ocean was rugged. The ocean was calm.

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in memoriam PJ Carmichael

She turned into a cardboard box, folded over in the rain and someone else slept on her.

I watched from afar, counting down the years until I might become the sidewalk.

“Sleeping girl,� kyle hemmings

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i remember your smile Steve Klepetar

as I hung from a crab apple tree heavy with red and green tinged fruit , sour in the huge, grassy yard of the green house with peeling paint where we lived almost thirty years ago. I could see where your teeth pressed against your thin lips, but then

it wasn’t clear whether you meant to smile or scowl and I had to locate your melting brown eyes, those puddles of pheromones and soul.

All night you painted sky with the palms of your hands, spreading that beautiful mixture of darkness and stars.

Sometimes when I dreamed in our tiny bed, I felt the motion of your art across that small sea between us, my boat struggling

with the current your sweet , sweeping breath brewed, oars leaping alive in my blistered hands, salt spray blasting my face. Was I a traveler yearning for home, prayers dripping from my lips like honey stolen from smoky hives? All down the isthmus of your thigh, I rowed through storm.

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changing back from new orleans Aline Carriere

Ground absorbed I make the fog The clouds and dark Bitter mist As I change back Dissolve the sultry rapture in the south Delicacies, delight Dance reflected streets Wrapped in wrought iron, forged Vigilant spirits infused Flying the entire time Languished, lost The heat a wanted weight Permeates, melds Like the length of your body on mine Magnifies scents, senses Sweat beads twist to tears, rain Rigors my core The cold clutches.

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series by stephen james

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untitled No. 2 Emily Randall

you say that i read into things too much quote passages of time from memory but i have cracked open your spine and dog-eared the page where our chapter ends two yellowed corners stuck together and i a footnote, long forgotten

anatomy

Taylor Bond dreaming of that blue bathroom & blue liquor with the tiles a puzzle spelling out foreign words edges lost on a native mind, a rooted hope drowning in the sink, a care flushed, you filled the tub with rose petals but they had wilted and you filled my dreams with the mist of surreal but they melted, and time was a constant that escaped through the windows. Those ribs became the bindings of a bible. Those hands became the serpents at my throat . They hissed and stole the air with flame-like tongues. They licked the blue tears at my eyes and made me blind. The past ached to be forgotten. A memory was folded into a square simple as a napkin, tucked in a pocket , its borders crackling. The bottles swelled and spilled pouring from the faucet , begging to be stopped, but this can’t be replayed, only repeated. Only remembered. Perhaps the tile has faded and the walls have peeled now. Perhaps everything is exactly the same. Perhaps the only thing changed is me.

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how to reassemble Margaret Mar y Riley a short guide 1st take the jaw between the second and third molar

(I should get out

not out , but here) the mouth will start to shake and recite or groan dying men sound just like a woman giving birth you won’t stop bleeding, when you sit blood puddles mouthshuteyeshut around your toes

2nd take the clavicles and pinch them together 3rd attach the ribs the chest will start to rise and fall

even bones remember life section the heart , when it starts to pump (the roof leaks at night ,

it’s been seventeen days, your clothes are rust colored we don’t wash them because the blood just pools on the floor you don’t wear clothes anymore)

if the left ventricle cannot be located look in the pan Once completed, the reassembly may not look like its former inhabitant this is only to be expected if you collapse the neighbor will come round crows only scream when someone comes round it hangs, scratchy in their throat crows sound like infants just born and reassembled.

29.

I am obsessed

with the daily requirements

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fill me up, dry me, touch me

you’d like to know how I am – if I am depressed of course I’m depressed the fantasies of filling me up aren’t enough I want you to sink inside of me and break apart

how can I erase the latest memories? will mathematics do it for me? when will I be able to drink my memories like this afternoon’s coffee?

I am

cruelest in the afternoon.

you’d like to prove that nothing is real you do this through groaning no one sees you like this your knees shake at night I dream about shattering them after you dry my skin

I want to begin with my firsts.

spatial awareness

light years away from here it’s a completely different sky you will say this while sitting far away from me on your bed that sags in the center, I don’t know anything about the stars, monsters are frozen in our sky and at night they crawl around my window, if they eat all of their prey soon they will have to eat themselves and the sky will be empty. halves.

I want to be cut in two, Can you do that for me?

the man beside me says he only wants to be loved he ate his photographs. he sits all alone at night he will do it for a price

I want you to separate the skin from the muscle and place it to the right he will place my heart next to my eyes

if he can trace my nerves, and lay his head inside my dislocated my jaws he says it’s never warm in his mind but it’s never cold either it just doesn’t sit right

he wants to tell people I was in love with him, sure, that’s okay.

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combating memories A.J. Huffman

Forget me, you whispered, crawling later under many sons and daughters, human plots strategically selected to bury me.

Forget me, you whispered when first you reached me, retracting tracks that had no intentions of going further or back.

Forget me, you whispered, confronting your own image. My gaze of decreasing frankness, still held by love of turbulence.

Forget me, I screamed, shattering both of our pieces, declaring this as our home, the place where I disappear.

� m e m o r i e s , � m a r c u s b o y d

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koi fish/rose Max Griffin

In my youth a girl with chocolate brown hair espresso thighs and plum lips gave birth to a whisper inside my inner ear’s sanctum.

Koi fish only exist in houses of the rich vanilla doughboys.

Years later my hair is greying like the granite at Greystone mansion.

As I scan the yellowed pages of smogged downtown with canary colored sacs running under my eyes.

Thirty years into the megadrought the hands of every water fountain clasped together rusted shut solidarity.

In le jardin de paix across the way I see clear blue water and koi fish.

There were three hundred eighty seven brick stairs like red marks of shame to be swallowed and tripped over on the way to Greystone greenhouse.

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With the glass half shattered I lit a candle and cut a rose while I prayed for opalescence.

In my pocket the salmon thorns scratched my chest like your nebulous nails.

When we make love I imagine giving you Greystone mansion pounds of it to weigh my body down as I close my fist and exhale.

visions of a former therapist Jill Shastany

There you are in your car in a traffic jam.

Now you’re crossing a square in the corner in my head.

You were white-haired-nice and clever in a black manner with a scythe of a smile (only less cartoonish,

Not the jack-o-lantern my mother drew in what I’m now remembering was the thing you wanted; something closer to my first Memory. Again, near Halloween, when more began than either of us realized.

We didn’t know a girl’s name

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could have such a lusty effect , or that a haircut could ignite such vitriol, didn’t know that an unmistake could weigh so heavy, or that the trail on the floor was a curse.

You were just as baffled as I, those months later.

Maybe I would have remembered the scissors contrasting the warm snips of your extended curled fingers) sift-slicing through my feeble inconsequentials, lending me the feeling of being human, as I sat in fluorescence.

I saw you in my town, in the high school parking lot (but no one ever comes here, not even for a carnival).

I blink and the lights remind me that I’m in my own world, populated by my past , a confusing cluster in which I can’t keep track of who is still in a room, in a house, with everything still glowing for me in case I [too] come back.

They are the bricks in the hearth, forming some character in my head-one from which there’s no parting, except in the fissures caked in flecks.

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It’s hard to tell

“what was here before,� Larry Holland

whose faces are real and made of clay and setting, and whose are made only of light , those impressions left on the back of your eyelids.

You panic because you know they will, just have/have just disappear[ed] or become someone else.

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” a n d i w a s t h e b i r d , ” j a c k s a v a g e

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[ fiction ] understood Matt Lowe

Of course you can ask.

You think you’re the first to wonder? No: most traffic in and out of Pewter is commercial, but you’d be surprised how many come just as sightseers, or pilgrims—we’re never sure which, and we’ve found it can be considered rude to ask.

You come with eyefuls of questions, yes; but few of you stand still long enough to voice them, let alone to listen for a response. But then again, we don’t often stand still, either.

I hadn’t been built yet , then, but our institutional memory is sound. My oldest forebears swear they remember it clearly—not when the Statue was built , mind, but before it fell. Here, they swear, is how things stood:

The Dictator’s emergence ended our Civic Wargame, and at first , yes, we resented him for it . The Real War had ended decades earlier, but the Game went on in their place: we were like the siege towers of old, raised to be not merely “smart” buildings, but mobile ones. Back and forth my forebears slid across the boards, in a new and more sporting form of warfare.

New! Civilized!

Urbane!

Complex!

But even though the Wargame displayed all these, our proudest Civic virtues, for all to see, it was also unwinnable. This the Dictator showed us: for all that we captured and incorporated and occupied, our profiteering was leaving more losers than winners, and fewer available moves. Instead of gridlock, he offered us a merger, and profits like we’d never dreamed of.

We restructured ourselves—grudgingly, at first—and saw his vision realized.

Soon, this new thing we had become—this city—stretched across our state, then our rival-neighbors’ states, then our continent , then all of Pewter itself. And further still: he taught us ways of influencing other worlds, even across the vast spaces where buildings cannot go.

How could we express our gratitude to the Dictator, who had shown us the way to new wealth?

We did what came naturally: we built . Not a building, not even another Civic like us, but—as you’ve read in the brochure—a Statue. A hybrid of a person and a building, one that would stand still. Not that it was intended as a statue of the

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Dictator himself; a statue can no more stand for him than one of us can represent our parent corporations. But an emblem, a monument , yes, the Statue was that , and more. For it also stood as the base for— —a space elevator? Is that what you tourist-pilgrims think? How silly! No, the Statue was more practical: our rule stretched to the stars by then, but our building ambitions reached only to the top of the sky. The Statue supported only a suborbital tower, reducing the cost of payloads to space, but without the trouble and suspense of a space elevator, we reasoned to one another. Without the hubris.

Which was, of course, a lie.

Why did the Statue fall? There’s still some debate about that . No, it wasn’t because it offended the old gods of Pewter, or any of the worlds we’ve taken over.

At least , it probably wasn’t—and “act of gods” isn’t a very satisfying analysis of structural failure. No, it wasn’t an earthquake or wind shear or any such stressors; not directly, anyway. No, the current prevailing theory is that we got too ambitious in bringing the Statue to life: by pressurizing it , giving it not only bladders of hydrogen and helium, but also lungs of a sort , with which to breathe above the smog. By making such a monstrosity self-stabilizing, we made it unstable. So one minute it was standing—legs astride our city and its harbor, one hand on its hip, the other pointing to the heavens, balancing the suborbital platform on a single, confident finger—and in the next , it fell.

The death toll climbed to terrible heights: in the old days of Real War, it would have been seen as collateral damage, but in those middle days of new peace, all Pewter mourned, and all the worlds of the Magistracy were made to mourn, too.

And then the builders gathered like prey-birds around the corpse: the senior Civics looked down, solemn, as their perishable consultants scuttled about , comparing architectural notes on their oversized slates and tablets. And together, they decided not to rebuild.

Can you grasp, little perishable pilgrim, how revolutionary that was? We had always built and rebuilt . Building was who we were. The Dictator was also less than pleased: he hadn’t endorsed the Statue, but he hadn’t opposed it for very long, either, and the idea that it wouldn’t be rebuilt was unwelcome. But now it was our turn to change his mind: we would build a new suborbital platform (only a platform tower, not a Statue) in a less densely-populated area of the planet-city. And we would rebuild around the Remains, incorporating them back into the cityscape— and the parts left standing would still serve as a tourist attraction, as you know.

So the answer is no, I’m not standing where the Statue once stood; I stand where he fell. I was born and raised in the crater where his head came to rest . And though I was designed, like all the other Civics, to move if I need to, I generally don’t . Why? Because while my peers, and all you tiny perishables, are busy running around, someone has to stop and remember. And that falls to me.

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memory

Ryan Higginbotham The slamming of the door snaps me out of my trance. I can’t remember any of the drive over, which is nice, as the present is unbearable. Walking down the trail that leads from the parking lot to my favorite bench, I force myself to stop thinking and pay attention to my senses. The smell of autumn, the crunching of the leaves, elicit a feeling, the ghost of a memory; no specific autumn, all autumns. The excitement of the new school year; the weather finally cooling.

Autumn is my favorite time. I arrive at the bench and take in my surroundings as I sit . The leafless trees look like mothers crying to the heavens over their dead children. The breeze swims across my face, caressing me like a lover. I can feel the warmth of sun. I look up at the trees to see it’s light shining through the branches. My gaze follows the light along its path. I look down to see it surround my brother. I am so happy. Every grain of sand, every gust of wind, every squawk from the seagulls is infused with so much exuberance that this bliss suffused the world with his own light , with the sun merely a spectator. The ebb and flow of the water on my right leg, the sand on my left leg, the sun on my back battle for sensual attention; my body absorbs them all and becomes all sensations.

As I help my brother build his sandcastle, I watch him, intently, but futilely— saving a spire from the coming tide, I feel such joy that I try to focus on everything, every sensation, every thought , every movement to capture it forever. Suddenly he looks up at me, his bright blue eyes piercing through everything I’m feeling, uniting us in such love that my previous bliss is like staring at a candle in the dark versus staring directly at the sun.

The entire scene, the unlimited explosion of this love, swirl around me; my body is still so euphoric, that I’m impervious to the slicing autumn wind that blows against me as I walk along the creek. I love the smell of the creek at autumn: it’s filled with such an earthy mixture of trees, soil, and rocks—I seem to perceive it more as solid than air. The dripping of the water brings my attention away from the wall and back to her. She puts her hand back in the bath, having only dribbled the water from it to bring my attention back to her. Sitting on the closed toilet next to the tub, I can see her entire body submerged except for her head and, barely, her breasts. I hate that I enjoy and even find some vague erotic pleasure when she makes me mad. Her smirk shows that she knows this. She reaches for the shampoo and says, “Are you still made at me?” only looking at me after she finishes her question. From our vantage points, to look at me her eyes are up and to a slight angle. Her shoulder is now blocking my view of the rest of her body.

She looks like a painting right now. My heart is beating. I’m hyper aware of the blood flowing through my body. I have the butterflies that should only exist when you feel joyous love, not anger. She knows, of course. “I think you’re really cute when you pout like that .” She begins to apply the shampoo.

“I’d like to join you.”

“I thought you were mad at me.” She seductively feigns consideration of what I want . “No,” she slinks back under the water, “I think taking this bath alone will be more relaxing.” We sit in silence for a while, me angry with her and furious at myself,

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desperately desiring her; she proud of the emotional toil she has wrought . “I love you, you know.” She and I both know that it doesn’t matter if that’s true; I’m hers.

I turn away from her, to ascertain why leaves behind me are crunching. It’s an elderly couple a couple of yards behind me, walking a little faster than I am. I slow down to decrease the amount of time it takes for them to pass me. As I watch them continue down the hall, I can’t help but feel depressed. Looking around at the elderly people in the lobby, I can’t help but notice that a majority of them are sitting just staring into place. I’m not sure if they ’re senile or depressed, likely both.

I arrived only minutes before my friend’s shift ended, but she’s running late.

After a period of time that felt like both an instant and an eternity, she approaches me. I laugh at myself that my first thought on seeing her is that I think she looks good in her scrubs. “Sorry I’m late. Today was rough.”

As we walk out of the lobby towards the parking lot , an elderly woman in a wheelchair grabs my hand. The fury in her eyes and on her face makes her look like a wild animal. “You took her, didn’t you? Where did you put her? You monster, she’s just an animal!”

She pulls me away and says, too forcefully, “Mrs. Anderson, I told you already no one took Oggie from you. She’s been dead for quite a while. You have to learn to accept this.”

The sadness of this entire scenario empties my being. I can no longer feel any connection to anything or anyone, even myself. I’m barely aware of who I am.

There is only sadness. As we get closer to the car I pause and say, “You shouldn’t have treated her like that .” She pauses to consider her actions.

“I know. It just gets hard when you spend all day cleaning shit off of them.

Can we please just go home?” I finish walking to the car, stopping briefly to take one last look at the trees. I get in and go home.

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yukon ho Robin Dunn

They had driven all night , but they were far north into Canada now and the light was a fine shade of blue and they were moving slow, it was an old car.

“That’s a beautiful light ,” Ariadne said. Usually she went by Arrie.

“Mmm hmm,” said her sister Len, quietly.

“Do you want me to drive?” Arrie asked.

“No, I’m all right .”

Both sisters were archaeologists. There was a hole in the ground in the Yukon and they had found one of those missing links; something to tie homo erectus to homo sapiens, a 1250 cc brain (erectus had 1000 cubic centimeters of gray matter, we have 1500), halfway in between, only 100,000 years old, but the millennia are young inside the cold of Canada.

The car rumbled because it was old and because it had an attitude about this trip, an attitude both women’s men had had as well—the Yukon? You don’t really want to go to the Yukon.

But they were going to the Yukon, into the blue. Into the blue night .

Ahead, the hills seemed to grow even bluer, bluer like the family curse, of dementia, and an earlier form of it , not Alzheimer’s, but some unnamed twill or root deep in the brain, one that changed the face like a stroke but made you angry, angry, angry. So far the sisters had avoided it , though it had taken their mother by this age and they would see her then, holding the kitchen knife, saying terrible things. Or waking them up in the night , crying loud enough to shake the walls.

For what has not come to pass beneath these hills? In Canada where madness is as common as it is in Scandinavia, and suicide a next door neighbor at best , and at worst a kind of lover, one you cannot touch but who sleeps in your bed.

The blue night of the Yukon and its blue hills are a deep quandary for Man; when did we cross them, and why?

Ariadne, who was two years older than Len, was a supporter of the theory that the last Ice Age had ended much sooner than had commonly been supposed, and so the last great migration of human beings south could have happened as early as 16,000 B.C., perhaps not via the Bering Land Bridge but via boats, from the Aleutian islands, winnowing their way through the sea, eastwards, down into the blue and frightening country that is eternal, for Canada means village, and it will know your face, like in the village, you are known, and you are known, and you are known again, your brother and your sister known, your ancestry burned into the lines on your face and the words from your mouth.

But the sisters were American and so they could afford to see the backcountry of Canada as charming and beautiful, great country for the archaeology of the First Peoples, and their cousins, our cousins, he who made fire first , who came out of Africa first , who learned the way, and told us of it , he told us all the ways, all the many ways out of Africa, perhaps 10 million years ago, as much as that , our biped cousin who had fire and a brain and a lust for wandering the Earth, including, apparently, to Canada, the first Man ashore, so long ago.

“How many are at the dig already?” asked Len.

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“About twelve. Six graduate students. Six professors.”

“Is Asshole there?”

This was her former lover, Mr. Elliott Fleischbaum, and a man with a handsome face, mad eyes, and a lisp.

“Yes, Asshole is there.”

“Shit .”

The blue hills of Canada know our assholes, for we have eaten of its country and shat back onto it , the work of mammals is to move around and shit , and does this comfort the archaeologist? To know that the land itself expects us, if only for our droppings? We are welcome here, too. With our teeth and stomachs and our assholes.

In Los Angeles in Hollywood the magic hour comes around seven o’clock but it is later in the Yukon, higher on the sextant , where the light is bluer, more refracted at that angle from the sun, though not as blue as Britain, and the magic hour is a powerful hour, for the word magic comes from an Indo-European root meaning power, to be able, and the magic hour is able, all right , it holds you so tight .

It holds you so tight , not like a lover, and not like a friend, and not like a mother, even, not exactly, perhaps like a long lost uncle, an uncle who has found you, and embraces you, and will not let you go, not yet , and you know that you must not let this uncle go, for he has come to you, and you are his, and he is yours, and his blue bygone years furrow into your consciousness like the stories of our simpler cousins with their liter-sized brains (we have a liter and a half ), setting to root the tales of faraway places, so far from Africa, the Yukon, but beautiful, and you can go there too, in your boat , following the stars.

Don’t you think erectus could navigate? I know he could. As I know that you are navigating now, moving in your ship, the ship of your body, furling the sail, steering into the current , and watching the wind, three knots, and when will madness take you? Will it be like your mother?

“I’m looking forward to this dig,” said Len.

“Me too,” said Ariadne.

Homo erectus on his great journey is our own. We are him and he is we and there is no meaningful separation: the cataloguing of human species is one of family relationships, not barriers and separations. We fled from Africa not once, not twice, but many times, in droves and droves of dozens, dozens, each one a Moses, with religious eyes, and strong legs, filled with a desire to see the next valley, covered in blue and dream.

And then we came back! And told a tale, and others went , again, again, again, again and again, whispering of the Yukon and all these human places where we dug a hole and left our droppings and whispered to the trees of who we were, who we were becoming.

Yukon means great river, as we are a great river moving, moving, never the same twice, with a thousand thousand thousand thousand names, cutting into the land and changing it , burning with a desire for the sea.

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” h e r d e l i c a t e b e a u t y , ” j a c k s a v a g e

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cushioned D ylan Young

INT. PICK UP TRUCK – JUST BEFORE DAWN

THE DRIVER, a disheveled man with large bags under his eyes drives on a main suburban road in Los Angeles as the pre-dawn light breaks. He pulls over on the side of the road where there is a worn leather couch. His old blue pickup truck coughs as it is turned off.

EXT. SIDEWALK - CONTINUOUS

The Driver gets out of his car and walks around to look at the couch. The black leather is cracked in a few places. A SMOKING MAN drags on a cigarette sitting on the front steps of the house the couch has been discarded near.

SMOKING MAN

Fine couch.

SMOKING MAN Wife and I got a new one. This one has a bit of wear and tear, but its still good.

SMOKING MAN I can give you a hand getting it in the back of your truck if you’d like.

The Driver looks up, noticing The Smoking Man for the first time. The Driver nods.

The Driver nods in agreement .

S’alright .

THE DRIVER

The Driver grabs the cushions off of the couch, and throws them into the bed of the pick up. The Smoking Man takes a final drag of his cigarette before putting it out on the steps. As the smoking man stands up, he notices the bed of the pick up is filled with the cushions from at least a dozen different couches.

SMOKING MAN Hey, are you planning on coming back for the rest of the couch?

SMOKING MAN Were you planning on coming back for any of those? Hey!

The Driver walks around to the other side of the pick up truck and gets in.

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The Smoking Man walks over to the truck and leans into the open passenger side window.

SMOKING MAN

Look, if you just take the cushions, no one is going to take the rest

of the couch, and it’s going to sit here for a month until the big trash day.

The Driver buckles his seat belt and turns to The Smoking Man

I know.

THE DRIVER

The Smoking Man takes a step back. The Driver starts up the pick up truck, which chugs to life with effort .

SMOKING MAN (to himself )

Why would someone do that?

The Smoking Man is left wondering as the truck drives off.

EXT. Sidewalk - A few nights later

The old blue pick up truck comes to a slow stop next to an old brown sofa with the back facing the street . The Driver gets out and makes his way over to the sad tired furniture, when a plume of smoke comes up from it .

SMOKING MAN I knew you’d find this one eventually.

The Smoking Man, rugged and red-eyed, previously lying down on the sofa sits up.

The Driver just looks at him. The Smoking Man takes a drag of his cigarette.

Well?

Would you move please?

SMOKING MAN THE DRIVER

SMOKING MAN That’s it? I wait by this couch for 3 days to find you and that’s it?

You found me.

THE DRIVER

The Driver motions for the Smoking Man to get up, but he does not .

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SMOKING MAN No. I’m not letting you take these cushions until I know why.

Why what?

Why do you take them?

May I?

THE DRIVER When I was about seven, I can remember there was a woman that used to live down the street . I say used to, because her house had burned down when I was about 3.

THE DRIVER This woman used to go through trashcans to find shoes. She would sleep somewhere during the day, and go out at night to find shoes.

Sometimes going into backyards and taking them off porches; if you left them there.

THE DRIVER In the morning she would walk up to the lot where her house used to be, arms full of shoes if it was a good night . She would stand at the edge of the sidewalk, never once stepping into the lot , and throw shoes at the remains of her house. And I would watch her.

THE DRIVER I used to lay awake at night , thinking about her. Why would she do that? Why shoes?

THE DRIVER

SMOKING MAN

The Driver sits down on the sofa next to the smoking man. He points to the cigarette.

THE DRIVER

The Smoking man stares at him. After a moment he sighs and passes him the cigarette, then pulls out and lights a new one for himself. The Driver takes one long pull of the cigarette and holds it for a moment before exhaling.

He drags on the cigarette.

He drags on the cigarette.

He drags on the cigarette.

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He finishes the cigarette, and flicks the butt to the sidewalk. He twists it into the

ground with his foot as he stands up. The Smoking Man stands up with him.

So why did she do it?

SMOKING MAN

The Driver shrugs as he grabs the cushions off of the sofa and heads towards his truck. He throws the cushions into the back and starts the truck. As the sun begins to crest the sky, the old blue pickup truck rolls away slowly, leaving The Smoking Man standing on the sidewalk with the brown old couch, devoid of cushions.

“havalina,” Laura Greenwald

END.

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“the lake” and “grandfather tree” (opposite page), allison anne brown

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“ c a m e r a p i l e ” a n d “ h o u s e p i l ” ( o p p o s i t e p a g e ) , m a t t h e w d i o m a t a r i s

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[ micro fiction ] settling

Benjamin Blake From the lookout , the lights of the town blink to life like miniature panes in the windows of doll houses. A match flares, burns out . The tip of a fresh cigarette glows, soon carved into a fiery pyramid by the autumn wind. Hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his worn jacket , the man puffs on his smoke, and smiles. This was the place. The small town where he could settle down: a house, a car, a job—hell, even a dog. And if he was lucky enough, a girl. Some cute little waitress, perhaps. At first , he would be a stranger. But by the time that winter thawed to spring, he would be one of them. This was the place. The place where he could leave it all behind. Forget the past . Start anew. Yes, this was the place.

moss roses Matt Lowe

She wasn’t the fiery one, the one they all thought of as the “character” of the family, the one who everyone had a funny story to tell about . She was the quieter one— the peaceful, settled soul. Whenever I visited Tillie’s house, that peacefulness was there. Especially in the smells: the moss roses she always kept in her garden, the dill and other herbs she dried in her summer kitchen, the grease and oil in her husband Henry ’s hands and clothes. But to remember her—to remember not just things about her home, but who she was as a person—I learned not just through eyes and nose but also by ear: the traces of Czech that accented her English; the way she called the chickens she and Henry raised her “babies;” her insistence that they sell their cows and buy beef that someone else had butchered, because, she would say, “we don’t eat our friends.” Babies and friends: in the sounds of these words, I also hear now what I didn’t know to listen for then, the sounds of the children they longed for but were never able to have. It’s in memory of those smells—and those sounds that I did and didn’t hear—that I grow moss roses in my garden every year.

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“couchfire,” samuel augustine

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“security,” kat lanser

farewells Max Griffin

Doing ninety going north on the 110, my thoughts began to wander. Not because I had just dropped off my SO at LAX, although that in itself would be a tidy story, about distance and the time it takes to fall in love with someone, culminating perhaps in a café, where she would tell him that she loves his eyes, that melancholy look he gets, but that they can never be together, and each of them would board separate trains bound to far off European countries, but not too wild or too Eastern, that story is the tidier one. Instead I was drawn to two separate memories, of years ago when I stood in a lecture hall, discussing with a man who harnesses the power of algae to create fuel, about the conditions over the Antarctic, where chlorine and ozone are the antagonists, where you might summon some sort of succor over your own lack of drive, the one that leads you to that night years ago in your drug dealer’s converted garage, you know the one who had a terrarium of black widows, black widows his girlfriend would collect , and you’re now hanging with the hoodratas, the laqueristas, denizens of the seventy two hour night , the two a.m. drive to San Fran, your car being fueled by derision and waxy fly paper, just to cover the fact that long ago sugar began to rot out your intentions, which brought you to this room where nobody talks about saving the planet , or even themselves. I wanted to explain to her who like an oil derrick dipped her head into the morass of my existence and drug me up against my own will, I wanted to tell her that she made me cry harder than when I heard Rankine speak, about that black man arrested trying to find his own hideaway key, that she made me laugh harder that when I witnessed Lester, that wanton child of god, prey on the high mountain folk, sandwiched in the pages of Appalachian fiction. When I drove away I simply waved, one more time, mouthing words to her through the filth crowding the glass of my ninety six Camry, as the boisterous sun began to rise before six a.m. at the end of a California summer.

glass and steel Lara Lewis

There are three of them, side by side in a perfect row. Dulled and scratched glass prisms hold chunks of metal. The lids have hinges that creak open and resist being moved. Rusted gears and cylinders lie inside, tarnished of their gleam. Only the third looks like it’s in any sort of shape to be used. They look broken, unusable. The first one has a little key. Turn it . Do you hear the notes, the faint chiming? Do you feel how soft it is? Can you hear how gentle and faintly melancholy the tune is, light enough to be gentle, slow enough to ache? Do you like the song, even as your chest feels somehow heavier? It stops when you let go of the key, and you close the lid. The second one sings as well. It is brighter, just as faint to hear, but faster. What’s this?

Is that a smile tugging at your face? It bounces, going from cheerful to devastating to somber to sweet . It plays long after you let go of the key, but you shut the box. The third one twinkles a bit in the light . The third song’s key is on the bottom. It creaks and winds up as you turn it . It resists. When you let go it turns, and you see the gear moving, but hear nothing. A single note plays, and then it stops. The second box is still playing, still turning even when muffled by glass. The key on the third box does not turn, but it moves, slowly, with the ticking hand on the clock.

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[ nonfiction ] constant vigilance Kr ysten Trindade

The memory is a tool that never forgets its purpose. You must remember, and so here it is to help you.

It is there, all the time—remember, remember, remember—a whisper of my own weakness that I must never forget . It is now chained to the physical device that never leaves my side, and it calls to me. You could die at any time. You must be your own warrior. But how do you fight yourself ?

The memory of the attack itself is a strange perspective, gained through a haze of medication and a low blood-oxygen level. After the attack, an anaphylactic reaction to an unknown stimulus, I was prescribed an epipen as a precaution. For a brief time, I thought of it as a freak occurrence—my body just got confused. But then I saw a specialist for my allergies and the now-constant anxiety burst forth from my lizard-brain with the knowledge that the confusion was what I should fear. My body was vulnerable.

My epipen became an anchor, the focus of my awareness that my body could encounter just about any innocuous thing and become confused. I became conscious of the need to always have it on my person; to never forget that my own body could betray me, attack me, and this small needle was my only protection.

And so it haunts me, a specter of my own mortality, lurking in a cloak of anxieties aimed to preserve. Constant vigilance! I must never forget , must always be aware that there are things out there that my body could reject at the expense of itself, and I have no way of knowing exactly what they are. I was tested, but the body changes, grows into and out of allergies like shedding a skin—peeling away one to reveal another.

But the brain does not shed fears, does not forget the urge to preserve itself and so the memory tied to the epipen remains. The pen itself sits in my wallet and every year it is smaller, more compact , easier to disguise—while the stigma grows.

It feeds on my hindbrain, harvesting my fight or flight response to keep me alert .

It fertilizes the fear with the memory of choking, of fighting, of a frightened family and a frightened girl and a body that martyred itself.

This memory is a tool, and it is sharp.

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the boston prayer Tess Walsh

Once there was a family with four redheaded children, a fat father, and a nervous mother. They lived in a house with peeling paint and air conditioners in the windows that looked like cavities. The oldest child took after her mother; she was nervous. She avoided the cracks in the sidewalk and said prayers every night , eyes shut tight like the Hail Mar y was the bathwater she and her brother cupped in their hands, and all of it was trying to swim out her ears. She prayed for her fat father, who, most nights, sat at the station in Brighton, a brick building right next to the funeral home where her grandmother was laid out for the last time, and ate doughnuts. The father ate doughnuts because they filled up all the holes inside him, and because they were the only thing he could keep down after the 911 call he responded to last month.

Once upon a time there had been a man with a wife and two little girls. The first little girl got sick all the way down in her tiny bones and she was laid out in the same funeral home as the nervous girl’s grandmother. The wife stopped talking and started ordering take-out , and one day, when the man came home, there were divorce papers next to the pizza box. The man kissed the second little girl, the one who didn’t get bone-sick, and he went down to the railroad station. The 7:54 train was coming and the man looked at the funeral home, the one next to the station, before he stepped off the platform as if he were stepping down the stairs. He used to put the first little girl on his shoulders as he went down the stairs so she could touch the ceiling, or scrape at the cobwebs in the corners with a rag. Most little girls were afraid of spiders, but not his. Not until she got bone-sick, because then the doctor showed her a picture and she said the inside of her bones looked like spider webs, like deadly cotton candy. It seemed unfair, the man thought , that there were surely spider-webs with her now, in her coffin. And that was the last thought he had before the train came.

The fat father of the four redheaded children and the one nervous girl was sitting in his station when the man with the bone-sick daughter stepped out to hug the train. He was watching the ball game, two-oh Sox, when the call came and he was the first one on the scene, the passengers off the train talking about the game, talking about Menino’s latest mumble, as the father looked at the corpse of someone who, five minutes ago, had been like him.

“There’s no head,” he said. “Where’s the head?”

The coroner pointed, and the father crouched down to inspect it . He thought of hamburger meat , the kind his mother bought and slapped with her bare hands.

He thought of the word flesh. He thought of his first communion, when the priest told him he was now eating the body of Jesus Christ , and how he had started to cry, imagining himself to be chewing on the Messiah’s earlobe.

He did not throw up until he came home that day, to his nervous wife and his four children, and his wife asked him to cut the roast beef. He looked at it and he looked at her and then he vomited into the kitchen sink and the kids made medicine faces, yucky, and ran into the backyard.

Since then, the father has eaten mostly doughnuts, and his nervous little girl

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knows this, so she prays. Sometimes, when it is late, she tip-toes past her mother, who has fallen asleep in front of an infomercial again, and takes her father’s first police shirt out of the closet so she doesn’t feel so alone. She tugs it on over her pajamas and it drapes along the floor as she tip-toes back out , some sort of train for a princess who wears no crown but steals lone bullets from the coin jar and once brought them to show-and-tell only to get in trouble. The shirt is from 1990 and it has white letters in a Microsoft Font , the emblem of the badge pressed onto the fabric above the heart . First in the Nation! First to Fight! It says. Boston, so proud of its boys in blue.

The girl is always shaken out of the police shirt by morning, when her father comes home to make scrambled eggs and then put them in plastic wrap to save for a meal he never eats. Sometimes the nervous daughter is up when he turns the key, and she sits at the kitchen table, swinging her legs, while her fat father listens to sports radio and gives her the handcuffs. She likes to play with them. She thinks that bad guys wear handcuffs so that their hands are forced to pray.

The father says, “I need that shirt , silly,” and the little girl wiggles out of her gown, gives it to him. It is usually five in the morning. He gives her a bit of the scrambled egg he has just made and not eaten. The nervous child hates scrambled eggs because she thinks it tastes like chunks of cut-up sponge, but she eats it anyways.

Once upon a time there was a nervous little girl with a chipped front tooth who never slept and stole her father’s police shirts; she took the bullets from the coin jar into kindergarten and got into trouble because guns were bad. And she grew up, and they gave her green and white pills to melt away those stripped nerves. The pills looked like they would taste minty but they did not . She takes two every night before she tries to sleep. Most night , she doesn’t sleep at all. She didn’t sleep the night of the marathon, which happened in April when she was almost grown-up but still liked to eat macaroni and cheese.

When the father came home, the girl was wearing the old shirt she had so often stolen. It was no longer a gown on her; she was too big. It was five in the morning, and she was watching the news. She’d been watching the news all day, and her nervous mother, who refused to take the pills, kept rubbing her hands with a dish towel even when they were dry as she said, Turn it off, turn it off.

The father was not so fat anymore. It had been years since the days of the doughnuts; that era had ended when the Pepsi bottles in the fridge stopped smelling like Pepsi. He went straight to the kitchen, smelling like leather and cold metal, smelling like the station which the nervous girl had sometimes played in as a child, feeding pennies to the vending machine for jelly-beans and pressing the fat buttons on the dashboard of her father’s cruiser to turn on the sirens.

The morning after the marathon, when a little boy died and several others lost pieces of themselves, flesh or otherwise, my father made eggs, and this time he ate them. He’d picked fingers out of the drains all day, blood running down the gutter like sunscreen ran off in the water, and he’d thought about the man who had, once upon a time, hugged a train and lost his head. That man was not my father’s first corpse, and the limbs he picked up like broken Barbie parts all over Boylston Street will not be the last bloodshed he sees, but they hurt him more than the others did, more than the others will. He does not say this. I don’t think

“summer’s gone,” kat lanser

he ever will, but I also think he doesn’t have to, because we know and I know. I was not the first reason he went into this bloody business, but I am one of his four most important reasons for staying in it .

My father is not a saint . He has broken ribs, bloodied noses. He has scars from belts and bricks. He has scars from whiskey and wine, from me, from us. But when I was born, the nurse asked my father if he wanted to cut the umbilical cord. He said no. He said that his hands had touched criminals, and they would not be the first things that touched his child. And when that same child went away to college, her first night , 211 miles away from the house with the air conditioners sticking out the windows like broken teeth, 226 miles north of the jelly-bean and bullet station next to the funeral home of her grandmother, of the bone-sick little girl, she wore her father’s police shirt and said the prayer on his badge: Sicut patribus sit deus nobis. May god be with us as he was with our fathers.

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“a moment,” ron melick

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“gentleman buck” and “lady doe” (opposite page), jennifer janeiro

artist spotlight hiptrip When Lauren Godding got her first guitar from her parents when she was ten or eleven, she probably hadn’t even dreamed she’d someday be HipTrip, an emerging rapper in Boston with a brand new mixtape, Shot. She picked up playing bass in high school when she first started taking music seriously—motivated by an incredible high school band teacher, she learned to read sheet music and play big-band classical concerts, as well as jam in smaller jazz bands. Music took a brief hiatus in college while she earned her Marketing degree from Emerson College until the end of junior year when her social circle was largely made up of musicians of all ilks, and after a summer of live music and picking up pieces from anyone she could learn from, one close friend in particular took over as mentor and really pushed her to start writing music.

What was it like, starting out writing your own music alongside your mentor friend?

HipTrip: It was so therapeutic, it was exactly what I needed and exactly when

I needed it . He actually ended up moving out of town, and that’s when I started learning to make my own beats instead of just writing verses, because he wasn’t there to make me beats or help me make them. All fall and all winter, I really buckled down—I was using all my spare time to work on my music, and actually had a decent amount of spare time once I graduated—and it felt so good. I was surrounded by teachers, you know? My friends would help me and listen to my stuff and give suggestions—almost everything I’ve learned so far about music production and song writing is shit that friends taught me. I’ve been lucky.

What drew you to hip hop over the singer/songwriter genres?

HipTrip: Hip Hop is it , plain and simple. It just feels the best .

Your lyrics show a particular affinity toward puns. Would you say your humor comes out when you’re writing?

HipTrip: I think that it’s really important not to take anything too seriously,

and to laugh whenever possible. I think I’m funny, or something—I think what I’m doing is a little bit goofy by nature because I’m goofy by nature. I’m a spooky white chick self-producing Hip Hop mixtapes, you know? Some people are probably gonna giggle at that , and I’m gonna giggle with them.

Y o u h a v e a s o r t o f s p o o k y / w i t c h y t h e m e t o S h o t —w h a t ’ s t h a t born from?

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HipTrip: I really love spooky and dark themes. There’s something very

empowering about the stereotypical witch—she’s a woman that is other-wordly,

all hiptrip photography by maggie main

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she doesn’t abide by our rules, she floats above them, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. I love that . My ideal self is very witchy. Another part of it: Bones and skulls fascinate me, and I really like knowing that we all have skeletons inside of us, ‘cause skeletons are considered spooky and scary. What a metaphor, right? We all have something “scary ” or “gross” hiding beneath all our other stuff. I’m learning to stare at my skeleton. It’s important that we see each other and love each other all the way through down to the bones.

What inspires you to write? Which song did you write first?

HipTrip: I wrote a lot of stuff that the public will never see, a lot of my

early early first beginner stuff. I had some computer issues and lost a ton of music once. I started out writing love songs, because that’s what I knew and I had been going through a lot of that type of stuff. That was good practice, in the beginning— “Zachary ” was the first song I started on Shot. Sometimes I focus on the sounds of the words to write my verses, and sometimes I focus more on meaning—I try to just let myself express my thoughts or feelings and write down everything that comes out , and whittle it down, and go from there. I write a lot of typical hyped-up Hip Hop self-promotional shit because it’s absolutely fun as hell. Everyone should do that . You tell yourself you’re a badass spooky queen for long enough, you become one. At least in your own eyes, and those eyes should matter most to you anyways. Fuck reality, amirite?

What is “Zachary” about?

HipTrip: It’s the closest thing to a love song that I’ve written, because I think it is about love—but it’s about how love fucks with you. It’s about realizing that love doesn’t conquer all—it’s realizing that you can love someone as much as you’ve ever loved anyone, they can even love you back, but that doesn’t mean the world is gonna stop spinning. Because we’ve got shit to do.

How has self-promoting your first release been?

HipTrip: This has been quite the trip. Ever since I started making the mixtape, everything was so haphazard and slapped together and off-the-cuff that it’s been a really bumpy and bizarre road. For a while, I was making beats using Garage Band with headphones, typing the notes one by one because I couldn’t afford a midi keyboard or speakers. My first midi keyboard was actually a graduation gift from two lovely friends. All of the vocal parts of Shot were recorded using a $40 USB microphone inside a sound booth made of cardboard and a faux-sheep skin rug to insulate sound. I played at a house show a few weeks before I dropped the mixtape, and I’m playing at another house show next month in Lowell. It feels very personal and very by-the-seat-of-my-pants—this whole project has felt that way. I’ve just been doing what I do, with what I got , with the best people I know.

When did you decide to release your music free to the public?

HipTrip: Shit can get sticky when it’s about making money. I am so grateful to

artist spotlight

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be making art , and music isn’t my meal ticket , its my soul ticket—I do it for me. It’s killer that people want to listen to my music. At this point , that’s more than enough for me. This isn’t my job right now.

Do you hope to someday pursue music full-time?

HipTrip: Sometimes I think about doing this full time, and then the art-is-notfor-everyone worries sneak in, and I think about how I’m really not in the position to pursue this full time, and then I start thinking about my car payments and student loans and rent , and by the end of the thought I’m convinced I will never do this full time. But I don’t know—I wouldn’t have believed I could do this even part-time three years ago, so who knows where this will go. This question is a tough one for me, it makes me kind of sad. Sometimes this feels like loving someone I could never marry.

But that’s selfish of me—like I said, even the opportunity to make music part time is such a huge privilege, and it’s like medicine, you know? So I’m grateful to have the hobby no matter where it goes.

What does the Boston hip hop scene need?

HipTrip: The same thing that any other Boston music scene needs: support .

We need people hitting up their local shows, supporting their local musicians and keeping the scene alive. Church just closed, you know, and that sucks; that was a tight spot to catch tunes, and I’ve seen dozens of local bands play there. I’m not an expert , though—I’m not the best person to answer this question. I’m really too new to the scene, you know? I’ve barely started calling myself a musician. But I hang with a lot of people who’ve been making it or trying to make it as professional musicians in Boston, and I think they ’d agree, that the support is the biggest need right now.

Where do you write? When do you write? What’s your process?

HipTrip: I write a lot of stuff when I’m just out and about—my favorite thing

to do is take a long walk, listen to some random beats, and just jot down the things I freestyle in my head. Sometimes, it’s more calculated, and I’m sitting there in my bed or at my desk really focusing on creating words. Sometimes I think about what I am trying to say, and then come up with the words to use—but sometimes, I pick words I want to use and figure out a meaning from there. I’m still so young that I don’t even have a solid process yet , I guess. I’m just running around all wide-eyed and bushytailed trying to learn as much as I can.

How do you dream up soundscapes?

HipTrip: Usually I get some sort of small musical concept , like a little melody or a hook, and then just build around that little concept . I work very systematically in that sense—I like to have a jumping off point , and then I go through the track section by section, adding and tweaking the sounds until it feels right to me. A track changes a lot from beginning to end. I’m constantly changing it . Sometimes I let them “rest” and don’t even touch them for weeks. That way, when I come back to them, I’ve got a fresh perspective. Sometimes I’ll finish an entire beat in a few hours, sometimes they sort of just take on a mind of their own.

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Stream or download HipTrip’s new mixtape, Shot, free at soundcloud.com/hiptripmusic or hiptrip.bandcamp.com and keep up with HipTrip happenings on facebook.com/hiptripmusic.

artist spotlight

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“beauty,” Aubree Lewis

“is she or isn’t she?” Harlan lovestone

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e a s t c o a s t e v e n t s Fall 2015

Atlanta Celebrates Photography

Throughout October, Atlanta, GA

Atlanta Celebrates Photography aims to make Atlanta a leading center for the world’s fastest growing art form. By producing the largest annual community-oriented photo festival in the US, we provide experiences that engage and educate diverse audiences through lens-based media. acpinfo.org

New York Comic Con

October 8-11; Javits Center, NY

New York Comic Con is the East Coast’s biggest and most exciting popular culture convention. The Show Floor plays host to the latest and greatest in comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies and television. The panels and autograph sessions give fans a chance to interact with their favorite creators while screening rooms feature sneak peeks at films and television shows months before they hit either big or small screens. New York Comic Con is the second largest pop culture convention in America and the only one that takes place in the comic book, publishing, media, and licensing capital of the world—Gotham City. newyorkcomiccon.com

Anhinga Press 40th Anniversary Poetry Festival October 9-11; Tampa, FL

To celebrate its 40th year in publishing, Anhinga Press is hosting a festival featuring readings by more than 25 poets whose books have been published by the Press, including David Kirby, Diane Wakoski, Erika Meitner, Frank Gaspar, Lola Haskins, Don Morrill, and Sylvia Curbelo, and many others.

fall festival on ponce October 17-18; Atlanta, GA

Enjoy the fall weather at this two-day outdoor arts and crafts festival, featuring over 125 booths to peruse with everything from fine arts and crafts, folk and “outsider art.” In addition to the fine arts, there will be a children’s area and local food and beverage. Attendance is free. festivalonponce.com

9: ViewPoints

October 17-November 20; Atlanta, GA

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Check out nine diverse Atlanta photographers in this eclectic photography exhibit. Subjects range from landscapes and portraits to abstract and architecture. Free admission. pbj-gallery.com

boston book festival

October 23-24; Copley Square, Boston, MA

The Boston Book Festival celebrates the power of words to stimulate, agitate, unite, delight, and inspire by holding year-round events culminating in an annual, free festival that promotes a culture of reading and ideas and enhances the vibrancy of Boston. bostonbookfest.org

fotoweek dc

November 7-15; Washington, D.C.

FotoDC’s mission is to provide a dynamic, evocative, engaging experience for photographers, cultural institutions, galleries, curators, schools, and area residents through photography and dynamic programming. The annual FotoWeek DC festival presents exhibitions, programs, and events highlights world-class photography, and provides exposure for photographers working locally and worldwide. fotodc.org

Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair November 13-15; Boston, MA

This year’s Boston Book Fair features events by Executive Producer of the Antiques Road Show, Marsha Bemko; a panel discussion on starting your own collection; The Ticknor Society’s 14th annual roundtable; the invention of the modern dictionary; and free expert appraisals. bostonbookfair.com

Boston Book Print and Ephemera Show November 14; Boston, MA

Explore hundreds of book-related prints and wares at this offshoot of Boston Rare Book Week (conveniently close to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair!). neantiqueshows.com

Miami Book Fair

November 15-22; Miami, FL

And the readers and writers will follow, as they do by the hundreds of thousands every year for the Miami Book Fair International, an eight-day literary party in November. The fair, in its 32nd year, will open Sunday November 15th with the popular “Evenings With…” series, featuring six nights of readings and discussions with noted authors from the United States and around the world. During Street Fair weekend, more than 250 publishers and booksellers exhibit and sell books, with special features like the antiquarians, who showcase signed first editions, original manuscripts, and other collectibles. miamibookfair.com

Books at Noon

Every Wednesday; New York, NY

This ongoing book group gives you the chance to spend your lunch break discussing a new novel every week with authors and enthusiasts, instead of sitting on a bench by yourself. Upcoming authors for fall include Richard Dawkins, Sloane Crosley, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Sarah Ruhl.

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“september 13, 2015, sharing scars,� savannah jane wolfgram

“margot,” sarina mitchel

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[ book reviews ] no. 4 imperial lane NO. 4 IMPERIAL LANE

by Johnathan Weisman 352pp. Twelve. $26.00 Review by LAURA APPERSON

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For most , a year abroad ends in a tearful goodbye to your new international friends and a promise to keep in touch, followed by years of nostalgia of all the good times partying in London or traveling across Europe. In No. 4 Imperial Lane, narrator David Heller decides to extend his year abroad in a very untraditional way—to work as a quadriplegic’s aid in Brighton, England.

David’s plans to go home and finish his degree in the States after being in England explode when he falls in love with a girl from Brighton—and his job as Hans Bromwell’s aide is one way to keep him in the same city for just a bit longer. Although it doesn’t look like much at first , David ends up learning more than he probably ever thought he would while living with the Bromwells, who also include Hans’ sister, Elizabeth, and her charming teenage daughter, Cristina.

Weisman sets the scene, with the backdrop as 1980s Brighton, at the outset of this new stage of David’s life, when he only wants to spend time with his girlfriend and is practically terrified of Hans, who is aged and, as David first describes him, “a corpse.” But in between his tasks and late into the evenings, David spends hours listening to Elizabeth tell stories about her life as a Portuguese doctor’s wife living in colonial Angola in the 1970s and learning about her and Hans’ upbringing as wealthy English royalty. Peppered with Shakespeare references (The Bard was Elizabeth’s only education), Elizabeth’s stories transport David to an unfamiliar time and place where war rages not only in Angola, but in the Bromwell home.

It’s astonishing how well Weisman weaves the stories of these characters together with such clarity. Switching from Brighton to Angola to Portugal to

“The bitterness over our entwined and ruined fates was just beginning to creep in,” she admits.

David’s Atlanta with ease, Weisman educates the reader about the wars and troubles of Portuguesecontrolled Africa while developing so acutely the personalities, histories, and feelings of every character. David is touched by the Elizabeth’s story, and he becomes connected to the Bromwell family in a way that he had never been able to with his own family. And what he discovers, as he decides whether to stay in Brighton or go home to his family on the other side of the pond, is, truly, how to tell his own story.

With a reporter’s eye and a novelist’s pen, Weisman has managed to write an intelligent page-turner that expertly explores themes of love, family dysfunction, and the complexities of the human experience—all from the Bromwell home on No. 4 Imperial Lane.

“We were born with so much, and look at us now,” Hans sighs. “We destroyed each other.”

“peace,” rebecca hartman

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“mountain memories,� dottie bruce

“south carolina wood ducklings,” timothy cunningham

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“a portrait of a memory of death,� kat lanser

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[ contributors ] memory, fall 2015

LAURA APPERSON

Laura Apperson is a writer, editor, and musician from Atlanta, GA. Currently, she works as an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s Press, specializing in narrative nonfiction, memoir, and literary fiction.

She lives in Brooklyn, NY. For more book reviews and other clippings, visit her website at lauracatherineapperson.com.

SAMUEL AUGUSTINE

Samuel Augustine, a contemporary American artist, works across many disciplines including illustration, sculpture, audio/video, painting, and poetry. A graduate of Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Samuel has shown work in various group shows and solo installations while juggling nomadic tendencies and working various jobs. Samuel likes to live out of his van, skateboard, sleep outside, and disappear with his lovely fiancé for extended adventuring. Samuel’s art is a product of life, believing decisions and circumstance are great mediums of creation. strangepagan.com

BENJAMIN BLAKE

Benjamin Blake was born in July of 1985, in the small town of Eltham, New Zealand. His fiction and verse have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Morpheus Tales, Black Petals and Danse Macabre. He was a contributor to the 2012 anthology A Feast of Frights from The Horror Zine. He is the author of the poetry and prose collections A Prayer for Late October, Southpaw Nights, and Reciting Shakespeare with the Dead. He currently lives in a cabin, somewhere in the New Zealand countryside. benjaminblake.com

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TAYLOR BOND

Taylor Bond is a 2014-2015 Lannan Fellow, a writer, and a freelance photographer. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various publications including Underwater New York and the Foundling Review. warrior-princess.wix.com/tbtb

MARCUS BOYD

Marcus Boyd, Sr. is a photographer based in Riverdale, MD. He has a twenty-year background in Information Technology and is an Army Veteran.

Before he started working on a computer he was photographing family events, school events, and activities at the neighborhood recreational center.

Marcus studied photography during middle and high school. After five years in business, Marcus decided it was time for a change of scenery and moved his focus back to something of a greater passion… photography. mboydphotos.net

ALLISON ANNE BROWN

Allison grew up in Greenville, SC where she developed an appreciation for art at a young age. She took private classes until high school, during which she attended the Fine Arts Center and the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Both places were pivotal in her interest and development as an artist. After graduating from The University of South Carolina with a B.A. in Fine Art and spending a while traveling, including places like Seattle, Santa Fe, and Tainan, Taiwan, Allison moved back to her hometown to begin a career in the arts. She now works out of her private studio drawing and making sculptures, jewelry, and ceramic pottery in the old Taylors Mill. allisonannebrown.com

DOTTIE BRUCE

Dottie finds being a mixed-media artist liberating; there are limitless products and objects available to incorporate into her artwork. Her studio is located in Cashiers, NC in the Nantahala National Forest. Just looking out the windows lends her plenty of inspiration—the forest, the river—even a black bear sometimes wanders by. Recently she has worked in a relatively new medium for fine art: alcohol inks. She loves the vibrant colors and the loose, spontaneous results she is able to achieve. mixedmediaacrylicartist.com

PJ CARMICHAEL

PJ Carmichael is a writer, philosopher, visionary, and artist from Wakefield, MA. His work is influenced by his experiences in the city of Boston, as well as his travels throughout the New England countryside. Through his work, he strives for a synthesis between the psychological and sociological, the individual and the environment. He edits the literary/arts zine High Tension, and his work has appeared in Route 2, Black Sunday Magazine, and Infinite Scroll. pjcarmichael.tumblr.com

ALINE CARRIERE

Aline Carriere lives and writes in Massachusetts. Her poems and short fiction have appeared in The Poetry Peddler, Daily Science Fiction, Saturday Night Reader, Acidic Fiction, The Literary Hatchet, and in the anthology Elements of Horror. She was the first recipient of the Andrew Grossbardt Poetry Prize at Brandeis University, quite a long time ago. She is @jedlight on Twitter where she enjoys connecting with fellow writers and readers, and looking at pictures of cats.

TIMOTHY CUNNINGHAM

Timothy’s love for music and fine arts has driven him since he was a child.

Although born, raised, and deeply rooted in the South, he has always been well-traveled and enjoys many

cultures of art. He began as a muralist in his adolescence. As a Marine Corps war veteran, his audience will begin to see him display some of his clearest memories of those times. He loves to see pieces that show overjoyed, accomplished moments in time and works out of a private studio in Greenville, SC. His participation in local shows, galleries, consignment, teaching classes, and commissioned work keeps his gears turning. facebook.com/ mymixedmediaarts

MATTHEW DIOMATARIS

Matthew R. Diomataris is a mixedmedia and illustration artist whose work is based on inspiring images that reflect a sensation of imagination and contemplation. He works to create unique perspectives while communicating a sense of curiosity and gentle humor within each piece.

Diomataris currently resides in Greenville, SC. mrdiomataris@gmail.com

ROBIN WYATT DUNN

Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles. robindunn.com

KATHERINE GIBBEL

Katherine Gibbel grew up in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has been featured previously in East Coast Ink magazine and on the website xoJane. A graduate of Wesleyan University, she now lives and works in North Carolina. @khgibbel

LAURA GREENWALD

Laura Greenwald is an artist. She’s always loved art in its many forms.

She sings and write songs. She paints.

She takes photographs. This past year she crossed the U.S. twice in her 1998 Volvo wagon and became a traveler.

She lives here, there, everywhere, and nowhere. You can see more of her work at peachesart.com.

MAX GRIFFIN

Max Griffin lives in the greater Los

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Angeles area. Currently studying creative writing at California University Northridge, he enjoys uploading pictures of his cats onto social media, as well as writing the occasional poem or story.

He hopes to age gracefully, into first a bitter middle-aged novelist, and then later into the bearded man by the Santa Monica pier. Contact him for literally any reason, at livingworthlife@gmail.com.

REBECCA HARTMAN

Rebecca is a late bloomer; she graduated from college with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering twelve years after high school. She worked as an engineer for 20 years, then opened a stained glass shop.

She served on the board of directors of the American Glass Guild for four years as secretary and also as conference chairman for two years. After ten years in the stained glass business, her study of glass painting led back to painting with oils and pastels. Her experience encourages her to experiment with structure, shape, and color in her paintings.

KYLE HEMMINGS

Kyle Hemmings has art work in The Stray Branch, Euphenism, Uppagus, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Black Market Lit, Red Bird Press, Snapping Twig, and Convergence. He loves pre-punk garage bands of the 60s, manga comics, and urban photography/art. He blogs at upatberggasse19.blogspot.com.

RYAN HIGGINBOTHAM

Ryan is a web developer in Atlanta who wishes he was a novelist. He enjoys meditation and celebrity gossip.

LARRY HOLLAND

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Larry Holland grew up on the outskirts of Boston and made his way to Atlanta in1992, now living and breathing in Decatur, GA. He practices many art disciplines, mostly concentrating on photography and mixed media, using his

own photos, wood, and found objects.

He enjoys traveling, peanut butter, avoiding frostbite, and hanging out with his two small daughters. You can literally find his art hanging out all over Atlanta (as a participant of Free Art Fridays) and in various art shows/ establishments. Find him on Instagram/ Twitter @FISBN.

A.J. HUFFMAN

A.J. Huffman’s poetry, fiction, haiku, and photography have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation. She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. kindofahurricanepress.com

STEPHEN JAMES

Stephen James has recently turned 24 and, even more recently, heard a song about turning 24. Doesn’t know the difference between writing plays and writing poems so never really says no to either these days. Bites off more than he can chew. Needs a proper job. folknwords.tumblr.com

JENNIFER JANEIRO

Jennifer Janeiro is a fine artist who creates pen and ink drawings of modern elements, found objects, and skulls with a vintage feel. Utilizing cross-hatching and hard contrast, her drawings take on the appearance of old etchings. Her loved ones have always encouraged her creativity, and it was with her research into tattoo design that she realized her love of skulls and the detail found on their surfaces. She also enjoys crafting, traveling, and reading fantasy novels.

Jennifer lives in Clemson, SC with her supportive boyfriend and two silly dogs. boneandink.com

STEVE KLEPETAR

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared in

the U.S. and eleven other countries. He has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein.

her education and career. She hopes you enjoyed reading her story, or maybe remembered something you’d forgotten from it. She can be found at linkedin.com/in/larascad, or emailed at laralewis2013@gmail.com.

KAT LANSER

HARLAN LOVESTONE

Kat is an illustrator that has been published in the American Illustration Annual, and has exhibited work around the U.S. in places like San Francisco, New York, Raleigh, and Savannah.

She focuses toward a younger female audience with themes of beauty, sadness, love, and feminism. Her current work is concentrated around the idea of portraying a girl who is very much an abstract embodiment of herself. She has been working a lot with text and “one liners,” doing compositions based off of sadness, or questions regarding a significant other. They are often tender, quiet, insecure, and sincere, like looking into an intimate moment of a girl wondering if “he loves me or he loves me not.” hatemailillustration.weebly.com

AUBREE LEWIS

Aubree Lewis is a artist with a unique passion to bring art that invokes a smile, and joy to fill viewers. She is making strides to become a professional artist by showing and selling her work through small art shows, her Etsy shop, and her website. She recently placed second in a local 24-hour art challenge and now feels like her art can be recognized in the professional world.

Scratchboard is her main medium and she loves how unique it is. She currently live in Greenville, SC and enjoys being a wife and mommy. scratchthedetail.com

LARA LEWIS

Lara Lewis is a writer, but asking what she writes on will probably merit the response “paper.” She’s currently located in Savannah, GA, playing an elaborate game of hide and seek with

Harlan Lovestone is an award-winning visual artist and arts educator with several years of experience who has exhibited in various parts of the United States. He is also founder of Arthaus Greenville, an artist-run initiative for establishing a unique community art center in Greenville, SC and promoting sustainable lifestyles for artists and residents in local communities. arthausgreenville.com

MATT LOWE

Matthew Forrest Lowe (Ph.D., McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario) is a freelance writer, editor, and professor.

His nonfiction work includes several articles and book chapters; his short fiction has previously appeared in Setting the Scene (Polar Expressions, 2012), and he is working on a science fiction novel. He blogs — less often than he should — at lonelyvocations.blogspot. com. ​

MAGGIE MAIN

Maggie is a recent graduate from Emerson College currently living in Boston working as a freelance photographer for her own company: MMPhotography. Growing up, she resided in more than 14 places across the globe. When she isn’t taking pictures or editing she can be found styling photos for her Instagram @ maggiemainxx, strolling art museums and galleries, and making travel plans for her next adventure. She just returned from a month-long road trip. Currently, Maggie is developing a documentary about her adventure and curating a photography book about

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the modern wild west. You can follow along with her daily adventures on her personal website/ blog: maggie-main.com.

updates a blog in between working on bicycles and avoiding her roommate’s cats. rileymargaretmary.wordpress.com

RON MELICK

W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of seven books including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, CA.

Ron Melick was born in Columbus, OH, and began painting in childhood. He has continued to learn through self study and practice. He creates landscapes and life paintings in acrylics, on canvas or hardboard. His paintings have been included in many exhibits in Ohio and South Carolina, and are in private and public collections nationally.

His paintings, prints, and giclees are available at the Art Cellar Gallery, in Greenville, SC. Since 2005, he has lived in Taylors, SC. ronmelick.com

SARINA MITCHEL

Sarina Mitchel is a visual artist currently based in Providence, RI (the coolest small city around). Among many other things, she loves laughing (her sound waves may reach you at the other end of the hallway), learning things, dessert (especially cake!), numbers and math and shapes, active listening, bats and other cool animals, rainbows, life, 4-space and 4-cubes (a.k.a. tesseracts), drawing and erasing (but mostly erasing), sending letters, anything that she can research or memorize, and—of course—the myriad of lovely people who support her in her ongoing adventures in life and art. sarinamitchel. com

EMILY RANDALL

Emily Randall, 26, lives north of metro Atlanta with her husband and three fur children. She spends her free time eating all the fancy chocolate she can get her hands on. @3milyjo

MARGARET MARY RILEY

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Margaret Mary Riley grew up in rural Georgia speaking Cajun French. She received a B.A. in Political Science from Agnes Scott College and has been published in Inpatient Press, Type House Magazine, and Corvus. She periodically

JACK SAVAGE

JILL SHASTANY

Jill Shastany is a writer from Holliston, MA (about which there is a campy horror series that is... a loose interpretation of what it’s like to live there). She enjoys most people (for better or worse), cooking things on the fly, entertaining, driving, and looking at water. She is in her last semester of the master’s in Professional Writing program at UMass Dartmouth, where she teaches Technical Communication to undergraduate students. @joppply.

KRYSTEN TRINDADE

Krysten Trindade is not an artist, but she spends a lot of time with artists of every nature and occasionally pretends to be like them. She is a student of history who resides in New York, collecting books and experiences. kmt. trindade@gmail.com

TESS WALSH

Tess Walsh grew up in Massachusetts and is currently pursing an English degree at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. She loves salt water and sunflowers. More of her work and musings can be found at misstesswalsh. wordpress.com/.

SAVANNAH JANE WOLFGRAM

Savannah Jane Wolfgram is a student studying Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

She adores hearing people’s stories and sharing her own, whether it be out loud, through images, or through poetry.

She would like to dedicate this entry to

little mouse rat soon to be born, and the memories about to be made with her new life. @govikesgirl

DYLAN YOUNG

Dylan Young is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, a city four times the size of his home state of Rhode Island. He likes long walks on the beach, writing about himself in the third person, and petting other people’s dogs without asking. When he’s not writing down weird stories, he can usually be found exploring his strange affinity for Power Points. Contact Dylan for literally any reason whatsoever. “I’m not lonely, I swear.” dylanpresents@gmail.com

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ea st coast ink | is sue 008 | memo ry