March 2010 -- The Louisiana State University Delta Journal

delta volume 52 | spring 2010

delta volume 52 | spring 2010 Staff List Editors anna hurst samuel oliver Faculty Adviser randolph thomas Managing Editor laura smith Fiction jade benoit chris prudhomme julia terese Nonfiction stefan karasoulis lucie monk

Poetry jaquelyn brown taylor gorman tommy jacobi blake stephens Art jonathan ryan Music giselle eastman karl simmerman Business Manager taylor pate Layout erin chambers

All author and artist names are in AWPC AliceOblique. All piece titles and folios are in AWPC AliceBold. All body text is in Arno Pro. Volume 52 of the delta was created using Adobe InDesign CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 on a MacBook Pro laptop from February to March 2010 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Delta is a closed publication and all copyrights revert to author upon publication. Delta Journal is a part of the Louisiana State University Department of English and a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization through the LSU Foundation. Donations should be sent to Delta Journal, Dept. of English, 260 Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803.

Matt Clark Award Judges: Fiction | Andrew Ervin Poetry | Lara Glenum

Table of Contents jade benoit

27

Breathing, Locked Outside Stained Glass

zachary cummings

42

Self-Portrait

andrew graziano

40

Symmetry

robert hudson

25

Antebellum

j. corey knoll

66

DogsArePeopleToo...

daniel lachman

15 41

Homecoming A New Frontier

cw lott

5

A Million Dead Bees i move through my own body as an elevator

64 ellen ogden

cover

Traveling

taylor pate

4 30 49

Ice Skating Bear ‫( ءادوس بوث‬Abaya) Pink Fluoride

mahtab pedrami

65

A Book About Death

benjamin pettaway

43

The Heathen Section

chris prudhomme

18

Love

laura smith

31 62

Bursting Parable/Paradelle

blake stephens

28 48

Confession I have a new kind of bicycle

julia terese

51

Bones and Blood

katherine a. virag

16

Monster Vacuum

Ice Skating Bear Matt Clark Prize for Poetry 2010

A Million Dead Bees Matt Clark Prize for Fiction 2010

taylor pate

cw lott

He killed three others But the news said I was His most glamorous ½ devoured ½ somewhere between what the fuck & holy shit it wasn’t that bad really, after his Distal Phalange claw snagged my Gastrocnemius and separated it from the Fibula. A women up here, from Iran, told me she was stoned for her husband sun but on all fours. your feet, , the pressure , your chest, & your , brain, eyes fish, bulging. pop like a balloon.

-* |4

But what did they think was going to happen? His training sessions at the rink would kick in & he would forget he was a polar bear? wrong humans, they instinct & . It’s not murder & bubble Gum. glitter paint On all fours like a balloon

They keep my mother at the end of the yellowed hallway at St. Tammany’s.

I’ve learned you have to walk quickly, keep your eyes fixed on the footprints in the dusty floor, not stop at the first room on your right where the man with the grinded-down teeth is clanking his bedpan and food tray together, left foot right past heart monitor beeps and nurses taking their cigarette breaks through a hallway window and the huge box fans that blow the disease off malaria victims. Stop at the car wrecked couple; both plastered head to toe and strung up like white piñatas. Laugh when you shake their foot and start running when you hear the cry through the slot in their featureless faces. At the end of the hall, catch your breath and look up. This is your mother’s room, nothing but a bedsheet hung over a string, where she’s been for the last six years. Close your eyes tight because you know if you see her the world will purple over your shoulders and you’ll hit the cold floor hard.

This was the summer the wood bees ate right through our walls. Me and my father were on the front porch in La-Z-

Boyz, waiting for the Finks’ White Trash Haircut Ritual. The Finks were our only neighbors, in the vine-eaten car accident of a house across the street. My father had been there since sunrise, an ice-chest of beer at his side, sipping slow and steady, not even bothering with the flies pecking at the remaining crumbles of mayonnaise sandwich in his beard.

It was getting more and more difficult to find things to talk about. He didn’t care about the bees chewing through the walls or that the roof had been leaking for a year, the bees were just another thing that had come to witness the ruin of his life. The tiniest little things would cause his face to crack open, like late night infomercials or seeing a bunch of crows lined up on power lines. And sometimes he would break into old memories, like how on their honeymoon, him and my mother passed out by the pool, and they couldn’t touch each other for days. But watching the Fink’s White Trash Haircut Ritual always gave us some hope: there were people out there worse off than we were. We were waiting for Daddy Fink to come out of their broken doorframe and round up his kids with a long car horn blast.

5|

“What about these bees,” I said, turning to him. “They all want to kill me.”

My father stood up and nearly fell off the porch into our weed garden. He put his hand on a column to steady himself.

“What about the bees? Is that what you’re asking me?” He put his dirty hand over his mouth to keep the laughter in and walked across the porch. He stopped at the screen door, looked at it for a second like he was thinking about going inside, and then kicked it in. The glass shattered and he broke it up on the ground under his boot. “That’s what you were asking me, wasn’t it? You said, ‘what about the bees.’” He came back and sat down in his chair and took a big swig of beer. He shook his head and started chewing on the mustache strands, which dangled over his lips.

In the spring when the wood bees showed up, they were just a light hum coming through the window. I thought: fat bees living quiet lives of honey and pollen, there is room for us in this world together. They seemed nice, like how my father takes me on the two-hour drive downward to the fishing camp and sets the radio to a low indecipherable murmur, where we don’t have to talk to each other and we don’t have to listen. But that was the spring, and now their buzz was thick and tremendous and coming from deep within the walls. Too many nights I’d lay in bed without sleep and when sleep finally did come it was dreams of |6

bees the size of fists, eating through the walls and covering me completely, until you couldn’t see my skin anymore, carrying me up to the edge of space before dropping me all those thousands miles back to earth. I pleaded and I pleaded, but he wouldn’t pay an exterminator.

This was a job you did yourself.

Finally, Daddy Finks emerged. He was covered in tattoos from head to toe, even on the bridge of his nose and the palms of his hands. He walked through the high weeds and opened the door of his defunct truck, held down the horn, and out poured his hopeless offspring through the lopsided front door—shirtless, rabid, bleary-eyed kids with poked-out ribs. Every time you counted there was a different number. This time, fourteen.

Daddy Finks lined his skeleton kids up and starting at the left side, he began buzzing their blonde hair into the ditch.

The children smiled and closed their eyes as he removed the fuzz from their heads. When one was done, he tapped him on his shiny bald skull to let them know it was over. I had imagined myself as one of them many times: closing my eyes, floating loose in that black formless space, pushing up into my father’s warm fingers with my sensitive new head, allowing my hair to leave my body forever.

“Where’s your girl at?” my father asked me. There was a huge smile on his face for all the dead hair in the grass.

He was talking about Adele Fink, the oldest daughter. She had been in my class at school for a couple of weeks before she gave up the world of education entirely.

It was her fourth time in the sixth grade.

After she stopped showing up, I moved into her desk and traced with my finger the curse words she had carved into the desk.

“Not my girl,” I corrected him.

I could feel him staring hard into the side of my face.

My dad had been trying to get me to go over and talk to her ever since he found her yearbook picture that I had cut out and hid under a loose tile in the bathroom. And there was the time he caught me watching her sun bathe up on the roof of her house with this toy space telescope he had bought me. She undid her polka dot green swimsuit top so her back could get tanned and smoked straight through a pack of cigarettes, like she was a real woman, capable of unspeakable things.

“Listen here, and listen here good,” he said, staring in awe at the ceremony.

“You listening? Cause I ain’t wasting a penny on no exterminators. But I’ll pay you twenty-five cents per bee you kill.

Kill them all and you can take that Fink girl to the Chinese Buffet or whatever it is you teenagers do nowadays.”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.

“Jesus, son. You kidding me? Pluck out your ovaries and man up. It’s a cold world, boy. A cold world.” The half-filled beer bottle slipped out of his hand and rolled off the porch. His head was tilting forward and his voice was slowing down and melting. “Every time we go see your mother you pass out cold or vomit…

We just want you to do something with your life…Anything…You know how long six years is…When I was your age I…Just look at Adella over there. She’s something, ain’t she…They’re just little nothing bees.” His head came to rest at a uncomfortable angle, his chin hanging just above his collarbone, like a man shot dead in a chair.

Adele came out from behind the house, smoking a cigarette like always.

She walked right past the ditch into the road, where she lay down and started making a gravel angel. On her back, she started singing tuneless nonsense words.

None of her skeleton brothers was paying her any attention; too absorbed into ascending into heavens by their father’s fingers. Adele stood up and threw two handfuls of rocks into the air, so that they rained down on her. Still, no one looked.

She turned to them and screamed, a painful, shrill note. Even my father looked, with his closed drunk eyes. “Get out the god damn road,” said Daddy Fink; irritated she was interfering with his spiritual moment. She raised one skinny arm to the sky as if were an antennae to space, and then, slowly, with her other hand, 7|

she pressed the cigarette into the meat of her forearm. She let out a murmur of pleasure.

For some reason I wanted to clap, I wanted to stand up in my chair and cheer, I wanted to say, I can feel it too, right here, and point to anyplace on my body, but no one said anything, her brothers and sisters just turned back to their father, who shook his tattooed head and knocked the clippers against his leg to remove stuck hair.

At seven in the morning I woke up to Adele Fink tapping on my window with one hand and smoking her cigarette passionately in the other. If you looked at Adele from the chest up she looked like a boy: flat unformed breasts, lopsided bowl cut, pimpled face, somewhat muscular arms from years of fighting for that breakfast hot dog. But from the waist down you couldn’t help but stare.

She had her thrift-store football jersey rolled up, showing her slender freckled stomach with the glow-in-the-dark belly ring dangling from it, her naval red and infected.

“Let’s kill some bees,” she said.

“Do what now?”

“Your dad said he pay me to help you out. I want to buy more cigarettes, so open up. Apparently, they’re in your house.” |8

Her lips were like little wet pink slugs.

She had a croaky voice, but croaky in a sexy way, like the half-whispered voices from the phone-sex hotlines that I often called from the corner-store payphone.

I dressed and crawled to the front door on my stomach. The bees had breached the walls and there were several flying up by the wooden supports in the ceiling of our living room. When I reached up and opened the door Adele headed straight for the icebox.

“Where’s your daddy keep his stuff ?”

She opened the fridge and squatted down, examining each level closely, like my mother did when she couldn’t find something.

“That’s illegal,” I said.

“Looks like the hurricane done fucked up your kitchen,” Adele said, closing the fridge. It felt so good to hear that voice in my kitchen, the assured voice of a woman.

“It’s been a while since we cleaned.” She looked around at the fungus-filled dishes climbing out of the sink, the holes in our walls from my father’s fist, and the telephone my father cooked in the microwave when the credit card companies wouldn’t stop calling. Crusted and molded towels were scattered on the floor and a bowl of dead goldfish on the counter, their orange bodies upturned and the water a thick green. She started laughing to herself and picked up the canister of fish food.

“What’s so funny?”

She sprinkled the fish food on top of the dead fish, and I could see the little red flakes float over their upside-down bodies but I lost them in the dark green.

“Even cleaning won’t fix you now.”

She disappeared into our pantry and I could hear her rummaging around. “I member you from school. I could feel you staring at my ass. And how when I turned around to look at you, you’d look down at your desk and chew your eraser right off.” I pressed myself flatter against the floor.

“You used to be ritzy as hell,” Adele said. “I member you and your momma flying remote-control planes in the field across the street while we was stuck playing catch with old paint cans and rolling around in rubber tires. You had it good.

So good we thought out shooting down your stupid plane with my Daddy’s twenty-two if we ever saw it flying again.”

I imagined Adele up in the pine trees in her back yard, watching me and my mother through the crosshairs in her scope, sighted on my mother’s head, who had her hand over her squinted eyes to block the whitening sun, searching for my plane in the air.

Adele said,” You know carpenter bees can’t sting you none.”

She jumped up on the counter and grabbed at some bees until she caught

one. She came over to me, with it pinched between her fingers, the blackSharpie she colored her nails with starting to wear off.

“See, no stinger.” The small hairy bee had a wide black face and its little legs moved wildly. “Only the bitches sting.

But they stay in the colonies. The males, they don’t do a thing but chew wood and dream about boinking the queen.”

She let the bee fly off her hand then clapped her hands over it, so that it exploded in her fingers.

“Show me your room.”

I kept my room simple, a twin bed, a desk, a chair. No posters, one window.

I kept it clean, so when I entered it, it was like entering a new house, no history looming in it yet to bring you down, no reminders of your mother’s gaping mouth lying frozen on a hospital cot.

“So this where the magic happens?”

Adele’s hand brushed against my leg and my face went numb.

“Yeah, definitely, you could say that.”

Adele grabbed my desk chair and pulled it to the middle of my room with a screech. “When did you say your Dad gets home?” She ran her tongue along her slug lips. “What do you say we play a little game Cadoc? I’ll need belts,” she said. I didn’t ask questions. I came back from my father’s closet with five long leather belts and my palms all sweaty.

9|

“Sit.” I sat.

Then right there in the center of my musty room with no music, she began to dance, raising her hands over her head and putting her scratched-up legs between my knees. I stared into the infection of her bellybutton and found it acceptable. The hot smell of her freckles came off her and smelled like coins.

I wanted that taste, wanted it in my mouth.

“I never met a soul more pathetic than you.” She shook her flat chest in my face.

She lifted my shirt over my head and put my arms down, wrapping belts around them and my legs to the chair.

“I like you, Cadoc. I always have. You were so safe. So safe, I just wanted to rip your fingers off.”

I looked up into her green eyes with a fleck of yellow thrown in there somewhere. “I’ve done terrible things, too,” I said. “We’re not so different.”

She grabbed my hair and pulled it back hard so my face was tilted up.

“Okay okay,” I said and made struggle sounds.

“I’ve carried things over to the other side. Daddy Fink brought me a rat named Snowflake. I chucked it against a wall. I blow-darted a possum in the eyeball. Have you ever touched an electric fence?” | 10

She let go of my hair and slapped me a hard one across the face.

“You know what a Daddy Long Legs spider is?”

I nodded my head, whimpering. She unfastened my leather belt and pulled my pants and underwear off quickly, so that I was naked and anxious and yearning.

“The most dangerous motherfuck on the planet, the Daddy Long Legs. Just ain’t got no fangs to bite with. I used to pluck off their legs so that they were tiny red balls, carry them around in a Ziploc bag like ammo. Someone pissed me off and I could crush it up in their carton of milk. Or crush the whole bunch of ‘em in the water tower and kill everybody in the whole town.”

“I bet my Dad gets off early today.

Yeah, I think he had said something like that” “Shut up, you pussy.” She put her finger to my lips and then stuck it in my mouth. It tasted like a finger. She pushed it in deep and kept repeating shut up, shut up. I thought of honeymoons and pregnancy and the disturbing sound of a newborn crying.

“I can see that,” she said, looking down.

“But you don’t know the first thing about being a man. You have no idea how to fuck me. You’re afraid of stingerless bees! But I’m gonna cure you, Cadoc Cadwaller. I’m gonna cure you, gonna set you free. You’re one of us now. And here at the bottom we got to look out for each other.” She walked out of the room.

I tried to move, but the belts were so tight I felt like I didn’t have any arms or legs.

I don’t know how much time passed. I heard her put Led Zepplin on my father’s record player in the living room.

She poked her leg through the door, kicked it out slowly like beautiful ladies did when they were hitch hiking on TV. She danced through the door, her bare shoulders bobbing out from one of my mother’s favorite dress, strapless and silk and blue and sagging on her bony frame. She had stuffed toilet paper to fill up the breast space. Her face was powdered peach with blush and so much eye shadow she looked like a caricature of an Egyptian priestess. My mother’s earrings in her ears and on her feet, high red heels.

“You suppose to be a man but you’ve got no balls.”

“Well, what do you think?” She lifted up her hands and pirouetted to give me the full view. “A Fink. A real woman.

Who would have thought?” She had my T-shirt, folded over in one of her hands.

“I’ve got balls,” I murmured over her finger, deep in my mouth.

“Put those back. You have no business touching—”

“Ssssshhhh.” She shook her toilet-papered breasts in my face. She lifted open my shirt in her hands just quick enough to show about fifteen bees swimming in the cloth.

I screamed. Humming the Led Zepplin and shaking her ass to the bass drum, Adele extracted a bee from the shirt and held it in front of my face. She plucked the wings off easily, and when she dropped the wings they flew off with a breeze that came through the window. She disappeared behind me and left scratch marks on my chest and unfolded her tongue into my ear. She whispered, “Remember, Cadoc, the boys can’t sting you, but they can sure as hell burrow” and placed the creature in my ear.

I could feel each one of its little tendrils and I knew it would think my ear wax was honey and dig towards it, drilling through my brain. If it didn’t have a stinger now, it would grow one. It would call its friends and hollow me out and make honey out of my insides. It would find a way to destroy me. I was hyperventilating and breathing in chokes. Adele danced back to the shirt full of bees on the ground. She attached many more to my bare chest and head. I was shaking all over and cold. When I shook my head violently the bees didn’t fall off. They walked all over my body as sweat pooled in my pits.

“Let it surround you,” she said. “Don’t fight it. I’ll be back soon enough.” She 11 |

kissed me on the lips. Her long rancid tongue forced its way through my clenched teeth. She closed the door and I heard her turn the music up even louder in the living room.

Even though the window was open, I didn’t call out. I didn’t want anyone to find me like this: with belts holding me down and bees crawling over my finger. I closed my eyes and recited the Apostles Creed and the Hail Mary and the theme song to Gilligan’s Island many times over, surrendering myself to death. The world purpled around me, the same dark color that grew around my vision every time I looked at my mother. Mother in the passenger seat. The AC softly catches her blond hair and picks it up. The light from the dash colors her face green.

My father driving. We’re floating down the highway returning home from a day at the beach. Dark woods surround. Rain tapping on the roof of the car like a soft drum roll. Me, six and a half years old in the back bench on squeaky blue leather.

All delirious from stand-still traffic and the thick rain. My mother pretends our car is a spaceship. Presses the cigarette lighter in. A radio to earth.

Mission Control, come in. My mother cups her hand over her mouth when she speaks. This is Commander Caroline.

Captain of the 1983 Buick Regal, beginning our descent from orbit down to Intergalactic Highway-128. | 12

What’s it look like up there in space? I asked. The earth, I mean.

And I watch the bottom of my mother’s bare feet fly through the windshield.

Absolutely beautiful, mission control.

Wish you could see it. Big and blue and green and we can see Africa and Eskimos and famous people everywhere.

The steering wheel like part of my father’s chest. His face dripping ropes of red, rolling down over the dash. The front of our car wrapped around a wide tree with purple bark like scabs. Front tire still spinning. My father opens his mouth to talk. But no language, a choking sound.

Nothing but dark water and dark highway.

Up here, No one can touch us. We have the whole world to ourselves.

How long will it take for you to come back? I ask. She knew what I really meant.

When are we getting home.

Well, mission control, good question. The atmospheric conditions up here aren’t exactly favorable and there is a slight chance your Daddy will have to pull over to pee again. Warm laughing voices fill the small car.

I see it in the road. Two small yellow eyes, blinking like diamonds. A dog? Armadillo? Swamp rat? A child of six years old? Not knowing gives you nowhere to put the blame but on yourself.

The wheel spinning in my father’s hands. Laughter into screams. The brakes crack like fingernails snapping off against chalkboard. Time skips. Or freezes. We’re moving forward, forward through blackness. I thought as I reached out to grab her, where were the yellow stripes of the road? But I could not reach her. Below us, the metal stretching and stretching.

Then the car pulls back, tight as a knot.

I want to move.

I want to separate our car from the tree and put us back on the road. I want to shove those ropes of blood back in my father’s head. I want to translate his chokes into English. I want to run out to my mother’s shape in the dark wet forest and animate the dead. I want to be circling the world in green tinted orbit, far removed from all of this. But I stay in the back of the car in my seat belt and that is where this usually ends.

But the vision keeps. I am still in the car on the squeaky blue leather. I lift my hands. Squeeze them. I have control. Mother. Her shape. Door handle.

Ground wet. She’s naked. Face down.

Her skin glowing bright pale pink. Her hands swollen, doughy as a newborn’s.

Body bloated up like something waterlogged. How long was I sitting there in the car while she’s out here in the thickest rain still moaning? I say her name and her long blond hair moves, starts retracting back into her head. Crawling

up her body like curtains of a play being lifted for the first act. Like her roots were strings and being yanked in from the inside. I lift her head.

This is not my mother.

This is Adele Fink. Foaming at the mouth and telling me to call my father.

And then I was back in the room, naked again, with the belts and the chair and Adele in the dress sprawled out on the floor, her body blown up like a pink balloon. I could see the red peaks on her neck and shoulders where she had been stung. I knew enough to know she was suffering from some sort of allergic reaction. She lay there, pink and huge and foaming, her eyes closed. Now I yelled for help out the window.

Thirty minutes later my father got home from work. With his hand over his mouth he crossed himself and paced in the hallway outside my door saying, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus” a million times. I didn’t have a voice to explain. My father undid the belts and not once did he look at my face. He ran over to the Finks’ and came back. They weren’t home. He picked Adele up over his shoulder and took off down the gravel road in his truck.

Again, I had failed. I had turned Adele Fink into a giant pink marshmallow. I was the reason my mother was stuck in the coma. Stuck out in orbit. I had killed my father’s hope.

13 |

I ran out to the rusty tin shack where my father stored his gardening tools and my failed Christmas presents—an unassembled weight bench, a Daisy twentytwo rifle, every kind of baseball mitt, a batting tee, roller blades, hiking gear, collapsible tents, football pads, elbow pads, jock straps, etc—all still wrapped in plastic or packed inside their boxes. I had begged my father to return each one, but he threw all the receipts away and stared at the floor.

I went through the crates and boxes.

I put a wool ski mask over my head and stepped in the fishing waders that went up to my chest. I attached catcher’s gear over my legs and chest like armor. I grabbed the aluminum bat, some gardening shovels that I thought resembled daggers, and the vacuum cleaner with its suck noodle thing.

I went through the house yelling but I had no sound left. I bashed bees with the bat, flattening them. I was fearless and impenetrable. They were the blinking diamond eyes that stole my mother. They didn’t even really try to fly away. They accepted their fate. I took off the gloves and crushed them with my bare hands.

I went outside with the vacuum noodle and sucked the females out of their holes.

They came out by the hundreds. I sucked the dirty dishes and the holes my father punched in the walls back to normal.

I sucked my mother back through the windshield. I had rid the entire house of | 14

the bees in an hour and by the end of it had enough bee carcasses to fill a small trash bag. Which is exactly what I did.

Homecoming daniel lachman | photography

I ran out to the road with the clear plastic bag of bees. Even though it was full, it hardly weighed a thing. The sun was at its highest and I ran until my breath gave out. I waved a flatbed trunk down and climbed in.

My father had taken Adele to St. Tammany’s, the only hospital within a hundred miles.

I ran past my father before he saw me, the sole person in the waiting room, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head buried in his hands. I knew the layout of this hospital well enough by now, wandering around it while my father visited it my mother, I knew exactly where they brought the new patients.

I was going to show Adele the bees, present them to her, so she’d have proof of my ascent to manhood. I’d buy her cigarettes for the rest of her life with the bounty earned because she had cured me.

I found her name on a clipboard outside a sheet and flung it open.

Adele didn’t look human. She looked like a cartoon. All her features were exaggerated except for her little eyes, which looked like dots in her pink face. The blue dress was hanging up on the wall with a giant slit down the side; they must 15 |

Monster Vacuum katherine a. virag | photography

have had to cut it off her. Adele had the sheets pulled up to her neck glands and her hands resting on top, so swollen there was no way she could hold anything. She was covered in sweat and there were three small plastic fans pointed at her. I held up the garbage bag, packed with the dead.

“The bees. I killed them. All of them.”

She focused her little eyes on the contents. Everything was slow and gradual.

Her dark eyes got wet, then droplets ran down the sides of her face towards her ears.

“Get a good look,” I said, shaking the bag. “We’re rich.” I brought the bag closer and she exploded.

Her hand threshed out and tore the bag open, sending a million dead bees circling out and pouring into the bed.

They spilled over her, filling up the valleys in the sheets, and careening over the sides of her cot. They took flight in the air of the fans. The lifeless black bees reanimated and swarming in her crowded little white cell. She flailed her elephantine limbs and her cracking voice filled the ward, unmusical as locking brakes. Desperate voices behind the curtains joined her. Nurses came running down the hall.

Soon the entire ward was screaming in fear of the unknown. The bees themselves seemed to scream.

eyes, past the couple in plaster swaying in their straps and yelling through their coin slot mouths. When I got to my mother nothing had changed. There were still the whites of her eyes; her pupils pointed somewhere else in her head, where I couldn’t see. She was hooked up to great menacing machines, but I didn’t acknowledge them. I moved towards the bed, hugged her frail body, imagined the rain pelting my shoulders in the middle of the woods where I lost her. I moved my fingers through her long hair, held it in my fingers and kissed it. Her body was warm and I felt her pressing out towards me from whatever depth she was kept. I knew she was staring back at me through a pane of glass to which she whispered, “It’s okay to be afraid.”

I ran past the old man and the infected, rolling around in their cots with wide | 16

17 |

Love chris prudhomme

We sat on the hill and passed a joint.

The grass crunched each time we rearranged our bodies, and we spoke softly the way ice melts. Every noise sounded like hush.

Tom inhaled large quantities of smoke.

Each time he exhaled I thought of cold weather. His hair reached down to touch his neck, and it was streaked with remnants of peroxide six months old. He had quite a jaw. It swooped between both ears like a waterslide, and his thoughts were mechanical. Tom released mechanical thoughts into the circle when he spoke, and they tumbled around slowly.

Laura had brown hair like a waterfall and a smile like a magazine. It made me shiver with warmth inside my spine, and I never really knew why. But I always smiled back. She was thin and beautiful, a wisp of smoke that shoots through green light. When she inhaled she had a hard time holding it in and she coughed gently.

I took the joint and inhaled, then felt my heavy eyes and skull. Every word we uttered added a glossy film over our eyes, and soon we looked like big dolls that had been abandoned late at night. | 18

“Goddamn,” Tom said, pushing his hair away from his eyes slowly.

Laura touched Ben’s bare toes and shrieked with laughter until she was breathless. “Why aren’t you wearing shoes, crazy?”

“Sometimes I just like to feel the ground with my feet, you know?”

Tom rubbed Ben’s hair and called him an idiot. We all laughed until we were gasping. Time got a little slower now, and the life that we saw in front of us performed small dances. Night children held hands and pranced around in my head.

We decided to take a walk down to the street, and all of us ran laughing down the hill like a pack of wild dogs with dry mouths.

There were no eyelids blinking as we held ghost hands on the way. Cars muttered deep vibrations as they passed, flashing brightly and then dimming as they moved under the streetlights. I always feel like a bystander. A floating thing, looking down at myself submerged in a sphere of jelly or something like that.

We walked into a gas station with dirty windows to buy some water. Laura flirted with the clerk while the rest of us aimlessly stole things. At some point the clerk noticed me sitting down, drinking beer at the back of the store. He asked me if I was going to pay for it. Probably not, I said. He asked me if I wanted him to call the police. I said what do you think fuck head. Then he told me to get out of his store. As we left I remembered that we had failed at buying the water we needed.

“Looks like we’re just going to have to crush them up,” Tom said.

“That’s so disgusting. I hate it,” Laura said as she grimaced.

I said, “Cheers mate.”

Ben stared at the ground and breathed slowly through his mouth.

We all kneeled down behind the gas station and Laura pulled the bag of pills out of her backpack. There were several for each of us, and we smashed our shares against the cement until there was just white powder left. We all bent down and snorted. Tom was the first one to lift his head up, and his left eye leaked tears as he blinked slow and firm like a wise dog. Laura exhaled and then patted her nostril as she sucked in leftover drug snow. Little pieces of rock and dirt and the skin of shoes made my nose bleed.

Ben rolled onto his back and covered his chest lightly with his hands.

It took about fifteen minutes for the initial opiate blanket to cover us. It was always warm and safe. When we felt it we walked down the sidewalk and spoke light into each other’s hearts, loving everything we touched. Every word possessed the softness of pillows and the warmth of forgetting.

Tom purred, looking me in the face.

His eyes were brown and glazed like pudding.

“You’re one of my best friends, man.

I love you. I really do,” I said as I put my sweaty palm on his neck. By now I felt like my happiness had been allowed to escape, gods all slithering around in my ears.

“Yeah!” he said. We made this promise to each other every time we got high. It was like getting out of bed upon waking up.

Laura opened up her tiny backpack and pulled out a picture. It was Tom and I at a party, hugging hard and drunk. She let out a stuttering laugh and kissed us both quickly with dry lips. Times like those made me warm in places that no one can actually touch. But I also felt like we were puppets, our emotions attached to strings.

We finally made it to the parking lot and climbed into Tom’s car. Laura clapped her hands together and said “this is going to be a sick party.”

19 |

As we drove I looked out of the window and let my eyes go out of focus. I felt like a liquid, a self contained soup. And I thought that maybe everything was alright, that I would continue to feel like this even after the high wore off. But it never worked like that. I always ended up stale and wrinkled, feeling like I had died and God had decided to shove my soul back into someone else’s old corpse.

Tom told me he felt like his bones were melting together and ran a red light at forty miles an hour. The bowels of our car began to flash blue and red, blue and red.

Tom said, “Cops.” His bones cooled and congealed into a vulnerable skeleton.

We all briefly lost our composure; palms got wetter and fingers clenched on fabric and leather. Laura’s thoughts centered on her backpack full of drugs.

She wondered if she should just eat everything in it, but shoved it under my seat instead. Tom pulled over to the side of the road just a few blocks from our destination. As the policeman walked up to the car I wished that it would start raining.

“Excuse me son, do you know that you just ran a red light going forty miles an hour?”

Tom just stared back, like a puppy on heroin. | 20

“Have you been doing any drinking tonight, son?”

the way people ruin each other’s plans by falling in love.

Again, Tom left his mannequin eyes on display.

Everything became loud and frightening. Laura and I took the opportunity to get away while everyone was distracted.

I remember the sound of my shoes on the cement, and looking back at the policeman as he ran to his car and yelled into the radio.

The policeman leaned over and put his red face through the open window.

“Hey, son. Are you going to answer me?”

Tom sat pensively for another few seconds. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you’re not my father, dickhead.”

I cringed.

The policeman paused like he understood. “I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle, sir.”

We felt stripped down, naked. Something that felt like hot breath pushed itself up against the back of my neck. Tom slowly opened the door and accepted the policeman’s full body search as a kind of massage. He closed his eyes and welcomed the stern hands to thrust into his pockets, to press and rub against his ribs. Just as he was nodding off, with his head against the cold metal of the car, he decided to run.

His body came alive with a jolt and the policeman grabbed frantically at the air. Tom sprinted across the road with junkie determination. He only got half way though, because his bones were crushed by a car that didn’t slow down until after the impact. He was thrown up against the windshield so that the glass shattered in conjunction with his skull,

Ben emerged from our vehicle and stared at Tom’s body like it was a campfire. We left him behind.

I looked at the cracks in the pavement and tried not to step on them. The leaves on the trees were like green ice cubes, dripping cold organs onto my skin. I felt streaked with life. A heavy pulse started to beat in my lungs. We ducked behind a building and leaned against the wall while we caught our breath.

I looked at Laura and said, “That was a close call.”

She looked back at me and said, “I know.”

It was quiet. I saw a tear drop from the blackness of her cheek and I opened my mouth to say something, maybe that I loved her. But before I could speak she shook her head violently and put her hand over my lips. “Let it sink,” she said.

She reached into her backpack and grabbed something, and then she smiled, and soon she was pressing her hips against me. I left my eyes open when we

kissed. Her immediate transformation resembled some kind of enlightenment, and it was in this that I took comfort.

While touching her skin my thoughts became quiet and white.

As she pulled her face away, she slowly placed a tablet in my mouth and then put one in hers. We both laughed and continued to feel each other’s skin.

We went to this big empty building that was surrounded by cement and other warehouses. Laura and I were dissected by the colors; we danced to techno, our eyes fluttered and I kept my hands in her pockets. Or her pants. It doesn’t matter.

Later on, we were sweaty and tired and sat down in plastic chairs near the wall. I closed my eyes and felt Laura’s body next to me, whirring with purple magic. The night had been a chemical riot. My eyes felt reversed, like I was looking inward and watching the gears grind. I realized that I wanted to leave. When I opened my eyes I decided to go see if I could find a bathroom.

As I was drinking from the faucet, a guy with a mushroom of curly brown hair walked in. He looked very interested in me.

“Hey, I heard that you had some X. You think I could buy a tab from you?”

21 |

The question made me uncomfortable and anxious. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m here with my mother.”

“Dude, can I please just get a tab from you? Just one.” He took a step toward me and I kicked him in the testicles and ran out of the bathroom. I heard him crying right before the door closed. It was unnecessary, but he was ruining my high.

Laura was talking to some guy when I got back. She asked me if I could hold on to her backpack while she went outside to smoke a cigarette. I said sure After she walked away I left in a hurry, stumbling over tangled feet and rubbing my face against wet flesh. I told myself that I wasn’t crossing a line, that there was no line to cross. I let it sink. I wanted that backpack for myself. the hummingbird lights inside made everybody rush segments of luminous skin reminding me of love careless patchwork extraordinary radiation giving free hug coupons

As I stepped outside of the warehouse I retraced my steps back towards the hill.

By now it was very late, long after midnight, and they had cleaned Tom’s brains off of the asphalt. I was glad that nobody saw me, because I looked alien and my tongue felt like sandpaper. Traffic was sparse, and I shivered hard when an ambulance sped by shouting like an angel.

I passed a woman taking her morning jog. She was dressed in lavender and her breathing sounded like a robot. Baby birds were hungry and loud. Laura’s tiny backpack felt rough but organic, like a bullfrog. Yellow lamps pissed light onto me.

Where the fuck am I? I peeled Laura’s backpack off of me, grimacing as my shoulders felt it release.

Laura loving nothing calming me with her fantastic indifference her kisses wearing off and I begin to feel the watchful eyes of life

| 22

return

not puke

that son of a bitch never lets me out of its sight

the desert a resin-stained hollow jar

I had to climb back into the hole. The dark world where visions sit at the bottom like holy sediment. The brain color for my gray matter. But it was all gone. All the little bags were empty.

and I remembered all of the times I had said, out loud

The sun unveiled a morning sky that was filthy and dark. I was hoping for stalks of sunlight. The flowers were alive and blushing, but all their color was stifled by the weather. The clouds hung like parachutes slowly descending. Eventually I walked behind a building to puke. I saw this scribbled on the bricks:

made it back to the hill and sat down alone

no, everyone else is wrong I am okay

didn’t realize it until then, but I had been biting my fingernails off my hands spotted with dry blood smelled like pennies

what a bone yard this is! we are building hives with smoke and will not ask again that we be left to our alchemy It all slowed down then. I felt something heavy and ugly growing inside of me

Tried to calm myself by imagining dead Tom lying next to me. Just looked over at the grass next and sobbed, saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry while I rocked back and forth pulling my hair. thought about the time he introduced me to needles 23 |

I was scared to do it myself so I had him inject

I would like to believe that he would have just floated there

me

crying tears of joy

after a slow half shot

saying it’s fine

I felt sick

it’s fine

asked him to stop but he kept pushing down the plunger squeezed his shoulder with my tingling fingers big gray eyes staring at my forearm I remember he kept saying

Now, here I sit on the green flesh at the bottom of our hill. There is a masked moonlight, a subtle gravity that brings me to this place. My rivers are dry now.

Antebellum robert hudson

You were a playback of the summer; an ocher branch that held my youthful viridian leaves, the crimson Mondavi tannins that signaled our return to Café Italia, those shadowed tea lit hours among the ivory linens and vodka sauces until we were both drunk on stratospheric snickering.

it’s fine, it’s fine leaking orange sex from my desperate pores, light unglowing softer to softer

Deep Chanel eyes slide me intoxicated into the seductive underside of your tones where do you want to go now the lake, always the lake. okay, take

to more soft

me there I follow you, following me. Snakey Lane is a blurry champagned drive that

it’s fine it’s fine

night to the curve where i hear the waves, this is it I rail over, dodging wooden posts as gravel

what if he had hovered

punches rough against mom’s Midnight convertible, and the stench of her last

just behind my back the whole night trying to touch me?

here take the lucky one cigarette escapes out unlock the door Her silhouette, sketched rugged among the pummeled

had he caught my attention | 24

25 |

path, shrinks as fuck these heels you run so far ahead of me.

I am sprinting to find you, and you to find yourself,

Breathing, Locked Outside Stained Glass jade benoit

but you only find a reflection where the long clay mound slides gently into liquid oblivion. And so many times I burnt to be you, but I was mannequined light this cigarette I do because the pale mimosa horizon reminds me that i can’t believe i’m going to be alone Baton Rouge again is falling fast.

I’ll come back for you when the sun licks the onyx tree line I’ll drive, faster down old Snakey lane to the curve, where the rusted antebellum columns tango in the moonlit pool, and your reflection waits.

| 26

In the morning, we heard our names called from a distance and stood by the altar window, only to look down notice that the voices were accidentally each other. Our mothers lit candles in the bathroom sink and asked the Holy Ghost to deliver fresh hats and suit jackets to each doorstep on the street. The roads were filmy, but we stood there and turned our heads while the Mary Elizabeth tapped its spoon against the edge of each jar resting in our throats. Rosary beads fell from strings when we collided, our teeth and eyelashes melted together like wet plastic. We crucified the shoes we were wearing, let our bare feet press into a house, a trip to the grocery store, a warm meal, a prayer, a slow dance, skin against skin. Children fled from us, guarding their privates. Our aunts and uncles hung old mercy dolls from trees in the backyard, rope gripped their cotton necks, eyes popped out and dangled by yellow threads. We tied our fingers together with splintered twine and ran down the railroad tracks. Hymns rang from a choir and tangled in our hair, pulled it from our pale scalps, strand by strand. The repentance couch told us we could not lay our heads there, because the upholstery collected only Spring Wind, and looking down at our trembling trays, we saw only scraps of Fall we dug from the cushions. A man stood beneath a maple tree, writing gospel poems with root twig. We asked him if he sold eternity soaps or perfumes, and he told us if we turned to each other and felt ants marching in the pit of our collarbones, then that was God. The grandfathers wiping diner counters with brown rags called him a false prophet and said the world made them feel like insects. Walking in the snow, we looked at each other and saw that we both had brown eyes and no one else had ever known. We went to a bus station, and sat in the only corner that would have us.

With numb fingers, we argued over who would drink the last cup of coffee, going cold on the floor. Factory days dried out our knuckles, left us with only one form of comfort, which was to bleed from our eyes.

27 |

Confession blake stephens

I was eleven years old.

The wing was in the box and it was wet and around me, and I was eleven and yellow and crying real salt tears

A fly wing fell

and Jesus told me

from the stained glass

“Perpetual” meant “Permanent”

window onto my arm,

like original sin

oval dust on my skin.

and I said No

It was a dead wing,

and carved it into the pew

smelled like incense in the pews

next to a figure of the priest

of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.

with dead crinkled wings

When the priest told me

and a glass of spoiled

“perpetual” meant “always”

wine in his hand.

I wondered what wine

I wondered what wine

would taste like without water

would taste like without water.

and the wood red and

Stained glass fell

yellow icon cried

onto my arm and

real salt tears.

cut like incense.

The pew in front of me

It was oval dust on my

had boxes etched into it.

skin, a dead wing,

I opened one and

wet and

crawled in, pulling the wooden

over me.

door shut, inhaling incense. | 28

29 |

‫( ءادوس بوث‬Abaya)

Bursting

taylor pate

laura smith

A girl from Oman Only 16 Wants to be raped.

To see red Freckles of freedom Between her Alabaster legs.

Says it’s the only Way out of her Prison of black Crepe and silk.

Says she wants to Sun her hands and hair.

To be seen.

To be heard.

| 30

The road carved through densely gathered pines swaying beneath the swirling sky. Fallen needles shone in the dappled sunlight that dripped through the dark boughs. Pine roots knotted into the deep red clay, soil that glistened after a rain and cracked dry beneath the sun.

Adam watched silently as his uncle drove.

The truck rocked over jagged potholes, and his uncle’s arms flexed, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. Adam focused on the underbrush as it jolted by.

The past several months floated across the mottled landscape, his brother in a hospital bed, white gowns and tubes, black dresses and too many flowers, but Adam forced memories from his mind as he stared at the dark line of trees.

Curving, the road opened into a clearing. Huge azalea bushes bordered one side. The rest of the yard sloped into the bank of a pond nestled against a little red cabin, stone chimney standing starkly against the sky. Adam’s uncle pulled the truck off the road and onto the grass, roughly hitting the brake next to a persimmon tree. He clicked the ignition off, truck shuddering, engine clicking as it cooled.

Behind the screen door, a woman’s pale outline, face framed with white, emerged from the dark house. Her hand pressed against the gray mesh.

“Alright, let’s get your stuff inside.” His uncle’s door swung open as he stepped out underneath the persimmon tree.

“Nee will probably have something waiting on the stove for you.”

Adam hesitated, absorbing the smooth, rippling water stretching away from the little house. Shadows gathered beneath the eaves, shrouding the house in twilight. His feet hardly made a sound among the sky and the pines when he lowered himself to the ground and stepped towards his grandmother’s home.

The house was dark. Fading sunlight fell through huge picture windows that faced the pond, dimming squares on the wood floor like smoldering embers. Adam’s uncle set his suitcase in the middle of a faded rag rug. “Need help, Mama?”

“No, Tom, it’s all ready.” She moved her head with her words, as though her chin provided subtle punctuation. Her frail shoulders, drawn together like a lit31 |

tle bird’s folded wings, were wrapped in a light sweater. “Just come here.”

The stone fireplace looming in the center of the house was empty. Adam remembered throwing magnolia leaves into flames that licked the mantelpiece, waiting for the pop when the glassy leaves exploded. Drew’s grin, macabre in the firelight, shuddered at the sudden sound, both boys insisting it hadn’t scared them, their insides quivering. No fire broke the gray of ash and stone now.

“And you.” Nee stepped away from her son towards Adam. “You come here now.”

Adam let her squeeze the breath out of his ribs. “Mm, mm,” she cooed. Stale perfume, holding the memory of crushed flowers, surged into Adam’s nose. “It’s good you came to see me.”

Adam nodded, moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes. She pulled away, her gnarled fingers digging into his shoulders. “Alright,” she muttered, turning towards the little dining room. “Let’s sit down at the table.”

Adam’s uncle left after supper. He had work the next morning and needed to make the drive back across the delta before it got late. Nee saw him to the door before instructing Adam to clear the table while she rinsed the dishes. She made quick work of the clean up, leading him into the living room. The sun had fallen behind the pines. Only dim | 32

rays stretched through the windows, falling against the stone fireplace. Nee clicked the lamp into light, an old kerosene lantern, converted into an electric lamp, resting on top of a Singer sewing machine. The sewing machine was antique, a wooden top and an iron pedal balanced on decorative whorls. Adam remembered Drew pumping the pedal vigorously, watching the sewing mechanism rise and fall until Nee caught him, warning him not to tear up a family heirloom. Confining the memory to his throat, Adam looked through the picture windows, across the pond.

Nee pulled a sewing basket from behind her armchair. She lifted a bundle of white yarn, unknotting a slender crochet needle. Pulling length out of the skein, she hooked her needle into previous stitches and began adding new ones.

Her needle caught the light, flitting in and out.

“It’s quieter up here than you’re probably used to.” She smiled. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had to get used to crickets for company.” Her hair looked darker in the dim light, streaks of gray coursing through the soft waves.

Adam nodded. A mounted deer’s face stared solemnly at him from above the doorway to the kitchen. Cobwebs laced its aging antlers. The hearth was bare.

“Where’s Lady?” No bundle of white and red fur curled on its stones.

Nee’s needle danced around her yarn, spinning stitches into being. She bit her lip. Adam wasn’t sure she’d heard him.

“Where’s the dog?” His voice echoed against the fireplace.

“She’s around.”

“Want me to let her in?”

Nee shook her head. “I put her food out this morning, but she never came to eat it.”

“Did you look for her?”

“She’ll probably come back.” Nee shrugged. “Or she won’t. There’s a lot of woods out there.”

“So you aren’t even going to try?” Adam’s voice was too loud. “That’s it?”

“No, that’s not it.” Nee’s needle flashed, moving rapidly. “She’ll probably come back. And if not, she can take care of herself.”

Adam swallowed loudly.

She stopped, studying him. Her eyes were gentle.

“It’s been a long day.” Gathering the loose yarn in her lap, she looped it around her fingers and laid her needlework back in its basket. “Why don’t we call it an early night?”

Adam couldn’t remember another night that had held so much noise. The humming of crickets rattled his teeth.

Throaty bullfrogs resonated across the pond outside his window. The little window unit air conditioner did nothing to stifle the night songs of nature, its dull humming and shaking small compared with the waves of sound echoing off the water. He tossed restlessly as seconds spun into minutes, melting into hours without dreams. Shadows crept along the walls and ceiling of the little bedroom where his twin bed was tucked. He tried not to look at the empty bed next to his, leaving his mind the freedom to follow vague memories that danced along the floorboards and tumbled behind his eyelids.

Adam woke late. The drip and rattle of percolating coffee stretched thinly through his bedroom walls. He rubbed his eyes, considering going back to sleep, but sunlight pushed through the drapes, making the room too bright. He should look for Lady. Or try, anyway. Maybe she was somewhere along the creek.

In the kitchen, Nee stood in front of the stove, bacon sizzling next to a steaming pan of eggs. She looked up at his footsteps. “Good afternoon.” Her voice croaked slightly. “I was just about to wake you. Sleep well? Or at least long enough?”

33 |

Adam rubbed his eyes, shrugging.

“Mm.” Nee stared at him, nodding.

“Well, coffee’s almost ready. You can have breakfast for lunch.”

Adam sat down at the little kitchen table, pushed up against the wall, the top half divided into large glass panes. The windows looked out on the yard, overflowing with unruly grass, broken only by a little brick path leading to a rusted water pump and a birdbath. He stared unseeingly out the window.

“I was thinking you could start with the side yard there today.” Nee gestured over her shoulder.

“What?”

“I don’t mean to be insensitive.” Nee lifted a slice of bacon out of the skillet and onto a paper towel to drain. “We’re all grieving. But you need to be busy, and this old woman needs help.”

Adam rubbed his forehead and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table.

He nodded.

She looked over at him. “The push mower is in the shed. I’ll show you where after you eat.”

The Alabama heat was merciless, snaking around his throat, tightening humid fingers as sweat blossomed through the fibers of his shirt. The push mower was dusty, grey silk trailing from its handles to the walls of the shed. Adam pulled it | 34

into the sunlight. He struggled with its ancient cord. After several tries, yanking irritably, he coaxed it to life, its voice a dull purr. He jerked it into the yard and began carving even lines in the grass, moving quickly. If he worked fast, he could have time to run along the creek before it got dark. His feet found a rhythm as sweat poured down his back.

He guided the mower carefully along a dip in the ground. Grass filled out an old wound, fringing the reddish soil with green. Drew helped him dig the hole, years ago, two boys digging through the center of the earth to China. Drew threw a dog bone in the hole, covering it lightly with soil, and led Lady to sit in the fragrant earth, hoping she’d do the digging for them. She hadn’t obliged. The void was changed, shifted with time, but it was still too deep for the mower. Adam pushed towards the birdbath, breathing heavily.

The engine sputtered, choking loudly.

Adam stopped it, letting the blades slowly spin to a halt. Its rusted handles led down to an aging body. Wiping sweat from his brow, Adam knelt beside the mower, peering at the ancient mechanism for the source of the problem.

A frayed wire had split. Adam cursed under his breath. He didn’t know how to fix it. His father owned a fancy riding lawn mower that had never broken.

He rose to his feet, shaking his head, and kicked at the mower. His foot bounced

dully against the stained metal. It didn’t fall over. He kicked again, harder, watching it slowly tilt to one side, toppling into the grass.

The mower was decrepit, the yard overgrown with dying memories, the house shrinking with time. It was all old, had all fallen into disrepair. Adam walked angrily towards the water pump, wanting to splash water across his heated forehead. He grabbed the rusty handle and pumped it up and down, harshly jerking it, waiting for cool water to gurgle out of its depths. But none came. He stopped, staring at the pump. Gripping it more tightly, he tried again, roughly forcing the handle. Only air gushed out of its trough. He wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving rusty streaks.

Pine trees loomed over the pump, stretching away into unbroken forest.

The creek was somewhere in there, carving a wavering trail through endless trees, sweeping leaves and eddying against fallen logs. Who was he kidding? Lady could be anywhere. The trees crowded his vision, swelling, haggard vines dripping from their limbs crawling up and out, filling the air, blocking the sky, forest stretching undisturbed as far as he could see. His breath was loud in his ears. He couldn’t get enough air, couldn’t open his chest against the heaviness that pressed into his throat and lungs.

The pump hadn’t always been broken.

When he and his brother were boys,

they would wash themselves off under it before coming inside. Adam would work the pump while his brother stood under it, catching the copper-flavored water in his mouth. Adam could picture it now, picture Drew’s muddy clothes, his tousled hair, water running in rivulets down his upturned face— But the memory was incomplete.

Drew’s face was blank. Adam could see the shape, but the features were gone.

He tried to resurrect them, tried to mold eyes, a nose, a mouth onto the shapeless void of memory, but none fit. Adam stared at the ground in front of the pump, willing an apparition of Drew to appear, willing an outline to fill in his recollection, but beneath the tousled, dirty hair, there was only shadow.

Adam recoiled from the pump. Drew was gone, Lady was gone, that stupid pump, that broken, failing pump, gone too, all dying anyway, all fading, all falling victim to sluggish decay. He couldn’t breathe, the humid air snaked more tightly around his throat, choking him, squeezing his trachea, leaving him gasping, elbow slung against the pump.

He turned back to the mower. Why was everything broken? He kicked at the mower, catching the top of the handle with his foot, spinning it around itself.

He kicked again, harder this time, missing, tried again, catching the body of the mower, his foot hurt, but he kept kicking, kicked it into green stems, crushing them 35 |

under its weight, kicked it across the hole Drew left incomplete before he reached China.

A voice called to him from the house.

Adam ignored it. He grabbed the mower with both hands, hefting it as high as he could, and threw it, listening for the satisfying clatter as it skidded across the ground, collided with the earth with a clunk, rocked once, and lay still.

Nee called again, louder. Adam turned his head, looking back over his shoulder.

She teetered on the stone steps outside the kitchen, clutching her loose pants in both hands. She was tiny. Frail. Her face was a myriad of wrinkles sagging beneath too many years. How much longer did she have? The shadows under her eyes were hollows, growing ever darker, decaying, withering away into something smaller and less alive. Drew’s eyes had taken on a similar darkness, become tired, shriveled as he grew sicker, broken down to hollow sockets that rarely opened, outlined in bruises. He was too young for that, they were all too young for that, but nothing was invincible, not the rusted broken pump or the choking mower that shuddered in the grass a few yards away, all deteriorating, all lessening, all weakening into nothing.

Adam turned back towards the shed as sobs wracked his lungs. The door to the house clicked shut. He didn’t look back. | 36

The porch swing creaked rhythmically. Adam looked across the darkening pond. The glow on the horizon cast a thin reflection across its watery surface.

His pulse throbbed in his temples. He rubbed them, trying to blot out the ache of the afternoon.

A switch clicked on, throwing buzzing yellow light over the patio. Nee opened the door, stepping carefully down the stone steps. She held onto the door for balance, moving gingerly, and settled herself into a rocking chair across from Adam.

“Listen to those frogs.” Her voice was calm. “They never shut up.”

Adam shook his head slowly. He stretched his legs against the stone floor, pulling the swing back.

Nee stared beyond the circle of light, eyes unfocused. She held her head high, her bird-thin shoulders lowered, relaxed.

“Did I ever tell you about the ghost in the church?” She turned her face towards Adam. He shook his head.

“Up at Montgomery Hill,” Nee nodded. “In the church up there, where I got married. When we were little girls, everyone thought there was a ghost living inside it.” Her voice cracked slightly.

“But, turns out, there was a man living in there.”

Adam looked up. “Yeah?”

“Mm.” Nee pursed her lips. “There was a man living there for three months without anybody knowing.”

“How?” “He was a convict. From the prison over in Atmore. He ran seventeen miles, running at night, all the way from Atmore, and hid out in that church for three months. He stayed in the attic most of the time, during services and all, but at night, I guess he’d come down for a while. He snuck around to people’s farms, stealing their chickens and eggs at night to feed himself.”

Adam shook his head, rubbing his hand against the stubble along his jaw.

“That’s crazy.”

“Some people saw a light in the church late at night and thought it was a ghost.”

She chuckled. “Some ghost.” The legs of her chair groaned as she rocked forward and then back, scraping against the brick floor of the patio. “Do you remember that straw-pee?”

Adam shook his head.

“Really?” Nee’s eyes widened. “You don’t remember that thing? You and Drew used to play in it all the time.”

Adam’s throat tightened, eyes squinted, considering.

“Your grandfather built it for you. He put a bunch of sticks up, in a triangle shape, like a teepee, and let you boys stuff

it with pine straw. Don’t you remember?” Nee paused, clearing her throat.

“Oh, you boys played in it all the time. I couldn’t keep you out of there. I was sure you’d come out with chiggers all over your little hides.”

Adam remembered. He remembered the red walls of stifling needles, remembered countless hours spent with Drew, rolling around in dried pine straw, whooping, hollering, blowing imaginary smoke signals to the sky.

“Whatever happened to that thing?”

Nee shrugged. “I never go back there anymore.” She scratched her cheek absently. “But I’d imagine it fell down a long time ago. Sticks and pine straw. Wasn’t meant to last.” She smiled. “But it was perfect for a pair of little boys.”

The crickets and frogs filled the silence. Their voices rose in robust waves off the water and shimmered against the trees. Only the creaking swing competed for sound.

“Did your daddy ever tell you about the nickel balloon?”

Adam shook his head.

“I thought he was going to burn this place down.” Nee rocked forward in her chair. “He took one of those nickel balloons, like they used to make, one of those big ones, and he blew it up with his brother.” She pointed towards the yard.

“Him and Tom, they stood out there 37 |

next to the pond and tied 25 feet of toilet paper to that thing. Then they lit the end of the toilet paper on fire and let go.”

Adam snickered.

“I was inside when they started, but I stepped out just as they let go. I coulda killed ’em.” Nee shook her head. “That balloon didn’t rise fast enough. I thought that toilet paper was gonna hit the house and set the whole thing on fire.” She chuckled. “It almost did, mind you. The wind pushed that thing too close for me.”

Adam tilted his head back, letting his laugh rattle his chest. “I didn’t know that.”

He shook his head. “Dad never told me that one.”

“No, I doubt he did.” Nee’s voice croaked. “He didn’t want you taking after him. That boy was a mess.” She shook her head gravely. “He’s always getting into something or another.”

“Like what?”

Nee paused. “You know that black mark on the hearth? That sooty mark?”

“Sure.”

“That’s from your father.” Nee rocked back in her chair, pursing her lips together. “He did that when he was just a small thing. He was playing with the coals.” She shook her head, laughing softly. “I don’t know how he didn’t burn his little hands.

Your grandfather came in and found him | 38

sitting on live coals. On live coals!” She scratched the arm of the rocking chair, tilting her head to one side. “He yanked your father up off the ground and scolded him pretty good. But your father, he just shook his head, his eyes all wide, saying, ‘I didn’t know! I didn’t know!’” She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “As he sat there with his britches on fire.”

the layers of peeling paint. He saw the fishing poles in the corner behind her, bamboo fishing poles he and his brother had made by hand, poles knotted and marked from plywood barges and pond mud. He breathed slowly, letting warmth swell his chest while a dull ache rounded out his stomach, and he didn’t think of going inside.

Adam’s laugh burst across the patio, startling him as it spread, resonating along the stones, glittering back in pealing echoes. Warmth started in his throat, spreading downward, seeping into his collarbones and meshing into his ribs.

Nee was laughing, too. Her hand covered her eyes, shoulders shaking, bound beneath her thin sweater. Adam let his throat fill, let moisture gather behind his eyelids, let his shoulders fall as his belly swelled. Nee was wiping her eyes, they were spilling over, leaving glistening streaks on her face. She gasped for air. Adam did too, his lungs expanding slowly, air flooding the passageways beneath his skin.

Nee sighed. “This house,” she sniffled, bringing her hand to her nose, “it’s just bursting at the seams with memories, with all them lives.”

Adam looked at the worn steps, at the green mold creeping along the mortar in between the stones, at the scars from so many footsteps, at the moon shimmering across the still pond. He watched Nee’s shadow rock back and forth against 39 |

Symmetry

A New Frontier

andrew graziano

daniel lachman | photography

Our hands looked like a clamshell zippered closed by our fingers as you dragged me through a crowd that I bumped into as drunk as a rag doll.

Your friend said to meet her by the light so you walked me to every one of them, and you stared into them squinting until you couldn’t anymore.

I tagged along until you judged (for the seventh time) that these lights weren’t “lighty” enough.

I dragged myself home alone, and tried to recreate our clamshell, but it’s harder than you’d think.

| 40

41 |

Self-Portrait

The Heathen Section

zachary cummings | oil on canvas

benjamin pettaway

The Wrinkled Mouth’s grandchildren enjoy having their hair brushed before school.

Our veranda overlooks the Barnes and Noble sales floor.

They really do.

An aging socialite is sitting crosslegged on a veranda discussing her grandchildren’s favorite treats.

Not as much discussing as explaining.

Not as much explaining as lecturing.

The old socialite manages a wrinkled mouth.

She is The Wrinkled Mouth.

The veranda doesn’t overlook the sea, though I’d prefer one that did.

I’m there, too – the veranda.

It doesn’t overlook snowy mountain peaks or a bustling urban scene. | 42

Our veranda offers a breathtaking panorama of what The Wrinkled Mouth calls “The Heathen Section,” though Barnes and Noble employees chose to label the same racks: Self-Help, Philosophy, and New Age. Our veranda meaning: My veranda.

And The Wrinkled Mouth’s.

And seventeen others’.

The Veranda’s crew, we’re all in our twenties or thirties.

Most of us have coffees and laptops and looming tests and essay deadlines.

We are all linked – kindred spirits of the Internet generation – save the wrinkly upper-cruster and her gabbing 43 |

partner: The Gabbing Partner with No Name.

She didn’t need a name, nodding intently at each new mentioned foodstuff, eyes brimming with adulation, pining for the next profound word that would, without doubt, change her life forever.

It was corn dogs.

Epiphany #1: Corn dogs.

The Wrinkled Mouth and her disciple are in their sixties.

They have pill schedules and plasticcovered couches and irregular bowels and biases.

The Wrinkled Mouth, she uses her outside voice.

They like to eat carrots, the mouth’s grandchildren.

The Wrinkled Mouth and her daughter have a great relationship.

“Not just great,” The Veranda is told obliquely, “but perfect.”

They eat lunch together three times a week.

Sometimes they get manicures.

Christine’s husband is doing well, I learn.

Darren took up jogging recently.

He looks good.

Darren can do forty push-ups.

“He’s probably going to get promoted soon,” says The Wrinkled Mouth – more than a few decibels above her already elevated norm – eyebrows arched, pupils darting, ears pricked, hoping that we would hear.

(They don’t know it’s good for them.) | 44

A Brooks Brothers suit near the coffee bar hovers over an audit form, gritting his teeth, glancing up at The Wrinkled Mouth, tearing eight tooth-shaped holes in his Invisalign.”

The modern-day beatnik in the armchair reads a page from The Andy Warhol Diaries, then he reads it again, then he reads it again, then again before slamming the hardcover onto the neighboring coffee table.

The Veranda’s crew is restless.

Our vibrations were getting nasty.

I wonder which one of us will throw The Wrinkled Mouth overboard.

“Monogamy is everything,” the mouth says with conviction.

A half-dozen irritated sighs rise above the ethnic music, confirming The Veranda’s knowledge of Darren’s potential

She angles her head toward an expecting twenty-two year old.

“Nancy has all the answers,” she says.

Nancy knows how to make America great again.

The Gabbing Partner with No Name nods, gives a few “uh-huhs,” nods some more.

“She’s a straight shooter, that Nancy Grace.”

We learn The Wrinkled Mouth has a penchant for Tucker Carlson.

She thinks he’s cute.

Not as cute as Darren, though.

She makes sure everyone aboard The Veranda knows that he’s not as cute as Darren.

Darren, who recently took up jogging.

Praying that we would hear.

They like cottage cheese.

Every now and then they take pleasure in a bowl of oatmeal.

promotion. I can’t be sure how many polite sighers have been drowned out by the tribal drums.

The divorce rate is at an all-time high.

Teen pregnancy’s on the rise.

Darren, who can really cut a rug.

“Sarah Palin’s new book should be an eye-opener.”

“She. . .” starts The Wrinkled Mouth before aborting the sentence.

45 |

Her lips purse. Her brow furrows.

This next sentence must require special consideration; she needs to get her words just right.

Her disciple leans forward, inhales, eyes wide.

“She’s got moxie.”

“That one is one to keep an eye on,” she says.

The Gabbing Partner with No Name exhales, satisfied.

Epiphany #2: Sarah Palin has moxie.

This country is going to hell in a handbasket.

“Our country,” says the mouth.

Obama’s the last prophecy, she says.

Then it’s The Rapture.

“It’s all right there in Revelations.”

“I swear it, I’m moving to Canada if things get any worse.”

The heathen leans in and he smiles.

A head comes into view over the veranda railing, emerging from the deceit of “The Heathen Section.”

I watch the heathen head: It bobs up and down along the rail, nearing the four small steps that lead to The Veranda’s deck.

| 46

The Gabbing Partner with No Name smiles.

The heathen cheeks swell.

He parts his lips, blowing thick, putrid air towards The Wrinkled Mouth with deliberation before stepping back from the table.

Steps it reaches.

Steps it climbs.

Steps that reveal its godless gender.

The Veranda learns that Darren speaks a little French.

Darren, who can name every state capital.

Darren, who looks really good these days.

The Veranda is enlightened.

The Veranda can find the particulars in The Good Book.

He bends forward – the heathen – leaning inches from The Wrinkled Mouth, now silent, now lacking opinion.

The Veranda learns that the younger generation, we’re all going to hell.

We learn that belching is not mentioned in Barnes and Noble’s bylaws.

We learn that wrinkled old socialites know The ‘F’ Word.

Epiphany #3: Old women know The ‘F’ Word.

The heathen learns this, too.

He makes his way to The Wrinkled Mouth’s table, nods to The Gabbing Partner with No Name.

47 |

I have a new kind of bicycle

Pink Fluoride

blake stephens

It is made of leaves blown by your tires skidding on the pavement.

We are skidding on purpose on our leaf-bicycles stepping on the brakes as hard as possible swinging my tire toward you cementing it to your leg the spokes through your ankles my feet locked into the pedals.

I am leaves you can crumple they form back together and crumple again they form back together and crumple again. | 48

taylor pate

The American Dental Association’s Dental Abbreviations, Symbols and Acronyms contains 52 pages It tells me that I have a sparkling new ABR (abrasion) on posterior number 4 and I’m in need of a DOF (distal occlusal facial) on lower 18 Cocaine Tobacco Cocaine Satin seminal stains burrowing like opalescent termites into the soft enamel of anterior number 9-I’ll need a MODF (mesial occlusal distal facial) On the TV A tooth swirls down the sink like an expiring halo, Shit man even the Mona Lisa’s falling apart.

On the wall Rows and rows of baby food jars glinting their secrets, the booty from four generations of tooth fairies, crystals from Arkansas, Granddaddy’s gold caps, marbles for Uncle Todd, sharks teeth and plush black sand 3 ounce familial anecdotes

49 |

Maybe I could perform a PACR (post and core restoration) on anterior 22, ball point pen style, bubble gum flavored Pectin (28 mg) to ease the FTP (phantom tooth pain)

Bones and Blood julia terese

Exposed root tips Cast pink shadows The glitter of Glamorous decay D (distal) -6,7,13,14,30,31,32 M (mesial)- 25,26,27 E (extraction)- 2, 20

I chew up leaves and stems because Claudia Lacorra lives inside me now, but there are worse things than leaf eating. Like I can feel her licking, kissing my gums, mixing her spit with mine. Her spit that tastes like sweat off lovers’ backs I climb on top of. And she climbs up with me, back licking and kissing, sticky red lip prints—melting, ebbing with the drips of sweat themselves—on these broad shoulders all hot and heaving, so that I am never alone anymore, not even in my own mouth. So much lipstick on my tongue that I spit red and have to conscious pull my teeth apart to talk and laugh and scream.

She talks laughs screams with me.

Talks for me like I’m some lipstick red Lacorra.

I am not delicate but I can feel bones crumbling, and when Claudia sits I can feel her square hips like pressure on my pelvis. She has all these premature body curves so there is this constant pushing out like from the inside of my hips. Lacehemmed skirts sway against the bottoms of my feet. Gold bracelets rattle, clank against each other like chiming I can feel all vibratory in my diaphragm when

| 50

I walk. When I bend over like pain, she folds over with me so that I am never alone anymore, not even in my own mind. And there are worse things than the leaf and stem chewing it takes to keep her quiet in here.

Papa says in Cardenas they used to chew on stalks of sugarcane, the end parts they didn’t need. There are pictures, boxes of them, and in some men lean against wood houses and truck doors with sugarcane end parts sticking out of their mouths.

But Papa doesn’t have Cardenas pictures and Claudia pictures and boxes of them for nothing but show.

They show what Lacorra women wrought and here is what it stands for.

Wasn’t until my last Metairie summer I found out my cousin was crawling all 51 |

of herself inside of me, but now I know she had been crawling into me on all fours since the first day I saw her sitting in Yeya’s Metairie house kitchen. Now I know I opened up my mouth and swallowed her right up.

That first day Claudia Lacorra sat on the tile floor. Little hands get cold faster, and even with this wet Metairie summer suspending itself in the air, I could see how cold Claudia’s were in the gray circle splotches on her fingers, palms and wrists. Could see it in the way blood tried too hard to squeeze through hand veins.

So I always knew she was a little girl, even if no one else could see it through all that lipstick.

Started seeing splotches on my own hands, dense like spiderwebs. Still and even though my hands were smaller and three years younger, they never were as cold as Claudia’s since she was accustomed to keeping her hands cold in hot Metairie house rooms. Hot rooms all her life and not a day I didn’t see her, head-to-toe dressed up like some vision of Hispaniola herself. We all watched her get dressed up woman pretty and smiled, even if it meant we had to ignore wet eyes sometimes. And Claudia’s eyes were always wet, even at the sight of a flamenco dress.

Took her cold little hand in mine and it was the first time I felt cold hands grab hold of my breastbone tight and from the inside of me. But Claudia crawled so | 52

slow and out of shadow moments that there was no knowing it was her fingers squeezing cold enough to pull my breath into my stomach. Two years old but I knew that Metairie kitchen was a room too hot for Claudia had to stand up straight in. Every Metairie summer and even after I had left back up Interstate 49 with my mother.

Something to get away from when it came to my mother’s leaving Metairie.

Something I could see in the way she pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek every time Yeya and Papa packed me in a car to drive five hours south down Interstate 49 to the Metairie house. Something I could see in the way she pulled a long dress made with more Mexican wool out of brown paper and shredded it with kitchen shears. All this desperate cutting up what Lacorra women wrought.

When Claudia presses her tongue against the inside of my cheek to get leaf parts she missed, I think of my mother smelling like smoke and baby powder.

She is not a Lacorra woman. Lacorra women call her tomboy, pity her like some woman martyr and wave their arms around their heads to keep the words from looming, rotting above them.

Talking over Bustelo, Esthercita leaned

to whisper—all spitty and too loud— into my Yeya’s ear, but all I picked up was ay dios mio and just like her mother and ay dios mio and a threat to what Lacorra women mean.

When Claudia kisses the inside of my lips, whispering, ay dios mio, I think of Yeya and Esthercita smelling like No. 5 and unsealed espresso beans. They are Lacorra women in the way Yeya wears lipstick to bed. They are Lacorra women in the way they move their arms around their heads to clean the air. When I showed my mother a picture of Claudia twirling in a flamenco dress, she under her breath whispered, So this is what Lacorra women wrought? I chew it up like leaves and stems because now I know what it means.

My mother is plain even now—barefaced and flicking cigarette ash between porch bricks—watching me pick leaves in the yard to eat for Claudia. She wears leaving Metairie in the wrinkles of her face. In the way she stares at skies and ceilings, musing, Family is important but there was no reason to stay. I chew it up like leaves and stems because there were so many reasons to leave.

When Claudia’s words come out of my own mouth I can see water in my mother’s eyes and all this spit in her mouth like I am what Lacorra women wrought. Claudia lives inside of me now, but I am not what Lacorra women wrought. I am what it stands for.

My last day in Metairie was the day Claudia finally crawled all herself inside of me, and all of it started with this forlorn stick house. Lacorra women sat at the kitchen table with cups of Bustelo, while Claudia grabbed my hand so tight and cold I shivered up my forearm with the damp leaf touch of it. She looked down at me and casual, Let’s build a stick house out front and they won’t ever find us again.

A way to get dirty, and Claudia always found dirty moments hiding in the hot room corners of a day. We would climb trees—her lace catching bark knots— staring out at the too wide gutters that lined the Metairie house street. Or we would hide from the Lacorra women in patches of mud where grass did not grow in the yard, primal crouching our faces in hot dirt. But it was never long before Esthercita shot out through the front door—waving arms above her head to summon the will of the air—to grab Claudia by a lace bell sleeve and bring her back to a hot Metairie house room where she would pose for Papa’s pictures with an all teeth smile and hands on her hips.

Claudia working her body over camera flashes and under dirty moments.

The air in the yard smelled like the street, and the mildew smell of it weaved its way into palms of hands, settled in creases for hours. Building a stick house 53 |

but Claudia could never do much in her flamenco dresses, and this one in particular had an inch of orange lace hem that dragged in mud. Just sat in a plastic chair pointing to which sticks make the best houses, while I hoisted each one on my shoulder so that dirt crumpled down my shirt.

This is what Lacorra women wrought.

I can trace everything back to these flamenco dresses Yeya made to dress Claudia up in. Mostly polka dots but in all colors, every single one tiered and lace-trimmed. Itchy and I can feel it even now while Claudia twirls, skirts rising up above her knees, winding my veins around my rib cage like a sash getting tighter and thinner and tighter and longer.

Took Yeya weeks to finish one, but it was all for Claudia. Claudia who got dressed up so woman pretty and everyday that I swallowed her right up to feel it in my own straight lines body. I never got dressed up, couldn’t. Even when Yeya mailed a rushed birthday dress— long and so much Mexican wool, modest compared to the overt womanhood of Claudia’s lace skirts—to our house up Interstate 49 for my mother to shred with kitchen shears.

| 54

Claudia and I were different even in the texture of our skin. Hers was rough like corrugated tin, stretch marks like wrinkles where her breasts and hips grew fat and soft. A rough skinned, hard faced woman, but she had these hopeful eyes like a little girl. Eyes that got wet even at the sight of a flamenco dress—the thought of dressing up and grabbing knees and being covered with hairy legs and arms on a bed.

Claudia’s eyes were always wet and mine were always dry.

Couldn’t be that I wasn’t pretty enough. Prettier than Claudia, smoother arms and legs, long wavy hair even it caked up mud and stuck to my head.

But I was freckle faced, thin and straight, banana leaf hanging limp over myself. Always dirty because Lacorra women were too concerned with keeping Claudia starched white and stiff too see me all the time covered in dirt or Claudia’s lipstick.

Smelling like grass and sweat, ashamed in the Metairie house where Lacorras are born women, women in lipstick, sitting in the laps of Villarreal men and charming. Enough to make me hide dirty nails behind my back, so I sat in corners with my arms around my legs while Claudia crawled herself inside of me on all fours.

Hot rooms all her life and not a day I didn’t see Claudia dressed up head-totoe like some vision of Hispaniola herself. No Lacorra women knew I would have twirled like Claudia—or better I wanted it so bad—for all my mother’s haggling with Yeya, She can go as long as you don’t dress her up. Away from her and in the Metairie house, still heard her loud Spanish—consonants too hard, volume turned up too loud on the phone speaker—warning, Mami, I will drive to Metairie and pick her up tomorrow if I have to.

Sat in shorts, backed into corners watching everyone’s hands on Claudia’s brown body, fitting her into a new flamenco dress so Papa could take pictures.

Claudia got dressed up so much, and I mean I wanted to spit dirt on my mother for keeping so many hands off me. So young and I had already opened up my mouth and swallowed enough of Claudia to feel a woman shaped hole on the back of my tongue where I was not a Lacorra. Not a Lacorra woman, but there is Lacorra in the skirts that sway inside of me, bursting at my skin seams.

Claudia would step her little brown legs into circle skirts that swayed against the floor while Yeya wiggled the sleeves up to her shoulders. Her arms looked thin enough in bell sleeves, but not a day Claudia didn’t complain about the itchiness around her elbows from gaps in low

quality lace. And I could never breathe for so much cheap lace and cotton balling up inside my throat.

Esthercita would layer makeup on Claudia’s face, brown powder, red lipstick so that every word she spoke was framed in red. Claudia was rough even in the texture of her skin. Makeup caked up like clay and simmered under her bumps.

But brown never streaked under her wet eyes, and Claudia’s eyes were always wet even at the sight of Lacorra women offering up a flamenco dress like alms. I wore makeup with her, under my face and on the inside of my lips.

Claudia got dressed up so much and always stood up straight in a polka dot dress—wide polka dots so that her stature was overwhelmed by blue and white playing itself out on her torso. Stood up straight like a real woman, poking her lumps of breast out far. Woman except her eyes would fill up all wet and sad. This is what Lacorra women wrought. When Claudia stood in front of Papa’s camera she twirled and laughed and twirled like her eyes had been dry all along. But Papa doesn’t have Cardenas pictures and Claudia pictures and boxes of them for nothing but show.

Claudia’s eyes were always wet and mine were always dry. Not that I wasn’t 55 |

sad or jealous. I am not delicate, but I know what sad and jealous feel like. Like how Papa took pictures of us both— Claudia spinning skirts and my hands on my hips, trying to jut them out under my shorts. Pictures of us both, but when the film was developed and out on the table, I could only find Claudia in a dozen cheap lace dresses. The Lacorra women watched me spreading pictures around the table, searching for hands and eyes on me.

Left fingerprints on every picture like I know what sad and jealous feel like, but my family couldn’t see it in the way my eyes were so sand and desert dry. Here is what it stands for. Spreading pictures on a table now, I cry remembering the hotness of the guest room and Claudia’s cold on me. Or maybe these are just Claudia’s tears in my own eyes even at the sight of a flamenco dress.

Got my first kiss at fifteen and Claudia had already been inside me for years. He leaned over and pressed his lips against mine, thrust his tongue inside my mouth.

The dirt under his fingernails came out onto my thighs like river clay while he grabbed and shifted over me, rubbing flat hands up and between my legs. He did not jump back at the feeling of four lips and two tongues, at the taste of back | 56

sweat spit, so I grabbed his knees while Claudia reached her arm through mine like a sleeve—grabbed his knees with me. Together we dug ten fingernails into the skin of his thighs his knees his hips.

Claudia gets hot in dirty moments and I let her work my body like she worked hers over mine that last Metairie summer in the hot guest room.

Everyone always chewed up the things Claudia said because her red lips drew attention to them. She sat in laps— knee grabbing and head tilting back so her black hair hung on torsos. Saw her grab Papa’s knee once and felt it in my own stomach that she wanted him to feel the coldness on her palms and fingers heating up his hairy legs. He was hot in his red face, bald spot sweat dripping to his ears. Her nails in the skin of his knees his thighs his hips. This is what Lacorra women wrought. Claudia got dressed up like a woman so much.

Esthercita looked proud holding Claudia’s hand in grocery stores while men touched her waist and looked her up and down. This one grocery store man slid his hand down Claudia’s back and licked his lips, kissed her cheek

while blood boiled at the surface of his stubble face. He had tattoos and smelled like stagnating dirt puddles, all desperate hungry to kiss Claudia’s red lips, lay her on a bed, thrust his hands all underneath her polka dots. I know she would have arched her back and dug fingernails into his arm because I am never alone anymore, not even in my own mind.

No one but me saw that Claudia’s eyes were wet while the grocery store man hugged her into his side. Something to be said about being stopped in grocery stores, and I would have dug nails into him too, just to feel his hands and sweat on me. So every time Claudia stepped into circle skirts, I closed my eyes to feel heavy fabric on my shoulders and camera flashes lighting me up. And all that time my eyes were closed, Claudia was all fours crawling away from woman and into my open mouth.

That last Metairie summer building the stick house and as soon as I collected all the sticks she wanted, Claudia helped me lean them against the side of the house. Sat under them together, but there was not room enough for both of us and so many layers of her thick skirts.

I picked up the hem and felt lace rough between my fingers thinking that it just couldn’t be I wasn’t pretty enough. And

Claudia knew I wanted to wear that dress and spin it around my knees. Could see it in the way I sat backed into corners with cotton in my throat, swallowed all this extra spit and knew that it was not just mine. I was ten and knowing what sad and jealous feel like, but at least my eyes weren’t wet.

Claudia held the fabric against my face and said, This color is for pale skin— want to trade? She leaned her head back like looking me up and down. Pictured myself in those bell sleeves, my straight hips under the dipping waistline. Already pulling the zipper down so that all of her skin was this brown triangle growing bigger under teeth and the color of leaves dying, she begged me, Just for a few minutes, I’m hot in all this stuff.

It was easy pulling Claudia’s dress down to the floor. Easy to undress her, Claudia got dressed up so much. Motionless in the dirt, that dress still made Claudia—looming over it with hard pink nipples and wearing blue panties—look like a woman. So impatient she could have torn my skin off with my clothes, slipping my T-shirt over her head and stepping into blue jean shorts. She was too rough for thirteen, mouth too red.

Rougher now that she was dressed like a little girl. But at least her eyes weren’t wet.

57 |

Claudia backed herself against the house and watched me holding that flamenco dress with her hands around her knees. The hem was this dirty orange color and we had switched bodies. Like I was Claudia dressing up and spinning and she was me backed into corners watching legs step into circle skirts. Like she needed to see me dressed up all woman pretty before she would crawl all of herself inside of me. Here is what it stands for. My bony arms shook pulling up the sleeves like I knew the significance of swapping skin even though I didn’t.

Bell sleeves were bigger around my own arms. Ten years old and I knew being dressed up so woman pretty was worth the itchiness of cheap lace around my elbows. Felt like dry leaves scratching tongues. Thought about hands and eyes on me. Lacorra women hands and the hands of grocery store men who wanted to kiss my cousin’s ungrateful lips.

Once I left the hot guest room in the middle of the night. Last Metairie summer and I cut Claudia’s prettiest flamenco dress into three dozen pieces with kitchen shears. All this desperate cutting up what Lacorra women wrought. | 58

Didn’t know then that Claudia watched me tearing polka dots down the middle from the inside of my eye sockets. Just like I could not understand why she sat in the middle of so much cotton strewn across the floor—all serene like some old woman of earth—while Esthercita slapped her across the face for cutting dresses up.

Here is what it stands for. With Claudia locked in her room, Papa took pictures of me doing handstands on the kitchen floor. The only time I remember eyes on me in that Metairie house. I could hear Claudia crying between the shutter closing, but it scared me that the crying came out of my own mouth. And so much slapping and crying was worth Claudia’s being able to crawl inside of me, guiltless and on all fours.

She zipped the bodice up my back, and even though it hung on me like hand-me-downs, I swayed from side to side, watching skirts graze the floor and smiling. Clamping her three gold bracelets on my wrists and Claudia ran out of the stick house and around the yard. Faster now without all that fabric hanging around her legs. She climbed a tree that was all bursting with broad green leaves. She picked one off, rolled it around in her hands. And I felt that wet

leaf between my own fingers, smelled its stem sap in my own nostrils.

She stuffed that leaf ball in her mouth, chewed it with both rolls of molars. Really chewing leaves and stems and tasting them. Shedding all those polka dots and now she was an animal, jumping out of the tree and rolling around in the dirt that clings to roots. Leaf bits hung out of her mouth like sugarcane end parts and everything was one brown mass of liberated motion.

It scared me that I really chewed leaves and stems, really tasted them while Claudia did. But I could feel dirt caking to my own skin, so I understood that there is cold and there is hot. Woman and girl.

Leaf chewing and tongue sucking. I want to remember Claudia shedding polka dots and eating leaves like one animal mass of liberated little girl. And there are worse things than the leaf eating it takes to keep her quiet in here.

Ay dios mio and I watched Esthercita barrel across the Metairie house yard.

Pulling her out of the dirt by a brown arm and Esthercita slapped Claudia across the cheek so hard that leaf bits flew into the air. I felt a slap sting fling dirt and leaves off my own face. Felt blood rising to the surface of my skin and tears— Claudia’s tears—welling up in my eyes.

She had all fours crawled so much of herself inside of me that Claudia’s eyes were always wet and mine were always dry. It means Claudia’s eyes were always dry and mine were always wet. My turn and Esthercita pulled me out into the mildew air, clawing at my dress so that it ripped right down my back and inches from the seam. Half naked in the front yard but at least my eyes weren’t wet. Even if the Lacorras could see Claudia’s tears bursting out of them. Claudia’s eyes were wet and she ran inside the Metairie house with those little leaf hands covering her face.

Found her in the guest room digging through my suitcase, choking on her own spit to ask, for some clean clothes to put on. Claudia said nothing while we sat together for hours and all night.

Fell asleep on the floor—Claudia in my clothes and I in that dirty, torn flamenco dress. And the moment was appropriately hollow because her eyes were just so soaking wet.

The first man I slept with had aggressive hands and Claudia thrived under how hard he grabbed my skin, squeezed fist fulls of it flat. Her nipples hard under mine, her cold hands grabbing him through the front of my torso. This is what Lacorra women wrought. Her words came out of my mouth like faster, 59 |

warm me up, and deeper. Here is what it stands for. I lay all motionless and limp.

Closed my eyes while Claudia arched her back.

Fell asleep holding hands, but waking up in the guest room all I could see was just how wet Claudia’s eyes were. Just how close they were to mine. Claudia got dressed up so much that she was easily naked on top of me. Feeling her cold hands through that flamenco dress rip and my eyes welled up all wet and sad. I don’t know how many tears were mine but everything around turned into salt.

Knew Claudia was a little girl in the way she unzipped that flamenco dress even though she didn’t have to. In the way she pressed her sticky lipstick mouth against mine with both eyes open. In the way she crawled inside of me, guiltless and on all fours. Felt her cold hands on my thighs, her steady breath all over my face and neck breasts stomach. I trembled like scared, feeling hands and breath on both sides of my skin. I sucked stem sap off her tongue even though her mouth was on my chest.

This is what Lacorra women wrought.

She was cold no matter how hot the guest room got to be. Whispered things like warm me up and I love you and | 60

please and please. Nothing I could do but leave our mouths and breasts and thighs smashed sweaty together. Here is what it stands for. We slid against each other.

I am not delicate, but I can feel nails in skin, and she wanted me to feel the coldness of her palms heating up the blood in my skinny legs. I was not old enough to feel hot in the pit of my stomach, sore between my legs even though I did. The air hung hot around me and there was not enough of it to breathe, it was so saturated with our sliding through space. Just like there was nothing I could say tucked into the corners of the guest room while Claudia laid me down like some hairy grocery store man. She crawled all of herself inside of me. I realized she’d been all fours crawling away from woman and into my open mouth for years. It was like pouring honey down my throat.

I can taste lipstick on my tongue even now because I am never alone anymore, not even in my own mouth. I scream at my mother with Claudia’s words because I am never alone anymore, not even in my own mind. My mother screams back, You are not a Lacorra and you are not a Lacorra and no reason to stay and you are not a Lacorra. The three of us scream together and at the same time. I chew it up like leaves and stems. The summer

Claudia crawled all of herself inside of me was my last Metairie summer, but I have all these pictures of Claudia twirling in a flamenco dress to remind me.

Claudia shreds them with my hands and sewing scissors, mumbling ay dios mio, ay dios mio because her eyes have always been wet even at the sight of a flamenco dress.

This is what Lacorra women wrought and here is what it stands for. Chew up leaves and stems because Claudia Lacorra lives inside me now. And the stem sap tastes the same as the day we tasted leaves and stems together in the yard.

There are worse things than leaf eating.

Like yesterday my mother spit on me and today she twists my arm around my back. So much desperate attacking what Lacorra women wrought.

The first woman I slept with showed me the significance of just how hot the guest room was. I was freezing under her and she kissed me with closed eyes.

There was nothing like pouring honey down my throat. Claudia was still too young to understand and I spend all day and night waiting for her to ask me what it means. But it is a hot room we can only share in the way I share by blood with her, the way she sucks it out of me.

It means this is what Lacorra women wrought, and I am what it stands for.

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Parable/Paradelle laura smith

Water worries feathers more bright than the sparrows, and Mama’s walking to grow you wine into the seven lilies singing in easy array never dressed with crying. Can the water want any more times?

Father’s looked so seventy.

Walking on water never looked so easy.

I don’t turn on up.

Walking on water never looked so easy.

The lilies and the sparrows dressed in bright array.

The lilies and the sparrows dressed in bright array.

The bright lilies walking never dressed on easy water, and so the array looked in sparrows.

Mama’s crying with worries more than feathers.

Mama’s crying with worries more than feathers.

Father’s singing seventy times seven.

Father’s singing seventy times seven.

Feathers singing seventy seven more times than Father’s crying with Mama’s worries.

I don’t want to grow up anymore.

I don’t want to grow up anymore.

Can you turn the wine into water?

Can you turn the wine into water?

Can the water grow up any more?

I turn wine into want. Don’t you, too? | 62

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i move through my body as an elevator A Book About Death cw lott mahtab pedrami | photography

you are grinding my head up against a microwave my mouth is dried-up like the sun when I try to yelp you fill my throat with fingers gagging me to a place where I am all music and can float around the room like a tendril the ceiling becomes a sky I can swim on I go through one of many holes in your head and put on your hand like a glove inside my own stomach digging through systems until we find my poems pretending to be organs and hold them in our hands tiny as bird eggs

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DogsArePeopleToo...

DogsArePeopleToo...

unknown artist | marker

j. corey knoll

Concert Notes

Performance Notes

DogsArePeopleToo... (2007) is a work for solo saxophone, sonically depicting an artwork by the same name. The artist is unknown.

1. DogsArePeopleToo‌ is a quasitheatrical work for soprano, alto, and baritone saxophone. The theatrical aspects involve murmurings, gasps and laughter.

The picture was purchased from a mental institution for $5 during a fundraiser. The artwork was drawn with felttipped markers because patients at the hospital are not allowed to possess any sharp objects.

Each movement of the piece is based upon one of three large animals or monsters standing upon a bed of green grass.

Each movement begins with clear direction, but through emotional outbursts ends entirely different. This is to reflect the shifting state of the artist and highlight onlooker speculation.

Dogs Are People Too... was commissioned by and is dedicated to Ryan Muncy for performance for the Foundation des États-Unis.

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2. At various times, the performer is to speak or whisper improvised phonemes of various languages into the saxophone.

3. Metronome markings are loose.

Both rubato and silent pauses should frequently interrupt the flow of the music.

4. At certain times the performer is asked to circular breathe on a sustained pitch. The performer may stabilize the pitch at any time outside of the notated time durations to maintain the circular breathing.

5. The performer must at no time approach within 50 cents of a concert B (493.883 Hz and all octave equivalents.)

6. The movements may be performed in any order. They are presented in order of composition.

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Performer should quietly whisper phonemes (in a language of his/her choosing) into the neck of the saxophone while simultaneously clicking keys randomly in a pointillistic fashion.

To subscribe to Delta Journal, please make a check payable to Delta Journal and send with your name and mailing address to Robin Collor, 260 Allen Hall, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA 70808 at one of the following rates: $15 Starving Artist or $25 Member. One copy of the annual journal. $100 Sustainer. Regular membership, journal mention. $250 Ally. Regular membership, journal and event mention. $500+ Patron. Regular membership, journal, event and poster mention.

Thanks to Anna Nardo and the Department of English, Rod Parker and the School of Art, Gaines Foster and the College of Arts and Sciences, Tangie and Bobby Stephens and Clarke Cadzow and Highland Coffees for their boundless support.