Volume 3 Issue 3 - The Identity Issue

CONTENTS 4

Forged in Obsolescence JOSEPH S. PETE

37

The Circus SOPHIA KING

5

The Calamity of the Dolls AIKO M.

39

Learning to Pray ALYSSA COOPER

8

Schrodinger’s Chest LINDS JAKOWS

40

Identity Crisis KEN CHIN

10

Clockwork MICHELLE HILLYARD

41

The Over-Full Room BOB MACKENZIE

11

The Truth of What is Possible LOUIE DI GIANNI

42

Close to Death KYLE CLIMANS

12

A Sunflower KELSEY NEWMAN-REED

45

Blue Rivers MEG FREER

13

The Warrior and the Prince JOSHUA HOWE

46

Self Portrait EUGENE CORNACCHIA

18

Dear Suki: Number Seventy-Five / When Love Hurt You Into Poetry LANA BELLA

48

Keep One Foot in Front of the Other ADRIANA GREEN

50

Isolation BRUCE KAUFFMAN

51

Representations LORRAINE LAU

53

The Sphere PATRICK CASE

57

Parasite KYLEEN MCGRAGH

59

Labels ANNE GRAHAM

60

My Father’s Daughter ANONYMOUS

62

From Here EUNICE KIM

20

Magical Women JESSIE READ

22

Porcelain DARRELL HERBERT

23

Mike Scully’s Windmills and Castles THOMAS MCDADE

26

Betrayal MIRIAM SAGAN

28

Suffocating LYNN WHITE

30

Her JOAN MCNERNEY

31

Six Years From Zero TYLEAN POLLEY

33

FEATURE

Trout Fishing on the Verge of the Grand Finale of Lawyers in Love JOHN TAVARES

2

Front Cover

1 SIGFRIDSSON

Back Cover

STEPHANIE SARINO

Inside Back Cover KAYLYN HUA

FREE LIT MAGAZINE Editor-in-Chief Ashley Newton

Literary Editor Eunice Kim

Staff Writers

Kyle Climans, Alyssa Cooper, Adriana Green, Bruce Kauffman

Contributors

Anonymous, Lana Bella, Massimo Cannataro, Patrick Case, Eugene Cornacchia, Ken Chin, Benjamin Dionne, Meg Freer, Louie di Gianni, Anne Graham, Kaylyn Hua, Michelle Hillyard, Darrell Herbert, Gwen Hovey, Joshua Howe, Linds Jakows, Sophia King, Dason Kwok, Lorraine Lau, Aiko M., Bob MacKenzie, Thomas McDade, Kyleen McGragh, Joan McNerney, Kelsey Newman-Reed, Claudia Pawlak, Joseph S. Pete, TyLean Polley, Jessie Read, Francesco Reale, Michele Sabad, Stephanie Sarino, Chelsea Saunders, John Tavares, Lynn White, Joy Zheng, Ally Zlatar, 1 SIGFRIDSSON

Colophon

Free Lit Magazine is a digital literary magazine committed to the accessibility of literature for readers and the enrichment of writing for writers. Its mission is to form an online creative community by encouraging writers, artists, and photographers to practice their passion in a medium that anyone can access and appreciate.

Identity

Everyone sprouts from the same dirt. We may come across those who look similar to us, but our individial uniqueness cannot be replicated. It is precious and worth nurturing.

We may find ourselves tempted to stand tall with those we think are most like us, but in reality, don’t understand us at all. This is where it’s important to dig deep to our roots and question what really matters; to shovel out the excess things that don’t bring happiness.

The best part about identity is its ability to shift and change in the span of a lifetime. Many factors contribute to who we think we are - and whether or not we figure that out is another branch altogether. We all face pressures to uphold traditions or expectations about our identities. But you don’t owe it to anyone but yourself to be who you want.

It’s okay not to have your identity figured out. It’s possible to enjoy all the things that make you a unique and magnificent human being without attaching a label to it. Just because you are born a tulip does not mean you cannot grow into a rose.

Ashley Newton Editor-in-Chief

Contact

editor@freelitmagazine.com

Next Issue

The Failure Issue July 2017

3

Forged in Obsolescence JOSEPH S. PETE

Rust and bone and slag yard.

Heaps and hillocks of moldering metal.

Rank coil oxidated, idle.

Sheen festered, patina rawhide.

All splayed in perverse formation.

Privates in a war against obsolescence, Unwinnable, over.

Roughshod days of barren scrap.

Steel sitting out on sun-bleached earth.

This desolate yard Baking in torrid calefaction.

So much inert viscera for circling buzzards, Economic carrion.

Ragged billowing fence line, Windswept litter hugging edge.

Barbed wire rust-bathed, enervated, long devoid of sting.

Piles of grainy ashen petcoke Powdering the bare rock-strewn asphalt.

Landscape all scarred, deformed.

Grotesque ghost of industry Haunts these scorched grounds.

Rivets didn’t hold.

Woebegone foreman wonders How to explain Cast-iron certainty’s decline.

All rusting, all waning, All that remains is a desiccated husk.

Hardened workers in bucket hardhats Still can’t let it go.

They still can’t pack away their rough, chapped gloves, Forsake the only life they’ve ever known.

4

The Calamity of the Dolls AIKO M.

I peered outside my window, as rain pounded the doors of my ancient house. I could barely see the floors of the driveway, let alone see the porch just because of the intense rainfall. It looked like my house was Noah’s Ark, and it was funny because the furniture in the house would be the animals, and my parents and I would be Noah and his family. It didn’t look like the rain was going to let up any time soon, so I decided to just wait, and sit around. Suddenly there was a loud bang, and I could hear my parents fighting. I decided to come down the stairs to see what’s wrong, and I see pictures ripped in half, scattered on the floor. My mother was extremely crossed with my father, and my father just continued to ignore her. My mother turns to me, her face white, and exclaims, “Oh Madelaine, your father ripped all my pictures of grandmother’s. He doesn’t want us to go over to her place where the sun shines brightly, and we are not in a moody place like this.” I turned to my father, and it’s plain as day that he is furious, but he is also trying to keep calm. My father has a great disdain towards my grandmother who is my mother’s mom, and I can’t figure out why, but I suppose that she is a little on the weird side. In turn, my mother screams, “WE ARE GOING TO MY MOTHER’S HOUSE, AND THAT IS THAT. NO MORE DISCUSSION,” and goes off to pack stuff. My father and I look at each other, and just shakes our heads.

The next morning, grudgingly my father drives us to grandma’s house. Upon arrival, I look to my right, and notice a big mansion with red roses surrounding the house. Judging from my mother’s reaction, this mansion has to be my grandma’s. Although I have little knowledge of my mother’s side of the family, I can guarantee you that they are probably really rich, but they just hoard their money for their own uses. I have never seen my grandma before either. I exit the car, and I feel like there is something or someone watching me. I turn around, and I see someone pull the curtains to cover the window. I shake my head, and we enter the house. The door creaks, and an old lady stands on top of the stairs, staring at us coldly. She gives a warm greeting to my mother, but dismisses us with her hands. I decide to wander around the house to get familiar. A certain black door catches my eyes. Just as I was about to open the door, my grandma ventures over, and stops me, “Little children shouldn’t be opening doors without permission. If you do that, you will be punished,” and she chuckles as she pushes me away. I decided to leave for now, but I promised myself that I would come back, and find out the secret behind that black door.

I waited until it was nightfall, and I slowly opened my creaky door to avoid waking up the people around me. I looked to my right and left, and I quietly walked up to the black door that my grandma wouldn’t let me see. There was this dark vibe coming from the door, and I just couldn’t resist in opening the hidden treasure that lies beyond. I enter inside the dark room, and the door slams shut behind me. I freaked out, and shook to my bones.

I am trapped, and I have no idea what I am about to face ahead. All of a sudden 100 pairs of glowing eyes stares at me, and I can feel them gazing into my soul, and I am frozen in place. I hear rustling sounds, and a doll with red lips walks up to me. I am transfixed by the sudden appearance of this red-lipped doll that I gasp in horror as it begins to talk to me.

“My name is Katsumi, and as you can notice there are at least 100 of us dolls living in this room. We don’t want to hurt you, but we want your soul.Your soul will finally free us from 5

this room, where we can conquer the world, and become powerful.Your soul is the last piece to the puzzle.” This doll is way too creepy to my liking, especially talking about giving my soul to a doll that wants to take over the world. My grandma must have either planted a device in each doll to talk or this house is actually haunted.

I slowly back away from the dolls, but they jump one step near me. “Uhh, how does it work? Do I lose my identity as a person? Does my soul enter the doll that is empty inside?

There are too many questions, and not even time to process any of this!” I said, looking at Katsumi straight in the eyes. Katsumi looks at me calmly, and states, “Your body becomes lifeless, and your identity goes straight to the doll that is empty. It’s painless, and you will become my assistant as I see great potential in you.You have a fiery soul that is well suited in commanding others, and I will let it slide this time, that as an entirety we can change you into a doll without you switching your soul over.” I let what Katsumi said swirl in my head, as her offer does sound outstanding. I wouldn’t have to see my weird grandma again or hear my parents fight. I can be in a pact of killer dolls that really knows what they are doing, and it feels more like a family in this room, than outside the room itself. Honestly I am fed up with the life I have been leading now, and being a doll that can take over the world sounds much better.

I lose my train of thought, as the door begins to rattle behind me. I can hear my mother shouting at grandma, “Where is Madelaine? Why are you holding on the doorknob, but not opening the door? Did you lock my little girl in there? Open that door this instant!”

My grandmother replies, “Bad children get what they deserve. She opened the door I told her to not enter or touch so this is how I am punishing her.” The doorframe begins to break from the constant pulling and pushing that is happening on the opposite side of the door.

Katsumi extends her hand to me, and urges me to grab her hand or all hope will be lost. “The offer I have given you; I will keep my promise to you, but if you don’t grab my hand, there is no turning back,” she exclaims, and I grab her hand willingly. I feel my body transform into a doll, as my views become smaller, until I am the same height as Katsumi. The door finally swings open, and my mother looks around the room, seeing empty space. She is stunned, and turns to grandmother who is completely baffled.

As I look on as a doll, I realize that I am much happier. Although I lost my identity in the flesh as a human, I have gained another identity in the form of a doll, and as a part of a family. This is home, and I finally grasped it: my true identity.

6

GWEN HOVEY

7

Schrodinger’s Chest LINDS JAKOWS

I’m looking at myself now most days, pre-shower and a haze of euphoria finally dances in my head to a beat I’d only ever heard in my dreams because it’s been a month post top-surgery defined for the millionth time as all this unwanted gender finally drained from my breasts in a necessary, deliberate attempt to feel more neutral breathe easier in a body now sculpted into this in-between shape but it’s nothing like neutral even more intensity is what I expect when I’m riding this new high with you — a new cutie— who grins the best kind of gender talk into my face so hard I trick myself into believing you can read my mind and when we roll into bed I expect to feel even more seen but as my shirt meets the floor you. say. nothing. of these battle-won scars bisecting my ribcage how these newly grafted nipples look settling into their rightful place the renewed parts of me I’ve been waiting to show someone my whole life In your silence I hear echoes of past lovers’ odes to these epitaphs on twin gravestones their spirits sing out to me, unwelcome I need you to out-shout them but-- you don’t. this born-again-virgin chest is full of hope so eager to prove it’s less, but not lesser quivering for kisses on every scar waiting to see if you will break into a new ballad un-conducted I hesitate to pluck the strings of your vocal chords invite you to a duet in a key that might slip between my past and present drop lyrics that sound too much like boyfriend 8

find out if you can reach the octave of both, neither improvise a chorus that lulls the ghosts of genders past to rest in peace all of this, impossible in my awareness of this presence and absence Schrodinger’s breasts and flat chest So much that-- I’m not all there you would think this well-rehearsed mouth` fresh off a year of running itself ragged with therapists, insurance, surgeons would be better equipped at placing this conversation heart on your tongue but it needs rest And maybe so does this skin still too tender to be cut with the faintest possibility of a lie I decide all I can do is create a diversion guide you down bury my chest into a pillow (it could bury itself in its sleep by now) get down to the business of losing myself until I’m released in a crescendo of a better out of body experience

BOB MACKENZIE 9

Clockwork

MICHELLE HILLYARD I am not a people person; what I mean is, that, I drown in shallow waters.

Sweep me out to sea.

Let me feel the weight of your soul on my fingertips.

Not just be a thought in the mind of the universe observing itself.

This clockwork; This collection of dials and gears, I disassemble over and over but I can never get it to fit back together any other way.

Lend me your eyes.

I am knowledge-blind and wonder-starved, craving a foreign rhythm in my chest; to stand under a starlit sky and constellations unknown; to slip into your skin and feel a summer’s rain fall on arms that He has never held -- please; let me in.

10

The Truth of What is Possible LOUIE DI GIANNI

What am I? Am I like Narcissus gazing into the placid pool of the fountain? The tiny waves, the slivers of light cannot tell the complete truth. I am compelled to look for greater light--the light of the illustrious Sun. However, this truth is not easily attained. I am coaxed by confusion that is associated with the unfathomable. Something in the air whizzes by that is not easily decoded.

Are we to have a philosopher king? Would this king quell the rage of Achilles for Hector, where Zeus could not make the terms for peace? The relentless Achilles chased Hector around the city of Troy seemingly endlessly, comically, like how we run after our elusive passions. We must be brave and hunt down our passions, like the crimson Achilles. Though, the wisdom of the philosopher king remains to remind us of the greater faculties of the mind.

Is the philosopher king the eye of one, or the eye of many? He or she is the one who represents the many, despite the imperfections of daily life.

Identity can stagnate like a sitting car with an expended clutch. Then we have to find ways to get going, which means actually getting the car fixed.

I ask if there is a way out of hell, and if society has a heaven for us. Community centres populate our region, though at times we avoid them for reasons that are unknown to us. Interacting with others gives us an aspect of ourselves. A twenty minute conversation with someone enables us to change our perspective for the day.

The overcast and dark sky makes me wonder, why does nature make our journey difficult?

If the sky is powder blue while the Sun shines, then we have a reason to find a way because life is vibrant. Vibrancy balances the dark within us. It is our duty to make it through the day with a new idea in mind. We must discover what lingers within us to make way for the new, like clearing out old spider webs to make every corner clean, as elusive the meaning of clean is.

What am I not seeing? Identity is seeing, and what we do not see means that we are not understanding all of our identity. It is not so easy to launch ourselves into the powder blue sky. Maybe there are crystals in the sky that we don’t know of, or is it a vast ocean of eternity?

Either way, there is always a story somewhere.

The window is draped by a silken white curtain so that the outside world seems brighter.

But what is brighter about our own lives? The veil, whether bright or dark, keeps us from the truth about ourselves. The truth is not easily attainable because we lose our sense of focus.

How do you get out of the dark? You get out of the dark. It is the same pattern every day.

Recognize the pattern and all will be well. Life is the art of writing out of hell, and heaven is only there if we want it to be. Heaven is not permanent, it is like the perennial boxwood that endures, from the yellow of winter to the green when the spring arrives, its life rediscovered.

11

A Sunflower

KELSEY NEWMAN-REED I want to keep love flowing.

I want to be love and grace, in human form.

I want to remain as a flower, As the sunflower you once thought I was, When I didn’t think I could be.

But I see now that I always was, This flower, A sunflower, I was just beaten down by the rain.

But the sun will shine again, And I will grow again, With stronger roots, And a stronger stem to hold my head up Because I am still here.

With love and grace And delicacy, My petals will bloom again.

12

ALLY ZLATAR

The Warrior and the Prince JOSHUA HOWE

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there was a prince and a maiden, and they were in love. But the maiden was a peasant, and so the king detested her, though he had never seen her nor learned a single thing about her. In disgust, the king demanded that his son no longer see her.

There is no stopping true love, however, and so despite the king’s commands, the prince continued to meet with the maiden in private, seeking her out beneath the gentle solace of the moon and her cloak of stars.

And it was beneath this cloak of stars, on the night before his sudden incarceration, that the prince said to his beloved: “My love, thine eyes glitter like sea-foam, and thy hair is more sable than a raven’s wings, but thy speech, thy understanding, and thy kind touch—that is why I love thee so. To see thy smile stay, I would pluck the very stars from their sinewy haven and give them unto thee.”

The maiden smiled, but it was a sad smile, there beneath the moonlight.

“But alas, my smile should not stay,” she said, “for one day soon thy father will undo us —never could he rejoice over the gaining of a peasant daughter. Therefore listen to me: a warning call we must have.”

Then the maiden made a sound. It was a soft, high-pitched sound, and it floated on the air like an unremembered dream. It was sweet and it was natural and it was music. No matter how many times the prince heard the maiden make the twittering song, he longed for more.

She sounded something rather like a nightingale.

But even as she sang the cheerful notes, the prince saw how sad his love had become— even her caramel skin had turned ashy—and so he reached up Up UP into the night sky, standing on his tip-toes, and enclosed his fingers around a particularly bright and striking star.

When he held out his clasped hands to her, they were at first accentuated with moonbeams that shot from every crevice and nook they could escape from. After a moment, the light faded and the prince opened up his hands. There, in his palm, was a white opal more magnificent than any gem the maiden had ever seen.

It pulsed with an internal polar light.

The maiden was overwhelmed at this gift, and after she pocketed it the two embraced, holding onto each other tightly as the night passed in the usual too-quick way that pleasant nights do.

Neither the prince nor the maiden knew that it would be the last of their secret meetings, but even if they had known, they would have been just fine with the one they got.

“Hold thy smile,” whispered the prince into the maiden’s ear, “until I may see thee again and greet it with mine own.”

And with that the lovers reluctantly broke apart, departing with the rising sun.

So it was that by the next day the king had discovered their secret by means of a spying night watchman, and presently locked up the prince deep within the castle walls, where no light —and certainly no maiden—could reach.

The maiden herself vanished, and no one could quite say as to where to.

None of this sat well with the people of the kingdom; seeing their beloved prince trapped and fettered like some sort of vile creature caused an outbreak of rumours and discomfort throughout the populous. The king knew he had to act, and act quickly, lest he should have an 13

uprising on his hands.

It came to pass, then, that the king made a decree—he stated that should a warrior of great and noble prowess complete three tasks set forth by his highness himself, then not only would the prince be freed, but his liberator would receive a substantial sum of gold.

This, thought the king, was the proper solution. He could avoid simply freeing his son to calm his restless subjects—for what should the prince do then, but seek out his peasant love?

Further, whoever—or whatever—managed to complete his challenges would be worthy of being called the greatest in the land, and in this person’s hands the king would gladly allow his son’s life to be held. Not only would he be safe, but his mind could be removed altogether of maidens, and filled with thoughts of more important things—battle tactics, for instance.

The king’s three tasks were as follows: the first was a duel with the greatest of the king’s knights, a man known best for his unrelenting will and wicked swordplay. He was highly regarded amongst the people, for he had protected them from evils many times over. The second was a feat of pure strength, which required the task-taker to lift a weight the likes of which had rarely been seen, for it was said that the object the king had chosen was made entirely of shadow.

The third and final task no one knew; the king would not speak of it, and not a soul could get past the second undertaking to discover what it might be.

Nonetheless, from far and wide came the applicants, both great and small. There was stumpy Byford the Brave, who with his ruddy face and sharpened ax was quite formidable to behold, and who claimed that he would be the first to lift the un-liftable object, for he had never met a weight he could not master. Unfortunately for Byford the Brave, he could not get past the first task and was swiftly dispatched by the skillful knight.

Then there was Firth of the forest, who smelled of pine needles and moss after a fresh rain. Boasting his power as ethereal and branding himself a wizard, he somehow managed to get past the knight. But when it came to the second task he faltered, and was labelled as a fraud by the people, who laughed him straight out of the kingdom.

They knew a real wizard when they saw one.

After a while the people began to worry. Would there be anyone who could save their beloved prince from his bizarre fate, wasting away within his own castle?

Days passed and fewer and fewer applicants came. Each and every one of them left with their heads bowed in shame, confused and humiliated. Even the king himself began to wonder if there would be any being so mighty as to pass his grueling tests.

Then, one day, from on the wind there came a rumour.

The rumour was that there was a warrior who had heard of the generous sum that came with rescuing the prince, and so they were coming to retrieve it.

Now, normally, this would have been of little interest to anyone what with all the recent failures, but this warrior carried a reputation. It was said that the figure was impossibly strong, and always wore shimmering golden armour from head to foot. No one living had ever seen the warrior’s face, and so the true name of this mythical person had long been lost. But there were other names. The warrior was called Battle-Dancer, Will-Ravager, Steel-Strider, and, perhaps most ominously, All-Slayer.

A susurrous wound its way through the doors and windows of the kingdom, and people told stories of how the golden warrior had once swam up a waterfall, brought fifty men to their knees in weaponless combat, and stolen power from the starry heavens themselves. But despite all these stories, none in the kingdom truly thought that the All-Slayer would come.

And then the All-Slayer came.

They came on a horse pitch as midnight, with patches of silver scattered about its silky 14

mane. The warrior rode through the kingdom in silence, helmeted head ever turned towards the king’s castle. The people stuck their heads out of their windows and stood off to the sides of the streets, watching in awe and joy as the gold-clad figure rode up past the castle gates and towards their imprisoned prince.

Once inside, the warrior found the king sitting on a throne at the back of the main hall.

Rising, the king smiled.

“The whispers of thy arrival have not been spread falsely, I see,” he said.

“I am here for thy son, the prince,” said the All-Slayer in a strange voice, “and the gold thou hast promised.”

Said the king, “Indeed. Art thou prepared?”

The warrior said nothing, and so the king beckoned to a man who stood off to the side, leaning against a wall. He stalked forward and stood in the middle of the room.

The knight was dressed in deep green armour—though he lacked a helmet—and from his waist he drew a long steel blade. His eyes were like coal, and his beard and mustache were a faded brown. He did not look scared of the newcomer.

“Here is thy first task,” said the king from the throne. “Defeat my chosen knight.”

Still, the All-Slayer did not speak, but unsheathed also a weapon: a silver sword that looked to have been forged from ages long past, when the moon was young and the stars were yet younger. It had a bluish tinge to it, and glowed faintly even in the daylight.

Next to it, the knight’s sword looked clumsy and brittle.

Then they fought.

The knight attacked valiantly, unleashing strike after strike without so much as a pause between. But the All-Slayer danced about each strike as if knowing where the knight was aiming quite before the knight himself did, and in mere moments the warrior unleashed a devastating, single stroke that ripped the knight’s blade from his hands and sent it clattering to the floor.

The All-Slayer pointed the silver sword at the knight’s throat, and then turned their golden head towards the king.

The king nodded. “Well done. Now for the second task.” He gestured at a large object that sat not far from where the warrior stood. “Lift that.”

The warrior approached the object, but paused a few paces from it.

The object was a great stone, nearly the size of a boulder. At first glance it looked as if it were made of glass, with its innards swirling and shifting with shadow. But then it became apparent that there was no barrier between the rolling shadows and the outer world, for every few seconds a shade of grey or black would flicker out from the edges of the mass, licking at the air hungrily.

There, too, within the confines of the dark, the warrior spotted something else: a pair of shadowy eyes that belonged to something—a something that was lonely and angry and cold.

But in an instant it was gone, sunken back down into the ever-collapsing shrouds of darkness.

The All-Slayer showed no fear, however, and attempted to lift the stone. But try as they might, they could not, and the swirling thing sat as immovable as ever.

The warrior paused, stared, waited. Waited for something.

Then, much to the king’s surprise and wonder, the warrior’s mailed hands began to glow a bright light—white as starlight—that shot out in tiny beams from their fingertips, soft and pure.

With these pulsing, glowing hands, the warrior tried to lift the stone once more, and this time it budged. In fact, it did more than budge—the All-Slayer hoisted the object into the air without so much as a grunt, holding it high above their head.

15

“A spectacle!” cried the king. “There is but one more task, which no one else has yet managed to reach. Bring forth the vermin!”

The knight vanished from the room, then returned dragging a man enveloped in chains.

He was scraggily and malnourished, and his best years had long since gone. In his eyes there was the faintest light, perhaps a year, day, hour from being snuffed out for good.

The knight dropped the man heavily at the warrior’s feet.

“End him,” said the king, simply.

The All-Slayer looked at the king, and then at the scraggily man.

“What is this poor creature’s crime?” they asked in their strange voice.

“Treason,” boomed the king. “This foul wretch stole from mine own bedside, and thought to leave my chamber with the spoils of a rich man. To the law his life is forfeit, and in this instance I have named thee Law.”

The All-Slayer regarded the man closely again. He said nothing at all in his own defense, and waited on his knees in a stance so frail that the faintest breeze could have knocked him onto his back.

“If I am the law,” began the warrior, “then my judgment shall stand despite protest, even that which would cometh from the king. Take heed! This man hath suffered long for his crime.

He is fay in mind so as he can hardly speak! And there, behold! his very ribs I can see through his aged flesh. Why, this man hath lived upon the edge of expiry such that his fate hath been worse than that which thou now asketh me to deliver upon him. So it is then, lord, that I shan’t end him, but free him.”

At first, the king’s face was one of rage and hostility. But he stroked his beard, and after a few seconds of pondering, nodded.

“‘Tis well,” he said, “for thou displayest good judgment in thy stiff manner. Thou hast not acted out of feeling, and though thou hast managed to thwart my task, thy decision is a worthy one.”

But the All-Slayer gazed at the king from behind their golden visor and said, “Thou wouldst do well, lord king, to feel more often.”

Then the king sent the knight off to retrieve the warrior’s earnings, and soon he returned holding in one hand a large sack heavy with gold, and leading the prince by the arm in the other.

The prince was not in chains, as the scraggily man was, but the look in his eyes made him appear just as—if not more—trapped. He shuffled over to stand by the king wearily, his clothes dirty and his brow creased. He looked upon the golden warrior.

“Meet thy rescuer,” said the king.

The All-Slayer dipped their head in a slight bow and said, “Young prince, it seemeth to me now that I have won thy freedom.”

“Indeed, I owe thee my life,” said the prince sadly. “But I cannot leave my kingdom, great warrior. For I have lost my love, and I know not where she could have gone. I am afraid I will be most useless for thy purposes, for I am useless without her.”

And then a strange thing happened.

Throughout the hall came a soft, high-pitched sound that floated on the air like an unremembered dream. It was warm and it was lovely and it was music, and it came from behind the helmet of the All-Slayer.

It sounded something like a nightingale.

Reaching up with both hands, the warrior removed her golden helmet, and waves of hair more sable than a raven’s wings cascaded down her back, contrasting with her shining armour.

16

The king and prince’s faces were equally astonished.

“A maiden!” cried the king.

“My maiden!” cried the prince.

“Thy maiden?” exclaimed the king, looking to his son.

The maiden-warrior merely smiled, and her sea-foam eyes glittered in the dusky hall light.

The king, still amazed, said, “Never have I set eyes upon a maiden so skillful and yet so lovely! I must have thy hand! Come, come, golden maiden! Come and be my queen!”

But the maiden-warrior frowned and shook her head, casting a dread look upon the king. “I have chosen thy son,” she said. “I will not be chosen.”

With that, the maiden-warrior stepped forward and took her prince’s hand, and he, happy as could possibly be—and perhaps even happier than that!—followed her out into the late twilight. There they mounted the maiden-warrior’s pitch horse, who had been waiting dutifully, and then took off through the town, riding at a brisk pace.

The people of the kingdom heard the ringing of hooves and stuck out their heads, again from windows and doors, curious to know if the mythical All-Slayer had succeeded. When they saw their prince upon the horse’s back, they let up whoops and cheers, creating a din loud enough to swallow the whole kingdom.

But if one had been standing just past the edge of the kingdom, where the cobblestone streets turned to grassy fields, they might have noticed another sound, issuing from the riders— one all but invisible in the dark, and another who glowed with an intense polar light akin to a star —whose horse galloped toward the horizon.

It was a soft, high-pitched sound, and it floated on the air like an unremembered dream.

It was beautiful and it was happy and it was music.

And, one might even say, it sounded something rather like two nightingales.

17

Dear Suki: Number Seventy-Five / When Love Hurt You Into Poetry LANA LANA BELLA BELLA

Dear Suki: Number Seventy-Five Dear Suki: New York, NY, 72’, I am subsumed by whispers of crickets purring through in this three-room house. You are wettouched of syllables, out of hug’s reach, bevel like scales of colors plummeting from hex midnight blue to floral white, courting my evening black. I believe as I cede into a tactful distance wrinkled of shadows on bedsheets, this is the measured steps in ways that undo the seeing parts of me, that ache in places where toed-socks and wedding bands splintered to matters smaller than fright, until the pearlescent swirls of syllabic tumble take you back, back where you are softened by want, invalid to my heartbeats lying next to you.

18

When Love Hurt You Into Poetry After William H. Auden You will remember to feel the fever over the narrow bridge through the park, when your hands chilled to nothing long before.

And you will flutter an eye from a face of cameo, nesting start in tinctures of pale, as if it were the crow feet’s stare beyond the whole dysphoria pressed into poems, whispered only in the offal of winter baritones, sawing out frail quatrains in curls and ascent drift.

JOY ZHENG

19

Magical Women JESSIE READ

I have a nervous habit of scratching my body like if I keep scratching i can dissolve this body be a masquerade vanishing act body target practice, biting the bullet my bullet proof man, be my knight in shining armour i’ll be damsel in distress not smart enough to realize you are the bullet scratch away who i am like bloodshed hold me hostage at gunpoint body folded small like women notch on the bed post, numbered women like accessory like do you slay women and call them dragons? discard their bones cacophonous flesh stuck in teeth all vulcher pick apart women’s words like muse women are just something to ride until they porcelain shatter until you’re bored with this toy plastic plaything when getting 10 kills by the end of a year means being a man Like what are women if not something to sink your teeth into a number, dissect their flesh rip them open, under a microscope maybe if you cut me into bite size piece for consumption i can vanish be a magical women because i was taught to sit pretty sewn mouth shut to be centerpiece at the dinner table just something to rate on a scale of how fuckable this flesh is take a knife to these bones, slabs of carcass meat ready to be tossed, peel away at my skin an apology, body in ruins that I wear like a slaughter house ready for hungry men their serpent tongue, the venomous sting, when my barbie throat cracks is zipped up tongue tied in conviction too scared to call for a revolution feeling conditioned into thinking i owe sex like like sex be power when you’re a slut something to graffiti your name over me in ownership in ink pull a leash around my neck like noose, your hands around my neck like a noose, bruised don’t ask to choke me in bed 20

because what is a slut if not an object without a voice box puppet for your entertainment scratching myself into a vanishing act hoping my body will dissolve into a magic trick split my tongue open every time i speak you hold it anyways chopped all marionette puppet sewn lips quiver knowing my legs are open longing to vanish because you never saw me as a person as magic like i’m a magical women see how far i shrink

FRANCESCO REALE 21

Porcelain

DARRELL HERBERT Bleeding beneath

perfect porcelain skin

screaming whirring

dripping

machines Rivulets nice down cheeks The night

mare’s

steady

gait punctures the day

Dreaming of an end

to the e n d l e s s

Crawling out, crawling up the walls Blinking under the bright fluorescent lights.

22

Mike Scully’s Windmills and Castles THOMAS MCDADE

“What the hell happened?”

“I stubbed my damned toe.”

“Miracle you didn’t stub your head falling up the stairs last night; gotta stop the tipsy driving Mike. We aren’t the only ones with a lot to lose. The Sox must have lost.”

“That’s the last time for me and the hard stuff,” he vowed, finger crossing his heart.

Maddie had the short brown hair, freckles and nose off an Aer Lingus ad. Her Irish heritage beat out the German side by a mile. She looked like she could lead a Boston or New York St. Pat’s Parade. She was a hard working emergency room nurse at Framingham Union Hospital, did a double shift once a week. Mike always teased that she was thin as a scalpel. He made a grab for her breasts. She took his hand and held it on her left breast while placing her hand on his crotch. “Oh say can you see,” he sang.

“Matter of fact, Sox trounced the stinking Yankees, thanks to Yaz! I met a guy I grew up with. We had a few for old times.”

“God, Mike, anytime you mention ‘old times’ I think of your Prospect Heights Project days.”

“Dean Phelps is an Assistant Pro at the Wannamoisett Country Club where I rarely got picked to caddy. I know he’s an ass but his good looks and bullshit keep fooling the world somehow and me too I guess. I managed to let go of a grudge, bygones be bygones.”

“All in all, I’m glad we live so far from your old haunt and haunters. Now either brush your teeth or hold your breath so I can kiss you good morning and goodbye.” He tipped her over his arm. As she pushed him away, he blew into her face. She pretended to faint, clutching the Newell post. Smoothing her scrubs, she said, “You better be this randy tonight,” shaking a finger at him. “You’re lucky you don’t have to be at work until ten today, “she added.

“Did the girls hear me come in?”

“Yup, they said they’d chaperone and I’d be the designated driver next time you go to Fenway. They wanted to wake you before leaving for school but I showed mercy.”

Mike and Maddie had two daughters, Haley and Juliet, 9 and 11. The Scully family lived in a raised ranch on an acre in Framingham.

Mike stepped on the bathroom scale for the first time in months and was pleased to find he was only twelve pounds over his fighting weight. Big head aside, he felt fine physically and was glad he’d hooked up with UPS thirteen years ago. All the running around kept him in shape. Lucky indeed that truck maintenance gave him a late start.

Looking in the mirror, he saw his brown eyes as stones tangled in baling wire. Gauging his beard growth as work acceptable, he skipped shaving. He wished he’d gotten into the habit of wearing sunglasses so he could hide his sickly eyes, but the bridge of his nose just wasn’t built for it. The little bump that remained from the time he’d gotten it broken in the ring was down too low to do any good. He recalled a Marine buddy’s words: “If God approved of sunglasses, he wouldn’t have installed squinting gear in our peepers.” Mike stood in the shower for ten minutes; switched the water from hot to cold and back again. As he stepped out, he pronounced himself cured.

Over a half cantaloupe, last night’s talk with Dean about beautiful Anna from their youth, a Wannamoisett member with a lawyer husband now, nagged at him. What the hell, Dean would have promised every male in the Fenway sellout crowd a round of caddying for Anna 23

just to glorify his employment. He’d likely angle for a piece of the tip. What the hell would he tell Maddie? “Imagine,” he said to himself,“38 years-old and considering caddying!” He remembered the adult caddies when he was a teen. They lived with parents, a parent or welfare mother in the Heights or in furnished rooms on Montgomery or Barton Streets. They spent time off the course at Rock’s, Hitching Post, Broadway or Central Falls bars, always bumming a rides and cigarettes. Some fantasy-talked of traveling to Florida in the winter and the celebrity bags they’d carry often resorting to whoppers of past visits. Shit, caddying at his age would be damn right embarrassing. It was one thing to carry say, Jack Nicklaus’s bag but not Anna’s, that is, with her fancy mouthpiece in tow; and he hadn’t caddied in 23 years, wouldn’t know how to act, misjudge distances and clubs. Why would he want to sneak into her life anyway? It wasn’t as if it had been a flaming romance. He’d been walking by the cave when he saw Phelps bolt out. Suspecting his cache of stolen goods had been tampered with; he scooted in only to find Anna crying. She was a wreck. The scumbag told Anna he could never marry a Heights girl.

She was pregnant. That was the extent of Mike’s Anna relationship. An hour or so spent together in a cave, that wasn’t really a cave, climaxing with a kiss on the cheek. She’d been sent away to have the baby and never returned. On the other hand, maybe in old age he’d regret missing this Wannamoisett opportunity. For many years his teen Anna adventure was rerun every night before sleep. His Marine Corps stint didn’t have much pop. He ran the rifle range at a base at Dam Neck, Virginia. Strangely, the memory of her was even more exciting than his 9-2-6 record as a light heavyweight on the New England boxing circuit. However, when he met Maddie thoughts of Anna were left in the dust. What was happening to him? Dean had bragged about making money on Anna’s golfing skill. Did he have a scheme up his sleeve involving Mike Scully? “Anna and I have an understanding,” he’d said at one point. “No one knows she grew up in the Heights or the kid.”

His head was spinning strategies, dodges and consequences like when the left uppercut mashed his nose. Suddenly he recalled the box of fancy cigars he’d stolen from a salesman’s car parked outside the Blue Star Pharmacy. He’d shared one with Anna in the cave, calmed her down. All the workday Mike was unable to shake a vision of caddying for Anna and her hubby.

Sox cap on, raggedy shirt and jeans. At a crucial point in the match, he would light a cigar. “I’m going nuts,” he cried out several times. Christ, how long had it been since he’d smoked? Maybe his last was at the Dam Neck E.M. Club. After double parking to deliver a package to the Ray Mullin Music Store, he picked up a three-dollar number in an aluminum sheath at Broad Street Tobacco. Trying to smoke sparked a coughing fit. He nearly swerved into a telephone pole. He’d have to find an Anna Plan B. The continual hacking added an hour to his route.

When he arrived home, Maddie didn’t say a word about being late. She greeted him with a kiss and a smile before suggesting a family activity for Saturday. “Remember when we went to Virginia Beach to visit your old base?”

“Great time, will never forget it.”

“We played miniature golf at a place with a jungle theme. Why don’t you take the girls Saturday to the place on the Post Road with the windmills and castles? I’ve got errands to run.”

Mike started coughing. He sensed she knew about Anna. Dean must have called with a few drinks in him to weasel out of the caddying offer, ran his mouth. Maddie would never say anything outright but there would be subtle and double-edged jabs and stabs for a couple of days.”

“I’d like that,” said Mike. His hands clamped into fists in need of a punching bag.

“Where did that hacking come from, dear? I’m thinking of your story about taking a cigar out of your father’s ashtray when you were seven and getting deathly sick.” Maddie left 24

him in the parlor.

Nothing but crazy coincidence thought Mike, no way that Phelps knew about the cigar.

Was there was more between them than the Heights and baby? Could they have had a good laugh about the cave at Mike’s expense? “Time to leave the windmills and castles to their scaled down selves,” Mike said to himself. Taking out his handkerchief, he spit a couple of wandering tobacco shreds in it and recalled an old caddy named Eric who moonlighted as a tout at the Taunton Dog Track he’d seen do the same.

25

Betrayal

MIRIAM SAGAN how did I expect to be betrayed and what supplies did i prepare from this betrayal? my passport printed with lace my fingertips marbled in pink and black my name and social security number written on the bare flesh of my arm with a sharpie in case of evacuation in case of emergency

26

BENJAMIN DIONNE

27

Suffocating LYNN WHITE

I am being suffocated by this society, pushed into a corner until I can’t breath any more.

Pressed up against the other screamers, the can’t breathers.

Crying out.

I am not being suffocated under the weight of immigration.

Or even the armlocks and bullets of police out of control.

No, I am being suffocated by the vile venom of normality or what has come to pass for it.

By indifference, by dishonesty, by power used to abuse.

What will it take for us to learn how to distort this normality, how to smother this sickness and heal us all.

28

29

CHELSEA SAUNDERS

Her

JOAN MCNERNEY Did you see that woman falling from the escalator at Grand Central Terminal? Lying in dark circles of blood? Begging the police not to tell anyone? She would be alright when she got up.

What about her?

Did you see that woman screaming in front of the newsstand? Hear those screams of hatred spewing from her face? Notice her eyes.... burning slits of light? Maybe she can’t be tranquilized anymore?

What about her?

Did you see that woman walking across the street? Wearing those special shoes? All the toes on her right foot cut off? Isn’t it awful? Watch her getting on the bus, all that pain on her face.

How much longer can she keep going?

What about her?

Did you see that woman? Ashen and still as a corpse. Lying by the side of the Palisades Highway? Her hair so grey, her legs so straight. Lying in the short grass. She was always running off schedule Always trying to be on time.

What about her?

30

Six Years From Zero TYLEAN POLLEY

“Does anyone want one? They’re disgusting,” Estelle asked all in one phrase, unwrapping a mint the color of Windex. Keith jutted his hand out as though the disclaimer “they’re disgusting” was a rave review. I politely declined the offer.

“I need to carry around something to suck on now that I’ve given up smoking.”

None of us were comfortable with the oppressive humidity, but we accepted that we were as comfortable as we could aim to be. Keith was leaning back, his arms stretched out over the back of the bench. Estelle was sat next to him but was leaning forward balancing her ass cheeks on just a few inches at the edge.

Keith’s body had a way of melting into the scenery but jumping into action in the blink of an eye. The contrast between utter calm and lightning fast movements made everyone think he was a CIA operative or a master of martial arts. Estelle’s body, on the other hand, was like a great big sack of kittens, all going their own way and none of them getting anywhere. With the exception of their red locks and baby blues, Estelle and Keith shared no traits. It was hard to believe they had shared a womb for eight months.

From Estelle’s perch, she couldn’t see Keith roll his eyes as he popped the Windex mint into his mouth.

Estelle had “quit smoking” twelve times in the six years that I had known her. Every time, she would give up cold turkey and be nicotine free for four, maybe six months. The only reason she could last several months without smoking was due to the invention of pay-at-thepump, but every few months or so, she would lose her debit card, quite often leaving it inside of an ATM. She was as absent-minded as a goldfish with Alzheimer’s. When she went in to pay at a gas station she would pick up a pack of Virginia Slims and a bottle of Coke without a shred of awareness and be back on chain-smoking as though she never missed a beat. As if her addiction were not to cigarettes, but to buying cigarettes.

Eventually, Estelle would have a hacking session, and some reformed smoker would preach at her, “you really ought to give up smoking. I quit 12 years ago, cold turkey. Haven’t had one of the little devils since.” And as though it were the first time the idea had ever been mentioned to her, she would.... for a few months. Then the cycle would repeat in an endless loop of nicotine and plastic.

I smiled and said, “good for you” as though I believed she really had quit this time.

Neither Keith nor I had anything nice to say about Estelle’s nine-thousandth smoking cessation cycle, so the conversation lulled. We were sat around a table on the back porch.

Keith and Estelle’s body languages were polar opposites. I scanned the area for something to talk about and noticed everyone’s glasses and coffee mugs were empty. Being the good hostess that I have come to pride myself on over these last six years, I asked whether anyone would like more iced-tea or coffee. Keith lurched forward, grabbing the glass that seemed dainty and frail in his hands. As I poured the iced-tea, the mere sound of the cubes clanking made me feel cooler in the sweltering heat.

“I couldn’t drink another sip of coffee in this heat” said the chain-smoking coffee-addict, “but I would like a tall glass of that tea, if you don’t mind, My Dear.”

The last one of the fresh glasses I had brought out to the porch had decided to accessorize itself with a dead fly. Not even in the solitude of my own company, when we are all apt to uncouth behavior, would I have used that glass without at least rinsing it out first.

31

“Oh dear,” I said, walking over to the railing to tip the insect carcass into the gardenias below. “I’ll be right back with another glass.” This was hardly an inconvenience. Having never mastered the Southern art of idleness, I was glad to have something to do.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean for you to get up! Don’t you worry yourself about it, I can just pour some tea in my coffee mug,” Estelle rambled as though she were somehow responsible for the cycle of life and all random events.

“Nonsense, I’ll be just a moment. There are plenty more clean glasses in the kitchen.”

“Oh, but really, I feel so bad. I didn’t come here to make you work!”

“It’s no work at all, really, I’ll be back in a jiffy,” I said as I let the screened door slam behind me. As tempting as it was to steal several minutes of refuge from Estelle in the kitchen, this would only have made her think her nonsense rantings justified. I grabbed a clean glass and went back to the porch as hasty as I could. The instant I stepped my toe across the threshold, Estelle said, “oh, you didn’t have to do that.”

By this point, I wanted to punch the bitch right between the eyes. What was she trying to prove making such a fuss over nothing at all? Supressing the old me flaring up inside – the me before I reached Year Zero - I poured the tea and handed it to her with a wide smile, “here you go, My Dear.”

In my head, I was asking myself who the hell I had become, and I couldn’t help but wonder if my missing person file was still open. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why the old me found this Southern lifestyle so seductive. If I could go back to the first day of Year Zero, I’d have boarded a plane to Europe instead of a Greyhound to Charleston. But, of course, you can’t very well make your former self disappear if you leave a trail of passport scans behind you.

GWEN HOVEY 32

Trout Fishing on the Verge of the Grand Finale of Lawyers in Love JOHN TAVARES

“The other anti-psychotics gave me tremors, but try taking lithium every day.” Barry, who would be dead by the end of the fishing season, swallowed his white tablet, dipped his empty beer can into Vermillion Lake from the sloping rock, and sipped water to chase down his medication. “The lake water is icy cold.”

Paul cast the lure into the deep clear waters. Entranced, he watched the glint of the silver spoon wobbling through the fresh cold water in the sun as he reeled the fishing line into shore, with an occasional musky gliding through the clear depths in pursuit of the lure, which was supposed to attract bites from lake trout. After he finished eating his salami and Swiss cheese sandwich on sliced rye bread, which served as his supper, he crumpled the wax paper and aluminum foil and the plastic bag and tossed it into the bottom of his tackle box, beneath dozens of small storage compartments in his tackle box. His fellow teacher at the reservation school clipped his rig, which consisted of a bell sinker, leader, treble hook, and a frozen herring, off his twenty-pound test monofilament line, slammed shut the lid, and said he was heading home.

“How am I supposed to get home?” Paul asked.

“No reason to be annoyed.” Earlier, after they agreed on a fishing trip, Barry called and urged him to leave his motor vehicle, a lightweight compact, at home, since he wanted to give him a ride in his brand new four-wheel drive, crew cab truck. “I’ll come back and pick you up,” Barry said. “I want to watch the grand finale of Lawyers in Love.”

“You’re kidding,” Paul said, glancing at his Toronto Maple Leafs wristwatch, which showed almost six p.m. “You sure you just don’t have to take a big dump. I always keep a roll of toilet paper handy.”

“No way,” Barry replied. “It’s an historical moment. This last episode of Lawyers in Love could be the most watched television show in history. They don’t even expect the season finale of Nighthawk Nurses will attract as many viewers. They’re even projecting the show live on the side of skyscrapers, downtown in the big cities, and showing it on massive TV screens in football stadiums and hockey arenas. Come on: don’t be a killjoy. Why don’t you come to my place and watch the show? Clarissa should even be there. Remember Clarissa?”

“The lawyer?”

“Adelaide’s boss.”

“I don’t care.”

“That’s your problem. She was looking for a husband and a father for her babies and she still has neither. She wanted you—you could have married her. You could have been her house husband, her stay at home dad, living in her big house on the lake.”

“Whatever.” Lawyers in Love reminded him of the pop song, the hit single and, anyway, the trout fishing he considered promising. “It looks like there’s going to be a beautiful sunset.”

“You could be enjoying the sunset with Clarissa, who still may have a crush on you.”

“I don’t think I’m responsible for any crushes.”

“I’m not blaming you. I suppose it’s Adelaide’s fault.”

“No, she got me the lawyer to help settle my mother’s estate for a decent price. She actually helped save me a few thousand dollars in legal fees.”

“She’s to blame; she set up the date for you and Clarissa. What did you do on your date with her?”

“I’d hardly call it a date.”

33

“Well, what happened?”

“We wound up walking along a nature trail.”

“She likes hiking and mountain climbing. That woman is fearless.”

“The second time we went for coffee.”

“She needed a pick-me-up. You were supposed to pick her up, literally and figuratively.”

“Yeah, I think I know what you mean. The last time I saw her, we strolled on the beach, and she suggested we have sex.”

“Well, I hope you had sex on the beach.”

“I was distracted when she started getting suggestive and thought I might’ve been daydreaming, but I heard her correctly. I said I thought I was hearing things, but she repeated it. Anyway, she is too attractive and upright to have sex on the beach. Her hair is very nice, and I’d hate to mess it up.”

“I told you she’s fearless. She an adrenalin junkie: she sky dives, hang glides, and rock climbs in her spare time; she takes vacations to climb mountains and hike across glaciers.

And you’re worried about keeping her hair neat?”

“Besides, she’s a lawyer, a family court and criminal lawyer.”

“And you’re a school teacher.”

“Maybe it was just a hypothetical proposition.”

“Talk about the paralysis of analysis.”

“Yes, and if I had sex with her on the beach, a public beach, even if it was in the bushes and at the edge of the forest, we would be technically breaking the law. I can’t imagine the embarrassment or gossip if we were caught.”

“You’re such a prude.”

“I even entertained the possibility she might accuse me of taking advantage of her, if she didn’t enjoy the experience or I made the wrong move.”

“You’re also neurotic, maybe paranoid.”

“Besides, I felt chilled; the temperature was almost freezing and there was a cold breeze. There was a chill from the wind blowing off the lake towards the shore.” He remembered how the darkening, overcast skies with their threat of rain showers, contributed to his incredulity and passivity.

“It was the kind of cold that shrinks your scrotum and makes your penis as erect as a wet noodle.” Paul groaned, but Barry chuckled, as he added, “You messed up. Nothing beats sex on the beach, even if the weather’s bad.”

“So you know all about that? I guess in the end I couldn’t believe my ears, because later I thought, yes, I would enjoy making love with her.”

“What are you talking about love? She just wanted to have fun. Whatever. If it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be, but you can’t blame me if you’re still a fortysomething virgin; Adelaide and I tried, and set you up with a respectable woman. Did she even call you back?”

“No, she sounded flustered and flabbergasted. I may have said the wrong thing, because she didn’t call again.”

Barry packed his gear to leave and shook his head, saying. “You messed up. Anyway, we can fish at the lake later.”

“It’ll be dark later and when will we be able to return?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll come back later to pick you up with your lunker fish.”

34

“Go watch your TV show.”

Barry scrambled up the steep sloping slippery rock towards the bush trail. When he thought Barry was safely out of distance, Paul muttered absently, “Get a life, and watch your silly effing TV.”

Barry stopped in his tracks on the bush trail and backtracked to the large smooth slippery sloping rock. “What did you say? How dare you talk trash to me? ‘Fuck your TV,’ you tell me. Listen, buddy, I have a wife and a kid, who like to watch their favourite television show together as a family, and they want me home, and you back talk like a psychopath?”

Through difficult experience, including tense confrontations between students and teachers at the reservation school, Paul learned that, when Barry lost his temper, the safest practice was best to remain silent because it could trigger a truly phenomenal tit-for-tat, unpredictable retribution or temper tantrum. He decided to keep quiet, as a matter of caution, to keep the peace, to avoid a fight, even fisticuffs.

“Listen, do you want to go?” Barry clenched his fists and threw menacing gestures.

“You want to go?” he shouted. The tendons and cords stretched and tightened in his neck and upper body.

Meanwhile, Paul realized whatever Barry drank from his thermos bottle was not ordinary coffee, but a spiked dark roast. He earlier talked to the guidance councillor of the reservation school about Barry’s spurts and outbursts of anger. The guidance councillor figured Barry was an alcoholic, but still an effective teacher and therefore a functional alcoholic. Paul wasn’t certain he agreed, but they both knew for a fact that Barry had a severe case of bipolar disorder, diagnosed by physicians and psychiatrists. Usually whenever he went through these wild mood swings, swinging into a cycle of hypomania or full blown mania, he wasn’t taking his medication, his antipsychotics or mood stabilizers, because he worried about side effects or needed to indulge in moods of euphoria.

Then, when he came within a few inches of him, confronting him, pressing himself against him, Paul, who did not have a strong sense of smell, almost felt relieved when he could smell the spiced rum and beer mingled with sweat exuded by his body.

Say nothing, Paul thought. Don’t even apologize for being rude, even if you’re genuinely sorry for acting rude. Paul figured, if worst came to worst, he would hitchhike home. If nobody driving along the highway back to Beaverbrooke offered a ride, he would stash his oversized tackle box in the bushes and walk home, even if he had close to twenty kilometres to hike. He would pick up his tackle box on the commute to the school on the First Nations some other day. Barry stopped to bend over in the leafy saplings to tie the laces of his hiking boots, and grimaced, while Paul looked away in an uncomfortable and tense silence. Barry spit and hurried up the trail and logging road to his parked truck.

Distracted by the memory of the lawyer Barry insisted was once in love with him, for whom Barry’s wife worked as legal secretary, he continued to cast his line, reeling in memories, but soon he grew bored when no fish, not a lake trout, a pike or a musky, struck his lure. When he caught his line and hooks on rocks, he moved closer to the shoreline and tried to free his snagged gear. He slipped on the steeply sloping rock into the deep water, which was astonishingly cold. He panicked and started to flail, but then he felt disappointed at his own reaction and floated and drifted until his breathing became calm. To prove his own mettle, to assure himself he did not entertain worries about his own safety, and he could survive, particularly around the water, he swam further into Vermillion Lake until he was a 35

few hundred metres from the shore. Then he started to shiver as he felt the pressure in his chest and his heart beating irregularly. He gasped and felt short of breath, fearing drowning and a heart attack, as a heavy weight pressed against his sternum. This time, afraid again, instead of flailing and swinging his arms, he purposefully did a beeline, swimming swiftly straight back towards shore. As he crouched on the flat top of the rock, shivering, shaking, he built a fire from moss, twigs, and broken branches with waterproof matches from his tackle box and wrapped himself in the lightweight foil survival blanket. The shivering, palpitations, and chest pain persisted until he lay down on the rock and gazed at the darkening skies. He realized again he was mortal: soon he would die, like everyone else. When the pain diminished and his breathing was regular, he took the portable radio, which he kept for weather forecasts, from his tackle box. He turned the radio power on, but there was no signal.

He replaced the battery and tuned into the public television station on the VHF frequency of the broadband radio, which, he knew from public radio announcements, carried the latest episodes of Lawyers in Love. He tuned the radio into the last episode of the Lawyers in Love— the first he had ever heard or “seen.” Soon he found himself laughing at the humour he originally conceived lame and dull.

Later, as the spring progressed, Paul went fishing less and watched more episodes of Lawyers in Love, until his lures and fishhook started to accumulate rust. During the summer, Barry went fishing solo for walleye drank at Vermillion Lake and, after he drank a cooler full of beer, he lost his balance while he attached a live minnow for bait on his fishhook and slipped on the flat rock. He fell into Vermillion Lake and drowned. A diver recovered his body near a sunken canoe and police found a half empty flask of rye and a tin of breath mints, alongside his wallet and condoms and an explicit mash note from one his students, in the sealed pocket of his cargo shorts.

Later, Paul continued to watch Lawyers in Love when the television show went into reruns and syndication. He went to Barry’s estate sale/garage sale at his widow’s home, skipping the storage bins with fishing lures and gear and tackle spread on tables, until he encountered Clarissa, who volunteered to help. Seated in a lawn chair alongside a folding table with compact discs and DVDs, she looked, he thought, stunning in shorts, a halter top, and sandals, and bought the entire collection of recordings of Lawyers in Love episodes, all nine seasons in a boxed set, from her. He invited her to his house, which was a few doors down the street from her law office. They binge watched whole seasons of the dramatic series on DVD. During the winter, she moved into his house. When he did not have papers and notebooks to grade and mark and report cards to compile and apprehensive or annoyed parents to interview, and she had no court papers and legal briefs to prepare, they watched the remainder of the series together and slept in each other’s arms on the couch.

36

The Circus SOPHIA KING

Vagabonds, they came to town The Strongman, jugglers, the Sideshow freaks Set up camp for two long weeks.

“Come join the illusion!” The Ringmaster will yell His eyes as red as the pits of hell.

The lion tamer cracks his cruel whip As the Bearded Lady says with her lip “Come here young man, you think this unreal, but your eyes don’t deceive you, we shall make you feel...”

She grabs my hand to take me to their realm Where madness is revered And the Ringmaster is feared.

Lithe acrobats leap As death waits below The Lady on Tightrope smiles, to say “I know...”

Look at that man! He breaths out fire!

While another plunges a sword down his throat Oh, how they must love to gloat.

All is a spectacle for the eyes to see The crowd, they will cheer, but they know not what is certain For they do not know what lies behind the curtain.

Then the clowns come out to play To jest, to mock To taunt and tease the flock Of men and women, boys and girls Here to see the show...

The clowns display that, which they refuse to know.

Their make-up tells a story Yet conceals their true face They have come to make us laugh at the absurdity of this place.

The one painted white, he is the leader Telling the Fools what to do Making a mockery of me and you.

Yet he is not nearly as clever as the one painted red With suspenders that hold on to clothes far too big 37

And orange curls for a wig.

He taunts the crowd, those silly buffoons Yet they take to him kindly For they look on blindly.

For a moment, I know not what is real I cannot see beyond the faรงade As I look beyond, the Bearded Lady does nod.

Then I see Her With the Fool painted white She tries to tease him with all her might.

She comes to the crowd Her face painted yellow From behind Her ear, a flower, to give to a fellow.

She juggles and skips But does not say a word She smiles to each and every one in the herd.

As I watch Her, my shadow becomes light I no longer despair Yet beyond Her smile, I can see Her sadness there.

Her eyes cannot deceive Even though Her mask hides so well That which is Her hurt and Her hell.

I want to touch Her, to take it all away And as my eyes lock on to Hers Without any words I can see and feel that which is real.

As Her eyes tear away from my gaze The crowd becomes subject to an impetuous yell From the Ringmaster, his eyes as red as the pits of hell...

The illusion has ended for the day Come again tomorrow And they shall take away your sorrow.

So it all begins to fade away And She too has disappeared Along with the madness that is revered.

As I stand alone I know that which is certain That I must go behind the curtain.

38

Learning to Pray ALYSSA COOPER

Stumble drunken, like I don’t remember how this body works when I am not resisting it, like I never learned to move freely, like these demons have had control of my arms so long that my hands are more like tools of destruction than appendages, like Jesus was sent here to suffer, and we are being reborn together, holding hands like twins in the womb and waiting for someone to roll back that cave door, and let in the light.

Learning to walk, I am full of potential like a newborn, and if my cells regenerate the way that they say, if I am remade every seven years, than this was my first winter living in a body that you have never touched, and maybe that is why it was so cold, maybe these lungs that have never breathed you in didn’t know what to do with the ice, maybe these eyes forgot colour when they forgot your face, maybe this heart lost its rhythm on the day it became a heart that had never beat alongside yours, and maybe I don’t know who I am now, dressed in this skin that you have never seen.

But I have learned from the endless coming and going of autumn that change is not just inevitable, it is fucking beautiful, and I have always been a good student, bent over books like learning to pray, and I am ready to relearn this body, ready to learn to be proud, like I will remember how it feels to hold my heart in my hands, like I stumble drunken, because I don’t know how this body works, but I am learning and the lesson is beautiful.

39

Identity Crisis KEN CHIN

Who are you What are you What is it that defines you Is it your job Do you become your profession Does a prefix before your name Make you the person that you are There is a saying Clothes make the man Do you dress for power Are you that same person Wearing a three thousand dollar suit As you were in sweat shirt and jeans Have you ever compared languages Compare Danish to Italian Japanese to Vietnamese Canadian English to American southern drawl The lower the latitude The longer the drawl And the langauge has a softer sound There are similarities no matter what hemisphere you live in Does the colour of your skin say who you are Or your ethnic background determine your identity At first glance it may seem so But if children from different parts of the world Are raised in the same environment Interact with each other They will turn out to be uniquely different But the same people That’s multiculturalism Despite our differences Basically we all want the same thing So why some of us feel that we are better than others More superior than others Want to impose their way of life on others And why do we listen to those extremist and fanatics Is beyond my understanding 40

The Over-Full Room

BOB MACKENZIE I would write you a poem and would read it to you but this room is too full afloat in others’ words only you can hear now and faces only you see I am not part of this yet you see them in me hear their words from my mouth and they swirl around me demons only you see but I sense all the same I am not

DASON KWOK 41

Close to Death KYLE CLIMANS

“Happy New Year, comrade.”

Fyodor paused from his wanderings and turned to look at who had spoken.

A wretched old man lay upon a pile of rubble. The air entering and leaving him was ragged and the vile sound made Fyodor shudder.

Next to the dying man was a pale young girl who looked no older than thirteen.

She was looking up at Fyodor with the same, unnaturally large eyes that many people in Leningrad now possessed. As the body shrunk from lack of nutrition, the eyes remained the same, which reminded Fyodor of decomposing corpses. This girl’s eyes were also tinged with yellow and red from some illness that Fyodor couldn’t place. Her mouth seemed stretched into a permanent leer.

For a moment, Fyodor said nothing. The white clouds overheard signaled that it was morning, and he was half-crazed from lack of sleep.

Then, as the words slowly registered, he simply nodded in agreement. He did not have the heart to tell this starving, deluded child that they were already three weeks into the New Year.

“I’ve heard Zhukov tell how this shall be the year of victory,” Fyodor lied. He had never been within fifteen feet of Georgy Zhukov. Zhukov was too busy managing the city of Leningrad against the German invaders who had cut off all roads to the city. That had been two years ago, and somehow, the city had still not fallen.

Fyodor patted the girl gently on the head, “Our time will come. The troops will drive out these fascists.” It would certainly be a welcome change to the Soviet counter-strikes which had been repulsed.

The siege continued, and the people inside the city continued to wither and decay. Not even the vegetable gardens, which were desperately being grown wherever possible, were enough to stave off the starvation.

Hundreds of people had also been murdered for their ration cards.

The little girl’s leer widened, showing rotten teeth,

“Arise, vast country,

Arise for a fight to the death

Against the dark fascist forces,

Against the cursed hordes.”

She attempted to sing the song, but her voice cracked from the strain. Beside her, the old man groaned, and his milky eyes stared up at the sky.

Fyodor was filled with such revulsion and sorrow that he stood up and walked away from the little girl, lest she see his tears. And yet her voice followed him as she desperately shouted the chorus.

“Let noble wrath

Boil over like a wave!

This is the peoples’ war,

A sacred war!”

Madness. This war was not sacred, and belonged to no-one. Who would even want to claim this war as their own? It made Fyodor shake with fury.

Rousing songs would do nothing to help stave off the ache of hunger in his stomach. Rations were cut again, in the wake of the latest failed counter-strike. Only work kept Fyodor from losing his mind. He made his way back to the cemetery.

Fyodor was the last of his family to manage the cemetery, which he did to the best of his ability. It helped him ignore the pains of his body which screamed for food and water. It allowed him to forget to worry about whether his mother, sisters, uncle, and cousins were still alive and safe.

The dead came to him almost every day. Soldiers succumbing to injuries that would have been treated well enough had the city not spent the last two years under siege.

42

Someone was waiting for Fyodor when he arrived.

It was a woman, short and hunched over, straining from the effort of carrying a bundle of rags in her arms. That said, her face was different from that of the little girl Fyodor had just seen. Her eyes were still clear, and hard. Her mouth could have been chiseled out of stone. This was a survivor, one who would not surrender, but who would fight for every second of life that she could obtain, no matter the cost.

She did not greet Fyodor as he approached her. Nor did she even look him in the eye. She simply thrust forward the bundle in her arms. Fyodor did not need to ask what it was.

“He died yesterday. Lost his leg and his arm to gangrene.” The woman stated curtly. Almost too curtly. She still refused to look Fyodor in the eye.

Fyodor looked down at the bundle in his hands, and his hunger gave way to a feeling of great sadness. He supposed this child had not even been five years old.

“What was his name?” Fyodor asked.

The woman flinched, but did not answer. She turned her face away.

“I must go. I have three living children left. They are waiting for me at home.”

Fyodor nodded, silently, and said no other word as the woman left.

Gangrene was a common lie. If the airplanes flew overhead, someone would claim that their relatives had been caught in the explosions to justify a missing limb or two. Fyodor had seen too many bodies to believe the lies anymore.

He did not know the woman by sight or name. If he did, he would be obligated to report her to the NKVD for her ghastly crime.They had arrested almost a thousand people for desperately consuming their fellow humans for sustenance. Two years ago he would have been horrified and would have personally dragged her by the hair to the NKVD. But by now, he had seen and experienced too much. Though he still felt that there were worse things than death, he no longer condemned those who found the nerve to make such a choice. For all his torment and pain, he was grateful that he did not have to make such a choice as that mother of four had made.

Fyodor looked down at the little body in his arms.

“Well, I shall call you Nikolai. Do you like that name?”

He didn’t realize that he’d said that aloud until halfway through the sentence. But there was nobody to hear him and accuse him of madness.

He walked into the cemetery, among the many graves that had been freshly dug within the past fortnight alone. He found a free space and began to dig.

The sirens sounded, then. An air raid was coming.

The rumble of enemy planes sounded on the horizon. Soon enough, the rumble would turn into a roar. Still Fyodor did not cease his actions, nor did he even pause and look upwards in a futile attempt to decide how much time he had left. He simply dug harder, determined to finish the grave.

As he used his shovel to fling hard, cold soil out of the hole, he was drawn to look at the pitiful bundle lying next to the grave. The solitary left foot stuck out, now a bluish-black colour. He focused on the earth again, trying not to think of what the boy’s face must look like.

Would Nikolai’s mother ever tell her other children how they had survived the siege? Would any of them live long enough to know the truth of what they had eaten? Or would she never tell? The nagging questions echoed in his head. Fyodor’s teeth were so tightly clenched that he wondered if they would break in his mouth.

The planes suddenly flew right over him, screeching death and destruction to the Soviet people.

Fyodor heard faint screams from people nearby who feared that their end had come.

He could have run then, but he did not. Instead he covered his ears as tightly as possible and ducked down, beside Nikolai. This grave was big enough for them both, he reasoned fleetingly.

The explosions, however, did not come. The flying machines of the Luftwaffe passed onwards and 43

the sound of their powerful engines faded almost as swiftly as they had accelerated.

Fyodor shuddered, shakily rose to his feet, and resumed his task.

Finally, enough soil had been displaced. Fyodor threw his battered shovel to the side, and gently picked up Nikolai. He could not stop himself feeling relieved that it was still cold, and the body did not smell.

As Fyodor gently laid the boy into his final resting place, he felt hot tears prick into his eyes, as they always did. The day that the tears did not come, Fyodor thought for the thousandth time, would be the day when he would take his own life. For what would it be worth then if he could not mourn the lost value of another?

Without pausing to wipe his eyes, Fyodor got up out of the grave, and began shovelling the dirt back into the hole. The sirens continued to screech, but the immediate threat had long ended.

Fyodor covered the foot first.

“There there,’ he crooned suddenly, ‘your little foot won’t be so cold now.”

He shifted his aim to fill the rest of the grave, gently lowering the soil onto the little body.

“Don’t cry now, little Kolya, you’ll be safe. The fascists will not have you.” Fyodor whispered. He could not tell if it was sweat or tears which ran down his cheeks.

When he’d finished, he knelt down and patted the ground.

“Kolya, this is my father, Grigor.You will like him very much.”

Shaking with emotion, Fyodor turned to his father’s grave, “Papa, do me this favour and look after little Nikolai. Someone must.” Fleetingly, Fyodor felt his soul lift slightly, and the pains of the world were eased for a single, golden moment.

As Fyodor stood up again, cuffing at his eyes, he looked at the other graves which he had dug.

Many of the bodies had been missing some of their parts, or worse, their names. For these, Fyodor kept meticulous track, and promised himself that when - if - the siege was ever relieved, he would provide markers with names for every one of them.

Somewhere in the city, Fyodor heard a crowd of people - possibly men from the garrison - singing “The Sacred War”, perhaps as a rallying cry. Their manly voices sounded more intimidating than that of the dying little girl, but Fyodor heard no more sense in the words than before.

Damn them all, Fyodor suddenly thought. A savage and fatalistic rage burned brightly inside of him as he listened to the words. Damn all of those who long to bring death and destruction, on any side of a battlefield. Death walks upon those fields and laughs at what men do to each other in the name of ideas and emotions which cloud their superior minds. Well, Fyodor thought, he would have no part of it.

The names upon these graves felt real. He was providing a bigger and better difference than any one soldier had ever done for these people. They had died by their hundreds, by their thousands, but as far as Fyodor was concerned, they would not die unmarked.

It was then that Fyodor noticed that the singing group of soldiers were approaching the cemetery.

They were carrying a corpse wrapped in an old rag. Following them was a familiar looking girl, struggling to sing along with the men. Several times one of the men would give the girl a proud glance and sing louder, which encouraged her to continue trying.

After he took a moment to compose himself again, Fyodor stepped forward to meet them.

44

Blue Rivers MEG FREER

Blue rivers flowing down my arms, washing into open hands. Blue lightning blazing down, transferring energy to fingers. Turquoise sunburst on my chest, tributaries flowing away from their source, fascinating, disgusting, so clearly drawn on my pale skin, I wanted to cover it up.

Skin plays tricks. Blood covered by skin looks blue.

Frightening to realize it was blood, my heart’s inner life too visible, easier to think flowing water, pure energy, avoid seeing the sunburst as a blow to the chest, cracks radiating outward, life flowing away.

And who would crack open a child’s heart?

45

Self Portrait

EUGENE CORNACCHIA if i were to be the artist i always imagined myself to be i would paint a self portrait lay in a neutral grey sketch myself in antique white and charcoal black the light and dark of me lay over a glaze of silvered grey wash then lighter still glazes of shimmering emerald and flickering violet phasing light a heart-beat with pure white high-light the eyes to mimic the spark of life

46

CLAUDIA PAWLAK

47

Keep One Foot in Front of the Other ADRIANA GREEN

though you may never understand exactly what it is you are loved for wanted for needed for you’ll know because you’ll find some sort of light at some sort of tunnel yeah, there will be an end but not the one that comes before that beginning that you beg for when all you can see are the demons in each face you pass on the streets you walk down because right now you’re sleep walking, yeah, you’re walking dead. though you may never understand exactly what it is you are destined for born for meant for you’ll know because you’ll find some sort of enjoyment when the nights are long and you just can’t sleep when you are content with your dreams you create when you’re awake yeah, you’ll scribble in your notebook but the thoughts will haunt you see the competition in each face that you pass on the streets; because right now you’re dragging, yeah, you’re dragging behind. but I know that there may never be a means to an end and you should never rid yourself of the passion that boils your blood and your psychobabble flows like a spell casting itself over whatever you want to be saved you’ll get lost in your mind takes some time being lost to be found

48

STEPHANIE SARINO

49

Is o l a t i o n

BRUCE KAUFFMAN isolation not forced

desired instead passive journey a quietness here beyond city noise your voluminous streets of lost beat

of heart

of song a city has lost me as much as i have lost

left it your smoke of days your neon false light your walls of offsetting mirror your loud echoes of shout your clamour your endless elevators and stairs not to sky but to nowhere instead 50

i have heard in whispered tales here of a small space beside a brook it in a knoll overlooking meadow and in the distance mountain peaks they say as well that there is no map to guide you there but if you look for and seek you will find and this morning on an open path i can see the clouds and blue sky full above and in the distance a far off horizon and know i am already

nearly there

Representations LORRAINE LAU

But who will write me?

On the screen the camera pans close to the profile of a wheat-fair girl lost in the labyrinth of London.

Her eyes are fragile blue pathos and unfolding lenses.

That is not me. My shoulders slouch against an onslaught of noise.

My eyes are not ethereal, my fear cannot be filmed.

her legs ripe with youth and wax.

She looks about my size but even so that is not me. My face is the speckled peach at the back of the fruit stand, kissed by the wrong shade of sun.

My arachnid frame spins no harvest in a market powered by thirst.

If there is no one I will write myself in the way only I know In the pages of my friend’s YA novel staining papers, walls, skies a boy stops a girl beneath her cherry tree. threatening blurs of cursive.

Her vintage scarves and love of Keats Is my bookishness not quirky? will alight his footballer’s heart Is my smallness not erotic? while he saves her from tragic backstory.

Do I not fit within the glossy skins of That is not me. No boy touches the curve of magazines and Hollywood films, my throat, where my vowels hide, by being cocky. primed, wanted, devoured?

I’d rather stew in a swamp of lonely than blossom for his pleasure.

If my presence fails to excite you perhaps I have succeeded in On the billboard a logo flashes by finally a model twirling in six-inch heels writing me.

51

52

EUNICE KIM

The Sphere PATRICK CASE

Magic is the lifeblood of the universe, its essence, its meaning.Yet after thirty years of education and twenty more of research, Dysis found she was no closer to even understanding herself, despite all the time she spent sequestered at the university.

A failed cantrip fizzled at the end of the hallway, a gust of wind blowing past Dysis as she headed to her office. All her papers were stapled in a tightly clipped folder; she had worked at the university long enough to have reasonable expectations of its students. And perhaps remembered her own time as a student, years ago.

A long, peach-fuzzed face popped out a doorway. “Sorry!”

Dysis waved off the teen.“You’re probably rushing it. Take five slow breaths before the next try,” she said.

The boy bobbed his head back into the classroom with another muttered apology.

Dysis hurried down the next hall, tapping the wall to reveal the door of her office. She still had some time to work on the sphere before her office hours started. The door slid shut without prompting behind her, disappearing as she stuffed the file into a desk drawer with as much grace as she had patience for. The office had to be immaculate. Desk. Chair. Fern. Everything had its place.

The single chair (a fourth-year conjuring project, decades old) was wood—just wood.

Brown and unpolished, it gave the room a sense of familiarity. It also gave her ass a lot of splinters, even through the knitted cushion, which had been a second-year project. Both were from the days when she’d made things, not ideas.

The desk, on the other hand, came with the office, some one-or-two-hundred-year-old relic that was meant to give some sense of grandness and history to the university. It mostly clashed with her chair. She tugged at a different drawer and it sprang open on the third try, the sphere inside ramming into the walls of its confines. She removed it from the drawer and, thankfully, no damage had been done. All the imperfections that remained were her own.

It was the size of her fist and felt like talc powder with the semi-translucent colour of a sea-sick jellyfish—an off-putting pink-green that she hadn’t been able to get rid of so far. That was what four years of work looked like.

Dysis rested it in her right hand and closed her eyes. She wanted it to be perfectly round, golden, and soft to the touch. The problem with magic was that it was really hard to make something from nothing, and this was a sphere of nothings-upon-nothings. Every piece of it—its atoms, electrons, and the space in-between—had never existed before she brought it into the world with each new idea. That’s why it took so long to make.

It had been easy to start, really. Who didn’t have new ideas, no matter how ridiculous (and Dysis considered ridiculousness a precursor to genius); was the Earth like a space potato? What if magic was just elemental ejaculate? What would happen if she started failing every student she didn’t like? The ideas might not have answers, but before she thought them they had never existed— at least not in the inflection of her mind, not with the intent of her curiosity. Each new idea gave the sphere a bit more form. But now it was as if she’d questioned the entire universe, leaving only herself to question.

Is it even possible to finish? That wasn’t an original thought—she’d had that one a thousand 53

times over. It had made her laugh the first time she’d thought about it, staring blankly at the pea-sized sphere, only to see it perceptibly expand. Maybe the universe had a sense of humour.

She was stuck in her memories now, trying to find what in them could be new, could be special and exciting and exclusive to her. Memories were old things, true, and yet they were what changed her everyday. It only made sense that they changed the sphere too.

Dysis recalled her first love, a girl named Laurel. Laurel had been extremely tall, hair always shaved close to her head, and shoulders that looked like they could carry the world. Many things blurred over the years but Dysis remembered the moment of realization, sharp and sudden, as if pricked by a thorn. But also the greatest happiness she had ever felt—that was such a powerful feeling!—as she whispered, “I love you,” under her breath after school one day.

Laurel had replied in a hushed tone that was still so large coming from her, “I love you too.”

And that feeling! That feeling…

The sphere stayed its awful pink-green, still chalky in Dysis’s palms.

Just another common experience. Common emotion.

Dysis couldn’t tell if any of her recent sessions had actually brought a single new idea, or if she’d just convinced herself that they had.

Could— No.

What if— No.

Grey mark wagon horse— Fuck.

Only ten minutes, and she was stringing random words together. Sure, some of those combinations might be fresh but they never seemed to change the sphere much. It was like shuffling the order of a dictionary—it might be new but that didn’t make it meaningful. Did it? The words were still what they had been before she formed the useless thought.

Maybe it can never be finished. Dysis wanted to kick herself every time that crossed her mind.

Useless, useless, useless. She looked at the sphere, wondering if it might even be shrinking, if the colour might be turning more and more foul, aging into obscurity with her.

Maybe there was something in that one time, when Dysis was 23. Back when she’d been young and bursting with new ideas, never considering that she might need to write them down.

The sky had been clear—

No, skip the boring details.

She had been practicing simple aeronautic spells behind her apartment, trying to make an air current that could perpetuate itself around her. It hadn’t worked, or at least she hadn’t thought it through fully. The current formed, a small globe of air flowing around her at whirlwind speeds. In its eye, there was silence.

Air left her lungs and she felt cold or hot or something, every bit of her body screaming against the silent space as her mind told her what she must do: stop the spell. Stop the spell. Stop the spell.

She’d gagged, fallen over, felt as if she was going to be turned inside out. All in the eye of that perfect quiet.

The spell had stopped when she passed out.

There had been shakes when she woke, her face wet with slobber and bile and whatever else.

The experience hadn’t been so much humbling as terrifying.

She had always read that oxygen deprivation could cause brain damage—how much of her had changed? Had some part of her died during the accident? Had those lights she’d seen winking out as she’d fallen unconscious been parts of her that would never come back? They could be the questions, the answers, she was missing.

54

She felt a shudder, the sphere in her hand changing. It still felt chalky but it was more like dust on a blackboard than smudged talc, and the colour was a more solid green. She couldn’t even tell what had been new in that rehash of the memory. She’d replayed it in her mind so often that she started to wonder how it was that memories seemed to fray, change, like old film strips distorted by a light’s close scrutiny.

Dysis plunged into her memories with new fervor. She tried to flush out every bit of originality she could, though memory after memory turned out to be as recycled and flat as the last. Broken vertebrae? Nothing. Food poisoning on her seventeenth birthday, mid-flight to Redge? Nope. First kiss?

Come on Dysis, can you get any more generic?

The kiss hadn’t been with Laurel though, so maybe that counted for something. It had been with some nameless boy, long before her. Dysis and he had been about thirteen at the time. His mom’s house was an imposing thing of terracotta tiling, horribly out of place in its neighbourhood, but terribly impressive to a kid who had no understanding of what “good taste” meant. There was a retractable awning at the back and they sat under it a few days out of every week gossiping.

That day she had braided his hair and so he’d become daring enough to ask something in return.

He had asked her, rather shyly, if she would mind being kissed.

She’d said no, she wouldn’t mind. She’d liked him, he was nice. Of course, as soon as she said yes, the boy had clammed up, looking at her like some strange creature. She puckered her lips and made kissy noises at him, and he’d gone red like a biza bush. With exasperation, she had taken hold of his two boney shoulders and kissed him.

Inside she’d been roiling, anxiety peaking from the question left unanswered thus far in her life— was she supposed to stick her tongue out or not when kissing? But she’d committed, tongue out. And with the wet, sloppy work done, she had smiled at him and they went back to gossiping.

They hadn’t really hung out after that, but she still always remembered it as her first kiss. Whatever that meant to her now.

The sphere smoothed. Slightly.

I’m on a roll, she thought, chuckled, then got annoyed. The change would have been completely unnoticeable if not for the way it had rippled against her skin right at the moment she thought of his “shoe-leather lips.” Of all the things in the memory, that had been the thing that no one had ever thought before?

She sighed and put the sphere on the desk, looking at the clock. Two hours had passed and though she finally felt she was making progress, there was still so much to go. It sat deep green and seemed to eat up the light bouncing off the polished desk beneath it. Maybe another four years and it would be done.

But, shit¸ two hours. It was her office hours.

Dysis went over to the door, tapping the wall, and it swung outwards. She stuck her head into the hall and, naturally, there was an anxious student pacing a few steps away from where her office door had materialized.

“Quentin?”

The boy jumped and stopped staring at the wrong patch of wall. “I’m sorry, professor. I, um.”

“It’s all my fault, I lost track of the time. Come in.”

Quentin entered her office and she closed the door behind him, though she left it visible, as it should have been. She hoped she hadn’t missed too many other students.

“Uh, what’s that?” he said, then asked the far more important question at a university: “Is it safe?”

The sphere was still on her desk, its unsettling green not budging despite the shadows cast on it.

“Just a project I’ve been working on. It’s new ideas.”

“A new idea for what? What does it do?”

“No, it’s new ideas. Something from nothing.” She picked it up and held it out to him. “Try it.

Hold it and think of something—something you’ve never thought of before. That nobody ever has.”

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She smiled reassuringly. “It’s safe.”

Still, he took it gingerly in his hands and stared at it for a few long seconds as it ate the light from his dark skin. Dysis was about to take it back, then it changed.

Quentin let out a little yelp.

The sphere was the same size but now it was perfectly smooth. A thing of impossible contours you could only navigate with a map. And it was golden, shining with its own iridescent light around those curves.

“What were you thinking!”

“I’m—I’m sorry professor. I didn’t mean to break it, I—”

She tried to modulate her tone to something less accusatory.“No, I mean, what were you thinking?”

“Well, it was something I was coming to you to talk about—my project, you know?” He looked over his shoulder. “But I think I’ve got the answer. I’m sorry.” He shoved the perfectly smooth orb back into Dysis’s hands. “I’ve really got to write this down.”

He sprinted from the room, the hints of flat-feet echoing into her office through the still-open door. Dysis stared at the sphere. Speechless. Finally, after four years, she had a perfect sphere of nothing. Of something. Of both! It was thoughts and ideas that had never before existed, and it was all in one place.

But then, as she stared at the sphere in all its useless beauty, a question forced its way into her head for the first time.

Why did I even make this?

And it shifted again. The surface cracked, inert gold peeling away and disappearing like youth to reveal an iron interior, rusting as it came into contact with the air.

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Parasite

KYLEEN MCGRAGH Flailing unwanted hostage Inhales blood through piscine gills, Pangs against flesh bowl, this Lost soul swimming through arteries.

Spot little fish in consumer maze Sporting leather and ceviche.

Tail to witness fins peddling Back to digestion in the red bowl.

Needle pricks pequeño pez Spiraling on vinyl polluting Brown ooze over ocular windows blinding.

Kudos you little fuck little thief, Bastard perverting cream between thighs. a Tiger ravages little fish’s bowl, Commences hot pursuit Beneath the pale through bloody jail. little fish little fuck, little thief Defeated corpse being pumped still, Spreading decay.

But he hasn’t poisoned the Tiger, yet

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MASSIMO CANNATARO

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Labels

ANNE GRAHAM It’s not my idea to have a label.

It’s just that everyone seems to have one, so, I may steal one - like a hermit crab easing in, crouching low, trying to blend in.

Unlabeled, lost in a sea of labels, I try each one with the hope I will fit.

It feels like a game of musical chairs because I’m the one always left standing.

In a crowd, I tend to become dislodged losing my hold of the borrowed shelter.

I am left in terror of being discovered naked and without a cover story.

I’m longing to find other hermit crabs.

I understand that we won’t look the same, but if we peek beneath the borrowed shell, what comfort for us, to contact sameness.

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My Father’s Daughter ANONYMOUS

I was five years old when I witnessed my first episode of domestic violence. My father was screaming at my mother from across the room and while I can’t remember what he said, I distinctly remember the enraged expression on his face. Within a few minutes, his words turned into actions and the next thing I knew, my dad curled his hand into a fist and smashed straight through our glass coffee table. I stood frozen as our table shattered into hundreds of pieces. Although I was stunned by the sound of glass breaking, it was the copious amount of blood flowing from my dad’s hand that terrified me most.

At that point, my mother decided that it wasn’t safe to stay and decided to take me out of the apartment. I suppose she must have voiced her intentions out loud because my father suddenly turned to me and thundered: “Do you want to go or stay with me?” As a child, I had always been a “daddy’s girl” and wanted nothing more than for us to spend time together.

Yet when I saw his furious expression and the blood dripping from his hands, I was too afraid to be anywhere near him. My mother grabbed me and quickly took me away. I remember her look of desperation as she knocked on our neighbour’s door and the two of us were let inside. Besides enjoying the cookies that our neighbours served, I don’t remember much else from that day. My mother and I eventually returned home but by then, the damage was done. The events I had witnessed would be permanently seared into my heart and unfortunately their effects would haunt me for years to come.

During my teenage years, I grew accustomed to watching my parents argue. In some cases, the effects of their fighting left visible marks around our house. There were nights when I would emerge from my bedroom and find flipped chairs, cracked walls, and broken appliances. Although my parents would make up quickly enough, it always broke my heart to see the damage the next morning. Every crack on the floor, every dented table, and every chip on the wall served as a scathing reminder of the fear and instability in our home. By my last year of high school, I knew I wanted to move. I decided to apply to a few out-of-town universities and was accepted into one that was six hours away. As an only child, I knew the separation would be hard on both my parents and me. Nonetheless, a small part of me was relieved. There would be challenges to face, but watching my parents argue (and everything that accompanied that), would not be one of them.

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I began to see a shift in my family’s relationship.

In my second year of university, I had a radical, spiritual encounter, which resulted in my conversion to Christianity. Needless to say, my new faith had a profound impact on my identity. I was instantly delivered of an eight-year addiction, formed new, meaningful relationships, and even changed my major to religious studies. My speech and behaviour were so different, that it eventually affected my parents as well. Approximately one year later, my father drove me home for Christmas vacation and in a quiet voice he explained that my mother had experienced a similar transformation. She had recently undergone a surgery and although it was successful, she was confined to bed rest for three months. During that time, she renewed her faith in God and the evidence was in her behaviour. From what my father told me, my mom was much more kind, compassionate, and forgiving. She began to love the people who had wronged her including my dad’s family. Considering that this family drama was often a cause of my 60

parents’ arguments, I knew that this was pretty significant. Before long, my dad also renewed his faith and began to make positive changes in his life. He quit drinking, which alone was a radical change because of his family history and because alcohol usually precipitated his anger. Of course, my parents still argued but it was never to the same extent as before.

It seemed like both my past and my pain were far behind me. Little did I know that I would soon become the very thing I hated.

One night, my parents and I were sitting in our living room talking to one another. In the middle of our conversation, my dad made an off hand comment about my perceived cleaning habits. I immediately got defensive and after a few choice words, my father and I found ourselves in a verbal warzone. It didn’t take long for things to escalate from there. My father’s words got louder and louder, and within a few seconds, we were both in front of each other’s faces, trying to assert our dominance. Our insults and screaming got so intense that pretty soon, my mother felt the need to intervene. She convinced us to move upstairs and give each other some space. Although my dad and I listened to the first half of her suggestion, we continued arguing outside my bedroom. After ten more minutes of our shouting match, I got so frustrated that I kicked the wall in front of me. Much to my astonishment, my foot went straight through, leaving a sizeable hole.

I was immediately overcome with shame. Despite everything I had seen growing up, I had somehow managed to emulate father. In the blink of an eye, I had become the very thing I hated.

As is often the case in my family, my dad and I made up relatively quickly. I apologized for the disrespectful things I said and pledged to never repeat my mistake. Although I knew my dad forgave me, I had a much harder time forgiving myself. For the next week, every time I walked into my bedroom, the hole in my wall reminded me what I was capable of. For the first time in my life, it wasn’t my parents who had destroyed a piece of our home; it was me. This time around, I had no one else to blame. I had become my five-year-old self’s worst nightmare and as much as I hated to admit it, I was most definitely my father’s daughter.

Looking back, I’ve realized that my past is still very much a part of who I am. Growing up in a home with domestic violence has affected me in ways that I’m only just starting to discover. It’s caused me to be scared and mistrusting, to the point where every time my fiancé and I argue, a part of me wonders if he’ll ever physically harm me. Of course, he’s never (ever) given me a reason to believe this, but it’s hard to trust someone when you’ve grown up seeing something else. I’ve also learned that DV didn’t just make me a victim, it also made me more likely to become a perpetrator. Though the hole in the wall was an isolated incident and partly a fluke, I fear that maybe there’s a part of me that is capable of violent anger. Moreover, it’s made me fear for my future. I fear that I will turn into a person who shows no self-restrain and gives in to her unbridled anger. Second, I fear that I will make the same mistakes in my marriage, and that I will either hurt or be hurt by my husband. Last, and perhaps most importantly, I fear for my future children. I fear that I may one day subject them to the same feelings of anxiety, helplessness, and pain that I experienced growing up.

Although I hope my fears never come to pass, I know that ultimately, the choice is mine. For better or for worse, these are my experiences and I can choose either to overcome them, or be overcome by them. At the end of the day, I need to decide for myself who I’m going to be, and although domestic violence is a part of my past, it doesn’t need to be a part of my future.

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From Here EUNICE KIM

how many times have i been here i recognize those walking on the lakefront tracing their breaths along the water unfamiliar faces but familiar steps how long ago was the last the grass isn’t as soft as i remember the sky greyer than the concrete how deep did my roots stretch beneath the dirt how much dust has collected in my absence moulting off a layer i’m shedding this scent this tint of light this sweat soaked into my skin wash me clean of this place how much of me did i leave behind how fresh is the rising air how soon is my season for bloom

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OUR CONTRIBUTORS...

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