CCLaP Weekender: October 31, 2014

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

October 31, 2014

New fiction by Oliver Zarandi Photography by Ruslan Varabyou Chicago literary events calendar October 31, 2014 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1 10am Patti Smith

Symphony Center / 220 S Michigan / $20 chicagohumanitiesfestival.org This year’s Chicago Tribune Literary Award pays tribute to Patti Smith, a galvanizing artistic force for four decades. Her debut album, Horses, was electrifying. Its raw energy changed music and poetry for good. Just Kids, her gorgeous, stirring memoir of the era and her relationship with the late Robert Mapplethorpe, made people fall in love with Smith all over again. Spend an unforgettable hour at Symphony Center with this American icon.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 2pm Poetry Off the Shelf: Eileen Myles

Poetry Foundation / 61 West Superior St / $5 to $12 Poetryfoundation.org New York poet Eileen Myles is the most seductive of writers— and impossible to categorize. She will discuss Afterglow, her new fantasy and dog memoir about her longtime companion Rosie.

7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / $6, 21+ slampapi.com Featuring open mike, special guests, and end-of-the-night competition.

7pm Asylum

Le Fleur de Lis / 301 E. 43rd / $10

lefleurdelischicago.com A weekly poetry showcase with live accompaniment by the band Verzatile.

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

enter.com/chicagocalendar]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3 8:30pm Open Mic

Kafein Espresso Bar / 1621 Chicago Ave., Evanston kafeincoffee.com Open mic with hosts Chris and Kirill.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4 7:30pm Homolatte

Tweet Let's Eat / 5020 N. Sheridan / Free tweet.biz With Scott Free, featuring gay and lesbian spoken-word artists.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 7pm

Reading Under the Influence Sheffield's / 3258 N. Sheffield / $3, 21+ readingundertheinfluence.com This month's theme, "Lucky Ladies," features Liz Baudler, Heliz Mazouri, Jessie Ann Foley and Cyn Vargas. Reading starts at 7:30; doors open at 7:00, and those wishing seats are highly encouraged to arrive early.

9pm In One Ear

Heartland Cafe / 7000 N. Glenwood / $3, 18+ facebook.com/pagesIn-One-Ear/210844945622380 Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.

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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6 6:30pm Harriet Reading Series: Garrett Caples

Poetry Foundation / 61 West Superior St / Free Poetryfoundation.org In this talk, the author and editor discusses surrealism and contemporary poetry.

7pm

Dan Pashman The Book Cellar / 4736 N. Lincoln / Free essayfiesta.com As a Cooking Channel host and creator of the WNYC podcast The Sporkful, Dan Pashman is obsessed with doing just that. Eat More Better weaves science and humor into a definitive, illustrated guidebook for anyone who loves food. But this book isn’t for foodies. It’s for eaters.

To submit your own literary event, or to correct the information on anything you see here, please drop us a line at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

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Featuring

Patricia Ann McNair plus six open-mic features

The CCLaP Showcase A new reading series and open mic

Tuesday, November 25th 6:30 pm City Lit Books | 2523 N. Kedzie cclapcenter.com/events

To sign up in advance for an open mic slot, write cclapcenter@gmail.com October 31, 2014 | 5

ORIGINAL FICTION

Photo: “Tink,” by Dustin Diaz [flickr.com/polvero]. Used under the terms of his Creative Commons license.

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It takes a lot to ‘wow’ me. I have a face like stone. I was born that way. I slipped out miserable. My mother wanted to call me Michael and my father wanted to call me Junior, so I ended up with Georgie. Don’t get me wrong, I can be happy.

I can do happy. If something happens that’s funny, fine, I smile. I can smile. But it’s all about the context.

NSAI

BY OLIVER ZARANDI October 31, 2014 | 7

I was at work. I worked in this office for a fancy-dress company that survived off teenagers and college students wanting to dress up as famous Disney characters, but we didn’t actually have Disney characters. We didn’t have the license or something. So Aladdin was called Alabbin and was some black-face makeup, a pink waistcoat, and pantaloons and the Genie costume was a gold fez and black office trousers. The Hunchback of Notre Dame just looked like a cripple. The hunch was a turtle shell that attached to your back like a backpack and you had to put on a suede purple jacket to go over it.

And some guy moved up next to me and took control of my mouse. He said check this out. He whispered. Why? So I waited for him to show me this thing. He sat there and clicked. I waited. I said I have work to do. He just breathed. Still clicking. I had enough time to notice the hair growing on his back. I had enough time to daydream his naked body with a layer of seaweedblack, dandruff pubic hair cushioning a button dick.

And then it happened. He said, look at it. It was a bonsai tree suspended in space. It floated there. It’s little pot and its miniature branches and leaves, floating there. Then he clicked ‘next’ and a pop-up for a Wizard’s Casino came up and then another angle on the bonsai tree.

He said, wasn’t that just the most amazing thing you ever seen? And I said, no, and quit my job.

So I moved back in with my mother. She lives with dad. Mom and Dad. They told me that, actually, other kids my age (I’m not a kid) who do move back home (and, they don’t, so what the fuck?) pay their parents’ rent. I said I had no money and was stone-broke and that my weight problem was spiralling out of control.

Which was true. I’m huge. I’m so big that I sometimes lift up one of my boobs and place ice cubes underneath and use my Casio to time how quickly they melt. I go red easily. I sweat. I spend entire evenings pinching my pubis and crying. My pubis was full of sweat and I could’ve sworn I picked lard bits from under my nails after scratching it. So, back then, I knew I had to change something.

Once upon a time, I was lean. I ate green leaves, yes. Women spoke to me. They still do—but, for some reason, I pity myself more with more fat on my frame.

And my mother looked like hell. She’d been going to the gym, she said.

I said cool. When I went to take a shit, I noticed the bathroom was filled with empty bottles of fake-tan, Hawaiian cooking oil, and industrial tubs of mayonnaise. Mom was cooking herself perhaps. I imagined her in an oven, sandwiched by two sesame seed buns and crisping slowly.

Dad was silent. He was going senile, Mom said. I said cool. But it was actually a shame. He had no awareness. I hovered above his head and picked 8 | CCLaP Weekender

at his bald patch with my fingers to take clumps of his scalp off his hair. I did this because I was bored. The scalp parts were skewered onto his hair like sausages on a toothpick. And he did nothing about it. I picked at my dad like an ape and he just sat there like he was waiting for something.

The second day in and my mom told me that the family was coming over. My cousin, Clifton, was coming over. This made me sick, of course.

The whole family coming over and everybody knew I was there so obviously they picked that fucking weekend to come over. Clifton, too. Just back from a tour in some sand hole in the Middle East. A hero. A hero’s welcome. A hero’s dinner for Clifton.

Well, I couldn’t wait.

So I took out my anger on some computer game. It was an online, firstperson shooter. I joined a clan server and made sure I had my custom spray tag ready. A spray tag is a square image you can spray on the walls or the floor. There were fourteen people per team. I was on the good side. The level was this Middle East level. Everything was yellow and dusty. I selected a shotgun and a desert eagle as my secondary weapon, as well as a flash-bang for emergencies. I was doing well. I teamed up with a guy called ~1337kill0r~ and we spoke over the microphone quite a bit, which was nice. But then I flash-banged him. He was blind. He was aiming and shooting at the brick wall. And then he just crouched. He had accepted his own digital death. So I moved up close to him and said over the mic, you are fucking dead, Clifton, and nobody likes you.

Then I shot him. He respawned, obviously. If only life were like this.

I went to bed and exhausted myself thinking about women and the possibility I was a homosexual because all I could see in my head was a different variety of dick glands floating around.

The meal was to be a real family affair, so my aunt and uncle came over.

They brought their grandkids along too. Aunt Nellie and Uncle Bob, two names straight out of a world war two rationing book; Arthur and Mary, the grandkids, two names that wouldn’t be amiss in a medical history of typhoid victims.

I sat in the kitchen with a glass of Coca-Cola (diet) and a straw because my lips were chapped in the summer heat. My mom and aunt were at the chopping board. They chopped spring onions. I played “I Feel For You” by Chaka Khan and sang most of the lyrics at the table. I think my mom was crying or was that the onions? People are hard to read.

The kitchen table was littered with Mom’s useless magazines. The headline of this one magazine said in huge, red capital letters SHIRLEY MACLAINE’S FACE IS MELTING! And this other article had a picture of Belinda Carlisle’s face, stating that ‘Belinda Wears Magnetic Undies,’ which October 31, 2014 | 9

But nobody talked. All I could hear was the chewing of food. I could hear Nellie swallowing. I watched her throat swallow the pumpkin gruel. It pushed down slowly, climbing down her hole and plopping somewhere inside of her. Nobody talked because Clifton had been shot in the spine. I felt bad now. He looked so small and defeated. His lap looked withered and his legs were kinked inwards.

We ate and we ate, in silence. The sound of cutlery was piercing. Every time somebody spoke, I could’ve sworn my mom was going to have a heart attack. My dad didn’t move, he just sat there. My mom kept on picking up his arm, placing a fork in his fist and closing the fist for him, forcing him to function properly. Her face was red and I could tell she was desperate to shout at my dad and say don’t embarrass me in front of the family.

And then it happened. Bob and Nellie were reaching over for the parsnips.

Nellie looked at Clifton and asked why he was in a spaceship. She got her spoon and fork and started playing a tune on the side of the wheelchair. She thought it was hilarious.

Jesus.

And Clifton got his plate and threw it across the room. He picked up the pumpkin gruel and tipped it, boiling hot, on Nellie’s lap. He said, I hope you fucking die, Nellie.

That’s when I kidnapped Clifton.

Well, not really kidnapped. Not like the way Mexicans kidnap rich, white folk and cut out their tongues. No, not like that.

The dinner was in pieces. My mom started crying. Bob and Nellie were cleaning up the pumpkin gruel off Nellie. Nellie was crying and looked like a raspberry. I went over to Clifton and wheeled him out of the room.

He said, where the fuck are you wheeling me, you fat fuck?

I wheeled him out of the house. I wheeled him down the streets and it was dark. I said we’re going somewhere. He said where. I said somewhere.

I took Clifton to the costume factory. He asked me why I’d wheeled him out here. I said I wasn’t sure. I said sometimes I got itchy feet. I’d be inside a place—a house, a shopping centre, a job—and I’d just get this feeling, I want to leave. But to where, I don’t know.

Clifton said, I hear that, Georgie.

I broke into the factory and stole us two costumes. I got Beast from Beauty and the Beast. I wore a furry monster’s head. I dressed Clifton up as Sebastian from The Little Mermaid—which was, essentially, a red lobster hat with little antennae sticking out in different directions.

I had this thought that I was going mad. I was going to be locked up for kidnapping my cousin and dressing him up. I wanted to go home and suffocate my dad and put him out of his misery. I wanted to be famous for 15 10 | CCLaP Weekender

minutes and write a book about my crimes.

I laughed at Clifton. I didn’t feel like a fat loser anymore. I was in control.

I asked Clifton how it felt being back. He said it sucked and, if he had working legs, he’d run away far from this shit hole.

I agreed.

I rolled Clifton up to the highest point in the city. We looked down on the city and saw all the lights in the houses glittering. I was out of breath and used my beastly tail to wipe the sweat from my brow.

We sat for a while and looked over the city. I said to Clifton that his war was stupid. He said he agreed. I wanted him to, you know, disagree with me here, so I could validate what I was going to do to him.

But nothing was giving. He was just really understanding. I wanted antagonism and all he gave me was understanding.

I looked up in the sky and pointed at it with my fat finger. I said to Clifton: out there, somewhere, Clifton, there’s a glass box suspended in space.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. And in the box, there’s a bonsai tree. It’s just a tree sitting there in space. Silent and useless, yeah?

Oh yeah?

Yeah. The only thing it’s good for is that it’s beautiful. Clifton said he thought it was pretty stupid. What’s the point of having something beautiful where we can’t touch it? Some beautiful things are just stupid.

I told him that I once thought the tree was stupid, but now I understood it a bit better.

I did what I did to Clifton and he had love bites blooming and then sat down to rest. I sat there in my beast costume looking up at the blue Disney sky with my Disney silhouette. I thought of the bonsai tree up in space, out of reach and unattainable. C

Oliver Zarandi is a writer. His recent publications include Hobart, Keep This Bag Away From Children and The Boiler. You can follow him on Twitter @zarandi.

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CCLaP Publishing

Jamie has lost his brother Matt to the war in Afghanistan. What he finds harder to deal with is that he soon starts to lose a sense of Matt. Hurt and confused, Jamie decides he must travel to the place where Matt was killed--he must go to Kabul. There he finds a surreal landscape of mercenaries and soldiers, violent teenage terrorists, diaspora-trained lawyers in a land currently without law, and where he strikes up a friendship with a beautiful, headstrong local woman. As Jamie’s life descends into a series of unwelcome encounters, and Afghanistan descends further into chaos, things reach a climactic head for the British bluecollar slacker antihero, and it soon becomes clear that his rash trip to a land he doesn’t understand may end up holding deadly consequences. A major new literary achievement, and one of the most metaphorically astute looks yet at the Millennial “War on Terror,” The Wounding Time is a darkly poetic contemporary masterpiece, and marks the brilliant literary debut of London author Hussein Osman.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/thewoundingtime

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Ruslan Varabyou

PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE originally published May 2014 October 31, 2014 | 13

Location: D端sseldorf, Germany photography makes it possible for me to become my introversion, visible to other people. a huge part of my photography is documentary photography, where i try to concentrate more on anthropological questions by snapping the human traces, without showing the human itself.

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ruslanvarabyou.com flickr.com/varabyou

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CCLaP Publishing

An official painter for the Lithuanian Communist Party, Martynas Kudirka enjoys a pleasant, unremarkable life with a beautiful wife and all the privileges that come with being a party member. Yet in the summer of 1989, his ordinary world suddenly turns upside down. Political revolt is breaking out across Eastern Europe, and Martynas comes home to find his wife dead on the kitchen floor with a knife in her back. Realizing the police will not investigate, he sets out to find his wife’s killer. Instead, he stumbles upon her secret life. Martynas finds himself drawn into the middle of an independence movement, on a quest to find confidential documents that could free a nation. Cold War betrayals echo down through the years as author Bronwyn Mauldin takes the reader along a modern-day path of discovery to find out Martynas’ true identity. Fans of historical fiction will travel back in time to 1989, the Baltic Way protest and Lithuania’s “singing revolution,” experiencing a nation’s determination for freedom and how far they would fight to regain it.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/lovesongs

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The CCLaP Weekender is published in electronic form only, every Friday for free download at the CCLaP website [cclapcenter.com]. Copyright 2014, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Behn Riahi. Layout Editor: Wyatt Roediger-Robinette. Calendar Editors: Anna Thiakos and Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

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