CCLaP Weekender, August 28th 2015

CCLaP Weekender

From the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography

August 28, 2015

New Fiction by Denis Bell Photography by Nev Nels Chicago Literary Events Calendar August 28, 2015 | 1

THIS WEEK’S CHICAG

For all events, visit [cclapce

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 3pm Paper Machete

The Green Mill / 4802 N. Broadway / Free, 21+ thepapermacheteshow.com A “live magazine” covering pop culture, current events, and American manners—part spoken-word show, part vaudeville review—featuring comedians, journalists, storytellers, and musical guests. Hosted by Christopher Piatt.

8pm Blackout Diaries

High Hat Club / 1920 East Irving Park / $10, 21+ blackoutdiaries.info A comedy show about drinking stories, a “critic’s pick” at Red Eye, MetroMix, and Time Out Chicago. Comedians share the mic with “regular” people, such as cops, firefighters, and teachers, all recounting real-life tales about getting wasted. Hosted by Sean Flannery.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 30 10am

Sunday Morning Stories Donny's Skybox Studio Theatre / 1608 North Wells / Free We performers are pre-booked. We feature novice as well as seasoned storytellers. On or off paper.

7pm Uptown Poetry Slam

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

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GO LITERARY EVENTS

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7pm Asylum

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

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

MONDAY, AUGUST 31 8:30pm Kafein Espresso Bar

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

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 7pm Wit Rabbit Reads

Quenchers Saloon / 2401 North Western / Free, 21+ witrabbitreads.com An inter-genre reading series showcasing poetry, prose (narrative or otherwise), drama, and other “text-creations,� particularly the earnest kind.

7pm Write Now

Cafe Lutz / 2458 W Montrose / FREE chicago-bakery.com An open mic for comedians and live lit storytellers. Hosted by Danny Black and Anne Victoria LaMonte.

7:30pm Homolatte

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

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7:30pm Tuesday Funk

Hopleaf / 5148 N. Clark / Free, 21+ tuesdayfunk.org Chicago’s eclectic monthly reading series, presented by the Gothic Funk Nation, and featuring a variety of fiction, poetry, essays, and other works in all genres. Hosted by Andrew Huff and Eden Robins.

9pm Two Cookie Minimum

Hungry Brain / 2319 West Belmont / Free, 21+ twocookieminimum.blogspot.com Stories and cookies. Both are free, the latter vegan, too. The goal is to highlight new writers and the Chicago zine community.

Hosted by John Wawrzaszek, A.K.A. Johnny Misfit.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 6pm Lyricist Loft

Harold Washington Library / 400 South State / Free youmediachicago.org “Open mic for open minds,” presented by Remix Spoken Word.

Hosted by Dimi D, Mr. Diversity, and Fatimah.

7pm

Reading Under the Influence

9pm

In One Ear Heartland Cafe / 7000 N Glenwood

Sheffield's Beer & Wine Garden / 3258 North Sheffield / $3, 21+

readingundertheinfluence.com “Because everyone needs a literary hangover.” Original short stories plus short-short excerpts of published work related to the theme of the month, such as “Well Done,” with trivia contests that award books and other prizes. Rotating hosts.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/In-One-Ear/210844945622380

Chicago's 3rd longest-running open-mic show, hosted by Pete Wolf and Billy Tuggle.

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 7:30pm Northside Story Club Holiday Club / 4000 North Sheridan / $10 Suggested, 21+

storyclubchicago.com A nonfiction storytelling show that aims to “mix the spontaneity of an open mic with the experience of live theater.� At every installment, featured readers and open mic performers are each given a microphone and eight minutes. Hosted by Dana Norris.

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

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ORIGINAL FICTION

THE

STREETW 6 | CCLaP Weekender

“The city which you never get tired of...” by Lima Pix [flickr.com/minhocos]. Used under the terms of her Creative Commons license.

When Jerry was twelve, he accompanied his mother on a week-long trip to France. Jerry’s father was scheduled to go with them, but something important came up at the last minute and he was forced to cancel. Jerry’s father was a senior partner for one of the more prestigious law firms in the city. He worked long hours, and since Jerry did not have many friends, he and his mother spent a lot of time in each other’s company.

WALKER

BY DENIS BELL August 28, 2015 | 7

They stayed in Paris, in a small hotel three blocks from the Champs-Élysées.

Jerry’s mother signed the register Mrs. Vanessa Polk, though her actual name was Vera, and son Jerrold. (Nobody called him that.) The hotel was unlike any Jerry had ever seen before—tall and thin like his mother. It looked fancy on the outside, but was quite shabby inside; small, dusty rooms with cheap prints on the wall and a tiny elevator about the size of those phone booths that disappeared with the advent of cell phones.

Jerry’s mother was in the habit of taking regular walks back in New York for the sake of her figure, so the two of them spent a good part of every day in Paris traipsing from one art gallery or museum to another. When returning to their hotel one day, they took a wrong turn and ended up on a street with grand, three-story houses that looked like they had seen better days.

There was a line of heavily made up women standing on the street spaced at intervals of twenty feet or so apart. Jerry asked his mother if the women were all waiting for somebody. Her face turned pink and she told him not to look at them.

As they reached the end of the street, Jerry glanced back and happened to catch the eye of one of the women. She was pretty and looked very young, probably only a few years older than him. The girl wore her hair piled on top of her head in a bun, and Jerry noticed that she sported an unusual feature that either detracted from or enhanced her appearance, he couldn’t say which: a crescent shaped birthmark near the hairline on the right side of her forehead. The girl smiled at him in a lopsided sort of way and shrugged, as if to say, I don’t know what I’m doing here either.

Thirty-nine years to the day had passed since the encounter with the girl on the street in Paris. The likeness of the girl was indelibly carved into the architecture of Jerry’s brain; axons, neurons, and synapses configured to the precise contours of body, face–most of all, that enigmatic smile. He’d always wondered about this, her effect on him.

Jerry was sitting in an armchair, sipping a fine pinot noir that he bought to mark the occasion. He picked up the photograph he’d removed earlier in the day from the wall safe in the cellar. As always, his stomach started to churn as he looked at it.

The photo had come into Jerry’s possession, and to his attention, with the death of his mother five years ago. It might have been forever consigned to obscurity, but for the refined tastes of a relative. Jerry was disposing of his mother’s things as a way of keeping himself together. There was a collection of romance novels. He had offered the novels to his cousin, who he thought would like them, only to be told that she doesn’t “read such trash.” The photo 8 | CCLaP Weekender

fell out of a book named Charlotte’s Viking as he was packing up the novels to ship to Goodwill.

The photo was a close-up of Jerry’s mother as a young woman. A dingy, monochrome affair, probably snapped with one of those old box cameras that were in use at the time. Written on the back were the place and date, Coney Island, July 27, 1945. The girl, who eight years later would become Jerry’s mother, would have been sixteen years old then. She was smiling sassily into the camera, pulling her hair back from her face and pointing to something on her forehead. Jerry couldn’t be sure, since the photo was badly faded, but it looked like a crescent moon, identical in shape and location to the one on the girl inside his head. There was an unmistakable resemblance between the girl in the picture and the young streetwalker in Paris. Oval-shaped face, dimpled cheeks, the way the left side of the mouth curled upwards a little more than the right when she smiled, lending a touch of roguishness to the face. You might have thought the two were twins, though the age difference suggested a somewhat different scenario.

Jerry’s mother hailed from a working It couldn’t all class family from the east side of Boston. be coincidence.

Jerry had never met any of them, ties with that side of the family having been well Looking at this and truly severed before he was born, but picture, Jerry he had researched a little of the family history. His maternal grandparents, Frank wondered if he had and Margaret Byrne, had emigrated from Ireland between the two World Wars, a every really known few years prior to his mother’s birth. As far as Jerry was aware, there were no relatives in France, and of course, he knew nothing about the girl. But the paternal family grapevine had it that his mother had been “a bit of a lass” prior to her marriage and one of the uncles was kind enough to pass on something he’d heard (though Jerry couldn’t imagine from where) concerning a hasty departure to Europe in her early twenties, “following an alarming expansion in the midriff region.”

It couldn’t all be coincidence. Looking at this picture, Jerry wondered if he had ever really known his mother.

The room was starting to grow dark with the setting sun. Jerry switched on a lamp and poured himself another glass of wine. This time of day was always the hardest to deal with now, the gray period between the time the markets closed on the West Coast and the night set in with its shroud of anonymity. The time of elephant men like himself and goblin women.

Jerry took stock of his life. No romantic partner, no siblings, a few

his mother.

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professional acquaintances—none that he would call friends. He pulled the letter out of his wallet and examined it for the umpteenth time.

Picard et Associés Détectives, efficace et discret 127 rue Saint-Martin 72001 Paris, France 29 avril 2005

Dear Monsieur, we thank you for your enquiry…

Efficace et discret. Would they be able to find her, as the upbeat tone of this letter seemed to imply? The very idea was fantastic.

Then again, what if they did? Jerry had led a sheltered life, but he knew enough about the ways of the world to know that things rarely turned out well for women who sold themselves. He was, by nature, a generous man— the type of generosity that wrote yearly checks to organizations with names like World Outreach, The New England Psychiatric Foundation, Battered Wives of America. How would it feel to look into the face of poverty? Sickness? Pain and despair? Madness, even? Assuming she was still alive. And what was there to say? I saw you once on the street, Madame. You were young and pretty then.

It was time to start thinking about dinner, though Jerry was barely hungry.

There was a steak in the freezer that he could defrost. Perhaps I’ll fry up a potato in honor of the occasion, he thought with a wry smile. He never ate anything fried these days, not since his doctor had found a cholesterol problem. Better safe than sorry. They’ll inscribe that on my tombstone, he thought bitterly.

Jerry crumpled up the letter and tossed it into the wastebasket. He cast a final glance at the photo and placed it in an envelope. At midnight, he’d take the photo down to the cellar and lock it back in the safe where it would remain undisturbed until this time next year. Next year would be the fortieth.

Perhaps he’d treat himself to a bottle of Dom Perign—.

Suddenly, Jerry was finding it hard to catch his breath. He fell back in the chair as a sharp pain seized the left side of his chest and poured down his left arm. Was he having a heart attack?

The room had become very bright. The two women were standing there, both looked exactly as he remembered them that day on the street in Paris.

His mother was pointedly ignoring him, pulling the girl’s hair back and tenderly stroking the birthmark. See how beautiful, she murmured to nobody in particular.

But the girl wasn’t looking at his mother. She was pointing at Jerry, like 10 | CCLaP Weekender

she intended to help him or at least draw attention to his plight. Instead, she just smiled that mischievous smile. His mother’s smile.

Look what you raised, she said.

Jerry would not be treated this way in his own home by a dead woman and a trollop. He opened his mouth to tell them so, but all he could do was gasp. I’m going to die, his mind screamed as the blackness overtook him, and—.

Just after dawn, Jerry opened his eyes. The pain in his chest had abated and the women were gone. Everything looked the same, but if felt as though something in the room had shifted.

After a while, he got up and walked over to the trashcan. He fished out the ball of paper and straightened it out. The letter felt like a lead weight in his hand, a doorway to another world or a dead end or the proverbial road to hell.

He sat down at the desk and reached for pen and paper.

Dear Monsieur Picard…

C

Denis Bell is a mathematics professor at the University of North Florida.

He was born in London some time ago. He lives with his wife Cindy in Jacksonville, Florida. They are the parents of two great children. His hobbies include reading, watching Premier League soccer and surfing (the web, that is!) His short fiction has appeared in many magazines, both online and print.

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CCLaP Publishing

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THE PUBLISHING EVENT NINE YEARS IN THE MAKING. In 2006, celebrated author Ben Tanzer began working on a series of short stories all set in the fictional upstate New York town of Two Rivers, most of them published in various literary journals over the years and eventually collected into the three small volumes Repetition Patterns (2008), So Different Now (2011), and After the Flood (2014). Now for the first time, all 33 of these stories have been put together into one paperback edition, highlighting the long-term planning of themes and motifs that Tanzer has been building into these pieces the entire time. Featuring dark character studies of childhood, middle age, and (lack of) grace under pressure, these stories are considered by many to be among the best work of Tanzer’s career, and voracious fans of his short work will surely be pleased and satisfied to have these small masterpieces collected together into one easy-to-read volume. So take a stool at Thirsty’s, order another Yuengling, and be prepared to be transported into the black heart of the American small-town soul, as one of our nation’s best contemporary authors takes us on a journey across space and time that will not be soon forgotten.

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/nystories

PHOTOGRAPHY FEATURE

Nev Nels August 28, 2015 | 13

Nev Nels is a photographer from suburban Chicago. He’s drawn to pieces of spaces that are elemental to overall feel of place. His photographs act as brief but contemplative gazes, often packaging ironic or critical messaging into frames of beauty, humor or the everyday. Canons are his weapons of choice.

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neverphoto.com

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Know thyself and nothing in excess. Just as the doomed sailors of Homer’s Odyssey fail to heed one or the other of these maxims, and end up getting turned to swine or lured to their peril by the singing sirens, so too do the doomed characters in Joseph G. Peterson’s new collection of stories fail idiotically in one way or another and end up, like those ancient sailors, facing the prospect of their own mortal twilight. Set mostly in Chicago and by turns gruesome, violent, comic, lurid and perverse, these stories are suffused with a metaphorical light that lends beauty and joy to the experience of reading them.

CCLaP Publishing

Download for free at cclapcenter.com/twilightidiots

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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 2015, Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. All rights revert back to artists upon publication. Editorin-chief: Jason Pettus. Story Editor: Behnam Riahi. Photo Editor: Jennifer Yu. Layout Editor: Wyatt Robinette.

Calendar Editor: Taylor Carlile. To submit your work for possible feature, or to add a calendar item, contact us at cclapcenter@gmail.com.

Did you like this? Pay us 99 cents and help us keep them coming! bit.ly/cclapweekender

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