Divulge Magazine by julia rivera

divulge the magazine of contemporary literature and culture

mark leidner valĂŠrio romĂŁo joe wederoth michael hurled heroine lee dave gates steffi klenz

Issue No. 1 Autumn 2013

divulge

Issuse No. 1 Autumn,2013

focus 25

Beauty Was the Case They Gave Me

Mark Leidner's new book

How We Got Mother Back Read it first here by Valério Romão

Letters to Wendy

Fill up with Joe Wederoth

The art of biography No. 1

The art of biography No. 2

Michael Hurled

Heroine Lee

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habituals 06

preempt

Editors note

fresh press

spotlight

I Used To Be Darker

patlette

Press Art

rythem

Spoken word vs. rap

lineation

141

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The seasons literary picks

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Selected poetry

fin Submissions and maual labour

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words 89

The Captain Fiction by Rattawut Lapcharoensap

96 Tour Guide Archive of modern conflict, intro by Phil Klay 102

False Spring Fiction by Ben Lerner

111 The Last Days of Baldock

Essay by Nara Verzemmieks

121

Seestück

Portraits by Steffi Klenz

134

The Curse of the Davenports

Fiction by Dave Gates

fresh press n ewly pu b lish e d wr iti ngs to end her life, and an enormous fortune has

farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the

been discovered in the home of a luckless

explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the

drunk. Moody is soon drawn into the mystery:

most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by

a network of fates and fortunes that is

the United States.

as complex and exquisitely patterned as the night sky.

The Wish Book: Poems Alex Emon

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the

Milkweed Editions • Feb. 11, 2013 • Poetry • 88 pages

Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

In his first collection since Fancy Beasts, a

Eric Schlosser

book that “sliced straight through nerve

Penguin Group • Sept. 19, 2013 • Nonfiction • 640 pages

and marrow on its way to the heart and mind

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser

of the matter” (Tracy K. Smith), Alex

digs deep to uncover secrets about the

Lemon dazzles us again with his exuberance

management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A

and candor. Whether in unrestrained

ground-breaking account of accidents, near-

descriptions of sensory overload or tender

misses, extraordinary heroism, and

meditation fatherhood and mortality, Lemon

technological breakthroughs, Command and

blurs that nebulous line between the personal

Returning Raconteurs

Control explores the dilemma that has

and the pop-cultural. These poems are full of

existed since the dawn of the nuclear age:

frenetic energy and images pleasantly,

This season releases new works from a few

how do you deploy weapons of mass

strangely colliding: jigsaws and bathtubs and

favorite storytellers across genres.

destruction without being destroyed by them?

kung-fu and X-rays. It’s a distinct brand of

Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate

edginess that readers of Lemon will once

The Luminaries

thriller, Command and Control interweaves the

again applaud. A lean and muscular

Eleanor Catton

minute-by-minute story of an accident at a

collection, The Wish Book marks a new high in

Little Brown • Oct. 15, 2013 • Fiction • 848 pages

nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a

this poet’s unstoppable career.

From the author of The Rehearsal and short-

historical narrative that spans more than

listed for the Man Booker Prize, a breath

fifty years. At the heart of the book lies the

taking feat of storytelling where everything is

struggle, amid the rolling hills and small

connected, but nothing is as it seems.... It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On the stormy night of his arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a prostitute has tried 8

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spotlight

has little to offer beyond those palatable ingredients, but

sti r r i ng n ew fi lms

Porterfield often seems more interested in using the scenario

Porterfield’s New Film Brings Beautiful Elegies

to establish a series of melancholic tones with incredibly effective results. The two

Eric Kahn

real-life musicians in

Standard Releasing - Oct. 4, 2013

the parental roles, Taylor and Oldham, perform original compositions throughout the movie and

In the follow up to the poetic explorations of his

often commandeer it,

s sleeper hit “Putty Hill,” Porterfield similarly

elevating the exper-

weaves realism and a rigid storytelling

ience beyond its linear

structure together with affecting results in “I

story to convey the

Used to Be Darker” Even though it adheres

melancholic soul-

more closely to familiar patterns in its percep-

searching plaguing the entire ensemble. Reteaming with

tive examination of a deteriorating American

cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier, Porterfield frequently

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family, it’s not your typical

views his characters from afar in long shots surrounded

divorce drama, “I Used to Be

by open space, as if they’ve been dwarfed by the pressures

Darker” stings harder than most.

surrounding them creating a distancing effect from

the material; however, the cerebral direction is frequently

Porterfield’s third feature, co-

written by Amy Belk, takes place

Taryn (Deragh Campbell), Kim’s

salvaged by the music, a series of beautiful elegies

in the aftermath of a decision by

niece and Abby’s first cousin, an

emphasized by their contextualization.

middle-aged couple Kim (Kim

alienated teen who ran away

Taylor) and Bill (Ned Oldham) to

from her family in Northern

end their marriage, much to the

Ireland before causing a ruckus

frustration of their daughter,

in Maryland and crashing with

“I just want to wake up and see your face next to me. Every regret I will go set it free. It will be good for me.”

college newbie Abby (Hannah

her shell-shocked relatives.

Gross). Into this mess lands

While Kim and Bill attempt to

In one scene, Oldham delivers a solemn ballad while

care for the young woman in the

sitting alone at home, only to lash out violently following

midst of their own problems,

its climax. It’s a surprisingly powerful moment that

Abby grows increasingly resent-

transcends the more conventional events surrounding it.

ful of her mother and Taryn

evades the mounting pressure to

kernel of hope. “I don’t write songs any more,” sighs Bill,

call her parents.

but then proceeds to do just that, leading to the conclusion

Plotwise, “I Used to Be Darker”

that creativity is the ultimate survival tactic.

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Despite its downbeat premise, the movie contains a

palette arousi ng i mag e ry

such as those by Varvara Stepanova, tried to show a new world. Fernando Botero reflected on the whole misery of Columbia through a painting with an oversize violin on a table together with pork sausages and a newspaper: la patria. The Dadaists saw their world torn apart by World War I and recognized that a new clash was imminent. Kurt Schwitters made a superb collage in 1930 with an article about Hitler wherein he says, “I am a writer and live from my income”; Schwitters gave his collage the

photographs with new techniques. It is no coincidence that Any Warhol's magazine Interview became a piece of art as soon as he signed the cover. A remarkable print on newspaper by

Press Art From the collection of Annette and Peter Nobel told by Peter Nobel

The nineteenth century saw a number of artworks in which people read newspapers to themselves or, supposedly out loud, to a small audience, sometimes a family, them the cubists—Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris—started collage daily news papers into their works. These artists undertook a mew style of painting, one that would explore synthetic abstraction and, equally relationship with technology. They took the newspaper as an advanced technical means of modernity and an expression of continuous change: news of the day—every day. With my wife, Annette, I discovered that, for the past century, a majority of artists had—at a certain time or for a specific occasion—had painted, collaged, drawn, or played with printed material. The Russian post-revolutionary collages, 12

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title Man soll nicht assen mit Phrasen (You Should Beware of Hot Air). Pop art then became the delusion and illusion of modern times, its artists working with printed material, painting newspaper articles, making

left: Annelies Bürgin, Roulette, 1984, newspaper and acrylic on paper, 20" x 15 3/5" top right: Daniela Keiser, Botanik (details), 2012 color photographs on aluminum, each 7" x 10 1/2" bottom right: Petr Axenoff, Princess Diana (detail), 2011 photo print on canvas , 47 1/4" x 31 /2"

palette arousi ng i mag e ry Joseph Beuys and Hans Herman

a painting by Sigmar Polke, for

says that new things can only

instance, for several years—a

come out of chaos. Willem de

large piece he had done in Zurich

Kooning liked to paint on

on Swiss newspapers and

newspaper, whereas Richard

sprayed with the slogan “Gegen

Prince is fonder of (pornographic)

die zwei Supermächte für cine

magazines. This list is endless

rote Schweiz” (Against the two

and touches all continents.

superpowers for a red

The name “Press Art” was, to

Switzerland). We are still far

my knowledge, first used in 1972,

away from such perspectives, but

when a Swiss newspaper—

the pinging is superb.

National-Zeitung of Basel—began publishing a Saturday page with artwork specially made for the top left: Youshen Wang, Newspaper (Washing Series) (detail), 19932007, color photograph and water. 46 1/2" x 30 2/3" bottom: Oswald Oberhuber, Untitled (detail), 1999, offset on newsprint, 18 1/2" x 24 4/5"

paper; one could also subscribe to and receive a detached, signed copy of this page. Series such as this are still in vogue today. The German Die Welt publishes one which a well-known artists changes all the photos in the print edition, and it even publishes a separate, signed copy

top right: Kurt Schwitters, Man soll nicht asen mit Phrasen (you Should Beware of Hot Air), 1930, collage on cardboard, 14 3/8" x 11 1/5" center: Hooper Turner, Helvetiva Alphabet (details), 2012 oil on paper, each approx., 10 2/5" x 8 1/10”

of the newspaper’s front page. Our collection comprises more than a thousand words of art by 485 artists. Going through an exhibition of the collection is always a great joy for me. For certain pieces, we had to wait quite a long time. I chased

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beauty was the case they gave me

No Snoop Dogg here, just Mark Leidner, irony and his latest book. by Robert Christophers

ou may come to this book looking for a stance on Beauty. You may come to it looking for more Snoop Dogg references. You may come looking for a catalog of Mark Leidner’s Twitter feed. In each of these cases you will arrive misguided, but by the time you realize it you will be halfway through this immanently readable book and a couple of express stops past your intended subway exit. In adopting the serial aphorism for his debut collection of poetry, Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me (Factory Hollow 2011), Leidner doesn’t so much aim for Nietzsche as shoot for perpetual brain spasm, a sort of intellectual pleasure buzz built on the evolution of a comic theme over lines. Mark and I talked on and off over a few weeks about form and expectation, titles and punchlines, and why simple, Socratic irony has never been enough in poetry. Robert Christophers: The last time I saw you read ‘Memoirs of a Secret Agent,’ you read the poem without introducing it by title or banter. Talking to you afterward, you admitted that this was intentional, as you wanted the audience to think that you, Mark

are they? What might they say next?’ That kind of active listening is what I seek in myself and in audiences. Stripping away the box that poetry comes in, presenting it naked, sometimes allows

“Stripping away the box that poetry comes in, presenting it naked, sometimes allows people to confront language with less mediation.” 27

people to confront language with less mediation. Feeling befriended, and then deceived, and then curious about the deception, and then smarter than the deception, and then humbled by it, and perhaps finally satisfied by it—that gives a listener more emotions, a more contoured experience with the poem than a straight up, ‘This first poem is…’ experience. RC: Throughout Beauty, there’s an obsession with erecting walls of expectation, as you call them, in order to knock these walls down within the poems. Titles, I think, afford us these rare moments in which we can establish expectation and misdirection in poetry. With your ‘Night of 1,000 Murders,’ for example, we expect a horror-movie massacre that never arrives. And ‘Story,’ which blows a metaphysical kiss toward Beckett, beLeidner, were engaging them in a story irrespective of the poem. You were using conversation as a form for building trust and establishing a ruse with your audience. In this way the realization that we’ve been deceived leaves a bigger dent. In this way the poem itself acts as a punchline. Mark Leidner: Sometimes poetry is a box we put words into so we don’t have to think about them. If you get up and say ‘This first poem is…’— whatever follows that comes inside the box. You could say anything you wanted, and at the end of the poem, even during the poem, the audience can write it off as ‘just poetry.’ If someone says ‘FUCK FUCK FUCK TITS TITS TITS’ in the context of poetry, no one bats an eye. But if someone says that outside the context of poetry, we wonder, ‘Why are they saying that? What? What are they doing? Are they crazy? Are they a threat? Who

comes as much about the burden of telling a story—‘the story,’ the poem calls it—as it is about the actual narrative. I love how that poem’s ending laughs in the face of both storytelling and the title itself: ‘It doesn’t end. It isn’t a story, it’s a poem.’ ML: Expectation is subverted in order to be fulfilled. We want to be shocked by the climax of a story, but in that shock glimpse inevitability. Great stories twist throughout, on the macro level of act, on the micro level of scene, even in dialogue beats. In Dickinson, turns occur from line to line, sometimes from word to word. She sets a thought in motion, twists it in the following rhyme or iamb, extending the original thought through slanted terrain. Over the course of the poem, these turns become a legend for the map of expectation we bring to each word. This gives writing the illusion of life. When we re-

“The pleasure of victory instantly evaporates in the anxiety of the next problem. You try and try but can never hurdle the horizon.”

ering free verse, which I had misunderstood as an abandonment of form for formlessness—instead of what it was—reaching into the universe of non-poetic forms and drag-

read it years later, because our no-

‘Romantic Comedies,’ it’s as though

ging them kicking and screaming

Sisyphus is given freedom by haul-

tions of these words have changed

you’re improvising over and over

into the context of poetry, and the

ing a rock up a hill. It’s ugly and true,

through our own experience, the

again, with each poem’s anaphora

farther you have to drag them the

the irony in that. Among emerging

poem seems to have been updated.

as your starting block. You inhabit

better. Maybe every poet’s work is

poets in America right now, irony

That poetry maps expectation

the romantic comedy and the black-

a hybrid of the vaulted poetry they

has become a prevailing mode of

makes it natural to extend the act

out as forms, each of which bears

have read and the secular forms

expression. What sets Beauty apart,

of cartography to satellite forms

with it its own anaphora. I wonder if

of their culture and experience.

I think, is that you never employ

in orbit around it: titles, epigraphs,

this liberates the work for you: since

The unpoetic part of me is forced

Socratic irony. That is, the voice in

arrangement of poems throughout

each poem is composed entirely of

to grapple with the discipline of

your poems never feigns ignorance

a book design, font, blurbs, banter,

you riffing on these anaphora, you

anaphora, alliteration, or rhythmic

toward its language or subject in

Facebook behavior, even this in-

have the freedom to experiment,

imperative, and the poetic is forced

order to elicit a revelation. Rather,

terview—they’re all verbal play-

fail, go crazy, chase a glimpse, suc-

to grapple with the absurdity of a

yours is an irony that invites dis-

grounds where we set expectation

ceed, try again, fail again, fail better.

Hollywood imagination. Leaping

sonance: desire is coupled with

for the lyric animating the center.

Because there is always that next

one hurdle raises the height of the

the grotesque, humor and parody

Mostly we think of titles as the

hurdle, that next anaphora, to clear.

next. The agony of defeat, as you say,

are fused with stark imagery and

is instantly ameliorated by the ex-

tragedy. Beauty’s cover—which fea-

citement of the next challenge. But

tures the World Trade Center rising

the opposite is true. The pleasure of

over a city that isn’t New York, with

victory instantly evaporates in the

a collaged basketball player rising

anxiety of the next problem. You

up to dunk between the towers—is

try and try but can never hurdle the

a terrific example of this.

‘first’ thing readers confront that inflects their interpretation of the poem, but it’s just as true to think of them as the final expectation-hurdle of hundreds or even thousands that the reader has already leapt before they enter the lyric.

ML: I used to think form meant rhythm and meter. That’s where I found the most meaning in the old poems I read. But trying to force my self expression to fit into blank verse left me with poems that sounded tinny and felt false. It took me a

horizon. It’s honest and perverse to name this inability to ever be com-

ML: I’ve never heard irony broken

fortable ‘freedom.’

down into Socratic and dissonant,

RC: Hurdles, I like that. I wish more

long time to realize that I had a lim-

poets were in the business of writ-

ited definition of what form was. I

ing poems that aspire to be steeple-

was also blogging, chatting, collag-

RC: It’s true. It’s like de Kooning

chases. Let’s talk about anaphora,

ing, updating statuses, telling jokes,

said: ‘Art is the thing you cannot

another way in which a poem cre-

watching movies, etc. It dawned on

make.’ So in a sense saying a poet is

ates hurdles. In ‘Blackouts’ and

me that those forms were just as

given freedom by form is like saying

but that taxonomy works. Irony is more like a necessary feature of truth than its opposite. Good and bad, right and wrong, gruesome

valid as five-beat lines; moreover, they were the native inhabitants of my imagination. It was like discov-

and beautiful, smart and stupid, are always cou-

moment. Do you want to end with some impro-

pled. I guess their fusion feels dissonant because

visations? Some laughter?

cultural institutions train us to separate them, perhaps for good reason. If we were forced to un-

ML: 147 grains of sand walk into a bar and dune

pack, over and over, the infinite complexity of ev-

know to order. 147 courageous, humble, and per-

ery object, moment, and utterance, we would kill

ceptive movie critics walk into a bar and buy

ourselves. Filtering through too much aware-

drinks for everyone who thought Hugo was a

ness is exhausting, so we allow reality to ice over

dramatically flaccid exercise in high-gloss bour-

with cliché. We stop thinking and fall into the

geoisie treacle surpassed in interestingness by

sleep of life. We let certain images and values off

its own Wikipedia article. 147 boxcars walk into

the hook and do not apply relentless analysis to

the bar and order non-alcoholic beverages be-

them. Survival rests on this trade-off. 90% of my

cause they’re in training.147 New Yorkers walk

life is spent not thinking about what is real, and I

into a bar while outside a cop tickets their dou-

wish it were higher. But art’s job is to pierce that

ble-parked dreams. 147 losers walk into a bar and

armor—reintroduce the mixture of calamity and

proceed to drink all night in unhinged merri-

ecstasy that is the present moment.

ment, laughing raucously at each others’ anecdotes, and generally achieving unexpected levels

RC: And ultimately, we write and we laugh as a means of not letting that absurdity and complexity undermine us. Maybe that’s what certain people mean when they say all poetry is an act of protest. I find I’m resistant to that logic, but I like that all jokes are acts of protest by that logic too. We sat in a bar a few months back and played a game called 147. The premise was simple: 147 of something—clowns or war heroes or anything— walk into a bar, and you have to tell a joke about them on the spot. I remember one, for example: 147 Oldsmobiles walk into a bar and say, God am I fucking exhausted. Even when the jokes were terrible, the game had integrity. Because you’re writing, improvising, delivering in the present

of happiness, never imagining they are losers at all. 147 futures walk into a bar and order 147 memories, but the bartender gives them weak pours. 147 sad wisps of smoke filtrate into a bar and the bartender looks at them and asks them what’s wrong and as they are sucked up into and split apart and evenly redistributed throughout the atmosphere of the bar by the ceiling fan, the bartender hears them say melancholically that they all just got fired. 147 punch-lines walk into a bar and order a setup ‘well.’ 147 sand grains blow into a bar and decline the bartender’s offer of free tapas on the grounds that they are full because there’s a universe in them.

"romantic comedies" He has a turtle and she has a shell. She’s the principal and he’s the janitor. She’s a widowed social worker looking for a father figure and he’s an elderly vagrant. She’s a woman and he’s

…a woman.

He’s unprincipled and she’s … principled. Everyone in his life has drowned and he hates dogs and she’s a collegiate swimming coach with a thousand dogs.

He’s a collapsing star in the heart of the galaxy and she’s an ex-con with 5,000 spacebucks and nothing to lose. He’s clever and she’s stupid. He’s good-looking and she’s ugly. She’s sort of interested in him, but he’s not sure how interested he is in her, though he is, a little bit. He is always being ironic and she is disdainful of irony. He’s a prosperous historian living in the present day, and she’s a historian struggling to make ends meet … from the future. She’s a Nereid and he’s a Dryad. She’s a sassy black oncologist and he’s a racist with prostate cancer. She’s a plucky explorer of catacombs with a lust for adventure and smoldering good-looks, but he’s the quiet type, content to stay at home, reading about the exploration of catacombs only in books. He’s moneyed and she’s a bitch.

He blew up the World Trade Center and she blew up when she heard he blew up the World Trade Center. She’s a singer/songwriter but he’s just a songwriter/ gay. They’re both gay. He’s a foot fetishist and she’s an amputee. She’s a world-renowned gourmet cook and he’s a world-renowned fastfood restaurant mogul. He’s a highly sought-after model caught up in the spree of drugs and sex that is the Berlin fashion scene, and she died in a car wreck six years ago in Zurich. It’s midnight on the mesa, a dry breeze rustles across the colorless sand, and high atop a wind-chiseled monolith, they are two black cobras, drenched in silver moonlight, coiling in a furious act of forbidden cobra love. She likes things one way and he likes them the other. He’s hungry and doesn’t care where they eat, and she keeps saying she doesn’t care either, but every restaurant he offers up, she shoots down.

He’s squeamish around She likes monogamy but blood but she is he likes sleeping around. courteous around blood. He’s bored but she He’s a Muslim terrorist keeps talking. and she’s a normal Muslim.

continued on next page U

He has a piece of turkey stuck between his teeth and she’s got a full Thanksgiving turkey stuck between her knees.

They’re both vegetarians but are both picky eaters and it’s almost enough to drive each other crazy.

He’s on an important fact-finding mission for the U.N. and she shits facts.

She’s his best friend and he’s sick of jerking off each night into the toilet.

They’re both the same.

They are the only two deer in the world who can walk upright on their hind legs and speak proper English in British accents, and their favorite activity is debating the superiority of Copernican models of the solar system over the alternate models.

She is uncomfortable and he is fingering her.

They’re exactly the same person. They’re in love. They’re both in love…

with murder.

She’s a pacifist and he’s a warmonger… until the tables turn and she becomes the warmonger and he the pacifist … though during the turning, on vectors bound for where the other just left, as they pass each other in the middle, like passengers on opposite trains, they see each other and reach out into the void, and for a few brief seconds, before their forward inertia pulls them irrevocably apart, they simultaneously occupy a single position. He is the ocean and she is the sea. He knows where a rare ore is and she knows metallurgy. He said a curse word when he was in space, and she was at mission control and overheard him and reported him to his superiors, after which he was not to be allowed back into space. He’s trying to solve the Middle East conflict, but she keeps stirring up trouble in the Middle East. 31

She is a t-shirt full of eggs and he is an egg accidentally blown out of a lake by a strong wind. He is expanding and she is shrinking. It is her second day at Ruby Tuesday’s and he has worked there for five years. He lied to her and she splattered paint all over his car except she made the paint the exact same color as his car to express the complexity of her anger but he didn’t get it. She is naturally thin and he has to work at it.

She finally trusts him and he finally thrusts himself into her. He’s thrashing around in a bathtub and she’s a flash flood happening somewhere far away. He gouged out Christy Schumacher’s face in the yearbook and she is Christy Schumacher. She’s the first female matador in Spain and he’s the first male bull impersonator willing to take male bull impersonating all the way… to its logical … and gruesome … conclusion. He’s a carpenter and she’s a virgin. He has a ponytail and she has no education.

She is involuntarily drawn into the story of every house she passes in her car, and he is unable to drive a car because of his leg.

He is widespread poverty, sweeping corruption, and violence institutionalized to a degree unseen elsewhere in the western world, and she is a tiny Latin American nation.

She’s a pale-skinned aesthete who edits a webzine, and he’s a suntanned meathead completely perplexed by the masthead.

He is the farmscape at sunset and she is the silhouette of the barn, the windmill, and the silo.

We’re driving through Atlanta and it’s the end of the world and you point out the window and I follow the pale curve of your arm

the line extending from your finger to the moon I finally say, I’m leaving you!and and the moon is full and on fire. All you ever gave me were the You’re panicking because you can’t remember wretched crusts! the meaning on nonchalant but I’m massaging your shoulders whispering, it’s what you are. You catch the flu but you refuse

charismatic "ambulance driver " I’m a charismatic ambulance driver. You make me French toast and when you set the plate down you kiss my neck and I just stare and stare at you. We’re tilling a field in Poland when the clouds break open and we throw down the reins of our plows and make love in the wind and the mud while mules, mute, look on. You are about to take a spacewalk and I stop you in the airlock by calling out your name and as you spin around to face me your hair splays out in the absence of gravity. Not without this, I say handing you your helmet. It’s Texas and somehow you’ve tricked me into attending a bake sale. We’re out in the desert resting in the shade a small cliff is creating

to blow your nose because you’re scared of looking sick. I finally get you to blow it by offering you $5 and when you do the most beautiful music comes out. I call you sport and you get a funny look in your eye and say, don’t call me that. You slip out bread into two parts the crust and the center and you give me the crust. I finally say, I’m leaving you! All you ever gave me were the wretched crusts! and you look up at me tears brimming in your eyes, and say But the crusts were always my favorite part. We are trying to purchase a car and you are heavy with child and we are test-driving a small coupe and I take a corner too fast, and your water breaks and you tap me on the shoulder and say My water just broke. And I say, Is it okay to drive this car to the hospital? We end up getting a different coupe. You ruined that one.

and you gently pat my stomach and ask it I’m gay. 32

"blackouts" It’s like using tweezers to pull diamonds out for your girlfriend’s tear ducts. Like an evil video game, the planet gaining money as is spins... You flush the toilet and stab the underworld with a curled sword of water. It’s like watching energy efficient homes burning down. It’s like being called a psychopath and thrown in jail but later released because a new psychopath is on the loose and only a psychopath can defeat a psychopath It’s like bating away the cloud of bats inhibiting the corridor you’re fleeing down to an abandoned space station It’s like needing something and not knowing it. It’s like trying to write a thriller with a shotgun to your head. It’s like having children as a joke. It’s like cutting your hand open on a piece of metal. It’s lie punishment meted out at night by a giant tractor. It’s like loosing at chess to a caveman. It’s like a caveman loosing at chess to a dinosaur. It’s like a dinosaur loosing at chest to a primeval force It’s like punching your children to a tune. Or driving a semi through a slow flock of birds You refuse to donate to charity because you think charity is a conspiracy. You had a briefcase full of proof but something posing a prostitute blew you 33

in a hotel room and stole it... Some beautiful philosopher... I think shitty people shouldn’t say what they think so eloquently. It’s like a cross between and orgasm and a black hole. It feels good but it sucks you in and it gets tiny. It’s like eating dick off a paper plate. Its like finding a turtle neck on the street and immediately put it on over the turtle neck your already wearing. You strut defiantly into your room and you present yourself with a petition against yourself that you will have signed a thousand times It’s like trying to fight WWII entirely by karate chop. You have to be like a solar eclipse, but when you look up, it’s just someone you don’t know punching in the eye! It’s like a mouse walking out of its hole admiring its own diamond necklace. It should be like cutting cobwebs out of cowboy boots with scissors.

But its like practicing cunnilingus on the bottom of a graphing calculator. It’s like blowing your nose into a Confederated battle flag. It’s like headbutting a tropical aquarium. It’s like wearing a ballerina outfit alone. It’s like burying a fireball in the small of the back of a fleeing enemy. It’s like busting into a game between two Grand Masters and shooting achess board with a shotgun. It should be like the sun kissing a planet on the cheek. But its the amount of light you get when you run over a light bulb with a steam roller It’s like taking a picture of the sky on a windy day. But no, even that is wrong. It’s like watching your favorite tv show through a straw. It’s like falling to your knees and praying that whatever happens happens. I cant even finish nine holes before nightfall because you release the club at the apogee of every stroke. It’s a never-ending shanty town and your and aristocrat lost in. You brace yourself in the doorway during an earthquake at midnight, while all around you the black space leaps. It’s like a medieval knight striding out of the forest with a wizard in headlock. It’s like kissing someone with lipstick made of matchheads. It’s like god with a giant magnifying glass melting a toy store. It’s got to be about belief like the uprooted tree in the forest. It should be like sipping water from a really expensive river. But it’s like Oreos at dawn. It’s like softening a coloring book in bathwater so later you can rape a whole through it. It’s like drinking a whole bottle of cabernet sauvignon in a prison cell. It’s like eating pieces of toast dipped in toilet water. You open your front door for the first time and realize you've been living inside a refrigerator. It’s breathing skeptically in the humid air of a new planet. It’s like learning that German word for the specific kind of shame astronauts feel when they masturbate is space It’s like only being able to become angry when things go right. It’s like interrupting polishing silverware to benight yourself with a little knife. It should be like a blizzard blowing all the windows of the U.S. mint in the middle of

You have to cry blood like two wild nuns leaving your eyes and sliding down Your cheeks in shiny red convertibles. You have to try and sell the kitchen floor sweepings like they are food. You put your windsuit pants on inside-out and start running around outside until the wind starts swirling around inside you. It has to be preceded by a shitload of really sweet previews. It’s like the sun striking a sunbather so hard it knocks them into the pool. You have to be able to interior design your way out of a year long depression. You have to get used to the horrifying way rooms spill out of themselves to become “loose room.” It requires that one of your parents take a running leap off a cliff and turn around at the last second to blow a bunch of sarcastic, rapid-fire kisses. You have to get on fire, the slowly walk around your old neighborhood. It’s like a space shuttle that flies in the shape of a jigsaw.

winter. Or preforming a wedding between confetti and graffiti

How We Got Mother Back by Valério Romão 2

Valério Romão has published two novels in Portugal, Autismo and O da Joana, as part of an intended 'Failed Paternities Trilogy'. Divulge is proud to be the first to publish 'How we got mother back'. This story is currently being made into a short film by Gonçalo Waddington, the widely acclaimed Portuguese actor and director.

n the immediate aftermath of our

who never left his room, his bed,

mother’s death, we weren’t allowed

the pillows he drenched until he

to laugh, run, watch television or

fell asleep in his lake of tears

even eat here in the house. We

made me tingle with joy inside, as did the whiff of

were obliged, by the omnipresent sorrow of father

father had a voice that

to suffer in a state of peni-

beer on his breath when he

tence, cilice about the waist,

gave me my goodnight kiss

until all of us, all at the same

and the smell of cigarettes

time, became very thin and

on his fingertips when he

sickly-looking, and were in-

squeezed my cheeks, flat-

capable of doing

tening out the creases of the smile on my face

our schoolwork because our brains, desperate for fuel, began to deal only with those functions essential for life, which is not quite the case with education.

When my thirteen-year-old brother fainted in the school-

his first reaction was to point a finger and send them on their

yard, someone on the governing board correctly decided it

way, I’ve no wish to see anyone, he whispered from behind the

was time to intervene in a mourning process that threatened,

pillow that protected him from the pale light of the gas lamp,

through its prolongation, to multiply and produce more vic-

dishevelled and dirty, eyelids drooping like a weightlifter

tims. The physics teacher and the religion and morals teacher

stuck halfway through a thrust, holding on to his pyjama

came here to the house and father got out of bed with great

bottoms to prevent them from falling down, so scrawny had

difficulty and met them at the door

he become, and his voice

ather, having stopped listening to them or affording them the least importance, stared at the house as if through a telescopic lens, and he saw that in his absence it had quickly become a wreck, a wreck occupied by pre-pubescent adolescents and toddlers barely out of

heavens above, neither I nor Professor Vítor wish to alarm you out of the blue, but, quite conceivably,

nappies and off their mother’s breast, and in a moment of domestic epiphany, he thanked God we were still all alive,

they might consider only the criminal underworld of drugs and gratuitous violence, with its illusory struggled weakly up the olympic as-

rewards of riches and happiness, able to provide

cent of the trachea, which for several days had been employed solely in

them with what the family home had failed even to

bringing forth saliva to provide an offbeat accompaniment to the con-

identify as a need, and which school, with the lim-

tinuous roll of tears:

what do you want? And so they explained

ited range of its influence, cannot hope to combat, only remedy through charity, you see, Senhor

the concern that had spread

through

the

Fontes, the dual root of the problem, said the

school and said that, as school spokesmen,

physics2 teacher, delivering the rest of his argument

they too were worried, because four children

in a manner appropriate to a man who feeds on

without proper adult care could easily end

and belches out algorithms, and who turns the

blamed himself for letting us descend to such levels of degradation and realized he could no longer just lie there hoping the death cart would pass by again soon, or even turn around and bring mother back, pale at first but then he’d cover her with warm kisses and nurse her just as he had done, unremittingly, until they took her from his arms so the earth might receive her.

up needing and

everyday world into something approaching a rallypaper, to be completed with Kantian punctuality. 40

I’ll deal with it,

father said interrupting them, I’ll deal with it, thank you for coming, and as each syllable left his mouth, in the melody of someone newly recovered from a stroke, he closed the door a little further on the two teachers who, from the other side of the door, said their last thank yous and take cares, washing their hands of a task that had undoubtedly been unpleasant for both of them.

in truth it was me and my older Father soon returned to his bed and his sorrow, abandoning the sudden energetic resolve that had surged invz him when contemplating the state of us. He lay back down in his blankets and wallowed for another full day and night, until we got back from school and decided

brother who decided, for we were aged twelve and thirteen respectively, and the other two were only three and four, so their votes didn’t count in this particular act of suffrage that there had to be a limit to all this,

we laid an extra place for mother, and

and that the limit should not be the

we made a piece of toast for her too,

gradual and seemingly inevitable ex-

which no one was allowed to touch,

tinction of our entire family, and so

nor steal during a moment of collec-

we drew up a plan to get father out of

tive distraction, and next to her plate,

bed and force a hunk of bread down

to honor her memory and respect the

his throat, bread I would toast in the

reality that had recently established

toaster that only I was allowed to op-

itself in the home, we placed a pho-

erate. We set the table in the lounge,

tograph of her on their wedding day,

covered it in a smart-looking table

some fifteen years earlier, in which

cloth, one mother liked to save for

she smiled, a smile that, though still

special occasions, new year and bap-

and fixed in time, we each of us im-

tisms, and which was dark coloured,

itated, unconsciously, as if through

in a show of subservience to the

some magnetic sense of empathy.

mood that held an iron grip on the 41

household, and as a finishing touch

We told our youngest brothers to drag father from his bed, no matter what he said or how he reacted. It was imperative that he get up and eat something,

not just to prevent us from ending up like aimless dogs, running down the road chasing headlights and then falling in the gutter, lying there until the first rains dislodge them, but also so that life, hanging menacingly over us like a cloud of acid rain, might go on, despite death having torn part of it from us,perhaps the better part, perhaps the most important part.

hen father reached the table, pulled there by our younger brothers as if it were Christmas and he had to give out the presents, the hunger and sadness that had enclosed him on all sides began to unravel, and very reverently he picked up the picture of mother, held it to his chest and cried, and cried, and cried, and gradually we began to hug him, and we cried too, until we were five bodies engaged in a monophasic retrospective reaction to death.

ver the next few days, we repeated the exercise, setting the same places at the table and again affording mother center stage by stationing her picture frame, in which she slept so angelically, so it was visible to all. Father began to leave his bed more often and for longer periods and he even involved himself in preparing dinner, the only meal we all ate together, breakfast being taken on the run. We were managing, bit by bit, to get father to reacquire healthier habits, like eating and getting dressed and washing himself, and though he did them irregularly, the irregularity allowed us to calibrate his anchoring on the endless carousel of life, and though there were bad days, when even getting him out of bed took tremendous effort, much lamenting and blackmail of a spiritual nature, whereby we said mother would be cross if he didn’t eat, there were good days too, days that felt like spring, when the sun, though hidden, makes its

presence felt through the breeze.

One evening at the dinner table, my older brother came out with some jokes he’d heard at school

because the enforced solemnity was like

a jack-in-the-box that required our constant attention, so as not to inadvertently smile at something

because my brother sounded just like mother,

sounded so like mother that it

two scars shaped like angry eyeb-

brought a tear to my eye that I

rows over her diaphragm, and my

struggled to hold back and then,

brother, on whose forehead hung

leaning against the back of the

numerous drops of sweat, despite

empty chair, smiling a gentle and

the mild temperature, because he

unexpected smile, such as weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d

knew he had the raw material but

not seen since before the hospital,

he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know where it would

before the internment, the chemo,

take him, went on addressing

the X-rays, the operation that

father, facing him more and more

turned her two breasts into

directly, telling him to sit down,

he began to mimic mother, her voice, her accent, her very particular way of turning the ends of phrases into drops of honey that came to rest in the ear holes of everyone who heard them, and we were left dumbstruck, the younger brothers and I, because our older brother was clearly breaking the most elementary of the surreptitious rules that governed the householdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mourning process, and we saw father coming back, feeling his way along the walls because he was totally disorientated

telling him to eat up, telling him to keep the children in check, which he usually did whenever we started shouting or playing with our food, making little trampolines of our spoons, and father sat down, still smiling, and he put his index finger to his lips, a gesture that said we should keep quiet and listen to mother, like he was doing, for she was right, she was always right.

when father, back at work for the second time With the passing of time we got used to hearing

our brother being our mother, especially at dinner,

the first time he went back he spent the whole day

locked in the toilet and they had to call the fire brigade to get him out, as he couldn’t even open the door

anted to talk to her and, above all, when he wanted us children to ask questions that could only be answered by the joint unity of a couple, all of which our brother managed to pull off admirably, brilliantly reproducing the manner of her voice and its content, and the two of them chatted away and we watched them as we’d always done, or as we used to do, and our brother, alongside the photograph of our mother on the table, sometimes seemed like one of those quack mediums who become suddenly possessed by a spirit that takes control of their vocal chords and makes their eyes move up and down

At night, when father went to bed what he lost in hunger he gained in sleep me and my older brother stayed up watching soap operas and European films in which the lives of couples, from the most trivial to the most fundamental matters, were examined in great detail, and we felt that by absorbing and digesting all this became better

especially him, who practised alone before the mirror, in the manner of an actor preparing for a play at understanding the impor-

ers to furrow their brows in

tance

incomprehension, but that

things we barely knew exist-

father, on the other hand,

ed, and as the days went

welcomed

by our vocabulary began to

or even, when my brother

take on adult characteristics,

got the voice just right, or

adoptin new words that my

very close, a burst of laugh-

brother would later try out

ter, which was contagious

in mother’s mouth for father

because our father laughing

to hear, saying things that

was the only reason the rest

caused our younger broth-

of us had to laugh.

adults

afforded

with

smile,

One day, father got home and told me not to make dinner, for he’d brought back a takeaway roast chicken and a couple of bottles of red wine, to celebrate.

I jumped up and down and hugged him, overcome with a singular sense of happiness, and as he held me around the waist I asked him what we were celebrating, after all it was a long time since we’d celebrated anything in the house, not even the very respectable end of term school reports we’d all received, a term in which we’d been through so much in so little time, and father said out loud, though very softly, that we were celebrating mother’s birthday, which I’d forgotten about, indeed everyone except father had forgotten about it, despite the fact that he and our older brother had talked lightheartedly about it over dinner the previous week.

That

night

father

I couldn’t eat for fear that my brother wouldn’t be

insisted that we, the kids, as he called us,

able to inhabit mother’s skin for so long, hold firm

ate in the kitchen, and that he and our brother

without my being there to kick him in the shins or

ate in the lounge, like a proper couple, and we

give him a disapproving look via a toothy smile, and

could not and should not interrupt them, he

it was only when I saw them leave the room, him

said, conjugal complicity couldn’t flourish in a place overflowing with people, he griped, and they ought to eat alone more often, he and mother, it was something

kids

would just have to get used to, he said, for we had to understand that either there was room for both worlds or there was room for neither, he concluded, ending the lec-

first, all smiles, father shortly after, a bit unsteady

even got to thinking that my brother might end up giving father a slap for something he might say, or even in order to escape

ture on a questioning note, and so we nodded our heads to say yes, because we were,

from the wine he’d drank over dinner, to which he was no longer accustomed, that I felt any relief, and when my brother and father came into the kitchen I got the impression I was seeing them again, my mother and father,

indeed had been all along, too stunned to do anything but keep back from the theatre or the cinema and finding us awake, despite the promises on nodding them.

from the babysitter that we’d be tucked in, promises that we were determined

to ruin by asking for glasses of water, stories and wee-wees incessantly until our parents got home, tired and happy, so that we could share in it together, the tiredness and the happiness.

These conjugal dinners became fixtures in the household and occurred at least once a month, when we, the kids, would eat pizza in the kitchen, pizza that father brought home, or, in the worst case scenario, pasta with tuna, which I threw together at the last minute when father hadn’t the time or patience to call in at the pizzeria, and they’d eat in the lounge and we’d hear them laughing and jangling their cutlery about their plates, seeking out whatever delicacies father had fetched for them instead of us.

With time, our brother became increasingly

authoritarian

and

intransigent. He began to order us about, telling us to get dressed, get undressed, brush our teeth and do the household chores, and he no longer ever did so in his own voice but always in mother’s, and he kept up the act until he got to school and, much to his irritation, had to talk as a thirteen-year-old kid talks to other thirteen-year-old kids had to talk as a thirteen-year-old kid talks to other thirteen-year-old kidsday in, day out. Sometimes I caught up with him at break time between classes and asked him to apologize

one thing by day and another thing by night and nobody seemed able to hold on to a form of identity that could be, at all times, one and boringly the same.

for the way he’d treated me on such and such a night, or for no longer ever talking to me like he used to,

whenever we started to get used to

when we were just brothers, and he

something, be it the dinners with just

would do his best to lick my wounds

the two of them or our older brother’s

so as not to see me upset, or to shut

diatribes, some sort of change would

me up at least, I never really knew

occur and force us to focus again on

which, and another day would pass

our plans for the future.

and our multifaceted family went on being

and we sat there quietly before our plates, looking at him once in a while, as he shouted, and as one glass of wine followed the next, our

One particular night, father, who had gradually reacquired the habits he’d abandoned when mother died, started arguing with my brother, father by now back to drinking more than he ought to and shouting at my brother that he was sick of being cooped up at home all the time, like an animal or a savage, as if he had

brother, endowed with a certain feminine way of being unmoved by it all, asked father to calm down, at least in front of the children, at least for their sake.

some disease, but neither he nor she had any disease he was aware of, he added, Some kind of truce reigned over the nights that followed. But the rift that had risen between them had formed in such a way that dinner, normally spent in the sort of conversation wherby everyone informed everyone else of how they’d spent the day, became a solemn affair once more, all of us compelled to show the creator the tedious burden of our existence. It was only when, one inspired night, our elder brother appeared at the table

wearing a blonde wig, a wig that in every way resembled mother’s haircut, that father, stunned by the unexpected turn of events, let out a loud howl of laughter, caressed our brother’s plentiful wig and thus allowed the nervous tension to lift, that laughter no longer had to be withheld.

By day we showed ourselves to be the increasingly mature survivors of the disaster that was losing your mother, and by night we reinvented ourselves, our father and oldest brother in particular, and thus, each in our role, we lived two separate lives, hermetically sealed, like characters jumping between scenes and plays. My elder brother couldn’t help but develop an increasingly distant relationship with us ‘kids’, because by emphasizing the contrast between himself and us he was better able to overcome the natural flaws in his character portrayal, flaws he endeavored to iron out day by day, and so he moved further and further away from being our brother and closer and closer to being our mother, reunited with us via one huge about-

Family life passed largely without incident for the whole of the second school term. 49

turn, so much so that I caught myself asking him for new clothes, a request he passed on to father, or telling him what I wanted for my birthday, just as I used to do with her before

One day father, drunk again a habit he’d reacquired rather too keenly somewhat alarmed by our father’s intense physicality and state of excitement, me trying to calm down the younger two who were holding on to each other and to me, and when we reached the lounge, father said, very solemnly

children, say welcome home to your mother and before us stood, I only properly understood afterwards, once a little time had passed, our brother, dressed as a woman, dressed as our mother used to dress, in a skirt and a blouse with white frills, his hair combed and his face made-up, and we noticed that he’d got rid of the hairs on his legs, hairs he’d boasted about only two months before, and father stood beside him, as if presenting him to the rest of the family for the first time, and the younger two began to wail, and this prompted an angry outburst from father, who shouted: right, get out, go on, if you can’t greet your own mother properly, disgraceful, and I took my two little brothers by their hands and as we hurried out of the room we heard our elder brother say

calm down, dear, it’s not their fault, give them time to understand and accept it, just give them time, and so our brother carried on, and father went quiet and for a moment we couldn’t hear them, until both of them, who knows why, disappeared giggling into the bedroom. ■

in a voice that was increasingly perfectly that of mother 50

fin th e e n d

Manual Labour Originally intended as a machine

Christopher Latham Sholes

for the blind, the typewriter

created a writing machine in 1867

eventually became something

that is considered the ancestor to

more to American society.

all standard type-writers

Printing had been around since

thereafter. He presented it to E.

the invention of the printing

Remington & Sons with

press around 1440 by Johannes

Densmore and they began manu-

Gutenberg. But the idea for a new

facturing as it was an idea that

machine had been around for a

would “revolutionize business”

while, as in 1714, Queen Anne of

according to Benedict Remington.

England granted a patent to

The first commercial typewriter

Henry Mill for an “artificial

was manufactured in 1873; the

machine… for impressing…of

Remington No. 1 was very archaic.

letters singly or progressively…

It only typed in capital letters and

whereby all writings whatsoever

the user could not see the line

may be engrossed in paper… so

they were typing.

neat and exact as not to be distinguished from print.”

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2013

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