Feb / March 2018

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The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

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Notes from New Delhi

VOLUME: 2 - ISSUE: 11 - FEBRUARY - 2018

Notes from New Delhi : Dibyajyoti Sarma 02 Columns:

Sotto Voce -Indira Parthasarathy 06

Letter from London: John Looker 11

The Wanderer - Andrew Fleck 15 A book review, an interview and Three poems

Abhimanyu Kumar 20 Poetry:

Heath Brougher 27 Ivan de M0nbrison 40 Tiffany Buck 43 David R. Cravens 62 Fiction: Era.Murukan 30 Trevor Almy 48

Norbert Kovacs 57

Zdravka Evtimova 84

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Phone: +91-9382708030 e-mail: thewagonmagazine@gmail.com www.thewagonmagazine.com The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

1.

At 19, I had decided I would kill myself at 40. I was young. Life looked enormously long and full of absurd possibilities. Now at 37, I’ve accepted the unapologetic inevitability of death. I hear Time’s Winged Chariot hurrying near. I notice the long shadow of the Grim Reaper in the dark. And I’m ready. I borrow the dying speech from Walter Savage Landor’s Old Philosopher: I strove with none, for none was worth my strife: Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art: I warm’d both hands before the fire of Life; It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

I’m ready to depart, but I’m not ready to bid goodbye. I’m not ready to dance this dance of destiny. I’m not ready to see someone I know, friend and family, climb abroad the Winged Chariot. I’m not ready to see the Grim Reaper accompany someone I know and love.

The way he accompanied him who was my breathing apparatus, who could have made me happy.

2.

I’m not dead, neither I’m alive. I’m the last seed of a lost genus of the world’s most beautiful tree, buried under a layer of sand, The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

4 waiting for the rain to seep in. He was my rain. He was the root to my budding leaf. The only goal of love is to satiate the desire to be with the person you love. An impossible ambition.

And the only constant of love is this mounting fear of losing the object of your affection. The more you love the more this fear grows, until at one point this fear and this love become synonymous.

There was nothing common between us. I was young, he old.

I was rustic, he sophisticated; I poor, he rich, I restless, he rooted. We spoke different languages. The only thing that bound us was this mysterious, absurd thing called love. I was the happiest when I was in his company.

When his old man fingers caressed my restless hands. When my thumb recognised his hungry lips. When we got drunk and ambled on the empty streets at midnight, with my hand on his shoulder.

When he drove and I craned my head to his bosom. When he said ‘I love you’ to me in Tamil and in Russian. When I hugged him and listened to the whiz of his heartbeat. It was music to my ears.

I know it was love, when 15 years later, I still miss that heartbeat. I close my eyes and I can still hear it. I cannot endure.

There was nothing common between us.

As our love longed to be together, we knew, the night will soon end and we will wake up in our respective lives as if the other never existed. So I started collecting memorabilia, a photograph of him with me, his visiting card, the number of his car on a piece of paper safely tucked in my purse, a packet of half-smoked Marlboro, the audio cassette of Iruvar which he liked, an ushanka he got me from Russia, an empty bottle of Royal Challenge, a box of dark chocolate in the shape of the Singapore Lion... So I started memorising the details of his life, his phone number, the name of his father, and the name of his first lover who broke his heart a million years ago, the neighbourhood in Chennai where he grew up, all the places he had travelled to, his mother’s death anniversary and her favourite deity...

For it was inevitable. One day I will sprout wings and flee this City of the Blessed. One day his heart will explode into thousand tiny pieces. He had a hole in his heart, a childhood condition, a manThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

5 ufacturing defect. He was living on borrowed time. And we built a relationship on the road, between a restaurant and a hostel, in a car.

At midnight.

He was thirsty and I was the last drink, one for the road, a stiff one. And our witness? The Grim Reaper.

So we talked about the eventual departure. He was determined to send me away across seven seas before the end. And the end was near. And I was young. Death didn’t scare me.

I was determined to see him climb aboard the Winged Chariot. Since parting was imminent, I vowed to be with him until the bitter end — like a Christian wedding vow: Until death do us apart. I would tell him, ‘If nothing else, I can promise you that I will be there for your burial.’ He would reply, it must be a cremation. He was a TamBram. I would say, ‘Then I will light your face with fire.’

This was the extent of my love.

I was no Savitri to follow my Satyavan to the gates of hell. But I was ready to see my beloved go up in flames, and perhaps steal some ash from the ground after everything was over. I had already purchased an urn.

This did not happen.

He loved me too much to make me see him wither away. I wasn’t allowed the hospital visits. All I could do was to make a call at 11 am. I would live to make that call. I would start counting the hours for the next call the next day after I had hung up.

The calls ceased. He was critical. I was promised I will receive a call once he was out of the hospital. My phone did not ring. Three months later, I got the news. He, whom I loved, had been dead for more than two months.

I did not cry. This had to happen one day. But what I regret is this — I couldn’t attend his last rites. I couldn’t see him depart. There were no goodbyes. I wanted a goodbye. I longed for a goodbye.

Now, 15 years later, sometimes when I’m drunk or when I’m alone in the open, I hear the breeze whisper and I hear his voice. It’s a mumble. I imagine him say he too loved me the way I did.

Even in death. Despite death.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

6 3.

And then, the future. The Great Unknown. The future is blank.

I live. I will, until I’m dead. I’m not unhappy. I’m not happy either.

There’s a wound in my heart that continues to fester. I’ve learnt to live with it. It doesn’t mean I’m not troubled by its existence every single day, every morning when I wake up, every night when I go to sleep. At times, the wound oozes with puss and pain and discontent.

Those days are difficult. Then the wound heals itself. And a few days later, it festers again, accumulating puss and pain.

On those days, I gaze at the distant. The Great Unknown. The Future. Like a daydream. Like a fantasy. I see my life as if on a movie screen, as if it’s happening to someone else. It’s a fantasy; a grand romance.

Ten years from now, in an unknown city, under unforeseen circumstances, I meet someone. That day, 10 years from now, I will be of the same age he was and the stranger I will meet will be of the same age I was. This is as simple as it sounds.

He, whom I loved, the cure for my festering heart, he will be born again, somewhere else, with another name, another face, and one day I will bump into him. And we will dance the dance of destiny once again.

How will I know if he was the one? I will. The moment I see him I will be happy again. Like the fog that disperses from the wizened tree in the middle of the empty field with the arrival of the sun, I will be awake from these years of mourning and I will be happy again. I know I will.

And at that precise moment, that merciless fear, the fear of losing the object of your affection, will return to haunt us. We will complete the circle. We will dance the dance of destiny. Happily, this time, the onus will be on him. I will be ready. I will depart willingly, goodbye or not. The stranger will dance the dance of destiny.

Dibyajyoti Sarma New Delhi The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

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SOTTO VOCE

I always consider myself as an Indian writer, writing in Tamil.

I write in Tamil because, this is the only language with which I am historically and culturally connected and a language, which I think I can use reasonably well to express my thoughts and feelings.

Though I have been writing from my school and college days, only during the Delhi phase of my professional career, I got published. I feel this has determined the nature of my writings. Most of my writings centered on only two places, one is Delhi and the other, Kumbakonam, which is my native region. Being away from Tamil Nadu, and being an alien citizen sort of, in Delhi, I had the advantage of being an observer to look at things that were happening at both places objectively.

A Bengali poet once asked me how it was possible for me to be a Tamil writer from Delhi His argument was that a plant can grow only in its own soil.

Maybe, I am not a coconut tree forcibly planted in Delhi. Maybe, I am not an exclusive plant but just one of those common varieties that can grow anywhere, even in a desert! My stories may lack the distinctive ‘soil flavor’ of a specific region in Tamil Nadu, as someone The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

8 wrote sometime back. But I feel I am in good company. A poet of the Sangam era said; ‘I belong to all regions in the world and all are my kin’.

I have taught Tamil literature for thirty-six years and to be a teacher and also be a modern creative writer as well in that language; seemed to be an apparent contradiction in terms in those days, when I started getting published.

Tamil is an ancient language and its antiquity can be traced to the early centuries before the Common Era. Moreover, it has the longest literary continuity among the spoken languages of this country.

This tradition is at once its asset and liability, ‘asset’ in the sense that one can be justifiably proud of one’s heritage; ‘liability’ because a romantic obsession with the past and ‘sentimentalized’ history puts the clock back by several centuries.

The Tamil academics, in those days, lived in the past, most of the values of which were not relevant in the context of contemporary reality. As a creative writer, living in the present, I believe that literature is a living artistic expression of stability and change, continuity and innovation, history and progress. True, there cannot be an instant evolution of any language; it has to have an origin, growth and a long tradition before it reaches the stage of serious adulthood. But this does not mean that the greatness of a language solely depends upon its exclusive past; its maturity is determined only in the context of its contemporary vitality and relevance.

Till the early sixties, a traditional Tamil scholar in the classical mould refused to believe that there was anything good about Tamil contemporary writing. And, at the same time, it was unfortunate that the modern creative writers of that era, although they quoted chapter and verse from Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Kafka, they were blissfully unaware of their own Tamil classical tradition. Happily, things are changing now and many of the young contemporary authors given to serious writing, have realized that there cannot be a present without a past.

Now, coming to the business of writing; why do I write? In a way, I seek my own identity and it is also my responsibility to me The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

9 and the society. I do not want to use the word ‘commitment’ because I feel this word has been much abused. ‘Commitment’ is identified with ‘ideology’ and ‘ideology’; once it is institutionalized it becomes stagnant. The political intellectuals stick with ‘ideology’ more as a matter of habit than conviction. But, a creative writer does not feel ashamed to accept ‘change‘; when he feels that his god has failed.

This is the reason why I would rather prefer to use the word ‘responsibility’ instead of ‘commitment’. Creative writing is a social act. I know I have to be exceptionally aware of people around me.

This will naturally involve a kind of responsibility, personal, social and moral. It is necessary I must have compassion, involvement, and clarity.

As I already said I write fiction in Tamil. Salmon Rushdie once said that modern Indian literature began to be taken seriously only after the arrival of Indo-Anglian writing. I am happy that I do not write creative fiction in English that might have given me a kind of neurosis that I need explaining myself to a western reader. Or introduce exotic events that may have an instant appeal to a western mind.

As an Indian writer writing in my mother tongue, I feel my genetic make-up, my environment, my past, my experiences, my psychology, my responses, all these things are unique to myself as my fingerprints are. I am convinced that if my creative writing comes from my own authentic ‘I’ it will have integrity that really matters.

I feel the necessity for communicating my inner reactions and responses, arising out of my experience with outer reality to others, as a kind of sharing, because of the existence of a common perpetual world with agreed symbols. It is a never-ending dialogue between ‘I’ and ‘you’. I write to communicate. Like the kite that needs the resistance of air to fly, I need a reader.

I do not believe in the technological approach to writing. It is like the story of a girl, who was once told to be sure of her meaning before she spoke. She retorted, ‘how can I know what I think until I see what I say?’ This is true of creative art too. Actual writing alone can answer this question. ‘What is this novel or play that I propose to write? Tolstoy once declared ‘this indeed is one of the significant The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

10 facts about a true work of art, that its content in its entirety can be expressed by itself ’.

Writing a novel or a short story or a play is much more like having a baby than constructing a bridge. An engineer, who is in charge of constructing the bridge, has to equip himself with all the technical data before he starts his work. A young woman need not be an expert on genetics or embryology if she decides to have a baby. Creative work is a spontaneous response to a situation and as such, when one starts writing about his/her experience, it is not essential for him/ her with all the theories of literary criticism or to have an academic degree.

Creative imagination functions in the darkness of the mind.

Writing is a kind of exploration, an intense, inner odyssey in search of the writer’s own personality, an affirmation of his attitudes towards life and society. It is an adventure into a dark and unpredictable jungle. It is an onward movement through time; it exists in the time dimension, as music does and not in the space dimension as painting and sculpture do. Once the writer is seized with the problem he proposes to deal with in his creative work, he should be least concerned about the plot, incidents and all such trivia. And at the same time, he should be sure that he has something to say worthy of sharing.

My starting point for all my stories are the characters and I strongly believe that if I put them successfully on the stage, their interaction with each other will dictate the plot and the story will write itself! A good novel is not determined by the technical perfection of the plot. ‘Ulysses’ is a good novel and if its plot is boiled down to its synopsis, one will find it a lifeless stuff, a transparent nothing. Yet, the way the novel is written holds the attention of a serious reader; Why? Because of an inevitability in its structure. It could not have been written by anyone else except James Joyce.

The same theme may be handled by two different writers but the end-product would have its own inevitability and character, like the same story of Dr. Faustus as immortalized by Christopher Marlowe and Goethe in two different ways or Valmiki’s Ramayana, as rendered by almost all the regional poets in India, each version justifyThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

11 ing the culture and genius of the different idioms.

The important thing is style, the truth emerging in a language.

Language is the most flexible instrument man has evolved in his struggle with Nature. Hegel describes the word as the most pliable material that directly belongs to the human spirit. Truth is a statement of language. As truth is the product of association, style is an affirmation of a writer’s personality, his ideas, his experience in the world of common people and events, his way of looking at life and his integrated character. ‘Where there is clarity of vision, there is clarity of style’ said Mahakavi Subramanya Bharati.

For the first time, in the history of Tamil literature, since the Sangam era, the existence of the common man was recognized, by adopting his spoken language in the works of poetry and fiction. Bharati, as a poet led this movement by rescuing poetry from pedantry and Pudumaipithan, the foremost among modern Tamil short-story writers used the near-poetic dialect of the common man to project his plight under an oppressive economic and social order.

He also declared that his stories are not insurance policies guaranteeing prosperity for the future. Both of them can be justifiably held as the ‘Pitamahars’ of modern Tamil writing.

I feel happy that, as of now, the educated classes among the oppressed have risen in revolt to demolish everything that has been held sacred, a true portrayal of the period in which we live. Many of the brilliant writers writing in Tamil today belong to the marginalized sections of the society. They are totally apolitical and amoral because ‘ideology’, stripped of its sacredness, is a dirty word in their dictionary and befittingly so.

Indira Parthasarathy is the pen name of

R.Parthasarathy, a noted Tamil writer and playwright.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

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Letter from London - 16 from John Looker

In Memoriam Cynthia Jobin and Bart Wolffe It is always sad when someone dies whom you like and admire.

Even more so when, in consequence, their literary work disappears from view.

Just over a year ago two poets died whom I had come to know through the wonders of the internet. Both wrote fine poetry and had a respectable worldwide readership through their websites, as well as warm online friendships. One was Bart Wolffe, the other Cynthia Jobin. Bart’s poetry collections remain available for purchase and his blog is still online; Cynthia’s blog has been taken down and her only book was sold out.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

13 At the end of November 2016 I received a startling email from Cynthia Jobin. We occasionally exchanged emails commenting on each other’s poems. Cynthia lived in New England, I in old England, and we had become acquainted through the internet. We gave each other a certain amount of encouragement and criticism, but it was neither a close relationship nor an extensive correspondence. Nonetheless I was delighted when she sent me a copy of her one and only book: a hardback edition of her poems, published privately with an unexpected inheritance, entitled A Certain Age. I too sent her a copy of my own first book.

That November email was short and to the point: she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and wanted a few of her internet acquaintances to know. She closed by saying simply “A new journey begun ...”. In trying to reply adequately, I encouraged her to think about the legacy of her poetry, to find someone to take care of her blog, her book, and poems yet to come. She responded by saying that she was puzzling what to do with the large number of poems which she had intended to be a second book. She was trying to decide who to send them to. Also: “My heirs know nothing of poetry, the literary world or archives, and could without malice just dump it all into the trash.”

This, more or less, is what happened. I wrote back with a suggestion from my wife: that we could approach my own publisher here in Britain and ask if they would be willing to bring out a book. I offered to help in any way Cynthia might like if her energies failed her – in proof-reading for example, or even by assembling the collection and seeing the project through. Cynthia said she would love to take up that suggestion but she died almost immediately without sending me her poems. I learnt of her death only indirectly through a brief announcement made on her blog. And that was it. My letter of condolence to her family was returned unopened, “address unknown”.

And then her blog was discontinued. There is almost no continued access to her work.

Cynthia Jobin’s poetry was skilfully crafted, educated and accessible. She wrote about the mysteries of Life, about her grief followThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

14 ing the death of her lifelong partner, about the love of pets and the landscape of New England. There was a depth of feeling, but equally a lightness of touch and – often –¬ humour. Let me show you the clarity of her writing. These lines come from Patient Belongings, a poem grieving the death of her partner: Your earrings and I, with only the turned-off machines pushed back against the walls to overhear said our appalling last goodbye. Then stunned to a disbelief way beyond sorrow, we went home. In time I gave the earrings to your sister– as you know, she is a fool for jewelry– and felt they should be hers.

But let me now turn to Bart Wolffe, whose legacy thankfully continues. Living in Zimbabwe, he was a published writer of novels, plays and poetry. He ran theatre workshops across southern Africa, brought a company to London and Edinburgh to perform his own plays and had assignments with the British Council, the Goethe Institute and Alliance Francaise. He left Zimbabwe in 2003 for Germany but finally settled in England.

Bart and I knew each other only through Wordpress, Facebook and email. It was Bart however who read one of my poems on local radio, for which I felt honoured. I should have met him, since he lived not far from me and invited me to join a poetry group of which he was a leading member. I hoped to do so but – I am sad to report – I missed the opportunity. While my wife and I were away in New Zealand in 2016, Bart was taken into hospital, and then the announcement of his death came suddenly and unexpectedly.

I have a short book by Bart Wolffe, called The Crusoe Morality.

In verse, it is a retelling of the Robinsoe Crusoe story, with a few unusual twists. Rereading it now, I wonder whether part of the appeal in Daniel Defoe’s tale lay in the sense of isolation or exile, for Bart The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

15 was writing it as an ex-Zimbabwean in England. He wrote: When the ship finally came Crusoe refused to look back At a shadow that was a man Shedding salted tears on the already salty sand.

Instead he asked the bosun To point the way to England, Closer, safer England.

Bart Wolffe’s blog is still online, at https://bartwolffe.wordpress. com. It says nothing about his death and remains as though it were his study and he had simply walked out of the room – leaving his final poem, Shelter From The Storm, for all to read.

The good news is that both Cynthia and Bart were persuaded to contribute a few poems to an anthology from my own publisher, Bennison Books, published through Amazon in 2017. This was Indra’s Net, about which I’ve written previously. There are some fine poems by these two poets in that anthology, which has sold in many countries. And in the case of Cynthia Jobin, there are also five short poems at poemhunter.com

John Looker lives with his wife in Surrey, south-east England. His first collection of poetry, The Human Hive, was published in 2015 by Bennison Books and was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection.

His poems have appeared in print and in online journals, on local radio and in two anthologies: When Time and Space Conspire, an anthology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Austin International Poetry Festival, and Indra’s Net, an international collection published by Bennison Books in aid of the Book Bus charity.

His blog, Poetry from John Looker, is at https://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

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The Wanderer Andrew Fleck

In 1923 the novelist and journalist Joseph Roth was living in Berlin in Weimar Germany, chronicling life in a part of the German speaking world that, though only some 700 kilometres north of his native Vienna, was very unlike his homeland. The great Austro-Hungarian Empire into which he had been born had been reduced to the rump of plain old Austria, and Vienna was already a monument to the disappearing glories of the Hapsburg Dynasty, what his fellow Viennese writer Stephan Zweig called The World of Yesterday, a world of royalty and chivalry, of deep loyalty to the emperor, devout Catholic faith (and Judaism), and pride in one’s bourgeois roots. Berlin, in contrast, was the world of today, or perhaps of tomorrow, a world of jazz and bawdy shows, technology and traffic, of republicanism, liberalism, and strange new ideologies stirring under its glitzy surface. In one of his dispatches Roth found The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

17 an avatar for his own bewilderment in a man recently released from a long stretch in prison, finding himself in a world shockingly different from the one he remembered: B climbed out of the S-bahn, and stood in the middle of the twentieth century. Was it the twentieth? Not the fortieth? It had to be at least the fortieth. With the speed of arrows shot from a bow, like human projectiles, young fellows with newspapers darted here and there on flying bycicles made of shiny steel! Black and brown, imposing and tiny little vehicles slipped noiselessly down the street. A man sat in the middle and turned a wheel, as if he were the captain of a ship. And sounds – threatening, deep and shrill, plaintive and warning, squeaking, angry, hoarse, hate-filled sounds – emanated from the throats of these vehicles. What were they shouting? What were these voices? What were they telling the pedestrians? Everyone seemed to understand, everyone except B. There was something in the air, and more than just the sound of brakes and the smoke of exhausts. As the above passage illustrates, it wasn’t just that the world around him was different, but the people were too: they all understood, or seemed to, the sounds of the traffic; they had adapted themselves well enough to a world of speed and noise.

A year earlier, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, another German speaker from a former province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had released his Sonnets to Opheus, one of whose poems dramatized this very same change, describing the siren call of technology and its champions: Master do you hear the New Quiver and Rumble?

Prophets come through heralding approval.

We could identify the ‘New’ here with the great new God that Yeats predicts at the end of his great prophetic poem ‘The Second Coming’, ‘the beast that slouches toward Bethlehem to be born’. The nineteen-twenties was a time of great spiritual upheaval – perhaps of The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

18 great spiritual abandonment, as Europeans, disillusioned by war, left behind the faith that they had followed for centuries; and the twenties were also a time when many people were turning, slowly at first, to terrifying new ideologies – the communism that would swallow the east of Europe, and many of the intellectuals (and some of the poets) of the west, and the Fascism, even madder and bloodier, that would rise in response. But Rilke’s poem seems less about ideology and religion, than about technology and newness itself, the great machines of the mechanical age that had, as Roth’s freed prisoner notices, transformed the world so drastically. It had transformed war, too, in the shape of the great machines of death of the First World War: The air is loud with death The dark air spurts with fire The explosions ceaseless are That is Isaac Rosenberg, of the English war poets, perhaps the most evocative in his descriptions of the machinery of modern war and the terror it inspired, of the power and ruthlessness of bombs and guns, and the weakness of flesh and bone in the face of fire and metal. Rilke too, saw service in the First World War, albeit briefly (and on the opposite side to Rosenberg), and his poem shows certain awareness of the great destructive power of technology: Look at the machine: how it waltzes and wreaks pain And mutilates and makes us cow Yet in these lines there is a faint but definite sense of the beauty of the machinery, as well as its dreadfulness – the word ‘waltzes’ intimates a kind of dance, a quite sophisticated one, and the destruction it wreaks feels almost like a creative act. Few would deny that great weapons can be beautiful – and explosions too inspire awe. So it is no wonder that the new has its prophets.

When he spoke of ‘prophets’ Rilke may have had in mind the great inventors and manufacturers of his day, but he may also have thought of figures such as the Italian poet and theorist Filippo Marinetti, who The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

19 lauded all that was new and technological, and argued for a radical, indeed, definitive and destructive break from the past – he was later an enthusiastic proponent of Fascism which would try to achieve just such a break. The destructiveness of fascism was not merely rhetorical, but at the beginning of his career, Marinetti was not quite so clear on what this break would look like, declaring in his Futurist Manifesto that: “We will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit of its own orbit.”

The early 20th century English writer G.K. Chesterton had a little fun with that in a poem called The Futurists’ Song. Chesterton, as you will gather, had nothing but contempt for the Futurist creed, such as it was, but he was at least appreciative of the comic rhyming potential of the word ‘orbit’ My fathers scaled the mountains in their pilgrimages far But I feel full of energy when I’m sitting in a car And petrol is the perfect wine, I lick it and absorb it, So we will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit of its own orbit.

That’s pretty funny, and perhaps that is the best response to those who would sacrifice our humanity in their rush to embrace technology – to laugh at and mock them. But almost a hundred years on the high priests of technology are by no means as ridiculous as Marinetti, and the change they seek to wreak is of as radical a nature, even if it is more slickly presented. Rilke ends his poem with the ambiguous imperative ‘Let it serve’, and indeed technology has served human beings well in the decades since the Second World War, but that too brings its dangers. We may well survive the great violence that technology is able to inflict on us and our environment, but we may not so easily escape its services: AI, robotisation, the melding of humans and machines, the creation of synthetic life. I can easiThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

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ly imagine myself, in thirty or forty years’ time, as bewildered and disturbed as Roth’s released prisoner standing by the S-bahn, as the latest manifestations of the new waltz around me.

A book review,

Credits

Extract from the article The Resurrection, from What I saw, Joseph Roth, transl. Michael Hoffman, Norton 2003 Extracts from Sonnet XVIII, Sonnets to Orpheus, Rainer Maria Rilke, Transl. Willis Barnstone, Shambhala 2004 Extracts from Dead Man’s Dump, Isaac Rosenberg, from Poetry of the First World War, Ed. Tim Kendall, Oxford 2013 Extract from Collected Nonsense and Light Verse, G.K. Chesterton, Xanadu, 1987

and Three poems

an interview

Of ‘everyday poetry’ Ratnakar Valmiki

Andrew Fleck, who has been a secondary school teacher, proof reader and EFL teacher, among other things, writes on poetry and history at sweettenorbull.com.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

The problem with Abhimanyu Kumar as a poet is that he is painfully humble, to a fault. In this day and age of insta-poets, celebrity poets, and different other varieties of poets, readers have come to expect a poet to promote his/her work. But Kumar seems reticent to go all out (he says, he understands the demands of the time, but has found it difficult to follow the rules).

Frankly, this has proven to be hindrance in promoting his debut collection, Milan & the Sea (Red River, New Delhi, 2018), and it’s a shame really, because the book deserves all the attention it can get.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

22 The book is a breath of fresh air in the current landscape of Indian English poetry, where the main concerns among the young poets seem to be either to wax eloquence about their own erudition or to complain against the world around them.

Kumar does neither. As is the concerns of a first collection of poems, Kumar’s poetry is essentially a means to understand himself, within the bounds of his personal connections, his father and his son, and the others he meets. What I find most remarkable in these poems is how Kumar refuses to wallow in self-pity, though there are ample opportunities to do so. Neither does he launches on irate triads. Instead, he is a clinical observer of his world, including himself.

Perhaps this detachment of tone was acquired from the poet’s experience as a journalist. This may also explain why he uses a plain, spoken idiom. There is trickery of language, no show of erudition, but a sincere attempt to observe and report.

The poet Indran Amirthanayagam is on point when he writes in the afterword of the book: “Abhimanyu comes from, consists of, and writes for you and me, and, in particular, for the betel leaf seller, the rickshaw-walahs, the bucolic visitor from the country at the elite South Delhi party, the misfit, the ill-mannered, the shy. He orients his passion towards the great majority, the dilemmas of the ordinary.”

Of course, Allen Ginsberg is a major influence. The first section of the book is called ‘Chasing Ginsberg’. Kumar is also the co-founder of the popular poetry blog, ‘The Sunflower Collective’ that celebrates dilettantism in Poetry and aims at showcasing poets who have not necessarily been trained formally.

Perhaps the not-so-flattering-epithet, ‘poets who have not necessarily been trained formally’, applies to Kumar as well, and believe you in me, it’s a good thing. This frees Kumar to be himself and this gives his poetry a hitherto unheard cadence — ‘the everyday poetry’.

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23

In this brief interlocution, Abhimanyu Kumar talks about his art and the place that fuels it.

On writing It’s difficult to map a journey that is more interior than exterior. Being more self-aware is how one can improve as a poet.

This self-awareness does not come easy and it is a continuous process. While external markers are also important – like publication, for example – they should never overshadow the main project. Poetry, ultimately, is not a career booster or a way to network or a pump to inflate the self. It is subservient to the cause of liberating the self from ignorance, to bring comfort to the sad, the desperate, the weak and the meek. I would like to add, however, that discovering the Beat writers helped me find a way to write in the manner I wanted to, to evaluate my concerns and expectations about and from my work.

On personal poetry The Political is all around us so naturally, it impacts the PerThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

24 sonal. I see it as trying to put your money where your mouth is.

It is important to minimise the internal contradictions between what we say and what we do, for our words to have the desired effect.

The nature of poetry as an art, at least of the kind which I like, is such that it abhors material riches and worldly success/ celebrity-hood, as well as blind hatred based on discriminatory criteria. It follows that predatory capitalism or fascism will never have the support of poets in the world. As Ginsberg as written somewhere, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Of course, exceptions like Ezra Pound exist.

On Delhi Delhi is a very politically charged space. At any time, there are protests going on; the Parliament is here. So certainly that has an effect – but there are also limitations to both the nature of politics on display here as we all as its reception. There are different social milieus in Delhi. There is the posh South Delhi which has the pubs and cafes where we read our poems, the inspiration for which we sometimes find in less prosperous parts of the city like Old Delhi or the seedier parts of CP. So that contradiction too exists and I know poets who, unable to reconcile themselves to it, have chosen to be more reclusive.

25

Three Poems from Abhimanyu Kumar’s Milan & the Sea Son returning home (For Father) I thought we have had our final showdown but the curtain hasn’t fallen on our act yet.

We speak on the phone; your voice is distant and holding back, as usual, the emotions that undercut it; it’s embarrassing for you, I know, to own up to them. I craved for you like a withered tree for rain all these years.

I’m afraid I shall have to hurt you again (Of course, my heart shall echo the hollow strains of your heart afterwards.).

I see you in my mind’s eye: old and irritable, like a deposed king in exile, able to see only shapes — vague, without details — the pleasure of reading gone, just a montage of sounds from the TV fills your evenings. I have inherited your temper, sharp and sudden, your small princely hands and feet, your cynicism and bitterness.

And a love of letters: all that is written and printed.

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27

Milan & the sea Today I took my son to the beach at Thalassery.

Before making it near the sea I crossed a couple of men packing freshly caught fish in chunks of ice — I asked one if he was with the Party — but he said no, a little startled at my question and somewhat disdainfully, ignoring the hammer and sickle flag hovering on a pole behind him like one ignores a gatecrasher at a wedding reception.

The air smelt of salt, fish and piss.

The sea was a beast, wounded but not hurt irredeemably.

It had the sun caught between its teeth, bleeding slightly over the waters. It whispered to me if lived with enough conviction, even a lie turns into a truth.

The party I went to a party last night. There was a guy; a film director. His film had opened a European festival recently. He talked on and on about not liking epic acting, Leonardo Dicaprio, and the Iraq War. He spoke in a falsetto sometimes. And his wrist went limp from time to time. He was an artiste and he wanted it to be known. He told a lot of stories, featuring a lot of famous names and cracked a lot of jokes with sexual innuendos. It was all great fun. I had a lot of Biryani, and thought of the Intelligence Bureau. They are sinister, I tell you.

Milan, daunted by the awesome spectacle, clung to Aletta and started to nap — I was reminded of another poem I had written about the sea many years ago which I sent to several fancy literary journals; they all rejected it.

I felt, like me, my son too must have felt immortal before the sea, like all men do but too small to contain the feeling he chose to sublimate it in sleep.

(Maybe if I had written about feeling mortal instead of immortal in that poem, it would have had a better chance at publication for that would have pleased the editors with its humility.

But I do not do humility. Just like the sea.)

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29

POETRY

Heath Brougher Falling Through Midnight Stuck in an accurate state of Pouring, I finally notice the broken twigs and this could be some type of Anti-Nirvana, truthless and shallow as ever.

Bombast’s Avalanche

The re-exploded gutturals, resolute and resonate, resounding re-splendid and resplendent, splayed, echoing through the centuries just like the voices of idolized idiots, not void eschewing, but careening off the walls of the soul, and finding there the Truest of Echo-chambers.

Can inner-thought be just as profound and solid as its corporeal cousin, the Diamond?

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Fire cannot put out a fire and somehow a random leaf falls onto the ground which just happens to be the lucky spot when it comes to Proximity as it is miraculously unlicked by the flames.

At least no aftermath for now— a cuckoo bird does not know it is a cuckoo bird.

There are uncontrollable certainties in life and this just happens to be one of them— fortunately, the masses are distracted by gadgetry and garments and endless arguments and just carry on, unconcerned by the severity of it all.

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30

31

FICTION

ERA.MURUKAN Simply Speaking You are always glazing us with your

thoughts.

How kind of you. Though, I’d rather you stop your mutated mumblings rife with insanity and instead speak Truth unto my ears.

It’s my favorite song to hear the tonsils sprout.

Heath Brougher is the co-poetry editor of Into the Void Magazine, winner of the 2017 Saboteur Award for Best Magazine. He published three chapbooks in 2016, one full-length collection About Consciousness (Alien Buddha Press) in 2017, another full-length collection To Burn in Torturous Algorithms (Weasel Press) in 2018, and has 3 other full-length collections forthcoming. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award Nominee and his work has been translated into journals in Albania and Kosovo. His work has appeared in Taj Mahal Review, Chiron Review, MiPOesias, i am not a silent poet, Setu Bilingual, BlazeVOX, PPP Ezine, eFiction India, and elsewhere.

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

At thirty minutes past midnight, the alarm clock started ringing. Saba got up and put it off in darkness. He was perspiring heavily.

The blades of the ceiling fan were moving around so slow that he could distinguish them as they moved. Electricity had tripped, he guessed.

Saba sat on the floor, trying to orient himself. A scourge of mosquitos rose humming into his ears and surrounded him, trying to get a foothold on his face and arms. He shook them away, wildly turning his frail frame back and forth, beating his exposed torso vigorously with his hands and slapping his cheeks. He picked up his vest from the floor and wore it hurriedly. As if drawn by an unseen force, he walked into the kitchen with unsteady steps in the dark.

A stench like that arising from an open jerry can of petrol was in the air. Kerosene might have spilled in the kitchen, Saba felt. He quickly checked the stove on the kitchen stone slab for any leakage.

It was dry. The oblong kitchen slab was also devoid of any moisture.

May be it was a phantom odour made up by his weak olfactory sensThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

32 es to annoy him, hard of smelling since he was a school boy of five.

Saba was in the other side of thirty.

It was then he heard the lizard crocking on the wall behind.

He instantly knew amma* had come. He felt the lizard staring at him impatiently.

“Be quick. Carry the buckets downstairs. The queue for water would become lengthy by the time you reach there”, amma muttered.

“I am going, amma .. I am going”, Saba replied plain bored with all this, as he bent down and looked for the iron buckets under the kitchen slab. There were three such buckets and a brass bowl and another two plastic buckets, waiting there for him. All these, he had to take downstairs for fetching water.

The iron buckets still had some water, close to two litres, taken together, Saba reckoned. He lifted them one by one carefully and kept them on the kitchen slab. The overpowering stench of chlorinated water in darkness made him feel sick.

Saba next searched for the copper cooking utensils. There were at least five of them around of different sizes, each with a specific capacity. As he was stretching his hand trying to feel their presence, he could recognize in the darkness, a coffee filter, two ladles, a porcelain cup and a few stainless plates. After sustained searching for another few minutes he took them out from the tin container for storing rice, lying empty near the door.

He filled up a couple of the cooking utensils with the remaining water in the buckets. Filling them up from the buckets was not an easy task either when it was dark all around. Some water spilled on his feet too. Amma would not like any wasting of water, he remembered.

Water is precious. Amma had emphasised this at least ten times daily when she was alive. With her here in flesh and blood, it was a different scenario altogether, Saba observed. She *amma – mother never wasted any water and the whatever stored in the tiny apartment that is Saba’s dwelling, never appeared to be in excess any time. The copper bowls were used only for cooking and not for storing chlorinated residual water from the day before.

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33 Of course, after amma expired, no one cooked there.

As Saba searched for the piece of cloth on the floor to dry up his feet and the water spilled on the slab, amma became restless. “You have all the time in the world for that cleaning. Not now. It is now time for fetching water. Run, my boy”. The lizard was sounding more noisy and agitated. It was squeaking for long.

The iron buckets though empty were heavy to carry. He was keeping the small ones inside the large ones and the combined stress on the shoulder muscles sent a nasty pain shooting all the way down to the groin. Saba was worried how to carry these buckets back after collecting water. He might get muscular cramps or still worse, might slip down on the stairs. The buckets would then empty themselves on the staircase rendering all these efforts futile.

More than that, it might not be possible for him to visit the house of the seven maidens, with a swollen groin.

‘You can fantasise about those seven sluts leisurely afterwards.

It is now time to fetch water’, amma was screaming at him behind his back.

Water scarcity always cast a shadow on the daily living of Saba and his amma; also the whole town. When amma was alive, almost all her awake-hours were spent fetching water, spending it diligently, evolving contingency plans in case the water supply became erratic and curing brackish water, making it soft for drinking and for cooking, by percolation through a series of clay pots half filled with sand.

Whatever amma spoke to Saba and others invariably would become related to water scarcity. Once caught in the vortex, she would come out of it only when she fell into a spell of disturbed sleep late at night, tense with worries about water.

Amma told Saba he could think about getting married, with water scarcity behind them, once the rains arrived. He accepted her counsel without any grudge as he himself wished his faceless wife to be and the children they would beget should never suffer from shortage of water. Amma would get up without fail at midnight to wake him up and send him downstairs for fetching water at the hand pump in their apartment complex. She could sense any attempt by The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

34 anyone to touch the hand pump down below and would immediately alert Saba that water had started coming. That continued even months after her demise.

Saba came to the drawing room with the buckets and switched on the lights. Electricity had resumed albeit with a low voltage, with the incandescent bulb burning dim. The cement floor appeared rough and cracks were there all around. Something coarse lying scattered on the floor was sensed by his feet. He knew what it was. The priest when conducting yesterday the monthly memorial ceremony for amma scattered them on Saba sitting cross-legged on the floor and beyond him, with holy chants evoking celestial beings to ensure her smooth passage to heaven. Saba knew she would prefer hanging around here than passing onto heaven, as long as the water scarcity would persist. She in fact opted to have a reduced version of the memorial ceremony which involved no cooking of offerings and no feast thereafter to the priests, but confined to uttering the core chants without lighting a fire and offering two kilos of raw rice, a new dhoti and a single unripe banana to the each priest. Amma might be reaching heaven late but would not allow needless spending of water for her sake, to cook and clean up.

Saba found a small snail moving upwards on the old calendar hung on the drawing room wall. On the dusty radio cabinet, a paper cone was lying half open. It was the partially consumed pack of roasted peanuts he purchased at the street corner when coming home last night. Saba felt like munching a handful from that as he went downstairs though it might not be that crisp as it was the day before. ‘No, not now, move quick else you won’t get any water today’, amma warned from the kitchen again.

As he was climbing down the stairs, he could see the empty pots in single file kept in front of the water pump. He could have come a little early, as amma was coercing him to do.

When he reached the pump, he saw the ground floor neighbour, a man in pyjamas with a trimmed salt and pepper beard, sitting on a wooden stool near the lamp post, reading a paperback edition of a large book. He was wearing a shirt wrinkled at the lower half.

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35 The bearded neighbour would have worn it to work the day before, tucking it into his trousers at waist, Saba guessed.

Near where the bearded neighbour sat, were the bicycles and scooters of the residents of the apartment complex, parked haphazardly. There was also a fish cart, a contraption looking like a three wheeled bicycle with a large square basket shaped space in front for carrying sundry things, like packs of rice or jute bags of red chillies.

A middle aged woman was sitting in the empty basket of the cart and was practicing to play a stringed instrument that people in this part of the globe call a bul-bul-tharang, presumed to be of Arab origin.

She was the grocer’s wife, the resident of the ground floor apartment opposite to the bearded one’s on the right flank. All the five bright red plastic buckets at the head of the queue in front of the pump were hers, as Saba was aware. No other resident had such dark red hued buckets in use.

Two lungi clad middle aged men were sitting cross legged near the pump almost at the feet of the bearded neighbour. They were playing a crude version of checkers with the board drawn on the floor with a piece of chalk. Saba knew them as the bank manager and the veterinary doctor, both being first floor residents.

As he went around them towards the pump, he could not help counting the buckets and other utensils lined up. There were a total of 25 items there. Even if it could be assumed the four residents waiting there had had placed five buckets each, there was a surplus of five, Saba observed. Someone else would have placed theirs there and walked back for a cat nap.

As Saba kept his empty iron buckets at the tail of the row, the bearded neighbour looked up and smiled at him. Saba smiled back.

At this juncture, as usual, he would close the book and exchange a few pleasantries with Saba. After that he would proceed to smoke a cigarette. He might have thought proceeding to smoke a cigarette immediately after closing the book, may not be a show of good manners towards the author of the book.

‘Appears you are a tad late”, he told Saba, closing the book.

Saba replied in a friendly voice, “You are right. I slept. And, is this a The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

36

new book you are reading?”

“No, it is the same book I’ve been reading all along. One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

Saba took the book from him. It is a book in an language Saba does not know.

‘It is in Malayalam’, the bearded neighbour told him sounding helpful. Saba looked at the back cover. There was a photograph of a thick grey moustached man with his name at the bottom of the picture, in English: Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“Is this fiction?” Saba asked in a tone seeking confirmation of something he already knows.

“In a way, a long story also, a direct translation from Spanish into Malayalam not the regular Spanish to English to Malayalam stuff ”.

The bearded neighbour lighted a cigarette, offering the packet to Saba, as usual. Saba politely declined. He looked at the book cover again. Something in him told him that the moustached man on the cover would be a smoker of Havana cigars.

The yet to be refined music notes of a film song were coming from the fish cart. It was the same note played again and again. It appeared that the woman in the fish cart would not proceed further unless she was able to play that particular note flawlessly.

“Doc, a customer of the bank had kept a pack of herrings inside the bank locker yesterday. The whole place was stinking like hell this morning. I had to go after him and beg to remove the pack. Took me the whole day”, the bank manager was rolling the dice as he said this.

“You said last year around this time, someone came for safekeeping butter. Now it is kipper”, the vet said, shaking the dice before casting them at his turn.

“I find an extra set of buckets. Whose could be those?” Saba asked generally.

The vet pointed to his back. There, apart from the bank manager’s and the vet’s, there were two other flats on the ground floor, one being that of an assistant director for feature films under proThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

37 duction and the other, of a clerk in an auditor’s office. Saba was not interested in finding out who of those two had left their buckets in the queue.

“It is half past midnight”, the bearded neighbour was looking at his watch and announced. He again sat on the wooden stool, opening the book where he kept the bookmark. Water would come down the pump soon. He seemed to be in a hurry to read as much as possible before it starts flowing. For the past three months, he was found reading the book every night. Even if the water scarcity lingered on for another four months, he would have enough pages in the book to read, Saba thought. If rains would come, he might not have time to complete reading the book. Saba felt sad at that possibility occurring.

“The audit clerk came here sometime back to place his buckets. However, he immediately rushed back home, clutching his chest.

It’s quite possible he experienced acute chest pain or a generic gastric problem”, the bank manager scratching his waist said.

Saba’s amma was a chronic sufferer of chest pain. The day she passed away and that previous to it as well as the one after it, saw the whole street go without water due to a major supply system fault.

The disappointment of not getting water would have triggered amma’s death, Saba believed.

Amma’s origins were in a red soiled village down south, with never ending water scarcity. As such she appreciated the value of water and was in a celebration mood when a little more than what is usually provided was made available. Also, any short supply would make her deeply sad. She bathed, washed clothes, cooked and boiled water for drinking as well as provided warm water to Saba for his bath, all from the daily supply. After her death, he was having extended showers using most of the water fetched daily. At times, unable to perform such meticulous water management as amma did, Saba had his morning ablutions at his office, before starting work.

While the office canteen provided him with the daily breakfast and lunch, he was having his dinner at a tiny restaurant in a cul-de-sac near home, mainly patronized by the herd of knife grinders roaming The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

38 in the town. Yet, he felt it was his duty to procure water at the pump as otherwise amma would not be at peace.

Once every fortnight, he would bathe at office when returning from work. On those days, he would catch a bus and traveling ten kilometres, would go to the house of the seven maidens who ran an eatery also, among other things. After having a dinner of steam cooked par-boiled rice, spicy tamarind soup seasoned with sun dried cut vegetables, spicy, sautéed eggplant and roast lentil papads, he would enter into an inner room. One of the seven maidens would be waiting for him there exuding a faint smell of tooth powder and carbolic soap. It would be an unmitigated pleasure to sing together with her the old movie songs, while indulging in foreplay. To ensure the lines of the songs were not forgotten when they were about to experience a climax, the song books would be kept at easy reach near the sprawling double bed. As all the maidens were accomplished singers and the best in the art of love making, Saba looked forward to his visits there, in spite of the charges, somewhat on the higher side. At times he would peak very early and would thereafter lie listening to the girl singing alone, till midnight.

A door opened behind and someone came out. It was the wife of the audit clerk. She stood for a second facing the men over there.

Her eyes fell upon the woman on the fish cart, still practicing the same musical note on her bul-bul-tharang. Approaching her, she stood silent, waiting for the music practitioner to look up at her. As that did not happen, the audit clerk’s wife struck the handle of the pump gently once to call her attention.

“Do you have a telephone in your house?”, the audit clerk’s wife asked the practicing musician who is the grocer’s wife, in a subdued voice. As the bul-bul-tharang was silent, Saba could overhear that.

“Yes, we do have one. Why are you asking?”

“I’ve to call the doctor. My husband again experiences excessive lactation. His boobs are swollen causing enormous pain to him”.

“Swollen boobs? Why should that occur at all in men?” the grocer’s wife enquired as she played the tune again on her instruThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

39 ment. Saba noted her face was bright perhaps with her delight in getting the notes right or on asking the most logical question.

“In my husband’s family, men also get it for generations”, said the audit clerk’s wife as she affectionately touched the shoulder of the grocer’s wife. The latter, placed her bul-bul-tharang carefully on the fish cart and got up. Both of them walked arm in arm to the grocer’s house.

Saba had had all along watched the audit clerk with an ample bosom and back, something extraordinary for a man, walking slowly to the bus stand carrying large accounting journals stuffed in a cloth bag, till a couple of years ago. He then was found taking a shared cab avoiding buses and local trains.

Saba thought that the mischievous hands of co-passengers on the crowded buses might have playfully grabbed and squeezed his man boobs for fun. He faintly remembered the audit clerk saying something to that effect when both shared a cab once, returning from the town.

“I’ve won”, the vet got up, shaking his clenched fists. “If the water supply gets delayed, we can have one more round of the game”, said the bank manager. The grocer’s wife came to the pump. She created some space for her to stand by moving the buckets to her left.

She lifted the covering shield off the pump, pulling it up. From a small brass utensil she poured some water into the pump and replaced the shield. She then stroke the pump vehemently for a full two minutes as water with its distinctive chlorine stench started trickling out. Saba noticed the pump too was singing the same notes, the grocer’s wife was practicing.

The doctor entered with his medical chest when the water started pouring copiously. He was clad in a dhoti tucked up to his knees.

“I think I had stepped on faecal matter while walking down here. May I get some water for cleansing my feet?” he asked, addressing no one in particular. There was no response. “May I get some water for washing my feet?” he asked again, raising his voice. Saba heard him but chose not to answer, like others. The doctor muttering The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

40 something incomprehensible left his pair of sandals at the entrance to the audit clerk’s apartment and stepped in.

With all her buckets filled up to brim, the grocer’s wife looked cheerful as she carried them off to her place. When she came for her last bucket, Saba was looking at the audit clerk’s house, waiting for his turn at the pump. The grocer’s wife too looked in that direction and smiled at Saba. He was remembering all his happy moments with the seven maidens.

“This Marquez guy is fascinating. No other author has until now given me so much satisfaction”, the bearded neighbour told Saba as he started striking the pump. His book was lying on the stool with the back jacket facing the world. He was looking at it as he pumped water. Saba thought he derived his strength to pump water with force, from the photograph of the moustached author, on the book. He could sense the lizard calling him in his flat. Amma would have been agitated as he is yet to get his share of water.

Murugan Ramasami • Techno banker and project management professional heading large banking IT projects in UK, Thailand and USA • An author with 28 books to his credit, novelist, short story writer, poet, tech-travel-humor columnist (Tamil and English) • Playwright in Tamil • Movie script - dialogue writer • Translator from Malayalam, English to Tamil The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

41

POETRY

on a traversé la paroi pour rejoindre le chemin derrière la maison il y a un enfant qui pleure et l’ombre fatiguée reste couchée dans un coin le feu déjà éteint dont la chaleur demeure quelqu’un lit à voix haute le reste de la troupe s’engage sur la route qui grimpe à l’horizon et passe de l’autre côté un à un les jongleurs avaient tous disparus ne reste dans le ciel que des restes d’étoiles lancées à corps perdus we went through the wall to join the path behind the house there’s a child crying and the tired shadow lying in a corner of the fire had burnt out The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

42 we could still feel the heat someone is reading aloud the rest of the band walked away on the road to climb up the horizon and go on the other side the jugglers have left too one after the other so the only thing left in the sky were the scraps of the stars recklessly thrown up

tu parles mais je n’entends pas le son de tes paroles car ta bouche est cousue le vent aurait pu tout renverser les hommes les maisons les arbres mais au fond du paysage le ciel était cloué à toutes les parois et l’ombre sous l’arbre a fondu sous la chaleur de l’aube les mains laissées dans la poussière ne servent plus à rien dans les jeux défendus des enfants les oiseaux dans les branches avaient tout entendu you speak but I can’t hear the sound of your words because your mouth is sewn the wind could have toppled it all men houses trees but down the landscape the sky was nailed to the walls as the shadow had melted under the tree thanks to the heat of dawn hands left in the dust are no longer of use in the forbidden games of children the birds in the branches had heard everything The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

43 quelque chose de plus lisse et l’eau forme comme un miroir on a découpé ta silhouette avec des ciseaux et on l’a collé au centre du paysage mais personne n’ose parler le cri est resté suspendu au nuage et dans le miroir effacé reste la trace de ton visage et la cicatrice aussi something quite smooth and water is like a kind of mirror we have carved your figure with scissors and glued it to the center of the landscape but no one dares to speak the cry has been left hanging to a cloud and in the erased mirror there’s something left of your face and of the scar also

IVAN DE MONBRISON is French poet, writer and artist born in 1969 in Paris. His poems or short stories have appeared in several literary magazines in France, Italy, Belgium, The UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and in the US. Five poetry chapbooks of his works have been published: L’ombre déchirée, Journal, La corde à nu, Ossuaire and Sur-Faces.

His novels include: Les Maldormants (2014), L’Heure Impure(2016), Orgasmes et Fantaisies (2016) Nanaqui ou les Tribulations d’un poète (2017) To be published “The Other Self ” (Bombaykala books India 2018) “La Cicatrice Nue (éditions Traversées Belgium 2019 ) The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

1. Drops of Blood

Drops of blood fall on the table She puts the needle and fabric down, and puts on a band-aide Her third one for the night It’s late She’s practically seeing double Stopping isn’t an option Her daughter needs the dress for her recital in the morning She’s a mother Her job is to insure her daughter has all she needs She’ll be thanked for the dress Not the time She looks at the clock, 1:00am Eight more hours till the recital

Tiffany Buck is a stay-at-home to a spirited toddler. She is a

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Do you remember the night you proposed to me?

Of course you do.

You, David looking so fine in your Army uniform, the only suit you owned.

With charm, you convinced my father to grant you permission to marry me.

With beauty and the skills of a chef, you convinced me to love you.

Our wedding day was the last day I felt no fear.

The beatings were mild at first, but like so many things in life they intensified.

A broken arm, a broken rib, a couple of missing teeth, and a miscarriage.

Twenty years later at the age of thirty-nine I find myself at the mercy of cancer.

You sit beside my bed and cry.

A cry for show to family, the children, our friends, and me who knows better.

You’re crying because you are missing your punching bag at least until you can find a new one.

POETRY

2. Punching Bag

44 45

Tiffany Buck

former librarian who lives in the foothills of Appalachia. Her

poetry has appeared in Silver Birch Press, Poetry Breakfast,

Rabble Lit and the San Pedro River Review.

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The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

After church we were invited to pray the rosary I had nothing better to do, so I stayed with only a handful of people The old ladies gave me a plastic rosary and a little pamphlet The pamphlet demonstrates how to pray the rosary I was amazed at how calming and peaceful the prayers were Since that Sunday I am never without my rosary It doesn’t give me the answer as to why my wife killed herself It gives me peace.

It was bound to happen.

That’s what my dead husband, Richard would say if he were here today.

“Ginny, you can’t go around telling people you have a car that Elvis once drove and not have people be jealous.

That’s just hateful and mean.

He put me away for a month Doctor said I got bipolar Tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t listen For making me sleep in a room that smelled like piss I was determined to make my husband pay.

I put arsenic in his coffee every morning.

That bastard called me mean and put me away Hell I’ll show him mean.

Suicide It leaves those left behind empty There’s usually a note explaining things, some say What if all the note says is ‘sorry’ Sorry for what?

You leaving me?

You not getting help/ You not communicating?

The anger and frustration led me back to church I left it because it was uncool in High School So after Confirmation-no more church Then my wife kills herself October 7th-the day I went back to church Not an important day to me, but it was for the Catholic Church The feast day of the rosary I remember the rosary They were the beads you see in the hands of old women

3. Saying My Beads

46 47

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The waves crash ahead of me Too many to count Fear sets in Lessons from childhood, Don’t go in the water past your knees in high tide I may drown Wait, isn’t that why I’m here?

Behind me and ahead of me is too much to bear I think of what I have to look forward to More surgeries we can’t afford for our son A spirited toddler who makes everyday a chore My husband passing out from exhaustion before the kids go to bed No adult conversation for me tonight A mother who doesn’t know who I am A father who has no interest in his grandkids Me alone with no one to hear me screaming The water is up to my neck now Time for one last breadth

4. Treading Water

FICTION

The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

He drove west of the Mississippi for the first time in almost two decades. He had last seen her when he was sixteen and she had said, Bernie, you won’t leave me. Who will look after you? What will you be without me? You can’t leave.

And, even now, the director he had come to imagine in his mind would snap the clapperboard and cause him to do a retake—to doubt. Who was he without The Mother?

But, he was no one really.

He found that was the best way to counteract the brainwashing, a term his therapist would later come to refer to it, than to insist upon his own autonomy, his own personal identity.

He left Albuquerque that day, sixteen and with barely a quarter tank of gas. He left and had not said a word—or, no, that wasn’t it.

He said a word but it was random, something illogical, Bears, was it?

Or Fire pit? The emotion of the moment occluded his recollection.

Maybe it was, I’ll take care of my own damn self. Yes, that was it.

From the time he was two, The Mother recorded every moment of his waking life and more. She had returned from the store with one of those clunky Polaroid, over-the-shoulder VHS camcorders.

Everything—everything was filmed—not just Little League games, birthdays, holidays, and vacations, but the random, seemingly inThe Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

50 consequential moments—breakfast before school on a Tuesday in February. The problem The Mother faced at first was where to position the camera so she could film life’s unfolding and still participate in it. Soon, she had developed a knack for caddy cornering it on a stack of old phone books, or placing it above the microwave, or situating it in a top shelf where she had removed the china.

The second problem came with the camera batteries’ lifespan. In the early days, there were moments of times—complete hours—permanently erased because of dying batteries. She quickly identified that though and solved the problem by hoarding batteries and always having them constantly charged. And, more often than not, by day’s end she plugged the camcorder into the wall socket for continuous charging, where it remained on her son’s dresser, always on, the red light stare never blinking but watching as the child winked off to sleep.

Those had been the formative years where his entire childhood and life had been catalogued and each VHS tape chronologically ordered for easy retrieval. Just as being under surveillance had been customary for him so too had been the nightly ritual where The Mother would sit him down and require him to rewatch the day’s events. This, too, was of course recorded so the conclusion of every nightly viewing, so long as he could remember, ended with him watching himself on the couch watching himself.

There were rules for this ritualistic viewing. The first and primary rule was that no fast forwarding was allowed. The only options that were permitted were pause and rewind. And, of course, the recordings were of nearly a full day, an entire fifteen hours. The second rule, and like the first, was that the tapes had to be viewed in their entirety. When he watched them though, as was his custom, in their full length, they did not seem to him to be any longer than an hour or so, as if time sped up during the viewing. But no—that was impossible, right? He was sure he had seen every event from the most mundane tying of his shoelaces to arguments on the playground and still only an hour had transpired. It had to be something askew in his childish brain, he told himself, something about the perception of The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

51 time but not time itself. But didn’t children generally perceive time as moving slower than faster? To be sure though, the clock read 9:01 pm after end of each viewing, which was exactly one hour after the unflinching 8:01 pm start time The Mother imposed on each nightly session. *He passed a gas station with plastic bags on the pumps and boarded windows. The land around him was flat and featureless and the mile markers only intermittently poked up like curious moles from the ground. The sun was rising and expanding like an amniotic sac in the distance, giving birth to a new day. He had made an early start to his morning, woken up at 5:30 am from his Best Western, drank a cup of coffee, showered, and started back on the road. He’d stop at a diner along the way to get breakfast. That was what he’d always wanted: an open road, a clear schedule, and a small town diner to eat at. He even imagined himself as a sitcom character, going into the restaurant where the cook and wait staff knew his name and him yelling, “The usual, Johnny!”

Certain events stood in relief in his mind, like favorite episodes from a TV show, or—he imagined—from someone’s favorite TV show since he didn’t watch much TV but only home videos. Life gives you the only entertainment you need, The Mother had said when they were going through a Walmart and he saw VHS tapes for a superhero cartoon on display and began pleading for them. You don’t want to waste your time in front of a screen, The Mother said while pushing the buggy past the temptation and hoisting the camera over her shoulder, the red glare and the dark lens watching him.

Other shoppers passed, kids in tow, picking up bedding, kitchenware, toiletries. None of them stopped and asked about this woman filming in the store. Or had they? Had it just been his false memory that they had circled around them, observers, like extras in a movie? *He stopped at the first diner he came to, about three hours outside Albuquerque. The place was empty, and, he thought for a second, closed until a waitress walked from the back with bloodshot eyes. He ordered eggs over-easy, bacon, toast, hash browns, and coffee. He listened to the grease sizzle and that reminded him of the The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

52 static that would play but only on some of the tapes. He’d be sitting during his nightly viewing and it had only happened once or twice (or had it been more? Who could say?). The footage would be playing and then static. The interruption time would vary from a minute to half an hour and all the while he would not be allowed to get up—to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom—but would be forced into observing. He was never explicitly told this but somehow intuited this unspoken rule from The Mother who looked on. The static was important, her face said. At first, when the interruptions began happening, the Mother seemed genuinely concerned over the lost time, the dust of the past that had been dropped in a mound of sand, never to be recovered.

What had taken place in those sections of static? He wondered.

Probably nothing significant. Probably more of the detritus of the day, the monotony of a morning. What had caused them was perhaps the more compelling question. Maybe a grain of dirt had fallen into the lens. Maybe there was a malfunction in one of the tapes. Or maybe The Mother had edited them? What was it she didn’t want him to see? But she wouldn’t have edited them, would she? After all, she had been the one to begin the taping, who had to preserve the past, who had to have some permanence of their existence together.

And even if she would, when could she have found the time? Wasn’t she always there, watching, recording? Maybe after he slept?

As he grew older, The Mother loosened her rules about television and he watched more cartoons. When he played, he imagined himself as Batman but not just as Batman but as an actor playing Batman. He would perform stunts on his bike. If his nose was runny or if his cape got stuck in a spoke, he would erupt in a fit and ask The Mother to turn off the camera. The camera stays on, was always her response. Well, edit it out, he’d say. Okay, she’d say. Those tantrums, those embarrassments, those indiscretions made their way to the nightly viewings. The only edits he could perform were ones in this head where he had entire shots of his life lying on the cutting room floor of his mind.

When he first came east, he found a job working as a clerk for a The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

53 convenience store and stayed with an uncle. Those first few days, free of the camera, free of being recorded and watched, were as liberating as they were frightening. If he ate at a restaurant, if he went to a park, if he read a book and no one was there to record, was it still happening? He liked the idea of his actions having no fixed state, of ending when they ended instead of being logged somewhere and archived for later examination. His first day on the job as a clerk at the convenience store he could remember his boss, some middle manager with a receding hairline, giving him a tour of the store, showing all the exits and aisles when a small domed camera caught his eye. He could hardly believe how small it was, how compact, how unlike that clunky camera The Mother had carried around with a shoulder strap all those years. Oh that, the boss said, hoisting his pants. That’s a decoy. We put it up six maybe seven weeks ago as a deterrent. But this place, never been held up in thirty five years. These days you can’t be too trusting though. You just never know, you know? What do we really know? *He remembered having trouble distinguishing what he actually remembered and what he only remembered because of the recordings. It didn’t take long for the two to get mixed in his mind. He’d remember an event happening one way only to watch the tape and see it being different. At first, this happened on anniversaries of events when The Mother had instituted Viewing Parties. The events were not necessarily significant ones either. They observed the usual ones of course—birthdays and holidays—but then extended that anniversaries to vacations, to when he first learned to tie his shoe, to when he lost his third tooth, to when he was chased by a dog. He learned the fluidity of memory when he recalled the dog as being a pit-bull and then it turned out to be a hound. Or he remembered his bike being blue and in the video it was red. With the bike, it had happened on the fifth anniversary and so he remembered not only the original experience as the bike being blue but every other viewing—or had it been the opposite? Had he only remembered the original experience as being with a blue bike and in actuality the other viewings were of a red bike and he had forgot? How was he to know? He would have The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

54

gone to the garage and checked but by that time he had outgrown the bike and it had been given to Goodwill.

Eventually, the false memories started happening earlier and earlier and that was when the panic set in. He opened a cereal box and the toy was a dreide, but by nighttime he watched a recording of him opening a Yo-Yo. Or there was the time that he ate pancakes for breakfast but the viewing showed him eating oatmeal. Or, the most terrifying, was when his friend Ken had come over and they had built pillow forts on a rainy day but by that night the camera had changed that to footage of him with Tim building Legos. What was this camera but a hijacker of his childhood memories? That night he had said to the mother, This is wrong. And she had said, for the first of many times, The camera does not lie. *He worked his way up to management in six years time. Somehow, the pacing of those six years seemed fast, without the camera to monitor him, it seemed instead to travel with the rapidity of those viewing sessions. Under his leadership, the store resisted change and continued on with the dummy camera through all the years. Eventually, six more years reeled on and kids were snapping pictures with their phones. Once, when there was an uptick in shrinkage likely owing to employee theft, a regional manager had suggested that Bernie get some actual surveillance cameras installed. But when the security salesman came and walked the floor, he had not been really listening, not taking into account the value and peace of mind that cameras would provide, because he already knew what his answer would be, had to be, No. Peace of mind was not what he associated with cameras. *He ate the hash browns by dabbing them in globs of ketchup and the waitress had at this point turned on the television. He tried to block out the noise, to drown out the talking heads with louder and louder chewing. The waitress turned the volume up. A news story was playing about a convenience store shooting. Can we turn this off? He put down his fork. Please.

The day he had left, The Mother had threatened him, had made one last attempt to get him to stay. If you leave, she had said, I have The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

55 the tapes. I’ve seen the tapes, he said. What would I want with those?

Not all of them, she had said and left her recliner and opened the cassette drawer. She thumbed through VHS tapes, past Christmases, past spend-the-nights, past vacations, until she came to one that he had never seen before, that almost looked lodged in a back, secret compartment. The first tape, she said and handed it to him. He stood there cradling it, debating whether or not to crush it in his hands. *After six more years, he was promoted to regional manager.

He visited all the stores in the district and did the budgets, did all the hiring and firing of store managers, networked with vendors.

His store was the lone holdout in terms of not being fully equipped with CVC cameras. When he received the call, he was on a drive out to one of his more remote stores. Shooting, was what the new store manager had said and could he please come.

When he pulled into the lot, he had already been formulating his defense. A camera wouldn’t have helped, he’d say. It’s usually hard to make out details in those anyway. He saw the yellow tape and two squad cars and an ambulance. One DB, he heard an officer say. Mr. Grimmel? the police officer said. Bernie Grimmel? He nodded and the officer escorted him inside.

Someone was shot? He heard himself say, but was he really saying it or thinking it?

A fatal shooting. No witnesses.

But my manager. Brad.

Brad crouched from behind a corner. Sorry boss. Smoke break.

Slow night.

And none of the clerks?

Brad looked down.

All taking a smoke break at once?

The security footage should be coming back now, the officer said.

Security footage? Oh but that camera doesn’t work.

Yes it does, Brad said and they were squeezing into a back office where there was a security TV and footage being played. Had Brad taken it upon himself to install a camera without him knowing? Had The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

56 that camera always worked all these years and Bernie not known it?

Had his original manager been lying to him? Or even worse, maybe it was a joke he had not gotten? Had that security TV always been there or had it been added by Brad? Surely, he would have seen it, would have noticed it. But he would have noticed a red bicycle too, right?

The footage played and he saw a customer, the John Doe, enter the store. The camera angle only revealed his back though as he began to walk toward the first aisle. And then, two minutes or so later, the culprit had lumbered in, raised his sidepiece and fired six shots, felling the John Doe. Turning to the camera, the face imprinted and caught in high resolution was his own. Brad and the officer turned to him.

This cannot be, he said.

That’s you in the video, Brad said. Unless you have a twin.

But the time, it doesn’t work, Bernie said.

The camera doesn’t lie, the officer said. And even then, across all that space and time, Bernie was sure this was The Mother’s doing, that this was some prank of hers. Perhaps this was on the first tape she had blackmailed him with, and now, after all these years, this was her getting back at him. He thought all these things as he sprinted for his car. *He was not sure how he had escaped the cops or if he had. Perhaps he was sitting back in some interrogation room now and everything now was some tape he was viewing. The escape was all static.

As he sat at the diner now, the news story played but it made no mention of a suspect, gave no description of himself, flashed no cartoon sketch of his portrait. Had he imagined it all? Had that been a detail that he had remembered incorrectly like all those details those many years ago? What was certain about memory after all? The only thing he could be certain of was his need to get to Albuquerque to see The Mother. She would sort all this out. And despite his attempts to resist, he imagined that director, after being absent all those years returning to that scissors chair and calling, “Action.”

When he arrived back at The Mother’s, he was overwhelmed The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

57 with how much had stayed the same. It was like a museum of another time, his skateboard, unrusted remained in the same corner of the garage where left it, the play set in the backyard looked unweathered and unmarked by time. He went to the door and found it ajar, so he nudged his way in. He went to his bedroom, and it was a snapshot of his life at sixteen, the same heavy metal posters on the wall, the same clothes scattered on the floor, the bed unmade. He checked the kitchen, The Mother’s room, the sunroom—all preserved as he remembered on the day he left. The Mother, however, was nowhere.

Maybe she went out, he thought. Maybe she is dead. He walked into the living room. There, on the stack of old phone books was the 1987 Polaroid camcorder. Was it recording him now? The red light was not on, but he had read where the red record light would burn out on those earlier models and they would still be recording. Maybe the red light had burnt out on this one, years ago. Or maybe the red light would come on in a moment and then he would be recorded. He looked down at the coffee table and saw the VHS tape where he left it, where he set it down those eighteen years ago instead of breaking it to pieces. He picked it up. Turning it over in his hands, he read the white label, “First Tape.” He inserted it into the VCR and his finger hovered over the “Play” button, when the red light of the camera came on.

Trevor Almy lives in Jackson, Mississippi where he formerly taught high school English for three years. During his time as a teacher, he was appointed the Poetry Out Loud teacher for its inaugural year and, in the second year, took his student to State. Currently, he is an instructional designer at a community college and moonlights as a barista. He is the founding editor of a literary magazine known as The Wolf Skin that was in operation from 2013 to 2016. He has two daughters and a son.

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58

FICTION

Norbert Kovacs

The thin, tall man was walking the roadside when he saw the stone wall by the forest’s edge. Old autumn leaves blanketed the ground before it though no trees and shrubs stood nearby that may have dropped them. The massed stone wall prevented any more than a partial view of the forest beyond. The man walked the short incline from the road, brought his feet over the wall’s top, and climbed onto the other side.

There the man discovered a square stretch of dirt that bore only two or three fallen leaves. The dirt showed dark and compact beneath his shoes. Why was it here? He thought. In a shrub close by, the man spotted an old spade, chipped with black and red rust. He picked this up and dug in the barren patch, casting earth and rocks beside him. He created a hole waist deep. After a last heave, he decided he would not find what was buried in the dirt if anything was. He felt tired from his work and leaned resting on his shovel. As he looked up, he saw a bird fly across the sky and go west. It flew past white clouds into an open, blue expanse. How far might the bird go in that sky? He thought and considered what he might do if he quit the hole and went elsewhere. The man emerged from the earth and walked The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

59 west through the forest, surveying the treetops. He passed taller and larger trees, the maples sporting high, dark branches, the pines, and wide heads. The man came to a ridge from where a great landscape spread before him. To the north loomed a set of six mountains, tall and heavy, their outline jagged. Granite showed in crooked runs through the forests that covered their sides. I will go see those mountains up close though they are very far away, he told himself. I will know them like this forest here. The tall man descended the ridge.

He took a long, curving way down hills green with poplars and spruce. Pools of water broke the patched, tall grass he met. The hills rose and blocked the mountains from him. He arrived at denser forest and running brooks. He crossed into a grove of hemlock bunched dark and close. Past the trees, he came to a stream that sparkled with light. How many different places will I find in these hills? He thought as he cut downward. Will I really know them as I go?

The thin man had passed the forest and crossed another bend of stream when he reached a thicket of dead mountain laurels and vines. A large grey blotch moved beyond him and made the dead laurel branches rustle. What might be there? The man wondered. The man neared and glimpsed a deer through a gap in the trees. The deer was pushing through the laurels toward the forest ahead. The man went slowly and quietly in the open beside it. He drew toward the thicket and the deer advanced, putting several paces between them.

Then the man made to enter the thicket. The deer bound quickly from the laurels into the forest and the man sped after the animal. He passed the corner where the deer had gone and found himself among maples at the forest’s edge. He no longer caught sign of the deer.

A lake past the tress sent a light through the dense grove around him. The man went past the maples to the lakeside. Its surface rippled, a steel blue mixed with green. The lake was large and the surface did not show its depths. There must be as much below that is beautiful and that I do not see as there is here before me, the man thought. Let me explore it. The man stripped his clothes by the waterside, stepped from the shore, and dove into the lake. He swam through the steely water for the indigo bottom. Beneath him the water spread The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

60 far and wide. The thick, jagged arms of oaks fallen long ago loomed upward toward him; black, snaked vines with soft leaves floated in and out of the dim light. When the man could hold his breath no more, he turned toward the surface; above him floated a hazy ball of sunlight toward which he swam. He broke the surface, swam to the shore, and pulled himself from the water.

The man let the sun dry him and dressed. He next walked down the lake to where something white moved in the meadow grass. The white blinked in and out among the tall blades, never staying in one place. At the shore’s end, he entered the grass that rose navel high.

The grass was a mesh of dried blades, purple cone flowers, and bluebells. He walked and watched the grass press down and lie flat below his feet. In the densest part of the grass, he encountered white butterflies, moving around three or four pogonias. They flew and did not rest long on the flowers. The white I saw, the man realized.

The man continued into the meadow. He heard water ripple between the lake side and a far grove of maples. He went toward the source of the sound. He passed part of the tall grass and reached a stream. Its grey water burbled, flowing from the north. He noted the stream’s stages through the meadow, the water slipping from one bend to the next. There is some higher land from where this water flows, he considered. He walked the stream toward a woods. The land rose and tall pines closed around him. He surveyed the stream up to where the forest cast a deep shade. I might see into that shadow once I reach the stream bend, he thought. The man walked the bank toward broken rocks. Past these, the light in the forest grew showing him the contours of birch limbs hanging over the water.

Suddenly, the man heard a wood thrush sing, clear and strong.

Where was it? He wondered. He listened. The man left the stream and walked into the woods. He went by pines and spruces and over land that rose in rocky hulks toward the north and east. He heard the thrush always before him, unseen in the trees.

The man reached a level place where a road cut through the forest. The dirt road went north-south; one of many he knew crossed the woods. I could follow the thrush, he thought, but this road will The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

61 lead me toward the mountains. The mountains that are my goal. The man crossed the pines and started north on the right side of the road.

The road stretched hard and dark through the trees. A car passed, going north. It was a black sedan and through its rear window, the man saw the back of the driver’s head. The car’s taillights went red as the vehicle slowed and took the bend. After the car had gone, the man noticed several rhododendrons in a clearing across the road. A brown-red hummingbird whirred in their blooms. The bird ducked its head into the pit of two or three after their nectar. Their scent has caught him, he thought.

The man faced the road again and walked. A second car neared, passed and disappeared in the distance. Across the road, he discovered several mountain laurels that grew beneath taller maples.

The maples were dark because the sun was declining; however, the laurels below them still had light on many of their long, green leaves.

Between the laurels’ leaves and trunks loomed dark shadows. The light appeared again on the low shrubs over the ground. The man looked, enjoying the light next to the dark, before he continued to walk. A car came south on the opposite side of the road. Through the front window, the driver’s face stood forth grey, his clothes black.

The car sped away. The man discovered mountain laurels by oaks across the road from him. The light on the laurel leaves and the low shrubs stood clear and sharp in the shade. How does that light reach here? He asked himself. He faced up and observed the light streaming from a break in the oaks to the north and west. He crossed the road into the forest and headed toward the gap amid the trees.

The man walked more quickly and surveyed the darkening forest. He gazed past the treetops toward the sky and at the light on the leaves of the darkest trees. At gaps in the woods, he studied the bulky mountains in the north, blazing red and orange, toward which he walked. He crossed roads and clipped through woods behind homes. He followed the falling light past fern thickets deep into the forest.

The sun had set when the man reached a grove of maples past the road. It had become very dark and he no longer could see well to The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

62 walk. He stood amid the maples and studied the edges of their leaves outlined against the night sky until he no longer could. Somewhere nearby, crickets chirped. Ferns rustled as animals passed. The man, tired from his hike, sat on the earth and leaned his back against an oak. I will go on in the morning, he promised himself. I must know the mountains far ahead. I came for them and I will go to them. He sat listening to the sounds that reached him from the night. Sleep was coming on him and he could not stay upright, so lay out on the ground. He shifted his back on the dead leaves, catching the odor they exhaled, before he lay quiet.

Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. His stories have appeared or soon will appear in Thrice Fiction, Westview, Squawk Back, Wilderness House Literary Review, and No Extra Words. Norbert's website is www.norbertkovacs.net.

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63

FICTION

We are all strong and difficult people in our family. My father drank, it was true, but he made the best cornel brandy in Southern Bulgaria and Bulgarians, Jews, and Greeks alike gave their last penny to buy Dad’s home brew for their sons’ weddings. My elder brother was the best rider in the country far and wide, and my younger brother could drink as much as all eels in the Struma River without falling from his chair. My sister sang beautifully. Guys gave her jars of honey and covered the path to our small house with roses for her to step on.

My mother wove woolen rugs and she could cure fidgety children who scared easily. She cast lead bullets for them, and while the lead melted in the pot she mumbled the kid’s name under her breath.

Then the little one forgot all his fright and fears. I’d seen this time and again, but I couldn’t explain what happened not if my life depended on it. Mother was held in high esteem and Dad was a man to be reckoned with. The only person in the family that lacked distinction was I, the youngest sister.

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64 That was bad.

I cared for Grisha.

I had noticed Grisha first when Dad organized the Big Bet. To be honest, he didn’t organize anything, he let our neighbors drink some of his cornel thunder and that was enough. Guys could hardly pay him for the brandy they’d drunk. It was true Grisha repaired his motorbike for free, another guy dug our cornfield for Mother, a cousin of ours plastered the walls of our living room etc. The guys had carts and good horses, Dad made wonderful brandy but no one could pay him well enough.

The Big Bet was a race in which the best cart and the best horse won. Grisha was a magician because he made your horse-drawn vehicle glitter, sing and sparkle. The competitors climbed in their carts and raced down the dirt road, stirring up dust as black as midnight, hooves hitting stones and crushing them into powder. The guy who won didn’t collect money for there was no money among the cornel brandy drinkers. As clever as he was, Dad thought up an interesting reward for the champion in the Big Bet. The winner chose one man among the population of the village to work for him for a day without being paid. It was very easy to guess who the most sought-after guy was: Grisha.

Grisha was the only man in the district who could make your old Volkswagen start even in the dead of winter. His shoulders were as broad as the dirt road that clambered the hill to our place. I loved the way he spoke, slowly and powerfully like a church bell.

Our village was big, all green and warm at the end of summer, and the river had not run dry completely. Some big shots from the nearby town drove their old Fords and Peugeots, pushed them into the gorge the river had dug, and left them there, in the thick mud, to rot away. But they didn’t know Grisha! He fixed the jalopies. From three rotten Fords, he put together one pretty good car then sold it dirt cheap. He rolled in money, but I didn’t care about his wealth. I cared about him.

The second thing I cared about was horses. They didn’t shout at me, they carried me on their backs and they loved the bags of barley The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

65 I plucked for them. I was good at driving carts and all the time I dreamt I’d win the Big Bet. Then I’d have Grisha for a whole day.

He came to our house when my sister sang and never noticed when I sang.

He didn’t know I swept the street in front of our porch for him. I knew the paths he preferred and I planted geraniums and lilac bushes there. Come on, somebody who knew our village would say. These paths are so steep lizards can’t creep on them! That was true. It was difficult to plant lilac bushes on stone and make them survive in the heat. I carried pails and pails of water to the bushes and geraniums, and I left roses and bottles of cold lemonade for Grisha to find. He didn’t notice me.

So one day - it was scorching hot, and the grass was motionless in the motionless air - I saw him pass, and I made up my mind. His hands were greasy, his face was greasy as well, and his eyes were indifferent. My heart became as small as a hazelnut. ``Grisha,’’ I said as I jumped in front of him. ``I am Anna and I am the daughter of Lila who casts lead bullets for faint-hearted kids, and sister of Pesho who drinks powerfully. Even you can’t out-drink him. My father is the guy who makes cornel brandy and you staggered and teetered after you drank from it.’’ ``I didn’t teeter!’’ he said angrily. ``You did,’’ said. ``But I didn’t stop you to argue about that.’’ I felt something was had gone wrong. His voice was sharp and wrong too. ``So why did you stop me?’’ he said.

I had rehearsed two hundred times what I’d say to him, but now when the time had come, my mouth felt dry like the dust on the road that climbed the hill, and my tongue was as heavy as the hill. ``Because I... I like you,’’ said which was true. ``All girls in the village of Staro like me,’’ he remarked which made me angry.

I had picked roses for him and had trudged up the barren hill to bring lemonade for him. ``I want you to marry me,’’ I said.

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66 He stared. And that made me so angry I could burst into tears or into flames which was all the same to me. ``Ha, ha!’’ he burst into laughter instead. ``Does `Ha-ha!’ mean `yes’?’’ I said boiling and seething. I didn’t make cornel brandy, neither did I cast lead bullets for faint-hearted kids, but I was Anna and I would have no one laugh at me. ``I’d rather marry a worm than you,’’ he said.

I looked at him. Yes, he was handsome, and he repaired the jalopies of the entire district, and all the girls wanted him, but I was Anna! ``Shall I take this is `No’? I said trying to appear calm. ``You understood me perfectly well,’’ he said. ``I won’t marry you.’’

I was on the verge of saying there’d be no more roses strewn on the paths he chose to go for a walk, nor would he find bottles of lemonade left for him to drink, but I changed my mind. ``Good bye, Grisha,’’ I said. ``Ha, ha,’’ he laughed again. ``Don’t say I have not asked you,’’ I said as he turned his back on me and strode purposefully down the path. ``Ha, ha’’ his laughter echoed like a whip oh a horse’s back. And I knew how a horse felt after you whipped him.

But there would be a Big Bet again! Dad had brewed another barrel of cornel brandy. Well, why didn’t anyone ask who’d picked the cornels, who sprinkled sugar on the mixture and who cleaned the cellar where the cornels took a century to ferment? It was me. I had thrown a lizard into the barrel and the brandy was sure to climb up your head like a lizard. The brew had a big kick in it because I kicked the barrel so many times that every cornel turned into a fist that would clout you across the side of the head.

The Big Bet day came and Dad announced it was Grisha who’d work a whole day for the winner. ``Come on, Anna,’’ Mother said, ``Go and pour out brandy for the guys. The whole village will participate in the race, so don’t give them too much to drink.’’

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67 ``I’ll pour no brandy into anybody’s glasses, Mom,’’ I said. ``I’ll participate in the race myself.’’ ``What!’’ my mother said choking on her tongue. ``A woman can’t drive a cart. And nobody’s heard of such a stupid thing.’’ ``You cast lead bullets and the kids are no longer afraid of anything in the world,’’ I said. ``But I need no bullet of yours. I want to win the Big Bet Race.’’ ``No!’’ my brothers, the best rider and the best drinker in the village, said. ``We won’t give you a horse and we won’t give you a cart. Shame on you, Anna!’’ ``I won’t ask you to give me a cart and a horse,’’ I said. ``I’ll go and take them myself.’’ ``No!’’ Dad pointed out. ``Look at your sister. She’s as meek as a calf and sings better than our TV. Why don’t you try to sing like her?’’ ``Why don’t you sing like her, Dad?’’ I said and he declared he was no TV and he was a brandy maker, then he nodded shortly.

I knew what that meant. This had happened before. My two brothers, my mother, my father and my sister who was as meek as a calf sprang to their feet and surrounded me. My brothers threw a belt around my shoulders. Then Mother who was as strong as three men sat on my feet.

My meek sister tied my legs with the belt of her dress; my best drinking brother tied my arms with a piece of rope - the same one I used when I dragged him from the pub to our one story house. O, no, he wasn’t drunk, he mumbled as I tugged him along. He wanted to prove how grand he was. My best riding brother tied me to the chair with an old bridle and said, ``We are doing this for your own good.

The carts will crush you like an egg and you’ll die, then who else will go pick cornels for the brandy?’’ ``You are my favorite child,’’ Dad said. ``Everybody is somebody best among us. You are nobody and that saddens my heart.’’ ``Here, drink some cornel brandy,’’ my nightingale of a sister said. ``Come on, drink that,’’ she encouraged me.’’ You’ll fall asleep even before the guys put the horses to the carts. I’ll sing for you and you won’t suffer.’’

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68 I felt like tearing up her nightingale ears and feeding them to the dogs.

Mother didn’t say anything for a while, then suddenly she opened the window. ``You wailed like a lion when you were a baby,’’ she said. ``I sang to you and you howled louder. Your father and I danced for you to make you shut up. You wouldn’t stop. You roared as if your tummy was full of vipers. Then I happened to open a window and you became as quiet as a worm. I’ve opened it for you now. So I hope you’ll feel good, Anna.’’

Then my famous family, Father, Mother and all, went to the Big Bet. Dad had drank enough so he burst into song and the minute he opened his mouth a glass fell from the table and my best riding brother dropped down on the floor - that was his trick to make Dad shut up. Alas, no success this time! The nightingale in the family, my sister, suddenly crooned too - that was how she hoped to discourage Dad’s singing efforts. My drinking brother produced a bottle of brandy and tried to smuggle it to Dad, but Mother, I’d give her that, brandished the poker she’d grabbed from the hearth and roared, ``Stop singing, man, or you’ll be dead in an instant.’’

It was the poker that brought Dad back to sobriety and drove good sense into his head. He stopped roaring and rumbling, and said, ``Whatever you say, sugar,’’ to Mother. ``Sugar or no sugar, you’d better be quiet,’’ my Mother said pointedly as she took her Black Notebook. In it, she wrote down who drank from our cornel brandy and noted if the guy had to dig a cornfield, weed our peppers, or paint the walls of our kitchen to pay off his debts.

They all went out, leaving me tied like the old ox Mother wanted slaughtered after a week. I was not an ox so I started gnawing at the bridle my drinking brother had tied me with. Like everything else he had, that bridle was half rotten, and although the saliva in my mouth tasted bitter like the poison I killed cockroaches with, I gnawed the thing through and through. My hands were free.

I had no other cart but the old two-wheeled gig Dad kept in The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

69 the back yard and drove the city folks with, showing them our beautiful countryside. Beautiful my foot! There were big sand hills that winds and heat had nibbled away. Waist-deep nettles were all over the place, thorns, hawthorns, thistles and elder trees flourished and burgeoned, and there were so many lizards crawling around that you stepped on them. The slopes were steep. Snakes and goats climbed the scorching hot outcrops of rocks, and dwarf cornel trees struck root in the cracks amidst the sandstones. The soil was so red that if you cut your finger no blood - red sand – would spurt from your wound.

In the Big Bet, one had to drive his cart through the tract of red land from the top of Purple Hill and reach the bottom of Scarlet Gorge following the road in which the ruts were so deep you could swim in them if it was raining. I rushed to the gig and then I saw there was no horse left for me.

My best riding brother had taken Lightning, our huge stallion that would eat nothing but barley, so supercilious beast he was. My elder brother, the drinking talent, had taken our second horse, or should I say a limping ruin, but he’d already had a glass or two, and hobbling or limping horses made no difference to him. The nightingale, as always very special, rode the young colt Mother was to swap for a motorbike after the Big Bet was over. Mother’s lead bullets had become so popular that after thinking and rethinking for a month, she made up her mind it was more advantageous for her to visit her patients riding a motorbike rather than a horse.

Marko, our scraggy obstinate donkey, happened to be the only living soul in sight. He was grazing dry yellow thistles in the backyard. If I had not found Marko, I’d have put our goat before the gig and I’d run for the Big Bet. Marko, the gig, and I were the last to come to the venue of the competition. It was a dry meadow, all yellow grass and red sand under the hooves of the horses. ``Hey, look who’s there!’’ the guys whistled, and the drinking talent, my younger brother, came up, grabbed my ear and pulled it very hard indeed. Then he spat on the gig and kicked the belly of the The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

70 innocent donkey. ``Go home. Now,’’ he hissed frothing at the mouth. ``Our family will become the laughing stock of the district because of you.’’

I tried not to squirm. ``You go home,’’ I hissed back. ``My victory will be the talk of the district. And you will buy me a bike to glorify my achievement.’’ ``Isn’t she an idiot?’’ I heard my mother’s comment.

Everybody guffawed. ``We are all democratic fellows here,’’ Grisha, the boneshaker repairer said. ``Let her participate.’’ ``I’ll participate not because you say so, but because I want to,’’ I snarled. ``Mind you what I’ll do to you after I win you for a day.’’ ``Perhaps marry him?’’ a guy with a horse, as big as a hotel, said. ``Are you beautiful enough?’’ ``I am,’’ I said. ``I’ll do what I’ll do.’’

The deep-rutted dirt road the competitors had to follow climbed down the red precipitous slope. The hill was cut and carved by three wild streams, all of which had run dry and gaped like mouths full of bad teeth. There were three narrow bridges over them, all shaky and rickety structures; then the carts had to cross the river at the foot of the hill. There was no water in it, just thick rich mud, overgrown with bulrush and teeming with water snakes, tadpoles and frogs. The old church Saint Ivan Rilski the Miracle Maker was on the opposite shore, in the middle of a flat patch of land, where we all gathered for Christmas and Easter to eat, drink and celebrate.

The track was narrow and tortuous, there were sharp stones that had wrenched wheels of carts before, and the rumble the hooves produced deafened young and all. Weeks after the Big Bet Mother couldn’t hear Dad grumbling under his breath: a fact that suited the family fine. Dad usually sold two barrels of his brandy - which meant that Dad’s buddies had to weed and sweep for Mother. As a rule, these guys were as industrious as mountain rocks. Like rocks, they wouldn’t budge, and it was their wives who span for us, and knitted pullovers for the drinking talent, the nightingale and for me.

The carts were arranged in a row, all seven of them, my two The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

71 talented brothers, the rider and the drunk, and five more guys. I was at the very end of the row, on a strip of land where there were more stones and lizards than air to breathe. ``Get out of my way!’’ the guy next to me said and kicked my donkey.

I kicked his horse in return and it was after the kick that Dad gave the signal. He whistled, waved his cap and all the seven carts rumbled down the hill, raising clouds of red dust and whirlwinds of sand. I, my gig, and Marko, the donkey, waited for the dust to settle.

The onlookers: the nightingale, the housewives who betted saucepans and teapots on their husbands, the girls who betted their belts on their sweethearts, all shouted, ``Hello, the laughingstock there!

Waiting for the Ivan the Miracle Maker to kick you?’’

I had a plan, a daring and wild one. I wouldn’t follow the dirt road. I’d take a shortcut through the dry brambles, briars, thistles and thorns I had so often roamed around picking cornels for dad’s dangerous brandy. So I kicked Marko trying to make him run though the dry grass, the spikes and barbs. The beast wouldn’t budge so I kicked him much stronger. Off Marko went.

The gig hit sharp stones, briars and hawthorn bushes caught it, but the hill was as steep as a hanging rope, so the animal couldn’t stop.

My vehicle cut its way through dry nettles, Marko ran and brayed terrified, I shook, jumped and bounced, clutching the reins, seeing only Marko’s tail and hooves. I didn’t know what hit him, maybe a branch of a cornel tree, then something bit me, and another thing whipped and slapped me across the face. Marko whinnied, neighed and shrieked. He couldn’t stop.

We thundered across the first dry stream and a flying stone clobbered me on the forehead. Then we roared and boomed across the second and third dry creeks, or did we? Small flies got into my eyes and bramble branches scratched my neck. Marco could not stop. Then suddenly there was mud everywhere around me, mud in my eyes and ears, and I could no longer see Marko’s tail. The gig under me shook, wobbled, and rattled, something wet and slimy slid down my blouse. I didn’t care.

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72 ``Saint Ivan Miracle Maker, help me!’’ I shouted.

Marko, the donkey, brayed for help too. He’s alive and kicking, a happy thought crossed my mind and that was the last thing I remembered. In a haze, I saw one of the wheels fall off. Then the gig hit something hard, a snag, a rock, or a bone of a dead ox. The second wheel fell off. A wet muddy thing hit my nose. Marko brayed, trumpeted, pulled hard and flew downward with the wind. I fell, my back hit the ground, and I lay prostrate like a pair of cheap wet pants.

I’m dead, I thought, but I wasn’t. From the corner of my eye, I saw a big cross and a stone wall: I was in front of the church Saint Ivan the Miracle Maker. The gig, having lost all its wheels, drooped by my side, and Marko, the beast, all spluttered with mud, was licking my face with his wet cool tongue.

All my bones hurt. My nose bled and there was red mud in my mouth. The left sleeve of my blouse hung down my shoulder, a mere rag, and a frog jumped from it. There was no trace of the other sleeve. A slimy thing crawled out of my pants pocket and inched away creeping as best as it could up in the dust. A small water snake it was. Another grimy thing moved inside my blouse, slithering and hitting the skin of my belly. Briar branches and brambles hung from my hair.

I looked around. There was no other cart in front of the church Ivan the Miracle Maker. The saint had done a wonderful job at saving my and Marko’s lives. On the other hand, he had thought it was beneath him to save the gig. As I watched, a side board of my vehicle broke up and fell onto the ground. Then I noticed all the other carts had stopped and the horses stood motionless in the heat. Competitors, their sweethearts, wives and mothers, neighbors, and children, all stared at me as silent as the empty pockets they all had. I tried to stand up, staggered and my nose landed in the dust. ``She’s alive!’’ My mother shouted and all rushed to Ivan the Miracle Maker who stared modestly at the mud in the river from his beautiful icon in the church. I saw Grisha, the man with the nimblest hands in South Bulgaria, rush to me, and I thought of the mud in my hair, of the slippery thing that squirmed under my blouse. My The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

73 head was as heavy as the gig and as shaken. Then I realized I had not reached the finishing line yet.

I scrambled to my feet, shook violently and fell. I scrambled to my feet again, grabbed one of the broken boards of the gig, and dragged it forward to the church. I wanted to win the race and win it honestly.

I pushed my way to the flat patch of land and collapsed in the middle of it. I’d reached the finishing line. I won. Then I spat mud in the dust and lay breathless on the yellow grass.

I was just trying to sit up when Dad reached out his hand to help me stand up. I disregarded it. I had something much more important to concentrate on. Grisha was the second after Dad to reach me. He bent down and stared. His eyes looked terrified as he scrutinized my filthy feet, my mud-caked face and grimy hands. ``I got you,’’ I said. ``I won you and you are mine for a whole day.’’ ``Priest Mano will refuse to proclaim you man and wife,’’ my mother said still panting. She had run from the top of the hill down to the church, and I was suddenly glad she was sweating profusely.

She stopped speaking as she tried to get her wind. ``No marriage is supposed to last less than a day.’’

The carters and their sweethearts, my brother, the drinking talent, and my elder brother, the rider, looked at me, their eyes burning. ``I’m proud of you!’’ the best rider said. ``No one dared drive a gig through the Snake Gorge!’’ ``You flew over the crags! You drove Marko as if he were an angel!’’ my drinking brother said. ``I love you, little sister. I love you!’’ ``And I’ll bring all faint-hearted and white-livered children to you,’’ my mother said. ``I’ll let then touch the hem of your skirt and they’ll never be afraid of anything in their lives.’’

The nightingale opened her mouth and a magnificent song poured out of it. This was the song about Ivan Rilski the Miracle Maker who, we believed, was born in our village. Then all of them, the carters and their sweethearts, their mothers, cousins and neighbors who had come to bet on the best cart, sang along. They shouted The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018

74 the words of the song, and they all stood motionless.

They sang for me.

They drank a lot, all of them, and my brother the drinking talent, was proud they were his friends. Maybe the cornels were the reason their voices were so powerful, or maybe it was the river that made the tune rich, or the wind they breathed in was in the song.

Their song was strong. My mother cast her lead bullets and was famous; my father brewed cornel brandy, and every one in my family was known far and wide. But I was the first one, the only one in the whole village that the best carters sang the song about Ivan Rilski for. They sang and I tried to stand up. Finally, I scrambled to my feet and sang along. I loved the hill and the broken gig. As I bent to kiss Marko, the donkey, on the forehead, the slimy thing crawled out of my blouse and thudded on the red, caked earth. It was a big frog. ``What will you do to me?’’ the most beautiful voice asked me - Grisha’s.

I thought about it. To be honest, I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew. ``Dad has a big barrel in which he keeps the cornel brandy,’’ I said. ``I want you to climb on that barrel and stay there all day long.’’ ``Why?’’ he breathed. ``All they long,’’ I said. ``I’ll watch you.’’

The carters laughed, their sweethearts snickered and Dad growled, ``You’ve got a screw loose. He can repair my old Ford instead.’’ ``He can assemble the engine of my motorbike,’’ the drinking talent ventured. ``No,’’ I said. ``I won him. He’s mine for the day.’’

When everyone was quiet, Grisha, the expert mechanic and loudmouth, looked me straight in the eyes and said, ``Well...if you ask me the same question which you asked me before the Big Bet began... My answer will be positive. You just have to ask me once more. And I’ll say yes.’’

I looked him straight in the eyes and said, ``No.’’ ``Hey, nitwit, you’ve got him,’’ my brother, the best rider, said.

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75 ``I don’t ask the same question twice,’’ I said. ``You are more obstinate than Marko the donkey,’’ my nightingale of a sister said gruffly. ``And you are less intelligent than him.’’

Everybody was quiet then the most beautiful voice, Grisha’s, said, ``Will you marry me, Anna?’’

I couldn’t believe the words I’d just heard. ``Anna, dearest,’’ the most beautiful voice said.

I stole a look at Dad who was scratching his head, speechless.

My mother, although she was a brave woman and cast bullets against fear for young and old, stared at me unbelieving. ``Will you become my wife, Anna?’’ Grisha said. ``I have to think about it,’’ I said.

O, come off it, I knew what I’d say. I’d dreamed about it thousand times. The gig had no wheels, and Marko was a sorry sight, all covered with mud, a couple of leeches gleaming like stickers on his back. ``Yes, Grisha, I will,’’ I said. ``But you’ll climb atop that barrel and stand on it for an hour, Okay?’’

Zdravka Evtimova was born in Bulgaria where she works as a literary translator from English, German and French. Her latest short story collections are: “Carts and Other Stories”, Fomite Publishing, Vermont, USA, 2012, and “Impossibly Blue”, SKREV Press, UK, 2013. Her short story collection “Endless July and Other Stories” was published by Paraxenes Meres, Greece, 2013. Her novel “Sinfonia Bulgarica” was published in USA, Fomite Books in 2014; in Italy, Salento Books in 2015, and in Macedonia, Antolog Books in 2015. The novel was published in Serbia in 2016.

Her short stories have been published in 32 countries in the world including USA (Massachusetts Review, New Sudden Fiction, Antioch review etc),Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, China etc. Her short story “Seldom” was included in the anthology -Best European Fiction 2015, Dalkey Archive Press, USA. The Wagon Magazine - February - 2018