Vol. 2 Issue 5, "Outside/In"

Vol. 2 Issue 5 New York London Hong Kong Philippines

OUTSIDE/IN Leah Mueller

Emmett Lindner

John Morris

page 6

page 11

page 24

Poetry

Non-Fiction Writer

Artist Profile

New Reader Magazine March 2019 | Vol. 2 Issue 5 COVER IMAGE

John Morris "Treshold" CREATIVE STAFF Lead Editor : Kyla Estoya Layout Artist : Iain Yu Publicist : Kota Yamada

TJ Delima

Marjon Gonato

Researcher : Rosielyn Herrera

PRODUCTION & FEATURES

Celina Paredes , Jazzie Maye, Neil Gabriel Nanta, Rey A. Ilejay, Rio Bianca Lim, Sarah Ann Eroy, Gifthir Elmido, Jarryl Ibrahim, Tiffany Joyce CONTRIBUTORS

David Sorensen, Nick Sweeney, John Tavares, Mike Todd, Matias F. Travieso-Diaz, Jade Wallace, Kay Albais, Emmett Lindner, Rasmenia Massoud, Pascale Potvin, Bob Beagrie, Lana Bella, Evelyn Benvie, Radhika Borde, Clara Burghelea, Con Chapman, Dewitt Clinton, Steve Denehan, Alyx Jordan, Bruce Mcrae, Leah Mueller, Toti O'brien, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Rachel Rose Teferet, Changming Yuan, Bob McNeil, Christine Sloan Stoddard MARKETING AND ADVERTISING

Laurence Anthony laurence.anthony@newreadermagazine.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS

subscription@newreadermagazine.com www.newreadermagazine.com Phone: 1 800 734 7871 Fax: (914) 265 1215 Write to: 100 Church St. Suite 800 New York, NY 10007

All Rights Reserved

NOTE When I was little I had this silly dream: to change the world.

Every time I want to remember my mother I always imagine the moment where she told me that that wasn’t silly at all. She said that if I wanted to make this dream come true, I had to start within myself. I learned that anything I want share to the outside world must come from me genuinely; love, compassion, wisdom and the like.

I still hold on to this dream, Dear Reader. Knowing that our featured artist, Sarita Dougherty, is proactively trying to make this planet less selfish and more compassionate through her artworks, it’s nice to imagine how many of us are doing the same. As for John Morris, being an observant artisan made him create such remarkable wooden sculptures that are from a melancholic outlook yet somehow depict freedom and creative energy. Both of their works bring awareness to what the world is like today and makes you wonder if you’re doing something to be part of this advocacy.

Khavn and Achinette—an amazing couple—talks about their musings as filmmakers and as individuals. They reminded me that when my little world starts crumbling down, my first priority should be to take care of myself.

On the otherhand, Leah Mueller taught me that heartbreaks and all the anger I may have in this world can still help me create beautiful things for my audience. Emmett Lindner introduced me to Clarence Spady, who sees his reflections on other people and does what he can for them.

During the first few days of making this issue, one of our editors decided to make a transition in her career. I’d like to believe that she’ll be making the world a better place in a different way. I dedicate this issue to her.

And you may not see me right now but I would want you to imagine me trying to make a toast: to us and to our not-so-silly dreams, Dear Reader.

Enjoy.

K.

Contents Feature 06 Contributor's Corner (Poetry): Leah Mueller JAZZIE MAYE AND RIO LIM

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11 Contributor's Corner (Non-Fiction Writer): Emmett Lindner NEIL GABRIEL NANTA AND GIFTHIR ELMIDO

14 Featured Profile: Ecosystem Portraits Interview With Sarita Dougherty

CELINA PAREDES

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18 Featured Profile: Khavn & Achinette RIO LIM

24 Artist Profile: John Morris The Butterfly Effect KYLA ESTOYA

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New Reader Media 134 To-Read List NRM takes on the challenge of bookmarking emerging voices in the indie publishing world, presented in random order.

Writer’s Corner 133

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140 Events, Conferences, Etc.

Featured Bookstore

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144 Off The Beaten Path Bookstore Sideshow Books Adventure Books and More

Short Stories

Poetry

77 1301 Gradus How to Write a Novel The Men From Nike

34 The Minos Child in the Underground Dunbar Dream-Song Nothing has really changed

DAVID SORENSEN

91 Whenever I Squint Into A Mirror One Way Dear Ear

BOB BEAGRIE

87 The Strobe

NICK SWEENEY

94 Toronto Life JOHN TAVARES

107 Something Bad Has Happened MIKE TODD

116 The Blue Pearls MATIAS F. TRAVIESO-DIAZ

125 Scorched Wool JADE WALLACE

Fictions 30 Running on Empty KAY ALBASI

39 Clarence Spady is Still the Blues EMMETT LINDNER

51 Temporary People RASMENIA MASSOUD

45 Coeur LANA BELLA

47 A Prayer For Eighteen Wheels breaking up, breaking down EVELYN BENVIE

56 My Hunger in this New Land The wildest of them all Life and Death RADHIKA BORDE

69 LIRR, Mineola to Pen Station CLARA BURGHELEA

71 One or Two Things You Should Know About Cupid The Swans of Diomed What Tiresias Knew CON CHAPMAN

83 Instructions On The Way Out The Door DEWITT CLINTON

ALYX JORDAN

100 One Night In The City Of Flowers My Lame Libretto Tammy And Shammy BRUCE MCRAE

111 The Queen’s Hats Love Maxim #2304 Polaroid Selfie LEAH MUELLER

121 Exodus TOTI O'BRIEN

123 In My Mother In Me SUZANNE S. RANCOURT

130 Sink Mouth Of Toes So You Wrote A Poem RACHEL ROSE TEFERET

133 My Crows CHANGMING YUAN

85 Salt Water STEVE DENEHAN

63 The Accident PASCALE POTVIN

BOB MCNEIL (Art Contributor p.56-58,60) Bob McNeil was influenced by the Imagists and the Beat Movement. Furthermore, even after all of these years of being a professional illustrator, actor, and writer, he still hopes to express and address the needs of the human mosaic.

CHRISTINE SLOAN STODDARD (Art Contributor p.29,124) Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American writer and interdisciplinary artist originally from Virginia. She is the founder of Quail Bell Magazine and the author of several books, including Water for the Cactus Woman (Spuyten Duyvil).

Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, Bustle, The Feminist Wire, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, So to Speak, Hispanic Culture Review, Jimson Weed, and elsewhere. Currently she is the artist-in-residence at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in New York City.

Contributor's Corner

Leah

Mueller JAZZIE MAYE AND RIO LIM

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Poetry

NRM: When did you begin composing poems? Tell us how it started.

Leah Mueller: I wrote my first poem in second grade, in response to a class assignment. I don’t recall what it was about. The teacher reacted with surprising enthusiasm and announced that she was sending my work to the school paper. When the poem appeared in print, she and I were both thrilled. A second assignment followed shortly thereafter. I wrote about snow, addressing my poem to an imaginary person named Sue. My teacher liked this poem, too, and promised to send it to the paper again. When the editors announced they couldn’t possibly run my work in two consecutive issues, the teacher was disgusted. “I don’t know why they would make that decision,” she fumed. “I tried to reason with them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

the page. Others have to be coaxed into existence, or even forced. I tend to edit obsessively, doing tiny things like changing “a” into “the.” I read my work aloud to hear the cadence of the words.

It usually takes much longer for me to edit a poem than it does to write it, though I edit in bursts that often occur days or even weeks apart.

NRM: What/who inspires your poetry and why?

LM: Pretty much everything inspires me, especially heartbreak. When I was younger, I couldn’t write unless I was sad. Though misery can be a surprisingly powerful motivator, I’ve trained myself to write when I’m happy, or at least content. Often, I just end up remembering an incident that made me unhappy in the past. I write a fair amount of political poetry, as well.

There are plenty of reasons to be angry about the present state of the world.

Though my verse skews dark, I do write about the little things in life that give me pleasure, like sex, trees and unicycles.

Sometimes.

NRM: Can you tell us about your writing style? How did you develop this style?

LM: My style is influenced by many different writers. Most of them employ a straight-forward, rather than academic voice. Since I don’t have a fancy literary degree, my own work reflects that lack of polish. I have always been drawn to the Beats, especially Kerouac. I’m ambivalent about how much Bukowski has affected me, due to his rampant misogyny. However, there is no denying his influence. Diane Wakowski’s poetry had a big impact on my style. Like many female “confessional” poets (and I kind of hate that term, because isn’t all poetry a confession of sorts?), I admire Sylvia Plath’s work.

I was especially impacted by Don Marquis’ creation, “Archy and Mehitabel.” His poetry centers around a cockroach named Archy who records his musings by hopping on the keys of an old typewriter. Archy was reincarnated from the soul of an impoverished free verse bard. He

NRM: How long does it take for you to start and finish a poem?

LM: Oh God, it varies. I can whip out a short poem in less than half an hour. Longer ones can take hours, or days. Some poems seem as though they’ve always existed inside me, fully composed, and those words burst onto

NRM: When you begin composing poems, do you compose for yourself or do you already have a specific audience in mind?

LM: Ultimately, I compose for myself.

However, many of my poems appear to be addressed to a specific individual.

Those “you” poems take on a style similar to a letter or a conversation. In a sense, these pieces are addressed to the person in question. But in the end, I write to please myself.

retained a compulsive and rather unfortunate need to communicate. I can’t believe Marquis wrote this stuff 100 years ago, because it is so ahead of its time.

How long before you started performing your literary works publicly? What is the experience of performing spoken word like for you?

LM: I began performing spoken word during the mid-90s. At the time, I lived in Seattle, which enjoyed a thriving literary scene. I won the first two slams I competed in, which gave me a swelled head until I started losing. I’ve always had an amazing amount of beginner’s luck, but the follow-through is harder.

My then-partner and I moved to Tacoma and started our own open mic called “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.” It was wildly popular for a while, then died on the vine, as did our relationship.

Ah, the 90s. Since then, I’ve performed sporadically at open mics across the country, as well as exotic places like London and Costa Rica. I travel a fair amount and try to catch open mics as often as I can. Four years ago, I became more serious about writing, so I’ve been performing more often and landing as many featured reader gigs as possible.

I love connecting with a face-to-face audience. Giving an actual voice to my work imparts a whole new dimension.

NRM: How does poetry make you feel as a person and as part of the community?

LM: Well, now I can finally refer to myself as a “poet”, rather than a person who sometimes writes poetry.

That’s a huge step, and it feels great.

When I read other folks’ work, I feel as though I am getting to know them on an intimate level that transcends other kinds of communication. Their honesty inspires me to become more honest, as well. I hope I do the same for them.

It’s a win-win.

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Contributor's Corner

NRM: How would you describe the writing/poetry community in your area?

Has the community been supportive of you and other poets?

LM: Tacoma’s literary scene has flourished during the past few years due to the development of several literary venues. Some of these are more formal than others. The strictly literary ones can be tricky—sometimes supportive, other times competitive. Artists who work in the same medium are often jealous of each other, though it’s not politic to admit it. I like the local open mics that feature both music and spoken word. This offers a nice variety of expression and also tones down the competitive element.

NRM: What part does your family and friends play in your writing process?

LM: My family and friends have been hugely supportive. In fact, my friends kicked my butt for years when I was stubbornly refusing to write. “You HAVE to write this stuff down!” they insisted. “You tell the best stories!”

Finally, after my kids were grown and literary magazines started popping up all over the internet, I no longer had any excuse not to write. My husband is a great cheerleader, though he is often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of my present output. I’m always touched when my friends and acquaintances buy my books. It’s the sweetest thing they could possibly do, and also helps to keep me in food and gas money.

NRM: How has social media affected your writing and the way you’ve promoted it?

LM: Social media, for all its problems, has been an indispensable tool for promoting my work. I’ve been on Facebook since 2009 and can navigate it like a professional sailor. When one of my pieces appears in an online literary magazine, I link to it on my page so my friends can read it. Amazingly, many of them do. Some of them even share my work. How cool is that? After I got serious about this indie writer thing, I

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became friends with many other writers via Facebook. It’s a pretty supportive crowd, and extensive. Last year, I finally started to use Twitter, but I’m a neophyte and don’t like it much.

NRM: Is there a part of yourself that is revealed exclusively through poetry?

Can you tell us more about it?

LM: Poetry reveals my shadow side like nothing else. I’m a pretty cheerful individual in person, and since I work as a yoga teacher/senior aerobics instructor/tarot reader, I need to project a sunny, positive disposition much of the time. However, there’s obviously much more to me than that. Poetry helps me form the disparate elements of my personality into a semi-cohesive whole. It gives a stronger voice to my fear and vulnerability and helps to stabilize the anger of being an abuse survivor and an American citizen.

NRM: How did poetry help you grow into the person that you've become now?

LM: Oh wow, good question. As I mentioned, poetry gives a voice to my angels and demons. Otherwise, they’d be trapped inside my body. Kafka said something about writers who don’t write, how they’re monsters courting insanity. For many years, I almost went insane due to my lack of writing. Now I can write thousands of pages about that insanity, so I guess it’s a trade-off.

NRM: What’s the most unexpected lesson that you’ve learned about your craft?

LM: I was surprised by how deeply my work affected others, and how much they were able to relate their own experiences to my words. Writing is a uniquely isolating experience, so many of us poets begin to feel like freaks after a while. It was great to discover that my emotions have been shared by other people, folks who hail from a variety of diverse backgrounds. This makes me feel a bit more connected to humanity.

NRM: What is the most important advice you’ve ever received as a writer?

LM: The best writerly advice I’ve ever received came from a guy who broke my heart. He was a writer, of course.

He was also a fantastic guitar player, which meant double jeopardy for me.

His memoir had been published by Grove Press, but then it went out of print and he became bitter. Anyway, one of the last things he said to me before we parted was this: “Remember to just write the way you talk.” At the time, my own literary output was sporadic and meager, so I interpreted his statement as criticism. Since then, I’ve realized it was one of the best suggestions I’ve ever received.

NRM: What’s the best advice you can give to aspiring poets?

LM: Just keep writing. Don’t give up.

Try to write every day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences or lines of verse.

Listen to suggestions from editors and other writers and the general public, but don’t listen to them too much.

They’re just human beings with their own biases. Speak your truth, no matter what. You’re not in this to win any niceness contests. For heaven’s sake, don’t wait until you’re in your 50s to get serious about writing, like I did. But if you do, write like a demon and draw deeply from your well of experience.

Contributor's Corner

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Non-Fiction Writer

Emmett L I N D N E R

NEIL GABRIEL NANTA AND GIFTHIR ELMIDO

NRM: Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Emmett Lindner: I’m about to finish up grad school at Columbia University, and my thesis—a novel that paints a portrait of the absurdity of Los Angeles and the film industry. I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and went to Colorado for college, where I majored in English literature and creative writing. After graduation I landed a job as a film/TV production assistant in L.A. I worked there for three years and then I got a job at a private aviation charter company.

Weird transition, but aviation gave me enough time to take night classes at UCLA and get back into writing prose.

After a while I realized that grad school felt right, so I applied and got in. I moved back to the east coast and here I am.

NRM: When did your interest in music sparked?

EL: I was always into music. My dad is like a musical savant. Our house was always filled with blues, jazz, punk rock, and everything else. He handed me “The Chronic” by Dr. Dre when I was nine, said “listen to this,” and walked away. My parents took me to

concerts all the time. In high school my friends and I had nothing to do except drive around town all day and listen to CDs. Music elevates everything.

NRM: We checked you on Instagram and see that you play the guitar. Do you have a band?

EL: I never got around to starting or joining a band, but I hope there’s still time. I played with bands at a handful of house parties in L.A., but that’s really it aside from playing with friends when we rent studio time or have a basement to get together in and play. I love to perform and want to keep it up here in New York.

NRM: What bands did you listen to growing up?

EL: The first time I heard “Friend of the Devil,” it was all over for my high school years. I couldn’t go a day without listening to Grateful Dead. I’d put Tribe Called Quest on my headphones when I was alone at night in my room.

The Libertines really spoke to me as an angsty teen (they still do). And like every good middle-class suburban kid, I worshipped Wu-Tang and Biggie.

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Contributor's Corner

NRM: Do you have any musical pet peeves? Can you name some of them?

EL: There’s music I’m not a huge fan of, and when I was young I could be really stubborn and refused to play songs or bands that I couldn’t stand. I think that was mostly an act, though—a need to be adamant about something. I grew out of that. People make music because it speaks to them, and if it doesn’t connect with me I can still appreciate that it does for the artist and other people.

NRM: When did your interest in creative writing start? Can you describe your writing style? Do you have any influences?

EL: I’ve heard by more than a few peers that my writing has a strong noir tone. That may come from the detective movies I loved as a kid.

I always wrote. It’s a compulsion. I wasn’t a good student in high school, but for whatever reason I’d always get an “A” in my English classes. I realized I was better at writing than other subjects, and I enjoyed it, so I began to seriously pursue it. My biggest influence for a while was Joan Didion—I sat down several times and transcribed a few of her essays to try and understand the language and rhythm of her work. Baldwin, Sam Shepard (his short stories), and Denis Johnson are all authors I’d love to say have had an impact on my work.

NRM: In creative writing, how do you know when you’re done? How do you usually end your piece?

EL: There comes a point when I have to let a piece go and say it’s as good as it’ll get. Otherwise I’ll edit it to death.

I try to end a piece with a sentence or two that captures the sentiment of everything that came before it.

NRM: As a freelance writer, how did you find work in the beginning?

EL: It’s tough, and I haven’t mastered it by any definition. I’d say pitch as

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much as possible, take whatever opportunities come your way to make a name for yourself, and find a voice people can recognize.

he sees himself in a lot of people and is always trying to do what he can for them. He’s a genuine and generous guy.

NRM: What are the usual challenges you encounter working as a freelance writer?

EL: I’ve been a freelance copywriter for a while, and I often have to remind myself that the client knows best. I’m not necessarily there for creative input, and so I have to really find a voice that fits exactly what I’m being paid to do.

NRM: Do you think Spady was an outcast? Do you think he was misunderstood? Or do you see him as something else?

EL: I wasn’t there for his early years, but at this point I think he’s understood by those who know him. There’s mayhem to Spady, and his bandmates and friends recognize it and accept it because that’s who he is and what makes him great. If he becomes more well known, which I believe he deserves, more people will get the chance to understand him.

NRM: How do you get yourself in the zone before writing a piece?

EL: I’m not sure that I have a zone. The most important part of writing for me is always the hardest: the first draft. It’s like ripping off a band-aid. I’ll try to wait until I can get into the zone, but that mindset is pretty rare. I put it off until I can’t any longer, then I force myself to write and try not to worry about quality.

Once I make it past that first hurdle, there’s a piece of writing that I can shape or discard, but it’s there and it gets easier.

NRM: What was your fondest memory of Spady when you were following him?

EL: Spady took me around Scranton, his home town. He was a great tour guide, and showed me his favorite spots. I walked down memory lane with him. We went back to his home after and he showed me all of his guitars, and asked if I wanted to play with him. It was a trip! We sat there for about an hour jamming in his living room.

NRM: For you, what is Spady’s greatest quality as a human being?

EL: The first night I met him at Terra Blues, we walked down Bleecker Street and everyone knew his name.

He offered doormen cups of coffee, gave buskers a few bucks and danced on the sidewalk to their music. I think

NRM: Of all the songs in Spady’s albums, what would be THE song that you could say encapsulates his entire journey as a musician?

EL: The song “Nature of the Beast” from his first album is a blues anthem.

It’s loud and envelops you. The lyrics deal with addiction and staying out of it, and the whole song has a tone of struggle and redemption. The pain and heart and longing all come through in that track.

NRM: If you were to pick a song that describes you, what would it be and why?

EL: Spotify tells me one of my most played songs is “Cry to Me” by Solomon Burke. Your guess is as good as mine.

Featured Profile

ECOSYSTEM PORTRAITS: INTERVIEW WITH SARITA DOUGHERTY CELINA PAREDES

T

he enamoring patterns, colors, and flattened perspective of Sarita Dougherty’s plein air paintings show her acknowledgment of all human and nonhuman beings present in the ecosystem. Her art and pedagogy reflect and generate an earth-centered cosmology, a map of a worldview of how someone situates themselves in relation to other beings, to the lands and to the cosmos. Sarita also does several collaborations through installations with elders, family, community and the land, sourcing from Cajun, Irish & Bolivian ancestors.

Sarita’s group works in and around the yurt and their habitat, which, according to Sarita “is a continually unfolding

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site-specific work in context.” Sarita recently held a workshop on plants at the Hammer Museum.

This month, she is launching an exhibit Beyond the Pale with Olivia Chumacero. She is also preparing concepts for another exhibit with her partner, Champ, in May. She teaches at a college and at a university, and she’s working on a book to be published in the fall—all of this on top of being a mother.

New Reader Magazine had the chance to interview the 35-year-old Los Angeles-based artist and discuss her new series, process and goals of shifting society from anthropocene to an ecocene, where human beings live in a balance with all the other species and life systems coexisting on Earth.

Arts and Culture | USA

of mostly adults. Lately my favorite thing to teach is botanical mapping.

I ask students to map the plants in their consciousness, in their ancestral or childhood memories, and in their daily lives as one way to connect us creatively to flora. People of all ages usually love it! Even if they aren't thinking about the environment, it gets them to acknowledge and draw the plants that are important to them, bringing connection to our non-human relatives. It was plant appreciation all around! The observational plant drawings paired really well visually with the plants from memories. Contentwise, it gave each person a little map of plants in their life.

Community: Ecosystem | Oil on board, 46" x 32 x 2

NRM: Is it at Tongva land where you met your mentor, Olivia?

Sarita Dougherty: There is a decolonization movement in the US wherein settlers (AKA, people of nonindigenous descent) begin to recognize that the place names we are familiar with- names like Los Angeles, or California, were given by colonizers.

Instead, indigenous people ask us to recognize the places according to the tribes whose land it is. Tongva is the name of the people who are indigenous to this land we now call Los Angeles, in other words, Tongva Land. Olivia Chumacero is my mentor, and has

definitely opened my eyes and mind to many of these concepts; she is indigenous from the Copper Canyon, Mexico, and has been teaching in and around Los Angeles for several decades now. Her class is ‘Everything is Medicine.’ NRM: You mentioned that you are teaching as well-to kids? Or professionals?

SD: At the Hammer last weekend, I taught families; so kids and adults.

At the College and University level it's mostly young adults. Additionally, I have been teaching a DIY PhD cohort

NRM: Are your paintings for this upcoming exhibit related to botanical mapping?

SD: Yes! The exhibit opens in early March at the Cypress College Art Gallery, called "Beyond the Pale." This group show has work "by artists who step outside the bounds of Western scientific thinking in their efforts to know and interpret the world" according to curator Janet Owen Driggs. Olivia is also in the show, and Janet wanted to feature the work we have done collaboratively. Our process together involves identifying a site with native flora growing, visiting the site and tending to the ecosystem there.

By doing so, we create a relationship with the flora, and begin visiting the site weekly or biweekly. After establishing relationship, I begin to paint what I see, how the plants reveal themselves after "knowing" me through my songs, breath, or words, and Olivia makes video.

Additionally, we will have an installation with native flora, and a codex we made mapping our journey at the last site we worked at, Huntington Gardens, where we had a Residency.

NRM: Could you consider your works deriving from spiritual beliefs?

SD: Yes, definitely! My spirituality is earthbased, so I consider the earth to be

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Featured Profile

sacred, and holy. I think many problems of the ecocene have come from religions that place the man, the mind, and the God in Heaven above and better-than the woman, the body, and the Earth.

I am continually trying to recover my connection to the Earth as a spirit. There are ancestral threads from my Mother's side that go back to Indigenous Bolivia, where Aymara and Quechua folks understand the Earth to be Pachamama, a primary deity. I offer to her, make altars to her, and try to be respectful of all her creations; often this is hard as I was raised in a very Westernized, Individualistic way! Olivia and other elders help to guide me, and I am very grateful.

NRM: We’d like to hear more on you view of the Earth as a spirit.

SD: The Earth is alive and beautiful, and my primary deity, Pachamama. I think a lot of problems have come from thinking of spirit as a male being in the sky, as opposed to the ground beneath our feet, of which we are born. In fact, I am working on a book called "Original Gift" which counters the "Original Sin" cosmology in Western Christianity, which I think is responsible for global repression of women and control/ degradation of the Earth. The earth holds many dimensions as well, beyond the visible to our eyes.

NRM: And the relationship of humans with other beings as coexisting and that we are not superior than others?

SD: Yes! Plants are beings that respond to their neighbors, to the other beings around them, including humans.

Animals, of course, do as well. And pollinators are impacted by us, all of which we need to survive. Cohabiting means thinking about their habitat needs, food needs, when considering what resources we are using in our lives, how we build our homes, etc.

These considerations I learned from Olivia Chumacero in Everything is Medicine, and still continue to try and be aware of.

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NRM: What makes the ecosystem 'portraits' to you?

SD: For one, I am a very observational painter. I enjoy painting from life, en plein air. And when beginning a new work I try to locate sites of bliss for me; where do I become so enamored with the patterns, colors, beings before my eyes that I want to share that visual medicine with others. I like the ecosystem portraits to acknowledge all the beings present in ecosystem; all the nonhuman beings. Landscape painting in the West was usually romanticizing nature as "other" from humans. So I like getting my body into the scene and making relationships with the beings there, and even asking them how they would like to be painted. Integrating myself in some ways also by making offerings before sitting down to paint for a few hours.

NRM: What is your painting routine?

SD: I like to either paint in the morning or at dusk for ideal lighting and color glow. I head out with a very small kit: a small tackle box with paints, ecothinner, brushes, and rag, and go to the site I’m working at. If I'm new, there's a lot of wandering about and sketching before taking my board. Then there are offerings, songs, breath. After that, I’ll still start with an offering, sometimes tend to the needs of the plant (offer some water, break off dry branches, etc.) and then sit on the ground (on an extra shirt if it's a bit damp; not too often a problem in L.A.) and paint for a couple hours. Since I'm looking at flora that is seasonal I have to finish in that season or wait until the next. This painting I am working on now I started in early Spring 2018, then wasn't able to finish, so now have resumed it early Spring 2019.

NRM: What are your series of works about?

SD: They are all about habitat. I am painting out in the Arroyo Seco, which is a seasonal riparian (river zone) in Los

Angeles. Also, soon I will be starting another painting of my current home: our yurt. My paintings are usually that; local ecosystems, home habitats, the home ecosystem, etc. The interiors used to be primarily what I focused on, now it's a little more exterior but still some interiors; as the yurt itself is often in flux I love painting the modular and seasonal home we have! The yurt holds many patterns, colors, and cultural remixes that I enjoy looking at.

I am transitioning to 100% sustainable pigments and walnut oil from the usual tubes I used to by. I paint on found and repurposed wood.

NRM: Did this influence have something to do with your upbringing?

SD: Later I started practicing earthbased spirituality once I moved to L.A. in 2009. I had a challenging time in Graduate School then and found myself pulled to the community Olivia was teaching in. I was raised mostly Methodist in the suburbs of Virginia; a protestant Christian religion. My Mother was raised Catholic in Bolivia, and always had little shrines to the Virgin Mary at home, which I think points toward a deeper connection to the Divine Feminine. She has an incredible connection to nature that she brought me up with; a wonder and appreciation for mosses, ferns, rocks and spirits in nature.

NRM: Which part in your practice do you consider a challenge?

SD: I have struggled with the Art World's Art Market. I put capital A's because in truth there are so many art worlds, yet one seems to dominate most media, sales, and institutions. I have found my place by following a path of values and ethics in my work which have led me to incredible collectors and curators, however I struggle to be relevant part of the Los Angeles Art World Market maybe in part because I am interested in breaking down the

Arts and Culture | USA

Song of Wonder for Pozo Blue

hierarchy of Art as a money-making scheme for the extremely Wealthy. I like selling my work on a sliding scale, which has been looked down upon by those really trying to climb the economic Art Market ladder. I find my way, though, and stick to the people and places who feel empowering, whose ethics align with mine, and who work to recreate an art world that is equitable, accessible, and fair. Luckily, there are many! When you are shifting paradigms, those who have profited off of the old paradigm are not happy about your intentions to shift it. They enjoy their privileges.

But making work to suit the tastes and comforts of a wealthy 1% is not my goal; as I mentioned the ecocene is my goal, and a decolonized one with a closed wealth gap, at that!

NRM: Where do you think your practice will lead?

SD: I am super excited about the book I am working on, "Original Gift." It will be released this October by the Women's Center for Creative Work, a feminist organization based in Los Angeles.

The book is a textbook of sorts, with theory and exercises of how to begin relating to the earth beneath our feet, tending to her, practices to connect with your own spirit, ancestors, etc, and finally auto-pedgaogical tools for creating your own higher and deeper learning program. All Earth-based and decolonizing, based on my DIY PhD research on earth-based creative, spiritual, and education practices. I am currently teaching a class at the University of Redlands called "Activating

Ethnoecologies" which I Love! We are applying stewardship and creativity to connecting with plants; using drawing exercises, mapping, and plant medicine to connect ourselves more deeply with ecosystem and ecology.

If I can keep teaching like that, sharing my book to encourage people in their relationships to self and planet, painting habitat, and deepening my own earth-based spiritual and self-care practices with community, I will feel quite lucky in life.

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Featured Profile

KHAVN & ACHINETTE RIO LIM

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n my humble opinion, I’ll be hard-pressed to find another couple as compelling as them. And they’re funny, too. On their Facebook pages, Achinette Villamor describes herself as “film producer; non-practicing adult”. Khavn De La Cruz “burns pianos, eats books, doesn't make films”.

For the uninitiated, they’ve thrived in the Philippine indie film scene creating shorts and feature lengths on society’s marginalized.

Far from the pity party we’ve come to expect, these films feature dark and taboo subjects with style and humanity. Watching one will assault the senses and, without begging for it, tug at your heartstrings.

They’ve undeniably captured the respect of award-giving bodies and international audiences. They’re the filmmakers behind critically-acclaimed Balangiga: Howling Wilderness (2017). The visually arresting and surreal historical on the Balangiga massacre during the 1901 American occupation has amassed an impressive 20 nominations and 11 wins, including FAMAS Best Picture.

This article may never end if we’ll just go by a list of their accomplishment. Musings and tangents on cinema, kids, and sanity to follow.

NRM: Who is the man behind the overthe-top glasses?

Khavn De La Cruz: There’s no one behind them.

NRM: As a filmmaker with an affinity for children, often featuring them in your films, what was your childhood like?

KDLC: Glorious.

NRM: I maybe the millionth person to point out your impressive productivity, is there a routine that gets you into the zone?

KDLC: Shoot till you drop.

NRM: Has it always been easy for you to slip into a state of creative flow?

KDLC: Easier in than out.

NRM: Can you give frustrated creatives practical steps to achieve more in their day?

KDLC: Don’t go to sleep without doing something significant (whatever that may mean to you).

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NRM: Which elements of film are important to you when you make your movies?

KDLC: All elements are important.

Filmmaking is juggling. Also Tetris, Sextris, Wordtris. If I can say one thing, make sure the camera is rolling.

NRM: Where do you pour more attention on: score, cinematography or acting?

KDLC: You should pay the most attention to your attention. Fill the bucket. It’s a balancing act. Cinema is a circus.

NRM: What are the lessons in filmmaking that you’ve learned the hard way?

KDLC: Each new film requires you to learn new lessons.

NRM: There have been several retrospectives of your work, which project have you been the most proud of?

KDLC: All of the above. Your films are your children. Favoritism is sin. But just

for the heck, I can also say: The first one, the last one, and the next one.

NRM: You’ve been invited to multiple film festivals as part of their jury. In your judging process, are you critical on a film’s technical merits? What kind of films typically impress you?

KDLC: That depends greatly. My default is: what hits me in the gut, even though it fails technically or there are many faults/holes in other aspects. The films that are shown with it, also makes a difference. For example: if all of them are serious, maybe you’ll be moved by a comedy. If every film is about suicide, maybe you’ll want to die on a film about a rabbit.

NRM: Having been exposed to a great variety of international films, do you find our national cinema to shine or pale in comparison? What is the state of the nation’s cinema in your opinion?

KDLC: Filipino filmmakers should strive to be their unique selves, whatever it may be, as bright as neon or as dim as shattered light bulb. Don’t ever ride the

Arts and Culture | Philippines

International Film Festival Rotterdam for the world premiere of Misericordia: The Last Mystery of Kristo Vampiro in 2013.

Left to right: Director Khavn, Producer Achinette Villamor, friend and Italian journalist Marcello Bussi

bandwagon. In other words, don’t sell shawarma. Never settle for mediocrity.

NRM: What aspect of the local film industry is in desperate need of change?

KDLC: Theatrical distribution.

NRM: Which one of your contemporaries do you think has a commendable but often overlooked body of work?

KDLC: Roxlee, Jon Lazam, Gym Lumbera.

NRM: Reports have confirmed that the bells of Balangiga will return in December, were you involved in any way with this process? Would you be commemorating this event in anyway?

KDLC: We’re the one who had it LBC’d.

NRM: You’ve mentioned in one of your interviews that you want to have a dialogue with the audience, what insights have you gotten from their response? Have there been instances where you’ve been frustrated with their response?

KDLC: They said it’s approved!

NRM: Having delved into different creative outlets from poems, music and film, do you find that the principles of one discipline can be applied to the other?

KDLC: Of course.

NRM: You present yourself to the world in flamboyant outfits, is this a statement against conformity or do you simply see fashion as another medium for you to express yourself?

KDLC: It’s a statement about political prisoners.

NRM: You’ve always been open about your rambunctious childhood and school days, can you pinpoint the experiences that lead you to filmmaking?

Achinette Villamor: My marriage crumbled. I started anew in Metro Manila. Flew in with one backpack and a lot of resentment. Figured the capital has people and places enough for an angry girl to disappear into.

But I didn't disappear. I got found. I found myself.

The funny thing is, back then, people wanted to hire me—as an actress. Even Khavn, who says I'd be spectacular in a mumblecore because I'm funny and think quick on my feet. The dialogue would be improvisational from start to finish, and all I'd have to do is show up for his shoot. What a strange idea. I'm allergic to the camera. The last student who interviewed me for his thesis docu

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Featured Profile

did several takes with me. Every time the lights go on, I rub my nose and scratch my face. Relentlessly.

NRM: Producing maybe the most tasking positions in the industry, most especially in the indie scene, can you describe the greatest challenges you constantly have to go through when you guys go into pre-production all the way to exhibition? How do you manage to keep sane?

AV: I once complained to Ara [Chawdhury], "How am I still sane?" and she said, "That's just it. You're not."

Maybe I'm not.

Or maybe it's the people I work with—all vision and heart, and willing to take on anything for those they consider their (film) family. Helps a lot that Khavn's always been an out-ofthe-box thinker. Makes it easy to keep the promise I'd made to myself when I started. "If it doesn't spark joy or if it costs me my peace, I shall not do it." I don't have to. I still think this. I'm strong, sensible, and hardworking. Any woman who has all three always has options.

The most challenging is the financing.

In all films except for two films:

With Khavn, Norman Wilwayco, and Homer Novicio for Bamboo Dogs.

I'm step one in the process. Practical because as producer, I can make financing decisions at story level.

For example, the minimalist POV of Balangiga. In a way, you could say I take care of the framework and Khavn and Jerry did the fleshing out.

I'd be lying if I say I don't feel two feet small every time I think about who I'm collaborating with. Jerry Gracio and Khavn are titans. So I don't think about it.

Alipato: Shoot took place 10 days after I birthed my son. I went around Tondo in adult diapers—and had to run home twice or thrice every day, to breastfeed.

Balangiga: Howling Wilderness: Three things a filmmaker has no control over: weather, animal, child. We had all three in Balangiga. We also had four of our five kids with us, with the youngest only three months old.

NRM: Along with Khavn and Jerry, you’ve received one of the highest honors for screenwriters in the nation during the 2018 FAMAS Awards, do you have an efficient or unique technique in writing that allows you to create memorable scenes?

AV: I didn't think of this as a technique before. I thought of it as weakness. I cannot get into a mindset where I speak Tagalog with the ease and fluency of the Luzon-born so all the stories I spin in my head, I envision as silent films.

No one talks. I have to find ways to communicate the conflict and move the story forward without dialogue.

How did this weakness turn into a strength? Without the crutch of language, I had to put more thought into the other elements: sound, movement, visuals. By the time other collaborators jump on board, they can play all they want with the dialogue, and the story would stay the course. Unless they decide to scrap a scene. Hasn't happened yet in the four screenplay collaborations I've had to date.

NRM: You’ve shared writing credits with Jerry Gracio and Khavn in Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember and Balangiga: Howling Wilderness, can you share how your collaboration process works?

AV: Just to get the names straight: With Jerry Gracio and Khavn for Balangiga: Howling Wilderness.

With Khavn for Alipato.

NRM: You’ve been invited to speak and teach in front of international audiences, the most recent one being in Italy. For those who’d love to hear from you but can’t, can you give them a couple of gems from your classes?

AV: I have only one advice: finish.

Whatever you want to do—whether it's to write, direct, color-grade, score, edit, strip, FINISH.

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Finishing is a rite of passage. Before you finish, your screenplay's just a dream. Once you finish, you see it can be done. Doesn't matter if it's crap. Or, too weird to be makeable. The point is, you did it. You finished. Now you know you can do it again. And better.

Or quicker. So, finish. The most magical first two scenes in the world is worth squat unless it's finished.

NRM: Advice to young and aspiring artists and filmmakers?

AV: Read. The more you read, the more you know, the more you learn, the more places you'll go. Sounds like a Dr. Seuss quote. Probably is.

Then stand up for yourself. Fight for your vision. Find your financing. Get over your shyness and send that email or make that call. Most importantly, do not stay where you're unhappy. An unhappy creative isn't useful to anyone.

She's a liability to herself.

I've heard and seen a mantra on pain make the rounds. "Turn your pain into art." Or was it "use pain as fuel for your art"? Something like that. I disagree. If I'm in pain, I have no business thinking about art. My first duty to myself is to stop hurting. To heal. To get to a better place.

Happiness is a decision. So is suffering.

NRM: Being in the filmmaking industry since 2012, what aspect of the local film industry is in desperate need of change?

AV: Distribution and legislation.

Distribution: Plenty of content, not enough tickets selling. Hardly surprising in this economy though. The minimum wage is P537. A ticket costs anywhere from P220 to P460. Isn't that cash better spent on bills or routed to the family table? Which brings me to legislation. It's expensive to go to the movies in this country. But I don't blame that on inflation. Were inflation to blame, the price of all other goods would have increased as dramatically.

The culprit for me is the lack of protectionist legislation.

Arts and Culture | Philippines

NRM: What was the rewarding experience in your career so far?

AV: Seeing the film on the big screen for the first time. Gets me every time. Maybe in the future, I'll sit through a world premiere (of a film I produced) dry-eyed.

NRM: What gives you hope for the future?

KDLC: Newborns.

AV: Laughter. Doesn't matter if it's mine or another's. Laughter makes me feel good. Makes me feel nothing is so completely out of whack it can't be fixed.

At the world premiere of Bamboo Dogs in Sitges, Spain, October 14, 2018.

Hollywood films pay the same tax as local films. And because those juggernauts have bigger and betterknown names on their slate, they get to open on a weekend when the foot traffic's heaviest. Plus, there's the slide rule. A local film that doesn't make money the day it opens is pulled out of theaters immediately. First Day, Last Day: Ang Kwento Ng Sawi would make a good title.

This is how much balls Filipino filmmakers have. They know they'd likely get massacred by a Hollywood film showing the same week they are, but they keep at it anyway.

What I don't understand is why the government doesn't see the merit of protectionism in the film industry.

Letting Marvel and, say, Regal slug it out in the box office is like sending your teenager to a title brawl against Muhammad Ali. South Korea has protectionist policies. So do Germany, Spain, France, and China—and those countries have massive film industries!

NRM: Having been exposed to a great variety of international films, do you find our own cinema to shine or pale in comparison? What is the state of the nation’s cinema in your opinion?

AV: Lots to unpack here. It's both. It shines, and it pales. Filipino cinema is largely the cinema of making do. We work quickly, cheaply, and intuitively because there are only two options: fast, and faster. Or, a film made for this much versus no film.

But that's also Filipino cinema's strength. It's guerilla, adaptive, chameleon. It's also richly diverse.

Because it's always been forced to deal with constraints that other countries would have shirked from, it's a reliable left-fielder, the surprise.

NRM: Which project are you most proud of and why?

AV: ALIPATO. I love the nihilism. It's so out there I'd have to work hard to outdo myself on that one.

NRM: What issues make you angry?

KDLC: Narrow-mindedness. Pagsanjan & other pedophilias. (Pagsanjan has been reported as a known tourist destination for child prostitution.)

AV: Wealth gap, colonialism, gender politics, and Dante Gulapa.

"I live for the day social media's purged of all things Dante Gulapa," I'd remarked to Khavn earlier today. That was all the encouragement he needed to sneak in Dante Gulapa into any discussion. Typical Khavn; stupid of me.

NRM: What/Who inspires you?

KDLC: The Surrealists, proto and post.

AV: Khavn. Whatever that punk is made of, he's self-replenishing. Never runs out of energy, ideas, generosity, or a madhat plan. He makes the self-work to live true to one's self look fun. A running joke among friends who wish for themselves a more exciting life: "I want to be Khavn when I grow up."

NRM: What ideas captivate you nowadays?

KDLC: The latest random Facebook post.

AV: Same old: world history, scientific discoveries, challenges to female sexuality and representation, crimes, learning to sleep.

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NRM: How is life on the road?

KDLC: Rocky.

AV: hell.jpg. On most nights, I'd gladly fall asleep on the floor. But the two toddlers wake in the wee hours. They'll scream the house down looking for me.

NRM: What is it like to work with someone you’re in a relationship with?

KDLC: Romantic.

AV: Only for the brave, not for the smarter crayons in the box.

NRM: How are the kids?

KDLC: They’re fine. How about you?

AV: The older ones have school and chores; the younger ones have walls to destroy and sleep linen to eviscerate.

NRM: What is it like to bring up a small family in the art scene?

KDLC: Small is beautiful.

AV: These past few weekends, Khavn takes the three younger ones to Rox Lee's in Cavite in the afternoon. They play and learn to animate. He tries to give me more "me" time so I can finish the screenplay I'm doing for the Ricky Lee workshop.

NRM: Are they getting involved in your projects?

KDLC: The 1-year old is currently in charge of set construction. The 4-year old is revising the screenplay for the 46th time. The 10-year old is talking to different pharmaceuticals for possible sponsorship. The 15-year old is in the process of inventing a waterproof, durable, edible, affordable, and sugarfree beer bottle made of candy glass.

The 20-year old is location hunting in Zimbabwe.

NRM: Do you still have a need for approval or are you now at the point where you live your life on your own terms?

KDLC: Yes, that’s why I still go to Sunday School.

AV: Moving to Metro Manila made me realize I've always been in love with

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solitude. I'd step in front of a rocket for my family. But I'm still happiest alone.

I read, sleep, daydream. Outside of my family's, the only approval I need is mine.

NRM: How do you handle publicity, recognition, and social media presence as an artist?

KDLC: I don’t.

AV: The only recognition I get is from my toddlers. They recognize no one melts quicker than mama. Thus, anything that needs doing should be done by mama.

NRM: A couple months back, your critically acclaimed film, Balangiga: Howling Wilderness, has gone through controversy. How do you handle setbacks, roadblocks and criticism?

KDLC: The controversy is part of a complex 12-year publicity plan.

AV: Clumsily, with a lot of nebulizing.

Before things get to nebulizer stage, though, I work at assessing situations impassively. Feelings aren't facts, and feelings rarely help.

KDLC: Dial-a-friend.

NRM: What haven’t you done that you still want to do?

KDLC: Finish this interview.

AV: Work on material closest to my heart: funny stories on self-actualization and the average wife and mother's struggle with work-life balance. (Think The Diary of Bridget Jones plus five kids and a topsyturvy household.) Also, tell more stories from our Occupied past. The third one would be writing on the bastardization of sexuality and the use of sex for sexual healing. I'd love to do standup comedy with sex and sexuality as material. I'll put it off for when I no longer have PTA meetings to go to, however.

NRM: What’s your next big project?

What can we expect from you in 2019?

AV: Working on a prison drama with Khavn.

KDLC: Fake Answer

-The Kontra-Kino Orchestra vinyl of imaginary soundtracks.

-My new novel entitled “Pinagdaanang Patay” -The French release of a Blu-ray box set of 5 of my films.

-A film not about Bukowski.

-Other projects not about Bukowski.

Real Answer No expectations is one of the seven keys to happiness.

NRM: How would you like to be remembered?

KDLC: As a forgetful man.

AV: Kindly, with an occasional chuckle.

What a lovely question to end an interview with. One of my favorite activities pre-sleep is mulling over the text I'd put on my tombstone. I have my heart set on a Bonnie and Clydethemed funeral so friends and fam can show up looking dreamily gorgeous.

My current favorite epitaph: Ya think I'm dead?

Almost sounds like I'm excited to die, aren't I?

Achinette is a film producer, writer and the managing director of Kamias Overground.

The production company’s scope currently includes “features, poetry publishing and releasing independent music”. Established by Khavn in 1997, the company (then known as Filmless Films) has spearheaded the digital cinema movement in the Philippines. In 1999, he founded the first digital film festival in the country, the .MOV International Film, Music & Literature. Festival. Khavn remains a prolific filmmaker, poet, and musician. His IMDB page is a sight to behold.

Artist Profile

John Morris The Butterfly Effect KYLA ESTOYA

‘Butterfly Effect’ - wood, metal, paint, 48 x 42 x 10 cm

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Arts and Culture | Australia

It's not that I'm trying to highlight the sad parts of life, that's just how I tend to see things so it naturally finds its way into the work. Sometimes I have ideas that relate to larger issues but I'm not sure I'm qualified or well informed enough to make a significant comment.

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Website: johnmorris.awardspace.info/index.html Facebook: www.facebook.com/JohnMorrisSculptor/

!!’ ME WTI

John Morris will be featured in Lethbridge Gallery Paddington QLD, Australia. Check out the Writer’s Corner for more information about his upcoming exhibit.

John Morris started his colorful and imaginative career in graphic design at Queensland College, Australia. He graduated with a Diploma in Arts in 1984 and in the early years of his life he worked as a freelance illustrator and sculptor. Back then he was well-known for his advertising and design skills and had won many several and State awards.

He was born in Sheffield, England but moved to Australia when he was three years old. He was (and still is) a natural introvert.

He often wonders if there would be any difference if pa int ,8 he never moved 0x 46 .

5x to Queensland.

9.5 c m But here’s a fact: when he young, it was completely obvious that his imagination was wild and the fact that his parents and family just let him be, gave him more freedom to keep creating.

"I’ve been making three-dimensional things all my life, starting like most kids with plasticine, lego, meccano, plastic model kits and later scratch built things inspired by TV and movies”, John shared. Like most children, art was a medium for putting his imagination to life. The fact is, John never stopped being a child. Even until now, he has tried and will keep trying to do other artistic means of expressing himself.

‘SHO

s artists, we are compelled to notice everything that’s going on around us no matter how small or how big they are. When the right amount of imagination reaches your brain cells that would be a good sign to create: put in on canvas, write it on paper or mold it into shapes and forms.

For John Morris, he found a home in the latter. The art of sculpting is one of the oldest forms of craftsmanship and probably the most difficult to experiment on. From being a graphic designer, he became one of Australia’s best wood sculptors. He took the scribbles and drawings from his sketchbooks and lifted them as 3D figures where he resembles a kind of sentiment of how he sees the world as it is today.

I grew up watching and reading Batman comics so when I saw Morris’ works on Batgirl sculptures—I completely became a fangirl of his works. It wasn’t just the fact that it was Batgirl; it was the idea that it was made from mere wood and the art deco feel of it gave the sculpture a sense glamour and prestige.

And with the magic of the internet and social media, I got the chance to talk to him and interrogate the man behind these awe-inspiring monuments.

He has done painting, photography and digital work. “I like doing too many things, and want to be good at them all but you can't develop your skills if you spread yourself too thin.”, he emphasized.

In his late 20’s he started making his early bronze sculptures or what he had considered his “real” and original ideas.

According to him, producing ideas are the easiest part of the process and that they almost come like a gust of wind. The rest of work lies inside his workshop where he spends hours of producing the art piece. While he’s doing all these inside his art chamber, he’s constantly learning, evolving and thinking about the future— what to make next. He’s always excited and he bears in mind that improvement is always a possibility every time John assembles his sculptures.

He worked with bronze for a while but after in 1996, he discovered an infatuation in wood sculpting. After that, their bond was inseparable. Before, wood was just a material to work with but he grew to appreciate the qualities of it as his medium and his identity.

The starting point of all Morris’ works is his many years’ worth of sketchbooks. His studio is full of it.

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Artist Profile

‘Reach’ - wood, metal, 54.5 x 29 x 10.5 cm

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Arts and Culture | Australia

‘Head 2016’ - wood, metal, 34 x 23.5 x 17 cm

Butterfly Effect is a piece I'm particularly proud of, especially of the concept.

The contrasting and contradictory symbolism of a butterfly wing and chains is quite effective, I think. Integral to the idea is the negative shape of the wing, all the more powerful for not being there.

‘Cat’ - wood, leather, metal, wood stain, 48 x 32.5 x 28 cm

The works he put on paper are for constantly evolving concepts and thumbnail sketches. He scribbles and scribbles and refines every thing until he’s happy with the results. When he’s satisfied, the detailed drawings will be ready for the production process. Ideas are resolved on paper before they go near any wood or tools in the workshop.

The works of John Morris are a comment and observation on life but doesn’t limit to what you see on international news or the big issues confronting the society. Instead, he focuses in the smaller personal aspects of life, often with his naturally melancholic outlook. He mentioned, “It's not that I'm trying to highlight the sad parts of life, that's just how I tend to see things so it naturally finds its way into the work. Sometimes I have

ideas that relate to larger issues but I'm not sure I'm qualified or well informed enough to make a significant comment.”

John takes little bits of inspiration from a wide variety of sources. His first and foremost influence are Art Deco figurines, particularly those of Demétre Chiparus. He was a Romanian Art Deco era sculptor and his style gave a big impact on John’s works. Other than that, the endless lists of surrealism, science fiction, fantasy art and films, photography, fashion, pop culture and more are the ones that contributed to the look of the things he makes. Which is why often times, his subjects are just an expression of the visual joy through its shape, texture and materials.

John’s art pieces are constant when it comes to the sum of its parts: a muscular structure and a skeletal figure

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Artist Profile

or seductive and strangely compelling creature. Another recognizable mark of his works would have to be the oddity of the subject’s body proportions which makes it look surreal. Some also display a sense of steampunk quality or somehow depicting a hero/heroine impression. You’ll notice how every bit of that piece is skillfully arranged and well-thought-out.

Winged figures have been part of his work from the very beginning. He explored bird wings, insect wings and mechanical wings. Bat wings were a natural progression. Masks and concealed identity have also been a regular theme so Batgirl was an ideal fit. These winged-themed works would have to be the most popular pieces he has done and the most numerous.

These wings don’t just represent the ability to fly but rather depicting a greater feel to the sculpture. Wings are a symbol of freedom and a release of creative energy.

“Butterfly Effect is a piece I particularly proud of, especially of the concept.

The contrasting and contradictory symbolism of a butterfly wing and chains is quite effective, I think. Integral to the idea is the negative shape of the wing, all the more powerful for not being there.”, he said.

Artists fill many roles in society, Morris’ own seems to be that of outsider, observer and maker of beautiful. He believes that his pieces are both thought provoking and entertaining. He even loves how buyers and supporters of his works create their own narrative to what he has made.

He adores the fact they people have a good imagination to creating stories behind his works.

“I think I've always felt like an outsider, joining in and being with people has never come easily.”, he shared, “Anyone who knows me would probably agree. I observe everything from people to nature.”

Morris emphasized that he doesn’t think he has any particular skills that

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‘High Wire’ - wood, metal, paper, paint, 37 x 30 x 10 cm

any other artists don't. “All artists are different and it would be pretty dull if they weren't,” he said. He does, however, have a strong stand that he is obliged to create things and that has always been and will always be part of who he is: “Even if I don’t need to, I always try new things. I get bored easily and I don’t like repeating myself.”

John reveals that art has been part of his life for as long as he can remember and can’t imagine a day that he is never creating. In fact, whenever he’s not working on sculptures then he’s probably crafting ideas for sculptures and gathering materials and equipment.

His whole life revolves on art. Everything he sees and everything around him is an inspiration. We know that moving to

Australia was probably a tiny detail in his life but it’s nice to think that it resulted to a butterfly effect on his life and made him who he is right now: a creator.

All artists are different and it would be pretty dull if they weren't. I think I've always felt like an outsider, joining in and being with people has never come easily. I observe everything from people to nature.

Comic | Quail Bell

Christine Sloan Stoddard

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Literary Work

Running on Empty KAY ALBASI

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kuco © 123RF.com

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n a flash of revelation Lucas detached the hose from the spigot behind the trailer and duct-taped it around the exhaust of the ice cream truck. The other end he threaded through the cracked-open window and into the back, situating it next to the two KingKool chest freezers. The whole thing, this contraption, only took a few minutes to set up. He turned the key to the ignition before turning back inside to polish off the last of the strawberry vodka. By the time he stumbled out to the truck he could scarcely keep the plan straight or his legs grounded. It was as though he’d constructed a trap for himself.

Only this one would save him. He threw wide the rear double-doors, stepped in, and slammed them closed in turn. The world behind his eyelids spiraled endlessly as he lay down along the rivets of the truck’s bed.

A violent force reached down and pulled him to the surface of consciousness. He burst through the doors and spewed the contents of his stomach at the base of a pine tree, holding himself up on all fours.

After a minute of retching he rose to his feet and kicked sand over the mess of mostly beer and bile, dusting over the foul-smell.

He stared over at his truck. It was still, the

Flash Fiction

engine dead. Dark fumes escaped at the seams on the roof where he had installed a giant fiberglass ice cream cone— strawberry soft serve with a single maraschino cherry. The truck was an old school bus, a short one. He’d got it cheap after Braeburn Middle School closed; he painted it white, accented with a pink stripe, and installed the industrial-grade freezers. A cavalcade of frozen treats framed the little window cut-out of the side of the bus. The tape holding the garden hose in place had turned to tar, melted and black. He yanked it free and left the residue wherever it settled.

There was a palmetto bug sitting on the crest of the railing leading up to his little home, a cabin lined with pale blue vinyl siding. It was skittering from one edge to the other when Lucas flicked it off. The property was a half-acre, but felt much vaster and desolate given how far his nearest neighbor was, a seemingly abandoned RV, long immobile. Though some nights he thought he heard footsteps treading through the woods.

Occasionally he made out bright beams cutting through the dark he took to be flashlights. On these nights he’d keep his hunting rifle cradled in his left hand and pass out with a bottle in his right.

There was an old gas can under the sink, which he grabbed before heading out. Grass grew in dry patches around the sand in the shoulder of the two-lane road. Most homes were set back from the street, only indicated by rusted mailboxes sitting atop wooden spokes. The overbearing sun warmed his perennially tanned skin. He passed a row of old Buicks across from a plot pockmarked with antique sheds, a mobile home, and scattered sun-bleached lawn furniture. Ducks and chickens meandered across the dusty soil and pecked at God knows what.

The halfway point of the four-mile stretch was a water tower emblazoned with the American flag, the property of Mossy Head Water Works. As soon as he reached Route 90 he could see the trusty Sunoco sign. “The official fuel of NASCAR®,” it read and underneath listed the price of unleaded gas and the price of Marlboro reds. The lot, covered with spiderwebs of cracked asphalt, was barren save two self-service pumps.

The first person he’d seen all day was the cashier. Neither betrayed the fact that they recognized each other. That they’d seen each other five or six times per week for the past four years. With a single twenty he put ten on pump one and bought a four-dollar bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the shabby stock of wine in the back aisle. Normally, he had the prescience to keep a stash but last night he’d managed to drink every last drop before retiring to that cool floor. With the crumpled receipt in hand he exited the store. In the hot sun he hit the button for diesel and filled the can until the pump clicked off after a few gallons.

The sign next door was supposed to be read vertically but he would always read it as, “Simply Country / Good Cooking.”

With his remaining $5.79 he bought chicken fried steak fingers

with gravy and dropped the last eighteen cents into the plastic bucket with “tips” scrawled across it in black Sharpie. “Y’all take care,” he said to Abby, the hostess, as he reached out to touch her arm and she recoiled.

On the walk home he drank enough to steady his trembling hand but not so much that he couldn’t drive—about half the bottle. He poured the fuel into the ice cream truck, started it up, and drove back to the gas station to fill the rest of the tank. From there, he drove forty minutes south, towards the beach, passing through miles of pine before reaching anything resembling civilization. The bridge across the bay was a single-lane, stretched over nearly four miles of celestial blue water. A horizon of high-rise hotels sprouted from the earth as he grew closer.

He managed to find some street parking where he’d catch people as they walked from their rented condos or vacation homes to the shore, and vice versa. He poured his wine into a plastic cup and flipped the switched that played, “Turkey in the Straw,” on loop out of an old boombox.

In an hour, he sold eight SpongeBobs, five Spider-Men, four Choco Tacos, a Tweety Bird and a Big Mississippi Mud. This was a light haul, but a few more and he’d have at least made enough to get back and enough wine to get through the night.

A couple passed by dragging their girl by the hand. She was crying, muttering repeatedly that she didn’t want to go in the ocean, she wanted to swim in the hotel pool. He hoped they might calm her down with some ice cream, unruly kids being a main driver of business, but no one in the family noticed him. People seemed less willing to buy ice cream from a truck these days, he thought.

He was eating a frostbitten Orange Dream Bar when a white kid asked for an Iron Man. “No dice,” he said.

“Why?” “I ain’t have none of those Marvel characters.”

“That’s a double negative. That means you do have it. And Spider-Man is Marvel,” the kid said.

“Sony got the rights to Spider-Man. And they sold the ice cream rights to Popsicle. Iron Man is Big Boy Concessions,” he spit out. His left hand cut into the edge of the metal counter as he gripped it.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the kid said.

“Buy something or quit fucking talking to me,” he said, and the kid puffed up his chest and stormed off. Satisfied, Lucas finished that last bit of the bar and licked the wooden stick clean.

The kid came back, his arms crossed tight, accompanied by his sunburned mom and a pale police officer.

“There a problem here?” the officer asked.

“No, sir,” he said.

“This kid says you threatened him.”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“Let me see your identification.”

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Lucas turned to open his glove compartment. He tripped over the empty wine bottle and sent it clanging across the floor. The officer took notice.

“You know public intoxication is a crime?”

“I’m not intoxicated in public,” he said. “I’m in my truck.”

“Is your truck running?”

He had to keep it running to power the freezers. “Come on, man. You know I’m not going nowhere,” he pleaded.

“I’m going to need you to turn off your vehicle and step out with your hands visible.”

“The ice cream-” he said, his shoulders deflated.

“Turn off your vehicle and step out with your hands visible.”

He did as he was asked. The officer pushed him against the side of the truck and patted down every crevice of his body.

Satisfied, the officer put cuffs around his wrists. The kid, held at his mother’s side, watched as Lucas was placed in the back of the squad car and driven away.

The car took him back over the bay to the booking department. They patted him down again, the magistrate issued a bond of $1,000, his photograph was added to the database, his fingerprints were scanned. The last time he was arrested here they used ink and he thought about the passage of time, how it can leave you behind. When they were done with him he was left in a holding cell, which was also different from the last time. The room had recently been redone so as to be suicide-proof—there weren’t any linens and the bed itself was made of molded plastic with rounded edges. As he lay down he went over what would happen once this was all over.

He’d have to pay to get his truck back, and even then they’d suspend his license and he wouldn’t be able to drive it. Hours later he woke to the sound of some cop sliding back the metal bars. The clanking bounced around in his head.

From the payphone in the hall he dialed 1-800-COLLECT. Pressed 1 for English Assistance.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said when prompted, and waited as the call transferred. The next voice he heard was that of the synthesized operator.

“We’re sorry, the party you were trying to reach is not available.”

He redialed 1-800-COLLECT. Pressed 1 for English Assistance.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said when prompted, and waited as it transferred. This time the call connected. A small sigh of relief left his lips.

“Hey,” he said. “I know. What you think? It ain’t my fault.

Cause it ain’t. You know how these cops are. Mhmm. Yeah.

Yup. Fine. There’s a spot up under the floorboards down by the toilet. Under the rug. Ok. Cya.” He hung up and was led back to the cell to wait once more.

His sister showed up sometime that night and posted bond. The clerk at the front desk returned his wallet and a cop showed him to the door. She was waiting in the parking lot.

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Her eyes looked tired; her spaghetti-strap revealed a bruise on her shoulder. “I ‘preciate it,” he said. “You owe me, again,” she snapped. “I’m keeping track,” he said. They stared at each other, working backwards from the moment ‘til they were two children hiding in a cornfield in the hazy past. Lucas took a step forward and they brought it in for a hug.

She dropped him off across town. At Cash’s Liquors he picked up a bottle of gin. Wine got him into trouble, after all.

He kept walking and kept drinking until he reached the beach and fell to a seat in the sand. The thought of his daughter came to him but he pushed it away. Somehow the lapping waves, screeching gulls, and chatter of nightlife added up to silence. When the bottle was kicked he stood and stumbled to the edge of the shore, where the boundary between land and sea tugs back and forth. The tide was going out, stretching the beach and revealing porcelain-white discarded shells. He removed his shirt and shorts, untied his shoes, placed them in a neat pile. His right foot slid into the warm salt water followed by the left. He continued like this, one foot in front of the other, until the water was up to his waist, past the point where the gentle crests were crashing. In one motion he pushed off the earth and fell backwards, caught by the buoyancy of the ocean. His arms spread wide in a cross to spread out his weight.

As he laid there, his head full of stars, he lost track of time.

There was nothing to gauge it by. Nothing to even tell him where he was besides the position of constellations. The Big Dipper, he recognized that one. But for all he knew the current could have taken him out to sea, or maybe he was still in that little gully he laid back in. It didn’t matter. He closed his eyes, settled into the darkness. Any minute now he might open them, stand up, make his way back to shore, figure out what to do next. No matter how bad it got, the worst was always the fear of what would happen next. At that moment, though, there was no fear. There wasn’t anything. Even his relentless thoughts were quiet. And whatever happened, whether this was the end or the beginning, whether he’d sink or stand, the weight was lifted as he floated in that dark void.

Kay is a Philadelphia resident and a student in the University of Pennsylvania's Non-Traditional Graduate Studies program. This is his first publication in a literary magazine. More of his work can be found at kayalbasi.com

Literary Work

The Minos Child in the Underground BOB BEAGRIE

and into the tunnel we hurtle to the shrieks of panicked cattle, where our ears sting and pop in the glare of inner illumination, the outside panorama abandoned, wiped clean by the squeals, and our own semblances quiver in the squeeze-space between double glazed panes as if moulded from blancmange and jelly or hover out there like spectres indifferent to the backdraught content on their ethereal gadgets and apparently unalarmed by the prospect of their abrupt disappearance with our sudden reappearance into the upper world when it comes, if it comes, we all hang on to that hope but refuse to let it show, keeping our faces in place, avoiding lingering eye contact at any cost, not thinking of what we left behind or what we’re heading for not listening to the rumble and greedy roar of the monstrosity hoofing about somewhere close in the ever-dark, mid-tantrum.

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Poetry

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Bob Beagrie has published seven full collections of poetry and several pamphlets, most recently Leasungspell (Smokestack 2016) and Nobody (Hunting Raven 2017). His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines and has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian and Karelian.

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Dunbar Dream-Song BOB BEAGRIE

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By Broxmouth Woods My dreams come in droves: Of gull-spume and spray veils At the tide mark of Bass Rock, Of ragged lines of dun geese Singing farewell to the quarry, The warble of crumbling ruins, Kittiwake shrieks and sea pinks And toadstool gills by the burn, Of ghost-bairns racing barefoot Through thickets, dangling From branches, raiding nests For mottled treats to ward off A stitch or pangs of hunger, Of failures known, shrugged off, Unrecognised, old infidelities Picked clean as sea-winds flap At our tent, tug the guide-ropes, Shake the poles and pegs, Of a silver thumb-print smudged In a darkening sky over a cement Works chimney, of troopers Preparing to strike at first light, The subsequent scramble, screams, Slaughter, flight from the reeking, The capture of colours And blue cap surrender, The harrowing march to the South, Of soft -grey thistle heads quivering In sunshine, seed-drift over A golden meadow just this side Of the Summerlands, the everShifting shades of the tree-line, Of storm clouds sweeping in From the Kingdom of Fife;

By Broxmouth Woods My dreams come in droves.

Poetry

Nothing has really changed BOB BEAGRIE

but the kitchen I stand in doesn't fit its angles the stone tiles on the floor, I laid a decade ago lead away behind a half closed door I know the bathroom is behind it I know the arrangement of fridge magnets, know all of the notices and faded snapshots pinned to the caulk-board beneath the pans but the forest has grown all around me my mouth is stuffed with moss and leaves.

It was snowing but now the sun is shining on the white houses over the back yard wall they look like glacial peaks where trolls live.

I know really that nothing has changed but all of a sudden I feel a vast transparency

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Non-Fiction

Clarence Spady is Still the Blues EMMETT LINDNER

T

kuco © 123RF.com

here is some confusion at the door of Terra Blues. The East Village club sits atop a tall staircase that rises up from Bleecker Street. I arrive at 6:40p.m., ten minutes after the club opens, and ten minutes late for my first interview with guitarist Clarence Spady. Spady, however, is also late—he assured me over the phone that my name is on the bouncer’s list. It is not.

The bouncer tells me that “Clarence isn’t here yet—I don’t have a list,” and it’s a $20 cover. The speed of his reply lets on that he doesn’t believe me, or simply doesn’t care. I don’t want to argue with his wooden tone and, defeated, step outside to wait. At 6:55p.m. I grow uneasy—the set begins at seven, and the crowd is filing in. Then, from the shadows cast on Bleecker, a short and dreadlock-ed man with a guitar strapped over his back struts toward me. He does not, however, turn up the steps.

“Clarence!” I shout, and wave. Spady waves back and smiles, but keeps his pace. I rush down to the sidewalk—he is already one block away. The man is quick for fifty-six years old.

I reenter Terra to tell the dispassionate bouncer that Spady just walked by. At 6:58p.m., the door to the club opens. A cloud of cigarette smoke floats by me, followed by Clarence Spady, who puts the ember out on the inside of the door frame.

He coolly tosses the butt behind him, and I watch as it trails across the floor. Again, I say hello, and again, Spady smiles.

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His eyes are friendly, but they hold no recognition. He keeps on walking, this time into the dressing room. Someone comes out with a guest list. I am, however, not on it.

“I have an Emmie,” the bouncer tells me. His expression is wary. I try to persuade him that I am who I say, and I am in fact the person on the list, albeit the person on the list is not me. I look up to see Spady on stage, setting up his gear. He has somehow bypassed all known stage entryways. He walks with a diva’s nonchalance—comped meals and exclusive back doors are his tried and true ways of life.

I convince the bouncer to, under his supervision, let me approach the stage.

“Clarence, it’s Emmett,” I say. He puts down his guitar and amplifier cables, and extends his hand. He greets me as though my name was never in question. This Pennsylvania blues man never hints at regret or chagrin—it’s as though nothing has been forgotten at all. He grins, and with a rushed civility (it is now 7:14p.m., and the room is packed), points me to a reserved table in the front row. I order a bourbon and watch his acoustic guitar hum Bible Belt blues.

Six years ago, Spady was inducted into the New York Blues Hall of Fame. Tonight, the music is still full of bravado and depth.

He vibrates a high note like a man from the Delta, and strums a chord that trails off—its sound is lost to the bass line and drums.

He holds onto the pause until the crowd’s excitement peaks, and they cheer as he picks the rhythm back up.

The first set ends, and Spady unstraps his guitar and zips off the stage like a dart. I’m told that I’ll find him outside smoking, and so I walk through the crowd toward the exit. The only person outside, however, is the owner, a large man who was earlier pointed out to me. He is bundled in a beige coat, and stares without expression at the strip of sidewalk that is his domain. I ask if he’s the owner.

“Who wants to know?” he asks. The words are full of gravel, and he continues to look past me. I tell him I’m writing an article on Clarence Spady. He nods and, for the first time, briefly looks me over, and offers this solemn praise: “Clarence is a fucking outlaw.” *** The air is cold and foggy on the streets of Scranton. The “Electric City” is a small, industrial town stuck inside rural Appalachia, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley. It is quaint and haunted, like many Atlantic towns that have given up on their original industry: slight and eerily empty. These streets are home to Spady. He was born in Patterson, NJ, which he’ll tell you was a time before it had its current rough-and-tumble connotation. His father was career military, and became stationed in Scranton, where the family moved when Spady was between five- and seven-years-old, depending on what day you ask. He learned to play guitar by sitting on his father’s lap and strumming along. After seeing his

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father wake up at 4:30 each morning, Spady knew at an early age that he “didn’t want to punch no time clock for no one. I knew I wasn’t cut out for the service. I knew I wasn’t hangin’ in that direction.”

But he did try. His father pushed him to audition for the US Jazz Ambassadors, an army band that has a two-year run with gigs around the world. At eighteen, when Spady worked as a heavy equipment operator in Scranton, he decided to join his best friend at giving the military a shot. “[My friend] went through, and I didn’t.”

Spady did, however, see the guitar through. His high school friend, and current manager, Scott Goldman, opened Blues Street, the first blues bar in Scranton, which Spady would frequent. The future bluesman would work his days on construction sites with pipelines and heavy machinery, and spend his nights on stage with whatever acts passed through.

“He’s a chameleon,” Goldman says. “He could play with Sonny Rhodes, Luther Houserocker Johnson. From there he really grew as an artist.”

His rise as a guitarist and bluesman was fast and dazzling, but hanging on at the top has always proved a challenge. He began to initially tour in 1991, but he and his father’s lives were devastated by the passing of Spady’s mother that same year.

To cope, he brought his father on tour for the next ten years. “I came home with a suitcase and said ‘this ain’t for me, pops— it’s for you. Me and my dad had a relationship—I never thought two men could bond like that. The thirty previous years were a speck compared to that time.” *** After following Spady for several days, it becomes clear that many people look up to him. He is something of a mayor wherever he goes. When I first arrive in Scranton, he suggests we go to Abe’s Deli for a sandwich. We find the doors locked, and through the glass we see Jared, the owner, cashing out the register. Spady raps his knuckles on the glass. Jared looks up and shrugs. We stay put, and Spady jokingly pleads through the window until Jared walks toward us and unlocks the door. He cooks us both sandwiches as the two recount old times.

We take the sandwiches back to Clarence’s home. On the way, we stop at a corner store for bottled water. While at the fridge display, a large, slow-moving man comes over to Spady.

“Yo, OG,” the man says, and the two shake hands. “You stayin’ out the way?”

“Yeah, yeah, got to.” It’s a touching moment of small-town notoriety that breeds family connection. Though I don’t ask, I believe that “stayin’ out the way” refers to Spady’s battle with addiction.

In 2011, Spady was arrested in a sweep that put 36 people behind bars in connection to a Bloods-run drug ring in Scranton, PA, where the guitarist was raised. Though he

Non-Fiction

only received five-years’ probation, the arrest overshadowed his recent induction into the New York Blues Hall of Fame.

“I’m just ready to put this behind me,” Spady was quoted as saying at the time of his sentencing. “I’m ready to move on with my life, and maybe now I can process that [the band and I] were inducted.”

Spady has been in AA since 1997, around the time his first album, “Nature of the Beast,” was released. It’s a soulful record, with the title track referring honestly to struggles with cocaine and alcohol. “That was my life, man,” Spady says.

One can feel it in the music and his raspy, been-there voice.

Back then, Spady had a lot on the line. In 1996, Living Blues Magazine, a premier blues publication, named him in their annual list, “Top 40 Blues Artists Under 40 Years Old.” The next year, he received a nomination for the W.C. Handy Award for “Best New Blues Artist of the Year.”

His rise continued. The bluesman began an international circuit, playing shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and across Europe, bringing pure, American blues to festivals in Belgium and France. In 1998, one year after his first album, his international recognition was solidified when he received France’s Blues Trophy for “Best Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year.”

“I didn’t have to make a speech,” Spady says about receiving the award at the ceremony. “I could have, but I said ‘Hey, I don’t know what to say other than thank you God, and all of you who had anything to do with this.’” He then pointed to his heroes who sat in the crowd, John Moon and Tinsley Ellis. “It was awesome to be in the midst of all these different players I look up to.”

After his 2011 arrest, Spady tried to focus on his sobriety.

“It hasn’t been 21 consecutive years [since I began AA],” he admits. “Three years, almost four years twice. Couple two year and one years. Put a couple two years together and then bam!

Take a sip, start the cycle, go on a spree for six months. I don’t regret it, it was fun, but it was costly. You tear it down, and then you try to rebuild.”

A few years after the arrest, during one of these reinventions, Spady returned to the studio. He produced and then released his second album, “Just Between Us,” a rhythm-and-blues, catchy and funky affair. Today, he’s almost completed his third studio album. Since his sentencing, his guitar has acquired a certainty and flair that continues to evolve. *** Spady drives across the highway toward Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, a small town that feels more like the deep South than any northern province. Along the highway, at the outskirts of Tunkhannock, we pass a billboard with President Trump’s taut and smiling face next to a large, red heart.

Spady drives like he walks through a club: with a certainty that he is shielded by fame. Oncoming driver’s, though, don’t

know who’s here behind the wheel. I’m a little terrified. He texts his bandmates and swerves toward the yellow median line. I offer to send a message for him but he ignores the veiled plea. He tells me, instead, of how he totaled his last car when he hydroplaned on the highway two months earlier.

I try to keep his mind on the tangible, so that maybe he’ll refocus on what’s ahead of him. I ask if he has the set list planned for tonight.

“Yep,” he says, “all right here.” He points his index finger to his head. He feeds on the momentum of any given moment.

His band mates, however, often don’t know what they’ll be playing until Spady begins a song.

“I don’t drink because I can’t be in an altered state,” says keyboardist Bob Hammond, about playing with his band leader. “His changes come so quick.” *** We arrive in Tunkhannock. It’s a small town with one main road. Tonight’s venue, The Blogg, is either under construction, or in a crisis of aesthetic. Two walls are bare and show skeletal beams. Wires hang from the ceiling. One of the owners keeps joking that it’s hip, and he says it so much that by the end of the night I’m convinced he will keep the place as is. The green room’s walls are layers of insulation, and a round, wooden table is crammed against a “Daytona Skill Crane,” a NASCAR-themed claw machine. Spady’s drummer, Matt Guza, who’s filling in for the regular percussionist tonight, takes a seat at the table. He lauds his band leader, but notes “You just don’t want to piss him off.” He winks and walks toward his place on stage.

The crowd is a sea of cowboy hats and spilled Bud Light.

It is, to put it mildly, a shit show. There is a family of good-ol’boys and their gals that try to start a fight the moment Spady plays something heavy. One of The Blogg’s owners tells me that last time Spady played the group actually did cause a brawl, but they spend so much money on booze that they’re never turned away.

From the moment Spady entered the bar, cigarette in mouth, guitar in hand, his pace changed from calm but speedy to focused-professional. Cables are unrolled and microphones are tested. Beers are consumed by the crowd while the band does a sound check. Then, Spady hits his first notes, and the band follows suit. High notes wail, and the kick-drum echoes throughout the room. The crowd picks up energy and heads to the dance floor, which is the same floor as the stage.

Spady leads the band into “Built for Comfort,” and the crowd becomes a wave of fast steps and twists.

It’s clear that Spady is quick in his stride. The drummer hits his cymbal a half-beat late. Spady turns and scowls and shakes his head. The drummer is visibly off after this, from what appears to be nerves, and at several moments Spady seems to be yelling at him below the music.

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The crowd has become a bit frenzied. Large men in boots and tattered jeans bump aggressively into other men they do not know. A blonde, middle-aged woman stands on top of a table and appears to be stricken by vertigo, but she’s held in place by the sea of checkered shirts. They all laugh and continue the revelry. One of the owners runs over to her and says she’s out of here. I think I see her mouth a few impolite phrases, and he replies with a few un-Christian words. He never follows up, though, on his threat to eighty-six her. Spady appears to capitalize on the rowdy momentum. He bursts into a Jimi Hendrix cover that’s all thick bass lines and fast, throaty rhythms. It takes the crowd to a violent place. Bodies move in wild abandon and bottles fall to the floor. Though there’s no fight tonight, I get the feeling from the spontaneous set list that Spady might not mind one. When I ask him about this later, he only smiles.

During the next tune Spady tells his bass player to take a solo. While the guy loses himself in the improvisation, Spady unstraps his guitar and exits the stage without any signal to the band. After about a minute the bass player looks back up, and sees that Spady has succeeded in another disappearing act. The band shrugs and they all trade solos. I see Spady in the back, smoking a cigarette. He reenters the bar and picks up his guitar. “We have a request,” he says into the microphone.

What follows is remarkable. “I never meant to cause you sorrow,” he sings into the microphone, in a near-perfect impression of Prince’s velvet, nasal tone. “Purple Rain,” a-la Clarence Spady, brings the crowd together as they sway and sing along with the chorus. Spady’s guitar jumps into a solo that sings out unexpected notes, but when they’re heard it becomes clear they should have been played all along.

Throughout the set, Spady was good most moments, and great for even more. But the notes he plays and the energy he musters during this Prince cover offers a genius that is recognizable because of its obvious separation from those players that are simply talented. In quick moments of brilliance, Spady brings himself out of the dive bars, and one feels a pang of guilt that they didn’t pay more money to see him, and on a much bigger stage. There is a certain magic as he finishes his first set. The realization sinks in that the crowd has been in sync the entire hour, even if that togetherness was volatile. Spady’s unspoken set list and Fender guitar punctuations led the bodies that stood before him into unity.

For sixty-minutes or so, The Blogg became an entity. The first set ends, hands clap together, and Spady smiles and nods while he unstraps his guitar. *** Spady has yet again managed to dodge me. His first set has been over for twenty minutes, and I can’t find him anywhere.

One owner kindly insists that he make me a hot meal. He

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takes me through the back, past the bathrooms and to a nondescript door. On the other side is a diner that he also owns. There sits Spady, alone at the breakfast bar, pencil in hand as he studies a crossword puzzle. He has a plate of chicken wings and fries on the bar top next to him.

Two women enter. One sits to my left. She says she’s from New Orleans. Her friend is the one that earlier tried to climb the table, and is still quite drunk. She goes running into the kitchen. One owner goes after her screaming bloody murder.

Spady sits to my right. The woman next to me asks if there are any CDs for sale. I say I’m not sure, but she looks at me like I should know. Spady is, or pretends to be, engrossed in the crossword. She tells me to ask the man himself, and so I do, though Spady can clearly hear her. “Naw,” he says, “I just assumed everyone here already owned one.” I worry the woman may find this a bit self-indulgent but Spady smiles and, for the first time, faces her. She appears charmed.

Sitting at this quiet breakfast bar, after hours, while a drunken woman is being chased through the kitchen and the hot wings clear my sinuses, while a bluesman charms a woman from New Orleans and a crowd of revelers await another song to dance to, I feel serene and nostalgic for a time I never knew. Dark bars that are clouded by cigarette smoke, and shouts and laughs that support the soulful music on stage. It’s a place to find solidarity in an ache transformed.

Music, soul, and a bit of mayhem. There’s an authenticity to the sawdust floors and musicians that still carry their own gear. The blues is pain and its translation, bent by anecdote or frustration. Spady encapsulates the organic nature of the genre, in more ways than his chain-smoking, outlaw persona and the inventive music he creates. It’s an essence that comes before the first note is played, and remains after the last one rings out. Wherever Spady goes, the blues follows.

Emmett Lindner is a writer pursuing an MFA at Columbia University. He is working on a novel that paints a portrait of the absurd in Los Angeles and the film/TV industry. As a copywriter, his work has been featured by a number of brands. His prose and journalism have been published in The Good Men Project, The Columbia Journal, Bloginity, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

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Poetry

COEUR LANA BELLA

After The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe I will mutter into the late hours to my ear tracking for sounds of the knock-knock rapping from beneath the chamber floor.

With a length of travel, I play a girl in conforming skirt, high breaths culling the dearness of something languorously tar, kind of like I’m seared and bitter trickled down a forlorn kiss.

I pass a curious hand through air the way water tucks between the eaves, giving way to crests of heat wild and crash of hungry licks on my flesh. Rosin-muted, my heart blinks something gone all brief in mercy and sadness, anomie of my body teemed with dead seeds, shadows flutter black from the light. And I turn, turn crawling to where the rumor floor move with patterns of the senseless and clandestine, an ocean of quivers pull inwards the settlings of the charred corpses of my loves.

Lana is a four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net & Bettering American Poetry nominee. She is an author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016).

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Poetry

A Prayer For Eighteen Wheels EVELYN BENVIE

They say there are no angels in America but Sometimes, on the empty road The ghosts under your wheels sing so sweet It sounds a bit like a hymn While you drive the places people dream of– The hashtag road trip destinations Vanishing beneath your wheels Like so many hitchhikers lost in the weeds It feels, oh it feels, in places you thought you left behind Maybe like falling, so close to sleep But caught in the branches of wakefulness The highway is no bed for you And the asphalt looks like a landing strip Strung out beneath Martian moons Like you at fifteen and drunk On your mother’s good strawberry wine That you never acquired the taste for (Oh but she tried for you, she tried) And yet you miss the taste of, too sweet But still not sweet enough to keep you From this winding endless infernal place You dare not call home, lest you remember Another place where you could lay your head Away from the eyes you pass in the dark

Evelyn Benvie is an emerging queer writer who's just trying to get by, pay the bills, and find time to work on that novel. Her poetry and short prose have been published online and in anthologies, and she has a novella coming out soon. Connect with her online at evelynbenvie.com or on Facebook and Twitter under Evelyn Benvie.

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breaking up, breaking down EVELYN BENVIE

You are the ocean of my heart so blue, The breakers on the beach your lips on mine.

A winter’s misty day or summer’s view Would never show the ocean near as kind. ha ha, no— I don’t think this is working what? oh, us or the poem I think I understand sometimes. Not you, not your hands or your love or your smile brittle edged in words wrapped in buts and contracts like plastic waste too shiny too slick. But sometimes, I think I understand the ocean. The ocean is no sonnet, but neither are you and neither am I, we are just fish, not even real fish jellyfish we float and sometimes we drown.

Love is not simple But neither is the ocean I can’t swim, can you sea turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish so maybe I’m a sea turtle, or maybe I’m not but in the dark of the ocean floor your heart looked like something I could swallow

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Fiction

Temporary People RASMENIA MASSOUD

F

or as long as Aggie could recall, strange people drifted in and out of the cozy doublewide she shared with her mother. Roby had a fondness for temporary people; wanderers, carnies, truckers and the like, just passing through. No attachments. No complications. They were flings and friendships minus the pain of prolonged endings, loud arguments, or resentful tears.

Aggie's childhood, as atypical as all things connected to Roby, was secure and joyful. She knew lots of fathers, mothers, aunts, and uncles who joked and played with her. Sometimes they even brought presents; stuffed toys, glitter mirrors, and other trinkets from the fair, or new books and wall posters for her room. The folks her mother ran with infused her days with new music, mismatched colors, and weird stories from their travels. Sometimes, Roby would get in a little tighter with one of these ramblers and he'd stick around for a while. Then, one day he'd move on and no one felt sad. Roby said it was emptiness that caused people to feel sad, and she'd made certain that life for her and her daughter overflowed, even if they had little.

It was like this with all Roby's guys. Except Frog. He hung around as though his presence in their home were normal.

Roby tolerated him, but Aggie sensed something about Frog irritated her mother, even though she never spoke of it. When he made surprise visits to their trailer, Aggie cringed at the way her mother's eyes didn't smile when she laughed; how her shoulders slumped as though she were trying to push them together. Roby never said a dark word about anyone, even when they deserved it. Up to her last day among the living, Aggie's mother had plenty of kindness for everyone, especially the downtrodden eccentrics who swarmed around her.

Without her mother's effervescence to light the place, it dimmed and became a less social place. Visits from mourners, friends, and well-wishers tapered off after a while. Aggie's boyfriend Tim moved in. He'd stretch out on the couch, remote in hand while Aggie washed the dishes, staring off toward the truck stop and highway with the fairgrounds in the distance.

She'd wonder what sort of characters were milling about out there. She tried to give her home a new life, inviting a couple of friends over, hoping for a changing of the guards, where she might step into her mother's place as lover and den mother to all manner of vagabonds, weirdos, and broken oddballs.

But, Tim was too tired after work for bullshit and can't a guy eat dinner and watch some TV without a bunch of freaks running in and out for fuck's sake? Even Frog stopped coming around to check on her after Tim moved in.

Until Tim broke a coffee mug on her face because why did she have to be such a nosy bitch first thing in the fucking morning. An hour later, he rode away from her in the back of a police cruiser. A persistent female officer made an admirable effort to coax Aggie into a trip to the ER to treat the cuts and bruises on her now swollen visage.

"I'm fine." Aggie hoped her quavering voice didn't reveal the pain flashing through her cheekbone.

The officer insisted, but Aggie couldn't be persuaded.

"It's okay. I'll have my friend take me to the doctor later. I'm sure it'll be okay with a couple of stitches and some aloe."

Minutes later, Aggie sat alone at the kitchen table that was once surrounded by boisterous laughter, its scuffed surface covered with comfort food. She began to weep, in spite of the discomfort it caused her wrecked face, and longed for her mother. *** Frog lowered his bulk onto the creaky threadbare sofa that years ago had been a lush velour. He gritted his teeth as he examined the shiny black and purple plum of Aggie's cheekbone; the ugly slice through her spotty red flesh. His dark, bushy brow furrowed and his nostrils flared as Aggie served him coffee and summarized the events of the past few days. He responded straight from the script most people refer to in these kinds of situations. Phrases such as, "that little sonofabitch," and "I'd better not see him around here," to show solidarity and make the victim feel safe and supported. Aggie didn't feel safe or supported. She didn't feel like being around anyone except Val, who stopped by every day. A couple of her coworkers at the auto parts store had called to check on her after they heard that she wouldn't be coming in for a while, but she didn't want to see them, either. Rather, she didn't want them to see her coffee mug-smashed face. Her victim face.

She asked Frog for a cigarette. Frowning, he shook one from the pack he kept in his shirt pocket, lit it, and passed it to her. Elbows on his knees, he folded his hands together and said, "So, you're eighteen now, aren't you?"

Aggie crossed her arms in front of her chest without realizing that she did so. "Yeah. Why?" "I started sculpting, you know."

"Sculpting? Like statues and shit?" She tucked a stray strand of her sandy bob behind her ear.

Frog nodded. "Statues. Small ones. Busts. Figurines. All kinds of sculptures."

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Aggie exhaled a small plume of smoke and gingerly touched her fingertips to her swollen cheekbone. It jutted out in a bizarre, pointy way that resembled an elbow more than a cheekbone.

"Well," she said, "I guess it's good to have a hobby to pass the time." She didn't look at him as she said this, but at the carpet, and she spoke in the soft, far away tones of a person on autopilot. Why was he telling her this? She had no interest in him, his hobbies, or anything at all aside from putting the past few days behind her and having her face back to normal.

She crushed out her half-smoked cigarette, and decided to ask him to leave, but then considered he might be attempting to distract her from her problems for a short time.

Frog cleared his throat, then removed the pack of cigarettes from his pocket again and lit one for himself. Scratching his temple as smoke blew out of his considerable nostrils, he said, "You know, if you need some extra cash now that you're on your own, I sometimes hire models for my sculpting projects."

"Models?" Aggie looked up at him. His wide nose and small eyes. The wiry hairs growing from his ears. He leaned back on the sofa, one foot resting on his knee, as though he was lighter and able to open himself up now that he had released his offer out into the room. She pointed at herself. "Do you see my face? Do I look like I'm up for any modelling gigs?"

He raised a defensive hand. "I'm not trying to get you riled up, I just want to help you out in whatever way I can."

Aggie's mind wandered back to the days before Tim, how it used to be when she'd had a kind of family. Frog had been there. Sure, her mother wasn't as tight with him as she'd been with some of the other carnies and drifters, but he'd been around some, and those fellas had all been big brothers and uncles and fathers to her.

"It's been a rough few days." She ran her fingers through her hair, and squinted at him with her unblemished eye, which was also red due to tears and lack of decent sleep. "How much do you pay your models?"

"Twenty bucks an hour, give or take."

"For modelling their whole body?"

"Nah." Frog waved a hand dismissively. He leaned forward and smashed his cigarette butt in the heavy brown glass ashtray. "Just faces, you know. For busts."

"Busts? Like Mozart, or Beethoven, or some shit?"

"Sure." Frog's face flashed a smirk that made Aggie feel uneasy again.

He thinks I'm stupid, she thought.

They were interrupted by a knock on the screen door and Val stepped inside. Aggie made a brief introduction, then Frog rose from the ugly green sofa and announced his departure, stating that he was just, "keeping our girl company," and he'd be on his way, now.

Val and Aggie stood next to one another, watching the taillights of Frog's powder blue van kick up dust as it rolled toward the highway and faded into twilight. After he'd gone a

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distance she was satisfied with, Val took his place on the sofa.

She raised an eyebrow. "Friend of your mom's?"

"Yeah. He offered me a job."

"A job?" Val straightened up and narrowed her mahogany eyes. "What kind of a job?"

"Modelling for some sculpture. Weird, right?"

Val jerked her head back. "The fuck?"

"And get this—he wanted to know if I turned eighteen yet."

"Aw, hell no. That's always a bad sign." Val shook her head and kicked her shoes off.

"Right? But, he said he'd pay me twenty bucks an hour."

"And that old dude has that kind of money?"

"I doubt it. He's a retired truck driver living in a shitty onebedroom apartment."

Val sniffed at the stinking ashtray on the coffee table in front of her and pushed it farther away. She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Dude, I told you. This shit is nasty."

"It's way nasty. But I need the outlet right now."

"I know." Val's voice softened. She rose from the couch and went to Aggie. Val moved to touch her face and Aggie winced.

"Just let me have a look at it."

Aggie relaxed and Val put both of her smooth, brown hands on either side of Aggie's head. "It looks a little better today. I still say you should've had a few stitches, though."

"It'll heal up fine without 'em. Besides. Stitches and doctor visits cost money."

Val smiled wide. "Now why are you being such a cheap ass when you're getting ready to embark on a big modeling career?"

There was a pause, then they both began laughing. Aggie strutted around the trailer catwalk style in her sweatpants and bruised face. Their giggling grew more hysterical and giddy and for a moment, Aggie felt relief in the absurdity. But the moment came and went. *** Todd unlocked his toolbox and did a quick inventory.

Mondays were his busiest night. Beginning a new week is hard on a lot of people. He leaned out his bedroom window and scanned the parking lot, realizing he'd forgotten to check the mail when he got home from work. His order of Fentanyl had likely arrived and he'd need it tonight. It was a popular item. He watched Lennie slink through a gap in the fence, straighten his baseball cap, then continue staggering toward the bar across the street. It was already past dark. Lennie was getting a late start. Lennie wasn't a customer, just a neighbor who dealt with his demons the old fashioned way. Good for him, Todd thought.

The rusty rattle of Frog's van rambling into the parking lot made the fine hairs on the back of Todd's neck stand up.

Frog. What a piece of shit. And what was his actual name?

Bob? Bart? He could never remember because the dude

Fiction

looked less like a frog and more like a lizard, preying and glowering from dark corners with impassive eyes. Bob. Bart.

Bill. Didn't matter. He gave Todd the creeps.

Todd pulled his head back inside and lowered the window before Frog finished parking his van. Todd didn't want to risk eye contact, or having to say hello to that shady motherfucker.

Sure, Frog had never actually done anything to him. Todd was a rational person and knew his suspicions of Frog were unfounded. Then again, nobody in the entire building cared much for Frog. The way he had kids going in and out of his apartment was strange. Maybe those young boys and girls were legal. Who could tell anymore? But a scraggly dude that old hanging around with so many people who even appeared that young struck everyone else in the building as unsettling.

Then Lisa and Jessie up on the third floor claimed that he stole their cat. With those two, it could go either way, really.

Lisa and Jessie, unlike Lennie, were great customers.

While Todd understood his dislike for Frog was unfounded, he felt certain Frog was in no way trustworthy, which grated on him. Running his drive-thru business from his bedroom window had always worked. Any of the other neighbors who knew about it didn't care. Some of them were customers, sure, but most important, it was because there was an understanding among all the residents. A sort of code. A code that Frog wasn't a part of.

It would be better for everyone in the building if Frog found somewhere else to live, but so far, no one had any clever ideas to get him out. The place was full of lawbreakers and lowlifes, but not a single criminal mastermind in the bunch.

Too bad.

Todd removed his duty belt and unclipped his tie. He removed his hat, rubbed his shaved head and set the pieces of his security guard uniform on the chair at the foot of his bed, taking the time to fold each garment. He crossed the tiny living room to the front door and squinted through the peephole. Straight across the courtyard, Frog turned the key in the lock and disappeared inside his own apartment. Once the door closed behind him, Todd's door opened and he stepped outside. He shuffled to the mailboxes, where a discreetly labeled envelope awaited him. *** Aggie lay sprawled out on her mother's bed, wearing Roby's gold kimono, sunflower print balloon pants, and Def Lepard t-shirt. She'd come in with the intention of clearing some space, getting around to the cleaning she'd been putting off.

She couldn't bear to remove what remained of her mother, in spite of Tim's constant complaining about how they should be using the big bedroom. She wasn't sure why she'd had the spontaneous urge to do it now, but after a few minutes of ferreting through Roby's space, it became clear. She wanted her mother to tell her what to do next. Instead of clearing

and boxing things up, Aggie started playing dress up in an unconscious attempt to channel her wise and charming mother. Roby, with the stubbornness of many deceased people, remained silent.

Aggie stared up at the ceiling, at those ridiculous glow in the dark stars and planets, and at last, she understood that this place, though cozy and often crowded once upon a time was now too large and too lonely for a solitary, not-quite nineteenyear-old woman. She could get a roommate, and move in here to her mother's bedroom, but that didn't sit right with Aggie, and she could not identify the reason why. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine life in an apartment. What was it like to be an apartment person with the sounds of cars passing by? Would she need to get a cat or a turtle or some kind of apartment pet?

Atop Roby's cluttered dresser, Aggie's phone buzzed. She didn't bother getting up. She knew it was Frog. He'd been calling, leaving messages to ask if she'd thought about his offer. She punched the mattress, kicking her feet up and down in exasperation for a few seconds, then rose from the bed and went to her phone. She typed out a quick text to Val, then returned to excavating her mother's closet. *** "This is a bad idea." Val shifted the car into park and turned to face Aggie. "At least let me go in there with you."

Aggie looked up at the building. "Pretty sure I've never seen a building constructed of snot green bricks before. It's weird, right?"

"Aggie."

"I know. I heard you. Look, I'll be fine. Circle the block a couple times, then pick me up here. I don't think this is gonna take very long."

"I'll be here. But I'm not cool with this. It's stupid and reckless."

"Acknowledged."

"Tell me one more time why you need to do this."

Aggie sighed. "I can't explain it. I didn't know Tim. Not really.

Then he showed me who he was and now I'm rid of him. I feel like, if I go in there, I'll see if Frog is really some weird old guy who means well, or‌" "Or he'll show you what a piece of shit he is, and you'll be rid of him."

Aggie nodded. "Something like that."

"Be smart. Take no shit." Val held up her pinkie finger.

Aggie hooked her own little finger around it. "Take no shit."

She stepped out of Val's little blue Honda and approached the building, passed through the doorway and found herself in a rectangular courtyard. The sounds of more than one television murmured from open windows above her. She looked down at a few small, sad plants struggling among the rocks and weeds in what appeared to be an abandoned

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attempt at a garden in the center. A lady with shaggy silver hair who appeared to be picking up trash waved at her. Aggie heard a door close and looked up to see a cute, pregnant redhaired young woman about her own age descending the noisy iron stairs with an older biker dude who could've been her father, or the baby's. Who knew. Aggie smiled. The redhead smiled back and the man nodded as they passed by. Aggie found Frog's apartment and knocked.

Never a warm or jovial man, Frog's demeanor was even more sullen than usual when he let Aggie into his apartment.

She took in the dim, drab surroundings. The plaid sofa that looked to be upholstered in some scratchy material from her grandparent's era. A worn, pleather recliner in a dull shade of soupy green. A long, bushy spider plant thrived from a macramĂŠ hanger in the corner near the room's only window.

This surprised her, the fact that Frog spent even moments during the day nurturing something. What didn't surprise her was that nowhere in the room did she spot a single sculpture of any kind.

"What's with the getup?" He gestured up and down in front of her, cigarette smoke trailing from his fingers.

She'd thrown on her mother's peacock feather print harem pants, a Bruce Springsteen t-shirt, and a purple baker boy cap that she pulled down low in an effort to cover the temporary wounded mask she'd been forced to wear. At once, she resented his critique of her appearance and decided not to acknowledge it.

Aggie removed the cap and moved a strand of hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. "I still have a while to heal, so I don't know how I can be of any help, unless you plan on sculpting a broken face."

He said nothing, but sat down. The ugly recliner let out a small, dusty wheeze and Frog motioned for Aggie to take a seat on the couch. He pulled at a drawer on the side of the coffee table. It stuck, and he had to struggle with it for a moment before it finally revealed its contents.

Aggie saw various shades of uncovered skin and several pairs of emotionless eyes staring up at them from the collection of Polaroids in the drawer. Frog removed a few, glancing for a moment at one with his cigarette hanging from his mouth before passing it to Aggie.

"This is an old roommate of mine."

Aggie took the photo. Looking up at her was the naked image of a girl who appeared to be close to her own age.

Standing in front of a bathroom sink, arms raised above her head, holding her masses of chestnut brown hair up in pose that seemed to Aggie more like a young girl trying to appear sexy without actually having the womanly self-possession to be sexy. What she found most disturbing, though, was the girl's expression. Wide-eyed, tight-lipped, and almost questioning, with zero self-assurance. She handed to photo back to Frog.

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"I'm not doing that," she said.

He exhaled smoke through his nose, and dropped his cigarette in a soda can on the table with a hiss.

"Frog," she said, "How old is that girl?"

"Eighteen."

Aggie glanced down at the open drawer. The smooth, trusting faces of young men and women gazing up from inside Frog's coffee table.

"What about the rest of them?"

He raised his head and met her eyes for the first time since she'd arrived. "Eighteen." His voice had descended to a growl that she wasn't familiar with, but wouldn't soon forget.

"I have to go." Aggie grabbed her cap from the table, then stood and moved toward the front door.

"Roby, wait."

"Aggie." Her hand on the doorknob, Aggie turned and looked at Frog, his wiry hair, plaid, short-sleeve work shirt with the pearly snaps tucked in too tight, revealing his beer gut.

"My name is Aggie."

"Aggie. Right. Aggie." He reached toward his back pocket, and Aggie flinched. Holding his hand up in a placating gesture, he held up his wallet. She felt herself begin to tremble as she watched him remove a twenty and hold it to her. Without a word, Aggie snatched the money from his hand and bolted outside. With her cap in one tiny fist and the cash in the other, she glimpsed Val's little blue car pulling up at the curb in front of the building and scurried toward it in such a panic that she didn't notice the man in a security guard uniform asking her if she was okay. *** Todd sat on the wooden stool next to his bedroom window eating a bowl of mac and cheese with the lights off. He scanned the scene outside with a practiced patience, his eyes moving from the parking lot entrance at one end of the lot to the gap in the fence at the other end. The alarm clock on the dresser announced in glowing red digits that it was almost two o'clock in the morning. Lennie would soon be staggering through the fence on his way home from the bar across the street.

He shoved another forkful of pasta in his mouth and lamented the absence of trees outside his window. His view was parking lot, dilapidated wooden fence, worn-down vehicles, including an abandoned Saab nobody seemed to know anything about, and the roof of a flower shop that stood between the apartment building and the busy street. It was September and still warm, but the leaves would begin falling soon and Todd would have liked to observe the rolling change of seasons while he waited on customers. Between his day job as mall security guard and his night job as a drug dealer, he spent most of his time watching in silence. The view was important to him.

Fiction

A little blue Honda pulled into the parking lot moving at such a crawl that Todd thought the driver might be trying to sneak in, or wasn't quite sure if they were in the right place. As it passed by his window, he recognized the car. He'd seen it the other day when the blond with the black eye was running away from Frog's place in a hurry.

Todd's jaw tightened. That fucking creep. "Why in the hell would you come back here?" he whispered to the empty room. Setting his bowl down on the nightstand, he watched the car back into the parking space next to Frog's van. He watched as the driver stepped out, pushing the car door closed. She was tall, dressed head to toe in black. Her skin was dark and her hair was pulled up in a bun. Todd thought she looked like a cat burglar. The passenger emerged, also dressed in black with a black cap covering most of her blond hair. He at once recognized her as the young woman who'd rushed past him.

He watched them squat down, seeming to inspect Frog's tires and felt certain that they'd come to exact some sort of revenge for whatever it was that went down the other day. If Todd could find out what happened, it might be enough to finally get that piece of shit out of the building. Not wanting to waste time using his front door and walking around, he pushed his window the rest of the way up, sat on the ledge, swung his legs around and hopped outside.

The women saw him right away and stood up, ready to dart for the Honda.

"It's okay." He put his hands up and tried to keep his voice low. "Friend not foe."

The two women glanced at each other, then back at him.

"You a cop or military or something?" The tall dark one asked.

He realized he still had his stupid blue uniform shirt on and shook his head. He pointed at the patch sewn onto his sleeve.

"Mall security." He gestured toward the van. "Did that piece of shit do something to you?" He turned toward the blond in the cap with the fading black eye and cuts on her face. "Did he do that you?"

"This?" Her fingers touched her bruised cheekbone. "No, but‌."

"But he's still a piece of shit," her friend interjected.

"So you came to slash his tires." Todd grinned, noticing the awl in her right hand.

The two friends exchanged glances again.

Before anyone could say anything else, a clatter of wood interrupted from the other end of the fence. The three of them watched in silence as Lennie slinked through the fence, muttering to some imaginary cohort, and staggered across the parking lot, disappearing into the entrance of the courtyard to go to his apartment.

"That's Lennie," Todd said. "Probably didn't even see us."

"This place sure does seem like it's full of some real

characters," the blond said, looking up at the green brick apartment building.

"It is. They're good people, though. Except for one." Todd looked back and forth between the two. "What if we could do more than slash a couple of tires? Legally? Some people here wanna have him evicted, anyway. And it's actually kinda hard to puncture a tire. And it can be noisy."

Instead of answering, the blond woman asked for his phone. He took it out of his pocket and handed it to her.

He remained silent as she entered her phone number and handed it back to him. He glanced at it and said, "Nice to meet you, Aggie."

"This is Val." She nodded toward her friend.

"Hey, Val." Val waved. "Hey, Mall Cop." "Let's talk about it," Aggie said. "But not here, not now."

"Okay." He nodded.

The driver was already inside the car, but just before she got in herself, Aggie turned back to Todd and asked, "Really?

Everyone else here is cool?"

"Very cool. Kinda strange, but you know, decent. Deepdown where it counts."

Aggie nodded, then said, "Hey, thanks for keeping us out of trouble."

Val poked her head out the window and smiled. "Yeah, job well-done, Security Dude."

He smiled back and waved as they drove away. Then he crawled back through his window, back to his dark room, his cold pasta, and the cold certainty that while he couldn't see the rolling change of the seasons, things would still be very different soon. He pulled the window closed, shut his toolbox and slid it under his bed, thinking he'd stop the night job before long, too, go completely legit. He'd already been slinging pills and weed much longer than he'd intended.

Attempting to make anything last longer than it was meant to be was a sure way to end up bored or in trouble.

Todd kicked off his shoes and lay back in his bed, picking up his phone one more time to look at the new name in his contacts. Aggie. Quirky and broken, trying to commit a crime when she clearly had no capacity for it. He already liked her. Her friend, too. He had a soft spot for awkward young women in weird hats, old drunks who slinked through fences, and the like.

They saved him from a life that would otherwise be too empty.

Rasmenia Massoud is from Colorado, but after a weird turn, ended up spending several years in France. Once she learned all she could about cheese and macarons, she found herself living in England, where she writes about what she struggles most to understand: human beings. She is the author of three story collections and her other work has appeared in places like The Lowestoft Chronicle, Literary Orphans, The Molotov Cocktail, Flash Fiction Offensive and Underground Voices. You can visit her at: http://www. rasmenia.com/

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My Hunger in this New Land RADHIKA BORDE

There’s a hunger in my hand, for the taste of food.

It used to search in the hot rice, for that chunk, of stewed aubergine.

The gritty seeds, in the soft flesh, would give up their secrets to my fingers.

And I would be nourished, by touch.

But now my hand must go hungry.

Now, I must poke at my food with steel.

Anything else, would be rude.

There’s a hunger in my feet, for the pitted concrete floor, of my grandmother’s house.

It was cool underfoot, and my toes liked finding the holes, left by things that had happened.

Familiar places, that I could slip into.

Now my feet must be covered in shoes.

So that they can’t touch the floor, or the grass.

The wild, young people from this place can do this.

But their satisfaction, is denied to me.

Bob McNeil

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Poetry

There’s a hunger in my eyes, for a lack of perfection.

Here I see it endlessly.

And my eyes grow bored by it.

The houses are not allowed to grow old, and the bushes never get a chance, to rebel.

They must not snag the people that walk past.

Everything that grows must make way, and everything that has been built must look eternal.

They want something similar from me, and I can’t give it.

There’s a hunger in my mind, for the peace that comes with anonymity.

Here I feel marked out.

A single glance makes my story known to them – so, they think.

When I show that I am more, and that they are not the infallible judges, that they think their lives demand of them, I do not interest them.

Rather, they grow afraid, as if I too could judge.

There’s a hunger in my heart, for the little bits of nonsense that people would say to each other on the street.

Poetry and philosophy and fleeting friendship from strangers.

Here people are polite and helpful and afraid.

And above all, busy.

We need to discuss the great matters of the world and the heart.

But my heart tells me that I must be satisfied, with much less. …who will understand that my growing hunger will keep growing, and that it will never drive me home.

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The wildest of them all RADHIKA BORDE

Bob McNeil

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Poetry

I am, from India.

From a part that’s said, to be wild.

My neighbours would live, in a big, mud hut, and sometimes they would dance, in circles at night.

Around a man playing a double-sided drum, that hung, from his neck.

When I was a child I would go to sleep, with the sound of jackals howling, in the distance.

A baby krait had been found, in my bedroom.

Once, a cobra was seen dancing, on our front lawn.

And yes.

We had a front lawn, back home in India.

Because it was fashionable.

The trees shed their leaves back home, just as they do here.

But at a different time, of the year.

It’s April when they fall.

Of late, it’s getting to be March.

The sun scorches the ground, that they flutter down, to rest upon.

When the leaves fall, their colours don’t change.

They dry out, and crunch.

You have to be careful, of the dangers, that lurk, underneath.

It’s important to make a lot of noise, when you walk.

Crunch, Thump, Crunch, Thump – your feet must go.

Snakes and scorpions will make way for you.

But only if you let them know, you are coming.

There were dangers here too.

But the bison, have been eaten, and people didn’t like the wolves.

So they killed them.

There are wild boars here, as there are back home.

But here, I think they are shy.

I haven’t heard of too many people, being mauled, by their tusks.

Back home in India, the government often has to pay, for people who are gored by boars, smashed by elephants, or eaten by tigers.

No, things are very different here, in Central Europe.

And sometimes, this is difficult.

You have grown to expect one thing, and when, things turn out to be different, the old responses, get triggered without need, or ostensible cause.

People might say you are crazy.

Are you crazy, for thinking that dangers lurk, beneath the fallen leaves?

Or are the people here, crazy, for thinking that nature, is just, one big playground?

Isn’t there something instinctual, in all of us, that warns us, not to get lost in the woods?

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Bob McNeil

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Poetry

Life and Death RADHIKA BORDE

Life is larger than death and we do more to cheat it.

But you won’t find records, of this in a filing cabinet in a doctor’s office.

You’ll have to look in the storeroom of your regrets.

Open it.

It’s guarded with the padlock of your performances of having arrived to a world that never cared.

Radhika is from India but is currently living in a small city that's not far from Prague.

She has a PhD in Cultural Geography and is involved with the work of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She teaches and writes both fiction and poetry. One of her flash stories ‘Triple Goddess’ was published by Tin House (Online).

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titanchik © 123RF.com

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Fiction

THE ACCIDENT PASCALE POTVIN

I

t was as he was slumped over the steering wheel that Frederick scratched at his collarbone for the hundredth time that day. The gift he was wearing was too appropriately from his mother; it looked nice on the outside, but only he knew just how prickly it was. He’d pull it off once he was home. He’d also ask his wife for her special warm apple cider, his favourite after a long day. The day’s burden hadn’t really been the conference; it was this drive to, and now from, the building at the other end of the city. It was another busy hour and he was stuck, yet again, in a slug of traffic.

He was stuck, also, in his petty grumpiness. He’d started to forget, even, that he’d known much greyer days in his life.

If anything, this particular Tuesday had only been off-white; that was what was showing in the clouds, in the way that the sky seemed to be covered in craft paste. The city was dim, but there had been no rain. Compressed in his small Peugeot, however, Frederick had sweat forming in his underarms.

He cursed when the Volkswagen ahead stopped, blocking the street like a kidney stone. He braked and hit the horn.

Others did the same, and the sounds of displeasure built up like pus. The guilty driver popped his head into the street and started to yell. Frederick didn’t realize, at first, that the man wasn’t yelling at him, nor at the other drivers. He’d turned his head to the left, to the park facing north.

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Following the look, Frederick noticed clumps of people forming on the pale lawn. They were all also starring north, towards the cliff that overlooked the water. Frederick had to concentrate to see past them, to see into the horizon, where the sky was finally ripping open. And then he saw the man that was climbing over the fence. In that moment, his heart sunk to the brake pedal; all that he saw was himself.

He’d climbed over a fence of his own, once, back in Copenhagen. On that awful spring night, almost two decades prior, he’d dangled a foot and his life off of the edge of the Hjernekam bridge. Thanks to the interference of another, though, he’d failed to jump, and that had been the last major failure of his life. Pulling his heart all the way back up, he parked his car amongst the traffic. He told himself that he should be brave, or it would be this man who’d be sinking.

When he stepped out out onto the sidewalk, his skin was shocked by the cool breeze. The air was also haunted by cigarette smoke and smelled more like death than any other part of the city. It was worse as Frederick entered the park and jogged on the stone path.

“I’ve got it,” he yelled, as he approached he cliff, “Someone call the police. I’ll keep him at bay.”

The crowd obeyed, remaining stagnant. It wasn’t surprising.

People feared death just enough to worry for the approacher, but often too much to ever approach it, themselves.

Frederick wiped sweat from his cheeks as he reached the fence. The rabid waves from below the cliff blasted him with colder air, and it felt good on his enflamed face. He leaned over the flat black metal and looked over the man on the other side. Though they were close, now, the stranger did not acknowledge Frederick. He stared only forward, his arms clutching at the fence behind him. He looked to be his twenties, with pale, flushed skin, and a raging head of auburn hair.

“Son?” Frederick tried. “What’s your name?”

The stranger took some time to gather his tears.

“Ansel,” he muttered. Frederick felt a ring of hope.

“Hello, Ansel. I’m Fred.” Frederick ran his hands across the cold fence. “I’m going to be very simple about this,” he said.

“I don’t want to ask why you’re here, because, clearly, it’s an upsetting matter. I want to tell you why I’m here, too.”

Ansel shied his head around towards Frederick. His pale blue eyes limped all over his face, as if to judge him. They finally fell into his eyes.

“I can’t not think about it,” he then said.

“What?”

“That my life is nothing,” he said. His face was drooping like a sack of blood. “My soul is too tired, now. It just wants to sleep.”

Ansel’s words frightened Frederick, weighed on his own confidence, but he couldn’t show it.

“The soul doesn’t get tired,” he argued.

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“What?” muttered the boy.

“There’s no such thing as a tired soul. Or an unhappy one,” Frederick said. His hands shook as he thought back to his time in the facility, to the things that he’d been told.

“I don’t understand,” Ansel said.

“Souls are made of pure, vibrating joy,” he continued. “It’s our souls that make us want to live in the world.” His hands shook more violently, but he told himself that it was just that vibrating power of which he spoke.

“I don’t-” “The mind is what gets sick,” he said. “Sick minds cover our souls with dust and dirt. But that can all be swept away. It just takes some work.”

Ansel did not respond. He turned back away, stared down at the water. Frederick’s throat turned to sand. He probably wouldn’t have believed the words, either, at his deadliest point.

These were only words. They were promises from a stranger.

He needed stronger proof of his personal wisdom, of his solidarity with this suffering child.

He took a moment. Then, he clasped the top of the fence with both of his hands. He placed a foot on the rung at the bottom, lifted himself upwards. His arms shook under the weight of was he was about to do. His heart was heaving. He raised one stiff leg over the top of the fence, then the other, and it felt like a plummet as he lowered himself onto the other side. With sweaty hands, he clutched the cold posts now behind him. Pieces of his insides ricocheted all over his body.

The edge was so close, the water so far down.

Still, the salty taste of the air was already overwhelming.

And the glassy blue waves below were curving and sinking, violently, like they were trying to grab at him. Watching them gave Frederick a crashing chill. A seagull as white as the sky passed over the water, and as it was only as it started to cry that he remembered what he was doing.

“Now, the reason that I’m here,” he coughed. His head felt sticky with mud. He turned over to Ansel, who wouldn’t be able to ignore him anymore. But his heart clenched again in fear as they made eye contact; the boy’s sunken, watery eyes looked too much like the water below. “I was in this position before,” Frederick managed. “At about your age, too.”

“You’re lying,” Ansel grumbled.

Frederick shook his head. “I was ready to give up, because I thought that I had nothing left,” he said. “And, to be honest, it was true.”

Ansel grimaced.

“But it made me realize that I had nothing to lose, if I took another chance,” Frederick continued, feeling sticky in his stomach, now, and in his legs. “I agreed to take just one more.

It was at my disposal. And now, I have a good job. I have a wonderful wife, and two boys. So, this,” he said, and he nodded his head towards the water, “it doesn’t even tempt me anymore.”

Fiction

Ansel blinked slowly at Frederick, and then he turned his gaze back over the fence. Was he thinking of climbing back?

Frederick looked too for a moment, and then a few, over at the pale park. A new crop of people had cultivated on the grass, remaining still and staring with large, scarecrow eyes.

Frederick felt Ansel’s grip tighten on the fence.

“Listen to me,” he insisted.

“You’re telling the truth?” Ansel muttered. His voice was strained, but that was good. It meant that something in him was fighting.

“Of course,” said Frederick.

The screeching of sirens approached, then, from the distance. Ansel’s eyebrows dipped, then curved up a little as he stared at Frederick.

“What are their names?” he asked.

“Huh?” “Your family.”

Frederick understood, and he smiled more vigorously. He had the boy. He’d reel him back to land, soon, like a fish on a hook.

It was only a moment later that he felt that a hook had entered his own brain and lobotomised him.

Ansel watched Frederick with lively eyes, awaiting his answer. Frederick, for some reason, waited with him. He felt paralyzed, almost—though internally he was spastic, grabbing at the air for words that seemed to have evaporated. He became only concerned for himself, in the moment. Any man would know the name of his wife, of course. Of his children.

And he’d remember their faces.

As he heaved in the increasingly salty air, he told himself himself that everything would return to him, in just a few moments. Unfortunately, the moments continued to jump away. Soon, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever had children, or even a wife. He supposed that he didn’t. He’d been mistaken…

“Oh my god,” Ansel’s voice shook Frederick out of his mind—or lack thereof. The boy’s face had been re-ignited with dread. His eyes flatlined. “You are lying,” he said.

“Wait,” Frederick struggled. He felt dizzy and thought he might collapse.

Ansel’s face screwed downwards, and he made the ugliest whimper that Frederick had ever heard. Such a sound could only signify death.

“Oh, god,” Ansel repeated.

He jumped only a moment later. *** Frederick opened the door, that evening, to the smell of burnt chicken and the noise of Klaus and Nikolai running through the halls.

“Darling?” Mary called, from the living room.

Frederick let down his bag. “Yes,” he said.

“I’ve been worried.”

Frederick came to her, coming up beside the brown leather

coach. She was sitting, her wavy black hair draped down over a book. She looked up at him and smiled.

In the fourteen years that Frederick had known her, Mary’s smile hadn’t burnt out a touch. Before his death, her father had even warned Frederick that some thought of her as off her rocker. She’d always grinned at all of the homeless people on the street and at every rude stranger. Nowadays, she was all joy and giggles every time she played with her children, and also every time that she and Frederick tried for another.

Frederick didn’t mind, too much, if people said that Mary was strange, or even if she was. Her smile, as always, brought him a luminous joy tonight. But it was the first time that no flame could catch.

“Work kept me,” he said.

“You’re starving,” she said, setting her book on the couch and standing. “Let me-” “No. I’m tired,” he said. His mouth and throat felt so dry that every word was like a razorblade. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?”

Mary furrowed her brows. She approached him, touched his cheek.

“You’re pale,” she said. “I hope you’re not sick.”

“We’ll see,” he insisted, backing away from her and going to the stairs.

“Say good night to your boys,” she said.

Frederick did, but seeing his son’s faces only made him feel worse.

For a long time now, Frederick’s family had been the twinkle in the eye of his social circles: the literature club, Mary’s relatives, the church, all of their colleagues. They were the guiding star, the goal that everyone else set to reach. It was always, remember Fred and Mary’s wedding? Fred and Mary are so in love. Aren’t their sons so beautiful? Most importantly, Frederick’s family was the light of his own spirit—the gaslight that kept it alive.

But now, the events of that past afternoon had ruined him, overturned all of the heavens in his mind.

Technically speaking, Frederick was an atheist. He’d participated in the church only because it pleased his wife, and pleasing his wife had become his only religion. Now, though, things were changing. The turbulence inside of him was knocking down his sturdiest beliefs. He was certain that his amnesia, on the cliff that afternoon, had been an act of God. There was no other explanation for it. There had been the pressure of the moment to speak, of course, but that couldn’t have been strong enough to crush his memory. No, what happened had been more than an idiot accident. The fact was as clear as the water, now: it’d been a punishment.

And the guilt grew like an itch inside of Frederick’s mind. He spent the night with his fingers in his hair, pulling at his scalp, trying to distract from the bursting pain.

He concluded, after a few hours, that he should have killed himself, all of those years ago in Copenhagen. He had just

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been shown what it was like to not know his family—for the simple reason that he never should have come to know them.

If he’d jumped off the Hjernekam when he was supposed to, he would not have lived to take Ansel’s life.

The young man had chosen to climb over the fence in the day, after all—when there were people around to see. That was the behaviour of a person wanting to be saved. It had been a cry for help, which Frederick had violently gagged.

He’d decided that he needed to be the one, out of the crowd, to take control, to help Ansel off of the edge. In consequence, he’d coaxed him off of the wrong end.

Frederick had tried to be the hero, and now he was guilty.

He’d become guilty of murder as soon as Ansel had jumped.

Knowing this, he’d climbed back over the fence and used the sleeve of his sweater to remove his fingerprints. He’d run past all of the bodies of shock, back to his car, before the sirens could get too close. *** The rash in Frederick’s mind sizzled as the sun reached his eyes, the next morning. His hands hadn’t left his scalp; brown hair clumps had gathered by his head. There was no worse pain, he’d come to find, than an itch underneath the skin, one that couldn’t be scratched. It felt like a taunt, like a mockery from God. He wanted to stick his hands inside his brain and pull it apart.

The static pain also reminded him, though, of what it felt like to have a limb awaken, after it’d been long asleep. He knew what this pain meant. His brain was awake, now; it was no longer delusional.

“Fred? Are you alright?” Mary gasped, as she woke next to him. She’d, no doubt, been pulled from her sleep by his groaning. He couldn’t cage it anymore. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You’re in pain?”

Frederick clamped his eyes shut. Her voice was stomping on his brain, and her face certainly would, too.

“I’m fine,” he croaked.

He still felt her approach. She touched his forehead, and the bones of her fingers felt like knives on his skin.

“You’re sweating,” she said. “I need-” “Get away,” he growled, grabbing her wrist and throwing it down.

There was a pause. A cold silence came over her as she backed away off of the bed, then all the way to the door. “I’ll call your work, and mine,” she said, in a single breath. As she stepped into the hallway, Frederick vomited on the pillow.

His wife left him alone for the rest of the day, except to clean up after him and to bring him food. He never left the bed. He didn’t need to move to plan his death. He’d already decided that he’d go to the same cliff where Ansel had jumped; it’d only be right. But he’d go when it was dark, when there would be no one to see. He’d just have to wait. The cliff would be an

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open crime scene for probably another day, maybe two. He couldn’t be intercepted by police.

More importantly, he couldn’t steal the public attention that was no doubt on Ansel. He’d taken too much from that boy already.

So, Frederick stayed in place for those two waiting days, but he also didn’t sleep. Even once he decided on his death, the shame in his mind didn’t stop growing like prickly bark on a tree. As much as he begged for sleep, the pain was too grating. There was no way he’d be able to sleep, forget his truth for even a moment. Now that his brain was truly awake, it couldn’t go back.

Still, he never hungered. Or thirsted. Sustenance was for survival, and Frederick’s new purpose was to die. Mary left food for him a few times each day, but he only hid it under the bed. She’d be alerted by the rotting smell, eventually; for now, it was masked by the lingering vomit.

He no longer wanted anything but to escape. To sleep. He thought of nothing else but sleep. With his entire body, he lusted for its curves, the ups and downs, the vivid feeling of it, of being inside of it. On his final morning, as he watched Mary change out of her nightgown, he felt even more sickness cooking inside of his throat. He didn’t know how he’d ever been attracted to that custard-like flesh. Nothing was erotic to him, now, except the perfect softness of slumber. And it was because he was meant to have the best kind, the ultimate coma—the kind in which he’d soon plunge the deepest and never have to leave.

He spent the whole of that final day on his side, facing the alarm clock, watching time die, and waiting for the time to die. Sometimes, the numbers would swirl and curve, and he’d have to readjust his eyes to stop them. The world just looked so ugly now, so deformed. He’d be happy to leave.

Finally, after Mary joined him in the bed and he heard her breathing change, he rose. He inched out of the room, down the hallway and to the stairs. He began his descent through the foggy darkness, towards the pale blue light in the front window.

He didn’t know that he’d never make it to the water. *** Frederick woke the next morning in a bed that was not his own. His body also didn’t feel like his own. He was swollen all over, and smothered with pain. He groaned as he opened his eyes.

He hadn’t thought that Hell would have tile ceilings.

“Sir?” a woman’s voice scraped at his mental wall. Frederick turned his head, with some expanding pain. Yet he noticed that the inside had cleared. Good. He looked to the young lady. Her hair was in a tight bun that pulled at her skin, making white lines. And she was wearing all white. Frederick was surprised. There was no way he’d been sent to heaven. He

Fiction

looked down at himself. Above the blue sheets, his arms were also draped in white. He blinked a few times before he realized that he was in bandages. His legs felt fatter, too. This was a hospital.

Yes, he thought. That makes more sense for Hell.

“Do you remember what happened?” the nurse asked.

Frederick squinted. With some distant nausea, he read her name tag: DANICA. “You were in an accident,” she told him.

“You fell asleep at the wheel.”

Frederick looked back to the ceiling. Reality started to drape over him.

“You’re very lucky to be alive, let alone in this form,” she told him, and she dampened her voice. “Sir, can you remember your name?”

“Was anyone else hurt?” he asked, with a cutting realization.

“No,” she told him. “Your name, please.”

He nodded. “Frederick Ivey,” he grunted. Speaking was somewhat difficult. He felt like he was breathing in smoke.

“Your wife?”

“Mary Ivey,” he said. He sat up as straight as he could manage, ignoring the clawed rip of pain. “Where is she? My-” “Your family’s waiting. They’ll be very relieved,” Danica told him. “Just a few more questions, first. Do you remember where you were going?”

“The park,” he said.

“Which?”

“I don’t know the name. It was by the lake, after highway twelve.”

Danica’s face looked, in the next moment, to have jumped and drowned for him.

“Oh,”she said.

Frederick felt a pull in his stomach. “What?” he demanded.

“You haven’t heard about…”

“Yes,” he said. “Someone died.”

“Many people died,” she told him, rubbing at her wrist. She paused then added, “They call that fence ‘Hell’s gate’.”

“What?” he asked, his patience trickling.

She went to a large grey bin near the door, leaning down and fiddling through.

“There.” She returned to him, presenting him with a page in a newspaper. The headline said, Detrolige District Shaken by a Self-Killing—Again. She pointed to the third paragraph. “I’ll get your family,” she said. Frederick took the news between his rough hands and read.

“My brother had precious things in his life. He was going to be a primary teacher. He was excited,” Remi told us. “And, above all things, he’s terrified of heights. So I don’t believe he did that willingly. I can’t.” When asked if he believed in the cliff’s supposed curse, however, he would give no pointed answer.

“I’ve heard so much this past day,” he said. “Some insist Ansel touched the fence for too long and that it… magically convinced him to climb over. Like their myth says that it can.

They say that probably Ansel didn’t know not to touch it. But I have trouble believing that, either.”

“Oh, it’s no myth,” one superstitious local had insisted, earlier in the day. “That water really takes people.”

Frederick’s confusion swirled like a whirlpool in his chest.

“I am a little offended by the speculation,” Remi added. “But I’m glad that that man came to the fence when no one else would dare go near. I would have thanked him, if he hadn’t run.”

And when asked what exactly this curse could possibly be doing to convince healthy minds to jump, the local was flustered.

“Well, I can’t know that,” he claimed. “Precisely because it’s killed every victim.”

The confusion turned to repugnance, then, flooding Fredrick’s throat. He realized that he probably knew exactly what was the magic of the fence. Tears finally came down his face. They dove into his cuts.

When we asked him about the mysterious stranger, whom witnesses are nicknaming the Runaway Man, our believer elaborated: “He was very lucky, I think,” he said. “I think he was concerned with Ansel, and he didn’t want people staring. I still believe in the curse, though. Really. No other person who’s climbed over that fence has ever climbed back.”

Pascale Potvin is an emerging writer from Toronto, Canada. She has a fiction piece featured in The Writing Disorder and a film in distribution by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. She has just received her BAH from Queen’s University, and she is currently working on a budding book trilogy. Some of her blog pieces about writing can be found at onelitplace. com, where she works as Assistant, Associate Website Designer and Social Media Manager.

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kuco © 123RF.com

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Poetry

LIRR, Mineola to Pen Station CLARA BURGHELEA

All the happy trains go to Manhattan, pulsating with readiness like a healing wound. I know your voice as distance, the abundance of us no longer filling my days.

I live in the weather of a different world, where rain is one way of smiling.

On the train, past Hillside facility, I’m stuffing words in all pockets since the universe is providing plenty, spurring a renewal of my anonymity every time the doors close.

I can always turn back, like an off-peak promise on a different track.

For now, love has a way of blistering the mouth, and two is an impossible number to utter.

Clara Burghelea is a recipient of the 2018 Robert Muroff Poetry Award. She is Editor at Large of Village of Crickets and got her MFA in Creative Writing from Adelphi University. Her poems, fiction and translations have been published in Full of Crow Press, Ambit Magazine, HeadStuff, Waxwing and elsewhere.

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Liliia Rudchenko © 123RF.com

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Poetry

One or Two Things You Should Know About Cupid CON CHAPMAN

Apollo told Cupid his business was not to play with bow and arrow, but instead to light a torch to guide unwary lovers. Cupid disagreed, saying “Your arrows merely murder, but mine do one of two things; either they inflame the flesh with love’s fire, or they kill love with boredom.”

And with that, Cupid shot his arrow of love and Apollo’s bones were pierced with the fire of lightning. As for Daphne, Apollo’s beloved, Cupid plunged an arrow dull as lead into her breast. Then Apollo walked about as in a tower of flames, while Daphne fled as though she feared the very shadow of love, much less its substance.

Apollo could only look on at her arms, milk-white from shoulder to wrist, and wonder what he’d done to deserve this penance. “I am no wild-haired stable boy,” he called out, “but lord of Delphi, where caves speak, there you hear my voice.”

But you can’t persuade a woman by chasing her like a rabbit at a greyhound track, around and back.

Daphne cried out to her father “Cover with earth this body I wear too well,” and she was turned into a laurel tree, whose leaves crown the heads of victors.

Moral: A bored woman can outrun a horny man.

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The Swans of Diomed CON CHAPMAN

The followers of Diomed were said, upon his death, to have turned into swans; it wasn’t safe to mourn him in human form.

He had wounded Venus, goddess of love, on the hand—no one had ever injured an immortal before.

War hero, he was honored with statues in Italy, received and entertained by King Daunus, until calamities began to afflict the people.

Then it became clear Diomed was the source of their troubles; to cut the hand of a goddess was sacrilege.

The King slew Diomed, and the warrior’s former companions became like swans, who chant sweet, melancholy dirges as they draw near to death.

Venus asked her mother Dione what the swans meant, what words went with their song; “The man,” she said, “who fights the gods does not live long.”

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Poetry

Milana Kharytonava © 123RF.com

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What Tiresias Knew CON CHAPMAN

While walking through the woods one day, Tiresias saw two serpents locked in the act of love.

For sport, he stuck his walking stick between them and for his intrusion, his sex was changed to female.

He lived that way for seven years, then one day he saw the same two snakes going at it as before, and decided to strike again; back her sex was changed to him.

One night Jove, in a mood to tease Juno after—let’s be candid—a few glasses of wine, said “You women get more out of love than men.

We do the work, while you have all the fun.”

Juno said no, and they decided to settle the dispute by asking Tiresias, who alone knew both points of view.

Speaking truthfully, and not reckoning the consequences, he sided with Jove. Juno put on a show of outrage, more than she had a right to feel, and damned Tiresias to eternal blindness for his effrontery.

I’ve thought about this tale for years, searching for a moral; or a meaning. The only one I can come up with is this: If you think that love’s a chore, keep it to yourself; it’s indoor work with no heavy lifting, and when you’re done you can take a nap.

Oh, and if you can’t keep your mouth shut, don’t ask your buddy to back you up, the poor sap.

Chapman is a Boston-area poet whose poems have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Light, Mulberry Fork Review, Scene & Heard, Spitball and other literary magazines.

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Poetry

Vladimir Salman © 123RF.com

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kuco © 123RF.com

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Short Story

1301 Gradus DAVID SORENSEN

I

shut the door and look to the driver—he turns his head, not quite halfway, and waits.

“Thirteen-oh-one Gradus,” I say.

He shrugs his lips and puts the car in gear. As we pull away from the sidewalk into the crawl of traffic I can see through the automatic doors to the baggage claim: parents wielding twisted children; young people in flannel with snowboards strapped to their backpacks; the elderly, openmouthed and closed-eyed in powered wheelchairs; TSA agents in varying stages of self-hypnosis. They all stand or sit or move like carrion feeders as the parade of luggage makes its dwindling circuit. The driver merges us onto the bypass without signal.

The cabin smells like menthol cigarettes and Jolly Ranchers.

The driver clicks and sucks on one, and the back of the leather bench seat in front of me shows two patches, craquelured and worn to white. The windows are water-spotted, scuffed as though by bootheel.

“Why didn’t you ask me where I was going?” I ask him.

He half-turns again, taking his eyes off the road but not looking at me. “Thirteen-oh-one Gradus,” he says. Black freckles stand out like hay bales on his tight skin.

“Yes, that’s what I told you,” I say, leaning forward so that the edge of the seat belt cuts into my neck just above the collarbone. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

“What?”

“When I got into this taxi you only turned halfway, just like you did a second ago, but you didn’t ask me where I was going. You just expected me to say something, to initiate. You couldn’t even welcome me in.”

“So?” “So? So? So you’re in the service industry. You exist to serve me. You can’t even say hello? You get tips, don’t you?

You expect me to tip when you can’t even say hello?”

“Hey, man, I don’t—”

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“No. No, you know what? You had your chance to speak.

It’s my turn now.” I look down; my shoelaces are wrapped around and digging into the flesh of my forefingers. “You... you got a lot of nerve, you know that? You don’t think I would tip you, or something? Because I was going to. A lot. But you missed out, buddy. You missed out big time. You know that one-percent that all those goddamn motherfuckers are always talking about? Well, that’s me. I’m the one-percent. I’m the goddamn one-point-one-percent. And you missed out, buddy.

You missed out, big time.”

My arms and face throb; my skin is cold, though my muscles twitch and burn. Each snuffling breath the driver takes seems to last hours. I turn and look out the window, at the trees, a house—nothing moves. The driver pushes the stick into neutral, pulls up on the handbrake, rests his tricep and flexor carpi on their respective spots of the leather, turns his head, and looks at me.

“You all right, man?” he asks.

I look down again at my fingers, still coiled and turning purple.

The driver nods. He puts the car back into gear and pulls onto the bypass, studying the side-view mirror. A semi hurls past us and I feel the blastwave push the cab a few inches. # We pull up to the building: three storeys, brownstone and white-pillared, like it was converted from a high school or a government building. Four men in teal scrubs stand around smoking, and when we get close enough they all drop their butts into a potted plant and turn to face us. One of them nods at the driver, who nods back.

How to Write a Novel 1. Choose a protagonist that will resonate with your target audience: You’ll want someone who works hard and doesn’t give up, who is considerate of the little guy, and also overcomes some significant moral character flaw.

2. Connect with an online writing community: There are plenty of websites out there that cater to emerging novelists, so start looking!

3. Start a local writing group: This is similar to #2, but instead of critiquing work, you’ll want to have a local community that will support and encourage its members, namely you.

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4. Host your own writing prompt sessions: Start off with five or so minutes of free-association journaling to get those creative juices flowing, and follow that up with two or three ten-minute prompts. Encourage everyone to share what they’ve written, but don’t make this mandatory!

Tip: Write down the name of your ex’s new boyfriend when your mutual friend casually brings it up. You’ll need this later.

5. Create an online folder (Google Drive works wonders) for members to type up and upload what they’ve written.

Remember: This is for encouragement, so critiquing or editing others’ work is faux pas.

6. Expand your now-online writing group: Add friends you’ve made on other forums, and encourage your members to add their friends as well. Post the week’s prompts so that everyone can participate, even if they can’t make it to the weekly meetings.

7. Get blackout drunk one night and add your ex to the group.

8. Invest in a laptop: It doesn’t have to crank out the latest in hyper-realistic graphics, but a solid keyboard and a bright, crisp screen will save you a lot of headache down the road.

9. Like to write things out by hand first? Invest in a good journal and pen!

10. As you’re organizing your new digital workspace, notice that you’ve added your ex to the group. It’s a little late to just remove her, so add her new boyfriend as well.

Tip: Post a link to an article—something innocuous, like the latest panda birth or a list of Muppets more articulate than Donald Trump—to both of their facebook walls. The fact that you’ve acknowledged them both publicly will assure them and everyone else that you’ve gotten over this.

11. Keep a list of the group’s most prolific contributors: You’ll need beta readers eventually, and it’s good to know who you can count on.

12. Find your workspace: Many cities have coworking spaces at affordable monthly rates, and local coffee shops can be great places to meet other novelists. Keep an eye out for those Macbooks!

13. Dress the part: Thick glasses, corduroys, and a thriftshop blazer with elbow patches will go a long way to convincing others and yourself that you’re a legitimate writer.

14. Music: Get yourself a nice pair of noise-cancelling headphones and block out those recurring images of all the sick, excessive, sodomistic sex your ex is having with Kyle, and focus on the task at hand.

15. Call up your mutual friend and explain to her that you’re fine, really, but you just want to make sure that Kyle is

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treating your ex right and isn’t abusing her in any way. Use this in next week’s prompt.

16. Assemble a portfolio of your three or four best prompts: Polish them until they’re perfect (hint: they’ll never be!) and submit them to a few online literary magazines. Focus on newer publications, ones that fit your aesthetic, and try to get at least a token payment if you can. Having some publication history will go a long way towards convincing an agent that you’re a legitimate writer.

17. Marketing: Once you’ve gotten a story published, create a personal blog and post links to your story there. Share this in your online writing prompt group and to all of your friends’ facebook walls. Mention your ex.

Tip: If you happen to notice, not because you were looking but because it just showed up there, that your ex has her relationship status listed as “single,” consider posting links to his wall as well—this will not only inform her that you’re now a published author, but if she happens to look around on his wall for whatever reason, she’ll see that you’re too busy marketing to pay attention to any of her amorous developments.

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18. Start an LLC: You’ll want to keep track of your expenses such as laptop, travel, and coffee, and setting up an LLC is a cheap (in most states), effective way to accomplish this. It will also go a long way towards convincing people that you’re a legitimate author.

19. Get blackout drunk again. Draft a long, intensely personal email to your ex, asking her why she broke up with Kyle, if in fact she did break up with him and didn’t just forget to update her status, and was it because of the sex, because you did some research and think that it might have just been as simple as using a different type of birth control, and that you’d even be willing to consider like a vasectomy at some point down the road, possibly sooner since you never wanted kids anyway, even though you love kids and are great with them. Apologize again for flirting with her sister. Point out that in any other context what you said could easily have been interpreted as simple courtesy, which really it was. Do *not* under any circumstances mention that, after you had broken up, you got blackout drunk and wrote a long, intensely personal email to her sister detailing, from your perspective, why everything went to shit after that one night, even though that was the only time anything like that had ever happened and really it was probably just the condom’s fault.

20. Move to Portland.

21. Get a job at a Verizon brick-and-mortar: You’ll want a bit of spending cash while you get your business off the ground, and besides, it’s all communication, anyway!

22. Start researching agents: Come up with a list of ten to twenty agents whose styles match your own.

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Find common things that they’re looking for—unique perspectives, locale, social issues. Keep these in mind when writing.

Call up your ex one night around 12:45 a.m. (9:45 p.m. her time) to chat: She’ll pick up eventually. Casually mention your LLC and publication. Ask her if she got your email.

Outline: If this is your first novel, it can be helpful to follow a tried-and-true format like The Hero’s Journey. Shoot for three parts, divided further into three parts, each of those divided into five two-thousand-or-so-word chapters. This will put you right around ninety thousand words, which is exactly where you want to be.

Write: Get your hands on some Adderall and bang out the entire manuscript in two days. Congrats! The worst is over.

Take a break: Catch up on sleep, take a weekend vacation, pour yourself a glass of wine and pore over those old High School yearbooks. Get your mind off writing. Then, once you’ve had time to relax, take your fresh pair of eyes and…

Read through your manuscript: Don’t edit just yet—get a feel for what you have to work with and keep a journal of what sorts of major revisions you have in mind.

Start looking for new agents, ones specializing in experimental writing, stream of consciousness, and/or YA. Start working on your query letter: This should explain your story quickly, concisely, and intriguingly, and should show a level of professionalism, expertise, and original voice. Don’t worry if you haven’t finished editing your manuscript—working on a query letter can be a great way to organize your own thoughts.

Visit your hometown for Christmas: Many great authors— Joyce, Faulkner—focus their writing on the places they’ve lived, and you would do well to emulate them. And besides, you’ll never know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been!

Draft up another email to your ex, asking if she wants to get together for coffee and catch up. Realize that you never actually hit send on the last email.

Tip: Check the “drafts” folder of your email to keep track of which emails you have or haven’t sent.

32. Send email, attaching previous draft: This will explain the oddness of your previous conversation. Something so beautifully and passionately written shouldn’t sit unsent.

33. Return to Portland, which let’s be honest is your real home now.

34. Shut down your writing group’s Google Drive.

35. If your writing prompt group still meets, cancel that as well. It’s time to focus on you!

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36. Alcohol: It’s time to move on from boxed wine and Smirnoff, so choose the spirit that matches yours.

Interested in cultivating a Hunter-S.-Thompson-esque gonzo vibe? Rum is your ticket. Can’t decide? Whiskey or a nice single-malt scotch are tried and true.

37. Take your journal or laptop to a local bar: not only are these great places to drink while getting work done, they can be excellent opportunities to meet some local artists as well.

38. Start up a conversation: Sometimes even something as simple as “Can I buy you a drink” is enough to get your foot in the door, especially if you’ve got a list of literary agents pulled up on your laptop’s browser.

39. Follow your new friend up to her hotel room: It’s time to find your inspiration!

Tip: If you don’t carry any condoms with you, talk to the concierge to quickly and discreetly locate ideal protection.

Once you’re in the room, and things start getting heavy…

40. Apologize, repeatedly and emphatically: Point out that this is really only the first or second time that this has happened. Don’t be afraid to cry a little—you’re in the business of emotions, so it makes sense that you’d be in touch with yours. Explain everything you’re going through with your ex and that piece of shit Kyle, and how you’re really honestly making a solid effort to turn things around and gain traction with your writing.

41. Offer to let your new friend beta read your manuscript.

42. Explain that the plot makes a whole lot more sense once you actually start reading it.

43. When she asks for money, frown and tell her that you don’t carry cash but you’d be happy to cut her a personal check.

Tip: Can’t find an ATM? Many grocery stores stay open past midnight and are happy to offer cash back on even small purchases with your debit card.

44. Move back to Orlando.

45. You’re an adult now, and that means paying rent: Agree on something reasonable, and make a list of expectations (laundry, cleaning, and so on).

46. Finish that creative writing certificate: Unless you’ve written the next Gravity’s Rainbow, many publishers like to see some level of completed higher education on your resume.

47. Dust off that manuscript! Now that you’ve got more freedom, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and edit to perfection!

48. Delete manuscript.

49. Get a job at a Verizon brick-and-mortar.

50. Be cool when Kyle walks in. Get him to sign up for the deluxe family plan, and give him a discount using your

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employee number when he asks. Wish him all the best with your ex and their new baby.

Tip: Smile.

The Men From Nike Anastasia’s first period came like a thief in the night, on a Tuesday afternoon.

Ken, the old man who lived two doors down, knew it by the way she held her textbooks over her stomach and slipped through her apartment’s door, thin and silent as a sheet of paper vanishing through the crack between desks. He remembered how a year ago his own granddaughter, Tina, had come home from school on a Friday and disappeared into her room in exactly the same way. He remembered the muffled pop music that came from her room all day Saturday, and the black skirt over her jeans she wore to church that Sunday.

Ken shut the door and turned the deadbolt, then set the cellophane bags on the counter.

He pulled out the tamales he bought, three for a dollar, at the bodega down the block, next to the Chinese market. He unwrapped them from their foil and arranged them neatly on a microwaveable plate, then put the plate in the microwave and set it for two minutes, but didn’t press start. He looked around like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls and realized that the clerk had forgotten to include mole sauce. He put his hand on the thin wad of bills in his pocket and wondered whether they had charged him. He hoped they would taste alright without it.

“Tina,” Ken said as he opened the silver drawer. “Can you make mooncakes? I want to take some to the girl down the hall.”

“The oven is broken,” said Tina, not looking up from the television. “You know that.”

And it was true, Ken did know that. In fact, it was true that very little in their apartment did actually work: The window AC unit heaved only lukewarm air, the rusted shower head dribbled only cold, sulphur-smelling water, and the refrigerator shut itself off intermittently, threatening to spoil what few perishable goods they dared to keep if not unplugged and plugged back in quickly enough. The tenants upstairs fucked constantly and resoundingly, packages reported to be delivered never materialized at the front desk, and if you got through the morning without seeing a cockroach you praised your good fortune and considered buying a scratcher.

Short Story

Ken reached down and massaged his ankle, which over the last few weeks had only gotten worse. For the hundredth time he considered making an appointment to see a doctor, and for the hundredth time he decided against it. He wondered whether the Chinese market down the block sold mooncakes, and whether they would be fresh. From somewhere in the building came the shriek of an hysterical child. There’s nothing like a fresh mooncake, he thought. His daughter made them the best, but she hadn’t made them in years.

There was a time, in Taiwan, when things had been different.

For generations far back as he knew, his fathers all worked as shoemakers. “Everyone is going somewhere,” Ken’s father would say to him, “and most of them walk there.” When his father became ill, Ken took over the operations of the business, and by 1971, when his father finally passed, Ken had grown the business tenfold. He had succeeded in carrying on his family’s name, and he had earned the respect of his neighbors.

Then one day the men from Nike arrived.

They came like men traveling from a far country, calling their own servants and delivering goods to them. No one knew precisely why they had come, nor how long they would stay, but everyone had their opinions. Rumors quickly spread: They carried guns, they spoke like John Wayne, they wore watches made of solid gold. Their faces were white like death.

They asked for Ken by name, by his Taiwanese name. They came to his house with Western gifts. Ken’s wife cooked for them a dish called ants climbing a tree, and they stuck their chopsticks in their rice like incense sticks. Ken’s daughter, Kelly, made mooncakes, even though the mid-Autumn festival wasn’t for another four months. They burped when they pulled up their belts and showed their teeth when they smiled. And when they showed Ken the contract they brought, and the numbers on it, he signed.

Tina shut off the television and picked up her phone. Later she will shut off the phone and pull out her laptop, the one she has on loan from the high school. Later still she will close the laptop and watch Simon Cowell judge the singers on TV. Screen for a screen for a screen, thought Ken. Ken looked at the microwave’s clock: 4:06. Kelly will be home soon, and she will expect dinner to be hot. Ken will press start. He thought to ask Tina whether he should set the table for three or four, whether Kelly’s boyfriend Mike will be joining them for dinner. This would have been rude, though, as Kelly’s boyfriends never joined them for dinner. So he began to set the table for three, like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son.

Mike was half Chinese and somewhere in his mid-forties.

Ken had only ever seen him for a total of about nine seconds.

It was a little after one in the morning, a month ago, and Ken couldn’t sleep, so he sat on the couch in the living room, the lights all out, listening to the refrigerator shudder and

wheeze. Mike, stark naked, walked to the bathroom, pissed, didn’t flush or rinse, and returned to the bedroom, the one Kelly and Tina shared. The only other sign of his presence was the shoes that showed up by the front door a few nights a week from ten at night to six in the morning. Mike will leave Kelly soon enough, thought Ken. And she’ll act surprised, but won’t be.

There was a knock. It was quiet, and singular, so that Ken wasn’t sure if someone had knocked on his door or someone else’s, or whether it was something else entirely, like a falling rat’s skull hitting an outlet box. He continued to set the table, turning the plates just so, when he heard it again, just as quiet.

He looked out the peep-hole, just in case, and when he did he saw the top of Anastasia’s downturned head.

He turned the deadbolt and opened the door. Anastasia had the puffed, affectless face of someone who had finished crying about half an hour ago. She asked if Tina was home. Her eyes were as small as mustard seeds. Ken invited her in, and she slipped in under the arm with which he held the heavy door.

He shut the door behind her and turned the bolt.

Tina looked up from the couch, then stood up and crossed her arms with her phone still at the ready. Anastasia stood with her shoulders slumped and her own arms hanging by her sides like a willow’s leaves. The two had never been friends, and as far as Ken knew had never even spoken to one another, despite living in the same building only a few doors down and attending the same schools only a year apart. Then Tina looked at Ken. “I forgot mole,” said Ken, re-unlocking the deadbolt and opening the door. “I will go and get it.” He felt the wad of bills in his pocket, hidden like treasure in a field, dug deeper still and thumbed the coins, and quickly calculated that he had enough to buy a few mooncakes as well. And maybe a scratcher.

He made it about halfway down the stairwell when his world turned white. He didn’t feel the snap in his ankle or the force of the concrete step against his cheek. He couldn’t smell the distilled urine that pervaded the stairwell, nor could he hear through the wall the shrieks and sobs of the child being beaten by her mother. He didn’t think about Kelly or Tina, or Mike, or his father, or his wife still in Taiwan, or the men from Nike. He didn’t even think about mooncakes.

He only thought about the tamales, how they would taste without mole.

David Sorensen lives and works in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.

His stories have appeared in Infinite Rust, The Squawk Back, and Bastion Science Fiction.

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DeWitt Clinton is the author of four books of poetry: The Conquistador Dog Texts and The Coyot. Inca Texts (New Rivers Press), At the End of the War (Kelsay Books, 2018), and On a Lake by a Moon: Fishing with the Chinese Masters, (Is A Rose Press, 2019). He tries to balance a yoga practice with training for short, mid and long distance runs, including the fall 2019 Berlin Marathon. croisy Š 123RF.com

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Poetry

Instructions On The Way Out The Door DEWITT CLINTON

Mother always reminded us as we opened The front door, “remember who you are.”

Now I wonder if I even know any more as So many can no longer remember hardly Anything, let alone who we might have been And that’s not before who we became after That, and even worse, it’s all going to not Matter again and again as I’ve figured out That when the door opens, in a new house, In a new village, in a new century, that I Can hardly remember who I was last night Let alone this morning heading out so Briskly into the bright light and late snow, But did she know about all this was she Just asking us to mind our manners, or Remember that we were the preacher’s Kids and we’d better do right by that.

It’s hard to know anymore, as the preacher Is gone long buried in some park for the Dead in some tiny little town in the South, And of course, mother’s on top, but both Don’t know that, but we do, and I suppose That’s all that matters, if anything matters Especially as we step out into a new world That looks a bit like yesterday, but so much Of what was yesterday has just vanished Into some grey part of what some call you.

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Caique Silva © unsplash.com

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Poetry

Salt Water STEVE DENEHAN

He crawled out of a hole in the ocean dragging me behind him he laid me on the shore a wheezing bag of cornered bones and sinew he coaxed me on to my side and pounded and pounded my back a blessed pain until water as salty fire poured from me steaming, as it melted into the sand remnants of myself to be left behind I wonder if it was mentioned that evening over dinner in the pub how he saved a man I wonder if he thinks of it now as I still do when the sky is low I wish that just once he could see the sunshine pouring from her warming us on autumn days

Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. Recent publication credits include Better Than Starbucks, Fowl Feathered Review, Dual Coast, The Opiate, Sky Island Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Evening Street Review, The Folded Word, Ink In Thirds, Crack The Spine, The Cape Rock, Visions International and Third Wednesday.

He has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and his chapbook, "Of Thunder, Pearls and Birdsong" is available from Fowlpox Press

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Tithi Luadthong © 123RF.com

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Short Story

The Strobe

An excerpt from They Still Believed in Angels NICK SWEENEY

T

he parents of my classmate Eurydice Armentiere were told there was something unsettling in their perfect daughter. Eurydice would sometimes go into a trance from which nobody could distract her, would emerge from it and resume whatever she’d been doing. It wasn’t wanton, her elementary school teacher Miss Kodaly asserted, but she didn’t know what it was, and she felt she ought to. Benny and Felice Armentiere maintained a stony silence until out of earshot of Miss Kodaly, when they dismissed her as an interfering witch.

Eurydice was a long way from perfect. She wasn’t particularly good at anything, for a start. Maybe that didn’t matter at elementary school, but it began to look like a lack once she got to junior high. By then, she’d begun to adopt the anonymity of a fixed expression, the movement of her eyes fleeting and barely seen, like that of old portraits in spooky houses, her bowed lips barely changing their set. She never betrayed any hint of either humor, interest or compassion to anybody other than her circle of friends from that elementary school, in the Civil-War-era fort that stood over our little Penn town of Balz.

All her circle, Milo Galitzki the obsessed bike racer, his athletic sister Mila, Moby Krzeski with his compulsive painting, Richard Rat with his daredevil stunts and fighting, Orville Charleroi with the cooking that served his gluttony, even Loretta Churchyard, with her religious zeal, all displayed enthusiasms they’d developed, no matter how flaky. For better or worse, those enthusiasms would become expertise, which would make them all stand out.

The Armentiere, as my friends dubbed her, was simply deemed to be beautiful. She had no disagreement with that, and her apathy was mistaken for languor, and admired. By the time she was at high school, even her friends agreed that she’d one day need to stop being decorative, and do something, anything.

Along with her brother Benny Junior, Eurydice got whatever she clamored for, got brand new everything when it came out, and got bored with it the same day. There were rooms in their house, it was rumored, like Macy’s department store, full of stuff they’d used once, then abandoned. Those rooms were filled with clothes, bicycles, musical instruments, toys, books, games, their wrapping discarded next to them.

The first splash Eurydice made on her own behalf came one day at the end of our first summer at junior high. School was out for the year, the sun was blazing, and there was a liberated feel in the air, kids dawdling to savor it, and not heading home.

Bored, maybe, maybe tired of being ignored for a whole minute, Eurydice walked over to Milo’s featherweight bike and got on it, and pedaled a few yards. She looked back to see if Milo was either admiring or alarmed, but he was neither, was in conversation with Richard and Moby. It was Mila who noticed Eurydice’s getaway, and she nudged her brother. Milo wasn’t perturbed. Eurydice was about to hit the hill up from school.

Even he found it tough to negotiate, so he knew she’d soon be rolling back.

She got everybody’s attention when she yelled, “Out of my way,” to a group of girls. She bashed into one with her shoulder, got a cuss in return. She headed agonizingly snail-

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like up the hill past the railings that edged the campus. Milo was impressed, knew what an effort it had once been for him.

Eurydice was stick-thin, though, and probably only two-thirds his weight.

“Hey,” he called. “Ride it on right to the top. And leave it there for me.”

All eyes were now on Eurydice. Though the antics of her circle were blanked, in general, by most of the kids at junior high, Eurydice was an exception, primarily because a lot of the boys would have died for the chance to gaze at her, and to communicate their dogged infatuation with her. My friends and I went, “Huh, look at Miss Notice-Me,” and watched her only without seeming to.

“She’s going on up.” Kids nudged one another, excited despite themselves. By then they were bored at the sight of Milo doing it, and this was something new. Kids and parents on the hill turned as Eurydice passed them, partly amused at the sight of her thin legs and white knees, the long figure she presented as she stood up off the saddle, the red that suffused her face. “Go on up,” some of them yelled, and a few started to clap. The applause petered out as Eurydice got about three quarters of the way, wobbled a little, then fell, in almost graceful slow-motion, to the ground. She’d forgotten that she’d fixed her feet into the stirrups, as nobody used those for riding except cowboys, and Milo.

The silence lasted only a second or two. My friends squealed with laughter, and I joined them. Some of the boys rushed to help Eurydice up, but she’d gotten to her feet by the time they reached her. It was the only time I ever heard those guys get all solicitous and caring. If it had been crazy Loretta Churchyard, or formidable Mila Galitzka, they’d have been joining in with the snickering.

Eurydice gave them a distracted who-the-hell-are-you-guys smile, then grabbed the bike and lifted a leg over it. She was careful not to put her feet in the stirrups this time, which may not have been the good idea it seemed because, without the stirrups, there was hardly any pedal to rest her foot on. Maybe she figured that she wouldn’t need to do much pedaling.

She turned her back on the boys, and set off back, down the hill. Her cries to get out of the way were heeded quickly this time. People whisked little kids off to one side, irritated, maybe, but certainly, still, fascinated.

By then, most of them knew she was going to crash.

There just wasn’t enough space at the bottom of the hill, blocked by the school wall, to get up enough friction on the brakes. I didn’t know much about bikes, but I could see that.

By the time she passed me, Eurydice had a strangely frozen look on her face. She was going so fast her hair was making a straight-back line of chestnut brown behind her.

One foot came off its pedal, and got caught in the chain, and the other found its way to the back wheel. Eurydice crashed to a halt at the feet of Orville Charleroi. She thrashed

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around below him, her legs spasming, one bloodied, one streaked with oil, one shoe kicked off a surprisingly long way.

As a pool of urine appeared from beneath her, her eyes tried valiantly to free themselves from their sockets. A bubble of froth appeared on her lips. She almost raised herself on one elbow, then was still.

Orville was transfixed by the front wheel of the bike, which was still spinning. He was shoved aside by the crowd that ran up and formed around Eurydice. People watched, shook their heads, puzzled and, somehow, scared.

The sunshine and the railings had created a strobe, it came out later, that had bored through Eurydice’s eyes and into her brain and, for a minute, turned it to mush. A lot of people in Balz had never heard of epilepsy, and refused to be convinced that it was anything other than the work of the devil.

Everybody agreed that Milo Galitzki had hesitated only a second, torn between the wreck of the bike he’d spent a year building to help him win the desiccated bouquets at the end of his races, and the wreck of his friend. Most had seen him follow Eurydice’s progress down the hill. When it became clear to him that she was an accident in motion, he’d let out a curse that coincided so neatly with her trajectory that a lot of people swore he’d put the evil eye on her. When he returned to school the following year, they avoided his eyes, and anything to do with him and his friends, which swung perfectly with the way they were all viewed in any case.

They avoided Eurydice’s gaze, too. Maybe it was the lack of eyes upon her that made her get up and do something with herself at last, and take up the sword for the fencing she became renowned for. Stabbing at people suited Eurydice perfectly, people agreed. She became watchable once again when she got up onto the piste, her eyes hidden safely behind a mask. The only sound in the room would be a slight metallic tremble from her foil as it was clutched in her hand, nobody knowing whether she’d move forward or not at the sound of the cue, that blade raised, or stand there, stock still, entranced by the strobe in her head.

Nick Sweeney’s stories are scattered around the web and in print.

Laikonik Express (his novel about friendship, Poland, vodka, snow and getting the train for the hell of it) was published by UK independent publisher Unthank Books in 2011. He is a freelance writer and musician, and lives in Kent. His supernatural novelette set in Polish town Gliwice The Exploding Elephant, is out at the moment with Bards and Sages. More than any sane person could want to know about him can be found on his website The Last Thing the Author Said.

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Whenever I Squint Into A Mirror ALYX JORDAN

look, an octopus fills the glass with shapeshift, skins itself the color of hot tungsten wire. look, how it births a circuit —once more goes dark—at once lovely & nothing at all. x x & when the mirror quits barking down my heels, it coos a sorrowsong: one, if only one of us, can leave unbroken. x x if god is a woman, each morning she spits me out of her mouth.

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Alyx Jordan has been writing poetry since graduating with a BFA in Theater from Clark University. Their recent publishing credits include Frontier Poetry, Cordella, Memoryhouse, and Half Mystic where they were nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize.They make a living, here and there, as a teacher or— more often than not—a server in some diner or other. Mostly, they write about their complicated relationship with Cuban heritage, or else the view from their porch, whenever they can slip in the time.

One Way ALYX JORDAN

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A ghostly hybrid speeds green all the way up Chestnut Street, past motley flags and fences forged from chain, past sidewalks salted too hard for teacup dogs, rounding home along the moats of grass crouching houses fat as caterpillars: the passenger, gripping one- handed at the wheel to wolf a croissant, unaware there are a thousand and one ways around ascent of smoke to choke a neighbor- hood.

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Dear Ear ALYX JORDAN

how long the footsteps of tunnel things will claw the walls of memory, your hallways? which wings are those in your dark, drumming swarm-warning, what sorcery of swords? & what of the skin of your drum, what ancient clash does it remember? whereby beats this bone magic that eyes cover over? where throats your rude, ruby threads of thunder? robodread Š 123RF.com

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Toronto Life JOHN TAVARES

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lay’s second cousin hiked the trail from the band office, where he had to deal with some kind of bureaucratic red tape and bull over his white girlfriend living on the reserve without band permission, even if she lived in town weekdays, when she wasn’t flying to reservations north of Sioux Lookout, where she worked as a social worker with the First Nations social services agency. After he cursed Clay and blamed him for letting his leg hold traps sit to rust in the shed, when he asked him to oil them, and showed him his broken leg was healing slowly from the snowmobile accident he had while ice fishing on Lac Seul, he said Clay inherited a condo in Toronto from his nephew. In disbelief and distraction, Clay returned to reading the Reader’s Digest large print condensed book, Gone with the Wind, beside the dim light from the lantern.

Stasyuk Stanislav © 123RF.com

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Then, at the reservation gas station and convenience store, Clay thought he was starting to go completely deaf, but, over the din and noise of the announcer shouting excitedly during the live telecast of the playoff hockey game, from the television on the refrigerator beside the microwave oven, the lawyer confirmed the bequest in a long distance telephone call. Clay still didn’t believe his nephew had left him a condominium; the nature of the accommodation was ultramodern, exotic, to him; the location was foreign, faraway. Later, the chief explained to him at the reservation band office a condo or condominium was a fancy city name for an apartment. His nephew, a lawyer, specializing in law for indigenous people, was killed in a fiery car crash on Highway 401, after he drove from the Six Nations reserve to help negotiate settlements for residential school and Sixties Scoop claims.

His nephew’s lawyer partner said Nodin had no other living relatives he held in high esteem, aside from his uncle Clay, who he remembered fondly. Nodin remembered the times Clay insisted on taking him on his snowmobile, all-terrain vehicle, and dog sled along the trails through the bush around Lac Seul and patiently taught him hunting, fishing, and trapping skills on the bush and lake around Tobacco Lodge reserve and the surrounding waterways, which, after the construction of the hydroelectric dam at Ears Falls, one could argue, turned into a reservoir. His nephew especially loved the skills he learned snowshoeing through the bush, along the lakeshore, and across the lakes, and fur trapping, ice fishing for walleye and lake trout, commercial fishing whitefish, setting snares and leg hold traps on the trap line in the snowy bush for snowshoe hare, fox, lynx muskrat, beaver, mink, marten, fisher, and wolves.

Nodin also respected the fact Clay never smoked or drank, or took advantage of women, or friends, or, for that matter, judged him. The lawyer called him several more times long distance. Again, he had to snowmobile or snowshoe to the reservation convenience store to use the payphone or hike to the reservation band office to borrow their landline to listen to the lawyer explain he should simply sell the condominium. The apartment was probably worth a million dollars. The lawyer, his nephew’s partner, reassured him he would help him invest the funds, purchase an annuity, set up an investment portfolio of income earning stocks and bonds, or set up a trust fund, which would provide him with a pension or monthly income.

The chief agreed with the Toronto lawyer he should sell the condo. The chief claimed he had gotten too used to, too acclimatized, to life on the reservation, and the culture shock of Toronto might kill him. She said he’d hate life in the city, especially a big city like Toronto, since he better appreciated the traditional way of life on the reserve and the surrounding nature.

Clay never liked the chief much and was mystified by her claim to speak for him. Who said he hated life in the city? he demanded. He never said he didn’t like life in the city, or

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preferred living in Sioux Lookout or Tobacco Lodge to the city of Toronto. He was seventy years old, and, in his mind, he felt fit and well, but he was afflicted with old age conditions like arthritis. He was suffering from gout and ankylosing spondylitis, and, short of breath, he worried about the effects of heart disease. He didn’t feel like he was in any physical or psychological condition to hunt and fish, and he was actually tired of living on the reserve. At his age, seventy, he felt like he could no longer tolerate the cold to snowshoe the trap line, or even fish or guide tourist for walleye, musky, or northern pike on Lac Seul, or hunt for moose, whitetail deer or ruffed grouse. The chief was incredulous and so was his nephew’s lawyer, both of whom continued to try to persuade him to sell the condo. Exasperated and frustrated, they raised their voices and gesticulated, as they tried to persuade him to sell the condominium, but he couldn’t possibly think of what he could do with a million dollars.

“It’s a million dollars before taxes, but after taxes and fees,” the lawyer said, starting to sound officious, like an accountant, “the bequest will be far less.”

Even after taxes, the chief said, how could he possibly spend a million dollars when he lived on a reservation like Tobacco Lodge, if he didn’t smoke, or drink, or chase women.

If he lived in the city of Toronto, though, Clay argued, he would be close to medical specialists like rheumatologists and cardiologists, who would be able to help him with the aches and inflammation of his rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis and the shortness of breath and chest pains associated with angina pectoris. He didn’t really have any close friends or relatives on the reserve, or even in the town of Sioux Lookout, nearby, anyway. He always enjoyed his visits to the city of Toronto and staying with his nephew. He liked visiting the gay bars and strip clubs, and he especially loved the coffee in the exotic variety of cafes, full-bodied, strong flavoured, not water downed or diluted like in the local café, in Sioux Lookout. At the Roundhouse Café in Sioux Lookout, if you lingered a little too long, or said the wrong thing, or talked a little too loud, or didn’t smell like eau de cologne, the owner, who hovered above customers like a stage mom, might kick you out and ban you.

Once again, the lawyer and the chief tried to persuade him not to live in the condo in Toronto, warning him about the high cost of living in Toronto, and the high cost of property taxes. When he compared the property taxes for the house he owned in Sioux Lookout with those in the city of Toronto, though, he noticed the property taxes weren’t that much higher, even though the Sioux Lookout house was worth much less. You could buy several houses in Toronto for the price of that condominium and then you would have a real property tax problem on your hands. So, he reassured them he had squirreled away sufficient savings, from the money he earned on the trapline, from his full-time job on the green

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chain and the planer and as a filer for the huge saw blades in the Northwestern Ontario Forest Products sawmill in Hudson, and from the summers he worked as a fishing guide on Lac Seul and the autumns he moonlighted as a hunting guide for Americans anxious to shoot a moose or black bear.

Likewise, he could sell the small house he owned in Sioux Lookout, where he lived for a decade while he worked as a night watchman at the Department of Indian Affairs Zone hospital for indigenous patients from the northern reserves.

Besides, he didn’t even own the cabin he lived in on the reserve in Tobacco Lodge. He didn’t even feel like shoveling the snow on the walkway—he didn’t want visitors and, if anyone was intent on visiting him, they could trudge through the snow—or fixing up and doing maintenance work on the cabin.

Beginning to think a condo might suit him, after all, the lawyer reassured him fees would cover maintenance and upkeep for the condominium. The lawyer explained he was a close friend of his nephew and would do what he could to help him when he flew to Toronto.

“Fly to Toronto? I’m not flying to Toronto. I don’t need to be hassled by metal detectors and security guards.”

Clay preferred to take the passenger train, which was slow by modern standards, taking over a day in travel across the Canadian Shield of Northern Ontario, before the train even started travelling south to Toronto. The Via Rail passenger train was often late, falling behind the right of way of freight trains, but the travel was hassle free and the dome car and large window seats allowed him to sight see the Canadian Shield landscape, the lakes, the forests, the rivers, creeks, muskeg, swamps, rock outcrops, and small towns and camps and outposts along the northern route.

Before he left the chief called him to the band office and his office for one last meeting. He said he just wanted to make certain that there was no hard feelings. He tried to reassure him he wasn’t trying to tell him or order him what to do, especially with his own personal life, but he was only thinking about his best interests and what he thought might make him happiest. He still didn’t think he would be happy over the long term living in Toronto, especially compared to life on the reserve of Tobacco Lodge. That judgement, she said, was based on her own personal experience with fellow band members, particularly younger people, who moved to the city and became addicted to opioids, intravenous drugs, and pills, or resorted to the sex trade or found themselves victims of human trafficking or trapped in a criminal lifestyle, drug trafficking, smuggling, robbery, because of poverty or addiction, or got caught up in the wrong crowd in urban centres like Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, or Toronto. Still, she understood he had a life and mind of his own, and he was free to learn through experience how hard life could be in the city, particularly in Toronto, and he would always be a member of the band. He didn’t tell her he wouldn’t allow her to decide

Short Story

what was good for him, but he thanked her, even though he thought she was overeducated, and a bit too condescending and overbearing.

When he arrived in Toronto, the lawyer friend of his nephew met him at Union Station, hired a limousine to drive him the short distance downtown home, and helped him set up house in Aura, the condo high-rise at Gerard and Yonge Street.

He told him the Aura Building, where his nephew owned a condominium, which he now owned, was stacked seventynine stories high, with more floors than any building in Canada, and was taller than any residential building in Canada.

Then the lawyer friend of his nephew said he was gay. The reason Nodin’s father or none of his brothers or sisters inherited the condominium: Nodin was gay. No-one in Nodin’s family accepted his sexual orientation or lifestyle. Born again Christians, Nodin’s family had difficulty accepting their siblings and son’s homosexuality and disowned him.

His nephew said Clay never had an issue with his sexual orientation. Live and let live, Clay said, and he didn’t know what to add because he still thought the fact his nephew was gay wasn’t his business, and he couldn’t pass judgement. He was family and another person, no more, no less, except he was smart and talented and had special skills as a lawyer, all of which he admired. Then Josh told him that Nodin actually died from AIDS. “AIDS? I thought you told me twice over the telephone he died from a car crash on the freeway.”

“After he was diagnosed with an HIV infection, Nodin started drinking, and he stopped taking his medications, which were also making him sick. Eventually, he contracted pneumonia caused by the HIV virus, and he died a painful death. But I couldn’t say he died from pneumonia related to AIDS to the people on the reservation. Then the gossip and rumour mill would go crazy, and his brother might drive all the way down to Toronto to shoot me.”

“I don’t think they care.”

“Possibly because they already know.”

“They know he’s gay, but Nodin doesn’t exist for them anymore. Nodin was already dead to his closest family before he actually died. He’s been dead to them since they discovered he was gay, when he was caught by an OPP officer with a teacher from Queen Elizabeth High School, in a car parked overnight in Ojibway Park. The teacher was fired, but Nodin was expelled from high school and went to Pelican Falls Residential School when it reopened.”

But, Clay said, he knew he couldn’t mention Nodin’s name around his family, because immediately his mother flew into a fury or his father threatened to drive a thousand miles to Toronto to shoot him. Or his brothers joked about taking him to downtown Sioux Lookout to the Fifth Avenue Club or Fathead’s sports bar and tying him to a tree or utility pole and allowing a loose woman from the rez or trailer park or living

on the streets have her way with him. They even joked about driving to Dryden and the strip club and locking him up in a motel room with a stripper who would give him more than a lap dance.

“You should have an easy time living in Toronto,” the friend said.

Clay said he hoped he would. The first several months he busied himself with adapting to the city environment and setting up house. He kept the television and the computer his nephew had in the condo, but he barely used them, except to watch a few movies and videos online and fishing and hunting shows on the outdoor television channels. In fact, he found the living quarters so empty and bereft he spent as much time as he possibly could away from the high-rise apartment, with its spectacular view of the city, especially at night, and its amenities and luxuries, including the weight room, the swimming pool, and the gymnasium. He busied himself with medical appointments with the cardiologists and rheumatologists, and diagnostic tests at the hospital, but once he was placed on the suitable medication at the proper doses he was stable and required little medical attention.

As he settled into city life, he busied himself with visiting the library to read the newspapers from around the world or large print bestseller books. Then, in the evenings, he visited the restaurants and coffee shops and the odd time adult video shops and strip clubs sprawled across the city, but what he found peculiar and more interesting were the buses, subways, and streetcar rides across the city to visit different establishments, including a few art galleries and museums.

He felt, in fact, he had become what subway riders called a straphanger.

He enjoyed taking the buses, subway rides, on expeditions across the city. He enjoyed people watching, amazed at the wide variety of people who commuted and travelled across the vast city of Toronto. What amazed him even more, though, was the way the transit commission police followed him across the city.

The transit enforcement officers seemed forever interested in where Clay was travelling, what he was reading, usually the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, or the Toronto edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper, leftover by another commuter, and they were usually interested in what or who he was looking at.

When they stopped him and asked him where he was going, he was a bit embarrassed to say he wanted to go to a flea market sale and see if he could find videotapes and DVD’s of Marlon Brandon movies on sale cheap at his favorite video store before it went out of business. He decided to tell them he was visiting The House of Lancaster on the Queensway and observed with bemusement how they reacted.

The officers tried to persuade him not to take the bus from the Keele subway station platform to the Queensway. They told him he was too old for a titty bar. Another time they called

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him a dirty old man and tried to order him to go home. Once they followed him because they thought he was a fare jumper and didn’t believe that he could afford a transit pass. They even double and triple checked his identification and monthly transit pass because they said he looked too young to be a senior and worried he might be an illegal immigrant. Another pair of transit enforcement officers told him they thought he was suffering from dementia and prone to wandering aimlessly and dangerously. The transit officer, whose turban he admired, said, if Clay was from an Indian reservation, maybe he should return to the north and live there again.

An officer said there had been complaints about him, and that he might be happier on the reserve. “Traditional and ancestral lands is where it’s at, eh?”

He asked him to tell him about the complaints, but the officer shrugged, shook his head, rolled his eyes, and crossed his beefy arms. “You don’t understand women in the city,” he said. “Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?”

Later, Clay even decided to buy a smartphone, from the electronic retailer in the Eaton’s Centre, and, even though he didn’t learn how to completely use the phone, he liked to read books, newspapers, and magazines on the screen because he could enlarge the text to a size large enough to suit his blurred and failing vision. Once, when he put down his smartphone and forgot to pick up the device, when he rose for his stop at College Station, a transit supervisor seized the cellphone, and, when he tried to take it back from him, he said it was lost or stolen. He said he was turning the smartphone to the fare collector, who would turn it into the lost and found, if no-one claimed it by the end of his shift. Since Clay didn’t use the phone that often, anyway, and even then the calls to the reservation were costly and depressing, he decided why bother complaining and attempt to have the smartphone returned, when his nephew had left him e-book readers, full of books, which only needed to be recharged every second or third week, instead of everyday like the smartphone.

Then, one evening, when he returned from a visit to a Starbucks in the suburbs, and he entered through the automatic gate, the burly pair of security guards insisted on seeing his identification and his transit pass, insistent that he was fare jumping. When he showed them his transit pass, they insisted it was stolen. When they asked to see his identification, to confirm the name on his transit pass matched my ID, he realized he forgot his wallet with his identification in the strip club. No worries, though, the doorman and security guards in the men’s club knew him and would hold his wallet for him until his next visit. The big burly bald security guard insisted on seeing his identification, immediately, and put him in a headlock, which turned into a chokehold grip, when he tried to pull and twist away. He decided to test the strength of his new dentures on the man’s hands, biting the flabby fold of flesh between his thumb and fingers. He didn’t see what

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choice he had since the man was choking him, suffocating him. He knew the man was a security guard and not a police officer, so he didn’t see how the man was justified in using such force, but, after he bit him, the point was moot since the second security guard, initially anxious his buddy was using excessive force, pounded his head with a baton.

So it came to pass Clay was hospitalized with a head injury in the intensive care unit of Toronto Hospital and then he, in a coma, was transferred to the neurology and the neurosurgery ward. The neurosurgeon operated, drilling holes in his skull, and removing a sawn segment of the cranium to relieve the intracranial pressure and stem the bleeding in his brain. After multiple surgeries, the doctors didn’t expect him to recover: he was taken off the respirators and feeding tubes.

He was returned to Sioux Lookout in a hardwood casket in the cargo hold and luggage compartment of the passenger train, which, delayed and forced into rail ridings by an early winter blizzard, arrived sixteen hours late. Their breath turning to clouds of smoke, the conductor and engineer cursed in the cold as they unloaded him from the baggage and luggage car, behind the locomotive, at the site of the abandoned train station in Hudson. Clay lay in the coffin alongside a piece of lost and misplaced luggage on the broken cement platform near the railroad crossing in Hudson, at the intersection with the road to the sawmill, until the chief sent his cousins to pick him up in the blowing snow and freezing cold. The chief reassured his cousins they needn’t worry, his estate and the sale of the condo would provide more than enough money to compensate them and to provide funds to bury him in the reserve cemetery in Tobacco Lodge, if no one wanted him buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Hudson, or the cemetery in Sioux Lookout.

An empty brown beer bottle and a few stubbed cigarette butts on the freshly packed soil marked the plot on the snowy landscape in the chilly cemetery where he was buried. With a few days, the late leafless autumn turned harsh, winter grew dark and frigid and froze the lakes and the Canadian Shield rocks, and the earth turned hard and the snow heaped high.

John Tavares’ previous publications include short fiction published in various literary journals, online & in print: Blood & Aphorisms, Plowman Press, Green’s Magazine, Filling Station, Whetstone, Broken Pencil, Tessera, Windsor Review, Paperplates, The Write Place at the Write Time, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, The Writing Disorder, Gertrude, Turk’s Head Review, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine. He was born & raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario.

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One Night In The City Of Flowers BRUCE MCRAE

That time you bolted upright in bed, some dream come to the fore, some memory recusing itself in your mind’s corridors.

It was summer, stifling and febrile and close.

Europe was rife with riots and fear.

Asia was grumbling, a clumsy giant.

The Arctic was melting down to the bone.

And you were sitting in bed, lathered with sweat, moonlight tugging on the curtains’ hem, heart pounding its drum, imagination in overdrive, the few stars lingering only an afterthought.

Like a spell of indecision.

feelart © 123RF.com

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Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with well over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’ (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

My Lame Libretto BRUCE MCRAE

My days, in a minor key.

My time, an octave below what is humanly audible.

What if you life were a song sung flat by an addled choir?

What if you were a character in a mad woman’s operetta?

A story expressed in bum notes, the audience a flat painted black, the conductor a drunken comedian who genuinely doesn’t give two damns if your life’s work bombs or prospers.

That’s it, your life is a musical, one critics make little effort to slam.

You close after a short run.

You lose your voice. The author has bolted.

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Tammy And Shammy BRUCE MCRAE

The colossi of Memnon are destroyed.

Time has taken its measure of death and mocks stone ruins and accomplishment.

The past lies unremembered.

But wait, reports of voices in the sand.

Cool nights the statues sing, contraction vying with expansion.

When even stone ululates.

Still standing guard, they are impaired, Amenhotep now the dust of dust, tourists posing their eternal question: What am I?

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SOMETHING BAD HAS HAPPENED MIKE TODD

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remember the radio was playing the best song. It was something new I'd only heard a couple of times before over the last few days. Later, I'd learn it was Van Morrison's “Brown-Eyed Girl”. But that evening a long time ago, I didn't yet know the singer, the title, or the lyrics. I just knew I was hooked from the opening guitar riff, and I turned the volume up as I approached home. I was trying to discern and learn the words as I pulled into our drive and saw Deputy Taylor's county car parked in front of the house. It really is a great song. I still can't listen to it. ***

The week began on a positive note: school had started back. Normally this would have been a bad thing, but I was now entering the eleventh grade. Throughout the summer I had thought about how I was now, though not a senior, at least an upperclassman, in the top half of the social hierarchy of high school. Graduation was just two years—no, less: about a year and nine months!—away.

It was also an exciting week for another reason: Dad would go away the coming weekend. The fact that he was leaving was not in itself exciting, but the nature of his trip was. He was going on a business trip, his first one ever. He would fly in an airplane for the first time in his life. He would spend a week in Baltimore receiving training and meeting with his company's executives, many of them for the first time. We would be students simultaneously, each proud we had made it as far as we had and each looking forward to still greater things to come in the future.

Mom and I were excited about his trip, more so than he was. Neither of us would be joining him, but at least we could live his adventure vicariously. Having a husband or father important enough to warrant a business trip which involved flying to and lodging in one of the biggest cities in the country was almost as exhilarating as making the trip ourselves. We, too, were proud of how far he had come. We, too, looked forward to what his career had in store. We, too, wanted to see him successful and happy. We, too, would benefit from his increases in his income and status.

He had brought our family up from poverty and planted us firmly in the middle class since he began working at the

furniture factory seven years earlier. He had steadily advanced from line worker all the way up to assistant director, a position created especially for him after he stopped a near-strike in its tracks without the use of force, financial coercion, or threats, but instead with the use of common sense communicated to his subordinates (most of whom he had known all his life) in a plain and simple manner.

His handling of this labor problem impressed the executives in Baltimore, and they considered transferring him (with a promotion, of course) somewhere else in the corporation, somewhere else in the country. However, Dad told them he would rather stay home for now and work his way further up the ranks in this particular factory, if they did not mind. They were a little disappointed by his rejecting the possibility of relocation, but this factory's current director, Ben Henderson, would probably be retiring in a year or two anyway, so. . . .

Mr. Henderson heartily approved the idea of promoting Dad to be his second-in-command. He had always liked my father, thought the world of him, appreciated his many contributions to the factory, and was more than willing to take him under his wing and train him to be his successor. It was Mr. Henderson who nominated my father for this in-house training usually open only to headquarters personnel in Baltimore because he felt that exposure to it and to the corporate executives themselves would benefit my father greatly.

Dad was flattered headquarters approved this trip. After all, it would cost the company money, which meant they believed in him enough to open their pocketbooks and invest a little, to take a risk with the expectation of receiving greater returns in the future. They believed in him. Dad was on his way.

He was not to fly out of Memphis (this after a two hundred mile drive) until Saturday afternoon, but Mom started gathering his clothes and toiletries on Tuesday evening. He did not even know she was doing this or he would have stopped her by joking, "I'm gonna need to use most of that stuff a few times before the weekend, ya know," or "Goodness! Are you planning on packing everything I own? I'm not going away for the rest of my life."

She packed while he was absorbed with the conclusion of The Fugitive. He had become addicted to it—the only television show for which he ever displayed more than a

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passing interest—a couple of years before and was fond of saying, "I just wanna see Dr. Kimble catch that one-armed man before I die." Alas, it was not to happen this evening; the final episode was a two-parter. "Well, shoot! I guess I'll have to finish 'er out at the hotel in Baltimore next Tuesday night." *** I did not like Deputy Taylor. Though he was the son of our family doctor (whom Mom credited with saving my life more than once), he was also the father of one of my least favorite classmates: Louise. She was a whining, complaining tattletale and my doses of her in school were more than ample to meet my minimum daily requirement of whining, complaining tattletales. Unfortunately, her parents and mine had become good friends over the last few years and sometimes entertained each other in the evenings, so I often had to spend extracurricular time with her as well. Of course, Louise and I had both matured a little as teenagers and could therefore now stand each other for a few hours at a time if we had to.

Plus, since we were older, our lives had separated somewhat from those of our parents, so their spending time together did not necessarily necessitate our doing the same.

The fact that he was Louise's father (and used to kid me about marrying his daughter) was reason enough not to like Deputy Taylor. The main reason I did not like Lee, though, was that he always flirted with my mother. When he was around, I did not like her very much either because she seemed to encourage him and even flirted right back. I did not even like my father when all this flirting went on because he sat among them oblivious to it—no, worse!—amused by it. I, however, was not amused. I took offense at Lee Taylor's flirtations and, thus, did not like him. Or perhaps I already did not like him and, thus, took offense at his flirtations. Either way, it did not matter: I did not like Deputy Taylor.

I did not like it when we would go over to visit him and his wife. I did not like it when he and his wife would come over to visit us. And now I especially did not like coming home early this Saturday evening to find his county car parked in our gravel driveway. If he was in the county car, he was on duty and his wife was not with him. He was in the house alone with my mother, because Dad had left for the long drive to the airport right after lunch.

I sat in the pickup for a moment confused—or more precisely, wishing I was confused so I would not have to cope with the thoughts going through my mind. Dad was gone.

Mom was in their house—in their bedroom, judging by the way the lights were shining through the curtains—alone with Deputy Taylor. They had always flirted and I had come home much earlier than expected.

What should I do? I asked myself several times as I sat behind the wheel of the pickup. I repeated these questions even as I exited the truck and walked slowly to the porch.

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Should I go in? I asked myself even as I opened the front door and entered our home.

I stood in the doorway and surveyed our living room like a burglar. This isn't my house, I thought, though it was. This isn't really happening. The living room was different somehow.

I surveyed it trying to determine what had changed, but everything seemed to be right, though everything was so obviously wrong. Then I realized it was me. I was different.

My heart beat faster. My breathing quickened and shallowed.

My eyes alternated between swimming surrealistically and focusing intently on the tiniest details I had never noticed before. This was my house, all right. It just was not me.

Where are they? I wondered, though I already knew the answer. The sounds of muffled talking and laughter came from down the hallway, the hallway leading to our bedrooms. The sounds confirmed my fear, confirmed what I already knew to be true, rendered undeniable what I so desperately wanted to deny. I felt dizzy. I felt nauseous. I felt my heart pound against the wall of my chest.

I wanted to run down the hallway, to run past my father's gun cabinet, to maybe even stop and grab a gun, to charge into his bedroom, armed or unarmed, to confront his friend, to confront his wife, to right a terrible wrong. I wanted to run away, to run back to the truck and drive away, to never come back, or to just come back later when Mom had expected me in the first place, when he would not be here, when the two of us could act as if nothing had ever happened, when she would go forth and live with a dark secret and I would help, unbeknownst to her, keep it.

I walked slowly down the hallway. What should I do? I walked past my father's gun cabinet and left it untouched. I have to tell him. I walked toward my parents' bedroom door. How do you tell your own father something like this? Maybe you don't.

Maybe you can't. Don't you have to, though? Is there really any choice, is there any right choice? Do you have to tell someone you love, someone you care for something bad has happened just because you were the one who discovered it? Or do you hide it from them, become a co-conspirator, to save them from suffering? Isn't it right to lie in this instance, to hide the painful truth? But isn't it also wrong? How do you tell your own father something like this? Shouldn't he know? Doesn't he deserve to know something bad has happened?

The door was slightly ajar and the bedroom light poured out into the hallway and onto the carpet in a straight line that fell in front of the toes of my shoes. I could not hear what they were saying, only that they were speaking softly. I leaned forward a little more, but not so far that the bedroom's light fell on my face.

I could not see into the room. I could not even decide if I wanted to see into the room, but I knew I must. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to work up the courage to enter the room, trying to fight the dizziness that had set in

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again. Please let this all be just some big mixup. Please let it be anything except what it looks like, anything. Nothing could be this bad.

I heard my mother moan. I began to shake, not so much quaking with rage as much as trembling from a jolt of adrenaline in my system. For a second or two, I tried to regain control of myself, of my body and my mind. Then I heard her laugh loudly, and without being completely aware of my actions, I burst into the room.

"What's going on?" I demanded, or more precisely, I started to demand. After the first word left my harsh lips, however, I saw that my mother and Deputy Taylor were fully clothed, that Mom was sitting on the bed and Lee was standing in front of her with one hand on her shoulder. As the last two words left my softening lips, I saw that Mom had not been laughing. She was crying.

They stared at me for a second, surprised I was in the room, in the house with them. Deputy Taylor looked embarrassed—no, something else: helpless, maybe. Of course, I caught them after they were done, after . . . after the act. No, no, I caught them breaking up, ending it all. That's why Deputy Taylor is standing there looking so sad, so serious, so something (I don't know what), trying to calm Mom down and make her stop crying.

I hated them. I hated myself, too, for catching them now, now that it was too late to matter, now that it was already over anyway, now that we all would end up wishing I had just

left things along, wishing I had just let them get through this one last moment together undiscovered. Now, because I had intruded, I was forced to play the role of proxy for my father.

"What are you doing here?" I asked the deputy.

"I'm afraid . . . I'm here on official business." It was not true.

It could not be. What kind of official business could he be conducting? "And I'm also here as a friend of your family's. I thought it should be me who came out here and handled this."

I grew dizzy again. I tried to fight it, to think clearly, sharply.

I opened my eyes wide, tensed all my muscles, clenched and released my fists. What's going on? Am I really feeling faint?

Why now? Get a hold of yourself. I sat down on the bed a couple of feet from my mother.

"Honey," she said to me. "I've got to tell—" "I don't want to hear—" I stood up. "I know what's happening here. Don't try to make me think—" "Honey!" she said, now standing and facing me with her hands on my shoulders. Then softly, apologetically she said, "Honey, something bad has happened. . . .

Mike Todd's literary/mainstream material has appeared in Gallery, Writer's Journal, Futures, AIM, Split Shot, Thema, and Rose & Thorn. His first novel, A SPARROW ON THE HOUSETOP, is currently being presented to publishers by his agent. He can be followed at facebook.com/ByMikeTodd.

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Poetry

THE QUEEN’S HATS LEAH MUELLER

Everything matches: the powder blue stovepipe crafted from crushed felt with matching tailored suit, the spring-green moss, or pale pink, like the inside of an ear shell. Pressed feather swirls to a point, its curl a coy emphasis.

The Queen must be perfect always, her jacket sleeves pressed and ready for waving. Wave she does, with focused detachment, her eyes on the spot just above your shoulder.

Ah, but the Hat. Perched like a glorious bird, its plumage unruffled.

Tomorrow the Queen returns. A different hat shelters her fair skin from the punishing English sun.

Her closet, large as the continent, overflows with thousands of hats.

Worn once, then confined to dark corner boxes.

A royal cannot be seen twice in the same headgear.

Fingers and tongues would wag, the proud Empire reduced to a commoner’s rags.

When the Queen smiles, her flushed cheeks reflect the encapsulated warmth.

She is immortal, her hats sworn to fealty for as long as the kingdom survives.

Any minute, it could burst into song, yet chooses silence, as the royal caravan rolls past, then disappears.

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Poetry

LOVE MAXIM #2304 LEAH MUELLER

They say you can’t

love someone unless you love yourself,

but this is nonsense.

If it were true,

there would be even

less love in the world, and love would only

exist for pompous assholes.

Unconditional love is

too heavy a weight to carry: that obligation

does more to kill love than it does to foster it.

The massive boulder

lands on your shoulders: you struggle to hold it aloft, push desperately to hoist its bulk above eye level

with your weak

and trembling forearms.

Set the weight down,

let it breathe on your floor.

Let it take up more space

than you have.

After enough time

has passed, you may grow accustomed

to its ugliness.

Leah Mueller is an indie writer and spoken word performer from Tacoma, Washington. She is the author of two chapbooks and four books. Her latest book, a memoir entitled “Bastard of a Poet” was published by Alien Buddha Press in June, 2018. Leah’s work appears or is forthcoming in Blunderbuss, The Spectacle, Outlook Springs, Crack the Spine, Drunk Monkeys, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and other publications. She was a featured poet at the 2015 New York Poetry Festival, and a runner-up in the 2012 Wergle Flomp humor poetry contest.

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Poetry

Polaroid Selfie LEAH MUELLER

In the days before cell phones, folks had to take selfies with Polaroids.

They held the heavy box in front of their faces, posed and smiled as their fingers sought the plunger.

Women wore cats-eye glasses, while children squinted in oversized swimsuits and cowboy uniforms.

Husbands looked bored and brutish with their square heads and military haircuts.

After the paper rolled out of the camera, an image materialized in mere seconds.

Polaroid film was pricey, but cost effective because it included developing, which would have been more expensive at the local camera shop.

With regular film, you had to wait for days to view your photographs, just to find a couple of good ones that didn’t have your thumb over the lens, or were overexposed, or underexposed, or the goddamn flash bulb didn’t work, or you had come to the end of the roll and didn’t even know it, so you just kept snapping photos that went nowhere.

Polaroid was as random as Kodak.

People stood in clusters, watching as one photo after another was ejected from the camera,

My parents refused to buy me a Polaroid Swinger, claiming it was overpriced and shoddy, and forbade me to spend my allowance on such a pile of garbage.

Finally, at seventeen, I found a Swinger at a yard sale for a dollar and decided to chance the purchase.

My parents shrugged and said it was no concern of theirs how I wasted my hard-earned money.

At home, I loaded the film, posed in front of the viewfinder against a backdrop of cornfields.

I bared my teeth for the camera wizard and depressed the plunger.

A grainy image materialized on the paper.

In the center, a wraith with my face, its blurred outlines fading into winter sky.

I waited for the edges to sharpen, but a cheap gray pall remained on everything, duller than ashes.

After ten minutes, I realized I’d been had.

The photo wasn’t going to get any better, and I had 11 more left on the roll.

I took the Swinger up to my room, hid it in a drawer under some newspapers.

I didn’t know which disappointment was worse: my shoddy camera, or the knowledge that my parents were right, as always.

only to be crumpled and discarded in the quest for perfect documentation.

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The Blue Pearls

Sergey Kozienko © 123RF.com

MATIAS F. TRAVIESO-DIAZ

C

elia always waited for him, sitting on an uncomfortable on a chair that barely fit on the wrought iron balcony, one eye affixed to the spyglass that scanned the glassy surface of the sea. A real life Madame Butterfly, she knew nothing of the armies of wives, fiancées, lovers, and mothers that had preceded her and would follow in her steps through the centuries, all with the same yearning for the return of some long gone man, all blind to the likely futility of their vigils. She would regard without seeing, the collapse of each evening as it sunk in violet spasms below the horizon and ushered in another dispirited night, another day of fruitless waiting gone. Her free hand, which she was barely able to see in the

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deepening dark, caressed the pendant which was the only jewel she allowed herself; the pendant that she had made to house the dusky blue pearl he had given her as a farewell token. “Wear it always,” he had admonished, “because it will bear witness that I am always thinking of you.”

Celia had smiled when Marcos uttered those words, which sounded like an endearment, not a real promise. But he hastened to add: “No, really. It is part of a set that I bought in a fishing village in one of the Greek islands, during the campaign against the Moors.” He took out a small pouch he kept over his chest and, opening it, dropped in his hand another blue pearl, identical to the one he was giving her. “They say the blue

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ones are the rarest of all pearls, and those of a dusky color have mystical powers. If you get two of them as a set, they will forever search each other out and will find a way to reunite no matter the time or distance.”

She had smiled again, indulgently, and asked with just a touch of sarcasm: “And where did you get that fine story?”

If he detected incredulity in her question, he chose to ignore it, and replied in earnest: “There was an elder at the village, a soothsayer consulted by people from all corners of Greece, who told me the story of how Penelope and Ulysses had matching blue pearls just like these, and they were reunited after a decade of separation because of the pull of the pearls.”

“And you believed him?” “Why not? I had already paid for the pearls to a local fisherman. The seer had no incentive to tell me a lie. Anyway, whether true prediction or fairy tale, I mean it when I say that I will return to you, unless Death takes me first.

I swear it by my faith as a Catholic and my honor as the last member of the Bazan family.”

For a while after his ship took sail Celia had kept the pearl in the casket where she stored the trinkets she owned. But one year went by, and then another, and one day she took the blue pearl out of the casket and had it mounted on a simple silver pendant. Thus she transferred her hopes to the pearl in the pendant, and silently leveled heathen prayers at the pearl seeking its help in bringing in its sister, and with her the long departed Marcos.

Celia’s prayers remained stubbornly unanswered, and a decade went by without news of her lover. Family and friends pestered her for years trying to persuade her to forget her probably dead (or if not, deserting) fiancé and seek a new life. She had rejected all pleas and, one by one, the voices that counseled forgetfulness became themselves silent and abandoned her to the fate.

So it was that, in a late summer afternoon in the fourteenth year of her wait, Celia’s spyglass scanned the emptiness of the waters as she sighed discontentedly. A heretic thought was forming in her mind, dulled by inactivity and longing.

Should she give up her wait? After all, she was no longer in the budding bloom of her youth, but was more like a withering rose shedding, one by one, every petal of beauty and joie de vivre, leaving only a charmless husk, an old maid fit only to be pitied. She was starting to course through those dangerous inner waters when she noticed with a start that the waters outside were no longer empty. A ship of a type she remembered well was making a lumbering approach towards the harbor. It was a frigate, a square-rigged warship like the one that had carried Marcos away.

It was too soon to identify the vessel, but just the same Celia hurriedly changed into her best clothes and rushed out towards the harbor, where a crowd had already gathered. As the ship maneuvered towards the pier, Celia’s heart began an irregular pounding; it was the Medusa, the frigate in which

Marcos had departed towards the North Sea, to make war for the glory of the Crown. The ship had suffered much from war and adverse weather: most of its rigging had been blown away, and only the lower foremast, lower mizzenmast, and bowsprit remained operational. The crew had experienced similar ravages, with many sailors appearing wounded and those that remained intact ambling about lifelessly.

Celia was able to corner a disheveled officer as he set foot on the pier: “Officer, is Don Marcos Bazan part of your crew?”

“Err… si, señora,” was the polite but evasive sounding answer.

“Where is he?” “He is below deck. He was seriously injured in our last engagement with the Brits and has not recovered.

But…” Celia did not wait for him to finish, and ran up the plank before he could stop her. She went the length of the main deck, skirting all the obstacles on her path, and went down the narrow stairs to the area under the prow that housed the sick bay. The sight she encountered was appalling: the sick or wounded were slung up to the beams in hammocks, subjected to the ship’s deafening noise, in constant collision with other swinging beds, and exposed to the heat and odors of cooking from the nearby galley. Instead of quietude, ventilation, and natural light, the area beneath the water-line that served as sick bay was close, dark, and dismal. The stench, the noise and the heat were indeed unbearable.

Standing at the edge of the confusion, Celia asked as loudly as she could over the surrounding din: “Does anyone here know where Marcos Bazan is?” There was an abrupt silence, and then out of the middle of the room came a feeble voice: “He is here, next to me.”

Celia followed the voice, which kept repeating “Here,” until she found herself close to the back wall, near a point where several hammocks coalesced into an uninterrupted mesh of rope. The voice, she now saw, belonged to a dirty looking sailor with a leg on a cast. With great effort, the man half rose on his hammock and pointed to his left: “There is Marcos.”

The hammock to the left of the sailor was occupied by a dark hulk of humanity that appeared oblivious to the world.

Celia approached the body and cried out: “Marcos, my love! It is I, Celia, come to rescue you!”

This declaration elicited no response. Celia repeated her cry again, now with a tinge of desperation in her voice. Again, no response. Turning to the sailor in the next hammock, she questioned: “What’s wrong with him? Why doesn’t he answer?”

The response came from behind her. The officer she had ditched had finally caught up with her and had seized her arm, seeking to lead her away. “He suffered a head wound in our battle with the English privateers. His body seems to be healing, but his mind is gone.”

Celia swallowed an anguished cry and, making an effort to regain her composure, asked: “What is the Royal Navy going to do with him?”

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“Our ship is badly battered, as you can see. We will have to stay in port for months to get it repaired. He will remain onboard while work on the Medusa is ongoing. If by the time we are ready to depart he has not recovered, we will leave him behind in some institution. I am sure some order of nuns runs a hospice or a hospital for the disabled here.”

“Is it possible for him to be released to me now, rather than waiting many months? I am his fiancée and would take care of him better than any institution.”

“I will need to speak to the Captain. Bazan was a brave soldier and a fine seaman, not to mention a nobleman who volunteered for service to the King, and we want to make sure that as good a care is taken of him as is possible. His papers do not list any family members or other relations to whom we could transfer his custody. Your suggestion may be well received. Of course, we would need to know more about you…”

“Of course” she replied haughtily. “I am Celia de Roxas, direct descendant of one of the first Spanish governors of this island. Our family is famous for its rectitude and loyalty to La Corona. We are not wealthy – never were – but our piety and good works are well known throughout the colony. Ask anyone.”

“Madame, I meant no offense. It is only that we bear some responsibility to the men under our command….” Celia cut him off. “No offense taken. But please talk to the Captain and let’s take care of this matter as soon as possible.”

It did, however, take more than a few days for Marcos to be turned over to Celia. The ship doctor insisted that he should be kept under medical care until his physical wounds were sufficiently healed. The Captain had demanded a stiff bribe to consent to generate the necessary paperwork, and it took Celia a bit of effort to round up the money from her friends and relatives. Finally, one bright but unusually cool late November morning Celia led Marcos down the pier and into a carriage she had hired to bring them home. Marcos walked hesitatingly, like a small child or a drunk unsure of where to set his foot next. His gaze was unfocused and there was a vacuous smile on his lips. His beard, so heavy it obscured most of his features, was speckled with gray.

“Yes, my dear, you are a mess. But I will take care of you” announced Celia brightly. When the carriage deposited them at the door of Celia’s home in the old section inside the walls of the city, Celia took him firmly by the hand, made him climb the three stone steps that led to the threshold of their dilapidated mansion, and pushed him indoors as Matilde, the old Indian slave, opened the heavy mahogany doors. As they entered, the bells in the nearby cathedral announced the hour.

It was eleven in the morning, and all was well – no pirate ships or English corsairs were in sight.

“First thing we are going to do is give you a bath and get you into new clothes. I will be glad to burn the stinking rags you are

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wearing.” He nodded, but it was not clear whether in agreement or as an automatic response to her commanding voice.

Between Matilde and Celia they disrobed Marcos, sunk him in a huge copper bath that saw use only on Easter and Christmas Day, lathered his body with precious Castile soap, and poured bucket after bucket of hot water to wash away months of grime from his body. Marcos did not protest, even when Matilde accidentally doused one of his eyes with soapy water; he merely rubbed the liquid away with a mechanical grunt. Indeed, he let them scrub and rub and poke at him, until he was as clean as a hairy forty year old sailor could ever be. “You have been baptized again” declared Celia with satisfaction. “Now, for the next step, we are going to trim your beard.” She took him by the hand and led him into the parlor.

She then produced a large cast iron straight razor that had belonged to her father. It was wide at one end and tapering into the handle, and very heavy. She thought for a moment of sending Matilde out to get a barber but decided she could do this herself, if she was very careful. She soaped Marcos’ beard thoroughly and set to work, trying to eliminate as much of the excess hair as possible and still leave a fashionable moustache and pointed goatee, in the style of reigning King Philip IV. However, her skills with the clumsy razor were limited and she failed to achieve an even moustache, or a presentable goatee.

So she ended up giving Marcos a totally clean shave, except for a few cuts here and there for which she stanched the flow of blood the best she could.

Celia then stood back to admire her handiwork and did a double take. The man whose face she had cleaned and shaved was deeply tanned, with wide set eyes and thick black brows that nearly touched and made the face look slightly sinister. Looking at him closely, Celia also noted that his pupils were lighter than Marcos’ – amber rather than brown. This man was NOT Marcos!

“Who are you?” she shrieked, and started to shake the man as if trying to dislodge the truth from him. At first, there was no response, but after a short while the man let out a big sigh and replied: “No, I am not Marcos, but he was my friend.”

“What do you mean he was your friend? Where is he?”

“He is dead. He was killed in 1624 during the siege of Breda in the Netherlands. I was by his side when he fell.”

“How did he die?”

“We were in the Royal Navy together and were sent as reinforcements to the army laying siege to the city. At first our army, composed largely of pikemen, was unaccustomed to facing the large numbers of musketeers fighting for the Dutch.

As a result, we took many casualties at the start of the siege, and Marcos was one of them. He was hit in the chest by a musket shot and perished.”

“But why did you steal his name?”

“He was a nobleman and I am a nobody, son of a slattern from the back alleys of Burgos. I was a deckhand on the

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Medusa, he a gunner. Despite the differences in class, we had become very close friends. I realized that he no longer had need for his name or rank, and I could make more of myself by becoming respected Marcos Bazan instead of low class Ramon Garcia. I took the personal papers he had on his person, deserted, hid in the countryside for a few days, and finally returned to the Medusa impersonating him. I got some strange looks at the beginning but I had grown a full beard, was of similar size, and knew him so well that I was able to fool everyone. Luckily, my skills as a gunner were never really tested until we ran into the Brits.”

“And you thought you could fool me too?” asked Celia angrily. “Did you think you could continue to pretend to be an imbecile, and I would never know any better?”

“No” he replied, lowering his head in shame. “I was in fact suffering from some mental disorder on that day you met me.

I later recovered but kept the pretense since I knew you were taking steps to free me from my indenture on that hateful ship. I was hoping to keep you in the dark for a while, before revealing myself. It was not meant to be,” he finished ruefully.

“And, apart from getting me to rescue you, did you have any other purposes in mind? Maybe you intended to murder me or steal the little I own?”

“Well, I did have another purpose. See, he had told me all about himself and you. When he was shot and lay dying, he asked me to find you and tell you that he had loved you to the very end and only Death had kept the two of you apart.

Also he had something for me to give you… But where is my scapular?”

“Do you mean the brown scapular of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel?”

“Yes.” “We took it out to bathe you. It is in the kitchen, on the table next to where we put the copper bath tub.”

“Can I have it back, please?”

Celia was incensed at Garcia’s deception, but she went back to the kitchen and brought back the scapular—two wool squares of cloth, connected by woolen strings. One square contained a leather bound image of the Lady of Mt. Carmel, the other showed a picture of the Holy Heart of Jesus. She handed the scapular to the man, who carefully pulled apart the square containing the picture of Jesus, tilted and shook a hidden receptacle, and drew out an iridescent, dusky blue pearl. “He asked me to give it to you to always remember him by.”

Celia’s eyes clouded with tears. She lamented: “Yes, one blue pearl will always find her sister. But not always carried by the same man.” And, more acidly: “Not even similar. You are only a common thief. I shall denounce you for impersonating a member of the Spanish nobility.”

“You certainly could. But please consider this: turning me over to the King’s justice will not bring Marcos back, and you will die as you currently are, bitter and alone. Let me stay

with you as your servant and, if you allow, your companion.

I promise to be your friend as I was the friend of Marcos. He trusted in me, why will you not give me a chance to prove my worth?”

Celia was indignant at Garcia’s request. “You are vile and brazen and I will see you punished as you deserve.” She turned her back on the man, started to walk away, and called her slave out: “Matilde! Please come here at once!”

Garcia begged again with mounting agitation: “My lady!

Please give me a week to prove myself. If you are dissatisfied with me in any manner, I will walk over to the mayor’s office and ask to be placed in chains. In the meantime, let me honor the memory of the man we both loved. Let me serve you. Please!”

Celia stopped. If Marcos had trusted this man with a priceless pearl and he had delivered it, perhaps he deserved a chance, maybe as a servant. She turned to him: “I can’t pay you and have only menial tasks for you to perform. If those conditions suit you, I will not turn you in, at least for a week.

But be aware that you are on trial, starting now.”

“Thank you, my lady. I don’t need money. I will get my pending wages … er, Marcos,’ from the ship’s paymaster.

Indeed, I will contribute to this household expenses.”

At that point, Matilde entered the parlor. “Did you call, Miss Celia?”

“Yes. I heard the bell in the cathedral strike three. Can we have dinner now?”

“Yes, Miss Celia.”

“Then, let us have a celebration to give thanks for this reunion,” she said ironically.

And so it was that Ramon Garcia came to stay in the old house of Celia de Roxas and, as time went by, proved more than satisfactory in every way. Later, Celia would re-introduce him to her family and friends as Don Marcos Bazan, returned after many years of absence. And, one day, they married and went to live in Marcos’ manor house in Navarra, where they lived happily ever after. And each of them kept a perfect dusky blue pearl as a token of their undying love.

Matias is a Cuban American attorney. He retired recently after four decades of law practice, during which he generated a large number of writings, including books and published articles, which were well received by critics and the public. After his retirement, he have redirected his efforts towards creative writing and have authored a number of stories of various lengths and genres.

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Poetry

EXODUS TOTI O'BRIEN

Let me lie by your side guardian of the gate.

Out there, quarrels of birds and a clangor of chains make me cringe (hope they didn’t notice my flight as I slipped shadow-like behind rotten boards).

Inside, dampness and twilight.

Asleep in your clothes you are reeking of sweat.

As you turn, your wrist brushes mine.

Your skin sends up a jolt.

Between my chest and throat a wave breaks, melting into a whirlpool of tears.

I remember the feeling of touch.

I dare exploring your palm.

Fingers twine— mine, yours, many— a school of silvery fish shining in the dark.

They play, unruly within your bushy beard.

My hair is coming loose.

Now your tongue like an arrow parts my lips.

On the road for too long I have learned the arts of caution.

I have sealed myself.

But your tongue, like a key pries my mouth unlatched.

Thick like velvet, your tongue draws the contours of mine stylo carving tablet.

Your tongue tastes like granite like iron, like fire.

I am dying of thirst guardian of the gate would you fetch me water while I am coiling my hair?

In haste yet so slowly.

One long, thin, endless braid.

Toti O'Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has recently appeared in Gyroscope, Parenthese, Mizmor, and A Migration Anthology.

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In My Mother In Me SUZANNE S. RANCOURT

You are in my dreams having a highball with Dad who has never abandoned you.

You are in Dad’s trembling voice and rapid breath after he ran up the cellar stairs after throwing a couple of sticks of wood in the furnace then plunked himself down in the glider on the porch and into our Yanky-ism silence then spoke about you still being in the basement about you being pissed off because he hadn’t cleaned up the scattered wood bark and you sent him upstairs to tell me so I could tell him it was you and he’s not crazy he’d better clean up.

You are always in my dreams showing me the goin’ ons.

You are in the fibers of the couch the pillows in the car the fringe you glued around bargain lampshades you are in the boys’ storage boxes of photos, books, beach towels even mice could not destroy you.

I had a dream of men in red coats. I remember when you saw a man in a red coat standing by the porch just before we moved you to the hospital bed parallel to the Peachtree sliding glass doors to watch the birds at your feeders and those damn squirrels.

You are in the bowl of consciousness everyone feeds from at family dinners, birthdays, and wakes.

You are in my heart and hand that grips the sword.

You are the glint in my eyes the slight lift at the left corner of my mouth when opponents realize I see inside them the way you saw inside me inside the future.

Suzanne is a multi-modal Expressive Arts Therapist with graduate degrees and certifications in psychology, creative writing, drug and alcohol recovery. Her first book of poetry, Billboard in the Clouds received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award. Her second, murmurs at the gate, Unsolicited Press, is scheduled for release May 2019.

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Christine Sloan Stoddard

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Short Story

SCORCHED WOOL JADE WALLACE

L

ocals don’t camp in their own towns in the off-season.

This is as true in Sheep’s Nest as anywhere else. Yet here is Detective Ficus’ sedan, rolling up the driveway of Low Branch Tent and Trailer Park on a late October morning.

“Herm!” he barks at me as he walks into the office. “What are you wearing? You look like a fuckin’ dolphin.”

I follow his eyes to my jacket sleeve. I am not sure that there is much likeness between aquatic mammals and aquamarine brocade, but then again he has never had a talent for rigorous and accurate identification.

“Haha,” I say, as I assign him the campsite farthest from the office.

“I’ll be staying for three nights,” he declares, looking pleased.

“Great,” I croak.

He leaves with his arms full of firewood.

First Night The porchlights of the office only brighten a few feet of grass. Beyond this scant aureole, there is a thick and woolly darkness. Trees wholly obscure the distant fairy lights of the year-round trailers. Sitting in the office in the evening, I am a suspect illuminated, waiting for interrogators to emerge from the shadows.

None come that night. At eleven, I set out for final rounds.

I walk past the pool, which is dry, filling up with leaves, undisturbed. The bathrooms are empty. There is a thin film of greying water on the floor that I will clean tomorrow. I continue along the road. At the first trailer, a campfire is crackling away, but no one is in sight. I knock on the door and wait thirty seconds.

“Jo!” I call out, banging more insistently. There is rustling inside the trailer. Then the door opens a crack.

“Hermes?” Jo asks, blinking at me, her white hair mussed.

She is wearing a long nightgown and has a quilt around her shoulders.

“Jo, there’s a fire going in your pit.”

“No, there isn’t,” she says automatically, before opening the door wider and craning her head outside. “Okay, well there is a fire but it’s not my fire.”

“Whose then?”

“Dunno.”

I don’t press Jo further because I can’t even remember her ever having a campfire before.

“Guess I’ll ask around,” I say.

“Could be kids from town, too, you know,” Jo suggests.

“Yeah.” I borrow a pot of water from Jo and douse the flames.

At the next trailer, there is another fire blazing like Christmas morning. I bang on the trailer door several times without reply.

Walking around the other side of their trailer, I see that their car is gone. I go back to borrow a second pot of water from Jo, who looks tired and resigned when she hands it to me.

“Sorry Jo. Last time, I promise.” She shakes her head.

At the third trailer, there is a third lonely fire. This time, I do not approach the darkened doorway of the trailer. I walk faster, past the fourth, the fifth, the sixth trailers. Each is glowing with flickering rust. I start jogging down the hill toward the river.

I pass unpopulated site after unpopulated site with fire pits stoked and blazing on my way to the sole tent.

But Sam Ficus’ lot is dark. There is no fire in the pit, not even embers remnant of a fire, and no lantern light is seeping through the translucent canvas of the tent walls.

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“Ficus!” I shout. His head shoots out of the zippered doorway.

“What?”

“There’s a fire in every pit in this campground except yours.”

“Is there a rule that says campers need to have synchronized fires? Am I wrecking the vibe?”

“I find it odd that you’re the only camper all week who bought firewood, and yet you are somehow the only one without a fire.”

“Look, Herm, I know that you’re not the detective here. I can look into this work of strangely harmless arson if you want.”

“Where is your firewood? I don’t see it.”

“I left it next to the fire pit.”

“It’s not there now.”

“Maybe it was stolen by someone who used it to light all those fires,” he suggests mockingly. I turn away from him briskly and set off jogging back up the hill, past the long line of burning beacons.

At the office, I retrieve the long hose then haul it as quickly as I can manage back toward the trailers. To my relief, Jo’s site and the second site are as dark as I left them half an hour ago.

The third site, though, is unexpectedly dark. The fire must have gone out on its own, I reason.

The fourth, the fifth, the sixth sites, too, no longer have fires burning. I put down the hose and retrace my earlier path to the tenting area. All is unlit and quiet, until I round the bend in the road to the final site.

There is Ficus, sitting placidly in front of a massive fire that looks ready to leap out of the pit.

“Your talk of fire made me want to start one myself.”

“But your wood was gone.”

“No, it was right by the pit, like I told you. I don’t know why you couldn’t see it.”

“It wasn’t there!”

“Calm down, Herm. Memory is like flame. It’s always moving, always morphing. You can’t keep a fixed picture of it in your mind. Did you know that fifty percent of memory is lost within an hour of being made? And that doesn’t even account for how the remaining half gets distorted.”

“I’ve heard that from you before.”

“When?”

“When do you think?”

“Are you making this about a twenty-year-old arson case?

Let it go already. Water under the bridge.”

“Water doesn’t flow under burned-down bridges.”

“That’s real clever.”

“You’d better keep an eye on that fire. It’s awfully wild.”

“And who’ll keep an eye on you? You seem a little out of control yourself.”

I sweep back to the office like a storm, leaving the hose by the road.

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Second Night I stop my morning rounds at the end of the trailers and avoid the tenting section throughout the afternoon as well. When Ficus drives out of Low Branch and turns toward town early that evening, I take the opportunity to walk down and check on his site.

There are no campfires burning in any of the pits as I pass.

Reaching the last tent site, I am relieved to see that the grass around Ficus’ fire pit is still growing well. There is now a cooking grate over the pit, which might at least explain why he had wanted such an inferno yesterday. Walking closer, I see that some of the embers are even now still bright among the ashes.

There is something resting among the embers. It’s dullcoloured and uneven, like a potato. Ficus should have known better than to put a potato straight into the fire, though. I grab a stick, slip it between the grating, and prod the ersatz potato into better view. Turning it over, I see a face.

I leap back and throw the stick aside in one hurried impulse, like how horses jump when they feel a dead sparrow under their feet. I wait and listen for movement from the pit. Hearing nothing, I shuffle forward again. I make myself look closely at the face.

The eyes are beady—no, beaded. Black beads on rough, charred cloth, in some approximation of a human countenance. It looks like a prisoner behind the bars of the grate. A rustling comes from the tent. I whip my head sideways, pause, then begin tiptoeing toward the tent. With my cheek inches from the wall, I can hear a girlish, indistinct whispering, as though someone inside is murmuring in sleep. I can only make out one word. Liar.

In the distance, growing louder, is the insistent rumbling of tires over stones. I scramble away from the tent and begin walking up the road to the office. I meet Ficus’ sedan in the middle of the road, face-to-face. Ficus rolls down his window.

“Will I not be allowed to return to my site this evening?” he asks politely.

“Campers aren’t allowed to put anything in the fire pits except wood and grates and food.”

“Well okay.”

“Why is there a poppet in yours?”

“A puppet?”

“A poppet. A kind of…doll. For…witchcraft.”

“Last night I’m an arsonist and tonight I’m a witch. What will I be tomorrow? A vampire? A murderer?”

“You can play witless but I know you’re not. You think I don’t know you because I was the one being interrogated, but you gave away so much of yourself.”

“Christ you’re paranoid. Can I go to bed now?”

I step out of the way, glaring down his car until it goes around the bend and out of sight.

Short Story

Third Night I go about final rounds, tense as a bleeding lamb. But there are no fires, there is nothing unpermitted in Ficus’ pit, and the only disturbance I note at all is two teenagers from town who are hiding out in the bathroom.

“Heeyyy,” the one with blue hair says when she sees me in the doorway. She is trying to be nonchalant but is looking unsteady on her feet.

“Goodbye,” I reply, stepping aside and gesturing them out.

“We’re not causing any trouble!” The blue-haired one protests.

“Are you even allowed in the women’s bathroom?” The other one chastises me.

“You are and I am and one of our campers tonight is Detective Sam Ficus, so for your own sake I’m recommending you find somewhere else to get high.” They look at each other, and look at me.

“We’re not high!” they whine, as if offended, but start towards the door. I wait for them to bring forth the choke of pot smoke, but when they reach the threshold they are scented instead with angel dust.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask, my voice strangled.

“Get what?”

“We have nothing.”

“We are nothing.”

“Yeah.”

“You could be nothing, too.” They are leaning on each other and staggering as they walk away from me.

“Can I call someone to give you a ride?” They don’t answer and I don’t know if I should insist.

I fall asleep that night thinking of the last time I had smelled angel dust. Fifty kids in the abandoned factory with all our hallucinogens to make it feel like a cathedral. Some, I think, must have been prostrate on shadowed tables as if they were altars. Some were circumspect, holding council among themselves. At least one was weeping like an ecstatic saint.

Lou and I were holding hands and chanting cacophonic hymns on the floor of the lab.

When I first sensed smoke, I thought it was another delusion, so I didn’t move.

“Lou,” I whispered. “There isn’t a fire, is there?” I looked over. Lou was passed out, head leaning back against the wall.

“Do you smell smoke?” I demanded of a girl drifting by.

“It’s burning myrrh,” she said, smiling.

“Who’s burning myrrh? Who has myrrh?” I shouted, but she was gone.

I rose to go looking for the myrrh, leaving Lou on the floor. A lot of people seemed to have left the factory already. The distant voices were softer than my footfalls. The heat rose in my cheeks as I neared the door of the lab. A golden glow was creeping in through the gaps. I kept telling myself it was a fever dream.

When I opened the door and saw the fire raging, I stopped caring whether I was hallucinating. It seemed reasonable to err on the side of paranoia. I ran back to Lou, who still wouldn’t wake, and lay like dead weight in my arms as I tried to drag us both toward the exit door, cursing. We were moving slower than broken-winged birds, and I could see the smoke now thickening the air.

“I’ll come back for you, Lou,” I lied, to comfort myself.

I ran out of the factory, expecting to see dozens of teenagers who had fled the fire. But there were only a few alarmed stragglers, none of whom I recognized.

“Did someone call nine-one-one?” I shouted at the crowd.

They looked at me. Then I saw the flashing blue lights of police sirens coming up the road.

I have a recurring dream of that night, though, that is different. Everything begins the same, but Lou leaves me midhymn, and I am singing alone, terrified of how enormous the factory ceiling is overhead and of the way my voice echoes weakly in the chamber. So I stop singing and walk over to a group of people I don’t really know and want to say take me in but I can’t speak. I just stare at them and start crying. They say nothing, but disperse with swift civility.

I leave the lab, but the whole factory is frigid and metallic and makes my voice disappear. The corporation that owned the factory when it was still operational was supposed to dispose of the vats of chemicals, raze the buildings, and restore the grounds for some other use. Instead, they dissolved. I find one of the storerooms stocked with liquids as arcane in their names and uses as the unholy elixirs of alchemists. I start spilling cordials all across the floor. I go further. I turn every room into an intricate set of riverbeds.

Then I strike flint, drop my lighter, and amble leisurely toward the exit.

In a fire, everything feels warm and close. I stand in the factory foyer, smiling as people shriek and brush past me on their flight into the night air. I am one of the last to leave, and I only go when the incalescence is biting its way up my spine.

I started having the second memory, the guilty dream, after the third day of police interrogation about the fire. The police suspected I might have been the cause and so Detective Ficus had been assigned to question me. In the first days of the interrogation, I kept telling the story as I remembered it. Singing with Lou, sensing smoke, escaping alone. But Ficus wouldn’t accept anything I said. He spun out endless variations on my scenes. Lou and I weren’t singing, we were bickering. Lou and I were singing, but Lou left me. Lou and I were singing, then bickering, then I left. Ficus was not crafting fairy tales of archetype and vague suggestion. His accounts were each proliferate and specific. He told me how floor gleamed when it was flooded with accelerants. He told me how Lou derisively said fuck off without even looking at me.

Isn’t that right, he’d say. And I wanted to say yes, because he

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made it so easy to imagine all of these stories being real. You were high, he said. Everything was hazy, he said. And I could not disagree.

On the fifth day of interrogation, he asked me if I had dreamt about that night. I didn’t say anything. He said innocent people don’t have secrets. So I told him about the guilty dream.

“It’s only a dream,” I said.

“It’s everything about that night that you don’t want to confront,” he corrected.

“No,” I said. But maybe he was right. Even though the dream did not feel like it was mine, even though it felt like one of his stories, I could not shake the possibility that it was real.

Why would I keep reliving someone else’s lie?

“You feel guilty. I can see it,” he told me.

“I only feel guilty for leaving Lou behind.”

“No you don’t. Lou’s fine. A short stay in the hospital and then back home. You feel guilty because your fire killed that boy, but you don’t want to face that fact, so you’re pretending your guilt is about Lou, because that’s a guilt that you can get over.”

“That’s not true,” I replied weakly, increasingly afraid that it was.

“It’s okay, you know,” Ficus said, gently. “We don’t even know who the boy is. Probably just some young addict. His death is as much his fault as yours. The court will go easy on you, as long as you come clean.”

I just shook my head, maybe in disagreement, maybe in some struggle for clarity.

The office bell starts clanging, and the loops of old film playing in my head stop abruptly. I look at the clock. It is three in the morning. I get out of bed and hurry to the door. It’s Ficus.

“What,” I say, not really asking a question.

“Thought you might want to know the washroom is flooding.”

“Which one?”

“The women’s.”

I brush past him and head down the driveway. Water is flooding all the way onto the stone path leading to the bathrooms. I can hear Ficus’ steps following unhurriedly behind me. The floor of the women’s bathroom is covered entirely with water, the current flowing steadily from the last shower stall. I move toward it, repulsed by the spongey feeling of my sopping shoes.

I tear back the shower curtain. The drain is strangely covered with pale blue flowers. I kneel down to brush them aside, and see that they were atop some kind of nest. I haltingly begin to pick the flowers off, one by one. Beneath them, are whorls upon whorls of bluish hair, so thick the water cannot pass through it. A full head’s worth of hair. For a moment, I wonder foolishly whether the teenager from earlier took a shower here.

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“Poetic, isn’t it?” I hear Ficus say from behind me. I whip around to face him. He’d asked me the same question outside the courthouse, at the end of the trial in which I’d been acquitted of arson and manslaughter.

Poetic, isn’t it? He’d smirked. And just. I had stared at him, confused. I had thought he wanted me convicted. He’d bent down close so only I could hear. That kid was as worthless as that factory. No one should be punished for scouring the earth.

Here I am again, looking wide-eyed at him like a child, unsure of what has even frightened me. He is smiling at me, as though we are conspiring.

“All this water, to douse all those flames, and wash away all that dust.”

“Did you do this?” I demand.

“Didn’t you?” Ficus retorts. I shake my head at him. He continues. “You know what those flowers are, don’t you?

Periwinkle. You can extract an alkaloid from periwinkle to make vinpocetine. The research on it was inconclusive, so it can’t be used medicinally. But do you know what it was supposed to treat? Memory loss.” He laughs.

I scowl at him and move to leave. He blocks my way.

“Where are you going?”

“To call….” I am about to say the police, but I realize that is a poor choice. “Someone,” I finish, defeatedly. He gazes at me for a moment, then takes a step toward me.

“No you aren’t. I’m not finished questioning you.”

Jade Wallace is a writer from the Niagara Fruit Belt, currently working in law in Toronto, Ontario. Their poetry, short fiction, and essays have been published internationally, including in Studies in Social Justice, The Antigonish Review, and The Stockholm Review. Their most recent chapbooks is Rituals of Parsing (Anstruther Press 2018). They play ukulele in The Leafy Greens, a band that has been incorrectly described as "psychedelic stoner metal."

Literary Work

royaltystockphoto © 123RF.com

royaltystockphoto © 123RF.com

SINK

MOUTH OF TOES

RACHEL ROSE TEFERET

RACHEL ROSE TEFERET

I excavate dishes three strata deep

My mouth is full of broken toes, their teal polish chipped, nails jagged and striated.

the archeology of breakfast lunch dinner crusted glasses curdled milk history in the kitchen sink repeats itself repeats

I have toes instead of teeth, sour with cavities, black gaps between.

Will joints grind, gnash in dreams?

Are my feet now studded with teeth— will I eat the ground?

How can I walk?

I’ll fall and smash my mouth of toes.

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Poetry

Rachel Rose Teferet graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in Fine Arts and a penchant for photoshopping the world with her eyes. She is an artist, graphic and web designer, writer, blogger, and editor. Her work has been published by Subprimal Poetry Art, The Tishman Review (pending), Page & Spine, Black Rabbit Quarterly, Slink Chunk Press, Manawaker Podcast, Sierra College Literary Magazine as the winner of the 2016 Flash Fiction Contest, and more.

royaltystockphoto Š 123RF.com

SO YOU WROTE A POEM RACHEL ROSE TEFERET

but the syntax sucked and the verse buckled like badly laid asphalt still, you wrote a poem and it captured your bones no one else read it no one else would understand it. Still, it is your poem inglorious obscure enjoy the hell out of your words.

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Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China.

Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline among others.

Engin Korkmaz Š 123RF.com

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My Crows CHANGMING YUAN

1/ Ture, as a Chinese saying goes Crows everywhere are equally black But this one in the backyard of my heart Is as white as a summer cloud I have fed him with fog and frost Until his feathers, his flesh His calls and even his spirit All turned into white like winter washed My crow’s wings will never melt Even when flying close to the sun

2/ Each crow you have seen Has a quasi-white soul That used to dwell in the body Of one of your closest ancestors He comes down all the way just to tell you His little secret, the way he has flown out Of darkness, the fact both his body and heart Are filled with shadows, the truth about Being a dissident, that unwanted color Hidden in your own heart is there also a crow Not blacker than his spirits But much more so than his feathers

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To-Read List New Reader Media, a creative marketing firm working in partnership with New Reader Magazine, takes on the challenge of bookmarking emerging voices in the indie publishing world. Presented in no particular order, here’s New Reader Media’s reading list for the first quarter of 2019.

Rinnie the Weasel DEBBY G. BOWES ED.D Rinnie the Weasel is very clever and mischievous. Join him in his adventures in McElvery Woodlands with Matilda the Fawn, Chadwick the Beaver, and Horatio the Frog.

Feel Me: A Book of Poetry RHONDA D. FELDER The poems in this book are meant to provide comfort, healing, empowerment, inspiration and hope to a hurting world.

The Sanctuary of My Solitude: The Thoughts, Feelings, and Life Lessons of an Imperfect Christian ANTHONY GIESICK As you read this book, you will be given the opportunity to journey through Anthony's mind as he discovers his identity in Jesus Christ and his role as a poet.

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Balanced Leadership: A Pragmatic Guide for Leading LEONARD W. HEFLICH In this collection of dissertations on topics relevant to effective leadership, you'll be challenged to think. Along the way, you'll learn how to discover and clarify your mission, vision, and values.

More For Less: Turning Disabilities Into Possibilities TYRONE HOLCOMB No matter what disadvantages you face, More for Less will direct you to a better place. It will show you how God’s great ability turns your disabilities into His possibilities, how your breaking point can become His breakout moment.

Mother Wit: Exalting Motherhood while Honoring a Great Mother PHD MALAIKA B. HORNE Living under conditions of Apartheid as practiced in the United States, this woman overcomes harsh and even grotesque societal obstacles, and succeed in rearing six children.

Land of PĹ?

RICHARD A. JURGENSEN Richard shares his philosophical insights of the world and how he perceives life.

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20 One F#ckn Quotes Vol. #1 PORNSTARRAPPER A collection of colorful expressive quotes by the character named PornStarRapperÂŽ that's written in code by way of grawlix.

Forever Man: Epic Origin Novel GLENN E. LEE Glenn Lee takes your imagination on an epic cosmic fantasy adventure of how a prophecy came to be.

#1 Silver Creek Ranch: Forgotten CLAUDIA MONTEIRO After an accident, Callie is sent into a flurry of confusion. She fights to discover herself again and clings to the one thing she'll never lose: horses.

Nigeria: A Failed State?: Profound Treatise On A Crippled Giant ROBERT NWADIARU This book treats in exhaustive detail the history of Robert Nwadiaru's home nation and the contemporary political, social, and economic obstacles facing the country as it attempts to modernize.

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Travel with the One You Love ANN MALIK OMAN AND JONATHAN D. OMAN A collection of photographs from a couple's years of travels.

The Spirit of Dreams LARA PARK This is a channeled book that brings meaning and guidance from the animal kingdom into our dreams.

This Nation under Attack ALEX SALAIZ Rookie FBI agent Chad Winters recognizes an assassin is the link to the expatriated American whose goal is to bring US Congress down.

Unholy Terror Waged on Our Beloved Nation ALEX SALAIZ The story unfolds as soon as FBI Special Agent Chad Winters brings to justice the fugitive financier Roberto Dela Torri from Yemen.

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Revenge Without Remorse ALEX SALAIZ The terrorist leaders had failed miserably to eliminate FBI Special Agent Chad Winters, a recurring thorn on their side. After having financed numerous failures, the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, decided to go after Winters’ family instead.

Maizie and the Chipmunks NANCY CRESS SKALSKY This endearing story about a dog and her first experience in camping will be able to give you a new appreciation and love for the wonderment of nature.

Instilling Touchstones of Character GARY SMIT This engaging and practical book will assist parents, educators and youth leaders in the intentional and explicit teaching of character.

The History on the Page: Adventures in Black British History TONY TALBURT This is a collection of short fictitious stories is all about the adventures of two children who learn about fascinating aspects of British history.

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The King of Hearts GWEN BEAUDEAN THOMA EDD The day after each murder, Angelina Harper receives a sympathy card with a king of hearts playing card in the mail. Clues are few and nonyielding as police try to catch this criminal.

Parnassus: Selected Writings and Poems MARKUS VOSSI This book is a small anthology of human experience from the eyes of a simple and trained observer of human and inhuman nature.

Olympus Mons WILLIAM WALLING A “miracle enzyme� enables carbon dioxide-oxygen conversion within the organism, opening the hostile Martian environment to colonization. Former intel op and alpinist Jesperson and his workpartner Barnes lead a semi-suicidal trek up a volcano's heights in a desperate attempt to effect repairs.

Jesus' Rapture Is Coming Soon!: The Coming Rapture of Jesus!

WILLIAM LOYAL WARREN This lists many of the moral, political, scientific, and environmental events taking shape today that clearly validates the very signs Jesus prophesied.

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WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

ART FESTIVALS

Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice at the National Gallery of Art

Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again

Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern at the Museum of Modern Art

Photo: Jacopo Tintoretto, The Madonna of the Treasurers, 1567

When: March 10 – July 7 Where: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

When: March 17 – June 30 Where: The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY If Lincoln Kirstein is remembered at all, it’s for co-founding the New York City Ballet. But Kirstein, who was born into a prosperous Boston family in 1907, was also a curator, collector, and writer.

This exhibition will include more than 200 works from MoMA’s permanent collection. (He was also, for those less interested in New York’s avant-garde, one of the “monuments men” who went into Europe to save Nazi-confiscated art.) There will be works from Kirstein’s close friend, Walker Evans, paintings by intimates such as Pavel Tchelitchew, costume designs by Paul Cadmus for ballets he commissioned, and Latin American art that Kirstein acquired for MoMA including works by Antonio Berni and Raquel Forner.

Jacopo Tintoretto was born 500 years ago, but until now the master painter has never had a retrospective in North America. Better late than never, particularly when the final product involves a series of spectacular loans that have never been seen before in the U.S. The exhibition first appeared at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice as part of a citywide celebration of the artist’s birth. For its U.S. debut at the National Gallery the exhibition will be altered and expanded, with close to 50 paintings plus a dozen drawings. It will be further boosted by two component shows on view at the same time—one of Venetian prints and another of Venetian drawings.

When: March 17 – June 30, 2019 Where: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Midtown West

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Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, Meatpacking District In a certain sense, this retrospective of the career of Andy Warhol (1928–1987) is somewhat redundant. After all, if you want to see his work, just look around you: Warhol anticipated our free-market cultural landscape of short attention spans and narcissistic social media engagements. But he also represented a classic example of American selfinvention, going from a skinny, nerdy kid from Pittsburgh to the world’s most famous artist. This show, the first major Warhol survey since 1989, takes the measure of his achievements.

Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern

Photo: Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York

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When: Now until March 31, 2019

This show is organized around the outsize cultural impact of Lincoln Kirstein, a curator and choreographer (he co-founded the New York City Ballet) who was a key figure of the New York art scene during the 1930s and 1940s, a period that is generally considered provincial, but in hindsight was a hotbed of post-abstract figurative art and queer aesthetics.

WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

Beyond the Pale

When: March 7 – April 11, 2019 Where: Cypress College Art Gallery To go beyond the pale is to move outside the acceptable, the safe, and the known. Curated by Janet Owen Driggs, Beyond the Pale presents work by artists who step outside the bounds of Western scientific thinking in their efforts to know and interpret the world, including Johanna BREIDING & Shoghig HALAJIAN, Olivia CHUMACERO & Sarita DOUGHTERTY, Veronique d’ENTREMONT, Helen LESSICK, Jennifer MOON, and Louis PESCE. Although the exhibition does include a near-magical broom, its title has nothing to do with buckets. Instead our “pale” refers to the “paling” fence posts that would once have enclosed a village or a fort, but which are now more commonly used to “impale” Hollywood vampires.

John Morris

When: August 23 – September 10 Where: Lethbridge Gallery, Paddington QLD 4064 The works of John Morris spring from exhaustive sketching and illustration, drawing on intensive research.

Intricately carved from wood by his skilled hand, John’s sculptures explore an ongoing fascination with human form and anatomy; deconstructed, modified, and added to.

Contrasting elements of biological, geometrical and mechanical work harmoniously together as he explores the space between the second and third dimensions, incorporating drawing in to his sculptures.

Photo: Crosswind

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WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

LITERARY FESTIVALS

Queen’s Park Book Festival

When: April 29 – May 5

Hay Festival Wales When: May 23 – June 2 Where: Hay-on-Wye, Wales What? The jewel in the UK’s literary festivals’ crown, Hay has been the goto festival for book-lovers for 30 years now. Cooked up by Peter Florence and friends three decades ago, when tickets were sold from a caravan under the clock tower and talks happened in the British Legion, the annual event has come a long way since then with speakers to date including Bill Clinton, Stephen Fry, Ian Rankin and Jacqueline Wilson to name a few. Throw in some of the best views and walking countryside in Britain and you’ve got a countrylover’s weekend made in heaven.

There’s plenty on offer for kids, too.

This year’s line up includes 2018 Man Booker Prize Winner Anna Burns, Leila Slimani, and Jimmy Carr, plus many more great names.

Sydney Writers’ Festival

Photo: Zadie Smith. Photo by Dominique Nabokov

When: June 29–30, 2019 Where: Throughout Queen’s Park What? This weekend-long London literary festival is a celebration for book-lovers in the heart of the capital.

Authors, poets, actors and artists will gather for a weekend of readings, talks, debates and special events throughout Queen’s Park. Alongside the ticketed events, there will also be free children’s events, special programmes and fringe events. This year’s event features talks from the likes of Zadie Smith, Tessa Hadley and Eleanor Catton.

Big-city festivals can sometimes lack a sense of community, but the week-long Sydney Writers’ Festival manages to keep focus, with many of its 300-plus events held at the Carriageworks arts hub. Australian and international writers get together to discuss their own work in relation to a central theme – for 2018 this was “Power”. One well-known author explained the attraction: “Partly because it’s huge and splendid, partly because it’s Sydney and partly because the Aussies know how to party.”

For the full programme visit swf.org.au

WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

FILM FESTIVALS CINEQUEST FILM & VR FESTIVAL

cinema. Filmmakers who are selected into ÉCU’s Official Selection join an active community of creatives who continually push the boundaries of indie cinema.

Bigfork Independent (aka Indie) Film Festival

When: March 5–17, 2019 Where: San Jose and Redwood City, California Located near Silicon Valley—the epicenter of glocal technology and innovation—Cinquest bridges the gap between art and technology through the presentation of Virtual Reality (VR) Competition and Awards. Guests can expect to see VR films, interactive pieces and games. There are also awards for best VR animation, horror, sports, music video, documentary and more. The festival's attendance has exceeded 105,000 guests and is expected to continue growing in popularity.

The European Independent Film Festival 14th edition

When: April 5–7, 2019 Where: Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts, Montana Filmmakers are encouraged to submit their projects early so they can be considered by the judges. Selected films will be shown and filmmakers can discuss their films in front of a live audience. $2,500 in cash prizes will be awarded for first and second place winners in each submission category, as well as for an audience choice award for each film category.

Blackbird Film Festival

When: April 26–28, 2019

Rapsodia Satanica (1917 Silent Film) presented by Cineteca Bologna

When: April 5 – April 07, 2019 Where: Paris, France Cinema is an art form that needs to be simultaneously nourished and challenged and ÉCU - The European Independent Film Festival provides the perfect arena for indie filmmakers to express authentic cinematic storytelling in the most compelling ways possible.

As one the World’s truly stand out independent film festivals, ÉCU embraces innovation and creativity and allows directors in competition to showcase their films to audiences who appreciate and love independent

is undoubtedly one of the finest achievements of the early Italian cinema.

In it, Oxilia spins a variation on the Faust myth, embodied here by the diva Lyda Borelli. Typical of extravagant D'Annunzian aestheticism at its height, Rapsodia Satanica was one of the summits of what was later called the "tail coat film." Diametrically opposed to the "cinema of reality" practiced

by Serena, Martoglio and others, "tail coat films" set their melodramatic stories in the salons and villas of the upper middle class and the aristocracy, deploying narrative structures contrived to showcase their actors and especially its actresses. This had the effect of accentuating their physical presence and turning them into stars - probably the first stars in movie history. The success of the "dive" contributed to the development of motion picture grammar in its special use of the close-up.

When: March 22, 8:15pm Where: Shemin Auditorium on Syracuse University, NY 13210

Where: SUNY Cortland - Brown Auditorium Theater Cortland, New York At the Blackbird Film Festival, we strive to curate an inclusive festival atmosphere - an environment where experienced professionals and first time filmmakers can strike up conversation and perhaps take something away from one another. Blackbird was originally founded as a festival for student filmmakers but quickly opened its doors to all types of filmmakers in the spirit of collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

With this in mind, Blackbird remains a festival geared towards the learning experience and attracts a large number of media production students.

Rapsodia Satanica (1917) was the last film directed by Nino Oxilia and

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Off The Beaten Path Bookstore Bob Lingle loves books. He met his wife, Shannon, while working at a Barnes and Noble. He worked for Follett for some time where he was managing two different college bookstores. After a short stint as a stayat-home dad, the Chautauqua County resident was looking for a different challenge. He didn’t have to look very far: a local bookstore that needed a new owner was waiting for him.

Established in 2009, Off the Beaten Path has continued in the tradition of independent bookstores throughout the world, by providing a sense of community, curating titles for customers, and offering a place for those of like-minds to convene.

Off the Beaten Path is located in the heart of the historic Lakewood Village, just off the shores of Chautauqua Lake.

Sideshow Books SideShow Books is a magical bookstore—an adventurous journey of lost treasure, wisdom, and discovery. We bet the same could be said for most independent bookstores across the country—those that remain!

Twice in the last 6 months, SideShow has been called in to do "book rescues"—saving two remarkable libraries from ending up in the dumpster.

These libraries were filled with rare publications, books, pamphlets, broadsides and journals—the type of printed material that provides voice to marginalized people and ideas, illuminates dark corners of history and explores esoteric thinking known to but a few.

In short, they rescued ideas and expression from extinction. SideShow brought them all to the bookstore to be catalogued, recommended, read, discussed, and appreciated. Now, retaining their original power, they live again.

So, to lose a dedicated bookstore that cares for the books of its community is to lose a crucial link in the chain of cultural experience— knowledge passing from past to future generations.

Featured Bookstore

The Published Page Bookshop The building was constructed in 1880 by Barzilaii Chambers. Chambers was a historic figure both locally and nationally. He was the founder of Cleburne, Texas. Although he built several building in the early city, ours is the only extant one standing, and is the second oldest commercial building in the city. Chambers was active in local, Republic of Texas, State of Texas and NAtional politics. In 1880 he was the Vice-Presidential candidate on the Greenback Party ticket.

Later he was active if the national Farm/Labor movement (AKA The Granger Movement) and the first organized labor movement in Texas was held in Cleburne, through the efforts of Chambers. In addition to building a terrific bookstore in Historic Downtown Cleburne, Connye and Jim Hart is restoring this old building and trying to preserve its history and significance.

Adventure Books and More Adventure Books and More is located in the foot hills of the Adirondack, Moutains in Central New York.

Other than new and secondhand books, they also sell a variety of gift baskets , fantasy and sport plates. Along with general gifts candles and some women's clothing.

Featured Bookstore