Vol. 2 Issue 8, "Fight & Flight"

Vol. 2 Issue 8 New York London Hong Kong Philippines

FIGHT & FLIGHT

New Reader Magazine December 2019 | Vol. 2 Issue 8 COVER IMAGE

Model: Maura Evelyn by Justin Rosenberg

CREATIVE STAFF Managing Editor

: Kyla Estoya

Associate Editor

: Aira Calina

Layout Artist

: Iain Yu

Publicist

: Kota Yamada, TJ Delima

Researcher

: Rosielyn Herrera, Marjon Gonato

John Paul Vailoces

Production & Features : Celina Paredes, Jazie Pilones,

Neil Gabriel Nanta, Rio Lim,

Sarah Eroy, Jarryl Ibrahim,

Joi Villablanca, Frank Go,

Rey A. Ilejay

CONTRIBUTORS

Darcy Smith, Gilberte O'Sullivan, Ansah Ben, Evie Benvie, Bob Beagrie, Bob McNeil, DeWitt Clinton, Robert Bowerman, Stephen Fox, Mark Tulin, Siaila Jagroop, Emilia Amodio, Toti O'Brien, Sharon Frame Gay, Annina Claesson, Justin Rosenberg, Rick Blum

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 us: 100 Church St. Suite 800 New York, NY 10007 ISSN 2688-8181

All Rights Reserved

NOTE Let things be.

There was a point when I’d get annoyed whenever someone gave me that advice; it sickened me. I was being a stubborn person and appreciated the day more if things went my way. My punch line? I love The Beatles. And what kind of a Beatles fan am I to go against one of their greatest hits?

Honestly, this year has been exhausting. And I’m not just talking about my personal life; I’m talking about everybody around the world. Humanity has grown fragile: easily offended and eager to protest. All the time. It seems that most of us have been paranoid over a lot of things. That, for some reason, has started a worldwide tantrum. Although I know these emotions are inevitable, do forgive my colloquial language when I say: can we all just chill for a sec? I’m not asking you to stop entirely whatever it is you’re doing; I am simply asking you to take a breather. Another year is about to end. When we look back at these past months, weeks, days, and hours—how much time did we spend worrying and panicking?

Better question: how much time did we spend being in the moment and just letting things be?

Every single day we make choices. Our days consist of question after question. But the biggest choice we have to make, we make when life gives us a plot twist and we catch ourselves thinking, “Now, what?” These are moments when we begin to understand that most of the things in life are beyond our control, and no amount of anger nor persistence can change the natural course of the universe and what it has thrown to us. In physiology, it is taught that the “fight or flight” scenario is common to all human beings. But just because it’s common, doesn’t mean there’s no other way to deal with life’s surprises. Undeniably, the only reason we resist something or run away from it is because we can’t control it anymore. To put it simply: the only thing holding us back is how we think.

From the eyes of Justin Rosenberg to the sensational experience of being immersed in Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, I hope you love the issue we have put together. The stories between the pages of this publication are reminders to fight the urge of wanting to control things and to uncage ourselves from the obsession of agonizing over what will happen next.

Since the very first issue of this year, you and I, dear reader, have grown so much. I don’t know exactly what you’re going through but I’m sure a lot of moments have overwhelmed and shaped whoever we are now.

And if you’re currently facing something threatening right now, I’m not letting you choose whether to fight or fly. I am challenging you to break free from all the worries inside your head, and find comfort in the fact that Paul McCartney was right.

Fight and fly!

Oh and, happy holidays.

K

Contents Feature

Poetry

Fiction/Flash/Prose

11 Contributor's Corner (Poetry): Evelyn Benvie

39 Ghost Names Afterlife Tr-eye-angle

30 The Empress’s Hairdresser

JAZIE PILONES

14 Contributor's Corner (Fiction): Siaila Jagroop JOI VILLABLANCA

16 Going Visceral KYLA ESTOYA

24 The Middle Ground AIRA CALINA

ANSAH BEN

08 Jan Notzon SARAH ANNE

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

121 NewReader Mixtape

51 The Last Will Be First The Ungentrified Truth A Song For Sheroes BOB MCNEIL

60 Zombie Abracadabra Glitch 70 STRENGTHS I Envy the Small Things the future is in color EVELYN BENVIE

83 Cindergirl at the La Basse Sahara Dust GILBERTE O'SULLIVAN

90 Loose Gravel Fresh Eggs for Mama The Duel DARCY SMITH

Featured Bookstores 06 A Little Bookish Book Tree The Wind, The Willow

37 On the Way to Port Hardy ROBERT BOWERMAN

BOB BEAGRIE

New Reader Media

ANNINA CLAESSON

103 Goodbye in Case I have to Go DEWITT CLINTON

104 Things I Did While Trying to Come Up with a Dazzlingly Descriptive Title for this Poem RICK BLUM

45 Copperhead SHARON FRAME GAY

56 AUGUR TOTI O'BRIEN

67 Stranger EMILIA AMODIO

79 Her Blue Dress SIAILA JAGROOP

87 Next to the Snap Peas MARK TULIN

97 The Eyes Have It STEPHEN FOX

Writer’s Corner 115 Events, Conferences, Etc.

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Featured Bookstores

A Little Bookish

8898 Old Lee Hwy Suite 110, Ooltewah, TN 37363, United States A Little Bookish opened just one year ago. This bookstore aims to be a cozy community place where kids could play, parents could browse books, book clubs could meet, and new friendships could be formed.

In their fast growing town, there’s no place like this. The owner, Miranda Atkins, wanted to be sure that her space was warm and welcoming—a place where the world slowed down just a little. And of course, and maybe most of all, she wants A Little Bookish to celebrate books and those who love them!

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Book Tree

609 Market St, Kirkland, WA 98033, USA

Book Tree is Kirkland, Washington’s only bookstore carrying new and gently-used books. It also features a children’s room with award winning (and nominated) books. Plus beanbags and toys for play!

The store opened in November of 2016. It coordinates with more than a dozen local book reading clubs and makes personal recommendations to loyal customers. There are author events, signings, open mic readings, free creative writing workshops, and local artists display work for sale on its walls.

Writer and poet Chris Jarmick once produced TV shows in Los Angeles but has called the Seattle area his home since 1994. He never thought he would wind up owning and managing a bookstore 6 days a week, but most of the time loves helping people discover new authors and books of all types. If you are in the area, drop in to browse, socialize, and support a friendly neighborhood independent bookstore.

The Wind, The Willow

2610 Lee St. Greenville, Texas 75401, USA “What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.” - Neil Gaiman The Wind, The Willow Bookstore opened in March of 2018 in response to the only retail bookstore in town closing its doors. Owner, Mary Grace Rodriguez, says that their philosophy, like that of Neil Gaiman, is that a town can’t call itself a town short of having a bookstore.

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Featured Author

Jan Notzon INTVW BY SARAH ANNE

J

an Notzon, playwright and novelist, was born and raised on the Mexican border in Texas. After a stint in The Big Apple, he now makes his home in Charlotte, NC. His second novel, And Ye Shall Be As Gods, traces the story of Jake Kazmareck and his quest to discover the evil that plunged his beloved baby sister into despair, and his lost love into madness.

New Reader Media got a chance to talk to Jan Notzon. In this interview he shares to us why writers are exceptionally precious people.

NRM: When did you fall in love with writing? Did you always want to be a writer? Which writer influenced your style in writing?

Jan Notzon: Honestly, my first dream was to be an actor. But while studying, stories just came to me out of experiences, people I’d meet, philosophical questions I had about this life. I just found myself compelled to put them in dramatic and literary form.

Strange to say, I am probably most influenced by William Shakespeare, having loved his work basically all my life. Where the novel in particular is concerned, I look to John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy and others.

A writer can have many different roles.

NRM: What was your creative process in writing And Ye Shall Be As Gods?

How long did it take you to write it?

JN: Interestingly, I did a lot of free associating out on my deck. I’d write an idea here, a bit of dialog there, a plotline anywhere. Some days I’d free associate and write almost nothing, then other days, pages and pages. Somehow, it all came together.

Hard to remember how long it took, but it was a matter of years.

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NRM: In writing your books, are your themes or styles consistent?

JN: I’d say the themes are consistent in this sense that they all reflect my questions about this life that we share. My style is probably consistent, although I’ve written in first person, third person omniscient. And the one I’m working on now is written in first person from multiple points of view.

NRM: What do you think is the role of a writer in society?

JN: Well, I’d say a writer can have many different roles: he or she can just write to entertain, i.e. produce something that a reader can have fun with, which is a worthy goal in itself. Writers can examine history or social issues. They can explore what makes us what we are and they can even, if brave or foolish enough, explore the most fundamental philosophical issues that we as a reasoning species have wrestled with since the first time we stood erect and looked up at the sky and wondered where all this came from.

NRM: Are you working on something else right now?

JN: I am. I know only the absolute rudiments of my father’s family’s emigration from Poland. So, I’m just

letting my imagination go wild with how that decision and that incredible journey might have unfolded.

Contributor's Corner

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Poetry

Poetry is for the pieces of me I don’t get to be anywhere else. The experimental side of myself that prose just doesn’t have the heart to capture. I reveal parts of myself in poetry, but never the whole.

Benvie

Evelyn Benvie: I write poetry so I don’t have to talk about myself. Just kidding. I also think I’m funny, but I’ve been known to be wrong before. I write poetry and prose in my spare time, heavier on the prose right now.

I’m currently finishing the first book of a trilogy that’s equal parts fantasy, humor, and philosophy. I’m really excited about it! It’s so different from anything I’ve done before.

Even if it goes nowhere and never gets published, just finishing it will have been such a great learning opportunity for me.

NRM: Did you always have a heart for writing?

EB: I’ve been writing since elementary school. Not very well back then, but I think “heart” is a good word to describe it. The words might come from the brain, but the truth of a piece comes from the heart. In that way, I do put myself in my poetry, but not always honestly or fully.

n y

l e v

E

NRM: Tell us a little more about yourself.

NRM: Can you tell us what influenced you to write? What were your first compositions and struggles during the process?

JAZIE PILONES

EB: I started writing when one of my teachers—second or third grade, most likely—told us we had an assignment, and I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since. I wrote these poems specifically based on a series of different ideas: thinking about switching jobs, the oil spills earlier this year, and watching birds out my window.

That’s how I usually start a poem. With an idea that builds into a theme or image.

Then I build the hook or intro from that idea.

Next step is to figure out where I want the poem to go and how I want it to end.

The beginning and end are usually the easy part for me. It’s figuring out the bits in the middle I always struggle with.

Sometimes I’ll write the first and/or last stanza and then the poem will just sit there for days (or weeks or months) until I figure out what to do with it.

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Contributor's Corner

NRM: Who’s your favorite writer or artist of all time? And why?

EB: I would have to say Terry Pratchett. The Discworld series was formative in developing my appreciation for both writing and humor as a means of coping with the world. He’s my go-to comfort read when I can’t deal with anything else.

NRM: What are the themes and styles that you've developed since you've started writing?

EB: I have definitely become more experimental in my poetry since I started writing, both in terms of style and theme. I like to use all lower-case for especially raw or simple poems, and indentations in poems that are thematically broken or disjointed.

Prose works well for confessional poetry.

I never write exclusively in one style or on one theme for very long, although the environment has been featuring more in my poetry lately. I guess it’s hard to stop thinking about right now.

NRM: Based on what you've submitted, do you dedicate these pieces to a particular audience?

EB: People who are worried about the future, both their personal future and our collective one.

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

NRM: What’s the best advice (in writing or anything) you’ve ever received?

EB: This might sound crazy, but I was blown away by how easy it was to submit to literary magazines. Not get accepted, mind you, but to submit.

The creative writing professors at my college had made it seem like some arduous task that only the most battle-hardened writers could surmount. But then I heard about Submittable online (not at school, mind you) and found out how easy it was to send out my writing. It was a truly earthshattering moment for me.

I’m sorry, you probably wanted something profound. But to me, that moment when I realized that the only thing between me and potential publication was an email or an upload—that was profound.

EB: The most life-changing advice I ever received was to write 100 words a day. Or for 10 minutes. Or work on a single poem.

Set a small, achievable daily goal and stick to it. Then if you do more you’ll feel awesome about yourself, and if you miss a day you can catch up easily.

Know your own limits and be kind to yourself about them.

NRM: How did you define yourself before you started writing? How do you define yourself now?

EB: Before, I was someone who wanted to write but wasn’t sure I would be good enough at it. Now I define myself by my writing. I am someone who writes. I am good enough. And I’m getting better.

It’s a growing process, and I never want to stop learning.

NRM: Do you have words for aspiring writers/poets out there?

EB: Just keep at it. If you think you’re bad, keep at it. If you get rejected, keep at it. If you get discouraged, take a break. And then keep at it.

Writing isn’t glamor and instant fame.

It’s hard work, it’s tiring, and it’s the most rewarding thing you can do without leaving your computer chair. Once you find your voice, you’ll know you can never be silent again.

So keep at it.

Contributor's Corner

Siaila J A G R O O P JOI VILLABLANCA

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Fiction

I have heard many slogans and phrases about feeling complete and being confident about one’s identity, but personally I feel that there is a quiet beauty in still being about one’s identity and continuing to seek it out."

NRM: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Siaila Jagroop: I was born and raised in a little island nation in the South Pacific called Tonga. My father’s father was an Egyptian, who migrated to Fiji with his sister in the early 1910s, and then after the Spanish flu of 1918, he migrated to Tonga and married my grandmother, hence the last name Jagroop, which is not Tongan.

My grandfather was a crew member on the doomed maiden voyage of the Government of Tonga’s long liner M.V. Teiko in 1960, which disappeared and as my father was still too young at the time, I have never known anything more about that side of my family other than my last name.

My father has already passed away but my mother is still alive. I have an older sister and brother and I am the youngest. I am happily married with a daughter, who is only three and a half years old.

I was truly grateful for acquiring a scholarship from the Government of Japan in 2010, whereby I left for my studies in 2011 and was able to get a Master’s Degree in Intercultural Relations from Tohoku University, Japan. I also hold a Bachelor of Arts’ Degree from the University of the South Pacific with a double major in History Politics and English Literature, which my father paid for with his savings before he passed away, as I was a full-time private student.

NRM: What's one thing unique about you?

SJ: In terms of writing, I think the one thing unique about me is that I am still unsure of my identity.

Culturally and socially, I am a proud Tongan but sometimes I feel that there is a missing piece in me simply because I have never known anything more than a last name and few stories about my paternal grandfather.

I have heard many slogans and phrases about feeling complete and being confident about one’s identity, but personally I feel that there is a quiet beauty in still being about one’s identity and continuing to seek it out. I think that’s a unique quality because it makes a person a survivor, especially when facing tough odds.

the normal things that we always showcase, the dancing and the history and such things.

I would like to dedicate this story to my father, Peniueti Jagroop Sr., because he passed away while I was still in Fiji doing my Bachelors and I couldn’t catch an earlier flight to return home to see him while he was still in the hospital.

NRM: When did you start writing? Who are your early influences?

NRM: Being a writer, in what ways do superstitions or culture incorporate your work process?

SJ: I began writing when I had to take a Creative Writing course at the University of the South Pacific, as part of my English Literature Degree, and to my surprise I kept getting A’s in all of my short fiction stories. However, I never kept my writing going because I had to study and afterwards work so most of the time I would come up with stories inside my head but would never commit it into paper, until a few years ago when I started writing just “Her Blue Dress” and two other stories, which I haven’t finalized yet.

I think Chilean writer Isabel Allende is my greatest influence. In one of my courses for English literature, I had to study her novel The House of Spirits, and I remembered how much I loved that story and also just how touched I was with her skills of storytelling and her allegory approach.

NRM: How did you come up with 'Her Blue Dress' and are you dedicating it to anyone?

SJ: One night my husband and I were sitting at home watching a movie and we began telling each other some ghost stories about our real life experiences with ghosts.

As we were talking, I started to think about the plot for “Her Blue Dress"—of course at the time, I didn’t have that title yet. I kept thinking about it and started to write it because I felt that Tonga continues to exhibit our culture and traditions through

SJ: I believe that Tonga’s ghost stories is another cultural aspect of Tonga that deserves greater recognition than it is actually given. Because people are so caught up in the notion of modernity that they hardly ever explore the mystery factors. They always downplay our Tongan beliefs about spirits but I think that this is something that makes Tonga unique.

I love Tonga’s stories about spirits, and personally I feel that they are my inspiration at times, especially since I grew up with a grandfather who was lost at sea and his untold story of that fateful journey haunted my father and I often saw it in his eyes.

Perhaps Tonga’s superstitions and its cultural beliefs about spirits will one day bring us closure.

NRM: If you were to speak with a loved one who has passed, what would you like to say?

SJ: If ever I was able to speak to my father again I would say, "Sorry, I was late.”

NRM: As a writer, what do you think is your role in society?

SJ: Being storytellers, I believe that we don’t need to just focus on telling the extraordinary, we need to also tell the ordinary so that generations will see where we have been and even though it can be a little outdated but at least we can see our footsteps in the sand.

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Artist Profile

K

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TO ES A YL

YA

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Arts and Culture | USA

Ashley Obregon

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Artist Profile

Natalie Jeanean

Things can go wrong.

E

ven though we’re unique in our own little ways, there’s always one undeniable thing every human being has in common: we can’t stop worrying about what lies before us and we keep feeling guilty about what we left behind. One of the vital practices the great Stoics have passed on from generation to generation is learning to accept the course of things we can’t control. Right now the world seems to be paranoid over a lot of things, and debates about what’s right and who’s wrong are unending. People demand the same thing: the greater good for mankind. Yet here we are still in chaos.

Although, behind this mayhem there are other little things happening, like joy or solidarity, or even love. Sometimes we forget these things exist because we get caught up in our problems.

When we feel like the world is falling apart, our wild imagination overpowers what we’re supposed to do in the present moment.

Photographer Justin Rosenberg reminded me of this little dilemma we face every day. In his works of portraits and landscapes, he instills, in his words, the hope in the struggle. From misty backdrops to lonely corners of a room—each photograph depicts how we can feel a multitude of positive and negative emotions at the same time.

Kay Smythe

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Arts and Culture | USA

Annelisa

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Artist Profile

Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus and Ansel Adams—these are some of the photographers that inspired Justin’s eye. His love for photography goes way back to when he was young. Apart from the people mentioned, the real heroes would be his dad and his uncles. They were the ones who exposed Justin to the wonders of cameras. From there, he had an on/off relationship with taking photos. As soon as he got his first DSLR, things went headlong from puppy love to a deep and unbreakable relationship with photography. Like any other artist, his style and intentions kept evolving and progressing through his experiences. When two massive events happened in Justin’s life, namely him getting sober, and having his large intestines removed due to the complications of Crohn’s Disease, his perspective towards the world shifted.

Alexis Turner

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Arts and Culture | USA

Elizabeth Jordan

Justin’s photos demand you to be in the moment and to be hopeful in a present struggle. He mentions, “My work serves as a form of cathartic or comforting emotional escapism—for both the subjects and the viewers.” His photographs reflect his innermost thoughts that when hard times cease, we will always have to put up a constant fight with life—which isn’t bad news at all. This viewpoint isn’t just displayed in his works but also present in how he composes his photos. “I’m not much into mood boards and concepts. There’s something I love about the challenge of not knowing what exactly I’m doing,” he emphasized. “It could be less about creativity and more about keeping my brain active in the attempt to prevent Alzheimer’s down the road. Or maybe it’s just me rebelling against all the check-off-shot-lists of the corporate world.”

While finding fresh angles, exploring new places, or working with different models thrill him, Justin expects things to eventually go wrong but knows quite well that panicking is never an option. Since a lot of his portrait work is unplanned and unscripted, being in the scene for a while taught him that having backup equipment and knowing how to troubleshoot is a must.

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Artist Profile

My work serves as a form of cathartic or comforting emotional escapism— for both the subjects and the viewers.

Johanna Cool

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Arts and Culture | USA

Cherish Waters

For a while, he was an official photographer for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Los Angeles. It was one of his proudest moments: “I lost count of how many times I’d meet the family members of residents. Parents would thank me for taking positive photos of their family, and as a member of the sober community, that really meant the world to me. Plus, it’s also the rehab I went to get sober so they’ll always have a special place in my heart.”

A subject exposed to a remote or melancholic environment is the common genetic makeup of Justin’s photographs. We could think of endless theories about its narrative, but nothing would come as close to explaining why we are drawn to his photos. Maybe there is something in his works that subtly takes us to a far and rare moment where our emotions are uncertain yet comforting.

And in this moment, Justin lets us be the best versions of ourselves: vulnerable and captivating.

Astraia Esprit

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Features

Middle t h e

trimming the distance between polar opposites in the art world

AIRA CALINA

What is art?

I know what you’re thinking: “Why is she using such an unoriginal question to start her article for an art magazine?”

Now if I told you right off the bat that this was my first article for NRM, you could be thinking this instead: “Why is she using such an unoriginal question to start her first article for an art magazine?”

Allow me to defend my case. The question, for me, isn’t at all unoriginal, per se. I think anyone, at any time in the world’s shelf-life can ask it simply because to this day, it hasn’t been truly answered. Sure, there have been attempts to put a definite dictionary meaning to the word art, but nothing that has yet to appease everyone. I most definitely am not trying to take the most-coveted honor for myself, I’m simply hoping to upturn another rock on the path towards giving art a clear-cut characterization, if it ever is possible.

Well, here goes nothing.

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Arts and Culture | Philippines

Ground F

rom the last days of October to the first week of December this year, the world’s most visited multi-sensory exhibit has once again set camp at the Far East. Filipino art enthusiasts were graced with the opportunity to see glimpses of the genius Vincent van Gogh’s life through his art, in a surrealistically contemporary way. The NRM team was fortunate enough to get tickets to see its Manila installation shortly before they were sold out. Grande Exhibitions’ Van Gogh Alive: the experience is billed as an “unforgettable multimedia experience,” and it does, in fact, hold true. But how? Let me tell you.

The exhibition’s promoter invites us to “discover Vincent van Gogh’s art and life like never before.” It is, in all aspects of the word, modern, in that it is timely, futuristic, and technical. It makes use of SENSORY4, a system created and developed by Grande Exhibitions, which combines technology and the natural human senses to create a dreamlike immersive world that captivates people of varying generations and interests. In an interview I had with Grande Exhibitions, they described the system as a combination of motion graphics, surround sound, and the use of projection.

The exhibition’s arrangement may vary in the different locations it’s in. Just outside the primary demonstration area at the Mind Museum in Manila, what greeted us was a mini-gallery of some of Van Gogh’s works, along with brief descriptions of the pieces themselves, or about the time of his life when they were created. It also featured a life-sized physical replica of Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, complete with furniture shaped and colored as they are in the painting. People were allowed to interact with the elements and take pictures to create the gushy illusion of being in one of the places the artist was, and induce a comforting feeling of intimacy.

Inside the main chamber, exhibit-goers were taken through Van Gogh’s artistic journey with the use of vivid imagery straight out of the esteemed artist’s repertoire. The accompanying classical music was soothing, and each track was well-matched and perfectly-timed with whatever painting was projected on the walls. Taking of pictures and videos wasn’t prohibited, as long as they didn’t disrupt the experience of others. When we were there, I almost forgot I had to take photos for this piece—I somehow learned to live in the moment again.

I almost forgot I had to take photos for this piece—I somehow learned to live in the moment again.

But what does all this have to do with this article’s main point?

Well, it turns out that NRM bears some similarities to Grande Exhibitions’ purpose in doing what they do.

Grande Exhibitions, creator and designer of some of the world’s most successful exhibitions, has been in the game for more than a decade. After the success of Van Gogh Alive back when it was first launched in 2011 at The ArtScience Museum in Singapore, they went on with releasing new content and adding more multi-sensory elements. In fact, they very recently introduced the incorporation of the aroma senses into an experience.

I broke off from my usually anxious and shy self and puffed up my tenacious tendencies to try and get someone from Grande Exhibitions to do an interview with us. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to go on a Skype call with no less than the Head of Commercial Operations for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Rob Kirk—a very polite and nice person—and the interview felt like a normal chat.

I learned a lot, though. Definitely more than what you could learn from an everyday conversation.

Grande Exhibitions, according to Rob Kirk, has a mission of introducing a new or different audience to certain subject matters.

They aim to provide a fun yet equally educating option for those who either aren’t very familiar about them, or those who may have some knowledge or idea, but wouldn’t really choose to go the traditional route of art appreciation and education, like going to museums or prestigious galleries. Their main goal is “breaking down the boundaries and introducing a newer audience to art.” As is the case with Leonardo da Vinci, for example, whose works can

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Features

be very technical and detailed. Through the use of digital media in their Leonardo da Vinci Collection, they are able to present his pieces and inventions in a more enjoyable manner—especially for those who haven’t and couldn’t make a move towards exploring the complexities of his creations—and in a way that makes them easier to absorb and understand.

Kirk says that according to their demographic data, of the total population that goes to traditional museums and sees static images on walls, 10-15% isn’t interested at all. But then there’s this middle ground. Majority of them do want to see and appreciate art, but most likely want it to be presented differently. That middle ground, Kirk says, is where projects like Van Gogh Alive lie: the classic yet contemporary.

“A lot of it is probably to do with the family [and visitor] interaction, where we want to make sure that you have an element of education, and you’re pitching it to the adult audience, but you’re not finding [that] the children are bored in the experience, and not going into a static art gallery where they’re tugging on your coat sleeves and sort of saying, ‘Look, this is boring, let me get out of here.’” Kirk went on to say that it’s all about presenting something in a different way to make sure that a particular audience is engaged and entertained, because there’s tons of information for them to pick up in terms of the understanding and enjoyment of art. Doing that in a slightly different way to engage them is a big part of what they do.

Another thing they also wish to achieve is the bridging of gaps.

In my humble knowledge of traditional art, which is largely based on books and movies, the proper way to appreciate it (if there is such a thing) can only be achieved by a financially or geographically privileged few. Take me, for example. As a Van Gogh fan who cries whenever Don McLean’s Vincent plays, and refuses to watch unofficial copies of Loving Vincent after missing the one-time screening of the movie in the area, it is only obvious that going to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has been my lifelong dream. My financial and geographical privileges end at browsing through Tumblr for pictures of the museum’s outer walls. When news of Van Gogh Alive coming to Manila sprouted all over Facebook, I knew I just had to stretch out my arms and go for it. A few days after the trip was planned and my appointment with Rob Kirk was up, I just had to ask

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Majority of them do want to see and appreciate art, but most likely want it to be presented differently. That middle ground, Kirk says, is where projects like Van Gogh Alive lie: the classic yet contemporary. him how they came up with the idea of taking art outside of the more artistic countries and cities like Rome and Paris.

“It’s because people don’t have the opportunity, necessarily, to visit those parts of the world. It’s huge sections of the [global] population that don’t have the luxury, the ability to be able to travel to Amsterdam and visit the Van Gogh Museum… or go and visit the Vatican, or the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, or Galleria dell'Accademia in Milan to go and see the originals on display.”

As a modern art enthusiast myself, I found that to be very thoughtful. And if that isn’t enough, they also wish to close the distance between generations, at least when it comes to enjoying art.

It is very much easy to see how the exhibition is entrancing for people of all ages. The classical music tugs at the nostalgia of the older folks, while they enjoy the fresh take on the classics. The technological aspect of it appeals to the younger ones, who are, in turn, introduced to the golden tunes of the past.

So what of Vincent van Gogh? There were lots of other artists before, during, and after his time, ones who were more famous and had, subjectively, more “refined” techniques. Grande Exhibitions runs another travelling exhibition called The French Impressionists: Monet to Cézanne, but as the name implies, it is but a collection of various artists. Why is there an exhibition dedicated solely to Vincent

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van Gogh? Kirk says there are quite a few reasons as to how that came to be.

He says he sees a natural appeal to the genius. For one, there is no denying the aesthetic quality of Van Gogh’s works.

The vibrant colors, the way they are fused together in every piece, and the subjects they portray all make for an interesting showing in large format. Add to that the fact that his is a tragic story that intrigues people more than a hundred years after his passing.

Again, this traces back to the original question I started all this with. Not very many people considered Van Gogh’s art to be worthy of recognition then. If he were alive today, he’d probably be nodding, not in agreement, but because he was right when he said, “If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”

His life is one for the movies, books, songs, and just about any cultural depiction you can think of. The collective art world decides what makes art art, so to speak. Although Van Gogh’s eccentricities weren’t readily received when he was alive, people have since seen the quality of his work and the immensity of his artistic reach.

Kirk says, however, that that doesn’t mean other artists’ creations won’t work as concepts—in fact, they’re constantly discussing which luminaries to showcase next—only that you could definitely see why people would get drawn to Van Gogh.

Grande Exhibitions takes pride in the fact that they are able to introduce a new way to see art. They want to clarify, however, that they are not trying to take audiences of the traditional approach away.

“It's just about making sure that it becomes a compelling story to tell—and I think that for us, at the end of the day, we are storytellers, so we try to look for the right story to tell. That drives a lot of our decisions in the content that we create, or the partnerships that we forge,” Kirk says.

The way I see it, these events are great ways to disperse what needs to be made known. it’s these kinds of events that aim to educate more people in more ways than previously imagined that we should take time patronizing, and we should be glad more people are now open to possibilities of all kinds.

I think I’ve exhausted all my musings after seeing Van Gogh Alive and after the lovely chat with Rob Kirk. Did I define art? Was this article able to provide a valid answer to that unrelenting age-old question? Were my attempts at blending facts with my own personal views significant at all? No, no, and maybe (I hope). What I know is that it would be nice if we could stop ourselves from making the same mistake that many before us have made in the past; art is better off not being secluded in a four-walled room with floor-to-ceiling

windows and glass doors to make it look like it has no boundaries.

The mere argument that it has to have a meaning is defeating its entire purpose of expressing the distinct and unexplainable inner workings of any individual. Besides, letting art free makes it a lot more fun, too!

Before I leave you to enjoy the other great things in this issue (and we’ve prepared lots for you!), let me just say that this is, in no way, an attempt to do away with the traditional tone that a lot of us have set our foundations on. It’s purely a proposition to not overlook or discredit something just because it is outside of the norms. Whether I’m talking about Van Gogh and his struggles in his last years, or Grande Exhibitions’ au courant take on showcasing art, or the general dilemma of the modern creative, I leave for you to decide. As has been the intended theme of this whole think piece, I wouldn’t ever dream of putting your beautifully restless thoughts in a cage—just remember to let them set foot on middle grounds sometimes.

It's just about making sure that it becomes a compelling story to tell—and I think that for us, at the end of the day, we are storytellers, so we try to look for the right story to tell.

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Literary Work

The Empress’s Hairdresser ANNINA CLAESSON

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he first time I met my neighbor, he was humming a Françoise Hardy song while vomiting down his own shirt.

I had just come in from the market, my sore arms hanging on to heads of cabbage. As the insides of his stomach poured out of his mouth, the sounds he made were nothing like the unlovely noises that I would have produced in such a state. It was a wet melody. I could not name the song. I had not come into the habit of listening to the radio.

He did not look at me, but I could not move my feet, only gawk.

Spread out across the wooden stairs, he blocked the way to my new door. A tall and gangly man, his limbs all bent at improbable angles.

His neck could not keep his head straight.

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Fiction

Natalia Hubbert

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Eventually, he ran out of song. Soon thereafter, his body too seemed to have been emptied. I studied the patterns of vomit he had created across the floor, like spilled water in the sand. These stairs, too close to the Champs-Elysées and too far from the local market, were not carved out for vomit. The contrast appeared deliberate, even artful. I wondered what the gardienne would think.

He opened his eyes and looked at me as if he expected me there.

“Good day, Monsieur,” I said. “Are you alright?”

“Thérèse?” he grumbled, his voice far less clear than when it had been employed in song. “I am perfectly fine. Leave me be.”

“I don’t believe we have met. I moved in with my husband on the third floor three weeks ago.”

“Just go on your way, you deal with enough babies in your salon.”

I looked around for a good resting spot for my cabbages, and found one on the steps of the stairs I had just come from. Carefully, as to not ruin my new shoes, I made my way to his side and offered him my arms.

“Do you live here?”

He did not take up on my offer. He let his head roll to his left, staring into the wallpaper for a moment, and then made a spasmic attempt to stand up on his own. His right foot appeared to fold under the weight of him, and he fell over on his side. I reached out my arms a little further, and he finally rolled his eyes over to me.

He gesticulated to the door on our right.

“This one’s mine.”

He looked down at his own shirt. Just like the stairs, it looked expensive enough to make something beautiful even of this type of decoration. He scoffed at himself.

“It’s alright, Monsieur,” I said. “We all have those days.”

At last, he took my arm. His body was lighter than it should have felt, hollowed out from a fuller state. I heaved him off the stairs and tried not to breathe through my nose.

There were only a few steps to the door. Whatever had happened to my new neighbour’s stomach had caught him just before he could have entered privacy. I asked him to fish out his keys. He shook his loose head and turned the handle on his door, giving way without protest.

As soon as we had stepped foot inside his apartment, he yanked himself loose from me, sinking onto a footstool by the coat rack with his head between his large palms. My attention was caught by what I momentarily mistook for the emerging hostess of the household, before I noticed that she was encased in glass.

A Japanese doll probably measuring two-thirds of my size, wrapped in layers of robes, her hair rolled up into a sphere, her mouth a thin, orange line hinting at a welcome.

My neighbor noticed me staring and wheezed out a laugh.

“That doll is a present from the Empress of Japan,” he said.

I was not sure whether I should laugh at the joke. I ended up with a short-lipped smile mimicking that of the doll. After the silent pause grew too awkward I offered: “On what occasion?”

“In return for her hair.”

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My neighbor offered no further explanation, but sighed and curled up into a ball on the footstool. At last, my feet caught up with what the stale air was telling me, and carried me back towards the door. I mumbled my farewells and glanced over my shoulder, the doll’s face the only thing in the room returning my politeness, and closed the door behind me.

I reclaimed my shopping bags from the floor and made my way up the stairs, skipping steps to avoid the pools of vomit. I did not tell my husband about any of it.

The second time I met my neighbor, I was not alone. My husband had brought me to a relatively affordable bistro that his new colleagues at the insurance company had recommended. I had not left the apartment much since we moved in. The kitchen table had started to smell more and more like pity with every meal.

My neighbor burst out of his door just as we were passing down the stairs. I almost did not recognize him in his upright state. This time, his silk shirt was pristinely white.

“Oh good day!” I said without thinking. My husband, one step behind me and always late in noticing people around him, almost crashed into him. If not for that, I believe my neighbor would have ignored us altogether.

“Please excuse me”, he said without greeting. “I need to go meet Brigitte Bardot.”

With that, he darted away in a rush of lanky limbs, leaving behind a whiff of copious cologne. My husband squinted his eyes, the way he looked when listening to the evening news. We both paused still in the foyer, overwhelmed by a presence and a scent we still did not understand.

When we made it to the entrance, we both knew to stop in front of the doorbell to study the list of surnames whose faces we had yet to meet.

“First floor,” said I. “Paganini. That must be him.”

“Like the composer?” my husband asked. “What a neighborhood, huh?”

I wondered if it was somehow Brigitte Bardot’s fault that I had met him in such a compromised state. The next time I let my fingers brush the glossy pages of a ladies’ magazine, I refused to look at her pictures.

The third time I met my neighbor, he was crying. Smoking a cigarette in the hallway on a sweltering July morning, I caught him on the way home from the post office. His shirt was covered in lilac polka dots, like tiny flower petals. I asked him what the matter was.

“Cleopatra!” he choked. Tears and smoke and sweat all ran down his face. His cologne was overrun by the smell of liquor as I approached him. “Cleopatra is the matter!”

“I’m sorry?”

“I always wondered why certain gods favor some people more than others. I was good enough for the Japanese spirits. The bestial Egyptian pantheon prefer Alexandre. What do you think of that?”

I paused. “I was raised in a convent, Monsieur. I don’t know much of foreign religions.”

Fiction

“That so?” he said with eyebrows raised, and my chest panged in alarm at this sudden genuine interest in my person. “And now you perm your hair.”

He gave off a noise that could have passed for either a scoff or a sob. “Read the papers,” he told me, and finished his cigarette.

So I did. Over the next few weeks, I scoured every headline in search of some mention of Cleopatra. I asked my husband if he had heard any strange news from Egypt, but he did not even hear my question. Finally, I found it on the cover of a glossy ladies’ magazine, cooing from the news kiosk window about the freshly released photos of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in a new American film.

I bought the magazine and sat down on the nearest bench to gulp down the article.

The name Alexandre might as well have been written in gilded letters. It was followed by the epithet “de Paris” as if he was some kind of lord. He had transformed Elizabeth Taylor into Cleopatra using scissors and a comb, entombing her in black curtains of hair covered in tendrils of gold. The magazine only contained pictures of the creation and none of its creator. Hairdressing, nevertheless.

“Your first name is not Alexandre”, I told him, triumphant, the next time I caught him smoking outside. This time he was not crying, but my words pricked something in his eyes.

“I am painfully aware”, he responded, and I could not help but feel a little smug that this time I was the one who had got him confused.

“So what is it?”

“Antonio”, he responded, as it if it had been that easy all along.

“Antonio Paganini”, I added.

“But not Antoine, and not of Paris.”

His words were cut off by a violent cough, as if to sabotage his attempt to maintain his air of mystery.

After that day, I lost count of how many times I met my neighbor.

No longer afraid of him, I started greeting him as casually as I had my neighbors in the village, stopping to chat about the weather on my way to the market. I invited him to have a Sunday meal with us once, but he declined. Sometimes he would indulge in politeness as if I was his kindly aunt upstairs who had never seen him with sick down his shirt, asking me how my husband was.

Most days, I answered “absent”. His work demanded long hours of him, and many were the nights when my only contact with him was when he crept into our bed in the dark around midnight. I spent most of my lonely nights sewing shopping bags, pillows, and lavender pouches.

Some days, my neighbor was not alone when I found him. Young and old men leaning against his door frame. I would never bother him when he had company.

Once, I came across him chatting outside his door with a short man with a thin-sliced moustache covering his lip, dressed in a white tuxedo. It was impossible not to eavesdrop “The weasel is unwell,” my neighbor said with his hand on the door handle. “You have not been to Sieradz in years.”

“Nonsense. He even calls Liz to check on me.”

“He will die and you will not even remember him, will you, Alexandre?”

The short man hissed something venomous in response, but only the smell of his sentiment made his way up the stairs. Later, I was sure I heard the crash of a breaking glass bottle.

My neighbor became friendlier as time passed. His skin became paler and his suits started hanging off his shrinking frame, but his cheeks were still red and rounded into smiles.

It took him a year and three months to invite me in for a drink. I dropped my paper bag full of vegetables in his hallway, next to the empress’s doll, and clinked glasses of kir, squirming myself into his velvet chairs to make myself comfortable. There were dirty dishes all over his marble kitchen counters.

“Why is it all men styling the hair of women?” I asked him.

“Some women’s hair is just hair”, he explained. “Others can become works of art that ripple across the whole world. Look at your perm. Do you know who curled that?”

“Margaux, from my old village.”

“No, no. It was the old weasel. He invented it. Long ago, he put it on a woman whose name you do not even know, yet you wear her hair. Creating hairstyles means seeing your art on strangers everywhere, years after you have painted it.”

I thought of Margaux’s hands, the callouses, the stains from dyes and treatments, her chipped nail polish. I thought of the feeling of her fingers rubbing into my scalp, the slight pain of her comb raking through my tangles, warm air blowing through the strands. Worldly music on the radio, the dog yapping, the youngest daughter yawning over the cashier in the back. None of that seemed like the domain of men. In fact, her salon had always bizarrely reminded me of the convent from my childhood.

“Is it still yours, then?” I asked.

“Well, not mine, certainly. It is the weasel’s, or Alexandre’s at this point. I have accepted my lot in life as a counterfeit. Cheers to that.”

He finished his drink in one swoop.

My neighbor had been sick from the moment I met him. The longer I knew him, the more impossible his ailment became to ignore. It was his profession and his nature to put lacquer over ugly things, but gloss will not cover up blood and bile on the stairs at seven in the morning.

I had heard him groaning all the way from the bed in my room.

Careful not to wake my husband, I stepped out in my nightie to find him convulsing in a heap of fresh vomit, one arm raised taut, his palm pressed against his own door. A pitiful supplicant to his own home.

“What have you been drinking?” I asked as I rushed to his side, as if that was the question that would get him on his feet again. His eyes were rolling like glass marbles, burst with red, covered by a watery membrane. He was twitching in strange places as I picked him up by his shoulders.

The door was open. By that point, he often forgot to lock it. He reached out to pull the handle himself, but his hand fell limp halfway through the motion.

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The Japanese doll appeared cruel with her painted hint of a smile in the hallway. The doll would never give this man a kind welcome.

I propped him up on a mustard-colored armchair in the salon, letting his head roll from shoulder to shoulder. His low groans rumbled like thunder. The apartment did not feel safe.

“I will call for a doctor.”

“Antonio. That’s me.”

“Yes, that’s right”, I told him, encouraging him like a child. “Antonio.”

I had never called him by his first name before that moment.

“Antonio de Paris!” he exclaimed, his eyes bulging wide like a spooked animal. I thought of the boars roaming around the woods of my village.

I patted him, helpless, on his shoulder. I was no nurse. I had no idea how to comfort grown men. I started to pull away in order to find his telephone, but he reached out after me. He did not really touch me, but rather poked at my wrist.

“The weasel is gone,” he said, small cascades of saliva escaping his mouth as his mouth loosened to form vowels. “Left. Left me nothing.”

As if this explained everything, he fell silent.

“You are Antonio,” I offered.

“I am nothing.”

Soon after that, he was hospitalized. It was not just his liver, but something in his blood that had been irreversibly tainted. He left me a note the second time they called him in, slipped onto my doormat when I came home with trout from the Saturday market. It said that he would be spending some weeks at the Saint-Louis hospital, as if on holiday, and asked me not to visit.

My husband had never made much comment on our neighbor, and I had assumed he understood little of the particular relationship we had cultivated. Usually, around our dinner table, we talked as if there was no Champs-Elysées outside our window, as if we still could not afford to buy cheese, as if there was still only woods and village and miners surrounding us. To speak of someone like Antonio as a friend rather than a specimen of wealthy eccentrics seemed heretic.

I had never expected my husband to mention the note. Yet, as we were eating the trout for lunch, he said: “So the hairdresser is in hospital.”

I felt an electric shock of alarm spark in my chest, as if I had something to feel guilty about. I struggled to find a response.

“He is not doing well.”

“Why does he not want you to visit?”

My husband had never sounded so direct, so accusatory. Yet he was peeling his potatoes with half an eye on the television, calm as always. I was frozen with the fork in my hand.

“He does not like people to see him in that state.”

I throught my husband was intelligent enough not to misunderstand. I couldn’t have an affair or anything like that even if I wanted to, I could have said, but I knew that would have been too much.

“But you already have.”

“He would like you too,” I said. “We should invite him for lunch.”

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My husband shrugged, swallowed half a boiled potato, and changed the subject to the midday news.

The idea stuck with me, so once my neighbor had returned from hospital and had spent a few days at least visibly in an acceptable condition, I invited him to join us both for a Sunday lunch in our apartment. He accepted with a pale grin.

The meal was a thoroughly awkward affair. I had warned my husband not to offer wine, yet he forgot himself in his nervousness and asked Antonio if he wanted an aperitif. My neighbor poured himself a generous serving, and I bit my tongue.

“When did you start going bald?” my neighbor asked my husband over the salad, his hollow cheeks already reddened.

My husband blinked. “Too early.”

“There are good serums for that nowadays. Your moustache is quite handsome, however. Well-kempt.”

“I thought you only coiffed women.”

“There are women with moustaches too, you know.”

He laughed like a village man at this. As the meal went on, both I and my husband fell more and more silent as Antonio derailed into anecdotes about Brigitte, the Polish minister’s daughter, and Audrey Hepburn.

“I thought you lost that contract,” I was foolish enough to say, even without a drop of muscat.

“Still talked to her. Still stuck-up as a stuffed peacock.”

By the time we had got to the cheese, Antonio finally waved his fork around to point at my husband.

“So what’s the story? When did you rescue the little convent mouse here?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She was going to be a nun, no? And you swept in from the mine, coughing up the sous to take her away.”

My husband’s upper lip was twitching. I was not sure how much wine he had swept. He never showed signs of drunkenness. Neither had I ever seen him truly angry. That was the reason I had taken a liking to him. Not the money.

“I would prefer,” I said, with perfect calm, slicing through the goat cheese, “if you did not refer to me as a mouse.”

My neighbor smirked. My husband chewed cheese with defiance.

We never made it to dessert, as my neighbor escaped to our bathroom to vomit just as I had got up to bring in the cake.

About a month after that, I came home from the Wednesday market to find my husband in the salon having returned early from the office. He was staring into the blackened TV screen, refusing to look me in the eye.

“I am leaving you,” he said.

I dropped my cabbages onto the floors. I had long stopped my daily prayers, but in that minute, I begged the Blessed Virgin for all my wordless desires for all of sixty seconds.

My neighbor found me sobbing on the staircase. I tried to pinpoint how old this made me feel—a toddler having scraped her knees? A fourteen year old girl experiencing her first heartbreak? A baby left behind by parents fading away into nameless pestilence?

Fiction

Incomprehension was the wettest emotion. Grief had not yet set in.

My neighbor stopped in his tracks, upright and lucid, to look at me as snot and tears mingled down my cheeks. I was no Elizabeth Taylor, regal and elegant with single eye-drop tears rolling down my porcelain cheeks. I could hum no melody. My chest was heaving like a cooing pigeon, each sob a suffocation. I had never breathed so loud.

He did not move, and he did not touch me. He just stared, straight-faced and somber, as I shook off the first waves. Once they had subsided, he leapt into action, and offered me his arm. I was about to apologize when he asked: “Your perm has always been a tragedy. Would you like a cut?”

I nodded yes without hesitation.

He led me through the three steps necessary to reach his door. He had crossed it on wobbly legs many times. We both knew by then that he would not repeat the journey for much longer.

The empress’s doll did not seem to mock me in her greeting this time. It was his housecat, I realized, only kind to those who had proven their worth.

My neighbor led me through the hallway into the salon, where he pulled me away from the chaise-longue draped in velvet in favor of a more austere wooden chair. With all the dexterity and swiftness of a true professional, he had his tools out and wrapped me in a sheet.

He asked me to lean back my head against the back of my chair. His now-skeletal fingers only lightly brushed my scalp. Massaging the oils into my roots only took a few swirls of motion before his hands were armed with metal scissors and combs.

“It is not my fault, is it?” was the only thing he asked as he worked.

“No,” I answered. It was not my husband who had misunderstood things. It was I. I felt tufts of my curls fall off my shoulders in clumps. Unlike Margaux, who would let her scissors linger over gossip and giggles, my neighbor was a strategist in choosing which bits to cut first and how, never returning to the same strands twice. It was less of a therapy and more of a purge. I kept my eyes closed, feeling my head lighten.

When he was done, he tapped me on the shoulder to wake me, and presented my reflection in a gilded mirror. My hair was now shorter than I had ever seen it. No longer a habit-shaped cone of curls around my face, it was wrapped in a layered bob, tucked behind my ear on one side. I saw more of my face than I had in a long time. No Hollywood beauty or foreign monarch. Just my own face.

He raised his eyebrows to ask how I liked it, revealing the hollows of his emaciated face. I did not smile, but I nodded.

“You know, I have been meaning to ask you,” he said. “When I am gone, is there anything you would like from this apartment?”

I tilted my head, unaccustomed to its new weight, as if to listen for whatever object called out to me in the room. The salon remained silent. Instead, I turned my gaze over my shoulder, toward the front door.

He understood.

“I am sure you will give her a wonderful home”.

This was our final conversation.

When my neighbor had died, I was one vulture among many in his apartment. I am fairly sure that I saw Brigitte Bardot waltz out of the hallway just as I entered, though she did not look much like her pictures. Elegant women with perfect sadness painted on their faces, confused gangly boys, a woman in her fifties with her hair cropped to the roots who took my hand and introduced herself as Thérèse. No sign of Alexandre.

They stuck their fingers in every gilded nook and cranny, claiming combs, scissors, books, entire chaise-longues. No one touched the Japanese doll, out of respect for the note that had been left at her feet: “for my neighbor”. I took her into my arms and led her away from the home that my neighbor had finally abandoned.

My husband quit his job and moved back to our village, taking care of an old windmill and growing lettuce with his brother. We settled most of the divorce papers by post. I was later told that he married the niece of one of the sisters who had raised me.

I put the doll next to the dining table in my new apartment in the fifteenth arrondissement. We shared our meals together just the two of us most of the time.

One Sunday, I had the idea of going down to the textile store to stock up on cotton stuffing and felt. The empress’s doll perched over my shoulder as I spent the next few weeks making her a friend. A boy this time.

Once he was finished, I dressed him in a golden silk shirt, and placed him on top of the cabinet where I kept my muscat behind locked mahogany doors. Whenever Françoise Hardy started singing on the radio, I imagined him smiling.

Annina Claesson is a researcher and freelance writer currently based in Paris, France. She has previously been shortlisted for the Junior August Prize by the Swedish Publisher’s Association as well as the Literary Taxidermy anthology contest. Her journalistic work has been published in The Globe Post, HuffPost UK, and openDemocracy. She makes a point of participating in or setting up a creative writing workshop wherever she goes. So far, that has included Scotland, France, the United States, and Japan.

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Prose

On the Way to Port Hardy ROBERT BOWERMAN

T

he cops are there to see him off. “Are you going to be alright? Is anybody waiting for you on the other side?” a female constable asks. I move away so I can’t hear. You can see he’s a mess. One hand holds up his trousers, in the other a halfopen duffel bag crammed with clothes. He’s four sheets to the wind, and it looks like the slightest breeze will blow him right away.

On the ferry from Alert Bay, he corners me and tells me his girl’s left him, that they’d been together for four years and that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, and can I give him a ride. I’m not so keen, but I’ve stood where he’s standing now, and I can’t say no. He shows me his red and black button blanket that’s missing one button and tells me he owns part of a fishing boat and that he’s a hereditary chief and maybe it’s true though he seems a little young.

When I ask him, he tells me he doesn’t know what happened to his belt and I wonder if the cops took it away from him while he was inside and didn’t give it back.

On the way up, I go as fast as I can. It’s only forty minutes, but I figure I can make it in thirty. The headlights bounce off the fog and a soft rain builds to where I have to turn on the wipers. He tells me he feels sick and I tell him to put his head between his knees and to take deep breaths and to let me know if he’s going to puke, but he says it's not that kind of sick and I know what he means because I have felt the same way.

“Am I going to be OK? Am I going to be OK?” he asks over and over and I don’t know what to say back because I wasn’t. Later he sings and I join in because I know the song and it seems like the right thing to do. Then he asks me if I can buy him a mickey, and I say no, that it won’t help. I know. I tried that and it didn’t.

To take our minds off things, I ask him about fishing. He says he fishes for halibut and explains that he does it with a long line with many hooks and that he likes being out on the water because it’s quiet and he can think better there and I wonder if I should try that sometime but I know I won’t.

He asks to be let off at a mall on the outskirts of Port Hardy and I wonder if he’ll be safe, but he says that there’s only his uncle and that they don’t get along. It’s late which means nothing’s open except the cop shop and that feels all wrong, so I let him out. We shake hands and then we hug, and we hang on to each other and neither of us wants to let go.

As I drive away, I see a group come towards him. I cut the engine and roll down the window so I can hear. And someone says ‘where have you been? Are you back for good now?’ and everybody laughs and pats him on the back, and I think that everything’ll work out after all. From behind the group, a young woman with a pixie haircut, tattoos and a jean jacket runs, and then jumps and throws her arms around him and her thighs straddle his waist and I’m a little jealous as I drive off.

Robert Bowerman is a retired teacher living on Vancouver Island. Because of a misspent youth he can order beer in several languages. He knows just enough of each to get himself into trouble. He has received the Meadowlarks Award for Short Fiction from Vancouver Island University in 2019 and has twice received honourable mentions in the Vancouver Island Contest for Short Fiction (2018 and 2019). His poetry has been published in The Nav (2019).

Péter Gudella

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Poetry

Ghost names ANSAH BEN

My cone head is a dungeon of flesh and bones, mixed with a pinch of unknown faces tangled in despair and isolation.

I’ve kissed boredom. And its beauty is exquisite.

I’ve strangled the void in tomorrow – and like a domino, watched it trigger sequences of sadness.

In my good days, I give shapes to shadows, marked X and Y – And in my bad days, I stitch the limbs of torments dismembered, lying motionless within.

I’ve never known love, so I write names for closure – names like: S andy U rsula I vy C andice I rene D orothy E va SUICIDE

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Poetry

Afterlife ANSAH BEN

We had no idea of life, before birth Will there be life after death?

On earth the body slumbers deep To a world where spirits sleep.

Oh, you flesh and bone Will you remain in the tomb alone?

Men’s eyes are buried in the clouds But their souls are wrapped in tombs of shrouds.

Wander not in ruins of lies For a safe haven in the skies And when you’re no longer brave Sleep peacefully in the grave– For your shadows are cast upon a hill Where just and unjust men remain still.

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Poetry

Tr-eye-angle ANSAH BEN

Sometimes, sitting in silence brings thoughts of violence – I’m under shades of grey and greens, smiling with the ghost that I’m yet to be.

Mom is curved like a scythe, and she resents every smile that I carved across her face – she says I’ve left a northern scar on her memory.

In times like this, a father’s disdainful stern amongst cola-red eyes could comfort the violence within; but mine (father) is trapped somewhere between cassava tubers and worm infested earth.

Sometimes, the weight of responsibility compels me to visit the graves of unremembered names where I last saw myself.

And at times, I become one with the warm ambers of the sun rising within the silent shores of my heart.

Bernard Owusu Ansah, who goes by the pen name Ansah Ben, is a Ghanaian-born poet who has had a long-term interest in the welfare and growth of young people. He discovered poetry after a long battle with depression, and writes to raise awareness to mental illness. He is currently offering a Higher National Diploma in Marketing at Accra Technical University.

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Fiction

Copperhead SHARON FRAME GAY

I

f it isn't one thing, it's another," my mother was fond of saying.

It seemed to be her answer for everything. She said it when I was sick, if the hens quit laying eggs, or a storm was comin'. There was no way of knowing by her statement if we were heading for a train wreck, or just a bumpy ride.

So I paid scant attention when she reeled through the door one morning, mumbling about one thing or another, and fell into the chair at the kitchen table.

"Go fetch Daddy, Charla, and tell him to drive me into town."

"What's wrong?" I asked, peering out from behind the book I was reading. It was the good part, and I resented stirring from my chair and going out to the field to holler Daddy in.

"Copperhead," she said, then collapsed.

Her arm was swollen, turning black, and there were several distinct holes in it. More than one snake bite. My heart thudded.

I didn't stop to put on my shoes, but raced across the fields through the dirt, rocks, and clumps of manure. I elbowed my way through the cornfield, the stalks taller than a grown man, following the sound of our tractor. Daddy was at the far end of another field.

I screamed and motioned with my arms until I thought they'd fall off, but he was driving in the other direction. Pin-wheeling across the newly planted furrows, I decided yelling was doing nothing but hurt my throat, because he couldn't hear me anyway.

Daddy reached the end of the row and turned the tractor around.

When he saw me, he sped up, stopped a few feet away, and climbed down. I told him what happened. We cut across the fields together, Daddy in his panic leaving the tractor running.

"Charla, you run over to the Beasley's! Call the fire department.

Maybe they can meet us halfway up the road to town! Tell 'em it's snakebite!"

I split off and sprinted down the gravel road to the Beasley farm, my bare feet cut and bloody. Nobody was home. Their cars were gone, and the dogs were sleeping under the porch. The doors were never locked, so I flew up the steps and threw myself over the threshold, knocking over a pile of books on a small table as I reached for the phone.

I talked to the fire department, then saw Daddy's truck as it sped by the window. Like a farm dog, I burst out the door and chased after my mother and father until they disappeared over a hill. Then I put my hands on my thighs, bent over and retched.

Wang Bin

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* After Mama died that day, sorrow roosted in our hearts. It was confusing, because Copperheads are usually found down by the creek that divides our property from another farm, twenty acres from our house.

"Why was your mother all the way down at the crick? I don't understand." Daddy said it over and over as we sifted through our grief and shock. It was a mystery. One we'd probably never figure out, but nothing would ever be the same again.

I didn't feel the same either, tip-toeing to the barn the next morning in knee-high rubber boots to fend off snakes. Using a pitchfork, I poked through the straw before loading the manure into a wheelbarrow and dumping it behind the building. I was horrified, frightened and heartbroken, emotions swirling like oil in a puddle.

The whole town turned out for Mama's funeral. After the service, we formed a caravan of cars and trucks, raising dust on the dirt road to the cemetery. The preacher led us through the ceremony, then The Lord's Prayer. My boyfriend, Britt, known as Codger among our friends, was restless as we stood together by the grave, his skin itching from a wool blazer he'd borrowed from an older brother. He shifted from side to side until I wanted to punch him in the arm. * "Charla, baby, I don't know what to do." Codger said later that night. We were in the backseat of his old greasy Chevy, with enough mysterious stains on the seat that it looked like one of those modern art paintings. Codger had his pants unzipped, bare-chested, dusty boots still on his feet. He rose off me and lit a Camel, blew the smoke out in a lazy ring.

I pulled down my skirt and swung my legs around. Reaching for his cigarette, I took a drag and kept the smoke in my lungs until it burned.

"There's nothing you can do," I patted his leg. "I know you're sorry. Everybody's sorry. But it won't bring my mama back. I need you to love on me, just a little bit."

Codger sucked the last remaining tar from the cigarette, then tossed it out the window. He was a big farm boy. The kind of kid who plays tackle on the high school football team, square headed and beefy. He was one of those boys who looked all grown up, even as far back as sixth grade. That's why we call him Codger. He could pass for twenty-one years old now, which was a bonus when he drove over to the next town to buy booze. We'd guzzle a beer or two, then head for the backseat most Saturday nights.

But tonight was different. Codger couldn't get worked up enough to make love. I guess he kept thinking about that damned snake and what happened, shameful that he was trying to poke the newly departed's daughter off to the side of an old farming road. My begging for comfort and affection gave him the willies. I can't say I blamed him. I wasn't behaving like myself.

We crawled back into the front seat, and Codger drove me home in silence. He walked me to the door with a flashlight, both our heads swiveling around, looking for coiled vipers hidin' in the grass.

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Daddy was upstairs asleep. A half empty whiskey bottle and a cloudy glass rested on the table, right where Mama collapsed. Our dog Pal snuffled at my legs and wagged his tail, looking around for Codger.

"He's gone home, Pal." I patted his head and climbed the stairs. My room was the same, but everything had changed. That Copperhead ruined our lives. I looked out the window towards the barn, and saw one of our cats creeping along the building, hunting for mice. But in my mind's eye a viper was waitin' in the weeds.

My heart sped up. I tried to relax, and sat on the bed paging through a magazine, but couldn't land on the words. It was futile.

That snake slithered into our lives and turned it upside down forever. * The following spring, I looked out at the auditorium on graduation night. My father sat alone in his only suit, no tie, hands in his lap like he was at church. I saw the bald spot on top of his head, a vulnerable patch of skin pushing away at his hair like one of those mysterious crop circles. When they gave me the diploma, I blew him a kiss, saw the tears in his eyes all the way from the stage.

Afterwards, the graduates piled into cars and drove out to Custer Lake, lugging coolers full of booze and food. We sat on top of the picnic tables and toasted each other. Two of my girlfriends were pregnant, sealing a time honored tradition of marrying right after graduation. This is what we did in our small town. We grew up, we mated, we reproduced. Codger and I just got lucky, I guess. It wasn't for lack of doing the deed.

I didn't want to marry him anyway, and I know for sure he wasn't interested in marrying me. He was off to the University of Nebraska next fall on a football scholarship. A Cornhusker flag was attached to the antenna of his car, fluttering in the breeze like a knight who won a jousting match.

I had no idea what I was going to do. Daddy needed help at the farm with Mama gone. We didn't have the money for college. I was pretty much stuck.

Grizzled old Mike Taylor, who owned the Elbow Room Tavern on the seedy side of Main Street, hired me to wait on customers, sweep the floors and wipe tables. I soon learned to hate the smell of booze and smoke. The men who sidled up to the bar had known me all my life, and known my parents too, but they looked me up and down like I was the Tuesday special at Mary's Diner next door.

Sometimes on a Friday night, younger men piled into the Elbow Room, gathered around the jukebox, talkin' loud and smoking hard.

Codger would wander in when he was home from school, but our romance had sputtered and died. He didn't even try to pick me up.

He sat in his college sweatshirt and told adventurous tales to our old high school friends. I'd walk up with a tray of beers and his eyes shifted away, like he was ashamed of me and what I'd become. Once in a while he brought college friends home, and they looked at me curiously. I wanted to toss the beer in their smart-ass faces, ask them how they think they'd make a living in this one horse town. Because

Fiction

of my attitude, tips were slim. But they would have been anyway with all these lackluster losers. * One early morning after the bar closed, I walked into our kitchen and found Daddy sittin' up for me, a cup of coffee steaming on the table. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was pale. I don't think he'd slept at all.

"Charla, sit down. We have to talk." He fumbled with a coin he took out of his pocket, looping it back and forth between his fingers.

The coin spun across the table, bounced on to the floor. He leaned over, picked it up, and stared out the window into the darkness. I saw his reflection in the glass, lookin' like a ghost of what he used to be.

I pulled out a chair, sat down and held my breath. Something was coming. It was in the air, like when a tornado is making its way across the open fields. There's a silence before the crashing wind, and right now it was dead calm in the house.

Daddy cleared his throat, took a sip of coffee. "I'm selling the farm. I'm gettin' too old for all the work, and after losing your mother, I don't have the heart for this anymore. I figure I'll ask around, see what we can get for it. There's a lot of work needs to be done, but the soil's good, and somebody could rebuild the barn and have a shot at decent farming."

I stared at him, opening and closing my mouth like a trout I'd caught in the creek as a kid. I felt so sorry for that fish, I took out the hook and set it free. Now the barbs of Daddy's words lodged in my throat and tightened. The farm was all I'd ever known. It was ours. It was a part of me and Daddy and Mama, God rest her soul.

"Daddy, you can't! You were born and raised here, and so was I. Where would you go? What would you do, for God's sake?"

"I'm too old to handle this myself, Charla. I've been talkin' to Cousin Wes in Kansas, and he said I can retire there pretty cheap. It's time, honey. Losing your mama was the end of all of this for me. We could look for new opportunities in Kansas. It's time to let this go."

He opened his arms wide, as though embracing the entire farm. Then they fell to his side in defeat. He heaved himself up from the chair, put the coffee cup in the sink. "We'll talk some more, but right now I gotta get some shut eye."

Wandering out to the back porch, I checked for snakes, then sat in Mama's old rocker. Just sittin' there made me feel a little better. I ran my hands over the arms of the chair, worn smooth from my mother's hands. I thought of all the days I sat on the floor next to this rocker, shelling peas or watching her knit a sweater. And all the nights I sat out here on the porch swing with Codger, lettin' him put his sly hand up my skirt, taking a chance, even though light shone through the kitchen window and we heard my parents as they talked about their day.

Now the porch was cold, the chair made old man noises, squeaking and groaning with every movement. I got up and walked to the top of the steps that led down to the path to the barn. It was quiet, a few night sounds coming through the darkness. I heard an owl in the distance, callin' for a mate. Pal grumbled in his sleep, legs moving like he was chasing a rabbit.

I hardly slept that night, but somewhere in the early hours, I thought of something that might work. * The next afternoon I walked across the fields to Codger's farm.

He was home for spring break. He was bare-chested, flattened out on a chaise in the backyard, soaking up the sun. His mother's car was gone. This was a good thing, as I always thought she didn't like me very much. Codger raised his head and gave me a wave. I walked across the fresh mown grass and patted his coon hound, Tick.

"Hey Charla, how's it goin'?" Codger rose from the chaise and gave me a hug. He smelled like beer and sweat and other familiar things that would make it easy for me to pick him out in the dark.

His arm lingered across my shoulder, and he brought me in for another hug.

"Wanna beer"? he asked, reaching into a cooler and plucking out an icy bottle.

"No thanks, Codger. I came to talk to you about somethin'."

"It ain't Codger no more," he said, taking a swig. "I'm Britt now that I'm in college." He climbed back on the chaise. "Come sit," he offered, patting the end of the chair.

I sat down and told him everything that had been going on. * Daddy was already in the house cookin' rice and beans for supper when I walked in. He gave me a little smile, turned the heat down and put a lid on the pot. Then he sat at the table and lit a cigarette. I leaned against the counter and took a breath.

"Daddy, I think I might have an answer for us, at least for a while."

I rolled up my sleeves like I was going to scrub our lives clean. Daddy crossed his arms over his chest and listened while I explained.

I'd asked Britt if he knew of anybody at college working on their agriculture degree, who might want to apprentice here at the farm for a while, get hands-on experience. He said he'd check around. That way, Daddy could have someone here to help, but not have to pay much. We'd provide free room and board and a few dollars a week.

Maybe we could work with a new apprentice every year.

My father stubbed out his cigarette and pursed his lips. He got up and stirred the rice, sat down again.

"Is that what you want, Charla? To try something like this first?"

I nodded. "It might give us some time until we figure things out.

I can help around here, but it's easier for me to cook the meals and handle the barn than to haul in the heavy crops. It'd be like when we hire extra men at harvest time, only this guy can stay in the guest bedroom and we supply him with a roof over his head."

My father cocked his head and looked at me. He nodded. "It just might work. That's some smart thinkin', honey." We spent the next two hours talking about the possibilities.

A month later, a young man named John Lasher showed up at our front door. He was tall and lanky with blond hair that I knew would be too long for Daddy's taste. We shook hands all around and sat in

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the living room and discussed things. Then I took John on a tour of the house. Daddy said John should be ready in half an hour, and he'd walk him around the farm before supper.

"Here's your room," I said, sweeping my hand in an arc, like I was showing him a consolation prize. John threw his suitcase on the bed, looked around the room, then peered out the window at the farm.

"Looks great, Charla. Let me wash up, then I'll go find your dad."

I noticed his eyes were green with tiny flecks of gold in them, like an agate I once saw at the county fair. I led him down the hall to the bathroom, then ducked under his arm and stepped aside. It felt a little awkward to have this man filling up our hallway. I hoped he'd be nice.

It was strange at first, having John here. He worked hard with Daddy every day, and when they'd come in for supper, they'd talk on and on about farming well into the night. Sometimes I'd hear them arguing, their voices rising all the way up the stairs and down the hall to my room. On those nights, I wondered if this was a good idea, if things might work, or not.

As time went by, it was easier in some ways. John was always polite. Never made a pass. Which, to be honest, annoyed the hell out of me. I upped my game by wearing makeup and making sure I looked nice every day. John seemed oblivious to my charms, and I was thinkin' maybe he was right to leave me alone, but it was agitating. I bristled when he was around, slammed his food on the table, and stalked into the other room with my plate. He looked mystified. It was gratifying.

One morning, John volunteered to wash our windows with Daddy. They pulled out the ladder and John climbed up and down with a bucket of soapy water. I brought more old towels outside.

John reached down for them and bumped me, knocking the towels out of my arms.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"Watch what you're doing!" I hollered, then flounced back into the house.

Before the screen door even closed, John was behind me.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" he asked. Those agate eyes were stormy and his jaw was clenched.

"Nothing," I muttered. "Nothing at all." I jutted my chin out and crossed my arms.

"Maybe this isn't working out." John shot the first volley.

I shrugged, looked straight ahead like a dog when he's caught thievin' in the pantry, and tapped my foot.

He stomped out the door, and I ran upstairs, flung myself on the bed and cried. I wasn't even sure why. It just seemed like the thing to do. * Later that night, John walked into the Elbow Room, ordered a beer and sat down at a table in the corner. I brought it over, and he looked up at me like he was looking for the answer to life itself, it was so intense.

"Thanks, Charla. Hey listen, I'm sorry about our spat earlier. I didn't mean what I said." John leaned back in his chair, spread his

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palms on the table. I looked down at the part in his hair, his scalp burned from working in the sun all day.

"It's okay" I muttered, and walked away before he could say anything else. I got some satisfaction that he sought me out and apologized. My spirits lifted considerably.

Two strangers were at the bar, guzzlin' beer and making obnoxious noises towards the locals. One of them wore a greasy shirt with sweat stains under the arms. The other one had his hair all slicked back with oil, dirty jeans frayed at the cuff.

As I walked by, they whispered and laughed. I ignored them and picked up a tray with drinks for another table. As I passed their way again, one reached out and patted my butt. The whole tray went flying, glass shards everywhere. My face burned with humiliation and anger. I bent over to pick up the mess and they snickered.

"Bend over a little more, honey, we're likin' that view!"

John stood so fast his chair toppled over. He walked straight up to the men, fists clenched.

"Leave this woman alone, or I might have to hand your asses to you."

The Elbow Room got quiet. Mike stopped polishing a glass, set it down on the counter. The two strangers got off their stools, faced John. He held his ground. There was a scraping sound, chairs sliding out from tables as half the men in the bar got up and stood behind John. One cracked his knuckles.

Mike said in a low voice, "You best leave here right now, gentlemen. Consider those beers my treat and don't ever come back."

The men huffed out, swearing, and tossed a lit cigarette on the floor. John put it out with his boot, then kneeled to help me clean up the broken glass.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I was trembling. He turned to Mike.

"Charla's leaving now for the evening." It wasn't a question but a statement. Mike nodded, and I took off my apron, set it on a bar stool.

Out in the parking lot, all was quiet. The men had left. John walked me to my car, checked inside and told me to lock the doors. I drove home with John following behind me.

"Don't tell Daddy," I said when we pulled into our driveway and parked our cars. "This happens all the time. I could lose my job."

"And that would be a bad thing?" his eyes glittered in the light through the kitchen window.

I was welling up with tears again, so I mumbled a thank you, then pounded up the stairs into my bedroom. When I closed the curtains, he was still standing in the driveway, staring into space.

Things were awkward the next day. I think we both wondered if this would continue to work. Being near him in the kitchen set off some sort of electrical feeling. I'm surprised Daddy's remaining hair didn't stand on end, just by witnessing it.

That morning, John and Daddy decided to dig a new post hole out on the road for the mail box. I wandered out behind the barn to the chicken coop. The chickens weren't laying as many eggs as they used to, which was puzzling. I scattered feed in their yard and tucked a few eggs in my basket, then turned to go.

Fiction

An old red biddy squeezed past me as I opened the gate and flapped into the blackberry bushes behind the coop. I heard her clucking and fussing. 'Damn,' I thought. Now I had to chase that stupid chicken around and mess with those blackberry thorns. If I didn't, a fox would grab her for sure.

I parted the bushes, saw something shiny on the ground. It was Mama's metal pail for gatherin' eggs, still with the straw inside it.

Broken shells were scattered under the bush.

I froze. My mother hadn't been down at the creek the day she died. She was right here near the chicken coop.

The Copperhead was in these blackberry bushes somewhere! It was poachin' eggs, and it killed my mother. Blood swished in my ears as I flushed with fear and fury.

I backed away, ran up to the house and pulled Daddy's pistol out of the kitchen drawer. Checked for bullets. Then walked back, shaking with rage.

Heart pounding, I pushed apart the lower branches, pistol aimed in front of me. I didn't see anything at first. Then I saw the hen.

She was dying, legs quivering and eyes glazed. Off to my right was a tangled, writhing mass of golden skin. A nest of Copperheads. Mama never had a chance.

One raised its head, tongue darting out as it tested the air. Its eyes were as dead as that chicken when they locked into mine. I stepped back. It unwound from the others, slid across the ground towards me.

Shaking, I pulled the trigger and missed. The jolt from the pistol knocked me on my back. The snake came at me fast and struck. Its fangs punctured my wrist. I aimed the gun again and blew its head clean off. Then I pumped all the bullets into the nest, scattering the snakes.

"Don't move!" I heard John yell. He came running up behind me, took the pistol from my hand, then lifted me under my arms and tossed me over his shoulder.

"Harold! Harold!" he shouted as he raced towards the car. "It's Charla! Copperheads!"

Daddy sprinted across the driveway. John placed me in the back seat, then got behind the wheel and gunned the engine. My father threw himself into the seat next to me, put my head on his lap.

"Christ, John, hurry! No time, no time!"

We spit gravel as John wheeled on to the county road and fishtailed. Then the car righted itself and we sped away like the Devil was after us.

I stared out the window at the sky. The clouds raced by, telephone poles etched across the blue like a picket fence, and I thought of my mother and those Copperheads. "Mama," I whimpered.

"Hold on, hold on," Daddy sobbed. I felt a strangeness wash over me, like a blanket being drawn over my soul, soft and out of focus.

Daddy and John were sittin' in chairs next to the hospital bed.

I had an IV in one arm, and my other arm wore a huge bandage with just my fingers poking out. A wave of panic washed over me as I remembered what happened. I struggled to sit up, but my father pushed me back down gently, reached for my hand and brought it to his cheek.

"The doctors say you'll be fine. They're keeping you here overnight as a precaution, honey. Lucky for us it was one snake bite, not multiple. You killed three of those bastards. I think one or two might've got away."

Daddy looked like an old man. The stubble on his cheeks was gray, and his hands were still dirty from digging that post hole. His eyes were red from crying.

John slumped in the other chair, his arms straight down at his side as though he'd collapsed in it. They both look so worried. He and Daddy looked out of place in the hospital, but their faces were like home to me.

I thought about the past couple of days, the Copperheads, and the farm. It seems like we rub against the things that, in the end, aren't important at all, and the things that ARE important can walk right out of your life.

Talking was an effort, but I looked at both their faces and whispered, "Stay."

"Charla, honey, we can't right now. We need to get back to the farm this afternoon." Daddy said. "The animals have to be fed and John and I will burn down the blackberry bushes near the chicken coop. But we'll be back later, after supper."

I shook my head. That wasn't what I meant. I looked straight at John. "Stay."

He understood, reached over and brushed the hair off my forehead and smiled. "Yes" he said, "I'd like that."

I nodded, feeling warm all over and it wasn't from that snake bite.

"We gotta go." Daddy pushed himself out of the chair, clasped John's shoulder, then bent down to kiss me. "We'll be back just as soon as we do our chores, I promise."

As they walked out the door, Daddy said to John, "Son, we need to pick up some feed on the way out of town, then check the crops. A big thunderstorm's on its way, blowin' in from the north."

John muttered as they walked away, "Well, if it isn't one thing, it's another." The sound of his footsteps down the hall was a song I wanted to hear again and again.

I looked outside the window at the clouds gathering in billowing fists, the sun beating them back, refusing to give in.

It was as though my Mama was up there sayin' things will be fine.

We just have to wait for the storm to pass.

*

Sharon Frame Gay has been internationally published in many anthologies and literary magazines including Chicken Soup For The Soul, Typehouse, Literally Stories and others. She has won awards at Women on Writing, Rope and Wire Magazine, The Writing District, and Owl Hollow Press and is a Pushcart nominee. This is her second contribution for New Reader Magazine.

I didn't open my eyes at first, but heard noises. Voices, telephones ringing, footfalls. I didn't want to wake up. My body felt heavy.

Slowly my mind cleared, and I looked around.

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The Last Will Be First BOB MCNEIL “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”

― Aristotle

Cold weather is something poor folks Really wish would pass, Because their clothes rival Swiss cheese, And that frigid air can cut an ass.

Affluence, vacationing from discomfort, Floats in a champagne bubble.

Intoxicated by plutocratic splendor, The moneyed avoid sobering trouble.

The indigent dream of kinder times When their hands won’t serve as a begging cup, And the world won’t treat charity Like spoiled milk that no one will sup.

Affluence is an invitation To an exclusive resort, Lodging A-list celebrities Who hang around and cavort.

Needing food and shelter, The indigent sifts through garbage.

Such hardship serves as an incentive For revolution and carnage.

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.

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The Ungentrified Truth BOB MCNEIL

Anything beyond a slum is A comfort-designed contrivance.

Take away the ease of beneficial Silver-filled utensils, And the savage will materialize, a savage No different than any savage from a slum.

For within slums and their sins, The truth of men exists.

It’s all there in the substance-addled man, The life-and-love-rejected man, The man you refuse to view.

Committed to decadence, he’s there Avoiding redemption the same way Rats and roaches shun daylight.

He’s not a program on TV. You can’t switch him away.

However, his show plays On criminal law stages.

You hear or read his reviews That daily news reports share.

Your American-Pie-sized eyes Don’t want to see Any bums in the city’s stratum.

You stray from their gaze, Afraid of the days When the economy may force your Life to join them.

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A Song For Sheroes BOB MCNEIL

Women, make men comprehend, Women, make men comprehend, Women, Make men comprehend That each sister Has a Harriet Tubman Prepared to seek A place where men Do not abuse their Queens, A place that erects Jewels of Respect.

Women, make men comprehend, Women, make men comprehend, Women, Make men comprehend That each sister Has a Shirley Chisholm Prepared to shake and make every state Understand that liberation Must not become a membership card Only given to men.

Women, make men comprehend, Women, make men comprehend, Women, Make men comprehend That each sister Has a Dr. Mae C. Jemison Entering a NASA shuttlecraft That ascends to a time Where gender mistreatment ends.

Women, make men comprehend, Women, make men comprehend, Women, make men comprehend.

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Zoya Kriminskaya

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Evgenia Silaeva

AUGUR TOTI O'BRIEN

T

he only change she perceived were the magpies. A pair—black and white so sharply contrasted on their plumage, she asked herself if the edges of those differently tinted patches bristled and burned, sending out electric waves as they touched, scorched like naked nervous ends. Black and white so bluntly interlocked, they hurt her eyes.

The only change she later recalled were the magpies.

But it might have been a false memory.

Perhaps only the turtledoves were around. The usual bunch, though since the sumac trees had been cut they had multiplied. Now, whenever she stepped out of the back door she heard the rustle of an entire flock taking flight—rippling sound of reverse waterfall.

Turtledoves—their increased number was a kind of change, sure.

On the minor side.

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Flash Fiction

And the tinge of blue, underwing, she hadn’t noticed before. Not sure where exactly—a flash, very intense yet hard to locate. Streak of periwinkle on brown. Was it new?

The scrub jay had changed as well. Lately, a brand new specimen had substituted the old one. She had accepted the switch as a matter of fact, careless about the previous bird’s fate.

Change is kind of cruel, that way.

The new scrub jay was plump and full-feathered—its plumage so glossy it looked false. But a joy to behold compared to the scrawniness of its predecessor. Bold, aggressive… as she packed the bedroom it came at the window and started hammering a metal pot with its beak—so near to the glass pane she feared it would pass through it any moment—seamlessly materializing itself on the shelf, perching upon the tall abat-jour.

It stubbornly tapped against cold aluminum, unabashed by her obtrusive closeness and exhibiting none of the well-known shyness of avians.

She was tempted to fetch a few peanuts—lone remain in a stark naked kitchen, survived without a reason. Offer them on her palm as she crouched on the backdoor sill. Oh, yes, the jay would come. But the house had to be vacated, and she had no spare time. * Yet those ‘dove’ and ‘jay’ modifications were somehow, she sensed, part of an organic cycle. The only worthwhile discontinuity were the magpies, if she hadn’t merely imagined them. She could have. Still, the clashing tones of their plumage had left almost a crease on her corneas, a wound.

And what did the pies want? Maybe they were attracted, like thieves, by the odds and ends, bric-a-brac—all the things that inevitably fall behind, slip aside during transition times. They’d find the bits and pieces she later would search in vain, weave them within the lining and walls of their nest. Then, she should be glad. A good omen, then.

Unneeded.

She did not look for signs. No direction had to be pointed at.

Wheels of fortune simply follow their course. No action on her side was required, besides clearing the place.

But she knew from precedent revolutions that in times of change details disappear—magpies’ booty. Details meaning things small and yet precious. She recalled when—years before, cleaning the same home on arrival—she had dug out of a crack in the windowsill—deep crack, filled with dust so old it had calcified—a brooch.

Elongated oval shape, large pearls cast in silver, the art-deco style her mom liked so much. Quite old-fashioned, exquisite and sweet, the jewel lost by a previous tenant then buried in dust… Truly identical to a brooch her mother had owned decades and miles away.

If she shut her eyes she could see the alias—the original—pinned on the silk foulard Mother wrapped around her neck in cold weather.

She recalled how she greedily pocketed her welcome gift.

Details are lost and found in times of transition. There are cons.

There are pros. She could count on both. Now, for instance, while

packing, she retrieved a tool she had mislaid in the process of scoring the bathroom’s tiles—that she wanted to be pristine for the next inhabitant. Therefore, she had borrowed her favorite tool from the workshop counter—dentist scalpel, extremely sharp, tip a bit bent from infinite usage, yet slim, perfectly tapered. Tool of choice, irreplaceable—it worked well in the thinnest interstices. At the end of the day she found it no more. * But on leaving she did. In chaos, things get misplaced. Lost, found.

That tool was already missing a part since time immemorial. It belonged to a category of scalpels sporting a different tip at each end.

Smart and handy. Her preferred tool had lost an end so far back, she couldn’t remember the shape of it. She tried once on a while by mere curiosity—always slightly dismayed by her mind’s unresponsiveness.

Like when, still in a time of change, time of chaos, she had lost an angel card. Very small, and that is the point. Angel tarot. Tiny figurine from a miniature deck employed to tell fortunes.

By then, she was prone to seek omens when life took brisk turns.

When things got very instable she carried her deck in her purse.

Once, she had drawn a card in the street, as she waited for something, for someone. Why so impellent? She had pulled just one card, placed it on the trunk of her car. Turned it face up. Breathed in.

On the same night, at home, she had realized the deck was incomplete. Verify, please. Again. Minus one. Then the card she had drawn earlier, outside, must be gone. Maybe her date had suddenly arrived, or had not and she had hastily left. A split second—card fell on concrete. Her tires ran it over, perhaps.

That night she hadn’t been able to figure out which was missing.

She had spread out the rest of the deck to no avail. The angels were named after qualities, virtues. Good things. Say meekness, for instance. Say relief. Say courage, for instance. Say love.

She had not memorized them. She couldn’t remember them all.

But she knew that she had drawn the card in the morning with her brother in mind. So the angel was—had something to do with—her brother. She felt as if she might have damaged her bro, pruning him off the deck. Panic punctured her like an insect sting, like a laser beam. But her fear was immaterial and she soon got used to the maimed deck.

Worries about her brother faded, of course—losing him, brother hurt, brother gone—though she lost her brother, it’s true. Afterwards her brother suddenly passed but, see, not the brother whose angel she had dropped in the street during a time of change, revolution. That one remained unscathed. The other passed. The other brother.

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 selfemployed artist, performing musician, and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in Really System, Colorado Boulevard, Thin Air, and Wilderness House.

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Zombie BOB BEAGRIE

The living dead line our street lying side by side, head to toe.

A crop of long pig, a river of flesh baking in the sun, wounds washed clean by rain their skins thinning like these October days like tall tales spun on the campaign trail.

But this is what they longed for.

This is what they've won, and we The Unbelievers were forced to play along so now, if I make any effort to venture out, to search for food or fuel to test the air of this half-botched apocalypse feel the teasing light, trackways of probing winds I take it all in, let it fill my emptiness to the brim in a pang of spiderly loneliness as I tip-toe the spaces between my neighbours try not to think of who they were hold my breath, steel my nerves as if we were all in the primary school hall playing a game of Sleeping Lions as if they were Chinese ghosts from a slapstick kung fu flick starring Samo Hung or Jackie Chan.

At times like this, it’s hard to remember exactly what life was like not so long gone when the whole world was just one click away, when you’re face to face with what we’ve become.

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Tharanas Chuaychoo

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bravissimos

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Abracadabra BOB BEAGRIE

like a music hall magician the sun steps out from behind curtains of clouds and we all glance up everyone tilts their faces skyward to feel its presence tickle their cheeks it speaks through touch a fizz on the skin of all things solid but it is only the liquids that readily commit to its beckoning “Come,” it says, “lift and rise, rise and drift.” and all that’s wet obeys: the raindrops on leaves the puddles in the road the blood in my veins; particle by particle dance, lift, rise and drift like party balloons like bubbles in a pan on the hob like applause to the end notes of an ancient song

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Glitch BOB BEAGRIE

Bamboo, a backcombed explosion of jade green blades slicing the warm Summer air in a race to cram the corner of our back yard shoot higher than the wall, catch a breath of breeze to tremble.

It forms a dense curtain – the start of a forest where a tiger squats guarding the black path that leads to The Palace of Endings, it's amber eyes watch as I hang out the washing with crocodile pegs, I tell myself they’re just snail shells, the low, rumble-purr is a plane circling in to land, the black path is nothing but the soil stack, and The Palace of Endings deep in that bamboo forest can wait till I'm ready to visit.

Bob Beagrie has published seven full collections of poetry and several pamphlets. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines and has been translated to different languages. He is co-director of Ek Zuban Press and Literature Development, and a founding member of the experimental spoken word and music collective, Project Lono. He lives in Middlesbrough in North East England and is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Teesside University.

Saktanong Chaipunya

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Fiction

Stranger EMILIA AMODIO

I

’m always late with the coffee. It should have been on before he arrived, it’s always more hospitable that way. He stands, taking up space in my hallway and I’m awkward. I don’t know what I expected of him, but he looks old. And it makes me feel old.

Natalia Sinelnik

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As I pack the fine powder into the well of the Bialetti, he scans the framed images along shelves and tabletops. Snapshots of my children and their children. Weddings and baptisms. He fires questions, as if to anticipate any beats of silence in the room. I tell him the names that belong to each face. He won’t remember them, but it gives me enough time until the water boils and the moka starts to spit, filling the room withits smell.

‘The smell of coffee is like home to me,’ he says, watching gratefully as I load the silver tray with espresso cups and saucers, and two glasses of water. The tray sticks to the plastic tablecloth as I position it within his reach. We shake the sugar sachets in unison and stir, our teaspoons ringing against the inside of the cups.

That smell is home to me too. It’s what I’d wake to in the mornings, while my mother prepared for work. It’s the smell that would accompany the loud disputes of moral outrage as we digested our lunch, sitting on the sun-drenched balcony of the flat we lived in with my aunts.

After trading well-mannered niceties, he dives in. ‘It’s interesting, that you don’t speak with a southern accent,’ he says. ‘After all these years living in the north, do you consider yourself Milanese now?’

There’s mild scorn in his joviality.

‘I think it was during my university days, I didn’t really notice losing it,’ I reply. I refrain from telling him that it’s the connotations of that Neopolitan accent that I grew to loath. He would be offended.

His own accent is thick with it.

‘Ah! So, it’s political. You’ve abandoned the terroni for La Lega Nord!’ I don’t laugh.

‘I’m joking of course,’ he continues. ‘But it’s also a shame – the south is our country’s beating heart. There’s no sense of regional pride these days.’

‘Nothing about my accent is political,’ I say. ‘It’s personal. It’s, just evolved.’ I’m aware that I’m folding the empty sugar sachet over itself repeatedly. This familiar entitlement from a total stranger is disarming.

‘Well. Hopefully, for your family’s sake, your cooking skills haven’t evolved.’ This, I suppose, is meant as a joke.

‘You’ve spent so many years in London, but you speak like a true paisan’.’ I know that word is distasteful, yet I can’t help but use it.

‘You must have had a good life down there. My southern existence taught me something else. I didn’t want a life chained to a kitchen… to a man.’

The hum of Vespa in the road below chaperones the silence. We both look down at the plastic tablecloth. It’s not his fault, I even surprise myself by how sensitive I can I be.

He picks up the painted yellow and blue espresso cup, the tiny handle clutched perilously between his chubby fingers.

‘But you have coffee cups from our hometown. So, that’s something.’ He smiles. ‘You know, these colours always remind me of the lemons on the coast, and the sea.’

I smile too, because I have those cups for the same reason.

‘When I first moved to London,’ he continues, ‘I thought the lemons there were yellow apricots. I cannot tell you how small the lemons are in London.’

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He talks to me with the affected familiarity of an old friend. He tells me about other people from our childhood, what they are doing and where they are now. He tells me about the ones who are dead. It doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t remember most of them – he tells me about them anyway.

‘It’s amazing how many people you seem to have forgotten,’ he says, mindlessly. ‘And there are so many you didn’t even know at the time.’

I am not surprised. I don’t even know this this grey-haired man sitting here now, whom I’d arranged to meet myself. There’s a generation of history that separates us. But I do remember the boy he once was. His skinny legs partially covered by little shorts and pulled up socks. I used to watch him, with his five brothers and little sister.

‘Do you remember that day when you followed me down the steps through the lemon groves to my mother’s house?’ I ask.

He nods sentimentally, but he’s unable to piece together the details. I’m sure he thinks he’s being kind by lying. Until today, we have never spoken a word to each other. That particular day had been the closest we’d ever got.

It was an afternoon when that eternally kaleidoscopic sea offered no reprieve, and my hair clung in clumps to the back of my neck. He and his siblings played unaware, as I watched them intently from a gap in the wall on the mountain path. I’d noticed the marks on his knees. The tell tail signs of an afternoon spent kneeling on dry corn: school punishment for minor transgressions. Then, he spotted me and chased after me as I ran.

The soles of our shoes skimmed the dust over the coarse stone steps, as we raced past the walls covered in fuchsia and white bougainvillea. We ran under the emerald canopy of the groves, held up by chestnut trellis’ and scattered with the golden, citrus jewels of the coast that he now speaks of so affectionately.

On the mountain road above, I could hear the lethargic hooves of the donkey carts, preparing for the following morning’s watermelon run. I’d just learned to play scopa – I had a deck in my bag. I’d have asked him to play had my aunt had not come wading through with her battipanni, shooing him away like an errant fly.

‘Vattene, vattene via! Siete tutti uguali nella tua famiglia, vattene!’

She’d also shouted me up the steps of my mother’s block, before resuming the merciless walloping of the rugs hanging over the steps outside. My other aunt was sitting in the kitchen, preparing the chocolate for the aubergines. I ignored her and ran straight to the balcony to watch the boy turn away, laughing at my aunt’s vocal diatribe and shouting something inaudible over his shoulder, serving only to stoke her vehemence.

Widows and zitelle, that was my matrilineal heritage. My grandmother and aunts were the women who loved me so ferociously, like a pack of spotted hyenas. Yet they’d never vindicated my mother’s shame, nor was I was ever quite legitimate enough. I’m grateful I got away. Had I listened to them I’d still be there now, dressed in black for remembrance.

‘I’ve brought these photographs so you can piece everyone

Fiction

together,’ the stranger tells me now, enthusiastically. But there’s really no need. They didn’t watch me in the way I watched them when we were young. I know all their faces.

First on the pile is a photograph of his father, frayed at the edges from being clasped by pinched fingertips. Everyone knew him as Ciccio, even though his given name also belonged to an archangel and a Renaissance artist. In the photo, he stands with his vest tucked into his trousers, the crisp crease down the centre reaching toward his shoes. He smiles down at the children standing alongside his legs, one hand in his pocket, the other drawing the cigarette from his mouth.

I know Ciccio because he owned the factory where my mother worked. The one that churned out beautiful paper. The one that was destroyed when the mud came and slid down the mountains in rivers as we slept. Sometimes Ciccio would be there in my mother’s house when I got home, drinking coffee at our kitchen table. He never stayed long enough to talk to me.

I’d been told that my father had left our gentle coastline in a ship to fight in the war. That when he’d got back, he’d changed his mind. Even the dilation of my mother’s belly hadn’t been enough to persuade him. There was someone else he wanted to be with, someone with enough money to help him rebuild his life. Someone who wasn’t already pregnant. ‘War changes everything,’ my mother would say. As if it was a good excuse.

No one told me that my father was Ciccio but, in some way, I must have always known. Perhaps because of the way I was shrouded from everything to do with his family. Or maybe because of the way he caught my eye before leaving my mother’s house on those hot afternoons, when all the shops and shutters closed to escape the height of the summer sun.

I saw how Ciccio’s wife would turn away from my mother in the factory courtyard, and how she couldn’t help but to eye me derisively.

They all said that she’d had too many children to cope. That with every new-born’s arrival, another of her older children was sent away to stay with an aunt or uncle.

On hot August evenings, around the time that the statue of Madonna would ascend the steep steps of the church, and the fireworks and winged ants would bring in the feast of San Lorenzo, everyone would wear their best and walk around the town, slowly, chatting, peering over their shoulders at the latest victim of town gossip. Ciccio’s wife rarely left her house, preferring to cook and clean obsessively. Those were the evenings I’d see my mother dancing in Ciccio’s arms.

Now, Ciccio is dead. The photograph of the lined, jaundiced face in his obituary is not one that I recognise. The stranger in my house, his son, my brother, is now showing me pictures of his mother. As if I’d be interested in seeing the image of the woman who’d won.

The stranger tells me that he didn’t know I existed until the night before Ciccio died. He’d been keeping vigil when the opiates in his father’s bloodstream had made him call out for my mother’s in his sleep. He’d opened his eyes to talk to a vision of me, sitting at the end of his bed. Even in the face of her husband’s infirmity, his wife’s rage

at this revelation had been febrile. This was a truth that no one was ever supposed to know.

‘You were the last person he thought of.’ The stranger says to me now.

If the look in his eyes had not been so pathetically earnest, I’d have spat out my aversion to his desperate sentiments instantly. Can he really believe that this last moment of grief and embarrassment in my absent father’s life, should be a comfort to me? I consider shouting this at him, but I don’t. It’s clear he is only here to unburden himself.

An English paper sits folded on my kitchen table. I notice an advertisement for a week’s luxury cruise around our coastline. Where tourists can eat freshly frozen vongole and listen to tributes of O Sole Mio. Where feet upon feet can traipse up and down the steep cobbled lanes and burn their soles on the obscure volcanic sand.

But when I close my eyes and think of that place, I hear the thunder and the pellets of rain thrashing against the groves. I feel the damp surge of cold air against my nightdress, as I remember that night when I frantically clung to my aunts’ bodies. The only pillars of stability in our torn down apartment.

That night, we’d all scanned through the dark, into the void where my mother’s bedroom had once been. Then there came the cold blue light of morning, and the revelation of the night’s destruction. I remember how Ciccio had looked at me, when he’d seen the remnants of my mother’s apartment, split through the middle, as if it were as fragile as those Nativity villages they sell in the Christmas markets.

As we searched, hopelessly, for her – knowing that her body would already be in the sea by now, the priest ran down the steps of the church with tears of joy in his eyes. It was a miracle. The statue of the Madonna had been spared.

Emilia works in TV drama development in the UK. Her daily job is to read, critique, and develop writers’ works. After years of being too nervous to allow others to do the same to her own, she’s taken the plunge in letting her own stuff out there.

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STRENGTHS EVELYN BENVIE

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And what do you consider your greatest strength?

The interviewer asks you Teeth gleaming like knives And you Have none Or do you?

She’s very creative, Your first grade art teacher said But you think she said that about everyone A great writer, Your high school english teacher told you And sometimes you resent her for it You’re so nice!

Your best friend tells you all the time But you’re really only that nice to her You never cause trouble, Your mother says, and you think She means it as a good thing Nice tits,

Some rando tells you, but you don’t mind

So much when your friends agree Organized and neat, Your last manager wrote about you Though you feel their standards weren’t very high Your grasp of grammar is fantastic, Your first real editor assured you But they’d never seen your rough drafts At least you’re funny, Your friends tell you, more with The sound of their laughter than words You can adapt to anything, You tell yourself, but sometimes You worry that’s just another way to say manipulate So you tell them With teeth bared and Your smile razor sharp like theirs I am a T E A M P L A Y E R But only because you know that’s what they want to hear

Vital Sinkevich

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I Envy the Small Things EVELYN BENVIE

I envy the small things The ones too far below For us to ever pay attention to The furred things, scurrying and scared Twitching and running away—

—jumping and running to Always with a destination One we’ll never understand The feathered things, darting in and out And always dying, always falling—

—always rising somewhere else Brittle bones and tiny eyes Carried on a wind we cannot see The many-legged crawling things Inching along in the dirt and the grass Harmful or helpful but always gross—

—but always needed We tried to pick favorites and always pick wrong The green and the growing things Big and tall, small and fruitful—

—smaller and sporous Everywhere and yet We so often act like they aren’t The very smallest things, too small For even the keenest eye to see First life, first death—

—and everything in between We often forget them, the littlest ones Living beneath our feet and In our breaths I envy those smallest things most The ones that still have a chance The ones we’ll leave behind The ones who’ll start anew For the world will never be so broken that Something cannot crawl Wriggling and glistening and raw Out of the salty remains of the sea And into the light Jens Johnsson

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Evelyn Benvie is the wooly jumper in a family of black sheep. Both a cynic and a romantic at heart, she writes diverse, queerpositive fiction and poetry that have been published online and in print. Her first novella, Something to Celebrate, was recently published by Mischief Corner Books and is available on Amazon. Find out more about the author at evelynbenvie.com.

the future is in color EVELYN BENVIE

Randy Laybourne

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the future is a rainbow cast in an oil slick as the tankers burn behind it colorful and beautiful and built on the demise of everything we know but the future is green they say it will grow and sustain us all it is the sun and the wind and the trees and it is beautiful yes, the future is green and rainbow and full of promise * the future when it comes is white and black and gray and so very very clean it is safety above all else metal and silicone and poly poly something I don’t understand it but it is good the buildings the hyper-trains the space stations are efficiency at its finest nothing is wasted, no color out of place it all lines up so nice and neat but what of the plants you ask? yes, they are safe too (everything is safe) we keep them hidden away in metal metal buildings they would not survive outside who would take care of them out there? but there are buildings and hyper-trains and space stations so you do not need to miss them there are other things to look at all white and black and gray * every future leaves behind its past and we lose something in each new age we have lost the color of fire burning against the sky turning the forest into a sunset the splash of red yellow blue at the side of the road that never fades because plastic bags don’t disintegrate we have lost the rainbow in the oil slick the future is white and gray and black and so very very clean but I do not know if it is beautiful

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Egle Lipeikaite

Fiction

Her Blue Dress SIAILA JAGROOP

I

nto the black night rose the cold moon. Its glimmers march downwards in cheerless strides. They are as pale as the piglet prepped for the spit. On such a night, sinners know that they must guard their immorality. For the evil spirits are circling, and waiting. They are readying themselves to devour the careless and the compassionate. And when they’re done, they leave only the silent moon to weep over their victims.

Under the ashen tears of the moon, the luster of her blue dress fades into the blanketing shadow of the forest. On the blackened earth, the seams of white harlequin diamonds of her blue dress are like spots of clouds sprinkled across a clear sky. She loved that dress, and it is befitting that she is laid to rest in it.

The muted darkness is disturbed by just a single sound. A shovel laboring against pebbles and earth, and it heaves as it casts them to the side. Under the watchful gaze of the moon, she lays in wait for the digger to break off the continuous burrowing. Her eyes are open but they are oblivious to the specks of dirt that falls on them. Beside the expanding pit, her still form stares upward into the night sky, at peace with the sighs of the crunching shovel.

But the moon, ashamed of its powerlessness, embraces the gloom to hide its face. And without its silver rays, she is swallowed by the darkness, and she slumbers.

When she woke, the warm earth had changed into frozen steel.

Everything in front of her was alien. She remembered trees as tall as the sky, and wet soil, soft like the petals of her aloe garden. In their stead were simple halls without thatched coconut leaves for roofs. A dark sea of green grass illuminated by the pale light of the moon, all added to her unfamiliar surroundings. Even her vision felt clearer than she remembered. Then, she heard the sound of children’s laughter and little feet running. The sounds were hammering inside her ears.

As the eldest of six children, those sounds should have been endearing but they were slithery and taunting. From the back of her feet to her neck, she sensed their laughter crawling up from behind her body like a centipede. Unsettled by their offensive happiness, she turned and was affronted by a wooden pole. Her face penetrated the timber and she saw three skinny boys pushing and shoving each other while they ran towards her. She felt a hurricane of rage rising from the pit of her unwelcoming thoughts. The youngsters were still some distance away so she flew across the grey lawn, halting them in mid-sprint.

The adolescent trio were preparing for the upcoming standard Government exams to enter High School. As hopefuls aiming for the best school on the island, the three lads did everything their teachers asked with glee.

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It was 7 in the evening, and the teacher had tasked the tallest child in the class with the important duty of calling students to their classes. This was done by beating the school’s big canoe shaped drum, which was made from the trunk of an old mango tree. The drum was laid out in the middle of the school while the classroom buildings surrounded it.

Not a single one would fulfill that mission. In the shadow, where she lurked, the overflowing streams of pale moonlight illuminated her blue dress. The dusty shoeless feet of the three friends staggered and then halted. A dress, the color of a clear sky, swirled right in front of them. There were seams of pointy white squares flowing from the top to the bottom of it. They looked at each other in fearful silence and looked back at the neck of the dress in unison.

There was no face. Then, they looked down at the hemline and the dress twirled.

“She has no feet!” shrilled one of the boys in terror.

That scream forced them out of shock. They all began with a backward sprint, which escalated into a racing panic in the direction they came from. Not once did they look back for fear that the blue dress would follow. They didn’t even look at each other. Their little eyes focused on nothing but the school building. In the darkness, the well-lit classroom and their fellow students’ cheery voices were beckoning to them like a safe harbor from the stormy sea of trepidation that was thundering inside their tiny hearts.

She stared at the children’s back till they disappeared into the doorway. Her stationary frame the perfect reflection of her unemotional face, with its unblinking eyes. There were no breaths dispelled from her slightly parted lips. Even the full skirt of her blue dress was unstirred by a stimulating breeze. But her thoughts were in mayhem. She had been appalled by the boy’s lie that she was lacking in limbs. Then, she was dumbfounded by their flight of fright and now, she was amazed by a summoning impulse to follow them into the schoolroom. But she just stood still, watching without blinking, inhaling without exhaling.

An hour passed and another crept by, then the children poured out from their classes, shouting and running, elbowing and laughing.

Their liveliness was nagging at all her senses. From everywhere their excitement pestered her. She saw a group of boys approaching. They were led by two of the three that she had confronted earlier.

“Here! This is the spot…” a boy’s confident voice pointed out.

“No… she was standing here…” the other contended.

“I thought you guys said you only saw a dress...?” a third questioned.

“Yeah… a blue dress with white dots…” the confident speaker answered.

She took a step closer to the speaker and twirled to correct them both. They ignored her and continued arguing.

“Come on Vite! … tell ’em…” the second speaker requested.

“I… I’m going home…” the boy Vite said in a timid voice. He parted the group, stepped sideways three times then started walking hurriedly. His shoulders hunched and a red notebook held tightly against his chest. For a 10 year old, Vite was too tall, so no matter

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what he did or didn’t do, he would always be noticed by people. Yet it wasn’t his height that the unseen young lady in the blue dress noted when she saw him again. It was his face.

She registered particular hints of familiarity. They charged her attention, and they started to whisper.

“Follow him…” they told her. She didn’t move.

“Follow him…” they repeated but she still didn’t budge.

“Follow him…” she gave way and drifted to the side of the boy called Vite.

She easily matched his swift pace and apart from frequent attacks by prowling mongrels, which unnervingly frightened her beyond comprehension, they journeyed on in complete silence. She was surprised to see the homes were now made of timber and their walls painted with an assortment of colors. At a fork on the road, she was baffled by the paved lane like the ones in the capital. There were lamps lighting the streets. Their brilliance would have been bedazzling had they not scorched her eyesight.

In front of a row of red leafed hedges, the boy Vite turned into an entry the size of two doorways combined. In a blink, she stood facing a maroon door. Beneath the skirt of her blue dress, snarls amplified by fanatical barking terrified her. They were like waves battering her down to the ocean floor. She closed her eyes and leaped against the door hoping that the boy Vite heard her anguish. She didn’t hear the door opening but she could feel herself falling. She kept her eyes tightly shut, then waited for the pain of flesh tearing.

“Can someone just go outside and see who the heck is teasing the dogs!” a woman’s voiced commanded.

She opened her eyes then quickly closed them again. She was blinded by lights as bright as the sun. She squinted and looked around to see a big chair covered with dark orange cloth. It was the size of a bed with arms on each end. There were scatters of alien objects all over, and she was impressed by all of it. Then she saw the boy Vite walking out of the room. She dashed to his side for safety, dreading the horrors of another canine attack.

They were at a narrow and dark hallway, which was comforting for her eyes. But then he touched the wall and the radiance of the room submerged them. She returned to the squinting. At the end they stopped in front of a shining white door. The boy Vite knocked four times.

“Grandma Sita…” he called out softly in his childlike voice.

The same notion of familiarity she had felt earlier surged at the mention of the grandmother’s name.

“Who is it?” replied a woman with a creaking tone.

“It’s me Vite… can I come in?” there was no reply.

He knocked four times for a second time. “I really wanna tell you something…” he called out.

“Ok… come on,” the half-hearted croak retorted from the other side.

The boy Vite gently turned the silver knob and pushed the door just enough for himself to enter. She shadowed his steps but had to jump past him when she saw the door swinging shut. Surprisingly, she didn’t knock him over or cause a commotion with her uninvited

Fiction

presence. Once she reaffirmed her ongoing irrelevance, she peeked around through her narrowed slits.

The room was as radiant as the others. An elderly woman inclined on a bed with thin black posts glared at them. She was awestruck by the finery shrouding the grandmother. From her chest all the way to the edge of the bed was a pink cover of fur, dyed with white flowers and green leaves. There were luxury pillows with matching pink cases supporting the tilted position of their hostess. She assumed the family belonged to either members of the nobility or one of those prideful half-caste pedigrees.

The boy Vite sat down sideways on the edge of the bed next to his grandma Sita. He stretched out both legs, gave her arm a loving squeeze and looked straight into her face.

“I saw a blue dress at school tonight grandma…” his lips quivered a little and tears pooled at the bottom of his eyes.

The elderly woman sat up quickly, her face wrinkled with so much concern.

After a short pause he continued, “I wanted to talk to you first grandma…because I saw you with the dress…it’s…” his grandmother looked at him surprisingly so he stopped and looked down.

He glanced sideways at the concerned old woman and held her hands. In a shaky voice he clarified, “It’s like the one you wore in that old photo you have inside your prayer book,” he concluded.

“I don’t remember!” The old woman declared. She re-inclined herself on the plush pillows and looked sternly at her grandson. The concern replaced by impatience.

“Come on…grandma!” the boy Vite articulated by rolling his eyes and then massaging his forehead. “I saw you taking it out in church last Sunday. It’s folded inside your prayer book…the one you always lock away in there!” he emphasized in an incriminating tone while pointing at the black nightstand placed against the wall.

“I’m tired!” his grandmother snapped. “Get out…get out before I give you a beating!” she screamed, looking at the opposite side.

The abrupt changes in their reactions were all taken in by their overlooked third companion. It was the most insensible discussion she could understand. In that fleeting instant, she was dragged from sizzling adoration to stagnating dismay. Her guarded posture had thawed when she saw their honest display of familial warmth. She relaxed and even leaned against one of the bed’s back post to fondly observe. When her blue dress was mentioned, she slid down to the floor in shameful repentance of her earlier display of hostility.

But then the voices tensed, and as they grew louder, she became completely paralyzed. At the sound of planks colliding, she jumped to attention but kept her eyes tightly shut. She tried to contemplate an escape plan. From left to right, she desperately squinted around the room. With each futile scan she became less static as her unease in multiples at the thought of being alone with the elderly stranger, Sita.

In spite of her deafening anxiety she could hear the elderly woman wheezing uncontrollably. Her curiosity was kindled when she caught a glimpse of the ancient Sita passing by. Through the small margins that she permitted her eyes to perceive with, she was able to discern

that the aged grandmother walked with a strain, and occasionally, a little hobble. She watched as the elderly woman injected something into a rectangular pocket and for a brief moment she averted her eyes out of loyalty to the boy Vite.

When she looked back, she intently squinted, trying to capture the other’s every movement. From a protruding cavity in the compartmental table, she saw her hostess tenderly take out a book and hold it with her right hand to her chest. Then she took five short steps to reach an exquisite red seat. She touched the wall with her free hand and sweet darkness snuggled them both.

In the brilliant shadows dimmed by the pale rays of the fickle moon, the two women stared aimlessly for a while. A weary bat announced the lateness of the hour with its hungry cries. The elderly female took a mighty breath. She opened the book on her lap without a downward glance to corroborate the act. The parted pages exposed a tired piece, out of place on the ensemble of leaves. With caring precision, she picked it up, rubbed the weathered surface then unfolded the edges.

Each motion gestured to the blue attired guest to move closer, until her dress brushed against the back of the scarlet armchair. In her line of vision were wiry grey strands tangled over a weathered forehead. Right below it was a heavy nose thickened by experience.

Downwards, her eyes continued to travel, resting upon the corroding photograph that was spread out between old Sita’s craggy fingers.

The snap had captured a fetching chap sandwiched on each side by two young women. Their heeding appearance presented an image of remorse, as if they were getting ready for confession. Even with the photo’s monotonous shades of black and white, and sometimes the occasional tan, their renegade attire spoke of an animated tale.

And the story unfolds when the elderly woman whispered in a miserable tone, “Ahi… if you’re here… I’m sorry,” she paused to swallow.

The unseen woman in the blue dress sighed, and touched her older companion on the shoulder. It returned them to the photo with an explosion of memories. Together they looked back on a day of excitement in their hamlet.

Their recollection were severed by old Sita’s agonizing whimper.

Her tears poured and poured on the old photograph as she spoke into the darkness.

“Forty-five years has passed…” she quivered and heaved a deep breath, shaking her head uncontrollably. “I knew that strange man was following us…” her voice broke off in anguish. After a short pause, she turned and looked straight up from the back of the armchair confessing softly, “I knew and I sent you off to him… because I hated your blue dress.”

Siaila Jagroop was born and raised in Tonga, a small island nation in the South Pacific. Currently, she is working in the Embassy of Japan in Tonga.

Siaila lives on a small farm with her husband, her three-year-old daughter, seven dogs, one cat, and a few pigs. She writes in her spare time.

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Poetry

Cindergirl at the La Basse At the Port-of-Spain dump in Trinidad.

GILBERTE O'SULLIVAN

Tonight I fed the inferno a thatch of your letters under which I roofed for years, even though it could not near protect me from the draft of rain.

This is the scene when it rages awake and brings back down the daybroken hours on unhallowed ground.

This is the level to which one must stoop to pat on the back this patient pot-hound.

I watched the garbage boys toss the stacks you left me enough to stitch a faerie gown for miles, I had to pursue them to see how your words might end a one-woman dumb procession-until we reached the place where corbeaux scavenge tattered lovers’ pleas Speak La Basse if you speak love.

At night old tyres burn, joining your once pristine affections.

A flame winds up--a Shakti dancer's hands invoking deepest cloud— until you cannot discern paper from mirrors.

Gilberte O’Sullivan is a poet, writer, mother, and irrepressible dreamer from the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Her poems have been recently featured in “Postscript”, “Anomalous”, “Gargouille”, and many other journals and magazines.

What I felt in that pyre I may live to regret the terrible tinder the stench unkind.

The echoes razed, “Why blaze your own history?”

I neglected reply. For years onward I carried the flambeaux Uproariously burning.

Ivan Zamurovic

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Poetry

Sahara Dust GILBERTE O'SULLIVAN

The Sahara feeds the Amazon, so revealed the nymph Calipso in satellite form; NASA gave the say so, causing me to think of the nights my mother would look to the low ranges, marking the quiver of hills a hazy veil powdering the evening porch lights atmospheric, and my vexation when she tamped exhausted butts into the Galway wedding tray.

I forewarned the tragedy of her lungs.

She ignored me, admiring instead a bowl, deftly cut to precise refracted symmetry.

Was I aware that crystal is part Sub-Saharan particle, part misty quartz and part vital mineral, she asks, like the iron supplement she blotted into my childhood milk so I wouldn’t die of anemia?

I imagined her final moments having swallowed hard-hearted questions with valium, heaving blue menthols-how she cursed the night nurse foul for binning them how stupidly we heeded the well-versed better-late-than-nevers, the holier-than-thous.

The district medical officer said anxiety is common in someone whose heart worked as hard as hers.

We should have honoured her orders.

I envision a room of smoky exhalations, ghostly admonishments to the absent living.

They came for her and her alone and left smiling.

Spirit possession is nine tenths of the law.

A month from now we pour white coralash and stardust remains into the well and sing a grateful memorare to a land of exodus, sending forth its love.

Vladislav Gajic

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Victoria Shibut

Flash Fiction

Next to the Snap Peas MARK TULIN

Y

our next door neighbor, the Chinese lady with the vegetable garden in her front yard, always gives me a sad and pathetic look whenever I walk up the steps to your apartment. "Nice garden I say," and always complement her bok choy and snap peas.

Not two minutes in the door, you tell me to sit down, and you show me photos that I’ve seen hundreds of times before. You never get tired of my baby pictures or the Polaroids of your deceased husband standing in front of his produce truck with his hands in his pocket, smiling awkwardly.

Even though your dead husband had a mistress, who shacked-up with her just two blocks from your house, you loved him anyway.

You have a big heart, Mom, but you are a fool. You should have done something about it, not stood there and let it happen.

Every day, you light a Yahrzeit candle to commemorate his life on earth. As the flame burns a wavy shadow in the kitchen, you fan its warmth to your face as you dredge up all the unpleasant memories that seem to be written in the lines of your face.

You think I don’t notice you crying in the corner of the kitchen.

You assume I’m reading the Sunday paper or enjoying the static of your cableless TV. But I see you hunched over the candle like a monk in a monastery, tears running down your face as if you’re peeling onions over the sink.

Soon you come into the living room and tell me to lean back on the chair, criticizing my poor posture. You push my shoulders back and say things like, “I don’t want you so high. You shouldn’t wear blue. What's wrong with you?”

“That’s nonsense, Mom,” I say and hold in my frustration.

Without asking, you shove the Sunday Inquirer in my face, thinking that it would soothe my nerves and burgeoning anger, knowing full well that it has never worked to quiet my temper in the past.

I try not to say anything, I’ll regret, and go straight to the sports section and study the box scores from last night’s baseball games to distract myself from you. Stats estheticize me. When I look at the numbers and compare one player’s batting average to another, it gives me a brief moment of joy. I absorb the sports pages like a sponge, trying to block out your chatter with a game I enjoyed since I was kid.

I would pay attention if you were normal and if you weren’t so stuck in the past. That’s all you talk about is how wonderful the past was when you were a young girl or when you first married my father. You have no present or future, only a murky past that you so effectively distort. I’ve pleaded with you to get a life, to make friends, or find a hobby. But you don't listen to me either; your thoughts dwell in my childhood and the many things that your husband repaired around the house like it was yesterday.

“I don’t care about that stuff anymore,” I say. “It’s ancient history.

Let's move on,” I plead.

You hold my 1973 Northeast High Yearbook like a bible. You know I always look at my first girlfriend, Cheryl Handsinger’s class picture, and her long blonde hair falling on her shoulders; and my best friend, Sean, with his curly hair parted in the middle; and Jerry, who got a nose job after years of being teased by friends and enemies

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alike. Then there was Henry, our next door neighbor, who wore moccasins and carried a suede pot bag attached to his belt loop, and who, eventually, left for California with his pregnant girlfriend never to be heard from again.

You smile a toothless grin, showing off your pink gums. It makes me glad to see you happy, even though the good memories you have are like old photographs, tarnished, stuck together, and yellowing with age.

I watch your anxious movements for a few minutes. You can never relax or sit still for any length of time; you always need to be in constant motion, opening the brown refrigerator, microwaving a store bought cheese blintz, and serving it to me with a cheap can of cherry wishniak soda.

“Do you want sour cream on the blintz?” you ask.

“No, I just ate.”

“Here, have some more. Your face looks thin.”

“I’m not hungry, Mom.” You put the food on the table, anyway. Right next to the gifilte fish that has been sitting on that soggy paper plate since yesterday and beginning to show signs of mold.

Just under five-foot with a wrinkled neck and purple age spots, you mindlessly talk about my dead aunt and uncle in a loud voice that breaks my concentration from the sports pages, so I do something that I promised myself I wouldn’t do—I lose my temper.

Blue veins pop out of my bald head as if I were my father. A powerful rage builds up in my body from all the things that you have ever done to me since I was in grade school. From the time you barged into homeroom to give me goulashes, to the time that you threw out my book of poetry as a teenager and, worst of all, secretly selling my stereo and my priceless record collection.

My anger reminds you of your dead husband; the same scary eyes and deep bellowing voice. You get upset and, instead of backing off, you fuel my anger by suggesting that I try on his hairpiece.

“I just want to see how it fits,” you say. “It will only take a second.”

“Don’t do it, Mom!” I warn while clenching my teeth.

But once you get the idea in your head, there’s no turning back.

You sneak to the bedroom closet when you think that I’m not looking, and you take out dad’s salt-and-pepper hairpiece from a black hat box.

You remove the hairpiece from its prison and pet it like a precious animal. You come closer to me with that sinister grin of yours and place the fake hair on my sweaty pate from behind as if I’d be pleasantly surprised by having a dead rodent on my head.

You always wanted to cover it up, ashamed and embarrassed as if being bald was such a horrible deformity.

Unlike dad, I refuse to go along with the charade.

“I don’t care if dad allowed you to put that thing on his head— you’re not going to humiliate me!” I shout.

“Do it just this once, for your mother.”

“I’m never going to wear dad’s damn hairpiece!” I shout.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t lose control, but you always get under my skin no matter how strong my intentions are. Perhaps

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that’s why my father found salvation in the arms of another woman.

He had to find something to numb his anger.

I rip the dusty hairpiece from my scalp and go to the front window, ignoring your terrified expression. Before you could convince me to do otherwise, I slide up the screen, then toss the wig out the window like a Frisbee slicing through the air and watch it float innocently to its resting place.

You freak out. “That’s your father’s!” you scream. Your face turns crimson red, and you want to scratch my eyes out, but you can’t muster enough strength. Your rheumy eyes grow watery, and then I realize what I’ve done. My breathing grows shallow and I stand guiltily on your spotted tan carpet and watch you, my mother, crumble right before my eyes.

The moment you fell apart, I finally understood. It is more than just a glued latticework of human hair from some foreign country; it is a part of my father. It has my father's smell, his essence. It's something of his that you can control, a tangible part of his remains that you can still keep alive and love.

As I watch you continue to fall apart, I remember my father throwing the Thanksgiving turkey out the window when I was a kid and how unsettling that was. I remember how hurt you were.

All the work that you put in to preparing that Butterball turkey was destroyed with one fell swoop. The turkey flew out the window like it was your heart being tossed. And now, I hurt you the same way by throwing your husband’s toupee out the second-floor window.

Before I can say I’m sorry, you head for the stairs. I look out the window and follow your agonizing hunt for one of the few things in your life that means something.

The wig landed on the neighbor’s robust Chinese vegetable garden, virtually hidden by the leafy greens. But I could see it from my vantage point. It’s wedged in the middle of the baby bok choy and the snap pea patch, where it probably would have been more useful as a fertilizer.

But you won’t give up your search despite the Chinese lady yelling at you to get out of her garden.

Your old frail body is bent over, hands groping frantically through the leafy greens, unable to find it because both of your cataracts make your vision blurry. I can see your varicose veins at the back of your knees, your weak and trembling body searching through the garden in desperation. I feel your pain as only a son could. I don’t want you to suffer anymore.

I stick my head out of the window and point to the part of the Chinese garden where the hairpiece had landed.

“Right there, Mom, right next to the snap peas!”

Mark Tulin is a former family therapist from Philadelphia who lives in Santa Barbara, California. A poetry publisher once likened his work to artist, Edward Hopper, on how he grasps unusual aspects of people and their lives. Mark has a poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis (2017, by Prolific Press), and two upcoming books, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories (Madville Publishing), and Awkward Grace (Kelsay Books), a poetry collection.

Literary Work

Loose Gravel DARCY SMITH

I didn’t ask these trains to howl me home to watch water slap steady on a pier of broken pilings, soft like termite hills on the red barn trail.

Gnats in the dead of summer, the river rips me in her wake. Wait for the burst of maples. Sap runs and Red Crisps, a bushel fresh picked.

Half eaten core, tossed to the tracks before the glaze of an Autumn rain. I scramble out from a bank of loose gravel, dust and screams could be a kettle or maybe Ma cursing the empty cupboard. I didn’t ask. The train howls me back to Red Crisps, fresh picked. As if I could forget bobbing for a Gala in a ghost sheet. Mouth wide, a wet grab, almost finding. As if I never learned how to throw out a mealy apple. I know where bushels get ground, pulp almost too sweet, after the root cellar, after they leave.

Nikolay Mossolaynen

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Fresh Eggs for Mama DARCY SMITH

I called you Venus. We laughed, applied deodorant to the thin of your world, pillows propped, a pasture of hens.

You wore 89 degrees and nothing more because at 92 you give in–to my basin of soapy water, another pair of underpants soaked, though the cushions dry fast enough.

There is a hornet in the room and one of us will have to slap the screen door shut again. Strands of our grays, dead wings–stuck like an ice pack I shimmied into the angry splotch again. I can’t eat– your demands, grinding gums. I floss the edges of a windless night, and even politics taste mild. Your accident cried me here without a poem because I know you won’t like the smell.

There is a hornet in the room and one of us will have to warm your broth, crooked straw and pills to pull the pain up a long forgotten rope hung from the maple. I count drips of daylight, your eyes make watermarks, each inch of me stamped. I lift you to the toilet, strained groans, we hold each other’s arm pits.

There is a hornet in the room and one of us will have to go.

The refrain from Fresh Eggs for Mama is after James Schuyler’s Buried at Springs.

Nikolay Mossolaynen

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Poetry

The Duel DARCY SMITH

In first grade he sits on his coat. Ignores the cubby because some part of him wants a cushion.

A cushion between his home where his family understands that he will pull a loose string, pull the thread to its enticing beginning and if that means a seam unravels and if that makes his cubby oddly empty he doesn’t mind an empty space because he can fill it with a stash of paper clips, build towers, odd angles everywhere a ticking clock, hands angled left then right and back to the tidy scent of his teacher’s dress, the swish, her heels so brisk she breaks his polychrome broken by her nails tapping his desk where he launched his hero pen. Choose your weapon now, he tells himself, Not now. Now is two hands on his shoulders.

Now is math stations. Now is get your assignments.

Backpack cascades papers, chicken scratched, fly to the floor, his battlefield of paper, pencil gallops, sword raised, she closes in. Where is your work?

Now. Not now. Now work. Now choose. Now.

Darcy Smith works as a sign language interpreter. Her poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Up The River, Chronogram, MER, GTK, Sadie Girl Press, Universal Table, Arsenic Lobster, Between the Lines, RAR, The Poetry Distillery andArtAscent. Darcy is a Buddhist and a kickboxer. Her current obsession is executing a six punch three kick combination with perfect form.

Nikolay Mossolaynen

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Miroslav Nemecek

Fiction

The Eyes Have It STEPHEN FOX

“Having trouble with your eyes?”

R

eally? Here I was in an ophthalmologist’s office, sitting in the classic chair, staring at the mask of doom hanging down in front of me like a spider, and the doctor makes a wild guess like that. I nodded. “When I get tired, everything seems to get a little blurry lately.”

Doctor Bradshaw fit my image of an eye doctor. Short, overweight, with thick horn rim glasses. He looked down at the form I had filled out for his receptionist. “You know, our eyes change as we grow older. When was the last time you had your eyes checked?”

With a shrug, I said, “Probably twenty years ago. When I was in the service.”

He looked up, studying me. “Special forces?” He returned my nod.

“I can tell. You’ve kept yourself in good shape. You wouldn’t believe how most people let themselves go.”

His triple chins jiggled as he spoke. He would consider anyone who could wobble into his office without a crane to be in good shape.

“I try to stay healthy,” I said.

His eyes lowered back to the form. “You would be a good candidate for a new procedure I’m working on. If you agree to be a test subject, I can treat you for free. The exam isn’t dangerous, of course.”

I like free, but he neglected to say that the treatment wasn’t dangerous. “What would be involved?”

He sat up straighter in his chair, a new gleam in his eye. “I’ve invented a new machine that can actually project what you see onto a screen. It will revolutionize eye care, but it needs to be tested on a few patients to gather data before I announce it to the world.”

That put a different spin on things. “It hasn’t been tested?”

He waved off the question. “Of course it’s been tested on various animals. I’ve tried it on myself and even checked my granddaughter’s eyes with it. But it still needs a significant number of tests on a variety of people before I can get approval for the machine.” With a reassuring grin, he continued. “It’s perfectly safe. Let me show you.”

I stood up, grabbed my coat from the chair where I had deposited it and followed him down a short hallway to a tiny office in the back.

A look through the doorway revealed two eye charts adorned the flat surface behind a table with two chairs. A standard chart with a series of random letters in rows growing smaller as one read down the page hung on the left side. The other resembled a bullseye with a cross of three vertical and three horizontal lines dissecting the circle. On the table stood a computer with a large monitor and what appeared to be two bulky printers. An HP logo on the face of the box on

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the left identified it as a printer, while the other held no markings whatsoever. A series of wires stuck out from that box, some kind of connectors on the ends.

“Looks like an EKG machine, doesn’t it?” Dr. Bradshaw stepped over to the desk and turned on the computer, blocking my view so I wouldn’t see the password he entered. “Actually it uses the same sensors. Instead of reading your heart the sensors read the optic nerve.

It combines the technology of a brain scan with that of an ultrasound.

I’ve spent ten years working on this design.”

“Impressive,” I said. A box with two rows of three dials. The machine wasn’t much to look at but the concept was intriguing.

“May I demonstrate?”

I was dubious but interested. “You sure there’s no radiation or anything?”

“No radiation, no chemicals. Perfectly harmless, I assure you. No more dangerous than an EKG.” I sat down and the doctor started connecting sensors to my head.

Two on the temples, two on the back of the neck and one below each eye. The sensors were little round adhesive pads, with thin wires connecting each to the machine. If I moved my face muscles, the pads under the eyes pulled a little, but there was no real discomfort. I started to relax.

He flipped a switch on the machine. I heard a whir as a fan started up, then a series of clicks. Finally he clicked the computer mouse and two annoying words appeared. “Please Wait.”

Nothing changed for about ten seconds. Except for the words the screen was blank. Then some fuzzy blobs appeared. Dr. Bradshaw fiddled with two of the dials on the top row on the machine, and I started to make out an image. A slight turn of the third dial and I was looking at the computer on the computer. What I viewed on the screen was what my eyes actually saw.

Bradshaw strived to talk in a calm, controlled voice, but I could sense the excitement and pride just below the surface. “The image is a little blurry, but that’s why you came to see me. The retina of the eye collects light and sends tiny electrical impulses through the optic nerve to the brain. This machine intercepts the impulses and the computer interprets them the same way the brain does.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” I said. “Then what?”

“You look carefully at the eye chart on the wall. While you are examining the chart, the computer will check the vision you have of that chart and determine what you need. Sometimes in very mild cases the computer can adjust the patient’s brain waves and help him see better. Otherwise, it determines the prescription for the best corrective lenses for the patient.”

“You mean the machine will fiddle with my brain?” Not the most comforting image. I reached for the sensor on my left temple.

“Relax,” the doctor said. “The program will determine if that is a viable option and ask for approval. If the patient declines, it will defer to writing the prescription. Perfectly safe. And if the patient agrees, the change will be very subtle. You’ll just see everything a little more clearly.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in and continued, “Are you ready to begin?”

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In spite of my concern, I was intrigued. “Okay. You’re the doctor.

What could go wrong?”

He smiled. “Not a thing. Now I need you to study the circular eye chart for a couple of minutes while the computer does its analysis.

Concentrate on the chart.”

I sat for a few seconds staring at the poster while the machine whirred and whistled.

The doctor stiffened. “What in the world?”

I turned my eyes to the monitor. A scene was playing out on the monitor. A man seemingly in fear waved his arms in front of him.

Dr. Bradshaw pointed at the screen. “I’ve seen him before. Isn’t he some kind of gangster? I thought he had vanished.”

I didn’t have to study the screen. It wasn’t hard to identify Wesley the Weasel, especially when you spent as many hours with him as I had. “What’s happening?” I asked.

The doctor looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. I think the machine has somehow tapped into your subconscious memory. It’s not supposed to do that. It’s never happened before.”

I could feel his eyes staring at me as the figure on the screen sunk to his knees in prayer. Excitement built in the doctor’s voice and he leaned forward. “Are you remembering this? Is this a true memory?”

I took a deep breath and snarled, “Turn the machine off. I changed my mind. I don’t want to be part of this.” Again my hand moved toward a sensor.

He turned my chair to face him. “But think of what this means.

Think of what the machine can do. I’ve got to know. Did this really happen?” Turning back to the screen, he added, “This is incredible!”

The glue was stronger than I expected. As I wrestled with the sensors, I didn’t have to turn toward the screen to know what Bradshaw saw when he gasped a few seconds later. A week had gone by and I still savored the moment when I raised the pistol and put a bullet right in the middle of Wesley the Weasel’s forehead.

Finally the sensors on both temples popped off, and the screen went blank. “It’s really too bad there wasn’t sound with the picture,” I said with a laugh. “That was the best part. Listening to that slimy rat squealing for his life, knowing that he was going to die.” I don’t know why I was talking so much. I smirked as that image ran through my mind. “The weasel was a rat or the rat was a weasel. Either way, he’s dead.”

I don’t know why I was talking so much. I never had before. Say nothing was my usual motto. But I had never been in this position before either and, no matter how bizarre the circumstances, I knew I couldn’t leave a witness.

The doctor edged toward the door, shock and fear etched on his face. Yes, I knew that look so well. I had seen it dozens of times.

Before he could yell, I was behind him with my arm around his neck, trying for a choke hold. The doctor was quicker than his bulk revealed, and stuck an arm up blocking my move. This had to be quick, before someone heard a commotion, so I whipped out my knife and flicked the blade open. “Sorry, Doc,” I said as I slit his throat.

The look on his face changed to pain, then to calm just before he dropped to the floor. I jumped back to avoid the blood.

Fiction

“Yeah, what could go wrong?” I muttered as I checked myself in the mirror on the wall. Twenty years as an assassin and I run into this kind of problem at a doctor’s office, and an eye doctor at that. Blood drenched my shirt sleeve but that was the only stain I could see, so I put on my jacket. One problem solved.

I found a towel and began wiping down everywhere I might have touched. The good news was that my fingerprints were not on file. I had never been arrested or even suspected of anything. Mr. Average; that was me.

The bad news was unless I found every print, every spot of sweat that could contain my DNA, I would now be in the system. I tried to think. Was there anything, anywhere I touched in the waiting room? I signed in with my own pen, and used the excuse of being a germiphobe to explain my using a tissue to avoid touching the clipboard. I gave a false name and address, but they would have a sample of my handwriting. Still, I printed my name in block letters, so they shouldn’t get much out of that.

With a start I remembered leafing through an old Sports Illustrated, so ancient I expected to find articles written in hieroglyphics. Surely they wouldn’t go so far as to fingerprint every magazine, would they?

I decided not to worry about that. There would be nothing to link one of hundreds of prints on the magazines to the crime and nothing to make mine stand out from the rest. The only thing they would have is a vague description of me from unreliable witnesses, and I was wearing a fake mustache and sported a faux scar on my jaw line.

The authorities would never get a usable sketch of me. Once I left the office, I would be in the clear.

The table and chair took little time to sanitize. The door had been open when we entered, and the doctor had closed it. At the last minute I remembered to grab the sensors, as I might have left some DNA on those. A tissue to open the door, a quick but confident march through the reception area and I was gone.

Pushing the down button in the elevator I breathed a sigh of relief and congratulated myself for all the precautions I had taken. I had chosen a doctor in Charlotte because I hadn’t done business in the city in many years. I shunned the suburban mall doctors because of all the security. This building had no surveillance camera in the elevator and, like so many places, the cameras in the parking garage had been vandalized years before and never replaced. Thank goodness for corporate greed.

The elevator door opened. By now they would probably have discovered Bradshaw’s body but the police would take at least ten minutes to seal off the area. No sense drawing attention to myself by hurrying.

I stepped out and hesitated momentarily, then continued. In front of my car, ticket book in hand, stood a uniform. Young, still a boy, he probably just got out of the academy. “Is there a problem, officer?”

The patrolman looked up and shrugged. “Parking in this section is reserved for taller SUVs. No sedans allowed. Sorry, sir. I have to write you a ticket. Nothing personal.”

His radio went off. “Stabbing. Donner Building. Suspect white male, middle age, blue shirt, black jacket . . .”

The radio droned on as I weighed my options. I was too far away from him to take him out. And he hadn’t really looked at me. Better I should act the innocent and let him finish. Surely he would rush to the scene and forget about the ticket.

For a moment it looked like my prayer was answered as the officer closed his notebook and answered the radio. Then, in a flash, his gun was drawn and in my face. “Hands behind your head and get down on the pavement!”

I tried to act innocuous, putting my hands up. “Have I done something wrong, officer? I just want to get my car and--” He didn’t buy it, screaming, “Down, down on the ground!”

He ignored my protests, staying just out of my reach. He sounded nervous but the gun never wavered. I decided I didn’t want to die that day, and complied.

I don’t know what or who he had done to be stuck with glorified meter maid duty, but he was a good cop. He didn’t try to cuff me.

He never took his gun off me and never got close enough for me to have a chance to overpower him. He calmly called in his position and within five minutes backup arrived. They stuffed me into the rear seat of a squad car As time went by more and more officers appeared and checked out my car and the area around it. Finally two uniforms strolled toward me. One was definitely higher brass, with his uniform so shiny he obviously didn’t get out in the field often. The other was the patrolman that caught me. They entered the car and informed me they were taking me to headquarters.

“Okay, officer, I have to know. What did I do wrong? What tipped you?”

The young man turned to look at me through the grate separating us. “The lieutenant here tells me you were meticulous about cleaning the scene of the crime. Granted it’s early in the investigation, but the only evidence they’ve found so far is a partial footprint in the blood.

Not big enough to determine shoe size. However we’ll be able to match it to the blood on the sole of your shoe.”

“Yeah? But if I did so great, what gave me away?”

“Um, okay. You didn’t spot several small blood spots on your white sneakers, sir.” Wide-eyed, the officer shrugged. “Also you obviously didn’t notice the sign not to park in this area.” He paused to let that sink in and added, “You should have gotten your eyes checked, sir.”

After thirty two years in the classroom, Stephen Fox retired to devote more time to his writing. He has published numerous stories in anthologies such as Cover of Darkness, The Pettigru Review, The Rabbit Hole, and Nothing to Dread: A Niteblade Anthology. Other stories have appeared in Beyond Centauri magazine and various websites.

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Literary Work

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Poetry

Goodbye in Case I Have to Go DEWITT CLINTON

If I had to leave, immediately, unexpectedly, As I have to go now, no time to even pack, I’d want to say how much I enjoyed all Of you, from top to bottom, every day, along With everything else you’ve ever done, but I did want to say, and don’t take this like You will, which you probably will, but Next time, perhaps we should have more Dogs and fewer cats, but that’s just what I’ve been thinking about as I am rushing Out of the house, not even realizing that I’m not going to be rushing out of the House any more, ever, as I’m about to Be exited, as someone might say, or Dusted, or mowed down, or simply Passed over, and now I’m even wondering What the heck is passed over supposed To mean, but then it doesn’t really Matter, does it, as this is it sweetheart, And I only hope all those walks we took Outside our little hotel in Florence or Even on the beach in The Yucatan, well, It was fun wasn’t it? Of course, I have to Go now, as I’m not even expected to know What to expect but something dreadful Is going to happen and if it doesn’t I’ll Be forever grateful that I may have even One more moment with you but that’s Asking way too much knowing what May have already happened without Even knowing what’s already happened.

I know as this is probably a goodbye though I really didn’t mean forever, just until Dinner, or drinks, sometime this evening.

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. rawpixel

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Things I Did While Trying to Come Up with a Dazzlingly Descriptive Title for this Poem RICK BLUM

Rick Blum has been chronicling life’s vagaries through essays and poetry for more than 30 years during stints as a nightclub owner, high-tech manager, market research mogul, and, most recently, old geezer. Mr. Blum is a threetime winner of the annual Carlisle Poetry Contest. His poem, Tomfoolery, received honorable mention in The Boston Globe Deflategate poetry challenge.

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Poetry

Checked email to see if it was my turn to play in a long-distance, Scrabble game with my sister.

Played zit for 32 points.

Ate some peanuts.

Remembered walking in the sand, and when we used to sing sha la la la la la la la la la la la, but not the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow.

Emptied my bladder.

Added Brown Eyed Girl to my Spotify playlist.

Composed a lusty limerick ending with the word “thar” that would make even Stormy Daniels blush.

Looked up “thar” in the dictionary just to see if it might have a meaning other than there, as in “Thar she blows.” It does. (Considered the many possibilities for amusing myself by using “Thar she blows” and “Stormy Daniels” in a limerick.)

Checked email again. Moved my June Hilton Honors statement into the “Monthly Statements” folder; deleted the May statement. Looked to see if my points balance was still zero. It was.

Lost a staring contest to my clock.

Erased a half dozen phone messages from overly chipper flaks trying to sell me a dirt-cheap, health insurance policy, gutter cleaning services, the benefits of donating to the local police benevolent association, and so on … and so on … and so on.

Finished the peanuts.

Clicked on cnn.com to see if North Korea is still no longer a nuclear threat, or if it is once again deserving of fire and fury.

Rubbed the nape of my neck to try to ease the pain from the whiplash the day’s headlines gave me.

Decided dazzlingly descriptive titles are overrated.

Wrote this poem Sandra Cunningham

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Holiday 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 this quarter!

Surface Talk VIRGINIA M. CRUTCHER Follow the Fish Family as they show how Christians should live their lives: honest and decent.

Our Forest NANCY B. FRANK See nature in yet another light with these four fur friends, and ponder on the lessons of cooperation and friendship.

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Rinnie the Weasel DEBBY G. BOWES ED.D This children's book can be any parent's new best friend. It's fun, endearing, and full of great lessons. Keep an eye out for the bonus interactive opportunity at the end!

The Little Drummer Boy Grows Up KITTIE M. WOOLLISCROFT In this book, author Kittie Wooliscroft talks about a few of what she loves: Jesus Christ, Christmas, children of the world, and, she says with a laugh, music.

Wee Willie One Sock JOHN PETRIE Join Lucy and Matthew, two lovable cats, and help Willie look for the missing sock around the whole house!

The Red Oak Rocking Chair NELIBETH PLAZA A refreshing take on life and love, as told from an unlikely perspective: the Red Oak Rocking Chair's.

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Stubborn Debra Sue JEFFERY TRACEY SR. Meet Debra Sue, a bright little girl who doesn't let her handicap stop her from doing anything, and learn to embrace life with a newfound positivity.

How To Live Forever: 12 Vows and Habits to Live By: Happily, Forever After (A True Story About Staying Married For 60 Years and Living Forever After) JERRY AND SHARI RHOADS Jerry and Shari Rhoads have reached the 60-year milestone in their marriage, despite what experts say. They plan to beat the world record and stay happily married for another 30 years—and they're optimistic! Just what could their secret be?

Pennies from Heaven . . . Really!: A Widow Shares Her True Story NANCY NORTHROP SLUZINSKI When a widow in grief first sees pennies appear out of nowhere, she pays no mind. Slowly, she realizes they meant her late husband still keeps watch over her. Watch as she comes to terms with her pain and chooses to see the world optimistically once again.

Twelve Years & Eight Months: How Mental Illness Took My Wife and the Mother of My Children and Changed Her Into Someone We No Longer Recognized VICTOR D. BANKHEAD A heart-wrenching real-life story about one man's battle against his wife's mental deterioration, and the sacrifices he had to make to protect his children.

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52 Years Living With Diabetes JAMES ZAJAC This insightful book about the life of a diabetic is packed with carefully studied and presented information that are designed to provide advice, introduce new approaches to the disease, and incite conversation about the main issues of today's medical system, among others.

The Origin of Disease: The War Within CAROLYN MERCHANT JD & CHRISTOPHER MERCHANT MD A fresh voice in medical literature, this book can help patients and doctors alike in seeking new answers; a softer employment of "out with the old, in with the new".

Soul Matters: Modern Science Confirming Ancient Wisdom: Healing at the Interface of Spirit and Matter JEANNE-RACHEL SALOMON PHD & SANDRA INGERMAN MA Discover how quantum physics and shamanic understanding come together to tackle matters of the soul.

Through the Fire MICHAEL KOWCH This book can not be any more timely than it already is. Read through the life of an all-grown-up boy who had to take a step back in order to truly move forward, and eventually into an ever-evolving self-realization.

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Victim to Victory: My Journey from Sex Slavery to Freedom in Christ TISHA DICKSON-NICKSON A genuinely raw chronicling of life, forgiveness, and the rise from one's lowest points through Christ.

Lifeline ARNETTE ADOBOLI Pure and sincere, this literary assemblage of family life and cultural heritage makes for a calming yet reflective read.

Help! My Teen is Pregnant: A Survival Guide for Moms of Pregnant Teens STEPHANIE ZEISS A practical handbook for moms facing a difficult time in their lives: their darling daughters already becoming mothers themselves.

#1 Silver Creek Ranch: Forgotten CLAUDIA MONTEIRO Callie loves horses. To her, a life without them simply isn't life at all.

What happens when an unfortunate event wipes out traces of her memory? Will her love for horses help her regain them, or will she get more than she bargains for?

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Up Close and Personal: The Equine Paintings NANCY B. FRANK Let your imagination run wild with these beautifully-painted images of horses, and explore the distances a relationship between a human and horse can go.

21st Century Figurative Art: The Resurrection of Art JAN ESMANN Flip through this palm-sized full-color gallery featuring works of the 21st century's major figurative artists, and learn a thing or two with the author's critiques and essays.

The Writings JOEL DAVID RINKER This methodically laid-out collection of significative writings is designed to make any reader reflect on life and its many issues.

The Godly vision portrayed in the book teaches readers to find hope in the midst of it all.

Five Lost Children PATRICIA W. SMITH Be eyewitnesses to how Christine Dianne Jackson, through the grace of God, saves five children from being forever lost in the pits of society.

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Wingtips Under a Bolivian Poncho BRUCE N. ANDERSON Henry Emerson faces a dilemma when an opportunity to work abroad arises, requiring him to make the choice to be away from his family.

Can he handle it?

Darfur: Road to Genocide BAHAR ARABIE Find out the truth about the Darfur genocide, and learn of the battles its freedom fighters had to face while enduring the enemy's constant attempts at weakening their emotional foundations.

Stealth Gambit: A Cold War Novel Inspired by Actual Events WESLEY B. TRUITT Powerful and soul-stirring, this spy story based on events that really happened is just hard to put down.

Spy Brothers: Seeking Russia's al-Qaeda Connection WESLEY B. TRUITT A much-anticipated sequel to Stealth Gambit, this is another spy novel with a compelling storyline speckled with action and secrets.

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WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

ART FESTIVALS

BRAFA ART FAIR

THE ONE OF A KIND HOLIDAY SHOW

Photo: Emmanuel Crooy

When: January 26 – February 2, 2020 Photo: One of A Kind Show Chicago

Where: Tour & Taxis, Brussels, Belgium

When: December 5 – 8, 2019

The BRAFA Art Fair, created in 1956, is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious art fairs, famous for its high quality fine art, antiques, modern and contemporary art, and design it offers. The first major art event of the year, it is considered a reliable barometer of the art market.

Where: The Mart, Chicago, IL A highly-anticipated and much-revered holiday experience in Chicago. Offering shoppers a one-stop shopping and entertainment experience, the show features work from over 600 talented artists, artisans, and makers from across North America and beyond, as well as gourmet cafes, live music, a thoughtfully-curated fine art gallery, and much more.

SCOPE MIAMI BEACH

BRAFA 2020 welcomes 133 top art galleries from 14 countries. The fair stands for quality at its best, diversity in all its splendor, elegance without pretension, and of course the warm Belgian hospitality so appreciated by exhibitors and guests alike.

Photo: SCOPE Miami Beach

When: December 5 – 8, 2019 Where: Scope Miami Beach Pavilion, Miami Beach, FL Honoring its perpetual mission to provide a platform for discovery, SCOPE will welcome 134 diverse contemporary exhibitors featuring The New Contemporary, a genre that stands as a critical contribution to both global politics and local community engagement. New to the pavilion this year is OASIS, an experiential multidisciplinary program that will present daily programming featuring large scale installations, music performances, and panel discussions while continuing their long-standing commitment to wellness.

Come enjoy morning healing programming, guided meditation, and CBD spa treatments against the backdrop of beautiful South Beach.

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WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

LITERARY FESTIVALS

RANCHO MIRAGE WRITERS FESTIVAL

JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Photo: Lani Garfield

When: January 29 – 31, 2020 Photo: Jaipur Literature Festival

When: January 23 – 27, 2020 Where: Diggi Palace, Jaipur, India Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas. The past decade has seen it transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcoming over a million book lovers from across India and the globe. Every year, the Festival brings together a diverse mix of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders, sports people, and entertainers on one stage to champion the freedom to express and engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue.

Where: Rancho Mirage, Riverside County, California The Rancho Mirage Writers Festival is a world-class gathering of the finest writers who contribute to the intellectual vitality of our time.

The City of Rancho Mirage, California, welcomes 40 authors and 1,000 readers from around the globe to the Rancho Mirage Library and Observatory each January. Jamie Kabler, who wanted to bring a premier intellectual event to the Coachella Valley, founded the Festival in 2014, which has been described as “Coachella for the Brain.”

VERVE POETRY FESTIVAL

SAVANNAH BOOK FESTIVAL

Photo: Patti Todd Photo: Verve

When: February 13 – 16, 2020 Where: Lucas Theatre, Savannah, GA The Savannah Book Festival is an annual event, free and open to the public, in celebration of the written word and its role in improving the human experience. Since the first Savannah Book Festival in 2008, SBF has consistently presented nationally-recognized national, regional, and local authors to thousands of book-loving attendees.

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When: February 20 – 23, 2020 Where: Birmingham Hippodrome, Birmingham, England Hear award-winning poets and local legends sharing the same stage.

Attend workshops open to all levels. Experience genre-defying performances. Bring the house down at a spoken word and music gig.

Brave an open mic. Meet your favorite poets and discover new ones.

It’s the friendly, down to earth, cosmopolitan, and deliciously bold festival you’ve heard everyone talking about.

WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

FILM FESTIVALS

Poster: San Francisco IndieFest

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD GENRE FILM FESTIVAL When: December 1 – 15, 2019 Where: New People Cinema, San Francisco, CA Fifteen days of mind bending cinema from the San Francisco Bay Area and around the globe! Another Hole in the Head Film Festival seeks broader horizons than their original genre festival allowed. All styles of independent film are welcome to compete—whether it's a major production from a professional company, a student film, or a micro-budget labor of love. San Francisco is the second largest film market in the country and a great promotional platform for indie filmmakers who are trying to get their film out into the world.

OTHER WORLDS AUSTIN When: December 5 – 8, 2019 Where: Galaxy Highland Theatre, Austin, TX Other Worlds is one of the premier SciFi Film Festivals in the US, championing filmmakers and writers and bringing the best films to the Geek Capital of the World. With a diverse and approachable team of programmers, they’re building a network of SciFi fans and filmmakers, leading a loyal community, and launching SciFi films into the wider world.

Photo: OWA SciFi Film Festival, LLC

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WRITER’S CORNER

Events, Conferences, Awards

SWEDE FILM FESTIVAL

Photo: Swede Fest

When: December 13, 2019 Where: The Tower Theatre, Fresno, CA A sweded film is a low-budget, summarized, recreation of a popular Hollywood movie or TV show. Swede Fest is a dream come true for anyone who constantly starts a movie only to find themselves snoozin' about halfway through. The festival features 4-minute mini movies that recreate the plot line of many popular TV shows and movies! Film fans can see the amazing creativity that goes into these short films and enjoy the unique take each filmmaker brings to their favorite stories.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Photo: Sundance Institute

When: January 23 – February 2, 2020 Where: Park City, Utah Every winter in Utah, the Sundance Film Festival becomes the ultimate gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives. The annual program includes dramatic and documentary features and short films, series and episodic content, and New Frontier, showcasing emerging media in the form of multimedia installations, performances, and films. They also host daily filmmaker conversations, panel discussions, and live music events. Since 1985, hundreds of films that have launched at the Festival have gained critical recognition and acclaim, reaching new audiences worldwide.

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NRM Team

NewReader

Mixtape

This year has been tuneful for everyone here at New Reader Magazine.

And since we’re wrapping up 2019, we’d like to start this tradition of paying tribute to artists and sharing the music we found inspiring, booty shakin’ or just simply loved.

Enjoy!

Cheapest Flight prep Move Your Feet junior senior Make Me Like You gwen stefani I Wanna Love You just friends Down the Line beach fossils June oh, flamingo!

Joy fkj So Far Away carole king Blackbird the beatles Obvious Child paul simon Nightbird kalapana Slide calvin harris ft. frank ocean Boy (I Need You) mariah carey watch you sleep. girl in red Young Folks peter bjorn & john It’s a Vibe 2 chainz 3005 childish gambino Everybody But You thundamentals All of the Lights kanye west Gone mr.probz ft. anderson .paak New House toro y moi DHL frank ocean 17 youth lagoon Who Can I Run To xscape Chilly Garlic Buttered Shrimp brass pas pas pas pas

Come and Get Your Love redbone Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You) kesha, dolly parton Carry Me Away john mayer All The Time the bahamas It’s Oh So Quiet bjork Constant Conversation passion pit The Universal blur Chilly niki Drive floor cry Don't bryson tiller On Ne S'aimera Plus Jamais larusso

Who’s Got You Singing Again prep Bawat Kaluluwa iv of spades The Love Club lorde Sober childish gambino idfc blackbear Mixed Personalities ynw melly ft. kanye west Just Like My homeshake Fast Slow Disco st. vincent Brown Eyed Girl van morrison Hot Thoughts spoon I Believe in a Thing Called Love the darkness

Baby, Now That I Found You the foundations

7empest tool No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross sufjan stevens

Was It Something I Said mykey You & Me the hunna Mr. Know-It-All young the giant Circles vista kicks Setsuna sunny day service Hey Jude the beatles Gotta Get Away vista kicks I Really Love You gibbz Indigo niki Ivy frank ocean Sunflower post malone, swae lee Die for you the weeknd History 88rising, rich brian Sanctuary joji New Song warpaint Art of sepia times Wash It All Away san cisco I Know What You Want busta rhymes 3AM honne I Wish I Missed My Ex mahalia

Just Like Heaven the cure Hold Me Now thompson twins You Never Knew haim Teenage Bones noirre Easy mac ayres Harry kelsy karter Movie tom misch Do You Believe in Love huey lewis & the news What You Want my bloody valentine Summertime Magic childish gambino Ça ira joyce jonathan Always panama Everyone but You the front bottoms Jocelyn Flores xxxtentacionxxx Heartbreaker Remix mariah carey ft. da brat, missy elliott Monster

kanye west, jay z, rick ross, bon iver & nicki minaj

Throwaway sg lewis ft. clairo Too Late to Turn Back Now cornelius brothers & sister rose

Star Prelude ibrahim Exchange bryson tiller La Vie En Rose lady gaga Johnny B. Goode chuck berry All The Love the outfields Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) my chemical romance SUGAR brockhampton Fantasy alina baraz & galimatias (felix jaehn remix) If I Didn't Have You vista kicks Spain between the trees Gold Snafu sticky fingers Closing Time semisonic

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