Noctua Review XI by Noctua Review

NOCTUA review

NOCTUA REVIEW

V. XI - 2018

MASTHEAD Elizabeth Wager Editor-in-Chief

Natalie Schriefer Assistant Editor

Molly Miller Fiction Editor

Giovanni Valentin Fiction Editor

Emma Moser Poetry Editor

Cole Depuy Poetry Editor

Noctua Review is the national literary journal produced annually by the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University This issue of Noctua Review is made possible by the Office of the Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at SCSU, the Department of English at SCSU, and the Graduate Student Affairs Committee at SCSU Special thanks to Jeff Mock, Tim Parrish, SCSU, Alex Girard, and Anna Wager Cover Art by Madeline Schlick

NOCTUA REVIEW VOLUME XI / INSTINCT

TABLE of CONTENTS POETRY But I Was Born at the Northern Border Natalie Solmer

To my father, upon waking Kelly Granito

The Car Paul Ferrell

Gammarus Brian Baumgart

Blind Jill Dery

Thornapple Honey Robert Campbell

How Death Fucks You (Acid Rain) Ahja Fox

Four Words Korbin Jones

Imperialist Christine Hamm

Citizens Band Vivian Wagner

Letter to Debbie from the Lincoln Park Zoo Sandy Coomer

La cancion del Mar Wally Swist

To Love the River Siham Karami

Cockatrice Marvin Shackelford

Flat Land Mark Trechock

FICTION The Feather Adam Hoss

Tesla’s Pigeon Matt Poll

Shells Abigail Skinner

Don’t Worry, Your Secret’s Safe with Me! Benjamin Hostetter

Needles Carmelinda Blagg

Brownie 2 Rachel Karyo

Lines Therese Hair

ART Ivy House Wayne Russell

Vein Luca McCarthy

We bribed someone to be here, La Habana, Cuba Arianna Johnston

Essentials Roger Leege

We should have bribed someone to let us in, Glasgow, Scotland Arianna Johnston

Totality Melissa Slater

Mother of Winds Kerfe Roig

Natalie Solmer But I Was Born at the Northern Border in Snowbelt. There, a long, great lake hangs in the sky, touching our hair and the ghosts of fish never leave, though the clouds move on, a few making it to New York. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll finally admit my interior is this Middle West. I used to think what defined us was the sadness of light: mostly thin cream in cold or mint green when leaves open, eventually pool-blue and warm and on rare days, golden, but I was wrong. I had forgotten the far line of horizon. In truth, it is this that pushes the light into us. Even as the atmosphere flattens and falls to our ankles, we speak out of its hard closeness.

Kelly Granito To my father, upon waking As usual, a rat scuttled into the garage as if skating a frozen pond on crooked feet: lunging from plywood shelves; striking the Plymouth’s dented hood—hanging from the bulb that punched a single treasured hole of light in the homestead’s boxed heart. We should kill it, I whispered. Catch and release, you countered—but then, guts. In my hands, your heavy redhandled shovel, slick with blood. Entrails cast to the wall like snow to the curb on nightlike winter mornings. The rest is gone, except for the shovel— its tender scraping of pavement: how you carried it to the driveway while I sulked in the idling van; how I watched in the rearview mirror as you dug a gentle exit to daybreak.

Ivy House

Wayne Russell

Adam Hoss The Feather Bear showed her the feather. She’d been spending days at the window, studying the mechanics of outside. A crosstown stream of soot and headlights, snow shovels, Aleut, barking dogs. Once per day, the staccato of noon in church bells. She was not a creature from a distant world. She was just curious, she’d told Bear. She wanted to know what people did with their freedom of movement. Four years, seven months and a day, out on parole, good behavior. Not a lifetime, but long enough. So she watched for patterns through the glass, listening to her even breathing. “A feather,” Annette said. “This is your plan.” “Not just any feather,” Bear said. “The northern curlew.” Empty eyes, a slackness to her neck muscles. She said nothing. “They’re dead, Annette. All of them. Global warming, I guess. This feather is all that remains of a species. Think about it. The museums, the collectors. The value. We’ll make a fortune.” She touched the feather, a monument of extinction, shrapnel of evolution pressed between pages. Its texture, made rough by saran wrap and superglue, proved a poor substitute for the touch that once captured her heart. “I know a guy,” Bear said. “David’s his name. We do a thing for him, then we sell the feather. Then it’ll be over. Then we’ll be a family.You and me and Zoe.” Annette heard her heart noise, pounding against a damaged aorta. She wanted to believe him. She looked at Zoe across the kitchen. A strange creature, five years old. Zoe watched snow erase the harbor, curtain-wrapped, getting impatient, her silhouette framed by ice floes and fjords. A cottage necropolis marred the coastline like rotting teeth, shingles sporting spider webs of ice. Annette glimpsed a square of orange peeking through the grey and pictured her mother pacing and sweating and wondering how long to wait before calling the police. “Canada?” she asked. Bear shook his head. “Too obvious,” he said. “Morocco. Madagascar. Somewhere exotic, where they won’t think to look. We’ll talk about it on the way.” He paused. “What did you tell your parents?” “Said I was taking Zoe for a walk.” The heart noise. Steady and clean. She’d heard its call before. 11

“Okay,” Bear said. “We need to hurry.”

They buzzed above the Alaskan coast, folds of fog-sheathed earth. Stars and contrails. The Northern Lights. Annette sensed something primordial in the night. In a past life she might have been a whaler charting a course by Polaris, alone at sea with her frostbite and the constellations. The landscape defied comprehension. Only after glimpsing the town of Unalaska aglow amongst crevices could Annette understand the hugeness over which they flew. Zoe pressed her forehead against the window. The world in her pupils. She pulled off a mitten, used her teeth. Annette felt the rhythm of her growing heart. “Are you scared?” she asked. Zoe shook her head. “It’s a big deal.Your first flight.” “We’re going on a trip,” Zoe said. Two Inuit businessmen snored in their seats near the cockpit. Bear paced the aisle and Annette realized that this time was for real, the plotting, the practice, the planning for contingencies, the human mystery of what the next person is thinking. Annette pulled Zoe close. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. Bear fixed his gaze on the emergency exit signs. “Mommy,” Annette said, “isn’t really your mommy. I am.” Zoe grew still. Her eyes darted port to peak. Maybe Annette felt tremors in her chest, a deviation in breath tempo, or maybe it was a ripple passing through the world. Annette waited for signs of struggle, but Zoe kept quiet. Silence between them grew like stem cells in a womb. Zoe was not a baby on a plane. Her tantrum never came. Annette tried to imagine receiving similar news at a similar age. Fear turned to shame turned to panic.You can’t just say these things. Not to children. You’ll fry their brains. “Okay?” Annette asked. Zoe blinked but made no sound. Bear hadn’t moved. His ponytail swayed in sync with the sky. The mass of his torso filled the space between seats. This nothingness confused her. Speak, she thought. Acknowledge me. I am a fact. “I’d like you to call Bear daddy.” 12

Nothing. She shook Zoe’s shoulders. “Talk to me,” she pleaded. “I’m your mother.” Zoe turned her neck and gave Annette a look. Her eyes spoke no sadness, no fear. She was not in shock. She was alive, breathing in, breathing out, cells in homeostasis, wearing a halo of Aurora Borealis painting in the canvas above her head. “I’m telling you something important,” Annette said. “We’re going away. Forever. I’m your mother. Martha is your grandma. Do you understand?” “I have to pee,” Zoe said. Annette loosened her grip and Zoe squirmed through limbs and disappeared into shadows. A door clicked. Bear slouched into a seat across the aisle. The seatbelt light dinged. The pilot made announcements about altitudes and arrival times, seatback pockets and electronic devices. She imagined Zoe sobbing, puking, punching the walls, but her mind kept returning to suspended animation, a heart and its host existing and nothing else, still as a sundial. “Morocco,” Annette said. She liked the way the word felt on her lips. “Morocco.” They rattled through Anchorage in a rented car. The city looked like an ice god’s tomb. Jousting plows and storefronts, snow, drab apartment blocks. Here and there a splotch of color. A sign outside a butcher’s shop advertised porpoise heads. On West 3rd, a bus crackled to a stop and out stepped mother and child. Tundra-hardened snow shovelers cleared the parking lot of the Hilton Anchorage in the methodical formation of a landmines hunt. Bear gunned the hatchback, struggling up an ascent. In alleyways loomed glaciers and rocks the color of sky. Annette watched an Inuit family, mother, father, son, lug groceries into a van through the reflection of her face. Bear’s book-holstered feather slid across the seat. Then something happened. Zoe, without prompting, reached out and held her mother’s hand. David had guests. They stopped what they were doing when they saw a child. Breath rippled through the townhouse like life draining from a punctured lung. In the kitchen, a bearded hulk of a man slid a bong behind his back, using his muscles as a shield. David lounged on the carpet, legs outstretched under the coffee table, shuffling cards. He looked up as they entered. “You’re early.” Bear nodded. “We are.” “You should have called.” Every surface stunk of marijuana. Wallpaper clung and curled, pinned 13

back by posters and jury-rigged black lights. Cigarette butts overflowed an ashtray. Someone fired up a circular saw in a nearby garage. An Inuit woman with green hair and a nose ring squatted near Zoe and smiled. “Hi,” Annette said to the gallery of faces. “I’m Annette and this is my daughter Zoe.” My daughter. The words sounded like Sanskrit. The pierced woman shook Zoe’s hand. David gestured at the stairs with his beard. “First door on the right,” he said, keeping focused on his cards. Zoe raced to the window and flattened her nose against the glass. The room had a bed with pink sheets, a stuffed giraffe, wallpaper that didn’t smell, a photograph of walruses in a tusk fight. Bear placed his arm across the doorframe, denying Annette the freedom of movement she’d lusted after for four years, seven months and a day. She watched her daughter draw shapes in window fog. We can trust David, Bear had said. He’s good people. But who was he, really? Whose room was this? Tremors plagued her psyche. She wanted forward motion. Bear pulled the door across her view. “I’m having second thoughts,” Bear said. “What?” He hesitated. “You can’t do things like this. We could go to jail.” “She’s my daughter.” “I know.” He trailed off, scratching his scalp. “We had everything planned. Morocco. Remember?” He nodded. “You talked me into this.” Bear shrugged. “Who talked anyone into anything?” He paced, boots on wood, floorboards wailing. “What if we get caught?” “Caught doing what?” Annette asked. “You make it sound like we’re criminals.” “You,” Bear said. “Not we. This is between you and Zoe.” “She deserved to know the truth.” Bear grimaced and sucked his lower lip, making a face like a doctor prepared to deliver bad news. “Look,” he said. “I’m not taking your parents’ side. But I understand them.You know? They thought they were doing the right thing. Because what were they supposed to tell her? What should they have done, Annette? She’s five. She doesn’t understand. We could have told her in a few years.” 14

Numb. It’s what she felt in her face, in her soul. The old darkness swelled inside her. Something corpselike crept into her eyes. “Morocco?” Bear asked. “What happens when we get there? We’ll need visas. We’ll need cash. We don’t speak the language.” Her fists were white phosphorous, her eyes bullets. She traced within her an echo of violence. “I’m no father, Anette. Jesus. What the hell are we doing?” He stopped, squinted. “You okay?” It was here with them in the hallway, the past and all its fangs. Bear knew it and he looked afraid. “Okay, relax,” Bear said. “Don’t do something you’ll regret.” He crept towards an open door and took on a runaway’s stance, as though he were ready to dodge a train. “Think about Zoe. Think about your daughter.” Black hair fell across her face. Her eyes took cover. She looked like something from a horror film. David broke the tension. “Hey you guys?” he shouted up the stairs. “You should come look at this.” They descended into the living room, side-by-side, a lingering emptiness in Annette’s gaze, and there she was, Martha Crane, bleary-eyed and sniffle-nosed, pleading on the television screen. “More as the story develops,” a reporter said over the image. The camera cut to a studio where a pinstriped newscaster sat behind a desk. Zoe’s picture was on the screen. “Police are asking for help locating the missing child. Her mother, Annette Crane, who was recently paroled after spending five years in prison for aggravated manslaughter, is wanted for questioning. If you have any information regarding the whereabouts of Annette or Zoe Crane–” David muted the television. Slowly, everyone looked at Annette. She had a blonde bun and a bulging eye, enlarged, Annette guessed, from years hunched over a microscope. She had a drawing in her office of birds wearing people clothes and doing people things, checking phones, straightening ties, sipping tea. Annette let her eyes wander. This was a common theme. Birds doing people things. A family of geese rode a bicycle in bronze on her desk. A stuffed waterfowl peered over glasses. A pelican wound its wing to throw a pigskin. She imagined a world of feathered cardiologists and poets and bird scientists studying people and our ways, pinning fingers behind glass in their bird museums. The woman’s eye looked even more exaggerated through a magnifying 15

glass. She concluded her study and looked up. “White-tailed eagle,” she said. “Female.” Bear blinked. “No,” he said. “It’s a northern curlew.” She took a second look. Annette sensed this was just for show. “White-tailed eagle,” she repeated. “Maybe you don’t recognize it? Nobody’s seen a curlew in thirty years. Better check one of your books.” “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Your feather belongs to a white-tailed eagle.” “Is it endangered?” Bear asked. “No.” She could hear him getting desperate, short of breath. She closed her eyes and pictured his heart. “So what’s it worth?” The woman clasped her hands. “What do you mean?” she asked. “It’s a feather. It’s worth nothing.” Bear palmed his face. The office was not large enough to permit him his pacing, so he settled for an awkward shuffle between cabinets. “Everything’s worth something,” he said. The woman shrugged. “Half a penny.” Birds doing people things. The imagery in her mind grew violent, wrens wrapped in suicide vests, flamingos on a firing line, poultry submarines, herons tarred and defeathered, boobies and bitterns and osprey and penguins plotting Hiroshima on ice. “Come on,” Annette said. “Zoe’s waiting.” “This is why we need a new separatist movement,” David was explaining as they came in. “AKIP has failed us. Vogler wanted secession. He wanted self-rule. ‘I’m an Alaskan, not an American.’ Where is that today? AKIP died in Vogler’s grave. AKIP’s a joke. We need to be breaking windows, turning over cars. We need skull bandanas and Molotovs. We need our voices to be heard. His bodybuilder friend took a bong hit and sprawled on the couch. “Takes money,” he said. David nodded. “Bear’s got some kind of priceless artifact. We’ve been over this.” He glanced at Bear as they came in. “Hey,” he said, quieter. “How’d it go?” They found Zoe asleep on the pink sheets, the stuffed giraffe in her grasp. Bear sat on the edge of the bed. 16

“I’ll turn myself in,” Annette said. Bear nodded, looking at nothing in particular. “We tried,” she said. He nodded. “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” “No,” said Annette. “Not that. I’m sorry for everything.” She watched her daughter breathing in and out, delicate, floppy-eared, desperate to be loved. Bear rested his palm on Zoe’s head and it was just as she imagined, the three of them together. Whatever happened, Annette thought, no judge or jury of her peers could take this away. Here in this white-walled room with snow falling in the window, for a single moment, they were a family.

Paul Ferrell The Car An ant is tap dancing across my windshield as my car ricochets from point A to point B. The ant is swinging a top hat. My car is held together with duct tape and glue. Work. $$$. I remember the feeling of my fingers as they spied the tender seam behind her leg. Spinning 360s with the emergency brake in a snow piled shopping mall parking lot to the glassy plucks of the organ solo from “Riders on the Storm”. There’s a killer on the road, his brain is a baked potato. Clouds of porn store laughing gas. Head like the cat who stepped on a rake. The car engine somehow survives the border of Wisconsin. An Arid Spring: It hasn’t rained since disco. The sky is a brown penny on a railroad track, smooth and faceless. We write the absurd last act in secret. The mid-west has no need for the dreams of scarecrows jittering in fields of baseball ghosts. Bags of pennies spill from the sky. The Ramada Inn is red, the Motel 6 is blue. She wants to, then she doesn’t but then she does popping her fingertips, uncrumpling her smile, in a town so much different than your own.

Vein

Luca McCarthy

Brian Baumgart Gammarus We discover them, coughed up by geese, deposited on old deck boards, ancient gods risen from beneath the sea if the sea were a shallow pond in Minnesota. Tiny, they fit, dozens in the palm of my hand, pink aliens on pink flesh, soft from winter. In dreams, they burrow in, flipping tails through veins and arteries, blessing my heart with bowed antennae. Grass shrimp, some say, when I describe the curled body and warriorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; armor, an appellation undue the miniscule knights popping their bodies just below the surface: it would be so easy to scoop them up, expose to spring breeze, watch them die in the palm of my hand. How long until they die? How long will the blessing last? â&#x20AC;&#x192;

Jill Dery Blind for Anthony Hecht Slats skid along the window panes as I release the blinds. Some tilt, letting light slip through—headlights, streetlamps, front doors. Geometric residential light— squares, spheres—obscuring darkness, dimming stars. I adjust the slats, but not before a moose appears and—as would a wedge of ravens disinterring trash—tugs loose suburbia. I dim the indoor lights so I can see it better, can’t be seen. I watch it chew the tips of ornamental shrubs comfortably, as if those plants belonged. It shits ten perfect oblong pebbles then kneels on the inelastic snow, primed for sleep. I adjust the slats, sit back down at my computer. Its geometry of crystals lights my room. “More light!” said Goethe as he died, according to his doctor. His doctor wasn’t even in the sickroom. Last year my country sold its birthright for a pair of diamond-studded blinkers. This year it’s worried that the deal’s gone bad but it can’t tell for sure—and it’s too late to see the light. 21

Matt Poll Tesla’s Pigeon Corinne reached in further, and when her fingertips gained purchase on the back of the brick, she tugged, which caused the rest of the structure to clank to the ground amidst a rusty cloud. With this last section of oddly discolored bricks toppled, she saw that there was a void behind the wall, with the dimensions of a half closet. When the dust settled, Corinne shone the beam from her silver Eveready flashlight into the confined space until it settled on a box. Made of a dull gold-colored metal, it was about the size of a breadbox, and rested atop what looked like a tiny igloo made from miniature bricks. Adrenal ice coated her spine, and for a second, she wished she had brought her friend Donna along. It was a summer Saturday in 1963, and Corinne, a lanky 17-year-old tomboy, was trespassing on the demolition site of the old Alta Vista Hotel in Colorado Springs. Technically, she’d told herself as she vaulted over the wooden fence with ease, it wasn’t trespassing when your dad is the foreman. So there. Corinne only hesitated for about two seconds before she reached in and carefully lifted the box off its bizarre, bulbous platform. She discovered that the box was moored to an iron pipe set in the centre of the brick mound, by an umbilical made of coiled metal tubing, but was able to pull it out of the recess far enough to lay it down for examination. She was mumbling. “Just a plain old metal box. Gold? Copper? Bronze? No, it’s copper. Open it up, Reeny! Gold inside for sure, farrr out!” The box was not locked, and the lid pulled back with little effort. When Corinne clicked it fully back, a salvo of loud, snapping white and blue sparks erupted from the box, which caused her to jerk her head back. The bulb on her flashlight also flashed and popped, and she dropped it with a nervous laugh. The box hummed for a moment, before the sensation seemed to travel down through the metal tubing and then belowground, where the hum intensified, like a generator was running in the basement. 22

Again, Corinne wished she’d brought Donna, but she leaned right in and peered into the box, with the fearlessness only 17-year-olds possess. The box held only two items: a yellowed envelope, and what looked to be a dead bird partially wrapped in a tan cloth. The bird’s grey-pink feet protruded from the cloth like defiant little fists. Corinne scowled, then snatched up the envelope, visions of a treasure map fluttering behind her eyes. She turned the envelope over and saw only “1899” printed on the front, in fancy hand-written fountain pen. The envelope, like the box, was unsealed, and her breathing quickened as she pulled out the single folded sheet inside and read the short note, written in the same slanted, elegant hand on time-tanned Alta Vista Hotel stationery: Dearest Golubzlato, My kind has nearly succeeded at exterminating yours from this planet, in a frenzy of vulgar, insatiate bloodlust. Sleep for now, for I shall soon pump life from the earth and back into you, so that I may selfishly keep you with me, as our ultimate separation would surely portend my downfall. I can take a grip on the earth so the whole of our globe will pulsate, but I shall begin with you, my only, and truest companion. Once more the light shall gleam from your eyes, more fervid than even the strongest lamps. When you flew into my hotel room, I can assure you that your unexpected advent in my life changed me forever, and for the better. I grieve not, for as long as I know you may breathe still, there is purpose in my life. Your loving and steadfast, Nikola. “Hmm,” Corinne grunted. The name Nikola percolated down into her memory’s punch-clock, then vanished. “Sounds like this guy was in love with a bird? Totally far out, ha! Well Nikola, let’s check out your main squeeze!” 23

She pulled back the linen cloth, which was draped loosely around the bird, revealing a pigeon. It was like any normal old pigeon, mostly grey and black, but slightly funny-looking—slimmer than most pigeons, with a long, tapered tail. She turned it over with a shard of brick, and took in its dull pink neck and chest. Corinne then noticed the slim copper band that was cinched around the bird’s midsection like a belt. Suspending her aversion to touching dead things, she gently plucked the bird from the box. “Let’s have a look at Miss Nikola...” The bird’s progress out of the box was hindered by yet another umbilical tether, this one a thinner version of the coiled brass pipes, running from the band to a low wooden frame in the base of the box, and presumably down to the hum in the basement. A huddle of greasy grey gears with brassy centres clicked into life on the sides of the frame. They looked like smaller versions of the toothed pedal-crank on her beat-up Higgins bicycle, but there were several of them, interlinked, and some were wrapped in thin wire. The box tinked and whirred, and the hum underfoot got louder, rumbling. The bird in her hands, one of the last Passenger Pigeons to have flown free in America before their extinction, instantaneously warmed up in her hands. Corinne gawked in wonder as the bird’s dingy pink underside shimmered into a vivid salmon-peach that glowed like one those romantic candle holders in a restaurant. The pigeon twitched in her hand. A wing fluttered spastically, and the bird tremored and seemed to unfold itself like an inflating beach toy. Golubzlato ruffled up her feathers and blinked to open her eyes. She bucked from Corinne’s hands and clattered into the sky through a large, glassless window, as the late afternoon thunder grumbled, still far off on the horizon.

We bribed someone to be here, La Habana, Cuba

Arianna Johnston

Robert Campbell Thornapple Honey Barbed as an urchin, bowed on its stamen, split to reveal hive-like clusters of black seeds, the common jimsonweed, also known as thornapple, is classed as a deliriant: to bring delight or ruin. Its white and purple flowers charm; its thorns shout warning. What did we think the bees would care? The August honey, dark and thick, could flood your tongue with its biting sweet before you lost yourself. How could the queen have predicted hands would rip apart her treasury? This is what comes of theft, strangerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; you whose home is not the forest, who does not toil for sweetness. And now you wander among the fields of clover and bullnettle, blind and possessed, mad with what

human hunger has engorged in you: green fire for air, devils all around, a circle of salt, bones wrapped up in the dirt, the dirt, the dirt.

Abigail Skinner Shells At night, we sit in the sand, close enough to the tide that our feet dampen and the legs of our checkered pajama pants crust with salt. We pass back and forth a thermos of peppermint tea, sometimes hot chocolate if Dad is in a particularly good mood, and we do not speak. The first time we snuck out of the house, just after midnight, and walked the five hundred yards to the ocean, I understood immediately that this beach, our beach, cocooned by darkness and the moon and the tranquil insistence of the waves, was not a place for words. It was a place of secrets not meant for daylight. Like the long journey of freshly hatched sea turtles from nest to sea, or the moon’s slender body stretching its light from the horizon to our toes. Tonight, Dad has brought a book with him, but it sits unopened on his lap. Instead, he appears to be meditating, hands resting lightly on his knees, eyes closed. I decide to give him some privacy, so I walk along the shore, my shirt folded around a collection of wet, sandy shells. When we return home, my pruned fingers will drop them in the jar that occupies my nightstand. The jar is nearly full; I will need a new one before long. In the morning, before Mom starts my lessons, I will sit by the window and let the sun enlighten me of the shells’ details I may have missed during night blindness. Quietly, quietly, without my noticing, Dad has joined me. I startle slightly at his sudden presence and he laughs. But I am glad to have his company. I hand him some of the shells—my shirt is getting heavy—and he stows them in his pockets. We drift a little ways from where Dad’s book was left in the sand. He hums softly and I think I recognize the melody. I join him, and it is just us and the night and the waves drowning out the vibrations of our lips. We step into the water, wade in up to our knees. We do not worry, do not ever worry, about the hours of sleep lost for nights of silent conversing with the sea. We stand, gripping tightly to shells or each others’ hands, and we look.

Ahja Fox How Death Fucks You (Acid Rain) after Lorn he likes to lock the trachea mid-dive when he tells you he loves you. swallow after he says his name. after he says he is here from the moon. you tell him to take you back with him to the ocean of polychromatic tongues: suicide graves in marshes. where are the martians, you ask. and the cough is gravel wet rolling. mouth stretched past the trees. cuts your hair.soaks soaksyour yourhands handsjasmine. jasmine.fire fireincites incitesscripture, scripture, tips hehe cuts your hair. tips the the blackbo black body regurgitating kidney beans over the top of gas clouds. * he says tongues are easy. bite down. spit out. siren voices will become of your teeth. beyond your lips, pandemonium.

Korbin Jones Four Words White shoes. Black feet. Running through the grasses. Chests heaving. Prey in chase. A call from the wild. A call from the hunter. No more a roar than a distant growl, and yet it led us to this running. Running out of fear that tail lights could turn to headlights, and that words could hang the same fruits as springs and summers past. We know that slurs are more than letters melting in their mouths before they’re uttered. We know these words they wield— these words that weigh more than what our feet can carry, more than what our backs can bear, but we are more than what their mouths can hold. We’ve inherited these names: whip-struck shoulders, bones suitable for kindling. Dusty flails and ashen pits are still capable of damage.

The burning behind my eyes is no more new than the four words they struck us with, our names to them. Our hands clutched. Still running. Panting. Trying to distance ourselves from the flames that mothersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tears have yet to bring to smolder.

Essentials

Roger Leege

Benjamin Hostetter Don’t Worry, Your Secret is Safe with Me! Remember the time when your mother asked you to take a look at something on the computer, and you asked her, “Is it something that can wait?” and she nervously said, “No,” as though she would rather you just see for yourself—? “I have to admit, Mom,” you said, after you had sat up straight and tall, “you have me curious, what’s this all about?” to which she, visibly shaking, said, “Harris, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” and, more distraughtly now, as though she had come to her wit’s end, “I—” she lowered her head, and then sort of just stared at her feet (no doubt embarrassed by having to come to you, her son, for help, ’cause aren’t mothers supposed to always know what to do when there’s a problem? Surely, she knew better than to assume the worse!) “—all I need is for someone to tell me it’s not what I think,” she finally said, after you had made a show of getting up off the couch to put your arm around her. “Hey,” you said, and then hugged her into your side, as she appeared to need a shoulder to rest her head on, as a kind of “reassurance.” “I mean, it’s not like your eyes haven’t played tricks on you before, Mom,” you tried to tell her, but by the looks of it, she’d already ruled this out as a possibility. “Let’s not forget the time,” you said, giving her arm a playful squeeze, “when you confused a tin of breath mints for—” and before you could say what, she said, “Dope!, I know, but—” and ’cause you couldn’t help yourself, you stopped her there, and said, “More specifically, Speed, Mom,” as though it mattered. “Harris, it doesn’t matter,” she said, no doubt referring to the “drugs,” and which of ’em she’d accused you of taking, “as this is different.” How, exactly, you couldn’t tell. “It wouldn’t be because—” (holding her out at arm’s length) you sort of, like, looked her up and down “—no, wait. Don’t tell me, Mom,” you told her. “Let me guess, you remembered to make sure your contacts were in first,” you said (when what you should have probably said to her instead was, simply, “Mom, no, you know what,” and “I take your word for it,” ’cause, clearly, she didn’t appreciate you suggesting that she’d been careless, ignorant, that she wouldn’t know a breath mint if it hit her over the head, as evidenced by the frown on her face); not to be talked down to, she said, “Harris, look, I know what I saw,” and then wiggled out of your grasp, as though she didn’t want to put this off any longer, otherwise she might lose her nerve and go back about her day, as if nothing had happened (like, perhaps, “it was just a dream”—something she’d imagined); it certainly wouldn’t be the first time, her pretending as though everything’s fine (when both you and her know it’s not!); apparently, some people would rather sweep things under the rug 33

than have to deal with ’em, ’cause: Often, “The truth can hurt,” and no one likes to be hurt, so. Before you mother could say, “Just forget it, Harris,” or, more simply, “Never mind,” and “But thank you, anyway,” you took her by the hand, and then slowly led her around the couch, assuring her that so long as you’re here, she needn’t have to worry. “’Cause,” you said, “you’ve got someone” (not just anyone, but you, her son, specifically) “to fall back on when you’re, like, you know,” and she said, somewhat grudgingly, “I do, I think” (as though she didn’t want to admit it), “if what you’re talking about is feeling alone, Harris,” as you helped (or, rather, more like sort of “carried”) her up the stairs, down the hall and into the study, where you, her, and your brother, Hal, shared a computer, which you were surprised to hear she’d even been on, seeing as she had one of her own, at work, which you couldn’t help but point out to her, saying, “I could’ve sworn you said you had a laptop, Mom,” and “Huh, you’d think one’s enough,” upon entering the room, like that somehow made a difference (on the one hand, she probably wouldn’t have seen what she saw if she had just stayed off it; on the other hand, she could do as she pleased, as the computer was hers, too, regardless of how many she happened to be in possession of); “I just—” sort of backpedalling a li’l now, ’cause you could see how she might’ve taken that the wrong way “—so, I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to, like, shift the blame onto you, or anyone else,” you said, “’cause—” and before you could say why and how you were sorry, your mother blurted, “Generally, I do most of my web browsing at work, I know, but” (having buried her face in her hands, she shook her head back and forth, then sank into the nearest chair, from which she quietly sobbed), “I just wanted to check my e-mail, see if I’d got anything from your father regarding your graduation. He said,” she said between sobs, then sniffed, “he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to attend but would let me know if something changed or—” and she sort of trailed off, at which point you told her, “Mom, it’s okay,” and, ’cause you knew he’d put in a request for a leave of absence, “I’m sure he’ll make it,” in case she still had her doubts about whether he’d show or not. “Besides,” you said, “it’s not like him to miss something like this,” which wasn’t exactly the truth (you had told him how much it’d mean to you if he took off work and drove down to see you walk, all the while knowing that he’d probably call last minute to say, “Sorry,” and perhaps something to the effect of “So, here’s the thing,” followed by the usual, though nonetheless disappointing, “Someone called out sick” (meaning he’d have to go back in, of course), “unfortunately, but don’t let that stop you from having a good time, okay?”), and though your mother knew the truth, she just kind of nodded, like “For your sake, I hope you’re right and I’m wrong,” like she, like you, hoped for the best but was preparing for the worst as well, lest it came as a surprise to her 34

when things happened to suddenly fall through. “But that” (and by that it seemed she meant your father and how he had yet to e-mail her back) “isn’t why I’m upset; why I’m upset, Harris,” she said, “is because of what I found in our browser history. I’d have gone to your brother first, but as you know he’s not here” (coincidentally, or not, he’d caught a bus back to school that morning, after having spent the last couple of days at home doing his laundry), “so,” crossing and then uncrossing her arms, “it’s up to you to explain this—!!” and with that, she stood, marched over to her desk, and joggled the mouse until it brought the computer out of: Sleep-Mode! — Suffice it to say you didn’t know what to expect once the computer came back on and resumed its search, whether the last HOME PAGE your mother had gone to and been disgusted by before she turned the monitor off would pop up again (if not, would she have to pull up her browser history?); (either way) one thing is for certain, and that’s that nothing—not your mother telling you, “Harris, you might want to sit down for this,” not her saying, “Brace yourself,” nothing—could’ve prepared you for what you were about to see, so. Hence, when the computer screen went from black to white and the first dick, cock, for a lack of a better term, “materialized,” you nearly choked on your own spit. “Fuck’s sake,” you said. Then, more confused than panicked, “Mom, what’re you doing looking up—” (with a shaky finger) you pointed at the cock and balls on her screen “—that?” to which, of course, she said, “Me, Harris?!” and then clutched her chest, as though she couldn’t believe her ears. “More like you!” Stunned (or, rather, resentful of the implication that you’d ever be into such a thing as that), you, sort of clutching your chest now, too, said, “First of all, I’m not—” and before you could say what, your mother shouted, “Having sex with other men, is that it?” like she couldn’t bare the thought of her son getting fucked in the ass or mouth, ’cause clearly that’s not what those are for. “Look, I’m telling you, Mom,” you said, “it’s not what you think, okay?” and though she’d come to you saying that’s all she really wanted to hear, she rolled her eyes. “Oh, really,” she said, back behind the computer, “then tell me, Harris, how do you account for—” she scrolled down the page, then stopped and clicked on 35

the next available link, titled “Everybody Does Raymond” [part 1 of 2] “—this, huh?” and with that, she pushed PLAY. “Is this what you do when I’m not home?” 13,069,819 views

anonymous says . . . in this [NSFW] vid., watch as Frank and Robert take turns topping Ray!!

— ’Course when your mother said, “Well,” and “So, what do you have to say for yourself?” you tried to explain how someone could easily mistake one link for another (“Say you’re looking up ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ for instance, but accidentally click on ‘Dawson’s Crack’!”); just because someone’s browser history says they visited a site doesn’t mean they didn’t close out of the window once they realized where they were. “So, let me get this straight,” your mother said, after she’d narrowed her eyes, no doubt still a little skeptical. “Harris, you’re saying this—” (tossing a thumb back over her shoulder) she directed your attention to the porn on her screen “—can what?” and you said, “Mom, I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” which sort of seemed to restore her faith, like perhaps she had finally found her answer. “Huh,” she suddenly said, nodding. Then, after she had put the computer back to sleep, “But just to be clear” (her eyes slowly but surely narrowed a trifle again), “that’s all it was, a fluke!, a simple misunderstanding?”; apparently, she still had some doubt left (which you, of course, were more than happy to help put to rest, if for no other reason than you didn’t want her to pester you about it later, over lunch). “I mean, so, Mom,” you said, then stopped before you told her how there might be another, simpler explanation as to why “Bareback Mountain” kept popping up in her drop-down list of “recent searches,” ’cause who were you to out your brother. Remember that morning, the look of horror (or was it shame?) on his face, when you caught him coming out of the study with what appeared to be a box of Kleenex under one arm and a pump bottle of lotion under the other (he must have had a cold—a runny nose, dry skin). Remember what he said, after you had asked, “Hey, are you feeling all right, Hal?” and “Do you need me to go and get you some Mucinex?” 36

No, but thanks. He said, “I’m actually feeling a lot better now,” which, if you had known that later you’d have to explain why your browser history looked the way it did, you might have found odd, though nonetheless likely, for who doesn’t feel good, nice and relaxed after they’d rubbed one out? It was all starting to make sense. That is to say, you were finally, slowly, beginning to connect the dots, some of which, of course, were less obvious than others, but that Hal had never really shown much interest in any women (not even Peggy or Kelly Bundy, from Married with Children) should have probably been your first clue. Sure, yeah, you’d heard your mother and father say, “Oh, well, that” (meaning his not having had a girlfriend) “ ’s just because your brother has always been too busy with school to pursue any sort of romance,” but then what about the summer, when he didn’t have class—some test to study for? Clearly, they functioned under the belief that what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them, as was evidenced by your mother’s insistence that “there’s some things, Harris, that you just don’t talk about, ’cause, really, you never know who you’re going to offend.” How coming out as gay could offend anyone—much less your parents, who were supposed to be liberal-minded (the type who don’t discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, gender, age, ability, etc.)—was beyond you, and yet, strangely, you could see how they might be confused, perhaps even a little upset, by your brother and what appeared to be his sexual orientation, so when your mother asked you whether you believed there could be another reason for the porn in her list of recently closed tabs, you looked at her and, with a straight face, said, “No, Mom,” and “I don’t,” and “Seriously, you have nothing to worry about, as I’m sure it was just a slip of the finger,” ’cause clearly she wasn’t ready to face the fact that, despite all her “free-thinking,” she wasn’t as tolerant or supportive as she’d thought!, which was probably why your brother hadn’t come out to her yet. — RE: the dissonance between the actions of your mother and father and their thoughts about homosexuality, you could only hazard a guess that when it’s your son, it’s somehow suddenly different. How, though, you couldn’t say. But you did find yourself wondering whether your brother figured that you, like them, would shudder at the thought 37

of him being with another man. So: the question then was this: Have you ever done anything that one might reasonably construe as bigoted toward, say, a particular group, person? ’Course, ’cause you knew the answer but didn’t care to hear it said aloud, you never asked your brother why he felt as though he couldn’t trust you with the TRUTH. SHOW LESS

Christine Hamm Imperialist This is not about this time, this is about before, when we lived on 133 street in Harlem and told each other that the gunshots were firecrackers because it was summer and the naked woman smoking crack by the traffic lights slapped your face because you took her picture with my camera.

Vivian Wagner Citizens Band My name was Tadpole. We had a radio set up in the living room of our trailer, and my dad helped me call out to truckers on the highway a mile away. 10-4, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d say, when they answered, proud to know the lingo, to have a name, to catch their attention before they crossed the pass and disappeared down the other side.

Sandy Coomer Letter to Debbie from the Lincoln Park Zoo I say wolves don’t have yellow eyes at all, but golden brown like the buttered toast we’d eat late morning after all-nighters. I watch the lemurs wrestle, then stop to groom each other at the top of the swing pole. Remember how we French braided each other’s hair? You showed me the way to brush rouge on the apple of my cheeks, line my eyes with black liquid liner. We thought we were exotic, desirable. The African lions lounge on concrete, yawn at the faces pressed against the glass, and the otters flip and scamper as if content in the manicured riverscape, recycled water, camouflaged walls. But the wolves know what a cage is. To them, walls smell like poison, metallic and bitter as thorn. They walk a groove into the carpet of earth, conspiring for wildness when or if it’s ever needed again. We circled the bars drunk on attention, our legs long, our skirts high, waiting for someone to love us back into ourselves. We weren’t picky. We claimed we were happy behind that fence built for girls like us, eager for the rescue that never came.

Carmelinda Blagg Needles The needle popped up through the cloth, a trail of green embroidery thread emerging as Breanne watched her cousin Grace swiftly grasp the needle between thumb and forefinger and drive it back down and through the underside of the cloth. Up and down the needle went, bobbing and dancing – a silver stem gathering strands of color. Beneath the disc of tightly stretched cloth, Breanne glimpsed a tangle of bright threads, like wires. All that year, time had passed achingly slow, and Breanne had wondered if summer would ever come. She remembered all the fevers, all those bodies slipping into darkness, and she’d longed for the day when the polio would be gone and people would no longer sink back into their lives, like moles burrowing into the earth. Swimming pools, drinking fountains and puddles of water still brought fears. She’d grown used to lying awake in the dark, her eyes adjusting so she could make out the shapes of things. And how learning to see in the dark made the sunlight that much harder to bear. But here, out on the screened porch of Grace’s parents’ house, it was quiet. A different kind of silence that felt easier for both the girl and the woman; less weighted with shapeless dread. They sat on a wicker settee, not always talking, but not feeling awkward when they didn’t. The sweet notes of Love Me Tender crooned from a portable Zenith on a small metal table at Grace’s elbow, alongside her steel crutches, leaning at a deep slant. She stopped her needlework, closed her eyes, humming softly. All the older girls loved Elvis. Well, even love seemed too small a word. They went crazy nuts wild for him. Breanne figured it must have been the song making her cousin breathe like that. She held a cardboard clown in her lap, idly fingering its legs up and down, listening to the lilting trail of her cousin’s voice. But really, all along she’d been quietly watching, alert to the way Grace worked with her hands because from Grace’s hands Breanne had always seen things – different and beautiful and purposeful – erupt, suddenly, like confetti filling the air. She remembered watching Grace’s hands cast shadow rabbits and birds that hopped and flew across the flowered wallpaper of her bedroom. A language before Breanne ever knew how to speak. It was raining – a plentiful June rain that shimmered through the dark leaves of the magnolias, and the fullness of the trees held the rain, coursing it to an 42

easy falling. Grace said the screened porch was the best thing about the house. Breanne liked the way she described it: a place where you could be inside and outside at the same time. When the song was over, Grace opened her eyes, then quickly shut them again, squeezing them more tightly this time, like she didn’t want to let go of something she could see there, and Breanne wondered if her cousin dreamed and what those dreams were. Or did she have nightmares instead like Breanne did before she learned to make out shapes in the dark? When Grace opened her eyes again, her face relaxed. She breathed softly then straightened herself, sitting up tall. She twisted her upper body, bunching her mouth as she turned to switch off the radio. Breanne waited in case Grace might take her crutches to go to the kitchen for something and Breanne would need to be ready. “Well, you look like you’re either bored or afraid to say anything,” said Grace. “Which is it?” Breanne felt her face grow warm. She wasn’t sure what to say. Grace was right about feeling bored, but the truth made Breanne feel shy. Grace held up her needlework in front of Breanne. “You want to try a little embroidery?” “Really?” Breanne said. She nodded eagerly, quickly folding the clown and letting it drop from her fingers to the floor. “You’ve never done it before, have you?” “No,” said Breanne. “It’s not all that hard,” she said. “Takes some practice. Then you get a certain rhythm going.” Grace’s voice. Clear as always. Its edges clean and tucked. But glancing down at her cousin’s legs buckled in those braces, Breanne thought Grace’s voice and her legs didn’t seem to go together. She wanted to ask her how it felt, but she couldn’t think of how to do that in any way that wouldn’t sound wrong. Grace was like she’d always been, but, at the same time, she’d become someone different. She’d come back home after her first year of college on those steel crutches. And there was something strange – like a forced hush – in the way she never talked about what happened. Never said anything. So, no one else spoke about it either. Everybody was terrified about the polio. It wasn’t something you could see. Not in the water. Not in the dirt playgrounds at school. People on Breanne’s block went from sitting on their front porches after supper, letting their kids turn water hoses on the neighbor’s kids, to shutting themselves away. Like they didn’t exist anymore. And, after Grace returned home, Breanne hadn’t been allowed to see her. Not until 43

you get your shot, her mother insisted. Breanne recalled that look in her mother’s eyes – like she was watching a scary movie – whenever Grace’s name was mentioned. It was Grace who had taught Breanne how to swim. People used to talk about what a natural Grace was; someone whose body took to the water like that was where she had always belonged. When Grace was eleven and Breanne just two, she would hold Breanne in the water, her hands cupping Breanne’s waist, her calm, easy voice urging Breanne to kick her legs. And the following summer, she had held Grace’s hand, trembling when Grace yelled Jump! and into the pool they plunged. Beneath the water, still clasping Grace’s hand, she had watched their legs floating, Grace’s dark mane drifting around her like one of her mother’s silk scarves, her body a twirling spear; and Breanne’s body, smaller – she felt swallowed by all that blue-green water, afraid she’d disappear if she let go of Grace. But it was Grace who suddenly let go, vanishing, and for a few terrified seconds Breanne floated, kicking her small legs as Grace dove beneath her, making her body a raft around which Breanne straddled her legs and clasped her arms, Grace’s arms like wings slicing the water as they surfaced. Grace made a couple more stitches then lowered the circle of cloth so Breanne could see. There, framed by the disc, a slender branch with leaves shooting off its sides. Breanne ran an index finger over the embroidered threads in different shades of green, her mouth a hushed o. The threads were smooth and tight. What a wonderful thing. Something that could never come undone. “I make my own patterns,” Grace said. “How do you do that?” Grace took a slow breath in, then out. Breanne watched her chest rise and sensed something like a secret lodged there in the way Grace’s breath filled her lungs. She looked down again at Grace’s thin legs, the pale flesh, jutting from her culottes; and at her feet, clad in white socks and black leather shoes with thick soles. Grace placed two fingers beneath Breanne’s chin and lifted it. Breanne looked into her eyes – the hush there, like a curtain. She raised her embroidery hoop where Breanne could see, fluttering her fingers. “You ready?” Breanne nodded. When she was allowed to swim again, she would make her body a raft upon which her cousin could float and she’d carry her from one end of the pool to the other. “Ok,” Grace said, “the way I do it is, I start with one color, through the needle, and, well, I just keep going.You gather one part of a picture, then another. 44

Bit by bit.” She plunged the needle down through the cloth again, snugly pulling on it, then she flipped the hoop over and ran the needle beneath a stitch and back up. She held needle and thread aloft, pulled tightly on the thread, took it between her teeth and snipped it. She wound it around an index finger, looping and knotting it then she handed the needle to Breanne. “First you have to learn how to thread a needle and make good knots.” Breanne nodded, took the needle between thumb and forefinger, a thin and weightless thing. As she held it, she remembered getting her polio vaccination, back at the start of the school year. Everyone was getting them now. She couldn’t bear the sight of the needle and had looked down at the tops of her loafers, the lace edges of her white socks, praying for it to be over. Grace sifted through her sewing box, lifted a curled nest of maroon thread, unwinding it. “Here, take this,” she said. “And hold the needle up. See that hole? That’s called the eye of the needle.” Breanne did as she said, lifting the needle to the light. She saw the hole. She took the thread and held it there, reminded of how, as she waited, the nurse had held the needle up to the fluorescent light of the ceiling, gently flicking a finger against the translucent scale. “I wet the thread a little between my lips first,” Grace said. “Makes it easier to slip it through.” Breanne ran her tongue along her lips, placed the thread between them. But as she drew the thread out, the needle slipped from her grasp. “Oops,” Grace said with a trickle of laughter. She pointed to the floor near the metal heel of one of her leg braces. Breanne knelt to pick it up. She pinched it from the floor and as she tried to position the needle between her fingers for threading, she accidently pricked the tip of her right index finger. “Ouch.” Like a bee sting the nurse had said. Breanne’s mother had perched herself on a little stool with wheels, her nervous hands fingering the brass closure of her handbag. Then came the sting, and the shame Breanne felt when her eyes watered. She chewed the inside of her lip, determined to keep quiet. The pale green walls of the clinic clouded, blurring, the nurse’s white shoes melting against Breanne’s loafers. “Roll the needle between your fingers,” Grace told her. “And don’t worry. You’ll do that more times than you can count before you’re through.” She opened one of her hands, unfolding her fingers. “See?” 45

Breanne regarded the calloused tips of Grace’s fingers, the places where the needle had pierced her skin so many times over that Grace said she no longer felt pain. “Go ahead,” Grace said, her voice quiet, low yet still coaxing. “Really. Touch one of my fingers with the needle.” So Breanne took the needle, lightly skating its tip across the calloused flesh of Grace’s right thumb. “Oh, that’s nothing. Give it a poke,” said Grace. Breanne shook her head. When the nurse finished, she had swabbed Breanne’s arm again with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol. So cold on her skin, it made goose bumps. Her nose filled with the alcohol’s sharp, unpleasant smell. And then her mother touched the band-aid on Breanne’s arm with a finger: Don’t forget. That little sting will spare you those leg braces. The sound of her mother’s voice, different. Still weary yes, but not as nervous, and in her face, ease there too, until Breanne had asked about Grace, why hadn’t she gotten the bee sting? Couldn’t she get it now? Her mother had simply shook her head while crushing the butt of her cigarette on the sidewalk with her shoe. Too late.You should think of yourself as lucky, Breanne. What did her mother mean? Was Grace going to die? Could she go and see Grace now? Could she visit when summer came? Did her mother hate Grace? Was that it? Her mother ordered her to hush, gripping Breanne’s shoulders as they walked from the clinic to the car, until Breanne cried out, twisting free from her. Now, Breanne still hesitated, so Grace took the needle from her and poked the tip of her thumb. She smiled. “It’s okay. Really.” Breanne looked at her cousin. “I don’t know…” “Here,” Grace said impatiently. She wrapped her hand around Breanne’s, placed the needle again between Breanne’s fingers. Next, she took the thread and measured a portion no longer than an eyelash, which she then coaxed delicately and precisely within the eye of the needle. “Now grab on to that, go on.” With thumb and forefinger, Breanne pulled on the thread, once, then again, slowly streaming it through the needle’s eye. That worked. It felt good too. Grace wound the bottom strands of thread around Breanne’s index finger and slowly Breanne struggled – once, twice, three times – to complete the knot, the threads still slipping her fingers the harder she tried. She slumped, like a balloon losing air. “I can’t get it,” she said. “I can’t do it.” “Oh, nonsense,” Grace said. “Make a circle and slip the tail end of the 46

strands through it.” She opened her palm, laying the threaded ends across. “Do it.” Breanne started twisting the threads again as Grace’s fingers – hovering, barely touching – guided hers, and the ends found the loop and this time Breanne got them through, and she pulled on them until the loop shrank into a knot hardly the size of a grain of sand. “You got it. See?” said Grace. Breanne nodded without looking up. They kept going, Grace’s hands guiding Breanne’s fingers. When Breanne would stick the needle through the cloth, Grace’s fingers would retrieve it from beneath, pulling it down, sending it back up. And Breanne would wait, watching the needle rise before taking it again. How satisfying that felt. How surprising her pleasure. Back and forth, up and down, the dancing lightness of fingers making one stitch, then another, the needle a shimmering pulse gathering, moving and gathering one color and then another into the emergent shape of a new branch, the beginnings of a leaf. “That’s real good, Breanne.” Breanne smiled. This was a new kind of pleasure, guiding the needle, making it do what you wanted it to do. Like the time Grace let go of her in the water, urging her forward, Breanne’s legs and arms – and her heart too – fluttering like moth wings. “You can show your momma what you learned,” Grace said. “We’ll start a new one for you.You can take it with you. Practice.” Breanne saw the toe of her mother’s shoe, her ankle, wagging in a half circle as she crushed out that cigarette on the hot sidewalk outside the clinic, the sun on their backs. Then, her mother had pulled a compact mirror from her purse, studying her lips, running her pinky finger along the bottom, the corners, as if to rearrange the plum color of her mouth. She tilted the mirror up and Breanne could see her mother’s tired eyes reflected there, and the tip of her finger running along the shadows beneath, rubbing at them, as if trying to erase them. A coin of sunlight struck the mirror, making the light dance, making her mother wince. The rain pattered softly now, like someone whispering. Warm, sweet smells lifted from the magnolia. Breanne heard her mother’s voice again, whispering. She had slipped the key into the ignition, sighing, staring through the windshield at what, exactly, Breanne couldn’t see. And then, she folded a hand over Breanne’s and gently squeezed. Don’t you ever say anything about what I just said, Bre.You know. About Grace. “Think of something you’d like to make,” said Grace. Breanne tried, but felt struck with nothing more than simple, rock-heavy 47

dumbness. “What kinds of things do you like?” Breanne considered trees, the sun, the colored candy from the Pez dispensers. Birds too. She hooked her thumbs together and fluttered her fingers, moving her hands up and down, making flying motions. “Birds,” she said, watching her hands. “I like birds.” She scooted forward, her arms outstretched, her hands making a faintly dancing shadow on the rough wood floor. Then Grace lifted her own hands and gently folded them over Breanne’s. She turned them so Breanne’s palms faced up, then hooked her thumbs. “Like that,” she said. She made a fluttering bird with her own hands as Breanne watched. Breanne made her bird like Grace had shown her – a bird whose wings she imagined cutting through the rain, circling back around, landing on her cousin’s shoulder. Grace glanced at the bird then at Breanne. Breanne held Grace’s gaze, smiling, remembering the flowered wallpaper in her long ago bedroom catching the rapid flurry of Grace’s hands melting from rabbit shadow into bird shadow, into floating starfish shadow.

We should have bribed someone to let us in, Glasgow Scotland

Arianna Johnston

Wally Swist La cancion del mar for Susan Tyler The rain in San Juan sweeps across the harbor. The ropes tied to their moorings squeak, as the boats bob up and down in the wake of the roiling sea, like a heart in longing; and the sibilance of the rain in San Juan releases itself in wide arcs, lulling those who listen into a drowsiness, out of which they are startled awake by the boom of the creaking masts; they find themselves walking across the cold docks, spattered in the deluge, into the heart of the sound of the storm, as if they were drawn by the sirens which can

be heard resounding across the city, the stucco pastel-colored colonials and art deco awash and shining in the rainfall, as if these were the sounds emanating from their own hearts, as they stand with their arms outstretched, undone by the pain of longing, in the rain that sweeps across the harbor as the squalls darken the sky with ominous clouds, unleashing their torrents of rain, in the port city of San Juan, like a heart in mourning.

Rachel Karyo Brownie 2 One morning, Brownie 2 noticed that Domino had developed bald patches on her face and neck. Brownie 2 watched the keeper take Domino out of the coop and rub something into the bald patches. He did this twice daily, and in a few weeks Domino’s face and neck healed, but the keeper kept taking her out of the coop anyway, to play, even though Domino demonstrated no interest in playing. Brownie 2 would have played. To make this clear, she began to play whenever the keeper approached the coop. She even started to play when he wasn’t around. Often she would pretend he was watching her. She liked to imagine she was playing in his honor. But then she started to worry that the keeper might not approve of her playing to send a message or to feel a connection because wasn’t play supposed to be spontaneous, pointless, innocent, and confident? However, the nature of her play, its motivations and attributes, did not appear to matter, because the keeper never noticed her playing, or perhaps he did notice, but he did not care, or maybe he did care, but still he would not take her out of the coop. Finally, it occurred to Brownie 2 that she could cultivate her own bald patch, and then the keeper would have to take her out. So she rubbed her face against the dry shell of a coconut, against the bark of the avocado tree, against the splintery stairs that led up to the henhouse, and against the metal fence surrounding the coop; she rubbed hard, and it hurt, but she did not appear to be losing any feathers. She needed help. Rooster was kicking in the dirt on the other side of the fence. Brownie 2 yelled, “Rooster.You are ugly and pathetic.You’re stupid, ugly, and pathetic, Rooster.” Then she forced herself to push her head through the small hole in the fence and wait. She hoped Rooster would hurt her, but not kill her. He came right over but did not attack Brownie 2. Instead, he spoke. He said that he had been watching her for a while, that he found her kind of fascinating, that she seemed like a hen who had it all figured out, and then he nuzzled against her the best he could through the hole in the fence and clucked. 52

She pulled back and asked, “Do you notice anything different about my face?” He said it was more beautiful than ever, that he could gaze upon it all — Brownie 2 walked away from the fence. The sun was almost where it usually was when the keeper would arrive. Domino was preening in the shade of the avocado tree. Generally, Brownie 2 tried to avoid Domino because she did not like Domino, and she suspected the feeling was mutual, but now she realized that their shared antipathy might prove useful so she scowled at the black and white hen. “What,” said Domino. Brownie 2 flicked dirt at her. Domino called her a name then climbed up the stairs to the henhouse. Brownie 2 followed. Inside, it was dark. Domino was sitting in the roost. “I did something to your food,” said Brownie 2. Domino scratched the side of her head with her foot. “It’s really true, Domino, haven’t you noticed your feathers? They’re drying up.” She held her breath and waited for Domino to attack her eyes or crown. Brownie 2 expected it would hurt, but the waiting was unbearable so she kept talking. “Do your feathers itch? It looks like they will start itching soon if they don’t already.” It was difficult to see Domino’s eyes clearly in the dark of the roost, but Brownie 2 thought they looked angry. They could fight inside the henhouse, but it was cramped, and the floor was covered with droppings, and Domino did not like to get dirty. It seemed more likely Domino would chase Brownie 2 down the stairs into the middle of the coop, and the other hens would watch them fight. Red, especially, liked to watch hens fight, would calculate odds, though clearly Brownie 2 would not last long against Domino. Brownie 2 just hoped that the keeper would intervene before Domino did too much damage. He would take Brownie 2 out of the coop, and place her gently in his lap, and feed her from his palm, and the food would taste faintly of his skin. When she finished eating, they would play, and when they finished playing, he would stroke her, maybe even underneath her beak, but perhaps that was hoping for too much. Brownie 2 worried that she might be so excited to be taken out of the 53

coop and then so excited to be sitting in the keeper’s lap that she might not be able to enjoy any of it. Outside the coop, the rooster was calling for Brownie 2, asking her to meet him at the hole in the fence. What if I do not like how the keeper smells, thought Brownie 2. But that was impossible, he would smell like himself, and she would love it. Domino was fluffing her feathers. She’s probably preparing to fight, thought Brownie 2. “Your boyfriend wants you,” said Domino. Domino only needed to hurry up and hurt her sufficiently but not too badly before the keeper arrived, but so much might still go wrong. For instance, Brownie 2 could be sitting in the keeper’s lap trying to appreciate the fact that she was sitting in his lap and then feel the sudden urge to release droppings, but of course she could not in front of him. And what if her crown itched? She knew her feathers were not as nice as Domino’s. All the hens agreed that Red was the most beautiful, and Domino was the prettiest, but Brownie 2 liked to think that she was the most intelligent, or at least smarter than Domino. Domino was shifting her weight from side to side. She is or is not preparing to launch her attack, thought Brownie 2. There was so little space inside the henhouse, it would be better to fight in the middle of the coop, where the keeper could more easily intervene, but Brownie 2 was starting to feel like she would never escape the henhouse, that Domino would always be just about to launch her attack, and the keeper would always be just about to arrive. If only Domino would hurry up and chase her down the stairs or make it clear she had no intention of fighting this afternoon. There were small cracks in the roof and sides of the henhouse which allowed narrow rays of sunlight to crisscross the wooden floor. The still air was thick with the smell of droppings. Outside the coop, the rooster was crowing. Brownie 2 wished the keeper would come and scare Rooster away, but then she remembered that the keeper could not come because she was not yet under attack or injured. But of course the keeper would come and probably soon. Brownie 2 reminded herself that it would be worth suffering a little discomfort or even a considerable degree of pain to be taken out of the coop by the keeper. On the other hand, thought Brownie 2, one could argue in favor of maintaining a comfortable distance. From inside the coop, she could observe the keeper, 54

dream about him, play in his honor, or in the more self-directed way she thought he might prefer. Nothing would be irrevocably ruined. And one day he might even notice her and think That Brownie 2 is a decent bird, and why shouldn’t that be enough? A hen ought to be content, thought Brownie 2. But then she pictured Domino sitting in the keeper’s lap. A chicken should finish what she starts! “Of course you haven’t notice that I’ve poisoned your food, Domino. I’ve known pullets with bigger brains.” Brownie 2 felt proud of herself. Surely Domino would set upon her now, but then Brownie 2 remembered that Domino had a reputation for going berserk when fighting. It might have been wiser to have provoked Red or even Whitey. And what if the keeper took her out of the coop and it was nice but not as nice as she hoped it would be? Brownie 2 thought some clouds must have moved in front of the sun, for now it seemed even darker inside the henhouse. She did not know what the keeper did when he was not with them. How he lived. Perhaps he cared for dozens of other hens housed in distant coops, but that was probably not true and unpleasant to consider. It was nicer to imagine that while he was away he sometimes thought about Brownie 2, that he wondered what she was thinking. Of course, it was far more likely that he never thought about her and certainly not about what she was thinking. But Brownie 2 wondered so often about what the keeper was thinking that perhaps he could intuit her interest, perhaps he found it sustaining. And where did he go when he left the coop, and what did he do with all their eggs she wondered, but it did not matter, she was happy he should have them. If only she did not have to watch him take Domino out to play every afternoon, to study how he held her so firmly in his lap, how he coaxed her to eat from his hand… It might feel good to fight, thought Brownie 2, to abandon herself in an orgy of unmitigated violence. “I have always wondered, Domino, why you lay such small, disfigured eggs,” said Brownie 2. “Brownie 2, get your ass over to that fence and shut that asshole up already,” shouted Red, from outside the henhouse. Domino laughed. A stupid and self-satisfied laugh, thought Brownie 2. It was difficult to understand what the keeper saw in Domino, who was not even the most beautiful of the hens. The only reasonable explanation was the keeper had healed Domino and 55

now felt connected to her. Brownie 2 had never been in a fight. No one had ever taught her how to attack another hen or how to defend herself. She did not think she would be good at pecking and dodging. She worried that when the critical moment arrived she would find herself unable to peck or dodge. Should she just apologize to Domino and go sit in the nesting box? Outside the coop, the rooster said that he was going to look for something to eat, but that he would soon return, and did Brownie 2 want him to bring her back anything special? Red said she knew exactly what Rooster could do for Brownie 2. Domino laughed, of course, because she had a terrible sense of humor, but what else did Brownie 2 know about her rival? She knew that Domino spent nearly all of her time caring for her feathers or pecking at melon rinds. It seemed she put no effort into her egg making. Domino always flapped her feathers in protest when the keeper picked her up. She would not eat from the keeperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hand. She would not play with him. Her general attitude toward the keeper appeared to be one of disinterest if not disdain. Perhaps the keeper cared for Domino because Domino did not care for him, thought Brownie 2. Or worse, perhaps Domino did care for the keeper, and he knew that she did, but she would pretend not to because it was part of their private game. It was even possible that the keeper had noticed Brownie 2 playing, knew exactly what she wanted, and pitied her. Was it worse if he pitied her or found her repulsive, Brownie 2 wondered. He could pity her and find her repulsive, she decided. Domino released droppings. Brownie 2 thought that might mean Domino was preparing to attack, and that Brownie 2 should ready for battle, but she could not concentrate on the incipient action, because what if the keeper finally took her out of the coop and decided she was not pathetic or repulsive but liked her very much, even better than Domino? Sitting on his lap, pecking food from his palm, feeling his warm hand on her back, Brownie 2 would only half believe any of it was really happening. Overwrought by his attention, she would no longer be able to sleep, to eat, to groom, to lay. For a few days, a couple of weeks at most, she would exist in a state of delirious exhaustion. And then she would die. Because who could live like that? Or, the keeper would want to spend every minute he possibly could with Brownie 2, would visit mornings and evenings as well as afternoons, and so she would become used to him. Maybe, in time, she would even start to resent him. 56

Flap her wings in protest when he tried to take her out of the coop. A hen’s life is short or dull, thought Brownie 2, or short and dull, or perhaps everything depends on the hen’s attitude, so why couldn’t she just be happy for Domino, who was preening again. It occurred to Brownie 2 that there was an art to feather maintenance, and Domino was very good at it. Too bad they were not friends. Brownie 2 never had any idea how to organize her quills. What if the keeper were to take her and Domino out of the coop at the same time? He could sit them together in his lap. Maybe it would be even nicer that way. Brownie 2 could model hand feeding. They could play games that required three players. But Domino would be better than Brownie 2 at some game and ruin everything. Besides, she couldn’t stand Domino. All Domino cared about was looking good and eating well. Brownie 2 cared about different things. Like the avocado tree. Brownie 2 spent a considerable amount of time every single day studying the beauty of the avocado tree. Except now, in the dark of the henhouse, she could not recall the shape of the avocado tree’s leaves. She thought it was absurd to claim that she cared about the avocado tree when she could not recall the shape of the avocado tree’s leaves. Obviously she did not care about the avocado tree at all. Someone could destroy the avocado tree for all she cared. She would gladly destroy the avocado tree herself, but how could she destroy the avocado tree when she could not successfully execute even the smallest of bald patches? At least, unlike Domino, Brownie 2 cared, she thought, about laying nice eggs for the keeper. Of course, Brownie 2 could not lay eggs for herself because she would not be allowed to keep them. She preferred not to think about that. And it didn’t matter, she was happy the keeper should have her eggs, whatever he chose to do with them. Brownie 2 fluffed her neck feathers. The keeper fed them. He scared off Rooster. He never beat them when they failed to lay. No one had laid anything for days. Brownie 2 thought the wooden floor might be slightly slanted, or she was suffering an attack of vertigo, likely induced by the claustrophobic henhouse. She had hoped this day would mark a turning point in her life, but now she wondered if life was more circular than linear, and how could she identify the shape of her life until it was over, and could a life even be described in geometric terms? Anyway, it 57

was probably more a question of motivation — did she want the keeper to take her out of the coop badly enough, even if it meant tricking or forcing him into taking her out of the coop? Brownie 2 looked at her feet and did not like their look. She looked at the skin on her legs and thought there was something horrible about the skin on her legs, or perhaps there was just something horrible about skin. Better the keeper not look at her, not touch her, better he think of her only as a part of his flock, an appendage, an anonymous egg laying machine, her voice indistinguishable in the chorus of clucks. Brownie 2 remembered how once, late at night, she and Whitey were the only hens awake in the roost, talking quietly together. She could not remember what they had been talking about, but she did remember asking Whitey if she would rather be beautiful or pretty. “I think I would rather be pretty, like Domino,” said Whitey, and Brownie 2 agreed. Brownie 2 asked Whitey if she would rather be Domino. Whitey looked at Brownie 2 strangely and said of course not, she would never want to be anyone but herself. “Come out, Brownie 2, I brought you fresh grass,” said Rooster. The clouds must have moved away from the sun, thought Brownie 2, because it seemed brighter now in the henhouse, though still very dark. “The keeper will soon come, Brownie 2. When he opens the coop door, run for the brush. I’ll lead you to safety. Beneath the forest canopy, in the cool, dappled shade, I’ll dance a circle dance for you. Together, we’ll discover the delights of combs and hocks, of wattles and sickles,” said Rooster. Up in the roost, Domino was still primping. Brownie 2 thought Domino worked at her feathers with the concentration of an artist. She thought she should admire Domino, or at least be happy for her, or at least not envy her, or at least tolerate her presence with indifference, but that was impossible. “You were never meant for this life, Brownie 2,” said Rooster. Before the bald patches, Brownie 2 had never been fond of Domino. After the bald patches, the more attention the keeper paid to Domino, the more Brownie 2 disliked her. It was an inverse relationship, thought Brownie 2. The keeper spent time caring for Domino and in that way developed an attachment to her, while Brownie 2 watched the keeper developing an attachment to Domino and simultaneously developed an aversion to her. Domino’s head was twisted around trying to reach the backs of her legs. “You’re nothing but a dirty feather duster, Domino,” said Brownie 2. Domino raised her head and looked at Brownie 2. 58

“A cheap, unremarkable domesticated fowl,” said Brownie 2. Domino growled. Outside the coop, Rooster raised his voice: “While I was eating grass, the keeper was sharpening a blade. How long has it been since someone laid an egg in the nesting box? Brownie 2, are you listening? I’ve seen this happen before. I will never forgive the keeper for what he did to Brownie. Do not share her fate!” Rooster spreads nasty rumors because he envies and resents the keeper, thought Brownie 2. But the keeper was surely on his way, and this might be her last chance. “Don’t you know, Domino, that the randiest cock on this island would rather mount a dung covered donkey than touch your rotten, plague-infested saddle,” said Brownie 2. “Shut up,” said Domino. “Make me.” Outside of the henhouse, Brownie 2 heard the creak of the coop door being opened. “I’ll deal with you later, Brownie 2,” said Domino. The tone of her voice made Brownie 2 shiver. It is no longer a question of if, but when, thought Brownie 2. They would fight. Domino would go berserk. Red would calculate the odds, not of Brownie 2 winning, which would be impossible, but of Brownie 2 surviving, which would be unlikely. No one would intervene, certainly not the keeper, who would be off visiting one of his other coops on the other side of the island. I do not want to die, thought Brownie 2. Although then she would finally be taken out of the coop by the keeper. Although then she would be unable to enjoy it. “Brownie 2, the door is open! Follow me into the heart of the jungle, where we may be free,” cried Rooster. Domino came down from the roost. New plan, thought Brownie 2. She would keep Domino in the henhouse. The keeper would take Red or Whitey out instead. He would realize that Domino is not so much fun after all, and tomorrow Brownie 2 would finally get her chance. Brownie 2 spread her wings and said, “Don’t go, I have to tell you something.” Domino laughed and shoved Brownie 2 out of the way. Brownie 2 followed Domino out of the henhouse. The keeper was waiting 59

at the bottom of the stairs. He carried a machete. Its steel blade flashed in the sunlight. A handsome instrument, thought Brownie 2. There were fresh scraps strewn all around. Domino ran to a nearby chunk of melon. “Hello, Domino,” the keeper said, “I don’t have time to play right now.” The keeper grabbed Brownie 2 by her leg and flipped her upside down. This was unexpected. He had never picked up Domino like that before. The keeper turned around and started walking towards the open door. Brownie 2’s head swayed near his thigh. I can’t believe it, she thought, the keeper is finally taking me out of the coop, and she tried to concentrate on his startling closeness, but the rooster was screaming, and her leg hurt, and, upside down, it was difficult to breathe.

Siham Karami To Love the River You wouldn’t like how my delicate arms flailed uselessly in the rapids, or the dim green diorama of death where I found oblivion under the river’s ripped shoulders. You’d love the river, its violence unimpeachable, its long breath a single unbroken word so beautiful it breaks you apart, ejaculated into eternity, a sound like your bloodstream echoing through a giant aorta, the sound of a galaxy’s spiral arms, distant, yet here! Loud above you, the surface— and you are no match for this. You long for the soft march of birch trees and their attendant wings, dragonflies, the infinitesimal reach of delicate things. Like me, you pump extremities to no avail. The river may throw us onto a rock to go on living. We are not heroes. Our home is a forest of weaker things. We name this place, wade onto shore, settle into leaves and conversation. And in the middle of our little words, some enormity pulls us deeper and neither of us can laugh our way out of this. Nothing else matters. Its currents shift our pulse, our course. If I must drown, let it be like this.

Totality

Melissa Slater

Therese Hair Lines We walked the yellow tightrope in the dark, the lines between the lane that led out of town and the one headed for the 7-11 and the post office. There was something liberating about walking in the empty street at night, not looking both ways, something rebellious and stupid. “We could follow this road all the way to Maine.” Megs went ahead of me, spread her arms and twirled, teetering on the yellow line. I could see her breath in the cold street-lit air. “Bet it would take a year, though,” I said, planting my feet on either side of the painted median. “We’d miss graduation and be forced to live as vagabonds.” Megs stepped ahead, nicking the rumble strip with the toe of her boot. She tripped and giggled, a grotesque noise in the still, reverential night. Ten o’clock on a Tuesday and everyone was at home. Everyone except Megs and me, and the Stevensons’ dog who howled every night until Mr. Stevenson got up to let him inside. This town was nothing more than a convenience store, a school that taught every grade, the little post office, and a video store that still rented VHS tapes for a deal on weekdays. And then there were the houses. A cluster of them all squished together in one spot beyond the convenience store and surrounded by trees. They told us in school that the reason the early settlers had built the houses so close together was for protection from the Native Americans and wild animals. The community they enjoyed sustained them through the first long winter, but every winter that I can remember, it was like living in a knitting circle with barbwire fences. I can count on one hand the number of people who have moved from here since I was born. Everyone else either died or was taken away to Sunnyside Acres in the next town over when they got too old to take care of themselves. Megs and her father were the only newcomers I could remember in the last ten years. “C’mon, Digger.” She slipped me her hand, wiggling her fingers to fit them between mine. A little tipsy. “Let’s just walk away,” she tugged on my hand, tripping forward while looking back at me. “I can’t, Megs. This place is…” “Circuitous. Hypnotic.” “I was going to say, ‘my home.’” I followed her anyway, keeping my feet on the yellow line. We went past the school, past the first mailbox, and stopped at the 63

sign that read: Welcome to Roemington. “Ironic, huh?” Megs gave a short, halting laugh as if it really were something funny. I pulled my hand from hers and crammed my fingers into my pockets, warming them. “How far do you think we’ll get by morning?” she said, not really asking. I looked at the fringe of blonde hair crowning her face, faintly outlined in light from behind us, the slope of her cheeks arched in a grin, and I took a step forward. The road was dark ahead where the streetlights ended and the trees began. We passed the sign and went up the road, keeping the median always between our feet, never out of sight. When we got far enough away from town that the light was completely lost, I used my phone as a flashlight, checking the clock when Megs wasn’t looking. It was midnight now; I had another four hours before my dad got up for work. Even then, he never came into my room. Mom would be down for breakfast at seven. Plenty of time. “We’ve got to be back by morning, Megs. Before the sun rises.” I jogged a few steps to catch up with her. She was walking ahead on the road, looking around the next bend. “What’s the point in that? We’ve been liberated.” “I’ll be grounded until adulthood if my parents don’t find me in my bed in the morning.” Megs just sighed and picked up pace, getting ahead of me. Her father wouldn’t care one way or the other. “You don’t have to go back. We can stop at the bus station.” She just kept walking. Twice we spotted headlights in the distance. Each time, the car pulled off onto a side street leading to the farmlands back behind the trees. We were steadily going up; the back of my shins ached with the incline. “Do you know what’s at the top? Megs.” She slowed a little. “Do you remember what’s at the end of the road?” I caught up again and this time she stayed even with me. “Just more crazy towns. Just a wink when you drive through them.” This walk certainly wasn’t a wink. And to see what? Another claustrophobic little town like mine? I stopped, just for a second, just to think. Megs turned around, hands on her hips. “You done?” 64

I hesitated and glanced at my phone. It was nearing one o’clock. “I’m going to the top. Then I can go back.” I couldn’t see her face clearly in the dark and I couldn’t feel my feet from the cold, but I sighed. “Fine.” I kept my phone light pointed at the road, at the yellow line, giving my feet a path to follow. I wanted to be at ease like Megs. Megs who had nothing to lose. We went on in silence for a while, me guiding our steps with the flashlight, Megs leading the way. Another hour and I could see lights up ahead from the town on the top of the mountain. The trees were thinner and the moon shone through the branches so we could see each other more clearly. Megs stepped quickly, arms swinging. I walked with one hand in my pocket, the other holding my phone. Our breath created a frosty mist. “One more hour,” she promised. “Then we’ll be there.” I didn’t respond this time. Didn’t bother arguing. As the lights got closer I sidled up next to Megs and took her hand. We hobbled into the town winded and holding hands like an elderly couple who took the stairs. A twenty-four hour-diner sat at the edge of town, close to the converging road that led to the highway. The sign blinked yellow in the darkness. “We’re going in here.” I dragged Megs out of the middle of the road and onto the sidewalk. There were cars parked along the street and I could see people through the window of the diner. The door slammed behind us, suctioned by the wind outside. A melty heat permeated the room. Two men sat at the barstools eating grinders; a woman sat alone in a peeling old booth by the window. Megs ordered coffee. I ordered pancakes and a smoothie. “How can you eat that in the middle of the night?” I shrugged and took the plate from the waitress. “Exercise makes me hungry.” Megs sipped her coffee and rubbed her hands together over the steam of her mug. We talked until Megs’ yawning interrupted the conversation. She balled up her jacket to use as a pillow and shoved it against the window; within minutes her shoulders rose and fell slowly. I stared outside and forced myself not to look at my phone, not to fall asleep. I reached over and took a swig of Megs’ coffee, now cold. When it was nearing five o’clock, people started to emerge from their houses, get into cars, make small morning noises in the streets. I waited until the black sky lightened to gray, then nudged Megs’ boot with the toe of my sneaker. “It’s getting light.” She awoke quickly, pulled cash from her back pocket and tossed it on the 65

table. “Let’s go. I don’t want to miss it.” The cold morning seeped through my jacket, under my collar. I clapped my hands against my thighs to wake them up, following Megs through the parking lot and back onto the street. This time we stayed on the sidewalk, abandoning the yellow line for the safety of the pedestrian walkway. We went up the street, to the peak of the hill where stores gave way to houses and more trees. Megs stepped off the asphalt into the grass, entering the surrounding woods. “Where are we going?” “To the top.” She pulled back branches as we went, breaking twigs and weak roots as we forged a path through the icy brush. I held my jaw firm to keep my teeth from chattering. The morning was filled with shadows deepened by the dense trees. I pulled my phone out to use its dwindling light until the incline became too steep and we had to clutch at trees to keep our balance. The light was beginning to grow, paling as we reached the top where the trees gave way to open sky. We came to a clearing, a jutting out of rocks, and I knew we were here. Megs stepped to the edge, boots crunching on ice. I stopped a few feet away, looked out over the ridge. There was no breathtaking view of skyscraping mountains or perfectly trimmed evergreens, just hills, smaller mountains with houses on them, and a wide busy highway. From the peak of the cliff the sound of engines and the smell of exhaust reached me. We stood together on the edge and watched the cars race by beneath us as the sun rose, turning the sky purple. As the night lifted I felt my tie to Roemington stretch to the breaking point. We had strayed from the yellow line and from here, there were dizzying possibilities, no longer stay or go. “We’re kind of like those two guys who rode across South America on a motorcycle and had an awakening.” “It was a political awakening.” Megs had her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes on the road. “It was an awakening all the same.” She sat down in the frozen dew, let her legs dangle off the edge, watching still. “They started a revolution.”

Marvin Shackelford Cockatrice The third morning the dog wakes me vomiting in her kennel, I worry of omens. I chase the heave of her form into the yard. I watch her lift joy from daybreak again. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine, but she isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. I search the bones of her sick for answers. I cast for stones or grass, tilted runes, the slow, uphill roll of fluid foretelling a monstrous future. I see only blankets washed again. I see her breath and taste the sour organs of her scent. Curdling. She pecks at her breakfast while I bring water to scalding. She watches me. We thread eyes. Neither of us moves.

Mother of Winds

Kerfe Roig

Mark Trechock Flat Land There is land not far from Whitman, North Dakota lying flat as the pages of Leaves of Grass or maybe a Sandburg poem about traveling by train across a prairie of empty thoughts to Omaha. Rows of wheat and flax run across it like long lines neither ever got around to writing, and in the fall tumbleweeds hang along the fences like notes from the treble line of a Dvorak symphony. The land seems about to say something that no one has found the words or music for, as though silence is the only commentary that wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem maudlin or go misinterpreted as some kind of metaphor for the cosmos. It is a manuscript composed of pure utility whose lyrics might be written by swathers and combines, then erased by the plow and written again next year, unsung, uncontradicted, keeping its thoughts to itself.

CONTRIBUTORS Brian Baumgart’s chapbook of poetry, Rules for Loving Right, was released from Sweet Publications in 2017, and his prose and poetry have appeared in a number of print and online journals, including Tipton Poetry Journal, Cleaver, SLAB, Ruminate, and The Good Men Project. He is the Director of the AFA in Creative Writing Program at North Hennepin Community College, just outside Minneapolis, and he has an MFA from Minnesota State University - Mankato. His son adores mythological monsters and cryptids, and his daughter has learned to croak “Redrum” while angling her finger at strangers; he will gladly accept responsibility for these children. Carmelinda Blagg received her MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of journals, including Halfway Down the Stairs, Best of the Web 2009, Lindenwood Review, and Barrelhouse. She was a 2010 recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She lives in Bethesda, Maryland, where she is a long-time member of the Writers Center. Robert Campbell’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, and many other journals. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Murray State University and an MS in Library Science from the University of Kentucky. Read more about him at robertjcampbell.wordpress.com. Sandy Coomer is a poet and artist living in Brentwood, Tennessee. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Mud Season Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Hypertrophic Lit, among others, and she is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including the recent Rivers Within Us (Unsolicited Press). Sandy is a poetry mentor with the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program and the founding editor of the online poetry journal Rockvale Review. Jill Dery has stories in Bellingham Review, Fourteen Hills, and others; her poems appear in Antiphon, San Pedro River Review, Windfall, Broad Street, Bracken, Penn Review, and Temenos, with poems forthcoming in Tule Review, Blueline, and Elm Leaves Journal. Her MFA in poetry is from UC Irvine. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she’s lived in Anchorage since 1992. 71

Paul Ferrell is a former freelance columnist for the New Haven Advocate. His poems have appeared in The Sand Journal, Pank, and Jet Fuel Review. He is currently writing and performing comedy inside of a tool shed in a field located somewhere in Illinois. Ahja Fox resides in Aurora, Colorado with her artist husband with whom she creates multimedia pieces. She is an avid reader, dancer, and researcher of all things morbid and supernatural. Her other passion is acting as co-host/co-partner for Art of Storytelling (a reading series in Denver).You can find her work published or forthcoming in Driftwood Press, Rigorous, Noctua Review, BONED, SWWIM, Taxicab Magazine, and more. Stay up-to-date on her reading/performance schedule and publications by following her on Instagram and Twitter at aefoxx. Kelly Granito is a former teacher from Michigan who now studies education policy in New York City, a city that inspires much of her writing. She has been published in Midwestern Gothic, the Laureate, Lines + Stars, and elsewhere, and is a nominee for Sundress Publications’ 2016 Best of the Net anthology. Therese Hair lives in Wellington, FL and is a current contributing writer for a rare bookstore on Palm Beach Island. Her previous work has appeared in Living Waters Review. Christine Hamm has a PhD in American Poetics, and recently edited the anthology, Like a Fat Gold Watch: Meditations on Sylvia Plath and Living. She is currently an MFA poetry student at Columbia University. Christine’s poetry has been published in Orbis, Nat Brut, Painted Bride Quarterly, BODY, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. In 2017, Ghostbird Press published Christine’s fourth book, a linked collection of hybrid poems, Notes on Wolves and Ruin. Adam Hoss is the author of Infinity Point, a mystery novel. His short fiction has appeared in Riding Light (forthcoming), Worker’s Write!, Crack The Spine, Epiphany Magazine, Lark’s Fiction Magazine and 140 Fiction. His humor writing has appeared on Cracked.com. He currently resides in Sandusky, Ohio. Benjamin Hostetter got his BA in English from Virginia Commonwealth University. He recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Southern Connecticut State University. He’s currently working on his first novel. His work 72

has previously appeared in Colonnade Writer’s Anthology, The Bookends Review, 580 Split, Black Heart, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia, where he hopes to find a “Big Boy” job soon! Arianna Carini Johnston often forgets she is an artist and amateur photographer. Despite using her photography skills often in her current position as objects conservator, her personal camera languishes uncharged at home. Arianna graduated from Alfred University with a BA in Fine Art and from Cardiff University with a MSc in Conservation Practice. Arianna promises the readers of Noctua Review she will charge her camera battery tonight. Korbin Jones is an undergraduate at Northwest Missouri State University studying creative writing, publishing, and Spanish. At the university, he works at GreenTower Press for The Laurel Review as an editorial assistant and typesetter. Prior, he has had poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published in Medium Weight Forks and Sucarnochee Review. His debut novel, Electus, was independently published and is currently available on Amazon. Siham Karami’s poetry and critical work can or will be found in such places as The Comstock Review, Able Muse, Pleiades, Literary Mama, The Rumpus, Tupelo Quarterly Review, Sukoon, Glass Poetry, and Orchards Poetry as featured poet, among other venues and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection will be published at at the end of the year. Nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she blogs at sihamkarami.wordpress.com. Rachel Karyo’s short story “Beavers” was published in the horror anthology Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace, and Misery. Her short story “The Rachels” was recently performed and published by The NYC Liars’ League. Rachel lives in Seattle, Washington and enjoys reading, swimming, and hiking. Roger Leege started out as a painter, printmaker and analog photographer, earning his MA in Visual Arts from Goddard College. With postgrad study in assorted small computer technologies, his art is now fully-digital, photo-based, and he works primarily in surreal montage on topical social themes and creative re-visions of reality. With extensive gallery, print, and online publication credits in the U.S. and abroad, Roger is also the publisher of the fine photogaphy monthly, Dek Unu Magazine (www.dekunumag.com). 73

Luca McCarthy is a sixteen-year-old artist and student at Common Ground High School. He has loved to create art for most of his life and aspires to be an art teacher someday to continue his passion. Luca enjoys working in a variety of different mediums and experimenting with his artwork. His goal is to continue creating new and interesting pieces and develop his artistic ability as much as possible. Matt Poll has spent most of the past decade in South Korea, and has written a memoir about the challenging life of a foreign birdwatcher there. When not lurking in the bushes with a pair of binoculars, he can be found working on a series of tales which combine birdwatching and the supernatural. A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is..., Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, and The Wild Word, Hellscape, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on the blog she does with her friend Nina: https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com and see more of her work on her website: http://kerferoig.com/ Wayne Russell is a creative writer and amateur photographer that was born and raised in Florida. His writing and photography work have been published in The Paragon Journal and Poets Espresso Review. In March 2016, Wayne founded the online underground lit zine called Degenerate Literature, which can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and at www.degenerateliterature.weebly.com. Madeline Schlick is an artist and Transpersonal Art Therapist in Boulder, Colorado. Her current artwork focuses on tapping into the unconscious by connecting to emotion, and allowing instinct to drive the art process. Often, she uses art to process her life or respond to her experience with clients. Marvin Shackelford is author of the collections Endless Building (poems) and Tall Tales from the Ladiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Auxiliary (stories, forthcoming). His work has, or soon will have, appeared in Kenyon Review, Blue Fifth Review, Hobart, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. He resides in Middle Tennessee, earning a living in agriculture.

Abigail Skinner is a senior English major and Creative Writing minor at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Her previous work has been published in Living Waters Review and Freshwater Literary Review. Melissa Slater’s passion is educational equity but photography is where she finds peace. The greatest compliment she ever received was when one of her students said, “Yooo Miss, this pic is so dope.” She hopes to continue taking “dope” pictures for the rest of her life. Natalie Solmer is the founder and editor in chief of The Indianapolis Review. She had a former life as a florist and horticulturist, and now teaches writing and English in the Indianapolis area. Her work has been published in journals such as Willow Springs, Tinderbox, Anomaly Literary Journal, Cimarron Review, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.You can find her at www.nataliesolmer.com. Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), The Daodejing: A New Interpretation, with David Breeden and Steven Schroeder (Lamar University Literary Press, 2015), The Windbreak Pine (Snapshot Press, 2016), Candling the Eggs (Shanti Arts, LLC, 2017), and Singing for Nothing: Selected Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (The Operating System, 2018). Mark Trechock, a retired director of a rural community organizing group, and a fill-in college Spanish instructor, writes poetry from western North Dakota. His poems have recently been published by Drunk Monkeys, Raven Chronicles Journal, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. Vivian Wagner is an associate professor of English at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Muse /A Journal, Forage Poetry Journal, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Creative Nonfiction, The Atlantic, The Ilanot Review, Silk Road Review, Zone 3, Eyedrum Periodically, 3QR, and other publications. She’s also the author of a memoir, Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), and a poetry collection, The Village (Kelsay Books).

NOCTUA STAFF Elizabeth Wager hails from New York State’s Southern Tier, and has lived in Connecticut for the past three years. While not writing for class, for work, or for fun, she enjoys gardening, ice skating, and graphic design work. Her poetry has appeared in Able Muse, Yellow Chair Review, The Rectangle, and Allegheny Review. Natalie Schriefer is currently pursing her MFA in fiction. Her short stories, poetry, and personal essays have been published in both print and online journals such as Nanoism, Penworks, 1:1000, and MTV, among others. She works as a freelance writer and editor. Emma Moser is an MFA fiction candidate and undercover poet at SCSU. In her 3rd year, she is (probably) the MFA program’s first unofficial low-res student, as she is currently living and drafting her first novel in North Carolina. She runs a blog, Antiquarian Desiderium, and has over thirty multi-genre publications in venues like Thin Air Magazine and River River. Cole Depuy grew up in Sandy Hook, CT with his three younger brothers. Slam poetry and rap music were his first inspirations to creative writing as a kid. He studied English at the University of Vermont and graduated in 2013. His favorite genres to write are lyrical poetry and thriller fiction. Giovanni Valentin’s sanctuary is anywhere outdoors. He’s using everything he learned from his degree in English from Eastern CT State to finish his current novel, Scrapbook. A good day includes casual rainfall, chopping wood, cigars, and bourbon. Molly Miller holds a B.A. in English Education from Purdue University. She is a rural Indiana transplant living in New Haven, CT as she finishes up her MFA from Southern Connecticut State University. Her publications include pieces in Front Porch Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, and Sisyphus Quarterly.

ABOUT the TYPE The main text of this journal is set in Perpetua, a typeface designed by Eric Gill in 1928 for the Monotype Corporation in London. A humanist Roman typeface, Perpetua shows the traces of handwriting in its design, which, when coupled with its strong contrast between thick and thin strokes, provides a modern feel. Titles and other headings are set in Tw Cen MT, a typeface designed by Sol Hess in 1937 for the Lanston Monotype Corporation in Philadelphia. A geometric sans-serif typeface, Tw Cen Mt is part of the Twentieth Century family of fonts, and is based on 1920s fonts associated with the Bauhaus movement in Germany.

MFA in CREATIVE WRITING at Southern Connecticut State University

The MFA in Creative Writing at Southern is a 48-credit, terminal degree that can be completed in two years of full-time study, or several years of part-time study. The MFA culminates in the completion of the thesis, a book-length manuscript of either fiction or poetry. The M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing is designed to graduate students who will: - have the necessary experience to become publishing writers - have the experience to become university instructors of creative and expository writing - have a comprehensive foundation in intensive literary study, literary analysis, literary theory, and critical writing - be versatile critical thinkers and perceptive, able communicators, prepared for the post-graduate job market, in positions such as freelance writers, editors, grant writers, teachers, technical writers, proofreaders, copyeditors, publicists, media and marketing associates, freelance reporters, and administrators in arts organiza tions The Creative Writing Program’s visting writers’ and editors’ series brings nationally-renowned writers to campus to read from their work. Visiting writers have included Steve Almond, Dale Peck, Brock Clarke, Marilyn Nelson, Stewart O’Nan, Erin McGraw, Andrew Hudgins, Juliana Gray, Michelle Richmond, Sandra Rodriguez Barron, Tom Perrotta, Michael Martone, Penelope Pelizzon, Alan Michael Parker, and Allison Joseph. For more information, visit http://www.southernct.edu/creativewriting

XI Âˇ INSTINCT Baumgart

Karami

Blagg

Karyo

Campbell

Leege

Coomer Dery Ferrell Fox Granito Hair Hamm Hoss

McCarthy Poll Roig Russell Shackelford Skinner Slater Solmer

Hostetter

Swist

Johnston

Trechock

Jones

Wagner