What if writing is dreaming together?

What if writing is dreaming together?

Poetry & Prose from Edited by T.K. Dalton & John Maney, Jr.

NY1 WRITERS COALITION PRESS

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What If Writing Is Dreaming Together?

Poetry and Prose from NY Writers Coalition

NY W RITERS C OALITION P RESS F ALL 2013 3

Copyright © 2013 NY Writers Coalition, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-9911174-0-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952882

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Upon publication, copyright to individual works returns to the authors.

Editors: T. K. Dalton, John Maney, Jr., Rose Gorman Layout: Rose Gorman, Joelle Blackstock Title: T.K. Dalton, John Maney, Jr. Cover Image: “Fifty-One Questions” by Victoria Cho Interior Images: Victoria Cho

What If Writing Is Dreaming Together? contains writing by NY Writers Coalition workshop leaders, who facilitate creative writing groups around New York City.

NY Writers Coalition Press, Inc. 80 Hanson Place, Suite #603 Brooklyn, NY 11217 (718) 398-2883 info@nywriterscoalition.org www.nywriterscoalition.org

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CONTENTS ABOUT NY WRITERS COALITION INTRODUCTION: Other People Can be Humble

by T. K. Dalton

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N EW S TORIES FOR N EW E ARS: P ROSE "Birds Crashing Into Windows" by Derek Loosvelt

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"Leaks" by Elizabeth Keenan

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"Eight p.m." by Melissa Tombro

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"seven minutes in japan" by kesha star young

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"Orbit" by Cait Weiss

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"Sky" by Cait Weiss

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"The Attack" by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko

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"Lungs" by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko

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“An Eruption of Emotion” by Patrick Mathieu

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“Dirt From the Earth” by Patrick Mathieu

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“Barack Hussein Obama” by Patrick Mathieu

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“Bomb Test” by Deborah Clearman

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“Ribs. Or, the intercostal space.” by Yvonne Garrett

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“Soldiers Sitting Cross-Legged Under a Cherry Tree”

by Nancy Lynn Weber

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P APER THAT M ADE N OISE AT N IGHT: P OETRY "A journey as errant as rain" by Tamiko Beyer

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"Lorax Remix" by Tamiko Beyer

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"Childhood House" by Melanie Votaw

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"To my father after the accident� by Melanie Votaw

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"A Poem for Mark" by Melanie Votaw

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"Unbroken Home" by Melanie Votaw

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"Slow Departure" by Melanie Votaw

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"Ars Poetica" by David Winter

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"All Shine and Angle" by David Winter

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"Burial Song" by David Winter

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"The Great Shores of Silence" by Angela M. Lockhart

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"Stories from the Ocean" by Angela M. Lockhart

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"Perception" by Angela M. Lockhart

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"American Melting" by Angela M. Lockhart

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"East Texas Witch" by Angela M. Lockhart

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"The Night I Heard Gerald Stern Sing" by Avra Wing

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"Renovation" by Avra Wing

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"As I give you a copy of the poem" by Avra Wing

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"With My Sister After the Rain" by Avra Wing

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"An American (in Love)" by kesha star young

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"exploration" by kesha star young

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"karma" by kesha star young

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"slave trade" by kesha star young

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"in memoriam" by kesha star young

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"Doubt: A Villanelle" by Cait Weiss

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"Money" by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko

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"Problem Areas" by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko

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“Sacred Word” by Patrick Mathieu

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"Decorum" by Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko

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“Latino” by Patrick Mathieu

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“Papers” by Chelsea Lemon Fetzer

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CONTRIBUTORS / WORKSHOP LEADERS

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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A RT “The Lie Factory” by Victoria Cho

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“Fifty-One Questions” by Victoria Cho

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“Sound Machine” by Victoria Cho

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A BOUT NY W RITERS C OALITION

NY Writers Coalition (NYWC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that creates opportunities for formerly voiceless members of society to be heard through the art of writing.

One of the largest community-based writing organizations in the country, we provide free, unique and powerful creative writing workshops throughout New York City for people from groups that have been historically deprived of voice in our society, including at-risk, disconnected, and LGBT youth, the homeless and formerly homeless, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, war veterans, people living with disabilities, cancer and major illnesses, immigrants, seniors and others.

For more information, visit www.nywriterscoalition.org.

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INTRODUCTION Other People Can Be Humble T. K. Dalton It is a pleasure to introduce the writers and the writing contained between the covers of this anthology. As the book came together, the diversity of style and sensibility had an effect similar to that of the introduction of a new voice in a song sung-in-the-round. The newest member made the whole chorus more and more complete, until the room was full.

The title of this anthology, What if Writing is Dreaming Together? speaks in part to that resonance, to the fullness of a room where people have gathered to make something beautiful. In addition to being talented writers, the contributors are invisible conductors of a chorus that refuses to be hidden.

These workshop leaders gather rarely heard voices together, in some rooms—in shelters, in prisons, in psych wards of hospitals, just to name a few—that may well be surprised to hear such sounds, such noisy paper.

This gathering is the work of New York Writers Coalition, whose mission is to facilitate creative writing by members of traditionally unheard groups: GLBT seniors, incarcerated women, people with disabilities, recent immigrants writing in multiple languages, city youth, survivors of cancer, and many others. The title line, though, also spoke to us for two other reasons. First, the phrase “dreaming together” seemed especially apt for an organization like ours, one that is tightknit and far-flung, one that is fueled on equal parts inspired idealism--dreaming--and grinding “get-it-done” collaboration-together. But that phrase alone, those two words in concert, wouldn’t have captured the journeys in this collection, an anthology replete with searchers for meaning and the pushers of envelopes. To capture the humility with which these writers have approached their characters and the skill with which they have crafted their language, you couldn’t be so arrogant as to posit a theory.

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You’d need to begin hypothetically. You’d need a question. That’s just what we had here. Sitting down to write this introduction, we realized that the two section titles, “Paper That Made Noise at Night” and “New Stories for New Ears,” speak to the first and last parts of the writing process. The first part is that itch that gets us (and maybe you) to the keyboard, the notebook, the smartphone, the grubby napkin, the backside of a receipt. The last part is what you’re about to experience. Get ready for the vibrations of a long ago noisy paper, having fluttered through draft after updraft of life and language, to finally land in new ears: yours.

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New stories for new ears

PROSE

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Birds Crashing Into Windows Derek Loosvelt In nothing but boxer shorts the Great American Playwright is sitting at his kitchen table, fighting with the final lines of the final scene of the final act of his yet untitled play, which he suspects will be his masterpiece, when all of a sudden a crash at the window jolts him out of his head, which is to say out of an imaginary scene, giving him such a fright, and he shoots a glance in the direction of the crash, toward the window, and sees feathers flapping frantically on the other side of the pane before quickly dropping out of sight. Almost immediately, as it occurs to the Great American Playwright that a bird has crashed into his window, and that this bird might have been injured in the crash or, worse, has died, the Great American Playwright feels an emptiness form in his stomach, an emptiness which soon vanishes when he thinks how strange it was that the bird had crashed into his window because he can’t remember the last time it had been washed, which is to say the pane is anything but clean, and he doesn’t see how it’s possible that it could be mistaken for a clear passageway by anyone or any animal, including a bird. A few moments pass, and then the Great American Playwright decides to stand up and walk to the window, which he does, to see if the bird had, in fact, flown away and is not on his downstairs tenant’s porch, either struggling or dead. Not that the Great American Playwright plans to find a way to get downstairs to help the bird if it’s in need of help, but it feels like the right thing to do, that is, at the very least he thinks he should see if the bird is okay, as if by getting up and looking he is somehow performing an honorable deed — a thought which, the Great American Playwright then thinks, only proves to highlight his lack of compassion. In any case, when the Great American Playwright gets to the window he sees not the bird on the porch below him but a significant pile of dog shit. Dog shit, in all probability, belonging to his tenant’s dog. Dog shit that looks like a pile of broken cigars lying wet on the deck (it had been raining Continued 13

all night, and the Great American Playwright suddenly remembers dreaming of smoke). From the porch, his stare then travels to his tenant’s backyard where he spots another pile of dog shit. And another. Perhaps seven piles in all scattered about the yard, a yard which, other than dog shit, mostly consists of mud and weeds. Do they ever clean up after that dog? crosses the Great American Playwright’s mind. How have I not noticed this before? And that’s when the Great American Playwright spots an overturned rusted wheelbarrow in the yard, and it occurs to him that the wheelbarrow looks quite beautiful lying face first in the mud. Like a sculpture. Or an antique.

Perhaps it is an antique. And then the Great American Playwright takes in the giant maple tree that grows out of his nextdoor neighbor’s yard and rises four floors above the ground and hovers over three backyards and has large green leaves (which turn brilliant shades of red and yellow every fall). And then the nearly as tall and equally as majestic pine that grows behind the maple in another neighbor’s backyard, and then a poplar and a fig tree and then the Masonic Temple that sits a block away behind these trees, not to mention more trees that the Great American Playwright wishes he knew the names of, as well as laundry hanging over balcony railings to be dried (still wet on account of the rain) in bright colors of blue and orange and white. He stands for a moment, the Great American Playwright does, his windows closed, but through their cracks he smells the morning air, which is still and quiet and rich with moisture and, he imagines, has an aroma like the color green, and as he inhales it occurs to him to thank the bird that crashed into his window, risking its life to pull him out of his head, out of his imaginary scene, so that he might stand witness to this glorious moment, on this glorious morning, and when the Great American Playwright turns away from the window, in search of paper and pen, it strikes him that what the final lines of the final scene of the final act of his yet untitled play, which he still suspects will be his masterpiece, need are not more words but birds, crashing into windows.

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Leaks Elizabeth Keenan She needed a new mop; the old one had been ruined.

It was the first rain since she'd moved-in. She'd moved through the barren apartment blindly reaching into unpacked boxes for makeshift buckets, another leak springing up, as soon as she'd staunched the one before it. Geysers of autumn rain fell relentlessly into his mother's meatloaf pan, the painted Turkish carafe, and his favorite copper pot. With each makeshift bucket placed, the sounds grew louder echoing off the bare walls in a violent sextet of pinging and dinging and popping, rain water into caskets of a different time. Happier, more savory, delicious times of hot food and back of the neck kisses while fingers lathered ramekins caked with soufflĂŠs. Nevermore bubbling Shepard pies and meatloaves hot out of the oven, curries and tetrazzinis that would never be made again by his hands. Or touch his lips. Or hers.

She sat in the center of their bed, wrapped in the quilt from their third winter together, the year they opened the restaurant, his fading scent still detectable in the elaborate patchwork. These things filled her and destroyed her all at once, strays hairs trapped in unwashed sweaters, his tread imprinted in his shoes, his essence still remaining like hidden notes for her to find long after he was gone.

Another leak sprung above the window, but she'd run out of vessels. The only one left unused and the most fragile, sat on the mantel above the fireplace. His ashes hermetically sealed in the Spanish casserole they'd cooked their wedding feast in. It was an unlikely urn, flat and wide, but he'd joked about it once so she made it his forever.

She bailed out the overflowing cisterns and tried to sop up the runoff with newspaper, her towels still not unpacked. The super wasn't picking up his phone, and she had a feeling that in a building like this one, leaks were hardly priority. She pulled on his old favorite jeans, the ones with the hole in the pocket and belted it with an old tie of his and buttoned up her Continued 15

wool jacket venturing into the storm. She didn't bother to look at the time; it didn’t matter any longer.

She draped the umbrella to shelter her face from the pelting drops. She walked unable to see in front of her and not caring. She heard their voices before she saw them, a voice in the darkness, 'you don't need to hide your face baby, maybe we'll like it."

Another male voice laughed and added "We like your legs, those we can see."

She cautiously moved her umbrella, revealing a group boys who couldn't be older than fifteen taking shelter under the awning of the bodega, paper bag bottles of beer in hand.

She hung back shadowed by the darkness, unsure whether to move to enter the store, their faces menacing. She bowed her head with a soft 'excuse me’ and the tallest boy took her by the shoulders and pulled her close. She could smell weed on his breath. She saw his bloodshot eyes register her mark, and as quickly as he'd grabbed her, he recoiled as if her shoulders were to hot to touch. 'Bitch, gotta fucked up face!' he proclaimed to his friends and their laughter circled in on her as they did.

A damn of fury broke in her. She didn't care about the boy's words, but the anger since her husband had been shot dead over an empty register had made her into a caged animal.

Once beaten down, desperate, she was now rabid. She pushed the boy hard and he fell over and cried out. Before she realized her feet were carrying her in the wrong direction, she was descending the stairs to the subway shaking like a fawn on new legs. The sounds of the boys yelling after her taunting her down to the bottom step.

She scanned the desolate platform. Shivering with adrenaline, she shoved her hands in pockets for warmth. Something slick and hard crinkled and she extracted the object. It was a fortune cookie. The fragile confection had surprisingly survived the trauma of the move and was still intact. She separated the plastic with her teeth and pulled the clear sheath off the cookie letting it flutter on the tracks where a giant rat frolicked in a skuzzy puddle.

The cookie split easily, exposing the white slip of paper 16

cradled inside. She threw the stale halves on to the tracks and read the fortune: A kind word will keep someone warm for years. She put the paper in her mouth and chewed. Then swallowed. A rare morsel since she'd lost hunger completely.

She'd always stuck out with her birthmark, spanning across her face like crimson Rorschach. And he'd always defended her. The night she'd fallen in love with him, he'd come storming out of the kitchen in the pub where they both worked, waving a cleaver over the table of drunk men calling her Gorbachev. He'd insisted on walking her home, her hand in his, his gaze on her eyes never once straying to the scarlet maligning her complexion. When the sun came up and he released her, he told her she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and she knew he meant it.

She was so far away from the moment now, but it was one she'd held on to all these years when she was feeling lost.

Now she was running from leaky ceilings and bullying boys in this strange new neighborhood, where robberies and gunfire were as likely as rainstorms it seemed. This was a new life now, and she had to keep reminding herself. A fractured attempt at a new start that was still very much jagged around the edges, like something cut out of a newspaper by a left handed person using a right handed scissor. Edges that she didn't believe would ever dull or smooth.

There was no sign of the train and she'd promised herself she wouldn't ride it to the end anymore. Once or twice she'd had too much wine and gotten on in the wrong direction.

She'd stand across the street from their building peering up at their old window. The new tenants silhouettes - a man and a woman, looking like shadow puppets. They were in love she thought, their shapes often moving together near the shrouded window like they were dancing. She didn't know if it made things better or worse.

The light of the train struck her out of the daze; it shot out of the darkness, doors opening, the empty car beckoning her to go back just one more time. She pictured him, his perfectly handsome face and loving eyes and shut her own. The doors closed with their familiar sound and the train pulled out of the station, leaving her standing there once again. The Continued 17

sound of the water leaking from above no longer, and she passed through the threshold, up, up into the first light of the morning and into her new life.

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Eight p.m.

Melissa Tombro Tap, tap, tap. The rhythmic tapping of promise just beyond the cardboard, conspicuous for being common yet uncommon, a bright yellow box filled with promise. Release? Escape? Old habits die hard. The smoke starts flowing around me in a new way in the middle of the street. I don’t notice it until I am a part of it. Occasional poser, I think they notice I hit too hard, rip too quickly, don’t know what to do with the plastic and foil in my hands, hastily tuck them in my purse to awkwardly fall out when I grab my wallet, keys, book on the train. When I get home, in the street, the annoyance of the crowd becomes a friendlier buzz, bringing me out of isolation and back to a peaceful mind, a mind that doesn’t buzz with the voices that buzz in the head of my sister, doesn’t ache with the rhythmic twirling of deadlines, doesn’t hurt with the pressure of decision and time. There, the sounds of the pacing of hallways, looking for a soul to understand but having alienated them all. The steps are rushed, searching yet silent. I hide from them. Darkness except for the click of the automatic light that goes on only when someone moves and I rarely do. The signs across the street flicker seizure-quick through the window and my speakers hum with the sounds of a failing PC casting glows of empty pages and full inboxes. What are the sounds we need?

Laughter that is real. Ideas that have possibilities. Endings.

Something’s got to end, right? A tap and away it will go, click of one less thing, footsteps stopping, silence. When you are alone, silence is all you have. The kind of silence that you fill with TVs, music, texts that might connect you to something larger. Pausing, creating space, taking in the silence and the occasional sounds becomes hard when you are always filling and avoiding silence. I take in the steamboat’s horn far away, the crying of a small child who is sad at 7:30 every night, a clinking of spoons cause the couple is always in the kitchen, cats on the prowl, eating vines and power lines, hunting small scurrying mice and rough skating leaves blown by wind across Continued 19

the concrete. I creak the pulley and grab the line to see if it moves, imagining soft cotton shirts swaying in the wind, smelling of perfume and sounding like summer, hopeful the rain has stopped but not knowing because the window fans sound like light storms, hundreds of them controlling the elements, pushing air and smells in and out and in and out. Water cascades over windowsills where pigeons perch every night in clusters to dream and defend in morning their spots to groom loved ones a feather at a time. Coffee grinds for the next day anticipating the broken alarms of a thousand workers trying to make ends meet. Let’s have small family conversations on stoops, let the children touch the wet paint and pick up the tossed away bags, run to make them crinkle and fly like kites.

Bring it all full circle, plastic in my purse, promise in my breath.

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seven minutes in japan kesha star young I: arrival This little bit of sunlight over the Bering sea is a rare treasure as most of the plane seems to prefer the dark or artificial lighting. No telling how long we’ve been up here in the air-still not convinced there isn’t some trickery to the whole flying thing.

New York is far behind, and Connecticut even father. What are my goals for this trip? To see Tokyo, fabled land of the hype new and quiet old. To feel truly lost at some points, in order to find myself and hone my internal guidance system to make and deepen connections of humanity, spirituality, reality and friendship. To experience wild free nightlife, great music, ancient temples, supercrowded flashy new culture. To identify with people who have disparate realities and yet commune on the same wavelength.

William and Masami meet me at Shinjuku train station.

William showed me how to read the map. Mitaka means 3 hawk and is 3 lines. A dreamlike train ride- looking out into the black night and seeing ads in neon katakana characters.

II: rules  Bag your own groceries  Put money in tray  sugar syrup and delicate stir spoons must look like they    

were made by or for fairies Ashtrays in the coffee shop Cigarette vending machines Everything vending machines Gauze face masks

III: new year’s day First, women in traditional kimonos greeted us outside the hotel with bowls of soba. Mine was vegetarian, a sticky dough rice ball in some sweet bean paste. Then we went to Harajuku Continued 21

where there were so many people heading for the park I followed them. I didn’t know where I was going, but the mass was undeniable in its attraction. I soon discovered that we were all on our way to Meiji Shrine, where we cast coins into white fountains and prayed. Bamboo fountains bubbled to wash hands. All wrote wishes down on wooden panels and placed them into a box in the forest clearing or tied their requests on clotheslines hung for this purpose. I wandered around little streets until happening upon a tiny jazz and coffee shop, winding stairs led to an old man with a billion records and some quality scotch. Had some smokes and talked about relationships.

IV: café shibuya Came over here in the hopes of getting warmth and food after the visit with the Emperor of Japan. Crazy umbrella parade through the imperial palace gardens to wait in the rain for his appearance and wave flags everywhere. Rain rain more rain. Then some fountains.

It’s hard to think because  jet lag is this weird force that just causes me to feel as if I’m awake at the wrong time, like it’s constantly 5 in the morning.  my dreams are crazy ridiculous. I’ve been dreaming about everyone I know, doing surreal important tasks.  constantly having to be alert. Which train, which stop, which exit, which direction? It’s a supernatural sensory overload experiment, all together which feels not at all relaxing.

V: JR fox bar Higuchi, the owner, gave me a vegetarian dinner and a free t-shirt! With a star and a dragon made into a two for the years he’s been open. He and some of the tattooed regulars were renewing the altar for the Japanese business god: one cup of water (mizu), one cup of sake and nuts. Nice! I love this town!

They have a system where customers keep a bottle on the wall.

So if I was a regular, I would come back and there would be bottle with my name on it.

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VI: harlem Last night was a madcap deal with my extra large suitcase.

After Andres and I had had a few drinks at the stone hibachi grill, I rushed back to the hostel, checked out with luggage and came back to Shibuya only to realize I had no idea what his line or station was. I called but got voicemail. I was obsessed with going to club Harlem, so what ensued was craziness where I wandered around Shibuya with my suitcase and a backpack asking everyone in English where Harlem was. A friendly Japanese guy named Yo! took me under his wing, calling the club, helping me find a place for my suitcase. No at Harlem, no at the police box. Yes ended up being a nearby capsule hotel for 3700 yen. The only reason it could stay there was because Yo! Was a man…

“Suitcase, sleeping!” he says, and we go dance our butts off.

VII: Kyoto A long night at the new town osento- a bubble massage in an outside hot tub carved of stone. A tour of three shrines: golden phoenix, rock garden and stone figures. The highlight was the Kyoto Women's University visit. They had a traditional tea ceremony with two kinds of tea, one being in a pot in the floor. A music ritual began with traditional instruments and the dressing of a “Noh” performer who put on a mask, which brings the spirit into the dancer, and the dance. In watching, I too feel the spirit of Japan.

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Orbit Cait Weiss “Why are you limping?’ It’s like God asking Job that. Honestly, she broke my heart and I saw her there on the sidewalk, the red curls and some guy and she just smiles, waves her hand at me says ‘Hey.’ And you’re wondering why I’m not fine? Fucking God asking Job if he’s having a good time. Engagement like it was nothing. Like used tissue, old newspaper. Tossed. I have ninety days off the stuff and she’s still done. I have ninety days proof I can get shit in line. Really? Really? You ask why I’m not fine?”

The waitress came by.

“Another bottle of wine?”

Mark looked at his cousin unraveling, a mess but still scripted, half-hazy precise. Even his relapse seemed overrehearsed.

“Remember the dope fiend,” his therapist had told him.

“Detach if you can,” the self-help group had said.

“This is my cousin, my blood.” He kept tugging. “This is the thread of my heart.”

He agreed to go after his cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend. His cousin agreed to stay clean for a while.

He was holding the planets in line like the hanger, the wire they’d both bent back in grade school for science. Same class, different ages. John was clever like that.

They’d both gotten Cs for half-hearted endeavors. They forgot half the planets and neither one cared.

Later that night, Mark helped John pack the black trunk.

The baseball bat, the ski masks, the tape and the knife. They had ordered that second bottle of wine. Mark had dug up some coke and they both saw it glitter.

“Ninety days, man. You promised you’d keep shit in line.”

“Just one line,” John had told him.

Mark thought of the next seven hours to come. The stakeout, the beat-down, the tape and the knife.

“Oh just fuck it,” he said as he pulled out his Amex.

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Two tiny white lines like the trail of an airplane, a shooting star, a meteor, the whole galaxy on fire.

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Sky Cait Weiss The secret. She knew why it was why she was stuck in Miami.

There she’d been posting on Facebook how much she loved the resort life, wished she could stay on the white beach forever, feet in warm sand, tongue on rock salt, lime, tequila, and Cointreau. No, though. She hadn’t really meant it that way.

Not like she wanted to be stuck here forever. Not like she wanted to never go home.

The secret had a strange way of working like that. It caused the cloudfire, she knew it. The heat so intense if turned the top layer of South Beach into beige glass like the skin soup gets when it cools down too fast, like the peel her own skin was unwrapping into now.

Her skin wasn’t the only skin burned by the blast. The cloudfire left nearly everyone red, itching, tugging at their forearms and their kneecaps with fingernails. By day three the whole state’s floor seemed covered in dead skin. The remains of who they all had been. Sam hadn’t meant to trigger a secret, the secret, as powerful as all that. She had just meant to gloat in a post to her friends.

The sun had started to unravel weeks before she booked her trip, actually. She heard the vague news clips on CNN while she ran on her NYC treadmill in her NYC gym. Snips of “unusual solar flares” and “record heat spikes in the southeastern states.” She had sensed her trip to Florida wasn’t as envied as it would have been a few years ago, a decade back when no one had fully connected the stronger winds, the crazed white summers, the cessation of nearly all un-aided bird migration, with the coming meteorological meltdown.

They had just been weird seasons, bad gusts, lazy species.

This spring, though, her friends asked if she was sure she should go. Yes it was hovering around ten degrees in the city, but down South it was, well, it couldn’t be worse. She wasn’t afraid of hurricanes, typhoons, invasive species – at least not if there was also sunshine and a tan.

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No one had mentioned cloudfire.

Sam turned towards the window. She had been in this airport for nearly a week. They’d all run there fore shelter after the flames went back up to the sky. The stores had been raided long ago, back on day four, once the skin had started to flake off in sheets and the people began to realize the flight delays were more like religion, less like a plan.

No one was going to go anywhere.

Sunglasses Hut was sacked first. Every since the sands turned to glass, everything was reflective and the whole airport looked out onto a newly-minted mirror. This new world here was like burrowing inside a ball of gilt light.

Sam had joined the mob early, got a pair of Chanel. She had wanted the Gucci but took what she could. In her pocket, she stowed a set of red frames, bright peppermint red, made for kids. She didn’t care. She was thinking ahead, thinking of how she could barter.

Her family must know that she’s gone now. The electricity went off once the cloudfire ended and the cellphones all died back around the start of day two. She had last tweeted out, “Off into the sunset. #understatemuch #apolcalysenow” She had meant to be glib, not then knowing the truth.

Here now she sat back, imagined the bridal party, how the rest must have fared after the big crack of heat. She’d lost track of them when the ground started to burn, turn liquid and boil. Lost the hen party back somewhere in Coconut Grove, shots dissolved into air in that heat. She was still in the Friend of Mrs. tee now, singed and torn. One hell of a final girls’ night on the town.

The secret, she thought. That’s what it should be for. The idea that we bring about events by our thoughts, create the universe through the energy we put out into the sky. The secret should be why we hope and we marry, not why we sit here and wait in an airport to die. Sam lifted her glasses, squinted out past the window outside. All she could see was a blinding white light and sky, mirrored infinite, and stonefaced. Just sky.

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The Attack Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko 1: This must be awkward, hm? You’re looking for flesh, of course, but sparseness, sparseness, indeed.

2: Absence 1: You noticed.

2: Absence of concern.

1: You say that now. Yes, you say that now, but when you’ve wrapped that wing around me, scraping my points and hard flatness with your arms like a screen, what will you feel?

2: Negligible. Not applicable.

1: When your fuzzy stripes are chafed shaven rather than smoothed neatly, penetrating the warm folds that lead soon to yum blood. What will you do when there is no promise of blood?

2: You like talking a lot. For a stagnant remnant of mountainside, tossed into a litter-rife field dismissed and dismissed among the feet of passersby, little activity befalling you day after day, you seem to think you’ve much to say.

1: I see a lot. No one comes by for so long. So long. So quiet.

So hard. I see so much, yes, I’ve then much to say, I tell you, even to a predator primed to end things for me, but oh, you’ve never known a victim like this, have you? A rock. I stand, yes, simple, footless, a rock— and what can you do? Furthermore, and directly on topic, where is your stinger?

2: I need no stinger. I am the killer. I kill you with my absence of concern. I kill you by bee-ing. Being just who I am.

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Lungs Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko Hey, the other day I saw this girl, g-e-r-l, on the subway, and she had her nose all ceiling-like, and it looked like it hurt her to stand there--she couldn’t sit; that would somehow tarnish her highly casual, no big aqua blue deal anyway ensemble.

Therefore, she stood, and every time anyone shifted a body part in that car, she’d grimace like a bullet just nicked her heart, good and healthy, always the LDLs, scrap the Hs. She’s getting all her fiber and protein, and when somebody entered with a McDonald’s bag, she almost fell down, had to actually touch the pole. So what? A few billion hints of people’s doings, cute kids and stuff, too, who may have picked up a ball that was in the street when some guy spat. So, what, McDonald’s. Oh, she doesn’t eat, what, meat, processed condiments or cheap shards of foodish approximations like that? And she had her chin up to her eyes, she couldn’t look when this baby licked the door; I could tell she was thinking knives like “not mine, never mine.” Cause she’s doing everything right, keeping a clean apartment, meticulously designed, renovated on a bare dense bones budget. Cause she’s, what, some kind of idealistic-ish artist who swears money is secondary to the method of obtaining it, the meaning of life. She probably helps people she calls the needy, and she comes in all crisp and pink and fresh to their collective public lairs and showers the second the help is over because she can only do dirty if it’s a good deed. Dude, I saw that girl, with her eyes all everywhere but directly at possibly something nasty, and I decided to follow her. Easy to do with that neck so sky-bound, stretchy-tight. And I crawled and slid and scrooched amid everything ripe and pulsing until I became the dust in her apartment, the VOCs in the paint, the gum barely in the mouths of the plumbers, the sediment and chemicals in the cheaper bottled water she had to buy to be frugal and survive during the process, the incense she burned to mask herself from it all, and I shook, and I shook, and I shook, and watched her fall.

29

An Eruption of Emotion Patrick Mathieu Volcanic eruption had nothing on him. He arrived relatively young to this new land; but with sufficient awareness to realize a distinct difference between the new education he was forced to absorb, and the one he had begun to learn in his birth-land.

Although grown-ups acknowledged this reality, they went along to get along. After all, the homeland was under dictatorship, and here, however superfluously, there was democracy.

Because he always aced academic tests in High School, but rarely attended classes, he was counseled that, if he wanted to graduate before his younger sister, he should lie to the authorities, claiming he had dropped out of High School six months earlier, thus he passed the GED test. And so, he wandered into College.

He did wonder why he had such difficulty attending classes. He recalled how he used to love history back in the old country, but grew to detest it in the new. There were several theories; culture shock; poverty; race; class; but his personal musing convinced him it was boredom. That was until he attended classes in the so-called “Black Studies Department�. It was there that an eruption of emotion brought clarity to an issue which continues to plague the U.S. educational system even today; a day when the United States of America has twice voted an African American to the highest public office in the land.

That eruption of emotion nearly radicalized him into a destructive force that, unlike volcanic eruption from which nature renews itself, would enshrine destruction simply to satiate rage! A rage born from realization that he was being forced to regurgitate a history within which his people were not represented even though they did much to shape that history, and remained a guiding light by which this new land continuously manifests its incredible potential.

A history taught in a manner leaving the implication that his people were docile slaves who needed a white man by the 30

name of John Brown to incite them into uprising; that implied the greatest contribution from his people was embodied in George Washington Carver (not derogatory)– the peanut person; that his people gained liberty by the grace of a white man named Abraham Lincoln (not derogatory)– giving no credit to the abolitionists, black and white, male and female, who fought, shed blood and treasure, for the cause.

Then, fortuitously, he read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn; hence learned the problem is deeper than Black and White.

31

Dirt from the Earth Patrick Mathieu There were many beds to walk by before I could get to shower. It was early morning, sun had not yet risen, men were snoring as I made my way through center aisle towards only door to dormitory.

This time of morning is good to shower. All alone, I turn them all on, immerse myself in sound of running water; letting fear, frustration, and anxiety, drain from me.

Soon I will be on the bus. The blue colored bus with wire meshed barred windows that will take me, handcuffed to a stranger, to Manhattan courts.

I feel water splashing against my back as I brace for horrors of bull pen – bull pen, moniker for cages where those detained are kept pending court appearance. Cages where it seems everyone but a few are ferocious beasts who will strike over slightest slight.

Climbing steps of that blue colored bus, handcuffed to a stranger, I am amazed how sunshine and chirping birds still elicit joy. Riding Brooklyn/Queens Expressway on clear Autumn morning is exhilarating, even though hard plastic seat continuously reminds me, I am no longer at liberty - especially when driver hits pothole, sending us soaring, head two inches from ceiling, only to instantly plummet back to unyielding plastic seat.

In bull pen, fight began over word voiced with wrong tone. Youngster was being forced to relinquish his cigarettes.

And sitting in middle of cage, an obviously disturbed young man, who had been murmuring to himself all along, suddenly looked up and beseeched the fighters: “Look! Dirt from the Earth!”

Absorbing this surrealistic tableau in motion, words from Voltaire crept to mind: “If centuries of slavery, oppression and injustice produced open, generous, enquiring and tolerant spirits, you would have to consider that there is something to be said for slavery, oppression and injustice.”

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Barack Hussein Obama

PRESIDENT

OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Patrick Mathieu The time had arrived. Suddenly, after use of Monica Lewinsky to curtail progressive agenda, waging expensive destructive war based on lie, while personal wealth of one percent increased at expense of 99%, he was given opportunity to stride unto the national stage where he proved his intellect and charisma. After hard fought democratic debates with, incredibly, another so-called minority, who proved worthy, he made history, as tears flowed from Jesse’s eyes.

Why are you not as excited as everyone else, I was asked: First, I explained, he’s a politician; second, he’s a democrat.

And I agree with Nader that Republicans and Democrats are two sides of same corporate coin. Third, and only third, is he a historical figure. And let’s not forget that fourth, the first three are wrapped inside a human being.

First term revealed politician willing to alienate his base in hope of grand bargain compromise with Republicans who balked thinking they had the upper hand. In spite of Tea Party, second term’s first State of the Union Address revealed the Democrat. So far, the human being has been impeccable.

Whether the conservative or progressive side of the corporate coin will succeed is unknown. What remains to be revealed is whether the politician will be able to effectively advance the progressive as opposed to the conservative side of the corporate coin. History on the other hand, has already been written.

Congratulations United States of America!

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F IFTY -O NE Q UESTIONS / V ICTORIA C HO

34

Bomb Test Deborah Clearman My father’s on an atoll, waiting for the Bomb to drop.

Twice a day he makes his rounds of the island, with a Geiger counter. Four hundred miles away, Bikini is a sitting duck in the azure sea. My father is bored and lonely. (I know this now.

What was the name of your atoll? I’m asking him, while there’s still time to get the facts. What was your job there?) His job—if the radiation levels rise too high, to lead the people on the island out waist-deep into the ocean. Water will protect them, by absorbing the toxic rays. State Department doesn’t want another Lucky Dragon incident, fishermen dying from excessive fallout.

Plutonium fissions, ignites the fusion fuel, and fifteen megatons light up half the sky. (Could you see the explosion? His short laugh comes through the phone. Oh brother, could I! It lit up half the sky.) Two hundred Micronesians, two US soldiers, a cook, and my father watch the mushroom cloud erupt.

I’m a child in Cincinnati, half a world away. I’m learning about atoms from little golden books. I picture tiny spinning balls with lots of space between them. So much space I wonder, why don’t we fall through?

On the atoll, tidy villagers sweep the sand street every morning. (What was it like to live in paradise?) My father lives in a tent, delivers babies, and walks his rounds with the Geiger counter. He’s a young man with a family. He doesn’t like islands, just wants to go home. The Soviet Union uses lithium deuteride in their Bomb Sloika, also known as the Alarm Clock. But its yield is limited compared to Castle Bravo, the Bomb that irradiated the fishermen on the boat Lucky Dragon.

On Bikini, another Bomb drops. The levels on my father’s atoll are OK. Another day on the job.

My mother calls my father to tell him I have tonsillitis and ask what she should do. He’s the family doctor. The signal goes by wire across the continent and under the Pacific to Hawaii. From there by short wave to the atoll. Communica-

35

Continued

tion is difficult.

In 2005 a lesion on my father’s scalp turns basal cell sarcoma. Atypical. But it’s typical of a man who wore a crew cut in the mid ’50s, exposing the skin of his head to a tropical sun.

Leaving the island the seaplane has to dodge reefs in the lagoon, trying to get up to speed. It takes several tries. My father comes home from the Pacific with a suitcase full of exotic shells and his first white hair. He continues to monitor levels of deadly strontium-90 in the milk of American dairy cattle— “making the world safe from radiation,” he likes to say—until above ground testing is banned.

Fifty years later, my father writes in his annual Christmas card to the friends he never sees (he tells me with his usual wit, over the phone long distance—hasn’t it always been about distance?) “My health problems, I am glad to say, are not painful, only lethal.”

36

Ribs. Or, the intercostal space.

Yvonne Garrett

[Source: Gray, H. (1918). Anatomy of the human body. Lea & Febiger.]

Rain-cast morning and I’m late. White Zombie blasting on the headphones. New raincoat wrapped around my average self.

Fifth Avenue looms. 12th Street. My street. My city. The click of the light change and the little white light man: walking. I walk. A silver van: headlights and a mirror bigger than my head. Not so much driving or moving as appearing out of the morning: metal against skin and bone. Fifth Avenue meets me or I meet it. There is no crunch, no slam, no sound at all - just the van and the sky. * In vertebrate anatomy, the ribs (Latin: costae) are the long Continued 37

curved bones which surround the chest, enabling the lungs to expand facilitating breathing by expanding the chest cavity.

The rib cage protects the lungs, heart and other internal organs of the thorax or trunk. * I do not lose consciousness. I stare into the sky. The sky is gray. My coat is gray. The driver stops. Runs. Screams to his god repeatedly. A woman who seems preternaturally beautiful and dressed all in matching lemon yellow asks if I am "okay." I am very calm and say only, "Call 911" over and over until someone does. The woman collects my iPod (pink) and my sunglasses (red) from the middle of the avenue. The driver wants me to stand. I've seen enough TV to know that’s the wrong thing to do. I lie still, frozen to the pavement. I think about cervical fractures, broken spines, gaping head wounds. I feel very little pain. I think about my new raincoat. * Most humans have twenty-four ribs (twelve pair). The first seven pair of ribs are known as “true ribs” and are directly connected to the sternum by the costal cartilage. The following five sets are known as “false ribs,” three of which share a common cartilaginous connection to the sternum. The last two (eleven and twelve) are known as “floating ribs” (costae fluitantes). They are attached to the vertebrae only, and not to the sternum. * There is so much silence. Like a day full of snow. The sky is gray but does not rain. There are four men in uniform. Two ambulances. I hear snow instead of sirens. The men seem giant. Incredibly beautiful. Like angels. Like what they are. They push me onto a board, strap a collar on my neck. Lift me into the air so high I think I might reach the clouds. Fifth Avenue is gone. There is only the flashing light, the gray sky and then the small flat fluorescence of the ambulance interior. The driver who hit me asks where I am going - which hospital, if I am okay. The EMTs say, "Leave her alone. You've done enough."

A policewoman leans in over me. Unfriendly. Asks a few questions. A roar of engines and she is gone leaving me alone with 38

the light and the board and the collar and an EMT whose name is the same as the name of my dead brother. The EMT has black bolts in his ears and tribal tattoos. A shaved head.

He fills out forms on a clipboard. So many questions. I hear my voice speaking but it is not me. I am gray. Full of snow.

Thinking about clouds. The very rotations of the earth. * All ribs attach in the back to the thoracic vertebrae.

Each rib consists of a head, a neck, and a shaft. The head typically has two facets on its surface: one for articulation with the corresponding vertebrae, and one for articulation with the immediately superior vertebrae.

The space between the ribs is known as intercostal space.

These spaces contain the intercostal muscles, nerves and arteries. * The ER is full of noise and light. The ceiling panels are yellow and white. They shut out the gray sky. I cannot move or see anything but the yellow and white of the panels. There is laughter all around: EMT and ER jokes. No one speaks to me. I have become a slab on a slab. Wheeled into a corner I stay and count the holes in the ceiling, the stains. I ponder the earth and its rotations. * The number of ribs (twenty-four, twelve on each side) was first noted by Flemish anatomist Vesalius in his De humani corporis fabrica (1543). This observation set off a wave of controversy as it was traditionally assumed that men's ribs would number one less than women's. * A murder of doctors. A herd. A flock. They are all gray: black or white, they become gray. A CT Scan. An MRI. A thousand X-rays: ankle, knee, hip, elbow, neck, wrist. I whisper over and over: ribs. No one listens. They park me in a hallway next to a Georgia O'Keefe poster. I send a hundred texts from that hallway. Only a few respond. He does not.

Continued 39

From the hallway they wheel me back to my slot in the ER. There are no curtains. My body is folded, strapped on a table with wheels. The table is slotted between other tables. I cannot see who or what is on the tables. A sonogram: the doctor is blonde, pretty. She speaks about fluids and internal organs.

I ask about ribs. No one answers. I tell someone, anyone: I have to pee. They leave a plastic yellow bin for me to pee in and go away. I ask a nurse how to use it. She says, if I really have to go, I’ll figure it out. I cannot move. Someone takes the collar off. I rediscover breathing. Someone else raises the bed so I can see. So many bodies in various states. Next to me: a woman with two tubes - one going in and one going out - both red. Her daughter leans. Full of tears. On the other side, a young girl weeps. Bleeding for days, her friend says.

Days. My head is full of the sound of snow. The sky is gray again. My gray coat is in a plastic bag somewhere underneath me. It has a crimson lining. A social worker comes and talks and talks. I answer in that voice that is not mine: a television voice. Friends come. They bring bendy straws and seltzer and animal crackers. Someone says: morphine. I decline. Someone brings a wheelchair and finally: there is a bathroom. A mirror. My makeup is perfect. My hair purple with blood. My feet bare on the filthy blood-strewn floor. I am wheeled back to my table, my space in the ER. Blood-soaked gauze covers the upper half of the table where my head had been. It is my blood. I lie back down in it. Hours pass. Finally: a dancing Filipino man with a fan-shaped haircut puts staples in my head. A friend watches. Asks questions. She's like that. A nurse gives me papers and a plastic machine to breathe into. I ask about ribs: again. She says: bruised. * Rib fractures are the most common injury to the rib cage.

These most frequently affect the middle ribs. When several ribs are injured, this can result in a flail chest.

Broken ribs are often indicated by the following symptoms:  Pain when breathing or with movement  A portion of the chest wall moving separately from 40

the rest of the chest (flail chest)

 A grating sound with breathing or movement  Where the mechanism of injury would indicate sub-

stantial force to the ribs * We walk the length of the hospital halls past historic displays and models of old horse-drawn ambulances. I think of madwomen hauled away by white-coated thugs - locked away forever. I think of lobotomies and ice baths. Outside the sky is dark. The streets are impossibly wide and full of noise. A friend walks me across Second Avenue through the loud scream of traffic. Pills in a bottle and home in a cab.

I was a walker. Always. Every day. I had owned the streets of this city, my city. Now I can barely find my own feet. I learn to sleep sitting up. I learn to walk holding on to walls, furniture, heavy objects. I learn to keep my fingers from the staples in my head and a pillow filled with ice against my ribs. * The human rib cage is a component of the human respiratory system. It encloses the thoracic cavity, which contains the lungs. An inhalation is accomplished when the muscular diaphragm, at the floor of the thoracic cavity, contracts and flattens, while contraction of intercostal muscles lifts the rib cage up and out. * Days pass. He calls. I do not answer.

At the clinic, a nurse with white hair and impossible cheekbones frowns at the way I hold my ribs to stand, to sit, to talk, to breathe. She says: X-rays. She says: ribs. Technicians probe and prod. I stand in a corner of the room, away from my body and watch as my half-naked skin is pushed against the cold metal of the X-ray. The nurse says: ribs. fractures.

First diagnosis: 3rd and 4th. Then 3rd through 7th. The nurse hands me to a doctor. He hands me sheets of paper and advice. Hydrocodone. Naproxen. Bed rest. Breathing exercises. I walk home through the fast-moving world, past cars and buses and the roar of trucks. I find my couch. Pillows and ice.

Continued 41

People come and go. Walk me to doctors. Traffic screams.

I wobble and hold on to whatever the world gives me: fences, walls, store windows, friends' shoulders. Every door becomes a wall. Every sidewalk, every elevator a ship at sea. Every stairway a mountain path beset by high winds. * Expansion of the thoracic cavity is driven in three planes; the vertical, the anteroposterior and the transverse. The vertical plane is extended by the help of the diaphragm contracting and the abdominal muscles relaxing to accommodate the downward pressure that is supplied to the abdominal viscera by the diaphragm contracting. The second plane is the anteroposterior which expanded by a movement known as the 'pump handle.' When the external intercostal muscles contract and lift the ribs, the upper ribs push the sternum up and out.

This movement increases the anteroposterior diameter of the thoracic cavity. When the diaphragm contracts, the ribs are able to evert and produce what is known as the 'bucket handle' movement, facilitated by gliding at the costovertebral joints. In this way, the transverse diameter is expanded and the lungs can fill. * I start a notebook. Every day I write down the date. The dosage. State of mind. Pain level (1 to 10). What I did that day (went to doctor. Friend came over. Called lawyer.) Every day I take a shower. Watch the blood come down the length of my body, mix with the water and disappear down the drain. I do not touch the staples in my head. I do not touch my bruises: elbow, hip, shoulder, knee. I do not touch my ribs except to wash the skin over them. I stop returning phone calls. I learned long ago - if I do not call them back, they will disappear. I think about his thick fingers, his hands. There is no place on my body I could let them rest. * Breathing may be assisted by other muscles that can raise the ribs, such as sternocleidomastoid, pectoralis major and minor as well as the scalenes.

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* Every day I practice my breathing: out, in and hold and count. Repeat. "As tolerated." Every hour. I write it in the notebook. A green notebook I bought for writing poems in.

For writing stories. Now just a list of dates and dosages and pain and pain and pain. The third through seventh ribs on the right side.

The diagnoses grow: Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) and Post Concusive Syndrome (PCS) caused by head injury and concussion. Five staples to reattach a portion of my scalp. My eyes roll in my head. They follow the very rotations of the earth. I cannot find my feet, hands splayed against walls, streetlights, mailboxes. The world pitches and moans. * BPPV: definitions: Benign positional vertigo develops when a small piece of bone-like calcium breaks free and floats within the tube of the inner ear. This sends the brain confusing messages about your body's position.

People with this condition feel as though they are spinning or moving, or that the world is spinning around them.

They may experience:  Nausea, vomiting, hearing loss, and a loss of balance  Vision problems, such as a feeling that things are

jumping or moving The spinning sensation:

 Is usually triggered by moving the head  Often starts suddenly  Lasts a few seconds to minutes

Most often, patients say the spinning feeling is triggered when they roll over in bed or tilt their head up to look at something.

To prevent your symptoms from getting worse avoid the positions that trigger it.

Continued 43

* Every night I climb mountains, ice pick in hand, crampons on boots. I wake to another TV fuzzed day. Commercials for catheters, canes, and the Hoveround. I have doctors for my bones, my muscles, my head, my brain, my eyes, my balance. I have doctors for fractures, for BPPV, for PCS, for PTSD. I watch disinterestedly as we discuss my body. It has become separate from me. I have become separate from it. I make lists in my notebook: Vicodin, Hydrocodon, Valerian, St. John's Wort, Verbena. A friend suggests laudanum. Another, opium.

I take the minimum dosage of the prescribed painkiller and watch the clouds in the sky on my ceiling. I grow layers of fat between my bones and the world. I watch the snow each night as it falls through my sleep. My skin grows tough with all that time in the snow. His voice appears in random patterns through my sleep. His words in soft mumbles in messages he leaves. The place I have gone to, he cannot follow. I climb and climb and wake to the silence of my white ceiling, my white bed, my white walls. There is no way out of or past this place.

There is only the white bare space of the day, the long cold climb of each night. My city has become a monster, its streets roar with menace and will swallow me. Chew me up and spit me out. * Nystagmus is a condition of voluntary or involuntary eye movement that may result in reduced or limited vision.

Positional nystagmus occurs when a person's head is in a specific position. An example of disease state in which this occurs is BPPV. * I learned to walk like walking on a boat. Like walking on a pitching ocean. A friend bought me a silver-handled walking stick. Another friend took me on "field trips" to wild places full of sky and water and smooth paths made for wheelchairs.

I pitched and swayed along every path and held ice packs under my right arm up against my ribs. One Sunday I stood at

44

the lip of a dune watching my friend run down to the waves.

The path to the sea was lined with butterflies. The sky was blue and gold and stretched over an endless ocean. I stood still ribs individually screaming. I thought of diving, surfing, the feel of the water on my skin and suddenly a cloud of Monarchs landed on my head, my arms, my chest. I breathed slowly and watched them rise and fall, rise and fall. * A rib fracture is a break or fracture in one or more of the bones making up the rib cage. The middle ribs are most commonly fractured. Fractures usually occur from direct blows or from indirect crushing injuries. Rib fractures are usually quite painful because the ribs have to move to allow for breathing.

When several ribs are broken in several places a flail chest results, and the detached bone sections will move separately from the rest of the chest. * It took a thousand steps on ocean sidewalks and days full of gray sky glutted couch-sleeping before I called him. He sent music and words but if skin is too bruised and bones too broken to stand even the touch of water, of Monarchs' tiny feet, what chance does a man's rough hands have? * There is no specific treatment for rib fractures.

There are few successful treatments for BPPV. The condition often clears up with time. * I have walked every inch of this island from East to West and South to North and back again. I know its shortcuts and its danger zones. I know its secrets, its alleys, its tiny gated parks and rooftop gardens. I have spent days, weeks, years, wrapping myself in the space of it, the paint, the soot, the giant towers touching the sky. I shoveled ash from its face after 9/11 and skied its avenues after every blizzard. While I drifted through gray days on the couch on a sea of television and fear, I lost my city. It is gone. In its place is a roaring beast, a pitching ocean, a nightmare place of blaring horns and screaming Continued 45

drivers. No one hears me. No one sees me. I walk and reach for the balance of objects staggering point to point. In all this noise, this endless stream of spinning days, what chance does he have to find me?

[All anatomical information for “Ribs. Or, the intercostal space.� is taken from Wikipedia, WebMD, A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. U.S. National Library of Medicine, and Gray, H. (1918). Anatomy of the human body. Lea & Febiger.]

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Soldiers Sitting Cross-Legged Under a Cherry Blossom Tree Nancy Lynn Weber They haven’t heard their mother’s voice in sixteen years. Maybe it is more like fifteen, since Candace saved a message on her voicemail from her mother for about a year until she bought a new, complicated telephone and accidentally deleted it. For months after their mother died, Candace and Diane would play that message, and try to make each other cry. They never cried. Their mother’s message was more creepy than sad, and they were numb, slaphappy.

They used her mother’s sewing shears to clip obituaries from the local newspaper of anyone who died that was younger than her to feel better. They drank all the liquor in the house, including the sweet, sticky Sambuca that their mother used to make those special cookies, the ones filled with fig jam and covered in powdered sugar. The cookies were shaped like bow ties and Candace and Diane remembered how their mother would arrange them in decorative tins and give them to their teachers as holiday gifts.

They joked about coffins, how the funeral director had them lined up in a showroom like brand new cars. They laughed at the brand names, and the different makes and models – solid cherry, solid hardwood, solid pecan, and solid steel. They referred to their mother’s grave as "the hole," as in, "Aunt Chrissie went to the hole today. She tried to plant a pink azalea bush but a gravedigger chased her away."

They brought gin home and ate dinners out.

They found the wedding dress in the attic. It was stained yellow and moth-bitten. Their mother had accused the housekeeper of stealing it, but never to her face. They laid the dress on top of a stack of mattresses out at the curb. They watched from an upstairs window as a pick-up truck that was spraypainted red pulled up to the curb and a heavy-set blonde woman got out. She tossed the mattresses in the back, and Continued 47

then carefully sat the tattered wedding gown on the seat beside her.

They shredded black and white photos of faded faces that they did not recognize, crooked shots of young people several decades before laughing on the beach in Atlantic City or soldiers sitting cross-legged under a cherry blossom tree.

They shampooed the rug. They signed for fruit baskets.

They made reservations at a fancy French restaurant for Thanksgiving. They had duck breast sliced and fanned out on a large square plate and drizzled with a thick port sauce that tasted like hard candy. When they got back to the house that evening they walked into the kitchen and found three of the four gas burners lit. Diane said, “Mom is cooking,” but Candace knew that was impossible because they had watched her through bleary eyes dressed in a yellow-stained moth-bitten wedding gown, being driven away by a blond in a red spray painted pick-up truck. They turned off the burners and drained the last drop of Sambuca stuck to the bottom of the bottle that they pulled out of the recycling bin.

They made plans.

They disconnected the phone. They sold the house to a man named Roosevelt. They moved away – Candace to New York City and Diane to several jagged spots along the Pacific coastline. They leave long messages on each other’s voicemail that they do not save. The distance between them is measured only in miles.

They stay away from the hole.

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Paper the made noise in the night

POETRY

49

50

A journey as errant as rain Tamiko Beyer I wrote dear journey. Nirmeen said, who’s he? and I said, maybe it’s a she. Anood asked, how to spell “I love you,” and Saif wrote a secret with his code of vowels and the letter n.

The edge they press against. Language to become a place of enter.

At nine, I was no bigger than these children and like them held two languages in my body. Now I’ve absorbed one into my skeleton, lost the other to rust and salt, and still, I’m shorter than the thirteen-year old in the room.

But we are all impossibly huge next to the marks we make on paper.

I say, what if writing is dreaming together? On the board: Water astonishingly difficult altogether. I tell them a lady long dead who once lived in France wrote it, knowing language could be far more astonishing than anyone else imagined. She held the wild weight of each word as if it were the oddest child. I say, what if we are all strangers to language every time we begin?

Word by word we travel – word by word we set it down: a poem so wet it runs.

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Lorax Remix FOR SAMUEL, NOW NINE

Tamiko Beyer One bird perched at the tip of dawn’s field and with great skillful skill, ventured forth to prowl. Sesame, wheat, dust. On the other side of the fence: blight-struck pine, chemical season. All the fish died in their strange hole.

Without wet, they curled – nothing left but grass on a stone.

A year in the sun became a fever in the snow.

As Earth squeezed with great speedy speed the shrike dropped open a dictionary: love. Seed and stones in his gizzard. “Good luck, boys, my bittersweets! If we survive memory, we might yet live,” he cried. And sent them away. The trumpet’s sudden eye at the river. Winter bread, a row of palms, and one very old tale.

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Childhood House Melanie Votaw The woman who burned to death in the third floor closet, the stale odor of dust and mildew cramped in the basement, the dark carved banisters leading to several upstairs doors, the buttons on the walls that had been used to call butlers, the man before us who died in his sleep in the room next to mine, the creaking of bricks and wood echoing the secrets of generations, the whispers from my parents' bedroom.

Night after night, the burnt lady descends the stairs, joining the man startled in slumber by death.

They fly into my dark room, whisking me to meet the faceless butlers of bygone years, who lead me up staircases wider than those of the most majestic hotels, each step waxed to reflect the sparse light from a single gilded chandelier.

I follow the tuxedo tails of the butlers Continued 53

up the stairs to an endless hallway of one closed door after another.

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To my father after the accident Melanie Votaw I am the only one who saw the STOP sign.

And nearly four months later I am still silent in the back where there is no brake or steering wheel, so the crash continues -my bloodless blaming and your vampiric guilt smash until our edges are souped into tangled veins, melted scrap iron, jagged bone and glass painted the blue of the car until indistinguishable.

I thought I had escaped this ride years ago, but we are still waltzing on the accelerator, though in 2/4 time now that I have only one shoulder to carry your burdens.

In order to heal I must re-break this fracture every time I sense your foot pressing down because I am the only one who saw the sign.

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A Poem for Mark Melanie Votaw Listening to live poets was something we were meant to do But would never do.

Or reading dead poets You, then me late in bed.

Instead We lay on the green with my poems.

You and me and my poems in Cambridge That August I crossed the pond.

You had read the poems I sent you And thought about them, Made notes even.

No one had ever done that.

Called me a poetess‌ And only you would tell me My most enigmatic poem was my best, It just hit you in that place where words touch no words, Your eyes explaining my metaphors to me.

When you walked away, I tried to memorize your walk, As the edges of your blonde hair Crashed like choppy waves on your shirt collar.

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Unbroken Home Melanie Votaw The television was a constant blare, but fragility was the loudest sound in our house.

It hung in the air like Strauss waltzes played flatly by a deaf orchestra with skeletal faces that would disintegrate if touched.

My brother wore that fragility like a crown of rebellion against our father's masculine bravado -a bungling-toreador-like bravado that could switch seamlessly to a slump of performed tears.

My father's kisses were as frequent and sticky as the ice cream and root beer he slurped out of huge bowls.

In spite of a stomach pregnant with sugar, he seemed to hang from the ceiling a 2-year old suspended by animal-shaped balloons, his cavernous smile betrayed by droopy eyes always braced for rejection.

My mother trudged through the mud of the earth, submerged from the knees down, Continued 57

and with Promethean strength balanced the house with a defeated resignation strong enough to prevent us all from being tornadoed to Oz. And I, sheltered by the outside, straddled the roof like a jockey on a wooden horse, while they all looked up at me -eyes thick with the syrup of hope.

Because I was the last perhaps they thought I would finally have the courage to break something.

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Slow Departure Melanie Votaw I’ve taken to gently stroking her head, It’s a motherly gesture, A strange reversal.

What do they say about the elderly returning to childhood?

I sit with her.

We don’t talk much.

Her words lose their way on the long arduous journey From mind to mouth.

Her hand attempts to rise toward her face, But her body says, “No, you cannot scratch.”

She lowers her hand in resigned defeat, But her facial expression remains unchanged As she disconnects from her senses, Now more enemy than friend.

Her skin becomes like someone else’s skin.

The surrender is painstaking.

Her implosion is like watching someone double over in slow motion.

Each day, she becomes smaller and smaller and smaller within her body, Preparing to leave it.

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Ars Poetica David Winter If this plush fruit stopped falling, a few worms already gorging on the meat within each apple's firm red shine, if your hand didn't catch them, couldn't lift their necessary weight from the ground, if your back bent so low, so often through the daily labor of rising into an orchard of fists, of clutch and blossom, of the five soft petals not yet ready to drop from your hand, what meaning would remain in the riot of your blood, in the thousand tides of tart sugar still lodging as ghosts in the dead buds on your tongue, in the sapling sprouting through the weak wind of your breath, in the lone seed your finger presses through the earth's hard dark teeth into its greedy, so nearly known throat?

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All Shine and Angle David Winter I wake more easily lately, without coffee, and not from the frantic dreams in which my lover appeared during the first months after I left him, his body arcing through my purple sleep like a blade, all shine and angle. I struggle now to leave behind his voice, which lives in the air, ready to answer my longing with longing, ready to fill each others’ mouths with poison.

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Burial Song David Winter Looking for a certain stillness (light’s quick motion across a lake’s rippling surface), I walk away from the past’s rough grasp, followed by his sweat’s thick aroma. I tell myself I don’t want to write his loss any longer; I don’t feel him like a ghost rising from the phone line, from the stripped mattress, from the city’s concrete. There is a new boy, a prideful cellist whose company is made easy by our lack of love for each other. I can hear the din of a new city, where time unfolds its manypetaled possibilities. I do not choose the sound of the song in my mouth, the fading taste of what I still live through. But I choose this future, how I enter the silence where my voice will take shape, how I bury the self defined by grief.

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The Great Shores of Silence Angela M. Lockhart At the great shores Of silence I listen Winter white sunrise Blue shadows of ice Birdsong Awakened In the unclouded air Life moves Beneath a misshapen, sore Battered feet Life listens for a Twilight summer Porch-swing Soul-songs Breeze breathing Racing through Mississippi Cotton fields South Carolina Rice Fields I listen Breathing wild Through blue shadows of ice I listen At the great shores Of silence For you

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Stories from the Ocean Angela M. Lockhart Stories from the oceans Come back To choke The adopted and held wisdom words in the Graveyard songs Sung by a lucky old woman Stories from the graveyard Come back to scatter Sweet memories that haunt The breaking chambers Of an AIDS widow’s Heart.

In the back room of fear Stories of heartbreak Hide in clutter and decay That waits to be Thrown away, buried and forgotten Again.

Old woman’s Thrown away wisdom Sung in graveyard songs Adopted and held will Scamper and wait.

Stories hidden Decayed, buried And forgotten Come back from the oceans To choke The AIDS widow heart.

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Perception Angela M. Lockhart Girlfriend came over the other day And asked me where my God was Took a moment before I answered “You don’t own a TV?” “You don’t have a TV?” “You don’t watch TV?”

I choose not to.

It’s not a law.

Listen! I can’t hear the universe or My ancestors with all that noise going on.

Then, weeks later, after he learns I don’t own, Don’t have, nor watch TV, My own daddy betrays me with “Well baby, do you need someone to buy you a TV?” Many quiet moons ago Lightning hit my urban dwelling And the tell your vision went “Boop” and blank As a little whiff of white greasy smoke Floated up from the back, towards the ceiling Where it dissipated, like a soul seeking the light And I thought, “What the hell was that?”

Now there is spirit in liquor and there are signals in smoke But I never expected to see a spirit’s signal Escape a television And a spirit signal belonging to what?

So I took control of my perceptions and Left the carcass of that delusion box On the curb Continued 65

I took back the Real myths and real spirit In an existence known only to me, The universe and my ancestors And as I awoke from false dreams Recovered from a vision addiction I resisted becoming a Dreaded Cassandra Warning everyone Of the corporate sponsored Pandora’s Box, But I warned no one of the Vision Gods Marketing Avoided warning, but reactions were all the same As I became the snake headed Medusa instead Cursed by last words “You don’t own a TV?” I hear my ancestors now.

Hear them in the rhythm of rain hitting the rooftop And the wind outside the window, Feel my people past and present As mother earth turns beneath my feet I perceive The original signals Of an unregulated Human That prays to a God That does not sell And still I resist warning you of this.

The dreams that comfort you Like a campfire, like a fireplace Are designed to delude And quiet you In your living room, Your bed room and Your little pads of light

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American Melting Angela M. Lockhart Up near the Sea Islands Of South Carolina Geechee midwives birthed Another way Into the Melting All stirred up in that Black middle passage White indentured servitude Building yellow railroads Walking red trail of tears All stirred up in Poor folks work.

Geechee rice survival Skin color Hair Politics Mixed with Who done got raped by whom Or who gave it up For ID government card oppression And why.

Old World New World This world melts Braided red headed nappy Almond eyed dark High cheek boned Everybody’s Colored

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East Texas Witch Angela M. Lockhart The witch in second Hand clothes Danced Burdened With regretted hindsight Later, in the early morning Of a sacred dogwood spring She danced With full moon friends Among the people of the pines Who Stood in rows By a dying fire.

Music made the magic then.

As Memories were Felt Danced and Sung.

She threw her arms wide Catching dogwood petals While those Who had lost love Conjured up Angry church songs To drive her away She threw her arms wide Catching dogwood petals

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The Night I Heard Gerald Stern Sing Avra Wing It was snowing and not yet Halloween. Drifts of white softened the Bowery’s rough edges. The trees, summer still in them, wept ice, cracked under their weight of leaves.

We wondered why we had gone out in such weather.

Sitting in the back by the bar, coats on, we drank bad wine, heard some guy’s lousy poem about a prick, a better one about Pandora.

The band onstage played behind the words.

A gimmick, I thought.

The sax was too loud.

Then Gerald read a poem about a tree, one in his lifetime of trees, one he could rest his head on.

A tree not out in this storm.

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Continued

When he finished, the music started up again, a different tune, and he sang, and sang well, Try a little tenderness.

He sang like a Jew, like a poet in a cap, like a man in his 80s who had crossed the river from Jersey just to be there, on such a night.

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Renovation Avra Wing The man repairing my window frames is West Indian; I am grateful for his English.

The others in the crew say Thank you. Sorry. I go now, and point downstairs, reminding me to lock the gate.

This morning, as I leave for work, the man has messages from the boss, questions about laying the bluestone and what color to paint the wood.

We stand together in front of the house, considering.

Then he says, Are you a Christian?

I ask because you have a humble soul.

Other people can be humble, I reply, ironically defiant. I say goodbye choosing not to ask his name, and wondering whether, among the blessed meek, either of us could claim a place.

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As I give you a copy of the poem Avra Wing about sunflowers in green pots massed outside the deli on Grand-how they are like people, identical and singular, patient and yearning, soaking up just enough life to get through the day-I wonder how you get through each day in your calm, sensible, yet clearly crazy way-rising from the mattress on the floor, putting on yesterday’s clothes, descending flights of linoleum stairs, counting the uptown blocks, picking through closeout books at the Strand, buying cans of soup at the deli, passing the flowers, crossing the cracked tiled vestibule thinking of the man who tips his hat to himself in the mirror.

It might be you.

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With My Sister After the Rain Avra Wing I kept thinking—we made it to the park, we are here— as if I’d won the prize of childhood.

It wasn’t much of a park— no swings or monkey bars, sliding pond or see-saw.

The cobblestones and grass littered with butts, the wooden benches missing slats.

It stopped at Jerome Avenue, which lay in gloom under the tracks of the el.

We could hear the #4 rumble by in its comings and goings.

But we were there, having braved three wet blocks, standing, resplendent in saddle shoes, gathering a crowd of squirrels and pigeons, as we meted out, from cellophane bags of Planters, peanuts, one by one, to make them last.

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“An American (in Love)� kesha star young The folds and creases that wrap your eye in multitudes of expressions White teeth pushed forward, biting the wind or laughing in front of everyone, Always in on the Joke The artistry of fresh pressed spices on rice Carefully seasoned asparagus, blueberries any time of year Precision cuts of tofu, eggplant, peppers, onion Lasagna noodles placed in symmetric beauty Running, modern sneakers fly lightly, do they touch ground?

A pace set for steady progress, one beat after another Always rhythm. Dancing, hips become one as the motion Follows music, preemptive slides or twirls match The turn, one with spirit of the song Lover, your slow heat glides ahead of hands, Heart pounding as symbiotic undulations Create volcanic build, lava spilling over as My earth revolves again Late nights dreaming we decide together, A final Lingering smoke at the window, a game of cards played Naked, a walk to see if the moon is above the Greene, another episode of intrigue and mystery as We lie together in tangled reverie.

Brilliant flashes of light as we photograph the same World from different angles sharing expanding vision Treasure hunting the urban field of grain.

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exploration kesha star young North south east west The small craft bent into the wind Kiribati was not known for its cold weather The Ventura was made from Norwegian wood and the Cyprus from Lebanon Her sails of broadcloth hand sewn in India the oil of walrus kept her water tight But today, was not a match for her strength.

The winds, blown by the mouth of Poseidon, god of the sea, had other plans for her fate.

Running aground on the Island’s sand, scraping that massive bow the habitants of boat turned into spiritual men, no women aboard this vessel in these times.

Being Polynesian, there were many gods for them to turn to: this was not their home Traipsing into the meager shelter provided by the massive palms bearing Strange fruits The explorers huddled together to stay warm, if not dry.

Emotions ran high as the crew contemplated their next step: the boat had splintered It was decided: half to stay with the ship and try to reconstruct Half to journey to the other side of the island in search of life.

Pre cell phone, GPS mapping television Fox news and even Christianity.

Navigation by stars, guided by naturist beliefs, motivated by survival still curious, Captain Cook we know him today through Google and history teachers Was to himself not a culture destroying monster, but a human in search of life beyond the known.

And who of us modern children can truly claim to be different?

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karma kesha star young I did not Did too Did not Did too This dichotomous dialogue reeks of two dimensional reality in which Black and white exist alone, perfect opposites of each other What about silver linings on clouds The mist on the horizon before the storm The kaleidoscope effects of mixing paint?

Justice is a nefarious concept.

Even with educated lawyers, a well-paid judge and a happy jury, there is no rest or peace in the general mind concerning public faith in our American justice system Yet we import it, demand it, spread democracy like an epidemic, get it and/or die!

But that is another day.

Today we ask the air outside of our human bodies to give us the assurance that somewhere, somehow, equity will exist.

Some universal law that cannot be changed, must – even if not in our time – dispense justice No human force can take into account every action, and rather than waiting until death for some indeterminable deity We trust and believe and hope, in KARMA

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slave trade kesha star young Savoring red wine in the night Argentinean It’s our trip toward the white sand beaches we run out and run screaming: into the gentle waves sometimes rough is okay Small fear to remind us of Survival Closing and opening Shore to sea Hot bodies seeking lines of definition I was here!

Argentina, Columbia, Honduras, Africa the original Spain transported boat foot jeep west and north Rhythms of conversation Punctuated sound dancing with angels and sparkles God’s children hands raised to the sky “all praise to the DJ” Stay high like many birds over the water, seeking land to ground.

Or perhaps NOT Enjoying Flight Motion Being.

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in memoriam kesha star young The night streets of the ninth ward are lit by dimly flickering orange candles in glass boxes hanging down from shuttered houses Wax melting from pumpkin shadows half broken streetlights and a full moon.

Trancelike we follow each other past political graffiti, train tracks and street names written in blue tile cement below our feet.

It wasn’t late, but it certainly was not early.

We knew we had arrived when the dia de los muertos skeletons appeared: large hats white boned faces, gold and red and hot pink flowers.

Stones crunched as we followed the painted dancers of death drumbeats and call and response led us on pulses already in rhythm we entered the temple.

Hushed whispers a staccato below the undulating figures in white fabric clouds circling around cornmeal cuneiform patterns, terraforms on dusty floorboards.

I approach the corners with meager offerings a cigar, oil, an incense, a coin. More faithful mourners than I have come before, evidenced in edifices built of graven images, orishas, bottles of rum, clothing, photographs.

A large white bird suspended through swirling smoke calls once then stops as if the message is over.

Three times the bells ring, and attention is paid to the aged man bent over a copper lamp. He fans the dragon’s blood with his breath and the dancers clap slower and then increasingly faster. My heart is racing as I place my gifts on the northwest altar, toward the direction of my grandparents’ places of birth and death, respectively with regret.

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Doubt: A Villanelle Cait Weiss So yeah I’ll rethink my opening line the one I used with you – the one that’s lost now forever to soundwaves and time (both things that move forward) (both things that aren’t mine to control). It is said it is done.

So yeah I’ll rethink my opening line.

Fuck – I love you. I said it. Ok? I’m sorry, but… Fine.

I have to run.

Lost now forever to soundwaves and time.

I had wanted to tell you about how I can shine inside like gold thread this feeling you’ve spun, so yeah, I’m rethinking my opening line.

Right? I blew it. I love you? Duh. Assinine.

How about something lighter, more fun?

Well, that’s lost now forever to soundwaves and time.

So this is why the poets and longshoremen pine.

Guess I shoot to stun.

So yeah I’m rethinking my opening line having lost you forever to soundwaves and time.

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Money.

Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko He needs me to pick him up to love him with the intense sense others have not ladled in their soups of consumption. Money.

He walks by every day, looking for me, but I am too busy. I am too to and fro. He only catches glimpses of my strands in the wind, looking for a cheap trim.

He salivates in my lobby, sniffing around the squares where my feet once stepped. He looks up, imagining the flow of my skirt and wonders if I wonder, too, why he’s never been inside.

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Problem Areas Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko She didn’t want to, want to have the mastectomy.

She wouldn’t let it.

It got the best of me.

She tied a snake around it, so she would forget.

They spied a knot in my liver.

I can’t remember it yet— That is, until the nominal coverage I get Milk thistle and Vit-A for my anger hub.

Devolved reconstruction for her newfound nub.

Never knew it was down there, but this one must love: Minuscule paintings of perfect areolae Yet, no brush can glide over the stain that I’ve got.

Frying buccal mucosa is narrowing the lot of dreams. But she’ll trim guilt, indulgence, and fat, and behold a red power button to truly marvel at.

Wrap your woes around it ,and grow, this time, wings

Continued 81

So, what are the brown spots?

I’ve a little more to lose.

No more suckling, you say?

Fewer words to choose.

Is this thinly masked envy of a middle-aged muse with one bowling pin boob?

That’s the kind of gender I’d like to belong to In the meantime, Mon Amie, what shall we do, while atop terra, I’m me and you’re even more, now, you?

No matter vernacular—what I wear, what you do— just Girls. Gesundheit! Tick…tick…ding.

From the first wombless cry, those neck-worn bibs effacing, effacing, effacing

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Sacred Word RESPONSE

TO

“KA’BA”

BY AMIRI BARAKA

Patrick Mathieu Captured by whom When, Where, Why Need be understood How correspond With black family On ethnically Most diverse continent?

Is Igbo Ashanti?

Yoruba Fulani?

Ndebele Zulu?

Should sacred word Be Tutsi or Hutu?

Kongo or Jaga?

Ethiopia or Mau-Mau? Pygmy or Maasai?

Needed spell is “defying physics in…stream of…will” Through simultaneous viewing

Continued 83

Behind Beyond Within Mask As we “walk the air” Realizing Gray chains Restrain more Than physical Sacred word Dancing to “swelling chants” Is Transcend!!!

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Decorum Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko How many times, mother, have you killed, and how many times have the victims been lamps? We had eight tiny, timid ones, forcibly plum, in each small stark room of the house, but you would never allow me to turn them on.

Although the warden will not believe it, isn’t likely to change his brick of a mind about any of these shenanigans I’m now navigating, my must and hunger my only weapons, my only shields, it is the light, the splash of color I was always seeking that you never turned on.

It was that I was always seeking when I sent out to find the crimson glow inside that truck driver, that politician, that yoga teacher, that candle-making shopkeeper.

They all promised to lead me down a path to better.

I said to Jonah, “I know a better way, a different route.

I can test out your navigational skills at the same time, but I know what I’m riding for, and I think it starts in your esophagus.”

He hit the brakes like a flesh-obscured ruby ready to be crushed.

Julie did the same behind the podium before the press arrived, Paolo on the mat, Ralph with his melting stick.

And for this they call me a vampire.

It is simply that I cannot bear a dark white wall.

It is simply that I cannot bear a stark white wall.

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Latino Patrick Mathieu There are those Who consider Latino Derogatory Italic language rooting Romance in tongue Exported by Conquistadores Via Genocidal lust For gold To Arawaks; Caribs; Tainos Latino They say Means of Spain Not Africa America Latino Others say Is social political awakening Like African American Japanese American Italian American Native American

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Not being Latin But Haitian Raging discussion Witnessed Without participation Can of Spain define Arawaks; Caribs; Tainos Can of Spain define Inca; Maya; Mexica; Hopi; Apache; Navaho Can of Spain define African Mixed with Native Sprinkled with European Is Machito or Jobim Latino Is Dizzy blowing with Bauza Latino Is Miles sketching Spain Latino Is Latino glue Espag単ol Mexican Thinks Dominican Speaks not Espag単ol Venezuelan Aunt Speaks Castilian Not Espag単ol

Continued 87

Is she Latina?

George Lopez says Since he resides In house not his Obama is Latino If Latino Is Social Political?

Question remains Is Inuit Latino?

Is Cherokee Latino?

Is Ha誰tiano Latino?

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Papers FOR

THE WRITERS AT ALI FORNEY CENTER

Chelsea Lemon Fetzer You had some paper that got carried away, forgot it was paper.

You had some paper that would have been better off without you.

You had some paper that, touched by the struck match, warmed your hands.

You had some paper that threw the first punch.

You had some paper that only told the death of a pen.

You crumpled some paper, blamed it.

You dug up the trash for a friend’s paper.

You taped some paper on the wall to remind you.

You had some paper that made noise all night; the neighbors didn’t complain.

You had some paper that stayed empty.

You had the last sheet of paper and did not give it away, though you were asked.

You wasted some paper.

You forgave some paper.

You know some paper can take extraordinary weights.

You tore this paper into too many pieces for anybody to find out.

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C ONTRIBUTORS / W ORKSHOP L EADERS TAMIKO BEYER is the author of We Come Elemental (Alice James Books), winner of the 2011 Kinereth Gensler Award, and bough breaks (Meritage Press). She joined the NY Writers Coalition as a workshop leader in 2005 and led workshop for queer and homeless youth, as well as many other groups. She is the Associate Communications Director at Corporate Accountability International and lives in Cambridge, MA. Find her online at tamikobeyer.com.

VICTORIA CHO was born in Virginia. She leads a NY Writers Coalition workshop for senior citizens at Isabella Geriatric Center.

Her fiction has appeared in Quarter After Eight, Word Riot and Mosaic Art & Literary Journal. Her collages can be seen at victoriareassembled.com.

DEBORAH CLEARMAN’S “Bomb Test” was a finalist for a Glimmer Train award. Her short stories have appeared in The Adirondack

Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Connecticut Review, storySouth, and many other journals. She is the author of the novel Todos Santos. Formerly Program Director of NY Writers Coalition, she has led numerous NYWC creative writing workshops. Since 2011 she has led workshops for women in jail on Rikers Island. Their stories never cease to move her.

T.K. DALTON has led a bilingual workshop with members of the Deaf community at the Tanya Towers residence and has facili90

tated NY Writers Coalition writing groups at the Aguilar Branch of the New York Public Library. His fiction and non-fiction appears in Red Rock Review, Radical Teacher, Rain Taxi, and The L Magazine. Drafts of his novel, More Signal, More Noise, have earned him residencies at the Montana Artists Refuge and the Vermont Studio Center. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Oregon and has completed the ASL-English Interpreting program at Union County College. When not camped at his writing desk or frolicking in the Deaf community, Tim teaches composition at LaGuardia Community College.

CHELSEA LEMON FETZER is a poet and fiction writer. She holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her work has appeared in Stone Canoe, Callaloo, Tin House, Mississippi Review, and can be found online at Poets for Living Waters and Sugar Mule. She is the founder of The Create Collective, Inc. and through NY Writers Coalition, leads weekly writing workshops for homeless LGBTQ youth at the Ali Forney Center in Harlem.

YVONNE GARRETT is pursuing a MA in Irish Studies (NYU) and an MS in Library & Information Science (Palmer/LIU). She holds an MA in Humanities & Social Thought (NYU), an MFA in Fiction (The New School), and a BA in English (Smith College). She is Associate Editor at Black Lawrence Press and Editor of Sapling, the Black Lawrence Press weekly newsletter. Her work has been published in Alternative Press, Thrash Metal, the Brooklyn Rail, Raleigh Quarterly, and the Baltimore Review, among others, and her third poetry chapbook with Mary Ellen Sanger And the wax91

ing moon: back country skiing in Afghanistan is out now. She leads a NY Writers Coaltion workshop at the Brooklyn Veterans Center.

ELIZABETH KEENAN wrote a regular column for the New York Inquirer about everything from insomnia to Scientology. She’s also been published in an anthology about growing up in New Jersey called Living on the Edge of The World (TouchstoneFireside). She is a NY Writers Coaltion workshop leader and led writing groups at Serendipity, a group home for formerly incarcerated women in a drug and alcohol treatment center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She is currently an Executive Director of Publicity at Penguin Random House and is working on a short story collection and a YA novel.

ANGELA M. LOCKHART is a writing workshop leader with life-long experience writing as a poet and playwright who also sings and directs plays. Inspiring others to express themselves creatively, Angela has worked individually and collaboratively with other artists to create performances that include theatre, dance, poetry/spoken word and song. Angela’s work as a playwright has been noted in the New York Times, Glamour magazine and the book Mega Trends for Women. Two of her poems can be found in From The Web, an anthology of previously unpublished female political poets. In the early 1990’s Angela founded Living Lessons, Inc., a non-profit Educational Theatre company teaching community members to be actor-teachers.

Angela and the company created performances that shared personal experiences involving AIDS, domestic violence, and ad92

dictions. In the summer of 2010 Angela worked with early childhood educators in North Carolina to create a multi-media performance that included song and spoken word to lobby and educate policy advisors. Angela also leads a week-long creative writing workshop at the World Fellowship Center in Conway, New Hampshire and has facilitated NY Writers Coalition workshops at Stepping Stone, a transitional housing facility operated by the Institute for Community Living in downtown Brooklyn.

DEREK LOOSVELT was born in South Carolina and raised in Michigan. He has led NY Writers Coalition workshops on Rikers Island, at the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City, and at the Osborne Association in Brooklyn Heights. His writing has appeared in Paper magazine, The Independent, Brill's Content, SmokeLong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, Taj Mahal Review, and blue magazine, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

JOHN MANEY, JR. is originally from St. Paul, MN, where he attended Macalester College and majored in religious studies and sociology. In 1995 John moved to New York to pursue writing.

He has attended poetry workshops through the Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center and Cave Canem, and he is a member of the The Writer’s Room. John has been published in the anthologies HEAL (Clique Calm Books), Testimony (Free Spirit Press), and Art’s Buoyant Felicity (Evolutionary Girls). His poetry appears in Sufi Magazine and in the chapbook Nkatie Wonu (Broken Rose Publications). John has conducted NY Writers Coalition workshops for formally incarcerated men 93

and women at the Fortune Society and at the Port Morris Wellness Center, a community clinic for patients undergoing treatment for opiate abuse/dependency on methadone maintenance.

PATRICK MATHIEU majored in dance at the City College of New York, where he was awarded a certificate to the Lavender Hill Mob for “distinguished service…and outstanding contributions.”

His off-Broadway debut at the Public Theatre was in George C. Wolfe’s production of Caucasian Chalk Circle. And then, the children arrived. Currently, Patrick seeks to publish his book Incarcerated Thoughts – One Man’s Journey and is putting the final touches on his video art piece Multicultural Democracy in Action. Patrick leads creative writing workshops for NYWC at the Fortune Society and Brooklyn Public Library.

KIMBERLY SHELBY-SZYSZKO is a playwright, poet, and educator whose work has been produced and presented at theatres and cultural centers throughout New York, including LaMaMa, Metropolitan Playhouse, Bluestockings, and the Bowery Poetry Club. Kimberly earned her BA in Creative Writing at Hofstra University and trained as a performer at Marygrove College. A miscellaneous contributor to numerous other art forms, including film, music, painting, and sculpting, Kimberly teaches creative writing and theatre for various organizations. Her articles on education, health, and the Arts have been published in MetroParent Magazine, Hour Detroit, The Big Idea, The Drive, and on numerous websites. Her work has been recognized with a Gold Award from Parenting Publications of America.

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MELISSA TOMBRO is an Assistant Professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where she enjoys teaching writing in all of its forms, from academic to creative.

After spending years of her life toiling away on her dissertation she has happily returned to more creative pursuits. Melissa has led the Moving Pen Workshop at the Creative Center for NY Writers Coalition and is working on her memoir, Third-Hand Life, about being raised in the wacky world of the antiques business.

MELANIE VOTAW is a full-time freelance writer, the author of fifteen non-fiction books, and an editor and book doctor for others. More than fifty of her poems have been published in the literary magazines of six countries, and her fiction has been published in book anthologies. Her workshops for NY Writers Coalition include a long-running group for the homeless at Jan Hus Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. She also regularly takes photos for NYWC at the annual Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival.

L.A.-born and N.Y.-wooed, CAIT WEISS led writing workshops for at-risk teens in Coney Island until Hurricane Sandy hit. She currently runs a social media company and attends Ohio State University in pursuit of an MFA in Poetry. Her work has appeared in Anomalous, The Cortland Review, and the L Magazine, among others. She lives with her pug, Bug. NANCY LYNN WEBER is the Program Director for NY Writers Coali-

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tion. Prior to joining the staff in September 2006, Nancy was a Founding Board Member of NYWC. She has led creative writing workshops at the Prince George, a supportive housing facility in Manhattan, and at the Arab American Family Support Center for children of recent Arab immigrants in downtown Brooklyn. Nancy's work can be found in Evergreen Review, VerbSap, Fringe Magazine, and the Brooklyn Rail. She lives and writes in Brooklyn, where she is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from The Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s College.

Publishers Weekly called AVRA WING'S new young adult novel, After Isaac, "an emotionally complex story of life, love, grief, and recovery." Her first novel, Angie, I Says, a New York Times notable book, was made into the movie Angie starring Geena Davis and James Gandolfini. Avra's poetry collection, Recurring Dream, won the 2011 Pecan Grove Press national chapbook competition, and she has published poems in numerous journals, including Hanging Loose and Michigan Quarterly Review. She was an adjunct professor of English at Kingsborough Community College for ten years and for the past four has led a NYWC workshop at the Center for Independence of the Disabled-New York. (CIDNY).

DAVID WINTER has led NY Writers Coalition workshops for seniors at the 14th Street Y and Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE). His poetry chapbook, Safe House, is available from Thrush Press. His writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, and The Nervous Breakdown. He is currently an MFA student in Creative Writing 96

at Ohio State University, where he teaches creative writing and composition and is an Associate Poetry Editor for The Journal. is a NY Writers Coalition antique since 2004, writing culture with folks who have been home-bound or homeless, with Middle Eastern middle-school students, with the incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, and youth in the park. She has been published in Words of Fire: An Anthology of Dragon’s Den Poetry Reading and was project director and editor of From Kingsbridge to Canarsie: Reflections by 8 NYC Girls. She explores life by degrees of education, cultural anthropology and social transformation.

KESHA STAR YOUNG

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A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a small, grassroots organization, NY Writers Coalition relies on the generous support of those dedicated to getting the voices heard of those who have been silenced. Many thanks go to our foundation, government, and corporate supporters, without whom this writing community and publication would not exist: Agnes Varis Trust, Amazon.com, the Bay & Paul Foundations, CreateSpace, Emmanuel Baptist Church Mission & Benevolence Fund, the Hyde & Watson Foundation, Kalliopeia Foundation, Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust, Meringoff Family Foundation, Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation, NYC Council Member Letitia James, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Partnership for Parks, and the Pinkerton Foundation.

We rely heavily on the support of individuals such as Mulan Ashwin, Michael Cosaboom & Diana Son, Charles LaFollette, and Jeffrey & Sheryl Posnick, plus the support of Write-A-Thon attendees and NY Writers Coalition members.

We’d also like to thank the workshop leaders featured in this publication and dozens more who have volunteered their time because they believe in giving back to their communities. In addition, members of our Board of Directors, Jennifer Belle, Louise Crawford, Shaina Feinberg, Marian Fontana, Lisa Smith, Cara Tabachnick, Raina Wallens, and Executive Director Aaron Zimmerman, have keep this vital, rewarding work going year after year.

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CONTRIBUTORS Tamiko Beyer Deborah Clearman Chelsea Lemon Fetzer Yvonne Garrett Elizabeth Keenan Angela M. Lockhart Derek Loosvelt Patrick Mathieu Kimberly Shelby-Szyszko Melissa Tombro Melanie Votaw Nancy Lynn Weber Cait Weiss Avra Wing David Winter kesha star young

Art by

Since emerging in 2002, NY Writers Coalition has brought thousands of creative writing opportunities to communities filled with stories that reflect the richness and heart of a city like New York. Stories full of hope, incarnations of family and home, perseverance, humor, lessons learned, and so much more are brought to the forefront

by NYWC’s network of volunteer workshop leaders, talented artists who are also diligent in the struggle for social justice.

In this moving anthology of poetry and prose, NYWC volunteers have helped bridge the writing communities of homeless LGBT youth, people living with disabilities and major illnesses, immigrants, war veterans, and other storytellers in New York City.

They ponder the creative process of one community-building art: What if writing is

dreaming together?

Victoria Cho

$12 US

For more publications from NY WRITERS COALITION PRESS visit our online bookstore at WWW.NYWRITERSCOALITION.ORG 100