Futility by Nemo Arator

Footsteps in the Attic

Pacing upstairs as if perturbed By the loneliness of thought, the mind is suddenly Startled by the specter of reason, the explanation Of a rat or raccoon, weaving its way Through a maze of mildewed boxes, like a minotaur Taken to guarding the mothballed labyrinth, Becomes a matter of ghosts and ghouls, giving Subtle hints as to their presence Among the old photographs and outgrown clothes. It’s no wonder we bang a broomstick Against the ceiling, rather than pay them a visit And be swept up with the dust of the past, As we’d find the only phantoms are fragments of us Mingling with the mold and the rats.

by C.B. Wamble

Turmoil 5

by Edward Supranowicz

Life out of Balance

Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit.

by Lynn Gilbert

“…where savage indignation will lacerate his heart no further.” —from Jonathan Swift’s epitaph in Dublin Cathedral.

I’m walking sideways and forwards like a sailboat tacking this way and that, giddy from something in my ears or brain. Somehow furniture and door jambs keep

getting in my dizzy path. Is this Meniere’s disease? I drop anchor on the sofa and try to read. My eye falls on “Two million children perish annually because malaria drugs offer no profit to produce.”

Though lying flat, I’m vertiginous, sea-sick. Oh, Dean Swift, things haven’t changed enough since your “Modest Proposal” to fatten and roast Irish infants otherwise destined to starve. Today

even without your Meniere’s vertigo and nausea to goad you, you would be savagely indignant knowing that the god Greed, like Goya’s Saturn, still snatches up his own children with both hands and devours them.

Yes

by Nora Laine Herzog

If I could write us a different past, a different path, some alternate universe where love worked out for us, both in the right time and the right place, I still wonder if I would do it.

It’s not that I didn’t imagine a future with you. Just us, an adopted tortoiseshell cat and a giant turtle older than both our memories. In Russia, Costa Rica, yes, where neither of us felt completely alien, where we could speak in our own language.

It’s books by Camus and travel to Kazan and breakfasts of eggs and blini and families and yes, it could have been exactly what we imagined, summer of ‘69, sunrise sunset somewhere where the world couldn’t touch us, in a lake like an ocean, a boat like a fortress where nothing else mattered not the warmth, yes, the cold, the thrill, the rush, yes, it was magical, it was beautiful and yes, we could have been happy together like that, forever, yes, in that magic place.

But I clung too hard for too long, and once I’d let go, you kept trying to return us back to something that could’ve made you happy like I could have made you happy, like we could have been happy together, but we both know you can’t revive the dead, and yes, you and I for too long tried to breathe life into an ending.

It doesn’t make me forget the magic though, a purple string of lights, a yellow-striped turtle, a sleeping shoulder, a soft voice singing, a laugh, a rap song, an old bus ticket stub, a goodbye kiss under Lenin’s train stop monument. Too much was so untouchable. It hurts, yes, it hurts to reach back.

Time Spun

by Carella Keil

Omerta

by Chachee Valentine

My mother is funny. She has a way of bringing light into the dark, but her dark edge frightens me. She is clever, too. A natural wordsmith. Sometimes, instead of saying fuck she says, Fa-nob-a-la. Or, stuck behind a Sunday driver, she hollers out the window, Gas pedal is on the right! When a driver hesitates, Wrong way, Corrigan! Drivers who drive with their blinkers blinking are driving around the world to the right. We are both Scorpios, my mom and I, ruled by Pluto, God of the Underworld. Astrology claims Scorpio people are psychic. Secretive. Observant. Hypnotic. We are known as the detectives of the zodiac who have a flair for solving mysteries. Mysteries like afternoons we are hushed up the stairs. Mom says we are hiding from Mormons. Starchy dark suits, gelled comb overs, and legit Ray Bans enforce peering men who gaze into our home through a cracked, taped windowpane. This time they arrive, their numbers have tripled as they exit a shiny, black, Grandfather Cadillac. I recognize these men from watching all of Cassavetes’ films.

Upstairs… now. Mom, super jittery, turns off afternoon cartoons. Using a mother’s telepathy, my brothers and I understand in silence we cannot gallop up the stairs as our usual joker selves. The four of us link hands, tiptoe, and I lead the way. Mom follows behind her lamb chops to the top of the staircase where a curve in its spine is notorious for cracking. This is the trickiest part: learning how to land is learning how to save our lives. The second trickiest part for mom must be teaching her youngest how to whisper.

While the men knock, she crams us into a hall closet. After the last time the men showed up, mom decided to keep the tiny space prepared with a few pillows, a large blanket, an old milk crate with a pack of juice boxes and a Tupperware filled with animal crackers. Mom’s worry passes through the air in-between her pointer finger pressed vertically across her lips. Don’t make a sound. She disappears.

Before they give us back to dad, there are JFK fish runs with my stepfather, Don, the guy the men in suits are after. Come on, it’ll be fun. In my pajamas, I sleep through the rumble of the cargo van. After he loads up, and after we are on the turnpike, from the other side of my dream tunnel I hear, Hey, we’re gonna make a quick stop. Under the Hudson River, the sloshing fish echo through the chamber of the van as we glide over streets. I wonder if the fish know we are driving through a tunnel that cuts through a river and if they feel homesick. The blurry, golden, zigzag of headlights, the moaning sirens crying for the people of Harlem make me feel drunk and old. We pull up to a shitty brownstone, walk up broken flights of stairs. Don carries me half-way. At the wicket, he smooths his balding wisps of curly hair, pulls up his Levi’s, clears his throat, gives a wink and a nod. We never knock. We bust into that room each time like we own the place. Heeeey, you brought the kid! Get over ‘ere and give your uncle a kiss. Not one of these scruffy-faced uncles are my uncle. Just six slobs, mumbling, smoking Cuban cigars under a hanging light bulb which hovers over the poker table. Don and I are gently transported into gangster movies we watch on Sundays. The cigar smoke drops the high ceiling, sharks for every corner of clean air. The scene I watch is of pot-bellied men belching, farting, talking about broads. Dudes named Gino, Tony, Joe, Al, Roy stinkin’ up the joint. They are nice enough to me, and oddly I feel protected, but I understand why Don gets me out of bed and brings me here. These men want their money back or they will kill him. So, I give these peckers a peck on the cheek every time and play along, but nothing more. I know they are connected to the guys who dress like Mormons and that this is business. Crack! A line drive! Bases loaded! Brackets on the wall hold a television like a baby. The volume is so high, the announcer’s voice crunches rough static. Stay here. Don walks across the room for a bag of Ruffles and a can of Orange Crush. My spot is always on the couch by the door where I keep an eye. Donny, hurry up and grab a beer. We got extra innings! There is something comforting about opening a can of midnight soda, watching a ball game roll into overtime and being with Don. Watching him and the mobsters play cards, having a whole bag of chips to myself on a school night, feels like being part of something sacred. ***

Either give up the racetrack or you sell those goddamn baseball cards! The next day, mom seethes in her offer. After the baseball cards sell, I can tell the little kid inside of Don misses his boyhood collection. The men in dark suits stay away for a few months and Don quits going to poker games for a while. I kind of miss those long nights of getting home at the crack of dawn and my head feeling fishy at school from lack of sleep.

Those nights at poker, I’d fall asleep to the sound of thudding chips. Not potato chips but gambling chips being tossed onto a round table covered in scuffed red felt. I’ll raise you this. Yeah? I’ll raise you that. Ehhhh, I’m out. Al, pass me a beer. Eh, me, too. Another crack from the television and the crowd goes wild! I miss him.