issue 06
november 2o2o
ogma
november: freedom MASTHEAD
Editor-in-Chief Layout Designer Photographers Editing Director
Aneleh Aneleh Khushi, Athena Gabriella
OGMA MAGAZINE contact - ogmamagazine@gmail.com Ogma is a publication for creatives with a passion for storytelling. We publish writing, artwork and photography by creators from all over the world. Our editorial office is based in Ireland. instagram: ogmamagazine
CONTENTS 04 - Editor's letter 05 - Cover photo series by Athena Merry 06 - Interview with Estée Preda 14 - Childhood by Seigar 20 - Funeral Lakes: music feature 24 - Golden Child by Nahnah Najeeb 25 - Trans Love II by Seigar 34 - Body Map by Carmen Arribas 35 - Fairytale by Eva Ridenhour 38 - Humanoids Cyanotype series by Nitara Kittles 42 - Affirmations for not abandoning myself by Soph Bee 43 - These tethered dreams of ours by Melody Jayde 51 - Smiling down a thicket of streets by Gabriella Brzostoski
06 INTERVIEW WITH ESTEÉ PREDA by Adeline Cole
EDITOR'S LETTER Welcome to our sixth issue! I can't believe how fast the months have gone by and that we are halfway to our 1 year birthday! This month's theme is "Freedom", so I hope you enjoy the pieces we have featured in this issue! I find that this month is our most diverse array of submissions yet, with an interview, a music feature, beautiful photo series and some poetry & fiction too! The past few weeks I have been thinking about the next step for Ogma Magazine. I debated with myself whether or not I should go ahead with the December issue and instead focus on seasonal zines. I decided that we will be releasing an issue next month, with a lovely theme for the wintry season that everyone can enjoy! As well as that, I am so excited to launch our RedBubble shop! The shop will be for our small designs by Ogma Artists, curated with love <3 I've already tested out a few of the pieces we will be launching and I'm so pleased! In the future it is possible we have more limited edition merch available that is hand made, but for now our RedBubble will be the place to go! As well as merch we are revamping our newsletter, getting more active on our instagram and the webzine. I can't wait to see where we go from here and I want to thank all our readers who have supported us these past six months. Ogma wouldn't be here if it were not for your continued enthusiasm about our work so thank you <3
Announcement: Ogma staff apps are now opened on a rolling basis, which means that you can apply anytime to join our team! We are looking for blog writers, designers, social media managers and more: check out the link in our instagram to find the application form. Ogma is an everevolving community and we want to expand our team so that we can bring you the best content possible! Lots of love,
Aneleh Enner
Editor-in-chief
ON THE COVER: PHOTO SERIES BY ATHENA MERRY (@GOLDROSECROWN) MODEL: KENNA (@GLTTERGRL)
INTERVIEW WITH ESTÉE PREDA BY ADELINE COLE
My name is Estée Preda and I’m a visual artist based outside of Québec city, in a small village by a lake named Fossambault-sur-le-lac. I’m a self-taught artist. I started painting in my mid-twenties and I’ve been focusing mostly on illustration since then although lately, I find myself exploring different mediums more and more. How would you like to describe your journey with art? How did you discover in which media you could express yourself most truly? My first love has been video making. I remember playing with my parents’ camera when I was a child and making in camera edits.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been attracted to art but I had this idealized conception that to be an artist you have to be born with some sort of calling and mine wasn’t crystal clear so I never considered myself an artist or allowed myself to pursue art for a really long time. I stuck to film making from my late teens to my mid-twenties.
"I HAD THIS IDEALIZED MISCONCEPTIO N THAT TO BE AN ARTIST YOU HAVE TO BE BORN WITH SOME SORT OF CALLING" I was documenting women’s snowboarding and as it was mostly documentarian, I never felt completely artistically fulfilled. By my mid-twenties, I grew tired of what I was doing and it also happened that the economy crashed and I had less outlets to work in. That’s when I started painting and felt like I had finally found the right medium for me to express myself, at least, during that period. Now I realize that I’m in a constant flux of evolution and I go through phases. Film making was my first introduction to art, then painting and illustration and now I feel like I’m entering new territories but I’m still in an exploratory mode, so I don’t know what the next phase for me is just yet. What is your favourite tool to create with? What is your connection with it like? It depends on how I feel. Probably a brush, but I also like using textile tools such as needles and sewing machines because I feel really proud of myself when I can make stuff out of textile. My connection with it is through childhood memories when my grand-mother would teach me how to sew and knit. I think she would be proud today to see some of the stuff I made using her teachings. What kind of lines, shapes and colours do you feel evoke your mind's vision most accurately in the process of creation? It never feels completely right if my work doesn’t have some sort of contrasts, either in feeling or in color. For example, my color palettes can’t be too pretty. There needs to be something odd to throw it off a bit. Same with emotions. As long as I can achieve those contrasts, my vision is complete.
TO ME, CREATIVITY IS AKIN TO A MUSCLE. How does the creative process flow with you? Is it more about spontaneity, stream of consciousness, careful selection, shaping and reshaping or something different to all mentioned? My process is very visceral and I try not to think about it too much. It never really works if I over intellectualize it. Sometimes images will pop into my head for no particular reason, or I’ll feel inspired by a palette of color I saw. How does creative work make you feel? Do you think your artistic creativity reflects when it comes to communication with other people? I believe so. To me, creativity is akin to a muscle. You always use it once you have it. The more I make art and consume art, the more it bleeds into other areas of my life. How important do you find one's inner worlds to be? How do you think one can balance them with society's demand for concrete and ever – present? I can’t speak for other people’s inner worlds, but my universe, I believe, is a reaction to the demand that society puts on me to be practical and pragmatic. My universe is just an attempt to escape from the mundane. How important you find sharing your art with other people? Who do you wish it would appeal to? If I would have had to answer that question 5 years ago, I would have found sharing my work with people quite important. As an aspiring illustrator, I needed feedback and validation to keep going and improve. Nowadays, I just want to create things that please me. If people like it, it’s a plus. I suppose it’s because I’ve created a universe I’m satisfied with and I just want to keep on expanding it. Do you find that some other forms of art inspire you? Would you like to collaborate with someone who works in different media from you?
Absolutely. I’m always inspired by people with unique universes who dive fully into them and that are unaffected by trends, regardless of the medium they use. Do you think social media affects your creativity and ideas? What do you think is the best way for an artist to present their work on the internet? I think it does, yes. It’s a bit tricky because it can be a great source of inspiration but it also seems like it’s easy to get stuck in the same loops where you consume the same content over and over again. I think the best way to present work is by keeping in mind quality over quantity. visit https://esteepreda.com/ for more information and links to Estee's shop!
CHILDHOOD BY SEIGAR
With this series, I wanted to play with the concept of childhood, using collage from fashion magazines and toys. As I am an intense person, always looking to experience the present, I seem to forget the past. There is not enough place in my mind for all the data, and that includes my childhood memories. That was the motif to create this photo-narrative, to connect with those years. The adult perspective places the pop icons in curious and weird situations testing darkness but also joy, some adventure, the supernatural, and even religion. In the future, I am considering to keep on doing collage mixed with paints to explore other topics. In a previous series entitled Toxic, I used for the first time the collage technique, and that made me think to keep on working with it in this new project. Childhood has brought something new to my work, both in the form and the content.
Seigar is a passionate travel, street, social documentary, conceptual and pop photographer based in Tenerife. He feels obsessed with pop culture that he shows in his series. He is a fetishist for reflections, saturated colors, curious finds, and religious icons. He also flirts with journalism and video. His main inspiration is traveling. His aim as an artist is to tell tales with his camera, creating a continuous storyline from his trips. His most ambitious projects so far are his Plastic People, a study on anthropology and sociology that focuses on the humanization of the mannequins he finds in the shop windows all over the world, and his Tales of a City, an ongoing urban photonarrative project taken in London. He is a philologist and also works as a secondary school teacher. He is a self-taught visual artist, though he has done a two years course in advanced photography and one in cinema and television. He has participated in several exhibitions and his works have been featured in many publications. He has collaborated with different media such as VICE and WAG1. He writes for Dodho Magazine and for The Cultural about photography and pop culture, and for Memoir Mixtapes about music. Lately, he has experimented with video forms. His last interest is documenting identity. Recently, he received the Rafael Ramos GarcĂa International Photography Award.
INDIE ROCK DUO
FUNERAL LAKES Funeral Lakes embraces the storytelling traditions of folk and embedding their own twenty-firstcentury lived experience to make entertaining — and inspiring — art. — Jim Di Gioia “The debut album from Torontobased duo Funeral Lakes is a thoughtful and dreamy neo folk reverie. […] If goth folk is a genre, this is what it sounds like. It’s dark and moody and benevolent, with lyrics that are socially conscious.” — Francis Baptiste
Funeral Lakes is Sam Mishos (she/her) and Chris Hemer (he/him). They started the project in the spring of 2018, selfproducing music in their apartment in Vancouver, B.C., and now in Toronto, ON. Funeral Lakes exists as a creative medium to share their fears and frustrations, drawing on experiences of life in the Anthropocene as inspiration. The duo’s emotionally charged songs create a musical world where they lead listeners by the hand through the destruction all around us, asking them to bear witness and take pause as they get lost in the dream — or nightmare. Following the release of last year's eponymous debut album in support of the Pull Together campaign organized by RAVEN Trust, Funeral Lakes have returned with their latest EP, Golden Season. It was written, produced, and performed by members Chris Hemer and Sam Mishos, accompanied in the studio by Charlie Van on drums and by Colin Spratt who engineered, mixed, and mastered the songs. The three-song EP resulted from two days spent together last January at a studio N O M A Din IC | 24 North Vancouver.
Whereas last year’s release came from a place of frustration, defeat, and dejection, this EP is charged, energetic, and frantic at times. The first album covered topics that ranged from environmental destruction and generational malaise to grifting and crooked politicians. Golden Season carries on with similar politically and socially charged lyrics, exploring themes of toxic masculinity, the sunset of industry, and what it means to be living in this day and age. The opening track, “Eternal Return,” deals with the intersection of toxic masculinity and the scourge of petronationalism, along with the misery fueled by the false promises of politicians.
This is followed by “Earth Falls,” which takes stock of the alarming realities of the world we’re now living in, sitting precariously on the edge of collapse, and what it means to be grappling with the fear of it all. The final track, “Power Trip,” marks a sonic departure that is frenetic and confrontational, criticizing the heteropatriarchy and domination that permeate our society. The Golden Season is a period of transition. A period of reflection. A time to hold dear the things we love. The gentle glow of foliage before the fall, the sunset years of life as we know it, and the distant glimmer of hope that we might forge a path forward.
“Funeral Lakes debut, self-titled album tackles all of the hottest issues in a world that is barreling towards its own destruction. It’s not all doom and gloom though, the lyrical content is heavy but the songs feel like a much needed hug.” — Jeshiah David
“When it comes to making protest music, Funeral Lakes know that you don't always have to scream to be heard. On their eponymous debut, Sam and Chris articulate their anxieties about climate change through explicitly political lyrics and shoegaze melodies. […] Album opener "Anthropocene Dream" has a dreamlike quality, despite its nightmare subject. […] The duo's harmonization is in contrast with their pessimistic view of the present: ‘It's hard to believe / It's getting harder to breathe,’ Mishos sings on the chorus.” — Courtney Heffernan @ Exclaim!
“Equal parts bitter, fearful, lost to a world that has forgotten its livelihood […] ‘Culture Bomb’ has the climate crisis at its forefront. In a dim lit folk/rock setting of cynicism, rage and an unspoken love for nature, Chris and Sam display a haunting intensity that is delicate, yet strong. As if one was stuck in an endless loop of frustration and inaction, the track has building emotion – faint vocal work by the pair, cloudy ethereal guitars – an understated delivery that forces reflection and attention.” — Chloe Hoy @ The Permanent Rain Press
“Funeral Lakes is the duo’s coordinated attack, a secondary partnership forged when seeking a creative medium to share building fears and frustrations. […] Though dark, none of what Funeral Lakes has put out insofar should be called ‘rainy day music,’ or ‘tunes to wake up on the wrong side of the bed’ to. Songs to enjoy in ‘muted horror’ is perhaps most apt; this is folk music inverted, pulled through the gutting realisation of climate change and its universal implications. […] This is the evolution of the budding genre.” — Colten Dom @ The New Twenties
“Bordering on folk rock, the music itself is crafted with such delicacy and poise, with the subjective political undertone of the lyrics drawing comparisons to early Radiohead. […] Comprised of partners Sam and Chris, their debut self-titled album is a captivating example of lyrical and melodic harmony, most notably in the second track [Kingdom Fall]. The combination of jarred, metallic bass with the almost ethereal, chorusdrenched guitars achieves its purpose with brooding confidence; drowning out the generational malaise and sadness that has crept into society.” — Croz @ In Tune Music
“The band’s name, Funeral Lakes, is a ‘eulogy to nature,’ showing the contrast between its beauty and its ‘inevitable destruction,’ according to Mishos. […] Starting out as an act of protest and reflection, the pair turned their love of music into a call for awareness. ‘I think with music, it’s always been a really cathartic experience for both of us—it’s something that helps us heal personally,’ said Hemer.” — Nabeeha Baig @ The Eyeopener “[Forest Burns] opens with smooth instrumentals and stark, lyrical imagery. The band’s sound immediately reminded me of classic indie favorites Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes. […] This single grabs at your heart as you drift along through it, witnessing the devastations Funeral Lakes points out. The young artists’ lyrics are especially impressive and telling, engaging listeners as the forests slowly burn.” — Julia Talen @ BolderBeat
My heart was broken as it all began It was mended with the tide of time The wind was blowing over skin As a whisper came through the pine It spoke a language that I never heard Told me to find some truth inside a lie And all along the sweetest words They were on his lips as he died So if there’s no more future - Golden Return lyrics excerpt V1
INSTAGRAM: @FUNERALLAKES
P O E M B Y N A H N A H N A J E E B N A H N A H N A J E E B I S A Y O U N G T E E N A G E P O E T E S S W H O H A S B E E N F E A T U R E D I N A P O E T R Y A N T H O L O G Y A N D I S C U R R E N T L Y W O R K I N G O N H E R O W N P O E T R Y C O L L E C T I O N . S H E ' S G O I N G T O P U R S U E E N G L I S H L I T E R A T U R E I N C O L L E G E A N D L I V E S W I T H H E R F A M I L Y I N T H A L A S S E R Y , I N D I A .
g o l d e n
c h i l d
I see a sun drenched chariot, and you, the golden child, bathed in the primrose garden, tearing down walls of blood, screaming from the belly of earth, you came, rising for the throne, a mere flesh but an aching divine. The clawing silence you behold before your wails seize the night lingers as a melody that is bound with your cradles. I suppose your skin is burned with stardust And you're waiting for the sky to call you back so that you could unfold your story before the universe.
P H O T O
B Y
K H U S H I
D E S A I
Trans Love II by Seigar This series shows the love between Amy and Kirian. Amy is Aries, and Kirian is Pisces, both 27 years old. Amy defines herself as a bisexual cisgender woman and Kirian as a straight transexual man. Their relationship started 10 months ago. They connected on the Internet, on social networks. Amy was the one to feel attracted to Kirian so she showed some interest to meet him. A Carnival night in Tenerife under a strong haze from Africa that we call calima, they met by chance. It was not their best night because of others, she was still linked to her difficult past. However, once they decided to be together, everything went right for them, except for the confinement break due to the coronavirus. It was hard to be apart and not to be able to meet, especially at the beginning of their relationship. They were missing having coffee together somewhere to keep on knowing each other. There is a great sparkle in their eyes when they talk about their video chats during that time. Once they could meet again, that very first day, Amy lost her bus home, so she had to stay at Kirian's. There is so much honesty, tenderness, and innocence in their narrative, there is no doubt about how they feel. Amy did not know much about the lives of transgender people before Kirian, but that did not make a difference for her to fall in love with Kirian. Now, she knows, and takes advantage of her strong presence on Instagram, she fights for the rights of trans people, she uses her voice to make people understand, accept, and respect. Kirian has always been an activist, he has participated in multiple and different social and artistic activities, and events to tell his story and to make his reality visible. I must confess that during the shooting, they were constantly protecting and caring for each other. They showed lots of verbal and body language signs of their feelings. This series is part of my work as a photographer on identity, I'm interested in everything that defines people. I intend to bring real stories to tackle the ignorance connected to hate and intolerance. I believe that knowledge permits us to feel empathy and love. Thanks, Amy and Kirian for letting me tell your love story.
BY CARMEN ARRIBAS
body map There is dust in every crevice of my body, every fold and plain, every rug and stretch mark, every scab I peeled off and grew again and again and againâ&#x20AC;Ś like weeds. There are testaments written in every crevice of my body, in every vein a thought, a manifesto in every erratic heartbeat, an atheist prayer in every steady breath. There are constitutions carved in every crevice of my body, my ribs are a temple where beggars come to eat, my feet declared their independence three centuries ago, I am my own state, my own republic, only I will reign over this Heaven.
THIS POEM APPEARS IN CARMEN'S SELF-PUBLISHED CHAPBOOK, TO WEEP CARNATIONS.
BY EVA RIDENHOUR (INSTAGRAM: @EVARIDENHOUR)
There is, in a tower, in a far away place, a princess. The tower is surrounded by a moat of bubbling lava and guarded by a fearsome dragon, the likes of which haven't been seen in the kingdom in many a century--all rusted bronze scales and wicked grins. It breathes fire, of course, and its winding body is long enough to wrap its way around the tower entirely. Its menacing stare frightens away any who dare approach, though it is rare for a passerby to do so. Perhaps you have an image of the tower in your head. You're right, by the way--it is tall enough to touch the clouds, and made of heavy stone brick. There is, of course, a window at the top of the tower, so the princess can sit in her chair nearby and stare longingly at the world of fire and stone below.
fairytale The top of the tower consists of one room. It is circular, and made of the same stone, and has a bed and a wardrobe and a stocked pantry and a bookshelf and a few sconces with burning candles that are usually lit. The princess does not know how long she has lived in the tower. She knows that sometimes she wakes up and the pantry has been restocked, the books on the shelf replaced with new ones, the dresses she's worn washed and dried. She does not see anyone do these things. Every morning the princess brushes and braids her pretty blond hair. She slips on the dresses and carefully arranges the way the pink lace falls around her bare feet. (There are never any shoes in the wardrobe. She wishes she could ask for a pair. There is no one to ask.) She lights the candles on the wall. She eats the bread and jam she finds in the pantry for breakfast. She reads the books on the shelves.
The princess does not recall first arriving to the tower. Vaguely, she remembers arriving there one day. There's a faint memory of the evil witch who brought her there and of a door magicked away into the same stone as the rest of the walls. She does not know why she was brought there. In hindsight, she wishes she had thought to count the days. By the time she thought to do so, she had already lost track of the sunsets and sunrises that pass slowly outside her window. She thought once to write her story down in a book somewhere, but there are no pens or blank paper with which to keep a diary. The moat of lava and the dragon ensure she has no way of contacting the outside world, so instead she stays in the tower and keeps her thoughts to herself.
Instead, she sings herself songs--bright and joyful songs and sad songs and everything in between. She sings while she sits on her bed, she sings as she makes her bread and jam, and she sings as she sweeps and cleans the floors. There are songs her mother taught her, and songs that her father taught her, and once she ran out of those, she wrote her own songs to sing. Months (or maybe years) ago, when she began to sing her own songs, she worried constantly over little things--her voice was too airy to give the words the power they needed, the words didn't quite capture the meaning she longed to portray. With no paper to write on, her lyrics were ever-shifting and fluid. As time went on she cast these fears off. The words that danced from her tongue were hers, and she decided that that would have to be enough. The music is a comfort, like the stories on her shelf are comforts. A promise or a whisper of something larger than the confines of her stone walls. Once there was a heavy tome placed on the bottom of her shelf about a boy who lived a life of adventure. He was raised by unicorns in a dark wood. His quest was his own--to see the world and help those he met along the way. There were no confines to his world, only paths and doorways where his feet could take him. It was a tome of endless possibility. The princess reveled in the descriptions of towering mountains and shimmering streams, of villages populated with bright-eyed peasantry, of castles filled with snobby royalty, of deserts and forests and rain and sun and a world of things worth seeing. The princess slipped the tome out from its place on her shelf and tucked it under her pillow, and when the books were replaced some time later, the tome stayed in its place. Sometimes she looks out her window and imagines the world outside her view of fire and rock. She wishes she could ask the dragon who lives outside what they have seen in their long life. Sometimes she wishes she could leave the tower. Such wishes are folly, though she doesn't always believe that. Sometimes hope will worm its way into her heart, and she will dream of a life outside.Sometimes she will close her eyes and see her life, and this time it is one free of stone walls and draconic guardians. It is a life of adventure, and it is glorious.
"HUMANOIDS" CYANOTYPE PRINTS BY NITARA KITTLES
"I’m a visual artist from Asheville, North Carolina. My work deals with various themes but is predominantly about the body and space. ‘Freedom’ can mean a lot of things, and I think my work fits into your theme through freedom of body, movement, and space." - Nitara Kittles
affirmations for not abandoning myself by soph bee I will relinquish the idea that shrinking could somehow grow beyond its meaning into something greater. I will forgive myself for worshipping smallness as if it were a saviour, for abiding by its rules even though I did not believe in them. I will trust that I did not survive only to choose survival over freedom. I will remember the sunsetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hallelujah on the evening I first ran not as punishment but as celebration for no longer being a captive of my own bed. I will not rescue my younger self by chiselling away at who she became, but I will cling to how she felt when she danced.
THESE TETHERED DREAMS OF OURS STORY BY MELODY JAYDE Melody Jayde is an aspiring young writer with
I was anchored to the seat in utter stillness. I wanted
a deep fascination for the artwork of words.
the guests to see me as they approached, and think,
Always keeping a pencil behind her ear and a
“How touching, a sculpture of his daughter. Must be
book in her sock, Melody has practiced writing fiction and poetry for six years, though her love for creativity and storytelling began much earlier, before she could read or write. Melody dreams of a life as a journalist as well as a fiction writer.
new; it’s not on the website gallery. Another of his recovered styrofoam pieces?” Then they’d add some fancy artist-talk, like, “Realism, I see. A nod to the classics.” Or something like that. They’d be so shocked when I smiled at them. I heard the tiny footsteps of my mother. I turned to see her walking down the wide, white walkway, her
I did not swing my feet back and forth that evening,
fingers brushing the wall for balance. If someone
even though I wanted to. I sat still in the foyer, on a
opened a window, the night breeze would blow her
bench next to Miss Blaire. I had two jobs tonight.
into powder.
The first job was this: when guests came in, and gave
“Mister Greene’s poor child is waiting out in the car,
their invitations to Miss Blaire, I was to say,
with only the governess for company. I thought the
“Welcome Sir/Madame. You look simply divine. The
two of you might like to play in the conservatory
tour is self-guided. Please enjoy refreshments
upstairs. Ms. de Lugo will show you there, she says
through the central hall, and remember to be
she has some board games.” My mom was jittery and
present in the assembly room at 12:00 o’clock
pale as usual. It was getting worse. The rouge made
midnight for the great unveiling of tonight’s gala.
this invisible to the public. But I knew.
Enjoy your experience.” People usually looked at me funny after I said this. Whichever of my father’s
“Okay.” I lifted the hem of my dress, which was both
coordinators wrote these lines for me forgot how
fluffy and boxy, and took a green sharpie from
little I am, and on top of that, how even littler I look.
behind my ear. There were already sixteen words scrawled on my tights from just this evening,
The second job was one I had commissioned for
starting with “devine” and “asembbly”. I added
myself.
“conservatory” to the list. It sounded fancy, but wasn’t everything in here?
I was a statue.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Grimaced my mother. She put her hands up by her forehead. “The stylists got that dress custom made for you, by Creatures of the Wind. For all of us, so we’d look nice together.” Her voice was scary, breathless. She looked at me in the same way she used to look at the kitchen mess when the oven failed and the old apartment was full of smoke. “Act like you care.” “I wouldn’t have a big vocabulary if I didn’t take notes. Besides, you used to like my words,” I said, “back when we shopped at Roses, instead of getting designers.” My mom’s eyes popped and she glanced quickly at Miss Blaire, who was holding a cream hand-mirror and relipsticking more lipstick on her already lipsticked lips. “Go run along - Ms. de Lugo and your new friend are in the hall waiting.” In the long hall, I could hear the talking and clinking and oohing and ahhing at my father’s pieces from the big galleries on both sides. Ms. de Lugo stood stiffly in the hall. She was better at being a statue than I was. But I had seen her practicing a lot. The boy next to her, supposing that he was a boy, because I really couldn’t tell, looked about six and four fifths, not seven. He was not my same age, and I was older, and I knew because I had grown out of pajamas like those. He was wearing one high heel and one rainboot, and fleece reindeer pajamas. The kind with footies and a hood and zipper. At any other party this would have been beyond underdressing and just plain weird, but it could be ruled here as artistic. He must have been dressed to sleep in the car. His eyes were round and big, not like anime but like googly eyes. He stuck out his hand like a grown-up. “I’m Eggy.” I shook it, but with the wrong hand I think. “Bacon.” I said. “Nice to meet you.” “That’s a lie.” But he giggled and said “Your name is Toast!” “Bacon-Toast!” I shrieked. I had always found that the voice that came out of my mouth was much more simple and childlike than the complex knit of my mind. For instance, I had once seen a video of a glorious panther, stuck in a frivolous circus tent. I had touched my fingers to the screen in empathy, knowing then that the two of us were kindred spirits. We were still giggling when Ms. De Lugo hissed “Her name is Zeekereene. And hush!” “Zeke.” I corrected softly. Eggy snorted. “Only artists would name a kid something as weird as that. Zeke’s a boy name.” I didn’t remind him that his name was Eggy Greene. I wanted to ask if he was named after Green Eggs and Ham. Besides, my name had six E’s and his name only had one.
My dad’s new agent was bubbling, “Oh wait till you see it, Mr. Greene. So brooding, yet, vivacious! Emboldened. Mystérieux.” I uncapped my sharpie and scribbled each new word frantically without a tinge of regret for my silk sleeves: metallek, evoke, swuave. The men continued to banter about the mystery piece, the agent tossing in a french-sounding word from time to time to describe it. I suspected he didn’t know what most of them really meant. “So meaningfully . . . Baveux!” Mister Greene must have gathered this too after the agent exclaimed passionately, “It is effortlessly dramatic! Incomparably . . . brassiere. So very - ” “I must say the anticipation is killing me,” Interrupted Mister Greene, with masked annoyance. “Perhaps I could guess what it is. Give me a hint, Logan.” We approached the archway, and I peeked in just in time to see my father’s smooth smile sweep across his face, crinkled on one side. He always achieved just the right amount of laxness, while remaining formal. “A hint you say. . . Hmmm. Well, it’s . . . nautical.” “Nautical?” Said Mister Greene. “A break from the norm. I thought this might be the finale of your Beautiful Beauty series.” The agent crooned. “Ah those . . . Beautiful Beauty . . . how poignant! But no, Logan here has indeed broken from the norm. He’s created a new stand alone piece. He still won’t tell me the title.” “Actually,” said my father “our guest of honor has inspired me. A title for the piece has come to me.” The agent and Mister Greene turned with clasped hands and puppy eyes filled with awe - as if gazing at God revealing the title of the Bible’s sequel. “These Tethered Dreams of Ours” announced my father. The two exclaimed and raved and praised, their voices mixing once again into the clamour of the party as we stepped higher and higher up the spiral staircase of the building. Once we entered the conservatory and closed the doors, Ms. de Lugo sat on a red bench and slumped, looking at her phone. She did not give us board games. The room itself was no bigger than our old apartment in The Bronx, but the ceiling was towering, made of glass panels in an arc. It was warm and damp, with big leafy plants that loomed over us. If this were a cartoon, the plants would have googly eyes like Eggy.
We were playing rainforest scientists when Eggy said “Look, Zeke!” and pointed at Ms. de Lugo. She was already beginning to nod off, blinking her eyes and slouching more and more against the back of the bench. Eggy looked at me with those bright googly eyes. “Do you wanna see the thing your dad made, before everyone else?” I gaped. “Not even my mom has seen it!” Eggy shrugged. “You know where it is though.” “Besides!” I squealed, “Thing? It's called a work, or a piece, or a masterpiece.” “Do you really believe your dad is a master?” “He made all this money, I guess.” “You think art made you this rich?” The word dumbstruck enveloped me. What did he mean? Of course art made us rich. What else could have? We had made it toward the door. I wasn’t aware I’d started walking. It was loud and chaotic inside my head, as it was in the hall when we stepped out. “Are you rich?” I asked, still dumbstruck, ringing. “My mom says we aren’t . . . but I think we are and she just doesn’t realize it. Everyone at this party is.” I thought about it, my brain still ringing after what he said about my father’s art and the money. There was something I was supposed to get. I didn’t know what he was talking about at all. But I decided he didn’t either, and the ringing mellowed a bit. “Except Ms. Blaire and Ms. de Lugo and the other staff. They aren’t,” I answered finally. I was leading. I realized it when we made it to the balcony, which I noticed when my parents toured the building to see if it was the perfect venue for the gala. It wasn’t, and the designers had requested that the entire interior be painted white, instead of off-white. It had been done. We pushed past the crazily-outfitted guests till we reached a table near the railing of the balcony. No one noticed us duck under it. Eggy kicked off his mismatched shoes as I squeezed between the railing, and hopped to the next balcony, not far down. I bet my dad could touch both at the same time, I thought, but then I wondered if that didn’t count because he was the tallest person in the world. Eggy hopped down after me. The other, ascending balconies were empty. We’d rented the entire building so the noise of two parties wouldn’t mix. The balconies zig-zagged evenly all the way down the side of the building. I could hear the ocean, and the flocks of people on the street below us. It was just dark enough and plenty loud enough for us to be unnoticed. We lunged from one balcony to the next, down the building. I heard my heartbeat with each step I took, each leap. I began to feel like the pattern of balconies was my heart rate, zig-zagging down to the sidewalk. Vertigo crept behind my eyes and throat and squeezed. After hopping a few I heard a little shriek and peered up. “I’m okay.” said Eggy. “But my shin isn’t.”
I felt like I was inside a dark bottle, with a beaming moon-shaped hole, uncorked at the top so that someone might take a sip of the night. It would be like the drink Gran had once let me taste from her cup when my parents left the room: a chilling liqueur. Eggy was right. I knew exactly where I was going. I knew exactly where my parents were, and how to avoid them. I knew where the sculpture was: already bolted into the pier a block away. The party would arrive there in limousines after gathering in the assembly room. We made it to the lowest balcony, but this one was far too high to jump off. Even for my dad. “Well….” said Eggy. I reached as far as I could, but my fingertips couldn’t reach back to the balcony above. I felt my throat squeeze. Cars moved slowly and haphazardly below us, congested by traffic, like the city had a head cold. People crowded the sidewalks. We were trapped. I wanted to go home, to our old apartment in The Bronx. I wanted to play Twister with my mom - the mom I had before she started deteriorating. I wanted to sing Elvis with my father on the way to school. I wanted to be told to eat my vegetables. Lights and music and yelling and singing and honking and . . . and I began to cry. Eggy was silent, playing with a feather he’d found. I felt like the word vibrant, in the most unwelcome way. It was a cruel word. It moved too fast. The adventure had found itself snared in the horrible realness of the world. This was not Little Einsteins; we did not have a little red rocket to escape in. This was not the Magic Schoolbus; we did not have a teacher who would tell us how the world worked. This was loud, sharp and unforgiving New York, and we were all alone. “Why do you write words on your arm?” Asked Eggy. “Because one day, I’m going to find a magic word.” I gurgled. “Will you tell me when you find it?” I considered this, sniffling. “You’d spell it wrong.” “You don’t know that!” I shrugged. “How many words do you have?” He said. “One thousand and two one eight.” I couldn’t say a number that big. “That’s pretty cool.” I couldn’t believe him. We were stuck on a balcony in huge trouble. They’d have to get a firetruck to get us, or at least catch us in a blanket like in cartoons. And here was Eggy, chatting like we were at recess. “Zeke!” Eggy was jumping up and down and pointing below us.
After we’d made it to the end of the block and rounded the corner, people stopped turning around when we pushed past them. We began to run slower, and we were absorbed by the tall, tall crowds and the vibrance of the grey city. I could see the pier. I could even see my father’s covered sculpture. As we neared, I saw something else. Multiple someones else. Security. They slunk around the piece like snakes round a nest with a chicken egg. We stopped. Of course the statue was guarded. We stood bent over, not like statues, but shivering, our breath shaky with fear and exertion. Finally when our minds caught up with our bodies, we looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Ms. De Lugo had probably woken up by now, and told my parents that we were gone. “We can’t go back like this.” I said. We were bruised and scraped and bloodied from falling into the road, but the real reason parents would be livid was the tears in my fluffy-boxy dress. We were at the pier now. Yellow street lamp light shone on the brick beneath our feet, having a battle with the cool night air. From another road emerged a school of slick, black, ominous limousines. My father stepped out, and a herd of artists and patrons and oohers and ahhers and rich whoevers followed. I was close enough to see that he was switching feet and running a hand obsessively through his hair, like I’d only seen him do when the rent of our old apartment tripled, and we had to stay at Gran’s until the art career started taking off. Or at least, whatever happened that made us rich, happened. I imagined him trying to smile as the piece was uncovered. The audience gasped. We climbed onto a bench to see above the heads of the crowd. It was a submarine. Made of trash cans and sheets of metal, which the press liked to imagine my dad scavenging himself, it shined like a magic word. I wanted to climb inside it and sink below the surface of the ocean, below the city, below who we were now, below it all, to the apartment with dandelions I’d scavenged from between cracks in the sidewalks and putin a vase on the kitchen table. Below the artist father, to the crafty father. My father was not a builder; he was a mender. It was what he was meant to do. I remember once, in the time before designers and publicists and Creatures of the Wind, a time when I had ripped my halloween costume on the sidewalk, a time when I cried until my father scooped me up like an airplane and flew me inside the apartment to the sewing machine, I had felt free. He hummed as he mended it, and when it was done, you could hardly see the seam from the outside. That was what he did, my old father. He mended things: objects, conversations, ideas, people. He smoothed them out like butter, so neatly that only a tiny seam showed. I had forgotten that when someone is staring at you for a long time, you begin to feel it. My father must have had this feeling and looked around until his eyes found mine. It felt like our eyes had been locked with a chain. My father screamed my name and Eggy and I ran before people could figure out what was happening.
To the right I saw the only little red rocket we had: the dots of ships in a port. And we ran like mad. That’s a figure of speech but I mean it. Clawed, shrieking, rasping, bloodshot and bleeding we ran. Tearing the air like tissue paper. Savage. It felt like the word ‘unreal’. We were tired only behind our eyes and scared only in our feet. We were werewolves. The cars and crowd thinned the more we ran towards the roaring ocean, hidden by the barbed and overgrown fences that lined that side of the street. We were far away from where we’d been, but the ships were still farther. Sirens blared and I wanted them to stop before the sound cracked the world in two, and broke color, so that everything really was grey. They would find us if we didn’t hide. I grabbed hold of a gnarly vine and climbed over the fence, tumbling onto the rocks below. Eggy crashed down a moment later and we sprawled on the colored stones, licked smooth by the ocean. We listened to the gulls and the whistles from the harbor, breathing in the air that stung our lungs. The siren whirred onto another street. After a moment, Eggy pointed to the water. “Maybe that water wayyyy out there,” he stopped to gulp a breath, “is New Jersey.” I stood and began limping toward the metal beam that divided the rocks and the sea. I wondered if the waves got tired of sloshing back and forth between the two worlds, rewriting themselves as New Jersey and other times as New York. “How can you make a line in water?” “Probably a forcefield,” reasoned Eggy. I wondered, if we were to swim far enough, would we become a part of New Jersey, or bring New york with us? Would we break the forcefield? Would it let us through at all? I made it to the edge. The tide was high enough that when I sat, I could submerge my feet. I gazed at the ships so far away. “What now?” Asked Eggy. I did not answer him. I felt spit running down my chin, or was that a tear? “Why did I run away?” I blithered. I ran away from my father, instead of toward him. I had made this unreal. I was the one who had, in the first place, taken a shenanigan and spun it into an adventure. A disaster. A vibrance. “Maybe you just needed a breath of fresh air.” Said Eggy. It didn’t make any sense. I got fresh air whenever I wanted to, whenever I asked Ms. De Lugo if we could go outside.
“I think I found a magic word.” I said at last. I leaned toward him and whispered it in his ear. We both looked at the ocean, which sent gales of salty breeze toward us, flapping our clothes. They were torn and muddied now, his footie-pajamas, my fluffy-boxy dress. So were our bodies. But not our spirits. I stood, but a flounce of my dress had caught on a bolt in the metal beam. On the hem I saw the word. It was a word like a bad song you hear too often, and begin to love: vibrance. I looked at the water. “Do you think vibrance is a type of freedom?” I asked the sea. It sloshed an answer. I tugged at the snag. The hem stayed fastened. I yanked harder and it tore. I tripped backward with the force of it, and nearly landed in the water. Eggy shouted my name. Regaining my balance I tiptoed along the metal beam towards the ships, leaving a chunk of the dress behind me, and half of that word, flapping in the wind. An anchor, untethered.
SMILING DOWN A THICKET OF STREETS BY GABRIELLA BRZOSTOSKI She slams the door in my face. It stings, possibly more than the time she’d slammed it on my fingers. She wasn’t going to let me in again this time. Clutching tighter to the bottle of shells in my left hand, I sling the bag she threw at me over my shoulder. If I weren't so dehydrated, I would cry so hard the hollowness in me wouldn't just be from the sinking feeling streaming through my veins like a serpent. The city blares at me accusingly. I walk away from her apartment. Yes, I know, I’d like to tell the horns and lights and flashing neon colors. I brought this upon myself. What kind of schmuck loses his license, job, and family in one day? You, they roar back, and I half-heartedly try to laugh it off. It turns into a hacking cough. My eyes sting even though no tears come out. It’s a quieter night, at least on the sidewalks, as I trudge along the glittering pavement, balancing one foot in front of the other until I trip into a murky puddle of what must be oil and piss. I wonder if she put any water in this bag. The thought of drinking the iridescent car-sweat creeps into my addled mind and I start cackling again, reflecting on how I can’t get much lower than this.
I slump down to the curb. The streetlights in the puddle’s dancing reflection tells the story of an alternate world. Maybe in that alternate world I wouldn’t have screwed up this much. My own muddled reflection doesn't make that look too promising, though. Someone in a red coat hails a taxi, and as they fly away together flurrying papers descend from their trail, coming to smack me in the face. I swat at them, and while the first two settle over the puddle, the third has landed neatly in my lap. It’s a map. Or–that’s my initial assumption of what it must be. It’s a peculiar little thing, sepia lines trickling like roots across the page that mark a clear path to a slanted star. There’s a blockier section, too, where the lines become rectangles of various proportions and the flashbacks to Mrs. Iresome’s Geometry classroom are not welcome. I sniff it; shit and frankincense. Or maybe that’s just me. I look around for a street sign to see if this map is one for the city. Squinting back at the strangely tough parchment I can see tiny letters written along the lines–too small to be able to read, though. The whole thing seems to buzz, in a mellow, hearing-someone-play-loud-bass-but-from-far-away, way. What the hell, why not follow it? I have nothing left to do with myself but fantasize about gulping rancid city-juice. I roll it up neatly, and slide it into my beloved bottle of shells. I will need one of those kiddie microscopes. “If Ehbinizer’s calculations are accurate, this should be the spot it’s arriving.” The gruff man’s voice could scratch calligraphy into metal. “Oh, sure, like he ain’t never been wrong before,” a significantly shorter man with golden rounded glasses follows him out of the Jeep, taking in the city all at once and dismissing it as all one and the same. Their destination is beside a diner, apparently, its flashing neon closed-sign blurring into the rest of the ambient noise. “And what was the timing he predicted, Ren?” The taller, meaner, crustier man takes out what looks to be a misshapen compass and listens. He barks a curse. The smaller man smirks, and raises an eyebrow to emphasize his point. Ren rips a Butterfingers from his pocket and hurls the wrapper down into an iridescent puddle. He crunches. “This is why we don't often collaborate, remember? Maybe Ehbinizer was setting us up and came earlier. I did say I thought he was throwing a snare for us, didn't I? Can’t ever trust them stuffy–oof–” He clutches at his side, newly dented by Ren’s fist. “Shut it, Jim. I’m getting something–It might not be too far away to track.” Ren holds the compass up, and waits. A crinkly grimace climbs up his features, and if Jim hadn’t worked with him for so many years he might've thought the bulky man had swallowed a hedgehog. “Got ‘em.” The sea is lapping against its cage and one can never tell if that smog in the horizon is natural or pollution.
Actually, many can probably tell but I don’t care enough to learn the difference. Cast aside with a pile of musty couches and moldy tidbits was a pair of partially broken reading glasses, which weren’t exactly a kiddie microscope but worked to make out the letters scrawled beside lines. Every second I read the map further the more enhanced, rich, the world seems. It’s addictive. Almost more so than the whiskey that I kept above her fridge and would swallow when she was out and couldn't tell me not to. When I look away from it for too long, everything withers a little bit. The colors fade. Maybe I’m getting closer to whatever it’s leading me to. The buzz has become a pulse that’s blended with my own and is massaging out my feelings of regret. There’s a lot more to go. And “there’s a long way to go,” I whisper to myself, gliding my fingertips down its body to the street I’m on. I’ve walked all the way to the financial district, circling around on some points before realizing I must’ve misread something, finding that the map had suggested a different path all along. Or maybe it was being fickle with me. A salty breeze picks up, and threatens to tug the map from my hands. A desperation surges through me, and I drop my beloved bottle just to be able to grasp the paper with two hands and reassure myself that nothing can take it from me. I step over the shattered glass. I try to forget that evening she humored my silliness and we collected those seashells together. I try to forget how she’d let me back into their lives time and time again yet apparently their forgiveness wasn’t enough for me. I try to forget her laughter, rampant and wild like a mockingbird mimicking a hyena, and how the last time I heard it was years ago. I keep walking. “The Collectors won’t be happy.” Jim remarks, Ren on his hands and knees focusing intensely on the compass through his third Butterfingers. Ren slides a knife from his boot and tosses it at Jim. It lands in his foot. He tears it out of his shoe, yet no blood seeps out. “Aww, come on, you got a hole in my shoe this time!” “What kind of work do you think this is that you can just go around talking, eh?” Ren grumbles and signals the Jeep-driver to stay put. “We’re close.” They are approaching the Snakes’ territory now, closing in on the shoreline. They would have to cover their tracks on the way out. The streets are bare, as it is well into the early morning at this point, but the breeze is howling away at the moon that it knows must be hiding behind those clouds. The two stalk down an alley, keeping a wary eye on the fire escapes. The rustle of mice and the coo of pigeons are the only sign of city-life, but Jim could swear that there’s something more than that here. They make it to the docks without disturbance, though, mingling with their friends the shadows. The street is clear, and the compass starts whirring with proximity. “Them Snakes must be on a different job,” Jim decides, breaking the silence, and an unmistakable hisss like that of a balloon slowly deflating erupts from all sides of them.
“Dammit, Jim!” Ren yanks a crossbow from his overcoat, and loads it as a wave of spitting vipermen descend on them. The map is definitely leading me astray. It’s wily, and unforgiving, like my mother-in-law. But unlike my mother-in-law, I’m dependent on it. I’ve struggled on my own in life, sure, and even did when she was there to support me and love me for being someone I wasn’t. But this feels different, a kind of unconscious aching need that urges me to protect, to listen to, to nourish this piece of paper like I’ve failed to do with my family. I almost feel drunk on life, stumbling into Chinatown with a vibrancy infused into my being. Colors are grander–not more saturated, or even brighter, but radiating with the pompous attitude of an elated rooster. I’m under this spell, and I know it, but I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. When I first picked up the map it seemed tired: duller and less detailed. A weary traveller from some journey I would never understand. The shade of its brushstrokes of streets looked as if they were painted with coffee to make the sepia lines. But it’s transformed from a gentle brown to a stern ink-black, the blockier portion enlarging enough to display the parts of the city I’m walking through in more depth, even sending me a slight tinge that something is nearby when a street cat is waltzing along the avenue. I find myself questioning whether it was in fact another way before, or if this bold representation of the parchment is how it’s always looked. Someone approaches, the map signals to me, a message delivered clearer than through speech. It feels almost instinctual. My eyes flit to the street corner where the person will appear, but when they do their figure is foggy, disrupted, somehow. As if even if I weren’t seeing them with my eyes they would look the same. The person harbors sympathy, disdain, when they pass my way. I smirk. They would be envious if they knew what I had. Acid-holes adorning their overcoats, the two hurry closer to what they track. Jim wraps a strawberry handkerchief around the stub of what used to be his left hand. The compass’s whirring has turned into an all-out frenzy of motion. Ren flips it closed, and it is silenced before it can start singing with enthusiasm. They cross another block, passing an alley cat as they do. Ren gesticulates a series of complicated hand signals. Jim cocks his head. Ren tries again, slower this time. Jim shakes his head. “Man, there’s something to be said about whispering,” Jim whispers emphatically. Ren puffs. “We turn that corner, I take out its victim, you stabilize the target.”
“Come on, that thing’s deadly. It ain’t gonna be that easy. Remember the Collector it left as a husk last time it escaped?” “We’ll get it. It’ll be gone again if we keep up like this.” Ren pulls out what looks to be a pitch whistle, and when he blows it the Jeep comes whirling from around the corner. They jump on as it passes, nearly running over a stocky stranger holding a paper. It stops a little late, the man’s leg audibly crunching under the wheel. He yowls, but the two only glove their hands and fight against bursts of artificial wind to wrangle the map into submission. The man abruptly stops yowling, yanks himself up, and tears his torso from his leg, showering the asphalt with color. He aids the wind, pulling at their feet enough to trip them into losing grasp. A whoosh, and it’s gone. Ren moans a foul guttural noise and bashes the man’s head to the ground. “Next time we do it my way.” Jim sighs, unfazed, and holds the man up by his haunches. “Snack for the road?” “Sure.” Ren mutters, opening a Butterfingers as they file into the Jeep.
After April Showers submitted by Huelasquez
OGMA MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2020