The Lost Issue by Paperfinger

Paperfinger

March 2014

The Lost Issue

Paperfinger

March 2014

The Lost Issue

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Kristiane Weeks Autobiographia Literaria

26 Poetry

28 Meet Marcia Vojcsik 30 Marcia Vojcsik 34 Michelle Clark Short 38 Ashley Peterson stories 28 Saragossa 42 Pauline Thier

20 22

Kristiane Weeks

FEATURE

I am a little bit of everything Carl Sagan calls it starstuff I call it fingered impressions into skinnot just my father, dark marble unbreakable unbreakable me or my mother we have the same Polish nose, lips, laugh Sorry mom, but I am the bay at the bottom of your magmatic steep (you’re a little too volcanic for me) I crave blueberry doughnuts, pools in thunderstorms Who gave me these? Was it you who made me horrific, “desensitized” for thirty-years-past, mostly Italian, blood (Oh, Argento!) the stars still keep me sweet, keep a smile you can pour over pancakes just give it a try try to imagine you without your surroundings without your setting: St. Augustine you’ve made me lax I move I think like your lapping bay like your heavy summer air Setting: Indiana I can take the girl out of the cornfield I can try, rip cornstalks out of the girl, unearth roots from ribcages you can replant them anywhere 13

but there’s nothing to be done against Midwestern charm Don’t thank me, thank Lake Effect snow gifted from Lake Michigan itself, thank the flatland consuming miles that brown mass paired tastefully with months of gray skies there’s hundreds of farmers killing themselves over these colors every year these colors are all mine * I am not a farmer but some days I wonder if this loam isn’t meant for more than seeds and scraping hands plant my feet, my scarred ankle and arms every ribboned curl on my head take my darkest tears I push them into soil, deep refuse to nourish them how are they still sprouting What fuels them and what fuels me what is my profession? I am not an academic I am more than a shaper of sentences I am a preserver give me your words I can jar them, boil them, seal tight I am a magician, watch as I turn mere letters into Earth and you are my gypsy man juggling and predicting shades of the graying sky 15

and you’re saying this is just the way it is and you’re saying I can’t tell you you won’t understand but you can tell me because who really knows anything about anything anyways? You can tell me stars are marshmallow fluff aliens built today’s technology and I will not laugh I’m not an encyclopedia and maybe an encyclopedia isn’t even an encyclopedia but maybe you are why I keep coming back to you for answers, coming back to soak up every yellow and red particle emitting from you. I want to explore pages inside your hands and read knowledge formed from the golden forest in your eyes. You can tell me seagulls are bagels I will listen, honestly, because your guess is as good or better than mine and right now I’m guessing you and I are going to be comfortable sitting under blankets together until we figure out just what 17

all this is all about And even when we don’t exactly figure it out at least I know you will move the orange juice to the front of the fridge after you drink from the carton and I know this because there’s never a glass in the sink and the dishwasher is full (or clean) and at least you will know this doesn’t bother me, observing your remnants shuffle around me when you’re away, the channel turned to HLN, the shower curtain left open, I need to feel these movements undisturbed.

Kristiane Weeks

Is it Ponce De Leon’s birthday again? All I want is a cup of coffee from one of the dozens of cafes in the downtown square. But any of these choices are wrong on this day, another day in St. Augustine where most of the older residents were dressed up as Spanish conquistadors, another day where all of America was somehow on vacation and confusedly wandering the Colonial Spanish quarters of town, where the best coffee is. Ponce de Leon himself is admired next to the softened stone City Gate, waving as hordes of strollers and people asking each other which way the fort is squeeze by. A couple looking at a map of attractions bumped into the founder of St. Augustine and knocks his saber to the ground. Everyone takes pictures, including my coffee date, Holly. We decide coffee at home is probably safest option and turn back. On the way back we pass coquina buildings and I remember the flyer on one of the wooden columns in the foyer of Ponce Hotel, better known as Flagler College; Celebrate the anniversary of

the first European expedition to Florida! I remember I’m supposed to avoid downtown at all costs on these days. This city is too compact for biweekly costumeladen celebrations. We pass Bed and Breakfasts and little vacation homes with cats hanging all over the low palms, and then I stop walking without realizing I’ve stopped because I’m enchanted by the only establishment in St. Augustine flaunting kaleidoscopically colorful stained-glass on the second and third floor windows and rich yellow siding that makes the house stand out like the sun emerging from cool clouds It doesn’t take long before I need to take a moment, discover something new every time I pass. Luckily the house I rent for my four-year stay in St. Augustine is also on Saragossa Street, a charming Southern neighborhood two blocks away from Flagler College. My house is a sad chipping pastel green ranch-style with ants climbing up kitchen cupboards, performing daily rituals around the bag of sugar. Every day I trip over the Rhapis palm clusters stretching

across the front steps, and head down Saragossa with sweet scents of loquat and magnolia trees lining the road. Three minutes later I’m gazing beyond a thin iron fence at a display of potted ferns and short palms covering a front yard of white concrete. Sprinkled in every space that doesn’t hold a plant is some sort of glass bauble or statue (mostly of cats). There’s too many things to admire; glass sailboats in a window just below the highest peak of the house, a ceramic rabbit’s head by the front door. On another coffee date with Holly, I ask if she remembers when I stopped in front of the yellow house a while back. She does, so I proceed to explain why this happened, telling her how vast the whimsy details of this house expand. I discover over thirty purple or blue glass bulbs sticking out of plant-pots filled with sand, on pedestals. There are wine and coke bottles displayed on prongs of rusted iron sculptures. Shiny vases I could hide in. There’s a ceramic sun smiling over the front door, tall stone cat statues accompanied with one of the many lounging cats of 23

St. Augustine taking a break from sun-bathing in the shadow of the figures. She responds, “This whole city is like that.” “The whole city is not like that. The whole city is…” what is the word to describe St. Augustine? “Gimmicky.” “Gimmicky?” “I mean, we just watched a magician cut a twenty-dollar bill out of a tangerine on the side of the road.” My boyfriend volunteered for the act and wrote his name on a twenty, gave the twenty to the magician, the magician put it under his shoe and pulled a tangerine out of his pocket. He cut the tangerine open and there was the twenty with Charlie scribbled on it. He used the twenty to get these coffees. I understand she’s talking about “Historical St. Augustine,” how most of this town is hanging on from the 1700s or earlier, hiding “fun facts” and “did-you-know’s” around every colonial corner. The rest of the city feels inauthentic. It’s full of attractions like the Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse that rang fake bells every thirty seconds

harmonizing with screeching recorded laughter of children.

Eye View sketch of St. Augustine.” 28 Saragossa used to be a house where a man could look through We walk through Old Town the Ponce De Leon Hotel, the Square to the cafe on a day that’s Lightner Museum, the Old Drug surprisingly not some holiday Store, look through binoculars, people are walking around examine life, and sketch all the costumed in colonial garb, women elegant cobblestone roads, Spanishin bonnets and long dresses—in style buildings, the exact way all Florida!—carrying needlework, the fingers of the Matanzas pushes talking about the ghosts wandering its way over land. Every perfectlythe top floor of Harry’s Restaurant. angled road. But that didn’t matter We listen as she eyes her stitching, now. Now, the porches and balcony casually noting how the restaurant porches are covered in dangling used to be a residence, built in tinkling wind-chimes of all shapes the late 1700s, owned by a rich and colors. There is a mosaic woman, Catalina. When she square next to the door, white and died, none of her nine children blue sea glass surrounded blue managed to inherit the estate ceramic squares shaping a 28. Now, and the Catalina Ghost has been 28 Saragossa contains a vibrancy terrorizing the third floor and the the city avoids through obsessing women’s restroom ever since to get over the way St. Augustine used to her property back. The view of the be. Old Castillo Fort overlooking the Matanzas Bay inlet might be worth fighting for, even in death. One day while examining the house, I notice a plaque on a pocked clump of stone hiding under long fronds in pots. The house at 28 Saragossa Street was built in 1891, with fifty windows, twenty five rooms, and no ghosts, it reads. I discover the three-story canary-colored, whitetrimmed Queen Anne style house was built for Henry Ritchie, who was “responsible for the Bird’s 25

It is appropriate to be featured in The Lost Issue of Paperfinger since I have been lost for the last year of my life. Poetry has been both my reliable roadmap to who I am, and a caricature of a roadmap which is not a roadmap at all, but the words “GIVE UP NOW” scribbled in crayon. What I’m saying is, being a poet is easy, but writing is hard. Hemingway said it best, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.” Most people do not enjoy spending an afternoon bleeding, let alone bleeding enough to fill up pages and pages of paper, but a writer must. For a while, I stopped bleeding. I splashed Kool-Aid on a page and pretended. This only depressed me and left stains I’m still scrubbing out. The emotional release I felt from writing was gone with this new heartless work, the words no longer danced off the page, they sat and pouted. I realized I can’t escape the truth about writing: I need to bleed. Writing is not powerful unless powerful emotions are expressed, and it was only once I acknowledged my struggles that I was able to write through them. -Marcia Vojcsik

Aubade for the Lover I Never Touched Your skin would be soft. I know this. You would fit around all the right contours, folded neatly over me like an envelope, nestled head over heart listening to the frantic tumbling of my nerves. Know this, I would be nervous. I would trace the outline of your form with shaky hands – an outline I have traced and retraced in my mind since the day we met. I would giggle at all the wrong times and interrupt your small talk with moans. I know this: you would like it. You would gasp in surprise, synchronize with my rhythm – a tandem synapse explosion. We would collapse with absolute clarity, you would wonder why you didn’t see it sooner, wonder: what on Earth took us so long? Ah, but you must know this by now: you will never know this.

Acrostic for Ganest II (Om Ganesaya Namah) Once upon a time I believed in a god, maker of the Christian heavens and secular earth but gone are those loitering days in the garden of souls and sweet tempting fruit. Now, a decision I must make: enter permanently or stay forever outside confused about my taste buds. You see, the fruit in that garden only taste as good as its advertisements and all the lord’s servants and all the clergymen could not convince this little Christian liar. After wondering through four years of wasteland I begin maintaining my garden within, accepting the love of the universe, Om Namah Shivaya, honoring the divinity residing inside all along. 31

[i want to be your dirty hippie bride] i want to be your dirty hippie bride living in our dirty hippie trailer growing our own food eating it crunchy raw caveman style under the stars playing music for tips reading palms of naïve tourists oh i see you have trouble in your life we squander time only resource we care about is what keeps us alive we don’t own clocks or worry about waking up for that office job you hate pretending to care about the economy toast with unfiltered water to being free to being in love to being alive

22 A late night rescue, sorry I missed your birthday party, sorry he ruined my birthday, awkward new ex-boyfriend, awkward new ex-roommate, Irish car bombs, hookah, battling the bard, poetic ambition, lose weight by replacing meals with coffee, a new frontier, a new haircut, a familiar enemy, ukulele at the dead end pub, the slutty phase, the fish, welcome back, you can show yourself out, oh hello, friends with benefits, hard drive dive, hookah often, the big fight, I’m sorry, Khalessi, tres leche, Stockholm syndrome, tourism, why can’t money actually grow on trees? unrequited, requited but briefly, lack of showers, peppermint bubble baths, jealousy, admiration, anger, goodbye, retail, cigars, wine, fist fights, fireworks, I miss being happy, Oh, Canada, last minute perfection, Christopher Walken, the Incredible Hulk, un-fuckable, sea gulls, kitten, oh, hello, friends with benefits take two, delinquent hot tubbing, never satisfied, short but still sweet, goodbye, together again, goodbye for good, 2 am texts, grease stains and greasy smells, Queen Elizabeth, Professor V, yoga, coffee, beer, insomnia, hookah, Magic the Gathering, Natura Café, the Jilly bean, hospital confessions, the final break, Princess Bubblegum, Buggy, questionable work etiquette, Lord Ouroboros arrives, No Cheat November, the slutty phase take two, the stray cat, hello, trouble, Facebook love confessions, Mellow Mushroom, Thor, beer, the dry spell, Yellow Jacket Press, the party, snakes make the best wingmen, new roommate, seventh commandment violation, the wake-up call, black smithing, cheap champagne, Ruby, oh, to be a kid again. 33

Vessel Haikus One might be a cup Open to the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s filling But Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been long sealed Skin like porcelain Hard with a catacomb heart Both bright and dark When I have been broke Let me spill but hide yourself It will not smell sweet

Hack Writers They’re a few million like me, in painfully small towns, high priced private schools, pews and local bars the whole world round. Uninspired scribblers, chicken scratching at significance. Second rate scholars, spending too much time licking their wounds and not enough of it exploiting them. Victims of the doubtful years, we write only when it kills us that we’re wasting time. Dreamers who lack the drive. Motivation and deterrent, Fear, is the name of the double edge sword we use to conduct our self mutilation. Penance for being undiscovered. Tending toward the grossly sentimental. We’ve won no awards, or hearts. We think we ought to pursue other things, but we can only continue to self deprecate.

What To Expect When There Are No More Expectations There is a mental moment, a move into new territory, that toto we’re not in Kansas anymore realization, leaning up against the soda shelf at the jiffy, starring at the tomato basil lays, you will acknowledge an easy acceptance of death, a moment known mostly to self-aware 90-year-old’s as the bed they lay upon begins to chill, If Micheal reached out his hand, If the clouds began a celestial turn down service preparing you for heavenly rest, if you bit the bullet while kicking the gravedigger’s bucket of dust, you would be okay with it, sore jaw, jammed toed and all, and you’ll leave the chips for the promise of a chacotaco, bite into it in the parking lot cursing with cubby bunny cheeks, it’s odd soggy staleness for deception and disappointment, you eat half of it. 37

A. In Texas there’s a city called Abernathy. 1882 brought them a streak of light following what might have been a marble rolling across the atmosphere as if it were on a glass table. Somewhere along the way it found a hole and shot out with such force and brightness that the state of Texas thought night had become day. It shook the entire state when it bounced off the earth, broke in two, and finally cooled in the dirt. The marble was lost in the desert, only five miles from Abernathy.

B. …and I flipped past the thick yellow cover, yellow pages, business pages, until I hit white searching for A…B…E…R… but the only Abernathys were Abernathy, Kimberly L and Abernathy, Brian D My hands, too small to hold a grapefruit without gripping each side tightly didn’t realize that phone books only covered certain districts, and not the entire world. So they kept flipping. Flipping and hoping to run across Abernathy in maybe the business pages, or even the blue hued dentist section, but Abernathy, Devin, my father, did not live in South Bend’s phone book pages. 39

E. By 21 I had hoped to be over Abernathy, Devin, but no matter how far a meteor travels, even if it hits the earth, a part of it still belongs to space.

R. â&#x20AC;Śand after searching with my small hands for years, â&#x20AC;Śand after hoping that Abernathy, Devin had his reasons for letting me go, â&#x20AC;ŚI find that the Texan Meteorite was not the only star to fall on this planet. Lost. Forgotten. 41

Twenty-Three hours A hot, sweaty summer evening. My sister and I are taking down the laundry, folding it. The phone rings. Her face freezes. We’re joking around—just watch it being about mom. As if we already knew. We have to come over. There’s mom. Laying on her bed, only wearing panties. It is too hot for anything else. The bed is stained yellow, like her. Her eyes are gazing steadily, but into nothingness. She tells the doctor the pain is minimal. That’s so her. All I wonder is if the doctor could prescribe an A/C. I miss the doctor’s verdict, but mom gives me hers. She is done. She is dying. I enter survivor mode. * 43

I barely slept last night but I am getting up early to take my nine year old brother to school because his dad has to wait for the nurse and someone has to tell his teacher his mom is dying on the first day of school and I have to make sure he understands too. He says he does. When I come back my grandmother and aunt are at my mom’s house and we all want to do something to make ourselves useful so we move all the clothes from their cut-short vacation of the way to make sure the hospital bed, her death bed, will fit in her room because she wants to stay home, but when that’s done there’s nothing else we can do, but wait, standing around and not really talking or looking at each other. We just wait for something else to do, or death. *

And then there you are at the pharmacy. Buying liquid morphine for your mother ‘cause she’s too stubborn to take her pills. She’s giving up When you get back to the house, there’s nothing to do. So you go home and wait. Secretly hoping she’s going to be better. You’re in denial. *

I’m having dinner with dad. Decided on greasy, comforting take-out. The smell of the bag of patat is heavenly, but abruptly disrupted—my sister’s calling. I’m ordered to come to mom’s right now. It’s not good. I let my tears run. Salting the patat in my hands. I don’t care about my audience. My mother is dying. Dad hugs me and tells me to take the patat with me. Someone might be hungry. When I finally get there, the food still warm. I’m told I am too late. She just gave in ten minutes ago. The patat still warm in the bag.

Lullaby The moon is peering, the moon is peeking. It is quiet oh so quiet in the room. Coincidence does not exist. Not now, not in silence. You would have liked to stay with us longer, in the room. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quiet oh so quiet in the room.

Some kind of peace my mother died yesterday yet I feel so calm. upset, heartbroken, but at peace. the screaming has passed. tears quietly come and go. blood flows smoothly through my body, no rush. no heart racing. I think I am fine. there is comfort in my heart soothing me itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ok waitâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; is this cloud nine in hell?

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