free
gwen florio
HER BEAR HUSBAND angela canales
OUT OF NOWHERE helen mallon
MY CHARLIE MANSON author profile
CHRISTINE WEISER
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c o n t e n t s ART 3 Fern by BJ Burton. B.J. Burton is the recipient of two fellowships from PA Council on the Arts. Her plays have been produced in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York. Recent artwork is forthcoming in Berkeley Fiction Review. B.J. received her MFA from Rosemont College, where she teaches the Playwriting Workshop.
CONTENTS FEATURES 3 Her Bear Husband (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gwen Florio 12 Out of Nowhere (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Canales 16 My Charlie Manson (essay) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helen Mallon 14 What Not to Submit (column). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aimee LaBrie 20 Author Profile & Broad Street excerpt . . . . . . . . . Christine Weiser
POETRY 9 11 13 17
Midway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Hayden Saunier DNA: Memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Teresa Méndez-Quigley Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Anthony Nannetti About Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Deborah Derrickson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kossman
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Along the Canal, Manayunk by Marita McVeigh. Marita McVeigh enjoys paintin because it transports her to beautiful places and special times. Her goal is simply to enjoy the journey. She is a member of The Manayunk Art Center. www.artworkby marita.com
6 Dance with Me by Kristen Solecki. (see bio below)
8 On the Dock by Pauline Braun. Pauline Braun's specialties are acrylic, watercolors, and oil. Her subjects are street scenes, beach scenes, and scenes of people in every day events. See her work at www.paulinebraun.com
LOCAL AUTHOR PROFILE 20 Christine Weiser
PHILADELPHIASTORIES.ORG Publisher/Fiction Editor Carla Spataro
Web Design Walt Maguire
Teresa FitzPatrick, fiction Denise Gess, fiction Pat Green, poetry Joanne Green, fiction Fran Grote, fiction Diane Guarnieri, poetry Marleen Hulstead, fiction Cecily Kellogg, poetry Aimee LaBrie, fiction Walt Maguire, fiction Patricia Mastricolo, fiction George McDermott, poetry Harriet Levin Millan, poetry Elizabeth Mosier, fiction Julie Odell, fiction Ryan Romine, fiction John Shea, poetry & non-fiction Janice Wilson Stridick, fiction Michelle Wittle, fiction
Editorial Board Holly Anzuena, Fiction Courtney Bambrick, poetry Christine Cavalier, poetry Liz Dolan, poetry Sandy Farnan, non-fiction
planning & development board Rebeca Barroso Blythe Boyer Michelle Wittle Aimee LaBrie Autumn Konopka
Publisher/Managing Editor Christine Weiser Poetry Editor Conrad Weiser Essay Editor Matt Jordan Associate Fiction Editor Marc Schuster guest Fiction Editor Marylou Fusco Director of Development Sharon Sood Production Manager Derek Carnegie
10 SISTAH by Linda La Rose. Linda La Rose is currently exiting a 26-year graphic design position to become a full-time illustrator. She is pursuing a degree in sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has been painting since age 12.
12 Family Tree by Todd Marrone. In 1974, God made a beautiful glowing ball of creativity, sprinkled it with art dust, wrapped it in skin, installed an abrasive voice box and called it Todd Marrone. I say this, not as a megalomaniac who writes in the first person, but as a friend.
19 Native by Suzanne Comer. Suzanne Comer. The beautiful areas around her current home near Philadelphia inspired Suzanne to explore digital photography and its use as an art form. Her work is influenced by her background in fine arts and graphics. Suzanne's digital photo-art pieces have been featured in many area juried exhibitions. http://comersuz.home.comcast .net/
16 Lime & Lemons by Todd Marrone. (see bio above)
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Cover Art: The Blues by Kristen Solecki. Kristen Solecki is a recent graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where she majored in illustration. Her work can be viewed at www.kristensolecki.com
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HER BEAR HUSBAND f course I’ve been in the woods before.” Lucia glanced around the visitor center to reassure herself that she looked just like everyone else there, then glared back across the counter at the skeptical park ranger. Until encountering him, she’d felt impervious in her new acquisitions: stiff hiking boots with heavy Vibram soles; cargo pants of a slippery, fast-drying fabric that made soft whispering noises as she walked; a rain jacket with a thin fleece lining. In preparation for her excursion, she’d also bought a 20-ounce sleeping bag that would bob atop an unwieldy pack, itself stuffed with a tiny tent – two-and-a-half pounds – a couple of changes of socks and underwear, and foil packets of freeze-dried dinners, their desiccated contents so devoid of texture and smell as to be guaranteed not to attract bears. Alone in the house she’d sublet for her temporary teaching job at a Montana college, she’d spent hours researching every item, checking off each against a long list of things various guidebooks insisted were essential. Then she’d gone looking for them. Her new town’s business district comprised a scant four blocks. An espresso shop, windows hung hopefully with cheap, root-bound houseplants. Molvar’s Ladies Fashions, chipped mannequins draped in generously cut pantsuits. A newsstand, the daily headlines indecipherable: “Biggest One-Year Drop in Board Feet in Decades.” “HeapLeach Boom Goes Bust.” “Coyote Depredations on Rise.” The last featuring a photo of a man in a cowboy hat, gesturing angrily toward the mangled body
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Fern by BJ Burton © 2008 of a sheep at his booted feet, the blood a scarlet shock in the dun-hued scene. A couple of pawnshops, and a bar – no, two – in each block, most of them along the railroad tracks that divided the town. The Mint, The Stockman, The Gandy Dancer. Red’s. Al’s. Burr Lively’s. And, not one, but three stores offering both hunting and camping gear – heavy
on the former, windows a forest of camouflage clothing, including a saucy leafpatterned bikini dangling from the antlers of a mounted elk head. But, from looks of the little plastic kayaks leaning against the doorframe, to the tents set up along the sidewalk in front of the stores, plenty of the latter, too. She would no more have set foot inside one of those
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stores than she would have walked through the door of Burr Lively’s, which nightly spilled a contingent of hardfaced men into the empty lot alongside it, where some slept until morning, only to list into the coffee shop at dawn, knocking back double espressos that they dosed from flasks stowed somewhere within their voluminous camouflage jackets that probably had come from the stores just down the street. Lucia avoided them all, ordering her backpacking gear online, gasping at the total, and endured the quizzical expression of the FedEx man who delivered the outsize boxes for several days in a row. The park ranger looked at her the same way, eyeballing the pack’s shiny fabric, the boots’ unmarred surface. Before she could even speak, he’d put the question to her. “First time in the backcountry?” He was tall, his starched khaki shirt
and creased green uniform pants hanging loosely on a rangy frame. His hands, long fingers tapping impatience on the countertop, looked too large for picking at a computer keyboard, and she wondered who he’d pissed off to get stuck on desk duty, dealing with the likes of her. A Smokey the Bear hat sat on his desk, and she refrained from asking him to put it on so that she could take a photo and email it to her friends at home with another sardonic note about her new life. Some of those notes also went to her lover. Whose reply was always the same: “Come home.” Home. Her alone in her apartment, him in Westchester County with his wife. The ranger cleared his throat, awaiting details of her “backcountry” experience. Apparently that was what it was called here. Not – she’d noted his expres-
sion at her reply – “woods.” She made a mental note. She thought of long weekends at bed-and-breakfasts in the Adirondacks, youthful summers in Connecticut, strolls through the pleasant groves of elderly oaks and maples encircling sun-dappled glades. “It’s my first time here,” she told the ranger, intending the words to convey vast experience elsewhere. “You’re not hiking alone,” he said, not even bothering to make it a question. “Of course not,” she snapped. Surely, there would be others on the trail. He took a pamphlet from the holder on the counter, spread it open before her and recited from memory. After each sentence, he glanced up and looked directly into her eyes – his were grey – as if to emphasize the point. “This is bear country. You don’t want to surprise a bear. Make noise while you hike. Clap, bang a couple of sticks
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Readers: Spring and summer brought many firsts to Philadelphia Stories: our first contest, the Rosemont Writer’s Retreat, and the launch of PS Books, our new regional books division. Helen Mallon won the First Person Essay Contest with her essay, My Charlie Manson, published in this issue. Judge and contest sponsor, author Kelly Simmons (Standing Still), had this to say about the winning essay, “[My Charlie Manson] was a subtle, affecting essay that took a lot of courage to reveal.” We’d also like to congratulate Victoria Barnes on her runner-up essay, Anthony—A Love Story, which can be found on our website. Thanks to all who participated! To properly launch PS Books’ first novel, BroadStreet, a rocking roster of four female bands will perform at Tritone nightclub in Philadelphia on Saturday, September 27, following an 8 pm reading by the book’s author, Christine Weiser. Pre-order Broad Street on amazon.com or through the Philadelphia Stories website. Read a sneak peak, and catch an interview with Christine, also in this issue. Also coming this fall, the return of last year’s wildly popular, Push to Publish. This year’s conference will be held at Rosemont College, on October 18 with easy access to public transportation and from the Main Line and 76 (and plenty of FREE parking). Look for more details to come on the website.
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And, on a sad note, we must close this letter in dedication to our dear friend, colleague, and essay editor, Marguerite McGlinn, who passed away late this spring. We still feel her loss and know that her family does, too. We had the pleasure of publishing one of Marguerite’s stories, The Sphinx. If you missed it, you can access it online. All the best, Carla Spataro and Christine Weiser Co-Publishers
www.philadelphiastories.org
g w e n together, sing.” “Right,” she said, and forced a laugh. “My voice is terrible.” He waited until she apologized. He resumed: “If you’re camping in the backcountry –” His gaze traveled to her backpack. “We have campgrounds right here, you know,” he said. He pointed through the window toward a reef of Winnebago roofs visible above low trees. She was silent. “Hang your food at least ten feet off the ground.” She was pretty sure that, somewhere in her pack, she had some cord. It was on the checklist. Enough to hang the pack – how high again? And, how was she supposed to get it up there in the first place? Climb a tree? She nodded, trying to look bored. “Don’t sleep in the clothes you cook in.” These same instructions were in her
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Along the Canal, Manayunk by Marita McVeigh © 2008
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Dance with Me by Kristen Solecki © 2008
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books, but she was no more enlightened now as when she’d first read them. Was she supposed to hoist her clothes up into a tree along with the pack? She pictured herself standing naked, tossing her synthetic, fast-drying turtleneck and swishing cargo pants – boots, too? – up into the branches. She nodded again, quickly. “Don’t,” he said, and his voice changed, “go into the backcountry if you’ve got your period. Bears…their sense of smell is so keen …” She couldn’t meet his eyes, but could feel him looking the question at her. “Jesus,” she muttered. “No.” “You’ll want to register at the trailhead,” he said, speaking briskly again. “Everyone in your party” – She could look at him again, her level gaze boldly challenging the disbelief in his eyes – “and how many nights you, all of you, expect to be out. How many nights is that, by the way?”
“Three. Maybe four,” she said. She hadn’t come to Montana, she told herself, just to spend her weekends at the same sort of faculty parties that filled her time in New York. Even though they weren’t the same at all. She’d arrived at a barbecue the previous weekend with a chilled falanghina; had dressed carefully, in thin-soled mules, pale capris, and a black knitted-silk shell with a matching cardigan thrown over her shoulders, only to find herself silent and ridiculous among people in roomy cargo pants like the ones she’d since acquired, swigging beer straight from the bottles. Her narrow heels, perfectly suitable for sidewalks, dug into the lawn and she twisted an ankle. Someone steadied her, catching her elbow in a steely grip. Back home, health-club memberships were a given, but these people were lean in a way that differed from the meticulously toned forms hogging the treadmills and ellipticals at her gym. Sinewy, she
thought. Muscles hardened and ropy, arms and calves nicked with small scars, tans that shamelessly bisected foreheads and arms, stopped at necklines. Lucia could only listen as they talked about rock-climbing and fly-fishing and float trips, whatever those were, shivering as the sun slipped behind the mountains, deepening the evening chill for which her flimsy sweater proved no match. She was determined to join the next such conversation. Hence, this excursion into the woods. Backcountry. Whatever. The ranger was talking again, tracing trails on a map – “These get a lot of traffic on weekends, especially this one. You’re best off here. You can read a topo map, can’t you?” She had such a map, its surface a spiderweb of dashed red trails superimposed atop a mass of thin black lines looping into whorls like so many fingerprints. She pointed to a trace of red somewhat apart from the rest. “What about this one?” He shook his head. “Too isolated,” he says. “Too high. Nobody goes up there this early in the summer. There’ll be snow. It’s for experienced hikers.” Again, his gaze swept her. She had left her hair loose that morning, and she knew the effect of the elbowlength russet waves, the luminous skin, the delicate features tiresomely described as pre-Raphaelite. She was used to men staring at her. But this man looked past that, scowling one last time at her obvious inexperience, and so she thanked him abruptly and turned her back and walked toward the door, awkward in her new boots. He called after her. “I’ll be heading up that way in a couple of days. Maybe I’ll check on you. What’s your name?” She called it back over her shoulder and kept walking. The SUV she rented for the semester had felt over-large in town, but here, when the asphalt road gave way to gravel and began to climb, she appreciated its
g w e n power. She passed the trailhead he pointed out on the map and, on a whim, pulled into the crowded parking area. Just as he had told her, there was a post with a covered wooden tray containing a hikers’ log protected by a sheet of clear plastic. She added her name in large, bold letters; then, with a tight-lipped smile, that of her lover. Ex-lover, she reminded herself. She got back into the SUV, studied the map, and took a side road, amusing herself on the drive by wondering what would happen if she were to get lost. His name would be reported, too, finally linked publicly with hers. There would be newspaper stories, a brief flurry of publicity before he was revealed to be safe at home with his wife. The reverie, bitter and pleasurable as a citrus sorbet, carried her through the next thirty miles until she turned into another parking area, this one devoid of vehicles. “Good,” she breathed. The solitude she had sought since leaving New York had eluded her as her new colleagues swarmed around her with invitations to coffee, dinner and more barbecues, trying to prevent the loneliness they insisted she must feel. “Lonely is what I need,” she wanted to say, but cringed at the Garbo-esque melodrama of the words. But it was exactly what she needed, she realized as she set off into the woods – this close to the road, did it count as backcountry? – slowly adjusting to the heavy boots, the unfamiliar weight on her back. The pines stood tall and straight, with segmented orange bark, their branches trailing skeins of dark, fringed moss. Light angled through the trees, glazing a carpet of dried needles. Slowly she found her stride, steps lengthening, arms swinging easily. She inhaled deeply, rounded a bend, and followed the trail onto a ledge that traced a granite wall. To her right, the rockface climbed up and up, nearly vertical. To her left, closer than she would have liked, the ground dropped away into a
vast valley. Her gaze swept its breadth, soared to the corrugated peaks on the other side. She forced it downward with difficulty, and was rewarded with the sight of a string of lakes along the valley floor, their waters tinted jade with glacial silt. A turquoise thread of creek connected them with long, crooked stitches. When she let her breath out, she realized how long she had been holding it. She thanked someone, something. Her belief in God was provisional, but the grandeur demanded acknowledgment. Only after she traversed the ledge and followed the trail back into the trees did she realize she hadn’t thought about her lover in some time. A smile stretched her cheeks. She camped that night by a small stream, its gurgle surprisingly loud. Her pack reposed in a fork in a tree at the far side of the clearing – not ten feet above the ground by any means, but it was the best she could do – her clothes tucked neatly inside. In the end, she had indeed
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stripped, foolishly looking over her shoulder as though there was anyone to see her, donning for nighttime the soft silk long-underwear pants and pullover that were among the guidebooks’ endless recommendations. It had taken her longer than she’d thought possible to set up the supposedly idiot-proof tent, to start the stove, to boil the scant cup of water necessary for her odd, freeze-dried dinner. Still, she slid into the slick sleeping bag, grateful for the lightweight pad beneath it that had seemed such an annoyance when she’d packed. Throughout the day, though, she’d marveled at the concrete-like consistency of the earth beneath her feet, and was happy for even the thin buffer offered by the pad. She lay awake for a few moments, pulling the tent flap aside to gasp at the nearness of the stars, noting the pleasant ache in her thighs and calves, smiling at her outsize sense of accomplishment for having achieved the
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simple tasks of the tent, the stove, the meal. She tried to slow her breathing. At home, bedtime involved an elaborate ritual of a hot bath, a little cognac, earplugs, an herbal sleep mask. She rationed sleeping pills carefully, cutting them in half, and even as she wondered if she should have brought some with her into the woods, she fell asleep. Morning brought a cottony grey light and a chill that shocked her. Her breath wreathed around her head as she dipped water from the icy creek for her breakfast. Hands stiff with cold, she repeated the previous evening’s struggles with her tiny backpacking stove, pumping its primer for what seemed like forever before the flame finally caught, too slowly warming the water for a meal that purported to be scrambled eggs, but tasted instead of colored Styrofoam. Already, she was planning for her next trip, thinking longingly how easy it would have been to pack slices of thick brown bread and packets of marmalade to squeeze upon it; maybe a frozen steak that would thaw in its baggie while she hiked, providing an evening meal with actual taste and texture. At least she had thought to bring strong coffee, and, for the evenings, little bottles of wine, and that small bit of foresight cheered her, even as the sun reappeared through the trees, burning away the fog. She felt quite pleased with herself as she fumbled with the collapsed tent and stuffed her sleeping bag into its sack and set out upon the trail. In that first hour, she rediscovered the long, easy stride of the previous day, but then the trail narrowed and began to climb, folding back on itself through a forest thick with spiky underbrush that caught repeatedly at her hair. Lucia stopped and slid the heavy pack from
On the Dock by Pauline Braun © 2008 her shoulders, fumbling in it for a bandanna that she twisted around her hair. She tried combing through its snarls with her fingers, dislodging pine needles and bits of leaves, and finally gave up, shrugging into the pack again and stepping grimly back onto a trail quickly growing wearisome. At first, the rise was gradual, but then the switchbacks came more frequently, and Lucia’s calves and lungs competed in fiery protest. The trees grew thick overhead, blotting out the sun, a mercy, she thought, as sweat dampened her shirt. Gnats whined at her ears, fastening themselves to the corners of her eyes and mouth. She breathed noisily through her nose, suppressing the searing gasps that would only draw in the insects. Somewhere deep within the pack was the recommended repellant, but she feared that if she stopped, the bugs would set upon her even more fiercely in the time it would take to unearth it. She saw an opening in the trees and moved more quickly, shoving aside thin, supple branches. She released them too soon, and they lashed back
across her face. She touched a finger to her stinging cheek, brought it away bright with a drop of blood. She smeared the back of her hand across her face, then swiped it across her eyes, damp with tears of frustration. It occurred to her that despite the ranger’s warning against hiking alone, she was glad no one was there to see her struggles, and then she barely had time to reflect upon the fact that she had not seen a single person in a day and a half when the bear ambled onto the trail in front of her and stopped. She had stepped into a clearing, and the sun was high and strong above her. She felt it warm on her back, and a soft breeze bent the tops of the pines and dried the sweat on her shirt and she thought it was far too pretty a morning for what was about to happen. The bear didn’t move, and neither did she and so there was plenty of time for her to register the characteristics the ranger had listed for her – the dished face, the humped shoulders, the gingery fur. “If you encounter one,” he’d said, “don’t look it in the eye. They see that as
g w e n a challenge.” But she couldn’t help it; the bear was looking directly at her, its eyes honeyed and liquid, and when it stood to peer down at her from a better vantage point, she realized it was male and that he was aroused (she would learn about the baculum only later). Oddly, the sight steadied her. She was familiar with this reaction and, unconsciously, she touched her hand to her hair, lifting it from her neck, the movement loosening the inexpertly tied bandanna so that it fell away and her hair flowed over her shoulders. The bear made a keening noise and fell heavily back down onto his forepaws and took a step toward her. She remembered how the ranger told her to play dead, and she crouched on the ground, wrapping her arms around her head (“Protect your neck, cover those big arteries.”) the way she did in elementary school when she and her classmates bent beneath their insubstantial wooden desks against the vaporizing powers of the atomic bombs. Through slitted eyes she saw his claws arced against the earth of the trail just inches from her nose, registered the hot breath against her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt his snout, cool and dry, against her elbow and she braced for the clamp of jaw, the pierce of fang, but he merely nudged her arm away from her head and put his nose to her cheek. She felt it grow moist and thought she must be crying again, but realized it was his tongue, gently cleaning her face, lapping the length of the scratch, touching carefully to the corners of her eyes and lips, flicking away an errant gnat. Then he pressed his head tightly to hers and held it there a long minute as she breathed in his musky scent, withdrawing so quietly that it was some moments before she realized he was truly gone. She stood slowly, unfolding her limbs as though they were strange to her. The sun drenched her in warmth, but
she found herself shivering, noted the chattering noise that at first she thought was a woodpecker, but turned out to be her teeth. She turned slowly, a full circle, but saw nothing. Even the wind had died, and the trees stood like sculptures against the bowl of sky. She had an impulse to wonder if she’d imagined everything, but could not yield to it; there, heading back down the trail the way she had come, were prints sunk into the crumbly earth, big as soup plates, each preceded by a row of deep holes poked by those claws. She moved her
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mouth experimentally, touched her tongue to a hair caught in her lips, and when she pulled it away, she found it both shorter and thicker than her own, like a strand of copper wire. So it had happened. She rolled the hair between her fingers, then shoved it deep into one of the pockets of her cargo pants. From another pocket, she withdrew her cell phone, but it told her, as it had nearly from the moment she had entered the park, that she was out of range of any signal. Her legs trembled, but when she shoved one before her, it worked, and so
Midway By Hayden Saunier The two-headed pig was jammed into a jar so I couldn’t tell it from the cat with two bodies or the cloven-hoofed devil baby discovered dead in a dumpster in New Jersey but Snake Girl was alive— no arms, no legs, no bones in her body. The word illusion floated, pale grey, like a misty ocean underneath her name, but I was distracted by two men hosing down the world’s smallest horse so I only remembered that later. Snake Girl was alive, a woman in her twenties, her head stuck through a hole in a fake table and wound around with perfect fake snake coils. She wore her hair in bangs and flicked her eyes from side to side but mostly she looked tired. I asked her how she was, she answered: cold. After that, there wasn’t much to say. I wandered up and down; I couldn’t go. The horse looked like a long-necked, stump-legged dog and I, well, I’d finally figured out I was part of the show. Hayden Saunier’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Nimrod, Margie, 5 A.M., Drunken Boat and Philadelphia Stories. Her book of poetry, Tips For Domestic Travel, is due out in Spring 2009 from Black Lawrence Press.
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she shoved the other, and eventually she discovered herself walking up the trail again. It seemed insane to head more deeply into the woods, but she didn’t dare return the way she’d come for fear of seeing the bear again. The trail described a twenty-eight-mile loop and she had already hiked nearly ten of those; two more nights would bring her back to the parking area. She wondered if the bear had really gone, or if it would return to stalk her; wondered if there were more bears ahead. She walked and cried, trying to push away the regret swelling within her for choosing such a lightly traveled route. She vowed to hike farther than she had planned each day so as to spend only a single night more on the trail. The thought cheered her, and she moved more quickly, hiking on legs grown rubbery until it was nearly dark, noticing little about her surroundings. She stopped reluctantly where a beaver dam across a creek formed a small pond and, with hands shaking anew, raised her tent in the middle of the meadow, thinking it less likely that a bear would creep out of the trees toward her. She was hungry, but feared that even the tasteless, strangely textured substances within her freeze-dried packets would prove too much of a temptation, so she crawled into her sleeping bag and listened to her stomach rumbling. Improbably, she fell asleep just as abruptly as the night before, waking to the same grey fog that had heralded the previous morning. She was ravenous, and headachey from going so long without food. She disentangled herself from the sleeping bag, and with some apprehension, unzipped the tent and tentatively put her face to the opening. The first thing she saw were the fish, three trout, water beaded upon scales whose rainbow hues still shone bright, their perfection marred only by the puncture marks of the large claws. The second thing she noticed were the footprints across the dew-glistening meadow, the outsize
SISTAH by Linda La Rose © 2008 depressions leading into the trees. The last thing she saw was the large circle of flattened grass not eight feet away. She crawled from the tent, stood slowly, then tiptoed barefoot to its center. The grass beneath her feet was still warm. She curled her toes into it, contemplated the footprints, then turned to the trout. Her stomach lurched demandingly, and within minutes, she had inexpertly gutted them with her Swiss Army knife, scraped away their scales, and sliced them into ragged fillets. She hastily pumped the little stove into life, boiled water for coffee, then sautéed the trout fillets. It was awk-
ward – she had neither butter nor oil and they stuck to the pan, so hot when she scraped them free that they burnt her tongue, but the flesh was moist and delicate and delicious, and she forced herself to slow down and savor it, alternating bites with gulps of coffee as the sun chased off the fog. An indignant beaver surfaced in the pond, saw her, slapped its tail against the glacier-green water and dived deep. In the trees at the edge of the clearing, a raven croaked and another flapped to join it, the pair of them clearly waiting for her scraps, and she rose and stretched and laughed aloud and
g w e n told herself that she had gone crazy, truly out of her mind, if she what she imagined was happening was any kind of real at all. Still, that night, her final one on the trail, she ostentatiously lingered overlong beside a creek, stripping off her shirt and bra and splashing icy water on her face and chest and under her arms, and she was not at all surprised to find the still-warm rabbit’s carcass beside the tent when she returned, its neck neatly broken by what appeared to be a single, decisive blow. Skinning it took some doing, but she managed, and she simmered the pieces in some of her wine, and although she might have wished for some mushrooms, a little thyme and chervil, a quick grind of coarse pepper, and a dusting of flour just to bring the sauce together, still, it was a passable meal, better than passable, and after she ate half the rabbit, and finished most of the wine, she lay back in the grass and let the stars do their slow cartwheel overhead until she was nearly asleep. But before she crept into her tent, she took the uneaten pieces of rabbit, and put them on a rock some distance – but not a great distance – from the tent, and found a good-size stone with a hollow in it, and poured the last of the wine into the depression. Then, standing before her tent as the moon rose, she took off all of her clothes (“Don’t sleep in the clothes you cook in.”) piece by slow piece, and stood a long moment in the moonlight before dropping to her knees and easing into the tent. Yet again, she slept deeply, but not so soundly that she was unaware of the warmth just on the other side of the tent wall, so close that she knew if she were to put her hand to the flimsy nylon shell and push just the slightest bit, she would feel a mound of muscle and the regular rise and fall of deep, yearning breaths. In the morning, there was no trace of the wine and rabbit, but there were more trout, beside a heap of purple-black
huckleberries. She ate them one by one, bursting them against her palate with her tongue, closing her eyes against the intensity of the flavor. When she opened them, he stood before her, fixing her with the same golden gaze. He waited patiently while she gathered her things, then walked beside her down the trail. At some point, she reached out and rested her hand upon his shoulder, absorbing the heat of the sun-warmed fur, pressing her fingers against him so as to sense the blood coursing just beneath the skin. He hesitated when they approached the trailhead. But they had already come
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too far to turn back, and she looked at him and nodded, and so of course he came home with her, and that is how he became her bear husband.
Gwen Florio first worked in the West during the 1990s as a Denver-based national correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer. During her time at the Inquirer, she was also a member of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writers Group. She has received two prose grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a residency from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Florio now lives in Missoula, MO, where she is city editor for the Missoulian newspaper. She is afraid of bears.
DNA: Memory By Teresa Méndez-Quigley So we were watching a documentary on cows standing not in fields of green grass like we saw Upstate, but on cement, squeezed in together with black surfaces from their droppings that get washed up into lagoons and run off into waterways, and how they still moo, but mostly how they only get to eat corn, though I’m sure they recall in their DNA memory the way a blade of grass felt in their mouths, how the breeze cooled them by the creek rippling beneath an old weeping willow and how they hope to rub up against a tree to scratch their hind quarters or be able to switch their tails to tag a fly. Teresa Méndez-Quigley, a Philly native, was selected Montgomery County Poet Laureate by Ellen Bryant Voigt in 2004. Her poems have appeared in four volumes of the Mad Poets Review, Drexel Online Journal, Philadelphia Poets, and many more.
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OUT OF NOWHERE s the three men rush the cab – your cab – the truth hits: what only happens to others is about to happen to you. You are not the exception. Moments ago, you and your Aussie boyfriend were splurging in a Bogotá bistro: grilled steaks, bottles of wine, and scoops of coke on an ATM card going black on the sides from acids. The waiter had looked away each time you ambled to the rest room. And here’s the killer: after thanking you for the fat tip, he’d offered to call a cab (neither of you had cells). But something about his eagerness, Davy had muttered, already paranoid. He’d probably call a friend, one of those dodgy drivers, saying, these gringos are loaded. And careless. Graciously, you’d answered, no gracias, and instead hailed a taxi off the street. Like you’d been told not to do a million times. So here you both are, your hearts beating merengue, the coke redundant, the air around you stinking of fake pines and human grease. Davy’s round face suddenly looks gaunt. A tsunami of silence then slammed car doors and heavy breathing. This is how it’s going to go, the one now in the passenger seat barks in Spanish. You and Davy get sandwiched between the other two. You can’t make out their features and never will. Davy lets out a gurgling holler and stomps his feet as if running in place. A child scared out of his wits. Then the one in the front pulls out a gun. The two of you dutifully unclasp your watches, unsnap your wallets and relinquish money, debit cards and pin numbers. For a rippling moment, you believe you may have to open something else as a sweaty hand reaches around Davy to caress your head, and the cab mazes deeper into unknown neighbor-
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Family Tree by Todd Marrone © 2008 hoods. You get a flash of yourself, flopping like a fish on the pavement as your jeans get yanked down and shadowed faces land on your face and neck. You imagine the aftermath: you and Davy
lying face down, the sound of air being ripped by bullets. You teeter on a precipice, flabbergasted by this possible fate. And to think it would be nothing personal, life just a
o u t minefield of ever-shifting odds. But then, out of nowhere, peacefulness descends. Or maybe it’s passiveness. You let go, as if on a hilltop, allowing the sky to unfurl you into a mound of autumn leaves. They just want your money. This isn’t it. You’ll see your family again. Breathe in real pine trees again. You’ll get sober, dump Davy, study for the LSAT... The gun-holder gently orders, close your eyes, like a parent putting you to sleep. Later he’s dropped off to procure cash from your accounts, earning two month’s wages in an hour. You can almost hear the purr of the machine. The other two ask what you do, if your boyfriend speaks Spanish. You’re a receptionist at a law firm and no, he doesn’t. The taxi driver just coasts along and you wonder what his cut is. Before the trio had emerged from peripheries, you’d sensed you were headed the wrong way, but couldn’t summon the boldness to order, “Stop. This isn’t it.” But now words are tumbling, from nowhere again. You know the deal, you fib, because this has happened before. This is your second “paseo milionario,” as they’ve dubbed this hold-up. This is old hat, your calm voice suggests. No, this made-up gang hadn’t hurt you because you had cooperated. Just like you and Davy were doing now. Neither of you were going to trade your lives for
money. “Good girl,” the stroker says in his husky, friend-like Spanish. “That’s the way.” You have the temerity to ask for enough cash to escape the shanty town you’re about to be dropped off in. The stroker says, “But of course,” though nat-
Transparency By Anthony Nannetti In a better world Bukowski gets a postage stamp, poetry workshops include vocational training, and mega hardware stores hang signs all around saying Put that shit back before you hurt yourself --while you, Inamorata, draped only in barrier tape, read me my Miranda rights. Anthony Nannetti’s poems have appeared in UK Guardian Unlimited and online in Ygdrasil. He lives in the Bella Vista area of Philadelphia with his wife and two daughters.
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urally he leaves you and your mute boyfriend peso-less, surrounded by houses that look like fangs in the dark. Finally, another cab catches your semaphore code for help and takes you to a friend who pays the driver and pours two glasses of scotch. You don’t touch yours. At some point Davy gets up for more ice, and your friend leans in and calls you brave. Numbed by everything, you shrug. Brave? You turn the word over like a shirt you’re not sure will fit. What had you been more afraid of, really, death? Or feeling forever hijacked, speeding in the wrong direction, unable to say, this isn’t it? Gwen Florio first worked in the West during the 1990s as a Denver-based national correspondent for The Philadelphia Inquirer. During her time at the Inquirer, she was also a member of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writers Group. She has received two prose grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a residency from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Florio now lives in Missoula, MO, where she is city editor for the Missoulian newspaper. She is afraid of bears.
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WHAT NOT TO SUBMIT Aimee LaBrie
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Though I have not written any interesting fiction in, oh, years, I still find it easy to judge the writing of others. This impulse comes not just from having taken years of workshops alongside teaching undergraduate writing, but also from my own dark little heart, which says something like, Well, I may not be writing, but at least I’m not writing this kind of stuff. However, I do think this list of things not to do can be helpful in avoiding common errors that seem to happen again and again in beginning writing.
the entire story on its head. For instance, you find out that the narrator, who seems like this total womanizer (keeps referring to women as “bitches”) is really….a golden retriever!
1. Having a first person narrator who turns out to be dead at the end. As in: “And then he shot me dead...” Or, “And that’s how I died that day.” Because, really, how is the narrator telling the story then? (Also, it violates rule #3, see below). Same goes for: “And it was all a dream.”
5. Not a big fan of the “crazy narrator” story. Unreliable narrator: fine. Nutso: no good. It’s difficult to create an interesting, complex, believable crazy, and very easy to fall back on stereotypes from movies and clichéd endings such as the narrator making plans to escape his padded cell.
2. Cramming 15 characters into a ten page story. Unless you’re George Saunders and using this technique satirically, the only thing it does is give your reader a headache: “Tommy opened the door. ‘Hi, Timmy,’ he said. Tony was in the kitchen, blending the drinks with Rich. ‘Come on in,’ called Joe from the living room where he was playing cards with Jack, Jim, Todd, and Dan. ‘Sam called,’ announced the man with the blue suit from the top of the stairs. The dog, Jeff, barked. ‘We’re in for it now,’ said a familiar voice.”
6. Third person stories where the point of view shifts suddenly and for no reason. You’ll be reading a story written in third-person limited (inside the mind of just one person) for the first 10 pages, and suddenly get a random interior thought from a periphery character. Often, the thought doesn’t impact the story and so serves to just be jarring: “His sister Mary wondered why it was that grapes were round.”
3. Again, unless you are a fantabulous writer or a blood relation of O. Henry, the “ah-ha” ending most often leaves your reader feeling tricked and cheated. The “ah-ha” ending occurs when there is a final huge reveal at the end that turns
4. For literary journals, don’t submit genre fiction. That means your story cannot contain elves or unicorns or hobbits or dragons or vampires or swords and most especially not elves on dragons with swords chasing unicorn-riding, undead hobbits.
7. I’ve been told that you’re also not supposed to write stories about other writers, cancer, break-ups or mental illness. I know this rule, and yet, I have attempted to write all of those stories with varying degrees of failure. 8. Nonfiction masquerading as fiction. You can spot these pieces because they
contain more “telling” rather than “showing.” If you happen to workshop such a piece, the author’s defense to criticism will be “well, that’s the way it happened, so…” So, write it as an essay. 9. Stories where the narrator is an animal or an inanimate object. My friend Luke recently told me about a girl in one of his workshops who turned in a story called “Sweat Beads.” In the story, the sweat beads referred to the sweat between the breasts of the female character. In any case, cats, trees, mailboxes, etc. do not make compelling narrators outside of children’s books. 10. Avoid sound effects in writing unless you’re writing a graphic novel (“The car back-fired with a ker-blam, startling the owl who cried hoot-hoot, setting off the sprinklers, which went tsk-tsk-tsk amid the frat boys yelling whoo-hoo!”) Same goes for exclamation points! Or the overuse of adverbs (“she advised guiltily, knowing truly that she too was particularly given to this gravely amateur error”). Or the use of the participle clause. Example: “Revving the engine on his motorcycle, the two-year old began to wail“ (makes it sound like the two year old is about to take off on a Harley).
But you know what? Write whatever the hell you want. Someone famous once said that the secret to writing is “Ass in chair.” At first, I thought that meant you had to be a jackass to sit down to write. Later, I realized it means that as long as you’re showing up and sitting down in front of the page, you’ve already started to succeed. So go ahead. Write it.
NEW FROM LOCAL AUTHORS
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MY CHARLIE MANSON ur wedding was in a graveyard in November darkness. I had recently turned eighteen, old enough to make hash of my life and do it legally, and my fiancée, Kemp, was forty-two. I wore light makeup and under a raincoat, my best dress of striped wool. My hair was long and straight, and my MaryJane style shoes were better suited to a little girl. I felt numb and disconnected, as if I were about to sign up after stumbling into in a meeting of bomb-assembling anarchists. I was also a little disappointed. It would have been festive to show off my dress, but the night was too chilly to take the raincoat off. A brick wall surrounded the graveyard of Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia’s Old City; it was the nearest thing we had to a park, given where Kemp and I were living in the city. I was worried that someone who belonged to the church would boot us off the property, even though Kemp said they’d told him we could do anything on the premises, as long as it was legal and took place outside the church. The absence of light at the wedding was due to a miscalculation. We’d scheduled the ceremony for five p.m. We didn’t realize—but how could my physicstrained fiancé not have realized?—that light fails early once autumn cold begins to shrivel the sycamore leaves. I don’t remember what Kemp wore that night, but he was a man who considered his coiffure. He bleached his dark hair brassy blond on the optimistic—but faulty—premise that if his hair were similar in color to his scalp, he could pass himself off as not-balding. The stringy combover rarely stayed put, but he had an appealing, little-boy grin and nice, agate-colored eyes. He was endlessly authoritative when relating my
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Limes & Lemons by Todd Marrone © 2008 own passion, visual art, to his interest in science. He encouraged me even as he dictated the kind of painting I did. You’re an artist now, he said. Why wait till you’re twenty-one to call yourself one? From him I learned terms like sexual revolution and Renaissance man. Years later, I found out from a former student of Kemp’s that in the early days of our relationship, he pinned my panties to the wall of his apartment.
Nobody gave me away at the wedding. My father stayed away, but my mother showed up with an elderly friend for moral support. The aisle I walked down was the worn brick path on which Kemp and I met the Ethical Culture minister. Mr. Smith was not exactly a believer, not Episcopalian, nor Quaker, as my family was, but the price he’d quoted to do the ceremony must have been right because Kemp hired him.
m y As I stood in the darkness beside the tilted gravestones of long-dead Episcopalians, my mother’s mute presence felt like the still point of tradition from which my adolescence had fled. Perhaps her inscrutable sense of duty drew her; perhaps she felt compelled to witness the unthinkable. Introductions were made, hands shaken. My mother didn’t kiss me, and I looked away to the brick wall, thinking I had dragged her into something cheap. At the head of our tight circle, the minister held his book at an unnatural angle to catch the sallow illumination of a street lamp. He read from Genesis about a man leaving his parents and cleaving unto his wife. But I’m the one who’s leaving, I thought. The June before our wedding, I had graduated from Germantown Friends, a private school where Kemp had been a science teacher. I was a ‘lifer’ there: K
through 12. My great-grandmother, my grandfather, my father’s first cousin, and my mother had all gone there. It was a world in which the staid traditions of Philadelphia Quakerism—meeting membership by ‘birthright’ or family succession and the quiet tending of old wealth—set the stage for their own eclipse, at least in part, by their liberal embrace of the social revolutions of the 60s and 70s. As a teenager, I was proud to be such a revolutionary, convinced that Kemp was proof of my emancipation. As my great-grandmother had, I attended mandatory weekly meeting for worship in a plain, high-ceilinged room with rows of wooden benches, where faintly rippled, tall glass windows revealed a pensive sky. Quaker meeting for worship is simple. People steep themselves in relaxed silence, waiting until God’s spirit moves
After Nothing By Deborah Derrickson Kossmann He took my hand that grey day dark, muscled trees emptied of birds. As if I were watching a grainy video myself, led away. The man was strong, all twists, low voice. It’s silent. Shouldn’t have taken the shortcut. There’s nothing after the path. See maybe I was meant to. Nothing after the Or had to. Deborah Derrickson Kossmann won the Short Memoir Competition at the 2007 First Person Arts Festival in Philadelphia. Her essay, “Why We Needed a Prenup With Our Contractor” was published as a “Modern Love” column in The New York Times. Her other essays have appeared in many other journals and magazines. She is a psychologist in private practice in Langhorne and Havertown
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someone to speak. The first time I encountered Kemp was when he stood up in meeting. I don’t remember much of what he said—I believe it had to do with Guernica, Picasso’s tortured painting of the Spanish Civil War—but his mouth revealed the subtle overflow of his heart. Kemp was a predator on the lookout, and I had a vulnerable and sensitive ear. A few days afterward, I described on lined notebook paper how impressed I was by his brief talk. At thirteen, I was reluctant to speak my own name out loud, and I avoided writing it except on school papers. With my face latticed behind untrimmed hair, I gave him my unsigned note at a chance encounter on the stairs of the science building. The next week, one of his students handed me his reply. All I remember is one line: i don’t even know your name. His use of the lowercase “i” impressed me; it seemed poetic and humble; like e.e. cummings. I was in eighth grade. He got fired at the end of my ninth grade year for ‘inappropriate conduct,’ but I never found out whether the school knew our relationship was indeed a sexual one. From my point of view, little changed with his firing; I simply continued seeing him on the sly. At the end of our wedding ceremony, the minister intoned the traditional warning: “If anyone…let him speak now, or forever hold his peace.” Silence crackled like a pause in a military assault. I glanced at the blue silk scarf tucked into the neck of my mother’s coat, wondering if she would yell or perhaps grab the vows from Mr. Smith and tear them up. My eyes slipped down to her no-longerparallel feet. No one stirred. No words were spoken. Because nothing appreciably changed, the minister’s words felt like an incantation, the power of which would only be revealed over time: I now pronounce you husband and wife… The night speeded up. My mother bid me goodbye, sort of, and staggered
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back to her respectably antiqued house on the arm of her friend. Kemp and I had arranged to meet a few friends in our city apartment. I proceeded to get drunk and fell asleep fully clothed in the bathtub. He woke me in the middle of the night. It was time to clean up. At the time, I believed that my parents would count me as dead, but as if my heart were swathed in bandages, the conviction brought no feeling. My loyalty to my new husband could have fueled an insurgency. A few weeks after the wedding, I received a set of place mats from my parents. Other than this, we had very little contact.
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I was married for years before my commitment disintegrated. Cut off from my family and my privileged life, and perhaps the only one in my graduating class not to go to college, I explored the realm of the spirit. Years of Quaker worship spent in listening silence had cultivated my instinct for the reality of the unseen. Lonely, I responded when televangelists told me that God, the spirit, was also a person whom I could know. I was used to doing outrageous things. Belief wasn’t a huge stretch. The conservative church teaching fueled my zeal to serve my husband, to smile when he cuffed me, and to organize his drawer of unmatched socks, although he claimed I’d interfered with his ‘system.’ Whatever the personal cost, my life had an aura of divine sanction. My church friends didn’t agree; they spoke of give and take, of mutual submission. If one of them criticized Kemp, I sharply defended an alcoholic man whose permission I had to seek to go out to dinner with my brother, now back in town after college. You don’t understand, I argued. You don’t know what he really is. Consider the loyalty of the Manson Family. Or the seductive influence of those who believe it pleases God to strap a bomb to a mentally challenged man and send him into a marketplace when the whole town is shopping. When
there’s enough of an emotional payoff, fanaticism can trump rational morality. The reality is that even if someone does something really, really nasty, there may be a girl who won’t stop loving him. Kemp, in fact, had not been my first love. An English cousin of my mother’s had visited us when I was six years old. I adored Tony. With his open lap and his gentle teasing, he charmed me. He enticed. He was handsome as a wolf. Early one Saturday morning, I crept up to our third-floor guest room to surprise him; I remember the sensation of flight on the stairs. Tony was happy when I appeared in the bathroom, where he stood in his boxers and undershirt, having just shaved. He closed the door. He imprinted on my body and in my brain things that I was compelled to forget. Afterward, he said: Don’t tell anyone you came up here today. While my parents fussed over breakfast downstairs, I stood in the weird light of my bedroom. What should I do? Pray? No. God was about Now I lay me down to sleep and Be present at our table Lord…He wasn’t concerned with the fallout from events that couldn’t even be named. Tell my parents that Tony had done something bad? But they would believe him and not me. In terror I saw that my mind would snap like a china plate should they turn from me in this way, and I resolved never to think about Tony again. Adolescence churned up more than the usual burden of confusions. In seventh grade, I considered myself preternaturally grown up, advanced beyond other girls who worried about boy crushes and parties, yet I felt envious to the point of nausea when no one passed me notes in class. Kemp was an escape from middle school drama. He also offered me a chance to revisit the moral and spiritual dilemmas instigated when Tony’s eyes changed from inviting to hard and glittering. In his mesmeric influence, Kemp was not unlike Charles Manson, minus the highly developed people skills.
When we were in high school, my brother challenged my father about the relationship: “Why don’t you put a stop to it?” “Your mother and I don’t want your sister’s name in the papers,” was his response. The damage Kemp inflicted wasn’t spectacular enough to make the newspaper. Fortunately, Kemp’s precocious interest in sex with schoolgirls translated into beer-fueled impotence in marriage. I wasn’t really interested in Eros, anyway. I was an alchemist who poured out devotion in an attempt to transmute sleaze into gold. Kemp needed a housekeeper, nursemaid, and receptacle for his rants. In our last few years together, I learned to manage him. When he dissected my flaws with his maddeningly persuasive condemnation, instead of defending myself I developed the instincts of survival in a cage. Nodding. Yes-ing. Pretending to swallow his wisdom. After four quarts of beer, he’d fall asleep, sometimes with his eyes half-open, and I would escape for a walk in the woods. Life was simultaneously boring and chaotic. But thanks to my long-suffering and, ultimately, supportive parents, I went to Tyler School of Art and obtained a degree. Clarity came to me, over time, bit by bit. The major revolution occurred after nine years of marriage. Kemp’s mother, a serious churchgoer, had gotten me to visit a hand-clapping fundamentalist congregation. It was God on your taste buds as against the cerebral quiet of Quaker meeting. At my progressive school, I’d envied the Black kids for the easy, familial solidarity they shared. Now I met cheerfully zealous people who might not have recognized the names of most of the poets I’d studied in my senior English seminar at Germantown Friends, but they invited me to their houses, hugged expansively, and called me “sister.” And they meant it. One summer, my mother-in-law invited
h e l e n me to a church conference, and Kemp urged me to attend, since he transformed himself into an authority on any topic that caught my interest. He expected me to come home chastened for my sins, and he sent me off with certain verses underlined in my Bible as preparation. Maybe I was sick of having glasses of beer tossed into bookshelves I had recently cleaned, or maybe my heart was exhausted. I didn’t expect anything from the conference beyond company for my loneliness and the possibility of becoming a better person. But that week, I began to tie the Christian notion of God as father around the fragmented pieces of my inner self. Throughout the last night there, I sat hyper-alert in my quiet dorm room, praying and touching the parts of my body I didn’t like. I repeated over and over, in shock and delight, that my mouth God loved me—m that binged on junk food, my breasts, my pallid skin. Something was re-ordering my spiritual DNA. On the long train ride home, I knew things were going to change. Kemp’s Mansonesque diatribes began to sound bombastic, even silly. He told me that what stood between me and God’s love was the fact that I had just rolled my eyes, revealing that my nature was as stiff-necked as the Israelites wandering in the desert, I didn’t argue or pretend to agree. I started sassing back. I moved out after he described a dream he’d had, involving me and a knife. I went home to my parents. It was a relief to say, “You were right about
him.” Our kisses were unpracticed and stiff, but genuine. I lived with them for a while, waiting for my divorce to finalize and figuring out what to do with my life. Today, those shadow years lie at the periphery of my thoughts. I am happy and productive. I am married again— this time, to a gentle and loving man. I never saw Kemp or Tony again, but a
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ond, ordinary life. There was a time when I believed I’d spend the rest of my life in a grubby apartment, the target of Kemp’s theories that I was the genetic inferior of people who were outgoing and successful. Scary as each hour of my new life could be, I lived it in the light of day.
Today, my children know only that I was married before. That I was young and he was old. That I made a mistake. They know that I have returned to Quakerism from a more conservative place, but they are not aware that the thick walls of fundamentalism once offered refuge for my sanity. Some day, when they’re ready, I’ll tell them this story. But am I the one who hesitates, knowing that their vision of order in the world is colored, however subtly, by their view of me? Once they know, they will think no less of me. They’ll also realize that I used to be pretty strange, the kind of kid that they would choose to avoid. My straightforward parental authority has tangled roots. For now, I’m simply Mom, who volunteers at the school store, Native by Suzanne Comer © 2008 someone who would never do mental breakdown while pregnant with anything seriously outrageous or unsafe. my first child catapulted me into a war. I I wish I could remain simple forever. had dismissed my past as over and done. I’ll introduce my story casually, as if I’d been to hell and back, but here, pain were not at its heart. “It was only reflected in my husband’s admiring face, love,” I’ll them. “Granted, that can be complicated.” were my years of Jubilee. But as I stared at the pattern on the Persian rug in my Helen Mallon received her MFA degree in Fiction therapist’s office session after session, my Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2005. She past proved to be tenacious as vermin. is completing a novel, Quaker Playboy Leaves Legacy of Confusion (working title). Her poetry chapbook from As a young mother, while my heart Finishing Line Press is titled Bone China. Her story, sometimes threatened to explode under “Astral Projection” is in the Best of Philadelphia Stories the pressure of change, I never lost my Anthology 2007. “Biology” won the Editor’s Choice Award in issue #5 of Relief: A Christian Journal. gratitude at having been granted a sec-
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QUESTIONS ABOUT BROAD STREET Broad Street is set in Philadelphia during the height of the grunge-rock scene of the early-nineties. Why did you choose this setting, and how does it factor into the story? I was in a Philadelphia band called Mae Pang, which was mainly a chick rock garage band that started in the mid-90s. It was a great time for garage and underground rock. We saw bands like Nirvana at a small Philly rock club Photo by Andrea Cipriani called JC Dobbs before “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit. Weeks later, they were playing arena shows. We saw Dinosaur Jr. and Tad and Mudhoney and they were all great, but it was really the women that inspired us — performers like PJ Harvey and Liz Phair and Hole and The Breeders. I remember this time as being wild and magical, and those moments inspired me to write a book about the time and the experience. The main characters in Broad Street, Kit and Margo, make a drunken pact to form a band, ostensibly to get back at the overbearing men in their lives, but as the novel progresses, music becomes an outlet for them. Do you see the arts in general and music in particular as liberating? I think having art in a balanced life—whether it’s writing or playing an instrument or knitting—finding that one thing that you love to do just to do it—can be incredibly liberating and satisfying. Finding that balance is important, but it can be tough. It’s great to pour your soul into a piece of art, but I think you still have to stay connected to the world. I believe life inspires art, and if you cut yourself off from life and focus only on the art, you lose a great source of material. In Broad Street, for example, Kit thinks that if her band just became famous, then all would be right in her world. She learns that isn’t true. I think women are especially pressured to do it all, and our challenge becomes how to carve out some time for ourselves in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us.
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don’t necessarily mind that they get attention because they look good and are considered by some a novelty act. This metaphor could ring true in a lot of areas of work and life. Sex is such a huge part of our culture, it’s hard to figure out how everyone can be treated exactly the same way when so many judgments are made based on the way someone looks. In addition to making a name for their band in the music industry, Kit and Margo also have to deal with a number of personal issues. For example, they both have interesting relationships with their parents: Kit thinks she’ll never measure up to her father’s expectations, and Margo’s parents worked on the fringes of pop-music superstardom before settling down to raise a family. Why the interest in family? What draws you to such issues as a writer? I think the power of family history is huge. We’re all shaped by the way we’re raised, whether it’s rebelling against our families or striving to be accepted by them. Often times, this behavior is repeated in our lives with parent substitutes, like a boss or an audience. I’m fascinated by people’s family histories and what that often reveals about their choices and personalities. For example, like Kit, I am very influenced by my father who always pushed me to question authority, strive for social justice, and pursue a balanced life of work and art. I have a job, a kid, a husband, a band, a book, a charity – and it’s tough balancing all of these things sometimes. But I feel I wear all of these hats better because I am lucky enough to have this whole package. Your novel is the first from PS Books, the publishers behind the widely read Philadelphia Stories magazine. What’s your relationship to Philadelphia? Do you find that there’s a thriving literary community there? What does Philadelphia have to offer the burgeoning (or established, for that matter) author that other cities might not have? I think Philadelphia has a bad cultural rap. People who aren’t familiar with the city still hear “Philly” and think: Rocky, cheesesteaks, and The Hooters. And while these are all great Philly icons, we also have a rich, diverse cultural voice that often gets drowned out by New York. I’ve lived in many places, but when I moved to Philadelphia, I fell in love with the city. It’s humble, and raw, and welcoming. Philly is nothing like New York or Chicago or Paris. It’s more like a big town with lots of neighborhood flavors that become rich sources of inspiration for writing and art. I’ve never felt more at home.
20 On a related topic, do you see yourself as a feminist writer?
I think “feminist” has many meanings to many people, and unfortunately not always positive. To me, a feminist is someone who advocates equal rights for women. Based on that definition, I suppose you could say I’m a feminist writer. Broad Street illustrates the challenge of being a girl in a boys’ rock club. Kit and Margo strive to be equal to their male musician peers, but they
Any plans for a follow-up to Broad Street? I have completed a sequel that picks up with Kit and Margo ten years later. Without giving too much away, things don’t turn out exactly as they expected (otherwise, what would I write about?), but their adventure continues in a new and surprising way.
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BROAD STREET (NOVEL EXCERPT)
I
took the subway to the party in Center City. As I approached the address of the old brownstone, I heard the muffled sound of voices and the latest Nirvana album. I felt a wash of panic. I could be back home and under my blanket in twenty minutes; but my feet kept moving forward. I rang the bell, and was buzzed in. The party was a crowded gathering of hipsters. I scanned the room for familiar faces, feeling stupid. The few I recognized looked at me, then quickly turned away. Finally, I spotted Noelle. “Hey Kit,” she smiled. Her sandy hair hung neatly around a tiny, plain face. She gave me a hug. Noelle would be one of many mutual friends walking the tightrope between the fallen couple. “Hi Noelle,” I said. “Who’s having this party, anyway?” “Pete and his girlfriend, Margo.” She nodded toward a guy talking to a group of people. “Pete’s in that band, Smarmy. And that’s Margo over there.” Noelle pointed to another corner. My eyes followed her finger to the corner of the room. Margo was tall and curvy, her long black hair shining with streaks of midnight blue. She wore a low-cut red satin dress that hugged her figure, and held a martini and cigarette gracefully in one hand as she smiled at a chatting male guest. I felt flat-chested and plain. “I’ll introduce you.” My heart thudded noisily as I followed Noelle. “Hey Margo,” Noelle said. “This is my friend, Kit.” Margo moved her cool smile away from the guy to fix her eyes on me. She inhaled deeply from her cigarette. I felt like a frog pinned down to a board, a scalpel dangling above me.
“Don’t you go out with Dale?” she asked. Noelle gasped. “I used to,” I said, attempting my cheeriest tone. “Oh. Sorry,” she said.. “It’s all right,” I mumbled. Margo’s eyes continued to scan the room. I fiddled nervously with the clasp of my purse. After a moment, she looked back at Noelle and me. “So,” she said in a bored tone. “Can I get you guys a drink?” “I’m going to go grab a beer outside,” Noelle said. Just as I was about to follow Noelle’s lead, Margo turned her piercing poolblue gaze toward me, and smiled with aloof politeness. “How about you, Kate, would you like a martini?” “It’s Kit, and… sure.” I followed Margo to a table that sparkled with a liquor rainbow. She poured with expert precision, first filling a chrome shaker with ice, then using both hands to tip in a clear stream of vodka, then a splash of vermouth. She snapped on the lid, spun the shaker, then filled the triangular glass until the martini almost kissed the rim. Dropping two olives in the drink, she turned and handed it to me. “You’ve done that before,” I said, trying to sound charming. She laughed. “A few times.” Margo continued to smile politely, but kept her eyes moving around the room.
“What do you do, Kit?” she asked indifferently. “I’m a proofreader.” I took another sip. The vodka was already massaging my anxiety with its warm fingers. “How about you?” Margo waved her hand as if shooing an invisible insect. “Oh, I do PR for an insurance company. It’s selling out, I know, but it’s decent money.” She leaned closer, crowding the air between us with musky perfume. “Sorry about mentioning Dale. I didn’t know.” “That’s okay.” I said. “We just had a different definition of monogamy.” Her eyebrow lifted slightly as she smiled. “So,” Margo began, pulling another cigarette from a silver case. “Last time I saw Dale he was playing at The Barbary with the Electric Love Muffin.” “I don’t think I was at that show.” “Probably a good thing.” Margo took a drag from her cigarette. “They were pretty bad that night. I stopped going to
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Pete’s shows. I thought it was fun for a while, but then I just got tired of being ignored.” She paused to glare in Pete’s direction, then took a sip from her martini. “I know,” I said. “Dale was really different in college.” “A band is just their excuse for getting drunk with their buddies. They don’t even know how to write a decent song.” “What kind of music do you listen to?” I asked. “Oh, I like the old stuff, like Wanda Jackson, The Collins Kids. It’s real simple, it has a hook, not like the crap these guys play.” She lifted her glass to her lips, then realized it was empty. “This is a problem. Looks like you could use one, too.” She took my glass from my hand and refilled them both. I didn’t normally drink hard liquor, and could feel myself disappearing a little, but I was grateful for the company. I hadn’t really talked to anyone about Dale but I wanted to tell these things to Margo, not just because we had things in common, but because I really wanted her to like me. We sat on the couch and smoked cigarettes and swirled martini after martini, my intimidation dwindling.
“I never knew what I would find when I came home from work,” I slurred. “Sometimes Dale would just be sitting around smoking with guys from his band, and I’d walk in all corporate and they’d look at me like I was someone’s mother.” Margo nodded her head sympathetically. “What an ass,” Margo said. “Pete’s the same way. He’s a bartender, so he sleeps in and stays up late and listens to music when I’m trying to get to sleep so I can get up the next morning and make some decent money to pay our bills. All he cares about is ‘the band’ and his friends.” We both stared at the tattooed people in the room. “You know,” Margo said, “these people work in comic book stores and coffee shops and they feel so superior to people like us who have the nerve to get a 9-to5 job.” She shook her head in disgust. “Just because they can wear an eyebrow ring to work they think they’re fucking artists. What gives them the corner on creativity? I know I could write a better song than most of the people in this room,” Margo said. “I play a little guitar. It’s not that hard.” “Really? Have you ever played with a band?” “Nah. I just mess around on one of
Pete’s acoustic guitars. How about you — do you play?” “Actually, I kind of know how to play bass. Dale gave me one, and I took it with me when I moved because I knew he wanted it back, but felt too guilty to ask for it.” Margo took a drag off her cigarette. “Maybe we should get together. See what happens.” “I’d like that,” I said. Margo glanced over at Pete. Two guys who looked just like him stood at his sides. They were passing a joint and laughing. She turned back to me. “I can definitely get an electric guitar from Pete. He has, like, a dozen of them. I’m sure he can spare one.” The buzz of the martinis accentuated my enthusiasm. Thoughts of parties and gigs and new friends clouded my blurry vision. “We can play at my house,” I said. “I have plenty of room.” “And I’ve got a ton of song ideas. Real simple stuff. I could bring some CDs over.” Margo fell back into the couch and grinned. “This is great. What better way to get back at these guys than to piss on their precious territory? Let’s do it.” Margo lifted her martini in the air and we clinked glasses, the bond as strong as a blood oath.
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