Philadelphia Stories Spring 2015 Issue

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Cultivating a community of writers,

artists, and readers across the Delaware Valley

POETRY

ISSUE!

Winner of the Sandy Crimmins Poetry Prize: E m i ly Ro s e C o l e Ona Russell

Without His Fingers Kat Clark

Geography Heals All Abby Reed Meyer

Packer Ave.

S P R I N G

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I S S U E

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Cultivating a community of writers,

artists, and readers across the Delaware Valley

FEATURES 12 Without His Fingers (essay) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ona Russell 15 Breaking Bad Online Habits with…

Online Writing Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aimee LaBrie 16 Geography Heals All (fiction). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kat Clark 22 Packer Ave. (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Abby Reed Meyer

POETRY 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Self-Portrait as Rapunzel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Emily Rose Cole Tough Bitches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nadia Sheikh Childhood of Wicked Stepmothers . . . . . . . . . . .Lauren Boulton Yield Signs Don’t Exist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kathryn Ionata Philosophy of Baking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Autumn Konopka Brotherly Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Warren Longmire DOG, COME HERE INTO THE DARK HOUSE. COME HERE, BLACK DOG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kenneth Pobo 11 Thirst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Kelly McQuain

PHILADELPHIASTORIES.ORG Publisher/ Editorial Director Carla Spataro Publisher/ Executive Director Christine Weiser Fiction Editor Mitchell Sommers Assistant Fiction Editor Amy Luginbuhl nonfiction Editor Julia MacDonnell Chang Poetry Editor Courtney Bambrick Assistant Poetry Editor Nicole Pasquarello Art Editor Melissa Tevere Director of Development 2 Sharon Sood Production Manager Derek Carnegie

Art Director Derek Carnegie Production Assistant Jon Busch Web Design Loic Duros Board of Directors Kerri Schuster, secretary Mitchell Sommers Alison Hicks Alex Husted Polia Tzvetanova Contest Coordinator Nicole Pasquarello Editorial Board

Sara Asikainen, fiction Peter Baroth, poetry Alex Brubaker, fiction Deb Burnham, poetry Jon Busch, fiction Liz Chang, poetry Melinda Clemmer, fiction Sam Dodge, non-fiction Liz Dolan, poetry Margot Douaihy, poetry Brian Ellis, fiction Ally Evans, fiction Kathleen Furin, fiction Elizabeth Green, fiction Pat Green, poetry Kathleen Furin, fiction

16 Belmont’s Tree by David Lowe. David lives just outside the city limits in a town named for a Welsh town, Bala Cynwyd. He rides around on his bicycle, searching for the right time of day and good locations, taking pictures wherever he can.

18 Interior – Bath Abbey by Pam McLean-

Parker. With a passion for Fine Art and Photography, Pam McLean-Parker began exhibiting her unique photographs while working towards a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Rosemont College. In the Philadelphia area and beyond her work has appeared on exhibit in galleries and art centers for over two decades and has received numerous awards. www.pmpfinephotography.com 22 Mask by Suzanne Comer. Suzanne explores the use of digital photography as an art form and is especially known for using elements of her photographs to create award-winning photomontages. These works, as well as her unmanipulated photos, are selected for exhibit in numerous juried shows each year. http://comersuz.home. comcast.net.

24 Daytime Flight by Michelle Ciarlo-

Hayes.

Michelle is an award-winning mixed media artist from Elkins Park, where she lives with her husband, two young boys, and two very badly behaved dogs. You can find her beautifully handcrafted art and wares in galleries and boutiques nationwide. mkcphotography.com

Claire Haggerty, fiction Daniel Huppman, fiction Aimee LaBrie, fiction Andrew Linton, fiction Nathan Long, fiction Chelsea Covington Maass, fiction Rachel Mamola, non-fiction Walt Maguire, fiction Chelsea Covington Maass, fiction 26 The Living Room by Robyn MacPherson George McDermott, poetry Smart. Robyn Macpherson Smart spent her Deborah Off, non-fiction formative years in Pennsylvania and earned her BFA Carolina Ortiz, fiction from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. She has Donna Wolf-Palacio, poetry Aimee Penna, poetry been an illustrator and graphic designer but she is Tracey M. Romero, non-fiction currently an artist and art teacher in North John Shea, poetry Carolina.

John Shea, non-fiction Carla Spataro, fiction Luke Stromberg, poetry 28 Bloom by Lisa T. Reed. Pittsburgh born artist Maria Thiaw, poetry and educator, Lisa T. Reed, earned a BFA at Sean Toner, non-fiction Temple's Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia and an Valeria Tsygankova, poetry MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute. Reed lives Cassandra Visceglia, non-fiction Glenna Walsh, non-fiction and works near D.C. and exhibits regionally and Sarah Wecht, non-fiction nationally.

Lena Van, fiction Che Yeun, fiction

Cover Art: Lift Every Rock by Christine Walinski. Christine studied Fine Arts at Keystone

Support provided in part by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.

College in La Plume, PA and went on to receive her BFA and Art Education Certification from Tyler School of Art. She is inspired by nature, color and shapes, and uses painting as a way to reflect on memories and experiences. She resides in Manayunk with her creative family. www.christinewalinski.com.

Philadelphia Stories, founded in 2004, is a non-profit literary magazine that publishes the finest literary fiction, poetry, and art from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware and distributes free of charge to a wide demographic throughout the region. Our mission is to develop a community of writers, artists, and readers through the magazine, and through education programs such as writer’s workshops, reading series, and other affordable professional development programs for emerging writers and artists. Philadelphia Stories is a 501c3. To support Philadelphia Stories and the local arts, please visit www.philadelphiastories.org to become a member today!

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p o e t r y

2015 This year’s contest drew submissions of up to five poems each from more than a hundred poets — more than we have seen in any year before. The Philadelphia Stories board chose seventy-five strong contenders, from which I selected thirty finalists to send to our judge.

This embarrassment of verbal riches prompted some difficult decision-making, but we were finally able to select a varied and exciting batch of winners. Of the poems he considered, judge Jeffrey Ethan Lee said: “They were very different from each other, as they seemed to represent many different worldviews, different classes, races, gender orientations, and aesthetics.”

The poems that ended up in print and online this year reflect the contest’s expanding profile. We have finalists from New Mexico, Florida, and Illinois along with Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Our geographical reach continues to grow each year.

Part of the reason for the flood of poems could be a change in this year’s prize: in addition to the winning poem which still wins $1000, three runners up are recognized and receive $100 each.

Runners up include Nadia Sheikh for her poem “Tough Bitches,” which Lee recommended, saying: “The imagery is very strong, and the ending is terrifying and poignant.”

Lauren Boulton’s “Childhood of Wicked Stepmothers” “reminded [Lee] of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” which I believe has become one of the inevitable myths of our (dysfunctional) time.”

Kathryn Ionata’s “Yield Signs Don’t Exist” offers, according to Lee, a “very compelling voice and a nice detached sense of dark irony and humor about itself.

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The Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry The style is very sharp and succinct, and the ending works intuitively very well. She captures a kind of life with great acuity.”

Honorable mentions go to Warren Longmire for “Brotherly Love,” Autumn Konopka for “Philosophy of Baking,” Kenneth Pobo for “DOG, COME HERE INTO THE DARK HOUSE. COME HERE, BLACK DOG,” and Kelly McQuain for “Thirst.” Honorable mentions receive publication in Philadelphia Stories as well as an invitation to attend the Lit Life Poetry Conference.

I hope that Philadelphia area poets continue to submit their work year-round.

And the winners are…

And for those poets outside of the region, we will begin soliciting submissions for the next Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry over the summer. We look forward to hearing your stories.

We can only do this with the help of guest judges (thank you, Jeffrey Ethan Lee), an expanded staff of editors, and Nicole Pasquarello, our contest coordinator. The prize itself is made possible by the generous support of Sandy Crimmins' husband, Joseph Sullivan, and her family.

Courtney Bambrick Poetry Editor Judge Jeffrey Lee (at left) shares his reflections on the winning poems:

Emily Cole — Winner: “Self-Portrait as Rapunzel” stood out with its excruciatingly particular surrealist imagery and its fearlessly heartbreaking themes. There is a sureness of style and a surprising sense of familiarity about this noir-vision fairytale and “coming-of-age” (read: losing-of-youth) story in a world that could have been painted by Frida Kahlo (i.e. Frida Kahlo if she were channeling Anne Sexton).

Nadia Sheikh — Runner up: Tough Bitches. The voice of the poet is very strong in this poem, and she conveys powerful ambivalence about being female right away, which is interesting. But the theme is far more deep and troubling for the poet as she seems to see herself more androgynously but feels—even against her own will—attracted to a woman who is more feminine and beautiful, i.e. the way most of our society sees these things.

Lauren Boulton — Runner up: Childhood of Wicked Steps. In its core, this poem reminded me of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz,” which I believe has become one of the inevitable myths of our (dysfunctional) time, and I was also reminded of many fairy tales that explore the terrors of childhood.

Kathryn Ionata — Runner up: Yield Signs Don’t Exist. This poem has a very compelling voice and a nice detached sense of dark irony and humor about itself.

The style is very sharp and succinct, and the ending works intuitively very well. She captures a kind of life with great acuity

www.philadelphiastories.org

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WINNER

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Self-Portrait as Rapunzel

By Emily Rose Cole i.

My mother built her tower out of baby teeth broken on stale communion wafers, out of dogs choked by chicken bones, empty medicine cabinets, every lullaby her mother never sang her.

When I was born, she mixed a mortar of bent needles, busted harp strings, and porcupine quills pulled from beneath her fingernails.

One day, she told me, gold dust will pool in the hollow of your tongue. Roses will track their roots in your spine.

Your body will chip like shale rock chiseled by rain. ii.

She shut me in. No door. One locked window.

A keyhole cut in the shape of my name.

I stayed inside for years, afraid of anything that carried its shadow too close to itself.

My mother hoisted baskets of mint and dill.

She wrote notes that ended with for your own good and planted morning glories that opened like eyes. iii.

When a prince arrived, he used words like trapped and escape. I offered a rope woven from daisy stems, but he said my hair was stronger.

The shorn end of the braid thumped the grass like a feathered body striking stones. Years later, after he left me, I carved a hole in my tongue.

I came home. The tower had fallen. My mother’s last gift: a handful of pebbles shaping a word: grow.

I built my tower out of nettles and closed doors and dropped seeds into my eyes. iv.

Now, red petals curl behind my teeth.

Yellow pollen smears my lips and bees drone at the corners of my mouth.

4 I swallow secrets that harden into keys.

All night, I listen to locks sliding shut.

Emily Rose Cole is a poet, songwriter, and fairytale enthusiast from Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including Jabberwock Review, Ruminate, Gulf Stream, and many others.

She is teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Southern Illinois Carbondale, where she is currently an MFA candidate.

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RUNNER UP

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Tough Bitches

By Nadia Sheikh I don’t like girls—our big, ugly nipples, slumber parties, cucumbers damming our eyes—no crying about lunar bleeding, our chromosome overdose sans the ‘Y,’ and our murderous designs against womankind in magazines for smiling all the goddamn time.

I’m a slouch—camoflauged in boyfriend jeans, elastic-muzzled boobs, and a noodle physique.

She’s a lady—velvet boots, earring medallions dangling, keeps her derrière curved, always tucked away in sugared sundresses and skirttrain fringe that might melt in the rain.

Curls pinned in pouf. Mane slung sideways, not quite dusting ankle but, oh, if she’d unleash the wild—roar like she did that Sunday night, after three whiskeys and an oyster dozen, she unbuttoned once, breathing in my ear, Baby, it’s a warm October, from two tables over, slipping off her jean jacket and not needing to make eyes with me like we do on Tuesdays across the classroom. She lingers, unblinking, mascaraed bivalves, widening to figure out if it’s my jitterbug fingers or feet ker-thumping.

I square her gaze and I don’t know why I think she’s waiting for me to cry already.

I should tell her—I don’t love—I shiver even in summer, my heart hummingbirds, flies backwards, dreams of her strutting across the room, wielding her oyster fork poised to pluck out my eyes, 5 slurping while she excavates the raisined pearls inside.

Nadia Sheikh is a first-year MFA student at Florida State University, a rhyme enthusiast, a waffle connoisseur, a human.

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RUNNER UP

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The Childhood of Wicked Stepmothers

By Lauren Boulton Like many beginnings, this is soft and small. Pink, smelling of flake soap and breastmilk. It has cheeks, dirt-stained, but cherubic as any. Sleeping eyelids, perhaps more seldom, but sweet.

The mother smiles. Wipes a slick of sweat from her forehead, clips to the clothesline an endless procession of diversely sized diapers, small dresses, medium pants, large socks. Plays patty-cake with her middle daughter.

The father works too hard, too late. Sometimes, when he comes home early enough, he will grab the middle daughter by her hands and spin and spin until she feels her arms are about to rip from their sockets, until she is dizzy enough to believe in this sideways flying.

Things spin. The mother dies, the father loses his job and the family moves to a smaller place in Buffalo.

They rent out the upstairs room to make ends meet. He remarries, to a woman who longs for stability, for love, but not for children.

Still, she eats, though not enough. She is beaten, but only upon occasion. A blue-eyed neighbor boy slips bread, tin soldiers, secrets through the fence. She only lies on her back to sleep, or to watch the clouds shapeshift.

She opens borrowed books and is surprised to find herself: stories of ash-covered girls with awful stepmothers, fathers who rarely look, and never see. And though there is nothing written about the upstairs boarder’s naked eyes, his close hands, she feels him there all the same, standing behind the proto-princess, his breath wet against her neck.

6 Lauren Annette Boulton's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Bayou, Great Lakes Review, Gingerbread House, Kenning Journal, and others. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Bowling Green State University, where she has the pleasure of working under Larissa Szporluk, Sharona Muir, Abigail Cloud, and Rebecca Dunham. She also serves as a staff editor for Mid-American Review.

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RUNNER UP

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Yield Signs Don’t Exist

By Kathryn Ionata Rob ran a solid red, first car in pilgrimage to Rocky Horror Picture show. He flicked a gaze back.

I didn’t lose the girls? Oh, man. I think I’m in love.

You remind me of that Zeppelin line, A. said.

When you look in the mirror, baby, baby, baby, do you like it?

All the chicks here are after Mike, Rob said.

He was wearing my feather boa.

Patted my shoulder, focus on the high heel parade.

Don’t worry, don’t worry.

I seen you here before, J. said. Eyes slant under sun.

I like those jeans you got on.

I haven’t seen you on for awhile, the train conductor said.

Punched bullet holes in my ticket.

You look good, how you been?

M. said a lot but I remember nothing because I was looking at his arms on the wheel, bone and muscle shift and pop on sharp turns. He drove me to the high school at night.

This was my space, he said.

The guy across had a Mustang too, but his didn’t stall.

Don’t tell them it’s your first show, he said.

Hand on my back now. (I took a too-deep breath.

My garter belt split.)

They’ll lipstick your forehead and make you grind with a blow-up doll.

The poem you wrote made me cry, he said, so I was no longer afraid of his trunk full of rope, tarps, handsaws.

I’m still building, he said.

I’ll keep cutting until I get it right.

You call me if it don’t work out, J. said.

We rolled through a stop sign.

(You rolled through that stop sign, the cop said.

Didn’t you see it?)

Sorry I don’t drive so careful, he said.

Long hair spilled out a cracked window and now he didn’t look at me.

You know how men drive? Rob said once Red lights are stop signs, stop signs are yield signs, and yield signs don’t exist.

Kathryn Ionata is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The Toast, Schuylkill Valley Journal, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Aries, Hawai’i Review, Wisconsin Review, and The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition. She is a two-time runner-up for the Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition. She teaches writing at Temple University and The College of New Jersey.

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HONORABLE MENTIONS

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Philosophy of Baking

By Autumn Konopka In the oven there are secrets: drippings, crusts burned and flaked, black bubbles that still smoke every time she fires up.

She says: Give me bitter lemons; I will sweeten them.

Give me brown bananas, sour milk.

Give me the chocolate so dark it chokes you.

You train yourself to listen.

Give the oven what she wants, and she gives you coconut custard, marble pound, red velvet cupcakes, cranberry scones.

You tune out the cacophony: “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” the doorbell bringing women who want to know if you’re saved, men who want to know if you’re saving enough on your gas bill.

Sometimes the oven says eggs, bacon, gruyere, chives.

And you obey without hesitation.

Other voices hurl pages of unwritten poems, echos of your husband’s lover singing “Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh god, yes!”

And him: “There has never been another woman so beautiful.”

You don’t listen to them.

You lean in closer to the oven.

Closer still.

Deep inside where it’s quietest.

Maybe today will be your day to change, to puff and flake, turn golden and rise without sinking in the center.

Autumn Konopka's poems have appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Literary Mama, Crab Orchard Review, Apiary, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and others. In 2014, her chapbook, a chain of paper dolls, was published by the Head & the Hand Press. When not frantically tapping poems into her iPhone, Autumn runs, reads with her kiddos, rewards well-placed semicolons, and watches embarrassingly bad tv.

Find her online:autumnkonopka.com.

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Brotherly Love

By Warren Longmire Philly all the emo with none of the moshpit.

Philly free jazz in a trashbag.

Philly’s a synthetic weave tumbleweed down 69th street.

Philly’s Schuylkill punch brown and meek mill’s cadence for an anti-depressant.

Philly’s a rust covered trolley rail used as a balance beam for cat sized rats.

Philly’s a mouse that stands in the middle your living-room wondering what you staring at.

Philly’s when the scent of urine feels comfortable.

Philly’s a crackhouse where someone pulls out an ipod touch.

Philly’s the seasoning left in potato chip bag, littered because fuck you.

Philly’s bulletproof glass protecting blunt wrappers and raisinets.

Philly’s a bed sheet ad for pet colonics.

Philly’s four empty barber shops in a two block radius.

Philly is abandoned midnight unsafe even if desert.

Philly looks at anything but you as intensely as it can.

Philly is dubstep basement row-home hot pagan light-show for nobody Philly.

Philly’s a cafe a bored new jersey dreamed into existence.

Philly bucktoothed street with caution tape floss.

Philly flosses through beirut in a hooptee.

Philly ain’t no white car.

Philly For Sale sign.

Philly loose dutch tobacco on the 23. Philly loose money. Philly is cheap. Philly chirps.

Philly speaks its first words. Philly lounges.

Philly is waiting.

Philly is waiting.

Philly is waiting and the teams choke.

The kids choke.

The fey smokers identical outside the whiskey bar chain smoke like it’s new orleans downtown.

The buses weeze.

The roads are cracked and the sidewalks grow flowerbeds beneath them.

Philly grows and shrinks. Screams “back door” but doesn’t tell you to step down.

Doesn’t speak. Gets cut. Names.

A paradox laughing at itself. The old friend with no money and a ugly mouth.

Warren Longmire is a web programmer, game developer, poet and part-time philosopher. He's been published in Painted Bride Quarterly, Metropolary, Eleven Eleven and two chapbooks: Ripped Winters and Do.Until.True, but what he really wants to do is direct. He currently resides in Philly across from a former Mausoleum with one roommate, one bluetooth karaoke machine and a pet python named Fugee.

You can find his writings, essays, videos and sounds at dountiltrue.tumblr.com and soundcloud.com/wclongmire.

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DOG, COME HERE INTO THE DARK HOUSE. COME HERE, BLACK DOG.

By Ken Pobo Etching by Leonora Carrington

At night when barred owls ask who cooks for you, she sits by the window. No one

cooks for her. She has a black dog and coral night. The moon offers stepladders of gleam. Preferring the dark,

she closes shutters at dawn. Of course people say she must be lonely. They’re right.

She thinks loneliness is like a maple tree

she counts on to change colors. Besides, with a black dog who could feel too alone?

His tail made of butterflies and

zinnias. He barks and a glass of red wine appears. Quite the dog about town yet faithful as a hard crossword puzzle

in a Sunday paper. Her windows open and close but rarely break. She knows that cracking glass will announce

her own death. She sees it faintly through dusty panes, smiles before turning away.

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Kenneth Pobo has a new book forthcoming from Blue Light Press called Bend Of Quiet. His work has appeared in: Hawaii Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and English at Widener University in Chester.

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Thirst

By Kelly McQuain From Mexico I brought you a silver and red heart: a tin corazon to decorate our Christmas tree.

And after a night in a luckless bar—El Gato Negro— a cocktail recipe: tequila and grapefruit soda—Poloma, the Spanish word for ‘dove’, the same pale name as the stubborn horse I rode through Guanajuato without you by my side.

I don't know what I drank that other night, an even unluckier bar in old San Miguel.

Tecate? Negra Modelo? Some other cheap local beer?

La Cucaracha—the Cockroach dive that would not die, where Beats like Kerouac and Cassidy loved and fought.

And where local drunkards sighed at my American jibes as doe-eyed jotos sized me up from the back wall.

I missed you then, like I did this summer in Shanghai on wild Nanjing Road drinking Heinekens with a Hawaiian named Billy, who never met a bottle of baiju he didn't like —it helped him chase hookers along the city's neon strip.

Baiju: rotgut Chinese white lightning distilled from sorghum, barley or millet. One swig from Billy's tiny green bottle and I quickly had my fill of it.

Never brought any home from the trip —only stories: of strange fruits, fried scorpions, whiskered fish.

Of the giant Buddhas carved from the Yungang Grottoes, of the ancient monastery clinging to the Hengshan cliffs.

I climbed the Great Wall, sang karaoke in Pingyao, made a friend or two over a bottle of scotch—but for three weeks among strangers in dirty coal-burning country it wasn't just blue sky I missed.

On my way home I bought you a bottle of Crown Royal from Toronto, duty-free and flavored with maple, because I liked to imagine the sight of you in your boxers bringing pancakes to our breakfast table.

Something new to slake your thirst, I said, handing the brown bottle over.

You told me to add ice cubes and keep the drink simple: “We'll call it a Mrs. Butterworth.”

These days, it seems I'm always returning from somewhere far off, even if it's just back to our conversation at the table.

Our lives drink up the years, I want to say.

They burn like a dragon, they sing like a dove.

Don't hate me because I can’t keep still and need to fill my cup up to the brim— I'd drink your heart right now if I could, even if it were silver and red and made of tin.

11 9 Kelly McQuain will be a 2015 Fellow at the Lambda Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices in Los Angeles this June. McQuain has published poetry and prose in Painted Bride Quarterly, Redivider, The Philadelphia Inquirer, A&U, Kestrel, The Pinch, Weave and Cleaver, as well as in numerous anthologies, the newest of which is Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (New York Quarterly Books). His chapbook, Velvet Rodeo, won Bloom magazine's poetry prize. He hosts Poetdelphia, a literary salon in the City of Brotherly Love. www.KellyMcQuain.wordpress.com

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WITHOUT HIS FINGERS he day was hot and humid, typical of a Philly summer. Bernie and John couldn’t wait for their ocean swim. They always took a dip before a concert, no matter what the weather. It was their ritual, a way to release tension and diffuse the jitters that accompanied a performance. But with sweat already clinging to their shirts, they were even more eager than usual.

The concert would be held at the Metropolitan Opera House or perhaps the Academy of Music on Broad and Locust at 8 p.m. that evening. So it must have been around noon, after a morning practice, when they felt as ready as they’d ever be, that they hopped a bus for Atlantic City, arriving an hour or two later.

I can see them during the ride, jibing each other, laughing, joking. And I hear Bernie asking John to pinch him, still in disbelief that he was a violinist in The Philadelphia Orchestra. Perhaps that night, Leopold Stokowski was conducting, the innovator who encouraged “free bowing” and was helping to create a unique, Philadelphia sound. The New York Times had just praised the Orchestra as possessing “uncommon excellence,” and Stokowski had no small part in its evolution. Would the program include Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor? I like to think so, like to believe that Bernie was anticipating playing one of his favorite pieces, the last great work of the Romantic composer, with its immediate entrance of the soloist, who, if Bernie worked hard enough, he would surely one day be.

In Atlantic City, the sand must have felt good under their feet. Soon, hard shoes and stiff tuxes would bind them, but now they were as free as their bows, imbibing the sea air, running toward the waves, admiring the female bathers. It was 1923, early in the decade, and they,

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This photo shows Bernie, circa 1923, when he was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

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w i t h o u t too, were in their early twenties, embodiments of the period’s youthful exuberance. They dove into the surf, perhaps hearing in the rush of water the concerto’s frenetic, final coda.

After an hour or so, Bernie swam back to shore. Time to go. Their towels were where they left them, in a heap. In the water, he and John had drifted apart, one doing a fast crawl, the other lazily floating. Bernie must have been drying himself off, looking casually to the placid blue surface for his friend. There had been a light current, a bit of an undertow, but nothing out of the ordinary. He spotted a curly blond head that he at first thought was John, but no. He glanced toward the dressing stalls, their established meeting place, but John wasn’t there either. Bernie returned to the water’s edge, getting his feet and then legs wet again. With his hand blocking the sun, he gazed more carefully now, out, far out, and up and down the coast.

And then, the first inkling that something was wrong. His stomach must have tightened, his breathing grown rapid.

Time passed, and then the real panic set in. Rushing to a lifeguard. Shouting down the beach, questioning everyone he saw. Thirty minutes, sixty. Longer.

That night, the string section was surely a little off. Someone had to fill in for the missing player, and if Bernie played at all, it must have been out of key.

The search continued for weeks, but John was never found, drowning listed as the official cause of death. Soon thereafter, one of Bernie’s fingers began to ache.

Bernie, Bernard Greenberg, was my great uncle, and before I tell the rest of that story, here are a few things you might want to know: Bernie grew up lower-middle class in the Logan area of Philadelphia, the second child of four in a secular Jewish family. His parents owned two delicatessens in Strawberry Mansion. He was a happy, loving kid,

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known for being a prankster, often dangerously so. Once, pretending he was Zorro, he carved a Z into my aunt’s arm with a pocketknife, and that was tame in comparison to some of his other antics.

My grandmother Rosella, married to Oscar Kahn, brother of noted architect Louis, was his sister. The family was close and Bernie, despite his mischievous nature, was a favored member. He was handsome and athletic, known for his nasty English, both on a ball and in speech. And then, of course, there was the music, the combination of passion and talent, charged with that ineffable something that separated him from the crowd. His pranks were infamous, but everyone knew that his violin would make him famous.

His left ring finger was the first to suffer. Why that one, I don’t know, maybe because Bernie never had the chance to marry, even though, before he got sick, he had a girl in mind. Soon all

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of his fingers turned cold, went white, then blue. For a while he could play through the soreness, but soon the pain became unbearable. One, then another and another, until he was forced to quit the orchestra and seek medical help.

The family thought his symptoms were related to the shock of losing his friend. And maybe in part they were. But on what I can only envision as a gray winter’s day, with snow beginning to fall, Bernie was diagnosed with Beurger’s disease, a circulatory disorder where the body essentially attacks its own blood vessels. All organs can be involved but the limbs and digits are especially affected.

Pathologist and namesake, Leo Beurger, first identified the disease in 1908, and Bernie was one of the first patients to undergo Beurger’s trial and error treatments at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York.

I could describe in graphic detail his twenty-two years in and out of hospitals, the freezing and boiling baths, the nerve surgeries, the eventual amputations. I could tell you of the constant agony, of pain so excruciating that my uncle became addicted to morphine. And I could, and should, tell you that cigarette smoking was related to the disease, and that, despite being told that he would lose his toes as well as his fingers if he didn’t quit, Bernie continued to smoke. That was before the tobacco industry even knew enough to lie about how addictive their products were. I could tell you about this nightmare. Yes, I could tell about when the music stopped.

But I’d rather tell you about when it began again, when spring finally returned.

By the time I came into consciousness, the disease had burned itself out. I wasn’t there when Bernie swore there were bats flying in his hospital room or when he stood over my parent’s bed, begging my father, a physician, for a fix.

14 By my time, Bernie was in his forties, living with my great-grandmother in L.A. He had gone cold turkey off all drugs and was a frequent visitor in our home.

The only remnants of his illness were his constantly perspiring forehead, and of

course, the mangled stubs where his shapely, violinist fingers used to be. I grew up with those stubs and thought nothing of them. It took others’ reactions to make me understand that they could be disturbing. Nor did it strike me odd at all when, after taking a year of piano lessons with a mediocre instructor, Bernie became my teacher.

I don’t recall how the deal was struck, but I’ll never forget those sessions. I was young, only nine when they started and seventeen at the end. Bernie was patient, but also demanding. He wouldn’t tolerate a sluggish trill, too heavy of a pedal. Every note was to be defined, every passage a delicate balance of restraint and force. Often, it was too much for me. Sometimes I’d run out the room, screaming and crying. I’d tell him I hated him. But there were other times, when we were in a groove, when his stubs would sway over me like a conductor’s baton, and the music came to life. All those scales, those repetitions until I thought I’d go mad, suddenly paid off, and my hands flew over the keyboard, smooth and clear. At those moments, I cared for nothing else. My mother might call us to dinner, and I’d shoo her away. We were in a world of our own, one that, without his fingers, my uncle had made possible.

Soon, word spread. “Ona’s pretty good at the piano. Who’s her teacher?”

“Bernie, her Uncle Bernie.”

“But he doesn’t have…”

That must have often been the reaction. But it didn’t prevent anyone from pursuing him as a teacher. First to sign up was a friend of mine down the street, and then another around the corner. As his fingers had once fallen, one by one, his list of students, for violin as well as piano, grew, until he had more than he could handle. It was the autumn of his life, but he was in high demand.

Now he was Bernard Green, music teacher. He’d dropped the “berg” to make his Jewish identity less certain, although the Yiddish obscenities that peppered his talk were a bit of a giveaway. He lived, as did we, in an area where vague and

sometimes overt anti-Semitic sentiment was common. The change was purely a business decision, and it may have contributed to him getting his foot (minus his toes) in the door. He frightened some initially, more with his expectations than his deformity, but everyone recognized his gift. He breathed music, and the air entered our lungs, traveled to our brains, and sent a special message to our fingers.

A few other things about Bernie: He had a cockatoo that stood on his head and ordered him, by name, to wake up.

He was an animal whisperer before the term was known.

His room was crowded with National Geographics and smelled like Old Spice.

He repeatedly dropped cigarette ashes into our Steinway.

He feared my Beatlemania.

He pretended to hate my mother’s meatloaf.

He drank up my father’s scotch.

He could have done stand-up comedy.

It is lately, as I approach the age when he died, that I think not only about what Bernie might have been, but what he was.

To say that he overcame adversity is an understatement. Like many artists, he created beauty out of anguish. But also, in his quiet way, he transformed lives. When children asked him in horror what had happened to him, he would say that he didn’t listen to his mother when she told him not to play in the street. When adults stared, he smiled back. Without his fingers, he touched everyone he met. Still, I like to think of him that summer day back in ‘23, before the drowning, with John alive, and all possibility before him, running toward the waves, with his hands outstretched, reaching for the horizon.

Ona Russell is an educator, mediator and widely published writer whose story, “The (O)ther Kahn,” was published in Philadelphia Stories and included in the first Best of Philadelphia Stories anthology. She has just completed her third historical mystery, which will be out next year.

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T i p s

BREAKING BAD ONLINE HABITS WITH... ONLINE WRITING CLASSES

By Aimee LaBrie In a desperate attempt to break my writer’s block (most notably my inability to sustain anything without getting sucked into the wormhole of the Internet, Googling phrases like “medieval brassieres” and “who is Demi Moore dating now?”), I signed up for an online writing class. I was skeptical at first—thinking that it would be some kind of scam or that the writers would be fixated on vampire fiction, but happily, the experience has been extremely positive. The class meets online once a week for ten weeks and costs $450. The one hour chats are focused on a particular reading and on questions of craft.

Students chime in with their thoughts via electronic group texts. I thought the conversation would be awkward or unwieldy, but the classes are small (only ten students), and we have a teacher who leads the discussion, and comes to each session with specific questions meant to focus us on reading like a writer. If you happen to miss the class, the instructor also posts a transcript of the whole thing in our electronic classroom.

Additionally, every Saturday, we have a two page writing assignment due, focused on a reading of fiction or poetry (Jane Smiley, Alice McDermott, Mark Halliday to name a few). Since we are all working on the same exercise and read each other’s work, there’s the added bonus of getting to see how other writers approach the shared challenge. For example, this week’s task was to model two pages of writing on Tony Hoagland’s poems “Benevolence” and

“Mistaken Identity.” Both poems tackle the idea of writing about someone significant in your life who has transformed into something else. In “Benevolence” the narrator’s alcoholic father has turned into a dog drooling for a whiskey ice cube and “Mistaken Identity” has a stayat-home mom turned into a biker lesbian. Our assignment then was to do the same—think of someone of significance in your life who has returned in another guise. The range of approaches is great—a bad boss returning as a donkey, a nun morphing into a male prison guard, a blind date bearing an eerie resemblance to the narrator’s dead tabby (that was mine).

We are also asked to comment on at least three of our classmates assignments; just as you would in a live workshop, but more manageable, because the assignments are short (never longer than two pages) and you only technically have to do three peer reviews (or more if you’re an overachiever like some people I could name). The teacher gives feedback on all of the pieces, so you are guaranteed feedback from her, along with at least two or three of the other students. As in real workshops, the student feedback varies—some are praise-filled and offer little to improve, and others pinpoint places where the writing could use work.

Lastly, the quality of the writing from the other students in this beginning craft class is uniformly good (no one, so far, has ended with “it was all a dream...” or made any of the other fledgling mistakes

you might see from new writers. This might be because they are individuals who are paying to take the class for no credit; not bored undergrads wanting an “A,” or dabblers with a passing interest in creative writing. Most, I believe, would consider themselves serious writers who want to get all they can from the class and clearly spend time on the assignments, pay attention during the chats, and offer concrete feedback to others.

The teacher is also good—she always has an agenda for the chats and her exercises are thoughtful and challenging.

Two downsides exist. One is that because of the truncated length of the weekly assignments, it’s difficult to work on a full length short story. For poets, this may not be a problem—two pages seems manageable for a poem, less so for a short story unless you’re focused solely on micro fiction. However, if your goal is to get writing, you will emerge from the class with nine beginnings—nine opportunities to start on something new.

The other downside is that there’s no guarantee that it will crack your writer’s block. You still have to maintain Nora Robert’s number one rule of writing (“ass in chair”) and since the class is for no credit, and there are no consequences for not doing the assignments, you could easily slip by without doing the work.

This, thankfully, has not been the case for me. I am writing. I don’t know if what I end up with will turn into longer pieces, but the weekly deadlines have pushed me out of my Google funk and focused on the page.

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GEOGRAPHY HEALS ALL

Belmont’s Tree by David Lowe © 2015

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You may recognize this story from last issue. We are running it again, due to some editorial errors, which I'm responsible for.

It was a great story; it's still a great story, and we're running it the way it was meant to be read.

– Mitch Sommers, Fiction Editor

wasn’t going to think about it today. I wasn’t going to talk about it today. I wasn’t going to look at myself in the mirror or touch that place on my neck or sit on that side of the mattress.

What was it that he’d said, sitting there?

I wasn’t going to think about it.

I focused on a camera: a dark box, with light coming in through a pinhole.

And on the opposite wall, an image from the world develops, inverted and reversed. So if I stand on my head and look behind me, there’s the world, but in front of me there’s only a pinhole. And maybe if I walked towards the hole, I’d be able to see outside the box — but it’s

I

so hard to walk on your hands.

I tripped on the curb. There was slush everywhere.

East of us on Hazel, a man dragged a boy behind him. Little boots knocked together as the big hand yanked him forward. He could have been a hand truck or a suitcase, skidding across concrete.

The pair stopped abruptly under a snowcovered tree.

I saw the man’s thick shoulders, his brown work boots. I waited to witness whatever discipline was coming.

And then I heard the man say gently, “Stand right there.”

The boy dropped his father’s hand and stepped under the branches. The sun was fading behind me. They were two black faces in the half-dark, lit by half a sunset.

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g e o g r a p h y Then the man took the top of the tree in both hands and shook it softly.

The boy jumped and danced, laughing in the falling white.

“I told you it would snow!”

The son reached out two puffy coated arms, two too-big mittens. A little baby Michelin Man. They didn’t see me watching them. Murray stood patiently at the corner, watching me. A cloud withdrew from the sky.

We passed a couple arguing about the importance of organic apples.

Two streets further, there were giggles in the darkness. A cat posed stiffly in the middle of the road. I heard the sound of a toy car scraping towards us: stop, go, stop, go. It jerked and bumped along the night sidewalk, its tiny driver struggling to steer.

The indignant grunt of a growing boy, the defeated squeak of plastic wheels. Then the shadows of two girls ran in front of the car, and from inside it came the yelp of a cheated little brother: “HEY!” “Can we pet your dog?” The shadows

asked me. They swept their hands across his spine.

The little brother stepped out of his red and yellow coupe and hoisted up his snow pants. His road rage subsided as he drunkenly toddled towards us.

“What’s his name?” lisped the boy. I told him.

“MURRRRRAY. HI, Murray.” He spoke slowly and loudly, like a white grandpa to an exchange student. Murray sneezed.

“Is he a daddy dog?” the boy wanted to know.

“He’s a boy, but he’s not a daddy,” I said.

“Why? Doesn’t he want to be a daddy?”

It was as if this boy saw the secret human I knew lived inside my dog.

“I’m sure he would be a good daddy, but he isn’t one,” I said.

“How come?” asked the boy, wiping snot from his nose. I stared.

“Some dogs get surgery,” the taller

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sister offered. The smaller one nodded. I imagined Murray entering the hospital in a collared shirt, withdrawing his insurance card: “I’m here — WOOF — for my vasectomy.” Or maybe he would turn to his doggy wife in bed: “I’m not sure that this is working.”

The little boy thought for a moment, his hand resting between Murray’s ears.

“We had a dog, but he—” There was a slurping sound as Murray licked the boy’s face.

The girls decided to conduct an examination.

“He has werewolf paws,” said one sister.

“Yes, he does,” I agreed.

“Do you think he’s a werewolf?” asked the other.

“Probably.” It was a full moon.

Murray stood guard, like Nana with the Darlings.

“Will you come back to see us?” asked the little boy.

“Yes, I live right around the corner.”

“But will you COME BACK?”

Immerse yourself in the writing life. t t t t t t t

Weekend June 19 to 21 Weeklong June 21 to 26

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Interior – Bath Abbey by Pam McLean-Parker © 2015

“Yes,” I promised. “And you can pet Murray whenever you want.”

The shadows of parents moved on the porch, clinking glass. As I walked away, the boy called out: “Come back soon! ...And don’t forget to come back!”

We kept walking.

A white man with a black hat passed us on the sidewalk. He looked at me, but I didn’t look at him. A black man with a white hat passed us on the sidewalk. I looked at him, but he didn’t look at me.

Murray barked at a passing pitbull. A bicyclist whizzed by in a yellow blur.

Then there was nobody for a long while.

At a corner in the blue dark, I saw a vintage green Chevy with its wheels embedded in ice. Up and down 47th Street, parked cars slept in a frozen stream, witnesses of a water main break.

But the green truck had been parked there for weeks. Some things are forgotten for safekeeping.

Murray licked my forehead as I knelt down to tie my wet shoelace. I remembered a kiss on my forehead, the specter of somebody who never came back.

I decided to concentrate on werewolves: victims of a contagious disease passed on through a bite. Or maybe they were people who chose to dress in wolfskin, self-punishing for some transgression (tax fraud?). Or what if they were only the deformed and lonely, hunted down for being too hairy? They undressed for someone they loved and then there was a scream and a silver bullet.

In my mind, the scream sounded like a love poem because love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds neither joy, nor love, nor light and conquers all that’s stored up for you like an inheritance, a song that only you can hear (I carry it in my heart) and there’s scarcely anything else in the world, for each man kills the thing he loves— I knelt there with my head on my knees, a communion with the slush, feeling the weight of a body. Someone else’s body. Now it’s like an empty house. I prayed

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to whatever god there might be, by way of C.S. Lewis.

And then I felt that sloppy dog tongue on my face. Not on my forehead, but almost in my nostrils. In places no human would kiss.

There is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.

I wished I hadn’t majored in women filling their pockets with stones and sticking their heads into ovens.

Maybe tomorrow the pinhole would widen and I would want to be a marine biologist.

But there was a van stalling behind my dog in the darkness.

I stood up. My foot was asleep.

Murray teetered, confused. The sliding door to the van was open. A man crouched on the upholstery, watching me.

He looked too small to be holding that gun.

Was I supposed to give him my money? I didn’t have any money. There

Be the writer you were born to be.

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PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 20

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was a peppermint in my pocket.

“Give me the dog,” he said. “Put him in the van.”

The barrel of the gun seemed to be pointed towards my elbow. I was supposed to give him my belongings and run. But Murray wasn’t a belonging.

Maybe if I stood very, very still, the van would go away...

The streetlights stared at me.

I remembered a night in a different city.

I had stepped off the train into the dark and into the open lot. Even with a sunburn heating my skin, it was cold and the world seemed crowded with shadows. I had walked quickly towards the newspaper dispensers at the corner, feeling the weight of the buildings surrounding me. A rat had scuttled in front of me on the sidewalk and I had started to run. I’d run past the garage that housed the big trucks, the fenced-in homes with all their lights off, the green-gated yard where I’d been kissed, once. I’d run past a possum with red eyes, a man pissing on a doorstep, a playground where someone

moaned and wailed. When I’d finally made it to the apartment, I had clanged the metal gate shut behind me and climbed the stairs to that warm wooden door. He’d pulled me inside. I’d said I’d never live alone in the city.

“Give me the dog!” The man yelled.

There was a clicking noise.

I pictured myself giving him the dog.

I imagined them screeching away with Murray in the backseat, me standing in the street alone. By myself. Murray gone.

Giving them the dog.

Murray began to snarl.

Here was the pinhole. It looked like a full moon. I was pressed up against the side of the box and I could see outside.

This man couldn’t put me in the box because I was already in the box. He sat motionless, staring at me.

I remembered the wooden door opening two hundred times. A laugh into my collarbone, two coasters and two mugs. What kind of math lets the present day trump all that came before?

This was a different city.

He wasn’t going to get my dog.

I remembered a key turning, a brown plant in the window, an empty refrigerator. He’d been twelve and then he’d been in college and then he’d come to pick me up from the train. He’d washed my hair when I was sick. He’d wanted two boys and two girls.

What was it that he’d said, sitting there? He’d recoiled. He hadn’t looked me in the eye. His face was a thumbprint on a glass of milk. I could remember his smell but not his mouth.

What was it that he’d said?

“Don’t touch me,” I growled.

We turned to walk away.

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Kat is the Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications at Moorestown Friends School.

Outside of her full-time position, she works for the Health for America Fellowship Program and supports The Chester Fund for Education and the Arts. Kat volunteer teaches at Mighty Writers and lives in Philly with her dog, Rory.

Philadelphia Stories is pleased to announce the

201 5 Seventh Annual Marguerite McGlinn

Prize for Fiction Deadline: June 15, 201 5 PRIZES: • $2,000 cash award • $500 2nd place prize • $250 3rd place prize • Invitation to an awards dinner in October

Requirements: 1. Previously unpublished works of fiction up to 8,000 words.

2. $12 reading fee (all entrants receive a 1-year subscription to Philadelphia Stories).

3. To be eligible, the authors must reside in the United States.

The Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction is made possible by the generous support of the McGlinn and Hansma Families.

For more information, www.philadelphiastories.org

PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 21

n a m e

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RESOURCES FOR WRITERS AND ARTISTS Philadelphia

Great Books

Interested in joining a Great Books discussion group?

There are over 50 groups meeting regularly in PA/NJ/DE using the Shared Inquiry Method for discussing significant works of literature or non-fiction.

Contact us to find a Great Books discussion group in your area:

Great Books Weekend at the Inn at Pocono Manor

All readers welcome!

Family Dynamics: * Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin * The Progress of Love, Alice Munro * Cousin Bette, Honore de Balzac * Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Anne Tyler * Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence

phila1@greatbooksdiscussionprograms.org

Cost: $370 per person double occupancy, $450 for single occupancy: meals, accommodations, books included.

For further information about Great Books events on the East Coast, see

November 6-8, 2015

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Alison Hicks, MFA, Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio www.philawordshop.com • ahicks@philawordshop.com • 610-853-0296 Monday evenings in Havertown • Tuesday evenings in Center City Private Consultation for Manuscript Development Rachel Kobin, Philadelphia Writers Workshop www.phillywriters.com • Rachel@phillywriters.com • 610-449-3773 Tuesday evenings in Flourtown • Private Consultation for Manuscript Development Marguerite Ferra, Woodland Writers www.woodlandwriters.com • woodlandwriters@gmail.com • 856-366-3138 Thursday afternoons in Cherry Hill

PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 22

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PACKER AVE. obody expected the bloody dog. Nobody. Not even here in South Philly where some sketchy shit could be happening behind any door, down any side street, at any time of day.

Kai tripped right over it in his gawky sprint for the field, the dog’s blood soaking the boy’s white baseball pants, covering up the shadowy grass stains his mom hadn’t managed to get out.

Aaron looked up from the plume of work emails that rose from his phone.

One day a week he left his Center City office tower early to take the boy to the ball fields all the way the hell down here.

He was ready to snap at Kai, urge him to watch where he’s going for once, but he

N

saw the boy on the ground and he saw the blood.

“Jesus, Kai,” he said as he ran the two steps toward him, shoving his phone in his pocket but still feeling its warm pull.

And then he saw the dog.

One haunch was soaked with blood, the curly black fur was matted, and the cut was narrow but deep. Aaron could see the muscle, the sinew shimmery like the T-bone he’d grilled last weekend.

The fur of just the one leg was speckled with glass, like the dog had almost made it across the street but for this last inconvenient leg. The dog was shivering uncontrollably, whimpering in the grass.

“Daddy.” Kai’s tone matched the dog’s. The boy was normally a torrent of

words but right then he had none. He tried again. “Daddy, what happened to this dog?”

Aaron could hardly speak himself.

“I think somebody hit it, honey.” He never called the boy honey anymore, he was getting too old for it, but it slipped out, that old tenderness. They stared, the two of them crouched in the grass, frozen.

“Hit it?” It wasn’t computing for Kai. “With their car.”

Kai’s brow was furrowed, his huge eyes on Aaron’s.

“But nobody drives here. It’s a baseball field.”

How could it possibly be his job to explain this to his son? This was the

22

Mask by Suzanne Comer © 2015

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p a c k e r world they live in?

“I think what might have happened—” he hesitated. “You know what, gimme a minute, Kai. Just gimme a minute.” Aaron thought in hierarchies, like any lawyer should. Who’s in charge here? The governing body for the securities his clients traded? The SEC, the NYSE, FINRA. Lots of people to call if something goes down. The governing body for dogs? Christ, who knows? He watched Kai watching the dog, the tension in both of their bodies, the dog panting. Think, dummy. Think. There’s no dog mayor, no dog regulatory agencies.

Then it came to him. The dog catcher.

He called 311, which was a crapshoot in Philadelphia. As in, would anyone answer the goddamn phone? But someone did. Said they’d send someone from animal control over to the field.

Aaron straightened his shoulders. He’d solved the problem.

Then he heard the crunch of gravel behind them.

The boxy old Honda was pulling into the parking lot, spoiler askew, windows down despite the heat. Aaron’s heart raced, wondering if it was the driver, hobbled with remorse. Or a sadist, back for more.

But it was that chick, the boy Sergio’s mom, Angela or Veronica, or well—fuck if he knew. She talked on her phone through every practice, through every game, some conflict that needed to get rehashed endlessly, as she paced in her tight black pants, her huge hoop earrings, ignoring her child except to pass him a Capri Sun and Fritos with her phone briefly to her shoulder.

Sergio and Sergio’s mom walked toward Aaron and Kai. The rest of the team was going to be showing up soon.

When the other team got there it was gonna be bedlam. Giving nightmares to the entire lineup of seven- and eightyear-olds for the foreseeable future..

“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know why she’s gotta be in my business like that.” The shellacked talons of her non-

phone hand sliced the air.

“Hey, we can’t be on the field right now.” He held out his palm to get her attention, get them to stop before Sergio saw the dog.

“Hang on, I said hang on. Fine, call me after—What?” she said to Aaron. It was the first time they’d spoken.

“We can’t play on this field right now.”

She squinted at him, his pleated suit pants, starched shirt and tie, like somebody standing in her way.

“Who says?” Followed by, “Why’s there blood on your pants?” to Kai. “Boys, go throw the ball over there,” Aaron snapped, before Kai could answer.

Sergio and Kai hesitated. “Do it!” Aaron said, his nasty lawyer-dad voice coming out.

The boys slunk off, Kai still looking back fearfully toward the furry mound, and Sergio punching his glove like it was any other game.

“Whadayou, the coach now?” she sneered.

“Come here.” Aaron tilted his head toward the dog.

“You’re sending them away and you want me to go where with you?” she said, popping her hand on her hip.

“There’s a dog. Somebody hit a dog.

And left it on the field,” Aaron hissed.

“What?” she said, her voice softening slightly. They looked together at the dog, its flank filling raggedly with air.

“Oh my god,” Angela whispered.

And then they heard David’s voice booming behind them. Aaron had been hoping that another dad would show up, maybe James, their perpetually hungover but competent coach. David wasn’t the man he was looking for. David was a douche.

“That was a bad choice you made, wasn’t it, Sasha, not going to the bathroom at home? You’re just going to have to hold it then, aren’t you? Move it, girls!”

Sasha Michael Smith and Malia Steven Smith were trudging across the field, holding their bat bags and pushing

a v e .

their bikes. Their stay-at-home dad made them bike everywhere, at age 7, to keep their fitness up, though at 5’ 4” and 250 easy, he could use a bit of work on his own conditioning. And yes, they were named after the Obama girls. “To inspire excellence,” David had explained at the first practice to a bleacher full of parents with raised eyebrows. David had clearly wanted sons (“I cried at the ultrasound, man.

Seriously.”) so the girls each had a masculine middle name. He claimed it was in case they ever needed to pass as a man on a job application in the future, because “there are people in this world who might think a woman is not as competent as a man. Nobody’s gonna do that to my girls.

Nobody.” He had now taken to terrifying everyone by roaring “Smith Girl Power!” if the girls made a play. Which wasn’t often. David wanted to have a second chance at his own failed Little League years, reliving it through Sasha Michael and Malia Steven. It was going poorly.

Aaron stepped between them and the dog.

“Girls, why don’t you go throw with the boys,” Aaron said, nodding curtly toward Sergio and Kai. The girls turned their downcast eyes up to their dad.

“Burpees and squat jumps first, and then yeah, throw with the boys,” David clarified. “I’ve got a routine for them,” he said with a shrug.

Aaron was momentarily distracted by the sight of obese identical twin seven-year-old-girls doing burpees in the middle of the weed-filled field, butts in the air followed by heaving jumps back to the ground.

David’s voice yanked him back. “You guys are early, huh? Game doesn’t start for a half hour—you get James’s email about the time change? I like to get the girls here early, get ‘em warmed up and sharp.”

Aaron shook his head. Kai’s mom hadn’t put Aaron’s name or email on the Little League sign-up form, so this kind of crap happened all the time. It was infuriating. No respect for his time. He could be wrapping up that Enstead mat-

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Daytime Flight by Michelle Ciarlo-Hayes © 2015 ter right now instead of standing on this dirty field with these people.

“Anyway, what’s goin’ on here?”

David said, clapping Aaron on the back.

“You don’t look ready for a game! You guys look like your dog died!”

“What the—” Angela said. “You did that?” She stepped toward him.

“Did what?” David stepped back.

24 Everyone was scared of Angela.

“You did this to this dog?” She was in his face now, pointing at the dog.

David saw the dog, and his hand clapped his mouth.

“No! Jesus! What the fuck?” He

gagged and stepped backwards from Angela, who was walking toward the dog.

“Dumbass,” she muttered. “Gimme your shirt,” she said to David. She crouched on her little espadrilles about a foot from the dog. Aaron stood just behind her. He could smell the iron in the dog’s blood, like rust, starting to stain the dirt.

“What? I don’t want—” David said, crossing his arms protectively over his enormous Penn T-shirt.

“We gotta get the bleeding to stop,” Angela said quietly.

“Well what about his shirt?” David

said, gesturing at Aaron.

“Yours is big-ger,” Angela said, like she was talking to an aggravating child.

David slid it over his head, unveiling his pregnant belly sprouting grey and white hairs. Aaron felt a little bad for him then. You gotta prepare for when you take your shirt off, and David was clearly unprepared. He crossed his arms over the crown of hair on his nipples.

Angela reached the T-shirt toward the dog’s wound to try to sop up the blood. But the dog snapped at her with a weak snarl.

“Whoa!” David shouted. Aaron startled at his volume.

“All right, it’s ok, baby,” she whispered quietly.

“You’re good with dogs,” Aaron said, relieved by her effort.

“I useta have a dog, when I was a kid.

I got cats now. But I ain’t done nothing yet,” Angela said.

“Is there someone we can call?” David asked.

“I—” Aaron started.

“Yeah, call 911 and ask for a dog ambulance. Just bark and they’ll come.”

Angela’s nastiness was back.

“Well I don’t know,” David said defensively.

“I—” Aaron tried again.

“No. We gotta get this dog to a vet.

Kai’s dad, we’ll put it in your car.”

“It’s Aaron. My name is Aaron,” he said.

“No, not in my car. The interior will be a mess.”

“Are you kidding me?” Angela said, disgusted.

“Angela, listen! God! I called the dogcatcher. Animal control, whatever.

They’re on their way over.”

Angela’s face fell.

“They’ll shoot him,” she whispered.

“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You dunno, you dunno what you’re talking about. They’ll say it’s more humane, he’s not gonna make it,” Angela said. “And you know what, I don’t know why you keep callin’ me Angela. My name’s Maria.”

PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 25

p a c k e r “Sorry.” He wasn’t that sorry. It’s not like she was calling him by his goddamn name.

“Gimme your tie,” Maria said, nodding toward Aaron.

“Sorry?” Nothing was making sense, her ordering their clothes off while the kids played catch and while a dog was dying on this field.

“We gotta muzzle him. He’s scared and he’s trying to protect himself, but we gotta muzzle him if we’re gonna help ‘em.”

Aaron ripped off his tie, wishing it hadn’t been Ferragamo Friday at his office.

“Here.”

She didn’t say thanks.

Maria formed a circle with the fabric, stood behind the dog, and looped the circle over the dog’s mouth. She then tied it in a bow on his head, like he was wearing a $200 sailboat-patterned bandana. She stroked his head as she did this, whispering softly.

“Wow,” Aaron said, impressed.

“I trained to be a vet tech for a couple weeks, ‘fore Sergio was born,” she said. “I never did it in real life before, just on a stuffed animal. All right, gimme me a bat bag.”

Aaron grabbed Kai’s bag, dumping the bat, grubby batting gloves, Kai’s Epipen and some stray Cheez-its onto the ground. Aaron was on board now, obeying her. She folded David’s massive shirt and pressed it against the wound. It was soaked almost instantly.

“Hold the bag out.” Aaron pulled at the bag, making a pouch for the dog.

Maria gently lifted it into the bag. Her previously immaculate white T-shirt was now stamped with blood. The bow on the dog’s head poked out. The dog was lighter than Aaron’s laptop bag. He settled the handle into his closed fist, and then, impulsively, pulled the dog to his chest, carefully holding the bloody side away from his dress shirt and feeling the dog’s rapid heartbeat against his chest.

It reminded him of Kai’s infancy,

when he and Kai’s mom had tried every “baby-wearing” contraption ever invented—slings, carriers, some weird purselike thing—to try to get Kai to calm down and sleep. She’d ordered so many of them that the credit card fraud detection unit called, wanting to confirm they had indeed made six separate $60 purchases in one day at Buy Buy Baby.

Maybe if one of them had worked they’d still be together.

Then a truck rumbled up, sounding like it needed a muffler. The kids ran over, drawn by the sound. They couldn’t keep it from them any more. Everybody circled around the dog, the kids keeping their distance.

“Somebody here hitta dog?” His nametag said Ron, and he lumbered out of the truck over to where they stood.

He sipped from a giant plastic pitcher of iced tea as he walked, his beige uniform shirt untucked and sweaty, looking like an unkempt scout leader.

Maria was right. Ron had a gun. Ron didn’t seem like a guy who should have a gun. Aaron eyed the gun, wondering how often Ron had to fire it.

“This how you found ‘em?” Ron asked, looking at the dog, snuggled in Aaron’s arms in the bat bag, still shivering, wearing a silk necktie-bow and a bloody T-shirt. The three adults studied Ron, and Maria’s eyes narrowed. Aaron wanted to believe he’d made the right call, but Ron didn’t seem to be the fix they were looking for.

“No, we found him on the field.”

Aaron tried to catch him up. “Maria’s been able to get him, um, tied up and tried to help stop the bleeding.”

Ron slowly snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

“Set ‘em down,” he said, and Aaron painstakingly placed the dog on the ground.

Ron pulled the T-shirt bandage off.

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” He whistled, stopped abruptly, then started to beatbox ineptly, quietly to himself, spit arcing through the steamy air, onto the dog,

a v e .

onto Aaron’s shirt.

“Dad, what’s he doing?” Kai asked, standing next to Aaron.

“Mm, not sure. Checking him out,” Aaron answered.

“Why’s he spitting and coughing like that?”

Great question, Kai, Aaron thought.

“I have no—” Ron cut Aaron off.

“Well, I can probably bring ‘em in.

He’ll go to stray hold ‘til we can see about getting him to medical. By the time we get him out of stray hold, might be better to just destroy ‘em now. I’d ask you to bring the kids off to the side.

Sometimes they get upset. Don’t understand it’s the more humane option.

Aaron checked the kids’ eyes to see if they understood. They were quiet. Since Kai was never quiet, he was hard to read.

Ron held out his chubby hands like a shifting scale. “Destroy ‘em now?” he lifted one palm up—“Bring ‘em in?” and lifted the other. “Destroy ‘em now? Bring ‘em in?”

“So you’re saying you might have to destroy him anyway, even if you do bring him in?” Aaron asked.

“Yup. I’m leaning toward destroy ‘em now, get it over with. Dog’s pretty bloodied up in there. Not so likely he’s gonna make it.”

“Dad, what does he mean, destroy?”

Kai asked. Aaron pretended he hadn’t heard him.

Maria sprang up.

“You’re not shooting this dog.” She was trembling.

“Oh no ma’am. I’d give an IV. Standard procedure for emergency euthanasia.” He rested a hand on his holster. “The gun’s, just you know, in case,” he said, grinning at the kids and revealing jagged, yellowed incisors. Kai and the other kids took uncertain steps toward their parents.

Maria shook her straight black hair. “’No way. We’re bringing him to the vet, like I said before,” she said, looking at Aaron. “His leg could be sewed up.

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More humane, my ass,” she spat.

Aaron sighed. He had kind of been hoping they’d settle on “destroy.”

Though he didn’t really want to huddle on the playground with Kai while Ron killed the dog, and then have to bring Kai home to his mom’s and explain how the game went. She’d make this his fault one way or the other.

“Look, maybe he’s right, maybe we’re just prolonging it and we should get it over—” “We’ll take my piece of shit car.

Yours’ll stay clean, then, huh? Let’s go, Kai’s dad,” Maria said, picking up her gigantic purse.

“Don’t you think Ron has a point here? I just think it’s more efficient not to mention humane—” “I’m not sitting here with these kids while you kill this dog. Mm-kay?” she said. She jingled her keys at him. Aaron saw Kai watching them argue, caught his eye. Aaron looked down.

“Yeah, fine.”

“Suit ‘cherselves,” Ron sang. “Next time don’t waste my time, ‘kay? I got 15 more calls and it’s almost dinnertime.” He shuffled back to his truck.

“So where are we taking it?” Aaron asked Maria.

“Pals Pet Hospital.”

“Is that where you worked?”

“Nah, I can’t go back to the place where I worked. But Pals is the team sponsor, right?”

She shook her head at his idiocy again. She was right; they were the team sponsor. Aaron never needed a vet, so he barely noticed. What he did know was that he’d meant to ask his firm if they’d sponsor Kai’s team, and he’d forgotten, and then it had been too late, and Kai’s mom had sighed about it, how Kai would have really liked that. Like the 26 kids ever cared who the goddamn team sponsor was.

“All right, you watch the kids ‘til coach gets here,” Maria said to David, heading toward the car. “C’mon,” she said to Aaron.

The Living Room by Robyn MacPherson Smart © 2015 “Whoa whoa whoa!” David said.

“And I watch four kids?”

Maria raised her thin, arched eyebrows.

“All right, fine,” David said, realizing he might have gotten the easier job.

“Make ‘em all do some burpees,” she said, inclining her head toward the girls, who were now cross-legged lumps, picking dandelions out of the grass where they’d been circled around the dog.

Aaron shouted to Kai that he’d be back in a minute. Kai had started throwing again with Sergio, and didn’t miss a beat. Aaron figured Kai was used to his

dad’s sudden departures. Aaron had a sudden surge of not wanting to sit in Maria’s shitty car, but it was too late for that, and it was either that or have the dog bleed on his car’s pale, leather seats.

The Virgin Mary and a Yankee Candle air freshener shared the rear view mirror.

The front of the car was clean, if old and worn. The back was stuffed with all kinds of girly fabric boxes up to the roof.

“What is all that?”

“I sell 360,” she said. Aaron wondered if that was a drug nickname he hadn’t heard of. “Those boxes. Designer home

PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 27

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PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 28

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Bloom by Lisa T. Reed © 2015 storage, you pick the patterns. I do parties at ladies’ houses, everybody buys something. Anyway, you’re gonna have to keep the dog in your lap.”

“What about the trunk?” Aaron asked tentatively.

“My ex’s MMA stuff is back there.

And not for nothing, but you can’t put a dog in the trunk. You know, it’s like, a living thing?” she said with another sigh at his 28 stupidity.

“Dad! Daddy!” Kai was running toward the car. “Dad, can I come?”

He stood expectantly next to the open window of the passenger side of Maria’s car.

“No, Kai. You’ll miss the game. Stay here with David and the other kids. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Dad, I don’t want to wear these pants,” he said, looking down at his uniform pants smeared with the dog’s blood.

“Please can we go get clean ones?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. If there’s time.

I’ll be back soon,” Aaron said sharply.

“No, Dad, I wanna come,” Kai whined.

“No whining, Kai! Get back over there. Your team needs you. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Fine,” Kai said, tipping his head down toward the crabgrass.

Maria’s car jerked to life, and thudded over the ruts toward Packer Avenue.

Aaron watched Kai trudge back to the other kids through the car window.

“Oh, shit,” Aaron said.

“What?” Maria said, eyes on the road.

“I forgot to tell Kai and David where Kai’s Epi-pen is.”

She looked blank.

“He’s got a peanut allergy.”

“You needta go back?” she asked.

Kai was getting big enough now that he should be able to read labels and refuse snacks that had peanuts. Three years ago, during the one and only time Kai’s mom had to stab him with the Epi-pen, Aaron had been in a tense negotiation at the office. Kai had grabbed a cracker with peanut butter from his daycare teacher’s purse, and daycare had called Kai’s mom, naturally, and she sprinted the two blocks in heels when they’d said that hives had swollen Kai’s eyes shut but they were nervous about giving the shot. Aaron didn’t know any of that when his phone rang and rang silently in front of him on the conference room table. Her texts hadn’t told him it was an emergency.

1. pick up the goddamn phone 2. don’t ignore me!!!

But then finally: 3. We are at Children’s Hospital.

Call me. Asshole.

He got home that night, and Kai and his mom were curled up together in bed, watching the Muppet Movie. Kai had greeted him with his usual delighted “Daddy!” but Kai’s mom hadn’t. She’d asked him to move out the next morning while he was shaving.

Aaron hesitated, pondering the likelihood that Kai would snatch a bite of someone’s forbidden granola bar. The dog warmed Aaron’s legs like when he held Kai in his lap, and he felt his suit pants sticking to him in Maria’s un-airconditioned car.

“It’ll probably be fine,” he said, shifting the dog to a drier spot and resting his fingers carefully on top of the dog’s soft head.

PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 29

p a c k e r Maria pulled up to the animal hospital, and Aaron carried the bag in.

They told the story to the front desk receptionist, who was wearing a huge scrub shirt with pastel cats over her enormous, low-slung breasts. Aaron waited for her to be outraged.

“So who’s responsible for this dog?” she asked.

“Like I said, we don’t know.

Somebody left him there,” Aaron answered.

“I got that part. So who’s responsible?”

They were quiet.

“I need a guarantor for services rendered,” she said, “or there’s nothing we can do for you here.” She held out a clipboard.

Maria looked at Aaron, pursed her outlined lips, and looked at her toes. The dog stirred in the bat bag against his chest. He thought about how Kai used to struggle in those baby bags, how he’d wet their shirts with his tears. He thought about that one time they’d been glad for the baby bag, when Kai had his first ear infection, and Aaron walked for blocks with him fussing and writhing, Aaron’s back aching, and he’d finally felt him settle against him, this warm live thing, and Aaron slept all night with the bag on, Kai shifting slightly on his belly and sighing, and Kai’s mom departed for the couch.

“Ya gotta pen?”

Aaron filled out the form, handed it back.

“We won’t do any procedures until you authorize them. And we’ll check for a microchip to see if we can figure out the owner. But we’ll expect you to arrange for care for after if we can’t find the owner—” “Now wait a minute—” Aaron said.

“It might just mean taking it to a shelter, but we expect that if you bring an animal here, you are going to help bring it out.”

Aaron felt like swearing again, but didn’t, in this room full of women and puppies.

“Ok. God! Fine!”

The receptionist picked up the dog bag.

“Good work on this muzzle,” she said, nodding. “Field medicine, I like it.”

Maria’s mouth turned up slightly.

“Let’s go, Kai’s dad,” she said.

They arrived back at the field with the game going, parents cheering, the ice cream truck in the parking lot. No trace of Ron or the dog. Aaron exhaled at the sheer normalcy of it. Aaron couldn’t spot Kai from the parking lot, though the kids were hard to tell apart in their uniforms. Kai’s team was at bat. Aaron and Maria walked toward the bleachers.

There was a kid lying flat on the ground by the team bench, wearing the team uniform shirt and pink shorts. As he walked up, the kid on the ground started to look like Kai. A few kids were circled around him, and Sasha or Malia seemed to be patting him. Aaron started to run.

David tried to cut him off, but Aaron dodged him, slipping a little in his dress shoes.

“He didn’t have peanuts, did he?”

Aaron yelled.

“What? No,” David said. Aaron stopped, panting, and David trotted to catch up with him. “Listen, I gotta tell you, Kai freaked out after you left. Some of the other kids were making fun of him because of the bloodstains on his pants, and they didn’t believe he tripped over a bloody dog, and they were saying he’s disgusting or whatever. And he just started screaming and crying, like, ‘Get ‘em off me!’ And he’s pulling off his pants and saying, ‘I want my dad! I want my dad!’

And I mean, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t even have your number, so I gave him Malia’s extra shorts. Sorry about the pink. And I tried to get the blood off his legs with some wipes, but he’s definitely still bloody.”

Aaron’s gut was still clenched as he reached the circle of kids.

“Hey, Kai.” Kai didn’t answer. He stayed on the

a v e .

ground, whimpering and barking.

Aaron crouched next to the Smith girl. “What’s going on, Kai?” “We’re playing dead dog.” Kai explained. “Sasha’s trying to get me to stop bleeding.”

“Oh. Ok.” He paused, trying to get his bearings. “Well, look, guys, the dog’s not dead,” Aaron said.

“No, this dog’s gonna die,” Sasha said emphatically.

“No, it’s not,” Aaron said sharply.

Aaron leaned in, touched Kai’s hair. “Kai, did you bat already? How’d you do?”

Kai closed his eyes, lolled his head to the side.

“This dog’s dead,” Sasha pronounced.

“Ok, my turn.”

Kai stood up. His legs were streaked with brown dried blood and looked girly in the pink shorts, which hung precipitously low on his hips. Sasha laid down on the ground.

“Kai,” Aaron said. “You wanna cut out early? Get cleaned up?”

“I took my pants off, but my legs are still bloody, Dad.” “I know. Let’s go get you a bath.”

“I take showers now, Dad. I’m up after Sergio. I gotta go,” he said, leaving Sasha on the ground as he grabbed his bat.

“Oh. Well get your helmet then.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Kai said, without turning around.

Aaron stood behind the cage as Kai stepped onto home plate, and he watched the Pals Animal Hospital ad buckle on Kai’s back as he shifted the bat. Aaron kept quiet about his stance and choking up and eye on the ball, and clapped for his boy as he grounded out on the dirty field.

Abby Reed Meyer has written for VIBE magazine and for WHYY Radio News in Philadelphia. She is at work on a novel called The Marathon, which won the 17th Writer’s Digest Dear Lucky Agent Contest. She grew up in New Jersey, went to Haverford College, and lives with her husband and two children in Philadelphia.

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PS_Spring_2015_PS Summer 3/1/15 10:19 PM Page 32

NEW AND RECENT TITLES FROM PS BOOKS, THE BOOKS DIVISION OF PHILADELPHIA STORIES The Best of Philadelphia Stories: 10th Anniversary Edition

Home with Henry

by Anne Kaier “Pet lovers will lap up every word of this charming and candid story of a single woman opening her heart and home to an emotionally complicated cat. Like the best pet memoirs, it is what we learn about the human ex perience that matters most.” — John Grogan, author of Marley & Me

Philadelphia Stories’ tenth anniversary anthology brings together some of the best short fiction, poetry, and essays published by the magazine, in print and online, between 2004 and 2014 and includes work by Philadelphia-area writers as well as by winners of the magazine’s national contests—the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry.

Second Oldest: A Poetic History of Philadelphia

by Blythe Davenport The poems in Second Oldest tell the story of the city and her people, past and present, through fresh and haunting images. “This is a book well worth reading and rereading for its informed voice, its subtlety, its grace.” — Donna Wolf-Palacio, author of What I Don’t Know

Extraordinary Gifts: Remarkable Women of the Delaware Valley Edited by Melissa Tevere, Tara S. Smith, Carla Spataro, and Courtney Bambrick This richly illustrated volume combines original visual art with poems and short fiction inspired by twenty remarkable Delaware Valley women, none of whom allowed the limitations of society’s expectations for their gender to stop them from fulfilling their potential. Extraordinary Gifts features the work of dozens of contemporary female writers, poets, and artists and spans centuries of local history and global shifts as it explores timeless themes of love, loss, creativity, achievement, and sacrifice through the stories of these remarkable women.

Feig A novel by Richard D. Bank Philadelphia attorney David Gold has never done a daring thing in his life—until he meets Jacob Feig, a survivor of Auschwitz who stands accused of murder. “In the end, Feig is really David Gold’s book. As he listens to the stories of survivors, he emerges from his safe isolation—and his insistence that they share their hardest, deepest secrets leads to a deeper connection to the world.” — Simone Zelitch, author of Louisa and Assistant Chair of Literature and Creative Writing, Community College of Philadelphia.

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