VOLUME 5 SISU This is the beginning of our second year. It is a time of shift and change and fearlessness. The title for this volume is taken from the original Finnish sisus, which means “interior”. Sisu translates, roughly, as “having guts”, but not in the physical or momentary sense; instead, it is sustained, headstrong, and doesn’t bow in the face of adversity or failure. The pieces represented in this volume, in addition to our renewed resolve to bring our readers daring new literature, hope to capture that essence.
CONTENTS “The Joy Kill Series [or] Becoming Less of a Human and More of the Sky” by Kathryn H. Ross “The Boyfriend Test” by Elizabeth Archer “Weight Watcher” by S. Kay “Green Fingers” by Anton Rose “Orientation” by Mary Casey “Paul Practices Yoga” by Dan Nielsen “Extremity” by Jessica June Rowe “How to purify your broken bones” by C.M. Keehl “The Bath” by Jordan Sanderson
THE JOY KILL SERIES [OR] BECOMING LESS OF A HUMAN AND MORE OF THE SKY KATHRYN H. ROSS Joy Kill Long, black hair pulled tight in a ponytail. Slender legs encased in dark fabric and a coat reaching down to the backs of his knees – Joy Kill stands in his metallic roller blades, leans forward, feels the sudden weight of gravity as she wraps her arms around his neck. The wind kisses his lips, caresses his skin and whispers through ribbons of flying hair, “faster, faster—,” Gravity tightens her hold. The wheels of his blades scream, the ground tips forward and Joy Kill, arms arched like wings, plunges head first into the black canvas sky. From the Sky Returned Ink dripped in globs to the earth. Someone screamed, “the sky is falling!” and little human ants went scurrying. Great, shining dollops of night rained down, leaving behind holepunch windows to morning. There was a great heave, and a body came hurtling to the ground, a glint of silver just visible in the beams of early sunshine. The sky was crepe paper and holes. Joy Kill landed spread-eagled, wet hair fanned out beneath him, clouds wrapped around his heaving chest. A star clung, burning, to his shoulder. His eyes were full of wandering.
He stood, wiped the night from his pants, saw it splatter the ground – a spray of black, mottled blood. He removed his shining shoes, tossed them upward and the sky, extending its arms, caught them – made them twin shining stars. Human ants watched from their hills, their beady eyes glinting like diamonds in the earth. Joy Kill started walking. The growing sun dried the ink, the mottled blood, and night burned away. “Where have you been?” a voice called from its hiding place. Joy Kill kept his eyes on the sky, ran a hand across his dripping face and replied, “Swimming in the flood.” Cleanse and Color He’d finally washed off the night; day had come, blazing white and warm. Joy Kill watched the world from his window, standing in the shadowed slats of his blinds, feeling like a phantom in his old apartment. The walls watched him warily. His long hair hung in wet rivulets around his bruised shoulders and a white towel lay draped over his hips, strung around his alabaster skin. Behind him she slept, surrounded by pillows. She sighed, covered her head with her small paws, trembled with a yawn. Joy Kill turned toward her, slowly approached the bed. He took her soft body into his arms and breathed the cinnamon smell of her fur. She awoke, startled. Getting her bearings, she hissed and jumped from his arms, leaving a deep, black scratch in her wake. She landed sprawled on the ground, scraped her feet against the floor, trying to get traction. Joy Kill called out as she reached the door. She stopped, back arched, eyes wide. He moved forward but, in the following moment, she scuttled from the room.
Joy Kill straightened, stared at the empty doorway. He felt the sting in his arm as black blood surged forth, dripped down, spread against the white of his towel, leaving a night-colored stain. Deconstruction The sun was sinking beyond the blinds; Joy Kill stood, picking at the black scab running down his arm like a polluted river. The crowd was clogging his lawn; their screaming pounded against the windows and roof like rain. They were nothing but shadows against the sun, eyes on fire and mouths hurling words like machetes. “Come out, you demon!” A rock hit the window, splintering the glass. The crowd cried in unison as Joy Kill took a step back, gripping his sides, feeling it all rage inside him. Another stone collided with the house. The window broke, covering the floor with crystal shards. The sun lost its footing, threw out a glowing hand to cling to the hills, keep it from falling. Its light was caught, held in Joy Kill’s eyes, then disappeared, swallowed like stardust in the twin black holes. A tear escaped from the void: ink on alabaster canvas. Becoming the Sky Hands forced themselves through the broken window. Blood sprayed
the carpet like wine leaping from from the glass. Joy Kill screamed, “Stay back!” but his words came as darkness from his mouth, landed on the floor, mixed themselves with the blood of the crowd and consumed them. White cheeks stained with ink and water color, Joy Kill backed against the wall. Heads and arms surged forward until they were all Joy Kill could see. The hands of the crowd gripped him, scratching and clawing, making rips in the canvas, loosing onyx strands from silver scalp while their cacophonic voices yelled for his blood and his death and his damnation. The crowd pulled Joy Kill forward, until he was born on bony arms—through the window and out onto the lawn. The last of the sunlight slipped from the sky and the stars peered out from behind the clouds, blazing. “Burn him!” Fire sprang from the air, as if from fevered human flesh. Joy Kill screamed, marble skin melting like wax as the flames licked his dying form. “Look!” The human ants scattered, spread out in a ring of raised limbs and bared teeth. Joy Kill burned at the center, a bonfire at a witch’s gathering. Black smoke rose from his body, reaching for the sky and the sky spread its fingers, reaching back. Joy Kill’s screams died. He smiled as the night leaked from him, onto the grass, into the air,
black mottled blood and vapor floating upwards into the sky’s arms. Flames extinguished themselves. Night fell, complete, like a curtain. Pulled apart, opened, scattered— Joy Kill becomes the sky.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathryn H. Ross is an LA-based writer, reader, and storyteller. Her prose and poetry have been previously published in Neutrons Protons and Here/There: Poetry, and will soon appear in Unbroken Journal, Dali’s Lovechild, and 50 Haikus. When she is not writing, she is blogging for her talented writers group, Thimbleschism, or bingewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender.
THE BOYFRIEND TEST ELIZABETH ARCHER 1. She’s in your bathroom forever. A) She’s looking for prescription meds to scarf. B) She’s sniffing nail polish remover. C) She’s sick to her stomach. D) She’s cutting herself again. Answer: D She comes out and you feel, as you slide your hands gently on her arm, the bandages. There’ll be more lines on her arms above the wrist, scratches like an alien language of grief. Never deep enough, except for those few times, to warrant a trip to the hospital. She says they remind her she is alive. But you aren’t sure how. 2. She faints at dinner with your family in the restaurant. A) She’s pregnant. Don’t pregnant women on soap operas always faint? You’ve never seen a real pregnant woman faint. Your pregnant sister is chasing your nephew around. She never faints. But everyone glares at you and your Dad’s lip tightens into a line as you try to revive her. Your Mom is flustered, suggesting splashing water on her face. B) It’s that pesky brain tumor no one sees, but she knows is there. There are scans all over town, from every ER, of the contents of her brain. You wish they’d all get together and compare notes, because every other month or so, she clutches her head, crying. Wanting whatever is inside her brain to come out. C) She’s faking. You can hear her steady breathing, and you know that flutter of eyelash, her long mascaraed hairs softly brushing her skin, just after she’s opened those luminous turquoise blue eyes and shuttered them again quickly. She’s checking, always checking, to see if anyone in the universe still gives a damn about her. She can never check enough. You tell her you love her every day, but it’s never enough. Maybe it will be better when you’re married. D) Like Grandpa says, it’s a bad jalapeno. Mexican food isn’t for everyone. Answer: C She won’t admit it, of course, not even in the car. She whispers she’d like to go the ER, That something is wrong with her blood, it’s the wrong color. More purple than red. It must be the new meds the doctor gave her. Next morning, she refuses to take her pill. You can’t find the bottle. You call her doctor, pacing outside the apartment in the parking lot. They won’t talk to you because you aren’t family. I’m her fiancée, you say three times. You hear her phone go off. Her doctor has called. She goes in the bathroom and slams the door. You don’t realize she’s swallowed pills again until the fireman knock on the door. She always calls 911 before she passes out.
3. She loses her job at the fish fry restaurant. She’s only had the job a week. She won’t tell you why, and you have to guess if: A) The manager groped her in the back room, just like the guy at the pizza place. And the guy at the hardware store. And the guy at the apartment complex leasing office—but she was only applying for that job, didn’t even have it yet. She has a body, people tell her, like a model. Or a stripper. You notice men staring at her. That long red hair. Those amazing eyes. And the huge breasts which owe nothing to silicone. B) She didn’t show up. Your friend Joey told you he saw her that afternoon she got fired from the coffee shop, buying shoes at the mall when she told you she was working. When she told you she dropped a plate of eggs and got fired by that mean woman with yellow hair that looked like a squat dandelion sitting on her head. Who eats eggs at four in the afternoon? You asked. Old people, she snaps. Old people always eat eggs. C) She slapped that girl Debbie with the ugly mouth, the one who was such a bitch. D) They were overstaffed, and last hired, first fired. Lent is over and no one eats fish in May. Answer: C The girl Debbie wants to press charges and says she chipped her front tooth. She wants money. Your girlfriend is a crazy bitch, Debbie says, when she comes to the door with her boyfriend. You should put that bitch on a leash before she bites someone. Before they have to put her down. You slam the door in Debbie’s face. She does have an ugly mouth. 4. She tells you it’s over, but she’s said that so many times you keep a count on your calendar. Seventy-two times since January 1. You don’t remember last year. Neither does she. Is it over? A) It’s never really over. This is true love, and true love never dies. You listen to every song on your playlist. They are all about love. You are drinking flat beer. It tastes like the Gulf of Mexico. B) It’s that guy on the motorcycle she’s in love with. The one she rode off with after that fight. The guy with the cool tattoos and the long hair in a braid. He’s big, but you could take him. If he was drunk, maybe really, really drunk. C) Your mom and your sister were right. And your friends. Everyone who knows her, even her mom and dad. D) It’s true, what her doctor says. She has that Borderline personality disorder. Answer: D When you hear, six months later, that the EMTs didn’t get to her in time, even after she called about the pills, you can’t quit crying even though you’re at work. Checking Facebook at work is bad that way. You wish she hadn’t moved out of town where you couldn’t rescue her. “It was the schizoaffective disorder,” her Dad says at the funeral, where everyone covers her pretty white coffin with daisies—pink, orange, and purple, even blue. She hated white ones. You can’t help feeling somehow you took and failed a test, the only test that really mattered. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Archer has published flash, short stories and poetry. She lives in the Texas Hill Country, and dreams of snow.
WEIGHT WATCHER S. KAY I swipe my card for a grilled cheese at a vending machine, unaware I’m standing on a scale. It dispenses a lightly-dressed salad instead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: S. Kay is a queer, curvy, Canadian author. Her debut book “Reliant” (tNY.Press, 2015) is an apocalypse in tweets, while her novella “Joy” (Maudlin House Press, January 2016), explores relentless rejection across multiple styles and platforms. Follow her at @blueberrio.
GREEN FINGERS ANTON ROSE She only sees her father a few times each year. There’s a different plant each time, always dying. First it was a miniature Christmas pine, needles shedding at the slightest of touches, a handful of wood-carved ornaments hanging weakly from the branches. Then it was a chilli plant. He cooked her homemade curry with home-grown chillis, dry little fingers, bland and insipid. Once there was a spider plant, a mess of grey and green tendrils that cracked and crumbled when she touched them. This time it’s a cactus plant, on a plate by the windowsill. She pushes one of the spines, expecting it to bend and snap, but it pricks her skin. She pulls her finger back, sees a small drop of blood. That one’s still alive, he says. Doesn’t need much water.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anton Rose lives in Durham, U.K., with his wife and their dog. He writes fiction and poetry, and his work has appeared in a number of print and online journals. Find him at antonrose.com or @antonjrose
ORIENTATION MARY CASEY what is your name?where you are?what brought you here? does anything hurt? there is a cat on your chest and she is looking at me but if I close my eyes I can smell the stars and lick the spoon clean of spittle your breath tickles the insides of me when we were young and didn’t know when to stop -ohpaper is streaming from the sky and it is beautiful
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mary Casey lives in the Blue Hills of Virginia. Her poetry is inspired by the wildness surrounding her at home and at her job in the hospital.
PAUL PRACTICES YOGA DAN NIELSEN Ben sat at the table. His eyes were closed. Sarah stood by the sink, looking through an open window at a darkening sky. Sarah gripped the counter with both hands, her pelvic bone resting against the sharp edge. Her hips moved, but just a little. Ben covered his face with the palms of his hands. He lowered his head until the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. He pressed harder. He saw bright flashing colors. He drew his hands back, smoothing his hair, then further back until the fingers locked at the nape of his neck. Ben opened his shoulders. Ben opened his eyes. “What do you want for dinner?” Sarah said. Sarah was facing Ben now, but her gaze was aimed a few inches above his head, and her focus was somewhere in the distance. They’d been married a year and Ben was still surprised by the height of his wife. Sarah was well over six feet, maybe closer to seven. Sarah was twenty-seven. Was she still growing? “What?” Ben sank into a slouch. “I thought we were having that fish.” Sarah opened the refrigerator door. Then the freezer door. She pulled out a frost-covered box and gripped it with the fingers of both hands so Ben could clearly see the label. “This isn’t fish,” Sarah said. “This is fish sticks. Not even the good kind. You bought minced.” “It was half off.” Ben felt defensive and then cheap. “But we don’t like minced.” Sarah waved the box in Ben’s face. Paul, under the table, sensed tension and growled, but just above a whisper. “I honestly can’t tell the difference.” Ben looked to the side and then at the floor. “People only say ‘honestly’ when they’re lying,” Sarah said, ending the conversation. Ben again covered his face with the palms of his hand, and repeated the entire gesture, until his fingers were once more locked at the nape of his neck. He pressed the heels of his hands too deeply into his eyes this time, and the brightly flashing colors remained until he became worried, but then they went away. Paul crawled out from under the table. He carefully positioned his front paws on the kitchen door. He worked his legs until he was standing fully erect. He arched his back and raised his snout. A strangely meditative sound came from deep inside his throat. “What’s Paul doing?” Ben said. “Yoga,” Sarah said. A sudden gust blew rain in through the window. The curtains billowed like flags of a country devoted to butterflies and flowers. Thunder chased lightning. “We should turn on the weather channel,” Ben said.
“Why should we do that, Ben?” “There may be warnings.” “So?” “The radio will tell us what to do.” “Like what?” Sarah said.“Like, go down to the basement?” “Never mind.” “Board up the windows?” “Okay! Just forget it!” “Stock up on stuff? Head for higher ground? Don’t loot?” Paul sensed tension again. He lowered himself to the floor and returned to his place beneath the table. Ben got up to close the window just as the sun came out. The breeze felt nice and smelled good. Ben left the window open. Ben turned on the oven. He arranged fish sticks on a cookie sheet, spreading them evenly so none of them touched. He added the remains of a bag of onion Tater Tots. He returned to his chair to wait for the bell indicating that the oven had pre-heated. “I wonder if there’s a rainbow,” Sarah said. “What?” Ben said. The bell sounded. Ben stood, opened the oven door, and slipped the cookie sheet onto the middle rack. He set the timer for forty minutes. He closed the oven door. When Ben returned to his chair, Sarah was seated across from him, and there were beers on the table. They each opened theirs at the exact same time so it sounded like one beer, but louder. “I said,” Sarah said, “I wonder if there’s a rainbow.” Paul followed a path of sunlight to the window. He sat, but with his hind legs crossed in a way requiring great control and concentration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dan Nielsen lives alone in a three-bedroom house a short walk from Lake Michigan. He’s been writing, making music, and doing art for half a century. Old credits include Random House and University of Iowa Press anthologies. Most recently his work has appeared in The Ottawa Object, Lockjaw Magazine, The Fem, Semaphore Magazine, and Minor Literature[s]. Dan is amazing at ping-pong. He has a website: Preponderous
EXTREMITY JESSICA JUNE ROWE The anger came from her hands. Eight-year-old Natalie listened to her mother yell about some minor mishap, and in her mind, she felt sorry; in her child-chubby cheeks, the flush of shame at being scolded. But deeper, the anger was there, in the tight coil of her tendons, in the disappearing space between her bones as her short fingers clenched into fists. She held them until the color disappeared from her knuckles, until her entire hand was white from rage—except for a small slice of red, a cut from a ragged nail where the bright spark of hate at her fingertips could slip into her soft tissue, calcify in her blood and coat the inside of her skin. Natalie thrust her hands behind her back to prevent herself from letting them fly and knock the teeth out of her mother’s sneer. Eventually, Natalie’s mother finished, and sent her to her room. She went quietly, but there was no appeasing the anger that grasped her little body like she grasped the toys, the clothes, the bedding she would destroy, out of control. And even then, once done, the wreckage of her life around her only served to inflate her childish fury further. Natalie’s hands unfurled, and the rush of blood back into her joints sent shivers up her arm. Eventually, Natalie would grow up. Eventually, her cheeks would thin and her grown-up mind would forget this moment, how it began. There would be doctors and diagnoses; therapists, and their questions: how do you feel, why do you fight, what’s going on in your head? But it was never her head that knew, and she could hit and slap, scratch and cut until she scarred, but under the surface it never changed. Violence had soaked its way into her fingernails, her cuticles, the veins of her palm and wrist. Eventually, life would go on, but Natalie was cursed knowing that whatever she touched, her hands would touch first.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jessica June Rowe is Editor-in-Chief of the Southern California Review and a Playground-LA playwright. Her work has appeared in Noble / Gas Qtrly, TheCultureist, and Gryffin, as well as on the stage of the Zephyr Theater in LA. She really loves chai lattes. Find out why by following her on Twitter @willwrite4chai
HOW TO PURIFY YOUR BROKEN BONES C.M. KEEHL 1. To begin buy ½ mile by ½ mile by half your swollen throat. 2. Strike to match white sage on your hallowed folded knees & 3. baptize the equation autumnal haven an ode of riddance to conflate your lungs full of planets full of istighat, full of deer-trailed paths. 4. Now find here the forest is dripping, 5. gather honey 6. add terroir to dirt your body deep to continue sanctification 7. bury your bones 3/4th earth under to dislodge Detroit deficit. To disengage those definitions that have dissected you whole / every direction you have swallowed in whole/ every last deception you were forced, 8. now swallow the forest. 9. Pine tress 10. moons 11. foxes finding leaves 12. the silence from the streets. The derivative is to decompose / discover / uncover as you cover that you lie here full of tattooed history but no simple suitcase surrender. Here the forest is & you are turning hundred & sixty acres alone & able to grow yourself holy to pour from the pines & oscillate complete absolution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: C.M. Keehl is a writer, dreamer & destroyer that fuels up on anything espresso &/ coconut. When not writing/ reading/ feeling everything all at once, she is chilling with her dog Carver. She is the poetry editor at Dirty Chai Magazine. Her work has been published & forthcoming in: Great American Lit Mag, Trans Lit Mag, Electric Cereal & Reality Beach. She tweets about motorcycles & dogs @cmkeehl
THE BATH JORDAN SANDERSON Bathing in possum milk, we were on the verge of deliverance. Light fell in scales from our eyes. We hissed like babies. We were torn between the branches of a birch and the plums rotting in a shirt someone left on the riverbank. We made it past the owls and big rigs into a shopping center, where we knew people who sold perfume, lingerie, and smoothies. They could tell we were different. They said we had that glow you see coming from white sheets on empty beds in an emergency room.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jordan Sanderson earned a PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. His work has appeared in Better: A Journal of Culture and Lit, Fiction Southeast, Bird’s Thumb, Scapegoat, Caketrain, and other journals, and he is the author of two chapbooks, Abattoir (Slash Pine Press, 2014) and The Formulas (ELJ Publications, 2014). Jordan lives near the Gulf of Mexico.
“SISU”, PIDGEONHOLES, Volume 5 Copyright 2016, Pidgeonholes and Individual Authors Contents may not be used or duplicated without consent from all parties. Learn more at: http://pidgeonholes.com/ Edited by: Nolan Liebert