Table of Contents “The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread” by Lou Graves…………………………………..p.3 “The Train” by Brian Crockett…………………………………………………………………….……p.4 “He Was There” and “The City I’m in Now” by Elizabeth Andara……………………...p.5 “Sparrow’s Dream” by Jenny Wu…………………………………………………..………………..p.7 Illustration by Rebecka Skog…………………………………………………………………………p.10 “Eggshells” by Sophie Panetti………………………………………………………………………..p.11 “White Winter/Brown Summer” by Eleanor Lucille…………………………………..……p.13 “Reina de la Noche” by Ashlie Marion…………………………………………………..……….p.13 *Cover art by Rebecka Skog To be considered for upcoming issues of Pour Vida lit zine, please send submissions of writing and artwork to pourvidazine@gmail.com
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“The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread: The History of a Platitude” by Lou Graves “I truly believe that one day, there will be a telephone in every town in America.” Thus was the bold prediction made by the telephone’s inventor Alexander Graham Bell. A bold statement at the time, but a comically naïve one in retrospect. How little he knew of how right he was; not only is there a telephone in every town, but in every house, in most rooms, and in almost every pocket. The invention, one might say, vastly exceeded the expectations of the inventor. Similarly, Otto Frederick Rohwedder, the inventor of sliced bread, was met with equal cynicism and skepticism, and the predictions made of his invention, in retrospect, are equally naïve and just as comical. Having patented his breadslicing (and bagging) machine it then took him fifteen years to gather enough investors to launch his idea. The excuse, and the implied criticism, he heard from reluctant investors was that “Americans aren’t that lazy” and would remain content to slice their bread themselves. Regardless, sliced bread was eventually launched in 1927 and became (and has remained) the benchmark for good ideas and momentous achievements, with a myriad of them compared to it ever since. The comedian George Carlin, whilst rattling off a list of superior inventions and achievements which have occurred since the invention of sliced bread, ending by saying “even a lava-lamp.” Like the invention it alludes to, the trope “the greatest thing since sliced bread” also arrived later than it might have. When sliced bread was at last made available to the consuming public (in 1928) it was advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread came wrapped.” “The greatest thing since wrapped bread” however is a platitude that never quite caught on (or, rather, never realized it platitudinous potential; since a platitude is defined by its popularity). In 1940 a form of bread consisting of two individually wrapped halfloaves was advertised as “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” This is the earliest known usage of the oft-spouted trope. Twenty-nine years later, man walked upon the surface of the moon and I’ll spare you, dear reader, any final clichés and assume you know already to what invention this momentous occasion was compared. ***
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“The Train” by Brian Crockett I testify to comparisons By laying tracks along my Arms; tied by blood Ties to every railroaded Moment. My arms aren’t long enough. My tracks aren’t wide enough To satisfy the chorusing cry That visits with family And echoes like a shrill whistle. I lay each tie by digging Trenches that flood with crimson. They allow the howling train To implode on that accusing chorus. Pencil hashes in the corner Remark how boys have grown; Compared like planets orbiting The sun. The tall one Triumphs in totem pole Accomplishments. The short one mumbles like A tombstone. A grey flower That testifies to blood ties
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Drying in that small chorus’ Dying, while I lay crying On the tracks Waiting for the train. *** “He Was There” by Elizabeth Endara I can only write about men who touch me when they shouldn’t and when they should and when I don't want them to and when I desperately do and all four of them have been to Prishtina traveling by way of my fingertips transporting like magic when they press their thumbs into my hips First he was there then me and then both of us together crammed into a taxi hugging too tightly I'm always asleep on his shoulder I was asleep when he kissed me I was asleep when he left Second he was there because I begged him to be even though he's a terrible friend but sometimes I wear his hoodie like we're 17 again and we walk down mother Theresa boulevard and I'm pissed and 10 pounds overweight and he thinks it's adorable when I'm angry Third he was there just across the Adriatic sea touching Frida Khalo on my shirt and shaking his blonde hair "I've been to Prishtina" he says and so I let him kiss me and whisper goodbye in Russian
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I don't like the way it sounds but I will pretend Fourth he wasn't there but his friend was in Prishtina during the war and that is enough for me to let him buy me another beer and another and we are those two people in the corner of the bar who didn't know each other an hour before and now know each other so well I am not the same girl I was in Prishtina except for my cheeks those are the same and so I let each of you kiss them in adoration and you worship at my feet that have walked every inch of this city so tired so tired so tired
“The City I’m in Now” by Elizabeth Endara There are one million cities inside of my body and the one I'm in now is outside of me too One year Two years of living nearby is not near enough time to figure out where I am or how I think about where I am The grooves of my brain are the alleyways with burekstores at the end of each firing neuron my heart is paved with footprints of heroes and villains and families and lovers my arteries are clogged with churches and mosques and statues of American presidents I walk down a boulevard named after my mother and my eyes scan the crowds for blueberries bacon a subway station fearlessness a college football jersey something familiar
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but all I see are pictures of people who are missing One day I will leave and this city will stack itself on top of another columns of memories in my lungs Weeks later in another city I will take a deep breath and when I exhale the blonde boy with the scar on his arm and his hand on my thigh hears a dozen languages but Albanian speaks the loudest and it tells him exactly what to do So he will kiss me because my skin is made of cigarette smoke and my mouth is red wine and now the city is part of him too he will grab my hand and then we are walking beneath the shadow of Skanderbeg thinking it's so easy to go back in time So I will keep breathing because I want him to know how it feels when this city wraps its arms around him how it feels when it doesn't let go *** “Sparrow’s Dream” by Jenny Wu After the symposium titled Interrogating Emotion, the professor of music thanks the sign-language interpreter, who indeed had signed for two days straight, so ardently that he forgets to thank anyone else. Gratitude turns into flattery. The signer is sitting in front of the podium where the professor stands. She has sat with her back to him, signing for hours: now she has to sign the compliments he pays her as well. He starts talking about the philosophical and semiotic implications of signing, mentions some papers published in the early nineties, the names of which have already left his mind. He starts complimenting her nimble hands, then her face and body, even her feet, all of which she has to sign. “Why do we speak with voices generally instead of speaking completely with hands? There must be an evolutionary explanation.” The professor proposes then that he will close the symposium by playing a recording of the most beautiful piece of music on earth, a choral piece: Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium. The listening audience falls silent, all pen-onpaper scratching ceases, the conference hall suddenly transformed into a religious service, a sanctuary, which is especially unfair to the deaf audience. The signer stops signing—she cannot. She scratches her nose. Afterwards, when he finds her timidly grazing the reception table’s cheese cubes and green grape clusters, he asks her out. —
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A jazz club, raining, room nearly empty and nearly pitch black, to reflect the calm reflective mood of a woman who has just been rejected in love. “One look, and I had found my future at last / One look, and I had found the world.” If the song is beautiful enough one is moved to start howling like a dog to the moon, and one would be surprised that one sounds exactly like a dog. Wounded. The horn cries quietly. “Coo-coo-coo-could’ve been…” There was no need to eat. Hunger was part of the experience. Not that she could afford anything anyway. To see and smell everything and not to own any of it was the experience. To yearn was the experience. To feel small and poor and unable to approach a stage and sit down—that was wonder. Besides, eating one thing meant excluding all others. Hunger heightens one's feelings of love. It also makes one cold, thus seeking physical closeness. That was how she got him. One could go crazy just to retrieve that feeling. Sometimes in these moods, it even feels good to have a cold. But moods come and go in accordance with their own laws. He had been inside her home, for example; she had plied him with cognac. Her ceiling was disorienting, like a tilted barroom floor; she owned an ancient radio, with a faux-wooden top and thimbledials. Nothing about this room impressed him. The previous owners of the house were her parents. They gave her the house when they retired to the coast. They had put up floral wallpaper, really ugly: black background with faded red roses. They are long-stemmed roses laid horizontally, each about two feet long, their blooming heads facing east, roses like Oriental writing, for the eye “reads” from head to root. Her mother had been high on prescription medication when she thought the wallpaper looked good. She papered her whole house with it, then ran out of pills and saw it sober for the first time. — Her memories of childhood: they all revolve around her parents and the feeling of shame; they always embarrassed her. “Phone rings. The hostess, my mother: ‘Oh, excuse me—how awfully rude— do you mind if I get that?’ The guests say, ‘Of course not, go ahead.’ Our hostess stands, walks, and plucks the receiver off the wall, and yells, ‘EVERYBODY SHUT UP CAN’T YOU SEE I'M ON THE PHONE.’ That particular night it was one of her relatives, probably asking about her husband, my father. ‘No he didn’t help with the meal,’ she practically yelled. ‘No he didn’t buy the meatballs—you should have seen him all day lying on his stomach, just paralyzed by that suppository.’” A middle-aged man at the dinner table, upon hearing his wife’s crude assessment of him, began shoveling food into his red face. All in one motion, the man got over-angry at the conversation (“What business of yours is it, Lydia?”), threw his plate and silverware across the room, unwittingly swallowed whole the meatball that he’d just put in his mouth, and choked. But the meatball was well-oiled so it popped right back up. The mother returned with a long, sensational story that she’d just heard on the phone. The dinner guests weren’t exactly pleasant either. As they laughed, the smells of their dinners in their throats escaped and filled the room. —
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“A dream: I am a sparrow. I have a pretty calico wing. There are two men who run a tiny convenience store. Judging by their accents and faces, they seem to be immigrants from some Asian city. Shanghai? I am in love with one of the men. I fly up to him. He says, ‘Hi Birdy’ as I fly up and down; he taps my head. His smile is full of love. I think, ‘If only I were human, and he could return my feelings... but then again,’ I saw myself as a scrawny, sniveling boy-child, crouched on the floor of the shop, the two men forcing a short-handled broom into my hand and feeding me very little.” — He proposed “a kingdom in which the artists were tortured: the painters forced to write poetry, the poets forced to draw clumsy pictures.” Listening to the radio together, she could tell he was very sensitive to music, wept and at one point listening to “You're My Everything,” started to laugh because he picked up the humor in it. She asked him, “Don’t you think the wallpaper looks a little Chinese?” He suddenly became very paranoid: “I’m not saying the Chinese aren’t to be trusted. They are very much to be trusted; just look at their fine restaurants and laundromats. I’m not trying to say the Chinese are sneaky or penniless or, god forbid, yellow. All I’m saying is you shouldn’t go as far as to trust one to access your home computer. That’s all. And I can attest to it. My ex-wife and her husband, they invited a Chinaman to one of their parties. The Chinaman said he wanted to install a computer game for my son. Let me tell you. It took a long time and in the end he couldn’t get it to work.” He was agitated. She held back, afraid to make things worse; she had no idea how to comfort him. He didn’t even want her to comfort him. After he left she sat on her bed and cried. If only he gave her permission to love him, she thought, she would be able finally to wade into the river and to begin the collection of the broken bits and pieces of his being that had up till now floated by her untouched and into nothingness. — An alternate ending: Ophelia handing out flowers Looney-Tunes edition. “One for you, one for you, one for you,” she lilts, and the last one is a bomb. ***
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“Eggshells� by Sophie Panetti I broke a glass jar the morning of April 10th and wondered if it was an omen. Rain was coming, And the melancholy set in Like water into porous brick, Without me knowing why. We learned about Karrin a few at a time And slowly Began cracking Into pieces like eggshells. We sat in her apartment in a clumsy circle, surrounded by Christmas decorations still hanging in April while a black bird, improbably, sang outside. People brought food: A box of crackers, muffins, three apples. People eat when they grieve to fill some sort of space, To give their hands purpose, to occupy their mouths when None of us could figure out what to say. The room was salt-water humid and our shiva was cluttered, warm with heartache; The heavy quiet was punctured only by the ragged inhaling of people Who couldn't quite get enough oxygen; The steady heartbeat of the clock, And the medicinal hum of the air conditioner Kept our breathing in check. In. Out. In. Out. If we keep breathing together, we thought, Our skins will stay together. I could not look at the clock so I cleaned; The others stared at the floor, at each other, At the window, gazing and unseeing. No one knew what to say. No one knew how to say it.
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No one knew where to look Except at the long shadow of a short life. The thing that stuck out to me most, Like a blackbird on a telephone wire Is that when we talked about her, How easily and without thinking We transitioned from using the present tense To the past. Time should have ceased And we are all bewildered That it didn't. That it still hasn't. That the frogs still sing, The moon insists on sinking and the sun also rises Over and over. But Time has thumped on like The heartbeat under a bruise. Spring has crept in the door But no one asked if we were ready. The grass is resurrected in waves, A fine tender green mists Over the tips of the trees; The air turns damp and kind. The world has not stopped, Though we think it should. We can inhale a little better Than we could a few weeks ago, Though it singes our lungs like smoke. But we are trying to breathe still. We are trying to find hope even though The rains have snuck up on us, And no one asked if we were ready. ***
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“White Winter/Brown Summer” by Eleanor Lucille Ancestral spirit, Stardust, Story Teller. Curly hair beyond history. Hips conclude such mystery. What is a tongue without a language? What is a home without territory? Can I conquer such story? Consumer, glutinous, American. Fables replaced by television, CriCri or Michael Jackson, Torta or Hamburger? The future is a fucking tourist. The past is trapped in an evening mass. I am stuck somewhere between pain and pleasure, Culture is not what one can measure. These two worlds are one, Divided only by time. Ugly preacher, neighbors just as handsome, Fear is our only ransom. *** “Reina de la Noche” by Ashlie Marion They will say my death was preventable when they find my body dried up, like a snakeskin husk in the desert sand, surrounded by rare, nightblooming flowers. They will ask themselves why I was alone, caressing the dainty blooms sewn into my skin by ghosts yielding cactus spines— funeral rites, I was told, for dying an obscure and lonely death in the desert. They will sprinkle sage oil onto my dusty skin, murmuring, who deserted you? As the last jaguar in Arizona observes from a nearby rock alcove, licking sweet desert sand off the marigold rosettes blooming on its fur. And thunder will rumble above like my hungry stomach did before I died and they will watch as evening comes with a glittering of snake scales falling from the sky. And then they will walk away, leaving my body to be desertified. It will bloom once a year, when the rain finally comes. ***
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