Riggwelter #18 by Riggwelter

RIGGWELTER #18 FEBRUARY 2019 ed. Amy Kinsman

The following works are copyrighted to their listed authors ÂŠ2019. Riggwelter Press is copyrighted to Amy Kinsman ÂŠ2017.

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Foreword The White Rabbit Speaks Salted Mornings Futile Book Editor at the Gallery of Modern Art Armed with madness for a long voyage The Plum Tree Light Map for the Bereaved Maps Alice #11 50 Congress Ave. Aequitas Corvidae Porcelain Choir Hope Taxidermy Meditation Clay Girl in the Corner Wedding Fever Poverty Psalm Dazzle Painting Revised Verses From The Feminist Bible Blossoming Untitled Abbess Hildegardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Remedies The Annual Bountiful Harvest Blessing of Arthur County, Nebraska The Bells Carnivores Rewilding the Body Barley There Fistful Of Mercy The Light at the End of the Universe &the end of a (space) opera Driving Past Roadkill While Pondering the New America Fireflies Words: Marissa Glover Art: Grace Velee Rebirth Contributors Acknowledgements

4 5 6 10 11 12 15 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 28 30 31 34 40 41 42 44 47 48 49 53 54 55 56 57 61 63 64 65 65 65 66 67 72

Foreword

Is it me or are there as many days in January as there are in the rest of the year? Anyway, it’s over now and for that we can only be thankful. February’s issue is all about faith and there are many things to have faith in: yourself, friends, family, humanity, nature, art, the state, the fantastic, the surreal and yes, of course, god. The nature of faith is of particular interest to me as a writer and as an editor, as someone with a complicated relationship with my own faith, it’s important to me to have those complexities properly represented. This issue does just that with thirty five pieces displaying all those glorious angles and nuances. As always, some thanks are in order before we begin. Thank you very much to the reviews team, who are always working tirelessly, and to all of our review and essay contributors. You can read all of these on our website. Thank you to all of our submitters – your work and your e-mails are a joy to read, thank you for honouring our little journal with them. Thank you to all of our readers and supporters, without whom this would be an exercise in shouting into the void. Now that’s quite enough from me, let’s got on with it. However cold February is where you are, let’s hope every month this year gets a little brighter.

Amy Kinsman (Founding Editor)

The White Rabbit Speaks

Poetry is the most important art in the world Hence it is used to convey the oldest rules. And what would the world be without clocks to measure and papers on which to mark the numbers of days? Lists become essential. A reader must read out loud in order to ensure that everyone is counted. People must be summoned in order and present themselves at the appropriate time. Parchment I declare proper for ceremonial books. Sticky with oak ink. The seal shall be opened to the sound of the trumpet with three short blasts. Then the scroll can be read and the plea considered. Pocket a journal for noting down observations, like our King, who needs magnifying glasses to decipher dates, times, and instructions such as no one must talk when the King is talking. I obey as it's my job to be charged with procedure. Give me the starting orders. What happens next must be recorded, in the tradition of the clerks, in the patterns of systemised wordshapes. Do you recall that I began this book? Alice was nothing. Merely a sleeping lump when I ran past her. My neat little rump, attracted her snoring eyes and set off this mystery. I am at your service. A well-presented rabbit, neat and knowledgeable. I commence all adventure with a minor slip up. If you want my help your task is easy. Take a deep breath and fall asleep. Jude Cowan Montague

Salted Mornings

Fragrant air escaped every time someone opened the door of the chicken shop, and Helen and Rowena stood outside only long enough for Rowena to take a final drag and drop her cigarette to the ground. Helen thought it was a disgusting habit, but she never said anything. By the time she remembered that Rowenaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s feelings meant nothing to her this morning, and she should finally say something, Rowena had gone inside. "God, I need food," Rowena said as Helen joined her in the queue behind two teenage boys. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yeah,â&#x20AC;? Helen said. Something warm in her stomach could solidify her thoughts, make them easier to hold and understand. Hatred was a strange emotion for her; it felt slippery, like a moth that refused to let itself be seen. But maybe that was just the hangover making her weak. The door opened behind them, and more husky-voiced, walking hangovers joined the queue. It was a day to be animalistic, raw bodies needing to be repaired through grease and salt. Strangers sitting in communal pain. Helen and Rowena sat with a bucket of chips each, tomato sauce staining their fingers red. When Helen finished, she stared into the empty cup. The grease swirls had turned it grey and it looked pitiful. Ten minutes ago it was stiff with newness and virginally white. It was a new year, but decay was everywhere. "What time did we get home?" Rowena asked. The clock had shown three-thirty, but it was running twenty-two minutes late, and had been for three months. Helen had missed her train every day for a week before she realised, but still neither of them had changed it.

"Four. Ish.” Almost four hours after they had shouted ‘happy new year’ and screamed as they hugged. The person with you at midnight was supposed to be the person you would spend the year with. As the clocks chimed and the streamers dropped, it had felt unquestionably true, but now the sight of Rowena licking her fingers while wearing her fingerless gloves made rage rush through Helen, like the rabble of moths were now aflame. “That’s a fair effort. And then what, another couple of hours just chilling at home? I don’t even remember going to bed.” “Yeah,” Helen said. Her memory was clear. Pain like a heart attack had sobered her. Rowena ordered chicken wings and they ate in silence. Helen finished first. "Do you want more?" Rowena asked, and pushed her bucket with two greasy wings forward. Helen took one but didn't look away from the menu. The heat, the food, being in public – it was working like magic. Her eyes were less gritty, and if she looked at her friend, Rowena would spot the hatred. Helen had no words for it yet, but her thoughts were solidifying. Bile spilled into her mouth and she stumbled off her chair and into the grimy single toilet at the back of the shop. It was not the first time she had thrown up there, but someone else had beaten her to it that morning: there was already the sharp tang of released nausea in the air. She rinsed her mouth, washed her face, then sat on the toilet until someone banged on the door. The smile she gave as she passed by was shaky, but his eyes were filmed over, focused only on his objective.

Rowena had ordered two large cokes, and was rattling the ice in her cup absentmindedly. “Hey,” she said as Helen sat. “Didn’t Shorty say he’d come last night?” He had held her hand as she cried, trying to keep the sobs quiet so Rowena, sitting in the next room with Jewel and Marco and Spencer, wouldn’t hear. His hands had been hot and he had tried to kiss her, taking her tears for an opportunity. But she had retreated to her bedroom alone. “Yeah, he did come. He was a bit late though.” “Huh, I didn’t see him.” “It was when you were with Jewel, and the others.” Her voice was too small and the rattling ice almost drowned it out, but Rowena blinked as though a door had opened unexpectedly in her face. “Right. What were, um – where were you then? I didn’t see you.” The door had been partially open, and the bottle of tequila had grown slippery in her hand as she listened to Rowena’s cackling voice, and the sharp jabs of laughter from their friends. “I was in the kitchen with Angie.” Angie had left an hour earlier, but Rowena wouldn’t remember that. “Oh right, good. God, she was acting weird last night.” “She’s on new medication.” Rowena rolled her eyes and slurped the last of her drink. “Let’s get out of here, I need more sleep.” Helen thought about grabbing her former friend’s arm so she couldn't leave. She imagined sitting on this plastic chair, at this plastic table, with a roomful of strangers

around her, and telling Rowena it was over. The thought sent a sharp pain through her, but she pushed it down. It was not the time to grieve, it was the time to plan. She would wait until it was just the two of them. She would script her words, file them into sharp instruments that would wound. As Rowena wounded others. As Rowena had cut through Helen while their friends listened. “Yeah, let’s go home,” Helen said.

Alison Gibson

Futile Alyssa Ciamp

Book Editor at the Gallery of Modern Art

Inspired by a Joan Rix Tebbutt Exhibition

“Ladders and tools linen and rope and walls and locks and skins clocks . . . flights and beginnings . . .” She presses herself against the cases like a child. They have removed the covers and splayed books against the walls like drugged moths. Blank inner pages. Mysteries embossed in gold-leaf brushwork, hand-painted by a modern scribe-monk. Words forgotten, leaving only enough to whet her appetite. Books captured behind glass; untouched, unread, unloved. Daphne and Chloe run with abandon among the curling script until their text, their purpose vanishes. Tooled black leather on white casts blurred reflections in a mirror. She wants to smudge the edges with sticky fingers, turn down the corners. “Not in the individual letters, words or their meanings, but rather in the solid forms, lines and spaces.” Gerry Stewart

Armed with madness for a long voyage *

After four paintings by Leonora Carrington

I Self-Portrait: Inn of the Dawn Horse (1937-38) It’s lost its mane and tail but she’s set that old rocking horse rocking so hard it is lifting, hovering in the air as if it might follow its living self the one that has leapt through the frame and is cantering into freedom. And yes, it’s a dawning Leonora, sitting on a satin tongue her demon hyena at her feet, will soon be gone as desire materialises beside her casts a shadow, erases lines that would confine her.

II Bird Superior: Portrait of Max Ernst (1939) Far away in a gilded country where the forests are deep and dark she paints maestro Max all flounced out in feathers and fish tail, his stinging stripy socks, Leonora’s shaman. He paints her tangled in briars and vines she paints herself frozen in the background watching him walking out of shot helpless to stop him.

Even before war is declared she knows he’s leaving taking her light trapped in his lantern, the egg he will hide in the ice of this barren lifeless mountain.

III The Artist Travelling Incognito (1949)

Why so paranoid? asks the Spanish psychiatrist She straightens the citadel on her head, rearranges the extra eyes she’s borrowed from her cat’s remaining lives.

They’re coming to get me, she explains In a submarine Lord Candlestick with his strictures Mother painting biscuit tins punishing nuns, suitors, the spies of the Gestapo entitled artists who would use me as their muse I’m sticking my necks out my real head’s the decoy it will parrot what you expect I’ve kept my umbrella in case it rains I don’t know why I’m in disguise none of them see me.

IV The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg) (c1947-50) No foam-born Venus blown ashore on a shell She crawled straight from the mouth of the whale turned her back on the map of her journey freed the geese that led her to her unknown home. As for the terror that overwhelmed her she’s put it behind her so let waves rise, mound themselves into hillocks miniscule men fight monsters saplings sputter flame. She is brooding mysteries in her head, her unhatched visions sprout strange feathers in their egg. Deborah Harvey

*The title is paraphrased by Leonora Carrington from the inscription in Mary Butt’s novel, ‘Armed with Madness’

The Plum Tree Light

She’d been holding the vigil in their front room for five years. Her body bent in prayer, crouched and facing the semi-circle of assorted candles that surrounded their child’s photograph. She’d picked the one with her daughter beaming from up high on her broad backed shoulders. A little dot on her daughter’s mouth – a chocolate stain from a Neapolitan ice-cream. Her favourite. Yet in the third month of the fifth year holding the vigil, her candles started going missing. Disappearing from around the fireplace where she’d sat them – vanishing into thin air. At first, she accused her husband, swung verbal scythes at him as he emerged from hibernation. From the separate lives they chose to live since the incident, their house divided in half. “You’ve been moving her candles. Whilst I’m at work you’ve moved them. Our daughter!”, she cried. “Why would I do that?”, he replied, face contorted in confusion. It was a look he’d held since the vigil had begun. Sore, she bit down on her words. Chewed and spat her accusations as though they were stuck on her tongue. “You never loved her as much as me. That’s why. Never understood my mourning.” He told her not to be ridiculous. Told her that he did love their daughter. That he did understand – which was a lie. The reassurance he offered didn’t swell into comfort. She left the issue alone. It wasn’t him who was taking them, that she knew, somewhere deep and dark.

By the fourth month of the fifth year – and with the candles still disappearing – she began to split at the seams. The stitching of her skin loosening itself at the veins. Mind knotting and unknotting as if caught under a spinning wheel needle. Perhaps it was her moving them. Sleepwalking after her prayers. She thought to set up a camera – to catch herself in the act. Even stay awake all night. But the former too technical. And the latter nothing but futile.

The start of the fifth month and there was only a solitary candle left. The evening routine of walking home, eating alone, bathing, napping, and waking for the midnight prayers was complete. She tied her dressing gown around her, pulling it tighter, and could almost taste the sweet mandarin scent waiting to be burned. But on arrival at the shrine there was nothing to be lit. The final candle missing from its spiked pillar holder – the photograph all that remained. She keened and cried around the house for hours. Scrambled through cupboards and ripped at every surface she could find just to unearth one of them. Any of them. No luck was to be found inside. She came to the final outpost – the patio doors, and slid them open, stepping out in despair.

The garden was overgrowing with neglect. She didn’t care for it. Her husband spending less and less time at the house too. Bare feet on the concrete, a faint glow under the plum tree caught her. Tired from overthinking, she let her body follow the light. To reach the tree she had to crouch and crawl past a lifeless blackberry bush, creep towards the very end of the garden. Shuffling past, and with minor scratches, she met the plum tree root. The sight stunned. Her candles – all fourteen of them – were the source of light. Each one arranged, not in a semi-circle, but in an oval. Set around a long-deceased fox cub. Its cold body caved inward. Ribs protruding. Belly a faded white. A wetness dotted on her skin, in the nook below her elbow, and dragged itself along her forearm, licking at her hand wet and rough. A fox, much larger than the cub, appeared at her side – eyes damp and features forlorn. It whimpered and began circling the cub and the candles slowly. Sniffing at the carcass gently. After three rotations the fox came to rest at her right thigh. She was kneeling, and it sat itself against her closely, akin and alike, snout level to her bicep. Lulled by its presence she dragged a hand through its thick matted fur – more maroon than apricot in colour – and scratched at its dipped ears. By the bright AM, the wax of the candles had pooled like a pond beneath them and glued their affliction together.

Emily Harrison

Map for the Bereaved

There’s lots of grey on this map, which is deceptive. The altitude is craggy, with jagged sharp mountains and thousands of miles of desert. There are hidden springs. There are moments of coves of birch and sycamore, rowan and oak. This is an ever-changing landscape and the map can alter from hour to hour, even when you’re standing in the same place. It often looks flat and grey, everywhere, but as I said, this is deceptive. It’s like a layer of ash from a volcano covering everything and often throughout the years, you won’t be able to see what’s underneath. There are hidden springs (I’m repeating things because on this map, it’s easy to forget where you are, where you’ve come from and where you’re going to). They come in the form of kind strangers, random books, films of falling petals, as well as actual water. Again, these can change on an almost daily basis, or sometimes stay the same for as long as a month, or perhaps a year. (You forget how the weather changes/stays the same here.) You have to see this map on a screen, ever-sifting like sand, never staying the same, you just can’t pin it down. The red spots will startle you, or they may be the ones you’re drawn to most and choose to reside there. The red is the anger and if you can’t immediately see it on your map, dig deeper, and keep digging. I promise you it’s there somewhere, often in unlikely places. And the red changes colour: it has many hues, sometimes black lava, sometimes thorn-blood. The thing to remember about the red spots (do seek them out, they have power), is that they are fuelled by passion and this is the most valuable of treasure – what you do with it afterwards is another question. There are sub-maps for that. So please don’t ignore the red spots, however active or hidden they may be. They will always show you something of wisdom, offer a piece of the jigsaw you hadn’t seen before. Desert can appear anytime, anywhere, even when you’re in a luscious forest and the fog of grey can descend anytime. The trick is to return to the hidden springs, return to them often and when you can’t find one, which will happen for unregulated periods of time, to remember they are still there, always still there, even though you can’t see, touch, smell or mark them. You have to believe in them, like faith in a blue sky and shining sun, when all you’ve had is nothing but rain for months. Remember: grey is deceptive. Bethany Rivers

Maps

If we fold the map just so, the journey's path shrinks considerably. Sacramento enters the Hudson Valley, Toronto meets Santa Fe, and Lee County, Mississippi merges with Tupelo, Texas, joining music to fruitcakes in a celebratory feast. Stroll down one road and find a lost car. Exit a theater to enter bliss or a good bar with craft beer on tap, where no one discusses mileage and you may eavesdrop on conversations about ancient nautical battles, the history of chili, and radiation. Unfold the map twice to find yourself in Swamp Angel, Kansas, named after a Civil War field gun and not a spiritual being, and wander to the next intersection near Barstow, where Joshua trees tickle the sky's belly and I ate the best chili dog in my young life's experience in 1968. Look to the edges, where the best places crowd and nowhere lives in a corner. Jump from Busan to Venice, drive to Perth and beyond. Slowly crease the page. Do this again. Point blindly. There. Your destination waits. Robert Okaji

Alice #11 Jude Cowan Montague

50 Congress Ave.

So there’s this house over on Congress Street with ambitious flooring that pushes the walls out further and further. Every day, it grows a little more, creeping up the floor molding and squeezing its way through the power outlets like a clogged-up tube of toothpaste. Once inside, the flooring smothers pipes, severs wires and eats up the insulation. The landlord brought an architect in to look at the situation, and the architect retired from architecting on the spot and later sold his own eyes for twenty bucks. It was all over the news. They talked to the landlord, and it turns out he as the one who bought the eyes. “Now, I don’t need glasses,” he said. The reporter laughed, but the cameraman didn’t get it and neither did I. Somewhere in the landlord’s fifteen minutes, he forgot about the flooring. The residents are getting by just fine though. They sold their laundry baskets to buy new clothes to cover up the floor with because they don’t care for rugs or doing laundry. None of them can remember how or when this all started. Living flooring wasn’t in the rental agreement, but neither was dead flooring. At the center of the house sits the bathroom. As the outside walls get bigger, the bathroom shrinks. What once was a sink is now a water cooler with a small bottle of hand sanitizer on top. What once was a toilet is now an optimistic bucket always half full of fluids. What once was ventilation is now blocked up by flooring, and all those bathroom smells have nowhere to go. The residents use the upstairs one instead. The landlord left his old eyes in the medicine cabinet which is now a first-aid kit nailed to the wall. The two of them are getting bored looking at band-aids all day, but they’re mostly grateful they aren’t noses. Dan McKeon

Aequitas Corvidae

The crow has been watching. It’s seen him sit sobbing by the river, and known with absolute certainty of his desire to jump. It has cawed softly to itself as it watched him walk slowly back, sagging under sorrow’s weight. And it has seen you. Oh, it has most definitely seen you. Through open factory windows it has seen your mocking of him and his sadness. It has seen your dirty tricks, and it has seen, with its crow eyes, the actual exact hue of your delight in watching him weep there at the bench in the corner. It has most definitely seen you.

*** He doesn’t know how much longer he can do this. He just wants it to end, for it all to be over. He could go get a bottle of scotch, drink it sitting here, then just step off this edge. He knows he won’t though. He knows he’ll give it another five minutes then head back to work. At least that prick Nigel isn’t in today. Some kind of accident this morning. Hurt his eye or something. There’s a crow cawing enthusiastically on the grass nearby. “You seem pleased with yourself,” he tells it. “Where did you find a pickled egg?”

Rosco Baldini

Porcelain Choir Brian Martin

Hope

A mother knits furiously on an angry day in September, the sun’s glare like an accusation. The woman knits faster the hotter it gets, desperately trying to weave away the darkness in her mind until dusk when they both give up; the sun crouching beneath the horizon with a final look like a warning: I’ll be back tomorrow, and the mother, exhausted, hands stilled by the moon. She looks up and for a moment she holds the moon between her thumb and index finger. She rolls it around her palm and it’s a cool, smooth pebble she will keep in her pocket. She will repeat this action nightly until, pockets full of pebbles, she will walk down to the river at the bottom of the garden leaving just the faintest of footprints in the dew-kissed grass. This is what May sees, years later, when she tugs gently on a piece of yarn— everything she owns is unravelling—and she pulls and she pulls, slowly at first, until it starts to resemble thick rope and she grows stronger and faster, pulling herself along, until this is what she finds at the end: her mother, knitting furiously, the fruits of her labour laid out by her feet: three hats, three scarves, three pairs of gloves and a tiny woollen bonnet, ribbon trailing from the ends, and the softest, smallest pair of dollsized mittens. June remembers the hot shame she felt whenever she caught sight of her mother’s swollen belly, summer dresses stretched too thin, her bird like arms skeletal in the morning light. Her unwashed hair and the look on her face as she moved around the flat in strange configurations, bending and arching her body until June had to look away. She could tell what kind of a mood her mother was in by the way the dust had settled when she entered the room. Increasingly she stopped asking what was for

dinner, stopped calling for her in the night, preferring hunger and a cold bed to her mother’s snarled hisses. Tuesday remembers milk-breathed kisses and sticky kitchen floors but really, she doesn’t remember anything at all so she takes the space in the brain usually reserved for memories and she fills it with daydreams, answers to the question: “what happened next?” And she tells herself stories of a mother floating serenely in an algaestrewn pond, wearing a necklace of violets, crow-flowers, nettles and daisies woven through her golden hair which spreads out, mermaid-like. A mother who wanted to swap places with her unborn baby. A mother who wanted to start again. Sunday was born on a Wednesday; that much they know. May remembers a cold day. Even now, a certain Kate Bush song will come on the radio and she’ll remember frosty walks to school, lonely trips to the library, ghosts in bell towers and the taste of wrought iron railings painted green. A heavily pregnant mother shuffling behind three girls wearing hand-knitted scarves, hats and gloves. Rooftops sparkling like sugar dust. May tells June that she lost one of her gloves that morning and June thinks she remembers. There is an image of a lone glove sketched in pencil on the tip of something, tiny particles of ice freezing the fibres –June feels a door swing briefly open offering a fleeting glimpse of an iridescent, intangible moment. She tries to chase it down before the door slams shut. She wants to interrogate it, to rip it apart with her teeth, but it disappears as fast as she can hold it, like a snowflake, a bubble, a glance.

Mostly June feels angry, as angry as the sun. She hates the hot weather, hates the name given to her by her stupid, selfish mother. May is a therapist now and though June is pleased they have found each other again, she can’t bear it when May goes into counsellor mode and starts trying to analyse everything. All of those summers spent apart have turned them into entirely different people. Uncomplicated blue sky days for May mean fat bumblebees and brambly hedgerows while June just sighs at the memory of the sunshine headaches brought on by the perpetual squint from a childhood spent sat in beer gardens; beer-fed, red-faced men laughing as they blew smoke in your face, your skin sticky and sore from the ice-lollies you’d eaten for lunch. Tuesday quite likes the warm weather though summertime in the city does make her grow itchy for the rain. Sometimes it gets so hot you can smell the traffic in your hair no matter how much you wash it. Tonight the sisters sleep in Tuesday’s flat. She’s done well for herself, despite the fact that if she’s not dreaming, she’s drinking and if she’s not drinking, she’s dreaming. They have come together for the funeral of their aunt, their mother’s sister. The last time they saw her before she died, she clasped each of them to her substantial bosom, trying to squeeze the anger, the self-consciousness, the dreams out of them. June walked out halfway through a chicken bhuna. “Twenty years,” she’d said. “Twenty years and she can’t even be bothered to cook for us.” As she brought out the plates and circulated the poppadums, their aunt had spoken too breezily: “I would have taken you in, you know. It was a terrible shame they couldn’t keep you together.” Except she hadn’t taken them in, had she? And yes, it was a terrible shame that they couldn’t be kept together. A terrible shame.

That night they cling to each other in Tuesday’s creaky single bed, springs poking into June’s back. They didn’t shed a tear for their aunt today but sharing a bed for the first time since childhood, their chests tremble as at first they try to hold it in but it’s impossible. It’s too much. May’s smooth legs are wrapped around June’s pyjama bottoms with the weird looking cats cuddling each other; Tuesday’s arms are wrapped around both sisters, unshaved armpits smelling ever so faintly of weed. Their bodies are clasped together so tightly and yet there is a space in there somewhere, somehow: a sister-shaped space, a Baby Sunday-shaped space. And it doesn’t matter that she would be eighteen by now, it doesn’t matter that they don’t know what happened to her or the colour of her hair or if she even survived. She is here with them now, in the hearts of her motherless sisters they will keep a space for her and in that space they will nurture her, her three motherless mothers, and they will watch her grow and they will agree that Sunday was a stupid name for a baby. They will rename her Hope.

Fiona Goggin

Taxidermy

The word "taxidermy" is derived from two ancient Greek words; taxis, meaning movement; and derma, meaning skin. There are three parts to the process: Skinning, Stuffing, and Mounting. I NYC 1979 I was a child model. I am now at an age where I can say this to people. I am now at an age where there is no child or model left. This skin has been peeled from me like a sock. stretched out and put in storage with my headshots and leather portfolio. When I wore this flesh I was a dumb ten. Walking down forty-second street past XXX marques, Peep O Ramas, and naked ladies plastered on brick walls. I sashayed across subway grates and breathed in that familiar mix of garbage, exhaust, chestnuts and meat smoke. Giggling at the Oh Calcutta billboard and waving at men posted at scarlet-carpeted entrances, And the sidewalk newsstands on every corner sold rags with Iranian hostage headlines that I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really get. I passed flyers for Etan Patz on every block my mom and I walked-In every taxi we took. He was my age. I kept waiting for someone to find him.

II Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel bad for me though. This skin got stuffed with lunches at the Plaza and the Russian Tea Room fashion shows at the Empire State with sparkly wrap-dressed models. I mastered the art of turning. Observed the fine fleshing aspect of trophy care.

Photo shoots in the Village with well-coiffed manes, fur jackets, and shiny pants. Had outfits designed for me cast from my form in my favorite color purple. Saw my face in the New Yorker, in the Sears Catalog, on a Macy's Billboard. Disco'ed at Studio 54 and on Regine's lighted floor. I didn't know the meaning but always belted out the songs: Hot Stuff and Bad Girls Do you Think I'm Sexy and Ring my Bell. III I could have been Brooke Shields in that topless shampoo ad. My waist-length hair covering everything I didn't have. But I was kept safe: preserved. And I almost don't remember the Russian cab driver who tried to kidnap us. Or the time we were chased down that dark flight of stairs in the meatpacking district. Or that photographer who put me in a bathtub with burgundy lipstick and a sheer lime green shirt. Victoria Nordlund

Meditation Theresa Reagan

Clay Girl in the Corner

He'll start playing with himself any minute now. The furtive staring was bad enough, but still. Standing here watching him get off may be the most degrading part of my life so far, and I've been pig-pens. I've been cesspits. He doesn't do this with the marbles. Or the ivories; he practically prays to them. The dust barely has time to settle on the studio floor before he's kneeling. Meanwhile I get shoved into a corner, covered with a sheet, or touched up. The cornerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better. Better than having a sweaty, desperate sculptor mould you for a solid half-hour, 'working on his craft'. That light, professional touch he lavishes on stone and bone is formed, messily, with clay. A clay girl. A starter girl; a girl he builds up and breaks down again and again, until he knows exactly what he wants. # He tears me apart every day. After all, I'm only clay. Dull on the eye, rough to the touch. Common as muck. He thinks I'm grateful for his fumbling, his ham-fisting carving. I'd laugh, if he'd managed to get my mouth right. # Creation, perfection; they both require the destruction of things deemed lesser. A truth you only know when a man is wrist-deep in your head or chest, reaching for a goal that barely includes you at all.

Flaws were alien to me, before this place. I was deep in the earth; I was the earth, wine-dark, shivering with cyclamens and pine. I was vast oxblood banks in the bellies of lakes, blooming like flowers around paddling feet. I stored wine, gave earthly homes to races older than this man's gods. I housed pigs and shit as well. Both greater and more noble than my purpose here; aping stone for a man who can’t bear flesh. # I frighten him. I’m too close to the genuine article; the women who redden their cheeks with ochre, whose hearts only open with coins. He won’t use them. He’s worried that they’ll laugh. Maybe that’s why my mouth is sculpted shut, even though it ruins the line of my face. He knows that I’d look at what he’s offering, and laugh. # A block of marble waits in the centre of the room. Smooth, white, unused; the sculptor’s holy grail. The stone girl waits inside it, beautiful, dead. She’ll only come to life under his hands. # I’m scared of him. I can’t open my mouth to say it, but I am. I worry that one day he’ll break me down into such tiny pieces that I won’t remember what I am. What I was. That’s the day he’ll make me into something lesser.

# Give me my sheet. Let me see nothing but darkness; dark like the bowels of the earth. Dark like home, where shape was nothing. Where substance was all that mattered.

Eleanor Mae

Wedding Fever

We get to the hotel about six in the evening – not the hotel where the wedding is; this is the evening before – and we're worried because we're late. We're greeted by Doreen, Maxwell's mother, a lady in her sixties who has dyed her hair blonde. Maxwell is the one getting married. He's a childhood friend of Anne, my partner, who is going to be a witness. “We've had so much drama today,” Doreen whispers happily. “We've even had tears. But at least you're here now, Anne. Come through to the dining room; we're already having dinner.” They've booked a function room for the evening meal so that we can sit on our own and drink as much as we like. Everybody is there: Maxwell; his parents; his brother and best man, Edward; Edward's girlfriend; a few nondescript friends and Henrietta, Maxwell's Aunt on Doreen's side. The hotel is a big Victorian house, a menagerie of cream-coloured walls, polished wooden chairs, flowery curtains and patterned rugs. I find myself sitting next to Maxwell, even though I've never met him before now. “Anne tells me you're into cycling,” I say to him. “I did seventy six miles the other day,” he replies. “I'm training for a ride across Europe.” “This is the best meal I've ever had,” announces Robert, Maxwell's father, as he carves his way gradually through a thin slice of pork. He has a very round, bald, head and a large stomach with his chest and shoulders somewhat lost in between. Anne has told me that he used to look scary, but people just humour him now. Doreen, his wife, chose the hotel.

“I'm glad you like it,” she says, “given how much it cost.” “Don't tell me,” says Robert, “I don't want to know.” “It is our son's wedding, though, isn't it?” “For the price of this wedding, he could have a deposit down on a house.” “That's not the point, though, is it, Robert?” “He could have spent tomorrow mowing his lawn or fitting his kitchen.” “Last year I rode from Lands' End to John O'Groats,” Maxwell tells me, “in the rain, some of the time.” My food arrives and Doreen videos me munching through my crackling. After dinner, we're on the flowery armchairs in the hotel lounge. There's a half empty bottle of whisky on a low coffee table and a set of crystalline glasses. The others are all on their phones, uploading pictures of the meal on social media. All of them, that is, except Maxwell, who has a notebook in front of him and a pen in his hand; he's trying to write his speech, but he's still talking to me too. “Ed trains with me on a Sunday. We cycle through the hills, but he can't normally keep up.” “Don't get him onto birds or he'll go on even longer,” says Ed. 'Do you bird-watch?' asks Maxwell. I shake my head. Maxwell stares at the blank notepaper that is his wedding speech. Ed has already written his, but whenever anybody mentions it, he turns pale and makes his way swiftly to the bathroom. I pour them both another whisky and say that I'm off to bed. My excuse is that I'm tired, but really I want to finish my book. Remember them?

The next morning, we're all standing on the beach and shivering in the salty March breeze. We're facing the shore with the water lapping up behind us. I'm in a navy blue suit with a yellow cravat, just like the other men. Yellow is the colour of Maxwell's latest bicycle, the one he's crossing Europe on. He's washed his long black hair this morning. “Where's Henrietta?” asks Robert. “She can't come on the sand because of her hip,” says Anne. “But it's Max's wedding. Can't she fit in just this once?” “Never mind,” says Doreen as she holds up the camera. “Say cheese.” We're posing again in a couple of hours' time, this time at the wedding venue: another hotel. Doreen is behind the camera again and this time it's an expensive one mounted on a tripod. A plump young man in a grey suit is standing beside her with his arms crossed and his face compressed into a scowl. “The official photographer,” explains Anne. But he's back at work when the ceremony starts, manoeuvring around the corners of our vision with his lens sprouting from his face like an improbably long nose. Anne and I are sitting near the front. She's by the aisle so that she can go up for the signing. A few rows in front of us, Ed and Maxwell stand facing the desk at the front of the hall. On the desk sits a pair of wooden birds – I couldn't say what sort – and on the wall behind it, swathed in pink and white ribbons, hangs the fragile-looking frame of a sleek yellow road bike.

We're waiting for proceedings to start and there's a song playing. “Beyonce,” Anne tells me, “the bride's favourite.” When it finishes, it plays again. And then again. And then again. Midway through the fifth iteration, it stops and we hear footsteps hastening up the aisle: not the bride, but a worried looking man in a dark suit. “I'm afraid there's been a delay,” he tell us. “Please make your way to the bar and we'll call you back shortly.” The bar is full with two families and two sets of friends, each sitting at opposite ends of the room. It's silent at first as we stare into the icy soft drinks bubbling in our hands, trying not to speak our thoughts aloud. Maxwell is nowhere to be seen. Eventually, people begin to talk: “Perhaps she's stuck in traffic.” “She could be unwell.” “She looked ill last time I saw her.” “She always looks ill, Henrietta.” “For the price of this wedding -” “Oh, do be quiet, Robert. Look at that lot over there in their fancy outfits. No wonder they don't talk to us.” There's another hush, broken only by the whispers of the toddlers consorting in the corner. “Seeing as we're all together,” says Doreen, “perhaps I could use the opportunity to take some more photos?”

I get the number of Maxwell's room from reception and then set about trying to find it. The hotel is like a cul de sac with quiet residential roads and two-storey terraced buildings made of beige stone bricks. Footpaths pave the way across freshly mown lawns to the doors to each block. We're all staying the night here, you see. It's not so much a wedding venue as a wedding village. He opens the door when I knock, pauses, and then backs off to let me in. His room is the saddest thing I've ever seen. One bedside table is populated with a wallet, a phone, an alarm clock and a mug. One jacket has been hung in the open wardrobe. I glance through the bathroom doorway and see one toothbrush in a glass by the sink. “Is she coming?” I ask. “No.” “She's changed her mind?” He nods. His eyes are bloodshot and his long hair is no longer straight. I stroll over to the window and peer at the horizon, where a dark band of blue nestles beneath a cloudless sky. “There must be a lot of birds to see on the coast,” I say. “Mainly gulls,” he replies. “Is that all?” “Well, also cormorants and gannets. Even falcons if you're lucky. Have you ever seen a falcon in the wild?” His eyes have widened now and there is a hint of life behind them. I look at my watch: it's coming up to three o'clock. “Maybe we could look for one?” I ask. “Now?”

“We can probably hire bikes from near here.” “We might not find a falcon, but I know where we can hire bikes. I'll cycle slowly so you can keep up. We can try to find some birds.” “I'd like that,” I say. “Really, I'd like that.” I'm surprised to find that I mean it too. It must be wedding fever.

James Northern

Poverty Psalm

Dear Lord, forgive me for I have sinned most grievously against you, God of my childhood. God of mapled down churches and tent hallelujahs, God of your son Jesus and that good man John. Dear God, I did it. I took A $4.89 tube of red magenta from the dollar store. It was not my intent, I tell you truly, but there it was, that passioned glory of womankind lying on the floor, fallen like a tree - rocked angel, giving me a sign that if I fixed up just a bit, the man down the road might look, and dear God, I need a man. All I possessed in my time weaved purse was just enough, barely enough, to buy dog food for my little saved dog, and Lord of Hosts you know I need her. I need her as I need the shadow of the Almighty, and please, dear God, the arms of a good man. Gayle Ledbetter Newby

Dazzle Painting (Cover Image) Karen Little

Revised Verses From The Feminist Bible

A woman should learn in full interest and ask questions. I do not permit a woman to fall short of her infinite potential; she must blossom. For if Adam can prosper, Eve can, too. The worst thing is not to be deceived; it is to avoid risk in exchange for the illusion of safety. Women will only be saved through courage - if they continue in strength, love, and rebellion. -

1 Timothy 2:11-15

Women should remain vocal in the legislatures. They are not allowed to be excluded, but must play an integral role in the creation of the laws, which impact them as well as men. -

1 Corinthians 14:24

If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s virginity can be found, she shall not be judged or abused, but valued and respected for the humanity that transcends beyond the state of her hymen. -

Deuteronomy 22:20-21

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her, he shall spend the rest of his life imprisoned, for his punishment must equal her trauma. The same applies if a man meets any woman (married or otherwise), man, or child and violates them. -

Deuteronomy 22:28-29

When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the sanctity of her bodily rhythms will be revered, and anyone who touches her will be affected by her moon-driven cycle. -

Leviticus 15:19

Wives, do not allow your husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs and goals to overshadow your own, but pursue your desires with vigor, as is fitting in an equal partnership. -

Colossians 3:18

To the woman [God] said, I will make your body more resilient than the man; with miraculous labor you will give birth to children. You have the power to create life from your pliable bones. -

Genesis 3:16

Caris Allen

Blossoming

On Wednesday afternoons Beau’s sister Annabelle went to cotillion. It would have pleased their mother greatly if Beau also attended, but Beau had put up such a fuss over having to wear a shirt and tie the first few times that she had simply given up. Beau’s father chalked it up to his son being more comfortable outdoors. In fact, it made him proud, though he could never let on. He too had been wild in his youth. It was healthy for a boy to want to be free and explore. Outside, in the woods and the fields was where he learned to be a man, not inside a stuffy room with some fruit in a dainty costume teaching him intricate and unnecessary foreign dance. Let the women spend the afternoon learning their manners, Beau would learn in time. It was far more important that Annabelle learn early on how to be presentable. Finding Beau a wife would pose no challenge to their family, but Annabelle would have to compete with the other girls in the town. She was nearing maturity and if she were going to blossom into a great beauty she had better do it sooner rather than later. For now her hips were narrow and her chest flat as a washboard. Their mother prayed nightly that the Lord would take pity on her. If she could not be blessed with a woman’s body she could at least have a woman’s manners and sensibility. On Friday afternoons, Annabelle went to piano practice. It was important for a woman to have talents, to be able to entertain. Annabelle’s body still appeared barren and waifish, despite her mother’s desperate prayers. No daughter of hers would be a spinster. She would pray until her knees gave out if she had to. Beau still did not attend lessons. Beau could skin a deer and give any boy in the neighbourhood a run for their money in wrestling. This was enough for now. His grooming could come later, when he

was ready. There would always be girls for Beau to court. Grandchildren would never be a cause of concern for their parents with Beau. Friday afternoons were Beauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favourite time of the week, as he had the house to himself. Mother always went with Annabelle to her lessons as to keep an eye on her progress, and his father worked generally until late in the evening. On Friday afternoons, Beau would walk lightly into his sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room. He would open her closet and look amongst her things, picking something out for himself. Her white cotillion dress was his favourite. It fit him well and he greatly enjoyed the way it swished around his ankles and the freedom it allowed him to dance around the room as he pleased. Once dressed he would go to his motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bathroom, sit at her makeup mirror, and paint his face, being always mindful only to use only small amounts of makeup at a time so as not to bring up questions. He had gotten careless in the past and used too much once. Annabelle had blamed it on one of the servant girls who was promptly fired by their mother. Beau had always admired that girls kind eyes, and since then had felt a small pang of guilt whenever he sat before the mirror. At times he thought he saw those same eyes staring back at him while sat doctoring his appearance, deep brown and calm, if only for a moment. When he felt beautiful enough, Beau would begin his performance. Slowly he would walk down the grand staircase in their home, casting lofty, smoky glances at the imaginary boys that filled the foyer, eagerly awaiting his entrance. Perhaps he would linger on one of them for just a second longer than the others to give him the illusion of hope. He would walk with his head held high amongst the crowd, lifting his hand lightly and gracefully for men young and old to kiss. Then, he would make his way to the dining room. A servant would seat him and he would chat with party guests nearby

about this and that, drinking in the gazes of everyone seated around him. A bell would ring and a toast would be made to his beauty. Then, finally, it was time for the dance. All around him boys would swarm and swell, vying for their chance to have his hand, even for a moment on the dancefloor. Perhaps one would get lucky. Slowly they might slip away upstairs and the two would make love. Once Beau had finished and sent the boy away, his night was over. He had blossomed into womanhood once again. He would carefully remove his sisters dress and hang it up. Then he would run himself a bath to wash off the makeup. There he would sit and soak, reliving his night, looking forward always to next week when he could feel beautiful again. Beauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parents often remarked jokingly on their son's curious Friday afternoon bath. He was not a boy who normally kept a schedule. Beauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father would always chuckle. It warmed his heart. His son must really have dirtied himself up playing outside in the woods all Friday afternoon, learning to become a man, just as he had.

Brian Martin

Untitled Janice Leagra

Abbess Hildegardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Remedies

& for blindness, pluck a golden topaz (smooth as an eyeball) from its leather purse. Soak it in fruity wine, decanted by monks. As day blinks shut, dampen the eyes with the stone. Let its coating trickle on furrowed lids sieved by lashes over the moony surface & for blurred vision buy clear rock crystal. Let it suck demons into its glassy cells. For soreness slip a sapphire on the tongue to seal its blue beauty in warm saliva. Hold it between the finger and the thumb like the stopper to a bottle of air then roll it into the itching inner eye a sticky sea globe blocking out pain & for eyes that ache from lusting earthly things, look up. Dip your faith in the stars. Helen Kay

The Annual Bountiful Harvest Blessing of Arthur County, Nebraska

On the first Saturday evening in January, the people of Arthur County bundle up in their insulated barn jackets and sensible hooded coats and gather at Dale Jorgensen’s barn for their annual harvest blessing. This quiet, secluded county in central Nebraska is slowly bouncing back from decades of decline. Everyone has varying ideas why oscillating years of drought and floods almost laid their county barren but all agree it wasn’t solely from bad luck or changing weather patterns, but from a falling away from reverence. They have recommitted, and now, summertime cornfields ten feet high are impenetrable borders along the county. Winters are equally looming, with only two barely maintained gravel roads leading out of the county that the men stop plowing a mile shy of the main highways. One of these men, Stan Jaros, Arthur County’s de facto commissioner, stands by the barn doors this January evening and greets everyone as they arrive. He is a big man with hooded eyes and jowls, and thick graying sideburns that stop abruptly at his jawline. Stan tends toward the lazy side of things. Drinking coffee with a handful of other men at JT’s Café every morning and telling the ladies how lovely they look while thumping their husbands on the shoulder at Sunday services are as labor-intensive as he likes to get. It’s his wife Cerena who is the meticulous worker, overseeing the harvest blessing’s record keeping.

Older ladies gather around the long tables set up inside Dale’s barn and arrange plates of ham and roast beef, scalloped corn, green beans, and a dozen different fruit and cream pies. The younger ladies, none over thirty-five, walk over to Cerena, who’s set up with a little card table behind some hay bales. One by one, they go behind the hay bales, where Cerena takes their temperature and jots it down in a notebook. Only four--Ellie, Ruth, Juliana, and Mary--are given little slips of paper with a red-stamped Yes. The remaining ladies walk back out, forcing smiles and shrugging off the disappointment that tonight they will not be one of the chosen ones. They join their husbands and children in loose little groups around the barn floor, and some of the more sensitive husbands quietly take their wife’s hand, giving little squeezes, each accepting that there are rules. Bill Green arrives, brushing off little flakes of snow from his corduroy jacket, and smiles as his wife Mary shows him her red-stamped paper. “It’s my time, honey.” Their youngest is now four years old, and they want another child before Mary is no longer allowed in Cerena’s line. This is her fifth time chosen. They dip their foreheads together, praying he too is chosen for one of the four available blessings. Stan tugs the bell rope, each chong echoing in the rafters, and Arthur County’s residents fall into neat lines at the food tables, loading their plates and filling up the benches at each hand-cut, heavy oak table. One table in front is only partially full, and this is where Ellie, Ruth, Juliana, and Mary sit, each sipping hot tea Cerena makes for the chosen each year.

Stan walks up to the front, near the four chosen women, and bows his head to lead the prayer. “Father, we pray for Your nourishment and sustenance. Within You, we achieve all You have set forth to grant us. In Your name, amen.”

Amens reverberate throughout the barn as rolls are passed, coffee and milk are poured, and a chorus of silverware tings against plates. Many of the men go back for a second slice of pie after a few minutes. At the top of the hour, Stan stands up, wiping his mouth. He clears his throat. “A quick announcement before we begin. Most of you know Doug Conway’s son Theo turned eighteen this year, so he has been added to the roster. Elwood Jenkins is still laid up fighting the gout, and we lost our brother Richard Smuthers this fall, may his soul rest in peace. If all you gentlemen of manhood years will stand up, we’ll begin.” Bill Green rises at his table not far from where his wife Mary sits. They lock eyes, each saying a silent prayer. The other men stand up around the barn, some strong and straight-backed, some a little hunched from too many decades spent sitting in a combine or bent down next to a milking cow. Cerena brings a small bushel basket over to Stan. He pulls out four slips of paper, setting one in front of each of the four women. The barn is quiet; even the children sit hushed, waiting. Stan flips the first paper slip over in front of Ruth. “John Highgrove, go forth.” The paper in front of Ellie: “Patrick Longwell, go forth.” Juliana stares at the edge of the table as Stan takes a step over in front of her. “Gerald Morgan, go forth.” She smiles.

Mary is last. Her eyes are shut tight, hands clasped in her lap, praying this time she will be granted Bill. Stan grins as he grasps the paper in front of her. “Theo Wilson, go forth.” As Stan walks over to the double doors preparing to say goodnight to everyone, his words resound throughout the barn. “You are the bountiful ones. May you all reside in the light tonight.” Everyone moves to collect dishes, coats, and children, and they head out into the cold to their cars and trucks. Bill and Mary linger, her head tucked under his chin, before he grips his coat collar tightly around his neck and walks out the barn doors with their children following. Mary remains behind and waits patiently for Theo. She knows Theo will be nervous his first chosen time, and she mouths a silent benediction. The rest will go back to their houses, where they will be shut in tight against the prairie wind, and wait to see if Arthur County’s prayers are answered for another bountiful harvest.

L. Mari Harris

The Bells

Then again, we could pull the tongues from clamouring bells & leave their houses hollow. We could stretch silence taut like a drum skin, stuff the mouths of prophets with roses, run wild as heartlines across the palms of mothers, or we could reverse to become the barefoot, burning childâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; go back, back to birth; climb inside the womb's closed fist; wish to inhabit the rich dark & unlearn our failing human codes. SeanĂn Hughes

Carnivores

The schoolhouse is full of crows and carnivores and small, smokeless fires. Lunch is a midday lynching. Recess is a roughshod run, harsh as gravel on bare knees, and I'm in the principal's office trying to remember that I'm an adult. My daughter slipped her cage, I'm told, and stretched her fine, strong legs. Someone tried to steal her candy, I'm told, and she unsheathed her claws, still soft at the quick, but sharp enough to scratch. This is simply not the way a young lady acts. She must learn to simper and whimper. She must learn to swallow her growl. She must learn to settle. The principal settles back in her chair, and I stare at her. I stare at the shifting camouflage she wears. I stare at the get-along snare just waiting there for well-trained girls. I've felt its bite before on my own ankles, and I'd rather teach my daughter how to chew off her own leg. Kelli Simpson

Rewilding the Body

Based on Isobel Treeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s account of rewilding, Knapp House Farm.

The ribs of my country jut, its dreams tilled to exhaustion. by intensively farmed ambition. Let thistle stitch my wounds, as painted-lady caterpillars feast on their prickles. Let pigs unzip my paths, with cracks for bastard toadflax and meadow-cleary. Let the ragwort flourish as one hundred and seventy-seven insect species thrive on its bad reputation. Let longhorn cattle tramp hoof-print pools for fairy shrimp, water crowfoot, stonewort. And one moonlit night, nightingales will return to fill my country with numinous song. Rachael Clyne

Barley There Geraldine Clarkson

Fistful Of Mercy

You say you feel life, down Always down Against the grave We are —“Fistful of Mercy” by Ben Harper, Joseph Arthur, and Dhani Harrison

I discovered the mouse the Saturday my father died. I’d seen tell-tale signs of it before— droppings and tufts of insulation by an air vent, a gnawed box of cereal in the cupboard—but until then, the mouse had been a phantom, a figment of my dulled senses, an opioid-induced illusion. It darted into the hall closet while a hospital social worker delivered the news of my father’s passing from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He’d died alone at my childhood home in eastern North Carolina, the victim of vertigo and a recently waxed floor. The cleaning lady I’d hired after I moved to London following my divorce the previous year had found him sprawled by the kitchen counter, his hand gripping the leg of a wrought iron barstool that had crashed on top of him, finishing the job the Italian tile had not.

I’ll call you back, I said impassively to the social worker. There’s a mouse in my house. I attributed my apathy to shock—that and the fact that my father and I had been estranged since our last conversation a few months ago. I barely remembered the argument, the details awash in a cocktail of bourbon and Coke. I could have called him back and pled innocent on the grounds of temporary intoxication, but we both knew there was nothing temporary about it, which was the subtext of most of our

disagreements. A few weeks later, I received a note from him, scrawled in his palsied cursive: Aren’t you going to ask for forgiveness? I’d thought of Joan Didion when I’d read it: What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.

May God have mercy on your soul, my father used to say while he drowned the squirrels he caught pilfering nuts from the pecan trees in our backyard, submerging wire cages he’d borrowed from Animal Control into a tub of water on the patio, desperate rodents thrashing against the bars, water surging over the sides of the tub like the parting of the Red Sea. My mother and I called him Mercy behind his back. I’m cooking spaghetti for

Mercy, she’d crack. There’s a man on the phone, Mama; he asked for Mercy . I understood the irony, even at six. She had not asked for Mercy while she lay dying on my parents’ white iron bed, empty pill bottle in her hand, “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison playing on the stereo.

It’s Providence, my father had said at her funeral. Providence and Fate. I didn’t think so, even at fourteen. She was an unnatural disaster, sundered not by the will of God but Valium and Jack Daniels. She’d made her choice. Providence and Fate be damned. There would be no funeral for my father. I was an only child. Most of his friends were dead, victims of old age and ennui. My ex-husband had absconded to somewhere out west with the woman who’d replaced me. You were gone long before I was, he’d said to me. In fact, I don’t think you were ever really here. He was right. I lived in liminal spaces, the caesura between here and there.

My father once said he wanted to be cremated. What about the Rapture? I’d scoffed. Aren’t you supposed to be buried with your body intact? We’re Methodists, he’d said. We don’t believe in the Rapture. I’d gazed soberly at my purse—through the leather and lining—at the flask swaddled in the lace handkerchief with my mother’s initials embroidered on the front. Doesn’t matter, I’d said to him. He’d nodded blankly. Then

you needn’t be intact. After his mother’s passing barely a year ago, he’d witnessed the unearthing of his own father’s body. My grandmother had instructed him to move her husband next to her upon her death, which had come suddenly. The wooden coffin had disintegrated, he’d told me. Only bones remained. Which ones, I’d wondered—a femur, ribcage, skull? Relics of a Depression-era death, before embalming became the norm. I’d read that George Harrison’s ashes had been scattered in the Ganges. I wondered if his son, Dhani, had held his father’s remains in his hand, sifted the ashes through his fingers, let the wind claim him, a zephyr committing dust-to-dust to flowing water, like music, the middle eight—the art of dying. First the fire, then the water. I hadn’t asked my father what he wanted done with his ashes. Scatter them in the river near the town of my birth and, now, his death, like an Old Testament prophet, a sainted sinner from the book of Exodus? Hold him in my hand—a fistful of Mercy— and say a prayer for all our souls?

Maybe he had written down his wishes, left a note in a box in his bedroom closet with my mother’s empty pill bottle and other evidence of our lives, intersecting like crossroads—my first tooth, sacrificed for the nickel underneath my pillow while I slept; a lock of my mother’s feral hair; a mold of my palm I’d made in grade school. I doubted it. He would have left the decision to Providence. I phoned the social worker and listened to her repeat the details of my father’s passing, tell me what to do before I arrive, ask me where to store the shell that remains in the interim. I stared at the mousetraps I’d placed by the air vent—kill-and-contain and catch-and-release. I’d let the mouse decide its own fate. I drained my glass of bourbon and Coke. Now, I thought, what to do for Mercy?

Christy Alexander Hallberg

The Light at the End of the Universe

Not the bioluminescence of fireflies pulsing around the maple out back, nor evening sunfire flying through purple dusk, but the weak electric glow on unmoving brown fur. A young rabbit. Huddled in the paintbrush shadows beneath my workbench. Dead. Stretched on its side, unbloodied, unbroken, perfect save for its stillness. Trapped overnight, unseen in darkness when I pulled the door down and killed whatever light had lit its small eyes. I try to taste its terror, panting in hot blindness until its heart seized. Or maybe choosing to dive into the lightlessness that lingers in all living things, embracing its own unknown instead of squealing and screaming with only spiders and dust to hear it. I lifted its thinness and touched the cold fur and carried it outside to birdsong and humming wind,

the thick knot of vines climbing the fence. I nestled it into the green, and in its eye was a pale and dim cloud like the light of stars long dead softly fading through space. Samuel T. Franklin

&the end of a (space) opera

in space, a tiny black pocket houses a (black) boy, floating. lifeless limbs lead his body on, dancing (loosely) in the direction of the sun. in space, the minister reads from death of a black boy, volume two hundred twenty-seven./& when the chorus sings those songs, a (black) mother asks god why he did her baby wrong. space, venus is the place where every nigga is a star on the twelve oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; clock news, & where every (black) father runs off in that cosmic chariot (never to be seen from again).

( there ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t no milk

in space, nigga!)

in space, (dead) black boys fill up the gravekeepers holes, plots crop up by the second. in space, a little black boy (armed) with a button nose, places a tulip on the grave of every fallen friend. Kevin Latimer

Driving Past Roadkill While Pondering the New America

First the sight: a mass of shrapneled flesh--former life and instinct--gutted by speed. Then the stench: a perfume of warm canker, occupying your nostrils, emptying its bags like an unwelcome guest. End with: a passing thought-it’s kind of like that, isn’t it? The blood only goes deeper into the gravel-no one to shuck the rot into the trash. Stephen Briseño

Fireflies First the bright burst followed by spastic flight—it’s caught, our palms trapping the moment, cupping snaps of electric shock. This optical signal blinking for love is refracted in the glass, peak voltage before the disconnect. Blinded, we track the light through wooded dark and fields mapped by insects—here, we buzz about being one’s own beacon.

Fireflies

Words: Marissa Glover Art: Grace Velee

Rebirth

A snake is no mirror, whispers into grass without implication. You find sloughed sheaths rubbed back from the eyes, delicious chaffing, dry and weightless, as if emptied by the wind, scales flaking onto your thumbprint, the last dust of scripture from a lost language. Think of the peeled whip somewhere among stones, as holy as a wound. James Owens

Contributors

Christy Alexander Hallberg is a Teaching Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University in North Carolina/USA. In addition to her teaching duties, she is an assistant editor for North Carolina Literary Review. Her work has appeared in such journals as Main Street Rag, North Carolina Literary Review, Fiction Southeast, Eclectica, Solidago, and Concho River Review. Caris Allen is a student at the University of North Texas pursuing a BA in English. Her work has previously been featured at Austin Film Festival, in The North Texas Review, and is upcoming in The Midnight Oil and Dirty Paws Poetry Review. She lives in Denton, Texas with her partner and their bearded dragon, Mosey. Rosco Baldini is a labourer at a door factory in northern England. To escape the crushing monotony of door manufacture he writes odd shorts, fragments, dreams and weirdness and posts them to his Facebook page, The Crying Room. He has designs on a waitress and made up his name. Follow him at facebook.com/cryingroomonly Stephen Briseño is a poet, photographer, and middle school English teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mentor Mixtapes, 8Poems, formercactus, Riddled with Arrows, and Right Hand Pointing. He lives in San Antonio, TX with his wife and daughter, where you can usually find them lounging at a coffee shop. Follow him on Twitter: @stephen_briseno Alyssa Ciamp is a scientist, a writer and someday, a ghost. Currently, she is very lost and attempting to find herself with little luck thus far. Watch her try and fail and get back up again @ClinicallyChill on Twitter. Geraldine Clarkson is from the UK Midlands, with roots in the West of Ireland. She has had poems published on cupcakes, handkerchiefs and buses, and in public toilets in the Shetlands (under Jen Hadfield’s ‘Bards in the Bog’ initiative), and she is interested in combining poems with other media. She is fond of photographs and enjoys taking her camera for a walk. Rachael Clyne lives in Glastonbury and is a well-known reader at poetry events. Her prizewinning collection Singing at the Bone Tree – is published by Indigo Dreams. Anthologies: The Very Best of 52, Book of Love and Loss, #MeToo. Magazines include: Tears in the Fence, Prole, The Rialto, Under the Radar, Shearsman, Lighthouse, The Interpreters House. Her latest pamphlet is Girl Golem (4Word, 2018).

Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. Her album The Leidenfrost Effect (Folkwit Records 2015) reimagines quirky stories from the Reuters Life! feed. She produces 'The News Agents' on Resonance 104.4 FM and writes for The Quietus. She is an occasional creative writing tutor for the Oxford University Continuing Education Department. Her most recent book is The Originals (Hesterglock Press, 2017). Samuel T. Franklin is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and Bloomington. The author of a book of poems titled The God of Happiness, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, Rabid Oak, Scarlet Leaf Review, and others. He can often be found building semi-useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests with his cats. He can be reached at samueltfranklin.wordpress.com. Alison Gibson grew up in Canberra, the illusive capital of Australia, and now lives in Brighton, UK. Many moons ago, she won the Henry Lawson Prize for Prose. This year, she placed second in the Winchester Writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Festival short story competition. In April, she was published in Meanjin, and in June she was published in Issue 11 of Scrittura. Find her @AlisonTheresa87 and alisontheresa.com. Marissa Glover teaches and writes in Florida, where she spends most of her time sweating. Marissa's poetry has recently appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Picaroon Poetry, Amaryllis, and After the Pause. Her poem "Enchanted" is forthcoming from Three Drops from a Cauldron. Follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_. Fiona Goggin lives and works in a noisy, happy house halfway between London and the sea, writing fiction and non-fiction in-between looking after her two small children. Fiona runs a writing group for local mums, encouraging and supporting women to write. She worked for an audiobook charity for a number of years and is passionate about making literature accessible to everyone. L. Mari Harris lives in Nebraska, where cattle outnumber people 4 to 1. Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ok with that. Follow her @LMariHarris. A young writer from North Yorkshire, Emily Harrison has recently discovered that she actually likes creative writing, despite everything she may have previously said. She can be found on Twitter @emily__harrison.

Deborah Harvey lives in Bristol. Her three poetry collections, Communion (2011), Map Reading for Beginners (2014), and Breadcrumbs (2016), are published by Indigo Dreams, while her historical novel, Dart, appeared under their Tamar Books imprint in 2013. Her fourth collection, The Shadow Factory, will be published in 2019. Deborah runs The Leaping Word poetry consultancy with Colin Brown. Her poems have been widely

published and broadcast on Radio 4’s Poetry Please. She finds inspiration for her writing in the landscapes and stories of her native West Country. Seanín Hughes is an emerging poet from County Tyrone who will shortly commence study of BA Hons English with Ulster University as a mature student. Seanín was first was selected for the Crescent Arts Centre's Poetry Jukebox, launched in October 2017. She has work published or forthcoming both online and in print, including Banshee: A Literary Journal, The Stinging Fly, A New Ulster, Abridged and NI Community Arts Partnership's Poetry In Motion anthology. Seanín is a shortlistee for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, 2018, and recipient of the Poetry Ireland Acess Bursary for Cúirt International Literature Festival, 2018. Helen Kay’s poems have been accepted by magazines including Stand, The Morning Star and The Rialto. Her debut pamphlet, A Poultry Lover's Guide to Poetry, was published in 2015 (Indigo Dreams). She was runner up in the High Sherriff's prize for Literature (2016) and winner of the 2018 Rosamond prize. Kevin Latimer is a poet and playwright from Cleveland, Ohio. He is a Best New Poets 2018 nominee, and his work has appeared in or is forthcoming from FEELINGS, TRACK//FOUR, Sooth Swarm Journal, DIALOGIST, and others. Janice Leagra is a writer and self-taught mixed media artist who lives in the US. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize for flash fiction. Her work has been featured in publications such as Spelk Fiction, EllipsisZine, Dodging the Rain, Paper and Ink Zine, and Ghost Parachute. You can find her on Twitter: @janiceleagra or on Instagram: janiceleagra. Gayle Ledbetter Newby has been published in decomP, the Hiram Poetry Review,

Gravel Magazine, After the Pause, Literary Orphans, The Santa Fe Literary Review and others. She lives in Mississippi. Karen Little trained as a fine artist at Camberwell school of Art, London and has exhibited internationally, often under her artist name kazvina. She is widely published as a poet in the UK and further afield. Eleanor Mae lives in Italy. She has been/will be published in New South, The Forge Literary Magazine and Palooka, among others Brian Martin was born in Dublin, Ireland but grew up in and still currently resides happily in Atlanta, Georgia. His work has previously been published in Underground Art and Literary Journal. He hopes people will find something thought provoking in all his artistic endeavours, or at least something to shrug and tilt their heads at.

Dan McKeon is a poet-journalist hybrid person who enjoys public transportation and debates over what exactly a sandwich is. They have a chapbook out called The Neighborhood and have been previously published in Peach Mag, Foundlings and

Ghost City Review. Victoria Nordlund received her MALS from Wesleyan University. She teaches creative writing at Rockville High School in Vernon, CT. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut. Her work is published in Pank, Gone Lawn, Ink in Thirds, Ghost Proposal, Bitterzoet, and Amaryllis. She is the 2016 NEATE New England Poet of the Year. James Northern is a Gloucestershire-based writer of satirical short fiction. One of his stories was longlisted for the Exeter Story Prize in 2018 and another, 'In The Firing Line,' appears in Stroud Short Stories Vol. 2. Robert Okaji lives in Texas. He sometimes wears boots and occasionally works on a ranch. The author of five chapbooks, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Eclectica, Bold + Italic and elsewhere. James Owens's most recent collection of poems is Mortalia (FutureCycle Press, 2015). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Waxwing, Adirondack Review, Tule Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Honest Ulsterman. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario. Theresa Reagan is a Philadelphia-based artist, freelance writer and graphic designer. She is driven by an ever-growing passion to experiment with every available medium and substrate to create abstract works from an emotional and soul level. Dali, Picasso and Miro are her favourites. Theresa holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and is a member of Fleisher Art Memorial. She has participated in a few local group shows and her work can be viewed at theresareagan.com or in Instagram @bodyofart2. Bethany Rivers' pamphlet, Off the wall, was published by Indigo Dreams (2016). Previous publications include: Envoi, Cinnamon Press, Three Drops from a

Cauldron, Obsessed with Pipework, The Ofi Press, Clear Poetry, Picaroon Poetry, I am not a silent poet, Bare Fiction, The Lake, Tears in the fence and The Lampeter Review. She teaches and mentors the writing of memoir, novels and poetry: writingyourvoice.org.uk Kelli Simpson is a mother and poet living in Norman, Oklahoma. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including The Five-Two, After the Pause, Glasgow Review of Books, and Eunoia Review. Find more of her work at mamaneedsshoes.blogspot.com.

Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Her writing blog can be found at thistlewren.blogspot.fi Grace Velee is an eleven-year-old artist, violinist, and award-winning cowgirl who competes in reining competitions around the United States. She loves watching fireflies in Tennessee woods.

Acknowledgements

`The Light at the End of the Universeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by Samuel T. Franklin was first published by M Review in May 2017 and also appears in his collection Bright Soil, Dark Sun (Finishing Line Press, 2018).

ISSUE #19 COMING MARCH 2019