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RIGGWELTER #25 SEPTEMBER 2019 ed. Amy Kinsman
The following works are copyrighted to their listed authors Š2019. Riggwelter Press is copyrighted to Amy Kinsman Š2017.
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Foreword 4 White Editor, I Know Trees 5 Scorched 6 Bluebell Woods 7 Jennifer 9 Home, for now 13 The View from Drumballyroney, County Down (March 2019) 14 Aviatrix 15 I Love Drunk Driving With You 17 Exhibit: Name 20 The Musicians 21 A Fissure 22 I Thought If I Tried Hard Enough I Could Grow Spines 24 scottish dad werewolf #27 25 There are no roads left to the sea 26 Perhaps 32 And We Were Silent 33 Hendrix: Dreams in Red Velvet 34 Punch and Judy 35 Survival Skills 40 The Exhortations of the Revolving Mask 41 Exhibit: Yesta Tilley 42 Wormhole Weaver 44 Tattoos of Baba Yaga and Danu on Her Thighs 45 Joy 49 Maybe we should talk about the Bacchantes always being the butt of a joke when really they were just living their best lives 50 always a distance 51 When the water settles 53 Reflex I 57 Our Debts Paid in Blood 58 Death Comes to the Banquet Table 60 a shirt with a picture of francois truffaut 61 Exhibit: Spontaneous Sex Change! 62 Twilight on the Train 63 Dog talk 64 Dream Recurring 68 Contributors 69 Acknowledgements 74
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Foreword
It’s Riggwelter #25! Get the streamers and cake out because this marks two year to the day since Riggwelter #1 made its foray into existence. I could not have imagined how much this little web journal would grow when I started out back then with a why-thefuck-not attitude. We’ve published some well-known folks, some less well-known folks and some folks, we have been delighted to publish for the very first time. Every piece of work along the way has been a delight to present and to share with the world. Thank you for being with us on this journey, whether you were here at the start or not, and here’s to the next two years. Let’s keep making art accessible to the masses. This issue is all about violence: the physical, the psychological, the emotional; what we do to ourselves and each other, as individuals and as institutions; all the huge deep wounds and thousands of little tiny cuts; the grimdark and the cosy catastrophe. As artists we’re fascinated by the stuff, whether we like it or not and unfortunately, we’re living in a time where every iteration of violence you can imagine is on the rise. It’s an awful time, but we hope this issue can help you out with a little catharsis. As always, we thank everyone that makes these issues possible – creators, submitters, promoters, readers. In particular I would like to thank all the submitters waiting on a response from us. The summer has been extraordinarily hectic for me and our response times have suffered badly. Please bear with me, I’m working on it, and thank you for your patience. Anyway, lets feast on this!
Amy Kinsman 4
(Founding Editor)
White Editor, I Know Trees
I hope this poem misleads you white editor, into thinking this is about the trees, safe, white from fallen snow and fire ash, odd only when looked at closely, black if night, gay if gaily, gaunt if gone. White editor, I know trees and could be the black woodpecker carcass confined to a caucus and that tasted tree, tried, then cut clawed, cat-licked by girded chains, sawed to sprawled dust, in which I first nipped then died, from ignoring the trees that aren’t castrated, hidden, dyed. Prince Bush
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Scorched Alan Murphy
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Bluebell Woods
The midwife wears navy, for rational solicitude. It's not a mother's blue, not like the singing river you followed here to this little cot; not like robin's eggs or forget me nots. Neither the blue of icy roofs on moonlit nights, when unremarked snow settles as you breastfeed in the hallowed dark; nor the cerulean music of celestial spheres not longing displaced, vision doesn't mediate. When her visit's over she’ll depart, with careful chat and data. You can lock the door then and let the walls breathe out, a home subsiding imperceptibly along cracks wide as the entire terrace. A neighbour’s clock straddles the wall and your embrace now you recall how she regarded you, as she was lifted from the womb - a changeling with silver eyes and otherworldly gravitas.
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Bruised bluebells writhe from pint glasses and cups, towards the cobalt light of half drawn curtains; exuding a milky sap and clinging scent. Lost in motherhood’s enchanted bluebell woods, you are almost alone. Not car exhaust blue of the absent father; speeding away over a pale blue hill. Katerina Neocleous
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Jennifer
A month after my daughter left home, my therapist suggested I put her belongings in storage, send her the key and say she had two months before the contract ended. I agreed with her. While painful, I understood I had to do this. I sent her a message on her Facebook Messenger. “I know you are still mad, but we need to talk. When you are ready.� No response.
That weekend I packed her belongings. Piles of laundry lay scattered on the floor. I have cleaned her room from infancy to when she went off to college. I went on strike after that. After graduation she did clean her room, twice. God grant her that. I folded what clothes were clean, stacking them neatly on a table. I would later load them in the plastic containers I got at the mall. Dirty clothes went into bags to wash later that evening.
I straightened the books, dusting off the bindery and wiping down the shelves. Those were easy to box up. Afterward, I made the bed. I dusted her desk, and individually bubble wrapped her photo frames. What remained was the shelf of dolls and plush toys.
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The first was the four Marions. They were the same, dark brown Beanie Baby cats made in the mid-90s. I remember my daughter in the stroller at the old B. Schatmann toy store on Fifth Avenue. She reached up on the low counter, grabbed the stuffed cat, and held it on her lap. She would not let it go. I paid fifteen dollars. Eventually there were three more, four identical kitties now in various states of wear. I had to wash Mr. Triangle, a cloth figure decorated in Russian supremacist designs. I bought it for her at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas. Finally, there was Mr. Smiley, a garden sunflower doll meant to decorate gardens. She got that when she was five. I have a drawing she made of it cut and colored with crayons. Eventually, I came upon her favorite. Her name was Jennifer. Jennifer was a cheap plastic baby doll a cousin gave her for Christmas. My daughter was very attached to it. She carried her everywhere; once she cried for hours when she left her on the porch at my friend Karen’s house overnight. She was so happy when we came back for it the next day. The body was cloth stuffed with cotton balls, and attached were plastic arms and legs. I had to sew the seams often but as it grew gray and dirty, I wanted to dress it, but my daughter would have none of it. I cupped Jennifer in my hands. She was special. I started crying. I spent an hour carefully cleaning off the accumulated grime, and repaired the right eye so it could close properly.
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It took me week, but everything was boxed and ready to go take away my daughter’s life of things. As I was packing the car, an old man walking his dog stopped and watched me load the car. As I picked up the last box, which held her dolls and plush toys, he nodded. “That is one well-loved doll,” the old man said, pointing at Jennifer. “I sure hope you are not throwing it away. Don’t.” He shook his head. “That doll belonged to a person who really loved her.” “I won’t. I promise.” I paused, took Jennifer out before shutting the trunk closed. I placed the doll on the passenger seat. I drove aimlessly for a while, debating whether to put my daughter’s belongings in storage. Finally, I took the expressway and headed home.
It was a good story, the two of us. We were supposed to have a happy ending. This was not the case. By college things were different, and degrees of a slow separation and the fraying bonds in the course of years ended up where we are now. This should have gone down differently. But I sadly conclude—and knowing her, she would agree—that this winding, twisting road we had traveled together would end us up terminating at a fork in the road, and a separation in silence. Whatever happens in the future, our relationship will not go on as before. Things have changed. It had been two of us for all so long. Now, there is only two singles.
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Yet on the mantelpiece Jennifer sits at the marble edge in front of the senior photo, the graduation pictures and the scattered pictorial moments frozen since my daughter’s birth. Jennifer’s arms are extended and spread, her dark blue eyes open, pink mouth in a smile, waiting in anticipation for mommy to return. Down the hall, in the bedroom is the rest of the brood: all the Marions, Mr. Triangle. Mr. Smiley the Sunflower, with his eternally fixed sunny smile, and stuffed animals from the first baby lion cub purchased before birth at the Toys R Us to the university mascot bear given to her as part of a graduation gift. I take Jennifer from the mantelpiece and walk her into the bedroom. I place it between two of the Marions. Gently, I push up Jennifer’s lazy right eye. I stand at the foot of the bed, before leaving. While walking through the living room, my gaze lingers on the photos documenting the life of a person, signifying a family that was once there, but now only ghosts, one in particular, wandering the rooms and halls of an apartment now grown too big and empty for my life. I know instinctively that eventually my daughter will come get her things, likely when I am out.
Jennifer will be waiting, along with the Marions, Mr. Smiley and Mr. Triangle.
Mike Lee
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Home, for now
From London chickens squawking talking to the postman
he stands there round the garden from India.
It is just after lunch. from down the street
Boys on bikes race down the street.
The gate clicks. Liz from next door (Queen of Mount Pleasant, street sweeper too) curses. Her son home from rehab flicks snails from the bush. The leaves opposite are playful with light, butterflies. See how a squirrel defies borders. /The chickens will escape. Havoc in the street as the man from two doors down chases them up a path to the dark house where a girl unloads boxes from a van and everyone laughs at the noise, the flailing flapping wings. The boys will be called in for tea. Other bikes will race past on the daily ride from work/ Now though, the chickens are in their garden the postman sings the man from London gets his mail (here on this Vancouver street where half the houses are new and all the prices are high) and the snails creep back to where they started. Sara Barnard
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The View from Drumballyroney, County Down (March 2019) Simon Zonenblick
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Aviatrix
I Amelia Earhart popped in for tea on a hot afternoon in 1932. Destined for Paris, she landed instead on Gallagher’s field in Ireland’s North West. As out of place as her Lockheed plane amongst the grazing sheep and cattle, she stood in her trousers and leather coat, calm as a Sunday stroll in the country “Have you come far?” a farmhand asked. She grinned, wide eyes the colour of sky. “America.”
II Years later, on another island, in a different ocean miles across the world, she was found by another Gallagher, an Irishman conquering the Empire’s last colony on a rocky outcrop. He identified her by her bones, a bottle of Benedictine and a tube of hand lotion – a broken rouge compact, a woman’s shoe and the remnants of a pot of freckle ointment all pointed to her. But the scientists disagreed. “It’s a man”, they said. She stayed missing, despite Gallagher’s protests. “It can’t be her – the bones are too long… Plus, this person survived for weeks,
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distilling drinking water in flames, living off turtles, fish and birds. It can’t be her.� The authorities closed the case, lost her bones. Gallagher died on the island. She’s still missing. III In an estate on the city fringes, a museum marks where she landed, its entrance bricked up against trespassers, windows long gone to teenage vandals. In the carpark, half-naked children play among caravans, weeds and burnt-out cars. Some petitioned re-naming the airport in her honour, a proposal left to rot in the squabbles of party politics. The papers say the airport is set to close. Nicola Heaney
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I Love Drunk Driving With You
He always said I was the best at driving when drunk. I thought about this as I drove from his wake. It was a small affair. A lot of older relatives. He was only 17. His mother greeted the visitors. His father sat in a corner. The whole scene made no sense to me. Like I was watching a movie. “The thing about Ben,” he’d say. “The thing about Ben is that he obeys all the rules, he stays between the lines, he goes right up to the speed limit and doesn’t drive any faster.” “That’s right,” I’d say, smiling in some kind of beery haze. Isn’t life beautiful? “He knows they’re watching him…” “No, they’re not watching me,” I’d say, gleefully. “They’re watching traffic. They probably don’t even see my face, and even if they did, it doesn’t matter because I’m staying between the lines and keeping a constant speed whether it’s the speed limit or not. I’m the only car on the road and they’re dying of boredom out here. But I just keep coming.” “I’d say Ben drives better when he’s stoned, but when he’s drunk he’s even better…” “Better than me sober?” “I don’t know, I’m not scared when I’m driving with you sober.” The cliff he’d jumped off wasn’t that high, but that was the problem with it. It was an unknown dive though me and a couple other friends had jumped off it and there hadn’t been any problems. He’d jumped off of it, too, and it hadn’t been a problem but still…
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He went back to the cliff with his girlfriend later that night. She loved him but she was totally out of his league. He always had to do this kind of thing to prove he wasn’t scared. To prove he was worthy. When he did whatever it was, the two of them could laugh. They’d proved us wrong again. But there wasn’t any judgement, now. His mother was not distraught at us, his stepfather didn’t fail to shake each of our hands. His girlfriend hugged any of us who came up to her and wordlessly a dozen of us committed eternal dedication her. Afterwards, I drove down the street with a bottle of whiskey between my legs. The traffic lights turned in predictable intervals to the colors they chose. Green, red and yellow. “The thing about Ben is he’ll always look at his blind-spot before he takes the turn.” I did. Even in the dark with the streetlights showing; I’d watch them stream through my windshield in big pale streaks. Blinding me. But I’d turn my head anyway. Even though I couldn’t see anything. Just like he said. I felt like crying. His face was had been so mangled that the family had decided not to expose it to the gaze of his friends. The official reason he’d died was that he drowned. His girlfriend had jumped in after he didn’t come up immediately. She’d found him covered in blood. She screamed underwater and tried to drag him out, but his leg was wedged in between two rocks…
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After hitting his head in the dive, he immediately lost consciousness and inhaled water instead of air. Eyes open. Don’t know how his leg got tangled with the crack in the stone. They’d had to send a diver out to get him. His body was floating midwater with long hair flailing out behind him. Most of the us who came to the wake had cut off our hair in some kind of solidarity. “I’d say that I’d drive with Ben even if I had a choice of any other person, because Ben knows how to have fun, and knows how to drive.” I smiled. I forced the whiskey to my lips again, and drove straight ahead. I was headed for the highway and from there, no plans. I didn’t want to go back home. I resisted the obligation to attend the funeral in the morning. That wasn’t him. That wasn’t what he was about. Even at this event, we’d have left early to avoid the inevitable come-down of idiots who didn’t know how to handle themselves. By now, we’d be out here, on the road. “I’d stake my life that driving with Ben would be safer than driving with anyone else sober,” he said. “That’s my opinion, but it’s based on experience and logic.” “I love drunk driving with you too,” I said tearing up, then swore as a deer ripped past my windshield. Too fast to be hit, but too slow for me not to swerve. Too bad you died in a hole, I thought as I hit the railing, and then there was nothing. Nothing for either of us.
Benjamin Joe
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Exhibit: Name
Should we reconstruct? Make a marble bust? Hold still while I describe the man in you: The purple sound behind his eyes is lust. The black & white. The thumb: a pale cashew. Where does he take off his square suite jacket? The back of a chair? Hair under top-hat. At night he rocks naked in a basket while lover woman inspects his fat. What’s his relationship to the mirror? Mother or brother? What gender are eyes? Could they be gem-stone? Black crystal clearer than womanhood. They come make him capsize in history. He puts on names like socks. Real men don’t fight unfurling into rocks. Robin Gow
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The Musicians
Assume we are a family. Imagine I am the mother of these two brilliant young women. Observe how they were just born under the moon of another moon. They formed from two ribs detached from my body by an improbable gravity. Sit on the Malecรณn with us. From ephemera, form this fragile family with brief bonds of misconceptions. Break them like waves on the rocks. And, then, please take your song elsewhere. Ray Ball
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A Fissure
A Daughter. Although I knew I couldn’t hurt her, my mother, I didn’t touch her, instead I watched her open mouth—the lips full of deep crevices—full of unspoken moments, like the time I was four and hungry and went off to find her and found grunts coming from her room instead, or the time I found grunts and trembling eyes, or the time I found grunts and cries, or the time I found grunts and tears, or the time I found my own tears as I watched; I didn’t find them—instead I found a girl who crawled beneath our house, before my bedtime, between my whole life, as if I couldn’t on my own—I never had to, I had to face the grunts and cries and tears on my own, until the day I fell into the fissure of my mother’s old wrinkled mouth, wandering the depths of primordial skin, fossilized with grunts that echoed my bones as I searched the little girl to understand.
A Mother. While I knew he loved me, it was in his own way, a way I came to learn very quickly when his roots wrapped around my neck for the first time, around the deserted acreage of thick and scaly skin, and as they grew tighter flickers of my father—my daughter—flashed in my blurring vision, because it couldn’t be that I married the same man I spent my childhood hiding from beneath torn gashes of earth, it couldn’t be that I became the same muddied woman my mother was, it couldn’t be that this was the only way of loving, no—it could, because even when I held my daughter in my arms for the first time I felt the land of violence pulsing through us, as if in that moment all the words of my life drained from my body into a puddle of dirt that I dribbled into deep
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crevices of skin—crevices I spent the rest of my life wading through, sewing myself inside of, watering the cries that grew from the bottom of its wasteland.
Julia Moncur
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I Thought If I Tried Hard Enough I Could Grow Spines
at Mayflower Beach where we ducked down into waist-deep bay water to retrieve sand dollars by the dozen. We followed strange trails in the sand to harvest them at low tide. I watched as the purplish brown ones covered in velvet spines crept along like snails and tried to burrow into the seabed. My father collected them so fast, some slipped between his fingers as he clutched them to his chest, discs spinning back to the sea bottom in whorls of sand. He carried what he could back to the beach blanket, laid them out on the towel at the feet of the woman who was not my mother, whose smile flashed around her cigarette, eyes hidden behind plastic cat-eye shades. Behind her the dune grass whistled, and a mangy dog howled and foraged for scraps. I took the sun-bleached skeletons from the blanket, thumbing their symmetrical petal patterns and counting the rings on their bottoms. Some were the size of my palm, others smaller than dimes. My father poked at the living specimens on the blanket, which sparkled with water and did not move. I wanted to hurl them back into the sea, away from him and the red-painted toes of the woman who prodded them and laughed and did not know my name. I thought, if only I could creep away unnoticed into the howling dunes, saving what I could before burrowing out of sight. C. M. Donahue
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scottish dad werewolf #27 Jude Cowan Montague
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There are no roads left to the sea
We haven’t left the room for two days now. To make it fun we’ve built a den. It’s a storytelling weekend. There’s bunting strung from the ceiling, and Maria’s collection of glass catches the sun, casting fairy lights across the room. “Tell us a story,” the children say, again and again. We’re done with all the books that we’ve salvaged. There is nothing left to read. There are no more words. “Tell us more,” they say. They’re bored. I’m trying to invent my own stories, but I’m distracted. The children say things like when we leave, and, when things are safe.
At first we recorded time on the wall, a mark for a day, a slash for a week, a triangle, a month. For a year, a circle. We left the city long before the country got cut off. Imports stopped; exports too; suicide rates rose quickly. Militant factions formed and violence increased. Health systems collapsed, health did too. The population dependant on long term medication died swiftly. Off grid and self-sufficient, when stragglers drifted through we welcomed them. The children loved the strangers. Why does everyone
leave? Maria used to ask. She’s used to their disappearances now. We stopped recording time, what was the point? It’s only a construct anyway, like conscience, or like church. The children added stick limbs to the markings and now their drawings cover the wall.
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“When I grow up,” Maria says, “I want to be…” When the children talk of tomorrow we catch our breath. Once, we built a boat. Marty and I carried it to the shore, whilst the roads were still passable. It was our get-out clause. “I want to sail in Hope,” Maria says. We haven’t told the children that Hope is gone, smashed to smithereens by the storms. “When can we go to the sea?” Jacob asks. “Soon,” Marty tells him. I glare at him. On this we don’t agree. Why build up their dreams for nothing?
There are lies that I have told them. That the visitors continue their pilgrimages, their strength renewed. That the dogs just ran away. Some secrets hurt more than others. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep.
It’s been two days since Marty and I made love and we are already moving apart. Human touch sews us together but now threads loosen and fray. Space springs quickly in between us and I welcome it.
Maria puts her head on my belly and smiles. “I can hear it beating,” she says. She’s always wanted a sister. Marty doesn’t know I stopped taking the pill. He rolls his eyes. “Tell us about when we went to the beach,” Jacob says. Years ago we took a trip out from the city. It was February but the sky was blue. The sun was hot. They’d stared in wonder at the waves and it felt like the start of something new. It’s the only time they’ve been to the sea.
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Not far from here there’s a carousel lodged against a tree. The paint’s chipped off the horses and their teeth are bared perpetually at the sky. The children sit on their plastic backs and hum along to tunes that we can’t hear. Imagination is a powerful thing. We haven’t told the children that the seaside towns are gone. Can you miss something that you’ve only experienced once? Marty puts his hand on my shoulder. I loved him too, once.
The children are restless and they want to go outside. The smoke clung to our throats well before we saw the fires, but now there’s a constant flickering on the horizon, growing closer. The sky is blood. We’re waiting for the wind to change direction and then we’ll make a run for it. At least, that’s what we’ve agreed. Safer to stay put for now. Maria sits on my lap. “I’m bored,” she says. “How will we find where Hope is?” Jacob asks. “We’ll walk for a day to to reach her,” Marty says.
There are no roads to the sea anymore. The hedgerows that hemmed them spread and sprawl, merging tarmac to fields, fields to the sky. It’s impassable unless you hack your way through. And what then anyway? “Where will we sail when we get there?” Jacob asks, as Marty clears his throat. I cast him a warning look.
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“We’ll sail round the coast of England,” he says, “and then we’ll head for France. I’ll show you the white cliffs of Dover and a huge stone arch that’s in the sea. You can play in the sand.”
We’ve heard the stories as people straggled in. Beaches obscured by the rising sea, entire cliffs submerged. Even if we could even make it out to open water, we wouldn’t get far. Maria and Jacob can’t swim and Marty’s weaker than I’d thought. The dogs could have made it though. The irony is sore. Even if we reached France, they might not let us in. Whilst our own leaders were burning bridges, other governments were building self-sufficient and stable communities. Eventually our government imploded. Poof. There was a quiet beauty to it.
We are a land of decay, the ground littered with dead birds. Pieces of torn plastic are caught in trees, wings flapping; their bright colours faded to parched cream. “I’m hungry,” Maria wails. The livestock are ghosts and the vegetables beds are dust. The heat is incessant. I siphon a can of chickpeas into bowls. Eat slowly, I remind them. We are all so thin. It’s been a long time since we had a good meal. Jacob picks each chickpea up one by one and pops them into his mouth. Maria peels off the outer layers with her nail. Marty isn’t eating. He gestures to me to come closer. “How much food is left?” he whispers. “Enough,” I lie.
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“Is there any meat?” he asks. I shake my head. “If we still had our knife we could go hunting,” he says. I think of the knife that I’ve hidden beneath our mattress. The idea of Marty hunting is laughable. I disguise my smile. “Of course, it’s more important that you survived,” he says. I told him that our last visitor attacked me and ran off with the knife. I slashed my own arm to convince him. Sometimes I wonder if Marty’s guessed the truth. We slaughtered the last cow two winters ago yet the meat’s only just run out. Surely he can’t believe that the cattle is all that we’ve been eating? Some lies are for protection. He’s not a natural survivor. “If the wind doesn’t change soon we’re going to have to make a run for it,” he says. I agree.
Night three. The children sleep. The fire grows closer. The heat of it travels through the walls. I calculate the distance. One mile, maybe less. Three days ago it was five miles at least. It’s moving fast and we’re in its path. Marty lies beside me. A change in the wind’s direction and everything could be different. I’ve been waiting for his breath to deepen. “Marty?” I push myself into the curve of his legs and his chest. Maria turns in her sleep. Marty wraps an arm around me. “We should leave tomorrow,” he says, “the fire’s moving fast.” Time is running out for us all. Marty reaches for the reassurance of my skin and I let him. Quietly, I whisper.
He falls asleep soon after, as I knew he would. I kiss his lips. I wait a while before I slip the knife out from beneath the mattress.
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Closing the door behind me, I exhale. The air is thick with smoke. A scarf around my mouth, I make my way to the outbuilding where I’ve left it. Beyond the fence, fire licks the trees. Fear makes me strong.
I heft the metal container to my shoulder and climb over the fence, skin growing warmer. Unscrewing the lid, I tilt the container. The parched ground drinks the liquid. A thin line of gasoline follows me, as I move quickly. Trailing my way back to the cottage, I put my ear to the door. One of the children cries out and then settles. Marty snores. I hesitate. Butterflies flutter inside my womb. I’ve felt movement earlier, this time. It feels like something new. What I’ll do to survive used to shock me, but not anymore.
We’re no match for a fire, and they’re no match for the sea. It’s them or us and I’ve chosen. There’s no guarantee that we’ll make it, but our chances are better alone. Love is a construct, guilt is too. You can teach yourself to escape them. I swing the last of the fluid at the door and in the light of flames it glistens, an open wound. As I walk away I hear the roar of the fire reach the cottage, louder, even, than the sea. I hum the children’s’ carousel tune, to drown out the sounds of their fear.
Hannah Persaud
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Perhaps Perhaps it is only that we are used to it; Like a spider who has his web torn daily Soon becomes incapable of exasperation; But finds a pattern, a rhythm In the weaving; the weaving becomes a purpose, The purpose becomes the spider. One knows when there is nothing to be done; Because eyes are almost always concrete, rarely Water; and you are frozen in glances, So I dive into another sea, and spread further Beneath the border, discovering this and that Treasure, discussing them with no one; Mind you, these are no secrets; Only words you cannot understand. You describe the same things you have always described On land; once more tearing the web, cursing the spider; Who waits a few moments and begins threading his legs To weave the web again. Jonathan Dowdle
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And We Were Silent
My father, Uranus, who was the Sky & the pounding of the oceans against the shore Used to pound the Earth My mother As he did the oceans & the shore & we cannot deny We cannot unhear What we heard Cannot unsee What we saw Every night Every day The pounding The pounding of the Sky against the Earth Cannot unbelieve what we know to be true The pounding Because our mother asked us to Asked us to understand our Father loved her & us Our mother asked us to believe our Father loved her & us & we tried to believe & to unbelieve The pounding & we tried to unhear & The pounding We tried to unsee & to understand & we were silent & we were silent & we were silent Until He came for Rhea. Cash Myron Toklas
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Hendrix: Dreams in Red Velvet Aqeel Parvez
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Punch and Judy
“Remember - be a good girl else Santa won’t be coming.” Danielle nodded as her mother unbuttoned her coat, tying it round the little girl’s waist and preparing to leave. She bent down once more to whisper in her ear. “Mummy will be back very soon. Anyone asks, you tell them I’ve gone to the Doctor’s. Okay? Where’s mummy had to go?” “Doctors.” “Good girl, Santa’s going to be very pleased with you. Here, have a sweetie.” She pushed a jelly baby into the child’s mouth, before disappearing into the swarms of people.
She looked back just once. Danielle was sitting cross-legged, quite at ease, among the other children waiting for the show to start. She felt a tinge of guilt passing the mothers standing dutifully at the back of the church hall. Proper parents, she thought. Still, with Kevin working at the garage every hour God sent, what chance did she ever have to snatch a moment to herself? She smiled. As soon as she reached the grocer’s she would be fine. “Your usual, m’ lady?” the Asian shopkeeper would say flirtatiously the only person who seemed to treat her like a lady at all. And then, after calling in at home, she’d be back as soon as possible, hopefully before the show was over.
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Danielle sat silently as people came and went all around her. Parents joked among themselves, girls giggled, boys jostled playfully on the floor. But she was looking at the large wooden box in the centre of the room. She thought back to the day they buried Daddy. The box was like his coffin, stood on one end. It was there, she somehow knew, that the action would take place. “You’re going to see a very special show,” Mummy had said. She did not know what that meant. She felt both nervous and excited. The lights faded, and a slight panic spread among the children. Some were reassured by mums and dads, slowly the noise died down. Lights from the ceiling and floor illumed the box. A curtain was tied across the front. Danielle was frightened. She wished her mother was with her. “Ladies and gentlemen - how do you do!” Without warning, a small figure had popped into the window, the curtain parting to reveal an ornamental archway. Danielle could not tell where he had come from. On his head - for it was definitely a “he”- was a red and green clown’s hat, threaded with a succession of multi-coloured bells, which jangled as he moved. With his stripy costume and long, fluffy whiskers, he seemed jovial and friendly, though his voice was sharp and with a hint of malice. One by one, different characters appeared, each dressed as strangely as himself. Brief exchanges would take place, and every time, the jangly man came off better than the newcomer, who he would trick or poke fun at, the children brightening as they watched. Danielle was unsure about these gnome-like beings. Who were they and why were they here? They were smaller than she was but that made no difference. Spiders were tiny, but even Kevin was scared of them.
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“Now look here, Mr. Punch,” said one of the strange people, who looked like a sort of policeman, “show me what you’ve got hidden in your pockets.” Slowly, Punch unveiled a collection of fat, curly sausages, knotted together in a seemingly never-ending line. The children around her were laughing, so she did the same. “Hey, them’s my sausages!” Up jumped a burly looking butcher in a white smock and apron, squaring up to Punch with a rolling pin. “You be a wretch!” He coshed the thief over the head, and the audience broke into waves of laughter. As the show continued Danielle, too, began enjoying herself. The strange people were gradually becoming more likeable, and she found it funny how they bumbled about. All manner of scenarios occurred, every character somehow embroiled in silliness and misfortune. The baby was cheeky and mischievous, the buffoonish doctor clumsy and eccentric. But it was Mr. Punch who brought the house down. The children rocked with laughter at his exploits, and even the adults chuckled at his wordplay and topical quips. Warmth and spirit had taken over the hall. The laughter and cheering were becoming uncomfortable. Two boys nearby were shouting, and few were sitting still. The booming voices of the grownups seemed to close in on her, the other children slowly getting out of control. “Take that, you nasty little brat!” cried Punch, swiping the baby’s head with a sausage. The infant fell to his knees, the crowd laughed wildly. Next, the crocodile, which had been skulking slyly behind, began attacking all he saw. His teeth were huge and jagged, his rasping voice threatening and fearsome. Danielle recoiled. No one noticed. As the beast held its ugly head towards the children, she shrieked in fear, but her voice was lost in the hubbub.
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The scene continued, and many children began re-enacting what they saw. The parents laughed and hollered louder. The scene played on. “Why, you miserable old sow,” groaned Punch, turning to his wife and walloping her on the face with a bottle. As the bottle smashed and Judy fell down, the crowd burst into hysterics, applauding madly and performing imitations. Danielle felt the whack of a girl’s purse on the back of her head. She scrambled away, but it seemed no matter where she turned a maze of shouting, laughing, and pure chaos was what met her. Punch continued his assaults. His victims were polished off with increasingly violent force, but it was Judy who suffered worst of all. He thumped her about the face, slapped her on the back, poked her in the belly, and tweaked her ears until she screamed. The children were laughing so loud that the words of Punch and Judy were drowned out. Something was rising inside Danielle. She did not know what it was called or where it came from, but it was the same feeling she got those nights when… “Come here, you nasty old hag-” “Agh!” Mummy had told her - begged her, even - to forget what she had seen. It was a dream, she said, a bad dream, a nightmare. She said so still the second time. And the third. And…guilty tears were welling in her eyes. Why was everybody laughing, while she…he was hurting Judy. It was not funny. “Now you remember, Danielle,” she had been told, “nobody at nursery wants upsetting with your nightmares., and Santa doesn’t come to bad girls’ houses. So be a good girl and don’t say nothing.” Danielle shuddered. Punch was doing to Judy what Kevin did to Mummy.
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“Stop it!” she leapt up, and ran for the box, reaching out for Punch’s hand to tear him away. “Stop hurting her!” As she yanked his arm away, the crowd exploded in a frenzy of laughter and disbelief. Danielle felt the energy streaming through her. She knew what Daddy would have done. This was what she had wanted to do, what she had been trying to pluck up courage to do… “You’re a…you’re a…” what was the word Mummy had called him, that night the ambulance men had come… “you’re a fucking bastard!”
The lights came on. She burst into tears. The puppets lay redundant on the box’s edge. One of the puppeteers had emerged and was standing at the side, trying in vain to re-stitch Punch’s sleeve. Parents rushed to scoop up bewildered sons and daughters, shaking their heads, looking ruefully at Danielle. Other children protested at the show’s sudden ending, the blame being laid squarely on herself. “What the Hell have you done?” Her mother was stamping towards her. She knew what this would mean. Santa would not come. Her mother marched her out of the hall, alcohol strong on her breath. “Is it any wonder with a mother like that?” sighed a disappointed dad. Outside, struggling to keep pace, Danielle fought back her tears and tried working out where she had gone wrong. Surely it was not her fault that she had thought them real. She felt so foolish now. She was not sure how, but she somehow knew that if Daddy could come back, he would put everything right. She looked up to see her mother’s face, flushed with anger and embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Mummy,” she said between gasps of crying. But her mother did not answer. Simon Zonenblick
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Survival Skills
They ask me to eat earth and kneel on the grass. I bite my tongue as the soil talks back in my language. I show them how the tar makes the best chewing-gum when picked off the pavement after a heatwave. Our mirror reflects the sun into the windows of speeding cars; the drivers’ faces light up like overexposed photographs. The first to snap a bird’s neck gets a lollipop from Father Michael. My hands flutter, the wings knot around my wrist. I hold my breath. We give it a burial behind the Laundry Block. One of us swings Father’s censer over the grave. My fist up to my face whistles all things bright. Across the garden, a robin watches the myrrh burning to ashes. Maria Stadnicka
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The Exhortations of the Revolving Mask Bill Wolak
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Exhibit: Yesta Tilley
1. The Woman wears long white gloves so that she doesn’t have to touch you. On her hat she weaves a bird’s nest but only lets doves land, plucks out their feathers & eats them on her walk home. 2. The Man leans on his cane, takes off his gloves to touch you. His hands are a black & white photograph & he tells you that it’s impolite to stare at them, but he smiles. He whispers that he once ate dove feathers. 3. The Man puts on his hat for a walk. A nice clergyman, you meet him under a street light & you take him up to your room. He hangs his long black coat on the glass door knob. He asks if you’ve every eaten dove feathers.
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4. The Man serves you black tea. A tray. A pristine white tea pot & two cups. He balances the tray. He asks you how much sugar & puts in extra & then a dove feather that dissolves in the hot liquid. He puts gloves on you & shows you how to touch him. Robin Gow
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Wormhole Weaver
They say exotic matter is not to be confused with dark matter. They say you have to enter a black hole to get into a wormhole. They say dark holes eat light. A wormhole must be a God who made lips. I would go there. I would let it swallow me if it meant I could hold onto her tongue longer. They say a wormhole needs exotic matter to exist. I say it’s possible that one billion trillion years in a tunnel of light is exotic matter. They say black holes eat collapsed stars, They say if you push exotic matter it would push you back. I believe it. I have fallen and not fallen. I have been that kind of mouth. Jennifer Lothrigel
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Tattoos of Baba Yaga and Danu on Her Thighs
The break-up took place in the kitchen, over glasses homemade kombucha. Pele stirred lavender flavored coconut sugar syrup into two smudged glasses. Nothing ever got clean in this kitchen. I turned my glass, looking for a place unmarked by Pele’s homemade lip balm. Our one bedroom apartment had no dishwasher. The disgusting continuous brew kombucha glass canister took up half of the kitchen counter space. The floors of the old building tilted towards the Bay. Berkeley was expensive, musty, overcrowded. My half of the rent would have gotten me a whole house back in Syracuse. Two houses. Pele swirled her spoon. The lavender syrup strands stretched through the pale kombucha. For a health obsessed yoga teacher, Pele needed a lot of sweet. “I’m feeling trapped,” Pele said. I sipped kombucha. So pungent my eyes watered. “Constricted,” Pele said. This again. Pele’s kombucha was more vinegar than fizzy elixir. Who knew what toxic bacteria were living in all that health? I dumped a spoonful of coconut sugar into the kombucha. Pele was right. The kombucha needed sweet. Bad. “Do you know what I mean?” Pele said. I did not know. We were polyamorous like all the good upstanding Bay area queers. I tried to be sex positive. To be non-judgement of kink. To be into kink. Pele had recently trained to be a tantric healer. After two months in Oregon, Pele was certified in sacred bowl massage. While she was gone, I let the kombucha fester into vinegar. I drank from smudge free glasses, never once lifted my slipper to find it covered with dust and red
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hairs. Still, I missed Pele. Maybe being nonplussed by Pele’s new passion would show her that I was worth the trouble of an actual relationship. Pele was incorrigible. Intoxicating. My nightmare and wet dream rolled into one henna haired, tattooed yoga teacher-now-tantric healer. Even when Pele bought the domain name, I figured she would get distracted. Then Pele returned from teaching Volcanic Vinyasa class and announced that she was going to run her business from home. Our home. “But what about your students?” I said. Pele grabbed my hand. “Without you, I would have never known my destiny to be a tantric healer. Remember how blocked you used to be?” Pele said. My molars pressed against each other. I imagined Pele’s strong fingers working their way up tech wives’ energy blocked vaginas to release their G-spots. Sure, Pele said she liked zaftig women with natural pussies. But once Pele massaged all those cellulite free power pilates asses, she would decide bony muscled women, waxed and trimmed, were the true iteration of the Goddess energy. Pele would realize that clients were more fun that a relationship. Clients only needed Pele for an hour at a time. I could have slapped myself. Anyone could have seen this coming. “You said it was OK,” Pele said, “but I felt guilty when I put up my website this morning.” When I had said “follow your heart” to Pele, I didn’t think the website would be up today. The website Pele had had the nerve to ask me to copyedit. The website that showed Pele’s thigh tattoos. A black inked Danu, Celtic goddess mother rested on her outer left thigh, while on her inner right thigh, Baba Yaga steered her mortar towards Pele’s pussy.
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“If you feel guilty about it, maybe that’s a sign,” I said. Pele was big on signs. Creepy feelings. Happy feelings. Goosebumps. Any feelings. Leaves on the building front steps. Seeing a finch. All these meant something, depending on Pele’s mood. She would listen to signs in a way that she would never listen to me. “This is my life’s work – to free feminine energy. I can’t do it when I’m constrained.” Pele pulled up her shirt, pointed to the pale blue Guanyin tattoo. The anger came on fast. My arms burned. I jumped up, knocked the table. Kombucha sloshed out of the glasses. “Can we just think about this? Where am I supposed to go when you have a client?” I said. “I can’t be the healer I’m meant to be and live with you,” Pele said. “What if you get kicked out of the building for prostitution?” I said. Pele sighed. She lazily stirred more syrup into her kombucha. “Andrea. All your trying. Get over it. Stop the faking. Embrace your uptight lezbo East Coast self. It would have been so cool if you had gotten all jealous and threatened to leave me or something. I loved tight hamstring Andrea who could barely touch her toes in my yoga class.” Loved, I thought. Past tense. “Your name is Bailey White,” I said. “You did dressage in high school.” Pele flinched. Took a long yoga teacher breath. “Andrea, you never did understand the difference between a transformation and faking it.” “Enlighten me,” I said. Pele stared at me with her crow eyes. Mean and inquisitive all at once.
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I walked to the sink. Dumped kombucha down it. Grabbed my backpack from the hook by the door. This day had been barreling down on me since our first sweaty kiss after yoga class. In a few weeks, I would shove clothes and shoes into duffle bags. It would be early morning, while Pele was teaching yoga. The damp morning air would turn the wood steps to the apartment slick. I would reach into that toxic kombucha. Grab the frisbee of hard, slick mushroom colored bacteria colony called the kombucha scoby. I would flinch when the brown tentacles of bacteria touched my fingers. I would fling the scoby onto Pele’s hand embroidered bed spread from India. Leaving that apartment for the last time, off balance, I would slip, bash my tailbone on the wood stairs. Weeks later, the pain would settle, dependable as a rock, into my low back.
Penelope Dane
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Joy Katy Telling
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Maybe we should talk about the Bacchantes always being the butt of a joke when really they were just living their best lives
I’ve done some dumb things in the name of wine: sweating or crying, in bed or on the floor, in company or alone. I’ve never brought God into it, but if I had, I’m sure I would have been there, too, panting under that tree, Pentheus’ bloody hand in my hand, hollering, into the night, over everyone else’s hollers, something akin to a prayer. “Dionysus, don’t save me, not from this. The world burns crueler in the morning, and as I lay me down to purge, know this is exactly how I thought this night would end, and it didn’t stop me. I am unstoppable. I am unstoppable.” Timothy Tarkelly
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always a distance
I am sitting in my car on the driveway on the phone to my counsellor, Carl. He has a Lancashire accent and I will never know what he looks like. I think his face is kind like his voice like his patience with me. It is hard tonight to speak at all, to try and haul heavy thoughts into sounds to try to translate the blackdog language that twitches beside me. It’s hot but I need Carl the dog and I to be alone alone alone so I keep the doors shut. Out of my dead-fly screen I notice bees must have built a nest above the porch in a high corner of the gutter. In our hourlong session they are tireless towards the exact same crack they think is home. I watch them as I listen. Carl tells me that in his fifteen years of counselling he has observed that people who have had he hesitates three drones lurch through blue space breakdowns there is always a distance between what is flying inside them and what they show the world.
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Blackdog shuffles in agreement endless successions of bees made silent by glass return again and
again into a darkness of their own making. Olga Dermott
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When the water settles
Robert, who tends the fire, says, ‘Nothing we can do when the water is cold. If it’s boiling, even at a simmer, we might bring them back. From a heart attack, choking. A drowning once. But when the water settles they are dead.’ We have two hundred thirty villagers. That much is sure because Robert keeps two hundred thirty pots, placed in circles on a burnt grille. I used to sneak in the upper floors and watch the pots from above. The pattern looked like one of the old runes, but I knew better. Robert draws mesh across the tops, and that keeps out vermin, yet those are not as bad as you’d think. He found a dead kitten in my pot the day I turned twenty. There was no bad luck, or illness. No impact at all. But not everyone is sceptical and that is why he sent for me: Sylvia’s pot has a cardinal at the bottom. It is not quite red anymore, huge and dead, although it throbs with bubbles. He cannot cool the water to take it out. That would kill her. He can only let it boil away. He thinks I should be the one to tell her. He believes my brother, her husband, would be cruel, might drive her mad about it, never mind if he loves her. I visit in two nights, when she is alone. Sylvia touches at an eye with a sleeve. If she cries it is not for long and she says, ‘Maybe a dead bird is my old life. Now that it is gone, I have a new life.’ A remark like that, she knows I will follow her anywhere. I say, ‘Sylvia, no. Please.’
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She drops hard from the window and flies high, strong, straight up. She is athlete-fast, and we have been drinking. I worry about an accident but I worry more that she will change her mind. Above the clouds it is cold, already morning. We have to fight to breathe. We leave our garments along the coast, my shoes are miles from hers. My pants, her dress, difficult to say where they are. Somehow, under so much noise, sleet wind, we are tender. By the time she brings me in, our skin is the color of a lake, as if her eyes froze us. She does not gasp, but then we are close to blacking out. Our breath is too precious for that. We land near the border, steal clothes from a farm. Everyone else is asleep, we are giggling. She is embarrassed and, I let myself believe, in love. I tell my brother but have to make up a name. He knows me, can tell that the woman is adulterous. He says, ‘Someone will empty your pot if you don’t call it off.’
Empty your pot. There are two ways to kill a man. The easiest is to wait until Robert looks away. (He leaves the pots of married couples boiling side by side.) The other way is to kill him in person. # I only hear from Sylvia once after that. I do not expect to; she is poised, funny, out of my class. She comes a few weeks before he dies. She says, ‘I’m leaving soon, we need to talk.’ Is that one lie, or two? I set my daypack in the barn and we fly high again, far over the ocean.
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I beg her to stay close. After our first time I have dreams about high atmosphere love, yet none are set over the north Atlantic. My latissimus dorsi will cramp just keeping up, and if I fall she will have to carry me. I outweigh her by thirty kilograms. We would drown. ‘Please, Sylvia. All the way up if you want. Just not out here.’ ‘You men, you never know what to promise.’ The wind takes most of her words, I cannot answer. Anyway, she reaches into my belt, her hand frigid. A brief touch, her cold skin around my taut, fevered skin. All I need to do is give in. We are shivering but she is dropping clothes into the sea. She licks at my mouth, a mess of saliva, and her bare stomach is yellow, embossed. We are higher, ever higher, crying out. No, if we were to cry the tears would turn to hail. She steadies herself with my coracoid bones and, when we are finished, she lets go. We have lost more altitude than I knew and all I have time to see is that, at the moment of splashing down, she is still lovely. Over the weeks I forget to eat. I cannot tell the authorities or grieve in front of my brother. At last I find Robert in a forgiving mood and he lets me dump the pot out, never mind the laws. It is still boiling yet I assure him Sylvia is gone, either brain-dead or drowned in a deep Atlantic trench. When mother comes it is with news of my brother, who passed suddenly. A pot-water killing. An exquisite con.
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Robert will not tell me of their conspiracy in detail, yet whether Sylvia is dead, she was part of it. She divorced with only a bird she found, and a lovely story. She must know because of her my food comes by platform and pulley. The cell is high-security, I rarely see other inmates. Mother has the pension and, since she will not take the Eve-sorrow for long, I will never have to find work, not that I could. When I am free, then, I will spend my hours in the sky. If Sylvia and I are to meet again it will be there, higher than before. The flashing of plasma will be all around, an entire new world of only red, only green. The largest of the oceans, the one that took Sylvia in a gulp, will look the size of a tomcat from that high.
Fred Nolan
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Reflex I (Cover Image) Christopher Dorsey
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Our Debts Paid in Blood
I. on a hazy Wednesday morning mark on arm identified him dead found without face fingers sanded blank somewhere on the riverbank missing shoe what did they do? I owe them money too
II. on a cloudless Wednesday night tell me you are not leaving that the dawn is not coming I beg Orion
Lie to me the grass is high damp with the dew of it will be tomorrow soon
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but my eyes will not remain open to see the sunrise the red flood beneath my head will drown me before then I will not be sleeping it will be no dream when the search dogs find me when the gray-haired uniformed man tells my family they found my body Orion do not leave me Ann Kestner
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Death Comes to the Banquet Table
Death Comes to the Banquet Table, ca. 1630-40 —oil on canvas, Giovanni Martinelli, New Orleans Museum of Art
The last grain of sand drops into the bottom of the glass and it simply does not matter that dessert has barely suffered touch. This moment has not been chosen by any rubric of convenience. Death does not sway choices until its invitation is welcomed. And no degree of shock, no finger point, no quick leap to the end of the table can alter its mission. Imagine how that plum would have felt bursting on your palate. Savor your idea of sweet, sweet peach for the rest of time. Or stand in the shadows, unimpressed, if you wish. Only so many grains of sand exist, and Death’s hour glass is smaller than anyone cares to admit. Jack Bedell
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a shirt with a picture of francois truffaut Adrian Belmes
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Exhibit: Spontaneous Sex Change!
Step up to the oval frames they are images of you in a bow white & turning 17 with good sex medicine. on your back you’re M/F. tongue is the whole museum. glow into lavender natural, in between & they’ll tell us we’re illustration mothers/ painting a selfon our dinner plate childhood. our name was one name & Robin Gow
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to the portraits of Woman/Man oscillating between genders in a bow tie black & swallowing Check the tag it should say your [‘re] light switch to the pink & blue into teal, that’s not a natural body. that we’re illusion that we’re no one’s fathers. portrait of our imagined Schoolyard where no one knew us otherwise.
Twilight on the Train
The huge fox, eyes caught in the beam like trainlights, meet me on the platform. Oh you trickster, is it you? Black legs leaping, white tail flashing, quietly he came, the thick-haired dog, up the tracks from the bushes, skulking the undercity. Outwitting, teasing, fast, cunning, careful, that thin jaw has a bite, he nips. He's got dark ways, back ways, he goes his own way. A fox tells tales, and those soft pads make a quick exit. He'll come back, when you least expect. Jude Cowan Montague
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Dog talk
My cancer was in remission and that morning I’d been given an unofficial all clear and to celebrate I sat outside a cafe and drank a beer. At the table next to me were a boy and a girl straining under the demands of an unfair relationship and at the table next to them sat an old woman with a coffee and a muffin. When she dropped her hand down with a piece of the muffin in it did I saw the dog. The dog ate the muffin and searching for other crumbs its head came up over the edge of the table. The girl tired of arguing let her head drop and she leant down and stroked the dog’s head but quickly sat back. “What?” The boy said. “Did he bite you?” “I’m a girl dog. Change your ways.” “That dog just talked to me,” the girl said. “Probably thinks you’ve got food,” the boy said. “No,” she said. “It spoke to me. Words.” “What did it say?” He said. “Change your ways.” “What?” “It said ‘change your ways’.” The boy laughed and then the dog spoke again. “I was talking to him, not you,” the dog said to the girl. “Excuse me,” the girl said to the old woman. “She can see you but she can’t hear you,” the dog said. “I hear for her.” “This is amazing,” the boy said. “Tell her this is amazing.”
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“Don’t waste my time boy. Change your ways,” the dog said. “You should be falling at her feet.” “How? What ways ?” The boy said. “Why me?” “Stop sleeping around,” the dog said. The girl looked at the boy. “What does he mean?” She said to the boy. “I don’t know, it’s a dog. I don’t know what he means.” “He’s lying,” said the dog. “He knows.” The girl stood up. “I’m going,” she said. “Jesus Christ!” The boy said. “You’re going to listen to a circus trick?” He followed the girl down the street and I watched them until they had turned the corner. When I looked down the dog was staring at me. “You won’t make it,” the dog said to me. “Won’t make what?” I said. “You know,” the dog said. “You know.” I looked at the old woman and shouted “hey!” The dog laughed. “Idiot. She can’t hear you. This is typical of you. You ignore everything. You always think you’re right. You’re not.” I went into the cafe and asked them for a pen and some kind of paper. “That woman with the dog,” I said. “Does she come here a lot?” The girl behind the counter looked out at the terrace. “That one?” “Yes, that one.” “I don’t know.” I took the pen and paper and sat down at my table and thought of what to write. The dog was watching me.
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“See,” the dog said. “You can’t even think of what to write now. You are sitting with a talking dog and you are stuck for words. How will you ever write a book. You won’t make it pal. You won’t live that long. Go back to bartending, at least you know how to drink.” I wrote your dog is being rude to me and put the note in front of the woman. The woman read the note and then looked at me. The woman moved her hands quickly, signing something at me and then gave me back my note. I wrote her another I don’t
sign and gave it to her. She read it and signalled for my pen. And my dog doesn’t talk, she wrote. How would you know ? I wrote. It’s a dog. Dogs can’t talk. “What’d she write?” The dog said. The dog stretched out its front legs and rested its jaw on its paws and closed its eyes. “Hey,” I said. “Don’t blank me. You’re just a fucking dog.” Across the street a little girl was pulling her mother closer to tell her that that man was swearing at that dog. “I wasn’t swearing,” I said. “You were,” the dog said through the side of its mouth. “You said fucking.” “Did you hear that?” I asked the little girl. The mother pulled the girl away and told me not to speak to her daughter. The old woman and the dog got up left the cafe.
I went back to the cafe the next day but the old woman with the dog was not there. I did this for five days in a row with no result until on day six when I got to the cafe, the girl was sitting at the same table as before.
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“You were here weren’t you ? Last week when that old woman had her dog with her,” she said. “I think so. I think I remember you.” “The dog was telling the truth. My boyfriend was cheating. How do you think the dog knew ?” She said. “I have to find that dog. I need some help. He knows stuff. I’ve got tough decisions to make. I want my life to work out.”
Nick Armitage
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Dream Recurring
It was a fine dream to finish on, the one her childself had begun, writing her little booklets with unevenly cut edges sewn together with cotton and hope The poems of flowers poems of birds and a story about the man hiding in the loft Do you remember him with his three giant blue toes? Daddy held her up in her nightie to look – nothing there only a faint odour of musty wood Teffy Wrightson
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Contributors
Nick Armitage has been writing for a while. Despite many failed efforts at writing a novel ennui sets in and he admits that the short story is perfectly suited to his style. His story ‘Just outside Finley’ will appear in Dreamcatcher #39. He has also published ‘We are not alone’ with the online magazine Village Square. Nick thinks he’s going places. Ray Ball grew up in a house full of snakes. She is a history professor, Pushcartnominated poet, and editor at Alaska Women Speak. Her chapbook Tithe of Salt was just published by Louisiana Literature Press, and she has recent publications in Coffin Bell, Moria, and UCity Review. Sara Barnard (she/her) is from the UK, has lived in Spain and Canada, and is now based on a sailboat in Central America, with her partner and child. Since finishing a PhD in Hispanic Studies, she has focused on sailing, parenting, and freelance writing (travel, music, culture). Her poems have been published by Bone & Ink Press, Glass Poetry Resists, Hypertrophic Literary, The Cerurove, and Okay Donkey, among others. Twitter: @sara_barnard Website: sarabarnard.wordpress.com Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collection is No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, fall 2018). Currently, he has been appointed by Governor John Bel Edwards to serve as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019. Adrian Belmes is a reasonably depressed Jewish-Ukrainian poet and book artist residing currently in San Diego. He is a senior editor for Fiction International, editor in chief of Badlung Press, and vice president of State Zine Collective. He has been previously published in SOFT CARTEL, Philosophical Idiot, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His chapbook, this town and everyone in it, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. You can find him at adrianbelmes.com or @adrian_belmes. Prince Bush is a non-binary, gay, and black poet attending Fisk University in Nashville, TN—majoring in English and minoring in Women and Gender Studies. He is grateful to have poems in numerous literary magazines, which can all be found at pbush.com. Don’t hesitate to connect with him on twitter: @princebush.
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Jude Cowan Montague worked for Reuters Television Archive for ten years. 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 on visual art for The Quietus and Artlyst. She is working on a graphic autobiographical novel, Love on the Isle of Dogs. Her most recent album is Hammond Hits (Linear Obsessional, 2018). Penelope Dane is a former disgruntled library employee. Her work has been published in Mockingheart Review, The Fem, Autostraddle, Apogee and in the anthology This Assignment is So Gay: LGBTIQ Writers on the Art of Teaching. She lives in Sacramento where the stray cats let the squirrels run wild. Olga Dermott is originally from Northern Ireland. A former Warwick Poet Laureate, she has had poetry and flash fiction published in a range of magazines including Rattle Magazine, Paper Swans Press, Magma, Under the Radar, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Poetry Shed and The Bath Flash Fiction Anthology. In 2018 she was one of the winners of the BBC Proms Poetry competition. She is a teacher and has two daughters. @olgadermott C. M. Donahue holds a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing with a Poetry concentration from Emerson College and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Connecticut. Poetry by C. M. Donahue has recently been published in The Mantle, Jersey Devil Press, Amaryllis, Sonic Boom, and Eunoia Review. Christopher Dorsey is a writer and artist living in Denver, Colorado. His fiction has previously appeared in Illumination Journal and at The Molotov Cocktail. This is his first published artwork. You can follow him @Crispin.24 on instagram or twitteract with him @chrisd4thee Jonathan Douglas Dowdle was born in Nashua, NH and has traveled throughout the US, he currently resides in South Carolina. Previous works have appeared or are appearing in: The Opiate, Whimperbang, Visitant, Adelaide, Blue Moon, Bitchin' Kitsch, Mojave He(art), Vox Poetica, HCE Review, The Big Windows Review and various other magazines. Robin Gow and is a poet and adjunct professor at Adelphi University. These three poems come from a recent project writing about and in conversation with documents and photographs from The Institute for Sexual Health (Berlin Germany 1919) which pioneered a lot of research and support for trans and gender non-conforming people during that era. Robin’s work often has to do with delving into voices of queer history.
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Originally from Derry, Northern Ireland, Nicola Heaney has just graduated with an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Her poetry is most recently published in The North and she has read her work at places such as the University of Bristol and the Irish Literary Society in London. Benjamin Joe lives in Buffalo, New York where he works as a freelance writer for The Niagara Gazette and IPWatchdog.com. His first novel, Nirvana Dreams, was published by NFB Publishing in November 2018 and excerpts from it can be found in the March 2018 Ghost City Review and issue 14 of Riggwelter Press. Short stories have been published by Burning House Press and Aspirant Co. Twitter: @benjamin_joeb01 Facebook: Benjamin Joe Ann Kestner is the founder and editor of the online literary journal Poetry Breakfast. For over 25 years her poems have appeared in various journals. During 2017, she was the poet in residence and director at the Poetry and Arts Barn where she hosted writing workshops and poetry readings. In 2018, she produced a series of free eBooks through Poetry House Studios featuring themed collections of her poetry. More information is available at AnnKestner.com. Mike Lee is an editor, photographer and reporter for a trade union newspaper in New York City. His fiction is published in The Drabble, Ghost Parachute, Reservoir, The Opiate and others. Website: mleephotoart.com. He also blogs for the photography website Focus on the Story Jennifer Lothrigel is a poet and artist in the San Francisco Bay area. Her chapbook Pneuma was published last year through Liquid Light Press. Her work has also been published in Arcturus, Deracine, Rag Queen Periodical, Peeking Cat Poetry, We'Moon and elsewhere. Julia Moncur is an emerging writer who studies at the University of Utah. She is an advocate for women, survivors of trauma, and those living with mental illness. Her work has been previously published in Rag Queen Periodical, The Canticle, and Folio. Alan Murphy is the Irish writer and illustrator of three collections of poetry for young readers. His last collection, Prometheus Unplugged, was listed in a children’s and young adults’ books of the year article in the Irish Times and shortlisted for the CAP awards. He has recently published adult poetry with Degenerate Literature and art and poetry with all the sins (who chose his collage as their lead image for an issue). Katerina Neocleous has recently become assistant editor of the poetry journal, Obsessed With Pipework. She has been published in various magazines and anthologies; and has two pamphlets forthcoming in late 2019: from Flarestack/ OWP, and from Maytree Press. For more information please visit her at visionsfromhell.wordpress.com
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Fred Nolan has published short fiction with The Molotov Cocktail, Alban Lake Publishing and Gingerbread House, among others. In December 2018, Emery Press Books launched his debut novel Alexei and the Second Empress. Despite what he claims on social media, he lives near Dallas, with his wife, two young children and worn-out Coetzee novels. He is a technical writer at a commercial subcontractor, but much prefers Twitter. Aqeel Parvez is a poet from Bradford, UK. He is the author of The Streetlights Are Beckoning Nirvana (Analog Submission Press) and the upcoming Gutter Musik (Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers) His work has been published in Hermesse (16 Pages Press) and the upcoming Gutter Poetry (Creative Destruction Press) Find him on Instagram @ap.writer Hannah Persaud is a writer. Her first novel, The Codes of Love, is being published by Muswell Press in print and digital edition and by Bolinda in audio in February 2020. She is represented by Laura Macdougall of United Agents. Her work won the InkTears Short Story Contest in 2017 and 2018 and the Fresher Short Story Prize in 2016. It has also been shortlisted for the Cambridge Short Story Prize 2017 and 2018 and been Runner Up for InkTears 2016. She has been published in numerous places. Winner of 12 national Romanian prizes for poetry, Maria Stadnicka is now based in Gloucestershire. Her work appears in International Times, Dissident Voice, and in various journals and literary magazines in Austria, Germany, Romania, Mexico, Moldova, US, UK and Australia. Previous collections: A Short Story about War (2014), Imperfect (2017), The Unmoving (2018). Forthcoming (2019): Somnia (collection) Knives, Forks and Spoons Books, Bearings II (pamphlet) Poets' Republic Books, and Uranium Bullets (collection) Cervena Barva Press, US. mariastadnicka.com Timothy Tarkelly's work has been featured by Peculiars Magazine, Cauldron Anthology, GNU, Parahon Journal, Fourth & Sycamore, and others. His collection, Gently in Manner, Strongly in Deed: Poems on Eisenhower is being released by Spartan Press in 2019. When he is not writing, he teaches in Southeast Kansas Katy Telling is a current featured writer with Sick Lit Magazine, collagist and designer. She is a former Party Girl, in the Parker Posey sense of the phrase. You can reach her @PoeticRituals on Instagram or Twitter. Cash Myron Toklas is the pseudonym for a new poet whose work has recently appeared in or been accepted by Balloons Literary Journal and Piltdown Review. His current project, from which ‘And We Were Silent’ is drawn, is a reboot of Hesiod’s Theogony from the perspective of Kronos.
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Bill Wolak has just published his fifteenth book of poetry entitled The Nakedness Defense with Ekstasis Editions. His collages have appeared recently in Naked in New Hope (2018), The 2019 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Poetic Illusion, The Riverside Gallery, Hackensack, NJ, the Dirty Show in Detroit (2019), The Rochester Erotic Arts Festival (2018), and Montreal Erotic Art Festival (2018). Teffy Wrightson is an elderly Yorkshire writer with an interest in many subjects including history and sheep. Given to strong views on politics, human rights and the environment. Twitter @belledujour208 Simon Zonenblick is a 37 year old poet from West Yorkshire, living in the Calder Valley and working in libraries and a variety of other spheres including gardening, greeting cards and film making. His film on Branwell Bronte's Calder Valley Years was released last year, and his essays on local history, poetry and wildlife have been broadcast on local radio and published in newspapers such as The Halifax Courier.
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Acknowledgements
‘Exhibit: Spontaneous Sex Change!’ by Robin Gow won first prize in the 18-22 category of the Whitman Bicentennial Competition 2019.
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ISSUE #26 COMING OCTOBER 2019
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