August 2015 by The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society

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Table of Contents Pg. 4 - VISIT CAMILLE’S, Sheree Shatsky Pg. 6 - HAMLET HAS A WEAK MOMENT, Matthew Wester Pg. 7 - SEATED ON A SMALL DOCK ON INTERMEDIATE LAKE IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN READING HEINRICH HIMMLER’S SPEECH BEFORE SS GROUP LEADERS IN POSEN, POLAND, 1943, Devon Miller-Duggan Pg. 9 - THE STAG, Amber Schmidt Pg. 10 - MY FRIEND ANNA, Janna Vought Pg. 12 - LATCHKEY KID, Joe Crunk Pg. 12 - HOW I LEARNED TO WALK, Vanesa Pacheco Pg. 14 - FUNERAL DRESS, Lydia Flores Pg. 15 - BREATHE TREES, James Croal Jackson Pg. 16 - …AND FOUND, Terry Barr Pg. 17 - POEM FROM A PARKING LOT IN STEUBENVILLE, Luis Neer Pg. 19 - FAIRY LIGHTS/CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS, Patricia Walsh Pg. 20 - MY RELEASE, Amber Schmidt Pg. 24 - ISAIAH, Christine Stoddard Pg. 25 - NIGHTLIGHT, Laurin DeChae Pg. 26 - POSTNATAL DEPRESSION, Katie Lexington Pg. 27 - EMILY AS THE TRAJECTORY OF THE ARMADILLO, Darren C. Demaree Pg. 28 - CALOS, Rosie McFarland Pg. 30 - WILDFLOWER, Sindhi Verma Pg. 32 - BLACK KING, Alex Valin Pg. 34 - INSPIRATION, Hanna Abi Akl Pg. 35 - UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, Tom Loughlin Pg. 37 - VOX POPULI, Adam Kane Pg. 40 - EDITORIAL STAFF Pg. 42 - CONTRIBUTOR BIOS

VISIT CAMILLE’S Sheree Shatsky Jack sifts through the ruff of the squirming dog’s neck, above the chest but below the throat where the blood runs warm. I stand by as lookout with a pack of matches stolen from my mother’s purse. Visit Camille's is scripted in silver across the purple cover. “Schlitz, for crying out loud, settle down,” he complains. He drawls out the name the length of three syllables, Sche-leee-litz. His dog is named after a third-rate beer, the apparent hands down libation of choice as noted by the number of six-packs imbibed by adult relatives attending the annual kickoff picnic. Most families reunion, say their goodbyes and are done with it, but not our family. We reconnect at the collective hip every summer for a month’s time in this drag of a hick town where I find myself stuck the June of my sixteenth birthday, standing watch and scraping my thumbnail across the strike plate of a souvenir matchbook from Key West, ruining my manicure in the process. I examine the damage and wish for icy pink nail polish.

Jack pinches his fingers on something found in the fur. “Oh, yeah,” he says, pulling off a tick, bulbous and grey as death. Its legs wriggle like tiny eyelashes. Jack is my first cousin on my mother’s side and has endured the misfortune of actually calling this twobit town home the length of his thirteen-year-old life. He found me earlier in the week sprawled on the couch watching a rerun of Star Trek, contemplating how I could beam back to Florida in time for my birthday if only this were the 23rd century and not 1967. “Life could be a lot worse,” he said. “You could be a moose with one hundred thousand ticks sucking your husk dry.” To prove his point, he unfolded a worn photograph torn from a National Geographic depicting a morbid tick-on-moose cluster feast. For the better part of an hour, the self-described tick-slayer filled me in on his personal vendetta to take out any tick he came across during his watch here on this mighty Earth. I joined Jack that day in tandem retribution for the besieged moose, telling him I had nothing else better to do, but the truth being the picture of the hundreds of engorged ticks feeding suck fat happy on that moose made me as sick as the one hundred and fifty I’d picked off my own dog last spring, dropping each and every squirming parasite into a waiting jar of Clorox. I spit at a patch of dandelions disgusted just thinking about it and the thought occurs to me to spit less when I turn sixteen in a couple of weeks.

“Dang, this sucker’s huge,” Jack says, releasing the tick next to a firecracker laid out on the patio. I watch it scuttle in confused circles. Jack digs back in the dog’s neck and pulls off two more. The ticks stagger about in a blood drunk conga line and I shove them into place with a stick, a conductor of demise orchestrating a perfect symmetry of 4

destruction versus destruction. “You ready?” I ask, tearing off a match. Jack leashes the dog as I light the fuse and the three of us run like crazy to the far end of the yard. As if preordained, we turn back around to watch the second the ticks blow sky high. The blast yodels off the hillside in a single contrail of varying pitch, giving voice to the cruel heat beating down on us. Jack slaps Schlitz on the backside and the dog sets off in chase of the bouncing sound.

We trail the scent of phosphorus back to the blast site and three wet circles underscored by a scorch mark is all that’s left of the bloodsuckers. Jack gives me the thumbs up, satisfied with the outcome. I watch a tick crawl from beneath the neckline of his shirt to negotiate his carotid and flick it off before realizing my hand has moved. Hey, what the heck, his eyes question before the dawn breaks and he’s off jigging across the sweet Tennessee grass, his feet lit up in revulsion. He tears off the shirt and shakes it out like a filthy carpet. “God dang dirty good for nothing piece of crap!” he yells, rubbing beneath his arms and behind his ears, turning his back on me to look down his jeans and feel between his thighs. His shoulders shudder then relax with an all clear. I suddenly feel sorry for this teenage tick-slayer who lives in a place that literally sucks. “Hey. There’s more where those came from,” I say, whipping out a M80 stashed in my back pocket. “Call back the dog.” Jack’s eyes widen at the daddy-o of tick ammo. He throws on his shirt and whistles between his teeth the way I never learned how. Schlitz comes running and I tear a match free from the book of Camille.

HAMLET HAS A WEAK MOMENT Matthew Wester Thinking of you in the bath now is wrong but why? A body is already 75% water and takes the shape it occupies, every bend and curve. I imagine that last 25% maintaining the floodgates, filling sandbags to hold back pressure. The rise and fall of your chest, Ophelia. Lust for life, life for lust. As a man I first learned to be stiff in body, then stiff in resolve and soft in body, finally stiff in the body once again. Too alive or too dead. So I compose myself and think of you, so soft. No, I take guilt and turn it into a thought which is easier to distance myself from. I fill up the space between me and the thought with more thoughts, pushing that first thought farther away. What thoughts of you? You once said my mouth was an empty promise, and on the flow of my thoughts you were just bits of floating debris. You once said my words floated through things like ghosts, like my father, an untethered shade gone with the rising sun. You once said pleasure was like pollen, useless till touched and spread, like rosemary, the one for remembrance.

SEATED ON A SMALL DOCK ON INTERMEDIATE LAKE IN NORTHERN MICHIGAN READING HEINRICH HIMMLER’S SPEECH BEFORE SS GROUP LEADERS IN POSEN, POLAND, 1943 Devon Miller-Duggan Mated swans come up along the dock. Even knowing they’re sour-tempered, I love the white water-pillows of their bodies, their sunset shaded, black-tipped beaks, black eye masks’ small swoop. Their feet fan and fold beneath the water, like water plants, visible beneath the almost-clear water, clear in the mornings because the lake has been dying since zebra mussels came. …absolutely wrong to project our own harmless soul with its deep feelings, our kindheartedness, our idealism upon alien peoples… They’ve come to beg, offering themselves as gracenotes on the scenery—a small lake, a bright morning, birches, pines, popples, loons earlier, ducks, one noisy gull, and now swans. The lake is dying. Alien mussels, zebra mussels. vomited ballast from the great lake’s port. What it means to see a hundred, five hundred, a thousand corpses lying together and have remained decent…This shall never be written. The mute swans’ sinewy, scroll-work necks rise up, bearing their heads like torches, curving like magicians’ ropes. Like the mussels, they were not meant for this place, and they, too, have spread and fed and jostled out the proper fauna-the trumpeters who’d have properly fussed for food. The most these do is hiss. Whether the others live in comfort or perish in hunger, whether 10,000 Russian woman collapse digging a tank ditch is of interest only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany.

They wait for food, as if aware we find them beautiful enough to feed. Dumbly patient—they’ll be back at evening, whether we feed them now or not. Their feathers ruffle in the wind like tongues of clouds. We shall now discuss it openly among ourselves. We shall never speak of it in public. We’re safe because the season’s late, cygnets gone, the nest hidden somewhere down the lake. We won’t feel the great beaks like hemostats locked on our defensive arms, Won’t run from their wings’ outstretched rage, like giant’s hands clapping after us. Wind feathers the water’s surface, silvering small peaks and troughs against the current. There’s enough sun to make a wavering gold net of light waft across the sandy bottom. It catches nothing. I’d never find the skills to paint that net beneath the surface. The camera’s a better tool for this. I imagine some Dutch painter in the 1600s spending his whole life learning to paint light beneath water. We shall never be heartless. Right. We’ll do it. Our soul, with its deep feelings. Beauty is our right. We invented it. Our own harmless soul. This year the lake’s begun to cloud. The sunken dinghy ten yards out—last year wholly covered in zebras, wholly visible— gone. Water plants turn white and waver like ghosts beneath the muddled water—less light reaches them. The tiny organisms are returning. The zebras ate the water clean, and die now, starving from the famine they have made themselves. Farther up the chain, in another lake, several pairs of trumpeters return and breed. Not all the alien mussels, though, will die. The lake will heal itself—young fish return, plants die back, the water cloud with life. Then they’ll have food again. I grew up watching Night and Fog. That war, I believed I understood. 8

But I go back to read it over, over, overâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to believe it ended.

THE STAG Amber Schmidt I imagined myself as a spirit, cold and breathing from the habit of it, my lips blue like my eyes. I was drifting through the mountains, my feet hovering over the dirt and my body angled and quivering as I ascended. The air was thinner, and although I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need it, I found myself growing lightheaded. I was a visitor in my own body, lacking control or even will, just going where guided. The top, my mantra. The top, the top, I whispered. Trees were plentiful, and I extended a ghostly appendage, my fingers touching those Alabama evergreens. I moved faster, dizzyingly fast, and began to circle the path, still headed up, up, but now through the trees and into the trees. Spirits canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bleed, but I imagined branches scratching my face as I flew; I imagined the lines such scratches would make, thin and slightly raised, jagged skin torn in some places, just perturbed in others. The trees with their long fingers, gently caressing my cheeks with biting fingernails and the wind dancing with me. The image seemed beautiful.

I saw a stag, his horns thick and captivating, his eyes dulled and a pale blue - unseeing, and he turned to me, those milky irises square on me. Unsettled, I reached a hand to him, but to no reaction. The thought of talking appalled me, the idea of having to listen to my own voice. My words were to be a punishment to us both. I smiled sadly for this deer so clearly nearing the end of his life, so tired, dead-tired. He can rest, said the wind, writing in goosebumps on the back of my neck. I found myself thinking of his impending rest - a rest so deep and heavy, so permanent - with longing. As if he could sense my thoughts, the stag reflected those same sad eyes onto me. My hand, still extended, was met by his cold nose, a nuzzle as if to say, do not be sad. You can rest soon. 9

MY FRIEND ANNA Janna Vought So it goes. I just returned. her funeral. dressed in black mourning. gilded coffin. her corpse. soft in the belly. I want to dig her up from beneath. the pansies. roses. calla lilies. quivering in sluggish heat. unwind morning (glories). ivy from the iron trellis above her grave. dormant beneath the roots. open her casket. let her breathe. too late. her blood on my hands I stayed mute, no screams. silent night. afraid. quiet. don’t interfere. I passed by. no time for pity/grief/tears. twenty years spent bruised. wounded. beautifully broken. bound to a were-wolf. in sheep’s clothing. his rage a single note in a chaotic symphony. powerless. dark hand(fist) explosion. blue-blue eye. blue eyes rimmed red (swollen/blind). oh blue sky. spit blood. pure. hot. white. pain. delicate wrists twist. break. a vision I cannot erase. What happens behind closed doors. mystery/secret/shame. he enters her room. locks on the door. useless. she couldn’t escape the black water. Bitch. bones splinter. hands. ribs. orbital. butterflies break from her shattered skull. coven of last wishes. it’s never safe for a woman. alone. how she survived this long. a miracle? punishment for sin? when police came, blood quilted the sheet. covering her on the floor. a simple misunderstanding. he’s so sorry. kicking in her teeth. shoving her down the stairs. snapping the tip of the kitchen knife off. in her head. the wife he no longer wanted. no more. ghosts were once people who vanish/disappear. gone in a cataclysmic instant. spirits eat stars. mouths filled with dying light. she’s gone. sister. friend. extinct. final. peace.

SHIVER TREES, CROOKED ON THE HILL ABOVE THE CREEK Tara Brooke Teets The following poem is a cut-up composed from Irene McKinney's "ironweed". above, the locust tree can't grow that afternoon, they fall into their deepest belief between a damaged world and Mary's army of iron, shrieking cicadas Each of them knows someone like a thorn but they don't hide Whatever lasts until the orchid roots itself into the dry creekbed is beyond thick iron 10

"Do you stand on the slope of everything?" It resists - drops to its knees its branches squared-off There is blood from another life in everything

LATCHKEY KID Joe Crunk My mom and dad never married, when they met in college he was already married to another woman, my mom knew this but they started screwing anyway and ended up having two kids, my brother and me. My brother was one year older than me. I only saw my dad a couple of times, he never lived with us, it was just my mom, my brother and I. My mom had a college degree and worked in a lab at a hospital. She often ran out of money a week before her next paycheck arrived so my brother and I were on our own to get food. Usually I ended up stealing food from the neighborhood grocery store or my brother and I would hang out with the neighbors who were a good family of chicos (mixed race Mexican and white), three generations living under one roof, they would cook good Mexican food like chicken amole’ and hominy with neckbones and my brother and I would eat with them and stay after and watch horror movies. As my brother and I got older and started high school we would also drink beer with them but we hid it from the grandmother who disapproved of that. There were some weeks when neither of these food options was available and my brother and I would go without food. Once I was so hungry that I sucked mustard out of the small mustard packets you get for carryout at restaurants. My mom knew that two days before her paycheck arrived she could write a check and it wouldn’t bounce so the three of us would walk to the nearby pizza restaurant and have a feast; juke box hero and eye of the tiger would be on the jukebox. My mom did get us into sports, boy scouts, and education, and she did not do drugs or beat us. Sometimes she wanted to beat us but we would run away and escape. She never got another man that I knew of. My mom worked nights and was often asleep during the day so my brother and I were on our own, we got into our fair share of trouble. Once we made Molotov cocktails with another kid in the back alley. It was the other kid’s idea to make those and later he landed in an insane asylum. We ended up starting a fire in the brush in the back alley, the fire department came, one of the firemen came to our front door and exclaimed, “That’s a Molotov cocktail! That’s dangerous!” There were lesser incidents as well, like my brother getting caught on fire while we smoked cigarettes in the back alley, he ran down the alley with flames fanning up off of his shirt and I yelled at him to stop drop and roll, he did, and it worked. There was also a back alley rock throwing war with kids from down the block, my brother’s forehead got cracked open. When that happened I brought him home to our mom and she took him outside to the hose on the side of the house, turned on the water rinsed the blood off his forehead, the blood fell off his face in sheets then new blood came pouring out of the crack so she took him to the hospital in a cab since she did not have a car. Our house was condemned and demolished after we moved out. My mom had no money to make repairs to the house so over the years the rain began leaking through the roof, puddling on the floors in certain areas in the house, rotting through the floorboards and making it unsafe to walk over certain spots, the water leaked through the floor and pooled several feet deep in the basement. The toilets became unusable and I took to shitting in the back yard. The plaster crumbled 12

off the walls, exposing the ribcage-like wooden slats underneath. The lazy boy recliner my mom slept on after work gradually broke down and decomposed onto the floor but my mom kept to her routine of getting home from work and laying down on that same old broken down chair, when it finally broke in half she laid flat on it and fell asleep. Some rooms of the house had to be cordoned off because they were littered with cat shit, a lot of cats lived with us. Once a month my brother and I walked to the hardware store down the street, rented a lawnmower, and mowed the lawn, that was fun. On one occasion my mom, brother, and I returned from a trip to our grandparentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; house to find the bathroom faucet turned on full blast, half of the first floor was sopping wet, my mom sat despondent, listless, and silent in a chair in the middle of the room and would not answer me when I spoke to her, I was alarmed by this, my brother gently told me to come away with him and leave her alone. Through it all, my mom was more or less a rational, kind, gentle, quiet person. I was accustomed to trusting her and believing her. That was why it was shocking to me when, decades later, she started sending me ominous text messages about people trying to kill her. She had never been a drama queen or paranoid before. It took a week for me to realize that she was hallucinating. When I told her she was hallucinating she acted like an asshole, this was another unprecedented thing. I arranged to have my mom live at a mental health diagnosis center for a week to find out what was happening. She argued with me, got nasty, and insisted that a bunch of crazy shit really was happening to her but I finally got her to go for the mental health evaluation. The doctor concluded that there was no way to fix the hallucinations and paranoia but perhaps a prescription of abilify might lessen them. It did seem to take the edge off the paranoia but my mom remains a strange and different person from who Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d known her to be. But thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ok.

FUNERAL DRESS Lydia Flores I wear it, ready, and willing to die. This is skin like a federal prison jumpsuit, this is exhaustion, this is wearing a color that doesn’t come off. I am the everyday funeral, my casket skin holding bones rotting from police badges, silver bruising, bullet casings like vampire skin to your authority. This is no dying art they won't remember my name or black face. I am the skinny black dress because that’s the color that sells. Fit for every occasion, but mostly dying. Sex doesn’t sell, black bodies do, like mine. Assault buying them in bulk, forget makes fortunes. I am the funeral, my body carrying blackness like a casket and armor bearers of sorrow carry me home. I am the mourning, the grief, the apology and there’s no taking it off, no zipper, no button to unloosen to the naked worthiness. I’m the color that sells, the price easily purchasable with abused authority the tag easily poppable with your hands on my throat, the life easily removable with guns and brutality. There is no freedom, from this, sentenced to life. A walking death penalty and you never know when your date with the badge is, so you better look good for the bruise. Black skin, like sin, like corruption they hunt for like Animal skin, they pull our fangs, sell our bodies for cheap at the warehouse of bullets. We are endangered, who's trying to save us?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m wearing exhaustion, wearing pain, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m wearing funeral, wearing apology, carrying my rotten bones in tired black skin But I want you to know no one looks better in this black, than I do, than we do, and I will wear my skin proudly like the American flag that waves. Even if the earth takes me back tonight after brutality buys me and white hands pull the tags.

BREATHE TREES James Croal Jackson I want to ask how it feels to be a forest at night, wood in your lungs. Tell me the ancient sap suckles at your chest, that you pine for a spell of two-glass wine. It's negative-three for my plus-one in this suburb, the white dress masked in time, this intruder. No more imperfections came so suddenly. 15

…AND FOUND Terry Barr After my father had been dead for a few days, I did what any good son would do; I rifled through his bureau drawers and found the various heirlooms he held: a box of watches—Seikos and Longines and Bulovas—dating back to the 1930’s. A list of songs and their most popular artists that my father feared his Parkinson’s would make him forget. His last two wallets, and the one his own father was holding the day he died. My grandfather’s wallet was a genuine Hickcok Alligator, with folds and crevices harboring the vitals: His green-encased “Charga-Plate Service” stamp that he used to buy groceries and dry goods on account. His license with three addresses, the first crossed out by pen--204 Dexter Ave--the last two written in pencil, one underneath the other: 2511 Mt. Brook Circle; 1110 Cresthill Dr. A precisely folded typed note signed by someone I’ll never know, a “Mr. Hardy” (VA administrator? The family’s accountant?), telling all that my grandfather’s World War I pension was $66.15 until he turned 65, when it would become $78.75, though he died at 64, just before the “windfall” kicked in. Many photos of his children, including my father and uncle in World War II uniforms, my aunt as a grammar school child and again as a sweet high school girl sitting on a park swing. And one of my grandmother, standing alone, smiling. This photo was separated from the rest by several unfilled plastic pockets, as if it didn’t belong; as if it were contagious. As if the woman there had cheated on him, which of course she had. Still, she was his wife, and so he kept her, passing her down with the rest of his things for his son and I to remember, to keep in our respective bureaus, because some things can only be stripped from you once you’re dead.

POEM FROM A PARKING LOT IN STEUBENVILLE Luis Neer my family was passing through steubenville en route to some party and my mother insisted we stop at the grocery store to get a bag of pretzels or something. we can’t just show up empty handed! she said. we stopped, my mother and stepfather went into the store and i stayed in the car to lie on my back in the back seat and look out the window at the docile clouds, thin, scattered, drifting lazily. all that could be seen from my angle were clouds. i imagined it was actually the car that was moving through the sky, not the clouds which left like whispers as my vessel floated past. i was alone, but felt no loneliness. the car was floating through the air, nothing could disprove that until i was pulled back down to the ground by the sound of a man’s voice, muffled, coming from outside the vehicle. i sat up and looked out—he was an old man, skeletal muscles gone dead with age, celluloid skin looking frail enough to be ripped off in a light draft. 17

he had white hair and a moustache like a comb held under his nose. he was barking at a woman whom i inferred was his wife. she, too, was old though not quite as ancient as the man who was barking at her. i couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t figure out what the man was saying partly because the windows were closed and partly due to his inability to enunciate. he kept going, barking at his wife sounding as if he were a wild animal choking on a bone. the woman looked sad and embarrassed, and i was sad and embarrassed for her. together, they slipped into their little red car, he continued to bark as she started the engine, and they disappeared away from me. a little brown bird landed in the space where they had been parked. i watched him peck at the cold concrete and sank back down away from the window.

FAIRY LIGHTS/CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS Patricia Walsh They still remain, these fairy lights brighten up the place a bit, pierce the darkness above our heads, where the exit sign no longer reaches you and I. The speaker entangled in a mess of light this space is too small for a band, to loudly dispense their offerings to swallow the music overhead. Tables remain vacant, but not for long. Is it me? Did my odour construe a force field around me? Maybe it's the fire too hot to handle this time of year. Stained glass windows don't give much light at any time of year, but are necessary as an escape route, hanging through its skull swinging from curtains in base denial. The mirror over the fire bounces off light. Never one for beauty or compliments amiss, a nude pirouetting in a glass prison ignored after a while, relenting to fine art. The lights remain, Christmas or not, some colour for dour summer days, decorations otherwise, do the same job enlightening those with nowhere to go.

MY RELEASE Amber Schmidt (Triggers for self-harm and unstable thoughts) I started cutting, like many people with whom I’ve spoken or read about, in high school. My life wasn’t challenging by any means; I was a straight-A student with a close-knit group of friends, and I was in a loving, two-parent household. My dad was in the army, and with deployments, it was often just me, my mom, and my younger brother. We moved around a lot, but I’d seemingly come into my own with the on-base school. Sophomore year of high school, my parents bought their first house, off-base, thus rezoning my high school. I began the new school year pouty and upset, melodramatic as any teenager, because of course it was all about me and the only thing that mattered was that I was away from my group of friends. Yes, I was bullied, although not to the extremes of others. I was shy, overweight, and eager for approval. I kept to myself, reading, and too self-aware to accept friendship. Who does she think she is? That new midget (Schmidtget, they called me) ain't all that. My loneliness combined with the general exhaustion of crafting a pleasant/happy-girl at-home persona got me to craving a release, an escape of some sort. I wasn’t one for drinking or drugs, but pain? It was something I could control, something I could focus on. It began innocently, if such a thing can be innocent. I found a safety pin and dragged it across my arm. The raised pink scratch was harmless enough, and so I did it a few more times, never drawing blood. If they knew, I’d think, they'd be nicer to me. They wouldn't expect so much of me. I started to push things a little further. I felt like the harder I pressed, the more real I was – stupid, goddamn STUPID, I know. But I was young. If I could just go further, a little further, then my pain would be a real thing, and it wouldn’t just be in my head. I tested for a magnet school and transferred, feeling better about my new circumstances. Life stayed the same, and graduation grew closer. I never drew blood, and I put it out of my mind. College began, a whirlwind of an adventure. Living away from my parents was unlike anything I’d imagined; I missed them in ways that caused something hollow in my chest. Visits were a warm solace and leaving was painful. I felt that I was supposed to be thriving, so I cultivated a blase attitude about my departures. I would cry on the drive home, but never while packing. I never cut during this time – honestly, I don’t think it 20

even crossed my mind – and I gradually came to see that living on my own had its perks. I came to love it – the freedom to do as I pleased, the ability to make my own decisions. I was free – liberated. In the fall of 2013 – senior year – I was living in an apartment with my two closest friends. We were barhopping on weekends, going to art shows on weekdays, laughing at our own existence and creating memories in the careless way that we felt only we could. I was minoring in professional education and was set to begin my student teaching. The curriculum that came with the field-experience was challenging, heavily based on theories and research – very different than the lecture classes and the literature I’d been studying (I was an English major). For the first time in my academic career, I actually had to try. Taking 15 hours of classes while student-teaching M-F (full school days and seminars) was wearing on me. I felt like I was missing out on my senior year. A lot of my friends were art majors and were thriving on campus. I felt jaded, isolated, and like I had always just missed something great. Once more, my pain was in my head. My uncle had come to visit during the summer and had bought me a toolkit for my apartment. I’m not sure when or why I decided to go through it, but I remember finding a little plastic case inside with two razor blades inside. I remember smiling, thinking now this - this is how I should do it. It was more of a morbid curiosity than anything else – would it be like I remembered? Was I really a stronger person now than I was in my past? For a reason that I still can’t understand, I equated strength with the ability to push myself. Strength, I reasoned, was being brave enough to push the envelope. So I picked up the razor blade and I cut myself. There was a tiny trickle of blood – hardly anything – but I remember my heart beating in my chest. Whoa. I was curious. I locked the door and turned up my music, grabbed a beer from the fridge. I chugged the beer and cut again, pressing harder this time. Ow- that hurt. It had never hurt before. I felt proud of myself and, with a smile, put the blade away. Having my own little secret was enticing; it gave me depth, made me more of a person. I would be at school lecturing and would anticipate coming home, being able to cut again. I began making excuses to stay in because nothing, nothing, gave me the rush that my strength did. I remember a mortifying moment in particular; I was lecturing the class and went to point at something on the board when one of my sleeves got caught on a freshlyformed scab on my wrist. It snagged and tore, causing just a little bit of blood and a whole lot of embarrassment on my part. It probably wouldn’t have been a thing if my 21

face hadn’t turned so red. I was thrown off, and I fucked up the lecture. After class, one of my students came up to me and wordlessly showed me his arm, littered in cuts. I felt sick to my stomach. Was I glorifying something to these kids? I made it a point to bandage and to wear longer sleeves. In December of 2013, my grandmother, with whom I was very close, passed away; her rapid deterioration gave my family little time to get to her. My parents asked if I wanted to go and, not realizing how dire things were, I made plans to go to Philly after the semester so as not to miss class. She was dead by the end of the week. Horrified with myself, I knew I needed to be punished. It was a turning point for me, to think of my release as a punishment instead of a reward. I drank too much, took a few sleeping pills, and hacked up my thighs and arms. I took a hot bath, soaking in the tub and, after drying off my sore and pink skin, started at it again. It hurt, dammit, but it wasn’t enough. I drank more, cut more, cut over the same places again and again. It was deep, but it wasn’t too deep, wasn’t deep enough. I was shaking. I was a coward, and nothing was going to bring my grandma back, and I was so self-centered as to only think of my own pain. I knew, then. I knew that I deserved this. There was a very low night in February, something I’m not really good to talk about yet, when I drank too much and wrote a few letters and took things too far. My intentions that night are still muddled- I had a lot going for me, and I wanted to be around for it- but the consequences of my actions were very real. The next day, I was no longer in Tennessee but was recuperating in Alabama with my parents – God, my parents were shaken. I feel horrible for that. We were on eggshells, and I was mortified. I vowed to never let myself spiral to where I was. I was healthy, lucky, had the world ahead of me, so what right did I have to be upset? I was “cured.” I was sane, and the dark thoughts that plagued me could be shoved away. Graduation was near, and the whole future was bright. I moved to Alabama in July of 2014 and began work. A new job, a new state, and new circumstances. I craved my old life, looking back on it with rose-colored glasses. I missed my friends and my independence. I missed the idea of having the world in front of me because here I was, a college grad, and, surprise, surprise, I didn’t have my dream job. I was living with my parents, and I felt like I was in high school all over again. I began cutting again – just small cuts on my thigh – to try and regain some of that control. Here I was, right back where I started. But the cutting wasn’t giving me the

same high that it was before. It wasn’t a punishment, but it wasn’t a reward either. It was just something I had to do in order to exhale. I started dating around (read: sleeping around) in a stupid “MUST FEEL SOMETHING” mentality. I started drinking too much when I was at home and then, numb but still sad, hacking up my thighs. Something in me settled, although I’m not sure what it was other than time calming me the fuck down, and I began to work on my singing and playing. I began meeting with songwriters at a downtown coffee shop, singing my original songs, getting a good response. I felt validated. I started dieting, started losing weight, started a better job, started dating Eric. I was holding on, finally, and things were coming together. I was healed. A few months into our relationship, we had a health scare that shook me to my core. I had no control… and I fell back into my old habit. I cut, and it felt so good. It was my danger, and I loved it. Well, loved it until I found myself wearing a longsleeved sweater in 90+ degree weather. At that point, I felt melodramatic, childish, and embarrassed… just like the last time. Something about that - realizing that after all this time, I was right back where I’d started - really pissed me off. I threw my razor blades away. This pretty much leads me to where I’m at now. I haven’t cut in about two weeks, and I’ve never gone as far as I did that night in February. Dark thoughts seem to plague me, and I get in weird moods when I feel numb and broken and all-around fucked up. I have times when I need the release, but I’m trying to work through it, to find other outlets, like my music or my writing. Today was one of those quietly dissatisfying days. I smoked three cigarettes on my drive home, grabbed a Coke, and sat down at my laptop to write this — my release.

ISAIAH Christine Stoddard Gabriela put the phone down and looked me in the face. She was my mother's age and, despite no relation, had my grandmother's hazel eyes, more green than chestnut. The magazine’s cramped office meant that our desks were so close to each other that I almost ate my lunch in her lap every day. “That was my friend,” she finally said, stunned. I nodded and continued typing my email to the priest/dentist I needed to interview for my article on Catholic service organizations in Central America. Gabriela kept staring at me. I kept typing. Then I clicked 'send.' I turned back to her. Her mouth hung open but no words came out. “Which friend?” “A friend at my old job. Our other friend gave birth four months into her pregnancy.” I straightened up as Gabriela sunk into her hands for a few moments and then rose again. “The baby was born alive,” she said. “But he was so small. He lived for fifteen minutes. They named him Isaiah. Then he died.” I sucked in my breath. “God.” “Fifteen minutes. And he died,” Gabriela repeated as she fell back into her hands. “Why would God do that?” I screwed up my face and lifted my palms. Gabriela sighed. “My old co-workers want me to write the sympathy card.” I winced. “I think this sort of thing affects us women most,” she said. Biting my lip, I nodded. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing my inbox and pretending to read the pope's new encyclical on the environment. Gabriela didn't touch her lunch.

When I got off work that evening, it was pouring. I ran out of the building and into the warm rain, splashing through the parking lot. My leather sandals almost slipped off. At the crackle of thunder, my heart skipped. I gulped and galloped toward my car. I spent the fifteen-minute drive home gripping the steering wheel, trying to enjoy the summer hits on the radio. Somehow I pushed through seven inches of water and parked my car farther from my apartment than I would've liked. I gathered up my bags and tried running to the main door, but there was so much rain now that I tripped and lost my sandal to the flood gathering in the lot. Another crackle of thunder stopped me from chasing it. I hopped the rest of the way to the door. When I reached the lobby, I shook myself dry and smiled a sad smile at the children playing by the front desk. My evening battle with the rain had lasted longer than Isaiah's whole life.

NIGHTLIGHT Laurin DeChae by tiny thousands you were led together, but bare, she is shadow. In pursuit of the moon we barely break a sweat, dancing drunk under a luminescent orb, easily swayed by tricks of light and dark. We are certain and yet unconvinced of ghosts. Or maybe it is just the haunting of memory that makes us flinch when a hand is raised, shadowing the face. Guilt is stitched into our inseams, groping that which makes us private. This is why we need darkness. To undress in a new light. To fuck like it’s nobody’s business. In pursuit of the sun we are toasted. Raise a glass to dappled light breaking through. It is milk we crave, sweet and dripping. Too much for the mouth to hold in one word. Too much for a mother to cradle in her arms. Teething on the strings that hold everything up, gumming paper into spitballs, I’m ready to fire. Born naked, you firefly me. Pray for nightfall, suck your thumb. picture me rust-beat and winded, smeared diamond-hot from finger to light. 25

POSTNATAL DEPRESSION Katie Lexington Why is it so difficult to love you is it me Am I feeding you wrong am I not supporting your head should I have breastfed? Are you cold is it a dirty nappy Why are you crying I just changed you What can I do Why won’t you stop You smile for daddy I’m the one always here Why don’t you love me What can I do.

EMILY AS THE TRAJECTORY OF THE ARMADILLO Darren C. Demaree For Lisa Jarnot If a woman can be flush enough to exhibit language that belongs in a display for tourists then she has a real, American talent. Emily once called me a pussyfist, which I thought was quite a dirty term until she explained that I abhorred violence towards women, but I thought some men needed to get punched in the face. That was clever of her I thought, but I was more excited to hear her spell it out for me. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spelled like it sounds, which is practical enough for any billboard.

CALOS Rosie McFarland Marbles shine in the sunlight - colors reflect on the dirt, rainbows in a desert. Calos loves to clink them in his hands that can only hold so many, hearing the glass chinkchink together before setting them down in a match to end all matches. His four-year-old feet wander the streets with only grandparents with rough hands to return to. He finds the marble games in the shade between two tin houses - where he meets the vagabonds, as the neighborhood calls them. He belongs with the aimless children. They have piles of marbles at their feet, filling their pockets. Treasures of glass in a world of dirt. Calos and other children dig for coins under the bridge near his house. The coins are old - they have seen more days than the children digging them up. Washed down from nearby houses when it floods or dropped by people on the bridge overhead, the coins gather dust and dirt. With fifty cents Haitian, a child can buy four marbles. Calos can lay out his marbles and count two hundred, or he thinks he can. His friend Eric helped him count them once. His favorite is Beeka - a white and yellow marble that is bigger than the rest, his lucky charm. And now the big game is here, and Calos has a hoard of marbles at his feet. His army ready for battle, to grow stronger. The circle between him and the other boy is noman’s-land, the battlefield, the place where marbles change hands based on skill and the fate of the snap of the glass balls hitting each other in dirt. But then Calos notices something strange: he is losing. The other boy is taking his marbles, his treasures. Oneby-two-by-one and too soon, it is over. He had kept Beeka back out of fear, but now it is too late. The game is over, and his army is demolished, ruined. His sparse troops’ bodies are scattered in front of him. Calos chokes back tears and yells, accusing the other boy of cheating. He raises his hands and pushes the other boy. They fall to the ground together, scuffling-hitting-screaming; the onlooking vagabonds cheer and encircle them. The other boy picks up a rock, which he brings down hard on Calos’ forehead. Calos stumbles back, falling onto the dirt circle, the world becoming fuzzy and blurred by blood dripping over his eyes. The other boys jeer at him as he picks up his stray marbles and makes his way into the street, his hand pressing against the walls of the alley to hold him up. He feels woozy as he staggers in the late afternoon buzz of people walking to and from dinner and business. His arrival home is greeted by surprise and admonishment from his grandparents. His grandpa first cleans the blood and wound. His rough hands stinging and scratching his already tender skin, telling Calos that wounds like this need air, you can’t cover them up or they will fester and drink water, which will be very bad.

His grandpa leans him over and spanks him with his hand, tough from years of work and tired of kids causing trouble. Ten swipes; each one hurts more than the last. Calos cries out with each smack, struggling to bite his lip to seem strong. He has Calos kneel on the hard floor. Calosâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knees burn and prickle with the weight of his body leaning down on them. His back and neck strain to keep upright without falling over. He cries quietly as evening comes, not wanting to show weakness. At least an hour passes, where he listens to people walk outside the window to reach their homes, families, and warm dinners. His grandma brings him dinner. Beans and rice never taste as good with pain, distracting from the nourishment and care put into the food. This common response to misbehavior is effective and simple, the body punishing itself for not sustaining the awkward position. Two hours later his grandpa comes back, but before he is allowed get up, Calos has to make an oath to never play marbles again. His favorite game, his precious jewels gone from his life. He just wants desperately to get up and stretch. The cramps in his legs are unbearable. The sound of his swallowing seems extremely loud in his ears, and he can feel his heart pounding in his fingertips and in his chest. He makes the promise, and his grandpa smiles as he helps Calos up off the floor. Burying his marbles is hard. His treasure, lost in the dirt. He can only muster the strength to bury them in his backyard, close enough for him to remember, to walk by and over, unlike his mother a year before - she is buried somewhere else, far away, out of sight but never out of mind. The bag of marbles is covered as he piles on the dirt, just next to a shrub as a marker. Just in case.

WILDFLOWER Sindhi Verma So you stumbled upon That wild unruly flower, Borne out of mystery And the mysterious forest, Not heard of and not seen, Not smelt and not kissed, Not admired and not loved, Inebriated with its own fragrance Which heady and strong for you Is fragrance nonetheless, Unaware of its own beauty Which singular and blinding for you Is beauty nonetheless. You found it odd and intriguing That it did not stare at you Prudishly from a flower vase, Vacuously from a picture book, Obscenely from a bouquet, Expectantly from a flower bed, Or sullenly from a wreath; That it refused your patronage Or to owe much to you; That it insisted on openness To the Sun and the rain. But you were resolute, To maneuver and to conquer. To turn the wild prim and proper, Fit for your garden of subjects Not wild and not free, Not unkempt and not unruly. And so you brought home To tame the wild flower Which you planted sans its wilderness Hoping to keep only what you like. But now it runs amok Ramifying into that same jungle 30

Bringing down your kingdom. You rush to hack it before it kills Your sweet roses and lilies.

BLACK KING Alex Valin Burn, black king. Burn, red king. Fuck the suit the suit doesn’t matter. Burn, black ten. “Let’s start with one.” “Call.” Yehuda lifts the edges of his two cards with shaking hands. He sees another king and a seven. Three kings watch the tell control the tell. He looks up at Jack. Jack looks back at him, eyes clear, left edge of his lip slightly upturned. Teeth hidden. Levi and Boris sit on either side of Yehuda, smoking foul cigars, the only kind they can afford. Levi is small and jerky, similar to Yehuda. He comes from Russia too, but Yehuda does not know where. Boris is rounder, keeping some fat over the massive amounts of muscle despite the amount of food he gets. He comes from Leningrad, a fact he proudly presents, although to him, it will always be Petr. Petersburg. No saints here. No saints in St. Louis. “I raise,” Yehuda says, attempting to keep his voice level. He slides two ragged dollar bills into the pile in front of him. Boris coughs up smoke and spits at the far corner of the room. “Ah, too rich for me. Petr men know when to fight and when to quit.” He leans back in his chair and blows a reeking smoke ring toward the naked bulb above them. Jack, the one American amongst Russians, yet always at home, looks calmly at Yehuda. “Well,” Jack begins to slide a bill forward. “‘Merican’s like me never learned to quit. Not like you Ivan’s back in the War. “We have revolution!” Levi exclaims, throwing down his cards. “We die at home and you say we cowards?” “Come now, come now, no offense meant.” Jack lights a cigarette, which he holds in a homage or a mockery to his Russian friends, between thumb and forefinger as opposed to the crook of his fore and middle finger. “That was a long time ago,” Yehuda mutters. He scratches a fingernail against his two cards. “Show the next card.” Jack reaches for the deck of cards. “Right as ever ‘Huda, right as ever.” He flips one over. Burn, black seven. Jack watches Yehuda’s eyes carefully, he sees them widen ever so slightly. Jack casually puts a dollar into the pot and sits back expectantly. Boris sits smoking and unsuccessfully trying to clean his long nails; he largely ignores the game, his part in it done for now. Levi sits hunched forward, his arms folded on the table, shiftily eying Jack and Yehuda. Full house. Bring the pot back to the house. The full house. Focus. “Raise.” Yehuda picks up four dollar bills and places them in the center of the pot. “Psh, big man,” mumbles Boris. “Big man indeed,” Jack mutters. His eyes rest lower than Yehuda’s and gaze upward from dark sockets, earmarks of too little sleep. “Let’s see what the big man can do.” He 32

puts three of his own dollars on the pile, readjusting the cuffs of his worn jacket as he lets the bills fall. “Moment of truth ‘Huda.” Jack picks up the first card. Burn, burn it. Bring me something. Bring me something to take back. Let some saint come. Jack places a red queen, a queen of hearts, next to the seven. “Well, ‘Huda, it’s do or die. Let’s start with four, how’s about?” Jack puts the bills in the pot. Levi shakes his head quickly, warning against the bet. Boris spits out smoke. Yehuda looks down at his now-meager stack of bills. Ten left. Only ten. But if it brings in more it could be worth it. But if it goes wrong it’s all gone. But the full house. The one here the one there. The full house could make the other house a little easier. “I raise two,” Yehuda says, nervously placing six bills in the center. “Mmm,” Jack considers the offering, “let’s go a bit higher. I’ll see that two plus… another two howsabout?” Yehuda looks down at the money in front of him again. Can’t go back now. Too far in. Take the rush. Take it. Have to now. Yehuda pushes the rest of his money forward. His fingers tremble. “Alright,” Jack claps his hands. “No fun without a little risk, isn’t that right boys?” Levi looks away. Boris ignores them. “Let’s see that hand ‘Huda, come on, guests first.” Yehuda turns over his cards, revealing his king and seven. “Full-fucking-house!” Jack crows, rushing the cigarette smoke out of his lungs. “Well, sonofabitch.” Levi stares at Yehuda’s cards incredulously, a smile playing on the corners of his lips. Even Yehuda begins to smile, laughs a little. He lets the victory calm his hands and he reaches for the pot. “Hold on, hold on,” Jack motions with his hands, sucking in on the cigarette. “Let’s be gentlemen here. Let’s be sportsman-like. Shouldn’t I have a chance to show my hand?” “Yes, yes, of course,” Yehuda waves him forward, still flooded with adrenaline and pride. The smile that almost graced Levi’s face drains away. Jack slickly flips his cards to reveal a king, the final king, and another queen. “Kings fulla queens. Now if that isn’t a clusterfuck I don’t know what is,” Jack laughs to himself, quickly raking the pot toward him. Levi looks contemptuously at Yehuda and gets up from his chair, walking out of the front door of the apartment. Yehuda sits in shock, all his money, the money the shop made over two weeks, gone forever. “Big men should stay at home,” Boris says, the foul cigar, burned down to a stump, still stuck in his teeth.

INSPIRATION Hanna Abi Akl I sipped at my beer And thought about writing But there seemed to be more Pressing issues that required my full attention Paying the bills Chasing the neighborâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kids Turning on the hot water They needed time; they needed consideration And thinking about those things Made me wish I was useful For in the end, what is writing Compared to these instrumental tasks? Nothing But pen and paper So I stopped thinking But I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bring myself To start off on any of the tasks And started feeling useless And happy Again And so I started writing.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES AN INTRODUCTION Tom Loughlin There are not too many advantages to getting older, but we won’t go into those right now. One of the few advantages, however, is that if you keep alert and have any sense of self-awareness, you gain long-term perspective. You can see a bit farther, you can take into account more perspectives, you aren’t so quick to judge, and you have a real opportunity to look back on life and society and see which decision you made worked, which did not, and what the trade-offs were that you made to get to where you are at this moment. One thing you come to realize with this perspective is that many of your life’s decisions had unintended consequences. Unintended consequences are those situations that manifest themselves in ways you never expected. They are the deeper realities of living. In many ways, you begin to see that it is these unintended consequences that can ultimately define and shape your life in significant ways. I have become fascinated with unintended consequences. They are multi-faceted and multi-dimensional. They can have positive or negative effects, but usually it’s a synergy of both. They can really change the face of people’s lives, and more than that, at the societal level, they can affect the course of history. I think that getting a stronger understanding of how unintended consequences work and the impact they can have at every level of people’s lives may be a key to better decision-making as individuals and as a society. Native American culture, specifically the Iroquios, speaks of the so-called “seventh generation principle,” where every decision made should be reflective of its impact seven generations into the future. It is with the understanding of how unintended consequences come into play that perhaps we can get a better grip on where we are going as a culture and think more like Iroquois. Too often now, it seems to me that within this polarized society, we have created a situation where most of our decisions and policies are made for short-term gain without looking at long-term consequences. As a result 10, 20, or 40 years down the line, we see unintended consequences that begin to create problems and situations that are much more difficult to resolve. Examples abound: the results of a polluting manufacturing base on the environment; the rise of mass media; the rise of personal rights over personal responsibility; sex, gender, marriage and divorce; innocuous tweeting; the consequences of creating longer life spans (what will we ever do with all these aging boomers? Can we grow enough weed for them and millennials?); the establishment of instant replay in sports (not to mention the impact of free agency); and especially, that all-consuming green-eyed monster of the 21st century, technology, about which so much has been written that has been so widely ignored.

The editors of The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society have graciously offered me space in their zine to explore and examine instances of unintended consequences. This column will appear on a bi-monthly basis. My hope is that it will give the readers a chance to look more critically at the world around them, and perhaps even question some of their own deepest-held beliefs. I intend to make the column both a micro one, examining my own life for its unintended consequences, as well as examining on a macro level the kinds of unintended consequences I see coming or that have already manifested themselves within society. No doubt there will be some unintended consequences simply in writing this column. These young whiz kids probably never should have let an old fucker like me loose on this theme.

VOX POPULI WE HAVE GONE TO THE ZOO Adam Kane "We’re doing the exact same thing that The Monkees was doing. It’s just an hour of storytelling." --Aaron Sorkin, lying about his television show (Vulture, 2012) Like it or not, Aaron Sorkin has captured our attention. His movies and television shows are popular and highbrow; and they have won him many awards. He has an interesting relationship with the internet. Case in point: during his very successful run as creator and head writer of The West Wing, he once visited an online discussion forum to answer questions about a particular episode. Predictably, this blew up in his face and he wound up apologizing, which I’m sure also blew up in his face. In equally predictable turn of events, Sorkin recreated the entire thing in a later episode of The West Wing. This, of course, led to more outrage. The most amazing part of the story is that it happened in 2001, back when the Problem Internet was merely an infant. Back when you didn’t have Twitter to complain about the world’s injustices and instead you had to seek out a different message board community to talk about all your favorite stuff. (And unlike Twitter, which allows you to say whatever you want [within some pretty basic and logical guidelines], message boards of old were legislated by rules ranging from sensical to totally arbitrary, and enforced by a member of the message board community charged with doing so. I once got warned, ironically, on a message board dedicated to The West Wing for a typo. I think I forgot to capitalize the first word in a sentence about Bradley Whitford.) The penultimate episode of The Newsroom, Sorkin’s show that ran for three seasons on HBO, is a prime example of this animosity coming to a head. Its storyline about a campus rape victim was propped up by some reviewers as an example of Aaron Sorkin’s misogyny. There is no evidence that Sorkin hates women. He has never been accused of sexual harassment, or domestic violence. He has never been accused of hiring a male writer over a female writer with better credentials. He’s never told Barbara Walters that it’s not always bad to slap a woman. The day after the episode aired, Sorkin was drawn and quartered across the internet. In a review for The AV Club, the author spends six paragraphs of an eleven paragraph piece comparing Sorkin to the attorneys for accused rapist and football star Jameis Winston, and accused rapist Bill Cosby. Aaron Sorkin, because he is rich and white and a man, could only write an episode of television where a woman gets her own horrible experience “mansplained” to her.

Except that’s not actually what happened. The scenes between Don, the producer, and Mary, the victim, are really about two seperate things. The network Don works for wants him to produce a segment where Mary and her attacker appear together, live and in person. Mary wants desperately for her story to be told and for her rapist to be arrested. Don never once denies that the attack happened. In fact, when he tries a relatively patronizing explanation for his position, Mary tells him to shove it up his ass. And the climactic scene of the episode, back in the fictional newsroom, has nothing to do with Mary back at Princeton. It’s an argument over what kind of news they want to produce: do they want to report the facts, provide thoughtful analysis and try their absolute hardest to get a story right the first time, or do they want to be first and loudest and part of the story? A segment where a victim and her rapist appear three feet from one another isn’t reporting the news, it’s creating new news. But that’s a story too complicated for the AV Club, who focus their review entirely on everything except a review of what happened in the episode. By ignoring the actual story of the episode and the season-long plot lines, the AV Club made the story about Aaron Sorkin, and by extension, about the AV Club. Ironically, this is exactly what the episode in question was about. A few episodes prior, two characters argue about the growing trend of first-person journalism: a writer reports on a story while simultaneously editorializing the story. This usually happens on websites like Gawker, which tends to report gossip as if it were hard fact and hard fact as if it were gossip, and Buzzfeed, which tends to report the same way as Gawker only they use gifs from Mean Girls to better explain things. I understand the reasoning; these sites want to find a new and interesting way to tell a story that most people reading it will have already heard about. But adding sizzle to a news story - that is, commenting on it - isn’t really adding anything new to the story. It’s spawning an entirely new story. It’s a story about the news, rather than just being the news. There is value in opinion writing (obviously,) just like there is value in hearing the first person account from a victim of a horrific crime. But those two things aren’t the same as reporting the news, and quite frankly, that should neither be surprising or controversial. It’s been repeatedly suggested that Sorkin writes to push his worldview onto his characters. The main character of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is a well-known television writer in love with an actress from the Deep South who goes to church every Sunday, which Sorkin has admitted to being biographical. He’s also been accused of creating The West Wing as an alternate history where Bill Clinton had no vices. So Sorkin writes the main character in The Newsroom an Eisenhower Republican who chastises the Tea Party for killing the party from the inside. The response from critics across the political spectrum: “thinkpieces” focused on Sorkin’s use of a Republican to hurl insults at the right. These essays ignore that the character is called a bully for his tactics, and punished when he goes too far. (It’s a bit like critics of Mad Men who claim 38

the show glamorizes the excess of the Madison Avenue wet lunches: there might be more scenes depicting hangovers than depicting wild, consequence free drunkenness on that show.) So the AV Club, and Gawker, Salon, etc. find the low hanging fruit and start tugging. They find their trigger words and rage against whoever wrote them down. Sorkin wrote a scene where a man talks down to the victim of sexual assault? Yes he did. But that assault victim called him out on it! She dismantles his argument. She’s a strong, brave, character who isn’t defined by what anyone thinks of her, least of all Don the producer. You won’t find that mentioned in the AV Club’s review, because it doesn’t fit what they already think of the show and its writer. A writer who, when last I checked, wrote the dialogue for all the characters in a scene, not just the ones we perceive to be making “his” argument. you can disagree with a character’s reasoning until you’re blue in the face, but don't assume that just because you don’t agree with a character's opinion, the writing is bad and the writer is out of touch. What about the reasoning of the other characters? The writer you’re so angry at wrote their lines too. So who’s really being spoken down to? The woman in the scene? The one who, in my estimation, wins her argument? Or are the readers of the AV Club? We’re being told, in eleven paragraphs, that any interpretation other than one of righteous outrage is the wrong opinion. An issue as complex as the story being reviewed deserved a more thoughtful, nuanced discussion than what we were given. So let us give the story it’s due consideration and reject the tabloid headlines and buzzwords and online shouting matches. It’s time we just decided to.

Editorial Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jordan Rizzieri is the 90's-loving, extremely tall founder of The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. After a having brief love affair with Western New York, Jordan now resides on Long Island, NY. She holds a degree from SUNY Fredonia in Theatre Arts (aka lying before an audience) with a minor in English (aka lying on paper). Jordan briefly experimented with playwriting (The Reunion Cycle - 2011 Buffalo Infringement Festival) and her mother's primary caregiver for over two years. She has been running a caregiver's blog on her experiences since 2011, as well as publishing essays on the topic. Now, Jordan spends her daylight hours arguing with her boyfriend's cats and at night takes on the identity of Pyro & Ballyhoo's sassiest critic, The Lady J. When she's not watching pro-wrestling or trying to decide what to order at the local bagel shop, she is listening to Prince and writing letters to her pen pals. Feel free to contact her with questions about the Attitude Era, comic book plot lines involving Harley Quinn, The Twilight Zone and the proper spelling of braciola. NON-FICTION EDITOR Jennifer Lombardo, Buffalo, NY resident, works full time at a hotel in order to support her travel habit. She graduated from the University at Buffalo with a B.A. in English in the hope of becoming an editor. When she isn't making room reservations for people, she reads, cross-stitches and goes adventuring with her friends. She is especially passionate about AmeriCorps, Doctor Who and the great outdoors. Ask her any question about grammar, but don't count on her to do math correctly. POETRY EDITOR Bee "Internet Coquette" Walsh is a New York-native living in Bedford–Stuyvesant. She graduated from SUNY Fredonia in 2010 with a B.A. in English Literature and a B.S. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution. Reciting her two majors and two minors all in one breath was a joke she told at parties. The English Department played a cruel trick on her and pioneered a Creative Writing track her final year, but she charmed her way into the Publishing course and became Poetry Editor for the school’s literary magazine, The Trident. Bee has spent the past three years trying different cities on for size and staring into the faces of people in each of them who ask her about her "career goals." An Executive Assistant in high-fashion by day, you can find her most nights working with the V-Day team to stop sexual violence against women and young girls, eating vegan sushi in the West Village or causing mischief on roofs. Run into her on the subway, and she'll be nose deep in a book. She holds deep feelings about politics, poise, and permutations. Eagerly awaiting winter weather and warm jackets, she’d love to talk to you about fourth-wave feminism, the tattoo of the vagina on her finger, or the Oxford comma. FICTION EDITOR Adam Robinson is an aspiring writer and barista languidly skulking the wetland void of Western Michigan. Following acceptance in 2012 to Grand Rapids' Kendall College of art and design in pursuit of an education in graphic art, his love for language and literature was made priority. Now, an English major on sporadically perpetual hiatus, you can most often find him pulling shots of espresso, keying long paragraphs in the dark, secluded corner of a local café, or taking lengthy walks through the dense Michigan woods conveniently placed in his own backyard. Monotoned, fond of the semicolon and existentialist literature; listen closely and you can sometimes hear him beseech advice from the ghost of Dostoevsky (who tends not to reply).

ASSISTANT POETRY EDITOR Wilson Josephson splits his time between the backwoods of New Hampshire and Northfield, Minnesota, where he attends Carleton College. Wilson spends the majority of his waking hours swimming back and forth over a line of black tiles, so he spends any dry hours he can scrounge up flexing his creative muscles. His prose and his poetry have appeared in Carleton’s literary magazine, he regularly performs in the student dance company, and he even directed a play once. Wilson is also the laziest of all the founding members of Literary Starbucks, and he still writes jokes about obscure literary figures when he has a little free time. His newest passion is making people laugh, usually by making himself the punchline, occasionally via the clever deployment of a slippery banana peel. SOCIAL MEDIA MISTRESS Kaity Davie is an overly enthusiastic gal taking on the world of the ever-evolving music industry, talking music by day and lurking venues, NYC parks, and pubic libraries by night. Currently, she makes magic happen across a number of social networks for a number of bands, brands, and writers. After having several poems published in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, she began managing their social accounts in early 2015. Kaity keeps her sanity by writing rambling lines of prose and celebrating the seasonal flavors of Polar Seltzer.

Contributors  Sheree Shatsky writes short fiction believing much can be conveyed with a few simple words. Her work as an opinion writer has appeared in print and online. Recent publication credits include Sleet Magazine, Wordrunner eChapbooks, Sassafras Literary Magazine, the Journal of Microliterature and Dirty Chai. Matthew Wester currently ministers in a United Methodist church in Algona, Iowa, which is officially the smallest town he has ever called home. He and his wife Carrie are thrilled to be first time parents soon. After all, how hard could it be? Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Rattle, Shenandoah, Margie, Christianity and Literature, The Indiana Review, Harpur Palate, The Hollins Critic. She’s won an Academy of American Poets Prize, a grant and a fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts, an editor’s prize in Margie, honorable mention in Rattle. She teaches for the Department of English at the University of Delaware. Her first book, Pinning the Bird to the Wall appeared from Tres Chicas Books in November 2008. Her chapbook of off-kilter poems about angels, Neither Prayer, Nor Bird was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. Amber Schmidt, aged 23, is a writer living in the South. She is a fan of ancient religious studies, the occult, voodoo, and the impact of such beliefs on the individual. Janna Vought is a poet, nonfiction, and fiction writer with more than 50 pieces published in various magazines and literary journals. She graduated from American Public University with a bachelor's degree in English and from Lindenwood University with an MFA in creative writing. She is an Association of Writing Professionals Intro Journals Project in Poetry nominee for 2013. This poem, "My Friend Anna", is part of her fifth book of poetry in progress. She and her husband raise two daughters in Colorado, the eldest who suffers from chronic mental and developmental illnesses. Tara Brooke Teets lives in a 2,000 person town 2,000 feet above sea level. She is seventeen and is entering her senior year of high school. She aspires to continue her education in English and creative writing. Her works have previously appeared in Canvas, Parallax, and Verse Virtual. Joe Crunk has practiced law for nine years and has been a comedian for five years. Lydia Flores is a photographer, poet, aesthete, giver, and a soul full of light. Born and raised in Harlem, New York. She is currently a graduate student earning her MFA in creative writing at Long Island University-Brooklyn. She has work published in Coraddi, Atlantis Magazine, and Monkey Star Press Anthology. James Croal Jackson lives for art, adventure, whiskey, and music. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, White Stag, and LEVELER. He was born in Akron, Ohio but currently lives in Los Angeles. Find more of his work at jimjakk.com. Terry Barr’s essays have not only appeared in RPD, but also in Red Fez, New Plains Review, Red Truck Review, and are forthcoming in Hippocampus, Deep South Magazine, and Blue Bonnet Review. He is on summer break, must now go to jury duty, and will have been married to the same woman for 31 years on June 21.

Luis Neer is a failed novelist and high school student from West Virginia. Some of his recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Maudlin House; Literary Orphans; Squawk Back and elsewhere. Find him on twitter @LuisNeer. In addition to having been published once before in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Patricia Walsh has also had poetry included in various journals, including: The Snapping Twig; The Fractured Nuance; Revival Magazine; and The Evening Echo. She has previously published a collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. Born and raised in Virginia, Christine Stoddard is a Salvadoran-Scottish-American writer and visual storyteller. The founding editor of Quail Bell Magazine, she is a Folio Top 20 in their 20s honoree and Puffin Foundation emerging artist. Her creative work has appeared in The Feminist Wire, The Southeast Review, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Hispanic Culture Review, the New York Transit Museum, and beyond. Laurin DeChae is a M.F.A. candidate for poetry at the University of New Orleans, where she acts as the associate editor for Bayou Magazine. She is active in the fields of education and composition, assisting in programs such as the Greater New Orleans Writing Project, Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Cleaver Magazine, burntdistrict, S/WORD, and Rose Red Review. Katie Lewington is a student, as well as a writer, a reader and firm believer in Karma. She has had her poetry previously published in various online magazine/journals including After the pause, in an issue of A new Ulster, on the Formerpeople: a journal of bangs and whimpers and The Pot Luck magazine website. She also has an eBook published on Amazon Kindle titled ‘Just: a sign of the times’. You can contact her on Twitter and read more of her poetry on her blog. Darren C. Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/ journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of "As We Refer To Our Bodies" (2013, 8th House), "Temporary Champions" (2014, Main Street Rag), "The Pony Governor" (2015, After the Pause Press), and "Not For Art Nor Prayer" (2015, 8th House). I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children. Rosie McFarland graduated with a BA in English literature in 2014. She then stayed almost two months in Haiti, interviewing locals and collecting stories for her forthcoming book, Seeds in a Dark Fruit Sky. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she writes and works in film. Sindhu Verma lives in Bangalore, India and works in a multinational semiconductor company as a wireless systems engineer. She graduated from IIT Kharagpur with a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering. She loves working on technology but also has a keen interest in literature and fashion. She writes poems and designs and stitches clothes outside her working hours. She eventually wants to pursue a career in poetry and fashion as well. Sindhu's poems are heartfelt and personal and they carry her thoughts and feelings about the world around her. Her most recent publications will appear in the July and August editions of Verse-Virtual. Alex Valin was born and lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and attends Oglethorpe University. During his time at Oglethorpe, he studied abroad at Oxford University and worked as Editor of the Tower, the school’s

literary magazine. He devotes his writing time to fiction, essays, and poetry, all the while spending way too much time deciding what music to listen to. Hanna Abi Akl is a Lebanese-born English writer currently residing in Beirut. He is a student pursuing an Undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature at the American University of Beirut. He is currently working on his first novel. Next to his writing, he plans on pursuing a Masters' degree in Media and Advertising. Tom Loughlin lives in the economically depressed city of Dunkirk NY, on the shores of beautiful but polluted Lake Erie. He works on occasion with the theatre community in Buffalo NY. He has a few more years left teaching at the State University of NY at Fredonia. Adam Kane is a pop-culture enthusiast, essayist, and recovering actor living and working in Boston. You can follow him on Twitter, where he tweets about the Red Sox, Syracuse basketball and the line at Starbucks.