Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #11

Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine

Issue # 11 Fall/Winter 2019 www.sblaam.com

Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine issue #11

fall/winter, 2019

fiction Ron L Dowell

Leland Dunwitty’s Square Circle Edumacation

14

Don Dussault

Yesterday Again

78

Trisha Durrant

The Prince of Splott

68

Ziaul Moid Khan

The Gold Research

40

Nick Skoda

The Alcohol Consuming Exile of Hess County

87

Steve Yarris

Happy Day Center

58

Aquamarine Polyester Blend

30

For Don Herbert

32

Amy Star

Sabotaged by Kindness

96

Therese White

Le Morceau

6

Dmitry Blizniuk

Beads of Time

5

Richard Dinges, Jr

Walking on Water

76

Jonathan Douglas Dowdle

Don't Be Defeated

10

Martha Golensky

Waiting

John Grey

Piano Practice

75

Nels Hanson

Hidden Caliph

28

Stones, Sun, Stars

29

non-fiction Jay Jacoby

poetry

100

Edward Lee

Speak

9

Deborah Levine-Donnerstein

Dusk on Isle Waters

86

DS Maolalai

Money for old soap

66

Darrell Petska

The Septuagenarian

13

Rick Pieto

Hummingbirds

95

A Stranger

94

Robin Ray

Eurydice in Brocade

henry 7. reneau, jr

Beautiful Losers

38

His/Her/Our/Their/Them/They Body

34

stereotypes

36

Robert Joe Stout

4

Playing Cards with Mom

103

Wake Up Call

102

Mark Trechock

What Is Left to Us

39

Rebecca Suzan Watts

King Jones, Resurrected

55

Needlework

56

The Exchange

57

Jeffrey Zable

Norma

101

Edward Lee

31-32

54

Deborah Levine-Donnerstein

Deeper November

77

Fabrice Poussin

Fallen Comrade

12

images

cover: 31-32, by Edward Lee

Editor's Note This issue features poetry from henry 7. reneau jr, Nels Hanson, fiction from Trisha Durrant, and non-fiction from Therese White. As usual, we have quite an eclectic assortment of works for you.

Some of our favorite poetry over the years has been contributed by Robert Joe Stout. But Bob was more than just a poet. An award-winning journalist, his expertise on Mexico led him to write several books about Mexican/US relations. Bob also authored novels, creative non-fiction, and poetry collections. Bob passed away this summer.

We will sorely miss him.

Eurydice in Brocade I’ve made it, torn loose from confinement.

Call me gelatinous isinglass, precipitate of my suspension. I’m that slick.

Clothesline over a hedge; on closer inspection, all dresses. One will have to do to supplant these stiff prison reds.

Snatch a teal silk brocade, mid-calf length.

Eyes fall on a pouch of ginger & turmeric jackfruit chews lying in the mortise of a mahogany table.

Famished. It will have to do.

Bay breezes soothe me on the shoreline; haven’t been to this beach in years. A shot of nepenthe to forget my ills would be better.

Barkeep smiles at my dress, wills me nothing.

No time for parsimony, I say. I’m desperate.

Pleas to the mound of clay fails. He doesn’t budge.

Fingers tap my shoulders. I turn, see faces, and run.

Brocade doesn’t permit speed. Cuffed once again.

Easy, I say. This is no way to treat a lady.

Robin Ray Robin Ray, formerly of Trinidad and Tobago, has been published at Red Fez, Scarlet Leaf Review, Aphelion, and elsewhere.

Beads of Time It's getting dark, slantwise, just a notch from eternity.

The ballerina of reverie takes slowly off her pointes of silence.

Left. . . now the right one. . . A long sigh. . .

A fence; birds made of twisted iron hungrily peck the rust.

A black cat glides along the façade.

The radiant rapiers of electric light are trembling; the streetlights in fencer's masks (the left hand is held behind the back) wait for the dawn, even though the night has just started.

The day is dying – long live the day. . .

The Lord has left the door half open, the door to another world, and slipped away through the sunset.

But the brick-red light flows from under the door, and shadows move – someone walks above the clouds on the carpet of the fir tops.

At night, I turn a table lamp on.

It looks like an ostrich, and the long sharp wedge of light knifes the linoleum.

The second hand methodically pushes the beads of time, hardworking dung-beetles.

The soul is rounded up by ideas, like a diving boy by a shoal of friendly dolphins.

So what? I've never been on this planet before.

And on this beach of time either I like it here.

I wouldn't exchange my life with the clear-headed Caesar, or belligerent Alexander the Great, or King Solomon.

And neither would they.

You can't jump higher than your karma lets you, Higher than a rainbow, or electric wires in the sky. . .

But my poems are floating there now. . . (translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian)

Dmitry Blizniuk Dmitry Blizniuk's most recent poems have appeared The Pinch Journal, River Poets, Dream Catcher, and others. A collection, The Red Fоrest, was published last year. He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Le Morceau Sleeping over Mémère and Pépère’s house when I was young meant crêpes in the morning. My grandparents were French Canadian and crêpes were a constant.

Mémère would turn on the stove after whisking the flaxen batter with a fork. She’d instruct me to use a measuring cup to pour a yellow puddle into the skillet, popping with hot butter.

I’d make shapes of all sorts, near-perfect circles, amoebas, balloons, and— eventually—sheep and bears, fish and clouds. Mémère would use the spatula to lift the shapes out of the pan to a waiting plate, confectioners’ sugar and syrup nearby.

But the best part of the crêpe making was the morceaux or the bits. In pouring out the batter little drops would land in the skillet, apart from the amoebas and balloons. These pinheads and discs were small and would brown quickly. We’d take pains to flip them over in order to crisp both sides and shuttle them out of the pan when the bigger crêpe was done. Les morceaux were like a delicacy in Mémère’s kitchen and they had to be meted out equally among the grandchildren. Three for you. Three for you. And three for you.

We would eat at the round kitchen table and then exit to the living room, where a large expanse of green carpet became a dance floor, a sea, hot lava, a stage, a bed. We’d lie down in front of the fireplace to nap in the afternoons. Around the room, stuffy furniture sat waiting for company, silk tufted sofas and velvet lined wingbacks in shades of gold and chartreuse, salmon and pink. A hi-fi in a long cabinet lined the south wall and we’d listen to Liberace or Perry Como. The ivory keys sent waves of sound our way while I’d make up stories about queens and baby kittens, villages and garden doors. Around me were the makings of great stories: a heavily carved wooden desk with a secret drawer, a bronze ashtray stand that had a spinning top, and tasseled curtains that hid a window seat. On the east wall a framed print hung for decades, Twilight by Maxfield Parrish. I would pass it weekly, on each visit when exiting the living room, for adventures down the hall, in the bedrooms, the study, the back porch or the bathrooms.

I cannot look at this image today without thinking of Mémère and Pépère. They are forever linked. There are four parts to the painting: the house, the stream, the sky and the trees. Four parts that my attention would shift among. Four parts that would capture my imagination and still do.

The house would demand my attention first. Look at me. I am here. I will withstand. You can’t shake me. I house the very heart of you. All that is vulnerable and soft. I protect. Grant me your trust. Walk through my rooms and see the vistas from each window, an outward glance is all it takes. Now look inward. I insulate you.

Keep you warm. I prescribe ritual and regularity. I wake and sleep. Rouse and lull. I am all geometry, manmade. But snug and idyllic. Come to me at day’s end, at twilight. I will wait and watch.

The stream flows next. I meander. I reflect. Look at me and make-believe. Can we talk? I babble. I may be shallow, but I am not superficial. Feel my cool water. Step from the edge of the bank and immerse your feet in a running accolade of praise for your ankles. This tributary pays homage to your inherent nobility. For you are replete with splendiferous goodness.

The sky calls for scrutiny. What color am I? I cannot see myself. I surround and overshadow. I am always shifting, but never shifty. Depend on me to inform your days and your nights. Clear of clouds. My height is limitless. The stars will encircle my heavenly head. Could it be that day is night and night is day? Am I twilight or predawn? If I am twilight, do not consider me in decline. For I will rise the next day and descend again. In my transfiguration, I am immortal.

The trees are all that are left. Don’t doubt that I am green, of leaf. Rooted to this spot, I will stand as watchdog. See my bark? Don’t consider me humorless. For my temperament is fine as I am tall. I brace myself against the wind and snow and storm.

But now, ‘tis summer. I know the seasons; there are four of them. My branches offer shade and shadow. I create the dance of light upon the stream. I drink the rain. Make me your landmark when you are far from home.

I eat this up. The picture of twilight. All is still, captured. But all is actually dimming or growing, waxing or waning. It’s all in the perspective. And I change my mind as I go by the print on the wall, just as often as I am changing. Growing. Cells

dividing. A living organism who will move beyond these days, this house, these people, whom I love, but who will wane and die. Yet the picture stays with me, its clear geometry and color, as well as the stories hidden within it.

There are no amoebas here, nor balloons, sheep nor bear. Not a cloud in sight.

But the light breaks through the small rectangle of a window in the picture. A little flaxen yellow puddling that patch of sky beyond the house, near the tree, far from the stream. It is le morceau, the best bit, a glowing pinhead saying, “Come. Enter here. It is where the story never ends.�

Therese White Therese White is a Connecticut writer, teacher, and MFA candidate at Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri.

Speak What doesn't need to be said still should be said; the world is silent enough without us making strangers of the people we have yet to meet.

Edward Lee Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and others. His poetry collection, Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge, was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

Don't Be Defeated Climbing up from the gutter Will not erase the gutter You'll always remember the howl of voices Like engines; deep and bitter traffic, How trust is killed early, The mouth a gun: the teeth and tongue Bullets.

Don't let it defeat you.

This is the easy way, the common way; To bow down in surrender And tie yourself to a single string of worship; Expectation becoming a building in the heart You return to on a daily basis To avoid the blows; or to be granted The sweeter benedictions.

This is also defeat.

Clambering into the cage of another's vision, Failing yourself, but meeting the expectation.

When you've risen, you'll see The world is still full of bodies, Face down and drowning, Help who you can, but leave the rest; They'll only collapse after you leave To drown themselves in the rain.

Find true peace when peace is true, This is success, Speak your bitterness until the poison is gone, This is success, Be relentless with yourself, fearless with yourself, Brutal with tender honesty.

Climbing up from the gutter, the gutter will remain;

There are a million ways to die, A million ways to be defeated; In the end: It's what some people want.

Don't join them just because it's easier.

Climb up from the gutter, but Keep the lessons of the rain.

Don't be defeated.

You're worth more than the fall can give you.

Jonathan Douglas Dowdle Jonathan Douglas Dowdle's works have appeared in Hobo Camp Review, The Opiate, Blue Hour Review, and others. He currently resides in South Carolina.

Fallen Comrade

Fabrice Poussin

The Septuagenarian My days no longer fit me: they pinch my toes, squeeze my waist, strangle my neck.

They've exposed my ankles and wrists, bared my fleshy girth and rubbed my pate so smooth nothing will adhere.

Economic factors beyond my control have closed the store supplying my days.

I can't find another to outfit me, though the younger set sport new days they seem to find in abundance.

How casually they wear their times as if they're owed an unlimited supply.

Eventually, the economy sours.

But what choice do I have?

I'll stick with my ill-fitting days till their buttons pop and their seams split, exposing me for what I really am: one naked to the light. Then off I'll be to that nudist colony where flesh is so unremarkable, in time it's as though it's not there.

Darrell Petska Darrell Petska's writings have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, and elsewhere. He lives outside Madison, Wisconsin.

Leland Dunwitty’s Square Circle Edumacation Taking tests always made my ear ache and ass hurt. Trouble was the 7 PM community college psychology exam was that night. To pay for couch space at my mom’s apartment and make my car note, I needed to pass it to keep my first real job.

But over the weekend I’d partied and didn’t study.

“To stay among edumacated people we need edumacation, Leland” Tony said, ears close to his head and barely visible under his ten-inch afro. A Cheshire cat grin splashed his face. At twenty he was a year older with an AA degree. A Project Bootstrap trainee too, he had chosen Jesus over drug use. He used familiar colloquialisms that morning in our office nook, a set aside in a county mental health clinic lunch kitchen in Watts, Los Angeles. “We need that D-gree,” he said. Since everyone else at work did their own thing, surely I could pore over a few pages of R.D. Laing’s, “The Politics of Experience,” before the test.

I’d need a drug boost for that.

But it was summer 1971 and something was different that day when I was cramming.

Hans Demmer, a wavy ginger-haired psychiatric tech, white showed all the way around his dead-blue irises, scanned the foul-smelling community refrigerator and pointed to a wax paper wrapped sandwich. A tiny guy, his job was to physically handle acting out patients. “Yours?” he said to us. We shook our heads, he loosened the wrap, took a whiff, then two quick bites. He frowned, laid the sandwich on the Amana between grease packed heating elements. “Better at room temperature.”

Congested, he always hawked phlegm into a dark blue handkerchief that hung from his back jeans pocket. He shuffled over to our creaky wood desks that were pushed together so that Tony and I faced each other. “What you need today Dunwitty?”

“Bennies,” I said. “—to stay up.”

He tossed me his damp hanky bundled around something mushy the size of a golf ball that reeked of hashish. Inside the package, among a drugstore of different

colors and sizes of pills, I picked amphetamines and took easy breaths. The white boy always had the best drugs.

Hans nodded to Tony whose face tightened. “In your ass,” he said to Hans.

“Stick it up your ass.” Then he regarded me. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “It’s the same old shit with you my brother. You’d better go help Menzimer.”

For the first two hours as a Bootstrap paraprofessional resource person I assisted Stu Menzimer with his Monday morning therapy group in my Huarache sandals, cornrows, and yellow tie-dyed Are You Experienced T-shirt with the fisheye photo of Hendrix. My job was advocacy, to understand mental health and help bridge the Grand Canyon of trust between government services and the Watts community. A pair of eyes peered out from Jimi’s psychedelic jacket.

In the conference room surrounded by small offices, storage, and restrooms, Menzimer was the schizophrenia go-to and all the patients no one else would work with were assigned to him and whatever help he could scrounge. He and his small group were to be avoided at all cost but for some reason head-asshole, Dr. Boyo, tasked me to him.

A detail focused psychiatric social worker who gave me the heebie-jeebies, Menzimer straightened his dull gray bowtie and, in his German lilt said to the patient dressed like Roy Rogers, “You say that your wife implanted a listening device in your teeth?” In the group circle he pulled at the lapels of his faded brown woolen tweed that smelled like mothballs and had black elbow patches and shoulder ridges as if had been hung on narrow wire coat hangers. He leaned forward in the chair, sharp elbows on his knees, gnarly fingers entwined. The man dressed like a cowboy nodded his head, yes. Cowboy’s image reflected in Menzimer’s Gandhi eyeglasses that covered a sizable portion of his ruddy rodent face. “She knows what you’re going to do before you do it——is that correct?” Cowboy nodded yes again. “It sounds as if you believe that she’s spying on you.” He nodded a third time. “How does that make you feel?”

Cowboy stared away from Menzimer and after a long pause stamped his foot like a woodpecker striking tree bark. “Angry——I wanna scream.”

Liza, a skinny woman in a red Oaxaca peasant blouse with blue embroidered flowers began to fidget. Jackson stared through Coke bottled glasses at a carpet hole, the other three patients sat taut.

“It’s okay to feel anger,” Menzimer said. “You can scream now, right here—— this moment——you certainly can.”

Cowboy’s eyes blinked like hummingbird wings, his shoulders slumped. “Sure it’s okay?”

Menzimer nodded assent.

Cowboy loosed a low volume snivel, “Ahhhhhhhh.”

Jackson weighed in, “Ahhhhhhhh.”

“Aw, c'mon—you can do better than that,” Menzimer encouraged Cowboy.

“Think about your wife spying on you and let it out——let go.”

“AHHHHHH—AHHHHHHHHH—” Liza recoiled. Jackson laughed nasally. My stomach rolled.

“Not bad, not bad,” Menzimer said. “Try again. This time imagine that she’s got the implant turned on, listening from another room——let her know that you don’t like it.”

Cowboy, into it, braced himself on the armrest, slid to seat edge, and bellowed, “AHHHHHHHHHHH—AHHHHHHHHHHHHH-AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” He paused only to catch his breath.

My heartbeat thrashed in my ears.

“Hooray—yay!” Five other patients cheered him. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” they said.

How could I study among these dingbats? I flipped through Laing, looked for pictures, found none.

“You’re shaking your head, Lee.” Menzimer’s forehead angled back, his nose most forward. “Is there something you’d like to share with us——scream maybe?”

I put my palms up, leaned back away. “Nah—” “Why are you rolling your eyes, Lee?” Cowboy said.

“They look a little red you know,” Liza said.

I didn’t know. “Huh—ha, ha,” I laughed edgy. “I’m here only for this job,” I dismissed her with a gesture and jabbed the air to drive home my point, then hesitated. I’d forgotten what I was about to say.

For sure, I’d never get a damn thing read in Menzimer’s group. He might be running this nut group but he’s not running me. “What good is screaming?” I said. Two hours. Blown. Focus, hard. “I don’t need no shrinking” Jackson snorted laughter again. “Really?” he said.

“Let me know if you need help with Laing,” Menzimer said.

What would I tell the Watts community about Menzimer’s group? ~~~ In the empty lunchtime conference room I munched cardboard Jack in the Box burgers and managed a chapter between barbiturates to smooth my nerves, and coffee and amphetamines to jack me through exam time later that night. If I failed, I’d lose my car and probably surf couches from mom’s place to the drug house. What a Goddamned choice. In practice, paraprofessional employees from Watts among highly degreed therapists may as well have been like Martians. They weren’t quite sure what to make of or do with us. They were strange to me too. My head and ear ached. The wall clock ticked, ticked, ticked to remind me that test time was nearer.

In-service. The expected happened in staff training after lunch every second Monday like last month’s rebirthing workshop. That’s when Hans chose to reexperience the struggle, to break out of the birth canal represented by the other staff that had circled him.

He had tossed me his snotty drug hanky to hold for him. The shithead fell asleep, snored loud in the session, and later claimed, “It was a caesarean birth.”

In-service training was like that, a perfect place to ignore guest speakers and read Laing’s text on schizophrenia.

I sat with Laing on the floor inside crossed legs, forehead cupped in the web of my hand, and blended in with yellow flowered wallpaper. I read: If we can begin to understand sanity and madness in existential social terms, we shall see clearly the extent to which we all confront common problems and share common dilemmas.

Laing seemed to say that people are interconnected.

Outside at my red V-dub, I swigged vodka, and chained Kool menthols, tried to recollect what little I had read: that psychosis represents a transient mental state that can, with sensitive support, and guidance, be resolved and transformed into a

deeper understanding of one’s place on this planet. Screaming? Maybe that’s what Menzimer was trying to do.

Back in the conference room Toussaint, the featured speaker, square beard, broad face like a tiger, shaved head, had arrived early, maybe to set up in front of the blackboard, or more realistically, to assess what kind of nut cases he’d have to deal with before he spoke about epidemic alcohol and other drug use. Tall, Toussaint wore bespoke Levi pants and jacket, a gray turtle neck sweater under a Navajo turquoise squash blossom necklace.

In the corner he chatted with Dr. Boyo, psychiatrist in charge of the clinic.

Toussaint peered at me over Boyo’s shoulder. I couldn’t make out their conversation.

“Excuse me,” Dr. Boyo said to Toussaint and he left the room.

Toussaint hitched his chin up to me. I threw back my head to reciprocate. He was black, like me, and his presence relaxed me and added to what the drugs were already doing. Certainly he’d relate brother to brother, understand why I would shine him on, read during his presentation, you know, do my own things like everyone else in attendance.

He faded back into the conference room silence.

Determined that the meeting would not start on time, two dozen rainbow coalition staff meandered in. Tony dragged behind them over to where I sat on a purple sofa pillow.

My heartbeat sluggish, the wall clock showed 2 PM, five hours to test time.

Things were not going good. I blew into my cupped-hands, leaned over to Tony and said, “Hey brother, do I smell like vodka?” I chomped on Doublemint. Amphetamines helped drive me along the center divider with an edgy attitude. “Do I look high?”

We fist bumped. “You look like yourself,” Tony said.

“What a Goddamn waste of time,” I mumbled. He grabbed a gold pillow, and sat to my left on the worn greenish low pile commercial carpet, cross legged like school kids. “Look at this shit,” I said. Menzimer and Hans rambled in. “Most of these assholes don’t help nobody in Watts—WAIT. That’s all they do is wait——in their offices for people to come in with problems. Who comes in? People in the worst shape. But they run to the bank every two weeks and cash checks,” I said. “They make good money too.” I leaned back against the greasy yellow wall. “Look at em’.”

“Love is not jealous or boastful,” Tony said. “We’ll join the club when we get that B.S.—Bull Shit D-gree.”

“This damn test,” I said. My jaw hurt from clenched teeth. “How’d these assholes do it?”

“If they did, you can,” Tony said.

“I’ll do a few chapters,” I said.

Menzimer stopped inside the conference room entrance to demonstrate for Hans how patients do the Thorazine Shuffle.

“They have a shuffling gait,” he explained. He dragged his right foot on the inside of his shoe in slow, stiff movement. “See, I’m not bending my elbows—don’t move joints.”

“Frankenstein?” Hans said. “A zombie.”

Tony yelled at him through my ears, “Just like you, ZOMBIE.” Hans flinched, wagged his finger at Tony. “Horrible,” he said to Menzimer.

“Yep, yep,” Menzimer said. “They might want to scream, throw a fit—” He exaggerated the shuffle walk for effect. “But they can’t do anything except twitch and grimace. It’s a powerful anti-psychotic.”

We flanked Toussaint who had watched quietly, me between Tony and Menzimer.

We helped form the larger circle, standard practice for mental health workers, to pretty much ignore the speaker, take refuge in numbers, and ask a bunch of superfluous questions. In circles was how we’d service patients, lunch, socialize, and meet, along the walls, a square circle, on all sized pillows, psychedelic, pastel, furry soft. A broken fluorescent inside the entry flickered like a strobe, the Timex wall clock below it, now 2:20 PM, ticked closer to exam time.

By design, we made even the best lecturer scurry for cover, never to return.

It’d be no different for Toussaint.

“I’ll fire up incense,” Hans said. A pack of Zig Zag’s, an oversized DO NOT DUPLICATE medicine closet key, and a prescription bottle fell from his pocket when he reached in for a lighter. “Hindu lavender’s good for depression,” he said. He said it helped anxiety, restlessness, and headache pain. I was okay with it.

I might pass the exam if I could just focus on a few chapters. I rubbed my eyes then dropped my head onto Laing’s words: insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world. Hmmm. The relation between experience and behavior is the stone that the builders will reject at their peril.

The custodian’s vacuum thundered down the hall. The A/C hadn’t kicked on and the humid conference room filled with lavender scented smoke.

Toussaint uncrossed his arms, offered a bemused smirk, but still did not speak.

Dr. Boyo returned. “Lee,” he boomed over the cacophony of other voices. “GO ——have the janitor turn that thing off until after in-service.”

Tony and I were always assigned grunt work, everybody bossed us. My lunchtime drug cocktail spoke for me, a flunky reasoning that he can’t be treated that way. “What?!!” I said.

Tony elbowed my side. “Dude,” he said. “Don’t be stupid.”

Doctor Boyo was built like a brick shit house, muscles in his forehead. He could fire me at best, or whip my ass. Tony forced a spark of light into my clouded brain. I placed Laing on the floor, raised my fist and got the last word, “Free Muhammad Ali,” before I dispatched.

In the hallway the vacuum sounded like an old car with a spent muffler. I hit the shutoff button, it didn’t work, the unit shook, and the noise increased. I followed the power cord down the hall to the right and around another corner of the rectangular building, past perimeter offices. It plugged in behind the janitor’s cart that blocked the hall, next to a closed restroom door.

“Les,” I called out for the janitor.

“Uhmph,” he grunted from behind the closed door. I wobbled to pull the power, tripped over the cord between the janitor’s cart and wall, reached back and grabbed the cart to break my fall. In slow motion cleaning liquids, soaked paper towels, and soiled sanitary napkins rained down from a shelf tray onto my t-shirt. My heartbeat raced as Jimi and his band faded away and bleach poured onto the floor.

Les appeared from behind the door and shut off the vacuum. He looked me over and pushed me a grey custodian’s shirt with his name stitched over the pocket.

Shit always happened to me, a cut here, a scrape there, accidents, a janitor’s shirt with Les’ name on it. Why? I had a sour, bitter tang in my throat and puked a

gunk of burger meat and vodka onto the floor. Les stink-eyed me again before picking up his mop.

In the conference room I tried but it was hard enough for me to refocus when high, worse under time pressure, and nearly impossible to concentrate on Laing around weirdo’s Menzimer and Hans.

Menzimer turned to me. “Hey Les,” a stupid grin made his face, “I mean Lee ——I can use your help in group after in-service.”

Oh hell no. I’d never get shit read there. I turned away, acted as if I hadn’t heard him. Maybe he’d ask Tony. I kept reading Laing.

Menzimer leaned into Hans who sat in Lotus position. “My patients did primal screams this morning,” he said. “——they really hung it out there.” He ringed his collar with an index finger and loosened his bowtie but did not remove his brown tweed jacket. “They seemed to feel better having done so.”

“We heard them from back of the building Menz,” Hans said. “Hell, I thought you were killing the bastards.”

“No. No we’d never——those moments are like new sparks of light, precipitated into the outer darkness. Who are we to decide that it is hopeless?”

“Yeah,” Betty Yoshida chimed in from next to Hans. She sat on a silvery pillow, knees bent, heels under her butt. Betty, a psychiatric nurse, always optimistic, had tried to help me with psychology class. “Yadda, yadda, yadda,” I had said to Betty at the time. She had infiltrated and found a place deep within me, a scrap of vulnerability. “I’m only doing this for you,” I told her even though it was my job at stake, not hers. She needed to stop nagging me about school, hell; I’m almost twenty —— “How’s the study going Lee?” Betty asked.

I yawned, turned my back to Betty, skated over a few Laing pages: we live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. I’d only managed a few pages and time was disappearing for me. ~~~ Forty-five minutes after the scheduled in-service start time, the wall clock ticked like a time bomb set to explode. I’d struggled with a few more pages during the lull. Fuckin’ test. In the third grade Raylon Skewlet had snatched my test paper,

scribbled his name on it, and passed it to Mrs. Fontenot. I punched his mouth, we fought. “Leland Dunwitty you’re nothing but trouble——F,” she’d said. “Your grade is F.” She twisted my ear between her knuckles and sent me to the principal’s office for swats with his ass-sucking perforated oak paddle. Tests were never fun afterwards.

Dr. Boyo ran a hand through gray hair. “Will everyone please sit and quiet down?” The group kept talking. On Boyo’s third attempt, the room quieted some. I marked my place in Laing.

“Our guest counsels addicts, is known countrywide for his knowledge of drug use and abuse. Welcome—Toussaint.”

Lukewarm applause and grimaces from indifferent professionals who probably believed they knew all about the Artane, Mellaril, and Valium for the Watts community on their storage shelves. “The nerve of him,” a psych nurse said. “What the hell can he tell us?” she said from among a slow paced group of other staff. I put my mind to Laing, ran an index finger down the page until Hans interrupted. Wrists resting on his knees he made no effort to whisper. “Did you get his last name?” he asked.

“Toussaint?” Menz whispered. “Toussaint Toussaint—same name twice maybe?”

Hans threw back his head, flung away hair that had fallen over dilated pupils, voice loud, “Is that lip gloss he’s wearing?” he said.

Menz leaned away from Hans, removed his glasses, handkerchiefed the lens, and returned them to his squinting face.

Toussaint, still standing, exchanged a knowing look with Boyo and looped his thumps in his front pockets.

I considered Laing’s text: if I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know, I think I don't know. Deep——that has to be on the exam.

Toussaint faced the group and stepped forward enough so that all staff members sat before him, silent, hands clasped at his silver belt buckle, a slight upward turn at his mouth corners. He peered over aviator glasses, then through them.

Several workers rocked on pillows, some bit their fingernails; others tapped empty notepads with pens, mugged silly grins, crossed then uncrossed legs and arms. Incense smoke clouds coalesced near the dirty cottage cheese ceiling. Ticka, ticka, ticka, the broken light flittered on and off. Again I tried to read.

Toussaint’s tactic hushed discordant voices and riveted attention toward him. I raised Laing’s book to eye level to create a barrier between Toussaint and me and read: there is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.

Tony elbowed my side, again, voice low, “Dude, he’s looking right at you.”

I snapped. “Fuck him,” He’d have to earn my respect—if he wanted it. “I need this damn job for my car note,” I said loud like the drugs told me to do. Sweat glued Les’ shirt to my back. Better than anything Boyo had said, the room went silent. They probably expected Boyo to discipline me but he just grinned, a sneaky grin as if he knew something that the rest of us didn’t.

In a soft almost delicate tone that belied his physical presence, Toussaint spoke.

“What would you do if your patient showed up forty-five minutes late?” His glasses reflected the fluorescent light that flickered. Several mouths slackened, Tony’s neck bent forward, room temperature upped as smoke grew denser, Boyo smirked. “Habits have consequences but since you are paying me to be here either way, it’s okay to start late——however it’s important to me that I share with you what I have learned working with drug dependent people.” The air conditioner rumbled on as if cued, cooled the room a tad, and created a swirl of perfumed smoke. “It might benefit someone here today.” His pitch lowered and volume rose. “But, I won’t start until I have everyone’s attention.”

All heads jerked to me. Toussaint, eyebrows angled up and down, was in control. I was too far from the door to run and couldn’t slide behind Tony who’d covered a grin with his hand. Doublemint lumped down my throat, lunchtime buzz faded, Laing thumped the floor.

Toussaint gaped at me. “You–—Custodian Shirt. You look almost intelligent. Do you know what the most abused drug is in America today?”

I whimpered, “No—I don’t.”

“Same question for you.” Thumb extended, fingers straight, Toussaint pointed to Hans.

Hans scratched the top of his head and slurred, “Nooo sssir.”

“Can either of you two tell us what illegal drug is used the most?”

I shook my head from side to side. Hans frowned and shifted on his pillow.

“Can anyone else in this conference room answer my questions?” There were blank stares. Boom! The A/C shutoff, incense smoke stilled, the broken light blinked faster.

“If you work in Watts, in mental health, and can’t answer those questions you’ve failed this community——what good are you?” Toussaint seemed to bask in the silence. “Alcohol abuse and marijuana use are huge problems here and across the country. Cannabis is what we call a gateway drug.”

Tony threw up his right hand, stood and did a spirit filled dance like people do at church. “Hallelujah,” he said. “Praise the Lord.”

“The U-S-of-A is a drug culture. I call it the United States of Addiction.”

Toussaint gestured toward Menzimer. “Designer drugs——prescription drugs, and what people do with them wreak havoc too.” His eyes blazed from me to Hans, his tone unnerving. “Dope fiends,” he said.

My stomach hardened and dropped to my groin. I faked a smile. I’d never heard drugs explained the way Toussaint had, and, until then hadn’t really considered wine and malt liquor, which I first used at twelve, as drugs. Marijuana?–—harmless–—was what I believed even though I couldn’t remember shit when smoking it. How could I pass an exam like that?

The fluorescent over the door finally burned out dimming the room. My nostrils stung, others gasped from thick incense smoke. Hans started to tremble, leaned and collapsed to the floor. His eyes rolled to the top and disappeared under his eyelids, his body stiffened, and then jerked violently. I bounced up. Dr. Boyo rushed over, raised Hans’ head, and shouted, “Lee, get a cold towel.” My feet felt planted in concrete. He turned Hans’ head to the side, all gentle like. Hans pissed his pants and passed out.

“It looks like a seizure——grand mal” Boyo said. He raised his voice. “Move your ass Lee.” “OKAY,” I said. Fuck.

Back in the hallway, I retraced my steps, around two corners to the restroom that had no paper towels. I found the janitor’s cart–—Les was nowhere in sight–—

grabbed a clump of damp towels from the cart tray, wavered back and handed them to Boyo who carefully placed them under Hans’ head.

After several moments Hans recovered, sat up with Boyo’s help, and rubbed his right eye vigorously. His hair had turned blonde where his head rested on the damp towels. Boyo raised his hands to his nose and did a double take. “Bleach?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Irrigate his eye in the kitchen——flush it with water. HURRY.” His feet dangled between them as Tony and Betty hoisted Hans to the kitchen. “He should be okay—,” Dr. Boyo said. “if he didn’t get too much bleach in his eye.”

Toussaint was about tough love and reality and spent time describing the effects of PCP, LSD, pharmaceuticals, speed, hash, and on and on, some of which I’d used over the weekend instead of studying.

“Would you visit a medical doctor that you knew was under the influence?”

Toussaint asked rhetorically. He pointed to his bald head. “Would you trust your wellbeing to someone who is not quite all there?”

Toussaint’s form was celestial behind a fog of incense smoke floating through a long uncomfortable silence. For once no one answered or asked a ridiculous question.

His honesty and information penetrated what was left of my high. I felt naked like the emperor with no clothes.

“Nicotine——yes it’s a drug——smoking causes emphysema, cancer,” he said.

Like Jack in the Box burgers, alcohol and other drugs were woven into the fabric of Watts, and, except for a few Tony’s, everyone I hung out with smoked, swallowed, or injected something, especially on weekends, which made it seem okay, normal.

Toussaint squinted at me and said, “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.” I leaned forward when his tone lowered. “Drug habits are how we paste over what we don’t like about ourselves.” He eyed the book on the floor in front of me.”It’s like Laing when he says, what we think is less than what we know: what we know is less than what we love: what we love is so much less than what there is. We are so much less than what we are.”

My limbs felt heavy.

He wrapped up at 4 PM sharp. “How can you love yourself when you don’t know yourself?” Toussaint asked.

Three hours to test time. What should I do? My mouth went dry. ~~~ After in-service, incense smoke cleared, clock hands seemed to move faster.

For me the exam looked like a lost cause but, still shaken from Toussaint’s talk and what little I’d read in Laing, I was more sensitive about those who were fragile, Menzimer’s schizophrenia group.

Liza shuffled in. She dragged the inside of her right foot and honed onto my custodian shirt. “I thought you were Lee?” Menz’s patients were unpredictable, and often among the more intelligent patients we’d see. “You got more than one job?” she said.

“No, one only,” I said. “—barely.”

Menzimer said, “Let’s talk about the book you’ve been reading all day, Lee.” Cowboy rested his hat on the armrest. Jackson adjusted his thick glasses and laughed.

My belly fluttered. “Did you know that some believe Laing will be remembered for his insight into the relational rather than genetic dimensions of schizophrenia, for his understanding that madness can be the inevitable expression of an existential impasse created by relation binds and familial collusions? Did you know that Lee?” “Yes,” I said. “I agree.” For the next two hours I read and we examined passages from R. D. Laing.

That night I answered exam questions on a Scantron sheet and sweated while the professor rushed away to score them on a machine. Sleeping on my mother’s couch always hurt my back, but I’d suck it up before I returned to the drug house that flooded my community with brain numbing zombie food.

The instructor hunkered in and handed back the test results. The scent of failure reached up my nose into my skull and hurt my head, heart pounded against my ribs.

There, at the upper right was a large letter scribbled in red, C+, and a note, Good job!

My breaths bottled in my chest, my face couldn’t contain my grin. ~~~ Six months later Toussaint was back. A bronze plaque hung above the conference room doorway that read; The Hans Demmer Memorial Conference Room-

Dedicated 1971. Five months earlier Hans had suffered a massive stroke, was on life support a few weeks before hospital doctors pulled the plug. I had to attend his open casket funeral, his half blonde hair, right eye patch where bleach blinded him. I told Tony how I hated parts of me that I saw in Hans. Those parts, like the rose I tossed in, were lowered into the dirt with him. “I want my edumacation——that Bull Shit Dgree,” I said to him.

“If they can, you can.”

Now, Betty and Menzimer mixed in with other staff that mingled under bright ceiling lights to the middle of a newly carpeted conference floor. The dusty cottage cheese ceiling had been scraped and repainted with the walls to Hindu Lavender. The A/C was upgraded and a digital clock with red numerals replaced the analog Timex.

We started on time. Les whizzed by with a quiet vacuum. Incense burned.

I struggled with my sobriety but didn’t give in.

Laing remained on my new desk but his words burned in my brain: whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.

“And that,” Toussaint explained, “starts with learning to love one’s self.”

That’s what I told the Watts community.

Ron L Dowell Ron L Dowell's short stories have appeared in Oyster Rivers Pages and in Stories Through The Ages/ Baby Boomers Plus (2018).

Hidden Caliph In those light boots how easily he strides over seven leagues with each half step. Silver wings that fit his heels like gentle spurs let him fly around the Earth so fast he’s home before he left. Gold spectacles unveil strange satellites, a different people beyond our solar system, at his ears scallop shells echo their sweet songs and grateful praise. He places a jeweled band across his brow and instantly knows secrets Einstein never dreamed of.

On his fingers ten rings teach hands the touch of summer breezes freely given, their only fortune another’s unexpected happiness. Stare into his jade mirror smaller than a plum leaf-you see past awful thorns your green self growing taller. Best is the coat of simple rags his heart wears to beat with other hearts until you realize every tower rings its bell. Morning when he wakes his gifts are gone but an exiled king remembers. No crown or scepter, in gray mantle with staff and begging cup he smiles-his realm lives in the world it came from and waits his halting footfall.

Nels Hanson Nels Hanson grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His fiction and poetry have received numerous awards, including the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize.

Stones, Sun, Stars Igneous, metamorphic, sedimentary, volcanic, pressured, accumulating, morning, noon and evening, child, man, old one with a cane, time is geologic, fire from underground, force joining particles, dust and sand building into rock, all to make a single life from different lives, shining stones in a river flowing from mortal stars, every blaze with its span, its calendar, blue, a rose, red flames flickering from darkness into the dark as our yellow sun rises, burns overhead and declines as dusk arrives and we look west for Venus and Mercury, then east before day begins again.

Nels Hanson

Aquamarine Polyester Blend Uncle Saul died a few weeks ago. Aunt Ruth had dropped off some of his clothes at my parents’, things that were “too good for Goodwill.” The cardboard box on the sofa burst open to reveal a bright blue cardigan with buttons the size of quarters.

My father let out one of his silent whistles that meant either “Isn’t that snazzy!” or “What a piece of crap!”

“Is this turquoise?” I asked.

“What do you know about color?” my mother challenged. “That’s baby blue.

Put it on.” She identified the sweater as alpaca, as if that would somehow make a difference. As I slipped it on, I noticed the label from Gimbel’s: 20% alpaca/80% acrylic.

Dad blew out another whistle. My mother observed, “It looks like it was made just for you. Go look in a mirror.”

Glumly, I thrust my hand into one of the sweater’s front pockets and pulled out a half-smoked Pall Mall and a wrapped slab of Dentyne. I then went, looked in the mirror, and returned. I was proud of my restraint in not yielding to the temptation to come back singing “Catch a Falling Star” or another hit from the Perry Como songbook.

Next in the box was a lint-grey sharkskin suit just like the one Philadelphia mob boss Angelo Bruno wore when he got his brains blown out by “Tony Bananas” at 10 th and Snyder last year. Fortunately, there was no controversy over the suit. The pants were way too short in the legs. There was no whistle from my father. Even my mother rolled her eyes as she dropped the suit back into the box.

We all seemed to agree on the next item, a cranberry pullover, although I wasn’t nuts about its shawl collar. Then, mercifully, we came to the last offering from Uncle Saul’s wardrobe, what I would call the pièce de résistance, the coup de grâce, the final nail in my coffin.

I just stared at it, frozen in place, my mouth hanging open. This time, my dad emitted what I could swear was an audible—but still indecipherable—whistle. My mother’s face glowed, illuminated by a shimmering bluish-green, greenish-blue blazer. I had already learned enough not to question its color, which, I was told later, was aquamarine.

I couldn’t help but blurt out, “There’s all these lumps in the fabric.”

“You know nothing about fashion!” my mother countered. “This is shantung.

Those ‘lumps’ are called ‘slubs.’ They’re supposed to be there.”

“But the coat seems to be flashing, like a neon sign,” I countered.

“That’s iridescence,” my mother said. “Put it on.”

I numbly obeyed. Somehow my father had managed to disappear from the scene of my humiliation. Slowly it dawned on me that the clothes Aunt Ruth took to Goodwill were things that Uncle Saul actually wore. What she brought to my parents were clothes that he rarely, if ever, put on. Clothes that, if you’ll pardon the expression, he wouldn’t be caught dead in.

I stood in front of a mirror. I was 33 years old modeling a jacket that should only be worn by gents in the dining rooms of retirement centers in Glendale and Deerfield Beach.

When I returned, my mother gushed with admiration: “Sharp as a razor!” At that point I wished that I had said razor so I could slash my wrists. There was no question that I’d be wearing this blazer later that afternoon when we met Aunt Ruth at Murray’s Deli for the early bird special.

Jay Jacoby Jay Jacoby's writings have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Jewish Fiction .net, and others. A retired professor of English who spent most of his teaching career at UNC Charlotte, he now engages his passion for writing and teaching at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Asheville, North Carolina.

For Don Herbert I began my life as a couch potato. Born in l946, I was among the first of the baby-boomer generation. We may have started out being fed on mothers’ milk, but we were soon enough weaned on television. In my house, at least, TV was the original Supernanny. Most of my early childhood memories are hazy, but I recall with perfect clarity my hours spent hypnotically fixed in front of our 1950 Philco console, a TV set the size of a Subaru Outback. I’d have to say that television, more than anything else, was—and, I’m ashamed to admit, still is—largely responsible for the way I view and act in the world.

Needless to say, this addiction to TV can create problems. There was, for example, the time I set fire to our toilet.

This happened when I was about ten. I had been watching some World War II movie on TV, a classic Navy adventure which pitted lipless American heroes like Dane Clark and Robert Taylor against your typically ruthless U-Boat Kommandant--a man who had a face that looked like he had tried to kiss a moving subway. An altogether dreary film. Except, of course, for the battle scenes: Speeding torpedoes. Exploding tankers. An ocean ablaze. The latter really kindled my curiosity. I kept wondering how water could burn.

When Pinky Lee came on, I was still wondering. Gasoline burns; lighter fluid burns; but water? No way. It was supposed to put out fires, not feed them. Maybe salt water? Or maybe if you mixed water with gas? Or lighter fluid.

Molly Bee was singing "Katy the Kangaroo." In his checkered-hat-and-checkered coat, Pinky was laughing like a billy goat. Having outgrown such juvenile nonsense, I was not impressed. The toilet would make a nifty ocean. Not the North Atlantic, but a little salt could take care of that. I knew where Dad kept the Ronson's hidden.

Getting the salt was no problem. I knew I could rustle up some matches--even though my parents were still a bit cautious ever since I burned a whisk broom. But that was over two years ago. I wanted to find out what was so special about brush fires.

Having gathered the necessary material, I stalked into the upstairs bathroom.

With the serious precision of the bespectacled kid on my Gilbert's Junior Chemistry Set, I carefully poured the salt and lighter fluid into the toilet. Then I tossed in a match. I had bent pretty close to the bowl, and my head snapped back simultaneously with the thermal POOF! Jeez. It really does burn. Neat-O. Oh shit. The seat’s catching. How do I get it out? I figured that if I flushed, I'd set the city on fire. What have I done? I envisioned headlines: "PHILADELPHIA STILL BURNING: Ten-Year-Old Held Responsible."

I rushed to the kitchen screaming, “Mom, I set the toilet on fire!" ordinarily, my mother might have laughed thinking, Just Jay pulling my leg again. Somehow though, she sensed that this time I wasn't kidding. I don't think it was so much the urgency of my voice but rather the fact that I no longer had any eyelashes. Mothers are quick to pick up on those things.

Taking the stairs three at a time, we sped to the john. The toilet was still blazing nicely; flames licked the rim of the seat; thin black smoke spiraled to the ceiling. Caring more for our home than the City of Brotherly Love, Mom flushed the toilet. Then, with the precision of the men on Rescue 8, she wet a rag and beat out the flaming seat. Then, using same rag, she began working on my living daylights.

I really don't remember exactly what happened next. I think Mom made two phone calls. One to my dad: "Harold, don't forget to bring home the rib roast. And, on the way, could you pick up a new toilet seat; your son burned the original." And one to Dr. Drayer, the child psychiatrist I had been seeing.

I wasn't allowed to watch TV for a month. Not Pinky, or Howdy, or Ramar, or Wild Bill. Not even Mr. Wizard.

Jay Jacoby [editor's note from Wikipedia: Donald Jeffry Herbert was the creator and host of Watch Mr. Wizard and Mr. Wizard's World, which were educational television programs for children devoted to science and technology.]

His/Her/Our/Their/Them/They Body Identity is only a collection of stories: the ones told about us, coloring the ones we tell ourselves.

The true magic of her body could only be found within, a muscular luminosity, in which the body resounded with bloodied, a Blues holla' no longer sorrow, but beauty & terror moaning one breath.

She came out to her father by sending him the results of her Kinsey Scale Test: a genderqueer, transmasculine person, representative of the polyamorous, omnisexual, gender fluid experience: fat, black, neurodivergent, & badass.

Her relentless heartbeat, an ardent grace of fearless sensitivity, without arrogance or apology, the burgeoning pulse that embodies the crackle of lightning when it strikes.

She whistled & crowed her body's betrayals, its pleasures, & undefinable selves, into a psalm that sanctified her holy numbered oil, where she gets to be the heroine of her own story: beautiful, even when existing in someone else’s space, & no fear of her body being her body, flinging the plasticity of her identity into the air & knowing she was going to land on her feet. A slow & writhing eruption of sexuality roiling under her skin, fluctuating & interconnected (she is but couldn't be more this without that) through layers of heat & pheromones, expectations & loss. The raptor eyes

scouring her happiness for its flaws.

But loving herself thoroughly, without caring what others thought. A love of Self, the fire born of another dream of fire, to say this is what is, this is what will, always, is gonna be. henry 7. reneau, jr henry 7. reneau, jr describes himself as a writer who "writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse, illuminated by his affinity for disobedience."

stereotypes after “History is a Room” by Shara McCallum

i cannot enter. to enter that room, i would have to become acclimated to a life of blind-hope-makes-them-stupid all-Amerikkkan days, articulated clay, brandishing freewill like a sleeping pill that lullabies their red, white & Blue(s), pledging One Nation Under God, but cowering to the center of status quo, or Occupy America, a rebooted activism in disarray. i am not allowed to enter. to enter that room, i would need a Mayflower silver spoon lineage & a palm print of Manifest Destiny flush to photoelectric scanner— hard-wired to FB-eyes of COINTELPRO, bio-metric racist recognition & the DOC, where we are a noose & a fire hose, of Indian-given affirmative action, & redacted voting rights; snarling dogs & debated victim-hood quibbling the semantics of Diaspora resumes; where we are half-eaten plates of perseverance gone cold in the refrigerator hum of post-racial Obama-nation: eclipsed by a 9/11 sun & the Badlands swallow us into the echo of silence; where we are three-fifths removed from free & equal, a nihilist threat drivin’ while black & subject to a white-oriented herd mentality that will turn rabid, at the first mention of Pro-Black. always, we are well aware that “be patient . . . wait” & CPT, in increments of “we shall overcome” & “change is gonna’ come,” will never be deemed legal tender in Big-Box stores of conglomerate GNP. to enter that room, i would have to calculate fame & wealth with the “things” that clutter a Monopoly board-game life— taking without asking & chasing success like a quota—an indifference to re-booted history

that is recounted as “The Book of Always Forgotten” the story of a people trudging the thousand & one displaced miles of dispossessed— how we look to others is a reflection of how we look to ourselves, a half-assed meta-phor comic relief for desperate times & beyond here, lies nothing but the implication of miraculous, the status labeled treasured “things” we covet—keeping people from doing what they do best & making them insane. to enter that room, i would need to wield a gun with the sociopathic accuracy of Seal Team 6, an eagle eye of avarice trained on Viet Nam, Grenada & Panama, Somalia & Bosnia, Iraq & Afghanistan, a pocket-size stealth drone snipping the wings from humanity, as a national consensus of labels, euphemisms & stereotypes propaganda Iran & North Korea, Syria & Pakistan squarely into the cross-hairs of the US of Amerikkka. to enter that room, i would have to idiot navigate rush hour traffic & shopping mall water fountains: too busy texting “whr u at?” in the micro-waved twitter-grams of midget attention spans, downloading a hope & a prayer You-Tube video into fifteen minutes of famous-for-being-famous— the “don’t-hate-the-playa” Blue(s). to enter that room, i would have to bridge the distance between get rich or die tryin'. but i am not allowed to enter— too MLK placed just so, the genetic memento mori of courage while black—an apparition of crows, caw-caw-cawing in myriads all at once. the One-Drop too black las’-nerve-tried inked on my skin: resonates the X lion’s conviction & makes comeuppance of Nat Turner’s hatchet & smoking gun— a rumble swept up in exultation of itself, like a fire born of another dream of fire: the raptor velocity embracing the Messiah’s truth, that we are none of us alone in the complicity of others. henry 7. reneau, jr

Beautiful Losers What the hell kind of country do we live in? —Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary

The sheen of umbrage polished by centuries of human oil & the cruel abrasion of deferred dreams. Colored People Time that Amerikkka has learned so little from. The tattooed fury of gnawed dignity & uppity tongues of pistoning fists.

Outrage now a limbic resonance: the persecuted thug labelled electromagnetic but brazen tenacity. We dare because all lives matter! necessitates #blacklivesmatter!!

Every raised fist living livid & no respect for broken goddamn law. Rebellious graffitied into words: : Whose streets? Our streets!! #hashtagged into Twitter-verse & freedom of speech that has armed itself.

Our dissent the sequined diamonds of broken storefront glass.

C.P.T. Every Molotov multitude of bulleted bottles & catapulted cuss like nouns that verb the world the civil right to fight.

C.P.T. The speed of speed of light crackling through shivery atoms.

Up like a pyramid from dust. henry 7. reneau, jr

What Is Left to Us Chained to a clothesline pole, the new neighbor’s Rottweiler howls and whines at all hours next door to the murder-suicide house, and across the street from eleven oil hands, each with his own tool kit, boombox, and litany of loud lewd insults, who have taken over the three-story house with the wooden owl, staring down on us as if to swoop.

Men with fixed gazes walk the street late.

On the outskirts, in a pasture absent of stock, natural gas flares from a scoria pad.

Across the road, apartments rise up in prison camp gray, surrounded by pickup trucks, dual wheels and dual exhaust, the faster to hit the road when the time comes.

Farther out in the country, chokecherries hang from a thicket at Aunt Signe’s homestead, where once she kept goats and lived in a soddie, up the rise from the cemetery where she lies now, across the road from the reassuring bell.

Why don’t we live there? asks my love.

Mark Trechock Mark Trechock started writing poetry again in 2015 after a twenty-year hiatus. Recent publications have appeared in Streetlight and New Limestone Review.

The Gold Research In the yard under the neem tree, Abdul’s corpse lay on the cot. The corpse was strangely swollen from having been in the village pond for three days. Some children at play in the morning had spotted it floating on the surface of the pond water after it rose from the depths. Abdul had been missing from his house since his drowning.

The investigating officer, in a khaki uniform, indicated for one of the constables to lift the white sheet that covered the cadaver. The contaminated body looked more like a ghost than a human being. The pond moss was still stuck to his body and a foul odor had attracted a few domestic flies to have a look at the dead man.

Surprisingly, his body was lying exactly at the same place, where the vulture had fallen after being shot at by Abdul on December 31. Two pink scars around the corpse's neck suggested strangulation. Abdul was not a swimmer; but he managed to swim, if the occasion demanded. And drowning in the village pond was quite unthinkable. There was commotion around, for hundreds of villagers were jam packed in the courtyard of Abdul’s house. Fatima, his wife, was away to her father’s place with Shuja, her fourth son.

Police Inspector Giri wanted an autopsy of the dead body, but that was abruptly declined by Mukeed, Abdul’s younger brother, who cited religious reasons, for it was sort of blasphemy and against Shariyat, the Muslim laws.

The body was identified by the villagers, for there was long hair on Abdul’s ears that he’d never got trimmed. Moreover, a loudspeaker announcement about Abdul being missing from his house had also been made through the mosque in the village. The officer, having taken the refusal of the family in writing, zoomed off from there with his men in the police jeep. And people got busy for the dead body’s formal funeral. ~~~ When I met Abdul for the first time, I could not believe that he might financially be so poor a man that he could not even afford to pay for a packet of Commander Cigarettes. For his personality was that of a luminous man of immense knowledge in alchemy, witchcraft and supernatural science, apart from an invincible command over

six languages, including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, English, Hindi and Sanskrit. In learning, he was only next to Leonardo da Vinci.

He would live in a ruined mud-house that must have once been palatial, for he had a royal linage. It sometimes would come in the way of his earning. That’s why he had made up his mind not to work for any organization, but to do some individual research so that he could pass the rest of his life with comfort and basic luxuries. I suddenly found myself lost in the flashback. ~~~ The three-door verandah of the big mud-house facing west had been seeping the incessant rain for the last three days. At the fall of evening, thundershowers had suddenly got a momentum, and the heavy downpour seemed lethal to this dilapidated building that was now more vulnerable to the heavy rain. Fifty-year-old Abdul in a shabby vest and pajamas squatted on a jute charpoy that was lying in the left door of the verandah.

His six children, five sons and a daughter, were at different positions in the same verandah. Little Zack, his youngest three-year-old son, was sitting beside him. Wife Fatima was washing the utensils in the kitchen. In the morning, a villager had informed her that the water, in all three major ponds of the village, was overflowing and mixing together. This usually happened during the monsoon season in this remote village of North India.

Out of the three, two ponds were extremely old, while the third one had recently been dug and its water was fathoms deep. Parents, more often than not, forbade their kids from going near this pond. Understandably so, the pond was treacherous, posing a big threat particularly in the rainy season. ~~~ Just at the report of thunder, Fatima came out from the kitchen murmuring aloud, “Jalle jalal tu! Aai bala ko taal tu!� [O great Almighty! Just save us from the impending danger! (caused by the heavy rainfall)] The backlash of rain was the root cause of her being so worried, for the mud house might give in and collapse due to heavy rain. She repeated the line three times in a row. The thick clay-plaster of the house was now giving way and spilling off from its place from the outer walls.

Abdul, musing over the fate of the mud house, stooped down from his cot and picked up a small piece of clay from the just fallen soil-plaster while all his six children were watching in profound silence.

He pensively muttered some verse in Arabic, breathed it on the clay piece, and then threw it into the middle of the courtyard. All the twelve eyes of the kids widened in utter disbelief, for they saw. As soon as the clay piece landed in the courtyard, the heavy shower stopped abruptly, just as, on a command of a master, the noisy students in a classroom fall silent.

Around thirty minutes passed and then the rain started again. Abdul picked up again a fresh piece of clay and flung it too in the direction of his earlier shot. The children this time had anticipated the result.

They smiled looking back at one another, as the rain stopped again. “Though it is a direct intervention into God’s affairs, yet for the sake of the safety of our house, I’ve to do so,” he said to his wife, now sitting there facing him. Fatima nodded, chopping onion into thin slices for salad, and giving her silent affirmation. ~~~ “Can’t you prepare a cup of tea?” Abdul asked Fatima.

“There is no milk left in the kitchen,” she informed him, adjusting her pallu on her head.

“Then I’ll prefer black tea,” Abdul said, his eyes still fixed on the puddle gathered in the yard.

Fatima smiled and went into the kitchen with a plate of salad in her hand. A little kerosene had to be sprinkled at the chopped wooden pieces in the hearth for lighting the fire. She was putting the kettle onto the stove when she heard Abdul talking eagerly with someone.

She peeped out through the window frame and recognized the face: It was Munshi Ji, who was Abdul’s long time friend. He often came there and had a good tuning with her husband. Both shared a common interest in alchemy and necromancy. Abdul was working on his Urdu Magazine, Murda Alum [The Science of Dead Souls], and Munshi Ji, his sidekick, was keenly inclined in this business too. The first issue of the magazine was already out, but got little attention in the market.

The visitor, an old fellow of around sixty with a long grey beard, wheat complexion and thinly built frame, was an avid reader of Urdu literature and a yielding in alchemy, while Abdul was an alumnus from Aligarh Muslim University based in Western Utter Pradesh.

Both the friends firmly believed that artificial gold manufacturing was possible, and in its pursuit they had been experimenting for twelve years, but with no apparent result. Experiment after experiment failed without any positive outcome.

“If you can drink black tea, why can’t I?” Munshi Ji said, insisting on taking the black tea like his friend. After a little haggling, Abdul had to give way. Now both the chaps took their cups, sipped, and discussed the progress made in the direction of gold making. “No headway so far,” Abdul said.

“I’ve come to you with fresh new ideas this time,” Munshi Ji said with beaming eyes.

“Every time you come here, you say the same thing.” Abdul took a dig at his friend.

“But this time it is not like that!” Munshi said with surety.

“Let’s see at the furnace!” Abdul replied with eyes still fixed on the white cup of black tea. ~~~ Having taken tea and supper, both the friends sat together by the side of a furnace in the living room. This room had actually been turned into a forge, where the two friends would often experiment. The flames from the furnace were rising high, increasing the room temperature. The wooden beams in the ceiling were tarnished by virtue of smoke.

Even the lizards in this room were blackish. I can’t say whether it was the effect of bhatti-- the furnace, and its night-black smoke on them or it was just genetic. But, I don’t know why, these lizards seemed to be a lot different from the ordinary domestic lizards.

In the middle of the room, a big rectangular blue-table was positioned surrounded by a dozen wooden chairs. The furnace was placed in the extreme right corner. Two chairs had been dragged nearby and were occupied, for both the friends were now sitting in them.

The fire was now on the sublime. Munshi Ji broke the ice, “Mercury will make the metal soft; particularly its effect on copper will be surprisingly great, I’m sure.”

“But why this phosphorus?” inquired Abdul.

“The crystals of red phosphorus will give metal a permanent golden hue,” Munshi Ji clarified. Though Abdul did not agree, he did not say anything at that moment.

Kuthali- the stone pot, keeping in the middle of the furnace, was red hot by virtue of the fire all around it. Abdul put about ten one-gram copper pieces in the pot with tongs. Munshi Ji followed suit and poured the same quantity of mercury into it.

Neela thota and a few more substances were added to the mixture. The chemical process started as the ingredients melted and now the pot contents looked like some volcanic magma.

“When is to mix the phosphorus?” Abdul said to Munshi Ji. “Just wait a while!” came the prompt reply from Munshi Ji. A few more minutes passed while both the friends were gazing intently at the red hot-pot made of stone, which, at that time, was burning as a red coal. And the contents inside it were a liquid form of the alloy metals.

When Munshi Ji was going to add phosphorus, his host warned him, “I think, it’d not be wise to mix the red powder in this mixture.”

“You just wait and watch!” Munshi Ji said, pacifying his pal.

Then, putting the red powder in a big-handled spoon, he extended a long hand and poured it into the kuthali while Abdul was watching the process as a keen observer.

BANG! With a horrible sound, the furnace exploded and the burning coals scattered all around the living room. Munshi Ji stumbled and fell backward heavily.

THUD! Abdul held his head tightly with both hands. The iron-made long-handled-spoon that was still there in Munshi Ji’s hand –-only God knows how-- had struck Abdul’s head.

He felt excruciating pain and a whistling sound in the ears while there was thick smoke all around in the forge.

A few moments passed with the men in utter amazement as neither friend precisely knew anything about what had just happened there. Then, getting back his nerves, Munshi Ji asked, “Are you fine, Abdul?”

Enraged Abdul grabbed his friend’s long white-beard and called him several names. “I foretold you, you silly old bastard!” Munshi Ji withdrew in fear, and somehow released his beard from his friend’s hold. Extremely embarrassed, he rushed to the other room. One more experiment to manufacturing gold had failed. ~~~ Remorseful at his own behavior with his old friend, Abdul was restlessly tossing on his bed. He was trying to sleep, but sleep was far away from him tonight. He regretted that he had misbehaved with Munshi Ji, who was older in age. Moreover, he did not intentionally ruin the experiment.

They, of course, wanted the same outcome in the gold research. And if ever they succeeded in their endeavor, they might get a Nobel Prize for such a never-before human experiment. But every time he thought he was near, something wrong would happen. “Bad luck!” he thought and tried to sleep.

It must have been around two am when Abdul was feeling a little drowsiness after long hours of mental conflict. He remained divided between his good soul and the bad one. Eventually, he decided he would apologize to Munshi Ji very early next morning. He felt himself a little relaxed and started sinking slowly in the arms of sleep. ~~~ Ghastly dim light of the kerosene lamp placed on the right corner of the big wooden table was the only witness to the pitch dark solitude in the living room. The death-pale light shrouded the whole interior of the forge.

It was a rectangular room where two closets, built-in in the opposite mud-walls, were facing each other. Both of these were filled with piles of books, most of them moth-eaten and filled with silverfish, ranging from palmistry to witchcraft, from philosophy to alchemy.

Abdul had interest in a wide range of subjects. Of late, he had been inclining towards conjuring. Trying to invoke some dead souls, he’d always desired some apparition to appear someday, or rather some night, and follow his orders to the tune of Arabian Nights.

All of a sudden, he felt -as though in some dream- a little jerk in the cot he was sleeping on. Thinking it all an illusion, or some nightmare, he remained calm and composed. Then he experienced the second jerk and then the third one. But so fatigued

was he that even after willingness to probe the matter, he could not rise and remained tugged inside the sleeping cover with white lily flowers all over it. He was fond of sleeping prostrate. Tonight too, he slept in the same posture: with his mouth sunk in the pillow and the rest of his front body in touch with the charpoy. Now it seemed as though someone was pulling the blue bed sheet that he had covered himself with.

Abdul tightly clutched his hands on his khes-- the bed sheet. Some irresistible force seemed to be pulling the sheet; and the cover kept pulling away with every passing moment. And finally, the whole of it flew away and landed almost four feet away beside the right side-wall under the foot of the closet.

Irritated, Abdul sat up thinking that it must be Fatima, his wife, and considered that she might have come to know that he had misbehaved with Munshi Ji. His eyes widened in horror and disbelief, for he saw, in the dim light of the kerosene lamp welllit on the table, a girl in her early twenties standing just beside the table with a sly-wry smile on her face.

Abdul was horror struck. Her long hair was touching her thighs. Yellowish salwarkamiz gave her a typical grave touch. Her sharp features reminded him of Shyama, his ex-beloved, who, betraying him, had married someone else, but she was no more. He sat up at his place and shrank back on his cot in stark terror.

Abdul faintly remembered that he’d tried to invoke Shyama’s dead soul a few nights back. Her high breasts and slim frame were, to some extent, the Xerox of Shyama; there was no doubt about it. But he was not willing to embrace her tonight. Not at all at the present juncture!

Before Abdul could understand anything, she approached near the cot and sat beside him. It was amazing; she was not breathing, while Abdul was panting. He wanted to run away, but his feet froze. He wanted to screech, but his voice got stuck in his throat. His whole body was paralyzed . And here was she: the dead soul of Shyama, the girl he loved once, to his intensity.

And then she leaned forward over him and put her long-nailed left-hand onto his right shoulder. It gave him a shudder, for her touch was wondrously cold. This left him agape. He glanced at her hand, it was death pale. Her face looked like that of a corpse.

There was a grave grin on her face.

He felt shivering to the depth of his bones. Then she put her right hand on his left shoulder. He wanted to release himself but felt unable and helpless to resist her advances.

Her grip tightened. She grinned fiercely and waved strangely toward the lamp that blew off leaving the entire living room in pitch darkness. Abdul was still gasping for breath, while she was leaning more and more over him. He was eventually down under her cold weight.

He could feel her bare body, and the movements of her icy-cold hands in all the nooks and corners of his own thin frame. Very soon, she was in full command; and he was there, just a helpless creature. When the last moment came, she put her mouth very close to his ears and whispered in a freezing tone, “I’M YOUR GOLD! YOU WANTED ME! YOU CALLED ME! HERE I AM FOR YOU!” With the release of the last sweat of his energy, he felt his entire body to be as if he were somehow deported into the North Pole.

Slowly and steadily, he was getting drowsy and felt his body light as a flower, but he was too tired to get up. A strange darkness surrounded him from all quarters. And he seemed to be in the deep cradle of sleep. ~~~ Next morning, when Abdul asked about Munshi Ji, he was informed that the old visitor had already left for his village early in the morning on a pretext of some urgent piece of work. But Abdul was not thinking about him anymore, for the girl’s face had still been haunting his memories. “What was she: Shyama, my lost love ,or some beautiful witch?” he said to himself, puzzled.

Though he did not have the answer, her words were still echoing in his ears: “I’m your Gold.” And he became pensive and thoughtful again but without an explanation. He went straight to the wardrobe near the jute charpoy on which he had experienced horrible sex with a ghost last night. He opened the cupboard and laid his hands on a small square wooden box.

Taking out the small box, he opened it and held out a thick envelope that contained some post-card-size snapshots. The pictures showed Shyma in a yellow frock, with little red flowers all over it, that he’d gifted her. Unmistakably, the girl last night was no different from her. His past visuals suddenly came alive.

~~~ Twenty years back The time is midnight. The whole village is fast asleep. The soiled lanes are vacant, save a couple of dogs lying under some standing bullock carts. In this winter night, they’re managing themselves somehow. Coiled by the side of cart wheels, somehow they’re trying to sleep.

The wooden door of Mangatram’s house opens, and a human figure comes out of it. She is Shyama, his only daughter, slim and tall with pretty, sharp features. It is not possible to keep your eyes away, in case you happen to see her once. With a torch in hand, she stealthily moves out of the house. Disguised, she is in male attire, her hair tied up in a bun and hidden under a gray turban.

The path is well known to her feet, and she’s trying hard to avoid using the torch, for enough moonlight was spread across the muddy street. No concrete roads are there in this belt of western Utter Pradesh.

The path now widens up to thirty feet in width, seems to be serpentine and endlessly long. During the day time, this road must be very dusty and passersby must face a hard time. Still at this time, for the wind is quite serene, it’s a pleasure to moves on it; but in terms of the wee hours, it gives shivers that such a beauty walks alone midnight along the deserted road.

Totally unperturbed about her surrounding, Shyama’s movements reflect her grace and unflinching approach to life.

After half an hour’s rapid walk, the path takes a turn to its left and introduces extremely dense woods, where strong bamboo and pine trees stand side by side with those of mangoes and guavas. Shyama now leaves the main track and starts strolling on a pagdandi, the narrow trail.

Almost a hundred meters, she walks, and at another fifty meters’ distance, beholds a human figure: Slim, dark and average in height, standing under a banyan tree.

Only a fraction of his body is visible due to the big trees’ shade. She does not show any symptoms of surprise or fear.

The man under the big tree remains stationed at his place. Going nearby, she finds that a bicycle too is at its stand at a slight distance.

“How long have you been waiting?” she said approaching the young and slim guy.

“Around half an hour,” he said. Both the boy and the girl remained silent for a couple of seconds. Then the boy broke the ice and said: “Did you encounter any trouble on your way to come here?” She shook her head.

“These clothes?” he enquired.

“My brother’s!” she replied.

Again the same silence in the environment. He removed her turban; the long black tresses came loose and fell on her shoulders.

Together they walk towards a mango grove and sit under a tree. The full moon is spreading her beauty in the sky. And under the mango tree she is sitting with her love.

“Abdul, did you miss me in Aligarh?” she said. “A lot,” he admitted. “How are your studies?” she enquired.

“Not able to concentrate well; however, I want that so much,” he said.

Gently caressing her long, fine hair, he puts his right hand’s index finger onto her lips: they were warm. Coral red, they felt even when there is so faint light that very few things are properly visible.

“Can I kiss you?” he humbly says.

“I don’t know.” When women show indecisiveness, it means they are agreed.

Abdul slowly bends his face over hers so close that they could feel each other’s breathing. She shuts her eyes with shyness and does not make any move. Now he removes the distance and envelops her lips with his own.

Her whole body vibrates and soon she is under some strange intoxication. The wind blows serenely. The moon shines brightly. The stars stare at them and appreciate the new couple. All the galaxies of stars talk about them. The kiss goes on uninterrupted. His hands hold hers, fingers crossed. The moment passes swiftly.

A little later, he slides his hand under her kurta and grabs her soft breasts and starts squeezing them one after the other. She breathes heavily and holds him tightly.

He continues kissing her lips, her chin. Slowly he places his burning lips onto her neck and makes her groan in arousal. Her whole body begins to shiver strangely.

His hands now commence to search something at her back inside the kurta, soon they find it: his fingers unhook her bra. Her eyes under deep influence, she looks at Abdul, trying to check him with gestures.

“Why are you doing this?” she murmurs. He ignores her weak revolt, and tries to pull out her kurta. After a little resistance, she surrenders.

A couple of seconds later, she is lying in his arms, topless. Her milky skin seems whiter than snow even in the semi darkness. He brings his lips closer and observes in the few moon-rays the sharp points of her pink nipples. A small area of half an inch radius around it is also of deep pink color.

He cups it in his palm and puts his mouth onto it and starts sipping the invisible juice out of it taking turns on both the sides. Very soon their bodies warm up.

“Abdul, is it all necessary?” Shyama again intervenes. Paying no heed to her comments, he moves his right hand to her pajamas.

She tries to retreat; he tightens his grip. With one arm under her waist, the other hand is helping to solve the mystery of this paradise. She tries to grip his fingers, but they’re adamant to do the needful. She tries to say something; he chocks her mouth by cementing his lips onto hers. A few seconds move in struggle, and the two ends of the drawstring that kept her beauty safe snap apart.

Mustering up her total strength and courage, she gets her mouth free from his lips and cries, audible enough to an area of ten meters: “NO! NO! NO! ABDUL NO! WE ARE NOT HERE FOR ALL THIS!” He comes out from his dreamland and immediately releases her. She quickly ties the loose ends of her pajama-strings and grabbing her Kurta-Choli, rushes through the pitch dark woods leaving behind her love, Abdul, in shock and regret for his whole life. ~~~ Almost present time Abdul came back to his senses when two droplets of tears fell on Shyama’s snapshot he was holding in his hand. The same day he told me about the two mysterious nights. I opined that the former might be the brainchild of his genius mind: a hallucination.

He was, no doubt, an eccentric scientist, whose brainwaves could go to any realms of unknown horizons. Still I remained courteous and assuaged him, calling life a mystery and saying that one day he would be successful in his gold-making research and of course get the Nobel Prize too. ~~~

December 31, Abdul sat in his courtyard, basking in the morning sunshine. Only a few days back, branches of the neem tree had been chopped off for better sunrays to shine and spread in the yard.

Fatima brought hot tea and paranthas for Abdul to have breakfast. He had his first morsel when he viewed a vulture perched atop the neem tree.

“Fetch my rifle!” he said to Fatima.

Perplexed, she looked up, and sensing that something was amiss, blurted, “Why do you wish to kill the poor bird?”

“A vulture is a bad omen,” Abdul clarified in a pensive tone. Fatima could not resist further but obeyed his orders like a three year old child.

Immediately, the gun was brought. It was a semi-auto, single-shot .22 rifle. A beautiful light firearm that was lethal for birds. He shoved a KF cartridge to the gun, and, loading the weapon, took aim. Shooting was nothing new to Abdul. He often went for hunting and never returned empty handed.

Totally unaware of the impending danger, the big bird was preoccupied in shuffling its feathers with its long, strong beak, and did not even bother to look under the tree.

Holding his breath, Abdul took aim, his hands motionless. The rifle, in his hands, shone brightly in the winter sun-rays. As he pressed the trigger, the savage machine made a loud report. But surprisingly, the bird looked unfazed.

Had the bullet missed the target? Little Zack, minutely observing the proceeding, could not suppress his curiosity and said to his father, “Papa, did you miss the mark?”

Abdul did not answer but kept staring at the vulture. By now, it had stopped shuffling its feathers with its beak.

A few minutes passed; the bird seemed to be losing its strength and suddenly looked fragile and sick. It began to spew out pieces of flesh that it had eaten. One after the other, its beak vomited effortlessly all that it had gobbled up.

Beneath the tree, soon there were flesh pieces strewn everywhere. One stray puppy charmed by the smell of meat helped himself over the fallen half-digested food.

Abdul lifted his gun again and fired a second time. The bullet went home, dismantling a few feathers gliding in the air of the ill-fated bird. This time, the vulture lifted both its wings and tried to fly to some safer place. Unfortunately, with fractured

bones of feathers, and multiple internal injuries, it could not succeed and came down heavily.

Still, the vulture was alive. Abdul sent Ballu for the air-gun; and shot several pellets at the wounded bird from point blank range. To save its life, the vulture rushed out of the main gate and vanished on the main street. Later, I came to know that some street dogs tore the poor bird into pieces. ~~~ On January 3, I saw Abdul had a sudden acute fit of insanity. He began to screech aloud on his own, shook his head sideways and spreading janamaz, the pulpit-cloth, he attended namaz more quickly than usual. He stripped his clothes and ran into the street.

He had to be dragged back by Ballu and Aslam, his nephews.

Perplexed family members called for a Maulvi, who suggested a he-goat to be slaughtered as a mark of sacrifice, for the victim seemed to be under the influence of some foul spirit. But Abdul declared straight away, “Either I can myself fix the problem or nobody can fix it.” Then calling his youngest son Zack aside, he spoke to him in undertone, “If I go somewhere, don’t let anybody know of it.”

And in the wee hour of the same night, when the whole family was fast asleep, Abdul disappeared from his house. Surprisingly, he’d beforehand burnt all his books on alchemy and witchcraft. All that’s left now -apart from his fond memories- are his books on philosophy and Smith’s History of Europe.

And Munshi Ji! He’s still engaged in the gold pursuit, assuming it a possibility, he continues his experiments. However, he misses Abdul a lot and calls him his best pal. I sometimes wonder if Shyama was the cause of Abdul’s death or the killing of the vulture caused it or it’s all just my apprehension. Some secrets should rather remain secrets only, I suppose. Poor fellow Abdul, his rich gold research endeavor, the girl that night in the living room and his sudden death are all yet a mystery to me and to the world at large! ~~~ Christopher Mark, the magazine editor, smiled and nodded after listening to the narrative. We were sitting at Café Holiday in Connaught Place, New Delhi.

“Your story is sharp, poignant, honest, and subtle. Congratulations on writing such a powerful piece! And I don’t see any reason to say no to it,” he said.

“THANKS!” I said, my eyes glittering.

A few moments passed in silence. The waiter, in spotless white dress, came and Mark asked for the bill.

When we stood up to leave after finishing our coffee, he blurted: “By the way Mr. Khan, I want to know one more thing. What connection did you have with Abdul?”

“He was my father,” I said, opening the door of my Alto 800 vxi.

Ziaul Moid Khan Ziaul Moid Khan resides in Johri in North India. His writing has appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Coachella Review, and others. An essay, The Love for Writing, is up-coming in Fiction Southeast. He teaches English at Gudha International School, Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan.

31-32

Edward Lee

King Jones, Resurrected Rehabbed jazzman never dreamed he’d be a milkman— not with these withered legs, this wheeled throne.

But he does feel blessed by the dairy man who gave him this gig.

He listens to the cold and clanking bottles, riffs on new rhythms he’ll play for Barry, Jug, and Skeet tonight.

Last night he dreamed he parked his truck again on the George Washington Bridge, flopped his fishtail, like he was King of the Mermen, and tumbled into the water below.

He awoke wet, worried about milk spoilage.

Today, no longer Tin Pan dead man, he’ll wheel his way along his route, making his morning music.

A jazzman with scales and raw milk aplenty to feed the cats along the way.

Rebecca Suzan Watts Rebecca Suzan Watts is a retired public librarian who lives near Atlanta, Georgia. She studies and works on environmental issues and is a member of the short films screening committee for the Atlanta Film Festival. Her poetry has been published in Firewords, Blue Lake Review, riverbabble, and elsewhere.

Needlework My mother licks the thread, eyeballs her needle, and pits one against the other.

Just visiting, I've put away my daily cares, and perch on the old camel-saddle ottoman at her feet. I try hard to focus on the task at hand and evade her eternal concern: getting me into heaven if I won't change my ways.

While the afternoon unravels, I get a lesson in stitches.

But when she talks salvation, I bring us back to selvage. We curse pricked fingers, mistakes in our designs.

She pulls her thread to the right, and I, with my glinting needle, pull left.

And when the light fades, we pack our work away, sidestepping the wary camel in the room.

Rebecca Suzan Watts

The Exchange The muscled nurse adjusts the drip bag on its pole, smiles and winks at Ms. Elena.

His inked green dragon curls down from his scrub sleeve to snarl at the blur of purple and blue on her needled delicate skin.

Elena studies his art-filled arms.

If this stroke hadn’t muted her, she would ask Did it hurt?

He listens to her belly, Were you drunk? her lungs, Why a dragon? her heart, What is it you will “never forget”?

Elena is dyeing pysanky with her Baba, gone so long ago.

The nurse is there, scrubbed, with his vials and needles. Tubing vines the three of them-Elena, her nurse, her Baba-they sit at her table, telling their stories.

IV bags hang from silver trees, drip an inky spectrum to paint their skin anew.

Wrinkled Baba giggles at her new tattoos.

Elena, with her kistka, wax flowing, draws new symbols on fresh eggs: On one, a tiger, fangs bared, peeks out from wheat and poppies.

On another, a rosed skull in a circle of diamonds.

And the last, a deer asleep beneath falling cherry blossoms.

Rebecca Suzan Watts

Happy Day Center The faded yellow school bus squealed to a halt in front of Walton Drive. The folding doors cranked open in front of a white-haired man in a pinstripe suit and a woman, half his age, wearing a floral morning robe.

“Just try it. You’ll see. It’ll be fine,” Sarah encouraged her father, Dr. Madison.

“For 33 years, I was the chief cardiac surgeon. Now, I’m getting back on the same damn bus that took me to day camp,” he complained.

“Come on dad, the Happy Day Center promised lots of social activities and new friends.”

A grinning bus driver tooted a plastic train whistle and shouted a greeting.

“Welcome aboard, first timer!” Sarah nudged her father forward. “Dad, I promise you’ll have fun—with new friendly people.” Sarah encouraged.

“I’ve seen thousands of people, both their insides and outsides. That’s enough!” he shouted back to his daughter as he lurched forward onto the top step.

“Damn Parkinson’s!” he muttered.

The round-faced driver saw Douglas's gimpy walk. “Maybe you should sit up front with me and keep me company. It's safer up here." He eyed Dr. Madison’s tailored suit, and said, “Those mutts in the back,” gesturing with his thumb, “They wouldn’t appreciate a gentleman like you.”

Dr. Madison steadied himself against a seat railing and gazed backward before sitting. There was a mass of grey-haired bodies, sleeping one atop another—walruses lying motionless upon a sunning rock. A chorus of snores mimicked the ocean tide.

He saw the same bus he rode some 60 years ago. The same tired black leatherette seats. The same empty potato chip bags and soda bottles strewn about the floor. ~~~ A few minutes after the bus began its journey, a smoker’s voice called from the back "Hey, suit man, you got a name?”

Without turning around, he answered in the same monotone voice he had used whenever he entered a new patient's hospital room “I'm Dr. Madison.”

Snickers came from the back of the bus. Dr. Madison overheard the now chuckling voice: “Well, listen to him—a real live doctor.”

Dr. Madison peered backward and spotted an XXXL sweat-suited man poking a grey-haired woman, who was sleeping on his shoulder.

"Hey, Gertie, we got a real live doctor for you here." The woman snorted her approval without opening her eyes.

Moments later, Douglas felt a tap on his shoulder. "Hey, Doc, we go by first names here. You got one?"

Dr. Madison stared at the gum smeared floor. “My name is Douglas."

"Hey Dougie, I'm Frank. How about that? You know, we got something in common. We both used to wear white coats.”

Douglas glared up at Frank and stammered. “You? YOU were a doctor?"

“Nah, I never worked in no hospital,” Frank laughed. “I worked in a meat warehouse. Same sort of thing, right, Dougie? Remember the sound of cracking bones— the smell of fresh meat?”

Douglas slammed his eyes shut in disbelief, as Frank impishly tussled his styled hair before heading to the back of the bus.

As the bus weaved thru traffic, Douglas repeated his stress mantra: “Ohm ManiPedi, Sure.” Soon, there came another tug on his shoulder. "Hey Dougie, not for nothing—but what's with the suit? It's nice tailoring, but you won't be able to do the morning rollover stretches.”

Douglas replied "Now look, Frank, I've worn these suits for over 40 years at the hospital. I think they'll do for whatever goes on at this center. Please, just leave me alone.”

Frank’s heavy frame wobbled to the back and snuggled up to Gertie. She was eating a bag of onion flavored Cheetos as she eyed a muscular sanitation worker hoisting a garbage can. ~~~ When Dr. Madison became chief of cardiac surgery at St. Mary’s, he was the hospital’s Tom Cruise, their ace fighter pilot, their chief priest. The other physicians and operating room nurses made way, out of respect, when the doors swung open

as HE entered the operating room.

Amid gleaming stainless-steel instruments, beeping monitors and the antiseptic smell of scrubbed walls, a human life depended upon him for survival. As he sought leverage using the retractor to get past the hard chest exterior, beads of perspiration were wiped from his brow.

But, as his Parkinson’s disease slowly progressed, his commanding voice softened, his confident stride to the operating table became a slow stumble. His ability to grip a scalpel and control it had put both the patient and the hospital at risk. One day, he lost his grip on an instrument while tying a suture knot, sending the metal instrument clanking to the cement floor. That night, the supervising OR nurse noted in the daily log that “Dr. Madison has lost the ability to keep his hands steady while threading catheters.”

The day after the weekly OR review, he sat in front of the large mahogany desk of Dr. Wilson, the hospital’s chief administrator.

"Dr. Madison, we've known each other since you came to St. Mary's Urban Hospital. Thousands from the inner city have received top-notch treatment because of the pride you took in always doing your best. I think you’ll agree that maybe it's time we let someone else take your place.” A memory tear welled up as Dr. Madison fingered the stethoscope he always kept in his suit pocket.

At the hospital’s suggestion, Dr. Madison took early retirement at age 64. His world changed. A year later his wife Jenny died. He struggled to get by on Medicare and the small hospital pension. He didn’t have much savings. His earnings had gone to paying off his medical college bills and paying for his divorcee daughter’s three children to complete college.

One afternoon over lunch, his daughter Sarah said, “Dad, I have a spare bedroom now that the kids are away. Why don’t you come live at my house?” He jumped at the offer. He sold his one-bedroom coop near the hospital and donated his beat-up Toyota to a local charity.

Douglas then settled into a simplified lifestyle including a vegetarian diet, lengthy meditation sessions and at least three hours per day, listening to Mozart, while strapped into an Olympic rowing machine (a remnant of his earlier life as captain of the Cornell rowing team).

The only irritation, to his otherwise peaceful routine, was the frequent breakfast conversations with well-meaning Sarah.

“Dad, I’m worried that you’re not socializing enough.”

“Sarah. Please. Please. Stop reading those damn geriatric journals and those stupid studies on elderly isolation. I’m fine.” ~~~ The bus shuddered to a halt in front of the Center’s storefront as Douglas stared at the program brochure—a color photo of a weary soul wearing a tilted sombrero as a grinning muscular aide shook maracas at his head. Across the top was a multicolor banner reading “Fiesta! Celebrate! We accept Medicare.”

A human tidal wave of sweat-suited bodies surged forward as the school bus door swung open in front of a dusty storefront displaying a cardboard sign in rainbow-glitter marker: Happy Day Adult Center. A smaller sign read Pre-K Stimulation Center.

Waiting for the last body to pass, Douglas gingerly made his way down the steps. His shiny black moccasins touched down onto a grimy concrete sidewalk. At the darkened entrance, a stern looking young woman grunted “Good morning,” and slapped a happy face sticker on his hand.

Once inside, Douglas recognized the worn green grass carpet from his pediatric hospital rounds, with its geometric pattern of red, blue, and yellow children-sized sneakers with untied laces.

The group swarmed around a folding table covered with donuts and boxes of fruit juice, like oversized cows at a feeding trough. “Better get over here, Dougie,” yelled Frank. “This is it until snack time.”

As the donuts disappeared, white coated aides wearing thick latex gloves herded the group towards chairs placed in a circle where a middle-aged woman began singing a “Good Morning to You” song. ~~~ Mrs. Johnson, a heavily perfumed program administrator, paraded from the back office wearing a flowery dress with jangling gold bracelets on both wrists. "Happy Monday, everybody!” she shouted as she cupped a hand to her ear awaiting a response.

A sleepy “Morning, Mrs. Johnson” response brought a smile to her bronze painted lips. She pulled a clipboard from behind her back and said “A few Merry Monday announcements. Today’s most exciting news--we have a new member, our first

doctor in residence. His name is Dr. Douglas Madison from St. Mary’s Hospital. Stand up Dr. Madison, so we can all give you a Happy Day Center hello!”

Half-hearted hellos echoed as Frank stamped his feet and whistled. Douglas hurriedly stood up and sat down.

Mrs. Johnson continued, without taking a breath, “This week’s memorial schedule: Tuesday for Mrs. Winston and Thursday for Mr. McGowan.

"Now, just a reminder, we skipped fiesta Friday last week because of poor attendance, but we still have those tacos and enchiladas, so let’s try another trip south of the border this week. Oh, and Mr. Grassley, please, no sangria! We will have the usual sombrero dance. Dr. Douglas, you should think about a dance partner!”

Gertie learned forward and winked at Douglas.

“As always,” mumbled Mrs. Johnson, “the staff hopes you have a fun, fun day!

The aides will now escort you to your activities.” She returned into the back office slamming the door behind her.

An aide went over to Douglas and tied a bright red helium balloon to his wrist. It read “I’m new here. Please say hello.” For the rest of Monday, during a break from group activities, Douglas looked about for a out-of-sight corner to hide. ~~~

By Tuesday morning, Douglas had ditched the balloon and secured a quiet floor corner, far away from the mayhem of shifting group activities. He was looking through an old medical journal he had stuffed into his suit jacket pocket when a wide-eyed aide stooped over him and shouted “Douglas, you're isolating. Come over here and play Chinese checkers with the group before naptime.” She smiled, “Your daughter told us to keep an eye on you.”

Wednesday afternoon, Douglas found himself in the timeout corner for refusing to square dance. He used his cell phone to call his daughter hoping that she could spring him from this forsaken place.

“Sarah, please listen. You've got to help me. I’m in detention,” adding sarcastically, “No chocolate pudding for me.”

“What did you do?”

“I threw a juice box at the aide. She wanted to take me to pee-pee.”

Thursday morning, Douglas again called Sarah from the time out corner.

“Today, darling daughter, we are spending the whole afternoon practicing the words to “La Bamba” to get ready for Fiesta Friday—” Before he could finish, the long arm of a muscular aide seized the cell while chiding, “We’ve warned you about that cell.”

The aide pulled Douglas to his feet, “Now you go to the closet, get the castanets, and join the others. I'm going to talk to Mrs. Johnson.” ~~~ Douglas was searching through the closet full of noise makers when his skin grew clammy at the smell of onion breath and a girlish voice.

“Hiya, Dougie. What are you doing? I've been checking you out,” Gertie said, pinching his butt.

Douglas turned to face the grey-haired Gertie with her XXL sized Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt. Her tight torn-at-the-knees jeans and jeweled sandals suggested a woman on the prowl.

With a seductive wink, Gertie whispered "I can tell that you like me. I think you're too much of a gentleman to talk to me because I'm Frankie's girl.” Gertie moved forward to hug Douglas and instead bumped him into the nearby closet. Gertie laughed as she fell on top of him.

Frank walked by waving a tambourine. He eyed the pair snuggling in the closet.

Gertie looked up and winked, hoping to ignite a flame of jealousy in her aging paramour. “Hiya, Frankie, we’re playing doctor.” She kissed Douglas’ forehead while pushing his head against her breasts.

“What are you doing down there with my woman, Dougie?” Frank grunted.

For the rest of the day, Frankie shadowed Douglas, muttering threats. “Mr. Big Deal in his three-piece suit—dangling his pocket stethoscope in front of our women.”

Frank finally cornered Douglas next to a basket of net balls. He grabbed Douglas by his tailored collar, pinned him against the wall, and shouted, “We’re gonna settle this once and for all. Get the table set up in the backroom, boys, while those stupid aides are busy making our lunch.” ~~~ Gertie whooped with excitement as a group of pale aged men sprang into action.

Like high schoolers looking for excitement, they chanted "Fight, fight” as they flung

open a side door and unfolded a card table leaning against a wall. The room’s faded wallpaper furthered the circus atmosphere with its pediatric pattern of primary colored animals doing carnival tricks–-a blue hippopotamus riding a unicycle, a green elephant selling balloons and a red lion walking across a trapeze.

Douglas sputtered in protest, as he was dragged into the now crowded room, unable to free himself from Frank’s meat hook paws. “Frank, I don't want any more trouble, and at our age, all this excitement--” When the pair entered the room, cheers greeted them, like two prize fighters had entered a boxing ring.

A tall bearded man used his cupped hand like a megaphone and shouted, “In this corner weighing 300 pounds, the undefeated champion from the Grass-fed Beef Warehouse—the hometown favorite, Frankie. He was the city's offensive lineman of the year in high school and has hauled meat carcasses for over 40 years.”

Pointing to Douglas, he said, “His opponent, the newcomer from St. Mary’s Hospital, weighing 173 pounds—Dr. Dougie. He went to an upstate college and, er, did some rowing.”

To further rouse the crowd, he added, “Come on now, folks, put some money down—right now the odds are 50 to 1 in Frankie’s favor.”

As the two seemingly mismatched gladiators assumed their seats, Frank smiled to himself. “This should be easy. Look at how his hands tremble. He's scared.”

Douglas strategically wrapped his legs around the plastic chair legs, bracing himself as he did on his rowing machine. He unbuttoned his collar and loosened his paisley silk tie. His tailored shirt hid his sinewy physique. Years of disciplined rowing meant well above average chest and arm strength. Years of wielding a thoracic retractor in the OR, opening thickened chests, meant a natural fluidity with leverage and angular momentum. Gertie kissed Frank’s cheek for good luck as the referee positioned the men's arms and began the countdown.

Frank grinned as his weight advantage initially pushed Douglas’ arm backward.

Douglas’ nerves quickened with the encountered resistance--reminding him of the familiar sensation of oars first dipping into a cool river’s flow. He repositioned his body.

Frank’s brows furrowed at this unfamiliar pushback. Beads of sweat formed on his brow as his body trembled and he began slowly fading backward into his chair. He

rubbed his chest with his free arm. Frank's oversized body toppled onto the grass like carpet with a thud.

Douglas' eyes widened and with the sudden adrenaline rush, Douglas was back in his Emergency Room days. He sprung from his chair, pounded Frank’s chest and shouted. “Call 911. Get the paddles!”

A bald man, using his cane to poke his way forward, waved ping pong paddles.

Douglas poked his stethoscope at Frank’s massive neck arteries, “I'm losing him!”

Gertie cried, “You’re killing him! Dougie is killing my Frankie!”

A minute later, Douglas stumbled to his feet, took off his stethoscope away and solemnly said, "I’m afraid he’s gone.”

Gertie wailed, “Help! Help! Doc killed my Frankie!”

Hearing the screams, Mrs. Johnson rushed from her office, and said “Everybody out of the way! Give him air!” ~~~ When the EMTs arrived, they heaved Frank's limp body onto a gurney, pulled a sheet over his face and rolled him towards the door. Douglas shouted, “I’m his physician. I'm going with him to the hospital.”

Mrs. Johnson grabbed Douglas’ hand. “Douglas, dear, you're not a doctor anymore. Your place is here with us. Why don't you join the others, in the love circle, while we get the bubble machine?”

An aide wheeled a rainbow-colored bubble fan to the middle of the room and set it spinning. As the bubbles blossomed into the air, Mrs. Johnson said, “Now, join hands, everybody, and visualize Frank floating into the universe to the sounds of our goodbye song.”

An out-of-tune chorus followed Mrs. Johnson lead voice “Kumbaya, Lord, Kumbaya.”

A tear streamed down Douglas’ still boyish cheek as he stared at the sneaker patterns on the carpet.

Steve Yarris Steve Yarris is a retired NYC psychologist who writes satirical pieces about the adventures of growing old in a frenetic city.

Money for old soap poverty, ugly as a head on traintracks, and everywhere and tearing things apart. there's a reason the wealthy are generally better looking people, and it's only partly through the selective breeding brought about by the exclusivity of the bars they choose. mainly it's through not being stressed all the time or tired all the time and through getting enough good food and expensive exercise. their skin as smooth as well-used soap and their arms strung muscled, their hair all good-pretty, sure, but featureless like a blank piece of paper. you can't draw them the way you can these lined

and walking oaktrees I see going through summerhill at sunset leaning against a wall--sunlight striking eyes like matches and crumpled tissues setting up sparks.

DS Maolalai DS Maolalai's first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016, with Sad Havoc Among the Birds released this year.

The Prince of Splott The rumours spread as swiftly as an incendiary bomb. As Bessie’s closest friend, Mrs. Durrant told Mrs. Murray, who told Mrs. Shanahan, who told Mrs. Carlin who said she’d known it all along. Mrs. Carlin hurried to tell the two old sisters who lived behind the corner shop, who said they didn’t care and it was none of their business anyway. However, they passed it on to Mavis-the-shop who worked behind the counter on Saturdays and she informed everybody who came in that Bessie Williams had had her baby and that Tom Williams was not the father.

Mrs. Carlin, a sharp-tongued Cockney who had moved to Wales to escape the Blitz in London, only to find no sanctuary in the bomb-damaged, working class district of Splott, in the City of Cardiff on the south coast of that principality, was one of the first to voice her opinion. She hinted darkly with many a knowing wink and cluck of the tongue that she had always known the baby’s father was one of the American servicemen who frequented Bessie’s house while Tom was away working in one of the big aeroplane factories up in the Midlands.

As Mrs. Carlin pointed out with the authority of one raised in a larger and more sophisticated city, Bessie and Tom had been married for fifteen childless years.

“It always seemed funny to me that she should get in the family way with Tom gone so much and all these soldiers in town.”

Not everyone agreed with her. She was, after all, not one of them, coming from England, and in the dark days of the Second World War, with no men around to speak of, all the women had to pull together and nobody was better at that than Bessie Williams. Bessie was always willing to share the last of her coal allotment with a neighbor who had run short. She would hold someone’s place in the endless daily queues at the butcher or greengrocers’ shops and she was one of the first to knock on a neighbour’s door to let her know that a shipment of eggs or tinned meat had just come in down at the grocer’s and did they want some. If someone was too nervous to stay alone in their shelter during the nightly air-raids, Bessie’s was open to them, and

she always had a hot cup of tea and sympathetic ear for those on whom the pressures of war weighed too heavily.

Her generosity extended to the American GI’s stationed in the Welsh seaport waiting to be shipped over to Europe. By and large the Americans were well liked with their loose-hipped swagger and big grins. A “Got any gum, chum?” from one of the local children would invariably result in a tossed chocolate bar or pack of Wrigley’s gum from these generous men. Often they would pile all the neighbourhood children in the back of the green army lorry parked outside Bessie’s house and take them for a hair-raising ride around the block, rounding corners on two wheels while everyone held on breathless and exhilarated. They were a rare treat.

No one then was too concerned that they visited Bessie while her husband was away. After all, with the bombing and life so precarious it seemed silly not to have a little fun while you were still able, and fun was something at which Bessie was particularly good.

Bessie loved to play the piano and sing. Many were the nights when the neighbours would sit out on their front steps listening to the different voices raised in song. I’ll Be Seeing You was a sentimental favourite. We’ll Gather Lilacs another that brought tears to the eyes. And when the party became too rowdy, Bessie would restore order by singing, We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillside and when she got to We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth, everyone became misty-eyed thinking of the homesick husbands and lovers so far away.

“Wouldn’t have them at my house,” said Mrs. Carlin. But why would anyone want to go there? One look at her dingy hallway was enough and Mrs. Carlin was never seen without her grubby apron and her greasy, black hair up in curlers. As far as anyone knew she never took the curlers out so it was not known if her hair were long, short, straight or curly. What was known, however, was that you could be dying of thirst before Mrs. Carlin would offer that first cup of tea.

The neighbours, then, were tolerant of Bessie’s visitors. They added a little excitement to the daily routine and if Bessie did occasionally receive the odd pair of nylons or bottle of whiskey, well, at least she would break open the bottle when things got bad and share with everyone.

Still, when she became pregnant there were a few whispers, she and Tom being married so long without children and all, but everyone, except Mrs. Carlin, agreed that’s what happened when your husband was away and only came home for the odd weekend. The news, then, was a huge shock.

The midwife who attended the birth whispered it to Mrs. Durrant who had gone across the street, not only to see if there was anything she could help with, but also to be the first to learn whether Bessie had a boy or girl. The information then spread across the back fence, in the queue at the butcher’s shop and even as far away as the Ruperra Arms just opened for another night of glass raising. The shocking revelation was on everyone’s lips. Bessie Williams had just given birth to a baby boy who was absolutely, positively, categorically, unequivocally not her husband’s, for this baby had dark skin, soft brown eyes and a mop of tight black curls.

It was not that there was any stigma attached to the child’s dark colouring.

After all, the Cardiff dockside was one happy conglomerate of Arabs, Lazars, Berbers and West Indians of all shades who had floated in like so much flotsam and jetsam on the incoming tide and anchored there.

Some like Moses Williams on Portmanmoor Road had moored long enough to raise a family before taking ship from the grey mists of the Welsh coast to warmer climes. Others stayed permanently to add variety to the landscape and become as Welsh as any native.

No, the problem was that Tom had the fair skin that went with his blonde hair and blue eyes and, although Bessie’s eyes were brown and her hair dark and curly, she had the pink and white complexion of the damp, verdant Welsh valleys. The finger then, pointed indisputably to one of the dark-skinned, dark-eyed servicemen that had until late frequented Bessie’s house.

Mrs. Durrant allowed that she had heard of the same thing happening to a girl who lived over by the docks. Her husband had given her a good hiding before kicking her out. Mrs. Shanahan said there was no knowing what Tom would do to Bessie when he saw the baby. “It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.”

Mrs. Carlin said, “Serves her right for carrying on behind her husband’s back.”

But everyone knew that with her Owen away fighting in North Africa for the past two years she would have been only too happy to be asked.

Still, there was no getting over the fact that Bessie had given birth to a baby that was definitely not her husband’s. She was well and truly caught. The thing that had the neighbourhood agog was what would happen when Tom came home.

The same question was in Bessie’s mind. Though she had written and told Tom of the birth, what with wartime travel the way it was, it would be a few more weeks before he could get a railway pass to come home. In the meantime, as was customary, she was spending the six week lying-in period pondering her dilemma.

Though she did not regret the comfort she had given to the scared, young soldier about to be shipped to the battle zone, she realized how difficult it would be to pass the baby off as Tom’s. That she was going to have to find a way to do it was without question.

Tom was as tolerant of Bessie’s warm nature as she was of his but she could not let him lose face down at the Ruperra Arms or in the neighbourhood. So she set to work thinking of a solution to her problem.

In the meantime the tongues wagged. Mrs. Carlin was certain that Tom would bring his Home Guard rifle home with him. Mrs. Murray said she’d heard of a man going berserk when he’d found out about his wife being unfaithful and having to be locked up. Mrs. Durrant insisted that Tom was not that kind of man and everyone knew how much he loved his wife. “Though,” she added darkly, “you never know what a man will do when he’s pushed.”

Bessie watched daily for the postman’s deliveries, not only for Tom’s letter telling her when he was coming home but also for the special package she had ordered. The baby grew strong and healthy. Everyone agreed what a fine beautiful boy he was.

Bessie’s lying-in was just coming to an end when two letters fell through the flap on the front door onto the mat below. Heart pounding, Bessie picked them up.

One was from Tom saying he had finally obtained a railway pass and would be home that weekend; the other was a large envelope from California in the United States of America. Bessie raised her eyes to the heavens. Her salvation was in sight.

Mrs. Durrant was the first to hear the news. Bustling with importance, as indeed she should have been to carry news of such magnitude, she went straight to Mavis-the-shop.

“You actually saw the photograph?” Mavis asked.

“With my own eyes,” answered Mrs. Durrant, “a fine looking woman.”

Mavis-the-shop told Mrs. Shanahan, who came in ostensibly to buy some brown shoelaces, but in reality to find out what Mrs. Durrant had to say.

Mrs. Shanahan went right away to tell Mrs. Murray, who hurried across the street and shared it with Mrs. Carlin. By nightfall Mrs. Carlin had spread the news far and wide and everyone knew that Bessie Williams's baby was the image of his African great-grandmother.

Mrs. Durrant allowed the same thing happened to someone who lived in her mother’s village up in the valleys and they had traced the baby’s ancestry to a West Indian great-great-grandfather. “A throwback,” she said, nodding sagely.

Not to be outdone, Mrs. Carlin said she had heard of the same thing in London.

In fact, it turned out there was not a person in the working class district of Splott who could not recount a similar experience. Mrs. Durrant, who, by virtue of being the only one who had seen the photograph, appointed herself expert on all matters pertaining to Bessie and her African lineage. She told everyone what a beautiful woman Bessie’s great-grandmother had been.

“There’s something quite noble about her,” she said.

Mrs. Murray said someone told her that Bessie’s great-grandmother was a princess who had left Africa with gold and diamonds sewn into the hem of her dress and when she had married Bessie’s great-grandfather she had founded the family’s fortune. Everyone nodded their heads. After all, Bessie’s parents were the owners of a very successful fish and chip shop in Aberystwyth.

“There’s no telling what that little child is going to inherit,” said the two old sisters who lived behind the shop.

Mrs. Durrant said anyone could tell by looking that the baby had royal blood, “Just see the way he holds up his little head.”

Mrs. Shanahan said she heard that the great-grandmother had actually been a queen not a princess and owned vast estates in Africa. When the baby came of age he would return to claim his land. But since she was Irish her testimony was deemed unreliable.

The news followed Tom all the way from the railway station. By the time he arrived at the house anxious to see Bessie and his new son, he had heard the whole story and it only remained for Bessie to show him the picture of her greatgrandmother that his son so resembled. If he was puzzled by the sudden appearance of such high-born ancestors, he didn’t show it. He was rather pleased with the idea of royalty in the family. He had always thought of Bessie’s parents as rather dull, though respectable, shop-keepers and it gratified him to think he had married into such a noble family.

Later that evening down at the Ruperra Arms amid congratulatory toasts, Tom replied to questions as to why Bessie had kept the family’s royal blood a secret for so long.

“My Bessie’s not one for boasting.”

“That’s the way nobility is,” said Mrs. Shanahan as she sipped her glass of stout. In her younger days she had worked as second housemaid on the estate of the local gentry in her native Ireland and therefore was the expert on everything relating to protocol and the highly born.

If Tom had any doubts about his son’s lineage he quelled them. After all, Bessie had offered a very reasonable explanation for the child’s dark skin, one that he could accept. He was proud of his son’s exotic colouring and when asked who the child took after would go on at great length about his royal ancestry. The working class district of Splott was honoured to have a prince of the blood residing among them.

Mrs. Carlin might boast about how many times she had seen the King and Princesses in London, “I was close enough to touch them.” And other cities might have their resident lord or squire but none had an African prince, heir to half a continent, living among them and people came from streets away just to catch a glimpse of him.

Mavis-the-shop asked the two old sisters to bake meat pasties, then sold them to the crowds flocking into the neighbourhood. Mrs. Murray turned her front parlour into a tea shop though with rationing the way it was, she could only serve fish paste sandwiches and had to re-use the tea leaves so many times customers started to complain.

The stories about Bessie’s great-grandmother grew until she was a legend as great as Boedicaea. She had led armies, conquered vast domains and been sought after in marriage by kings and emperors. It was taken as a great compliment to Splott that she had chosen to marry a Welshman and live in Wales.

Mrs. Shanahan and Mrs. Carlin vied for position of tour guide. Though Mrs. Shanahan had the authority of one who had consorted with nobility, Mrs. Carlin had lived closer to the seat of power.

Through all this Bessie kept her own counsel. Everyone said it was due to modesty.

“You never hear our Bessie boasting,” said Mrs. Murray to Mrs. Carlin who had been known to go on at great length about a rich uncle in London who sold jellied eels from a barrow in Petticoat Lane.

The less Bessie said the more the stories grew until there never was a woman in the whole of history to compare with the great-grandmother of the Prince of Splott.

The photograph itself was revered and Tom, tired of having his tea interrupted, took to hanging it in the front window.

And that is how the American actress, Hattie McDaniels was adopted by and became a legend in the hearts and minds of the people who lived in the small, working class district of Splott, in the sea port of Cardiff in the principality of South Wales.

Trisha Durrant Trisha Durrant is an Asheville, North Carolina author transplanted from the mid-west. She has three books in the Kate and Doris series, Almost Abducted, Body in the Barn, and Chained in the Quonset Hut. She is presently researching and working on a WWII mystery set in South Wales.

Piano Practice The upright in the parlor of the old Victorian is like church.

That’s why Anna’s dragged there against her will, plumped down on the stool, ordered to play scales over and over and over.

Her father is as musical as cement.

But her mother had the dream and poverty defiled it.

There’s money now.

Lessons with Mrs. Andryziak.

And two hours practice a day.

Anna’s fingers hurt.

Her wrists ache.

And the wild boys are playing outside in the street.

Her head, her heart, are with them.

The rest of her spans a single octave.

John Grey John Grey is an Australian poet who resides in the United States. Recent publications include The Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, North Dakota Quarterly and others.

Walking on Water She walks across the frozen lake, stutters at sharp ridges where water forgot itself in a moment of wind and reached beyond gravity to merge with sky, then froze in midwave. She waves at me.

I wave back, our own moment that breaks this calm then freezes again.

Richard Dinges, Jr Richard Dinges, Jr has recently published in North Dakota Quarterly, Gravel, Old Red Kimono, and others. He holds an MA in literary studies from University of Iowa and manages information systems risk at an insurance company.

Deeper November

Deborah Levine-Donnerstein

Yesterday Again It was only yesterday, feels like, two weeks go by so fast, I got a husband, Jake, 42 years married, good man, and his heart give out, the doc he say congestive failure, and I am alone in a dinky apartment close to downtown. What do I do downtown at my age? Daytimes I walk around. Funnylooking new fashions in department store windows like in a foreign country. Showcases crammed with stuff. I never seen so much. Why take hours looking? Nothing I want. Nobody to shop for. You can look in the same stores only so many times. My kids Robert and Doris come out from California when Jake took sick. Robert got a job and family. Doris helped me sell my cottage, too big for me now. I guess she is right. She went back to California, the south part. Robert lives up north. His city got a Spanish name. Doris calls me on the telephone. I say I am fine. She can hear in my voice I am not happy. She comes out to take me to live with her and her husband in California and we get in a big argument.

All my brothers and sisters live here, I say.

So where are they, Ma? They got families. They are busy.

What good are they, if they dont visit you?

I can visit them any time I want.

Then why dont you?

I cant drive. Jake did all the driving. I can learn.

At your age you will pass a driving test? Ma, I dont think so.

I will take the bus.

What happens if you take a fall? Who will take care of you? Come back with me. We got a spare room. The trailer park is nice too.

If I go to California I will never see my family again.

Stay here and how much will you see me? And Robert and his kids? They are your grandkids.

California is so far.

Ma, I will pack your things and ship them. We will take a plane to your new home. Airplanes are safe these days. Now you got to start packing. Give away them heavy clothes you wont need in California.

Doris always been pushy. I give Jakes car to my sister Angie. I am scared of flying. Pretty quick I get use to it. We are higher than the clouds. The land looks miniature instead of me being high up. My room in her trailer is tiny. It got enough closet space. Her husband is quiet. He dont talk much. I give her half my Social Security check to help out. I am not a big eater. The trailer park is empty all the time. People here stay indoors. When they go out they drive cars. Not much out here. I walk around the trailer park a couple times. I seen it all. The trailers look pretty much the same. Her husband travels around the county. He fixes washers and dryers for laundromats. He makes good money. Besides, he finds loose change in the machines. Free money. He gets a kick out of it. He works six days a week. Comes home late and tired every day. They go to bed early. Doris wont take me grocery shopping. I slow her down cause I pick out the best produce. Doris is bossy. I complain, You wont let me help with the cooking.

Ma, I make supper faster when you are not in the way.

When I go to bed early I dont sleep so good. I get a notion. Doris, I should visit Robert.

Its a long trip by bus. He can phone you.

He writes to us. Nice letters. My grandkids are twelve and ten now. I never seen them. They got a house and a big spare room. I could stay a week.

I know you. You wont come back. You want to move there.

Just visit. You could come too.

I cant leave for a whole week. I can see through you, Ma. You think you are so clever. You want to run out on me. You wont come back. No, you are not going. Thats settled.

How did I get such a mean daughter?

We will do more things together. Go shopping. You can pick out what we have for supper. On rainy days we can play cards.

I hate playing cards. Back home me and my brothers and sisters would sit around and talk. Even after Papa and Mama passed, we always had things to talk about. I miss them.

Doris tries for a while. We go to the store. She drives us to a park and we walk under nice trees. I see birds I never seen before. We talk about her father Jake and the family and life before she was born. It goes good. Again I say I should visit Robert.

She gives me this suspicious look. Ma, your home is here. Tell you what, we will write and invite him here, him and his family. They can stay at the nice motel down the street.

I write the letter. Robert writes back he just had his vacation this year. Next year is a long time to wait. I can go up there and stay long as I like.

Doris sulks. Fine, she says, next year. Now no more about Robert.

Pretty soon everything is back like it was. Doris makes excuses. I stay in alone while she goes out shopping. She forgets I like the park and the birds. We dont go back. We go months without no letter from Robert. That is new. I ask Doris, you sure we got no mail from him?

You see when the mailman goes by. You watch me bring in the mail.

You dont show me all the mail you get.

Yes I do, Ma. All the letters. I drop the junk mail in the garbage can. Why carry it in the house when I throw it out anyway?

I want to write a letter to Robert.

All right, she says real snippy, you write it and you go put it in the mailbox yourself.

I write the letter after supper. She says let me read it.

Why? So I can add a few words. Robert is my brother, you know.

I already sealed it and put a stamp on it.

Whats your big hurry to seal it? Tear it open. I got more envelopes and stamps.

I get mad. I tear it in half and drop it in the kitchen garbage can. She says you had no need to do that.

I go to my room and shut the door. I cant sleep. I got to do something.

Every day I go out in the back yard. Its small, hard ground, some weeds, no flowers. I cant see nothing past the high board fence, only the roofs of trailers. I sit in a white plastic outdoor chair every day. Doris dont watch me so much. She figures she can leave me alone in back. One day I hear voices on the other side of the fence. Two women. I go to the fence and listen. A woman lives there alone. She has a visiting friend. They are widows. After supper I go to my room and write Roberts telephone number on the envelope of his last letter. Every day I keep my apron on after I finish the breakfast dishes. It got a big pocket to put the envelope in. I sit in the outdoor chair. When Doris is not looking I knock on the fence. A whole week I do this. Doris says why dont you take take off the apron when you go outside?

Sometimes I forget. Is that a crime?

I worry about you.

My head is fine.

She leaves me alone after that. One day I hear the neighbors voice. Why are you knocking?

I am a widow like you. You know Doris my daughter?

No. I thought I had a woodpecker in the yard.

I am a prisoner here.

What do you mean, you are a prisoner?

Doris watches me like a hawk. She wont let me leave. She wont let me talk to my son. Can you take a message to him?

The woman is quiet. Gone away? Then she says how can I give him a message?

I take the envelope out of my apron pocket and reach as high as I can and toss it over the fence. After a minute she says I will call him tonight.

Tell him dont write. I dont get his letters. I will stay close to the telephone.

Doris and her husband go to bed early as usual. Doris is suspicious. I say I cant sleep. I will have warm milk and go to bed soon.

She shuts their door. I sit at the table by the telephone. I am about to doze when the telephone rings. It surprises me and I grab it before it rings again and I almost drop it. Doris door stays closed. Its Robert. He asks what is going on?

I whisper I am a prisoner here.

I can hardly hear you.

I dont want to wake Doris.

The neighbor lady said you want to leave.

Doris wont let me go out. She runs my life.

You want me to come and get you?

Yes. Whats the best day?

Any day except Sunday. Her husband is home Sundays.

I can take this Friday off. Its a long drive. I will leave Thursday night and be there Friday after noon.

If her green Taurus is not in front of the house, she is out. Did you hear that?

Yes. Pack one suitcase and keep it under your bed. Hang up now before she catches you.

I do as Robert instructed. I am too excited to sleep. The next day Doris notices I am dragging around. She says if you dont sleep you will get sick.

On Friday Doris keeps watching me. You look fidgety.

I get restless, stuck in the house all the time.

Go sit in the back yard. You like that.

I am tired of sitting in the yard.

You are up to something.

She goes to my room and looks around. She comes out with my packed suitcase. What is this? Why did you pack those clothes?

I did not unpack them.

Yes, you did. You packed them again. Are you planning to run away?

How? I got no money.

You are acting real suspicious.

After lunch I help clean up. I sit in the easy chair so she wont think I am waiting at the telephone. I close my eyes to wait for Robert. Doris says if you are tired take a nap.

I am not tired. Maybe you should get me something from the drug store so I can sleep better.

So you can make a phone call while I am away?

You check the bill every month. Did I ever make a telephone call?

Not yet.

Then stay home all the time. Dont go nowhere. We can eat out of cans.

Ma, I worry about you. You need to sleep. I will go to the drugstore right now.

Come with me?

What a treat. Shopping at the drugstore. You go. Better take my suitcase with you so I dont run away.

Dont be silly, Ma. You dont feel like going out, fine. I will be right back.

Tonight you will sleep like a baby.

I go to the window and see her drive away. I hear knocking at the door. Its Robert. He says ready to go?

I got my suitcase right here. Are you hungry?

We can stop on the road.

He grabs my suitcase. I go to the fridge and put sliced cheese and bread in my purse. I take the ketchup bottle. I paid for it. He says hurry. On Doris pad for shopping lists I write a note. Robert is here. I am going back with him. Ma. I make sure to lock the door behind us. He tells me to wait and he runs down the block. In a couple minutes he drives up. Pretty soon we are out on the freeway. I think of something. Doris was not away a minute before you showed up. She could have seen you. How did you get to the door so fast?

I was hiding under the trailer. Its propped up high enough, I had plenty of room. I could hear you arguing with her. If I sat in my car too long I would look suspicious.

I make sandwiches. We eat while he drives. After dark we stop in a city and get supper in a nice restaurant. Doris never took me out to a restaurant. Robert fills a thermos with coffee to stay awake. We get to his house after midnight. We are careful not to wake his wife and kids. My room is ready. I sleep like a baby.

Saturday afternoon Doris telephones. Roberts wife answers. They argue and Roberts wife hangs up on her. Those two dont like each other. She is ten years younger than Robert. She is blonde and a little heavy. My family all got dark brown

hair and we are thin. Robert put on some weight. The boys are well behaved. They call me Gramma. I help Roberts wife with the cooking and cleaning. Robert is home for supper every night. At Thanksgiving we go to her parents house in the mountains.

Her family welcomes me. They talk among themselves and I listen. I dont have much to say and they dont ask me questions. I am in a family again.

Roberts wife takes me Christmas shopping. She helps me pick out games for the boys. Her and Robert wear nice clothes and he has plenty of expensive neckties and since I am not up on the latest styles I get robes for him and her. They give me two nice sweaters. One is a pullover. The other one buttons up. We get Christmas cards from Doris. She writes a note on my card. It says Ma, I hope you are well. Sorry you left. I am not angry. I will always welcome you back."

Roberts wife scoffs. People dont change overnight.

My brothers and sisters reply to my cards. Joe and Sam still go fishing off the pier. Angies varicose veins are better. She likes Jakes car. Lucille and Rita work part time. Their husbands might retire soon. Megs husband got in the State Assembly.

Here winter does not get freezing cold like back east. I go grocery shopping with Roberts wife. They never ask me for rent or food money, so I pay at the store sometimes. The boys are used to me and they listen real polite when I talk to them.

Sometimes they snicker. For kids everything is funny. The back yard is all lawn with a table and chairs and a barbecue. One Sunday Robert has a bunch of friends and neighbors over for hamburgers in the back yard. They are about his age. They bring California wine and desserts. We never had wine at home, me and Jake. Some of them talk to me. I sit at a card table and smile when I dont know what to say. I am glad being here I dont change the family routines. Some Saturday nights Robert and his wife go to a restaurant and a movie. They invite me along but movies dont interest me. I am content to babysit. Many times I think I am not here. When I say something, they listen. They got things on their minds and try not to look bored.

Young people should not have too many burdens. I miss my dear husband but he is gone. I should have my own place. I ask Robert about senior housing. He says there is a place in town. His wife says I should stay here. The kids like having their Gramma around. I ask her to put my name in.

I go downtown with his wife to a tall building. The people are nice. They have a short waiting list. Sure enough, in one month they have a vacancy. Roberts wife and the boys help me move. They carry my clothes up to my new apartment. A delivery truck brings a color TV. On a decorator table by the wall I can watch it easy from the sofa. Roberts wife says her and the kids will visit every week. We will go shopping together. Robert will come by on weekends.

The apartment is clean, with modern furniture. Its on the tenth floor with a big picture window. I can see most of downtown. People on the street look like tiny walking dolls. At sundown I stand at the window and watch the street lights go on. I send Doris my new address and she writes back I should return to her. She writes a mother and daughter need to be together. She can drive up here and take me back. She promises to do all she can to make me happy. I get three letters from her the first week.

After dark, street lights and store lights look like a lot is going on. Not much traffic downtown at night. The streets glisten with dew. Every night even Fridays and Saturdays the sidewalks are empty by ten o'clock. Every night I stand at my window and look at the streets until the people and the cars and buses are gone. Once in a while a long trailer truck will arrive and park behind the department store. At lunch and supper I sit at the sofa with my plate and cup and saucer on the glass top coffee table and I watch TV. I use to sit with Jake and watch the news. I liked sitting with him. I would listen to him talk about politicians like he knew them in person. He did not trust them much. I know he wanted to. I watch the news cause there is nothing else on that is real. I turn off the TV after the weather report. Often I eat without bothering to turn it on.

I write to Doris. Come get me when you are ready.

Don Dussault Don Dussault lives in the San Francisco North Bay. His work has appeared in Azure, Gargoyle, Adelaide, and elsewhere.

Dusk on Isle Waters Blue-violet sky opens to sheer ivory dove clouds, as they fan overhead in dusts of color.

I watch their wider glow transform to a mix of lavenders and white in even-winged edges, late swans, in an afternoon skyline.

Clear ocean voices join my laced thoughts, and tide movements become my new pathways.

Sun treads lower on slate patterned waves in grays and azure, and its brilliance emits tones of golden glass.

Shimmering to burgundy, its rays disappear, shading me at a deeper hour, in navy-night waters.

This is where you found me, under half-globe darkness amid fathoms of changing promise.

Deborah Levine-Donnerstein Deborah Levine-Donnerstein’s past work appeared in Santa Barbara Anthology (Community of Voices), Curiouser and Curiouser, and other publications. Retired from the faculties of the University of California and University of Arizona, she began writing more fiction and poetry in Asheville, North Carolina.

The Alcohol Consuming Exile of Hess County It was the first Friday since March that there wasn’t a drop of or sign of rain.

Ray and his boy, Hank, headed down to the Meet-Up after Ray got off work. The Meet-Up, a cozy, dimly lit round belvedere structure that was large enough to comfortably fit one hundred and fifty persons and was surrounded almost entirely by dense woods, was where the local socialites did their chatting and because everyone over the age of nineteen had at least one kid, it was where all of their kids really got to know each other outside of the school house. The Meet-Up wasn’t a place for revelry and debauchery but an unspoken place of gossip and mightier than thou attitudes where the depravity was well hidden behind wide smiling faces. The MeetUp was for the honest church goers. It was a place to highlight accomplishments in the community and then pretend to listen as others did the same. There was occasionally music from a fiddle or someone strumming a guitar but the music was overwhelmingly ignored by the attendees of the Meet-Up. Ray didn’t so much like the gossip and the braggadocious jabbering; in fact, Ray, like most of the men, just stood off to the side talking about crops and tractors and how long the work days were and how nothing could be done about it. Since Lorraine had passed, Ray never missed the company down at the Meet-Up and it was good for Hank, too. Hank was a quiet boy and never really showed interest in baseball and football or harassing the children who wore glasses glasses or had limps. Hank just kind of kept to himself. So Ray liked taking him to the Meet-Up where he hoped Hank would find friendship.

It was always the same story though, every time. Hank would disappear into the woods while the other kids his age would wrestle, play tackle football or throw rocks at each other. When Hank would show back up towards the end of the night, he’d always have some little specimen with him. One time Hank came back with what he thought was a space rock and what Ray quickly discovered was hardened deer droppings. But sometimes, the specimen was more of a trinket, like small metal bands intricately bent around each other, often creating broach like designs. Hank always

said that they were just things he’d find on the forest floor and Ray never thought much more about it. Hank would always come back in time to leave and so Ray really had nothing to complain about.

It was a few Fridays later, that Ray became suspicious of his son’s affairs in the woods. Hank appeared through the thick underbrush of the woods with a Star of David patch pinned to his flannel. Ray asked him where he got it and Hank said he found it on the forest floor, just like everything else he brought back. The next Friday, as Hank ambled off into the woods like he did every Friday, Ray, giving a wide berth, followed his son into the thicket.

Due to Ray’s size, navigating his way through brambles wasn’t as painless as he imagined it was for Hank but he didn’t let it deter him. He could still make out the yellow lines of Hank’s flannel but the red and green lines were scarcely detectable.

The moon was shining through the tree tops and lighting up Hank’s curly yellow blond hair, his head Ray’s guiding light. A light began to make itself apparent about a hundred and fifty yards from Ray, maybe a hundred yards from Hank. Ray began to close in on his son a little quicker now that he realized someone else was there.

He closed in close enough to see his son moving out of the thick of the underbrush and out into an open area where a fire was roaring and tent was haphazardly pitched. Then Ray made out a figure, much larger than his son gyrating from behind the fire, hopping around in a feat of gesticulation. Ray, under the assumption the character was on the verge of harming his son, burst through the brush that he’d been onerously trudging his way through, unseen branches snapping him on the cheek and in the eye.

“Hank. Get over here now,” Ray demanded. Both Hank and the figure dancing around the fire froze in bewilderment. Ray’s face was lined with welts and scrapes from brambles and the wild branches. The dancing figure, which was now clear to Ray to be a sinewy, middle aged man with stringy hair streaming down from the top of his head into his face, stopped its movement long enough to take in Ray’s face and let out a guttural chuckle.

“What’s so damn funny then?” Ray said. Hank remained frozen in the perplexity of the situation.

“Well, the woods are supposed to be your friend. You look like you’ve been getting in fights with them,” the man said through a wide smile. Ray could feel the warmth of the fire on his jeans and it was an unwelcome comfort in what was to him a truly outlandish and aggravating situation.

“Come on, Hank. Let’s go,” Ray said.

“But dad, Mr. Kofax isn’t dangerous. Heck, he couldn’t hurt a fly,” Hank said.

The name Kofax struck Ray as familiar. Ray commanded his son to come with him once again and an acquiescent Hank led the way back toward the Meet-Up. For the next few days, the name Kofax continued to tumble through Ray’s thoughts until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to find out where he knew the name from.

Ray went to the paper and rummaged through archives.

“Looking for anything specific? Something on your record breaking season?” the editor of the paper, Elmer Purkey, asked Ray. “I’m looking for anything on a Kofax. Caught my boy out in the woods hangin’ out with a the guy at his campsite. Hank called him Mr. Kofax. I know I know the name from somewhere but for the life of me I just don’t know where.”

“Check through the Spring of ‘46. I bet you’ll find what you’re looking for,” Elmer said to Ray with a comforting air of confidence. Before Ray could thank him, Elmer was off across the room sitting on the desk of Mary Gaitskill, his new reporter.

Ray started his looking in February of ‘46 just to be safe but nothing came up. Onto March then April and still no luck. Then he came to something of interest. May 5, 1946: Charles Kofax, a Purple Heart veteran, gets home from the war, gets locked up for public intoxication and starts a riot in the jailhouse all in the same night. Hess County is, was and likely always will be a dry county so the town was real hard on Kofax. Ray was in high school at the time and remembered the occasion vaguely. He mostly remembered what his mom and his friends were saying about Kofax. About how he was the devil and how he was going to bring hell upon the town if he stayed.

It had to be him, out there all alone in the woods. Drinking homemade mash liquor and dancing around his fire. Eating berries and squirrels he managed to trap. Ray made Hank promise him that he wouldn’t go back out into the woods to see Mr. Kofax. Hank begrudgingly promised his dad he wouldn’t go see Mr. Kofax anymore.

Whether Hank had any intention of keeping true to that promise was at the time unknown even to Hank.

A few Fridays at the Meet-Up came and went and it was obvious that word had gone around about Ray’s boy’s clandestine journeys out to the deep of the woods where he’d hang out with an exiled lunatic. And even worse, an alcohol consuming exiled lunatic. Nobody in Hess County drank and if you did you weren’t someone in Hess County. And nowhere had Ray seen dancing like the dancing of Mr. Kofax that night. People danced sometimes but it was all very respectable, usually in large groups as line dances. Nothing so suggestive as Mr. Kofax had demonstrated.

“What's he look like?” the Bishop boy asked Hank at the Meet-Up on Friday, April 27.

“No, no. Who cares about that? What's he smell like?” Spence Martin asked.

Hank had been minding his own business, fiddling with a knick knack Mr. Kofax had given him. Mr. Kofax enjoyed having Hank visit him. Hank would just sit and listen to his stories about being in other places and some stories about killing other men.

Hank never really understood the extent and weight of the stories but liked how animated Mr. Kofax would become while he told them. And how the more Mr. Kofax pulled from his clear jars, often letting the liquid from them run down his cheeks onto the tight skin of his chest, the more he danced between stories and then he’d always send Hank on his way with a keepsake. A gesture of thanks for being good company.

When word got out that Mr. Kofax was living deep in the woods, a group of gossipers, mostly mothers with imaginations running wild with extravagant and grotesque scenarios, concerned for the health and safety of their fledglings, but also a few men concerned about the safety of their wives, spread across the woods in search of the campsite. Upon discovering it, the group leader, Beulah Bishop, raised a flabby arm to stop the progress. The gang watched cautiously and attentively from the protection of a thick bramble the scene of the campsite which was lighted by an undulating fire. Around the fire danced Mr. Kofax with a big glass mason jar splashing this way and that. Beulah Bishop had seen everything she had needed to see. She motioned for the group to head back and when they were out of earshot of the campsite informed everyone she’d be in contact with the sheriff, post haste.

“My mom said that he lost his all his toenails in the war and now the devil seeps through the ground up into his body through his toes and that’s why he dances like that,” Bobby Bishop had said to Hank at school a few days earlier.

“That’s why I always wear shoes,” Spence added.

When the gang appeared from the woods, Ray realized he hadn’t seen Hank in a while and moved about the Meet-Up searching for him and calling out his name.

When it appeared that he was nowhere to be found he went to Spence and Bobby whom Ray had seen Hank talking to earlier in the night. They shrugged their shoulders and both unconsciously glanced at the woods. Ray understood the situation perfectly well and took off to the campsite where he found his son sitting on a stump, uproariously laughing at a very animated and shoeless Mr. Kofax laying on his back and waving his feet in the air.

“That’s it, Hank. And you promised you’d stay away. Let’s go. Now,” Ray said.

He was furiously gesticulating, almost like Mr. Kofax had been the first time Ray had seen him.

“Come on, man. The kid just wants to have a little fun. He’s suffocating around all those stuffy windbags back there,” Mr. Kofax said. “We aren’t hurting anything.

Plus he’s mighty good company.”

“If you think for one second I’m gonna let my son live like a pagan out here disrespecting himself and the laws of the county then you really have lost your mind Mr. Kofax.”

“Listen to your pa, Hank. He knows what’s best for you,” Mr. Kofax said, half sarcastically taking a pull from one of his jars.

“Now, Hank,” Ray said. He grabbed a hold of Hank’s sleeve and Hank jerked loose.

“I want to stay here, with Mr. Kofax,” Hank pleaded. “He’s the only smart person in this whole county. I hate everyone else. Mr. Kofax is the only one that’s any fun to hang out with. And he’s showing me how to dance to impress the girls,” Hank said.

“Damnit, Hank. No. It’s over. Now let’s go. And you’ll never be seeing Mr. Kofax again. It’s for your own damn good.” Hank had never heard his dad use two

curse words in such close succession. Ray looked right into Mr. Kofax’s eyes and said, “You better watch your ass, Kofax.” Ray had to practically drag his son away from the campsite. “Keep on dancing, kid,” was all that Mr. Kofax said.

With Hank thrown over his shoulder, Ray appeared from the woods to the delight of a conglomeration of southern socialites looking for just this type of entertainment on a Friday night at the Meet-Up. “That boy’s headed straight for hell,” Beulah Bishop could be heard muttering.

“He’s got his momma’s wild genes,” said someone else.

Spence and Bobby ran up behind Ray where Hank’s upper body lay limp against his father’s back.

“Is it true, Hank? About the toenails?” Bobby whispered.

Hank didn’t grasp the question immediately but after a moment of thought lifted his head from his father’s lower lumbar, cracked a smile and nodded a discreet nod. The boys went wild.

When they got home, Ray gave Hank a whipping for the ages and he took it only shedding a few tears. It wasn’t often that Ray had to whip his son, but this time Hank was asking for it. He’d embarrassed Ray in front of the whole town. No longer could Ray let it slide. Hank retired to his room after a short supper of stew and cornbread and stayed there all weekend, not coming out once. Monday morning came around and it was time for Hank to go to school. Ray had intentionally left his son alone all weekend. To let him think about his wrongdoing. But now Ray requested his son come downstairs and get ready for school. When there was no apparent stirring upstairs, Ray decided he’d go reason with his son. Explain that everything he did was in Hank’s best interest and that sometimes it was hard to deal with that reality but that was just the way it was and that Hank would understand when he was older.

Ray knocked on Hank’s door and when there was no answer, turned the knob which was locked. Ray, frustrated now and growing more frustrated by the second, began banging on the door, demanding that Hank open it. When it became apparent that maybe Hank wasn’t in the room, Ray put his shoulder through the door and it crashed open, swinging hard against the wall, the knob leaving quite an impression.

On the floor of Hank’s bedroom, Ray discovered a knife, ten toenails speckled with

blood and a little trail of blood leading out the window. The scene both confused and sent a horrifying shiver down Ray’s spine. He knew where his son was. He knew that if he could see his son now, he’d see shoeless feet covered with socks soaked to the ankle in blood. He would see that curly blonde mop bouncing in the clear country morning air. He would see tears streaming over soft slightly chubby cheeks past a wide smile. He would see his son, happier than he’d ever seen him, letting the devil into himself, dancing his life away with the alcohol consuming exile of Hess County.

Nick Skoda Nick Skoda is from Knoxville, Tennessee but currently lives in St. Louis, where he writes for a weekly newspaper. He says he is trying his best not to end up like the characters in his stories.

A Stranger a stranger is your family in peace worried in shadows your life

trees

stutters

the

stranger is home let’s welcome him/her with flamethrowers and melancholy switch it up at “random” intervals until no one knows which is which we need a kill switch this thanks giving us something more than

bones and carcass and what’s left on our plates Rick Pieto

Rick Pieto is a visual poet and writer who has work forthcoming in The Big Windows Review. His visual poetry has been exhibited at Rhizome DC and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center and published in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine. He lives near Silver Spring, Maryland, and has taught at Georgetown University and University of Baltimore.

Hummingbirds their concern

the labyrinth

of wildflowers or geographies in midair the labyrinth --something untamed inside-brings them with worn-out possessions like the labyrinth

to hover in midair memory

will teach us to live with

broken things.

Rick Pieto

Sabotaged by Kindness “It’s time to move, Amy,” said my husband, a retiree of two years. “Face facts and resign from your job. It’s time to move to a new place—one with more moderate weather and less expenses and fewer headaches.”

As any happily married couple, I responded thoughtfully, “Are you out of your mind?!!! I love my job. What would I do with retirement? Sit at home knitting (which I don’t know how to do) and playing cards (which I don’t know how to do) and exchanging medical condition stories (which I want to avoid at all costs)!!!!”

“I’ve been researching,” my husband Bob began. I stopped listening as soon as I heard him say researching. If we needed a washing machine or a toothbrush or even a number 2 pencil, Bob would research it.

“WELL, what do you think?” asked Bob impatiently.

“What do I think about what?” As soon as the sentence left my mouth I knew I was in troubled waters. Senior married couples by and large do not really listen to each other.

“ASHEVILLE as a place to live!” yelled my exasperated husband.

“Nashville? The country music place?”

“No, no, no! Asheville with an A. It’s the place to retire according to 15 magazines who rank it in the top ten communities for retirees. It’s in North Carolina—-wait don’t make that disapproving face of a liberal. It’s a forward thinking town. It’s in the South but ringed by mountains so it’s cooler in temperature. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountain Range and beautiful. It’s a meeting place of art, music, theatre and they have a senior college there where you can attend and I can teach!”

“I’m not moving,” was my defiant reply.

“Robert our hairdresser [we both used Robert’s services] loves it and would relocate there himself if it weren’t for his grandchildren being in New Jersey,” Bob countered, not giving up.

Still, I did not understand how on one September day in 2014, I was on a plane bound for Asheville with my excited husband at my side. Bob’s seat was surrounded

by maps and guide books of Asheville and the surrounding area. When he learned the guy in front of us was an Asheville native, Bob bounded out of the seat next to me and sat down with his new Asheville friend Trey. I wondered smugly to myself, who names their kid Trey? Later I learned that Asheville is full of guys with the third after their name, so hence the nickname Trey. My aggravation only grew when the plane steward accidentally spilled a Diet Coke on me as he passed it to another passenger. Now I was fuming and got even angrier noticing how quickly Bob seemed to forget I was with him as Trey consumed all his attention.

Our little plane landed on the uncrowded runway of Asheville Regional Airport.

I had to admit quietly to myself that the approach to Asheville was filled with beautiful mountain vistas. But I reminded myself to RESIST. I was singing to myself, “We shall not be moved....” Then of course I had to locate my husband who had attached himself to Trey like a tick reluctant to leave his new host.

The baggage return was a VERY short walk from the gate. HOWEVER our bags were not to be found. I had a foul and angry mood billowing up like angry thunderclouds. Then the airline agent called me “Honey” and I completely lost it. Trey had disappeared wanting no part of this recent friendship. Bob was embarrassed. I was in sweaty, smelly clothes which were also horribly sticky from the spilled soda. Just before an ambulance was to be called to take me for psych evaluation, the agent promised to find our bags and promised to pay for our rental car while we were in Asheville.

We drove to the hotel which was actually outside of Asheville in Candler. This booking was the result of Bob’s brilliant research in which he did not realize that Candler was not in Asheville but actually some distance away. It took some time to get to the hotel as we took many wrong turns before we found it. Once in the hotel, I was able to shower and then discovered our bags had miraculously been found and were delivered to our room.

My mood improved slightly after a delicious lunch in which I was introduced to the concept of “to-go-cups.” As we were going to pay the bill, the server asked “Do you want a to-go-cup?” Then she explained that for no charge, you can be given a big take out cup of whatever beverage you have been drinking. My hard armor against

Asheville was starting to melt. This was a little perk I could greet with open arms or mouth.

Then on to a gem museum where I managed to knock over a large display of geodes and I apologized profusely. “You’re fine!” was the response. Wait, what was this? Not ”You stupid idiot!” Not ”Watch where you are going”? Just “You’re fine.”

And no hard feelings. A person could get used to a place like this I thought, grudgingly.

A visit to Jonas Gerard’s art studio was next on our agenda. I immediately fell in love with the eccentric Casablanca born artist. He took us aside after we made several comments about how we loved his work. We confessed we were thinking of moving to Asheville permanently. He regarded us both seriously, and spoke in a gravelly voice, “It’s not the water and it’s not the mountains that make people want to move here abruptly. It’s the crystals underneath the ground.”

While we pondered his appraisal, several people came up to us and confirmed the “Asheville mystique.” One of Jonas’s assistants said she and her husband were driving through Asheville when their car broke down and needed a part that had to be ordered. When the part finally came three days later, the couple decided to quit their jobs and move to Asheville immediately. We came across stories like this one throughout our week’s stay in Asheville.

The next night we were eating at a downtown Mexican restaurant with an outdoor garden. Bob and I were yelling, er, discussing whether to move or not. Our waiter came up and remarked, “Ma’am you didn’t eat a bite. Do you not like the food, because I’m glad to get you something else.” Taken aback by his kind concern I responded, “No, it’s just that my husband and I are trying to decide if I should quit my job in New Jersey and relocate here permanently.” His face lit up and he ripped a huge sheet of paper towels off the roller nearby. He began to write down different neighborhoods we should explore as places to live. A woman at the next table called, “Waiter!” Our waiter looked up from his writings and responded, “Just a minute ma’am these people are in the middle of making a life changing decision of whether to move here.” The woman apologized and then began making her own suggestions for places to explore.

We left the restaurant and I was in a kind of zombie state. What kind of people give you a to-go cup, tell you that you’re fine when you knock over their property and then take time away from their job to give you suggestions on places to live when you are a total stranger to them?!!!

We went to our rental car and after I got in, the door stuck on the curb. I began to call out to my husband, “BOB my door is stuck...” when this young man bounded up to my door. I grabbed my purse from the floor and yelled, “Back off!”

The stranger replied, “”So sorry to have startled you, ma’am. I was just trying to help you close your door.” I blushed my apology.

Then turning to Bob, I declared with defeat, “Well that’s it. Now we ARE going to have to move here. I’ve been sabotaged by kindness.”

Amy Star Amy Star started writing stories and plays in childhood. A recovering English major, she joined her first writing group in New Jersey in 1995 and rediscovered the joys of writing. She and her husband moved to Asheville five years ago.

Waiting Now, I live more in shadow than light.

Oh, a good book allows me to escape beyond myself, and the sizzle of a porterhouse still evokes a frisson of delight, but, mostly, time passes without distinction—one day bleeding into the next, Saturday no different from Monday.

Family and friends who shared my past gone the way of the dodo, impossible to replace.

I'm like Odysseus coming home to Ithaca, recognized by no one except his dog.

And I find myself wondering when I stopped caring about stains on my blouse.

Martha Golensky Martha Golensky began writing after retiring from the faculty of the School of Social Work at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her first poetry collection, Pride of Place, was released in February, 2018. She currently teaches writing as a volunteer at the Shepard's Center of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Norma is a resident at my mother’s care facility.

She’s around 90 years old, and is always sitting in the hallway that leads to my mother’s room.

Norma has dementia, but her dementia isn’t obvious all of the time. Sometimes she seems to be perfectly lucid, but other times she’s completely off, like yesterday when she told me, “My car is parked outside with the motor running, and I’m afraid someone will steal it!”

After telling me this she started crying, and it took me a few minutes to calm her down.

Occasionally I’ll see her sitting there with eyes closed, talking to an imaginary person in an easy going manner, but other times she’ll seem to be angry at them.

Most of the time when I talk to her I’ll tell her how nice her hair looks, or that I like the blouse she is wearing.

As with most people, she responds positively to compliments.

There are also times when Norma has asked me to help her, but when I ask her what she needs, she will look at me with a puzzled expression and answer, “Well, I don’t know.

But I certainly need help. That much I can tell you!”

Jeffrey Zable Jeffrey Zable is a teacher, musician, and writer whose works have appeared recently in Corvus, Up The River, The Mark, and others.

Playing Cards with Mom Oh! She shaped the word to blow out candles on a cake she wished was there then placed the nine of diamonds on the seven I'd discarded, clapped her hands and told me about home and Mom and Dad and Joe, her brother (dead these thirty years) and Gladys and Marie.

And from a childhood fixed within her sight and mind she watched me smile and wonder if my children, grown and working in some distant crowded city, someday will shrug and grunt, half-listen to their senile father race his boyhood through deep pastures, clap and call his mind's gray fumblings Home. Home. Home.

Robert Joe Stout Robert Joe Stout's writings range from investigative journalism (Why Immigrants Come to America) to a novel set in Mexican league baseball (Running Out the Hurt) to poetry collections (A Perfect Throw). Essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in such diverse publications as The Monthly Review, Prick of the Spindle, Smoke, and others. Mr. Stout passed away in July.

Wake Up Call The evening newspaper lay open to HELP WANTED and REAL ESTATE ads —my last investment to the world my wife calls real before I’d climbed into bed.

An interrupted card game's two spread decks separated pairs of tennis shoes on the rug beneath a wobbly table lamp.

My fifteen-year-old daughter, in the bathroom, sang to a radio throbbing rock about love and cops while her sister talked to her cereal bowl about C. S. Lewis fantasy lands.

Embracing them and all they mean to me I pushed my thoughts beyond the window's view of sky and trees and sang to myself of childhood, youth, and the dream that I could, if I chose, grow wings.

Robert Joe Stout