WTCP IS DEAD
Spring 2017
CONTENTS TEXT in motion : sarah terrazano : 3 child’s play : leah nashel : 4 excerpt from august : hannah sussman : 5 your mother : rachael hershon : 7 home : sumner alperin-lea : 8 my father drives with his knees- a pantoum : ryan mouton : 11 the head of the cult : grace gallagher : 12 same form in a broken pane : alasdair macdoormat : 13 cancelled soliloquy from hamlet : leah nashel : 14 the ballad of buckley the bear : otis fuqua: 15 ramen instant : linfei yang : 22 IMAGE party city blues : oil on canvas : margot field : front cover maisie : digital photography: sumner alperin-lea : inside cover day dream II : cast glass, turf digital photography: margot field : 3 untitled : digital mixed media: angela liu : 6 i chose a green dress : oil on canvas : samantha shepherd : 8 day dream : photo-transfer, acrylic media, oil on canvas : margot field : 9 love is only deep : oil on canvas: jason lipow : 10 untitled : digital photography : tova weinberger : 11 untitled : digital photography : tova weinberger : 12 doll at sunset : oil on canvas: samantha shepherd : 13 the bear : 35mm film photography : hannah sussman : 21 on earth we are briefly gorgeous : oil on canvas : jason lipow : back inside cover trans dimensional hassenfeld : digital photography : jesse held : back cover
wtcpisdead@gmail.com spring 2017
In Motion Squinting in sudden floodlights, I spin across the stage and out of my skin. I become a particle of dust, suspended in the light that burst me open, floating down rows of rapt eyes and returning to the stage where I, the particle, my gasping breath, pause between arched backs and flexed feet to re-enter my chest as I leap. — Sarah Terrazano
Day Dream II: Margot Field
Child’s Play So I can’t give her away, my Barbie doll, or let my mother see. She has a dull pink stain between her thighs, faded pigment of a brown Crayola marker that wouldn’t wash away. In vain I scrubbed the color that had pulsed from my marker’s tip as nipple-less, bow-armed, her body received it, pink to complete each breast, brown to cloak the triangle: the lady-parts plastic, manicured, perpetually clean-shaven, now almost soft, sweaty almost, like my hands before they chilled stiff and I tried to wash away the deed, shoulders tensed in case the bathroom door flew open — “Honey, time for dinner. What are you doing with that Barbie in the sink?” — the soap suds turning brown and blush, rusty drops rolling off plastic thighs, catching in the indent of her belly button, leaving traces of desire on imitation flesh. —Leah Nashel
Excerpt from “August” You do not kill what you love. You stifle it, you lock it up, you poke it with sticks and needles. You shock it with wires and water and blood, and you drain every bit of salt and soul from it out through the nose, but you do not kill it. Charlie had written that on a napkin and then ate it. It had not been rational. It was just one of the many things he had tried in order to get over Joanna. Their relationship had not been rational either. Ever since Joanna had left him he had been trying to find something in life more beautiful than the note she had left on the kitchen counter saying that she was leaving. He had not eaten that one. He threw it in the trash. He had committed himself to forgetting what the note said in the same manner which he committed some things to memory, the name of a song, the smile of a waitress. He had not wanted to, but he figured that’s what people do when they’re moving forward, and that maybe if he did it he’d be one of those people who were moving forward, and not a guy selling timeshares and still masturbating to the pornagraphic drawings Joanna had made him. He had a folder full of them. She wasn’t particularly good at drawing and nor was she against giving him nude photographs of herself, but she had liked making the drawings because she thought Charlie liked them, and Charlie only liked them because Joanna had drawn them. At first they didn’t really do anything for him but eventually he started getting conditioned to be aroused, if only a bit, even by the sight of a black pen. Now that she was gone they were the only thing that worked for him. Charlie imagined Joanna at her desk at work, black pen churning out crude shapes, her back slumped to attempt to hide what she was doing. He imagined her quickly sliding other papers on top of the drawing if somebody happened to come talk to her. She would smile at them, tap her pen on her lips, her heel on the ground. He knew that he should probably throw them away. He tried, once, to start to get rid of one a day until there were none left. Spread out the pain. There were three years worth of drawings to go through. He had tried to organize them to find his least favorite ones to throw away first. He spread them out in a circle around him as he sat on his bedroom floor and he was immediately overwhelmed by the scribbled erections and breasts and got distracted and gave up. He knew that the beginning of the end of their relationship could be marked by when Joanna stopped drawing for him. Her big toe was out the door by then. Her heart, likely, as well. Charlie had searched for something more beautiful than the note she left him in places he knew he wouldn’t find it. In a dating website. In a short, flat hike ten minutes from his apartment. In the taste of paper and ink. In the magazines he gave out like candy with images of idealistic vacation homes. In a little adult video and erotica store called “Luvland” whose LED ticker tape sign advertised the release of “Cocaine City 4.” He didn’t find beauty. He wasn’t surprised. He knew he wasn’t trying very hard. Joanna hadn’t the first person he loved or lived with, but she had taken the largest bite out of his heart. She chewed it, swallowed, and opened her mouth wide to prove to Charlie that she wasn’t hiding any under her tongue. *** Today I wore my love for you outside for the first time. Eight people asked me where I bought it because they wanted to get it for themselves too. I didn’t tell them. It must have looked good on me. The next day, Charlie wrote that on a napkin and shoved it into a glass of ice water and left it sitting overnight. It was copied from a note he wrote, but never gave, to Joanna. Sometimes he had a way with words. Some days he questioned everything. None of the figures in the drawings Joanna made had faces. She didn’t like to draw them. After writing the note, he took out the folder of drawings and found the one that had been his favorite, one of the first few she had drawn. A woman on all fours, a man behind her. Charlie took a black pen and drew manic grins on both of them along with wide, cartoonish eyes. He folded the paper neatly in half and then threw it in the trash. —Hannah Sussman
Your Mother I.
III.
She was once a beautiful woman. She will never let you forget that you and your father ruined her. Nineteen, breasts became swollen with milk she refused to give. Now, a loose belly draped in excess skin gives way to legs clawed with varicose. Rheumatic joints creak in the walk from fridge to couch.
Your daughter looks like her, the woman who ruined you. Too tall with big feet and parrot eyes. Belly and hips like the bowl of a spoon. A too-loud laugh that erupts from the roots of her stomach. You will never let her forget.
—Rachael Hershon II. One night she brings a strange man home. Hairbrush in fist he imprints ovals down your spine. Her stiff dress pounds with laughter. Later, in the mildew -crusted tub, she soaks in salts until her skin turns the color of grapefruit.
Home Onto my lips: the fire which your faucet leaks, The scald of wait – I spent more than three lifetimes, All stolen, on fresh water With which our doors and windows became walls. A stone that walks, armless, Chased by hammers in flesh but bloodless human hands.
—Sumner Alperin-Lea
I Chose a Green Dress: Samantha Shepherd
Day Dream: Margot Field
Love is Only Deep: Jason Lipow
My Father Drives With His Knees – A Pantoum Some people drive with their knees. My father did, on his way to work, my way to school. What he did not have in time, he had in speed. Drifting the road, wheel slipping, anxiety-fueled, My father did, on his way to work, my way to school, Tell us not to do the things he did. Drifting the road, wheel slipping, anxiety-fueled, I smell like drink, like a drunk kid. He told us not to do the things he did Don’t think time is money, or that you’re lacking both. Drifting the road, wheel slipping, anxiety-fueled, I pity him more than me, but my mother most. Don’t think time is money, or that you’re lacking both. What he did not have in time, he had in speed. I pity him more than me, but my mother most. Some people drive with their knees. —Ryan Mouton
Untitled photos: Tova Weinberger
The Head of the Cult (sees Lily looking out the window in winter— she turns to him with her crooked smile and says “I’m so glad you married me”) snow falls on suburbs I used to feel
deaf made lesser by comfort
houses in madness in isolation
—Grace Gallagher
Same form in a broken pane Husk of lightning, let me see you. Suede boots on an eight foot thing, hamstring on a stick, might walk you Like a story, a highwayside. I can taste Your onramps, I think. That was Blood across us, a lapworth. No alarm for tears; magnets, Tongues for our jawline of razors. I know what will break this Needle, king of all hallways, into the cold brick paint which abuses windows alone but No; the mirrors pile up like hail, Pile up and melt like hail, While the green night whittles his nails. Tell me then. If two yards of rope Were to stand this close to you, Were to look at your neck with intent – Well. Here I am. —Alasdair MacDoormat
Doll at Sunset: Samantha Shepherd Doll at Sunset: Samantha Shepherd
Cancelled Soliloquy from Hamlet Flowers bleed transparent on my skin, Innocents killed by seeming innocence And swaddled into garlands where thin necks Choke in knots supporting maiden heads. I know for certain now that I am no one, At least that I have nothing left to say: A blossom flailing on the rank wind’s breath, I’ve caked my fragile shape in river mud, Soiling virtue with still-virtuous hands Designed for gentle work like strangling stems. I wove a blooming circlet for my head Whose blossoms now wilt slowly in the sun, Rough pendant tongues of leaves that graze my brow And petals drying auburn at the tips As I will never dry, not if I let This rashness seize me, lead me towards the cold, Towards water still as unremembered dreams Where, calm at last, I can be free and leave This bitter, biting world, this heavy air, The castle walls that shut me into silence Even from afar. But how to go? Shall I, in slipping, by some misplaced step, By one foot tangled in the muddy ghost Of skirt that drops disheveled from this bodice Whose bones I snapped, one toe that slides too far Across this bank, fall swift into the brook And there thrash fit-like till the terror leaves My limbs, and I float limp like wreaths of violets And tangled wisps of rue that crown my head? Remember me, I want to say. Recall The springtime sister, laughing sunlit daughter, Who skipped at your heels and smiled and obeyed. Look how my pain, once masked, has sent me whirling, Unlacing in a rage my throbbing wrists To bloody cheeks of rue and fennel necks. Garlands of song wrap words I cannot breathe, Until at last, drowned laced with flowers, I leave. —Leah Nashel
The Ballad of Buckley the Bear “Yesterday bear made itself at home in’r wagon. Just hopped right on up, plunked itself in the middle, and proceeded to lay waste to three weeks’ provisions. Now, Buckley and I here’re well-to-do, won’t be a problem gettin’ more. But this bear. Real fatass.” Lorie paused and appraised the bartender. Not listening. “S’pose I can’t get too mad, wasn’t lookin’ to kill anything, but it took its damn sweet time chowin’ down. Had itself a day. Left us in the pass with an hour a daylight and a snowstorm inbound and a pair a dreadful perplexed horses besides. Me and him in the same bedroll and we still near froze.” Hunkered over the bar, lachrymose and dusty from the road, Buckley hummed an old dirge. Something ragged and icy, broken every line by alternating gulps and sighs; but he found himself quickly winded and gave up. Between the shelves of glasses across from them, Lorie’s reflection stared at him, slumped across the glossy purple wood, and he wished he weren’t so drunk. He stared back at her for a while, but she turned away and he figured he should too. “Point bein’ we’re mighty happy to be here. And keep ‘em comin’ for my husband, plenty to forget since his last drink.” Lorie said, to which the bartender shrugged, nodded, and refilled. “I’d die without you.” Buckley said. It was a thing he always said when he was drunk, and it made Lorie react as she always did, with a furrowed brow and an awkward cough. “Are you addressin’ me or your glass? Both seem equal to the truth.” And when he didn’t laugh, she quietly finished the call and response. “I’d die without you too, Luck.” Buckley pulled a taught smile, his eyelids falling shut, and with the last of his waking energy threw his head back and poured the liquor deep into himself, to a warm, sunny place in his belly where yesterday never happened and tomorrow would never come. As he fell asleep he thought of sand and palm trees and cool ocean water, the last thing he saw the swimming field of purple and brown beneath his face. The bartender called for closing and Lorie found Buckley unrousable. She tried to carry him, a thick arm strapped across her shoulder, wobbling under his weight, but at the door her knees gave out and they crashed to the floor like stones. She cursed herself for her own stupidity, Buckley for his, and God for his lack of foresight in the creation of such a man. The bartender helped them to the street, giggling the whole time. “Hotel Magnolia’s down that a ways. Get yourself a room and shin out a town in the mornin’. No room for thimbleguts here. Try Buena Vista. They’ll take anyone. En. Ee. One.” The bartender chuckled and went back inside, content to spend the rest of the night muttering the words “En. Ee. One.” and laughing to himself. Thick clumps of snow fell onto the steep rooftops on either side of the road, gathering into great sheets that sprinkled themselves over the edge onto the wagon’s canvas, the day-old drifts, and Buckley’s back. After kicking and shouting failed to wake him, it occurred to Lorie that he might be dead, and or a fraction of a second she felt relieved. Muscles relaxed she hadn’t realized were tight, then tensed with self-directed horror and then loosened again with shame for having wished the unthinkable. While Lorie clenched and unclenched, Buckley farted– high and plaintive, stark in the quiet of the night. Then two things happened at once. The first thing was the snow stopped. Not in a gradual, natural way but as though a leaking bag of sawdust in the sky had just run out. The second thing was the appearance of six grim-looking men at the end of the road. As Lorie would learn, this was a group known (although only to themselves), as the Killin’ Crew. Long, drawn out meetings were held every night in the saloon, wherein murderous plans were drawn and bloody stories of gunfights were recounted in tortuous detail. In truth, none of its members had slain more than a rabbit, and even that had been the result of a target practice accident. Accuracy was not important to the Killin’ Crew. Each earned enough in the mines or the river to carry on mining or panning and drinking between, and in this way the months had already melted to years and the years to a flavorless mush. A growing sense of uselessness had nurtured a dependence on their tales of gore, and the creation of an unspoken, inviolable agreement to never question the validity of another man’s story. By way of repetition and staunch belief, the Killin’ Crew had come to trust that each of its members possessed both a capacity and penchant for murder, although all they had proven themselves capable of killing, was time. And the occasional mood.
Lorie knew none of this, and took note of the pistols at their hips, the choreographed menace in their formation, and felt a flicker of fear behind her eyes. They walked in a lopsided ‘V’ that pointed away from her. Two chubby little men in beaver furs carried the lead; a wiry man in a black Stetson lagged behind. When they reached her, Lorie was seated on her husband’s back, her hand swaying over the colt at her hip. The Beavers planted themselves on either end of Buckley and the remaining four formed a semicircle before Lorie, who thanked the lord she wasn’t drunk when she realized they were arranged by height. “Hi.” Lorie waved at the men. Two waved back. They paused for a while, analyzing the woman resting on the giant, and the mountains swelled around them like the teeth of a mouth frozen in silence. When they could no longer contain them, they exploded with questions, each launching a separate and simultaneous investigation. “Did you kill this man?” “Who are you?” “You lost?” “Take your hand off your gun.” “Where’re you comin’ from?” “Can I buy you a drink?” “Who’s that?” “What’re you doing?” “You been to Salida before?” “You know how to use that thing?” “He dead?” “You need a drink?” “Got any work?” “Where you headed?” “Need a horse?” “Buy you a drink?” The thunder of a gunshot forced silence, and the man in the Stetson slapped his pistol back into its holster. He was tall and dressed from head to toe in black and despite his twiggy body, possessed an air of physical power. If it weren’t for his surroundings, Lorie might have thought him intimidating. “Jesus Christ. Shut the fuck up, boys.” When he spoke he never stopped making noise, instead adopting a wandering frequency that he slapped around into words. It was wildly irritating. He scratched at his eye and pointed at Buckley. “He dead?” Lorie smiled and shook her head no. “Y’all a dancing troupe?” She asked. The seven men blushed like a rose with bearded petals. None of them laughed. “No.” Stetson said. “Lee Brilliant and the Killin’ Crew. We’re outlaws.” “Just the Killin’ Crew.” A man in thick glasses sighed. “He’s not in charge.” Lorie raised her arms and eyebrows. “I surrender.” The significance of her words sunk in slowly, like a pad of butter in a not-quite-hot-enough skillet. One by one, brows unfurrowed, eyed widened, and frowns upturned. But before they could break the silence, yee-hawing and slapping each other on the back, Buckley interjected once more; this time farting what Lorie was feeling. It was an ebullient and hearty sound, a prolonged note of unification that set the crew aquiver with laughter. Lorie slapped Buckley’s meaty behind and rose to her feet, confident that after a year on the run, she had found her ticket. The gang insisted Lorie join them for their nightly meeting, and she agreed on the condition they help move Buckley and some luggage to the Hotel Magnolia. A condition they were scurrying to oblige before she was even finished making it. A red-panted, adenoidal man hopped into the wagon. Upon doing so, he found himself in the center of an arsenal large enough to arm an orchestra. Shotguns leaned against one side in ascending order: single, double-barrel, and sawed-off; Rifles on the other: bolt, break, and sniper. Dozens of pistols and revolvers
and revolvers lay in neat square stacks, and towards the driver’s seat the barrel of a rusty Gatling gun stared into Red Pants mouth as it bobbed like a fish. “W-Why?” Red Pants managed. “We’re gun salesmen of course!” Lorie chirped. They were, of course, properly outfitted; each the proud new owner of a shotgun, a rifle, and a sidearm– included free of charge. Lorie sold them at prices half, even a quarter of market value, tossing them from the back of her wagon like a travelling salesman’s miracle tonics. The Crew kept their shock to themselves, but even so the prickling sensation of a lie lurked in the shadows of their minds: Lorie should not have had the guns. If they had asked, Lorie would have told them the truth, that she and Buckley had killed as many men as there were guns in the wagon. Some out of justice, others out of self preservation, but the lion’s share out of delicious, untamed bloodlust. It would have been too soon, but she would have told them. And if they had found the weight of this truth too much to stand, Lorie would have passed a bullet through each of them and added the Crew to her firearm graveyard. But no one asked. Buckley was left on his side at Lorie’s behest, although minutes later he collapsed onto his face, slowly suffocating himself against the scratchy blankets of the Hotel Magnolia. He slept in this way for a while, the bedding beneath him growing damp with his breath– a low rattle that caught and slowed until he woke with a splutter and an earth-shaking cough. He pushed himself to the edge of the bed and the world rushed back to him in blurry splotches. “I’m in a hotel.” Buckley noted. Adding, after an eruption of fiery vomit, “Drunk.” He crumpled against the wall. And as the room whirled around him, his foamy, caramel sick soaking through his pants, Buckley concluded his state of unease owing to the resigned, burdensome look Lorie had given him in the bar. Her cagey, bored eyes stared at him still, blinking wearily as he struggled to a stand. On tottering, unfamiliar legs, Buckley carried himself to the mirror on the far side of the room, humming tunelessly: “Oh I was born in a frying pan, Halfway to being cooked. But by grace of god and strength of man, My life was not forsook. Oh I’m a force of nature, Such blood and bone and teeth. And all you living creatures Best run away from me.” Buckley lifted his shirt to examine the fresh scars. Lorie was in the bathroom, not listening through the paper thin walls. Red Pants had the floor, making Lee’s interjection all the more rankling and unusual, for to have the floor was to have the pulpit. “I don’t trust her goddamnit!” He dropped his whiny drawl as low as he could, gesturing at Red Pants with his hat, “I don’t see why yall’re so eager. You’re smilin’ ‘bout gold you aint found yet.” Glasses coughed. “You don’t have the floor!” Excepting Lorie in the john not listening, they were the bar’s only patrons. They had a disturbing way about them that made people less interested in drinking than leaving, and had been barred from regular business hours, relegated to late-night meetings over double-priced drinks. They didn’t mind. Red Pants continued: “Look. Lee. The guns are real. The money still in your pocket you didn’t spend on them is real. I’m not sayin’ she’s the fuckin’ messiah, am I?” The Beavers shook their heads no, and he added, “She’s a friend. And a damn good one for us to have.” Lee rubbed at his eyes and turned on his stool to face the bar, sulking. The eldest member of the Crew, who wore dainty silver spurs at all times despite not owning a horse, tinkled over to Lee and grasped his shoulder. “I get you, Lee. It’s mighty suspicious. But of what? What does she stand to gain by selling her guns so cheap? Sure, she’s got a secret; I’m not denying that. But it doesn’t concern us.” Lee shook his arm off, but Spurs continued, “I’m sure of it. Let’s keep her close, keep our eyes peeled, and reap the rewards of a friend with tits and guns and tits.”
The Crew found this an excellent speech and applauded accordingly. It was as Glasses had said, Lee was not in charge. Besides, as Lee made a point of reminding himself, this was supposedly the leisure portion of his day and he had a drink in front of him. It wasn’t the time to work himself into a lather. That would be tomorrow, knee deep in icy mountain runoff. Then he could thrash and curse and angrily masturbate under the lunching tree into the Colorado River, but now, he swallowed his tongue with his whisky. Lorie banged the door as she exited the bathroom. “I need to eat less fruit.” She announced, rubbing her belly. It was unfunny and even the Beavers didn’t laugh. She sauntered across the bar and set herself on a stool beside Lee, drawing on the dark wood with a toothpick. He spread a thin line of water droplets into a little house, pulled more towards it to fill in the roof, but instead sucked the house’s outline back into his puddle-palette. “Abraham was telling us about the time he shot a sheriff in Lincoln.” Spurs said. Lorie nodded knowingly. “Yee-haw. Did he get the badge?” Red Pants shook his head and examined a wide crack in the floor. For a long minute, the only sound in the bar was that of the bartender sucking on his tobacco and muttering ‘En. Ee. One’ to himself. Through the frost on the windows Lorie saw the flickering white lines of falling flakes begin to dissipate, and tried to remember her last warm day. The sun beat down on them all through Kentucky and Ohio, but that sun gave only thirst and sweat and sunburn and if it did anything for the frozen chains in her chest it tightened them. As far back as she could remember, no warmth to be found. She pinched her eyes shut and wondered if maybe she hadn’t used it all up. When she was done wondering she stepped from her stool to the center of the bar, and began to undress. She slid out of her jacket arm by arm, and began: “Well. I suppose it’s time you know why I’m here. Me and that behemoth you helped move have been on the road for the better part of a year lookin’ for a group of cold-blooded killers like yourselves. Don’t make ‘em like they used to I guess.” Balancing against a support beam, Lorie wriggled out of her boots and placed them neatly at her side. “So gentlemen, thank God. Thank God for all you killers. Salt of the earth, truly. But. Well… Shit. I told it all backwards. I’m gettin’ ahead of myself.” Lorie unbuttoned her fleece. “Me and My husband are what I guess you’d call career criminals. And we’ve been forced to take what I guess you’d call a sabbatical.” She unsnapped her flannel overshirt, punctuating each sentence with a button. “We’re wanted in a whole bunch of states for a whole lotta crimes. Murder. Robbery. Arson. Kidnapping.” When her shirt was undone she forced a thin sickle-smile across her face and blinked lazily at no one in particular. She raised her chin to the ceiling and let the shirt fall from her. “Was a robbery in Nashville that made us change course. Too dangerous nowadays. Everybody armed and itchin’ to shoot. But that’s a story for another day.” With the tips of her fingers, Lorie peeled her undershirt up. She moved glacially, relishing in the pulse of each moment, keenly aware of the effect she was having on her audience. Moths to a light, Dogs to food, like any other animal really. “But you. You beautiful wolves of Salida. With your numbers, and mine and Buckley’s criminal expertise…” Lorie clucked her tongue as she committed the coup de grace. She pulled the shirt over her head and dropped it to the floor, revealing the deadly curves of her breasts, the gentle accusation of her nipples pointing at the men like Uncle Sam. “We can do whatever we goddamn please and never answer for it.” The men were slow to respond. She had the floor and they held their tongues. And as she spoke they recoiled into their chairs, hands over their long-forgotten groins. But now, with the proposition of a new life, they went promptly limp. Even the bartender ceased his muttering, and weighty silence filled the room like steam. In this way, no one saw Buckley’s burning face pressed to the window, fogging it with his breath and wiping it away with a clenched fist, fogging and wiping, fogging and wiping. Nor did they see him leave the window, or hear the faint crunching of snow as it snaked its way to the back of the building. Lorie undid her belt buckle and continued: “Salida’s a small town. Small towns’ve got small banks with small guards.” She slipped her thumbs into her waistband, but stopped short when she noticed the men rising like an orchard around her. “You do what I say, and I guarantee each of you one-hundred-and-fifty dollars by the end of tomorrow.” Gingerly, Lorie lowered her pants until they were at her knees, whereon Lee drew his weapon from its holster and took aim. He tried to speak with steel in his voice, only managing tin. “You ain’t who you say. You been playin’ us since you got here and now it’s time for you to go. We ain’t
ain’t stupid and we ain’t–“ A beefy hand hooked itself around Lee’s throat, ending his thoughts with a squeaky puff. And as his face faded from white to red to purple, the hand raised Lee to the ceiling, gliding, as though it were not attached to a human arm but a machine’s. A second hand circled Lee’s ankles, and yanked down with inhuman strength, separating Lee’s body from his head with a serious of wet snaps and sending a cascade of viscera down upon the beast now revealed: Buckley, eyes wet with tears, a snarl of teeth glittering through the crimson rain. He hurled Lee’s head across the room, trails of blood tracing spirals in the air. Lee’s body dropped and folded like a banana peel at Buckley’s feet. As the glazy minds of the Killin’ Crew caught up, the warm glow of the gas lights turned stark and pale, and the alcohol in their mouth to acid. The smell of iron swirled around them, pounding their nostrils like the footfalls of a panicked stampede. Trembling, they began to reach for their weapons in slow-motion, fighting paralysis in every muscle. All told, they would only manage one shot. Lorie, for her part, felt herself flush at Buckley’s ghastly countenance. This was the man she met in New Orleans, the muddy Beast who begged to marry her in the glades. He had been in hibernation so long, she had begun to forget the sweet cauterizing sensation that held them close for so long, the orgasmic freefall that made each weary climb to the mountaintop worth it. Now, she oozed with remembrance. She clothed herself, and in a single stride pulled her gun and knife from her hips, howling with delight, and pierced Spurs’ head from beneath his chin. He wagged his tongue at her and died, sprawling across the floor with a muffled tinkle. Buckley grabbed Red Pants by the ears and bit an egg-sized chunk out of his throat, dropped him, and forced the flesh into one of the Beaver’s mouths before wringing the poor miner’s neck so hard his head snapped off and spun on the floor like a top. Lorie beamed at him, twin falls of blood pouring from either end of his mustache, eyes glowing with holy light. “I’d die without you, Buckley-Bear!” The remaining Beaver made for the door, tripped immediately upon standing and collapsed at Buckley’s feet, where he was scooped up and heaved at Glasses– tottering on his feet, gun raised and shaking. Glasses reflexively clenched, firing a bullet into the shrieking lump before it crunched into him, broke his nose, and trapped him under its folds of fat and bloody fur. Buckley stomped over to the gasping tangle and dropped himself on top. The lazy crunch of bones shattering under his weight echoed in the gloomy light. Lorie swaggered over and planted a kiss on his bloodied cheek. “I’ve missed you so.” Lorie sighed. Buckley opened his arms and Lorie fell into them. Home. With each sugary breath of head-smell Buckley tightened his grip, clutching at her like organs spilling from his body, waiting for the storm to pass. And as the minutes turned to hours, Lorie turned blue and cold in his arms, never finding air to cry out. But if she had, Buckley wouldn’t have heard her, for he had gone deaf. And she left it all and him, frozen to her corpse like frost on a pole, waiting for the morning sun. After forcing itself through the ragged holes in the mountain’s edge and cutting itself to pieces on the rocks and branches. After roiling through the snow, gathering strength and speed and spilling into the town. After drinking in the patchy storefronts and porches and stairs and fences and barrels, the sun pressed itself against the frosted windows of the bar and forced its owner to a stand. “You’ve killed her.” The bartender said, raising a shotgun to his shoulder. Buckley released, and her body thudded to the floor, surrounded by the bodies of broken men and their blood. The bartender’s shell hit center-mass, perforating Buckley’s chest in a hundred different places, but only slowing him down the half-second it took for rage to consume him. He reached the bartender in three bounds and proceeded to shred him. Buckley tore his limbs from his body, separated each joint, bit off every digit, ripped every muscle from the bone. And when the bartender was sufficiently minced, Buckley jumped on the mangled pieces until they liquefied beneath his feet. And when the bartender turned to liquid Buckley slapped at the puddle with feet and hands, furiously painting himself with innards. Then Buckley cried and filled in the spaces on the floor not stained with blood with his tears.
Still crying, he dragged himself out the door, staining the virgin snow scarlet, crimson, and black. As he stocked off into the surrounding wilderness the tears in his voice turned to a rumbling growl, a growl he hurled at the face of the mountain looming above before attacking its slope. And, when he found what he was looking for, a growl he breathed into the thin air before disappearing deep inside a cave. —Otis Fuqua
The Bear: Hannah Sussman
Ramen instant He’s carrying his big black coffin in the common room again And he says Can you please not do that My family’s going through a rough patch But I cannot relate I do not know his family A rough patch might as well be the carpet I am sitting on When I ask he clambers up His eyes gain a dead quality Made comical through his beer goggle glasses I have never seen what a fish drowning looks like before It snaps me out of my reverie and I realize As much as I try These feelings of loss and despair Might as well be hallucinations Conjured by my half-starved mind They belong to me And to have someone like him try to colonize Even the dead weight that is mine Well Suddenly the pastiness of this tofu seems less vomit-inducing What-seems-to-be-chicken drowned in miso-formaldehyde So I dig into my noodles till The sound of my slurping fills the room I treasure the visible discomfort in his eyes Before he left he said That’s my baby in there I believe him In more ways than one I will still call him by his nickname The snow falls at an alarming rate outside Either he keeps carrying it with him or leaves it behind I assure you There’s no use comparing the length of our nights We get on with our terrible lives — Linfei Yang
Editorial Staff: Sumner Alperin-Lea Liana Simpson Nyomi White Hannah Sussman Sarah Terrazano Tafara Gava Kiana Khozein Tiana Murrieta
On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous: Jason Lipow
On behalf of all our editors, living and/ or dead, we’d like to thank all our submitters, readers, and the trail of professional mourners that follow us around. Thank you for coming here to pay your respects. May we all R.I.P in peace. This magazine’s layout was designed and compiled using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. Printing for the spring 2017 issue was done by Freedom Digital Printing, of Ashland, MA.