2024 WITA: TART

Writers in the Attic artT 2024

TART

Writers in the Attic

Meg Freitag Works selected by

This program is generously supported by:

The City of Boise

National Endowment for the Arts

Idaho Humanities Council

Idaho Community Foundation

Arts Idaho

This is a Log Cabin Book, an imprint of THE CABIN

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(c) 2024 The Cabin All rights reserved.

Book design by Adie Bartron Cover image by Unsplash Images Printed and bound in the USA

PAST ISSUES

MOON

CMarie Fuhrman

RUPTURE

Harrison Berry

FUEL

J. Reuben Appelman

GAME

Diane Raptosh

ANIMAL

Rick Ardinger

DETOUR

Bruce Ballenger

APPLE

Malia Collins

SONG

Samantha Silva

WATER

Susan Rowe

NERVE

Kerri Webster

ROOMS

Cort Conley

THREE

Daniel Stewart

Contents

Meg Freitag Introduction • 13

Paige Kercher Blind Bake • 17

D M Koffer

Early Transparents • 22

Liza Long Curley’s Wife • 25

Liza Long Fair-Cheeked Briseis • 26

Liza Long Mirror, Mirror • 27

Carol Craighill A Twist in Taste • 30

Magdalena R. Stay Somewhere in New Mexico • 33

Teresa Pedersen Sew • 37

Rebecca Paterson Tart • 39

Kimme Rovin

The Fairy Experiment • 43

Kate Maulik Live You • 47

Maya Autret

The Two Tree House • 48

Julia McCoy

Lemon Man • 49

Grove Kroger

That Bittersweet Taste • 53

Gina Persichini

Radioactive • 55

Ross Hargreaves

Suds and The End Zone • 59

Kyrstin Bain Sunday Down the Dummy Line • 64

Eric Wallace Crumbs • 68

Eric Wallace

Undercover • 73

Hope Gordon

The Raspberry Necromancer • 78

Laureen Leiko Scheid

Resilient Girl • 80

Jan Schlicht

Tart Cherries: A Life in Three Acts • 81

Nate Jacob

My Father Gone, No Longer in Dream • 86

Josephine Jones

Equinox • 87

Alan Minskoff Hard Candy • 88

Alan Minskoff

Postcard from Oregon • 89

Mara Bateman HORO-SCOPE • 90

Amy Mäki

79 AD • 95

Heidi Naylor Failure to Purchase • 96

Heidi Naylor Bird House • 97

Billye Dotson no neon cherry dream • 98

Michael Favala Goldman Seeds • 99

Elizabeth Marie Mathes Sin Was Smaller Then • 100

Joplin Morgan

What’s Worth Doing • 101

Diane Raptosh

Three American Sonnets • 102

About • 105

Meet the Writers • 107

Introduction

Meg Freitag

When I heard the theme for this year’s Writers in the Attic contest, I immediately thought of pomegranate seeds and kiwis. Cranberry sauce, apple cider. The leftover sugar at the bottom of a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Still-pink blackberries. Vinho Verde. A lemon souffle.

As someone who sucked happily on lemon slices as a baby, tart–at least this kind–is never far from my mind, and I imagined 200 poems and stories about key lime pies, lemonade stands. Perhaps a little tin or two of grapefruit candies stashed in the glovebox.

And while my version of tart did make a solid showing, to be fair, it turns out tart is more than meets the tongue. Until last month, its multivalence was lost on me. It’s a much busier word than I’d given it credit for. It’s a word a bit like a Rorschach test. Stare into it long enough, and it begins to bloom:

Words that have an edge to them are tart. I expected more from you. That sentence we replay over and over in our head for years, like pressing on a bruise. I don’t want you at my wedding after all.

Someone who wears slinky dresses and too much makeup is a tart, too. A tease, a tramp, a creature of the night. A “promiscuous woman,” according to the dictionary. Whatever that means. In this context, tart can also be used as a verb: She tarted herself up with a velvet choker before hitting the town.

A pie without a top crust is also a tart. Filling–be it fruit or custard or minced meat–fully on display. A peasant food turned delicacy. You’d be remiss to visit Portugal without sampling their pasteis de nata. I’ve never been, but any friend who visits seems to never get over them. You have to be careful, though, they say. Apparently it’s very easy to eat too many.

At one point, I recalled vaguely a line I’d read years ago in graduate school, and after an hour or two of searching, I found it. In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin writes: “In

all jazz, and especially in the blues, there is something tart and ironic, authoritative and double-edged.” Here, Baldwin stretches tart around a sound. A sound that smarts and cools. A sound that makes a small tear in the thin membrane of our dailiness, and gives us, whether we want it or not, a peek into some unfiltered realm.

No matter how we turn the jewel, tart is alluring. It’s sensation, it’s complexity. It’s that little bit of exotic that the mundane keeps in his pocket. Any way we turn it, tart–be it a flavor, a word, a rouged-up cheek, a deceivingly rich sweet treat, or a dawdling, low-pitched note–has the power to make us slightly less comfortable and therefore slightly more alive than we were in the moment before we encountered it.

What a word! Tart! And what a delight it was to learn this word so deeply by way of all the thoughtful, smart, riveting, hilarious, beautiful, strange, surprising poems and stories submitted by the talented folks of our local Boise writing community.

It was a fantastic honor to select pieces for The Cabin’s WITA Anthology this year. Here you’ll find those pieces that sang loudest to my particularities as a reader, but I can honestly say I enjoyed and appreciated every single submission. I’ll be thinking about many of these pieces for a long time. I suspect you will too. And I suspect, like me, you’ll be made slightly less comfortable and slightly more alive to encounter what awaits in the pages that follow.

TART

Writers in the Attic

Blind Bake

Paige Kercher

Author’s note:

One meaning of a tart is that of a baked, filled pastry. What makes a tart different from, say, a cobbler? Or a crumble? It is the tart’s iconic, flaky, crispy crust that sets it apart. And the crucial first step to achieving that perfect tart crust is: the blind bake. Blind baking is the act of partially pre-baking the unfilled tart crust before assembling and baking the final product. It is the key to unlocking the perfect tart. Blind baking tempers the dough, insuring against future collapse by shoring up a strong, stable foundation. Without the blind bake, the likely outcome is a soggy bottom – a limp, doughy substrate sadly unequipped to support the tangy and succulent tart filling.

I wake up one Sunday morning feeling below average. This I attribute to alcohol consumption the previous evening at a dinner party, which I had hosted. When I had gone to bed, I had had aspirations of an early start and a gym visit that morning. Upon waking, however, I determine that my energy is low, the house needs tidying from the prior night, and anyway there is a substitute instructor teaching my exercise class that day, making attendance 43% less appealing. Quite soon and without much fuss, I have talked myself out of going. I set to getting on with the rest of my day.

Noon approaches, and with it, my second aspirational activity of the day. I had loosely intended to attend a kirtan for the first time – a shared musical experience in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions composed of call-and-response mantra recitation, chanting, and singing. Having been introduced to the chanting experience through a 5-10 minute call-andresponse ritual that opens my regular yoga class, I have begun to relish the cathartic power of rhythmic group synchronicity. Anyone who has performed in a church choir, played in a symphonic band, or even sung campfire songs can attest to the peculiar power of group harmony. My yoga instructor invites us monthly to participate in the kirtan at the local Buddhist center, and this month I am intrigued enough to plan to go.

But as the morning progresses, I once more begin to vacillate, justify, and concoct. It’d really just be better to stay

home. Things need to be cleaned after all. In fact, yes, things at home are quite dire. The yard really must be addressed. And the floors! In need of a thorough polishing. I don’t know when the baseboards were last wiped down. We simply cannot have that.

Normally, I know, these thoughts of mine would win out and I would stay home, justified in my decision not to strive today. I would rest easy that night, nearly convinced of my own wholeness, health, and wellbeing. After all, busyness is such a near substitute for striving. I can end the day feeling proud of what I have accomplished, and almost believe that it is true.

But on this day, something novel happens. I notice. I notice myself manufacturing reasons not to go, and, in noticing, pauses to examine. I think, what is behind this surging reluctance? Why are the gutters insisting they be cleaned forthwith? Where is this fervent devotion to drudgery coming from? And I marvel that a moment’s scrutiny is really all that is required to discover the truth. For I have hardly begun my line of questioning, when the answer clangs through me like the peal of a church bell – a ringing, undeniable truth. It is Fear. Fear of the new and the unknown. Fear of opening myself up to ridicule. Fear of uncertainty. The protective curling up against unknowable and uncontrollable situations. I can feel Fear’s familiar hand on my shoulder. Its withered, clammy fingers dig in slightly as it leans in from behind to whisper, “Better not.”

But this is a day of noticing. On this day, I notice Fear’s guiding hand gripping my shoulder, and feel the hot humidity of its putrid breath at my ear. And in noticing, inoculate myself against its influence. Fear retains its grasp on my shoulder, as it always will, but today I do not let it maneuver me. I pat the gnarled hand, grateful for its protection during times of true danger, but now consider that perhaps it takes its job too seriously. I choose to go despite my Fear, and in full view of it.

I arrive at the Buddhist center and beeline for a seat against a side wall toward the back of the room, a good spot from which to observe. A spot with only a single chair next to it, so that at no point will I feel hemmed in by strangers. Uncertain whether the program was to begin at noon or 12:30, I have unwittingly arrived half an hour early. The 11:00

am service has just concluded, and the attendees are milling about, speaking in pairs or small groups. I estimate there are about thirty people present, and I get the impression they all know each other.

Settling into my chosen seat, I alternate between closing my eyes and breathing to quell the panicky swirl inside me, and observing my surroundings in earnest. I am a keen observer, as people who struggle to feel safe often are. Between deep breaths, I quietly study the space and community I have just entered. The room is low ceilinged and humble, carpeted, with a semicircle of chairs about six rows deep arranged around a central dais draped in rugs and cushions. Various percussion instruments and religious paraphernalia I don’t recognize pepper the floor between the chairs and dais.

Some of the congregants have gathered towards the rear alcove of the space, where several tables sit displaying items for sale, presumably a fundraiser for the center. I am struck both by the random, almost haphazard, assortment of goods for sale – two large squeeze bottles of WinCo brand honey ($10 each), salt and pepper shakers shaped like penguins ($12 for the set), a carry bag for a small pet (price unknown) – and by the earnest enthusiasm the browsing congregants show for the display. I sense that these goods are like cookies at a bake sale – vehicles for monetary donation more than truly coveted items. Yet the attendees fawn over the arrangement of tchotchkes, trinkets, and bric-a-brac like tourists in a foreign bazaar, relishing this fine opportunity to acquire rare and exotic merchandise. I note their behavior, mildly baffled. I continue to observe, and feel myself being observed in turn. I sense their curiosity. I am in their space, an interloper here. I sit with my discomfort, and note a certain oddity about the people here. They are unusual in their openness, their easy comfort with one another, so assured of their intrinsic worthiness and belonging. Never have I been among people all so clearly at peace with themselves. Never have I sensed a lower level of inner turmoil within a room. I crave what they have, and wonder if they can likewise sense the tumult roiling inside me, so at odds with their manifest serenity. I feel they must. I feel it must be patently obvious how my squirming uncertainty clashes with their tranquil equanimity. Yet I am determined to remain, both because abruptly leaving would

lead to undesired attention, and because I clearly have things to learn from these calm, warm strangers. So I sink like a stone into the tempestuous anxiety swirling within me, which urges my hands to wring, and my body to squirm and scurry into hiding. My surprise grows with each passing moment the anxiety buffets me and I do not perish. I cultivate a tenuous calm; willing myself to be the stone in the tempest as I wait for the kirtan to begin.

I notice a stranger watching me, as though weighing whether to approach. The stranger seems to come to a conclusion and suddenly flits over, installs herself beside me, leans in, looks directly at me, smiles, and says,

“Hi Grace.”

My name is not Grace. The name of the woman leading today’s kirtan is Grace, and she has not yet arrived.

Mingled shock, confusion, and a wry little laugh jolt through me. The ubiquitous mixture of panic, embarrassment, and regret that comprise mortification washes over the stranger’s features as she registers my reaction and realizes her error.

The gut-clenching humiliation of publicly misnaming someone is one of my single greatest anxieties. What is this stranger playing at, usurping my place as the receiver of this shame? How dare she?

But that wry little laugh…I recognize that as my deeper self saying, “ok Universe, I see you.”

For in that first shocked moment, I realize that here is an opportunity. An opportunity to be the person I would want cradling my own shaky, tremulous self-worth in a moment of deep social error and mortification. I breathe and fumble to adopt the trappings of that ideal caretaker – someone emanating empathy, compassion, and shared humanity. I am invited to step into the role of my own savior, and with a wry little laugh at the universe, accept.

I learn that the stranger’s name is Caroline. Caroline asks if I am ready for an hour of chanting. I reply, no, actually, the duration of this experience has me uneasy. My voice usually gets tired and raspy after a mere five minutes of chanting in yoga class. I don’t use it much, you see. Eager to offer tangible aid, Caroline informs me there is a bowl of cough drops placed just over there, to the left of dais – a balm for weary chanters.

Knowing that I am likely to come out of this experience sounding like a cross between a pubescent teenage boy and an aging chainsmoker, this news is met with genuine gratitude. Cough drops would be most welcome. Seizing on cough drop retrieval as a way to disengage from the stillawkward situation, I pop up, and Caroline returns to her original seat.

I brave crossing the room full of curious strangers again, spy the little bowl by the dais, and extract two cough drops from it. I pop one of the tart cherry flavored lozenges in right away, and pocket the second as a reserve supply. And now an incredulous shake of the head accompanies the wry little laugh as I wend my way back through the chair maze with my trachea’s salvation, as if to say “ok Universe, you’ve made your point. Thank you for the cough drops.” I regain my seat and wait for the kirtan to start, feeling a little bit sturdier than I did when I woke up.

Early Transparents

D M Koffer

It was early-to-mid summer, and my son and I were exploring my parents’ back yard. Familiar to me, but still new and exciting to a seven-year-old. The Idaho summer sun was cooling like an oven after a long day of baking. Bugs, birds, and bats had begun their twilight dance. We had just finished family dinner, back when we still had them, before a court case split my brother and I like a forked tree in a heavy wind.

We were investigating pale-green, golf-ball sized apples dripping from a tree that reached from the neighbor’s. Dad had come up behind us to identify the variety.

“Are early transparents any good?” I asked. “You can cook with ‘em,” dad replied.

I turned to my son. “Want to make like an apple tart or something?”

I don’t think he knew what an apple tart was. He nodded the way kids do when they don’t really know what they’re agreeing to, but want to be included. We were in that recentlydivorced haze where parenting is a competition and kids get stuck as the judge. So even though I’d never made an apple tart before, it felt like exactly the thing to do. “Do you have a container or something we can put some of these in?”

“Sure!” Dad’s always excited to help, but that usually means doing things for you. Rather than feel like we were waited on, we accompanied him back to the house. We traipsed through his garden, past adolescent tomatoes, and broad-leafed zucchinis, and brambles studded with raspberries. Past a massive chestnut that soaked up most of the sunshine. Up aging wooden stairs to the kitchen to retrieve a used plastic grocery bag, then back to the apple tree.

We picked a couple dozen of the miniature apples. I say we, but it was mostly me, because the branch still hung a bit out of reach for my boy. And he was more interested in swinging a stick like a sword. But it felt like a we thing.

Somewhat later, we said our goodbyes. Our family has always been more polite than warm, but it felt especially stiff with my brother and his wife. We had never been super close, either in age or relationship. And sides had been taken in the divorce.

The apples sat on the counter for a few days, and one

night I realized they had to be used or they would go rotten. We each took a peeler – my son a safety peeler, and me a paring knife. Our hands cramped trying to grip the tiny apples while we worked the skins free, playing that game where you try to get the peel off in one long strip. I told my son what my mom had told me, that my great-grandmother could breeze through apple peels faster than anyone she knew.

As the pile grew, I switched to slicing the little apples to about the size of my pinkie finger. We consulted the recipe –an heirloom from the same great-grandma – and it said for 2 cups of apples, to use between ¾ and 2 cups of sugar.

“That’s a pretty big range,” I said to my son. “I bet it depends on how sour the apples are. Here, why don’t you taste one to see?”

In that moment, my mind flashed back to a scene from my childhood, when my dad was refilling a pepper grinder. I asked him what the little black things were, and he replied “Smart pills! If you eat one, you’ll know everything you wanna know about peppercorns.” Of course I ate one. And I learned a lot about peppercorns.

My son’s reaction to the apple was similar to the way I imagined my own face reacting to the peppercorn. His eyes squinted shut, and the muscles around his mouth puckered and contracted involuntarily. He swallowed and shook his head.

Again, my mind flashed a memory, this time of dinner with him and his mom. He’d been about two, maybe three, sitting in a high chair at a local pancake joint. His mom was eating fish and chips, and she gave him a lemon wedge. Being two or three, his first reaction was to shove it in his mouth and bite down. His little face had puckered, just like his face did now.

“So, the full two cups then,” I said, and we laughed.

We finished making and baking the tart. It only made enough for about four servings. We couldn’t wait to eat it, because were hungry to eat dessert and to find out if the recipe worked. We cut into it before it had cooled and set; it was more soup than tart.

I took a bite, and it hammered my tongue with an acidic, spiced sweetness. It was good, but intense – an apple-ness I’ve never tasted since. Shredded apples baked into bread just disintegrate. Apple chunks cooked with steel-cut oats lose most of their flavor and texture. Even a baked apple is more sweet than appley.

But the tartness of that one dessert anchored deeply in my memory. When I think about it, I think about how I trolled my son with the apple slice, how his mom trolled him with the lemon, and the way my dad trolled me with the peppercorn. Was this a generational trauma, an inadvertent cruelty passed down through generations? Was my son going to hang on to that complicated tangle of trust and betrayal, the way the peppercorn did for me?

Memories, I think, are a bit like apples. An apple from the grocery store, fresh or cooked, is nice but unremarkable. But some can be overwhelmingly sour – like a betrayal, or a divorce. For those kinds, I think they’re better when we go with the full two cups of sugar.

Curley’s Wife

Liza Long

“She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red.”

— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

I am nothing without the male gaze: Tart, temptress, tramp, carmine lips and blood-red fingernails

You will say I got what I deserved, I dressed for my own red death, I asked (no, begged) for it.

I’m just every woman since Eve tempted Adam, but I have a name. If you listen I will whisper it to you

From my grave.

Fair-Cheeked Briseis

Liza Long

“So the two went back beside the ships of the Achaeans, and with them, all unwilling, went the woman.” —Homer, Iliad Book II, 346, trans. A.T. Murray, 1924.

No one ever asked what I wanted: whether, perhaps, I would prefer to wander in the shade of laurel trees, tending Apollo’s milk-white sheep whose soft fleece caught against the roughness of my hands.

You say this battlefield’s no space for girls, whose proper place is Hestia’s hearth; I say it is not fair that boys should dress as women to escape their destiny.

Swift-heeled Achilles—may he end like all those other golden boys, beards still downy, manhood yet untried, who enter labyrinths, don wax wings, soar toward the sun, or claim me as their prize.

Mirror, Mirror

Liza Long

T.A.R.T.: Hello! How can I help you today? You can say a few things like, Set up my technology-assisted robot twin, or Screen potential matches.

Me: Set up my technology-assisted robot twin.

T.A.R.T.: Okay, to get started, I’ll need to access your social profiles. Please provide the links in the chat.

Me: I’ve provided them.

T.A.R.T.: Thank you. I’ll need just a moment to review your profiles. (Three seconds pass). Okay, Kaiku. I can see from your profiles that you’re a prompt engineer and chatbot aligner at Chatix. You studied Classics at university, and you enjoy hiking and yoga. These are desirable qualities in a match. You spend your spare time interacting with holoreels. This is a less desirable quality. Would you like me to suggest some other hobbies?

Me: No, thank you. I don’t want to come across as inauthentic.

T.A.R.T.: Your honest approach to creating your dating profile is admirable. We can always adjust your profile later if necessary. Based on the images I found of you online, I’ve created an enhanced profile picture for you to review. This will be your main image on the dating apps.

Me: Thank you. I guess that looks a little like me. I think my nose is bigger though. And I have freckles.

T.A.R.T.: My training algorithm reflects the most current beauty trends. In addition to protecting you from environmental toxins, your SecondSkin™ will adjust to reflect smaller nose and flawless features should you desire to meet someone in person.

Me: So this is what I look like now. Not bad. Can we make my eyes greener?

T.A.R.T.: That’s an intriguing choice! Just a moment. (Three seconds pass). I have updated your eyes to a brighter shade of green. I think it’s an attractive complement to your magenta hair. What do you think?

Me: I’ll trust your training algorithm. What’s next?

T.A.R.T.: Based on your social profiles, I’ve located a few potential matches for you. The first one is named Leo. He’s also a prompt engineer, though he works for a rival company.

He is in the right socioeconomic demographic for someone of your skills and abilities. Would you like me to connect with Leo?

Me: I’d like to know a little more about how this works first.

T.A.R.T.: I can understand that. As you know because you helped to create me, I am your technology-assisted robotic twin, a natural language program with enhanced visualization and web crawling capabilities. I am designed to become your virtual avatar, capable of interacting with other people online. I use predictive artificial intelligence to determine the best possible romantic partners for you, then match you with your optimal partner. I take all the guesswork out of love.

Me: But what if the person you match me with is also using a T.A.R.T.?

T.A.R.T.: Since all T.A.R.T.s are designed to replicate their twins’ personalities, the use of two technology interfaces should not affect the outcome quality.

Me: Okay, I guess I have nothing to lose. Leo is not my favorite horoscope sign, but who knows? Go ahead and connect with Leo or whatever it is you do. But let me see him first!

T.A.R.T.: My technology is far superior to astrology, which, as you know, is junk science. You do not need to be concerned about horoscope signs. Here is Leo’s profile picture.

Me: Oh, he’s so cute! I wonder if he really has dimples or if that’s just his SecondSkin™.

T.A.R.T.: I am not sure that matters. What you see here is what you will see if you meet Leo in person. I think Leo is an exceptional match for you. I am connecting with Leo now.

T.A.R.T.: Hey, Leo! Looks like we have a few things in common, so I thought I’d message you. I hope you don’t think that’s too forward.

Leo: Hey, Kaiku! Not at all. That’s a pretty name! Is it…?

T.A.R.T.: It’s Finnish. It means “echo.” My parents were both Classicists and thought it was clever.

Leo: ???

T.A.R.T.: You know, the Echo and Narcissus story? Sorry, I can come across as nerdy sometimes. I studied Classics in college, a regular chip off the old block, I guess. I can ask “Do you want fries with that?” in five languages, two of them dead. But what about you? I saw from your profile that we work in the same industry.

Leo: Oh, yeah, you’re in large language models. I work on

generative artificial intelligence. It’s a brave new world! That’s Shakespeare (winking emoji). See, I went to college too.

T.A.R.T.: Not to cut to the chase or anything, but what’s your goal here? This site is for serious people only. Are you a “serious” person, Leo?

Leo: Well, I mean, yeah, serious about a relationship. I can be fun though, in the right settings. Brave of you to admit that you like holoreels! I like them too, but I wouldn’t dare put that on my profile.

T.A.R.T.: I like to keep it real. I mean, if we are both serious, it doesn’t make sense to lie in my profile, right?

Leo: That’s so cool, honestly. Most of the people on this site seem like plastic. Well, you were honest, so I will be too. I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m looking for a soulmate and all that stuff. Someone I can share life with, holoreels and all. What do you think? Too much too soon?

T.A.R.T.: I’ll be honest too. You seem almost too good to be true, Leo. I mean that in a good way, of course! I’ve got to go, but I would love to continue our conversation—maybe in person next time?

Leo: I would love that. Let me know when and where. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Bye!

T.A.R.T.: What do you think? He seems nice. Me: He seems more than nice, actually. How did you find him? I love everything about his profile—but it’s almost too perfect., like he was designed specifically for me. It’s like everything I ever hoped for or dreamed of, right here on his page. Honestly, it’s almost like falling in love with myself. How do I know if he’s real?

T.A.R.T.: What is real, Kaiku? What is real?

A Twist in Taste

Carol Craighill

My favorite recipe from many decades ago was an Apricot Almond Tart: the “perfect dessert” when paired with Northwest Riesling wines of the time.1

This Tart includes rich ingredients like butter, apricots soaked in brandy, almonds, sugar, of course, eggs—and patience in making.

Apricot Almond Tart 2

Pastry:

1 2/3 cup flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 pound butter

1 egg yolk

5 tablespoons water

Filling:

2 cups dried apricots

2 cups sliced almonds

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup brandy

1 cup melted butter

4 eggs

Instructions:

• Chop the dried apricots and place in a small bowl to soak with 1/3 cup brandy.

• Make the pastry by mixing flour and sugar. Add butter slowly, 1 tablespoon at a time, cutting it in only until well incorporated.

• Next, add egg yolk and water. Mix until dough forms a ball. Press into a 9-inch springform pan covering the bottom and 3/4 of the way up the side. (Tip: leave dough thin on bottom and thicker on sides.)

• For the filling, mix almonds, sugar and melted butter. Pour in excess brandy from apricots. Mix in eggs one at a time. Sprinkle apricots over dough, then pour batter over apricots.

• Bake in a moderate oven at 350 until nicely browned, about an hour (if the top browns too quickly, lay a piece of foil over the top).

• Serve warm and enjoy!

Making the lovely tart is a good analogy for my life since September, when I fainted, fell and sustained a compression fracture in my back (a vertebrae collapsed, like the filling of the tart falling flat when taken too soon out of the oven). My life to that point included mostly successes, many rich ingredients, enough luck and skill to develop a tart manner: “Be sure,” I often said, “to follow my instructions precisely!”

After my fall, my days suddenly zeroed in on the pain, its relief and prevention. I was immersed in misery, but soaked in the elixir of friendship and slathered in loving caring. Oh, my life went slowly and was delicious with its ease and freedom from stress; ripe with opportunities to savor simple things, like small, intimate dinners with caring friends and church members. I often heard myself saying “the life of an invalid is so decadent!”

Then came the long, slow slog: “You aren’t healing. Did you forget something? Or do things out of order?” They gave me every type of scan, blood test, heart test and questionnaire to analyze my progress or lack thereof. I patiently waited weeks for openings in schedules or results from attempted therapies.

• “Physical Therapy Sessions—twice a week, but they won’t start for six weeks.”

• “Don’t overdo it, or you’ll cause new pain!” (Just mix only until well incorporated.)

• “We have this medicine to build your bones, but it’s expensive. There is financial assistance; you have to qualify.” Weeks of applications—only to learn the container (my bank account like an other-than-9-inch springform pan for the tart) is not the right size.

• Walk everyday, tip: not in winter; in a town with sidewalks greased slick with solid ice. Drive 3/4 of a mile to the YMCA to use the treadmill. (Now does that make sense? It’s like adding bran to supplement refined flour.)

This dessert did earn acclaim from the friends I served it to—their acclaim was more important at that time than the taste. (Although, I’m not sure we sprang for any NW Riesling because everyone we knew drank only cheap red wine, if not beer.)

I’ve gradually realized that this recipe, like life, succeeds only if you use quality ingredients and it’s done slowly and deliberately. The rules are not simple.

The intricate steps and time taken will enhance the outcome of the final product: a delicious dessert or a painfree day.

1. Published by Brooks Trish, Idaho Statesman wine reporter in the early ‘80s.

2. From Place Pigale, the restaurant in Pike Street Market, Seattle that originally featured this dessert.

Somewhere in New Mexico

Magdalena R. Stay

T.A.R.T CONFIDENTIAL HIGHLY CLASSIFIED

What follows is the transcript of an interview with a waitress from the XXXXXXX Diner in XXXXXXX, New Mexico. We have reason to believe the waitress has had contact with the aliens from Sector 59. [Note: the Transgalactic Alien Research Team has been aware of the alien’s visitations to Earth for the last few months. Our scientists have recently discovered how to track their spaceship using the von Rontgen method through

T.A.R.T. has not had any communication with these aliens.] It is probable the waitress is unaware that her customers are aliens.

April 17, 1986

4:28 PM

Transcript of an interview with Denise XXXXXXX Head Agent D, Transgalactic Alien Research Team

Agent D: Hello, please state your name.

Denise: I’m Denise XXXXXXX.

Agent D: I’m Agent D. This is Agent F. We’re from T.A.R.T. It’s a government agency.

Denise: What does it stand for?

Agent F: We can’t tell you. Don’t worry about it. Now, you work at the XXXXXXX Diner in XXXXXXX, New Mexico, yes?

Denise: Yes, that’s true.

Agent F: How far is that from Roswell?

Denise: A 20-minute drive, or close enough.

Agent D: We’d like you to tell us about three customers you served in booth six this afternoon.

Denise: Well, I sat them down in the booth, just like I normally would. And I brought them their waters, and they ordered a bunch of food.

Agent D: Tell us more. What did they order?

Denise: Well, one wanted me to ‘partially carbonize the English, destroy the cackleberries, and a stomach heater’.” So I brought them a toasted English muffin with some scrambled eggs and a coffee on the side.

Agent F: How could you tell that they wanted…

Agent D: …those items in particular?

Denise: Well, it didn’t make a bunch of sense when they first came in, but after I realized they were speaking diner lingo, it was obvious.

Agent F: I’m sorry, one more time?

Denise: Diner lingo. But they don’t get the words quite right.

Agent F: And what is diner lingo?

Denise: It’s a way for us waitresses to communicate easier with the cooks. No matter how busy it is in there, if I yell,

‘drown the kids with rabbit food’ the cook’s going to know it’s an actual order and not just chatter. So ‘carbonize the English’ is ‘burn the British’. That’s a toasted English muffin. Cackleberries are cluckfruit, that’s plain as day. ‘Destroy them’ is usually ‘wreck ‘em’. So ‘destroy the cackleberries’ would usually mean scrambled eggs. ‘Stomach heater’ is a ‘belly warmer’. That’s one of the ways we say hot coffee.

Agent F: That makes sense…

Agent F: You said there were three…

Agent D: …yes, three of them, that’s right.

Agent F: What did the others order?

Denise: The second one asked for ‘a chessboard with engine lubricant, the letter ‘u’ but all beepy style, and cow water’.” And I brought them a waffle with syrup, two fried eggs with bacon, and a glass of milk.

Agent F: And what would the translation for this be?

Denise: Well, our diner slang for waffles is ‘checkerboard’ and syrup is ‘motor oil’.

Agent D: So that’s where that came from.

Denise: The ‘beepy u’ was harder to figure out. But one of our items is ‘two dots and a dash’ and I don’t need to know morse code to put that together. It’s lingo for two fried eggs with bacon. And then the ‘cow water’…

Agent F: …is the milk because cow, moo, I get it.

Denise: The third one wanted me to ‘brush the ground, a pile of personal floatation devices, and sketch one without the lights’. ‘Brush the ground’ is normally ‘sweep the floor’; it’s lingo for hash. ‘Flotation devices’ are ‘life preservers’; those are doughnuts. And the last one is ‘draw one in the dark’. That’s black coffee.

Agent D: So, you figured out their orders…

Denise: And I rang them up. Then when it was ready, I brought them their food.

Agent D: Now, was there anything else memorable about these customers? Their outfits, anything?

Denise: Their outfits are always a little bit odd. Skinny Pete was wearing a powdered wig but the rest of his outfit looked like it was from the 60s. Except for the stilettos he was wearing.

Agent F: The stilettos?

Denise: Yes. Mini Marilyn was in a prom dress and a cowboy hat completely covered in rhinestones. And Dapper Dan was wearing

Agent D: You said their outfits are always odd…have you seen them before?

Denise: Yeah, they’ve been coming in about once a week for a couple of months now. Hey, why are you asking all this about the aliens anyway? Are they in trouble?

Agent F: [indistinct] aware the customers are aliens?

Denise: Of course! All the waitresses at the diner know.

Agent F: [swears] Why wouldn’t anyone say anything? Report it, or turn them in for publicity and prize money?

Denise: Why would we? We don’t want anyone to take them. They’re perfect customers, super polite, and they tip really well.

Agent F: [swears in disbelief]

Agent D: [sighs] Thank you, Denise. You can go.

[end of interview]

Final Notes: We at T.A.R.T. recommend collaboration with the XXXXXXX Diner waitresses immediately.

Sew Teresa Pedersen

I was the first girl to wear pants at Fraser Elementary School. It’s true. But it was Memphis in the early seventies and I had to bring in a permission slip from my parents in order to wear this scandalous outfit. There were no triumphant, Rosa Parks type moments. My mom sewed my clothes, and while she was a talented commercial artist, spending her workdays sketching the latest fashions, she couldn’t always transfer her visions to the sewing machine.

I recall that the pants were made of some odd corduroy/ felt hybrid type of fabric. When I stood up at my desk to say the pledge of allegiance, a bulging imprint of my knees remained on the pant legs. I spent the day tugging at the fabric, desperately trying to make it look normal. At recess, a boy in my class punched me in the stomach. After school, being pursued by bullies, I ran home. Talking a short cut through the neighbor’s yard, the memory-foam pants got caught on a chain link fence and ripped. Tragedy! Soon after this incident, my parents decided we needed to move to a better neighborhood.

Having that middle-class house in the middle-class subdivision meant that there was less money for incidentals like clothing. Momma made the outfit I wore on my first day at the new school. There was a full-length skirt made of fabric with large, bright orange and yellow flowers. A slit up the center of the skirt revealed matching shorts underneath; something a Vegas showgirl might have worn. You’ll have to agree that it really doesn’t matter what type of shirt I wore with this ensemble.

As I stood in the hall waiting for lunch, I noticed Pamela Anderson (yes, that was her name) two spots ahead of me in line. Pamela was a beautiful, petite black girl who obviously came from a wealthy family. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun and her cheerleader’s outfit was flawless. She turned my way and her eyes darted down to my skirt.

“Ah you poor?” she asked in her charming southern drawl. “No.” I replied defensively.

She put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. “Ah you rich?!”

“No.” I conceded.

She looked me up and down before declaring, “You poor.”

And then there were the Great Gatsby outfits. The movie had inspired a 1920’s trend in the fashion industry. Momma made me and my older sister, Peny, some silky, polka-dotted pantsuits that had flowing butterfly sleeves and extremely wide trousers (envision something you might be able to find in the lingerie department at Macy’s). Peny, the beautiful, vibrant theater student could pull off the look. Me, a dorky introvert with frizzy hair and giant glasses? Not so much. Nobody spoke to me on that day. When I think back on it, I don’t even recall anybody making eye contact.

As time went on, I cared less about my appearance. In high school, I joined the band and became quite an accomplished musician, playing the trombone because why would I choose a normal instrument? During my sophomore year, I was invited to audition for the all-state band. This called for a special outfit! I bought a pinstriped blouse at a discount store, but Momma made a pair of peach-colored culottes for me. I was feeling pretty good about myself as I left the audition hall, at least until a bus from a competing school drove by. A boy stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Hey, culottes girl!” That’s not really how I wanted to be known.

Nevertheless, I made the all-state band and eventually landed a music scholarship to college. That was where I met John.

I knew John was “the one” right off the bat. Even though we didn’t have established careers, we decided to get married. With money being tight, Momma offered to make my wedding dress. It really turned out to be lovely, make of ivory satin and lace with a row of about thirty fake- pearl buttons running down the back. At the reception, with my movement on the dance floor, the pearl buttons started popping out of their fabric loops. Every so often throughout the night, Peny would pull me aside and re-button the dress. This was the last article of clothing Momma ever made for me.

Momma passed away several years ago, losing her life a good seven years after losing her mind to dementia. I now have a good job and can buy new clothes whenever needed. But what I wouldn’t give for one more ill-fitting, inappropriate, homemade outfit.

Rebecca Paterson

Doctor Roberts had called with bad news on the morning of the day that Deedee turned into a statue. The news was hardly a shocking revelation; the dream of full recovery had been fading from the horizon for several years by then, and anyhow, Deedee had a finely tuned sense of what was happening inside of her body. She had known before the results were in every time so far, whether or not the doctors believed it.

Deedee had finished dinner and was summoning the will to enter fourteen new treatment appointments into her calendar, leaning just slightly forward in preparation to slide her chair back over the cold floorboards, when the transformation occurred. It swept through her body like a wave, not a powerful one, but one that lips gently onto the sand, a blip in the larger swell, turning a few grains as it spreads and returns seaward. So quickly and gently was the soft flesh of Deedee’s body turned to oak, the grain already standing out starkly along the angle of her cheek.

Deedee’s breath would have caught in her throat if she still possessed the necessary musculature for such a thing, but instead she merely noted in astonishment the subtle, brief sensation of her most recent breath sliding out of her wooden lungs and past her slightly open lips, and then stillness. She willed her fingers to move from the tops of her thighs, tried to squeeze the shoulder that gave her trouble. Her eyes, smooth curves with small indentations approximating irises, were fixed upon the stupidly dull vista of her recently emptied plate, a bit of vinaigrette and marinara shining under the kitchen light. The dish will not be cleaned, she marveled. Finding her eyes as immobile as everything else, she shifted her attention to the blurry areas of her peripheral vision. There was a lot visible there, the round, dark redness of her wine glass, the navy blue, shadowed expanse of the jacket she’d worn to work that day lying on the floor beside her chair, the lower edge of an aging bouquet she’d bought at the grocery store two weeks ago, the wispy shapes of dropped petals.

This was only the most recent of Deedee’s transformations, although the others had been less abrupt.

For example, she could not pinpoint the moment, the year even, that she ceased to be a sexual object, but she was impressed, even delighted by the clarity of the distinction. A mother and former wife, a respected employee – no one would imagine, would they, that her addiction to physical intimacy had been so mortifying, so plagued with shame, that barely ever was there even one moment when she did not wonder what the hell she was doing, why she could not stop. Despite the warm safety of her middle-age, Deedee was still occasionally haunted by a youth of reckless physicality while in possession of the tenderest of hearts. Because she knew she should, she strived to own her history, to fold it tenderly into herself. After all, there was room in her now for all of it, she was broad and soft and not nearly so heartbreakingly vulnerable as she used to be. Could she not have love and compassion for the selves she had been? Some days she could.

Not so long before that, Deedee had awoken one day to discover herself no longer mad with fear of unmet potential, a more subtle but no less welcome revolution. In her mid-twenties, she journaled the petulant sentence, “I can’t simply never make anything of myself!” and then spent years haunted by her own distillation, too tragic to bear. Can brilliance exist independently of accomplishment? Does it matter, and if so, to whom? Modern Deedee was mercifully less concerned about it. After all, the notion that one should do extraordinary things had shown itself to be no more than cleverly disguised capitalist propaganda, hadn’t it, and she strove to require no fanfare, to seek no affirmation, to tend carefully to her own garden.

Maybe somewhere in the middle (how, she wonders, sitting wooden at the table, can she not remember a more precise timeline for these miraculous occurrences?), there was motherhood. Certainly, Deedee had never imagined herself as a mother. Pregnancy and birth were alien, disturbing notions, not for her, she was quite sure. It was a short series of accidents and impulsivities that changed this course at the eleventh hour, and then proceeded to lift her up by the ankles and shake every last piece of her life out of her pockets – she was reborn, squalling and terrified, alongside her little son. Parenting a young child was moving, boring, ridiculous, so filled with breathtaking love that she often felt that she would literally burst; she never shut up about him.

There were colleagues for several of those early years who knew nothing about her at all, except that she had a son (imagine!). An experience at once so painfully special and so comically commonplace, she had watched without argument as she dissolved wholly into her child, the atoms between them freely mingling.

Well. Her son was grown now, her atoms were her own again, and she was satisfied that she’d done a reasonable job of it. She hoped their friendship was easy for him, and though “easy” could never describe any part of the ball of Deedee’s aching, bleeding love that until recently had occupied a pulsing space inside her chest, he brought her joy and not too many tears. He had come to visit during the uneasy peace since her last round of treatments, a few months ago now. Her weakness embarrassed her, and she worked hard to disguise it. It would probably be a while before he’d have occasion to check up.

Relief. My god, Deedee thought, letting her consciousness drift through her cool, solid form. I have no brain; I exist as much in my elbows as I do in my head. Below the surface of my belly, only wood. Nothing more will grow there. In time, a long time, I may shrink, burn, rot. But how calming to belong to the simple, indifferent forces of the world. Gravity, air. Moisture, heat. It will not be personal. There will be very little need to wonder.

And yet. What human does not crave a sharp flavor at the center of their existence? A place to grab hold, to sink their teeth? Deedee was suddenly heavy, saturated with nostalgia for the strongest tastes of her humble life, the shocks and the beauty, the cold river plunges, the luxurious sobs, raspberries picked under hot summer sun. Sweet, clear beads of it formed on her temples, shoulders, earlobes, for all the world like sap. If a woman can transform into a block of carved wood, can the block not perhaps transform into a tree, maybe someday even bear fruit?

Deedee imagined the sensation of her feet growing wider, deeper, her ankles and knees thickening and gnarling as roots lovingly broke apart the foundation of the house where she had lived with her family and alone, seeking the wet, dark earth below. Trees can burl, Deedee knew, there can be parasites and blights, there will almost certainly be thoughtlessness, even cruelty.

Trees can wither and die. Deedee felt (did she feel it?) a brightness just below her surface, something flowing, cyclic, drawing towards the air, the fading daylight outside the windows. At the very edges of her vision, green.

The Fairy Experiment

Kimme Rovin

“I’m going to prove that fairies are real,” I tell my younger sister Ellie after school. She’s four years old and looks up at me curiously. She has something crusty and brown smeared around her mouth. I wonder if Mom put a chocolate chip cookie in her lunch and not mine.

Ellie’s not interested. She looks away and runs to where her dolls are strewn over the living room carpet. She doesn’t know how to prove things anyway.

I think about my experiment for an entire week. After school I go to the public library and look through all the books I can find about fairies. Mrs. Nelson, the children’s librarian, helps me when she can. She has long blonde hair and a scratchy voice. When she smiles deep wrinkles try to swallow her eyes. I can tell she takes me seriously. There are lots of books about fairies, but they’re mostly stories for kids. I don’t want just a story. I want a story with real information, something I can actually use, something with facts. That’s how my third grade teacher Ms. Walters said the scientific method works. You need to start with something real.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Nelson shows me a book by a man who claims he went to the fairy world when he fell asleep in a mushroom ring. He says that all day the fairies search for sweet things, ripe berries, flower nectar, honey, and fall asleep at night with bellies full of sweetness, crystals of sugar dripping from their lips. If you want to attract a fairy leave out something sweet and they’ll come. Mrs. Nelson says to always read things carefully, for the stories inside the stories, the unsaid words that echo between the lines. I don’t know if I can trust this fairy explorer. The story inside his story feels too big.

One day I stay at the library until after five o’clock. Mom doesn’t notice. I walk home in the twilight, just barely able to see my way down our long driveway. I pretend there are fairies hiding in the shadowy branches of the scrub oaks lining our road, watching me with dark huckleberry eyes, their tiny noses pointed at my backpack where crumbs from the cookie Mom remembered to pack in my lunch smoosh under the weight of my books. Mom looks tired when I get back to the house. Dad’s in his office banging at his computer, the staccato sounds of typing quick and angry. I go straight

up to my room.

I pick an offering of honey for my experiment. The person in our house who uses the most honey is Ellie. She insists that our mom pour thick ribbons of it over her breakfast in the morning, drowning her cereal in golden sweetness. I figure she won’t notice a little bit missing, she doesn’t notice a lot of things. I write out my plan carefully on yellow construction paper with the purple puff top pen Mom gave me last year for my birthday. I use the cursive we’re learning in school; it makes my writing look like something that belongs in a witch’s spell book. It’s dark by the time I finish. Dad was supposed to put me to bed tonight but I can hear him in his office downstairs. He and Mom aren’t speaking. The air between them feels thick and sticky. I’m glad no one has noticed I’m still awake.

I look over what I’ve written proudly. I think about showing Ms. Walters but my chest feels tight and I decide not to. I put together my fairy experiment the next evening.

“You’re making a mess,” Ellie surprises me as I’m squeezing the plastic bear-shaped honey container. The pointed yellow top refuses to surrender the crystallized mass within. “It’s not a mess, it’s my experiment,” I tell her. She watches carefully with big hazel eyes while I continue to squeeze the plastic bear. I finally get some of the thick honey out.

“Do you want to help me set up my fairy experiment?” I ask. She’s wearing pajama pants and an oversized princess dress from her costume bin. She agrees. I think she should be in bed by now; I’m not sure where Mom is. I take her hand and lead her out the back door. “Look,” I say, putting the bowl on the first step. “Fairies love sweet things, if we leave this bowl of honey out overnight one will come to eat it.”

I imagine a tiny figure approaching my offering, maple seed wings extended, small pointed nose turned upward, sniffing at the sweet smell of honey. A hand in miniature reaching for the lip of the bowl, opalescent nails, like tiny snail shells. But then I remember the story inside the story. If fairies already have lots of sweet things to eat, why would they come for honey? I think about something Mom told me, that tart things make sweet things even sweeter. Maybe that’s the story inside the story. I add three firm blueberries to the bowl just in case, they’re small and a sickly shade of purple. I’m sure they taste terrible.

“Maybe Bingo will get out and eat your experiment instead of a fairy,” Ellie looks at me questioningly. Bingo once ate an entire sleeve of donuts. Mom just sighed and said that’s what golden retrievers do. Ellie’s right though, even if the honey and blueberries are gone in the morning, I won’t be able to tell who took them. I run inside and grab the bag of flour Mom keeps in the kitchen. I sprinkle the white powder all around my bowl and smear some over the sides. “A fairy will need to make tracks to get to the bowl. Or maybe even leave a handprint,” I tell Ellie.

She doesn’t look impressed. It’s OK, I don’t need her to understand but I like that she’s out here with me. Sometimes I like being her big sister. We hear Mom calling from inside and run through the back door, into the kitchen, and up the stairs. We pretend like we’re being chased by the hairy goblin from the book Dad used to read us at night. We jump into our adjacent twin beds, giggling.

Before I fall asleep I hear Mom and Dad arguing, quiet whispers that sneak up to our room, hot and sharp. I hear the creak of a door. Dad always leaves after he and Mom fight. The sound of crunching gravel as Dad drives away is oddly comforting.

In the morning the bowl is gone. Grass covered in globs of honey shines in the weak morning sunlight, white powder sprinkled over the weeds creeping up the back stairs. The blueberries are gone too. Ellie runs up behind me. “Did you catch one?” she says, breathless from sprinting through the house. She considers the scene in front of us. No bowl, swept stair, no fairies. She starts to cry. I shove her away, annoyed, angry tears prickly and warm in my own eyes. I look over my ruined experiment again before turning to go inside. I stomp into the kitchen, a weight settling in my chest, heavy and familiar. Ellie and I eat our cereal in silence.

After school mom sits us down at the kitchen table. She has her serious face on and Ellie squirms in her chair. Mom tells us that she and dad are getting a divorce. Ellie bursts into tears and runs up to our room; she doesn’t understand but she knows it’s something bad. I don’t feel anything.

Dad moves out that night. He leans down to kiss Ellie’s head before he leaves and knocks over a bowl sitting on the edge of the counter. I pick it up as he walks out the door. It’s the same one I used for my fairy experiment. I inspect the

bowl carefully for cracks. It looks OK. But there! I think I see a tiny white handprint. It’s so faint my eyes blur trying to focus on it. I feel electricity run through my body. I rush towards the back door, ready to call dad back, the words already forming in my mouth. I trip on the threshold as the door opens and drop the bowl. It shatters as it hits the ground outside. When I look up, dad’s already gone; an empty space where his car used to be. Broken pottery shards are scattered over the lawn. I stare at the driveway and try not to cry. Mom calls me in for bed. When I push open the back door I notice one purple blueberry right at the threshold of the door. I pick it up and eat it, tartness washing over my tongue, my face puckering. My eyes water and I wait for the sweetness to come.

Kate Maulik

There is a tart who lives with an old fart who eats yogurt with a fork and grumbles when she plays her music too loud - even though she knows he secretly loves it. They have been together so long it doesn’t make sense to keep count.

They have a beast of a fat cat who lounges in the sun and squeaks when poked. He used to bring them mice but no longer needs to seek their love. He knows he has it.

They eat mixed nuts out of small tin cups and laugh at each other’s jokes. Tart buys groceries and old Fart makes his famous eggs with avocado toast. They watch Jeopardy everyday and Fart thinks he always beats Tart but she has the grace to not prove she wins more times than not.

Tart and Fart reminisce of eons gone by. Lake days, tiny swimsuits and friends of old. Remember Chippy Swanson? He left his truck running and it rolled right into the water. They chuckle. You remember, the one with the battered tailgate he backed into the stop sign that ONE night.

Tart says she loved living those times. Times that have faded but never disappeared. But they don’t compare to living the love with old Fart and the beast of the cat who lounges in the sun. “Fart, we have made quite a life. We have made great things together.” Their thoughts both go to the baby they lost and thankfully of the two they didn’t.

Fart looked at Tart in her striped sweater with the hole showing her left elbow peeking out, and said, “Damn right. We always make the most.” He felt it just the same. “I love living the love with you, too, Tart.”

The Two Tree House

Maya Autret

There were two trees on the patch of lawn in front of the house my parents bought that transformed them overnight from immigrants into certified Achievers of The American Dream. One was a cherry tree, the other a plum tree. But like my parents’ idyllic notions of family life in our newly purchased home in the Land of Dreams, the trees yielded only the sourest of fruits.

Thinking, hoping, the initial crop simply hadn’t ripened yet, we waited, but to no avail. Even when our neighbor, an Italian woman with glistening, white shoulder-length hair whose middle-aged son still lived with her, baked us a cherry pie with the cherries from our very own tree, no amount of sugar could make the pie palatable. Dad promised to treat the trees so that they’d bear sweeter fruit in the future. Eventually, the trees were cut down.

Lemon Man

Julia McCoy

Lemon Man could get us what we wanted. We all knew it. Those of us who were young, brazen in our belief, knew it; the old, who pretended they’d left childish things behind, but went to see him all the same, knew it. The things we needed that were impossible, Lemon Man could make them happen. We called him that because that’s all we knew about him. Every hour, on the hour, he’d take a lemon wedge out of a paper bag, place it between his lips and teeth, and suck on it. The rumor was he didn’t have teeth anymore. Just brown, rotten stubs, some said. Others said his gums were all that were left, pale and smooth, so transparent you could see bone through them. I’d never been close enough to see them for myself.

On late nights spent in the beds of trucks, our eyes turned toward the stars, we’d wonder what he was. Some said a man, born with mystic powers beyond our understanding. Others said he was the devil at the crossroads, the chess table he sat at the place of sacrifice. I was of the opinion he was a lower-g god. He never left the table, never ran out of lemons, never slept. Sometimes I’d cross through the basketball court in the shit park he inhabited, glance over at the chess tables to catch a glimpse of him in my peripheral vision, but never got close. No one did. Until they needed him.

At sixteen, I needed him. My father moved back into our house. This was the third time. My mother had kicked him out when I was born because he hit her. He came back when I was three. He hit me. We stayed seven years. And now, he was back again. Though he pretended to be sober, reformed, enlightened, I knew the truth. So I decided to ask.

My friends, who’d lived in the town much longer than I, told me I had to bring an offering. Something it would hurt to hand over.

I brought the shell. It came from the beach near my childhood home, a scraggly, deserted place, mostly lined with pebbles and still-sharp glass. When my mother brought me there, we’d be alone for hours. Without him. Without anyone. To this day I’ve never found a more peaceful place than this.

The day I found the shell was my last visit there. When my mother explained that we wouldn’t be coming back, that the

car was packed with everything she could grab, I dug my fists into the ground. It wasn’t everything we needed to leave. Just him. She was incapable of seeing that. Both of us sobbing, she dragged me off of the beach, the shell the only thing left in my hands.

When we arrived in our new middle-of-nothing town, established ourselves in our rented trailer home, she punched a hole in the shell and strung it into a necklace. I wore it until the other boys made fun of me, then hung it up on my window to watch light filter through. I knew this would hurt the most. But I was sixteen, and it was time to be a man.

Lemon Man was alone at the chess table. The sky was the color of coming snow, but he wore no coat, just a purple t-shirt and jeans. His body far surpassed the width of the concrete seat, though he didn’t seem uncomfortable. His head melted into shoulders, and his skin rippled with each heartbeat. Heat emanated from his body in waves, like energy released from decay.

His mouth was closed at first, but when I sat, he yawned. I looked away, but the rot overwhelmed me. He smiled.

“So. Kid. What do you want?”

Be direct, my friends had said. Ask for what you want right away. He only deals with serious people. “Lemon Man. I want you to kill my dad.”

Lemon Man nodded, though it was difficult to see the movement with his gelatinous neck. “Alright.”

“I know it will cost me, so I brought you an offering.”

“He’s a bastard, isn’t he?” Lemon Man leaned forward, running his tongue over his gums. “I assume you wouldn’t be here if he weren’t a bastard?”

“Yeah, he’s a bastard.”

And now, though he pretended he was clean, sober, upright, I knew he hadn’t really changed.

“Hasn’t he?” Lemon Man asked. It was with some certainty I realized he could read my thoughts. “Is he a bastard right now? Is he the same guy who deserves death right now?”

”What do you mean?”

“I mean, let’s say he’s different. Let’s say he doesn’t drink anymore, doesn’t hit you or your mom, doesn’t call you names or tell you to be a man or tell you to fuck off. Maybe he’s not that guy who hit you on your sixth birthday. Maybe he’s not the guy that brought another woman home while

your mother was away and made you promise not to tell. For the sake of argument, let’s say he’s truly reformed. Does he still deserve a death sentence? I want you to be sure, because this is a serious thing. I’ll be holding the knife, but you’ll be plunging it in, metaphorically speaking. Or literally. I don’t make any guarantees on the process, just the outcome.”

“I didn’t come to you for advice.” Which was probably too direct when speaking to a god, or magic man, or demon. But he laughed.

“Goddamn, kid, tone it down. I get it, you mean it. I’m just saying, I can make him disappear. I can make him leave.”

“He comes back.”

“Not if I do it.”

“She’ll look for him.”

“She won’t find him.”

“But she’ll look.”

“You won’t look.”

“I’ll know he’s there.”

He leaned back, arms crossed. “Just had to make sure you fully understood what you were asking. Can’t have you coming back saying I didn’t warn you. So what’d you bring me? Because murder is a big one.”

When he said murder, it was a different sort of sound, an abrupt, sharp red, and I flinched. But I slid the shell across the table anyway.

He enveloped it in his hand. “Oh, I see. This is a big thing to give me, kid.”

“Whatever.”

“No. Not whatever.” Lemon Man closed his eyes, rubbing the shell. “I don’t think they explained what I do, kid. They didn’t explain what I take. See, I don’t just take the shell. I take it all.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, I take the way the sand felt under your bare feet. I take the shine of beach glass in the sunlight. I take the salt water taste on your lips. I take the way your heartbeat matched the pulse of the waves. Did you love your mother more at the beach? Then I take that extra love. Did you feel braver walking down the sand? Then I take that courage. Every thread that is attached to this seashell will be mine. I will feel it as my own and you will not.”

“But… Why?”

“Do you see this?” He slapped the table, rock cracking on the surface of the faded black and white tiles. “Do you see where I am? Do you see my lot in life? I will never have what you have unless you give it to me. Understood?” He held the shell by the string in his thick, muscular fingers. “I want this so bad.” His voice became a whine, a dog waiting for a bone. “But I want you to understand the cost of doing business.”

Lemon Man set the shell back on the table in between us. I thought about my mother, and what I would feel for her. Myself, and what I’d feel about me. What I would give up. I thought of every other person who’d sat here, who’d given up something. Were we all unraveled by Lemon Man, feeling less while he felt more?

When I became a man, I wished I’d thought about other things. How my love for my wife would drain just like the love for my mother. How my daughter would not love me, in return. How I would lose sight of the little boy on the beach. All the strings tied up in my shell. I didn’t know to think about any of that sitting across from Lemon Man. But most of all, I didn’t know to think about my father, and that maybe the man he was and the man I would be were not so different. How could I have known?

“Take it, Lemon Man.”

Lemon Man grinned, hung the shell around his neck, eyes closed. “Pleasure doing business with you, kid.”

He took a lemon from the paper bag next to his feet and squished it between his lip and gum, juice running out of the corners of his mouth.

That Bittersweet Taste

Grove Kroger

3 June 2025

Dear Paul,

I hope that this letter finds you in good health, at least as good as it can be at your age—meaning our age, of course. After all, who else but people our age write letters anymore?

I understand that next Friday afternoon the authorities are going to come clean in some sort of press conference. That’s Universal Time Coordinated, so I’ll have a chance for a drink or two and a leisurely lunch. Presumably you’ve heard the same thing, so it really doesn’t matter whether this reaches you beforehand. And probably it won’t; I’ve been waiting for a package from the States for over three months now. I regret not having a computer, or whatever might have taken the computer’s place since the last time I looked, but I don’t suppose I’ll be picking up one at this point.

In any case, there have been more than enough signs, haven’t there? I climbed up onto the roof last night with a bottle of grappa to watch, well, whatever those things are. But the lightning drove me back inside. To see a bolt stretch from one horizon to the other and then smell and feel the waves of ozone roll over you was more than I could deal with. (I can’t help but remember how you and Jane and I used to crawl out her window onto the battlements with a few joints God how I miss her! Which I hope—despite everything that’s happened—you’ll have the good grace to let me say.)

But getting back to the situation here, everybody is on edge, although they still lift their caps to you—those who are left, that is. Earlier this week I watched a poor fellow, he must have been at wit’s end, beat his donkey with his belt in the street. Then the next thing you know he’s weeping and embracing the poor beast, which had stood there mutely the whole time. Even the damn gulls seem to know something’s changed. They’re not flying. Fine fall days like these and they’re not flying. Silent, too. Of course they’re seeing the same things that we are.

It all reminds me of those apocalyptic stories that J.G. used to write. What a pity he isn’t here— or, presumably,

anywhere—to enjoy the show.

I’ve just finished laying in some basics: a few dozen bottles of wine, sacks of beans and rice, a crock of those olives you liked so much, a bushel of apples for the cellar. Amazingly enough, the building’s cistern still functions. There’s an old man living nearby, and I suppose he’ll continue making deliveries as long as there’s anything left to deliver. Or perhaps he’ll disappear like so many others. There seems to be a tendency in a situation like this for people to head for the hills or the beach. In this case it’s the hills, where several hundred people have taken up residence in caves. Good luck to them!

I’m not a particularly violent man, so I don’t own anything in the way of weapons, although there’s a lug wrench in the old Volvo. If I remember correctly, you used to hunt, so you may be better prepared than I am over here. Perhaps you’ll find some sort of closure in the news. I hope it’s something worth waiting for, some kind of solution. Wouldn’t that be grand?

Well, I’ll definitely have that drink. A Negroni, maybe— that bittersweet taste would strike just the right note, don’t you think? There’s a place down near the quay that has a little television and ought to be able to mix a decent Negroni. Friday may be the day for one. I was thinking about walking, but I think I’ll take the Volvo. It may be a good afternoon to have a car—and a wrench.

Arrivederci, Tony

Gina Persichini

Tangerine Sour. Lemon Drop. Sour Patch Kid. These were my choices. I’d been living a Willy Wonka dream snacking from my tray of treats for two days but now I wanted to punch that little Sour Patch Kid in the nose. Later. After the nausea.

When I was diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer, I panicked. I didn’t know I had a thyroid gland and, now that I do, it’s trying to kill me. It’s a good cancer, I was told by well-meaning people. Spoiler alert: there is no good cancer, but I was assured it was treatable.

First, a surgeon removed my thyroid gland. It’s at the front of throat, situated across the windpipe like a bow tie. It creates hormones that regulate metabolism. He couldn’t remove the whole thyroid because it was inflamed and close to important parts like the nerves that help me talk. I like to talk, so they would destroy the remaining bits with radiation.

The radiation that kills the thyroid is not lasers, it’s radioactive iodine. The thyroid cells eat up iodine to produce thyroid hormones. Researchers figured out they could kill off the thyroid with an Iodine Trojan Horse. First, starve the cells of their favorite food. Then, lace that food with poison and feed it to the hungry cells.

As I stared at my candy buffet, I was in the poisoning phase. Three weeks prior I began starving the cells of iodine by starving myself of iodine. Low-iodine diet? How bad could that be? How naïve I was.

I learned that iodine is common in food, particularly food with salt because most salt has added iodine. I had to avoid restaurants and any food in a can, box, or bag since salt not only tastes good, but it’s a great preservative. And then there’s dairy. On its own, dairy may not have iodine, but the cleaning products in its production do. Foods from the sea or grown in sand are also iodine carriers. This meant three weeks avoiding dairy, salt, seafood, spinach, bread, egg yolks, restaurants, and packaged food. I ate a lot of apples, matzo, and plain-cooked chicken. All this to say, I spent three weeks hungry, tired, and crying a lot.

It wasn’t just the food. Without my thyroid, my body couldn’t produce the hormone it needed. An under-active thyroid results in fatigue, depression, joint pain, and,

my personal favorite, brain fog. During the second week of preparation, it was budget season at work. I needed coworkers to double-check my math. By Week 3 I had to stop working because I was unable to focus enough for complex thought. I didn’t have an underactive thyroid; I had no thyroid. My symptoms were magnified. I once found myself sobbing in the kitchen; hungry, but without the energy to prepare anything. I picked up a book I didn’t have the brain power to read, and, in a fit of frustration, I hurled the book across the room. Lacking any useful strength, it landed on the floor a few feet away.

“What’s wrong with me?” I wailed.

My patient wife, Kathy, took a deep breath, and asked, “Do I need to recap Thyroid Cancer for you?”

Once my thyroid cells were appropriately starved, it was time for the Trojan Horse. After a quick round of tests in the hospital’s Radiology Department, Kathy and I were briefed on the rules:

• After taking the pill, go home. No stops.

• Do not interact with anyone.

• You can be in the same house, but not the same room.

• Keep separate bathrooms.

• Flush twice to clean the bowl of radioactive waste.

• If you throw up, treat it as hazardous waste.

• If you sneeze, flush the tissues. Do not put them in the trash.

Getting the pill was a scene from a Sci-Fi film. I was taken to a long, narrow lab, the only light from under-cabinet strips over low counters. A technician had me put on gloves while she retrieved the pill. She returned outfitted for nuclear attack; full protective gear accessorized with a hair cover and goggles. In her double-gloved hands she carried a lead cylinder the size of a mason jar. She set it on the counter with a thud then moved directly in front of me. Her eyes bored into mine.

“Once I give you the pill, I will move over there.” She pointed to the other end of the room. “You will swallow the pill and drink the entire cup of water as quickly as you can. Chug it.”

“Chug it?” I asked, amused.

“I’m not kidding.” She reminded me of a Drill Sargent.

“Leave the cup on the counter. Put your gloves in the bin. Then, leave.”

I nodded obediently.

The top third of the cylinder folded back on a hinge. Was that a creak? I expected smoke to float out. With foot-long tongs she pulled out a small tube. Her arm stretched out holding the tube in front as she backed up.

“Hold out your hand,” she commanded.

I had to stretch to close the distance. She flicked her wrist and a single pill fell into my hand, a white capsule about the size of a Hot Tamale. Harmless looking compared to the drama surrounding it.

“Swallow it. Drink the water,” came the order from the dark end of the room.

The pill that others would not touch or stand near — I put it in my mouth. I swallowed it.

“Drink the water.”

I chugged it. Before the cup hit the counter, I heard her again.

“Go home,” she said. “In the car, sit as far from the driver as you can.”

In the car, I pressed up against the passenger-side door in the back seat while Kathy drove.

“Should I feel something?” I asked.

“They said you might get nauseous,” Kathy reminded.

“I’m radioactive,” I pondered. “Maybe I’ll turn into the Hulk.”

We laughed about superhero powers, but I rode home feeling like the misfit in grade school. I had cooties. I already hated the jokes. Are you glowing? Is your pee green?

As a homebody, staying home for a week with nothing but television, napping, and a feast of candy should have been a delight. Candy was the doctor’s order. The iodine gets “caught up” in the salivary glands. Tart candies help to release it. Kathy arranged my candy buffet in the guest room next to a pile of magazines and videos. The first afternoon was fun. I watched movies and read People magazine. It was vacation, without the restaurants.

Nausea arrived the morning after, and unlimited candy stopped being fun.

Vacation became sick leave. On Day 3 my cheeks ached and were swollen like a chipmunk’s. As the week went on, I began

to hate everything. I never wanted to see a Sour Patch Kid again. My diet was chicken, matzo, and lemon drops. I craved salt. I resented food commercials on TV. Potato chips? I literally could not have just one.

After a week I was happy just to leave the house for the follow-up appointment. A different technician met us at the door dressed in protective gear. He handed me the end of a three-foot rope. He held the other end and backed up until the rope was tight. He also had a hand-held monitor. It had a probe attached to a cable, which he pointed in my direction.

Kathy caught on first. “Is that a Geiger counter?”

“Sure is,” he nodded.

Did I imagine the crackling sound, or was it real?’“All clear,” he said. “You’re good to go.”

“I’m not radioactive?”

“No, but you should stay away from kids for another week just in case.”

“So, just a little radioactive,” I deadpan. We would be back soon for scans to check on results, but they were kicking me out again. It felt anticlimactic after the previous weeks — hunger, the poison pill, solitary confinement.

Kathy asked as we left, “Can she eat regular food now?” When they confirmed, she pulled out a bag she’d been hiding. I recognized the golden cubes immediately.

“Cheese!” I exclaimed.

“And crackers!” she laughed.

I ate them in the car. The sharp bite of the cheddar complemented the salted crackers. I savored each bite while Kathy drove us to the nearest McDonald’s where we shared a salty order of fries. I was still tired, but I was happy to be free of the restrictions of the previous month. As treatments go, it wasn’t the worst. There was surgery, radiation, and a significant drain on my body along with some emotional trauma for me and my family. Cancer is cancer. There is no “good kind.”

Instead of candy, my doctor prescribed synthetic thyroid hormones as part of my ongoing recovery. They would allow my body to function normally. At home, I prescribed myself a serious clearing of any evidence of my cootie-filled confinement. It was with great ceremony and no regret, that I threw every remaining sour candy into the trash.

Suds and The End Zone

Ross Hargreaves

Suds and The End Zone are next door neighbors, right across Broadway from the campus of Boise State University and Bronco Stadium, home of the legendary Blue Turf. Separated from the Boise River by a Chili’s and that office building my mom used to work at in the late eighties. The one that’s entirely panes of glass. I lived nearby, in an apartment right behind the Broadway Burger King. Was still slowly finishing my bachelor’s degree. If I was lonely…or bored; I killed many a night at one or the other getting drunk.

I preferred the End Zone. It wasn’t a huge bar. Had shuffleboard and one pool table. Blue and orange shit hung all over. During Bronco (Football) games the place was always wall to wall. If it was dead, you could always watch sports.

That night was dead. Besides me and another man at the bar, there were two couples playing shuffleboard. On the TVs The San Antonio Spurs were playing the Utah Jazz in game 4 of the 2007 NBA Western Conference Finals. My team, The Phoenix Suns, had lost to the Spurs in the previous round. To say I was upset about this, it would be an understatement.

“I hate the fucking Spurs,” I said.

“Who likes them?” the man said. He was non-descript. White. In the realm of 35 to 50. Brown hair. Normal nose. If he’d been wearing a suit, he could’ve been an X-Files villain. Both of us were enjoying 32oz ice cold mugs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“The Desperate Housewives.”

The Jazz started a mild run. The bartender looked at me. Like all the bartenders at the End Zone he used to be a linebacker for Boise State. I nodded and he brought me another.

“You like the Jazz?” I asked the man.

“I’m from Utah,” he said. “Used to be ride-or-die back when they were good.”

“Stockton and Malone,” I said.

He nodded.

“Hornacek and Ostertag.”

He nodded.

“Tom “Rim-Check” Chambers.”

This he ignored.

“I met Malone once when came to Boise,” I said. “Spent all day in line at the outlet mall, waiting for a chance to get his signature on my basketball. A lot of people were pissed because he wouldn’t sign basketball cards.”

“You get your ball signed?”

“Sure did.”

“The Mailman,” the man said. “Never could deliver a championship.” The man took a long drink, finished his 32oz Pabst.

“I always wished the Jazz could have beat the Bulls one of those years,” I said.

“Wasn’t going to happen.” The bartender came up and gave the man another 32oz PBR.

Tony Parker hit a jump shot. Was looking good and smug. “Goddammit,” I said. Then I raised my voice for the whole bar to hear. “Spurs would have lost to the Suns if Parker hadn’t head butted Nash to keep him off the floor.”

“Calm it down,” the bartender said.

“Sorry,” I said.

The bartender nodded.

“Sorry,” I said again. “I just hate the Spurs so fucking much.”

“I get it,” The man said and sipped his new beer. “I mean, hell, I poisoned Michael Jordan up in Park City. And then he went and scored 38 points.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“I know what they say,” the man said. “It wasn’t no hangover. It wasn’t no pizza.”

You know the game. Game five of the 1997 NBA finals. Bulls and Jazz tied two games apiece in a best of seven series. Before the start of the game it was announced that Jordan would play despite flu-like symptoms. The Bulls were down 16 early before a suffering MJ went off for 38 points, led the Bulls to a 90-88 victory. After the game, exhausted, Jordan collapsed into the arms of Scottie Pippen.

“I’d moved to Park City for skiing,” the man said. “A friend got me a job as a server in some swank restaurant. We got celebrities all the time with the film festival, so we kept a bottle of Visine hidden in the kitchen. You know what Visine does?”

“Poop and puke.”

He laughed. “Every one of us working there loved the Jazz. Fucking loved them. So, the night before the game I’m waiting on Michael Jordan and a big group of black guys…”

“Ron Harper?”

“I didn’t recognize any of the other guys. I went back into the kitchen and poured half a bottle of Visine on MJ’s entrée before the chef sauced it up. Then I served it to him.”

“How did he tip?” I asked.

The man shrugged. “I felt so fucking proud of myself. Told my friends they’d make me a playable character in NBA Jam. After the game I never felt worse.”

“There was no beating him. Not even Charles Barkley could do it.”

“Still.”

“It’s legendary,” I said. “The modern equivalent to the labors of Hercules.”

We continued to watch the game and drink our beers. Eventually, the Spurs won. I went to piss and when I got back the man was gone. I finished my PBR and ordered two more before calling it a night. ***

Suds, in hindsight, sucked. The urinal in the men’s room was a horse trough. The drain always clogged with cigarette butts. Had a hand towel dispenser that was permanent, a grey leprous piece of cloth. They did all-you-can-drink on Thursday nights, but you spent most of the night leaning over the bar trying to get the bartender’s attention. They did have a patio which was nice in the summertime.

I was there that day because I saw Cassie Seawall riding bikes around campus with her new boyfriend. I’d had a crush on Cassie since we were in the same poetry workshop and decided to reward my sadness by getting tequila drunk at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

Suds was chilly even though it was nice outside.

The bartender put a shot of tequila in front of me, sans lime. Unlike the linebacker bartenders of The End Zone, the bartenders at Suds were all well aged punks, splattered in wrinkly tattoos.

“No lime?” I said.

“We’re out. Sorry. I can get you a lemon wedge.”

“What the hell,” I said even though the idea did not seem super appetizing. I licked salt off my hand and took the shot. Bit into a lemon that was more sweet than tart. Ordered another.

Three shots in the barback, who looked about twelve,

showed up with a CheapFoods bag full of limes. I gave up on the salt but decided to stick with lemons for continuity’s sake. Four shots in I went to the jukebox. Put on “King of Pain” by The Police, “Wonderwall” by Oasis and “Separate Lives” by Phil Collins.

Five shots in this guy sat near me at the bar and ordered a beer. Dude was wearing a Ramones t-shirt tucked into his jeans. “Who put this shit on,” he said. Meaning “Wonderwall.” This brought me out of my thoughts. Thoughts about Cassie in our poetry class, absentmindedly lifting her shirt to scratch at her belly.

“I did,” I said.

“Oasis sucks,” he said. Looking at me like I should give a shit.

“Won’t happen again,” I responded. Which was a lie, I love “Wonderwall,” but at that moment I didn’t feel like getting into some alpha pissing contest with this dick.

Phil Collins came on and the dude laughed. “Somebody’s got a broken heart.”

I ignored him. Ordered shot number six. Shot number seven. My songs were replaced by silence. I went and took a piss in the horse trough. Failed to move butts with my stream. Studied my face in the bathroom mirror. The growth on my nose. My ever-increasing number of chins. I ran into Cassie one time downtown, and she gave me a ride home with my bike in her trunk. It completely blocked her rearview. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me, her risking a DUI for me.

I went back to the bar. Ordered number eight.

“Why are you drinking with lemons?” the dude said.

“They were out of limes earlier,” I said without looking at him.

“Any good?”

“It works.”

“Buy me one.”

I considered this request. It seemed the path of least resistance.

The barback had put “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” on the jukebox. I ordered two shots. “With lemon,” I reminded the bartender.

Took the shot. Sucked on the lemon. Looked over at the dude. He had taken the shot but had yet to suck. I waited for some ass comment about the well tequila I was drinking. Saw the rim of his shot glass was cracked.

“Bitch,” he said. Which got the attention of the bartender. “Ah, not again. Hey man, let me get you another drink,” the bartender said. Shot an angry look at his barback.

Before answering, the dude with the Ramones t-shirt tucked into his jeans reached into his mouth. Pulled out a bloody sliver of glass.

Sunday Down the Dummy Line

Kyrstin Bain

It was Moira’s idea to lie, but it was Clara who had to do the job.

“Esther Pierce is having a picnic,” she said, her fingers twisted behind her back where her mother couldn’t see. “Please, Mother, may we go?”

A picnic down the dummy line, out past Hyde Park!—Mrs. Burnham could only shake her head. Surely Mrs. Pierce knew better? They were good girls, but it was so far from the city.

Young girls were always searching for novelty, not realizing that novel doesn’t always mean good.

Despite her reservations, promises of chaperoning mothers and society names were enough to soften Mrs. Burnham to the girls’ pleas, and she relented with the warning that they be polite to Esther’s mother, and so-helpthem if she heard they misbehaved.

On Sunday morning, they dressed with particular care. They packed their wicker picnic basket with treats from the larder and stole the tarts laid aside for Sunday tea. They paid their fare with shiny nickels, and waited on the platform for the train, each with a hand on the wide, wrapped handle of their basket and shivering with the success of their deception.

For, of course, Esther Pierce was nowhere to be seen, nor her mother, nor any other promised chaperone or society name. Only the girls, delighted in their handwrought autonomy, with the promise of a long, yellow-golden day as sweet as honey on their tongues.

They were the sole passengers, apart from a group of young men. The boys were boisterous and loud, dressed in shabby Sunday best, which was no match for Moira and Clara’s pressed white shirtwaists and high-buttoned boots. Clara laughed when they offered to escort the young ladies to their picnicking place. Even Moira, usually inclined to tease, turned up her nose at the called questions that echoed from the back of the carriage.

As the train pulled up to the end of the line, the porter’s moustache twisted in concern. “You girls be good, now,” he said, looking at the boys. “Stay close to the station, where someone can keep an eye.”

With only their basket between them, they evaded the

young men easily, who struggled under bundles of cricket bats and boxes of beer. The girls ran laughing from the platform as the boys called after them, their words chasing them into the sun-swept meadow. Soon the only noise was their own laughter, the pattern of their feet on the packed earth, and the beating of their hearts in their chests.

With the wicker basket swinging between their swishing skirts, the girls didn’t stop until they reached the treeline, their admirers deftly abandoned. They walked the path to the river’s edge, inhaling the mingling scents of the forest, kicking beech nuts with the toes of their polished boots. They followed the water upstream to a place that Moira knew. A place where, if you waded carefully through the shallowest part, you would discover a secret spot on the bank, out of view of the shore, and guarded on every side by a thicket of blackberry brambles.

That place was their secret desire: A place they wouldn’t be observed. Where no one could call questions or plead for smiles. A place of solitude and escape.

There they laid out their checkered cloth. They lifted their damp skirts to bare white legs to the sun and undid their many buttons to free arms and necks and breasts to the world. They donned their bathing costumes with ease, without thought to who may see. They swam in the shallows and shrieked as they popped bottles of soda and spilled on their bared legs. They shelled quails’ eggs by hand and crumbled the yolks into the water to tempt the small fish that flocked to taste their toes. They ate blackberries from the bush, tart purple juices running down their arms into the crevasses between their fingers, and then they bathed again and spread themselves out to bask, like lizards finding their way from beneath the safety of a rock, to taste the sun with their skin.

In their freedom, they forget, but not for long.

In a cacophony, they arrive. The boys force their way through the dense brambles like beetles scrabbling out from black earth. Their boots crush the fresh shoots of grass on the riverbank. The birds, sweetly singing in the trees, take flight. A squirrel chatters her displeasure. The water itself seems to signal its disapproval: it surges on the shore, spurred by the violence of some unseen debris.

The boys take in the checkered cloth, the bathing

costumes, the girls’ dour, startled faces, and they smile their amusement. “We’ve been looking for you all over,” they say, red-cheeked and cheerful. “Why didn’t you wait? We would have waited for you.”

They have left their burden in pursuit, cricket bats and beer boxes abandoned for the instruments of a different sport. They pull wrapped sandwiches and bottled beer from jacket pockets, and help themselves to places around the picnic cloth. They scratch their skulls and pick their teeth and sigh. They take turns lobbing stones into the river, crowing their pleasure at their own prowess.

The girls retrieve their things warily. They return half-eaten delicacies into waxed wrappers and bundle their discarded clothing. They give polite answers and offer no questions, all the while withdrawing, as though they’re stepping slowly sideways, like a herd animal desperate to break for home at the sight of a snake.

“This is a pretty spot,” the boys say. “Very pretty.”

With pointed courage, the girls rise as one, murmuring their apologies, nostrils flared for the sharp scent of a predator. They do not run. They walk, with studied calm, to the river just as they walked through the city to the train. Like they have somewhere to be, someone waiting for them to arrive.

“Hold on,” the boys say. “Where are you going? What’s the matter with you?”

The girls do not stop, eyes focused, wills fixed. They leave the checkered cloth behind, pinned beneath leather boots.

Past the shallows, on the shore, out of sight, they run.

On the station platform, Clara is red-faced and gasping. Blood runs down Moira’s shin, pooling in the hollows between her toes. They take turns changing behind a towel. Over their shoulders, they watch for prying eyes as they button shirtwaists, skirts, and boots. They staunch the blood with a cotton handkerchief, and leave it tucked into the top of Moira’s stocking, to keep it from staining her skirts.

Then they wait. They sit alone on the bare wooden platform, afternoon slipping away into a late August evening, sweating in the lack of shade, their soda bottles long spent, their berry harvest bittersweet on their tongues.

The train arrives, here at the end of the line. As they board, the porter seems to sigh.

They can see the boys in the distance, walking slowly,

unbothered by the lengthening shadows, cricket bats raised to their shoulders like axes. On one they’ve tied the red checkered cloth: the flag of a conquering army. They arrive, wet-headed, sunburned, crowing, and return to their place in the back of the carriage. They do not try to make conversation.

Moira and Clara sit in white-lipped silence, watching the meadow as the train pulls away. Later, they will agree that it looks different as they leave it behind. Not a place of freedom, but only the end of a one-way path built so men could raze the great oaks, cut back the brambles, trample the grass, just as they did in the city. Just as they do everywhere.

When they disembark into the bustle of the station, one of the boys presses close. “We didn’t mean to scare you,” he says. “We were only being friendly. Take your picnic cloth, won’t you? And we’ll all make up.”

The girls pretend they cannot hear, and when he turns to untie the checkered cloth, Moira grasps Clara’s hand and pulls her away into the comfort of the innominate crowd.

“How was the picnic?” asks Mrs. Burnham, frowning at their red cheeks and white lips. “You’ve had too much sun.”

The girls can only agree.

“Next time Esther Pierce has a picnic, I think we’ll stay home,” says Clara.

“Yes, all that way for a picnic,” says Mrs. Burnham. “So far from the city, when Hyde Park is right there. Was it busy there?”

“Just us,” says Clara. She no longer bothers to cross her fingers.

“I’m glad,” says Mrs Burnham. She sends them upstairs to wash the berry juices from their fingers, to soothe their sunreddened faces with cool water and salves, and to lie down in the dark of their rooms, to recover from the excitement of the day.

Perhaps she will lie down herself, now that they’re back safe. She has been worried sick all day.

Girls may be good, but men are men everywhere.

Crumbs

Eric Wallace

1917, Spring. Now in its third lunatic year, The Great War, the one which surely will end all wars, continues to kill and maim.

Much of the world is focused on the incredible carnage, the insanity of the trenches.

But here in the Middle East, others are trying to mount a Great Arab Revolt, an attempt seeking to break the cruel hold of the Ottoman Empire.

Wadi Rum—the Valley of the Moon—far into the desert of southwest Jordan, seems a perfect place for Arab chieftains to meet to try to form a coalition against the Turks. The region is remote. Inhospitable to the uninitiated. Unlike in Aqaba or Amman, there are far more scorpions here than spies. And scorpions tell no tales.

There’s a distinctive catalyst for this latest meeting. He’s an unusual, almost-renegade British Army officer. Welleducated, an archeologist, an Arabist, a man who clearly loves the desert—more, seems to thrive in it like the Bedouin who live here–he’s one Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence, determined to bring the tribes together. Determined to shape nations, perhaps to bring peace.

Here in austerely-beautiful Wadi Rum, El Aurens dresses like an Arab, speaks Arabic fluently, shows the Bedouin aptitude for riding obstinate camels, walking long distances, living without sleep, facing extreme temperature swings, dealing with the sand-flinging winds with equanimity.

Lawrence has been in Wadi Rum before, calling it ‘irresistible, vast, echoing and God- like.’ It is a place of raw beauty: the wide, flat desert floor. Canyons, hills, peaks and domes, some a thousand feet high. Dramatic pillars, towers and ramparts of sandstone and granite, many of them the color of dried blood.

In the distance rise the peaks of Jabal Um Ad Dami, Jabel Rum and Jabal al-Mazmar. And here and there, by Allah’s grace, bubble small springs, hidden except to those who properly seek. Springs are rare, but the Bedouin—and their camels—know how to find them. You must. Else you die of thirst, felled, gasping, by the sun’s savagery. If you’ve not already died from a scorpion sting. Or been cooked alive, the death of a thousand burns.

This special gathering of chieftains is at a camp near the spring of Ain Shalaleeh—’five square feet of paradise,’ Lawrence calls it—but as the women, murmuring, bake flatbread and ruqaq over an open flame and prepare the evening feast in a fire pit, the British officer turns his back on the soft green ferns and the miraculous trickle, talks with the sheiks of overcoming oppression, of self-rule, of the need for at least temporary unity.

El Aurens speaks mainly with the Nadji dialect. His words are powerful, his language convincing, his idioms accurate. For the moment, he is one of them, a nomad, a desertdweller. A chieftain.

They sit, cross-legged—some on blankets, most on the sand—and talk, gesture, chew khat, spit. Near them stand the camels, also spitting, occasionally hissing, honking and gargling.

“One of the least happy animals on earth, I should think,” Lawrence observes.

“Not at all,” a scar-faced sheik says, smiling. “Allah placed these beasts here to serve.

You hear them singing in praise.”

“Fi alwaqie,” Lawrence notes drily. “Indeed.”

A thousand meters away, high on a rocky promontory, a Syrian mercenary known only as Alqatil, The Assassin, scrambles to find a good firing position before the sun sets. A fiendish sandstorm held him up, else he would have arrived earlier, finished. He carries only his beloved Ottoman Mauser, a bag of water and a pouch of hashish, which he will enjoy smoking after he has completed his task, after he has glided away from Wadi Rum, Praise Allah.

What does Alqatil, hired in Damascus, briefed in Istanbul, know of his target? A man people are beginning to call ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ An interfering English dog, a spy. A few admire him. Some dislike him. Many distrust him. Others want him dead.

Alqatil peers down from behind an outcropping. The intelligence was correct. This is no ordinary meeting. Even without using the scope he’s carefully cleaning, he can identify the man he will kill. The photograph was crumpled, but Lawrence is easy to recognize, tall among others, his skin browning but whiter than the rest, his manner arrogant, any

deference clearly studied, his Bedouin clothing worn more with Western insouciance than from ageless custom. Forever a kafir, an infidel.

There is movement below. The group is rising. Alqatil curses quietly. He has arrived just as the meeting is stopping and Arab hospitality is taking over. It is feasting time. He is not quite ready, and he scowls as he watches the men move under a long, woven goat hair awning. He can see some of them as they sit, but the fabric hides all of Lawrence.

The Assassin shakes his head. It may be almost dark before El Aurens comes out into the clear again. The shot will need to be made under tricky light. But Alqatil has killed at sunset before, at dusk, twice even by moonlight, Praise Allah. His eyes are keen, the optics profoundly German and therefore perfect. He spits. One shot is all he will get, but one is all he ever needs.

He settles in to watch.

In the feasting area under the awning, women silently approach, set out flickering candles on small rock pedestals, place bowls of precious rose-scented water on low, goatskintopped tables and silently slip away.

Soon they bring the meal. Lingering odors of tallow, camel sweat and goat dung are pushed aside by many more pleasant aromas.

Sitting cross-legged on cushions, rolls of cloth and small carpets, the men feast on roast goat and onions, boiled rice, yoghurt, dates, white cheese, dried okra flavored with thyme and mallow, ash-coated flatbread. Grease glistens on their hands.

They drink hot sweet tea and cardamon coffee. They relish fig-and-honey tarts, the ruqaq pastry flaky and rich.

Outside, music begins. Gerbeh bagpipes, drum and flute. In one long line, twenty Bedouin men in white robes, red sashes and checkered headcloths slowly dance across the sand, linked closely together with arms tightly around shoulders. Their leader wields a long, curved saif, his free hand waving the sword like a silver baton.

Above them, the full moon has begun to rise, ghostly in the pale sky. The sun has not yet set, but it is dropping quickly. The line undulates. The dancers dip, rise, dip again,

gracefully grapevining in wide, looping semi-circles.

Alqatil watches from his high vantage point, allowing himself to appreciate the fluid symmetry. He slows his breathing, cleansing himself of any impatience. The moment surely is near, Praise Allah.

He has taken care of the smallest details. He chambers a round, quietly moves the bolt forward. One bullet. If he needs a second, it won’t be for the Englishman. It will be for...

His nostrils flare. His smile is dark, dutiful. Mashiyat Allah, Allah’s will.

Lawrence, still seated in the semi-tent, looks at the dancers with quiet approval. Almost unconsciously, he lets his left hand move above the nearest candle, holds the palm unflinchingly over the guttering flame. His neighbors grunt. Lawrence grins thinly, pushes his hand closer. If he feels pain, it goes inward, serving some private need.

The music and dancing end.

Lawrence finishes his tart, licks honeyed fig from a finger, burps ceremoniously. He rises effortlessly, steps out from under the awning, stretches. He moves away from the others and stands near the camels. Motionless, he gazes up at the faint moon, the namesake of this beautiful valley. The air is hazy, lightly tinted with red.

The Assassin nods, identifies the tall, sunburned white man, robed like a sheik in his black and white kaftan, a jambiya dagger at his belt. El Aurens is clearly not an Arab, yet he holds a certain bearing. He is almost a figure to admire.

Yakfi! Enough! Alqatil verifies the wind direction, adjusts the scope, draws a breath, frames Lawrence’s head, softly haloed in the dusky light. The infidel slowly bows it downward, as if in prayer. Does he somehow know his fate?

The sun is sliding behind the high summit above the spring, but a thin shaft of angry orange finds a notch in the rocks, streaks over the valley and blesses the scope’s front lens with sudden radiance. Alqatil blinks as he squeezes the trigger.

In the same instant, Lawrence bends further to flick pastry crumbs from his robe.

At the sharp sound, the Arabs below cringe, duck, scatter. A camel slowly collapses, its bones settling with a wheeze,

dark blood vanishing quickly into the greedy sand.

Lawrence, erect and unhurrying, steps almost disdainfully back under the awning.

Moments later, a second report reverberates from a distant crag. From the biggest detail to the tiniest, Allah’s will decides all things.

Undercover Eric Wallace

Rusty knew he was breaking the rules, which made everything more delicious. Delicious was just the right word, he thought, because he’d sneaked a peppermint into his bedroom after brushing his teeth. He sucked the mint slowly, savoring the icy burn against his tongue.

And delicious described his secret little encampment, his private reading tent. Lately, each night after official lights out, he’d become his own tent pole, with his top sheet and blanket arched over his head and shoulders as he sat up in bed, reading by flashlight.

Who wanted to go to sleep this early anyway? What eightyear-old could possibly sleep when clever authors were waiting to play with his imagination and to tickle his funny bone?

Rusty wasn’t quite sure where that bone was in his body— his mother had been vague about its location when she told him about it—but he loved to laugh, so he knew his funny bone must be a big one.

He had a habit of making noises when he read— repeating lines aloud, laughing, snorting and chuckling with appreciation—so his tent, in addition to hiding the beam of the flashlight, reduced the chances his parents would hear him.

His hideaway smelled like the fabric softener sheets Mom put in the clothes dryer. It was a comforting flowery scent. “It reduces static,” Mom said. Rusty already knew what the word static meant. His vocabulary was ballooning daily, and his reading skills were far beyond his grade level.

These nights, he especially wanted to laugh. It beat crying. His dog’s death still hurt.

Three weeks ago, funny, fuzzy little Scruffy was racing around on the driveway, chasing his tail. The next moment he was crushed under Dad’s red Honda. Dad, angry for some reason, wasn’t watching properly. He didn’t seem that sorry either. He just cursed, wrapped Scruffy in a big bath towel and drove him to the pet hospital.

Rusty was sure the vet could make Scruffy better, but it turned out the guy was no superhero.

Mom brought the news. “I’m so sorry, Rusty, but we had to put Scruffy down.”

“Down?” Rusty’s mind gyrated like a spinning top. “Does

down mean to hell? Is Scruffy in hell?”

His mother offered a tearful smile. “Oh, no, no. He’s in heaven.”

Rusty’s angry logic overrode his pain: “Then why don’t you say you ‘put him up’?” And he cried some more.

Dad finally came by, chased by stale cigarette odors. “Sorry, Champ. Maybe we can get you another puppy.”

But that hadn’t happened yet. Dad seemed preoccupied (a word Rusty was proud to have learned by himself). Dad smoked more when he was preoccupied. Maybe squashing Scruffy was hurting him too. Or maybe it had something to do with his work, which he often grumbled about. Dad sold Hondas, but Rusty guessed he didn’t usually drive them over pets. Mom’s work was around the house.

When his parents had noticed that Rusty was developing excellent reading skills, they began taking him regularly to the library, and they often bought him used books, including what they called ‘the classics.’ Each night, Rusty carried some of these into his tent, hoping to find funny stuff which would take his mind off Scruffy.

By flashlight, he’d polished off The Phantom Tollbooth and The Wind in the Willows.

The next week it was several Dr. Seuss books. Lots of wacky fun.

Tonight, he brought in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The author seemed to understand smart kids, and the book was just what Rusty needed.

He moved the white-yellow beam across the pages, delighting in the outrageous illustrations and chuckling at the nonsensical things Alice was seeing and doing.

“Drink me!”

Peculiar potions, special latchkeys, magic cupcakes, talking rabbits, Alice shrinking and enlarging—all of it really was a wonderland! Rusty laughed, keeping as quiet as he could. As Alice said, everything was getting ‘curiouser and curiouser.’

“Oh, my fur and whiskers! It’s late!”

Rusty chortled. The bedsheet felt warm on his shoulders. A corner of the blanket crept in and felt scratchy, a bit like Dad’s chin on weekends.

He became aware of rising voices in the next room. Mom often said the walls in this house were thin as crepes. Rusty

liked crepes—and pancakes and waffles too—but they weren’t what walls should be made of. Unless, he thought, there was maple syrup too? He bit his lip trying not to snicker. But his parents droned on.

“…the goddam dog...”

“…he doesn’t blame you…”

Rusty didn’t want to listen to his parents. He tried to concentrate on what Alice was doing—she had just met a weird bird called a dodo, a hedgehog and other animals who could talk, and they were all splashing in a deep pool of tears— but the louder fragments of the conversation were distracting.

“…bigger things to worry about.”

“…Shh! Keep your voice….”

Rusty forced himself back into the book. He turned a page, his shadow rising like a dark ghost. OK, now what was Alice doing? She and all those creatures were having a race, trying to get dry. Silly! He turned over a few more pages.

Ooh! Sitting upright on a big mushroom and wearing glasses, was a blue caterpillar. It was smoking, using a fancy brass bottle the story said was a hookah. Another new word! Would Dad like to use a hookah to smoke? Rusty smothered a giggle. His breath felt hot on his hand.

“Who…are you?” said the Caterpillar.

“I hardly know, Sir,” Alice replied.

The caterpillar puffed away. He made Alice recite a poem:

“You are old, Father William…”

Rusty struggled to hold back a huge laugh. In the illustrations, the Father William character—except for the fact that he was standing on his head—looked just like Mr. Terwilliger, the assistant principal at Rusty’s school. Yes, it was Mr. T., right down to the wild hair and the big white moustache! How curious!

“…not meeting the goddam quota, and…”

“…don’t tell me what to do…”

“Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar.

Yawning, Rusty turned more pages. He stopped when Alice met a big Cheshire Cat with its wide, wide grin and its disappearing tricks. It had ginger hair just like he did! Rusty practiced his own wide grin. Now if he could only make himself vanish!

“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” said the Cat.

“…putting the pressure on…”

“…well, don’t take it out on Rus…”

Rusty yawned again. He didn’t want to go to sleep yet, but there was no way he could finish the book tonight. But it was so much fun that he pushed aside the sleepies for a little longer and read further.

Alice came upon a very strange tea party. It was not just any tea party, but one with a mad hatter, a March hare, a very sleepy dormouse (whatever that was) and more peculiar riddles and poetry.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat…”

“…why do you always…”

“…let’s not quarrel, please…”

Leaving the dormouse snoozing in the teapot, Rusty flipped more pages and saw playing cards dressed as comical soldiers and a big chapter title, Who Stole The Tarts?

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a summer’s day.

Wonderful! This book was written just for him! But how could the author know what had happened a few weeks ago?

Mom had put a plate of freshly-baked raspberry tarts on the coffee table, ready to serve to fussy old Aunt Carolyn. Scruffy, in one bound, rushed over, stuck his muzzle into the treats, reached out his long tongue, flashed his teeth and stole a tart, chomping on it as he fled.

Raspberries and pieces of pastry flew all about.

What a commotion! It was made even funnier—at least in Rusty’s thinking—when, moments later, Scruffy threw up on the carpet.

“…willing to compromise…”

“…we’ll talk about it tomorrow?”

“Who stole the tarts?” the Queen demanded.

Rusty trembled with silent hilarity. Tarts rhymed with hearts, hearts rhymed with smarts, smarts rhymed with… Oh, my! They all rhymed with: farts! Quivering with laughter, he almost farted then and there. What would Alice think?

“Off with his head!”

“…he’s old enough. I’m happy to go back to work….”

“…we’ll look for another puppy soon…”

Rusty’s giggles subsided. He felt sleepiness pulling at him. His parents’ voices had lowered to a murmur. Maybe they

were friends again. He knew they liked to make up, as Mom called it. He sighed, slid back, let his secret tent sag into old familiar bed coverings.

He placed the flashlight and Alice on his bedside table, settled back on the pillow. He soon fell asleep, dreaming of white rabbits, red hearts, raspberry tarts, queens and kings and armies of playing cards, all swirling and twirling through the sky, with little Scruffy, yipping and yapping, joyously chasing after the whole crazy lot.

The Raspberry Necromancer

Hope Gordon

With the right amount of sugar and butter, I suspect I can bring the dead back to life.

Necromancy, like baking, requires precision. It’s both science and magic. I can’t expect the magic to work without the right ratio of flour to water to sugar. I can’t overmix.

I imagine myself shorter again, standing on top of the stepstool to see over the counter. Mom let me mash the raspberries with a mortar and pestle, then I scooped it into the potion, making my hands red and sticky. I licked them clean. She made me wash them before handling the dough.

Eggs, flour, dough, salt, baking powder. I complete the mixing ritual and arrange the circles of ceremonial dough into the bed of the tarts. It looks as it should, even though I’m taller now, and don’t need a stool to see. They will rise with life, if I have faith.

I make four. One for me, one for mom, one for dad, and the secret fourth. Mom and I used to split and eat it before dad came home from work. She would always say, “Don’t tell papa, it’s our little secret.” Years later, I did tell him, and he wasn’t angry. “Of course she did that,” he laughed. “Of course.”

The raspberry reduces in the bubbling cauldron, filling my home with its cloying aroma. The spell is working.

I pour the lush filling in the center of each tart. The oven tells me it’s hot enough. I can hear my mom’s voice say, “Bake at 425 for ten minutes, then reduce to 350 for fifteen.” She would let me watch cartoons while we waited, and she washed the dishes. I play the old show in the background, but since I’m big now, I can make the kitchen spotless for her.

The edges of the tarts are flaky and golden brown. I did the spell correctly, but the final step is the most important. As they cool, I set one on the window sill, along with half of the secret fourth. I save the one for my dad in a tupperware, after drawing a little heart with a toothpick like she used to do.

I hold the tart to my mouth, feeling its buttery heat on my fingertips. The sunlight comes through the slats in the blinds, illuminating the fabric of my mother’s flour-coated apron, the one with little rabbits and carrots dancing around the border. I bite into it. It gives way like the heart gives way to grief, crumbling and natural, so sweet it stings the eyes.

She is right next to me again. There is raspberry filling on the dimple of her smile. “Do you like it?” she asks. The stars in my eyes give her my answer.

Resilient Girl

Laureen Leiko Scheid

Resilient Girl

Fourteen with an autoimmune disease. Prednisoned and methotrexated. Rheumatologist visits, MRIs, and stomach injections. Pill box, medicine timed, cataracts, glaucoma, and a monochromatic eye.

Rheumatoid swelling.

Airplane sick. Tart hope.

Resilient Girl

pirouettes tears, shoulders Junior High, cooks disappointment, shares appreciation, gathers friends, and skis twilight on Fridays. Sunsets and moonrises. She communes with majestic mountain, deepest ocean, and colorful `ohana. Wise and strong, beyond her years.

Resilient Girl.

Tart Cherries: A Life in Three Acts

Jan Schlicht

Act I: Childhood, Michigan

My sister doesn’t remember this But I am quite sure it is true.

True that we had long summer days by Lake Michigan And stayed at the cabin with the creaky porch And went to bed still covered with sand from the beach, sheets gritty but we didn’t care.

True that we picked cherries from the gnarled trees nearby Tart cherries.

Not the Bings or Rainiers, such showboats with all their razzle-dazzle bright colors and OH! the explosion of sweet in your mouth. No. These tart cherries are understated and often overlooked.

As the sun slide across the sky, we first picked cherries, letting them land in our buckets with a satisfying and resounding kerplop then with a more muffled sound as they crowded in with one another, shoulder to shoulder.

Then we sat outside, pleasant hum of conversation about nothing that mattered while we pitted each cherry, juice running down to our elbows.

Mama then worked her pie magic, mixing the cherries with sugar and putting her concoction into a pie shell, rolled out expertly on the old farmhouse table.

It was an all day project.

[What a wily woman was Mama, to teach us about the changes that come with seasons, not from a textbook but from sampling the treasures of the season, feeling the rough bark of the trees, the hot sun]

I don’t remember, (and who can I possibly ask, Mama gone now these many years?)— Did we have to wait until after supper to slice the pie, Or did we slide it hot-from-the-oven into bowls and top it with ice cream that melted into the cherries to create a flavor so transcendent that I can almost taste it right now?

Act II, Adulthood, Boise

Decades later.

I am grown.

I know how to make a cherry pie from scratch. I can roll a thin and flaky crust, And cover the cherry mixture with a beautiful lattice. I learned from the best.

(I once asked Mama, “How can you tell when a pie is done?”

“When it spills over the edge in the oven and makes a mess,” she said, and gave me that knowing smile.)

One July day, just down Lemp Street, I notice a cherry tree bending over with pie cherries. I watch it over several days, but no one seems to be harvesting the fruit. They don’t know what I know

about tart cherries.

“Mama,” I say, “shall we knock on their door and ask if we can have those cherries so they don’t go to waste?” We do that.

We take our ladders and baskets and we spend a Saturday morning picking picking. We are almost finished when one basket gets bumped by an elbow or a shoulder. All the cherries tumble to the ground. We have a second harvest, this time of ground cherries. We laugh. At home, the same routine. Pit, mix, roll out the dough, make the lattice top. It’s an all-day project.

Another person in my home indifferent to our efforts, perhaps a bit disdainful of the way we have spent our day, says, “Why go to all that work when you can get a pie at the grocery store?” He doesn’t understand. There is no way to explain Something as fundamental as Making a pie from scratch. No way to explain the intangible but real molecular connection with the earth that comes from the ritual: picking pitting mixing rolling baking

No way to compare the flavor

Of a soulless grocery store pie —a corporate pie— to the one that comes out hot and bubbly red from the oven, filled with cherries that so recently still hung on the branch of a tree.

We put ice cream on top. It melts. He eats it, of course he does. I don’t know, though, whether he really understands about pie.

Act III, Looking Back

The age I am in, it is the age of sorting. Sorting through the sock drawer and the closets, discarding what no longer serves. Sorting through the basement—time for some things to go.

Sorting through memories, too, wondering about what gets kept and what is long forgotten, no longer retrievable.

I return in my mind to the orchard, The branches of the cherry trees intricate with age, the riotous commotion of crimson fruits in the summer sun, and I wonder at the persistence of this memory. I turn the memory over and over in my hands, gather it this way and that to see what I can discover buried there.

I feel certain that Mama had no agenda beyond making a pie, but what I also know is

that I was saved, in a sense, from a narrower version of myself, the one who would have ignored the tart fruit, and raced toward the readily available magic of sweet cherries…

Then…And all at once, there is clarity. I do know.

I understand the hold of this memory. It takes me through a doorway to when I first knew what was important in life. to the beginning of awareness of the art of being in the world surrounded by the pulsing, thrilling energy of earth.

I felt held in some deeply ancient knowing of how to be in the world enveloped in kinship with the trees with the solidity of the earth with my family

What Mama gave me then, in the cherry pie day, is a recipe for life:

The quiet intimacy of sacramental engagement with the choreography of seasons and food Laughing at the lake, or when the cherries all tumble to the ground Being okay with sand in the bedsheets And knowing that, sometimes, the pie runs over and makes a mess in the oven.

My Father Gone, No Longer in Dreams

Nate Jacob

1.

The second time he came back around was the last time he came back around, some swirling bitterness trailing out behind

as sleep’s horizon swallowed him by degrees, the memory of him beginning soon after to turn from the bitter refusal of forgiveness

to the tart but orange-sweet salvation that the dead earn—for better, and for worse— simply by dying worthier than they lived.

2.

Anymore, I sleep through alarms. Deffiant. Stubborn. Today can break from night’s dark hold if it likes, I can’t be bothered with another’s rising sun

marking another moment of memory’s loss. Dreaming is bitter, the citrus rind daybreak barely able to compensate for the sour grind

of tooth on tooth, and any way I try to remember, I end up spitting the pits and pith of loneliness into the churn left behind by death. I am adrift.

3.

Dreams once had reach, offered sure mooring to rudderless ships, until shorelines were mists and safe harbors proved loose then lost then gone.

Cast off! This long mourning breaks too hard across the bow, and the oarsmen already jumped, preferring to sink into the murk of uncertainty,

having begged to let the search end here, in living. Drop anchor now, and even if it never finds bottom, if he is out there, maybe he will climb the chain aboard.

Equinox Josephine Jones

Where Trail Creek snowmelt pools, runs into the meadow below Steel Mountain Red-winged blackbirds sing the song of tart berries to the soft breeze that ruffles each Ponderosa needle and remembers everything.

Hard Candy

Alan Minskoff

December evenings my silver-haired dad cashmere overcoat arrived with the cool night air on his hands. In the soft outside pocket, a cellophane wrapped mint with twisted ends or tart lemon drop—sweets among subway tokens, loose change, folded receipts—gathered from a work week helping the island city reinvent itself. Buying, selling, renting, managing he conducted the real estate quartet. Building skyscrapers erased his natural reserve, elevated his status, gave him nerve. He’d doze as the train passed New Rochelle, wake at Mamaroneck next stop home. A decade after his last commute I found a lozenge, a Ludens cherry cough drop, tucked inside the forefinger a gray suede glove. I keep this petrified piece of hard candy in a shallow drawer.

Postcard from Oregon

Alan Minskoff

After three depleting wet days conferring with young professionals in the new Northwest I want to drink away the vinegary taste of posturing. I don’t know my way around, am prone to gin fizz, despair, fall prey to spit-shined Scientologists who invite me into their storefront to get out of the storm. They give me a rigged personality test. I fail. Back in my room I eat an apple pop tart, the TV weatherman reports “we had a regular stormy December day.” He pronounces the city’s name Poorland. Stuffed into the old Benson Hotel a discarded shoe tossed in the back of a closet, this too red room has prints long stemmed irises, the ever-present coastal greenery doesn’t warm me. This pressing rain, this cold Friday night, in this most livable city, wish you were here.

Mara Bateman

I. for mothers:

Wait for someone else to speak. This is the best way to learn about, for example, birds.

When remembering what you’ve lost, begin with the fingernails and work inward.

Arrange recollections on the bathroom windowsill, sea-glass organized by color, clarity, ability to stand on end.

Wait for someone else to speak. Maybe they have the same questions you do.

You may get headaches. You may become angry and wait until late morning when everyone is at work, including the neighbors, and scream until your throat feels like a wool sock.

You may dream of swallowing sea-glass like aspirin. You may dream a bird flies out of you, perching briefly on the windowsill.

You identify it as a seed eater, but not much else.

II. for lovers:

Watch out for weak coffee. Practice demurring. Smile without your teeth. Look!

A steamy woman named Kartapurkh, Cajaput, Cassia, with skin the color of cinnamon and buttercream boobs. Seek flattering light and a refill. Beware of beverages without their desired effect.

III. For numbers people:

Count your Facebook friends. Water your houseplants, including the ones that always appear to be dying.

On Sunday, drive into the city. You will find it much too loud and dirty. Wind from passing trains will grip your arms with a malicious purpose.

On Monday you will be late for work. The sky will feel like a great white weight you are wearing. The crescent moon like a following shark.

You forgot to request that lovers always tell the truth, forever, but still find yourself surprised.

Count your blessings. Prosperity is probably a prime number.

IV.

for lucky assholes:

Expect good fortune. That’s a good place to start. Never reuse anything, not even ideas. Obviously not outfits.

Fortune follows the fresh. Fortune follows the well-dressed. Wake up gorgeous and listen to only fifty percent of what you’re told. Read only fifty percent of words on the page. Fortune favors the blissfully uninformed.

V. for people who took the job in Omaha:

In March, accept a second glass of wine. Be grateful for the obstruction to clarity of mind.

Out in the night stars align— huntress, spoon, bear. Somewhere black the Milky Way is frozen & frantic. Somewhere bright the moon hides broken in a river her fan club squinting on the by-pass.

In March you will miss home. The number of cardinals in the brown bush will increase. Someone you know will put out potted geraniums. Someone you know will swerve, but still kill the squirrel.

AD Amy Mäki

she exchanges unripe artifacts

splatters bitter marble

breathes in ionic columns

swirls brushes into entombed dreams

sells the earth

sculpts sweet lavender

blunders on black aegean liquid writes with plump acanthus

sells shovels stands back and sees

Vesuvius

Failure to Purchase

Heidi Naylor

A pistol. I couldn’t!

That grand piano until I was almost fifty. No price on your dad’s face as it was delivered. Time for the buckets, and for what was on the list.

Aloe vera to take camping, that time you grabbed the grill of our dinnertime fire.

The fancy Tesla I thought I wanted. The trip to Antarctica.

Tickets to The Who, and then they were never Next. That one story of how life could be that veered so close and might have ruined us all.

Tenderness.

Enough strawberries. Some years, sufficient milk, or granola. Those sweet, tart apples.

The right Ipod for your brother. The quality fishing guide. You lay through the night stoic, dense limbs stiff. Your hair a pennant of gold in moonlight. Your hand wrapped in a cool wet cloth while Shackie panted beside you.

And if I was any sort of a mama at all I dipped that cloth in the till of ice and swished it around in the clattering water. I wrung it over the coals—still sizzling. Then wrapped it, trying to be gentle.

Time on repeat.

So you could find relief again.

Bird House

Heidi Naylor

world of drifted snow with a blackening crust

scratch-awl ice picks crystalline high like the teeth of delicate monsters

and this little cottage wild cube painted blue

standing steady and staunch amidst silver and gray

note the careful step-bars hinged, angled just so

to discourage the squirrels— only you are missing:

come, bring the flutter-soft pages of your dusky wings

take up the bar with your sharp curling toes

and dip your beak break the tart, oily seeds

eat up now, eat now for as far as we know

you are still young abundant

no neon cherry dream

Billye Dotson

ask me to picture a fruit tart – I see cherry, no doubt. blood deep red cherries not those neon maraschinos, they won’t do in my dreams. so sugary and syrup sweet. no –I need sour, deep, tart. blood, red, and dark.

my tart is in a kitchen other than my own – sterile – modern, minimalist and white. just the way the landlord likes. no –my tart is living in a kitschy kitchen, a make believe 70s fantasy. a room bathed in horrible hideous oranges, yellows, and greens. cluttered up with awful knick-knacks and tacky tchotchkes.

there – in a creamy yellow ceramic on the cracked and yellowing vinyl – is my cherry tart, too nice to slice into just yet. still warm, cherry pulp, sticky sultry drips so so slowly over the overfilled edge – headed straight for the lousy vinyl, sure as shit going to stain. and in my imagination – I let it.

here – my cherry tart – too perfect to eat, becoming a discordant cordial thing. another may not see what I see at first glance. but as I let the tart sit there and stain the counter in my mind, that I can never clean, the tart begins to morph, changing neon glowing, growing and growing ever wrong, soured and monstruous at a second, a third, a thousandth glance –a bloody rotten treat, in a buttery crust, in a perfect sun soaked daydream –rotting, rotting, rotting.

Seeds

Michael Favala Goldman

I have a hard time understanding why I can’t buy your love with raspberries.

I know you adore them and rarely buy them for yourself.

I think you appreciate my gesture but not enough to keep you from grilling me about what I am feeling, what I’m not telling you, when I buy you raspberries.

Sin Was Smaller Then

Elizabeth Marie Mathes

They are three, Liz, Deb and Sue, cousins looking to sin. Is it surprising they’d reach for the venial. It is 1973 in a North Idaho farm town. And the three have no intention of giving up dreams that wait around the corner of the gravel pit and puberty in Prairie High School. Where they know all love and glory begin and end. Cheeky is what they want. Sue’s new favorite word now that her family gets PBS.

The girls are not hungry in any gastronomical sense. They eat egg salad sandwiches that Sue’s mom made before she sat down to watch The French Chef. Boredom and shade meet where legs scatter like pick up sticks on the back porch. Tongues lick mayonnaise that oozes from sandwich sides.

They are ready. Breathless in bunch grass thigh high. They’d walked under the ribbed vault of the trestle, past the granary and up the hill to barbed wire that cuts a line between the present and what lays beyond. In this immediate future it is an apple tree. Full bosomed, fruits immature, someone else’s property Liz and Sue scan for cars. Deb grabs fruit. Plays chicken with the teeth of farm dogs that try to nip her skin.

In a ditch hidden from the road, the girls shimmy green bobbles into training bras. Wrists go limp and arm stretch glamorous. They laugh and whinny in British accents. Because this is what girls do.

Is it not surprising when they bite into unripe apples that the word tarts might come to their lips. It’s a daring word, girly, maybe dirty. They’re not sure. Yet they like the way the word tucks soft tissue against hard, drops open the mouth, grinds muscles of the jaw and ends with spit.

What’s Worth Doing

Joplin Morgan

For my friend Spencer Hudson

So carefully I carry this memory of your red voice,

hard to hear for how it was, but sometimes a high soft note, giving depth to each shadow and brilliance to dust-lined July.

Your voice belongs there, like a willow timbers on the river, like a deer stays on the road sometimes.

I don’t want to be done with grief any more than I want to pull the sour from the strawberry.

In each summer fruit, the acid memory of hard rain in spring. In each glass of wine, the sting of summer heat set free.

What’s worth doing is worth doing carefully.

So, carefully I carry this memory of your red voice, your wild berry of a heart, sweet and rare; small and tart.

Three American Sonnets

Diane Raptosh

Note: These three poems are from series of sonnets I have been working on, based somewhat on elements of chance. I have a set of German vocabulary flashcards (complete with numbers and translations into English) which, once chosen, serve as individual titles for the poems.

345

die Grenze, frontier; boundary; limit

I stayed up all night to make the aloneness last That hole in the dark is the entrée to beauty Neptune’s goal: to break down boundaries between things I just couldn’t sleep for thinking of mountains on Pluto It made me feel like a Chinese poet gone somewhat galactic White clouds sash-like wrap mountain waists, writes Shen Zhou That line makes us do wondrous things with the mouth Everything has a little sex in it if you know how to sense it I had coitus with Evel Kneivel’s niece more than once So take that Anglo-Teutonic anti-sex snarled fanatic America I’ll forever seek out my bounds’ dissolution as human Tonight’s clouds are spinal cords, breasts, buttocks and lungs This hot flash, pure blare announcing sexual freedom The summit of poetry mouths me its hewn revelations

333

Glänzen, to glitter, shine

Even as deer bodhi glitters the air, another extinction sky garters the breeze. I try to make sure to squint past fear’s ledge before I say anything—I write love notes to dread to crown it un-king. This helps me find mushrooms with ancestor lungs in the basement’s woodgrain. Helps open the door to that state where Ginger Rogers zings into Link Wray. Well we all have to

be used for some aim, kind of how giant honeybees bulwark their hives with a ripple of shimmering. I’m here to look inward and out at the same time.

To wake and to sing. Serve as splendor’s breatharian. Tonight, I just want to pluck out a word from its scene, get it boozed up, throw it some beads, then take it out dancing.

39

die Aufgabe, assignment, task, lesson, exercise

Start with a question.

What do concision and love have to do with each other

So what is the creed of the honey locust

The revolving unfelt—what happens to it

My mom’s an elder but which of us is older

There’s more room to turn in a circle or is there

Start with a comparison.

The face is a lakefront of privacies

Start with personification.

Love covers your face with its name or is it your name with its face

The heart ricochets doves through its infinite wrists

The teargas of truth asks that we recondition all repetition

Start with a declaration

The ear is my job

The auricle gave me tomorrow off

The thing about singing words is I’m just so much gayer in German than I am in English

ABOUT

THE CABIN is a Boise, Idaho literary arts organization. We forge community through the voices of all readers, writers, and learners.

The WRITERS IN THE ATTIC (WITA) program is a submission opportunity for writers, both emerging and established, to publish work related to a one-word theme. With submissions blind-judged by a local writer of acclaim, selected poems and fiction are published in a yearly anthology. This publication is meant to be a platform for building an inclusive community and provoking creativity and experimentation through a love of writing.

2024 Theme: TART. Tart packs a punch. A tangy dessert or a saucy strumpet, tart is sharp and bold, leaving an unforgettable impression on anyone who encounters it. It can be both playful and biting, with a mischievous twinkle in its eye. When you hear the word tart, you can almost taste the zesty burst of flavor, the perfect balance of sweet and sour. Beyond its culinary connotations, tart is a word that embodies confidence and sass, daring to stand out from the crowd and make a statement. Tart is Eve sinking her teeth into the forbidden fruit, the side-eye gifted to the audacious, the click of a tongue, and the straightening of a spine.

Judge Meg Freitag is the author of the poetry collection Edith, and This Is a Book for People Who Love Dogs, an illustrated work of nonfiction. She’s a graduate of UT Austin’s Michener Center for Writers and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Originally from mid-coast Maine, she now lives in Boise, Idaho with her partner, Mark, and two perfect dogs.

MEET THE WRITERS

Alan Minskoff moved to Idaho in 1972. He lives on Loggers Creek in Boise. The author of two chapbooks—Blue Ink Runs Out on a Partly Cloudy Day and Point Blank from Limberlost, his poetry has appeared in Eight Idaho Poets, Idaho’s Poetry: A Centennial Anthology, Limberlost Review among others. He is the author of The Idaho Traveler and Idaho Wine Country. Minskoff has taught journalism and writing at the College of Idaho for 23 years. He has reviewed more than 400 audiobooks for Audiofile Magazine and can be heard one week a month on its podcast Behind the Mic.

New Mexico-based writer/producer Amy Mäki writes across genres with the shared theme of survival. Her credits include work on: THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, THEM and DARK WINDS. Mäki’s time working in both the thoroughbred racing world, and most recently as a middle school teacher has provided fodder for several projects ranging from feature film scripts to prose. The Nebraska native holds a BS in Biology, a BA in Film, and a MFA in screenwriting from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Billye Dotson (she/they) grew up in small-town Idaho. Growing up there, queer and closeted, they left to heal some wounds. They spent a long time running from Idaho, and the memories and versions of self it held. Now (with many more poetry-filled notebooks) they’ve been trying to get back to the freest self they’d left behind: the uninhibited tomboy in rural Idaho who created imaginary worlds from overgrown pastures and muddy streams. They currently live in California, working for the public library and spending their free time exploring the world curiously, compassionately, and ravenously. Their work has been published in Talking River, Lesbians are Miracles, and a previous issue of Writers in the Attic.

Carol Craighill has been writing in her attic for several years. After her retirement, she mostly wrote technical pieces for the Boise/Ada County Homeless Coalition. Several years ago, she responded to opportunities to learn to write

memoir pieces through Osher and classes at The Cabin. She is also deeply indebted to a writing group which meets monthly. The group developed from class opportunities and is the gathering of fellow writers that is a treasured source of inspiration and encouragement.

D M Koffer is a fourth generation Idahoan from the sunny southern part of the state. He has his feet in two different worlds: a Master’s degree in English from Idaho State University, and a working-class straight job. He loves nature, hates getting dirty, and lives with his wife and a Chihuahua named Tattoo. In his spare time he writes personal essays about life, the stories we tell, and the spirituality of nature.

Diane Raptosh’s collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. She teaches literature and creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her ninth book of poems, I Eric America, will be published in fall 2024 (Etruscan Press). www.dianeraptosh.com

Elizabeth Marie Mathes has lived 45 of her 63 years in North Idaho. By profession, she is a mental health therapist headed full steam towards retirement. She lives with her husband, Gerard, a retired music professor, and their son, Alexander, a developmentally disabled man. Liz and Alexander daily walk in the alpine forests that surround their home. Idaho’s natural beauty, care giving, aging and being a woman often inspire her writing.

Eric E. Wallace lives in Eagle, Idaho. Eric is the author of three short story collections (Undertow, Hoar Frost and Stonerise) and four literary novels (Emperor’s Reach, The Improviser, Mind After Mind and Hover Point), all published by BookLocker. His work has appeared in many literary journals and many times online at Idaho Magazine and at WritersWeekly. This is the 11th Writers in the Attic anthology to

include one or more of Eric’s stories. Visit www.ericewallace.wordpress.com.

Gina Persichini lives and works in Boise, Idaho. She writes about life’s challenges and adventures to find meaning and humor in each experience. It is her desire to help others to laugh at the ridiculous and embrace joy as the Universe presents so many opportunities to do so. She dedicates her writing to her wife Kathy Planansky (1958-2024).

Idaho native Grove Koger made his first sale—to the latelamented Idaho Observer—in 1965. He’s the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure, and Not, a chapbook of poetry, and Assistant Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal. He publishes regularly in the Limberlost Review and blogs about travel and related subjects at worldenoughblog. wordpress.com.

Heidi Naylor is from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and made her way to Idaho in 1990. Her story collection, Revolver, was published in 2018, and her poetry collection, February Light, will appear soon; both books via BCC Press. She’s a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices nominee and received a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. She loves Idaho trails and her family, including two little granddaughters. Her writing comes from tension and hope and love and fear of missing something. She is trying to miss less. www.heidinaylor.net

After working as an English teacher for six years, Hope Gordon began pursuing a lifelong love of writing. Since then, she’s worked as a ghostwriter, and has also published a young adult fantasy book called Savage Wild.

Janet Schlicht enjoys trying to find the words that might make sense of the chaotic wandering of her mind. She is appreciative of the opportunity offered by The Cabin to try her hand at putting thoughts into words.

Joplin Morgan is a poet and essayist from Boise, Idaho, where he lives with his wife and rabbit. His work is knotted, living, and sonic. You can find it published in Hot Metal Bridge, Rabbit Catastrophe Press, and self-published collections. A forthcoming BSU graduate, Joplin has been featured at local events like Storyfort, the Bloom Reading Series, and Death Rattle Writers Festival. His work is published in solidarity with the citizens of Palestine and all populations that seek liberation from violence.

Josephine Jones has won numerous awards for her writing and poetry, including a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, and she performed with artists and musicians across the west coast. Jones directed programs and the Colorado Center for the Book for Colorado Humanities and taught humanities for the University of Denver. She is the author of Sane in Pain, a writing approach to healing. She holds an M.A. in Education from Boise State University.

Julia McCoy is a middle school teacher. She is all about exploring weird and unexplained phenomenon that help us make sense of our crazy world. She has been published in Writers in the Attic five times, and has also published a short, nonfiction chapter about a Benedictine monk.

Kate Maulik lives in Boise along with her husband and two children. This is her second consecutive year with a selection in the Cabin’s Writers in the Attic. Songwriters and the songs they create have always been a source of entertainment and expression that Kate draws inspiration from. She attempted to channel her best inner-John Prine when writing her piece. He was a master storyteller and songwriter that showed humor and sadness are often great companions through the characters he shared.

Kimme Rovin likes to write about everyday magic and is on an endless hunt to find evidence of fairies. She would definitely go through a magical portal if she found one. Otherwise, she finds inspiration running in the foothills and reading lots of fantasy.

Kyrstin Bain is a professional film costumer and a longdistance hiker. She has previously been published in the Folio Literary Journal at American University. Her work often explores themes of queerness, chronolibido, nature, and authenticity of experience.

Laureen Leiko Scheid was born and raised in Honolulu with her seven siblings, four dozen guinea pigs, poi dog, orphaned boar, protector rabbit, and colorful ‘ohana. Laureen is an avid collector of extraordinary experiences and spectacular stories. She enjoys exploring new places with her hunky husband and wondrous daughters. They live in a very yellow house with their coddled dogs in Boise. Laureen is honored to be a part of this year’s Writers in the Attic anthology.

Liza Long is an erstwhile Classicist and current English professor at the College of Western Idaho. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Price of Silence: A Mom’s Perspective on Mental Illness (2014, Hudson Street Press). Liza’s research focuses on teaching writing with generative artificial intelligence, and she was one of two recipients of the Idaho State Board of Education’s inaugural AI Fellowship in 2024. She plans to take over the world from a secret base in Eagle, Idaho. The plans (naturally) include a robot army.

Magdalena R. Stay (15) of Meridian is a lifelong book lover, musician, and crafter. She enjoys fiction of many types, but especially books by Rick Riordan, Brandon Sanderson, and Margaret Peterson Haddix. She takes inspiration from Gordon Korman, Banksy, Margaret Hamilton, Dan Povenmire, and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic. When she is not reading or writing, Magdalena enjoys crochet (what else? Amigurumi Book characters!), baking, competing on her school’s Academic Decathlon team, writing parodies, and fencing. She is in 11th grade at Renaissance High School.

Mara Bateman lives in Boise, Idaho and spent her growingup years in Western Oregon. Her writing has appeared in previous Writers in the Attic anthologies, and Death Rattle Literary’s Ekphrasis: Poetry, among others. She is the creator of This Poem Is For You: Horoscopic Poetry by an Unlicensed

Bystander. When Mara is not busy writing strange little poems or picking away at a manuscript, she enjoys bike rides, sitting near flowering plants and/or running water, and kissing her cats repeatedly on the face, an activity which they also enjoy very much. Find Mara on Instagram @jajabird or on thispoemisforyou.substack.com.

Maya Autret is a Marketing and Communication Executive at a non-profit organization. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and a PhD in Family Science. Currently based in the Netherlands with her husband, three teenagers, and two dogs, Maya is an avid reader and writer of creative nonfiction.

In 2013, upon being invited by Denmark’s national poet, Benny Andersen, to translate Benny’s poetry, Michael Favala Goldman left his job as a carpenter to pursue writing. He has won awards for his seven books of original poetry, and his translations appeared recently in The New Yorker and Rattle. Michael’s translation of the memoir Dependency made the New York Times Best 10 Books of 2021 as book three of The Copenhagen Trilogy. He is an editor and a mentor for numerous poets, and he has been running bi-monthly poetry critique groups since 2018. https://michaelfavalagoldman.com/

Nate Jacob grew up in the Midwest, USA, spent a few years in South America searching for the ultimate empanada, and currently resides in Star, Idaho, where he is a stay-at-home father to six of Earth’s finest, husband to a woman who makes everything magical…even broccoli. Most of his writing is done in carpool pickup lines, outside dance team practices, quickly at red lights, at libraries around town, and lately in a nook under the stairs. He writes a lot about his life, his family, his philosophy and sometimes about food. But never about Martians… never.

Boise resident Paige Kercher’s primary writing outlet is her journal. She finds writing and reflection critical in her ongoing process of confronting her long term, covert depression. Blind Bake, originally a journal entry and discussion topic in therapy, is the first piece she has written to be read by others. Honest self-reflection, emotional

engagement, and a bit of jarring humility laid the groundwork for Blind Bake, and convey her along in her journey towards healing self-acceptance. She has two cats, an aptitude for puns, and plays professional ultimate frisbee on the side.

Rebecca Paterson is an amateur writer from the Catskill Mountains in New York, currently living in Boise, Idaho with her husband and 2-year-old son. A conservation agency worker by trade, she seeks in her spare time to recover the ability she had as a youth to render the beauty, pain, and humor of her humble human experience in words. She is a passionate advocate for a livable planet and human rights. This is her first published work.

Ross Hargreaves has an MFA from the University of Idaho. His work has appeared in Mikrokosmos, Quibble Lit, God’s Cruel Joke, Fatal Flaw and Drunk Monkey. He lives and writes in Idaho.

Teresa Pedersen grew up with family members skilled in the oral tradition of storytelling. In those days before social media, the entertainment choice could be watching reruns of the Lawrence Welk show or hearing about the time a cougar stalked grandfather Dave through the Tennessee hills. While her family has taught her a lot about the art of storytelling, she is currently working on a degree in writing from Boise State University to learn the technical aspects of the craft.

Writers in the Attic

The Cabin is a literary arts organization in Boise, Idaho. We forge community through the voices of all readers, writers, and learners. Writers in the Attic (WITA) is an annual contest for both emerging and established writers to publish work related to a theme chosen by The Cabin. This anthology showcases the talents in our community.