Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones Vol. 7

Vagabonds

Anthology of the Mad Ones

Volume 7

Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones Volume 7 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Weasel EDITOR: Emily Ramser EDITOR: Valdon Ross ISBN-13: 978-1-948712-17-0 Copyright © 2018 Weasel Press Cover © Shelby Dillon Back Cover © Bob Callan All written and visual works remain the sole property of their creators. They are free to use their works however they see fit.

Vagabonds is an independent anthology that is published yearly through Weasel Press.

If you would like a copy of the magazine, you can order one at http://www.weaselpress.com/shop Vagabonds: Creative Arts Anthology runs solely off the support of its readers, authors, and artists. To find out how you can help keep Vagabonds going, email the managing editor.

If you would like to be considered for our next issue, please visit our website to see when we open up again. http://www.vagabondsink.com http://www.facebook.com/vagabondwriters http://www.twitter.com/vagabondwriters

Featured Vagabonds T. Thomas Abernathy Emma Atkinson Jennifer Benningfield Anna Bohleber Jas Breece Derrick C. Brown Mara Buck Bob Callan Sheena Carroll Samuel Cole PW Covington Linda M. Crate Jeni De La O Anthony DellaRosa Shelby Dillon Alex Ewing Jonathan Ferrini Peter Gutierrez Rollin Jewett Rachael Jordan Mascha Joustra Peter Kahn Tom Darin Liskey John Mclaughlan Jessica Mehta Jim Meirose Gary Mielo

Adelina Rose Kenny Nguyen Mason O’Hern Taylor Olson J. Ray Paradiso Ashuni Pérez W.C. Ramirez Philippe Refghi henry 7. reneau, jr.

Dylan Scillia Gary Smothers Verene Snopek George Stein Jamie Stow Ann Christine Tabaka Courtney Taylor Tori Thibodeaux Jonathan W. Thurston Viviane Vives Jay Waters Tara Werner J Luke Westbrook Lynn White JT Wilson Emily Witz Lobo Xocoyotlzin John Zheng

5

The Bastard Couldn’t Keep Us Down I don’t remember how long it rained during Harvey, but I know the bastard stayed around for longer than anyone could have imagined. Each day was like was like watching the ocean pour from the sky, and wondering when it would end. What was once a soothing experience, was turned into dread. One the last day I was staring up at my ceiling, rain dripping down to the pots on the ground, and I cursed that fuckin’ roof. The mold was already setting in.

Sick of the house, sick of lookin’ at the damn roof, at the mold, I decided to take a drive down the road, fortunate enough to not be flooded in like the rest of Houston.

Friends of mine posted on Facebook, trying to make the best of the disaster that hung over us for days. They swam in the floods. Others surfed on air mattresses, hell, some were trying to fish. But I took a drive, and when I got around the corner of my street all I could see were men carrying guns. Unpracticed militia’s roaming the rain, looking for just about anyone who seemed out of place; who seemed like trouble. I didn’t recognize anyone in the area, and didn’t fuck with anybody.

Harvey did a number on us. He brought us into the boxing ring and pummeled us with everything he had, some areas more so than others. He never got the best of us though. We wouldn’t give it to him. Last year’s decision to cancel Vagabonds for 2017 was a hard one, but one I’m glad that was made. It allowed us to regroup and to recover. And now that we’re back, we’ve put together a fierce collection of work.

We’ve nursed our wounds long enough, and though we still carry bruises, they don’t hurt enough to keep us down.

Open up. Hitch a ride. And don’t let the madness get to you all at once.

Until next time Weasel The Dude

7 The Heart Consumes Itself It’s not true the starved don’t eat, we die of broken hips, pelvis churned to dust—slowly, the heart consumes itself. Atrophies and implodes.

(These chambers, remember, are a muscle.)

Nobody nowhere shoulders the strength to stop it all, the whole fat world from slipping between cracked, wanting lips. We eat and we hate, with each bite and gagme spoon. Our weakness displayed like limbs splayed wide, flushed shameful folds of pink.

How I wish I could stop. Let the valves shut down cold. Listen, that last organ coda. And you in dutiful ovation.

—Jessica Mehta

8

Moon in Water and Grass — John Zheng

9 Positivity Being HIV positive is like day and night There are things people think you should be concerned about: Anxious, worried, scared And there are the things that people say that actually do concern you: Hurt, self-hating, loathed.

Day and night.

1. How long do you have to live?

2. Aren’t you worried about spreading it?

3. Oh, isn’t there medicine for that now?

4. How’d you get it so young?

5. Doesn’t that make dating hard?

6. Don’t you think you should maybe try dating a girl now?

7. Well, I hope you’re taking your meds.

8. How often do you get sick?

9. Does it hurt?

10. Make sure you disclose your status.

1. Why don’t you go and kill yourself?

2. Damn, I wish I was the one who pozzed you.

3. If I were you, I wouldn’t even have sex, just saying.

4. Since I’ve eaten food you’ve cooked, do I need to get tested?

5. You’re a slut, and you deserve it.

6. Well, why didn’t you just wear a condom?

7. That’s what you get for being gay.

8. That’s kinda kinky. Think you could infect me?

9. You’re diseased, and you want all of that. Well, isn’t someone a picky little bitch?

10. Isn’t you writing about it just selfserving?

When you lie in bed, your head has answers to the Day Folk. That’s easy.

But to all the other voices, not one imaginary, but all negative memories injected into your head, to the words of the Night Folk, your heart answers. And it’s not easy.

And you cry.

And cry.

And try to find a way to turn these negatives into positives.

—Jonathan W. Thurston

10

Phone Booth — John McLaughlan die young, leave nothing W.C. Ramirez It had just started getting cold outside—the days of sporadic 85 degree highs had slipped away along with the slowly setting sun.

Around the same time she noticed there was something wrong with her throat and lungs. She was coughing up phlegm, her voice sounded more guttural and strained. There was a pain in her esophagus, the same ache that she had whenever fighting the urge to cry.

This didn’t stop her from smoking.

She woke up, cleared her throat of mucus, and pulled the covers around her a bit tighter. The crisp air should have felt invigorating, but instead it oppressed her— made her shudder against starting her day. Her stare drilled into the ceiling forever before she lit her first cigarette. As she sucked it down, she swallowed dread spawned by the thought of her bare feet kissing the frigid tile floor.

After that first cigarette, she skittered into the kitchen to start brewing a pot of coffee. While the dark roast gurgled through the machine, she emptied her bladder of dehydrated piss and hocked a tar-brown loogie on top of it.

11 This doesn’t look good, she thought.

But she wouldn’t drink more water. She wouldn’t eat better or seek medical attention. She wouldn’t stop sucking down Pall Malls. She just flushed the evidence of her ailments down into the sewer and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she lit another cigarette, retreated back to her room, and thought about all the things she could and should and would do that day if she could just stay out of bed.

Then she thought about him—what he was doing, thinking, feeling, planning.

She thought about the scar on his eyebrow and his wide nose and the tattoo on his back. She thought about his laugh and the way he used to look at her, the way he would smile without showing his teeth. Waves of memories crashed against her skull—that night he said I love you and, six years later, the night he said he didn’t.

Her throat started to hurt more.

So she lit another cigarette while the tendrils of smoke still rose from the crumpled butt of the one before. A cough contracted her lungs and the salty bitterness of phlegm coated her tongue. This prompted a few quick sips of coffee and a forced recollection of someone other than him.

So she thought about that Marine from last September, the one whose frame was wrapped in muscle and fading scars. The military tattoos and the nose with multiple breaks branded him a badass. He was lethal and dangerous and she was living to die. They were lovers forged in misery.

So she replaced the ghost of the one she loved with this man—it was easier to be haunted by him.

Another cigarette, another cup of coffee, another memory: the way that Marine kissed her outside the bar, his imposing arm wrapped around her waist to hold her against him. She recalled the excitement in his jeans and the way his voice lowered when he told her things she couldn’t remember.

As she laid in bed thinking about him instead of him, she pretended those things he told her were beautiful and sentimental—the type of things she wished were coming from him. But they were neither. They were crude and kinky, and they were coming from the lusty trooper instead of the one she loved.

It didn’t matter what he whispered into her neck last September, just as long as she wasn’t thinking about the pain in her throat or the ache in her soul or the mucus in her lungs.

Nothing felt like it mattered without him.

She coughed, lit another cigarette, and remembered how she traced her fingers along those bulging muscles.

12 degradation it’s amazing to me that most people never have to spend a week and a half building up the courage to run their tongue through their mouth to see how much of a tooth they still have, or how many teeth they have total. it’s amazing to me that most people never have to sit here at ten in the morning and wonder how many teeth can melt, rot, snap, crack, or shatter before the simple act of speaking becomes too much to bear. a man flew his car into space, and I sit here, and rot on a bare, broken mattress, stained brown, beaten, a bit bloody, and torn, barely breathing. telling myself, “how many teeth “does a person need, anyway? “i mean... really... “when you think about it?” a man flew his car into space ‘cause he could, and i sit here, awkwardly gulping down dinner. it’s amazing to me how much you can live with, how much becomes normal when you know you have no other choice.

—Anthony DellaRosa

13 Haikus for surviving i.

I am surviving this painful existence I am still growing

ii.

Remember to breathe one day everything will still You will find healing

iii.

My mouth is buzzing with all the words I can’t say you call this healing

iv.

The trauma has faded from my conscious memories I am finding peace

v.

Growing takes courage I am bending towards the sun searching for the joy

—Mason O’Hern

14 I am a black woman but...

Always black girl never black woman Not woman enough to be called a woman but you cannot deny my boobs and pussy so, you settle with girl.

The struggle with being a black woman is that to white men you are still black girl and beneath them. But let me tell you I was always black woman and never black girl.

I am a black woman.

Covered in skin that may not be comfortable for you to be around.

You don’t even want to think about what you would do if this were the skin you were in.

I’m a mixed breed, a mutt. I’m a broken rule, a bad combination. I’m the product of interracial love.

This is me before I could even form personality and voice.

This is who I was meant to be not given a choice I stepped into this world as a black woman not a black girl.

I was born

I was born a woman

I was born a black woman

Yes, I come from nappy roots and wide hips the hands and fingers that have picked and been picked on most.

Shades from day to night like the transitional phases a roasting marshmallow may take.

Each shade as beautiful as the self-love that radiates from within my beautiful black queens.

I’m a symbol of beauty and love from the inside out I’m a result of change. Because now I’m kind of socially acceptable Do not presume to insult my intelligence or the intelligence of my people by assuming that because I am educated and speak above a 2nd grade reading level I must not be a member of my own race.

I promise you I am a black woman but I am not trying to act white because I speak properly I am a black woman and I still speak the same English as you I did not chop up the alphabet just because I couldn’t understand the one given to me.

Slang is not created because of black people’s ignorance but instead because my people have always felt we need things to connect us together since we have been pulled apart by your standards and if that comes in the form of words

15 then so be it but call it as it is.

Not in the best way you see fit to put us down even further than you already put us I am a black woman you cant take that from me but that is not all I am No, I do not represent “black culture” because I am the only black student in class.

And no, I cannot tell you the black perspective.

It is true my people, we can speak for ourselves individually as everyone else can.

And you white man Uncle Sam cannot tell me how it is to live the life of who I am Who you are not Jim crow Oh hell no How dare you?

I am a black woman but I am not your early morning coffee extra sugar extra cream your caramel twist or double stuffed Oreo your definition of black I am a black woman but my skin is not dirty I do not need to wash it off I am a black woman but I am not interested in you touching my hair My hair is made of wild curls out of control like the long list of things on your to do list that was supposed to be finished yesterday but not yet started.

It defies the law of gravity and does not need to be “combed out” or fixed with your repair instructions to straighten.

So, it can fit in your little box full of normality’s I would much rather not be bothered with. black on black crime is used as an excuse black on black crime does not give white people a free pass to kill us black people don’t kill black people because they are black black people who kill black people go to jail: justice is served White on black crime is excusable, defendable, able to be swept under the rug and not be justified.

Shit white people kill more white people than black people kill white people but does that stop you from locking your car doors clutching your purses, avoiding all eye contact although you can’t help but watch their every move the second you see a black person crossing the street or coming around in any setting?

16 Making where ever you are less safe just with our presence? black people are treated as problems or slaves or PRISONERS way before we are treated as people The government and the media are controlled by the same people. Ignorant. Ass. White people.

There’s more shame in loving a black woman than raping one black women get raped in ungodly numbers each year, 1 out of every 6 women.

Black women are spit on by white men and disregarded by the black ones So, fuck the angry black woman stereotype because at least I have a reason to be mad Yup, shade thrown right at white people because they beat my midnight black sisters, chestnut bronze brothers, honey covered mothers, chocolate loving cocoa dipped beautiful African queens for being sun kissed with melanin before the sun even had a chance to hit their skin.

You told them they were nothing because of their skin then go lay in the face of the sun trying to catch the shades and tans we already rock. I am a black woman and I am light skinned Light skinned black woman so light I grow invisible blurred between too light to be black and too black culture to fit anywhere else.

This absence of melanin in my skin does not make me color less but makes me light black I am a black woman and for that I will not apologize but that is not all I am but for some reason that is all you see

—Jas Breece

17 The Badlands: Money, Mississippi to Charleston

Hate is the keloid topography that marks us with their intolerance & fear. Pierces us with the shrapnel of stereotype. Our flesh that holds its own beneath a great weight: He’s a Negro.

Probably been stealing since he could crawl.

Hissing into the face of the wounded.

Our psychic graffiti a dirge-like utterance of ghosts that resonates mute perishing: A parliament of blue-black crows perched to the left of center. Shimmering darkly a mirage of undulating need.

Yellow beaks open to consume. To swallow blind hope like magic. To fester without living between the wide frame & the close-up shot. Passing.

Despite or maybe because of Perseverance hair-trigger tensed on mute but using a guitar as a second voice.

We chained lightening to the 12-bar blues so others might walk with us into the sunrise.

Despite or maybe because of the knowing in our hearts just how ugly things are. Can be.

Have always been.

So much anger swallowed by frustration.

18 Frame by frame. Our broken off shards sharpened by the hate that made hate. Riot become a metaphor: Smoldering rage like the calcium signposts that litter the Middle Passage below the Atlantic.

Despite or maybe because of 60 million or more moaning mouthing a synchronized plus-justment.

Evokes the rage that validates the fire.

They’re not protesting. They’re not making a statement.

They’re stealing.

Despite or maybe because of their paving over all the tiny terrors but always reverting back to stereotypical. Criminal, specimen of thug.

They (mistakenly) think they’ve done the work & that they will never have to confront Selma again.

So much be patient . . . waiting & hope. So much salt thrown over our shoulder to blind the Devil.

—henry 7. reneau, jr.

19 Short Order, Long Time Mara Buck “One order of rich and famous life coming right up.” The waitress with the beehive hair scribbles on a ‘guest check’ pad, using a pen proclaiming Good Eats. The pen is on a retractable cord that when released springs back to dangle just below her name tag. Betty, reads the name tag. Frank’s crooning on the box, something about being seventeen. There are crackers in a red plastic basket. I’m hungry, but not for crackers.

I drum my fingers on the formica. It’s been a paralyzing wait for a simple order.

“Excuse me.” I flag down a waitress. “Could you ask Betty how much longer it’ll be for my rich and famous life? I’ve been waiting quite a while.”

“Betty? She died two years ago. I’ll check in the kitchen.” This one’s a “Tammy” with a pixie cut and she stuffs a Bic into her pocket. She refills the crackers in the basket. Is that David Bowie in the background?

The springs in the vinyl seat of the booth are drilling into my increasingly boney bottom. For the sake of all that’s holy, why is this taking so long? I’ve seen others come and go and yet here I sit. The Saltines have been replaced with Triscuits, Bowie has morphed into Lady Gaga, and yet here…

“Excuse ME! I’ve been waiting, like forever, you know and do you, like you know, have my order coming up real soon? A plate of rich and famous life? A la carte?

Nothing on the side, but you know, like, some water would be like, you know, okay?”

I’m trying to communicate in the language style of those around me, but I’m falling woefully short. The latest server is named Beryllium and I think my eyes are a tad woozy, because I can’t tell if it’s a she or a he. There’s a swatch of tie-dyed hair and tattoos and its face is sprouting gold rings from all manner of painful spots. He/ she rolls red-pencilled eyes and punches in a succession of keys on a plastic gadget.

There’s still music in the background, but it’s as unrecognizable as static. A great deal of hair has accumulated on the table in front of me. It’s gray and stringy and I do believe it may be mine.

“Ready for pickup for table seventy. One order of rich and famous life.”

A robotic hand sets the plate before me. There seems to be a great deal of green fuzzy mold and a spider eyes me accusingly as she protects the strands of her web.

Screw the mold. Fuck the spider. I dig in and it’s as delicious as I had always anticipated. originally published in April, 2015 by The Tishman Review, Vol 1.2 and subsequently published in “50/50 Anthology” by Philadelphia Stories

20

Sunrise Coffee — T. Thomas Abernathy

#5 — Mascha Joustra

21 Like a Dumpster Full of Flowers You thought these images were just for poetry workshops: -A sky full of surrendering bodies.

-An ocean of lost letters.

-A dumpster full of roses.

Then you see it.

A long green dumpster, four feet tall, flowing with fresh and old flowers.

Daffodils and carnations, plastic leaves, roses galore, some in grand wreaths, some with names still on the easels in petals.

James in styrofoam. Tara on a beauty queen banner.

Stefanie under a photo of Stefanie.

A long dark photo album overflowing with flechettes and shrapnel of scattered color.

I go to a funeral every year now.

I tell my friend to not waste his money on flowers.

He says it makes him feel a little better to throw away a few cards, some money, some food, pour out some good whiskey, let it go to waste, because he doesn’t know what else to do.

—Derrick C. Brown

22 Orbital Exchange Samuel Cole Standing on the front porch, I throw a kiss to John and Peggy—childless like me and Lon—who live four blocks down on Wyndom Street, the better street, better yard, better house, better furnishings, better clothing, better health, better marriage, better lives, and better high school prom king and queen who Pastor Huxley called at their wedding the most fabulous couple he’d ever had the privilege to marry. At my and Lon’s wedding, Pastor Huxley said okay then, good luck. But Peggy can’t cook for shit. And she’s a terrible host. And she and John have no flair for funny one-liners and sassy, spastic zingers.

Back inside the house, clearing off the dinner table, I replay like a wake-up call the meatier portions of the table conversation, mainly a discussion about the new, American definition of marriage, the TOP 10 baby names of the year, and the twenty-eight mutually acquainted couples who have all divorced since college.

“I admire couples who know when to call it quits.” Lon had said during dinner, to which I replied, “Now I know who’s been removing all the batteries from the clocks.”

John and Peggy laughed.

Lon stood and scoffed.

Then I said, “I’m just kidding. Jeez, Lon. Nobody cares if you have a crooked dick or that I’ve been seriously contemplating lesbianism.”

John and Peggy howled, hunching over, grabbing their sides. That’s when Lon disappeared upstairs and didn’t return. Which was odd. I’ve said way funnier, and worse, things about his appearance. It’s unclear whether John and Peggy dislike Lon, but if I were to ask a mind-reading-fortune-teller, my bet is yes, uh-huh, oh yeah.

Climbing the stairs to the bedroom, I hear Lon stirring in the spare bathroom, making noises I don’t entirely understand, as he’s recently claimed the space as private, locking the door and harboring himself inside like some touchy-feely-middleaged-outlaw. Flush number four worries me. I know he’s ill-tempered, but maybe he really is sick. The water faucet turns on and off, on and off, on and off.

“You okay in there?” I press an ear to the door. “You getting ready to go out somewhere?”

The fan starts to hiss.

“Hey Hey Hey.” I tap three times. “It’s me.” I use a sweet voice, reserved for the times in life when I seek collaboration. “Knock knock.”

The shower head begins to gurgle.

23 “You’re supposed to say who’s there.”

He doesn’t say a word.

I press my back against the door and slide down to my ass, playing the WhatCould-He-Possibly-Be-Doing-Inside-Guessing-Game. When we first met, he used Dial soap for face, hair, and body. Now he uses Pantene shampoo and conditioner, H2O body wash, a blue Loofah, and Neutrogena facial soap for oily skin. Peggy refuses to believe that Lon and I used to shower together, rinsing in circle, singing, Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes. Sometimes I can’t believe it either. There’s been no singing for years. Only an absurd adeptness at taking up each other’s time.

“Whatcha doing in there, cutie?”

The electric shaver hums, as does the nose and ear trimmer. “Herrooooo in there.”

“Stalking’s a crime. Go away.”

“It didn’t come out right. Don’t be mad at me for keeps.”

“It came out exactly how you wanted them to hear it.”

“Two days and they won’t even remember it.”

The hair dryer, whooshing in quick spurts, moves from low to high, high to medium, medium to low. The little hair left on his head must despise all that blowing: wild prairie grasses fighting against a tornado. There was a time when I described him as head strong and manly.

“Why do you always have to keep talking?” he asks. “Why can’t you ever shut the hell up?”

I do always keep talking, and I can never shut the hell up. I’m like a rusty valve.

Once I’m spun clockwise, good luck turning me back. “I promise to say something negative about myself next time.”

“They’re not happy either.”

“Fine, mister mysterious man moving methodically mamound ma mafroom.”

When we first met, he adored my alliteration, said it softened his rigidity and turned a childhood frown into a smile. “Musy min mare much mar moo?”

“I hate it when you talk like that.”

“Mah mon, moo mow moo mumit.”

“No, I do not love it.” The toilet lid bangs against the bowl. He blows his nose.

Coughs. Clears his throat. He used to be so quiet. He never used to clear his throat.

Who is this man, and what has he become?

“It sounds like a festival in there. Tell me you haven’t taken up makeup and wigs?”

I giggle. “You’d make one ugly drag queen.”

“Leave me alone.” Drawers open and close. Toiletries move from here and there.

24 Something unrecognizable thumps across the tile countertop grout lines. Like wheels rolling over rutty cracks in the highway.

“What’s that noise?”

“They think they’re better than us. They always have.”

“Fine. What’s that noise?”

The thumping stops. “What noise?” The shower curtain slides across the metal bar. The light underneath the door darkens. “I could make fun of your hearing aids and your knee-length boobs,” he says. “But I don’t, because it’s mean.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

He presses his back against the door and slides down. It’s the closest we’ve been in years. His breathing turns soft. “Do you really hate my penis?”

“No. I mean, kinda. I don’t know. Yeah. I guess it’s a little gross.”

“Have you told them that before?”

“I should have called it a faulty follicle seeking an exorcism. Now that would have been hilarious.”

“They didn’t seem a bit surprised when you said it.”

“Peggy says bad stuff about John’s body all the time. Sometimes right in front of him. But he never storms off like a little kid.”

“Cuz he’s a pushover and Peggy knows it.”

“Fine. I won’t mention your penis in front of them again.”

“And why in the hell did you call me a spinning orbit of clipping shears?”

“I never said that.”

“How day-laborer do you see me?”

I have two choices. One, admit to cluelessness and inadvertently call him a liar or two, keep him talking by playing along. “Are you naked in there?” I stick my fingers underneath the door and wiggle.

He flicks at my fingers. “The only thing that’s ever been spinning around me is you.”

“What was that noise?”

“You’re the one who cuts everyone down and off all the time.”

A spinning orbit of clipping shears does sound like something I’d say, especially about Lon in front of John and Peggy. I scroll the smartphone screen to Peggy’s name, and text, Did I say sumum bout Lon’s orbit 2nite?

Peggy usually texts back fast.

“You did cut them off pretty quick,” I say.

“I didn’t cut them off. I simply left out of embarrassment. Do you not see the

25 difference?”

“Huffing off during dessert is super junior high, Lon.” “Yeah, well so is lying for fifteen years about being able to conceive.” The thumping returns, this time across the tile floor. “Now leave me the fuck alone.”

I sit quiet. No funny retort. No cheeky reply. No emotion beyond sad shame, both at my defective uterus and for the faceless children who float in my dreams—little ones, big ones, black ones, white ones—amorphous shapes I cannot reach, hold, savor, or love, forbid by heaven, or hell, from participating in the wild-rush-ride of motherhood, parenthood, familyhood. With Lon. I wiggle my fingers underneath the door. “I didn’t have a funny way to tell you that I was flawed, so I didn’t tell you at all. Maybe someday you can learn to forgive me.”

His fingertips touch mine, overwhelming me with a deluge of lost enchantment our malfunctioning egos have built and our demeaning personalities have destroyed.

Peggy texts, ur such a hoot, girl. Only ud call Lon clipping sheers. lol.

“Lying is your orbit in case you didn’t know it,” he says. More dragging. “That, and pretending.”

I pound the back of my head against the door. “Tell me what that noise is.”

“Why did you bring up baby names tonight?”

“Peggy brought it up, not me.”

“Has she ever told you why they never had children?”

“They didn’t want children.”

“So they could have them, but they chose not too?”

“That’s the story.”

Thud!

“What just fell?”

“Nothing fell.”

“You wouldn’t hurt yourself, Lon, would you? You’d never do anything dangerous to harm yourself, or me, right?”

He sighs, and in a hot flash of copper vividness, I can see things clearly, eye to eye—every stage, every age, every heartbeat, every bungling tale bringing to completion me and Lon.

26 [esther] an ashtray made just for her watching her lips twitching stifling a laugh perusing my piece sensing an awful churning in her gut esther wants to vomit and tell me my watermelon lights and my turtle-green palms and shells are dreadful —JT Wilson

My First Boyfriend My first boyfriend stole from the dead to bring me graveyard flowers. Papery, they railed of sorrow and a kick sick-sweet as fentanyl. He patrolled the high school halls, sniffed out my classrooms—the other girls squealed at his beauty, but it was only me whose car he’d pet. See if I’d strayed that day. Went to a friend’s for offcampus lunch and not the library like I should. When we loot from the buried, we carry that knowing with us, through us, in our ligaments and innards. All those underground bones, metal fillings and prosthetic hips have nothing to do but wait. They haunt, keep tight tabs and make bets on our homecoming.

—Jessica Mehta

27

Ritual — Shelby Dillon To Keep You Here Emily Witz John put down his book, closed his eyes, and sighed. He pulled the cigarettes and the lighter out from his desk drawer and shoved them deep into the pockets of his old leather jacket.

He climbed out onto the fire escape and leaned against the railing. The air was much cooler out here than in his room, so he lit up and watched the sun set over the city through a puff of smoke. The city was floating, drifting as it did from time to time.

Then he saw the boy move.

“Jesus!” John exclaimed, “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Sorry,” the boy mumbled. The wind rippled his oversized t-shirt like a flag. He pulled his knees closer to his chest.

“Aren’t you cold?” asked John.

The boy shrugged.

28 “How long have you been sitting out here?”

No reply.

John hesitated.

“Were they fighting again?”

The boy lowered his eyes.

John sighed and opened the window to his room. On cue, the boy crawled inside.

“Is ramen all you eat?” the boy teased, picking up one of the many empty insta-noodle cups collecting on John’s desk.

“When you’re my age, you’ll understand why the choice-diet of a graduate student is ramen.”

“You’re not that much older than me…”

“Keep telling yourself that, kid.” John grabbed the book off the edge of his desk and sat on his bed. The boy snaked his way between John and the book, planting many sloppy kisses on the man’s lips. John neither pushed him away, nor embraced him. The boy’s brow furrowed and he lifted his lips from John’s.

“Not tonight,” John said, “I have to read this for class tomorrow.”

The furrow in the boy’s brow deepened and he plopped his head onto John’s chest a little too forcefully.

“You said no last time, too,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” John said, “I know.”

John reopened his book and the room fell silent.

“I should run away,” the boy said finally, “no one would miss me.”

“I’d miss you.”

“Then you should run away with me.”

“I can’t. You know that.”

“Then I should move in with you.”

“You can’t. You know that.”

The boy looked at John. John looked at his book.

“I’m not sure I can take another three years of this. I think I’ll die.”

John sighed and closed his book.

“You won’t die,” he said, looking at the boy.

“You don’t know that,” the boy said, a hint of danger flashing behind his eyes “I think I just might…”

John sat up further and put the book on his nightstand. Placing his hands on each side of the boy’s head, he looked deep into his eyes. The look on the boy’s face was unyielding, so John kissed him, his kiss deep yet somehow gentle. John pulled his

29 lips away, but pressed his forehead to the boy’s and stared into his tear-stained face.

“You won’t die,” he said, “you’re strong. If you’ve made it through fifteen years of this, you can make it through three more.”

The boy buried his face into John’s neck, his hands clinging to John’s shirt like a lifeline.

“I love you,” he said, “I never want this to end.”

“Yeah,” John said, gazing at the empty ceiling “I know.”

30 Valentine Fold us up, Envelope our love Shove it in your pocket Wrinkle it up.

Carry a piece of us with you Like a stray worn page I’ll keep our loving going Like you keep the memento of our love from spoiling.

Tightly wound Our heartstrings taut but intact We defy expectations Like we deny each other.

And yet we keep going Like a journey on the edge Of utter bliss or potential disaster.

Pent up angst About what our future may hold But when we carry one another’s love It’ll never weigh us down.

I put your affection Gladly bestowed on my sleeve I wear each kiss Like a badge of honor.

What affection remains restrained I hold within my own chest In a golden chaste cage Waiting for the moment I let it free.

—Tori Thibodeaux

31

#29 — Kenny Nguyen

32

Pray — Tom Darin Liskey Hello. It Doesn’t Matter In my handsome garden I look down and you two are beautiful together and it doesn’t matter and you look at her and see that she’s your only truth the wood-splitter of your heart and it doesn’t matter and he’s your dream museum your favorite species marrow sucking apprentice and it doesn’t matter and she loved you like a hidden God and it doesn’t matter and he wants no one else but he sees it in her posture that she might and it doesn’t matter and there’s someone better always and it doesn’t matter and a bird crashes into his window he will wonder if the bird is lost or if his window was in the way but it doesn’t matter and her hurt and hate for me is growing in her liver and it’s too large to cut out or she’ll bleed to death and it doesn’t matter and he has a violence inside that lives in his sperm and I put it there and it doesn’t matter and she wishes she was designed better but she wasn’t and it doesn’t matter and you want her to look up and love you again to love you harder than sneezing with your eyes wide open and it doesn’t matter and he will wish his season wasn’t all over so soon but it is and it doesn’t matter and you’ll both wonder why did I make your ending so grueling and you will hunger to know but I won’t answer and it doesn’t matter •

33 I love you, useless.

Love is not the moon and sun swapping space. It is one eating the weaker nightly.

One of you will win.

So just drink your wine and cry and become a flood.

Drink down all that loneliness.

Sometimes it will feel like it’s just you and me in the garden, but sometimes, it’s really just you.

You thought you two were a church that couldn’t be torn down, a synagogue that couldn’t be unbelieved in.

You’ll think, wasn’t I designed for her? Why must he stray?

You will look up and think: Why don’t you just un-design all this grief?

Why won’t you just make it go away?

Because it is in me and I need to be known. I can’t go away.

I can never die. Death and loss are my gifts. If you know my pain, you can know my love.

I love you in rivers.

—Derrick C. Brown

34 Purple Love I think more people Need to smoke Inhale in the lungs Peace And Love of Food Nachos Pizza, Chocolate French Fries I can roll A fat Spliff I think A funny thought I write it down I eat a plate of Nachos I cannot stop —Alex Ewing

35

Empty Nest #3 — J. Ray Paradiso

36

The Debate — J. Luke Westbrook

37 Damian PW Covington “You scared me a little bit, earlier, when you led the group into that bar…”

“The one off Avenida Reina?”

“Si” “Hell, I needed to pee. Turned out that a couple of the others did, too.”

“Oh, no big problem, and it was nice to have a few drinks once I was able to find you all, but it wasn’t on the itinerary. Neither was that little place you all decided to eat lunch. I’m glad I caught up to you all,” Damian’s eyes shifted a little, from his beer to my face.

“The cafe was Olivia’s idea. I wasn’t even all that hungry. Hey, thanks for playing along yesterday when I brought you up on stage to interpret at that studio…you’re a natural on stage.”

“You write well. I enjoyed reading your work.”

Damian reminded me a lot of a retired journalist I knew years ago in a little place in Mexico called Estación Creel.

Esteban.

Esteban had been a reporter in Tijuana for almost 30 years before he came to that canyon town in the wilds of Chihuahua. I found the way his skin crinkled around the corners of his eyes, and the way his silver-streaked hair contrasted with a seemingly perpetual youthfulness and smolder, very attractive.

We worked together, serving drinks, then, once we found a trustworthy supplier, selling eighth ounce lids of weed to backpackers, at a place called Margarita’s. I was hiding from Texas cops, and Esteban just seemed to be waiting. We’d shut down the bar and walk back to the row of adobe apartments where we both rented rooms.

Sometimes he’d invite me over, and we’d drink, smoke, and sniff up a few lines.

Sometimes he’d ask me to massage his back or to read, out loud, from an English translation of Pablo Neruda’s poetry; other times it was Grateful Dead cassette tapes.

Most nights, I’d take him in my mouth before returning to my little garret. We kept things loose. Easy, unrushed, like the town itself, that sat at the mid-point of the Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacífico. That summer was a season between other seasons…there was no real pressure to hurry or end anything.

I ended up back in Santa Fe by the end of 1999, then drifted back out to the Bay Area, before finally getting sent back to Texas and that 2 year prison term. I’m not really sure what happened to Esteban, but I saw something in Damien that brought

38 him back, after all these years.

“Never mind. But, I did have to report in at my agency; let them know we had been there,” he said, reaching out for the green, glass, Cristal beer bottle in front of him.

“Well, you know poets; we never have been much good at walking straight lines.”

Damian nodded. His English comprehension was exceptional. I suspected he had spent some time in the States at some point, but according to him, he had traveled some, but had always lived in La Habana.

“I do not know much about poets, but I do know that you left the American Air Force… how was it? Non-judicial punishment?”

“Touché, Damian. You’ve done your homework.” I brought my glass to my lips and sat back in the padded, wooden, chair. “Yeah,” I said, “Then, you also know all about the first unit I was with too, before it was dissolved. You know about Africa.”

“Maybe… I didn’t read that in your application.”

“Maybe because it wasn’t IN the festival application,” I needled. “Neither was anything about that fucking Article 15, two and a half decades ago.” Our eyes met and I caught something. I noticed a smile in those wrinkled corners of his eyes. I held his glance with slight and amused inquisition. We searched each other, silently, like co-conspirators, until the waitress interrupted.

“Si, señorita un otro, por favor, pero…tienes anejo?”

“Si, Havana Club anejo. Ocho años.”

“Perfecto, un anejo mojito; y un cerveza Cristal por me mi manejador, también” His lips parted as he nodded to the waitress. It was after 6pm, and just a hint of beard shadowed Damian’s face. There was still plenty of natural light. It was early July, and what stubble was emerging, cast a silver sheen. We were at the bar at the Hotel Nacional, having drinks, while waiting on the owner of tonight’s paladar to call from Old Havana and say he was ready for us, the delegation of American poets.

He looked out the large, glass windows; the ocean was choppy. High, grey, clouds, turning slightly orange, stretched to the horizon. A dark haired woman, maybe 35 years old, lounged poolside in a turquoise bikini. “Manejador! Por favor, I am just a guide…here to make sure you enjoy yourself in La Habana.”

“How many years were in prison, Patrick?” Damian asked, directly, when our eyes met again.

“How long have you worked as an intelligence agent, Damian? “ “And, a point for you, my American friend.” Damian finished his beer as the waitress returned to claim his empty bottle and my glass, replacing them both.

39 “I went to the arts academy, to be a dancer.”

“A dancer,” I asked.

He still had a tight figure, maybe five and half feet tall, with slight but strong shoulders. Age had had its way with his mid-section, but only slightly. I could easily envision him, 20 or 25 years ago, a member of a dance troupe.

“Yes; I studied many years. After graduating, I traveled with the Cuban National ballet…we went everywhere, London, Beijing; los Americas, también, Buenos Aries, Caracas, Mexico…New York.”

“Moscow,” I teased.

“Si; Moscú,” he sipped his beer. “Many times.”

“You were that good?”

“No, I wasn’t…I did not travel as a dancer. I traveled with the dancers. You know…”

“You… made sure everyone always made it back to the hotel alright….that kind of thing, huh, Damian?”

“Yes, you could put it that way…That is a good way to put it. Sometimes, people need help when they travel.” He was, again, staring out to sea, northward.

“And, you’ve been helping travelers ever since?”

“Más o menos. During the Special Period I helped the government acquire construction supplies… then, later, assisted some of the athletes that came for the games.”

“You paid off Venezuelan bureaucrats, then kept Pan American athletes from getting… lost” Damian shot a look through my eyes into the back of my head, then softened.

“Drink your mojito, Patrick.

“There is nothing wrong with making sure people don’t get lost, Patrick. Was it two years? That first time, then another year and a half, later?”

“It was 16 months.” I swallowed sweet, aged, mint-garnished, refreshment. “The second time.”

“I am glad to know you have left Texas, and it is nice that you are here, in Cuba. I wanted to meet you when I saw your visa application for this poetry festival. We have good internet at my agency, you know…How is it? Broadband?”

“Well,” I smiled back, relaxed and free, “I am glad that the Special Period is in the past…and, that there is broadband internet at your agency.”

Damian looked up, past me and over my shoulder. Our delegation’s driver was signaling from the hotel hallway, outside the bar.

“And, now, I work for a tour agency, helping visitors enjoy themselves on our island.” Damian flashed his best tourist bureau smile.

40 “But, it’s not the same, is it” I asked.

“No, but we are Cubans, we adapt…You know, this place where we sit…It was a gambling casino, before the Revolution. The place was full, every night, with American gangsters.”

“And Cuban dancers,” I teased, “Sometimes, the more things change...”

“The more they do not change, huh, Patrick? Finish your drink, I will round up the others, it is time to leave for our dinner. Cinco minutos, okay?” He rose and placed a manicured hand on my shoulder, with just enough pressure to communicate something beyond fraternity. “And then, maybe after, I can join you for a nightcap, at your pensión…to continue this?”

“Maybe, Esteb...Damien. Me gustaria eso...” I lifted the tall, thin, glass again.

“This is not Mexico, my friend,” he smiled and left as two women speaking to each other in loud, excited, giggly, Russian entered from the hotel lobby.

41

The Devil’s Golf Course #1 — Jay Waters WDR-GAS #18 (one big load o’ silly) Jim Meirose Angela wants to become a nun but of course of course she does she always wants to be whatever she thinks she can’t possibly be to challenge herself yes challenge herself she lived at home until the age of forty all the while meaning to become a nun but she never got around to it and who was really surprised at all she always says, I will I will yes this time I will but not just yet no which turns into no not ever other things just kept getting in the way—like men of course the base instincts the easy ones to surrender to the easy path the downhill coast the playground slide when summer comes gets too damned hot and something says, Get off get off yes off yes and so around and back up the ladder she goes so yeah I will so yeah now so yes I will here’s what yes this time yes but right now she’s got a relationship with a man named Cooper who smokes and spits and does not wash smells like dirt his head’s twenty pounds sweat grease and dust-dirt and just five of flesh bone and brain but she still wants to be a nun though—figures she’ll do it when Cooper kicks the bucket yeah might as well admit the years have slid under too slick too smooth sneaky and slimy to have been seen going until it’s too late and there’s no more point to slowing them down Cooper is a hardworking man who works on a farm in bull guts sperm

42 smegma and snot phlegm dirt dust manure all day every day all week every week month year and more he milks the cows and slops the hogs and never is clean or smells good smells kind of like an old horse harness forty of fifty years buried with its very own worked to death filthy floppy swaybacked mare all rotted superslick then dug up and reused without so much as a wet wipedown or freshen up or, hey, well, cooper is working in the barn one day and under some straw he finds a goldbound bible, in perfect condition which is the first thing he’s seen in perfect condition since the day his mother popped him out and he looked down at himself that very first breath before immediately plunging forward through the years whipping by pulling the one time baby dirtied and dirtier with every one zipped on by; the bible’s studded with jewels and is worth a lot he figures, sure, it’s like what he saw in a store down Forneytown one time on the way to the doctor to get a deep plow-gouge stitched up; he saw a little store window full of fake glassy glittery sparklies that he supposed were some kind of diamonds or what have you washing away in the wake of his bleeding nearly to death from the floppy drippy gouge, yup, he shows the old book to Angela and she grips the jewel-shine into her eyes and another dimensional plane of possibilities drops a sudden ramp for her to climb up and out of her current nothingness, she takes it as a sign from the lord my God himself that the lord my God himself wants her to have it the lord my God himself has brought it before her the lord my God himself says nothing you do to have this gift will I consider worth damnation hellfire or any pain at all, no, so she wants it—in the barn she immediately brains Cooper with a long spade to get the bible the lord said anything so anything she did yes he lay with the shovel blade’s worth of a gash in his crown all red but God said anything so anything she did and to please God she hit Cooper fifty-five more times down plum flat so please the very lord, Cooper is dead—she flees the barn and hides the bible up in her room where she lives with Mother three farms over arm she ran the dirt road faster than she ever thought she could but she was so busy running she never even noticed she was running at all no not until the sweat and wheezing gripping her slower told her she had arrived home, thank God—the next morning her Mother finds the bible in her drawer and says, Wow—Angela what’s this, this is worth some money—where did you get it like she ought to know or something like she needs to know all Angela’s business just as she needs to know if Angela’s drawers show the tiniest evidence when she does the wash that maybe her sweet daughter has—oh—I found it, says Angela, and Mother says, Where? and Angela says, Out in some cow field I saw the moon glinting and it looked like a sign and there it was, God meant me to have it, nobody else, it’s a secret you know oh

43 so secret secret as any shovel blade’s worth of a gash in some crown all drippy wet red would seem to be—Angela, says Mother, I want to find out what it’s worth—let’s take it someplace—what things are worth is very important like you know when you get a thing it’s just a thing but when words get thrown around it saying its worth this that or even a lot more than this that it’s not the same thing any more it kind of grips you in some different place you know yes so Angela, let’s no, it’s my bible and God smiles down because that’s the way he meant her to answer if questioned; even though Angela never wanted such a thing or even knew of such a thing before God gave it to her, now that she has it becomes holy and even holier the more it is worth and even holier the more it is wanted needed guarded more than food air breath or the beating of one’s heart itself how could she have possibly lived without this how I swear Lord, how—it’s my bible, mine, and it was worth a life to get it—I owe it to Cooper to keep it—I owe it to that shovel blade’s worth of a gash in his crown all red to keep it so mom, I owe it to this shovel raising in my hand later this night to make a second gash in a crown all drippy wet red to keep it secret the way anything holy from God is meant to be—Angela, says Mother, we should sleep on this tomorrow morning you will see things my way when you’re rested, sure, Yes yes yes Mother, Angela agrees, I will see things different tomorrow for sure yes great idea great idea sleep tonight to not know or see at all when I gash crown red keep secret yes Mother sure you are right Mother dead is always right always.

Love you Mom. Oh.

44

Pike Creek — Peter Kahn

45 Ghost Story Gary Smothers Across the pond they called him Willard although Daniel was his name. Willard, or Daniel, he wasn’t all too certain why everyone in town called him what he wasn’t.

At times he liked the sound of it. Other times he hated the mother fucking sound of it. Yet he couldn’t seem to separate those times he liked it from the times he didn’t like it. Maybe it was that something in the air from over the desert. Or the shit he’s seen over there.

Whatever it was, it had him all fucked up—that much he knew.

Time didn’t seem to pass right. Some days, like today, it seemed like he was riding his rigged-up mountain bike into town and getting those stares he always got, then, next thing he knew, he was riding out of town with his side baskets full of cans and his front basket full of rich smelling food from the town diner. But he’d just drug the bicycle up from under the bridge, weaved it around some scrub brush, and settled it onto the road. But he’d just stowed the bicycle up under the bottom of the bridge on that nice little dirt shelf, worn smooth from his comings and goings.

Once, he thinked he remembered, fancying himself as some remnant of Native America, living amongst the timber and the animals that dwelt there. Dwelt was a good word. He knew that. And that thought he’d had, it had been a doozy.

He was 1/16th Native American, he thinked he remembered.

But he lived under a bridge and not amongst the animals and trees and skeletons and logs. How long had he been here listening to cars thump-da-thump overhead?

Yesterday, just today. Last year. Sometime after the war. Yeah, sometime after that.

So he’d moved his camp closer to the pond to have the days stretch longer, to see the pretty park he’d once played at when he was a kid. Set up a nice little home with some corrugated steel for a roof and one wall.

His Santa Claus time came once a year, for a lot of days, like the real holidays. But, unlike all them other folk, his came in September. First week thereabouts. When the land across the pond in that little park became abuzz with activity. Giant carnival rides that lit the night sky in a soft and fun light, unlike the light he’d become accustomed to—the flashes, the pause, the explosions that sounded like they were under water or something. They had a bouncy house across the pond. Some years, depending on where they placed it, he’d watch the ballooning think jump and dance with the kid’s feet. Oh how he wanted to bounce in that big house like he thinked he remembered doing a long time ago before the gas sunk in and the screams rattled

46 down in his bones. When playing war was fun. A game.

Music always wafted clear as could be across the still water of this little pond like his very own radio. The lights of the fair laid right on the top of this water like a painting, a paint by number book. Kids laughed. Way off across the park, there was an open-air building where the music was played at, a light, sometimes, a lots of lights blinked and went up and down, lit up really, really fast. Those lights, unlike the happy lights of the rides, they sometimes scared him some and he didn’t know why for exact. But sometimes they just made him cry happy. Why? He’d have to ask someone, maybe his old kinnergarten teacher why a happy could make a crying.

But Mr. Lynn had died a long time ago. He wished ghosts were real and he’d asked himself if he knew for sure they weren’t. Sometimes he pretended he was a ghost, but it always scared him worse than seeing one probably would.

Nights like tonight, he’d stoke the fire setting right next to the water’s edge and just watch his pretty park and all the lights, the darkened bodies of the people that played there and screamed and sang and danced and hooted. Soon, the rides stopped moving and the lights atop them went dark. The people cleared except for way, way, way across the park where those lights that sometimes scared him blinked and shot in and out of the dark. The music was sometimes familiar to him. But sometimes, it downright pissed him off it sounded so strange.

Eventually, it went dark. Dark everywhere across there.

He piled a fat log and another bundle of sticks onto the fire and sat there listening to the log sizzle and termites scattering across the bark popping in the heat. He watched the darkness across the water for a good long time before leaving the fire to walk around where all the others had been.

A full moon lit everything up right and bright. Willard or Daniel followed the old fishing path along the edge of the pond to the near side of the park. He floated past the trailers where the people called carnies slept, some of them laughed, some of them moaned in sex or maybe pain.

He reached the rides. Stood in the line that wasn’t there at the Ferris wheel and then moved to the Tilt-A-Whirl. His rides were great. Now or then or when. But a great time. He walked the row of carnival games. “No. No thank you.” He laughed to his right and to his left. “I’m broke!” He laughed on.

At the bandstand he walked quite proudly to the center of the cement dance floor.

Heard that song he used to like about a man on a train, or a man in a prison, or maybe both. His feet scratched in a rhythm across the dusty cement floor and his arms outstretched in an embrace of another he couldn’t quite remember.

47 He stopped.

Tilted his head and cupped his ear.

Maybe somewhere. Maybe here. Right now. Last year. Maybe never.

“Holy something or ‘nother,” he whispered. “What if I’m a ghost? For real.”

His head throbbed in the rush that took him from time to time and the world lit up like a light had been flicked on. Then, as soon as soon as it had come, it got gray again.

“Fuck,” he whispered toward the stage. He shuffled across the floor and stopped at a tripod— one of those bright lights that was flashing a while ago probably. He touched it.

The heat there felt good. Felt like life, the sun.

He climbed the stage and pissed off it onto the crowd of no one.

Daniel or Willard pulled his garbage bag from his pocket, bag getting a bit used over by now, and started his search for cans. His search took him back through the bandstand, underneath the stands, and across the area where they sometimes left corndogs on picnic tables. Past the games where no carnie guys bothered him this time. Past the carnival rides, still and cold.

He stopped at the fishing trail and hefted his bag over his shoulder. His park was gone to total black. The Ferris wheel’s shadows reminded him of a dinosaur. Darker than ever it seemed. He stood there on the path and felt weird. It always felt weird here. Like it was haunted. Like there was a ghost standing beside him. A ghost with a fishing pole and a ghost kid, in particular.

Across the pond, the campfire glowed down to embers and he set off down the fishing path.

“Willard,” he whispered. “Daniel,” he tried for sound. He repeated both names, saying them a touch different. He stopped where the trail met the woods and rapped himself in the head before he stepped into the trees.

48

High School, Night — Peter Gutierrez Opal Bones I never write of home, when I am home.

The hallways I trace on the lines of my palm I keep so close they weave into blindfold & navigate the growing shadows with string, Hunting patterns in yesterday’s dark Until I conjure ghosts out of a lump of jacket, A fellow shadow in the museum With its soft light & shifting exhibits Of suitcases & laundry bins // When I am most at home Laying on my girlhood bed, I begin to see a skeleton Slipping off its skin & lying by my side.

49 The back of my palm rests In that hollow holy space between rib & spine Where translucent butterfly wings Kiss my wrist with each inhalation, My other hand tucked close to my chest To keep from writing benedictions In the film of dust collected with care, A grain of sand for each day gone // A friend plans my wedding in a crypt, Where the negatives of ceremony unspool like a film reel.

So I paint my walls grey To make at home these opal bones, Shrouding the window with white gauze.

I strip my walls of old idols & carve arches into the ceiling, Consecrating my tongue with dregs of stale tea Until I pray the ancient blue carpet cracks open & the foundation swallows us whole // Lying airless in this shrine I dream of smoking at my kitchen table When sounds of footsteps hit trip wires-Menacing against the honeymoon hush.

Hiding the cigarette stub in my nightstand, The trick candle relights, Incense mingling with the air Until it was all a light rain of ashes // —Tara Werner

50 There are holes in his memory There are holes in his memory.

The night I wore the red dress and thought, tonight, that night is smoke in his mind, an empty ache like when I put my hand on his thigh and he ignored me for weeks.

I’m a haze, a hole, I want without thinking, crave without consuming.

I think about the night he told me he wished something could matter, wished he could make it so that I did, above all else in this big dark world.

I remember the night he carried me home, the first time he ever held me in his arms. I remember the warmth, and light, the entire world in the touch of my body, and his.

I wonder how much he recalls.

Growing darker still and darker still. —Courtney Taylor

51

Jamie Stow

52

Dylan Scillia Rain

Taylor Olson

The few years after the crash were hardest on him. All of his money was in the market, as a great deal of Americans money was. He didn’t really know where the line was actually crossed. It may have been when he realized he was going to lose the house, it may have been when his wife told him she never really loved him, or it may have been when he came home to find her and their daughter gone with only a note informing of their departure. It was a Thursday, it was raining, it never stopped. That day he left his near-foreclosed home and his missing family, and hopped on a traincar to nowhere. The landscape blurred after the first thousand miles, he wondered how the rain could seemingly follow him wherever he went. He desperately wanted to have somewhere to go, someone to love, but he knew God would never allow it.

To keep his sanity between his ears, and to pass the time, he would drink whatever he could get his hands on that would make him feel less like himself. Apple wine, gin, whiskey, moonshine, mouthwash, it truly didn’t matter. He would also write to

53 his daughter.

Alice, you may never get this. That’s ok. It may be more for me than for you anyway.

Everything I did, I did for you and your mother. Greed may have gotten the best of me, but it a was greed to keep your mother and you in the most comfort I could provide. I don’t know if you’ll remember me, you’re only three now, but you were taken from me by your mom, probably for the best. I wish I knew what to say to you. I’m sorry. I love you.

It had been two months riding the rails, the rail police kicked him off the car in Burnt Corn, Alabama. He wandered the streets looking for his next drink and a dry place to sleep. The former came in the form of stolen Boone’s Farm, the latter didn’t come at all. He woke up to water cascading over his forehead like a grand waterfall.

He was used to rain now but this Alabama onslaught was unfamiliar to him. He had heard the term “drenched to the bone” in passing in a few instances in his old life, or at least enough times to recall the phrase at that particular moment. His clothes felt like they weighed a hundred pounds per article. His plethora of wine hadn’t exactly run its full course yet so in his jumbled mind the only reasonable thing to do was strip them off or drown in God’s next great flood, he contemplated both. The local sheriff picked him up and brought him to the resident drunk tank to sleep off his latest bender. The sheriff asked him if he’d like a call but he declined and instead begged for a pen and a piece of paper.

Alice, without you I don’t have anything. I wish I was there but I know it wouldn’t matter either way. I hope you never find this level of loneliness of helplessness. Love will always come from me to you, wherever you are, wherever I am.

He found a way back to the steel highway and continued his destinationless journey toward death and drink. Car 36 offered him a faux gift. A battered and beat King James Bible. He glared at it, for what seemed like days, sitting as far from it as physically possible. It could have been boredom or maybe an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope for redemption, but he rose to investigate the good word. He walked as eagerly over to it as a person could in his situation. As he approached it the train turned sharply and sent him barreling out of the car into a near-fatal roll down frozen hillside. He was in Pennsylvania and it was nearing winter time, so the ground felt harder than concrete. He reached the bottom, concussed and bloody; broken, in

54 every sense of the word. He laid there, hurt, staring at the cloudy sky, listening to his ride and refuge sprint away from him, too adrenaline-laden to feel cold, although he knew it was. Then he felt a drop of rain on his cheek. At that moment he prayed, for the first time since his mother stopped forcing him to church at 13, and for the first genuine time ever. All he asked was ‘when you gonna make it stop rainin Lord?’

He laid in the same spot for two days, talking to God, never getting an answer. He begged God to kill him for those two days, all he got in response was rain. Warm rain, cold rain, sometimes giant fat drops, other times the finest mist he’d ever seen, but it never stopped. He finally hobbled onto another train but his time laying still on the cold wet ground solidified what he had been suspecting for a while. His existence was an offense to God. He didn’t know what he had done in this life, or a past one, that made this second act of his life a personal vendetta for god. Some people would have lost faith in god’s existence after even half of his tribulations. For him however, his trials enshrined that there was a god. A spiteful, angry, hateful god.

He finally landed somewhere in the Northeast that would give him a job and allow him to still drink his sorrows away. He started on a large fishing boat doing grunt work for nearly no money but a place to stay and plenty of gin to spend his wages on. After about two years of a constant drunkenness on the wet deck of the fishing vessel, he saw something that would change him. Another lowly deckhand had been hit by a wench that broke when a cable snapped. It hit him in his left temple and he died instantly. This in and of itself had no effect on him, in fact he envied the sailor in a way. What struck his deepest and last heartstring was when he watched their captain explain to the fisherman’s wife and young daughter about the tragedy. He gazed as the new widow sobbed hysterically, and watched the fatherless girl look frantically back and forth between the captain and her mother in the deepest state of confusion. He wrote his daughter that night.

Alice, daddy hasn’t forgot you. I’m coming, I don’t know when or how but I’m going to find you. There is only one thing in this world worth fighting for and it is seeing you again. I will be with you as soon as I can.

He worked endlessly for the next seventeen months, he didn’t touch one drop of intoxicating substances, barely ate, hardly slept. He was too excited to see his daughter, almost giddy. Every day he woke up knowing it would bring him one step closer to her.

55 He saved enough to redeem himself, at least in his eyes. Enough to give his almost nine-year-old daughter every last penny and not feel like a complete failure. In the spirit of saving and sacrifice, he took one last ride on the rails to get back home. It was a long journey but he was happy, even grateful, to be able to do it. He wrote her almost every day on the way back, usually just recounting the day, expressing his immense eagerness to get back home to see her again and be a good father for the rest of her life and maybe even attempt to make up with her mother. He didn’t ever have an actual address for which to send these letters he composed, so every single drop of ink he cast, from the first letter of the first letter to the last letter of the last letter, he kept in his knapsack, to give to her. He was about two days away from his old home when he authored his last letter to her.

Dearest Alice, sweetest Alice, darling, perfect, angel, queen Alice. I’m so close to our old home, I feel like I can sense you near to me. The train is approaching where our little family would watch sunsets on Sunday evenings. Waiting feels like torture. My only hope is that I’ll be able to pry myself off of you when I finally get to hold you again. I’ve seen so much that I can’t wait to tell you about. I hope there are no hard feelings, between you and I or you and your mom. Forgiveness will be what bonds our family back together. Love Dad. P.S. You were, are, and always will be, the first and last thing I think about when I close or open my eyes.

He rode into town, excited to start the search for his daughter and wife. He even looked up to the heavens, for the first time in a long time he felt no ill will towards god, even the smallest bit of gratitude for his renewed spirit. He went to his old house and, as he figured, came up with nothing. He did however, happen to notice that the Prichard’s still neighbored his old home and went to investigate there for any type of clue. He knocked and Mrs. answered, startled by his hoboesque appearance she called for Mr. and retreated back inside. It dawned on him that he looks drastically different than the last time anyone from his old life saw him. He then said to Mr. “It’s me, we lived next door, at 9811, the wife, myself and Alice. I’ve lost contact with them after my wife left me but I’m desperately trying to reconnect.” Mr. looked at him with an indescribable face of uncomfortability. Mr., queerly standing in his doorway now said “the day your wife left you and you abandoned the house…” he trailed off. “that day, your wife threw little Alice in the river off of the bridge. Alice drowned that day, they sent your wife to-” He went deaf. god had sent him one final

56 glimmer of hope and happiness only to rip it away and shatter it away in the most grandeur way possible. He went to the liquor store, got the biggest, strongest, cheapest whiskey he could. In one motion, he drank the entire jug. He staggered back to the railroad tracks, numb, not because of the whiskey, and screamed at god “when you gonna make it stop rainin lord?� He laid his head on the rail. He felt the trains vibrations, he finally saw it. As he lay there, numb as a statue, he felt a drop of rain on his cheek.

57

Chain Linked Ashuni Lucía Pérez

Energy

58 She is Survived By a worn-out radio, neglected nail polish cracked in glass, diagonal notes in bent books, unfolded laundry, trails of bobby pins, paper flowers and a button bouquet; by three bearded dragons, bellies roasting on flat rocks, a pewter gargoyle with stained glass wings, a red laptop and 262 letters written every week for five years.

She is survived by an echo of anger.

Ribbon-thin and obsidian sharp a knife tang, hidden; and a glaze of joy, that firefly-cold light, as what she touched glimmers bioluminescent green; and her son.

Who reincarnates her body with sagging boxes filled of these fixtures that shape a life, hoping that each cardboard flap creates the stepstool to a heaven she neither wanted nor believed in. —Rachael Jordan

59

Impression, Sunrise 1872 Monet is only an eye, but my God what an eye! - Cezanne all he was // was an eye caught in the accumulation // of wavering blues & the accommodation of // the warm breeze that builds the sun on the retina // reflecting // in the blushing sky // the orthogonal lines that scaffold the sea into a blue // slick with oil streaks a quiet return // painted on light eyelids // clouds float west to smudge le soleil levant // as shadows suggest // ghostly sailors imprinted on the iris // three skeleton rowboats in a shipyard // like a time-lapsed photograph // humanized by a the heat of noon // the hazy film // of squinting at a home built by the staccato notes of a bird // & the grasping // of photoreceptors bathed en plein air // your own saltwater lens // // blurring the horizon once familiar // now immortal —Tara Werner

60

#30 — Kenny Nguyen

61 No way…

I have never dreamt of flowing dresses, trains to trip me up, veils to blind me, elaborate fingernails to cripple my hands as I tear off false lashes, Silicon and Botox and Spanx and Panx and the obligatory arsenal to create of Me the She of the airbrushed illusion.

I am not Marie Antoinette, though I like my cake.

We shall share it and grow fat and happy together.

Keep your ankle-spraining stilettos, your push-up bras, your murderous pantyhose and all the powder and the paint, for I am the female of the species who had the sense to eat the apple and I found it most delicious.

—Mara Buck Originally published online in The Lake Literary Magazine, Ireland, 11/13 Subsequently published in the print anthology, LIKE A GIRL…

62

J. Luke Westbrook — River Haze What Truth is Spoken Retreat into the darkness oh oracle of the night.

Your perverse proclamations confounding common speak.

Disenchanted diatribes from your mouth do spew.

Hearken to the naïve maid who believed in your foul discourse.

Was there no hint of certitude in anything you proclaimed, or do your heartless speeches lay quiet among the decaying?

—Ann Christine Tabaka

63 greed vs. poverty a homeless man one winter was turned away from the shelter huddled into our shop for protection, and was allowed to stay; couldn’t help but feel annoyance at the shelter for turning away an old man who could’ve died in the cold— we gave him a sandwich, and he sat by the window shivering and cold; but i reminded myself it was better than the alternative of standing in the snow all alone praying for morning or someone to care someone with means to come along and help out how they could— i wonder why it is more easy to forgive those who greedy rather than poor.

—linda m. crate

64 SOS, or Preface To A 45 cal. Gat w/Extended Clip a shout-out (no doubt!) to Amiri Baraka We are the not / that is not nothing // Where we always been / in the middle of / becoming who we are / : The cobalt Daddy Blues / smoldering hot molecules from our lungs // Something bluer than / the bluest of Blues / traveling a vector through Space/Time // Shelters our heart swooned Selves / more than / status staggered off kilter to gravity // We be Rapture-risen hopeful // The harvest moon / gri-gri signifier of souls / long after / & before they first see us as Divine / & so hip & so / very very beautiful.

We are our only Creators created by our own Selves as we were created by those that created before before there was a before to remember.

(If Elvis Presley is King, then James Brown must be God!!)

Our dark flesh staggered upright but startled so civilized stunned primal: The fire next time!!

We be Black.

A caravan of blueprints bumrushing the scene / bum-rushing / the way / leading the way / bum-rushing the system.

Negro, ya’ betta’ keep up!

We be Black code-switched to / stereotype //

C.P.T. become /

65 metaphor: Walking through hell / with a five gallon can / of gasoline strapped to our / backs & / five sticks of dynamite clenched in our teeth / that maybe explodes!

Note: C.P.T (colored people time) —henry 7. reneau, jr.

Requiem for the Hollow Men or Goodbye to Language This is the way the word ends This is the way the word ends This is the way the word ends Not with a Blog, but a Twitter. —Gary Mielo

66 Blue Moon (The Scene of the Crime) Return to the scene of the crime Scoring smoke in nickels and dimes Rolling on eggshells From west of the line Avoid blue light, blue moon Bumps and grinds Seek out soup kitchens Guitar picking And fried chicken Love lines Lines should not define The poetry you find inside Metaphysical cast-asides Castaways the end of days Return to the scene of the crime La crimen La crimen ferpecto Say it ain’t so I’m just laying low Hiding from blonde hair Blue eyes and the goddamned Cotton Eyed Joe What’s the difference Between yours and mine?

Put the difference on my visa Stamp it crooked Side ways Like the Tower of Pisa Like that hemisphere spire

67 In San Antonio White table cloths And 100 dollar vino Spin motherfucker Spin motherfucker Spin As blood moons Blue moons Super moons shine Return to the scene of the crime to find…

—PW Covington

68 Garlic Boy Jonathan Ferrini The screams and cries are loudest at night and aggravate the inmates who encourage the predators and fantasize about the fate of the prey. I chant “Om Mani Padme Hum and peace replaces terror. It’s my final night after being incarcerated at Corcoran State prison for five years.

The tiny plastic mirror above my combination metal sink and toilet reflects the transformation of a slightly built eighteen year old into a formidable man with prison tattoos. The tattoo on my forearm reads, “El Chico de Ajo” which translates into “Garlic Boy”.

Soon after my incarceration, I visited the prison library and randomly selected “The Teachings of Buddha”. Reading it removed the hatred and vengeance consuming me. I wrote to the Buddhist publisher and thanked them for transforming my life and was forwarded additional copies and other Buddhist publications. The transformation I found in Buddhism spread throughout the cell block and I became a revered Buddhism counselor to the hardest of criminals and their jailers.

Its daybreak and the Warden escorts me to the bus which will take me home. The only possession I took is a copy of “The Teachings of Buddha.” He hands me a pencil drawing of a family of spiders nestled in their web. The drawing is titled “Peace and Gratitude” and the Warden tells me “Charlie” meditated and gave it to me as a gift. I tell him to sell it and buy Buddhist publications for the library.

Gilroy California is a farming community known for growing garlic. Our family lived in a trailer home located downwind from a garlic processing plant and gave my family the permanent stench of garlic. There are two social classes of Latino’s who live and work in Gilroy: wealthy landowners tracing their lineage to Spanish land grants and migrant farm workers harvesting their crops. My parents are migrants paying the wealthy land owner rent and a percentage of their crop sales. I’m an only child, and was a lonely, quiet, studious kid with dreams of attending college to study agricultural science and one day owning our own farm. My garlic stench made me an outcast teased and bullied with the exception of Andalina, a quiet, studious girl, exchanging loving glances with me in school. Andalina’s parents own a beautiful ranch home on hundreds of acres. A relationship was never possible given our economic differences. I received a postcard from Andalina in prison telling me she graduated from college and was attending graduate school. I was proud of her but too embarrassed to write back and tell her I earned my GED in prison.

69 My parents often sent me to the only minimarket/gas station in our neighborhood to buy groceries and I welcomed the errand because they included money for a “Slurpee”. The owner of the minimarket is Ernesto. He was once a struggling immigrant but saved to open the new minimarket/gas station. He’s considered a “Coconut” by Latino’s and prefers to go by “Ernie”. Ernesto was politically ambitious and a “law and order” businessman with aspirations of running for mayor.

His minimarket/gas station has no competition for miles and he charges monopoly prices.

I entered the minimarket and dashed for the Slurpee machine. I poured a tall Slurpee and grabbed the groceries. As I approached Ernesto to pay, a Latino gang entered the store which was empty except for me and Ernesto. One gang member stood guard at the entrance. Sensing trouble, I hurried to complete the transaction and get out of the store. The leader of the gang passed me and smelled my garlic stench placing his arm around me saying, “You’re my garlic boy”. His grip was firm and he approached the counter with me in tow. He held a gun to Ernesto’s head demanding money. Ernesto opened the register and handed over the money begging, “Please don’t kill me!” The gunman turned to me and said, “You stink man!” He hit me on the back of the head with the butt of the gun. I fell unconscious.

I regained consciousness to find Ernesto standing over me. My arms and feet were bound and I was being photographed by the local newspaper. Ernesto assumed I was a gang member and used the robbery as a photo opportunity for his mayoral run. Ernesto planted the pistol dropped by the thief in my pants. I was arrested and charged with armed robbery. The Public Defender ignored my plea of “wrong place, wrong time”, and pressured me to accept a plea deal. I was sentenced to prison and Ernesto was elected mayor.

The bus ride home feels like a prison cell as it crawls up Interstate 5 surrounded

by Central Valley farms. I’m anxious and clutch the “Teachings of Buddha”. We pass a billboard reading: Next Services 8 miles.

Ernie’s Minimarket and Gas Station The billboard reignites hatred and vengeance towards Ernesto but I hold the book close to my heart and chant, “Om Mani Padme Hum” which calms me. I’ll get off the bus at Ernesto’s minimarket and buy a bottle of champagne to celebrate our family reunion and treat myself to a Slurpee which I dreamed about in prison.

The bus stops in front of the minimarket. I enter and recognize Ernesto behind

70 the counter. I pour a Slurpee and select a bottle of champagne. I approach the register and ask Ernesto, “Remember me?” to which he replies, “No. You all look alike!”

The doors to the minimarket swing open and in the store mirror behind Ernesto, I see the “shark like” stare of a “meth head” quickly approaching the register determined to rob and likely kill Ernesto. I alone will determine if Ernesto lives or dies.

I turn to the meth head rolling up my shirt sleeves revealing prison “tats” criminals recognize while giving him my “prison eye stare down.” I hold the bottle of champagne like a baton. The meth head stops dead in his tracks saying, “It’s cool man.

No hassle from me!” He backs his way out of the store and runs to his car speeding away. Ernesto knew he “dodged a bullet” and holds out his hand to shake saying, “Thank you. How can I repay you?” I hand him my copy of “The Teachings of Buddha”. I walk out of the store to my family reunion sipping the Slurpee like expensive cognac.

71 quaternate argument revealing the sum of its parts 1.

in spite of stories told so well they’re self-fulfilling, life is more than muddled, halfway between illusioned & lost or monument to principle; in point of fact . . . minute-to-minute fearful & jostled together, a linear crawl of doom, because of which, many take umbrage 2.

ego

she traveled the world, but all she ever saw was a never-ending mirror, the prism of her soul refracting

3. in public no one is whom they really are, or seem to be, a riot of subterfuge, precisely, an extension of self-interest, a tool that hammers intolerance to hate

72 4.

rage

to fit in we’ve become spiritually homeless, the complaints of gulls feasting upon the refuse of nobility, more precisely; a gluttony unto

rage is not the same as anger; everyone has that, but rage sits patiently with its box of Diamond matches & a gallon of gasoline . . . incineration, the hot spit of self-interest: to burn & burn —henry 7. reneau, jr.

73 A Matter of Life and Death A cry into the world One out Sliding in sliding out Faces behind the glass A naming An identification given The answer yes The statement no A blue blanket Yellow tape Liquid flowing down Pain Screaming Elixirs Ailments A call light A light calling A prognosis Strange hands A moment says Caution Congratulations Someone somewhere Is giving a high five And a cigar —Alex Ewing

74

Hiking Rest — T. Thomas Abernathy

75

Camper — T. Thomas Abernathy Reparations over Rice Noodles Mason O’Hern We are the only people in thanh lihn, maybe because it’s 3:30, on a Wednesday, or maybe because it’s midterms and no one has time to leave campus. Shit. Even I don’t have time for this, but I met him here. Because he asked me to. I don’t even know why we’re here. But he is staring at soy sauce, evading eye contact, clearly collecting courage to say something.

“We need to start over.” I shatter like baseball-broken window--and I don’t even know what he means. Server returns with two pairs plastic chopsticks, two orders vegetarian rice noodles. And he is saying something about boundaries.

“Let’s just eat lunch, and go from there” handing me chopsticks before picking up his own. Laughing as tofu slips through a third time, smiles as if to say “I don’t judge you” before reaching across table top–uncross here, press harder here–his hand guiding mine to correct form.

We talk poetry, the play he wrote this summer, the responsibility of performance poets, and content warnings. He asks about my plans after graduation, listens to my clueless stumbled syllables. Deep breath. Flip the question back to him. Listen as he passion-rambles about the Pacific Northwest, the indigenous people, and the pipeline the government is building on their land. “In the Sioux tribe there was no word for property, no one could own land, just like no one owns the sky”.

Swallowing my pride, hours later, I text him, “I miss this.” and for a second I found peace. He replies, “True peace between nations will only happen when there is true peace within people’s souls.”

76

Pizza Night — Bob Callan Garbage Man A.C. Bohleber The garbage man was hunched over on the curb in his apartment parking lot. His eyes were red with crying.

He ought to have been sent off some cliff right then and there. He was not that fortunate. Instead he sat slumped for a good many hours more in the dingy lot and lit stinking cigarettes and smoked while he cried bitter tears. The tears stuck to his flesh and made it look yellowy and varnished. It had the appearance of an old dresser that used to sit in his room in his childhood home.

His mom used to light up those stinking cigarettes every day. Every day she would open a new pack of those cigarettes. He would hide them, but she would buy new ones. His lunch money would be gone. He stopped this game of hide and seek after a while. He got smart. And suddenly he was old.

He made it to eighteen and smart didn’t mean he could stay in that old house anymore. He got himself an apartment to smoke in, to smoke and have sex in. The

77 women would wonder in and out. They would smoke those stinking cigarettes after and before. He fell in love with one, but she couldn’t stand the sight of those yellowy tears. She left, but left the dog.

Her gray mutt still lounged around the apartment and smelled those stinking cigarettes and saw the women. He could tell some stories. He was quite foul mouthed, though, and no one listened. The dog’s stories made the garbage man sad, so he stopped listening. Now the mutt talked to no one and was alone.

The man stopped crying and smoking and walked back up to his apartment. Back to the lonely dog and the stained mattress on the floor. The neighbor next door poked his head out when the garbage man came through.

“Hey man,” the neighbor said. He was some college kid who played loud music and spent all his money on bitter whiskey.

The garbage man didn’t respond and unlocked his door and went inside the apartment. At the end of the short hallway was a picture hung crooked. In the living room there were sheets over the windows. The kitchen counters were flooded with beer bottles. The dog sat slumped in the corner, head over its paws.

“I love you, you son of a bitch,” the dog said.

The man didn’t respond. He walked to the bedroom. The hard wood floor creaked under his feet as he stared at the mattress. Just a mattress. As lonely as the dog.

Yesterday the dog had said, “You ever heard the poem ‘Musee des Beaux Arts?’

She used to read Auden at night. Something like ‘About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters: how well they understood the human position: how well it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’… I can’t remember what comes next.”

A thud came from next door. Something hit the wall. The dog whined in the other room. The man walked out to where the dog was, banged on the wall where the noise had come from, and sat on the sagging futon. He was nearly sitting on the floor. Another loud bang reverberated off the walls.

He walked out into the hallway. The kid’s door was open. The neighbor across from the kid had his head out his door.

“It’s always something with that kid,” the neighbor said and put his head back in and closed the door. He was an English teacher at the college and the whole apartment building could hear his bed squeak against the wall at night when the women would come by.

The garbage man’s eyes sagged. He deflated with every step he took towards the kid’s door. He pushed it open and walked down the hall. He could hear multiple

78 voices. At the end of the hall was a poster hung crooked. The wood floor squeaked under his weight, but the voices didn’t seem to notice.

He walked around the corner and into the living room. Three kids turned towards him, not alarmed. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table and the smell of limes.

“Hey man,” the kid said and stood up walking towards him, “how ya doing?”

The garbage man shrugged. “Why are you banging on the walls?” he asked.

“Sorry man. My bad. We’re celebrating.” The kid moved around the room sporadically, weaved among the recliners, and walked into the kitchen.

A girl sat in one of the recliners and smiled shyly. She eyed the boy on the other couch as if they were communicating. The boy on the couch was eyeing the girl, but he did not know they were communicating.

“What the hell is there to celebrate?” the man asked.

The girl uncrossed and crossed her legs. She said, “Mardi Gras.”

“It’s a Tuesday,” the garbage man responded.

“Exactly,” she said. She pulled a red solo cup to her lips. He could see a green liquid inside.

“Want a margarita?” The young neighbor had come back from the kitchen with a cup and offered it to the garbage man.

“Why are you drinking margaritas on Mardi Gras?” the garbage man asked.

“That’s what you have on Mardi Gras,” the neighbor kid told him.

The girl and the guy sitting down rolled their eyes.

“Y’know, M-A-R in Mardi and M-A-R in margarita? You get it.”

The garbage man didn’t get it, but he took the drink. It was heavy with tequila.

Standing in the middle of the room he wasn’t sure if he should sit or stand.

“Take a seat, buddy,” the kid told him. He walked to the window. There was a stereo, and he turned the music up a little. It was some jam band the garbage man didn’t know. Maybe his dog would. Maybe the dog could hear it. Maybe he wanted to come over. The man didn’t know, but he finally took a seat.

“I’m having a cigarette,” the kid said. The girl and guy nodded and watched him walk out.

The garbage man had sat down in the recliner by the girl. “What the hell’s up with your boyfriend?”

“That’s not my boyfriend,” she said and leaned back into the recliner. She was still trying to communicate with the boy across from her. He was looking off now watching the sun sink into the city. They all drank, and the girl finally gave up and looked around the room.

79 “So, who are you?” she asked.

“Just the neighbor,” he said and then didn’t know what else to say. “I have a dog,” he told her.

“Aww you should bring him over.”

“He doesn’t like people,” he lied. “He talks too much anyway.”

The girl cocked her head slightly and looked away. “Perhaps you should invite him over,” she said into the room.

The boy looked away from the sunset for a moment and stared at her. “You want to make me another drink?” he asked.

She walked to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of lemonade on the counter. As she walked back she grabbed the bottle of whiskey. She poured the two into his cup and sat back down.

“Okay,” the garbage man said.

“What are we okaying?” the young neighbor had walked back in stinking of cigarettes.

“I was going to see if my dog wanted to come over,” the garbage man said.

“Aw sweet. Wish I had a dog, then I’d have someone to hang out with all the time.”

The man stood up and walked back to his apartment. When he got in the dog looked at his cup.

“What are you drinking, old man?” the dog asked.

“Margarita. It’s Mardi Gras.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I hadn’t realized,” the man said. “Do you want to come meet our neighbors?”

The dog rolled his head back and forth. “I can’t tell stories anymore. I’ve forgotten them all.”

The garbage man stepped away and back out to the hallway. He could hear the dog stand up, and he thought for a moment the animal would join him, but instead he heard the shaking lug of vomit erupting from the dog’s throat. It was moving up the esophagus, away from the stomach, being pushed by every slight intake of breath until it was on the floor. Mushed grey slop creeped into the cracks of the hardwood, webbing in separate directions. The particles of food were indiscernible, and the dog began to lap it back up.

“The dog didn’t want to come. He got sick,” the man told the college kids. He sat back down in a recliner and drank from his cup. The young neighbor was still weaving in and out of the chairs and moving things around in the apartment.

The boy on the couch stood up. “I’m ready for a joint,” he said.

80 “Let’s smoke in my room,” the neighbor said. “The window opens in there. You wanna smoke?” he asked the girl and the neighbor.

Both shook their heads, and the two boys walked into the other room.

“How old are you?” she asked the garbage man. He frowned. His hair was going grey and his belly was a new protrusion on him.

“Thirty-nine,” he answered, “But I don’t think I was ever young.”

“I’ll let you kiss me.”

The two chairs were next to each other, and when she said this she cocked her head again.

“Why?” he asked.

“It’s Mardi Gras and its Tuesday and we’ll all be like your dog on Wednesday,” she said.

He kissed her. She looked on passively.

“You taste like ash,” she said.

“Indulge me again,” he said.

“No,” she said and looked out the window. It was dark now. The room was stinking of pot and cigarette smoke. She spilled some of her drink. It hit the floor and began to web along the cracks. She ran her hand over the varnish and brought it to her mouth, licking her fingers as if no one was around.

81 Dumbing Down Words have power.

The generals know it.

The dictators know it.

Know they must stop the flow of words.

Arrest it.

Arrest the poets, the singers and songwriters, the graffiti artists, the comedians, the speakers and shouters.

Make them dumb.

Words have power.

So we must swallow them in fear as they rob us of our culture.

As they make us dumb.

Dumbed down.

Dumb. —Lynn White

82

#8 — Mascha Joustra

FQ Window #2 — Jay Waters

83 The Blackness Rollin Jewett There’s a blackness in everyone if you dig deep enough. If you push hard enough. I know.

When I was twelve, my mother married this guy. German guy. He was all right before they got married, but there was something sneaky about him. I never trusted him. Soon after they got married, he changed – started cussing and yelling at me and my older brother and making us do all kinds of crazy chores – like when we raked the yard, he’d make us dig holes and bury the leaves instead of using trash bags. And he was never satisfied no matter how hard we tried. Nothing was ever good enough.

One time I was in the kitchen down on my knees petting my dog and I heard someone behind me. Before I could turn around, the sonofabitch kicked me square in the ass as hard as he could. I fell forward and banged my head against the wall.

I turned and it was him. I looked at him through tears and he just stood there -smirking. And walked away. Never said a word about why he did it. What kind of a person kicks a twelve year old kid in the ass?

The physical abuse got worse. He started punching me in the arm when he was mad at me. And he was constantly yelling and cursing. You never knew what would set him off. He was a walking time bomb. I’d hear him stomping down the hall and pray he wasn’t coming for me. But he usually was. At six o’clock on a Saturday morning he’d throw open the door to my room and say “Get your goddamn ass out in that goddamn yard and start working or I’ll kick your face in!” And he meant it.

My older brother moved out. He went to live with a friend. But I had nowhere to go. Hell, I was 12.

My mother became an alcoholic. She couldn’t deal with it. I’d come home from school at three o’clock in the afternoon and find her passed out on the couch in the living room – dead to the world. I’d do my homework at the dining room table so I could see out the front window and watch for when his car drove up. Then I’d run out the back door, hop on my bike and go to the library and read books until they closed. Or go to the movies. I’d watch the same movie over and over until they kicked me out of the theatre. Then I’d come back, hop the fence and sneak in the back door praying he wouldn’t hear me.

One night, as I was sneaking back in, I heard him yelling at my mom – calling her a slut and an alcoholic…and a cunt. I walked into the living room and saw him push her down. She cut her leg and was crying. I yelled for him to stop and he came

84 at me like a stormtrooper, pushing me hard in the chest. He pushed me and pushed me and pushed me down the hall until we were in my room. And suddenly, the dam broke.

All that 12 year old rage and resentment I’d been feeling surged in my chest and I exploded. I grabbed all 200 pounds of him and threw him down on the bed, sobbing and babbling like a madman. It was as though I had superhuman strength! I felt like I could physically do anything I wanted. And what I wanted to do at that very moment…was kill him.

I drew back my fist and my only thought was to turn his face into a crushed pancake of blood and bone. It was gonna feel so good – letting all that pent up rage and anger and hatred spew out in a pure act of physical violence.

But through my tears I saw something unexpected. I saw terror in his eyes. Raw fear – of me! He was actually in fear for his life. And I felt at that moment this incredible power -- the power to choose whether or not this man lived or died, right then and there. I had that power.

At once I was calm. I let him up. He immediately grabbed my boot off the floor and drew back to hit me with it. But I was no longer afraid of him. And he knew it.

I stood right up in his face and dared him to hit me. And he knew he had lost. And what’s more, he knew that I knew…I would never fear him again.

Pick Your Poison Jonathan W. Thurston When Red was a kid, he would read all kinds of choose-your-own-adventure novels.

He was particularly partial to R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps ones. He would sit there on his Spiderman-sheets bed and read through the book multiple times, trying to find each of the possible endings, basically a 1,000 Ways to Die for kids.

One day, Red grew up, and he realized life was roughly a choose-your-own-adventure. He didn’t make the choices his parents wanted him to make. He indeed chose what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to be a doctor. He pursued a degree in English. He didn’t want to be straight. He came out as gay. He didn’t want to doubt every person who showed interest in him. He was lied to by a guy named Lucas and was tested HIV-positive. Lucas chose to exit the narrative at that point, having infected the main character.

Suddenly, all of Red’s choices seemed to unwind. His family no longer wanted him. “You deserved it.” His friends were worried they were infected now. “Should we get tested?” The school didn’t even want him. “We just can’t keep up with your health insurance. We’re sorry.”

But the adventure wasn’t over, not yet. Red realized over the passing months that what had started as a choose-your-own-adventure was now a pick-your-poison. He had a clear view of ten ways to die, and it was the only choice he was left with.

First dose. He left home, didn’t say a word to the landlady. He walked to the bad part of town, knowing what he was getting into. And he found a gloryhole. There, he crouched and serviced those beggars and homos and homeless and vagrants who came by. He was useful. That was bliss.

Second dose. Some of the generous ones gave him a can of beer. He hated the smell but loved the feel. It numbed him. It softened and blurred his senses. He kept drinking. That was bliss.

Third dose. As night fell, a lady came over with a needle and asked if he wanted to try some. He said he wanted it all. The needle didn’t hurt going on. He didn’t ask what was going inside him. It didn’t matter. In seconds, he was falling inside himself.

Fourth dose. He found a gun. His mouth embraced the end of the barrel. A last kiss. A last taste of the poison. The last choice he could make. Even as his muscles began to pull at the trigger, too late for him to control them now, his mind saw the text beyond his vision and the reader looking over the words: Despite everything that’s happened to you, your final thoughts are of Lucas and how, even while he was lying, he would pet your hair and tell you how much he loved you. These thoughts make you smile even as the gun fires.

85

86

Dylan Scillia

87

I’m Sorry I Stayed Silent Mason O’Hern My introduction to law professor is talking about the degrees of sexual assault, and when she thinks victims should be believed. I am trying to stay present, trying not to run head first into the darkness she invited.

We were supposed to talk about real estate law, but I can’t tell you one thing we learned that night. I spent the whole hour panicked, reminding myself that he can’t hurt me.

This is the third week that she has talked about assault, for the shock value. Can you believe this? she asks with a laugh, after the me too hashtag bursts her bubble weeks late. as she invites people to share their stories, as if this is some fun debate.

Completely unaware that I am playing back the worst thing that has ever happened to me again and again.

When I finally gather the courage to say something to her, she tells me this is the real world is not my liberal arts bubble and I will have to deal with this. That this is just something that happens to women.

I take a deep breath, but don’t correct her. Because I don’t have the energy to prove myself masculine.

I should have told her, that this body, makeup and lipstick is male. That my gender did not stop me from saying me too, that this body did not protect me from a man who wanted my body. But I didn’t and is that silence not an act of violence too?

88 The Midnight Princess i’ve been getting stress headaches. you told me to slam my fingers into a car door to help with the pain. você tem namorado? minha princesa. i broke my right pinky toe, but i don’t have insurance. i’m sure it’ll heal on its own. you joked that it would make it harder for me to run away from you. do you have a boyfriend? 彼氏はいますか？ έχεις αγόρι? есть ли у вас парень? my princess. i stay inside and eat a loaf of bread for a midnight snack. i don’t look outside my apartment window anymore.

—Sheena Carroll

89 Proverbs this hurts me more more more more than you i don’t want to i don’t want to, child— this is what you, child, you drove me to. vas a ah vas, vas a der que a se- se re Selah.

—Jeni De La O

pren der ah pren quí- aquí spe ta!

90

#33 — Kenny Nguyen

91 We All Return to the Water Some Day Emma Atkinson You have to remember what the forest smells like. You have to remember, or you will never be able to find it again. River moss and wet stones, baking dirt and pinecones.

As a child you were friends with a three-legged deer who wore a tag in her ear. Rescued by human scientists after getting hit by a car. How many people have touched a living deer with their hand? You have.

You can dream about it all you want, but it won’t mean anything. Dreams are deception; you’ll wake up thinking you’ve finally learned something, but all your mind can do is cobble together old information. You have to seek out the new. You have to get out of your car and let your sneakers slip along the gravel and mud. You have to be at peace knowing that you might trip down the embankment and tumble into the water.

You used to build villages from twigs and leaves, as if fairies needed you to create homes for them. It may have been your last act of tenderness, teaching yourself how to add second and third floors, gathering stones to serve as tables. You didn’t care whether anyone ever knew you had done all this work.

You may remember the time you turned a corner and saw a whooping crane through the drooping branches, how you felt the size and the life of it more than you saw its feathers or eyes. But the moments that create you are not the small number you carry in your memory. You are defined by the moments that gather in you like drops of blood, so many of them that you can’t notice or care until you begin losing them.

This was always the plan. The arc of gravity, a perfect orbit. Headlights carve worlds out of the darkness around you, caught and dropped as you move forward, captured and abandoned. Your veins are your map. You drive between the hills, through cracks in the earth carved by rivers. You’ve rolled your windows down to smell the cedars, your one gesture to the world, your small version of a prayer.

Most days you jump from one distraction to another like stones across the water.

You weren’t always like this. You used to make yourself promise to remember, remember, this tree, that raccoon, that kickball mid-flight. You were trying to build a solid thing from flashes of light. You were so afraid of dissolving.

Now everything drifts, everything shines and pops and vanishes. Seeking pats on the back from the internet is sort of like being alive. It’s a fair compromise between the part of you that wants to live and the part of you that doesn’t. You’re a ghost,

92 you’re a neutrino, you barrel so cleverly towards nothing.

There may be a way back from this. You have always known intuitively that every victory carries a loss within it. What will you give to find your place in the universe?

Keep driving. Find the river. Take off your shoes.

It’s funny that you were first brought to this place as a Christian child. This is where you saw the fox and the caterpillar. You saw the stars over the valley and you knew who your gods were. The holiest of holies is hill country soil. This is where you knew. This is where you first knew.

93

George L. Stein

94 Bitch in my Bones sometimes my lonely tries to swallow me whole devours my self-esteem my lonely claims i am worthless blames my roughness my cabrona real tough, my no quiero tus piropos, my lonely blames my mouth my fiera viva la desgraciada who lives in my bones the same one who couldn’t care less about a salivating mouth, a hand itching to hold the thickness of my thighs the roundness of my breast the lushness between my legs my lonely is no match for my fierceness for my “find a puta who gives a damn about the inches you carry between your legs” my lonely thaws the frost in my voice when i feel threatened snickers maybe “i should have been nicer to the boy who grasped my behind” “should have smiled pretty” “should have ingested my pride”

95 my lonely asks “why do you have to be so goddamn loud anyway?” as though god has something to do with a hand grabbing my flesh like ripe mangos ready for picking my lonely knows i am petrified by proximity my lonely has made me quiet has shrunk the bravery out of my vocal cords i have been apologizing for my fierceness for my toughness as though water and fire cannot co-exist as though I can’t be honey and still hold a flame on my breath —Adelina Rose

96 The Binding Philippe Refghi An angel appeared before Abraham.

“I have been sent by God to test your faith. Take your only son Isaac, whom you love most dearly, and bring him to the land of Moriah, and then go up the mountain and offer him as a sacrifice to your God.” Abraham was stunned by the contrasting bold and bright surrounding light but yet soft-spoken manner of the angel sent by God. Although shocked at the request, he slowly nodded in agreement, having faith that God had a greater purpose in mind which he could not at that moment understand.

The next day, Abraham rose early and saddled his donkey with wood for the burnt offering. He gathered two young men and his son Isaac and they made their way together to the land of Moriah, until Abraham saw the mountain in the distance.

“Here, take my donkey, the lad and I will go worship and come back,” he said to the men while giving Isaac some of the wood to carry. Abraham carried the remainder of the material for the fire as they began their trek up the mountainside.

“Where is the lamb for the offering?” Isaac asked Abraham.

“God will provide us a lamb, my son,” Abraham replied.

Once at the correct spot, Abraham and Isaac began building the altar, furnishing it with wood and flint. Abraham helped a confused Isaac lay down on top of the altar, and then he began to bind his limbs.

“Don’t worry son, trust me, have faith,” Abraham kept telling the boy, for he did not know how else to explain his actions. A distraught but naïve Isaac had no choice but to cooperate.

Abraham started to take more time to bind Isaac. “When will God intervene?” he thought to himself. Finally completely bound, Abraham turned his back to take out the knife.

“Father, father, I’m scared, please don’t!” Isaac pleaded upon seeing the blade.

“I’m sorry son, it is God’s will, you will have eternal life in His kingdom,” a palefaced Abraham said, leaning over Isaac. He made his way to the back of the altar, grabbed Isaac’s hair tightly and pulled his head back. He placed the blade under his son’s neck, ready in one motion to slice the esophagus, as he had done so many times before with animals. He paused a moment and looked up, giving God one last chance to intervene. He looked down and sighed at a trembling and crying Isaac,

97 “I’m sorry,” he said with tears in his eyes, as in one swift gesture he sliced through his son’s throat. Blood gushed out as Isaac gasped for air. Abraham dropped the knife and fell to the ground while Isaac simultaneously choked and bled out.

“Why God! Why?” he bellowed into the air, while sobbing and reaching for the stones to finish the ritual. He hit the stones together while still on his knees and crawling through Isaac’s warm blood toward the front of the altar. “What is the purpose God? What did I do to deserve this?” Abraham continued, shouting to God in desperation.

Suddenly an angel appeared, the same one from the previous night.

“Abraham, what have you done?” the angel asked.

“I did what you commanded me to do, oh God!” Abraham responded, still tearyeyed, but now somewhat consoled by the angel’s presence.

“I did no such thing! God would never demand this from one of His children,” the angel firmly replied.

“What? But I saw you. I did! You appeared to me just like this! You told me it was a test of faith! My test of faith!”

“You are wrong, Abraham. Did you bother to ask anything of the angel? How did you know for certain it was God or a representative sent by God?” “But you both look the same! You sound the same! You both appeared out of thin air! Who else but God can do this?”

“The devil,” the angel calmly replied. “Abraham, you have been corrupted by the devil. He takes the form of an angel and demands horrors of people in the name of God! You must be vigilant! Ask questions! God never demanded blind faith from you, in fact, it’s just the opposite. God wants you to think for yourself and question your surroundings because the devil is hidden everywhere and comes in all forms and shapes, trying to manipulate you by impersonating divinity.”

“But what of my son- it’s not my fault! It’s not his fault!” Abraham pleaded with the angel.

“Isaac is dead. Nothing will bring him back. You have no one to blame but yourself. If you truly loved your son, you would never have agreed to do this, not for any reason whatsoever. Let this be a lesson to you.”

Abraham, now bloodied and beyond distraught, returned to his donkey and the two young men. The men quickly realized what had happened, even before an inconsolable Abraham confessed everything. In a furious rage they beat Abraham and left him for dead at the side of the dirt road. It took several days for Abraham to die from the loss of blood, and then animals arrived to scavenge his carcass.

98

Viviane Vives bad Latina according to a taxi driver in NYC I am not rude enough to be a real Latina when I told him where I was from he said he couldn’t have guessed it because my manners were too proper and women my nationality and women my age are always a pain in the ass he complimented my English saying it was close to perfect he should see how amazing my Spanish is

99 according to old men I’m not tan enough to be a hot Latina I am too fat and too blonde and my skin is not flawless because of some secret gene when they see my pale complexion they wonder if I really am Latin after all according to mass media I’m not funny enough to be a sassy Latina nobody laughs at my jokes because it seems I’m not smart enough in English I’m also not skilled at dancing nor a great cook, nor a beauty queen nor a drug dealer’s daughter my body lacks curves and café con leche skin and salsa dances my personality lacks fire and anger and loudness my life lacks family bonds and blessings from abuelita and that’s what makes me a bad Latina —Verene Snopek

100 Chicome Itzcuintli Atemoztli Yei Acatl The powder and the lacerations of the lands: Huey Culhuacan. La hierba ma– la/saña torrentes the poetic sheathes light after dark. A people of brawn. Ma– lintzin/la Malinche initiated the collapse.

We’re all cut from stars/dusts mien the complexion silex shards. Invisibility of jade thoughts. The pulse of the heart rainbows/snow caps shimmers Pleiades sight. Poetisas deslumbran en la portada –fuerte los guardianes. On chicnahui mi– quiztli tititl yei acatl presides chalchiuhto– tolin tlaloc. Tus antepasados están res–

If you don’t understand this the devil has nothing against the natives. You see spi– der webs in the optical cortex I. But what can you see in the dark poolside eclipse: Ixquimilli the one with the dark eye with blinds. Quebradiza la memoria de obsidi–

pirando en este parrafo. Rain/ teardrops in the temples like dreams scarred from red earth. Brown/ castaño el mirar de ancianos. Then the consciousness bleeds lightning aftershocks in the memories glare.

Symmetry how constel– lations a shower of bright scars’ edged in the blood when life’s worth a dollar’s toss. Kaleido scope caste in the iris shine. Sinaloa te traigo en la sangre aunque nací en el bajío –en el lugar de sauces: el cerro viejo de otro tiempo. Como es los de hueso colorado nunca mueren.

101 ana like mother earth keeps you breathing /I. Then the hourglass shatters into a ple– thora ethereal voices. Like what your rea– ding here: el diablo se esfuma en Sinaloa.

Check this atemporal displacement how these words serrated hills/quebrada escarpment in a topography of ashen green and steel. A peo– ple shard from skies of blue thunder/lightning so precise the skin tone reflects desert solar flares. Reel to reel you bleed this from the soul.

So we’re all Bedouins’ then/now time keeps cut– ting you as sands shift. De estas raíces buena mata. Fists-to-cuffs the grip there’s a prism in the sky that shatters into these words might in the jade iris bright. El diablo desaparecido aun.

—Lobo Xocoyotlzin

102

An Hour After the Last Train — Peter Gutierrez American Goulash Jennifer Benningfield I work in a prison kitchen. Most meals are the same bland, unimaginative offerings associated with hooskow chow: cold soup, warm bologna sandwiches, soggy potatoes and recombinant hot dogs. Once a month, though, the state allows one of us to act out our dink-butt Top Chef fantasies and concoct a no-kidding meal.

Last month, Charlie wowed our brutally jaded diners with pork ribs rubbed to perfection, macaroni and cheese cooked at optimal temperature, and sweet cornbread unable to double as a weapon. This month was mine. My nerves dependably performed a drunken trapeze act at just the thought, ever since straws were drawn.

The Day fell on the first Wednesday, as it has been decreed all The Days will.

Some silliness about “getting over the hump.” Supervising me--all of us, always--is Grant, a convoy of waxy-white flesh whose poorly-oiled breaths vary from mildly annoying to astonishingly aggravating as he prowls the kitchen, making damn sure the cooks are parsing out ingredients with cups and spoons rather than trusting our

103 eyes, all the easier for him to rehash old complaints.

“I’ve had it up to my chin with all these sententious people who don’t understand why we do what we do. ‘He’s the guy who shot up a community pool. Why even feed him?’ Because, you half-insane dolt, he’s a human being and we’re human beings, and human beings must still treat each other humanely. He forfeited his status as a free man, but not his status as a man.”

I’ve heard some variation of this gut-grinding speech so often in my relatively short time in the prison kitchen that I’ve grown fond of performing duties to its rhythms. That day--The Day--I was cracking eggs.

“The inmate to the left of the shooter impaled his own grandmother with a baseball bat, and the one to the right tried to cut off his own penis after trying to molest a dog. I’m not making any excuses, or trying to hear any for that matter, but you know what I say? At least their palates aren’t demented.”

Listening to the monotone ramblings of a possibly delusional walrus has its benefits: time goes by quicker, and I am able to tighten the bond with my partner-in-feeding criminals Clive.

Clive’s facial features are set so alluringly that I am inclined to mistrust him.

When he smiles, it’s all teeth, no gums. His face is so smooth it belongs in a female penguin’s nest. Worse, he’s unfailingly cordial to our dishwasher, Sandy, whose surly disposition would cause Hello Kitty to chug bleach.

So you see why I suspect sociopathy. The main reason I don’t accuse outright has to do with Clive’s treatment of our roly-poly supervising chef, Elliott.

One anticipated benefit of The Day--one that I reasonably expected, thanks to my observations of the two Days that had come before mine--would be Elliott’s decreased influence on my dish. Normally, he’s peering over our shoulders (or through the gaps between our arms and torsos), second-guessing our proficiency at the most rudimentary skills, dispensing superfluous advice, accusing us of relaxing our standards, of “cooking down” to our diners. When a new month begins, and The Day arrives, Elliott shows restraint, satisfied to act as a jack of all trades in the kitchen, helping with dicing and slicing, stirring and whirring, all while breathing harder and louder than an aroused possum.

And then my Day arrived.

I entered the kitchen on The Day with a single goal: take it over. I was determined to claim dominion over every inch of counter space, to clutch every utensil as if it were the Master Sword (not just the knives!), and above all, deliver a great meal for some maybe not-great guys.

104 Rather than humbling himself, or retiring to the sidelines, ol’ Elly Belly treated my special day like it was nothing special. Judging my bread slicing skills, muttering after every sentence I spoke, and basically deflating my enthusiastic parade balloon before it even reached the halfway point of its designated route. Only Clive, with his dazzling array of sympathetic gestures, kept me from dunking my face in the fryer.

Then, just after three hours, a Very Important Man visited the kitchen and whisked Elliott away. Twenty minutes later, Clive received a text from Elliott, explaining that he would be gone for the day, and Clive should take over as the supervisor. Which of course he didn’t.

The kitchen proved a more jovial place sans a meddlesome manager, and when Charlie took a lunch break, Clive and I were left alone. The kitchen was not ours, however, it was mine. The fury I’d felt over a dream delayed could not compare to the delight brought upon once that dream had been fulfilled. (Only relentless self-consciousness kept me from squealing, although in retrospect I regret the restraint, since nothing short of a bomb can overcome the clamor of a well-loved kitchen.)

Blame it on the sounds of beef sizzling and pasta boiling, then, or the resultant aromas…hell, blame ‘em both. People aren’t built to handle the good stuff life offers up. The ideal present engenders soothing memories and auspicious wishes, and that is precisely the select state we found ourselves, keeping a loving watch over my burgeoning masterpiece, when Clive suddenly strode over to the pantry, returning with a 25-lb. bag of sugar. He flipped it to the side with surprising ease and stuck it underneath his shirt. With a hand on either side of his new artificial bulk, Clive sauntered over to the front of the fridge, so I could enjoy the show without having to leave my all-important bread-buttering post.

“Pardon the interruption, dear Mary,” he began, pulling off an impressive imitation of a foghorn speaking English. “I feel as though now is the time to share with you my philosophy on food.”

I shook my head and quirked an eyebrow.

“Food is love. Love is complicated. That knife in your hands spreads, but it can also chop as well. I view the humble chicken as a sky without end, while turkey is essentially a desert.”

Clive plods over to the oven. His face is contorted in gleeful mockery, and still falls into perfect place.

“I desperately wish that I were gifted enough to tell you a summary of my thoughts and feelings these past five months. Yet, much like the Inuit mother and her papoose--”

105 The butter knife clatters on the steel countertop as I cover my mouth. I must have looked a goofy, but denying a body the hearty laugh-a-day it needs is a ticket to heart disease.

“--we will carry these memories with us over great distances, and with great fondness.”

Welcome thought the comic relief had been, Clive’s help in prepping the meal was crucial. Even if it left him perplexed.

“This isn’t what I thought goulash would be,” he admitted, just after he’d shut the oven door. “It seems like a more spontaneous dish.”

The words tripped along my tongue before they could line up. I considered the pantry, momentarily forgetting I’ve the upper body strength of a young boy. Oh well, one does not need huge biceps to be an officious prick. Crossing my arms over my breasts, jutting my chin into the air, I fixed the man standing less than a foot away with a smug glare. I swear his eyes twinkled, but that could have just been my compromised air supply.

“Goulash is a Hungarian dish,” I informed him, as if announcing the birth of the future king. “Goulash is a half-soup, half-stew noted for its thick consistency and for the presence of paprika. You will doubtlessly have noted that what Melinda has prepared is closer to a casserole. Did you notice, however, the distinct lack of paprika in the recipe? Melinda, my dear, what say of this borderline blasphemy?”

I switched back to the role I was literally born to play.

“This is the recipe I grew up on, sir. This is what I know as goulash.”

“Hmm, perhaps so, and it may well turn out delicious, but calling it ‘goulash’ seems disingenuous.”

“Okay, I’ll call it ‘American goulash,’ then. Happy?”

“As a bride on the big day. Thank you, Melinda. And remember--food is love.”

Clive snickered. “Every day is a big day for him,” he cracked, grabbing a recently-emptied pasta pot from the stovetop. I watched as he took it over to the sink area, not bothering to fill it with water, as Sandy snapped at any attempts to “help” her do her job.

Pulling off such a satisfactory mimic had me chuffed; when Clive snatched a spoon and opened up the oven door, my breath caught.

“This is like mac and meat, instead of mac and cheese. Did you add anything besides ketchup?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I wonder how it would turn out if you added tomato sauce or diced tomatoes. It’s

106 pretty awesome. I wanna make it for myself!”

The praise is sucking the air from my lungs, but all I will allow is another airtight smile and a one-shoulder shrug.

“Careful now, girl. Don’t get the big head.”

To stave off swelling--and swooning--I leaned back against one counter and gazed across the room to another counter, focusing on the meat slicer. For a time--a minute? Ten seconds?--the kitchen faded into a gray void, leaving only me and Clive, who is cradling a colander of cooked spaghetti noodles. Wordlessly, he approaches, flinging pasta in my direction--angel hair, my favorite!--careful to avoid hitting my mouth. Once the colander’s been emptied, he turns and walks to the fridge. My mind blazes with possibilities. Clive turns back, holding a red glass jar, but it’s not the glass which is so colored, it’s--wait wait, no, don’t waste the sauce!

Only after emerging did I notice Clive had been watching me watch myself the whole time, the mischievous glint in his eye undercut by a wink. (I despise winking, it’s the physical version of punning, childish and overused, and Clive doesn’t constitute an exception.)

“Don’t let that fat jackass get to you. Okay?”

Again, that wink.

I gather up more dirty dishes as I curse my chest. The worst part of having a mild arrhythmia--after you’ve been properly diagnosed, I mean--is how it can mislead you. Although I understand that the flutters in my chest aren’t portentous signals, I’m occasionally mystified as to the cause. Stress? Caffeine? Poor diet? Attention from a witty, attractive co-worker?

I’m assuming my American goulash went over well, since a riot didn’t break out.

Next month, the cycle begins anew, and Clive will be overlord of the oven mitts.

Hopefully, I’ll have moved on.

107 Step-Nation She can hear the noise inside him, the chatter of people, the sound of the river, the water in his ears.

She feels the booze dulling his senses, the pot lifting him off the ground.

He is late.

She barely exists.

Not in the slightest edge of her people’s mind in Catalunya.

Not sheltered in her canyon, curled up under the blanket on the couch, now that it finally rains and winter begins.

Tomorrow is her birthday, no one in Barcelona will think of her.

He will forget.

Yesterday, she met a couple at a bar, when she said she was a Catalan they did not know what it was.

Barcelona, she had to say, everyone knows Barcelona.

Being a Catalan is strange in Texas.

Step-nation indeed; had she lived when her great-uncle Al-bert, she would’ve been killed in the war or she would be Mexican.

Not a communist like him,

108 but a beautiful anarchist corpse, better than this half-ass death.

Life also weeps too slowly for him, this they have in common.

She’s been longer here than there, dissolving like a sugar cube in coffee; the smell of pine, the Mediterrani sway, the pearls of Catalan in her brain are suspended in the air, waiting.

Unless the old voices continue rumbling down the white walls of Pedralbes, she barely breathes.

Here it is, finally, silence, as her mother had wanted it: “All shut up, please.”

Que se callen todos.

With a French accent.

It’s raining, curled up on the couch with her notebook and huge laziness, she feels a hole in her chest where her country, and her sea, and her lover, should be.

She listens to his river.

—Viviane Vives

109 Paraiso mom and dad study the bible by candle light because the power is out and talk about paradise (not now) through linoleum, slick with humidity, i hear their voices flickering- He will always understand

do not lean upon yourownunderstanding higher than your ways are His ways. when it is over and candles are blown out, abuela lights those same candles for something that

has not been washed in the blood of the Lamb, and puts a glass of water under my bed. —Jeni De La O

110 The Perfect Story Philippe Refghi “I’ve got it!” declared P, leaning back in his chair in a moment of epiphany. “I’m going to write The Perfect Story!” he exclaimed out loud, although no one was with him to share in this exciting revelation. He had come to terms with the fact that he would often speak to himself and, after years of therapy, he no longer felt any shame about it.

P grabbed his phone and immediately called his agent and good friend, John Gomory, to declare the good news: “John, John, you won’t believe the good news!”

“Who is this?” John replied sarcastically.

“No, seriously John, I have the idea of the century, you might want to take a seat for this one.”

“About time P, I was getting worried! Go ahead, tell me, what did you think of?” he asked, eager for the answer.

“John,” he paused, “I have decided to write The Perfect Story.”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“John, are you there?”

“Yes, yes,” he said rapidly, as if having drifted off for a moment, “just repeat what you said to me once more, I’m not sure I understood correctly.”

“Ok, so I was at it again today, brainstorming, trying to get over this horrid writer’s block, and I thought to myself, ‘Ok, you’ve written The Pretty Good Story, The Saddest Story, The Happiest Story, The Funniest Story, The Mediocre Story, The Mildly Entertaining Story, The Bit of Everything Story, The Violent Story, The Horror Story,’ and so on and so on, and then it hit me, what if I was to write The Perfect Story? Think about it John. It’s The Perfect Story, how can anyone not like it?” P paused, caught his breath, and somewhat patiently awaited a response.

John cleared his throat.

“P, that is single-handedly the most perfect idea you have ever had. By definition, everyone has to love The Perfect Story. The perfection is the key, which is what will get the attention of everyone. We could capture literally every single reader everywhere. No one wants to read about anything ordinary anymore,” John responded with increased interest, “but P, please, tell me, how will people know that the story is perfect and that they are guaranteed to love it?”

“Yes, I thought about that long and hard my friend, and I found the perfect solu-

111 tion. The story will be literally called The Perfect Story,” P answered, immensely proud of his idea.

“Your genius never ceases to impress me,” John replied. “But tell me, how will you ensure the story will be good, let alone perfect? Surely you didn’t think the title alone would be sufficient?” John asked, slightly worried.

“It’s simple John! What is the most dreadful thing in the world that people avoid at all cost?”

“Well, I guess suffering is the most horrible thing and people try to avoid all that is unpleasant, uncomfortable, and such.”

“Exactly. Pain.”

“Yes, but life is suffering, like the Buddha said,” John retorted.

“Why is life suffering?” P asked.

“Just get to the point P, stop getting all Socratic on me,” John chuckled.

“With every day we get closer to death, we deteriorate and die, it’s the way of the world. If we were immortal, we wouldn’t get anything done, and life would be meaningless and boring. But readers want to escape from this, just for a moment, and we will give them that break from their very real and imminent death. But why try to imitate real life? The Perfect Story is one without any pain or suffering. It is heaven,” P explained.

“That makes a lot of sense to me P, but how do we make sure the story is absolutely void of suffering? If life is suffering, how can we know anything else, let alone create a world without it? According to what you just said, we would need to suspend time,” John questioned.

“Excellent query my friend, and here is the really brilliant part about it. You see, in the absence of time, nothing happens and nothing ever changes. Therefore, in The Perfect Story, nothing will happen.” P paused, waiting for John’s response.

After a slightly longer pause than P had anticipated, John asked, slightly agitated, “But what is it about?”

“It is a story about nothing. That is The Perfect Story.”

“How do you write a story about nothing?”

“Don’t worry about that part,” P laughed. “It writes itself- or it doesn’t, if you know what I mean,” he burst out in laughter.

“You’re the writer!” John responded, satisfied.

Months later, The Perfect Story made headlines everywhere as people were willing to do almost anything to get a copy of the book for themselves. It spread like wildfire over the internet and virtually overnight made P an international sensation.

112 Soon there was a deal with one of the large networks to create a series around The Perfect Story, a movie, a clothing line- all of them perfect, and all of them about nothing, just like the original book.

Years went by and P’s popularity started to wane as The Perfect Story gradually became a former bestseller. He once again found himself with the dreaded writer’s block. Success also had its downside, for P was now under pressure to create a new and original story that was even better than the last one, which, by definition, was impossible, or so he thought, until one morning he once again experienced a brilliant revelation. He swiftly took out his phone: “John, John, you won’t believe the good news!”

“Who is this?” John replied sarcastically.

“No, seriously John, I have the idea of the century, you might want to take a seat for this one.”

“About time P, I was getting worried! Go ahead, tell me, what did you think of?” he asked, excited for the answer.

“John,” he paused, “I have decided to write The Worst Story.”

“Why on Earth would you want to write The Worst Story?” John inquired.

“Don’t you think it will fit in perfectly with the last one?”

“Um, yeah, I can see how that could work,” he said after a bit of hesitation, “but how will you write it?”

“The exact same way as The Perfect Story.”

113 didn’t want to be mistaken it was dark that night cold, too, as winter fell upon us infringing upon the warmth of an indian summer received in autumn; shivering i held my friend’s cigarette like a model in one of those ads inexperienced and ignorant of how one really smokes making it look glamorous when it’s really just choosing another way to die— told myself it was one bad habit that i would do without because i already have enough vices without that, too; and i felt a sense of relief wash over me when she took her cigarette from me because i didn’t want people to mistake me for a smoker even if that’s not the worst thing to be mistaken for.

—linda m. crate

114

The Faithless Mystic — J. Luke Westbrook

115 I Wish I Could Happen Again I wish I could happen again.

I wish I could happen to someone again.

I wore your breath till stripped of its warmth. It’s just mine now, no headphones.

I notice my mouth opens lazily when running— throat trails out, sounds like animals exhaling from under the bed.

Who follows me? Who comes after me?

A stupid beast sneaks up on me poorly, yelling nonsense.

Why listen to the blues when the blues can’t stop listening to me?

Your eyelashes are spider gams.

I wanna die next to you and take your laundry room warmth.

I want to draw the last part of me you loved.

The ocean before us— the dark mane of an unbroken foal.

I am there.

The weak kid inside wants to negotiate out— it is all too much. My ribs hurt from not laughing.

I am not safe.

I am the teeth around your nipples waiting for you to say when.

116 Your long black socks, two rivers of night easing down into the subterranean.

My hunger is the hunger of the mad ones, the ones without counsel, without family, without godsend, without love, with sudden blows to the ribs.

I am empty enough.

A quarry gutted, but so ready to be turned into a lake, overflowing, like a dumpster pushed down the street, littering pieces of irrepressible laughter.

—Derrick C. Brown

119

Biographies T. THOMAS ABERNATHY is a freelance writer/artist residing in Lansing, MI. EMMA ATKINSON lives in Houston, TX. emmakatkinson.wordpress.com JENNIFER BENNINGFIELD is a lifelong Marylander who has been in the (mostly) benevolent thrall of words since receiving “Green Eggs and Ham” as a birthday present. Her work has appeared on Babbling Of the Irrational, Mad Swirl, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, The Drabble, and The Broke Bohemian.

A.C. BOHLEBER is a writer located in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where she received the Ken Smith Fiction Award and a degree in Creative Writing. She has been published in Treehouse Magazine and has a blog where she likes to throw odds and ends. She now works a full time job to pay for books and cat food.

JAS BREECE is a Sophomore at Ithaca college majoring in Writing. Jasmine mostly writes poetry and wants people to read her work and feel something. Jasmines work can be risky to put out there and hard to swallow but she believes the truth is beautiful whether it is true to herself or someone else’s truth. She has not published or put any of her work out into the world until now and is looking forward to seeing the response she gets.

DERRICK C. BROWN is a novelist, comedian, poet, and storyteller. He is the winner of the 2013 Texas Book of The Year award for Poetry. He is a former Paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne and is the owner and president of Write Bloody Publishing, which Forbes and Filter Magazine call “…one of the best independent poetry presses in the country.” He is the author of seven books of poetry and three children’s books. The New York Times calls his work, “…a rekindling of faith in the weird, hilarious, shocking, beautiful power of words.” He lives in Los Angeles, California.

MARA BUCK writes and rants in a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods.

Awarded/short-listed by Faulkner-Wisdom, Hackney, Balticon, Carpe Articulum, Intergenerational. Recent firsts include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Poetry Prize, the Binnacle International Prize. Published in Hektoen International Medical Journal,

120 Huffington Post, Crack the Spine, Blue Fifth, Writing Raw, Pithead Chapel, Tishman Review, The Lake, Whirlwind, Degenerates, and others, as well as in numerous print anthologies.

BOB CALLAN lives in Beverly, Massachusetts with his wife and two young daughters. He enjoys photographing the cities and towns north of Boston, often with his daughters in tow, budding photographers themselves. Bob has an interest in urban landscape photography, and he looks forward to overcoming his fear of street photography.

SHEENA CARROLL is a Pittsburgh-based poet, tutor, witch, and painter. She is influenced by spacecraft, witchcraft, and personal trauma. Her work has been published in Nasty Women & Bad Hombres Anthology, Philosophical Idiot, The Mantle, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She sometimes writes under the name Miss Macross.

SAMUEL E. COLE lives in Woodbury, MN, where he finds work in special event/ development management. He’s a poet, flash fiction geek, and political essayist enthusiast. His work has appeared in many literary journals, and his first poetry collection, Bereft and the Same-Sex Heart, was published in October 2016 by Pski’s Porch Publishing. His second book, Bloodwork, a collection of short stories, was published

by Pski’s Porch Publishing in July 2017. His third book, Siren Stitches, a collection of short stories, was published by Three Waters Publishing in October 2017. A second poetry collection, Dollhouse Masquerade, will be published by Truth Serum Press in May 2018. He is also an award-winning card maker and scrapbooker.

SAMUEL-COLE.COM PW COVINGTON is a contemporary Beat writer currently living in Northern New Mexico. He has been named a featured reader at the Valley International Poetry Festival in deep South Texas, and has performed his work at The Beat Museum in San Francisco. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Covington’s latest collection of poetry, “The Motor Hotels of Central Avenue” is now available. www.PWCovington.com LINDA M. CRATE is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published

121 chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018).

JENI DE LA O - In 1932 winds carried a woman from Santiago to Jamaica and from Jamaica to Queens. She married and had a daughter, who had a daughter. In 1992 those winds kicked up again pushed that daughter’s daughter from Miami; she eventually landed in Michigan, where she writes poetry and short stories about warm waters and personal catastrophe. Her work has appeared in the York Literary Review, Oakland Journal, Five:2:One Literary Magazine, Rockvale Review, Rigorous Magazine and other places.

ANTHONY DELLAROSA (they/them) is a twenty-eight-year-old agender asexual amateur writer. this is their first-ever poetry submission.

SHELBY DILLON is a filmmaker and photographer. Her art is either a single frame from a film, a moving photograph or both.

Her work focuses on female characters and their subjective narratives.

Her mind lives in the space between voyeur and analytical storyteller.

Her heart absorbs the paintings of Goya and Matisse and watches black and white films.

Her body resides in Minnesota and graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in Film Studies in 2016.

Her entire being creates daily. http://shelby-dillon.com ALEX EWING is a graduate of Howard University. Her poems have appeared in Juked, The Laughing Dog, Dying Dahlia, Poetry Superhighway and Star 82 Review. She lives in Central Ohio JONATHAN FERRINI is a published author who resides in San Diego. He received his MFA in motion picture and television production from UCLA. PETER GUTIERREZ has been professional writer and poet for a quarter century. Only in the last few years, however, has he turned to photography as his preferred form of self-expression. His images have been published by numerous websites and literary/art magazines, by School Library Journal, and by the Gannett newspapers in the area where he lives

122 in New Jersey. A small selection of his work can be found at instagram.com/pgutierrezphotography.

JONATHAN W. THURSTON is the editor-in-chief of Thurston Howl Publications and the author of Sinister Stoat Press novella THE DEVIL HAS A BLACK DOG and Black Rose Writing novel STRAIGHT MEN. His short stories and poems have appeared in a varity of anthologies.

ROLLIN JEWETT is an award winning playwright, screenwriter, singer/songwriter, poet, author and photographer. His screenwriting credits include “Laws of Deception” and “American Vampire”. His short stories, poetry and photography have been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and his plays have been produced all over the world.

RACHAEL JORDAN lives in Southern California where she teaches writing at a local university. She’s been the recipient of an Academy of American Poets’ Prize.

You can find her other poems and fiction in Plenitude Magazine, The Passed Note, and The Northridge Review, among others.

MASCHA JOUSTRA graduated in May 2015 at the Fotoacademie Amsterdam, specializing in documentary and portrait series.

She graduated with a large series of photographs documented in a voluminous photobook called ‘Elders’ (‘Elsewhere’). The book has been shortlisted for the ‘Unseen Dummy Award “ in Amsterdam, september 2015 and has been presented during Paris Photo 2015 at the Polycopies event at the the Tipi Bookshop/Brussels.

Her graduation series ‘Elders’ has been received very well and made entrance to several (inter)national exhibitions. In this large series of photographs her quest is finding out whether a historic dualism in religion in the Netherlands is still dominating the different regions.

“Mascha’s work has different layers and each photograph is demanding time from the viewer. Some images are poetic some direct, but her work is often asking for closer attention.” ..

Also her (now) 16 yo daughter plays a substantial role in the series called ‘fierce-fragile’.

PETER KAHN lives on a farm in southern Wisconsin among the whitetail deer and

123 the pileated woodpecker. He is known by the local squirrels as the madman with a pellet gun guarding the bird feeder.

TOM DARIN LISKEY spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi.

His writing has appeared in the Crime Factory, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Driftwood Press, and Biostories, among others. His photographs have been published in Museum of Americana, Hobo Camp Review, Blue Hour Magazine, Synesthesia Literary Journal and Midwestern Gothic. He uses images and words for a monthly narrative photography column at Change Seven. @BlankGenerationPhotography is the work of Photographer, JOHN MCLAUGHLAN based in Leeds, United Kingdom. His work mainly focuses on street photography and urban exploration.

JESSICA (TYNER) MEHTA is a Cherokee poet and novelist. She’s the author of ten collections of poetry including the forthcoming Savagery, the forthcoming Constellations of My Body, the forthcoming Drag Me Through the Mess, as well as Secret-Telling Bones, Orygun, What Makes an Always, and The Last Exotic Petting Zoo as well as the novel The Wrong Kind of Indian. She’s been awarded numerous poet-in-residencies posts, including positions at Hosking Houses Trust and Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, Paris Lit Up in France, and the Acequia Madre House in Santa Fe, NM. Jessica is the recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund in Poetry. She is the owner of a multi-award winning writing services business, MehtaFor, and is the founder of the Get it Ohm! karma yoga movement. Visit Jessica’s author site at www.jessicatynermehta.com.

JIM MEIROSE’S work has appeared in numerous venues, including Le Scat Noir, Offbeat/Quirky (Journal of Exp. Fiction pub,), Permafrost, North Atlantic Review, Witness, and Kairos Literary Magazine. Published books include: Understanding Franklin Thompson (JEF pubs (2018), and Sunday Dinner With Father Dwyer (Scarlet Leaf Press (2018). Details at: www.jimmeirose.com GARY MIELO, A freelance writer whose articles have appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco

124 Chronicle, Keyboard magazine, and Writer’s Digest. His latest works include short stories for Vagabonds and How Well You Walk Through Madness anthologies, and a novella, “Purple Fantasies,” all published by Weasel Press.

KENNY NGUYEN is a Vietnamese-American fashion, portrait, and beauty photographer based in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. He is currently a student at Furman University as a Biology major with a strong interest in art and photography. His photos have been published in his university’s literary magazine, and he often collaborates with and assists local modeling agencies. The ultimate aim of his work through portraiture is to depict various narratives and to create impactful and memorable images for his viewers.

MASON O’HERN is a poet whose work centers on mental illness, identity and healing. More of their work can be found in their first chapbook, Rising from the Ashes, available now from weasel press.

TAYLOR OLSON is 22 years old, a college, student, and has grand aspirations. A child of an alcoholic mother and a father whom lived through his son his pressure to write caused his views to be dramatic and ever-changing.

J. RAY PARADISO is a recovering academic in the process of refreshing himself as an EXperiMENTAL writer and a street photographer. His work has appeared in dozens of publications including Chicago Quarterly Review, New England Review and Into the Void.

ASHUNI PÉREZ was born in the Arizona desert, raised on the border of Texas and Mexico, and now lives on the coast of Spain. She is a writer, audio-visual creator, and co-founder and co-editor of The Skinned Knee Collective. Her work has appeared in Peach Fuzz Magazine, TWD’s Tinajero Papers, Girls Get Busy, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse.

W.C. RAMIREZ lurks the streets of New Orleans, where nearly three decades ago she was summoned from the dregs of the swamp by an ill-advised shaman. She is a whiskey-swilling, chainsmoking, mischievous type of writer with an affinity for chaos. You can often find her straddling a barstool in the early afternoon, sipping a hair-of-the-dog and frantically scribbling in her notebook with a Pilot Precise V-5

125 RT pen. Approach with caution—she is still pretty feral.

PHILIPPE REFGHI was born in Montreal. He is an avid reader and writer of short fiction and has contributed to Vagabonds before. Passionate about issues of social justice, he often gets involved in local politics. He teaches English part-time while pursuing a M.A in Philosophy at the University of Montreal. henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words in fire to wake the world ablaze: free verse that breaks a rule every day, illuminated by his affinity for disobedience, a phoenix-flux of red & gold immolation that blazes from his heart, like a chambered bullet exploded through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, he has self-published a chapbook entitled 13hirteen Levels of Resistance, and is currently working on a book of connected short stories. His work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by LAROLA. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New York City by her mother, ADELINA ROSE’S writing is inspired by both experience, environment, culture, and gender. Adelina is a full time employee, a single mother, and student. On her spare time she can be found spending time with her daughter, writing, and reading.

DYLAN SCILLIA - I am a Junior at Susquehanna University studying Early Childhood Education. While photography has nothing to do with my major, it is one of my passions and I try and indulge in it as often as possible. It is my dream to one day teach in middle schools about the basics to photography, to hopefully open their eyes to the artistic possibilities.

GARY SMOTHERS was born and raised in Central Illinois in a hardened mining town which died after the coal mine shut down. He worked in a prison for 13 years which afforded insight into the darker nature of humanity. His talks with inmates revealed a dark side of humanity once hidden to most people. He has several published short stories and is currently at work on a crime novel.

VERENE SNOPEK is an Argentinian psychologist/teacher/translator/ghostwriter/ aspiring poet with a lot of ambition but zero luck. Jane of all trades, master of none,

126 she is constantly reflecting on her life through art. She is currently looking to share her experiences through her poetry, while at the same time studying and working full-time. Young, tired and confused, one of Verene’s biggest flaws is her inability to accurately describe herself in 3rd person bios.

GEORGE L STEIN is a writer and photographer living in Michigan City in Northwest Indiana. George works in both film and digital formats in the urban decay, architecture, fetish, and street photography genres. His emphasis is on composition with the juxtaposition of beauty and decay lying at the center of his aesthetic. Northwest Indiana’s rust-belt legacy provides ample locations for industrial backdrops.

George has been published in Midwestern Gothic, Gravel, Foliate Oak, After Hours, Hoosier Lit, Gulf Stream Magazine, 3Elements, Stoneboat, Occulum, the Gnu Journal, Iliinot Review and Darkside Magazine.

JAMIE STOW is a sophomore at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA study graphic design and photography. She is twenty years old and grew up in New Jersey. She enjoys taking photos of people and architecture.

ANN CHRISTINE TABAKA is a nominee for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry.. She lives in Delaware, USA. She is a published poet and artist. She loves gardening and cooking. Chris lives with her husband and two cats. Her most recent credits are Page & Spine, The Paragon Journal, The Literary Hatchet, The Stray Branch, Trigger Fish Critical Review; Foliate Oak Review, The Metaworker, Raven Cage Ezine, RavensPerch, Anapest Journal, Mused, Apricity Magazine, Longshot Island, The Write Launch, The Stray Branch, Advaitam Speaks Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review.

COURTNEY TAYLOR is an English major at Stony Brook University. Her work has appeared on The Stony Brook Press and The Shakespeare Standard, and she was a semifinalist for the 2016 Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize. Recently, her play “Lights in the Sky” was performed in Pocket Theatre’s Ten Minute Play Festival. She works as a PR Writer and Social Media Archivist for Stony Brook’s Faculty Student Association.

At night TORI THIBODEAUX is a creative explorer. She does everything from art to writing, and when she gets hungry, baking. During the daylight hours she makes a steady paycheck as an interior designer. She currently resides in Houston, TX.

127 VIVIANE VIVES is a filmmaker, actor, photographer, and writer, she’s married to architect MJ Neal, FAIA; together, they own an interdisciplinary creative studio.

Viviane is a Fulbright scholar for Artistic Studies (Tisch School Of the Arts, NYU) and her translation work, poems, and short stories have been published internationally. As a photographer, filmmaker, and co-owner for the design studio she has exhibited internationally and won many awards.

Viviane’s recent publications are poetry in the Southeast Missouri University Press, a short story, “Todo es de Color,” in Litro Magazine of London, and a ten page story in The Write Launch: “ In the oblique and dreamlike style of Marguerite Duras, Viviane Vives weaves memories of her ancestors and place—Nice, Barcelona, Perth, New South Wales, Texas—in “Dialogues With Your Notebook,” a stunning literary achievement.”

Viviane was also a finalist of the Philadelphia Stories’ Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry this year.

JAY WATERS walked away from a good job in order to teach in college and do other things, including photography. Old enough to know better. Yearns to be a well-travelled Southerner. Believes that a photo should be, for as much as possible, just the coincidence of time and camera - but is learning Photoshop and Lightroom just in case. Usually finds things interesting that most others don’t. More work at noodlephotos.com. From McCalla, Alabama.

TARA WERNER is an undergraduate student at Muhlenberg College, pursuing a dual-degree in Mathematics and English Literature. Her work has previously published in The Penny Dreadful literary magazine and in Muhlenberg’s student-run literary magazine, Muses.

J LUKE WESTBROOK is a photographer in his free time, providing a creative outlet for him outside of his full time job as a Product Manager at a software company.

He loves to explore the city he calls home, Boston, but he takes whatever chance he gets to see as much of the world as he can, taking photos to capture the essence and mystery of his destinations along the way.

LYNN WHITE lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially in-

128 terested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Her poem ‘A Rose For Gaza’ was shortlisted for the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition 2014. This and many other poems, have been widely published in recent anthologies such as - ‘Alice In Wonderland’ by Silver Birch Press, ‘The Border Crossed Us’ and ‘Rise’ from Vagabond Press and journals such as Apogee, Firewords, Pilcrow & Dagger, Indie Soleil, Light and Snapdragon Find Lynn at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lynn-White-Poetry/1603675983213077?fref=ts and lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com Not only does JT WILSON crack his own knuckles while consuming large quantities of covfefe-free coffee [simultaneously, with the same hand!], he spends his down time creating odd characters for his short stories, novels, poems, screenplays, toxic outcasts that very few people can stomach. He is the co-creator of [paper cuts], a literary magazine that puts the quirk in #quirkcameron, and has self-published nearly a dozen novels over the last fifteen years. His current favorite authors are literary wordsmiths like Nicole Elizabeth “Snookii” LaValle, Monica Lewinsky, Nicole Ritchie, Pamela Anderson, Tyra Banks, and Tinkerbell, Paris Hilton’s dog.

EMILY WITZ is in the creative writing program at Monroe Community College and plans to graduate with her Associates degree in Spring 2018. She also has a strong interest in illustration and comics.

LOBO XOCOYOTLZIN’S inspirations include Nezahualcoyotl, Humberto Ak’abal, Ray A. Young Bear, Antonio Mendiz Bolio and James Welch. He has been published in various literary journals in the US, in the UK, in India, in Spain, in Australia and in Argentina. 2015 Pushcart Prize nominee. Received 3rd Prize for three poems from El Centro Canario Estudios Caribeños – El Atlántico – en el Certamen Internacional de Poesía “La calle que tu me das” 2016 and Honorable Mention from 58vo Concurso Internacional de Poesía y Narrativa “Fusionando Palabras 2017”.

JOHN ZHENG teaches at Mississippi Valley State University where he edits Valley Voices: A Literary Review. His photographs and photographic essays have appeared in a few journals or used as book covers, including The Southern Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Down to the Dark River, and Twisted Vine Literary Magazine.

Other publications Red Ferret Press www.redferretpress.com Furnicate Knotted: A BDSM Anthology

Sinister Stoat www.sinisterstoat.com Dread: A Furry Horror Magazine The Haunted Traveler Weasel Press www.weaselpress.com Civilized Beasts Degenerates: Voices for Peace Ordinary Madness Typewriter Emergencies

Coming Soon to Weasel Press Bleeding Saffron by David E. Cowen Civilized Beasts Volume 3 edited by Laura Govednik Everybody But You by Thia Sexton If the Hero in Time was Black by Ashley Harris Knotted: A BDSM Anthology Volume 2 edited by Weasel The Night at the End of the Tunnell or, Isiah Can You See by Mark Greenside Requiem for the Plastic Clown by Billie Duncan Smash and Grab Poems by Ryan Quinn Flannagan Thirsty Earth by Chris Wise We Don’t Make It Out Alive by Weasel

Books from Weasel Press Beneath This Planetarium by Michael Prihoda Brinwood by R.K. Gold Chaos Songs by Scott Thomas Outlar Colliding with Orion by Chris Wise Dark is a Color of the Day by Robin Wyatt Dunn The Devil Has A Black Dog by Jonathan W. Thurston Dormant Volcano by Ken Jones Evergreen by Sarah Frances Moran the first breath you take after you give up by Michael Prihoda Ghost Train by Matt Borczon The Goat: Building the Perfect Victim by Bill Kieffer HAIL by Stanford Cheung Harmonious Anarchy by Matthew David Campbell How Well You Walk Through Madness edited by Weasel I Am A Terrorist by Sarah Frances Moran I’ll Only Write Poems for you by Max Mundan In and of Blood by Kat Lewis The Madness of Empty Spaces by David E. Cowen Purple Fantasies by Gary Mielo Reach for the Sky by Vixyy Fox Rising from the Ashes by Mason O’Hern Satan’s Sweethearts by Marge Simon and Mary Turzillo Shades Fantastic by Bruce Boston Still Life Over Coffee by Robert Cone Taking Back the Underground by Steven Storrie Taste I Say, You’re Timeless by Chuck Taylor Taxi Sam in Pink Noir by Neil S. Reddy To Burn in Torturous Algorithms by Heath Brougher UHAUL: A Collection of Lesbian Love Poems by Emily Ramser The Underside of the Snake by Leah Mueller Viscera by Manna Plourde Wayward Realm by Sendokidu Adomi Wine Country by Robin Wyatt Dunn Wolf: An Epic and Other Poems by Z.M. Wise Years Without Room by Michael Prihoda Yours Sincerely, Axl Rose by Steven Storrie