ANY WAY YOU LIKE 'EM by WHICHWITCHLA

ANY WAY YOU LIKE â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;EM

WHICH WITCH 2015

Which Witch recently organized a Writers-In-Residence program as part of &NOW 2015, the biennial experimental writing conference held this year at California Institute of the Arts. The WW W-I-R-P invited a host of interdisciplinary writers to spend time at the Saugus Café, the only 24-hour diner in Santa Clarita and L.A. County’s oldest restaurant. Over a continuous 72-hour period, participants worked on a piece of writing/communicative artwork of their choosing while occupying the vinyl-covered booths of the Saugus. The result is the co-authored publication you now hold in your hands. WW views print and digital publications as temporal spaces borne of impermanent (sometimes imperfect) thought and action. Of particular interest is the specific role of the “publication” - the archivable document - in relation to the larger ethos or mobilizing power of the press or collective. We were curious about what kind of publication would develop if we used place/space as the only guiding principle, and whether providing this common physicality would be enough to create a compelling catalog. The Saugus Café is somewhat of a local treasure, a strange, impenetrable time capsule on the edge of Santa Clarita. Established in 1887, the Saugus boasts an impressive record of visitors, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Mulholland, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Barrymore, the list goes on… Through all of this, the Saugus has remained largely steadfast in nature. James Dean and Which Witch ordered from the same menu. Coffee. Pie. Eggs, any way you like ‘em. The work contained in the following pages, however, is remarkably diverse. It fluctuates, chameleon-like, so that anticipating the next course would be next to impossible. Nor do we know the whereabouts of the writers who ordered these meals in the first place. Our dinner party ended, and they’ve all dispersed now. WW could only serve the leftovers on something not unlike a silver platter. How you eat them is up to you. -WW, October 2015

Menu Breakfast

Jessica Lee Richardson...10 Seth Blake and Adria Bregani...12 Henry Hoke...16

Lunch

Daniel Wroe...31 Pedram Navab...34 Vesta Vaingloria...35 Jen Hutton...36 Heather Noel Aldridge...38

Dinner

43...Michael Atkins 50...Joe Milazzo 54...Sam Cohen and Megan Milks

Dessert

57...Rebecca Ann Jordon 64...Anna Lena Phillips Bell 66...Robin Myrick

Served all day

Adriana Widdoes and EmmaKemp (Market Value)

Thursday 26 March Adriana, In front of the stain-glass window, her veil is an absent space suffocating the yellow light pouring in from outside. Like the Blessed Mother Mary, she kisses his bleeding head. Who is he? Some sap from the forest, gripping his staff for dear life. I hate him. The explanation here is that one must learn how to play the game, make new allies and yield to the whims of the existing hierarchy. I say fuck that. Stamp out the internalised rules of the culture. Rip off the bandages wrapping his head and set them alight. There’s no time for pleasantries, for basic coddling. And what of the difficulties involving public versus private conscience? You are a woman and your body is a public park. I would cry but my mascara is already bleeding. A breeze tickles my arm as I type. It’s not the Santa Ana’s, but the ceiling fans are spinning just a tad out of sync. Why, then, the desire to have the blades match up, as if matrimony were that precise? In the booth opposite (before you came in this morning), a group of republican retirees were convening over eggs: “It is time to deliver the Prayer & Praise Report,” says a middle aged white guy in a baseball cap. “But before that, I want to share an update on Vanessa.” A sigh like trapped wind ripples around the table. “Well.” He says, placing his palms on his lap. “She went to a party, and her parents found her naked on the front lawn in the morning.” The five other men wince. One tears his cap from his head with a trembling fist. A train ripped through the scene then, blaring horns and making my coffee quiver. I imagined their outrage speeding away on that train, stinking up carriages and clouding the little square windows. “She hates her dad,” he continues.

“How old is she now?” “Twenty-two. She’s twenty-two!” “Jim, just take refuge in Luke 15.” “God’s love never fails!” they chant instructively. You walk into the diner at this point. The glittering feathers lining the collar of your shirt momentarily blind me. I wince, glance around at the wall decor: an American flag made out of mirror; an orange slice with a Mohican announcing Shock Top’s summer brew; a Budweiser plaque on which a cowboy is seen riding an anamorphic bottle of beer (or maybe a hotdog, I am not wearing my glasses today), and I read your shirt against these, an example of collision, friction, thrill and despair. When you leave I open the box, pull the card from the top of the pile. It’s V, The Heirophant. A cloaked woman taking care of a weeping boy. (Note: read the Aesthetics of Injury?) Almost immediately my phone vibrates. It’s an email from Marjorie letting me know I did not get the REEF residency. The card takes on new significance. How little setbacks are mothballs, eating up party clothes until the fabric disintegrates into useless strands that hang like loose flesh tripping us into the future. [I later googled the parable in Luke 15. It turns out there are three separate stories, but my favourite is that of The Lost Coin. Wikipedia produces the image of an engraving from 1864 by Jon Evert Millais (Malaise). It’s titled “The Lost Piece of Silver” and shows a witchy woman clad in tumbling skirt, broom stick and candle in hand, occupying a dark archway where the corner of a window is visible but awkward. Clouds billow outside.]

The windows back then—on the way to the Oak of the Golden Dream—were beveled thick, small, and crossed with wood like closed eyes. Keep out, they must have said to a vague band of generalized robbers. Or perhaps they were specific. There were dreams at stake; there was gold. The people would need water. The windows were indifferent. Take a peek, but it won’t be much. Come in. Keep out. Drink. The robbers, they did drink. Now the hard ache of the oak is remembered in panels, bright in hardscrabble welcome. But the mothers, crimped with curves, wish the room would squint a little more. They drink hot fluids in synchronized swigs. The corners of their lips are shiny with syrup and all the sweaty children seek the humps of their spines, shoulders, breasts on which to rest, the world cleanly shut out by cotton. One of the children already feels herself a mother. A butter baby, she says in her head, a butter baby is what I’ll have. I will teach her construction, my butter baby. Her brother pockets silverware under the table. She swings her leg into his calf muscle. He pinches her. She squeezes her shoulders together and stands up hopping. The father has a ring of gleam crowning through the shoots of his hair. He is white and flip-flopped and watched, unlike the rest of his family. He treats his food with civility and speed, a thing to be done. The mother passes her thieving son a half of a steak. The girl names her butter baby Butter. She kisses its softest face. Beams, she whispers, must protect against the shake of trains and plates. Beams, she says, must reach toward the sun. Her brother fills his pockets with sugar and sips.

In the old times, the sister says, the floor was made of rocks. The other mothers watch their sons shake bottles, watch their sons shake milk, say look, look at me and they do and they pretend to. The boys stand up on the chairs. They bang on the tables. The mothers all gleam with sheen like fresh buns. They can sleep and be awake at the same time. Their eyebrows are painted to prove alertness. Come in, their eyebrows say as a train rattles on somewhere else, come in. Keep out. The pockets fill. They spill. The canyon waits, holds their golden dreams like water. See, says the daughter to her butter daughter, pointingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;just like that. They step out into the smear of parched air.

Me: When you think about the process of creation, what is the very first idea (or thing) that comes to mind? Me: The first, first thing is an image—a scene really. The iconic “Sperm Race” scene from Look Who’s Talking wherein the Mikey sperm, voiced by Bruce Willis, is swimming around Kirstie Alley’s egg and they’re both cracking wise. I hate to say it, but that’s the very first thing. Me: I imagine that I can’t make anything that’s any good without retreating into the forests of my childhood, where I can run and skip and jump and play in streams, splashing COLD water on my face, and then return to my treehouse, where I suddenly realize that I’m all alone, so alone. Me: You have to return to the source. For some it is perhaps a beautiful sylvan dreamscape, for others it is Look Who’s Talking. You gotta play the hand you’re dealt. Me: Beans, beans, the musical fruit; the more you eat, the more you_______. Me: Absorb and process fiber, a necessary nutrient. Me: As a rule, would you say that grimness and usefulness are related qualities? Me: Many things are grim and not useful, like the Republican Party. Me: What do you think James Buchanan would be doing right now, if he were still with us? Me: James Buchanan would probably be in line at In-N-Out, like everyone else, oxygen tank in tow. Me: When you wish upon a star, do you also wonder what that star is exactly? Me: That star is long-ago emitted Lite-Brite.

Me: If I were to say to you, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” what would be your response? Me: Depending on my mood, I might tell you, “Well, we haven’t hit Dave’s 6-foot bong,” but truth be told, we were never invited to try it. Boy, we could easily get “higher,” but then we’d never think clearly again, which impacts one’s very survival. Me: What is it about the name “Dave”? Me: Generic, American. Dave is everything to everyone, yet he doesn’t care. I think in the end, Dave is very alone. Me: I’d like to think Dave has a little place he can go that’s all his own, where, even if he is alone, he is not exactly lonely. Me: I hope Dave gets there, man.

“”

What do you think James Buchanan would be doing right now, if he were still with us? 13

Thursday, March 26, 6 PM Dear E, Hello, here I am. It’s strange. Spent all day rushing between conference panels and readings and performances and “Hi how are you’s” and feeling excited and feeling miserable and now sitting quietly with all of it—all of that—in the booth of a suburban diner waiting patiently for inspiration, trying to write you. I’m sweating. Why do we choose writing over speech, text messages over phone calls? The actions seem to imply an intentionality that is more or less never there. You told me not to order any more food at this place, but screw you—I did it anyway. A BLT with avocado and french fries that made my stomach ache. Lots of coffee. I wasn’t hungry (unusual), but I didn’t know how to start writing this letter to you, dear E, so instead I read the menu first. The menu read deliciously. So many kinds of pies! To hell with writing. What can writing give me that I don’t already have? Jen stopped through here briefly, so I showed her the card you pulled for me—the wretchedly triumphant 5 of Swords—and she said “Think in fives.” I am thinking in fives. When I was five, I was afraid of a portrait. The portrait was a monochrome mixed-media collage of the actor Anthony Quinn, assembled by the actor himself in shades of white. It was sickly looking. My father bought it somewhere—I don’t know where—and hung it in the large, hollow foyer of our large, hollow home. I hated that painting. I hated Quinn’s purposefully disfigured face and the way his gaze seemed always directed toward me no matter where I positioned myself in the room. On nights I couldn’t sleep, I would attempt to cross that foyer in the dark, for my mother’s bedside or for a glass of milk. I would wrap my toes around the edge of the carpet where the hallway ended and the foyer began, daring myself to run, stalling. Sometimes I’d summon the courage and other times my mother would find me in the morning, in a crumpled wet ball on the floor, collapsed from terrified exhaustion. I begged my father to get rid of that painting, but he refused. His prized possession. What are you afraid of? I am no longer afraid of that portrait of Anthony Quinn, although it is still just as ugly as I remember. My childhood fears assumed different shapes as I grew older, then morphed into something larger, more unknowable. At age eight, for example, I became very afraid of the Hale-Bopp comet colliding into Earth and incinerating me along with the rest of my third grade class. Then being forgotten, being alone, and eating white-colored foods, in that order. Do you remember the Hale-Bopp comet from back then? Do you remember 1997

and Nike Decades and Heaven’s Gate? (I know you do.) I wrote about it in my diary exactly 18 years ago today. I wrote: “I saw a comet in the air. If it hits Earth all life will be wiped out. I really hope it doesn’t hit Earth. I don’t want to die. The entire sun could fit inside the comet, it’s so big.” -A

Breakfast all day, great eggs, any way you like ‘em they’re great eggs. But one thing: (and not the Diner’s fault) but the mother in the booth next to mine was warning her kid the whole time I was eating that he better watch out, cuz if he ate too many frozen grapes, his life was gonna freeze like that.

After three year-long attempts, we adopted a highway instead. A little twolane strip far from anywhere weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d ever grown up. It ran north/south and was all natural surroundings, a good kind of isolated. We arrived to find curtains hanging down at the northern side of our stretch. There was no way to look up high enough to see where they hung from, but it was ceremonious. We pulled the curtain aside and I left him standing and drove down to the southern end, where there was a second set of curtains. I turned around to look back and guestimate the distance. Six miles of road from the edge of my flat hand resting above my eyes all the way to his expanding grin. Our blank baby.

Decent enough but they only have one TV, and it was playing a sport I didn’t recognize. A sport where it’s an eating place and the servers continue to bring things and take them away, like the second they drop at one table they head to another to take away so there’s this ongoing balance thing. I forget if there’s a scoreboard? The more I stared up into the set the more it was like a mirror of where I was, like I was in the game watching live...

We were dizzy, those first few weeks, with the sense of duty. Keeping our highway clean. Our highway. We’d wake early on Sundays and I’d get in my car and he’d get in his and we’d leave our house, which was twenty-five minutes to the east of our stretch, at the same time. He’d enter from the north and I’d enter from the south and we’d comb the sides for trash and eventually meet somewhere near the 3-mile point. We would sip water and share kisses and show-and-tell with the junk we’d found. A hubcap, a plush dog’s headless body, beautiful dead ornaments.

Loved this place. Very fresh coffee, but very very hot. So hot I’m all in flames now. A single star. That’s not my rating above that’s a self-portrait.

The first time I got sick he said all you ever have to be is unlucky. I said the dampness was a punishment, I blamed the changing road. I blamed the Diner. He said I’d just picked up my illness from the side of the highway. Then he picked it up from me. We had no energy to head out to our stretch, and it kept feeling like we were re-infecting each other. You could tally our sickness by the honey spoons overflowing the sink. The last time he got sick we decided we’d been unlucky enough. We both hated each other for letting our highway go. One Sunday he rallied and headed out for cleanup duty, but came back quickly and said he only made it half way. I went out to finish the job, saw he’d tossed a tissue in the grass and decided this was as far as we were going to go together.

La comida es buena, pero sin duda el lugar está embrujado. Mi esposa les llama “los dos” y se pueden oír discutiendo y rompiendo cosas en la parte de atrás, pero cuando vas a ver, no hay nadie allí. A veces, la puerta abre y cierra por si sola. A veces se puede oír alguien tosiendo. No creo que estaremos de vuelta.

I told him I was leaving. He told me he was cutting my face out of his everything. For a heated month we forgot about the highway. When we remembered, we shook. Re-devoted to its care, we got rid of our home and he got a place on the northern end and I got a place on the southern end and we alternated days. On Sundays weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d each drive halfway and attempt reconciliation from the hoods of our two cars. It never occurred to us to hold our meetings inside the Diner. Coffee might have helped, but I always resented and avoided the place for besmirching our untouched strip. For a while now Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d suspected that he had opened the Diner in secret. I never accused him directly, but I never let him cook bacon either.

CLOSED I’ve been coming to this place for a while, on my commute, and I’m sorry to report that it appears they’ve shut up shop. I visited their website and I’ll tell you this page has some issues. I visited the actual site and tried the door. Y’all remember the door, the bulky glass door that makes that perfect opening creak that only movie gates make? It didn’t open, so there was nothing to hear. I peered inside. I saw something move but I doubt it was anything real.

When the Diner was enveloped by the wild we knew our stretch could fend for itself. We drew the curtains from our separate ends, sold our properties, and broke in opposite directions. Now our highway is abandoned and we work to forget it, though there’s nothing we can do about the dreams. In the dreams the sun is baking the cracked pavement and our bones are resting side-by-side on the dividing line. Awake and alive, he makes his way north and crashes in low-lit temporary rooms. I don’t stop driving south. When we write each other our words are muffled with hotel towels. Somewhere along the way he calls, just once, from the woods probably. His mouth is full of the ghosts of chewed gum, and I’m the freeway at night.

Friday 27 March Adriana, I wanted to arrive at 4 AM, but did not wake until 5. I was tired from the task of inputting 600 endnotes into a 20th century philosophy manuscript. Since I am only at 300, the future looms greyly. My arrival was delayed further by an excursion to Whole Foods. I realise the hypocrisy here, but noting the decline of your health, your vomit, my digestive complaints and the “kitchen” card, I really needed some fruit. Additionally, the pain in my tooth necessitated the purchase of $12 clove based antiseptic mouthwash. My unerupted wisdom is certainly giving me gripe. Anyway. I’m here, and the coffee cup is missing. It’s fine, it was free. I got it from The Dish Depot, a sort of hoarders warehouse on San Fernando filled to the ceiling with dusty chinaware and crates of ketchup. The manager pawned two dirty mugs to my load. I got home and scrawled WHICH WITCH with a Sharpie. I imagined all the rats that had pooped in this mug. Would WW bring back the plague? It is 9 AM now, and the same bible group that deplored Vanessa on Thursday has returned en masse. We cannot frequent the hipster bars because GENTRIFICATION. We cannot go to these old dives because the customers are racist bigots. Where do we sit at the table? I suppose I enjoy pivoting on my swivel stool behind these cargoclad dudes, our picture cards a viscious affront. I can see them, nervously cupping their concealed weapons, ordering wheat toast and home fries well done. When I opened the box this time, I believed it all a big joke. You told me yesterday this was your card, the worst card of all: The Tower of Death, imprisonment, banished desire. Did you pull this unknowingly or are you playing a trick? Perhaps I deserve it, but I cannot accept humiliation thrust down from a higher place. Is it late enough yet to introduce the impotent member, the tantric internalisation of ejaculation? I watch Gail, our amazing and steadfast waitstaff, circulate the gunrange mafia beside us. She airdrops scrambled eggs with military prowess. Later I learn her mother too was a waitress here, and served the CalArts crowd in the dead of night. “It was different then”, she confides. I am trying to visualise the moment you knew you your body would reject this place. How did the tail lights look, bleeding together like applesauce? Or were they more like bacon—striated, stringy and fat? When you threw up after the French toast, after a seizure, after sex, after heatstroke, did you stop and consider writing, ever, as a recital (redefinition?) of this act?

There Are Others There are twenty-three different types of Hamburger on the Saugus Café menu. All but two are labeled Deluxe. There is an Avocado Burger Deluxe, and a King Avocado Burger Deluxe, but no regular Avocado Burger. There is an American flag on the wall, just outside my peripheral vision, that keeps glinting and catching my eye. The static plastic flag—about two inches thick—appears to flow in the wind, but its white stripes and stars have been replaced with reflective mirror. I read a news article a few months back that described how all of the American flags that had ever been left on the moon are now bleached white from sun exposure because of lack of atmosphere. I ended up choosing the King Avocado Burger with Cheese. “A fine choice.” It came to my table with a frilly red toothpick, staking claim directly in the middle of the bun, holding it all together. I debated whether or not I should cut the burger in half, and if so what side I should leave the toothpick on and whether or not separating my territory would leave it weaker in the end. All I Can Think About Are Batteries Amp hours. I touched a couple of wires together in the wrong place last night. Both wires sparked and made a loud POP. I could feel the heat of the wires through the plastic coating surrounding their copper threads. I tried different combinations for the wires, always with the same frightening result. Battery positive to power. Power to motor terminal. Motor terminal to ACC. ACC to motor terminal. Motor terminal to ground. Ground to battery negative. I think that’s the right way to wire it.1 All I really want is a onesecond camera shot of a large red switch being flipped and for the LED to illuminate as I flip it. I only ever think about death when I’m calculating battery life.

It’s not.

About Loops What does it look like to experience space? What is the difference between the spatial volume or area displaced by a mountain, and the psychological space that a perception of said mountain takes up in our brains? What is the difference between perception of space and space itself? What does it feel like to inhabit a space? What does it mean to own land? What does the act of ownership imply when you think about something that doesn’t actually exist in space? Where does the mountain begin? When does the sunset end?

When Digging Graves With a Hammer I always find myself attracted to these contradictory characters, the ones that distort expectations or previously perceptions—the depressed charlatan, the deflated muscle man, the goofy yet endearing cult leader. Something about these caricatures is really appealing to me, I think because they are existences that operate in the in-between. The fact that their prescribed stereotypes are upended is less interesting than the fact that they are archetypal and antithetical at the same time.

If You Feel Inclined Outside, a billboard is painted in red and white stripes, not in an attempt to emulate barber shops, but to express patriotism. The billboard’s current advertisement is funded by the American Solar Energy Society. A year ago, I purchased a three-foot by five-foot, 100-watt solar panel on a whim. The solar panel has never left its box and is currently living in my garage behind layers and layers of stacked scrap wood. I did the research. I know all about the correct inverters, the battery power needed to run pretty much any appliance in the house, but I have never actually hooked anything up. Can you pinpoint the shift from potential to kinetic energy? Can we build a machine that inherits our guilt?

Since Forfeiting All Control The artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

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a s

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t y makes itself its master.

He thought it strange that he should be transported to this time and place and to this café. Now. The booth was reserved for him, and for no one else, just like in Kafka’s parable. No one else could sit in this booth at this time other than he. What was he to do here? Was it his destiny that brought him to the Witch? Would the Witch consume him and finally devour him of life, taking him back to that place before birth, before any origins, before his identity? Wouldn’t that be great, he thought. He remembered a play that he saw when he was young. The play was Hansel and Gretel, which left such a deep impact on him. He loved it. He loved the gingerbread house best. It appeared magically out of nowhere, just like this Witch café. Was he seduced here by a town that felt straight out of a Disney or Brothers Grimm tale? On his way to the café, he remembered passing Main Street and the town reminded him of a Disneyland of yesteryear, where he would have paper coupons to give the attendants prior to embarking on the rides. He now also remembered Snow White’s ride, where the image of the Witch continually lay before him, enticing him with that poisoned apple. He recalled the glass coffin and the magic mirror. As he remembered the ride, the smell of mechanical dust permeated his senses. As a child, he had felt terrified that should his carriage on the ride malfunction, he would be stuck here with the Witch and end up dying alone. But, in a way, he realized that he actually liked the idea of being alone with the Witch, to understand her thoughts and the psychology of her actions. The Witch would explain to him her reasons for wanting to see Snow White destroyed. He would perhaps bond with her over a glass of Ovaltine chocolate milk, which he loved drinking. His image of the Witch was not that of a terrifying sorceress, but a destitute individual who was in need of love. He would give that love to her and show her that she could be happy again. The Witch was not in need of antidepressants. No. She was beautiful in her own way, and he would reveal that to her in that magic mirror of hers.

I am a web of No Are you– Will you– Can I– No. No is the armor we are told to seek and the weapon we are forbidden to use– Be careful, you’ll poke an ego out Now I tread on ego-shells, crushed under steel toed foot. I am a priestess of the Temple of No channeling the ghosts of the unconcerned and laying communion, transmuting soft pink tongues to daggers. Let it resonate like the sound of Om– No– Yet still it is dilute, an ouroboros of participation rejection and indulgence, a Grumpy Cat in a leather jacket– But a fetishized No that is just as much form as function is still spelled out in holy razor-wire.

Jen Hutton

Sometimes it takes an impulsive pilgrimage to get far enough away from yourself that the instincts kick in and take command and your petty life has no stage Your mind can no longer dwell in its usual fluorescent marred, windowless office but gets in a car, drives way up the 5 Opens the windows and lets the fragrant warm farm air in it smells of olden warmed earth Scarred dust and a diner that hasn’t changed much in 119 years (thank God, I have) the lights hit me as I push open the door Accosted by a smell of greased slicked vinyl under hot lights I take refuge in the slightly dim bar in the back Rusted canteen, needs a refill the regular good ole’ boys on the barstools barely look up from their whiskey the clapboard and dingy laminate fuse into an unassuming background of gentle bland The drink comes to me slowly a marbled mug of blurred glass I drink deeply and look at her, a beer and a shot hunched over her journal, next to me fish pursed lips eyes in deep thought pack of cigarettes marking her spot at the bar she’s pressing hard on the pages making every letter count marking it with meaning we sip our beers in silence one sideways glance I can’t avoid it she looks familiar, but nothing comes we small talk dance until laughter

the bizarre commonalities the girly trinkets the circles we run marathons in the same bones given to ex lovers the loose teeth rings to our nightly fairies the too loud TV squawking out commercials looming over our heads her name, the connection we drew a card in haste what could it all mean too much in a random place hope and purpose in this journey summoning up cowboys and screen legends side-eyes from the bartender worn out worry-lined bartender wrangling her patrons with an iron remote damn city girls, not staying long asking all the same played out touristy questions squeaky bar stoolâ&#x20AC;ŚI spin it again Oh wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t something, Oh anything come?

Friday, March 27, 2 PM Dear E, Hello again. There’s an episode of Maury on at the bar here. 19-year-old Adriana suspects her boyfriend Johnny is having sex with one of her family members! Oooo. She came on the show with her aunt Georgie so that Maury could give Johnny a lie detector test. I want you to know that it isn’t just Adriana’s name that grabbed my attention, it’s that Adriana is fucking beautiful. She has the glossiest red hair and it falls straight down her back, an immaculate feminine valance. She has dewy skin (white), blue eyes, a big mouth with big lips that she uses to shout wildly in Johnny’s face without ever disturbing her mane. Her aunt is squat and likes to express herself by throwing her arms around in the air—I’m not actually sure why her aunt is there—and her boyfriend Johnny is a scoundrel. He failed the lie detector test. Adriana cry-screams without ever smearing her mascara. You get the feeling that Adriana will still rise victorious because she is so pretty. Or is that just me? If we believe Maury’s narrative about Johnny and Adriana like we believe the narrative of these letters and the entire &NOW conference, then we believe that Johnny is indeed a scoundrel. Well. Johnny and I have something in common. We are both cheats. I didn’t just remember that text from my third grade diary yesterday. I went home and looked it up, then inserted it into the letter later. What am I really afraid of? Yesterday I left the conference with a headache that morphed into a migraine that morphed into me pulling over and vomiting by the side of the road. Today I am greeted by the Chariot card. Car trouble. I thought I might crash trying to get home. I couldn’t see clearly. The pain started first in my skull, like shallow, then moved deep behind my eyes until suddenly the pain was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Have you ever had a migraine? That is not a metaphor. I feel like an imposter here. I am so afraid of not writing well that I hardly let myself write at all. Will I ever reach my targeted destination? Will I stray the path like Johnny? There are other fears tormenting me besides fear of failure, like fear of regret. Fear of boredom. Fear of bigotry. Fear of shame. Fear of hubris. Fear of manipulation. Fear of the body. Fear of rape. Fear of age spots. Fear of popular culture. Fear of my own love for popular culture. Fear of missing out (FOMO). Fear of loneliness. Fear of abandonment. I can go on. Will Which Witch save me? I feel an urgency in this project that I doubt anyone else is

experiencing. I want to build a community (protective barrier) through making. I want to stay alive as a writer. I want to stay alive. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to die. Write me back. -A

“Möchten sie bitte Frites damit?” pinged the notification bubble projected onto Tycho’s windshield. Within Tycho’s purview and that of his comrade commuters stood a row of monstrous brick buttresses hoisting ornate dingbats toward the sky. Inside his vehicle, Tycho saw concrete pergolas overhead, spanning the freeway and linking each faux-Italian Renaissance citadel to the next. Tycho blinked <Ja, Natürlich> , completing and confirming his takeout order, which was now being dutifully assembled several miles away at his neighborhood McDonald’s. A green rosetta fern signaling +1 eXperience Points floated north by northwest to Tycho’s Rosetta Stone™ Scorebox on the top left of his windshield, where he was a mere 24 XP points away from advancing to his next level of language learning. “Damn it! If I had just said ‘Ja, bitte mit Tomatenketchup’ I would have been +3 XP closer to Level 20,” Tycho thought. Two months into Rosetta Stone 4S: LanguaFranca virtual stagnation had set in, reflecting Tycho’s broader arbeitslos1. Tycho originally planned on advancing his foreign language comprehension for purely opportunistic motives, intending to delve into hours of German language television with a new awareness of its exceptional and mysterious rhetorical devices. The television industry in Deutschland had produced a rash of programs in recent years that were popular as subtitled releases available to streaming customers. As a result, producers across L.A. were scrambling for hot leads on any German scripts to greenlight, shoot, can, and broadcast without subtitles, from Gestapo-produced procedural dramas to Stasi sitcoms. Tycho wanted to join this fraternity and ride the wave into notoriety, believing that if he could just understand more German dialogue he would then be capable of reproducing its exquisite comic timing for American audiences while it remained trending. While at first Tycho had assumed a modicum of language comprehension would unlock untold secrets and spur the cogs of creativity, now only the dim

Arbeitslos – “unemployment”, more generally, the state of losing interest and motivation in one’s work.

allure of advancing the construction of his simulated feudal city through the expenditure of thousands of XP points motivated Tycho’s endeavor. Tycho paused the secondary video game playing in his windshield—Black and Blue Shield—with a gruff grumble. Even though it was unlikely that his avatar Detective Gumble would catch the rapist/carjacker tearing ass through downtown L.A., Tycho preferred this elusive perp simulation over his real 8 mph northbound crawl on the 101. A ticker scrolled like a series of tributaries running along the perfect banks of his windshield wipers, relaying pressing news feed updates. The Dodgers were tied after committing two straight errors, the marine layer was set to arrive within the hour, and the Moon had entered Pisces. Sitting in the passenger seat of his 2018 lobo Prius, Tycho observed the ballet of automatedmobiles exiting stage right from the 101. The automatedmobiles streamed fluidly past the queued “dumb cars” waiting for their green off-ramp light, which lasted for only a fleeting ten seconds. Tycho’s Prius was a “lobotomized” existing electric vehicle, adapted with new hardware and software upgrades to pass the SMARTest (Sustainable Mass Automatedmobiles Regulatory Test) needed to travel with fully automatedmobiles through traffic signals and in express freeway lanes. His vehicle was by no means one of the mobile pleasure fortresses of more current models. Still, it was considered a major upgrade from the usersteering experience of dumb cars, which were relegated to share lanes with behemoth commercial vehicles and wait for yellow lights to skirt through intersections. By contrast, Tycho’s lobo “smart car” placed him squarely in the middle class of the road, crawling past the gridlocked masses at a fixed mph, yet still riding the coattails of the automatedmobile elite through privileged traffic patterns. “Dictionarie geoeffnet bitte”2 (+1 XP) Tycho croaked. Tycho cleared his throat as if attempting to dispel the cobwebs his mind had accumulated in the process. “Bringt mich das Restaurant Wortbuch3. Macht schnell. Bin ich in Eile.” (+3 XP) Tycho requested, albeit in vain; he was in a rush. His computer, of course, already knew this and reminded Tycho that he still had twelve minutes to cram. On the passenger side of his windshield appeared a slick diagram that displayed a Formica-encased diner complete with wait staff, 2

Open up the dictionary, please.

Restaurant Vocabulary Book

menus, back kitchen, and a full house of transfixed models squirming with animation to suggest life. SETTING:

Restaurant //// SCENARIO:

Waiter

“Gibt mir das Fast Food und spiele ich als ein Fresser.”4 (+2 XP) SETTING:

FastFood //// SCENARIO:

Diner

The pristine diner spun away into a familiar American fast food restaurant. Tycho spent his final minutes before reaching McDonald’s reciting salutations, requests, and +10 XP words while his lobo Prius puttered on to the chosen drive thru. Far off, Tycho’s BigMac was being assembled with mechanical precision in anticipation of his arrival. Suddenly, it dawned on him— “Wörterbuch: bringt mich ‘patty’ (+1 XP)… Oh ja, und ‘Sesame’!” (0 XP: cognate. No points awarded.) “Ok danke schön!” At its precisely calculated speed, Tycho’s lobo glided off the 101 and north to Echo Park Ave, Glendale Boulevard, and then under Sunset. The vehicle passed several blocks worth of tarp covered shopping carts and sunburnt souls before merging left for the golden, shimmering LED archway that towered above the bustling McDonald’s. Tycho, along with nearly every other patron at the restaurant, had pre-ordered and pre-paid through his smart device. Tycho’s lobo tucked neatly into the stream of automatedmobiles queuing under the golden arches while a swarm of customer service drones photographed, sorted, and paired each incoming license plate with the appropriate outgoing fried food. As his turn approached, Tycho’s windshield screen lit up with his order confirmation and a friendly voice read aloud: “One BigMac, large Coca-Cola, large fries, and apple turnover.” Tycho spoke up with sly self-satisfaction: “Kommt das komplette mit zwei allerindfleisch Hamburgeren, Angebotsosse, Eisbergsalat, Käse, Gewürtzgurkenn, zwiebelwürfel auf Sesambrötchen?”5 (+12 XP) A flurry of fern leaves floated into his scorebox.

Give me the fast food setting and I will play as a diner.

Does it come complete with two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?

Detecting a change in language, the drone retracted its delivery arm just outside of Tycho’s vehicle in order to inspect the contents of his food parcel. Salivating in anticipation of dinner, Tycho eyed his scorebox with glee—only a point shy of his upgrade! Just as the delivery drone completed its language recognition and order confirmation for the second time, a loud noise rocked the driver’s side of Tycho’s lobo Prius. As he looked back at the unexpectedly empty claw of the McDonald’s drone, Tycho’s eye caught the image of a reflective-clad cyclist speeding past the queued drive thru vehicles idling ahead of Tycho’s car and awaiting their turn to re-enter traffic. Tycho hardly noticed the hot blood that coursed through his veins, his immediate biological response to the crime that had just been enacted against him. As Tycho awakened from the myth of his own simulation, he heard himself exclaim in protest: “HEY! Stop her! THIEF!” This particular experience of injustice inspired within him the red meat powers of his Black and Blue Shield avatar Detective Gumble. Tycho took off on foot, running south after the Fahrraddieb6. As she zigged and zagged through automatedmobiles, the cyclist thief activated motion sensors on half a dozen vehicles that responded by halting in their place, throwing obstacles in front of Tycho but enabling him to likewise duck between traffic in pursuit. Along Glendale, Tycho saw a bicycle dart up a ramp towards Sunset. After a deep breath, he vaulted up the adjacent stairwell with vigor, taking them two at a time. Once near the top, Tycho viewed the distance between him and the bike growing. With desperation he attempted three steps at once to reach the street, but he fell short, flying face first onto the rough cement as the full force of reality crashed in upon him. Tycho limped back to his vehicle. The McDonald’s lot was a mess by then, with drive thru traffic backed up onto the street and two newly arrived LAPD drones hovering over Tycho’s abandoned lobo. “WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM HERE?” one of the police drones bellowed. Tycho responded: “Theft in progress, suspect on a bicycle, couldn’t make out the colors or characteristics.” He could hear his detective avatar in his voice. “THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPLIANCE CITIZEN,” the drone answered through hums and buzzes, calculating. Then it added: “LOW PROBABILITY OF

Bicycle Thief

RESTITUTION NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED THANK YOU.” Tycho’s smart device illuminated with the LAPD case number for further recall. Just as Tycho slumped back into his automatedmobile, the McDonald’s delivery drone chimed: “Order complete! Thank you for eating at McDonald’s. Please rate your experience to earn McBucks towards your next visit.” “Einfact scheisse,” answered Tycho. +1 XP floated into his scorebox, which began blinking with revelry, announcing Tycho’s advancement to level 20. Silently, Tycho typed “H…O…M…E” into his MapApp and his vehicle coasted into traffic along its familiar route and metered speed. Moving south, Tycho’s lobo followed the same ramp up to Sunset as the thief had moments before. His antenna dulled from physical exertion and his experience with the police drone, Tycho rested his head on the passenger window as the lobo braked at the intersection of Sunset and Alvarado. THWAP! Tycho was startled by a soft squishy thud on his window and wondered for a moment if he had been shot. A ketchup and mustard encased pickle slid down his window just as a second thud produced another. Together they crept downward, leaving streaks of fast food gunk in their wake. Peering through the stains, Tycho noticed a female cyclist resting under a Metro awning just as she crumpled a McDonald’s take out bag and tossed it into the street. Tycho instantly sprang into action and shouted to the thief from the muted confines of his automatedmobile, his face turning a startling shade of tomato red. Frantic, Tycho grabbed the steering wheel from his passenger seat, attempting to turn his vehicle onto Alvarado in pursuit of the perp. But Tycho was no match against his lobo; he barely budged the stationary steering wheel while the thief calmly wiped her hands of grease and mounted her bicycle, already in motion. The traffic light above turned from red to green and Tycho’s vehicle pulled him forward down Sunset Boulevard, rendering Tycho’s attempt at pursuit futile. Tycho continued watching the cyclist for as long as possible while she gracefully jetted out of sight down Alvarado. Defeated, Tycho resigned himself to his fate. He thumbed through his smart device and selected the HomeApplianceApp to preheat his oven to 350°F and await frozen pizza.

Saturday 28 March Hi Adriana! El Mundo, the world: A man, an eagle, a lion, a stag. The female body pirouetting in the middle portal, spinning on that lemniscatal axis for infinity. Eternity? These words are not the same. Eternity means no beginning and no end; infinity is something other, it outlines an origin in our post-resurrection existence. What does that mean? On the couch beside me a small child, face too grown for his miniature body, writhes in slow motion, mouthing “take me to church” and staring me down. It’s like an impacting scene from Twin Peaks. [I go home later and google the song’s lyrics: “I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies, I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife, Offer me that deathless death, Good God, let me give you my life.”] On the drive up this morning, I listened to Brand New in advance of their L.A. show with Desaparecidos and Built to Spill. The ultra-emo tunes of my teenage years smack me flat. Suddenly I’m back on the tobasco-red couch in our family home. Back when the black cat was still alive, when my sister ate only dry foods, when Tamagotchis were all you needed to love. There is a particular way light filters into a room of your youth. You remember it corporeally. The sharp heat bisecting your shin below the knee, dinner on your lap in front of the TV, untying your dad’s red shoes when he gets back from the tip—not particularly liking the shoes, but owning an exact replica now. Emblematic, regurgitory, cannibalistic, oedipal. Do you know what I’m talking about? What did you really think of the conference yesterday? My favourite part was being led by the hand down a dimly lit walkway, whispered to gingerly in front of a crowd. His breath wet my cheek, sharp, strong, filthy. “Pussy”, he whisper-screamed. Tom and Huck are sitting beside a stream, dragging their fingers through the cool water. Tom asks Huck what their children will be like. Huck replies that he doesn’t know, but he can’t wait to have kids so he can beat them. Sometimes at night he lays down and imagines beating them, making them beg as he unlatches his belt. Tom takes Huck’s hand, drags it down below the water line. Did you ever really know your father? Can you? As a young child, I used to watch my sister sleep. She was a few years younger than me, slept better. We shared a room, were hemmed in back then. This is East London in the early nineties. My parents had just moved our family of four from a one-bedroom high-rise in Bow. Every weekend we walked down to Roman Road Market, an environment I can’t explain to you because it does not exist here in California, in America even. In puffy jackets strapped into a pram, my mum would bundle us into the pie n’ mash shop on the corner,

just past the leather stalls, to get out of the rain. The stench of eel and vinegar stung my eyes even then. All the windows were steaming. Everyone white and unhealthy, poor, post-war, ageing, canned-spam, boiled veg, perms, poor eyesight, yellow teeth, bad breath. In the dead of night, I would pinch my sister’s nose as she slept. I wondered if she would suffocate, how long it would take. I’d wait for her to splutter and choke then jolt back in the bed as if deep in a dream, as if I hadn’t been awake at all. I wonder now if my experiments contributed to her constant nervousness, her unexplained anxiety. She would wake in shock, but find nothing amiss. What was I preparing her for? That’s a better way to see it. Other times I would just play with her limbs, rearrange them, stretch, bend, pose. See how far I could push before her eyes opened up. I still do not sleep well, but I’m no longer interested in the body beside me. Thinking about it this way, I always chose lovers who were limp and maneuverable, even in daylight. I liked to play mom when the stakes were low. Now I’ve no energy for libidinal exploration. Have you traced your contemporary relationship back to its preadolescent emergence? What did you find? [Epilogue: It’s Sunday and I’m reading through these before I share them with you. I just got home from a performance in which a seated lady cut holes in her skirt with a razor blade, swallowed milk from a shallow glass bowl and spat it out into her lap, milk running down between her legs and onto the floor beneath her.]

You don’t know if you’re expected, or how to be expectation, your choice of what least announces resistance. Your denim is as tired as sweatpants. You feel bait, a barbed twitching, the twitch itself as the depending you don’t want to name as such. Names order, orders name. Earlier today, under the incremental duress of traffic, you told yourself how sick you were of sitting in the shame, the dampness, of your own impatience. The best mannequins for modeling loneliness are the sedentary real. What if paint markers were superior to chalk? All glass would be abysmal. Whose help could be hired that you couldn’t extend yourself? Rest is always more nicely appointed with moving out and checking in than you remember. Even if the conduit is exposed, paneling more butterscotch than caramel. Can you recollect the first time you heard the word “pergo”? A lavender t-shirt blues into a single endless aperture as soon as you realize how many decades of youth have been consumed here. A bit of jam, a tear of spinach in the seams, these caulking "or”s: they ask the most rhetorical questions of advertising. Always open, always on fire. If a house of cards is the measure of the flimsy, how much more so a house of able-bodied scratch-offs. You’ve vanished into the Formica, glancing but unreflective, and further, into even the ketchups, married. No jitters pour out your promised coffee, just the neighborly kind. Breaded foods, side orders of bacon, these muscles add character to nations. You don't want to know about the priapic scale of saffron's economies. Pepper, on the other hand, is as cheap and reclaimable as lumber. Salt is a syntax whose gold has been swept underneath the market. Maybe you pulled your chair out before you should have, or read the signs that were once placards for what you wanted them to say. The fervor of the ceiling fans is lazy. What specialness could be left wanting? The incense, uncovered, of the open bar's uproarious murmur has its analog in the patchouli of a dry mouth. Scoring is everything. And now, a sense of persistent transit, even in the salad. You're never able to ride the flat out. Commerce, Industry, sure, but there's never any City of Vending. An Art Deco Peter-Max-ism dots the foreseeable future with tiny particles that disclose holes. You’d think a towel might take a wet rhythm to it: slapping, or thighs to populate a sanitation. Instead, an indifferent splay of aluminum chum. Handles turn to teeth, implements take a hell of a slender growing. Institutions you don’t remember, maybe malls, make a grid of your hunger. A lawn-man’s

shift bumping under the newsy glare. The minute it's reported, it's a long time going. Celebrity potholes are just veiled paparazzi. You can’t convince your way into or out of comforts. You have to be vomited. There are these mornings that remain to be evaporated, or unfolded. If parking is the only thing that goads you, you might as well dash yourself against the tracks. If the coffee is weak poetry, does it smack of strong philosophy? A counting mnemonic finds no outlet in the middle of the truck-auto divide. 24/7 breakfast pulls a chain door down over these hills. Their anesthetic rockiness heaps itself in the distance alone. They’re backdrop, just like the burble of loose Midwestern delicacies. Unwashed, plates are the white tongues of the night. They wag the cornflower-rimmed submission you know would be better off swallowed. The gristle of association is an aspic of clockwork toothache. What you do with your napkin is a way of saying, “Please let me be a customer. Be my cashier and I'll be your Grapenut Flaker.” You don’t have to be singular or like me to take my tips. Never gamble on the dairyfree screwdriver. Don’t “hon” the “hon”s. Don’t apron your cut plastic carafe with club soda. Care is a register; charity, a mode. You always loved that anything could roll in the dough of whatever was topped with pecans. Pie is a faddishness, eroded, over, say, radium dials, Bakelite vespers. Coconut isn’t coconut unless it aims its gobo at the color of butter. Like rations, hot tea was a wartime thing. 7-Up Cake and Lemon-Lime Chicken: these are recipes in the unmaking, therefore gourmet leftovers. Microwave bling requires sunglasses, sockless ankles, allegations. Every breaking controversy is terrorized by the same overture. Chew up your notes with your gum. Dirt yards embrace filth and rhyme with "sandy.” Summer builds its pueblo on the driving arm whose window dressing you permit. Dessert is always disembodied. Just like the plunge into citation, only with more salivating. Free a table and let it grieve the booths. It is affect whose fiber you think you digest easily, but there's little nutrition in its baroque sugars. What do you think you are imbuing, ice or chest or crust, sauce or solicitation? Asking after someone's satisfactions— not their needs, notice—is always a fabulation. The gravied legibility of biscuits tastes like taste itself. Feeding is the poorhouse of the fed. Protein, that simile: what or which burgeoning? That same inquisition we ladle over the mind. Instinct has no shirt, no shoes, no more credit to take out or palm its arguments along this counter. Somewhere along the way, the machinery of the scenic set limits over itself, leaving right hands shaking lefts. A perfume bottle wraps its immaculateness around the pulverized side of a mountain, and so ash takes on the tang of sushi. The invisible pivot has more potential to shovel. Eggs are color and texture lapsed wild, to the extent of sparseness. Why can't you ever feel the dead gaze of the blue screen reading out not over but barely on the horizon your shoulder? You just want to watch it, to

char the remorse with your watching. Your presence is only ever a package and not a cornucopia of toleration. Too much baggage in baggage, and not even in it precisely. Fairly traded? Is fair trade filling? Isn't this only another way of asking: Isn't justice convivial? Aren't calories conversational? Isn't backlit still lit? Isn't fluorescence beyond angles? Note to yourself: as soon as you exit the desert, remember to Google: "What's the deal with Nalgene?" Recommendations aren't for you, but rather for the â&#x20AC;&#x153;youâ&#x20AC;? in "you too" to dislike. Arranged like this, the back of the next person's head makes up your face. And these evenings are, it turns out, the late days of disco: disco without any of the decadence.

we all went

camp

well-manicured blond christian-looking hung

dirty around the mouth

We were too

camp

blond black sheep potato calves fat knees pink fluorescent swirl designs cut-off denim Timberland boots a goatee rainbows

curly mullet

Hulk

Jewish Jewish

Jewish

French big plastic poo plastic penis skin

pizza and

Top Gun

mushroom

beer

Nintendo

flesh and fur Hulk

to the lake

Bear Club shirts off muscles Hulk ex-girlfriend

brunch

what Howard did to Angela

sex long toenails sticky and frothy naked in front of

Hulk

Q: Nobody wears a ten-gallon hat. Is it true, the micro-memories in your skin? A: Are we male or female? Are we prone to run or prone to couch-sit until we’re fat? Talk or zip our lips? Are we dog people or cat people? How do I feel about this? Can I go with this tide or should I try to be a boulder? Does it matter what path we’re going on? Do we believe in evolution or intelligent design? Free will or fate? Liberal or conservative? Are we violent or peaceable? I can’t remember—do we like Sriracha or rosemary? Are you vegetarian or not? What’s your reasoning? Are you wise or stupid? Young or old? Have I answered your question or not? Q: Not, but point taken. I hear the clearing of a throat, but I see no evidence. If I look to see if he is there, it will destroy the illusion. A ghost, then. But that seems cliché. A: It isn’t like hearing voices. It is a specific brand of schizophrenia. I know I am one whole. That is the fact. The fact is that I heard family stories growing up and internalized them. Painted pictures in my mind. Overactive imagination, but I don’t believe in facts. Q: We are seated near the bar. Each bar is an archetype. Each trying to live up to the last iteration. Are you…? A: I am an iteration, but I am not sure of what. God or witch or everyman? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Flesh is just flesh. Everyone is the same. I started itching inside. Craving bruises or blood or massage oil on my hands. How many mistakes are we doomed to repeat? How much must we learn for ourselves? It seems like such a waste of corpses in the ground. Q: Which archetype am I? And if you aren’t you, if you are more than you, what are you, and what is you? A: As you can imagine, it’s difficult for me to make decisions. There’s always

part of me that disagrees. Q: Stop riddling. How does this work? A: Let me provide an example: My great-grandmother was a farmer. I can’t remember of what, but I feel the way the thorny weeds unzipped her skin. I feel the rough, efficient hands of her husband as he patched it back together, badly. Pressing, outstanding ridges hardened by calluses. He feels like a silent man. The kind of man we would like. Q: The men across from us seem like they’ve been here every morning for eons and eons. They’ve exchanged ten-gallons for balding spots or baseball caps. Quarter horses for Fords. Telegraphs for iPhones (one prompts to his partner Siri, slowly, clearly: Tell me a joke). Archetypes on archetypes. A: And I feel him, too. My great-grandfather. In times when I want to protect people, teach them right from wrong. Trust me, I grasp how patriarchal that is. But it is him, separate from other males of my blood. We feel broader and thicker than everyone else. Want to wrap my arms around her when she’s hurt, when she doesn’t want me to see. Want her to know I’d kill for her without a moment’s hesitation. Our kids, too. [She gazes distant, then shakes her head.] Sometimes, when I was younger, I would pretend to be a man. Even though it didn’t feel like pretending. Is it the same with you? Q: I carved my initials into a tree once, with a heart and the initials of a boy I liked. I don’t remember where or when. Nobody I knew had ever seen my RAJ. Across from me, initials sewn into green leather: DRL. Behind me: PRD. Were they famous? Donors? Employees? Lovers at this favorite booth? A: Sometimes the weight of all of them throws me facedown on the ground. Q: We all share the initial R. We all write them with curlicues. A: Would you like to hear another one? A bright memory that comes by hard and quick, like the flash in orgasm. Or lightning. We were/are riding a horse. How old are I? Doesn’t matter. He is thick and warm between my legs, a body like a house. He is dusty; I am barefoot, caked with mud. Maybe there is blood shared among us. We race. We run from everything behind.

From what? Doesn’t matter. To what? Don’t care. He leaps over a wide river. I hear his leg sink into mud and snap like lightning, buckle. I fly over his head. I fly. My fall is hard. I tumble, hitting earth and water and weed and stone. His backside strikes my shoulder. Breakings within me. But for a moment, I’m pressed of breath between earth and horseflesh, saved of screams like buried in blankets. [Long, lazy breath, and full.] The best memories are physical. Or grief. But grief is physical. Q: And what about my body in this place? What is this meat and splinter? A: We feel like a murderer. [A spark in the eye; the look of memory?] Something itching inside. Nervous twitch. Don’t remember who I killed, just the way the gun jumps back into my hand, bruising the palm a little. The deafening noise: no screams. Whoever it was, I’m sure he deserved it. Q: I take up too much space. A: Sometimes my skin feels ready to burst open, like indigestion. Q: At least it’s a respite from the staggering heat that closes around you like a thick, thick wall outside. A: Sometimes I wish there were more containers for these things. Q: They run back and forth, so attentive and so hurried. The room is nearly empty; can they be so busy? Do they have to forget their ancestors in order to focus on the task at hand, to smile and call each other “honey”? Can’t they feel the ridges inside themselves, like the folding of time, like tectonic plates smooshed up against each other? I for one am flat, usually. Are they closest to their family trees with regulation shoes slapping on refurbished wood? A: We believed in causes. We were female, left to worry. Yet what was I to do with quartering militia? So I bound my breasts. So I clicked in the bayonet. What’s that? No, I wasn’t frightened. I liked the way we shared each other’s leftovers. Hm? Oh, honey. You’ll have to give me something stronger than tea

for that much detail! Q: Honey, honey, honey. Sweetie, sweetpea, sweetheart. Everyone calls me this. Is it because I’m female? Young? Still hanging on to baby fat? Nervous in public? I don’t want to be anyone’s honey. I do not consent to sugar jars and clumsy television tropes. When is it too late to fall in with another species? A: This is one long journey through bloodlines, and I a wayside stop. Genealogies seem to tangle. I look at the family tree and none of it makes sense. Eugene feels more like a brother than a great-grand-uncle fifty years in the ground. I ask my mother if Eugene, with his asthma, is outside playing. She gives this look, the cut it out, you’re too old for that to be cute anymore look. Her face is lined like canyons. She seems much further away than most, like perhaps she was on the Mayflower. Q: Nevermind the fact I pride myself on being sweet. A: Would you like some advice? I usually find solace in warm, inoffensive things we all can agree on. Nobody within can object to chicken soup. Or another cup of tea. Q: Someone checks his smartphone at the bar. A woman leans against his shoulder. They are intimates. Except for the uniform, it’s hard to tell them apart. A: This is all I’ve been trying to describe. Do you ever feel like you’ve met someone before? Do you ever want to kiss them? Do you ever want to kill them? That is what it’s like, all the time. This is a small town. My ancestors were always known. I am known now too. We are infamous in our various ways. Sometimes people used to ask me to communicate with their dead grandfathers, etc. I used to humor them—“He says he’s proud of you and you should move on”—because I didn’t know what we were. Now I know I can’t communicate with all of my selves, no more than when you misplace your cell phone and keep reaching into empty pockets. Any last questions? Q: I want to know what it is like to have time collapsed. As I have often said, I wish I lived in the Enlightenment, or during the Revolutionary War, or in the Wild West, when not everything was claimed. But when my mother says, “But that means you would be dead by now,” I don’t quite believe her. Even though I forget things easily, I think that all times are happening simultaneously. Or maybe I simply imagine it wrong and think that if I was

me living in the 1800s I would be living right now, only the world around me would be the 1800s, and they would be spilling their hearts to the bartender instead of watching football, and they would be talking about crops and gold prospects and horses instead of how there is one more year of water left in California, and I would be writing this down on a chalk slate instead of on a laptop. Except it would be now, not then. Also, downside, I would probably have been married by now, unless I dressed like a man. I can almost feel the warm press of my not-husband’s fingertips. Other times I reply to my mother, “So should I wish I was born in the future so I wouldn’t be dying now?” A: None of I understand the question. Q: Say one more story. Then I have to go. A: Reminds me of… Nobody talks about my grandmother much on my dad’s side. She and we were slightly strange, married a female husband. Nights I danced for extra cash. For a long time I didn’t know what she was—I was happy minus sex. Had enough of the male gazes at stockinged legs. Once I learned of her I left her, married a man who made me strip tease every night before bed. Left him too, after kids. I boarded a boat to Hawaii when she still had a queen. Alcohol running warm, thick in the blood. Sand in every crevice. Leaves to lick warm water from. Never told them where I went. Officially and otherwise I’m dead. [With that, she is gone, all of them. I sit alone at the table. I grieve. I always sit alone; I have always sat alone. That is the fact of it.]

Saturday, March 28, 2 PM Dear E, Here again. It’s the final day of the conference. All of our Which Witch crap was stolen from the writers’ booth overnight. Is that sad? The notebook I left here for people to write their names and email addresses is gone. The pins you designed so that they looked like two twin babies squished together in a womb and had rush ordered are gone too, and so is the pale green ceramic bowl that you bought to display the pins. Was the bowl expensive? I bet you bought it at a fancy Good Will. I guess I should have seen this coming. Someone swiped one of the two Which Witch mugs/pen holders after the first night of this experiment. The risks of a 24-hour establishment. That’s what you said when you told me the news. Who would want a dirty mug with Which Witch scrawled across it in permanent marker? You didn’t even write the words very straight, and you smeared the ink when you wrote them. I didn’t tell you that when you showed me the mugs, but I thought it. This morning I gave a woman who I’d never met before a ride from the conference to the diner. The smallest act of kindness to precipitate my final card, Strength. She was interesting, a copyediting freak like me, but more polite. She asked how we came up with the name for Which Witch so I told her the story. I told her that it took a very, very long time. That it happened during that summer when we were both feeling listless, indecisive. That it began with a text message you sent me while we were both at the Mike Kelley retrospective downtown, and that we kept texting each other stolen words and phrases for the rest of the summer. We’d hoped we’d stumble across whatever we were looking for. I told her Which Witch happened at some point along the way, and eventually we realized the name contained ourselves—our hoped for future selves too—neatly, in a phrase. I just ordered a piece of chocolate cream pie because this particular letter feels very nostalgic. Like sad and lustful at the same time, and that’s pie to me. I’ve been imagining the person (persons?) who stole from us. The Saugus Cafè is open 24-hours and there’s a homeless shelter down the road. Whoever stole the mug probably needed it more than Which Witch does, you’re right. I read in the local newspaper that a homeless community has been growing along the Santa Clarita river wash. According to the Santa Clarita Gazette, one of the dwellings out there even had a shower rigged up, and a living room, before the police tore it all down. I imagine someone boiling water over a fire, then sitting back in their outdoor living

room and enjoying hot instant coffee out of our mug with Which Witch written in crooked handwriting on the side, maybe feeling OK, maybe, for a moment. Even if the thief isn’t homeless, I don’t blame him or her. I know what it’s like to covet something you don’t have. I know what it’s like to feel lonely. -A

At Table 1, which is really a booth, monograms are stitched into the green seatbacksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;four in all, in a curly, freehand script. They are the initials of old regulars, the waitress told me. On March 28, 2015, words to match the initials were donated by patrons of the Saugus Cafeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;people waiting with their children in the waiting room with its toy-machines and the curtains with tranquility and harmony printed on them; people seated in the main dining room (where the curtains have no words but cheerful stripes) and the bar, at the counter and at booths and tables, who looked as though theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d mostly finished their meals and would not mind thinking of a word. Mostly, people did not mind at all, and gave the matter serious thought. (Two children shyly declined; their parents gave words instead.) Words were requested without reference to those already offered. Each was contributed by a different person, or, in one or two cases, one half of a couple thought of both their own word and a word on behalf of their partner. One man also told several jokes.

dog

railroad love

pancakes

rodeo damn

january

apricot caravan

coffee

avenue love

She said He’ll be drunk I mean Takes a confident guy to run Seven You should see Back in the day it never Went to high school [pounding the table once] And I said that to Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Everybody’s different, you know Because, like, Or something I was like Her hair was white What are you doing today? Shouldn’t have said

Butter Butter Butter Butter Butter Get in there right down there all the way in but stop short look like you’re eating it but don’t eat it use your hand to cover your mouth hide what you’re doing (and don’t actually do it) maybe cup your palm up close like it’s an ear, and you’re whispering into it or flatten your hand when you make that rubbing motion like a stroke but use no fingers fingers are for professionals Make it beforehand put it in the oven but don’t turn it on let it sit there, waiting while you’re showing you’re talking you’re swooning invoking how and to till we’re ready make it glisten build anticipation but don’t eat it

don’t serve it you can’t have it at some point it’s going to be toxic you’re going to have to destroy that mother when we’re done In the meantime, don’t spoil the surprise because there’s no point doing this if it’s not going to look like you mean it you’re an actress a surrogate the illusion is the most important part it’s the only part it’s the difference between wankable and non‐wankable price club and artisanal we’re the former, a credible version This is why we never turn the oven on because no one cares whether you’re actually making it while they watch not really, they know it’s impossible to to finish off Veal Prince Orloff in a fucking hour, forty minutes with commercial breaks, that’s not the point it’s the exercise They know that you’re not making it they’re watching you not do it cheating your face to camera cupping your hand horse whispering that shit to climax all serious-looking

that greedy bobbing-head motion, mmmm…delicious and so easy, closed-eyes lapping-chin tongue-to-saucer move isn’t original or anything it’s industry standard textbook but that’s fine we’re not in the business of signature gestures we’re the lunch-pail division we whip something up we promise something and it happens what’s going to come out of yours is going to come out of theirs it’s about what’s possible, not probable the perfect ending that’s always waiting in the oven we never turn on

Saturday, March 28, 2 PM (again) Dear E, Had to write you another letter after I finished my pie because the waitress (Debbi) ended up finding all of our Which Witch stuff underneath the bar. I guess the cleaning staff put it away to protect it from getting stolen by someone homeless overnight. Is that better or worse than my original interpretation? I love you. I love all of you. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter. -A

CONTRIBUTORS HEATHER NOEL ALDRIDGE has worked on the TV show “Criminal Minds” for going on 11 seasons, where she is a writer’s assistant. Poetry, to her, is concurrently “Vice, Mistress, and Coping Mecanism.” Heather is a native Californian, but has spent a considerable time living in NYC. That should explain a lot. She lives in Playa Del Rey and utilizes all things Ocean for inspiration. MICHAEL ATKINS is a creative entrepreneur and community activist. He has contributed in his professional life to documentary films and television, supported local food and agriculture, has founded his own snack food brand, and actively promotes sustainable living in the 21st century. Michael lives in Los Angeles, but is visiting from another planet. SETH BLAKE’s work has appeared in Trop, [out of nothing], Nat Brut., El Aleph, The Los Angeles Review of Books, HTMLGIANT and is forthcoming in The Encyclopedia Project and The Synchronia Project. ADRIA BREGANI is a scientist and artist living in Los Angeles. SAM COHEN writes about queer intimacies and is working at figuring out how to make our bodies evolve for flight. Her fiction is in Black Clock, sidebrow, Joyland, Pank, New Orleans Review, Entropy, etc., and her story Gossip is a chapbook on Birds of Lace. She lives with a cat on a weird hill in Los Angeles. HENRY HOKE wrote The Book of Endless Sleepovers (forthcoming in 2016 from Civil Coping Mechanisms). Some of his stories appear in The Collagist, Electric Literature, Tierra Adentro and PANK. He co-created and directs Enter>text, a living literary journal in Los Angeles. -

JEN HUTTON is an artist and writer. She lives in Los Angeles. REBECCA ANN JORDAN is a speculative fiction author and artist. She has published poetry and fiction in Infinite Science Fiction One, Fiction Vortex, FLAPPERHOUSE, Strangelet, Crannóg, Yemassee Journal and more. Becca studied at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 2015 and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts. See more of her work at rebeccaannjordan.com. EMMA KEMP is an artist, writer, and co-founder of Which Witch. PEDRAM NAVAB is a neurologist and Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, currently residing in Los Angeles. He has been educated at Stanford and Brown, and also obtained his J.D. His debut novel, Without Anesthesia, a psychological medical thriller, was recently published by Jaded Ibis Press. He is currently at work on his second novel, tentatively entitled Black Birds and Cocaine. When he is not practicing medicine or writing books, Pedram can be found listening to underground music and watching films of Lars von Trier and Hitchcock. JOE MILAZZO is a writer, editor, educator, and designer. He is the author of the novel Crepuscule W/ Nellie (Jaded Ibis Press) and The Habiliments (Apostrophe Books; forthcoming, 2015), a volume of poetry. His writings have appeared in Black Clock, Black Warrior Review, The Collagist, Drunken Boat, BOMB, and elsewhere. He co-edits the online interdisciplinary arts journal [out of nothing], is a Contributing Editor at Entropy, and is also the proprietor of Imipolex Press. Joe lives and works in Dallas, TX, and his virtual location is http://www. slowstudies.net/jmilazzo/. MEGAN MILKS is the author of Kill Marguerite and Other Stories, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and the chapbooks Twins and The Feels. She is the editor of The &NOW Awards, Volume 3: The Best Innovative Writing, 2011-2013; and co-editor of Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives.

ROBIN MYRICK is a writer, visual artist, educator and instigator based in Dallas, Texas. Her work engages the transitory nature of the mediated moment as expressed through television and film, portraiture and the body, and the rhetoric of identity, politics, consumerism, and disaster. She holds an MFA in Writing and Critical Studies from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Aesthetic Studies at UT Dallas. ANNA LENA PHILLIPS BELL’s projects include A Pocket Book of Forms, a travel-sized guide to poetic forms. Her work appears or is forthcoming in places including 32 Poems, Colorado Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. The recipient of a 2015 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in literature, she teaches at UNC Wilmington and is editor of Ecotone. JESSICA LEE RICHARDSON’s first book, a short story collection called It Had Been Planned and There Were Guides, won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and is due out from Fc2 this month. You can read some of her short fiction at www.jessicaleerichardson.com. With swamp moss and black glitter, draw a circle. In its center, place oyster shells, Morticia’s rose clippings, and a well worn copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Sprinkle with whiskey and rainwater. Clad in black tatters and adorned in silver, a creature will arise from the summoning circle and call itself VESTA VAINGLORIA. With corporeal form realized, she is now founder and host of Wilde Words, and possesses an MFA in Writing from CalArts. ADRIANA WIDDOES is a writer and co-founder of Which Witch. DANIEL WROE is an artist living and making, but not always making a living. He is one half of the artist duo Earl Gravy. His favorite website is thistothat.com, a resource dedicated to giving advice on how to glue things to other things. He is a graduate of the MFA Art program at California Institute of the Arts, and currently resides in Los Angeles.