The William & Mary Review Vol. 54 by William and Mary Review

The William & Mary Review

The William & Mary Review Volume 54 2016 Volume 54

2016

The William & Mary Review Volume 54 2016

Masthead Editor-in-chief

Claire Gillespie

Poetry Editor

Frank Fucile

Prose Editor

Cam Menchel

Art Editor

Aidan Selmer

Assistant Editor

Bezi Yohannes

Poetry Staff

Elena Bischak, Lauren Hurley, Makeda Jackson, Max Miroff, Aidan Selmer, Emily Wynn

Prose Staff

James Kaplan, Anna Kelly, Elijah Levine, Alison Romig, Brandon Trainor, Colin Weinshenker, Bezi Yohannes

Art Staff

Megan Bland

Layout Staff

Silvana Smith

The William & Mary Review (ISSN: 0043-5600) is published by The College of William and Mary in Virginia (est. 1693) once each academic year. A single, post-paid issue is $5.50. A surcharge of $1.50 applies for subscriptions mailed outside of the United States of America. The William & Mary Review publishes poetry, prose, and visual art. Please find subscription information and submission guidelines on our website: www.wmreview.org. This issue of The William & Mary Review was typeset in Minion Pro and Goudy and was printed by Fidelity Printing. COPYRIGHT 2016

Editor’s Note When I joined the William & Mary Review my freshman year of college, there was something intrinsically exciting about the magazine: its highly creative and intelligent staff and submissions from people around the world gave us the starting place to recognize and publish great art. Over the past four years, The Review has doubled in size and in the number of submissions received. We’ve tranformed our online presence into a thriving blog and social media platform. For these changes, I am extremely proud of our staff and the work they’ve put into The Review. But the most exciting part of The Review, to me, is the foundation that The Review was built on over fifty years ago: the conversation our staffs have about poetry, art, and fiction each week. Students at William and Mary are known for being busy, so for twenty individuals to take time out of their lives to talk about art suggests not only the vitality of art but the necessity of it. There’s something special about students volunteering their time, bound together through conversation and comraderie rather than payment. In places like The Review, we have the opportunity to innovate, to explore, and to learn more about what a poem, a work of art, or a story is. The work we feature in this issue ranges from a photographic observation of female friendship, to stories about families, to poems about the objects we see in the everyday transformed. To our readers, I hope you find these pieces as thought-provoking, moving, and true as we did. To our contributors, thank you for sharing a piece of yourself with us. Finally, to everyone, may you always find a place in your life for conversations about art, and may this issue serve as a starting point for one more. Claire Gillespie Editor-in-chief 6

Table of Contents Poetry Ryan Eckes, chase scene Jeffrey MacLachlan, Wall Street Bodies Ivan de Monbrison, The Sleeper Mebane Robertson, Blue Deity Matt Hart, Improvised Explosive Invitation Device Matthew S. Wise, I Used to Sign My Paintings M. Sparrow, Sounds From My Hotel Room Len Church, L’Inconnue de la Seine Laura Falsetti, Raynaud’s Linda Taylor, Autumn Sauce: Steam at Six O’Clock Clayton Adam Clark, Fungicide Blues Tricia Asklar, How to Make Dreams Come Out of You Tricia Asklar, Lesser Pole Star Adam Tavel, Four Failed Elegies for Alexander Hamilton Brandon Davis Jennings, No Compass, No Star Mebane Robertson, Conch Daniel Moore, Rolling DNA Dice at the Adoption Sock Hop Ryan Eckes, chase scene Carol Smallwood, On the Passage Home

11 12 13 18 42 44 47 49 50 53 56 65 66 67 69 72 91 92 97

Art Karen Marshall, Between Girls 9 Alissa Chanin, Of a Pillar 39 Ernest Williamson, No Clowns in Harlem 41 Louis Staeble, Strange Matter 51 Louis Staeble, Ravages 55 Ivan de Monbrison, Figure trying desperately to get out of 64 an empty room Thomas Gillaspy, Cluster 98 Fiction Kevin McIntosh, The Feast of Saint Patrick Samantha Kolsenik, The Burning Dress T.G. Hardy, The Prospect of Montauk

21 57 75

Contributors

Front cover: Brad Garber, Rock Pilings, art Back cover: Sparrow, Pinochle, poem

Karen Marshall’s “Between Girls: A Passage to Womanhood 1985-2015” is a three-decade-long documentary study following a group of middleclass New York City girls from the ages of 16 to 46. Marshall began photographing the teenagers in 1985 after being introduced to Molly Brover, a junior at the Bronx High School of Science. After Brover and her friends, who lived on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, agreed that Marshall could photograph them, she began spending time with the group and documenting the mundane rituals of their friendship. “I believe that there is a language that women share with each other that is really hard to articulate,” says Marshall, who was in her mid-20s at the time. “My intent was to look at the emotional bonding that happens between girls at age 16 and document the emblematic relationships that often develop at this time in their lives.” Ten months later, Molly was hit by a car and killed while on vacation in Cape Cod. Marshall was devastated, but resolved to keep the project going. “I realized that Molly would remain 17, and the rest of them would become women,” she says. “It is the main reason that inspired me to continue to document the girls in various ways over the years to come, which has evolved into a 30-year meditation on friendship.” We hope you enjoy the photographs featured in this issue.

Between Girls: A Passage to Womanhood BY KAREN MARSHALL

Jen G. and Molly during a walk in Riverside Park on a September Saturday afternoon. (1985) 10

chase scene BY RYAN ECKES

we’re driving down washington ave, listening to “wonderful tonight.” do i feel all right? i feel the dumpy heat, red light every fifty feet. sad horns from the corners dismember the clapton, cluck-u-chicken. clucku-seven eleven. cluck-u-a-plus mini mart. i remember, right around here, losing my breath once from heartbreak, out of nowhere, just walking along here, at night. frozen music. architecture is frozen music. people were drinking in the scoreboard, which is closed. we closed it, remember, to drink inside and watch people kiss and turn off the lights and be washington ave.

Wall Street Bodies BY JEFFREY MACLACHLAN

Sidewalks lay flat on their bellies under the malevolent stare of Copper John, revolution legionary, now prison eunuch who never responds to overworked subwoofers vibrating the visitor lawn where weeds seizure and brown each dawn from inmate ground crews drooled out the red door, the red door, the red door opens and drools inmates out like an addictâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tongue and after too long starts panting for more dark orange pills with blushing cheeks of rusty concrete and blue collar watchtowersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; angry window grills grinding, grinding, grinding spitting tooth decay like silver fireworks above the startled puddles remembering their lake

Le Dormeur

BY IVAN DE MONBRISON

Lac de peau qui sèche au soleil où l’ombre traîne son manteau bleu. Un doigt sort d’un cratère et gratte le cou du vent qui penche vers l’horizon, ton corps plié en quatre repose dans un tiroir et quand je l’ouvre il se déplie comme un manteau, je me revêts alors de toi et sors marcher dans la rue, ta tête pend derrière mon cou et tes mains agrippent les miennes. Quand je m’allonge tu te regonfles et deviens chair à mes côtés, alors je te parle de la voix basse des défunts, la nuit posée sur tes yeux est pleine d’étoilesfilantes. Tu restes ensuite étendue comme un mannequin dans la chambre et néanmoins tu es vivante. La fenêtre fermée forme un écran qui nous protège de la lumière, des boyaux courent par terre sur le sol défoncé de la pièce vide.

The Sleeper

BY IVAN DE MONBRISON

A lake of skin is drying in the sun, its shadow dragging its blue coat. A finger getting out of a crater scratches the neck of a wind leaning towards the horizon. Your body folded in four has been resting in a drawer and when I open it it unfolds like a mantle, I put it on and I go walking down the street, with your head hanging behind my neck, and your hands clutching mine. As I stretch out you reinflate and turn into flesh by my side. When I tell you about the hushed voice of the deceased the night resting on your eyes fills up with shooting stars. You keep being stretched out as a dummy in the room and nevertheless you are alive. The closed window turns into a screen shielding us from the light, bowels run all over the sagging ground of this empty room.

Ton crâne résonne de tambours, tu ouvres la bouche et tu cries, tes dents tombent une à une et prennent racines, bientôt des squelettes poussent de celles-ci et se mettent à danser dans la pièce au son de ta voix, ils agitent leurs os dans tous les sens, cette sarabande est merveilleuse; et je me dis, elle est merveilleuse, elle est merveilleuse . . . comme ces fleurs à peine fanées conservent un étrange éclat adouci dans la mort, il est légèrement velouté et me rappelle l’esquisse d’une fleur rouge sur la toile, ou l’étrange absence d’un geste qui en déferait les pétales nuitamment, à voix basse. A l’éveil je suis près de toi et le mal peut bien tambouriner à ma porte ça m’est égal, ma force est sans contrainte et ton visage inscrit à l’envers du mien me protège quand je marche.

With drums echoing in your skull you open your mouth and scream. Your teeth fall off one by one and take roots. Soon enough skeletons grow out of them and start dancing in the room to the sound of your voice. I can see their bones wiggling, this saraband is wonderful, and I keep saying to myself, she is wonderful, she is wonderful . . . Like these barely faded flowers which hold on a soft and strange glow after theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re dead. It is slightly velvety and reminds me of the outline of a red flower on a canvas, or the strange absence of a gesture which would take down its petals one by one, by night, in a low voice. Waking up, I stand near you and the devil may well be drumming at my door, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care. My strength is unconstrained and your face carved on the back of mine protects me as I walk.

Jen G. Blake, Piper, and Leslie. A Saturday afternoon in the hallway of Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s West End apartment building. (1985/86) 17

Blue Deity BY MEBANE ROBERTSON

Green as leaves those lashes. Tattoos Grow over her body. It’s the last one of the 33 I’m curious of whereabouts. Chew on this. She’s making an exhibition in the club. Her stare into the crystal is deep as money. Hers is the darkening deck of real characters. She is the spirit’s social networking site. She believes what I say is a backdrop. She’s a city crying, breaking beads that turn her clients Into water and wanderers. She only works with the blind— Those the deity has spit from his mouth. But it’s not her bad. She turns things around for visitors. She turns your butterfly into a gun.

Jen G., Blake, and Rachel S. hanging out after school in the front of LaGuardia High School for the Arts on Amsterdam Avenue and 64th Street. (1985/86) 19

Piper (Blake’s sister), and Jen G. hanging out with the boys in Blake’s bedroom after school. West End Avenue. (1985/86) 20

The Feast of Saint Patrick BY KEVIN MCINTOSH Grandma’s McKinley Park neighborhood has changed, more Mexican than Irish now, but her bungalow is as solid and cramped as ever. And tidy. The beige carpet has long been worn to an irredeemable gray, but the lace doilies still grace the armchairs. Grandma’s people, Cudahy’s and O’Gara’s, were from outside Dublin, schoolteachers, clerks, not farmers, miners—earth-scrapers—like Grandpa’s family. The small touches were vital, lest he forget. When Grandpa would spill some crusty tobacco ashes on the lace, cleaning his pipe, he’d get no end of it from Grandma till he’d finally dial his hearing aid down to deafness. But Grandpa, as ever, has had the last laugh. He’s long since gone to his reward, but his pipe tobacco—I sniff—still lingers. Brian’s boys are down on that dingy carpet arguing over some spelling game, lettered cubes exploding inside a plastic dome. The game, loud and cerebral—like Brian—distracts them from my entrance. I’m alarmed at how large they’ve gotten, don’t think of them as old enough to play the sort of game I played with their father. They greet their long-lost Uncle Patrick in a perfunctory manner that distresses slightly; and yet, why not, who am I to them? They return to punching the plastic dome as I head down the hallway that leads to the basement. The hallway is lined with ghosts: sepia great-grandparents, -aunts, -uncles in stiff linen collars; black-and-white snaps of Chicago pols from Grandpa O’Connor’s days as alderman; and, finally, the shrine to the patron saint of all Irish-Americans, St. Jack. The most cherished relic in the shrine is gold-framed, unmissable, just before the basement door: the newly-elected president of the United States in front of the Palmer House downtown, Mayor Daley the First to his right, my grandfather 21

beaming at his left, having earned his place at Kennedy’s side by rounding up enough Democrats in the 12th ward—the young, the old, the dead— to put our first Catholic president over the top. Down the basement stairs, more ghosts. Grandpa would point them out to me: That’s Daniel O’Connell, boy, the Liberator; your cousin Brendan on the Irish football champions of 1947; big Michael Collins (I shook his hand); and, fresh from his bee-loud glade, Yeats himself. A terrible beauty, intoned Grandpa, tapping a finger on the heroes of the 1916 Easter Uprising, awaiting execution. That basement, my hedge school. I turn the corner on the stairs and the scene below could be 1945 or 1965 as easily as this evening in 1985. Red-faced Irish-Americans shoulder-to-shoulder, bobbing in a cloud of smoke, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. Some are O’Connors—a quorum of my six siblings is scattered about (though no Margaret); some are friends of my parents, grandparents. Green plastic Kiss Me, I’m Irish derbies poke through the cloud, fuzzy leprechauns peep out, arms spread in greeting, crucified against the knotty-pine walls. I glance back towards Collins and Yeats and wonder at how identity devolves in America, from authenticity to cliché to self-parody. “Little Pat,” says Frank, clasping my hand as I hit the bottom step, taking my shoulder in a half-embrace. “As I live and breathe.” “Francis,” I say, invoking his baptismal name, the one he’d beat me up for using. “The prodigal returns.” “Ran out of jelly sandwiches,” I say, and we laugh, recalling the last time I ran away from home. His eyes crinkle, as always, but now the lines remain. Forehead’s bigger too. He’s thirty-three last July—did I send him a card? “So, still teaching?” he asks. “In a manner of speaking. I just got tenure-tracked.” “No shit? Congratulations.” He grasps my right hand again in his, still larger and stronger than mine, and smacks the back of it with his left. As if my recent success is news to him, that Mother hasn’t put out an allpoints bulletin. “Still selling stereo equipment?” I ask. 22

“In a manner of speaking. It’s home entertainment centers now.” He lifts his brow. “Ah,” I nod. “Good. Where’s Mother?” “In the kitchen, drying out the soda bread.” I snort. “Oh how I’ve missed that.” He smiles. We stare at one another’s shoulders for a bit. His, I note, are still broader. I’m pleased at how little it matters. Dismayed that it matters at all. I peer through the haze. “Where’s Michael?” “Couldn’t get off from the restaurant. Not on St. Patrick’s.” “The manager? The manager couldn’t get off?” “Especially not the manager,” he says, shaking his head at how little I understand the real world, the world outside books. “Is Margaret here?” I have to ask. “She never comes to these things. You know.” “I know.” “Let me get you some silly green beer,” Frank says, and shoulders his way towards the pony keg behind the sofa. The Clancy Brothers sing “A Nation Once Again” above the din. My eyes are tearing from the cigarette smoke. Deirdre’s hands cover them. “Guess who?” she says. “Deedee,” I say. “Hey, professor. Long time, no see.” “How’s my favorite sister?” “Ha,” she says, patting my chest. “I know better.” Deirdre’s face is flushed with green beer, that creamy O’Connor skin shot pink. She’s never lost the weight from having my three nieces, but she’s still the pretty one. She says, “I hear they’ve made you president of the University of Wisconsin or something.” “Something like that. It always improves in the retelling.” “They say in big families the youngest is usually the smartest.” “Well, usually.” “The youngest learns from watching the older sibs.” “Still got the notes,” I say, tapping the breast pocket of my corduroy jacket. She laughs. 23

“How’s the catering going?” I ask. Deirdre looks over my shoulder. “It isn’t,” she whispers, though it’s way too loud to not be overheard. “Kathleen wasn’t interested anymore.” “That’s too bad.” She shrugs. “Truthfully, it’s not a tragedy. We weren’t doing that well. Kathleen said we needed to do more marketing. Brian said no one could figure out what Fine Irish Cuisine meant.” She lets go her laugh again, which is more of a bark. “And Kathleen was getting on my nerves. She goes to this new church with that boyfriend. Mark.” Deirdre points her chin over my shoulder. I twist my head and catch Kathleen and Mark slurping green suds on the brown sofa that was in our living room on Parnell Avenue. Kathleen puts her head on his shoulder and burrows into his neck. I can see my teenaged self nestled on that same sofa with Doreen, a girl I met at a St. Joe’s-Sacred Heart mixer. A bit on the chunky side, Doreen, a bit unsteady with the eyeliner, perhaps, but when a good Catholic girl has your good Catholic self in her warm Catholic palm, it’s not a moment for critique. She squeezes me experimentally, intrigued by the changes her handiwork has wrought. Above the bumpy black liner, her eyes are glossy. An ungodly gurgling comes from the TV room—Daddy in his recliner, where he often slept towards the end of his drinking, before Mother’s ultimatum. He was a blue ribbon snorer, my father—Michael can still make us weep with his impression: two or three porcine inhalations followed by an old Schwinn with a slow leak. Doreen’s eyes fly wide. He’ll never wake, I plead. Doreen peers down at the withered contents of her stubby hand in puzzlement, then dismay. Was this supposed to happen? she may be wondering. Would it always? Whatever she thought at that critical moment, Doreen thought better of it later. Such activities, she sniffed over the phone a few days after, were not consonant with her values. Direct dictation, no doubt, from the nuns at Sacred Heart. She felt cheap, she said. Direct dictation from her mother. Clearly, I would not be getting the milk for free. Frank shoulders in, holding two plastic cups of green liquid. “Your beer, sir.” He hands me a cup. “Frank,” says Deirdre, “what’s the name of Kathleen’s church?” 24

“Out in Barrington?” He sucks in some green foam. “St. Dominic’s?” “Yes,” says Deirdre, “St. Dominic’s. Kathleen dragged me there one Sunday. They’re—what do they call themselves?—charismatic Catholics.” “What’s that?” I ask. I hadn’t been to a Mass of any kind since high school. “My Lord,” snorts Deirdre, “worse than guitar Mass. They hold hands and sway like a bunch of Baptists—” “Baptists don’t sway,” Frank interjects. “No?” “Not white ones, anyway.” Deedee puts her free hand on a child-bearing hip. “And how would you know?” “I went with a Baptist girl.” “She didn’t sway?” I ask. Frank chokes on some beer. “Patrick,” says Deirdre, “really. Anyway, it’s nothing Father Hanrahan would’ve approved.” “Oh, Father Han-ra-han,” says Frank. “There’s the guy. A real saint. Beatify him, why don’tcha?” “What?” says Deirdre. “I liked him.” “Sure,” Frank nods. “And he liked the altar boys.” “No.” Deirdre punches his shoulder. “Yes.” “You were an altar boy, Frankie,” I remind him. “I was never alone in the sacristy with Father Hanrahan, I assure you. But just go ask Tommy Donovan.” “Oh, well, Tommy Donovan,” Deirdre shakes her head. “He was always a little light in the loafers.” “Not before Father Hanrahan got a hold of him,” says Frank. “I don’t think it works that way,” I have to add, being from Madison now. Frank lifts his brows. “And you would know that how, professor?” “Boys, boys.” Deirdre puts a hand on Frank’s beefy shoulder, rests her beer cup on mine. “And anyway, Deedee,” says Frank, “why do you think they sent him to that parish in Milwaukee?” Deirdre looks at her feet. She sips her beer. 25

Brian saves us. He claps me on the back, then swallows my skinny frame in a fleshy bear hug. He’s the only huggy O’Connor brother, and I can tell by the intensity of his embrace he’s three or four beers ahead of me. “Patrick,” he says, holding me by the arms, “you look great.” “You too,” I say, though Brian, of course, doesn’t. He was always a god to me, a dark Celtic god—eight years older, with that angry rock star beauty. At fourteen, being Brian seemed a reasonable life’s goal. But look at him now: not yet forty and his wiry centerfielder’s body gone pillowy; a face like the road map of Ireland. And Daddy—wherever he may be—is surely smirking down on Brian’s scalp, smooth as a baby’s bum. Oh, the epic fights at the O’Connor dinner table over Brian’s hair! Somewhere Kathleen still has the front page of the Sun-Times from ’68, with Brian being dragged down Michigan Avenue by one of Chicago’s finest, his black, shoulder-length locks wrapped around the officer’s fist. But you had to admire the in-your-faceness of Brian’s hippie rebellion, the direct insult to father and grandfather, His Honor the Mayor having hoisted stout in this very basement. “We’re all so proud of you,” Brian says, still holding on to me. “I was just saying,” Deirdre leans in, “that the youngest is usually the smartest.” “Though we wondered sometimes,” says Frank. “Remember that baby book? Pat the Bunny? Patrick used to think it was great, how he and the rabbit had the same name.” Frank giggles. “I was two,” I protest. “Eight,” says Frank. He turns to Deirdre. “Michael thought he might be retarded.” “Shut up, Francis,” says Brian. Frank’s eyes harden a flicker. But he just sips his beer and shakes his head because Brian’s smiling and Brian’s—in whatever form—still Brian. “Let’s be nice to Pat, boys,” says Deedee, “or we won’t see him for another three years.” She ruffles my hair. “We were just discussing Father Hanrahan,” Frank says. “Weren’t we, Deedee?” “Really?” Brian laughs. Something Brian and Frank could always agree on—needling Deirdre, our traditionalist, about the Church. Brian says, “I still ruminate on those thought-provoking homilies.” 26

“The Feast of the Assumption!” laughs Frank, invoking one of their old routines. Brian hunches his shoulders, bobs his head. “The Blessed Virgin Mary did not ascend to heaven, as did Our Lord,” he squeaks in Father Hanrahan’s wispy tenor. “Oh no, she was assumed wholly—and holy—” “Assooomed,” sings Frank, lifting his green beer skyward. “Enough,” says Deirdre, turning away. “Oh Deedee,” croons Brian, throwing an arm around her neck, pulling her to him from behind, kissing the back of her head. “You know we love you. It’s just Jesus we’re ambivalent about.” Deirdre barks in acquiescence, hating this. And oh my lord, how have I never seen that Brian is Daddy all over? The bluster, the angry wit, the rough affection that gets rougher beer-by-beer. Brian smiles as she slips off under his arm. Daddy’s smile. When was it—second grade? I was babbling away at the dinner table about my day in school. We were studying frogs, which were more interesting than anyone imagined. A rare chance to get a word in edgewise; you could only hold court with the O’Connors if you were quick and clever. I was too little, always a beat behind the cut-and-thrust. But everyone indulged me, this once. I prattled on. “Enough from you, Mighty Mouth,” said Daddy. Then he smiled. A smile like a slap. My brothers chortled. It stung doubly, him using my favorite cartoon character to silence me. He had an instinct, Daddy did, for the most efficient way of reducing one to size. And a knack for surprise. I was in high school when, to the amazement of all, Daddy stopped drinking. Mother issued her ultimatum and he stopped. And then the aftershock: we liked him better drunk. He went from one extreme of our breed—which at least has some charm at the two-drink stage—to the opposite, judgmental, tea-drinking pole. Then, with even less warning, he died. Dried to a husk and blew away. As if the alcohol had been a preservative he couldn’t exist without. Brian turns to me, his choppers still in that wide grin, and I wonder if he could subsist on Earl Grey. He says, “Deedee’s a little bent out of shape about Kathleen’s new boyfriend. She blames it on religion, like everything. But the truth is 27

she and Joe are having troubles and she can’t bear being around the lovebirds. That’s why they stopped catering.” He tips back his beer. “Not that I’m one to talk,” he says, the grin vanishing. “You probably heard about Sarah and me.” I nod. When Margaret called she spilled all the nasty details of the separation: Brian’s DUI, his cramped one-bedroom in Northbrook, his limited access to his boys. Frank peels off, having heard this story. I, too, know the story and have no interest in hearing it from Brian’s soggy point-of-view. The only thing worse than the giddy drunk IrishAmerican is the weepy drunk Irish-American. “Gotta use the loo, brother,” I shrug, pointing upstairs. Not a phrase I’ve used, before or since, but Brian’s too far gone to be insulted. I hit the top of the stairs and take a right at St. Jack. “Psssst,” someone whispers as I approach the bathroom. “Psssst, Pat.” A hand beckons through a crack in the back door. Red fingernails, chipped at the tips, curl towards the back steps. Margaret pulls me through the door, down the cement stairs to the scrubby backyard with its battered trash cans and chain-link fence. She wraps her arms around me. “Thank God,” she gasps, “I was just about to leave. Oh, ashes, sorry,” she says, brushing my shoulders, blowing smoke out a corner of her mouth. “Leave?” I protest, my breath steaming in the brisk March night. “Leave? I just finished refereeing Deedee and Frank’s deconstruction of Vatican II. Brian was about to tell me His Side of the Story. I came all the way from Madison—” “I know, I know. And that’s why you moved there, to get out of the middle.” Margaret takes a drag on her Camel Light, clears those red pre-Raphaelite waves from the collar of her green wool coat. “I know,” she says. “I owe you.” She squinches her eyes, flapping the butterfly of freckles that spreads out from the bridge of her nose. “But I didn’t see your car—” “Mine’s in the shop.” “You borrowed Debbie’s?” “Um, it seems I won’t be borrowing anything of Debbie’s.” “Oh, Pat, you didn’t say.” I shrug. Debbie: my caustic, raven-haired, sometime girlfriend. What 28

was there to say? Three months of on-again. Off-again. “I’m sorry. She sounded . . . nice.” Margaret taps ash onto the steps and adds, “The bitch.” We laugh. “Her loss.” Margaret shakes her head, runs the back of a hand along my fuzzy cheek. “By the way, I like this,” she says, meaning my scruffy attempt at beardedness. “It becomes you.” Big sister, amazed that her thirty-year-old brother can grow facial hair. She takes my elbow. “Watch out for those hot-pantsed co-eds.” “Not much of an issue, actually. I seem entirely resistible.” “Oh, you’ll be surprised. Guys dream about cheerleaders; college girls weave fantasies around young professors.” “Scrawny dudes bearing Finnegan’s Wake?” She pouts her lips. “Oh yes I said yes I will—” “Wrong Joyce.” “Even so. You’ll see. My advice: keep that office door open.” She pokes me in the middle. I look at my shoes and blush, thirteen again. All my sisters have this ability, but none more than Margaret. “How’s Charlie?” I ask. “He’s fine, he’s great. He’s home building cabinets for our kitchen.” She takes a deep drag, lets the smoke trickle out her nostrils. At thirty-five, Margaret finally has a live-in love. No carpenter has created so much stir with the O’Connors since the one from Galilee. That, too, ended badly. “He offered to come,” Margaret says, “but I told him I already had an escort.” I growl, “They keep pulling me back . . .” She laughs. She loves my Pacino. “All that therapy down the drain,” she sighs. “I’m sorry.” “Stop apologizing. I owe you. Forever.” And she won’t argue that point because it keeps being true. It was Margaret who saved me from being my father’s football and my mother’s confessor. An unlikely savior, five years older and always the outsider. Those from small families think of big families as undifferentiated masses of children, but I find we group in twos and threes. The O’Connors, for example, are two sets of triplets . . . and Margaret. Which would make 29

some sense, were she the middle child, but that’s Michael. She just wouldn’t be part of a set. We bonded one Christmas vacation when I was ten and down with the flu. Mother quarantined me on the basement rollaway and Margaret fed me broth and read me Kipling’s Just So Stories. We discovered our unending affinity that Christmas and stumbled upon our futures, hers in nursing and mine in the healing power of books. Taqueria Mexicana flashes a sign over Margaret’s shoulder, beyond the alleyway, beyond the house that once was Mrs. Flaherty’s. A breeze kicks up, swirling that frizzy red mane around Margaret’s face. I stick my hands in my pits, shivering. “You cold?” she asks, pulling the collar of her coat together. “Freezing my ass off.” “Let’s go in.” She stubs out her cigarette on a cement step, palms the filter. I touch her elbow. “You ready?” “I’m not here to make a scene, Patrick.” “I know that.” “I’ve got a right to be here. I’ve paid my dues.” She folds her arms, juts that solid chin. “This is my family. She can’t keep me out.” Her eyes widen, the pupils huge. I wonder if she’s taken one of those pills that help her stay inside her skin. In her profession, she always has access. “Let’s do it,” I say, holding the door for her. Margaret sweeps through, pausing at the top of the basement stairs. She takes a deep breath and nods at Grandpa, Kennedy and Daley. She descends. Her aura fills the room. Kathleen, who missed my entrance, looks up, as do Brian and Frank. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” says Brian, having recovered his joie de vivre. He wraps her up. “Good to see you, too,” she says, submitting to his embrace. “Margaret, hey,” says Kathleen, finally disengaged from Mark. “And Pat, too,” she adds. “This is quite the occasion.” Hugs are exchanged. Frank replenishes everyone’s beer. Mark is pried off the sofa and introduced. A shy, good-looking lug, a bit shellshocked—perhaps calculating the price of being with an O’Connor girl. 30

We give him the once-over: younger than Kathleen, probably younger than I. Margaret flicks a look at me as he ambles over. Her eyes chuckle: Kathleen, who knew? “Where’s Deedee?” Margaret asks. “Helping Mother with the corned beef,” says Kathleen. “Isn’t that your department, Kathleen?” says Brian. “Don’t start with me, Brian.” “So,” says Margaret, “we’re all assembled.” “Excepting Michael,” says Frank. “Always working,” says Brian. “I asked him when he wanted to move Grandma’s stuff and he said he already had. Always has to do it himself.” “I helped,” says Frank. “I thought you were in Detroit.” “I was. But he used my truck.” Brian raises his beer. “Duly noted, Francis.” Kathleen turns to Margaret. “I keep meaning to call you. I wanted to help Grandma settle in.” “That’s all right,” says Margaret. “You’ve done so much. Too much.” “I don’t mind. I’m the nurse, right?” “That’s no reason it should all fall on you.” “Is Charlie coming?” asks Frank. “No,” says Margaret, “he thought he’d skip this one.” Leave it to Frank to bring up Margaret’s one blemish. We O’Connors bear titles like medieval kings: Brian the Great, Francis the Unappreciated, Deirdre the Fair. And though the titles are immutable, the hierarchy can shift depending on events—Brian’s DUI, Deedee, long ago, dating Joe right out of seminary. (Though a spoiled seminarian, unlike a spoiled priest, seemed a gray area, sin-wise, to Mother. And he wasn’t spoiled, Deedee insists, believe me. Not even ripe.) Margaret the Good shacking up with Charlie the Carpenter is a tectonic shift none of us is prepared for. But Patrick the Peacemaker is here to ensure no one gets swallowed in a fissure. “I’ll miss this little house,” says Margaret. “Wild times in this basement,” says Brian. “Remember Michael smoking Grandpa’s pipe, starting that fire?” says 31

Frank. Kathleen points at him. “He still says that was you, Frankie.” “He would,” Frank frowns. Brian shakes his head, sighs. “Strip poker with the Nowitzki girls.” “I don’t remember that,” says Frank. “You weren’t there.” He looks at all of us, heavy-lidded. “It was a very private game.” Kathleen cocks her head. “Who won?” He grins. “Everyone.” Naughty laughs all around. “Last time I made dinner for Grandma,” says Margaret, almost to herself, “she kept lifting her nighty up, giggling about someone named Johnnie.” “Poor Grandma,” says Kathleen. “Oh, those hot Dublin nights,” says Brian. “Brian,” Kathleen smacks him, “that’s our grandmother you’re smirking about, not those slutty Nowitzki girls.” “Well, she wasn’t born ninety. They weren’t just milking goats and studying Gaelic behind those hedgerows.” “You were so good,” Kathleen says to Margaret. “You practically lived here those last few months.” “Well,” says Margaret, looking up. And down the stairs comes Maeve Cudahy O’Connor, mother of us all, bearing soda bread. Deedee trudges behind with a great pot of corned beef and cabbage. They make their way through the crowd and park the food on the groaning board next to the washer/dryer. Deedee starts slicing the soda bread, ladling out steaming bowls of the corned beef. Mother approaches her children. I lean way down and kiss her cheek. She keeps getting littler, barely five feet now. “Happy St. Paddy’s, Mother.” “Oh, Patrick,” she says, letting me hug her. “And where have you been?” she asks in that mournful tone. “In Madison. I call every Sunday.” “Yes, that you do.” “Finishing my dissertation.” “I know. We’re very proud.” She looks up at her bearded baby. I look 32

down on my wee mother, her newly-beautified silver curls tighter than ever. She surveys her children. “Where’s Michael?” “At the restaurant,” we all say. “Of course,” she nods. “Kathleen,” she says, “aren’t you cold? Grandma still has sweaters upstairs.” Kathleen shakes her head, folds her arms across her chest. She’s wearing a short, Kelly green halter dress, eye shadow to match, looking like one of those tarted-up step-dancers who’ll invade America in a few years after money and sex flow into Ireland. Maybe they do sway at her new church, I’m thinking. “Well,” Mother sniffs, “get Mark some corned beef and cabbage. He looks starved.” Mark looks plenty well-fed but nonetheless relieved when Kathleen tugs him away from the inner circle. Mother glances at Brian’s beer, then Frank’s. “Brian,” she says, “your boys are tired upstairs. They’re going back to Sarah’s?” He nods. She drops her voice. “You’ve got a ride?” “I’ve got it covered,” Frank states, relishing his enhanced status. It’s taken thirty-two years, but he’s finally upgraded to Brian’s chauffeur. Mother scrutinizes Frank. A seasoned judge of intake, she nods. “Francis,” she says, “go put on some coffee. Brian, check on your boys. Billy’s cranky and he’s starting to bother Jimmy.” She shakes her head. “They come by it honestly—just like you and Michael, so help me.” She turns to Margaret, as if just noticing her. She can talk to her, now that she’s almost got her alone. It’s what Mother always did; she never trusted her children in clumps. Plotting a coup, maybe. Somehow, my presence doesn’t count. It never did. “Margaret,” she says. “Mother,” says Margaret. “How are you?” “Fine. I’m fine.” Mother pats herself down, as if she’s lost something. “Did I ever send you a check?” “For what, Mother?” “All those groceries. And that new spread on Grandma’s bed—you must have gotten that.” “No, you don’t owe me anything.” “You shouldn’t have to—” “Mother.” Margaret puts up a hand. “How much do you think Grandma 33

eats? And the bedspread was a gift. Home-warming, sort of.” Margaret can’t restrain an ironic smile. Mother pulls into herself, her lips tighten. “It was the best I could do, Margaret, under the circumstances.” “Oh, Mother, I know. We all know—” “There was no place I could put her at home. And she can’t manage the stairs.” “No one expected Grandma to move in with you, Mother.” Mother looks away, then at Margaret. She says, “You still think she should be living with you.” “Let’s not get into—” “She would not have been comfortable—” “We have plenty of room,” Margaret says, rising to the bait. God help her, she always does. “I’m a private care nurse,” she adds. “And Charlie works at home.” “That’s not what I meant.” “She knows we live together, Mother. She doesn’t care.” “I’m sure she’s very grateful, but she cares. On her good days, she cares.” “Did she tell you that?” “She doesn’t have to tell me,” Mother clucks. “I’ve known her fifty years. When your father and I stayed with Grandpa and Grandma on our honeymoon, she put us in separate rooms.” “It’s 1985, Mother! She’s ninety years old. I’m thirty-five. Maybe she’s figured out that the nuns were wrong. Or maybe she’s just happy that I’m happy.” This, I realize, is where I should jump in, where I always jumped in: Deedee, why’d you spill the onions I was chopping? I didn’t, Kathleen, and why’d you leave them on the counter and what’s Patrick doing on the floor? He’s going to get onion juice all over himself. Michael, where’s my catcher’s mitt? You had it last. Get your hands off me, Frank—look, Patrick found it. It was in the closet under your baseball cards, you idiot. Little St. Patrick, Brian would chuckle. This is why I came from Madison, to keep the peace, to keep items from being added to the list of irremediable hurts. But Margaret was right—too much time, tears and cash has been spent learning to extricate 34

myself from these situations. So I stand there, holding my silly green beer. “It bothers you, Mother,” says Margaret, raking back those red curls. “Did you think Kathleen and Deedee were virgins? Not to mention your sons. What’s all the fuss?” Mother eyes her guests, who continue to laugh, spill beer, drop ashes. She squares her diminished shoulders, inhales deeply. Though she’s gotten little over the years, Mother can still swell when she needs to. “None of my other children,” she sniffs, “ever made a public spectacle of themselves.” Margaret exposes those swollen pupils. “So that’s what it’s all about,” she says, “what the neighbors might think? The neighbors are dead, Mother, you might’ve noticed. And besides—who gives a damn what anyone thinks?” Margaret looks down, twists a ring on her right hand. “The hours, the days I spent cleaning up after Grandma,” she says softly, “I don’t mind that. I love her.” She looks at Mother. “And you can keep your money. Just spare me your judgments.” Mother flinches. Grandma, whom she has agonized over, is her tenderest spot. She’s Daddy’s mother, after all; it’s hardly Mother’s fault that everyone on his side is dead, drunk, or dead drunk. Caring for this ancient woman—a woman she’s always hated, let’s be honest—should never have fallen to her. But it has. And there’s no arguing the heavy lifting Margaret’s done there. Mother’s eyes narrow and mist. She swallows hard. “It’s about respect, Margaret Elizabeth.” The words, almost a hiss, barely pass her lips. “Respect for your parents, your family. And your faith.” “Ah,” bellows Margaret, hand on hip. “Now we’ve struck bedrock. Who goes to Mass how often? Who takes Communion? I’m the only one who’s ever been honest with you, Mother. And this is what I get—treated like the family whore. I’m damn sick of it.” This last bit has finally broken through the din. Old Buddy Callahan, who can barely hear, hears this. Peggy O’Malley, leaning on her cane, also tunes in. Mother looks for an escape route, up the stairs, back towards the corned beef. “I won’t talk to you when you’ve been drinking,” she 35

rasps. “Drinking?” Margaret brandishes her half-finished beer. “Get me a bus, I could be the designated driver for this entire family.” I can hear that gear-shift in Margaret’s breathing, that near-asthmatic wheeze that kicks in when she can’t stop herself. I lean in to her side, a hand under her forearm. She shrugs me off. “Why do I have to apologize for my life?” she says. “Brian can get arrested, Deedee can marry a priest. Kathleen can have her little operation—” At this, Mother, whose people are nearly melanin-free to begin with, goes wholly white. She looks left, then right, then up. Her pupils disappear. She stands this way for some moments, waiting, perhaps, for the Blessed Virgin to take her. Waiting for her Assumption. Clearly, I have waited too long. Fearing that Mother will faint, I pull Margaret away and take Mother—who disinvites touch—by the waist. Her stocky little frame slumps in my arms. Frank, Lord love him, I never see coming. Working through the crowd, full coffee pot shoulder-high, he sees the three of us jostling and tries to—avoid? intervene? The rest I can only reconstruct through a series of Zapruderesque jump cuts: Frank’s large elbow growing larger as it nears my mouth; a rainbow of brown and green liquid overhead; Margaret’s red curls fleeing the scene; my mother’s mournful face as she holds my head off the floor, a Celtic pietà. Next thing I’m on the sofa in the living room, trying not to bleed on Grandma’s lace doily. Blood fills my mouth. And it does, as Hemingway suggested, taste like pennies. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” says Frank for the twelfth time, as he hands me a clean dishtowel and a fresh bag of ice. “Forget it, Frank,” I mumble, handing him the bloody dishtowel and bag of melted ice. “And stop calling me Jesus.” “It’s just that—” “I’m OK.” “There was beer on the floor—” “It’s all right.” “And you and Margaret—” 36

“Drop it, Frank, OK? It was an accident.” He scrunches his face. “You still think I broke your nose at Gilbrey’s pool.” “Christ, Frank. I don’t, I didn’t.” “You blamed me. Daddy blamed me.” “Daddy blamed everyone. For everything. I didn’t.” “You did.” I inhale through my scarred nasal passages, swallowing blood. “OK,” I gurgle, “maybe I did. But that was twenty years ago. The statute of limitations has passed.” Frank looks unconvinced. He twitches his head around as Mother nears, perhaps serving him papers for the prior offense. “Frank,” she says, “they’re done cleaning downstairs. Go take Brian and the boys home.” He nods, relieved to have a task. “I’ll call you,” he says to me over his shoulder. “Let me look at that lip,” Mother says. Her eyes widen. “You may need stitches,” she insists, dabbing at my mouth with the fresh dishtowel. And she adds in that clipped way, “Herself certainly left in a hurry. We could’ve used a nurse.” “It’s nothing. Bloody lips always look worse than they are.” “Well,” Mother sniffs, “she certainly had her say.” “Let’s not talk about Margaret.” Mother folds and unfolds her mouth. “What she said about Kathleen—” “What did she say about Kathleen?” She nods. “You always took her side.” “I didn’t come here to take sides. I wanted to celebrate St. Patrick’s with my family.” “And you have.” I smile. It hurts. “I’ve ruined your party.” “Nonsense.” She dabs at my wound. “The old folks are having a grand time, mopping up, reminiscing about when your father broke Uncle Tim’s jaw.” Great, I think, not only will I go back to wooing Debbie with a split lip, I’ve been hauled into another Irish cliché. Some peacekeeper, dripping blood all over like a summer stock Mercutio. 37

But Mother, as ever, has risen to the occasion. She was always at her best when, as Yeats would have it, things fell apart. Everyday intimacy, not her strong suit. Just give her a crisis. “It’s fine,” she tells me, “you sticking up for your sister.” She sighs. “We were always too much alike, Margaret and I.” Mother urges some overgrown hair back behind my left ear. “You were the good one, Patrick.” “You’re getting confused, Mother. I was the smart one.” I lift my head off the sofa. “And I wasn’t that good.” “I know,” she says. “You were a boy.” And gives what passes for a smile.

Of a Pillar

BY ALISSA CHANIN These photographs are performance stills â&#x20AC;&#x153;Of a Pillar,â&#x20AC;? performed live for an audience in Chicago, Illinois on January 23, 2016. Concrete, at least twice the width of my waist, and an architectural support for the fourth floor above, the pillar becomes a reference for a body that traces it first with one eye closed and pinched between two fingers, and eventually sized against heel, calf, thigh, waist in profile, waist in full width, ribs, bust, shoulders, neck, head, and eventually height. Through the performance, the body is measured and equated to the pillar, albeit impossibly.

No Clowns in Harlem BY ERNEST WILLIAMSON

Improvised Explosive Invitation Device BY MATT HART To you with your long faces long-spun around me, and me with my long faces long-spun around me, let us go somewhere soft to wonder—warm and electrified, forgetting our dread— our arms wrapped tightly around each other, light breathing bodies in our light breathing heads And let us also let this be only the beginning of a surgical catharsis, a self-indictment in the jungle, a cataract lifting off into a sky so blue-eyed-Siberian-husky-blue-eyed that our awe hangs out exposed to the elements of awe hanging out exposed to the elements, which is a good thing, because being exposed is our natural human predicament and as such can be used to thwart the habitual under-amazement and over-concealment of our bodies’ own souls in floods of numbing diabolical liquid and too much bird-like anesthetic scree, the drowsy sounds some babies make to bewitch themselves when their mothers go deep, complete in complete darkness, vultures and mavens and preachers and geeks Let us hurl ourselves out of ourselves into the discomfort of being anew, aghast, and aglow, limbs screaming And 42

treed in our faces, let us ready ourselves, blood stain and grass stain to bewilder and be wilder, the latter of course just exactly like the former, except with its leap-of-faith gap to rabbit-over into the condor, into the shark, which is back to you so back to dirt Now’s the time, dear friends, to be an overheated engine block, irrational radiator, a reactor so intractable the core melts—not down, but up—unleashing a beacon surprised even by itself, smiling like a sea monster and all the world’s devastating money in its mouth Human heads splitting open Revelations Pink blossoms Asteroids slamming their crusts into breasts into seas into similitudes all at once so unnerving that the heart’s haywire electric goes blush with new juice and everything is reoriented to a gladness O Radiant Companions Forget the long faces Let us roll up our sleeves and encounter each other for the first time every time, with all inclusive kindness, with dear ferocious wonder There is so much to do Won’t you be moved I am singing our souls to you singing our souls Can you hear us in the aftermath beginning

I Used to Sign My Paintings M. (But Then Again, I Used to Paint) BY MATTHEW S. WISE There is always a moment in the Film, where the Opposition surrenders to your Effort. There is always a moment, when You, have done Enough, to have Earned, the Win. The building has exploded, because You cobbled together explosives from kitchen cleansers, and You lived because You went out the back, while the Cartel came through the front. Crafty stuff. The painting has disappeared because You had the blueprints, and knew the guy, who knew the Interpol agent You doubled-crossed and gave a knowing glance toâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; Right before You shot them both, because You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t leave loose ends. 44

You. You who dove off the peer, because You knew that Their bullets would only travel so far into the water [especially since it was on fire] and if You just held your breath long enough â&#x20AC;&#x201D;and just swam, finding the gap in the oil slick, They would shrug, realize They had been outmatched, and allow You to move onto the next scene. You. You who knows that knowing glances get you ten to twenty. You who knows You have been smoking way too long to hold your breath at all, and that the Police arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really dim enough not to check the neighboring beaches for a half-drowned, thief-murderer, covered in oil. On fire. You. You who knows, There is a temperature where celluloid melts and that the Police are never going to just quit, and that Interpol never affords respect to an art thief for being in awe of what they steal.

. . . and so here You are, trapped in the backroom with all your kitchen cleansers, none of which will have enough phosphate, [or whatever the hell makes that work in the movies anyway] because celluloid burns white-hot and the Cartel is coming, and nothing You create will ever save You, because You have never been captured on Film, and You do not know a single god-damned person who knows a single god-damned person who is employed as an agent by Interpol.

Sounds From My Hotel Room (Rome, May 3, 2015, 7-8 PM)

BY SPARROW

Laughter. Yelling. A car horn. Silence. The screech of brakes. Silence. “Bravo!” A child weeps.

Art by Sparrow 47

L’Inconnue de la Seine BY LEN CHURCH I woke up in the middle of the night and the thought struck me— The real problem with New York City is that there is no romantic, medieval river for people to throw themselves into Like the Thames or the Seine Instead, I look out at the East River and it swirls like a drunk’s melted cocktail Full of swollen popcorn crumbs Impotent ice chips And lint

Raynaud’s BY LAURA FALSETTI When 3:24 is not my friend and I awake with fiery sting— hands, arms, shoulders—my love tighten your grip on me. When cartoon sketch houses slide tectonic into rabid ocean froth and thunder-eyed madmen lurk in sunny kitchens to ambush me reassure me about elevations and altitudes— Where will I see you again? Could be it’s for nothing except icy hands arcing over keyboards. Squeeze the blood out of my fingers on the downhill slope. Certainly Raynauds will join us every time— rock hard cold and bone white render me incapable. But now, step off the trail and be still. Let me please my hands inside the seam of your waistband.

Strange Matter 51

BY LOUIS STAEBLE

Autumn Sauce: Steam at Six O’Clock BY LINDA TAYLOR Steam—being a wonderful thing, whether rising from this rolling pot of noodles I prepare for him, or from that pan of warmed-up chili last week that boiled my fourth finger to this nasty silken bump— I and the steam that dances stir his sauce, red as blood. In an hour he will come, with another dripping set of tennis clothes for me to wash. I have slammed the plates at dusk, the greasy pot he would not touch, the spoons I speared into the sink. I remember, like the fire-tipped trees our own sweetness of love— flowers in each other’s bellies, rain for each other’s opening, curved umbrellas.

Millions of insects died last night. I have been sad all day, while the earth still bubbled and firmed, the leaves trailing, traveled embers from a low fire. But he would not feel that same flame, both of us dancing around. Without leaves, our eyes and arms still scrape the rigid skyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; our skin will vanish under their naked wind. The towels are folded for his shower. I have drooped his fastened belt from the silver hook by the cloudy shower door. I will step on a chair and rise, hot as steamâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;then fall, like a leafâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;where he will bring his cold and dripping flowers to warm.

Ravages

BY LOUIS STAEBLE 55

Fungicide Blues BY CLAYTON ADAM CLARK Between a mirror and a window, a woman can see herself and nearly all behind her or just the woods out back where trees wear coats of black angels share fungus. She sips a bourbon, the last of her fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drink and a reminder how space suffused his uh-huh replies each morning. He shaved while she talked and talked, his gaze remaining fixed on his own mouth, chin, sideburns, and throat. Black growths mar white siding on the house her father left her, gorging on ethanol a distillery voids airborne toward each host. She treats the stains and in the bathroom places two mirrors opposite, so she gluts that space but canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see past herself where spores still fall.

The Burning Dress BY SAMANTHA KOLESNIK Ilya and Marie spotted something in the middle of the road by the roundabout. It was black and grey, an intriguing lump of fur lying flat on the sun-scorched tar. “It’s a raccoon,” Marie shrieked. Her ponytail bobbed as she skipped closer to the dead animal. “A ‘coon?” Ilya echoed. He was close behind her. They both peered down at the animal’s corpse. Its mouth was open, and something was moving around inside. “What is that?” Marie asked. She felt excited to see a dead animal up close. Ilya followed her lead, and they both bent down as close as they could get to the roadkill. “Oh.” Ilya said flatly. Maggots slithered around inside the raccoon’s mouth. Marie wondered if the chubby, white insects had already eaten its insides. Did they eat from the inside out? She held out one of her fingers and let a grub crawl onto it. The maggot’s body was almost translucent. “I think I see raccoon in its stomach,” she said. She laughed and just when the maggot reached the crest of her hand, she flung it off onto the road, far from the raccoon. It was a good distance now from its family. Maybe it would also die. “Let’s bring it home and give it to my mom,” Ilya suggested. He was still crouched next to the raccoon. Anger flashed across his face. “Let’s take a picture,” Marie said. She pulled out the little digital camera Ilya had bought her and snapped a photo of the raccoon. She admired her pic. There was something comical about the way the rigor mortis froze the raccoon’s arm into a stiff crook across its patchy chest. “Poor sucker,” she said, and laughed. Rain started to drizzle. The boy and his girlfriend hurried beyond the roundabout, across the playground, and through the woods to Ilya’s house. 57

Ilya’s mom was sitting on her throne at the head of the dining room table. Her red hair haloed her face like a crown of flame. Marie deliberately smiled and in a pitch much higher than her natural voice, said, “Hey Miss Norma.” “Hey you’s,” the depressed matriarch called out. Ilya tried to usher Marie up the stairs, but Marie walked into the dining room, ready to be received by Miss Norma. Miss Norma’s fat face mushed into a droopy, sad smile. “You’s hungry? Daddy’s cookin’ tacos. You love tacos, don’t ya, Marie?” Marie smiled and said in a purposefully sweet voice, “Oh I love tacos. They’re my favorite.” “Have a seat.” Miss Norma said. Ilya’s mother took a long drag off a cigarette, and flicked it into the glass ashtray, already overflowing with butts. Specks of ash scattered onto the plaid tablecloth. “You’s want a Coke?” Mr. Henry asked from the kitchen. He was browning meat from one of those taco kits in a skillet. Chopped tomato was already piled on the counter. There was a smell of tobacco and grease in the air. “Please,” Marie chirped. She loved how Mr. Henry always offered her a glass of Coke. Ilya sat slumped in a chair. He slid the candy dish over and popped a peppermint candy into his mouth. Ilya didn’t talk to his mom much. Miss Norma stared at her son, her smile having faded. Mr. Henry plopped a sweaty glass of Coke down in front of Marie and smiled at her from beneath his cap before returning to the kitchen. He was draining the beef fat now. Marie liked his gap-toothed smile. “So what did you think about Ilya getting his GED?” Marie asked. Miss Norma exhaled smoke into Marie’s face. A small smile appeared on her face, and a sign of life twinkled mischievously in her eyes. Marie could feel Ilya listening. “He didn’t do good on his math. Did you see his math score?” Miss Norma asked. She knew damn well that Marie had seen his math score. “I think he did great. I’m really proud of him,” Marie said. “It’s just a GED,” Ilya said. He threw a balled up candy wrapper onto the table. He took Marie’s Coke and drained it to just the ice, which clinked around in the glass, menacing the silence. 58

“Well I wish you’s would help your brother get his. I wish you’s woulda helped him before you got yer’s because now little Henry feels bad.” Marie tried not to roll her eyes. “Little Henry” was Ilya’s brother, an obese man seven years older than Ilya, who suffered from schizophrenia. She was glad he wasn’t here. His sloppy appearance and idiotically vacant gaze disgusted Marie. Every time she saw him, she wanted to bash his head in, but instead she had to be sweet. She had to pretend. Marie’s smile must have gone. Miss Norma was looking hard at her. “What’s wrong wit ya?” she asked. Marie smiled big, “Oh nothing. Sorry. I’m sure little Henry will get his GED soon, too. I just—I’m just so proud of Ilya.” Marie reached out to touch her boyfriend, but Ilya screeched his chair across the floor, away from the table, away from her. “I’m goin’ to bed,” he said. Miss Norma scowled. “You’re not gonna eat them tacos your daddy cooked?” “I’m not really hungry, Mom,” Ilya said, his voice low and soft, almost pleading. Marie could hear Ilya trudge up the stairs. She was stuck now at the table until dinner was over. Often Miss Norma would want to talk to Marie long after dinner was finished. It could be hours before she could go upstairs to join Ilya, who’d probably soon be asleep. “What’s up his ass?” Miss Norma wondered aloud. “Well maybe he wanted you to be proud of him, hon,” Mr. Henry said while he put plates on the table. Soon the taco fixings followed, and a bowl of greasy ground beef became the table’s centerpiece. Mr. Henry refilled Marie’s coke without asking. Miss Norma disinterestedly assembled a taco. “Well he shoulda just gotten his diploma in the first place. I didn’t ask him to get on that dope,” Miss Norma said. She shoved the taco in her mouth, and beef grease drizzled down her chin. Marie looked away. “I know, hon,” Mr. Henry said. He lingered in the kitchen, at the peripheral of the conversation. He didn’t want to be involved. Miss Norma turned to Marie and began talking even though she wasn’t finished chewing. “Yer problem is you always take his side. Anything I say ‘bout him you always jump to his side.” 59

“I just love him,” Marie said. She focused on piling fixings on her taco, so that she wouldn’t have to meet Miss Norma’s gaze. “I know you do, but you’s also gotta see my side. I’m his mama. And I didn’t ask him to get on no dope. I know he got his GED, but I gotta worry about little Henry, too. And see, the way little Henry look at it, he now feels like he’s less than.” “Little Henry is so sweet, though,” Marie lied. She crunched into her taco, which promptly fell apart onto her plate. Why were things always so messy? Miss Norma smiled from ear to ear, “I know. He’s just like a teddy bear. And you know, he always sits and talks with me. Ilya don’t talk with me.” Miss Norma’s greasy fingers touched Marie’s arm. Marie looked at her, startled. “If Ilya dies, you can marry little Henry, huh?” Miss Norma laughed. Marie laughed, feeling awkward. She said, “Oh you’re just saying that,” and slowly slid her arm back from the fiery worm’s touch. Miss Norma swished the remaining beef on her plate onto one of her bloated fingers and scooped it into her mouth. Marie thought of the maggots she had seen earlier. She imagined them in Miss Norma’s stomach, feasting first on the mushy taco dinner before they would get to her other organs. Miss Norma became more serious. “You will take care of little Henry after I die, though, won’t you’s?” Marie feigned sweetness, “Of course we will. Don’t talk like that, though, Miss Norma!” The two women shared a laugh. Mr. Henry receded into the back computer room, where he’d likely fall asleep on the guest bed, amongst the unfolded laundry, piles of which served as a communal makeshift closet. Marie put her plate away and faked a yawn, “I think I’m gonna go to bed. Thank you for dinner.” Miss Norma looked disappointed, and pulled out another cigarette. “Alright, hon, goodnight.” Marie left the matriarch on her fraying throne, and quietly walked upstairs. She looked behind her to make sure no one was walking up after her. The door to Ilya’s bedroom was shut, but Miss Norma and Mr. Henry’s room was glowing in the dim light of a rose-patterned table 60

lamp. Marie gingerly tiptoed into Miss Norma’s bedroom. Her heart skipped in her chest. The adrenaline felt good. A bag of chips lay uncurled atop the bed sheets, and a TV so old it had rabbit ears sat on a milk crate in the corner. Marie spotted the closet in the opposite corner of the bedroom. The closet door creaked as Marie opened it. She froze and looked back at the bedroom hallway. She didn’t hear anyone coming, so she continued to look through the row of Miss Norma’s clothes. Everything smelled of smoke. Marie quietly slid a green flowery dress off a cheap velveteen hanger. She balled up the dress and hurried over to Ilya’s bedroom. He was fast asleep in bed. The next morning, Ilya and Marie headed out of the house as soon as they could get past Miss Norma, who watched from her bedroom. She was lying in bed, the covers pulled up to her stomach, a droopy nightgown exposing half of one breast. “Hey where you’s goin’?” she called out. Mr. Henry continued to snore next to her. Ilya and Marie walked into the woods behind the house, down the hill, and near to the creek. The houses were out of sight. “I told you she was a bitch,” Ilya said. He sat down on a felled tree and put his head in his hands, staring into the past. She could see last night’s dinner conversation run across his face. “We can do something about it, you know,” Marie said. She flung her backpack on the ground and went over to her boyfriend. She straddled him on the tree trunk, and pressed her forehead against his. “God I love you,” she whispered. Ilya pressed back against her. He dropped his head to her shoulder. “I just wish I had a different mom,” he said. Marie stroked his hair, “I know.” Moments passed. Marie extricated herself from Ilya’s embrace and stood up. “So, look,” she said. She pulled out the green flowery dress from her backpack. “What is that? Is that my mom’s dress?” he asked. “Yep,” she said. Ilya laughed incredulously at her. Marie smiled, “I once had a friend, Misty.” Ilya laid back on the trunk, looking up at the sky. “Uh huh . . . ” 61

Marie laughed, “Just listen, will you!” Her giggles abated, and she walked over to Ilya. She sat beside him, the dress in her hands. “So I once had this friend, Misty, and she said something to me I didn’t like. So I waited, and then one day, I got this idea. I’d sit behind Misty on the school bus and put wax in her hair. I had all this wax from an art kit. I’d tell her, ‘Misty there’s something in your hair,’ and while I was pretending to get it out, I’d really put the wax in her hair, get it in real good, you know?” “You’re crazy, Marie,” Ilya said with admiration. “But I was scared, Ilya. I was scared of actually doing it. So I needed to practice. I had one of those doll heads with the hair, that you can practice doing hairstyles on. I took the wax and I just practiced messing up the hair in it. It gave me courage. There was no God who struck me down, and it gave me nerve, you know?” “So did you do it?” Ilya asked. “Oh yeah I did it. And she never knew it was me. She thought it was some other girl who had called her a hoe a few days back in gym class. She had to get her hair cut straight up to her ears. It looked awful. I’d made her real ugly.” “Wow,” Ilya said. He looked strange to Marie then. He was staring at her, squirming a little. She had never seen him look like that before. Was he afraid? Nervous? She couldn’t read him. “So with your mom, Ilya,” she began, holding up the green dress, “we just need to practice.” Marie pulled out a bottle of liquid from her backpack, and a pack of matches. She stood up and looped the dress over a low-hanging tree branch. Ilya sat up straight and watched his girlfriend. Marie splashed the lighter fluid onto the dress, and lit a match. She threw it at the hanging green fabric, and a fire caught on quickly. The flames jumped and popped. The green fabric melted off into black strips of straw. Marie looked at Ilya. He looked strange to her, so she tried to sound sweet, and did the thing she did with her voice—the high-pitched one she thought people found cute, “See, Ilya? It’s not hard.” 62

She walked over to her boyfriend, and sat down next to him. They watched the fire climb up the fabric. The flames licked the branch until it bent lower and lower, eventually falling. Ilya asked, “But what will happen to her? What will happen to us?” Marie shrugged, “We can always take a picture.”

Figure trying desperately to get out of an empty room BY IVAN DE MONBRISON

TWO POEMS BY TRICIA ASKLAR

How to Make Dreams Come Out of You Dear Son, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be cozened by mates who say when sleep comes dreams bullet out automatic, rapid-fire and dizzying. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want those billeted stories pumped from the surface with spasmodic fire engines ready to extinguish the memory. Plumb the powder casks in the deepest holds, patient as for cricket song or firefly. The bloodshot vision of the quick will miss the windlass. Comport yourself as a phantom and divide the reiterations of the self. Imagine a flurry of butterflies or a murmuration of starlings. Like a gentleman or a fishman, lower a net and winch it to your dream deck. Sort and arrange them like your twin makes beds. You will see one that looks invited. Not the one that demands you obey. When you see the pressed card that marks your calling, gather your body and sink down and let the quadrangle cover you.

Lesser Pole Star Sigma Octantis lies nearly mute closest to the very south of the Earth. Weak strains of light wobble, the great star purse of dustry patriotism, comma-dash to Polaris, guide star, fierce, bearing us out of the nightmarish mist of lost. Dear shipwrecked south star, think of yourself as unapproachable octopus whispering secret instructions, plot a chart with Antarctica up. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re no alpaca, no vacation resort. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll associate you with the raven crimping a fiery spark. Pulse of light years, ripe tomato, wood dog, cloth bottle, dim handle, red elephant, rock stop, faint and burning below us.

Four Failed Elegies for Alexander Hamilton BY ADAM TAVEL

I. little bastard genius America land of westward handshakes knee-jerk test-prep land of newborns shrieking tossed in ghetto dumpsters (where hark the gunfire blooms the city nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orgasm) my land reduced to stockpiles at least we grant your face more purchase power than the redhead rapist gracing the defunct $2 the only bill I horded in a Jif jar under my bed the summer I felt my skin begin to ______. II. vault-stalkers speculators assholes your tribe wrecked the skyline milkshakes even the taste & smell of rivers etcetera I wonder deep down didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you loathe the way they grinned & shook your hand limply speaking always to the crown of your scalp

III. your mother Rachel spreads her Nevis legs like dawn IV. & Burr despicable rowing through the dawn fog from Weehawken as his lead pinballs around your ribs rowing as he lisps the eight names of your children yes having seen them sprout in & out of waistcoats while Pendleton diminished to a hazy speck collects your gilded pistols (hastily cocooned in silk) & this finally the sum ledger: your guts leaking out beneath the massive limb blasted where you threw away your fire

No Compass, No Star BY BRANDON DAVIS JENNINGS My dusty boot heels crush the gravels surrounding this parched stump. I scratch a strike-anywhere match across my sand-worn chin. Phosphorous bursts, and the orange flame flutters. I hold the fired match to the gnarled roots. Heat scorches my fingertips, and the pad of my thumb blackens before the flame dies, before the roots have caught. And the match, a sickly ashen worm, crumbles before I can let it fall. Rust-gnawed tank tacks, chiasmatic fly swarms, cracked lizard jaws and whirlwinds mark what once was home to soldiers. Soldiers who smashed their compasses, the freed red needles lost in the night, buried by soldiersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; always-searching-palms beneath dunes that have always shifted. Here I gather dust-caked MREs, and dry-rotted wood, splintered and snapped from buildings vanished or, to lie, never here. All these things, for you, daughter, I will burn day and night, to warm and light our way: my hair: a matted-curl wick; my flesh: sore-pocked, blistered tallow â&#x20AC;&#x201D;If it ever comes to that.

Green plastic peels itself back, like a checkered skirt hiked up a sunburnt thigh. Except this orange light erases itself and the plastic it gnaws on, bit by bit, revealing the silty sand that it had cast a shadow over. The warmth of the fire is consumed by the heat that drowns the desert, the heat that presses down on my spine as I wander the desert night, lost because I can’t make up my mind about which stupid star is the right star for me to follow. Those dead lizards wonder what I’ll burn next. Their whiteness so brilliant that I’m blinded, and I believe for a moment that this is when I should stare at the sun to save my sight. But I tell you, out of love, that staring at the sun will never cure your blindness. I sit on the rough-hewn stump, and the crack of my knees replies to the crack of melting plastic. The pops are the cries of meals long gone and my hunger makes me queasy. I scoop handfuls of sand, let grains spill through splayed, dry-scaled fingers; and bounce off my camouflaged thighs. I swallow handful after handful, until a muddy sickness replaces the old. 70

You’re not here to witness this, daughter. You sway safely in the crook of your mother’s arms. Because I am always half here: stranded in a place that is not. But this is not, no matter what they tell you, a fool’s curse. Sand blows across my weakling fire. Grains hit me in each red and swollen eye, carom from my stubbled, wind-chapped cheeks, from my grimy forehead, sting my cracked and peeling nose. And as a dusk-born fly swarm ascends, a billion clear wings beating, buzzing up to black out the new moon, one speck of sand glides toward the flame, magnetic, a dulled electric spark. Its aim, I am sure, to extinguish what remains of my fire, that will soon have nothing left to burn. That will leave me on this stump: burning.

Conch

BY MEBANE ROBERTSON Fervent red the natives of the blood Turn another. The name jammed, passed Like a set of glood flatware Down the family line, through the squabbles Ending us, ending a good name. The cigarette stubbed, a blind man, A blue circus in a downpour. It all ends on schedule. Every little thing is where it belongs. This is what is called home, where we get. Where we get all things but never along. In the portrait you can’t see his glass eye— In the long hall of pictures, you can’t tell Who died violently, who by nature’s touch, And who by what variety of boredom.

Molly, Leslie, and Jen G. The morning after a sleepover in Mollyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room on Riverside Drive. (1985/86) 73

Leslie and Molly having something to eat at the Argo Diner on 90th Street and Broadway. (1985/86) 74

The Prospect of Montauk BY T.G. HARDY Goldie, my secretary, stands as I approach. She has her coat on, and I know she is eager to be off for her lunchtime workout. “You need to wolf down your sandwich, Ned. You have to be at the Yale Club by 1:30.” She looks pleased at my surprise; she loves to change my schedule. “It’s Julia. She’s arriving on the 1:25 from New Haven. She’s been up at her mother’s clearing things out and will spend the night with you before flying back.” She shoulders her gym bag. “Full instructions summarized on a three-by-five in your overcoat pocket. Bye.” Julia Flagg. Julia quit Yale after completing a year there and entered the Naval Academy the summer after 9/11. Now, seven years later, she’s an FA-18 pilot, just six days and a wake-up from her first deployment. Julia’s hero picture is on my credenza: a Navy-issue, black-and-white of her suited up, hoses everywhere, helmet under her arm, standing in front of her jet. I look at it as I eat my egg salad sandwich. Visitors notice the photo, of course, and ask my relationship to her. I say we’re like family, like favorite-uncle-to-favorite-niece. At first I ventured to add that we were pals when she was growing up, but this seemed to confuse the matter, so I quit with the footnotes. I study the other framed photo: one of the four of us maybe twelve years ago. Julia’s father, John, is on the left: a gangly, patrician George Plimpton look-alike, leaning on his cane, sick already but still cheerful. Julia’s mother, Eadie, looking radiant and every bit the leading lady, is sandwiched between John and me, arms tight around our waists. Then me, Ned Rubin, an aging beach boy in a Parrothead T-shirt, looking faintly confused. My friends in the firm get a kick out of this image, for I’m a mergers and acquisitions attorney—buttoned-up, clubby, Yale Law. Julia, then twelve or thirteen, stands in profile on my right, arms around 75

me, coltish, already inches taller than her mother, looking precocious. She’s a woman to reckon with now, self-assured in the way of a natural leader, quick-witted and popular with her cohort. But I haven’t been alone with her enough in recent years to know what else. About this, I am curious. & I exit the building onto Park Avenue and turn south, pleased to be outside, the wind at my back for the six blocks to where the avenue tunnels through the MetLife Building. Bracing late-October weather. Out at the tip of Long Island the surfing would be perfection. In high school I played hooky on Fridays like this, schlepping my surfboard out to Montauk on the train. At Grand Central I take up a perch on the West Balcony overlooking the Main Concourse. The display board has the New Haven arriving on the lower level. I came to know Julia and her parents as summer neighbors at Groton Long Point on the Connecticut shore. The Flaggs were among the few year-round residents. Eadie was the public face of the Mystic Seaport Museum, their head of fundraising. John taught at Yale–New Haven Hospital. Happily, over those dozen summers prior to Annapolis, Julia glommed onto me. I taught her to sail, and then to fly. I watched, alone and nervous, as she took off in my Piper Cub from a deserted grass airstrip on her first solo flight. I watch the ramp at the far end of the concourse. The last time I saw her—ten months ago, when she got her wings—she was in full dress uniform the whole time. Today she’ll be in civvies, and I don’t know what to expect. I don’t spot her, in fact, until she is past the four-sided clock. Her outfit is an odd mash-up of merchant sailor and rodeo cowgirl: black wool cap, pea coat, and too-long Wranglers over tasseled roper boots. She shoulders an elaborate desert camouflage backpack, the broad waist strap buckled over her coat. As she tops the stairs I step in front of her. First a hard look, then recognition. We embrace. “Ned! You were supposed to wait across the street. I wanted it to be like our old routine.” We hug. “This is hardly routine, Julia. It’s been a long time.” 76

“Indeed,” she says. She slurps my earlobe, puffs in my ear. I let go of her, and my briefcase as well, muttering an oath in Yiddish. She laughs. We have impeded traffic. An attractive well-dressed woman, my age, waits while I retrieve my briefcase. “Get a fucking room,” she says as she pushes by, leaving me blinking, but Julia takes me by the arm and turns me toward the Vanderbilt Avenue door. Clear of traffic, I pull her aside. “Stop with the pranks, Julia. Please.” “Sorry. Just that it’s fun to be impulsive again, playful, civilian. We’ll be adult now.” The Yale Club is just across the street. Inside, Julia goes straight to the bathroom, still bundled in her wool cap and pea coat and I wonder if she might be ill. I wait for her in the Main Lounge, a grand, high-ceilinged room that somehow manages to feel warm and intimate. I settle in our traditional grouping of armchairs and order drinks. The year she was at Yale, Julia would often accompany her mother on these Friday treks—after her fall rowing and until the spring collegiate season began—taking the same train as today, meeting here. Eadie, Julia’s mother, was my lover. She died of cancer fifteen months ago. Breast cancer, virulent, but in no hurry. Julia appears at the far end of the room carrying her coat and shaking her hair out with a flourish. Without her hat, I hardly recognize her; she’s let her hair grow since she got her wings. Though she’s my height, six feet, she’s always had a waif-style hairdo. This thick mane—like her mother’s—suits her better. She’s applied red lipstick, another look I’ve never seen. She has on a tight pale-green cotton sweater as well, one with vertical ribbing, a head-turner like her mother favored. Julia’s always been of the baggy, rumpled school of fashion. I am so thrown by Julia’s transformation that I fail to stand as she takes her seat. A young man in an adjacent grouping of chairs lowers his newspaper and has a good look at her. Horny bastard. I shudder, recalling the ear business. “Cheers,” Julia says, and raises her Manhattan in toast. I raise my glass and take a reluctant sip. I’ve lost my taste for this cocktail, her mother’s favorite. “How was it? Up at the house?” “I’ve decided not to sell it. I’m told the rent for the summer will net more than my annual salary. Shit-canned all the personal stuff. Except 77

for one box—framed pictures and albums, and her baby book, which I’d never seen. Lugged it up to the attic and sat there on the dirty floor with it, finishing off her Mount Gay Rum, just fiddling with what I’d kept. Ended up having a cry.” She rubs her hipbone. “Fell off the ladder coming down. Drunken sailor. Anyway Ned, how goes the lawyering?” “Managing now . . . amounts to herding cats. I’m not suited to it. I said as much, but had no choice in the matter.” “You lose a bet?” “No, the Old Man came in and quit one Monday. No warning. Chucked it all. Went to live with a female fishing guide he met in Montana. I didn’t want the job, which made me more attractive than the person who did.” Ten years ago, when Julia’s dad died, I would have quit the firm myself, bought a Jiffy-Lube franchise or something, just to live with her mom. But Eadie wouldn’t have it; she needed her space. Never budged from that stance. “So,” she says, “couldn’t you just step down and go back to what you were before?” “No. I’d have to push my replacement aside. I have no stomach for that.” I perk up. “Sometimes, Julia, on Friday nights, with enough wine, I imagine myself repotted as Jimmy Buffett on a permanent Bain de Soleil vacation, sailing the Caribbean, flying my vintage seaplane into beautiful harbors, dancing the samba with women in Brazilian outfits.” “You have the cash for it?” “Couple of years. Four maybe. You? Will it be Admiral Flagg? “Maybe. We’ll see how I deal with the loneliness at sea. Right now, you buddy up with the opposite sex and the fraternization police create a file. The guys, especially, are spooked.” “What would you do, Julia, if you got out?” “Sell Long Point, cash the stocks, pitch a partnership with you in Margaritaville.” “I wouldn’t count on me. More likely I would buy a surf shop in Montauk. Jello Jones called the other day. Wants to sell.” “Well, that’s not quite as appealing.” She stretches her legs. “Squash. Stand by to get your ass waxed tomorrow.” “Wax my ass? You’ll win, eventually. I’m twice your age.” “Not after this year. Not from then on . . . less than twice, every year 78

more so.” I look at Goldie’s three-by-five card. Saturday: Court at 10:00. Rubs after. & In the car, Julia stares out the window for the first several blocks, then says: “Why did Goldie say you wouldn’t want to go with me to Ground Zero, but would, for me?” “Old Jewish sayiny—‘Why untie a sack full of snakes?’” “Because you haven’t killed them off?” “Maybe I’m a pacifist.” “Maybe you’re a pussy,” she says, and the driver chuckles. “Look, I can understand it being important for you—motivational. For me, I see no value.” “It is important to me, and that you’re along. Think about it. I had to fill out that next-of-kin form last week. Guess who?” “Oh,” I say, all I can manage. She stares at me, her face a question, but then turns to look out the window, thinking better of some impulse. Still looking out the window, she says: “How are you doing about Eadie?” She has always referred to her parents by their given names. “You clear of her?” “Mostly.” I loosen my tie and unbutton my collar. “Hard to get clear of those last months.” “I don’t think there are many men that would have dropped everything for six months, nursed her like that.” “I’ve heard of it.” “Much older couples. Movies.” “Yeah, well.” “My last emergency leave, watching you with her.” She tears up. “I fell in love with you.” More than a bit dramatic, this, coming from Julia. And crying always throws me, and I’ve never seen Julia cry—she didn’t at the funeral—so I struggle to make sense of this, and decide it’s maybe about mortality and the next-of-kin bit. I search for words. “Well, I’m blessed then.” “You are,” she says, and after a beat or two her face brightens. & The driver drops us quayside in front of the American Express 79

Building. We walk the extent of the marina. I walked here at lunch when Morgan Stanley was my client responsibility. Back then they were over in the North Tower. I love the briny sea air, fresher today on the wintery wind, but still carrying traces of diesel ferry exhaust, creosote and garbage. It reminds me of riding liberty boats to and from the carrier—Barcelona, Naples, Piraeus. What a cakewalk I had: a navy scholarship to Wisconsin, a party school; then two peace-time deployments to the Mediterranean. Julia will be shot at. “Smells of liberty call,” I say. “Yes.” She squints at the sky above the World Financial Center complex. “Were the Towers visible from here?” “They were. Crane-your-neck high. Looming.” She stares at the sky for a long minute, her jaw working, then takes a picture with her phone. & At the Memorial Preview Site, we stand at the windows in the viewing room and stare at Ground Zero, the vast bombed-out ruin of it, now littered with construction equipment and material. I lead her to the scale model and renderings of what the Memorial will look like when it’s finished. Julia wants to review the pictures and videos of the crashes and collapses. I tell her to take her time. I’ll wait inside St. Paul’s Chapel, next door. Out on the street, the noise and dust and diesel fumes, and the stalag look of the concertina-topped fence combine to make me feel faint. I sit on the filthy steps with my briefcase on my lap. I picture my former assistant, pregnant and planning to relocate with her husband out of the city to New Jersey. I arranged for Morgan Stanley to hire her. It would ease her future commute: there was a Port Authority terminal right at the Trade Center, a direct train in from Newark. “You didn’t make it to St. Paul’s.” Julia’s voice. I reach for her hand and lever myself to my feet. She wipes away tears with the cuff of her coat. I nod in the direction of the chapel. “Want to see it?” She looks over at all the makeshift memorials surrounding it. “No,” she says, “I’ve seen enough.” She braces up like a hawk, her eyes hard. I see the warrior in her, palpable, unmistakable. I find this reassuring. 80

She hooks my arm and leans in. I lead her away, feeling loved. A pinch-me feeling, and it lingers as we walk down Church Street, six or seven blocks in silence, the wind buffeting us at the cross streets. As we approach Trinity Church, I suggest we stop there to warm up. We kneel in a rear pew and I drop my eyes momentarily, then stare blankly down the long narrow canyon toward the altar. I feel Julia’s gaze and turn to it. She says, “Were you praying?” She knows I’m not observant. “In my own way.” “What for?” “That no harm comes to you.” “That I not auger in, buy the farm?” I’m surprised they still use those terms. “That you not get groped some night on the hangar deck, that you’re not shot down and taken prisoner.” She is silent, expressionless. “And what would you wish for, Julia?” “More that I don’t screw the pooch . . . that I perform well, that my squadron mates come to think of me as having the right stuff. Not, you know, as pretty-good-for-a-woman.” “Amen.” I cross myself and rise and she laughs at this. Outside, I point down Broadway to the Battery: “The Canyon of Heroes . . . ticker tape parades.” She takes it in. “The old newsreels,” she says. “Cool.” & On the crowded subway, a man my age looks at Julia’s backpack and offers her his seat. She nods and he gives her a salute. I stand in front of her, straddling her pack. She isolates herself with her iPhone, a perfectly natural thing to do on New York public transportation, but the connection I’d felt with her is gone, and I feel an age gap I hadn’t earlier. I glance at my reflection in the window. The age is there, the grey, the squint-lines. Gravitas, I decide finally, it suits me. My morale improves. I think of our destination, the restaurant Syrah. One night, maybe fifteen years ago, we came in as a threesome for the first time -- Eadie, John and I. Before that it had been just Eadie and I. She introduced John as her husband, to which Manny, the owner, must have shown a flicker of awkwardness, and John, the psychoanalyst, picked up on it, and, as 81

always, was eager to expound on our unconventional relationship. He launched into his spiel: “Relax my man, I’m thirty years the senior of this luscious woman and in need of a succession plan. So we’re sharing her until I check out, and Ned here—a fine man, as I’m sure you agree—has a chance to get up to speed.” I step aside to let a passenger with a stroller exit. Julia grabs my arm. “Ned! Don’t we change at Grand Central?” We scramble for the doors and they shut on her backpack but reopen to a recorded message about blocking the doorways. Julia aggressively opens zippers to check for damage. There doesn’t seem to be any, but she glares at me. “What the hell?” “My mind wandered. With you gone millennial, checking Facebook or whatever.” I feel hurt by her tone, but I try to look angry. “I was sending a request to extend my leave a day. Imagine that, wanting to linger with your sorry ass.” She has more fighter instinct than I ever did. Certainly more swagger. A train approaches: the Six. “This is ours.” Seated, I say: “We get off at Seventy-seventh, in case you’re through talking to my sorry ass.” She gives me a narrow look, turns away and is silent. I remember being stressed before deployments, thinking about night catapult shots and arrested landings. But I know better than to ask. Carrier pilots don’t talk about the fear. It’s there, unavoidable. You handle it. I break the silence. “I was just remembering you up in Long Point. You were maybe seven. Dinner outside. Long teak table, Citronella candles. Some colleague of your dad was holding forth about the uprising in Poland, where he’d just done a lecture tour. You were bored I’m sure, the only kid. Suddenly you were on your feet, standing on your chair, tinkling my wine glass with a spoon. When you had everyone’s attention, you cleared your throat and said: ‘Ned here,’ nodding at me, ‘wants me to call him Uncle Ned. Anything I want, actually. Well, he’s not my uncle, he’s my best friend Ned, and he will be for the rest of my whole life. Right, Ned?’ Then you downed a big gulp of Sancerre.” “I don’t remember this.” “Your father stood and raised his glass in toast and said: ‘To Julia, and to Ned, and to friendship.’ Then you curled up in my lap and fell asleep 82

in my arms.” “Adorable,” she says. “In Eadie’s things I found a handful of cufflinks, none with a mate. John didn’t wear them. They have to be yours. I assume you were her only lover.” “This is our stop.” We come up from the subway to darkness and damp cold. At First Avenue, we huddle close, waiting for the walk signal. “The cufflinks,” she says. “The Grumman Mach II pin is obviously yours. You get pinned, Ned, like a frat boy in heat?” “She stole things like a packrat. She’d hide the item in a sock, my briefcase or toiletries kit. I would put it somewhere where it would surprise her back, make her smile and miss me.” “You have the mates to the cufflinks?” “Tossed them after she died. Tossed everything. Figured it would help with the letting go.” “The cufflinks are like us, Ned—only children, and mateless.” She laughs. “Mateless in Manhattan.” The tiny restaurant is always cozy and welcoming, but in the winter even more so. One wall of the restaurant has a bench running the length of it and the narrow tables-for-two are arranged close together. My usual spot is in the center, on the bench, facing the room. I offer it to Julia, but she prefers the chair. The hostess sets three smallish glasses of red wine in front of each of us, on paper coasters with the name of the wine. “Three Shirazes from South Australia. Enjoy.” We raise the left-most glass in toast, but neither of us slurps, sniffs, squints and all that; we just gulp it down. “Whew,” Julia says. “That’s good.” The Romanian owners, Natalia and Manny, approach our table and we stand to embrace. Manny says to Julia, “What a babe you’ve become, leftenant.” “Sub-leftenant, Manny.” She taps her sleeve. “One and one-half stripes. Junior grade.” They leave us and we sit again and Julia takes my hand. “A babe. That’s totally throwback . . . Casablanca or something.” She beams. “Oh, Ned, it’s just so good to be here.” “Ditto.” I raise my glass. “May the skin of your ass never cover the 83

head of a banjo.” This is an old RAF toast. She knows that; I used it at the Officer’s Club bar after she got her wings. She smiles. “Remember when you flew all the way to snake-bit South Texas to pin on my wings? You pinned them about three inches above where they belonged. My classmates thought you were hilarious, afraid you’d cop an accidental feel. They couldn’t believe a man with such shaky hands had bagged three-hundred carrier landings.” “That’s unfair. Those kids wouldn’t know gravitas if it bit them on the ass.” Manny asks which Shiraz we like best. I look to Julia and she shrugs. I read the slip of paper under the third one. “The Eileen Hardy, 2004.” The last-tasted is always the strongest. “Bună. Please to accept a bottle from a place of gratitude. Without freedom, a person has nothing.” He whisks away. We are silent for a moment. “You’re hyperventilating, Ned.” “Spooks me a bit. How much you look like your mother.” “It’s the sweater. She wore this kind a lot when you were around.” “More to it than that,” I say. Still, I think of Eadie sitting close to me on the sofa, back before Nora left me. We were watching a Patriots preseason game at Groton Long Point, and she wiggled closer to nestle under my arm, then made a bit of a project of brushing Dorito crumbs off her breasts, and her nipples showed through her sweater, and—whoosh!—I got an air-bag erection. She watched this and the spot of seepage soaking through my chinos. Just at that moment Nora called from the kitchen asking for my help. I was trapped, but Eadie rushed to Nora’s side. I was able to scurry off to change trousers. It all started with that sweater. Manny uncorks our bottle and recommends the lamb chops and garlic mashed potatoes on a bed of spinach. We order that. “Eadie’s memorial service,” she says. “I never told you this. The boys didn’t want you to have a role, but Eadie specified in writing that you not only speak, but preside.” The boys were Julia’s half-brothers, older, and beholden to their own mother’s money. They hated Eadie, but she waved that off. She continues. “I had to threaten to involve her lawyer. They thought your mere presence was disrespectful to their father.” 84

“John had been gone for ten years.” “Well, yeah, but they thought you’d been boinking—their word— for years before that, and that the triangle of friendship stuff was a smokescreen that John was complicit in because he was too pussy to call you out.” I laugh. “And what did you think?” “I was uncertain when it started. Didn’t think it mattered. We were all friends. The boys were just tight-asses like their mother.” She takes a sip of her wine. “When did it start?” “I thought it didn’t matter.” “Probably not, but I’m curious now.” “Way back. Even before Nora left.” Nora, my former wife, was a lipstick model when we married, a Revlon regular. In due course she broke into television spots, with shoots everywhere from Tokyo to Tahiti. I’m essentially a nester. Nobody was surprised when we split up. “Something you should know. It was actually John’s idea.” “What was?” “Your mother went to him one day and said that she’d seduced me, and that I was spooked about it and intended to come clean with him, and that she’d probably lost both of us. He told her that he wasn’t surprised, nor displeased, and proposed that she have it both ways. He wrote me a letter proposing this arrangement, reiterating his professional opinion that Nora and I were a no-hoper. He even suggested that Eadie and I start out with romantic getaways, though he wouldn’t object to trysts nearby—he just didn’t think the latter would work for me. He was an extraordinary man. I showed the letter to Eadie.” No surprise or wonder from Julia, just a smile and a faint nod. “I know,” she says after a long pause, “Eadie saved the letter. I read it.” “So those trips,” she says, “the three of you.” “On our third vacation together, your mother and I went to a tiny fishing village on the Italian Riviera. We’d only been there a day, and we were watching the sunset after dinner and finishing the Chianti, feeling good about life. And I told Eadie I wished John was with us and she said that he’d come if we invited him. So we drove our Vespa to the telephone exchange in town, called and invited him. Two nights later the three of us sat together, staring into a wood fire, listening to the tremolo of a 85

mandolin somewhere upwind.” “The sleeping arrangements on these vacations . . . a menage?” “No. John went to bed early and rose early. She went to bed with me and woke up with him. He took an afternoon nap. We did not.” “Whew,” she says. “This could be a movie.” The woman at the table next to us, the one facing me, coughs, catches my eye and arches her eyebrows. I give voice to her expression. “No shit.” Julia turns pensive. “You had it made, Ned, seems to me.” I take a minute. I sense our table neighbors leaning in now. “No,” I say finally. “When I was with her, or with the two of them, I was fine—in the moment, as they say. Alone, here in my apartment, I’d get pretty squirrely. I didn’t trust that John was totally at peace with the arrangement. I couldn’t have borne a cuckolding, let alone broadcast it. And I resented that he got to nest with her. And after John passed away, when she decided to live alone . . . that stung.” “Maybe she wanted to hold on to the excitement of having a visitor.” “Not very comforting, that. Like I wouldn’t generate sufficient excitement otherwise.” Julia takes my hand, squeezes it and holds on tight. “I doubt that very much, Ned.” I’m too embarrassed to look at her right away, but when I do there is something like admiration in her eyes, not pity. “But I think you make too much, Ned, of the marriage stuff.” “It’s not that. It’s the sharing, the commingling of laundry, getting into a tender sort of day-to-day dance with one another. I wouldn’t have hovered, or crowded her. She knew that.” We are silent for some time. She still has my hand in hers. “Did Eadie like to sleep touching, snuggling?” I pull my hand away. “Holy snikey, Julia. This is getting weird.” “Work with me, Ned. I’m curious about the private details—to what extent I’m wired like Eadie. I see it as a way of completing my connection with her, clearing the decks, if you will.” “She did like to cuddle, but she couldn’t sleep that way.” We order Manny’s signature malted milk ball ice cream. “Julia, there are zero surprises in all this. We were true to our 86

personalities. John too. You can fill in the dots yourself. Your mother came and went at her whim—like a cat.” We eat Manny’s ice cream in silence, giving it the reverence it deserves. Finally she says, “Okay, Ned, you’re a Golden Retriever. But what am I?” “I’m still in discovery phase on that. Dunno. Maybe a fawn crossed with a Hummer.” “Ha. I confuse myself, actually. Maybe I’m still a work in progress. In the context of co-sleeping, I’m a fawn.” & We drink tawny port in my living room, not talking much, staring at the candle in the hurricane globe and at maritime traffic on the narrow East River. She has on her bulky Navy Crew warm-ups, and I’m grateful, for the memory of the sweater lingers. A coastal tanker comes racing by, riding the outgoing tide south. The ship’s bridge is at our eye level and no more than seventy yards away from us. We can see the pilot sip from his coffee mug in the red light of the wheelhouse. We are silent, and she seems comfortable with that. I am in a state of well-being that I haven’t felt for several years. Not sober anyway. Julia’s eyes are closed now, her head swaying to the bossa nova on the stereo. I catch myself nodding off. When the song ends, I kiss her cheek and say good night. & I wake with the dawn. I fell asleep easily and slept soundly, drained, I guess, from all the drama. And it seemed like I was always at least a step behind, and offbalance. I’ll need to do better at squash today. Seeing the sun light up the side of the apartment opposite, I recall the first time I saw Eadie: I was sitting on the side of my bed up in Long Point, blinking at the early summer sun, stretching my arms overhead. On the porch next door was a woman deadheading geraniums in a flannel nightgown, down vest, feet stuck into LL Bean boots. Beside her, a girl, similarly dressed, gathering the trimmings and dropping them in a bucket. Remembrances of a healthy Eadie. And a full night’s sleep. Good, all 87

this, promising. While the coffee steeps in the French press, I soap up in the shower, singing Jimmy Buffett, forgetting that I have a guest. I’m starting through “No Plane on Sunday” a second time, when I hear the click of the shower door and feel her breasts swing against my back and she’s got ahold of me. Then somehow I’m against her back and my soapy hands are full and she’s fluttering, touching herself. Who knows how long, until I feel her body tense up, and that sets me off. And then we bend at the waist, catching our breath like middle distance runners just past the finish line. Finally she straightens up, turns and steps back and once she sees I’ve had a good look, her arms are around me and she says: “Kiss me Ned, light, back and forth, like you were—” Some instinct makes me resist. I’m not sure where it’s is coming from, but I wonder at the power of it. “No,” I say. “This is a good place to stop.” I hold her tight, avoiding any friction that might get me going again. “Let’s stop.” She stiffens. “Oh boy. I was afraid this would happen.” “I would be sleeping with your mother. To some extent or other, still. Not fair to you.” This is all I can come up with, though there is truth to it. “Fucking men.” She frees herself and steps out of the shower, grabbing a towel. “Always the star of their own movie.” She pulls on her warm-up suit and turbans a towel over her hair. “I am not my mother.” She isn’t, of course, but I don’t want to get drawn into that. I take her hand and squeeze it, but she doesn’t squeeze back, and I’m suddenly afraid of a messy—and maybe final—farewell. My resolve weakened—after all, she’s an adult, and she ambushed me—but she decides for me: she goes to her room without a word. I dress in a daze. Her door is closed and I knock. “Come in.” A whisper. She is sitting up in bed, the duvet over her legs, her hair wild and still damp. She has been crying. “I’ve screwed the pooch, haven’t I?” I’m surprised at the vulnerability. “Not as far as I’m concerned, Julia.” “Well, to borrow from your song, we can’t go back to just being friends.” 88

“No. Friends-plus. Something, whatever . . . something just fine, as far as I’m concerned.” “A work in progress.” “Yes,” I say. “No use worrying about it.” She bites her lip. “I wanted more than sex. I wanted to wake up in your arms. Something quaint and conventional.” “For me, it was wonder enough to have a look at you—an image to squirrel away.” “Well, maybe I won’t make you so nervous now.” “One can only hope.” She rearranges the duvet so we are both under it. I search for other ways to soften the rejection. “Actually, Julia, for what it’s worth, by that final summer before Yale, I didn’t trust myself alone with you.” “And now, minutes after soaping the twins, you trust yourself?” “Yes. But, as you say, work with me here.” She holds my gaze for several beats. “Then let’s nap. It can be our rapprochement.” We slide down under the duvet. She rolls me away and spoons my back. I feel a stirring but force my mind elsewhere. I do the Greek alphabet several times through, and then somehow I’m out at Montauk Point, straddling my surfboard, slow dancing with the swell, watching the horizon for the next set. I remember the animal pleasure of pissing in my wetsuit, feeling the warmth spread. I chuckle at the memory. “What?” Julia says, a whisper. “Time to get out to my cottage in Montauk. Surf.” “Umm. What color are my eyes?” “Brown. Flecked with blue.” “You surprise me, Ned. And it’s cool, I guess, you pushing back.” “Yes?” “I’m thinking R&R in Montauk next fall, learning to surf.” “Piece of cake.” “Promise me, Ned, you’ll get back on the water. And dating again.” “Sure,” I say, feeling at peace, finally, about the two of us. I yawn, and I feel her do the same. She nestles closer. “But don’t go squandering my inheritance,” she says. “Save part of 89

yourself for me.” “Mummph,” I say, though I’m alert again. I slow my breathing, feigning sleep, and wait. But she’s done; said her piece. Her breathing becomes audible, husky. I settle easily into matching her rhythm. & The phone snaps me awake: the squash pro. On the side table: my Mach II pin stuck in a tangerine.

Rolling DNA Dice at the Adoption Sock Hop BY DANIEL MOORE How I got here at all, after no invitation and no directions, after one long night of Can’t Stop the blood as the DNA dice on the rearview mirror of mamma’s Alabama ’57 Chevy, danced to a violent pot hole beat over 17 years of hot tar skin, making her more black than Methodist white, making me grayer than a storm over Selma, the last southern lightning this boy’s eyes would see. The fact she was there at all, with me in the center, her hungry little crow, pecking the future off the faded yellow line where the engine of creation met the craving of collision with the world

bearing down on us both.

chase scene BY RYAN ECKES whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wiseblood? all the cleverness, all the being-outside-of. wawa goose flies thru it and the vulture brains fall away. i am a person of septa, laugh at me. everybody knows captain moneybags was hired to dj the conversation, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fine: half-assed foreplay and the great depression. knife on the roof, been there seven years. blood to rust. so what should the maximum wage be? cockroach the size of an alligator just slid under my radiator.

Leslie, Jen G., and Molly. During a walk through Riverside Park the girls pause to gaze at the clear sky by Soldiers Monument. (1985/86) 93

Blake on her wedding day at her fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house in upstate New York. (1995) 94

Leslie, Blake, and Jen G. catch up with each other in Blakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s living room on West End Avenue apartment. (2001) 95

Jen visits Blake at her new house in the New Jersey suburb of Maplewood. Blake recently gave birth to her second child, Griffin, and Jen is pregnant with her first child, Jamin. (2002) 96

On the Passage Home BY CAROL SMALLWOOD

from the oncologist, shadows of birds became flying reptiles A TV tower held by guide wires, a captured Gulliver

Cluster

BY THOMAS GILLASPY

Contributors Tricia Asklar earned her MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Stonehill College. Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, The Bakery, Cold Mountain Review, juked, Neon, Poet Lore, The Portland Review, Redactions, Red Wheelbarrow, SIDEkick Lit, Sinister Wisdom, So to Speak, Tupelo Quarterly, and Verse Daily, among other publications. Her sestina â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Series of Photos of Legsâ&#x20AC;? was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Asklar lives with her wife and three children near Boston. Alissa Chanin is a painter, poet, and Modernist literature scholar who began her practice in the dense forests and deserted streets of the Hudson Valley. Her performances, which include readings and dance constructions, stem from object-oriented prompts and language play. She lives and makes work in Chicago, Illinois. Len Church, a native of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is living in the shadows of the Ivy League. On any given day, you can find Len riding the Acela Express train between Providence, Rhode Island and Penn Station living the American dream. A chance encounter with a Nuclear Physicist recently changed the trajectory of his life and now he writes poetry. Clayton Adam Clark lives in Saint Louis, his hometown, where he works for Health Literacy Missouri, a nonprofit that helps healthcare organizations simplify their communications so more people can receive good care. He also volunteers as an editor and board member for River Styx magazine. He earned an MFA in poetry at the Ohio State University and is currently seeking publication for his first full-length collection. Some of his poems are forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere. Ivan de Monbrison is French poet, writer, and artist who lives in Paris. His poems or short stories have appeared in several literary magazines 99

in France, Italy, Belgium, The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, and the United States. Five poetry chapbooks of his work have been published. His first illustrated poem-novel Les Maldormants was published in 2014 in France. Its sequel Le déni will be available soon. Ryan Eckes lives in South Philadelphia. He’s the author of ValuPlus (Furniture Press, 2014) and Old News (Furniture Press, 2011). Recent poetry can be read in The Brooklyn Rail, Sugar Mule, Tripwire and elsewhere. He has been teaching reading and writing at Temple University and other colleges for ten years. He is pro-union. Laura Falsetti is a dentist who lives and works in western Washington, where she enjoys hiking, boating, and taking in the gorgeous scenery. She is thrilled to see “Raynaud’s,” her first literary publication, appear in The William & Mary Review. Brad Garber has shown his drawing and paintings since 1997 in the Portland and Lake Oswego, Oregon area. His photographs have appeared on the front cover of the 2014 Vine Leaves Anthology and in magazines including Gravel Magazine, Cargo Literary, The Grief Diaries, The Tishman Review, and Foliate Oak. Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals Compose, DMQ Review, and Citron Review. More information and examples of his work are available at www.thomasgillaspy.com and flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/. T.G. Hardy spent what he considers his formative years in Rio de Janeiro. He has been a greenskeeper, sorority busboy, naval aviator, businessman, and corporate headhunter. In 2006 he quit Manhattan for good and moved to Colorado, where he devoted himself to learning the craft of writing literary fiction at Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the Boulder Writing Studio. His short stories have been published by SpringGun Press, The Faircloth Review, O-Dark-Thirty, and Open Window Review. 100

Matt Hart is the author of several books of poems, including Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), Debacle Debacle (H_NGM_N Books, 2013), and Radiant Action (forthcoming, H_NGM_N Books, 2016). A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL. Brandon Davis Jennings is an Iraq War veteran. He earned his PhD in fiction from Western Michigan University. His work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, Black Warrior Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Monkeybicycle, Curbside Splendor, Blackheart Magazine, R.KV.R.Y, Passages North, Ninth Letter, TriQuarterly, Lake Effect, and The Baltimore Review. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and has won the Thomas J. Hrushka Memorial Contest in Nonfiction and the Iron Horse Literary Review’s Single Author Chapbook Competition. He lives with his pregnant wife and two dogs in South Bend, Indiana. Samantha Kolesnik is a writer living near Philadelphia. She is the editor-in-chief of Five on the Fifth, an online literary magazine. Her short screenplay, “The Price of Bones,” is being produced by Hollow Tree Films and was a finalist at Shriekfest Film Festival in Los Angeles. Rose Red Review recently published her short story “Christmas Morning.” Jeffrey H. MacLachlan has recent or forthcoming work in New Ohio Review, Eleven Eleven, and Santa Clara Review, among others. He teaches literature at Georgia College & State University and can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack. Karen Marshall is on the faculty at The International Center of Photography in New York City, where she is a core seminar teacher in the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism One-Year Program. During her tenure there she curated two shows at ICP’s Rita K. Hillman Gallery of Education. She teaches photography workshops internationally and is a freelance photographer and visual storytelling consultant in New York City. Her website is karenmarshallphoto.com. 101

Kevin McIntosh’s short stories have appeared in the American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Chicago Tribune Printers Row Journal, Potomac Review, and elsewhere. He has been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation and Blue Mountain Center and was nominated by Andrea Barrett at Bread Loaf for Best New American Voices. During the past twenty years, he has taught writing in public schools in New York City, Oakland, and Greater Boston. Daniel Moore’s work has been published in journals including The American Literary Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Flint Hills Review, Coe Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Artificat Nouveau and others. He has poems forthcoming in Dewpoint, Atticus Review, Wayne Literary Review, Katterskill Basin Literary Journal, Prairie Winds Literary Journal, Mandala Journal, Riding Light, and Badlands Literary Journal. He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island where he is working on his first book, Waxing The Dents. Mebane Robertson grew up in Richmond, Virginia and graduated from The College of William and Mary. He moved to work at a bookstore in New Orleans before relocating to Brooklyn, New York where he earned his PhD in English at Fordham University. Currently, he writes poems, fiction, and songs. His work has appeared in The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Guernica, and other venues. He is the author of An American Unconscious (2016) and Signal from Draco (2007). Carol Smallwood’s most recent books include Divining the Prime Meridian (WordTech Communications, 2015), Women, Work, and the Web (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), Writing After Retirement (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and Water, Earth, Air, Fire, and Picket Fences (Lamar University Press, 2014). Carol founded and supports humane societies. Sparrow is a self-taught visual artist, pianist, and chef—but has a masters degree in “creative writing.” He lives with his wife Violet Snow in Phoenicia, New York. How to Survive the Coming Collapse of Civilization has just been released by The Operating System. 102

Louis Staeble lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in Agave, Blinders Journal, Blue Hour, Digital Papercut, Driftwood, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Inklette Magazine, Microfiction Monday, Qwerty, Revolution John, Rose Red Review, Sonder Review, Timber Journal, and Your Impossible Voice, among others. His web pages can be viewed at staeblestudioa.weebly.com and lstaebl.wix.com/closeup. Adam Tavel won the Permafrost Book Prize for Plash & Levitation (University of Alaska Press, 2015). He is also the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming) and the chapbook Red Flag Up (Kattywompus, 2013). Tavel won the 2010 Robert Frost Award and his recent poems appear or will soon appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Gettysburg Review, Sycamore Review, Passages North, The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and American Literary Review, among others. He can be found online at adamtavel.com. Linda Taylor has published over 95 poems in The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Black Warrior Review, The Ohio Review, The Georgia Review, Tar River Poetry, Permafrost, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest and other journals. Her work in the Indiana Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2008 and 2012 her book manuscript was a semi-finalist in the University of Wisconsin Press poetry first book competition, and a finalist in the White Pine Press first book competition. She teaches literature and creative writing at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. She has traveled to Tanzania to research the landscape, life, and work of archaeologist Mary Leakey, in order to write about her. Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 600 national and international online and print journals. His poetry appears in The Oklahoma Review, Review Americana: A Creative Writing Journal, and The Copperfield Review, among others. His visual artwork has appeared in journals such as The Columbia Review, The GW Review, and Fiction Fix. Dr. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University, a self-taught pianist, editor, poet, singer, composer, social scientist, private tutor, and a self-taught painter. His poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology. 103

Pinochle BY SPARROW When I play pinochle, the whole world plays pinochle. When I win, the whole world loses.