Frostwriting

Chris Wiewiora

by

Brigita Orel

by

Erica Dessenberger

by

Rebecca Kinzie Bastian

by

John Lowry

by

Russell Evatt

by

Zoe Smith

by

Philip Arnold

by

M.J. Nicholls

by

Amanda Skjeveland

by

Joel Wool

by

The Price of Humidity

by Marc Vincenz

We’ve hit stone and the front right is flapping: a real live plucked chicken.
Yet, apparently unfazed, he still drives on; strangely, he leans to the left,
as if his scrawny body weight might balance the load.

The five of them, piled in behind, jumbles of sweaters, and musty tweed
and ties that lie like stethoscopes, banded eels, liquorish twizzlers, entrails,
and I daren’t say, even one like a hangman’s noose.

Now we’re stopped again, not from the flap of rubber, but there’s a fight,
right in the middle of the road.  Cars, trucks, motorbikes, jumbles of produce
perched, ready to spill; still, they weave their way round, sputters,

throw a glance, toss an occasional butt, gravel, carbon monoxide gust,
grumble, hoot, but the scrap ensues; fisticuffs.  One has a swinging Shaolin kick.
Ooo—crack straight to the jaw.  Backseat basket crowd of five applauds.

A gold tooth clinks along the fender rail.  Anyway, there’s nowhere to go.
The fat one has the thin one pinned, flat foot of sole grinding, oozing rust. 
Evening scrapes in, and headlights pop on in relay.  Eyes glint.

Behind me they’re calling bets: five to one on the Skinny, three to one
on Humpty, fresh notes are crackling, and there’s nowhere to go;
full school bus straight ahead, passes, wheedling the barrier, taxi left.

Skinny spins to hands, flips back, kick straight to the nose. Humpty stumbles,
two hands cupped like an avian flu mask, cracks, swings forth in chops.
Skinny steps on his shoe.  Humpty reels, hops on one toe.

Again, the crowd applauds.  Someone’s raised the odds on Skinny,
paper changes hands.  Guy with a tie like a noose, screams from the window:
Onward Shaolin Master!  Strike him down now!  Squash him like a frog!

But the thin man, bends over, coughs three days of cigarettes, hacks,
then somehow catches his thick air in short bursts, stands, walks calmly.
Steps into his taxi and rumbles off.  Great boo and sigh behind:

Money goes back to where it started, full circle.  Humpty too is vanished,
and soon, rumble of asphalt resumes, and we bump on, chuffing, slopping,
cropping onward until we’re blue.

Marc Vincenz

by

Khristian Mecom

by

Free Swedish Haiku VI.

by Daniel Gahnertz

digging up my cat
to bury her
deeper…

(Originally published in Fri Haiku)

taking photos
of tourists
taking photos
 

after his stroke
the old drunkard
only old

Last snow
in the spring dusk . . .
roe deer’s tail

Daniel Gahnertz

by

The Art of Respiration

by Carolyn Scarbrough

When the call came the car was on empty,
I was late, stopping for gas and
no one in front of me moving fast
enough.  The cashier looked at
my scrubs, my badge as I shoved
money toward her, trying to hurry and
go. She said, my boyfriend died, died
right in front of me and I told him
I loved him. Do you think he heard?
Yes, I said, and slowed down, told her
what I know and
it was a little like breathing,
me giving her this true thing and she needing it,
taking it in like air.

Buff Whitman-Bradley

by

The Shirt

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

I’m wearing one of your shirts Bill
The yellow and blue-green short-sleeved one
Perfect for a warm summer day like today
I suppose the dead don’t care about such things
Still I thought you might like to know

The day after you died Jane asked us
To come back to your place and help her
Sort through your belongings
To toss out what was useless
And take whatever we wanted

Besides this shirt we got your toaster and
Your clothes dryer and Jane gave me your watch
The appliances do their work without complaint
And the watch is a work of art
But it is the shirt I like the best

Some of our fellow humans will be inclined
To make a big deal out of this
To go on about how the cotton fibers are
Suffused with your sweet and generous spirit
To swear that you live on in your shirt

That kind of talk made you grind your teeth
While you were alive and probably would
Even now when you’re dead but don’t worry
I’m not about to rile your materialist bones
With sentimental jabber about the soul

What I like about the shirt are the glimpses
Of you that come as I am buttoning up
And the way people who see me walking
Down the street turn and say who is
That handsome man in that wonderful shirt

Cynthia Reeser

by

Peter Weltner

by

Free Swedish Haiku V.

by Lars Granström

The old lady
wipes her window
I wave back

Den gamla damen
torkar sina fönster
jag vinkar tillbaka

Swedish version originally published in Tidskriften Haiku

resting
on three legs
three ducks

First published in Taj Mahal Review

Vilande
på tre ben
tre änder

Swedish version originally published in Fri Haiku

Lars Granström

by

Jörgen Johansson

by

The Icicle

by Amber Foster

I remember the icicle.

It was a thin, elongated cone, with undulating ridges down the side
reminiscent of Saharan dunes.  The thick end was a brownish-gray, with
specks of dirt where it had once made its home along the edge of our
shingled roof.

Snowstorms were a rare and freakish thing in the heart of the Texan
desert.  We lived in Del Rio, a small town dwarfed by the vast
nothingness on all sides.  Our house was tiny, a two-bedroom with
peeling brown paint and a front lawn whose weeds had long ago won the
war against actual grass.  Its one advantage was that it was only a few
miles from the Air Force base where my father was stationed.

I was used to the hot, summer rain that fell, warm as bath water, from
the desert sky.  During these times, Mom would let us put on our
bathing suits and run around in the backyard. Sometimes, we were naked.
There are still pictures of us like that, running with our arms
upraised to the sky like members of a primitive, rain-worshiping tribe.
My mother takes them out from time to time to embarrass us at family
gatherings.

Snow was unthinkable in that hot, flat landscape, yet one winter
morning, there it was, a thin layer no more than a few inches deep.  I
wanted nothing more than to go out and play, but I had come down with a
cold a few days earlier, and had been forbidden to go out. I gazed with
a child’s excruciated longing at the icicles that hung like stalactites
from the edge of the roof, but my cries for mercy fell on deaf maternal
ears. In that moment, I knew hatred for the first time.  But not of my
mother.

Of my sister.

I watched helplessly as my father led her outside by one puffy,
purple-gloved hand.  Dad was rarely home for long, and his time was
more precious to me than any of the trinkets he brought back from the
Philippines, Japan, or Guam. I imagined him holding my hand like that,
then us throwing snowballs at each other and laughing.  Instead, he was
building a snowman with my sister, scouring the ground for something to
use as eyes.

Use hers, I thought.

On the roof, the icicles went drip, drip, drip, a painful reminder of
the moisture emanating from my own nose.  They were already melting—by
the next day they’d be gone.  I pressed my hands to the window, my
fingers leaving streaks of snot and tears.  Annoyed with my hysterics,
my mother sent me to my room, where I threw myself onto the bed, put my
head under the blanket, and sobbed.

Some time later, my father shook me gently awake. He was holding
something in his gloved hand.

“I brought this for you,” he said, putting the freezing icicle into my
hands.

“Daddy,” I said, passing it from hand to hand like a hot potato, “It’s
so cold!”

He smiled.  “We can put it in the freezer for you, and you can lick it
later, like an ice cream.”

“John,” my mother said from the doorway.  “She can’t eat that.”

Dad didn’t reply.  He simply winked at me, took the icicle out of my
wet hands, and walked out of the room.

Mom sighed.

Over the next few days, I’d take the icicle out of the freezer to play
with it.  When I licked it, my tongue would stick for a moment and then
release as my body’s heat melted the outer layer.  It didn’t taste like
much of anything, but my sister didn’t know that.  In her presence, I
took long, slow licks, as if savoring the taste.  My tongue quickly
became as numb and heavy as a rock in my mouth, but it was worth it.

My sister was furious.

Long after my father was gone again, the icicle remained in the
freezer, at first a solid mass, then slowly shrinking into a gray lump.
  It didn’t matter.  It was a souvenir of my first snow, of my father’s
kindness.  So many of my memories have melted away over time, but the
icicle did not.  In my memory it is intact, pristine, unmelting.

Mine.

Amber Foster

by

Sally Bunch

by

Free Swedish Haiku III.

by Iréne Carlsson

The buzz of the fly
drowns
in Vivaldi’s Autumn

Flugans surr
drunknar
i Vivaldis Höst

Far into the woods
you can hear the chime
of the ice-cream truck

Långt in i skogen
tar sig melodislingan
från glassbilen

Swedish version of “Far into the woods” first published at Haikuverkstaden

 

 

Jay Kauffmann

by

Janice D. Soderling

by

Jane Hertenstein

by

David H. Brantley

by

I Want to Write You Some Sort of Love Letter

by Rebecca Kinzie Bastian

I Want to Write You Some Sort of Love Letter

In this unbidden time, this time,
not for condescension but its willing swerve,
when the leaves are agog at their own lack of color
I want to write you some sort of love letter:
a piece of snow, lichen,
the dirt under my fingernails,
coils of bear droppings, frozen,
by the buckshot sign. I want to show you
how water seems clearer when it is this cold,
pooled, shallow, over leaves and their companions.
I want to give you the crows,
the mist hanging over the mountains,
everything wet, wet, gray and dun,
the grass so gold against it,
and my own broken heart
that wants to pause here
among the black and dripping branches
but stays with me, up the gravel road,
beyond the barbed-wire banded trees,
past the swollen stream
and on home.

Of the Past, I Have Only Hints

by Russell Evatt

When you wanted to draw the curtains
but were too consumed

by your nakedness to rise
and I, politely refusing for the same reason,

stared at your ear as your head
shaded my eyes from the morning light,

I thought of the dent in your earlobe,

grown tight and small but still visible,
where an earring once pressed through flesh

now no more than a nod to that time
and when I asked

you said, “I don’t wear earrings anymore,”
then slightly adjusted your head,

allowing the morning light to leave
my eyes squinting.

It’s True About Owls, Monday Morning

by Carolyn Scarbrough

Monday Morning

I read a poem by a woman who
writes that death enters her room, tells her
she will only write about him.
As if any collection of words fails to
bear him along;  any sky, any
yawning hour of night, any river,
ocean or even this simple stream of
water twisting down the bathroom
drain, braided with incandescent light;
light that reveals every line,
every mark of fatigue, every living
pore. Death is there like a lover, like
a god, like the pungent odor
at low tide, the tartness left on
the tongue after blueberries,
after every sweetness.

 

It’s True About Owls

The silent flight of their hollow boned, soft-
feathered bodies. This one
has switched perches to observe me
as I exit the woods, the movement
sudden and silent like the change from love
to indifference
and back again, the flight itself
imperceptible.
You were here, now there
and it’s unfathomable
I never heard a thing.

 

Free Swedish Haiku IV.

by Jörgen Johansson

buying 2 of each
don´t want to show
i´m single

 

the childless man
carves a juniper bow
for himself

 

sound
of the wishbone
winter depression

 

on my way out
touching the baptismal font
three times

foot-flirting
at the podiatrist
convention

spring morning
the short life
of a raindrop

asking my friend
what i want
the cross-eyed waitress

 

 

afternoon fog…
i envy
the hidden

 

prison guard
opening the window
letting out a fly

Peonies

by Carolyn Scarbrough

Last week, their bulbous buds were
fisted tight and now their extravagance drags
across the sidewalk and dirt, sweetness
riddled with ants. At night the fresh-waxed
cars of prom-going teens pass by, girls
in lavish dresses that will brush all night over
thresholds and the tops of boyfriends’
shoes. The weight of ripeness, the living as if
it’s all a feast, then these soiled tattered petals

which remind me of a remarkable elderly woman
brushing a hair behind her ear, lovely still and strong
still, but underneath, biology shredding the strong heart,
the quick mind.

All night the boys drive by, calculating
how to remove expensive dresses that the girls’
bodies are unaccustomed to. The girls submit to
the evening gowns, every move accompanied by odd pullings,
rubs and rustles, the gowns altering everyday movements-

the careful car exit, the required lift to climb stairs, the simple lack
of a pocket or comfortable shoes. Do they see my young
girls watching and pointing excitedly?

They are princesses, the happily ever-afters
driving by in freshly waxed cars with boys in ties
and tuxedos. In our yard, my own daughters
are drawn to the statuesque iris,
the shouty tulips, and I must lead them

to the peonies, raise the ant infested heads
to their noses and see their surprise as
they inhale again and again.

Katherine Nehring

by

Anita Anand

by

Kaitlyn Tucker

by

Wilda Morris

by

Jill Leininger

by

Corey Mesler

by

Christine Tongue

by

The European Schedule

by Jane Hertenstein

We never once thought we were the type. Our vacations usually never extended beyond the tri-state area. European travel was for the rich or at least well-to-do. My husband and I both work at non-profits. We had a budget of $750 per year for vacation. But one day a friend called us. “Ninety-nine dollar round trip tickets to Europe,” he announced unannounced. Marek, our Czech neighbor, was always making big statements. He was the king of hyperbole. So I pretty much dismissed him. He said it again, “$99 round trip tickets to Europe.” He rattled off a website. Marek was constantly on the lookout for airline deals. About once every three years he and his family made the trek back to the homeland of beer and big pretzels and svíčková.

Even though I knew it must be a scam, I typed in the web address. Up popped a very nice page explaining that for $99 plus airport taxes I could fly to either Paris, London, or Madrid. Hmm. I clicked on each city to see what the airport taxes were and of course this added another hundred or so dollars. Still this wasn’t a one-way listing but $99 for a round-trip ticket.

A vision of opening shutters and gazing down upon a sunlit garden flitted through my mind. Europe. I longed to see castles and Gothic churches and eat a slice in the birthplace of pizza. I pulled out my address book. We had friends scattered all across the continent. I knitted together a route where we could stay with people we knew and day trip to the big sights. If we took night trains then we could save on hotels. Bread and cheese is cheap. Our daughter was eleven, eligible for child rates and free at most museums. If we “borrowed” from next year and put our two vacation budgets together, it was possible. More and more the far-flung idea of traveling overseas began to seem do-able. I booked the tickets.

After that my husband and daughter got onto the European schedule. This consisted of getting up progressively earlier each day in order to avoid jetlag. He would wait for her at the end of the hallway. She had her own alarm, and at 2 AM she’d poke her head out the door. It was their ritual. He’d do a little work while she finished up homework. Then they’d watch a movie and eat cold cereal while the sun came up, fuzzy at first, then slowly breaking over the horizon. By the time she left for school they’d been up for over 5 hours.

The deal was too good to be true. About a month before our planned departure I got a call from the Attorney General’s office in Colorado alerting us that it was a scam—but, good news, our money would be refunded. I hung up the phone and then called my husband at his office. That evening we broke the news to our daughter.

“No way,” she cried.

So we looked in the back of the newspaper in the travel section at all those advertisements with teeny-tiny lettering and turned up tickets that averaged $360 per person with taxes. Real tickets. I earned extra money on the weekends helping a friend out by baking goodies for her coffee shop. It is possible to cinnamon bun one’s way to Europe.

Now we think in terms of before and after. We view life much differently after having traveled abroad—perhaps like the difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, or the difference between having a cup of Maxwell Coffee or sipping a cappuccino at an outdoor café by the Palazzo Vecchio. Our lives have been completely changed, our world got much, much bigger. The effect of deciphering a Paris Metro map, of hearing Czech spoken in a submerged restaurant in Prague, of opening the shutters of our room overlooking a frenetic Vespa-filled street, of waking up to “other” sunlight made us hungry for more. Like those chocolate Nutella filled croissants we bought at the bakery kitty-corner from our hostel, we just couldn’t get enough. We realized you didn’t have to be rich to travel, to experience the relatively simple pleasures that go along with opening yourself up to new experiences. We realized we were the kind of people who went to Europe.

At the moment our daughter is living abroad, doing a gap year in London before starting college in the fall. Since our first trip to Italy she’s been back three more times, the last two times on her own. As an independent traveler she’s experienced the thrill of exploring a new city and surprised herself—finding her way back to the hostel. She has learned to quickly calculate Euros to dollars and pence to cents. She’ll return home to us a year older, jetlagged, completely changed, on the European schedule.

Phoebe Wilcox

by

Gabrielle Soria

by

Linda Sullivan

by

Jenny Karlsson

by

Three Poems

by Rebecca Kinzie Bastian

****

 

Acrostic
We clap our hands and look –
In our palms the red leaves appear,
Nibbled and twinkled with stars.
There are lights in your hair.
Even the squirrels have gilded their nuts.
Riddle and sugar rolled out for deer to
Step and cut heart forms like messages –
Over the hill and into the woods – pressed and swift
Like our own celebrations, our own hands
Stinging from all the noise and cold and, yes, joy.
The stairs creak as the children bound up and down.
Icicles. Stars. A wish for fire. Mulled wine, cupful after
Cupful. Your scarf thrown rakishly over your shoulder.
Everything comes down to this.

****

 

 

 

Fold

I keep a lark in the freezer
its field still bright when I open the door.

One rough poem
Birch bark chewed
New wrinkles around my eyes
Apples in the cold cellar

One old way
An empty wine glass
Snow specked mornings
The mutable vole

Who will remember?
Who will run fingers over
the pebbles at the bottom of the drawer?

Birch branch, sharp and minty
Apples buckled in their box
Wine gone half sour but potent
This snow melting

It is something. And I’ll give it to you
if you want.

Walk all the way to town, and keep walking.
Take just this and my favorite shoes.

 

****

 

 

Via Vulpina

 

When you were a child, you searched

for the fox, followed the fox, followed the claret between

dusk and dawn. She was everything you wanted to be–

 

narrow, red and cunning. You walked the field, walked zigzag and ditch,

her tail your dark-tipped flag. You wanted her.

 

Slender as the wrist you turned in her direction. Your nostrils flared

toward lemmings and beetles and snakes.

 

Where she lay she did not leave a mark.

 

She moved through barn and garden,

the reeds around the lake,

swallowed every shadow.

 

You longed, ribs showing dangerous hunger. Her teeth. You were not

your mother’s lap. You wore your scarlet dress torn at the knees.

 

She was never

 

black or white, she was russet, Fennec, Swift and Gray, sometimes dark,

and it was in her shifting you wanted to slide, go with her through

 

her shapes, find your way lower. She was not caught. She did not call.

Her way was under, shadow weaving into the wheat, into the tufted
grass. She fit

 

a chink of stone,

a stalk of burdock,

under the oak root’s tongue. You followed.

 

You left no spoor, flattened no grass, breathed her blend and dunning.

 

What looked like hiding

was really a charm for finding,

for the sharper way in. You crawled on your belly.

 

If you were quiet, if you were slight, if your movements worked like folded
    water,

she would come, lay her head in your lap, a flame, the one you never could
    name.

 

Now on the roadside – haunch; white belly; fine, sleek hide;

and her banner – the flag you attended no longer advancing. Stop. 
Leave the car.

 

Press your cheek against her shoulder.

Pinned to my Jacket, a Note from Sonja

by John Lowry

  Jonnie: This is to inform you that things are not working out for us.  I, too, am in a total state of shock.  What went wrong?  Well, this may seem petty, but I am not afraid of being petty because we all know that attention to detail is a sign of intelligence; therefore, do you realize - or do you even care? -  that during the whole duration of our marriage, you never sang, hummed or even whistled, Autumn Leaves?  If you remember, it was Our Song before we got married.  You sang, hummed and whistled every god damned song ever written but you could never get around to Autumn Leaves.  This caused me indescribable pain.  And, since I am venting: another thing.  Boy, did you ever brood!  Thinking, thinking - always thinking.  About what?  All you talked about was baseball and what’s-for-dinner?  I’d say, what are you thinking, Jonnie and you, you would just smile.  It took me years to discover, NOTHING!  The man is thinking about nothing!  I’m married to a computer.  There’s a little light on but it’s not running.  Jonnie, don’t be hurt!  There were good things in our marriage.  For instance, your shoes.  I loved your shoes!  Polished, always new or new looking, never needing heels, that nice leather smell. How did you do that?  I never saw you touch them. You worked like a thief in the night, didn’t you?  Sometimes, I used to hold your shoes and I had a funny feeling.  Like it was you in a different form.  What else was good?  The way you opened mail.  I loved the snapping sound you made when you slipped the paper out.  It all seems so cool and important, like a diplomat reading a declaration of war instead of the gas bill.  I tried it so many times but I could never get it right.  And one more thing.  When I got out of the car to open the garage door and looked back at you, sitting behind the wheel in your suede jacket, your cool sunglasses and that blond hair!  Oh, the fantasies I had!  You were a pilot!  A race car driver!  One of these expert drivers you see on TV, spinning cars around, screeching the tires, what-not.  Did you ever notice how many times we made love in the garage on top of the bags of Lawn Grow?  Jonnie, I’m sorry we didn’t have babies.  I know I said the money and my job, blah, blah.  But you want to know the real reason?  It was too weird.  I didn’t want to look down and see something coming out of me like some kind of alien.  This made me feel so bad, I secretly went to a psychiatrist, Mrs. Hiller-Troup.  In effect, she said I was a mess.  I had the sexual life of a fourteen year old.  You know what I said?  So, isn’t it better than having the sexual life of a sixty-five year old (which she was)?  Thank you.  End of therapy.  Well, I hope all this clarifies why I am leaving you.  I’m going far, far away, someplace like India or Nepal.  I’m going to be a monk and spend the rest of my life thinking about why this world is so weird. Maybe I will write a book that will be made into a movie.  Wouldn’t that be cool?  Even though I don’t understand you I still love you in my way.  You wife, Sonja.  P.S.  I don’t want a divorce.

Iréne Carlsson

by

The Lies, Example for Restraint

by Russell Evatt

The Lies

In Sumerian poetry,
there are always lovers. 
Sometimes a deity

engaging a deity,
or perhaps a human,
who is to say?  The lover

could be king or shepherd,
answering pleas of
bring me into your chamber, O King

and accepting, as the father
takes his daughter
into his hands, a daughter

as gift.  This is not unlike
the way our bodies make decisions
for us: the sections we cover,

the portions left exposed. 
The anxious manner in which
a shirt is slipped into

just before the weary lover rises;
how I utter your name
soft enough to leave you

untroubled, your slender back,
telling me you are here,
almost revealed.

Example for Restraint

For instance, what we do with our mouths,
the parts of us we use

to touch each other, our kneeling—
                    how necessary, we think

this is all there is.  But we become older,
realize the waking we ignore to stay close

and the stretching we use to feign expansion

is limited, that distance marks
the absence of fingertips on a shoulder blade. 

And we become softer, keep to ourselves—

by now, two lovers have gone to the kitchen
for something to eat,

no longer thinking of the time
before they met but making their distance

as small as they can.  But it remains
and they will remember soon enough.

Angie Curneal Palsak

by

Julie Ardelean

by

Peter Waldor

by

Anika Fajardo

by

Free Swedish Haiku II.

by Iréne Carlsson

The storm has calmed
the lights continue
to flutter

Stormen har lagt sig
ljusen fortsätter
att fladdra

Every half hour
in the silent night
the neighbour’s cuckoo clock

Hel och halvtimme
i den tysta natten
grannens gökur

A country road
beneath a starry sky
a radio tower twinkles

Landsväg om natten
under stjärnklar himmel
blinkar en telemast

Have to hug you
he cries - bends down
to hug my dog

Måste få krama dig
ropar han - böjer sig ned
och kramar min hund

All four poems are reprinted from the anthology Snowdrops avaiable at
bokverket.com .

Margo Williams

by

Thabi Di Moeketsi

by

Elisia Guerena

by

LAKE CHRISTINE

by Jay Kauffmann

I remember everything from that evening as if seen through a filter—golden, idyllic. The lake slid over and around me like velvet. Not a ripple on the surface, except for what my body made, as I stretched one arm over the other, my legs fluttering—one-two, one-two—somewhere behind. It was dusk, a warm summer night, and the lake glowed like polished copper. I was seventeen and my sister Jessie—keeping pace by my side, rowing the big Rangely—was fourteen. We were partners in an important endeavor: to regain, for the family, the record for swimming the length of Lake Christine. It had fallen the summer before to some Yale hot shot, a boyfriend of one of the girls from the cabins across the lake. This was a personal affront to my father who believed the record should stay within the family. He had held it at one time, as had his brother, and his father, and so on, for as long as Rockwells had owned land and spent summers on the lake. It was a family tradition going back over a hundred years. And now it was up to me. I was a high school swimming star, All-State, and felt I had a good chance at taking back the record. I felt the support that evening of my entire family, of tradition, as I set off from the public beach.
I moved effortlessly and fast, gliding through the water in what athletes today call a zone. Occasionally I lifted my head—I could allow myself this luxury—to appreciate the sunset, particularly over Edgar’s Peak (named after my great-grandfather Edgar, whose head it resembled, including his bald spot—a granite patch near the top), where the sky had turned crimson, as if Edgar’s remaining hair had caught fire.
The sky slid past. Bugs alighted on the surface. Below me I could see dark shapes—browns, rainbows and suckers, big ones—moving lazily, then rising abruptly to a fly at the surface, attracted to its infinitesimal struggle. I crossed over their dark, silent world, making hardly a splash or sound. There was only my breath, the sudden gasping intake, one side alternated with the other, rhythmic, life-affirming. The soft splash of my hands and arms reaching, the satisfying pull downward through the water, followed by my body sliding with the least resistance. And the oars creaking, moving in their oar locks, and the faint groan of the wooden hull. I remember the water’s subtle taste, like iron—the aftertaste of spinach—but sweeter. Fed by mountain streams, deep hidden springs, the lake was crystalline, pure, and fiercely cold. Now and then I would pass through an unexpected pocket of warmth, as if a forbidden pleasure, with half a mind to slow down and linger. And every few minutes Jessie would consult her stop-watch, scowling like my coach, and call out the times. “Come on, Christopher,” she would yell, “get mean, man!” And I’d up the tempo.
I was about two-thirds the way across, my shoulders warm and rolling nicely. The shadows of pine and birch trees crept steadily across the water. Lights blinked on along the shore; blue twilight had begun to set in. I could see a few of the cabins coming into view and felt as inspired as if I had spotted the New World. There were twelve cabins in all, twelve families bound, more than anything else, by their love for the lake.
I could just make out the large rocks rising from the water at the end of the lake—my finish line—and on the largest one, the wooden pagoda (granddad’s curious display of oriental beauty in the New England wilderness). I could imagine the fanfare waiting for me at home: a fire burning in my honor, dad slapping me on the back and handing me a shot of gin, mom wrapping me in a towel and fervently rubbing, and Jessie telling our story, turning it into family legend.
I shortened my stroke, picked it up a little, as Jessie began to fall behind. I remember her sitting there, dwarfed between over-sized oars, tugging hard, her freckled, pudgy face flushed from the effort, her reddish hair damp and hanging limp to her shoulders—so determined to keep up with me. In that instant, I adored her.
As the water grew shallower I could see the great trunks of fallen trees passing beneath me—a tangle of dark, ominous limbs—and I knew that I was almost there, well ahead of schedule. Mr. Yale hot shot would soon be history. Then I heard my father’s deep voice booming across the water: “God damn it, son, that’s the ticket. Bring it on home!” I looked up to see his outline a few hundred yards ahead. He was leaning back against the railing of the pagoda and applauding, his legs crossed jauntily at the ankles, still showing no signs of the cancer. A pinpoint of bright orange embers flared before his face, then subsided, then flared again, as he puffed away on his evening cigar.
Over the last stretch I pushed hard, my lungs burning, arms gone slack and flung murderously at the water, while my legs drove me steadily forward. For some moments, then, I felt nothing, no discomfort, not a trace of the workings of my body. I was wonderfully removed yet present, watching this frenzied activity as if it were in some way not related to me. My mind as still as the bottom of the lake.
And then I touched rock and everything came abruptly to a halt.
I reared my head and gasped, sputtering water, then turned eagerly to look at Jessie to find out the time. She was drifting toward me in the boat, still breathing hard. A trout jumped nearby. She held the stopwatch close to her face, scrutinizing it with great seriousness, milking the moment. She looked over at me then at dad perched on the rock above me. “Forty-eight minutes and thirty-four seconds,” she said (it was more than two minutes faster than the old record), “put that in your pipe and smoke it!” Exhausted, I stood on the muddy bottom and took a long, satisfied breath.
I could see it was already time for cocktails (or as dad liked to call them, cockballs), a glass of his trademark gin-and-tonic on the railing of the pagoda. It was nearly dark. A three-quarter moon appeared just above the trees. Dad’s hair shined ghostly white. I could tell he was a bit drunk as he moved unsteadily to the edge of the rock and stood wavering above me. He was in grand spirits, though, chomping proudly on the end of his cigar. I couldn’t remember a time he seemed more pleased with me. He took a wide stance and, extending his right hand, reached down to help me up. “Put ‘er there, my boy. You did it.” In that instant, I was convinced that the reign of Rockwells would never come to an end. I reached up and grabbed my father’s hand.

Gabrielle Grace Kauffmann

by

Papier-mâché

by Zoe Smith

    Holly sat at the kitchen table, swinging her legs back and forth under the chair. A pile of newspapers sat before her on the counter and she was busy shredding them into thin strips.
    “Mummy?”
    Olivia looked down at her daughter, her tiny hands fumbling to unfold a broadsheet.  “Yes?”
    “When’s Daddy coming home?”
    “Soon, honey, soon.”
    Holly scrunched up her nose, unimpressed. Olivia poured the papier-mâché paste into a bowl and clapped her hands loudly. “I think we’re ready.” 
    Her enthusiasm was forced but Holly didn’t seem to notice. She gave a squeal of delight and hopped down from her chair. Olivia took out the instructions and scanned the page: How to Make a Papier Mâché Mask. She sighed. Artistic creations had never been her strong point. It was Jack who did the creative stuff. He was the one who prepared Holly’s show-and-tell items and accessorized party costumes. Where was he when she needed him? It had been his idea to send her to a private school where stay-at-home Mum’s lavished their children with designer dresses and spent an average days wages on baked goods for the Mother-Daughter fairs.
    She stroked Holly’s hair back from her face. “Ready?”
    Taking a sheet of tin foil from the counter, she shaped it awkwardly around Holly’s face. Holly giggled beneath the silver sheet, fluttering her eyelids until the foil crackled like popping-candy.
    “Hold still!”
    She removed the foil mould, padding the back with newspaper to hold its shape.
    “O-k! Papier mâché time!”
    Holly yelped with excitement and began to dunk the strips of paper into the goo, flinching as the cold mixture trickled down her arm. Olivia steadied her wrists and together they layered the paper onto the foil. Slowly, the face began to take shape; the apples of the cheeks protruding in squidgy mounds, then the nose, a sausage-shaped roll that dripped, sloppily, down the mask. Olivia pierced the eyes with a barbecue skewer so that Holly could see and stood back to survey their work.
    Holly squinted at the mask. “It doesn’t look like me.”
    Olivia looked at the lumpy, misshapen face with its jutting jaw and lopsided brow.
    “Its ugly.” Holly said, matter-of-factly.
    “We’ll have to paint it all pretty colours.”
    “Can’t we get Daddy to make it?”
    “He won’t be back from Grandmas in time. The fair’s tomorrow.”
    “Can’t we make another one?” said Holly, twisting a tuft of hair around her finger.
    Olivia sighed. “Holly. The parade is tomorrow. We don’t have time to re-make it.”

    The instructions advised leaving the mask to dry overnight but there was no time. Olivia waited a few hours, then attacked the surface with a hair-dryer until it felt dry enough. She set out the art kit they’d bought from the market – little pots of poster paint, tubes of glitter, sticky embellishments and coloured felt strips. Holly doused the face with pink paint, adding rosy red cheeks whilst Olivia fashioned a yellow wig out of twisted pipe cleaners. An hour later and the two of them were covered in shards of tinsel, their hands encrusted with paint. Olivia threaded ribbon through the sides and measured it around Holly’s head, deciding, finally, that it was finished.
    “Ok, Hols, time for bed.”
    She followed her up the stairs, Holly clambering and giggling up each step then collapsing on the landing in faux exhaustion. Olivia hovered over her, tickling her ribs until she crawled, squealing into the bathroom.
    “Teeth,” Olivia said, tying Holly’s fine blonde hair back with a pink glittery bobble. Holly drew a purple toothbrush from the bowl and shakily squeezed a strip of milky white paste onto the bristles. Olivia heard her running the tap and spitting the paste back into the bowl, as she made up her bed.
    Once Holly was tucked in, she shuffled across the landing to her own room, propping the mask carefully on the dresser. The bed was cold and empty without Jack, his scent still lingering on the pillows. She reached for the phone to call him, edging her foot over to his side of the bed and feeling out the shape of his absent body.
    He picked up on the second ring.
    “Livy, we can’t do this now.” His voice was groggy and sleep-laden. There was the sound of a woman being shushed in the background.
    “I need to talk to you.”
    He sighed, frustrated. The woman’s footsteps faded into the background. “I’ll talk to you when you are ready to be reasonable.”
    “Reasonable?” Her voice was scathing. “I’m the one at home looking after our child. Our beautiful daughter who keeps asking when daddy’s coming home.”
    “Please, Olivia, don’t do this.”
    Olivia. He only used her full name when he was annoyed at her. She wondered how he reversed the right to be annoyed at her. Wasn’t that her right?
    “What am I supposed to say to her?” she hissed, a spray of saliva hitting the mouthpiece.
    “Why don’t you tell her the truth?”
    “The truth?” She mustered a bitter laugh. “That you’ve run away and you’re threatening to leave us both? I’m sure she’ll be thrilled!”
    “Olivia.”
    His tone was patronizing. The kind of tone they used with Holly when she stuck her finger in the peanut butter or glugged juice straight from the carton. She didn’t know how to react.
    “Olivia, I’m sorry, I’m not coming back. I know you’re angry at me. I understand…”
    “You do not understand,” she cut him off. “You have no idea.”
    “I just want us to try to sort this out amicably. There is no reason why we can’t support each other. Do the best for Holly.”
    “The best for Holly would be if you stopped messing around and came home.”
    There was a long pause. Finally, he whispered: “I can’t do that.”
    Olivia slammed the phone down. She couldn’t hear it. How could this be happening? Her perfect marriage dissolving before her eyes. She looked at the parade mask lying on the dresser, it’s eyes two empty black slits. Everything was a disaster. Her marriage. This stupid mask – a mangled crescent of glitter and finger-paint that was to be presented as a beacon of her successful motherhood. 

*

    The May Day Parade took place on a Monday, a key event in the community calendar, although Olivia had never understood its appeal. It’s about building a sense of community, Jack would say. All the schools were involved, the masked parade marching through the village whilst the junior school band offered up a squeaky ensemble of recorders and ocarinas and their families set off ripples of enthusiastic applause.
    Olivia stood with the other Mums at the edge of the village green, her navy wool dress feeling suddenly drab against the mass of brightly printed tea-dresses and deftly highlighted hair. She hated the way she felt around these women, acutely aware of her pale skin against their orangey tans. She wondered if they could see the pink paint embedded in her fingernails or the smears of concealer bleeding into the dark creases of her eyes.
    She shuffled into position beside Sarah – the friendliest of the bunch – as the parade started. Sarah’s daughter, Evie, marched out first, a bejeweled spectacle atop her head with glass-bead trains shimmering from the headdress. Olivia gasped, half in shock, half in amazement. “How the hell did you make that?”
    Sarah glanced sheepishly at her. “I didn’t. I got the nanny to do it. She’s really good at art. She’s Brazilian. She made it from an old Carnival costume.”
    “I thought the point was to let the kids make the mask?”
    “Yeah but if you let them actually make it, it’s hardly going to look good!”
    Olivia tried to conjure up an image of their finished mask with its pink paint splotches and gooey trails of glitter-glue.
    “Does it have to look good?”
    Sarah shrugged. “Well, you don’t want Holly to look bad, do you?”
    “She’s six years old, she doesn’t care what she looks like!”
    Sarah looked unconvinced. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. How long did it take you to make?”
    “I don’t know, an hour or so.”
    “Really?” Sarah pulled a face.
    “Yeah, why?”
    “I made the nanny stay home all bank holiday weekend.”
    Olivia scowled at her. “Some of us have jobs.”
    Sarah laughed good-heartedly, “That’s your fault for being such a damn feminist!”
    The girls traipsed out behind Evie, some holding tambourines and maracas, others carrying sparkling flags proclaiming “Valerie Girl’s School.” They filed past in a convoy of gummy smiles and ruffled pin-tuck dresses. Olivia scanned the crowds but she couldn’t find Holly.
    “That’s the headmistress. Ask her.” Sarah nodded towards a scrawny woman with a clipboard. 
    Olivia was already marching over before she had finished speaking. She tapped the woman on the shoulder. “Excuse me, I’m Holly Hayward’s Mother.”
    The woman’s face crinkled into a thin smile, the pink folds of her lips forced upwards. “Is there something I can help you with?”
    “Yeah, where is she? Why isn’t she in the parade?”
    The woman sucked her teeth decisively, her brow furrowing as if chewing over the thoughts in her brain. Finally, she spoke, throwing her eyes dismissively back to the entertainment as she did. “We decided that it wouldn’t really be suitable for Holly to be in the parade today. We discussed it and she agreed that she would prefer to sit this one out.”
    “Why on earth would she want to sit out?”
    The headmistress, by now visibly aggravated, peered at Olivia quizzically. “Well, you see, the local paper has come down to support the event and they’ll be taking photos.” She paused, waiting for a reaction as if that was explanation enough. Olivia felt her jaw drooping in shock, the realisation of what had been said taking roots and growing inside her.
    “Where is she?” she demanded.
    Olivia headed over to the bench where her daughter sat, perched on her hands. Holly looked miserable. She was grinding the heels of her Mary Jane’s together like she did when she was bored or embarrassed. When she saw her Mother she scowled and crossed her arms across the chest. “Mummy, they said I couldn’t walk because the mask is ugly.”
    “Did they really say that?”
    Holly didn’t reply but her bottom lip hung limply from her jaw and began to quiver. Olivia knelt beside her, her face crumpling in sympathy. “Sweetie, I’m so sorry. Next time I’ll make sure you have the best mask, ok? And tonight, I’ll cook your favourite dinner and we can have strawberry ice cream. Ok? Honey?”
    Holly squeezed her arms to her chest and shook her head. “I don’t want ice cream.”
    “Even with chocolate sprinkles?”
    Holly scowled, resolute, “Evie said I could go to her house for tea.”
    Olivia sighed, defeated, “Ok honey, are you sure?”
    She nodded. Olivia bent down to kiss her on the cheek but her body stiffened in her arms. She walked back to Sarah, feeling her heart flip inside her chest.

*

    Without Holly the house felt empty and void of life. Olivia unlocked the door behind her and shuffled inside. In the freezer she found a frozen lasagne and slid it from its plastic sleeve. It tasted dry and rubbery but it seemed pointless to chop vegetables and grill meat just for one. After she finished she lay down on the sofa flipping through the channels. Eastenders was on. She was exhausted. The TV screen flickered behind her eyelids as she drifted off to sleep.
    The doorbell woke her. Her watch said 9pm. Shit. She was meant to pick up Holly over an hour ago. The doorbell rang again. She swung open the door to see Jack stood on the doorstep looking concerned, Holly gripping his hand.
    “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
    “You forgot to pick her up.”
    Holly pushed past her into the hall and scurried up to her room. Olivia couldn’t help feeling that she had avoided her gaze on purpose.
    “I know. I was just coming. I fell asleep,” she mumbled, embarrassed. “Why didn’t someone call me?”
    “Your phone was off. Sarah didn’t know what to do so she called me.” He paused. “Apparently you haven’t told her that we’ve separated?”
    Olivia felt her face flush red. She rummaged in her bag for her phone and sure enough, the battery was dead. “I don’t want to talk about this now. Please –“
Jack rested his hand on her shoulder. “We need to talk about this Olivia.”
    “I know,” she whispered.
    “Olivia, I want a divorce.”
    He reached for her hand. Olivia felt her tongue dry in her mouth, the taste of bile at the back of her throat. She was speechless; her mind was fuzzy with shock. She had never thought it would come to this. An affair was one thing. She understood his guilt, his need for space, the time to explore his feelings and work out the way forward. But divorce? It was so final.
    “Olivia?” he repeated, squeezing her arm. Her eyes met his. “I’m sorry, I really am. But you knew this was coming. It’s been long enough. I can’t…” He looked down at his shoes, struggling for the words. “I can’t put my life on hold any more…”
    She nodded numbly, still speechless.
    He tried one last time, “Look, why don’t I call you tomorrow and we can talk about it?”
    Olivia felt herself nodding. She watched him leave, her eyes welling up, the door clicking shut behind him. She heard Holly tiptoe up behind her.
    “Mummy?”
    “Yes.”
    “Daddy’s not coming back is he?”
    “Why do you think that, sweetie?”
    “He told me.”
    “What did he tell you?”
    “He said that he was going to live in another house and that we had to look after each other. He said that you don’t love each other anymore.”
    The truth hit her like the wind being sucked out of her. The tears fell so easily she felt they were out of her control. It was as if her eyelids had burst open and flooded all their years of restraint into one solid stream.
    “Mummy?”
    Olivia didn’t answer, her face smothered in the damp sleeves of her cardigan.
    “Mummy?”
    Olivia felt Holly’s tiny arms reach up around her neck and her face press against hers. She reached out a hand and felt around until she found her hair. Holly hugged her tighter.
    “Mummy,” she whispered softly, “I don’t mind that the mask wasn’t very good. I didn’t want to be in the stupid parade anyway.”

The Cove

by Philip Arnold

The lurking weight of anchors
let go
    the smoked-glass waters of the cove.

I look through the haze
to the other side,
            a glimpse into residual night.

Gleanings of weather gathered along the horizon. 

Along the shore a red skiff extends
the pier,
      the tide’s swell seizing
the slack of the mooring rope to a    
                    Thwung

the deep vowel vibrating through taut,
wet braidings, between resistance

and the freedom
          of a break away.

I let go the rope,
release the waves that rise to tongue
at the corded line          
            as I am released from land,

as wave by wave my bow is aimed,
                  like a sounding,
to the horizon’s untouched measure.

Ann Fisher-Wirth

by

Lawrence Wray

by

Tom Sheehan

by

E. Louise Beach

by

Free Swedish Haiku I.

by Johan Bergstad

autumn wind-
swinging in the hammock
an apple

From the poet’s site haiku.nu .
Also published in Snowdrops: Eleven Swedish Haiku Poets
[Anthology available at bokverket.com]

höstvind
i hängmattan gungar
ett äpple

Earlier published in Lyrikvännen 1/08

I hopscotch
when no one’s watching ...
spring again

Also published in Snowdrops: Eleven Swedish Haiku Poets

 

hoppar hage
när ingen ser…
vår igen

Earlier published in Ljudlöst stiger gryningen


Translations by author.

Jude Coulter-Pultz

by

J.E. Reich

by

The Arcing Crystals

by M.J. Nicholls

K.Y. Jellette was so eager to send his latest novel, Arcs of Crystal, to publishers, he forgot to write it. So much time had been spent scouring websites and books for appropriate markets, drafting cover letters and self-promoting on the internet, that he assumed the novel had been written somewhere in those four months of intense networking.
 
His outline described how Mr. X was involved with another character, named Mr. Y, and that when these characters collided, there was a confrontation, or a disagreement, or a minor quibble – something potentially exciting. In the second paragraph, he explained how his characters adored speaking to one another on various subjects, or having brief conversations about mutual interests, and went and did something together on weekends – often behaving quite amicably towards one another.
 
On his website, a huge message in neon Helvetica read ‘Something Thrilling Is Going To Happen!’ He spent months convincing people to join his site, to which he added Flash effects to make the letters glow and sparkle. After the first three months, he had over 4,000 hits on his website from people eager to find out what thrilling thing, if any, was going to happen.
 
One afternoon, the head of Fraction Publishing telephoned him as he sat weeping in the bath.

“K.Y. – I’ve read your outline and I love it! It’s so cryptic and original. It’s as though you are inviting the reader to fill in the story for themselves. What a metaphor! In an age of condensed fiction, it’s as though you’re making a profound point about the death of the imagination, about the transience of literary experience, that sort of thing,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I can’t wait to read the finished draft. Can you send it to me straight away?”

“Uh-huh.”
 
K.Y. took his laptop into the bath and opened a Word Document. He wrote the phrase ‘The crystal arced’ and thought about electrocuting himself. Deleting the phrase, he wrote ‘The arcing crystal’ and lowered the laptop tray nearer the water. It struck him after eighteen more deletions, and an attempt to immerse the keyboard into the suds gradually for a slow death, that his novel was finished.
 
His novel had been finished from the very beginning. The excitement building up to the novel had been the most entertaining part of his work. There was no need for an actual novel. If people had to read a dull prose work of over 80,000 words, their expectations would be murdered and his left career in tatters.Having no novel was the perfect hook. People would fork over £9.99 for 340 blank pages and leave the bothersome reading process behind them, reveling in the profundity of it all. The move would go down in publishing history as the most powerful metaphor for the vacuity of contemporary culture ever conceived, as well as the biggest waste of trees since the canon of Wilbur Smith.
 
In short: hype alone would sell the novel.

Three weeks later, after sending the publisher 340 blank pages and the front cover with his name and the title written on it, K.Y. received a second
telephone call in the bath.

“K.Y. – I’m loving the manuscript. Just have a few changes, however. How about instead of ‘Arcs of Crystal’ we have ‘The Crystal Arcs?’ If you’re not loving that, that’s fine. Also, maybe put your forename instead of initials? How about if on page 360, we put like a scary picture of a witch or something? Beef up the climax?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Great. I’ll go ahead and make those changes. Have a great day!”

K.Y. sank under the water. As he came up for air, he thought about having a great idea for his next novel. This nonexistent great idea would be the sequel.

The novel was finished by the time he came up.

Tonight, They Say, Later, Jenni

by Amanda Skjeveland

Tonight

Tonight we will know each other, the night air
tickling our skin like eyelashes in mid-wink,

hinting at fluttering, horrible, teasing secrets.
We will take turns chasing them, cornering them

as the other watches in disbelief, until one of us
clamps a secret by its wings, finishes the wink,

forces the eye to close, and suddenly it is morning.
We’ll need coffee before we can bear to look

at its remains, its hobbled spindly legs, what used to be
its wings smeared into glittering dust on the pillowcase.

They Say

Read me a poem, they say.
Stand up alone in front of me
so I can watch you

as you tell me a secret,
unexpected and candid
like a lover’s pillow-tears
on a rainy night
when words flow
clean and free
in torrents,

as you confess a crime
that makes me shy
from your gaze,
helplessly linked with you
because you are only
illuminating my own ideas
when the world gets heavy
enough to droop my eyelids
and skew my sight,

as you reveal your body in love,
pressing my palm to the
rhythmic contractions  
that empty your heart
and send your blood
thick and hungry
to your skin,

as you invite me in
to graze on your tragedy
before I file away
with the others
through double-doors,
reviewing your innards
like Sunday’s brunch
that was served with
too many expectations.




Later

I am angry at you, again,
and you have clasped
my arms to hold me
from doing something
that will go on my list
of things I am sorry for.

We’ll talk later, you say,
and I wrestle away
from you and sulk
on the porch
while you sleep.

At dawn, I search
the night’s wreckage.
I open the fridge,
looking for sweet,
thick coffee creamer,
and I see you’ve put
your bottle of beer in there,
drunk all but the last two inches,
chilled and waiting,
as if with fresh lips
you would return
to something
so bitter and stale.

Jenni

Propped against the willow tree,
she wanted you long before you came;
her dirty summer hands raised
the plastic version of you
to her still-awkward chest
to offer her essence
before it was time.
For years she must have known
you were coming
as she planted footprints
for you to fill
and danced,
brave and irresistible,
like the willow’s branches.
She would not have believed
her heart would fail her,
the umbilical cord
having made its transfer
but not yet fallen from you,
its strong core barely shriveled.

Feedback

by Joel Wool

The video feedback artist does not require a Brazilian, but his subjects must be clean-shaven and nude. The light catches better that way: the cameras train brilliantly on naked illusions. The woman under the hot lights sweats, the many colors collect in pools and droplets, coat her, and—thanks to the projector-camera rig, the image fed into itself over and over, ad infinitum—her skin becomes strangely clear, a crystalline ether. Viewers can see the woman, yes; they can also see through her.

In Mike Hall’s studio the hirsute are forbidden: one has to be unbound, airy, immaterial, without dark skin, or any sort of clothing. Without this the effect cannot be produced. The light balls up in a tuft of hair, an earring, a skirt, a necklace. The feedback is lost; the image devolves to an ugly blob, steaming the expectant, anticipatory model, in meaningless heat and light. Mike Hall uses a variety of subjects, but thus far only women have volunteered.

“Volunteered”—he compensates them well; they are paid by the session or by the hour, according to the contract he strikes up with each one at the beginning of her services. Only women have volunteered, perhaps because they are more secure with their naked selves, perhaps because they are slower than men to assume that nudity equals lust or its satiation. Mike Hall despises the obscene, the indulgent, he even despises sex—at least, as it comes in contact with his art, about which, by the way, he is very modest.

Her breasts emerge into the light, merge with the light, become part of the luminescent room. It’s hardly pornographic, although the image is so beautiful and celestial that the natural and mundane human body cannot help being stirred, and some component of this is sexual, and some component of this is a channeling of desire. She channels the light: her ribcage, curvaceous, creates in the warp and weft of her every millimeter its own shadow, a detailed umbra echoed by seemingly infinite series of penumbra, the same rib-image reflected in varied colors and densities up her chest—mobile, flexible, though never quite passing beyond her chin. She is at once see-through, apparently emaciated, and also shelled, gifted with an exoskeleton. Her ribs appear a hundred times on her own body: she is fulgurations, she is a dying woman, she is a dancing skeleton born out of the Day of the Dead.

She is not herself, in addition to being her self: she is on the wall; behind where she is, she is diaphanous, projected. This ghostly face flickers amidst the hotspots and parhelia, the paraselenae, the globules and colored light beams. She is a feral and elemental being. She can live inside you, destroy you with a touch.

She can copulate with gods.

She gains everything and loses definition. She loses everything, and when the lights turn off, the projectors fail, the cameras’ lenses are covered, she is again a human woman. She is lost in the real world. She has touched the solar system, flown through wormholes into a parallel universe, plugged into a hundred disparate selves: she has been the impossible and now she longs for it, this is why Mike Hall’s art is sometimes about Desire.

Nanette Rayman Rivera

by

Landloved

by Marc Vincenz

This is the place
you wanted to grow ancient
out beyond the lighthouse
where the cold is
but another shade of warm
and chill is something shared
and stoked with coal.

Coal burns long and slow
because it was once trees,
and truly old trees are diamonds,
all the oxygen of primal day
compressed into a cold glimmering
bullet of light.

When we share a bottle
of your home made wine
you hum a sailor’s tune
as if to lure mariners
behind the breaking waves
of stillness, comfort
and old, old bones.

There’s nothing more divine
than you, old woman,
you and the smell of the sea.

limbo

by Nanette Rayman Rivera

In the presence of stalking men I made diminuendo,
Grinding teeth in rain, and it came—
a wind swarm from New Jersey with its capricious cache.
Bent willows near the East River
butterfly runners ducking for cover.
I wonder why there’s no truck stop
between life and suicide, a beach
with anemometer to lounge and gauge
when it’s time to live or strip
like a jute before crossing over. 
What fear ventures: limbo and lupine,
a lyric supine decision.

manhattan, kansas

by Nanette Rayman Rivera

I come to the window with nicotine curtains, fancy
seeing doppelganger-me seeing an archetier,
loaf of bow rosin, ginger wound scarlet over horse hair. 
I tell you it shouldn’t end like this, not for

my solvent bowed lips, but because I imagined I’d
play the violin.  This must be a dream, rapacious
red scrawled on medicine mirror bastardly
hung over dolly porcelain sink: help—soon

I’ll be homeless, and the homeless can
do what the dead do.  Dart into your world
in a hum of whore-cloth; we come pretty
educated swan-women, not mute, clicking
our heels in unison to Manhattan, Kansas.

In the moldy carpet then mirror then concrete in which the hell
O—please let me stay but see the marshal comes see what he’ll do

is meticulous like something a lip-print has held, or a lip has been used for
a latitude I need one of those now I have no safeguards leave only my lip no

trace else out the window but see the real me in the arms of the archetier.

The Secret at the Center

by Khristian Mecom

  One November night while lighting a cigar out in his backyard after dinner, Sam wondered what was at the center. The exact center of it all. He leaned back in his lawn chair, the plastic straps straining at his weight, took a deep breath that filled his lungs with sharp musky smoke, and wondered. Did the universe even have a center? Sam thought that it must, everything has a center, has that one point which can be calculated and defined as being the center. He stretched out his feet, his knees cracking at the effort, exhaled, and surveyed the small expanse of sky before him. Smoke spiraled upwards from his cracked lips, obscuring the few stars that weren’t already hidden by clouds and city lights. What is at the center up there?
  How odd it was for him to even wonder about anything at all, let alone wonder about the vastness of something so large, but these days he welcomed distractions of any kind. The question echoed in his head strangely, What is at the center of the universe? Maybe more dark space or dying stars or giant planets. Maybe a point where all things converged before heading in the opposite direction, only to someday return to the same spot or a black hole that devoured everything it touched from light to the dust of shattered planets. Or perhaps there was only a small sign with the word “Center” printed in neat, legible lettering to mark the spot. Sam chuckled at the thought.
  Thinking about the largeness of that vast vacuum of space made Sam feel very small and still more alone, sitting beneath it in his small rusty chair. Taking another long drag from his cigar, he vaguely remembered learning in school that at its center the Earth was a core of hot molten lava that swirled in and around itself, always daring escape, threatening to break through the many layers of dirt and rock in search of clean air. Sam shifted uncomfortably as if he could feel the movement at the center of the Earth vibrating up the weak aluminum chair legs. But how did anyone know for sure? As far as he knew no one ever had dug that deep into the earth, had never seen the center, had never ended up in China by digging a hole. So who could ever say for sure what is it the center without ever going there?
  Finished with his cigar that was no longer appealing to him, he put it out in the ashtray next to his chair. But not ready to go back inside, he continued to sit as the night grew colder and colder, forcing his mind to concentrate on smaller matters. It wasn’t until later that night as Sam laid awake in his bed, still not used to the absence of weight beside him, that a sudden idea overtook him. An absurd idea, a impractical idea, an idea that would never work, an idea that made him pull the covers tight to his chin, the idea that he wanted to be the one to discover the secret at the center.

  The next morning he woke later than usual, made a pot of black coffee, and stepped outside. Sipping his coffee, he walked around his small backyard, surveying the garden that had turned to ruin from neglect. The one person that had tended to its needs one day stooped in the middle of planting her favorite golden marigolds, which should have been opening their buds right now. Instead, all was dust and weeds, brown plants, and empty wooden stakes. The grass was a bit overgrown beneath his feet and he promised himself that he would take care of that soon. A shovel caught his eye leaning against the shed at the side of the house, a bit rusted with a handle that was splintering, but still looked as if it could dig a good, solid hole if it needed to.
  Later that afternoon, his daughter was busy in the kitchen cooking him dinners that he could freeze for the next week. He sat quietly at the table reading the newspaper he didn’t have time for this morning. The front page didn’t hold his attention nor did the sports section, his gaze kept drifting out of the window to the small expanse of his backyard.
  “I was thinking that I would take those red crystal candle holders,” his daughter said.
  Sam folded the paper back up. “What now?” 
  “The candle holders she used for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I thought I would take them. We’re eating at our house, anyway, and I wanted to use them as the centerpiece. That alright?”
  “Sure, sure, you can use whatever,” he answered, remembering she loved the way the candle holders would shimmer and cast red shadows on the table when lighted.
  “Well, I’m about done here. Is there anything else you need?”
  “No, no, I’m fine,” Sam said.
  He watched her carefully fill Tupperware containers with lasagna and some kind of chicken before putting them in the refrigerator. “I have to pick the kids up from soccer practice so I’m going to get going,” she said, placing all the cleaned pans back in their proper place. She paused and surveyed the kitchen as if she expected someone to approve her work and verify that everything was cleaned up correctly.
  “Thanks for coming over, don’t forget the candle holders,” Sam told her, standing up and kissing her on the cheek.
  “I won’t, but next week we really need to do some dusting in this place. You could write your name in the layer of dust on the dining room table,” she said.
  He helped her pull out the candle holders from their place in the cabinet. She opened up the box to check them and held them up the light, admiring them like she had done when she was child, Sam recalled, and all the times she had been scolded for touching them. But now they were hers and she could admire and touch them all she wanted. She carefully laid them back in the box and delicately carried them to her car. Sam stayed behind, like always. Returning to the kitchen, he filled a glass of water at the sink. A wedding ring was stilled kept in its ring holder next to the hand soap, the last place it was placed by its owner’s hands. 

  Again after dinner, Sam sat outside, but this time the cigar remained unlighted in the ashtray. After a short time restlessly sitting, he stood suddenly and went upstairs to change into a pair of old overalls that he hadn’t worn in months. Five minutes later he was pushing that old shovel in the earth, breaking apart grass and top soil in search of the center. For the next five days, Sam dug.
  At one point the handle of his shovel broke as he tried to pry up a particularly large rock so he had to run to the hardware store to buy a new one. He wasn’t sure what had taken over him, he knew that he would never reach the center, that it was an impossible task, but he couldn’t stop himself. At night he dreamed of scoop after scoop of dark black earth piling into a great mountain and of a hole reaching, reaching for something buried deep down. By day, he dug, sweating and burning in the sun, covering himself in dirt that had permanently stained his skin and lodged itself under his fingernails. But as the hole grew wider and deeper, changing from the light colored topsoil full of rocks and worms to the richer black soil underneath, Sam pressed on even harder, more determined than ever to reach the center.
  When his daughter came the next week, he covered the hole with a tarp. He sat in the living room watching a baseball game as she dusted the house and vacuumed the floors, all the while anxiously wanting to get back outside. Coming back from the kitchen she asked him, “What is that tarp doing out there?” He nervously made up a story about how the roof of the shed was leaking and he had to take everything out to fix it and needed the tarp to store things on. She nodded and didn’t ask anymore. After she left, he went straight back to digging.
  More days passed and the hole grew so deep that he had to go buy a tall ladder so that he could easily enter and exit the hole. When he could no longer shovel out the dirt over his head, he devised a pulley system which took him only a day to design and build that attached to the tree branches that overhung his hole which allowed him to fill large barrels with dirt and pulley them out. Sam’s obsession grew and he found himself only stopping to drink water, quickly eat, and nap for a few hours. He began to work late into the night, setting up a bright lantern so he could see in the dark, as there was nobody there to call him inside with her soft voice after the sun went down and nobody there to tell him stop digging that ridiculous hole.   
  One night, as usual, he had lost track of time and checking his watch he saw that it was eleven minutes past midnight. For hours he had dug without rest and although he was thirsty and worn out, his bones and muscles aching from all his hard work, he couldn’t find it in himself to quit. So he dug on, faster and faster, shoveling and straining his back, not knowing where the strength and drive was coming from. He had to reach it, had find what was at the center. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he wiped it away. The sound of his heavy breathing mixed with the crack of the shovel as it entered the earth. Sam forced another shovel stroke into the ground but instead of meeting resistance, it slid smoothly in, meeting a hollow space. He tried to pull it back out but a force was pulling from the opposite direction, he yanked, and with final effort he pulled, lost his grip, and hit the wall of the hole hard, knocking the wind out of him.
  Recovering, Sam gasped at the sight before him. The earth had broken away under his feet, he stood suspended on nothing. Below him, the universe opened into a great expanse of swirling darkness, lightness, blues mixing with greens mixing with reds, brightness and stars, expanding, flowing clouds of glowing dust and rock, time streaking through space, trailing sinuous comets, infinite rings surrounding planets revolving, a snapshot of the universe from a deep space telescope. Sam wondered at the sight. It was so large, but strangely he had never felt less alone. Everything was open to him. He knew everything stayed connected, the Earth to the universe, him to her. Shown the secret at the center of everything right under his feet, he promised silently never to tell.

Spies

by Sally Bunch

Whenever Caitie got bored at family gatherings, she thought of a new way to spy on the adults.  “No one can see us if we hang a towel over the door.”

“I don’t know,” said her seven-year-old cousin Lily, who had been filling up on Triscuits because the pasta had too much of that throw up cheese on it.  “My mom will get mad again.”

“Nah, she’ll be getting shitfaced like everyone else,” said Caitie, who was not only three years older, but had pierced ears and strawberry lip gloss, seen both High School Musical movies and knew five really bad words and how to get away with using them. Lily pinched the pleats of her skirt and scanned the living room.  She saw unsuspecting hands cradling wine glasses, as if toasting to the plan.

Caitie lived in one of those old houses with creaky floors, fireplaces that were never used, ceilings upstairs that were sloped at funny angles, and layers of dust in odd unreachable places.  The narrow downstairs bathroom was off a hallway between the kitchen and mudroom leading to the backyard. The shower stall, made of frosted fake glass, was on the left.  With the stall door cracked open, someone crouched down inside could see down the length of the room to the window and the toilet, yet be concealed by an old dresser placed between the stall and a tiny sink opposite the toilet.

“We’re going outside,” Caitie told her mother Joyce, who was passing Caitie’s one-year-old sister to Lily’s mother, who loved babies but had told Lily that she couldn’t have any more. It had made Lily a little mournful to hear that, whereas Caitie’s statement brought on a surge of relief; perhaps she had changed their plans. But when they slid past the bathroom door in their stocking feet Caitie jerked her inside.  A large damp towel had already been hung on the shower door, so Caitie pulled it as far down as possible to cover the door without it falling to the floor.  “Get in,” she ordered, and Lily felt that she had no choice, as they heard footsteps and Caitie pushed in behind her and pulled her down to her knees.  Lily tried to find a dry spot, but when Caitie pivoted around, she accidentally knocked Lily into the wall, and drops soaked the back of her shirt.

“Shh,” Caitie said in a harsh whisper as the first subject entered.  Through the narrow opening they could see their Uncle Jack undo his belt and pull down his jeans and underwear.  His rear jiggled a little like adults’ rears do as he turned around, and his thing hung limply, swaying slightly from left to right before his porky butt reached the toilet seat and his thing disappeared between his thighs, hidden a little by the length of his button-down shirt tails.

Caitie squeezed her eyes tight and pursed her lips to keep from laughing.  Lily knew it was wrong to watch a man use the bathroom.  Yet despite her heartbeat that she was sure could be heard, she had to bite her own tongue and avoid eye contact with her cousin in order to stifle her own giggles.  Laughter was one of the few things that could spread faster than the head lice in her first grade class.

Then came the smell.  Ew, Caitlin mouthed.  Lily pinched her nose and stopped breathing.  They could no longer stand to look at Jack as he flushed, zipped up, and left, shutting off the light and leaving the girls in what had become at this point full darkness.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” Lily murmured.

“Come on, don’t be a chicken shit.”  Lily could hear but not see her cousin, and felt herself being jerked back down to the shower floor at the sound of approaching heels.  They squinted through the slit as the glare of the returning light revealed Aunt Joyce.  At least it was a woman this time.  One hand wielded a can of air freshener, the other hit two buttons of a cell phone.  Caitie glanced at her accomplice with raised eyebrows, and Lily mimicked the gesture back. Aunt Joyce stood facing the window with her back to the girls, looking over her left shoulder into the mirror, pushing up her hair to make it appear like she had more of it.

“Hi.”  The warmth of Aunt Joyce’s voice reminded Lily of her own mother at the bus stop in the afternoon, arms opened wide.  As the faint vanilla scent attempted to edge out the lingering odor, Caitie bit her finger, eyes revealing a mind trying to figure things out.

“I miss you,” she said, then a pause.  “Yeah, it’s okay.  The birthday boy’s being his usual plastered arrogant self.”

The birthday boy was Uncle David, Caitie’s father, and Lily knew the word arrogant meant something bad.  Caitie tucked her head into her arms, the ruffled tiers of her pink mini covering her jackknifed legs like a bed skirt.

“Can you get away Monday? I can’t wait to see you.”  Then another pause.  “Caitie’s all set.  Dave’s getting her from ballet.”  Then another pause.  “Call me when you’re done.  Love you.”

Aunt Joyce had forgotten to turn off the light as she clicked the phone shut and her heels echoed off the hardwood of the hallway.  Lily’s breath left her like a class granted recess on a spring day.  She rose, but Caitie stayed put, staring straight ahead, sitting on crossed legs and arms folded like some religious statue.  “Close the doors,” she ordered Lily.

The cake, Lily wanted to remind her cousin, but instead she quietly followed the order, then slipped into the dining room as the crowd finished singing.  Uncle Jack cut the cake and Aunt Joyce offered her a slice. 

Remembering that Jack had not washed his hands, Lily averted her eyes and said a quick “No thanks.” 

“Are you sure?” It sounded like Joyce really wanted her to take it.  But Lily had lost her appetite.

Going for Bones

by Cynthia Reeser

We strode waist-high
through thorns, picking
up fallow sticks, those
that splintered bark like bones.

Then: killing you off
cell by cell, a tinkling
Of bells out of hand.
There would be no turning

And looking back behind me.
We scouted the vines:
less their menacing chokeholds
they would be perfect,

Would sing into the night.

Battenkill

by Peter Weltner

It’s famous:  “Best trout fishing stream in America.”
Here, the river doglegs, forming a pool Eakins’
boys would have loved if they’d lived near, flat,
man-sized rocks to sun on, a hemp rope, high
as a silo, tied for years to an old oak branch
still able to support two or three grown men
swinging over the water, frothy where deepest,
to dive or cannon-ball in.  Summer’s such
a kingdom on the Battenkill.  Idling bird song.
Folks on inner tubes floating by.  Beyond Gerald’s
and Bob’s, it curves past bridge and silent mill.
In the corners of yards, on the borders of farms,
headstones stand erect or lie half buried,
well-kept or moss-covered, some chiseled with dates

older than the Battle of Saratoga.  Small American
flags, some wind-shredded, memorialize the fallen.
Its planks peeling like infested redwood, fathomless
pits gaping between boards, a barn forms
a backdrop of sorts to a terrace, one of three
edged by brush and rocks, that descend to the water.
Fenced on both sides by fragments of stele or bits
of monuments no longer standing or long torn
down, its path narrows like an isosceles triangle
to a point where a girl’s beautiful head carved,
etched from granite rests on a tall wood plinth. 
The woman who posed for it now’s dead, lying
only a few miles away under her own stone,
guarded fancifully by giant sculpted dogs.

Memory’s a heraclitean flow none can cross
the same, unchanged, each time.  I barely met
her, spent much of our one afternoon together
talking Faulkner with her and her husband, saying
how in his art landscape, place, is always part
of us and the past races past us faster than
the future can try to catch up—or something
like that.  Who knows anymore?  The face she wore
was an old woman’s graced by joy like Hals’
Malle Babbe, an owl, wise to age, also darkly
perching on her shoulder, the girl she was
and is in her sculpted portrait still visible, as if
life were endless, streaming like the Battenkill
under winter’s ice, fighting to stay river.

Scar Tissue

by David H. Brantley

In the aftermath of rain, when the earthworms abandon
the safety of dirt and begin their trek across the driveway
and front walk,

I scavenge for them before the birds have a chance
to peck at them, the moist essing of their bodies
irresistible,

an attraction to the mothers that hover above
in trees, tired of the whines of babies
with ceaseless hunger and open mouths.

I do my best to save them, the worms,
the generous tenders of my garden soil,
(as I do the beetles

that trap themselves in the bird baths
stationed throughout the yard),
before the sun reclaims

the sky and dries them, the ones
who end their journey dehydrated,
like scar tissue—

pink-sheened and curled in prayer—
at the edges of grass, a few inches
from salvation.

Laura Solomon

by

Abigail Welhouse

by

Ceci Mourkogiannis

by

Bradley McIlwain

by

Blackbird at Dusk

by Janice D. Soderling

bright beak
full-throated song
purling pouring and we
stopped mid-sentence, one and all, to
listen

Carla Criscuolo

by

Holding Hands on the Greyhound

by Wilda Morris

I never knew the name
of the young man
who sat down next to me.

He did not probe my flesh,
kiss me or even talk much
but he held my hand
as Ohio rolled by.

For the first time,
I felt maybe,
just maybe. . . .

I have forgotten his face
but not the heat of his hand.

Still Waiting

by Wilda Morris

For two thousand years
I have stood loyally,
my terra cotta feet
firmly planted,
top-knot pointing up
toward sun my eyes
never see. My fingers
bend to hold arrows.
My bow fell to dust
centuries ago.
I await commands
from the lips of a terra
cotta general, a general
silent when Han troops
stormed Shaanxi,
when rebel soldiers flamed
our quarters and the roof
collapsed, terra cotta heads
rolling, comrades falling
into dust and ash.
While Xiang Yu burned
Qin palaces, robbed
the mausoleum
of Qin Shi Huangdi,
I waited. Still the lips
of the commanding
general were silent. Not
even the pheasant
feathers of his terra cotta
cap moved.

Six Years in Sri Lanka

by Wilda Morris

A little luck and the money
from my father’s will
and I was touring the world.

I settled down for six years
in the Sri Lankan highlands,
married a Sinhalese artist.
We carried paint
and canvas to the rainforest,
painted bromelaids, epiphytes,
and the purple-faced leaf monkey.

At Yala, we watched a leopard
limp off the dirt road,
followed him into the jungle
till he hid himself in underbrush.

Each year we hiked to Kandy
for the Esala Perahera.
On the day of the full moon
we watched dancers, drummers,
whip-crackers, torch-bearers,
and caparisoned elephants
parade the streets, bowed
when Maligawa Tusker passed by
with the canopied reliquary
containing a replica of Buddha’s tooth.

When Tamil fighters came,
I hid my love beneath coconuts
picked from our palm trees,
told them he’d gone to India
to paint the Taj Mahal.

These are just a few
adventures in that other life
I never lived.

T.F.

by Kaitlyn Tucker

For three years I had a nightly correspondence with the tooth fairy.
It began, as you can suspect, with my loosing a tooth. I was in first grade, taking a standardized test that would reveal my egregious lack of aptitude for spatial relations. As I contemplated the rhombus, trapezoid, I chewed on my number 2 pencil—a Ticonderoga, I remember, the Cadillac of pencils. While contemplating mirror images, suddenly my elbow slipped, and the pencil that I had been nervously gnawing on jabbed my front tooth, which had been wiggly for several weeks. I felt a swift pain, heard an odd tearing noise, and instinctively spit out a wad of tooth and gum onto the test booklet.

I could feel the blood swirling in my mouth. You are not allowed to speak once the test has begun.  I raised my hand. Mrs. Larkin sat reading a romance novel. I waved both hands, panic mounting. I was doing a dance that resembled the YMCA by the time Mrs. Larkin finally looked up. She rushed over. “I lotht a tooth,” I gurgled. Blood spurted everywhere. Mrs. Larkin, a seasoned teacher, swiftly handed me tissues and the nurse’s pass and whisked me out the door.

The nurse gave me gauze to chew on and a pink glittery plastic molar-shaped case on a green string that I wore around my neck and sent me back to class. I realize, in hindsight, that the school’s faculty was very efficient at the tooth losing business. I bounced back down the hallway, smiling to show off my gauze pipe to the measly kindergartners who stood lined up along the hallway. As I would soon learn, any kind of injury is a recipe for instant celebrity in elementary school, particularly when that injury has an element of gore. As I re-entered the classroom, it was to cheers of “Gross! Cool!” Mrs. Larkin sat trying to wipe off my answer sheet. Be sure to erase completely, avoid all stray marks. My sheet was modern art, a constellation of graphite orbs pocked with rusty, red smears. 

At the end of the day, I ran off the bus, lunchbox swinging behind me, eager to show my Mom my trophy. I smiled proudly, jutting my chin to emphasize the gaping whole. “You’ll have to remember to put it under your pillow tonight so the tooth fairy can come,” she said. I nodded vigorously.

  When I woke up the next morning, I groped under my pillow and found a ten-dollar bill and a note from the tooth fairy, congratulating me on my first tooth, a real milestone. At breakfast, I sat absentmindedly swirling my Cream of Wheat, preoccupied with visions of the tiny nymph who flew around, collecting bloody baby teeth and exchanging them for surprises. This was cool.

But exciting though the discovery of this mythical creature was, I was disappointed by the fact that the show, so to speak, was over.  I wanted her to come back! I felt my other teeth, trying to see if any were showed promise of being loose. All hard as rocks. But then I had a brainstorm. I would write the tooth fairy a thank-you note, like Mom was always telling me to, to be polite. Then she would have to come back to reply to my note! It was brilliant. Brilliant!

I told my mother of this plan, mainly for brownie points. My mom was never a stickler for etiquette, but one standard she insisted upon were hand-written, personal thank you notes. Growing up, I came to resent this, as the rest of my generation sent generic, party store pre-inscribed thank you cards, and as technology progressed, thank you emails. However the rule for me was always the same: one whole handwritten page.  I figured I could score some points with my mom if I informed her that I was, on my own accord, writing a thank you note to the tooth fairy.

The tooth fairy, then, was probably just trying to solidify my good thank you note writing habits when she responded to my note with a note of her own. She could not have foreseen the nightly ritual this would become, the era of my childhood she was ushering in. 

*

The box arrived yesterday. I went to pick it up at the front desk of my dormitory. Next to the UPS label, in my mother’s even script: To KT, Love TF.

I opened it immediately. On the floor, in the lobby. I have yet to acquire the adult restraint of opening packages calmly; and to be honest, I doubt that I will.

I had asked her to send it to me so that I could remember it exactly. Because I couldn’t recall the details; just that I wrote to the tooth fairy every night for a while when I was little. And that I sometimes made her presents. And that she always wrote back.

Of course, she had saved the letters.  And of course she sent them, when on a November day my junior year of college, I had asked for them. And of course there was a tin of homemade scones in the bottom of the box. Because she is my mother.

*

The letters are of every shape and size. They are written on construction paper, stationary, postcards, leftover classroom Valentines, hotel memos, yellow legal notepaper. They are all slightly crumpled, attesting to the fact that they were once placed under my pillow, and then swiftly extracted so as not to wake me from my light slumber.  I pull them from the box, handful after handful, and assemble them into a jumbled heap. Glitter sprays the floor.

The earliest ones are the simplest. In shaky print, they inquire and declare, alternatively. Dear TF, Were you a brownie? I am. Love, KT.  But soon the print steadies, becomes more uniform, evolves into cursive. The questions become more complex, contemplative. Are you the only tooth fairy? Do you have relatives? Are fairies mammals?

There is a good collection of shameless pleas for more contact: Please wake me up when you visit. I want to talk to you! Can I see you? With my eyes?  A fair amount of venting: I hate brothers!  Some genuine appeals for advice: What can I do to make Monica my friend? But the focus of most of the letters is a simple chronicle of my elementary school life.

Today we made cards for the American soldiers in Bosnia. I am being Amelia Earhart for Halloween. I have poison ivy. There is an invitation to my second grade geography bee, my first horse show, several school plays. There is a letter mourning the death of my guinea pig, Hampton, featuring the lyrics of “There are places I remember,” and a magazine cutout of John Lennon.  A Valentines Day letter has chocolates glued on. 

As I leaf through the pile, I pick up one crinkled piece of notepad paper, and intake sharply.  Dear T.F., Can you write to my friend Sandy? She wrote to you tonight too. She is in the sleeping bag next to me. Thanks. Love, KT.  I realize in hindsight that this was just about the time Sandy, my best friend from childhood, was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis, initiating a ten year valiant struggle with the disease. Her letter is next in the pile: Dear T.F., I am sleeping over at Katie’s. Today we saw Free Willy 2 at the movie theater. We each ate a whole bag of popcorn. From, Sandy.  She passed away last summer.

I fold the letter and put it back in the box, an action I’ve perfected. I tuck it in beside a miniature bed, made of neon green pipe cleaners twisted into a frame—a present I made for T.F. There is a quilt, too, a sloppy seam just barely affixing patches of fabric left over from our kitchen curtains.

I remember that I loved making her presents; I loved imagining ways I could make things miniature, T.F.-sized. The box is full of these fossils: tiny bead bracelets, a miniature Christmas tree made from beeswax, chairs made of seashells, a tepee.

I would bake for her too. Or rather, I would help my mother bake, and insist on a “T.F. batch” – a miniature version of the Linzer Tart, pumpkin pie, biscotti she was baking for my homeroom class, the neighbors, the stream of foreign exchange students we hosted throughout the years. We would rack our brains to find ways to miniaturize these treats, repurposing my brother’s lego-men as cookie cutters.

Dear T.F., Happy Birthday! I made you a cake, but I left it at your house because I couldn’t put it under my pillow. Love, KT.  I remember the house. I made it out of Lincoln Logs, and placed it in the corner of my room, near the window. I wanted T.F. to have a place to come and rest if she had a busy night of tooth collecting. And I remember that T.F.’s birthday was May 1. And that the first year I began writing to her, she was 16 years old in fairy years. She told me that there were seven human years in every fairy year, and then she asked me how many human years old she was. I was just learning to multiply.

There are several letters from T.F. in the box as well, although those, on the whole, have been lost at a far greater rate, as I, the recipient, generally kept them, hoarding stacks in secret places. In my early teen years, several years after the T.F. phase, I would happen across these bunches of letters, and embarrassed by the childishness of my not too distant past, would surreptitiously throw them out. But a few precious specimens survive.

There is one that documents T.F.’s family tree—describing the different elvin duties of each one of her 9 siblings. Another describes the elvin educational system. One explains why it is important to study for spelling tests. One recommends ways to avoid getting angry with younger siblings, describing T.F.’s conflicts with her younger brother, Moondust. (Moondust, coincidentally, was five years younger then T.F., exactly the same age interval between me and my younger brother, Robbie.)

I smiled when I read that one.

She was so graceful.

To the Train Station

by Christine Tongue

It’s all coming back to me. Over me. I don’t even know where it all began. Those days are long darkened by a mist that, most times, I don’t even know exists. I want to go back to the time before. I have to capture the pieces, and put them all back together again. Where did it all begin? Maybe it began before I even existed, or maybe it began when I was two. I was two and my mum took me for a walk in the pram.

Imagine a house in a small countryside village set aside from the motorway to the main town of the province. A two-floor house with a basement and a garden at the back with a strawberry patch.  A house along a road aligned with other identical houses. And behind the left row of houses a vast stretch of green field. This is where my parents lived. This is the house where I lived.
It was a Tuesday and my father had retired to his office in the basement for another day’s work. My mother knocks on his door at eleven o’clock and serves his eleven o’clock tea and cake, just as she always does. The fact that my mother has dressed in triple underwear that day, my father does not know. Nor the fact that she’s dressed with double clothing. Everything looks just like it always does. The fact that she is preparing to take me for a walk in the park just after eleven o’clock is also as usual. And that my favourite teddy is left sitting on my bed. 

There she goes on her normal route at the back of the house towards the park with me in my pram. Not that my father is able to see her at this point. Nor does he see us when her route diverges and she heads for the train station. Now with an increased momentum. My father is unaware and my mother thinks she is making the best decision in her life.

He is still unaware as she boards the 11:45 train with me in the pram, destined for freedom. He would never have guessed.  To the city, to stay with her sister, temporarily, until she gets a job and her own flat. My mother has planned everything in detail. She’s also planned to call my father when she is safe and tell him that she’ll never come back. That everything has reached a certain point, and that it’s over. She’s not prepared that he will forever after claim that she kidnapped his daughter.

Of course, I was only two, so I couldn’t honestly say how it was. I can only put the pieces together. My mother’s, my father’s.  But deep in the very marrow of my body, this day is embedded in me. Not the words spoken nor the actions, but the emotion as my mother boards the train, and the emotion as my father puts the phone down.

Tom Fillion

by

Night Bus (Malanville to Niamey)

by Katherine Nehring

   
  How little the darkness seems to perturb everyone!  The little towns along the paved road are all aflame with ineffectual fires – a blue pillar of fluorescent lights along the gendarmerie, a storm lantern or a coffee tin filled with kerosene lighting every vendor of onions or soap or rice. The meat-sellers are lit by nothing but their glowing coals.  And everyone goes about their business just as if it were broad day.  Women bargain for stacks of spices as if they could see them clearly, men make their way home by flashlight without evident resentment at the inconvenience.  By intermittent flashes of flashlight, no less – you can’t keep it on constantly without draining the batteries, so at every other stride you flick it on just long enough to glimpse the way before you before flicking it off again. Perhaps light, after all, is not something to which we are entitled.

  Away from the towns, the obscurity is complete; the only things visible are the lines on the road.  The battered bus travels in a bubble, illuminating nothing of where it has been, and precious little of where it is to go.  Occasionally an overhanging tree or a spray of dusty grass flares into life, but the highway lines always lance ahead, marking where the road will be.  That’s a piece of luck, too – if the quality of the road reflected the quality of the bus, it would be pocked and pitted, cracked and crumbling, as stippled as the vehicles traversing it.  Darkness will forgive many faults – ugliness, for instance – but not potholes.  This road is fine by night as by day, and perhaps even clearer under high beams than under the diffuse, punishing sun.

  The passage of the bus is not unremarked by the night landscape – creatures of the small and harmless variety go scampering out of its path, and the great creatures of the road flash their beams in warning and salute while still a long way off.  Night is the time of the predators – the bikes and motos have all gone to bed and even the long-working, long-suffering 504s and 505s are stabled for the night.  Busses and trucks rule the road, the powers of the night time, carrying bulk cargo; cotton or oil or human souls.  On the back of one truck two tires were affixed, and the bar of the bumper transformed the whole thing into a huge mask.  Was it inadvertent?  Does its inadvertence make a difference?

  But there’s a ghost abroad in the night, flying through the darkness like death or the devil.  Light limns the lines of all the quiet faces in the bus, all but one.  Black people turn black in the darkness, but white people turn green, chloris, as pale as the pale horse.  The apparition is so ghastly that it seems that it should strike fear into the hearts of the people in the dim bustling towns (not sleeping, still not sleeping, do these people ever sleep?) If the maladies and the curses that swoop through the night were to take on a face and form, surely it could be no more terrifying than the death-pale human negative sitting in the bus, as quiet and patient as the lawful travelers, as if it had every right to be where it was.

Greek Story

by Anita Anand

The man on the yacht is waving to the boy and me. The name of the yacht is Monachus-Monachus, which translates as the Mediterranean monk seal, an animal seen on the islands of Alonissos and Zakynthos.

The boy and I are dressed almost identically, in dark shorts, sleeveless white tank tops and sandals that you can pick up at a stand by the docks in Piraeus. I am not wearing a bra today, having rinsed it and left it to dry on a clothesline at the youth hostel. He is carrying the same long rough white towel as me, rented from the front desk for 100 drachmas.

We don’t know each other.

The boy stands out here in a way I don’t, with his fair skin, long sunny curls and eyes the colour of restaurant mints. He is very slight for a man, but then he is really a boy, no older than me. I am nineteen.  We have both stepped out of the youth hostel at the same time and are walking, for now, in the same direction.

We wave back hesitantly at the man on the yacht and continue to walk past the docks towards the beach. We both look at the seagulls, the sailboats, the other yachts. The tide is coming in.  The water matches the boy’s eyes.

He is not my type, too small and feminine. But there is a bond between us, things we already know.

Like this: we are both very hungry, but trying to save our money for a ferry or bus or train to the next place. Our official story is that we are traveling, learning about different places and cultures, but really we are just landing once in awhile, skimming the surface.  Looking for something to eat.
He wraps his towel around his tiny waist.

“Ye shuld do this too,” he says.

For scavenging?  I think. I say nothing as he takes my towel from my hands and wraps it around me.

“Yer awfy wee,” he says, surprising me.

Just then the man from the Monachus-Monachus calls to us. “Come.  Come here.  Welcome.”

A local man, middle-aged. Lopsided grin, tired eyes under bushy black eyebrows. Once handsome. Loose blue shirt, longish straight black hair blowing in the breeze.

There is, under the brine, a whiff of onions and rosemary.

“Come, you see boat.”

The boy and I glance at each other, wordlessly board the yacht, and follow the man down a few narrow steps into the cabin. 

The cabin is warm, dark and muggy. It has the wood paneling of a suburban basement back home. There are floodlights in the ceiling. There is a fire extinguisher in a narrow corner next to a tiny sink. A pot of simmering liquid, the source of the enticing aroma, sits on something that looks exactly like a toy stove. Above the fire extinguisher, there is a sign featuring the English word WARNING. I can’t read the rest from where our host has motioned us to sit, on a sofa upholstered in leather, with small round cushions featuring cartoon cowboys. I look around for something Greek. Well, there is our host, Christos, black hair poking out of the top of his shirt. A gold chain, a gold watch, gold in his teeth. He crouches down, suddenly disappears behind a curtain in the corner by the sink, and when he reemerges, he hands us each a glass of ouzo.

“You see seals? I take you tomorrow, yes? Very nice.”

Ouzo, I think, is basically black licorice in clear liquid form. The Scottish boy—his name, it turns out, is Tom –- listens politely as Christos talks about naval mechanics.  Whenever Tom says anything, though, Christos looks at him blankly and then turns to me with a slight frown.

Christos serves us eggplant soup, olives and bread. We are both ravenous but puzzled. In Scotland, in Canada, people do not randomly invite passersby in for food. Tom keeps protesting, “Naw, Ah cuidnae. Naw, a’ richt, ta, jist a wee bit. That’s awfy guid o’ ye.”

Christos is clearly very rich, at least for a Greek, at least in contrast to us. So far he has not spoken of emigrating to Canada. He beams at us affectionately as he refills our glasses.

“How nice.  Nice young love, beautiful boy and beautiful girl.  You are so lucky.”

Tom tries to explain that we are not together. That we just happened to leave the youth hostel at the same moment, for a walk on the beach.

“Yes, how nice, two beautiful young people on love honeymoon, yes? You sleep here tonight?”

He pins us down with his sad dark eyes. We don’t say anything for a moment, and then suddenly, out of the corner of my eyes, I spot a small, neat picture frame on the wall. Blue background, as in a school photo.  A dark-haired girl, perhaps a high-school student, smiling merrily, showing white teeth and dimples.
“Your daughter?”  I ask, not hopefully.

“I have no family,” Christos confirms glumly, but his body shifts a little as he prepares to tell us a story.

“Ech, I have nephew. This is lovely wife of my nephew. They visit before.  Then only him, but he keep her picture here. Her name Despina, but I call her Persephone, because she only visit in the spring.  But now no.”

He sighs heavily.

“Perrsephone, the goddess o’ sprrring,” says Tom.  I glance at him, impressed.  He acknowledges this with a humble half-bow. Christos doesn’t seem to have noticed his intervention, for he continues.

“Persephone, this is the goddess of spring. Hades, this is lord of the underwear. He take Persephone. Then mother of Persephone, Demeter, she want Persephone come back, so she say Zeus, tell Hades, let my daughter come back. But then, Hades make Persephone eat apple.”

“The pomegrrranate,” corrects Tom.

“Not an apple, this is the fruit with the many seed,” Christos says, ignoring Tom.

“A pomegranate?”  I ask.

“Yes, yes, I think. In Greek, poido.  Po –ee-do.”

“ Po-ee-do,” Tom and I repeat obediently.

“Yes, she eat the poido and this is why she must come back at the underwear for one-three of the year.”

Christos belches, heaves himself up from his chair and excuses himself as he leaves the cabin. We soon hear his heavy footsteps on the deck.

“Whit he’s tryin’ tae say is the underrworrld,” says Tom.  “An’ Hades wis a fuckin’ rrapist!”

Tom is playing with one of my hands.

We hear Christos clear his throat and spit.

“Grrreat!” Tom comments dryly.

“My dad does that,” I say, for no reason at all.

“Is that richt?  Why, is thir onythin wrang wi’ him?”

“ Probably.  A lot.” And I laugh as if I have said something incredibly witty.

“Naw, naw, Whit Ah mean is, is he ill?”

“I just think something is wrong with him.”

Tom nods. He tickles my palm with a forefinger, and my hand closes up around it like an infant’s.

“How come you know about Greek myths?”  I ask him. He seems more attractive to me now.  Not just a pretty face.

“An’ how come ye dinnae?  Dae they no teach ye yanks onythin’ at the schul?”

“I’m not a Yank. I’m Canadian,” I say, and half pull my hand away.

“Is that richt?” His eyes glint with amusement. He seems much more masculine now that he is mocking me. He grabs my hand back and pulls gently on my fingers, one at a time, leaving a cool buzzing sensation in each. “So, dae they no teach ye Canadians onythin’  then?”

“Yes,” I say brightly. I think:  I am drunk. And then I say, “They teach us French.”

“Oooo-la-la,” Tom exclaims, and we look up to see Christos standing in front of us again.  Tom unlaces his fingers from mine.

“Ah, Tom, you speak French!” he says, as if this has cleared something up that has been puzzling him. He frowns, and then his body shifts into storytelling mode again.

“Maybe then you can explain a story to me now. It is French story, about a man he die, and he write in blood on the wall, ‘Omar m’a tué.’ What mean, Omar m’a tué?”

He stares at Tom but I answer for him, “It means ‘Omar killed me.’”

This story, much briefer, has the ring of truth to it. Who told it to him?  A French couple that he invited onto his boat? Why is he telling it to us now? 

Now he asks us again if we will spend the night. He insists on a tour of the two cramped bedrooms, his and then the guest’s, with their identical fake oak king-size bed and night tables. The air is hot and stuffy but the bed looks inviting after youth hostel bunks. I try not to think of the blood graffiti story.

“Dae ye want tae bide?”  Tom asks me when Christos disappears behind the curtain again to get more drinks.  Tom bores into my eyes with his.  He has long eyelashes like a contestant in a little girls’ beauty pageant.

“Bide?”

“Stay the night?” he says lightly, teasingly, holding my eyes with his, as if it both matters a lot and doesn’t matter at all.

“Do you?” I mumble, for I don’t know. The ouzo is making everything seem at once blurry and sharply scented, like a thick cloud of perfume.

“Yer richt bonnie,” Tom says.

No one has every said anything like that to me before. I want to say, “You’re the one with the goldilocks and the pretty eyes.

“I hae a lassie at hame in Scotland, but she gaes wi’ ither lads,” he says sadly.

His eyes are glistening.

The sky has turned to dark blue ink. I wonder what time it is. Will the youth hostel be closing its doors soon? 

Christos comes back with the drinks and asks us if we would like to take a shower.

“Hot water, very nice.“
At the youth hostel, showers are 200 drachmas, and they are cold. Tom begins the “verrry, verry guid o’ ye,” stammering, but Christos unwraps his towel from around his waist, hands him a plusher version and pushes him up the stairs onto the deck, into the shower stall. 

Then he turns around and considers me, as I have followed them up the steps, somewhat wobbily.  Christos is somewhere around my father’s age. He smells like a father too, a mix of aftershave and tobacco. But the fathers I have known all seem beleaguered by an abundance of human company.  Maybe because he is a bachelor, Christos seems completely insane with loneliness.

I think of the photo of Despina. How to avoid ending up like Christos, scaring people with desperation and crazy storytelling? This is why people get married and start families, I think.  Because they know that otherwise there is a chance they’ll end up like this.

Maybe I should marry Tom. I don’t know him, but we would have pretty children. I see a pair with golden ringlets, holding hands. We would be safe, I think. There is safety in numbers. I listen to the waves outside, hitting the shore, and for a moment it is as if the noise is the sound of alcohol rocking around in my head. The inside of my brain, I think, is ouzo, rocks, fog, deepening darkness.

Now Christos turns to me and says, smiling a little questioningly, “You wan me to tell you something about your young man, beautiful Cassandra?”

I am baffled and speechless.  My name is not Cassandra.

“No? O.K., go to him. Go to your young man.”

I suddenly fear that if I decline, he will claim the right to have me. Drunk and dizzy, I let him push me into the stall with Tom. Tom is naked; his wet hair seems very long. I let the shower drench my clothes as we stare at each other.

“Tom, who is Cassandra?”

“Eh?”

“Christos called me Cassandra.”

“Is that so? Whit dae ye ken?”

“What do I what?”

“What do you know?” he says, in a soft American drawl.

“Is that a question?”

He just looks at me.  Finally, he puts his arms around me and draws me to him.  I kiss him tentatively, and then he kisses me back and then we stay entangled within the warm, wet sensation like suckling children.

And then he shocks me; he pushes me away. 

I step out of the stall, confused and cold now in my wet clothes, and wait for him.  Christos hasn’t left me a towel. I had thought he was hovering outside the shower, but now I hear the bouzouki music from below deck.  He must be waiting for us in the cabin with more drinks. Will he expect us to dance with him?
Tom comes out of the shower, avoiding my eyes. I miserably pat myself dry with the damp towel he hands me on his way out of the stall.

He pushes past me and in a moment I hear him in the cabin.

“Naw, thanks a’ the same. Verry guid o’ ye.  We hae tae go.  Naw, we cannae bide.  Naw, the lass has tae gang back tae the hostel fur her stuff, ye ken, or we’d surely bide wi’ ye.”  His voice is light, sing-songy.  I can imagine Christos’ expression of disappointment and bafflement. I don’t want to go back but Tom returns to where I am standing, shivering. Fierce again, he grabs my hand and marches me back down the steps, muttering, “Say ‘Thanks’  tae the guidman, wull ye no?”

A few minutes later we leave the boat, still holding hands, smile and wave cheerily at the Greek as he watches us with a drunken, hurt pout.  As Tom drops my hand I feel my face relax into a similar pose.

“Whit did ye dae that fur, eh?” Tom barks at me.

“What did I do what for?” I ask, glumly. Suddenly we are bickering as if we have known each other two thousand years.

“Whit did ye egg me on fur?  Whit did ye egg me on fur when Ah telt ye?”

“Telt ye what?”  I ask, dimly aware that I am mimicking his accent. If we were a long married couple rather than two drunken strangers, would I be doing the same? Probably, I answer myself dully.

“Ah telt ye Ah hid a lassie at hame in Scotland, Ah did. Ah did tell ya.  An’ aye ye hud tae keep on eggin’ me on. Yer brazen, urn’t ye?  Whit did ye think ye wir playin’ at back there? Whit wis on yer min’?”

And on and on.  I clam up. I worry that he does in fact know what I was thinking.

“Naw, yer no’ a Cassandra. Yer one o’ the’ Sirens fro’ Sirenus Scopuli.”

I think of a friend back home, who had a lot more experience with men than me, but always complained, “They make no sense. They’re not like us, you know.  The things they come out with. They might as well always be speaking Greek.”  I will myself not to listen to Tom.  Still, I keep tuning in.  At one point he is saying, “And anither thing, ah never kent a lassie who hud sae little respec’ fur her faither.”

What I had no idea of course, back then, is just how many affable strangers would turn out to be complete madmen, some even uttering threats. How many guys would find me bonnie and charming and sexy and delightful—and never call.  Run into them in the street and they would look away, muttering to themselves, as if offended, as if I had somehow polluted them by virtue of my existence.  And how sometimes it would be me, being the hot and cold psycho. The fact I was never slashed to death, my blood coagulating into gruesome sentences on a wall, fills me with amazement, when I think about it.

I’ve been wondering lately what must have happened to Christos.  Is he even still alive?

And Tom. He must have changed a lot by now. I wonder if he still has his hair.

I dreamt that our footprints, Tom’s and mine, had hardened in the sand as if in cement, and we stood looking at them, I puzzled, he unsurprised. He turned and looked at me with a trace of a smile and gave a wry shrug. 

He didn’t look like himself; he kept morphing between my ex-husband and a man who advertises gunk remover on T.V. 

My father, who died ten years ago of lung cancer, smiled sadly at us from the yacht, waving two white towels, before disappearing inside.

Barry Basden

by

Jon Olseth

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