Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fall 2018
s
BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX 18 | an online journal of voice
Copyright © 2018
First Edition
BlazeVOX [books]
Geoffrey Gatza
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org
BlazeVOX [ books ]
blazevox.org
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Fall 2018
Table of Contents
Poetry
Aidan Coleman Allan Johnston
Ann Privateerl Brandon McQuade
Christian Woodard Christine Karka
Christopher Barnes Clive Gresswell
David Hawkins Debopriya Bhattacharya
Deborah Saltman Denise Bell
Donato Mancini Emilie Pichot
Ethan Goffman Heller Levinson
J.B. Stone Jeff Bagato
Jen Rouse Joe Milford
Joel Schueler John Grey
John J. Trause JoyAnne O'Donnell
Julio Valentin Juno Probe
Kate Wise Kelsey Ryann Orsini
Linda King Lorna Perez
Margaret Adams Birth Mark Young
Mary Shanley Matthew L. Morris
matthew scott harris Michael J. Grodesky
Michael Starr Mick Raubenheimer
Milton P. Ehrlich Miranda Elise
Ndaba Sibanda Nicholas J.A.
Paige Melin Paul Lojeski
Peake McCarthy RaKhiy elder
Roger Craik Ruth Gooley
Sudha Srivatsan Tori Perry
Fiction
Utopia — Tahseen Reza
Creative Non-Fiction
Five Dusky Phantoms: Re-reading Moby Dick in Times of Trouble — Barbara Roether
Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies these pieces appear as dreamlike images in which
fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory
always play a key role. In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference post-colonial theory
as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of
resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
Many of the works are about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water),
space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes develop in absurd ways. By creating
situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to develop forms that do not follow logical
criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make
new personal associations. These pieces demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and
often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century.
It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’
and ‘civilized’ selves. Enjoy!
Rockets, Geoffrey
an online journal of voice
Fall 2018
s
Fall 2018
Tori Perry
Surrender
Rose knew. She spoke. Shaved her head in defiance, took hush money to silence his crimes and poured it
into the shredder.
A Difficult Woman is now called a Brave. She is Brave.
Husk of a person, filled with fire and fervor and the voices of victims.
Fighting. Fighting. Fighting.
Warrior.
She flipped the rock over and showed us the darkness underneath, flipped the light switch on, howled in
defiance.
She refuses to stop. Pushes herself forward, propelled by outrage.
Holds enablers accountable.
Your time is coming. Look at the roses outside, delicate, soft, feminine.
Remember that roses have thorns.
Accept your crimes.
Submit.
Surrender.
Trunk
I heard talking. Two men, a few feet away, in a truck opposite me.
Saw them out of the corner of my eye. Saw their phones up in selfie mode.
Finished putting my groceries in the trunk, I pushed my cart ten feet away to the return stall.
The phones were following me.
They were filming me.
Me.
A thirty-four year old mother of two, in a plain black blouse and black pants.
I would like to tell you that I pulled my phone out, took a picture of them and walked inside to report them.
That I called the police and gave them descriptions of my offenders and recited their license plate number.
That my short red hair transformed into real flames that set fire to the bed of their truck, that they poured
out and begged my forgiveness. The black truck a burned shell. Their phones turned to tar in the incinerated
charred remains.
I didn’t.
I got into my car and sat there.
Stared at the steering wheel.
Slowly started my car, backed out, and pulled away.
I did nothing.
I know that I was lucky. They never got out of the truck. It was daytime. They would have had a easy time
grabbing all 5’1 of me and getting away.
My kids were not with me.
My son did not hear the vulgar assault.
My daughter did not watch her mom cry.
Now I carry a switchblade with me. Occasionally I wrap my fingers around the handle.
I tuck it into my boots.
Daring anyone to talk to me.
Confident.
I am safer now.
Still.
The first time I had suicidal thoughts, they were not really suicidal.
It was not an intent to leave.
I felt as if the floors were tar and that I was sinking into the ground.
There was no fight to claw my way out of the tar.
It clung to me, to my clothes.
Burned the nostrils of people around me, the acrid smell keeping sympathy at bay.
Glazed eyes. Sleepless.
I had no fight left.
I was outside last summer. My pale skin enraged at the audacity of the sun.
Kids running around the spring, laughing. I was struck by how visible my skin was.
Every freckle, every roll and tuck.
Remarked that I would be a terrific junkie. I am transparent. My blue veins like a map. A Vitamin D
deficiency and a white bikini.
Stared at the vast expanses of my thighs, struck by all the new and unseen stretch marks. Horrified.
My husband quietly tells me that those are not stretch marks at all, but veins. I am relieved that my age and
childbearing has not scarred me outside.
My insides have not fared so well.
Depression to me, mind you, this is not the same as being afraid of shadows.
Shadows are comforting. They are soft darkness that clings to us.
I am not afraid of the shadows, the dark corners. The soft recesses.
The second time I had suicidal thoughts it was if a sheet came from behind. Wrapped me.
Hid me.
I was replaced with a splintered outline.
Jagged Lines of yellow decorating pale skin like daggers.
Opened my mouth and locusts filled the room. Curves replaced by hard edges and quills. The pout of my
bottom lip withdrawn. Hands full of dust. Blindly moving my feet forward.
Tornado of a girl. It was too loud everywhere. Winds blinded me. I could not feel the comforting hands on
my shoulders.
Questions. Questions. Questions.
Concern.
I was nearly away.
I was afraid the outline would hide in my attic, under the bed. Would whisper in my ear at night. Would drip
poison into my decorative mug of coffee in the morning.
It might be gone. I’m not sure. I think I locked it away somewhere in a hallway. I’m not sure where the
hallway is. Did you see where I put my keys?
Utopia
John woke up wide-eyed like he did every day now. Roaring to get the day started. It was 5 am and the sun
was glowing through his high glass windows, softly illuminating his room as if cradling him in its warm
embrace. The temperature was just right at this time of day, not too cool not too hot. But of course, it was
always that now. Dedicated Scientists had finally figured out how to recycle greenhouse gases into
renewable energy that powered the world so that Global Warming wasn't the disastrous issue as it was back
in 2021. The Climate had been stable for 59 years. The sea level didn't rise, no more ice caps melted and our
polar bears were still as jolly as ever. John had just seen a family of them last weekend. They had teleported
to the Artic, him and Matt, albeit a little cheekily but what their parents didn't know didn't hurt them right?
It had taken only half an hour - they had seen the beautiful snow coated creatures playing with their
adorable cubs, rolling around, making odd polar bear snow angels in the snow. John had badly wanted to
join them but Matt had restrained him. Polar bears, after all, were still dangerous but to observe them in
their magnificent glory had been a risk worth taking.
They had teleported back to the Glass Skyscraper Metro Station and had caught hoverboards back to school,
just in time for their morning class with Miss Lilium or Miss Lily for short. She was their botany teacher as
well as the world to Matt. She was beautiful like her name, tall, slender and green with the richest chestnut
hair and the warmest smile. She had Driad blood in her after all. The boys made their way to the
conservatory where their class was all huddled in a group near Miss Lily. John stood up on his tiptoes, trying
to get a look. In Miss Lily's slender pretty hand, stood a plant, its flowers small, a rich-hued burgundy brown,
emitting the pleasantest of smells. Like cake and his mother, it seemed to John. "This is an extremely rare
plant called 'Cosmos atrosanguineus' or Chocolate Cosmos," explained Miss L "recently a team of researchers
at Gaea-Cambridge institute has successfully been able to bring this beauty out of deep extinction and
remarkably so, we haven't these since 1998 and now ten bushes are going to be planted in this very school!"
Miss Lily gushed. "What's the scent coming outta them Miss L?" asked Talia, almost ramming her druid nose
into the precious flower. John twitched his own nose, Talia was always getting her nose into things. Always
meddling with her incessant questions and bickering. It didn't help that she was perfect with glowing
emerald skin, bright sapphire slanted eyes and always so kind. It didn't help that he was hopelessly in love
with her either. "That's a chemical called Vanillin" Miss L answered, “You smell it in cakes, coffee, and
chocolate." An 'Ooooh' was heard from the class and Miss L chuckled. "Yes, there will be chocolate and you
all will get to help me plant these splendid creatures tomorrow," she said as she caressed the precious plant.
Cheers were heard from all at this news. "Oh, what a wonderful start to the day!" John thought.
The school day went by as normal as it could. Always something new being discovered, reclaimed and
renewed. Science, humanity and the environment had combined to form a perfect trifecta of wonder that
would never have been thought possible in the Later Medieval Ages of 2015-2025. John walked out of school
and into the Sherwood Forest, his route home. As he trudged along the green velvety carpet of grass, he
could feel the cool clean air filling his lungs refreshing him. Thank God, smoking had been eradicated. It was
an immense group effort back in 2030 when the UN all unanimously voted to eradicate smoking. People had
finally decided, on their own, to give up the tar and nicotine and embrace the oxygen and within the next 3
years, marvelously tobacco production had completely halted, lung diseases and cancer had dropped by
60%. In three years! This was his lesson in Renaissance 2.0 history and it fascinated him, the commitment
and will that could be summoned by man. Of course, the new government had sped things up. A
government, very much like the UN, with representatives of all countries, races, genders, and faiths all
unanimously working together for one noble cause: the Earth. Running on honesty, integrity, kindness, and
love. After all, we were so close to losing our planet back in 2021, we weren't going to do it again. John mused
as he walked. He liked walking though, teleportation and flight were just a hand span away. It gave him time
to appreciate his world. Utopia meaning a perfect place was the only word that came to his mind. The earth
now was lush, evergreen and a haven. The aquamarine rivers ran crystal clear through the forest with a
treasure trove of marine life hidden in its depths, leaping tantalizingly into view. These rivers ran into the
oceans, now clean of waste and oil spillages- home to a billion life species. The animals all flourished in their
natural habitats with minimum human disturbance and they rewarded us with an Eden of an ecosystem.
Every promenade was shaded by tall, fruit trees that provided both sustenance and protection. As soon as we
had taken care of our environment a little, it had done tenfold for us. Food and poverty wasn't an issue
anymore. Not with the myriad of natural treasures at our disposal.
John finally reached home, a tall spindling glass tree house, intertwined with an oak tree like so many others
in his neighborhood. As he looked at his house, he realized that it was a perfect symbol for what his world
had become. One with the Earth.
Fall 2018
Sudha Srivatsan
That morning
Hither at nightfall
This is my spot.
Scatter me here,
where sea spaces sky,
where blue dragonflies flit
above owl and bobcat scat,
where bees scrabble for sugar
in pink buckwheat tops.
Let me lie here in this place
I know so well,
every turn in the trail,
every fold in the hills,
every season, every time.
Death will be bearable if
I’m not far from
the coyote’s nightly yowl,
the hawk’s shriek,
the tumble of the surf.
HEARD IN A RESTAURANT
“Accessibility,”
“Display Accommodations,”
“Color Filters”—
“50 me.
0 to you.
Shuffle ‘em good!”
Fall 2018
RaKhiy elder
I’m Terrified
i’m terrified.
A . T
> O, LL-'C.
Ché\ + __
guerill@
熊 と獅子
昨日の晩に
filet を魚(bii!)
寒かった
Sad as I am.
gottlieb elem.
'ぁLаla@fa|tf
Fugitive Spirituism
chasm.
We...touch it with
Thumbs stripped of place.
We pry it
Open with careful hands void of
Intention and watch atmospheric ash
Curl over its soft edges
Sighs of some prior predatorial
Existence piling, glinting, promising
Something like purpose.
Here is where you always were,
never outside of it.
Unbuttoning dresses with my
assistance, pedantic casual be its
ways.
be.
The sway of palm trees froze in
winter: umbrellas under fire.
We conditioned not to know pain.
Now no position holds us safely.
Daffodils playing host to spiders-
us only held in each other's aura.
Falling. At. each.
me5t. iculous step.
dialogue
amongst
yourselves. be. creams
S
call back from the
woods. Trees taut as learned
____________________________________________________________________________
*and i do mean Thine
enter.
Well…
Fall 2018
Peake McCarthy
history
riding fire
sipping
moonlight
swimming
in memory
fading like
a dying sun
all the while
singing to
my friends
the stars.
but weeping
anyway when
a horse called
Leaving thunders
closer, as I hold
out my hands
to give these
tears a home.
no science fiction
there’re none
but us already
here, aliens
speeding through
space, weapons
hot and loaded.
Stressed Out
oh, yeah
baby!
& I think
I see it too
I don’t
want it to happen
I’ve decided
that I should be
an actress
“what
were yesterday’s events?”
you might ask
well
first things first
yesterday
was codee’s birthday party
it was:
all of her friends went to play lasertag
then cake & presents at her house with friends & family
then a sleepover with her friends
then
they asked if my dad let me listen to them
I said
no, felt myself
going red - uncle r said
“I didn’t think
he would they’re a little…
rough.”
as if
all of this wasn’t bad enough -
as my family
was getting ready
to leave (I
was staying
for the sleepover)
mommy kept
pulling me aside
telling me
“if they listen to Green Day just
leave the room. don’t make a fuss. just
walk away. I don’t want you
hearing swears or
anything.’
and
“if they’re searching
bad things
on the web just
leave.”
I felt
so bad
for all the times I’ve
listened
to Green Day, for taping
uncensored
Green Day songs, for getting
that stupid
shirt
I should be an actress
may 5, 2005, thursday
today
is five-five-
oh-five next year
it will be
six-six-six
(beware the devil) last year
it was
four-four-
four
livi
came over and we were
laughing
like crazy because
(don’t ask me
what goes through
our heads)
we sat outside
some kind of
retirement home we ate our
italian food then we
walked into some
antique stores
(where we saw
a beautiful
tortoise shell
inkwell that was inlaid with
mother-of-pearl)
we got two
arizona green teas and a seriously
frosting-covered
honey bun we sat
in front of a church
eating
& drinking
From (In)directives
~
What follows is not what must follow.
What follows is a posteriori: involving the deduction of theories from facts*, or developed on a basis of
“They struggle now on even terms, each having spent his spear.”
You took the plate of food I threw and threw it back, to the backseat and I cleaned it.
But we are now just far away, living impartially, if not infrequently.
* Logic.
** Linguistics (of a constructed language).
~
You chuckled at his botched soliloquy.
Remained unread.
“His speech (his lean, unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward.”
** “I ‘worked’ this morning, but you know what I mean by that: mourning—for me, for us in me.” Jacques
Derrida, The Post Card.
~
Tell me that this love story ends with an accordion.
Tell me that you will pay me for the work** I’ve done.
Tell me that you will tell me if there is any more I can do.
* “Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.
Leviticus 7:27
** “The work bears with it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered.” Martin
Heidegger, Being and Time.
~
Do you ever think about breaking down little bits of animal in your stomach?
Do you ever think about the question as its own dimension and thus its own death?
How many times will I shove your letters into the ground before they are hyacinths*?
Bad weather.
* Death by projectile.
Fall 2018
Nelson Lowhim
The Spokane River, unlike many rivers that flow through downtowns around the world, is an
untamed thing. When the water is high, the falls are a magnificent pack of roaring beasts. One
could watch them for hours, the multi-layered and multi-directional currents fighting with each
other and the range-limiting rocks: at these points of friction, a frothing bubbling white foam
arises, each time a different shape, yet somehow very familiar.
The Spokane River, like many other rivers, holds its secrets well. And one of those secrets is the
exact cause of death of a body discovered on its edges.
Meth is a hell of a drug, and some folks here will attest to that, and it has resulted in more than a
few bodies being found in this river. Recently a body was fished out of the water which may not
have stoked any fears in others, but awoke such a disquiet in my mind that I almost lost my life
over it.
Caption: The Spokane Falls was a meeting place for natives before
white settlers moved in. Nearby a site marks the spot where Natives
had been hanged after they approached the US Army under white flags.
Today, this region imprisons Natives and Blacks in high numbers
locking them up in debtors prisons. A free call phone system is used
to help round up any suspicious people, especially the dark ones. The
playwright was known to paint these falls and had over sixteen
thousand such paintings. Each one was different, he said.
The body was of an aging artist, a playwright, and director, who was known to deal drugs.
“That’s what you get”, was the general consensus and since no one enjoyed his plays, there
was hardly a murmur of regret.
But I had seen one of his plays and having been the only one to clap—and stand up, as it were
—at its showing, I see his death and works’ lack of recognition as something of a tragedy. So I
only wish I had told him what I thought of his work rather than taking a photo with my phone and
sharing it on Instagram. As a struggling artist I should know the value of a single appreciative
handshake.
Interestingly enough the disquiet after his death, as after the play, was something all too familiar
for me. The play was about the loss of an iPhone. In confronting this horrendous problem, the
leading actress learns how to overcome the loss of so many contacts. She meets them face to
face to get their names and numbers. And, in the end, she finds a way to help these people—
with acts of kindnes rather than pressing a button—and earns money for a replacement phone.
Caption: The artist was a known graffiti artist. This destruction of
private property earned him a bad reputation amongst the business
owners in town. Among some of the people who lived with him, this
pushed them to speculate that he had said the wrong things to the
wrong people and this, not some drug deal gone bad, is what caused
them to end him. His family stated he had long ceased acting out this
juvenille stage of his life. Nevertheless, his graffiti has spread all
over the internet, and copycats around the world mimic his tags.
All pretty kitchy and unoriginal. But in the background there’s a whole other play going on. This
is a shorter one, though it repeats over and over. Basically, it depicts what goes on in the Congo
today: warring, fighting, death, rape, subjugation, oppression, and the mining of vital elements
needed to create the iPhone.
A little simplisticly, the elements are fed into a machine that spits out the phones (one of which is
given to the actress at the end). Yeah, still pretty kitchy and unoriginal, I suppose, yet the way
the two stories played off each other—contrasting something beautiful in the girl’s world, like her
enjoying a memory (in photo or film form) with a friend, with something horrendous in the
background, like an execution—really elevated it for me.
Caption: After spending some time with the artist’s friends and his
roommates, this reporter was led to the above makeshift bookstore he
had built right before his death. It was to be a place for human
exploration. By this time, however, all the books were water logged
and needles were spread about. A tunnel-like tube led to an
underground portion and though it smelled horrible, there had been
plans to make something grand. I left wondering why.
Another example: a person in the Congo would scream in horror, and someone in the
foreground would say “What’s that?” “Nothing, stop worrying about nothing.” Then at other times
the reaction would be: “Keep it down. It’s always you you you.”
I know what you’re thinking: a play as a self-flagellating tool for the depressed but rich. Sure, but
for me that the play was better than most.
Hard to know if the negative critiques aimed at this play is what drove the author into the despair
that followed. Besides his drug-dealing, he had been writing more plays of the sinister and
disquieting genre. But after his iPhone play flopped, no stage, no group of actors wanted any
part of it. So unknown and impoverished he became. And even his death could not bring any
measure of acknowledgement from his community. A sad thought, but I’m trying to unearth his
later writings and find those unpublished plays. Someone must hold that torch, mustn’t they?
Fall 2018
Ndaba Sibanda
An Ode To Masturbation
An everlasting bond,
my first true love
and my favorite form of exercise
With a twist of the dark blue cap, all her problems faded away
to the calming sound of carbonation exploding from the giant
yellow container
She ghosted me
I sometimes still think about Susie, but just like pineapple fanta,
it’s bitter
Play Date
God smiles, locks the door, and throws away the key.
A VINTAGE BOAT GOES FOR A SAIL
When the gale winds blew, I ordered the crew to ease the main sheet—
we were heeling too much.
SOS useless,
there’ s no Coast Guard off the Magdalen Islands.
Capsized, I ordered: Abandon ship!
The Brute.
Keenan Ahrends and Reza Khota were communing with their respective gods via 2x 6 strings (1x
electric 1x semi-acoustic fretted with ellipse and potent semi-colon) with just the tonight particularly
snaky Jonno Sweetman on drums. Swathes of sound somnambulent like Klimt conducting some sex
starved Morroccan princess’ dreams via metallic tones. Sexy and abstract. Scary and inviting as
Monica Bellucci uncrossing and recrossing humming legs in a simple, tight cut, off-white matt skirt.
I squeeze her hand quickly and she leans over, a hot mess of murmur in my right ear, “your place.”
Which was code for manly man sex - fond manhandlement and such - bare, bruised furniture. Sofa
crunched into a corner; mangled sweaty rug or carpet or whatever. My place was scantily furnished.
Music and food and obstacles over and through and across which to tumble the howling. My upper
thighs and triceps would be talking for days. For daze.
Lovers leave temporal auras on oneother, when they care (to) - lingering scent; ebbing throbbing
remnants of pain or ache; snarls on skin; heart’s lament or missing; random bursts of vivid
mnemony. So we ornament the Other with our traces, weakening or diluting or negatively dilating
the trespass of others.
Reza Khota is my favourite South African guitarist, hands up, and I do not ken exactly why. It has I
hazard to do with two things - a capacity for self-immolation or immediate transcendence (flipsides
of the phoenix’ essential verb) and a more mysterious and hid agency. Something which dodgy but
arcane and anciently talented Hollywood agents refer to, simply, as It.
'Hard Hat Jive' is the title of a classic tune by South African World music band Tananas. Copyright Tananas 1988.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXlKZ_gq9UQ
Chapter 177: Theory.
Carlo Mombelli was regaling the assembled with a meandering anecdote of a dream he’d had about
Henri Matisse as an Nguni herdsman eating weird roots with the Moon in the mysteries of morning
in Kwaz Lowlands.
I was distracted because her hips kept bumping against mine gently and almost peripherally - a
startling, unpredictable metronome triggering disturbingly visual flashbacks from the eve/morn
before into the tiny, vibrantly focused mind of my phallus.
“Ass for days.”
She said that around 02:13 going on 05:47 - my mouth was no longer lingual - stuffed as it was with
trembling, poison-gilted bouquets feeding off my salival voluptuity.
“Pharmakon - the root of the term pharmaceutical - is an ancient eskimo legend wherein it is written
on whatever it is that they write it on down there that Poison is Medicine and Medicine Poison.
Come smoke my Herb.”
“Maybe less with the talk for a bit, m’kay?” I pleaded,
then said: “Bring me you forests.” (in baritone.)
Chapter eleven: Little Dragon.
“You are spreading the Good Word through spermatozoa, kisses and danger.” Lilith said that. Then
she said. “You’re my little church.” Then
we
fell
in
love outside The Mahogany Room with Kyle and co {Shane Cooper And Brydon Bolton this time,
Jonno on the drum machine} reaching wild dervish frenzy which is why i lifted her up and we kissed
like dangerous demons of in-fa-chew-ay-shin.
amen.
The three prose pieces above are extracts from the upcoming novella 'Black Moon', a meditation celebrating the improvised music scenes
and girls of Cape Town, South Africa.
Fall 2018
Michael Starr
I am not reckless
But I hope to stampede over your car
When you are racing together with your mind
Down the 101
In a wrecking ball
There is a crystal which consumes the concrete's negative energy
Upon striking
And to tamper with it
Is to dampen its soul
I hope one day you will find out the secrets of July
My stampede awaits you
And your lucky one strike romance
January
Free range
Walls up the walls up
The gander on the skirt around
Downtown, it was about dusk
And the roiling in the air
Drunken neighbors, bar-to-bar
Hoodlum elephants swinging their trunks,
Clinging to their desperado image
I cling, too
To a different song
Whether we are capable of standing in the same unit
Whether we would be found in neighboring carrels
Is questionable
And so much for unity
Development, mindfulness, cohesion
It’s a feint drawn by the artist
Hues of impressionism staining my shirt
I walk on and the din lessens
It’s smoother here
By the shore
Walking along the planks stitched together to allow me to do so
Wondering how long it will last
Before someone collapses with the wood harvested from a forest
From another continent
Into The Ocean
Which?
I turn
And there it is
The palace I was looking for
Overlooking the crest like a judge on their dais
Mindful, timely, heartfelt
It is just another place
So I enter, going unknowingly and uncaringly into space defined
Many years ago, by unknowns and unknown folk
This gutter, I sink into it
But without remorse for the splendor I am supposed to feel
Awe, weariness, dread
The cocktail thickens, and it turns into an alcoholic smoothie
As I travel, foot before foot, the balls begin to harden
And I am hardier than before
Wondering why all this had to happen
Why all this nothing is so everly present before me
And only me, for I am the one that sees it between myself
And the other
A cleansing stanza for the sinuses, skin, heart
Like lukewarm sewage water, the best murky brew
Sure to fix the fix
And just like that
It is gone
No stationary objects resting
Resting on, resting on that crest, resting on my chest
Disdainful of my presence
And so I am lost
Again, the usual
But it is where I am always
And shall be always
For there is nothing in my way
Something Sentimental Should Be Happening
This tune,
I’ve heard it before
And it repeats like the record was homeless and finally found
It loves its owner tenderly
But stolen are the notes that key in on the violence
Once spoken liltingly
Contrast, too, native, and delightfully rancorous
Full of rain and sorrow
For rest is autumn’s last relish
Crow hums at the tree trunk
I wonder what it’s thinking
A Modern Descriptor
I am
The gull whose wings are snared in one of those plastic soda can connectors
I am the oil in the ocean that soaks itself calm
Mass catastrophe
I am point blank neurolepsy
An 80’s rock gig for the psych majors
Who want a career as pill dispensers
I am rote and mundane
But in a good way
I will stay on this planet for as long as I live
And you can’t make me not
I say things that move rocks
Over shoulders and under hens
The squeaking of a frog
The churrur of a squirrel
And what are the ones on the ground?
Say what you want, but those things won’t go away
Just because you closed the window blinds and closet doors
The bunny out of the hat has a lot to tell you
And I am the side character, fresh out of prison, who will mend
Broken bars and reincinerate the Amazon after it has grown back
The Library of Alexandria after it has been restored
My luck is a chime with one missing
Nicks and dents
Out of tune
Singing like a coin whistling through the air at high velocity
Swirl me up, I am your diet coke smoothie
I am your pillow for a nap
I am your replacement lens on the DSLR
I will rob you
And make you cry
Until you pay
Unless you forgive me
And perceptively chime in during the conversation to make valid points
This world is due for an overhaul
And the vicious will have to embrace cognition to be in demand
To be marketable
This is the nature of economy
This is the nature of the passenger seat
Rhythm, style, and upholstery
I’m in your TV, cleansing your soul
Brandy, a harmonica, and applesauce
Wander often, stray dog, for your last days may be simultaneously your coldest and warmest
The bowl of water is outside the coffee shop in the ritzy downtown district
Meet me
At nine
And we will sow mayhem
Fall 2018
Michael J. Grodesky
between notes
and to space
to sew me up.
So many pieces. So many
edges. So much space
between the stitches.
When I call I still hear
your recorded voice.
Sounds you left behind
to allow for silence. All accent
you said
means no accent.
All absence is no absence
at all. Just the beats you left
behind leaning against
the sills.
Bruises of the Bully
my slap of proudness
on your back. But the gun
was a doll you cradled
as you backed away
further and further
At dusk
our hobbled gelding stumbled
on a ridge
of rocks and bellowed
his death down the canyon wall.
And l saw
the thinness of your shadow
trembling in the tent
and hated
myself for hoping
you would believe
that sparing
the elk had somehow killed
the horse.
Bobby
(Pueblo, Colorado, 1978)
comfortably displayed
gender preference a goon
forever shattered safe haven
of Pulsations Night Club where on June
12th, 2016 - forty nine lives affiliated
with LGBY Community bayed at moon
2.
2.
High Functioning
Slick with their own sweat and ooze, inching ever closer, slithering near and nearer.
Throat parched like a New Mexican mesa as we try to scream out silently.
Cardiac palpitations concede defeat to the clean shear of relentless and terrible fear.
Fall 2018
Mary Shanley
1.
My heart opens.
There is no sound, yet I hear the wild,
undefined rhythm underlying all.
Every move that I make, everything
shakes.
My heart shakes
a rhythm that sets
my life’s course
for the day.
Sometimes my entire
body shakes from the
effects of atomic spinning
and excess caffeine.
idiosyncratic supermarkets
ALPHABETICAL DISORDER
With thanks, for inspiration, to John Ashbery for his poem “They Knew What They Wanted” and to
our local teenagers for their dramatic texting-style dialogue I can’t help but overhear whenever I walk near
their high school
A-number one—
that’s what you think you are!
What the F?
G whiz!
(I am a nice girl,
so I don’t say the actual words.)
If I dared you to J-
walk across a crowded city street,
N-O!
it even happens
to the pretty “Bachelorette” on TV.
Z-z-z-z-z . . .
Your drama is such a bore—good-bye!
DAMAGED GOODS
Maybe mythological
maybe biological
the Shadrach/the Meshach/the Abednego
of the fantastical or natural world
Late Night
miles stretched out like longing
as though it could so easily be held out
in these fading hours
as though a voice across distance
can conjure all our past tenses
is it enough to make you open--
blossom like an invitation or promise--
past these hastily stacked almosts
into another here;
something more and less than now
pushing back,
arched against the dawn,
its close enough
Almost Autumn
Again, the night comes, heavy against the neon
and all of these predictable certainties
like wine uncorked, a book of new poems
and the hope that there is something
out there in the night waiting to become
you are unprepared again,
for the loneliness of the impending season
as the late light filters through trees, mild and deceptive,
you think there is time yet.
yet.
we will always want just a bit more
another long evening
another morning delayed,
another arrival
and find ourselves instead
in the empty moment, delaying nothing
save the falling.
The Far Flung (an immigration poem)
Emerging, world-weary and blinking at
harsh and angular light,
relieved for fresh air, though it
lacerates the lungs
and I think of life on other landscapes
and wonder if geography can
be grafted into us—
these lands we’ve wandered
folded in our marrow
strung in our DNA like ship-rigging
immigrants to arrive far flung
out of history and situated by it
because we can never outrun
famine or ancestors under feudal skies
can’t outrun dictatorship or colonies
or centuries of leaving to
arrive under brittle skies
these desperate generations of raging
just under the skin
Just Like a Woman
I think of nights passed like this one
Held trembling before the inevitability of discontent,
Broken open like so many moments
Never arrived at
And now, years later in some hotel bar
In some city that belongs to neither of us wholly
We introduce one another as friends
An ill-fitting nomenclature
That doesn’t begin to hint at the ache behind the words
I’ve raged through crisp autumn days
Stealing tenderness past grieving
And believed, finally, in the indisputable
Ability of time to gnaw away the edge
Like all clichés, this too ruptures
Fall 2018
Linda King
alphabet dwellers
sentence fragments
language leaves
a suicide note
blurred edges
prove a point
an element of truth
catalogue of remembering
portrait paintings
board games
bored games
word games
war games
whisky obscured
what did you expect? what did you expect? what did you expect
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
It is always better
safe than sorry
sympathetic as softened butter
your tendency to be
unfortunate muscles
of inner thigh cause trouble
to survive lose
pounds from your brain
sadness from arteries
widen your mouth eat
organs like dates fill your apartment
magic plants comfort
honey raw in your bloodstream
unsweetened peak of time
find sunflower seed luck of your childhood
replace the readout on the screen
with the gold on your hand a tourniquet
testing the pressure of minutes
counting muscles in the beauty of seconds
the subtle measurement of minerals
austere
My father's land had always been a love letter written in penmanship I could not decipher.
I searched for imagery my whole childhood, but what I discovered in reality
was two dimensional to the land I had fashioned in my mind,
to the land I scaffolded from the aching magnificence of photography.
I had wandered through the outdated grey scale.
I memorized the mountains and moors in the hushed geography section of dimly lit libraries.
I traced the peat bogs with my hands, wanting to know the scent of such rich soil.
It had felt like pornography those quiet afternoons,
something I sought for the thrill of desire as well as for the crescendo of knowing.
New Beginnings
I stepped foot on USS The Sullivans on December 15th, 2010. It was a dark and cold night, I felt
shivers and goosebumps all throughout my body. I wasn’t entirely sure if my nerves were just getting the
best of me or if it was actually as cold as I remember. The moon was, “a perfectly round cheese,” as my
grandmother would say. It was so bright it enlightened the four ships along the pier. As I continued walking
down the pier, I held my head high, I looked up at the beautiful dark sky and noticed three little stars. I felt
as if those three little stars watched over me… I felt comfort from them, as if they were telling me everything
would be ok.
I was wearing my crisp new Dress Blue Uniform and I carried a heavy dark green sea bag on my
back. In that sea bag, I carried my black steel toed boots, three different uniforms, jackets, shirts, running
shoes, sweats and toiletries. The bag had to be over thirty pounds, it had everything I needed to start my
new life in the United States Navy. As I walked by the second ship I could feel eyes on me; I felt judged. I
knew that whoever was watching me was probably calling me a “booter”. That’s what they called a person
that was fresh out of boot camp. I didn’t know what that term meant back then but either way, I knew that
whatever they were talking about had to be about me. My heart started beating faster by the second, and I
was anxious to get to the ship that would soon become my new home.
From a distance, I started to see a long white banner with letters that read, “USS The Sullivans
(DDG-68)”. This ship was made of steel, it was 505 ft. long. The dark night made it difficult to distinguish the
ship's actual color but it seemed to be a dark shade of gray. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. As I
approached the ship, I held back many tears. I didn’t want anyone to see how home sick and terrified I
actually was. I walked up the stairs and again, I felt eyes on me. That whole time I walked with my eyes
glued to the ground but when I looked up I saw two females greeting me with a warm smile. One of them
said, “Hi, welcome to USS The Sullivans, are you checking in?” “Yes, I am.” I answered in a very low voice. I
wasn’t even sure if she heard me, but I was too nervous to care.
She introduced herself as Petty Officer Mendez. She looked Hispanic, she had dark brown eyes and
jet-black hair that was pulled back into a low bun. I could tell she was a “squared away sailor,” as navy
sailors called someone that looked sharp and well put together. She said, “We’ve been waiting for you. It’s
too late for you to check in today but I can take you down to your bed so you can put your things away, and
get settled down. Get some rest, I’ll go get you in the morning so you can start your check-in process.” She
took me down through some very tight hatches. I felt like I was going through a hole made by a groundhog.
I had to take my sea bag off and put it through the hole before I could even start making my way down. The
hallways were very narrow. If I tried to fully extend my arms out, I wouldn’t be able to. I suddenly felt
trapped and overwhelmed by my surroundings, I wanted to run out of there as fast as I could but there was
no going back.
We finally arrived to berthing, where all girls slept. The beds were staggered, one on top of the other.
Three beds high, twelve in one single hallway. The beds had just enough room for you to breathe, they were
more like coffins, not beds. A sheet, a blanket, a pillow case and a pillow were nicely placed on the foot of
my bed. No one else was there except for me and Petty Officer Mendez. I wondered why that was but I
didn’t want to ask. I just said, “thank you,” and she left a few moments later. I took a deep breath, put down
my things and all of my emotions poured out of me. A waterfall of tears kissed my cheeks that night. There I
was, alone with no family, no friends, not even a single star to look over me.
Petty Officer Mendez showed up at exactly 7 o'clock in the morning. I was already dressed in my
Navy Working Uniform, not ready to see what the day had prepared for me. She walked me to the mess
decks, which was the navy term for cafeteria and we sat together and had breakfast. We exchanged a few
words, mostly about me. She asked me if I slept ok, if I was nervous and if I had called my parents to tell
them I made it ok. “I can’t believe I didn’t even think to call my parents!” I thought to myself. The only thing I
told her was that I had decided not to call because it was already very late.
After we finished breakfast she gave me a tour around the ship. She introduced me to around twenty
people and took me to the admin office to get checked in. I guess she expected me to remember the way
around the ship from the tour she gave me earlier that morning because she left me there like a dog on the
side of the street. I had no clue how I was going to get around on my own but I kept my calm and pretended
to be fine.
My check-in process was completed and I walked aimlessly around the ship. I walked in circles many
times. As I walked down the hallway I noticed a young man coming down the stairs. He appeared to be
around nineteen years old, maybe six feet tall. He had enchanting light brown eyes. I tried to shift my gaze
from that muscular, statuesque figure but before I could look away, he gave me a very sweet, comforting
smile. He didn’t say a word to me as he walked down the stairs but his smile meant more than the twenty
“Hellos” I had exchanged with sailors earlier that day. I didn’t get a chance to read his name tag on his breast
pocket, I was too busy trying to figure out where I was. I guess I could have asked him to help me out but I
got nervous all of a sudden and I kept walking, as if I knew where I was going in the first place.
Two weeks passed and I hadn't seen this mysterious guy. “What was his name? Why did he
disappear?” I kept asking myself. He was the only person I looked forward to seeing as I continued to adjust
to the ship life and he was nowhere to be found. I was in berthing with a girl named Kelly when I thought to
ask if she knew anything about this guy. I explained what he looked like and she immediately knew who I
was referring to. She excitedly replied, “Valdez!!!” She appeared to know exactly who he was.
“Oh my God, He’ll be back tomorrow! He is just on leave visiting his family in California!!!”
“Really?” I said.
“YES! Why in the world would I lie to you? AHHHHH! You like him, don’t-cha?! You guys would
“I just think he’s ok looking, plus I don’t even know the guy.” I tried to hide how I really felt because I
Sure enough, this guy was back from his vacation the following day. I noticed him from a distance
while I stood there gazing in his direction. He was standing behind one of the 25mm chain guns with a few
of his friends. Whatever they were talking about had to have been hilarious because they were all laughing
hysterically. He didn’t seem to notice me at first but when he did, his eyes lit up with excitement. He rushed
in my direction and said, “Hi, my first name is Isaac. I noticed you a few weeks ago but everything happened
so quickly that I kind of froze. I’m really sorry about that, you looked pretty lost that day, I wish I would
have helped you out.” I didn’t realize that I looked so out of place that day until he pointed it out. I felt
somewhat of a burning sensation on my face and I knew that my face was turning a bright shade of red by
the second. I was so embarrassed for some reason. He took a quick look at my last name on my uniform and
he read it out loud, “Rodriguez, huh? What’s your first name?” My name is Grace I replied.
We started dating a few months after. We were moving “fast” according to some of our friends and
family members. We didn’t care what anyone else thought because we were young and very much in
love. The problems started to happen when some of our higher-ranking personnel started to notice us
together more often. We always went to lunch together, we sat together, we went to work together, we left
together. Eventually, one of the Officers on the ship threatened Isaac and I with, “If I continue to see you
two together, I will report both of you.” We were much more careful after that. We minimized our time
together at work and even had to start boarding and departing the ship at different times just so we didn’t
seem unprofessional.
Pretending not to know each other on the ship became frustrating. I was aware that relationships on
the ship or in same commands were frowned upon and that we could get into extreme amount of trouble if
we continued our relationship. It wasn't just any relationship for me. I had finally found someone who I
could be myself around but here I was again, alone on the ship. Yes, I knew more people but what good was
it when I still felt lonely? When we saw each other in the small hallways we had to avoid all eye contact. We
had to walk past each other, couldn’t even say, “hello.” Isaac had been on USS The Sullivans for three years,
he couldn’t afford to be kicked out of the US Navy, especially not because of me.
Despite all of those problems that we faced on the ship, we managed to work through it and stay
together. It wasn’t easy but I was only on the ship for two years before I had to be transferred to a different
command in Jacksonville, Florida. My new command was only a thirty-minute drive from USS The
Sullivans so Isaac and I continued dating, it was so much better that way since we were both in different
I will always remember how terrified I was walking onto the ship that dark and cold night but I also
The Spider does not Spin its Web for a Single Fly
The radio once said something like, ‘Spiders don’t spin webs
To catch a single fly.’ I was like, wait, what? No it was really
Like, like I was totally speechless when it said that.
I was standing in the doorframe by the copy machine.
You were eating breakfast in the evening, I asked you or the radio,
‘Is that us, are we the flies?’ You tapped silently on a dusty speaker.
We decided to go to the resourceful studio to dance and pick words.
Our minds were vacant but our bellies were full on Cap’n Crunch.
I was breaking down the wall and you sat on the fence,
And years later we noticed that there was one more thing I wanted to say.
Every November we called each other to celebrate the anniversary of that day.
It has been eighteen years now, now nineteen, now twenty.
How time flies when the situation is desperate for explanation.
How the frenzied remodel exposes the words: passing years.
The only record we had to play at the time was Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
But that was too spot on, if you know what I mean.
But when the government did fall, our radio had no credibility.
The migratory patterns of radio waves spin in bright blue gyres.
Our language was empty but the river rode high.
I think of him picking the first blossoms of periwinkles,
Sometimes I wonder if any of his stories were true, as
If all the words he spoke were simple submarines floating beneath
The surface of an imaginary Sargasso Sea anticipating
An adventure or a nautical disaster to transpire but doesn’t.
The words for hyacinths and amethysts are a part of a larger story.
The radio waves that transmit us are spider webs spun from hope.
Fall 2018
Julio Valentin
Poeta De Sangra
Estas dentro
de mi Corazon,
sangrar para mi
and give me sanctuary
in your pools of Scarlett,
envelop my scars with rays
of your Neruda Sun,
and seep into the cracks of skin
to moisture my soul
1.
Rice uncooked
is a tragedy but
Pegao is a delicacy.
2.
Rice is proof
that colonialism is alive
when you knell.
3.
Rice without Sofrito
does not carry shame
but no salt is blasphemy.
4.
I have not once
seen God cook. If so,
rice would be testament
of her love.
5.
Baptism is when
canola oil snaps,
reddening the skin.
6.
The first time
I’ve prayed to rice,
there was a downpour
in St. Louis.
7.
The road paved by rice
is a blessing on
those walking for love.
8.
When Lubriel died,
we saved a bowl of rice,
praying he doesn’t go
hungry again.
9.
The circle of life
is also known
as the rim of the Oyya.
10.
When the buildings fell
I sunk my skull into rice,
hoping it’ll dry out my tears.
11.
The body of rice
can only be soften
through patience like
the heart.
12.
I saw rice
in the shape of light
breaking through the clouds.
13.
For every grain of rice
I’m grateful it was
not a bullet.
Fall 2018
JoyAnne O'Donnell
Periwinkle
Twinkle, sprinkle
love is in the periwinkle
glazed by the love so bright
inside the sunlight
opening up a box of moonlight
candlelight at suppers night.
Kisses In The Breeze
There are these four guys sitting in a bar. Actually Chet and Kyle are playing eight ball on a six-foot,
quarter-operated table. Ray, Raymond; Robert, Bobby; Chester, Chet; and Kyle play the game in a perpetual
rotation that has been going on for over a year now. They clean up after work in their own way and wander
down to this neighborhood tavern. They do this a couple nights a week, coming home from their respective
jobs to small places they’ve established as warehouses for their personal property. Bobby keeps a bedroom
at his parent’s house. Kyle and Chet have small one-bedroom uppers after getting booted from a girlfriend’s
place and a three-bedroom starter home of a now ex-wife. Ray is buying an eighty-foot singlewide. It’s used,
but he got a deal. Only thing he doesn’t like is that now he has to drive in from the north towns.
Bobby is sitting with his back against the bar watching his two buddies play. He’s clutching a bottle
of beer and a cigarette in his right hand, holding on to the neck with the third finger and pinkie, using his
thumb as a sort of cantilever, the cigarette squeezed between his index and second finger. He takes a drink
then a drag in almost one movement, in a practiced way that he thinks some girls think is cool. He’s already
generations of working-class customers trying to find a few hours away from the perpetual worry of eking
out a living, of putting one socially accepted foot in front of another. It’s wedged into a building that is
wedged onto an old city block. The establishment is long and narrow, with the bar toward the back along
the side and tables up front near the window so the few customers can look out on the street where, if the
seasons aren’t changing, the walkers-by are. Shadows of privacy or loneliness, whatever the pleasure,
accumulate like cobwebs. And with the old heating and the two rainy seasons, spring and fall, the very fiber
of the place exudes that old tavern musty odor. It’s been open for decades despite the fact it’s got no reason
to stay open but low rent and no help to pay to wait on the sporadic flow of customers willing to do without
Two TV’s sitting on high shelves are tuned to ESPN with the sound off. Ray is telling the guys this
joke he heard, but actually thinking about the fact he’s getting hungry and about getting something to eat,
but he’s not crazy about eating at a bar. He drives an eight-year old pickup truck and lives in a small
cramped two-bedroom upstairs apartment until he closes on the singlewide, works as a line inspector
checking the same parts day in and day out. He insists on a couple of things in his life, just to know he hasn’t
sunk quite as low as his buddies. One is eating food you need a knife and fork for and doesn’t come on paper
plates or in Styrofoam containers. The other is never lowering his standard in women even if it means most
“So where was I,” Ray says. Before anyone can tell him, he says, “Yeah. This girl walks into a bar.”
They’re really not paying much attention to him, but that’s just because he’s told them this part before. “She
restaurant he knows where they serve decent steaks with a huge baked potato and more sour cream than a
guy can stand, but he figures his chances of getting his buddies to go sit at a table are almost nil, seeing how
they like to play pool and have a lot of bills, which keeps them in the hamburger and cheap beer category.
Bobby and Chet turn their heads in his direction. Kyle, who is shooting, just glances toward him for a
second.
“The bartender looks at the girl and asks, ‘you want ten bottles of Miller beer?’” Ray reaches for his
bottle but just holds it in anticipation of drinking it right after the punch line. “She says, ‘yep, line them right
It’s times like these that Ray really wishes he had a woman. Not that he wants to tell a joke to her.
He’s pretty tired of jokes as entertainment on a Friday night. He wants someone to take to a nice place and
have a decent conversation, one that doesn’t involve some sort of masculine verbal jostling. There are other
times he’d like a woman, too, but he tries not to think of those. A steady woman would solve a lot of his
“Where’s what’s-her-face?” Kyle asks Bobby, as if he’s reading Ray’s mind. For a second Ray’s
surprised, but then he realizes they’re all thinking about women. Chet turns around, Ray figures, just to see
if Bobby’s got a good answer rather than what it might actually be.
“Who?” Bobby says back, not moving other than gesturing with his full hand. He kisses his bottle like
a lover, taking a slow swig, and then with a twist of his wrist he presses the filter of his cigarette against his
lips. Without speaking he holds everything over the ashtray for a second, knocking the ash off with a flick of
his thumb against the filter. He does it nonchalantly like there’s no way he could miss.
“Yeah, where’s what-her puss?” Chet says, leaning lightly on his pool stick. He’s back lit by a lighted
sign, one half clock, one half beer advertisement. A half-dozen clocks advertising beer hang on the walls of
the bar. Ray sees a certain irony in this, how people are constantly reminded that they’re wasting their lives
in here.
Kyle comes up out of his shooting crouch. He blinks several times from the change of light now
being outside the bright luminescent cone cast onto the table by the cheap florescent light hung from the
acoustic tiled ceiling by two anorexic chains. “The good-looking little one,” he says. He accidentally taps the
lamp with his stick. Blue dust accumulated from years of single men blowing away the extra chalk for the
tips of the cue stick, comes floating slowly down like the plastic snow in one of those little Christmas scenes
Ray is close enough to see Bobby’s eyes twitch minutely before he gets himself together. Ray knows
“Gone,” Bobby says, waving his beer and cigarette. “Dumped the bitch.”
“Dumped you, most likely,” Ray says. He takes a quick drink from his bottle, wanting to get back to
his joke.
Bobby flicks him off and everybody laughs. Ray laughs too but he’s not sure if Chet and Kyle are
laughing at him because he just got flicked off, or Bobby, because the gesture is tantamount to an admission
Kyle sets back down in his crouch and shoots, missing the side pocket with the nine ball. Chet walks
around the table to see his best shot while Kyle chalks up. Chet lays his stick against the rail and goes to
sight down it, but comes up gazing across the long room. Ray turns to see the new barkeep, Meagan,
bending over to wipe a table. She’s rubbing hard on something, which has got her butt moving forward and
backward. The four men stare for a minute until she straightens up and then they look in different
directions while she scoots behind the bar, disappearing into the kitchen.
Bobby has already called dibs on her and Ray thinks that he’s getting damn tired of Bobby calling
dibs on all the good-looking ones, except Bobby calls dibs on all the girls good looking or not. What really
pisses him off is that most of them fall for Bobby’s bullshit for a while and then they skedaddle. Ray has
watched all three of his buddies hit on Meagan more than once and each time she shut them down. Behind
her back they call her a stuck-up bitch, but that doesn’t keep them from coming up with some new line.
Only now they try to do it when nobody is looking. She’s getting to be a challenge, or more so, Ray thinks, a
trophy. Ray hit on her once, almost thinking he had to, never once thinking she’d take him up on his offer.
He’d been correct. He knows that whoever succeeds in getting Meagan to go out with him will be hot shit
around the others. Of course that guy will imply he got her in the sack. Ray knows he’d treat her right. He’ll
never get the chance, but most times he never gets the chance to treat any woman right.
Meagan rushes out of the kitchen and bounces to a stop across the bar from Ray and Bobby. “You
Bobby leans back against the bar and peers over his right shoulder. “Better than okay,” he says. Kyle
and Chet pretend to attempt to smother up a couple of guffaws with the back of their wrists.
She steps to her right so she’s directly across from him. “How about you?” she asks.
staring at her little-girl angel face with blue eyes he’s seen some nights just before sleep. So he shakes his
bottle and contemplates tying one on, but that’s getting old. “Naw, thanks,” he says.
Meagan is staring at something behind him, up and to his left and he figures it’s one of the clocks.
It takes her a couple of seconds to snap back to attention and a few more to remember what he said.
She says, “Tony will be here in fifteen. Kitchen will be open.” She pats the bar twice in front of Ray. “If you
Meagan’s still smiling as she turns back to the kitchen, but Ray knows the smile is already gone. The
four men stare silently at the space where Meagan had been as if trying to conjure her back up.
“Anyhow,” Ray says. “The girl drinks the ten Millers and passes out.” He holds his arm straight up at
the elbow and slowly flops it over like a falling tree or girl.
High-pitched giggles and silk-smooth voices of more females entering the bar fill the empty space
between the walls, ceiling and floor like a flash flood. The sound goes through Ray like a low-voltage shock.
It’s unusual for girls to be coming in at this time of day, actually for any time of day in this bar. Ray figures
it’s one of the reasons the guys chose the place, a sort of respite from the romance wars. He swings his
barstool around one hundred eighty degrees to get a good look at them. The girls seem to have come in
three sizes; a short one; a tall, skinny one; and a fairly stocky one who lets the door slam shut behind her.
The women snake around the tables. They all wear the same color pullover shirt, a burnt orange
with something printed on the left side above their breasts,. The short one touches the top of a table with
one finger and gazes at the other two for affirmation. The stocky girl nods while the tallest girl pulls out a
chair. The all have long hair in varying degrees of brown. Ray has already surmised that they work together
and they’re trying out a new bar probably someplace in the neighborhood of their jobs or at least on the way
“Well, well, well,” Bobby says, sliding up on his barstool. Bobby says it in some weird accent that Ray
figures is a poor attempt at imitating a movie vampire or a Snidely Whiplash sort of villain. It just reassures
Kyle and Chet seem to have lost track of the game, or interest in it anyhow. Ray takes a drink from
his longneck while still gazing at the girls. It splits his vision like one of those old stereoscopes. The short
one sits with her back toward the men. The tall one and the stocky girl glare quickly toward them while Ray
is still trying to focus past his bottle. He suddenly gets a vision of what he looks like. He puts the bottle
down and glances away. “Anyhow,” Ray says, “where was I?”
Kyle suddenly starts chalking up, rubbing the little blue square against the end of the stick,
“No you don’t,” Ray says back, still a bit embarrassed at looking like a fool to the girls, already.
Bobby leans forward and glances down at the girls. “We can figure it out.” He smiles at them but
Ray looks down to the three ladies. The distance between him and the girls is only about twenty feet
but he realizes he has no ability to traverse it and that it’s too late for the joke. Once the girls walked into the
bar, everything changed, but he thinks, maybe for the better. There’s always a chance. Can’t get shut down
forever. He knows his only hope, though, is to send Bobby as point man, which he thinks shouldn’t be that
hard seeing how Bobby never has a clue when he’s out-classed and he’s definitely out-classed. They all are.
Bobby’s built up the reputation of being a ladies’ man, mostly through his own bullshit, bragging and the
like. Ray knows that if he sets him up, there’s no way Bobby can get out of it.
Ray turns to Bobby and says, “Fine, you’re up, smart ass.”
Kyle looks right at Bobby and says, “Ray’s right, I think we need to get to know them.” The way he
says it Ray knows it’s a challenge for Bobby to put it on the line and he’s not surprised at all that they‘re all
thinking the same thing. Ray is already figuring that there’s a problem, three girls, four guys.
“What the hell you need a minute for?” Ray says. “Just go get ‘em.”
Bobby takes another drink as if he’s not worried about it at all, but Ray is close enough to see the way
he gulps his beer. He knows the guy is nervous. “Need a plan,” Bobby says.
Chet is back in his shooting crouch and he leans his forehead against the rail as if the stupidity of
“Fine,” Bobby says. “You guys go out there and do it.” He points with his beer/cigarette hand toward
the women who Ray has noticed have glanced at them several times. “See how you make out. At least I get
And that’s what puzzles Ray. Bobby’s decent looking. He’s got that lead-singer-from-a-rock-band,
boyish look where he could be a skateboarder or college student or any of those cool types. He’s the shortest
of the four of them, but that seems to work in his favor too. He doesn’t seem to have much trouble getting
women and some of them seem pretty nice, but he never keeps them. It isn’t like they catch him screwing
around on them, although Bobby does or will if given half a chance. It’s just that he sort of ignores his
woman once he’s got her. The longest Ray remembers one sticking around was a year.
Chet fires off a shot and Ray hears the miss-cue and the ball goes spinning across the table like a tiny
white planet whirling out of control in some green, felt-covered solar system.
Kyle goes down to line up the next shot. He’s smiling and Ray sees he’s got only one ball left on the
table, an easy shot with draw to line up the eight ball. But Chet is smiling too and Ray’s starting to think he’s
playing a bigger game. Kyle drops in the eight and Bobby slides off his stool.
Chet says, “Let Ray take your spot. You’ve got some cattin’ to do.”
Bobby stares at Chet for a few seconds then glances at the three girls who are now getting drink
orders from Meagan, all smiling and laughing like they’ve known each other for years.
Ray can’t understand how women do it, just settle in to each other like that. He walks over and takes
the stick from Chet and nods in the direction of the girls. “They didn’t ask for menus which might mean
they aren’t planning to stick around long.” It’s a warning for Bobby to get a move on or Kyle or Chet to kick
his butt. Ray knows he’s the smartest of the bunch, not just because he almost finished a four-year degree
and only Bobby even attempted to go to the community college, mostly for the girls and parties, but by
observation and how the other three seem always to be screwing up their lives. He also knows, through
painful observation, that he’s the least good-looking of the bunch, or he’s got something that doesn’t appeal
to most women. It’s why they hang together. In some ways they’re all screw-ups even if the others won‘t
admit it. Everyone else, though, seems to be a leader except him. That is, if someone says something the rest
take it for gospel truth. He says something, they think it’s all bullshit, so he usually has to put it in some way
the rest of them can swallow, like a suggestion, which they always turn down but come up with later on as if
it had been their idea in the first place. Of course his failure to find a woman, any woman, is legendary
Bobby glances down the bar to the girls again. The short one moves her chair back and starts to
stand. Bobby sets his bottle on the bar. He drags hard on his cigarette and snuffs it out in the ashtray. He
blows the smoke out his nostrils in one of those long sighs like a gunfighter at high noon. He walks away but
seems to be heading for the bathroom when he accidentally bumps into the girl who seems to have been
heading there also. They talk for a few seconds. Bobby is giving her one of his smiles where the girl can’t
help but smile back, and then they go do their business. She is back sitting in her chair with the other two
friends by the time Bobby is done. He walks straight to their table and takes the fourth chair as if he’s known
“Son of a bitch’s gone and done it,” Kyle says. “Can you believe that?”
Ray can, but for some reason the girls being so easy disappoints him. “So,” he says, “which one loses.”
He nods towards the table as he jams in the coin receiver on the side of the pool table. The sound of pool
balls falling echoes through the bar and somehow they sound like the antithesis of the girls’ laughter.
“Huh?” Chet says, and then seems to catch Ray’s drift. “You do.”
“No way,” Ray says. “You two already had your turn.” He’s speaking about the fact that Kyle has two
kids and an ex-wife while Chet has one kid with an ex-girlfriend.
Kyle smirks at him. “You mean the ex?” Kyle says. “Tell you what Ray, give you her phone number.
You can go over there right now and take her and those kids off of my hands.”
“Sorry, man, but she’s used and abused,” Ray says, but he’s already tried it a couple of times after he
heard she was going for a divorce. He’d heard divorcees were desperate. He found out she wasn’t that hard
up. And Chet’s woman was already replacing him before she threw him out. Ray had seen Bobby and
Kyle’s cars over there on different nights while Chet worked the late shift.
Kyle is racking up the balls, matching them up in the wooden triangle, high—low, high—low.
“That’s right. You couldn’t get laid if you had a tranquilizer gun.”
“Hey, man,” Ray says, but he doesn’t finish it. He knows they speak the truth, but that’s not going to
keep him from trying. He bends over the rail and lines up the cue ball. Kyle lifts the rack. Ray hits it hard
sending in the eleven and three. He calls choice. It’d be real easy to tell Chet about Bobby and Kyle, or Kyle
about his ex saying she was glad to be done with him and his drinking because most times he was too
screwed up to be any good in or out of bed, which was her reason not to give Ray a chance, figuring he’d be
just about the same, but what good would it do? Just make them lonelier than they already were. The
thought comes to Ray, while trying to figure out whether he wants lows or highs, and how he is going to
work his way down to the table, that maybe Kyle’s ex is desperate enough now to give him a chance, at least
Chet picks up his beer and walks down toward the table. The tall one, who is sitting facing toward
the back of the bar where the pool table is, stops laughing at whatever Bobby is saying and stares at Chet
advancing on them. He’s a kind of burly man with a lot of rough edges. Of the three, Ray figures Chet’s
better off with the big one, not the one he’s staring down. That’s the problem with most people, he thinks;
more drinks. Chet taps her on the behind when he’s done. She smiles but Ray sees the flash of anger once
Ray bends over to take a shot, having decided the lows are lined up the best. He’s thinking about
saying something to Kyle about Chet’s technique, thinking he’ll stick around to finish up the game, but Kyle
“Fuck,” Ray says to himself. He shoots the six, misses, lines it up again and makes it in the corner
pocket. He shoots at the three and drops the cue ball in the side pocket, all the time trying to stay calm as if
Kyle glances up from where he’s just pulled up a chair, and they stare at each other for almost a
minute. Ray’s not sure what he looks like standing there with his stick in his hand, but Kyle has a look on his
face that’d stop a rhinoceros. For a second Ray is wondering if he can take Kyle. He thinks he can. Kyle’s a
big boy but he’s a wild swinger, mostly arms, and no real power.
Kyle says, “Hey, why don’t you finish it up yourself. That way you can win.” He glances at the girl to
the left of him, then the one on the right and laughs. Chet and Bobby laugh too.
“Fuck it,” Ray says under his breath, disgusted with all three of them and goes to cleaning the table
getting angrier at every click of ball hitting ball, at every thud of a ball dropping into a pocket. When he’s
done he tosses the stick onto the table, slides up to the bar and takes a couple of swigs of his beer, watching
wondering what’s going on. Ray knows it’s just Tony’s way of letting everyone know he’s in charge. He nods
to Meagan then walks behind the bar and into the kitchen.
Meagan follows Tony, passing Ray. She’s untying her apron and turns to him as if just remembering
Ray glances at his bottle. It’s three-quarters gone. “Yeah,” he says, thinking he might just go home.
“You want something to eat?” She says it as if really concerned about his welfare, folding her apron
up and holding it in her hand. He thinks she might be done for the night.
Ray almost says, yeah, not wanting to disappoint her and liking the attention, but he glances down to
the table where the six of them are drinking and laughing and thinks that he must look pretty sad sitting
there alone and would look even worse eating alone. “No thanks,” he says, then adds, “I kind of want to go
out. Not that you don’t have good food or nothing, but it’s just, you know, I wanted to do the baked potato-
salad-bottle-of-wine thing.”
She smiles and he knows it’s not at him. He figures she’s got a good memory or two of a dinner like
that. He almost asks her what time she gets off, but thinks better of it.
“So, you’re going out,” she says. She leans against the wall with her hands behind her and Ray
notices her deep blue eyes again for maybe the thousandth time.
“No.” He draws the word out like it should be obvious to her that he’s not and why he’s not.
She’s bouncing against the wall, a little movement back and forth and Ray can almost feel the
tiredness in her legs from working all day. “Where’s your favorite place?” she asks. She mentions hers.
“Been there a couple of times,” he says. He doesn’t mention how he showed up alone and was stared
at most of the time as if being single was some kind of affliction. “They’ve got a decent rib-eye.”
Probably got a bunch of nice boyfriends Ray thinks. Except he’s here a lot and no one comes in
looking for her or picks her up. Bobby, Kyle, and Chet all noticed it, too. That’s the main reason they keep
hitting on her. They think that someday she’ll be horny enough to take one of them up on it. Damn hard up
is what Ray interprets it as meaning. “Really? I sort of had you figured for a vegetarian type.” He finishes
his beer, pushing the bottle toward the back edge of the bar.
“Naw, not me,” she says, picking up the empty bottle and setting it underneath the bar.
Ray picks up his money, leaves three dollars tip and feels the metal-heavy finality of the moment. All
he can do now is get down from his barstool and walk by his three buddies with the three girls, head out the
door, get in his car and drive home to his TV, a TV dinner and his two cats. Then he just blurts it out not
even thinking of it or maybe thinking he can’t be any worse off. “What time you get off?”
Meagan smiles but doesn’t answer and now Ray can feel himself start to sweat like he does when he
thinks he’s about to get shut down and he knows, she knows, he knows she is getting off now or very soon.
He shrugs. “I just thought you’d like to go.” He glances down to the table full of happy people and her gaze
follows.
She shrugs back as if to say she doesn’t know how to say no without hurting his feelings and she
“Ok,” he says, feeling himself giving up, having no idea how to get a woman to like him. He’s tried
every line, every trick in the book. He’s had three different haircuts in the last year, tried several different,
“looks.” “I’m desperate here,” he says, not giving a damn how he looks or sounds anymore. “All I want is for
someone to go out to dinner with me so I can eat in a decent restaurant without being stared at for Christ‘s
sake. Drive your own damn car. Meet me there.” Now he’s gesticulating, but forcing himself to speak
quietly. “Order anything you want. I’ll pay for it and you can leave right after dessert, before the check
comes, so you can make a clean get away in case you’re worried about me getting any ideas.”
Meagan stares at him for a moment. They both turn at the staccato sound of three chairs being
pushed back. The girls have gotten up to leave. “Supper? That’s all?” Ray nods. She seems to think about it
for a few seconds watching Bobby, Kyle, and Chet watch the three girls file out the door and onto the street.
“I’m pretty hungry.” No funny stuff? Just friends?” Ray nods. “I guess you’ve got a deal,” she says. She
walks into the kitchen and comes out carrying a light jacket and a small black purse.
Ray follows her around the table toward the door. She’s made it clear it’s only dinner and there’s no
way a girl like her would ever hook up with a guy like him, but he also knows Bobby, Kyle, and Chet don’t
know that. Ray and Meagan walk past the three men sitting in the bar. Ray winks as he goes by.
Fall 2018
John J. Trause
Tout de Suite
Will it ever end, this daily, weekly, monthly, yearly pace, this drive forward, which is only really a way of
keeping up, maintaining, sustaining, forbearing all? No one really cares enough to fill in the gaps, to smooth
the path, or even to get out of the way, and yet, even if one trips once, twice —and yes, three times— no one
lends a hand or even comprehends the worlds that could come crashing down. It seems that others struggle and
in that struggling achieve some goal, some awareness, some end. On the question of seriality most others can
collect the whole set. I have never been able to do so except in The Twilight Zone.
Agh, but it is unfair and childish to complain about the problems of practicalities when more spiritual, creative,
and life-sustaining gifts abound. And it is not as if one is unaware of these; it’s just that the little annoyances
are the ones that sting the most and take their toll.
If I had to hang on for dear life and go without, even with trivial loses, I know I would not hang on too hard or
long. It is not that I do not love this life; it’s just that the compromises of this life do not seem worth it. Am I
really not of this world? Am I too confident in another realm? The big question or statement, really, is that I do
not care. I am lazy at heart, says the man who seems to sleep not or rest.
I reconciled a long time ago that the house I am building and setting in order will always crumble before I can
even get a foundation laid. Perhaps I shall live on air and grace and only the wispiest of wishes. I learned to
reconcile.
In the Street
Who are these people? What is your name? And you? Who are you? What is your name? On this street
teeming with strangers and strange others I ask, “Who are these people?” Why is this street pink or orange?
Why do shots of yellow glare out between the bodies or among the masses of bodies? What city is this? It
looks like Berlin or Vienna or any city of strangers. I am alone in this crowd, and I like the anonymity, but do I
dare ask if these strangers suffer as I do or suffer in ways that I do? Shouldn’t it all appear gray, not pink,
orange, or yellow? Why do I prefer a Kirchner and Macke to a real city? An Unreal City to a real city? What
is more frightening? Ha, what a silly conceit I expose in myself. Who are you? Isn’t that what the Caterpillar
rudely asked of Alice? Her answer evaded him or at least evaded the question. How rude is that? Well, I will
not ask this of myself or anyone else. I am content to be another stranger, an other stranger, a strange other.
What a bother. Hey, brother, can you spare a lime? How about a line? Before I end this collage à trois I
should answer my own question. I am no different from you, dear passerby, dear stranger, dear other trapped as
I am in the modern twilight zone.
Going to Canossa
Although I am not dressed as a beggar I feel like Emperor Henry begging forgiveness of Pope Gregory at
Canossa— the door closed for three days. I will repent and be on time next week.
Big Lub in a Tub
It was by all odds the most infectious chuckle in the history of politics. It started with a silent trembling of Taft's
ample stomach. The next sign was a pause in the reading of his speech, and the spread of a slow grin across his
face. Then came a kind of gulp which seemed to escape without his being aware that the climax was near.
Laughter followed hard on the chuckle itself, and the audience invariably joined in."
Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft: A Biography (1939)
giallo
NOTE: Inspired by Untitled [Man in Hat on Yellow Background, 2017], oil painting by Merle Rosen (died
spring 2017) of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Cleopatra Romano-Sodomized by Julius Caesar and Marc Antony Anachronistically Before
Capitulating After the Battle of Actium, But in Only a Metaphorical Way, Thank God, or Ra, or
Thoth, or Sir William James Erasmus Wilson, Elbert E. Farman, Muhammad Ali Pasha al-
Mas'ud ibn Agha, and Louis Philippe I of France, or Salvador Dalí for That Matter
Thutmosis, Moses, make the most of wine and roses, neurosis, necrosis, so says Sesostris.
The astral obelisks stick and prick, and you lick my haunches, cautiously, carefully
placed thousands of years before we knew you.
Ramesses crammed me. Ammon Ra rams me in Ramsey, †an anal torpedo†. Thoth will slam me
against a cherry-dark mound, surrounded by that wine-dark sea.
I weep for the fall of all of us, in this vernal autumn of our undertakings, for the loss of blood, lubricant.
We lucubrate and celebrate, lubriciously, no more, but in the stars.
But in our tears.
nix nix
nix
nix nix
nix
nix
nix
Fuck ‘em
kinked,
purpling,
this eye,
its lashes
like
slices of sleet,
wild orange,
obtusions
of pygmy
carcrash reds,
swashing,
though of none,
above I watch,
I am
108
i remember when seeing you come out of the bedroom with just my button-up was oasis enough.
later dipped that shirt into kerosene and made a Molotov cocktail and threw it at the church of us.
like when one day discover a colony of millions of daddy-long-legs on the backside of the shed.
when you had to cut the hanging and choking kitten out of the kid’s soccer net with pocketknife.
as in when armadillos set up shop under the porch and you worried about their myriad diseases.
the home is never sterile. it is vermin, asphyxiation, pestilence. it is all necessary. it is love won.
it is flu, thrush, insomnia, pinkeye, croup, colic. it’s blanket, fireplace, stew, mousetrap, poultice.
Solon, the exiled: “Call no man happy until he is dead; until then, he is just lucky.” supposedly.
the desert is sterile. Aeolian processes strip everything of its soft flesh. the wind-keeper reaps.
pull the shawl across your mouth, the sheets up as far as they will go. you are the estranged one.
109
you want to feel sunlight on your face. you see the dustclouds disappear without a trace. you too.
that first day when you do leave the room as the silent brown ladies make no eye contact. 10am.
that first day you leave the room and the street is different for some reason. new trash in gutters.
the carney gypsies have set up the rides in the dirtmall parking lot. you need to explore this city.
Barnum once said that “Clowns are the pegs upon which the circus is hung”. right at home now.
the fire ants are in ecstasy today. the crows in ecstasy today. shining cockroaches are teeming.
your life a fugazi. your life Catch-22. your life an epic clusterfuck. your life a bohica fubar snafu.
remember the sandbox at Papa Joe’s as a child? grown-ass-man, look at this dire quarry of yours.
you will go back to the room to clean towels & sheets, clean carpets. TOTAL RESET BUTTON.
but the mustard stain on your shirt, the beer in your veins, and the prize you won are so vibrant.
113
first time we had sex, you were pregnant with another man’s child. we started & ended as dogs.
if that was how honest we were, gods can only fathom the secrets we had. curved as scimitars.
generic sheet slides under the door at 4am. it’s time for me to get out. bill like a crooked smile.
i was out of shekels & the wheels and rims were off my chariot anyway. let her sell it for parts. then the
greatest moment of pleasure in weeks. packing my bags. minimizing. new inventories.
all women around you smell this on you. some of them, it disgusts. some worrying. all moms.
remember our daughter was born they asked us to freeze her stem cells to save our lives later?
C.D. Wright called poetry “an ever-shrinking arena for cultural conflict”. snowglobes shattered.
my mind then, in the sun at the Best Western lot. like breaking seals. like unbuttoning her blouse.
a mangy skinny dog sauntered by the McDonald’s drive-thru line and a douchebag cussed her.
114
“Myths always condemned those who ‘looked back’…no matter the Paradise they were leaving.”
waiting to see if your credit is good enough for the lease. waiting to see if you can book passage.
memes haunt you about loser-hood. people howl at you from pick-up trucks. own your privilege.
as Scylla devoured his men, Odysseus said it was the most pitiable sight he ever saw on the seas.
like when they told you to get married. like when they told you to be a teacher. then, years later.
knowing this could not be his apotheosis. imagining pyramids only and always from the bottom.
the Chusan Palm. the Windmill Palm. introduced from China. fanned leaves. hardiest of palms.
as the divorce led him from the forest of pines to the palms of the desert. as the ink kept drying.
the Milky Way rotating with billions of other galaxies around the Charybdis of giant black hole.
he was not leaving Paradise he was not seeking Paradise he was gouging the eyes of Paradise.
115
met a homeless man while city walking. he was holding a King James Bible. it was nailed shut.
seagulls flying over the Kentucky Fried grease franchise just ten miles south of Atlanta airport.
one way to look at the chasing of wyrms is the attempt of a man to follow life to water sources.
to even read the story of the Jabberwock, one’s world has to be inverted. mirrored languages.
the desert contains borogroves, raths, bandersnatches, and jubjub birds. glass teeth and talons.
tomorrow, I am going to take a clawhammer, find Jerome, and pull those nails out of his book.
shooting out online job applications like flung black arrows in pitch dark night battle. sad sorties.
patch of woods behind liquor store. trail cuts through to neighborhood. paved by cans, bottles.
there is an oasis in this ghetto, barrio, shanty meth and crack town. Shannon Bend apartments.
the nails that crucified that Bible are in my pocket. there was no fuss about it. all parties in peace.
Fall 2018
Jen Rouse
An Afternoon in Paris
Over there
a silver-
haired mermaid
on a bicycle. She circles
and circles, moonlight
in the spokes
of her laughter.
These streets
are cobbled
with mirth, and
so one imagines
Gertrude and Alice
taking Basket
for a walk. Even
Gisele unfolds her
tripod and we hear
the collapsing
rasp of her
immediate
shutter.
The fountain
of what we
imagine
must matter
years later
when we
are
alone.
Complex Active Bodies
Frozen in Babylon
A matrix of massive
stone blocks
creeps around the citizens;
laws chiseled
in deep relief
on these great walls
lean asunder—no exit,
no room
for living
Monsters, too,
face down the people
and force them into line;
a clawed beast here,
one with scales and long neck,
and the unicorn waiting
to impale a virgin before
she escapes
the labyrinth of laws
No begging
has made rain fall in seventeen years;
the tribes that came back
to the canyon painted their
mascots on the wall:
parrot, horned toad,
and cougar—
as they cried
of hunger and thirst
such rocks
slide down a mountain
gathering speed; no arms
can stop them—
they must hit
bottom to stop
These lies
remain in pieces
as the dust settles
like fog on every
morning when the red
gates of heaven
roll open
On the roadside:
a cup, a can,
a broken urn, each
filled with bubbled
poison and preserved
across time
The White Grave
A guru of elephant
lore runs his
own school into the ground;
radiating myth,
he now seeks profit
and angers the gods
Mountain on Fire
Tucker L. Dixon used to walk down to the laundromat when he couldn’t sleep, slip inside, and waste
quarters watching the washing machines spin. He found the aesthetic soothing. It got him through some
tumultuous nights.
As a child, Tucker’s family always owned their own washer and dryer, so he never had to spend time
at the washeteria. In fact, the home units were an important part of his youth. His parents did laundry in the
evenings, and the sound of a dryer rumbling in the hallway closet lulled him to sleep most nights. It got to
the point that he couldn’t sleep without it. He’d lie awake, staring at the ceiling, or he’d dip in and out of
nightmares, soaking his sheets in cold sweat, yearning for that tranquilizing drone.
When his parents divorced and his mom moved out, the laundry schedule changed, and Tucker
stopped sleeping. His father began to stay up late, sipping clear liquid out of a short glass until falling asleep
in front of the television, and the piles of dirty laundry grew higher and higher. Tucker couldn’t stand it, so
he went to stay with his mother at her new husband’s house for awhile, but her new husband was a very
peculiar man who did not allow Tucker’s mother to do laundry at night. He thought she might fall asleep
and the dryer would catch fire. Instead, he made her wake up early and wash their clothes in the grey hours
before work.
Tucker moved back in with his father who had quit drinking clear liquid in front of the television.
Now he stayed up late taking the stationary bike on marathon journeys. The contraption gave off a faint
whirr that was reminiscent enough of the rumble of a dryer for Tucker to fall asleep to, so he got in the habit
of dragging his pillow and blanket out to the couch, and drifting off to the sound of his father riding far, far
The first year of college was easy enough. He had to live in a dorm room with a guy named Carl who
watched NASCAR on their shared tv and mixed vodka into gallon containers of Hawaiian Punch and always
had a sunburn, but Tucker only used their room to study and change. At night, he slept in the dorm
“This guy fucks,” Carl said of Tucker one morning when he was sneaking back into the room after a
night in the basement. Several of Carl’s friends were in the early stages of waking. Two on the floor, and two
“I didn’t think you’d mind if we borrowed your bed, seeing as you never use it. Some buds from back
in here.”
The buds rose a ruckus of respect as Tucker stepped carefully through the bodies on the floor to take
“Toss me that HP, will you?” Carl asked. Tucker leaned down to the mini fridge wedged under the
television between their desks and removed its only contents. He tossed the bottle across the room and Carl
caught it, twisted the cap, and took a swig. Then he offered it to his nearest friend. The gallon made it around
“We’re going to the lake today,” Carl said. “Do you want to join?”
“Thanks, but no,” Tucker said and opened his laptop and put on his headphones. When he turned
around again a long time later, they’d gone and an empty gallon bottle of Hawaiian Punch rested on top of
the tiny recycling bin. Someone had made Tucker’s bed, albeit sloppily.
The summer in between his freshman and sophomore year, Tucker was the best man in his father’s
second wedding. Afterwards, he drove a U-Haul across several state lines while his dad and new step-mother
followed behind in their sedan. He stayed with them in their new home in the desert for a couple weeks and
then his dad drove him to the airport and his mom picked him up and he stayed with her until he could
The drive through the desert was an experience. Unable to sleep for the entire trip, he began to
hallucinate as he drove. Styrofoam cups of gas station coffee piled up on the floorboards as the azure, pink,
yellow, green, and brown of the desert swirled dangerously before him. Once, outside of Phoenix, his father
“It’s supposed to be beautiful. I mean the road is called Carefree Highway, afterall. Ginnie
remembers it from when she was a girl. You can stay on the freeway if you want and we can meet back up at
“No, I’ll go. Pull in front and lead the way,” Tucker said, afraid to go off on his own in his current
state.
Saguaro cacti as high as telephone poles filled the dusty plains on either side of the two lane highway.
Mountains rose and fell in the distant haze. Every few miles, signs warned of the danger of flash floods in the
area, and visions of these massive cacti swaying beneath a sea or standing stock still like coral as strange
desert fish awoke from their long hibernation to flit around them filled Tucker’s head. Gusts of wind
buffeted the high walls of the truck as A Horse With No Name started up for the twelfth time on the mix cd his
dad had handed him at the start of their journey with a knowing wink.
“The heat was hot and there were birds and shit,” Tucker
mumbled to himself as he gulped cold coffee from styrofoam and tried to get a grip.
Sophomore year was hard. The only apartment he could afford didn’t have a washer or dryer in the
unit, nor even a communal laundry room on site. He got by on Youtube videos of dryers, but his sleep was
shallow and haunted. He was often visited in his dreams by a golden-eyed fox. In the first dream, he’d been
on the playground of his elementary school when he noticed a hole burrowed into the gravel beneath some
of the equipment. For some reason, he lowered himself into it, and, crawling forward with his elbows in the
tight space, two golden lights appeared before him in the darkness. He woke up gasping in a dark room to
find his laptop had died, the phrase My golden-eyed fox on his lips. In the moment, it seemed to mean
something deep and he wrote it down, but later in the day he realized it was nonsense.
In later dreams, the eyes watched him from some bushes as he walked through the woods, or stared
One morning, he realized he had never actually seen the fox. He’d only seen the eyes and woken up
with the idea of a fox. The dreams began to freak him out, and after one of his professors appeared to teach
an entire class with glowing, golden eyes, he gave up on using the laptop to sleep. Clearly, it was doing
something to him.
He did poorly in school out of sheer exhaustion, but the fox stopped visiting him.
When his lease ended at the end of the school year, Tucker was on academic probation. If he didn’t
figure out a way to start sleeping and soon, he would fail out of college. He took out a larger student loan and
began working a part-time job in order to afford a room in a house with a washer and dryer.
Even though his new job left him feeling exhausted, emptied out, and hopeless, it didn’t help him
sleep at night. And the laundry room at the new house was a tiny closet at the far end of the hallway from his
Desperate, he climbed out his bedroom window one night and dropped into a bush, ripping his t-
shirt and scraping his arms and legs. Cursing, he stumbled through the dark front yard towards the street
where he found his bearings and started walking. He didn’t have any destination in mind, but it was a
pleasant night. The air sat light and warm in the dying days of August.
That was the first night he came upon the laundromat. Its fluorescent lights buzzed through steamy
windows and he stood transfixed. An automatic door slowly peeled open and he stepped inside. It was
empty but for two old women who stood on opposite sides of the building, not speaking to each other. He
walked down the aisles in awe wondering why he’d never thought of the laundromat before.
The next thing he knew, a strong pair of hands was shaking him and he awoke to find two policemen
“Son,” they were saying. “You can’t sleep in here. Do you have somewhere to go?”
“Yeah,” he managed. “I just fell asleep.” He stood up and brushed himself off.
“Best get on home then,” one of the cops said and Tucker pushed between them and out the door.
The next day at work, he thought of nothing but returning to the laundromat.
After work, his new roommates invited him out to the bar, but Tucker said he had to do something
and went to his room, gathered all of his clothes, clean and dirty, shoved them into trash bags, loaded them
The immediate calm of the dryers greeting him, each like a waterfall contained in machinery. He
exchanged a twenty dollar bill for eighty quarters. They clattered into the small bowl before overflowing and
rolling across the ground. He dropped to his knees and began filling his pockets with the runaway coins.
“Rookie mistake,” said a voice behind him. He turned and saw a young woman sitting atop one of the
machines, legs bouncing in front of her. She hopped down and helped him gather the last of his change.
“Never put anything bigger than a five in there or it’ll dump everywhere. I’m pretty sure they
“And what, they come gather the lost coins for themselves?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah,” the woman answered seriously before climbing back atop her machine. “It’s a vicious
world, man.”
She wore a pair of pink cotton shorts with the word BALLA printed across her rear end, clunky white
Tucker thanked her before turning to claim a secluded corner for himself. He figured he’d study
during the wash cycle and then get some sleep while his clothes dried, but he found the room hypnotizing
and couldn’t concentrate on his book, so he simply stared into the washing machine and watched his t-shirts
and underwear spinning violently along with his jeans and socks. Nearly every machine had a sign which
said not to sit on top of it, but he could still see the back of the woman’s head, elevated above everything else
in the room.
When the buzzer went off, Tucker wondered if he’d fallen asleep without realizing it because it
He retrieved a cart and unloaded his clothes and then pushed them across the room to the dryer
section. He chose the most secluded one he could find and nestled himself into a little nook nearby. There
was a steel door labeled Emergency Exit and another locked door which was probably a supply closet.
Against the third wall, there was a bench and he laid himself down on it, figuring if the cops came again, he’d
having just opened or closed. Sunlight poured in through the windowed front and the washing section was
Tucker felt newly revitalized for the first time in as long as he could remember, and he resolved to
Professor Alvarez praised Tucker’s participation in class and asked Where has this guy been? Likewise,
his new roommates confessed they’d been worried the first few days that they had found a drug addict to live
in their home, but after a meal together they realized how wrong they’d been. Again, they invited him out to
the bar. This time he simply said that he wasn’t much of a drinker. He waited until they left, and then he
closed his bedroom door, turned off the light so it’d look like he was sleeping when they came home, and
This time, he didn’t expect to be productive during the wash cycle. Instead, he let himself enter the
weird trance, only regaining consciousness when the buzzer rang. Then he dragged his clothes back to the
same corner, put them in the dryer, and curled up on the hidden bench.
Some time in the middle of the night, someone bumped into him and he stirred. The door to the
storage closet was open and he thought he saw a set of stairs and heard strange noises coming from within,
but he was too groggy to know for sure. The door sealed itself shut and he fell back asleep, unable to resist
In the morning, the door was locked from the outside with its usual padlock.
On that drive through the desert, it had seemed to him a mountain was on fire in the distance. The
night was a deep black and his eyelids drooped heavily, but he’d been shocked awake by the burning
mountain. It pulsed angrily in bright flashes of white and seemed to do so only for him. He remembered
driving for a long time without looking at the road, one of The Handsome Family’s eerie ballads playing
from his dad’s mix CD, watching the mountain, and then he remembered sitting in the hotel lobby eating
breakfast with his dad and step-mom while she asked him if he was excited to return to college and start
“Geography, that’s interesting,” she was saying. “I was always terrible at memorizing the state
capitals, but the schools put such emphasis on it. Even now, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why it’s
“Wait, don’t tell me,” Tucker’s dad said excitedly, “It’s Wilmington, isn’t it?”
“No,” Ginne said, biting a sausage link in half, leaving the other half pierced through by her fork, “I
“Let’s make this interesting. Let’s say winner gets to pick the music for the rest of the drive.”
“You’re on,” she smiled and bit the rest of the sausage from its pronged embrace. They both turned
“Uh, Dover,” he answered in a daze. “I am pretty sure the capital of Delaware is Dover.”
The next night, he went through his usual routine, but this time he resisted the urge to fall asleep.
Lying on the bench, he kept his eye on the padlocked door, but the dryers overpowered him and he fell
This time, the door was wide open, and all the dryers were silent. Tucker sat up. There really was a
staircase and it descended down into the basement from which he thought he could hear music.
Standing up from his bench, he peaked around the corner and saw he had the entire laundromat to
himself. Goosebumps blossomed up both his arms as he stepped through the door frame and down the
stairs.
The girl who helped him collect his coins that first day was behind the bar in a dim lit speakeasy. She
wore a suit and gave him a nod. For a moment, her eyes seemed to flash gold, but they were only reflecting
the lamps which hung low over the bar, each illuminating only a small, but overlapping bubble. The rest of
the space was occupied by round tables. About half were empty, and the others contained couples, or loners.
The one large booth, tucked away in one of the corners, housed a large and rowdy group of card players. In
another corner, there was an elevated stage where a man played piano.
Golden-Eyed Fox. Tucker jumped in astonishment. He looked at the bartender and then back to the sign,
“Can I get you a drink?” she asked, sounding as if her patience was running thin.
“I’ll have a gin and tonic,” Tucker found himself saying. Further down the bar, he saw a familiar man
sipping a bright red liquid from a short glass. Carl nodded in greeting then stared back down at his drink.
As he sat and sipped his own drink, he thought of his father after the divorce, and he wondered if
he’d done enough. While he drank and thought of his father, he realized the piano man had begun playing a
Jamie used to sit on the same brownstone stoop, holding a 40 Oz. with the tastes of drowned sorrow and
bitter memories.
Smothering the back of his neck with a garbage bag for a pillow wrapped in a collection of torn rags for a
blanket hoping not to be suffocated by the desperate need for warmth.
The dumpster-drenched cardboardlaying on the curbside is his bed now and these roughshod streets are the
bedroom.
He hovers over an open garbage can humming hymns over an alley way bonfirehe starts to sing the same
song of praise his father would sing him to sleep with:
He stops, because he can’t get through the first verse without breaking down in tears without pounding his
fists against a brick wall hoping the mortar layered lining will crack before he does.
Childhood visions of monsters under the bed now stalk him in the streets demons laced in human skin
looking to gut him for any loose change he’s collected during the day.
A requiem lost in the annals of tainted tributes, because some losses can’t be resolved by remembering the
deceased and what they would’ve wanted, nor by the memories of good times to keep one sane.
Some losses can’t just be carried on in spirit when its pallbearer is torn and frayed. Some losses push us to
our breaking point, a point of no return.
Where our old selves are a shadow of our past and the stains of anguish, death leaves behind leave us in
shambles of who we used to be.
This must be what it’s like to be trapped in a vicious rut of self-damnation. And no drunkard’s Prayer, no
beggar’s bible can save him from such suffering. A worn out stump looking for a wood chipper to dive into.
Jamie spotted an alternative an 18-wheeler with headlights that called to him like the eyes of death.The night
was pitch black.
He jumps in front, in hopes he will join his father in paradise, instead of a bed of maggots and mahogany, in
hopes that heaven is a reality instead of a biblical fairy tale.
I am not a religious man, but I still like to think he is in two locations. One beneath the tombstone next to his
father and another in lounge chairs, downing cans of genny light with his long lost father, engaged in a state
of grace, atop the clouds of eternity.
Post-Mortem Depression
My scenery:
the portrait of
a phantom brainstem
with cracking foundations
hovering over a scrapyard
of scrapbooks
like a spectre lifting the veil
of a rookie corpse
looking down upon a crowd of tears
except the crowd is of one
it’s the feeling when a soul
doesn’t leave the body,
but the smile does
Fall 2018
J. Carlos Valencia
Yesterday I dreamt that they were killing me. It was the third time that I had the dream. First, there
was the thundering sound. Then, they knocked down the door to my apartment followed by their shouting
and screaming and, without giving me time to fully wake up or even scratch my ass, they stormed my room
under the cover of darkness. I couldn’t see their faces. The only thing illuminating the room was the
fluorescent green being reflected on their eyes. One of them kicked me off of my bed, and while the others
barked commands at me in strange languages, another aimed the barrel of his gun between my eyes and pull
the trigger.
I couldn’t feel the blood running down my face, flooding my right eye. I couldn’t taste its dense salty-
metal as it trickled down pass my mouth. After the bullet did its job, my body lied inert on the ground. The
peaceful cold, which blankets the soul of a dying man and the quite whistle of a vanishing life, was all that
was left. Their eyes, like lightning bugs, stared at me like stellar astral bodies, so far away, turning and
turning around without ceasing.
Nobody heard the fatal shot. No one came to complain. No one asked for me. No one said a thing.
The newspaper published, in a little corner of section D, the sports section, a meager announcement
of twelve letters (not even in bold) that I had killed myself. “Juan Guillermo Velez, prominent soccer player
for ‘Medellín,’ committed suicide last night.”
Only my mother came to the burial, but not a single prayer did she offer to “our Father who art in
Heaven.”
The night before last, I dreamt that I had scored a goal, a goal among goals. I had scored it off of an
amazing backwards flying kick while surrounded by players of the “Nacional” … but no one was cheering. I
didn’t hear the screams of the cheerleaders celebrating in uproar my athletic prowess. One could only hear
a silenced lament. The birds stopped singing, the band ceased its jovial music, and the smell of dry flowers
invaded the stadium. Suddenly, they began throwing things at the field because I had scored a goal against
my own team.
I signed my death sentence with a kick… and because of that, I cannot stop dreaming that they are
going to kill me.
Ayer soñé que me mataban. Es la tercera vez que lo soñé ayer. Primero, se escuchó un trueno.
Llegaron tumbando la puerta. Luego gritos, y sin darme tiempo de quitarme las lagañas o de abostezar o de
rascarme el culo, se metieron en mi cuarto con las luces apagadas. No les puedo ver la cara. Lo único que
ilumino el cuarto fue el verde fluorescente de los ojos. Uno de ellos a patadas, me tumbó de la cama y
mientras los otros me gritaban en lenguas extranjeras, otro me pegó un tiro arribita de la nariz.
Siento la sangre tibia correr por mi frente, me encharca un ojo y saboreo su espesor salado. Mi
cuerpo yace inerte en el suelo. La áspera humedad, que cobija el alma y el agrio silbido de la vida, se van
agotando lentamente. Sus ojos, sus ojos de cucuyos me miran como astros estelares, lejos, muy lejos dando
vueltas sin cesar.
Nadie escuchó el disparo certero. Nadie vino a decir que se callaron. Nadie preguntó por mi. Nadie
dijo nada.
Anteayer soñé que había metido un gol, un golazo de los golazos. De palomita y rodeado de
jugadores Nacional, pero nadie se alegraba. No escuché los gritos de la porra celebrando en alboroto mis
habilidades de deportista. Sólo se escuchó un lamento silencioso. Los pájaros dejaron de cantar, la banda
paró su música jovial, y ese olor de flores secas invadió el estadio. De repente empezaron a tirar cosas a la
cancha por “yo” haber metido un autogol.
Firmé mi sentencia de muerte con una patada y por eso es que no dejo de soñar que me van a matar.
The Forest Path
I continued my excursion like a sleepwalker without a preset course, savoring the yellow bile that
erupted from my entrails. With hoisted sails, the wind accompanies me in this immense ocean called life.
Walking without a set destiny, I raised the fine August dust leaving prints with my sandals. The cheerful
gust of your memory, the one that could not be stripped from me, continues to beat here, in the hollow place
where I buried the truth of our history, our past life.
I walked a while by the sides of the hill of the Angels and the cliff of Judas, looking without eagerness
at the gardens with flowers of ivy. I walked, completely set in extracting the poison-fanged serpent that
nested itself within my heart. I walked thinking about the possibilities, about another opportunity, another
life, a new beginning in another town, another place… but no, I couldn’t; you ruined everything. That’s the
case, the sole truth that can’t be viewed in the internal darkness but in the yellow bile that I vomit.
After passing the orange grove, I took the path that led to the other side of the forest, and I
contemplated in astonishment the landscape as I stood by the edge of a half-dried creek, underneath a tall
oak with noble arms. From here, I could make out a cabin with stone walls and a straw roof, almost timid
and half-forgotten on one of the hills at the tip of the mountain of the Monks. A grey, opaque smoke was
arising from its chimney. The sky produced a brilliant sunset accompanied by tri-colored clouds: grey,
yellow, blue, and purple. I didn’t see the orange color.
I had never ventured by these places, had never passed the Little Volcano. I had never seen this oak,
never noted its branches, and naturally my gaze conquers this new territory.
The day, for August, was fresh and I hadn’t felt as animated as I did today in a long while. Today was
the first time in weeks that I had the energy to leave that little room on the second floor. Something had
invigorated me with a newfound energy, and I ventured out to put my plan into action… and for that sole
reason I arrived here today, without you and a very small amount of your memories.
I decided that it should be done late after lunch. Today I decided to do it: to end it all, to end you.
Life is only suffering, agony, and pain.
I mull it over in my mind, and I can’t, I can’t find the reason for your departure: so abrupt, so sudden,
without warning; just a letter that smelled like roses place in my coat pocket.
I remember when you folded it and, in a moment of carelessness, placed it in my pocket and smiled at
me as if nothing had happened, “something for later…” Three weeks I’ve suffered without you, without us,
without your olive-green eyes and pleasant smile. Your strength is like rubidium, your complexion is of the
color of a common flower in a sunny spring day.
I only encounter whispers of the past in the dusty, cobweb-littered objects placed in the darkness of
my consciousness. If I live after putting the noose around my neck, someone will ask me one day, “and how
did things turn out?” I know they will ask me, if I live that is. I will look them right in the eyes and then… I
will remain silent. That is why I have to forget, so as not to lie but to tell them the truth that I did it because
of you. No, I can’t keep you in my memory. Here and now is the end of my life, and of yours too, as the
stifling August afternoon wind gently swings my limp body from the crooked branch looming over the
nearly dry creek. It will end.
There She Was / The Garbage Can
There I was, on the dance floor, mixed up in the confounding racket of the cumbia and the tropical
guaracha, salty, fat beads of sweat dripping down my face and diving into the abyss in slow motion and
colliding star-shaped against the dirty, paper-covered floor only to be immediately trampled by the soles of
free-roaming dancing shoes (trendy Italian trendy leather, high-heels, plastic-soled). They evaporated from
the floor - mine, the ones that came off of my head, those which rolled down my face and flew off into the
emptiness amid all of the activity. My drops of sweat.
The ecstasy of the dance - the bewitching rhythm like a chicken with its head cut off, like sweet
sugarcane from the August harvest, like thick smoke of Caribbean tobacco, like a little high-pitched ringing
bell – the Caribbean blood that empowers one's being, transporting it as if through a trance to an erotic
world ruled by the rhythm of tambourines, trumpets, and cymbals. The vibrations of the body, of the bones,
of the muscles, of those flexible hips in the tight-fitting skirts, to the rhythm of pan, pan, poon, poon.
The Main Stage was the name of the hole-in-the-wall on one of Tallahassee's downtown blocks.
There on Park Avenue was that cave of nocturnal rats, that den of sleepwalking savages – Latinos in search
of women; or dancing; or drinking; or escaping, getting away, changing the scenery – or simply being a little
closer to their own.
Dark black tinted windows, neon lights, and a thick, heavy door guarded by two burly Puerto Ricans
with a cash register covered on stickers, charging five dollars per stamp. It's Thursday, and that means it is
Latin Night. We all congregate here, those of us that know where to find a little bit of our culture and also
those who like the ambience of our race.
The walls seemed to have been painted sporadically – a little green here, an apple-red there, a little
pastel-yellow over the main door, and sky-blue in the bathroom. Pieces of the wall were on the floor, red
brick with little gray stripes. There was also a pink plastic curtain hanging from the all and a real cloth one
covering part of the wall. Wilted flowers, along with a pretty one that was fake, adorned the bar counter.
Paintings, that had to have been purchased at a Goodwill store, littered the walls. They hung
trembling in fear of falling to the floor. They had seen their best years of admiration in the seventies.
The tables were without centerpieces, and most of them would sway back and forth unevenly with
the mere touch of a finger, or the magical waves of sound that emanated from Gabriel's metallic flute. The
few lamps available, seemingly snatched from the city dump, let out just enough light to sufficiently
illuminate the proud sponsors of this Caribbean atmosphere.
The chairs were covered with holes and some even had knife-carved graffiti on their surfaces. Nail
heads were searching for freedom amidst cotton and fabric. Metal, wood, plastic; I felt it better to parade
around, beer in hand.
I was sweating and the air was spoiled by the stench of nicotine. It was already past one thirty in the
morning. The drinks, loud tropical sounds, non-stimulating conversation, and racket that accompanied
nights such as this served only to augment the internal shame of this taciturn, waking nightmare.
It was in the middle of this gibberish – the red, yellow, white, purple, and blue lights; the "Excuse me,"
"What did he say?", "Come again?", "Sorry, hahaha," "Bring another round for the whole table!", "Cha, cha,
cha, let's DANCE!", and "Oh, tell me more!" – that I saw her.
I saw you first, gringita linda. I saw you many times before around the university, locking up your
bike, playing with your hair as you walked down one of the floors of Diffenbaugh. I saw you doing your
homework in the library and when you were talking with your friends in the Student Union during Flea
Market Wednesday. I saw you swimming in the pool. I even saw you after that horrible haircut, the one that
made you look like a boy.
But this was the very first time that I saw you here in our cave, our subterranean temple, our cultural
synagogue. You look so clean, so white, so dry, and so out of place. Your hair was so straight, so long, so
golden. You facial profile was so detailed – I like profiles. I liked looking at your nose, strong and not shy.
Your chin with that little dimple in the middle gave you airs of a Roman empress. And those lips, so full and
provocativos. Your skin with those freckles – those freckles really complimented the color of your skin. Your
face looked so perfect from there.
Our eyes finally met during the band's salsa song. You didn't dare to look into my dark brown ojos. I
couldn't hear the music embraguiadora. Your eyes, los tuyos, azules, blue, los tuyos. Mirame, mami, look at me,
don't be shy. I took another swig of the gold drink from Saint Louis, thinking "Should I get closer to her or
not? If I do, should I talk with her? What should I say? What should I ask her? What if she ignores me?"
She went back to looking at me, smiling freely and flirtatiously. Don't be so bad, I thought, don't play
with me. Huerita linda, you look at me and smile. "Where is she going? I think she's coming this way! She is!
She is coming towards me! What do I do?"
"Hi!"
"Hola." The music stopped playing. There was silence. The people stopped screaming.
"Are you the guy, the playwright?"
"Playwright?" I couldn't think straight; what was she talking about?
"Yeah, the one who wrote that play? You know, the one presented by the Spanish TAs, the Grad
Play?"
"Oh yes, THAT play – the one we did last spring." You smiled – you remembered my face, my play.
"I KNEW it was you! I liked your acting too!"
"So you liked the play?" You liked my play, my acting? I looked around, pretending to be busy
looking at the people desperately waiting to hear more music.
"Yes. You are very talented."
"Thank you." Why was I ignoring her? Why was I playing so hard to get? She was the one who came
to me. This was my chance, my opportunity to get to know her better.
"I liked your role. You played a very funny character."
"Thank you."
"What's your name?"
"My name is Ramón, Ramón Perez... but my friends call me Ray."
"I like Ramón. Can I call you Ramón?"
"Sure." Ray – what a plain name that is. Ramón sounded better when you pronounced it with your
beautiful voice. I liked the way you rolled the R – Rrrrramón. It didn't sound natural, but it was beautiful.
"I'm Leann."
"Nice meeting you, La Ana."
"No, not La Ana – Leann. LEANN. L-E-A-N-N."
"As in lean más?"
"No, as in Li-An."
"Li-An?"
"Yeah, that's it! Leann!"
Silence. What should I say next? What should I say to keep the conversation going – this lively,
energetic encounter? I couldn't let that energy die.
The music began to play again, the cumbia. I took another swig of beer.
"Quiere bailar?"
"What?"
"BAILAR!" I was almost screaming.
"WHAT?"
"Music, dance, you and me. Bailar, you know?" Movement of hips, passion, lovers.
"I don't know how!"
"Li-An," I say while looking into her blue eyes, "I'll teach you." More screams; I was almost deaf.
"What?"
"I... can... teach... you." I say it slowly as I accompany my words with my hands.
She put her hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear. "Are you sure? I've got no rhythm!"
"Yes, here." I take her hand and hold it close to my chest and pull her through the crowd to the dance
floor. She was in my arms, her left hand grasped by my right one and her waist, her waist secured by my left
one. I couldn't believe it!
"Now what?" she says, screaming again. Gabriel the flautist was now playing the trombone. He
greeted me, nodding his head in approval of my selection.
"Just feel the music and follow my lead," I said to her.
The awkward moments as well as time had passed by. They had gone by like smoke, like wind, like
nothing.
Then it was time to leave. The cave was illuminated from the entrance, no longer opaque. There was
light and the exhausted clients began to leave through the mouth of the cave, looking for another place to
talk, to continue the party, hoping to rob the night of its life.
Y tú, Li-An, still there with me, holding my hand. You got closer, looked me in the eyes, then my lips...
and I looked at those blue eyes glancing at my lips, the ones that were going to kiss yours. Y los besé.
"Everybody out; we're closed! Let's go, everyone out! Party's over!" two boricuas screamed as they
picked up empty cups and beer bottles. "Get out of here, guys! Thanks for coming; don't forget to come back
next Thursday!" they continued without lifting their eyes from the ground.
The refreshing outside breeze dropped me back into the reality of Tallahassee - the nocturnal silence,
the clarity of the night, the tall oak trees, the distant rumbling of motors, the free chatter of the passersby, the
clicking of heels on the sidewalk and the paved street, the sound of slamming car doors followed by blaring
car stereos.
"Come on, Leann, it's time to go," said her friend, seemingly out of nowhere – a short, overweight girl
with long, curly hair, long red fingernails, short eyelashes, and a fake freckle. She was the one doing the
dirty dance to the sounds of a guaracha. She was the good friend of the two Puerto Ricans tending the bar.
She was the one who came to steal my Li-An.
"No, you can't," the short gorda replied quietly, thrusting her index finger in my face – the one with the
long, red nail, while placing her left hand on her hip while pushing her should back.
"I could, Li-An, if you want me to," I said, still holding her hand.
"C'mon, girl, let's go," the one with the fake freckle said, pulling Li-An's free hand. I let her go and
looked, speechlessly, as she dragged her toward a red Honda Civic – two doors, sunroof, tinted windows, and
chromed wheels.
"I'll see you around campus!" the blue-eyed beauty screamed to me as she got into the passenger's side
of the little red car with the sunroof.
"I –" was all I had time to say before the fat, short-eyelashed girl whisked her away just before the
clock struck a quarter past two. "I'll see you later, gringita linda," I thought to myself. "I'll see you around
campus. I'll see you unlocking your bike. I'll see you playing with your hair walking down the sidewalk, or
while you are doing your homework in the library. I'll see you talking with your friends in the Student
Union during Flea Market Wednesday. I'll see you swimming in the pool or working out in the gym. I'll see
you; I'll see you around."
Fall 2018
hiromi suzuki
lucing
propelling altitudinous
scant friction ~ ~
where in the
distance
is
the trapdoor
of suction
Wound
antibacterial triumph
robbed of bosom,
speech
analytic
artichoke heart
cadaver suds
unobligated currents
A masterpiece is a kind of rubric from which we can discern a living pattern. It is a fractal, or a
skeleton key, an energy field of movable circuits; illuminating connections between something in our past to
clarify something in the present. I started re-reading Moby Dick just before the fires in Sonoma County last
fall, in the midst of that ominous haze which lingered so long, in the tense tragedy of the unfolding stories.
The photos of that older couple who survived by diving into their neighbor’s swimming pool, as the flames
surrounded them, stayed in mind. They held wet shirts over their faces so they could breathe, huddled
together for warmth through the night. The water protected them, but by morning the turquoise pool where
they stood was turned black with fallen ash. The role of water as protector and destroyer is one of the
myriad strands within the macrocosmic sweep of Moby Dick, in which I find reflected, so much of my own
life and our collective moment as well. The similarities between Captain Ahab and our current president,
my family having to leave San Francisco, and a lost world that existed the first time I read Moby Dick, are all
Moby Dick, in case it’s been a while, is a story narrated by a sailor called Ishmael, who shows up in
New Bedford, Mass. looking to shake off the “damp drizzling November in his soul” by joining a whaling
voyage. Little does he know, that the ship he has chosen, somewhat at random, the Pequod, will be captained
by Ahab, an obsessed maniac set on exacting revenge from a large white whale who has bitten off his leg.
The ensuing voyage, as Ahab pursues his hatred across half the world, ends badly for everyone except of
course, Ishmael, who alone escapes to tell the tale. That’s just the face of it, like the ocean itself, every thing
Moby Dick may be our most alive great book, in its pages life seethes and swells together, you can cut
into it, eat it, flip it over, talk to it, stand on it, listen to it. It veers from micro to macro in the turn of a clause.
In a typical scene, the second mate Stubb, has killed a whale and wants to eat some of it, on the side of the
ship a school of sharks are already eating, Melville’s prose dives in to the melee.
“While the valiant butchers over the deck tables are cannibally carving each others’ live meat with the carving
knives all gilded and tasseled, the sharks also with their jewel-hilt mouths, are quarellesomely carving away under the
table at dead meat, and though you were to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same
thing, that is to say a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties”
Reading Moby Dick immerses one in a system of deep time and intense physicality that we have lost
and may never have again. It is this reality of the corporal, the outdoor live action life that the advent of the
screen world has obscured, and discouraged. Between the smooth freeways on which our tech residents flow
out of San Francisco and the smooth glass of the screen that guides them, gale force winds, and flying
harpoons have no place. What the tech world brings us, a flatness, a smoothness, Moby Dick shatters. Most of
us would struggle to survive through one page of the action on the Pequod’s deck awash in slippery blood,
swinging iron chains and flames from the rendering pots boiling down the blubber.
While the physical world of Moby Dick, and the vast sweep of time and space it invokes, seem to be
vanishing from American experience, other aspects of the story feel more present, or even prescient. In
shaping the character of Ahab, the deeply damaged man, who leads with a monomaniacal selfishness that
obliterates all common courtesies and care; Melville has rendered the metaphorical outlines of our current
president. We now have Ahab, the half man, hell bent on destruction, leading the ship of state, with
congress crewing on his ship of doom. That the crew of the Pequod fails to stop the deadly mission of its
captain is central to the tragedy of Moby Dick. Melville ponders how a crew of stouthearted sailors could
acquiesce against their better judgment, and go along with Ahab on a hunt they know to be deadly. The
For weeks after the voyage begins, Ahab stays quietly below in his cabin, until one bright day he
finally appears on deck, to rally the crew to his intention, to hunt down the great white whale and kill it. It’s
not so strange a request, the getting of whales is their business after all, why not the big one? Ahab
intoxicates them with liquor and gold, nailing a golden doubloon to the main mast, a treasure for the man
who first sights the white whale. As he speaks, he elevates the rhetoric of his personal revenge to a noble
quest, painting the whale as an accursed monster that must be annihilated, as he urges on his crew.
“And this is what ye have shipped for men! To chase that white whale on both sides of earth, till he
spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye men, will you splice hands on it now? I think ye do look
brave.”
Ahab has to cajole a rational and hesitant Starbuck (the first mate) that he should believe as well.
“The crew man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in the matter of the whale.” We’re reminded
of the president’s claims about his own popularity, as if the fact of being liked, is evidence that he is right.
Soon after this speech, Melville lets us overhear Ahab, pacing the deck, reflecting on how it went.
“Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits
And our president is right behind him, pacing the West Wing a year ago, “How could it be that I
could win, first time out? I can’t believe it was so easy. It’s amazing. I’m amazing.”
Meanwhile Ishmael begins to realize, then regret, how easily he has been swayed.
“Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.”…” With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.”
Whatever vengeance each sailor carries, has found a target in Moby Dick, the strangely colored
creature, the one we can’t see, or understand. Our horror mounts when the first pod of whales is sighted. As
the boats are lowered to give chase, Ahab suddenly appears: “With a start all glared at dark Ahab who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms who seemed fresh formed out of air.”
Suddenly Ishmael understands that these are men Ahab has been hiding, his own special crew,
hidden below deck since the Pequod sailed, ready to help Ahab do his own bidding, regardless of the
contract with owner or crew. The ‘dusky-phantoms’ are not exactly Russian operatives, but the sailors know
they shouldn’t be there, and are not to be trusted. But eventually, the crew of the Pequod comes to accept
the phantoms, rationalizing that the ocean is vast and whalers often pick up unaccountable things.
“Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the Captain and it
would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.” How much strange behavior our congress,
lost ship that it is, has gotten used to I’ll leave for others to trace.
In his famous essay Call Me Ishmael, modernist poet Charles Olson posits a detailed argument for
Ahab representing a certain kind of 19th Century industrialist. The whaling industry itself, now so distasteful
to our ecological sympathies, was even to Melville’s contemporaries, recognized as a wholesale plunder of
the wild. Melville discusses in his various chapters on cetology, the likely extinction of whale species
through hunting. It wasn’t like they didn’t know. The owners of whaling vessels, Puritan by pretension, were
willing to forgive almost any offence on board if the hold came back full of oil. The whaling industry and
whaling captains, like Ahab were set on ruthlessly exploiting natural resources for their own gain. Success
on a voyage depended on paying the crew as little as possible to catch as many whales as possible. Wal-Mart
and the whale-mart are cut from the same American cloth. With the dusky phantoms Ahab is simply
hedging his profit margin by bringing in a sort of second extra crew, who work only for him. True his profits
are of a psychotic emotional currency, but he wants them just the same. Lately, here in San Francisco
especially it seems we’ve come to accept a sort of hopeless materialism, as if we have no choice in the matter.
For the last ten years we’ve rented a stucco row house a few short blocks from the Pacific at Ocean
Beach. I hear the ocean while I read, or write this at my desk. Its constant voice has become the sound of
home. What is it saying I wonder? When will I know? Shouldn’t I know by now? Pondering the larger
mysteries is a lot of what goes on in Moby Dick. After killing the first whale of the hunt, Captain Ahab speaks
to its severed head, hanging by chains from the side of his ship, “Speak mighty head and tell us the secret
long, a fin whale. My son and I kept going back out to look at it. Its body had been torn open, and was rotting.
Layers of pink blubber, carved in tiers, reminded me of the ceiling decorations in the Alhambra. These
striations of whale flesh were so hard to fathom, like some ancient geological event, pink, grey, massive,
carved with caverns and streams, but leading where? The fins, still buried under the surf, looked pathetically
small in relation to its bulk. Then we saw its round glassy eye, which made us want to cry, because then we
realized that the whale was like us, had looked out on the world. What mysteries had he seen? Our eyes were
Around the time of the fires we learned that our house is being sold, redone. The rent will likely
triple. Like hundreds of artists each year, we just can’t afford to stay anymore, so this summer we’ll leave the
city where I’ve lived, mostly, for forty years, where I’ve raised my children. Sometimes, leaving feels like a
fire in which I will lose everything, but sometimes it feels natural. Leaving was how I got here to begin with.
Rereading Moby Dick in my fifties, I recall the first time I read Moby Dick at 20. I had just moved
from a cabin in the mountains of Oregon, where I had gone partly inspired by Thoreau’s Walden, but had
come to the “city” thinking rightly, that this was where writers were, and I was going to be one. It was still
easy then, to find a spacious room in a Berkeley Victorian in exchange for babysitting and gardening. There
was plenty of time off and the sense that most of my life was safely stored in the ocean of years ahead. I’d
also gotten a part-time job at an influential small press in the Berkeley hills; packing books in a closet under
the stairs, several nights a week. I wasn’t in college, I even dropped out of high school, but I was working my
way through the books everyone read, and there were books everywhere. There was also a steady stream of
writers coming to the press, smoking on the deck, giving impromptu readings. Some times older poets would
show up, and compelled by lust or curiosity, I would have to seduce them. It was fantastic. Mornings we
might search out obscure Vedic texts at Shambala Books on Telegraph. A copy of War & Peace would be
purchased as a gift, a sexy note added to the title page. I absorbed these poets’ lifetimes of reading, over
breakfast and espresso; it was in their small talk, their kisses. Literature was subversive, illicit, alive and
pressing on the now. I read then as the young do, with a hunger for information about how to live. Now I
Now reading Moby Dick I’m sickened by Ahab’s selfishness, and can’t help but see the whole voyage,
as an incredibly depressing and pointless ship of doom. I can’t help but see that the big thing here is not the
whale at all, but the maniacal obsession of Ahab, who is more than ready to take everyone with him down
into the murderous depths if only he can get what he wants. This is a novel about the problem with minds
that can only entertain one point of view; it’s about capitalism or materialism or whatever you label the need
to capture and possess things. I want to yell, Fuck you Captain Ahab, you and your self involved little
wounds. Take you’re hurt little carcass and stay at home. How many are you willing to take down with you
on your raging race for revenge. I have a grown son who could get on a boat, or a business, with someone
like Ahab. I’m sick of the Ahab force at work in the world today, good and honorable people like Queequeg
and Tashtego, and Starbuck, taken down ineluctably by the tyrants in charge.
Perhaps the saddest scene in my re-reading of Moby Dick, is not the final sinking of all ship and crew;
but what the Pequod becomes before it goes down. If you’ve ever been with a dying person you know that at
the end, things begin to fall away, dignity, control, the voice. The Pequod is a dying ship. First the life buoy
flies off by accident, then a man falls from the mast, then goes Ahab’s hat, lifted off by a giant black bird.
The last thing to fall away is compassion itself. It happens like this.
Another whaling ship the Rachel passes close by the Pequod and Ahab shouts out to the Captain.
Captain Gardiner of the Rachel, a fellow Nantucketer whom Ahab knows, boards the ship and tells
his story. They had indeed seen Moby Dick, had even given chase, but lost one of their whaleboats in the
process. The Captain begs for the help of the Pequod in his search, “My boy, my own boy is among them… A
little lad but twelve years old.” Gardiner offers money to charter the ship, even reminds Ahab that he himself
has a son. But Ahab can see nothing but the nearness of his prey, his answer, is final and chilling.
“I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good bye, Good bye.”
Now the Pequod, captained by a man who has lost all human feeling, can really do nothing more than
The air out here by the ocean is almost always fresh. But the week of the fires, a broad river of yellow
smoke and haze flowed off shore parallel with the coast. There was a strange yellow light on the water
during sunset, not the usual gleam of amber and magenta, but a sour orange light, flame colored, like a toxic
Still, people keep coming to the beach. The streetcar route ends at the foot of Judah Street. Tourists
from Paris or kids from Oakland disembark, cross the Great Highway, walk up the dune, and there it is. The
great opening of sky and water, everyone seems hungry for. People come here to play, or ponder, or fall in
love. Every week, I see some new person with a bouquet of flowers stand at the water’s edge and pray.
This city, like so much of the American life described in Moby Dick, which was once metaphysical
and playful, discursive, unruly, and at heart egalitarian is now being tamed and readied for sale. It’s as if we
have been moving backward out of the unexplored waters Melville draws us to, spooling back to that cold
steepled, flat screened, white church in New Bedford, where everything is accusation and sin. We could call
the story a non-quest or an un-adventure, but who wants to read that, let alone live it. What finally bothers
me most about having to leave San Francisco is giving up living two blocks from the ocean. Walking on
Ocean Beach all these years, I am conscious of being held against the edge of two great immensities. The
civilized grid of the Outer Sunset, on one side while across the Great Highway the deep wilderness roar of
the waves stretches to the horizon, to the sun, to the beyond here. This border, this intellectual estuary, is a
writer’s natural habitat, and leaving San Francisco I’ll miss it. But Melville reminds us always of the mystery
within as well as without, and all the deepest borders we cross without even noticing.
Fall 2018
Ewa Mazierska
Too Smart
My grandma used to say ‘It is not worth being too smart.’ These words come to my mind when I’m thinking
about the Ns., who were our closest neighbours, living on the opposite side of the road, slightly to the right of
our house. They were also close to us socially, so to speak. The N. used to come to discuss political issues
with my father and his wife used to visit my grandmother to exchange cooking recipes for cakes and jams.
She was also keen to borrow small sums of money, which she used to repay in a week or two. I always
considered the Ns. funny. He was funny on account of his loud voice; she due to being fat, short and
extremely energetic. Later I also learnt that they had funny names: Teodor and Teofila, which for me suited
The Ns. lived in a large house with a huge orchard and courtyard, and plenty of sheds. However,
they were not farmers, as there was no field behind their house and I never saw Teodor driving a horse cart
or a tractor to a field outside the village. But then I do not remember any of them having a regular job either.
Irrespective of the season Teodor used to work around his house and Teofila was busy in the kitchen or
visited neighbours to spread gossip. When recently, for the sake of writing their story, I consulted my mother
about Teodor’s job, she told me that he was on incapacity benefit. This might have surprised a stranger,
given that Teodor was always moving a huge amount of wood around his house or building a shed, sporting
an athletic figure, but during the communist times almost half of men in our village were on incapacity
benefit. The second half were farmers, who could not get incapacity benefit even if they were sick. The smart
people tried to move from full-time employment to incapacity benefit as soon as possible so that they could
engage in better paid work or devote their lives to acquiring shortage goods. Apparently the three mansions
the local doctors built for themselves and their children were paid by fake certificates about incapacity of the
local people. But let’s return to the Ns. Making sure he was not short of shortage goods was Teodor’s
favourite occupation. Getting what was difficult to get was everybody’s ambition, but Teodor went in this
respect further that anybody else. The peak of his thrift was during the martial law in the early 1980s when
the contents of the Polish shops were transferred wholesale to people’s pantries, leaving only vinegar and
tins of squid imported from the Soviet Union boxes on the shelves. During this time my parents amassed
over twenty kilos of sugar and flour. But Teodor looked at our supplies with disdain, confessing that of sugar
alone he had 200 kilos. As for flour, tea and dry sausage he was not sure, but if a war of the length of the
Second World War was to start the next day, the Ns. had enough food supplies to keep them going till its
end. They had also plenty of coal and wood. It filled all the sheds in the courtyard and when there was no
more space for wood in the sheds and for sheds to be built, Teodor used part of his house as storage. I think
it was around this time that my grandma described the Ns. as too smart. Too smart for their own good – this
For Teodor food did not mean the pleasures of cooking and eating, or at best they were of secondary
importance to him. Food meant fuel. Therefore he liked most what was rich in energy: meat, bread, potatoes
and deplored everything which was too fancy. Adding spices was for him like polluting petrol. Teofila tried
to process the excessive food acquired by her husband, hence her constant baking of cakes, jam-making and
rolling dough for dumplings. I still remember the taste of her layered cakes and redcurrant jam. In exchange,
my mother, who worked in a local chemist shop, kept bringing her medicines for indigestion.
It would be a literary achievement to come up with a theory explaining Teodor’s hoarding obsession,
for example to discover that he was a concentration camp prisoner who suffered from long-time hunger and
cold, but unfortunately it was not the case. He suffered no more than ordinary inhabitants of our village and
many people would say that the Ns. got a better life than most of us. This was because they benefitted from
good connections. Teodor’s brother was a local Party dignitary and Teofila’s sister lived in West Germany.
While the advantages of the first connection was difficult to measure, the second was obvious. The Ns.’
daughters used to wear western clothes and Teofila had various kitchen appliances which provided a
discord to her otherwise old-fashioned and poorly maintained kitchen. She even passed on to us one or two
foreign items, but they turned out as useless for us as they were for them, proving that everyday life is a
system; one cannot change one element without moving many others.
Teodor and Teofila had two daughters. I was never friends with them, because being seven and nine
years older than me, they belonged to a different generation, but I liked them. The older, Ela, had a very loud
voice, like her father and was joyful, tall and pretty. The younger, Lidia, spoke quietly and was rather mousy.
The only remarkable thing about her was that she was a heavy smoker; she started early and must have
smoked two packets of cigarettes per day as she seemed to always have a cigarette in her mouth. Maybe
because of that she couldn’t find a husband, which greatly worried Teofila. At the time spinsterhood was
seen as a pretty grim predicament. It was a great relief for her mother when Lidia got herself a boyfriend as
early 1980s. The fire broke in their courtyard and did not damage their house, only destroyed some sheds
and wood laying loose in front of them. But afterwards people started to point to the Ns. the danger of
having so much fuel around their house. Even a local fire inspector told them that if they did not comply
with the health and safety regulations, they would face hefty penalties. Some things indeed changed, as was
later discovered. Teodor, without giving up his wood and coal, switched to a ‘smarter’ form of energy by
diverting the stream of electrons aimed to the households of his neighbours to his own house. This
operation, in which Teodor was assisted by his son-in-law, was initially very successful as proved by the fact
that the Ns.’ electricity bill shrank to zero. However, the trick ultimately frustrated Teodor, as he was unable
to hoard electricity – what he stole he had to use on the spot. Moreover, another inspector came to check
why there were electric lights in their house while, according to their electricity bill, the Ns. lived like
cavemen.
These brushes with the law drove a wedge between Teodor and his apparatchik brother. The brother
did not want his reputation to be tarnished by a connection to a criminal. Teodor, being a man of an
independent mind (as he liked to present himself), not only ignored his brother’s warnings to use energy like
everybody else, but got more defiant. His sheds got higher and more elaborate, more like fortresses than
sheds, and there was a sign of a bunker being dug in the Ns.’ orchard. Somebody on our road even named
the Ns.’ adobe ‘little Albania’. For a time this name stuck and when people said it, they pointed to their
foreheads, indicating that the inhabitants of this place were not healthy of mind. Teodor did not care. His
next project was a small chapel to the Holy Mary in his front garden. Later on a chapel of this kind would
also appear in the garden of the Bs., but in the case of the Bs.. it was a reflection of their true religiosity; in the
case of the Ns. of spite towards Teodor’s brother. On this occasion he again proved ‘too smart’, because by
the mid-1980s religiosity started to be seen not as a handicap, but as a way to save one’s public life. In due
course Teodor’s brother claimed that he was always a good Catholic, as proved by his brother’s private
The final blow to Teodor came in the 1990s, when the economy of shortages finished in Poland and
money became the only thing people were short of. He still had some hope that the domestic and world
politics would turn to his advantage and at times the world appeared to move in his direction. Every closed
down Polish coalmine was like honey to his mouth, as it meant less coal for a Pole. Teodor also looked with
hope at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab countries, predicting that it would lead to cutting oil
supplies to the West. Russia also would eventually say ‘no’ to the persecution of Russians in its old republics
and at a minimum would invade Ukraine, which would reduce oil stream coming to Poland. Furthermore,
there might be a conflict between Poland and Germany as, after all, Poland stole a large chunk of its
neighbour’s territory in 1945. All these developments were meant to leave Poland isolated and cut off from
energy supplies, giving Teodor an advantage. His prophecies, however, were increasingly a subject of jokes
in the village.
By mid-1990s both daughters of the Ns. were married and the older left the family home to live with
her husband and two children in the regional capital of Włocławek. Since then she was rarely seen in our
neighbourhood. The younger stayed in her parents’ house and in due course also had two children.
However, by the time the younger child was born, Lidia’s husband disappeared. The common belief was that
he was a drunkard and a crook, who eventually ended up in prison. People even wondered if it wouldn’t be
better for her to be a spinster rather than having a husband good for nothing. As the first decade of
democracy progressed, Teofila was losing her energy. She got diabetes and stayed indoors more and more.
From being a chief disseminator of gossip, she was downgraded to its recipient. Teodor fared even worse, as
in his older age he got all the illnesses he faked in his young age to get incapacity benefit. He lost his
strength, he got back pain and his heart was failing him. He could not build any more sheds or even mend
those which needed repair. He was also constantly harassed by the police, even when he was bed-ridden.
But the misfortune which befell the Ns. was small in comparison with that of their daughters who
died before reaching forty; the older from colon cancer and the younger from lung cancer. Although people
in our village were neither particularly superstitious nor profound, they saw a connection between their
deaths and the sins of their parents. This is because cancer is a reaction to excess, for having too much to
burn: food in the case of Ela’s cancer and fuel in Lidia’s. Teodor, being metaphorically and literally deaf,
made nothing of such comments, but Teofila took them to heart. However, she had little time to ponder on
her guilt, as she had to look after Lidia’s children. The alternative was an orphanage, as their father was
behind bars and wasn’t interested in them anyway. Teofila’s main objective was to survive till her
granddaughter, Joanna, reached seventeen, as by then not only would she be too old to be taken into care,
but she could become her younger brother’s legal guardian. Teofila died five months after her husband and
two weeks after Joanna’s seventeenth birthday. Her funeral attracted a sizeable crowd. Although people
remembered Teofil’s eccentricity and criminality, in the hour of his wife’s death what was remembered was
Focusing on preserving one’s physical existence, as was the case in the Ns’ last years, made
everything else decline at an accelerated rate. The house got more hunched every time I visited our village,
the wood in the courtyard was rotting, the Holy Mary in the chapel lost an eye and her blue heart, and their
dogs roamed the streets, howling and attacking the cyclists, as if they were strays.
It was very difficult for Joanna to lose all her family, although the blow was cushioned by certain
advantages. She inherited some money from her great-aunt, the one who lived in Germany and got
compensation for losing a part of their garden when a motorway was built nearby. She had money to live on
for some years and even to sort out some of the problems around the house. But this I know only from my
mother, as when Joanna was a child, I was already living abroad. In fact, I did not even know how she
looked. Hence, I was surprised when during one of my summer visits, she came round, bringing a bucket of
black currants. She said she did not know what to do with all the fruit growing in the orchard and it occurred
to her that we might want to use them for jam. Her granny told her that my grandma’s jam was the best on
our street. Joanna did not look anything like her grandparents or her mother, so it was almost a shock for me
to think that she came from the same family. She was a very blond, slim and pretty girl, but seemed to be a
bit shy.
I invited Joanna to the kitchen, and she was happy to sit, drink tea, smoke cigarettes and tell me about
herself. She confirmed that her life was hard, but not only because her relatives were dead or in prison, but
also because she was not smart. She had a problem learning new things, failed twice her driving test and was
not sure if she would pass her A-levels. The ultimate proof of her not being smart was that she was stuck in
the village, like the old people, while almost everybody else of the working age left, for England, Germany or
at least Warsaw.
‘You also must have been smart to move to England and even do so before everybody,’ she finished
her autobiography.
For a while I did not know what to say and then asked, ‘do you know how to make jam?’
‘I do,’ said Joanna. ‘Cherry, plum, redcurrant, blackcurrant, even apple. I can bring some for you if
you want.’
‘Yes, please do. Maybe we can build here a small jam factory. There is still so much fruit growing
nearby and nobody is buying it. This will be smarter than moving to England. We can even add a special
As she was saying it, my mother was already in the house, bringing shopping bags into the kitchen.
She must have heard what we were talking about as she turned to me and said, ‘Making jam? Communist
jam?’ and then to Joanna, ‘did she tell you that she burns everything she cooks and does not even know
which bank she keeps her money in? If you want to start a business, better stay away from her. And stop
I refute it thus.
--Samuel Johnson, kicking a stone to refute Bishop Berkeley’s theory of the nonexistence of matter.
Perhaps we are
Automatons
that exist only to survive and breed
spewing out
new generations.
a spirit,
a source of pure love,
rubs against me and purrs
Fall 2018
Enzo Scavone
Fu Dinxiang
Fu Dinxiang stands on the Brooklyn-bound platform of the N, Q, R-train at the Canal Street station. A
slender boy with buzzed, black hair and a pallid face. His dark eyes begin a nonchalant expression which his
forehead, mouth and cheeks have trouble completing. A breeze rising out of the tunnel flattens his wide,
worn out t-shirt to his skinny upper body. It blows into the sides of his open sweater jacket. His baggy jeans
are stained, barely hanging on to his slim waist. His sneakers cry for replacement, but Fu doesn't hear. The
train is coming. As the doors open he gets in and sits down on the hard, blue plastic bench. The air in the car
is cold and he zips his sweater jacket. The train’s engine is completely quiet for a brief moment. Then, a loud
buzzing sound, the door signal, and the doors close. Fu looks forward to the train passing over the bridge
and being able to see the tall skyscrapers through the windows. Soon after that, however, the train will pull
The conceptual laziness of the Atlantic Barclays subway station. Easy-to-clean tiles and dirt and ever-
moving throngs of people. Fu remembers when he used to come here with his grandfather; every weekend
and often on weekday nights, too. On a laundry cart his grandfather would carry an electric keyboard that he
had bought in a second hand store in Chinatown. They would go to the lower level, the platform where the
D, N, and R-train stop and his grandfather would set it up. Fu would watch him and the strangers passing by.
If Fu carried any toys, he would now stick them in his pockets or his backpack to have his hands free. After
his grandfather had set down a cardboard box in front of the keyboard and put a couple of bills and coins in
it, Fu would sit down at the keyboard and play. His grandfather would stand a little apart with his hands
clasped behind his back and try to gauge the faces of the passers by at the sight of his six-year-old grandson
Since he had been a small child, Fu had been trained to play pieces on the keyboard. His grandfather
would set it up in the living room, next to the blaring TV, and switch it on. He would press a couple of
buttons and then little red dots would light up on the keys in a flickering and confusing pattern. His
grandfather would tell Fu to try to catch the dots with his fingers. Fu would see the blinking dots on the keys
and try to catch them. When he pushed a key, a sound would come out. The first time this happened, Fu
startled a little in surprise. He would push another key and a different sound would come out. First he wasn’t
so good at catching the red dots, but as he got better he realized that by catching the dots with the right
finger, in the right order, and at the right speed he would play a melody. Just like the ones his grandfather
would play for him on cassettes. His grandparents made him sit at the keyboard for the most part of a day
telling him that if he improved, they could go out together to play in the streets and people would give them
money.
Fu remembers the many endless afternoons in their apartment on Henry Street. While he practiced,
his grandfather would watch TV next to him getting worked up about something on the screen. Hours
would pass until Fu could stop playing. When he was done he felt very exhausted and relieved. After
practice he liked to look out the window onto the life outside--like he's looking out the train now. But
through this window he only sees the darkness of the tunnel. Opaque and impenetrable. He’s getting a
headache and perspiration is accumulating under his sweater. He feels a little sick and terribly tense. He
doesn't want to look out the window anymore. Nothing is happening and he gets angry at the thought that
it’s taking him forever to get to Brighton Beach. He checks the display showing the stops and before realizing
how many stops there still are, he turns his gaze back to the window, quiet and serious. He feels contempt for
the conductors of the train and holds them responsible for its slow movement. He feels trapped in a loop,
like having to repeat something over and over again many, many times.
The years passed and Fu went out into the stations with his grandfather, until one day his
grandfather didn't take him anymore. Fu didn't ask why. He was happy about not having to do it anymore.
He had been fifteen then. Soon afterwards, Fu took a job in a warehouse in Chinatown and stayed mostly to
himself--even when he didn't work. As he grew, he found out that most things in life can be done the same
way he had when he had pushed the keys on the keyboard. You simply go through the motions. You repeat
and repeat until your hands do the task by themselves and your head doesn't bother with it anymore. When
your head stops thinking and your hands are on their own, you feel the rest of your body more. When his
hands went off like that Fu felt like he was really hungry, really had to go to the bathroom, and really wanted
to kiss a girl--all at the same time. Something deep within his body complained. And with every repetition of
and delivers goods to the warehouse where Fu works. After Zhenya’s truck was unloaded, he and Fu would
sit outside on the sidewalk on crates or whatever they could find and smoke a cigarette--talk about this and
that. Zhenya quickly picked up that Fu felt strange most of the time and wanted to help Fu, he said. One
Friday, Fu went to his place in Brighton Beach. After some beers Zhenya convinced him to snort dope with
him. Fu had sniffed tobacco before. He had enjoyed that quite a bit. At first it seemed weird to sniff the
floury white powder, but why not? Fu quickly realized that dope was nothing like tobacco. After he had
snorted it and the tingling in his sinuses had vanished, he could feel the complaints of his body vanishing
along with it. He felt like his arms were finally calm and belonged to him. His body was quiet; all parts at
once. Fu felt like he could finally look out onto the life outside. It was wonderful. He stayed at Zhenya's that
weekend snorting dope in regular intervals. He returned to work on Monday. There he put his hands back to
work once more, but all his head could think of was the coming Friday when he would go over to Zhenya’s
again. Every Friday he went. And every Friday his body would stop complaining. Just like it will soon today.
Fall 2018
Emilie Pichot
toothbrush is missing
until you shower. Floats up
from drain, in wet hair
the only clean clothes
are washer wet but you stretch
them and your skin on
google reminders
pops up notification
about a missed flight
aljazeera news
announces that it is in
fact owned by facebook
Ricky Thorpe was the first boy I ever kissed. He was perky, scraggly with brown hair and drove a purple
moped.
We lived in Lakewood and he was from Jackson—our streets bordered the towns. The kids on my block
were not fond of him. That he asked me out was not a problem; if I wanted to date a “dirt bomb” from
Jackson, NJ, this was cool because the Lakewood boys, which included my brothers and neighborhood guys,
“You’re a 2-by-4, Agatha,” my brother Harold said. He slammed the door when he saw me experimenting
with makeup.
It was the first time I wore blue eye shadow and cherry lipstick and went near the road and Ricky came
“How ya doing?” he asked, glancing at my mascara. The other kids played baseball cards across the
street.
“Good and you?” I was skinny back then—5 feet 6 inches and weighed less than 100 pounds. My mother
(and some elderly aunts with sour breath in the Bronx who wore bargain-basement lipstick) fawned over
my beauty. Their compliments were irrelevant on the tar Jersey streets where I played kickball.
I looked at my family—some in the house and others playing baseball cards with neighbors. I muttered
incoherently.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Well c’mon then,” he said, motioning toward me. I looked pensively at Ricky’s miniature leather jacket
and slowly got on his bike, putting my hands around his waist.
Ricky smelled of cigarettes. His leather jacket felt smooth as we drove around the block. The kids playing
“Look—there goes Agatha and Ricky!” They ogled as we rode along Poplar Street near the golf course.
I was petrified when Ricky took me on Ocean County Line Road, which was a major highway.
“Fine,” I remarked, perhaps a little unenthusiastically. It was the closest I had ever been near a boy, not
including my brothers.
Ricky returned me to our Cape Cod house, which was located at the top of the street.
A few days later Ricky came by to invite me for spaghetti. My mother was downstairs in the laundry room—
a dim, concrete area where I rarely went by myself because you had to waddle in the shadows to find the
light. I was afraid people would come through the curtain and strangle me.
“Mom,” I said nervously as she stared at the boy next to me. He was wearing his “Jackson Jaguars” jacket.
“So, you want two meals—you’ll eat his spaghetti and won’t touch my food. The answer is no.” Once she
gave an opinion, it was like slamming a door in a bank vault without knowing the combination.
“Mom, I promise I’ll clean the dishes if you let me go—please?” I whined, which she abhorred.
“Agatha—the answer is no. If you persist, you’ll be grounded for the week. I’ve got work to do.”
My mother folded clothes and I went with Ricky upstairs, where our German Shepherd Felicia barked at
him.
“Why do you call your dog ‘Felicia’?” Ricky asked. You could smell his cigarette breath.
Bye Ricky, I thought, and before I could say it, he was gone.
The next time I saw Ricky he took me to an abandoned seminary behind the golf course.
“This is where they taught young men how to become priests in the 1800s,” Ricky announced. It was, he
“Closed at the turn of the century—” Ricky pointed. It seemed like he walked around there by himself.
“It don’t scare me none, ‘cause what’s a dead priest gonna do?” he said, laughing to himself.
Ricky had a deep voice, which deepened as we got further into the woods and near the seminary. We
walked among pine trees and nailed-up buildings and a darkening blue sky.
We stopped for a moment, while, what appeared to be a bird, made sucking noises.
“Shit—did you hear that Agatha—” he motioned to me. I heard a hissing screech and saw a lizard-like
creature ascend.
I was shivering but did not know to whom or what Ricky referred.
“Who—what—who is it?” I murmured, clinging to his coat. We sat near a bush and heard what sounded
“Shhhhhh—that’s the Jersey Devil,” he explained while there was yelping in the air. The creature—
more interested in the trees than me or Ricky—was moving less apprehensively than we were.
I was about to cry until Ricky put his arm around me. Through the trees, we could see it flying back and
“What’s the Jersey Devil?” I mumbled, quite taken by the deafening sounds. I wished he brought his purple
moped, but of course, his bike was so loud our escape might have been foiled. The wind, in the
meantime, was blowing rapidly through the trees like a larger version of the thing above us. The
“I probably shouldn’t talk about it now—he’s up there...ya know what I mean? Just stick close,” he
touched me on my back.
We walked further.
“No, it doesn’t eat people—just chickens or puppies,” he reassured me. We were away from the trees, felt
“Think it’s gone,” he said, leading me to a bench. He put his hand on my knee. “Hey—maybe we should
go a little further—make sure it’s gone,” he led me to a seminary building which, like the preceding ones,
was nailed up. It was five stories high. The Victorian architecture looked misplaced, and Ricky was certain
that “the ghosts won’t bother you, if you stay close to me.” The windows were covered with huge blocks of
wood with graffiti: “Isabel Loves Steve” and “Shit on the Jackson Jaguars!” and “White People Suck.” It
stretched for several hundred feet and smelled like burnt timber.
“What about the monster?”
“Think the fucker is gone,” Ricky grinned and motioned me to accompany him to a neighboring bench.
“Come here,” he said while he lit a cigarette. “You want one?” He pointed the pack in my direction.
“No thanks.”
“You know, you’re really hot, Agatha. I’ve liked you since you rode my moped,” he inhaled. I didn’t
respond and he moved closer. I had only, until that point, made out with female dolls on my windowsill.
“Don’t worry—I’ll protect you,” Ricky assured me. I heard quiet verbs of bravery. He put his hand on my
“You have beautiful eyes,” he said, while I wondered about the Jersey Devil’s eyes, particularly if he were
looking at us.
Ricky put his mouth near mine and inserted his tongue. He pressed his head closer. We were smooching
I didn’t enjoy this, and Ricky thrust his tongue in my mouth. I could taste the nicotine in his breath, and
“No.”
I heard wind coming from the old building. It was nearly 6 pm and starting to get gloomy.
“I have to go home, Ricky,” I withdrew from his embrace. He motioned in his direction, forcing his
chapped lips against mine. Ricky moved his hands toward my bra.
I broke from his hold and he threw his arms up in the air. “What’s wrong with you, Agatha?” He lit a
I chased after Ricky, but he moved faster along the muddy path.
A week later I had not heard from Ricky. I flirted with Cinderella and Barbie again and was relieved that I
didn’t have to neck him, but also missed Ricky and his moped. I loved the breeze against us and his smell of
cigarettes.
I was a little restless so Mother suggested I take Felicia on a walk “down the block.” It was gloomy and
I went toward his house, which was on the street that bisected ours, where Lakewood becomes Jackson. I
saw Ricky standing by the fence with his neighbor, Nessa, a handsome girl.
“Hey Ricky!” I yelled. He acted as if he didn’t see me, and I walked with Felicia toward his fence.
Felicia barked and Ricky remained silent but Nessa acknowledged us.
“Hey Nessa, hey Ricky.” I waved and dragged Felicia, who barked at them.
“What’s up, Agatha?” Nessa asked, staring at Felicia, a little nonplussed in her company.
“Taking a stroll,” I said, trying to catch Ricky’s attention, but he smirked at Nessa.
“Isn’t this a little late for you, Agatha?” Ricky chimed in. He saw the sun going down. I was not wearing
Our streets were located by a large wooded area, and I rarely, if ever, went in there, least of all by myself
“It’s got steely red eyes and hunts soon,” he said lowly. Ricky told us that the creature had hooves, a
horse’s head, bat wings and a forked tail and that it was born as a devil to some lady in the 1700s.
“Mrs. Leeds,” Nessa inserted the name. “Her son lives in this forest,” she pointed at the overgrown trees
“It usually feeds on girls,” Ricky said, “but if there’s no girls, then it goes after boys.”
“You said it likes puppies and chickens the other night, Ricky,” I retorted, grabbing Felicia.
“And sometimes German Shepherds,” he rolled his eyes, giggling at Felicia who was unusually reticent.
I was afraid to visit my laundry room, and until my thirteenth year, slept with the bedroom light on.
The sky was bleaker, and Felicia was eager to go home for dinner. I heard the mistral. There were insects
flying and frogs croaking and it was chilly so I grabbed the leash and we ran up the block.
Fall 2018
Donato Mancini
redecorate, paint or
environment, whether
leroi’s psalm
Selena
Your ground floor
Is a potpourri of your perfumes
Caressing the tendrils of my trunk
Hitching a ride on the nerve of my nose
Resting on the buyers’ page of my brain
Your café
Pulls my lips, my mouth, my tongue to yours
Conjugating the five nerves of my face
Selena your coffee brews deep inside
We are over
The nerve of control
Finally slows my guilty heart
And you are alone again
Fall 2018
Debopriya Bhattacharya
Sparks.
View
‘… to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the
mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.’
– Thomas Browne, Urn Burial
Maybe leads back to civilization. A flared, overexposed photo of some detritus. A polaroid from the future
because once it was the done thing. Meanwhile the image is still developing. Wind the window down; the
smell hits you, the heat. They go out of the woods and over to the side of the road. Whose lunar surface gets
rattled so many times a day. The metronomic big trucks. Brazenly in the flared light all the chucked rubbish
gets tumbled into the small ravine, the combe, the arroyo, the sidings – whatever you choose to call your
local roadside picnic place. Then they go back into the ‘woods’. There will be more; civilization?
And in the gold of the sky there are brighter gold flecks panning through space. Like what to do with all your
drafts. All the graves will be grown over, gently turfed like a slipper. And their sweet words smoothed away
with acid skies and crept with lichen. Ghost moths hover up and down along the cushioned edges, just
visible, on invisible strings that go up and up and also down into the tip.
Meanwhile, back in civilization, two stars are depicted drawing their yolks heavily together. Void over void
they will fling more gold towards this pretty scene.
After Some Films by Joseph Bernard
COMPLETE MAKEOVER
I’m not sure exactly when, or why, that decision was made. But then I’m the father, so of course I am
biased in favor of the God given gender. Morgan lived half of his life before he became a she. Up to that time, he
was all male, big muscles, thick neck, rugged good looks, full of testosterone. A few pills a day changed all that.
The plumbing required surgery, and a bit more rehab than advertised. The baritone voice, big feet and narrow
hips proved to be more of a challenge. No choice but to leave some things as they are, as they were meant to
be.
Morgan’s brothers all agreed that he was a lot better looking as a man than as a woman, but that
wasn’t Morgan’s perspective. No surprise. There’s not much of anything that Morgan has ever seen the same
as everyone else, including the use of pronouns. After forty years, it’s hard to picture Morgan as anything but a
“he”. But, that would no longer be politically correct, not that I give a crap about political correctness. It
does, however, seem to be urgently important to Morgan to now be referred to as a she. So, as difficult and
vexatious as it continues to be, I do my best to comply, at least in front of him, …. I mean her.
When Morgan changed from a male to a female, she encountered problems that others could never
identify with, or even imagine. Several friends, or former friends, no longer knew how to relate to her, perhaps
they no longer even liked her. Some were disgusted, some polite. Many just went away. No family member will
ever be happy with this type of makeover. The news was sudden and unexpected. Nobody said, “Wow, what an
improvement!” Some tolerated her, tried to be understanding. After all, we are family. And families do stick
together, at least most of the time. We all love her, but she was not easy to be around. The person we knew and
loved no longer existed, at least not in our minds. A few wanted nothing to do with her. Family or not, she was
carved out of their lives, at least for the time being. Morgan was probably always a little too off center for them
anyways, and the transition was the perfect, and only, excuse they needed to say goodbye.
Whether by design, intention, or total surprise, the new transgender Morgan was unwittingly compelled
to enter an entirely new world, previously unknown or imagined. Before the public leap, she probably got most
of her information, and encouragement, from others perceived to be in the same boat; transgender
spokespersons, trans doctors, trans psychologists, trans testimonials. After the leap, the trans community would
be waiting with open arms. Only later did she discover that there is no trans community. Unlike gays and
lesbians, transgender people don’t stick together. For the most part, they don’t commune together, they don’t
party together, they don’t seek one another. If anything, they avoid each other. Morgan’s dream was never to
live her life with another transgender person, her dream was to live in the world she had always known, but as
a woman rather than a man. She had no issue with her world, only with her born gender. She loved, or at least
liked, the world she lived in, she just wanted to live on the other side of the fence. But to Morgan’s shock and
dismay, the world she’d always known and loved had removed the red carpet for her, pulled the doormat from
under her feet. He had been welcomed as a male born into the world, but that same world shunned her as a
transgender female. She was forced to find a new world, not the one she’d always known, not the transgender
community that doesn’t exist, but the world of survival. A world where she could find acceptance, even if
And like all the others who had walked this road before her, Morgan found herself knocking on the door
of that dark world of survival. The reality is that many transgender women fail, they can never find the spot in
that world reserved just for her, where they are accepted, in which they can survive. Most fall victim to
depression, alcohol, drugs, and even suicide. This isn’t the life I would ever want. Personally, even if every
morsel of my being craved to be a woman, I would never cross so much as my little toe over that threshold. Nor
would I ever waive my right to stand up at a urinal or to pee into a bush on any golf course in the world. But
Morgan not only didn’t cower in a corner, she boldly leapt forward, announcing the makeover in loud
and explicit terms to anyone who would listen. Even if they didn’t want to listen, nobody was spared. Morgan
bombarded her plethora of friends and family with the news, personal meetings, phone calls, emails, long
letters, but mostly via social media. Facebook, InstaChat, SnapFace, Tweeter, these were all foreign objects to
me. But not to Morgan. Every bloody detail of the transition was posted for the whole world to see, breast size,
mood changes, dilation rituals, status of the new vagina, everything. Pictures, videos, not a morsel overlooked.
Way more than I needed to know. And if you didn’t like it, you were promptly jettisoned from her address book.
_____________________
It’s been four long years since my transition began. And I’m lonely.
I tried dating for a while, but no good man wants a woman with a dick. At least, none that I ever met.
That was a major motivating factor in deciding to go through with the surgery last year. It’s been nine months
and I love my new vagina. Things are coming together. I’m a little nervous about the future, but I feel like I’m
But I don’t know how to date. I’ve been out of circulation for four years. Before that, I hadn’t been
single in years. Luckily, a friend came to my rescue, and introduced me to Tinder. She told me it could get
pretty slutty, but “if you’re sick of being single and lonely, get on a dating app. Once you wade through the
I opened an account that day. Easy to work. You thumb through the pictures and read as much of the
bio as you want to read. Then swipe left for “No”, swipe right for “Yes”.
As expected, I got every imaginable response. Some were sophomoric, rude and obnoxious, most were
There were, of course, the daily stream of dick pics and “Ya wanna fuck” messages. But all I wanted
was a picture of him smiling. A picture of someone with whom I could share my time, someone I could love,
Other than the immediate “Left Swipes”, most responses fell into one of three categories; Shock, Not my
Some couldn’t get past the shock once I dropped the bomb. Perhaps they couldn’t believe a transgender
woman could be so hot, Ha Ha. Or maybe their fragile egos were cracked when they couldn’t distinguish a
trans woman from a cis woman. Regardless, their reaction was tantamount to someone sticking their finger in
Cool, fun
Works for me
Haha, right!
No you didn’t
Yea, really
No joke
No test
Others were pretty cool and polite, but it was just not their thing. I’ve got no problem with that.
Chemistry and attraction are strictly personal, no excuses necessary. As long as they’re honest and respectful,
Cool
Wouldn’t do that to u
So if we Face Time, will I be looking at the same chick that’s in the bio?
Gotta be honest
Appreciated
We’re cool?
You seem nice and I don’t wanna be rude, but gotta be honest with you too
Please do
I can’t see myself with a trans. Not prepared for this. Sorry
Fair Enough
Then there were a few that were actually positive prospects, and didn’t get scared off when I told them I
was trans. Still showed interest after the big news. Here’s what Michael had to say:
No questions?
Rare
Rare what?
I’ve been plowing through this for a few months now. Trying to meet someone on a dating app is like
shopping at the Salvation Army. You have to sift through all sorts of trash, but if you’re persistent, there’s the
I’m in love!
_____________________
“Come on, pumpkin, get off your butt,” Nellie prodded. “They’re going to be here in a few minutes.”
“They’re not boys, they’re a couple, one man and one woman.”
“Morgan’s very excited, and nervous, for us to meet Marcus. Now, don’t you go and embarrass him,”
“Ha, gotcha. Watch your pronouns, pumpkin,” Duke blurted sarcastically, wagging his finger.
“You’re right, Marcus and Morgan, that’s got a nice little twang to it, kind of like Mork and Mindy.
Perhaps we could start our own reality show, ‘Marc and Morg’. What do you think?”
Nellie smiled, walked behind Duke and put her arms around him. “I know you’re just being a hard
ass.” She gently placed a kiss on the top of his bald head. “Whether a he or a she, Morgan is our child and
you know we will never abandon her. Besides, you want to see Morgan happy just as much as I do.”
“Grrrrrr.”
“Haha.”
Ten minutes later the doorbell rang. Duke slouched deeper into his chair in the corner.
“Hey, pumpkin, can you get the door?” Nellie called out from the bathroom.
The front door flew open and Morgan bound up the stairs. “Hello, hello.”
Oh man, what I’d give to fast forward a day. She may be a girl now, but she still clomps around like a
baby elephant.
From ten feet away, Duke gave a short wave, “How’s it going, Morg? Good to see you.”
Morgan charged forward and gave Duke a big hug, “Great to see you, too. I love you, Pops.” Then
she stepped over to Marcus and draped her arm around his shoulder. “Mom and dad, I’d like you to meet my
friend, Marcus.”
Introductions, pleasantries, and small chit chat consumed the next several minutes. Then Morgan
“Forget that, let’s go make some sushi. Just like the old days. I brought all we need.”
“Great idea.” Nellie turned to Duke. “Pumpkin, why don’t you get Marcus a glass of wine. I hear he’s
a Cab man, you guys should have a lot in common.” Morgan and Nellie retreated to the kitchen.
Oh, that’s just swell, sweetie pie. Go on, throw me to the fuckin’ wolves. “Sure, great idea,” Duke
lipped weakly.
Duke poured two glasses of cabernet. They both swirled the glass a bit, stuck their noses down deep,
took a slow sip, then swirled again. Marcus kept his eyes focused on Duke, but no contact was made. Duke’s
eyes riveted on his glass, lasering a hole through that innocent cabernet. Wine wasn’t such a bad idea, time
flies when you’re drunk. More swirling, then his wine was gone. Besides, this stuff is pretty darn good. Duke
poured himself another, then peeked over at Marcus’ glass. Good, no need to share. More swirling, and
“So, Duke,” Marcus hesitated mid thought. “Is it okay to call you Duke?”
“Good,” Marcus smiled. “So, Duke, tell me. What was Morgan like as a kid growing up?”
“Are you fuckin’ shitting me?” Duke wiped the wine off his lips with the back of his hand. “You want
me to tell you what Morgan was like when she was a boy? Really?” Marcus slumped back into his chair.
Silence re-entered the room, with no prospects of leaving. Man, I’ve got to settle down. More swirling,
and sipping. Another glass for Duke, and again, no need to share. At least I think I got the pronouns right.
Countering pronoun abuse is probably a required class at the gender conversion school. I wonder if the
pronouns are as important to this guy as they are to Morgan. Oh well, who cares. More swirling and sipping,
on both sides. He seems like a regular guy, bet he doesn’t go beserk on you when you miss a pronoun. The air
Marcus broke the calm, all the while having kept his composure. “What do you want to talk about now,
Duke?”
Duke lifted his eyes, his mind seemingly deep in thought. Smartass.
“Look, Duke, I walk into your house with your daughter, who you still see as your son. Surely you have
Just keep your cool, this will be over with soon enough. Duke smiled, “How about another glass of
wine?”
know. Besides, why would a gay guy be with a woman? But then, if the woman used to be a man, would that
make him half gay? Is there even such a thing as half gay? Probably not, I suppose either you’re gay or you’re
not, no in between. Oh shit, how would I know? I’m thinking too much. Duke glanced over to a bewildered
“Fair enough. No, I’m not gay, not at all. Morgan is all woman, nothing else.”
“You’re a good looking, seemingly smart guy. There are plenty of women out there, why are you with a
“I don’t look at it that way. Morgan’s smart, has a great sense of humor and she’s always so full of
energy. I love that.” Well, I guess I can’t argue with that. “And I’ve been with a lot of women, nobody better
“Oh, come on man, draw a fuckin’ line,” Duke moaned. “You’re talking to her dad, I don’t want to
Marcus snorted, “Just yanking you’re chain, dude. Fun to see wine spray out of your mouth.”
“Fuck you,” Duke grinned, shaking his head, wiping his lips.
Duke refilled Marcus’ wine glass along with his own. He smiled, “Cheers”. They clanked glasses and
Marcus leaned forward, somber plastered across his face. “It know it’s not easy for you, Duke.” You
got that right. “But if you think it’s been hard on you, what do you think it’s been like for Morgan? She’s out of
your sight, out of your mind, 95% of the time. But Morgan lives with the abuse and ridicule 24/7.” Oh man,
this guy doesn’t even know me and he’s already playing the selfish card on me. Grrr, I really hate that.
Duke regrouped. “The pills, the eyelashes, the hormones and the fake tits were all bad enough. But she
jumped off a cliff when she had the surgery. So fuckin’ final.”
“I get it, I get it all. I know you’ve heard, and probably researched, all about how she has always
identified as a female. So I won’t bore you with that. But you’ve got to get past all this gender shit, Duke.”
Marcus implored, “Forget male, forget female. Morgan is a living, breathing human being, just like
you and me. She has a heart, she has feelings, she loves, and she needs to be loved. Just think about it, Duke.
What else really matters?” Duke sat expressionless, his head bowed low.
Nellie and Morgan marched out of the kitchen, platters in hand. Morgan was humming a little tune,
Nellie turned to Duke, “You and Marcus have a good time? What’d you talk about?”
Duke glanced over to Marcus, their eyes connecting for the first time. “Sure, great time. We just talked
Nellie herded everybody towards the table. “Let’s all sit down, dinner’s ready. You guys are going to
Duke hesitated just a moment, then said, “Come on over and sit by me, Morg.”
Nellie dimmed the lights slightly and lit two candles between the low lying pink and blue flower
arrangements. They all held hands at Nellie’s direction and she offered a nice prayer. Then everyone dug into
the sushi.
Nellie and Marcus got wrapped up in a lengthy discussion about the preparation of sushi, from selecting
the proper ingredients, and where to shop, to the best methods for cleansing the bacteria off the raw fish, why
you use the Yubiki method for snapper, but the Aburi method on bonita. Nellie had Marcus’ undivided
attention.
“Ha, that’s okay, dad. You don’t need to patronize me, I know your mind.”
Duke placed his hand on her arm, “No, I mean it, Morgan. You are looking really good. Your color is
good, and you look healthier than I’ve seen you in a long time.”
Morgan was taken aback by not only the sincerity in her dad’s voice, but especially by the physical
“Maybe it’s that new skin crème you’re making. Which formulas are working best?”
“I’ve got seven different products now. But ‘Cheat Death’, the anti-aging crème, and ‘Kieran’s
“That’s great, one for the old people and one for the young’uns. Mom, most of her friends and all the
granddaughters sure rave about your creams. How have sales been?”
“Sales aren’t the problem, orders are pouring in, but I can’t keep up the production. I’m doing
“What do you think you need to get yourself to the next level?”
“I need about $40 grand in equipment, a couple of employees and some more space. Just for starters.
Duke pondered, “How about we run some numbers, make up a detailed list, then prepare some
projections. If everything looks good, we’ll see what we can do to get you an infusion of capital.”
Morgan sat speechless. Then dabbed the corner of her eye, lest a tear appear.
Nellie stood up, “I’m going to fetch the dessert.”
Duke rose, “I’ll grab a few dishes, then get us some port.”
“Perfect.”
Once they left the room, Morgan turned to Marcus in disbelief. “Dad hasn’t taken that much interest in
me since I came out. He actually treated me like a real person. What did you say to him while I was in the
kitchen?”
1/
we walked between the birthing stalls
among fields of withered ideals
crushed and dictated against the palms
and staring off into the dark
where none of it was true anymore
the officer with-held your letter to the ranks
each word star-fixed on the page
& wet as it was with your home-made tears
& the swirls of each of the arrow lights
slit into a pierce of sky-skin
the words now folded & folded again against this piece of paper
as i recall you re-said the lines
that finished my sentences before i had even
but i knew i was mis-spoken & the bloody handkerchief dropped
into the mud of the field.
2/
oh these crying injured stars
& chernobyl hosts
these tides of antelope division
where they invaded
& sectioned off the house
borrowing from each mortgaged brick
the clay to build & then rebuild
the effigy
as torturing theresa haunts the halls
& free-market espionage equips
&the grey ships blast hull
out of the ghost-rattle death of the tyne
(forever shattered & on the brink)
3/
these curved & curated edges
of sky & the trail of plane-cloud smog
dust reaching up into fingers of dark
& on the horizon across each border
where weighted down in the mud-limp
bodies of the poisoned hastened
onto the hand of a god whose imagination
glistens among the factory gates
& into the lens of industrial ego now stretching forms
from hospitals of sound the crushing roar
of the symbolist poets shrouded crashed against
the carnage of refugee newsreels in glorious technicolour
the bleeding of the pricked finger
now from rose-red the hue of victory
thumbprints displace the cheapness
of the irony
4/
grips in thrall of chill air of wander field
with-holding gestures turned over gravestones
& clamped against the imploded TV images
of night-child & bruising limbs recalibrating
stitching of the needy & gesturing
as political will day air grows foggy
& headlines spill their blood
against the flagstones while nightbirds call
unto the moon as it lays its shadow traps
of sound-bites set upon against the fox
& hounds & baying dogs
once more into a slumber
a silence encased in the gesture of a scream
5/
crossed over tongue
the clicking alphabet
warning of the city
tool chip emblazoned
& stone infused conquering
each space of thin air
trailblazing zeitgeist
born higher on the thermals
pierced from such torn longings
the statue remodelled
in stages of reclamation
(hard on the full stops)
to the ground they floated
the vowels of democratization
the kneeled & chanted realization
incarcerated in explanations
(to this capital)
of eurpean sublimation
6/
hard on the heels of this green blaze
turning vicious cartwheels
hello forever come climb up our stories
& mountains of divinations for soldiers
bring us harmony and warmings in packaged
tight wrappings of cloth & lay with us
in charity & hope of future shocks we’ll lay
down the golden locks and circulate
the city blocks tuning in to the radios
the DJS offer us marvellous news
& so we dig into our culture with stains
of stairways from other departures
& we’ll blitz the bleeding diaphragm
stitch the herding city plan
7/
when they command in the soft tones of endeavour
hushed & ushered appealing to the font
of your burning earth & its ravages
excited by the predicament
of where vast winds wail & edges assimilate
into the blurring of the mountains
& where the fire rages
& then the ice-pool savages
into the bliss of the eternal sounds
blistering on your tongue
& into the strings of regret
imagined by the amulet
8/
asphalt black blue the robin’s eggs lie strewn
across the acres of infinite city where catnaps whirring
in & out of blare-sound nebulous wars atrophy
in craters of their crashing cacophony to splinter heart-threat
& come into my body my bonnie baby boy
& see where the blood red stars stoke up the skies
& retaliate with moonbeams of jagger swagger across
the nimble walls of torn graffiti arms from which we
raised a toast at the dagger’s orifice & said well if the moon
is that dangerous we’ll set a rat-catcher in the blackness
of his sanity his profound and sacred backbench MP
bitter as a harmony in june from yer memory as a slip of a girl
& where your mother warned yer not to walk
freezing by the towpath of the canal
where you catch the jagged edge of his verbs
& kicking ‘em along the stones as iced as previous age
recalled that in the depths of time
this memory was replayed
9/
half his eye/tongue scattered
lain on the grass of years
across the hotbed of infinity
& his soldier’s uniform of grip
& the wretched grammar of the place
where moving from the streets
he winds his white-boy sheets
& into the victory blood of ghetto neighbourhood
pours out his life’s distain
into the distance born the piano plays
a black & white harmony of jazz keys
& a close up angle of his face freeze
frames into other times
& the half-forgotten lines of other songs
plague his brain
10/
Restoration:
A 3-splits mirror,
Furfur is this turnout’s replica.
Unclasping ingrates purse,
The secret heart, libido. In memory,
Our guru dunked at hallowing waters.
Though time herself mislays the pure.
Fall 2018
Christine Karka
Candles
and misery
How many water drops does it take to create
a wave
- I am a storm
Watching storms colliding in front of me and houses burning down to their last pieces
I’ve learned that everything has an end
they start cautiously touching my face and slowly move down my collarbones and
further to my tummy and hips
warm and gentle
calming and satisfying
comforting the broken parts of me that usually are hidden in the shadows
Fall 2018
Christian Woodard
II
&
I know, cake sitter, is your password. You do not know me and you're most likely wondering
why you're getting this email, correct?
In fact, I placed a malware on the adult video clips (pornography) website and do you know
what, you visited this web site to experience fun (you know what I mean). While you were
watching videos, your browser started out functioning as a RDP (Remote control Desktop)
that has a key logger which provided me with access to your display screen and also cam. Just after that, my
software collected all of your contacts from your Messenger, FB, and email.
I made a double-screen video. 1st part displays the video you were viewing (you've got a fine taste : )), and 2nd
part shows the recording of your web cam.
Well, in my opinion, $1900 is a fair price tag for our little secret. You'll make the payment through Bitcoin (if
you don't know this, search "how to buy bitcoin" in Google).
Note:
You have one day to make the payment. (I've a special pixel in this message, and now I know that you have
read this message). If I don't get the BitCoins, I will, no doubt send out your video to all of your contacts
including friends and family, co-workers, and so forth. However, if I receive the payment, I will destroy the
video immidiately. If you want proof, reply with "Yes!" and I will certainly send out your video recording to
your 9 friends. This is the non-negotiable offer, so please do not waste my time and yours by replying to this
e-mail.
DOWN TO THE BOATS
Down
To the
Boats
I want to row now, he says.
Maybe after a few lessons, don't you think.
No, he says, I want to row now. I think I can do it.
You can't do it, you’ll have us thrown over the side.
I want to …. SPLOOSH
Fall 2018
Brandon McQuade
Never Let Me Go
mold
scale
chips away
rip
tear
ripple
in a swift current
tight pocket
of rippling air;
aimlessly
I will stretch
reach
stretch
letting me
go
as I let them
go
go
if you’ll let me
*
flapping
madly
It is the flies
that open my eyes
finally
wake me
I am waken
no
they haven’t
no
not yet
Whiskey Memory
I think
the trees can speak
amongst each other
when they want to
they share water and clean air, their hard branches beyond our reach
are closer than us
somehow
more in tune
Their hard roots warm and dry under the sun’s glow
after they have taken in
and given away
all they can take in
and give away
flaccid underneath
buried
mingling
If I plunged
a hypodermic syringe
deep enough
into the cracked earth
between these roots
disseminates
HIV
I had started re-reading Moby Dick just before the fires in Sonoma County last fall, as an endless
plume of dark smoke poured out of the north, flowing like the River Styx along my neighborhood beach in
San Francisco. In that hazy week, tense with the tragedy of unfolding stories, there was a news photo of an
older couple who had survived by diving into their neighbor’s swimming pool as the flames surrounded
them. They huddled together through the night; the water protected them, but by morning the turquoise
pool where they stood had turned black with fallen ash. The role of water as protector or destroyer is one of
the myriad strands within the macrocosmic sweep of Moby Dick in which I find reflected, so much of my
A masterpiece is a kind of rubric from which we can discern a living pattern. It is a fractal, or a
skeleton key, an energy field of movable circuits; illuminating connections between something in the past to
clarify our present. Today Melville’s masterpiece reads like a prophetic gift from an earlier America, warning
modest beach house in San Francisco, and a lost world that existed the first time I read Moby Dick, are all
Moby Dick, in case it’s been a while, is a story narrated by a sailor called Ishmael, who shows up in
New Bedford, Mass. looking to shake off the “damp drizzling November in his soul” by joining a whaling
voyage. Little does he know that the ship he has chosen somewhat at random, the Pequod, will be captained
by Ahab, an obsessed maniac set on exacting revenge from a large white whale who has bitten off his leg.
The ensuing voyage, as Ahab pursues his hatred across half the world, ends badly for everyone except of
course, Ishmael, who alone escapes to tell the tale. That’s just the face of it, like the ocean itself, every thing
interesting happens under the surface. The sheer inventiveness of Melville’s prose, willing to caste itself
Moby Dick may be our most alive great book, in its pages life seethes and swells together, you can cut
into it, eat it, flip it over, talk to it, stand on it, listen to it. It veers from micro to macro in the turn of a clause.
In a typical scene, the second mate Stubb, has killed a whale and wants to eat some of it, on the side of the
ship a school of sharks are already eating, Melville’s prose dives in to the melee.
“While the valiant butchers over the deck tables are cannibally carving each others’ live meat with the carving
knives all gilded and tasseled, the sharks also with their jewel-hilt mouths, are quarellesomely carving away under the
table at dead meat, and though you were to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same
thing, that is to say a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties”
Reading Moby Dick immerses one in a system of deep time and intense physicality that we have lost
and may never have again. It is this reality of the corporal, the outdoor live action life that the advent of the
screen world has obscured, and discouraged. Between the smooth freeways on which the tech residents flow
into and out of San Francisco and the smooth glass of the screen that guides them, gale force winds, and
flying harpoons have no place. What the tech world brings us, a flatness, a smoothness, Moby Dick shatters.
Most of us would struggle to survive through one page of the action on the Pequod’s deck, awash in slippery
blood, swinging iron chains and flames from the rendering pots boiling down the blubber.
While the physical world of Moby Dick, and the vast sweep of time and space it invokes seem to be
vanishing from American experience, other aspects of the story feel more present, or even prescient. In
shaping the character of Ahab, the deeply damaged man, who leads with a monomaniacal selfishness that
obliterates all common courtesies and care; Melville has rendered the metaphorical outlines of our current
president. We now have Ahab, the half man, hell bent on destruction, leading the ship of state, with
congress crewing on his ship of doom. The fact that the crew of the Pequod fails to stop the deadly mission of
its captain is central to the unfolding tragedy of Moby Dick. Melville ponders how a crew of stouthearted
sailors could acquiesce against their better judgment, and go along with Ahab on a hunt they know to be
For weeks after the voyage begins, Ahab stays quietly below in his cabin, until one bright day he
finally appears on deck, to rally the crew to his intention, to hunt down the great white whale and kill it. It’s
not so strange a request, the getting of whales is their business after all, why not the big one? Ahab
intoxicates them with liquor and gold, nailing a golden doubloon to the main mast, a treasure for the man
who first sights the white whale. As he speaks, he elevates the rhetoric of his personal revenge to a noble
black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye men, will you splice hands on it now? I think ye do look brave.”
Ahab has to cajole the rational and hesitant Starbuck (the first mate) that he should believe as well.
“The crew man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in the matter of the whale.” We’re reminded of the
president’s claims about his own popularity, as if the fact of being liked is evidence that he is right. Soon
after this speech, Melville lets us overhear Ahab, pacing the deck, reflecting on how it went.
“Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into
And our president is right behind him, pacing the West Wing a year ago, “How could it be that I
could win, first time out? I can’t believe it was so easy. It’s amazing. I’m amazing.”
Meanwhile Ishmael begins to realize, then regret, how easily he has been swayed by Ahab’s hate-
filled rhetoric.
“Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.”…” With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous
monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.”
Whatever vengeance each sailor carries, has found a target in Moby Dick, the strangely colored
creature, the one we can’t see or understand. Our horror mounts when the first pod of whales is sighted. As
the boats are lowered to give chase, Ahab suddenly appears: “With a start all glared at dark Ahab who was
surrounded by five dusky phantoms who seemed fresh formed out of air.”
Suddenly Ishmael understands that these are foreign men Ahab has been hiding below deck since
the Pequod sailed, his special crew, ready to help him do his own bidding, regardless of the contract with
owner or crew. The ‘dusky-phantoms’, are not exactly Russian operatives, but their presence violates the
way a ship is run, the sailors know they shouldn’t be there, and are not to be trusted. But eventually, the
crew of the Pequod comes to accept the phantoms, rationalizing that the ocean is vast and whalers often pick
up unaccountable things. “Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin to chat with the
Captain and it would not create any unsubduable excitement in the forecastle.” How much strange behavior our
congress, lost ship that it is, has gotten used to I’ll leave for others to trace.
In his famous essay Call Me Ishmael, modernist poet Charles Olson posits, among other insights, a
detailed argument for Ahab representing a certain kind of 19th Century industrialist. The whaling industry
itself, now so distasteful to our ecological sympathies, was even in 1851 recognized as a wholesale plunder of
God’s creation. In his various chapters on cetology, the author broods on the likely extinction of whale
species through hunting. It wasn’t like they didn’t know. But owners of whaling vessels, Puritan by
pretension, were willing to forgive almost any offence on board if the hold came back full of oil. Success on a
voyage depended on paying the crew as little as possible to catch as many whales as possible. Wal-Mart and
the whale-mart are cut from the same American cloth. With the dusky phantoms Ahab is simply hedging
his profit margin by bringing in a sort of second extra crew, who work only for him. True his profits are of a
psychotic emotional currency, but he wants them just the same. Lately, here in San Francisco especially, it
seems we’ve also come to accept a sort of hopeless materialism, as if we have no choice in the matter but to
acquire and pay. How I long for the city that was once so wild and open, a city that had not been readied for
sale.
When I first read Moby Dick I was 20. I had just moved from a cabin in the mountains of Oregon,
where I had gone partly inspired by Thoreau’s Walden, but then had come to the “city” thinking rightly, that
this was where writers were, and I was going to be one. It was still easy then, to find a spacious room in a
Berkeley Victorian in exchange for babysitting and gardening. There was plenty of time off, so I’d also gotten
a part-time job at an influential small press in the Berkeley hills. I packed books to mail out, in a closet under
the stairs, several nights a week. There was also a steady stream of writers coming to the press, smoking on
the deck high above the Bay, giving impromptu readings, anthropologists, Irish fiddle players too. Some
times older poets would show up, and compelled by lust or curiosity, I would have to seduce them. It was
fantastic. Mornings we might search out obscure Vedic texts at Shambala Books on Telegraph. A copy of
War & Peace would be purchased as a gift, a sexy note added to the title page. I absorbed these poets’
lifetimes of reading, over breakfast and espresso; it was in their small talk, their kisses. I wasn’t in college, but
I was working my way through the books everyone read, and more importantly talked about. This was
before the proliferation of MFA’s, when any official imprimatur was looked on with suspicion. Literature
was subversive, illicit, alive and pressing on the now. I read then as the young do, with a hunger for
information about how to live. Now I read with outrage, about all the ways we fail to live.
I’m sickened by Ahab’s selfishness, and can’t help but see the whole voyage, as an incredibly
depressing and pointless ship of doom. I can’t help but see that the big thing here is not the whale at all, but
the maniacal obsession of Ahab, who is more than ready to take everyone with him down into the
murderous depths if only he can get what he wants. This is a novel about the problem with minds that can
only entertain one point of view; it’s about capitalism or materialism or whatever you label the need to
capture and possess things. I want to yell, Fuck you Captain Ahab, you and your self involved little wounds.
Take you’re hurt little carcass and stay at home. How many are you willing to take down with you on your
raging race for revenge. I have a grown son who could get on a boat with someone like him. I’m sick of the
Ahab force at work in the world today, good and honorable people like Queequeg and Tashtego, and
For the last ten years we’ve rented a stucco row house a few short blocks from the Pacific at Ocean
Beach. I hear the ocean while I read, or write this at my desk. Its constant voice has become the sound of
home. What is it saying I wonder? When will I know? Shouldn’t I know by now? I walk on the beach almost
every day, staring out at the surging blue Melville once crisscrossed. Pondering the larger mysteries is a lot of
what goes on in Moby Dick. After killing the first whale of the hunt, Captain Ahab speaks to its severed head,
hanging by chains from the side of his ship, “Speak mighty head and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.”
Everything? Nothing?
Once a few years ago, a whale carcass washed up on the beach here. It was fantastic, about fifty feet
long, a fin whale. My son and I kept going back out to look at it. Its body had been torn open and was rotting.
Layers of pink blubber, carved in tiers, reminded me of the ceiling decorations in the Alhambra. The
structure of the whale was so hard to fathom, like some ancient geological event, pink, grey, massive, carved
with caverns and streams, but leading where? The fins, still buried under the surf, looked pathetically small
in relation to its bulk. Then we saw its round glassy eye, which made us want to cry, because we realized that
the whale was like us, it had looked out on the world, had traveled. What mysteries had he seen? Our eyes
triple. Like hundreds of artists each year we just can’t afford to stay anymore, so this summer we’ll leave the
city where I’ve lived mostly, for forty years, where I’ve raised my children. Sometimes leaving feels like a fire
in which I will lose everything, but sometimes it feels natural. Leaving was how I got here to begin with.
Perhaps the saddest scene in my re-reading of Moby Dick, is not the final sinking of all ship and crew;
but what the Pequod becomes before it goes down. If you’ve ever been with a dying person you know that at
the end, things begin to fall away, dignity, control, the voice. The Pequod is a dying ship. First the life buoy
flies off by accident, then a man falls from the mast, then goes Ahab’s hat, lifted off by a giant black bird.
The last thing to fall away is compassion itself. It happens like this.
Another whaling ship the Rachel passes close by the Pequod and Ahab shouts out to the Captain.
Captain Gardiner of the Rachel, a fellow Nantucketer whom Ahab knows, boards the ship and tells
his story. They had indeed seen Moby Dick, had even given chase, but lost one of their whaleboats in the
process. The Captain begs for the help of the Pequod in his search, “My boy, my own boy is among them… A
little lad but twelve years old.” Gardiner offers money to charter the ship, even reminds Ahab that he himself
has a son. But Ahab can see nothing but the nearness of his prey, his answer is final and chilling.
“I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good bye, Good bye.”
Now the Pequod, captained by a man who has lost all human feeling, can really do nothing more than
light on the water during sunset, not the usual gleam of amber and magenta, but a sour orange light, flame
Still, people keep coming to the beach. The streetcar route ends at the foot of Judah Street. Tourists
from Paris or kids from Oakland disembark, cross the Great Highway, walk up the dune, and there it is. The
great opening of sky and water, everyone seems hungry for. People come here to play, or ponder, or fall in
love. Every week, I see some new person with a bouquet of flowers stand at the water’s edge and pray.
This city, like so much of the American life described in Moby Dick, which was once metaphysical
and playful, discursive, unruly, and at heart egalitarian is now being tamed and readied for sale. It’s as if we
have been moving backward out of the unexplored waters Melville draws us to, spooling back to that cold
steepled, flat screened, white church in New Bedford, where everything is accusation and sin. We could call
the story a non-quest or an un-adventure, but who wants to read that, let alone live it.
What finally bothers me most about having to leave San Francisco is giving up the beach. On this
stretch of sand I am conscious of being held against the edge of two great immensities. The civilized grid of
the Outer Sunset on one side, square blocks and book shops, while across the Great Highway the deep
wilderness roar of the waves stretches to the horizon, to the sun, to the beyond here. But Melville reminds us
always of the mystery within as well as without, and all the deepest borders we cross without even noticing.
Fall 2018
Ann Privateer
Bubbaloo
Whump! Elena Morais slammed a tray of mail onto my ledge. Big, beautiful Elena Morais. Her flowery
perfume enveloped me as the letters clicked by at the rate of sixty per minute. Twelve of us sat at the big
green letter sorting machine while twelve little tentacles danced back and forth feeding us the mail. Elena
plucked out a postcard and propped it up on my console: a topless Hawaiian girl in a grass skirt. Hoorah! I
yelled over the noise of the machine. I looked up and her dark eyes glowed. Hey, we should get us a beer
later, I said. It’s so fuckin’ dry in here I could use one right now! she yelled back. Just pray there’s no OT. I
glanced at the big clock on the wall. It was only seven. We got out at eleven-thirty; they had until ten-thirty
to call mandatory overtime, and if they did all was lost. I wanted that beer with Elena. The suspense was
already killing me. A couple of seats ahead of me Phil Goffman was jolting around in his chair more than
usual, giving the impression his part of the machine was going faster than the rest. Impossible, of course,
with everything synchronized. Suddenly, a loud BOOM! The machine stopped, tentacles frozen in mid-air. A
cheer went up, for this meant we had an unscheduled break. The last time this happened Mike Gilpin picked
up a thick handful of mail out back and with a smile showed me how he had used it to jam the gears.
Imagine a huge bicycle chain going off its sprockets and fucking everything up. A blue-shirted mechanic
appeared with his toolbox. Everybody out back! shouted Richie Farley, the acting supervisor, not content to
let us chill for a while. He waved his arm toward the machine and shouted even louder, Dispatch the full
trays! Clean it all up! Richie looked like Macaulay Culkin, the little kid in the Home Alone movie. As a clerk
he was a regular fun loving guy but whenever he clipped on that big yellow acting supervisor’s badge he
turned into John Wayne. I checked on Phil before heading out back. His eyes were wild. Cackling madly, he
told me he had been sending every single Boston Edison yellow payment envelope he saw to Alaska instead
of Boston. Why? A dispute over his bill. He would show them! And if he got caught he could just say
Whoops! I got confused and hit 9-9-5 on the lower keyboard instead of 9-9 on the upper. The mechanic fixed
the problem quicker than we had hoped. Farley pushed a button on his command panel and a school bell
rang. He pushed another button and the machine started rolling along. Tentacles began dancing one by one,
sucking onto each letter with a vacuum swoosh, then dropping it for your viewing pleasure. A click as the
letter moved away and when you heard that click you keyed in the code like a laboratory rat who could read.
Swoosh. Click. Swoosh. Click. Swoosh. Click. Something didn’t seem right. I checked the speedometer on the
command panel when I got relieved. The needle was almost at sixty-one! Farley trying to make up for lost
time. I pointed at it. Look! It’s at sixty-one! He shook his head and claimed he had timed it. Sixty on the
button, he said, crossing his arms. The needle is a little off. Bullshit! I said. I called Gino the union steward
over and he went ballistic, shouting and gesturing while Farley, arms still crossed, refused to budge. Gino
took out a stopwatch and Farley eventually turned the speed back down. Gino stormed back to his cramped
union steward area and kicked the shit out of a file cabinet. Ten thirty came and went with no overtime
announcement. As soon as the minute hand on the clock jumped to thirty-one a cheer went up. But at ten
thirty-two a barely audible male voice droned over the P.A. system: All Tour 3 LSM operators on the three to
eleven thirty shift MUST remain for overtime. (LSM: post office speak for letter sorting machine.) A chorus of
boos and complaints. We knew the drill: they would claim the clock was fast. Gino stormed over to the
general foreman’s desk and thrashed his arms around. Some time went by. The announcement was repeated
* * *
Freedom! Elena and I burst out the front doors into the warm night with scores of others. People laughed
and shouted. Rock music from The Channel nightclub drifted across the sludgy water of the Fort Point
Channel. A small plane buzzed overhead like a happy bee. From above came the crack-crack-crack of an AK-
47 rifle. But that couldn’t be. Was I having a flashback? Close to us we heard a metallic clink-clink as
something fell to the pavement. I picked it up: an empty shell! This was real! Another crack-crack-crack and
the light at loading dock #1 went out with a pop and tinkle. Let’s get the fuck outta here! screamed Elena and
we ran for our lives. We were still jittery and confused when we got to Three Cheers. On the TVs above the
bar a news crew replayed video of the plane looping through the sky above our place of employment and
above the blue neon sign of Gillette’s World Shaving Headquarters further down the channel. From there it
flew to Logan Airport, almost touched down, went up into the sky again and finally landed just minutes ago.
They showed the pilot’s picture. Elena shrieked. It was a guy from Machine H! A heavyset middle-aged
Italian guy with short curly black hair and normally an eager grin on his congenial round face. He always
wore a loud Hawaiian shirt and always sat at console #12 at the front of his machine like he was leading the
charge into battle on the green beast. I figured he must’ve listened to some exciting stuff on his big black
headphones because every once in a while he would rear his head back and bellow Bubba-loooooo!!! It
would echo through the entire building. Bubba-loooooo!!! You could hear it miles away like a foghorn on the
bay. He had shot and killed his ex-wife in Salem. Then he stole the plane at gunpoint from a nearby airport
and headed south. He flew UNDER the Tobin Bridge. He shot the skywalk on the fiftieth floor of the
Prudential Tower. He shot parked cars near Fenway Park. He buzzed Logan Airport, shutting it down for an
hour before attacking the South Postal Annex and heading back to Logan. Miraculously, no one was hurt
except for his ex-wife. They said she had divorced him after a fight over a television channel. The clerks on
Bubbaloo’s machine voluntarily memorized extra zip codes for a half buck more an hour. Their machine ran
at fifty-five instead of sixty. Most were smart. Some may have been geniuses. But in my opinion fifty-five was
too slow. It gave you too much time to think. I told the bartender about him always hollering Bubbaloo! for
some strange reason. It’s bubble gum, silly! said Elena, and I remembered seeing packages of Bubbaloo at
the store. Dontcha know it’s also your Honey Bunny? said the bartender. Your Sugar? Your One and Only?
Elena slapped her hand to her heart. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! He was wailing for his wife all this time and we
didn’t even know it! The bartender shook his head sadly and said Kill the things you love, right?
* * *
The next day: Rage. So-called management KNEW this maniac was in the air shooting up the city. They had
been briefed by Boston police and state police who told them he was possibly headed our way, but still they
let us leave without saying a word. We all could’ve been killed! They held a meeting in the cafeteria in an
attempt to justify their negligence. Standing room only, packed to the walls with angry workers. The chief
culprit was Mike Donnelly—a tall, red headed dork in a suit who got his job through his upper management
hack father. As acting tour superintendent he had been in charge of the whole facility, which comprised the
old building and the new building stuck together. Except for red hair instead of gray, he was a carbon copy
of the unsmiling old fuck. In ridiculous, convoluted doublespeak, Donnelly claimed he had let us leave the
building to keep us safe. What? This was because they thought the building—not people—would be his
main target. The building must have stretched three or four city blocks down Dorchester Ave. Did this idiot
really think there was no safe place to hide in that massive structure of stone and brick? Did he fear
Bubbaloo might blow the whole place up with a rocket launcher or a bomb or something from a tiny little
Cessna airplane? So you put us in harm’s way to keep us safe? shouted Mike Gilpin. You could hide in the
building but not us? You’re a worthless piece of — Shame on you! boomed a burly custodian. Donnelly
adjusted his microphone and straightened his tie. I’m proud to report, he said, that not a single one of my
people was hurt in this unfortunate situation. We’re not your people! screamed a black lady who normally
was outgoing and kind. And you’re not ours! Disgusted, I worked my way to the back of the crowd and gazed
out the glass wall at South Station right next door. Trains sat by the platforms. People streamed back and
forth. I pictured steam rising from the engines like in an old movie as the last boarding call was made for
New York or Chicago. All aboard! I wanted to be out there too, doing normal things with normal people.
Elena nudged me and whispered Look what I brought for swing (post office speak for lunch). She opened
her pocketbook and I glimpsed a fat joint resting in there like a jewel. I nudged her back and said Hey, I
* * *
After swing we felt no pain. Farley pushed the machine faster and faster and it rushed and roared like a
locomotive. This time I said nothing. I turned Elmore James up loud on my headphones and let some of the
mail fly by without keying anything. The sky is cryin’, screeched Elmore to a slow blues beat. Look at the
tears roll down the street. And it hit me: those bullets falling from the sky and bouncing off the street were
Bubbaloo’s tears, maybe the only way he knew how to cry. Some letters I sent to the upside down or
backwards bins. For others, whether I could read them or not, I hit #3 on the bottom keyboard for
unreadable. In my mind it morphed into unreachable—exactly how I felt at that moment in time. I poured
my heart out with Elmo on Every Day I Have the Blues and then his slide guitar started singing and crying as
Nothing Swoosh
Going Swoosh
Anywhere
Click.
Fall 2018
Allan Johnston
Woman in White
after Sylvia Plath
perilous tenement,
near collapse, simply
waiting to be destroyed,
Encarta
a library? Germans
clambering
over ruins
like Indiana Jones.
listlessly
shopping through night,
while others
try on postures.
At the seminar
for jobs
embroidered
in brutal
statistics.
Peace is a word
to hang up from.
Whichever dawn or sale
is tweeted, a line
will be drawn
to cross or hold.
Our century
neck-verse.
Any way you monster it
my dentist is friendly
and careful.
Logos, as in Brands
Aidan Coleman
Aidan Coleman’s work has appeared in Australian Book Review, Best Australian Poems, Blackbox Manifold,
Glasgow Review of Books, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and
Virginia Quarterly Review. He is currently writing a biography of the poet John Forbes, with the assistance of
the Australia Council.
Allan Johnston
Allan Johnston earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and his Ph.D. in English from the University of
California, Davis. His poems have appeared in over sixty journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle,and
Rhino. He is the author of one full-length poetry collection (Tasks of Survival, Mellen, 1996) and two
chapbooks (Northport, Finishing Line Press, 2010; Departures, Finishing Line Press, 2013), and has received an
Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination (2009), and First Prize in Poetry in the
Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition (2010). Originally from California, he now teaches writing
and literature at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He serves as a reader for Word River
and for the Illinois Emerging Poets competition, and is an editor for the Journal for the Philosophical Study of
Education. His academic articles have appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and several
other journals.
Allen X. Davis
Allen X. Davis’ recent stories appear in Ragazine, Tinge Magazine, Gravel, and the Sanctuary anthology
from Darkhouse Books. His short short “Packy & Backy” was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize.
Ann Privateer
Barbara Roether
Barbara Roether is a writer and teacher recently exiled from San Francisco to a rural hamlet near Asheville,
North Carolina. She is the author of the novel This Earth You’ll Come Back To, (McPherson & Co.) and a
poetry collection Saraswati’s Lament from Wet Cement Press. She has lived and taught in Morocco, Bali and
Japan, and worked for many years in book publishing. Her stories, poems and books reviews appear in
various journals. In January of 2019 she will premier an Asheville chapter of the national Why There are
Words literary reading series. She hopes Blaze Vox writers will come join her.
Brandon McQuade
I was born and raised in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. I graduated with a BA in English from the
University of New Brunswick in 2015. In the following year, I attended and graduated Trinity College, Dublin
with an M.Phil in Irish Writing. Always a student and avid reader of all things literary, I began to write
poetry shortly after Dublin became my temporary home. I now live in San Antonio, Texas with my wife
Jacqlyn and our dog, Nevi. My work is previously unpublished.
Caspian Radar
Every Shark got blown away by this SHOCKING skin product...They all Invested! Say goodbye to all the
wrinkles in your face! Find how this works and how you can obtain your free sample. This is the biggest deal
in Shark Tank history.
Christian Woodard
Christian is a freelance writer and guide based in Laramie, WY. His creative work has appeared or is
forthcoming in Cirque, Pudding, Tidal Echoes, Work, Plough Quarterly, Wilderness House, Barrelhouse, and others.
He has an environmental writing degree from Middlebury College, has received a grant from Breadloaf
Writers Workshop, and taught nonfiction for the Adirondack Center for Writing.
Christine Karka
My name is Christine Karka and I am a 18 year old artist from Vienna, Austria. As far as i can remember art
has always played a very important role in my life - If I’m not busy with poetry I’m most probably drawing,
doing some photography projects or making music. I literally couldn’t imagine a life without those mediums.
Christopher Barnes
Clive Gresswell
Clive Gresswell, 60, is an innovative writer and poet working out of Luton in Bedfordshire, UK. He has been
widely published, not least in BlazeVOX, and has a work soon to come out with Knives, Forks and Spoons
Press called Rages of The Carbolic. Clive has an MA in innovative poetry from the University of
Bedfordshire.
Cyrus Reddy
Writing has always been part of my business life. Writing fiction has not, though I’ve always had an interest.
With retirement imminent, I took some writing classes and wrote of few short stories, two of which were
published in Gloom Cupboard and Sixers Review. The ideas, outline, character profiles and first draft for
my first novel are well under way.
David Hawkins
David Hawkins is a writer, editor and botanist from Bristol, England. He was awarded second prize in the
2015 UK National Poetry Competition. Recent work has also appeared in Stride and The Hopper, and is
forthcoming in Blackbox Manifold.
Debopriya Bhattacharya
Deborah Saltman
I am re-emerging poet influenced by one of my mother's childhood boyfriends - Paul Celan. Now, I am living
across the hemispheres and the Atlantic currently enjoying my London landing. I have had poems
previously published in Blazevox and after twenty years of scientific writing and I am enjoying my return to
my calling.
Denise Bell
Donato Mancini
Donato Mancini's books and chapbooks include Snowline (2015), Loitersack (2014), Buffet World (2011) Fact 'N'
Value (2011), Hell Passport no.22 (2008), Æthel (2007), 58 Free Coffees (2006) and Ligatures (2005). Same Diff, his
most recent book, was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Prize.The poems presented here are from a cycle of new
poems in a medieval French form known as the "fatras." The lines in italics are by A.K. Ramanujan ("this
Biafra"), Nicole Markotić ("prevent emergency tours"), and Deanna Ferguson ("be bit map"). Having spent
much of his life in Vancouver BC, Mancini is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of English
at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore MD.
Eleanor Levine
Eleanor Levine's writing has been published in more than 60 publications, including Fiction, Evergreen
Review, BlazeVOX, Litro, The Toronto Quarterly, The Denver Quarterly, Wigleaf, The Breakwater Review, Bull
(Men's Fiction) decomP, Hobart, Artemis, Fiction Southeast,Gone Lawn, Juked, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Barely
South Review, Monkeybicycle, Atticus Review, and others; forthcoming work in Faultline Journal of Arts and
Letters, Switchback, and Cleaver Magazine. Levine’s poetry collection, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, was
published by Unsolicited Press (Portland, OR) in 2016. Eleanor received her MFA in Creative Writing from
Hollins University (Roanoke, VA) in 2007.
Emilie Pichot
Emilie Pichot's work scratches itches to dismantle violent power structures, poking holes into them until
they leak. Based in Baltimore, she is a library worker in the daytime, and a baker, collage artist, and horror
film enthusiast after five.
Enzo Scavone
Enzo is a writer of Italian descent. After living in Germany and Switzerland he settled in New York City
where he received a Bachelor in Creative Writing from Hunter College. He has been published in El Portal,
The Opiate, and Forge Journal and won the first prize in fiction of the writing competition at Borough of
Manhattan Community College. He’s a proofreader for McSweeney’s and a submission reader for
Ploughshares. In his free time, he plays poker and attends open mics where he performs his own
monologues and improvised scenes.
Ethan Goffman
Ethan Goffman’s poems have appeared in Mad Swirl, Madness Muse, and Setu. He has published non-fiction
as a staff writer for Mobility Lab and the SSPP Blog, and as a freelance writer for The Progressive, Buzzflash,
the Baltimore Sun, Grist, EarthTalk, and others. Ethan is the author of Imagining Each Other: Blacks and Jews in
Contemporary American Literature (SUNY Press, 2000).
Ethan Goffman is an environmental and transit writer and a volunteer for the Maryland Sierra Club. A part-time
teacher and sometime poet, Ethan lives in Rockville, Maryland.
Ewa Mazierska
Ewa Mazierska is historian of film and popular music, who writes short stories and nonfiction in her spare
time. Several of them were published in literary magazines: ‘The Longshot Island’, ‘The Adelaide Magazine’,
‘The Fiction Pool’, ‘Literally Stories’, ‘Ragazine’, ‘Shark Reef’ and ‘Terror House Magazine’. Ewa lives in
Lancashire, UK.
Heller Levinson
Heller Levinson's most recent book is LinquaQuake (Black Widow Press). The originator of Hinge Theory, he
lives in New York.
hiromi suzuki
hiromi suzuki is a poet and artist living in Tokyo, Japan. A member of "gui" (run by members of "VOU" group
of poets, founded by the late Katsue Kitasono). The author of Ms. cried, 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi
publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1), and logbook (Hesterglock Press, 2018 ISBN 978-1-9999153-1-5).
Web Site : https://hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com/
J.B. Stone
J.B. Stone is a neurodiverse writer from Brooklyn, now residing in Buffalo. He is the author of A Place Between
Expired Dreams And Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press 2018). Stone has fiction, reviews, and poetry
featured in Bone & Ink, Occulum, Peach Mag, Breadcrumbs Magazine. He is the recent winner of the 2018
Academy of Heart and Mind Summer Poetry Contest. You can check out more of his work at
jaredbenjaminstone.com <http://jaredbenjaminstone.com> and/or twitter @JB_StoneTruth.
J. Carlos Valencia
J. Carlos Valencia teaches Latin American literature and language courses at Truman State University. He
authored “Coffee Aroma. A Drama in the War Torn Country of Colombia.”
Jake Buckholz
Jake Buckholz is a founding editor of the journal Sybil. He lives in San Marcos, Texas.
Jeff Bagato
A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic
music and glitch video. Some of his poetry and visuals have appeared in Empty Mirror, Futures Trading,
Otoliths, Gold Wake Live, H&, The New Post-Literate, and Utsanga. Some short fiction has appeared in
Gobbet and The Colored Lens. He has published nineteen books, all available through the usual online
markets, including Savage Magic (poetry) and Computing Angels (fiction). A blog about his writing and
publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.com.
Jen Rouse
Jen Rouse is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cornell College. Her poems have
appeared in Poetry, Gulf Stream, Parentheses, Cleaver, Up the Staircase, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and
elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue. Rouse is a two-time finalist
for the Charlotte Mew Prize with Headmistress Press. Her first chapbook with HP is Acid and Tender, and her
forthcoming book is CAKE. The Poetry Annals published her micro chap, Before Vanishing. And Riding with
Anne Sexton, Rouse’s second chapbook, is recently out from Bone & Ink Press in collaboration with dancing
girl press. Find her at jen-rouse.com <http://jen-rouse.com/> and on Twitter @jrouse.
Joel Schueler
Joel has a BA(Hons) in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He
has just finished his first novel and his works have been accepted across nine different countries in over two
dozen publications including Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Bangalore Review & The Brasilia Review.
John Grey
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East and
Columbia Review with work upcoming in Harpur Palate, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.
John Lavelle
John Lavelle is a graduate associate professor at Florida Institute of Technology where he teaches literature,
academic writing, and creative writing. His novel Oreads is now available through Roundfire Books and was
chosen as a finalist in The Lascaux Review Fiction Prize. He has published short stories in diverse literary
journals including, Red Rock Review, Trajectory, Stone Canoe, Pisgah Review, and others. He has also published
in more than several anthologies of short stories. His scholarly book Blue Collar, Theoretically: A Post-Marxist
Approach to Working-Class Literature was published by McFarland & Co. His second academic book is now
forthcoming.
John J. Trause
JOHN J. TRAUSE, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press,
2017), a book of traditional and experimental poems; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press,
2016), a book of poems on art, film, and photography; Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA,
2016), a book of fictive translations, found poems, and manipulated texts; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most
Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round
and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day
Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, and visual work
appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including The Antioch Review, the artists' periodical
Crossings, the Dada journal Maintenant, the journal Offerta Speciale, the Great Weather for Media anthologies
It’s Animal but Merciful (2012) and I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (2014), and Rabbit Ears : TV Poems (NYQ
Books, 2015). Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets. He is the
subject of a 30-on-30-in-30 essay on The Operating System, written by Don Zirilli, and an author of an essay
on Baroness Elsa at the same site, both in April 2016. He has shared the stage with Steven Van Zandt, Anne
Waldman, Karen Finley, Andrei Codrescu, and Jerome Rothenberg; the page with Billy Collins, Lita
Hornick, William Carlos Williams, Woody Allen, Ted Kooser, Victor Buono, and Pope John Paul II; and the
cage with the Cumaean Sibyl, Ezra Pound, Hannibal Lector, Andrei Chikatilo, and George “The Animal”
Steele. His artwork has been exhibited in The Museum of Modern Art Staff Show (1995), at Il Trapezio Café
(Nutley, NJ), and in the permanent collection of The Museum of Menstruation (New Carrollton, MD) to
whose website he has contributed. For the sake of art Mr. Trause hung naked for one whole month in the
summer of 2007 on the Art Wall of the Bowery Poetry Club. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams
Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series. He is
fond of cunning acrostics and color-coded chiasmus.
Joe Milford
Joseph V. Milford is the author of the poetry collections CRACKED ALTIMETER (BlazeVox Press) and
TATTERED SCROLLS AND POSTULATES, VOL I. (Backlash Press). He is an English professor and
Creative Writing instructor living south of Atlanta, Georgia. He also edits the online poetry thread,
RASPUTIN, A POETRY THREAD.
JoyAnne O'Donnell
JoyAnne is the author of Spring & Summer's Veil from Kelsay books 2018.
JoyAnne currently lives in Maryland enjoys writing and swimming.
Julio Valentin
Juno Probe
Juno will improve our understanding of the solar system's beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution
of Jupiter. Unlike all earlier poets sent to the outer planets, Juno is powered by solar arrays, commonly used
by satellites orbiting Earth and working in the inner Solar System, whereas radioisotope thermoelectric
generators are commonly used for missions to the outer Solar System and beyond.
Karla G. Orozco
Kate Wise
Kelsey Ryann Orsini lives in Richmond, Virginia. She's been published in Northern Lights and the University
of Edinburgh Journal. She teaches English and creative writing to high school students and writes poems
when she isn’t grading papers.
Linda King
Linda King is the author of four poetry collections - the most recent - Ongoing Repairs to Something Significant
(BlazeVOX [books], 2017. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals in Canada and internationally. She
lives and writes on The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.
Lorna Perez
Lorna Perez is an Associate Professor of English at Buffalo State College, where she specializes in Latinx
Literature. Her creative work has appeared in elimae, The Mississippi Review, and Label me Latina. Her one
(youthful) chapbook Overdetermined Romances (2003), was published by Chibcha Press, which was founded
by the late lesbian poet and librarian tatiana de la tierra whom she met while they were both at the
University at Buffalo. Lorna holds graduate degrees in English from the University at Buffalo (MA, 2003;
PhD, 2008) where she wrote a dissertation on Latina Literature and Empire, and an undergraduate degree in
Philosophy and English from Creighton University. A native of Northern California, she moved to Buffalo
with no intention to stay, and has now happily called the city home for many years.
Mark Young
Mark Young's most recent book is les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on
chessboard grids, just published by Luna Bisonte Prods. Due out later this year is The Word Factory: a
miscellany, from gradient books of Finland, & an e-book, A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks, from otata.
Mary Shanley
Mary Shanley is a poet/writer living in New York City. Four of her books of poems and stories have been
published: Hobo Code Poems by Vox Pop Press. Mott Street and Las Vegas Stories, Things I Left Behind and
Poems for Faces by Sidestreet Press. She publishes in many online and print journals.
Matthew L. Morris
Born 1989 in the small, Western Kentucky town of Murray. Attended Murray State university for studies in
English, Sociology, History and Philosophy. Major literary influences include Jack Kerouac, William
Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, HP Lovecraft, Raymond Carver and many others. Currently lives in his home
town with two loving dogs and a lovely girlfriend named Mary.
Publication history only includes impending publication in BlazeVOX! Fall 2018 issue.
For her being imbued with vim and vinegar til illness ate
away her je nais sais quois personable maternal trait
evident during my boyhood reflected by her son of late
as he too inches closer to his mortality and Hades gate
Margaret Adams Birth had her first chapbook, Borderlands, released by Finishing Line Press in 2016; she has
also had poems previously published in such journals as Riverrun, Aldebaran, Shawnee Silhouette, Mobius,
Black River Review, Potpourri, Ship of Fools and The Wild Goose Poetry Review. Her short fiction has been
published in a wide variety of magazines, ranging from the literary (The Caribbean Writer) to the commercial
(True Confessions), she's had novelette- and novella-length romance fiction published by Boroughs
Publishing Group, and years ago she even had a handful of comic books published by the now-defunct
Revolutionary Comics. She grew up in North Carolina, but has since lived in Virginia, upstate New York,
southern California, the Caribbean island of Trinidad--and, for the last two decades, in New York City.
Mick Raubenheimer
Mick Raubenheimer was born in the crude 1979 of Krugersdorp, Transvaal, South Africa. He cranes in blood and
leaps in ink. He teaches smiling, unruly children to keen their wildness, and hopes to one day show them Fawlty
Towers on IMAX. Dumela.
Michael Starr
Michael Starr is a scientist in pharmaceuticals and plays tennis with his brother on the weekends. He has
been previously published in BlazeVOX, Aberration Labyrinth, Lipstick Party, and Anapest. His
photography has been featured in Junto Magazine. He lives in the Bay Area of Northern California.
Michael J. Grodesky
Michael J. Grodesky is a poet and photographer in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Down In The Dirt
Magazine, Scars 2014 Poetry and Prose Collection: Need to Know Basis, Stepping Stones Magazine, and Urban
Textures, a collection of photographs and poems published with his husband photographer Jim Simandl. He
teaches at the University of Washington where he is a clinical assistant professor.
Milton P. Ehrlich
Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. is an 87-year old a psychologist who began writing poems after the age of seventy.
He has published many of his poems in periodicals such as the Toronto Quarterly, Wisconsin Review,
Mobius, The Chiron Review, Samsara, Blue Collar Review, Cartier Street Review, Naugatauk River
Review,Taj Ma Ha Revielw, Poetica Magazine, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.
Miranda Elise
Miranda Elise is a seventeen-year-old writer and poet from Chicago, Illinois. Her main goal with her writing
is to make people feel something; any emotion at all is welcome.
Ndaba Sibanda
Ndaba has co-authored more than thirty published books. Sibanda was a 2005 National Arts Merit Awards
(NAMA) nominee. He compiled and edited Its Time (2006), and Free Fall (2017). The recipient of a Starry
Night ART School scholarship in 2015, Sibanda is the author of Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing,
Football of Fools and Of the Saliva and the Tongue. His work is featured in The New Shoots Anthology, The Van
Gogh Anthology edited by Catfish McDaris and Dr. Marc Pietrzykowski, Eternal Snow, A Worldwide Anthology
of One Hundred Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma scheduled for publication in
Spring/Summer 2017 by Nirala Press and Seeing Beyond the Surface Volume II.
Nelson Lowhim
Born in Tanzania, of Indian and Seychelles and Euro background. Lived in India for a year. At age 10 moved
to the States (all over) and currently live in Washington State. Oh, it doesn't really end there, but that should
be good for now. Since some people tend to ask: yes I served in the US Army. I like to think that my writing
has been influenced by... no, no, I won't go there. I read and I write. What else to say? Enjoy
For more look me up at:
twitter: @nlowhim
Medium: medium.com/@nlowhim <http://medium.com/@nlowhim>
Nicholas JA
Nicholas J.A. lives in Detroit. His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in E·ratio and Otoliths.
Paul Lojeski
Paul Lojeski was born and raised in Lakewood, Ohio. He attended Oberlin College. His poetry has appeared
online and in print. Somehow, he has grown very old. He lives in Port Jefferson, NY.
Paige Melin
Paige Melin is a poet, editor, and freelance writer from Buffalo, NY. She is the author of the book of poetry
Puddles of an Open (BlazeVOX, 2016) and the microchapbook MTL/BFL//ÉTÉ/QUINZE (Buffalo Ochre
Papers, 2016). She served as an editorial advisor for My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX, 2017) and
has worked at the SUNY Buffalo Poetry & Rare Books Collection and the National Poetry Foundation. Her
poems, reviews, and articles have been published in Peach Mag, Ghost City Review, Yellow Field, Karibu News,
the Buffalo News, Step Out Buffalo, and Rain Taxi Review of Books. Currently, she is the host of the Fourth
Friday Reading Series at Dog Ears Bookstore and the Burchfield Penney Art Center's POETEXPO.
Peake McCarthy
Peake McCarthy is a young writer from the East Coast, best known for her poetry and personal essays. Published
online and in print, her work consistently delves into the more complicated and most important aspects of human
experience - sexuality, mental illness, and self-fulfillment, among other things. Peake spends her time reading,
walking New York, and finalizing her soon-to-be-published novel. Keep up with her writing and publications by
following @peakemccarthy on Instagram, or enjoy her musings on her blog, The Bitextual
(bitextualblog.wordpress.com <http://bitextualblog.wordpress.com> ).
RaKhiy elder
RaKhiy elder is a recent graduate of Williams College with a Bachelor’s in Japanese, and concentration in
Africana. She is a queer sufi, Black woman. Her work centers around issues of heart, spirituality, and
confidentiality. She is planning to move to France in the coming year.
Roger Craik
Ruth Gooley
Ruth Gooley has published a chapbook called Living in Nature (July 2018). She has also published a variety of
poems in publications such as Your Daily Poem, Ibbetson Street Review, vox poetica and NatureWriting, among
others. She resides in a cabin in the Santa Monica mountains, where she lives in harmony with the
abundance of nature.
Sudha Srivatsan
Sudha Srivatsan was born and raised in India. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies
including Commonline Journal, Tower Journal, the Germ Magazine, Carcinogenic, Indiana Voice Journal,
Bewildering Stories, Leaves of Ink, Mused Literary Review, Subterranean Blue, Corner Club press,
BlazeVox, MadSwirl, BurningWord, The Stray Branch, inbetweenhangovers among others. Her works have
also been translated into French and were also selected to be part of Storm Cycle’s 2015 Best Of Anthology.
Tahseen Reza
Tahseen is a Bangladeshi, living in Thailand and is hopefully a biologist in the making. Her hobbies include
reading (well duh!), photography and going on adventures. I do my best writing when I'm pressed for time,
under a deadline (ha!) and enjoy satire in the form of South Park.
Tori Perry