Helicon 2013/2014

Helicon 2013/2014 Helicon 2013/2014

Helicon Fall 2013- Spring 2014

Letter From The Editor Dear Reader, You have in your hands or on your screen the 2014 issue of Helicon.

This magazine is an outlet for the creative productions of the Vassar College student body. It was a year of new growth, for both the campus and the magazine.

As we watched the skeleton of the new science facility develop, to be completed in some future year (I confess my unconcern with the specific date, knowing it is my lot to never have use of the shiny, new lab space), Helicon made its way to Princeton University for the first annual Intercollegiate Literary Conference to connect and share with members of college literary magazines and with the greater writing and publishing world. It was an inspiring and reaffirming event- an address by Joyce Carol Oates, in particular, on the writing life a reminder of the risks we must take in order to flourish.

Against all polar vortex odds, the roots of our new growth settled in deeper as we took our commitment to the creative community in a new direction, hosting a poetry reading in December featuring Anthony Madrid who read from his 580 Strophes. Vassar writers Charles Hoffman, Ethan Cohen, Nick Creighton, Madison Hickman and Raffi Kiureghian (to whom we are indebted for spurring the event onwards and upwards), opened the event by reading some of their poetry and prose.

This is also the year we made it online- we’re not abandoning our goal of distributing free print copies to the community but are instead expanding the garden for ease of access and to promote new growth.

So thank you for picking this up, our labor of love, and I hope you find reading this issue, however that may be, as pleasurable and inspiring as it was to put together.

Sincerely, Veronica Peterson Editor-in-Chief

HELICON Fall 2013- Spring 2014 Volume XXIV, Issue I Vassar College Executive Board 2013

Editor-in-Chief

Veronica Peterson

Managing Editor

Daria Schieferstein

Secretary Ethan Cohen Treasurer Madison Hickman

Art Editor

Margaret Yap

Layout Editor

Jayce Leathers

Copy Editors Filippa Olsson Skalin Catherine Tween

English Department Liaison Jacqueline Krass

Editorial Board Jade Wong-Baxter Lily Choi Elizabeth Dean Isabella DeLeo

Sean O’Connell Sarah Rubock

Juliet Simon Lanbo Yang We would like to thank Janet Alison, Production Manager for Vassar Print Publications, and George Laws, Graphic Designer for Vassar Print Publications, for their support.

Helicon is a student-run publication and a member of the Vassar Student Association, working in collaboration with the Department of English.

Table of Contents

Jacqueline Krass ‘16

Interview with Francine Prose

6-8

Visiting A Friend Across State Lines Cleaning Woman Reluctance on a Course of Action Starguts The Least Poetical Topic in the World Spring after Dickinson Haiku for a College Graduate Equinox ‘Security (Bukowski-rip)’ clearance sale Oscillations The Telescope San Francisco de Macorís Trashman Testimonials Edie aka Ghostwriting Sunday Morning

9-10 11 12 17 20 21 24 25-26 33 34-35 38 39-41 47-48 50-51 53 59-61 65

Poetry Thomas Wolfe ‘15 Isabella DeLeo ‘17 Sean O’Connell ‘17 Aja Brady-Saalfeld ‘15 Kate Shakespeare ‘16 Thomas Wolfe ‘15 Emilia Petrarca ‘14 Joshua Multer ‘14 Zachary Wilks ‘17 Jocelyn Hassel ‘16 Sharon Lee ‘14 Thomas Wolfe ‘15 Jocelyn Hassel ‘16 Joshua Multer ‘14 Madison Hickman ‘15 Joshua Multer ‘14 Dylan Manning ‘16

Prose Cat Tween ‘16 Aidan Kahn ‘14 Ethan Cohen ‘16

The Kite Bumblefuck On the State of the Avant-Garde in 2014 and the Lurking Temptation of Fascism Nick Creighton ‘14 Hearts and Arrows, Arrows and Hearts Jean-Luc Bouchard ‘14 Holiday Dion Kauffman ‘15 I Hope You Found The Floral Wallpaper You Were Looking For Emilia Petrarca ‘14 The Duck Thief Aidan Kahn ‘14 Lyagushkah - A MONOLOGUE Ben Sandman ‘14 Midway Daria Schieferstein ‘15 Untitled Ben Wills ‘14

13-16 18-19 22-23 27-32 36-37 42-46 49 52 54-57 58 62-64

Art Jayce Leathers ‘16

The Last Polaroid (35mm Film)

Cover

Jacqueline Krass

Interview with Francine Prose Francine Prose is a writer and Visiting Professor of Literature at Bard College. Her latest novel is called Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932.

H: You ended your nonfiction book Reading Like A Writer with a list called “To Be Read Immediately,” back in 2006. If you were re-writing that now for college kids, is there anything you would add to the list?

FP: I do have these crazy reading list for my classes, and they’re college kids. Basically we still read in that same way, the way I said in Reading Like A Writer— slowly. Certainly any college kid could start with the 118 books on that list and do pretty well. If you want to write, or know what culture we came from, or live in, just read as widely as you can, and carefully as you can, and as much as you can. Just read all the time. I mean, that’s what I did, that’s really how I learned how to write. I became a writer because I was a big reader.

H: You mentioned at the reading you gave for Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, that the inspiration for the book came from a photograph of two women with the same title. What made you think there was a book in this photo?

FP: When I saw the photograph, I looked up the woman in it, who was just identified as being a Nazi spy, assassinated by the resistance and obviously [from the photograph] a cross-dresser. It turned out to be very easy to find out on the Internet who she was. But the image is just the image, you know—the image was the starting place. I just learned some things about who the woman in that photo is, and then I had to make up a lot of other things about who the woman in that photo is.

H: You write a lot of – perhaps morally questionable characters in your novels, from the pedophilic professor in Blue Angel to the charming Hitler in Lovers at the Chameleon Club— FP: Well, he isn’t really charming. I mean, the character thinks he’s charming because she’s besotted with him, but he’s actually incredibly banal and boring, actually. Everybody of course worships him, but I don’t think I’d say that

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Jacqueline Krass

I’ve made Hitler into a charming character.

H: Well, they’re certainly characters that are maybe uncomfortable to identify with. Could you talk about what’s interesting about that, for you?

FP: That’s the challenge. You know, it’s easy to write about people who are nice, the way we like to think we’re nice, but it’s much more difficult and interesting to write about people who are actually kind of complicated the way we’re actually kind of complicated. I’ve never really written autobiographically – I mean, I’ve written some autobiographical essays, but they’re always as different from me as possibly could be. Because I know what it’s like to be me, it’s interesting to find out what it’s like to be somebody else.

H: You have all these different perspectives in Lovers in the Chameleon Club. What was your reasoning for splitting it up into so many different voices?

FP: Well, there were all these different characters who were involved in the story, and it seemed to me that each one wanted to tell his or her own version of the story. So I began kind of hearing their voices in a way, and writing their voices.

H: A lot of writers talking about hearing the voices of their characters. How is that – FP: Yes, I’m hearing voices! It’s not exactly auditory, it’s something else, I don’t know! It’s as if someone is actually speaking to you inside your mind.

It’s very very strange. It’s sort of fun – I mean, it’s great fun, as long as you know they’re not real! But I felt that I was getting in touch with these characters in a funny way, and that they had stories that they wanted to tell. So I was only too happy to tell their stories for them.

H: How did you decide what kind of different characters to bring together, how they’d all work together?

FP: Well, it was a funny thing, it was as if they kept just kind of walking on stage, as if all these people kept sort of showing up and…I knew, for example, that if I was going to start with the photograph, then the photographer and the two women in the photograph were necessarily going to be characters, and then the question became – you know, how did they meet, who was around them, what was their histories, who was involved with their histories, what common ground did they have, and that kind of became the plot, I suppose, of the novel.

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Jacqueline Krass

H: Clearly, this was a time period and place that has been the subject already of so many books. Did you feel you were looking for something new in the way we understand that period?

FP: Well, it’s not really a history book. It’s a novel, so I was creating characters who, as far as I know, had never been created before. So I didn’t worry for a second that I was writing about a period of history that had been written before, because as far as I know, these characters had never existed before anywhere, they just happened to be in my book.

H:Before we go, it’s a cliché question, but is there anything you’d say to people are interested in becoming writers?

FP: You know, good luck! It’s hard work, but it’s really great, I feel very fortunate to be able to have done it.

8

Thomas Wolfe

VISITING A FRIEND ACROSS STATE LINES Driving into New Jersey On the I-80 East.

Those poor Palatines! Dispersed about the tri-state, Driven from black forests From ice-age poverty.

Who thought the charming Rhine always sun Speckled would withhold?

Drifting down the highway, keep in mind The trucks lumbering by: painted mastodons.

Different, these surprises – A swerve out of the lane and the Possibilities of acceleration.

Doesn’t it seem like disorder from a page?

But the lanes stay in line, They don’t forget their parallels, Too the traffic cones nod to the Bows of speckly wild flowers.

And the barriers, breakers, keep each thing To its place.

To whom I’m visiting aside: lately My pedigree’s confused me.

Crass father, strong mother, whose dead Mother, magnetized, points surely to the Future, while Father’s father, the farmer, we Shun. But Dad’s archaic swing of the sledge’s Got a lot of history in it still. Oh well.

Trying to forget before the weekend.

Merge. My car’s over concrete, which is?

Poured bucket by bucket in the past.

Since solidified, and bright (and so hard)

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Thomas Wolfe

Lying statuary of the present.

This chrome giant stretching from one state To another, Running out of gas.

Anonymous, fuming, assemblage of parts.

One should have a story to tell upon arriving.

That hornet, this morning.

The power of that hornet, hiding Behind my desk (injured?). waiting, its red legs Scintillate in the morning slant. My Unsuspecting fingers. Killing it with that Book (the book’s really the matter) But nothing really special about that.

And I’ll be there soon.

I’ve passed into New Jersey, Jersey Line Connoting still narrower lanes yet.

Easy land. Well with that, you, and A few more agreeing things like Stark cement angles against the blue sky.

10

Isabella DeLeo

Cleaning Woman She erases our wanton words with white gloves and collects the rubbish rumpus in heaps on the floor tomorrow, when we sing Walt Whitman, we must thank her for the clean windows.

11

Sean O’Connell

Reluctance on a Course of Action Nothing highlights my melancholy more than shiny little notes and glittery little keys gleaned over melodies and plenty of space for roaming. color me a cunt or a lone standing dandelion, a pleasant weed who curses her misfortune at having been germinated by careless seeds giving themselves to gusts on a careless spring day.

Let me be a shut-in. contemplating my navel or giving myself to the church.

Important occupations.

Important ways to count down days to grave.

12

Cat Tween

The Kite In the autumn of the year I turned fifteen, my older brother came home from university and announced that he was taking the rest of the semester off. He didn’t say why, and our parents never asked him— just gave him a hug, and a long steady look, and made him breakfast when he woke up each day at noon. But, if I look back over those next few months, I do think my mother cried a bit more often, and my father looked tired at dinner; and sometimes I could hear them arguing, late into the night, their voices strained and muffled through the plaster wall that parted their bedroom from my own.

I, for one, was glad that my brother had come home. He was nicer to me than he had been when we were younger: he let me borrow his old CDs, and sometimes he’d buy me cigarettes if I begged him long enough.

“I hope you know I hate myself for doing this,” he’d say, sliding two or three out of the pack with his thumb and forefinger and pocketing them before handing the rest over to me.

Some nights, before dinner, we’d go out walking together in the woods behind our house. I would talk endlessly of myself, my friends, my school— the teachers I disliked, the girl I had a crush on— and my brother would listen, his face lifted to the sky and the tops of the trees, his eyes opened wide, his footsteps soft and deliberate on the rotting fall leaves.

We’d walk slowly and directionlessly, with the light of the setting sun at our backs and shadows stretched portentous on our path. At twilight, the woods were quiet and cool; my brother used to say they were ethereal.

My brother was strange in the way of those who believe themselves to be ordinary. He never spoke of himself but for in the most abstract terms, and he preferred to let his interlocutor steer the conversation, so talking to him wasn’t like talking to other people. Often, when I spoke, he’d stare too far into my eyes and listen, fixated, motionless, like he was trying to escape himself and live within my words instead. He was such a good listener that I often found myself feeling sheepish and almost ashamed after confiding in him— as if whatever I’d said had not quite merited the rapt and selfless attention he had paid it.

When my brother did speak, he could be frighteningly, intolerably

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Cat Tween

sincere. He had a way of talking sometimes that could make you feel as I imagine an actor would feel, were his stage-mate suddenly to break character and address the audience off-script regarding his own private life’s hopes and fears. Often and without warning he would look me in the eyes, his expression one of awe, and make solemn, earnest, totally inscrutable declarations along the lines of, “I can’t believe I’ve only just realized— there is no ‘I’ that experiences. There’s only experience,” or “Do you know—? I could die. Right now. If I had to. And it would be ok.” In response, I’d laugh nervously, and give him a hard time, and quietly adore him.

Outside of our family, though, he was less tolerantly received. I loved my brother deeply, and with that certain aching intensity we reserve for those who do not seem to love themselves; but I would often, when in the company of others, find myself embarrassed by and for him. It was around the age of thirteen or fourteen that I first began to develop a somewhat painful awareness of the fact that most people in our town disliked my brother, perceiving his eccentricities as affectations and generally believing him to be pretentious. I do not know when he first began to develop this same awareness himself, but I know that he carried it like a stone in the bottom of his heart, and that it was the reason he had trouble speaking in class and looking people in the eye when he introduced himself.

I remember one night we were walking together in the woods when, upon coming at sunset to a familiar stream, we stopped and sat down beside a mossy boulder. My brother had said hardly anything that day, and so I was taken aback when he spoke.

“Look at that,” he said.

“At what?”

“That kite, in the tree.”

There was a small diamond-shaped kite, striped red and yellow, caught in the upper regions of an oak tree on the other side of the shallow stream. Its tail was wrapped snugly around an otherwise barren branch, and its body fluttered and sailed in the wind. The occasional gust would send it spinning wildly into an orange blur.

“It’s stuck,” I said.

“Yeah.” “ ’s a shame.”

“I don’t know,” my brother said lightly, looking thoughtfully at the kite in the tree. “At least this way it never has to go back into a drawer, or some box in the basement. It never has to sit collecting dust in the attic. It gets to fly all the time.”

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Cat Tween

I shrugged, unconvinced, and pointed my chin in the direction of the kite. “I don’t know if I’d call that flying.”

“No?” “I mean, I’d say it’s stuck.”

He didn’t reply. I paused; and then, to provoke him: “Trapped, even.”

My brother smiled. “Well, it’s like,” he said slowly, leaning back against the rock, “it’s like, I guess the kite gets to choose. Trapped or free, stuck or flying… If it thinks it’s stuck, then it’s stuck— trapped— for the rest of its life.” He paused. “And if it thinks it’s flying…”

I followed his gaze up to the kite. It was soaring in the breeze. The contours of the oak tree were glowing warmly in waning slabs of a pale golden light from the west. “If it thinks it’s free,” he said, “then it gets to fly.

It spends the rest of its life in flight.”

He turned his head to look at me, and I searched his eyes for some trace of a challenge, of a confession, of a plea— but they were empty of all intent, and in them I saw only the reflection of the sun, and the trees, and my face.

“We create the reality we live in,” he said, his voice soft, his features relaxed, his tone simple and naked and impossibly sincere. “We choose.”

He stared up at the kite in the tree. The night had come windless and the air was still. The sun had slid below the horizon, and darkness was settling furtive and blue upon the woods. “‘The mind is its own place,’” my brother said, rhythmically, as one recites a mantra, and I could hear the smile on his lips and in his heart as he savored the line. “‘The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell… a Hell of Heaven.’”

He fell silent. Today, when I look back, I wish only that, for once, I had been silent too. But I was precocious enough to fancy myself jaded, and I had spent the past year cultivating a Byronic sense of arrogance and ennui. And so, instead of sitting quietly beside my brother, listening to the night and the softwashing sounds of the stream and the gentle clarity of his voice as he told me what was probably the truest thing I’d ever been told, I missed exactly one beat— and then I smirked at him, my eyebrows raised, my eyes mocking.

“You’re so full of it,” I said, and laughed, and shoved him. “You’re a walking self-help book. You’re a fountain of clichés.”

He closed his eyes and laughed, tucking his head into his chest. But then, as if remembering himself, he sat up straight, pushed the hair from his eyes and brushed a fallen leaf from his shoulder. “You know what,” he said

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Cat Tween

offhandedly, and his voice sounded different than it had a moment earlier; there was a strained and almost ironic quality to it now. I could tell that he was trying hard to seem less in earnest than before. “You can laugh all you want, but I think dismissing clichés has become one of the biggest clichés of all. And it’s just about the least useful.” He picked up a stick and threw it. We listened to it land invisibly in a bed of fallen leaves. “Frankly, the older I get, the more I find myself surprised by how much truth there is in a lot of the clichés I dismissed growing up.”

I avoided his eyes, and picked at my shoe, but I was listening.

“I mean, of course, even the idea that clichés contain more truth than we give them credit for is itself a cliché,” he said quickly, his tone rising tight and coiled. “But— I feel like— we don’t—” He trailed off, dropping the hands he had raised in gesticulation to his lap. “I don’t know,” he muttered.

I turned away, pretending to have been distracted by a passing bird. It made my heart hurt to see my brother censor himself, strangled by his own self-consciousness. I didn’t want him to see the disappointment and regret on my face.

We sat in silence for a moment, then, and I could almost hear his mind, so clear only minutes before, turning inward upon itself in a spiral of doubt and reproach. He shook his head, and I heard him force a selfdeprecating laugh.

“Never mind,” he said, and rose to leave.

16

Aja Brady-Saalfeld

Starguts you tell me to be proud because every element that comprises my too-soft body was transmuted in the belly of a star, or shook loose when the universe roiled outward from singularity. but what is a star, except some atoms that couldn’t bear to be apart? and, more pressingly: why should I care?

17

AIDAN KAHN

Bumblefuck out of the truck and onto the running board. Who knows why I’m such a performer and probably no one was looking but I had to give it a try in case the blonde was watching. I didn’t even need the gas that dripped tantalizingly from the phallic nozzle. I had mainly stopped driving to have a look at this girl who caught my eye from the road like I was a crow and saw something shiny.

The heat of this one-street, desert town makes me dizzy and I’m starting to wonder if taking a job on Kyle’s dad’s ranch was the best idea. I’m pretty excited about the whole thing though, having traded in my Japanese sedan for a badass old Ford pick-up and gotten a new pair of cowboy boots. I’ve even tried to start liking country music and with all my duds on and my eyes sort of squinted, I think I really look the part.

Mine is the only truck at the pump up and as I climb down from the cab she comes into view, this queen of the oasis, revealed from behind the columns of the gas pumps. She stands in front of the store window, contrapposto, with one knee bent and her hip jutted out making angles. I throw the truck door closed and kind of crack my neck like a ranch hand might do.

I walk past her into the station and I can’t tell if she’s paying attention.

Thank God for peripheral vision. Inside the air-conditioned store I put ten dollars on the counter without looking at the loser behind it. I’m gazing out the window at this girl, at her back, her tan legs exploding out of cut-offs and her hands on her sharp hips waiting for something. She’s probably waiting on a ride from some hick in a pick-up. Someone she knows she’ll probably marry, whose hick babies she’ll raise in a doublewide on PopTarts and Jesus. Maybe I’ll save her. I’ll take her out of this backwater; I’ll show her the city, the ocean, books and good music— maybe even sushi. her simple, country beauty. Damn. She shifts her weight to her other hip so that for a second I can see the side of her bra-less left tit.

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AIDAN KAHN

lons drip into the tank. I smile in her direction and she just stares, maybe at me or maybe past me, maybe gazing into her dull, dustbowl future. I think about how she’d probably love to hook up with a guy like me, but she probably thinks I’m like all the other rednecks around here because I’m disguised so well. She’s got a face that makes my chest ache. I could change this poor girl’s life and she could change mine.

Even if she snubs me, I’ll know I tried to save her. I start to walk over to her and as I do the roar of a black Mercedes SUV grabs my eyes and hers as the fancy piece glides around the side of the station toward us, looking as out of place as could be. The shiny rims stop spinning right between the Oasis Queen and me. As I stare into the green tint of the windshield at a guy who could easily go to a college I didn’t get into, the legs exploding out of cut-offs start to move, smoothing the razor-sharp angles of those hips into hypnotic motion. The girl moves around the car right past me with a smile, close enough that I can smell her sophisticated perfume and see the glint of a real diamond unveiled by blond locks pushed behind her ear.

She opens the heavy door, wafting the scent of a newly vacuumed her guy. They screech away from the station and onto the highway.

I get back in my truck, turn off Hank Williams and drive back to the ranch.

19

Kate Shakespeare

The Least Poetical Topic in the World My bruises are not explosions of the night sky across my skin, nor are they deep violet pansies, my blood clots are not roses blooming across my body, which is not soil for you to sow with overly romantic seeds.

My deterioration is not some metaphor, my starvation is not in agony of your disapproval for my body, I do not suffer so that you may render my misery in abstract art, or convince others that you are deep and sensitive.

I am not Lucretia: you may not build a city of splendor on my grave, you may not bend my bones into colosseums in worship of gods the likes of which drove Caenis to become Caeneus, for his own safety, of gods the likes of which swayed the waves that dragged Ophelia mercilessly down – I am not your Ophelia, my narrative is not some poetic offshoot of yours, I am not Dulcinea, transformed by your love, from something you perceive as lowly into something beauteous and “pure.”

My suffering is not your burden to bear, nor your challenge to overcome, My death is not the catalyst for your coming-of-age tale, nor your revenge-fueled fantasy.

My eyes are not sparkling jewels, my tears are not dew-drops on flower buds, and when I cry, you better believe I am ugly and loud, and that I will wipe the debris of my misery on your copy of The Works of Edgar Allen Poe.

20

Thomas Wolfe

Spring after Dickinson I. Winter has passed the counting hands show twenty come and gone the thawing ground gives way to grass and birds renew their song

II. The buzzing bee in front of me knows not that I shall move in every space he stays and stares for small eternity.

III. Now curling vines wrap round old trees who’ve snow and silence seen they stand so tall yet each new leaf makes tired their light lean

21

Ethan Cohen

On the State of the Avant-Garde in 2014 and the Lurking Temptation of Fascism The first question we ought to consider is an essential one: What are the masses?

The masses occupy the majority of humankind, and they are the persons who do not advance humankind. They lack not the resources but the capability. Any person who is not envied, admired, and, above all, discussed in zir absence is a member of the masses. The masses lack three fundamental tools: intellect, indifference, and indispensability.

The masses cannot create art.

The masses have been led to believe that they can create art.

They have misinterpreted the rise of the Avant-Garde as an indication that anyone, regardless of aptitude, education, or experience, can produce and judge art. They have mistaken genius for arbitrariness. They have mistaken skill for creativity. They see an amalgam of shapes and colors and assume it to signify the random whims of the artist. Art is an other language, and the masses cannot understand or speak it.

The object of art in 2014 is two-fold: To reveal truth, and to propel social justice.

The Avant-Garde must be turned on its side to combat the trend of false empowerment. Fascism lines the road ahead.

Artists are born to create art. They must develop their skills, but anything they create will naturally reveal truth. The select creators stem from all regions of the globe, all facets of the economy, and all variations of gender.

Today the role of artmaking has been putridly seized by a certain block of masses who call themselves the Avant-Garde, and in doing so, blasphemize the sacred entity.

Art is academic, not expressive.

Socrates gave to Plato, who gave to Aristotle, who gave to Alexander the Great, who took.

Artists: The time has come to take. We are a nation! We are a minority!

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Ethan Cohen

We must rise and delouse our culture! Fascist Art will stamp out the rancorous domination of the privileged class, gender, and race whose name dare not be legitimized and replace it with the dominion of the true Avant-Garde.

The United Party of Fascist Artists is heretofore established.

Batons will strike down free expression in the name of quality expression. Art Police will march through university halls with their hands clasped behind hunched backs. They will weed out the pseudo-art of the masses in conjunction with the forces of the Academic Military. After a generation of suppression, oppression, and repression, the author of this text will preside over a Conference on the Rejuvenation of Art. Art must be killed and reborn. While the masses cower in fear, the legitimate members of the Avant-Garde will risk their lives to continue their work.

They will champion the United Party, and they will rule the world.

Long Live the Death of Art! Long Live the United Party of Fascist Artists!

LONG LIVE THE AVANT-GARDE!

23

Emilia Petrarca

Haiku for a College Graduate The Starbucks menu has so many choices, but I still want to die.

24

Joshua Multer

Equinox I want to be seven, unlearned in the world’s false subtleties, pounce on a porous leaf pile fall in Love, unconditional love, elementary love where the only thing you know is that – that stranger makes you smile…

I want to dream about a girl I’ve never spoken to and to think that’s really love, because it is.

To bite into a Honeycrisp To consciously disregard the sneaking leaves, who crumble between the fabrics, between your shirt and sweat shirt and sweat your shirt through.

I want to be small enough to hug my walking father’s leg – and sniff the bark of the trunk, release from it my sticky paws, and tumble down the rolling field my frantic cub sister following suite I want to shower in Jack O’Lantern’s guts after I scalp him, and Mop his seed into a glorious gooping gob on the newspaper.

I want to sing a song I improvise, called “pumpkin sitting on a trampoline” while dressed as a pumpkin sitting on a trampoline.

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Joshua Multer

I want to bawl, because my sister shoves me off the stage in sophomoric envy.

I want to do what I have done.

I want to know, that every time I roast rosemary potatoes or spot a blonde Labrador retriever I’ll see Mary.

I want to tell Troy she is the strongest and funniest woman I will have ever met (Helen just a simpering nobody) And that no words I write will even begin to scratch at– I want to thank David… and I want to tell Joey he is more than a stupid fucking meaningless number on a football jersey and that there’s so much more to life than our hometown in the perpetual autumn of pseudo-rural New England

26

Nick Creighton

Hearts and Arrows, Arrows and Hearts Our story begins with a murder. Or rather, the telling of our story begins with a murder, because chronologically speaking it would be somewhat difficult to place the murder at the beginning of the story—I am using “beginning” in this context strictly in a chronological sense—because there has to be something before the murder, for one, the life of the being that was ended by the murder, who in this case was a young man, but not so young that he had not experienced the important things in life such as love and the satisfaction of a well-paid and fruitful job. The details of this young man’s previous love and job experience are not to be addressed in the narrative of this tale, so you, as the reader, are welcome to imagine them as you like, although I am inclined to imagine that his encounter with love was fleeting and beautiful, that he and his love had already parted ways, so that I am not left with the emotional baggage of imagining that he has left his love waiting for him to return while he was in fact murdered.

There was some mystery to the circumstances of the murder, to be sure. Indeed, the circumstances were very mysterious, as murders often are. Even I know very little of the details of the happening. For you see, our young man was walking home from a particularly satisfying day of work (I am privy to certain details of the young man’s life only so much as I imagine them that way, and I like to think that the young man’s last day on earth was a successful one). So we find our victim, in his last breathing moments, walking down a dark alley—which in hindsight was perhaps not his best choice of the day—when he was accosted by some unknown; it could have been a poor drugged out street person, desperate for a few dollars, it could have been an old lover in a jealous rage, it could have been an international assassin, who mistook our young man for an evil terrorist bent on world domination. These are all possibilities, but what is known, somewhat conclusively, is that our young man was killed instantly by an arrow straight through the heart.

“What do we have here?” the detective said, as he arrived on the scene. A couple of parked squad cars were flashing blue and red and the forensic team had taped off the crime scene and was taking pictures of every single little detail. An unnamed police officer in normal dark blue uniform

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provided the context of the scene.

“He was found by a woman who lives down the block on her way home. She called us rather hysterically and was here when we arrived on the scene. She’s been escorted home, we don’t think she knows much.”

They walked underneath the Crime Scene tape and approached the body, which was covered in a plastic sheet. The detective lifted up the sheet and looked at the body. The young man was clutching the arrow in his chest with both hands and his face was frozen in a look of horror. There was a pool of blood that exceeded the area covered by the sheet, but the detective had been careful to avoid stepping in it, as he was a professional and had a good amount of experience in circumstances such as these.

“Did you find any evidence on the scene? Perhaps a large bow of some kind?” the detective asked.

“No nothing like that. His wallet is gone. It might have been a robbery.

It didn’t look like there was any struggle whatsoever. It seems like whoever did it didn’t give him any warning before they killed him with an arrow straight through the heart.”

“That is strange. What did he do to deserve it?”

“Who is to say? I guess that’s what we need to figure out. It seems like a doozie.”

“But an arrow through the heart? Who has a bow and arrow these days? Do you think it was a random killing?”

“Seems that way, although it could be something to it. He had no identification; all that was on him was a single white business card that had nothing written on it except for, tomorrow, colon five six two, in all caps black print,” the detective said, waving his hand in the air like he could see the writing floating in front of him.

I feel it necessary to interject at this point, despite the obvious plot point of the white business card, because I realize now that I have forsaken the customary description of scene change. After the detective’s police friend says “they killed him with an arrow straight through the heart,” we leave the crime scene and find ourselves in the simple home of the detective, who his having dinner with his wife, and discussing work, as he often did. They were eating leftovers: he was eating the last of the baked ziti and she was having rice and steamed carrots and broccoli. She was mid-bite, so he continued, “Five Six Two? Five-hundred and sixty-two? Fifty-six two? What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure but we don’t have that much time to figure it out. The

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card says tomorrow.”

It is important to note that there has been yet another scene change.

You see, the dialogue of the detective (“Five Six Two…”) was in fact paraphrasing two things the detective said that week, the second, chronologically speaking, to his wife at the kitchen table, and the first, to his colleague the night that they discovered the young man’s body, after they had returned to the police station. I thought it would be an interesting transition, but I can see how without any contextual clues it could be confusing.

They were staring at the card, which they had scanned into the computer and projected in high definition on the wall of their conference room in the police station. They could see every detail of the card, of which there was very little, except for TOMORROW:562, written in size 12 bold Courier font, or maybe it was American Typewriter font, they hadn’t been able to agree on which one when they had looked it up on the word processor on the detective’s computer. It is in this moment, with the detective and his partner looking pensively at a projection of white space and TOMORROW:562 in small black print, that I want to leave them, suspended, until we return to them later in the story. Chronologically speaking, we will return to them in the exact same moment, only later in the story.

“What a tragedy!” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek. She was talking to her neighbor, who had just delivered the news to her. She had known the boy, he used to come to the farm and help her feed the animals and plow the fields. She was a widow, you see, and her two sons were older than the young man and had been sent off to war, leaving her on the farm by herself. He had been a light in her life during this time, he was 13 or 14, and he was a dreamer, he had an attitude of excitement towards life that was contagious. He told her he was going to explore the world, marry an exotic princess, and he promised to send her letters to share with her his adventures.

They were standing outside of her farm, leaning against an old wooden fence. It was a beautiful day, or rather, the end of a beautiful day, as the sun was just above the horizon. The sky was on fire, red like the color of the blood lost by the young men fighting in the war that had seemed like a world away until this very moment. Farmland stretched in front of them as far as the eye could see, rolling hills covered in green wheat seedlings.

She could see him now, plowing her field, sweat dripping from his skinny hairless body, she could see him running with the hounds, charging up the hill that was directly in front of her house, she could see him lying in the grass imagining stories of heroic knights and great dragons acted out in

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the clouds. She was overcome with emotion, she could feel it her stomach, and like rising floodwaters it burst from within her and poured from her eyes.

“How did he die?” she asked of her neighbor. “Did they tell you?”

“He was on the front line and the enemy’s archers filled the skies. He was killed by an arrow straight through the heart.”

“Skrysty ghrega. Gha ganunk tifibidiba?”

“Jrykhash. Gha yerkderk. Shruvakyrk, gha xu amadan.” …I feel it necessary to interject yet again. As you have probably guessed, there has been yet another scene change. We find ourselves now on an alien planet. This planet is almost entirely marsh, a green fog hangs in the air, and it is covered in short jagged purple shrubbery. Our characters are standing on some sort of floating cabana, in the middle of a green lagoon, surrounded of course by green fog, marsh, and short jagged purple shrubbery. They are insect-like creatures, they kind of look like Praying Mantises, but with more expressive faces. I assume that they are humansized, but in reality I have no idea, because there is nothing around them that would give me any sense of scale. Phonetically, I am doing my best to mimic their language, but they clearly have some organ that we do not that allows them to make sounds that are particularly difficult to imagine, considering the limitations of our alphabet.

“Byadar. Regaziziba, frititijha, ku gamba. Gha ix fuamba oj bakja, jrykbax ub shmaba wix imba akjryk.

My competency in this language is quite low, but I am fairly certain that the last thing said was “He was killed by an arrow straight through the heart,” mostly because there seems to be some sort of pattern with this phrase in the story.

“Could five six two be some kind of address? Maybe he was supposed to meet someone,” the detective posited. His colleague thought for a moment.

“But there are too many possibilities. Without a street name how are we supposed to find it? There could be hundreds of five six two addresses in the city. Maybe it’s a time? Five six two could really be six o two.”

“Pee em or a em? Is this a meeting of some kind? Maybe the card was old, maybe ‘tomorrow’”, he said, making quotations marks in the air, obviously unaware that his entire dialogue was already contained within quotation marks, “was yesterday, or last week, or last year. We really have no idea what this means. It could mean absolutely nothing, for all we know.” He shut off the projector—which, if you remember, had been

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projecting a high definition image of the white business card with TOMORROW:562 written on it on to the wall—and turned on the lights inside the conference room.

“I guess we just have to hope that this was an isolated case,” the detective went on, “and we’re not dealing with some sort of serial bow killer.

It would be a real shame if someone else was killed by an arrow straight through the heart.”

And now we are returned to the scene of the crime, shortly after our young hero breathed his last breath, where we encounter the perpetrator of said crime, or rather, the presumed perpetrator, although it seems like a pretty good bet considering that it was holding a rather large bow. I refer to the presumed-criminal as an “it”, only because it is very dark in this alley, and it is difficult to discern the gender, race, or species of said presumedcriminal. The outline of the bow and its presence at the scene of the crime clearly implicate it, but there is still a question of motive. It could have been an accident, a young Olympic hopeful practicing in a dark alley, or it could have been a sinister premeditated act directed at our young hero.

I did it. I killed him. I did not want to, but I didn’t have much of a choice. He had no idea it was coming. All those years of training with archery and I finally landed the perfect shot, straight through the heart. I feel oddly, exhilarated. And I feel guilty for feeling exhilarated. The portal is supposed to open any moment. I think I hear someone coming. Where is this portal? Chronologically speaking, it was supposed to open about thirty five seconds ago. I cannot stay in this world, my bow will give me away, and I will be sent behind bars, not to mention the confusion of trying to explain why I am what I am and where I came from and why I did it. They would never understand why his death was so necessary.

And in that moment, the dark alley lit up green and yellow, and before we can catch a glimpse of our confessed murderer, it disappears through a rotating vortex of said green and yellow.

And so, having made our way through time and space, and through something that I am unsure can be qualified as either of those, we find ourselves at the end of our tale. I apologize for any confusion, I hope that I have been a helpful guide, although I must say that the purpose of this strange meandering of words is somewhat foreign to me, and that I in particular have grown tired of the phrase “he was killed by an arrow straight through the heart.” These stories of characters without names or histories or lovers bore me, I guess you could call me a romantic, I like my stories to be a touch surprising and a touch comforting, a bit of exactly what I expect

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with exactly what I don’t.

I wish I could have loved her longer. I wish we could have worked harder to make it work. My bed is empty each night, and now I can only but dream of her warm body curled up in mine.

And with that thought, he was killed, instantly, by an arrow straight through the heart.

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Zachary Wilks

‘Security (Bukowski-rip)’ I still remember the time I didn’t remember to take off my shoes at the airport and that tsa agent forced his latex skinned caterpillar-finger up my asshole and pulled out the cockshaped locket I’d hidden from my family for 18 years until now.

But hey we’re going to the Bahamas.

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Jocelyn Hassel

clearance sale I. If silence were golden I would be Midas’ daughter hanging in gilded suspension lungs frozen over in 14 karat gold.

I was told that opinions do not pay the bills folded in every crevice of our apartment we bought cabinets and cheap plastic containers to hold them all every miner hopes to strike it big when all they do is swim in coal.

II. The other day I finally learned the word for that groove above my lip philtrum.

Right above the lip, right under the nose, brushing against lips and noses hands and wrists

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this groove always reminded me of a gutter after torrential rain it is a running down of words spat in my face until they seep through my teeth crawling into my esophagus is every drop of words that are not my own.

III. my sweet millennial generation is somewhere in a Sears display case fogging up the glass with muffled words silence is just another loaded bargain a fair shake with brass knuckles painted over in a cheap yellow IV. NEW LIMITED TIME OFFER: speech is now free and luckily I am a cheapskate

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Jean-Luc Bouchard

Holiday And so, because it was Valentine’s Day weekend, I gave my used dress socks a couple days off and masturbated into much more festive indulgences: microwaved salami slices, honeydew melons left out to room temperature, a paper towel roll whose insides had been coated with liverwurst. I left work early to buy flowers for myself—tulips, my favorite, even though they were out of season—and wore a dinner jacket and tie around the house at night. I threw my boxers into the dryer for a few moments just to feel that new laundry warmth hugging my pelvis, and liked it so much I didn’t feel the need to add pants. To the lulling pulses of Vivaldi and Puccini, I ate my meals standing up over the sink, a lit candelabra on the counter to my right. When I went to run errands, I left my Toyota Camry in the garage and splurged on a horse drawn carriage ride, complete with charming Irish cabby, for my trip to Costco. I asked to take the long way through the park.

Walking along the aisles of Costco, searching for economy-sized packs of salami, I felt an immense swell of holiday spirit such that I was reminded how long it had been since I last felt so jolly. The pre-puberty Christmases of my childhood, maybe. Perhaps the Easter I received one and a half chocolate bunnies, after my brother got sick on his. After gathering my supplies, I was happy beyond words to discover a vacant SelfService Checkout Station, bypassing the blue-smocked cashiers clawing at their blackheads.

By Sunday, when the mail stopped coming, I was resigned to the fact that there would be no Valentine’s Day cards this year. There hadn’t been any cards in the previous years either, going as far back as late grade school, but this year seemed different. I missed the maxims of unromantic love that would accompany a heart-shaped cardboard cutout taped to a piece of undesirable taffy or hard candy. “Hope your Valentine’s Day rocks!” or “Be my Valentine!”, a phrase which, quite uniquely, gains in meaning and severity the farther out you are from adolescence. There was no one to blame but myself, I suppose, for the lingering disappointment I felt passing by my pile of junk mail and unopened bills, since I had never sent a Valentine’s Day card in my life. And though I spent chunks of that day consider-

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ing the absurdity that I had sent dozens of cards in my lifetime for all sorts of reasons covering sickness, birthdays, and babies, and had never once sent a card out in the name of something so universally wholesome as unspecific love, still, I’m sad to say, I realized that there was no guarantee that I would be sending any Valentine’s Day cards come the following year.

Now, it being Monday and the weekend a distant memory, I’m home from my day at work and standing by the front window, drinking a light beer and looking out onto the street. I’m waiting for the trash bags filled with paper hearts, candy wrappers, undernourished flowers, and all the other materials of weekend love to crowd the sidewalk like the browning Christmas trees of early January. Tomorrow, during my lunch break, I’ll stop by the supermarket and sweep up my annual armload of discount Valentine’s candy left unbought. And if they’re within sight of the candy, and similarly discounted, I suppose I might even pick up a box of generic red Valentine’s Day cards and leave them on a shelf where I can find them or lose them as I see fit come next February.

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Sharon Lee

Oscillations The acorns took off their hats, on the road, where fallen leaves curled their stiff and brazen––bold––arms inwards, as if to embrace, in their final moments, their dying selves, their load: to lift onto a crispening autumn breath––now coming to life, now gently tugging at unfallen foliage friends still holding rigorously on, mortified––by death slowly alighting, setting ascarlet, from a corner: a summer tree so green, it thought itself evergreen (A goblet to life! - full to the brim with youth serene.). Even pine needles turn yellow-gold, and fall to wind, said the forest growing cold.

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Thomas Wolfe

The Telescope I. An actor died today.

Overweight he played sad supporting characters.

Both his parents survived him.

My brother falls in a dream.

He keeps dropping with a dead-end weight, dropping into a sweaty double bed over and over.

II. The snow’s been melting. It’s huddled into clumps of slush, gray along the road and in wispy streaks out in the fields behind the railroad tracks. The earth is coming up. It leaks everywhere and it’s tracked into the house.

There’s leaking earth beneath the covers. The cold won’t come out of anything all the way. And the whole town smells like shit from the thawing fields. The weather channel calls for snow.

III. She was too tall to fit in the bath.

She winced at the bare wall against her back.

the wicks of her nails dry out of water

They scrape up on towels in the world so short bitten right down to blood.

Little flecks of blood streak a towel crumpled on the carpet.

Living this month to shear long nails

room was blue

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Thomas Wolfe

first of the day IV. Cassegrain reflector: When he was a kid my dad wrote a poem about a traffic light at night with no one to guide.

What they would have said were distant stars in the side of an eye, an essay on what divorce lawyers learned from Anna Karenina.

Twice a month I get a shot in my eye, since my vision’s going.

A man stands beside his truck alone at the head of a family –

far off clusters in Orion’s belt

V. It’s so pleasant to see the first violets in the golden rush hour light. Black wet drops of dirt linger on the stems and cloud the water.

VI. The same three strokes repeat all day and I sleep cuddled up with wires.

When I die IV will still flow in clear little tubes into me the DPM’s not calculated exactly.

But of a sudden I don’t get hungry anymore.

I’m so alive I’m plugged into a wall, I’ve grown into the room I’m kept just enough I don’t rot.

Of a sudden I didn’t get lonely anymore.

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VII. Giants had been out walking for awhile in the night.

Their deep footprints oozed and bubbled they smelled like soap.

A cat fell into one and died and the roads were closed for all the felled trees.

At lunch some gray hairs sprouted on Carl’s tall bald head.

The eaters walked gingerly their legs were long.

VIII. The weather had gotten so nice. The brown of March finally washed out and seeped into the sticky purpling green of April. Morning buds on the branches and honeysuckle kept some alive. For our part we found a time to go.

IX. Houses were quiet Shoes were filled with sand The earth buckled The word dropped with a plop A puddle on cement I can’t feel a thing Not these mangled fingers

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Dion Kauffman

I Hope You Found The Floral Wallpaper You Were Looking For What would you do upon receiving the news of a death; a death nonetheless that happened to a stranger in the apartment directly below you?

There were many times I tried to answer this looming question. Or rather, tried to find a way of answering. It was vain, of course, to believe that somehow it even mattered. That finding the answer (or even imagining the question to begin with) would restore a sense of how things used to be. I was participating in an extreme act of narcissistic absorption by even assuming the answer of the question lied within me, or was even within my grasp. And yet how it seized me! I’d be pouring boiling water over ground coffee and then I’d start to feel hyper-conscious of being there, making coffee, at a time like this. And I’d stop, go sit on the couch. Water a plant. Or smoke a cigarette.

Perhaps it might be helpful to back up, to allow you a more formal entrance into this whole mess I’ve been sorting through.

I moved into this three-story apartment at the beginning of a rainy November three years ago. At the beginning, I derived a great pleasure in measuring warmth against the backdrop of gray sky in a foreign place, whether it was the antiquated (yet functional) fireplace in my new bedroom or the newfound sense of adventure and hope lit inside me of being in a place where possibility lingered along every corner and in every uttered syllable.

I grew up on a Wisconsin farm in a small town (town is a rather lenient and generous term on my end, given the scarcity of neighbors and immense spread of uninhabited land, but I think it’s with a newfound nostalgia that I at least grant where I grew up as a town to give it a sense of unity, a place of singleness which seems rather distant from me as I sit typing this). I lived there until I reached the age of twenty-two and then, upon a whim, packed two suitcases and moved into a distant cousin’s second house in Baltimore, where I’ve lived for the past year. This move created a wrinkle in my relationship with my parents, for I was not only avoiding

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Dion Kauffman

the conventions of a four-year college education, but I openly and vulgarly flouted in front of them whenever given the chance the notion of spending invisible money on a washed-out, stifling environment crawling with attention-seeking pedants wanting to express themselves to anyone and everyone listening. My feverish hobby of reading books satisfied me in a way they could never understand, and so I parted with my parents and the life they laid out for me rather undisturbed.

The differences between my childhood and this bustling city I now find myself in are too many to go into great detail, for time’s sake (that incessant ticking clock of our days!), so I urge you to draw on your own imagination how all of the noise and cars and signs must have disturbed and confused me. The one thing, however, which I do feel is necessary to elaborate is the discomfort I had, and continue to have, with relating to the mass of strangers surrounding me. No amount of trips to the one grocery store in my hometown, no amount of books, or guidance from my parents (and you can imagine what kind of guidance they gave me) could’ve possibly prepared me for the sensory overload of human interaction in a city. I act either overly intimate, probing unnecessarily personal questions in the line of a bank, or I am received as a callous and removed person who lacks even the most basic of all social cues. I recall an incident at church (back when I was desperate enough for a sense of community anywhere) when a Ms. Walsten told me about her sister-in-law’s traumatic divorce; not finding any appropriate words for a response, I remained silent. She responded with, “I shouldn’t have even opened my mouth! I knew to take you as an insensitive brute!” I remember thinking it strange to slander someone under God’s roof, but knew better than to tell her so.

It is this clumsy ineptitude with conversations that I return, once again, to the death of the downstairs tenant and this question that engulfed me. His name is, was, Gary, and we only spoke twice. There was the time I was locked out and, seeing him smoking a cigarette on his porch, asked to use his fire escape to climb into my bathroom window. It was the first time I saw the face of the man who lived below me, and what a strange, strange, feeling that was for me. It’s a wonder how much you can gather about someone simply by the sounds that rise up through your apartment floor. For example, I knew that every morning around seven, Gary would flush a toilet and retrieve the newspaper, in that order. I knew he lived alone and had no visitors, for rarely did I ever hear voices except for on Thursdays around dinner time, when a phone would ring and he would converse for anywhere from an hour to three. I sometimes heard a couple words

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Dion Kauffman

here and there, usually coming from the heating vent outside my bedroom, but beyond that I had no clue who was on the other end of the line and what they ever talked about. To see his face, for that hurried moment, felt damaging. It ruined the image I had in my head of who lived below me, for I had all of these ideas of who this man was given his movements, and yet there he stood, stoic and wrinkled, a lot older and fragile than I thought. He gestured his hands towards the fire escape as a means of saying, “Yes, of course you can use it” without any words.

The second, and last time, I met Gary was when I stumbled upon him walking his dog (which startled me at first, for not once did I hear a dog from below, nor even had a suspicion he had any pets whatsoever). We tiptoed around each other with formalities and conversational conventions, and I remember leaving feeling quite sad at this. I wanted nothing more than to ask him about his family, friends, lost lovers, where he grew up and how he felt about Baltimore. I wanted to ask him whom he talked to on the phone every Thursday, or if he heard that creaking noise outside on windy days, if he too felt that the floors in our apartment slanted east. But instead, he commented on the weather and I said yes, yes it was a fine day. And I asked him what his dog’s name was, and he returned with Benny and I said what a lovely coat Benny has. A heavy silence fell over us, and then our meeting (if you can call a spontaneous stumbling upon a meeting) ended as quickly as it began. I walked home, and he walked to the store to grab trash bags. I always felt I should’ve walked with him to the store, and recall now having come home and immediately realizing that I, too, was out of trash bags. It was too late.

I heard of Gary’s death from my landlord (a stout and grumpy man with a moustache that always seemed to be dripping of wax, or grease) who informed me that he died of a heart attack that morning and would it be alright if he could get rent a little earlier than normal to help pay for, what he referred to as, renter formalities.

I didn’t stop hearing of Gary’s death, not immediately anyway.

Benny, for a few days after, howled and howled something miserable, incessantly. It was the sound of mourning, of a longing so deep and melancholic that I had trouble sleeping. I remember lying in bed the night after Gary’s heart attack, kept awake by Benny’s howls, and thinking: this, this right here is the sound of a mountain being disemboweled. And I wept until morning.

Not even Gary’s niece (who, I also learned from my landlord, was in town to prepare for the funeral and help pack his belongings) could

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soothe Benny. The next day, after I heard the niece leave and start her car, I decided, rather rashly over a bowl of cereal, that I would sneak through the fire escape window into Gary’s house and at least offer my condolences to Benny. In retrospect, as I sit here recalling the whole ordeal, the entire thing was out of line and I should’ve exerted more restraint, but it was as if by some holy ordainment I was being summoned into something beyond my comprehension, some act of faith I shouldn’t question. It must have been my futile attempts in trying to answer the question of what I should be doing after his death, or perhaps it was the eerie silence downstairs that drove me to believe it would ever be a good idea to sneak into his apartment.

The image of me crawling down the fire escape must have been an awkward and slightly unsettling scene for anyone in the neighborhood to witness given my ruffled business suit and the awkwardness of my oversized feet clamoring for stability on the toothpick of stairs. But I must be frank, I felt as if I was merely climbing down familiar stairs into yet another floor of my own home, as if I made this journey over and over again.

I can’t possibly imagine writing down all that I felt and observed upon climbing into Gary’s house. I remember being overwhelmed by the clutter of it all, not knowing where exactly to lay my eyes.

Let’s just say I wasn’t able to calm Benny, but made sure to apologize for his loss by saying how I couldn’t possibly imagine how he must feel. Through my eyes I tried to show Benny that I was, by extension, a friend of his, and that if he needed anything within the next couple of days that I’d be right upstairs. I also spoke and told him about the heating vent outside my bedroom, and that I hear him often if he ever changes his mind.

And that he doesn’t have to be afraid. The frequency of Benny’s barking slowed and slowed, which I found to be, by extension, an acceptance of not only my foreign presence in his now empty home, but a recognition of our commonalities of being both a little bit lost and a little bit scared.

I then began to feel self-conscious about entertaining this delusional conversation with a dog, and felt a heavy sense of overstaying my welcome. As I was about to climb back out the window, I observed a stack of books resting along the wall and, curious, glanced at the spines.

A book titled Path of Purification intrigued me, and quickly, before I had the chance of raising any moral flags against stealing a book from a dead man, I stuffed it in my coat and climbed back up the fire escape.

Inside the book was a letter, which I only feel appropriate in sharing with you if I am to include the whole thing verbatim. It’s important never to

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Dion Kauffman

crop or edit someone else’s personal letter when sharing with others, and it is with this principle that I include the entire thing: May 07, 1978 Dearest Ellie, The nights here are as cold as hell but I’m doing well. I think of you often. Yesterday, the boys and I set up tent alongside a river that, I swear, had a current that would knock you down a whole mile before you could blink your eyes! I know you’d like it here, though. I imagine you dipping your toes in the river, just to scare me.

Oh how things have changed. Funny isn’t it? I hope you’ve been happy, E. I hope you found the floral wallpaper you kept waiting for. Please write back, I’ll postmark this from a house you can send to. I’ll be here until March, in which we pack up and head south again.

Kiss Charlie for me, will you?

All my love, Gary After reading the letter I poured myself a glass of whiskey, gulped it down, and headed to my car. The address was written on the envelope that accompanied the letter, and after driving thirty minutes north on the highway and four long, windy roads later, I wound up in a cul-de-sac of houses that were distinguishable from one another only by the color of their mailboxes. I drove slowly until I reached number 278, looked down to check that it was, indeed, the address for which Ellie was addressed, and parked the car across from it. Staring through the windows, I saw a woman folding a towel in the living room, a field of daisies and lilacs and peonies dancing above and behind her. I only saw the back of her hair, of which must have been pinned up somehow. It was grey, a slate grey (whether or not this had more to do with the lighting inside the house is, at least to me, of no concern here; whether or not this woman may or may not actually be E neither concerned me). I smiled, lit a cigarette, and got out of the car, heading anywhere, really, down the street. I’d walk until I reached the beach. Or a restaurant. It didn’t really matter where I ended up. And looking back now, as I write this, I don’t remember exactly where I did end up.

I just remember feeling like I was floating, rising, and that something was restored to the order of things, even if I didn’t know quite what it meant.

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Jocelyn Hassel

San Francisco de Macorís tropic soil rushes outside the contours of pavement wet with afternoon rainstorms and mango peels, flip flops clack with a broken strap. outside, the morir-vivir plants rest in rain-ridden stupor, their smooth velvet tendrils heave under my fingertip. sunday siesta drowsiness crawls with humidity, the television drones on in static technicolor. everyone I’ll ever know gathers across generations in abuela’s backyard, arranging wrinkled bodies in plastic chair semi-circles they speak of futures in rosary beads. que Dios te bendiga they coo under tin roofs – my hands greet

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Jocelyn Hassel

leather skin I haven’t recognized in years nodding with familiar understanding at memories of me. lizards trail along the wall. in San Francisco de Macorís, past the colmados and pastelito stands, my fingers still know the crevices of worn-out dominoes and mosquito bites. abuelo reaches for a slice of salami and a cup of coke.

48

Emilia Petrarca

The Duck Thief An old man walks into a supermarket in Copenhagen hoping to steal a frozen goose. It’s Christmastime and he’s one of only a handful of customers. His orthopedic shoes glide him through the electronic doors and across the linoleum tiles. He steadies himself, dusting the snow off his beige bomber jacket. He then tips his newsboy cap at the security guard, revealing his shiny bald head underneath. The security guard smiles back.

The old man doesn’t go straight for the freezer aisle, but rather shuffles his way towards milk and dairy. He lingers, turning the corner when the aisle is empty. Once in the meat section, he pretends to browse. But he knows exactly which goose he wants: a 1.5kg extra-fatty bird that he hid in the back of the freezer two days prior. He looks over both of his shoulders then lunges at it, cradling it like a newborn. Next, with his left hand he picks up his newsboy cap and places the goose on his head with his right. Using the silver freezer paneling as a mirror, he adjusts his hat. The goose feels securely attached, like a curious boy’s tongue to a pole.

He moves quickly, which means slowly. This is fine though—a tightrope walker would do the same. As he rounds the corner of the final aisle, a younger woman almost plows him with her cart. “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she says, placing her hand over her heart. “I didn’t see you there.” The old man doesn’t respond. “All you alright?” She asks. She notices he has neither a cart nor a basket and isn’t carrying anything. “Fine,” he says, careful not to nod. As he walks past her, she decides to follow him, just to make sure he’s not in the middle of some amnesiac adventure.

“I knew something was wrong,” she tells the police later. The old man was just a few yards away from the exit when he collapsed. He fell vertically like a melting candlestick. First his ankles buckled, then his knees. When the goose fell to the floor, the tiles absorbed its thud. They say the cause of death was brain freeze.

49

Joshua Multer

Trashman I don’t drink none of that shit man, just Pepsi man, no coke no no.

Man I, I been workin’ the same job for 20 years man Then they lay me off just like that it’s fucked up man, fucked up…

They don’t give us benefits, insurance, vacation, I been promised 40 hours a week but I never worked it, you’ll be lucky if you get 25 man how’d you even find this place? The lyagushk? Man…these days…

This company’s goin’ to shit man I’m pushing 60 next month, Been here 2 years man haven’t missed a day haven’t gotten a raise A man can’t live off of 9 bucks an hour man the whole thing’s fucked man You were shafted by the institution.

Your brother’s truck broke down on the way here, A pipe burst straight through the engine and dented the hood-roof It’s a goddamn three-hour walk home, and like some pathetic first-grade fallacy, The downpour’s just begun Your name was Ricky, and you were Saint Nick’s six foot five dirty-bearded brother and to me You dwarfed him, Trashman.

They told me you were in some foreign war, Vietnam or Korea (who gave a fuck? not you) And your flashbacks and your roaring rolling eyeballs snuffed Even the frog-lady’s hubris.

The drives couldn’t touch you, no, only their shells their plastic pink cocoons you ripped apart after we, sloughing through them with our rusted, greasy hands tossed only their shells emphatically at your feet because neither of us had time for being human.

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Joshua Multer

Break be damned you wouldn’t sit still for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I never saw you eat, and maybe That’s why you lost 100 pounds Or maybe this dogamn’d place ate you Like it’s eating all of us Slobbering at its tin we can’t fill fast enough…

You took our feces And you, sweating shirts through coke-bottle glasses, shoveled shit into that metal maw With your hairy hands, as it lazily Raised its lower jaw just once, ‘til you came trucking right back only to face our backs and when you left I was relieved

51

AIDAN KAHN

Lyagushka - A MONOLOGUE Russian man, late-twenties: Ah, you! I’ve been looking for you! No, it’s okay I just want to talk! Listen, I have been wanting to ask you about this dream I have. No, don’t go, please! I am here in this parking garage for hours and I have only tiny television and I know you are good listener. You are lawyer in this building, yes?

I am not smart like you— not rich! But I have this dream— Please. Pozhaluysta. (The Man agrees to stay) Ah! Spasibo. Ok, in this dream, I am driving fancy car like yours there but I am in Russia. The wind is in my hair, I love this beautiful car. But then my mother, she arrive like bird, like hawk, have is tiny television like one I have here in this fucking garage and I have only one channel like when I was child. And then the sun go away and hills become grey color like road and everything is grey like uh, tsement. I wake up and I must drink many glass of water and I am coughing but not sick, you know. Very bizarre, heh? Really. I only have this kind of dream before when I was soldier in Russian submarine. Submarine is worst place to go if you are in Russian Army. Is where they put criminals and Jews in old days.

And me. All this metal and air that taste so terrible. Really. Anyway, this dream, it remind me of when I was kid and there was small forest behind building I’m living. In the forest, there was a little lake where I play with little frogs. Many, many of them. I loved frogs, little lyagushka; everywhere, all green, making songs. I love frogs, really. I look a little like frog, maybe? Anyway, I go every day after school into forest to see these frogs, but one day I get sick. I am sick in my bed for one week in my dark room and I have no window to look at my forest. Then after week, I am feeling good, I go out.

There is no more forest— there are builders and big trucks. They get rid of forest, they need new apartment building. I thought maybe frogs escape, But in my village, not many buildings. So many people here, but most of them alone, walking around all this tsement. It’s sad you know. I am always down here. I want to go outside, go to park, but, you know, I work all day and then it take long time to get to Central Park from garage and then sky is dark. (He glances at his watch) How do you drive home? Do you put top down and drive in the park? You think today I can come with you?

Pozhalujsta.

52

Madison Hickman

Testimonials There’s angels up in heaven Just waitin’ for us to die.

I know.

I seen them.

Waitin’ to take me, Dark shadows in the corners Of my dreams.

You must understand, God is everywhere.

But especially in churches, Where you can feel it, The vastness of His grace Expanding.

Sometimes, When I pray, I like to imagine All the others— Millions of them— Filled with His light.

There was a devil in her, Devil in her body.

Evil thing, I had to Blot it out, Silence The screaming From the Devil’s Mouth.

‘Round Mama’s neck, Wore a purl cross.

Got a pretty penny for it.

Real purls, them And gold too.

She don’t need it, Where she’s at now.

Devotion Is not an action, Or a way of life But A feeling.

53

Ben Sandman

Midway I tell them of the mist that came in off the river. How it flattened the grass, then got my face wet. Now I mention the meowing: how I figured the sound had blown in from a darkened yard on the opposite bank.

I tell them I couldn’t see any cats.

I try to explain how these sorts of sounds––dog whimpering, baby howling, parent sobbing––are at their worst when you can’t see the source.

Dog behind fence, baby upstairs. Parent on cellphone with sketchy connection.

That awful yowling coming out of the darkness, plus the shushing of the river coming in through the trees.

You know the spot, I say. I know you all do.

First I head to the store, thinking tea, thinking Snickers. The clerk will definitely see my red eyes.

I’m not worried about any kind of brush with the law, even in a town that’s as tiny as ours. I made sure not to take the Ziploc out with me––it’s got a bunch of small holes where the stems have poked through––and I didn’t leave it sitting there on top of my dresser. The usual measures had been taken: the folding of the bag into an empty film canister––because, unlike friends who prefer using pill bottles, I value opacity and have come to depend on it––then the placement of the thing in my bottom drawer, under letters, envelopes, photos and post-its, all of which somehow still smell like perfume.

3AM says the sign by the bank.

64 degrees blink the bright yellow bulbs.

A line of gas pumps glows in the distance. The lot looks empty, and I’m happy to see it. I look down, for a second, at the wet slate shining in the light of the street lamps. Water condenses on streets and sidewalks, but I don’t remember anyone ever calling it dew.

A girl sits out on the gas station curb. She’s staring at a stain on the asphalt. I used to run track with this girl in high school. She doesn’t look pregnant, but I’ve seen the ultrasound she posted on Facebook.

––Hey, I say, how’s it going, how are you.

––Not bad, she says, still looking at the ground.

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Ben Sandman

I look down, too, but there’s nothing to say.

The door’s too heavy and dings as I enter. I go down the first aisle, away from the counter. A turn executed with such visible purpose that I feel I should inspect all the shit on the racks: motor oil, Advil, antacids, condoms. Nothing I’d buy. Head at a tilt, cradling my chin between forefinger and thumb, I linger, taking unit prices into account. I wait for the right amount of time to elapse. Then I go to the coolers and grab what I came for.

The woman at the counter is hunched over, wrinkled. She smells like a couch that’s been out in the rain. I could swear that she chuckles as she hands me the change and I leave the store with her laugh in my ears.

Outside again, I remember the shortcut: the path of wood chips around the back of the building, the gap in the hedge, the drop from the ledge to the parking lot. Later I tell myself this was due to the weed.

Thoughts that someone might spot me on Main Street. But if I’m being honest, it was something more innocent––a memory of what shortcuts had meant as a kid, the comfort of something I could learn and repeat.

It all goes back to a game played on car rides, invented with a best friend who was more like a brother. One of us named locations from around our hometown that he’d been to: a store, a classroom, a friend’s house, a bathroom, then hoped it was a place the other hadn’t set foot.

––Have you taken a piss in the diner bathroom?

––Yep. You seen the back storeroom, Paint and Paper?

––Of course.

Friend punches my thigh across Nissan’s back seat.

––Ouch.

––Sorry.

––I’ve got one: County offices, basement level.

––Where the vending machines are?

––Yeah.

––We went there years ago. I got the Beef n’ Cheese and you made fun of me for it.

––Oh yeah.

Cars slide by that I know by their headlights. Oldies radio murmurs out of the dash. Dad cranks down the window, seal squeaking on rain drops, then he holds out an apple core, waiting to toss it–– I’m leaving the gas station.

Bright roof over pumps, circling mosquitos.

Dropping down to the lot, I hit my feet hard. I hear mom’s voice in my

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Ben Sandman

head. She says try buying shoes with a bit more support.

Do you remember the snack bar in back of the parking lot? I’m near it now, my feet crunching on gravel.

It’s at this moment that I hear the cats.

I move toward the sound. Soon I’m on grass, and my steps become quiet. The ground is uneven, dew soaks through my shoes. The meowing grows louder and so does the river. Water flows black in the gaps between trees. It sounds as though the cats are upstream a bit further.

I stop at the shore. To the left, I see something: a man standing out on a half-submerged stone. A sack at his side is jostling like it’s full of microwave popcorn. I put things together.

The guy doesn’t move. It’s like he can’t hear all the fear at his side.

He swings the sack gently, forward, then back, and I flinch each time it looks like he’ll throw it.

I want to say something. Even more, I want him to.

I’m sorry little guys, but this has to be done.

I hope you bastards know how to swim.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

He leans down and places the sack in the current. Twenty yards apart, the two of us watch its progress. I’d think the cats might sink, with a trail of bubbles rising up to the surface, but soon I realize that unfortunately they float. Still roiling, the bag drifts out into the center. Inside must be a pocket of air. It’s floating right toward me.

Then it passes, all full and alive.

I imagine myself swimming after the sack, but this isn’t realistic––the water’s not deep. Running, splashing, would be a thing I could do. I’d look clumsy. The man might see me. He might even laugh. Somehow it’d be like I was running away.

I step in the water, start wading upstream.

––Hey, I shout.

The guy’s been scrambling his way up the bank. Now he stops and clutches roots exposed by the water. I expect him to hop up the rest of the way, to turn shadowy, faint, rushing through the trees off into the darkness.

––What the hell do you want?

The guy’s voice is brittle. It quivers and shakes.

I stop where I am. I wanted my voice to scare the guy off.

––Well?

––Do you know what you’ve done?

The way it comes out, I sound like a teacher.

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Ben Sandman

––You don’t know me, the man says.

I could say the same to you, I think, you don’t know me.

The man starts sobbing. I don’t say a thing.

He scales the bank. Branches clatter. Judging by the direction he’s going, he must have parked by the auto parts store. In the center of town a steeple is glowing. Up on the hill, the lights of the college––like a parking garage, or a storage facility––seem to promise more than is actually there. The breeze blows sour and it’s familiar and I know it must be one of two things: the rusted bridge, or that pale froth, like the head on a freshly poured beer, which swirls on the water in eddies and pools.

Closing my eyes, I wish the current would move me.

I stand and wait until I’m numb to the knees. Then I go home.

57

Daria Schieferstein

Untitled 1.

He turned to look over his shoulder at me sitting at the other end of the kitchen table. The end farthest from him. I was flipping through a book whose images I had no attachment to. Whose images I was only using as a way to pass the time. A way to pass the time between now and the water boiling and the chicken cooking. And suddenly he looked at me and paused before he spoke, like this question was going to mean something, like it was going to pressure me and make me think…so he said: “Are you positive…” and like every word he spoke, it held so much weight as if it had all been calculated. I didn’t know what he was going to say. I couldn’t think of a time he had wanted to know something like this. I thought of how few things I was positive about at that moment and how many options there were to finish that question. I thought about how I might lie if the question were concerning me and him, our relationship, but all that came were more thoughts of all the lies I had already told him. I wondered why I was here, sitting at this table looking at these photos in this book, why I’d come. But before I had any answers to an array of questions he would never ask me, he said: “Are you positive…about the corn?” And without hesitation or disbelief, I said yes, I was positive that the corn I had just bought from the bodega on the corner of his block that looked slightly old and had signs of death hidden inside, should go in the soup. And after returning his gaze to the chopped corn in the bowl he silently agreed, giving me no opportunity to relish in my confidence. He turned around and continued his life in its simplistic manner. The manner that allows no one else to really matter and left me on the far end of the kitchen table thinking about the first half of his question and all the directions it could have gone. But thinking most of all that when people forget you, they just do.

58

Joshua Multer

Edie aka Ghostwriting Two day lilies – these – Are my introduction – Forgive me if I am frightened I never see strangers and hardly know – what – I say This is my letter to the World – The daguerreotype – Curls and ruff added – As it appeared – in 1924 Is to be disowned – I have little shape – It would not crowd your Desk But am small, like the Wren, (But, were I Cuckoo born – I’d swear by him –) And my Hair is bold Like the Chestnut Bur – And my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, That the Guest leaves – Would this do just as well?

My father reads only on Sunday – He reads lonely and rigorous books – I never had a mother – I suppose A mother is one to whom you hurry When you are troubled – They shut me up in Prose – As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet –

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Joshua Multer

Because they liked me “still” – I was almost persuaded to be a – I am continually putting off becoming a – Christian, but I soon fumbled At my Childhood’s prayer Or else it was irksome to me – One by one My old habits returned – I continually hear Christ Saying to me – Daughter – Give me thine heart!

But the world is sleeping In ignorance and error And we must be crowing cocks – And singing larks – and a rising Sun to awake her – or else – We’ll pull society up – To the roots and plant it in a different place – Softly my Future climbs the Stair – “Faith” is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see – The Soul selects her own Society – Earth would have been too much – I see – The angels will consent to call me sister!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog – You think my gait “spasmodic” – I am in danger – You think me “uncontrolled”– I have no Tribunal Assent – and you are sane – Demur – you’re straightway dangerous – Are you to deeply occupied – To say if my Verse is alive?

Should you think – it breathed – The purple Queen of Calvary

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Joshua Multer

Read my sentence – steadily – Reviewed it with my eyes!

When I lost the use of my Eyes It was a comfort – to think – There were so few real books That I could easily find some One to read me all of them – I cannot realize The friends I have seen (Thank you – dear Suzie) From my sight pass In the prime of their days – Dew before the sun Will not again walk the streets And act their parts – And I am standing alone in rebellion, And growing very careless – How lonely this world is growing, Something so desolate – creeps – Over the spirit and we don’t know its name, And it won’t – go away – Either Heaven is seeming greater – or Earth – A great deal more small – or God Is more “Our Father” – Eternity, I’m coming You must pray when the rest are sleeping, that the hand maybe held to me, and I may be led away I had rather wince, than die –

61

Ben Wills

Wild Alaskan Selfies According to philosopher Galen Strawson of the Universities of Reading, Oxford, etc., there indeed are such things as selves. The self “is as much a physical thing as any blood vessel or jackhammer or cow,” he moos with ethos in his argument for the existence of a Real, Metaphysical Self that is our basis simpliciter. Having seen Prof. Strawson’s curriculum vitae, I’m probably safe in supposing that he’s never worked in a salmon processing plant in Bristol Bay. If you are supposing that I have, then you’d be right. If you are supposing, however, that because I know the difference between Coho and King salmon I can opine on the ontological status of Holsteins, demolition equipment, or selves, the truth is that I don’t know – I’m not a philosopher, full disclosure. But I suspect that experiencing infinite sunsets and other such monotony might cause Professor Strawson to re-evaluate his metaphysical surety that the self is an immutable Thing, simpliciter.

The job is as follows: having put on your rubber boots and rubber apron and rubber gloves and hair net and face mask, stand at your place in line and watch open half-pound metal cans filled with machine-“filleted” salmon shudder past on the conveyor belt. If you see cans with fish bits glopped over the edge, un-glop them before the lidding machine gives the cans a non-hermetic seal, allowing killer microbes to infiltrate and infect the product. Your additional task: if the cans are too heavy or too light, the weighing machine will kick them to the side: glop them into spec. Remarkably, the can conveyor moves just fast enough to demand vigilance, but not so fast as to allow you and your self to get into the sort of rhythm that would make doing the same thing 18 hours a day after day after day, bearable.

Fun fact: there is no genuine night in Dillingham, Alaska, in the summer. There are only times of more or less light, with three or four hours of dusky obscurity in the small hours of the morning.

Back in the plant, every two or three or so hours the “engineer” (God knows what engineer worth their protractor would work here) pulls the steam whistle, letting you know that for the next fifteen minutes you are free, gloriously free. Provided, that is, you leave yourself enough time to take off your apron, hair net, mask, and gloves before you leave the facility

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Ben Wills

and then put them all back on and rinse with the iodine disinfectant when you return. If you are overwhelmed by the abundance of possible break time activities, remind yourself that you probably have to or at any rate should piss; America runs on Dunkin’, but Peter Pan Seafoods, Inc.’s Dillingham operation runs on many, many Styrofoam cups of “coffee” brewed from industrial-sized containers whose dimensions drive you to interrogate your preconceived notion of the difference between “can” and “barrel.” At any rate, the hot, brown water supplied gratis to the bloodshot de-gloppers is coffee enough to have that signature diuretic effect, so it’s time you saw a man about a dog. By now, your self is left with about five minutes to catnap or shit-shoot or diddle your phone and Snapchat a wild Alaskan selfie, but don’t bother trying – with no major carriers around, your only option for more bars in no-places like Dillingham is from regional companies with bush-league service. You’re always roaming here.

Truth be told, there is no genuine night in Dillingham in the summer, but there is evening. The whole day is kind of one long evening, actually, which makes it hard to predict at what point the mosquitoes will come out to desiccate you and the other foreigners (they pass over local Alaskans, who have made a bargain: their selves for immunity).

Thanks to a vacation to Costa Rica my family took when I was a tween, I know that sunsets near the equator are short-lived spectacles of dramatic and fiery passion. (Like bamboo, which grows three feet per day, they are slow to watch but fast to glance back at.) At zero degrees latitude, the condensed timespan amplifies the drama of sunrise and sunset. The sun indeed seems aflame – it’s easy to understand why the Greeks anthropomorphized it. Up in Dillingham, where you can almost see Russia from your company-supplied barracks, the excruciating slowness of the sun dilutes its movement’s meaning; in the Alaskan sky, Helios’s chariot must trundle behind arthritic oxen. Sunsets up here are so gradual, at any moment in the evening you could swear to yourself that the sun was lower the last time you looked; ditto (mutatis mutandis) for sunrises, your self replies.

Earlier; later; morning; evening.

Was that the whistle? No, no, everyone is still glopping. There’s probably half an hour to go, or an hour, or something. There aren’t any clocks in the cannery, and watches aren’t allowed because hygiene and hermetic seals and HACCP, so the question of time truly is anyone’s guess. Anyone’s, that is, except for Foreman Dave and the “engineer” and the quality assurance people, whose blue coats expectorate fishy pseudo-authority.

Your self is thrown off by these characters – is the plant’s doctor a “doc-

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Ben Wills

tor”? Everyone likes a good round of charades, but maybe the carnivalesque is best left to professionals.

The salmon know when to spawn, when to swim upstream and downstream, and when to get caught in nets and become canned salmon. Sure, they spend their last moments in a ship’s dark holding tank, suffocating among thousands of their gasping, flapping, comrades, but at least they know when it’s their time. You and your self, on the other hand, don’t know anything about time. For eighteen hours a day, you stand in a salmon-andiodine-scented fog and glop or de-glop, as required. The factory doesn’t change. The sun doesn’t change. The work doesn’t change. The foremen and engineers of Peter Pan have had the foresight, it turns out, to engineer your self, simpliciter, out of your very being. No longer just a theory, reification becomes real – has salmon processing made a thing out of you? For the less that changes in this upside-down world, the deeper your mind sinks, drifting idly as it descends within your sea inside. And when you look up at the surface, tranquil and without sign of rescue (perhaps the line on Strawson’s life ring doesn’t reach this far), it’s difficult to tell whether the sun is rising or setting, whether it’s day or night, if that was the whistle, or if the waves glistening above are reflecting you or your self.

64

Dylan Manning

Sunday Morning Where were we? I leaned over your body In the night just to know I did.

I don’t know where this pleasure In being a terror comes from, but Even a layman has to smile As the bathroom lock clicks Behind the special needs kid. Kid, I’m telling you, not many of us Make it out alive. Words were spoken to me And I started. Which is to say Jolted. I touched it, and the devil Grew cold at the feeling I felt.

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Helicon 2013/2014