collected - School of the Art Institute of Chicago

COLLECTED
MAPS
SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
2014
COLLECTED
MAPS
SCHOOL OF THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
2014

FOREWARD
The 2014 edition of Collected is a selection of work from the graduating class
of the School of the Art Institute’s MFA Writing program.
The MFA in Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was
established in 1996 to present students with the widest possible spectrum of aesthetic and formal choices. SAIC brings together writers of
poetry and prose, as well as artists in performance, film, video, visual
communication design, printmedia, and painting. Students may focus
their studies on one or more particular genre but are also free to meld
diverse literary and visual disciplines into new forms of artistic expression.
For more information, please see www.saic.edu/mfaw or call 800-232-7242.
In the spirit of SAIC, the work presented here is interdisciplinary. From
poetry to prose, to image to sound, all work represents our diverse styles and
our capacity to push and traverse boundaries. In devising the theme of Maps,
we had no concept of how keenly our contributors would expand upon this
subject, some creating their own personal territories in local, domestic, and
international spaces, some pushing their work into realms beyond any concrete boundaries. Hence, we have divided the work between the pieces that
exist “On the Map” and those that exist “Off the Map.”
We would like to thank Veronica Corzo-Duchardt of Winterbureau for her
artistic design of the journal, MFA Writing Chair Ruth Margraff and MFA
Writing Administrative Director Amber C. Da for their assistance in all
practical matters of the journal’s publication, and all of the contributors
whose work appears on these pages.
Sincerely,
Collected 2014 is a publication of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Collected Co-Editing Team: Tsehaye Hébert, Jill Jichetti, Heather Lynn
Shorey, Jill M. Stone, Holly Lee Warren, and Rachel Wilson
Authors retain copyright of all works in this publication.
Design: Winterbureau
3
SECTION I – ON THE MAP
M A IR E A D C A S E
8.
M A P OF M Y FIR S T C HIC AGO HOME
9.
M A P OF HO W I K NO W DE AT H I S R E A L WR I T T E N IN T HE WA I T ING RO OM
(NOV E MBE R 2013)
H. ME LT
11. A PR IL OF 1979
A L I X A NNE S H AW
12. R E D L INE S
K AYL I A ZA NC A N
17. UN T I TL E D
HE AT HE R LYNN S HOR EY
18. F ROM E V E RY WHE R E , L IK E L E AV E S ON T R E E S
21. S EXY BE A S T
K AT HRYN W E IL
C A RL EY GOMEZ
SECTION II – OFF THE MAP
HOL LY L E E WA R R E N
52. HO W I GO T OU T W E S T
T S EH AYE G E R A LYN HÉBE RT
56. M A P S
A S HL EY J. MCCL E NON
58. E C HOE S
BR I T PA R K S
59. YOU A LWAYS C OME TO T HE C OUN T RY DR E S S E D L IK E I T ’S TO O L AT E
K EVIN S PA R RO W
60. PL AY POE MS
JIL L M. S TONE
63. UN T I TL E D
64.UN T I TL E D
DE EPAK UNNIK R I S HNA N
65. I VDAY[HE R E].AVDAY[T HE R E]
R AC HE L WIL S ON
66. 12.12.12
67.12/12/12
68.PR IN TM AK ING
A L E C VIE RBUC HE N
70. IN S T RUCT ION S F OR A C E ME N T YA R D
71. IN S T RUCT ION S F OR A WA R EHOU S E
RYA N E NDE
72. T HE DINE R OF MOR A L I T Y
LYNDS IE M A NU S O S
74. CL OUD C OIN S
23. T HE H A NGM A N’S T R E E
28. A N A R IZONA A NIM A L
JE S S E L A IE R
33. LUK E A ND JE S S E PL AY AT T HE PA R K
RYA N WR IGHT
36. ATAVI SM
C A ROL HO OD
40. I T T Y-BI T T Y T R IUMPHS FA R AWAY
K R I S SY WIL S ON
45. ON A G AT E TO W E R AT YUZHON
46. A S ONG OF C H A NGG A N I
47. A S ONG OF C H A NGG A N II
JIL L JIC HE T T I
76. JIL L WR I T E S CUR AT E S M A P S!
48.BOR DE R-S ONGS
80. BUDDH A AT T HE A RT IN S T I TU T E
OF C HIC AGO
SECTION I
ON
THE
MA P
MAIREAD CASE
MAIREAD CASE
M A P O F M Y F I R S T C H I C AG O H O M E
M A P O F H O W I K N O W D E AT H I S R E A L W R I T T E N
I N T H E WA I T I N G R O O M ( N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 )
where everything I owned fit in the kitchen—everything—and it looked
shabby but it was mine, and my money
where I wrote across the brown grass lot from a green stairwell, and
watched men in bathrobes walking up, down, up
where I was sure a bad thing, a hole-thing with eyes, it sat on the corner of
the bed to watch and dare me to scream (we burned sage)
where everyone came over to practice a dance on the roof, and before they
came I made bread so it was like, one hundred degrees inside the apartment
where I covered the walls in glitter nail polish
and ripped-up magazines
and thank-you notes
and never really slept
where we smoked and made rainbow wire sculptures
where I was so hungover on my twenty-fifth birthday that I could barely eat
the terrible tuna fish and apricot salads I used to eat everyday
where I had just one bookshelf and no television
where the bathroom had bubblegum pink and blood-colored tile, and it was
so small you could barely sit down
where I felt sad and went to bed and Jim ran over in case I was hurt—I
loved that he did but told him it wasn’t a test, feeling lonely
where Nick tried waltzing with me in the kitchen, like writing a book with
someone else in it
where I kept socks and tights and underwear in a little blue Tupperware
where the headboard wasn’t screwed onto the bed, the bed just pressed it to
the wall and for awhile I was scared it’d beam me
where one night we heard the ice cream cart fall over and the bells stop
where a man in a white tank sat on the porch across the street to watch us
where I caught a mouse under a spaghetti strainer in the sink and played
Miles Davis for him until I was done cleaning and could take him out to the field
where I wore a balloon-big red tutu and 3D glasses with the lenses popped
out and a blue glitter bird in my hair, for Halloween
where I woke up early enough to ride a bus and two trains to Evanston by
nine o’clock every morning and never missed a day of running either
where Alex wore the radish dress and drank all my good vodka, the kind
with ducks flying on the bottle
8
Two days ago, through an Orange Line miracle I was twenty minutes early for an
appointment at Planned Parenthood. (I’ve been there several times in the last couple
weeks, once the waiting room played Poison but time before that it was the Grease
medley, which made me sad. Sandy Olsson did not have access.) I was twenty minutes early, so I went into the gem shop and bought a hunk of rose quartz, because
caconrad said it will bring me love and strength and to my potential. I feel wasteful
buying anything besides coffee and birth control pills on Michigan Avenue, but I really
wanted this rock.
I want to hold it while I’m meditating, which embarrasses me because I meditate?
and I had to buy something to meditate? But yes, actually. I started at Naropa last
summer. All this fall I feel less panicked over my parents’ death, which has scared me
ever since I was a little girl, and everyone else’s too. Loneliness is no one else around
to listen, or to listen to. Nothing else ever—not therapy, not whiskey not running—
has ever calmed my fear like meditation does. Afterwards it is like I stand up wrapped
in a blanket. Before I bought quartz either I used nothing, which meant the cat would
try and sit in my lap, or a little black skull Mel brought me from Mexico. This is how
resistant I was. I meditated holding Death. The quartz fits in my hand like a baseball.
It is the color of muscle or fatty ham. It is a color my sister says I should wear more
often, since I am a redhead.
All this is to say many people I know right now, they are dying. I mean this beyond
my own awkward hungry body and my new baby friend’s, she came two months
early so her mom, my old friend, she breastfeeds every couple hours to get our girl in
fighting shape. My friend Kat died in a bathtub last week and my other friend, Daisy,
who I know from high school, is mailing me some earrings Kat used to wear. They
swirl along your neck. In the letter I wrote Kat’s parents I said once we sat on the dock
and listened to “Lovefool” all night. My friend Sam is in a hospital bed healing after
chemo. He gained his weight again, in water, and there are sores in his mouth that
burn and no hair inside his nose anymore. Sam says he never thought he’d want to go
back to that dumb car lot and sell Volvos under those sparkly flags, but what do you
know now he does. I look at his girlfriend and hate myself for thinking someday she
and I will eat dinners alone together, again. Science says we probably will. Today I hate
science. This is how I know I am dying. People were here and now they are not. I am
still here.
My grandma is on morphine in a bed in Nebraska. She is maybe dead now, maybe
not, maybe by the time they call my name, here at Planned Parenthood. I mailed her
9
MAIREAD CASE
MAIREAD CASE
“It was the house where I donned a hat and stood in front of the refrigerator for a
picture that would represent me to others.” – Renee Gladman, TOAF
H. MELT
APRIL OF 1979
a letter yesterday. The woman in that bed makes me feel like I met my grandma as
a child too. Dad crying on the phone last night made me feel like now I am the dad.
The weather in Nebraska this weekend is zero percent rain and exactly seventy-four
degrees both days, and I am already packed. I already know what the cemetery looks
like, how the sky arcs blue overhead.
I took this job in Chicago, I had never been here before Grew up in New Jersey,
college in Baltimore, moved to DC
I took this job in Chicago, right after a big snowstorm
Everyone thought I was crazy, no one knew where it was
MAIREAD CASE
My first impressions were very positive
Then I met your dad, I met your dad in October
My job was in the Sears Tower and I traveled a little bit for work and I was on the
elevator getting ready to go out of town and I heard someone coming down the hall
and I held the elevator and your dad got on are you coming or going? He said he’s
going I said me too how are you getting to the airport? Can I have a ride? He went
to the bank is he really going to come back for me? He gave me a ride to the airport
and we exchanged business cards and I asked if I could buy him a drink and I was
headed out for a month and I got back and I called his office and I called his office
his secretary his secretary said he’s out of town out of town I called his office
one last time he called me at home
we got married and we got pregnant
your father wanted to live in the suburbs
and he wants to die there
too.
10
11
H. MELT
I looked in the newspaper for an apartment
All of these places said LSD and I couldn’t figure out what that meant
Rented a condo in Lincoln Park, I was the only straight person in the building
Took me awhile to figure out, everyone in the building was lesbian
Except for me, took me awhile to figure out, I knew no one
When I came to Chicago, I talked to absolutely everyone
ALIX ANNE SHAW
FROM RED LINES
Tunnel
Armitage
In this train car I have ridden
a long way through the dark. Together
climbing the concrete stairway to the train
she hears the rush approaching checks the registration of the light
with these riders, through tunnels
with no speech. Bathed in the necessary shapes,
(along which side of the concrete
above her on the platform
the hard seats, absolute.
(Announcements, the narrative voice
that there is no registration of words or actions in space
how to understand it if each car bears the imprint
(This is a red line train to 95th--))
Everyone reading a smartphone, attendant
to the single, lit device.
But if no one will bear witness
then how can we be human?
The man with dirty hair, jittery and raw-eyed,
ravenous, raking the scene.
how many through the tunnels
don’t return
lost in the cars
(and how many
thin ghosts of herself)
who is even now still real
that there is no registration as light struggles out of darkness
she struggles
with her backpack
up the stairs
To Fullerton on the Brown Line
If there is no witness to bear you.
The angles coming forth.
air thick pink like Boston
Sedgewick
winter eve
whitegirls brown brick buildings
ghosted
(She says, “Close the window.
of the bodies that have ridden
she has shed how many selves (“filled with unruly desire”) passed through
the woman who was alive there These days, I cannot help
but keep hard track.
the silver plates advance
that scaffold’s moving light)
Close the goddamned window.”)
Pitched from side to side
in the cars, on the restive train. In the stark fields
in the glass
she answers your face
she asks “are you tired?” no the girl says no
you are tired
I am looking in
Ad Lucem
of your absence, I have begun
to starve.
huddled under orange heat lamp
he can tell by the sound of rushing
(These winter anniversaries and no grass.
12
dots of sun distort across his bag
the next train does not stop
13
ALIX ANNE SHAW
ALIX ANNE SHAW
The man with red hair clutching at the rail—
a woman pierced and tiny
eyes closed
turning
he thinks
a tiny bird
an Ibo statue
the blackeyed maple
by the imprint of its riders
lately gotten off
(It’s 32 degrees
9:42)
he thinksa room to work in
in which there might shiny head
in sun be sun
watches the bald man’s
she plucks the split ends from her hair
ghost murals auto/ fire / life a red comb in his hair
(she watches my reflection in the glass)
the glittery red Target his hands and how they shake each of us beside an empty seat
the woman there
now gone
he
hunches forward in his seat
she strokes her girlfriend’s nape
(the branches in the wires
shine
with rain)
backward in the doors ailanthus
(“tree of heaven”) weeds car in the breakdown lane
ground” the sky
in the median the truck says Intermodal
“throws an equivocal light on double
Hello my first name is Mickey my last name is Cameron. I spent a year and a half in
the state psychiatric hospital. Now I have no money no food and no clothes. Ladies
and gentleman can you help a brother out?
‘Or Reinhardt, borrowing Hegel, who writes of a ‘luminous darkness’,
calling black the ‘medium of the mind.’”
Here at the conjunction of the freeway and the bus
See Thru Chinese Kitchen mirrored in blackened pane
To 95th
“All passengers must exit” or exist
Temple of Anubis installed at Mickey D’s
in the showcase golden jackals “I did some time in prison”
she glances toward
beside me
he announces to the car
the girl’s thick braids
away
a whitegirl sits
she takes her pillow with her where she goes
I text the boy
<emoticon>
we smile
through our phonesin the tunnel
the woman sits in front of me
“to read what was never written”
95th
she sits beside the stroller
no more signal
enormous silver hoops
penetrates
on the northside
we don’t ride to
attend the mummied dead aslant
beneath fluorescent light
the man’s eyes Legba’s
Do not leave items on counter
gospel from the speaker
no no it’s not too late
run
you may think your life is done
here where the trains stack up
she says not where I live but where I stay pink lip prints on her rubber
boot
the sign reads Do Not Board
ain’t seen your best day yet
photographs the baby with her phone
14
as if
15
ALIX ANNE SHAW
ALIX ANNE SHAW
“you ruin everything!”
“spark of the contingent”
what it might mean to document a life
if each car is inhabited 87th
fat black wires parallel to tracks first snow on the leaves
in the car his hair illumined by the sun
“the expressive coherence” glinting on her hat
fake bits of plastic
“due to the length of time the subject had to remain still” KAYLIA ZANCAN
She reads “The Spirit of the Age” on his t-shirt gravestones crosses
who survive the past” UNTITLED
& “Open-Handed Help”
“The future returns to those
who ridestoward which station
I move
a colder car
*
Making my way forward
I pass above the rails
If you press this button by accident, please respond
ALIX ANNE SHAW
alone
one other rider
in the first car of the train
exhausted opening a woman in the front seat
slumped her tired troubled eyes
regard me don’t respond
instead she travels backward freight containers trash
at her feet
move she sleeps
that she cannot close”
the switch
“face turned toward the past”
“wreckage upon wreckage” hurling
two red lights approach us this angel she does not
of repair “such violence
the violet light the switchyard
&
Note Many short quotations above are drawn from writings by Walter Benjamin, including his
essay “A Short History of Photography,” and “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” For the idea
of thought as “luminous darkness,” I am indebted to Briony Fer’s article “Night,” which appeared
in Oxford Art Journal 30.1, 2007. 69-8.
16
17
KAYLIA ZANCAN
To the man//who hangs the stars/where do they go/in the mornings/when the light
comes on/and there’s no one/to see them burn out//where do they hide/on the other
side/of the moon//why don’t you/let me stay up with you/just once/to watch them
simmer/like nightlight flares on a map/let me/stay up with you until the morning/
when the light comes on/and we go for coffee/on Lincoln street/beside the old music
hall/sit at a table for two/by the window/with one fuchsia carnation/two chipped
mugs//we talk about the gravel roads/lined with iodine tipped foxtails//the coffee
steam/bends and twists/like the roads between the mountains/lonely roads//you pay
in quarters/before you leave/on hourglass time/to hang the stars/in the city/until the
light comes on
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
F R O M E V E R Y W H E R E , L I K E L E AV E S O N T R E E S
Heavy Bass-Drum Beats
Last time love happened. Lied to. Used. Convinced by some monster with a
dangling bowl of porridge to come out from under her bed.
She liked porridge. It wasn’t fair.
Odds were against her.
Almost Human In Heft
His heroes, Sid and Nancy. After them, he modeled everything. A girl he
concluded, should make him more like Sid. He wanted leather and a motorcycle. So
he attached himself to people that rode leather and wore motorcycles. He wanted to
appear larger than he really was.
The truth was more Pulp Fiction.
The tragedy: that he wouldn’t take the time to enjoy a nice plate of blueberry
pancakes.
Why was that?
Men Like Men Alone
The bigger monster than a monster could possibly be was in fact, a vulture.
He picked at the dumb ones, prettier ones.
You are what you eat.
As pretty dumb ones bled on the altar, he took their cartilage between his
beak until he found raw bone. Because the marrow was his favorite he saved it for last.
He sucked until they stopped their writhing. And screaming. Then was he
satisfied.
Until supper again.
In Some Science-Fiction Reality Rent Is Due
The football player said, “I would like to take your virginity.”
“I can’t,” she said. “There’s an election today. I must vote. I’m a democrat.”
“But you are not old enough to vote.”
18
Kiss The Front
One of the nicer Mexicans in Mexico, Eduardo was always crossing the
border to
California for their Vons Club chocolate chip cookies, which left Lupe feeling hopeless
and lonely because she had come to accept that no matter how good her molé was
Eduardo would prefer the taste of America more.
Lupe and her “Chulo Wardo,” as she called him grew old like this, content
with the mechanics of their relationship.
Goddamn That Girl!
“Why won’t you come with me?”
She was the most daring unicorn the stallion had ever known.
“There are sun and palm trees where I am going. We will fly.”
“What you don’t understand,” he said, “is that I’m a stallion. You have a horn.
I can’t fly.”
“What you don’t understand,” she said, “is I believe we can.”
Uni·corn: noun \'yü-ne-₁korn\
was an evolved species. She flew all over the world leaving a trail
of light so that the stallion would be able to find her. If he wanted.
And if he believed horns and light trails were beautiful. Because
she already knew.
If No Customers Came For Me, I Would Yell
Fill in the “_____________________,” is a pop song. And Mallory Jones
hates pop songs.
No One More Than You
Between my teeth are stuck the letters O-U-C-H. Hold taste before you
swallow.
When you offer him M&M’s and he ignores you, keep the green ones.
Making Love In 2008, 10
Can your heart float Columbus? Like mine does? Buoy and circle? Like a sea
of red, sinking?
Up?
Up?
Up?
Up?
19
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
For Him, Potatoes
Hans-Georg, a German boy about four, maybe seven, looked like a boy who
would grow up to be someone Samantha Patterson might like.
Samantha Patterson, a linguist, studied how sounds were made, the patterns
of letters going together.
To her, Hans-Georg was a cherub. Literally. It was his face. So cute. And
round. More important, she liked about him the way he made things. The way he
shaped an intricately embossed pig from Chinese paper.
“Are you old enough to put your penis into my vagina?” she asked. “Would we
even know how that would work?”
“I’m a libertarian,” he answered.
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
Facing Time Warner building, a window seat. Overlooking Central Park
South.
Russian male ballerina. We call him ballerino. For Italian.
Gucci leather, Gucci watch, Gucci shoes around your ankles. He photographs
your naked body.
“To remember,” he says. “To take home.” Lost in mouth, wrapped around his tongue. An earring vanishes. Over
window, circle, park
When it happened to me, it happened at the beach. I can say it was slightly
traumatizing. I had a fiancé. A surfer. I was a surfer too. We were at the beach to surf.
Because that’s what surfers do. Well, we were walking to the water, surfboards in tow,
talking about I don’t even know what—but it must have been interesting because for
one, I wouldn’t want to marry a guy that wasn’t interesting and two, the conversation
was interesting enough for my ankle to run into a pipe protruding haphazardly out of
the ground.
“Ow,” I said with complete non-bravado, in the most unexcited monotone
voice that I’m capable of mustering. And I really said it just like that—no dramatic
overemotional flair. Just, “Ow.” I mean, I tripped and kept on walking, hoping to divert
the attention away from my clumsiness in the smoothest, most graceful manner
possible. And my fiancé, we’ll call Nick for the sake of privacy, asked me if I was alright.
Of course I said, “Yes, yes,” brushing it off in an effort to rush from the scene, but,
because this is how it seems to work in my life, at that moment a woman started yelling
hysterically. She was maybe sixty-five and had a perm. And you could tell that she had
very strong opinions about the world she lived in because she screamed as shrill as she
possibly could, “Your ankle! The pretty part of your ankle!”
My initial thought was, “God.” And by the time I had that thought, a crowd
had gathered. There was blood. It was oozing. I could hear people shouting things.
“Get her some air!”
“Make room!”
“Elevate her leg so she doesn’t die!”
It was too much. I felt a little bit dizzy. I didn’t know if I was really losing
blood or what, but things started to look fuzzy. I could make out a dwarf hovering in
the periphery of people who had ringed themselves around me, he yelled out, “She
might get an infection!”
“I’m alright!” I shouted back.
But obviously the people were concerned. Because the sixty-five year old
woman told my fiancé that he needed to get me to the lifeguard and that the lifeguard
would know what to do.
“No, please, you’re making it seem worse than it really is,” I said.
“Honey,” my fiancé said. “It’s pretty bad.”
And the crowd said, “Yes, yes! It is bad! Take her to the lifeguard!”
So I said, “If I go, will you all relax?”
And the crowd yelled, “Yes! Please go! We’ll all feel much better once you see
the lifeguard!”
So I agreed, my fiancé helped me up, and I hopped on one foot through the
sand like it was the fucking Mojave. As we got closer to the lifeguard tower, the lifeguard
became clearer—which meant, the lifeguard was cute. Which meant I stopped. Which
20
21
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
SEXY BEAST
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
Until the glass from a living space on the 57th floor of the Time Warner
building makes miniature your taxi cab. Like Hot Wheels.
meant that my fiancé stopped and asked if I was alright.
“Of course. I’m fine,” I said. “You know, I really think it’s fine. Maybe we can
skip this part.”
But of course he was having none of that. “You heard what the little person
said back there. You might get an infection.”
To which I replied, “I didn’t shave my legs.”
This is when my fiancé normally begins to lose patience with me. Because
what my fiancé knows about me that you don’t is that I can crush like a high school girl
when there’s a hot guy in front of me. Like for example, when we first started dating,
my fiancé (boyfriend at the time), took me to an Incubus concert—knowing how much
I loved them—because well, he was a nice guy and he loved me and wanted to do nice
things for me that would make me happy. I of course got geeky and drooled all over the
presence of the God that was Brandon Boyd, while my boyfriend watched me in all my
patheticness, saying in his professional monotone voice, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Of course I said, “No. No, I’m not.” Then I turned back toward the stage and
screamed a sound that I think Brandon would want me to scream if he said, “You, you
over there in seat 14G...” I would look around all shocked and say, “Me!? Me?” And he
would say, “Yes, yes you.” Then I would wave my hands all quick-like in front of my
face to keep from losing it because he was talking to me and he would say, “Take your
panties off.” And of course I would say, “Yes, Oh my God, Yes!”
So we end up at the lifeguard tower. And might I say, if only to give you a
better picture of what kind of lifeguard hotness we’re dealing with here—the guy was
equipped with an Australian accent, and using it.
He asks what he can do for us. I bury my face partially into my hands and say,
“I have to apologize. I didn’t shave my legs.” There’s a confused pause before my fiancé
says to him, “She cut the pretty part of her ankle on a pipe out there.”
And the lifeguard says, “Right mate, let’s have a look, ay.” He starts looking at
it. I’m mortified. My fiancé is sending me secret mind messages that sound something
like, “Get a grip you fricking dweeb-tard.” Then of course I have to say, “This is so
embarrassing,” out loud. Followed by, “If I had known this was going to happen I would
have shaved my legs.”
My fiancé says, “Do you think she needs stitches?”
“I won’t tell you what to do ay, but if you were my daughter, I’d say, Yeh mate.
If you don’t, that gash will be at least an inch wide, an inch tall—leave a nasty looking
bugger of a scar. You get stitches ay—you’ll shrink it.”
“Daughter!” I screamed in my head. “What about if I was your lover!?” But he
couldn’t hear that. I remembered my legs were exposed. That they were hairy.
And my fiancé, sweet bad-ass Nickey, the one who came to the beach with my
unshaven hairy legs, turned to me and said, “Will you listen to the guy?”
So what could I do? The scar was going be there whether I liked it or not, but
at least someone cared to make it better for me.
...Nickey fucking Nickey—fucking love that guy.
22
THE HANGMAN’S TREE
Hook, you remember, had sneered at the boys for thinking they needed a
tree apiece, but this was ignorance, for unless your tree fitted you it was
difficult to go up and down, and no two of the boys were quite the same
size. Once you fitted, you drew in your breath at the top, and down you
went at exactly the right speed, while to ascend you drew in and let out
alternately, and so wriggled up. Of course, when you have mastered the
action you are able to do these things without thinking of them, and then
nothing can be more graceful.
-------------------------As I step on the old wood, blue-grey paint chipping and folding under the dew of
spring rains, it’s the first realization I have that my feet aren’t the feet of a 24-year-old
woman, but those of a 10-year-old child.
At first I think I’ve reverted, that my body has shrunk back to the androgyny it possessed until I turned fourteen, absent all the fat that would eventually come in a tide
to change me. But as I raise myself up I can feel the heaviness of my breasts and know
that it isn’t the foot of a ten-year-old child, but House has grown, or I have shrunk.
5’6” to 4’3”.
For a moment after lifting my second foot off the wet off-white concrete of House’s
driveway, I stand there on the first step. I can feel the weight of the air, drops of snow
from the cloud that’s stopped to sleep above House, landing on my hair, taking tiny
naps. Resting before floating up and up again into the clear Colorado sky.
The chipping paint is slick under my feet, but years upon years of running barefoot
over concrete, wood, grass, stone, and gravel have hardened their soles. I have no fear
of slipping when running up those steps, two short, one long plank, then two short
again, a long plank, then three more short.
Up and up until I reach the final ten short steps to the mouth of House.
Even if I fall, it’s never given me a splinter. House is old wood.
Soft wood.
It holds you up while bending slightly, as if the wood never died but kept living and
23
KATHRYN WEIL
HE ATHER LYNN SHOREY
KATHRYN WEIL
growing deep into the earth, and I had grown with it. A sapling absent roots.
I walk the few steps to House’s mouth and turn the long faux-gold handle until it
opens then take that last slight step in. I’m sad to leave the fog and wipe at the sleeping dew resting on my arms and legs, but I don’t want to get the golden wood floors of
House’s foyer wet.
I don’t wipe my feet. The bottoms are covered in small pieces of wood and paint that
came up with each running step. They’ll dry inside, quickly. Though there isn’t a rug,
so the splinters and paint chips will stick or fall away to the floor.
Anyways, to the left is my room, and then my sister’s room. Mine was obviously the
smaller of the two, but if we go you should know it’ll just change.
It changes from the room I had when I was five to ten, to the room I had when I was
ten to twelve. Flipping back and forth as if House can’t keep it still. I’m actually not
sure that’s House. It’s probably just me.
I don’t go in my sister’s room.
Don’t really like her.
House’s torso dips down, it’s a step down from golden wood floors to plush pink carpet, not pink like bubble gum, but more like the mottled color of raspberry vitamins.
A little white, a little magenta, turning pink.
My feet have dried and are picking up dog hair off of the wood floor that connects the
arteries to the heart to the torso and the roots. It’s golden, but I don’t expect to see a
dog. You won’t see anyone.
I never really go there, anymore. As a kid I’d lay on the floor rewinding VHS tapes or
watching episodes of Boy Meets World, ignoring the piano in the corner I was supposed to be practicing on.
The heart is where I walk through, always. Foggy sun is trying to peek through the
window over the sink, that thankfully has curtains. At night when the light is on, no
matter where I am, I hate staring out windows and doors not knowing who is looking
back.
The piano would get sold, despite it being an heirloom. I never learned to play, not
really. Even with the lessons. It’s when you’re forced to do something that you hate
doing it, and would rather do anything else. Now I wish more than anything I’d
learned it to perfection.
I don’t go to the bedrooms (arteries) either, not now. But I’ll take you there anyways.
House’s arteries branch off of each other. Right next to the stairs to its roots there’s
this doorway just sitting there. You can choose to go right, or left. Straight ahead is
the first bathroom.
There is an island counter, which is actually just a huge chopping block. Wood made
purely for cutting. A black refrigerator—the Schwann’s guy fills it when I’m not here, I
think—and a bunch of counters, then the stove with the microwave above it.
This sink, here, has a little spigot on it. The kind of sprayer thing that has a retractable
cord you can pick up and squeeze so it’ll spray the dishes. Like in showers.
As a joke every April Fool’s my sister and I would tie a white hairband around it (to
match the color of the sink) and wait for my mom. Every single year she would turn
on the faucet and spray herself.
Right is where my parents slept. Huge waterbed, huge bathroom.
Every year, without fail.
Huge bathtub, with bubbles.
It had a porch too, the aorta. The porch wrapped around House from the dining room
(don’t worry, we’ll go. That’s the lungs), to my parent’s bedroom.
I don’t like having a porch or a door off my bedroom, to this day. Easy access, you
know? One time my father took my sister and I around House and showed us where
24
Then there’s the breakfast bar and these huge seats. They’re tall, like barstools, but
golden wood like the floors and they have backs so you don’t have to balance. The bar
is the same height as high-chairs so my mom could feed us here easily.
Though my sister and I would fall anyways, rocking the high chairs.
25
KATHRYN WEIL
KATHRYN WEIL
I call it a foyer but it’s not. The moment you enter House the truth is you’re actually in
the living room (torso), staring into the kitchen (heart), and next to the stairs to the
basement (roots).
to hide in case someone broke in. There was this slat underneath my parent’s waterbed that my sister and I could just fit into. I asked where he would go and he said they
would go outside, onto the porch. My first thought was that, that wasn’t very safe.
Especially if whoever broke in came in through the porch.
The fourth yard is back further and has a swing-set, but I only played on it sometimes
because the mosquitoes would just fly above it—like they were being clever.
The humans will certainly come to the metal device.
And then here is the dining room, the lungs.
But we didn’t. Not really.
My feet by this time have gathered more animal fur. Black and white has joined golden, then some mottled, then some grey. I try to rub it off on the woven carpet underneath the gold-wood table and the two chairs (on either end, benches flank the other
side of the table. They’re wood too, but dark wood. Almost black), but it won’t go.
I’d go out there except it’s always here, at the back porch in House’s lungs, staring out
the glass door.
Fur loves to stick to wet feet, but I hate socks and I hate shoes. I want to feel House.
For some reason, this spot, this very spot, caught between the outside, and House.
I want to feel the world branching out underneath me.
Because outside of House, leads to Home.
And here it is then.
But you couldn’t understand.
The back door out to the aorta that connects to my parent’s room.
Under the porch is another glass door like this one, which opens to the roots, where
my dad spent most of his time.
House is my only home, even though it doesn’t exist anymore.
That’s the start of yard number three. (Did I mention House has four yards? Because
it does.)
Home is like, if House had more roots that joined with other roots, they would be
Yard number three is pretty big, Starts at the roots, then goes around and up, she has
a waterfall between her top (where the porch and the big tree are, see?) and her bottom (where the roots are). Eventually the grass stops and becomes stones and twigs
and pinecones that fall from this pine tree. It’s pretty big, the first branches don’t
start ‘til the top of my head.
I’m always here.
Home isn’t my home.
Home’s roots. Like the Aspen Grove in Colorado that is all one organism, connected at
the roots.
I don’t have to ask, but I know.
House is for the subconscious mind. House is for pirates, detectives, birds, beasts, and
absence.
Mom said the pine tree is the only reason she bought House.
Home is what I think about when I’m awake.
So I guess I owe a bit to the pine tree.
But don’t ever climb it! The branches are rickety, and when you climb a pine tree you
get sap all over your hands, and splinters from the breaking bark. Also the pinecones
have sticklers, and the needles will tickle and scratch you all over.
Better to climb the white Aspens over by the other end, right in front of House where
the white concrete meets smooth rocks. (Have to find a strong one, though, Aspens
are the more fragile trees.)
26
27
KATHRYN WEIL
KATHRYN WEIL
I don’t remember which is which, but one of us fell forward in the high chair (SMACK
to the floor) and the other fell backwards (THUD to the floor).
CARLEY GOMEZ
To my mom, the desert was death. Moving from Florida to Arizona, the
dry, baking air and the rolling dust and plants were signs of vacancy and danger, signs
of stunted growth. When we moved, I was too young to agree with her and too young
to care about the heat that causes a large box of crayons to melt into pools of sparkling greens and purples in the car in early May. I watched the pretty swirls of color
dripping down the backs of the leather seats in awe.
“There’s nothing green here,” my mom would say our first year in Tucson.
We would point out the saguaros and the Palo Verde trees but those didn’t count.
Where were the leafy trees and the grass? Even our school fields were yellowed and
would prick our thighs when we had to sit down before gym class.
Eventually, the loss of Florida’s greenery subsided as my mom found colors
to love in Arizona: the warm-colored progression of the sunsets, the purple fruit
budding out of prickly pear cacti, and the red and blue feathers of birds’ wings flaring
in flight.
***
In the last days that my aunt lived in Texas she almost OD’d on a combination of pills and liquor. After her rehab, my mom drove from Tucson to Texas overnight to bring her to our home. Our house was fairly crowded. We had a lot of space
but my grandmother was already living with us since my grandfather had died, I had
two brothers, we had a cat and a dog, and Aunt Melinda had brought her guinea pig
with her. While Aunt Melinda was healing, my parents took care of her guinea pig.
Our dog, Cosmo, had a tendency to take his plush toys and methodically rip
the the stuffing out until all that was left was an empty, fuzzy shell. No one wanted
Melinda’s guinea pig to suffer the same fate and there wasn’t a place in the house
that would have been out of our Cosmo’s reach. My parents tried to come up with a
living arrangement that suited all three pets. After seven years in Arizona, I would
have liked to believe that we knew enough about the desert not to reach an outdoors
arrangement, but that was all my parents could think of. They put the guinea pig in
its little cage on the balcony beside their bedroom.
When it was stung by a scorpion and died over night, it was easy to blame
my parents. But the truth is that none of us kids would have been responsible
enough to keep any room door closed all the time. If the desert hadn’t gotten Melinda’s guinea pig, Cosmo would have.
***
When a gila monster bites someone, they don’t let go. They dangle from
their mouths off of whatever body part they’ve managed to rip their teeth into. And
then the victim is stuck with a black and orange lizard up to two feet long attached
until they remove it or get to a hospital.
28
Once the gila monster and the bitten arrive at the hospital, there are a
couple of ways to remove the lizard. One option is to put a lighter under the gila
monster’s chin. Another is to submerge the lizard completely in water. The last option is to pour alcohol down the animal’s throat. The lizard releases and then falls to
the hospital floor. Sometimes, they let the lizard fall to the ground and put a bucket
over it.
This situation isn’t often met with sympathy. Usually when a doctor asks a
bite victim (of any animal) how they got bit, the victim starts with “I was minding my
own business when...” and it’s followed by “a rattlesnake jumped out and bit me” or
“the lizard chased me down”. In other words, they lie. Rarely is an animal out to do
someone harm.
Although mistakes are made when our senses aren’t operating as they
should. Like the time I stuck my hand into a pool filter without looking and a baby
gila monster (they love water) was an inch from my finger. Or the time that my
younger brother sat on a scorpion because he wasn’t looking. Or when my entire
family went on a walk in the neighborhood after dinner and my older brother almost
stepped on a snake. None of us were hurt but others weren’t as lucky.
***
My mom told me that my aunt always had an unusually close relationship
with animals. When they were really little my mom and Melinda would share a room.
Once in a while my mom would wake up in the middle of the night because Melinda
was whispering down on the ground, her face near the floorboards. My mom would
lean over her bed and see Melinda reaching her hand out to feed a mouse bits of
cheese. The mouse would eat directly from Melinda’s hand.
I like to believe that there was a thread of cautiousness and sympathy that
ran through her. A combination of emotions that an animal could understand.
***
When I was eleven years old, my family adopted a cat. We adopted her
from the humane society and even though she already had a name, “Lulu”, I decided
that it wasn’t fitting for an undersized, siamese mix that carried herself like a princess. I named her “Sasha”. She was an indoor cat, as much as most cats in Tucson are
indoor cats. They start out inside because the desert is dangerous but eventually they
sneak out.
She had the freedom to come and go as she pleased for about two and a
half years. And then one day she didn’t come back home for food. After three days
my mom pulled me aside and told me that she thought Sasha was gone for good. She
said that maybe someone nice had taken her in. But by then, I knew better. Hawks,
coyotes, there were a number of animals in the desert that made cats disappear.
***
29
CARLEY GOMEZ
CARLEY GOMEZ
AN ARIZONA ANIMAL
CARLEY GOMEZ
***
Javelina live in herds. They seem to wander without discernment through
the neighborhoods. They cross roads slowly and steadily, sometimes three or four
“Reds” (baby javelina) between several rather menacing adult javelinas. Even as cars
approach, they don’t speed up.
Occasionally, in the middle of the night at our old house, I could hear them.
They took out our trashcans, knocking the recycling bin over, and smearing garbage
along the driveway. Not easy for an animal that can only reach about two feet tall.
But they’re vicious. A man in our neighborhood was taking a walk one evening and
came across a male javelina. The javelina attacked and the poor man had to run for
his life.
After they heard that story, my parents tried to make sure the lid of the
garbage can was more tightly closed each night, thinking that it might deter the javelina. People put rocks or bricks on their trashcans to keep them out. They had kids to
worry about after all. But the javelina kept coming.
***
My mom often told me the story of her and Melinda each owning a pet
turtle. She didn’t say much about the turtles themselves, what they liked or how
they acted, I got the feeling that the turtles weren’t very exciting for eight year
old girls. But one day, my mom noticed that one of the turtles was dead. As she
screamed for her dad she decided that the dead turtle was Melinda’s. Neither girl
could tell the two apart.
The girls sobbed hysterically and their dad took the turtle outside in the
30
backyard and dug a little grave. After putting the turtle in the dirt, they all went back
inside. My mom went to look in on her healthy turtle but upon prodding it, realized
that it wasn’t healthy at all. They had buried the wrong turtle.
When my mom used to tell the next part of the story, her father would run
outside, dig through the dirt and save the turtle. Lately though, she’s taken to telling
the truth. Her father didn’t get the turtle out in time.
***
My aunt moved out of my parent’s house when I was fourteen. She didn’t
go far. She picked Bisbee, Arizona, a two hour drive from Tucson. There would be
jokes about this for years to come because Bisbee was known to Tucson as a town
that collected and created crazy people. It was a small, old mining town, with houses
that tilted precariously on the edge of a mountainside. There was so little to do in this
place that even high school valedictorians had a proclivity for vandalism and trespassing.
The place seemed strangely perfect for my aunt. She collected friends
quickly there. When we visited Bisbee to see her, half the town knew her and smiled
when they said her name. She collected stray cats just as quickly. One visit when I
was twenty-two, she told us that strays made her closet their home. The bits of her
that were missing kept her smiling as she told us that a cat had birthed several kittens
on her jacket and the father had ripped one of them apart, and smeared blood all over
the closet floor.
That visit was the last time I saw my aunt before she was killed.
***
When I was seventeen my family moved to a smaller house and my grandmother moved into her own apartment. Every Thursday my parents and I went to
her apartment to have dinner. Oftentimes, my younger brother came too and once in
a while so would my older brother. One Thursday, when all five of us were there my
older brother, Max, told us a story about two of his friends that had gone on a short
backpacking trip the previous weekend.
“A day and a half in, Casey and his friend lost their water,” Max said.
“Lost it?” my mom asked, alarmed.
“Lost it. Gone,” he nodded. “So they had to decide if they should turn
around or keep going and hope that they would run into someone. They had another
three days ahead of them. They decided to keep going.”
“They kept going?” I repeated. “Why?”
“They didn’t want to turn around,” Max said.
“Jesus,” my mom said.
“Casey told me that the second night, he was so thirsty that he couldn’t
sleep. He just laid awake all night, thinking about water.”
I’d heard you can survive three days without water. But in the desert, they
probably had less time than that.
“The third day, they finally ran into someone. Casey told the stranger what
31
CARLEY GOMEZ
When Melinda came to Tucson she was changed in a lot of ways. I could
only remember bits of difference though. Her hair was crisp and brittle, her skin was
yellowed, but where her appearance had diminished, her voice had grown louder. Her
wardrobe was that of a confused old woman, with glasses from the early nineties. Her
teeth were a cautionary tale. She was the woman we avoided on the street but she
was also one of the kindest women I had ever known.
She would wander around the house singing, helping my grandmother with
chores. Everyday, she walked me home from the bus stop. When I had dreams of
being some great poet, she collected my poems without me knowing, and put them
into a binder because she believed that they were worth saving; that the ramblings of
angst from a twelve-year-old were worth saving. But there were days when we could
see that threads of her were missing.
We had two rose bushes in our front yard, one that bloomed pale pink,
another that bloomed yellow. Melinda took to pruning them. In the beginning she
was cautious, carefully trimming down leaves and excess growth, but on a day when
a thread of her was missing, she began to whistle and just kept pruning until the
bushes became stubs. They never bloomed again after that.
JESSE LAIER
had happened and they were able to get enough water that they could finish their
trip,” Max said, picking up his fork.
I wanted to call them idiots but almost all of us at the table have been
desert-stupid before. My younger brother had gone hiking more than once without
water. My older brother went rock climbing in the winter in shorts and a t-shirt. I
don’t think he had a rope. And I had gone hiking in the middle of the night during
snake season and had a tendency to walk barefoot in desert washes.
When I found out that my aunt had been murdered, I was in Chicago getting ready for graduate school. I was unfamiliar with the tightly shaped urbanism of
downtown. I had never seen people living so close to one another before. I lived in a
high rise in the South Loop and I remember my dad calling me at around eight o’clock
at night. I remember that after my dad told me that Melinda wasn’t missing, that
they had found her dead and hidden in the bathtub, I had a sudden sense that people
were somehow wrong, that human nature had become sick and decrepit. And I was
completely surrounded by them. Living in a forty-three story building, there was no
space to be separate from others.
I remember yearning for open land, for the desert. I remember wishing
that there was wild space surrounding me, natural space, that hadn’t been defined by
people. I remember thinking that at least nature wasn’t malicious. That even though
the desert was hostile and destructive, I imagined that nature was sympathetic. It
doesn’t kill over lust or anger, the way that I imagine Melinda’s boyfriend must have
killed her, it kills out of necessity. There are only so many resources in the desert to
go around.
***
The first time I saw a rabbit after moving to Chicago, I laughed. It was tiny,
a shade of bland brown that seemed useless in the snow, and it’s ears were painfully
small. It was nothing like the gray speckled rabbits with long ears and visible tension
in their hind legs from Arizona. Hiding under the brush of cacti and ragweed, those
rabbits were defiant survivors. They were animals that hadn’t gone soft and plump in
the grassy yard of a suburban home, used to convenience and consistency. Arizona
rabbits, those were true animals, waiting and observing, knowing that each step could
be known to a predator, that each step needed to have a purpose.
32
“Where are you going?” my dad said.
“For a bike ride,” I replied. I tightened the chinstrap of my gold bike helmet.
“It’s not safe. The drivers won’t be able to see you.”
I wanted to say something smart, something that would make my dad throw his
hands up in the air and realize he needn’t impart any wisdom onto me since I had all
my shit together.
Instead I whined, “But dad…” until my high-pitched screech forced his head to throb
and he realized the benefits to letting me leave.
I hopped on my yellow Magna and peeled out of the driveway to the Skylake Strip
Mall, which was around four blocks from my house. I stayed rolling on the sidewalk.
Despite my put on hardness to my dad, I was afraid that any contact I had with the
road would result in the traffic flattening me out against the asphalt. The sidewalk
wasn’t much safer, with the roots from the trees in the planters swelling and popping
the sidewalk panels out of place. If you paid no mind to the uneven terrain you were
likely to wind up with your teeth scattered across the way. My mom knew a thing or
two about those sorts of accidents. She’d busted her elbow when her foot caught the
lip of one of the unaligned squares. Another time she had to get stitches after she tore
open her forehead on the metal tip of her umbrella after tripping.
The sidewalk of the strip mall was off limits to bicyclists. I learned that after many
scolds by the security officers who took their jobs too seriously. I walked my bike to
my side to the Peruvian Restaurant, called Mi Peru Restaurante, Luke and I used as
our official meet up spot. We never ate there, but they kept an orange water cooler
with paper cups outside, which we drank from. We weren’t quite sure why they offered up the water service. Maybe it was for those that ordered take out but wanted to
shovel down their food right after they got it. Maybe they thought a passerby would
think the water was so delicious that they would go inside and try some of their
dishes. Our favorite resolution was that Mi Peru Restaurante had a plot to engage the
neighborhood in a collective hallucination. The water cooler was distilled with liquid
acid and those who drank it would trip hard after a few hours. How this would lead to
more meat pastries being sold, we didn’t know, but it seemed as good a reason as any.
33
JESSE LAIER
CARLEY GOMEZ
***
L U K E A N D J E S S E P L AY AT T H E PA R K
After we properly hydrated ourselves with the drug water, we cut across the parking
lot and made our way to Greynolds Park. We passed the golf course and the Pro Shop
where my mom used to take me in the morning for bagels and cream cheese. We
searched for an opening within the trees. We wanted to be enveloped by nature, away
from the Frisbee tosses and the volleyball matches, engrossed within the woods, next
to the brown water with threading spiders and treading snakes. We found an entryway with a concrete bridge that extended into a clearing. We placed our bikes parallel
to the ground and sat on the steel handrails. The heat attached itself to our skins. My
face turned red, Luke’s brown skin reflected the sunlight. We ingested the surroundings, as fish bobbed up to the surface to wrangle some food into their mouths. A
breeze stirred the leaflets of the moss-covered trees. They fell down to our feet. Then
we got up and continued exploring as we chatted about paranormal phenomena and
our annoying friend Mauricio. Luke found a small plastic baggie on the ground. He
picked it up with his thumb and forefinger and held it up to my face.
“Look, man, a nickel bag,” he said. “Someone was lighting up some trees.”
As we walked around under the hardwood hammock, we complained. What was
there to complain about? Home life was a drag, but it was also comfortable to have a
room with a bed and materials to expand the mind. Luke had a computer and studied
supernatural occurrences. Those old conversations were vibrant. He taught me about
Old Hag syndrome, where a person woke up in the middle of the night, paralyzed,
with a weight on their chest and the shadow of a demon sitting on them projected
against the wall. I had a typewriter and notebooks in my room, which I used to write
short horror stories and lyrics to fake pop punk songs, like “Homeless equals hurt/
hurt equals pain/ pain equals loneliness/ or my firecracker went the wrong way.” We
weren’t aware of politics and had vague understandings of the consequences of America’s wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, we found ways to complain, about our
friends, about our parents, and about each other.
Our favorite thing to do at the park was to ride our bikes down the hill. It connected
the golf course to the playground. There were no hills in the normal topography of
South Florida, just some dips at the banks of creeks and canals. Greynolds Park had
hills, a byproduct of the drainage used to convert the land from a limestone quarry to
a public park.
the repetition of the hill. I had already conquered my fear of going down it. I trusted
myself to not get hurt.
On top of the hill was a mound. It was a mixture of grass and concrete with an American flag erected at its apogee. At 42 km above sea level, it was the highest point in
South Florida. A sign stood at the mound’s mouth. It prohibited the use of skateboards, roller blades, scooters and bicycles on the hill. I had always abided by those
rules, feeling no compulsion to break them.
Luke wanted to break them.
“Screw the sign,” Luke said.
We hiked our bikes up to the top of the mound. I looked at the expansive perspective
from the height. I quivered. I couldn’t focus on the pathway ahead of me. I imagined
crashing my bike and snapping my neck. I took a breath to dispel my dread. It didn’t
work. I turned to cry to Luke, to make him bend to my demands that we do the
responsible thing and safely trek back to the mound’s base. But he wasn’t in sight.
He had taken off without me noticing. I had no choice but to follow. I leaned forward
and zoomed down the mound as fast as an Olympic luger. I pumped the pedals until I
lost control over their revolutions. I lifted my feet and they whirled around like ghost
feet propelled them. I gripped tight against the handlebars. I steered them around the
wayward stones etched along the path. Once at the bottom I braked and skidded into
the road. No cars were coming. I thanked God to still be breathing. I took a moment
to gain my composure then popped my head up to look for Luke.
Where was Luke?
He wasn’t in my sight. He must have used the momentum from the mound to glide
all the way out of the park. I knew where he would be. He’d be at Mi Peru Restaurante,
one hand’s palm pressed against the orange water cooler with the other bringing a cup
to his lips.
“What’s up, man,” he’d say.
But when I got back to the water cooler Luke wasn’t around. A crumpled paper cone
cup lay at my bike’s tire.
When we started at the hill’s apex and pushed our bikes into the incline, we’d gain so
much speed that we left our bodies, feeling as if part of the wind. Though the more we
sped down the hill, the less exhilarating it became. For Luke, at least. I was fine with
34
35
JESSE LAIER
JESSE LAIER
Luke appeared next to the card shop. He guided his bike with one hand between the
handlebars. We gave each other a high five. He grabbed a paper cone cup and took a
drink of water. I followed suit.
RYAN WRIGHT
The ostrich would be a problem, Dad had repeated, the ostrich, a problem.
Its nest, its eggs. Somewhere along the fencerow. An ostrich could kill a man. Vertiginous, piston legs. Ruthless. He probably made it up, but Dad had told Patrick when he
was his age, sixteen, and laboring on this very farm, Happy Mac’s Pumpkin Farm, he
scoured the fields for those speckled, butternut squash sized eggies because legend had
it they were like eating edible molten gold cream, a less sugary, heavenlier, healthier
and huge Cadbury. But he couldn’t just stroll over and casually yoink an ostrich egg.
Kick kick from the mommy and there’d go his organs, all ruptured and useless. Dad
had to employ ingenuity. Luckily times were tougher then. Men cultivated calluses instinctually. Dad worked his hands rough saving for his rusted out little wagon of a car.
The rust turned out to be advantageous. It was simple. Spot a nest, straddle it with the
rust wagon, and reach through one of the various floorboard corrosions to snatch the
treasure egg and zoom off.
Ostriches evolve. The lady bird that dwelled here now hatched from one of
the eggs not purloined and eaten, and she was somehow privy to the rust wagon antics,
the terrorism, and so as a mother herself, having absorbed, somehow, a lesson from
her embryonic distress, she took to hiding her precious eggs. Land owner Jason asked
Dad to tell Patrick that she built her nest somewhere along the fence in the tall grasses,
the woody grasses Patrick was now charged to cut back with the steel-bladed weedeater
which, should he juice it held above his head, might copter him out of this farm and
down the driveway to the Ault’s blue swimming pool. He revved the weedeater once,
taunting the fencerow overgrowth, and approached.
This wasn’t the thing he had in mind for this day, this summer, this life. Despite the swelter, he had to wear thick denim pants and long sleeves and garden gloves
and a big brimmed hat, that is, if he didn’t want his skin compromised by the prickly
zucchini stems or stinging nettles or harsh woody grasses and poison ivy or sun or
the ticks, ticks were a problem, too, though he had never seen one. He posited their
nearby—always nearby—existence, enough to send unceasing willies thrumming up
his backbone.
Not the thing he would have chosen, but here he was, a job to do, and getting
paid at the end of it, cash, tax free. So he decided to man up. And maybe he cringed
under his long clothing, squirmed, writhed, the nerves, yes, maybe, but Patrick found,
somehow bracketing off the discomfort, little respites in animal form. The Texas longhorn chewing cud, umber body massive, musculature pronounced beneath taut hide,
power and menace encapsulated and then refuted in the vegetarian roamings of this
novelty creature, exotic, this ain’t Texas, no steaks were grown here. The llama. Goofy
black and white, tall-necked sucker. Spitter. He ran funny, mostly what he did with
that neck when running, lunging it forward with an epileptic twisting motion. Stopped
spitting when they castrated him last month. The majestic buffalo, symbol of American frontier. That one was complicated. Patrick longed to snuggle with the curly wooly
36
brute. Without flaw, his cheek upon a buffalo’s throat. He wanted to give up his clothing, his fabric, and live close to the animal because he knew he never could stomach it.
He wanted to set the buffalo free.
Dad grew up with Jason who grew up on the farm, so Dad worked here every summer back then, hard. Manual, rural labor. Indelible crud under finger nails,
lava soap in the mud room, heave-hoeing watermelons onto trailers, twelve year olds
driving pickups over fields, cylindrical cow licking-salts, corn stalks and tobacco leaves.
What could be more Kentucky, where you are from and who you are to be. Toiling the
earth, manipulating vegetables from seed to harvest and growing fat on bounty cultivated by a will to survive, by one’s own means and fortitude, taking satisfaction from
taking control. This was what it was to be a man.
Never mind that Dad did none of this now and probably hadn’t since he was
Patrick’s age. These days Dad wore ties and drove a sedan to his cubicle position, which
didn’t strike Patrick as a bad way to get by, relative to continuous sweating and wielding
a steel, rumbling weapon that sent decapitated woody grass tops every which way, occasionally toward his unprotected eyeballs, all with the possibility of pissing off a prehistoric, beaked Shaquille O’Neil with disconcertingly attractive eyelashes, for an animal.
Patrick wanted to like this. He felt he should like this, this work, applying
himself, outdoors, communing with nature, communing in the sense that he was cutting it back, true, so not really ‘communing,’ rather forcing nature to conform to the
fence, but still, a game, a dance; a chop today, a landscaping buzzcut, and instantly the
grass responded, microscopically springing back, conjuring its fibers into regrowth so
that by this time next week, another due chopping; a tennis match, a chess board, a
competition, an intimacy with something alive and beneath his feet. But he did not
like this.
He wasn’t being monitored, so why not?
He took a break, leaned the weedeater against a tree. Come to think of it,
this was summer. Ticks were winter phenomena. Why not? So he checked all directions, saw no one but the longhorn, and followed his urge, pulling down his jeans and
underwear to his ankles and slowly bending to test his bottom skin against the newly
trimmed fencerow grass. Prickly. Not comfortable, but not all together displeasurable.
Curious. He raised an inch, then bobbed back down on the grass. He did it again. And
again. This was communing with nature. Soft skin, the harsh reality of grass. He didn’t
let his whole weight down, only kissed the surface. Grass didn’t think of it as his bottom because grass didn’t think. Along the fence by the tree, Patrick bobbed and for the
first time in years felt the liberty of natural choice complicating his posterior.
He had tried something like this before, in the shower last week, but it was
artificial. Mom got him a fingernail scrubber for all the crud he accumulated every
day at the farm. The scrubber fit in his palm and had numerous tufts of stiff bristles
that he’d slather and rub vigorously over his fingernails to dig out the crud. Like the
grass, it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, the scrubber bristles, but it did feel paradoxically
good, a different kind of good, like when his tooth hurt and he unreasonably wanted
37
RYAN WRIGHT
RYAN WRIGHT
ATAV I S M
RYAN WRIGHT
he would think of something, and he thought his shirt, his shirt, he unbuttoned it,
running, took it off, running, his hat flew off his head, running, saw now a trail of blood
in the grass leading to the valley behind bushes and trees tossing in the humid wind.
There under some shade the ostrich huddled in a convalescent slump. Patrick
hesitated. She could still hurt him, snatch one of his fingers, his nose. He decided to
move slowly, maybe approach her from behind so he could tie his shirt around her chest
for, as a tourniquet, as, but the wound gaped too far for that. Purple and black gradually
expanded from the gap in her body, surrounding her in a circle, and she seeped into
the earth. Patrick dropped the shirt at his feet. The shirt was a stupid idea. This farm
was a stupid idea. Why did they need all these creatures. Pumpkins. Kids came for the
pumpkins. And they loved to point at the exotic animals while hunting the patch for
the perfect jack-o-lantern. An ostrich around kids, a stupid idea, and now this one was
dying and then dead, bled out.
The ostrich’s long neck had gone limp on the grass, eyes still open. Eyelashes.
Patrick approached the deceased, went to his knees and shut her eyes. He was not angry
or sad. He felt a tingling in his hands and arms, and his pulse, finally slowing from the
panic, the fear. Patrick crawled behind the bird and spooned its long neck like a body
pillow, rubbing his cheek carefully against her soft, fuzzy skin, still warm, but cooling.
38
39
RYAN WRIGHT
to keep tonguing it to feel the pain. And so Patrick laid the scrubber on the tub floor
and bobbed his bottom on it. He liked it, the soft spikes half-tickling his puny cheeks,
half-irritating.
But the grass was different, coarser, and with no shower water, dry. And it
was not a clean thing to do. Showers were clean. Grass was dirty; it came up from the
dirt. It was not a normal thing to do, bobbing your butt on the grass, this was true.
Certainly true. So he stopped.
No one watched him, no one ever had to know, but Patrick knew, and he felt
sorry for himself. Sorry it was the kind of thing he did, the kind of thing he liked to do,
not romp around on fourwheelers or shoot rifles or camp or hike but put his bottom,
his butt, his ass down on the ground to get pricked by reedy grass tips. This was what
no one did, and he had to live with himself until he died.
Patrick pulled up his jeans and picked up the weedeater. He revved it and
went along the fence, fighting back an inexplicable crying which disturbed him further.
It seemed to issue from a blank weakness at the core of him. All along the fencerow he
fought it back, and there it was, the nest with them inside, unmistakable, nine speckled
ostrich eggs.
The weedeater rumbled. Patrick hovered it above the nest, the longest
seconds he had lived, the eggs still, calm, doing nothing, him holding a weapon that
churned and grumbled and gurgled, vibrating and rattling his forearms, his elbows,
his shoulder blades, his consciousness, his conscience, with high grass all around, the
white fence, the creek down there flowing, the opportunity, the possibility before him,
he could bring the weedeater down on the nest and slaughter the forming birdies, still
in their shells, shatter their shells, send their early bodies flying in every direction,
reduce them to pulp and mist, red against the white fence, and maybe then the mother ostrich would come and loose vengeance on him, the boy who massacred her unhatched, helpless, hapless babies.
But he did not. He stepped back. He went around the nest and before he
could resume his job, he saw her, wings outstretched, sixty some yards in the distance,
stamping her feet. Patrick held the weedeater high over his head making himself tall
and menacing and loud. He revved the engine once, twice, he did not fly away and
he did not deter the ostrich now running directly at him, wings beating fiercely, beak
snapping, veritably foaming from it, making no real sound though she could have
been wailing, squalling, admonishing him, imploring him. Out from Patrick’s mouth an
unstoppable and primal cry and he came down with the weedeater, steel blade whirling, and in that moment, as the weapon traced its now inevitable path, Patrick saw
each blade’s distinct sharpness, glinting, reflecting, falling toward the victim in a momentous, lethal arc, contacting, slashing the mother ostrich across the chest, sending
Patrick recoiling backward, vulnerable, and the bird now truly wailing in the opposite
direction over the hill, away.
He dropped the weedeater without shutting it off and ran after the ostrich.
He was repentant. He needed to help it. He didn’t know how but it would come to him,
CAROL HOOD
I T T Y- B I T T Y T R I U M P H S FA R AWAY
day I unwillingly volunteered. I had escaped the fate for weeks, so it had only been a matter of
time. And sure enough, when I pulled from the bag, my scorpion did not even have a tail.
During lunch break, our little group would find our way to the sixth floor of the
yīyuàn (醫院) and sit in the hallway right outside the room of a patient referred to as Caìrén
(彩人). Caìrén was old, her skin dark and rippled like a prune, spotted jowls and a silver
wreath of hair. She was fond of sleep and when she woke she gazed out the window, unmoving
and complacent to let time pass. One of the local med-students, Lǐ Jiaqi, said the woman was
trash, broken, not happy, 不高興.We came filing in, all of us were in white lab coats with an
American flag sewn into the pen pocket. Under it was our Chinese names, given to us on
orientation for the Junior Medical Mission to China. The first row was the ideograms or as
our language instructor called them, characters. The last row was pinyin, the alphabetical
transcription of mandarin, which I quickly learned was for our own benefit and not theirs.
If anything, the pinyin was a gleaming reminder that we would always be remedial Mandarin
speakers, on the outside looking in. My Mandarin name was:
I tried to smile, but really I wanted to crawl in the bed next to Caìrén (彩人)
vegetable person and also sleep for days. “Give me the list,” I told them, but it was always the
same. Bottled water. Fifteen American students perpetually vexed by the idea that they were
expected to drink from the tap, and bottled water? Harder to find than cola.
李采入
Lī CàiRú
No one asked me if I was all right, if I wanted company. I had drawn the deadly
scorpion straw thing and that was all there was to it. I was on my own, in the elevator.
Readying myself for Běijīng (北京) and all the rén (人). What I didn’t think about was that
the last junior medical volunteer who ventured into Běijīng (北京) alone never returned. We
found her that evening in her hotel room, in her bed and tucked meticulously under the covers.
She was sent home the next day.
I practiced my Mandarin, was it yī shuĭ píng or yī píng shuĭ? What were the tones?
Yī píng shuĭ? Yí pìng shuī? Tonal mistakes meant everything, the difference between calling
your mom, mā (mom) and calling your mom, mǎ (horse). I settled on yī píng shuĭ—or how my
American mind rationalized it: Eee. Ping. Shway. The characters came to me next: 一瓶水.
Roughly pronounced: LiyEE-THAI-ROE, given to me for no reason other than
what my English name sounded most similar to. For us, translating Mandarin to English or vice
versa was at best clunky, like a child counting with their fingers. It was an echo effect, a triple
translation: the characters, then the pinyin, then its English meaning or whatever was closest
to it. The goal was to be able to skip over the pinyin, the mark of an efficient translator, but
even at our most advanced, the majority of us were forever caught in the barbwire of the tonal
system, unable to even produce legible sounds.
I exited the front entrance, on the search for bottled water. Coca-Cola ruled the
main streets. Its familiar insignia on every awning, painted on walls, on poles, buzzing across
marquees. Merchants blitzed tourist buses shaking trinkets and novelties so tackily-and-yetdisingenuously Chinese. Little old women scraped the sidewalks with brooms, brushing water,
left over from morning rain, toward the sewers. Pedestrians marched with purpose, unfazed
by the cars that I don’t believe ever adhered to crosswalks and street signs, yet performed
beautiful spatial control, only to be outnumbered by bicycles—and the bike lane was its own
contained apocalypse. They converged through the streets with the wrath of a biblical plague,
ravishing intersections without any signs of breath.
“Any volunteers?” Ben broke the silence. We all diverted our eyes where we could.
I leaned against the wall and peered down the hallway where a single window at its end hardly
warmed the hallway, Beijing (Běijīng, 北京) was always more cloud and soot than sun. Ben
sighed, tired of the same ol’ same ol’, no one, not even him, ever wanted to volunteer. “Fine,”
he said, “we’ll draw straws.”
I was herded left without choice, my height and contrasting skin snatched the
attention of merchants. They came for me toting knock off designer bags, bootleg movies and
“traditional” Chinese memorabilia.
We didn’t use straws. We used bugs. The pharmaceutical room was a trove of
them, a room scrubbed and tiled, lights florescent bright and humming lined steel cabinets
ceiling high. Open a drawer and it was possible to come across dried flowers, scorpion
powder, or bundles of dried centipedes ready for ingesting.
We used scorpions. The one with the shortest tail “wins” and by win we meant
doomed to hit Běijīng’s (北京) concrete jungle with a grocery list. We plucked from the bag
one by one, and I already knew, in some dream like precognitive way, that today would be the
40
Still I kept forward, mumbling to myself: yī píng shuĭ, yī píng shuĭ. I meant to
turn right but was swept into the street by the pedestrian undertow. I hopped over islands and
sprinted across bike lanes. Eee ping shway eee ping shway eee ping shway. Left and right, an
unfamiliar street and that much further away from the醫院 (yīyuàn).
I pushed my way into a bodega, no larger than a train compartment and no space
left untouched. DVDs and flashlights, posters of Chinese movie stars, stacks and stacks of
t-shirts and sweatshirts that advertised the Olympics that had yet to come, a spinning display
fanning out Chairman Mao postcards. Candy red toy cats with 好運 printed on their backs
41
CAROL HOOD
CAROL HOOD
小小運氣是遠
(好運…hǎo, ???…good, ???…Fortune? Good fortune?)
“I’m looking for bottled water,” I said.
The freezer was in the back corner, but there was no bottled water, just coke and
regional drinks, all of it flavored and sugary. I waved to the cashier. He set down his magazine
and turned his gaze to me.
She shook her head. “You no find here.”
“Yī píng shuĭ?” I squeaked.
“Where should I go?” I asked and then threw in for good measure, “Yin wei Wo yao
he shui, yi ping shui suoyi wo xiang qu…uh…” (I want! to drink water, a bottled water, so I
look/area…???)
“Ah? Supermarket?”
It was an amusement park crowded, oppressively hot, and smelled of fries and soy
sauce (I swear). There were no short lines. Every floor had ten cashier stations open and the
lines spilled out the waiting area into the eating area and the eating area had more patrons than
chairs. Four levels of McDonalds and four levels were not enough.
My Mandarin was pointless. Everyone was singing and I was tone deaf. Qin! I
heard “qin!” Everything was qin! (Sounds like “chin!” to Americans). CHIN! CHIN! CHIN!
And it’s its own word and it’s on the end of words, it was a terrifying fun-maze of qin because
either everyone was calling for their mothers or their fathers or their mothers and fathers or
they were talking about getting married or they were talking about going home because that’s
how Mandarin works.
I returned to the ground floor and stood in line. I studied the overhead menu. It
was digital, every few beats the images faded away and new options shimmered in, each more
exciting than the last. Lunch specials! Happy Meals! McWings and spicy garlic sauce? Shrimp
nuggets? Uh…nope. Not today. Coke products galore, but bottled water? I couldn’t tell.
Slowly I inched towards the front of the line, exasperated and wailing inward: would I ever,
ever get back to the醫院 (yīyuàn)?
I finally faced the cashier, a girl with hair crimped crispy like she’d watched one
too many eighties movies. She gaped at me, then without warning or permission yanked out a
small camera from under the counter and snapped my picture. In China I was exotic enough to
be souvenir worthy (黑奴人了!).
I nodded.
“Chāo jí shì chǎng,” she corrected me. (超級市場)
“Chow gee shuh jong,” I tried again. (Noisy, chicken, ???, singing?)
“Chāo jí shì chǎng,” she said slower this time. (超級市場)
“Chao chee suuuure?...jong…?” (超…級… is…場…?)
She laughed and a new wave of frustration and insecurity took me down again. I
felt winded, exhausted, even tears bit at the corner of my eyes. Why was this so hard? Was
I that stupid? That incompetent? I suddenly hated everyone. The cashier in front of me, my
peers waiting comfortably back at the醫院, a girl who one time stepped on my shoes when I
was twelve—everything held equal and antagonizing space in my mind, it all mattered and it
all culminated to a humiliating end: me back in my hotel room, in my bed with the covers over
my head. Waiting for that knock on my door and that one-way ticket back to the States.
The cashier took sympathy on me. She leaned over to her co-worker and whispered
something, then hopped over the counter.
“Hěn hǎo, hěn hǎo,” she said (很好, 很好), “it is good.” She took me by the wrist,
led me out the front door and pointed down the boulevard. “Chāoshì. Supermarket, ah?”
And there it was, two storefronts down with a sign sticking out over the sidewalk:
超市.
I turned to my savior, “Thank you, thank you,” I told her. She grinned, amused
and maybe terrified by all the emotions I’d displayed in our short time together. I thanked her
again, but this time in her language, “謝謝.”
“Xiè xiè!” she gasped, “you say that beautiful, like Chinese.” She waved me off
and returned to the McDonalds. I counted my steps towards the supermarket, narrowly missing
a mother who’d stopped abruptly, guarding her toddler who squatted, relieving himself through
“Help you?” she asked in English.
42
43
CAROL HOOD
CAROL HOOD
“Ah?” he cocked his head to the side like a curious dog. I instantly crumpled. Yī
píng shuĭ, right? Hadn’t I said that? Maybe the words were wrong or the tones were wrong,
I wasn’t sure and was too afraid to try again. The cashier waited another beat then without
another word returned to his magazine. A wave of humiliation overtook me, and all I could
think to do was run! Run outside, back into北京, to the next street corner and that was where I
spotted it. Across the intersection, a four story glass complex bejeweled by the mighty golden
arches. McDonalds. Sanctuary! Or the illusion of it, for as soon as those doors slid open, I
found myself in something even more foreign.
KRISSY WILSON
the bottom slip of his chaps.
O N A G AT E T O W E R AT Y U Z H O U
BY CHEN ZIANG
“謝謝!” I blurted out.
She cut her eyes at me and hissed, “白癡了!”
And I rejoiced in understanding instantly, that she’d just called me an idiot. 很好
for me, the美國人. A good enough triumph, even if the醫院 was still so far away.
On a Gate Tower at Yuzhou
by Chen Ziang
trans. Krissy Wilson
CAROL HOOD
44
獨
愴
然
而
涕
念
天
地
之
悠
後
不
見
來
者
前
不
見
古
人
下
45
念
天
地
之
悠
後
不
見
來
者
前
不
見
古
人
下
KRISSY WILSON
On a Gate Tower at A
Yuzhou
quiet song
by Chen Ziang
(as to raise one’s head
trans. Krissy Wilsonfrom a desk secluded)
ascends in scale
A quiet song
and mounts to issue
(as to raise one’s head
from this province
from a desk secluded)
to explain
ascends in scale
this province.
and mounts to issue I read aloud the sky—
from this province him, her, it—
to explain
and field—
this province.
him, her, it—
I read aloud the sky—
at ease, long in time
him, her, it—
at midnight.
and field—
I am independent and sorry
him, her, it—
and correct;
at ease, long in time just so, as a seed
at midnight.
or an egg
I am independent andorsorry
a surname
and correct;
shows casual relation,
just so, as a seed
shows change of state,
or an egg
shows contrast
or a surname
and declines.
shows casual relation,
shows change of state,
shows contrast
and declines.
獨
愴
然
登而
幽涕
州
臺
歌
悠
登
幽
州
臺
歌
悠
KRISSY WILSON
KRISSY WILSON
A SONG OF CHANGGAN
I & II
BY C U I H AO
BORDER-SONGS
BY LU LUN
KRISSY WILSON
或
恐
是
同
鄉
生
小
不
相
識
停
船
暫
借
問
同
是
長
干
人
妾
住
在
橫
塘
來
去
九
江
側
君
家
何
處
住
家
臨
九
江
水
或停
恐船
長
是暫
同借
干
鄉問
行
二
首
之
生同
一
小 是
不長
長
干
相干
行
識人
二
首
之
二
46
妾
住
在
橫
塘
來
去
九
江
側
君
家
何
處
住
家
臨
九
江
水
長
干
行
二
首
之
一
長
干
行
二
首
之
二
I.
I.
We are condors, crooked
over gold.
We are condors,
crooked over gold.
We are grain-eating
the fields decline
behind
Wegrubs;
are grain-eating
grubs; the
fieldsus.decline behind us.
Our swallowing isOur
a measure
wordison
each place;
swallowing
a measure
word on each place;
We—a thousand We—a
men—exhale
in amen—exhale
single breath.in a single breath.
thousand
千
營
共
一
呼
獨
立
揚
新
令
燕
尾
繡
蝥
弧
鷲
翎
金
僕
姑
II.
II.
The wind is a hasty
Thedraft
wind(ofisaadocument),
hasty draft (of a document),
and we divert water
our arms.
andwith
we divert
water with our arms.
We make the same
thesame
snow—
Wescore
makeasthe
score as the snow—
bright and gratuitous—
bright and gratuitous—
counting the square
beams,the
thesquare
drowned
rocks.
counting
beams,
the drowned rocks.
沒
在
石
稜
中
平
明
尋
白
羽
將
軍
夜
引
弓
林
暗
草
驚
風
III.
III.
In a tall month, black
geese
escape
In a tall
month,
black geese escape
like surnames after
form.
likemarriage,
surnamesfleeing
after marriage,
fleeing form.
We desire a crooked
We song,
desire a crooked song,
pursuit with a knife,
pursuit with a knife,
and deep-packed and
snow.
deep-packed snow.
大
雪
滿
弓
刀
欲
將
輕
騎
逐
單
于
夜
遁
逃
月
黑
雁
飛
高
雷
鼓
動
山
川
醉
和
金
甲
舞
羌
戎
賀
勞
旋
野
幕
蔽
瓊
筵
IV.
IV.
When we open our
tentswe
to open
the field,
When
our tents to the field,
it is as if a curtainitopens
the stage.
is as ifacross
a curtain
opens across the stage.
We congratulate each
other on oureach
toil, other on our toil,
We congratulate
on our hands stung
occasion.
onfor
ourthis
hands
stung for this occasion.
We wield cups and
Wecaps,
wield cups and caps,
and respond in song.
and respond in song.
We drum thunderWe drum thunder
between the mountain
andthe
themountain
river.
between
and the river.
47
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
一
塞 下
曲
四
首
之
二
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
三
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
四
千
營
共
一
呼
獨
立
揚
新
令
燕
尾
繡
蝥
弧
鷲
翎
金
僕
姑
沒
在
石
稜
中
平
明
尋
白
羽
將
軍
夜
引
弓
林
暗
草
驚
風
大
雪
滿
弓
刀
欲
將
輕
騎
逐
單
于
夜
遁
逃
月
黑
雁
飛
高
雷
鼓
動
山
川
醉
和
金
甲
舞
羌
戎
賀
勞
旋
野
幕
蔽
瓊
筵
KRISSY WILSON
A Song
Song of
of Changgan
Changgan (I)
(I)
A
by
by Cui
Cui Hao
Hao
trans. Krissy
Krissy Wilson
Wilson
trans.
A Song of Changgan (I)
“Competent and
and temporary,
temporary,
by Cui Hao
“Competent
Conduct
trans. Krissy Wilson
Conduct yourself
yourself across
across the
the unruly
unruly pond
pond
like aa horizontal
horizontal character
character stroke.
stroke.
like
What
“Competent and temporary,
What pretext
pretext have
have you
you to
to stop?
stop?
Perhaps
weunruly
are alike—frightened.”
alike—frightened.”
Conduct yourself Perhaps
across the
pond
we
are
like a horizontal character stroke.
What pretext have you to stop?
A
Perhaps we are alike—frightened.”
A Song
Song of
of Changgan
Changgan (II)
(II)
by Cui
Cui Hao
Hao
by
trans. Krissy
Krissy Wilson
Wilson
trans.
A Song of Changgan (II)
“Professional and
and overlooked,
overlooked,
by Cui Hao
“Professional
lean
trans. Krissy Wilson
lean beside
beside this
this constant
constant river
river
like aa drying
drying shield.
shield.
like
length
“Professional and What
overlooked,
What
length have
have you
you to
to record?
record?
Perhapsriver
we have
have known
known each
each other
other
lean beside this constant
Perhaps
we
since
like a drying shield.
since birth,
birth, as
as footnotes.”
footnotes.”
What length have you to record?
Perhaps we have known each other
since birth, as footnotes.”
Border-songs Border-songs
by Lu Lun
by Lu Lun
trans. Krissy Wilson
trans. Krissy Wilson
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
一
塞 下
曲
四
首
之
二
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
三
塞
下
曲
四
首
之
四
KRISSY WILSON
KRISSY WILSON
SECTION TWO
KRISSY WILSON
OFF
THE
MAP
50
HOLLY LEE WARREN
Helen
My history begins with the house. I had no map to get there, but I had
this conviction that I needed to be far away from wherever it was I lived back east. I
boarded a train, and as it headed west the passing gray sky and mountains erased
everything that had happened behind me. The train made it to the desert where the
telephone lines disappeared into white sunlight, and I had a blank slate.
Conviction followed me to the last station where I disembarked and began
walking down a blacktop road that led away from everything. Conviction remained
with me until I found myself standing in front of this ramshackle structure of slanted
stories, jagged holes in splintered wood, and gaping black window eyes. I felt a heat
of dread rising in me. My hands began to ache, like they were recalling the last thing
they had done back east. The sun turned from a pleasant warming device to an iron
heat that constricted my throat and burned my scalp. It seared into me like an interrogator’s light, reminded me of what I had done, the wrong choice I had made. A wind
picked up and pushed toward the desert house stairs. I creaked up and let myself in
through the screen door into the front room.
Across the room from me a wooden cabinet reverberated off of the wall,
its insides clanging. The cabinet was about hip height and spanned the width of the
wall it was shuddering against. Glass covered its three slanted shelves. Everything on
them was jumbled together, like they slid around each time the screen door slammed
or a wind moved through. The things I made out were: part of a tumbleweed, a train
track stud, a collection of rocks, a metronome whose pendulum seemed to have been
blown permanently to the far left by the wind, a net, a snorkel, what seemed to be a
dried small purple lizard, a partial fish skeleton, and a jar of rubbing alcohol, and I was
grateful it was the wood whose smell overpowered the room. There was also a piece of
coral that looked like a brain, and I could pinpoint the spot where one would make an
incision for something that my mind had left back east.
There was a man standing next to the cabinet. He looked rendered in charcoal, black eyes and jutting shoulders that towered a foot above me. He had mussed
up black hair and black crusted fingernails. Sunspots appeared in my eyes. His image
blurred.
“You must be my replacement,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant. I tried blinking him into focus.
“I should probably give you a tour of the house. Don’t expect the things
I tell you to be exact. I don’t even know if the words I’m saying are right anymore. I
haven’t spoken in so long. Usually when I open my mouth it’s just sand going in or
out.” He looked past me as he spoke, but there was nothing there he could have been
looking at, no one standing behind me.
This was how the tour commenced. The man gestured for me to follow him
down the hall. “This is west right?” He asked some invisible thing behind my head. He
nodded. “This used to be west. It is the west.”
At the end of the west hall he indicated the room that would be mine.
“When I used to sleep, I slept in here, “ he said. “It’s such an empty space now, so I
think it will be perfect for you.”
We moved back toward the front of the house, stopping on the way in
front of a room the man indicated was for mapmaking. He gestured to its walls and
described various maps he had tacked up - the documentation of a train route that cut
down through the northern mountains, past this house and ended in a set of sharp
cliffs and sea; the detail of a forest with key that revealed its different trees, all circled
by various paths.
I saw none of what he was describing. Instead I saw a series of charcoal lines
on the wall intersecting with each other.
We creaked back through the front room and down the hall on the east side
of the house. Here the light was dimmer, and the air was cooler. We walked until we
reached a cracked doorway that opened up onto a descending flight of stairs. We took
them down into a room that I could barely see, but I could sense the sawdust walls in
close proximity. I could feel the ceiling sagging only a few inches above me.
“I’ve wired this room for sound recording, the man said. “Do you hear that
buzz? That’s the electricity. This is the only room that has it, and there is only enough
for sound.”
I didn’t hear any electric buzzing, only wind colliding with the walls above.
The man remained standing in the cramped space. He rocked back and forth
in tune with his imagined buzz. “This will be a means of keeping archives,” he said. “It
will help you maintain the records of your work.” His voice scratched against the walls.
I had no idea what a recording space had to do with me. I wanted a guaranteed erasure
of everything. I wanted nothing to do with archives or any sort of evidence. Evidence
could not be trusted. The man started for the stairs. I followed him up and further
down the hall.
The next room we came to was lined with off-kilter bookshelves, empty
except for one holding two thick volumes. The man designated this the library.
The wind picked up again and cut through the walls of the library. It rattled
around the jagged wood paneling and shook the room from side to crooked side. Sand
dusted about in the corners. The man kicked at it with his boots.
“Sometimes I just see everything as sand,” he said. “Sometimes I think that
is what everything is made of, and I’ve just pushed that sand around and given names
to its forms, and I’m the only one who understands those names.”
This made sense to me. Everything could be broken down into sand and
rebuilt into anything. A cut could become a happy memory. A stone could become a
stopwatch. And my job, that conviction to come out west, was to rebuild things, to
lose the sense of history, desire, influence that informed my perception, my definition
of memory, or nostalgia.
We moved further down the hall past a series of rooms the man referred to
as the cells. There were no windows in these rooms. Light pierced through the spaces
52
53
HOLLY LEE WARREN
HOLLY LEE WARREN
H O W I G O T O U T W E S T:
HELEN VS. THE DOCTOR
54
HOLLY LEE WARREN
The Doctor
All organic material tends toward an end.
Let that end equal the West.
This is how I got out West.
HOLLY LEE WARREN
between the boards, creating snagged patterns of shadow wood across the walls.
I mulled over my history, the evidence, as I followed the man deeper
into the house, turning corners and corners, dragging my aching hands along the
scrap-wooded walls, splintering up my fingers. My guilt over back east remained.
In the hall the shadows began overtaking the light. They crossed over my arms and
hands and mapped all my history out onto my skin. I willed that past away. Finally the
light in the hall diminished completely and all those marks disappeared. I continued
forward slowly, listening for the man’s creaking footsteps ahead of me. Their sounds
grew further and further apart until they stopped.
“This is the door that leads out back,” he said.
I didn’t see the door. I couldn’t see anything.
We turned around and headed back down the meandering hall. All the
rooms and slants and stairs we had visited seemed to be in different places as we
passed back by.
Back in the front room where the sun reasserted its presence I tried blinking everything into focus again. The man leaned against the dusty cabinet.
“It was good to have a reminder of these things before I left,” he said. “This
house is my history. It defines me. When I built this house, I erased the past, and
I began instead to see the future. I knew that this would happen. I knew that you
would come. This is part of a cycle. I am leaving and you are staying and you will build
a residue when I disappear, and this is how things will continue.”
The man began taking things out of the cabinet and gave each of them the
wrong name. He took out a bottle of whiskey and called it a map. He took out a rock
and called it an ashtray. “Keep these,” he gestured at the items. “This is the completion. This is the conclusion.”
I followed him out onto the porch, sat down on its guardrail, and watched
him leave. I watched him until I couldn’t make him out in the dunes, until he converged into the sand.
I can’t exact the amount of time I sat on the porch after he disappeared. The
sun didn’t set when I expected it would. I grew accustomed to its glare. It permeated
my body and suspended my consciousness and all of my senses. The sand fuzzed
against the white sun and became a static screen in front of my eyes. There were no
discernible objects and the wind consumed any distinct sound. I had no urge to eat.
My mind broke down into sand until there was no conscious part of me. There was
only, on the periphery, sun, sand, heat, wind. Time extended. There were no individual seconds to experience. There was nothing indicated by the light.
Eventually sand brought me back around. I felt it piling up around my feet,
scratching in my eyes and grinding between my teeth. I remembered oh yes, I exist,
and I remembered the house, that I was sitting on a rail on the warm front porch. I
remembered why I was here. Once more the heat became the iron inquisitor. My eyes
watered. My stomach growled. I went into the house.
55
TSEHAYE GER ALYN HÉBERT
MAPS
nothing, is nothing and has nothing to compel one toward. Ripples emanating from
center.
Way?
direction
The Writer in hell… TSEHAYE GER ALYN HÉBERT
Why do I need to know?
I am. Am I?
I am reaching, reaching for an edge. Reaching for the edge, is there one?
Boundaries? Do they confine or contain?
I fade black into the nothingness, to places that I have not visited. Uncreased/Decreased
Formless. I am fluid and fluidless.
Nothing.
Everything.
Tsehaye G. Hébert © 2014 Dear Dante: need a map and directions. I can hardly go anywhere without them. I need planes, Dear Dante:
vectors, pints Ioneed
f access, and angles oI f can
return. Wanywhere
hat happens when I need
maps, directions and a map and
directions.
hardly go
without them.
planes,
words fail? vectors, points of access, and angles of return. What happens when maps, directions
and words fail?
An I? An I?an I? A me? An I? I? Is there An I? I? Is there an I? A me?
The edge falls, slips away, dissolves. As soon as I collect bits, as soon as I wrap The edge
away,
soon as I collect
as I wrap Iawareawareness around it, falls,
it’s slips
gone. Mdissolves.
agically Asdisappears as bits,
if... as Ssoon
isyphean. ’m here ness around it, it’s gone. Magically disappears as if...Sisyphean. I’m here
and then I am and
not. Edges I presume, like the edge of myself or the edge of the bed then I am not. Edges I presume, like the edge of myself or the edge of the bed
or taking the eordge o
of edge
awareness…just like like
that….gone! takingff the
off of awareness…just
that….gone! But where am But
I gwhere
oing? am
I Ihgoing?
ave sense enough to to
wwonder.
onder. Back
Back to square I have sense
enough
to square
one, amoIne, am I an “I”? If I am, anthen m athen
lso Iaam
n aalso
m am
not? W
here am
am I going? If not,
I athen
m not, “I”? IfI Iaam,
not?
Where
I going?
If I am
whythen why am w
I wondering
what
andis what
is not?
am I wondering hat is and wishat not? Is this Ipurgatory?
Is hell better?
It’srthe
rippling,the the iin-between
where
knows
s this purgatory? s hell better? It’s the ippling, n-­‐between wone
here one knows nothing, is nothing and has nothing to compel one toward. Ripples emanating from center. 56
Sound fragments. Why do I find myself in the binary code? private : public more : less me : you artist : audience more : less me : you artist : audience 57
TSEHAYE GER ALYN HÉBERT
one?
map
noitcerid
directiondiectiondirection
purgatory, inferno or road trip? Sound fragments. Why do I find myself in the binary code?
private : public more : less me : you artist : audience
more : less me : you artist : audience
me : you artist : audience
artist : audience
BRIT PARKS
ECHOES
YO U A LWAY S C O M E T O T H E C O U N T R Y
D R E S S E D L I K E I T ’ S T O O L AT E
I was going to use my voice but the problem with echoes is the layering. How far will
it travel through the soaking darkness before shattering into tiny pieces? I’ve gone
many miles beneath these waves. Sinking. They told me to go to the bottom where
there is an opening. Like pores. The human body has about three trillion of them.
They told me to fill them with light before I fill them with emptiness. They told me to
fill me with light before I fill me with emptiness, so that I can find my way. It’s taken
years to travel this way. Through the nose and out the mouth. Shrinking. I never
learned to float. How salty does the sea have to be for an infatuation? They told me
to come this way to find another way. To survive I’ve been traveling through this
submersion. The reduction of touch underwater dissipates pain almost completely.
It’s taken me years to find this way. To find an entrance. They told me to enter into
a state of dedicated relaxation to best conserve the use of energy and oxygen. They
told me that when I find you that we could share breaths. We can share them for two
hundred and forty seconds before surfacing. I can show you.
58
You always come to the country dressed like it’s too late.
ancient habits intact
keep saying révolution in the bowery
never tire of your teeth
keep saying revolution in the ether
I am a taxidermy of dead languages
Sober as perfume
59
BRIT PARKS
A S H L E Y J. M C C L E N O N
A S H L E Y J. M C C L E N O N
KEVIN SPARROW
P L AY P O E M S
i.
iv.
Sound waves in a corner.
Sound waves in four corners.
ii.
A club on the corner means stop here first,
but don’t intend to stay.
You cup your hands around the glass
in mimicry of prayer,
the tasting of the wine at mass;
the blood that wasn’t there.
Four corners to each square,
all open to the public.
You travel 360 degrees
and at ninety still wind up.
The names will change,
the change change hands,
hands recup the glass.
But none of this continued motion
creates momentum that will last.
v.
Role reversal or
refusal
it’s hard to tell the difference.
If a rock causes a ripple,
does that become a wave?
Rules order to different tastes,
and tastes change
how far back on tongue.
KEVIN SPARROW
KEVIN SPARROW
We steer the boat to north-align,
to line against the sun.
The waves rough up
against our stern,
the paddles overrun
with seaweed dark
as sick mucous
and thick with water weight.
My arms pretend
to be a man’s
and stretch to future state.
You fall into a sandpit rough,
but do not feel each stone.
Tell me this: do you know
the arc of the club
you made from bone?
vi.
Each muscle can be winded
like clockwork
uncoiling by the second.
If I try to reach
a minute’s push,
the pull strings start to itch.
The pull strings start to itch,
and so, I pull
them with my feet.
My legs walk back
until I’m stretched,
beyond diagonal, flat.
iii.
You know from clubs.
You’ve swung them wide.
But not so far from home.
You know the wood,
the nine-iron,
but not the qualities of your own.
Beyond diagonal, flat
the space inside
our cubic meters
Funny that a flat marks
cubes, and not
our square feet.
60
61
JILL M. STONE
UNTITLED
Our square feet
move in chessboard
pattern, in inches parallel.
When astride each other,
I expect a clash as well.
I expect a clash as well
as silence, like sound
waves neutralized.
We hover
in a stalemate,
proximally paralyze
KEVIN SPARROW
62
JILL M. STONE
O sequined truth
what matter you
when those about you lie
how garish seems your plumage
how obvious your style
your feather boa
your press-on nails
false eyelashes galore
the high heels you stumble in
track your finery on the floor
you should embrace the fiction
of your own demise
and cart your carcass to the grave
to seize your earthly prize
for those who assign distinction
favor ornaments of decay
and who spends coin
when truth is cheap
and lies invite such praise
63
JILL M. STONE
DEEPAK UNNIKRISHNAN
UNTITLED
I V DAY [ H E R E ] . AV DAY [ T H E R E ] .
Ivday, Amma says, it’s getting cooler; relentless rains. The dog’s taking the move badly,
barely eats, sleeps all day, barks all night. The neighbors have complained. Avday?
The collector
gathers you in
she coos and coddles you
lulling you into forgetfulness
she strokes your back
a gentle finger extending the silken spread of your wings
you lie there undulating, unaware
until a sharp piercing
nails you to the mat
struggling to free yourself
your body twitches and wilts
as she places you under-glass
and gives no more thought to you
except once a week
when she dusts off your display case
Avday, is the fish good? Amma wonders. What do you know about fish? Where you
find time to cook fish? Come home, my boy. Ivday, Acchan will buy fish. Then eat as
much fish as you want. Avday, I know, Americans prefer the bland stuff. Only salt and
pepper for them. Or they make fish fingers. Avday, you get only sushi.
Ivday, I’m fine, I say. Amma isn’t convinced. I left home eight years ago for the
Midwest. A boy bound for college. I haven’t returned since, undocumented for the
past three. So Amma assumes things. That ivday, I miss avday. Sometimes that’s
true. I miss Acchan’s habit of watching my face for signs of stress. Don’t worry, don’t
you worry, he’d say, everything will be okay. There is a sister somewhere, my baby
sister. A young woman now. Ivday, I begin, then stop. Amma waits for me to finish. I
struggle to remember the word for jaggery. I’m embarrassed. I panic. Ivday, I’ve been
buying spices and tin food from the Arabs, I say instead, partly in English. I buy cheap
produce from the Mexicans, I continue. The shrimp is on sale every Sunday.
Avday, what is the weather now? Acchan wants to know. Amma has put him on the
phone. Don’t you worry, okay, he says, wear your winter coat, okay? Stay there, okay?
And don’t go out in the snow without gloves son, he says, before putting Amma back
on the phone. Avday, Amma begins – is everything okay, son?
All’s good ivday, Amma, I say. I am near my kitchen window. There is little afternoon
light. In a few hours, it will snow. Avday, in a few days, it will rain. A dog will have
made peace with his new surroundings. By then I will remember. Among my people,
the word for jaggery is sharkara.
END
64
65
DEEPAK UNNIKRISHNAN
JILL M. STONE
Ivday, I say into my phone, nippy – snow is expected again. My boots have salt crusts,
the radiator in the bathroom is useless, my trousers are tearing at the crotch. It has
been busy, life. There is a book of stories to finish, a woman to love, and full-time
employment to be found. Tell me again how you make your fish, I say.
RACHEL WILSON
RACHEL WILSON
1 2 .1 2 .1 2
12/12/12
Sad flights of stairs
pink bows covered
their doors. Stillness
exists like an invitation
while our childhood home
is a forgotten landscape
by the carpeted sea.
Two feet hidden
in the folds of waves.
Is it a sin to say
god
revolts me, puts
a coward in me.
Turns up
greedy.
Explain the heavy dances
he makes us play. Our eyelids
tip to rain.
I ate your corners, headed for home. It’s not about forever, it's just such a long time.
If/then I’ll meet you again. And if not then I won’t. There are fragments, and guilt,
expanded in my pockets. Many sunny afternoons in California we drove in your white
pickup truck to get bobas. My head feels tight every afternoon. I try to relieve it. I
wasn’t at your celebration of life, but I saw the slideshow. A person’s life recorded in
20 minutes of photos. Silence is good at filling me up, a cavity awarded for every gold
star.
A person can run circles around their life if they want. Or they can always turn around
and go backwards. I think about the slick surface. An accident. Later your mother
looked like the saddest version of you. I want to feel the tiny melts of the sun in my
hand. I want your death to make me appreciate everything more. But I don’t. I sit
with god in an angry room, sometimes covered with spikes. He can’t admit to tiny
mistakes, or even large ones. I can’t swallow anybody’s tea. But I would do anything to
make you a cup.
Things don’t make sense, and it makes it hard to write. I’m good at picking out vintage
bed sheets at the thrift store. I’m good at attaching meaning to things. I’m good at
looking in a person’s eyes, sometimes. I’m bad at remembering the exact shade of
your voice, your hands, you died with rings on. This is not a lesson in love. This is a
lesson in god doesn’t give a fuck. It’s a lesson in growing up, learning to leave the flowers behind for another day. I whisper your life to my open windows. Try to feel your
pulse against the telephone. I reach out and hit nothing but air.
I’m used to the ground shaking. We grew up in a town next to the beach. There was a
perpetual fog. It's easy for thoughts to drown in static ventures. I’m reminded of the
sun, the way it hit the ocean on the drives home. I think of your body decomposing.
All I can see is waves.
66
67
RACHEL WILSON
RACHEL WILSON
RACHEL WILSON
ALEC VIERBUCHEN
ALEC VIERBUCHEN
I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R A C E M E N T YA R D
I N S T R U C T I O N S F O R A WA R E H O U S E
Construct a fire pit from loose bricks
for late night games of bones.
Build a fort with narrow windows or
paint a face on your fence
and make disguises for it to wear,
such as spectacles from rusted bike rims.
Build an apiary or a dovecot
if you can maintain one.
Find a way into a warehouse
down by the river and attach
lengths of rope to the rafters
so that they dangle down.
While standing on a ladder,
attach to these ropes
places to sit and places to set
objects such as tablecloths, tea sets, and plates.
Acquire through your associates
a small band, perhaps a fiddle
accompanied by an accordion
capable of producing sad Balkan songs
in muted tones.
Or, arrange weatherproof screens into a maze,
changing the layout at predetermined intervals
and install misleading exhibition tags
which contain a cipher.
Pencil a note to someone
you will never see again
in isolated letters, proceeding
by altitude in a descending spiral
around the entire perimeter
of your backyard.
ALEC VIERBUCHEN
ALEC VIERBUCHEN
Begin with a table and chairs,
covered, if desired, by a tall tent,
with Christmas lights running up its legs.
Train a vine up the fence from a raised bed
and plant any pots you have.
Be sure to plant a lemon tree.
Cover every surface
in tea-lights or the bottom
halves of beer cans
filled with rubbing alcohol
to just below the holes
you have punched
at four equidistant points
to give the flames their air.
When the guests arrive,
attired in white,
let them rise up the ladder
to seat themselves before
the tea sets, whose pots
you have cunningly filled
with imitation whiskey.
As the band begins
and the guests sway
from their suspended
tables, aim a bright light
to sharpen the relief
you have thrown them.
70
71
RYAN ENDE
Marty walked past the tiger exhibit, saluted with his spear, and headed
out the zoo’s gate. He didn’t even have to do much of anything this time. Probably
would be the last time anyone would try to set the polar bear loose, at least for a few
months. He headed down the paths through Lincoln Park, acknowledging people
when they greeted him. He was a Hero, and the people of Chicago could not doubt
that anymore.
For the most part, things in the city had reverted back to the way they had
been before the Cabal, crime-wise at least. Shithead assured him this was only going
to last so long – Heroes, by their very nature, attracted suitable villains. Marty found
himself wondering if there was a Villain’s Guild existing in opposition to the Hero’s.
Seemed an interesting and plausible enough idea. Marty made a mental note to
inquire with Shithead on the matter. And by inquire he meant drink copious amounts
of alcohol and slur out some half-coherent thoughts.
Screams reached Marty’s ears, and he instantly took off in their direction.
Marines weren’t the only ones to do so, like the advertisements might suggest. He
reached the edge of Lake Shore Drive, where nearby pedestrians were shrieking and
pointing, the international symbol for “I hope a Hero is within earshot and can quickly respond to save the day.”
“The problem?” Marty asked a hysterical woman.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she wailed. “Everyone else was, seemed like the thing to
do. Sort of a Twilight Shriek, if you will.”
Marty moved to a more put-together woman.
“The Armant Collective’s bus is out of control and heading this way. They’ll
crash, killing all 25 of them if someone doesn’t do something.”
“Nice exposition.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
The Armant Collective was one of the largest business conglomerates in the
Midwest. They were funding nearly fifty percent of the Loop Reconstruction Project.
And they had a reputation for being the most unscrupulous, amoral, vile businessmen
in the country. If Marty could prove they were Villains, he’d not hesitate to slaughter the lot of them. But he couldn’t prove it (they were more a job for the League of
Extraordinary Richards anyway) and besides, the city really needed their money.
“I’ll save them,” Marty grimaced.
This was going to be tricky. He wasn’t exactly built for stopping giant steel
death machines. He hit people with a sock of pennies, for Christ’s sake. That wouldn’t
exactly do much against a bus. The only thing to do was to find something to climb
and hope the timing of his jump was perfect.
72
Fortunately, there was a telephone pole right near him. Marty slipped his
spear into its holder on his back, shifted the shield further up his forearm, and leaped
to reach the first stake. He was more than halfway up the pole when the shrieking
grew even louder.
“Yeah, I know, the bus is coming.”
“No, Centurion, an innocent old lady tried crossing the road and fell. She
can’t get up and the bus is going to hit her. You have to save her!”
“If I climb down, I’m going to miss my opportunity to stop the Armant
Collective’s bus.”
“Well, you have to choose!”
His admission to the Hero’s Guild stated that he had to do what he could
to protect and save innocents. He could see the old woman in the road, and then he
turned to see the rapidly approaching bus on the horizon. Time to choose.
Two Hours Later
Marty picked up the salt shaker and covered his plate of fries liberally. His
helmet sat on the table, shield in the booth beside him. He placed a fry in his mouth
and stared at the waitress seated across from him. She had been hanging on his every
words, and if it weren’t for Liz… He envied the single Heroes briefly.
“So that’s how I saved the day,” he said from around a mouth full of potato.
“But how were you able to decide and not have the weight of the consequences on your conscience?”
“You’re a sweet girl, you know that?” She blushed. “But Centurion’s first kill
was his conscience.”
“That’s awful!” she said, raising a hand over her mouth. “That must be so
hard sometimes.”
“Not really. I’ve got a British replacement.”
“I just – a few hours ago, you made a huge moral decision, and now here you
are, talking to me and eating French fries like nothing happened.”
“That’s the life of a Hero, my dear. Sometimes you have to roll the hard six.”
“I’m not sure I could do that.”
“You never know just what you’re capable of until you’re in the moment.
And I’m here so that hopefully you never have to. Could I get another Coke?”
73
RYAN ENDE
RYAN ENDE
THE DINER OF MORALITY
F O U R M O N T H S , T H R E E W E E K S , A N D F I V E DAY S
AFTER THE INCIDENT
LYNDSIE MANUSOS
Walking on cobblestone streets and everything is sepia. Like old, glass
negatives. Like burnt edges. We walk along, smelling the clouds and high-fiving each
other after every block, after every street sign, as if we’ve accomplished miles of
walking. Perhaps we have walked for miles. Perhaps we’ve walked for years.
Moss grows between the stones beneath our feet and we skip over them,
counting the moss. Hopping over the green veins in this antique city. We create our
own hop-scotch songs. We use the moss as our guide.
One of us wears a yellow poncho, but it’s overridden with dust and dirt. It’s
as if she rolled around in the mud. Bits of yellow shock through the dirt. She holds
the hood over her head. We look up. The clouds aren’t white. They’re vanilla crème.
They’re mocha with creamer. They’re fading into the photo’s edges.
There’s a vendor on the street selling rolls of parchment. Ten dollars a
roll. Or is it ten pounds? A hundred yen? Seven euros, give or take? We look in our
pockets, and we bring up handfuls of coins that have nothing stamped on them but
clouds. Cumulus gold coins. Silver altostratus. Copper cirrus. One of us has a giant
Cumulonimbus brick. Lead. The vendor seems excited. We hold up our cloud coins
and our lead brick to the vendor selling parchment, and he says that is enough. We
thank him. We carry the rolls under our arms like firewood. It’s getting warmer
outside. The moss is receding back into the cobblestone streets. We’ve forgotten the
hop-scotch song.
We reach into our pockets and this time we find cashews and almonds.
We eat, realizing how hungry we are. Finally, it begins to rain, and the parchment
becomes soggy. It’s of no use anymore. We unroll the parchment and lay it on the
street like a carpet. Soon it will grow into the space between the stones and become
nothing at all.
There’s a town square. All the shops are closed and shuttered. All the
windows have rusted bars. We can’t see inside the shops. There are so many roads out
of the square, but we feel trapped. We stay and sit by the waterless fountain. There are
sculptures of flowers all over the fountain. The petals don’t match the stems. Marigold
flowers with daisy stems. Annual flowers with perennial leaves. Wildflowers with rose
thorns. The flowers are all wrong, but they can’t be plucked from the stone. There’s a
brass plaque on the front of the fountain. It reads Kaleidoscope Rose.
A café opens its door and the owner beckons us inside. We do not have
coffee, the owner says, but we have plenty of hot water and honey. The owner says,
don’t pay any attention to Kaleidoscope Rose. It’s a failure of a fountain. It is a silly
fountain. It’s never given water to the town. Do not give Kaleidoscope Rose any
water—it doesn’t deserve it. We are encouraged by this. We are comforted. We go
inside and order a pot of hot water and honey. We drink until our throats are coated
with it. We taste the pollen in the honey. It is real. It is grown.
74
The rain continues outside the café. There is no one else in the town square.
The owner asks where we came from. The owner asks where we are going. We high five
each other and remember the moss hop-scotch song. We sing it to the owner until he
walks away.
LYNDSIE MANUSOS
LYNDSIE MANUSOS
CLOUD COINS
75
JILL JICHETTI
J I L L W R I T E S C U R AT E S M A P S !
Written within the festival of Lupercalia. Also, Valentine’s Day. Do whatever needs to
be done with it: all the things.
TITLE! JILLWRITES CURATES MAPS!
TITLE_JILLWRITES_CURATES_MAPS
Generative Excerpt From A Continuingly Evolving Memoir In Many Media
A Visual-Chronolinear Map of My Studio
Map of A Guided Tour of The Museum of JillWrites: What To See In Four Pages
[photos]
[aphorisms]
The Internet Is A Mythological Field. My Web Presence: A Tarot Deck for the
Misbegotten
my grey matter I experience a dramatic situation. #postpostmodernmindtheater
PLEASE, if your car IS, or even resembles a DeLorean, DO accelerate. “Look, I went
to the internet and I am alive, Neo. But I went to Derrida and I come out crying every
day.”
I go through excessive self-conflict to tell you about the lack of something. Because
telling you in words about a lack just isn’t as true as letting it lack.
“Now is a summery discontent.” - JillWrites “Now is a summary discontent.” - JillWrites
Missing something? No words for you, JillWrites!
IT IS ART THAT I AM ON TWITTER AT ALL. IT IS ART THAT WE PERFORM
THAT WE ARE ‘NOT TALKING TO EACH OTHER’. IT IS ART THAT YOU MIGHT
THINK WE DON’T KNOW EACH OTHER. IT IS ART THAT CHANDELIERS FALL.
BY MY CALCULATIONS, THE ‘IMAGINATION’ ITSELF IS ART. THE IDEA OF THE
HUMAN IMAGINATION IS ART. EVERYTHING IS IN REAL TIME WITH OTHER
HUMANS. THAT INCLUDES MEMORY. WHEN YOU ARE LOST IN MEMORY,
YOU ARE IN FACT, STILL IN THE NOW WITH OTHER HUMAN BODIES. WHEN
YOU ARE LOST IN IMAGINATION. YOU ARE, IN FACT, STILL IN THE NOW
WITH OTHER HUMAN BODIES. WHEN YOU ARE READING. WHEN YOU ARE
KISSED.
YES, SORRY, FUCKING, TOO. DON’T LET ANYONE ELSE CONTROL WHEN YOU
GO TO THE BATHROOM. ‘WHEN YOU HAVE TO GO, YOU HAVE TO GO.’
THE WOMAN’S URINARY TRACT IS STILL TOO CLOSE TO THE VAGINA. EVOLUTION WANTS TO FIX IT.
76
What people call fate when they look at it through hindsight is in actuality the result
of proactive moving-forward by the web of human necessity to move ourselves
forward together. “Sure, I’d love to write a dissertation on the ethics of prophecy!” ...is
going to be heard much more often now that the Harry Potter series has spawned a
generation of dark-magic-warring witches. The whole internet is Tom Riddle’s diary.
THE WHOLE INTERNET IS TOM RIDDLE’S DIARY. THE WHOLE INTERNET IS
MY/OUR/YOUR MARAUDER’S MAP.
Rereading Immanuel Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”
He used a lot more !’s than I remembered! Or expected! It reads like a self-aware futuristic magazine text! He’s very air-quotesey! But here, I agree! “Sapere aude”!
I have not written memoir. (?) I have not photo-narrated a map of my studio. (?) I
have not (designed / supplied) a guided tour of my work. (?)
“I wasn’t expecting myself to go straight to the MoMA, but I did think I’d… write a
paragraph.” #attentionspananarchyinthedigitalage
#JillWritesisms I’ve been developing my own dictionary, as I’m sure many of you are.
Jillwritesism: “Whattingtheup.” It’s a hypothetical salutation. Please @JillWrites me
on Twitter if you read this. SUPERJillBatWomanHulkPhilosophyPhDCandidate: To
become the world’s foremost authority on the bio-social significance of Twitter?
I LOVE (translate: I’m somewhat embittered) that the derivative of what we’ve been
taught about the Modernist writers amounts to they were big geniuses who knew
what they were doing all along. Um. Bullshit.
Imagined Conversation Between Virginia Woolf & James Joyce,
Traversing Space & Time
Soundtrack: the end of “The World Spins Madly On” (The Weepies).
JAMES JOYCE: (Eagerly & conspiratorially, into his mirror.) Hey, Virginia! What are you
doing June 16th! (AS IF she could actually show up in Dublin, because really it would
be great if really she could get there, really!)
VIRGINIA WOOLF: (Flitting around in her Room. As if in a feathery bird-winged ballerina
costume)
(I must have deleted these Tweets. Did save the punchline? I remember this day.)
THE END
77
JILL JICHETTI
JILL JICHETTI
By JillWrites / Jill Jichetti
The presence of an explanation wouldn’t convey “missing”! That’s the point--it’s all
negative space. / The point of what? / My sculpture. / That’s air. / Exactly!
Memory! And Proust! Next: On JillWrites.
A Thoughtful Interlude With JillWrites
SHAM OVER
JILLWRITES: What happens next? Do I put on my Balenciaga gown? (Addressing the
Dickens’ Miss Havisham, in absentia) Huh, Havisham?
(A BRECHTIAN PROJECTION TITLE APPEARS ABOVE HER HEAD… I MEAN… HERE:
HAVE! A SHAM! JUST SO YOU KNOW.)
N.B. We are now having. a sham. Also: chandeliers fall. Helicopters arrive. comedy ensues
JillWrites lives an entire memoir, Forrest Gumpianly. The soundtrack to Saturday Night
Fever plays the entire time. In the background. On air. Sometimes, when you cannot hear it.
When the frequencies zoned out, that’s when we danced *for* you… This sh*t gets very, very
absurd...
The Road of Trials. (unto / ad) ± vocabularium!
[insert quadratic formula here]
SHAM OVER
(A dude theatrically scurries in, no choice about it.)
SHAM OVER: Hi. I am a man. I speak.
JILLWRITES: APPARENTLY, “Sham Over” speaks. He is a real man. We have to let
him think he’s a character here, so we can let JillWrites be a writer. JillWrites is a writer. Sham Over is a visiting character. ...With a flower in his mouth. He is accompanied
by… five other characters. ...And he speaks… Italian.
Years have passed. Jill and Sham are now in the tragicomedy stocks. Ros & Guil are in the
stocks nearby. Jill lectures all on the male / female romcom cum BFF duo. All are enraged &
alarmed. JillWrites has taken over where Nora Ephron has left off. We are all pleased. Snorri
Sturleson takes over, it’s really creepy and he doesn’t know punctuation at all and also tone
and also biology and also he never read Zen and the ARt of MotORCCYCLe Maintenance
Special OPS of jillwritesia needs to be enlisted. No one here knows their rights. and they all
need to be trained.
A TYPING VOICE: CALL ME FROM THE BRIDGE OF KHAZAD-DÛM, NEA.
JILLWRITES: (TYPING)SOMEONENEEDSTODETHRONETHISGUY$$$$$$$$$
(PERFORMING:) BUT WHERE TO PUT THE HASHTAG?!?! (Aside) I’ve got to pull the
curtain on this shit.
CATS.
BEAD.
BEACH.
WORK.
TIME.
you know these are sneakers in barbed wire. or do we call them trainers?
I haven’t yet found the right wherewithal to encapsulate the tone of comedy I would
like to choose with you, Nerd-Reader. It seems that I keep getting kidnapped by
werewolves, comedians, and Taxi Drivers. Before I can get to what you and I have in
common. Which is: “books, because I like them”.
Comedians are hiding in this methodological field. They’re making me mimesis this.
Is mimesis a verb yet? Not yet, on the official, but ‘usage dictates meaning’ and we’re
all so in the know about being sick of ourselves since the millennium at least, that I’m
going to make a case to using mimesis as a verb. Why the hell not. The internet has
already turned my beloved self-portraiture into the Word of the Year, “Selfie”. And
HAD already BEEN using “because” as a preposition because teaching kids to write
essays. (College writing instructors have to bond somehow because otherwise it’s just
us improvising 75-minute stand-up comedy routines for 30 kids at a time. Repeatedly.
All week. I didn’t grade your papers yet because drowning. Okay, why don’t we watch
a film now.)
N.B.: “Film Is Literature, Too.”
And now a word from our sponsor: The Internet. The Whole Internet.
good night
Rehang chandelier. Repeat. Next up: Duck Tape. I could go on like this all night. But the
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79
JILL JICHETTI
JILL JICHETTI
JILLWRITES: “Have! A sham!” is how it should be pronounced. Have. A. Sham. Just
so you know.
question is: what will happen when the magic deadline arrives and I have to send this to
an anthology? Do I start writing the clock in now? ...Well, obviously. CLOCK. MANY
CLOCKS. TOTO, TOO. AM I WRITING A(L)ICE IN WORDERLAND YET? YES, I THINK
I AM. I’M YOUR FAIRY GODMOTHER! THE FAIRY GODMOTHER CHARACTER, ON
THE FLIP SIDE, IS THE EVIL STEPMOTHER. IF JUNG WAS ALIVE, I’D HAVE TO
TAKE HIM FOR A PINOT GRIGIO IN SOHO OR THE WEST LOOP. -- this is / “Not
Me”.
this is / “Not Me” / ‘Tis I
cats
OKCUPID!
BIOS
MAIREAD CASE
CAROL HOOD
Mairead Case - MFAW 2014’s classroom map includes: SAIC, Naropa Summer Writing Program,
Program of Liberal Studies, Punk Planet, Promontory Point, Skylark, Sem Co-op, the Hideout,
Temporary Services, Mess Hall, Co-Pro, Skylark,
Hugo House, Neighborhood Writing Alliance,
Poetry Foundation Library, Fantagraphics, the
Nightingale, the NLG LO’s, Bookslut, and LTAB.
_
mairead.case@gmail.com
Carol Hood’s novel in progress, The Misadventures
of Tip & J.B. Turner, was nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award for Best Manuscript, and her short
story, “White Alien,” was short-listed for Glitter
Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. She’s
currently writing a graphic novel, hoping this will
appease the gods enough to make her Wonder
Woman. It hasn’t happened yet.
_
CHHoodjr@gmail.com
RYAN ENDE
JILL JICHETTI
Ryan Ende, a writer of science-fiction and fantasy,
holds degrees in Writing and English from Ithaca College and is finishing his MFA in Writing at
SAIC.
_
ryan.ende@gmail.com
Jill Jichetti is a digital artist with a multi-disciplinary practice. Main arenas include photography/digital art self-portraits; post-genre prose;
plays; community events & strategies; web intervention art; performative installation; mixed
media. Her course packet on Comedic-Lecturing
The Internet will be available soon!
_
JillWrites.com, JillJichettiPhotography.com;
Twitter: @jillwrites; Flickr: TheJillWrites. Tumblr:
jilljichetti.tumblr.com
CARLEY GOMEZ
Carley Gomez is a Chicago-based writer working
with long-form narrative as well as shorter prose.
She received her BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Writing at SAIC, where
she is teaching an undergraduate English course
and creating multi-modal text pieces.
JESSE H. LAIER
Jesse H. Laier is a playwright, poet, fiction and
non-fiction writer who grew up in the humidity
of South Florida. He graduated from the Florida State University in Tallahassee with a BA in
Creative Writing, and from SAIC with an MFA in
Writing.
T S E H AY E G E R A LY N H É B E R T
Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert holds a BS from the
School of communication, Northwestern University and an MFA in Writing from School of
the Art Institute Chicago. A member the Collected staff and the Dramatists Guild, her play
pygMALI won SAIC’s RhinoFest 2014 Competition. She won is the 2015 Kendeda/Alliance
National Graduate Playwriting Competition for
The C. A. Lyons Project, both of which were completed as part of her Graduate Advisory Projects.
_
Tsehayegeralynhebert@gmail.com
LY N D S I E M A N U S O S
Lyndsie Manusos grew up in McHenry, IL and
received her BA in English from the University of
Missouri-Columbia. She hopes to stay in Chicago after graduating from SAIC, and has a poem
forthcoming in The Cortland Review.
lyndsie.manusos@gmail.com
81
BIOS
BIOS
A S H L E Y J. M C C L E N O N
ALIX ANNE SHAW
ALEC VIERBUCHEN
RACHEL WILSON
Ashley J. McClenon’s work includes broken dialogue narratives, monologues and poetic formations that have been used in sound and video. With an appreciation for research and science,
experiences such as anxiety, loss and fear are explained with biological and psychological jargon.
Ideas of western science are challenged while the
absurdity of life’s vicissitudes are diagnosed with
faux science. Alix Anne Shaw earned a dual MFAW/MFA in
Writing and Sculpture. Publications include: Dido
in Winter (Persea, 2014) and Undertow (Persea
2007), the Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize winner.
Her poems and reviews have appeared in Harvard
Review, Denver Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review,
The Kenyon Review, and New American Writing.
_
www.anneshaw.org
Alec Vierbuchen collects small, old objects from
other people’s trash on his interminable walks,
but no—the less we say of his disgusting habits
the better. Folded into the newspaper on the table
you will find a photograph of him and a revolver.
We have your fiancé. It is in your hands.
Rachel Wilson is a poet and printmaker from
California. She is obsessed with cats, typewriters,
naps, and cooking gluten-free dairy-free food.
She lives in Chicago and is completing her MFA
at SAIC. She is a member of the Collected staff.
_
rewilson713@gmail.com or visit her blog
http://rachelelizabethwilson.tumblr.com/
H . M E LT
H E AT H E R LY N N S H OR E Y
H. Melt is a poet and artist who was born in Chicago. Their work proudly documents Chicago’s
queer and trans communities. H. Melt’s work has
been published by 3rd Language, Chicago IRL,
and THEM, the first trans literary journal in the
United States. They are the author of SIRvival in
the Second City: Transqueer Chicago Poems.
Heather Lynn Shorey is originally from a rock
called The Big Island of Hawaii. She received her
BA in Anthropology from Columbia University in
New York before completing her MFA in Writing
at SAIC. HLS has lived many lives and continues
to push her luck. So help her God or whatever is
out there that can. She has a fondness for avocados.
_
hshorey@gmail.com
BR I T PA R K S
JILL STONE
Brit Parks, poet and artist, received her BFA from
the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. After
working in New York for nine years, Brit returned
to Chicago to receive her MFA at SAIC. She has
been published in after hours and exhibited films
with Chicago Underground Film Festival and Chicago Filmmakers.
Jill M. Stone, poet and song-writer, performer,
sound artist.
_
jstone4@saic.edu
DE EPAK UNNIK R I SHNA N
Deepak Unnikrishnan is a fiction writer and storyteller from Abu Dhabi, where he was manufactured and product tested by befuddled Malayalee
parents.
K EVIN SPA R ROW
Kevin Sparrow is a multidisciplinary artist and
writer. He has recently worked on activating text
in poetry for readers to concretely map their stories to those of memorial zones, cultural landmarks, and symbolic characters. Previous work
has been published in LIES/ISLE, Chicago IRL,
and Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly.
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H OL LY L E E WA R R E N
Holly Lee Warren would like to live in” a tent, an
RV, a tree house, a normal house, and underwater. These structures inform the shape of both
her writing and visual work. Her text-based installation “Excavation” appeared in the exhibition
The Artist in Nature, part of Chicago’s 2014 2nd
Floor Rear Festival.
RYAN WRIGHT
Ryan Wright subsists on a diet of lentils and
cream. This is an ancient combination passed
down by no one. For more information, look both
ways before crossing the stream.
K AYL I A ZA NC A N
K AT HRYN W EIL
Kaylia Zancan is an Eastern Kentuky Native/
Investigative journalist, graphic designer & fiction
writer.
Kathryn Weil is a hermit who lives somewhere
in the Lakeview area, yet to be discovered by
non-hermits. She only emerges when necessary
and often waves her gnarled hermit-cane at
bar-goers and partiers on the weekends, cyclists
and slow walkers during the week while grumbling, “Damn kids.” Her age is unknown, but the
reference to Scooby-Doo has us dating her somewhere between twenty and thirty years old. It is
not recommended to approach Kathryn without
a proper introduction from a hermit-approved
advisor.
KRISSY WILSON
Krissy Wilson is a writer and artist from Miami,
Florida. She holds a BA in English from University of Florida, where she studied children’s literature. She returns discarded texts to the public
spectrum and is concerned with the relationship
beteen visual form and textual content.
83