Into the Chaco by Lorraine Caputo

INTO THE CHACO

23-24 November 1998

Santa Cruz de la Sierra to Yacuiba, Bolivia

I.

Calling vendors wander this short train. Small net bags of mangos, oranges, apples dangle from wrists. A man leans into each platform-side window: Chicken, chicken for your family, chicken for your children.

Out the window of the only primera clase car, a young Mennonite woman peers. A straw sun bonnet partially shades her stern face. A scarf-headed girl, a blond-haired boy crowd her legs.

The station bell tolls. The locomotive horn blows. More passengers hurriedly board, amid last-minute kisses & chao’s.

Five o’clock p.m. en punto, the final clang … & the slow, slow pull-away of our train … out of the station’s cool shade, into bright sunlight. The deep muffled clunk-click across wooden ties. The echoing squeals around curves into switches that will lead us into the Chaco & south towards Argentina.

Already many drift into sleep or day dreams, into bored stares. Outside, the human world stops. Children wave, dogs bark. Plastic bags caught on bushes & barbed wire fray in the wind. Fires smolder. Birds take flight at our passage.

II. Sunset

The clicking clunk, the echoing squeals across miles of prairies. Sandy soil billows at our heels. The seeded tops of grasses are transparent in the sun nearing the summits of once-distant hills. Swirls of cirrus clouds gather lilac & orchid & snow-tinged honeysuckle. 

We stop at & leave Totaicito, & its wattle-&-daub homes. Bib-overalled Mennonite men file through this car. Women & children vendors continue to wander the aisles with baskets.

A señora in the section beyond the mid-car vestibule reads a large Bible in her lap. Her lips softly voice the passages.

This sunset brightens the pale sky in periwinkle & orange. A chorus of cicadas raises its low song.

In Zanja Honda, dusk is darkening the village & plains. The thin sliver moon silvers the deepening blue sky.

The now-tarry-green brush still scrapes the side of this train. Sparse-leaved trees & ragged horizon silhouette against the rose & gold & indigo.

We pass over yet another broad dry river, its light sand paler against this new night. Hundreds of stars float around that crescent-boat moon. The whorp-whorp-whorp of sapos drifts up from the swamps.

As evening nestles us, we slip into intimate conversations. Others fall asleep, leaning against walls. Children sprawl across seats or on the floor.

& somehow they will awaken in time, gather their belongings & step into the dim lights of their station stop.

III. Midnight A horse whinnies, three huge frogs hop away as we enter Charagua. The station is crowded. Women serve meals at small tables lit by oil lamps. Military police check faces. The car is blackened, except for the light of the distant station or of passing locomotives. A soft toll of the bell, a muted blast of horn. Lamps are extinguished. Dogs sniff about as we creep away. But soon we clunk-click & whoosh through the night. A column of grey smoke arcs over these cars. Our lights within & before & whirling red atop the engine mar the ebony world.

IV. Sunrise

The land is just beginning to green & the sky to blue. Pastel colors color the east. It is not quite five. A cacophony of insect & frog song swells in the twilight.

At Tigüipa, chicks peck along the tracks. Beside the old wooden station, a man stands, hat pulled tight, dirty jeans holey-kneed. He crosses his arms against the cool morning.

& in the oriental heaven pool magenta & salmon, cascading into honey.

We zoom across lush prairies & through copses of woods. The new sunlight gilds their canopy.

By the time we arrive at Tahiguati, that yellow-blue ball is well above the horizon.

V.

Rough dark-faced mountains rise to the west.

Villamontes – Mothers & their sleepy-eyes children enter with baskets & jugs. Hay café, empanadas, biscoti.

Leaving behind railroad workers waiting to repair beds. Leaving behind shanty homes. & back into fine-soil dust storms that seep into our cars.

Aguaraicito

Palmar Grande – A windmill stands against the cloudless sky.

Over a died-blood-colored quebrada we hollowly click-clunk. Thin rivulets of water braid.

Sunchal – A young man at the car-end door begins strumming his guitar. Goats laze in the dirt crossroads of this village. 

Clang-clang, clang clang. & we roll away from the brick station, our rhythmic bumping across bleached crag-eroded soil.

Caiza

El Palmar

Now 17 kilometers from Yacuiba, less than 20 from Argentina. & yet mile upon searing mile of dense-treed savannah clicks by.

The airstrip sock is limp. Men stack bricks from out of a kiln. Forests fray into neighborhoods. The more-frequent warning horn stops that human world outside.

It is now time for me to gather my belongings & step into the bright light of morning.

Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 300 journals on six continents; and 22 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores(dancing girl press, 2019) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her travels at:www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.

For Jerry and Fruit Trees by Janelle Cordero

For Jerry

He’s a few months shy of ninety but doesn’t look it. He walks the Pomeranian two miles every afternoon, and he takes his wife swing dancing on Thursdays down at the grange. He volunteers at the veteran’s hall in the valley a few days a week, too. He stays busy is what I’m saying. They’re even going on a cruise to Alaska next week. I don’t look towards the future, he tells me. I just look back, way way back. I can’t expect the past to be anything but what it was, so it can’t disappoint me. I can’t be afraid of the past, either—I’ve accepted everything I’ve done wrong. But the future is a gamble, he says. Someday I’ll die, or at least that’s what they tell me. He laughs at his own joke and then takes off down the block, looking young for his age but still old, still on the brink of what none of us can face until the very end. And even then we think no, this can’t be. 

Fruit Trees

The fruit trees are going to have to go. They’re in the front yard, for one thing—seven in total. The old man who died here (maybe by suicide—the neighbors clam up when we ask about him), he loved birds, so he wanted all these fruit trees to attract blue jays, robins and quail. Most of all, he loved the ravens—he would fill a giant wooden bowl with rotting fruit and set it on the front lawn, and the ravens would descend on the house like a whirling black cloud. I wonder why they haven’t come back, but my husband says ravens are some of the smartest birds around. They know he’s dead, he says. Maybe they killed him, I say. The mystery of Gordon’s death looms over us like a specter, a ghost, hooded and hunched as we take the saw to the fruit trees, their trunks white and frothing with life under the blade. I look away just before each one falls, but I still hear the sad sound of their branches collapsing on the ground like the skirts of a woman dropping around her ankles. Sorry, I whisper to Gordon as I drag the spindly trees around back and throw them on the burn pile. The birds watch from high up in the pines.

Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in Spokane, WA. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate, Hobart and North Dakota Quarterly, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle is the author of four books of poetry: Impossible Years (V.A. Press, 2022), Many Types of Wildflowers (V.A. Press, 2020), Woke to Birds (V.A. Press, 2019) and Two Cups of Tomatoes (P.W.P. Press, 2015). Stay connected with Janelle's work at www.janellecordero.com and follow her on Instagram @janelle_v_cordero.

Scars by Nicholas John-Francis Claro

Do you remember when you shaved my head in our front yard? You got up from the table one morning and came back holding electric trimmers. Flicked them on and off. I knew what you were going to say, so before you said it I said, “Never going to happen.”

“It’ll feel great,” you said.

It was August. Out the window, the sun wasn’t quite up. The sky was purple-going-pink at its edges. Dim stars flickered like faulty flashlights. The A/C hummed. Before you went into the bathroom for the trimmers, you complained about how I’d complained about the heat since we moved here. You couldn’t stand my constant complaining. I really believed the sun was more intense in the Midwest. 

My theories as to why.

One theory was there aren’t many trees and the trees here aren’t tall. I mentioned this to a local I met at a bar after I drove up to look for apartments. He said it’s the wind. They’d blow down if they were any taller. Same went for the buildings. My other theory was cows. I came up with this later. Once I learned beef rules Kansas agriculture, I couldn't help but blame the cows. All the methane in the cow farts probably thinned the ozone layer to nothing. I told you this more than once. You called me ridiculous but laughed. At least you did the first time. 

I ran a hand up the side of my head, lifting my hair. This was for show. “Have you forgotten about my scar?” I said.

You rolled your eyes, and cocked your hips beneath a pocketed T-shirt of mine you had on. You wore underwear, but I couldn’t see them. The shirt hem fell an inch or two above your knees.

“I have a hard time remembering something I’ve never seen,” you said.

I let my hair fall. “That’s the whole point,” I said.

“You weren’t a baby,” you said. 

In my confused silence, you readjusted your hips and stood erect. A foot shorter than me, you were a commanding presence. Maybe the silence helped with that. Maybe it was because I was sitting down. 

“When you got into your accident,” you added.

“Kristen,” I said. “I’m well aware.”

“Are you aware that you heal slower the older you get?” You didn’t wait for me to answer. “You don’t scar as badly. Babies, toddlers—they scar badly because they heal too quickly. I bet you hardly have a scar at all.”

All I’d told you about the accident is I’d fallen asleep at the wheel. I never mentioned I’d been drinking, that I passed out, which is different than falling asleep. You knew my brother’s death haunted me, but what you didn’t know is back then these hauntings were more frequent and frequently they haunted my dreams, so most nights I drank so I wouldn’t have any of those. 

I wanted to tell you this. I was afraid to come clean. Afraid of what you’d think of me. But what I feared most was this admission might open a rift between worlds and my brother would start visiting me again in my sleep. I’ve been a coward my entire life.

So I said, “Let’s get it over with.”

I brought a chair out front while you went to the bathroom for a towel. 

Outside, grass crunched beneath my steps, itching my feet. I sat and waited. A little brighter out, but still dark, a car drove by, headlights washing over concrete. It was warm, getting warmer by the second. 

“I can’t believe you’re letting me do this,” you said 

You wrapped the towel around my neck like a giant bib. Without you having to ask, I closed my eyes and leaned my head forward. 

The trimmer teeth felt cold. I flinched when they touched my neck. You laughed and placed your hand on my head to keep me steady, then kept it there to move me how you wanted me to be moved. After a while, I could tell you were nearly finished. The crunches of hair shorn in the trimmer blades were sporadic, nearly imperceptible from its usual buzz. I felt lighter. 

 You turned them off and brushed my head with your hand and said, “Almost done.” I kept my eyes closed as you traced a finger over the scar. You didn’t say anything about it.

Nicholas Claro is an MFA candidate in fiction at Wichita State and reads fiction for Nimrod International Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, Heavy Feather Review, X-R-A-Y, Necessary Fiction, and others. 

A Small, Solid Thing by Colin Lubner

What he wants is not to drink. The stakes are whether or not he drinks. After all, it’s not that he drinks a lot. And if he drinks, it’s okay. It’s okay if he drinks a little, one or two drinks, never more than two, especially if the drinks are on the stronger side. It’s not like he’s a character in a Carver story, drinking four bottles of champagne a day. Although that wouldn’t be so bad, really. At least, if that were the case, it would be clear what he had to do. What he needed to do. The other day, sharing a story with his partner, she asked him, “What does he want?” He, meaning the main character in the story, a corrections officer named Ray. Want meaning need. And he didn’t know what to say. Back in his undergrad days, he would have had something to say. Everything was clearer in those days. The first time he read “Cathedral,” for example. Thinking: this, this, this. He’s reading Carver again, often in the afternoons. This time it’s his collected stories—one of those Library of America hardcovers, with the black-and-white portrait, the patriotic stripe. In just a few weeks, two or three, he’s probably read one hundred of the man’s stories. What impresses him most, this time around, is the accuracy of his alcoholics. Never—not before, not since—has the state of being muddled been rendered so clear. Either they are there, in the thick of it, or they’ve been off the stuff for years. If he could get to either point, he could fix it. He could begin to. He could lash himself to a peacock, a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, a shotgun, a fire, a slice of cake, a cord of wood. The sign of a clear mind, he thinks, is not variety, not expansiveness, but devotion. Commitment to a limited number of small, solid things. He’s begun to think of taking up another craft, something to do with his hands once the afternoon is almost over and he’s begun to tire of Carver. He’s thought about woodworking, but he doesn’t have an artistic bone in him, not when it comes to things that aren’t words. If he did, he wouldn’t be in such a fix. Instead, the afternoon is over. It is five o’clock, and it’s okay if he has one drink, no more than two. It is this he thinks as he goes to the fridge. He thinks this as he sits, sips. Tomorrow he can buy a good knife, a block or two of solid balsa. He’ll begin with words, gouge into that soft fragrance his favorite among Carver’s motifs. Peacocks. Phone calls. Cake. He’ll carve steadily—deep, strong cuts. He will stain it once he’s done. The finish will be dark. These inscribed, re-recorded lines will guide him out. In a notebook, maybe a week ago, he wrote: “The only thing different about this time from the other times was that this time he was sober. —Carver.” He forgets what story the quote was from. It was true—that’s all he remembers. It was true, and it came at the story’s start.

Colin Lubner writes from Harlem. You can check in on him on Twitter: @no1canimagine0. He'd love it if you checked in.

Congratulations! You’ve Matched With Sam by Sam Simon

Okay, Gina, I’ll play along; my favorite color is orange, though I don’t wear it, so if before our three-month anniversary you find yourself staring at the Uniqlo sock wall, stick to your grays and your browns, maybe a green or a blue. I say my favorite movies are by Buñuel or Fellini but I end up watching Snatch and Inglorious Bastards and anything by Pixar. Dream vacation is tough, but I guess I’d like to spend some time at the beach. A real beach, like I just saw blue for the first time and it made me weep, beach. We can call that Tahiti. But just so you know, I’m not really into seafood, by which I mean I don’t like seafood at all. I know this isn’t one of your questions, but foods I do like tend to be wrapped in other foods. Not like bacon-wrapped dates or chocolate-covered cherries, more like burritos, tacos, kebabs, gyozas, or ravioli. I mentioned what I don’t like, but the weird thing is the exceptions: sushi and ceviche, love them both. You would think that a fish’s primary offensive quality, i.e its fishiness, would diminish the longer it ceases to be a fish but I find that it increases when cooked. 

‘Dream dinner guests’ may at first sound troubling. I’ll just say they’re Adolf Hitler, Roberto Bolaño, and Larry David. To a few choice people who really, I mean really know me, there is no need for explanation, but I better elaborate before you think I’m a member of the Proud Boys and block me. If, say, you’re a basketball fan, dining with MJ, LeBron, and Magic would be a good story, but would any good stories emerge from it? Nothing you can’t see on Netflix. Now imagine the formalities of my dinner party. I promise you won’t find that on any streaming platform.

I can guess from your profile that Larry David wasn’t the deity in your house that he was in mine. To me, he is the embodiment of Adolf’s failure, and his mere presence would be infuriating, so much so that I could envision Adolf becoming enraptured with Larry. Bolaño’s inclusion is due to him being, in my opinion, the greatest writer of the 20th century, though I can see how you might prefer Pizarnik, Poniatowski, Saer, or someone else entirely. In your second picture, you’re perusing bookshop shelves, though I can’t see what you’ve got your eye on. If you’re willing to concede Bolaño’s greatness but inclined to categorize him as a 21st-century writer, I might urge you not to take such an Anglo-hegemonic approach to canonization, and also to consider the possibility that the “best” 20th-century writer came to us as a result of standing on the shoulders of those other names. Another draw for inviting Roberto is that he wrote extensively on fascism and nazism and to put it nicely, was not a tremendous fan of either. Plus, he and Larry looked quite similar in their younger days, slim build, unkempt hair, and nearly identical wireframe glasses to the ones in my third picture. With Larry being a health nut and Hitler a vegetarian, right off the bat, we have an unexpected connection. Bolaño would eat anything, as he said, “She tasted of cigarettes and expensive food. I tasted of cigarettes and cheap food. But both kinds of food were good,” and since it’s my dream dinner, we’re going with tacos. Frijoles for the veggie boys and al pastor for me and Roberto. Imagine Adolf trying to eat a taco without splattering salsa on his Hugo Boss or Larry and me quietly debating about the cilantro leaf stuck to Adolf’s doormat of a mustache; good dinner etiquette would have us discretely alert him, but it’s Hitler. Anyway, another reason for the tacos is that they require no silverware. Bolaño wasn’t beyond a drunken knife-fight or even a duel, at least on the page, and though I wouldn’t mind seeing him slice into Adolf, one thing you should know about me, Gina, is I don’t have much of a tolerance for blood, and as it’s my party the cleanup would inevitably fall onto me. Speaking of intolerance, Roberto would most likely chain-smoke cigarettes and I can see Larry hacking into a balled-up fist in lieu of speaking out, then waving his hand through a cobalt blue plume while airing inane grievances that go over both Adolf and Roberto’s heads. 

I can’t say for certain where the evening would go, and that’s part of its beauty, its appeal. You’re no doubt familiar with the preface to Roberto’s book Between Parenthesis, which recounts a dream he had where Josef Stalin and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas had a drinking competition at a bar in Mexico City. Especially considering the linguistic barrier the four of us would share, I think there’s only one way for the evening to go. After the plates were cleared I’d set out two shot glasses (Larry I don’t think is much of a drinker and I would prefer to watch). In Roberto’s glass, Los Suicidas Mezcal, and for Adolf, I’d hesitate, then pour him a glass of schnapps. He rarely drank either, only on special occasions, but perhaps he’d share my view that meeting Roberto was special? 

And so it would begin, the two of them going shot for shot. 

Unable to sit still, Larry might ask Adolf if he’d seen any Woody Allen movies, hoping to elicit either an overtly anti-semitic or vaguely praiseful response while Roberto, who shared a narrative affinity for meta and autofiction with the troubling filmmaker nodded, perhaps interjecting with thoughts on Alejandro Jodorowsky. At a certain point, Larry would finish the one taco he’d been working on for two hours and wipe his face before making the observation that the three of them were all writers. This would intrigue Roberto and surprisingly enough, Adolf, whose artistic failures would surface in search of validation from successful colleagues. And I think that for a moment, just one moment, they would stop drinking and look at one another, Roberto through a cloud of smoke, Larry with his scrutinous eyes nearly shut, and Adolf scowling like a mad dog. Then for the first time, Adolf would ask Roberto a question, perhaps about where he lived. He would respond, Spain, and Adolf would light up and say, like my favorite book, the Quixote, and Roberto would smile and say, the original savage detective. And though he didn’t get the reference, Adolf would try his best to smile back and Larry would chime in that he was sort of a sitcom-ish Quixote, and for a moment, the four of us would simmer in a pleasant silence. 

Writers, Larry would say, what is it about us? And Adolf would shrug and look to Roberto who would repeat an answer he once gave when asked about the ecstasy of poetics:

I think that all writers, even the most mediocre, the most false, the worst writers in the world have felt the shadow of that ecstasy for a second. Without a doubt, ecstasy they haven’t felt. Ecstasy like that burns. And for someone who feels it for a second and later returns to their existential mediocrity, it’s apparent that they haven’t experienced ecstasy, because ecstasy is terrible, it’s opening your eyes to something difficult to name, and difficult to bear. *

And that, Gina, in answer to your final question, I suppose is what I’m looking for on Tinder.

*Translation by author

Sam Simon is a writer and translator from Oakland, Ca. He is an associate editor for the Barcelona Review and teaches creative writing at the Institute for American Universities. He is a co-founder and managing editor of Infrasonica.org.

Friday, October 15, 2021 (Excerpt from "Until It Feels Right") by Emily Costa

Was up at 5am again, got some work done. I guess that’s nice. I couldn’t sleep after that though, and I am exhausted. I presented to a Brazilian college class virtually on creative writing for an hour and a half in the morning, and it ended up being so much fun that it distracted me for a bit. Talking about myself like I’m successful or like I know anything at all lolol. But it was cool. I bounced from worry to worry the rest of the day. I wasn't able to resist little “checking” behaviors like before. I asked Jesse over and over if he thought Ezra was going to be okay, if he'd be feeling some symptom by now. I asked Ezra if anyone had been coughing a lot at school. Who was the most disgusting kid? And did that kid happen to sit with him at lunch? As if narrowing down who was the positive case would somehow allow me to calculate our odds while we waited out the next couple of incubation days. I felt guilty and bad for the checking. Like I had a choice and made the wrong one; in the past I honestly didn’t feel like I even had a choice—I had to do the behaviors. I only googled once, but I felt like shit after. I felt the extreme urge to ritualize. Like hardcore URGE, this pull, and I resisted but barely, just forced myself, which also didn’t feel totally healthy because I wasn’t really riding the wave of anxiety, but God I’m so fucked up today. Took Ezra to get donuts, took a picture of the donuts, but only once, it didn’t feel like THE picture, didn’t feel right, bad thoughts while I clicked the shutter, etc. etc. but…I left it. Didn’t delete. I’m trying to focus on these little wins. 

At my appointment, we worked on a plan for when these “speed bumps” happen. When some unwanted thing occurs and I’m losing it. Some trigger. Whatever. I know most of what I'm supposed to do now, the signs I have to be on the lookout for: initial panic, worry, trouble sleeping, urges to perform rituals and seek reassurance. When that shit happens, I need to do an exposure, or an exposure statement. Or I need to reach out for help, which is not the same thing as reassurance-seeking because you’re not asking for answers, just support, like here is my plan, will you support me? And I have to keep in mind the difference between a slip and a full-blown relapse, the difference between an urge and a choice. C also said to try to create a character around the OCD “voice” that pulls me, and from what I described, he said it sounded like the bad guy in a 1980s/90s anti-drug commercial, the guy in the alleyway. It’s definitely some bad dude in my head.

Oh to reiterate, or maybe I didn’t even say, I was totally fucked up coming in. On the verge of tears. Worry-hopping, spiraling, sad, TERRIFIED. Once we made the plan, which took like an hour, I started to feel like I wasn’t freefalling. Like I jumped out of an airplane with no parachute. Because now we built the parachute. Then we did an exposure statement: My son was exposed to COVID, so he might have COVID, and if he has it, he could die, and I can’t fully control if that happens. That would mean I’ve failed as a mother, and I don’t think I could survive that. I could have a breakdown or attempt suicide. The aftermath is unknown. I had to really pay attention to I can’t fully control if that happens and the aftermath is unknown. Scary shit. I felt really anxious at first, but it started to dissipate, then turned into terror and sadness, because I was picturing Ezra dead, little kid in a casket, so I started crying, but then eventually I sat with it, kept saying it, and it got replaced with this calm feeling of just being bummed out, and he said yeah that makes sense, that’s the feeling that usually happens. I’d rather be calm and clear-headed and sad than anxious and a complete maniac. I’m going to try to do this this weekend. My homework is also to resist testing Ezra before Sunday. Just got really grossed-out typing all of this. FUCK IT FUCK THIS AHHHH

Cried again while putting Ez to bed. Did Reiki on him and he said Reiki is fake!!! But then he let me. Then I did it on myself and that’s when I cried. I saw a medium last night and she told me to keep up with the healing and that animals will be my niche. She also told me my dad was the one leaving feathers everywhere (we keep finding feathers everywhere; I did not tell her this) and that my dad was talking about coffee (that last “conversation” I “had” with him—me talking to his footstone—was about coffee) and she couldn’t have known this either, but I dyed my hair from neon purple to reddish brown (normal), and she said my dad was saying he liked my hair, that “that’s [his] Em.” I felt sad but also nice but mostly sad. I’m still sad, but I’m going to let the emotions come and go, see what happens. Also, I am going to have a beer, just one beer, a perfectly innocuous beer. I feel guilty but also I am unsure of other ways to unwind. Maybe we can talk about that.

Emily Costa is the author of Until It Feels Right (Autofocus Books). Her work can be found in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel sort of about her father's video store, as well as a book of short stories. You can follow her on Twitter @emilylauracosta.

Emily Costa has had obsessive-compulsive disorder since childhood. After decades of unsuccessful treatments, her condition worsens significantly during the pandemic, and she decides to try an intensive program of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Until It Feels Right is a series of framed and stylized diary entries written during the three weeks of this treatment. It’s a closer look into the realities of OCD outside traditional media depiction, a peek behind the curtain of the processes involved in CBT, and an entertaining complex portrait of a mind fighting against itself.

To pre-order Until It Feels Right, follow this link to Autofocus Books’ catalog.

Pulp by Susan Holcomb

My friends said that the baby’s first kicks would feel like butterflies, like goldfish swimming, but to me, they felt exactly like if you took a segment of an orange and squeezed. The gentle pop, the suggestion of tension, the worry that the juice might run. The first time she kicked me in the cervix a sense of dread absorbed me, a certainty that my body was falling apart and could not contain her, because with the kick came a kind of aftershock, echo after an avalanche, and a sense that something had dropped, dropped out of me, and broken. But it hadn’t.

Last night, you rolled over in my stomach. You weigh less than a pound but with my hand, I could feel your body push against mine. You turned over and the bulk of you swelled above my belly button, the place where I was once connected to my own mother, and I imagined you not inside me but encased under a domed infinity, star-lit, turning over in the vast unknown. Pascal said that our terror is inspired equally by the infinitely large and the infinitely small, describing bodies expanding to the scale of outer space and then shrinking down to the size of infinitesimal particles. 

I studied atoms in college because I found the planets boring. But with age—and motherhood—I have come to respect the composition of matter: the gaseous planets, the bundles of cells, and then you in your star-lit world-– inside me but unknown to me, secret in my own body. A star-creature so at home in your own dark kingdom, lounging with one leg up, a leg that already looks like mine. Matter which cannot be created or destroyed. You were always there, pulp ready to pop. Every kick predestined, your star-bound roll against my stomach written in infinity.

Susan Holcomb holds an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and studied for a PhD in physics at Cornell. Her writing has been or will soon be published in the Southern Indiana Review, The Boston Globe, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and newborn daughter.

An Interview with Keely Shinners by Brandi Spering

Keely Shinners sat down with SVJ Online to discuss the inspiration for their debut novel  How To Build a Home for the End of The World and the context it carries. 

Told through the lens of a post-apocalyptic case history, this story follows seventeen-year-old Mary-Beth and her father Donny as they traverse from Fox Lake, Illinois to California in a time of extreme drought and crisis. Despite the state of the world and the strains within her family, Mary-Beth’s quest to save the girl she loves ebbs on. The novel mirrors life and the constant strive for connection, comfort, and safety. However, the route doesn’t veer away from the ruminations one often has to confront in life in order to build a home, especially within themselves.  

How To Build a Home for the End of The World is unlike any other book I have ever read. When did the idea for this novel come to be? What came first, the plot or an idea for a character?

In January 2017, I went on a road trip with my father. We drove from our hometown, Fox Lake, Illinois, to Los Angeles, where I was doing my undergrad. We elected to go the southern route, following the ruins of Route 66. As we drove from ghost town to ghost town, one nondescript landscape to the next, punctuated only by beige motel rooms and stale cups of coffee, I got to thinking. One could write a story—say, about a father and his daughter, about a girl’s first love, about a road trip—tell it as close to the grain of truth as possible, and call it out for what it was. A dystopian novel. Or, a realist novel for dystopian times. 

In my view, the world ended in 1492 with the acceleration of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, and the genocide of indigenous peoples the world over. Therefore, I think most Americans know what it's like to grow up in a post-apocalyptic world. And yet, we still fall in love, still, break each other's hearts. We endure drama with friends and family, we get sick, and we grieve. This is the world I set out to depict: a world that was socially, politically, and culturally ravaged, but a world in which people still found joy, healing, resistance, love, and life. 

Do you have any techniques for developing characters?

Usually, I contrive some lesson for my characters and then see how long it takes them to figure out what the lesson is. In How To Build a Home for the End of the World, Mary-Beth needs to let go of her innocence. At first, she assumes that means she needs to sacrifice herself to save someone else. Only later does she realize that sacrifice will not absolve her; she must learn to live with her past, her guilt, her heritage – and choose love in spite of it all.

Was Dr. Maria Camphor always an integral part or did the concept develop as you were writing?

At the end of the day,  it is a coming-of-age novel. To put it in other words, it's the novel I wrote in order to grow up. The protagonist, Mary-Beth, is very much a surrogate for my younger self: sheltered, naive, eager to please, and struggling to come to terms with the fact that she is no longer innocent – maybe she never was. In order to put that girl down on the page, I needed a surrogate for the writer I had to be – the writer who had grown up, who was capable, who could see things from a distance. What emerged from that need was Dr. Maria Camphor, the book's narrator. I named her Maria Camphor because that's the name of the woman who had my phone number before me. During the years of writing the book, I often got calls asking Maria Camphor to please pay her cable or some other bill. I thought this a great name for the alter ego I was developing. She's kind of an amalgamation of Joan Didion, Anne Carson, and my future self. She's also a grieving widow and a raging alcoholic who realizes that she has some growing up of her own to do. 

What was your biggest challenge while writing?

The biggest challenge was the revision process. I revised the book twice on my own and twice in the editing stage with my publisher – so four times in total. Each time I faced a new re-write, it felt like I was changing the fabric of reality. At the risk of sounding dramatic, it was spiritually daunting and neurologically disturbing. But in the end, I arrived with a manuscript that had sweated off all doubt and denial to expose the raw prose underneath.

What does your writing process look like? Do you have any routines around writing, and do they differ depending on the form/genre?

When I embark on a writing project, big or small, I take tons of notes. I read, research, and feel through the story I wish to tell and record little fragments in a notebook or on a document on my computer. When the time comes, I begin to organize the notes into a structure. For an essay or short story, this whole process can take a week. For a novel, it takes years. 

Do you have a preference when it comes to the time of day you write or the setting?

When I write, I write first thing in the morning until it's time for dinner. I sit on my cane chair in my office overlooking Plein Street in Cape Town. I usually accumulate a stack of books around me – sometimes for guidance, sometimes for protection! 

Besides the amazing outcome of your novel, is there anything you gained from this experience (writing or publishing your first full-length book) that you think will carry into future projects?

I enjoyed writing a literary novel with a dash of genre fiction (in this case, spec fic) and have been so pleased with the warm reception it's received. For my next book, I hope to do the same. This time, I'm playing with the ghost story and the erotic romance novel. 

You once shared online that your dad found the cover photo in a barn. Can you share more of that back story?

My father is a carpenter. On a job a few years back, he found this stack of photographs and brought them home. Most of them were a bit mundane, a bit bizarre – a photograph of a stove, a photograph of a river. There were no figures. Except for this one photograph – the woman standing behind one of those coin-operated binoculars. The image was so bizarre that I kept it and carried it around with me for years. Since the novel is about a carpenter (like my dad) and his daughter (like me) on a bizarre road trip at the end of the world, I thought this image would be a great cover.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about How To Build a Home for the End of The World?

I finished How To Build a Home for the End of the World in February 2020, just days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global emergency. My book is not about a pandemic. But, the questions the pandemic raises feel relevant to the project. To what lengths would you go to alleviate another person’s suffering? No matter what, it feels poignant and sometimes eerie, to be a writer concerned with the End of the World when there is so much talk of it. I won’t claim prescience. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t expect my book to have any answers or voice the anxieties of a generation. My only hope is that this novel allows us to look at a dystopian scenario and not succumb to nihilism, but ask ourselves, have we been here before? How did we survive this the last time? What can I learn from history, from my ancestors? What histories, personal and collective, have I been running from, and how might reckoning with those histories allow me to imagine a better future? What justice do we demand? What beauty might spring out of the mess of the world? How might we best take care of each other? What integrity of love is required if we have any hope to survive? How do we remake the world?

How To Build a Home for the End of The World (released May 2022) is available through Perennial Press.

Keely Shinners is a writer from Fox Lake, Illinois. They are currently based in Cape Town where they write fiction and essays about literature and art. How To Build a Home for the End of the World is their first novel. 

Brandi Spering is the CNF editor at Schuylkill Valley Journal Online. Her first book,  This I Can Tell You (Perennial Press 2021), is a poetic narrative dealing with the fragility of memory due to trauma.

Honey Barbecue by Michael McSweeney

New chicken place just off Montford Center an immediate hit no fanfare just chicken greased onsite I was out of school academic probation flunked parents yanked tuition money one of those situations opening morning I take a low-pay delivery gig bird runs out at noon breading on the kitchen floor clings to shoes like fresh brown snow but goddamn I had more cash than missed opportunities by second week Lou the owner rejects every other order snarls no more honey mustard people keep begging for a taste anyway tell him Lou we'll pay extra just save me Lou hangs up rips out leaves doesn't come back third week some guy stakes out parking lot rifle at the steering wheel guy bellows honey barbecue honey barbecue honey barbecue cop calms him says some things guides car back to the road I watch rear lights shake like baby rattles cop says bad heart distant kids dead wife bad dragon took her the thing about working delivery you're an invisible eye money input food output don't think about the insides of windows just count the fucking money like this one acid party edge of town $90 order homeowner collects beer flooded dollar bills everybody is soaked some dude topples crawls to stereo tears volume knob to max metal wave crowd flows back ears trapped I'm $20 short with one foot out the door guy writhes on carpet jabs bloody finger at ceiling maybe God maybe nobody laughs says to me

you hear this man?

Michael McSweeney is the author of the novel HEROMAN, forthcoming from Expat Press. 

Rubbed Raw by Lauren Kardos

CW: Reference to miscarriage

Through the fields behind our backyard, we started drifting after our fifth failure. My fifth failure, my brain still tells me. I left out the backdoor and kept walking until, hours later, you discovered me on the cemetery hill off Lutheran Church Road. I couldn’t look away from the small humans on the diamond in the distance, and you agreed that you couldn’t either.

This Saturday gifts a breeze of fresh mowing and honeysuckle, so we lounge on the grassy slope and watch the tee-ball game from the outfield’s edge. Leaning against headstones toasty from the afternoon sun, we enjoy the pinballing of little players from corner to corner turn into a spectacle: a pigtailed player beelines to third base after a successful hit. 

“Remember being so young and certain?” Most days I can only offer empty words instead of saying what we both want to say, but don’t. A coach spins the child around, nudging her toward first base, and a tiny chuckle escapes your lips. Your jaw unclenches. Finally. 

“I’m going to make some rubbings,” scooping up my satchel with butcher paper and charcoal, I amble toward the oldest section of the graveyard where lichen obscures family names and departure dates.

The grounds feel like an oversized sweater, comfortable and contained. I linger at a headstone about to kiss the earth. There’s security in knowing that it too will turn to dust. 

“Babe, check this one out,” but you stopped looking back, feigning interest in my hobby, months ago. I catch your arm sweeping in wide arcs and make a mental note to bring bug spray next time. 

Today, I carry extra supplies. I’ll probably stay long after the game ends and the players are put to bed. Until my fingertips numb, until my hands turn to soot.

“Tina’s expecting,” I told you after returning from brunch with my oldest friend. She asked me to be her godmother. I hung the keys on the kitchen hook as you flipped an egg on the stove, and I know you’re perfect because you didn’t ask me to reenact how my congratulations tinkled out like an off-key piano. Or how Tina clutched my elbow, apologized, though she shouldn’t have to. You finished your eggs. We turned toward the field. 

Clover tickles my knees as I kneel in front of a pockmarked stele. We had names ready the first time. The second, we reshuffled the guest room and told the family. After that, we stopped talking about it, even to each other, as if admitting joy was a jinx. These days I wonder why we’ve wanted to create what will become another rectangular eternity.

I press the paper against the grainy surface, relishing the liquid feel of the charcoal as I make diagonal passes across indentations and letters. The limestone, too damaged to read otherwise, reanimates on the page. Joseph P. Vaughn, 1887-1926. Beloved Father and Husband. A shadow falls, and I flinch as if Joseph himself hovers.

“Just me,” you say, hugging around my shoulders. I hold up the rubbing, hoping you’ll admire it as much as I imagine the ghost would have. You smile and say, “Come on.” 

Our routine has never moved beyond voyeurism from our cemetery perch, so this is new. You pull me along the right-field foul line, bleachers packed with cheering parents ahead. 

“There’s a mom here I want you to meet. She and her wife just adopted,” you say, though all I’m able to process is that you’ve been coming here without me.

Glancing back, the headstones beckon with the sunset, but your hand settles on my low back and guides me toward a redhead in a visor. She shouts, hands cupping her mouth, “Come on, Lana!” The child with pigtails zips now diagonally from first to third. The mom beams as we approach and pats the empty seats beside her. 

You lace your fingers through mine and, together, we step forward.  

Lauren Kardos (she/her) writes from Washington, DC, but she’s still breaking up with her hometown in Western Pennsylvania. You can find her on Twitter @lkardos.

Desert Shells and Pearls by Dave Serrette

She drove a 1963 Pearl Cadillac Coupe DeVille with bullet holes in the door and a horn that played Gospel music. “It was Elvis’s car,” she would tell anyone that would ask. He bought the car while he was busy making movies in Hollywood, and it still had the California sunshine trapped inside. She had a letter of authenticity signed in ballpoint pen by some movie producer. She kept it locked up in the glove box in case someone didn’t believe her. 

We would drive around with the windows rolled down, listening to the engine and the road and wind rushing past. She would play Bob Dylan songs on the portable 8-track player in the seat between us and we would hum along. She never spoke, not until we got back to the trailer. 

She would get out and look over the roof of the car directly at me, her big sunglasses hiding her sad eyes. She would smile a little. She would always shift her hips and walk me inside for a cold drink. 

We would sit outside on the Astroturf rug, in the springy metal lawn furniture, staring out at the desert beyond the flamingos and jockeys still in their sweet repose. She would hand me Coke after Coke while she sipped on a pint of whiskey she always had hidden in her back pocket. Then we would crawl into the hammock hanging under the pop-out awning and sleep in the cold desert air. “I need some sugar, sugar.” I’d curl up next to her like a kitten who just found a warm spot to nap. 

But that was then, when things were good. That was before she started drinking alone and wrecked Elvis’s Cadillac. That was before I would wake up and find her crying in the tiny bathroom of the trailer. This was long before she would wander off with a shotgun into the desert and come back a few shells lighter than when she left. 

“I’ll never leave the desert,” she would say with a smile. That was on her good days. On her bad days she was throwing rocks and hunting ghosts with her 12-gauge. Those were the days that I was scared to be around her. 

I had just made us breakfast, making up a song about bacon and eggs while I served her in my underwear. She screamed and threw the plate out of the window. 

“I can’t eat this!” 

“Momma, It’s just some bacon,”

“I’m not mad at you. You didn’t know.” 

“Know what, momma?” 

“That they poisoned it.” 

“No one poisoned it. See?” I took a few bites. I smiled, my mouth full of food, and syrup dripping out to make her laugh. She got her shotgun from beside the bed and sat down with her back against a wall, facing the door. 

“They’re trying to get me, but I’ll be ready.” 

Her eyes had gone hard and cold. They reminded me of a bag of marbles, rattling around in my pocket. 

She told me to sit down beside her. I listened. I tucked my knees up under my chin. The metal bathroom door was cold against my bare back. I held my palms flat against my ears while she fired a few shells, blasting holes in the door. My ears started ringing. I felt like I was about to pass out

She slid the barrel of the shotgun under my chin. “Don’t worry, sugar. I won’t let them get you. I’d never let that happen. I’ll kill you before I let them get you.” 

“Momma. No one’s there. See?” I don’t know how, but I pulled together some courage and opened the door. I walked outside to show her that no one was there. I don’t think she ever really believed me. 

There were times, mostly when she was inside crying, that I would sit outside in the springy metal chairs and pretend my daddy was there, though I'd never met him. 

He wouldn’t be anything like her stories. He would drive up in a pickup truck that would backfire when it stopped. He would climb out, with a little sheepish grin and apologize for staying away so long. He would be wearing bluejeans that were cuffed above his sneakers, and a plaid short sleeve shirt, tucked in, just like the ones she would put me in when we had company. Some days we would even match. 

He would come sit down in a chair next to me, and hand me a cold bottle of Coke. He’d have one for himself. He would ask how I’ve been, and if I’ve been good at school. I would tell him that the coach let me pitch the last baseball game. That wasn’t the truth though, the coach had never let me pitch. 

Maybe he had a house somewhere. Nothing too big, or too small. At his house, he had a little dog that he was keeping around for me to come and visit. He also had a new momma. 

But this time, I couldn’t go sit outside and pretend. She had the barrel of that shotgun pointedright at me the whole time. In an act of defiance that I was sure would be my last, I turned my back to her. 

“Fine, Momma. Shoot me. But there’s nobody here.” I sat down right on the Astroturf, my back still to her. I crossed my arms and looked out into the desert. 

I heard her creaking around inside the trailer. I started to wonder if she had shot me. I had always figured that getting shot would hurt. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe the cowboys on TV were all just faking it. The truth was that I had never been shot, so how could I really know what it was like? And likewise, how could they?

The wind picked up a little. I could see a couple of lizards playing way off in the distance. I thought about how hot they must be on those rocks. Whenever I walked around barefoot on the rocks, my toes always burned. They should be wearing shoes.

Dave writes weird little things on paper, because he doesn't know how to say the weird little things in his head. Twitter@poemsandrobots

Five Colors by Salvatore Difalco

1. How Green Your Face 

Feelings of positivity engendered in the atrium took a dark turn later in the day when we encountered the red dog from Paul Gaugin’s famous painting but also Gauginesque women in various states of dress, billowing fragrance and jingling like little bells. After decades of the same nourishing but flavorless dish, one welcomes ghost peppers and near-toxic condiments. The loveliness flushed my cheeks—it was spring for fuck’s sake—but I played the asexual cretin and slobbered grotesquely as we passed the fluttering angels, gazing skyward like the Hindenburg had been revived and slowly slid across it, threatening inferno on the carnival below. In other words, I offered nothing to my eyes that would offend my companion. The pretense went unanswered till we came upon our house and entered silently. I switched on the lights and she screamed at me to switch them off. “I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said. I didn’t understand. She kept me in the dark till later, in bed. She asked if I still loved her. I said I did. She asked if I found other girls attractive and I said I did but that zeppelins really were my thing.

2. Burgundy Mohair Sweater

Put it in a silver paper box, stick it in a drawer, and save it for those times when you need the big gun, the holy silencer. It comes out with a puff and once the staticky fuzz relaxes, you hit Brandy’s Lounge on the Esplanade: all Tiffany lamps and zippered boots and black lipsticked pouts. The bartender with salt-and-pepper muttonchops and pewter paisley vest knows me from the past and in silence proffers the soothing green lantern of a Heineken. This is the telepathy I’d like to purpose in general. Imagine the advantages. I drink and belch into my hand. I drink and belch again. Beer disagrees with me and yet if I drink harder liquor I will metamorphose into a gibbering idiot and offend everyone within earshot. What everyone else imagines escapes me, and always will. Never mind confessions and the confessional mode. No one will forgive you for your sins except yourself. Tell me that after six of those magical bottles you can see everything through them. Everything is fuzzy and green. 

3. Samy’s Brown Study

Don’t you wish you could resolve your emotional needs with money? Yeah, but what if you can’t rub two sous together? Then turn your pockets inside out and do a plaza moonwalk for gratuities—but there has to be a better way. Has she for instance ever validated your vocation? Not really? But she’s beautiful, I see. Heads turn, no guff. Dudes must think, What’s he got? A chateau? A yacht? A grand piano? White gloves and stripes will only get a fella so far in life. Well, we can add a validating pépite to the plot. Remember when she thought you were the coolest bouffon in town? Didn’t last of course. Being on all the time is a job for Lecoq. The face aches from all the pseudo-jollity it dishes. Or all the oleaginous juice drains from the melon and isn’t replenished. And then one day she says, “You’re sec, Samy. Sec. I’m in un déserte when I’m with you—hissing dunes, scorpions, and belching chameaus on the horizon is how I see you now. Your gestes mécaniques no longer move me.” And this is why Samy the resident mime assumes the pose of Le Penseur and sighs.

4. Celadon Ceramic Duck

It belonged to my mother, alas, so beloved when she walked the earth. So beloved when she lost her bearings and became a menace to herself and everyone around her. She had to go. Sad as it was, she had to go. I look at it now and think: It belonged to the woman who gave birth to me and several others I no longer understand and perhaps never understood. Ho, we fought over the trinkets and baubles that had ornamented our childhoods. “You never liked the duck,” one sister said. Another sister asked me what color it was. “If you can name it you can have it,” the sisters chimed. A younger brother screamed as if his pacifier had soured, that strapping young man. Wah wah, I want it now, I want it now. A brawl broke out beside the rose cremation urn between the younger brother and the middle one whom I’d not seen for years. The younger brother, trained in martial arts, made short work of the middle one. During the tussle, they kicked over the urn and spilled our mother’s ashes. Meanwhile, I snatched the duck and ran. “It’s celadon!” I cried. “It’s celadon, you morons!”

5. Fulvous Whistling Ducks

Ducks can whistle like sailors is the message, when nothing could be further from the truth, I would hazard. Ducks appear and reappear and there is no reason for the phenomenon that I could summarize in this space. Listen here, I am only capable of riding a bicycle now. I’ve forgotten just about everything else that used to mean something to me, like playing the clarinet. But now I ride my soda orange bicycle through the flapping banners and blue rays of the city like a madman. This is not to say I endeavor to be contrary: it doesn’t profit to start blazes or to be misunderstood. And yet, how to extemporize how black I feel inside? If someone were to run a sword through me, I’m convinced a tarry substance would ooze out. Calico Daisy eyeballs me as if my funky mood has caused her evening fantasies of gooning mice to fizzle out. What’s the matter with you? she asks with languid emerald eyes and I answer by half-shutting mine to show her that I’m fine, I’m good.

Salvatore Difalco's short prose has recently appeared in Nude Bruce Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Cafe Irreal.

Clover Time by C. Cimmone

We’ve escaped the heavy hammer of a minute hand – a feat only appreciated by him and I in this exact moment, but we do not mention it aloud. My sister views grief as stillness, as silence, as loneliness. She has not yet come to her own tragedies of life – moments that hold you hostage with the steady pick of time. My sister does not understand how we sit alone with the clock, waiting for our own hour to come. She will not commend our bravery for going outside to pull weeds.

He sits across from me, a few rose bushes over, in a worn-out factory uniform – his last name hardly legible on the front pocket. My hair blows in the wind and I can feel tiny tangles tug at my scalp. We are both exposed to the light. We both observe spring and what continues to thrive.

I will pull the clover. He will pull the green onions. We will pull everything in between. Our work is gentle, as the dirt is still pliable from the morning dew: the slightest tug will produce complete roots. We toss the expelled weeds into piles as the sun begins to wilt their fronds. Without water, they begin to die.

My clover is easily identified: long, clover filled shoots create a large circle from a well-defined center. I start at the top, grab the ends of the top shoot, spin my hand counterclockwise to gather all shoots like a ponytail, and pull at the center. Clover after clover, I gather the shoots this way.

After several minutes, I pause to consider why I do not gather the shoots clockwise, in the direction of time. I tell myself I pull the weeds counterclockwise because I am right-handed; and this process is the same as it’s been since I was a child: wiping up a spill in a counterclockwise motion – or – washing my body in the same circles – or – tracing tiny circles onto my husband’s hand as a ventilator worked until we all gave up.

As I gather the next clover, I watch my hand make the circle. I tug the center. I toss the clover into a large pile. I consider each clover a minute of time. I assume I have pulled 20 weeds. I calculate 40 more clover to produce an hour of time. I try to calculate two years and 62 days in clover time.

My father has produced a smaller pile of weeds, but green onions are more tedious than clover. He tugs at the base of the weed, but their fronds are brittle and easily detached from the root. He shakes his head in disappointment when he fails to capture the root of the weed and he chooses to extract the following weed with his index finger, running it down the side of the weed and into the soil. He pushes until he feels a swollen onion, cups his fingertip below it, and pulls. The weed is intact and he tosses it into his pile. 

With each push into the earth, I wonder if he hopes to find my mother’s finger, wedding ring still attached. I wonder if he hopes to then extract her from the broken dirt and dust her off. I wonder if with each discovery of an onion bulb, he is reminded of his grief as I am of mine.

Hour after hour, we burn in the sun, our ends becoming as limp as the piles of withering weeds, but we keep working to avoid the minute hand that waits for us in the house. My sister will call this afternoon, as she does each day, a blaring ring disrupting the tick of the clock.

I imagine telling her about our hard work. I imagine her wide eyes when I explain Clover Time and how Derek is clean and sober. I tell her we are expecting our first child.

She cries.

I go on to explain our father also had a productive day and that our mother is having her evening cigarette at the kitchen table.

C. Cimmone is an author and editor from Texas. She is alive and well on Twitter at @diefunnier.

Sputtered and Died by Daniel Wartham

There is nothing but a Ford 351 big block and silence between us now. A hood covers your face as you lean into the engine bay, but I know that it is sour. Like the gasoline fumes we keep choking down. We've been at it for days now. The turning of wrenches in that hastily built garage with nails sticking out like paintings, a roof that leans a bit too far back to be "probably" safe, and silence. There is the occasional scream as a knuckle scrapes and cuts against jagged edges, cells tearing at the seams. Blood goes into the engine. It's got enough iron in its veins, but it needs life. 

The key turns again. An empty clicking noise. The gas pedal makes a hollow noise as it bottoms out of on the floor. A cough from the engine that reminds me of your father that taught you what you're teaching me. A spray can's "tsst" as it fills the room with starter fluid. Liquid dripping; gasoline. A grunt with an inquisitive tone. A lever moves in the engine bay and a wire moves inside the cab. The gas pedal moves. It is the only connecting line between you and me. 

A key's click. A cough. A spray can. A wrench or bolt turning. Metal against metal. Metal against flesh. Flesh against metal as a knuckle makes an indent in the fender. Silence. 

A key's click. A stronger cough. A spray can. Silence. 

A key's click. Metal turning deep in the bowels. A hollow cave filled with bats that are waking up. Spray can. 

Key. Pulley turning. Bats getting closer. A sound. That thing with feathers. 

Key. Cough. Backfire that scares us and the neighbors. Hurried dialing of 911 on a rotary phone before they learn. Pulleys gaining speed. 

Key. A deep growl. Something is catching and is trying to pull itself free. The dying of a spray can as it loses steam. Silence. 

A spray can flying past the windshield. Wind whistling past my ear. The empty cylinder rolling against the rough concrete. A scream from the now useless container before it hits the wall and stops. Silence. 

Key. Growl. A bark. And then finally, an engine running. Not strong. Not well. Not even in the right order. But running.

There is no silence as the oil pumps through the chambers, the pulleys reach out for air, and the gears turn their joints for the first time in years. You lift your head up and it's painted with a smile that says more than you ever could. 

Daniel Wartham is a current graduate student at Appalachian State University with a Bachelor’s in Professional and Technical Writing and an interest in 20th century American literature. He can be found in the catalogues of The Peel: Literature and Arts Review, Livina Press, and The Daily Drunk. He can also be found walking around at all hours of the day trying to find experiences to write about. He also can be found virtually rambling over on Twitter @DanielWartham

Ouroboros by Emma Burger

Jewel was singing when I felt two eyes on me, someone’s muffled voice trying to engage. “What? Sorry.” I pulled out my earbuds, still unaware that from that moment on, You Were Meant for Me would make me nauseous.

“I was asking where you play tennis,” the man repeated, this time grabbing the end of my racket, which was slung over my shoulder in its black case. I looked down at his hand on my racket, an ouroboros tattoo decorating the fleshy webbing between his thumb and index finger. I pulled the case back toward my body, inching away from him, hoping not to offend. Even then, I knew you didn’t want to set people off, especially strangers in the subway. 

He was probably 35 or 36 but only a few inches taller than me, his short dark brown hair hanging just above his eyebrows. He looked like puberty hadn’t done what it was intended to do for him. His skin was too smooth for a grown man’s, his mouth too animated - pink and glistening.

“Roosevelt Island,” I said. My friend and I had a lesson under the bubble there each Sunday morning. 

“Oh yeah? I’m a racquetball player,” he responded. “Where do you go to school?”

“Hunter,” I told him, immediately kicking myself for not coming up with a lie. 

“Really? Me too. I go to Hunter College.” My high school was part of the city university system in New York and had a college counterpart thirty blocks south of our building on the Upper East Side. In any case, this man didn’t look like most of the twenty-something-year-old college kids who went there. “How old are you?” He asked.

“Fourteen,” I said, noticing as his eyes widen.

“I was with a fifteen-year-old once,” he told me. It was the pedophile’s version of the sales tactic I’d later learn was called the foot-in-the-door technique. Or maybe he was using the pick-up artist’s technique that guys would later explain to me as peacocking. Either way, this conversation was only getting weirder. I turned away from him, hoping some benevolent, preferably large, stranger might overhear our conversation. All I could do was hope that being with a fifteen-year-old didn’t mean exactly what I thought. “Do your parents let you date?” He asked.

“I don’t really know,” I answered, taking that as my queue to leave. I took off down the platform toward the exit - my heart pounding hard in my chest, my legs pumping fast beneath me. Terrified of the possibility he might be following me, I whipped my head around, hoping he couldn’t sense my fear. He probably got off on it - feeling powerful enough to make me run. From fifty yards away, I spotted him moving purposefully toward me, picking up speed. I took off sprinting––striding up the subway steps to the platform above, three stairs at a time. The six train doors were shutting right as I reached the top of the stairs. 

If it hadn’t been for some passenger at the front end of the train wedging their body between the closing doors I would’ve been trapped - my body between his and the tracks. I was onboard, hot tears streaming down my cheeks, relieved to be on a train speeding in the opposite direction. I wanted someone to see me and take me in, to hold me close. And didn’t want to be bothered by anybody at all. 

I replayed that conversation for months, recalling the exact details of what I’d revealed to him about my movements and my whereabouts  - half expecting him to be standing outside my school as I left the building each day, ready to follow me home. 

It wasn’t until a Tuesday evening ten years later at a bar in the West Village that I saw that face again. It was the type of place populated by regulars getting a drink just a little too late on a weeknight. He looked older, but still unsettlingly unformed. Oddly youthful still but not in an attractive way - more like he’d aged quickly but not grown old. He must’ve been nearing fifty. He sat slumped at the bar, somewhere between sober and drunk - his shoulders rounded, his face devoid of any particular expression. I got up from my stool to walk past him, resolving to confirm whether he was who I thought he was - to see if a spark of recognition might flash across his face - but nothing.

For every time I’d thought about him in the decade since - for all the times I’d avoided that particular train platform, for all the times I’d turned my body away from friendly strangers - I doubted I’d even crossed his mind. As I walked away from him, I turned my head to see whether he was once again watching me from behind, on my tail. This time though, I’d gone entirely undetected, having aged out of his demographic years ago. In the bathroom, I washed my hands under the too-hot tap water, deciding what exactly to do when I got back out. I’d slap him across the face. I’d wait until he cashed out at the bar and follow him home, revealing myself only when I was at his door, firm in the conviction that he should know that I knew where he lived. When I got back to the bar though, I froze, my body choosing instead to do none of the above. 

All I could focus on was his hand, which gripped a sweaty PBR - moist with perspiration and darkened by an inky snake-like phallus penetrating its own womb.

Emma Burger is a writer and young professional working in oncology research. She splits her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan and New York City. Her debut novel, Spaghetti for Starving Girls, was released in September 2021. You can also find her work in Across the Margin, Idle Ink, and the Chamber Magazine.

Jean Paul by Dan Crawley

The mom chopped and sliced, while the dad fried the corn tortillas into shiny shells. The table was set with red plates and green napkins and white plastic utensils, and how the whole place smelled made the children excited. They could eat mountains of homemade tacos, if their parents let them. They said this to Jean Paul when he came into the kitchen smiling.

Jean Paul, the exchange student, smiled all the time. They piled into their ‘72 Ford Econoline van and took Jean Paul to Disneyland, and on the dizzy teacups his wide smile was like a blurred chalk line. He patted the sick children on their heads after the ride, his white line a twinkle of encouragement. They took him to Newport Beach, and after he tumbled in a wave, he emerged choking and spitting water, but managed a foolish grin. That made the children tease and spit sea water all over his skinny chest. He remained all teeth. They took him to Hollywood, and on Sunset Boulevard an angry taxi driver heard his accent and let him know that in this country everyone spoke American. Jean Paul beamed at the taxi driver in response.

Jean Paul never had tacos, but they could tell by his expression that he appreciated all the bowls of fixings. The long row of hot sauces lined up across the counter. He leaned over and breathed in the lustrous taco shells stacked on the layers of paper towels. The corners of his mouth swelled.

The children told Jean Paul that homemade tacos were beyond bitchin’, a word they figured they taught him.

Then Jean Paul frowned. He stared down into the big pot of refried beans on the stove. Everyone swarmed around him, loading up plates with bulging tacos, piles of beans and rice. The college student hovered over the pot.

“Dig in,” dad said to him.

“Merde,” Jean Paul said under his breath. The children heard him, though. He had taught them this word, and so they laughed and elbowed him. His eyes stayed locked on the brown mush.

“What’s up?” the dad wanted to know.

Jean Paul winced, hesitated, then said, “It looks like mud.”

“It looks like poop,” the children said.

The mom glared at them. “That’s a gross thing to say in front of our guest.”

The dad explained all about the refried beans to Jean Paul. And how he made them extra spicy. Jean Paul looked incredulous. His tight lips formed the sharp point of a pencil. The dad said he had to try at least a bite and scooped a spoonful onto a plate.

Jean Paul stared down at the tiny pile. Instead of taking it, he walked around the dad and opened the refrigerator. He brought out a jar of strawberry jam. Next he scooped jam on top of the beans.

“You’re ruining it,” the dad said.

The children screamed, “That’s gross, Jean Paul. Are you trying to make us puke?”

The mom lifted her eyebrows as Jean Paul slowly spooned the jam covered beans over his lips. The children gagged and scattered. The dad placed his fists under his chin. They watched the college student move the food around in his mouth. It wasn’t long until he looked up. 

“Well, there it is,” the dad said. “From ear to blessed ear.”

Dan Crawley is the author of Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, JMWW, Atticus Review, and elsewhere.

Voicemail 3 by Elizabeth Walztoni

Voicemail 3

I can’t return everything on the list you sent me because I’m barred from entering the last  K-Mart in the state of Massachusetts now. It’s just that I had something to replace there. I know you’ll find this funny, but it’s not, so don’t laugh. You left behind the heart-shaped box of earrings you were going to give me for Valentine’s Day. I put them all in a shot glass of hydrogen peroxide to sanitize them of your hands and they dissolved. First they turned blue, like a shipwreck. Then they were dust.  

And I figured you would ask for them back once you realized you had left them–you were always so careful with your bank account–so I went to buy some more. You’d find someone else to give them to–you were always so practical. The K-Mart doesn’t look so good anymore, like it did when we were kids. I was one of the only people there and the color of the floor made me sad.

The Valentine’s jewelry was displayed on roundabouts in the aisle, circle tables tiered like wedding cakes. I wanted to cry. I remembered your mother telling me how when she was young she used to steal from this store so much that her classmates would place orders with her for a small fee. Our world was excess, she said. Shirts and perfumes and hairsprays and jewelry. I didn’t cry yet. She would get anyone shampoo for free. They never caught her.

I spun the carousel and found the last red heart with earrings inside. One pair was different than the ones you had bought for me. They were all so tiny and bright. The backing paper looked worn. I hoped you wouldn’t notice that the glass hearts were missing. 

Maybe somehow you never opened the box. I don’t know why I did this, but I put it in my purse and kept walking. When they caught me they told me that I could have just put the earrings on layaway and paid for them later if I didn’t have enough money. The security guard said it to me like it was the simplest thing in the world. Layaway, lady, while he took my picture in front of the claw machine by the door. I’m crying in the photograph.

I had this other picture in my mind of myself walking out of the yellow light into the day, past the religious store next door, winking at the statues in the window and getting into the car and putting those earrings on. I just wanted that picture for myself. It gets hard sometimes feeling like I live in this world where everything else is fading.

Anyway, I asked them to put the earrings on layaway under your name. I’ll mail a check to your mother’s house tomorrow. I have a few of your socks too which I will send separately. Don’t come by to get them, I might not be here.

Elizabeth Walztoni’s work appears or is forthcoming in Roi Faineant, scissors & spackle, HELL IS REAL, and elsewhere. She received a Nature in Words Fellowship from Pierce Cedar Creek Institute to complete her first short story collection. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net & the Pushcart Prize.

https://twitter.com/EWalztoni

Two From Mackenzie Doebler

Passing Through

(CW: Suicide)

“Walter Benjamin and his companions settled into the hotel.  Benjamin, exhausted, went to his room, no. 4 on the second floor… What happened over the next few hours is a striking illustration of all of the tragedy of barbarism” – Walter Benjamin Memorial

     It is a Catalonian sky tonight.  You can hear the trains passing through the Portbou.  My eyes are fixed and contemplating.

     I press my thumb against the glass bottle and listen to the medicine rattle inside.

     Looking up I can see my reflection in the mirror. I try to focus on the light in its center; the aura of a face.

     Two stories up, I am looking out the window and I remember: there is an infinite amount of hope.

     They seek justice and so the world will perish.  I know it.  I am a stain on their Reich.  This is why we pushed and strained over mountains and through vineyards to find this place where we are still like prisoners.

     I could go for a walk, see the Rambla, or watch that Badia and the sea out beyond.  But I am tired from the climb and this hotel is like a prison.

     Escape is hard to picture, I am in no state to leave. The remaining tablets rest in my hand.  A tiny village in the Pyrenees.

     A storm is blowing from paradise and the wings cannot close.  I take water from the tiny sink beside the window and wash them down.

     There is an infinite amount of hope. The trains pass through.  But not for us.

Thin Strip of Road

            Here there is a thin strip of road that runs along corn fields and small rectangular homes.  There, beside the little green house with the small garage, stone steps, and thin metal banister, is the field in which grandfather tended to carry his oxygen tank with him and disappear among the corn stalks.  Close by is the tree, thick at the base with branches that spread over the sandbox where Brother and I spent afternoons with brightly colored plastic cars and speedboats.  Ice cream.  Ice cream always came after.  I try to imagine his smile, and my own.

            Inside the little house there’s a patchy couch where Brother and I sat and ate sour candy until our mouths ached and we couldn’t taste sour anymore.

            There’s a watch strapped on to the support beam in the bathroom and an electronic solitaire machine.  I never understood how the lock worked and I remember crying inside while Grandmother tried to explain how to unlock it (push the knob against its base and turn).  

            Downstairs the carpet is thin and the air is cool.  There are instruments for baking and seats for Halloween.  Have you ever had a popcorn ball? 

            Family members I’ve never met wash into faces I’ve loved and kids I never knew (and wouldn’t know again) dare each other to climb the old thick tree by the sandbox, or jump all the way down the steps.

            And then they were old, which they always were, but suddenly I could see it.  We sit and watch TV, Grandfather points at the jukebox on the pawn show.  I love him and I wish the gulf of the years would go away.  Still, he calls Brother and I tiger and we know we are loved.  

            We used to eat pickles straight from the jar.  I was a clumsy child and the pickle always slipped.  Stupid pickle.  Grandma gave us Blue Bunny Ice Cream which we enjoyed at the dinner table, hiding away from the mid-summer Wisconsin heat.  I remember non-pareils in the candy dish, or Strawberry bon bons.  I remember trekking below the road through the drainage pipe with Grandmother on our way to the store for some kind of treat.

            There is the red SUV heading north on the thin strip of road, away from the little green home with the sandbox and the cornfield, the patchy couch and watch, and the cool basement.

Mackenzie Doebler is a writer and graduate student living in the mountains of North Carolina.  They write when they can, study when they need to, and relax by binging blockbuster flicks with their pet rat Seymour.

Paris of America by Scott Gannis

They met at a bowling alley in Northern Kentucky. 

Her high school sweetheart played for the Bengals. They’d winced through JuCo towns in Kansas and practice squads in Missouri until he ended up covering kicks along the Licking and Ohio rivers. Once you make it, you want to make more. That means dumping your long-time girlfriend. 

Maybe it was because she was blind and grew up on a farm. Maybe it was because she was unemployed. Either way, she was alone now. Six weeks of sitting without deliverance and she took a bus, sight unseen, to a bowling alley across the bridge. 

****

An adoptee from Cleveland with a cocaine habit and a GI father who returned from World War II but never recovered from being one of the only Jews at Bastogne. Life before her was flooded basement apartments and stolen vending machine sandwiches and flipping kielbasa for $2.65 an hour. Halfway house cigarettes, skipping from gutter to gutter. 

She needed a partner. He didn’t have one. He said bowling is golf for poor people, which made her laugh and him blush and the rest of the league snicker at the two broke and broken Midwesterners in the suburbs. They fell in love under the glow of a Cincinnati skyline. The rust had not yet taken hold.

****

I tell you all this—my brothers, my niece, anyone else who intuits how it might end for me—because they were happy once. And like so many love stories, their happiness peaked early, too early. 

Just before the peak, though, came a child. Born in Cincinnati the last time the Bengals made a playoff run. He grew up sad, because they grew up sad. And now his mom is dead and his father drinks every day but he got out, away, lives elsewhere, sees his dad once or twice a year, where they go bowling and don’t talk much. 

Just look at broad alleys like boulevards as the lights shine and pins crash.

Scott Gannis is a former asbestos abatement professional from Minneapolis and the author of Very Fine People (Atlatl, 2020). He tweets @scootergannis

One of a kind Warlock in primary palette by Sheldon Birnie

Bored, the boy built a rockin guitar out of Duplo. 

Earlier, we’d spent some time on a tower, or castle, or some such. But the endeavor failed to capture the boy’s attention. We gave it up, let the blocks of primary red, green, yellow and blue fall where they may. I puttered around, made coffee, tossed in a load of laundry. In that time, a guitar had taken shape.

It wasn’t functional (obviously). But it looked pretty deadly. Not unlike a Warlock whose angles have been squared off and brightened up. The boy wailed on it all morning, through the afternoon and into evening; strumming invisible strings, fingering imaginary frets; riffs recreated a capella, complete with distortion and wha-wha-whammy. More than once, I saw him strike a rockin pose, check his look in the mirror.

Hell yeah, buddy boy. Rock n roll.

Blocks detach, form dissolves, what once was is no more. Smashed to bits in the early evening, burnt out before it could fade away to gather dust in a corner. Pieces gathered, tucked safely away, waiting for the latest spark to bring them out of the shadows once again. Not unlike the brief, fleeting moments of bliss a song cranked up to 10 can provide a soul, young or old. You take what you can get when you can get it and hope you can hold onto that feeling through the brow beating slog that eats up the bulk of our waking moments. 

Sheldon Birnie is a writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada who can be found online @badguybirnie