Riding Light

Spring 2015

The Riding Light Review

The Riding Light Review

A sixteen-year-old boy once imagined riding on a beam of light, and
his simple thought experiment played an important role that would
later change the worldit ushered in the age of modern physics.
This boy was Albert Einstein.
Einsteins use of imagination fueled his work in physics, which
eventually lead to his famous 1905 papers on Special Relativity.
Riding Light emerged out of a desire to push the boundaries of
creativity through language, ideas, and story. We believe in the power
of imagination, the fuel for our ideas and innovation. This notion
inspired the name of our magazine.

Masthead
Editor in Chief
Cyn C. Bermudez
Senior Editor
Taylor Lauren Ross
Associate Editor, Fiction and Nonfiction
Melissa Ra Shofner
Associate Editor, Poetry
Kara Donovan
Junior Copy Editor
Sophie Eden
Readers
Jamie Hoang
R. L. Black
2014 The Riding Light Review ISSN 2334-251X
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form
without permission from individual authors or artists. The scanning,
uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other
means without permission of the author(s) or artist(s) is illegal.
www.ridinglight.org

CONTENTS
EDITORIAL 7
ARTISTS 8
Photography Showcase
PHOTOGRAPHY 24
Harry Wilson
PERSONIFICATION 68
Lavinia Roberts
Fiction
COME BY 11
Heather Roetto
Photography: Cactus Heart by Amanda Bess Allen
LONELY PEOPLE 16
Rebel Sowell
Photography: Rapunzel by Rebecca Oet
BALLOONS 33
Christopher Dizon
Photography: Door with Red Flowers by Amanda Bess Allen
AULD LANG SYNE 47
Mathieu Cailler
Photography: Garden Gate by Amanda Bess Allen
ATOMIC PASSION 55
Richard Klin
Photography: The Lake Knight by Rebecca Oet
PAST RELEASE 82
Christina Scott
Photography: Over the Bed by Kathy Rudin

THE NOISE OF YOUR ENEMIES 89

NoahDavid Lein
Photography: Eva and Raymond by Kathy Rudin
Poetry
LOOK AT HIM CALMLY 15
Cheryl Quimba
MODERN LOVE 32
Howie Good
THREE POEMS 44
Dan Fitzgerald
BLOND BREW 66
Nicole Jean Turner
THREE RINGS 77
Sue Hyon Bae
DEEP RIVER ROAD 98
Marnie Heenan
Nonfiction
A DAD TO HIS DAUGHTER 78
Kate Tagai

Riding Light is a collaborative artistic venture: writers, artists, and

editors coming together to contribute a quality work, to establish our
voices among the larger landscape of literature and arts throughout
the world.
I am humbled and inspired by the generosity of our readers and
patrons. The support of our readers and patrons is essential for Riding
Lights continued success. Riding Light receives support through
regular and one-time donations, as well as through reading and
sharing of the magazine.
The dedication of the Riding Light staff is exemplary. The time and
hard work our volunteers donate in bringing this magazine together
is invaluable.
A very special thank you goes out to Art without Limits.
Thank you for supporting the arts. Thank you for supporting Riding
Light.

Editorial
Life is journey, not a destination. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Welcome to Riding Lights first themed issueour fourth issue that
completes our first year. The theme is love, loosely defined as
anything that pertains to the notion of love: family, relationships,
physical, emotional, and even other worldly. Im happy to say we
have an eclectic selection of stories, poems, and art that are as
colorful as our coverbits and pieces of different lives whispering
and laughing and shouting for the sake of it, because it is the journey
that matters.
Ive been thinking about my own journey lately. Thats the wonderful
thing about art and literature; it evokes self-reflection. Like so many
in our first-world culture, I pursue my goals relentlessly. Im
ambitious and determined. But sometimes I forget to enjoy the
present moment. When my daughter was a little girl, my focus was to
improve our lives. Each goal that was completed gave me momentary
peace. But there was always another goal to accomplish. My life
became a long trudge up a steep maintain slope. And while I climbed
that mountain, my daughter grew up and became a young woman.
Now when I look into a mirror, I see my first gray hair laying across
my bangs like a trophy. All the moments with my daughter as a
young girl are gone. I wish I had relaxed more, worried less. I wish I
would have held on to those moments with her a little tighter,
enjoyed them for what they were in the moment they were
happening. The birth of my grandson has changed my perspective.
Ive slowed down. I still work like a madwoman, but its less
important. I cherish every single moment, no matter how small, with
my beautiful family: my grandbaby and daughter. Because that is the
real journey.
I hope you enjoy our first spring issue.
Sincerely,
Cyn Bermudez
Editor in Chief
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ARTISTS
Cover Art
Vivian Caldern Bogoslavsky is a Colombia Native born to
Argentinian parents. She holds a bachelors in anthropology with a
minor in history and a postgraduate degree in journalism from
Universidad of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. She has studied art
for over thirteen years with the well-known Argentinian art master
Carlos Orrea. She also has studied in Florence, Italy. Today she is
studying fine arts and design in the United States. Vivian has shown
her work in both individual and collective shows in Colombia, Italy,
and the United States. She has been published in multiple books,
magazines, and webpages.
Photography Showcase
Lavinia Roberts is a visual artist, facilitator, and activist. She is a
published, award-winning writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She creates
masks, puppets, and other objects for live performances. Her work
has been produced in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and London.
You can see more of her work on her website at laviniaroberts.com.
Harry Wilson is a retired professor of art at Bakersfield College. His
photographs have been exhibited and published widely, yet he
remains an unknown photographer and backwater malcontent. He
has been on the brink of a brilliant career for fifty years.
harrywilsonphoto.com

Photography Headers
Amanda Bess Allen holds a degree in photographic technology and
is currently studying language, literature, and writing. Her goal as a
photographer is to create images that evoke stories and capture the
beauty of the natural world.
Rebecca Oet is a student from Solon, Ohio. She enjoys reading,
writing short stories, poetry, and, of course, taking pictures. Rebecca
is a national silver medalist in the 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing
Awards and has won multiple awards for her writing and
photography. She often fantasizes about growing wings and flying
through the air.
Kathy Rudin is an artist from New York City. Her work has been
published in OUT, Genre, Wilde, DUM-DUM, RIPRAP Journal, The
Sun, The Boiler Journal, and Bop Dead City, among others, and has been
exhibited at galleries in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, and
Vancouver. She also volunteers at an animal shelter, and she likes
cheese.

10

COME BY

Heather Roetto
Im in love with a one-armed man.
They say he has killed before and the law is looking for a one-armed
manbut folks here tell a lot of things, and where are they when the
twilight touches the darkness on the horizon and he holds my face in
his hands, both the phantom and the real, and calls me his darling?
Now that I have the one-armed man, friends dont come around
bothering menot after I took a twenty out of Margarets handbag
because he told me to. The visits and the invites and the swinging
bys have all gone to dust, but I dont need them because I have my
one-armed man. And my people, they threaten to disown me, but I
already took all they had for the one-armed man. And I dont imagine
therell be much of an inheritance left, and so I left them for the onearmed man.
We settle in a small place, out of the way because he says he likes it
quiet. There isnt much of a yard, but theres a porch, and we sit,
sometimes hardly speaking a word as familiars go, until he places his
hands, both the phantom and the real, on his knees and stands. I
follow him into the house and into our bed, but before I do, I latch
the screen door.
Most days I sit at the kitchen table and watch the one-armed man
through the little window, filling the woodpile for a fire that no
amount of tears can quench. He wipes his forehead in the June heat
and kicks the next piece into place. He swings the axe so it curves
over his head and just before the blade buries itself in the timbered
heart, he leans forward and beats and beats and beats the breath out
of the wood until the dust exhales. When all the woods cut and
piled, the one-armed man wipes his forehead once more and comes
inside.
As night creeps in, mosquitoes are desperate for the warmth under
my skin. I pinch one in my ear and smear the drop of red along my
11

fingertips while the one-armed man takes the few steps from the
porch to the road. I dont see him until long after the twilight has
touched the darkness on the horizon and Ive been bled dry. I hear
him whisper my name, and he runs his fingers, both the phantom
and the real, along the fresh welts on my arms and calls me his
darling.
The next morn, the one-armed man tells me he needs my help, and
so I set out with him into town. I wear a disguise and he a prosthetic
arm. We go inside the Sun Trust and Loan, and the one-armed man
tells everyone to stay quiet and dont make a move. I hand the gal the
bag, and I tell her to fill it with all the cash she has because the onearmed man needs it and I love him.
Shes scared of the one-armed man, but I tell her that when he holds
my face with his handsboth the phantom and the realat dusk
when the twilight touches the darkness on the horizon and calls me
his darling, my heart wants to believe him.
Her hands tremble as she picks up the stacks of fives and tens and
twenties and shoves them in the bag, and so I know that she hasnt
heard me. But before I can tell her again, the one-armed man shoots
her for being slow, and theres blood on Andrew Jacksons face. The
one-armed man motions me toward the next teller, who has the
money all in the bag before I can tell her about the dusk and the
twilight. Shes scared of the one-armed man too.
The one-armed man pulls me out the door and fires his gun again. I
step over a fella lying on the ground. One leg is bent toward his back,
and he twitches a little as he lies there, but his shirt reminds me of
bitterweed petals against the dawn, and I think of the one-armed
man.
I latch the screen door when the one-armed man takes me home, and
all I can think about is running the hose over his feet so I can wash
away the dust and blood and dry the delicate flesh between his toes
with my hair. But instead I watch the red earth creep over his knees,
filling his body until I can taste the rust on my tongue when he kisses
me.
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I put the kettle on the stove, and just before it can whistle sweetly, I
hear the shrieks of the lawman, and the one-armed man tells me hes
moving on.
And I know its true.
He tells me hell come back for me.
And I know its not true.
The lawmans boots stomp toward the porch, and the one-armed
man takes my face into his handsboth the phantom and the real
and calls me his darling once more before running out the back door
with the bag of money and the ten dollars from the gravy bowl
behind the cups in the cupboard.
When all is quiet, I find the phantom arm on the kitchen table and it
is all that remains of the man that I love; the one I want the onearmed man to be. I cradle the arm because I cant let go.

Heather Roetto received her MFA in creative writing from Antioch

University, Los Angeles. She is the editor in chief of Gold Man Review,
a literary journal based out of Salem, Oregon. For six years, she
served as the co-representative for Willamette Writers Salem Chapter
and has taught workshops on writing, editing, nonfiction proposals,
and writers block. A recent transplant to Northern California, she is
enjoying reading and writing in the sunshine.
13

LOOK AT HIM CALMY

Cheryl Quimba
That he is in my line of sight. That at the edge of sleep lies the winsome
exhale, as if I could feel two edges meet against my finger like a razor blade
uncased.
That now he drops his chin, is lost against the wallpaper. That the domestic
is every day unfamiliar, and I walk awkwardly to the bathroom in the dark.
That now magnified inside a glass of water floats an ant.
That shadows sweep across the wall. That they stop, and move again.
That a bicycle tire slowly spins. That keepsakes crush flinty in my pockets,
that the telephone is ringing that way it does when the room is crisp at
night.
That saturated with old sweat the carpets fibers stiffen. That his hand is
clenching and unclenching and alive.
That he is dearest. I look at him calmly.

Cheryl Quimba's poems have appeared in Dusie, Phoebe, Tinfish, Everyday

Genius, 1913, and Horseless Review. Her first book-length collection of poems,
Nobody Dancing, is forthcoming from Publishing Genius in December 2015,
and her chapbook, Scattered Trees Grow in Some Tundra, is forthcoming from
Sunnyoutside Press. She lives in Buffalo, New York.

14

LONELY PEOPLE
Rebel Sowell
Squeezed between a man and a boy, strangers who could pass as his
own grandson and great grandson, Harry no longer felt the jostling
of the train. Though he disliked the subwaypeople always pushed
and shoved with no regards for othershe had no choice. With his
failing eyesight, he couldnt drive a car well enough to maneuver the
heavy traffic. Thank God he could still walk. He didnt need a cane.
Yet.
He stared at the wormy veins traveling his gnarled hands without
seeing, rubbing the bruised arthritic knot on his right thumb. His
thoughts drifted to another time. He used to drive Eleanor
everywhere: beauty shop, grocery store, doctors. She had been quite
the looker, with her dark hair, blue eyes, and long legs. Theyd been
married for fifty-nine years, not all of them happy. Especially the last
15

decade. Something inside her died before she did. She grew angry
and bitter with old age. It didnt agree with her. Shed lost most of
her close friends to petty grievances and envythose gals sure loved
to gossip, and see where that got them. The other friends slipped
away from boredom and finally death. Her looks deserted her, too.
So she took it out on him as if he were her mirror.
At first, Harry thought she just needed a whipping boy, someone to
absorb her pain. Hed let her nagging roll off his back for so long, he
no longer heard her. Once he retired, he couldnt escape the
onslaught. He had nowhere to hide. She might as well have put a
pillow over his face and suffocated him to death. Her words, like
rocks, crushed him. His shoulders slumped with the weight. He
started believing her.
You stupid son of a bitch, shed scream at him if he forgot an item
off her long list of groceries and beauty creams.
You cant do anything right, you impotent bastard, shed say when
he struggled with fixing something as piddling as the squiggly line on
the television.
With her death, he thought hed be free at last. But he felt lost. He
missed the woman she had once been. Hed welcome her criticism
just to hear a voice directed at him.
Someone coughed. He glanced around, remembering why he was
here, on his way to another doctors appointment, aware now of all
the people near him. But they didnt see him; senior citizens were
invisible. He had a feeling if he still had his sense of smellthe first
sense to go if you had Alzheimers, according to his doctorthe boy
next to him, the one wearing baggy pants and a stained, white T-shirt,
holding a skateboard, would reek of sweat.
The skater, sensing Harrys direct gaze, turned his head and scoffed.
What are you looking at, old man?
Harry shrugged and glanced across the aisle. A fifty-something
woman across from him tried to look pretty, crossing her legs, ladylike in her linen trousers, her bosom straining against a peach floral
16

blouse. He bet she smelled sweet of perfume.

***
Was that elderly man eyeing her? Dirty old fart. Lisa folded her arms
across her chest and turned her head away, spotting a distinguishedlooking blonde fellow further down the aisle. Dressed in khaki slacks
and a blue polo shirt, he reminded her of Eric, the only man shed
ever truly loved. Eric had worked as a copier repair man, replacing
toner, fixing paper jams, aspiring to one day move up the ladder.
They met in the workroom at the high school where she taught
sociology. He serviced the schools broken-down machines often. It
wasnt long before he began servicing her. After years of promising,
they would marry, buy a house in the suburbs, raise a family, he had
left her for a younger, prettier girl, one whose family owned the
copier company and had money.
What can I say? He told her after finally returning her call. Hed
avoided her for weeks. I dont love you anymore.
When Eric abandoned her, Lisa began drinking. She needed
something to numb the grinding agony. She didnt want to think or
feel too much; it only drove her insane, making her pace the floors of
her apartment, smelling the mildew growing on the wooden window
seals, listening to the water drip from the leaky faucet, the neighbors
doors open and shut, a woman yelling at her husband to turn down
the damned TV.
She wanted to scream, Shut the hell up, and pull out her hair. Shed
wasted many years with a man she thought was her one true love and
lost her moral compass, her sense of self along with him. She picked
up strange men at bars, men who looked good under the dark red
lights, but not so much in the daylight, who smelled of cheap cologne
and sweat, never meeting one worth keeping. She had unfulfilling
sexual encounters in various placesbackseats of cars or cabs, park
benches, his or her apartment, and bathroom stallsand contracted
a disease. With that disease came others, but none as painful as her
broken heart. She remained alone, living vicariously through others
on the television set. At night, when she crawled into bed, her
17

loneliness wrapped around her like a cold blanket. Though she could
never have children, she still hoped for a husband someday, before it
was too late.
Lisa glanced at her watch. Shed have to hustle to make her doctors
appointment on time. She noticed the blonde looking her way, before
returning his attention to his newspaper. Had he found her
attractive? Licking her lips, she wondered if he was married.
***
Mark felt her eyes bearing down on him. Not a bad looking gal, a
little rough maybe, but she was too old for him. He liked them
younger. She made him nervous. Why did she have to keep ogling
him? He stared at his newspaper, though hed stopped reading it
minutes earlier when he saw a wedding photo of his ex-fianc and
her new British husband, their smiles wide, filled with a future. It
made his stomach churn. Why had Diane left him? Hed tried so
hard, but it wasnt enough.
As a college professor, Mark lived a simple life. Diane hadnt thought
of him as simple-living when she first met him. Shed been his
student. When had she stopped looking up to him? Shortly after
graduating with a bachelor of arts in English, she moved in with him.
She thought his apartment quaint, and bought flowers and burned
incense to cover the smell of a troubled sewage system. She nabbed a
job at the newspaper and made new friends. Soon, she started
dreaming of grad school in England. He let her go, thinking shed
come back. He worked his way up to Dean of the English
Department and leased a nicer apartment. Hed reached one dream
and lost another.
He no longer dreamed. He wanted to cry, but didnt know how. He
wanted to die, but was too afraid. The doctor prescribed him some
pills. Now he felt nothing but a deep-seated loneliness. Would he feel
this way forever? When he spoke with his therapist this morning, he
would ask her. She was easy to talk to, a nice woman. Striking, too.
Could a woman like her find a man like him desirable?
Girls twittering like baby birds broke his train of thought. Were they
18

laughing at him? He shook his head without looking up from his

paper and turned a page.
***
Nancy heard giggling. Her eyes followed the sound and landed on a
huddled flock of college-aged girls. She caught whiffs of their breath
mints and tanning lotion from where she sat. All lively with bright
white smiles, slender long limbs, and not an ounce of fat. She
imagined they were off on some adventure.
She couldnt bear watching longer than a minute. It seemed like
yesterday she was one of them. And then one morning, before she
retired, shed looked into the mirror, and the girl was gone. Poof!
Like a magic trick. In her place, stood a woman with graying hair and
lines on her face, skin sagging from her chin, breasts, butt, even her
knees. Shed never known knees could sag. No one had warned her.
Where had the time gone? Shed taken it for granted, living at fullspeed, working to get ahead at an ad agency, never once stopping to
think about where she was going, other than the executive offices.
She glanced at a little girl sitting across from her. If only shed taken
the time to have a child or two. Shed have something to focus on,
someone to love, and not feel so alone. Nancy winked at the
youngster and reached inside her purse. She had a stick of gum
somewhere. She found it and held it up like a prize. Excuse me,
she said to the girls mother. Would it be okay if I gave her a piece?
The woman glared at her. No. She dont take candy from strangers.
Nancy felt her face burn and her throat tighten. She stuck the gum
back in her purse and grabbed the pole to her left as the train lurched
to a stop. She smiled at the little girl before exiting.
***
Clarissa flashed a quick grin at the nice gray-haired lady. She would
have liked some gum, but she already had two cavities. Before they
left the apartment, Mommy had griped. If youd brush your teeth
like I keep telling you, I wouldnt have to fork out money I dont
19

have or lose a day of work to take you to the dentist. Clarissa

clapped her hands over her ears to block the rest of her ranting.
Mommy never stopped.
Feet swinging, unable to touch the floor by half a shoe, she
pretended to read the advertisements on the subway train while its
wheels reverberated on the track in her head. She didnt have to go to
school today, which was a good thing. She fingered the loose thread
dangling from the hem of her skirt. She hated school. She hated all
the kids who made fun of her clothes and her stutter. She couldnt
help stuttering. People made her nervous. Between her mothers
screams and her teachers sad eyes, she wanted to run away. But
where would she go? No one knew where her father had gone. Her
grandparents were too poor and grumpy like Mommy. Besides, they
were old and smelled funny.
Clarissa stood to get a better glimpse of the new people climbing
aboard, filling up the empty, plastic, blue spaces.
Sit down and be still, her mother scolded.
Another old woman took the place where the gum lady had sat. She
looked happy, like someones grandmother on television. The
woman grinned and winked. Clarissa pretended she was hers. They
were going on a trip. She smiled and scanned the advertisements
again, looking for the ones about travel. She would find the perfect
place.
***
The little girl reminded Maggie of when she was a child, bursting
with hope and longing to explore. Maggie enjoyed watching people in
the subway. She imagined what their lives were like, comparing them
to all the people shed known throughout her life. For every happy,
upbeat person, there existed five more who were miserable. Most of
them were responsible for their unhappiness, but some couldnt help
it. A few just had bad luck.
Her eyes met those of a man close to her age sitting across from her.
He nodded. She read the sadness in the lines of his face. She smiled.
20

Yes, she understood. Shed had her fair share of sorrows, the worst
of which was watching her beloved Dan suffer through hours of
painful chemotherapy. She lost the love of her life to cancer and
battled the darkness that followed. Knowing theyd meet again in the
afterlife gave her the strength to carry on. What other choices did she
have? So Maggie made the decision to be happy. She relied on her
faith and learned to feel fortunate for the many good memories with
her husband of fifty-five years.
She lived alone but wasnt lonely, content with a garden to tend and a
dog to walk. Her garden flourished with wildflowers, bumblebees and
butterflies. She could watch them all summer long. Spanky, her
golden retriever, slathered her with wet kisses at every greeting. They
enjoyed their walks together, especially in the spring as the birds sang
their lullabies at nightfall. During their morning walks, shed grab a
handful of wildflower seeds from her coat pocket and sprinkle some
at the nearby park. Thinking the pigeons would eat them all, she was
always amazed that some of the flowers grew.
Shed loved many and kept those memories in an imaginary jar inside
her head, opening it whenever she needed, releasing them like
butterflies. Shed had a good life, filled with many friends whose
cheerful voices lingered on. Shed raised three healthy, independent
children. They seemed happy. Her seven grandchildren called their
Maggie Gran twice a month and came for long visits on holidays.
She played Bingo once a week and won thirty dollars here and there.
When it was time for her to leave this earth, shed go willingly, with
no regrets. But she wished she could do more before she died. The
train slowed as it approached the next stop. She watched a handful of
people lean forward, readying to depart, faces bland and empty of
expression, except for their shifting eyes. She would like to gather all
the lonely peoplethose who remained silent, refusing to make eye
contact or reach out to othersand bring them together. Shed be
like a kindergarten teacher, making them hold hands, teaching them
how to take care of one another, looking both ways before crossing
the street. Shed tell them, Here you go. Youre not alone anymore.
Help each other. Be kind. Like God, shed spread love like
wildflower seeds. It was a good wish. Shed hold on to it, like the
21

railing she used for support to exit the train.

Rebel Sowell taught elementary school for thirteen years while

raising her two daughters before embarking on an old dream of being
a full-time writer by earning her MFA in creative writing from
Southern New Hampshire University. She has published short stories
and poetry in West Texas literary magazines: The Tableau, The
Sandstorm, and Chaos West of the Pecos. Rebel has written two novels:
The Magicians Hook, a fantasy, and Daughter of the Bride, historical
fiction. She is currently writing another historical fiction novel, the
title still unknown.
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Harry Wilson is a retired professor of art at Bakersfield College. His

photographs have been exhibited and published widely, yet he
remains an unknown photographer and backwater malcontent. He
has been on the brink of a brilliant career for 50 years.
harrywilsonphoto.com

30

MODERN LOVE
Howie Good

You can catch him. You can expel him. You can paint over him. He
will still be here. The woman at the bar with the heart-shaped face
seems to be waiting for something without knowing what it is. Are
you busy tonight at 2:00 a.m.? he asks her. I don't want to pressure
you, but my Viagra is starting to wear off. Management approves.

Howie Good is the author of several poetry collections, including

most recently Beautiful Decay from Another New Calligraphy
and Fugitive Pieces from Right Hand Pointing Press.
31

BALLOONS
Christopher Dizon
Its all about ambience, and if youre gonna have sex for the
first time, you might as well infuse the setting of your broken
virginity with the endearing sentiment of Pixar. And its tough.
Because lets face ityoure not invested in the parental
problems of fish. Youre not Finding Nemo because youre really
looking for the G-Spot. And you guess that its somewhere
between the thighs. You also dont know why this pivotal
erogenous zone is labeled with a capital G. How would you
go about finding it? You assume that if you get that far, that
there wont be a gigantic fluorescent green G glowing
asking and guiding you toward it: touch me. You cant ask her by
pointing toward a section of her body with your index finger,
because then shed know. You dont want her to know. So.
You go with what you do know.
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You decide to watch Up.

It goes against your logic. Youre inexperienced and you own a
tendency to walk inside the domain of the literal. Why should
we watch a movie? you inquire. Your younger brother shakes
his head. Hes seen through your awkward question and
scratches his bearded chin like a TV dad waiting for the laugh
track to die down. Hes twenty. Youre twenty-six. And he
laughs because hes the smooth one, the inheritor of better
looks and charisma that somehow skipped you. He grins and
sighs kindly. He knows. Despite what you believed, what hes
told you is true: whenever two people decide to watch a movie,
theyre never actually watching the movie.
Its foreplay.
Its multitasking.
Its a goddamn jungle trap.
But instead of the hole in the ground, a discreetly covered gap
with frail branches and inconspicuous leaves, its an engaging
tale of love and loss. An enjoyable film for all ages. A
smokescreen for touching. Your very own aphrodisiac in highdefinition with extra deleted scenes.
And its awesome.
Because youve seen the movie. But you rerun the plot
sequence in your head. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl grow up
with a common interest in exploration. They have adventures.
Whether its discovering an old abandoned house, falling in
love and getting married, or rebuilding the whole damn thing
just so that you can tie it with a million inflatable decorations
and watch it fly away. Its grand. Its an epic journey propelled
by a promise. Like floating. Like rising. Or a stuttering
crescendo in your voice that rises as if youve just inhaled
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helium. Youre sure. Its sex. When youre navigating a twostory home through a forest of cloud space so that you can
maroon it in an undisclosed paradise, you know, its like making
love. For the first time.
After tonight, you will be anointed. You will inherit the
knowledge that every non-virgin owns. Youve graduated.
Youre a man now. The stiff pain tucked into your waistband
encompasses moreyour erections will take on a new sense of
purpose. You will move through life thinking that everything is
different. You will have all the answers. This is what youve
been waiting for.
***
The movie begins. The two of you get underneath the covers.
Right before, you went to the bathroom and wiped your ass.
Then you looked down. You squinted. You groaned. You tried
to see what it is that she would be seeingif it happened. You
hope it happens. You look down once more. The sigh that
escapes echoes throughout the room. It will have to do.
Its happening now. The two of you are cuddling. The first
thing you notice is the way Emma smells. She hasnt washed
her hair in a day or two. And when Emma blows her hair out
of the way so that her bangs slightly glide up and around her
forehead, you smell cigarettes. And you actually like the smell
of cigarettes, but from Emmas mouth, tinged with her breath,
the cigarette odor feels acridits different. Its somehow more
chemically sour. She even smokes the same cigarettes as the girl
you really wanted to be doing this with and you cant explain it.
The same brand should catalyze the same scent.
But.
Its different.
34

And it permeates all the way through. Therere those cigarettes,

that sporadic whistle, and the aroma of her sordid hair. All
three of these things are supposed to be charming. You know
that theyre the qualities a person remembers and cherishes.
These are the things people savor when theyre in love. Little
intimacies to treasure like a secret pencil box full of affections.
But youre far from infatuated. And you suddenly yearn for
this to stop.
Youve been kissing her neck and you pause to look at the TV.
This is your chance.
Maybe its not too late. Emmas removing her bra and you see
that this is the part where the old man ties thousands of
balloons to his home so that he sets off on his adventure. You
become invested. Maybe we dont have to do this, you think. Maybe
we can just watch the movie. But then Emmas head disappears
underneath the covers. Her mouth goes where you want it to
and you close your eyes and melt. You talk to God. You hurl
obscenities with your chin tilted toward the ceiling in the dark.
But. Youre far from angry. Youre not even mad. Just unsure.
This isnt so bad, you think. Maybe this shouldnt stop.
So you roll over.
Theres no going back. You notice things. You make
comparisons.
For instance, the curves you imagined underneath her blouse
are now yours to explore, the bending flesh below her neck
released. Her meandering skin changes in sections and incites
an invitation. And you arrive. The zest you imagined at the
apex of either end of her chest is bland. Its flavorless. Theres
no sweetness or even a hint of salt. It tastes like nothing.
You take a migratory approach thats tethered to baseball. It
begins at the mouth. You pepper kisses all over her body,
35

making sure to account for areas that are neglected and

unexpectedthey need to be accounted for: the armpits, the
wrists, the shins. The body geography goes on. Its not just the
obvious places, but all of the ignored areas of skin you rain on
with intensity. Like the rough crook of an elbow or the
calloused formation built around the knobs of her knuckles.
Your mouth is getting dry and your lips are starting to crack.
And then, like every runner trying to score, you go home. Back
to the lips. Its a cycle that you repeat while asking yourself, no
matter how much you try not to, Would Gwens mouth taste like
this? Would Gwens mouth feel like this?
It comes full circle. As children, we suck our own thumbs. For
comfort. For reassurance. For something to do. As adults, we
change places and take turns. Youre hitchhiking with a wet
thumb. Emma has turned your finger into a pacifier. Her eyes
are closed and her cheeks are caved in. And you have to admit:
you dont hate this.
Your phone rings. Its Gwen. Her picture shows up on your
phone beside the bed. Her face takes up the whole space of the
screen. A blur of wavy hair outlines her asymmetrical face. Her
single dimple forces the gravity of the room toward it. The tiny
impression vacuums the attention of everything into it like the
galactic might of a black hole. Emma notices. She stops. Why
is she calling you now? she asks.
I dont know, you say. But you do know. Of course you
know. Hours before, you updated your Facebook status letting
the Internet world know about how dumb you are. You dont
own a TV in your own room. You could have been watching
Up years ago. So youre in your little brothers room with his
permission, and youre looking at the blown-up image of your
best friend who youre in love with, who has feelings for you
but has stronger feelings for someone else. Gwen is calling
because she saw through your message and she understands.
36

Shes confirming whether or not its true. I dont know, you

say again. I have no idea why shes calling. And its half true.
You dont know exactly. No one forced her to call. But she did.
And you know why youre here. You want to get this over with.
You want to be like everyone else. Just go with it. This is what
you tell yourself in succession like the chorus of a song. Emma
is a nice girl. If you have sex with her, youll fall in love with
her. You wont think about why youve been waiting all this
time, or what your little brother will say in the morning, or how
you feel about Gwen. But you will, and you know it, so you
fight through the wincing and kiss Emma on the cheek. You
kiss her again on the neck and on the lips and once more for
good measure. And you tell yourself that youre not a bad
person. You pretend that you dont care. Why would she be
calling you now? she asks. You shrug and work your way
downtown. And somehow. It works. Emma believes you. And
thats how you know for sure.
You are a bad person.
But you try to get past it. Maybe you can move on with Emma.
Together, you work into a position of arriving. Shes on top of
you. Youre on top of her. Youre beside her until youre
behind her and with each switch, you realize that the transitions
are awkward. Are people really meant to bend this way? It isnt
as easy as changing channels or flipping a switch. There are all
these things to keep track of. The heavy breathing. The backand-forth. The give-and-take. When shes moaning, if shes
moaning, and if this is the right time to ask her a question:
whats my name? If her eyes are closed, then thats good, you decide.
It means that shes savoring this moment and all of these
sensations, so you should close your eyes too, but you dont.
You cant.

37

You do better than you thought you would. Moments pass.

Five more elapse, and somehow, youre still going. In fact so
much time has gone by that youre breathing hardits hard
work. And you last. You dont even finish or take the time to
think about the consequences because of the urgency of the
matter: you just want to get it over with.
Whatever happens will happen tomorrow.
You dont have protectionno balloons, but you go for it
anyway and embrace the risks. You could have prepared. A part
of you saw this opportunity coming. But if you had bought a
condom, then you would have been making the decision that
this was going to happen. And you werent sure. If youd
bought one, you imagined, it would have lived and died in the
side pocket of the tomb in your wallet. Only an asshole would
do that. And you didnt want to commit. Maybe she would
have one. Maybe she wouldnt even want to. If you didnt have
a condom, maybe that would be the reason for her to say no,
and that thered be time. Next time perhaps.
But the time is now and together, youre emerging. Youre
embracing the risks. Herpes. AIDS. The clap. You push
forward inviting the tiny oblivion that one small tadpole can
make against all odds. Its possible. A love child arrives sharing
half of your features. Your nose. Her eyes. It cries and waits
relying on your decisions because youre older. You should
know what to do but you dont. All you know is that you said,
Fuck it. Now youre here. Because you had to.
You were tired of waiting. You were sick of pretending to
know what everyone was talking about and so youre gambling
your life just so you can talk about it. How you became a man
by conquering a girl. How you kissed one girl while thinking of
another. Youll leave out the whole bit about why you were
saving yourself all along. Because youre dumb.
38

But you learn a variety of things.

For instance, Emma does some things you like. When she
climaxes, she bites down on wherever she can put her mouth.
She clenches down on your shoulder staining your t-shirt with
saliva. Other parts of your body receive her mark. Theres a
trail of incisors on your neck. A stamp of bicuspids rests on
both of your arms. There are teeth marks and dental records
everywhere, and if they were permanent, an archaeologist from
200 years in the future could figure out that people once
minced up their partners, not only because it hurt, but because
it felt good.
The wind chime at the front door jingles and you recognize the
weight of those footsteps. Your little brother is home. Hes
exploring the kitchen, probably opening the fridge to look at
whats inside, and staring at the bleak contents before it closes.
She hasnt noticed. Her eyes are closed and yours are open.
Youre palming parts of flesh while listening to the background
noise. Hers. Yours. Your little brother using the hallway
bathroom. The old man chasing the dodo bird on screen. All of
it is coming together, and you want him to hurry up. You want
him to make it to your room so that he can go to sleep and you
hope that hes not lingering with his ear pressed against the
wall. Listening. This isnt about him. This is about you. This is
about you and her. This is about sex, isnt it? It shouldnt be
this complicated.
Because its supposed to be about pleasure. You didnt get the
chance to bite Emma, because you werent made the way she
was. You look at the scars on your body and wonder: what
would Gwens teeth marks look like? So you imagine it. An
unevenly crooked path of enamel, like a trail of gnome
footprints zigzagging its way in lightning bolt streaks across
your skin. It would be irregular and unpredictable. It would be
flawed and perfect. It would be Gwen.
39

But youre with Emma, and Emma also does some things you
dont like.
She manipulates tongue movements toward your ears, and you
pretend that it feels good, but it doesnt. Its uncomfortable. Its
a wet willy. Why would anyone do that?
And then theres Emmas catch phrase: How cute! Its her
go-to response for everything. Everything is cute. Things that
are attractive. Things that are clever. Anything that remotely
contains wit. Pokemon are cute. Planking is cute. That meme of
Bert whispering in Ernies ear, Hail Hydra, is cute. That big
reveal from the movie Gone Girl, which you havent seen but
were planning to, which you now know about because she told
youand its cute. All of this is supposed to be endearing. This
is the kind of thing that you should remember years from now,
that she used to say this, and every time she did, you smiled.
And Emma just said it, but youre not smiling. Youre gritting
your teeth. You look at her and know. Shes living proof. Not
everything is cute.
You realize this notion in capital letters. Its underlined in bold.
It pulses. It breathes as you lie next to Emma on your side of
the bed and watch her sleep. Youve seen this done in the
movies. When people gaze at their lovers while they rest, its
supposed to be romantic. Theyre savoring those moments.
But not you. Youre tentatively annoyed. Cranky for sure.
Its the fatigue. You dont sleep at all, even though youre
exhausted. You look at Emmas body, and think about Gwen.
Whats she doing right now? Who is she with? What would
Gwen look like, at that moment, in your bed sleeping?
The next morning, trying to come up with a better version of
what to say than, Ill call you, you walk Emma to her car. But
40

youre worn out. You feel like youve made a mistake somehow
and cant summon a better alternative to everything that youve
done up to this point. The best that you can come up with is
this: Ill text you.
Emma drives away, and you think about it afterward. Since you
never finished, does that mean youre still a virgin? If you are,
then maybe you can do things differently. Better, the way it was
meant to be, the way you wanted. With Gwen. But that isnt
fair, you think. Not to Emma. Not to you. Not to anyone.
Whats fair? In the end, no one actually gets whatever it is they
want when they want it. When they need it. You need it now.
You sit on a stool in the kitchen at the counter staring into a
cup of coffee clouded beige with too much creamer.
How was your night? your little brother asks. Hes smiling
and he knows. You wonder about that and how some people
are born knowing. But now, you know too.
You place the DVD of Up on the counter.
I got lucky, you say. Im a man now.
He places a plate on the counter and slides the movie away, but
swipes too hard. It lands on the floor, and you know that you
should, but you dont bend down to pick it up. You let it lie
there. You pick up your phone and scroll through your
contacts. Alphabetically, E goes before G, and you scroll
past Emma and start typing a three-letter word. You stare at it
before teleporting it her way. Hey.
Your brother pours maple syrup all over his waffles and dips
his bacon into the sugary residue. He picks up the movie and
smiles at you. Hes always been the good-looking one.
Delivering this news should give you relief. Things should be a
41

little more even now. But theyre not, so you speak again and
repeat yourself, just in case he hasnt heard you.
I said Im a man too, you say.
He throws the movie back at you without looking up from his
food. You stare at your phone at the sent text message and wait
for her to reply knowing that she probably wont. Its early.
Maybe shes sleeping. Maybe she isnt.
Sure you are, he says. Sure you are.

Christopher Dizon is a literature student at California State

University, East Bay. He has an affinity for nostalgia and enjoys
exploring what's strange and emotionally honest. He spends
most of his time sipping Hippie Brew coffee in between
squinting so that he can find all the right words.
42

THIS TIME EXCEPT

Dan Fitzgerald

In the after-sex breath

of hurried air,
I love you
seems so natural to utter
until the ceiling
finally focuses into the
where-the-hell-am-I,
oh-yeah,
and then it is only
Ill see you again.
Call me sometime.
Except this time.

OLD LOVERS
Dan Fitzgerald
She looked at me
with eyes closed,
thinking of all the men
she ever wanted.
I looked at her
with eyes closed,
thinking of women I knew in dreams.
Opening our eyes,
we see flabby flesh, saggy tissue,
and then with love.
We fuck like maniacs
into sleep.
43

DRIVING SLOWER
Dan Fitzgerald

She fell asleep

in the car
while we drove down a highway,
taking her to some task
not of my choosing.
I daydreamed of
romantic encounters
in exotic lands.
She slept unaware.
But then,
I looked at her face
asleep and trusting me,
remembering two nights before
when neither of us
could find our way through the other
and find the back of the bed.
I slowed the car.
and let the countryside
drift by,
lulling us
into more blissful
dreams.

Dan Fitzgerald lives quietly in Pontiac, Illinois, tending to home

and garden. His poems have been published in The Writers Journal,
PKA Advocate, Nomads Choir, among others. His poems are also
included in two anthologies: Love Notes (Vagabondage Press) and
Ekphrastia Gone Wild (Aint Got No Press). He has written off and on
for a number of years and is hoping to publish two books of poetry
in the near future.
44

45

46

AULD LANG SYNE

Mathieu Cailler

My phone vibrated with gusto in my blazer pocket. Sneaking my cell

under the table, I stole a peek. It read: New text from Josie. Excited, I
opened her message.
From: Josie
Be there any minute! :) J
Sun., Dec. 31, 10:06 p.m.
There were no guarantees for affection, but this was as close as a
man could get. I had reservations at Thirteen-Threes on New Years
Eve. I wore a freshly tailored three-piece suit, a polka-dotted tie, and
all the other trimmings: a starched shirt, high socks, and new wing
tips (which were squeezing the bejesus out of my piggies). Best of all,
Id received an exclamation point and a smiley emoticon from Josie.
I took it as a good sign that she was running late. Maybe I was weird,
but I thought it meant that she was primping, curling, shaving,
tweezing, and smoothing. Although, to be honest, Josie was one of
those girls who didnt look like she needed much upkeep. Then
again, maybe thats because she was constantly grooming. I needed as
much attention as a golf course.
Would you like a cocktail while youre waiting for your other guest?
the waitress asked; her voice soothed.
Sure. Whiskey. Rocks. I was proud of the way Id ordered, like Id
been here before.
Right away, sir.
Thirteen-Threes was a gastronomic monument. It was an old place
that continued to update itself decade after decade by bringing in top
chefs from all over the world, while staying true to its roots and
somehow never losing its heart. When you told people youd eaten
there, it was like telling them Bruce Springsteen had taught you how
47

to strum a guitarthat he himself had placed your fingers atop the

frets and strings and shown you how to grip a G chord. People
would have questions, a lot of them: Howd you get a table? and
Was it fabulous? and Did you try the risotto?
Id just moved out to Chicago from Gary, Indiana about six months
ago, so for me it felt like I finally belonged. The only reason that I
was able to enjoy a meal here on New Years Eve was because my
Uncle Myron and my Aunt Bertie werent feeling well (something
about adult chicken pox) and didnt want to fritter away their
reservation.
I was nineteen. And still a virgin. To life. To sex. To all of it. The
most virile thing about me was my stubble, and even the follicles
were starting to question their role in this charade. Maybe tonight,
with all these clothes and this reservation, Josie would think me a
man.
The waitress came over pushing a cocktail cart. On it were so many
spirits and mixers, elixirs and syrups, limes and lemons, onions and
olives, liquors and liqueurs. In the bottles, you could see the patrons
faces, stretched and scary. This one guy, who had a grey beard, was
reflected in a Chambord bottle, and he looked like the man from
Picassos The Kiss. At least I thought so. My mom used to have that
painting in her bedroom, so maybe I just wanted to see it. I wished I
could have shared that tidbit with Josie. Women liked men that
slipped art into conversation. Maybe they did. What the hell did I
know? A whiskey on the rocks, right? the waitress said. Her nails
were glazed with clear polish.
I studied the glass as she poured in the whiskey and it flooded the
cubes. Then she put a little more booze in something the size of a
shot glass and placed the tiny vessel in a ramekin packed with
crushed ice so that I could enjoy a few more perfect sips at my
convenience. There you go, she said. Happy New Year.
Same to you.
She smiled, wheeling off the cart.
48

I was the youngest guy in the place by at least ten or so years. All the
other customers stank of real estate, Michigan Avenue, prenups, and
401(k)s. I was just an aspiring comic-strip writer who, as my mom
always said, was poor in cash, but rich in tenderness. Tenderness
was worse than minimum wage, though. We didnt have a lobby or a
union. We were alonetoo tender to do anything about it.
Josie and I had met at a party a few weeks ago. Id secured her
number on a cocktail napkin and placed in on my desk, next to a
softball trophy from grade school. Id studied it for days, noticing the
way the ink from her pen had bled onto the thin cloth at certain
points on certain numbers. When I got the call a couple of days ago
about my uncle and aunt, I decided to give Josie a ring. ThirteenThrees was a hell of a matchmaker. I knew she was recently single
(shed told me so at the party), and I didnt know if Id be her
rebound or whatever, but it didnt matter much to meI liked
basketball.
My ears perked at a sensual sound, a mating call, the beat of high
heels striking a marble floor. It was Josie. She checked her coat near
the door, and then worked my way. We made eye contact, and I
beckoned her with a hearty palm flick. This was a moment I was
certain I would replay: Josie strolling over with a wide grin and a
black, strapless dress that exposed her collar bones on which a small
pearl necklace bounced in perfect rhythm with her sultry stride.
Hi, you, she said, whispering into my ear as we embraced tableside.
Her breath was hot.
Hi, I said. So glad you could make it. You look, umI tried to
find an adjective that would be fresh and fun, interesting and
uniqueluminous, I finally said. It was, well, eh.
I tried, she said. We laughed, perhaps a bit nervously, and sat down
at opposite ends of the booth. She seemed chipper. I thought about
this place all week. There are so many waiters. Its amazing.
Her analysis was odd. Since when was the server-to-customer ratio a
criterion for amazing? But she was piercingah, piercing . . . damn, a
better wordso I just shut up.
49

Josie snatched her phone from her purse and held it up high, like a
priest and his Bible. This is a turn-off-the-phone kind of evening,
she declared, pressing and holding the power button. I chuckled, but
still left my phone on vibrate.
When the waitress came by, Josie ordered a Shirley Temple with extra
cherries. I think she may have been the first person to order a Shirley
Temple at Thirteen-Threes since, well, Shirley Temple. While we
looked the part of high rollers, everyone knew something was up. We
were too young, too excited. It was as though Thirteen-Threes had
some sort of foundation for the underprivileged, and tonight our
Ping-Pong balls had been plucked. Josie reached back into her purse,
and then handed me a Happy New Years dunce-shaped hat and a
party horn. I fastened the cone to my head and shoved the party
horn into my mouth; Josie did the same, though she skipped the hat
and left it propped over the salt shaker at the far side of the table. At
the same moment, we puffed into our party horns, and the tubes
uncoiled and bumped into one another.
The waitress dropped off two menus. They were thick and heavy and
crowded with dark letters. Man, its like studying for the bar exam,
I said. Except instead of plaintiff and defendant, its wine and beef.
Do you want to split the forty-ounce steak for two? The lovers
platter, Josie said, tossing a cherry into her mouth.
Hell yeah, I said.
After we ordered the forty-ouncer, a side of hash browns, and
creamed spinach, as well as a cake that needed to be prepared in
advancesome hot-lava thingwe shared the usual first-date,
gentle-inquisition banter. Lots of Do you like things? Yes, I love
stuff!
Josie was chatty, which I liked. One interrogative sentence bought
me time to think of the next question. Here, with the table between
us, I felt safe, like I knew what was going to happen for the next hour
or soconversation, steak, laughter. But what then? Afterward?
When the clock neared midnight? Sometimes I just wanted life to be
one long meal. One long pass the bread and yes, Ill have
50

another. Josie continued talking about running and exercise, a

strange conversation considering our bovine future. Do you run?
her shiny red lips spouted.
Only when somethings chasing me, I said, grabbing a buttered roll
that Id neglected for some time.
Oh, come on, she said. Youve got to admit it feels so good. I
mean, not at first, but when youre doneall that blood pumping, all
those cells dancing around.
I dont know. I readjusted my cone-shaped hat. I feel pretty
amazing lying down. And you get to bypass all that sweating and
grunting. We chuckled, and I took a swig of whiskey. Much of the
ice slid down and slammed into my face like an avalanche. I toweled
off with my napkin while Josie clapped in approval. I wished it could
always be this easy. But outside of Thirteen-Threes, itd just be me.
And Josie. I wouldnt have the atmosphere to distract, the patrons to
divert. Itd be the two of us. And I didnt know if I was good enough
for something like that. I brought up the fact that we were the only
ones laughing in the entire restaurant. Josie agreed, adding that
laughter wasnt chic and that people believed money blanketed
inadequacies.
Like clogging potholes? I said.
More like filling them with water because its an illusion.
This is too deep a conversation for a man wearing this hat. I
pointed up top.
Im sorry to interrupt, said a white-sideburned man. Your steak
will be right out.
Just as we thanked the man, a chrome cart burst through the
kitchens swinging doors at the back of the restaurant.
Josie, I said. The food!
She picked up her party horn and gave it a good blow.
51

Our dinner closed in on a silver tray atop a shiny cart. The steaming
potatoes and creamed spinach wrapped around the meat and acted as
a moat to our beloved steak. When the platter was set on the table,
we didnt talk. We went in, savored the black-pepper-crusted beef,
traces of sea salt, and sweet blood. Bite after bite, chew after chew,
groan after moan, we were addicts, and wed gotten our fix.
Giddy, my mind roamed. My thoughts and fantasies were airy.
Sometimes, I just wanted life to flow the way it did in my cartoons,
where I was in control of what words made it into the conversation
bubbles. It was funny how a personlike me in this instancecould
live for almost twenty years and never bump into a woman worth
caring for, or better yet, one that wanted to care for me, and then,
just like that, it could change. I could go from bachelor to boyfriend
just while sharing grilled cow. Maybe loneliness wasnt sadness;
maybe loneliness was just happiness that had put on a little weight
and needed a reason to shed the extra pounds. I thought that if I
could make it with Josie, I could make it anywhere. Basically she was
to me, what New York City was to Sinatra.
Time had put on its track shoes, as it was now 11:34 p.m., and the
New Year was less than a sitcom away. I thought about the kiss, the
countdown, all that cookie-cutter hodgepodge. It seemed overhyped
and amateurish, but part of me wanted to know what clich tasted
like before I bullied it. Execution would be a problem, though. I
mean I couldnt just plant one on her right here in the dining room,
could I?
Josie finished her last bite, dabbed her mouth with the tip of her
napkin, and excused herself. She filed to the ladies room, smoothing
out the back of her dress as she got up.
I exhaled, unfastened the top button of my dress shirt, and loosened
my tie. The waitress swung over and took a look at the destruction.
Wow, she said. You guys did a nice job. You mind if I take these
plates out of the way? I didnt understand why waiters and
waitresses were always so shocked when customers finished their
meals; wasnt that the whole point of eating out? The waitress piled
the plates onto her tray, and then took out her crumb-cleaning tool
52

and maneuvered it around the thin glasses and stained napkins.

Your souffl will be out momentarily, she said, heading to the
kitchen.
Minutes later, Josie returned from the restroom. I was proud to be
with her and enjoyed watching an old potbellied man ogle over her.
He even held his spoon inches from his bowl and paused from his
what-had-to-be lobster bisque, in order to catch a glimpse of her.
Lets get out of here, she said. Shed done something flattering to
her lips or her face or her hair, but I wasnt sure what, and I didnt
want to ask.
But the souffl, Josie? It needs time, I said.
We can have dessert at my place, she answered.
These words were to men, what diamonds were to ladies, and I had
no trouble pronouncing yes. As she went to fetch her coat, I yanked
all the cash I had from my pocket and slapped an empty tumbler
atop the bills; then I pulled a pen from my blazer and scribbled on a
paper napkin that was still a bit damp from the Shirley Temples
condensation. Had to go . . . please give the dessert to someone else. It deserved
a better ending.
Ready? Josie said, wrapping her scarf, buttoning her coat. She
grabbed my hand and rushed me to the front door. Outside, the air
was hard and the cold was sharp. In the distance, a cab was parked,
idling, its rooftop light illuminated, the backseat vacant.
If we run, we can make it, I said.
Quick, she said, starting to pull forward. Wait, I thought you only
ran if something was chasing you!
Something is, I said, just as I might have penned in the panels of
my cartoon strip.
Our fingers were interlaced and sweaty, despite the temperature.
Certainly, it would have been more practical not to hold hands, but
we had to. As we hurried, our feet pounded the frozen concrete;
53

Josies scarf loosened, and the fringe found my face. Id fallen in like
with Josie. That much in this murky world was sure. Maybe she felt
the same way. Maybe she felt more. Or maybe we were just two
horny carnivores trying to hail a cab on New Years Eve.

Mathieu Caillers poetry and prose has been widely featured in

numerous national and international publications, including the Los
Angeles Times, Epiphany, and the Saturday Evening Post. A graduate of
Vermont College of Fine Arts, he has been a finalist for the Glimmer
Train New Writers Award, the New Rivers Press American Fiction
Prize, and the Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Short Story Contest.
He is also the recipient of a Short Story America Prize for Short
Fiction and a Shakespeare Award for Poetry. He is the author of
Clotheslines (Red Bird Press) and Loss Angeles (Short Story America
Press).
54

ATOMIC PASSION
Richard Klin
He had gradually come to look forward to Mr. Hinmons last-period
English class. Much of it was the sheer spectacle of Mr. Hinmon
himself, whose behavior oscillated from overt, undisguised
hostilityas if he found the very existence of the class so loathsome
he couldnt even pretend to tolerate themto episodes of shocking
ineptitude, like passing out a quiz that included the answer key.
More than that, though, was that girl who sat right next to him,
Candace. She had first engendered Tys curiosity simply by virtue of
proximity: the long, blond hair, her legs, the luminous smile that
broke out unexpectedly.
Throughout the day Ty moved along amid the thick river of students
that slowly flowed throughout the high school corridors and
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hallways. As the crush of people ebbed and flowed, it became easy to

spot Candace along with her sister, Joni, the two of them laughing
together, darting to their classrooms. Then, quite unexpectedly, he
ran into both of them at the football game. Leedsville High was
facing its archenemy, Kittahikan, which was supposed to be a big
deal. Ty didnt give a shit who won or lost. To his surprise, though, it
was more fun than hed anticipated: the packed stands, the blaring of
the band, and the primal, booming drums. The atmosphere outside
the stands was frenetic, everyone zipping back and forth, the
intoxicating odor of roasting hot dogs and soft pretzels, and this was
where he had run into Candace and Joni. He was struck, once again,
by Candaces smile, the long hair.
The idea of two sisters who were also best friends was intriguing, but
during one of Ty and Candaces increasingly lengthy chatswhich
were slowly replacing any notion of paying attention to Mr.
Hinmonshe confused him by mentioning Jonis mother. And then
the jig was up: Candace and Joni werent sisters at all, but best friends
who bore a striking resemblance to each other. It was an ongoing,
elaborate prank on both their parts, fooling anyone they could into
thinking they were siblings.
Ty found this even more fascinating. If being best friends with ones
sister was idiosyncratic, how much more idiosyncratic was it to go to
elaborate lengths to pose as sisters? Yet, though, he had been
hoodwinked, which necessitated a response. A few days later he
informed Candacewith the utmost gravitythat Mr. Hinmon was
about to administer a pop quiz, a case he made so convincingly that
she cleared off her desk in preparation for the quiz that never came.
As he was sitting in Mrs. Garganos interminable algebra class and
being forced to listen to her endless prattle, he just happened to
glance into the hallway. Candace was strolling by and she noticed too,
breaking out into the luminous smile, walking backwards a few paces,
and then proceeding forward.
And just as gradually came the elaborate, Technicolor scenarios that
played in his head before he dropped off to sleep, scenes of him and
Candace running into each others arms across a large field. It was so
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appallingly hokey that he felt paroxysms of shame right there in his

bed, as if somehow these internal visions were being recorded for
possible viewing by all of Leedsville High.
There were no delineated stages in Tys relationship with Candace. It
was, instead, an amorphous flow: he had noticed this girl sitting next
to him. They had begun to joke around, and then to talk, and then to
talk some more. And it was the most natural progression that these
interchanges extended to after school was over. Ty and Candace
ambled out the door as soon as Mr. Hinmons class ended, made
their way past the tennis courts and cut through the ballpark to
Mariner Road, and drifted over to the little clump of shops right by
the post office: Miss Cordells Dance Studio, the karate place,
Lamberts Deli. Slightly set apart from the other buildingsas if to
delineate its importancewas Casa Enzos, where they often whiled
away the time eating pretzels, the packaged blueberry pie, or a
cheesesteak and Dr Pepper if they were feeling particularly expansive.
The streets were braced with massive, orderly piles of leaves, the
autumn foliages blazing colors unceremoniously swept away and
neatly arranged into big, mulchy entities, all that careful work for
naught as Ty and Candace plowed full-speed into the piles, the leaves
sticking to both of them in the oddest spots: their hair, on their
backs, behind an ear.
Like everyone else, they too infiltrated the old docks, although the
dangerous allure of this forbidden place faded quickly. The docks,
ultimately, were mundane; the perceived dangerscops, sand sharks,
escaped mental patientsthe stuff of myth.
On Saturday afternoons, Ty and Candace went along the old tracks
that ran through Leedsville and followed them until they reached
their end on Birch Street, which had become an informal focal point,
a noisy gathering spot of high school students that spilled out into
the middle of Birch and Galloway Avenue and generated a steady
stream into Patchs, the shitty little store, for purchases of gum or
soda or candy, the hideous old witch of an owner casting her beady,
suspicious gaze.
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Down at the end of Galloway, near St. Zenos Church, was the old
lumberyard, which for Ty and Candace proved to be a far more
intriguing place than the docks. The giant, rusting freight car was still
perched right out front, ripped-out train track scattered everywhere,
along with a whole forest of old planks, boards, and thick chunks of
wood. Nobody, as far as they could tell, had utilized the lumberyard.
It was theirs and theirs alone. Ty even briefly contemplated storing
the pipe hed purchased on the Ocean City boardwalk; perhaps hed
hide it between some planks of wood or even in the rail car.
Ultimately, though, it seemed too risky.
They gave serious thought to sneaking into Toby Hunts and some of
the other loud clubs that lined the baythe Parlor, the Rock
Gardenbut ultimately felt too conspicuously underage to really pull
it off. Their music-going, instead, took the form of the massive,
impromptu parties that sprang up on weekends and seemed to draw
most of the school, some of these get-togethers augmented by kegs
and often some band or another, the smell of beer and currents of
sweet smoke mixing in with the echoes of the music, the night air
bearing a large measure of autumns snap.
It was the fallen leaves, of all things, that had been the improbable
catalyst for the first time theyd kissed, the polar opposite of Tys
dreamy scenarios. They were in the back of the lumberyard, Candace
suddenly aghast at the discovery of a thicket of leaves plastered to the
back of her sweater. Incredulous that Ty hadnt said anything, she
disappeared into the tangle of her sweater, one sleeve off and one
sleeve somehow twisted around the side of her face, both of them
laughing as Candace flailed about, and then Ty also becoming
entangled as he attempted to help. She took on an entirely different
persona during that kiss, softer, vulnerable, and he opened his eyes
for the briefest of moments to ascertain that it was, in fact, her.
***
Tys part-time job was at Nutmeg Acres in the mall. Nutmeg Acres
tended to attract a fair amount of attention because of their clever
strategy of offering samples that were conspicuously placed near the
front entrance for all to see: crackersboth sesame and plain
58

slathered with Nutmeg Acres cheese spreads, as well as a huge tub of

their super-sweet mints. Customers exhibited less interest in
exploring the rest of Nutmeg Acres, as passers-by tended to gobble
down the meager samples and then be on their way.
Only girls worked at Nutmeg Acres, most of them older or from
Kittahikan. Not that it even mattered. His domain was in the solitary
back reaches of the store, sequestered from everyone else, and
involved the outputting of the cheese balls and cheese logs. He
functioned as a one-man production team, the process beginning
when he ceremoniously donned his regulation brown apron, Nutmeg
Acres stitched in prim white cursive with a primitive rendering of a
barn and silo underneath.
Officially garbed, his next task was to pull open the heavy, imposing
doors to the giant walk-in freezer, which was akin to a morgue with
its rows and rows of massive, plastic-wrapped cheese blocks.
Hoisting a hickory-flavored slab, he carried it out of the freezer and
into his little windowless work station, where he washed down the
counter with vinegar, wiped and dried it thoroughly, and then cut off
a substantial portion. This had to be cut into smaller sections and
then smaller still.
These smaller chunks were rolled into individual balls and covered
with walnuts. Next was the application of the putrid maraschino
cherry, so rank that Ty had never been temptedeverto eat one.
The finished creation had to be weighed on a little scale, Ty adding or
subtracting bits of cheese to produce the desired weight. This was a
finished cheese ball, which he then bound with plastic wrap and
dumped into a flimsy little Nutmeg Acres box. Finally, he retrieved
the pricing gun and affixed the tiny pink sticker. The procedure was
then repeated over and over and over, and then began anew as he
made his way a second time into the freezer and hoisted yet another
plastic-wrapped slab, this one the red-wine cheese that was flecked
throughout with blotchy pink stains. These needed to be fashioned
into logs, not balls. It was an essentially identical procedure, except
that the large block needed to be whittled down to size with a special
log-appropriate implement and then packaged in a log-appropriate
box.
59

The manager of Nutmeg Farms was an older, utterly ineffectual

woman named Rita, who seemed entirely unaware of Tys existence.
He had once come into work higha mistake, as it turned out, and
something he never repeated and walked straight into an elaborate,
multi-tiered stack of cracker boxes, which had collapsed completely.
Rita stood, helpless, as the girls scurried to clean up the damage.
Sometimes Candace would manage to make it over when his work
was done. They would wander through the mall, peruse the T-shirt
booth, and look at records at Shoresounds, which they often
followed with a slice of pizza and a soda at Angels. Since Ty had
started at Nutmeg Acres hed managed to spirit out a cheese ball or
log occasionally, which was a difficult undertaking. But with Candace
in the picture, he devised an ingenious maneuver; he convinced her
to rap on the back door as he quickly tossed her a box or two. The
cloak-and-dagger thrill increased when Ty insisted on a special
number of knockslike a codewhich Candace thought completely
absurd. She complied, though.
Candaces mother spent long hours working at the insurance
company. Her house, no matter what, retained the faint odor of her
mothers cigarettes. Ty would come over after school and Candace
would fill a jumbo plastic orange bowl with chips or pretzels. They
would perch themselves on the floor in front of the TV, sometimes
hold hands, sometimes put their arms around each other. A few
boxes of Nutmeg Acres cheese balls and cheese logs began to
gradually, sneakily occupy their own perch in her refrigerator.
The afternoon movie on channel forty-four was standard viewing
fare, that and Skeeter Boss. Skeeter Boss was the loud, ridiculous
Philly DJ who had been famous back in the fifties. Someone had
seen fit to give him his own TV show, and Ty and Candace would
watch, incredulous, as Skeeter Boss screeched out his arcane patter or
reminisced endlessly about obscure people and places: out-of-fashion
bands that nobody had ever heard of. From time to time, though,
Skeeter Boss would leave the confines of Philadelphia and come
down to the shore. He would broadcast from Wildwood or Atlantic
City, which was mildly interesting.
60

***
On a whim, Ty had brought a box of cheese balls to school. He was
surprised by the genuine interest it elicited. The cheese balls and logs
were such a product of the mall. Yet here they were in school, out of
context. Throughout the day, to his greater surprise, other students
approached him with serious inquiries as to the further availability of
Nutmeg Acres cheese balls and cheese logs, as if he were a salesman.
Somebodys mom wanted a box; somebody elses mom wanted three
boxes. And so Ty insisted, the next time around, that Candace learn a
different, slightly more elaborate series of knocks at the back door,
and they would deftly spirit away more than their usual number of
cheese balls and logs, as well as the occasional box of sesame
crackers.
He felt a daring pride that he hadnt anticipated. Ty, of course, knew
the older kid that everyone called Cupid. Hed even been to Cupids
bedroom, which boastedin full view, for all to seean elaborate
gold scale. Never in a million years would he have the guts, like
Cupid, to peddle dime bags to half the school. And yet to be the
purveyor of stolen cheese balls, logsand the occasional box of
sesame crackerswas also a risky undertaking, fraught with all sorts
of potential peril.
It occurred to him, as he gradually, incrementally expanded his new
business venture, as he began pilferingwith Candaces helpa little
bit more, and then a little more than thatthat he was Cupids
counterpart. It could even have been postulated that he was more
subversive than Cupid. Everyone knew what Cupid did; there was no
subterfuge. But when Ty sold three boxes to Dori, a girl in his
biology class, they wound up being served at the Leedsville Garden
Clubs luncheon: the ladies unwittingly partook of stolen cheese balls
and cheese logs.
Ty, catching the rare glimpse of Cupid sauntering through the
hallways, felt the secret affinity of one outlaw to another. Inspired, he
smuggled out a Nutmeg Acres apron.
The extra money didnt yield a huge amount. It enabled them to
61

become regulars at Casa Enzos; it allowed Ty to spring for both

banana and strawberry rolling paper.
In Candaces home, in the late afternoon, they would be mashed up
together on her bed: a confusion of impulses, discarded clothes,
linked body parts, while a pleasant fatigue crept up on them in
tandem with the slow-moving, descending sun. Ty was never certain
as to what had specifically transpired, that familiar smell after he had
shot his load lingering obscenely in the air for a few minutes before
fading out. Sometimes the radio would be playing softly in the
background, WMMR, but mostly it was quiet, save the occasional car
or passing bicyclists calling out to each other.
***
He was approached by Linda, who he didnt know all that well. She
had heard Ty was a private conduit to Nutmeg Acres. Her parents
were giving a party and greatly desired some cheese balls and cheese
logs. This required more nerve than usual but, using Cupid as
inspiration, he had Candace meet him at the back door with a
shopping bag and a new series of knocks. This time the haul was
larger. On a whim he threw in two boxes of crackers.
The next day they biked over to Lindas house with their substantial
delivery. Ty graciously offered the crackers for free and thenper
Lindas mothers request, since she assumed this transaction had been
sanctioned by Nutmeg Acreswrote out a detailed receipt while he
and Candace tried not to laugh out loud.
They both felt buoyed by this most illicit transaction yet, one that
dwarfed the Leedsville Garden Clubs luncheon. Before they knew it,
they had biked in the immediate proximity of the Quay, the decrepitlooking bar perched on the far side of the docks. The Budweiser sign,
lit a vibrant, neon red, was an uncharacteristically jaunty
augmentation to the dark and forbidding Quay. There was money in
his pocket and Ty was infused with a sudden bravado. He swung his
bike in the direction of the bar. Candace, eyes wide, followed suit.
Arriving at the Quay on bicycles felt stupid, but it seemed impossible
to back down. They parked their bikes off to the side and
62

approached. He was half-hoping Candace would raise strong,

irrefutable objections, but she didnt. The trick, he suddenly
surmised, was to stride in confidently, fully expecting to be served,
but as he opened the door and they both entered, he was unprepared
for the darkness of the interior. It took a few long moments for him
and Candace to adjust to the intense gray-black, permeated with
cigarette smoke. There was no choice now, really, to proceed to the
bar itself.
Their eyes focused some more as they took their seats. It became
easier to discern the details: the cash register, Phillies memorabilia on
the wall, a jukebox off to the side. Almost entirely obscured in a
smoky haze, two older men were sitting at the far end of the bar.
Instinctively, he reached for the bowl of peanuts in front of him and
took a long look around.
The bartender ambled over and to their horrified shock it was Mr.
Sluka. Mr. Sluka was an older business teacher who had been
teaching at the high school since the first day it opened in 1957. Ty
silently cursed his luck. Fate had decreed that their bartender would
be, of all the people in the world, Mr. Sluka. Too afraid to even look
in Candaces direction, he crammed a large handful of peanuts into
his mouth. Some of them spilled onto his shirt.
Mr. Sluka, though, gave absolutely no indication whatsoever that he
recognized the two of them as Leedsville High students. Nor did he
seem to be awareor give a shitthat they were both underage.
Tys peanut-stuffed mouth, as if operating on its own accord, ordered
for him and Candace. Two bottles of beer were placed in front of
them.
He glanced around as nonchalantly as he knew how, finally allowing
his gaze to settle on Candace, who still looked frightened. But they
belonged here; he knew that now.
The two old men down at the end were keeping up a steady,
incomprehensible murmuring, punctuated by the occasional loud
guffaw. It was impossible to discern their facial features. One of the
old men, in a surprisingly thin voice, ordered another round.
63

There wasnt a glimmer of concern on Mr. Slukas face as Ty ordered

another round and then helped himself to a beef jerky. He was a
bargoer now. Bargoers took their seats, ordered some rounds, ate
beef jerky. He and Candace left the Quay after their third round,
both of them good and truly shit-faced and feeling a little queasy.
Tys cheese stash had been exhausted by that party at Lindas house.
He arrived for his next shift at Nutmeg Acres with the knowledge
that Candace, today, wouldnt be able to make her way over. He had
to think of a method to smuggle as much as he could by himself.
Like a robot, he automatically put on the ridiculous brown apron
with the stitched lettering, barn, and silo, and was suddenly filled with
an overwhelming wave of revulsion so powerful that he actually felt,
for a moment, as if he needed to sit down. Wearing this apron and
spending the next few hours awash in cheese balls and cheese logs
seemedeven with the allure of thieveryabsolutely, utterly
impossible. Ty attempted to argue himself out of these feelings. The
disgust and revulsion, though, were too powerful: they were akin to a
crashing wave on the beach that caught you unawares and left you
sputtering salt water.
Then he made what really was the boldest move of his entire life.
Without a trace of hesitation, Ty exited the back door, the lock
automatically kicking in behind him with a liberating, definitive click.
The mall parking lot was crowded; a whole world was going on while
he labored away in his little windowless room at Nutmeg Acres. To
his horror he was still garbed in his brown apron, which he
emphatically tore off, crumpled into a ball, and tossed into the
nearest garbage can.
In his bravado he hadnt planned how he was to get home. That
realization was slowly starting to sink in when a blaring car horn
made him jump. Providentially, it was that guy who worked at
Angelswhose name Ty could never remember or perhaps had
never knownheading in the direction of Leedsville, happy to give
him a ride.
64

He bored the shit out of Ty on the ride home by recounting, in

excruciating detail, the inner workings of Angels, which to the
average customer no doubt appeared to be a well-run business
endeavor. Appearances, though, were deceiving. Angels Pizza was
rife with discord between the two owners. There was no captain at
the helm, which was a prescription for inevitable disaster. When they
finally arrived in Leedsville, they pulled over on Oceanside Avenue
and shared a joint.
***
Candaces room, in the late afternoon, was warm and filled with the
scents he was starting to recognize as specifically characteristic of her
home. They lay, half-asleep, in that familiar tangle, her hair covering a
portion of his face. Darkness, almost imperceptibly, was falling earlier
and earlier, the days incrementally growing shorter. The silence was
broken by the ringing of a phone; ten long rings or so before it
ceased. And Candaces house grew quiet yet again.

Richard Klin is a writer based in New York Hudson's Valley and the
author of Something to Say (Leapfrog Press), a series of profiles of
various artists discussing the intersection of art and politics. His work
has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and has appeared in
the Brooklyn Rail, the Forward, Kindling Quarterly, January, and others.
65

BLOND BREW

Nicole Jean Turner

She has blonde hair.
And, yeah, her lips might be stained with rum
but today, her summer locks dont sit the way they did when we were
young,
no, they fall free.
They ring around rosy cheeks
and they curl without consulting me.
Her eyes, insulting me,
glazed with frost white icing
she blinks twice when she says my name
but darts her gaze left when she starts to say
she misses me.
And yeah, her lips might be stained with rum
but she still remembers the way I loved the sky.
And then she reminds me of that one time
where we counted clouds,
with grey sand ash dusting her hair,
the beach wind whipped up loud waves around us as a storm drew in
but we, were invincible.
She, has blonde hair.
Mine, was never quite as beautiful.
Its been 3 years,
and, yeah, her lips might be stained with rum,
but so long as lax inhibitions tell her that we're still in love,
I guess I'll play along.

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Nicole Jean Turner is an artist of many mediums and a lover of

words. Always up for a challenge and eager to learn new things, she
holds a vocational certificate in computer programming, a Bachelor
of Arts in philosophy, fine art and creative writing, and will soon
complete her masters in writing. Turner is happily employed as a
tutor and editorial intern, and occasionally performs slam poetry in
coffee houses throughout New England and Upstate New York.
Turner currently resides just west of Boston, Massachusetts, and she
enjoys meditation, walking her dog, and wearing mismatched socks.
For more, visit: NicoleJeanTurner.com

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Lavinia Roberts is a visual artist, facilitator, and activist. She is a

published, award- winning writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She creates
masks, puppets, and other objects for live performances. Her work
has been produced in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and London.
You can see more of her work on her website at laviniaroberts.com.

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THREE RINGS
Sue Hyon Bae

One for my husband,

one for each child,
placed on my ring finger
in the order they came to me.
Taxidermal skin makes them
shrivel loose; the swollen knuckle
keeps them in check. They have gone
out of fashion over the years,
my dull golden eyes.

Sue Hyon Bae is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University. She

grew up in South Korea, Malaysia, and Texas. Her work has appeared
in Silver Birch Press, ZO Magazine, and others.
77

FROM A DAD, TO HIS DAUGHTER

Kate Tagai

October 1982
The letter started with, Darling Daughter. He signed it, Love your
Dad, folded it in thirds, and sealed the envelope. On the outside, he
wrote, For my daughter, open on your eighteenth birthday when
these silly words might mean something. He put the letter in a
folder with her birth certificate and forgot what it said.
August 1988
She forgot about the accident once ice cream was applied. Her Dad
had taken her and friends out for an end of summer celebration. But
her tear-streaked face emerging from under the overturned alpine
slide stayed with him. He braved his wifes look when he brought her
home. The look said, What have you done to my child? The
bandages that covered her face and calf were frozen in her first grade
photos. Proof, for him, he had failed to protect his daughter.
October 1997
Her first boyfriend looked at her with a longing that made her Dad
want to lock her in her room. He feared she would limit herself for
that boys look. But he smiled and gave her the keys to his car and a
curfew. When he heard the door softly close at ten oclock at night,
he sighed in relief and finally went to sleep.
March 2000
His fire pager blared with news of an accident. He knew it was his
car, his daughter at that scene. He didnt go to the station or collect
his bunker gear. He drove in the opposite direction toward his
totaled car and terrified daughter. He wanted to touch every bone to
reassure himself she was whole. He wanted to wrap her in his arms
and rock her. He wanted to shake her for not looking twice and for
pulling out into oncoming traffic. Now he knew for sure: He was no
match for the world.

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October 2000
Her Dad dropped her off at school on his way to work. He picked
her up on his way back home, her hair damp with sweat from soccer
practice. Their daily routine unchanged by the fact that at five that
morning, she had turned eighteen. He called her into his office after
dinner, pulling a sealed letter out of a file folder.
Here, I wrote this for you. Sealed for eighteen years, he didnt
remember what it said. His daughter hugged him, thanked him, and
then took another week to open the letter and read it. It didnt say
much.
June 2005
He watched her plane take off and disappear into the sky. He
watched the sky for another minute just to make sure. Hed let her
go across the world. He was proud she wanted to volunteer and
proud she had the nerve to go. He sent a small prayer after her into
the sky, Please world. Be kind to my girl. Please, world. Be gentle.
August 2006
Pancreatic cancer, stage four. Prognosis is death. He wrote a letter to
his daughter halfway across the world. He started, I have some
news And ended, Please stay there. Dont come home. The
work youre doing is so important. He sealed it and dropped it in
the mailbox. The next day he wrote an email. Please come home. I
need you.
April 2007
His daughter unfolded the letter shed received on her eighteenth
birthday, a letter she carried with her ever since. The words he had
given her meant something now. She looked out across the sea of
tears, breathed in the scent of lilies, and let out the tension of unshed
tears. She read her dads words written the day she was born.

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Darling daughter,
I watched you being born this morning. Three minutes after five in
the morning, exactly, you popped into the world. Your mom and I
worked pretty hard to get you here. Actually, your mom did most of
it. I just watched the time and rubbed her back. The pain she felt will
be forgotten; it was almost too much for me to watch. You lay in
your mothers arm and looked at both of us with eyes startled by the
light, but taking in all they saw. You tried to grab my finger. I hope
my hand will always be there when you need it. Your mom and I
have many hopes for you. The biggest one is guiding you to a good
start in life. Its a big job, and I hope were up to it. You can bet on
one thing, though, that we will try our best because we both love you.
I hope I can make the world a better place for you through my
choices. My folks did that for me. Be patient with us. Were new at
this, just as you are.
Ill always love you.
Dad.
When she was done she sent a small prayer for her dad: Please,
world, take care of him. Please, world. Be gentle.

Kate Tagai is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has

had work published in Zephyr and Gone Lawn literary journals, and is
currently at work on a full length memoir.
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PAST RELEASE
Christina Scott

I stared at Kevin trapped in the exposed end of a sewer pipe. His

eyes, down in the darkness, were blue dots that disappeared with
every blink. He breathed a shallow scraping sound that reminded me
of my bed-ridden grandmother a week before she died of
pneumonia. The flashlight slid over his collapsed, skeletal body.
Please, he said. He beckoned me with a hand.
No.
I would not follow him.
***
Kevin entered improv class that first spring day in stoned-washed
jeans and a blue Dallas Cowboys t-shirt. At five foot eight inches, we
stood the same height, though his mouth sported crooked teeth and
his head brown mousy hair. I was a newly married twenty-four-yearold woman, taking the eight-week course on the side. I soon found
out he was thirty-eight and avoiding his pregnant wife. She didnt
give him enough attention, now that the second child was on the
way. A girl, like the first one.
We were ushered into a high-school gym and five foldout chairs. The
heavy-set drama teacher wore black martial arts pants, the kind that
tie at the waist and leave three inches of ankle visible at the sock line.
He paired this with a stained white undershirt and a natural cockiness
that made him easy to resent. A plump man in the far-right chair
identified himself as a middle school physics teacher and a
conservative Christian. Through the weeks, we found he became
offended when anyone mentioned fetuses, The Girl Scouts, and
caffeine. A sixty-year-old nun in full habit sat beside the physics
teacher. She thought improv classes would help her administer to the
poor. An 18-year-old female bass player wafting the smell of pot sat
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in the middle chair. A laid-off middle-aged computer programmer

named Kevin sat to my right. And I, a struggling writer, occupied the
last seat. We formed a circle and did breathing exercises. Kevin
smiled as the teacher instructed us to stand and hold hands. The
nuns hand curled around my right palm as Kevins wrapped around
my left. He moved his thumb back and forth over my knuckles. The
contact made me recoil but he kept holding on, and by the time the
exercise ended my hand lay limp inside his. He let go regretfully.
This contact stayed with me. The next day I placed Vincent the tabby
in the laundry room with his litter box, so I could have some peace
while writing. He mewled the rest of the afternoon. Nothing came to
my fingertips, so I closed the laptop and sat on the living room
couch. I moved several X-box accessories and a pile of comic books
to clear space for myself. It all belonged to my semi-absent husband.
We dated three months before moving in together, five more before
getting married. I remember looking at him from across the altar and
repeating my vows inside a haze of white numbness, a fizzling
disappointment that was as present to me as my pulse. I had just
moved out of my parents house after graduating with solid grades
from college. The depression came from nowherea privileged
white girl whose lack of stimulation is somehow cause for emotional
distress. The hand contact from Kevin was the most I had felt in
months. I settled in the left crook of the couch and fell asleep.
I dreamed visions: The pipe, the muck, the skeletal body.
Remembering the first one is hard, since the following visions varied
slightly, each adding a few seconds. Sometimes I saw the destroyed
landscape around the pipe. Felled trees, a field of rotten wheat. A
bombed-out road with chunks of earth thrust upwards. The opening
of the pipe in a divot, underneath a bridge. Sometimes it rained. In
one, I am bent and my head is near the opening. Kevins expression
was hollow. His exposed and filthy face was cracked and raw.
The following Monday when the class met for the second time Kevin
wore business slacks and an open-collared shirt. A few of the buttons
were undone, and I could see the scraggly beginnings of chest hair.
Id worn my tightest jeans and a blue shirt that plunged. It made it
hard to pretend to lift things without showing cleavage. The nun and
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the conservative physics teacher averted their gazes more than once.
Kevin mussed his hair and volunteered to be in scenes with me. At
the end of the class, he walked me to my ten-year-old black Honda
Civic in the rain. He brushed my hand with his own as we both held
the umbrella. A surge of adrenaline shot through my chest.
Kevins hand wrapped around the umbrellas stem while placing his
wedding ring an inch from my face. We talked for a few minutes
about his wife, his forming child, how he saw the world as people
shouting at each other behind locked doors. A David Foster Wallace
reference I could barely tolerate for its typical white male
depressiveness. He leaned forward, and I saw his chapped and raw
lips. I found myself pushing him away.
He smiled in a sad and fragile way, and I got into my car.
Unconsciousness that night brought me the shape of a prisoners
striped uniform. A few nights later, he began to drag himself down
the sewer pipe toward me with his broken, twisted legs scraping
behind him. He still refused to come out of the pipe and into the
light. Yet he begged me to come to him.
Please, hed say.
No. I could not follow him.
***
In the third and fourth classes, I tried to avoid Kevin, to no avail. He
smiled at the teacher and all I could focus on was the faint smell of
lilacs emanating from Kevins direction. Had he made up with his
wife? I imagined her hugging him goodbye and rubbing her exposed
neck on his shoulder. I imagined a kiss on the lips that thrilled
through his body. I filled with a sad, weak envy I could not sustain.
In the scene we were assigned together, I played a woman who
wanted to drive the family car all the way to Canada in hopes of
shooting a moose. He played the husband unwilling to spend money
on all that gas.
By this time silent groans of frustration occurred whenever anyone
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was assigned a scene with the physics teacher. He stood woodenly on

stage and constantly turned his back to the audience. Frequently in
games, he forgot what he was supposed to be doing and instead
delivered soliloquies about the elements.
In the vision that night Kevin stayed at the lip of the tunnel. This
time I heard him in my head: Come here. It was a desperate voice,
one that did not expect relief.
I followed Kevin in the debris and fetid water. The icy liquid chilled
me, and my palms scraped against rocks. I followed him until he
turned a corner. I hesitated. He could kill me and no one would
know where Id died. I assured myself he was weak: Surely someone that
fragile cant hurt me.
I turned the corner, anticipating some kind of reveal, an explanation
for the vision and Kevins begging. Instead, I woke up in frustration.
The spot beside me in bed rose and fell with my husbands breath.
He was alive, after all. I put out a hand to touch his shoulder but
dropped it halfway.
After class five, Kevin brushed my shoulder with his arm and jerked
his head as an indication to follow him. I had decided not to speak
with him, so the sudden contact made me tremble. He took me
outside and smoked a cigarette in the parking lot. He was lethargic in
his movements, like a broken toy soldier trying to salvage some
dignity despite being plastic and twenty years past his popularity.
I dont know if Im alive, he told me, sounding like a fifteen-yearold boys first attempt at depression. He angled his body so his hips
matched the angle of my hips. He slid his feet closer, and his hand
grazed my cheek. He smelled like smoke. When he kissed me, he
tasted like escape. Not the good kind of escape, where you break out
of prison and find a car with a key in the ignition and drive away with
your hair down and wisping in the breeze. He tasted like the kind of
freedom you regret later, the kind that comes after five tequilas and a
skirt hiked up to your waist. I couldnt look him in the eyes after.
On the way home I kept thinking about my grandmother, the one
that had died five months before. She was ninety-three, with a back
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crooked from too many years of gravity. She had her hair
professionally quaffed twice a month into a spectacular 1950s
housewife beehive. A few months before she died, she sat me in her
kitchen and made me green tea. Vincent the cat, before he was mine,
sat underneath a kitchen chair and swished his tail as he stared at me.
Youre too young to get married, she said.
I didnt believe her at the time. I wanted anything other than being
alone. If the man I chose paid more attention to video games and
online forums and his two brothers than me, at least I had another
soul in the room. At least he hugged me and almost meant it. If I
couldnt have the real thing then a faux happiness was enough.
Before she died forty-two days later, she looked up at me from her
bed and smiled. She said, I love you. I wondered if she understood
what that did to me.
In class six, the plaid-wearing teenager and the physics teaching kept
looking in our direction and talking behind their hands. I gave them
the bird and worked it into the scene. A disgruntled driver being cut
off in traffic. In most of my scenes I was in a car. Always ready to
flee.
I left before Kevin could catch me. I saw him staring at me from
across the parking lot. He had his hands in his jeans. I think he
expected me to be angry. Maybe slap him. Or he hoped I disliked
myself enough to ask for more. Another kiss, another extreme closeup of his wedding ring, another masterful denial of his involvement
while encouraging me to cross the line. Because he wanted every
chance to feel something without having to pay for it. And I reeked
desperation like a bleeding tourist pushed off a yacht, miles from
shore and treading water. Ready to beg for a plastic bottle full of
urine from a half-dead man in a broken canoe.
That night, I had the last vision I would have of Kevin. After that
class, he never came again. I never saw him again.
In the vision hes in the pipe, broken body and striped uniform.
Again he beckons me to come inside. Again I follow him around the
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corner. Instead of waking up like I had before, we breathe in silence,

dust particles swirling where our air manipulates them. His eyes are
dim. Hes holding my hand, suddenly. I feel the cracks between his
knuckles. I feel the blisters on his palm. Then I see the hole in the
middle of his uniform. A wet, black stain widens as I look into his
blue eyes.
I dont want to die, he tells me.
I kiss the back of his hand, and wake up.

Christina Scott is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program

at Sarah Lawrence College. Her nonfiction has appeared in Spry
Literary Journal, and her science fiction is forthcoming in the next
issue of The Quotable. She currently resides in Westchester County,
New York and teaches writing at a local college.
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90

THE NOISE OF YOUR ENEMIES

NoahDavid Lein

Nobody knows you like I do.

No one has seen you fall asleep holding your daughter in your work
clothes. No one can understand how youve suffered under the
thumb of Steve and his new wife. None of them have seen you clad
in orange, or bowing alone to an invisible god on your paper-white
cot, your face awash with tears as the guards muffle the lights one at
a time.
No one really understands you.
Not like I do.
***
I began watching you almost right away.
You took the gun in your trembling fingers and held it to your chest
and breathed slowly in the throbbing dark of my room. Your face
cloaked in shadows and sweat. You mouthed my nameAdamas
if it could bring me back.
I learned then that I couldnt tell you it was going to be okay. I
couldnt hug you or rub your back. I could only watch.
You turned away from my body and slipped out the door, sweeping
down the stairs on your bare, silent feet.
***
Our last conversation was at Natalies funeral. I carried her coffin
with a hung-over head while spraying tears everywhere. I blacked out
and landed on the marble church floor. The other pall-bearers caught
the coffin, thankfully, and Natalie didnt fall on top of me. They
carried me to a folding table and you came in after. You put your

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hands on my face and I woke. You didnt know it would be the last
time we would speak.
Im here, Adam, you said.
I want to die, I whimpered.
You stroked my cheek, held my hand.
I know, you said. I know you do.
***
You told them flippantly that I really died when Natalie crashed into
the telephone pole on Mills Road on her way home from camping.
Under a veiled sky of ash, we found her sedan in the curve of a black
creek.
At my funeral, a mere week after Natalies, her mother cried harder
than you did. It was Natalie, her mother said, who taught me how to
load a gun, and to fire it.
***
In the blue dark of the kitchen, the digital clock lit your pallid figure
like some eyeless leviathan.
Xanax and Temazepam. A handful.
The bottle of Smirnoff from the cupboard above the stove, your
favorite hiding place. The glass rattled on the counter as you placed it
next to the warm barrel shining silver in the bleeding moonlight.
What will they think of me? You gasped, swaying seasick in the haunt.
What will Steve do? You crumbled, weeping helplessly.
Then you climbed the stairs, wet hair in your eyes. You stumbled past
the pink night-light, into your daughters room. The gun firmly in
your grasp.
***
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When they scattered my ashes into Natalies creek, her mother, Janet,
held you tight and said, You did the best you could. Dont let
anyone tell you otherwise.
They think I encouraged him to do this.
Stop torturing yourself, she said, patting your arm. We both did
our best. When they fly away, we cant stop them.
They think Im an awful mother.
Youre not.
***
You showed them the notes in my journal. I wrote my last one after
Natalies funeral. You found it stuffed in the pages of a script Natalie
and I had written about zombies taking over the high school. You
gave the journal to them and they gave it to Steve; he gave the journal
to his new wife. She gave it to the prosecutor.
***
You always remembered our first conversation.
His name is Adam, you said. Because his real father is God.
Then Steve came.
Your muscular contractor with curly black hair. The lover who
haunted your salon, whom you scolded for calling me Fat Adam.
Father of your daughter, Emma Grace. The asshole who left you for
a Florida lawyer and took Emma with him.
I never felt I could trust her with the kids, Steve told them.
Hes saying I would hurt my own son, you cried to Janet in protest.
Her drinking was excessive, Steve said.
Hes destroying my reputation, you wept.
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She talked a lot about dying.

After mourning me for a year, I watched you open the door, the
police knocking one final time.
***
The pink glare of Emmas nightlight made the gun look plastic, toylike. You hovered over her, wavering. You lay beside your daughter,
holding her in the warm nest of your arms. Your lips murmured her
nameEmma. The girl in your arms, your hope and rest. Her gentle
breath, proof you could give life, and that you were a good mother
indeed.
The toxins mingled with your blood and your eyes went black.
***
Janet visited you in early May.
You sat on the iron bedframe, your chin tucked between your knees.
The whole of your clothing thin and orange, shielding little of the
lingering winter winds that slithered about the bare stone floor.
She came and you knelt before her like a sinner and clutched the bars
in your tiny hands.
Where is she? Wheres my Emma? you asked.
She swallowed. With Steven, in Florida. Shes fine.
Your breath left you with a gasp as twin tears fell to the floor.
They think Im a monster, you said, sniffing. Dont they?
Janet lowered her eyes for a moment, and asked, You need to tell
me. Is it true that you wrote Adams obituary before he died?
You shook gently, mostly from the cold.

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I didnt know what to do, you said. When you lost Natalie, I
imagined losing Adam. I felt so helpless.
Did you wrote Emmas obituary, too? And then your own? Thats
what theyre saying.
I know, I know, you mumbled, lips quivering. It looks so awful. I
was venting all kinds of crazy, drunken thoughts then. Who told you
this?
It doesnt matter.
You trembled with palpable rage. Theyre going to twist things. Its
Steve and his lies. Please trust me.
Janet nodded slowly, caressing your cheek with her fingertips. Just
one more thing.
What? you snapped, so weak after months and months of these
horrible questions.
Theyre saying the wound was in the back of Adams head. At a
downward angle. Behind his left ear.
I know. I found him.
Yes, you did, Janet said. He was right-handed. Janets lips shook.
He couldnt have
Listen to me, you begged your only friend.
She backed away. Im sorry, she whispered. But I dont know you
anymore. She turned and disappeared down the long, monolithic
hallway.
You screamed for her to come back, that you loved your children
and would never hurt them. You howled, Im not a bad mother!
Your voice echoed like a dying thunderclap.
***
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You were lying next to Emma, the gun pressed between your chest
and her back. You dreamt the cold of it woke her and she picked it
up and set it on the floor. She had to pee, and tip-toed to the
bathroom. On her way back, she wanted to see if I was awake. She
found my door open, peeked past it, and stepped inside.
You did not stir when she screamed.
***
Janet never returned.
Lying on the icy floor with eyes closed, you saw a secret vision that
no living person can relay. Your lips fumbled in the cold, reciting
your favorite psalm.
Attend to me and answer me, you whispered in the grey. I am
restless in my complaint and I moan because of the noise of my
enemies
The prayer disappeared, unanswered and forgotten.
I watched you study your cell, looking for a way out. You stripped
your cot and threaded the sheets through the narrow slits in the
ceiling vent. You were mechanical, numbly peaceful. I watched you
slip your tiny neck into the noose.
***
I want to lay my head beside yours, like our picnics on Lake Michigan
in the summers when I was little, before Emma, and before Steve. I
want to hold your hand, like I used to when Steve left and you
couldnt breathe. But I have nothing to offer beyond the deathly chill
Ive bestowed on your lonely prison.
Goodbye, Mother. Soon you will fall. And when you do, I will not
watch you anymore. There are cold tears about to fall from your eyes,
and I cannot wipe them away. You are crying because no one knows
you, no one understands you.
But I understand.
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And where you are going, they will, too.

NoahDavid Lein has been telling stories since the first grade, when
his tale of a heroic teddy bear was performed by a team of
professional actors. After studying literature, education, theater, and
creative writing at Hope College, NoahDavid moved to Florida and
shares his love of story with high school students as a teacher. He
wrote two murder-mystery dinner plays for his drama troupe and is
finishing his first novel, the story of a barista with the dream of
saving the world with coffee. Readers can find him coaching
storytellers at http://noahdavidwriter.com.
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DEEP RIVER ROAD

Marnie Heenan
I walked to the top of our gravel driveway; granite
stones potholed my sneakers soles until I stood
on the rusted sheet metal that Dad put down,
because the concrete tunnel underneath crumbled.
Honeysuckle coated the mailbox, climbed the utility pole,
and sprawled into the neighbors yard, conquering his
weekly weed whacking. I plucked one of the fragrant
blooms, severed the base of the outer petals, and pulled
until a drop of nectar hit my tongue. I did this until the bus
came, left the discarded flowers waiting for the wind.

Marnie Heenan graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with

a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in creative writing. She was
born in High Point, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in Kudzu
House Quarterly and has been selected for Broadsides: Poetry off the Shelf
at the Lee County Alliance for the Arts. She is an editor for The
Mangrove Review.

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Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein

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