Issue 4

FICTION

• Waiting, by Matthew Fairchild

• He Knocked, by Jeff Fleischer

• Leopard Skin Skin-Tight Pants: Marble Falls, Texas, by Susana de la Pena

• For the Rest of Our Lives, by Steven Rosenfeld

• The Affair, by Nina Schuyler

NON-FICTION

• Make Way, by Robert Anderson

POETRY

• Coming of Age, by Austin Beaton

• When Artists Nap, by Charlie Becker

• Potatoes, by Amanda Chiado

• Cowboy Dream, by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

• séance dispatch #43, by Patrick Kindig

• I Like Fun, by Nathan Logan

• Old War Machine, by Carolyn Oliver

• On Loving, by Jeremy Radin

• Crash, by Juanita Rey

EDITORIAL TEAM: Marina Crouse, Tonya Kelley, Tiffany Argueta, Allison Blackley, Jacqlyn Cope, Claudia Pocasangre, Kegan Swyers, Sharon Cleveland Blount

ADVISOR: Joanna Novak

The Calm, by Melinda Canny

FICTION

_____________________________________________________________________

Waiting

by Matthew Fairchild

The station breathed in a gust of cool air as the train arrived at platform four. The high, glass roof held the air pushed into its chest, warming it with the afternoon light coming through. As the air warmed, it hung there in the iron and glass rafters, waiting to be exhaled.

A woman sat alone in an area with four seats around a table. Her papers were strewn out across the table and jacket, laptop bag, and scarf draped over every seat to ward off any friendly strangers. She looked outside as the train came to a halt in the station, the bear iron beams meeting the concrete at the platform. It made the whole building have an industrial feel, though the light coming in from the glass roof warmed the place up enough to at least make it inviting.

As the doors opened and the people came on, she started to feel a pang in her bladder. The new riders looked down at her mess of papers and clothing, judging her. She needed to go, but if she went to the restroom, she would need to clean up her papers to make sure no one stole or looked through them. You never knew with these people. But if she did that someone would take her seat for sure. Maybe she could wait until the train was going. They would take her seat then, too, the vultures that they were, looking greedily at her as they passed, moving farther back in the train.

The person in the two-seat row front of her could watch it. She got up, sticking next to the chairs to avoid touching the people passing by. The man in front of her had his eyes closed. He appeared to be napping, but everyone else in the car who was awake looked at her with judging eyes, just like the people getting onto the train. What did they know? She needed the space. And she got there first.

She tapped the man on the shoulder. He calmly opened his eyes, turning his head toward her while still resting it on the top of the back of the chair. His backpack took up the seat closest to her.

“Could you keep an eye on my stuff while I use the restroom?” she asked, pointing to her mess.

He turned his head around and nodded.

She thanked him and rushed to the restroom in the next car.

Across the aisle from her was a family: a dad, a mom, and two young boys. Their grey Samsonite rollerbag luggage was stored underneath the table. The boys played cards, tossing them into the pile one after another, long since invested in the game. The mom read a book while the dad watched over the kids, making sure they did not become so bored that they started making trouble. They were headed to the airport for a Caribbean vacation, but it was too early to start wearing beach attire. The train station may have been heated, but outside the fall air was chilly. Each of them wore jackets to stay warm.

The ride to the airport was taking longer than the dad would like. Soon his boys would be bored, and he would have to find something else to distract them. His friends at work kept telling him to move closer to the city. Don’t you see all the “If you lived here you’d be home” signs along the tracks, they would say. He had, but it was cheaper farther out, and who would want to live by the tracks, constantly hearing train horns and aggravated business types honking at each other for stealing parking spots? The quiet nowhere of the suburbs was much better for his family, where they could live and play in silence. A slightly longer trip to work and the airport was worth it.

After having to go not one, but two cars down to find the restroom, the woman returned to find all her stuff where it was, but the man fast asleep, his mouth agape. People were incompetent. At least no one slid into her spot. She sat back down and continued looking through the press releases for typos.

The flow of people entering the train had slowed to a trickle in the time she was gone. Now they waited for the requisite time for stragglers to pass so that they could all get moving again. She would much prefer to do this work from home, without the jostling and noise of the train, but at least in the station the jostling stopped and the family across from her was quiet for now.

The boys finally tossed all of their cards into the pile in the middle. The one sitting on the same side as their mom started swishing the pile around in bigger and bigger circles. A complaint was coming. They were only four stops from the airport. He just needed to keep them engaged for a little bit longer. The dad pulled out his wallet, causing the boys to perk up.

“I’m getting kind of hungry,” he said, “Why don’t you two go get something from the snack bar two cars down for me and yourselves.”

He pulled out a ten-dollar bill. Their eyes went wide.

“Whatever we want?” the one sitting next to the dad asked.

“Nothing with caffeine. And only one for each of you. Can you promise me that?”

They both nodded enthusiastically.

The dad handed the money to the boy next to him, and they ran off. That would buy them until their stop.

As the boys left, the train lurched forward, pushed ahead by the engine at its end. The station exhaled, pushing the air out of its rafters and back into the cool fall afternoon.

______________________________

He Knocked

by Jeff Fleischer

He knocked at about a quarter to six on a Tuesday, just as Stacy had finished setting out all the ingredients for her pasta primavera and started to chop the green beans.

She didn’t hear him at first.

Since college, Stacy rarely cooked dinner without listening to the same playlist of Nineties hits. Her music had migrated from mix tape to burned CD to MP3 to streaming, and she swapped out a few songs at each step along that path (some had gone from ironic to embarrassing; others had taken the reverse journey). Still, most of her soundtrack remained unchanged since she was a nineteen-year-old aspiring doctor. When she shared a cramped two-bedroom townhouse with three girls she’d met in her freshman dorm.

Her speakers were set loud enough that they overpowered his first attempt. She didn’t even hear his next set of seven knocks (which arrived in the familiar shave-and-a-haircut arrangement). However, the tall black pot holding the noodles had started to boil past the top, forcing her to rush over and turn down the burner on the stove. When she did, she could see the top of his head through the square window on her front door. She lowered the music and jogged over to answer it.

Stacy and her husband lived in a safe neighborhood (the most common surprise visitors were schoolchildren selling magazines or chocolate bars), but she still had to unlatch a thin chain and turn the deadbolt before greeting the visitor.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Stacy didn’t recognize the man standing there. He was about her height, dressed in a loose-fitting suit that clearly hadn’t been ironed recently. He held a wooden clipboard with a thick pile of paper under the metal clamp.

“Yes, I’m looking for Stacy Montaigne.” As he said it, he took off his driver’s cap, revealing a mussed comb-over. “Would it be fair to guess that you are Ms. Montaigne?”

“Not since college; it’s been Mrs. Woodley a long time.” As she said it, she indicated the sign below the mailbox with that surname in gold plate. “How can I help you?”

“May I come in? It’s a bit of a long questionnaire, and some of the material might be a bit, personal, if you will. Though you can always decline to answer any part of it.”

Stacy had never been particularly comfortable inviting strangers into her home when she was alone (probably because her parents warned her many times against doing so in her childhood). Even though she spent most days writing alone in her dining-room office while Gary was at work, she almost never answered the door. Usually, the only knocks came from postmen dropping off packages. Unless it was wet outside, she would rather collect them from the porch than interrupt her routine. Still, the form in the clipboard made a census look like a bit of light reading.

As she scanned the neighborhood, the visitor continued, “If you prefer, we can speak out here. My name is Delroy Randle, and I’m here on behalf of Eastern’s alumni association.”

While he waited for a response, Randle took a silver pocket watch chained to his coat pocket and popped open the fob to check the time. He stared at it for a few seconds, giving Stacy a moment to make a decision.

Something in the man’s tone made Stacy believe that whatever he wanted to discuss was best broached inside. Along with that, his age (somewhere in his late sixties) and stature (too thin for his clothes) made him seem harmless enough. Not knowing how long this would take, she didn’t want to leave dinner cooking unattended, and wanted to have it ready before Gary got home.

“That’s okay; you can come in,” she said. “Just wipe your feet first.”

Randle did her one better and took off his shoes on the faded welcome mat, partially obscuring the grinning mascot who had greeted Gary nearly every day since his pledge week. While Stacy made a quick stop in the kitchen to turn off the stove, the visitor hung his suit jacket and hat on the coat rack (which Gary had argued in the store that nobody would ever use).

“Sorry, just had to make sure I didn’t overcook dinner,” Stacy said as she took a seat on the couch. “My husband will be home in about half an hour, and I want to have it ready.”

“Thank you, but I’m not very hungry,” Randle said. Stacy hadn’t offered him anything, but that subject seemed moot. Randle chose a spot on the love-seat across from her, and placed his open pocket watch on the coffee table between them. He took a pen from behind his ear and flipped up the first few pages of his questionnaire. “Mind if I begin by confirming some basic information?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We have established that you are the former Stacy Montaigne.”

“That’s me.”

“The same one who attended Eastern from 1991 to 1996?”

“Still me. At least, that was me.”

“If I may say so, that’s an odd way to put it,” Randle replied, glancing again at his pocket watch. “What do you mean?”

“Just that it seems like a really long time ago now...I’d never been on my own before, or ever really traveled. Going to school was such a big adjustment. The first time I did my own laundry, I wound up turning half my clothes pink...”

Every time she paused, expecting him to ask another question, Randle just looked at her and smiled silently, and Stacy found herself filling the silence with more details. “Our machines in the dorm weren’t even coin operated. You had to buy these little plastic tokens, and sometimes they’d break, or you wouldn’t buy enough, and your clothes would get kind of musty because they didn’t dry all the way...”

After she detailed a few more laundry-related mishaps, Randle marked something on his clipboard with a pen (which brought her attention back to the moment). “I see you graduated with a bachelor of arts in biology.”

“BA in biology and comp lit. I was a double major, with a pre-med concentration.”

“Where and when did you attend medical school?”

“Oh, I never went.”

“Any particular reason?”

“My father was a chiropractor, and my mother was a dermatologist, so medicine was what they always wanted me to do. We all thought I’d be a surgeon, as a way for the next generation to do better than the last one, the whole American dream thing...” She found that she liked talking to Delroy Randle; he was either a good listener or exceptionally good at pretending to be one.

“You said you were married―”

"Yes, to Gary Woodley. We graduated Eastern the same year. He’s a year older than me, but it took him an extra semester to finish. I took five years, but he took five and a half.”

While Randle took notes, Stacy told him about how she met Gary at a mixer during her sophomore year, about their first date at the student union movie theater, about how they moved in together their last year at Eastern without their parents ever figuring it out.

“Any children?”

“We had a dog for a while, but we had to put him down last year. He had cancer that spread to the bone marrow before we could catch it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve always been something of a dog person myself. Loyal, friendly animals, no guile there.”

Stacy smiled.

“No children then?”

“No.” She paused there, staring at the open pocket watch. Breaking the awkward silence, she revealed something she’d never told anyone else. “I’m not able to have any. It doesn’t matter, though. Gary doesn’t want them anyway.”

“I see,” Randle said, jotting down more notes. “What does Gary do for a living?”

“He’s a consultant. He works in risk and resource management, and some analytics.” There wasn’t much about her husband’s work that she could really explain, other than people who made a lot less than him tended to get laid off when he showed up at a company. Stacy told Randle about how he ended up there. How in school, Gary wanted to be a teacher or maybe a chef, but decided he wanted to make more money (which she thought sounded embarrassing when said just minutes after she described their younger idealism).

“Who does he work for?” Randle said, glancing at the pocket watch, and then at the clock on the wall. He didn’t seem to be syncing them, and Stacy wasn’t sure what he was doing.

“Whoever hires him. He has a few dozen clients at the same time.”

“Which consulting firm, though? What types of clients?”

“His own company. He’s independent. He just consults with whoever. I don’t really know how it all works; like he always says, he makes it and I spend it.” Stacy found herself fidgeting nervously, which she hadn’t done before (probably because she realized how little she knew about the source of her lifestyle).

“If I may say so, based on this house, he must be making quite a lot of it. That is, it’s a very nice and well-appointed home. And what is it that you do for a living, with medicine off the table?”

Stacy blushed. “Oh, I don’t really work. I just take care of the house, make dinner. I do write a pop-culture blog that gets a few hundred readers. Woodley at Home? Do you know it?”

“I’m not much for technology,” Randle said with a shrug, holding up the pen and clipboard in his hands to emphasize his point (as if the pocket watch hadn’t already).

She explained how she had started writing the blog before they were even called that, when she would go to her dorm computer lab in the middle of the night and write short, sarcastic reviews of whatever movie or show she’d watched that week, started submitting them to the dorm newsletter, and eventually put them online herself. Her musings had traveled from a college server to Geocities to LiveJournal to MySpace before Gary bought her a permanent site and hired a designer for it.

Randle didn’t say much (probably because details like gigs of storage space flew over his head), and just focused on his pocket watch for most of her explanation.

“You said hundreds of people read this. How do they pay for it?”

“They don’t. I don’t make any money on it yet. Hopefully, I will one day, but like you said, Gary makes enough for us to live pretty well. Whatever I make will be extra.”

Randle, who had sat upright while taking most of his notes, leaned in and lowered his voice a bit. “Well, I believe that takes us to the most important portion of the survey. According to the school’s records, you’ve never made a single payment on your loans in all these years.”

“That’s true,” Stacy admitted. “Gary makes all the money, and his parents paid for school. I don’t have any income.”

“Yes, the records show you received an exception for economic hardship when you first graduated―”

“We were broke, barely making rent while Gary was doing internships. We had to borrow from his parents just to get by.”

“―but it’s hardly possible that economic hardship is still a factor here, given all this.” He made a sweeping gesture around the room (and Stacy had to admit he had a point). “I do not doubt it was a real concern when you were twenty-two. For some time, though, you must have been able to pay, just unwilling.”

Stacy began to fidget, visibly uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “I don’t see why I should pay for something I don’t use. Eastern’s called a bunch of times, and I always tell them the truth, that I don’t work or use my education.”

“From what you’ve told me, it seems you gained quite a lot from your experience there.”

Randle was calm, and Stacy found he still had a way of putting her at ease as he recapped some of what she’d told him. “You met your husband, learned to cook, learned to take care of your own place, learned to weblog.” He listed many more examples (underscoring just how many memories Stacy had shared in their sessions), most having little to do with academics.

“I already have all that. Like I said last time they called, what are they going to do, make me return my education?”

“Something like that,” Randle said. “That’s where I come in.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will soon enough.” With that, Randle checked the clock on the wall (not his own silver one), which showed it was nearly six-thirty. “I know you expect your husband back any minute, Mrs. Woodley, so I’ll show myself out. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for all the memories you’ve shared. We’ll put them to good use.”

Stacy wasn’t sure what to say as the strange man put his shoes back on and collected his jacket and hat. She instinctively rose to show him out, but Delroy Randle waved her off.

“Thank you, but no need to get up. Pardon me, I almost forgot the most important thing.” He grabbed the pocket watch that still sat open. “Can’t leave this behind.”

The instant the figure in the loose-fitting suit closed the fob on his watch, Stacy felt something change, as if she’d lost track of time. Randle thanked her again and left her home. From the window, she saw him walking down the street with his clipboard, making additional notes (and realized for the first time that he’d arrived on foot).

Stacy remembered that she had been making dinner when Randle knocked, and went back to the kitchen. She found a few piles of vegetables on the counter, but was at a loss for to how to prepare them. The stereo, which she’d turned down on her way to the door, played a series of unfamiliar tunes, though she found that she liked most of them.

A few minutes later, another man she didn’t recognize came to the door, claiming to be her husband. Only when he correctly described every photo over the mantle, and she saw his face matched several of them, did Stacy feel comfortable letting this man into her home, though nothing he said about their time together sounded familiar.

_______________________________

Leopard Skin Skin-Tight Pants: Marble Falls, Texas

by Susana de la Pena

My dad helped build the roads of Texas. In the summers, my mom and one of my sisters and I would follow him at his work. We were out of school in the summers and Mom wanted us to be with Daddy. My two older sisters who were already in high school could be left at home, under the care of relatives. I remember so much about those trips. Like when we went to Marble Falls, near Austin, Texas. We rented a motel there for a couple of months while my dad worked for the Dillinger Company, tarring and paving roads. In the evenings, Daddy would get home and oftentimes would take us to the Dairy Queen for ice cream after supper.

Marble Falls is known for its granite rock. Beautiful, purple rock. Marble Falls is a small central Texas town. One of those small sleepy towns, as they call them. Not much going on. Every one of those towns has a Dairy Queen. I’m reminded of Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways as I write this. He wrote about those roads, the little ones, that are oftentimes not on the map. The ones that wind through dusty little towns all over the United States. You meet some weird people in those towns. That was the fun part. So, in Marble Falls we met a couple of young girls like us (my sister Glo and I). I think Glo must have been about nine or ten and I was about six or seven. These two sisters who lived next door to the Marble Falls motel we were living in for the summer had what I know today is called platinum blonde hair. They didn’t dye it, though. It was just like that, naturally. They had a nun doll, which I thought was kind of strange. I’d never seen a doll that was a nun. They turned her all over, lifted up her skirt, and inspected the hell out of her. They ended up taking her head off and leaving her headless. I never understood that. What was that about? I wondered what my mother would say about that, so I never told her, because I knew she would be mad about anybody treating a nun that way. Mom said her rosary every day, kept her faith, went to Catholic Church on Sundays. Always. The early morning mass that was still in Latin. No California Sunday guitar-masses that came later on when the church tried to stay “relevant” and keep people from leaving during the music-laden ‘60’s. Anyway, that was the Marble Falls nun doll incident, as I’d call it today.

One of the really weird people we met... well, she was weird to me at the time... was the motel owner, I guess she was. If not the owner, she ran, or managed, the place. She wore leopard skin skin-tight pants. I’d never seen such a thing. And she had red hair piled high on her head in that 1950s/60s teased up way high style with a long pony tail hanging in the back. Her eyeglasses were pointed at the ends and were a red-brown. Seems lots of things back then were pointed like that. Like the fins on cars. I think they called it “streamlined.” But what was with all those pointy, pointed upwards, fin-like glasses, bras, and car “tails”? Anyway, she was really thin and I never saw her without a cigarette in her mouth. (My mother recoiled at that, I remember.) She also jangled when she got near us. We could hear her coming. She must have had on, it seemed to me at the time “a hundred bracelets.” Today, I think it was probably closer to ten or so. Gold, orange, brown, to match her leopard skin skin-tight pants. And her high heels were black. And higher than any heels I’d ever seen. She looked funny trying to walk across the grounds in between pebbles and things on the ground. I was sure she would fall any minute but she never did. I think she thought us curious, as well. I don’t think she was used to seeing “brown people” like us that much. There were more of us the closer you got to the South Texas-U.S./Mexico border, where we lived. She looked at us like she was trying to figure us out, with a question on her face all the time.

There was a constant droning sound coming out of motel air conditioners that were always on. Summers in Texas, near Austin, were hot and humid and unbearable. After a while you forgot that there were air conditioners on because the noise didn’t sound new or different anymore. It was always on. If you walked a little away from one of them you could hear the cicadas. The chicharras we called them. Their constant, non stop, chirp chirp chirping in the air. I read somewhere that it’s the sound of their rubbing their legs together that we hear but I have a hard time believing that that alone makes that sound. Maybe I just imagined reading that. Overhead, too, were the “alambras”. the hot electricity wires that “snapped” every now and then in the heat. Texas is a lush cacophony of sounds in the summer. You never forget them because if you move away you miss hearing them. You’re like, “Wait. Where are the chicharras? Why don’t I hear the wires snapping?” The sounds in the air are as lush as the greener parts of the state can be in the hot tropical parts with overgrown greenery. Not all of Texas is like that. Much of it is flat and dry. But some places, like Marble Falls and Austin, for example, have those greens.

Anyway, I still see Miss Leopard-Skin Skin-Tight Pants walking across the motel yard like a bird traipsing across trip wire, some motel mine field. Those stiletto heels landing you weren’t sure where. When she was far away I could see two spindly legs against the sun that looked more like stilts because she walked so unsteadily through the little gravel rocks along the pavement. There was lots of stuff strewn along that pavement and she gingerly and masterfully... humorously it seems to me now... stepped here and there and got through it all.

There was one day I remember most. My older sister, “Glo,” got the big idea to make some “jelly.” There were blue berries... I don’t remember what kind of plant or whatever they were... but she decided they might be edible and so we got a bunch and mashed them on the front porch to our motel room to squeeze some juice out of them and into some jar she’d found in the kitchen. Soon enough there was purple all around us. We must have been at it for at least several hours or more. Who knows. Time is so different when you’re young. It could have been one hour, or six, for all I know, now. Well, it soon became 4:00 in the afternoon, and my mom poked her head out the front window to remind us that we had to shower and be ready for Daddy to come home because we would be going out to eat. All the kids, now that I remember, had to be cleaned up and “ready” before “Daddy” got home. I don’t know what that was about, but I guess it had something to do with his being the “head of the house” and “king of the castle” or something like that....

Anyway, so my sister and I started to clean up. Only thing is, the purple wouldn’t wash off. We tried and tried but no way. It wasn’t goin’ nowhere no-how. Our porch was one big purple splash. It was supposed to wash out like everything else did, but it didn’t. This was worse than the headless nun doll, for sure. Maybe they wouldn’t notice, we thought? Maybe nobody would see that we’d basically painted the whole front porch purple when we weren’t supposed to? We talked about it and thought that, yeah, maybe they wouldn’t notice. I looked at Glo and felt safe knowing that if they did notice, she was the one that was going to get in trouble because she was the oldest. My arms went limp because I knew it was useless to get the purple out. At around that time Daddy pulled up in the driveway. I think he immediately sized up the situation and, of course, had a fit. Mom poked her head out again and I saw the horror on her face. Uh oh. I looked at my hands and there was no use saying I didn’t do it because I was purple all the way from my finger nails to my elbow. I really don’t remember much after that except that there was a lot of yelling and Mom shaking her head and Daddy looking so tired just having gotten home from a hard day of work to this. To us. Our mess. He yelled out lots of Spanish cuss words that we knew we weren’t ever supposed to say. But I do remember that soon after that we had to apologize to the Leopard Skin Skin-Tight Pants lady. Glo hung her head, I remember, when she spoke. And I just basically repeated what she had said. And we were very sorry we repeated for having made her porch all purple.

That day we were kicked out of the motel. Even before we got to go out to eat. It was bad. Daddy was cussing the whole time he was turning the wheel to back up and drive out. I looked out the of the car’s back window and sooo remember her, still, Ms. Leopard Skin Skin- Tight Pants, just standing there in front of her purple porch with that same question on her face. Like “Who were those people?” I thought of the Lone Ranger on TV: “Who was that masked man?” And I waved to her from the back seat of the car as we drove off. I think my sister and I were in trouble for at least a couple of weeks or maybe more and there was no Dairy Queen during all that time. We had to go to bed early and couldn’t watch TV and nobody laughed or smiled.

There were lots more hair-brained ideas we had growing up. And traveling with Daddy was always an adventure. I saw so much of central Texas that way. I may get my love of traveling from those times. Years later, when I attended the University of Texas at Austin, I remembered Daddy’s welding/road-building days. How he had built those roads all around Austin and the University and beyond. Somehow, I got onto one of those privileged roads that took me to the University and I thought of the White House that was built by slaves. We did the building and sometimes they let us in to the special places the roads all led to. But I always felt like I was still always getting in trouble. Like it was the purple porch all over again. Like a pachuca who mistakenly got invited to and showed up at a Daughters of the American Revolution Tea. I saw, and still see, lots of professors with those questions on their faces just like Ms. Leopard Skin Skin-Tight Pants. When we integrated Harlingen, Texas, it was the same. “Like who are those people?” all over again. They can’t figure us out. Especially when we move into their neighborhoods. Or get Ph.D’s. Or speak English without an accent even better than they do. “Who are those people?” Not like it was at home, south of Austin, closer to San Antonio, where we were all more alike. And then there was the move to California... but that’s a whole other story.

___________________________

For the Rest of Our Lives

by Steven Rosenfeld

If the IRT subway hadn’t been extended to the Bronx in 1908, I’d never have met your grandfather, and you wouldn’t be you.

On summer Sundays, our only day off from the sweltering dress factory in Brownsville, we girls would go out to Coney Island on the old BRT. We were looking for men, Jewish men of course, and Coney Island was the place to meet them. All we had to do was sit on the beach and chatter loudly in Yiddish, and before long they would find us.

That Sunday, the beach was crowded as usual. Blue sky and wispy clouds. Shirtless men plunging into the waves to impress the shiksas in brightly colored bathing costumes strutting up and down the beach. I was wearing the shapeless yellow and brown striped bathing outfit I’d stitched together at work during lunch. Sadly, its puffy sleeves and bloomers didn’t show off my figure. Still, I was hoping to meet a boy who would buy me a hot dog on the boardwalk. They were Kosher and smelled wonderful, but a nickel was more than I could afford.

Sure enough, we attracted a group of boys. They said they were from the Bronx. The Bronx? That was a foreign country to girls who’d never left Brooklyn. They boasted that they’d taken the subway, then a ferry and then the elevated, and the trip had taken more than two hours. So I reckoned one of them could spring for a nickel hot dog.

After a while, I found myself sitting back to back with one of those Bronx boys. We didn’t have beach chairs, of course, so we often leaned against each other. I didn’t even know what this guy looked like. He was talking to two pretty girls sitting across the way. But I decided this was my chance for a hot dog, so I turned my head and asked over my shoulder if he realized he was supporting me, and how long he could continue doing that.

“How about for the rest of our lives?” your grandfather said. And of course, that’s what happened.

___________________________

The Affair

by Nina Schuyler

I was in my twenties, he, in his forties--married, but that word was an abstraction, an accessory, like a neck tie that was easily slipped off and tossed aside.

He was my boss, though that, too, seemed a concept only, the way he laughed with everyone, sat in a cubicle like us—he was in my line of sight, his curly brown hair tinged with gray--his friendly open manner, he gave credit where credit was due.

We ended up, as you do when there is nowhere to go, in the basement of his gym. Down three flights of steps, in a dusty storage room, among cardboard boxes, sweat-infested blue mats, and jump ropes. Upstairs, above our heads, a basketball court. We were serenaded by pounding feet.  

Always mid-day, sun sneaking shafts of light. He’d wink, I’d wink, and we’d slip away, finding the gaps between meetings and documents, phone calls and rows and rows of numbers. We were investment bankers, an associate, me; he, a manager and on his way up. Acquisitions, mergers, hostile takeovers. Tall and lanky, he swam every morning in the ice cold bay the color of silver. His companions were seagulls, the Golden Gate Bridge rainbowing him.

We went away to a conference in New York. My hotel room was right above his. I only had to do a tap dance, and he’d be standing at my door, extending a gift of wrapped miniature soap or a shower cap. “Madame,” he’d say, smiling. “For you.” We walked block after block, holding hands, his arm around me, he kissed me on the corner of West 85th and Central Park, a long passionate kiss, and the world sighed.

We made plans, extravagant plans. Lying in fresh white hotel sheets, we imagined Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo, Athens to see the Parthenon. Imagined a house in Sausalito, with a view of steel blue water, little sailboats, the glittering city. We changed jobs, became what we dreamed—me, writing novels, he, opening a school, where most of the time, the classroom was outside. The things you can learn from a bee, he said. What wasn’t there to love about him?

It could have been two months later, or maybe five. We were living feverishly, and time--along with everything else--was left out. I remember I was at home, eating ramen. I remember picking up the newspaper, putting it down again, not wanting to read anything bad, not wanting anything to spoil my good mood. When the phone rang, I jumped. “Say something,” he said. He never called me at home, a tiny studio, the bed and oven nearly on top of each other. He couldn’t stand it, he said, he had to hear my voice.

I heard a woman’s voice in the background, then the long wail of a baby.

It was never against them. The truth, a sorry truth it is, was that in my mind they never existed, his wife, his family. In the beginning, maybe she was hazy, but that swiftly blurred and vanished, she was smoke that blew out with the first lusty gust. I’d always been good at math, especially subtraction. He told me later he had a three-year-old, too.

I saw them years later, after I’d left that job, left that profession. They were having a picnic in Golden Gate Park, a red and white plaid cloth on the grass, a wicker basket, a bottle of wine, red grapes, a baguette. He looked happy, and so did his wife, their little girl with long brown braids, was jumping rope, the baby now toddling. I was near enough to hear his laugh, that full bodied laugh. The hairs on my arm stood up. He had on a pair of gray wool socks, she, a yellow print dress and black strapped sandals. They were so vivid, so real, everything else paled, turned vague. When the wind picked up, I was like a dried up leaf, blowing away, but not before I saw her toenails were painted bright pink.

NON-FICTION

_____________________________________________________________________

Make Way, Make Way!

by Robert Anderson

The Minnesota Twins had just won the 1987 World Series and crowds were beginning to mass along the motorcade route in downtown St. Paul. The radio reported that tens of thousands of jubilant fans were expected on this bright, crisp October afternoon to hail the conquering heroes, clad in mink and chinchilla, riding astride their Cadillacs and Continentals.

Not even a fair-weather baseball fan, and proud of it, I left work early to avoid the crush. My plan was to walk several blocks up the hill past the State Capitol to skirt the crowds and catch my bus, but I was too late. The sidewalks were already jammed and I soon found myself tapping my white stick through a dense thicket of humanity. I zigzagged and excused my way through, bumping into people, disentangling my cane from between their legs, shrinking from their muttered curses. I hadn’t a clue which way to turn; each move raised new obstacles, and there was barely room for me to swing my stick, much less for anyone to step aside.

I stalled, boxed in, my cane crushed against my chest, useless even as a signal for help. No one was paying attention in any case, with all eyes riveted on the street. This is no place for a blind man, I thought, and resigned myself to waiting it out.

“Can I help?" A hand touched my arm.

Ordinarily, I fiercely protect my hard-won independence, guarding it against those who would be too helpful, like the lady the other day who dragged me across an intersection I didn’t want to cross, mistaking my patient puzzling things out for fear and confusion. I had to be vigilant. Dependency was an ever -ready, always tempting trap, so easy to fall into, so hard to crawl out of. My stock response was instinctive, reflexive, sometimes verging on rudeness: “I can do this quite well myself, thank you very much!”

Not this time. "Yeah, I'm stuck… like totally."

The stranger, a raspy whisper on my right, began to steer me by the elbow, gently at first, but then more firmly. I stiffened, ready to bristle; I hated people moving me around like a piece of furniture. Sometimes they’d grab my hand like it belonged to them, and stick it on something, with no clue what it was, to show me what to do. They could explain it to me; I wasn’t that stupid or helpless. The stranger started to pull and push me by the arm, directing me toward thin spots in the crowd. Using his body as a buffer, his eyes as a guide, he eased us through the thicket… so slick and easy, like Moses parting the waters!

“Sorry, sorry” I muttered again and again, as we nudged past knees and feet, shoulders and hips, arms cradling purses and jackets, kids clutching legs and hands. He threaded us through the maze, with me holding my stick out in front of us like a divining rod.

"Make way for the blind man, make way for the blind man!" he shouted as he maneuvered us through the almost impenetrable mass. Proud and aloof, even in a pinch, I had to swallow my chagrin. When even he got stuck, he squeezed behind me and began shoving hard with both hands against the small of my back, thrusting my hips forward, pivoting them left and right with his fingertips, driving my trunk like a wedge through the crowd. Helpless on my own, what could I do?

I surrendered. I raised my cane and waved it aloft like a pennant. “Make way for the blind man, make way for the blind man!" I shouted above the din. With each advance, the crowd congealed around us like a sea of mud, sealing us in over and over again. This only made my helper drive all the harder. He twisted my body every which way, testing for resistance, then jammed it into every fissure and fault-line he could find. Inch by crawling inch, we slogged our way through.

“Make way for the blind man, make way for the blind man!” We were chanting in  chorus now, with me pumping my cane high in the air like a drum major. A curious conga line we made that clear October afternoon, my friend and I, as we snaked our way up the long avenue toward the Capitol. Far behind us we heard wave after wave of people cheering and applauding as the motorcade crept along the parade route. As we neared the crest of the hill, the crowd thinned and our pace quickened, till suddenly, with one final shove, I popped free to the other side, as cleanly expressed as a squeezed carbuncle.

Out in the open air at last, I turned to face my rescuer. "Thank you, thank you,” I gushed. “I could never have done it without you."

“No, no,” he said, taking my hand warmly. “Thank you! I've got a dentist's appointment in twenty minutes, and if I hurry, I can just make it." Laughing, we pumped hands like old friends, and went our separate ways.

With the sun shining down on my face, my cane tapping out its friendly patter on the sidewalk, I strolled to my bus stop, pondering this vaunted independence of mine. Certainly, it was essential to my survival as a blind man, but so were my rescuers. How many times had I been helped over the years, sometimes saved from near disaster by a hair, by strangers who’d risked embarrassment to step forward and offer aid when I’d been too proud, or too oblivious, to ask? They flashed before me, my rescuers, too many to count. I was a lucky, lucky man… or was the word “blessed”?

These and similar thoughts filled my mind as I walked along. What if I had it all wrong, this tidy picture of reality I carried around inside my head, with its fixed rules and boundaries, its careful calculus of give and get, win and lose, its stringent illusion of self-sufficiency? What if the universe operated by another set of rules entirely, a vision far more generous, boundless and reciprocal?

Maybe my dependency was a gift? These thoughts I pondered as I relaxed into the routine of the long, lazy ride home, lulled by the rocking rhythms of the bus, its stops and starts, the whoosh of doors opening and closing, the muffled chatter of nearby strangers.

POETRY

_____________________________________________________________________

Coming of Age

by Austin Beaton

Ghosts of violin scratches

made by burnt witches being

driven over their grandsons

earning raising wages

isn’t silent. Despite church

hymns; it doesn’t all work out

though our atoms

end up somewhere; when

Grandma’s pistol naps

in the dark of a cabinet

I kiss the newest hound

near the dead buried below

still echoing backyard

sobs. Pray to the days

of forgetting feeling mortal

like kid legs & nameless calves

not muscled, dangling

above what’s decided for us.

Once the self judges bicep small

then stomach fat inflates.

If I snap at your pronouncing

supposebly, you hide your

charisma. I’ve hugged you.

I’ve hurt you. Jesus how

teleportation ruined flying’s fun.

What I want from the past

is a letter & a song but

the moon throws only

its cables of silver

and God is a place

that can offer a small

handshake of quiet

at this time.

________________________

When Artists Nap

by Charlie Becker

There’s barely time as eucalyptus leaves

level stillness on the ground, the air more

pure thanks to artists breathing deeply

in Griffith Park. Our blanket softens

twisted tree roots and the dry dirt beneath

when we open our eyes to late-day clouds.

We hurry. You begin now with turquoise

pastel across the top of cream colored

paper. Your blue absorbs the daylight

as it spreads growing trees from their

top branches to the sandy brown earth

you draw below. You work quickly

bottom to sides, inside to edges winding

emerald moss and mustard ivy around

trunks and sides of angular rocks. Even

a seagull circling our heads somehow

sends its caws into the purples of your

uneven wild grasses.

Afternoon bright begins to fade casting

orange shadows everywhere. You grab

some with a crayon and splash it to your

sky like fire without flames, heat causing

dusk. Then I nervously begin to search

the ground at our feet as darkness arrives

until finally, there it is, the tiny pale

glowworm we dreamed about hours ago.

With my finger I rub yellow light from

its body and transfer some to your drawing

just underneath one of the perfect flat gray

stones so your artwork is properly signed.

__________________________

Potatoes

by Amanda Chiado

When my parents say we should make gravy

I have to find my brother like a foreigner

Searches for mushrooms in a wasteland.

I trip rock by rock through the quarry.

My brother sits at the table, leather jacket on

And we hover like pieces of chess.  He might run

But I get home without being clawed.  He might

Run so my mother keeps a tear in her eye,

A weapon always laying in wait in a heart

Upstairs.  All of us speak so much of weather

We might shift the winds with our small talk

For Dorothy and all of us that say go home.

Holding my brother after all those mashed

Potatoes makes me hate how much a body fails.

My mother gives birth to miniature storms, cries 

Silvery bullets.  My father, snores to a crime show.

My brother kisses his hand too long.  I say fly.

My brother walks up the street into the limelight

In some angelic goodbye, we send him off with eyes

Because when someone loves you, they watch you go.

_______________________________

Cowboy Dream

by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

Anne Sexton shows up on my doorstep in cowboy

boots and we think about hunger together. Our spurs

clink idly beside each other like tiny ferris wheels,

rusty in their spur-cages. I turn to her and say God, Anne.

What the fuck are spurs even for? And she teaches me

about directing horses, the way you would direct

your hunger. How to press your desires into them.

You have a lot to learn, she says to me. I let her press

a spur into the heel of my hand until it draws a small

amount of blood. Yes, this too is poetry, she says.

____________________________

séance dispatch #43

by Patrick Kindig

remember that night

            with the liquor

                        & piano music

                                                i mean

                        the one where i got

            conspicuously sticky

& you offered me

            your shower

                        the one where

                                                afterwards

                        i kissed my first boy

            in the basement

while you made margaritas

            upstairs

                        remember

                                                i mean

                        the night you slept

            on the pullout

with me

            the night i woke shirtless

                        at 4am

                                                your hand

                        on my chest

            remember how

you asked me

            to dinner the next day

                        & i went

                                                & you

                        just smiled through it

            through the soup

& the salad

            & the chocolate

                        mousse

                                                & i could see

                        there was a small light

            growing inside you

& i was too afraid

            to tell you

                        the light growing

                                                inside me

                        was different

            & i’m sorry

i’m sorry

            i’m sorry

                        i’m

                                                sorry

___________________________

I Like Fun

by Nathan Logan

To negotiate over the phone,

legs crossed in a cow skull chair.

I like fun just as much as the next

in line, please. What’s happening

just out of my line of sight. Beneath

the floor is where all the furniture

gets rearranged. Scary noises

in the hedgerow. I’ll shave my head

to speed up the divorce proceedings.

All I’ve done is come back home.

At my second yoga class, the instructor

says the tandem bike pose is both

relaxing and a metaphor for the next life.

But I don't agree with that.

______________________________

Old War Machine

by Carolyn Oliver

Clovers to corollas,

propellers bloom.

No target, no payload,

skeleton crew.

A slab of good fortune

heaving aloft.

Its grit still a moan

caught in my mouth.

_______________________________

On Loving

by Jeremy Radin

After Aracelis Girmay, after Nazim Hikmet

I do not love my dog. The family dog.

I know this is true

because I told it to my therapist:

I do not love

my dog.

The family dog. 

“Cooper” is the name of this dog

I do not love, who plods like a gorged

grizzly through the house, & seems

always to be sleeping

in the exact place you are trying

to walk through, a pile of shine-

sapped treasure, who begs

at the table & when

he doesn’t get what he wants,

lowers ever so gently his slobber-

soaked muzzle onto your pant leg.

I do not love this animal,

this beast I did not ask for.

& the responsibilities of keeping

something alive? I did not ask

for those either, but still find

myself bent over the silo

of dog food in the garage,

scooping the dry kibble

into the bowl, & then cutting up

the Sausage & Egg McMuffin

for his breakfast at the request

of my loving father, but what

kind of loving is that?

Such a youthful sort,

like giving your fish a bit of fresh air.

I think of the article

about the man who walked

his 19-year-old mutt each day

into the lake, holding it up on his chest

to relieve the pain

of its arthritis & I wonder

what kind of person I am, who

can’t even text his friends

on their birthdays.

I saw a person once, here on earth,

do a thing out of such love—

did they calm a weeping stranger?

Obsess over the giving of a gift?

Listen to the old woman speak

of the dragonflies, or the machines

of forgiveness? The point is, I can’t

remember. Because is not

remembering a kind of loving?

The way my grandma’s friend

remembered the expressions

of his parents the last day

he saw them, the face of the guard

who pulled them away from him—

how it came rushing back

when he clutched the paper

my grandma brought him from

Poland, the paper that said where

& how he lost them, such

meticulous records they kept.

& the smoke of them living

in his body until his last day,

curling around his bones,

soaking his voice thick

with phantoms. Cooper,

to begin to love you now

is to permit you unguarded

into my heart, this trembling

mess, yowling for shelter,

shying away from the sunlight.

It means to refer forever

back to the records

of my ambivalence, to lay down

on the floor of the kitchen

with you on the last day

of your life—a fruit fly circling

the nectarines—

as a ponytailed stranger

prepares a needle

while praising gently our mercy.

& I cannot help but notice

that the fluid is pinker

than it ought to be

as from out of our hands you eat

one final McMuffin—

& then, two swift injections…

The air unfolds. A furred light

grasps at the hardwood. & there

is your bowl. & there

is your mangled purple hedgehog.

& there, the garbage bag

we will put you inside of, load you

into the trunk of the car

as we pay the man

who opened the doors of you

from which you left us

behind, & the dread of being

something that leaves behind,

of loving what leaves

behind, the wondering what else

I have waited too long to give

myself over to, or whom, for fear

of being left behind, whose

arms might I be weeping all this into—

yes, I am weeping at last, cradling

your dumb, gorgeous head

in my hands, head I barely held in life,

head I scorned, head I hurried

out of my time, your eyes,

those twin lanterns, my too-late love

winking inside them, moving deeper

& deeper

into the dark…

________________________________

Crash

by Juanita Rey

Her death happened

on a Dominican roadway,

so it’s still in Spanish –

la muerte –

for a hot climate,

it’s incredibly chilly

you say you like this face

but I tell you it holds secrets –

crumpled cars,

the sickly air of ether

all it takes is her name

and your kiss is broken –

her name

and I can’t bear the grind of bones –

her name,

please, zip me up,

it’s cold as hell in here –

wait,

why wouldn’t it be ?

it is hell –

el infierno

if you’ve been paying attention.