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He grew up in Poland, a Catholic childhood with a proclivity for stoicism; pious, ascetic, the gift of intellect and his rock-hard work ethic defining an otherwise ordinary life. He would go on to emigrate and assimilate and father children and achieve the American Dream, pulling so hard on his bootstraps that he had the luxury of losing tens of thousands to Bernie Madoff without it mattering at all, so many years down the road. But first came the war. He left home. He joined the Polish army. He defended his country with honor. He was captured by the Russians. A prisoner-of-war, a hostage, an object as autonomous as a classroom pet constantly harassed by overenthusiastic schoolchildren. A prisoner-of-war, collateral, a dead man walking at the mercy of the Allied Powers, a life in the hands of those who do not regard it as such. A prisoner-of-war, a scapegoat, a pawn in the geopolitical chess game between Freedom and Fascism. He was really just a math professor from Warsaw. A prisoner-of-war, he was held with soldiers from all over Europe. A prisoner-of-war, he lived with them in squalor and learned their mother tongues. A prisoner-of-war, he spoke Polish and German and Russian by the time he escaped, only to be recaptured by the Americans and thrown back into captivity. It was his brain that saved him. While loose lips were sinking ships and babies were storming French beaches and nations were choosing guns over butter, he was fighting to stay alive. He translated for American guards, babies themselves with no stake in this war, deciphering a cacophony of language from dozens of different origins which must have echoed throughout their prison like the pounding of waves. A postmodern town crier in a cellblock of strangers, he relayed messages from the inmates and communicated directives from their captors; he was too useful to kill. They paid him in cigarettes. He traded cigarettes for privileges for allowances for food for anything to help him hang on for even one more day. So when he was released, when the world was once again safe for Democracy, when he moved to Austria, when he met a nice Czech girl, when he proposed by the fountain where Sound of Music was filmed, when he took her through Ellis Island, when he built a family in America, when my mother was born, he already knew how to speak English. But – for as long as I knew my grandfather – he never did smoke any cigarettes. Shannon Frost Greenstein (she/her) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “These Are a Few of My Least Favorite Things”, a full-length book of poetry available from Really Serious Literature, and “An Oral History of One Day in Guyana,” a fiction chapbook forthcoming with Bullsh*t Lit. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Follow Shannon at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre.

There was nowhere for me to go when I aged out of Bell County Baptist Children's Home, but I didn't care. They gave me a list of job openings on my last day there, but I didn't want a job. Jobs are for losers. I was going to be the next Carl Kidwell. Carl aged out of Baptist three years before I did and became a legend. The newspapers said that within a six month period Carl scored over $100,000 from nine banks throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. He died in a hail of police gunfire at the First Fed in Corbin during his tenth bank robbery. I was determined to be just like him—minus the twenty bullet holes, of course. Todd, Chuck, and Danny said I could stay with them in the abandoned mobile home they were squatting in. Danny was the only one from the Baptist Children's Home, Todd and Chuck were high school dropouts. We had a two acre trash-strewn lot all to ourselves, but no electricity or running water. "Just shit and piss over there behind the Dart," Chuck said, pointing to an engine-less old Dodge Dart up on cinder blocks in the back corner of the lot. There wasn't even an outhouse, just turds and toilet paper on the ground. But who cares? I was out of the orphanage and had my freedom, for the most part. My first day there Todd and Chuck laid down the house rules: Keep my face clean shaven, my hair trimmed, my clothes clean. If you look like a hillbilly, you'll get treated like one. We wanted to avoid scrutiny, not broadcast ourselves like a bunch of patch-wearing outlaws. Made sense to me. Todd and Chuck made for an odd couple; Todd with movie star good looks and pug-nosed Chuck with a circus strong-man's hairy physique. Danny told me how lucky he and I were—Todd was an expert house breaker and Chuck could strip a car in a just a few hours, and they were willing to take us under their wings. Neither of them had ever been busted by the law, although Chuck had been interrupted while stealing a cache of bootleg liquor from the back of a general store in Harlan. A single punch knocked the store owner unconscious, but they had to stay out of Harlan for a while after that. Danny and I were assigned the easy stuff at first, shoplifting from grocery stores and assisting Todd and Chuck when needed. And at first, things were going fine. Then along came Sarah and things got complicated. * * * I'm not really sure what it is about rich kids that make them want to rebel and run away and pretend to be desperate. Is it wealth and privilege guilt? A longing for a sense of adventure, that their lives aren't enough? But Danny had Sarah sitting in the car with him when Todd came out of the funeral reception that they'd crashed to swipe jewelry, prescription pills, and whatever else they could find. Sarah was a niece of the decedent—a rich trucking company owner whose funeral had been announced in the newspapers. Todd had sent Danny out to the car to wait until he could get away from a chatty old woman who'd cornered him in conversation about Jesus and salvation. When he finally broke free, Danny was waiting in the passenger side of the Thunderbird and Sarah was in the back seat. Todd opened the back door and tried to yank Sarah out, but he gave up under the ferocity of Sarah's defensive kicking. When the three of them got back and walked into the trailer, Chuck and I looked at them in astonishment until Chuck pointed his finger at Sarah and roared at Todd, "What the fuck is she doing here?" "I need a place to stay, Ham Hock," Sarah said, dropping her duffel to the floor. "Y'all owe me, robbing my aunt's house and all." "How old are you? Anybody gonna be looking for you?" Chuck asked her. "Ain't nobody gonna be missing me. I'm eighteen." Sarah took the smallest room in the trailer as her own after throwing out the trash and junk we'd been tossing in there. She was pretty—perfect alabaster skin, hair tinted with pinkish red highlights cut into an angled bob, petite and muscular as a gymnast. But it wasn't her looks that enthralled me, it was her strut, her attitude. Nights when we'd pass the bottle and smoke the weed, she didn't seem the least bit scared or intimidated to be alone with a bunch of young men. She verbally slapped down any male chauvinism with quick wit but could just as easily show maternal caring with gentle words. When she was in high school she used to fill black capsules with ground up No Doz and sell them as Black Beauties. She was pulling in a hundred bucks a week and she didn't even need the money. Before Sarah had even been there a week, she seemed to have disappeared. She came back a day later, pulling a red Radio Flyer loaded with canned food, Fritos, sodas, a socket set, and a display rack of disposable lighters. Chuck demanded to know where she'd gotten it. She wouldn't tell him. "Don't worry about it, Ham Hock," she told him. "Y'all been sitting around on your lazy asses all week, somebody's gotta bring home the bacon." Danny and I just watched in amused admiration. Chuck fumed. Todd fell head over heels and made little effort to disguise it. Todd's talent was home break-ins, and he was fucking good at it. He seemed to always know the perfect time to strike. It was if he had a sixth sense for where the valuables would be inside any given home and zero right in on them. Not even the dogs would bark at him. And now that he had Sarah to impress, he wanted to really step up his game. But he would need an assistant to do it. No, not Sarah, he couldn't trust her to pull of a burglary, not yet. Chuck was too big to fit through windows and too impatient and prone to senseless vandalism. Not Danny, he was to timid. He picked me to go with him. It would serve a double purpose for me—I would learn from and surpass the best, and I'd become a legend and get the girl. Sarah and I would be the next Bonnie and Clyde. Or so I hoped. I'd still have to contend with Todd's male-model good looks. I wasn't expecting it when it came. Todd just nudged me awake one night and jerked his thumb toward the door. He explained to me in the Thunderbird that we were going to a two-story brick mansion in Wasioto set back from the highway, ironically just a short walk from the sheriff's home. He backed up the driveway, around the side of the house, and parked between the back door and a swing set. It astonished me how quick he gained entry with his improvised screwdriver/crowbar tool that fit between the door jamb, the strike plate, and the latch. I was disappointed when he told me to wait there just outside the door. Within a couple of minutes he came back with a mop bucket filled with whiskey and wine bottles. He told me to load them in the trunk and bring the bucket back. When I got back to the door he handed me a laundry hamper full of watches, jewelry, a pistol, and a box of ammo. We went on repeat for about fifteen minutes and when we were done the trunk and backseat of the Thunderbird were bulging with loot. As we drove back down US Highway 119 we went by a Chevy Suburban coming in the opposite direction. "Holy fucking shit," Todd said. "What?" I asked. "That was Glatstein. They came back earlier than I thought. That was fucking close." * * * The Glatstein job was Todd's biggest at the time. We drank for days on the liquor, but we went through the $500 cash in no time flat. We sold the bank statements and social security cards to a friend of Chuck's in Knoxville. We divided up the loot, but Todd gave a special little gift to Sarah; a sapphire and diamond tennis bracelet. She thanked him and he shyly said It's not like we're married or anything like a schoolboy with a crush. It became readily apparent I was going to have to accelerate my learning curve if I didn't want to be regarded as a beta. Still, I was the only one Todd wanted along with him on his jobs. We hit two houses over the next two months that got us hauls nearly as big as the Glatstein job. Then we hit the mother lode. The house was barely more than a shack, obviously occupied by a hoarder. It was the first time Todd had me go inside with him, he needed me to help clear the junk and look for anything worth taking. In the corner of the bedroom behind mounds of clothing Todd found a dozen manila envelopes, all stuffed with cash. Damn near fifty thousand dollars worth as we found out after we got back home and counted it. "Damn!" Chuck said. "If I'd known having a girl around would make you this good, I'd of brought a bitch in here a year ago!" We partied the whole night, talked about what we could do with the money, Todd repeating his story on how he knew that shack had something good in it, Todd lighting Sarah's cigarettes for her, pouring her drinks for her, complimenting her hair color even though it was too dark to really see it in our electricityless trailer. I made eye contact with her as often as I could in the dark, but kept my mouth shut. And I could tell by the way she looked back, it was me, not Todd, that was going to win her affections. I got up off the floor a little before noon the next day and decided that the first thing I'd buy with my share of the money would be a fucking bed. Goddam, my back hurt. I staggered out to go take a piss and thought I heard something from behind the dump-truck bed on the other side of the lot. I peeked around it to see Sarah's combat boots in the air and Chuck's hairy ass pumping up and down between her legs. All of a sudden I didn't have to piss anymore. Todd was coming out of the trailer as I was going back in. My face must have betrayed something because he said "What?" when he saw me. I yanked my thumb in the direction of the dump bed. He went over—his reaction was the same as mine. That very night Todd took me with him to go hit another house, but he pulled off to the side of the highway and started nipping at a vodka bottle. "I know you like her too," he said. "But I'm gonna win her fair and square. No hard feelings, okay?" We sat there for an hour in silence passing the bottle back and forth, but in the second hour I started refusing it. I didn't think it was a good idea to be drinking this heavily before hitting a house, but I thought I would be stepping out of line to say anything. When we'd been sitting there almost three hours I asked him if we were going to hit a house. He got out of the car without answering me, so I followed him. He stumbled a little as he walked. We left the Thunderbird out in the open on the side of the highway. I should've questioned all this. I didn't. He walked off onto a single lane paved road past one house, then another, and then stopped in front of a large clapboard home with a neatly trimmed lawn. "What do you think?" he asked me. What the fuck was he asking me for? He always planned out what we were going to hit ahead of time. But he was the master—I couldn't question him and I damn sure wasn't going to tell him whether or not it was a good house to hit. He walked right up on the front porch, not bothering with stealth, I stopped at the porch stairs. "Wait here," he said. His voice was slurred. He sliced the window screen, slid the window aside, climbed in and fell over the sill. I couldn't believe all the noise he was making, but I still had faith that he knew what he was doing. I waited as usual. The car was about a two or three minute walk away. The pop of the gunshot was enough to make me jump, but Todd's hideous scream caused me to lose control of my bladder. His scream was completely silenced in short order by a second gunshot. I couldn't use the car to get away—Todd had the keys with him. I ran back to the storm drainage ditch that paralleled the highway and made my way back to the trailer as fast as I could through all the brush. It took until a little after dawn the next morning, my progress slowed after an eastern racer bit my ankle. There were three Bell County Sheriff's Office vehicles with lights flashing all around our little home. I just slid back down in the ditch and massaged the snake bite while I tried to come up with a plan for what to do next. * * * It turns out that the FBI had us under intermittent surveillance and a few hours after the homeowner shot Todd, the FBI contacted the Sheriff's Office to let them know where our trailer was and who we were. They cuffed and stuffed Chuck, Danny, and Sarah before tearing the place up and cataloging all the stolen shit. A sheriff's deputy picked me up behind Hall's Grocery later that afternoon as I was having a meal of Doritos and cherry Coke. My lower leg was swelled up like a butter churn, but he wouldn't get me an ambulance because the bite wasn't venomous. After they figured out I was with Todd when he got shot, they told me I would be charged with his murder—unless I testified against Chuck. There was also an implication that they would not let me see a doctor for my now-infected snake bite unless I agreed. I agreed. Although I didn't know it at the time (we were all separated in the jail), Danny and Sarah also agreed to testify against Chuck. When I finally got my copy of the case documents, it looked like they were charging him with every car stolen within the last ten years within a thousand miles. When the day came to testify, Chuck glared at me from the defendants table as I sat in the witness stand spilling it all. Sarah wasn't there, she didn't have to testify. Her parents paid for her lawyer and got her her own deal. Chuck got a twelve year sentence; Danny and I got time served. * * * So much for my plans to be a big fucking legend. My first job when I got out of jail was cutting dark fire tobacco in Tennessee. After the end of the season I came back to Bell County, Kentucky and tried to get a job at a wildcat coal mine, but the fucker looked at my name on the application and told me they don't hire rats. I finally got a job in Middlesboro washing dishes at Joanie's Pizza and Burgers, but Joanie keeps 10% of my pay or she'll tell my probation officer I was stealing out of the cash register. One more year of this shit. I wasn't sure if it was her or not, a little plumper, no dye in her hair, walking in through the door with a little rug rat clinging to her leg. I went out into the dining room on my break, and sure enough it was Sarah. Her kid was the spitting image of ugly Chuck. I slid in the booth across the table from her, pointing at her pack of smokes on the table and asked if I could have one. She slid the pack over to me. I asked her if Chuck was out of prison yet. "Don't know," she said. "Does he even know he's a daddy?" I asked, pointing my cigarette at her kid playing with the free toy that comes with kid's meals. "Nope." I blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "Heard from Danny?" "Heard about him." "What?" I asked after she finished chewing a mouthful of pizza. "He's doing fifteen years in Eddyville. The Hurley brothers gave him a .32 and told him to hold up the Texaco in Pineville. The clerk shot him in the back as he was leaving through the front door. He's paralyzed from the waist down." "I guess I better get back to work," I said, jabbing the cigarette out in the flimsy tin ashtray. "That police report on you and Todd was pretty fucked up. Todd really tied up that couple?" The police report was full of lies made to make Todd look as bad as possible. It said he held the married couple in the house at knifepoint, tied them up, and then ransacked the house. Then it claimed the husband freed himself, retrieved his pistol and told Todd to get out of the house, but Todd charged him forcing the homeowner to shoot. "Let me tell you what happened to Todd," I said, taking another cigarette from her pack. I told her about us seeing her behind the dump bed with Chuck, Todd falling into a lovesick depression, and then breaking into the house while drunk—getting shot ten seconds after falling through the front window. Joanie gave me a dirty look from across the dining room floor as she wiped down a table, letting me know break time was over. Sarah noticed it, too. The old Sarah would've zapped me with some humiliating zinger about being a minimum wage pizza boy. I probably would've felt better if she did. Hugh Blanton is the author of A Home to Crouch In. He has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, As It Ought To Be, and other places. He can be reached on Twitter @HughBlanton5

…the man and the woman live without speaking. They’ve turned their attention elsewhere. In the spare room, the woman feeds calciworms to her largest bearded dragon. The sticky tip of its tongue tickles against her palm. The others wait in their vivariums, and she sees herself reflected in their clear bright eyes. She will scoop one up, making sure to support its legs, and the weight of its body will rest against her heart. In the loft, the man adjusts the thermostat so that his lavender Dendrobium orchids can gather themselves to bloom. They blush gently in their specially diffused light and scent the air with the papery smell of baby powder. He checks their leaves for scorch and presses the buttons to play ‘Isn’t she lovely’ for encouragement. He bobs his head to the upbeat. In the bathroom, the woman changes the water in her musk turtle tank while the filtration unit whirrs. She sweeps away fragments of bitter uneaten duckweed, she checks their UVB light bulb. Their blackish-brown shells glisten. The man keeps his toothbrush and washcloth by the kitchen sink. In the kitchen, the man mists the leaves of his bird’s nest ferns. He checks the roots and rotates the cool smooth pebbles that help keep them well- drained. The air around them is warm and moist against his skin, a tiny micro climate he’s created. The woman eats pizza in the paved over garden, under a rusted beach umbrella when it rains. In the nursery, the cot sits in pieces, the Babygro’s stay wrapped in the room where the words were last spoken. In the silence, Stevie Wonder croons ‘we have been heaven blessed’. The bearded dragons blink, the orchids sway. And in the kitchen and in the bathroom, the man and the woman rest their heads in their hands and quietly weep. Anita Goveas can be found on Twitter @coffeeandpaneer.

She laces her cherry Docs and shuffles forward to knock A book tucked under her arm her heart ticking like a bomb Other side of that door is a mystery that will quickly become shared history She rubs at the mascara under her eye her eyes like stars dim in the winter sky A token in her pocket from a time before lies lies unwrapped by a time machine Her brain overthinking every promise sanguinely Not all stories have beginnings Nor endings Sometimes a middle is a killing Of a past in an unlit cave Even before they misbehaved And yet they build a new order They will be rooted in only what they foster No longer feeling like imposters in their own lives no need for detectives they unpack how they feel in luminous spaces no need to be suspicious because they become fresh air in broken lungs and tongue-tied laces Margot Stillings is a storyteller and cocktail napkin poet. She resembles a housecat most days: paws bare on hardwood floors and lounging in sunbeams.

I misheard write a tree poem, thought I’m not a tree person, I’m a bush person; I’m not a nature person, I’m a nurture person— which was what she wanted: words to help her sense love like baby talk she feeds her pug, more soft turns of phrase scented with cologne, a stanza or two on how she wears enchanting scarves & makes a tasty latte. She hopes to feel appreciated for her efforts. What choice but to give her what she wants.

Didn’t go to his funeral. Anxiety. Truthfully. Regretfully. I liked him. Counted out papers And betting slips Whilst the dog Lay black and Sunday lazy. Thin Until he quit smoking. When I returned From time away Was glad to see me around Chatted a good chat. Then one day he sat in a chair Mumbled nonsense And bled in his brain.

Lover, do you think the sun misses the moon the same way I ache for you? Do you think they’re long-distance like we are, with only an eclipse to look forward to? We, too, eclipse, and I, collapse into you like a dying star of a woman; the cosmos are funny like that. Make the two people that love each other the most two ships in the night, or, put the love of my life an hour behind and 1200 miles away because absence makes the heart grow fonder. And it does. And it sucks. Some nights I miss you too much to articulate, and even then I find you in the empty breath, which is to say you are everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing— My darling, nothing lasts forever, except love, which is to say, we are all each other has in the end. So hold me tight. Love me tender, like the moon, empty, and full, and empty again. Love me like the stars, dead but still shining. Mo is a 25-year-old poet, who is an avid reader, and lover of all things art; Her passion has always been music, poetry, and the arts as a whole. Poetry is her truth. Being able to find healing through her platform as an artist, is a gift that she is truly thankful for. She can be found on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as @momothepoet.

The Holiday Party When friends asked me to join them at a Christmas party, I didn't want to go empty-handed, and I had no idea what the host liked or was like. Never met him or any of their new friends in Lake Amnesia, their new hometown, a remote mountain village just over the state line. So, I played it safe and brought a big basket of fruit. The store had done it up like a work of art. Plenty of apples—ruby, crimson, scarlet—and fat oranges and pears speckled with blueberries and green grapes, draped in bananas, punctuated with cherries, clementines, peaches, and apricots. Exploding with color, it looked like the centerpiece of a children's banquet catered by Julia Child. And did I say 'big'? It sat on my Nissan's passenger seat all those hundred-plus miles, a pyramid bent a couple inches under the roof. The seatbelt failed to reach around it, but it was too wide to fall between the seat and the dashboard, so no matter. Once there, for all its size and shape, I balanced it up the walkway to the door which I had to bang with my elbow. My friends had an ear out for me and let me in. I had to walk in backwards as they said hello, but when I turned toward them with the basket, they fell silent. From the middle of the room, I heard an indignant "What????" "Hi, I'm Evan and Helen's friend from their previous life. I thought you and your friends might like fruit." "No fruit! Apples! In this house we have apples!" "Good! Look, look, there are plenty of apples! See all the red?" "But you said 'fruit'!" "Yes, apples are fruit. You can look it up." "No! Apples are apples! Call them apples!" "Um, well, I don't much like grapefruit, and pineapples are a pain in the ass, so I can understand if you don't like grapes or peaches or blue--" "No! In this house, it's apples!" "You can have as many as you like! Honey crisp! Maybe your guests would like the other fruit? Healthy fruit?" "No 'healthy fruit'! Don't say that! It's apples! Happy apples! We say 'Happy Apples'!" I turned to Helen: "Is this some kind of joke?" "Joke!" the inhospitable host exploded. "This is no joke! It's a war on apples!" I turned to Evan, but he grabbed my elbow and turned me around while Helen took my other arm. They told me to take the basket to their new home, giving me a key, where they would join me after they “calmed things down." Back at the Nissan, I resisted the temptation to send the apples back in. One at a time. Through the front windows. But they were honey crisp, and as we used to say when someone failed to show at a drinking party: "More for us!" The Wrong Turn Evan and Helen also gave me directions to the new pad they moved into just weeks ago. Upon arrival, I was more than surprised. Looked like they were planning to have kids, because it was one of those standard four-bedroom, two-floor, cookie-cutter, middle-class homes in a sub-division with nine other identical structures—though of various colors—lined on both sides of a semi-circular lane, generously spaced from each other and away from the highway. Behind it all gurgled the lovely Fox Run River. Since the trees were all saplings, I could see it all at once. More surprisingly, one of the other homes was ablaze. Three fire trucks were there and several hoses were aimed at it. I left the Nissan in the driveway of the home with their number and walked over with the basket of fruit, thinking the firefighters should have it when they got the fire under control. As I arrived, a resident from one of the other eight houses came over and started yelling at the firefighters: "Hey, what about my house?" The firefighters were too consumed to pay any attention, but I was too curious not to: "What are you talking about?" "My house deserves just as much water as this house! Why aren't the hoses on my house, too?" "Um, because this house is on fire?" "That's not a good reason! A fire in this house has nothing to do with my house! That's this house's problem!" "But fire-fighters exist to solve problems, and you don't have one, at least not now." "I pay just as much taxes as anyone who lives here!" "Would you like an apple? Here, have one. Honey crisp. In appreciation for your support of your local fire de--" Before I could finish and before my friends' new neighbor could speak, two more residents approached. Both were carrying signs: "All Houses Matter!" "Is this a joke?" I blurted out, vaguely shaken by the echo of my surprise at the party I just left. "No! Our houses matter just as much as this one!" "But this house needs attention that yours do not!" "That's housism in reverse!" A few more residents approached, all with the same signs. They started chanting: "Stop the Hose Job! Stop the Hose Job!" Over the noise, I heard a car horn and looked up to see Evan and Helen waving me to return to them. I took the basket and put it on a side of one of the trucks facing the blaze and the firefighters. I caught the eye of one and motioned toward it, and he or she nodded in thanks. I then motioned to the gathering crowd and turned my hands up in question. The firefighter gave a wave of a hand and went back to work. I went back to Evan and Helen who told me that I had made a wrong turn, and to follow them home. The Bumper Stickers When we arrived at their cozy two-bedroom cape, all by itself along a little-traveled back road with a wide view over a long, glacial lake, they apologized for my reception at the party. Turns out that the host had been living at his girlfriend's in a neighborhood where, as rumor had it, the drinking water had been poisoned by toxic waste from a chemical plant two miles upstream on Fox Run. They knew he was having problems, but they did not know, as the police charged, that he had set a timer that morning in his girlfriend's home that would start a fire, allowing him to use the party as an alibi. He was easy for the police to find. They put out an all-points bulletin, but all they really had to do was patrol the town for a car with bumper-stickers saying "Happy Apples!" and "All Houses Matter!" The Forgotten Curb Evan and Helen invited me to stay a few days, giving me the guest room with its panoramic view over Lake Amnesia. A side window offered a view of several McMansions that lined the shore not far from their relatively modest abode. “We have very rich neighbors,” they liked to say. One, a talk-show radio host in the mold of Rush Limbaugh, bought a brand new, bumblebee-yellow Hummer just a week before I arrived. My friends say that others in the neighborhood have jokingly tried to hail it as if it were a cab. The Rush-wannabe has taken it well, laughing as he races by. Once, he actually stopped to offer a lift to one elderly gent who had to admit he wasn’t going anywhere. A day before I arrived, he hired a crew to put some curbing between his spacious driveway and the street, only to forget, two nights later, that the new curb was there when he returned from his late-night show. I heard it all: BANG!!! Or was it Bang-Bang? Both front tires blew. The impact was so bad that the rims themselves were bent out of shape, but he managed to hit the brakes soon and hard enough that the back tires were spared. Before long, a large truck arrived to repair the damage. Why they always keep their engines running is beyond me, but whatever, I awoke to the commotion and went to the side window to watch the truck raise the front of the crippled gasguzzler. Clearly, Rush Jr. told the repairman to bring rims, as the new tires were already on them. Didn't take long at all to change the two sides, and I poured myself a tall glass of water to take back to bed. But then I heard more commotion. Instead of the truck driving off, it lifted the back of the Hummer. Back at the window, I watched the repairman remove the car's rear tires and rims, and replace them with two more out of the truck. I pinched myself. I sniffed my glass. I breathed on the window to see if it fogged. It did. I went back to bed wondering if I was going back to sleep or had been asleep all along. The Talk Show Next night, out of pure curiosity, I tuned in to All the Same, my friends’ neighbor's call-in show on the local station to see if he might chat about his mishap and, if so, how he would spin it as a crime committed by liberals—and how his tires were victims of "cancel culture." Occurred to me that he might prefer to keep the whole thing a secret. After all, if he applied his constant calls for "personal responsibility" to himself as he does to the world at large, then he would likely be embarrassed by his own mistake. What if I called in and started filling his airwaves with it? My guess is that, since I had to tell him I was awake, I'd be condemned as "woke." Never thought that awareness could possibly be a bad thing in a country founded on the principle of self-governance, but then I still marvel at how the American flag is used to sell beer and automobiles. On one radio station back home, the hometown’s baseball games begin after the announcer tells us that “the National Anthem was brought to you by…..” They never broadcast the song, but that doesn’t stop them from using it as a commercial to plug a regional “financial institution.” Anyway, what I really wanted to know was why the back tires and rims were also changed. Why did he discard two tires with barely two weeks’ wear on them? On the slim chance that he would explain it, I tuned in. But it was nothing more than his standard fare. It began with condemnations of "congress," which the first few callers reinforced, several of them spitting out the phrase "all the same," not as the title of the show but as what they think of any and all people in Washington DC. While doing this, he and each caller complimented each other on how wise they were to have this understanding of how things "really work"—or "don't work" as they seemed to mean. I kept waiting for him or any of them to make distinctions between the branches of government, between the House and Senate, between federal agencies, between federal and state governments, between the two sides in court decisions that uphold or strike down laws. Never happened. It was all a blur for as long as I kept myself awake. Nor was any distinction ever made between the two parties, much less between those within the parties. This one kept me awake a bit longer, as if against my will, as the callers kept complaining about what wasn't getting done regarding the economy, infrastructure, health care, education, and more. Every problem mentioned was one that most Democrats are trying to solve, but which all Republicans keep blocking. Regarding the few measures that Democrats have passed—such as unemployment stimulus to offset the pandemic shutdown—Republicans voted unanimously against, but then took credit for benefits received in their districts. No matter. Neither host nor any caller ever made a distinction. If I wasn't asleep having a dream, I was awake with the nightmare of All the Same—a term applied as mindlessly to our government as it might be to the tires on a luxury car. The Border Bridge When it came time to return home, I thanked my hosts for what was, overall, a pleasant and relaxing stay. But the lingering—or malingering—thoughts of Happy Apples Man, All Houses Matter, and Rush Reincarnate made me crave departure. Evan and Helen have a very nice home, and it will take no effort for them to avoid a crank who is now in jail or the in-your-face neighbors of that subdivision. And they have plenty of other places for their radio dial. But many of their new neighbors were at that party, and they are surrounded by fans of that station. I wish them well, but I doubt I’ll ever return. I breathed a sigh of relief when I re-crossed the Attention Span Bridge and left Lake Amnesia. So glad to be back here in my home state where such things can never happen. A word from the author: I'm a life-long street-musician, a seasonal Renaissance faire performer, a guest columnist for the Daily News of Newburyport, Mass., a part-time movie theater projectionist, and a retired college English teacher. I have written and self-published two books titled Pay the Piper! A Street-Performer’s Public Life in America’s Privatized Times and Keep Newburyport Weird: An Atlas of Downtown Rhyme & Surfside Reason. My blog is: https://buskersdelight.home.blog/

I Sister Three was on the phone, and she was outraged. Sister Two had told her about the photos I had taken that afternoon of our mother lying dead in the open casket in the viewing room of the funeral home. Sister Three scolded me for my lack of respect and demanded I delete the pictures. She said Sisters One and Two agreed with her. We each have our own ways of grieving, I wanted to say, but I was too spent to argue. “All right,” I said, “I’ll do it.” One by one, I deleted the pictures, while my daughter, sitting next to me on the bed in the hotel room, confirmed it to my sister. “Okay,” she replied, mollified. I could see she’d been prepared for an argument I hadn’t given her. As soon as she hung up, I reinstalled the photos. “It’s none of her business,” I told my daughter. “These photos are precious to me.” II Nearly ten years after my mother’s death, I stare at these last images of her. She died soon after her cancer diagnosis. She had no time to waste away. In my pictures she is lying tranquilly against the white silk lining of the casket. Her eyes are closed, her face is made up, and her hair arranged. She looks like herself, and yet not like herself. She is wearing a dress of navy-blue velvet, and her hands are folded. On her left wrist is a silver link bracelet made by Sister One. I recall the mortician wringing his hands, speaking softly with the right note of sadness, yet clearly proud of his handiwork and eager for us to see what he had done. An impulse made me take the photos after he left the room. Even though I knew I never could solve the mystery of my mother, I knew I would want to keep these images close to my heart.

Only man, the pinnacle of creation, has the capacity to alter his world by wielding a sentence. Etgar Keret, trans. Jessica Cohen, “The Greatest Liar in the World” 1. Once again, Nadine reminds him that on the first of every month, one is supposed to say “rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.” If you wish for good luck for the whole of the month, this is how you begin. And if you hear these words on the first of the new year, you will have good luck for the whole of that year. Caleb looks down at his shoes. He has never believed in luck, other than as a function of happenstance and perspective. Luck presumes some larger hand at work in the universe, directing our movements and moments: as either punishment or reward, providing opportunity or karmic justice. At times, simultaneously. Too often, he’s realized, any notions of deities become confused with genies. God, if he or she exists, is not there to grant wishes. 2. His was a sequence of pragmatic gestures: ten years married to his high-school sweetheart. When they were in grade ten math class, one of her self-owns was that she had memorized her library card number. This was enough for him, right there. From this small, unremarkable fact, how he fell head over heels. 3. Caleb had developed their lot into a panacea of tulips, although he’d organized an assemblage of other flowers as well: hydrangea, roses, chamomile, cosmos, calendula, daylilies, dahlias. A small vegetable patch along the back hedge. The transplanted rhubarb. But at the heart of his enterprise: a flow of tulips, rolling up and along their suburban boundary. His mother had laid the foundation of what would be a life-long engagement. She’d always proffered a cavalcade of tulips in the front of their yard, a backdrop regularly featured in local newspaper photographs and family portraits. The tulip had evolved into a personal token for his grandmother, something she had clearly gifted to her own children. Caleb always remembers her site as more delicate, porcelain. Born in Amsterdam, she had landed here, five years prior to the Second World War. Around her small house in New Edinburgh, carefully curated red and yellow tulips lining her front step, and around the side by the hedge. On her part, Caleb’s mother had tulips on everything, from sweater patterns to plates to decorative spoons. “My mother had tea once with Princess Juliana,” she repeated. “Her daughters went to school with my sisters.” She mentioned this often, especially during those last few years, as she poured tea into her favourite mug: adorned with the logo for the Canadian Tulip Festival. Her home care support worker had recommended she retire her more elegant tulip china set, which Caleb’s eldest sister, Julia, inherited. In Caleb’s garden, a bedrock of tulips. Garden tulip. Parrot Tulips. Tulipa greigii. Flax-leaved tulip. 4. No one is going to want to read novels set during the pandemic, he tells her. Nadine disagrees, although she isn’t necessarily in a hurry to read fiction from this particular period, either. What might that even look like? A sequence of stories from hospitals and nursing homes examining political inaction, preventable death and hero front-line workers, or the unending days in enforced isolation, and how it breaks down the body and erodes our spirit. Perhaps a political thriller, where an anti-masker gets Covid-19, and their small group receives their comeuppance. Why would anyone care? Perhaps it will be a book about time itself, and the realization that time is elastic. The realization that the possibilities of positive change were there the whole time; it was just there for the taking. 5. After a particularly warm stretch of days, another thick snow. Ten to fifteen centimetres. It coats every surface. Caleb notes that it covers their garden, the birdfeeders, and the wheelbarrow left out by the woodshed. Caleb’s mother sleeps. After his mother died, he spread her cremated remains through the flowerbeds, as they had discussed. She liked the idea of feeding his flowers. Grey ash and bone, turned into the roots. For Caleb, it was the opportunity to keep her compartmentalized, close. If she was ever too much, he could return to the house. He came to think of her as Demeter, set to wake, once again, with the warm weather. Nadine doesn’t care to think about the garden, nor of Caleb’s mother. But for waving her hands to show off as part of her summer garden parties, Nadine doesn’t spend much time back there, preferring to spend her free time during the warmer months on the front verandah, whether reading a book or working a crossword. She greets passers-by. The tulips held none of her interest. The tulips, and his creepy dead mother. 6. When he was thirteen years old, Caleb’s parents sent him to spend New Year’s Eve with his widowed grandmother. They watched Gone with the Wind on television, timed to end just prior to Times Square, as the ball dropped to signal the annum, turning its yearly page. Once it landed, she crooned “Auld Lang Syne” and danced around the living room, slow hands into soft air. She opened the back door of her bungalow to sweep out the old year, before returning to open the front door, to greet the new. Wooden shoes, set by the side entrance. The idea was to remove all the negative energies of the old, so the positives of the fresh, new year could properly enter. It was 2003, and his grandmother would be dead before the first bloom of spring.

Open and Closed Doors The door of my childhood home is now worn, too many scratch marks from this dog or that one before we put a hole right through the wall so they could go in and out. Now the porch is more of a breezeway, no 4 seasons, or even 3 about it and I wonder how much else has changed. The door of my first apartment still smells of weed floating down from upstairs. There’s a couple lost coins buried in the loose soil where that kid got shot over a dime bag. The door to my in-laws’ basement was once our front door, when money was tight and it was convenient enough. We didn’t lock it and they didn’t lock theirs, but I wonder if they got sick of our cat sneaking up when we went to the laundry room or if I ate a slice too much of the pizza when they invited us up. The door of our house now is glass because there’s a view…something we always wanted and birds picking at scattered seeds around a feeder and a lawn that needs cutting because there’s always something more important to do. To My Hand Scrawled Lines in the Hospital You’re typed now and moved out, making a home in this magazine or that one and have an added http before your title, but I think I liked you better back then: written in rough handwriting in a notebook with a couple curling pages and the spiral binding catching on an overstuffed backpack; the missing e, misspellings and a scratching from a pen that wouldn’t quite work. The words that came quickly even after 36 hours without sleep, written in a pen and mind that didn’t care about tired eyes anyways. Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee and regular contributor for Fevers of the Mind with words in 50+ lit mags, 100+ accepted pieces and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities on Amazon. http://linktr.ee/McGuirkMatthew Twitter: @McguirkMatthew Instagram: @mcguirk_matthew.

Aria for Need The night is a parched dog and I quench it, skate my feet so you will not hear me peel my toes from the kitchen’s stained linoleum. Skin: the first thing to catch and caution. The sudden way mine reddens a perfect tell. I make like my desires walking around you, watch you from the bedroom doorway while the summer air settles its mouth upon my neck. I don’t hate it, the feeling, the wanting for others it brings. I say “others,” I mean people you could become if you cared for me enough. I love you which means I’ve become lethal to my own happiness. My chest is full of fingers struggling to undo laces, straps, belt buckles in the dark. A stuttering sound, like someone about to give a secret away. How different to search for you in these dreams now. Aria You remind me there is a reason for singing when you tell me not to—leave, leave me to my fantasies, the most naked part of me the inside of my throat. Soft geography. Inspired in lust as well as rebellion. Even when you are not on stage there is a man I sing to. Notes ringing with the tenor of my bones. Draped over a fainting couch, the seams of my bodice threatened but not yet torn; kneeling by the one I desire, an applicant for love. My song is not what I am, but all I have left. In dictionaries I look up aria hoping someone will notice, write see: supplication, see also: begging at the end. Each time the descriptor: an accompanied, elaborate melody sung… a single voice. Aria means by yourself but not alone. A mouth opened to the listening dark, emitting a tune so lovely that later I will hum it. And you will find me, set your lips upon mine, so you don’t have to hear. You Leave Me to Weep at dogwoods. The petals of their blossoms split at the ends, curled like burning paper. If you were here, you would say this is just nature, beg me not to look for a different reason, insist it will get me nowhere. I imagine your hand outstretched, its promise of forever slowly returning to your pocket, a flower out of season. Months after you’ve gone, I think how dangerous it was for others to say we were ever inevitable. We smiled in agreement. Aware that what we had was just another fate of the body, we still believed it good. Beautiful things bloomed from your mouth. You looked at me one day and said dogwood would make a perfect middle name for a boy. The corners of your mouth turned and for a minute I expected tears. This was the edges of what we had dying. This, I realize now, was nature. After a bad dream, I find myself consoled by a man whose voice strains to sing me back to him His is a song that will end mid-verse. Fall asleep before I do. I listen until he slows like the tired spring of a music box. Whatever sings, needs, and whatever needs does so specifically. Even the simple call of an unseen bird, just two notes descending, a white key’s distance between each other. I lean my head out, pitch my whistle. The bird repeats, and I smile like we’ve spoken. I’m sure I have not fooled it. A song is not noble, giving, it is not grace content with itself. A song is not single, it is hope for a lover. The lover is a response, an answer. Answer could mean reason, but now things are getting dangerous. Enikő Deptuch Vághyis a poet whose work has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets College Prize in the graduate division. She is currently a PhD student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.