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A note from the publisher: our web server is terrible, and the formatting of Beth's first poem, "Inadequacy". is very important. It displays beautifully on the desktop and tablet versions of the website, but the mobile site got all smooshed. So, to see this poem in all of its glory, please view this page on a desktop/tablet, or click below to download a PDF version. Thank you! Inadequacy My old friend, it’s good to see you again, in spite of it all. Will you sit down? There’s something I need to say, so this drink, it’s on me. Hearts break all the time, I know, but there’s this little cup of inadequacy that fills up a little more each time, so one has to pour it out before it overflows and completely floods out any belief in oneself. Al those heartbreakers, they were wrong, you see. I couldn’t see it before but I can see it now: it was not I who wasn’t enough in some way or too much in another - the lacking was theirs. In all those times my heart was broken, my failing sense of self was abundantly revealed anew, in every possible way, in all the reasons why it just wasn’t going to work. For the ones with political aspirations, I was too unconventional and for the free spirits, much too normal, and for the artists, well I just didn’t get it; I was far too needy for the independent, too fickle for the loyal, too restless for the settled, too distracted for the devoted, and for the musicians, my mind was not open enough, but for the philosophers, so open that it was closed, and for the predator my body was ok but not compared to the model he was with before, and for the brains, I was just not smart enough, for those wallowing in their own drowning, I was not messed up enough to really understand, even if I wanted to and for the up and coming, I was too unstable, for the cheerful, far too moody, for the glass half empties, too optimistic and too flaky for the irritable, too responsible for hippies, too driven for the old fashioned and insufficiently ambitious for overachievers and on and on the drips of doubt filled up my cup of inadequacy but now I’m pouring it into yours so drink up, old friend and you will see it really was you and not me. Attic Alcove august crickets fill this silence sticker stars fill the darkness generated breezes break stale heat hunger pains pierce my numb solitude voids danger and I wonder when your voice will melt this heart again Beth Mulcahy lives in Ohio with her husband, two kids and loyal Havanese dog sidekick. Beth works for a company that provides technology to people without natural speech. She writes poetry, fiction, memoir, and dreams about visiting Scotland. Her work has appeared in various journals and she has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Check out her latest publications at https://linktr.ee/mulcahea

Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates—often without our conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations. That is, the effect we have on other people is in turn passed on to others, much as the ripples in a pond go on and on until they're no longer visible but continuing at a nano level. The idea that we can leave something of ourselves, even beyond our knowing, offers a potent answer to those who claim that meaninglessness inevitably flows from one's finiteness and transiency. –Irvin Yalom, Staring at the Sun. The cold, sharp edges of one revolver press against my skull. Another is aimed at my mother’s heart. Time ticks quickly from all that came before to what happens next. ~ “Kris,” my mother, Elaine, yells from the adjoining study. “Can you get the door? On the phone.” Mitzi, the dirty white lap dog belonging mostly to my mother and sister, is barking the high-pitched yip she uses to grow herself big. I sigh with that impatient, eye-rolling breath I often use with my mother. Do this, do that, I think to myself. Just leave me alone. ~ I wanted to be anything other than what I was that year of 1984—a missionary kid of a missionary kid—and, in Israel of all places. My parents had not taken my own social standing into consideration when they became people doing God’s work. To be fair, they told me when I complained about the wrongness of it all, that they didn’t like the word missionary either. They weren’t there to start a church. My father, a conscientious objector, spent two years in alternate service in the West Bank at an orphanage. After marrying, he and my mother returned to the same work. The nuances of why and how they came to be American Christians in Israel and Palestine were inconsequential to my teenage self who wanted to belong and didn’t. ~ We live in the middle of a citrus grove, by day a fragrant contrast in colors, by night a silent sentinel, accompanied by an orchestra of insects and the occasional coyote. This is Israel in the 1980s before its upward and outward takeover of stony fields dotted with aged and contorted olive trees and crimson anemones that could be seen from afar. Our windows are always uncovered and at night we could pick out Orion, Taurus, and Canis Major with ease. The moon grows large in the dark. I run in the cool of the night, daytime heat melting as the sun lowered. I know the paths around my home well enough to move comfortably in the dark. It's Wednesday evening and my father has taken my sister, Kim, to her cello lesson in Tel-Aviv. It’s also soup night and Mom has made a vegetarian chili chocked full of carrots and peppers. Her chili is more soup than stew. Vinegar sits in a small carafe, ready to be poured by the teaspoon into waiting bowls. She has set the table with five placemats and purple cotton napkins rolled into napkins rings. Water glasses are filled. We wait for dinner until we can all sit together. It’s like this every Wednesday. Something they clearly knew. I am restless, edgy—at home on a school night, counting the days till graduation. A pile of art books teeters next to me as I sit on the corduroy-covered couch, comfy in the concave impressions left by hours of use. I have spent many evening hours here imitating, with my pencil, the drawings of Da Vinci’s women, passing time and imagining myself in art school. Dreams niggle the confines of what I’ve decided to do—follow a boyfriend to college. Something’s off. I can barely tolerate sitting still and my skin tingles, vibrates. The sensations have amplified in the last weeks. I chalk it up to boredom, to wanting the next part of my life to start. Waiting. I hated waiting. ~ I set aside my drawing pad and slump towards the front door. I look through the upper half and see my own face reflected back against the dark of the summer night. I turn the handle and pull open the door. Two men rush the door. Their eyes, dark and darting beneath balaclavas, glance at me and then shoot about the room. They are dressed in army fatigues the colors of sand and shrub. I fold, as though a marionette dropped from above. From what seems a great distance, I hear a whimper. Me? The dog barks—sharp, staccato, piercing. A base-key groan, “No. No. No.” My words, repeated. My chest rises and falls as I try and catch my breath but the room feels empty of oxygen. Static, like a television without a station, grows louder in my ears. One grabs my upper arm—his presence imprints my skin with purple bruises I find the next day. His shoulder wedges itself between my shoulder blades. My legs no longer work and I am jerked upright. I am caught in a vice of revolver and a hard male body. Molten fear runs down my face from temple to chin. My legs grow warm and wet. “Dollars,” one says, the r stuck in his throat. “We want dollars.” Each word loudly exaggerated, “What? You want money?” Mom says, as though in slow-motion. My mother remains planted on her chair next to the old pine desk in the study. I see her sit up taller than I’ve ever seen her sit before. Her shoulders are thrown back. Defiant. The two of us are facing each other through the door connecting the kitchen and study but I can’t see her expression, the look on her face erased in the glare of the fluorescent lights. ~ It’s April of 2021 and I’ve had a terrible case of writer’s block for the past month. I pull out of my files, the latest draft of a piece, “Finding Her Voice.” Maybe a revision will quiet my inner critic. New doubts arise. I talk with my therapist, describing my resistance to writing this piece. “I don’t think it matters,” I say. “Not with what’s going on in this country.” She doesn’t give me a line like, “All stories matter.” What she does say is that there are little t’s and big T’s—small, repeated traumas that reinforce somatic and psychological states of fear and huge, devastating moments of horror and trauma. An unheeded call for healing and resolution, even for seemingly minor trauma, adds one more story to the collective grief of humanity. Minimizing my own experiences of unsafety and terror render others’ experiences unimportant as well. I carry on. ~ “Dollars. We want dollars,” one of them repeats. I can’t place his accent. The phone dangles, taut, as she rises from her chair. “What?” she says loudly. “What? You want money?” I hear her again, her voice unnaturally loud, abrasive. I want to throw my hands over my ears but I can’t. My arms and legs are unresponsive to my brain’s plea—do something. Language abandons me. I am eighteen and stronger physically than my mother but in these moments, the lines are all hers. At vision’s edge, movement. One man charges my mother. She drops the phone. It clatters on the tiled floor. He pushes her but she resists. He uses his shoulder to push harder. “Leave her alone,” I hear her say. “We have money.” I see her clearly as though I could draw her. She had grown larger. She is all I see. ~ Her hair, thick and russet red, is pulled back, looped into a bun. She covers it with a scarf tied in the back, just under. She stands beside the dusty bus, arm outstretched towards something in the sky. A bird, perhaps? She is beautiful, my mother, like Iris, goddess of the rainbow. Such possession. I pull plastic off the album page and pry the photograph into my hand. I want to remember her as strong and powerful. ~ “Punishment, A Story” At the boarding school, matrons roamed the hallways, listening, looking for aberrant children speaking or laughing during rest time. Carol, my mother’s closest friend and confidant, is caught by the head matron. “Go into your dirty laundry and grab your knickers. Sit here and smell them.” A row of chairs, students walking by, shame. By age seven, my mother has learned to not make a sound, to curl up, arms hugging herself. “Inspection” She stands at the foot of her bed every morning after the bell has woken them. Hands out, palms down and then up. Lift that face up! Face down and a hand slides down beneath the clothing on her back. Grime. Elbows? Dirt. Go scrub with a brush. Brown and white children scour their skin until sink water runs pink. My little-girl mother is silent. ~ They drag us back to the kitchen from the bedroom where my mother has led them to the box, high on a shelf, filled with money, dollars. The men slash at air with guns like swashbucklers swiping with swords. “Down,” the guns say. We fall on the linoleum, bellies to the floor. I see a dried clump of dirt and want to touch it. My eyes take in the kitchen—steam from bubbling soup, the table covered in a white, needlepointed cloth, a blood-red flower in a vase. It looked like the kitchen always looked only brighter. Strands of my mother’s hair touch mine. “It’s not real,” my mother says as they grab a toy gun my parents, the pacifists, gave to my brother for his birthday. They take it, anyways. A final wild wave of guns and they run out into the trees hidden in the dark. ~ “A Mother” If she could go back there would be no toy guns as birthday gifts for her Black boy. Not because of that night but because of now—her Black boy now a Black man in America. I see bones beneath her silky pants. She has dressed up, pulled out her fancy clothes. Her arms are translucent, skin layered like crumpled fine paper pressed flat. Regret burns my throat, scorches my chest. I had never asked for her stories. I kept her quiet all these years. Now, I welcome their reiterations and practice telling my own. ~ My father and sister turn onto the sandy lane. Flashing police lights pierce the rural darkness. Dad steps on the gas, wheels spinning as the car gains momentum. Kim grabs the door to balance herself, the bouncing making her queasy. Something is wrong. My father has visions of what he might find, images born from war and his care of its orphans. My sister counts the police cars. “Five, Dad,” she says. No one stops them at the door. A good sign, Dad thinks. They find Mom, my brother, Matt, and me, seated on the loveseat that had borne witness to it all. “Dad, they took my .44 Magnum,” Matt yells over my parents’ embrace. “I told the police all about it.” I’m told I was interviewed by the Petah Tikva Chief of Police. That police combed the grounds around the outside of the house, measuring boot prints, looking for any other clues. I have no memory of the neighbor, on the other end of my mother’s call, finding us still on the floor. He had heard her, “What? You want money?” and had taken off running across the fields between our houses. Around the edges of memory, I see myself, arms wrapped around my knees, shaking in a dry bathtub. I spent the night there, cocooned in blankets, cradled. I imagine I slept. I don’t know. Trying to bring logic to the choice, I confirm, many years later, that the bathroom had no windows. I was no longer on stage. The curtain had fallen for my audience of two. ~ I struggled for decades to tell this story. Thirty years passes before I am diagnosed with chronic PTSD, this night one more in a series of childhood violations. Unresolved trauma can linger in the body. Or, not. It did in mine. I begin trauma work with a therapist who is trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). I’d been in talk therapy on and off for my entire adulthood, long enough to have been fired by three therapists. “We aren’t getting anywhere” led me from one to the next. I had a number of “Aha” moments but they were correct—I was stuck. I approach EMDR therapy with skepticism but after a few weeks of using the bilateral stimulation while recalling distressing memories, I notice a shift. I feel stronger and carry a new belief about each trauma. I go from telling Alev, “I am not safe,” to “I can take care of myself.” There’s something simple and beautiful in replacing the negative with something different. The ringing in my ears, flash of heat in my chest, the shaky voice were danger signs from my primal brain. Do not enter here. And so, I didn’t and the story laid dormant until the fifth decade of my life. In the shadow of a devastating pandemic, murderous racism, hunger and grief, I feel uncomfortable with telling my story. I compare and I almost decide to stay quiet. Humans want to belong and storytelling connects us to one another. Telling my story brought you to me and me to you. Putting this tale out into the world has brought me back to my mother. I asked her at a post-COVID vaccination dinner what she remembered of the evening, my myopic rendering of childhood still surprising to me. Her brow creased. I could see the effort it took to return to memory—they are growing opaque and dusty with the passing days. “Oh, I remember,” she says, her voice rising in pitch and volume. “I was so scared. They had you with a gun on your head.” “Yes,” I say. “But, I told them we had money.” “Yes,” I say. “My girl.” She pauses, looks at me across the table. “Oh, I remember. I told them we had money and to let you go.” “Yes, Mom,” I say. “You stood right up to them.” I reach across the table for her hand and write my story into ours. Kris Haines-Sharp is an educator and writer living in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. She is a 2020-21 Craigardan writer-in-residence where she was selected to study with Kate Moses in the Bookgardan writing program. Her work has appeared in Entropy Magazine and Adelaide Literary Magazine and is forthcoming in Academy of the Heart and Mind.

100 Years of Modernity: Language, Point of View, and the Declining Role of the Reader in Contemporary Fiction —————— And so the smashing and the crashing began. —Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, 1924 But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? —Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction, 1925 ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS In the early twenties of the new millennium, as we move towards and through the hundred year anniversary of these lines and the revolutionary literary movement they epitomized, it is fair to ask ourselves just how far have we gotten over the past century. Surveying the landscape of literary fiction, there is perhaps something to be desired, a hesitance in the approach to the novel as an art form that emanates, if not from convention, in that antiquated, Edwardian term, then from custom and from that most menacing word of our own age, marketability. It seems that there has been a death of the reader(1) at the base unit level of fiction. The scale of work, the division of labor between the writer and the reader, is a broad spectrum. An author can employ point of view and language in such a way that requires very little effort from her audience, on the one hand, to asking much of her, on the other. In modern publishing, at those fundamental levels, there has been a general decline in how much a reader has to do, how much work is required of her, in order to access and navigate a book and its central concerns. Instead of presenting a fictive world as it may be on the sentence level, messy and chaotic but with verisimilitude and reflective of its subject matter—consciousness, reality and the human experience—the writer is doing ever more of the labor. The scale has slid to the point where the author seems to be enjoined to come to the reader, to present a world that, no matter how complex and imposing it may be, must be rendered so that there is little risk of losing many readers along the way. ___________________ (1) From Roland Barthe’s The Death of the Author, 1967. While his ‘scriptor’ may be but a notetaker, for this essay it is the very reality being rendered that must not be given too helping a hand via interpretation. Where, we might ask, are the books that mount a direct and frontal assault towards its reader, towards that slippery byword readability, or its dark cousin accessibility? Where are those novels that declare themselves as technically complex works of art, requiring patience and practice to interpret and to decipher? To ask these questions is of course not to say that there are no works that demand careful thought and study to analyze on other levels besides those played out at the sentence—there innumerable such books, but the interpretation needed comes at broader realms, ones dealing with message, theme, content, and story, ones that challenge a reader to see new perspectives or voices, to consider underrepresented sides of issues or to hear from marginalized groups. This is, to be sure, an increasing and positive trend in the market. The readerly work that this essay speaks to is on that other stratum, a more minute and line-to-line world, where technical and mechanical difficulties and challenges have perhaps been overlooked. Thus, this article will discuss two elements of the novel in which the reader and her efforts seem to have fallen away—point of view and language. It is there that consciousness is best explored in fiction, the element that is most at risk in the novel today. These are the front lines of the fictive form, where there is less glamor and less discussion, but where the battle is won.(2) ___________________ (2) Although this essay will shy away from specific examples, two exceptions may be useful here. Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, from 2019, and Lucy Corin’s The Swank Hotel, from 2021 represent, with vociferous energy and skill, the type of technically challenging novel that is, by and large, not appearing on bookshelves today. Woolf, writing in the mid-1920s and at the single most defining and drastic revolutionary epoch in the history of the novel, was of course responding to an era and a society which allowed far less flexibility, individuality, inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility than that in which we live. She was responding to a far more ominous and established threat than anything faced today. However, there is wisdom to be gained, insight to be had, that stands as applicable to our own contemporary state of fictive affairs. The modern novel, for as wonderfully varied as it is in perspective and representation, form and structure, content and theme, nevertheless rarely takes risks at the sentence level. This essay will make the case that twenty-first century fiction has room for far more daring and inventiveness in language and point of view than is currently being done. It will do so by offering a few definitions, looking at what is lost, discussing potential solutions, and finally by asking what the essence of the novel as an art form may in fact be. First, however, an important and necessary caveat.(3) While the connective tissue between the modernist and today are of interest to scholar, practitioner, and enthusiast alike, it is important to not lose sight of the differences. The argument here is not that anything which is being written shouldn’t be; indeed, the plethora of voices and stories that are being told and are doing the telling, the greater accessibility—both literally, in a technological sense, and practically, in diversity in writing and publishing—and an increasing embrace of experimentation and unconventional elements of fiction are major, positive trends in the industry. ___________________ (3) A second caveat, rather more obvious but nonetheless worthy of elucidation: this is a discussion of and response to a general trend in current fiction, as perceived by one quite interested observer. Of course there are exceptions, both among books I have encountered—some of which will be explored below—and those I have not, but on the whole this seems to be, to this critic, the state of affairs. Furthermore, to make a slightly different point, nothing in this essay is to say that the type of fiction that is being written now does not have an important place. On the contrary, it is essential and often wonderfully done. To take one type of narrative that seems to be on the rise recently, the type of discursive first person fiction we are seeing more and more quite often results in funny, insightful, true-to-life voices taking us through engaging plots and engrossing worlds. There is much else being done today and which will not be discussed here other than to say, quite broadly, that it is not that which is being sought. To break the novel into three levels of consideration for a moment, there are the stories told and who tells them, the form and structure of a book, and movement at the sentence level—our focus. This essay, simply put, is to say that something has been neglected, that deep cracks begin to run in the foundation of the novel. To analogize, perhaps torturously, the state of literary fiction to a major-label rock band, if a guitarist is suddenly not pulling his weight, one does not suggest firing the drummer. As in life as in fiction (and, apparently, in rock n’ roll), harmony is needed. Both at the book and the industry level it seems that a key element has lately faded from view.(4) As a result, within the bedrock of that great artistic form that is the novel, the fissures begin to show, the ground begins to grow perilously uneven. OUTLINES AND DEFINITIONS Whatever the themes, questions, or central issues of a book may be, they can be handled with a number of technical-mechanical approaches. As noted above, while an ever-increasing amount of books are being written and published that take splendid risks in form, structure, voice, story, and perspective, the gamble seems to stop short when we reach the single line. The technical and mechanical realm—the domain of point of view and language—remains largely a sunny, well-lit upland for the reader to traverse This essay will differentiate between perspective, taken to mean the character that a narrative revolves around (also, as used above, describing the wider viewpoints or voices of an author or story), and which can be in first, third, or even second person, and point of view, which is a set of technical and mechanical approaches, techniques, and strategies to explore said perspectives, and which is largely done at the sentence level.(5) While the term stream of consciousness is often (mis)used as a catchall for point of view techniques there are in actuality a great many tools a novelist can employ to foreground consciousness. To investigate too thoroughly would be beyond the scope here (6), but the primary method would be free-indirect discourse used idiomatically and at a high frequency. ___________________ (4) Why is this? There are, perhaps, two factors largely responsible for this trend (or lack of a trend) in modern fiction, a blend of forces from outside the literary world and from with the community itself: first, a response to the threat posed to the industry in the twenty-first century by other forms of entertainment—it is too much, the argument might go, to asking an already-dwindling readership to work too hard. The second is possibly simple trends in tastes and culture; if one steps back to take a decade-wide view, a turn towards more “accessible” and plot-driven, externally focused fiction with discursive narrators and clean writing makes some sense as a response to the hysterical realism of David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Don DeLillo, and the like. Much in the way the Modernists were reacting to Victorian and Edwardian rigid sensibilities, today’s market can be seen as a natural shifting of the wind, to some degree. Indeed, framing the past thirty years of publishing as an exhausted reply to Infinite Jest does have a certain appeal. (5) Two books may be written in third person perspectives and have wildly disparate points of view— from Ulysses to Anna Karenina. This essay is mostly concerned with point of view. (6) The interested reader may look to Dorrit Cohn’s peerless study: Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. While this technique is found in virtually every third person novel, an interior-focused book (see below) will use it liberally to blend together the thoughts of the narrative entity and the given character, bleeding the world views into each together across the page.(7) For simplicity if not for clarity, we may call these methods of point of view techniques branches off the stream of consciousness family tree. ___________________ (7) The range here is quite large; at the other end from the light use of free-indirect one might find autonomous monologue, in Cohn’s term, where grammar and punctuation takes its leave and we slide from third person into first person present tense—Molly Bloom’s triumphant closing of Ulysses. The second major fictive element examined here is language, or prose. This is taken to encompass diction, grammar, mechanics, idiosyncratic speech and sentence structure. Point of view is inexorably tied to the mechanical use of language; together they propel a book line-to-line. A novel can deal with an effectively infinite range of themes and stories in all manner of sentence-level rendering. The risk-taking that this essay sees as largely absent from contemporary fiction, then, occurs here amongst the weeds and wilds. Works that emphasize these two elements—prose and point of view—may be said to be internally focused, or concerned with characters’ inner life, as opposed to those that are externally focused, or interested in outside events and happenings. The former, the subject of this essay, place a greater emphasis on the quotidian, the minute, and the everyday, in an attempt to turn that material—that “stuff of life”, in Virginia Woolf’s phrase—into suitable narrative action; they do so by relying on language and technique. A novel that takes the daily workings of life, with an emphasis on and foregrounding of the consciousness, explicitly does not rely on eventful plots or major external happenings to which the characters then react. It should be noted that difficulty, challenges, or readerly endeavors at this level do not inherently mean ‘hard to read words’. One does not have to write Finnegans Wake in order to take chances—Woolf is just as fearless as Joyce. But the writing in which the reader is required to mine the text, to participate in the struggle in order to discover meaning—that is fiction that takes risks on the sentence level. It is the extraction of compelling art from ordinary events that distinguishes the interior-focused novel. In the absence or diminishment of rangy plots set across lit-up worlds and peopled by billowing characters, this type of book establishes momentum and progression with greater fluidity in point of view and prose, by building the novel from the sentence up, rather than the fictive world down, starting with individual thought as opposed to collective action. There are certainly challenges in writing and, at times, reading this type of book—challenges that are not “superior” or of a higher order than those involved with creating and consuming more externally-focused fiction, but that are simply of a different nature, and which are sorely lacking in the industry today. AT WHAT COST? The key “selling point”, to stumble over a bad pun, for interior-focused fiction is its flexibility and verisimilitude in depicting the events that comprise the mass of human experience. This is the central touchstone to the exploration and foregrounding of consciousness, and to the narrative approaches used to do so. Crucially, these ends are not able to be reached by other means. For all the important improvements made in recent years in unconventional structure and subject matter, an increase in diversity of perspectives and authors, and a greater willingness to blend elements of various genres and thematic concerns, when the literary landscape as a whole lacks risk-taking at the sentence level, it loses the most efficacious and efficient vehicle to depict the quotidian travails of the human experience. There is a straightforward reason for this—the daily human experience is not simple and easily digestible. (8) A novel may have many other wonderful elements, elements which are just as important, to the community and world as a whole, as those discussed here, but without some portion of the emerging literary generation investigating those inward-facing approaches and techniques, a fundamental and unique ability currently possessed by the novel as a form is greatly diminished. ___________________ (8) As noted, I will avoid the discussion of specific works in a “negative” manner—this is not a book review, nor is it an indictment of anything being written today—but this point speaks to a general problem often encountered in reviewing. An unwillingness to take risks at the sentence level, as this essay has termed it, is what creates, from time to time, such a great disconnect between the ideas a novel attempts to explore and the actual effectiveness on the page. There is no substitute for formless language or the “stream of consciousness” family tree of point of view techniques. Oftentimes, one will encounter compelling characters and their intriguing journeys not being explored to their greatest possible depth because limiting the language and the point of view are limited—intentionally or otherwise—only to those styles which the general reader can easily and happily navigate. It may be asked why other methods can not fill the void, so to speak, why more reader-friendly (or less pretentious, depending, perhaps, on one’s, say, vantage point), styles cannot give us a healthy approximation of that which is offered by challenging language and point of view. The answer, quite simply, is that it does not work. Alas, much of life insists on the difficulties with the rewards. There is sometimes an attempt to get around this issue of establishing immediacy and interiority (9) via first person present tense, a movement which appears to be growing. While there are exciting and intriguing benefits of that form, it does not “solve the problem” with nearly the same completeness as does a drilled-down third person operating amongst the mind of the characters, for a few reasons. The first is an inability to explore inner life with the same flexibility, verisimilitude, or accuracy in first person as in third. The inherent bias in first person means that the direct line to consciousness—that which signifies modernism and its literary lineage and is the truest account of a moment in a mind—can never happen in first as it does in third. There will always be a filter, or a guardian, between the thoughts themselves and the narrating of them to the reader. While present tense, to be sure, cuts down on this (there is no elderly David Copperfield to pick and choose—and discriminate—which aspects of his life story to relate), it remains an incomplete solution. There is still a middleman, a failsafe, between the mental impressions and the act of the telling—the protagonist herself—that is not able to be circumvented. One cannot speak without making a decision to do so. ___________________ (9) That is not to say, necessarily, that books are being written in an explicit attempt to avoid employing techniques from the stream of consciousness tree—indeed that seems unlikely—simply that, as all art forms must and should do, the novel is evolving and writers are conceiving of and trying out fresh methods. The second main problem this method runs into vis-a-vis the exploration of consciousness is time itself. The passage of time is an essential, perhaps the essential, part of the human story, and central to the way our minds process and recreate key moments in our lives. The present tense undercuts this, and limits the way the character—and author, by necessary extension—can relate their experiences. There is no reflective ability in the present tense, that remembering and self-assessing quality that gives past tense first person so much of its power and depth. Finally, there is a sacrifice of verisimilitude in present tense, especially first person present, which may limit the effectiveness of any other elements at work. In a problem first identified well over a century ago by Joyce reflecting on Dujardin’s Les Lauriers sont Coupés, there is a strong inverse correlation in first person present between external action and plausibility, limiting how much action can take place in a present tense monologue—no one walks down the street narrating every small happening. While modern writers are far more sophisticated in their approaches than was Dujardin in the 1880s, and the general suspension of disbelief works in the method’s favor, there is still, for many readers, a loud and incessant unreality to extended stretches of traditional narration in first person present tense. There is no replacing books that take risks with their language and point of view in the name of rendering consciousness. It is a necessary aspect of the larger literary world, one that, happily, is perhaps malnourished but in no way deceased. Here we may break our loose prohibition against the discussion of specific works to speak a moment about a modern writer who stands as both ultimate risk taker and innovator par excellence and, not quite coincidentally, the preeminent novelist of her generation. (10) Rachel Cusk’s career has demonstrated an ability to innovate and gamble at the sentence level while remaining largely accessible in the modern age, and extraordinarily effective at depicting the minute concerns of consciousness that are at the forefront of interior-driven fiction. In Arlington Park and the Outline series, in particular, Cusk has shown what bold risk-taking on the sentence level—she is especially focused on innovations in point of view, although her language can also be daring, especially in her use of idiomatic free-indirect speech—can look like in the contemporary, very much “accessible” novel. ___________________ In this reader’s opinion, at any rate. I have written more thoroughly about Cusk and her use of point of view elsewhere: https://www.westtradereview.com/westendcuskcriticalarticle.html Of course highlighting the work of a single author is not to say the problem is solved, or that interior-focused books are not in dire need of reinforcement, but simply to show that it can be done, at the highest levels, in critically and commercially viable work. And, of course, to underscore once more the fruits of the labor. What separates Cusk is, among other things, the vibrancy, the completeness, with which her characters exist on the page. Their interior lives, so well-drawn and immediate, enable them to carry novels in which the domestic and the ordinary are often foregrounded, and high-strung external action is at a minimum. It is the inner life that makes these characters real, makes them human. This essay’s focus is not merely aesthetic concern, then; fiction, like all art, should mirror in its renderings that which it purports to represent. And while much of life is indeed storytelling and the experiences we have—and thus externally focused, plot-oriented fiction has that important place in literature—the vast majority of human existence takes place within the mind. That great breakthrough, discovered by modernism and articulated by Woolf, is that life is a messy, incoherent series of moments, often occurring without rhyme or reason, interspersed and infiltrated by the continuous blasting chorus of the past, memory interrupting perception via the onslaught of sensation. The great genius, then, of interior-driven fiction, doing its work with uninhibited, occasionally grammarless prose, intrusive point of view, and manic, discordant freely associative thought, is that it renders, as near as possible, ordinary and brilliant lived experience on the fictive page. Wholly separate from the great writing that is being published, this cannot be replicated in any other way. By asking the reader to engage alongside in the struggle, to come to the work, as opposed to being a peripheral, largely passive bystander given only abridged reports from the front, the author allows for direct views of that vérité de la pensée that can only be found in the crucible of the consciousness. What is given up, then, by asking less and less of the reader is a fundamental aspect of the novel, creating an art form that reduces its own capacity to reflect life. ON THE NATURE OF THE NOVEL AS AN ART FORM Why, it might be asked, do the writer and the reader feel and respond to these limitations on the form, be they imposed or perceived? Why has the novel, as a form, shifted away from sentence-level risk-taking in the modern day? We noted above a few of the reasons for this change; chief perhaps among them is the notion that the novel, in a world of shortened attention spans and an endless stream of distractions, must amuse to be read, must be an easy, light form of diversion. To be sure, there are books that set out to, and do, just that. However, the literary novel of which we speak is not designed for such a thing. It is an exercise in futility to ask the novel to distort itself into competition against the ever-increasing plethora of entertainment options available to the twenty-first century public, as opposed to being allowed to exist as it is, an artistic expression of the human condition. The market-driven demand for efficiency and utility in fiction misses, indeed grotesquely warps, the mark. It would be possible, should one chose, to condense every novel ever written to a mere line or two, a neat paragraph on a single page—this is the story of a middle-age woman who hosts a party and remembers her youth, the end—but of course no one suggests doing so ridiculous a thing. But it is the logical extension of the provision that fiction never stray from the plot, that any scene, or portion thereof, which does not immodestly and without deviation drive towards the book’s conclusion be excised for the sake of the eternally over-taxed reader. Like a deviant schoolboy, novels are taught to never stray from their route home, to never pause, never wander, never stop a moment to breathe in the world around them and make rough, brilliant, flawed sense of it all. The young writer is enjoined to be ever more efficient, ever more self-denying and self-effacing, that there is no room in contemporary fiction for anything but that which directly, expressly, and accessibly brings us to the conclusion of a neatly ordered plot. This, of course, is nonsense. While there is something to be said for economy and sparsity in writing, these are decisions best left to the artist, and not an abstract amalgamation of the marketplace. The novel is an art form, and like all art forms there must be, and indeed is, room for artistic flourish, for the demonstration of the artist’s natural gift and acquired skill, for exuberance and boldness and daring and the brash movements of a rhetorical dance. The novel is not a mere utilitarian device used to relate a happening. It is an artistic endeavor which should and must be given room to communicate something about the human experience with that ebullience, that intimacy, that creative and artistic expression, which it alone can possess. These moments can, of course, be found in all manner of styles and books, not only the interior-focused fiction that has been the subject here. But it seems to be especially true that where the general reader must try a little harder, work a little more, pull herself from the sepulture in which she has been so long lying in repose, there is an especial enormity to the backlash against “artistic” fiction. Where the novel is hard, in other words, the willingness to read diminishes. Naturally, there are realities of consumerism, along with a great many other factors, which inform publishing trends—in many more ways than one, we have long ago left the age of Woolf, Mrs. Brown, and Modern Fiction. It is not for us here to do battle with western capitalism as it relates to the book-selling industry. Rather this essay is a call to writer and reader alike, to remember the fruits that can be had from interior-focused fiction, to have no fear of risk-taking on the sentence level. There will, of course, always be books that are ineffectual, including a great many that attempt to be indecipherable merely for the sake of being “high brow” or “intellectual” or some other such notion. This essay does not argue that every novel which merely runs its sentences together and eliminates a cogent plot should be adorned with the garlands of fine art. However, we must remain vigilant, not only in carving out space for novels of all sorts—across perspective, form, story, authorial identity, and narrative focus—to be written and published, but in remembering that the nature of art is not to entertain, it is to illuminate. There is work that comes with consuming art, an involvement by the audience in the artistic process that makes their experience all the richer and more significant. The novel is not beyond these artistic protections—indeed, it is the only medium that can explore the human condition in so immediate, so universal, so myriad and so poignant a manner. The reader, then, must remain involved in the labors of the novel, ensuring that the truest expression of the human condition—innovative, fearless, unrestrained fiction—retains its safeguarded place in the artistic pantheon. A word from the author: 100 Years of Modernity evaluates the landscape of contemporary fiction through the prism of the modernist movement and its literary ancestry a century after its birth D.W. White is a graduate of the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Otis College in Los Angeles and Stony Brook University's BookEnds Fellowship. Currently seeking representation for his first novel, he serves as Fiction Editor for West Trade Review, where he also contributes reviews and critical essays. His writing further appears in or is forthcoming from Fatal Flaw, Twelve Winters Journal, Chicago Review of Books, Southern Review of Books, The Rupture, On The Seawall, and elsewhere. A Chicago ex-pat, he now lives in Long Beach, California, where he frequents the beach to hide from writer’s block. He can be found on Twitter @dwhitethewriter.

It reminds me of telling someone they'll always be something, until they die- the old road wrinkled with cracks, while the new highway isn't a smooth ride either- my tires slowly balding as I go grey, and after three days in a car, our conversations can't help but go flat, like that low carb bread the doctor recommended, trying to keep us alive a little longer, our mouths too full to admit one day there'll be no more trips back east or west for us, only newer routes, leading to the same destination. Richard LeDue (he/him) currently lives in Norway House, Manitoba. He is a Best of the Net nominee. His first chapbook came out in 2020, and a second chapbook, “Winnipeg Vacation,” was published by Alien Buddha Press in 2021. As well, his third chapbook, “The Kind of Noise Worth Writing Down,” was published in late 2021 from Kelsay Books.

Promise I bring you almonds and apricots, fresh dates and country oranges. You have stitched your name in the very world around me, I see it in every grain, every inch of all the orchards and oceans of earth. I think of you in each movement of the clock, and in each moment of summer— You’ve re-written my life, and made real my steps down the mountain path to the valley of wildflowers and August winds. I will follow you anywhere, through the hours of dim isolation, to the other side of paradise. You’ve called me out of the grim winter to meet you here in the soft morning rain, away from the others, here where we were always going to be, in our shared silences, our own summer of quietly spoken promises, where at last I can touch your hands and kiss your brow, and bring you almonds and apricots, and put a white jade ring on your finger. Mind of Fire The shadow on the wall grows wings — The shadow grows white flame in the empty room, always empty. I’m here, but gone into cold interiors as the shadow burns on, its wings now nothing but fire, a frigid, thinking inferno— a fire stretching out time—its engine like the pinprick of a black hole in this deserted house, where I know nothing but my absence, and my place in the conflagration— my only home, where I began, where now I’ve ended into purgatorial quiet—a dream an ancient blizzard had, the one with the mind of fire. Moonfall Fly, fall, plunge into ruin, into blue doom, fly, falling in dark matter, away, down the galaxy road to a black hole. Sink away, out of yourself, blue-red and burning moon, faithful friend, even in your calamity, and in my own and final ruin. Unpublished I’ve ruined so many pages of my life--- dog-eared, stained, and burned them out back in a furniture fire. My book goes unfinished and unread, neglected and left in abandoned houses where it wilts into dusklight and knows only graves of the dust . . . Words drain from its pages as I become, myself, a single word lost somewhere, wilting and withering on the last page of a book.

Summer sun burns down: clothes feel too heavy for comfort. The air tastes humid, breezes brushing wet over skin. You’d scorch from the sun alone, feel your skin going pink, then later stiff with a burn. You’d feel the pink. And with him: you scorch under his gaze, the embodiment of what want looks like. It’d encompass you. Sweep over you, same way you feel the heat of a thermos-brewed tea blazing down your morning-dry throat. (before too long, you pray for winter) When she’s not browsing through stacks of books or watching mysteries, Sarah Little is a poet and sometimes story-teller. Her first poetry pamphlet was "Snapshots" (Broken Sleep Books, 2019) and most recently she's been exploring fairy-tale motifs while branching out into fiction. Her most recent publications have been pieces in Cypress Journal, Mineral Lit, and Perhappened, among others.

His first big mistake was telling me. You gotta love over-sharing in the office. Left himself wide open, Gaz did. Never let a chance go by, one of my life rules. So many things to get even for. I am sure Garry is the one who nicks food from the lunchroom fridge, even though clearly labelled. I even use recognisable containers, seen nesting in Garry’s waste bin, empty of course. Once I pulled them out, but Garry kept right on working, said nothing. Fancy trying to read The Exorcist on the train, what was he thinking? Then complaining about being so engrossed he missed his station. ‘Bloody had to cross the line; wait for the next service…’ Garry announced. Change of scenery, more time to read, I thought. On the inward journey, Garry arrived at work in a lather of nervous tension, sweaty, with a face like a rabbit stuck in the headlights. ‘Latest stock figures?’ I’d reminded. Eventually, the book-induced haze lifted and he grasped an employment-induced haze, somewhere around his second tour through the kitchen and fridge check. Still, Gary insisted on reading The Exorcist, on the train too, no matter how much I tried to tell him, ‘not a good plan, mate.’ ‘Can’t read it alone in my flat, at night.’ Garry used to sneak about during break time; change screen saver images, alter file names, I’d think, on to you - you sicko. Especially when a semi-clad sports model image came up on my screen next time I logged on. Then I heard him saying, ‘So she fronts up to me and says…Sir, you left your book… fucken Good Samaritan. I actually tried to leave the bloody thing on the train.’ At the time I wondered why he might force a random stranger to be a victim of the dry-mouthed panic and skin-crawling repulsion those pages evoked? ‘Was I wrong? No one reads on the train, anymore.’ Garry continued. I, for one, am so sick of hearing Garry’s opinions for his fellow travelers, ‘Everyone is so intent on screens…’ Never could get Garry to notice how many of us, who also caught trains and relished quiet journey moments. So, Gazza, if everyone commuting is in their own screen-bubble, how do you explain one of your fellow passengers noticed your attempts to leave The Exorcist behind? Not to be deterred, Garry tried again to jettison the book. This time left where he thought no one would notice, shoved down between slats of the waiting room bench. ‘I figured no one would see it until I was at least three stations away.’ But still, a well-meaning school student, morning fresh faced in pristine, checked pinafore tapped him on the shoulder just short of vanishing in the exit gate crowd, ‘Sir, you left your book.’ A see-young-people-do-the-right-thing expression on her metal chained, soon to be straight teeth, hardly a whisker of embarrassed blush to fill out gaps between fresh crops of cheek pimples. ‘I looked down into that face and just couldn’t tell her, don’t want it, you keep it… So sure, I’d be able to leave the damn thing behind. By doing one of those set-the-book free things’, Garry continued. Am I the only one who notices Garry scratching his balls, in public? ‘Let someone else fall under its spell. Didn’t figure on a school kid.’ ‘Can’t take it anymore, this book is truly evil.’ Gary told the whole office, over and over, often while he stared at the cover as if contemplating how to bring the government fiscal balance into surplus. Yet he kept reading. His piece-de-resistance was taking the book out one lunch time. Walked down as far as the bridge. You’d think hurling the volume out mid Sydney Harbour Bridge into the swirling azure below was enough to condemn The Exorcist to the deep. Bragged big time about finally getting rid of his nightmare. Amazing to hear this recount. If true, this is THE most exercise Gaz ever took. As I already said, his first big mistake is telling us stuff. Took myself off to the bookshop, brought another copy. Wasn’t too hard to find. The book seller gave me a creepy grin as he took my money. But my ruse needs more. So I ran the book under a tap. Bear with me, there is a reason for all this - even though putting any book through this type of torture seems sacrilegious. Who the hell ruins a brand-new book with tap water? Then I dried The Exorcist off overnight, but only mostly. A little moisture is essential. I caught an early train to be in the office before anyone else. Then I located his top-drawer key where he always left it – under the cookie jar, from which Gary never, ever shares. Then I left the reincarnated, risen from the deep, The Exorcist hidden in plain sight. Well, the sight of his face, pale isn’t good enough, deathly pallor, might be closer. Hewn from alabaster, yes, that’s it. Of course, I made sure to maximize the audience concept. Letting everyone know I planned to ask for bull-dog clips which I knew Garry kept in his top drawer. He’s like Gollum, clips – my precious. He began to gobble for words, office spaces rife with stifled giggles. The book fell from his grip as Garry’s hands shook. He still thinks The Exorcist has power. No one has told him the truth, yet. You need to remember this man responsible for hiding all the rolls of paper hand towels. Yes, he removed them, not only from the toilets, but also from the tea-room. Fair’s fair I say. He’s not even twigged, I am responsible. Just to add to the impact I posted a potted version of this tale on Facebook. Such a classic: hasn’t stopped Garry’s over-sharing. How many times have I said The Exorcist… Brings on a twinge, like saying Voldermort or Beetlejuice too often? Karen Lethlean is a trying to be retired English teacher at a Senior College. Ever Present Predator is being published by Pareidolia Volume 2 Wanderkammer as part of their memoir section. San Antonio Review will publish In Isolation. She has won awards for her writing, Bum Joke was awarded a comedy writing award. She is currently writing of military services 1972-76. In another life she is a triathlete and has competed at Hawaii Ironman world championships twice.

I am in the church hall when those first notes begin. Like crystallised raindrops landing in a pail. Your song. Familiar, unexpected, beautiful and pulsing with pain. On stage, just feet away, the girl with curled hair and teetering, uncertain voice is singing your song. Our song. The song. The room spins away. And just like the movies I am flying through space. My heart, beating and banging in a million rhythms, in a million places. I am here, but I am not, I am in a basement disco; drinking, wearing neons, screaming this song. On a bus; one ear phone each. School skirt rolled up, socks rolled down. In a doorway doubled over, both of us sweating and praying and puking. Engagement rings, wedding days, antique lace, peeing on sticks, late night calls. White rooms, clutching hands, sick jokes and promises. In a chapel. Alone. I am in all these places, just me and those notes. Just me and your song. And inside I am laughing. And screaming. And dancing. And crying. And bleeding And dying. But still that girl sings. She sings, even though right here, here on the front row my heart, my soul, my gut have all fractured. Split into a million jagged pieces ready to be thrown across the four corners of this dusty hall and the world beyond. Suddenly I can smell cider, suntan lotion, White Musk, chips, vomit, hospitals, Ash. I am overwhelmed by every shade and scent of you. Dizzy with anger and dizzy with joy; I want to stand up and shout, to shine like a beacon in this room full of toddlers, mothers, grandfathers, next door neighbours. I want to break through their proud thoughts, their lists of festive things yet to do, their badly disguised boredom and scream. ‘This song, it doesn’t belong to any of you.’ can’t breathe but I can’t leave. So instead I wrap myself in this bittersweet gift of your song. Consumed by the first Christmas without you Rachel Canwell is a reader, writer, teacher and blogger but not necessarily in that order. She is currently working on her first novel and looking for a home for her flash collection, inspired by the sea. You can find her on Twitter @bookbound2019

NARRATOR: Good evening, I’m Bartleby Zane and you’re watching the Cracks of Time where we examine historical moments that might have fallen through the cracks. Tonight we share with you a small, but important scene in real-estate history. The year is 1797. Beacon Hill is an affluent neighborhood of brownstones built around a small, common square park in Boston Massachusetts. The residents have agreed to have a meeting to address several ongoing concerns of the neighborhood. We flashback to a colonial meeting hall. CHARLES: All right, thank you all for joining together tonight for the first meeting of the Home Owner’s Association of Beacon Hill, Boston. On this the 23rd of July, year of our lord 1797. And might I add, this is the first of any such meeting in our young nation! (Polite applause from the crowd) CHARLES: Yes, unlike the unwashed masses of Philadelphia or New York, we have decided to come together as a community to create rules and governing operations for our shared land rather than leaving it to the lowest common denominator, we shall hold each other to certain standards in order to keep our living spaces pristine. ALL: Here, here! SULLY: FUCK PHILLY! GO SOX. CHARLES: Yes, thank you, Sully. If we could please only speak when called upon. SULLY: Sorry, Charles. Take it away. CHARLES: And let’s try to keep the anachronisms to a minimum, yes? SULLY: Sure thing. (Sully pulls out a Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee) CHARLES: (sighs deeply) Right, our first order of business is a point of concern from Mr. William Blaxton. William, I yield you the floor. WILLIAM: Good evening, friends, neighbors. I arose early yesterday morning to the sounds of cardinals chirping outside my window. SULLY: FUCK THE CARDINALS, GO SOX! CHARLES: SULLY! William has the floor! SULLY: My bad, sorry Bill, go ahead. WILLIAM: As I ventured from my front door to take in this revelry, my boot sunk into a pyramid of feces, the likes of which I have never seen. (The crowd reacts with disgust.) LADY BLAXTON: In his new boots, to boot. WILLIAM: Thank you, dear. The warm muck was so thick, I well nigh- lost my boot. I humbly ask this group that we immediately and forthwith institute a mandate that if one’s horse is out of stable and defecates on a neighbor’s lawn, it shall be the owner of said horse who must dispose of said feces from the property in question. The Widow Kent and I have designed a receptacle for future horse droppings (they hold up a burlap sack proudly) and these will be strategically placed around the square for ease of care. We only ask that if you take one, leave one. (Enthusiastic applause from the group. A few “here, here’s”) THE WIDOW KENT: Instead of a gunny sack, we’re calling it a runny sack for when your horse gets the runs, you see. CHARLES: Excellent points! All in favor… SULLY: Just to be clear, if we deuce in a neighbor’s yard we gotta clean it up, but numba 1’s are still okay, right? (Charles glares at Sully and continues without addressing the question.) CHARLES: All in favor… (Ayes and nays) CHARLES: The Ayes have it! The motion is approved! (Applause from the aye voters. The nays pout. Roger raises his hand.) CHARLES: (Annoyed) The chair recognizes Mr. Rodger Crumperdin. ROGER: Well, I just find it rather amusing that the crowd so obsessed with “Freedom” is mandating where a creature of the wild can and can not defecate. ELOUISE: Excuse me, Charles, but if I might have the floor, my issue actually concerns Mr. Rodger Crumperdin. CHARLES: The floor is yours Ms. Minuet. ELOUISE: I have the great misfortune of having a clear view into Mr. Crumperdin’s dooryard and he has recently erected a sign stating, “Make Britain Great Again.” What is most offensive is that the sign first appeared on the anniversary of our great nation’s independence day, July 4th. Gasps and hubbub. ELOUISE: Furthermore, when I confronted Mr. Crumperdin on the matter, he insisted that George the III was still the right ruler of America and none of our stately laws bind him. CHARLES: Roger, is this true? ROGER: Yes! There are many of us who know who our true sovereign is! MBGA! (It’s awkward to say, so he tries again) MBGA! SULLY: Hey Charles, you want I should kick this guy’s ass or what? CHARLES: No, Sully, we are here for intelligent discourse, not showcasing brute strength. I’m sure we will be able to settle the matter with reason and shared common values. ROGER: George Washington is a false god. Those of you who worship him as such will be smote by the almighty himself and I will put that on a flag to fly in my dooryard. WIDOW KENT: Can you even put that on a flag? SULLY: Oh, you can put anything on a flag, waddya need? I got a flag guy. My cousin, Stevie. ELOUISE: Do you see what I’m subjected to? The ravings of a madman! When I asked him to remove the sign he threatened my very life. And with my husband passed, God rest his soul, I find myself frightened to lay my head at night. SULLY: Whoa, you came for an old lady, bro? ROGER: You are all charlatans and snakes! You will be dealt with in due time. The red tide shall rise up once again and engross these tyrannous banks and the loyal shall rule once more! RED COAT LIVES MATTER! SULLY: Charles, all due respect, this guy’s a fucking asshole. I beg of you, let me punch him in the throat. WIDOW KENT: Let the morons fight! WILLIAM: FOR THE GOOD OF OUR NATION! CHARLES: Ladies and gentlemen, please, I beg of you to be civil! This man is clearly not well, he means not what he says. ROGER: CHARLES MATTHEWS IS A SYSTEM OF SERPENTS PILOTING HUMAN SKIN. You all are witches who feed off the blood of children. You filthy Yankees will never take me! SULLY: NORMALLY I WOULD SAY FUCK THE YANKEES HERE, BUT IN THIS INSTANCE, (Sully looks around)..LET’S GO YANKEES. LET’S GET THIS DOUCHE! CHARLES: FUCKING- A, SULLY! (Charles and Sully chest bump. The crowd cheers and tackles Rodger to the ground. They start singing “SWEET CAROLINE” on “BA BA BAAAAA” they kick Rodger in rhythm with the song. They freeze when the Narrator takes center stage. ) NARRATOR: And with that, the residents of Beacon Hill bonded together over a shared sense of decency despite their differences. Although there were some initial hiccups, the HOA of Beacon hill continued to meet and provided a blueprint for other such communities. Roger Crumperdin built a brick wall around his house to keep his neighbors out and starved himself to death out of spite and insanity. His home was eventually demolished and a horse park put in its place. I’m Bartleby Zane, and this has been Cracks in History. BLACKOUT

Pump Station The sound of the clock Becomes the sound of the water This fluid moves like Color through the brain This hour’s cruel and Fine hydraulics press your Bygone days into tomorrows — Rusted lever, seal and lock The sound of the water Becomes the sound of the clock. Sigil for Permanence this night i sit and defend a little fortress of Time drawn about my still figure a schema, clear stars, unpassing cars, door that wants to Lock behind me it can’t touch me here, the diffuse sadness seeping into all the Parts of our lives here a line is drawn through my middle, here i am under the Protection of the squared circle (waiting while the night sounds Fall away) Invisible Boogie After Twin Peaks in a hotel room Someone has imagined me A hotel lobby In the winter Morning dark They manifested me A lonely staircase, Frost-touch window Overlooks a park This troubled dreamer Sees me, shifting Past the tight-shut Formal dining room They feed me well Conditioned atmosphere, A basement door half-open, Handle made of chrome I sing a song To be forgotten when the Curtain seizes up Against the sun I slow-walk backwards Down the hallway, I unfold When morning comes. Waypoint Travelogue I must be something like The hundred billionth primitive idler To witness this Annual assay of the geese Southbound following the Turning earth’s body heat (Dim eye for their returning Weak voice for their retelling) Honking, they draw the circle, They make a disciplined arrow, And the forces of nature move with them — And all that spell needs Is our crossroads at the center, Fly in the web, Lamb softening again, Or the slow drip Of that dear blood, oh flock, Forever. Open Field Cosmology The day I found myself adrift in the tall grasses: landscape let and laid across a grand swath of memory Running fingers stately up the stalks, I have brushed aside the wholeness of any city and its numbing sunset lights (Me on my father’s shoulders, all this grass a stillness, shallow water washing gently across time) A southbound wind closes every distance Look across me, familiar face of the golding harvest, what goes there, there beyond the trees? Jesse Miksic is a graphic designer and writer living in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He spends his life writing poetry, scribbling in notebooks by the fireplace, and having adventures with his wonderful wife and two children. Recent placements include Drunk Monkeys, Green Ink Poetry, and Pink Plastic House.

Summer Bonfire The smell of wood smoke pops the air, Engulfing the late summer evening in bursts. I watch the sparks of fire soaring, darting; Imagine them along the paths we trod, Past the trees we climbed, hovering at the gate We shut tight, and finally stamped out by the Riverside reeds where we played. Now the halo of the fire grows brighter, And only then does the evening draw the shutters on the day. A Space I Cannot Fill The empty chair, The hour on Sunday when I’d phone, The question I want to ask, The bare coat peg, The distant hum instead of the ticking clock, The bookmark loose on the table, The closed glasses case, This space I cannot fill. Unsure how to greet it, I walk around it, I sulk, then rage until I allow the space to frame me, Shifting and settling like your old cardigan That even now still keeps me warm. Helen Openshaw is a Drama and English teacher, from Cumbria. She enjoys writing poetry and plays and inspiring her students to write. Helen has had a short monologue commissioned by Knock and Nash productions. Recently published and upcoming poetry work in Secret Chords by Folklore publishing, Green Ink Poetry magazine, Words and Whispers magazine, The Madrigal, Fragmented Voices, Loft Books and The Dirigible Balloon magazine.

All four windows down, burlap mullet in the wind. Sun-sweat glimmering across your paperback skin. Face like motel heaven, lips a bright strawberry storm — rioting to the radio, louder than the day you were born. You say “this trick’s real easy,” like skating full-speed with no rain. But after hitting hills in Frisco, I only see through cellophane. Misty in the mountains, girlhood blurred by ginny dreams — the toe stop couldn’t catch me screaming; I got smashed to smithereens. “Diff ’rent worry from a diff ’rent season,” you say, tapping scraped-up knees. “You can make a house a home, y’know, in any place you please.” Hillbilly prophet, I know you’re right — you tell me, “Just keep drivin’ straight.” Onward, not upward, here is good: My great escape on the interstate. Alana Greene is an American writer living in London. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the minison zine, cool rock repository, Fish Barrel Review, and HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology.