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Forever relegated to the role of the elder and more responsible child, I delivered almost every sibling disaster headline to my mother. My younger brother Mick fucked up again, managed to get arrested for possession and distribution, and found himself sitting in a jail cell for the first time. “It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back, Mel!” my mother shouted when I broke the news. However, the camel is my mother, and my mother’s back is strong. My mother called me back for the fourth time in under two hours, quizzing me, “Is there anything else, Mel? Are you sure that’s all there is to it?” So, I carefully reviewed with her the details of our previous three phone calls. My mother said she didn’t want to forget the little things; she feared, or hoped, she might have heard me wrong the first time. But she didn’t hear me wrong; rather, her ears resisted the weight of my message. My mother helped her children whenever she could, always offering us encouragement and support. But, unlike the baby camel who walks on its own immediately after birth, my brother could never move forward on his own. And so, my mother carried my little brother Mick on her back for almost fourteen years. But my mother is a camel, and she can carry almost nine hundred pounds. For my part, I developed into a (mostly) strong and independent adult. And so, my mother, believing she did an adequate job with me, continued focusing her attention on Mick. But, no matter how hard my mother wished or prayed, Mick struggled to find his footing. So, inevitably, my mother will set out to save Mick’s ass once again. I sat by the phone and awaited my mother’s fifth call of the day. She will want me to check her accounts, ensuring she has enough money for a lawyer or possible bail for Mick. I will try and make my mother understand the severity of what has happened, but she is already on a mission to save my brother. She will ignore the impossibility of his situation, unable or unwilling to hear or see the barriers that impede her way forward. You see, my mother is a camel, and she will travel one hundred miles through a desert to save her son. I wanted to tell my mother I am angry with her for always rescuing Mick. And, I resented the fact that my brother kept taking, giving our mother nothing back in return but grief. I wanted my mother to leave my brother in his cell and teach him a lesson. I needed her to understand she was partly to blame for my brother’s inability to stand on his own. But, of course, I won’t say this to my mother; she wouldn’t listen even if I did. So, I finally picked up the ringing phone and said, “Hello, Mom.” “Why haven’t you answered, Mel? I have been trying to reach you. And you know we have so much to do!” my mother began. And then, instead of convincing her to let my brother figure it out himself, I listened, wrote down her instructions, and started the process of saving Mick. And all the while, I remembered, my mother is a two-humped camel, and she still has one hump left for me.

Charlie Chaplin and Me When I was a kid, I thought we were related. I walked like him and, like him, didn’t speak, and could pantomime like a vagabond tramp. Ballroom dancing was easy as I skated my way around flip-flops with orders of restaurant meals. I was always roaming around my neighborhood, looking in windows as if I didn’t belong anywhere. Every one of his silent films was too good to miss, and I fell madly in love with Claire Bloom in Limelight. When he ridiculed Hitler, I laughed until I cried, and applauded until I wore the skin off of my hands. I envied him for having the courage of his convictions, to retire to a country with no army. Courage You never know how much you have until you’re tested. I had no fear when I slept overnight In the woods to prove I was as brave as a Leni Lenape Indian at the age of 14 to qualify as an honorary member of the Order of the Arrow. I had no fear when I took a bus to Afton, New York to work as a Farm Cadet during the second world war. I was not afraid to drive my ’37 Dodge to Iowa City in a January blizzard of 1950 to enroll as a student at the University of Iowa. I had no fear the day I became a member of the US Army during the Korean War. Now I’m being tested again as I face life alone after losing my loving wife of 67 years. How brave will I be? I will be the first to find out. The Love of My Life Anyone can tell you she presented herself as a sparkling bright light with an alluring charisma, and more alive than any human being I ever knew. Her lifelong guiding idea was to live with no chance of the casual. Vibrating with life, she never wanted to miss a trick, yet managed to live by the five Buddhist precepts even though her dreams were often filled with dancing dreidels, mezuzahs and menorahs. Her presence changed the quality of the air, made the sun hotter, and the moon whiter than it has ever been. My Mutinous First Mate Jumped overboard before me, leaving me to cry the 3 rivers dry from the tidal estuaries of— Brudenell, Cardigan and Montague, rivers that flowed into Saint Mary’s Bay. I spent the happiest days of my life with my chest puffed up like Captain Bly, getting my Boston Whaler underway across the bay to Boughton Island. She stood at the bow, her hair flowing in the wind, moments before she exclaimed to me: I will wait for you,” and dove into the sea. Milton P. Ehrlich Ph.D. is a 90-year-old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published many poems in periodicals such as the London Grip, Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times.

CW: For readers of this story--This is a story about the early 1990's. It is about a rough time and place where strong and objectionable language often prevailed. In the middle "panel," I am spoken of as suffering from "pasty-faced fear," i.e. being "too white," due to my previous inexperience at the time with Latinos who were poor and not schoolfellows. The point of the final sentence of this passage, a Biblical reference to "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone," is that in such an area, I was being harassed because the men on the street thought that, being out so late, I was a prostitute, and the young man was different from his comrades and was too modest to think that he himself was "without sin." In the last "panel," "Ryan's" family was in a sense marketing him because they mistakenly thought I could take care of him, and thus they in a sense made a sex worker of him to me, or me to him, though I didn't catch on right away. Coming from another area where strong language has often prevailed (where, for example, developmentally disabled people are still sometimes referred to as "retarded," and people with emotional disabilities "not right") it was possible for me to see even then that this made me and "Ryan" roughly equivalent in the prejudice we suffered from, though it was necessary as a stronger person for me to stop things. Referring to the institution as the "loony bin" marks me not as a person uninvolved with it here, but as I am myself a former occasional inmate of such places, I'm letting you know that people such as myself get tired of them, and object to the prejudice that goes on even within them where one is supposed to be safe and that often inmates themselves use such terms to define their experiences with the behavioral health system. I think anyone who knows me well will be able to say for me that I rarely use objectionable language except to make a point, but this is not a story for prissy language or the faint-hearted. That being said, I hope you enjoyed watching the gradual enlightenment about wider and other lives that my main character (myself) underwent in another kind of education. I want the main experience for the reader to be becoming aware of how far we have come, and where our dangers still lie (because we are now facing the same sorts of issues again nationally). It's time to stand up and be counted. Syracuse-Prequel Funny how you focus on things other than what’s really at issue sometimes. It was the third heavy snow of the season, and I was trying to think of expressions for the cold. They always said, “As cold as a witch’s tits in January.” Though if you don’t like witches, I’d guess they’re too cold for you at any time. Or maybe even colder in the end of October, near Halloween, or at a witches’ sabbath. Those who had less shame about showing no regard for honest labor said “As cold as a welldigger’s ass.” Tits and ass: typical Americanisms. However you wanted to phrase it, I’d lived in the Snow Belt before and it was cold. But somehow, the last time it’d been in Ithaca, going to school in a place where I was supposedly one of an elite, however little I behaved like it. People judge you later for things you can’t help either way, I guess, people on one side of the American divide or the other. And how to explain that I had lived on both sides, more or less? People don’t want to hear long-winded explanations, it sounds too much like making excuses. So, anyway, here I sat— on a fold-out couch with bad springs in a Welfare apartment. No heat, no refrigeration for my perishable food, and my little cat huddling under the couch hiding, wondering why the hell we had left Buffalo, where the apartment was heated and she had been comfortable. That I hadn’t been comfortable with a sleazy landlord who was trying to jump my bones was something that I couldn’t explain to her, nor why he was, since my mother was paying full rent for me to live there and try to write. “You’re a writer, eh? Well, just don’t bring any colorful characters into my apartment, okay?” Colorful characters? What had he meant by that? He and the other tenants were a real slice-of-life crew, not polite or particularly honest, and the first lot like them I’d met up with in my mostly-protected life. What did he mean by colorful? His imagination was a filter I couldn’t conceive of. So, it was after that I left, after the tenant who had a copy of my keys against my will, had stolen a third book from me (I was sure it was she). The landlord had come in some time and cut off the gas to the stove, apparently to produce some effect in me, I wasn’t sure what. He’d then turned up at the back door one night all the way from Depew, the suburb where he lived forty-five minutes away—well, I mean, what else could he want? He had a raunchy cologne on and his hair was slicked back, and he tried to force his way in the door. I think I shut it on his foot; he went away when it was firmly pulled to, anyway. It was after that I packed what I could take, hid my cat under my thick winter coat at the chest in a warm sling, and got on the bus headed to Amish country. Surely they’d take me in, let me work on a farm somewhere, give my cat a good berth. This notion gives me a belly laugh now. I had a worse sense of humor back then. But of course, we never got there. Because the cat, too warm? having to pee? hungry? who knows? started to wail, and the driver pulled the bus over and amid a lot of laughing girls, who’d done their best to hide me out in some unavowed kind of sympathy, by pretending to wail and be responsible for the sounds themselves--he found me. And my cat. He stopped the bus in Syracuse and made us get off, regardless of what I’d paid to get to Pennsylvania. There were various events after that, in a sort of kaleidoscopic array: a long-distance friend paying for a cheap motel for a while, a stay in an institution for two weeks while the motel manager looked after my cat for the price of my piccolo, then a rush transfer to a Welfare apartment where I luckily got in just a day before the cop squad came to look for me to try to put me back in the institution. There’s no telling just how many places like that were being used back then to house people who were stable enough at the time, but had no place to go. I hadn’t phoned Mom, couldn’t rely on her dollar, she was probably still mad about being asked to go all the way up to Buffalo to put my other stuff in storage somewhere. So, there I sat. And it was cold. The window glass was cracked and thin in places, with a few ripples near the edges. Rime had gathered all around, and thick ice inside on the bottom three inches, and I was still sitting, wondering how many more days it was going to be before the appliance store that the Welfare Office had an agreement with would deliver the mini-fridge I was supposed to get. I’d just been to the grocery store two miles away; I was a strong walker then, with a backpack and extra bags, armed with food stamps and some spare change I’d saved up for cleaning and cat food, since they couldn’t be bought with the stamps. I sighed. There was no reason except foolish appetite to have bought a quart of milk and a quart of half-and-half, or even the eggs and the jar of mayonnaise, the fresh vegetables, the other odd items which now would spoil. I shivered, and got on another jacket and wrapped myself in a blanket, the last two unpacked bags still on the floor in front of me. Then, in a blinding neon of late insight and halfassedry, I realized that if I was in an undesirable deep freeze, so were my groceries. Only for them, it wouldn’t be bad, but good. I hummed as I lined up the perishables on the four windowsills in the living room and back room. I left the kitchen sill empty; it was warmer in there because of the heat from cooking and the interior position of the room kept it so. That sill I would leave for the cat to sit on. Yes, now the mayonnaise was safe. Syracuse I. It’s late at night, no, early. Still dark as a bat’s wing, though, brownish-black winging through the old clapboard houses and yards. Syracuse post-Happy Hour. Friday night, of course. Not the best (cheapest) time to call, but when did I ever think of her first, she’d say. Still possible, then, to place a collect call from the only payphone in three city blocks (back, I cast my mind back; I remember the small post the phone was mounted on, time after patient time, by a phone company’s workers who knew if they went by three weeks later, the neighborhood’s boys— can you really call them young men?— would have it torn wire from wire and leave it hanging to the ground again). And after all, then the workers could go for a quick beer at noon, when the streets were drowsy still, out of their truck and into Danny’s for lunch, company-allowed surfeit time, who would know about the beer? Who would care? Only an absent management. I stood at the phone, yes, still functioning, both of us, wakeful, waiting. I had waited only for the time when the streets would be quieter, less occupied by potential for attack; I didn’t like my neighbors, and they didn’t like me; I didn’t belong on Shonard St., a fish out of her fishbowl trying to make do with ocean. I called. I called again. Mom still asleep; I need some money, Mom, somebody stole my check from the box. Have to keep ringing, annoying the operator till Mom wakes up. Rapid escalation of heartbeat, “suddenly” is the wrong word, “instantaneous” is it: boys, no, young men coming down the street, laughter too raucous, tones too mocking, too many of them. They go past, catcalls, taunts, safely past? No, pausing at a distance, some stopping, quick whispered dialogue; I wouldn’t know now if Mom even woke up and answered, my attention too obsessed with boys, men so soon, trying to attract my fears, my fears going out to them with obliging readiness, terrified. They head back my way, picking up rocks, pebbles, still howling and caterwauling, throwing them, striking my arms, my legs, my back. I hang up the phone and slowly walk away, so as not to allow them—as if I could prevent them—to give chase. Relief. They are done with their fun with me, I hope, as they seem to keep going in the distance. No, not yet: one of them still following, my footsteps echoed by his own. Can I pick up my feet any faster, still slow, not seeming to run, but able to get away? I go faster, he pursues. Quickened by pasty-faced fear, I feel him grab? No, tap, but still, my shoulder, hear the Latino accent, this is it, I have to whirl around as if able to combat, I whirl, at least he’s not the biggest: he says, “Miss? Miss? May I walk you home?” “No, thanks.” “Okay.” At a guess, he’s not the one who threw the first stone. Syracuse II.—Resolution My second cold January in a frozen city. But I had lived through a bright, hot summer, cool and dappled with light both, as the perennially damp cold of even the top half of the small house where I was living was pleasant in the summer. And in the back room, the light from the sun poured across the stale old carpet, making a smell that would have been indefinable if I hadn’t been able to imagine all sorts of things, noxious and rotten things, that might have contributed to it. I’d been in Syracuse from a cold late fall to this January, and now my mother had had enough of my abasement at the hands of whatever one was supposed to assume the fates were these days, and she was coming to move me off Welfare and to Boston area, to be closer to my brother, who might help me reorganize my life. It was odd to ponder the words “fates” and “Welfare” as existing in the same universe; certainly they didn’t seem to find room in the same galaxy of discourse: the fates were what I used to read about in literary courses, where characters in myths, legends, novels, and poems had such things. Welfare, on the other hand, was something no one had better have any more of than anyone else, or it was unfair; and a fate was a thing too special, too prejudicial, to exist in the same conversation. Things had happened to me and others in Syracuse. Unintentionally, I’d had an affair with a developmentally disabled Latino man with the first name of Ryan (no last name given). What do I mean by unintentionally? I mean, I do have scruples, and though I didn’t abuse him in any way, I also wouldn’t have been more than a friend if I’d been clued in or been told that he was what people in my neck of the woods called “retarded,” which differentiated him from people like me, who were usually (as clients of the behavioral health system) simply called “not right.” I guess that amounted to being “wrong.” When Ryan first showed attraction, I’d not been desperately interested, but his sister and brother-in-law egged us on, and I assumed that the difficulty we were having communicating was a problem a good ESL course would have corrected (or, conversely, my learning Spanish). He was generally coherent, kind, loving, had a bright sense of humor, and was passionate and considerate at the same time. One of our neighbors, a younger man in his teens, kept pointing to me and saying to Ryan something that sounded like “Cho-cha.” I asked what it meant, and he grinned and said “Cupcake.” I still don’t know for sure what it means, but I feel it likely that it didn’t mean “cupcake.” In fact, I think it was probably, given the general behavior of the teenager, something a lot more prejudicial. Ryan and I were involved for only a little while, but I finally saw the light when his sister tried to get me to “take care of him” when they moved away. They were planning to go without him, with such an unsteady guardian as I was in charge. Just to confirm my new impression, I spoke to the mailman, who knew everything: sure enough, I had made what amounted to a serious, mistaken lapse of judgment in my own world. I was also ill, and when I told my neighbors I didn’t feel well, they called an ambulance. Somehow, though, I was put back in the loony bin for a weekend, and while I was away, someone came into my apartment, threw everything around, and stole my cat and a red cashmere sweater my mother had given me (which I never wore except when she was visiting). The sweater was unimportant, but the cat was unforgiveable. I asked around, I called outside, and one morning, I heard my baby give an answering meow. It was mid-morning, the street was mostly empty, and I kept calling and calling. Soon, it was obvious— she was in the upper level of the house next door. There was a broken window atop the house, and as I called, she poked her beloved head through the wide aperture and looked at me. I ran up to the house and climbed on the porch bannisters of the first floor, holding on with precarious grip to the roof, coaxing her down the slope of it to where I waited. Though I’ve never picked up a cat by the scruff of the neck before or since, as I cannot be persuaded it’s comfortable for them, that was the only way to carry her with one hand while I balanced with the other and got down. She submitted to this way of being handled and we went home, after Ryan had come across the street and asked what was wrong. He also delivered my Welfare check, which, even though we were no longer together, he had been protecting from a distance as it sat in my mailbox during my absence. And as the joke goes, “then some other stuff happened,” meaning in this case that Ryan and his family moved away, that one night there was a Hell’s Angels rally on the street and I was afraid to go out, that when the house next door vacated, they left their own two cats and numerous kittens there to roam the neighborhood. I took three of the kittens in, the ones that had begged admittance at the front door, meowing hungrily and winding around my legs. My mother had been coming periodically to visit all this time, and in an effort to restore me to myself, she had been bringing the New York Times crossword puzzle, which we always worked together. Without a dictionary or any form of reference, we always got it right. I don’t know how. It must’ve been one of those gratuitous dispensations, a small handout from fate. And that was all. On the day I left Syracuse, we took the refrigerator and a few other things that Welfare had paid for but refused to take back for the use of another client, and put them on a street corner, where someone else could use them. As an afterthought, I took a real gold bracelet I’d been hoarding, one which a long time before one of my college friends had given me, and hung it on the top of the pile. My final gesture of fealty and bewilderment and tribute (or guilt?) to a system that might have meant well, but didn’t serve well, so what could it have possibly done for the others who had equal right to it? And with me, I took my little family of four cats, the few possessions I’d had, and one small, injured songbird of a sparrow, who’d lived with me and the cats in his separate cage the whole time after I found him in the dust on a city street where he chirped in pain at a leg missing below the knee. Pennywhistle, who had re-learned to fly by being swung in a circle through the air on a halter of wool I’d made to fit him; who was kept in the back room away from the cats and let fly out of his cage when the door between the rooms was closed; the bright spirit who had learned the sound of the grocer’s truck coming up the street, and always whistled because, summer or winter, if I was there, I bought him cherries and fed him through the bars of the cage. Pennywhistle would be our ensign. Victoria Leigh Bennett, born W.Va., B.A., Cornell University, M.A. and Ph. D., University of Toronto. Degrees--English and Theater. Since 2012, website maintained at creative-shadows.com, mostly with reviews and articles on literary topics. August 2021, pub'd. 1st print book, "Poems from the Northeast," Olympia Publishers. 334 pp. "A LIfe," a poem from that book pub'd. in Winning Writers Sept. 15, 2021 newsletter. In addition to poetry, has written 8 novels and 1 book of short stories, currently all in search of a publisher. Twitter handle: @vicklbennett, Facebook, at Victoria Leigh Bennett. (She/her). Victoria is a member of the disabled community, dealing with the issues of manic-depression and glaucoma.

It happens on a Thursday. The morning offers the usual odors: armpits, assholes, instant coffee, and cheap cigarettes dominate, but, also, Diego’s cologne. We stand in a line, but there is no order. When we get picked, if we get picked, depends on whims we can’t understand. Does lighter skin attract? (probably) Will a mustache repel? (probably not) Should hair be gelled or natural? (unclear) We pretend to have control, pretend we’re something more than muscle attached to brown bodies. Diego talks nonstop. Legends of the line. He tells anyone who will listen about Chuy Rodriguez. He was picked up by a brunette and before one hedge was trimmed, he was fucking her from behind, fake tits bouncing against the marble kitchen counter. Same every day for a week and took home a grand on Friday, never touched as much as a rake. And there was Rogelio Sanchez. Got picked up to lay some irrigation and saved a girl from a horse or a horse from a girl or some damn thing, and walked away with ten G. Fucking ten G. But today’s there a new guy. Young, tight shirt, muscles bulging. He reeks of ambition which has no place here. He glares at Diego. “Bullshit. No one’s that lucky.” Diego talks faster. “Remember Esteban –” “Shut the fuck up,” the new guy takes a step toward Diego. One of the older guys, Juan Rivera maybe, speaks up. “Diego, drop it, this guy’s bad news.” Diego shifts his weight from one foot to another, silent for once. He’s a bad worker, but we don’t care. We like Diego and his crazy stories. He brings us hope – and donuts. A pick-up truck cruises toward us – work for two? Someone shouts, a blade flashes. Blood flows from a thin line on Diego’s hairless forearm, the new guy dances away with the knife, and tires squeal. It’s a surface wound, but the damage is done. Our hands are the maps of our lives. Every nick, every scar, every blackened nail, evidence of our labor. Hands that caress shovels, hammers, and trowels but which have forgotten how to touch a woman. Everything happens so fast in this country. Before the blood has dried on the asphalt, there’s a screaming manager, white face red. And when we hear sirens, we flee, like cockroaches from the light. There will be no work today and no return here. Too late to go anywhere but home. We will cross the border shamed by our empty pockets and hollow dreams. Tonight, we will sit together, no meat in our bellies, cigarettes in hand. We will discuss where to go tomorrow. Someone will say there is a new Home Depot we can try. He’s heard the gringos are plentiful there, looking for us, cheap labor. But we worry about what we lost today. The constellation of possibility has gotten smaller. Dreams and legends cannot make this border life sustainable. We don’t expect to see Diego again. We’ll miss the donuts. A word from the author: I write in the hope of better understanding myself and the world around me. I hope I got it right here.

Trampoline tattered safety net ripped sliding off its poles in no condition to stop an errant jumper rusted springs rusted uprights But it still has bounce hedges stopped trying to get around started growing right through But it still has bounce maybe I’ll just remove the net clean up the springs front flips belly flops it still has bounce at the peak of jumps hair floating off your heads laughter escaping lips years go by in blinks The last vestige of childish play to leave this home Everyone has grown Pinstripes for a moment they remind me of my grief as everything beautiful does when grieving orange blocks in the sky separated by the thinnest strips of white cloud I’ve never seen a pinstriped horizon before but I’ve felt this grief for two months now windows down moonroof open COVID mask dancing on the rearview mirror Shit! I forgot about the papers on the backseat collected before soccer practice every day each one a teenage girl’s proclamation to wellness 98.7 97.6 99.1 98.1 97.7 97.6 Fuck it let them blow the blocks of sky morph orange to dull pink as I crest a hill I can’t remember us sharing a remarkable sunset I’m sure we had as kids time spent lying in the backyard grass calling out the shapes of clouds I always saw turtles. My daughter pops into the car picking her up from girls’ group A gathering of teenagers proclaiming their love of God and chicken fingers Check out that sky I know, I’ve been watching full deep pink now the thin white lines now dark thick navy Pink and blue the balloons tied to the dining room chair for tomorrow’s gender reveal party my first grandchild I couldn’t be happier but the grief reminds me as everything beautiful does when grieving How that grandchild will never meet their great-uncle

One Friday, when I was seven years old, Mama brought home single packets of cheese. They came packed together like little, yellow slices of love. Growing up, I didn’t often see cheese packets among the household groceries. We couldn’t always afford them, but I was always aware of them. They were in fairy-tale branded lunchboxes at school, across the table from me when I ate with my friends. They were in specific aisles at the Shoprite grocery store into which we rarely ventured. Most frequently, though, I saw them on TV, in strategically placed ads during my favourite shows. I lived with the cheese. It haunted and eluded me. When Mama brought these cheese slices home, I figured there must have been some special occasion. There was none, she told me, she just thought it would be nice to have once in a while. She gave each of us – Buti, my elder brother, Ami, my elder sister, and me – a little, yellow slice of love. They ate theirs immediately, the amateurs. A treat like that was to be savoured, forgotten until such time that its memory delighted you more than it had previously. I practiced delayed gratification daily. I was never allowed to swallow toothpaste, so after every brush, I would squeeze another dollop of toothpaste onto my brush and place it on the windowsill to dry. Then, after school, before everyone else got home, I could enjoy a piece of sweet, minty toothpaste candy. So, no, I would not eat my cheese right away. I would save it. I took my cheese slice, wrung it thoroughly between my fingers – the wringing did for the cheese what the sun drying did for the toothpaste, added a bit more pizzazz – and placed it in the fridge to eat the next morning. The wait would be long, even if only overnight. In the morning, I awoke blissfully oblivious to my hidden treat, only reminded when another strategic ad came on TV during one of my shows. And then delight came. I made my way into the kitchen and approached the fridge. The light came on as I opened it, but the mystery of it did not distract me. That day, it would not be a magic bulb operated by a tiny, invisible wizard. It would be, instead, a halo effect that illuminated my cheese. I stood on my tiptoes and reached for the compartment in which I’d deposited it just before bed. Nothing. I rummaged about, turning over the frozen peas, the sauces, opening the deceptive ice cream tub that contained rice, and even poked the old, lone tomato in the corner of one compartment, too squishy and stale to be touched by anyone. My cheese was gone. My little, yellow slice of love had been stolen from me. Who could have done it? An icy feeling rose inside me, and it wasn’t just the cold front from the still open fridge door, about to set off its tiny alarm to inform me the wizard needed a break. I left the kitchen with my mind racing, singling out family members and analysing possible motives. It couldn’t have been Papa. He only went to the kitchen to make his way out back to the kraal, to tend the sheep. And it couldn’t possibly have been Mama. She knew almost everything that went on in the house and she would have known that it was my cheese. Mama wouldn’t have done that to me. That left me with two probable culprits; Buti, whom I excused because we spent enough time together that I knew he was fair and truthful, and my sister. She and I were always at odds. If she took my cheese, I doubted she’d be honest about it. She wouldn’t help me make the case for Mama to give me another slice of cheese. She probably knew that when she did it. She probably enjoyed it, knowing it would taunt me. Ami sat in our room, staring dispassionately at her phone. I stood near the doorway and thought about how the confrontation would go, recounting to myself how previous ones had gone. She’d deny it. She’d say I was imagining things. It was meant to be a delightful morning, and I was not prepared for that kind of frustration. I turned reluctantly and went back to the kitchen. There was nothing to do but accept that my cheese was gone. I would have to wait until Mama decided to give us more. More… there was more cheese in the house! And… I knew where it was. Mama always let me help her put groceries away. It was because she trusted me. She knew I was disciplined and wouldn’t take things without permission. Buti and Ami hardly ever helped. I suppose Mama didn’t trust them like she trusted me. But was I about to break that trust? I hadn’t gotten my slice of cheese. Was I not entitled to my slice? Mama was outside doing laundry. I couldn’t ask her or explain what happened. I knew how it would look – like I was lying and just wanted more cheese. No, I couldn’t ask, so I had to take another slice and pass it off as mine. It wouldn’t be difficult because I was small, I was fast and I could be really quiet. But what would I say when someone saw me eating cheese? At least one person would know it wasn’t mine. So I needed a witness, someone to corroborate my story without being implicated in the lie, and I knew exactly who to trust. After taking the cheese and wringing it hurriedly, I walked to the living room where Buti had changed the channel to his favourite basketball show, Slam Dunk. I sat beside him and held up the cheese. “Buti, this is my cheese from yesterday. I just took it out of the fridge.” “No, it’s not,” he chuckled. “I ate your cheese from yesterday. That’s a new slice you just stole.” In all my years, I had never felt such a strange swirl of embarrassment, confusion, and betrayal. I sat there dumbstruck, thinking ‘Next time, I’ll eat my cheese right away!’ Rorisang Moerane is a poet and writer from Maseru, Lesotho with a passion for emotions. Some of her work has appeared in an anthology by Head and Hand Press, and she is a big fan of Charles Bukowski.

He sat in an all-night diner. A waitress who resembled Bela Lugosi crept then flew towards him. He was reading Ibsen, which he regretted. The weekend was nearly at an end, which, if he had not been dead these past seven years, might have mattered. What is it about the reluctance of ghosts? Some must have thought there was allure in the sucking of a milkshake through a straw, its indelible sounds when you reached the bottom. But it was more and less than that. The perfume of the cheap booth seats, kids talking nonsense, the forever light. Dylan Willoughby is a permanently disabled LGBTQIA+ writer, music producer, and photographer, born in London, England, and currently living in Los Angeles, CA.

The Tequila Shot ~ long lick of the tail feather flick tapering tail like a grass blade glass blade shoot of a cry and a gulp and a green shot salt on your tongue and creature compelling lime wedge green long tail of a glass beaker the tequila shot parakeeter singing like a loon you are a tune to make music to ~ Parakeet Lilypad ~ I lie on the surface as flat as I can my edges hold tension like nothing else I can float on the pressure beneath held by the density of my own suspension, my skin is a place to land bah-bah leaving ripples out wide water and air, bom-bom, I keep beat I am circle and snare ts-ts reeds brush my belly so softly by handfuls, I shiver and hear the soft watersnake hiss at the water line. tell me my rhythm as I float on by ~ Drum Three Musketears Mould iron on the Anvil mass Low through the rumble of the Long handled sound Everything shakes Under my Stare I am Not a victim of the Crash and the Underscore – I am the receipt I am the Steward, I am the strength under it all Swing up, Take your seat And stabilise your shaking limbs Press into my flanks, be held in the Eye of my Sound Victoria Punch is a voice coach and musician. Curious about voice and identity, the limits of language and how we perceive things; her poetry comes from these explorations. Published in the6ress, The Mum Poem Press (guest ed. Liz Berry) and Sledgehammer Lit. Forthcoming in Nightingale & Sparrow. Found on Instagram and Twitter @victoriapunch_

For Butch Baristas and Platform Docs My friend hand-crafts bulldog harnesses the style you always said would look great after you got top surgery. We’ve been lying in bed for the whole morning, drinking black tea because the french press we use never tastes quite right. I wanted to get you something, some gift other than the books that overflow bookshelves, or the poems I write about you, or the dried flowers that take up most of our bedroom walls, but I didn’t know how to properly size a harness, so the oxblood-red leather went unused, or rather used for a different customer, another butch. It’s been hot for days now, ninety-degree sun baking last week’s torrential downpour into the loam, or silt, or— well, you could tell me the soil composition, though you’d bemoan how your hands are too soft now, no longer farmer hands, despite the tomatoes you planted earlier this summer. It’s been hot, and I bought my first pair of sandals but still wore my platform docs on that two hour walk because I know you like how the extra three inches make it so your head rests right against my chest. It doesn’t matter if heels rub away into raw skin when I just want to spend all day lying next to you. And even though you now work for the government, and I sell books and pour wine, we both know how to pull a perfect shot of espresso, how the smell of used coffee grounds can cling to a person for days. Prayer for Justice i sink my teeth into bricks, into concrete push the grit out from between my gums there is always another question always another road that needs taking why must we feed our blood and sweat to these open maws these cavernous stomachs and probing tongues that belong to these worshipers of profit who have sacrificed compassion for an extra ten dollars an hour the tongues that belong to this vile idolatry of dividends we mourn in community or making bread from stolen grain we mourn by providing hot meals to friends to lovers to strangers in worn books and new zines in touch and in prayer G-d where is that fire you promised us where is your justice they speak of tzedek tzedek tirdof why must we always seek what you promise Avinu malkeinu honenu va'anenu ki ein banu ma'asim Aseih imanu tzedakah va'hesed v'hoshi-einu i'm sorry it's just we're dying down here I am caught on film The divine is undisputable how else could we accept the permanence of death. The divine is undisputable because we see it every day, whether we stop to look for it or not. The divine is undisputable because how else can we explain the world. It only takes a minute to look for it, to see it in the way asphalt splits as if it were trying to form rivers, or in the infinity of mycelium below feet and dirt. There is a shot in Solaris of reeds, or some other plant, flowing as if they were part of the river. It lasts maybe two or three minutes. It is proof that the divine is visible. In another film there is a shot of wood pulp or maybe asbestos flaking like snow in a derelict factory. Tarkovsky died soon after. The divine is undisputable because how else could we determine what is the river and what is not. The divine is undisputable because what else do we see in the current. Mangrove trees use their roots as stilts in salt oceans. Clouds may move or may not. The divine is undisputable because how else could we know what it means to move or stay still or both. The divine is undisputable because you can perform augury if you open your eyes wide enough and there is meaning in the stars and clouds and tea leaves and bones. One day we will be gone and yet we will not as if we were the clouds. The divine is undisputable because it is in neon lights and the warmth of the sun. Fire eats bones and trees speak. Do not move. Evelyn Bauer is a writer, bookseller, and wine punk living on stolen land in so called 'New England.' She is often found reviewing books, petting cats, and listening to experimental music. You can find some of her tabletop roleplaying games at https://eeveeholdsredbull.itch.io/, her poems in Moral Crema, Corporeal Lit Mag, and Not Deer Mag. Find her on twitter at @neo_cubist

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath. - H. Melville “Moby Dick” Mary had two suitors, cousins William “Billy” Martee and Matthew “Matty” Martee. The boys grew up in the fishery. Five in the morning they’d push off and trust the Old Man who captained them to take them to the waters where the cod ran in thousands. The nets would be into the water by eight, and they’d pull them in by hand at noon or no later than one. The nets would cut your hands to ribbons, and then the salt of the ocean would fill the cuts, and the old hands had old hands, white as an alabaster Christ, and scaled like Triton’s tail. The younger men, unmarried and conscious of their prospects, wore gloves. Three in the afternoon they’d be back on the docks, the catch to unload and the nets to mend, and each would have a measure of rum from the same small silver cup engraved with a St. Andrew’s medal and each would sing a verse in turn from old sailing songs. They’d be in bed by eight and then, the next morning, up by half of three or four to go out again. Billy said he thought he could live this way forever, and Matty said he thought he could too. Matty proposed marriage to Mary, like he thought he should. Mary, he said, I’ll build a boat and I’ll name it after ye. I’ll be captain of my own ship. I’ll be a bye no more. I’ll be a man worth the havin’. Will ye have me do ye think? All young men’s proposals have the firm capital of a half a bed and a mortgage on the promise of more good things to come. No, she said. I think I won’t. You’re a fine b’y Matty, she said, as fine as any here. But my heart is set on Billy. He’s promised me a house, a home and hearth of our own, warm against the winter, with a foundation of stone, and he’s a man too already aye, fair of hair and eye. I’ve told him yes, I have. I’ve promised already. I’ll have Billy. Matty Martee went off without a further word. What could he say? That he risked something in a proposal declined? Other men suffer as much. They find other wives and are often the better for it in the long, even if they feel worse in the short. Unlucky indeed is the man that hears yes on a bad match. But that his cousin, his friend, his Billy, had got the yes of it and hadn’t told him of it before or after, That it was kept a secret from him, perhaps that was where it lay wet and heavy on Matthew Martee’s soul. A month later the Old Man had them in rough water late in the season and they had a bad time of it coming back to shore. The last wave came up and hung there a moment above them, and the Old Man saw that it was over for them. He said I’m sorry b’ys, I’ve taken a bad tack and led ye to a bad turn. The blame is mine, and no one else’s. The ship tipped over on her port side and into dark water they went, men and catch, rum and Saint Andrew’s silver cup. Matty came up on a piece of the wreck, enough planking to float on, with his gaff in his hand. His purchase was secure and he looked about the flotsam for the other men and there were none but his cousin Billy to see above the water. Billy saw Matty on the last bit of the wreck that held hope of succor and made to swim over but when he got within his hand’s reach Matty pushed him off with the butt of his gaff. A second time Billy put out his hands up to his cousin. Again, Matty pushed him off. A third time, this time with the sharp and the hook, and Billy spoke before he sank beneath the water. You have undone me Matty, he said. You have undone me cruel and unfair. May Hell swallow you whole. When they sank, they were within sight of shore, but the wind and current and the stir of Leviathan in her sleep in the deepest deep took Matty away and back out to the bottomless black water and away from the eye and ear of home. When the ship didn’t come in the mothers and wives went out to the docks to watch the other men push off to search for the missing and then, when those men were gone, the women walked the shores. They were widows to a wreck, and found not so much as a scrap of cloth to bury. They were the heiresses of the sealers of the Newfoundland, its men left by the Captains Kearns to be frozen to death on the ice out on the hunt, and the Southern Cross, it’s men unfound, and other ships less famous. Sometimes there were remains to mourn, but mostly just memories. Still, they walked the shore. Mary walked with them, but she said nothing to any of the others about her two suitors, the cousins Martee. What was there to say? Finally, darkness came as it must. The cycles of the earth and the sun are eternal and were set by the creator when he first spoke a word upon the water of the primordial, and they stop not by the wishes of widows. When the darkness come to midnight Mary heard a voice outside her window. It was Billy, come up from the sea, and he was not so fair of hair and eye. He was strung with kelp and run rough with a dredge of sand, his skin scoured by ordeal and made the white of the old fishermen’s palms, and his eyes were already gone to the small creatures, who move fast in the darkness and the light alike. Mary, he said, Mary will you still have me? Matty has undone me he has, pushed me from the wreck with a gaff, and I have perished. He left me as you see me here. My God Mary, he said, they’ve even taken my eyes, the small, fast things. All this from the barb of Matty’s gaff, and him without a word of why. Mary, will you have me? Mary took him then, out of love, and he lay with her in her bed in her mother’s house like a man with a woman. In the morning when Mary’s mother came to wake her, she chided Mary, not for Billy, who was gone, but for the kelp and sand in Mary’s bed and the salt of the sea on her clothes still wet from the spray from when they’d walked the shore, for that is what Mary’s mother presumed. Only Mary knew that it was Billy, dissolved forever now, gone and run in rivulets back to the sea. A Portuguese trawler brought Matty in a week later. They’d found him and him alone, on his plank with his gaff, the day after the storm, afloat on seas so calm they seemed made of glass and you could see so far into the deep you thought you could see the glimmer of stars like as to the firmament above, the two things being not unlike one another. They didn’t speak much of English, and he none of Portuguese, but they were men of the sea and ships and by the laws they governed themselves by they took him on up and brought him on in to harbor and Matty had nothing to say to anyone but that they’d tipped over within sight of land and that he’d been the only one to come up from the wreck and he’d lived he knew not how, except by providence. A week since his return come up and went by and Matty made his way to Mary’s house and asked to see her and her mother in her mother’s kitchen. He spoke slowly this time, and carefully. This harbor is short a boat and crew, Matty said. I mean for the next boat and the next crew to be mine. I’ll build ye a house, he said. A house with a stone foundation, whitewashed, two stories high. A home and hearth for you, and for me, and for our children what come after. Mary, will you have me now? Mary would not speak so Mary’s mother made her answer for her. Yes, she said, yes. Mary will have ye. Mary looked at the floor and nodded. Yes, she will, her mother said, looking at Mary, and not at Matty. God only knows what moved the mother to accept the proposal on her daughter's behalf. Perhaps it was no more than it was a good match. Maybe too, she knew time is short for everyone, shorter than they think. She herself was the granddaughter of one of the sealers what went down with the Southern Cross. She knew of the woes of the sea, and that there was no stopping what may come. The end of it was that her daughter and Matty were wed two score of days past the sinking of the Old Man’s ship. There was a proper ceremony in the church and there was a roast beef dinner in the hall, with tatties and neaps and all the fixings and a fourth plate for every man who wanted one. Matty took her home then and carried her across the threshold and into the bedchamber, where Mary told him that come what may, she’d never lie with him of her own volition. She told him what Billy had told her when he came up eyeless from the sea, about Matty and his gaff and the hardness in his eyes. She told him that since Billy had come up from the water to lie with her, she’d not had her monthly, and that Billy’s child was filling her already, and that if should she choose to let people think it was Matty’s come early, Matty should count himself lucky by her grace. Matty held his silence then, and he did abide by her discretion. They slept in the same bed for sure, Mary sleeping without dreaming, without moving, and Matty sleeping hardly at all, acting out a pretense like a mummer. Six months later the baby came, and Mary’s water broke like brine and there was seaweed in it and it ran cold too, colder than the heat of her body by far, and a little boy followed, a baby made all of salt, eyeless, cold and scaled like old fishermen’s hands and without a heart to beat, a simulacrum not possessed of life. The midwife took the sad thing up but she could barely lift it in her arms, such was its weight. Ah, she said. A salt baby, born of some wreck and made from some misery, would that I had never seen such a thing. She left Mary with her mother and set the salt baby like a statue at the foot of the birthing bed. Matty then, he came in and took the baby away. He took the hard stone weight of him down to the sea and set him in the shallow water to wait there for the ebb tide, there to be reduced to nothing while Mary cried in her room with her mother silent by her side. It took three days for the salt baby to disappear into the sea. None of the small and quick and mean came up from depths to hasten the dissolution, for the child was all salt and as solid as a rock and besides, what need do the legions of the sea have for one more ration of salt? So, three days of tide. People heard of course, from the midwife’s tale. Credit goes to those who did not come to look, and shame falls upon those who did. Matty shipped out with an oiler out of Boston they said, and from there no one knows where he went, only that he never came back. Mary poor girl, they say, sometimes before storms she’ll walk to the shore in her very best dress and dare the sea to take her, to come up and get her if that’s what it wants, but it never does and even the roil of storm, the green foam on the black water, calms around her feet and in her footstep’s wake and that is her Billy, the last and least bit of him the salt in the brine, keeping her alright, her bare feet in the water all of the all of their hearth and home.

I. The Incredulity of Thomas An index finger points the way from beneath the altar at Santa Croce Church in Gerusalemme, Roma. Postmortem examinations record the appearance to be blackened at the tip to the first knuckle; ashen grey for the remainder; absent of nail; and an irregular, saw cut along the webbing. Like a fat cigarette that’s been snuffed out and soaked... I ponder this relic and imagine it in a clear, Petri-like dish, resting as a dial in a compass: coming to life with a shudder, spinning wildly, and settling its accusatory point on all passersby, incredulous with doubt—of its existence. II. The Virtue of Catherine The patron Saint of not only Rome but Italy and, eventually, all of Europe—Saint Catherine of Siena lost her head, literally, having been beheaded upon apprehension while doing papal espionage… rare for a woman in the Middle Ages. Her virtue had witnesses speak of levitation during prayer, stigmata, even the Eucharist flying out of a priest’s hand directly into her mouth. Her head rests on a pillow in Saint Maria Sopra Minerva Basilica in Rome. They say her body ghost walks through the maze of pews along the transept, nave, and apse, in search of her holiest of crowns. III. The Incorruptibility of Anthony Within a reliquary on the altar of The Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua, there sits the wet and incorruptible tongue of the very man. This patron of lost things—and noted orator—might be at a loss for words as to what he, himself, is missing. Dying from Edema in the year 1,231 AD, he was exhumed 32 years later in reinterment in his current resting place. While the Christian world makes pilgrimages and prays for his intercession in finding things or people lost, he—too—calls out for the return of what he needs to answer them. Keith Hoerner lives, teaches, and pushes words around in the Bible Belt of Southern Illinois.

2-1/2 cups plain flour: mother-in-law Vera 8 tablespoons butter: Dan, my husband. 1-3/4 cups sugar: “Let’s host my sister’s engagement party!” said he sweetly. 1-1/4 cups whole milk: our new kitchen. Said: “Let’s show it off!” 2 large eggs: Kayla and Kyle, bride-and-groom-to-be. They won’t last. Breakable. 1/4 teaspoon salt: Vera will rub it in at the party: “Ever gonna give me a grandbaby?” 1/2 cup lemon juice squeezed from her sneer. 2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder: my surprise. It’ll get a rise. 1/2 cup diced figs: fresh, gooey. To close mouths—including Dan’s—that may hang open. The flour and the eggs blend, pour on the sugar as butter opens the door. The mixture takes in the milk and our kitchen, sniffs: “Too white.” Bake that at 350˚F for 15-18 minutes. Cool, say: “My bun in the oven will take longer.” Sprinkling “Bitch” and/or icing sugar optional. Serve and enjoy. Karen Walker writes short fiction in Ontario, Canada. Her work is in Reflex Fiction, Sunspot Lit, Unstamatic, The Disappointed Housewife, Retreat West, FiveMinute Lit, Sundial Magazine, 100 Word Story, The EkphrasticReview, and others.