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In the reviews I’ve done thus far, I’ve spotlighted indie authors or debut publications. E Ethelbert Miller is not in that category. A quick google search will highlight his years as a poet, activist, and teacher, and the many awards and honors he’s gathered in those roles. In short, he’s a hugely accomplished and acclaimed poet and an inspiration to countless writers. One of Miller’s recent collections is If God Invented Baseball, highlighting his passion for the game. Over the course of a month, I had the opportunity to chat with Miller, visit the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, and read the collection. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is in the historically Black 18th and Vine neighborhood of Kansas City, less than a mile from downtown. Walking there involves passing under an interstate highway and several desolate blocks, a geography I’d guess isn’t happenstance. The museum shares a building with the American Jazz Museum and the nearby streetlights have banners proclaiming, “Let’s Play At 18th & Vine”, some featuring jazzmen, others ball players. There are several colorful murals and a few jazz clubs around, including the famed Blue Room which is connected to the museum. The Negro Leagues Museum was free for Black History month with donations accepted. My donation made, I entered and the first image I encountered was a painting of Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher who also graces the cover of Miller’s collection. Paige’s legend and accomplishments are unmatched in baseball. His semi-professional career started at age 18, he first pitched in the majors at 42, and threw his last major league pitch at 59. He is reported to have won over 2000 games, thrown a ball at 105 mph, and often told his fielders to sit down while he proceeded to strike out the side. Miller writes about Paige in “Rain Delay”: The rain stops in mid-air like Satchel Paige throwing his hesitation pitch or the Supreme Court deciding it’s all deliberate speed when it comes to integration. Satchel’s hesitation pitch was designed to fool the batter. Miller’s poem, like many in the collection, might fool us into thinking it’s just about baseball when soon we’re taken into a history lesson or a jazz riff. “The Boys of Summer” ends with the line: Our mothers talking about Jackie Robinson and how Willie Mays learned to catch a ball while turning his back, running full speed as if he were Emmett Till. Willie Mays made “The Catch” in the first game of the World Series, September 1954. A year later, Jackie Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to their first ever World Series win over the vaunted Yankees. Emmett Till was brutally lynched in between those events in August 1955. Connect those basepaths. Miller was generous with his time and talking with him was a great pleasure as well as a challenge to keep up with the pace of his mind and references. The conversation jumped between baseball, literary, historical, and family topics. When I told him that my interest in baseball was reignited after years of dormancy by my son’s baseball career (my own little league career included a mere three hits across three seasons), he thought for a moment then tossed at me, “How did baseball influence your parenting?” It wasn’t a softball. Later in the conversation, I asked Miller his opinion of the pitch clock, an innovation Major League Baseball introduced last season to speed up the games. He took me to the theater. “Imagine a phone rings during a play. We need the character to be on one side of the stage and the phone on the other. The character has to walk the entire stage to get to the phone.” Point taken. The Negro Leagues Museum is a collection of treasures. Newspaper cutouts, old gloves and bats, ticket stubs, and uniforms fill cases. There’s also a mini baseball diamond with statues of the legends. Satchel Paige is, of course, on the mound, throwing to Josh Gibson, arguably the greatest power hitter to wield a bat. Cool Papa Bell, one of the fastest players ever, hangs out in center. There was a joy to these portrayals which also came through in the quotes and videos. But there was also the reality of Black life in America. “There was no place between Chicago and St Louis where we could stop and eat … So many times we rode all night and not have anything to eat, because they wouldn’t feed you,” Bill Yancey, New York Black Yankees. Imagine playing a game at the highest level in front of thousands of fans and then having to sit hungry and dirty for hours on a bus. I found a quote from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the powerful and racist baseball commissioner, saying he strongly opposed the barnstorming games between the Negro League and MLB teams. He knew his teams were more likely than not to lose. I was moved by the history, imagining the lives of these men, living their dreams by playing a game, in a country where the fleetness of their feet could also save their lives. I was also moved by my fellow museum visitors. I walked in parallel with a father and his daughter, a girl of about seven or eight. She laughed, pushed him along, grabbed his phone to take pictures, but also stopped and made pointed observations about the men in uniforms who could have been one of her great-grandfathers or uncles. One of my favorite poems in Miller’s collection is “The Trade”, recounting his experience as a boy upon learning he was going to switch to an all-white school. It closes with: You give your mom a Curt Flood look And your dad nothing at all. You turn From the doorway and walk to your room. You feel traded. You feel betrayed. And then, just as the Negro Leagues Museum gives way to the Jazz Museum, the poem moves into music. Outside your window the birds are chirping blues. Ma Rainey is singing about the Mississippi risin’. Sam Cooke calls from next door and says “Yes, a flood is comin’ and a change is gonna come.” In both the painting and the book cover, Satchel Paige looks tired, impatient. When is that change gonna come? The brilliant poet Matthew Johnson, who shares many of Miller’s sensibilities, argues in “Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever” that Paige’s weariness may have come from not being the first Black player in the MLB. That after decades of setting the groundwork, Carrying black baseball on your back for well over a decade Someone else was chosen, and you weren’t the first one 𑁋 A change did come and Paige made it to both to the show and eventually to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The Hall of Fame at the Negro League Museum will have no more members, yet it remains as relevant as ever. Visit the museum, read E Ethelbert Miller and Matthew Johnson, and push for more change. Links E Ethelbert Miller’s work is widely available. You can find If God Invented Baseball many places. One is linked below as well as a terrific interview in which he discusses and reads from the collection. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/If-God-Invented-Baseball/E-Ethelbert-Miller/9781947951006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUb6wVtmgE Matthew Johnson’s poem cited above was published and nominated for an award by this press. Link to the poem and his full collections below. https://roifaineantarchive.wixsite.com/rf-arc-hive/post/an-interpretation-of-why-caged-birds-sing-maybe-i-ll-pitch-forever-by-matthew-johnson https://www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com/book Negro Leagues Baseball Museum https://www.nlbm.com/

I read novels for so many reasons including to travel, to learn, to think, to escape, to immerse myself in the lives of characters, and to appreciate language. Christina Cooke’s debut novel, Broughtupsy, meets all of these markers and more. Broughtupsy is the story of Akua, a twenty-year-old queer Jamaican woman living in Canada via Texas. We meet Akua at her twelve-year-old brother, Bryson’s, hospital bedside. Bryson dies early in the story leaving Akua and her father bereft. The final member of the family, Tamika, the older sister, comes neither for Bryson’s last days nor his funeral. Akua, grieving the loss of a brother and a relationship decides to return to Jamaica with Bryson's ashes in a wooden box to find her long-lost sister. We quickly see that the relationship between the sisters is tense. Akua is angry with her sister for abandoning the family. Tamika, devoutly religious, is openly hostile to her sister’s sexuality, calling her “strange” and telling her that has no place in Jamaican society. Early on, Cooke gives us the intimacy of a car scene, complete with all the sights and sensations of the Kingston road. The language soars. We continue up, up, passing half-built houses with rebars turning red with rust. Silence fills the car like smoke as Tamika turns down a side street, pulling off the road then parking on a green bank. I turn to her, my questions shattered into splinters burrowing deep into my insides. The image of splinters gives us a visceral view into Akua’s state of mind as she tries to cope with both her sister and native land. The narrative continues with the tension between the sisters ramping up. To get away, Akua sets out solo to explore the city, often stopping to leave literal bits of Bryson across the city. These trips are ones which encompass the past and the present as Cooke’s expertly takes us back and forth in time, following the patterns of Akua’s mind. Wild goats munch on patches of weeds next to shops closed up behind zinc shutters, graffiti scrawled on top. … Boys in dirty khakis and girls in pink dresses come running toward the bus and I remember! I don’t know where I’m going, but I know where I’ve been. I remember staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, at my own brown tunic with pleats starched crisp. First day of first form. I was ten years old. As Akua grapples with her past across three countries, in the present, she meets Jayda, another “strange” woman. Here Cooke ratchets up the novel’s tension several notches. We see intense scenes between the sisters, passion between the queer women, and roof blowing scene on the occasion of Akua’s baptism in Tamika’s church. Cooke’s prose captures the big and the small, from street-level details to the largest of emotions. No spoilers, but the novel’s last scene is as beautiful as anything I’ve read in a while. This rich novel takes us on a multifaceted journey though space, time, identity, sexuality, and the struggles of family. Broughtupsy (a phrase used several times in the novel) is a force and a must-read. I read in an interview with Cooke where she said she hoped her future works would involve “more insightful explorations of who we are and what we want as told from a Jamaican and immigrant lens.” Yes, yes, yes. Read Broughtupsy as we await more exceptional work from Christina Cooke. You can pick up your own copy of Broughtupsy here.

“So many things, so many experiences, seem to be about the breaking of a woman, and not the mending of her.” This line from “At My Gynecologist, the Ghost Gloves Go to the Garbage and the Too-Green Girls Become a Little Less Green” the first essay in Exodus Octavia Brownlow’s razor-sharp collection, I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can?, sets the table for what’s to come. In a series of essays, following her own growing up, Brownlow shares experiences and observations on how the world seeks to put down and demean women, Black women in particular. The essays center Black women in relation to one another and to the larger world. The book’s third offering, “Stories from my Grandma’s Body”, follows the author’s thoughts on the day before her Grandma is to begin a diet. She tenderly recounts her Grandma’s history with longing and beauty. “Stories from her breasts, where babies have sipped, and slept, and grew.  … Stories from her hands that have slapped against reluctant biscuit dough, and against my rebellious brown bottom.” Brownlee’s prose is intimate and flowing as she pushes back against the idea of diet, wishing that her Grandma could live forever in her “big, beautiful body.” In the second set of essays, Brownlow tackles the complexity of hair for Black women. She describes the processes for Black hair care – which of course vary with the style, her decision to go natural, and the historical and social implications of the choices made by Black women in this regard. Early in the first essay, “Love & Nappiness: On Hair, Race and Self-Worth 2016”, she addresses the question of “why the hell hair matters so much to the black community?” She then gives us definitions of good and bad hair, followed by a funny but painful scale upon which Black women are rated for attractiveness involving hair, African features (or lack of), and body shape. We learn about her hair journey and “nappiversary”. In writing through her process and decision-making, Brownlow gives us a close window into her thoughts and emotions at different stages and the reactions from others along the way. And lest someone who looks like me, might think, It’s just hair, what’s the big deal?, she hits us with the line, “Appearances are important, when black girls are suspended from school for literally wearing their hair as it naturally grows from their scalps.” In the third set of essays, Brownlow’s takes us up to the present. We see her with her grandmother again, and we see her moving through the South, the complexities of the past and present intertwined. In “We Deserve More Black Stories with Happy Endings”, she writes: “Yes, I want to write the happy endings despite all of the obstacles, and I am aware that happy endings for black people exist, but in many ways, they are simply conditional. Conditional, until we are pulled over by the wrong kind of cop.” This line leaps off the page, showing us how a happy ending in a Black life can explode in any moment. In her last essay, Brownlow describes being told by an older white man that she reminds him of the “old south.” Is that the south with “whites only” bathrooms, the America with sundown towns, a nation with slavery, or the current south with confederate statues which still loom over the town square? Reading Brownlow, these questions and so many more, hit us square on. Among her many gifts as a writer is to dance between the present and the past, the idealist and the realist, and the verbiage of the academic and the parlance of the storyteller. In a recent New York Times essay on the mid-twentieth century Black novelist Chester Himes, the writer S.A. Cosby says of Himes: “His implacable drive to examine the Black experience, the disingenuous nature of the American dream, the reality of pain and sorrow and what it does to the soul – that is what makes him the bard of the existential African American psyche.” With this collection of unsparing essays, Brownlow puts herself squarely in this tradition. One can only hope that as we get more work from this remarkable writer, that the moral arc of the universe does bend toward justice, and that there may be movement toward happy endings. You can pick up your own copy of I’m Afraid That I Know Too Much About Myself Now, To Go Back To Who I Knew Before, And Oh Lord, Who Will I Be After I’ve Known All That I Can? here.

“Spring break meant a trip south of Atlanta to Georgia’s fat bottom.” When I finished Ra’Niqua Lee’s collection of flash stories, For What Ails You, published by ELJ Editions, I decided to play a game: open a random page and look for language. “The first ghost she meets isn’t dead. He has coke-bottle glasses.” “Happy as the raisin in potato salad flock.” “When Ginny aches deep enough to betray her own self, she will invite the wild girl out for drinks.” “Pretty Women get kissed at 4 AM. Lisa made the mental note as the reassuring smell of sulfur from the chemical plant blew in from down the street.” In lines such as these which drop into every story, we see Lee’s gifts for magical language and storytelling explode from the page. In “Remedies in Riding” Ginny pushes her bike so as to catch or perhaps run from the wild girl. “The Ghosts of Our Lives” brings us a young asthmatic girl, struggling for breath and caught between an uncertain future and the past which keeps showing up. Lisa, the protagonist in “Skeleton Cat”, learns to live with the sulfur smell, hooking up doggy style with a man who won’t look at her, and her neighbors whom she loves despite their constant noise. Lee describes herself as a “hood feminist”, her characters Southern Black women struggling and succeeding both in pain and beauty. Their stories are stories of the soil, often blood soaked, whether it be in the burning protest summer of 2020 or a visit to Stone Mountain, a homage to the Confederacy where “the man on the golf cart collecting trash is Black.” In several stories, Lee balances race with the ritual of football including “Saviors, Spells, and American Tragedies”, a flash story with the thematic reach of a novel. The 48 stories in the collection come fast and furious, some lasting less than a page. Characters such as the Prostitute Nurse, and Grace, a single woman who contemplates her sister’s family and the accompanying advances from her brother-in-law, recur. The reading can be challenging as we try to take in the themes through the dazzle of the language. I often found myself needing to slow down to take in the flash fiction. Finally, Lee’s tales take us into the supernatural. Besides ghosts, we see a woman fly, felines with no flesh, “Horse man”, and a collection ending mermaid. These characters challenge us to see and think beyond what is, beyond our limited perception, beyond our stereotypes, and into the possible. With For What Ails You, Lee announces herself as a storyteller for our time, one who gives us an imaginative tour de force while holding a mirror to the sins of our past and present. Grab this collection and anticipate future work from this magical writer. You can get your own copy of For What Ails You by Ra’Niqua Lee here.

“They gave Jada an ultimatum: do the work or get kicked out. Ayanna delivered the news during indie. ‘You’re here to face what happened, learn from it, and thrive.’” These are the opening lines from LaToya Jordan’s novella “To the Woman in the Pink Hat” published by Aqueduct Press in March 2023. Aqueduct’s mission is to “bring challenging feminist science fiction to the demanding reader.” Jordan’s novella, part of the press’ “Conversation Pieces”, does just that. Without giving away too much of the masterful plot which Jordan unravels at a steady pace, we soon learn that Jada is a young Black woman in the year 2040. She’s committed a violent crime and is now confined to the Center, an alternative to prison and place where she is to undergo rehabilitation in the form of various therapy sessions. Ayanna is her AI therapist who plays good cop / bad cop with her human therapist, Zoe. Both therapists have the goal of getting Jada to relive and confront her crime whether in the world of her mind or that of virtual reality. Despite the odd fact that Jada and the other young women in the center are called “Leaders”, the set up seems straight forward. That is until we begin to learn more of Jada’s background. Prior to her crime, she was a member of the SUs. “People already called us a gang, but we called ourselves a movement. Someone on the social came up with the moniker SU, and we went with it. It stood for stolen uterus and we thought Sue sounded safe and all-American for a group of brown girls out for justice … and maybe a little blood.” Ah, here we are into the Sci-Fi part. A group of girls whose uteruses have been stolen? A movement which some view as a gang? It’s impossible to read “The Woman in the Pink Hat” without thinking about the last few years. Years in which Black Lives Matter has been vilified. Years in which a 13-year-old Black girl in Mississippi is raped and forced to give birth in a post-Dobbs nation (https://time.com/6303701/a-rape-in-mississippi/). And years in which Black and brown skinned immigrants are said to “be poisoning the blood” by the former president. Late in the novella, Jada recalls a speech she delivered to her fellow SUs before her arrest. “The people who did this wanted to hurt us so they could go back to a time when Black folk are ruled by them. They were afraid of what would happen in a country where they were outnumbered by POCx.” These words ring all too true in 2024, taking us from the future to the present and it was impossible to read the novella without surges of anger in which I had to put the book down and breathe. But Jordan’s work is storytelling and not political allegory. There’s a strong narrative with Jada as a compelling and very human character at its center. As more of her backstory is revealed, we are moved by her family history. No spoilers here, but readers will come across an intimate and beautifully rendered scene from her past. Ultimately, Jordan answers the major plot questions including the identity of the woman in the pink hat and the true purpose of the Center. But the age-old questions of justice remain and Jordan ends the novel with a homage to a timeless quote from a leader in a previous age. “To the Woman in the Pink Hat” succeeds as story and conversation piece leaving us plenty to think about as we await the next work from Jordan. You can pick up your copy of "To the Woman in the Pink Hat" by LaToya Jordan at Aqueduct Press: https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-236-7.php

INHERITED MEMORY: BACK FROM THE MIKVEH Setting: penumbra of lamplight, clothed in warm flannel, back from the mikveh, my bleeding done. You—always a stranger beside me— a gentleman in front of others. A monster with drink, in bed a voracious animal or an exhausted peasant. And me, who am I? A victim of the brutal night? Or a stranger’s cruelty—? A rapacious husband who pretends passivity during the day? A bristle of beard on soft skin. Can this be illuminated in the melting darkness? AVALANCHE The cornice above the granite face hovers a shiver from disaster. A ski edge, a dog paw is all it needs to release the suspended energy of time’s snowy curtain. Did the ravens and spiders who guard this kingdom abandon their vigil? Does the snow misting behind the avalanche have memory? Do I have to remind you, his mother expected him, praising his prowess in the snow? How quick a river can become a riptide, a wave a tsunami. How the flesh compresses under the weight of ice— how life is stilled. The phone call in the night, the answering machine message retrieved in the morning. The mother’s voice; My son, my only child; the dog in the snow, distraught, searching. The father gazing nightly thereafter into his blazing bonfires, a ticking timepiece, the forsaken dreams, superhero figures unearthed in the yard years later. From where? All that remained. Laura Celise Lippman’s work has appeared in Apricity Magazine, Avatar Review, Brief Wilderness, The Broken Plate, Chained Muse, Courtship of Winds, Crack the Spine, Crosswinds, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Flights, Glassworks Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hey I’m Alive Magazine, La Presa, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Perceptions Magazine, Plainsongs, Pontoon Poetry, Poydras Review, Journal of Family Practice, The Meadow, Neologism Poetry Journal, New English Review, Red Ogre Review, Sin Fronteras/Writers Without Borders, Spotlong Review, Synkroniciti, and The Vashon Loop. She is a co-author of the book Writing While Masked, Reflections of 2020 and Beyond. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She practiced medicine for thirty-seven years and raised two children in the Pacific Northwest. Since retirement, she continues to take poetry courses at Hugo House in Seattle. She enjoys the outdoors and sharing her wonder at the natural world.

ANNIVERSARY I stick my thumb out and demand a ride. It’s our anniversary. Of the day we died in our last lives. I want to celebrate with you—catch up over coffee, then find a room to catch up on all things pent up. I pray whoever just complied with the thumb’s demand isn’t a creep. I point every few streets, he turns as I direct, until we are forty-five minutes away from where he meant to end up. We start pulling through what looks like our old town, and I see what looks like our favorite café: same beaten-up exterior, same yellow walls. I don’t know why I remember so much, or why I was stuck remembering if I wasn’t given the power to find you. I start crying. The driver doesn’t interrupt, just rolls down my window, puts on a song. When he drops me, he tells me, “I’m sorry, whatever it is, I’m sorry.” I tell him, “Thank you,” before shutting the door. Everywhere I go I do not know what I will find, but I cry just in case it’s still not you, all over again. WHEN I SAY LONELINESS I’m at a restaurant. The walls are white, the lighting fluorescent. The waiter is glued to the kitchen, barely checks in. To my right, there are stacks of unused chairs. I counted them: fourteen. The fly in my soup gets lodged in my throat, and is humming along to the Lucy Dacus song playing in my ears. When the waiter makes his way back over, I ask for another of the exact same thing, and swallow it down fast so that the fly can have someone to talk to. He buzzes as if to say thank you, and I breathe as if to say I know what it’s like. ART + PAIN > NO PAIN, NO ART I say look ma, I made art, and her eyes fall to the ground. The vase she dropped only a moment ago Is now enhanced in its beauty by some pinecones I found in our backyard and some flowers I picked From the front. She says that’s great, hon, but the Shards will still make your feet bleed, and proceeds to sweep away all my goddamned work. PSYCHIC The psychic folds over a card and leaves me to stare at it. She carefully chooses one that says I will die in the near future. I reach for the dictionary to define “near” but she slams her hand against the book and holds tight—I can’t slide it out from under her. She gets up to fix me tea. She even tells me to take my coat off, she’ll wash it for me. She says she wants to spend some time together, make a day of it. She says we don’t have much time. I reach again for the book for a definition of “much.” And I guess she doesn’t trust me anymore; she throws the book into the fire across the street that wasn’t there when she started to toss, but I guess she saw it coming. I have checklists of what I want to feel before dropping dead, and if I’m low on time, I need someone who’s going to do all the work, make me feel all of it at once. She tells me there’s a man who plays guitar on the same street corner every night, gives me the coordinates, says when he plays he looks just as impassioned as I do when I’m hunched over sheets of looseleaf, agonizing over words. She promises that he, too, thinks driving into the mountains at 4:00 in the morning is the most important thing a person could possibly do. Sounds like my kind of guy. I get my ticket for the subway and tell the woman, her hand on a pole, that I have finally found something worth holding on for. She asks me where it is, and I tell her, I don’t know— I lost the coordinates—left the boy on the corner for somebody else to find, because I already have it, just by knowing it is possible. And because I know everything I have ever wanted is out there, I don’t need it, not even any of it! I let myself fall asleep, deciding that I’ll get off at whichever stop I wake up. How can it be that both things are true? I am dying, and everything is possible. Danielle Lisa is a poet born and raised in Long Island, New York. Her mother knew Danielle would grow up to be a poet because, as a child, poetry would get her to stop crying. Now at twenty-six, poetry doesn't get her to stop crying, it makes her start. She has been published in Waxing & Waning and her poem "I'm Convinced You Actually Liked the Whole Wheat Pancakes" will be published in an upcoming edition of Rattle.

Lying in bed one night, I found a lump on my testicle. This was Spring 2009; I had recently turned thirty. To be certain, I fondled the protuberance with my fingertips, discreetly worrying at it until there was no room for doubt – a small node on the right side not present on the left. My heart sank, my stomach roiled in queasy appreciation. This was it, the moment you think will never happen to you. Certainly not in your twenties but they, it seemed, were long gone. As I lay there, my wife beside me (oblivious to my intestinal turmoil), I made a snap decision – the single most imbecilic, feeble and contemptible of my life. I would ignore it. If I pretended it wasn’t there, maybe it would go away. I said goodnight, turned off the lights, and lay there staring into space. Why had I reacted like this? I had one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met lying right next to me yet my instinct was not to mention it. Rather than share, which would have allowed me to tap into the unwavering reservoir of support that my wife, Kim, provides, I chose to hide it. Simple: embarrassment. It was too much. Not the embarrassment of becoming ill, (although the idea that my immoderate lifestyle was finally catching up on me, you reap what you sow, the pigeons coming home and all that, did cross my mind as I lay there pretending to sleep), but of having to show a doctor my junk. I was so mortified by the idea that in that instant, I made the fateful decision. It was preferable to slowly die of testicular cancer than to get it checked out. I fell into an uneasy sleep. This secret, that I had a tumor in my bollix, I lived with for months. I compartmentalized the issue, stored it neatly amongst the bric-a-brac of long-lost friends and childhood clothes at the back of my brain. Nightly I would check and recheck my right testis to see if I could be mistaken, hoping beyond hope that somehow this lump would miraculously disappear, but to no avail. Every time I checked, there it was on my right, there it wasn’t on my left. The old queasiness would roll through me and I would turn over, close my eyes, and hope that when I awoke the next morning, it would have all been a bad dream. After the first year, I became aware that the growth was living up to its name. Previously, when I first noticed it, it had been more or less the size of a pumpkin seed, whereas now it had doubled to the size of a pea. There was no pain, no tangible decline in my fitness, no erectile dysfunction, no hair loss (which I know is caused by the treatment of cancer rather than the cancer itself but the association is strong). No ill effects to speak of at all. This did not, however, inspire confidence. I may have felt fine, but it was inevitable, the tumor was metastisizing inside me. It was only a matter of time, I was sure, until the ticking bomb in my ball sack went boom. Still, I kept shtum. The bigger fear, even bigger than dying from a disease slowly but surely forming in my very core, was to have to expose myself to a medic. This is far and away the most pathetic thing about the whole story. I had conditioned myself to think this way. It was hard-wired into me. Years upon years of schoolyard banter, taunts by friends at me or more likely by me at friends, had emotionally stunted me to such an extent that I was paralyzed with fear. Death was preferable to potentially opening myself up to ridicule. A literal case of toxic masculinity if ever there was one. This is all the more embarrassing to admit given that Kim had just given birth to our first child. During this time, as practically all pregnant women do, Kim had undergone any number of smears and scans and prods and probes, yet I couldn’t even bring myself to get checked for cancer? Not just putting my own risk at health, but potentially tearing our newborn family apart just as we were starting a life together. Another year passed. Still no illness, no pain in the marrow, no thinning hair (I’m aware I’m an idiot, this is the point). We were trying for another child, we wanted a bigger family, and after several months, Kim became pregnant again. We were over the moon. So much so, we decided not to wait until the traditional twelve-week mark to tell people, but instead told friends and family at around week nine. What was the worst that could happen? we reasoned. If there did end up being a problem, surely it would be better for our friends and family to know than have to go through it alone. The theory soon got put to the test. At the next scan, week eleven or so, we were told the pregnancy was ectopic, the foetus was, for want of a more medical term, stuck in one of Kim’s fallopian tubes. We were to lose the child but, with immediate treatment, they may be able to save the tube. A hammer blow, we were devastated, but, thankfully, we didn’t have to go through it alone. Our friends and family swiftly rallied around. Kim subjected herself to more probes and scrapes, pills and poisons, and I did my second-best to support her. I did everything, absolutely everything I could, except, of course, from subject myself to anything remotely similar. God forbid. What if somebody poked fun at me? Another year passed. The lump had, at least, remained pea-sized throughout. This did little to encourage me though. I was sure this could only mean the tumor was boring inwards, its ever-metastasizing carcinogens seeping deep into my dick, my other ball, my spine. By now, I knew, I could be riddled, and there would be nothing I could do about it. Through a mixture of embarrassment and prudishness, I had let myself die. I’d destroyed our family. Finally, one night, after more than three years of procrastinating, I mentioned it to Kim. You need to get that checked, she said without hesitation. No drama, no molly-coddling, just straight. She was right, I agreed, there was no time to lose. Two weeks later, a helpful porter escorted me into a room in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin, asked me to take a seat on the trolley and wait. The Ultrasound Doctor would be along shortly. A minute later, in walks a young, female doctor, extremely attractive, who asks me to lie back on the gurney and pull down my pants. This was it. The moment I had been dreading for so long, that I had put my health at risk for. What if, God forbid, she laughed at me or, even worse, I had an erection. Dublin is a small place; this woman could easily know people I know. With no small sense of horror and shame, I did as I was told. The doctor was in no mood to hang about. Without the faintest amusement, repulsion, or admiration for that matter, she slopped a dollop of KY on my ball sack and began nudging my nuts with a sonographic probe. The experience was neither pleasant nor in any way, shape or form, arousing. It was perfunctory and sterile, and the doctor, like every other medic in the country, was actually there to help, not to laugh at or tease me like an immature child. You’ve a cyst, she said matter-of-factly. Is that, like... cancer? Oh no, an epididymal cyst. They’re quite common, really. Oh. Ok, I said, my fears evaporating like the mists of a new dawn. So, what do I do about it? Nothing. Just ignore it. It’s not dangerous. If it gets too big, come back in and see us. How big is too big? The size of a fist. At this, I almost choked on my own relief. The notion of having something the size of a fist tucked neatly betwixt my balls was abhorrent. Whenever it gets to bothering you, she reassured. Here, she said, handing me a ream of blue tissue paper, clean yourself up. That’s it for today. I went home to Kim. Everything was going to be okay. Part 2 A decade passes. A second daughter is born, then a third. We have the family we have always dreamed of. My cyst is not yet, thankfully, the size of a fist. It is, however, the same size as the other two spheroids in my sack. This was considerably disconcerting, especially when playing football. I took one to the balls a couple of times that year and the pain was the usual agony but exacerbated by a crippling fear. The cyst might burst, I thought, leading to who knows what kind of a mess down there. There was only one solution. My third ball, the superfluous bollock, had to go. I told my doctor the situation and we booked in for another scan. This was the diagnosis. Below is your ultrasound report. There are several things that can go amiss in one's sack and you have more than your fair share. Good news is none of them will harm you unless they get too big and even then are only an annoyance to be removed. Your visit to the urology clinic in June will be infinitely more valuable with this done in advance and ideally they will offer you the chance to have some of these extraneous items removedThere is a 4.2 by 4 cm cyst in the head of the right epididymis, this has increased considerably in size since examination of 02/11/2012.There are small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. There is a small left hydrocoele. No other focal abnormality in either testis is demonstrated. Conclusion: Interval increase in size of right epididymal head cyst. Small bilateral varicocoeles, larger on the right. 4.2 by 4cm cyst. Slightly larger than your standard ping pong ball. Two months later, having fasted for eight hours, I arrived at Loughlinstown Hospital for surgery. I met the consultant leading the operation, he made some crass joke about me being lucky to have three balls (obviously went to an all-boys school too), and I was escorted to wait in a ward. A few minutes later, I was in a cloud of blues and whites, six medics surrounding me. The mask went on and the lights went out. I awoke back in the ward, groggy and weak. The surgery had been a success, I was told. I had pain along the centre line of my scrotum where the incision had taken place, but apart from that, all was well. The cyst had been removed; my balls were back to normal. Kim kindly picked me up, three relieved daughters in the back seats, and we went home. Despite having been under for two hours, or perhaps because of this, I was still exhausted by the time we got home. I shuffled into the living room, lay down on the couch, and promptly fell fast asleep for another hour. Then, at about eight p.m., I made my way upstairs, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed to sleep the whole thing off. Part 3 Break the fucking lights. This is what I asked – no, correction – begged of Kim as she pulled up behind a couple of cars at the junction of Ailesbury and Merrion road. Run the fucking lights, I screeched in hysterics, another wave of pain crashing over me. Run the fucking lights! It was astronomical, the pain, like nothing I had felt before. I was teetering, on the verge of passing out. I needed to be in the Emergency Department fifteen minutes ago, when the pain was only threatening to pull me apart. Not now, too late, when it already felt like I’d been shot. The lights turned green, Kim raced through, pulling up in an ambulance bay where a kindly porter fetched a wheelchair and helped me into triage whilst Kim parked the car. I’ve always fancied myself to have a reasonable tolerance for pain. I’ve played rugby with twisted ankles, broken fingers, a broken thumb. Every tackle sent a white-hot jolt up my arm as my thumb inevitably banged off the opposing player’s hip, but I played on, then strapped it up the following week and togged out again. This was different. For one thing, the pain was bigger, much, much bigger. It felt as if somebody had affixed a clamp to my gut and was slowly but surely jacking it apart. Like a hole was ripping inside me and it was only a matter of time until my guts spilled out on the floor. Then there was the fear. Despite not being localized there, the pain could only be emanating from my most delicate point. Something had gone wrong with the surgery and now there really was a problem down there. The pain was excruciating. I sat in my wheelchair in the E.D. waiting room and whimpered inconsolably. Eventually, after an interminable half hour, I see an administrator. He asks me some details. My brain is too scrambled to communicate effectively but thankfully Kim is by my side, (in sickness and in health) and relays the pertinent points. How I had had an operation, what time the surgery, what time the pain kicked in, etc, etc. Did you do any strenuous activity when you got home? Not a thing. Slept on the couch for an hour, then went upstairs and went to bed. You walked up the stairs? he asks incredulously, as if I had broken the cardinal rule of cyst excision. This stair-shaming did little to alleviate the pain. Yes, I mewled desperately, mea culpa. I had walked upstairs. At this point, or some indeterminate length of time thereafter – time had ceased to move forward but was instead caught in an eddy, slowly but surely dragging me down with it – I was shown through to the ward and assisted onto a trolley. Kim was not able to follow me through so reluctantly turned away and, without any concrete understanding of what was going on inside her husband, headed home. My trolley and I were wheeled into the middle of a busy E.D. and deposited there to wait our turn. I can talk (even if only to groan), I can breathe, I am not bleeding. I am demonstrating no immediate risk to life. Ergo, my problems can wait. At least a full five agonizing hours later, a cannula is finally inserted into my vein, I am administered a shot of morphine and slump into an exhausted heap. The opioid hits me like a cold blast. The pain, the incessant, interminable pain, is finally gone. I sleep. Part 4 Briefly. I am awoken by a drunk woman who is shouting outside my door (unbeknownst to me, I have been wheeled into one of seven rooms which stem off the central station), threatening to fight the entire staff on duty. No particular reason, as far as I could make out, but she was well up for a scrap. I look down at my stomach. There, where the pain still resides despite the lingering effects of the drug, is a dark purple bruising. Two inches wide, slightly below and to the right of my naval. The penny drops. Internal bleeding. The scab on my right epididymis where the surgeon cauterized the wound must have come off and I’ve been bleeding into my abdomen. This is a relief. Yes, the pain is still monstrous but at least I now know what’s going on. I lie back down and listen to the soothing sounds of an Emergency Department in full flow and soon fall back to sleep. Shortly after, I would guesstimate at about four in the morning, I feel the need to pee. With an abundance of care, I ease my legs off the trolley and, wincing, take to my feet. I stick my head out the door. All is quiet now, relatively speaking. The mad woman has been sedated, there are few shouts or cries. I tread my way to the toilet, lock the door behind me, stand in front of the bowl, and pull out my penis. Still groggy, but having done this literally thousands and thousands of times, I take aim, close my eyes, and let it flow. Disaster. My urine is not just slightly off target, it has flicked to full garden-sprinkler mode. The spray is everywhere, all directions all at once. I look down to see what is going on and that’s when I see it – the horror. My dick is not something I recognise. Instead, I appear to be holding a dark purple mess in my hands. It’s an organ of some description, that I can tell, but if I had to guess, a barbecued kidney would be my best bet. I turn off the hose and, mortified, stuff my malformed sex back in my pants and wipe the piss off the walls and floor. I now have a moment of confusion. In this bathroom there is also a shower, it’s a wet room of sorts. I wonder if this shower has been provided for people in my exact predicament – that of not being able to control the trajectory of flow. I wonder in all seriousness whether I am meant to piss up against the wall and then wash it down. Eventually I realize this can in no way be hygienic and is probably the last thing I am meant to do, but nor do I think if I sit down on the toilet will I be able to hit the pan beneath. I’m torn, and still in dire need of the toilet. So, for once, I do something sensible. I go and ask a nurse. Of course, as luck would have it, the nurse at the station is unbelievably good-looking. Let’s have a look, shall we? she says, leading me back into the bathroom where I am obliged to show her my mutilated genitalia. No problem, she says, disappearing for a moment before coming back with a cardboard jug. Here you go, she says, handing it to me. Pour it down the toilet after and then stick it in the bin. I do as I’m told. The jug, a one-liter not dissimilar to the type of juice bottle that has a handle fitted into its side, has an over-sized mouth for this very reason. Relief. My dick may be presenting as an aubergine emoji, but exhaustion takes precedence. I limp back to my room, lie down in the bed, and snatch a couple more hours’ sleep. Part 5 I spent four days in hospital that week. The streak of bruising along my midriff extended from one side to the other, three inches deep, fifteen wide. A belt of blood, purple and green; a bike tire track across my gut. My balls and dick matured in color from mauve to a dark wine. Guts of a pint had spilled into my nether region, one nurse estimated. The elasticity of the ball sack ideal for soakage. Like a sponge, he explained loudly. I thanked him for his candor. There were three other men in the urology ward with me. To my right, Kieran, a short, wealthy (as he liked to allude), tonsured man in his early seventies. Kieran was of a nervous disposition, and understandably so. He was being monitored to see if he could qualify for a new kidney. Opposite him was Gerard, a younger man, mid-fifties I would say, with rich, thick, dark, peppered gray hair and pitch-black eyebrows. He reminded me of one of those guys in a Just For Men advert. His was a good news story. He had found blood in his urine, flagged it with his doctor straight away, and now here he was, a couple of months later, happily recuperating as somebody else’s kidney filtered the waste from his body. Time would tell but the surgery, it seemed, had been a success. Then finally, opposite me was Patrick, the eldest of the group. He was in his eighties. I wasn’t sure what he was in for, general waterworks presumably. Tall and thin with a sharp nose and sprouting eyebrows that gave him the air of an elderly emu, he was a warm, friendly, chatty man, but ever-so-softly spoken. On the first day we exchanged pleasantries but neither of us could clearly hear the other given our debilitated states. The important thing was, though, we both understood and recognised that the man opposite us meant well. There was an immediate rapport. There were curtains between each of the beds which any of us could draw around ourselves should we need our privacy. Plastic piss jugs sat on the night stands beside each bed (Patrick had several scattered around his enclosure), and a television was on mute in the corner. That is to say, your typical man’s urology ward. Whitewashed walls and linoleum floor. There was also a large bathroom into which we could totter to use or empty our piss jugs or to give them a rinse. That first day I remember very little of, other than being visited twice by troops of trainee doctors requesting a look at my butchered meat. Two separate occasions, two separate cliques. I lay on my back, pulled down my tracksuit bottoms, and thought of Christmas. Twice. The ignominy. If my teenage self could see me now. Here you go, folks, here’s the road kill. Feast your eyes. The second day passed much like the first. More trainee doctors, some nurses, a consultant, all swung by for a gander. Down went the pants and up went the smile as I grinned and beared it. At least something good might come out of this, I thought. At least by exposing myself to all these future healers I may help prevent some other poor unfortunate three-balled bastard from experiencing likewise. A learning experience all around. Also, Gerard had had more good news. His latest test results were positive. He might be allowed leave tomorrow, all things being equal. The same couldn’t be said for Kieran though. His bloods, or whatever it was they were monitoring, weren’t where they needed to be. There was zero progress being made, no evidence his body would accept a new kidney and therefore no point risking one. He put on a brave face but we could feel his anxiety heighten, but what could we do? Patrick, opposite me, had a quiet day that second day. He sat up on the side of the bed when the nurses and doctors came to examine him. He’d shoot me a conspiratorial smile, the occasional wink before the curtains were drawn, but other than that there was little engagement. Rest was the order of the day. No family came to see him, nor me, for that matter. I had agreed with Kim it would be too much hassle with the kids and sure wouldn't I be home soon enough. On day three, Patrick slept even more than the day before. There were no smiles, no craning of the neck over a nurses’ shoulder to give me a wink. The man was clearly exhausted. But overall, day three was a good day. We said goodby to Gerard. At least, myself and Kieran did, Patrick kept his curtain closed. Gerard’s levels had sustained, they were happy for him to check out; he could take his new kidney home to meet the rest of the family. Hands were clasped and, when Gerard’s daughter came to collect him, celebratory sweets passed around. We were both genuinely happy for him. He was a nice guy and now he’d go on being a nice guy out there in the real world. If Kieran was jealous, it didn’t show. Gerard’s bed, a totem to modern-day medicine, remained unoccupied for the rest of my stay. Patrick’s, however, was still occupied and still he lay asleep. At intervals I would get a peak in at him, resting there, surrounded by quarter-filled jugs of wan piss, which the nurses would either empty for him or not, depending on how diligent they were feeling. Whatever plumbing issues he had, fatigue was a major side-effect. I, on the other hand, could feel my strength coming back. More nurses and doctors came to visit me, to peer at the medical anomaly between my legs, and I even managed the occasional joke. Not literally, but things were looking up. I’d be home the following day, where I could lie on the couch and not have people come to visit me and the most mangled member in Dublin. Kieran said he was glad for me. I almost believed him, too. The next day, day four, the day I was to be discharged, I woke to a commotion. Patrick had died in the night. Nobody, other than medics, that is, had come to visit him during the four days I had been there. Nobody, confirmed Kieran, during the two days prior to my arrival. Just me, Kieran, and Gerard, the last three people on earth he had spoken to who weren’t discussing his blood pressure, piss or pills. The wink he had given me the day before was the last interaction with a human outside of the medical profession he ever had. Kieran and I shook hands when it was time for me to go home. I wished him well with the kidney, even though I had heard the consultant earlier that morning telling him the bad news. They would wait one more day but if there wasn’t a significant change there would be nothing they could do for him. He wished me well with my recovery. I thanked him and we parted. Him, climbing back into the bed. Me, by chance, walking out the front door. A few weeks passed (it would be a few months yet until I was back at the 5-a-side football); I had some old school friends around to watch a match. A barbecued kidney, I insisted, much to their disbelief. I’m serious, I said, slipping out the phone. (On day three, prior to a shower, I had taken a snap in the mirror. A quadrangle of black circles described my torso, the gluey residue of monitor suckers. My penis engorged and hideous). I flashed the screen at them. Look, I insisted. Look!

My father played guitar at night. Sometimes, I’d peek out my bedroom door to listen. He’d sit in an old velvet chair, his guitar like a broken lover in his arms. Strumming and picking until the nylon strings snapped. Until his fingertips bled. He had a voice like chocolate syrup, so sultry and smooth it was easy to crave, easy to get lost in a sugary high. Easy to forget the bark, the bite, my mother’s resentment, his indifference, the neglect. My father played guitar on weekends. Sometimes, I was his audience. Sometimes, his many girlfriends were. He’d sing about old truths and new lies, lost in the tomorrow of yesterday. He’d sing about little white houses and harbors. About the end of the return of the long dark nights. He’d sing until his audience disappeared. Until his voice cracked or his eyes misted. He’d sing until there was no turning back. My father used to play guitar. Now, his music gathers dust. Sometimes, I sit on my red velvet couch transported to the bedroom I’ve never really left. The cold smell of frost on its single-pane windows. A fresh coat of paint on its crumbling walls. I listen to his old recordings. The unmistakable crackle of the cassette tape. The squeak of a finger slide. The shiver of a fret buzz. I listen to his voice, a splash of sambuca in my cup of espresso. His words spike my heart. I listen until I can’t hear it beat.

I suppose you think it’s funny, that my friends call me Madman, or you think I’m going to be funny, or do crazy things, or belong on “Jackass” or blow something up or, I don’t know. Maybe you don’t think that.  I just know this about myself. I was a skinny kid and I didn’t have friends until eighth grade when I began to sing out loud in public besides that, I grew ten inches and began the bulking up process that guys go through, and grew my hair longer than anyone else’s in our school (which was easy to do, since they all had crew-cuts or whatever you call short hair) and then I had friends. Which is to say, people stopped making fun of me and began to like me. First for my voice and, second, the girls liked my looks, too.  And maybe some boys too, I have sort of feminine features so who knows? Someone compared me to Johnny Depp but that’s far-fetched, the only thing is that we both have fine bones and big eyes and that is not enough to make me Johnny Depp, but let me tell you that I’m a lot taller than he is, and I don’t know if he can sing, but I sure as hell can. Think I talk too much? I do when I’m nervous and I am nervous because I just got kicked out of UCLA, cause I sort of forgot to attend classes and I only made it one and a half years, and I had bet my dad that I could make it through two full years, so he won, but I don’t talk to him anyway. That’s not why I’m nervous. I am nervous because I am sitting here in this auditorium and about to go on stage to sing for a band whose lead singer died three years ago (okay, died is a euphemism. He committed suicide by combining alcohol, drugs, his car and a cliff. Might as well have thrown a gun in there, too.) and now they are looking for a replacement and every singer in L.A. is here trying out.  There must be three hundred people here. I’ve been watching and listening. Some are really good, but they have a blues edge, or a soul sound, or an r&b thing that is better suited to pop music and these guys are this outgrowth of grunge/punk, but newer in the way that has yet to be defined by Rolling Stone magazine or anybody else.  Past emo, past screamo, not even nu-metal.  I just know it fits my voice and I like their songs and I think my songs can fit into their niche but they won’t know that if I don’t get up there and sing. There’s no real order here. You sit in the audience and when you feel ready, you go up and hand this incredibly ice-cold beautiful woman your registration sheet and line up to go on stage. A lot of us sit and wait; a lot go up.  The doors opened at around 2 p.m. and now it’s nearly six and I don’t know how much longer they will go on, so I have to make my move. But I can’t. Not yet. Some girls are trying out too.  Some are really great, I would pay to hear them sing somewhere, the Key Club, the Knitting Factory, even House of Blues prices wouldn’t put me off some of them.  There have been three guys today who I think could be in this band, but I’m trying hard not to think about them and to get my mind together to stand up and make the walk down the aisle to that woman. Maybe it’s her.  Maybe she’s the one keeping me from the stage. I don’t have good luck with women, that’s for sure.  Listen.  My first girlfriend, Suzanne, wanted me to take her virginity and I wouldn’t do it, because I was still a virgin and too scared, so she convinced my close friend, Jeremy, to do it which he did (a virgin too), and then they both told me all about it in great detail.  It’s not just about sex, though. I did finally lose my virginity and things have been okay since, but I don’t seem to be very good at being a boyfriend. I almost married Tabitha, even with her totally weird name that came from really weird parents.  She loved to hear me sing, had me sing to her in the shower, in bed, while she made dinner, all kinds of times.  I started to feel she was a vampire, she was draining me of my voice and my energy; I spent it all singing for her and when I went to gigs (I had gigs in background vocals) I often lost it, went hoarse, couldn’t hold a note or stay on pitch. She sucked me nearly dry of my one and only talent, so I dumped her while she was making wedding plans and putting deposits on caterers and photographers and gazebos. No one talked to me after that, no one in her family or my family. So that’s when I moved back into the dorms and threw myself into dorm life (except for the schoolwork part of it) and met lots of girls, and made new friends among guys, and guest-sang in a myriad of garage bands that were mostly horrible, but when I sang with them, an audience came and people had a good time. This is boring. My life is boring.  Don’t get me started. Or, I guess I am started, but make me stop. This is all because I am nervous about going on stage, which is ridiculous, I can do this. It’s just that I actually want it, more than whatever else I wanted before. My girlfriend offered to come with me. Yes, I do have one, and her name is Suze and I’m not scared of her, in fact, I really like being with her and I’m comfortable with her.  And she’s pretty but doesn’t think so. She’s not super-skinny like the girls around campus, or the girls here on stage. Or the ice queen down there.  Suze is not in the least fat but by these stupid modern fashion standards, she could be described as baby-fat cute.  I could give a shit. She is beautiful.  We even went through this really bad time, we almost broke up even though the thing that happened was out of our control – neither of us could do anything about it – but we survived and this is something I find like really amazing. But Tashi, if she came with me today, I would be even more self-conscious. A guy stands up in near the front row, and I realize it’s one of the band members, the bass player.  He turns to those of us left in the audience and, in a really loud voice (shouldn’t he be the singer?) he yells out, “Don’t any of you have passion?” Fuck, maybe not. I have passion for sex and for Suze. I have passion for music. People tell me I am really involved in music when I sing, they say I embody it, but I don’t really know what they mean.  I feel it, yes, and I love it and love singing and don’t want to stop once I am started, but hell, more than half the people I just watched on stage sing with that kind of passion.  Does he want something else? Does he want more? A half a dozen people leave quietly, slipping out the back door. Not even enough passion to believe they can still have a shot. No one else moves. The ice queen looks at the band members and I recognize her signals to mean, should we end this now? No, they can’t. I leap up, a bit too ungainly, and trip my way over the feet of people whose faces look up at me with suspicion and awe. Is he really going to go on stage after that?  I am not going to let them shut down auditions without having even tried so I am loping down the long aisle to the ice queen, barely acknowledging her presence and then I am up on stage. I feel like someone who has just won a Grammy award and now I should thank everyone who helped me get this far. But I am not that far.  I am on stage. The lights are bright and I can barely make out the band members in the front row, can’t see if their faces are intrigued or disgusted or bored.  The singing is a capella, there is no one to wait for, I can start whenever I am ready. There was this really bad time.  Suze’s friend had died in a cruel incident. It was kinda suicide and kinda murder and completely horrible and Suze and I both were witnesses.  We moved in together after that.  We held each other a lot and for a while didn’t even have sex. Suze works at Starbucks and she almost lost her job ‘cause she couldn’t bring herself to go to work.  I don’t even like to think about this but it has an odd way of slipping into my thoughts and suddenly exploding like goddamn fireworks at the wrong times. And all times are the wrong times. Suze suggested therapy. She said we have post-traumatic stress. “That’s for Vietnam vets,” I said, “Iraqi war vets.” “It’s for victims of crimes and terrible accidents and tragic losses.  It’s for us.”  She showed me a corner torn from the L.A. Weekly. An ad for a clinic in Silver Lake that listed, among its other services, group therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. “Please,” said Suze.  So I went, figuring that while it probably wouldn’t help me, it wouldn’t hurt either. We parked on Silver Lake Boulevard and walked two blocks to a small bright green storefront. The windows were sealed from window-shopping view by what looked like furniture pads, making it a sort of black hole among all the furniture and décor shops around it. I was not eager to go in.  Just as we stood there, the door opened and a tiny Asian man stepped out. He looked up at us, smiled like the sun had just come from behind a cloud and beckoned us inside. “Please come,” he said, in limited English. “Doctor is good, very good.” Then he left and we were standing in the dim interior of a waiting room, the furniture pads being the primary decoration in a room that otherwise held seven metal folding chairs and a water dispenser sans water.  We shuffled around together, whispering. (Me whispering, “let’s go” and she whispering, “No.”) A woman came through a door.  I do not believe I can describe her in any way that would do her justice. She was tall, a little over six feet.  Husky in a Midwestern sort of body. She had grey hair pulled into a ponytail that went down her back to her waist except for the multitude of stray hairs that spun out of control around her head and arms.  Her eyes were dark and the skin under them saggy like a basset hound.  She wore several layers of what I took to be Guatemalan dresses and skirts.  When she waved us into an interior room, it was all I could do to keep from running the other direction.  Only Tashi’s strong grip on my hand kept me moving toward this woman and her mysterious room. Her office was one step better than the waiting room. She sat in a padded folding chair and there were more of the metal ones scattered around the room.  Files and books and papers lined up on the floor along one wall. This doctor had great need of a desk and bookshelves and some decent seating. “Is this the whole group?” Suze asked. “I thought it was group therapy, I imagined more people.” “Not right now,” the woman said with a voice that informed us not to mess with her. “So, what do we do?” asked Suze. She is so sweet, she wanted to do whatever this woman thought would be appropriate. “Names?” the woman demanded. “Suze,” said Suze, “and Madman, er, Mattais.” “Madman?” “A nickname. Just for fun,” I added.  She stared at me, and I waited for some diatribe about the inappropriateness of the nickname, or a deep psychological interpretation or just some obtuse thing.  I really disliked her.  And she didn’t tell us her name. “What was so traumatic?” “Uh,” stammered Suze, “um, uh, my friend, um died.” “Lots of friends die.” “She died in a fire,” said Suze. I sat back and watched. Would this story come out one sentence at a time, with a judgment on each sentence, and then the next sentence trying to reconcile the judgment with the emotion? “Lots of people die in fires, too.” “We saw her die,” explained Suze. “Wait,” I said. “And lots of people have seen people die in fires, right?” “Hostility is not welcome here,” the woman said. “Only polite people can get therapy?” I answered. Suze took her hand away from mine, distancing herself.  I thought, I won’t forget that, babe.  I will remember that. “You will have to leave if you cannot be civil.” “Listen. Our friend, Moira, joined a religious cult. They built a bonfire, she stepped into it and even when she wanted to get out, they pushed her back in. We watched, we tried to get to her, to help her, but they held us back. We watched her die a long slow burning death.  Now,” I sat back in my creaking chair, “is that typical of lots of people?” I was dismissed. I waited in the stupid waiting room on a stupid folding chair and listened to unintelligible murmurs from behind the closed door.  When Suze came out she was crying but also smiling. I never saw the woman, she did not enter the waiting room. “I wish you had stayed,” Suze said. “I wish we had both left,” I said. “Fuck you.” Suze turned to me and hit my shoulder. “You and your big male ego couldn’t just listen to her, to hear what she had to say. She helped a lot, Madman. She helped me a lot.” “Yeah, well thanks a lot for pulling away from me, for letting me just hang there, for letting me leave, for not coming with me. Fuck you.  I’m taking a walk.” We parted there on the sidewalk. Suze drove home. I walked around Silver Lake for a time, had some coffee, walked through a video store and a clothing store, not looking at anything. I walked up to Sunset and stared at a bus stop sign for a long time until a smiling Hispanic woman asked if I needed information. “I need to get to Santa Monica,” I said.  And she efficiently wrote down the three buses I needed to take from that very corner to the very corner of Wilshire and 14th Street, four blocks from the apartment.  She even made change for my five-dollar bill.  I could have kissed her feet. I wanted to ask what she knew about post-traumatic stress because I was certain she could be very helpful in that matter, too. Long bus rides are useful.  This is how:  By the time I walked the four blocks to our apartment, after more than two hours on three buses, I was ready to apologize. I hoped Suze was ready to let me.  When I went in, she tackled me, crying and sobbing and soaking my shirt and telling me how she was sure she would never see me again.  I said sorry, she said sorry and we made love for the first time in months.  Oh, yeah, that helps a lot and things got better and better. “But let me tell you one thing the doctor said that helped,” said Suze as we lay coiled together, our sweaty bodies cooling off with the breeze coming in the window. “Okay, I can take it,” I laughed. “She had me deconstruct the incident.” “Um, like Foucault or Derrida?  French literary deconstruction theory?  You took it apart?” “Well, whatever that is.  First I told her the entire story. Then we talked about all different parts of it, focusing on the dancing, the singing, the fire itself.  I had to describe in detail the moment Moira stepped into the fire.  And in detail what it was like to run toward her, to be grabbed and held by the other people.  And last, I told her the story completely backwards, so that Moira stepped out of the fire, danced backward around it and went back to her room.” I listened and I understood.  Better than Suze, who said, “I feel better but I’m not sure why.” “You lessened its power,” I explained. “You took away the one narrative and all of its power and pain, and you examined the parts and felt each one of them fully, then like they are little gems or something, you put them down. And then you played the whole thing backward which means you control the narrative and it doesn’t control you.” She glared at me. “How do you know that?” “College, babe.  A course in postmodern theory, the deconstructionists, the way we looked at literature. It’s the same thing.  Take power away from the text and the author, and give it to the reader.” Suze curled her head up against my chest and I stroked her back. I was glad she felt so much better.  I was glad to be back in our apartment and not wandering the streets on foot or bus. And I was glad that, no matter what, I was not going to see that doctor again.  I would deconstruct Moira’s death on my own, if that was the cure. “What are you going to sing?” asks a face from the dark front row. “I was going to sing one of your songs,” I reply. “I was going to sing, ‘No Reality.’  But I changed my mind. I’m going to sing ‘The Country Where No One Knows the Language.’” “Whose song is that?” comes the voice. “Mine. I wrote it.” And without waiting, I launch into the song and I sing it with all the passion I had written it with, I sing it with my fear, and with my certainty. I wrote it for Moira and I sing it better than I ever have before. It is silent after I sing.  The ice queen is busy talking to someone in dark clothes who I cannot see; I await her official words to leave the stage.  I wait. The remaining singers wait.  Someone in the front row stands up. The guy with the booming voice. “Good on you, bloke.” The ice queen calls, “Next,” and as I pass her on the steps, she puts her hand on my arm. Her hand is warm and soft against my cool sweaty skin. “You can go. But expect a call-back.” She smiles at me, pleasantly. I don’t know what comes next. I just know that there were odd bits of Los Angeles that went into whatever success this is: wackos who immolate their true believers, a wiry-haired doctor who heals with Derrida, and a sweetheart of a woman who knows the bus system and can impart her knowledge to a suffering fool when needed. Amy Jones Sedivy grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in NELA (Highland Park) with her artist-husband and their princess-dog. She recently retired and spends her time reading, writing, and exploring the rest of Los Angeles. Amy’s most recent stories have been published in (mac)ro(mic), Made in L.A. Beyond the Precipice anthology, Big Whoopie Deal, and The Write Launch. “On Fire for Jesus", a story that tells about Moira's character and her death, will be printed in the Chiron Review in April.

So I’ve been wandering sodden streets, crossing narrow bridges. It shouldn't be any great surprise that I’m lost in Venice. It’s the easiest city to get lost in. There are landmarks, sure, like the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and the Canal Grande. But they don’t direct you from one to the other, much less back to your hotel or country of origin. I’ve asked in Italian if there are any maps but was laughed at by the locals. When they stop laughing, they admit they can’t remember another time when it rained so long. Now I’m hoping a gondolier takes pity and ferries me back across the Atlantic. I’ll pay them in stories collected while lost in a sinking city. We’ll set course for the Statue of Liberty. It’ll be a straight shot. Matthew Isaac Sobin's first book was the novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. His poems are in or forthcoming from South Florida Poetry Journal, Midway Journal, Orange Blossom Review, Ghost City Review, and MAYDAY Magazine. You may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California.

The Resounding Silence The silence was resounding— Stifling as it crept into my every thought. The silence was all consuming— Reshaping every crevice of my imagination. The silence was foreboding— As the thoughts of my mind seemed to echo off the walls. I wanted the silence to break, But it seemed to gain on me, twisting around my heart— Wrapping its chilled fingers around my throat. I was powerless to stop it— But something sounded, a bang, a crash— Piercing through the shroud of endless silence. —My heart? Was I finally falling apart, At the thought of my own silence? No— It was the door. And with it, came a flood of noise— Tumbling into the room, overwhelming every thought I had. A bang, a crash —And smoke. Was it a fire? Was I wrong about the silence? Or had it only been hiding, waiting for this moment to consume me? No— Oh— My dad’s smoking again. Broken Mug It was a cold, clear day in the second week of April. I remember that it was a Saturday and that I was in the kitchen making coffee for the two of us. I remember taking the cup from me and holding it up to the light to see if it was clean. There was a smear of coffee on the rim, but the coffee inside was still clear. I remember how the light shone through the coffee and made the liquid glow. I remember how he stood over me then, and how my heart fluttered like a bird. I froze. He took the cup from my hand and threw it against the wall. It shattered into a thousand pieces and I remember watching as they fell to the floor like rain. I opened my mouth to tell him that it was his fault, that he should have known what he was doing, but then I remembered that it was me who did that to us. I took the broken pieces of ceramic and put them carefully in the sink in case there might be some use to them later. I cleaned the place I had thrown my heart at, cleaned the place I had thrown my soul at. I swept up the pieces of my life, as dull and meaningless as the fragments of ceramic. I carried them to the garbage and threw them in, along with the fragments of my body.