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This is back in Throggs Neck, the summer I turn ten. It’s too hot for whiffleball, handball, stickball, or stoopball. I’m sweating into my bowl of Cap’n Crunch when I get the idea. “Ma! Ma! Am I allowed to walk to the pool?” Ma says I’m allowed. “Can I have a quarter for Pixie Sticks?” Ma says don’t be a jackass. I’m out the door, down the stoop, on my way to the McKenna Community Pool, named for the late Bonehead McKenna, who somehow managed to crack his skull open on the high diving board and sink to the bottom of the deep end before anybody noticed. And why people go around naming pools after people like Bonehead McKenna I have no idea. I’m in the men’s locker room, slipping out of my shorts and underpants and into my bathing suit, when I spy, in the drain in the middle of the floor, money. I’m down on all fours. Yup. It’s dollar-bill green, just a few inches down that filthy drain. Now I’ve got a shoelace with a wad of already-been-chewed Dubble Bubble on the end. Down the drain and up, down the drain and up, down the drain and up, up, up, and I’ve got the dollar. Only it’s not a dollar. It’s a ten-dollar bill. From behind me, a voice goes, “Whoa, Bobby!” It’s my buddy Hickey. “Ten dollars! You’re Bruce Wayne!” “Hickey, what are you talking about Bruce Wayne? I’m Tony Stark.” “What are we gonna do with it?” We. Hickey’s the kind of person, when his name comes up around the house, Ma says “I suppose he’s got a good heart.” “Hickey, I don’t know about you but I’m getting in the pool.” “Bobby, we are rich and alls you can think about is getting in the pool?” “Hickey, it’s my ten dollars.” Hickey goes, “What are you, some kind of pussy?” Now we’re hotfooting it to the snack bar. “No running, dinkywinkies!” It’s Gigantor, the lifeguard, flexing his hairy arms. Asshole. Now we’re at the back of the line, squinting at the distant menu. I say, “Zotz!” Hickey says, “Razzles!” I say, “No, wait a sec. Pixie Sticks!” Hickey says, “No, wait a sec, wait a sec. Chili Velveeta dog!” I say, “No, wait a sec, wait a sec. Double chili Velveeta dog!” Hickey says, “No, wait a sec, wait a sec, wait a sec. Ding-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding-ding- ding! The Moby-Dick! The Moby-Dick!” Nine dollars and ninety-five cents later, we’re sitting at a picnic table, each of us has the Moby-Dick — a triple chili Velveeta dog smothered in grilled onions, a basket of french fries, and a king-size chocolate egg cream. “Hickey, I don’t think we’re supposed to get in the pool for an hour after we eat.” “Says who?” “Says everybody.” “Who?” “Pop, I think.” “I’ve never seen your pop swim.” “Maybe it was Ma.” “I’m not a-scared of my mommy, Bobby.” “You were a-scared of your mommy that time she beat the crap out of you for mooning the Ancient Order of Hibernians.” “I was not mooning the Ancient Order of Hibernians. I had a scorpion in my bathing suit.” There’s no scorpions in Throggs Neck. There’s no scorpions, I don’t think, in the mid- Atlantic region. Hickey opens wide and takes a huge bite of triple chili Velveeta dog smothered in grilled onions. The Moby-Dick. From hell’s heart I stab at thee. I open my mouth and take an even bigger bite. Now we’re both taking gargantuan bites. Chewing, chewing, faster, faster. Hickey’s got a bigger mouth than me. I double my speed. Hot dogs, chili, Velveeta, greasy fries, sucking down those chocolate egg creams. Then our empty paper plates lie stinking in the sun. It’s got to be a hundred degrees. From the pool, splashing, laughing. I feel… Well. I feel like I just wolfed a triple chili Velveeta dog smothered in grilled onions, a basket of fries, and a king-size chocolate egg cream. It’s time for a nap. But first we tear the tops off our Pixie Stix and pour radioactive neon-colored sugar powder down our throats. Hickey says, “Bobby…?” He says it kind of sing-song. I say, “What?” I say it like I don’t really want to hear what comes next. “Cannonballs!” “No way.” “Cannonballs! From the high diving boards!” “Hickey, we’re not allowed on the high diving boards. You gotta be twelve.” Hickey goes, “We’re not allowed you gotta be twelve, we’re not allowed you gotta be twelve, we’re not allowed you gotta be twelve.” I go, “Maybe later.” Hickey goes, “Later is never, Bobby.” I go, “Never, then.” Hickey goes, “What are you some kind of pussy, what are you some kind of pussy, what are you some kind of pussy?” Now we are racing toward the high diving boards. “No running, dinkywinkies!” Gigantor hollers from a lifeguard chair. Hickey hollers back, “We got scorpions in our bathing suits!” Then Hickey somehow manages — while running — to slip out of his bathing suit, and now he’s running one hundred percent nude. And so am I. Moms and kids and babysitters fleeing from our path. Gigantor blowing his whistle. We reach the ladders. We ascend the ladders. The high diving boards are high diving boards. I look down. We’ve got an audience. Moms and kids and babysitters and lifeguards looking up at us and all they want to know is what’s going to happen next. We strut to the end of the diving boards. We bounce. We bounce. I’m feeling extremely nude at this moment. Reconsidering my choices. We bounce. We bounce. Giving that triple chili Velveeta dog smothered in grilled onions, greasy fries, and king-size chocolate egg cream a good churn. We strut back to the platforms. I look over at Hickey. Our eyes meet and I know we are going to do this. I know we are going to sprint to the end of the diving boards and fling ourselves— But Hickey’s face turns white. Hickey’s face turns green. Hickey’s knees buckle. Hickey smashes his head on the high diving board and plummets into the deep end. It’s Bonehead McKenna all over again. I dive headfirst like Tarzan on channel 9 into the deep end. I hit the water. Hickey’s lying at the bottom. He’s not moving. What’d Ma say? Don’t be a jackass. I swim to him. Down, down. Eight feet of water crushing my skull. Hickey’s not moving. Then all of a sudden not only is he moving, he’s climbing on my back like a friggin’ monkey. I’m pinned to the bottom of the deep end. Water rushing up my nose. Jesus Christ, they’re gonna name the pool after me. Then huge arms wrap around us and we are rising, rising. I recognize those hairy arms. Gigantor. Asshole. Saving our lives. We burst to the surface, gasping. Gigantor dumps us at the edge of the pool. We should thank him. But we have just discovered there is nothing funnier than cheating death. And we will leave Bobby and Hickey here. Two ten-year-old boys sitting on the edge of the pool. Naked, laughing, immortal. Before each boy opens his mouth, and in an act of synchronization that rivals anything you will ever see at the Olympics, nine dollars and ninety-five cents worth of chili Velveeta dog, grilled onions, greasy french fries, and chocolate egg cream, not to mention radioactive neon-colored sugar powder, explodes like fireworks over the deep end of the McKenna Community Pool. A Note from the Author: My writing has a bratty, trashcan-Kierkegaard vibe that I hope will make you smile. I’m a two-time Emmy nominee (for Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series) and a Folio-award-winning magazine editor. I regularly perform experimental solo theater pieces at NYC-area venues including Dixon Place, Irvington Theater, Emerging Artists Theatre, and Bad Theater Fest. I hold a Master of Music degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory, a BA in English from Colgate University (where my mentor was novelist Frederick Busch), and I made my show-business debut at the age of five on WOR-TV’s Romper Room. I’m represented (as a novelist) by Jill Marr, at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

“All I have to do is put on a bear costume and march for two hours?” Jen asked. “Yes.” The casting agent on the other end of the phone could barely contain her excitement. Finding an actor to don a bear suit had not been that easy. “You march in the parade. You’ll have a rope around the neck of the costume – loose, of course – to symbolize your captivity in the circus”. “And I’ll get paid $1000?” Jen’s voice sounded doubtful. This was not the gig she had in mind when she quit her full-time job in Human Resources to put more energy into finding acting work. “You need to show the Universe you’re serious about this,” her friend Samantha had urged. Samantha was also an actress; her beautiful blend of Hispanic and Asian features were a natural for film and television, even stage. She had quit her job ten months ago and been working steadily ever since. Jen wasn’t sure she’d be as lucky. Her looks weren’t all that castable or interesting, she wasn’t getting that many calls from agencies. The bear job was the first to come her way in a long time, and she hadn’t even had to audition. Jen wondered what it was about her headshot that suggested covering her face up with a big fake head to this particular casting agent. “I’ll do it.” The bear gig turned out to be pretty strenuous, although at least the rope was attached to the body of the costume by a hook, and not tied around the neck as suggested. The problem was the weather; it was a warm day, and being inside a furry bear suit and head was excruciatingly hot. The client, an animal rights agency known as Animals Are People Too (AAPT), had been very positive when Jen arrived, telling her she truly “embodied the desultory spirit of the overworked bear”. Jen was the only actor – the dog, wolf cub and several bunnies in the parade were all real. At the end of the march, Jen took off the bear head to grab a drink of water. “That’s not a real bear!” someone – a reporter? – shouted, as a flash went off in Jen’s startled face. She started to laugh, pleased – her attitude and body movements must have been really convincing – until she heard, “This is animal appropriation! Why wasn’t a real bear used for this?” Jen looked to the agency spokesperson, who’d been fairly eloquent during the press conference at the beginning of the march. She was shielding her face and scurrying away. “How do you think the bears feel about their opportunity being taken by a human?” another reporter almost spat at her. “Answer me that!” “I’m an actor. I’m playing a bear,” stammered Jen. “Tell that to the bears!” someone yelled. “Don’t you think the bears deserve to earn a living, too?” “Uh – I guess they’re pretty dangerous, right?” Jen said. “Whoa! Are you bear shaming?’ “N-no, I “- “The bears belong to this land more than we do! They were here first!” shouted a frizzy haired woman with a twisted mouth. “But I’m – I’m sympathetic to the bear. I’m depicting the bear as –“ “The bears don’t need your HUMAN depiction! They need to be representing themselves and earning money for it!” a man’s voice bellowed. Jen could see AAPT’s publicity person gesturing from a large white van. Jen made a run for it just as what felt like a woman’s shoe hit the back of the bear costume. “What the heck?” Jen almost shouted to the publicity woman. “Please don’t shout,” said the woman, looking hurt. “I’m sorry. I – did you see what happened out there?” Jen was shouting again. “I had no idea people felt so strongly about the plight of the bears,” said the publicity woman, her voice trembling a little. “I mean it’s beautiful the way they felt that the bear deserved to make a living, too. I didn’t expect that.” She started to tear up. “Do you have a tissue?” Jen held out her furry bear arm. The publicity woman looked appalled. “Bears aren’t Kleenex for humans”, she said, before fishing around in her purse. Jen called the casting agent the next day to see if she had more work for her. “I think you might want to take a little break from acting,” said the casting agent. Jen was stunned. Nobody could argue that her characterization of a bear wasn’t authentic; she’d managed to fool an entire crowd into thinking she was real. “I – I was good, right? They believed –“ “We take animal appropriation very seriously here,” interrupted the casting agent. “We have zero tolerance for this kind of exploitation, you understand?” “But you’re the one who got me the gig!” Jen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You were hired to play a bear, not be a bear. You know, be playful. Like a dancing bear. They weren’t supposed to think you were real.” “They wanted me to be put upon! I was being taken advantage of by the circus! Not a lighthearted role.” Jen could feel herself starting to get riled up. Be calm, she told herself. You need more work. “Nobody expected Method bear,” snapped the casting agent. “That’s just the kind of attitude that’s going to brand you as being difficult to work with.” Jen could tell by the tone in the casting agent’s voice that she was already there. “I’m very easy,” said Jen, remembering to unclench her teeth before she spoke. “I’m sure,” said the casting agent in a tone of voice that said the opposite. “Listen, I’ll call you if anything comes up, okay?” “Sure,” said Jen dejectedly. The bear stunt was all over social media; Jen in the bear costume next to a photo of a real bear curled in the fetal position, presumably sad because he or she or they didn’t get the gig. Jen started to type underneath it, “Maybe THEY should have stayed with the circus” but thought better of it. Jen had also left two text messages and one voicemail for Samantha, who hadn’t texted or called back. It didn’t take long for Jen to realize that that casting agent, or any other casting agent, was never going to get her work. She’d been blacklisted. She called her old company, hoping to worm her way back in, only to be told, “We don’t think that anyone involved with animal appropriation should be working in human resources”. Jen thought she heard a snicker in her former colleague’s voice. In desperation, she called AAPT. “I see you have an open position for “ – Jen swallowed hard – “a telemarketer”. “Sure.” The woman on the other end of the phone sounded ecstatic, as these were not easy positions to fill. “What’s your name?” Jen told her. The woman’s voice hardened. “Are you the animal appropriator?” It took Jen every ounce of acting ability, as well as improv skills, to answer the question. “I am. And I feel a really strong, and I mean strong, need to atone. This is the one way that I can truly give back. To the bears. And the bees. And the wombats. And the bunnies. And the wolverines –“ “Okay,” sighed the woman. She really didn’t want to do this, but times were desperate, as most young people couldn’t bring themselves to pick up a phone. “Come in on Monday. Starting salary is $11.50 an hour, with bonuses every four months if you make your quota”. “Health insurance?” asked Jen hopefully. “This isn’t a charity for humans,” snapped the woman. “You’re here to help the animals. That should be enough, don’t you think?” “Sure,” said Jen, in a desultory tone. Telemarketing didn’t sound all that fun, but she needed the money. Maybe she’d join the circus.

I’m sure my moans could carry across 4000 miles. More maybe. They go as the crow flies when I think you’re in another woman’s bed. I have my fingers crossed against it— the thought of your closed curves, your celestial bodies ascending in euphony… nauseating— warm hands, heads, tongues; caresses are just speculative structures and, god, I’m linking them all, killing Spacetime. Your disparate points should be mine. In another version, somewhere, a ghost cat stuck up an impossibly branched tree; its non-stop crying across dimensions for the you who wants to be with me can be heard right through Earths 1-42. Syreeta Muir (she/her) has writing in Sledgehammer Lit, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Misery Tourism, The Daily Drunk Mag, Ligeia Magazine, The Blood Pudding and others. Her art has been featured in Barren Magazine, Olney Magazine, The Viridian Door, Rejection Letters and Bullshit Lit. She received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations for her work in The Disappointed Housewife and Versification (2021/22)

The Summer I Got Diagnosed With Hypertension you will forfeit salt put 2300mg into an envelope the one with your rent check bike 4.33 miles to the property manager’s compound blitheproof glass it looks like sodium azide’s chemical formula the road will still be armored with january’s roadsalt it will not be a gratifying ride your intercostals and asshole will ache they will grudgingly sweat people who think wearing a helmet is gay will walk on the left side of the road not to spite you they get aura-cleansing asmr from being wrong that’s their prescription you must remember to hydrate every sip of diet coke equates to your credit score dropping by a half point you can purchase a rubber proboscis at the front desk our receptionist can spear it right under your ungainly cloddered skull’s occiput it will drip cucumber water directly onto your brainstem there is a 27% chance you will perceive hallucinations of marathon runners shaking their heads at you instructing their buff heatstroked goldendoodles to avoid acting like you can you please remove the blood pressure cuff you can just condemn it into the biological waste bin i find your left bicep to be categorically abhorrent Lake Verna, Colorado or The Sublime Misery of Hiking i hardwalk uplong now 8 milers out all back gorgeous grotesque noon sprains this pine treachery of yours inconvenient like boulders slippage into rollage fucked jointhucking down my toenails mauve my patellas brave but outyondermatched 78 degree bottled water i love lake full of antlers and kindless scat yes unsentenceable beauty but i am a sapient scab Jenkin Benson is a 2nd year PhD student at the University of Notre Dame. He principally studies the creative interchange between Welsh and Irish modernists. You can find his poetry in New Note Poetry, The /temz/ Review, KEITH LLC, Deep Wild Journal, UC Irvine’s faultline, and Squawk Back.

Frost Bitten (after ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost) I was a teenage atheist Lost to Frost and a world full of words The unease of snow falling as poetry Sieved through me And drained me of faith in things I couldn’t see I screamed with the violent wind Disbelief in a God Who only offered questions When I wanted statements Maybe on the brink of silence I longed to stop like a war widow Who looking through her window At the teakettle wren Forgot for the longest minute The potatoes to peel Or the need to white wash the front step Knowing it would never be blackened again But instead I set up a rhyme to move me on Like the horse in those friendless woods That Frost so loved Yet now in my middle ages I see the import of all the silent words An atheist still Yet in that strange syntax of your leaving I looked at the stars and felt the despair of heaven We only care about the smallest things The way your front teeth cross just slightly Or the comfy hollow of a promise I could never keep Some poems work every time But not this one So on this darkest night I’m drawn to the lovely woods In the hope that I may sleep In the hope that I may sleep Burnt Bridges Am I able to live in my age? To let my heavy lidded life / be weighted down with glitter / rather than gruel / not worrying / if my thighs are not as smooth as river rocks /or my breasts move to the beat of their own drum / and why can’t I just affirm myself / as a writer / in a poetry workshop / without sniggering like a teen / asked to put a condom on a banana? Am I able to stop self censoring? To let my words out / not caring if they are deemed delightsome / there are surely enough out there / wanting to shut me up / writing rejections / with / not a fit for us at this moment / and why can’t I let go of the dangling hope / I might be more acceptable / on a different date / at a different time? Am I able to be on my own? To let go of the people / and ghosts / crowding my shoulder / yet I know / like any weaver / that tension is needed for creation / so maybe I’ll can my words / let them condense like milk / so they are sweet / and glossy / and / why can’t I hold on to one of my ghosts / my Welsh fire talking mother / and burn everything else down? trimming the blue spiraled slowly passed // she could neither float or swim // and she fought the blessed grace of drowning in its umbral hug // instead she idled // starched and distorted // friends tried to trap her in the silvery weeds // they swayed together in an abstract ballet // of disintegrating parts // whilst the unseeing lot whooped // sit down // to save her self she’d always lived her life in pieces // tucking away the sprawl // winding it around her neck // slathering it with crepe erase // and stuffing it into nude shape wear // but in the end // she flaked off all her paint // leaving as quietly as a sigh // and it was cold enough to see the bird song // and my howl // left on air // Adele Evershed was born in Wales. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press will publish Adele’s first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places, in July. Her Novella-in-Flash, Wannabe, will be published by Alien Buddha Press in May.

Hey-hey-hey! I like it when the sun rises early and the day is bright and warm, long into the afternoon. The earth is happy in the sunshine. The breeze, my old friend, tickles and teases. Whoop whoop! My separateness calls to your separateness, and together we chase after the One... GLORIA I’m in the middle of a webinar in my new little studio office just beyond the kitchen – ‘Key Principles of Management Accounting’ – when I am distracted by some polite but persistent tapping on the big sliding window. It’s Theo, my old college pal and now, dear Lord, my landscaper. I close my eyes for a second as the flat tones of the lecturer run on about controllable and uncontrollable costs, and pray to an unknown deity that when I open them again, Theo will not be there. Never hire your friends to work for you. They may not mean to, but they take the piss. OK, so they offer you ‘mates’ rates’, but, as I’ve discovered the hard way, you have to make up the shortfall in Jaffa cakes, lunches, and silent fury. Theo’s good at his work when he does it, to be fair, and for the first time my little back garden is actually starting to look like a garden, rather than a Council amenity in a jungle. Visitors no longer have to make polite noises about its ‘wonderful potential’ as they stare through the studio windows at a cramped vista of old furniture, ragged shrubbery, and bald patches of lawn. But. Theo comes and goes when he pleases, he’s obsessed with his phone, and he wastes whole mornings going off to fetch tools and materials he was supposed to have brought with him. He is blissfully unconcerned about all the agreed timelines we’ve missed – he’s missed – and he has no concept of boundaries. No matter how often I hint to him about the course I’m doing – how it’s quite intense and full-on, and I really need to focus – he seems to think that I’m basically just sat in at home to make him a cuppa every five minutes and join him for a smoke and a natter whenever he decides to down tools. Even the nattering is hard work. When he’s not sharing his latest horde of internet factoids for another exhausting Did you know…? session, Theo will be in need of some energetic moral support ahead of his next date or – all too often – a shoulder to cry on after the disaster of the previous one. I blame the app he’s using – it keeps throwing up men 20 years younger than him. And his vanity, of course: Theo’s pretty well preserved for his age, but, well, I’ve got a grown-up daughter – Gabby – who’s older than he looks in his profile pic. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Glor,’ says Theo, spade in hand. ‘But can you take a look at this?’ Oh God, I think. Another gentle but devastating knockback. ‘You’re a lovely guy but I just don’t think we really have enough in common to take this forward.’ More tea and sympathy required. ‘Oh OK,’ I say, not even bothering to hide my reluctance. ‘Shall we have a cuppa in a quarter of an hour, say?’ Theo is gently stabbing at the patio concrete with his blade. ‘Not tea,’ he says. ‘It’s something you need to come and see. In the garden.’ Oh God. I bet he’s put a spade through a pipe. ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a... He’s... Well, I think it’s him.’ Theo stops. ‘Oh God. Come and have a look for yourself.’ Something in his voice alarms me. I remember thinking: He? Who is he? I was watching one of those Scandi-noir shows the night before, and my first thought is that Theo has discovered a dead body, and it turns out to be a 30-year-old unsolved murder, and there’s only one woman in all of Brighton who can solve the crime. DCI Gloria Heaven. She’s a maverick but she gets the job done, and… Oh God, my garden’s going to be a major crime scene from now until Christmas! Theo won’t be able to do any work at all, and I bet he’s already smirking to himself at the thought of it. Theo leads me the few short steps from my studio to the bottom of the garden, where he is supposed to be digging out the remains of the old rockery and preparing the ground for my little garden room. I’m spending the money from my divorce from Angel at last, doing the course I always wanted to do, extending the kitchen, tidying up the garden. I cannot resist looking back up for a moment at my little terrace house and taking in its warm brick tones and the dappled magenta shades of the Boston Ivy that almost reaches up to my bedroom window sill. (Is all that ivy sound, structurally speaking? I’ve no idea. But I like it.) For so long, this place has felt like a holding position for me, a moment of temporary rest between proper destinations, like a bus terminal. Since the divorce it’s taken me years to mentally unpack my bags – my baggage – and really start to move in and move on. Brighton, place of becomings, as Theo likes to vape. Which, of course, is a very Theo thing to say. Theo is now peering into a big hole just to the left of a pile of not-very-big ornamental boulders that he seems to have been digging out for several weeks now. I am about to say something gently sarcastic about his inability to get his rocks off, but there’s something about the way he nervously peeks over the edge of the hole, as if to check that its contents haven’t changed since he last looked, then takes a couple of steps back. It’s oddly deferential, like a pallbearer putting down his precious load and stepping away from the coffin. If he had a cap on, I can’t help feeling he would remove it at this point. Gingerly I step forward. The hole is about two feet deep. At the bottom of it, I can see the tattered remains of a plastic bin bag. Through the tatters, I see something sticking out that looks sort of furry or bushy, almost knitted. For a moment, it looks like a paw. A teddy bear, I think. The thing is a sort of blacky-brown colour. Then I lean down further, and I gasp. Now I can see a furry back and stomach, and two more paws! The final third of the body is still covered by black polythene, but the woolly poodle coat is already unmistakable. ‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘Only if you spell God backwards,’ he says, which is another very Theo thing to say. He gets like that when he doesn’t know what else to do. Less than a week ago, I dropped a turkey carcass in the recycling bin. Stupidly I forgot to put the bin out to be collected the next day, and when I lifted the lid a few days later, the remains of the bird’s flesh were turning to a putrid, gelatinous paste and the bones were caving in on themselves. In the spring sunshine, little flies were buzzing around the body in scratchy, restless patterns that rose up angrily at my appearance, and gangs of maggots had moved in to do their thing. The stench of the seven-day-old turkey was like a physical assault on the nostrils, and so I steel myself now for the inevitable wave of nausea as I bend down and nervously stretch out my hand. But there is no stench. Instead, there’s a sort of citrus musk that I don’t recognise – and I know a lot about perfumes, trust me – but which is really quite pleasant. I move to pull back the plastic, but the last piece comes off in my hand, and the face is revealed in full. It can’t be. ‘It’s a dog,’ I say. ‘It’s your dog,’ says Theo. ‘But it can’t be! That was… seven years ago.’ ‘It is though, isn’t it?’ he persists. ‘It’s Boyzone.’ He is perfectly, uncannily intact, the expression settled into that warm almost-smile I find I know still so well. The gentle eyes closed, the lashes surprisingly long. That little scar on his nose where a cat once nipped him. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, Boyzone. Our dear old labradoodle Boyzone, whom Angel and I bought as a pup 20-odd years ago, not long after we first moved in together. Boyzone, who died in his old age a few months after we separated for the last time as if the divorce was all too much, as if he just wanted some peace from a toxic situation that even his big selfless doggie heart couldn’t heal. Our own dear Boyzone. Dead still, yet untouched by time or biology. Solid, substantial, almost warm to the touch, as if he’d been put in the ground half an hour ago. He is more like a lovingly stuffed replica than a rotting corpse, in fact; the more I look at him, the more I expect him to open his eyes, give that little hello! yelp of his, and start jumping up and down at my side, tail thrumming in an ecstasy of unconditional love. Seven years have passed, but here he is, as fresh as the day he died. And smelling rather better too – he was a flatulent old thing in his latter years. I remember burying Boyzone with Theo. Boyzone had been staying with me at the time – I had accidental custody of him because Angel’s new girlfriend (now his second ex-wife) said that she was allergic to dogs. There was nothing Angel could say or do around that period which didn’t enrage me, but I remember being especially furious about this because Angel was always mad for animals. (More than for humans, perhaps.) Not surprising for a zoologist, I suppose, but it was Angel who pressured us into getting Boyzone in the first place (though of course I soon fell for him too), and it was Angel who always liked to say that he could never trust a person who didn’t like dogs. Boyzone. Our baby boy Boyzone. Yo-yo-yo! I lick the day, happy to live and not live. I am waiting again, just as we always do, hanging on every word for an invitation to respond. Love is our master, yay! We can only love, even when those we love seem not to love each other. GABRIELLA I come into the garden to find Mum and Theo bent over a hole. They are so wrapped up in whatever it is that they don’t even notice me peering over. ‘But… how?’ Theo is saying. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ says Mum. ‘Well, I’m going to put it on the WhatsApp group,’ I say. ‘Hey! You frightened the life out of me!’ says Mum, startled. ‘Ooh, I think a ghost just walked over my grave.’ ‘Surely his grave,’ says Theo, pointing at the hole. ‘And I think you mean a goose,’ says Theo, brandishing his Google. ‘Let’s not get into all that again,’ Mum and I say, almost as one. The man is a trivia obsessive. Personally, I’m not given to superstition or over-thinking things, so when something doesn’t make sense to me, my impulse is always just to put the question out there. The local WhatsApp group started as a little support network for vulnerable people during the pandemic, but it wasn’t long before the polite requests for emergency shopping gave way to offers of second-hand furniture, thinly-disguised ‘personal recommendations’ for chimney sweeps, and feng shui consultants, and rants about the local traffic calming scheme. I think Mum felt a bit funny when she saw my message about Boyzone out there for all the world to see, and she probably wouldn’t have agreed to me sharing a pic if she’d known I’d taken one. But then, as she’d doubtless be the first to say, Boyzone was as much mine as hers and Dad’s. Remember Boaty McBoatface? Well, when I was just four or five, Mum and Dad decided, in a fit of parental foolishness, that I could baptise our adorable little puppy. Whatever name I chose, that would be his name, they said – no ifs or buts. Which was how we ended up with Boyzone. It was a ridiculous name, and I don’t even really know why I insisted on it now, though I do remember being completely adamant at the time. (Mum still blames my keyworker at pre-school, who she says always used to wear a Ronan Keating T-shirt.) Mum and Dad went back and forth about my choice, but in the end, Dad said that it was important to show me that a promise was a promise. (Which, given that Dad’s serial infidelities had probably already begun by this time, is pretty fecking ironic.) So Boyzone it was, even if, to start with, Mum and Dad had to keep explaining it to people, almost apologise for it. But you know how it is with names. Boyzone started to wear his like it had been made for him, and soon enough it was impossible to imagine that he could ever have been called anything else. Oh! I long for you to call me, for the run and the dance and the play. All names are my name if it’s you who is calling. Come! Go! Fetch! You send me away, and I love you for it, because you want only to watch me return. GLORIA Gabby’s WhatsApp post received quite a bit of interest. Many of the responses were surprisingly sensible, and even the silly ones weren’t too silly. Our local joker Barry merely observed that this was clearly a case for the scientists, who would need to carry out a PET scan and lots of Lab tests. Which were very Barry sort of comments to make, and actually quite funny by his standards. A few theories were kicked around – radiation, soil composition, sea air, a minor conspiracy about a switch of dogs. But several friends and neighbours also said how sorry they were about what had happened. As animal owners themselves, they couldn’t imagine what a shock it would be to come across your old friend like that and, as next-door-but-one Janice said, ‘have to mourn for your darling all over again, in a way’. And that was it really, that was the worst thing. Non-animal people will never get this, but in terms of pure grief, saying goodbye to Boyzone was right up there with my divorce and my own Mum dying. Perhaps because they all happened about the same time, in 2013 – unlucky for some, and me and Gabby’s horrible anus, as we like to call it. In my mind – in my heart – these sadnesses are all wrapped up in one messy tangle. But somehow, letting go of that silly little dog and pushing the earth down over his poor lifeless form was the moment I drew a line and began to move forwards. It’s taken me years to get back on my feet, but that was the moment. Perhaps we can’t connect with animals in all the ways that we can with humans, but then animals can bring us something that humans can’t. They can never hurt us, for one thing, except by their own pain and death, which only hurts them more. ‘Mum,’ says Gabby, right on cue, and by the tone in her voice I know she is preparing me for something I won’t want to hear. ‘I’ve got Dad on the phone.’ ‘Oh, for god’s sake, Gabriella.’ ‘He’s got a right to know.’ I go to the bottom of the stairs, where the landline sits on the little table, and I’m just about to pick up the receiver when the doorbell goes. ‘Hi,’ I say to the phone flatly, opening the door with my free hand. And then: ‘Hang on, I’ll call you back.’ I’m not trying to annoy Angel on purpose, though of course, it’s always a temptation. It’s just that, on opening the door, I find Senora Buena Muerte kneeling on my welcome mat. Next to her, she has placed a little coffee jar, from which the hot, sickly aroma of half-a-dozen smoking sticks of incense swirls up to greet me. A thick candle with a deep cross carved into it has been perched on my hedgehog shoe-brush, and an ornate black rosary swings from liverish hands that are tightly clasped in prayer. I should perhaps also mention that Senora Buena Muerte is swathed in one of those fine black-lace prayer shawls, and her bulbous lips chatter soundlessly as she works her way through the Decades. All this, as you can imagine, is more than I can easily explain to Angel. Senora Buena Muerte is a Catholic of the old school; and also, possibly, a tiny bit mad. For years now her hunched, shuffling frame has been a fixture in our streets, as she goes knocking on doors for a variety of causes, collecting for Christian Aid or distributing crosses on Palm Sunday, or circulating pamphlets about a miraculous new healing statue in the Philippines. One that drips tears of blood. She is always accompanied by her little Jack Russell, Benito, a weary old-timer who was a good friend of Boyzone back in the day. Left to its own devices, Senora’s face tends to wear an expression of otherworldly piety, as if she is deep in contemplation of the Sorrowful Mysteries – until you say hello, when at once her lovely smile, coated always in a thick, deep shade of burgundy lippy, appears. But although everyone recognises her, no one really seems to know her. I don’t know of anyone in the street who’s ever been inside her house, for example. ‘El cano,’ she says, and crosses herself. It’s been a good many years since I was in a church, but these habits die hard, and I am always tempted to return the gesture. There’s always been something reassuring to me about making the Sign of the Cross. ‘Boyzone? I know! It’s so sad and strange. And thank you, Senora.’ I don’t really need this whole circus camped out on my doorstep, but no one can say she hasn’t made an effort. Behind her, various locals survey the scene placidly as they walk past. A few wave or smile at the makeshift shrine on my doorstep, but no one bats an eyelid, which is of course a very Brighton sort of reaction. ‘Si, El Boyzone. Es un… incorruptible!’ ‘In… corruptibles?’ I think of the film, remember that brief window of time when Kevin Costner was quite the man. ‘Santo Boyzone! Ay Dios mio – que miraculo!’ Dances with Wolves, wasn’t it? And then, oh dear, Waterworld. Senora pushes a little booklet into my hand. It is published by The Society of Divine Truth, whoever they are, and it is called The Five Steps to Sainthood. She opens the book at a folded page and points to a highlighted section: ‘Sign 5: The miracle of incorruptibility.’ ‘OK, right. Thank you, Senora. Er, can you... leave this with me?’ ‘Por su puesto!’ ‘Now I’m very sorry,’ I say, as I try to think of a gentle way to draw this whole exchange to a close. ‘But I must inform Angel of the situation. Mi... hombre.’ It is the first time in many years that I have referred to Angel as my husband in any language, or at least not without wanting to spit blood at the same time. But Senora Buena Muerte is old school, as I say, and always ready to defer to the hombre. ‘Claro, Senora! Claro que si!’ She immediately gets to her feet. ‘I leave?’ she asks, gesturing hopefully at all her paraphernalia. ‘Leave... the incense,’ I smile. ‘Boyzone loved incense.’ Which is a very me thing to say, in that I’ve just made it up. Senora Buena Muerte looks pleased. She crosses herself deftly once more, kisses a medallion attached to her beads, and is soon gone. ‘Angel,’ I say, a few moments later. ‘You just won’t believe this.’ ‘Oh. My. God!’ he giggles. And for a moment it’s 20 years ago. Hey you! The air is brightly coloured with your smile. Your laughter is my birdsong. I watch sadness and happiness break over you, like the moods of the weather. If only you could see you as I see you! Oh yes! I wish only to reflect your joy in my eyes, so that you can see it at last. ANGEL I’m scrolling through the university research hub on my laptop. The case of Boyzone’s non-decomposition intrigues me. Tamara is at the other end of the sofa, tending to some chilli cuttings on a small table. ‘It’s a power animal thing,’ says Tamara. ‘I’ve told you about this before. It’s a manifestation of your animal essence, that’s all.’ She giggles, and I spot again the cute little gap in her two front teeth. ‘How is my dead pet a manifestation of my essence?’ ‘Oh don’t be so... linear,’ says Tamara dismissively. She hates it when I come all sciency with her. She smirks. ‘I always said you were a bit of an old dog.’ What is Tamara’s inner animal, I wonder? A vixen? A scorpion? A wolverine? ‘Well, thanks very much,’ I say. She strokes my arm. ‘Joking! You know what I mean: playful, strong, loyal. A faithful companion.’ A Siberian lynx? A Moorish Idol? A Northern hawk owl? ‘I’m not sure Gloria would ever think of me as “a faithful companion”,’ I say, for some reason. ‘Well.’ Tamara sits upright, as if she’s just taken a smart blow on the chin and is ready to strike back. ‘That’s because she never knew how to bring it out of you.’ She strokes my arm. ‘Let’s face it, I don’t think she’s very enlightened, you know… shamanically speaking.’ Oh Lord. I look into Tamara’s extraordinary violet eyes, so clear and challenging, and I know in an instant both that I have never desired anyone more – and that it is only a matter of time before I leave her. ‘Also, what kind of a ridiculous name is Boyzone??’ ‘It’s the name Gabby gave him?’ I try to mask it, but there is a definite edge in my voice. ‘Gabby?’ ‘My daughter?’ This chat is not going well. ‘Oh yah. Sorry.’ Tamara’s ways of repairing things are always physical. She slides over to me across her cruelty-free sofa and I inhale her scent and stroke her skin, and for a few moments I forget everything. I even forget the little comeback of my own that I’d been brewing – something to the effect that anyone who chooses to call their little boy Apollo Moondew Waterfall is probably not best placed to make fun of other people’s naming choices. I don’t care how beautiful the dawn ceremony atop the Tor at Solstice was, that poor little sod has many hard years ahead of him in the playground. It used to be exhilarating, leaving people. It was grim and painful too, of course, but I always felt I was doing something ultimately positive, something right not just for me but for everyone concerned. A growing pain; a moulting. Does it hurt a hermit crab to change shells? Does the caribou mourn the shedding of its antlers? Does the Mexican Red Kneed Tarantula grieve the loss of its old familiar exoskeleton? (Note to self: No more dates with postgrad students.) Perhaps if you were less obsessed about animals, you’d be better at understanding humans, a tearful Gloria said to me more than once. Gloria, who left me. Monogamy is not a universal norm, from the evolutionary perspective; I should have been an early Mormon. Then again, we seem to evolve towards monogamy as parents. Fathering requires sufficient sexual exclusivity to provide for assurance of paternity (him) and adequate resource provision (her). With Gloria and Gabby, for a long time, I was only too happy to build the nest, sit on the egg, feed and defend our chick. We enacted perfect romantic pair bonding. For a season at least. Tamara hands me a tab of something or other, and I ingest it without thinking. I feel the familiar tingle of narcotic panic as I cross again the threshold of self-control. I have never broken up with someone when high before, but why not? I have done it in so many other ways – in a rainforest, on a scuba dive, in a lion enclosure. Even in mid-climax, once, which did not go well. (As an organism we are programmed to keep scanning the radar. However committed to bi-parenting, we still possess powerful non-monogamous desires, because of course it will always be potentially adaptive to mate with a partner with the best genetic material or the most resources. But though I cheated on Gloria a-plenty, on her terms, I never cheated on the three of us, on mine.) ‘I must go and see Gloria tomorrow,’ I say. ‘She’s so upset about this whole Boyzone thing.’ Gloria, who left me. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Tamara. ‘It’ll just be a pocket of radiation or a 5G surge. Or a vibrational vortex. The primal peoples write about such things all the time.’ I let this pass. ‘I must go,’ I say. ‘She’s really cut up about it.’ ‘Wow. Can you not see what she’s doing?’ ‘?’ ‘Even now, she wants to own your ego-self through time.’ ‘Through… time?’ ‘Yes! She demands your appearance whenever it suits her because she needs to demonstrate that you are still part of her circuit of psychodynamic control.’ ‘I’m not sure I follow. And I have to say, it’s a very, very long time since Gloria has demanded my presence for anything. Quite the opposite, in fact.’ ‘You just don’t see it, do you? How she tries to stifle your energy with hers. She has these long cold auric coils that she emanates, and you’re just choking in them vibrationally.’ I am starting to feel a little disembodied. ‘I have an A level in physics and a degree in evolutionary biology,’ I slur. (I forget in my rapidly altering state that I am also an associate Professor of Zoology.) ‘But I do not recognise this energy of which you speak.’ Tamara’s eyes are dilating and her neck is rouge. She says she has something to tell me, but it seems I have decided to blurt out my own news first. Never let them speak first, another lesson I have learnt the hard way. It’s all a bit of a blur, but I believe I go with, ‘This isn’t working’. Tears, punches, silent reproach. A few projectiles. These are the sorts of things I have come to expect. But Tamara snarls; suddenly she is a furious mandril, a pitiless serpent eagle, a haunting Great Plains Wolf. ‘We will meet again in the next life,’ I say. Even in my growing delirium I am aware of a little frisson of self-congratulation: this is surely the perfect line for breaking up with a New Ager. ‘No. We won’t,’ she says, and she looks at me with a terrible pity. ‘You are a very unevolved soul.’ And I seem to see her fold in half, reach down with tremendous yogic suppleness and pull something wet and precious from inside herself. An orphaned flying fox. A tiny spider monkey. A scrunchy, fluffy chocolate labradoodle pup. ‘You will never know your own,’ she says. GABRIELLA Boyzone was lying out in an open hole for five days before the women in the plastic suits moved in. They set up a cordon and a tent, and brought out instruments that beeped and clicked. They trod mud all over Mum’s new kitchen, and ruined all the landscaping that Theo claimed to have almost finished. The whole thing reminded me of that bit in ET when all the scary agents and government scientists move in on Elliot’s house. Finally, they took Boyzone away, in a special plastic crate. It all seemed a bit pointless, to be so worried about contamination or radiation or whatever, because by then half the neighbourhood had traipsed in and out of the garden to gawp at the miracle of ‘the dog that wouldn’t leave’, as the Argus put it. There was even a camera crew from the local TV station, and a couple of news agency stringers too. The journos all seemed pretty unimpressed about the whole thing, and you couldn’t blame them. There wasn’t any developing story to chase, just some static footage of what looked like a sleeping canine in a hole. (‘How do we know it didn’t die last week?’ I heard one of them mutter. ‘How do we know it’s even dead?’ said another.) One of them kept sniffing round me and Mum for some sensational backstory – they wanted some special symbolism or supernatural dimension, I think. Did Boyzone come back for a special reason? Did he have unfinished business? Had he always loved that part of the garden? Had anyone been in contact yet with the surviving members… of Boyzone? The questions were all a bit crap, really, because they all seemed to be based on the assumption that Boyzone had come alive again in some special way – that he had made an active choice to return. But he wasn’t a ghost or a spirit or anything. OK, something had happened to his body, to stop it decaying as it should, but no doubt there would be some boring scientific explanation for that in due course. But my dog Boyzone – my best friend through all the crap years of Mum and Dad – was still dead. He’d just been dug up. I suppose if you wanted to believe in a miracle, you only had to look at Mum and Dad sitting in the kitchen, hugging mugs of coffee and shrieking with laughter at poor old Senora Buena Muerte. ‘Boyzone reforming – now that would be a miracle,’ says Dad. Mum giggles, unembarrassed. It’s almost as if Mum never tried to run Dad over in the driveway, never threw his five-grand microscope out of a second-floor window, never hijacked one of his student lectures with a PowerPoint presentation of her own itemising all his infidelities. And it’s almost as if Dad didn’t deserve it all, as if Mum’s jealousy didn’t provide him with an easy excuse for going astray again and again. I think he liked to see himself as some sort of alpha primate for whom the usual rules don’t apply. But the fact is, he was just another selfish bloke who couldn’t keep it in his trousers. People split up all the time. So much is life, and usually it’s for the best. My own break-ups are always a relief, you can see them coming a mile off. Mum and Dad, on the other hand, seemed to spend half their marriage breaking up, and then making up – only to break up again. It’s hard for me to remember it this way, but people were always telling me that Mum and Dad were meant for each other. Everyone knew this, apparently, yet each was like an animal programmed to go on trying to hurt the other, even when they were hurting themselves more. And I had my own ringside seat on it all. I remember lying in bed every night, listening to them snipe and shout at each other. During the day, they would try very hard to keep things normal for me, but as a super-sensitive teenager, there’s not much you don’t pick up on. Anyway, it wasn’t exactly hard. The airing cupboard in the corner of my bedroom sat directly above another floor-to-ceiling cupboard in the living room downstairs. The water pipes must have left some gaps between the floors, because if you opened the cupboard door and stuck your head in a little, the sounds from downstairs travelled up perfectly. I don’t think Mum or Dad ever knew this, but I could hear every single word. I spent hours every night with my head on a pile of blankets, one side of my face all hot from the boiler, and an arm around Boyzone, who never left my side. Together we sat and listened as Mum swore and threatened and cried, and Dad waffled and protested, tried to deny or downplay everything, issued promises and apologies – then, when none of that worked, tried to make out it was her fault and turn the attack back on her. I learnt a lot of swearwords in those years, a lot about hatred and a lot about pain. Mum took me to church a few times when I was little. It always bored me rigid – the weird incantations, the endless silences, all the standing and kneeling like the living dead, the fake smiles and handshakes. But I must have taken something from it, because I remember at night I often used to kneel by the piles of lavender-fresh laundry, and pray for Mum and Dad. And me. Boyzone would rest his head quietly on my leg, as if he understood, as if he was praying too. And now: what? Were they going to get back together thanks to our old dog? Was this the real miracle behind his non-decomposition? Had my prayers been answered? The journos would love it, of course. But some things aren’t meant to be fixed. Sometimes ‘making up’ is just a Band Aid for a hurt that can’t really be healed. We do it for practical reasons, so life can go on, for the kids. Well, please, folks, don’t do anything on my account. As we now know, simply burying things doesn’t always make them disappear. Mum and Dad back together? Over my dead body. Whoa! When you are sad, I am sad. I have no power to change the things that make you sad. But I am here. Yee-hah! I am always here for you. THEO With my landscaping work on hold, I’ve had a bit more time for research. It turns out you can see a lot of these incorruptible saints online. There are various churches and cathedrals all over the place (well, mostly Italy) where the bodies are actually on view. It’s all on Youtube. Lots of these ancient bodies have survived various mutilations and removals down the ages, not to mention a suspicious number of fires. St Bernadette of Lourdes fame is the poster girl of the incorruptibles – a pious sleeping beauty in a glass case, her rosary-draped hands clasped in prayer. Bernadette’s body was exhumed three times as part of the canonisation process – an unspoilt corpse being one of the classic signs of sainthood. She was reported to be largely intact the first time they removed her, in 1909, 30 years after she died. But by the time she was pronounced officially ‘incorrupt’, parts of her skin were missing, and her face had a blackish colour, so it was decided a ‘light wax mask’ would be in order. And now she lies in her crystal casket in her convent in Nevers – ‘a martyr,’ it says here, ‘to our ghoulish curiosity’. Now I don’t mean to be funny, but a lot of these incorruptibles don’t look that great. I mean, they’ve been dead for hundreds of years so it’s kind of amazing they look like anything. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that people kept wanting to dig them up. Also, different convents and monasteries were jealous of who got to keep the remains, so body parts were often hacked off and shared around – a leg to Segovia, the heart to Florence, the head in a special case for Rome. Not surprisingly, each of these upheavals made the body look even worse – apparently, the reason Bernadette went off colour was blamed on the poor nuns of the time, who tried to give her a wash, no doubt with the best of intentions. If she’d been left alone, who knows how great she’d still look? Who gains from a body being incorrupt? If I live a holy life of exemplary self-denial, is a flawless corpse really the reward I’m after? Perhaps it’s to help others believe, but then how do the patches of mildew and missing bits of skin encourage the faithful? If a miracle can be worked to make a body half-survive centuries in the ground, why not go the whole hog and give us pristine cadavers instead of these holy zombies? But perhaps you have to leave a little gap, for people’s faith to fill. Are they going to give Boyzone the Bernadette and Chairman Mao treatment, I can’t help wondering? Stick him in a see-through box in a chapel somewhere? Saint Boyzone has a sort of ring to it. Canonisation. Canine. Canine-isation. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but it just won’t come. Which is not like me. Can you get animal saints, I google to myself? Not officially, although there’s a story of a Saint Guinefort, who was actually a greyhound. Legend has it that he saved a child from a snake attack, but was originally thought to have attacked the child himself and was slain for his trouble. After people realised the mistake, a shrine was built and parents took to leaving their sick children by his graveside. According to legend, St Christopher came from a half-human, half-hound race known as the Dogheads. Half-dog sounds kind of cool. I mean, your sense of smell would be incredible. In Finland, they believe Christopher was so good-looking that, on being baptised, he asked God to make him less attractive to women. So God made him a dog! Not necessarily the best choice, in my view. My last boyfriend said that he’d never a better kisser than his Cavalier King Charles. Which, you know, was a little tough to hear. Dogs are faithful and kind, so were seen by early preachers as model Christians. Just as a dog heals wounds by licking, so prayer and teaching wash away sins. A 15th-century Islamic text advises those who seek holiness to adopt the ‘10 praiseworthy attributes of the dog’, such as not complaining of heat or cold, being happy with whatever you’re given to eat, and being incapable of hate, even if your owner beats or starves you. Also – a sign of a simple holy life, this – ‘leaving nothing behind to be disposed of’. Only his body, and our feelings. I was there the day Boyzone died. I helped to bury him. I don’t remember anything supernatural occurring, just a terrible sadness. It was pelting down with rain, and we kept slipping and sliding in the muddy yard. Our little grave seemed to fill with water quicker than we could dig it out, and I remember that the deadweight of a dead dog, even a labradoodle, is a surprisingly heavy thing. The body did not move, but it did its best to help us out by flopping and folding to fit into our hole. Here’s another question for the internet: Do dogs go to heaven? Some people say yes, because all our happiness will be restored there, and that’s got to include your dog. Just this side of heaven (it says here) there’s a place called Rainbow Bridge. All the animals you’ve ever loved wait for you there, healthy and whole again. When you arrive, they break from the pack, cover you in licks and kisses, and together you cross the Rainbow Bridge together. That’s what they say at animal funerals, and I do like the idea. Apparently it goes back to Norse mythology, and a burning rainbow that spanned the gap between the earth and the heavens. It sure beats the crappy euphemisms we use for death today, like ‘passed away’ and ‘departed this earth’. ‘Boyzone crossed the burning rainbow today.’ That’s more like it. Only: Why is he back? Is he waiting for someone to cross with him? Waiting is loving; loving is not forgetting. I call but you do not come, not now, not yet. And in your absence I am happy, for I have someone to wait for. GLORIA When Boyzone is brought back to us, he’s in a small cardboard packet about the size of a Tupperware lunchbox. The air and the damp have done their work at last, the woman from the lab says tactfully. As a thank you for sharing our find – which, she says, has yielded much ‘valuable but as yet inconclusive’ data – they offered to arrange the cremation for us. I said yes. What else was I going to do – bury him again? I don’t ask Angel if he wants to join us for the scattering of Boyzone. It was good to laugh with him, and remember a time when I didn’t hate him, remember why I actually rather liked him. (Understatement.) But there is a quiet happiness in making peace with the end of things. (Apparently he is going to be a Dad again, and I could not be more happy... that this has nothing to do with me.) In any case, if ever I did find myself slipping back down the slippery slope of Angel’s charm, I have only to catch a glimpse of my daughter’s expression. We move on. Theo, Gabby and I drive along the coast to Hove, the bit beyond the King Alfred where the dog-walkers all go. It’s where Boyzone used to run for miles, in and out of the tide, chasing sticks, balls, birds and other things on the doggie horizon that only he could see. He was more a paddler than a swimmer. He seemed to love the wind as much as the water, and I will forever see his woolly ears flapping up and down and coming together above his head in lazy time with his ridiculously bouncy stride. He was happy to be alive. As people often said, he always seemed to be smiling. We stand at the edge of the water, happy for the tide to wash over our bare ankles. Theo says some rather incoherent words, something about Boyzone making old bones (a joke, I think) and a bridge made of rainbows and Happy are the Dog-heads. Gabby gets her phone out and plays that Ronan song, You say it best when you say nothing at all, which ought to be ridiculous but somehow becomes very moving. The whole occasion rises up on me very fast all of a sudden, and I shed a tear or twelve. THEO Back at Gloria’s, we all sit outside for a cuppa and I show her and Gabby some pics of Friday’s date. Terry. We’ve only met the twice, but I can’t help feeling this is the one! Gloria and Gabby are both very complimentary about the little water feature that throws up a lovely column of spray from the pond that now sits on Boyzone’s old spot. Gloria seems pleasantly surprised at how quickly I did it all, and is especially impressed at how you can’t even see the filter. It’s so pretty the way the drops catch the sun and the water glistens and ghosts in the play of the breeze. I say I can’t accept the extra money she offers me for the work. It’s to remind her of Boyzone, I say, it wouldn’t be right. Plus I had nothing to do with any of it. GLORIA I forget the lyrics of the song now, but there’s a bit about how a look in your eye says we’ll never be parted. Nothing like the love of a dog to remind you of the crapness of humans -- the weakness of our will, the frailty of our promises. The ashes fly out over the sea for a brief second, but then of course a gust whips them right back in our faces. Whipped by the grit of his remains, we all lick a bit of Boyzone. It feels right. In the water we wake to a new life. The light sparkles and the moment wraps us all in its joyful embrace. The beach breathes in the sun, and the breeze tickles and teases. My apartness calls to your apartness, and together we chase after the One. Whoo-hoo!! Dan Brotzel is the author of a collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, and a novel, The Wolf in the Woods (both from Sandstone Press). He is also co-author of a comic novel, Work in Progress (Unbound). His new book, Awareness Daze (Sandstone Press) is out November 2023. More at www.danbrotzel.com

I sat, criss-cross applesauce on my back deck in the direct sunlight, waiting for that hint of inspiration to come down from the heavens or whatever magical place one believes exists if they think heaven is a con. I had just read Elizabeth M. Castillo’s book “Not Quite An Ocean” published in 2023 by Nine Pens Press. This complete work of beauty, pain, anger, love, and personhood, inspired me yet is so perfect in its execution it left me a little dizzy. Thus it is a perfect example of someone’s poetic inspiration lighting a fire under my behind: I must write about this, and immediately. But there I sat, dumbstruck. I would like to say it was the heat, but what happened was that I read the piece “Poem after my 4-year-old’s bedtime tantrum” for the first time. I found myself immediately connecting with Castillo’s words. Suddenly it was twenty-eight years ago and I was alone with my daughter amid a standoff over putting on pants. My wishes, and desires that were seemingly simple within the chaos of child-rearing, now seemed fraught with regret. I remember wishing eighteen years would hurry up and pass, and that I could matter again to myself. I could barely keep the tears from breaching the sills of my eyes. Castillo’s honesty is tinged with melancholy in this piece, a beautiful look backward and forward at secret regrets, selfishness, and unconditional love. I think we have all experienced the drifting away or the sudden removal of someone who has fundamentally shaped our existence. Castillo bravely explores father-daughter dynamics in “Things that have replaced my Father”. Whether the absence of the father is figurative or literal, the deep dive into the wreckage left, as well as the beauty inherited is powerful. There is a temptation as a reader, to get to know the protagonist in this poem. I want to understand and relate, which seems to be the miracle of Castillo's writing. You care about this work and the subject. “In Which Bertha Mason Cannot Sleep” is a poem I wish I had written. Simple, to the point, this piece harkens back to an iconic fictional character through the lens of a modern, privileged woman who realizes she has been painted as the bad guy for far too long. That her melancholy may just be justified. It’s not easy to make an impact in so few words, but Castillo can paint a vivid picture with very few strokes. “In summer I am beautiful” is another direct hit to my heart. As I read this I was sitting lizard-like in the sun. Castillo’s description of the seasons in conjunction with the self, and the perception of who we are within the ebb and flow of nature is absolutely lovely. Case in point, the line “In summer, I wear beauty like a shroud, and my solitude becomes a wildflower crown” is the perfect description of how it feels to come out of that cocoon of bitter cold and gray of winter, to the warming sensuality of summer; to the blossoming of the fruits of flower ‘sex’, the exposing of hidden skin, to the water. There is a distinct quality to the writing in this piece that reminds me of Mary Oliver, where the seasons and humanity are wrapped around each other, returning to the order of things. I can’t tell you what makes a poem feel personal, but I can tell you that whatever that is, this one has it in spades. “Love song” so aptly named, reads like a Country song. It flows, it fights, and it wills itself to be understood. Again, there is a tinge of sadness and a conclusion that feels inevitable. I read it to my husband, who is often my poem-reading audience, and said “This is how I feel about you”. Like a song dedication on the radio, he was flattered. The helplessness in the decision to love an imperfect person is palpable. What we sacrifice and what we hold onto so desperately for love. This poem could be the beginning of something or the end, you decide. But I’ll tell you one thing, you can sing it in your sleep. I left my little backyard inferno, and picked up the iPad to begin this review, a little stunned and more brave for having had the experience of reading “Not Quite An Ocean”. It’s a task indeed, to find the right words to convey how perfect and impactful Castillo uses hers. I don’t think I will ever have it in me. But I will say, you should pick up your copy of “Not Quite An Ocean”. You may get lost in the beauty, you may have to feel around the walls in the dark rooms of your heart and feel something you thought you left behind. You may look at your own writing and want to burn it in your fireplace. But you will learn something about yourself, you will see yourself in this work, and you will love something in this collection. Elizabeth M Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, workshop teacher, and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Paris with her family and two cats, where she writes a variety of different things, in a variety of different languages, and under a variety of pen names. In her writing Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism. Her writing has been featured in publications and anthologies in the UK, US, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. Her bilingual, debut collection “Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras” is for sale on Amazon, and her debut chapbook "Not Quite an Ocean" is out now with Nine Pens Press. You can connect with her on Twitter, IG and TikTok as @EMCWritesPoetry, or on her website www.elizabethmcastillo.net Kellie Scott-Reed is a real so and so, and loves to write music, poetry, and short stories, review other’s work, and make a spectacle of herself. She is AEIC of the Roi Faineant Press, the host of “A Word?” where she interviews creatives of all sorts. She is published in Punk Noir Press, Identity Theory Press, the anthology “A Place Where Everyone’s Name is Fear”, Five Minute Lit, Bullshit Lit, and Three Rooms Press to name a few. She can be found wandering aimlessly in the woods in the Finger Lakes Region of NY with her dog Juneau until her husband calls her back home.

I’m not talking baby curls but full-Jesus, gleaming-waxen-flaxen, back-to-the-sixties, personal-best lush. The waves of maturity. Gray to be sure. I’d considered adding a trace of beard that all the young guys sport, but then I’d look homeless. My wife goes to the hairdresser every six weeks for a color and cut. Essential for her self-esteem. She says that she doesn’t recognize me. I tell her to use her sense of smell. After all, our dog Max doesn’t bark at me because of my locks. The woman is just hair shaming me, pressuring me to see a barber. She doesn’t understand that long hair is freeing, opening up fresh lifestyle choices like actor or philosopher. Drama classes are possible, or I’ll buy a chiton tunic on eBay and head for the Agora. My intransience caused her to purchase dog clippers. Staring at me, turning the shears over in her hand, her eyes became Delilah-lustful. Max succumbed to her grooming. After all, she’s potentate of his food bowl, so he can’t resist. I sense a quizzical jealousy in his eyes, wondering why I’ve not had to relent to her grooming. For him, my wife’s the alpha-female, and after him, I’m third in our pack’s pecking order. Time for Max and my wife to get with the program. With my mane, I’m now king of the beasts. Joe Giordano was born in Brooklyn. He and his wife Jane now live in Texas. Joe’s stories have appeared in more than one hundred magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, and Shenandoah, and his short story collection, Stories and Places I Remember. His novels include Birds of Passage, An Italian Immigrant Coming of Age Story, and the Anthony Provati thriller series: Appointment with ISIL, Drone Strike, and The Art of Revenge. Visit Joe’s website at https://joe-giordano.com/

lily-pads on the cold water Paper boats gliding through uncertain eddies - - - Soda bread chewy in all the wrong places Trying not to gag Telling grandma Its lovely through heaving breaths - - - Sprinting, running through uncut fields To silver streams at the bottom Sharp stones turned ankles Concrete lanes to other worlds Where imagination lived alongside wooden swords The tiny house and its caved in roof And rusted pump on the dried up well lily-pads on the cold water floating drifting always always out of … … reach. we were More years ago than either of us can remember we were driftwood, even then And then, washed up upon a shore we were the shelter we didn’t know we needed And the town we became grew, and we supported more than each other, and we had to become more And so we did. We grew and grew until we were everything around us and we were nothing at all. But still, we were. We were the roads and tracks of our new world, and the blood that flowed. We became the lives of others and the thoughts in the dark and the shadows at their doors. We were the fears in their dreams and the hope in their futures. We were the rains that fell and turned their barren lands to crops. We were the thunder that echoed in their valleys and the lightning that lit their nights. We were the nameless We were the memories of things that didn’t happen. We were everything. And we were nothing. Sean Smith is a writer and poet from Northern Ireland, who is previously published in Roi Faineant, Fiery Scribe, Orchard Lea and others. He is currently found trying to get pieces of writing in on time to complete his MA in English & Creative Writing at Ulster University.

I was at a home show hot tubs and roof vendors baked goods and hot sauce Fancy chamois that suck up all the spills What I didn’t expect was a poet tucked between a deck builder and a coffee cake baker a young woman offering to write patrons A poem for $10 My hand immediately reaches into my pocket here in the flesh one of my brethren a chance to connect like minds for only $10 But what would I have her write The confidence to write and hand it over Immediately instead of pondering for months How do I introduce myself and not feel weird it always feels weird I didn’t buy a poem or even say hi I’m a poet, too it’s a week later and I still feel guilty I had $10 I should have bought a poem even if I couldn’t introduce myself but after 46 years on this earth I still find it hard to say hi to a stranger Jason has a website at www.jasonmelvinwords.weebly.com

Early on the last day, we drive to find the bottle bank. The morning is thick with sunrise and unspoken language and ladybirds clustered on windows. Silence melts like chocolate on our tongues. Your face conveys discovery; chores will never look so beautiful again. We say little, pendulums swinging back and forth. Days ago we were squealing atop boulders — somehow monotony is more fun. I carry as many bottles as I can. They quiver in my grip as I do in yours. Glass calls back its brokenness, shapes swishing through the dark like falling stars. Destruction is unexpectedly romantic; let’s take a sledgehammer to the sky. We mock the strangeness of temporary traffic lights. Standstill makes me dizzy. In the forest, I pulled a ladybird from your hair and wished that I could take its place.

Technically speaking, it is night. However, despite the chronological truth of the statement (a quick glance at his watch offers the time: twenty-fifteen), the moon barely glimmers in the sky. The heavens are unchanging – they remain as lazy blue as the afternoon. Summer does not bow down. It is not safe yet. He sits on his porch, contemplating. There is an emotion deeper than impatience, there – it is the impatience of several days – several months, several years, several decades – and if he had a heart, it would pound with anticipation as he waits for the inky darkness of true night. He always waits. His skin still feels cool to the touch, underneath the awning’s shade. In the sun, he feels the burning sensation come on quickly. From underneath, where his organs begin to heat up, it travels at record speed to the surface. Once it breaks through the surface, he feels a rupture – excruciating, like something inside of him trying to break free. Summer does not bow down, but it eventually grows bored, and allows brief hours of coolness for monsters to roam. He watches the fleecy white clouds, waiting. If there was any blood in his body, the summer sun would set it on fire. He knows – more than most men – how fast blood can boil. When he drinks it, he mixes in ice cubes. That’s when it tastes sweetest. He will wait for such delicacies. He always waits.