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I saw the true face of humanity– Masses gathering, phones alight, Recording, photographing the scene, Loudly, excitedly chattering about The tragedy that erupted around 10:30 p.m. that dreadful Wednesday Night, but my ears nor eyes caught A single person asking if everyone Involved was okay, if they had survived On that dreadful Wednesday Night when I stepped into the living room, Saw my wife with her ear to the open Window, curtain trembling with the late- -August breeze, summoning me to come, Listen to the popping, a sound that fell to Our ears as indistinguishable between Fireworks and the gunshots someone In the neighborhood sent crackling Into the sky on random nights such as these, And as we opened our front door to witness The whoosh of flame from several doors Down, popping turning to explosions, A fire raging from a neighbor’s home, A question of why the police, fire department Hasn’t yet shown-up, if anyone has called them, And shadowy visions of my wife immediately On her phone to Report the grisly scene, police, the local Fire department showing up minutes later, The face of humanity beginning to morph From ghoulish to promising and back again As hopelessness sets in, rises, wafts Like the all-consuming flames, the reminder Of how swiftly all we have and all we have Worked our lives for could be taken from us By a terrible accident, an act from the Undiscerning hand of fate as I, too, Stop, stare, horrified, wordless, sickness Twisting in my gut, feeling the anxiety that Would captivate my fleeting slumber that night, I recognize that, I too, carry the alternately Sad, hideous, and occasionally uplifting Mask of our collective actions— I, too, am the face of humanity. Andrew Buckner is a multi award-winning poet, filmmaker, and screenwriter. His short dark comedy/horror script Dead Air!  won Best Original Screenwriter at the fourth edition of The Hitchcock Awards. Also a noted critic, author, actor, and experimental musician, Buckner runs and writes for the review site AWordofDreams.com .

I just learned more about this composer, Schubert, yesterday.  I was trying a new song in my lesson, and my cello teacher filled me in about the guy, (he does that all the time).  At first, I thought he was showing off or trying to gain clout with my mom, who often flits through the lesson, trying to be unobserved, but that wasn’t it.   After multiple lessons, I got it.  Mister B constantly lives all this music stuff, the composers, the instruments, all the crazy theory, it all.  He’s kind of obsessed that way and I get it.  It’s like me with Minecraft.  So, about this Schubert, whose song I was learning, “He’s kind of a savant,” Mr. B said. I guess he should have said he was a savant because Schubert was born like two hundred twenty-five years ago, in 1797.  He died in 1828, when he was 31 years old, and my teacher said “He was so young.”  I guess to him he was, since Mr. B is like over 50, but to me 31 is more than twice my age, and that sounds like another lifetime to me.  So not that young, maybe. Mr. B calling this Schubert a “savant” confused me.  Of course, I didn’t ask about it, but then Mr. B said he rarely left his house, lived with his father, but he wrote seven effing symphonies.  Do you know how long a symphony is?  Because I do, as mom made me sit through an entire one for extra cred in my cultural appreciation class.  (Sometimes it sucks to have your mom as one of your teachers). Seven symphonies.  I guess he didn’t often go out to hear them played.  Then my cello teacher said he also wrote 600 vocal works, 2 operas, and lots and lots of sacred music which I can’t really get the weight of, but it sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time. We worked on the song “An die Musik”, and the name is pretty self-explanatory, German to English, “To Music”.  Maybe I should have picked German to learn instead of stupid Hindi, just because dad comes from Jaipur. “To the Music” was pretty simple on the cello.  I got to work on my second and third positions a bit, but Mr. B penciled fingerings also in first and fourth, my faves, so yay.  It was actually kinda cool, the way it sounded.  I went over it a few times and I tried to get it pretty fixed in my head since I hadn’t heard it before.  I like to know where the notes are going and how they should sound before I play them so I don’t make stupid mistakes. I make enough mistakes in life just from being on this “spectrum.”  You put your fingers up to make quote marks here.  So.  Autism is the word people think but don’t say as much as “spectrum”, with the quotes, which doesn’t really clarify anything, in my opinion. And I’m thinking this Schubert was maybe on this “spectrum” but maybe they didn’t call it that back then.  They maybe used words like savant or I don’t know, but I’m sure they had them.  I think a lot of us passionate people end up in some category that folks come up with to lump us all together so they can describe us with words that aren’t so judgey, like weirdo and all. The more I thought about this Schubert, as I played along with those notes that had come out of his brain, the more I felt akin to him.  Do  you like that word akin?  Means I’m almost like related to him.  After the lesson I went to play Minecraft because I have a big session with Kirby and Colin coming up and Minecraft is one of my biggest passions.  I think my mom hoped the cello would replace Minecraft, but that’ll never happen.  Even though I like cello a lot. In my room, in my game cave, I googled that Schubert.  I thought I might like to hear his song, “to music” again, but I just kept running into other works by him.  Mr. B was right, he wrote a ton.  I did take note of his other names besides Schubert though.  Names are important to me.  I remember  the names of everyone I ever met, including like, waiters at restaurants, and all the teachers and staff at school, which sometimes drives my mom crazy, because my dad’s always asking me everybody’s name on the few times he meets us at school functions, like plays and concerts and sporting events that my sister, Kiara, is all about.  Not me, not a sporty kind of guy.  Then my dad, says “Hello  good to see you” to this and that person, saying their name and smiling.  I guess mom thinks I make it too easy for my dad to look like he’s paying attention when he’s really just kinda an iPad dad. So, Schubert’s whole name string is Franz Peter Schubert.  He’s basically from Austria, well to be specific, between 1867 and 1918 Austria was allied with Hungary and they called it the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed 10 years before our Franz Peter Schubert died of disputable causes, which I’m not going to go into here. Because I want to get to the nut of all this before 4:15 pm PST where I have to be ready and geared up for Minecraft with my friend Kirby, which happens at 4:30, exactly. Back to the Music, and Franz, and me, and the nut of this story.  Not to digress, again, but the nut of a cello is a raised piece of wood where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on.  It matters a lot, in cello playing, because if it’s too high, it makes the cello much harder to play.  That’s why I care about the nut.  Also, because I care about words, a lot.  Nut, and nutty is what I’ve heard about me, when I’m stimming a bit, and people don’t know I hear them, but I do, in a piece of my brain that is set on record for later. Tic, tic, tic, I know, time’s fleeting, keep moving forward. An die Musik-- to Music.  After my lesson, I kept trying to capture that tune, like I told you, but it kept flying away from me because it wasn’t predictable, like a pop jam, a rock song, or a folk tune would be.  There are these 16 measures where nothing’s related, but somehow it all fits together.  I don’t know, it kept flying away from me and I wanted to pin it down before I went to sleep yesterday night.   I noticed Mischa Maisky, (my fave cellist, along with Shaku, naturally) plays it on YouTube and then pops the repeat up an octave, which surprised me in a good way.   So, I’m plugged in, got my earbuds in, and I keep listening to Maisky’s version, (An die Musik, D. 547 (Op.88/4), listening over and over again, whenever I can. Not at dinner—family rule, no earbuds at the table, no devices in fact, which is so unfair, but I guess I get it, the only time we’re together (except for dad), to talk and stuff, “bond” I guess.  I don’t know, without dad, it’s so different. But back to the nut of things.  On and off during the day I guess I listened to the song seven or eight, maybe ten times, and I still didn’t have it.  Then, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I put it on for one more time, then my earbuds went out of power.  So, I held the phone up to my ear.  My sister, Kiara, was already in bed, close enough to yell out, ”Alok, turn down that music.”  She’s getting ready for some kind of hurdling meet or, thing.  So, I turned “An die Musik” down to a quiet buzz and pressed the phone against my ear with my left hand, while brushing with my right hand, and the vibrations swept through my skull as I brushed along with the piano accompaniment, beat, beat, beat, and the melody of the cello took flight and soared all over the galaxy of my brain, around the shooting stars, swirling in and out of planets and meteors and everything.  I was in a space trance and the music took me into “An die Musik” until I got lost in it.  Thank you, Maestro Schubert, thank you Mr. B.  Sometimes I wish you were my dad, but then I banish those thoughts, because, well, it’s not right, not okay, not fair.  But sometimes I can’t help it.  My dad told me life’s not fair, and I guess he’s right, but I wish I could share some little things with him like I share music with Mr. B, like Kiara shares sports with him. And now the song ends and my teeth are way too clean, so I’m off to bed.  Putting the phone away but it’s still vibrating.  Did I not get out of YouTube?  Yes, it looks like I did, but then why do I still hear it?  Lifting it to my ear, I hear it faintly, quietly, rhythm not stopping, melody flying.  Wait a minute.  Now I’m turning the actual phone off.  I do this but I still feel  the buzz, like a car pumping a bass line, driving by.  But this is different, like that, but not.    This is the music in me, in my head, in my cells, not a memory but a continuance.  Not a device, but my neurodivergent brain singing along with what, Franz Peter Schubert?  Or did the music take over the authorship of whatever is still singing in my head? It wasn’t scary, at least not yet.  Not like alien radio signals in your tooth fillings, but like an integral part of the ongoing inner workings of my body.  Because it drifted now, from my ears into my cosmic brain, down my spine, and mingling into my arms and legs and feet and hands.  Could I sleep with all this going on? I wondered, and  I tucked into my lower bunk, turned off the light, and settled into sleep.  Three deep breaths, ins and outs, and I remember nothing else until this morning when I heard Kiara doing her squats and burpees in her bedroom next to mine. And I heard the music.  Low level, yes, but still moving through me.  It felt like it had been playing all night, and I wondered what it might feel like to hear this and play it on the cello.  Would it change depending on what I was playing, or would it tune out and disappear?  I didn’t want it to disappear. Since I can remember I have owned multiple pairs of noise canceling head phones.  From when I was a baby, random noises were always a problem for me.  The Roomba was the first monster I remembered.  It came chewing into my room one day when I was still in my crib and it felt like the noise was beating up my head.  Mom said I was two years old, and I don’t remember anything before that, but I remember the Roomba monster. After that, they got me puffy head phones and any time they took me out they kept them close, in case of loud repeating noise.  Like if I was in the stroller and we passed a street fair with loud music, the headphones brought me peace and quiet.  I always felt like they were safety marshmallows against the monster chewing noises that randomly happen in the world. But weirdly, maybe, now, this ongoing “Musik” is nothing like that at all.  It stays with me, but quietly, like I turned the volume way down, unless I pay attention to it, and then like holding my phone to my ear, I feel the vibration and it gets as loud as I want. I’m enduring school now, but I can’t wait to get home to play.  Not Minecraft this time, but cello, especially this song from Franz Peter Schubert’s head to my head.  School is as normal as it ever gets for me, but better today because I have this secret power that only I know about, and it makes me smile.  Smile inside, not all over my face like a clown.  And I think it helps calm me down when stuff happens, like it always does, with bells ringing, and people bellowing, and cheerleaders cheering, like they always do.  It’s not muffled, like my headphones, it’s bright and singing, that same song, “An Die Musik” but I’m not getting sick of it, rolling on and on, like a river that keeps flowing beneath  my thoughts.. When we get home Kiara goes directly to her room to study so she can meet up later with friends at tennis practice.  She’s on the school team, and she’s either #1 or #2 out of 12 contenders, depending on a lot of things she is not afraid to share with us. I get my cello, and start the B major scale, just to get the notes in order before I start up, just to feel my fingers feel the right place on the fingerboard, to get the slide of the strings.  They make my fingers tingle today, those notes running non-stop in my head and my fingers perfectly follow them through the scale, like walking up the stairs behind them, at first, but then after working my way up and down three octaves, my bow picks up the rhythm and the melody of Franz Peter Schubert’s song, and I follow along without reading any notes on the page.  I follow along, even when his song “To the Music”, swirls into measures from his other songs, like “The Wanderer,” or “Ave Maria”, and others I never heard before.  At least I assumed they were his songs.  Who’s playing these I wonder, Schubert or me?  Because I feel propelled, like I was seven years old, dancing with my mother, when she’d spin me around, and my feet were dancing the steps, but her force was moving me.  It was so fun with my mom, but when dad tried to do it, it didn’t work so well.  I stumbled over my feet and he ended up swinging me in the air like a ball on a string and it scared me.  We never got our steps together, dad and me, and now he’s not just separated by work trips, but he lives separately too.  Mom is calling it a “trial separation”, but I don’t see anyone trying anything.  Kiara and I go visit on weekends and they play tennis for hours, sweating and whacking balls interminably. You like that word?  I just added it to my word collection.  It means they don’t stop; they just keep going at it, while I just play Minecraft on my own. Nothing against Minecraft, you know, my biggest obsession, I play it any time I can, but dad has no interest, and I might as well be home in my game cave, and a lot more comfy, because there’s zero interaction with dad here.  I mean, he and Kiara may have been interacting in a tennis game, but dad just asks me questions about school and I can never say much, because I don’t think he’s listening.  Dad and I don’t sync.  Suddenly the notes in my head take a deep diminuendo, and it feels like time for a cello break.  I look at my timer and it dings.  I’ve been playing nonstop for fifty-five minutes.  I guess I should say, we’ve been playing, Franz Peter Schubert and I have been playing “An die Musik” and more.  I loosen my bow and pack it into my case, then my cello, snapping all 8 silver snaps.  We have a recital this evening at one of Mr. B’s other student’s houses that has a big room they call a salon and devote only to music.  They have a nice Steinway and a little platform and music stands, so groups of Mr. B’s students can play, trios or duets, and such.  Mr. B plays the piano parts sometimes.  He’s pretty good at a lot of instruments, along with his super cello powers. So tonight, after school, I took my cello to dad’s place, which I never do, but since the recital was in his neighborhood it made sense.  For the first time he was coming with me instead of mom, and for the first time that didn’t even bother me.  Normally I don’t like to play with him anywhere nearby, cause it makes me think about messing up, and then I do mess up, majorly.  See, dad used to play guitar, back in Boston, when he was in college, but now his guitar just hangs on the wall at his place and he never touches it.  He always looks like he’s in pain when he hears bad music, and when I was first starting out with the cello, he had to leave the room when I practiced.  You can see why I don’t like to play around him. But today, with Franz Peter Schubert singing away in my head, letting me play along with him, I am just into the music and no fear.  It’s not like I can’t concentrate on other things, like homework and dinner, and talking and stuff, the thing is I have this background loop, rolling around in a quite relaxing fashion.  I have to say, it doesn’t scare me at all.  In the very beginning, when it didn’t go away, it felt a little weird, like something in my brain was stuck on repeat, but now it keeps changing and it makes me calm like my puffy headphones but much better.  Dad and I get to the “salon” where they’re having the recital and I’m calm and buzzy at the same time.  I go and sit with the other students on the benches in front and dad slips into the comfy chairs with random other parents. Mr. B. goes over the performance order with us and makes sure we’re all cool with it.  I usually hide somewhere in the middle of it all, but tonight I ask Mr. B. if I can go last, because I don’t want my dad tapping his foot and looking impatient while all the “not his kid” students play after I’ve already played.  Not that he’s done that at a recital before, since this is his first, but I know how nervous he makes me feel when he’s impatient, and I want to enjoy this, and only think about the music. Mr. B looks surprised, but says sure, and I settle in for the duration.  Funny thing though, as Shaniqua plays “The Swan” and then Angelo plays “Arioso”, I hear them with my ears, while at the same time, “An die Musik” twirls around their notes, in a kind of wispy way that’s interesting to me and reassuring, even when the players make mistakes, which of course they do.  No biggie.  Six more students present their work, a couple of duets by the twins, and finally we come to me.  Mr. B. sits down at the piano with the accompaniment music, but I don’t even put my music on the stand.  I know all of this by now, up and down, and all around.  I plan to play it through once, and then go up an octave for the repeat.   Mr. B will be proud, he nods and we begin.  It’s like playing, for sure, but again more like dancing to that music that’s swelling up in my head.  I sway a bit with the cello, I close my eyes and feel my way along with the song.  It’s  pure happy.  I looked up the lyrics but they were all in German so I found a translation of the poem that Franz Peter Schubert based the music on.  I don’t remember it all, but it talked about how during the gray hours, when life’s wild circle entangles him, music transports him to a better world.  And at the end, he talks directly to music and he says, “You, beautiful art, thank you for that.”  And as I’m playing, I’m singing it out in my heart, thank you, music, you beautiful art. Mr B. has stopped playing the piano, and he’s looking at me but I can’t stop myself from playing, and I’m playing my thanks too, for this new gift of music in me, and I’m crying a bit, so when I notice that, I do a few arpeggios, still in the key of B major where I started, and then I taper off on a long, long, note. The clapping is very, very, loud.  Normally I might put my hands over my ears, but tonight it doesn’t even matter, with the quiet music still flowing inside me. I look over at my dad to see if he’s clapping and he is, but he’s crying too and I don’t know what to think about that.  We head out; Mr. B gives me a big high five on the way out and says, “You’ve reached a new level in the game.”  I laugh, because I feel happy. We drive home to dad’s and on the way, we don’t say much, but it still feels good.  Dad says, “I didn’t know you could scat like that.”  I don’t really know what he means by that, but it sounds good so I plan to look it up later. When we get back home dad asks if I’m tired or if I want to play a little more.  Strange as it is, I’m not tired at all and yes, I do want to play more.  We go into the living room, and for the first time since he’s been there, I watch dad take his guitar off the wall.  I’m unsnapping my cello case, but I hear him blow some dust off the strings and he strums a chord.  It’s all out of tune, no surprise there, and he sits down and begins tuning it all up. Dad’s good at tuning; he used to do it for me when I was nine and new to cello.  Then, of course, he’d leave the room.  But now, he’s tuning his guitar to my cello, and he says “go ahead, I’ll follow you.”  So, I go ahead, it’s as if I never stopped and somehow it just feels natural and nice to have dad finger-picking along.  He’s doing a bit of what the piano played, but he’s doing his own kind of playing along too, and I feel like the music is taking over the two of us and making us one song. We go on and on, and we don’t stop, until my phone rings and it’s mom, wondering how it all went.  I talk to her a little and she asks about all the other students and their pieces.  Dad goes to the kitchen and comes back with ice tea for him and that coconut drink I like mixed with ginger ale.  I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.  Mom says, “Okay, I’ll let you go.”  Dad reaches for the phone but I’ve already hung up.  Somehow, for once, it feels good being just us.  He lifts his glass of tea and makes a toast.  “To the music,” he says.   I raise up my glass, clink his, and to the music, I say, “Thank you.”  Meredith England-Markun was born in Panama where she grew up in a temporary clearing now being reclaimed by the jungle. She lives in Seattle and co-founded the School of Alliance Program at the Richard Hugo House, an urban writing center. She is a winner of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference Poetry Contest.

The phone rang, Rory’s pencil hesitated above a page of fractions dividing fractions. Came his mother’s expected voice, “Rory! Phone!” “Someone else!” Rory pleaded. “No, you, now.” He left pencil and homework on the folding TV tray table in the nook between refrigerator and kitchen corner where he studied. His mother waited near the phone. He took up the receiver. “Hello,” he said in his firmest treble. “Mrs. Leary?” Rory knew the script from prior performances. “No, this is Rory,” he said. “May I ask who’s calling?” “Tell her it’s Mr. Ghilardi.” The voice held gravel that was none of the phone’s doing. Mr. Ghilardi rented the house to them. Rory had seen him more than once but only by parts when his mother placed herself across the front doorway to block his entry, and from this the sum: A man shorter than her, gray hair slicked imperfectly back, front panels of a short-sleeved plaid shirt untucked by his belly from his belt, rheumy brown eyes under lushly untamed brows in a dried-apple face a range of odd folds and excrescences. “I’ll look for her, Mr. Ghilardi,” Rory said and looked at her. She shook her head. Rory counted slowly in one-eighth fractions – one eighth, one quarter, three eighths, one half, to one – then in their inverses, then uncovered the mouthpiece. “She’s not available.” “When will she be?” said the rough voice. The unwritten script said, and so did Rory, “I don’t know.” His mother made wringing gestures with fists side by side. Thus reminded, Rory added, “You can’t get blood from a turnip. Thank you. Goodbye.” and hung up. His mother kissed his forehead. “Why am I the one for this?” he said. He was in fact one of seven, with an eighth coming. “Because you’re best at it.” Her big rosy cheeks bloomed in a smile and she passed her long fingers, once a pianist’s, across the dark buzzcut she had given him that week. He returned to the nook and the sheet of fractions. His mother remained in the kitchen to put away dishes he and his older sister Maurie had washed and dried but been too short to replace on their high shelves. She hummed something and it was a distraction. He had no other place to study. A room away his father presided before the television in sweatsuit and laborworn sprawl on a recliner, the day’s grit and smear and sweat freshly showered from him, while on the carpet at his sides clustered faces wore the screen’s glow. The bunks and dressers in the small room Rory and his brothers shared left nowhere to sit, one bunk too tight above the other, the floor too narrowed for chair and tray table. He was in any case too eaten by questions to continue homework. He left it for his mother’s side. “How is it,” he said, “that what you have me say is not a lie, and so a sin?” She turned to him and stiffened. “Think carefully,” she said. “What I’ve taught you to say is no lie.” “But how is it true?” He was in reach of her right hand, but he was growing and so feared it less. He believed he saw her weigh its use. She said at last, “The Jesuits called it ‘mental reservation.’ They told enough truth to keep an evil from doing them harm, but no untruth. They had no obligation to tell the whole truth.” What here, Rory wondered, was the evil? He had seen the writing of checks to Mr. Ghilardi. He knew that the last months had not been ordinary. His father had left the house less regularly for work. Rory had heard arguments that had no sense for him, the name of a woman he didn’t know snarled from his mother’s lips, and from his father’s, “I give you enough. Where does it go?” and then the right hand caught and held an instant from his father’s cheek, dark with the day’s grime and hard now from his fury. To this he could add, as some fractions of the whole, cost of heat and light in this chill season of rain and wind and the growls of seven bellies. “Will Mr. Ghilardi make us leave?” he asked. His mother eased a moment and swayed as though she thought to bend and embrace him. “Mr. Ghilardi is a good Catholic,” she said soft-voiced. “He’d be very slow to put a Catholic family out. He might never.” “Then what is the threat I keep away by … by not committing the sin of lying?” Rory said this as it came to him and only then considered the hand. He closed eyes to await it. It didn’t come. “You have your homework, don’t you?” said his mother, and she left the kitchen. He returned to the nook and tried to resume his work. In his mathematics each single-digit whole number had a character, a near-human personality – the four, for example, stolid and hard-working, the three wild and undisciplined except in music, and the seven that combined them clever and adept in navigating the stark world. He had been puzzling how the dramas of their interactions would play on the stage of fractions and delighting in the puzzle, but the numbers now lay inert on the page. He was turned from them to imagining the blood of a turnip, if blood it had. This would not be like his own when it dripped red from cut or scrape. It would, he supposed, run clear, with a heat and sharpness in its taste. He asked himself where – if he were of the family of the turnip-blooded – it might in reservation flow in him. * Father Sánchez faced the class. Rory’s row was seventh of the class’s front-to-back rows and rightmost of its seven across. Seven by seven: The class was an array of cleverness, and outside in its San Francisco neighborhood, where men cut adrift by fading shipyards and industries rode the day’s tide, and where the crisp hard rhythms of gunshot some nights supplanted the dithyrambs of firecrackers, any adeptness from seven-by-seven was – even Rory knew, unversed in adult realities as he understood himself to be – a thing to be sought and, once gained, prized. Father Sánchez looked back and forth, up and down the multihued faces above forty-nine forest green wool cardigans, twenty-six above the white Peter Pan collars of girls, twenty-three surmounting the white point collars of boys, while Sister Athanasius introduced him, whom they all knew. She wore still the long black habit that the younger nuns, given recent opportunity, had abandoned. “Father,” she said, “wishes to speak to you today of vocation.” The priest had removed his jacket and was in short black sleeves. His forearms were much more slender than Rory’s father’s, which Rory assumed his own would someday resemble. After a “Good morning” and bright-toothed smile in the dark olive face that told Rory this visit would be friendly, not admonitory, Father Sánchez said, “My children, a ‘vocation’ is a calling of God to the kind of life any one of us is to live.” He went on to list by example many occupations, some of which Rory didn’t recognize, but most known to him from his neighborhood’s daily sweat and one, Carpenter, from his father’s. “Like Saint Joseph,” said the priest, his accent charming the “J” into a “Ch.” “And for some of you boys, the vocation may be to the priesthood, like mine, and for some of you girls, it may be to serve the Lord in a community of sisters, as does Sister Athanasius. I pray this will be so. You have time, all of you, to come to know your calling, but even now you can ask in your prayers what it is. Do this, and someday you will know, whether by a sign or by a feeling. I felt mine when I was not much older than you, as I knelt one day in the Catedral de Santa María in my birthplace of Trujillo, Perú. Please join me now in prayer. O Lord Jesus, o Holy Mother Mary….” Rory listened past the melody and trilled R’s of the priest’s continuing tenor for some first rustle of response to what it asked. He heard the fidgets of the class’s boys in their deskbound constraint. This seemed too ordinary to speak for God. He heard beyond the classroom windows the skirl of gulls contesting on the play yard the remnants of lunches not long ago finished. This, too, was ordinary, but did inspire in him a question: Did stronger gulls always prevail, or was there sometimes a gull, a seventh maybe, who took the contest by cleverness? * Arturo’s brother and brother’s friends ruled their block, which Rory walked going to and from school. Some few of them were always there, on or near the sidewalk, except on rainier winter days, and even then Rory would meet from within his raincoat hood the eyes of one or another posted at a window. Arturo had another brother whom Rory had known from walking the block while he was yet smaller, but who now had to be away. Rory had asked “Away where?” only once. Arturo’s pinched lips and turn told him not to ask again. Arturo was Rory’s friend. After school they walked together as far as the block. In some of these walks Arturo professed his love for Diana Rinaldi. Whatever his feelings for girls, Rory qualified none as love, which seemed reserved for when his treble broke; but friendship committed him to acknowledging the reality of Arturo’s love for Diana Rinaldi. In class she sat directly in front of Rory and to Arturo’s right. Every day confronted Rory with Diana Rinaldi’s blond hair, which she wore always in single thick French braid at the back of her head. He had asked her once how she could be Italian and so blond. This departed from the norm he had known in the parish. “We’re Po River Italian” had been her reply, quick and sure enough to tell him it was family habit, as was in his own “Granda was out a back door in Cahirciveen as the Black and Tans came through the front.” Several times daily the braid took more of Rory’s eye than Sister Athanasius’s chalk marks or the letters and numbers splayed on his desk. The hair’s rich wave swelled the braid, and the braid’s volume in deepening the plaits and their internal shadows combined dusky tones with the blond in a spectacle that changed with each movement of her head and with each gradient of daylight through the near windows. One afternoon as his eyes wandered the braid’s landscape of hillock and ravine Rory glimpsed Arturo’s hand extending a folded paper across the aisle to Diana Rinaldi. Sister Athanasius, whose face had been to the board, turned at that moment just enough to see the paper offered. “Arturo Sandoval,” she said, turning now completely to him, “bring that here.” The green wool of his cardigan hunched, he obeyed. She did not take the paper from him. “Anything to be shared in class,” she said, “is to be shared with the class. Read.” He unfolded the paper and stared at it in silence. “Read.” “You are so beautiful. I love you so much. When can I kiss you?” The voice was smaller than Rory had ever known it. “I’ll have that now,” Sister Athanasius said. “Back to your desk.” Rory’s friend came hunched still down the aisle. Just before his desk he lifted his eyes to Diana Rinaldi. Rory saw not the least stir of her head Arturo’s way. The instant they reached the street after class Rory put himself at Arturo’s side. As they walked nothing that came to Rory’s thoughts seemed fit to pass his lips. He matched Arturo’s pace wordlessly, then, in hope of shouldering some of his hurt. Along Mission Street, just after they passed an old woman sweeping the sidewalk, they arrived at a cluster of empty beer bottles at the foot of stairs to a house recently vacant, like others in the neighborhood. Most of the bottles stood upright, but some had toppled. A few had broken. They were just one side of Arturo’s line of travel. “Watch out,” said Rory. But Arturo veered slightly and aimed a foot through them. Bottles flew and shattered loudly. The force and reach of his sweep having unbalanced him a little, Arturo stumbled but did not fall, and immediately his shoulder was in silence again by Rory’s. Turning his head to note this, Rory side-glimpsed that the woman had paused her broom and stared. A half-block on he glanced back. A police Ford had stopped by her. She spoke through its open passenger-side window and gestured toward him and Arturo. As Rory continued with Arturo he listened to the distinctive roar of the Ford as it sped toward them. It stopped just ahead of them. Arturo’s cardigan hunched. “Hey,” said the policeman in the passenger seat. He and his partner, who looked younger, came from the car to block the path of Rory’s brown-skinned friend, but not Rory’s. Rory stopped anyway. Both policemen hooked thumbs into black belts with cross-hatched tooling so that one hand was by holstered pistol, the other by can of mace. “What do you think you’re doing, breaking glass?” the younger policeman said to Arturo. The older gestured with chin at Arturo’s uniform sweater and salt-and-pepper corduroy trousers. “What would the Sisters do if they knew you were breaking glass?” Rory watched the small twist of the body beside his and felt its misery. “Breaking glass on a City sidewalk is vandalism,” the younger policeman said to Arturo. “That could get you Juvie.” Rory and all his acquaintances knew this to mean Juvenile Hall, jail for boys. Rory had never contemplated the distinction between a policeman in blue with seven-pointed star and a policeman in black and tan. He wondered if the latter’s reputation for abundant violence, in his family’s telling, applied to the former. He felt in this moment they might at least be kin. Heat rose in him, but no red took his eyes. They saw clear, hot, sharp. It came to him: Turnip-blooded. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said loudly. The policemen looked at him for the first time. “I was talking to him. He looked at me. He tripped over a bottle. It broke. So did a bunch of others. He’s lucky he didn’t fall and get cut up.” Rory spoke with a vehemence that did not seem to himself uncalculated, but surprised him nonetheless. He accompanied his statement with an acting-out of Arturo’s near-fall. “Who is it leaves this stuff on the sidewalk for us to trip over?” he concluded. “Why aren’t they in trouble, not us?” It was all truth, so far as he told it. The younger policeman regarded him impassively, but the older let go of his belt and crossed his arms. After a moment he said, “Be more careful.” He started toward the car. He stopped and turned again to Arturo. “What’s your name?” he said. “Arturo Sandoval,” said Rory’s friend. With a glance at Rory, the policeman asked Arturo, “The Sandovals up there?” He flicked his head toward the block. Arturo’s nod was small. Looking still at Arturo, the policeman held an index finger to his own eye. Then he and his partner were in the car. The roar carried it away. Rory and Arturo took the last steps to the block in silence. At his door, Arturo caught Rory’s cardigan and, turning Rory toward him, touched right shoulders. From across the street, Arturo’s brother and the rulers of the block watched. Arturo’s and Diana Rinaldi’s eyes didn’t once cross the aisle in the next day’s class. Although he told himself his friend’s pain was no fault of hers, Rory’s inevitable regard of her blond braid putrefied through the day into revulsion. At recess, across the play yard and away from Rory’s ear, her friends knotted around her and glanced singly or in bunches at Arturo, and Rory saw but did not hear gusts of laughter blow through them. He kept to Arturo’s side. He wished Arturo had a crew beside him, as Diana Rinaldi did. Arturo needed one. He was by Arturo again on the walk home. When they reached the block, before arriving at Arturo’s door, Rory saw Arturo’s brother stand from the window of a BMW, where he and the young white driver had just touched hands, and start from the street toward them. Two of the brother’s companions crossed the street in something both of saunter and swagger to join him. The three stood athwart Rory’s path. “Little man,” Arturo’s brother said to him. Rory did not believe this attention a threat, but belief was not certainty and did not preclude fear. They were all three bigger than him and likely faster. If they meant to hurt him, he had no hope in either fight or escape. “Little man,” Arturo’s brother said, “little bro told us what you did yesterday. You have skills. We admire skills. They can be useful. We talked. We talked to people. We all think you should come hang with us, so we get to know you.” Something in the voice, a voice broken within Rory’s memory out of a boyhood very like his own among meager cabinets and freighted men, a voice now richening into baritone, this something seemed to Rory a calling. A boy in a large and struggling family seeks and perhaps finds his vocation. And on me: Michael Thériault has been an Ironworker, union organizer, and union representative at various levels. He published fiction in his twenties, half a dozen stories in literary magazines, but abandoned it for decades to support first a family, then a movement. In his recent return, since 2022 his stories have been accepted by numerous publications, among them  Pacifica Literary Review, Overheard,  and  Sky Island Journal.   Popula.com  has published his brief memoir of Ironworker organizing. He is a graduate of St. John’s College, Santa Fe and San Francisco native and resident.

Rochester  We walked across the bridge to Genesee    but didn’t walk into the brewery.     Then we walked further, a little later, a mile down the endless dock above   the lake. We ate the same breakfast two days in a row. I needed a break       from work and another dull birth   day. It was selfish, I know. That four     hour drive into a simpler time               across the hungry sea. The Mass Marketing Email Says We Will Miss You After I Smash That Unsubscribe Link Bye-bye blue beaches underneath a copywriter’s fingertips! I am feeling filthy enough typing my own contributions to the downfall of everything. The keyboard sounds juicy if you just listen. Zesty. Squishing lemons. Releasing shift ’s a loud clicker. A double jump for a healthier life, somersaulting upwards, get jacked!  I wish there were a supplement to supplant my depression. They will keep trying. I am alive enough  to receive burnt-out transmissions. Home I whistle in the neighborhood shade where pennies shimmer on the sidewalk, stars. I could call this home forever–  or as long as anything lasts. Nothing  thrills me more than you, I know,  wherever we go. To speak of my dream of leaving for a state of bluegrass and bourbon– a place to start anew and air is sweet with a little kick– I want to come home  to another home where trumpets blare  and the cabinets are full of angel hair,  where I can open the window at night. James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In  (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me  (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in The Garlic Press, Glint,  and Triggerfish.  He edits The Mantle Poetry  from Nashville, Tennessee. ( jamescroaljackson.com )

Rick Slickman ached from his neck to his toes, his joints creaking louder than a rusty door. At 72, every  trip to the shared bathroom down the hall in the old house on Bewildered Street felt like an Olympic event.  “Hey Ron, how’s the warehouse job?” They talked while taking care of business. “Nice seeing to you. Be good to your girlfriend and be safe at work.”  Rick made it back to the tiny room and dropped into his recliner.  His wrecked knee had ruined his life, but he stubbornly refused to have it replaced. “Life is tough and the tough keep going.” 1968. Cedaredge High School. He and Robyn had ridden across the brilliantly lit football field in a red convertible Corvette as Homecoming King and Queen. Gorgeous with long brown hair and hazel eyes, she was his first, and he hoped his only . With time running out in the fourth quarter, so had his luck. A linebacker from Hotchkiss High took out his knee. As a result, he nearly missed the homecoming dance where she had waited patiently, refusing to dance with any other man. Rick gulped from a cheap gallon of red wine and sang, “I took my troubles down to Madame Ruth’s. You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth. She’s got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine, selling little bottles of Love Potion Number 9.” He remembered his past mistakes, the unfortunate events, and most importantly, his lifelong love – a girl with a beautiful smile and a talent for baking chocolate chip cookies. He declared, “I would have kept my jeans and her dress zipped.”  Back then, he was determined to dance despite being badly injured. He limped into the gym towards Robyn with the grace of a waddling duck. He’d envisioned sweeping her off her feet with a romantic spin, but his messed-up knee had other plans. He stepped on her right toe which made his swollen knee buckle – causing him to stumble into a group of innocent girls who fell against the snack table, scattering fruit punch, salsa, and chips through the air like confetti.  Dancing couples stared and laughter broke out. He stood with his face dripping fruit punch.  Robyn doubled over, mirth spilling from her lips.  Rick realized he didn't have to be perfect to win her over. With a goofy grin, he limp-waddled back to her, chips and red sauce stuck to his face. “At least we’re having fun, right?” He said with a smile that could light up a black hole. She wiped away tears of laughter and took his hand. “ You are a disaster… but you’re my  disaster.” As the music resumed, he took Robyn’s hand and led her out to his car since he couldn’t dance. The warm night had an atmosphere of glorious adolescent romance, and he popped the question, “Will you marry me?”  She accepted the small marquise diamond ring, saying, “I love you with all my heart and soul.” But love sometimes has a wretched sense of humor. Six weeks later, Robyn learned she was pregnant. She shook her head. “We only made love one time. I can’t believe it.”  They agreed to name it after popular tunes: Michelle, Sweet Caroline, or Sherry if it was a girl. If it was a boy, Jude or Billie Jo. He promised, “We’ll make it somehow. I’m not afraid of hard work.” Her strict Mormon parents promptly shipped her off to live with relatives somewhere in Utah. Despite pleading and promising to join their church, they slammed the door in Rick’s face. He never saw her again despite thousands of periodic efforts to find her over the years. He constantly wondered what their baby looked like. Was it a blonde with blue eyes like him or a brunette with hazel eyes like her? She was the love of his life. His heart ached more than his joints. God, how he wished. Back in those days, he thought he was destined to be a brilliant attorney who helped the poor. Failing to get a football scholarship, he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. He stayed in the Army as a non-commissioned officer, volunteering for the most dangerous missions, hoping to be killed since he had lost Robyn. After fifteen years, they booted him out for drinking too much. Rick stumbled through two half-hearted marriages like other lonely men. None stuck because he was in love with Robyn, but he took solace in the fact there were no kids to inherit his terrible dance moves or the permanent  stains on his reputation. Days turned into decades. After the Army, he did carpentry jobs here and there. The fucking knee kept giving out and causing more injuries. Now on a pittance of social security, he suffered from more aches and pains than he cared to count and was invisible to the world. As the sun set on his life, the ghost of his knee nibbled at his sanity, and he sank into a deeper depression, perpetually marinated in his Love Potion Number 9 since it numbed his burning knee. He mumbled to himself, sad about the dumpster fire of his life. After a particularly grueling day of greeting people at Walmart, every joint ached with arthritis. He sank into his faded recliner with a sigh loud enough to wake the ghosts of his past. They stomped past as he sipped from a gallon jug of Love Potion Number 9 and popped another pain pill.  Staring out the window of his bare room at the bustling youths playing soccer in a Grand Junction neighborhood park, he fantasized about being back in 1968 when everything was fresh. He imagined how he would change things, especially what happened with Robyn after the homecoming dance. He took another pain pill with a gulp of wine. A guy couldn’t change the choices made in the past. One night after working at Walmart, he took an existential leap off the deep end, mixing his Love Potion Number 9 with pain pills and the nostalgia of lost dreams. This was the ticket to his one-way adventure to the land of regret-free football fields and sweet kisses from Robyn. He was ready for the ultimate escape and guzzled the gallon of cheap red wine like it was grape juice, sucked cigarettes although he hadn’t smoked since Nixon was president, and washed down a large handful of pain pills meant for his sciatica. The potion soothed the burning in his knee, the terrible ache in his back, and numbed his empty heart. That’s what he needed: a pain-free death. With a contented sigh, he crushed out the last of the Camel filters, and slumped into his lumpy recliner, lost to the embrace of potion-induced dreams filled with visions of being with Robyn. He drooped, slobbering wine onto his chest.  With a cacophony of muffled sounds, Rick felt the strange sensation of being pulled through a tunnel before crashing into a familiar yet fuzzy place. When he arrived at the other side, he didn’t find paradise or a cramped room filled with regrets. Instead, he sprawled on the stadium-lit football field of Cedaredge High School in the middle of a game, wearing a tight jersey that accentuated muscles he hadn’t possessed in decades. “What in the name of fried donuts?” He exclaimed, popping up like organic rye bread from a toaster. “Who are you talking to, Rick?” It was Charlie, the quarterback, and his cousin. They were seniors at Cedaredge High School in Western Colorado. Their number one goal was to get scholarships to a small college and avoid the raging Vietnam War the US was losing. Even Walter Cronkite, the trusted CBS newscaster, said it was unwinnable. “I’m talking to a relative I’m trying to forget.”  Charlie rolled his eyes. “As you okay? I thought you were knocked out when you caught that pass since that Hotchkiss player speared you.” He patted his shoulder pads. “Nice first down catch. You’re the best tight end in the conference, and you make me look good with those impossible catches.” “I’m alright.” He staggered to the huddle, holding his head. He was back in high school as a senior! He looked down at himself and nearly fainted. No more skinny, sagging, age-spotted arms—he was a hawk-eyed teenager again. A thrill of youthful energy surged through him. The next play was between him and the right tackle. He knocked the Hotchkiss linebacker down, and their fullback made another first down. He helped the opponent up, but there was anger in the kid’s dark eyes. “I’ll get you.” The next play, the linebacker tried to take his right knee out, but Rick anticipated it this time. Instead of having the cartilage in his knee torn to shreds, he shoved the boy’s head down onto the turf.  The young man glared at him. “I’ll get you on the next play.” It was a reverse to Rick. The pulling guard opened a hole and seeing daylight, he turned on the afterburner. The defensive backs had followed the offensive movement to the right. He was the fastest man on the team. Putting everything he had into it, he sped for the goal line with the defense chasing him. Touchdown! It was an accident because he tripped over his own feet while showing off as he trotted backwards.  The final horn sounded.  “We won!” The Cedaredge fans tumbled from the stands onto the field. Instead of having the coach tell him, “Your knee is badly swollen. I’ll wrap it, but you should see a doctor on Monday,” he blinked against the bright field lights, and before him stood bell-bottom jeans, psychedelic shirt patterns, and the aroma of patchouli oil in the air.  And there was Robyn, running to him across the field, stunning with flowing brown hair, her hazel eyes filled with pride. “You did it, you scored the winning touchdown!” She threw her arms around him and leaped up with her muscular cheerleader legs straddling his grass-stained uniform pants.  This time would be different, he promised himself. Armed with the wisdom of an old man, he would woo her without fail. He felt the shock of paddles on his chest. His drunken eyes flickered.  “Good!” The EMT turned. “Guys, he’s alive; let’s get him into the ambulance. They need to pump his stomach.” Days later, his eyes fluttered open in a hospital room, tubes in his arms and clear bags of some shit above him—this was not the heaven he envisioned. He looked around in confusion. Pissed him off. He’d rather be playing football and kissing Robyn. He moaned, “God, please, if you care, take me home.” The hospital social worker came in and talked with him, asking about his life and why he wanted to end it. After three interviews, she said, “According to your medical records, you need two rotator cuff repairs, a right knee replacement, and your spine fused at L 4-5.” She caught his pained blue eyes. “If you agreed to the surgeries, you might find life a lot more tolerable.” Seeing the doubt in his eyes, she added, “Medicare will pay for it.” “No, I’m ready to go to the other side. I don’t have any friends or family, and I’ve lived with pain since I was a senior in high school.” He shook his head quickly. “It would be a waste of medical resources.” The nice social worker shook her head. “You are a stubborn man, aren’t you?” “Yep. Once I make my mind up, I make it happen.” Mary Sue stared at him. “Rick, I’ve seen you greeting people at Walmart. You make us feel warm and welcome. I hope you’ll change your mind.” Somewhat upset, she left.  Closing his eyes, he didn’t give a thought to having the surgeries. He was done. He heard a noise and this beautiful woman in her fifties with long brown hair and hazel eyes quietly walked in. Behind her stood two adult children who looked somewhat like him—the muscular man was adorned with blonde hair and the brunette female held a baby in her arms. He stared at the lady. She looked just like Robyn. Am I dreaming? “They said you’re well enough to have visitors.” She gently took his weathered, spotted, and blue-veined hand. “Thank God, I’ve finally found you.” Moisture rose in her eyes. “W..who are you?” “I’m your daughter, Sweet Caroline.   I paid for an internet search to get your phone number, and I kept calling you that night. Your buddy across the hall told me about the EMT’s saving your life.” She smiled, oddly mystified. “Ron wondered why you didn’t answer your phone so he went over to check on you.” She introduced the kids, “These are your grandchildren – Jude and his sister, Michelle, and the baby is Sherry.” His Love Potion Number 9-free brain was clear. “Where are you from?”  “We drove over from Salt Lake City. I’ve been trying to find you since I was fourteen.” A tear ran down her pink cheek. “Well, it’s sure  nice to finally meet you. You’re lovely. I’ve always wished things had turned out the way your mom and I wanted.” “May I call you Dad?” “Well, of course !” Something in his chest broke loose. He fought the tears welling up. A tough man doesn’t cry, but he couldn’t avoid her eyes. She looked exactly like Robyn.  She leaned to him, softly wrapping her arms around him. They kissed as tears ran down their cheeks. The two grandchildren moved to the other side of the bed, their hands reaching out. Sweet Caroline sat on the bed, and everyone held hands. No one could speak. Michelle placed her baby on his chest.  He wrapped his arms around the baby, holding it gently, looking at its familiar face. He caught his breath. “Where’s your mother?” He stubbornly forced the tears to stop. “She’s at the motel. Mom is afraid you might not love her after how her parents treated you. Her husband died ten years ago.” There was something in her hazel eyes. “They never had children, and Mom refused to marry him in the Mormon Temple for time and eternity because you  belong together.” A lump rose in his throat. He gritted his teeth. They talked for over an hour, and Sweet Caroline realized the old man was tired because his eyes kept closing. She stood. “We’ll come back tomorrow.” “I’d love to see Robyn.” Those darned tears started up again. “She’s the only woman I ever loved.” Sweet Caroline and her children smiled brightly. He slept soundly for who knows how long.  The social worker came in. “I heard you had some visitors. How do you feel?” “Wonderful.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I haven’t felt like this since Robyn was sent away.” They had a delightful talk. At the end of her visit, Mary Sue asked, “Would you consider talking to one of the surgeons? Your medical records say you have been suffering for many years.” “Sure.” A smile rose on his lips. “Maybe send the knee replacement doctor.” The food service cart arrived. Rick couldn’t believe how good the hospital food smelled and tasted. Slept like a rock. No football nightmares. In the morning after coffee and a great breakfast, he pulled himself up and raised the back of the bed as he worked to control his excitement. Unable to, he managed to move the IV lines so he could make it to the restroom without using the plastic jug. There, he got cleaned up, using water to smooth his thin blonde hair. “Oh well, she’s got to look old too.” He flashed his famous smile that out shined any weakness.. To his surprise, the pain wasn’t as bad, so he walked up the hall and back, pushing the IV rack in front of him, using it like a cane. He asked for his clothes, but a doctor had to order the IVs removed first. With steely determination, he sat on the hard leather couch, waiting, the IV rack to his left side. His heart pounded each time he heard footsteps approaching his room, hoping it was Robyn. He hadn’t felt anything in his empty heart for years. This was both exciting and confusing. The hours passed.  Disappointed and afraid Robyn might not come, he ate lunch alone. The tasteless food in his stomach made him sleepy, so he crawled back into the bed and slept, dreaming of her, of them – of having a family. A light touch on his right arm startled him awake. It was Sweet Caroline. He looked around. She was alone. He stared into her eyes. “Mom is outside. She’s too nervous to come in.” A wide grin on his face, he said softly, “Tell her I won’t bite.”   She turned and called, “Mom, come in. Dad is awake and he wants to see you.” With long silver hair, Robyn walked in with a shy smile, her hazel eyes down, wearing his small marquise engagement ring and a plain white dress as if she was going to the Temple. Their anxious eyes met.  Suddenly, he was happy to be alive. Danyl A. Doyle is a former resident of New Zealand, now living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He is a professional speaker of mixed race. Despite learning disabilities and mild autism, he became an English teacher, a Ph.D. psychologist, and a businessman. He has five Facebook profiles with 5000 followers each, along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and an author blog. He enjoys traveling worldwide as a professional speaker. His stories and poems have been published in The Southern Quill, The Milkbarn, Anaconda Magazine, The Wilderness House Literary Review, and The Winged Penny Review. He has two novels accepted for publication in 2024-25: “The End Of Hardship” and “For A Woman’s Love.”

O Lord of burning pain O Giver of aching head I have wronged thee   I have in my foolishness Mistaken thy rays For a curse to oppress   As I lay in a daze Filmed in dank sweat I see thy blessing outside And begin to count inside With each tree espied My gratitude is multiplied But when I raise my head To glory in thy stead -   Why doth it stink so?!   But nay! I go off-track With drenched palm I smack Sense into greasy face My sweat is but vital water Thy gift to feed bacteria.   So I lay there in a senseless swoon Bursting with the bounty of thy boon When I realise what you grant Is not just trees and bees Sweaty pits and knees   No, what you grant to me Is the most cherished of all For in my utter misery In my abject downfall I care nothing of trivial urges  That my paunch bulges That my shoulders are round That my teeth are unsound That I walk like a 10 beer drunk That my thoughts are mostly bunk That I may never reach that goal Never give back what I stole   I care nothing but for Thy shining orb’s daily rise Its pure burning lancing fire Glows when I close my eyes I have no thought but thee Thy glorious fury with its touch Sets me utterly free. H. Talichi is a writer of speculative fiction, satire and poetry. He's awaiting publication of one short story in the Sci-Fi Lampoon but has otherwise only been posting out on his substack.

“You’re everything that’s wrong with this country, do you know that?” “Me? I’m sorry sweetheart, I thought that was your side.” “Sweetheart?” she fumes. “Sweetheart?” She glances around the coffee shop as if to say See what I’m dealing with here? “Relax, it’s a term of endearment. You should grow a thicker skin—it’d make your life a lot easier if you didn’t have to go around being so offended all the time.” Now it’s his turn to look around like, Get a load of this chick, amirite? The other patrons avoid their eyes. This does not discourage either. They are among like minded people, surely.  “Oh, next you’ll call me a snowflake. It’s always the same old crap with you assholes.”  “So sue me. We’re just saying what everyone’s thinking. It’s about time somebody did.” “You really think we’d be better off with Neanderthals like you in charge?”  “As a matter of fact, I do. But at the moment I’m just trying to get to my job, lady. Us Neanderthals have to work for a living. We don’t all have the luxury of majoring in women’s studies.”  She sniffs at this latest affront and performs another solicitous scan of the café. Of course these good, sensible people are on her side. How could you not be, unless you were an idiot? “I’m a dental hygienist, douchebag. But since you brought it up, loud-mouthed bigots like you are the reason we need women’s studies.”  “Woah! Who said I was a bigot? You’re making a lot of assumptions about me, girlie, but let’s be real here. You’re triggered because you don’t like my hat. Well, I feel the same way about your haircut.” “My haircut isn’t an open endorsement of fascism.” “Maybe not, but it’s a definite crime against fashion.” He looks around to see if this strikes a chord with anyone. He,too, assumes he is in sympathetic company.  People bury their noses in newspapers, books, screens, and coffee cups. Behind the counter, a beleaguered barista queues up the quarrelers’ orders. In this instant, she has an opportunity to defuse the conflict between her two most obnoxious customers of the morning. All it would take is to withhold one party’s beverage long enough for the other to exit the café. She opts instead to clear both problems from her plate at once. She doesn’t get paid to resolve conflicts; she barely gets paid enough to serve coffee.   “Mocha latte with an extra shot for Ty? Cortado for Hailey?”  Tyler thanks her, tips her, takes his latte, and heads for the door. Hailey stuffs a crumpled fiver into the tip jar on top of his desultory handful of change and exits hot on his heels. He holds the door for her with a pointed look, daring her to take issue with the common courtesy. “After you, miss.” She doesn’t rise to the bait. She takes a deep breath and, determined to be the bigger person, marches past him with her chin held high.  Tyler knows he should let her go, but can’t resist a parting shot. Nothing ticks him off like the smug superiority this woman exudes from every pore. “Have a nice life, lady.” It’s the insistent mention of her gender that irks Hailey most of all. As if by calling attention to it, this stranger thinks he can assert himself as the more rational party. The grown-up in this situation, and her just a hysterical woman. This makes her so angry she does something uncharacteristic. She pivots on her heel and follows him down the sidewalk.   “Listen, man ,” she begins. She is two steps behind him, gathering herself to say something truly biting, something that sums it all up in one blistering retort. In this moment, she is champion of the downtrodden and oppressed. Defender of all that is righteous. If only more people were willing to stand up to bullies like this, she thinks, maybe we could make some real progress. “Just because you can’t see it from your white, male privilege pedestal doesn’t mean your awful politics aren’t hurting real people.” As she says it, she gives him the slightest push.  He whirls to look at her, face flushed with anger, and  plummets       from sight.  One moment there, the next gone. Hailey blinks. Somehow, the sidewalk before her has immaterialized. No, look again: not the sidewalk. A loose sewer grate, onto which her antagonist just happened to be stepping at the moment she nudged him. It takes her a moment to apprehend this, another to believe it. By then, there is a loud metallic clang and a thud. An agonized groan rises from somewhere below. What shit luck.  For a sliver of a second she wavers. Later, she will be ashamed to recall this moment of hesitation, how she looked around as if to—no, not as if  to, — in order to check for bystanders. Then moral sanity returns. She peeks over the edge.  There, ten feet below, is the red ballcap with its maddening slogan, the rubicund face covered in five o’clock shadow, cheeks now paling with pain and dawning horror.  “You pushed me!” “I didn’t! I—” “You did! You pushed me, and I think my ankle’s broken! Oh, it hurts!”  “You provoked me!”  “What, by holding the door for you? How the hell am I supposed to get to work now? Never mind that, how the hell am I getting out of here?” “Oh don’t play dumb, you know what you did! Your whole persona is designed to needle people like me.” “People like—what, because of the hat? Are you listening to yourself, lady—agh!” He cuts off with a groan of pain. “My lawyer’s gonna have a field day with this.” “It’s stuff like that! The ‘lady,’ and the ‘girlie,’ and the general air of boorishness!”  “So what, you shove me?” “Not shove you! Lightly   nudged you! I didn’t mean for you to fall. How was I supposed to know the grate was loose?”  “I could have died!”  “Oh come on, that seems a touch dramatic.” “You’re a monster! Don’t just stand there, are you crazy? Go get help!” “Okay, okay! Hold on.” Hailey pulls out her phone, dials 911, and walks a few steps away, so he doesn’t hear how she describes the situation. By now several passersby have taken interest, including a couple who witnessed their spat in the café.  Great, she thinks. Just great.  Then the operator starts asking questions and she says, “Yes, hello, there’s been an, um, accident on…” She hangs up once she’s given the location and returns to the sewer grate. “Alright, I called 911. They’re sending help.” As her face, framed in that offensive haircut, reappears in the window of sky above him, Tyler grits his teeth against a fresh wave of pain. “Good. Don’t think for a second this makes us even, either. My lawyer’s going to love hearing about you!”  “Me? If anyone, it’s the city sanitation department you should be blaming!” This makes him splutter. “Oh, that’s rich. See? This is what you get when you let liberals run your city. Blue-state politics at their finest!” “Well, the fire department is on its way. Should I screen them for political views when they get here? Make sure they didn’t send the diversity hires?” “You’re pretty snarky for someone who just assaulted me!” “Oh sure, it’s very easy for you to claim the moral high ground now.” Tyler sniffs in contempt, and immediately regrets it. The air down there is fetid. “Like you wouldn’t do the same if the situation were reversed. Believe me, if you were in my shoes, you’d give pretty much anything for higher ground! Don’t you feel any remorse at all?” “…I am  sorry you fell into the bowels of the city.” Like the piece of crap you are, she doesn’t add. “There you go. How about a little empathy for the guy with the busted leg?” The appeal to her better nature is not lost on Hailey. “Fair enough. Sorry. Does it hurt?” Tyler grits his teeth. “It’s pretty bad, yeah. I can handle it, though. And let’s be honest, the view down here’s not that much worse than the dumpster fire up there.” “If you hate how this city is run so much, why don’t you leave?”  “It doesn’t work that way. I got family here. I got a job here—which I’m missing right now, thanks to you. I can’t just pick up and go wherever I want, whenever I want. Plus, forgive me if I feel extra stuck at the moment.”  “Okay, I’ll give you that. We don’t choose our own circumstances. But here you are asking for empathy, and yet you don’t seem to have much compassion for the other side. Why can’t you see that sometimes we have to sacrifice a little to make life a lot better for everyone? Change doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time for the effects to be felt across the board.” He scoffs. “Pssh. Better how? By hiking taxes and taking away our freedoms? And for who? All I see is how they’re trying to make things better for certain groups of people. Meanwhile, us blue-collar guys get short shrift.”  She rolls her eyes with such vigor that it’s visible even from his vantage. “Just the response I’d expect from your typical entitled white guy.” Tyler throws up his hands in exasperation. “ You’re white, lady!” “If you call me ‘lady’ one more time, I’ll replace this grate and be on my way.” “Fine, fine. What was it again? Kayleigh? Tragedeigh?” “Hailey, asshole.” “Hey, that’s Mister Asshole to you. Tyler Asshole.” She smiles despite herself. “That a family name?” “Nah, that’s just how they anglicized it when my ancestors came through Staten Island. In the Old Country it was Assholioni.” This earns a reluctant snort of laughter. “See? That’s the systematic bastardization of culture, that’s what that is.”  “Exactly what I’d expect to hear from a leftist.” This time they both laugh. “Seriously though,” she says. “You don’t seem like a total imbecile now that we’ve talked for a little. I mean, not completely irredeemable. I refuse to believe anyone’s completely irredeemable. So help me understand. Why the hat? What’s the appeal of all that willful ignorance and punching down?” “How’s my hat any different from your haircut or those Doc Martens you’re wearing? And as far as ignorance and punching down go, you got it all wrong. What’s ignorant is expecting people to give up the ways they’ve always lived on the drop of a dime. So I see it as a way to protect our future and  our past. To get back to the original vision of this country, how it was meant to be, even if that means stepping on a few toes to make it happen. Shit, politics ain’t beanbag. America didn’t happen without stepping on a few toes. Besides, that’s better than lionizing weakness.” “Every person deserves dignity and respect. It’s not weak to show people basic humanity.” “It is if it means sacrificing our national interests.” “Politics doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.” “It does if you’re part of the group they’ve decided to take everything away from.” “Oh, spare me.” Another eyeroll from the heavens. “Take everything away from? Please. If anything, it’s about evening the playing field. Giving everyone a seat at the table.” Tyler rolls his eyes right back at her. “Wow. You really drank the Kool-Aid, huh?” “Really plumbing the depths of the gene pool today, huh.” “Hilarious. Are those firefighters getting here anytime soon?” “Any moment now.” “Can’t come soon enough.” When the firefighters arrive, neither Hailey nor Tyler mention the push or the argument that preceded it. The rescuers lower a harness and hoist Tyler to safety with only a minor hitch: he loses his hat as they raise him up. Paramedics diagnose him on the spot with a double ankle sprain; contrary to his fears, neither ankle turns out to be broken. He profusely thanks the first responders but refuses an ambulance ride to the hospital (“Oh no, I couldn’t afford the medical bills—I can hobble home just fine from here.”). Worst wounded is his pride, which he doubts they’d be able to treat on his crappy insurance.  Hailey stays on the scene out of a sense of moral obligation until the last of the emergency personnel leave. “Sorry about your hat.” “Ah, no worries. I got two more just like it at home.” “Of course you do. And um, listen. I really am sorry about this, you know. This wasn’t like me at all.” “I got under your skin that bad, huh?” “Yeah.” It physically pains her to give him the satisfaction, but there’s no use denying it. “I guess so.” They exchange numbers, since, as he assures her, “You’ll still be hearing from my attorney. But…maybe just to help corroborate my case against the sanitation department. I could’ve died, y’know?” “I think ‘died’ might be a bit of an exaggeration,” she says, then adds in response to his glower, “But sure, have him give me a call.” A slow, shit-eating grin spreads across his face. “Maybe I’ll hire a woman attorney.” At this, she turns on her heel.  As Hailey struts away, wondering how the hell this morning got away from her so fast, Tyler shoots his shot. “So, you want to grab a drink with me sometime?” This prompts another sharp heel-turn. “Are you shitting me? The nerve of some men!” “Hey hon, it’s a compliment. Don’t be uppity.” “As if attention from someone as asinine as you could be taken for a compliment.” “Asinine? I don’t know the meaning of the word.” “Why am I not surprised? Nope, sorry bud. I think we view the world a bit too differently.” As she attempts to walk away for the fourth time this morning, he calls after her. “Oh well. You got my number—maybe you can call and try to change my views sometime! Who knows, maybe you’ll even come around to my way of seeing things!” He laughs. She scoffs and says over her shoulder, “Ha! Don’t count on it, guy.” The stoplight on the corner changes, and she joins the press of pedestrians in the crosswalk. He turns and limps the other way, wondering how the hell he’s going to explain this to his boss. Within seconds both are out of sight. B. P. Gallagher moonlights as a writer and is completing a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology at the University at Albany, where he will defend his dissertation at the end of July. His specialization is in political psychology, in particular predictors of left- and right-wing authoritarianism. In the fall, he is excited to begin a post as Assistant Professor of Psychology and Culture at Naz University. His fiction has been published in Barzakh Literary Magazine, Meniscus Literary Journal,  and elsewhere.

Sometime in 2019, I realized that my brain held onto information the best in list form, and so, at the bottom of my notes app, there’s a document that starts like this: 1. Jake 2. Caleb 3. Victoria If I was organized enough to label things properly, I guess I could call it the kiss list. It’s almost a directory of my life from age 16 and on, a way of remembering things I did by the people I was with. My first-ever boyfriend, that guy from the weird club on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, my best friend. The time I got my hopes up or the time it just felt like the right thing to do. It’s a reminder to myself that sometimes a kiss is a question, a leap; sometimes it is nothing more than an answer, and not always the right one. 13: Micah He’s a bad idea from the start, not that he was an idea I even had—two years older and part of a friend group I’ve just barely made myself a part of, and when we both end up crashing on the same couch after a party goes too long to walk home, I lull myself to sleep with a list of reasons why I shouldn’t think anything of it. The list, which starts with “Alice, she has a crush on him” and ends with “Max, he’s asleep in the other room and still obsessed with me,” goes out of my head when I wake up at five in the morning to someone’s alarm and realize he’s practically holding my hand. The sky is a hazy early-morning gray and we’re half-asleep quiet, and somehow in the middle of it we shift from opposite ends of the sectional to pressed up close to each other. The kiss arrives without butterflies or sparks; it’s intentional and calm, every point of contact measured. It’s exhilarating at first—he’s tall and gorgeous and talented, and I have no idea what he’s doing with me —and that only changes when we go back to sleep, this time his arms around me on purpose, and he whispers I want to see you again  and then we can’t tell Alice  into my hair. We wake up to Max’s eyes on me like a brand, red hot, from across the room. I hide the memory in the list in my notes app on my walk home so that I remember what happens when I let myself be selfish. 34: Mike Mike kisses me before my seatbelt is on in the massive parking garage on Mass Ave. after offering to drive me home from dinner. It’s a good kiss, better than I’d expected. I’d made a habit of gravitating toward assholes, albeit pretty ones; Mike in his polo shirt is more polite than my usual taste. A week before our date I’d held a funeral, party of one, to mourn the end of a year-long situationship I’d had no business being genuinely upset over. Mike is the first step in my plan to find someone nice , even if nice  means kinda boring . He wears khakis and works in tech sales and drives a Toyota so bland I forget what model it is immediately after I identify it. He is, in a way, not someone I expected to be a good kisser. Maybe it’s because he takes me by surprise that I don’t let it stop there. It feels the opposite of classy to sleep with a man after the first date, but it’s been so long since the last time I’d been on one that I forget what the rules are and let him follow me into my apartment, into my twin-sized bed. We last a week longer, one more date until he drops me off at my apartment in his khakis and his Toyota and makes no move to follow me. I waste one more kiss on a goodbye, and I never see him again. 41 & 42: The hottest girl ever at Down, & John The curve of her waist under my hand devastates me. We’re in a shitty club in downtown Boston and I’ve been drinking gin and tonics like my actions don’t have consequences that will haunt me in the morning. She has cold hands and her blonde hair spills down her back in a wave I’m scared to touch, for fear of getting swept up in it. Her lime green eyeliner was what caught me earlier, a compliment yelled over the music to a girl I’d thought was astronomically out of my league until she found me in the crowd and pulled me into her orbit. She’s taller than me even in my platform sneakers, and in that single moment it is the best kiss of my life, better than the 40 kisses I’ve had before it. It lasts a fraction of how long I want it to—which is forever —and then she’s gone before I’ve processed the loss fully, over by the bar and then, eventually, world-endingly, in a man’s arms. She kisses him and I force myself to stop planning how I’ll go up to her and get her name, get her number, get her to—I don’t know, propose to me? She kisses him and I allow a boy in a backwards hat to dance his way up to me. She kisses him and I let this new boy kiss me, even though he yells in my ear to tell me that his name is John  and his hands are sweaty and I crack my eyes open to see where my friends are. In the car, once we make our escape, I add them both to the list, and allow myself one more moment of devastation over the fact that I only got one name. 45: Cole Cole has a tattoo of a lipstick kiss on his hip bone, a fact that drives me to distraction long after his shirt comes off. We watch Ocean’s Twelve  in his bed and drink red wine, taking breaks to eat fruit out of the plastic supermarket container and smoke out the open window into the humid July air. He tells me about his job at the crystal store and I nominate myself for an Oscar with how I pretend that I had no idea, that I hadn’t sent all-caps texts on the way to his place exclaiming how I was finally finally  seeing cutie-crystal-boy Cole. I lose track of the kisses—the ones I press to his mouth and to that tattoo, the ones he leaves on my forehead and along my jaw like points in a constellation. We nearly die twice on Storrow Drive later that night, rain so thick we can barely see out his windshield, and I make him promise to let me know when he’s home safely. He seals the vow with a kiss, on the sidewalk in the rain like we’re in a movie, and I let myself feel every second of it, every spark. In spite of this moment, it isn’t until I see him on a different dating app five months later that I finally know he made it back in one piece. 51. Kay I know before I even meet Kay that developing a crush is a bad idea. We match on a stupid app a month before she’s set to move over 900 miles away, doomed from the start, but I let her take me out anyway. She picks me up and brings me to her favorite restaurant, and I laugh more than I have in months over fruity drinks and food that I normally wouldn’t try but I eat without hesitation in an effort to come across as cool and unaffected and not someone who excuses her eating habits with some bullshit line about textures . We make it back to her car after dinner and she looks at me from the driver’s seat and says “can I kiss you?” and… oh, fuck. She kisses me and I am in so much trouble—I’ve caught feelings in a way that feels like a tidal wave or jumping off a cliff, like there’s no coming back from it. She takes me home and we talk for hours , sitting close enough together that I can pull her mouth to mine whenever I want, which is all of the time. She drives me home at 2 a.m. and the highway is deserted because it’s the middle of the week, and I have work in the morning and she has to start packing up her apartment, but none of it matters because she holds my hand over the center console the entire time. She drives with her left wrist over the steering wheel, drumming along the top of the dash to each song that comes on with a practiced ease that shouldn’t be hot but has me distracted in ways I’ve never been before. At every red light she leans in to kiss me. I pull back when I notice it’s turned green, but she draws me back anyway. There’s no one else on the roads so it doesn’t matter when we give in and just linger, foreheads touching and matching ridiculous smiles on our faces in the middle of an empty intersection. “Uh oh,” she whispers. It’s 3 a.m. and we’re standing on the sidewalk by her car, illegally parked outside my apartment. We have our arms around each other and I’m frozen, unable to comprehend how someone has come to mean so much to me in such a short period of time, especially when they’re leaving so soon. Uh oh, indeed. It doesn’t last, because of course it doesn’t. By the time a month has passed since that night, we barely speak—by June, it’s gone completely quiet. It takes two weeks of the requisite sad music spiral I always go through when I get ghosted before I am able to sit down and think less about the ending and more about the moments of pure joy. Maybe I need to split up the kiss list—do the math I don’t want to calculate and see how short it gets if I take out people I never touch again, how many stories get cut off before they hit any sort of meaningful conclusion. Maybe I’ll start to learn something. Jamison O’Sullivan is running out of storage in her notes app, which is how this story ended up here. She has also recovered file space through publications in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rejection Letters, JAKE , and more. She lives in Boston, and you can follow her on Twitter @pajamisonn .

To Fill Their Glasses Once Again Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman and  Frederico Garcia Lorca  walk into a bar. That’s all. No joke. Just one magical evening  in a dusty corner of a long-forgotten dive bar where poets convene  to drink coffee and laugh at  the sadness and ridiculousness of humanity. We aim to please our personal demons while the crowd outside struggles to keep warm, clustered at the dusky windows, using torn sleeves to clean the pane to get a closer look inside at the splendor that is a small group of dangerously beautiful minds coming together to explore the foundations of joy, the meaning of life, and the spaces between time. Ginsberg says to Whitman ‘Ooh what have you done to your hair, Walt? It’s vibrant and alive tonight. It really brings out your eyes!’ Whitman shyly smiles and tosses his tresses back like  a shy high school girl about to hit her prime. Lorca sighs and sips his almost-empty cup, his luck worn thin.  Salty as the bottom of sailor’s boots, he rises to fill their glasses once again. The Poem Escapes Me  I thought of a poem  on my way home in the car and  when I turned to look at it  when I parked  it had gone. Must have snuck out  the window  when I was daydreaming,  looking up  at a yellow sky with  the sun  in my tired eyes. You know I like to run the ac and  roll the windows down  on these hot summer days  on the way home.  A small luxury I afford myself  for windswept hair and  chilly feet after a long day of  gazing into the abyss of  nowhere-near retirement, of  too-short weekends teasing  luridly  from the beginning of  a long week. The poem escapes me regularly, as life does at times  when I get too focused on  staring internally, not looking at the sun, the stars the people who surround me. The air hanging desperately  in spaces just waiting  to be discovered were every day  a Saturday with no plans. April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.

and by the time we order drinks she’s lit two cigarettes.   She says, (while breathing in smoke from harbor fires),   Glo-ree days! Says, I’m trying to quit. ​​​Exhale.   Did anyone ever tell you, that with your eyes silver and gold like that, they look like coins? Like, I could scoop ‘em out and plunk them in my pocket and they’d jingle? You should know that you’re not the first — or, there’s been hundreds of firsts who thought they could make me right.   For example: I sometimes act a little too much like my daddy. I’ve got wiles to drive a man wild, and I often use ‘em to burn. Sometimes I’m burning, and I never met a history book that didn’t make me cry. Sometimes I powder my hair, and did you know that I got “collateral damage” tattooed across my inner thigh? ​ Do you wanna see?   … Slow down, boy!   Have you ever held someone who looked like you? A girl disappeared from this place, right after we kissed behind the jukebox — that old dinosaur, that old relic. I was high. They probably got her bones scattered across Appalachia by now, and she’s making things grow, or else she hit-and-run to Hawaii trying to get away from me as best she can. God Bless Her, either way. A toast!   ​ And down goes a gulp of Diet Coke — her lips, ​ mine.   I wonder sometimes what museum they’ll put me in. Once I wrapped bandages around my chest — up&up — and it felt kinda good, until I started seeing shades of mummification. I’m past my peak. There’s no future here. And I thought, Fossilize me.   What the hell.   Sometimes I act too much like my daddy. I deny the influence of prescription pills. I don’t cut myself- I just rust. But I don’t read  either.   ​ She takes a bite of a burger, ​ and breathes out smoke.   Ever been to France? There, they call me La Liberté éclairant le monde  — and I think that’s beautiful. My accent’s kinda good, huh? My mama got kicked hard, in the gut before I was born And maybe that’s why it all turned out the way it did. Did anyone ever tell you that your eyes, silver and gold, looks like blood money? You can love me —   believe me, honey, I’m wide open —   but once day these acrylics will stop piercing your hands, and I’ll topple down, down, into the harbor and she’ll welcome me home. She’s tasteful.   I’ll sleep.   But until then—   ​ I toss ​ blood-money bills on the countertop of justice as Liberty              lights another match,              licks out, and              swallows it whole.   But until then — hell, we got time. C’mon, new-moon sucker — let’s light a fire, pummel the highway, make the National Parks fear to god. Let’s end up laughing on a slab. let’s hit the road.   Julianna Reidell is an undergraduate English and French major at Arcadia University. Her work can be found in two anthologies by Moonstone Press, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Sword and Kettle Press’s “Farewell, Neverland,” and issues of her university’s literary magazine, Quiddity.

Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,                         and all the host of them Her smile is a dead end street,  a door opens, snow  skitters across hardwood.  I’m inconspicuously  armed; we’re not supposed to be here,  not flirting, not during Mass.  I miss the sting,  that sharp bite right before needle  hits groove.  Light bends to her,  I become a long shadow;  her breath evaporates. Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden;                         and there he put the man whom he had formed The moon is bullet shaped,  wonder how it might feel  pressed against my temple.  My limbs are pitched, nothing  ever happens here.   She gives me a sideways wink,  her shoulder bumps mine;  wonder what I’m made for,  wonder if it was a day like today when men stopped believing in God.  Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium                          and the onyx stone There are other people’s feelings to consider.  There are saints, traditions, passages with hidden doors.  There are steps and steps and steps and the dry  sharp intake of air when we hold our breath.  She brushes her hair back, touches my hand,  we’re supposed to be recounting our sins; all I see is the black edge of her bra strap, all I feel are the ragged edges of the exit wound.   Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook,  Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife , was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024.  http://www.louisianaliterature.org/2024/04/11/new-release-announcement-alex-stolis/  ,  RIP Winston Smith  from Allen Buddha Press 2024, and  The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres , 2024 by Bottlecap Press.

SNOWSCAPE Flakes gathered  on a stone, on a leaf, on the arm of a lawn chair left out. A coating of snow, I suppose I could say. Yet  each object  holds  its own. WHITE ON WHITE The white lettering pasted  onto his front bass drum head  blends into its white background, so no  full words emerge  to name the snappy society quartet  for which he was the drummer. My teenage grandfather, cigar  jutting out, brandishes  two sticks in one hand and a tambourine in the other for this sepia-toned, Roaring-Twenties publicity photograph. If, say, fourteen, he had ten years to live before  his fatal auto accident and made use of them: played in a band on a boat to Europe; played  on a cruise to the Caribbean; filled-in, one night,  with Paul Whiteman (the biggest bandleader of the day); married a beautiful, tender woman; fathered my father. And left this blanked-out—so iconic—lettering. THE BRONZE BUST I forgot to buy milk and needed wine so I threw my coat on and clopped downstairs with the shops across the street in mind when I saw, in my building foyer,  a life-size bronze bust  of Gene—one  he fashioned when a young artist  of his beautiful young self—receding atop a wooden dolly, an appraiser giving instructions to the mover in her British accent. I literally clutched my heart, having  known this bust nearly thirty years as it presided over the entry hall  of Gene’s apartment, a bust passed countless times by my wife and me  and our two boys when Gene invited us up  for tea and pastries, a bust that seemed to watch  its model’s manifold life unfold before its  attentive, sensual, unchanging gaze. But Gene, at ninety-one, his memory deteriorating  by the day, felt it was time to deaccess  his kept work while he could handle it  judiciously, stripping  his apartment of every piece, a process  about which he was unsentimental—or  so the appraiser reported when I confessed  my stab of pain. And she, of course, was as unsentimental as he,  just doing her job while I stood and watched this  emblem of Gene’s full life—and emptying memory— fade away, its tender face to me. Mark Belair's  poems have appeared in numerous journals, including  Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review , and  Michigan Quarterly Review .  Author of seven collections of poems, his most recent books are two works of fiction: Stonehaven  (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood  (Turning Point, 2022). A new collection of poems entitled Settling In  will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com