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In 2011, you couldn’t find many places in Seoul, South Korea selling Mexican food, authentic or Americanized. Choi’s Tacos, a small, privately owned Mexican eatery, walking distance from Yonsei University, where I was attending graduate school, was a rare exception. That year, Taco Bell made the very ruthless and/or savvy (depending on your feelings about international corporate capitalism) choice to set up a new location in the building across the street from Choi’s. Fellow graduate student, Evan*, an American like me, decided to champion Choi’s Tacos cause. Evan, also like me, had taught English at Korean public schools for two years in the southern part of South Korea before attending our small global studies program, in which half the students were Korean nationals and half were foreigners. Evan often became red-faced and righteously angry when tactlessly sharing his many opinions, embodying the rudeness and entitlement of American stereotypes. He complained loudly about how Koreans treated foreigners, assuming prejudice even when there wasn’t much evidence. He enjoyed riling people up, claiming things like: “Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant.” In a discussion on Barack Obama, he tried to explain that many people from his home state saw the current President as “just another n-word”, but because he said the actual word, he rightly offended a lot of people. Evan hated that Taco Bell. He told us not to eat there and encouraged people to go to Choi’s Tacos instead, where they’d encounter an affable Mr. Choi, a big man with round glasses and apron who spoke English fairly well because he’d spent some years in the US. The restaurant was almost too well lit with fluorescent lights and small, with just a few tables and a basic menu. Evan went there multiple times a day, trying to save the small business by eating as many quesadillas as he could. Occasionally, Evan had valid points: Taco Bell could handily outcompete Mr. Choi, and sometimes, policies towards foreigners in Korea were unfair, and unfortunately, some Korean people were prejudiced or ignorant. Although, as graduate students (especially white students, like Evan and me), we generally experienced far less discrimination than other groups of foreigners, like migrant laborers from Southeast and South Asia, and we could return to our home countries and easily find employment. Anytime I started to like Evan, he’d do something offensive again and I’d feel like he deserved to be ostracized. I tried to avoid Evan, but our program was too small. During breaks from the semester, I worked at an English camp for elementary students at the Yonsei campus. Evan worked there, too. *** When I lived in Korea, I volunteered for a few North Korean human rights organizations, helping them edit English news articles as well as some documents to present to the United Nations and assisted with some charity events. I volunteered with these groups before I started attending Yonsei, when I was still teaching full time at a public school in Ulsan, South Korea. In South Korea, NK human rights groups are associated with Christian missionaries, right-wing politics, and pro-US and anti-China stances. I’ve met and seen online plenty of international cheerleaders for North Korea’s government, who doubt that North Korean society is as bad as activists claim it is because they associate maligning NK with pro-USA propaganda. There have been incidents of activists lying about or exaggerating situations in NK, including the well-known Shin Dong Hyuk, who was born and raised in a concentration camp but escaped. He admitted recently that he had lied about some details of his past out of shame. I’ve met pastors and activists that admit to entering China illegally to escort NK refugees through the country, and when you ask them about these trips, they understandably are loath to give out many details about when these trips happen, the routes they take, or the exact locations of families that receive aid. Most of them look fatter, older, or nerdier than the type of person you’d imagine as an international secret agent guiding refugees over kilometers of land and past multiple borders into countries that won’t repatriate them, such as Thailand. Some of these activists also get healthcare, food, education, and other needed supplies to North Korean children and families in China. It is Chinese policy to repatriate North Korean nationals caught on Chinese land, often forcing North Koreans to leave their children behind, including many children with North Korean mothers and Chinese fathers. These children have a hard time accessing social services, including food, healthcare, and education, because they or their North Korean mothers entered the country illegally, and they are not official Chinese citizens. Of course, these activities cause some tension between South Korea and China. Most foreigners who are curious about NK human rights don’t immediately understand how Koreans view the movement. In 2011, I volunteered, along with some other Americans and Koreans, at an event raising money for this cause. We stood around our little table on a street corner with a box for collecting cash along with activist performers playing instruments or wearing fake chains, near crowded bars in Seoul. A drunk European man, seemingly very offended, called us idiots and American imperialists for getting involved with causes that had nothing to do with us. Instead, we should worry about poor people back in America. At first I thought he was not too serious, but he got louder and more aggressive. I wanted to ignore him, but my friend argued back. He got close to her face, and his friends egged him on. I was protective of her, wanting to get her away from him as she started to cry while telling him to mind his business. Eventually, his friends pulled him away. She removed herself from the crowd and went down some alleyway where she squatted and curled her tall body into a small ball. I followed her and tried to rationalize how he was wrong because I am not good at comforting people, and I was trying to convince myself, too, while secretly wondering if he had a point. I suspect that his anger stemmed more from a dislike of Americans than any actual knowledge or feelings about NK. However, the incident made me consider, why did I, an American, feel like I should get involved with North Korean human rights issues? The question continued to nag at me. For a graduate school class on social movements, I interviewed some American NK human rights activists, trying to understand why this cause moved them. Was it their religious beliefs? The mystique of knowing more than most people about a mysterious society? An act of rebellion? Did they have Cold War fetishes, spy fantasies, a fascination with dystopias? Or was their motivation simpler, like, they found friends and community among the activists? The answer for each person was a different combination of all those reasons. Sometimes the cause just moved them, they just wanted to help those people, and they couldn’t tell me exactly why. However, no matter what initially interests someone in a particular cause, they need to feel a part of the community surrounding that cause to sustain their activism in the long term. *** Choi’s Tacos eventually did go out of business some months after Taco Bell moved in. “Mr. Choi is nice,” one of my friends admitted while sitting in the freshly painted yellow and purple dining room inside of Taco Bell. “But his food is more expensive and this Taco Bell is pretty good, better than back in the States. Plus, if I go to Choi’s, I’m afraid Evan will be there, and I don’t want to have to talk to him.” Ironically, Evan’s enthusiasm for saving Choi’s Tacos might have actually scared customers away. Maybe that drunken European might have donated to North Korean children if Americans weren’t the ones asking. In activism, both big and small, who delivers the outrage can matter more than the cause itself. *** One of my graduate school professors brought in an American woman activist to talk to students in our program about the NK human rights movement to inspire more students, especially the Koreans, to care more about the issue. She gave a short talk about North Koreans and the human rights abuses they experience. Though some activists have lied or embellished stories from NK, there is a significant amount of evidence of widespread human rights abuses. North Korean political prisoners are sometimes sent to concentration camps and subject to communal punishments. Much of the population suffers from lack of nutrition, and illicit drug use and production is rumored to be encouraged by the government. There is little open communication between cities and towns, extreme censorship, rampant sexism, religion is banned, and so on. When the floor opened up for questions, I asked something like: “As foreigners, we can bring different resources and perspectives to the issue, but how do foreigners respect the South Korean perspective? If North Korea collapses and millions of North Koreans suddenly become South Korean citizens, or if North Korea starts a new war, we can just leave. South Koreans are the ones who will suffer, die, and have to rebuild their society. If they join a North Korean human rights group, they get social backlash from other Koreans. How do we ask them to care, when they have much more to lose than we do?” The professor who had invited the American woman activist, a South Korean middle-aged man, known for right-wing views, yelled at me in front of everyone. He said I was disrespectful, and he was offended by my question. Truthfully, I didn’t mean to disrespect him or the activist woman because I was wrestling with those questions myself. Thank you, one of my fellow graduate students, a Korean man, texted me in secret as the professor scolded me. It is different for us. *** After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I saw a left-wing podcaster post on Twitter that instead of donating to help Ukrainians, Americans should be donating to homeless people and food kitchens in their own country. To me, this sounded strikingly like right-wing Americans who bemoan any expansion of social safety nets for immigrants or the poor when “ThErE aRe HoMeLeSs VeTeRaNs”, even if they don’t help veterans themselves. I’ve seen people debate the freedom, corruption, or racism of Ukrainian society. Debating whether or not Ukrainian people are moral enough to receive international aid feels like a dangerous slide into apathy, like, refusing to help NK refugees because some have exaggerated their litanies of hardship or because Americans offend you. Is it different from Fox News pundits arguing that some Black American victims of police brutality don’t deserve sympathy or justice because they had a criminal record? The victims’ flaws aren’t really the point. They’re just excuses to not care, or in many cases, to dehumanize the victims, to paint them as deserving of their suffering. Yet, the podcaster did have a point, sort of—why were white, Ukrainian refugees suddenly more important than a starving American neighbor? As others have noted, why do these refugees get more grace, attention, and sympathy from the West than those suffering from war in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, or the millions of climate and economic refugees, mostly black and brown people, in the Global South? How much do our own biases, prejudices, racism, or personal interests influence whom we help or how we virtue signal? Activism and charitable organizations exist within a competitive market for funds and attention. Breast cancer fundraising, due to the marketing prowess, is often more successful than other types of cancer fundraising. How much money is spent on panda conservation while less cute animals are overlooked? People rail against nonprofits for wanting overhead, but some projects are complex and need well-trained employees to succeed, and how can an organization, in good conscience, help the poor and disadvantaged if they don’t pay their employees a living wage (many don’t)? In the marketplace of activism and outrage, whether or not you successfully make people care relies on successful navigation of both practical issues and peoples’ perceptions and identities. *** At the end of the summer, the teachers, both Korean and foreign, who worked at that Yonsei English camp went out to get celebratory drinks. Evan was there, as were some other foreign teachers. An Irish teacher went on a long rant about how Americans were idiots for being offended by the word cunt. In Ireland, it was just a common insult. One of the American women said: “Maybe if someone from Ireland called me that word, I wouldn’t care, but I think if an American man calls a woman that, you know he means to hurt you. It’s not the same.” We ended up at a Canadian-owned bar with a selection of foreign beers and thin-crust pizza. Most of the teachers went home after a couple of drinks, except for me, Evan, and one of the Korean teachers, a woman, around twenty years old. Evan and this young woman, Young Mi*, were getting very drunk while playing a game, ruining a deck of playing cards with greasy fingers and beer-glass sweat. I went to the bar to talk to the bartenders and some acquaintances, keeping an eye on Evan and Young Mi, knowing that they were probably getting too drunk to get home by themselves. Suddenly Evan yells, “Hey Jennifer, come here! Come here, you, CUNT!” That word echoed through the whole bar. No man had ever called me a cunt before, not to my face. Evan was not Irish. He was American. It wasn’t a funny joke. The whole bar grew silent, and I felt pairs and pairs of eyes on me, waiting for my reaction. *** To confront why we do or don’t care often leads to a realization that we may benefit from our activism (getting involved in North Korean activism makes you more interesting at cocktail parties) or from others’ suffering (asking people to care about Choi’s Tacos means asking them to give up the convenience and allure of capitalist junk food). Can we be critical of and reform how people care without shaming people out of caring, totally? People care so little, so rarely about things beyond their own lives, even if they’re imperfect carers. I’m afraid to criticize, too harshly, how and what people care about. Wouldn’t total apathy be worse? On the other hand, I think about how much damage failed international development projects can do, how much money can be wasted on fancy ideas that rich, privileged people have that don’t actually make sense in practice (piles of expensive unused computers for kids in classrooms with unreliable electricity come to mind). Caring too much about things you don’t understand well can actively be harmful, and is perhaps, at times, worse than apathy. I’m lucky to be able to debate the politics of caring—I’m not starving, in a warzone, dying of some terminal disease. No matter your intentions, when you talk about charity or activism, you always, somehow, sound like an ass. There is always something you should care about more, and passionate activism or taking offense about anything always says something about the person who cares. *** Shortly before I was about to leave Korea, Chae Won*, a human rights activist I met while volunteering, invited me to stop by her organization’s office because the staff wanted to formally thank me before I moved away. I admired this woman–she’s always seemed focused on helping people, and not particularly interested in political or religious posturing. She worked tirelessly, without losing patience or becoming deterred. Honestly, I didn’t think my helping with a few events and lightly editing some documents needed to be specially acknowledged. I had realized, too, that I lacked the intelligence, advanced language skills, investment, and passion to effectively help the North Korean human rights movement. However, it would have been rude to refuse a very kind gesture on the part of her staff, and it felt like I had been invited into some elite club. “Another American student is also coming,” Chae Won told me before I arrived at the office. “He’s volunteered a lot with us. We’ve got small gifts for both of you.” I was sitting in the small office, meeting the staff, composed mostly of shy men with big smiles and thick glasses, when suddenly, I heard Evan’s voice at the door. “This is Evan,” Chae Won told me. “Have you met before? I think you’re both at Yonsei?” We forced smiles and joked. We ate cake, and they made us take pictures on two chairs placed in the center of a room. “It looks like you’re getting married!” Chae Won teased. I pretended I wasn’t insulted by people joking I should marry this very annoying individual who thought it was funny to call me a cunt in front of a bar full of people. Evan also didn’t seem charmed by the joke; in the past, he had repeatedly stated his preference for dating Korean women, not fellow white Americans. Evan being there made me feel less special. I wonder if I would have continued to volunteer if he had come to the same events I attended, if I knew he was this active with this group and had to worry about the social backlash among my grad-school friends from being associated with him. Like me, Evan moved back to the states. From his social media, it seems like he became active in the Blacklivesmatter movement, joining a few protests. I’ve only supported police reform activism through modest donations. I’ve not yet, unlike him, actually marched for that cause. *** At that dimly lit bar, melting snow dripping down the large windows, the word cunt uttered from someone who already annoyed me, who thought that joking made demeaning words okay, who loved attention on his “good” deeds and sometimes embarrassed me as a fellow American, felt like a hot slap across the face. Yet, Evan and Young Mi were very drunk. If I got in a fight with Evan, it would ruin Young Mi’s night and make an awkward situation for everyone at the bar. This offense was so much smaller than human rights abuses, or war, or even Choi’s Tacos being run out of business, but, in that moment, I still had to navigate the politics of caring. To care enough to loudly scold Evan and leave him there, dramatically, everyone watching, might have been what he deserved. It might’ve taught him another lesson on overstepping boundaries. I would get praise and encouragement from my fellow students who loved to be offended by Evan. I put my beer down and walked over to Evan. “Don’t call me that again,” I told him quietly, choosing not to care (much). “When do you guys want to go home?” I helped them get home later that night because I would’ve felt guilty. Because the thought of him seducing Young Mi made me roll my eyes. Though he probably wouldn’t have done anything inappropriate to Young Mi, whatever his other flaws. He was stumbly drunk, himself, and if he had called the wrong person a cunt, that other person might not have been as forgiving as me. I wanted to feel like a good person, and not like a person who got in a fight over the appropriateness of a word that could hit so much differently, depending on who has said it to whom. Sometimes, I think, it’s okay to care enough to help someone, when you actually are the right person to help, even when other people might question why. *names have been changed for privacy Jennifer Jeanne McArdle‘s work can be found on her website: https://jenniferjeannemcardle.blogspot.com/ Author’s note: An essay about working with nonprofits, the North Korean human rights activism in South Korea, some wrestling with morality, offense, and passion for causes.

The Gaze as She Leaves the Country Club’s Annual Cocktail Party They want you to think you’re aggressive or even a little hysterical But your womb was removed when they found a blossom-end rot They want you to smile because it might never happen But of course you know it already has They want you to starve yourself and act like Martha Stewart But store bought brownies get eaten first while yours are left to molder in the tin They want you to freeze your face and plump your lips But then you’d look like artificial intelligence or a Nicole Kidman wannabe They don’t want your opinion or to hear you say the ‘c’ word And they definitely don’t want you to talk about misplacing your orgasm So you took stock over a plate of canapés And after eating five you still felt empty But you knew—you were not aggressive You are assertive (and at this age there are so many worse things you could be) On Twitter someone posted about speaking from the scar not the wound And people (mostly men) asked—but what does that mean? You wanted to add an eye roll emoji as wasn’t it obvious A wound is too raw, like licked lips in a bitter wind But a scar is raised and hard and a constant reminder you survived So the next time a man (and it was always a man) Told you to calm down—relax You roused a riot in your throat And baring your scarred chest You told him to suck your tattooed nipple And as you left the club to drive to the all night diner You conceded—after two decades of dieting Maybe you were a little hangry Contemplating your usual omelet You knew you no longer wanted this egg white life So you ordered the lumberjack pancakes with extra bacon And before you even took a bite You were suddenly full up Imagining The Taste of Longing Imagine a person is a hotel / not the four seasons / more like a quick roadside stop-over / waiting for the key in the door / wondering if a bedroom servicing will be ordered / or if a sometimes husband will prefer the mini bar In the dark / you require redemption / but find only the devil / burning hearts / so you order a door dashing hero / not caring Taco Bell fry the peppers in the oil from the meat / your life was always about cross contamination Imagine a lifetime of cravings / pretending your marriage was a cheesy roll up of days / even when he sang that Springsteen song / about you not being a beauty / and you found yourself / believing it And when he leaves / you find / you don’t mind / as for the longest time you’ve only found a Cinnabon delightful / and you can get your cravings filled online / giddy that you get rewarded just for ordering Imagine a restaurant with two health warnings / like the devil’s diner / abandon your waistlines / all who enter / tapping your fingers / to the rain / inside yourself / how can you care / who the bell tolls for / when it’s taco Tuesday every day Adele Evershed was born in Wales and now lives in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry, and her first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places will be published next year by Finishing Line Press.

Shannon lifted her face toward the open sky, waiting impatiently for the passing of a shooting star. John spotted one after another, their tails cutting through navy blue darkness and disappearing before Shannon could readjust her focus. The house next door was silent, and the two siblings whispered to accommodate unseen neighbors behind darkened windows. It wasn’t raining yet. It had rained every night since the first week of June. The tourists never quite learned when to pack up and get inside, but John and Shannon knew. They grew up here, they were sun-rusted townies and always would be. They could detect the slightest shift in air pressure, the smallest drop in temperature, a system of warnings baked into their skin. “When do you leave?” Shannon asked, the wicker chair groaning beneath her shifting weight. “I haven’t decided yet. Maybe tomorrow. More likely Monday. Sunday flights are too expensive.” “Sure,” Shannon said. “Bad luck to fly on Sundays, anyway.” “What about you?” John asked. “I don’t know. I don’t think I should leave yet. What is Mom gonna do with all this stuff, you know?” John said nothing. Shannon had all but moved back home after their father died and she kept starting the same argument with John even though she knew that it was unfair. “You could stay, too. She needs your help, too. And not just her, but me.” For most of their adult lives, Shannon had been in and out of their parents’ house, always claiming it was for the family and not because she got swallowed up by every city she tried to call home. John moved to Idaho, became a husband, became a father. John called Shannon a martyr. Unattached and unemployed, she had endless time to try on the weight on their mother’s shoulders, to fuss and coddle as if widowhood had made their mother needy, infantile. She had even more time to make John out to be the absent brother, the brother who never came home, the brother who didn’t care anymore. She knew that it was unfair but did it anyway, trying desperately to convince them both that they had more choices than they did. The sky seemed clearer somehow, each star a pinhole to a universe unseen. The tree frogs grew louder, their sheep-like bleating cutting through the thick, heavy air. The two took turns waving away mosquitos, Shannon cursing under her breath as they landed on her neck and face. Shannon opened her mouth, prepared to make small talk that would keep an argument at bay, but her jaw slackened as movement on the horizon overtook her attention. A mass—or maybe an orb, or maybe an aura—of blue mist was consuming the roof of the house next door. It moved like fog but denser, faster, propelled by some invisible force. The shape of it was hard to hold visually—Shannon noted that if it were a liquid, it would be about as viscous as oil—and the color was so vibrant, so electric blue that it hardly seemed natural. For a moment, Shannon was certain that the roof, itself, was moving away from the house as if unbound by eaves and nails. It was a moment as short as the popping of a flashbulb and equally as disorienting. As the thing kept shifting, Shannon rubbed one eyelid, then the other, wondering if it was a sign of some new disease of the brain or eye that was causing her to see this blue something. She pawed at John’s shoulder, eliciting from him a distracted swat that reminded her of long car rides and hot mornings in church pews. This wasn’t a misfiring of the ocular nerves. They both saw it. It was real. And then it was gone, moving noiselessly out of sight and disturbing nothing in its wake. “What was that?” Shannon asked. “I’m not sure,” John said. “Maybe… some kind of cloud.” Shannon stared up into the cloudless sky. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said. “And it had… a presence. I felt it.” “A presence?” John asked. “Yes, John, a presence.” “What kind of presence?” “Like, human. Or, no, inhuman. Otherworldly.” Shannon could feel John’s eyes on the side of her upturned face. “Maybe someone just passed away in that house,” Shannon said. “Someone what?” “Passed away. Died. Maybe what we witnessed was, I don’t know, the departure of their spirit.” “Or maybe,” John said, “it was the return of someone’s spirit. Maybe it was a guardian angel.” “Maybe it was,” Shannon said. John rolled his eyes. Shannon knew he thought she was difficult to talk to now, and not just because of the martyrdom, which John said had been part of her personality since day one. It was the spiritual stuff, which she hadn’t started gravitating toward until their father’s illness. She parroted the beliefs that he held, musing about trees having inner lives and the restlessness of an unseen dimension. When John asked her what had caused this shift, she’d said, “I have a new perspective now. Something you’d benefit from finding, yourself.” John snapped his fingers. “You know what? I just saw a video about ball lightning. It’s rare but it does happen. I bet that’s what that was.” “I know what ball lightning is,” Shannon said. “That’s not what that was. It didn’t flash. Besides, it wasn’t fast enough. It didn’t move like ball lightning. It moved sideways. I think that it might have been extraterrestrial.” “Oh, come on,” John said. “What? You can’t possibly tell me that you’re so narrow-minded that you really believe nothing else is out there.” “I didn’t say that,” John said. “I just don’t think they’re floating around the beaches of North Carolina. I mean, seriously. A UFO. Do you know who claims to have seen UFOs? Scammers. People with too much time on their hands. People who want to get on the local news. Are we those people?” “So, because other people have faked UFO sightings, you don’t think anyone will ever actually see one?” Shannon asked. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that whatever we just saw has a rational explanation and you’re going out of your way to ignore it.” “What makes my explanation less rational than yours, John?” Shannon asked, her voice glinting like shards of glass. “Who are you to say that clouds are more rational than ghosts and lightning is more rational than aliens? Do you know everything? Are you the smartest person on the planet, John?” “If you’re going to act this way,” John said, digging his fingers into his temple, “I’m going inside.” “Is that so you don’t have to admit that you’re not the smartest person on the planet?” “Jesus, Shannon,” John said, throwing his hands up in the air as if to catch something. It was a gesture that they’d both inherited from their mother. “I don’t think I’m the smartest person on the planet. You want it to be a ghost? Fine, it’s a ghost.” “I don’t think it’s for sure a ghost. I just don’t think we have any business ruling out that possibility when we don’t know what it is. I mean, what’s the point of that?” Shannon stopped speaking. She wondered what John was thinking about, sitting there with his hands balled, his lower lip tucked between his teeth. Memories of their only real fight, their one true screaming match flashed through her mind. John shouting, “If there was something wrong, the doctors would know.” Shannon shouting, “It doesn’t matter what the doctors know or don’t know. He’s dying, John.” Their mother pushing them both out into the driveway and slamming the door behind them. “Do you think it will rain tonight?” Shannon asked. “Doesn’t feel like it,” John said. “No, it doesn’t.” “I think I’ll head inside, anyway.” Shannon nodded and the two rose from their chairs and dragged them back beneath the porch awning. They slipped past the sliding glass door and up the stairs, turning in opposite directions when they reached the landing. Shannon shut the door to her childhood bedroom, wishing she’d said goodnight to John, sweet dreams, anything to show that she cared for him. She heard the sink in the bathroom open, a rush of water flowing over John’s hands and then his toothbrush. She kicked her shoes off and changed into a pair of running shorts and an old t-shirt with the words I Got Crabs at Stan’s Seafood Shack peeling off the back. Climbing into bed, she turned off the lamp beside her, not bothering to pull up the heap of twisted sheets at her feet. Thick, wet air hovered over her body. She was just beginning to drift into twilight sleep when the thin sound of her ceiling fan was overpowered by the noise of pouring rain. It beat against the windows and bounced off the leaves in the trees. When she awoke the next morning, the weatherman crackled over the radio that it was the most rain they’d gotten all week, marveling at how it managed to sneak in undetected. “I guess we never do know for sure, Doug,” the news anchor said. He never mentioned the unidentifiable blue something. Shannon wondered if John would continue to think about it, would embrace a question with no answer. She hoped that there was still value in sharing something, even if you could never agree on what it was. John found Shannon on the deck, her bare feet propped on the damp railing. She smiled at him and patted the chair next to her. “It’s wet,” she said. “Everything is.” John tipped the chair to the side, letting the puddles of water fall away before sitting down. “Some rain,” he said. “Sure was. You leaving today?” “Yeah,” he said. “Even though I’ve heard that flying on a Sunday is bad luck.” Shannon elbowed him and he elbowed her back. She chose to surprise him, to say nothing when he expected a diatribe. She could sense his tension leftover from last night, or perhaps it was a permanent wall he’d built between them. She tried to will it away as the tree frogs below bleated in praise of impossible puddles. Molly Andrea-Ryan is a prose writer and occasional poet living in Pittsburgh, PA. Her work can be found in Idle Ink, trampset, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere.

Hunger doesn't always jive with common sense. I guess that's why I went out into a February blizzard to the grocery store when it would have served me better to stay home. The A&P Supermarket was on Frankford Avenue, a gritty neighborhood in Northeast Philly. Snow fell a few inches an hour and no end in sight. At 7 p.m., there was already two feet of that white stuff atop a sheet of ice. Obviously, there were very few motorists on the road. I didn’t listen to weather advisories to stay off home. I had my own laws, and one was, no matter what the weather conditions are—a tornado, an earthquake, or a monsoon—if my refrigerator was empty, I would go to the supermarket. Hunger spoke to me on a visceral level, calling me to satisfy my cravings no matter the circumstances. And so, I bundled up with two pairs of flannel-lined pants, insulated duck boots, and a parka from L.L. Bean that was capable of withstanding thirty-below.. I was prepared to take my white Rabbit diesel into the teeth of the blizzard. Surprisingly, I made it to the supermarket. . I drove slowly and avoided streets that weren’t plowed. This isn’t so bad, I thought. The weatherman was full of shit. When walking the supermarket's parking lot, I barely stood upright, falling once and sliding the rest of the way. Not surprisingly, the A & P was empty. At first, I wondered if the store was open. There were lights on, but no customers. Then I spotted a woman wearing a hairnet at the number three checkout lane and a chubby guy at the meat department who seemed to be rearranging the cold cuts in the display case. The store was packed with merchandise, so I had no trouble finding what I needed. "You must be hungry?" said the guy whose name tag said ‘Tony’. “Can you get me some lunchmeat?” I asked. “Sure, you’ll have to get a number first,” he joked. I smiled. “Half a pound of Swiss Lorraine, a small tub of potato salad, and a pound of smoked turkey breast.” “No, problem.” “The snowstorm is giving me the munchies," I said, as Tony passed me a sample slice of turkey.” "I don't blame you," he said, scooping out some potato salad. "There's nothing to do in a snowstorm besides watching the weather on T.V. and feeding your belly." "Yeah, I hear we’re getting another one at the end of the week,” I said. “What do you expect? This is Philly.” Tony passed me the wrapped turkey and the other items, then he went back to stacking the meat case. *** Once the three shopping bags were loaded into my V.W. Rabbit, I closed the hatch and turned the key, hoping to get home before the icy rain comes and freezes up my windshield. I turned the ignition, nothing. Tried again, and it didn’t start. The third time, it almost turned over, but I didn’t want to keep pumping the gas pedal, fearing I'd flood the car. I waited a few minutes, then made another attempt; this time, I smelled gasoline and knew I was stuck. I had three bags of groceries, my engine wouldn't turn over, and I didn’t renew my AAA membership. I hurried back into the supermarket for help. "Let me ask Tony in the deli,” said the manager with the hairnet. “He usually has junk like that in his truck." Tony walked out of the backroom wearing a dirty apron and a smile on his face. “You’re lucky. What kind of car do you have?" "Rabbit Diesel," I said. "1982." "Damn, you bought one of those? Don't you know the fuel line freezes in cold weather? You should have bought a regular gasoline engine." "Yeah, I found out the hard way. Do you have any jumper cables?" "Sure do. Got ‘em in my truck. Where's your car, and we’ll start it up?" “It's that white one covered in snow in the middle of the empty parking lot." "Oh, I thought it was a snowdrift. Get inside your car, and I'll hook these babies up to my battery. I want to get you back home before the Eagles play tomorrow.” *** The engine started quickly, and I couldn’t turn up the heat and defrost soon enough. It was hard seeing out of the window with the amount of snow falling. With the street lights shining, everything appeared bright white from the snow, hurting my eyes. I must be lucky today, I thought, driving in the blizzard and having the meat guy start my car. I expected to make it home in one piece. All I had to do was go slow and not jam the brakes. But as I pulled out of the A & P, I looked both ways. I could only see about ten feet in front of me—it was a thick, snowy white fog. Just into the street, a speeding pickup came out of nowhere. It was a rumbling apparition in the form of a crazed driver, driving at deadly speeds on a snowy, icy road. A split second later, I felt a jarring crash that either signified death or a lifetime of paraplegia. My head hit the steering wheel, and I blacked out for a moment. Then, as if I were in a slow-motion dream; the fear of being a victim of a deadly collision. I told myself it was over. I was dead, but I kept feeling my achy forehead, and the world seems become a fuzzy concussion like I was viewing static electricity. My windshield shattered, and the pickup truck was stuck to the front end of my car with my hood bent in several places. I don’t remember how long I stayed inside the car, rubbing the growing welt on my forehead. A guy in a flannel shirt and a number 3 Dale Earnhardt hat asked if I was alright. “I think so?” I said, still rubbing the knot on my forehead. “You pulled out so fast; I didn’t see you.” I knew he was lying, just covering himself. I could smell the booze and cigarettes on his breath. He didn’t seem at all upset about the accident, even smiling about it—how alcoholics look when they’ve had one too many. “I need to call my insurance agent,” I said groggily. “No, don’t do that,” he pleaded. “The damage doesn’t look that bad. By the way, my name is Johnny Donnish. Pleased to meet you." If I called the insurance company or the cops, he’d be in hot water. He’d never pass a breathalyzer. “Why don’t I drive you home,” he offered, acting faux friendly. “You can work this out with your insurance company in the morning.” There were a lot of factors that went into my dumb decision to agree. It was freezing, I had a splitting headache, and couldn’t think or see straight. Instead of chancing he’d get angry, I deferred, thinking he would drive me back to my place and I’d handle the car issue tomorrow. “Okay,” I said, “but I want to go straight home.” “Sure,” he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. As soon as I got into his beer garden of a truck, my anxiety level hit the roof. There were at least a dozen empty beer cans in the car, a load of cigarette butts on the floor, a crowbar, and what looked like a hunting rifle in the back seat. As he started the car, I imagined him side-swiping a dozen vehicles on the way home. “You mind if I stop at this club for a minute? It’s down the street. Have to clear something up with a buddy and we’ll be back on the road in no time.” I didn’t trust this loser. Johnny Donnish would have me sitting in the truck for hours, freezing my ass off while he was downing one shot glass after another. There was probably an APB on him for a slew of other crimes, like running over a pedestrian. A whole SWAT team was after him. I’d likely be viewed as an accomplice if I was caught in his truck. I reached for the door handle, and he grabbed my shoulder. “And where are you going?” “I changed my mind, Johnnie. My friend is going to pick me up instead. Go ahead to the club without me. Stay as long as you like.” Johnny Donnish gave me a menacing stare. “I thought I was taking you home. It’s not very friendly to agree to something and change your mind. I noticed Johnny's hand clenching and thought the man was about to strike me, steal my wallet, and dump my body in the Delaware. Just then, there was a knock on the window. Tony, the deli guy, was wearing a beanie and gloves along with his A&P apron. He motioned me to roll down the window. “Hey, I’m getting off from work soon. I’ll be glad to take you home.” Johnny Donnish didn’t say anything. He watched as I quickly opened the door, reached into the backseat for my groceries, and left with Tony. Johnny Donnish didn’t say anything, sped off crazily in three feet of snow and ice, spinning and swerving into tires spinning. “I wasn’t going to let you leave with that maniac, buddy. Look what he did to your car. If I had let you in that truck with him, I couldn’t live with myself.” We both looked at my totaled car covered in snow, and walked back to the supermarket. “I don’t know why I agreed to go, Tony. I wasn’t thinking straight.” “Nothing makes sense when you’re stuck in a blizzard. All you want to do is get out of it.” I waited for the police to arrive and told them the whole story, about how a man named Johnny Donnish who wore a number-3 Dale Earnhardt hat and was driving drunk down Frankford Avenue. I told the officer about the shotgun in the backseat, and he was heading to another bar. I felt safe for the first time tonight in Tony’s all-wheel-drive Jeep, knowing that soon I’d be home, safe and warm. “Next time, I’m going to eat what’s in the refrigerator,” I told Tony, who turned down my street. Once I got inside my apartment, I made a turkey sandwich. Mark Tulin is a recovering therapist who's been told that he writes like Edward Hopper used to paint.

“Where does the moon go during the day?” The child stands with his hands in his pockets, his head craned towards the sky. A wide expanse of blue that hasn’t disappointed him yet. He has lived for seven years now and I don’t know how I ever loved without him. I tell him that the moon doesn’t go very far away, it’s just that you can’t see it. Like the moon gets shut off, just like the light in his bedroom. “Why does an elephant have such big ears?” I tell him it’s because they have to hear predators approaching. I do not know if this is true but it sounds right to me, and I hope it sounds right to him. An animal must know when something dangerous is coming, I tell him. With the big ears, they know what is coming, so they can prepare. “Like if a coyote comes at them?” he says. I say, yes, just like a coyote. A snarling, evil little package of fur and teeth, rabid, cursed. The child begins to sprint, away from me, his little feet slapping against the ground a ticking clock. My life is running towards an end. I catch up to him, breathing heavy from the effort. I get it. My chest, my head, my heart, they’re all broken. My bones picked clean by some mangy creature. The doctor called it Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. I don’t have answers for the child. I’ll never have the answers. Not the right ones, anyway. “Where did mommy go?” I raise him up. His flaxen hair cascades almost to his shoulders, obscuring his face, tickling mine. His bony clavicle so fragile and perfect. I hug him tighter, the sharp angles of his body pressing into my ripened flesh. Even still I am amazed at where he came from. What man was I that made such a perfect person? How many versions of me died so that this one could live, so that he could be here? “Dada, why are you crying?” Chris Gilman Whitney is a writer from Western Massachusetts. He has an MFA from Bennington College, and his work has appeared in Gulf Stream, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Complete Sentence.

baby boy i love the way you fight your demons it really gives me something to sink my teeth into they say don't bite the hand that feeds but jesus christ you're delicious when you're crying come home covered in blood and shaking and i'm all yours for the taking you smell like death and i'm all over that you drop the bat and the thud as it hits the ground is a death knell is it fucked up the way i want you to tear me apart or i could tear you apart - maybe we could take turns, i'm easy i'm always easy for you in the distance there's a fox shrieking, and boy i can relate there's a harshness to its call that can only be feral and that's either you or me or both of us and maybe we're going to collide in the most awful way and it's all going to end in tears but god i always loved a good firefight let's go down in flames baby boy i'm all for oblivion these days. Charlotte Amelia Poe (they/them) is an autistic nonbinary author from England. Their first book, How To Be Autistic, was published in 2019. Their debut novel, The Language Of Dead Flowers, was published in September 2022.

You fall out the bottom of a bad dream and land ass-up in the swamp your uncle ran off to after the car accident that killed his wife. Parallel lives, he says, and you want to say no, not really, but the words get lost somewhere in the muck. It’s a cartoon of a place. A rust-eaten school bus, half-buried. Trees draped with dark curtains of wet moss so thick and heavy the light can’t get in. Smells like lettuce left in the veggie drawer way, way too long. But your uncle has a wild-ass beard and gun and a guy who brings him groceries once in a while and he says you’ll be okay here, he says no one’s looking for you anyway, which how the hell is that supposed to make you feel better about your life choices, but whatevs. A few days, a week, a month, who knows how long, time passes and you’re already feeling as off the rails as he looks, and it’s not just the beard. Back home, you imagine, things have died down, everyone’s moved on, or maybe they haven’t, it doesn’t much matter because you’re never, ever going back to that place. Not ever. You will be here, in this underbelly, this marshy thicket at the wrong end of the world. It’s just like in that song, your uncle says, and you say you have no idea what he’s talking about and then you disappear. Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize.

It takes me four or five poems To learn to read a poet. I haven’t written many yet So you and I don’t have that luxury. I mean what I say but Trouble saying what I mean. If I draw a comparison Please go with me there: It is usually to a nice vacation spot Like a beach or on a wing. Granted many poets use Ocean and avian metaphors. I do too. I hope you’ll continue To find them alternatively Freeing or tragic. If you come to a line That doesn’t interest you Skip it. If it’s better that way Cross it out and mail it to me: My editor is pretty ‘hands-off.’ If a poem spills Onto a second page It’s either because I couldn’t Shorten it any further Or because it became a friend I wanted to properly introduce. How else could I ensure You spend enough time with it? The word Love I use as I do In year two of a relationship When we can no longer deny Each others’ flaws and when For the first time the honied Vision of our future ends In my death. If I make an obscure reference Or literary allusion the poem Can be as well understood In ignorance and with a nod To tradition might be tolerated Forgiven or even enjoyed Like a Christmas Tree. So now if you please Choose one: salt or pepper Buying or making Drum or drum-machine? If you answered any of These questions correctly Please turn to the next page… Alexander Mint can be found in and around the cafes of New York City practicing poetry and entertaining politics.

The embers of memory smolder but no longer flare. I hold her in stolen moments of dreams, my mind altered, untethered from the ravages of melancholy and age. Her lips burn brightly, glowing with sadness as I rage behind sunken eyelids. * Those who consider me misanthropic fail to understand that I detest the commonplace in mankind. I scoff at its inhabitants who find me peculiar. Perhaps fate ordained such a life, desiring what others dismiss as foolish or self-destructive. They know not the sensations of living in the ethers where contentment secretly dwells. I keep a keen eye fixed in the hour of the wolf, when time is no longer calculated by chiming clocks, but in uneven footsteps—treading lush gardens of exotic scents and sounds, flavors and visions, where all is possible. One evening, unable to resist the addictions of my muse, I entered a café during the hours when simple men wear the sleeping caps of the dead. I took a seat at the back of the room and opened a tome of Baudelaire. I had just stepped inside a poem when my waitress appeared, perfectly proportioned, her hair combed back revealing high cheekbones and full red lips—much like the classical women of yore. She introduced herself as Madeline. “I don’t mean to pry, but why, in the devil’s name, would a lovely woman such as yourself work these infernal hours? Are you not afraid some crazed nighthawk might haunt this café? Or, perhaps I am mistaken, and you yearn for him.” “Would you be that nighthawk, sir, and if not, have you no fear walking the dark and misty streets alone—more likely than I the mark of a madman?” “I am not that of which you speak,” I replied. “Rest assured, I do not think you a fiend,” she said. “As for my choice of hours, I live for the night, when one’s fortune cannot hide behind the light of day. I sense you are of the same ilk. What is your heart’s delight? I regret we’re out of crème brûlée.” “How unfortunate,” I said, pretending to wipe away a tear. Her lips affected a pout. “We have a large selection of fine desserts. Care to see a menu, though none exists?” “Very clever, my dear. I leave the choice to you.” Oh, how this fanciful woman impressed me, her language and beauty articulated far above her station. Had my mind been seized by the sighs of the poet? I whispered: “The café is quiet. Join me?” She raised a finger, suspending her reply, then left and returned with two braided cakes glazed in unidentifiable sweetness. She gestured to an idle waiter, who reluctantly brought us porcelain cups, flatware, and a pot of espresso. “I am in love with these twisted pastries,” she said. “They are called crullers, but worthy of a grander name: Perhaps, labyrinths de doux mystère, for each mouthful strikes the palate with unexpected surprises.” “You bestow upon this pastry the greatness of myth,” I said, eager to taste those sweet mysteries. She tilted her head as if angling for a kiss. Her hair lightly brushed my face, its scent the leafy dew of autumnal nights. “Do not allow impatience to rule desire,” she advised. “Savor it slowly. We have all the time in the world.” I slipped into utter subservience, a state where one no longer suffers the angst of destiny. “Yes! The flavors are remarkable,” I said. “I shall buy this café and make you my partner.” “I assumed by your appearance you were no stranger to wealth,” she replied. “Vanity and prosperity do not impress me. A beggar might show more discretion. Could you see yourself as one?” “Myself as a beggar? I hope never to honor that rank. I’d rather lavish my wealth on you.” She neither blushed nor took offense. “Let the labyrinth decide,” she said. We lowered our heads as if in prayer and plunged ourselves back into the euphoria of the twisted pastries. Madeline and I left the café. The air turned wintery. She proposed we steal away to her nearby flat. I raised my collar then held her close, warming her with kisses each step of the way. As we crossed the boulevard, our senses engaged in restless ardor, and neither of us noticed the horseless carriage speeding out of control. It struck us and continued on as if no transgression had been committed. The impact shattered my leg. Madeline lay across the cobblestones, her body twisted and draining life. “Don’t leave me,” I begged. Love looked up and spoke in labored breath. “Marcel, take this. It is our only hope.” She placed a card in my hand as her head fell limp and the unobtainable was lost. I shoved the card into my coat pocket. Pain raged through my body, yet nothing matched the agony of witnessing the death of perfection. I received the best medical care yet the damage to my leg left me with a permanent defect. I became a cripple, dependent on a cane. Each day, I paced my flat attempting to strengthen my gait. The healing of the shattered leg slowly progressed yet I remained morose. The mortuary sent a message to announce the headstone I purchased had been set at her gravesite. I asked no one to attend the advent, seeking no consolation, for pity is a fool’s elixir that provides no relief. Storm clouds threatened the day I slogged to the cemetery. I kissed the cold granite on which was etched, Madeline, I will find you again. Rain fell and I placed my hand in my coat pocket. There was the card Madeline gave me the night she died. Months passed and I had forgotten about it. M. Mage Nu.1 Rue de Rêves What good was this? If only the card were a letter of transit to the sphere Madeline now inhabited. Marcel, it is our only hope. Her words resounded in my ears. That evening, after the showers let up, I set out for the address, traversing the gas-lit walkway that followed the river southward. The unexpected distance and damp air caused my leg to ache with each step. I found myself in a remote district I’d never visited. A gray wall loomed high and upon it the address, Nu.1. I passed through an iron gate and hobbled along a sodden path toward the door, then struck the portal with my cane. When no response came, I called, “Open up! You have a visitor in search of the impossible.” No one greeted me. I stepped back, looking for another entrance when I tripped and fell. “Ouch, you clumsy fool. Watch your step! You nearly spilled the dinner from my bowl.” I’d stumbled over a disheveled man who wore the slovenly garb of a beggar. He lay on a mound of dirt near the door. I apologized to the poor fellow, then picked up my cane and handed him twenty francs. “Ah, twenty francs for my suffering. How generous,” he said in an irritable tone. “If it were twenty thousand I would still remain poor. You’ll soon understand.” “Careful with that tender leg,” came a voice through the encroaching fog. An odd little man stood attired in a mourning dress and top hat. One hand twisted his waxed moustache; the other held a key. “Doctor Mage, at your service,” he said, bowing. “You have come to the end of a tedious journey. Please, come inside,” he said, pointing to the house. Mage didn’t see the fellow lying beside us—or ignored him. My host turned the key and opened the door, then ushered me in. He took my overcoat and cane and led me toward a smoke-filled chamber that exuded a sharp floral scent. We made our way through a maze of sleeping men, then entered a room illuminated by the reddish glow of hanging lanterns. The faint beat of a high-pitched drum entrained my heart. “My assistant will handle the preparations,” he said. I turned to inquire what he meant. Mage vanished and in his place stood an old woman. From her apron, she extracted a metal rod with a tar-like substance at one end, then lit it with a lantern’s flame. She placed the smoky nugget into the bowl of a pipe and handed it to me. “Here you will find what you seek,” she said. “You are no different than the others—men who believe they can cheat Death.” Without pausing to think, I inhaled deeply. The second puff stupefied me. The room turned upside down and I found myself standing on the ceiling with no ill effects, recalling pleasant memories that flickered across my mind like a newsreel. When it ended, Madeline appeared before my drowsy eyes. The buried treasure had been exhumed. “Marcel. My cheeks are so cold. Here, feel.” I touched Madeline’s sullen face and felt nothing but a gust of cool air. She faded away and the old woman appeared. “You cannot have her unless a bargain is struck,” she chided. “The girl is yours if you have the courage to strip yourself of all possessions.” Yes, the opium held me in its sway. I agreed to her terms, choosing the immortality of dreams rather than a miserable existence without Madeline. I stood numb and shameless as the hag undressed me. She placed my garments on a rack and called for the poor wretch whom I stumbled over. He disrobed and dropped his tattered rags in a pile, then stuffed his leprous body into my clothes. “Now, Marcel,” said the hag, smacking her loose lips. “You will wear his scraps and eat from his bowl.” The beggar strutted about the room in my haberdashery—twirling my cane—glowering as he handed me a paper and quill. I signed away my fortune with a single stroke. “Excellent,” said Mage, who mysteriously appeared. “Now you must leave.” “Where is Madeline? I gave everything for her.” “She resides here,” he said. “You may see her tomorrow, then the next day, and the next. In time, you will have no desire to leave this sanctum. Madeline will lie in your arms forever as you sleep among the other men who dream they have found what was never lost.” With those curious words, Mage opened the door to his madhouse and tossed me out. I fell atop the filthy mound of dirt where the beggar once dwelled—now my domain. I dined on scant morsels placed daily in my bowl. Festering sores covered my body. I grew weaker each day and longed for the hour when entry into the asylum would be granted. There I inhaled until my phantom lover returned. In time, I was given a cot and a medicine chest beside the other men whose opium dreams became their reality. In such atrophy, I claimed the unobtainable, lingering like the poet in his artificial paradise, dreaming of Madeline. Stephen Myer is a writer and musician based in Southern California. His stories and poetry have been published in online and print journals, such as Goats Milk Magazine, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Grand Little Things, The Literary Yard, The Avenue Journal, The Quiet Reader, Close To The Bone, and others.

The tragedy of touch is a multi-sensory dive into the self, a collection of poems presented across a range of formats that invites the reader to explore their soul on a voyage through the emotional spectrum. I open The tragedy of touch to be immersed in colours and Venn diagrams and aesthetic layouts, to prose that makes sense left to right and top to bottom, and think: I'll never wrap my thoughts around all this. But here it is - and this goes for everything Shiksha Dheda writes - the author walks with you, guiding and engaging with you and inviting you to see what's within; and not just the words on the page, but within the self. For me, the challenge in Shiksha's highly accomplished chapbook lies not in the comprehension of its multifaceted elements, but, as it turns out, in having the courage to investigate my own inner workings. I haven't studied poetry since school. I've read a lot, but not sought to extrapolate prose the way I was taught to: they used to urge us in class, 'What does the poet mean here?' We were forever interpreting the concepts delivered to us by the author. But reading The tragedy of touch (absorbing actually, because there's much more to this chapbook than just words on a page) I find myself exploring not what the author means, but what I mean. Because every line reflects back on me and sends me willingly into my introspection, and this is the genius of the writing here: it's fluid and it runs through me as a reader until I'm a part of its sentiments and its sentiments are a part of me. It's the skill of a writer who doesn't paint by words, but hands me, the reader, the canvas and brushes. The intensity of the writing is immediate: Shiksha has invited me to explore the world she's created, but it's a world that exists within, a collision of thoughts and feelings that demand self-inspection of the soul. The tragedy of touch is a ride deep into the emotions, a very stellar example of the author's voice which is woven like a current through the prose: Shiksha's words are surrendered to the reader, to be absorbed and interpreted on an individual basis. Throughout this 19-piece collection there's a tidal ebb and flow, sometimes soothing, sometimes heart rending, always powerful. A recurring sense of drawing to an edge and touching without grasp. Of slipping back, inexorably, to the realm from whence we came. To begin with I meet Red, Shiksha's warm sunrise, and it's an element that will expand throughout the book to fill our emotions; I meet cool Blue, whose calming influence is at once guiding and heartbreaking, on a journey to eternity. Red and blue come together in Then there were two and Fresh air, ocular poems with two gently contrasting voices each reaching for the other, yearning for an understanding that never manifests. I am lured in with visionary formats that switch on the bulbs of comprehension and then, just as I follow their sequence, the circuit flips and I find new meaning. Words run from left to right and top to bottom and can be read in two or three directions. These are poems and puzzles combined, literary conundrums that invite me to solve them. I'm up for air, literally, with Fresh Air (very different to the almost identically-named Venn diagram that precedes it) a traditionally formatted piece that is equally patent and beautiful, a simple tribute that speaks of relief from pain and a tonic to the soul. This book is a visual and poetic pleasure but it isn't all one way or the other, image or text: the deeply sensual and heart rending Stardust is presented without diagrams, but the font descends in a staircase dripping with passion and despair. It's a poem which can be interpreted in more than one manner, as is the theme throughout this collection. I read Stardust on two separate readings and found distinctly but beautifully contrasting sentiments each time. In Under(stand)ing and Understand me Shiksha draws red and blue closer still and invites me to further explore passion versus logic, and what happens when contrasting personalities come within touching distance, each clawing to assuage. Green is introduced, a voice of equanimity on this voyage that's pulling me ever deeper into my own reflection. I continue into prose in which I become gladly entangled, through incarnadine emotions, cool rejections, colours and shapes and thoughts and feelings, through text and images (including the wordless Do I only want you, proving the author's competence to quite literally paint a display of emotion). The journey - and if ever there was a literary journey it's this, because we begin in the depths of the cosmos and travel lightyears - transports me on through a middle earth of understanding and coexistence. The beautifully complex notion of counter-passions are explored in A negative and a negative make a positive, and I am taken to the edge of emotional acceptance but never quite beyond: the theme of reaching but never holding recurs, that pervading sense of nearing some vital discovery, but by now I've seen enough to know that the object may be beyond me. I arrive with racing heart and rushing blood at the book's titular piece, a breathtaking work that is tragically poignant and speaks of the evanescence of love. The journey is complete and whether it ends conclusively I wouldn't deign to divulge: not for fear of giving away a spoiler, but because, of course, my conclusion will be markedly different to yours. And that is the beauty of The tragedy of touch. To read it is to learn about myself, a trademark that Shiksha Dheda has made her own. No poet I've read has the same ability to deliver words straight to the reader's soul, to allow me the space to explore my own spiritual components. At least, I never came across one during all the years I spent reading the classics at school. 'The tragedy of touch' is written by Shiksha Dheda. It's an image-rich feature that includes Venn diagrams and text that's structured in various visual formats. 'The tragedy of touch' is available here: https://www.fahmidan.net/the-tragedy-of-touch-digital-chapbook Matt Kruze is an occasional fiction author who writes stories that cross several genres. Normally a crime has been committed, but whether that's part of a thriller, mystery, fantasy or sci-fi, is often open to interpretation.

Note from author: Soft Serve is a little piece voiced by two narrators, one a young girl full of enthusiasm and just making her way into the world. The other narrator is a middle-aged man engaged in a futile battle against the increasing flood of dog waste taking over city sidewalks. HEADS-UP: this piece has some icky bits, mainly references to dogshit and melted ice cream. It's nothing gratuitous. I hope you have fun reading Soft Serve. I sure had fun writing it. Ice cream drips, first in a trickle down their faces, then into the parking lot. Soon it’s dripping off the scoop before I can get the cones packed. Today is the day we were supposed to help people forget their problems for a while and unite the town through the magic of ice cream. The whole walk here, I could see the cars driving down to get a good spot alongside the hill. The crowd stretches off, snaking a bit past where I can see, quite a big deal with the heat and all. Mr. Tibbetts is sweating quite a bit. He isn’t his usual self. Last year took a lot out of him. He’s polite and stuff, but not much beyond the formalities. “We’re going to have to get everybody served quickly as we can. The power’s out. Radio says the grid’s blown.” I hand a family their cones, watch the son’s chin goateed in drippy liquid. “Ruined,” Mr. Tibbetts says. “An American tradition completely destroyed. “ Like most losing armies, we knew we were doomed from the get-go. Deborah and I pry nuggets of shit with a shovel, depositing them into a contractor bag. The stuff seems to be everywhere: all over the sidewalk, laid in chunks on the strip of dirt abutting the curb, logs of shit scattered among the mini-garden. This is the same little garden a group of volunteers arduously cultivated in the dumping site by the wall overlooking the train. For a brief while, the presence of the garden led to a cessation of dumping. Occasionally someone leaves a discarded toilet or tub, which we repurpose and use as planters. Deborah, one of the strongest people I know, cries silently. “This is horrible,” she points out a tomato plant, shit smeared down the sides of the planter. Someone must have picked up a dog, squeezing its belly like a ketchup dispenser, spraying the shit everywhere. As I squeeze the chocolate syrup on top of a vanilla cup, the very sweaty customer lets out a groan. “That syrup is probably the most solid thing in that cup,” he says. I feel terrible and I tell him as much. It’s not like this should be a surprise. All the way up the line people are pointing out the melty ice cream in astonishment. What are they going to do, go somewhere else? Everywhere, the same blown grid. The same tragic situation. I hand the man his change, avoiding eye contact as he stiffs me on the tip. His sweat drips onto his side of the takeout window, just as the ice cream will soon follow the same trajectory. I’m getting good at recognizing the different types, the taxonomies. Little dog, medium dog, big dog. Human. The horrors of the smells. Hector has been driven a bit crazy by all of this. He’s taken to staying up all night, perched with coffee and lawn chair, inside the community garden entrance. He’s on stakeout, he calls it. When I arrive at the garden to get the supplies for my cleanup shift, Hector’s got some guy by the neck. He’s on top of the dude pushing his head towards a pile of dogshit on the sidewalk. “Motherfucker, this is payback.” “Hector! That’s not the mad shitter, that’s Ephraim,” Deborah yells, running up from around the corner. “He’s a garden volunteer.” “Look, I’ve got my dog’s poop in a bag,” the guy says, waving a gushy blue bag. “Sorry,” Hector says. “I see a dog walker near the garden, I flip out.” With his foot, he sweeps away some of the garbage away from the bodega candles by the garden entrance. He brushes a leaf off a picture of a young man fastened to the fence with zip ties. Ephraim, the garden volunteer says something, but I’m taken by the candles, the stoic assertion of the flames. I know the face in the picture. Part of the group of guys who drink on the sidewalk outside the garden. Could’ve sworn I just saw him the other day. One customer, a nice old women from the church where we used to have girl scouts, gives me very detailed directions on her ice cream sundae. “Just another scoop, here. Now lay the banana across, nice, good.” Who am I to begrudge anyone their futilities, I who have been assiduously scooping liquid all afternoon. She tips me two dollars as her banana sinks into the ice cream. Mr. Tibbetts sits, head in hands, face possibly covered in tears, but it could be sweat. “Finished, I’m finished,” he says. “You are a good girl. It is up to your generation to come up with a solution. We crawled out of the sea, evolved from apes, all that we’ve weathered. The transition from feudalism to capitalism, we made it so far. It’s just too hot, humans can’t live like this.” He says more, but I don’t follow, I’m thinking of humans crawling back into the sea, an all-consuming, biblical sea of melted ice cream. “Flee. We must flee.” Mr. Tibbetts still carrying on. His bowtie uncharacteristically rumpled. “This place is an institution. Built it up from the ground. We made people happy. We were there for them when they lined up after little league games. We were there for their birthdays. We employed people. You are good girl. You must survive this, work for a future worth living. Flee!” Where will we flee to? I scoop more liquid onto a customer’s cone. “There you go, rocky road, sprinkles on top.” Young Maggie accompanied me yesterday. Sweet, young Maggie, absolutely the most pleasant, upbeat human, not an ounce of cruelty in her. Together we sang joyous songs. She sculpts common experience into song the way I sculpt the scoops into cones. With purpose, unashamedly. Walking to the ice cream parlor, woo hoo! Everyone will be so happy, woo hoo! The boys hurl epithets and handfuls of muddy gravel. The gravel muddies our Cream Beacon uniforms a bit, but we keep our chins high. Today, Maggie doesn’t have the energy to come help me. She says it’s the heat, but I wonder if it was the boys. If I have ever felt something so resembling hate, I feel it for them. “She’s not well, mother says, she needs to stay home and rest. The heat just too much. I wish it would rain and take the edge off. Cool things off some.” It hasn’t rained in forever. It’s been raining so long I can’t remember what it was like in the days before. Will the rain ever stop? Will the shitting ever stop? No one person, no one dog can be behind this. It’s got to be some kind of concerted campaign. I’m sure of this. Hector scoops a tremendous shit that looks like it came from a moose into a contractor bag. He’s got knee high fisherman’s boots on. Running for the bus through Poop Alley, that’s what the kids call it, the strip of street that crosses over the surface line, where the train ravines the neighborhood, making the rows of drab apartment blocks look like a badly assembled montage. We’re running for the bus in the rain, first my daughter, then me. The bus barely moves among the truck traffic, but it’s dry. Through the resentful stares they register their olfactory displeasure. My boots and hers have brought the shit with us. “Papa, I don’t think this is dog poop.” The halitosis tinge, reek of rotting innards and humanity rendered something interminably foul. We leave the bus, make our way home in the rain. No way can she go to school like this. A group of kids pass by, cartoon characters on their umbrellas. Hector’s on some bullshit about the youth, “…their fresh faces, fresh smells…so clean, like that new car smell…” Deborah stares out at the traffic, forever clogged, never moving. “Cars, the highest stage of civilization,” she says. Mr. Chablis, that’s what they called him. The latest local memorialized on the fence around the garden. Where they got the picture zip tied to the chain link I have no idea. Must’ve come from a family member. This Mr. Chablis is from another era, younger, with a smiley glow, in a tuxedo. Where could the photo have been taken? A wedding? I only knew him as someone drinking wine from a paper bag, engaged in screaming matches with some of the other street characters. The carboard box shielding the bodega candles is getting soaked, the flames still flicker hopefully. Someone has smeared shit on the inside of the box and the base of the candles. I have no strength left to fight this. If only there was somewhere to flee to. Rico Cleffi’s work has been published the Brooklyn Rail, Flatbush Review, Urban Omnibus, the Village Voice and elsewhere. He edits the radio-issues website, Frequency and Amplitude (freq-amp.com). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he spends his days attempting to traverse the sidewalk without messy encounters with man’s best friend’s chief export.

I inspect the fence post, and Beechie trots over and nudges my hand with her nose. She’s always asking me for a pat on the head or a handful of grass. She acts more like a dog than a goat. The other goats are always out in the field standing on one of the old cars, pulling up weeds with their wobbly lips, or singing monotone songs. It seems like they’re all waiting for what’s next. The horses watch me with their black pearl eyes and follow me with their pointy ears. All of them, the horses, the goats, even the rattle snakes, they all know what’s going on. I’m thankful for the job, but Mr. Crawford didn’t mention the long stretches of time between seeing an actual person. I thought I'd enjoy it, but after the first two weeks, I realized I need social interaction from time to time. The only other people I see out here are the butchers and, sometimes, equestrians. Once a month the butchers arrive, all greedy and bug eyed. They leer at the goats, rubbing their hands together. I saw one of them lick his upper lip while inspecting a billy goat the last time they were all here. I turn to the goat trotting beside me. “Not you though, Beechie. Nobody’s interested in you.” She thumps her front hoof on the ground and bends down to uproot a few dandelions. She stares at my nose as she chomps the weeds. After pouring some feed into the trough, I check each stall. Only one needs scooping this afternoon. This is my life, now: talking to an old nanny goat and scooping horse shit inside of a stable that’s nicer than the cabin I sleep in. I grab the chain saw from the barn and make my way across the field to the tree line. The tree woke me up last night when it fell. Louder than anything I’ve ever heard before. I rode the four-wheeler over to inspect it this morning first thing. It’s a fallen hickory and if I remember right, it’s just beyond the edge of the forest. Working out here, I realize why so many fables are set in the forest. I’ve already started seeing things our here, hallucinations, I guess you could say. Two tall dark figures in the woods. They weren’t actually there, I know that. But the shadows out here are deceiving. The mind wanders, you know. A branch cracks above my head and a bird cackles behind my back. The tops of the trees sway, and the wind whistles through an alley of pines. This is where some songs come from: the plump silence here. It swells if you stand in it long enough. Mr. Crawford not only sells goats, but he’s got about four hundred acres of pine forest out here that I’m in charge of. Row after row of pines, all for paper. As part of my job, I also have to maintain the logging roads back here in these pines. Got to make sure the trucks can get back here and scoop all the young trees up. I yank the pull-chord, and the chain saw jolts to life. Rattling and wailing, its echo bouncing around the forest canopy. Sending all the fauna back to their burrows. I assess the angle of the cut. After careful consideration, I slice into the massive tree trunk. Cutting into a freshly fallen hickory smells dense, like my grandfather’s sweaters, like dirt and campfire, a hint of old tobacco. Before I slice my way to the middle, I back the saw out and start a cut from the bottom. Almost everyone that uses one of these things eventually gets hurt. My moment with this chainsaw hasn’t happened yet, but it’s probably coming. Mr. Crawford happened to be here inspecting the property on the day the last farm hand got his (chainsaw lesson, I mean). Mr. Crawford picked up the guy on the other side of that ridge. He nearly bled to death in Mr. Crawford’s truck. The hospital had to amputate his leg, and he lost this job. Mr. Crawford said he couldn’t use him on the farm anymore after the accident. No severance. No help. No nothing. He said he hired me to help get me back on my feet. I’m not complaining. Since getting out, I can’t even get a job at Burger King. I always have to check that box: PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS YES [ X ] NO [ ] And then fill in that section below that says explain. It doesn’t matter if I’m honest or if I lie on those applications, they all know. They can look it up. And they do every time. The guy that lost his leg was a former prisoner too. Mr. Crawford probably thinks people like us are expendable. He works in the city as a stockbroker. He says he bought all eight hundred acres for the day when it all collapses. The way he talks about it (the market, the economy) makes me think running a chainsaw and trading in the stock market are equally dangerous. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, something unexpected can happen, the chain gets hung on a knot and kicks the blade back at you, or some bit coin bro fucks with a stock no one’s ever heard of, and the bottom falls out. Still, the life of a stockbroker and a farm hand look pretty different to me. Mr. Crawford’s co-workers and their families came out here two weekends ago. He asked me to be one of the bartenders, but I told him I couldn’t be near booze since getting sober in prison. So, he asked me to run the coat check at the front door. That’s the only time I’ve been in the farmhouse. I saw all those families pulling up in their black Benzes and yellow Porsches. One family drove up in one of the first Lucid electric cars. The guy said it was built by one of his friends who is a prince in Saudi Arabia. Then he threw his coat at me like I was a rack on the wall. I spit in the breast pocket before I gave it back to him at the end of the night. It’s probably all dry and crusty now. He'll never know. No one ever uses those pockets. As I cut nearly all the way through the fallen Hickory, the crack of the tree trunk thunders over the buzz of the saw. I kill the motor and set the machine on the ground. There’s that hazy quiet again. I take it in before the wrens start warbling again. With all my weight on top of the cut, I stomp. The tree fractures into two pieces and my heel slips on the bark. The two pieces thud down to the forest floor, and I land hard, my ribcage on top of the tree’s trunk, graceless and exhausted. I remain in that position, feet resting on the earth, fingers dug into the dirt, my body twisted and arching over the hickory’s carcass. One broken and limp body on top of another. The squirrels emerge, then the wrens. I lay there until I see a red-tailed hawk fly overhead. I’ll finish the job and drag the pieces to the fire pit tomorrow. The saw is still warm when I pick it up. By the time I reach the cabin, the cicadas are crooning and the sky is blushing. I thump my boots on the edge of the porch. The mud, manure, and hay crumble down on top of a growing mound of dry earth. The screen door grinds along the floor as I open it. I turn to take another look at the field. I really can’t believe this is where I’ve ended up. I thought I was going to end up in San Francisco. Ebby thought that too. The metal spring quivers, and snaps the door closed. I look down at my rug. It’s not really mine. After the accident, I just took the rug. Every time I look at it, I think about the first time I slept on it. Ebby had hosted a birthday party for one of our friends in San Francisco. She had made this incredible Birria from her mother’s recipe. I ended up helping her clean up after the party. The stew was amazing. The meat was tender and the adobo sauce was divine, but someone spilled a huge clump on her rug. I don’t think we ever figured out who it was. After a cleaning session where we had a debate about which method worked better to take care of the gleaming red blemish on her treasured rug, we split what was left of an open bottle of wine and sat in her kitchen talking until three in the morning. She offered her freshly cleaned rug for me to sleep on for the rest of the night. After a few months of us seeing each other, I moved upstairs to her bedroom. We had three good years before the accident. It seemed important to grab the rug before Ebby’s parents came and got everything else. My side throbs in unison with my heartbeat. I grab a blanket and pillow and lay down on my back. I center my torso in the medallion of the rug, take a deep breath and glance out the window toward the tree line. There is a small shred of orange light left in the sky. The trees are outlined by what’s left of the day’s light. I always try not to look into the forest after a certain time. I can’t stop thinking about Ebby and that day she lost her sunglasses riding on the back of my motorcycle. I had told her how to ride on the back but it was still my fault. I should’ve slowed down when I felt her lean over like that. Should’ve known to stay away from the curb, that fucking fire hydrant. I don’t want to keep looking at the forest tonight, but I can’t look away. The trees sway. The moon is dim and blue. The sky ripples above the treetops. One shadow in the forest seems different, more energetic, than the others. I’ve never tried talking to the figures I imagine I see out here, but tonight I pose a question. I hesitate and brood about whether the figure is truly there. “If you are there,” I whisper, “why don’t you take me with you?” The spring on the front door tings. I sit up and snap my head toward the door. My ribs sting my insides. I palm my side and watch the door. The spring crackles twice more. It’s just the coiled metal cooling off from the heat of the day. I turn and look back out the window. My eyes widen and my back stiffens. I lean forward, toward the window. It’s undeniable. “Ebby,” I say. Her thick black hair glistens in the moonlight like coal shimmering in a flickering fire. Two of her fingers rest on her collar bone. She says nothing and stares at the bookshelf on the other side of the cabin. She must know that I’m down here on the floor. I stand up. Her gaze doesn’t falter. She still seems to be looking past me, through me. I wave my hands. She turns away from the window, like she’s in an orbit with the forest itself. “No. Wait.” I bolt out of the cabin without any shoes on, one hand waving through the night air and the other grasping my rib. I trot around to the other side of the cabin. Panting, I shake my head and look down at my feet. Chasing ghosts, with no shoes, and what feels like a broken rib. I wish someone else was here to see this. Before I round the corner of the cabin, I hear it. A deep and big inhale breath. I can hear the loneliness and the surrender in the exhale too. Before turning around, I hold still for a moment and listen. The breathing was coming from a few yards behind me, toward the tree line. I hunch down to line up the moonlight with the horizon. I see a silhouette laying there, and know right way, it’s her. The ryegrass crunches under my socked feet. She doesn’t move as I get closer. She’s barely alive when I kneel beside her. Her feet are stretched out; head thrown back. Mr. Crawford told me this might happen soon. Her body is not as warm as usual, her belly is rising and falling, peacefully, slowly. I place my hand on her forehead and rub my thumb on the knot in-between her eyes. I swat a fly away from her open mouth. Her yellow eye meets my green eyes. Beechie’s mouth opens wider. I hear her breathing change and I begin to stroke her neck. She lets out one more breath and closes her eye. I gently close her mouth. I stand up and survey the field and the darkness beyond the tree line. My shoeless feet plop through the dry and prickly grass once more. Inside the cabin, a fire glows inside the iron stove, and I can smell the faint yet tender aroma of warm birria. A word from the author: Fallen Hickory is inspired by the time I spent working on a six-hundred-acre pine tree farm. I didn’t see a person most days during my time there and this work of fiction aims to point to both the allure and the drawbacks of being completely alone in a landscape.