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February 2016 Issue 4, Volume 1
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EDITORS ASHLEY BACH RAKIM SLAUGHTER
DESIGN ASHLEY BACH
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Table of contents POETRY ANONYMOUS GODDESS – SUE DONIMB PAGE 7
MARINA IN THE AFTERNOON – DONAL MAHONEY PAGE 8
SONGWRITER’S NIGHTMARE – DONAL MAHONEY PAGE 9
MARCIA AND THE LOCUSTS – DONAL MAHONEY
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PROSE FLOWERY RELIC—MY NGUYEN PAGE 13
COFFEE AT THE NIRVANA CAFÉ – MITCHELL WALDMAN
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Contributor’s notes PAGE 22
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poetry
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ANONYMOUS GODDESS
Sue Donimb
It is probably basic knowledge for you but you are the prematureventricular contraction-inducing gorgeous kind.
Your eyes, if you so wish could grant you the world. You, a pillar. You, a skyscraper, while I’m a sandcastle waiting on the waves to destruct me
and bring me back to earth. You had these black curls rolling along the nape of your neck. I dreamed of gently sliding my fingers between the tresses, gently dancing my fingertips along your scalp, then finally pulling with all my might
as you pin me against something, a wall, a bed, a couch, a pool table, a regular table, a cold, linoleum floor.
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MARIMBA IN THE AFTERNOON Donal Mahoney
a few dollars a basket for picking grapes and plums under pounding sun.
Raul is a kind man who plays marimba in a salsa band at LA clubs late into the night.
Some afternoons he plays at a nursing home in Cucamonga where he was born, grew up and dashed home from school.
He’s paid with a taco, maybe an enchilada, a burrito now and then. On Sunday a fresh tamale
almost as good as his mother used to make after being in the fields all day, long ago. Old-timers in the day room
bounce in their chairs, some on wheels, to Raul's music. Long ago they were young and danced all night in
tiny clubs after being paid
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How does he know it was red?
Or the lothario memorialized in the paper this morning for crawling out the window when his lover's husband caught an early plane home. Left his pants and wallet behind.
Some things never come back, sometimes for the better but not this time. SONGWRITER’S NIGHTMARE Donal Mahoney
The next time I wake up in the middle of the night and hear the band playing
Where did it go?
a new song in my head
I really don't know.
I'll get up, believe me,
I lost it weeks ago
and write everything down.
in the middle of the night.
It might be another
Too tired to get up.
"Moonlight in Vermont."
Said I'd take care of it first thing in the morning. Didn't want to wake the wife.
Now it's lost in the ether with some others, gone forever. They never come back.
I feel like the blind man in the yard next door trying to find the red ball
his guide dog failed to fetch. 9
Marcia and the Locusts
to make them fathers.
Marcia was 17 the first time
Courtship and mating
thousands of locusts rose
and laying of eggs
from the fields of her father's farm
takes almost two months
and filled the air, sounding
and then the locusts fall
like zithers unable to stop.
from the air and die.
Her father was angry
Marcia remembers
but Marcia loved the music
the iridescent shells
the locusts made.
on the ground shining,
She was in high school then
She was always careful
and chose to make
not to step on them.
locusts the focus
She cried when
of her senior paper.
the rain and the wind took them away.
At the town library she learned locusts
Now 17 years later Marcia is 34
spend 17 years
and the locusts are back again.
deep in the soil,
Her dead father can't hear them
feeding on fluids
and Marcia no longer loves the music
from roots of trees
the way she did in high school.
that make them
Now she stays in the house
strong enough
and keeps the windows closed
to emerge
and relies on the air-conditioner
at the proper time
to drown out the locusts.
to court and reproduce.
Marcia has patience, however.
Courtship requires
She knows what will happen.
the males to gather
She reads her Bible
in a circle and sing until
and sucks on lemon drops,
the females agree
knowing the locusts will die. 10
In the seventh week,
like a favorite prayer.
the locusts fall from the air in raindrops, then torrents.
She made each man happy
"It is finished," Marcia says.
as best she could.
She pulls on her father's boots
They would grunt
and goes out in the fields
like swine the first night,
and stomps on the shells
some of them for many nights.
covering the ground
But then like locusts
but she stomps carefully.
At 34 Marcia's in no hurry. Before each stomp, she names each shell Billy, John, Chuck, Terrence or Lester, the names of men who have courted her during the 17 years since high school. They all made promises Marcia loved to hear, promises she can recite 11
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FLOWERY RELIC My Nguyen
Jonas tried to focus his mind on other things, but he ended up thinking about it anyways. It was spring of ‘88, and his best friends, Juliann and Warren, who were married, were having a dinner party that was taking place a few hours from now. His mother would’ve approved of these dinner parties from beyond the grave yet Jonas dreaded them like both his mother and the grave. Too bad he had long ago consigned himself to bachelorhood for the remainder of his life. While he whittled away his time away with thoughts Jonas refused to address, the afternoon rush hour drew in more customers. They all entered the shop the same way, but upon taking a few steps into the bookstore, they branched out into different areas according to interest. Vietnam. The word breathed life into him. When Jonas recalled his one and only visit to that
country of vast potential, he remembered only the pungent odor of garbage on the busy streets, the thick stagnant air that makes you feel like you’re swimming in a deluge of people, bicycles, and debris, and when he did get the chance to visit them, the overpowering scent of incense in the Buddhist temples. The chaos that festered down in the busy streets of Vietnam matched the chaos in Jonas’ mind. Sitting in a café somewhere in Ha Noi, sipping on sweetened iced coffee, he felt for a while a peace he never felt while in the States. Often while at his home in San Diego, he would search out a piece of utilitarian unquiet on the surrounding suburban streets, looking for anything immaculate, anything without a ripple across its manicured lawn. Yet, every time someone asked him about his trip, Jonas’ mouth would run dry and all that would come out would be a hollow sound. Often he felt like he had no voice in order to express his love for Vietnam, a country too corrupt for his money and that had changed drastically since his last 13
visit. If he were to ever return to Vietnam, he probably would no longer recognize its changed landscape. China was also a country worth exploring Jonas figured, but because it was so expensive to get there he'd be better off not inviting that beast of a frontier into his life. What he discovered from his brief delve into Chinese history was intriguing though. Scientific findings from an ancient dig of human bones and ancient artifacts as moldy and decrepit as the books that told their tale, revealed pictures that showed tiny and fragile human bones that had been buried in a grave for what seemed like eons. To Jonas, the curled human skeletons looked like those of small animals who had burrowed themselves so deep beneath the surface of the soil that they had forgotten the sight of daylight, and had eventually resigned themselves to the earth forevermore. Peering closer at these grainy photographs, Jonas had noticed some of the lower regions of the skeletons were separated from their upper halves. The detached parts were clenched into fists
and he saw their silent curves as symbols of twisted sacrifice and decimated worth. Back inside his small home Jonas attempted to fold his bare feet into halves as a small measure of the range of discomfort these women had to endure. He stepped on his toes next and could hardly imagine balancing his entire life onto their brokenness. He stood like this until he felt his entire body cringe. He slowly unfurled and relaxed his toes, feeling the slight tingle of blood flowing back through the veins of his lower appendages again. He had to knead the back of his feet in order to get them to straighten out fully, and the mere gesture revived compressed feelings and sensations surrounding the full body massage he had received in Vietnam. He remembered the masseuse, a petite woman, who upon their first introduction had given little of herself away, pinning her gaze to the floor and folding her hands over her stomach until it was time for her to start the massage. A wooden fan swiped at the humid air over-
head. Once the manager had left the room, the masseuse’s compass needle leapt to rest on Jonas’ 14
doughy physique, and gradually as her small hands lifted, kneaded, and made his soft flesh pliable again, he began to feel like a victim, being pulled and wheedled from the tight joints that held him together. The experience had overall been painful. Who knew what planes and angles that women had until the stalwartly masseuse started pressing her elbows against him and had started his body to its breaking point. Once, when he thought he could not take the sharp joints and the stabbing pain any longer, the masseuse had climbed overtop. He sensed the tips of her bangs moving with the motion of the fans, and when the curve of her foot slipped to fit perfectly within the groove of his spine, much like a puzzle piece finally finding its place, it connected deep within the marrows of his bones. The small of the masseuse’s feet was what Jonas had been thinking of when the total embodiment of the girl of his dreams walked into the bookstore. Jonas studied her fingers as they slipped in between the pages of the book she held in her hands. Her eyes skimmed from the slim tome she held to the plethora
of titles on display. From behind the confines of the register Jonas could not tell the title of the book she held. It lacked the glossy covers that most modern paperbacks donned. The book bent beneath the girl’s fingers. Jonas tried to catch another glimpse of the girl, but then it seemed, as if one by one, the store’s assorted customers decided to shuffle up to the register before him, blocking his view. He followed her out of the corner of his eye, catching a glimpse of long black silken hair, and an oval face that looked as if made of ivory that fainted among the rows of shelves. After the last customer had finished perusing the aisles, Jonas settled back behind his perch. He watched as the store emptied itself, dwindling down to just a few remaining book purveyors, hoarding themselves in some remote corner with a dogged-eared copy of the current bestseller tucked beneath their arms.
Soon the store was quiet save for the droning of the oscillating fan and the swishing of pages 15
from his notebook. It flapped open every time the fan happened to turn in its direction, the notebook pages billowing like sails on the breeze. The girl’s bone-washed face continued to diminish within the confines of the shelves as he tried to watch her out of the corner of his eye. Jonas caught another glimpse of her between the spaces within the shelves and before he knew it, the girl was standing before him. The hair on her downcast head was pulled taunt but strands of it slipped haphazardly from its hold. “Yes – how may I help you?” Jonas said, smoothing back his windswept hair from his forehead. She wrapped her eyes around the store as if to see who he was speaking to, even though she happened to be the only customer left. And then she surprised Jonas by inching in closer to him, her warm, sweet breath on his face. He noted that her irises were flecked by rings of gold – unusual for someone of Occidental descent.
“I’m Faye,” she said, her voice cloistered as if in prayer. She lowered her voice an octave lower, so that Jonas had to lean closer to hear her speak. “And I need you to tell me more about this book.” “This book?” he repeated. She held up a loosely bound book that was missing its cover. He leaned back as if reaching some sort of understanding, and asked, “What about the book?” Her luminous face had suddenly turned unbearably ashen. “I just brewed a pot of some very fragrant Jasmine leaves from Indochina,” Jonas said. “Vietnam?’” “Yes, I agree it is quite a luxury. Tea leaves from Indochine.” “Indochine?”
“I know it’s being awfully pretentious calling it Indochine when really it’s Indochina,” Jonas 16
said, realizing he was babbling. He felt pinned by her gaze. “I know my home country, old man.” “Home country?” “And it’s Vietnam, not Indochine or whatever you called it.” “And what about this book?” Jonas asked. He watched as she opened the book carefully as if it were some precious relic, and creased the pages until the first chapter was facing up. “I want you to start reading.” “You want me to start reading? Now?” He carefully took the pages out of the girl’s hand and had a long look himself at its contents. She sighed. “No, just read through and help me with who wrote the book and what it’s called. The cover is missing and I don’t know much about literature. You, on the other hand,
should.” Jonas raised an eyebrow, “May I ask, why?” “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.” “Let’s get this clear. You want me to read this entire book which you brought into my store? How do I know it’s not something you pilfered?” “Obviously, you saw me bring in the book. So there’s no use accusing me of stealing anything.” She made a grab for the book, but missed. Jonas waved it out of her reach. Her small frame placed her at a disadvantage. “Why, that’s not such a gentlemanly thing to do. What happened to tea?” she asked. “I will need to hold this book,” he said with whatever authority he could muster.
“For investigating purposes.” 17
Faye bit down on her bottom lip. “Fine, old man. But what you have to understand, I got my brothers to back me up. If you don’t give me a title by the end of all this, you’ve got yourself into a load of trouble.” She pushed her pointing finger at him. “I will be back every day to make sure you keep your word.” And with that, Faye whipped around so quickly her hair that had been bunched up before slackened. A floral perfume filled Jonas’ nostrils. The chiming of the clock brought him out of his reverie, and he realized that he was already late for the dinner party. He scurried to find his good tie and coat and locked the store behind him. Jonas opened the door a crack, scuttling sideways into the room, so as not to alert the other guests of his late arrival. He muffled the sound of the door closing by placing a steady palm over the slab of wood and proceeded to attempt to soundlessly shuffle out of his coat when a mysterious grip materialized and tugged his arms free. During this struggle, he caught glimpses of the gossamer hands in flight as they scurried to free his wings. Ageless and white, the unclad hands that re-
sembled porcelain appeared flawless next to the beautifully fissured face that was before him moments later. He felt rather than saw the gossamer hands strike him.
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Coffee at the Nirvana CafĂŠ Mitchell Waldman
Kurt Cobain is stirring his coffee, dumping another packet of sugar in and stirring. He puts his spoon down, takes a sip, says "Ahhhh," and looks over at me with a smile.
"Now, that shit's good, Nathan." "Yeah, theirs is the best," I say. He doesn't look half bad for a dead guy, a little pale maybe, but he's still got the light in those sky blue eyes of his.
He sets his cup down. "It's not what you think," he says, getting all serious on me all of the sudden. "What isn't?" He raises both his hands, gesturing to all the stuff in the street around us. A car horn beeps as if on cue. "All of it, all of this."
"Come on, would I lie to you? I'm dead, for Godsakes. I oughta know something by now." "Yeah, I guess that's true." "And all that shit, all that stuff I did while alive, you know that meant something, but not
nearly as much as you might think. "No. I mean, some of it was good, but a lot of it was crap. Just 19
stupid adolescent crap."
"But you were huge, Kurt. You guys changed the music." He reaches across and pats my shoulder lightly, then leans back and stretches his arms out wide behind him and yawns. I just then notice that his T-shirt has a picture of John Lennon with IMAGINE plastered under it.
"We were huge and now someone else is huge. And Dave's not doing too bad for himself. He's done some good stuff, as long as he doesn't let it go to his head. But he seems to be okay with that stuff, doesn't let it affect him. Not like I did. I never could handle all the fame bullshit. It did me in. I just wanted to do my music."
"Yeah. We miss you, bud. The world does." "Thanks, Nathan. It's good to hear. Just don't believe all the crap they say about me, about us. Because you know most of it is pure fucking shit."
"I know, bro', I know. But you got people to listen, and they're still listening. You could scream with the best of 'em. God-wrenching, awful, beautiful screams."
"Thanks, man. I appreciate it." He stands up all of the sudden. "You going?" I ask. "Yeah, it's that time, I guess. Thanks for the Joe." I nod. "Okay. Well, thanks for coming by. And say 'Hi' to John for me," I say, gesturing to his
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shirt.
He looks down at Lennon's face. "Oh, this? It's just something I threw on. J and me aren't gettin' on too great right now. Something I said last week about him having mother issues. But they've patched it all up now. He'll get over it."
"Yeah? I hope so." "Keep on writing, dude, that's all I gotta say. It's all about what you share of yourself. It's not about the fame. That'll kill you in the end anyway." He gazes at me with his sad smile one more time, then walks out of the cafĂŠ, and down the busy street, until he's gone poof! out of sight.
I pull out my notebook and start writing, staring out across the traffic, thinking for a minute about what I'm going to say. Then I pick up my pen and start jotting in my God-awful penmanship:
Kurt Cobain is stirring his coffee, dumping another packet of sugar in and stirring.
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Contributor’s notes
SUE DONIMB wishes to remain anonymous.
donal Mahoney is a frequent contributor to Baby Lawn Literature. Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and Commonwealth. Some of his work can be found at eyeonlifemag.com
my nguyen graduated from the University of California, Riverside in 2010 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Quietpoly, and she been published in my college's literary magazine, Community Voices, Espresso 1, The Whistling Fire, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Straylight Magazine.
Mitchell Waldman's fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Waterhouse Review, Crack the Spine,The Houston Literary Review, Fiction Collective, The Faircloth Review, Epiphany, Wilderness House Literary Magazine, The Battered Suitcase, and many other magazines and anthologies. Waldman is also the the author of the novel, A Face in the Moon, and the stor y collection, Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart (Wind Publications), and has served as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see his website at http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com).
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