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CO NT EN T S Prose
PHOTOGrAPHY
NicHolas ILAcqUA
Jason BranDsma
“WILDFLOWErS” 9
CALEB WrIGHT
“THE THINGS THEY LEFT BEHIND”
13
“BUGS AND WEEDS”
17
Poetry HOLLY DAY
“HErE IS THE DrESS SHE WOrE” 27 “HOW I IDENTIFY YOU” 28 “WIFE IN DENIAL” 29
Editor’s Note About Us Submission Guidlines Bios and Credits
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UFM MARCH 2017, Issue 27
UMBRELLA FACTORY WORKERS RicHARD WEAVEr “MIGrATION” “ANCESTrY” “DEATH OF A FINCH”
30 31 32
Editor-In-Chief
Anthony ILacqua Copy Editor
Janice Ilacqua Art Director
Jana BrAMWELL
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Umbrella Factory isn’t just a magazine, it’s a community project that includes writers, readers, poets, essayists, filmmakers and anyone doing something especially cool. The scope is rather large but rather simple. We want to establish a community--virtual and actual--where great readers and writers and artists can come together and do their thing, whatever that thing may be. Maybe our Mission Statement says it best: We are a small press determined to connect well-developed readers to intelligent writers and poets through virtual means, printed journals, and books. We believe in making an honest living providing the best writers and poets a forum for their work. We love what we have here and we want you to love it equally as much. That’s why we need your writing, your participation, your involvement and your enthusiasm. We need your voice. Tell everyone you know. Tell everyone who’s interested, everyone who’s not interested, tell your parents and your kids, your students and your teachers. Tell them the Umbrella Factory is open for business. Subscribe. Comment. Submit. Tell everyone you know. Stay dry
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hello there UFM editor’s letter - March 2017 Welcome to Issue 27 of Umbrella Factory Magazine Hello readers, writers and passers-by, We are delighted to offer Issue 27 for your consideration. I found a significant theme in this issue’s content that is nearly pastoral. It’s probably a coincidence and not relating to the beginning of spring which happens this week. As this this issue emerged, perhaps thoughts of spring did too. A noteworthy item with Issue 27 may be the question of nepotism. Generally speaking, the three of us at Umbrella Factory Magazine consider ourselves to be family. We have been at this magazine business for many years. And when you see the name ILacqua on masthead, please know that while I have always been ILacqua, Janice began as Hampton. One of our writers this issue, Nicholas Ilacqua, and I have no certain familiar relation. We met during the submission process of his story “Wildflowers.” Our email banter has yielded some cool genealogical findings, which I have really enjoyed. Along with Nicholas Ilacqua’s “Wildflowers,” we curate Caleb Wright’s “The Things They Left Behind” for our prose selection. As I mentioned, both pieces have a sort of beautiful pastoral setting. They also have that slow burn exposition that I love in fiction. I hope you love it too. Holly Day and Richard Weaver are our poets. As I cris-cross the literary web, I see Holly Day everywhere. I’ve enjoyed her poetry in other magazines and I’m particularly excited about the selection we represent here, “Wife in Denial” being my favorite. And the poetry of Richard Weaver? Well, he has rounded out this issue’s pastoral theme. After all the poets I’ve encountered along the way, I think Richard Weaver’s set is by far the most cohesive, the tightest group, I’ve ever seen. “Ancestry” being one of special interest. If I was able to talk my way out of the nepotism point with Ilacqua, let me introduce to Bransma. In this issue, I am absolutely honored to showcase “Bugs and Weeds,” a photography portfolio by Jason Bransma. I love his work and I love these images. If you like what you see, please see his website, it’s choke full of great photography and some very cool digital art. It’s not really nepotism, but I have known Jason for well over 20 years. We met in the mid 1990s when we worked at summer camp. We spent the summer of 1997 working together on a shotgun range. How things have changed. Please enjoy Issue 27 and we’ll see you in June. Read. Submit. Tell Everyone You Know. Stay Dry. Anthony ILacqua
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submissions
Submission Guidelines:
Yes, we respond to all submissions. The turn-around takes about three to six weeks. Be patient. We are hardworking people who will get back to you. On the first page please include: your name, address, phone number and email. Your work has to be previously unpublished. We encourage you to submit your piece everywhere, but please notify Umbrella Factory if your piece gets published elsewhere. We accept submissions online at www.umbrellafactorymagazine.com
ART / PHOTOGRAPHY
POETRY
Accepting submissions for the next cover of Umbrella Factory Magazine. We would like to incorporate images with the theme of umbrellas, factories and/or workers. Feel free to use one or all of these concepts. Image size should be 980x700 pixels, .jpeg or .gif file format. Provide a place for the magazine title at the top and article links.
We accept submissions of three (no more and no less) poems. Please submit only previously unpublished work.
We also accept small portfolios of photography and digitally rendered artwork. We accept six pieces (no more and no less)
We do not accept multiple submissions; please wait to hear back from us regarding your initial submission before sending another. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please withdraw your piece immediately if it is accepted elsewhere. All poetry submissions must be accompanied by a cover letter that includes a two to four sentence bio in the third person. This bio will be used if we accept your work for publication.
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NONFICTION Let’s just say nonfiction is a piece of expository writing based in fact. Further definitions are as follows: piece-a work with a beginning, a middle and an end. Expository writing-writing with a purpose such as, but not limited to, explanation, definition, information, description of a subject to the extent that a reader will understand and feel something. Think about the cave paintings of 30,000 years ago, they tell a story. And for the modern man, a good film documentary conveys its purpose. A film about Andy Warhol and his friends who liked to drink and smoke and screw is interesting. A film about how I felt at age ten and watching the adults in my life drink and smoke and screw is not a good idea.
FICTION Sized between 1,000 and 5,000 words. Any writer wishing to submit fiction in an excess of 5,000 words, please query first. Please double space. We do not accept multiple submissions, please wait for a reply before submitting your next piece. In the body of your email please include: a short bio—who you are, what you do, hope to be. Include any great life revelations, education and your favorite novel. Your work has to be previously unpublished. We encourage you to submit your piece everywhere, but please withdraw your piece if gets published elsewhere.
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PROSE
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WILDFLOWERS Nicholas Ilacqua
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prose They run through the sky like a streamer descending from heaven, neon green hanging above the rushing road, bleeding into the dull dark blue of a long twilight opposite a setting sun. I turn to Stacy and ask, “Is this the first time you’ve seen them?” “No, I saw them in Norway,” she says. “The northern lights are beautiful in whatever country you see them in.” The two lanes of pavement are straight and even. They must have worked on it recently; the ground barely registers a sound through the rental car. The fields on either side are green with mountains at the horizons. There’re a few elk on evening constitutionals, not in a hurry, not even sampling the grass. Stacy’s hand rests between the seats; her knuckles graze the hand brake. I tentatively put my hand in hers. We’ve gone on dates for the last two months, then this trip to Canada fell in my lap, and I thought: this could be great with her. Out of the corner of my eye I see her smile: red lips stretched over white teeth. She pulls her sunglasses down to the edge of her nose and says, “The wildflowers are so vibrant.” I ask, “Do you want to stop and walk through them?” “That sounds wonderful.” I slow the car, listen to the humming of the engine working its way down through the gears. I see the grass and flowers rustle in the wind, an image longer than the passing snapshots at 70 mph. Glimpses of a quiet world of sunlight and wind fill me, no transatlantic cables or satellites, emails or conference calls. It’s simplicity realized. I’m a part of the world and it of me. The world slows down, pauses, as I look at the road’s straight line through the valley and the smoke rising from the hood in long wisps. “Uh, Stacy,” I say. She’s looking out the side window. “What is it?” Her voice is clear but distant, lost in her reverie. “Uh-” I say. We’re almost stopped. “We might be here a while.”
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“I know. I want to savor this,” she says. “Hmmm―” We’ve stopped, and I smell burning oil. “What’s that smell?” she asks as if in a passing thought. “Well, look forward,” I say. “Shit, we’re on fire.” “I don’t think so, but still―get out!” I swing my door open and run down the center of the empty road with my arms flapping, feeling the cold air, hearing my ears ringing. I go about 100 feet down, before I slow down and look back, panting. My hands are on my knees. My god am I out of shape. Stacy calmly walks down the road with her purse hanging from her shoulder, carrying a water bottle. She gets to me after a minute, extends to me the water bottle. “You need this,” she says. “Thanks,” I say, getting a few sips between gasps of air. “Do we really need to be this far?” she asks “Probably not.” Stacy takes the water back, taking barely a sip while looking at the car. “I don’t see it exploding,” she says. “Neither do I, but it’s still smoking.” “We saw a lot of cigarettes in Montreal,” she says, “didn’t run from that.” “I guess it’s the smell of burning oil that bothered me,” I say. “I once straightened my hair with a hot iron fifteen minutes after putting oil in my hair.” “Is that what it smells like?” I ask, having the image of smoking hair in mind. “Not really,” she says. She hands me back the water. “Do you want to see the wildflowers?” “Yeah. Wildflowers. First, let me catch my breath.” I lean forward rubbing my thighs. She says with a half-smile, “I don’t think you’re in shape to catch anything that isn’t in a cast.” “Give me a second,” I say. I pace back and forth, stretching my leg muscles. “You feel better?” she asks, looking over her sunglasses at me. “No, but standing in the highway isn’t helping.”
“Great,” she says, “let’s look at the flowers.” She flashes that wide smile again. We go to the side of the road, then across a gravel bed and into knee-deep green. Stacy goes to the closest flower and picks it by the stem, a yellow poppy. She slowly lifts it to her nose, closes her eyes, and breathes in deeply. The way her shoulders arched back as she inhaled reminded me of a bird about to take flight. You don’t half fly, and I realize Stacy doesn’t sense the world halfway; she’s in all the way. Pulling her face from the flower, she stretches her arms above her head and lets the wind lift the flower from her hand into the sky. Letting her arms fall to her side, she looks around with that smile. She kneels slightly so she can run her palm against the grass and looks back at me, radiant. She says, “Done. Now we should really do something about that car.” I haven’t smelled the flowers or looked at anything but I feel vicariously satisfied, so I nod. “Agreed. Do you have your phone?” I ask. “In my hand,” she says as she lifts it up. “I don’t even know who to call in Canada,” I say. “Dudley Do Right,” she says with a straight face. “Yeah, I left my Dial-a-Mountie cheat sheet back at the hotel, along with my spare mechanic. Zero should probably at least get us to an operator.” “I think you’re right,” she says and looks down at the phone. “It should, but we won’t know because we don’t have reception.” She puts the phone back in her purse and looks at the car. “It stopped smoking.” “I’m not sure I want to risk it,” I say. I imagine the car in a genuine explosion and shake my head. “Yeah, but I don’t want to be stuck in the wilderness after nightfall,” she says. She pauses and looks up and down the road, then at the surrounding fields with a tight grimace. “We might get eaten alive by carnivorous elk.” “Don’t worry,” I say, “you can use the cyanide pill I keep in my molar so you’re dead when the elk eats you.” “That takes a load off my mind,” she
says, putting her left foot forward, then back beside her right a few times. “We don’t know if anyone will come along. I don’t even know how far away the next town is.” “It’s thirty miles to the next town. How about we just wait a bit. It won’t be totally dark for an hour or two. If no one comes by, we drive on slowly.” She looks at the car again. “That’s if the car starts,” she says. “Of course, we do have blankets.” “We do?” “I saw them in the trunk when I put the suitcases in,” she says. “Either the rental company likes contingency plans or knows their cars break down.” I look back at the car. “Anything else back there?” “A case of wine,” she says. “Yeah, that would be great,” I say. “Not really.” She lifts her hand up and points a curled index finger at me. “That was going to be a surprise. I got it from the hotel, a case of different vintages from same winery we had last night.” “That’s great,” I say. I look at her and smile, before looking down at my hands, rubbing against each other. “No corkscrew though.” “They’re twist off,” she says with another smile. “Ah choices, to start with the oldest or youngest,” I say. She says, “I’ll choose. It’ll be a surprise; you guess which.” We walk back to the car; it still smells pretty bad. I lift the hood and have no idea what I’m looking at, but I leave it open so passing cars know we’re not just doing a splendor in the grass. Stacy gets a bottle of wine. We go down the road to where it smells better, get off the asphalt, open the wine, and pass it back and forth like two winos. “This wine is great―so enjoyable,” I say. “I’m getting the thoughts I had of it last night mixed with tonight. What is it when you’re experiencing something currently that you experienced in the past, and you are having fond memories of both simultaneously?”
“Alzheimer’s,” she says. “I guess nostalgia is just a polite word for it,” I say softly and pass the wine to her. “So what were you doing in Norway?” “Visiting an ex-boyfriend.” She doesn’t touch on her past much. It’s always a guessing game with a recent addition to your life, how far to go, how soon. She isn’t frowning though, just looking ahead. “Was he an ex at the time?” “Kinda yes. Kinda no,” she says and plucks a blade of grass and twirls it between her fingers. “We were engaged but hadn’t seen each other for a few months. We realized that we weren’t really an item any more. It wasn’t a fun trip.” “Going halfway around the world to break up doesn’t sound like a good vacation,” I say. I look at the northern lights still in the sky, thinking of it lighting up her past as well. “I didn’t know you used to be engaged. I thought you never wanted to be married.” “I don’t,” she says quickly. She rubs her hands together like a faith healer before putting them in her pockets. “When did you see the northern lights?” she asks. “Well, I hadn’t, but I read up on them before we came.” She shakes her head and says, “You’ve never seen the northern lights, and you’ve never been engaged.” “Yes. That’s true,” I say, while looking at a scuff on my shoes. “I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights. I’m glad I finally did.” Stacy asks, “Have you ever thought about getting engaged?” “The sky’s so beautiful.” I wave my hand at the deep blue above. She smirks at me, takes the bottle from me, and pokes my stomach with the mouth of it. I say, “I thought about getting engaged, thought about asking, but I was ditched for the circus. I was left for a barrel of monkeys.” “A barrel of monkeys?” she says and looks at me with her eyebrow raised. “How can you compete with that?” I say. She pauses and looks at the colors in the sky, a long pause, and I wonder if she’ll say
anything. She says with a measured tone, “You could join the circus too.” I sigh, then say, “We talked about it. Maybe I should have; maybe we would have been happy, but what would that look like? Mom and Dad, I’m leaving the firm to do the books for a circus. I’ll travel the world, add up receipts from sodas while everyone around me is swallowing swords and breathing fire.” “That’s what she wanted.” I hear that and think to the last dinner before the circus left, fettuccine and ice-wine, the back and forth of each of our wants and needs and fears. I say, “More like that was what I wasn’t. Going off was frightening. I don’t swallow swords; I’m afraid of putting a pen in my mouth. We were growing up, dreaming up futures―mine wasn’t matching his.” I sigh. “Yes, it was a he.” Stacy pauses for a second and takes a swig of wine, as a bird lands in the roadway. She frowns and smiles and frowns again and says, “You could have joined the circus to show your love.” “I didn’t. I joined MENSA and Toastmasters. He wasn’t impressed.” I reach for the bottle and take a swig, too. The wine hit me. “What about your boyfriend? What was he doing in Norway? Running away to live with the gnomes?” She takes the bottle back and takes a fast gulp. She says, “No, he was studying barnacles of the Arctic.” I say, “Sounds even more boring than what I do.” She stares at me. “It’s comparable.” I stand up and walk to the middle of the highway. I look up and down the road, scratch my head, head back to the grass and sit down. “Did you know you were going to break up?” I ask. “I had no clue. I got there, and we spent a week staring at each other. Then one day, we hiked along the rim of a fjord, got to the point farthest out toward the ocean, looked at each other, and both frowned and nodded. I got on a plane the next day.” I look at her. Her forehead is furrowed and her frown makes her laugh lines more
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prose apparent. I see her crow’s feet where I had ignored them. She taps the wine bottle; it makes an almost empty sound. “That seems very sudden,” I say. “Yes, if you know only the end, otherwise it makes perfect sense. Did your breakup make perfect sense?” she asks. Hesitantly, I say, “No. It still doesn’t― making plans and choosing your life, deciding everything quickly―I don’t make choices quickly. I like the numbers to necessitate my actions. Instead, I’m just counting the years apart.” “There aren’t algorithms for human relationships,” she says. “Sounds like a mathematician’s wedding vows,” I say, taking back the bottle and having a large gulp. “He sends postcards from random places around the world. How does your breakup make sense?” I ask. “It became obvious we had different visions for our lives. The types of lives we valued and respected weren’t the same. We were becoming different people, living different lives, living in different worlds.” “What were you doing that was so different?” I ask. “I was traveling through East Asia with a circus,” she says. “Oh?” I look at her. She has a far-away look, a wistful one that I hadn’t seen on her before. Words start coming out my mouth. “Um, yeah, you were―you were―” She says, “I was painting sets, but improving on my knife juggling skills, working my way up.” I see the northern lights have gotten brighter, almost gaudy, and the elk have laid down. “You’re serious?” My voice cracks. “Yes,” she says. “Remember that tattoo on my ankle? Everyone in the circus got drunk one day and the tattooed lady drew it on us. We joke that it’s the guild tattoo” “I thought the tiger was a symbol of something, like a childhood surgery,” I say. “No, that’s Tim the Tiger, he’s a sweetheart.” I think of my ex-boyfriend with a tattoo
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of a dolphin on his shoulder, a complex forest of curling waves surrounding it. “I didn’t know all that,” I say. She says, “Yeah, knife juggler looks odd on LinkedIn, so I put something else.” She pauses and looks out at the mountain at the end of the road in our direction. Her face is very serious. “Before that, I had been in data entry, but one day my boss brought me into his office to say my performance had been suffering. I said, ‘Fuck you. I’m the one suffering. Any longer in here and I’ll be ready for a straitjacket.’ So, that was my last day. I went out that night drinking, ending up alone walking along the wharf. In front of the pier with Sinbad’s restaurant there was a large man with no shirt and scars across his chest juggling knives. I offered him a cigarette. He declined. I said, ‘I’d like to do that.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you?’ I said, ‘I don’t know how.’ He said, ‘Then learn. My circus is leaving in the morning and is looking for a set painter.’ I said, ‘I can bullshit that.’ So, I called my fiancé, said I would meet him in Norway later, and joined the circus.” “Ok,” I say, looking at her and then the ground. “Ok, I thought you were in law school.” “Yeah, I was tired of painting sets, and the owner thought I wasn’t very good at juggling knives. There were a few incidents. But he liked me anyway and said, ‘You’re smart. I’ll pay for the first two years of law school, not the third, if you work for me for three years after you graduate.’ So, I’m in law school.” She’s smiling again. “It’s not what I planned and I’m not a performer anymore, but when he gave me the offer, I realized all they ways I can help the people and causes I care about. I love the circus, but making the world better will give me a more meaningful happiness. I was a conflicted jumble when I was deciding, but I realized I’d rather be dead than afraid of going after happiness.” She gives me a cold stare. “And I realized I don’t want that fear my life.” I don’t know what to say. She keeps staring at me for a minute, before looking away.
We sit in silence, staring into the distance as wind runs over the grass in waves. My face feels hot, and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on just seeing a series of faces, boyfriends and girlfriends, friends and enemies, people I remember revealing truths in moments of inspiration and others who always seemed on the verge of dissolving into dust. I remember my grandmother smiling and nodding for two years with Alzheimer’s, before wandering into the snow and freezing to death. I think of the piles of papers on my desk waiting for me, that I will wade through, work through one day to the next, under a fluorescent light, in the quiet, until I’m hermetically sealed and under the ground for the rest of time, while Stacy lounges above on a cloud. Stacy gets up and walks into the field, passing her hands over the wildflowers. Going around in a circle, she bends low so her hands touch the flowers and grass, getting deeper into the higher grass, above her knees, almost to her waist, though she’s standing straight up. Then she stops to look up at the mountains at the side of the valley and sings a refrain from a Hare Krishna song I once heard. She sings it a few times and stops. I say loudly, “What happened to the Norway guy?” She doesn’t respond for half a minute. “What?” I realize that she had forgotten about me and was just enjoying the wildflowers. “What happened to the Norway guy?” “He’s still in the Arctic, married with two blond kids. There will always be enough barnacles to keep him busy.” “Barnacles,” I say. “If I hear about another barnacle, I’ll shoot myself.” She looks at me again, a stare like you give a stranger on the subway. I lift the bottle to my lips and finish it. I mumble, “Great wine.” She isn’t looking at me anymore. I hear her voice, “I’ll enjoy the rest when I get home. Here’s a vehicle coming.” She runs out of the field into the road and waves her arms as an RV slows down and stops in front of us.
THE THINGS THEY LEFT BEHIND Caleb Wright
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prose For me, it was the squishing of wet clay oozing up around my bare feet that always brought me back to the creek. Later, on the walk home, the clay would harden and crack. It left the soles of my feet callused and nicked. Colt would mock me, and tell me the creek wasn’t worth the cuts. He was wrong though. We’d gone down to that creek for years now. Ever since Dad took us there when I was 6 or 7. It was a small, dirty creek, no more than 10 or 12 feet wide, with a cracked limestone bottom, and a handful of small fish skirting around its deepest spots. The creek was crossed by Clearcrack Road, which we lived on, about a half-mile up hill. There was no bridge, and any cars that wanted to pass had to delve into the shallow water and navigate to the other side. When I was younger we played a game there where my dad would throw a stick as far upstream as he could, and as it floated downstream, my dad, Colt, and I would take turns throwing rocks at it. Dad always said, “The first one to hit the stick wins a prize,” but he never lost. I’d throw my stone, and it would splash in the ripples before disappearing in the murky water. “Cleo, what was that?” he’d joke. Colt’s rock would splash too. Then my dad would find the smallest pebble he could, simply to show off, and launch it. I hated the sound it made. The thud of the rock knocking the stick because it meant I lost. Then he would turn to us, with an arrogant smirk on his face, and say, “Man, thought you guys were better than that.” He’d follow that by grabbing us and tossing us up over his tattooed arms. Then he’d start running. As far into the deepest part of the creek as he could, soaking us head to toe. I’d tuck my nose into his shoulder, and suck the smell of menthol smoke from his flannels. It was miasma, but it was home. Over my dad’s stiff neck, I could make out Colt’s green eyes lit up by the late afternoon sun, full of joy. He left us—me, my brother, and my mom. He disappeared somewhere in the Vietnamese jungle back in ‘71. He left my mom, the need to pull sixty-hour weeks at the Lodge to save up for Colt’s college. He left Colt
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a library full of fantastic stories and adventures I’d never take the time to read. And he left me the creek. Where he knew I’d always been happiest. We still went to the creek, years after, when I was fourteen and Colt was near eighteen. Every week during the summer we’d walk down the gravel road in our torn jeans. Colt always had a book tucked under one arm and an antique microscope in his opposite hand. His hair was red, and fiery, but his personality never had been. He never wore a shirt, and his chest was a conglomerate of freckles and sunburn. On the walk he’d ask me deep leading questions, “Where do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do?” My answers never changed. I always told him some bullshit story about wanting to be a vet, but in truth I wanted to be there with him, lost and waist deep in water. We didn’t throw sticks anymore. Colt would sit on the bank swimming through Thoreau, Emerson, and Hemingway, while I built dams, caught crawdads, and cast my fishing pole from the water’s edge. I played right in the intersection where the creek crossed the road. The water was only shallow enough that it danced along my ankle line, but the bottom dipped off on either side to three or four feet deep. Watching cars judge if they should pass through the creek was a regular event for us. There were only two groups of people that ever came that way anyhow, and very rarely would I have to move out of the road for anyone. The first and most prominent group Colt named the Gawkers. They were tourists. They came in flocks each autumn to gaze at the changing of the leaves throughout Brown County’s rolling hills and dense forests. The Gawkers usual showed up on Clearcrack only when they got lost, tangled in the web of small country roads leading to the state park. I’d hear them slowly and uneasily pulling themselves off the pavement and onto the gravel. If I listened carefully I could even hear the soft tinging of gravel rocks bouncing off their undercarriages. Their cars are always immaculate, Pontiacs, Studebakers. They’d roll
up to the water’s edge and stare at me through tinted windows that stopped me from looking back. I think to them I am a zoo animal, or a character in a painting, simply, a piece of a wider puzzle that makes up Brown County’s bustling tourism industry. I wonder if they think I’m beautiful too, standing knee deep in rusty water, with my hair in a knotted bun, and dirt smudges around my cheeks. If they thought I was, they never showed it. They would simply reverse away from the creek and back all the way back to Nelson. For Colt they left behind unanswered questions, he would always wonder who they were, where they were from, and what it would take to be like them. I simply wanted them to stop coming. The second group we called neighbors. They lived much further down Clearcrack. None of them lived within a mile of us, so the term neighbor is relative. We never knew their names, only where they lived. It seems to me they had lived here forever, and always would, their kids too. All of the caution and uncertainty the Gawkers showed when driving towards the creek was lost on the neighbors. They flew down the road towards me, throwing rocks like missiles, and sending a plume of gravel dust skywards. I’d jump to the side of the creek to avoid them, and sink into deeper water. Then they’d plow through the water in their Ford pickups cloaked in rust, and send tidal waves ragging towards me. Sometimes, in this ruckus, they would lose parts, or drop things from their windows, and we’d started a collection of the things they left behind. Once a pickup lost a rusted muffler, which I hung from a nearby tree and eventually became a home for a bat. Then there was a hubcap, which we found and used as shield during our stick sword fights. Once, a kind man from up the road got out of his Buick and placed two glass coke bottles on the bank. Then he drove off without speaking a word. We stared at the bottles for a while, watching the condensation roll down the side in droplets towards the dirt. Colt said the man’s generosity seemed strange and refused to drink, so I drank both. Another day we found a large glass
bottle that was 3/4 of the way full with a clear liquid that smelled like fire. Colt told me it was moonshine. He came up with some elaborate story about bootleggers who would probably come back for it later, and kill anyone who disturbed their precious product. He decided to hide it from them. We buried it beneath the creek rocks. After Colt graduated from Brown County he went straight to college in Lafayette. I sat in his empty room and stared up at the rows of bookshelves full of books I’d never read. I could hear mom crying across the hall, she was thanking God for having a son make it out, and pleading that her daughter would too. But I wouldn’t. I left the house and headed down the road by flashlight. I tried to find that bottle of moonshine we’d hidden in the rocks, but it was either gone, or I’d lost it to the water. I sat at the water’s edge and listened to the creek ripple over the limestone in a ceaseless song, and wondered for the first time where the water went, and from where it came. Colt would have known. I flipped the flashlight off, and watched the trees hang in ominous shapes above me blurring with a starless sky. I watched as the rocks sat motionless on the creek bed, resisting the consistent pushing from the water. The water’s push was strong, firm. Permanent.
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“BUGS AND WEEDS” -Jason Brandsma
“I am fascinated by the tiny life in nature. Through the macro lens, I seek to capture the elegance and complexity of plants and creatures which many of us either never notice, or simply take for granted. These are the intimate details and fleeting moments that make up the grand, sweeping panorama. Without bugs and weeds, there can’t be a forest.”
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POETRY
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Holly Day
HERE IS THE DRESS SHE WORE high-pitched girlish giggles the dull scratch of garden tools screams from the bedroom in the backyard I’m not like that. no. taste, smell her sweat even now I wonder no. I don’t want to. no. washed clean in the river sprawled on the stairs, scalped beach bunnies dreaming of Barbie lying around the house, plastic limbs staring back at me, wide blue eyes. who once held me I remember what happened to her.
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Holly Day
HOW I IDENTIFY YOU I listen to your heart beating inside its cage of broken bones the Braille graffiti of your chest, and even now I wonder what things would have been like if you were whole when we met if you weren’t so damaged by your past, would you have come to me? I run my fingertips over the old cigarette burns along your arms testament to a drunk stepfather who never bothers calling anymore, wonder if I could somehow put the pieces back together, fix this mangled child how long it would take for you to decide you didn’t need me anymore that without your damaged past, there’d be no reason to seek solace against me and my own broken heart.
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WIFE IN DENIAL I hear the screams from the bedroom imagine her staring back at me with wide, blue eyes but it doesn’t do any good. I tell him to pick up after himself when he’s done I’m not doing the laundry this time, either. I hear the conversations coming from the room afterwards and I know it’s just him, it’s him speaking in two separate voices his and hers, and it is nothing I want to know about. I walk above the corpses I know are in the yard lightly careful with my garden spade, avoiding any fresh-turned dirt sprinkle wildflower seeds over the suspicious berms instead.
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Richard Weaver
MIGRATION The man with the blue mustache winks and the mallards pull clouds beneath their wings. They fly North for the winter to avoid tourists. In Rhode Island a chicken house clucks to life. What they see overhead could be ink blots someone left in the sky. Or is it simply statement? The essence of color is its loss, is whatever cuts across from ear to ear. Once over the pole they will touch down. No prints will be found in the frost. Only bones huddled together for warmth.
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ANCESTRY Brown pelicans light against the mercury grey water, disappearing over the waves as the sun descends. A red fox blazes at the beach’s edge. We leave leftovers outside but never know who feasts on what remains: crabs, endangered beach mice, or the red fox whose prints dot the dunes as they merge into the darkness.
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Richard Weaver
DEATH OF A FINCH At that moment when the bird flies headlong into the bronze glass and the impact of its head and neck is reduced to wingless sound, how soon, how quickly does the following silence become testimony? Death of all that dies? A fraternity of dying? An eternity of flying?
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bios
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Jason Bransma is a multimedia artist, born and living in Colorado. He is on a creative mission to express his fascination with the nature, the universe, and the human experience. http://artbyjasonbrandsma.weebly.com/
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Oyez Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, while her recently published books include Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, A Brief History of Stillwater Minnesota, and Ugly Girl.
Nicholas Ilacqua lives in Sacramento, where he develops software, posts vinyl on Facebook, and organizes a Scotch Club. According to those closest to him: “His hair is like a bird’s nest, sans bird.” “There is a crazy world that actually makes sense buried somewhere deep within his head.” “He should visit Bali.”
Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. He volunteers at the Maryland Book Bank, and acts as the Archivist-
at-large for a Jesuit College founded in 1830. He is also an unofficial snowflake counter. (There are real ones). His recent poems have appeared in the Red Eft Review, Gnarled Oak, and Conjunctions. Forthcoming poems will be appearing in Crack the spine, Steel Toe, Clade Song, Aberration Labyrinth, Triggerfish, Kestrel, & Gingerbread House.
Caleb Wright currently studies history at Indiana State University. He has been published in Allusions Literary Magazine, and has won the Mary Reed McBeth Award for outstanding nonfiction writing. He plans to pursue an MFA shortly.
Fabio Sassi makes photos and acrylics using tiny objects and what is considered to have no worth by the mainstream.
Fabio is also a casual poet living in Bologna, Italy. His work can be viewed at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com. His piece,The Bead Factory is this issue’s front cover.
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