Crack the Spine
Issue Thirty
Crack The Spine Issue Thirty June 25, 2012 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2012 by Crack the Spine
Contents Hannah Allen Alopecia in Margaritaville Dan Birker Rupture Unsure Dianne Post The Last Night Out Bernard M. Cox Anthills Before He Left Us, He Bought A Bicycle Davy Carren Semblables Michael O’Brien Life After Christmas Kina Viola When She Chose to Forget
Cover Art “Making Hoa Binh� by Stephen Mead A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, and maker of short collage films. His latest project, a collaboration with composer Kevin MacLeod, is entitled "Whispers of Arias", a two volume CD set of narrative poems sung to music, http://stephenmeadmusic.weebly.com/ His latest Amazon release, "31 Kisses", a poetry-art hybrid, is a celebration of romance for lovers everywhere regardless of sexual orientation.
Hannah Allen Alopecia in Margaritaville Dirt road. Buildings slump around me, blunt and stocky as midgets. I’ve been working at the liquor store for six years now—always with clean, muscled arms well-maintained and a ham sandwich dry. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. It’s barely thirty minutes of stocking the shelves before she’s there. Right on cue, every Monday at eight AM for the last six years, she comes in her burned-out Caddy and gets a fifth of Skohl vodka. I grab the bottle for her before she’s even out of her car. I am good at what I do. The first time I met the old lady, she came in with her straw hat canted on her brittle little head, a fat stuffed parrot seated on its brim—presumably a souvenir from a Jimmy Buffett concert. She wore a spandex belt that gripped her so hard that she looked the way a banana would if you squeezed it right in the middle: flesh seeping between the edges of peel, bulbous at either end, oozing from the inside. This is her usual attire. I set the fifth of Skohl on the counter and busy myself with the aligning of single-shooters while I wait. Malibu, Jack D., even Patron—the classics. No one ever gets the Patron, though. If I were in the city, maybe overpriced junk like that would sell and that Skohl would sit on the shelf until some hobo finally broke in and took our whole stock of it. Happened once at the liquor store I worked at before this one, the one my father owned. Dad was all his own man, self-made. He shaved his head shiny the moment it showed a hint of gray. Once, he gave me a sippy cup—though I’d barely outgrown it and was insulted by its presentation alone— half full with gin and said, Drink up. He shaved my head afterward because my full crop of lush hair mocked him with its youth. Alopecia is what you call it when your body doesn’t grow its own hair. My body is this way, utterly bald, but not by nature. I’ve been shaving my entire body since. My pores open in the cold like flowers, like they did when I was just a little kid and the broad open air was like a welcome to the rest of my life. An invitation to soar. I long for Alopecia. I always joke with the old lady when she comes in, I’m surprised you don’t get margarita mix and tequila instead of vodka, you Parrot Head. A little blush spreads through her cheeks, flabby and veined so they look like moldy pancakes, and she giggles. Her fingers are twisted horribly with arthritis. She
flirts with me the way very old women will with handsome young men—utterly unserious, more to make him uncomfortable than anything else. What else do you do to get your kicks at that age? I shift the last single-shooter of New Amsterdam into place and look out to the parking lot. The old woman hobbles out of her car and leans against the bumper of her Caddy. She sets her purse on the trunk and rests her hands on her knees, leaning over. She’s had a revelation, I muse. Her Jimmy Buffett wine cooler inspiration has arrived. I lean back on the counter and cross my arms, savoring the feeling of the smooth muscles slipping over each other. The old woman leans harder into her hands, back arching. Her neck extends like a jowled slinky and a stream of vivid blood clots bursts from her mouth and splatters on the tar, some of it still bright liquid. As her shoulders wrack, her parrot-ridden hat topples into the viscous heap at her feet. Light blinks off her scalp; she is completely bald. I stiffen behind the register, posing like I haven't seen what's happened, thumbs looped at my belt buckle—the one Dad gave me for my birthday with a picture of the two of us engraved in it, eroded now with constant use. Must’ve cost him a full month’s till. I moved back home that month to be with Mom when Dad went back to the institution. The night after, he died in a tango with Xanax and gin. The mechanized bell clangs over the door, announcing the heave and wet pant of the old woman. Her floppy breasts beat up and down beneath the strain of her dress, seeming to have fed and weaned at least three children by the look of them. She reaches across the counter and stiffly pulls the fifth of Skohl toward her, unzipping her purse. A strand of thick mucus dangles from her split lip. The old woman with a head of wispy liver spots looks me dead in the eye, freezing my every breathing pore, and holds out a wad of bills. Rasping, she says, Why do you keep selling this stuff to me?
Hannah Allen is currently attending college in Littleton, CO where she lives with her cross-eyed cat named Magnolia. The time spent away from her is time tucked in books and glued to a pen. Daily, she produces some absolutely awful material, but on rare gorgeous days, the words shape-shift on the page to become a thing she believes without having known its resonance as she penned it. Such a piece surfaced in her high school literary magazine and again in her college's literary magazine, The Progenitor. A prose poem of hers has been published in Rufous City Review. She intends to go forth into the larger world of journalism and publishing, to expand herself until she has as much detail, insight, and compassion as is necessary to have anything of value to say to the world, so the awful material she daily produces may somehow cleanse into truth and take on a life of its own.
Dan Birker Rupture wrinkled fellow lukewarm from aluminum heater sits on bench in hotel lobby, wrestling arthritis and plastic cups. he thinks about when crimson sun melted the yolks of his eyes back in spain, brilliant bullets forming tundras over chimney smoke veils. coalitions of scarred young men, clothes handed down from great grandfathers, black soiled mud on their onyx-stained chests, walking faltered march for liberation and collecting epitaphs for fascists. drenched trenches making suffering winter reprieve numb feet, their veins catalysts for pneumonia, the sounds of oblivion echoing against church spires. he rubs his cooling eyes and takes his two absurd pills, removing remainders of pain. he wanted to plow holes in the green Catalonian beaked hills so everyone could see how the country felt about rupture.
Dan Birker Unsure A hoard of green parrots Squawk at my white windowpane. They think it’s a crinkled cloud Unsure of itself Mocking their cries. Staring out, I see A scathed man choking a blue can His wife holding a glass enveloped with hearts Filled with violets gnarled and vivid. A boy passes out wet newspapers, their white spores Drizzle dashes on concrete, the front page A pyre of broken books. My neighbor raises a peace flag In honor of the veteran he couldn’t be I give him a salute And he gestures back With a middle finger.
Dan is 22 and an undergraduate English double major at Cal State University, Long Beach. He is the co-owner of Al's Pal's Pet Services, a self-owned and operated pet walking and sitting service as well as the drummer for a math rock duo called The Fox and Bear Band. He is also a part of the art collective, the White Lotus Collective, a collective of artists, musicians, actors, and more that help strengthen and enlighten the Long Beach community through art and inspiration. He has been published in Surrounded, Riprap and Bankheavy Press.
Dianne Post The Last Night Out The tall boy walked into the pawnshop carrying a long, black gun bag. He hadn’t yet grown into his bones that seemed to be sticking out like a skeleton with skin hung badly on them. The boy laid the long bag on the counter, under which a hundred watches laid side by side in a locked, glass case. “How much can I get for this?” The clerk unzipped the bag. “Where did you get it?’” “My dad gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. I’ve never used it.” The man glanced at the boy’s long slender fingers and manicured nails. “You don’t like hunting?” “No, I hate it.” The boy said it with such vehemence that several men in red, flannel shirts stopped their shuffling through merchandise and looked toward the counter. The clerk pulled the gun out of its leather case. It was a Springfield 3006 rifle, as clean as the day it left the factory. “One hundred” “That’s all?” “It’s a pawn shop,” the clerk shrugged. “But it’s brand new.” “You said you got it for your sixteenth birthday. How old are you now?” “Nineteen.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “So it’s three years old.” “But never used.” One flannel shirted man poked the boy in the shoulder, “That’s too low.” The boy flinched as if he had been hit. The clerk shot the interloper a dirty look. “Okay, I’ll give you one-twenty, but that’s it.” The boy shook his head no but shrugged his shoulders and said, “Okay.”
The clerk wrote out the paper work and handed over the cash. As he walked out, two men walked up to the counter and said, “Let me look at that gun.” Twenty minutes later, the same young man took two steps into the tailor shop and stopped. He looked around the room filled with women, brushed his dishwater hair out of his hazel eyes and blinked. “May I help you?” The squat, older woman stood up from her sewing machine, waddled over to the counter and leaned on it. “Yes, I wanted to know if you rent tuxedos?” “Yes, we do. When do you need it?” “Saturday night.” “We can do that. Let’s go and measure.” As they walked toward the back, the young women glanced up from their sewing with envy as the boss preceded the boy with the chiseled face and strong, square jaw. He left a deposit and promised to return the following day to pick up the pieces he had chosen: one-button peak lapel cutaway jacket, pants, Diamond Royal vest, cummerbund, pique wing collar shirt, black and silver stud and cufflink set, and just for fun, ivory formal tuxedo clip suspenders. After picking up the tuxedo, he returned home and checked the yellow pages for limousine companies. Several disconnected numbers later, a call rang through. “Chauffeurs on Call.” “I’d like to rent a car and driver for tomorrow night.” “Yes, sir. How many people?” “Five of us.” “Is it a special occasion? Do you have a theme in mind?” “No special occasion, just getting together with friends.” “For how long and starting when?”
“Well, how about you pick me up at seven, and then we’ll go get the others. Then I want to take a tour around the city especially the lakes and then go to McDonalds.” “McDonalds?” “Yes. Is something wrong?” “No, but we usually don’t get requests to go to McDonalds. How old did you say you are?” “I didn’t. But I’m nineteen. It’s just a special evening.” “Okay. Just between you and me, better you go to McDonalds than a lot of places boys your age might be going. So maybe a couple hours?” “Yeah, two or three. How much will that be?” “Our rates are thirty dollars an hour so for three hours it would be ninety dollars. I need a credit card to hold the order.” “Can’t I just pay when we are picked up?” “No we don’t do that. We need a credit card for other reasons too e.g. if something is damaged by your group.” “Or if we steal the car?” They both laughed. “Though I’ll admit,” said the woman at the rental shop, “you sound like a nice boy. Not one who would trash a car. Maybe you could take my son with you.” “Maybe some day. Okay. Let me get a credit card.” He ran to his room and found the credit card his aunt had given him for school and made him swear it would only be used for education. He returned and read the number and code to the clerk. The following night, when five young men walked into McDonalds, one dressed in a tuxedo and the others in street clothes, followed by an older man with a satchel, no one paid them any mind until after the five sat. Minneapolis was full of its quota of strange people. But then, the chauffer, dressed in livery, opened a bag and removed a crisp, white linen tablecloth. He snapped it in the air and by some
magic it billowed above the boys and then covered the table perfectly. The boys leaned back in the booth to give him room. From the bag, the driver pulled out four crystal goblets in molded, plastic cases, removed them one by one and sat one in front of each partygoer. The boys picked up the glasses and pretended to drink, their pinkie fingers extended in the air. Next, he produced four white, linen napkins rolled around silver cutlery and held with a slim silver ring. These he placed to right of each boy. To their credit, they didn’t immediately grab them and unroll the napkin except for one boy who slid the ring off the napkin and onto his finger for a one-finger salute. Last, mimicking Mary Poppins, the chauffer dug one more time into the black bag and took out four china plates with silver filigree around the edges. After placing a plate in front of each boy, he extracted a white napkin from his pants pocket, unfolded it, and draped it over his left arm. From his jacket pocket he removed a small pad and pen. “May I take your orders, please?” Like children, the boys giggled and punched each other in the arm. “You go first. No, you.” The waiter stood in perfect silence with perfect posture as if he were at the Ritz waiting on corporate bigwigs until finally he turned to the organizer of the party and broke the logjam with, “Would you like to go first?” When the waiter returned with the food, before removed each burger from the bag, unwrapped it and using the wrapper, placed it on the china plate. The fries he upended over each plate. Drinks were poured like wine from a bottle into the crystal glasses. The five ate in splendor amid the Styrofoam cups and plastic ware of the other customers. They talked about sports, bragging a lot, and girls, lying mostly, and their second year of college coming up while children slid down a blue tunnel and climbed up yellow net. After the meal, the group piled back into the limousine for a tour of the lakes, the campus and the new convention and sports center on the water. They drove to the rich area of town and tried to sneak
into the gated communities. Finally, the chauffeur dropped off the guests one by one. At every stop, the boy got out of the car and gave each friend a long hug. When the car reached the final drop off, the boy handed the driver a thirty-dollar tip. “No way. That’s much too big a tip for three hours.” “Take it. I don’t need it. You were very nice. Thank you.” Inside the house, the boy carefully removed the tuxedo and packed it neatly in its box. On top, he laid the receipt from the rental store. He put the pawnshop receipt next to it on the bed. He dressed in his favorite blue jeans and Save the Whales sweatshirt, white socks and red tennis shoes, picked up the car keys, a blanket and a pillow and went to the garage. The car door of the old Ford Escort creaked when he opened it. Though it had over two hundred thousand miles on it, it still started in the Northern winters and got him where he was going. Now it would do it again. He started the car and rolled down the front windows. He didn’t think about his mother or what her reaction would be. She had made it clear that now that he was grown, he was on his own, to be an adult and a friend, not a scarecrow lurking around like Icabod Crane. He didn’t think about his brother. Jim had told him things would get better if he could just hang on. But life was different for Jim. He was a simple guy. He wanted girls and sports and any kind of job. Jim was like all the other guys, he fit in; he understood them. He didn’t think about his dad who refused to take responsibility for anything as if he were always the helpless victim of a hostile world. If his sons failed to bring him back his long lost sports fame, they were useless. He did think about his baby sister. Only a half-sister, she had been born when he was eleven, and he lived with his mother then. He had played with the baby like a doll, a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, talking doll. He carried her everywhere and when she could walk, she tagged behind him, always at his heel making the other boys laugh. She had some third sense and seemed to know him unlike others, as if they had met before in a parallel universe.
She would miss him. She would care. But he could no longer protect her. Besides, she had strength beyond his. She seemed far older than he in wisdom and understanding. She could fend for herself. He had.
He visualized the shelter he had constructed in the woods in Canada and how the
park police had destroyed it. He recalled the vistas he had seen on the Appalachian Trail and when he turned another way, the oozing sore of mountain top removal. He ached for the pike in Warner Lagoon who suffocated because of the growth of reed canary grasses that steal all the oxygen. This tasted like truth. He curled up on his side across the front seat, spread out the blanket to cover his long frame, wedged the pillow over the padded door handle, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Post has her BA in Corrections, her MA in Psychology and a JD, the first and last from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the middle from San Jose State College (when it was) in San Jose, CA. After law school, she practiced family law for twenty years representing battered women and abused children and then started work as an international human rights lawyer. She has lived in seven countries and worked in fourteen primarily on gender-based violence issues. Her work has been published in law review and academic journals, articles in various media, and newspaper columns in five countries. Three of her five published fiction stories have won awards.
Bernard M. Cox Anthills Like the moment When you’re washing dishes, And you turn to grab your mother’s good china, Which was her mother’s before her and her mother’s — An object reminder of generational love — Thinking you’re being a good citizen, Doing your chores, But the plate is slippery, and You drop it. It hits the edge of the counter And freezes for an instant In the air, And you think You can catch it, But it spins out of reach And shatters on the tile. Or it’s like Watching kids grab fireflies And smash them on the ground Just to watch the residue Glow. You feel Sick for it, Because you showed them fireflies And you told them how fireflies kept you company When you ran away from home. And you yell at the kids, But a small flash in your mind,
You in your Sunday Hush Puppies Squashing an ant hill And watching little red bodies Running around, screaming Bastard! And you laughed, until your dad came up beside you And told you that if people were to die the world still would be And if ants were to die then all life would cease But really it’s not like that at all; It’s really like this. The words rapid from the recesses of my mind, Past the floodgates of better judgment, Into the mouth of stupidity, and over My liberal lips. They stumbled out. At first a joke between friends, And then a bloody horror. And even after your forgiveness I feel sandbags hanging off butcher hooks piercing my heart Tearing and swinging in asynchronous rhythm with each step — Dragging me down; Crushing my breath. How could I do this To you? And no matter how hard I rap my chest The bags don’t fall. I am on my knees Still picking up pieces And rebuilding anthills.
Bernard M. Cox Before He Left Us, He Bought a Bicycle It was true he needed a form of escape It was true he needed to lose some weight He could pedal down the block Ringing his bell all the way Ringing and waving To neighbors To strangers To bus stop waiters His ringing bell The clackclack of his pedals The whirwhir of his chain The snicksnick of his gears Just how far would a bicycle carry you Over the river Through the woods Far enough to have gone Far enough to have gone Far enough
Bernard M. Cox is a graduate of Roosevelt University’s MFA Creative Writing program and Assistant Artistic Director at The Tamale Hut Café Reading Series in North Riverside, IL — thcreadingseries.wordpress.com. His work has appeared in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Red Lightbulbs, Blood and Lullabies, A cappella Zoo and is forthcoming in Collective Fallout. His story "The Memory of Salt Shaker" was nominated by Up the Staircase Quarterly for the Million Writers Award.
Davy Carren Semblables I was supposed to be meeting up with my father at a hotel bar. I hadn’t seen him in five or six years. The grammatical components of our reuniting were laying waste to the proper nouns of my sensibilities. I knew a thing or two about hotels. All seemed promising. Best of luck to me. Best of luck to me. Best of luck to me. That’s what I was singing. Maybe it was humming. That could be said of it. If I changed my tune it was only to quarter it right back. Privacy was of the utmost importance. The bales of hay were stacked. The novels were all pulped. Dabbling in the bright lights, halving the haves from the have-nots, and steaming broccoli-- these things kept me preoccupied most nights. The days scanned like something out of Proust. A few stray nickels rolled my way. Hoagy Carmichael was singing Am I Blue just for me. The hotel was opened. The bar was in the middle. A fountain waterfalled beer-foam yellow behind the bottles behind the bar. I found my father sitting on a stool. He had a toadstool hat. His mustache was gold. I might have mistaken him for a rocket ship. But I did not. Sadly, it was only my father. He did not smile when I sat down next to him. He did not know me. He did not look my way. “Til now I was nothing but beholden. I’m in love with what you say not what you do,” he was singing. “Marks on the apple core are scoring, what’s left of ballyhoo? What shall I do?” It was a catchy song. It was like playing catch. ‘I am quite a catch,’ I thought. ‘What a resemblance.’ Banished eardrums caught wind of our meeting. Bullhorns tarried, too late for the fray. We were of no use to ourselves. My father was brash. He hammered the glass. “Do not speak my piece, dear god! Do not!” It was a marvelous sound. Something sprinkled on my sleeve. It was a few dashes of Angostura bitters. My father was contemplating and contemptuous. He declared his person off limits to pedestrians. “Orson Welles does not live here!” my father boomed. I didn’t argue the point. I thought it to be circumstantial at best. The proof was not exactly in the matter’s gristle. Decisions were made. I left for a dental appointment. On the way out a garden appeared. I punctured my lung on the air of cucumbers. Slide stepping helped. I moved with resilience and a patterned determination. Branded to hold water, I lugged a smug
gentility to the door. My voice was grappling with the gripes of ulterior-motive persecutors. Being verbed was all that became of it. My motions chimed towards deliberate. The scene was cased. It was only afterwards that I victimized myself in regards to my father. It was isolation and chili dogs that did it. Grouping became necessary to mix the fended off remains. If a poor country goes here then a rich country cannot. Trembling is the latest fad. Simpering, though, on the same hand, has gone out of style. Too bad about father. He played it cool. He missed out on a lot of attention by talking to himself. Somehow a toothbrush was lost in the fray. Waltzes made time with the horoscope’s predictions, and my toes defrosted under the warm glow of a heat lamp. The day blazes with curse words. A downdraft vaporized most of my pillowcase mentality. It was something I’d been lavishing in for too long anyway. There are a still a few pegs and dowels to insert in the porcupine poles, for supportive and climbing purposes only, of course. I am seeing about the prolific spending habits of nuns on tropical cruises. I look forward to pontificating about my results, which should yield me a pleasant return. I might also avouch that nothing cures the contusions of life’s hindrances like a bath in watermelon juice, though there are solar systems of doubt still to contend with. Catchalls will come in handy. Teeth bared, this knuckled thing rests with a lucid temperance on my shoes’ vamp. Maybe its warty demeanor is stalling, perhaps awaiting the plurals of pearly opportunity to wash its way, but my notions and Peckinpahs about such things are spooning restlessly. I have patience too. It seems a mistake to trust in this beast’s willpower to overtake my stride. Band-Aids are for the resourceful and insanely competent. Shelter calls me by name. Father borrowed isosceles triangles from the larger metropolitan areas of the planet. A breech in good intentions was found beneath the silver slide of his aluminum-coin dollars. I minted them in good faith, but nobody’s going to preach semantics to pie-in-the-sky dwellers. My species is hunted by the lustful windgun-toting breezeshooters of the world. I will not topple easily. Father regrets regretting. Father dines on peacock squirrel and Striped Rocket Frog legs. Father spends his time with carefree abandon. Father will wipe his lips with the oil-stained indifference of tissue-paper souls. Even I tramp around in the boon of rising temperatures at night. One cannot always resist the temptation to be imprudent. Wearing knives in one’s bootstrap is unsettling to some. I find it invigorating. Can I become clean without washing? Well, there are chimpanzees wrestling in the guts of capitalistic urgency, and the upended are uninsured as far as nightmares go. I will try only for minor appeal.
Father laughs at the squandered moments of his life. We once had a drink together. It was in a hotel bar I believe. Nobody wrote a song about it or anything. A strict disciplinarian scoffs at the mild unctuous muttering of children. I am making matters relevant. I see father as a stooped over figure. He is in tire-changing mode; and this happening while the rich kids have it made. I cried. It was on a glass-colored day. Not too hot. Not too warm. I made myself feel bad and then reflected on why I was essentially forcing this moribund state upon myself. The tears didn’t last long. They rarely do, if they come at all. Grueling hours stayed. Mass hysteria was quelled by pundits with gravy mouths. I splashed bitters in my Diet Rite soda. Nobody is left to place the blame on. My father has not wept recently. Verily, as these fundamental-bound things tend to go, hunting for spare tires will come down to mini decks of cards, salad dressing packets, over-the-hill jack rabbits, eavesdropping mailmen, cobless corn, plastic teeth, chicken feed, and all the empty space filling up the grand canyon. I found a jealousy-binding tie down at the rail yard. It made rehabilitation possible. It made me think. I became given over to reconsideration, to restructuring my ability to meet and be met by those who once had me down. My thumb grew sore with oppression. “Blip the bleep!” screams my father from his couch-cushioned lair. “Derail communists from my track! Do not believe in fences that grow beneath the soil!” I ignore what he says but not what he does. Most of the masses cut their doves from electricity. Nobody flatters the circuit breakers. I never show recalcitrance with gestures. Emphatic glances are enough. Ever since meeting my father at the hotel bar I have had the phrase, “You can’t go home again,” stuck in my head. Wintered in the language of coffin makers, I relocate to the manumission of been-there-donethat and pay no heed to radical indifference. “Leap to huger endeavors,” I keep telling myself. But I stay strained with the closed cases of minor events. I now believe that within a gender-specific time frame the blander among us will intersect their lives with the soon to be rising tides of scum. There is no room for perfection here. I look around and see that postage stamps have become passé. Perhaps I can barter my pretensions for food. Do not worry about my father. He has gone to sleep with the lights on again. Morning will not rush to find him.
Davy Carren was born in barn, raised in a circus, and currently resides at the top of a good-sized hill in San Francisco, California.
Michael O’Brien Life After Christmas Eden, the grail of nostalgia where everything my father did seemed holy and important: the checkbook oracles, the supermarket pilgrimage. I could not see the hammer hidden within the bell. A broken toy that cannot be repaired, a crucible, an apple, a casualness— the obvious spoken like a secret. Now it seems God only exists as a book shelved between the weather and the lottery, quoting the atmosphere among the almanacs, while Newton's Third Law of Karma reincarnates in the margin of adolescence. I became convinced, comfortable, with the certainty of life after Christmas. From the gold mine death of dreams, I awoke to the butter eyes of spring. I walked once more in the garden, thinking of Whitman, and now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. M. N. O'Brien received his B.A. from Roanoke College, where his work was published in On Concept's Edge and received the Charles C. Wise Poetry Award. His work was most recently published in SOFTBLOW and Counterexample Poetics. He currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky. He does not like writing about himself in the third person.
Kina Viola When She Chose to Forget The day they wheeled Beatrice into the emergency room on a stretcher was the day she chose to forget. That day, she decided to begin forgetting her life. They had banged on the door of her old, one-story brick cottage, scratched at the paint, broken the hinges and lunged full-throttle through the sun room where the mid-morning dripped its beams through the windows like honey. The advertisement said ten-second emergency response time, and yet at this particular instance, this particular Monday in April, she knew it had taken them exactly twenty-eight before they arrived to pry her flattened body (911-button necklace in hand) off of the ivory-colored linoleum kitchen tiles. Beatrice had counted, neck straining as she watched the glowing green digital clock on the DVD box under her television. She had fallen while getting a glass of milk, heard the sounds of her orthopedic shoes squeak against the hard floor before her body weight dragged her downwards, and this, she figured, was time. Twentyeight seconds of emergency response time, and six hours waiting for a doctor was ample time to decide if it was her turn to begin the forgetting. She absorbed the room, noticed how all the walls were blank, wherever she was wheeled to. White, like the hospital bed she was finally placed into. At first it seemed just clean, but slowly, subtly, an aftertaste of metal emerged, smelling like blood. Beatrice knew this; that metal tastes and smells like blood. She knew, and she could have told the nurses, too. But she chose to forget. As days passed, she talked to the nurses about little things, every-day instances. Things where it didn’t matter whether one remembered or forgot. She knew what was for dessert (chocolate pudding), or what the weather would be like tomorrow (overcast and 66ºF), but decided to just make conversation. She chose to—to prove she could. To prove that what could be lost could be lost, and to prove that a Saturday afternoon meant chocolate pudding. The nurses always smiled as they fluffed the pillows. Sometimes, when the nurses asked her things, she decided to forget. Beatrice pretended that she couldn’t remember the street name where her little cottage lay nestled between rosebushes and elm trees. She would joke, even shrug her shoulders as if it were a game, grin toothily. She pretended that she was younger than she really was, and chose to forget what her favorite song used to be—she had one for every decade.
When the nurses asked about her life, she decided to tell them that she just couldn’t remember. Beatrice let go of something beautiful every minute of every day—let each memory dissipate into the heavy hospital air, to waft, perhaps saturate into white wallpaper. She decided to forget her 10th grade English students where the kids all called her “Ms. B.,” and once brought a bouquet of yellow daffodils to her house in Spring when she had the flu. There was once a cat that had come to her front door—it was winter—she had carried him inside, of course, but now decided to forget the softness of fur, what paw prints looked like on the countertop. She decided to forget the man who she forgot was her husband (she chose to, of course), and the roughness of his brown beard stubble; the way he wore knit cardigans over button-up dress shirts and ties. She forgot about wedding rings, and wedding nights, and chose to never remember the way hands feel riding the ridges along another person’s spine (like they’re cradled by tiny ocean waves). She forgot the way a voice sounded when it told someone “I love you,” and finally, painfully, decided to forget the word “love.” She let the word float from her so that someone else could catch it. When she talked, she talked about nothing—as if bits and pieces of words dissolved in her mouth like a lozenge at the end of its life. Beatrice forgot about sex, the way her body used to move, dance, and let go of the sensation of a whisper—forgot what it felt like as it whirlpooled in and around an earlobe. She talked about nothing. They transported her to a nursing home and the doctors spoke in hushed tones and worried and worried, but Beatrice forgot worry, too. Beatrice remembered her name, but decided to forget what it meant. She scourged the corners of her mind, overturning memories of cousins, and swing sets and stolen kisses in June to Johnny who lived down the road back in Ohio. She knew about the sky, how it changed colors, but chose to forget an incredibly vibrant pink and orange sunrise that painted itself across the horizon on the specific day she moved to a quiet, suburban New York. She smiled at the nurses and read books, deciding to forget why and how letters made a story—the newspaper was a jigsaw puzzle. The nurses once gave Beatrice a pencil and a piece of paper, but she remembered how her hands looked (the blue and budging veins that rippled under paper-thin skin) and how they shook. And so, she chose to forget how to hold a pencil—forgot the feeling of rubbing graphite against paper, forgot why it felt like dancing to draw a landscape on a sheet of plain white. The day a handsome, tall, young man dressed in grey put his hand on her cheek was the day she chose to forget her son, and the day she began to disappear. Beatrice watched a man cradle a child in his
arms, and chose to forget that blue eyes ran in her family. She touched the soft hand of a baby who was not her only grandson, and when she retracted her arm, Beatrice watched her left hand disappear. It was subtle, of course, but was gone. She learned to forget the hand. And when she forgot the hand, and also chose to forget that she loved the way the words of T.S. Eliot tasted on a rippling tongue, a leg went too, into nothingness. They would sparkle, a bit, like the ocean in Greece she saw on her honeymoon that she decided she would not remember. Skin and muscle and bone and fluid: all fading, all simultaneously disintegrating, vanishing as if crumbling rubble. Beatrice could see through her thighs and her stomach, never said goodbye. The nurses came and smiled with sad eyes, but she had long since forgotten their names. She chose to forget what day it was, along with forgetting the feeling of waking up to a sunny Spring morning. A man and a woman would come in sometimes with tears in their eyes, but Beatrice chose to forget what tears were, and whether or not they hurt to shed. Each day she watched her body shimmer and fade like the light in the room did when the stars came out. Until she was nothing. The day Beatrice disappeared was the day she became ashes. It was the day Henry and Abigail held their son, Eliot, in their arms, tucked him tightly to their hearts and cried for all that could be forgotten. It was the day that the sun broke through the overcast sky and warmed the Earth to a balmy 70º, and turned everything bright. The day Beatrice disappeared was also the day that Henry remembered daffodils. He used to grow them in the spring with his father, weeding the garden and cradling handfuls of soil in little five-year-old palms. The day he watched them put his mother’s ashes in a box and walked away was the day he remembered how to spread his fingers and knead his hands into fresh dirt, remembered why mixing the earth and planting the bulbs felt like dancing.
Kina is an undergraduate at Hamilton College pursuing a B.A. in Creative Writing. She is a full-time student, part-time barista and caffeine enthusiast with an undying love for poetry and words. She is originally from White Plains, New York. Her work has appeared in Welter.
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