Oxford Magazine: Lonesome Harvests, Issue 35: Fall 2015

Oxford Magazine Issue 35 • Fall 2015

Lonesome Harvests

1

Featuring the winners of the inaugural Golden Ox Award for Prose and Poetry

Dear Readers, It has been a warm fall here in Ohio. The pleasant weather of our late harvest has meant the fruits of long, hard labor have exceeded expectations in a year we found ourselves worrying. Quite frankly, we’re stunned. The challenges of the planting season, the wet, cool temperatures of June, have meant that even while the harvest hasn’t been as bountiful as in years past, we’ve found ourselves surviving, and even thriving, here at its close. Two weeks ago, the tomatoes were ripped from the ground, withered by a frost that tricked us into believing we must close up our houses. We turned to the power of the written word to fill the table our own gardens had left wanting, and in solidarity with each other we have thrown open our windows and doors again. And today we celebrate a fine feast under peaceful, even if at times lonely, skies.

Has this harvest been lonesome? We’re afraid it has been—at times terribly so. But today we offer this brief missive as thanks-giving for what we’ve dug bare-handed from the earth, even if that digging has broken our fingernails. Because here in the end-that-is-not-an-end we find, somewhat miraculously, a community, a feast we can offer one another.

This issue tells stories of such lonesome harvests, and the tables we gather at once we return from our muddy fields.

It also presents the winners of the inaugural Golden Ox Award for Prose and Poetry, Geramee Hensley and Kailash Srinivasan. We find ourselves swept up in the kinetic movement of Srinivasan’s prose in “Half Smile,” with its single long paragraph, while Hensley’s “Quiet,” true to its title, allows us much needed pause in our ever cacophonous world. Like these works, harvests too are charged with moments of such desperate, frenetic energy and such deep, exhausted quiet. We welcome them, and the work of the rest of the writers in this issue, to our table.

All the best, Evan Fackler & Jess Marshall Editors-in-Chief, Oxford Magazine

2

Masthead Managing Editor Joe Squance Editors-in-Chief Evan Fackler Jess Marshall Prose Editor Andrew Marlowe Bergman Poetry Editor Ian Schoultz Creative Nonfiction Editor Joshua B. Jones Events Coordinator Michelle Christensen Staff Readers Tammy Atha Justin Chandler Chris Cox Courtney Kalmbach Mosisah Mavity Sammani Perrera Isaac Pickell Carly Plank Katy Shay Tatiana Silvas Darren Thompson

3

Table of Contents Cover Art: The Beauty of Indecisions by Ernest Williamson III Table of Contents.......................................................................................................4 Donald McMann........................................................................................................6 Donald McMann........................................................................................................8 Henry and Fritz Were Not Lovers 6 Gay Baines...............................................................................................................15 Gay Baines ..............................................................................................................15 The Palestinian Orange 15 Thomas Gillaspy......................................................................................................16 Thomas Gillaspy .....................................................................................................16 Haze 16 Hillary Sideris..........................................................................................................17 Hillary Sideris .........................................................................................................17 Mann 17 Joseph Pritchard......................................................................................................18 Joseph Pritchard .....................................................................................................18 Brainwashed 18 Riddle......................................................................................................................19 Zachary Riddle ........................................................................................................20 The Last Ghost 19 Ernest Williamson III ..............................................................................................21 Ernest Williamson III...............................................................................................21 Mirage of the Old Woman 21 Susan Mikiel............................................................................................................22 Susan Mikiel ...........................................................................................................23 January Fourteen 22 Geramee Hensley.....................................................................................................32 Geramee Hensley ....................................................................................................32 Quiet 32 A.S. Coomer.............................................................................................................33 A.S. Coomer ............................................................................................................33 Polly Jean 33 Zachary Zachary Riddle...........................................................................................42 4

Zachary Riddle ........................................................................................................42 Dyatlov 42 Thomas Gillaspy .....................................................................................................43 Thomas Gillaspy......................................................................................................43 Studies 43 Ned Carter Miles......................................................................................................44 Ned Carter Miles .....................................................................................................44 Inalik 44 Hillary Sideris..........................................................................................................54 Hillary Sideris .........................................................................................................54 Juggler 54 Thomas Gillaspy......................................................................................................55 Thomas Gillaspy .....................................................................................................55 Dreaming of Sante Fe 55 Kailash Srinivasan...................................................................................................56 Kailash Srinivasan ..................................................................................................57 Half Smile 56 Ernest Williamson III ..............................................................................................62 Ernest Williamson III...............................................................................................62 Engendering Gender 62 Allen M. Price...........................................................................................................63 Allen M. Price ..........................................................................................................64 For Closure 63 Wulf Losee...............................................................................................................75 Wulf Losee...............................................................................................................75 Still Life with Meyer Lemons 75 Contributor Bios......................................................................................................76 Contributor Bios......................................................................................................77 Golden Ox Award Guidelines………………………………………………..……………………77

5

Donald McMann Donald McMann

Henry and Fritz Were Not Lovers

Jenny and Liam needed a new car. When his dad gave him the Honda on Liam’s sixteenth birthday, the car and Liam were the same age. Liam was now twenty-three. A good age for a young man, a bad age for a car.

“It’s the transmission,” their mechanic, Fidel, had said, “and even if I put a rebuilt in, it will still cost more than the car’s worth. You need a new car, or at least a newer car. Maybe consider importing from Cuba.”

“Funny, Fidel.”

Jenny and Liam were shocked at the bad news. As a couple, it was the only car they’d known. Really known. It was the car they took on their first date. They made love for the first time in that car, and it taught them the true dimensions of the word subcompact.

“Forget hatchback,” Liam had said after. “How ’bout hunchback?”

(By the way: we’re not talking about their having had sex on their first date. No, not at all. They actually managed to hold off until their second. They had some selfcontrol, after all.)

The little blue Honda was the car that had carried all their things when they moved in together. Jenny learned to shift gears in that car. The Honda was almost like a child, or better yet, a beloved pet. An old dog, hard to get moving. Definitely slow and creaky. But familiar. Loyal. All its eccentricities known and certainly forgiven—well, mostly forgiven (there was that time when he’d stalled on the bridge during rush hour). They even named it: Henry. Henry Honda. (They’d considered Jane, but the car was too cute for that.) But reality is reality. If Fidel said Henry must be put down, then it must be so. It was, after all, an argument against interest. Fidel could have kept repairing Henry and presenting the bills.

Jenny and Liam called a local charity that would tow old cars for free and issue a tax receipt for Henry’s value as scrap. It seemed like the thing to do—sort of like organ donation. Liam and Jenny were silent as they removed the fasteners from the 6

Donald McMann license plate. They emptied the car. Henry’s ice scraper. His first-aid kit. Half a jug of window-washing fluid. A sandwich. A sandwich? Yes. The very one Liam had lost after that party the previous August. (“Don’t puncture that wrapper. Whatever you do, don’t puncture that wrapper. Oh, God. Why did you do that?”) Jenny found her missing earring—the pearl one with the two little diamonds. (“Where is its mate? Did I throw that out?”) They left his registration in the glovebox in case that was necessary.

The tow truck was scheduled for nine on Thursday morning. On Wednesday night, Liam said, “Shouldn’t we just get him repaired? It’s cheaper to pay a few hundred for a secondhand transmission than it is to buy a new car.”

She looked at him. “It’s time.”

“There was a line in Twelve Angry Men. Juror Number Eight said, ‘It’s not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.’”

“We’ve talked,” said Jenny. “We know Fidel is right. We can’t just keep up the repairs. It’s not even fair to Henry. It’s not as though he’s going to be executed or something. Or euthanized. He can’t die. He’s a car. An old car. A broken car.”

“No. No execution. Instead,” he paused, “instead, they’ll crush him.”

They were silent. *** It was a week after the man came for Henry. Jenny and Liam sat at a table in front of a bakery in Old Strathcona. They each had a warm croissant, a small fruit cup, and a cappuccino. It was one of their rituals. It was togetherness.

“You know,” said Liam. “This week hasn’t been too bad—I mean, this week without a car hasn’t been too bad. I think I could adapt. The bus is good. Taxis in a pinch. And I’ve checked out that car-sharing service I told you about. It’s cheap. It’s convenient. We could save a pile of money by just not having a car. Do our bit for the environment at the same time. What do you think? Are we on to something here?

Maybe poor old Henry’s sacrifice could turn out to be a meaningful gesture for the planet.”

7

Donald McMann Jenny said nothing; instead, she reached for her bag and, as Liam watched with an expression of surprise mingled with horror, produced several brochures for new cars. One was a Honda (Henry II?). Another featured Ford Mustangs. (“It’s about time a girl had some fun.”) Another extolled the virtues of Lexus. (“A practical choice,” said Jenny, “if not a very exciting one.”)

“But this is the one.” She concealed its cover, and she looked at Liam, eyes burning into him. (Who is this woman? Why are we choosing a car we have no money to buy?)

Jenny said nothing; instead, with the flourish of a magician about to produce a missing dove from the ear of an astonished audience member, she slapped down a brochure that featured the Chrysler 300. 300 C. “Big. Bold. Beautiful. Bad. Very bad.”

On the last point, Liam could agree.

“Finally, some class, Liam. No more schlepping around in the vehicular equivalent of a thrift-shop polyester cardigan. It’s time for you and I to step out, baby.”

“That’s you and me.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“You’re kidding. Right? I mean it’s huge. Opulent. We’d have to buy the optional oil refinery. It’s a symbol, a symbol of everything that’s wrong with our consumer culture.”

“It has cylinder deactivation. You’re going down the highway—cruising, you know—and you don’t need the whole engine to keep you going, so half of it turns off.

Suddenly you’re running on three cylinders. It’s an economy car. Just like Henry.

Better—Henry always ran on four. It not only has heated and cooled seats, it has a heated steering wheel. Got that? A. Heated. Steering. Wheel.”

“Look. Even if I thought this was a great idea, we can’t afford a car like that.

Remember student debt? Forget morality. Forget the environment. Forget what our friends might say. We can’t afford it.”

8

Donald McMann “No. Fifty-six thousand. Payments over eighty-four months. One ninety-nine biweekly. Perfectly doable. V6. Trimmed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. People will look at us when we pull into Save-On-Foods.”

“But we won’t be pulling into Save-On-Foods or any other grocery store. We won’t be eating. By the time we pay the car payments, the insurance premiums, and the fuel costs, we won’t be able to afford food. We’ll have to gnaw on the leather seats.”

“Did I mention that it has all-wheel drive?”

“We can’t afford it! And we shouldn’t even want to.”

“I have two words for you: ‘Yes, we can’ and ‘Uber.’”

“That’s four words.”

“Fine. Two thoughts then.”

“They hardly qualify as thoughts. You seriously want to work as a gray-market cab driver so you can drive a car that exists counter to all our values?”

“Liam, honey. Listen. Listen, Liam. I want a nice car. It’s true. So kill me. I’m not ashamed. But I also want to fight the taxi cartel. In some places, taxi licenses cost a hundred thousand dollars. What’s fair about that? I won’t drive full-time. I’ll take the Chrysler—I’ll call him Fritz, of course—in and out of the business as it suits my schedule, and pay off the loan years ahead of time. We need a car. A nice car.

Sure, we could by another tiny Asian toy, but it wouldn’t be a 300 C. We have to think outside the econo-box. Honey?” *** They don’t have car salesmen anymore. They have sales consultants.

Sometimes sales associates. And some of these professionals, such as Brandy, are women. Amazing. In spite of himself, Liam liked Brandy. (Not her real name, but better, she thought, than Mary-Agnes—too gentle. Far too Catholic. Green, even. You don’t by a 300 C from some Earth mother.) Brandy had a master’s degree in anthropology and a teaching certificate that qualified her for kindergarten through grade six if she could ever get a contract. Sure, maybe she lacked an MFA in creative writing, but still she was perfectly equipped to sell cars. When Jenny and Liam 9

Donald McMann signed the sales agreement for the Inferno Red Crystal Pearlcoat Chrysler 300 C, Platinum edition, Brandy flushed just a little. Liam liked that. Could she be as embarrassed as he? *** The deal was done. The car was prepped. Brandy provided a tutorial on the navigation system, the entertainment system, the collision avoidance system. Liam asked if there was a weapons system. Brandy smiled. Jenny glared. He worried about the possibility of a final exam, the results of which might determine whether either of them would be permitted to actually drive the car. (A relief. No exam.)

Jenny let Liam drive home from the dealership. He knew he was being played, but still. He had to admit that the car was winning him over. It sounded great. It was easy to drive. It was furnished far better than their apartment.

Liam pulled out of the dealer’s drive carefully and started up the avenue— taking the long way home. Suddenly, there was a flash of blue as a small car cut in front and then, just as quickly, changed lanes two more times and disappeared.

“Did you see that?”

“Yeah. What an asshole. Can’t believe driving like…”

“No, but did you see it?”

“Of course I saw it. We nearly hit it.”

“No. The car. I swear it was Henry. Same blue color. Missing right rear wheel cover. It was Henry.”

“Dear Liam. They took Henry more than two weeks ago. He’s gone. Crushed.

Henry is the thickness of your credit card. Henry’s flat. You could use him for a spatula. There’s no more Henry, Liam. It’s Fritz now. Fritz.” *** It was a hot night. Jenny had had some restless sleep, but now, somewhere near three, she emerged from a frustrating dream about a missing kitten. As she became more aware, she realized that Liam was not in bed. She lifted herself up, supported her body on her elbows, and looked around. She spotted him at the

10

Donald McMann window. It was open, and there was a breeze blowing the white sheers as they billowed around his naked body.

“Those curtains make you look like a bride, but you need a slip. I’ll…”

“Shhh. He’s out there.”

“Who’s out there?”

She got off the bed and went to the window. At first she saw nothing, but then she saw it parked across the street just outside the beam of a streetlamp. It was a small car with its parking lights on. Listening carefully she could just hear the sound of its engine idling.

“It’s Henry. Henry. He’s after us.”

“Listen to yourself,” she whispered. “You have two university degrees. You’re within a year of having your PhD. And you’re trying to tell me that a car is stalking you? An old car with a bad transmission. What’d it do? Repair itself? Jeez, Liam.

Think of all the money we wasted on Fidel when Henry could have fixed himself each time he broke down. Pull yourself together. Christ. Now come back to bed.” *** “You look dreadful. You have dark circles under your eyes. You’re pale. You’re exhausted. You’ve got to get some sleep, Liam,” Jenny said to him as he sat across from her at the small round table in their kitchen. “You can’t keep thinking that old car is driving around haunting you.”

“Henry. Not some old car, Henry. And he is. He was there when we picked up the new car.”

“Fritz.”

“OK. Fritz.” Henry was there that night out in front of the apartment. I saw him at school one afternoon. At the mall last weekend. I haven’t told you every time I’ve seen him, but it must be more than half a dozen. I mean, he’s everywhere. He won’t forgive us for giving up on him. For committing him to be—crushed.”

“This is starting to get scary.”

“I know. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

11

Donald McMann “No. you’re starting to get scary. It’s coincidence. Give it up. That old car is gone.” *** Liam gave up. Several weeks went by. He spotted Henry in an alley near the grocery store. He saw him on campus, parked right next to a Honda Accord.

Whenever he spotted Henry, Liam kept it to himself. Meanwhile, Jenny had obtained information from Uber and was trying to find an insurance company that would cover her if she sometimes drove people for money. They were still able to eat. They began getting on a little better. Then it happened.

“God damn it, Liam. How can people be so stupid? There ought to be laws. We need to get tough on crime. Mandatory minimum sentences—that’s what we need. I just—” “Hold on. What’s wrong? Calm down and tell me.”

“Follow me.”

Liam followed Jenny out to where Fritz was parked. She stood by the right rear corner and pointed. Her face was red, easily as red as Fritz. She shook slightly.

At first he couldn’t see anything, but then he spotted it. It was a scuff mark where a vehicle entering—or possibly leaving—an adjacent parking stall had rubbed up against Fritz. He crouched down to inspect the damage.

“Don’t worry. This will buff out. There isn’t even a dent. Whoever did this just gave Fritz a wee kiss.”

He looked again and then scraped a little of the paint off with his fingernail.

Blue paint. The same blue as Henry’s paint.

“It’ll be fine.” *** It was ridiculously simple. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier? Call the people to whom they’d donated Henry and make sure he was really gone, destroyed. OK, not that simple. He didn’t want Jenny to know he was doing this, and she’d filed away the tax receipt. Somewhere. He couldn’t remember the name of the organization, though he knew it had something to do with human organs. Liver? Heart? Lungs?

12

Donald McMann Spleen? He was getting cranky. This just pisses me off, he thought. And then it came to him: Kidneys! When he reached the kidney organization, they referred him to a scrap dealer. It was on their phone line that he waited on hold, listening to an allElvis playlist, while the company’s representative checked the records to determine Henry’s fate. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Finally, nearing the end of “Love Me Tender, Love Me True,” the man’s voice came back on the line.

“Stolen.”

“What? Stolen?”

“Yeah. Disappeared from our lot the night it was brought in. Don’t worry, though. You still get the receipt. Insurance. Odd, though. There were much better cars here than that one. Yours ran, but that transmission. Last legs. You know?”

“Yeah. Last legs.” *** Jenny answered the phone at her office.

“You OK?” “Of course. Why?” “You weren’t in a car accident or anything?”

“No.” “Fritz wasn’t stolen?”

“Liam, are you nuts? I’m fine. No accident. And no, the car hasn’t been stolen.

What are you on about?”

“Sorry. There was this thing on the news site. Late-model red sedan. I just worried.”

“Ah. That’s sweet. But, honey, you’d better lighten up a little. There are a lot of red cars out there. You can’t panic every time one is involved in a collision. Promise?”

“Promise.”

He opened the news site and reread the story.

EDMONTON, June 17. Just after today’s morning rush, there was a bizarre accident on the city’s west side near 170 Street and 81 Avenue. A red late13

Donald McMann model Chrysler sedan was rear-ended by a blue Honda that witnesses say appeared to deliberately cause the collision.

“It was like this guy in the Honda was trying to smash the Chrysler,” said witness Danny Motiuk. “He seemed to be chasing it, and then, man, he just rammed it. Never guessed a little car like that could do so much damage.

And then this pickup—I guess he wasn’t, like, paying attention—just ran into the back of the Honda and just crushed it. I mean it was, like, crushed between the Chrysler and the pickup. Like sandwich filling. You know?”

Police confirm that the Honda was stolen. The driver of the Chrysler was taken to hospital for observation. The truck driver was uninjured. Charges against him are pending.

The driver of the Honda appeared to have fled on foot, but witnesses didn’t recall having seen anyone exit the car following the crash. A check with local hospitals turned up no sign of the driver. Police are asking for information from anyone having seen the person.

By four-thirty this afternoon, the road was open again following the police investigation.

Liam called Jenny again.

“He’s gone,” he told her.

“Who?” “Henry. He’s crushed. He’s gone. It’s confirmed.”

“I don’t know how you got here, but welcome back, honey. Welcome back.”

14

Gay Baines Gay Baines

The Palestinian Orange One day a friend brought an orange to lunch and said This is a Palestinian orange and my Evil Twin Skippy said “Does it have a travel visa?” (Other people have brains. I have my Evil Twin, Skippy) and she, overseriously, said Of course not. She let me hold it (“As if it were a puppy”) and it felt the same as a California orange, even had the usual California scent, but it was slightly oval, rather than ball-shaped, and I said Where do you grocery shop? Beirut?

And she said No, at a Tops in Tonawanda, and Skippy said, “Ah, yes, Tonawanda in the desert of Niagara.” She said No! and then laughed and said You’re joking, and Skippy said, “I’ve never been more serious in my life.” Oh, shut up, Skippy! That ended the conversation

15

Thomas Gillaspy Thomas Gillaspy

Haze

16

Hillary Sideris Hillary Sideris

Mann Hirsute primate, opposably thumbed, descendant of a fish.

Although omnivorous, I eat raw beef and run for miles between play dates. Long story short, I’m here for fun while being divorced, when not rereading Goodnight Moon to a blond child whose mother says she’s mine.

17

Joseph Pritchard Joseph Pritchard

Brainwashed It Is because I sat that I know this brainwash this Pejorative need not be a drain-plug need be But a step a sensation a whispered-air for It Becomes a creek-stone when you feel the shower when The stream becomes a stillness becomes A bath the deepest pool for It To delve in two & soak its cloth & realize it’s Not the cloth but the cleaning.

The cloth Needn’t be separate to wash.

It Finds itself clean like layered carbon Called a diamond.

The precious sparkle comes about Through time & pressure through sitting.

18

Zachary Riddle Riddle The Last Ghost When I arrived at your apartment, there were ten thousand people, each wearing a mask of your face over their face. A note was pinned on the lace shirt of the first you that came to me and it was illegible. I pull the mask off of the first you, and the first you cuts off one of its fingers. I pull the mask off of the second you, and the second you cuts out one of its eyes. When I pull the mask off of the third you, the third you slits open its brow. When I reach the four-hundredth and seventy-second you, the floor is littered with pieces of not-you and masks of not-you. Then, you come forth and take off your not-you mask and ask me to wear a blindfold. You ask me why I'm covered in blood. You ask me about the desert growing in my stomach.

You place a not-me mask on my face and take me to the cemetery. When we arrive, you tell me that all of the tombstones have sunk into the ground and the mausoleum is chained shut and covered in white-flower vines. All the trees are staring and wish we were naked. While I'm waiting for you to speak I pretend I'm inside the brig of an ocean liner passing by the only fjord we will see. But I don't see it. I never see it.

Later, the guard brings me a single piece of bread and salami and offers to tell me about the fjord. I say no, and ask him if I can have his eyes.

You say I'd like to see your ghost. There is a gargoyle perched atop the mausoleum whispering to the trees. It is cracked and dusty and bleeding. It is wearing a kind of mask that neither one of us has worn before. But there's a mask of not-me separating us, and the mask of not-you is in the back seat of your SUV staring awkwardly at the mask of not-me. You try to talk, but the not-me and not-you masks have fallen deeply in love. You sigh. Wormwood grows from your throat.

I ask you if you want to see my ghost. I open my mouth beneath my not-me mask and a memory of you crawls out. It is small and dressed in beach sand. Memory-you lunges off of the tip of my tongue, jumps out from the car window, and sits on the mausoleum. You ask me if we can take a photograph, but you forgot your camera at your apartment. The gargoyle doesn't want its picture taken, anyway. I take off of my not-me mask. A city grows around us. The moon shatters.

After years of only knowing only not-you and not-me we don't need masks anymore.

The masks have left the country and now live on a hillside in northern Europe. The fjords are in my lungs, and soil runs through my veins. Memory-you is a tattoo on the small of your mother's foot. The gargoyle is a picture of your father on the 19

Zachary Riddle nightstand next to the bed. The cemetery is the zipper on the back of your turquoise dress. Your eyes are photographs. You ask me to stay with you.

We are in your apartment. It is night, like it always has been. We are alone, like we always have been. The world is flooding. You tell me Ghosts don't exist, anymore. But, they do. They do.

20

Ernest Williamson III

Ernest Williamson III

Mirage of the Old Woman 21

Susan Mikiel Susan Mikiel January Fourteen

Looking behind me, I twisted my torso and pressed down on the tin canister that sat in the passenger seat as I backed up the car. A horrid pop song played on the radio. I don’t normally think the word “horrid”, but I was in mom mode, so my mind ran towards affectations in hopes that my son, Hazen, would never reach my level of Midwestern banal. The tin canister contained his ashes, and today was his 14th birthday.

I squabbled with him in my head. I may have been underestimating his taste in music, but I thought that he for sure wanted to listen to that horrid song. All fourteen-year-old kids must have been listening to that song, so of course he would want to, even if he knew that it lacked merit in the areas of composition and vocal execution. Hazen would probably be too cool to take mainstream pop seriously. He’d like some obscure 80s crap his father listened to, but still, he had to listen to that song on the radio in order to laugh about it with his friends, tease the girl he had a crush on who genuinely liked that horrid song. It was really, really important that he listen to that song. And if I didn’t let him listen to it, I was a mean, unreasonable“Dammit, I am the mother in this situation,” I thought. “You can sulk all you want, but we’re listening to NPR.” I resolutely turned on To the Point with Warren Olney. I was doing us both a favor. Even if neither one of us liked it. Besides, given the current state of his matter, I was immune to Hazen’s sulking. You can’t sulk any further than being a canister of ashes.

I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew I needed to get out. I felt that way often: cities, relationships, conversations. Even yoga. Sometimes I beat myself up for leaving scenarios, running away, and wished I could be one of those people who stuck with things, like a person who stays in one house and watches it appreciate in value with some hard work, or a person who falls in love with their childhood sweetheart, and is just as happy decades later as the day they met. I was that kid lying in the grass looking up at airplanes. Wanting to go somewhere other than where 22

Susan Mikiel I was. I spent my life looking at things from a distance, and part of it looking for things, but I didn’t know what. I thought it was a family and a home, but that didn’t turn out the way I decided it would. Since moving to Los Angeles from New York four years prior, I learned that I wouldn’t explode if I faced things, like feelings. Some days, even, I could just be.

One of my places in Los Angeles to “just be” was at a theater group’s cold reading series every Tuesday. Writers bring in 10 pages of a script they’re working on, and actors read them aloud without any rehearsal. The actual theater company is based in New York, and I used to sporadically attend the same series there. In Los Angeles, the night was my Cheers, and I was Norm. Hazen’s birthday fell on a Wednesday that year. So I did what I always do on a Tuesday, went to the theater. I almost stayed home to stare at the wall, but pushed myself through the waves of sluggish depression to go. There weren’t a lot of female parts that week. Usually when that was the case, I would end up reading a character role, a larger than-life person with an accent or quirk. They’re great parts. You’re in, you’re out, and have to jump in fully to do the role any justice. This Tuesday, however, was primarily brimming with male roles, and the occasional ingénue. So one of the guys running it asked me if I wanted to read Stage Directions—the “We’re outside a dark glass office building, she checks her watch” stuff in a script—I wanted to act, but reading stage directions beat sitting in silence. I’d get to read a lot of words, which is nice on quiet days when the only voice I hear is the one inside my head.

I sat in the very last row of the theater, next to an older writer I never really talked with before.

“Do you get nervous when you go up there and act?” he asked.

I thought about it, thought about what I felt. I didn’t really feel anything much at that moment. Except tired.

“No. Not really,” I said.

“I would think it’d be nerve wracking.”

“You forget about yourself and help out the person who’s saying the words.”

23

Susan Mikiel His earnest smile revealed a boyish gap between his teeth. He kindly continued the conversation. Yet as much as I was sick of the day’s silence, I didn’t want to think about using my words that evening. I was searching for somebody else’s. So I shrugged my head down with an apologetic smile.

I scoured the script. The smile disappeared. It was about a couple searching for their abducted son, whom they feared to be dead. I sighed. Not because the script hit close to home—my child wasn’t abducted, my child died of cancer—but because the death of a child is the world’s largest violin, and without the instrument, the piece would be pretty bland.

Personally, I could talk to a blind orphan quadriplegic who lives under a freeway and nine times out of ten he’d tell me, “But it isn’t like losing a child.” I could never verify the comparison, as I intended to keep my legs and never live under a bridge, God willing.

Although I understood that a deceased child is melodrama’s version of a horror film, exploring horrible feelings in a safe environment, I rolled my eyes as I glanced at the pages. I could just picture the actors emoting with a glint in their eyes, thrilled about the opportunity to take an emotional shit all over the stage. “What a cliché,” I thought, as I tossed the script on the floor.

The thing about reading stage directions is that it’s a thankless job. Everyone knows that. That’s why the group only applauds the person reading them. As my group settled in to read, I introduced myself. Everyone cheered wildly. Genuinely. I was taken aback by the love as a hundred clapping souls pushed away the boulder on my heart.

I read using my theater voice. I spoke from the diaphragm versus the chest, but I wasn’t all there. My voice was strong but my mind was chasing the words as I read them. It was fine overall, though. “I’m in control,” I thought, and lowered my voice half an octave to support the illusion. I read aloud that the father of the missing boy is at work. He’s in a meeting. His boss is droning in numbers about quarterly reports, as bosses tend to do. The father’s thoughts drift off. He is transported to his son’s last birthday party at Griffith Park. There are children and cupcakes. The stage 24

Susan Mikiel directions walk us closer in to the party. I see the words “balloons” and “Happy Birthday” for a very long time before I say them aloud. All of a sudden I’m me again.

And I’m the father. And I’m sad about our missing boy. And I so badly want to see the balloon again. And my son again. And it’s his birthday tomorrow. And what are the chances? I stop mid sentence. “Sorry guys, I can’t do this today,” I said, sounding like I had a grapefruit in my throat, and quickly exit stage right. Crying. What a cliché.

After a morning full of “Thank you for your kind words.” And “Yes, it’s his birthday.” And “Love you too”, via phone, Facebook, and text, I felt like I deserved a cup of fancy coffee. So after I backed up the car, I drove through the alley and turned left. I drive everywhere now, after strictly taking the bus, or walking, or riding my bike for my first four years in LA. The best part about driving through the alley vs. riding my bike is that the Mexican auto mechanics across the street, thinking I’m Mexican, catcall a little less when I’m in the car. The Armenian auto mechanics on my side of the street, thinking I’m Armenian, never catcall. Although one did try to sell me his 1995 Infiniti Q45, white with gold accents, declaring the car was perfect for me. For some reason that felt creepier than catcalling. After all, I kept visiting the Armenians to ask their thoughts on the Toyota Yaris.

I turned right on Rosalia, left on Fountain and parked across the street from the old KCET studios, which are now owned and operated by Scientologists, much like everything else in Los Feliz. Lucinda Williams’ “East Side of Town” was playing on the radio. I never heard it before, but it made me think of my boyfriend, who is Westside-centric, given the fact that it’s a few degrees cooler over there and he lives alone/doesn’t have three roommates like me. But the Eastside is far more interesting.

More vibrant. Maybe a little douchey-hipster with its precious art and food scene, everyone spending a fortune on screen-prints and sauerkraut, but, there is hope in creation.

As I walked, I felt Hazen. “Probably because his ashes are in your backpack,” I thought. Hazen’s remains, combined with my laptop, felt as heavy as when he was a baby strapped to my chest for the first time. We went to the Food Emporium, a 25

Susan Mikiel grocery store on the ground floor of Manhattan Plaza’s 10 th Avenue tower. It was winter, so that was the best I could come up with. I remembered his eyes scanning the brightly colored packaged food, as if he were reading the labels, categorizing options.

That was before the Baby Bjorn. Instead, we had a cheap little Fisher Price carrier that wobbled and felt unsafe. I remembered running up subway escalator steps, in a hurry to catch the 6 train, immediately after the World Trade Center attacks. Running to my Aunt Hulya, who was in town from Istanbul. Wanting so badly to see her, please her, show her that we were all right, that I missed a step and nearly crushed Hazen from a fall. But didn’t. We were both safe. At that moment.

I walked to Dinosaur Coffee, which was one door down from McDonald’s on Sunset. Hazen liked Dinosaurs. Well, he tolerated them. He learned their names but could care less about seeing their bones whenever I dragged him to the American Natural History Museum on Central Park West. I remembered recently going to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles for Biology class, a requisite to finish my Bachelor’s Degree, and feeling an almost going to pass out numb because its marbled interior looked so much like New York’s and had dimly lit dioramas. And dinosaur bones. Here it was just coffee. Loved by some, claimed overrated by some on Yelp.

The place was serene. White walls. Scales of sculpted plywood hung from a sturdy wood beams ceiling. Windows ate the walls North and South. In the back, the only greenery in the place, a wall of ferns, framed a pink neon sign that said, “Everything will be fine”. I picked up the message like it was a note passed under a closed door, and decided to open it later.

I ordered a coffee for here and waited for the French Press to happen. As I waited, a regular from the McDonald’s next door started walking across the benches of people sitting outside. The regular was a longhaired blonde homeless man wearing nothing but a full piece women’s red bathing suit. His body was caked with soot, I noticed, as he walked in and started reciting gibberish.

“That’s a dude,” one girl, also waiting for her French Press, said in a disenchanted-á- la-Ellen-Page sort of way.

26

Susan Mikiel The young manager didn’t know what to do. She sent a male barista, short in stature but with a perfectly manicured beard, to chase him away. The blonde man came back, and started screaming at a patron’s barking dog outside. So the manager finally called the cops. The blonde man went away, and people went back to the chitin of laptops and lattes.

I thought about how cruddy it was that Hazen saw the blonde on his birthday, as he lay hidden in my backpack. I felt bad for thinking the word cruddy. This wasn’t very festive. Well. Maybe it was. He’s seen worse. I thought about our time in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. That was before the Pinkberry and American Apparel came in.

Drug addicts smoked stuff on our playground. I didn’t have the nerve to chase them away. Instead, we left, breathing in the secondhand smoke of whatever it was. In Los Angeles, there was so much more space. The air felt segregated. I drank my coffee and listened to grown men discuss wine country on the cheap. “It’s time,” I thought. I had been avoiding making a big to do, but it was time to acknowledge Hazen’s Birthday, so I ran out as soon as my cup was empty.

The cashier at the 99 Cent Only Store rang up an avocado, a box of stevia, and a tri-pack of seaweed snacks. “Can I have one of those too, please?” I said, nonchalantly pointing to a Mylar balloon that said “Happy Birthday.” He wiped his scanning hands on his sides as he looked at me. Maybe it was because he assumed I spoke Spanish, given my olive complexion, and was surprised to hear the word “can” with a Michigan “A” so hard you could open a bottle of pop on it. Maybe it was because I looked like the most somber person ever asking for such a happy balloon.

Maybe he just knew. Whatever the reason, he ceremoniously untied one for me.

“Four fifty,” he said. I gave him a double take. He knew exactly why. “Fifty cents to blow up the balloon.”

I looked at my receipt with skepticism.

“Nothing is free,” I sighed. “Oh well. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars spending hundreds of dollars here. “Besides, Hazen was on my back and we didn’t walk down the toy aisle. No gift bag. No treats. No begging to go somewhere better, just a dumb balloon. What a cliché.

27

Susan Mikiel Balloons reminded me of Hazen’s life. After treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering, I would walk Hazen home in his stroller and cut through the park. We lived across town and twenty blocks down, but Central Park was our buffer between the hell of treatment and staking a claim to normalcy. One time, after a treatment that zapped all of Hazen’s nerve endings, an experience so painful it may have been deemed too brutal by the Spanish Inquisition, we stopped at Sheep’s Meadow for a rest. It was hard to stop moving. Stopping meant coming down from the high of happy—a forced personality hooked into the crapshoot of positive thinking thanks to all the Wayne Dyer, Joel Osteen, Florence Scovel Shin, etc. my cancer mom friends were giving me. I could love Hazen’s cancer away. We could laugh it away. Laugh away the pain. The anxiety. The fucking hell of not knowing if we would be together next year. But Hazen had no energy, he needed to rest his body, so I entered the dank cage of reality. We sat in the meadow. It was fairly empty, even for midweek. I scanned the field. There were a couple toddlers and their nannies in the middle of the park with two balloons tied onto their parallel-parked strollers. The wind knocked the balloons into each other, making them look like a couple of discombobulated clowns. I pointed out the balloons to Hazen.

“Ouch! What are you knocking into me for?!? That hurts,” I said, channeling the balloons.

“Who me? I can’t help it. I wanna play with you, Bob.” They knocked into each other again. I felt Hazen’s slight body rise and fall with laughter as he rested in my lap.

“Ouch! Quit it! That really hurts! I don’t want to play, Roger!”

“But, Bob! Bob! I wanna.”

Boink.

“Owww, Roger!”

“Play, Bob!” Boink. Boink. Boink.

The more Roger beat up Bob, the more Hazen laughed. We could both laugh out our frustrations. We were Roger. Bob was everything else. I wanted Bob to pop.

28

Susan Mikiel After Hazen’s funeral service, his father orchestrated a procession from St. Malachy’s church on 49th Street to May Mathews, a playground park with basketball courts, on 46th. Hazen called it the “Choo Choo” playground because of its old jungle gym train. The park was sandwiched between tenement apartment buildings. A fading mural depicting the strength of the local community working together loomed over the courts. We have pictures of that mural: me, pregnant and pretending to make a basket, Hazen, riding his scooter. I wondered if anyone would take a photo now, as I watched hundreds of our friends and neighbors stand on the courts distributing red and blue balloons. I felt like a spectator at my own son’s funeral. At his father’s count, everyone let go of their balloons and watched them float up in the air. My friend’s three-year-old daughter called out to Hazen as she watched a balloon fly through a basketball hoop then up into the air.

“There he goes. He’s flying! Hi, Hazen,” she said, about to timber backwards from waving uninhibitedly as she followed its flight. It didn’t surprise me that she could see him. Hazen wanted to marry her.

This was the first year I had custody of Hazen’s ashes. Eight years after his death. I promised his dad I wouldn’t scatter them into the ocean. “Even posthumously he doesn’t trust me to take care of our son,” I thought, suppressing my bitterness about our still-pending divorce. Now that I finally had custody of Hazen’s remains, it was important to do something special, versus live in the swampland of unidentified emotions. So, I bought a damn silver Mylar Happy Birthday balloon.

“Hold this,” I said in my head, as I plopped Hazen’s ashes unceremoniously on the ribbon of the balloon. We proceeded to argue.

Mommm I’m not a baby anymore. I’m fourteen. I’m too old for balloons.

“Relax. It’s just a dumb balloon,” I thought, like a seasoned mom, immune to her teenage son’s crap. Then I doubted myself and wondered if I was too curt. “Is that what he would say? Would we have teenage hormones affecting our relationship now? What would he say? I don’t know what he would say.” I had no idea. So I said something.

29

Susan Mikiel

“I get that you’re older, but, sorry kiddo, you’ll always be almost-six to me.”

Holding onto the last bastions of Hazen’s life was a glue trap that kept me from communicating with him in my dreams. I wanted to see him as healthy and whole.

Limitless. Ageless. But mostly I saw him as a really sick boy with a mind older than his years, and a body ravaged with cancer. Cancer and Hazen didn’t belong together, but I couldn’t break them apart. I wanted to let go of the predatory nature of disease.

Every time I would start to think of Hazen in happy ways, his painful demise would prey upon the happy thoughts, eat them bloody and raw, then shit them out to grow again. Like the Nitrogen cycle. They say, or I’ve been told, that once grief subsides a little less, your loved ones come to you in your dreams. I’ve seen him there once or twice, but always from afar. We never speak. He’ s fine, or trying to be fine, but I feel melancholy, feeling remorse because he doesn’t know how sick he is. All I’d want to do is hold him.

Despite seeing that it was closed, I parked the car by the carousel in Griffith Park. Hazen loved the one in Central Park. His favorite horse was Bubbles, a black lead horse who stuck his tongue out. “I bet Hazen can walk through walls,” I told myself, not knowing where else to go. “It doesn’t matter if it’s open or closed. What matters is that I can talk to him here,” I thought. Moommmmm, I’m too old for carousels. A strange man passed by as I walked down the hill.

“Hello there,” he said. “I expected it to be open today.”

He was alone, a spectator like me. I barely acknowledged him, unsure if he was a psychopath or just a simpleminded dude.

“He could kill me. He could come back and kill me,” I thought. No, that’s not going to happen. You’re protected. Especially today.

I plopped us down on a bench under a tree facing the carousel. We were sitting next to a dumpster, which helped make the bench feel like a private room. I appraised our party clothes. Me in my California casual wear, jeans and a fancy

30

Susan Mikiel sweatshirt, Hazen in a tin canister wrapped in a purple Nepalese bag. I held on to the silver Happy Birthday balloon.

“Well? Ya gotta say something,” I thought.

“Happy Birthday, Hazen,” I said in a whiny, cheery voice, much like a kid forced to say “Thank you” when they don’t understand why they have to say thank you and they just want to run away and play.

The balloon began to dance. Because of the wind. I’m grateful for the wind.

Sometimes it’s the only thing I feel.

“God, Angels, Saints, Universe, I look forward to the day that I can communicate with Hazen in my dreams without the sadness. Every time I see him, he’s sick, or we don’t talk, or both.” I felt a great disappointment. Deeper than my grandmother’s, who was sure that Hazen could become President. He was that kind of kid. I took a breath.

“Thank you for choosing me, Hazen.” That’s what we used to say to each other. Only afterwards did I discover on Youtube, or a snarky comment section on some blog that even saying that to each other was cliché, but I didn’t care. We said that. That was us. That was ours. Besides, clichés exist because they’re true. “I’ll always be your mom. I love you. I miss you. I know that you’re right here.” I folded my arms.

The balloon bobbed back and forth, so I let it go and watched it circle upwards.

The sun hit the silver Mylar as the balloon sailed away from the carousel, up across the 5 Freeway and up towards the mountains. I wondered if any drivers or bikers or joggers would see the balloon and say something like, “Ah. A kid lost his birthday balloon. Ya gotta hold on tight to those things,” without ever knowing that only by letting go can a balloon do what it is truly meant to do, bring random happiness to everyone who crosses its path.

31

Geramee Hensley Geramee Hensley

Golden Ox Award Winner Quiet You can fill a concrete mixer with sound if you scream loud enough. Seal the drum and churn the noise with unanswered prayers.

Do not be alarmed by its hiss like covalent bonds snapping in an aerosol can. When the mix clots into cement, build cities with it.

In this city every building is a church, and prayer is the local pastime. Huddled in a stadium with 50,000 strangers it comes to light: those prayers at best are God-calls, and you’re hunting.

32

A.S. Coomer A.S. Coomer

Polly Jean

The sun, like embers in a rekindled fire, burned through the budding dogwood blooms. Polly Jean was nestled with her tattered blankets, her breath puffing from her nostrils in thin, white tendrils in the early morning chill.

“Honey,” Richard said, nudging Polly Jean. “Honey, wake up.”

She moved away from his touch, pulled the covers over her head.

“Polly Jean,” he shook the place under the covers where he thought her shoulders were, “we gotta to get moving.”

She moaned but came to waking.

“Feels like I just went to sleep,” she complained.

“The suns up,” Richard said. “We got to be moving on.”

She stretched, rubbed the crust from her eyes, then came out from beneath the covers. The sun, as if waiting for just that moment, broke through the foliage and lit her face with what could’ve passed as golden early spring light.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Richard whispered.

Polly Jean jerked her head towards him and narrowed her eyes into slits.

Richard’s face flushed and he rose to his feet and began brushing the grass and bits of earth from his thin, worn jeans.

“I slept like a rock,” he said.

He turned and scanned the copse of dogwood while Polly Jean rose, stretched, and folded her blankets.

“Let’s go,” Polly Jean said. *** Nothing stirred. They came out onto the highway and not a car or truck was to be found. They walked south, the direction they’d been heading for the past three days.

He was looking at her.

“What?” Polly Jean asked.

33

A.S. Coomer For the second time that morning, Richard’s face reddened.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

They walked on in silence for some time.

“They’ll probably die now, you know,” he said.

“What?”

“The dogwoods. It’s nearly fall but that cold snap tricked them into blooming when it warmed back up. Like it was spring.”

The sun moved up and the day progressed.

The truck barreled by without so much as a tap of the breaks. Polly Jean let her arm drop to her side and sighed.

“Asshole,” Richard said.

They walked on. The silence stretched out until it was something nearly tangible.

The road crossed a small, green river. Polly Jean stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked down. The water lazed by, slow but steady, an overfed snake making its way home.

“Let’s take a minute,” she said, not looking up from the water.

Richard nodded his head and waited.

Polly Jean found an animal’s path from the bridge to the river. Richard followed her down.

She stripped in silence, setting her clothes in a neat pile on top of her pack.

The bank was muddy and Polly Jean moved slowly, carefully down the gentle slope until she was waist-deep in the hunter green water then she dove in.

She resurfaced some fifteen yards away, near the center of the stream. She rubbed her eyes, ran her fingers through her thick and knotted hair.

She wondered how long it’d been since her last real bath. She vaguely remembered a truck stop shower somewhere in Wisconsin—after a date.

Richard was naked and shivering. He toed the water and shook more violently.

“Pussy-footing ain’t gonna help you out here,” she said.

34

A.S. Coomer He had both hands cupped around his privates.

“God but it’s cold,” he said.

His teeth clapped together with that last word then he broke out in a sprint into the river. He let out a battle cry and water splashed around him in a cascade of white. He tripped and flopped down, doing his best to turn his misstep into a dive.

He came up panting and red-faced.

“You are the picture of grace, Richard.”

They laughed. *** They caught a ride in the back of a rusted pickup later that afternoon. The sun was dipping behind the rolling hills, creating little pinpricks through the loblolly that fluttered like moth wings as the truck barreled south.

Richard smiled at Polly Jean, his shaggy hair whipping against his forehead.

She returned the smile but something dropped in her stomach and the smile did not touch her eyes.

The man let them off somewhere on the other side of Tupelo and drove off into the night.

“Better find a place,” Richard said.

Polly Jean nodded and followed him into the thin strand of woods. The grass crinkled under their steps, already dried out from the sun, and a warm breeze ruffled the branches overhead. Everything would be auburn and gold before too long.

Shivers in sleep and frost fast on the deep sheets.

“What?” Richard asked.

“Nothing,” Polly Jean said.

They came to a gathering of thick evergreens. An eighteen-wheeler rumbled past on the highway but the sound was muted and distant.

“How about here?”

“Sure.”

Polly Jean sat down her pack and started scooping handfuls of dried pine needles into a pile. She felt Richard’s eyes on her but did not acknowledge him.

35

A.S. Coomer “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is,” he said.

Polly Jean reached under the tree and raked out more needles.

The sun had long since disappeared from sight but the night held hard to dusk and the light was plenty. She watched him step closer but still chose to ignore him.

Polly Jean unfolded her blankets and spread them out on top of the pine needles and kneaded them into the shape of a small bed.

“Polly Jean—” Richard started.

“I’ll be back,” she said, leaping to her feet.

She darted off into the thicket leaving Richard standing over her pallet.

Polly Jean strode into the darkening woods sweating despite the falling temperatures. She came to a stop and leaned her back against the trunk of an oak.

Time to move on, she kept thinking. Time to move on. The night is long and cold and it’d been nice to share it with somebody, sure. You gotta take love where you find it.

Love?

That’s the wrong word. Comfort is more like it. You gotta take comfort where you find it. But it’s time to move on.

She pushed herself off the tree and headed back to her blankets.

Richard had doubled the bed, combining his blankets with hers and plushing both with armfuls of pine needles. He was sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, chewing on a bit of jerky.

Polly Jean looked down at him, briefly, before kneeling onto her blankets.

“Richard,” she said.

He looked up from the jerky and the first bit of moonlight caught his inky eyes.

They glittered in the dark, large and doe-like.

“Let’s sleep,” she said. *** She waited. Listening to his breathing until it came in slow, long pulls like settling water. She carefully removed his arm from her stomach and set it on his

36

A.S. Coomer blanket. She rolled over onto her side then rose to her knees and slid out into the dew covered ground.

She quietly folded her blankets and rolled them into her pack.

Richard sighed somewhere from his dreams but did not stir.

Polly Jean left him sleeping in the pines. She found the road and started walking. *** Time to move on, she repeated. Her mantra. She’d been moving since she was born and wasn’t about to stop or slow down now.

A clean break is always best.

A set of headlights crested the hill behind her then settled onto the road ahead.

Polly Jean turned and stared into the twin growing orbs. She stuck out her arm and projected her thumb.

The truck passed but its brake lights shone red in the darkness. It slowed to a stop, the tires rumbling on the sleeper lines sounded heavy in the stillness of the night.

Polly Jean trotted the fifty yards or so to the truck and peered into the passenger window. There were three men inside. The driver nodded his head to the bed. Polly Jean tossed her pack in then climbed in behind it.

The pickup jerked back onto the road. The back window slid open and the stale scent of hand rolled cigarettes and pot wafted out.

“Hiya,” the man in the middle called out.

“Hi,” Polly Jean said.

“Where ya heading?”

“South.”

“Want a beer?”

“Sure.”

The man’s heavily veined hand extended from the cab and Polly Jean took the can of beer. It was warm and skunked but she drained it in deep, tear inducing pulls.

She burped into the night and crushed the can.

37

A.S. Coomer “Thanks,” she said.

“Hot damn,” the man said. “Hot damn.”

They drove on late into the night. The middle passenger passed Polly Jean beer after beer and prattled on about his life. She didn’t even half listen or pretend to. She sat with her back to the cab, her hair dancing in the wind and watched the road recede.

Near to morning, the truck braked and pulled onto the shoulder. The wind raged in her ears despite being stopped; it was much like feeling the motion of the waves after a time spent in the ocean. In the red light of the brakes, a teetering man emerged looking every bit the ragged Orpheus returning haggard and alone from the underworld. He climbed slowly into the bed and sat down beside Polly Jean.

His breath came in ragged gulps and wheezes.

“Evening,” he said.

Polly Jean nodded her head and sipped from the beer.

The truck started back and the wind whistled then roared and drowned out the middle passenger’s ramblings.

Time to move on, she repeated. It’d taken on a musical lilt with the buzzing of the beer in her head. Time to move on.

She crushed the can and let it float onto the bed with the others.

The sky was changing; a great boiling starting. To her left the deep blue was melting into a lighter hue. It was subtle but Polly Jean felt she could almost catch it if she squinted real hard.

She swayed with the truck as it navigated the pothole ridden road. She wondered vaguely if the driver was drunk.

The sky was quickening into morning. She’d missed it somehow.

They came to a halt and the driver said, “Last stop.”

Polly Jean scooped up her pack and climbed out on unsteady legs.

How many beers?

“Last stop,” the driver called through the window again.

38

A.S. Coomer The old man hadn’t moved. He was slumped over with his head in the crook of his arm.

Polly Jean leaned over and shook the man’s shoulder. His head lolled limply, his face coming out into the fresh morning light. The man’s mouth and eyes hung open. His face was of a very pale blue.

Polly Jean gasped and jumped away from the truck and the dead man. Her legs, unsteady with the alcohol, betrayed her and she crashed onto the seat of her pants on the shoulder of the road. The motion was too much, her head felt heavier than the rest of her, and she couldn’t stop herself from dropping flat on her back.

The lithe wisps of morning clouds were jarring in their tracts. They moved left smoothly then jerked suddenly back to their starting points as if on strings or a spring of some sort. Polly Jean clamped her eyes shut and saw the man’s unseeing eyes. She opened her eyes to the clouds, unnerved and sick. She rolled onto her side and threw up. *** When she could stand, Polly Jean found the three men from the truck gathered around the passenger side of the bed staring in.

“Shit,” the middle passenger said.

“Goddamn,” the driver said.

The passenger reached over and clapped his hands together near the dead man’s head. Once, twice, three times the passenger slapped his hands together. The dead man in the back of the truck did not move.

“Dead as a fucking doornail,” the man said.

The driver spit a wad of snuff onto the shoulder. A bit of brown splashed onto Polly Jean’s dirty sneakers.

Her head buzzed and spun. She took hold of the tailgate to steady herself and saw the man in the bed and the men surrounding him. She retched then retched again.

“Jesus, lady,” the driver said.

“Well, we cain’t call the police,” the passenger said.

39

A.S. Coomer “Why not?” the middle passenger asked.

“I got warrants.”

There was a silence between them. The road was empty, surrounded by thick woods on both sides. Somewhere near a woodpecker hammered away.

Polly Jean was sick again. She set her sweating forehead onto the lip of the tailgate and panted. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she breathed through her mouth in quick sips but still smelled the stale beer at her feet.

“What d’you want to do then?”

“I ain’t catching no body. Especially not some old hobo.”

Polly Jean picked her pack up and slung it over her shoulder with as little movement as she could. She straightened then started walking south, past the men and the truck.

“Hey.” “Hey, lady. Where you going?”

“Lady.”

Polly Jean kept walking, training her eyes on the white line at her feet and doing her best to follow it in as straight a course as she could.

Richard flew into her mind as their calls faded. Richard had held her close.

Called her “honey.” Richard had smiled at her and thought her beautiful.

Time to move on.

Richard had kissed her softly. Made love to her. He wasn’t just some date. A meal. A shower. A place to sleep. Richard wasn’t just a fuck. He made her laugh.

Polly Jean turned and saw that she’d rounded a corner some time back and the truck was no longer visible.

Richard.

A clean break.

She crossed the median, tripping and nearly falling twice, climbed up onto the northbound lanes then on to the woods opposite. She went from tree to tree, steadying herself, watching the road when everything stopped spinning enough to turn her head. She was well out of view, hidden by the summer-thick leaves.

40

A.S. Coomer Her breathing was heavy in the silence, loud in her own ears. She felt sick but refused to puke again.

She walked north until the sun was well past midday. Cars and trucks had passed going in both directions. She’d expected police sirens and blue lights but none had come.

What would she tell them if they did come and found her hiding in the woods?

They have nothing linking me back to that worn out Orpheus. I’ve done no wrong.

Polly Jean couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt though. It permeated from her skin like a radiation sickness. It was more than the beer. More than the days without bathing. More than nights sleeping without a roof. More than the unnamed truckers and joyless acts. More than the constant shuffling of feet and blurring of landscape.

It was the night without end.

Polly Jean stepped onto the shoulder of the northbound lane from the woods and stuck out her thumb. *** “Richard,” she called. “Richard.”

There was no answer.

This was the spot.

She was sure of it.

“Richard.”

She had walked through the woods, the end of the workday traffic a bug’s hum and buzz, until she found the gentle mound of pine needles. Richard was gone, long gone.

Time to move on. A clean break.

Polly Jean sat down and cried.

41

Zachary Riddle Zachary

Zachary Riddle

Dyatlov She was silhouette, crowned in antler and lace, bound by the ankles to the front steps of her mother's house. I wanted to rediscover her, little by little, the way a gardener rediscovers snow while losing his plot to storm—to pierce her lightning blue veins like a needle—to suture my body to hers: rib to rib, palm to palm, mouth to mouth, tethered like skier to avalanche. She asked me to tell her my story, so I tore apart my father's corpse and buried it in nine shallow graves. In the following years, a bonebuilt city grew around us, each new structure brittle and ripe with dark, bloated flesh. A slab of sternum became the stairs to the church—a gray, withered heart became an altar for violent gods. Skeleton hands cupped the city like water, and a tunnel was dug beneath the phalanges. Old men and their wives, cloaked in flaps of throat and cheek, laughed as families crawled through the dirt to the outside world. They told me that they didn't know my father, but they knew me, and that was all that mattered. When a great skull, marrowsplit, settled atop the city's skinless walls, I knew the nature of heritage: I watched her, emaciated, slip through the ropes that bound her to home. You're not meant to leave, she said to me in passing, wingless. Unchanging. She handed me a satchel. When I opened it, I saw that it was filled with severed tongues, eyes, and lips, a single feather jutting from the gore.

42

Thomas Gillaspy

Thomas Gillaspy

Studies

43

Ned Carter Miles Ned Carter Miles

Inalik

Fog in all directions settled on the horizon, imposing untouchable limits like the escarpment of some glacial valley. Above the rusted boat was an ice blue sky, no gradient or depth, and below it a heavy, indifferent ocean, blotted with black patches, marking its deeper secrets like imperfections in glass. The fog obscured any possible index for progress, and the three passengers—mother, father, and son—felt in each of them a deep inertia. Only the grizzled Alaskan, having developed a wider sense for space through a lifetime of near desolation, was able to track their progress through the water.

Charlie peered over the edge of the boat, his eyes following arrows of rust that ran down and into the water, he looked for fish. A fishing boat, even one as defunct as this, he thought, should be around fish, as though the name of a thing were enough to give it both a purpose and to fulfil it. Charlie's mother sat back against the gunwale, she was tired and felt the dry cold keenly. The ashen outline of his father hovered in the fog next to that of the pilot. Though Charlie heard no words they were stood together as in conversation, and this was a place where sound travelled—for lack of anything else. Neither parent watched him.

'Your wife's lookin' a little lonely all the way over there', the Alaskan finally said to David, trying hard as he could to sound personable but landing just this side of sinister. Really he just wanted his passenger to turn away long enough for him to dislodge the flask of sour mash he kept behind the helm, take a gulp, and put it back unseen. He knew he wasn't fooling anyone; he was clearly a drunk, he just didn't want to seem a letch as well. The truth was hard alcohol and isolation had long since sterilised that kind of dirt in him, neutralised its earthy smells, the hunger and the satiation. He and this Englishman had even met in a bar, two nights before, and he had already been far-gone then. Nonetheless, he took a kind of pride in his work, in any small job where he could find it, and this, at least, spurred him to keep up an appearance of sobriety for the duration of the trip. David took it as a throwaway 44

Ned Carter Miles comment, or at least pretended to. His partner, not his wife, he refrained from pointing out, may well have been lonely, but she was not the sort to seem it. She had the kind of aloof, inaccessible confidence that, even in a place so steeped in solitude as this, made her being truly alone, or truly with anyone, inconceivable. In any case, what could he do? He imagined walking over, his steps solid, thumping out his presence with an agency at least surpassing that of the lightly creaking boat floating passively in the water. He stayed where he was.

Charlie pushed himself away from the gunwale railings and, with an awkward childish gait, let his momentum and the slight rocking of the boat carry him to his mother. His miniaturised body, as yet neither man's nor woman's, fell beside her with no great impact where, had it been man or woman's, it might have had some force.

'Are we nearly there?' He looked up at his mother from below the arm she had put around him.

'I'm not sure. You should ask your father.'

Charlie looked over to his father, who still stood in an ambiguous interaction with the Alaskan. This man frightened Charlie somehow, and he remained quiet.

'What is there to do there?' This time he looked straight out over the edge of the boat.

'There isn't anything to do there, really. It's more about being there. There are some places that, for certain reasons, are just special, and being there can be special, even if there isn't anything to do.'

'So why's it a special island?'

'It ain't,' Charlie started at the Alaskan's voice, 'ain't nothin' special on its own.

Lil' Diomede's only special 'cuz there's a Big Diomede. 'N Big Diomede's only Big Diomede 'cuz there's a 'lil one. What's special in it is what's in between.' He had the attention of the whole family now, and had made a point of straightening up, pushing his elbows out from the steering wheel and looking out over the bow with affect so as to better play the parts of sailor and storyteller. ''Lil Diomede's 'merican 'n Big Diomede's Russian. In between you got th'International Date Line. That means you

45

Ned Carter Miles stand on Lil' Diomede lookin at the Big'un 'n you're lookin' at it yesterday. Always. So you go 'tween the two and you go back in time.'

He addressed this directly to Charlie, who looked at him blankly. He was the kind of sharp and slightly precocious child who had been exposed early to the oneline humour of American television without yet having developed much sense of propriety. With anyone less intimidating he would have surely replied, most likely paraphrasing: 'I'm ten. I'm not stupid!'

The Alaskan turned to the grown-ups, 'Now you know why the US is always ahead o' the Russians.' He was met at best with polite smiles, and turned his attention down to the control panel of his boat, or rather to the protruding cap of his bottle of sour mash.

Anna wouldn't have known what to tell her son about the island, and was glad for the Alaskan's interjection. She had only been aware of its existence since two nights before when David had come back to the small cabin where they were staying, smelling lightly of whiskey, and had woken her despite his best efforts to subtly lift the two heavy blankets of their bed and lie down. She had pretended to sleep—it seemed easier—but when he told her he had found something for them to do the following day, she nodded in agreement, or acceptance.

'So what're y'all doin' all the way up here?' The Alaskan picked up again, his oncoming sobriety leaving him less able to tolerate the tension on his boat's small deck.

David had already given the sanitised explanation one gives of such things to strangers two nights before, when the Alaskan, whose name was Jack, was not in a state to remember. He answered out of politeness: 'Well, me and Anna both have a fair amount of freedom at work and try to take as many trips as we can, and Charlie here's been getting very interested in nature lately, so we thought we'd come out to Alaska, rent a car, and see "The Last Frontier"'.

Jack had recognised David's explanation while he was speaking, and listened silently to save face. His response was delayed by his hangover and, again, sounded

46

Ned Carter Miles less personable than he had intended: 'You ain't seen your last frontier yet, but tha's where we're headed'.

The non-sanitised version of the story was, of course, more complex. Alaska was partially due to Charlie's interest, and the family did make a lot of trips, but the locations were becoming more extreme, more laden with the hope of experience. They were increasingly what Anna had called 'special places', places that might subsume the family, and specifically Anna and David, with an experience in common. The desired effect was similar to how natural disasters (at least as reported) dissolve individual difference and bind communities, but without the victim status. The buying of tickets, renting of cars, and writing of itineraries had assumed, over the last couple of years, the disinterested but vital approach a professional might employ in wiring up a car battery, or charging a defibrillator. This explanation of events went unacknowledged even between the couple, and its exact reasoning was difficult to put into words, but each alone knew that this was the purpose of their outings, and worked together to realise them with the accustomed precision of mechanics or nurses.

David started up again, 'we were supposed to be getting a plane out two days ago with another family. There's a flight that goes from here a couple of times a week exporting fish to Japan, and the company takes passengers as well,' Jack nodded, he knew the company, and its owner, whose side-operations as a charter airline were not strictly legal, 'but they made a mistake and the pilot thought he only had one family to take. It's a good thing I ran into you or we'd be stuck here with nothing to do!' David smiled across to Anna as he said this.

'Yup, don't get many flights outta here. That Wilson an' his planes ain't the most reliable, neither.' Jack had by now remembered most of what David had already told him, and felt awkward having to feign an impression. He was not an actor, which was in any case a profession he disdained.

When they had heard the news from the company that their plane had taken off without them, Anna and David had both thought with envy of this other family, but not for their having made the flight. They were an every-family, taking a trip to

47

Ned Carter Miles Alaska as an end in itself. They had no pressing destination, no goal, could have happily stayed two more days in the wilderness, and yet were moving on unhindered.

By the time they had returned to the small cabin and arranged to rent it a further two days, the tension between the couple had grown thick, and Charlie could feel it. Out of the car it had taken no more than five steps for Anna to be walking far ahead of David, and Charlie found he would have to decide with which parent he would walk the second he got out, running on his stick legs to catch up with his mother, or lagging behind to stay with his father. Uncomfortable as each outcome was, either was preferable to the floating in between that would come with any hesitation. He thought that he would have preferred his parents to shout at each other rather than acting as they did. Their words, when spoken, were the same others might say, others like the family on the plane to Japan, but they were spoken differently.

Charlie even sensed that part of the reason his parents resorted to the frozen silences they did was for his benefit, and this grieved him all the more. It was in this spirit of protection, bordering on self-sacrifice, that David decided to leave the cabin that evening, to put some space between him and Anna, to let his son breath freely.

As a reaction to his father's leaving, which of course aggravated Charlie even more, he began humming to himself. It was Charlie's humming that David heard as he stepped out.

Only outside in the cool air on the way to the settlement's one bar, in a flash of recognition, did David realise that Charlie's tune had been the theme song to Seinfeld. A show that hadn't seen a new episode in ten years and was probably no longer aired at all. Entering the bar and taking a seat he struggled to imagine how his son might have heard and remembered the disjointed slap-bass melody. David himself hadn't watched the show in years. He used to catch repeats of it on returning late from work, and would habitually watch with a beer and a bag of Bombay mix in order to clear his head before going upstairs to Anna, and sleep. Was it possible that Charlie had snuck downstairs one night, or several, and watched with his father from some hidden place without his being aware of it? Could this tired and lonely ritual

48

Ned Carter Miles have been something they shared without his knowing? Having a child, David had found, filled his days with such mysteries, of which this was no less compelling than any other. He and Anna had always shared an interest in how Charlie discovered the world, trying to push his exposure to it in directions they thought productive or appropriate, but it amazed him how such things as this could still find their way in, that their son, in spite of his constant presence in his life, would always remain something of a mystery, and would only grow more so in time. Far from concerning David, this gave him great pleasure. He liked to think that he, too, might still enjoy the occasional novelty in the same way his son did.

It was in this spirit that he got talking to one of only two other patrons at the bar. His collocutor was Jack, the Alaskan: a fisherman divorcee whose ex-wife now taught yoga in California—having originally left with aspirations as an actress—and took his estranged daughter to Kabbalah meetings in friends' living rooms where any knowledge of Midrash was at best second hand. Through their conversation, which was broken up by televised sports commentary and much better informed barcommentary, Jack, who was more congenial drunk than sober, had told David about a pair of islands named Diomede. He explained that they lay together between the Western tip of Alaska and the Eastern edge of Siberia, that one island belonged to the United States and one to Russia.

To play tour guide was uncharacteristically hospitable of Jack, but it seemed to him this evening—when in spite of his congeniality he was inwardly a bitter kind of drunk—that impressing an outsider on this rare opportunity might somehow be a way of getting back at his wife, and at wherever she had gone, and so he offered David and his family a trip to see the islands in exchange for due payment. David accepted, enthralled by the story and keen for another last frontier, another shared experience, another chance. Jack wrote down his address on David's hand and told him a time to arrive the morning after next. He then took a further glass of a burning, flavourless liqueur—brewed locally and illegally but far from the jurisdiction of any potential enforcer—and began asking David if he had ever met his wife, then once, more threateningly but less coherently, if he had slept with his wife. David, who was

49

Ned Carter Miles still in an uncommonly good and open mood, took this with a pinch of salt as a charming idiosyncrasy. He himself enjoyed a drink, and wasn't going to hold a man's cutting loose against him in a country that five months of the year saw between four and zero hours of sunlight, and a sleepless twenty-four in high summer. He said his goodbyes cheerfully and left before Jack passed out at the bar.

In the cabin where the couple lay that night, now half sleeping, David unconsciously rolled over to hold Anna. The closeness would resolve to its habitual state before morning, but for now the two bodies shared each other's warmth. Here it would always be to David to turn rather than Anna. At the age of eight she had been sent to a boarding school—the same to which her mother had gone. The first night she didn't sleep, but spent the whole night staring at the door waiting for her mother to come back for her. She didn't come, but during those first months the habit stuck for life. By the age of twenty-two Anna had vowed never again to speak to her mother, but would still only sleep facing the door of whatever room she was in.

A day later David took Anna and Charlie to the address Jack had given, though a lack of ordered housing there made asking for 'Jack the Fisherman' a surer way of finding it. Years of heavy drinking had given Jack a uniform appearance and as he answered the door he looked natural in his own unshaven, strung out way, as though that were how he were meant to be. At first Jack did not remember his offer, and would have turned them away in his less congenial sobriety. He was driven to accept by the vague fantasy that these English tourists—seemingly well travelled English tourists—might one day find their way to California and laud publicly the superior hospitality and natural beauty of a small Alaskan settlement they had once visited. Jack didn't go to church and hadn't thought about god since he was a boy, but he, like many people, liked to feel that his actions were given meaning by another someone or something watching, and he had given this role to his ex-wife.

It was in this absent other's eyes that Jack stood at the helm of his boat, looking into the distance, his chest pushed forwards, waiting for the island to appear.

He saw himself also in the eyes of the family. To them in this moment he was a captain, intrepid and knowing, leading them forwards.

50

Ned Carter Miles 'Anna!' David called from over Jack's shoulder, pointing into the distance. Anna stayed seated, stretching only slightly to look ahead. Charlie, however, ran to the bow of the shelled-out fisher, pressing up against the front railings that creaked under his child's weight. There was the island, visibly not much more than a rock, breaking through the water, its image barely burning through the fog by its stronger presence.

Something about it there, a permanent shadow, made it unreachable and unchanging, as the moon or other planets never seem closer or farther away in their distance, only larger or smaller. Though ever present, their weight is somehow separate, but Charlie felt the island's weight and its distance all at once.

'That there's Inalik,' Jack called out as the island came into focus and, with it, a small settlement on its nearest shore, 'tha's the native Yupik name for the city, for the whole island, really. The island makes part o' the city.'

The family looked out now at the handful of houses in pale and pastel colours some of them on stilts—that were scattered over the shore, one of the few places visible that wasn't a steep cliff into the water. Beyond they saw the island's larger partner, looming over the smaller from an imperceptibly delimited Russian yesterday.

'It means "the one over there", Inalik.' Jack added.

Anna thought over this for a moment. These two islands had never been conceived of without each other. Their very naming in any language was a reference for the other. Though one was in the North-Western most point of America, and in fact the world, as our cutting up of this sphere would have it, the other was at the Eastern-most point of Russia. They were separated at all times by a day in our system of time, and yet these two barren islands existed, beyond our artifice, next to each other, the one entirely in reference to the other. When the sea freezes over in deep winter, Jack explained as they got closer, the two are joined by thick ice. It's even possible to walk between them.

The boat moored to a jetty of slime-covered rocks, Charlie jumped out onto the shore and ran a little way towards the settlement. Anna called ahead for him to wait and he did, she climbed down next and looked up at the island. Nobody emerged from the houses, and above them the island was more like the visible tip of an

51

Ned Carter Miles iceberg, the rest of which was surely creaking in its massiveness below. The tip was all coarse rocks and barren, interspersed patches of mossy green, moor-like and wintry even in high summer. Charlie was still suspended in the silence, looking back at his mother. She caught up and walked a stretch with her hand on his back, past the homes, to a point where all that remained before them was the summit of the island. After stopping there for a moment to look at the ascent, suddenly, she began to run. Once a few steps ahead of her son she yelled back: 'race you!'

He caught on quickly and ran after, scrambling over the larger rocks as the climb became steeper. David watched from the boat with a brief, forgotten levity. The tune to Seinfeld came into his head and disappeared in an instant along with the memory, now strangely nostalgic, of those lonely nights it had often punctuated. He jumped to shore and caught up, helping Charlie over one of the larger rocks before racing ahead. He saw Anna above him, her thick hair caught in motion by her steps and leaps, and he felt grateful to her for this, and momentarily for many things, for the child they had made together.

David and Anna had always been quietly fascinated with the idea of shaping a person and, as part of their exposing Charlie to the world, had for the last year bought him several natural history books. They were expensive, high quality photo books with strange and often unheard-of creatures that Charlie would pore over, fascinated, learning their facts and images by heart.

The Nomura jellyfish resides primarily in the waters between China and Japan and is the largest cnidarian in the world, capable of growing to beyond two meters in diameter and weighing over 200kg. In recent years environmental factors have led to unprecedented blooms of Nomura and they have begun to stray East from their traditional feeding grounds.

Two days before the family found themselves on that rusting Alaskan fishing boat, a small plane transporting fish and three passengers to Japan crashed in the West Pacific. Pending correction, newspapers the following day would report that the pilot and all his six passengers, two families, perished in the crash. Newspapers more local to Alaska would also publish exposĂŠs on the legally questionable activity of

52

Ned Carter Miles certain import-export companies in transporting passengers from remote parts of the state along with their cargo. None would report that the crash occurred in the middle of a bloom of Nomura Jellyfish, unprecedented in size, which were feeding near the surface of the water. The impact, and explosion that ensued, confused some of the creatures—not so much conscious animals as collections of nerve nets and cellulous membranes—and they began to swim north. In time the Jellyfish entered a fast current of water and were carried rapidly towards the Bering Sea, alarming climate researchers who suspected their erring to be an effect of global warming additional to the irregular convective patterns they were in the area to study. Approaching the cold waters of the Bering Sea the jellyfish died, but continued to float, by momentum and tide, to the North.

It was only on breathlessly reaching the summit of the island that Anna and David realised the fog below had cleared and stopped running to look out ahead.

David with a tingling in his hand at the proximity of Anna's, Anna's hand the same, the physical sensation of a phantom limb long missed. Below them the Nomura surfaced, giant, lifeless, and drifting. Like the incongruous planets of a lonely orrery observed by a family who existed here, or not at all, on the early frontier of tomorrow and yesterday. They floated without meaning or reference.

When Charlie reached the top and turned around he contemplated the origin of the bodies that slowly orbited the island on which the three stood, brushing the imaginary line of West and East between Inalik and its sister island, but he said nothing. Instead he looked up at the faces of his parents, grave and searching out into space while their hands grew cold with inertia at their sides. A finger twitched involuntarily on David's hand. Anna swayed a little though there was no breeze.

Charlie stepped and stood between them. David's left hand and Anna's right searched for their son's head, settled with fingers weaved into his thick hair that was both his and hers, did not touch, but felt each other's presence by the tension they put on those precious hairs... My woman, my child; my father, my mother; my child, my man.

53

Hillary Sideris Hillary Sideris

Juggler Women of Gotham, I’m in awe of your efficiency, how many items you cross off your list in a day, phone-screening me while crushing basil, composting green tea: I seek a companion as busy, or busier, than me.

I like to read online reviews of sturdy boots, grooving to Kind of Blue, stir-frying Asian fusion with bacon.

Is there a brand you stand behind, whose sole won’t split after a New York winter or two?

54

Thomas Gillaspy Thomas Gillaspy

Dreaming of Sante Fe

55

Kailash Srinivasan Kailash Srinivasan

Golden Ox Award Winner Half Smile

A man is on his way to a job interview. He’s nervous. He downs a mouthful of neat rum just before getting on his motorbike, and all the way to the interview he wonders when he will get to take another swig. He worries that if he doesn’t he will do badly at the interview. Or maybe he secretly doesn’t want to get the job; he hasn’t had one for over a year now. He likes this life. Anyway, he manages to take another drink from his Pepsi bottle—mixing rum with Pepsi, an idea he thought was entirely his own—when he stops at the signal, and derives a perverse pleasure at fooling the world. It’s an advertising agency, one that claims to do everything under the sun, from below the line to above the line communication. The man goes over to the receptionist to say hello and to tell her that he’s here. People walk in and out in denim shorts and psychedelic shirts, while he’s in formals. He laughs at the irony of it: wearing formals to an advertising agency, which prides itself on its hippy culture.

Someone once told him: ‘When you get the job you can come in to work naked, but when you’re trying to get your feet in, pretend to care.’ A couple of minutes later, the man returns to his seat. The receptionist is still on the phone. He’s reminded of receptionists the world over: at hospitals, banks, schools. All of them busy with someone else, just not having the time for those in front of them. He picks up the Times of India and starts flipping through it: ‘After spat with wife, man jumps into the lions’ enclosure at an Orissa zoo.’ The officials saved him, the report says. He wonders if the husband would survive, and what would’ve happened if he’d jumped into the crocodiles’ enclosure. At this point, the man realizes that he has been waiting for half an hour. He thinks about going over to the receptionist’s desk and telling her off. It’s the kind of thing he never does—but seconds later there he is, trying to get her attention, telling her to do her job. He’s bummed because she has a rotten attitude and is not even pretty; not even half-decent looking. Married at twenty 56

Kailash Srinivasan or twenty two perhaps, two kids by now, awful mother-in-law, unsupportive, unattractive husband. He’s not a mean person, but sometimes people need a wakeup call. He goes back to his newspaper. The husband stripped to his underwear, dove in and saluted the lions. That ought to teach the wife a lesson, the man thinks. You don’t mess with the Zohan. He admires the husband’s passion, his fury. He hopes to get over with this stupid formality and be home in an hour or so. He has a movie downloaded on his laptop, ready to go, about this girl who’s an alien, but doesn’t know she’s one. Or maybe he’ll watch the one where this man has had a terrible accident and is cared for by his ex-girlfriend. Now what is it called? He looks up and sees that the half-decent receptionist is talking to another walk-in, a girl in a grey jacket and a skirt. The girl, an attractive young girl with flowing curly hair, black, reaching up to the middle of her back, comes and sits next to him and they exchange greetings. Well she initiated anyway. “Are you here for the copywriter’s position?”

“Yes, you?” “Same.” She smells like a freshly-made banana cake with a hint of vanilla. He’s not trying to pick her up. He’s here for an interview. Who thinks of hooking up with someone at an interview? Besides, he’s no good at it. He has never picked up anyone anywhere. He has friends who have, but him, no sir. He finds it bizarre, walking up to someone with the intention of bedding them: Hello, will you sleep with me? The man reads some more news. India loses the second test match against Australia. “Admirable quality this, no one but the Indian cricket team, has the knack to lose when winning is an absolutely sure thing,” he says. “I’m sorry?” she says. “Nothing,” he says. He knows women don’t understand cricket. A man in a nice suit walks out in a hurry. He’s talking into his phone. His watch and brown leather shoes look expensive too. He’s followed by a busy-looking lady with several folders in her hands. She’s slim and good-looking and from her closeness to the man, appears to be sleeping with him. The receptionist sits in attention, hiding the receiver under her desk, between her legs, but a moment later puts it back to her ear and grins like a fool. An hour back he was really angry at her, but now he finds it hard to evoke the same rage. The receptionist finally says, “The director has gone out for an urgent meeting. He might be back in an hour.” But he doesn’t mind. He even gives her a half 57

Kailash Srinivasan smile. The pretty girl is leaning with her elbows on the coffee table, reading last year’s issue of Femina, and the man can see the mole on her chest. There are fine white spots on her cleavage. He can see the Goosebumps on her fine brown skin. She leans back, leans forward, picks another magazine. What a great meet-cute, he decides.

Eventually, the man tells her what he thinks about this place. “I know, she didn’t even ask us for a glass of water,” she agrees. “What’s going on? What’s that on your arm?” “Oh,” the man says, embarrassed, “It’s a tattoo.” Her soft fingertips trace the symbol of Aum on his skin. For all his talk about meet-cute and picking up women, he’s totally unprepared for this sudden physical contact. Fortunately, she lets go. “I love tattoos,” she says. “I am thinking of getting one soon.” “Really?” the man says, pleased. “What do you have in mind?” “I want to get—don’t laugh—something that says peace, love, happiness, optimism, the strength to look for the good in people.”

“You want one tattoo to say all of that?” the man asks. “I know. Everyone gives me the same reaction,” she says, smiling. The man is caught off guard. He wanted to say something original. Something that showed he was supportive or broad-minded. “It’s a really good idea,” he says. “Maybe you can think of getting one in Chinese.”

“Cantonese or Mandarin?” she asks. But he doesn’t know anything about the language, and now doesn’t know what to say. The pretty girl, sensing the man’s unease, readily moves on. “I’m auditioning for this singing reality show tomorrow, in Mumbai,” she says. “This is the last time I’m going to try. I’ve had a band for years now. We do all kinds of music. But where does that get you?” “Who’s your favorite artist?” the man asks. He likes to think of himself as a music aficionado. “Freddy Mercury,” she says. “He’s the greatest artist ever.” Sadly, the man must admit that he has not heard of this musician. “Who?” “Freddy Mercury!” she says. “He was a Parsi of Indian origin? Led Queen?” He despises himself for disappointing her. “Ah, yes, Freddy Mercury, of course.” “He was phenomenal,” she says. “Crazy little thing called love. Have you heard that?” “No,” he says. “Somebody to love?” “No, not that, either,” he says. The man moves on to movies. He sees a lot of them. Surely, she couldn’t have seen more films than him. I like indie films. He then recommends Butter, Giant Mechanical Man, Grassroots, Tiny Furniture, Burning Man. He has a few more movies 58

Kailash Srinivasan hidden in the corners of his mind, including the ones he’ll watch at home today, but he can’t recall them now and that exasperates him. She makes a show of typing the names down on her phone. She lists a few favorites of her own, by directors he has never heard of. “I always wanted to be an actress,” she says. “I would love to do the kind of movies that Nandita Das does.” “The director just called,” the receptionist says. “He won’t be returning today.” And that’s all she says. The man and woman don’t move. They continue to sit on the couch. They continue to talk while the receptionist blinks. Just as they seem to be getting somewhere, and the man is about to tell her that he’s going to start working on a novel, that he doesn’t know what it’s going to be about, but he’s going to have a go at it anyway, a good-looking man swaggers in. The kind of man that makes other men secretly admit he’s good looking.

“What are you doing here?” she says to the good-looking man. This man is stalking her, he knows. “I’m sorry about your mother,” he says, and attempts to look genuinely sad; the saddest person on the planet, a clown with a frown. What kind of an opening is that, the plain fellow thinks. The pretty-girl shrugs. “It’s been long, way too long since we hung out,” the good-looking man says. “Yes, ages.” “We should make plans to meet. I remember you had shaved your head once because you wanted to know the shape of your skull,” the good-looking man says. “That was hilarious, but brave at the same time.” “Yes, I know.” Again, unnecessary, the plain fellow thinks. “I loved it though,” and at this point she remembers the man sitting with her.

“Meet each other,” she says. His hands are clammy as he shakes the good-looking man’s hand. “Where have you been?” the pretty girl asks. “I went on a backpacking trip around the world, finished writing my third book, and I’m currently working on a screenplay.” What’s he doing here then? the plain fellow wonders. Show-off. “I know the director, good friend. Came to say hello,” the good-looking man says. Of course you do. “You’re amazing you know that?” the pretty girl says. “Am I? Why is that?” he says. “You just are,” she says, and smiles with purpose. The plain fellow takes out Salman Rushdie’s Shame from his bag so that the other two can see that he reads intelligent stuff. “That’s an old-old book,” the good-looking man says. “I’m currently reading his memoir, where he recounts his life in the wake of the Satanic Verses 59

Kailash Srinivasan controversy. You know I did my PhD thesis on him, about the amalgamation of magic realism and historical fiction in his books,” the good-looking man announces. The man with the book grumbles. He puts the book back in its place. The good-looker talks passionately about Rushdie. He knows everything about him. Even the fact that he started his career as a copywriter. He goes on and on, chronicling Rushdie’s work, from Grimus to Haroun and the Sea of Stories. He remembers everything about him, never once faltering. The receptionist is into it as well. “He’s collaborating on the screenplay for his novel Midnight's Children with Deepa Mehta,” she says. These are the kind of men, the plain man thinks, you want to vote for, want them to run for presidency. “There’s nothing left for you to do, is there?” the copywriter asks. He just broke up with this German model he says. “I do alright for myself,” the handsome man concedes modestly. Very soon, the man thinks, both of these women, or at least the copywriter, will grovel like Meredith does in front of Derek Shepherd: Choose me, pick me, love me, with that dumb-ass expression. The handsome man might not even care about the half-decent receptionist; even if she was excellent in bed, which is unlikely. This is getting out of hand. I might as well be gay, he feels. I should just bless the couple and start thinking of a suitable wedding gift. The light’s fading outside. Everyone has left. It’s just the four of them in this dingy office with sounds of the fax machine beeping wildly, as though Charlie Sheen is speaking on a show intended for families. Like sheaves and sheaves of paper are about to surge out of this foul-mouthed machine and submerge them all. There ought to be something that is his own, that no one else can contest, or raise a point about. They obviously don’t know everything in this world. No one does. As the handsome man seduces the two ladies, the man with the book, the original protagonist, who in fact should have been doing the seducing, starts to disrobe. Piece after piece of his clothing starts to come off: the silly-looking red and black tie, the dirt-creased baby blue shirt, the vest, the cheap watch, the trousers, underwear, socks, his shoes; neatly folded and lined on the floor, atop a grimy carpet that must have had many interviewees rubbing their feet on. He’s fully unclothed now, the hair on his body untrimmed. All he wanted was to speak his mind and not be interrupted, to find out if he can talk, just talk to a 60

Kailash Srinivasan woman in a non-threatening environment. Maybe attempt to have something meaningful with a lady. Everyone falls silent. He’s satisfied. No one knows his body like he does. He knows his penis is a decent-sized one; that it has a slight curvature and when he pulls the foreskin back, it hurts. He knows that he has patellofemoral pain syndrome; that his knee caps rub against the femur bone when he gets up from a sitting position, which is strange because it usually affects more women than men, something to do with his wide hips. After he’s dressed, after every item is where it should be, he picks his bag up and steps out. Upstairs, he can hear the conversation is back on. As he climbs down stair after stair, it strikes him that he will never meet these people ever again. And the tragedy, the real tragedy of it all, is that they don’t even know each other’s names.

61

Ernest Williamson III

Ernest Williamson III

Engendering Gender 62

Allen M. Price Allen M. Price

For Closure

It is December 5, 2011, three weeks before Christmas. Millions of us around the country are trying to keep our families together, and prevent our homes from getting foreclosed on in the aftermath of what economists have called the worst financial crisis America has seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

My partner, Marco, is sleeping in his bed when my cell phone begins to vibrate.

I rush downstairs to the basement, closing the door behind me. When I flip open the phone, my mother’s voice comes bellowing through it. Without saying hello, she barks: “Well, what did he say!?”

“Stop screaming,” I whisper, trying not to wake Marco. I pull the phone away from my ear to see what time it is: 9:30 p.m.

“What did he say?” she whispers condescendingly. “We wouldn’t want to disturb the master’s sleep. I don’t know how he can even sleep. That’s white folks for ya. Never worried about anything.”

“He’s not gonna sleep, mother. He never does when he’s stressed out.”

“Did he ask his mother?”

I begin to tear up and feel my body lose strength, before saying, “No, he doesn’t want to ask her again.”

She too begins to cry and through sobs she tells me that she never wanted this kind of a life for her son. That she worked three jobs so I could have a future, one that involved plenty of money, not struggling like we did when I was young.

“Of course, I know, mother,” I say, sitting down on the floor with one of our cats, Ralphie.

“Are you saying he is going to let the house go into foreclosure?” she asks, softening her voice.

I cry and do not answer.

63

Allen M. Price “I want you to come home, son,” she says. “You aren’t going to change him, Allen. If this financial mess the country is in hasn’t taught him anything, nothing will.”

I do not know what else to say. I want to say more but my crying, my hurt prevents me from doing so.

“It’ll be okay, son.” she says. “I gotta get to bed or I’ll be late for work in the morning.”

Then we hang up the phones.

I sit shivering in the middle of the floor with Ralphie resting his sleeping head on my thigh. I cannot decide which is more shocking: the fact that the house is in foreclosure three weeks before Christmas or that we were in this exact same situation a year ago to the date. I have so much anxiety. I keep asking myself how did we get here. Marco got the ten thousand dollars from his mother to get the house out of hock last December. He was all caught up as of February. So how did he get behind again? I have so many questions. After months of believing he was paying it on time, I finally at the age of thirty-eight get the courage to confront him, but all he does is tell me to mind my own business. This is how he talks to me. I mean the man who I have called my partner for four years. Sadness mixes with frustration and fatigue.

But there is a way out of this mess once and for all. Marco makes two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year as senior vice president of marketing at a Boston advertising agency. Somewhere, he must have money. This is what I tell myself as I turn out the lights and head to bed.

It is noon and the vibration of my phone wakes me.

“Can you go into the office, and in my stack of mail, get that letter from Wells Fargo?” Marco asks in his work voice. “I need the account number.” His calm, warm voice is reassuring. “I also need the phone number off the paper that they left on the door yesterday.” I suddenly feel like there’s hope, and the bank coming and leaving an eviction notice on the front door yesterday afternoon was nothing more than a bad dream. I lift my head up off of the pillow, clear my throat to not let him know I am still in bed, and say, “Did you figure a way out?”

64

Allen M. Price “Call me back when you have it all please.”

“Of course,” I say, pulling the blankets off. I turn my head toward the pillow where Ralphie is sleeping. White fur frames his lips, and his half-open eyes, bright green, shine. He sees me looking at him, sits up, and winks.

“Hello, my little angel,” I say.

“Meow,” he replies, stretching his long blond-furred body.

I go downstairs to the office, find the number’s Marco asked for, and call him back at work. The phone goes to voicemail, so I send him a text message with the numbers.

“TY,” he texts back.

While in the office, I turn on my laptop, and read my emails, then go over things I need to do in the house for the day. I just finished acing a medical anthropology course taught by Paul Farmer at the Harvard Extension School, but I need to get my PhD applications to the schools I am applying to done. As a prospective student who has a master’s degree in journalism with a concentration in health, and has written for health magazines, I have to attain three recommendation letters from top medical anthropologists, write a killer personal statement as well as a writing sample…but there is a disconnect as my mind slips back into panic mode about the revelation I received yesterday afternoon while working on my applications.

I try to process this new information: our house is under siege by the bank, therefore we might not have a home for Christmas.

I suddenly feel as if I am looking at our house from the outside. Even as I look at the framed photos of us on the walls, and our three cats all huddled together in front of the quartz heater that is facing the direction I am sitting on the couch. The house suddenly feels familiar and foreign: I have always dreamed of living in the upscale Massachusetts neighborhood of Chestnut Hill where my grandparents lived.

Growing up across the street from Governor Francis Farms, a wealthy part of Warwick, my mother, who divorced my father when I was five-years-old, raised me on her own. The suburban neighborhood was mostly white, upper middle class, and well educated. We, unlike the people who lived there, were brown skinned, poor, and my

65

Allen M. Price mother worked three jobs. She did not have my father to help out, nor did she have a college education. Needless to say, we struggled. The fact that my mother’s parents— whose rental house we were living in—were wealthy, never entered into our own story. They did not let us live in the house for free or help pay for any of our necessities. In many ways, they blamed my mother for getting married and having me so young—nineteen. With my father far from plain sight, my mother and I never spoke about our poverty. Instead, we focused on always keeping the house clean, looking presentable in public settings, and the story that just because we were black and poor didn’t mean we had to behave like we were from the ghetto.

I was supposed to take pride in my blackness and poverty. To be proud of my black ancestors’ hardscrabble endurance, their heartbreak and eternal pining for freedom, their determination and fearlessness to keep going in the face of not knowing if they would ever be free from poverty, and most of all, their winning fight to end segregation. The blood of kings and queens flowed through my veins, my mother used to tell me. They had survived being pillaged from their land in Africa, shipped on boats across the Atlantic Ocean, shackled, raped, beaten, and killed to help the white man grow crops and make money. Black people knew strength and will and drive and scraped their way back from poverty and slavery to becoming movie stars, athletes, and President of the United States. You don’t expect anyone to pick you up, you pick yourself up, she repeated to me throughout my childhood. This was presented to me as an honor and a birthright.

But the blood in my veins doesn’t flow with just black ancestry. I am not just the descendant of the brave African ancestors that my mother can lay complete claim to. While her blood is of African ancestry and some Native American, mine has a large dose of English that comes from my father. My father is a mysterious white man who bailed on me and mother shortly after they divorced. I still look at him as a strange white man. He has popped in and out of my life, forced my mother to take him to court to pay child support, and has a family I do not know and could not recognize if they were standing in front of me. Most of them have graduated from college, have

66

Allen M. Price successful careers, and plenty of money in the bank. My mother told me they have some black heritage in their bloodline but choose to ignore it.

When Marco comes home, I am cooking dinner: teriyaki chicken, rice pilaf, and asparagus. I want to ask him how this happened, but I hesitate. I need to know the whole story, but I also dread knowing. I just kiss him and say dinner will be ready shortly as he passes.

In the kitchen, Marco turns on The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and I suddenly realize the reason for my disconnect. It is because I have been living in an assimilated reality. I have forgotten what my mother had instilled in me as a child, as well as the lessons from my African ancestors, and succumb to my partner’s way of living.

Things that link me to my black ancestry upbringing even in the slightest way Marco finds unacceptable and does not allow inside the house: wearing t-shirts, shorts, or socks with holes, cutting coupons to use when grocery shopping, unplugging electronics, and turning lights off in rooms no one is using. The only thing that is allowed is keeping the heat on sixty-two degrees in the wintertime. The house uses oil for heat and it costs $3.95 a gallon. So times that by ten and then multiply that by two and that is how much it costs to fill the oil tank that only lasts a couple of weeks at a time during the cold, snowy Massachusetts winter months. Yet living this fake lifestyle is something I mastered as a teenager.

In my all-white schools, being brown skinned and poor did not negatively affect my “fitting in” with the cool, white rich “preps.” My normalization was secured by being in college-prep courses, showing that I was as smart as the preps were, and wearing Ralph Lauren Polo shirts, which signified class. I showed my hip hop dance moves on stage at the school follies in the eleventh and twelfth grade. In a class of three hundred students, everyone knew who I was. I was nominated for best dressed in my senior year, made honors, and voted most likely to succeed. But I could not escape my truth when I came home every day after school: that I was a poor black kid who only lived in a white neighborhood and got to go to white schools because my mother’s parents let us rent the home they owned at a price that my mom could afford.

67

Allen M. Price My peers at school never looked at me as black, but as brown skinned. When I came out of my mother’s womb, my skin color was pure white, and stayed that way for a little while. Sometimes I thought many of the kids in school knew that by the look they would give me. I was constantly asked questions like, “Where are you from?

What’s your history? Are you a model?” Whenever anyone asked my nationality, which happened frequently, and still does, I would say “African American.” They would then look at me puzzled, and I would elaborate, “My mother’s black and Native American, and my father’s white.” At the time I did not know the white was English. I had asked my mother if I was something more than black because of the questions my skin color prompted.

“You as black as they come,” she said, without missing a beat. “If people think you’re white it’s ‘cause you don’t act like one of them black kids from the projects.”

I lived with this double consciousness: at school I was the exotic looking brown skinned kid who had style and smarts, but at home I was a poor black kid who could only take a bath on Sunday nights, and had to wash up in the sink during the week, and who could not flush the toilet after peeing, but only after pooping because we could not afford to empty the cesspool in the backyard but twice a year.

When Marco comes downstairs from changing out of his work clothes, I realize that I have gone back to living with this double consciousness. But I can resolve the contradiction by exposing the secret I have been keeping, the lie I have been living. I am thrilled to remove this burden, but also afraid to do it. Though I was able to do it once before. I set the plates and silverware on the table in the TV room.

This is it, I think, no more charades. It is time to feel the burn like I do when I am weight lifting.

I can hear Marco talking to our black and white cat, Sylvester, in the TV room before he flips on The Real Housewives of Atlanta in there, and then lays on the couch with Collin, Ralphie’s brother, sprawled out next to him.

As I fix our food, and sit down to eat I realize I am doing this as a black man. I look at the black housewives on the television portraying themselves as rich when in reality they are anything but. I wonder how my behavior to reflect my black poverty 68

Allen M. Price will affect my relationship with Marco who is so deep in the closet about his own poverty. White people who are poor are able to walk around being themselves. Black people who are poor walk around in shame. This is one of the great truths of being a minority in America: poor black people are not allowed to forget they are poor or once were poor, and our society doesn’t forget it either.

I clean up the dishes the way I always have: by myself, feeling tired, underappreciated, ready for Marco to go to bed so I can turn the channel and watch something with substance, but I know I need to ask him what happened today with the bank before he goes to sleep.

I put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, getting annoyed at Marco for laughing so loudly, so happily. My thoughts jump from subject to subject, taking in the sight and smells of the house and having negative and positive reactions to them, thinking about how I should have kept my townhouse when I moved into Marco’s, dreading not knowing where I will be living if he loses our house, and the exhausting tedium of finding a place to live.

After loading the dishwasher, I go downstairs to the garage to take out the garbage. When I open the door, and turn on the light, I notice how empty the room feels with Marco’s broken-down jeep, and boxes filled with Christmas lights and decorations stacked against the wall. I walk back into the house, and then into the office where I can hear the sound of paper ruffling. Marco is now sitting at the desk going through a pile of his unopened mail.

For some reason his bald head, and bushy grey beard, the weight in his haunch, and his lackadaisical manner about spending money particularly annoy me today. I pretend it does not when I sit down on the futon, and ask him if he has talked to his parents today.

“No,” he says, angling to avoid a conversation that he knows will inevitably steer in the direction toward me asking him how he is getting the house out of foreclosure. He is a forty-nine-year-old passive-aggressive Italian celebrity and label ho. He is also very, very white. I realized that when we first met, as his complexion

69

Allen M. Price was one of the things I found so attractive. I register this, and in addition to being annoyed, with my new consciousness, I am able to speak my mind.

I try to avoid conversations with Marco that involve his finances because I know how frazzled he gets when discussing them, but today I don’t even bother to smile or beat around the bush. He must somehow feel my renewed strength because he sits resolutely in the chair, trembling a little.

“I spoke with a woman at Wells Fargo,” he says, before I can say anything. “I have set up a payment plan. Three thousand will come out of my check on Friday.

Another three thousand will come out next Friday. With those two set up, they have given me an extension until the thirty-first.”

I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I have to pause before speaking, because I know his communication of financial matters is like that of a teenager. I wait, looking defiant, although it makes me feel nervous to speak for fear we will get into a fight, like I am the one who got us into this mess.

“I’ve decided to take thirty thousand out of my 401K,” he continues. “It should be transferred into my bank account next week, which gives me a week to pay the remaining that’s due by the thirty first. I’m not asking my parents for help again so please don’t ask me to.”

He doesn’t say how much, or how many payments he is behind, which starts to raise my already high blood pressure. My heart is pounding hard and my instinct is to go off on him, to let my African ancestry come out in full force, but I sense he feels bad. He lingers, smiles, but my lack of response puts us both ill at ease.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight,” I say, looking at Sylvester, Collin, and Ralphie who are now in the office lying in front of the quartz heater, “but won’t it be cutting it close in terms of getting the rest of the money to them before the bank auctions the house off on the thirty-first?”

“Relax. I’m taking care of it.”

I am pained by his condescending answer. My frustration and anger mount.

Why should I as a black person accept this anymore? This is so white. No black person would tolerate this because the inability to communicate openly is a white 70

Allen M. Price thing. We black people have no problem speaking our minds; it is a trait my African ancestors had to learn in order to demand their equal rights. I slam my hand down on the couch, causing our cats to jump.

“Don’t patronize me,” I say. “There is no room for it today or any day anymore.”

Marco tries to suppress his anger but fails.

“What’re you talking about?” he hollers.

I don’t blush, but I can feel my face red from heat.

“You haven’t noticed? Everyone knows!” I say, and realize what makes Marco attractive, besides his pasty white skin, steely blue eyes, and ruggedness, is that his voice, with his perfect pronunciation of words, can become high pitched.

“What, that you’re Madea incarnated?” he says jokingly.

“Funny,” I say, not laughing. “I’m not Madea. Just because I love watching Madea movies doesn’t make me her. You seem to think that black people are rude and obnoxious because we speak our minds.”

He looks at me, thinks for a moment, and then turns on the computer.

“I’m black,” I say, as if it is not evident, or revealing some new piece of information.

“Oh, so you’re no longer mixed?” Marco says.

Fuming, I look at Marco who is paying no attention to his angry partner. His eyes are glued to his Facebook page. How many times does one need to check their Facebook page a day? This is not normal. I don’t even have one to check.

“Hey,” I say, waving my hand in front of the computer screen. “Am I invisible now?”

I expect him to see that I am upset and apologize, but instead, he smiles and says, “Go get my slippers, will ya?”

I go to hit him on his arm, but in trying to block my hand, he knocks the pile of mail all over the floor.

“Guess this means you’ll finally have to look through it all,” I chide.

He peers up at me from picking up the mail, and asks, “Why’re you being such a bitch tonight?”

71

Allen M. Price It is then that everything hits me and I start sobbing. Marco goes and gets me a tissue. I wipe my nose.

“Last night,” I say, calming down a bit, “I was talking—” “I know,” he cuts in. “You think I can’t hear you on the phone in the basement?

You are not as quiet as you think you are.”

“My mom asked me to come home. She doesn’t think you can change.”

His face softens. He sits back in the chair, and says, “She’s right. I don’t think I can. I’ve been living like this my whole life. It was the reason my wife divorced me. I told you that when we first met. It had nothing to do with me being gay. I can’t blame you for wanting to leave.”

“I didn’t say I want to leave,” I say, as I continue to wipe my nose.

“You didn’t say that you didn’t,” he says, as he continues to pick up the mail.

“I don’t want to leave.” I say, angrily. “I want you to stop spending money you don’t have and pay your bills on time so we can stop fighting and go back to the way we were when we first met. Is that so much to ask for? I pay all the utility bills on time. I go grocery shopping every week so we don’t run out of food. I clean the boy’s kitty litter boxes three times a day so they can go to the bathroom, and the house doesn’t smell like piss and shit. Hasn’t this recession taught you anything? The entire world was almost brought down because of the massive debt people are carrying.”

“I am sorry,” he says, then gets up to get me more tissue. When he comes back he says, “I forget how our backgrounds differ.”

The day of the auction I wake at 10:00 a.m. I did not fall asleep till after 3:00 a.m. Outside it is cold and icy from the rain that fell last night. The bank has not stopped the auction of the house because they decided, after receiving the past due amount, that they wanted two months paid in advance of the next due date. Marco has sent the money to them, but Wells Fargo has yet to stop our house from being in foreclosure. The auction has been published in The Boston Globe every day for the last week. We had some twenty-five family members for Christmas dinner at our house. A couple times, interested buyers poking around outside of the house found 72

Allen M. Price their way inside in the mix of all the people. This made the day even more stressful because most of Marco’s family did not know he was in such dire straits. During the Christmas gift exchange, some whispered about the tension between the two of us.

And since Christmas day, Marco and I have not spoken to each other about anything beyond basic necessity. I have no more words.

It is almost 10:30. I am filled with anxiety, frustration, and anger. I have finished all of my PhD applications and sent them out, but wonder if I will have a home to study in when classes start in the fall. As I lay in bed, I can hear him talking to someone downstairs in the kitchen. I am nervous because it is New Year’s Eve and the bank is closing at noontime. I know if I say something Marco and I will definitely break up. But at the same time, I need to know what is going on, so I reluctantly walk downstairs.

I look through the kitchen to see Marco standing with a brown skinned man of towering height, muscular like me, with long black braids tied back, a few stray ones falling around his dark face. The man is collecting his paperwork that is spread out on the dining room table. He sees me, smiles, and says, “You must be Mr. Price.”

“Yes, I am,” I say, realizing my nervousness has kicked into overdrive, and caused sweat to drip from my underarms.

“I’m Marvin,” he says, and shakes my hand, “Marco’s lawyer. I just told him, but will tell you that the auction has been canceled. The house has been taken out of foreclosure. I’m so sorry it took so long.”

I collapse into the seat next to Marvin at the table. I feel as if the strong hand that was gripping my spinal column, and keeping me standing upright, has let go.

“You’re a lucky man,” he says to Marco. Then turns to me, and says, “I got one at home just like him. You keep doing what you’re doing.”

I want to say something to Marvin, some gratitude, some acknowledgment of our shared race.

“Thank you for saving our home,” I say, standing up and shaking his hand again.

73

Allen M. Price “You’re welcome. Now you can go out and have fun celebrating your partner’s birthday tonight.”

Looking at Marco, I lean in toward Marvin, and say, “It’s always the same at these things. I’m the only one.”

“Oh, believe me, I know what it’s like,” he says, sympathetically, “to be the only one of color at the table.”

74

Wulf Losee Wulf Losee

Still Life with Meyer Lemons when skies free themselves from clouds light shafts through the curtains the lemons hum in the bowl saffron-tinged yellow skins they are so bright poised—waiting for the world to be born high notes of scent fill the kitchen tangy as crushed lime leaves a spider corpse clutches a lemon’s nipple I brush it off—wash them in the sink you slice them up with snicks and taps— santoku knife against a cutting board your hips swaying to a rhythm several octaves below the spectrum of the lemons marmalade boils in the pot—thickens— steaming up the kitchen

75

Contributor Bios Contributor Bios Gay Baines’ poetry and fiction have appeared in RE:AL, Slipstream, Pinch, Atlanta Review, and other journals. She is co-founder of July Literary Press. In 2010 she published a poetry collection, Don’t Let Go. A selection of her poems appeared in A Celebration of Western New York Poets (Buffalo Legacy Publications, 2014). She lives in East Aurora, N.Y. A.S. Coomer is a writer of fiction and poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in issues of Red Fez, Literary Orphans Journal, The Quill and Serving House Journal. You can find him at www.ascoomer.wordpress.com.

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His photography has been featured in a number of magazines including the literary journals: Compose, DMQ Review and Citron Review. Further information about his work is available at: www.thomasgillaspy.com.

Geramee Hensley is a Filipino-American writer from Ohio and a social media editor for Winter Tangerine. His work has appeared in Souvenir Lit, Cartridge Lit, Sundog Lit, and even journals not ending in “Lit.” He’s won awards including the Adelaide Hinkle Prize for Creative Writing, Calliope’s Mount Union Prize for Poetry, and the Columbus Poetry Forum’s 22nd Annual William Redding Memorial Prize.

Wulf Losee lives in Northern California with his two cats. Both his cats are severely critical of his poetic efforts. Writing poetry detracts from his attending to their needs, and they also believe that his verse is vastly improved by their walking across his keyboard. Qxvopkvh!

Don McMann has always made his living by writing—speeches, magazine articles, technical manuals, ad copy. He worked in public relations where he developed his interest in fiction. McMann has an MFA from Bennington and a PhD from the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. He¹s currently an assistant professor of English at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada.

Suzan Mikiel is a writer, actor and photography enthusiast. She is currently working on her memoir. Her work can be found on Vimeo, Eyeem, and at suziesays.com.

Suzan, a Detroit native, lives in Los Angeles by way of New York. You can take the girl out of the Midwest…

Ned Carter Miles has recently declined a law scholarship in favor of finding his vocation. He currently works as a freelance writer and translator in London, England, and has published stories in The Pinched (UK), reviews in Fuselit (UK), and has a forthcoming article in Opticon1826 (UK).

76

Contributor Bios Allen M. Price is an MFA candidate at the University of New Hampshire. He has an MA in journalism from Emerson College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Saturday Evening Post, Tulane Review, Natural Health, Muscle & Fitness, Pangyrus,Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, among others.

Joseph Pritchard is a senior English major at Kent, Salem. He has been published in Wordgathering and was awarded the Anna Ulen Engleman Creative Writing Award

by Kent State's English Department. Joseph is currently working on a creative honors thesis with poet and professor Craig Paulenich.

Zachary Riddle is a graduate assistant at Central Michigan University studying creative writing. He is a graduate assistant at CMU's writing center, and an avid fan of everything horror. Zachary has had poetry published in The Central Review, Temenos, The Blue Route, Apex, and Yellow Chair Review. He thanks you for reading his poetry.

Hilary Sideris is the author of Most Likely to Die, poems in the voice of Keith Richards, published by Poets Wear Prada Press. She lives in Brooklyn and works as a curriculum developer for The City University of New York.

Kailash Srinivasan has a Master’s in Writing from Macquarie University, Sydney.

His work has appeared in Sincere Forms of Flattery (O&S Publishing), Urban Shots Love Collection and Yuva (GreyOak), Chicken Soup books, and literary magazines like Crate (US), Going Down Swinging and Regime (Australia), Bluslate and Them Pretentious Basterds (India).

Dr. Ernest Williamson has published creative work in over 600 journals. His work has appeared in journals such as New England Review, Tulane Review, and The Columbia Review. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University.

77

Golden Ox Award for Prose & Poetry Oxford Magazine is pleased to be hosting the second Golden Ox Award for prose and poetry. What is it? Well, it's cash money, people. Who couldn't use a little more of those sweet, sweet greenbacks? How it works: Pay in $3.00, and get entered in a contest to win $100.00. We'll keep the contest open on submittable from November 12th until April 1st (no joke). Poetry and Prose (including both fiction and creative nonfiction) will be judged separately—there will be a winner for each. Runners up will receive honorable mention and publication in the June issue of OxMag. Guidelines: Poetry • Unpublished work only • Simultaneous submissions welcome, but you must let us know immediately if it's accepted elsewhere and there are no refunds if you must withdraw your work • Max 3 poems per submission • One submission upload per contributor Prose means Fiction and Creative Nonfiction • Unpublished work only • Simultaneous submissions welcome, but you must let us know immediately if it's accepted elsewhere and there are no refunds if you must withdraw your work • Max 3,000 words • One submission upload per contributor • Please indicate whether your submission is fiction or nonfiction in your cover letter Submissions now open: oxmag.submittable.com/submit. Show us what you got!

Note: No person affiliated with Miami University may submit work to this contest.

78