T he M eadowland Review
Fall 2010
Cover Photo Dew on Parchment By Wendilea
Editorial Note Just about one year ago, during this same season of ―mellow fruitfulness,‖ the idea of The Meadowland Review began to take shape. We, the Editors, did not know then how many incredibly talented and committed writers and artists would be interested in being a part of our journal. We are astonished by the abundance of thoughtful and fascinating work we have read and viewed over the past year. We are delighted to present our Fall issue. We are incredibly proud of the pieces that are found within these pages and feel honored that all of our wonderful contributors have entrusted their work to The Meadowland Review. Enjoy. Megan Duffy
Poetry Editor
Lauren Cerruto
Poetry Editor
Jennifer Walkup
Fiction Editor
Ray Caramanna
Photography Editor
For submission guidelines please visit www.themeadowlandreview.com Questions or coments: contact@themeadowlandreview.com Copyright © 2010 by The Meadowland Review. All rights are one-time rights for this journal.
Poetry Blake Leland Margaret Gilbert Geordie de Boer Daniel Hudon Chelsea Whitton Charlotte Beard Nancy Devine Lindsay Faber Chiat Joshua Liebowitz Lisa Zimmerman Zara Raab Lois Marie Harrod Emily Hayes Louie Crew Anna Catone
The Grackles Three Flowers For Emily The Nightingale in the Parking Lot Angle of Repose Golconda Memoirs of a Saint On Edward Hopper‘s ―Western Motel‖ The Entrance The Scientist Who Knows Best? Four Months The Flicker of Days Anything that Tears Be`la Bart`ok Houdini Comes to Gillette, Wyoming Coldwater Mandolin Club Euphotic The Meadow
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To Have And To Hold The Ghost Cat
28 37
Fiction Kristen Gentry Rachel Monroe
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Photography and Art Wendilea Francis Raven Chad Finer Susan Black Joan Leotta Marri Champie
Contributors
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Dew on Parchment A Recent Exercise View to Bass Hole – Yarmouth Port, Ma. What‘s Left Roman Spring Locked Up
cover 3 11 18 25 27
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Poetry
A Recent Exercise by Francis Raven
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Blake Leland The Grackles for Leslie, 12/18/09 make a racket in the trees out back--a commotion, a flock of raucous talkers in silhouette rising from branch to branch, they might be as many, almost, as the last yellow leaves that catch the mid-December light. Flashing blue-black or purple in some sunlit angles, calling all to all, each to each, they raise a din that seems to billow up, out, and then to fall, filling with thin bright brass shards the air around us. We stand side by side in that glittering noise. Then in a sudden mass the glass-black birds rise up-like flaked obsidian inlaid upon a turquoise sky!
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Three Flowers for Emily
Blake Leland
1. The meaning of a Lily is-Something gay, a game. The Stakes are--what the Heart will risk-The Croupier--a Dream.
2. This Rose's red is red--more Red Than any rose's is! What is the word you've whispered To make it blush like this?
3. Sweet Pea's tendrils spell adieu; We two its Scholars are-Its cursives--careful--to review, And every purple flower.
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The Nightingale in the Parking Lot
Margaret Gilbert
I hear the nightingale in Newark, NJ under the bent moon with horns pale deep into the night in this the city by the filthy Passaic and lie awake like Troilius. Why is it you don‘t answer? You who write every day in Paris. I told you I loved you a week ago. The nightingale in the parking lot sings a sorrowful song, green with moonshine under my chamber window. Troilius waited for Criseyde at the wall night after night because she promised to come in a letter, until he had a dream. He was walking in a forest and came upon her kissing and fondling a wild boar, and then he knew she would never come. It is almost as if your silence is an answer, a letter in the hot night, through the swallow song that says you can‘t write, you won‘t, you are with another, full loud song against the moon shine.
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Angle of Repose
Geordie de Boer
Think of a Modigliani model, fully exposed, reclining on a couch, almost slouching into her pose, vaguely abstract, as if her Act on a Sofa were inclined to slide off, causing her to feign comfort — the awkward left arm, the pained smile, and all the while the composed painter saying, this is the precise angle of repose I was hoping for.
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Daniel Hudon Poems after Magritte
Golconda
These were gigantic days when the sky was infinite like a shard of bone and the ruins of
time coursed unhindered through our veins. Nothing moved; the Earth didn‘t turn and the sun cast only shadows. In the town, above and below the apartment blocks, suspended in front of houses, suspended in the sky as far as you could see, neither rising or falling, the men in the bowler hats rained supreme.
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Memoirs of a Saint
Daniel Hudon
What if at the beach one day, with a long, long stretch of your arm, you could peel off the horizon and, without letting the clouds wander away or the waves die, roll it up like a mural and take it home under your arm? What then? What if your mural became the lining for a set of red velvet curtains that you tied with a red velvet rope and stood on end in an empty room in your house until you figured out where you could unfurl such a masterpiece again? And what if a few days later you came back to the room in the middle of the night because you heard a sound and you saw the curtains standing freely their ends opening to reveal inside the billowed white clouds aloft in the sky and curled along the bottom, diligent as truth, the windblown waves galloping in? And what if, after being tied so tightly, the curtains still showed a slight depression at the waist? Would you be surprised?
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On Edward Hopper’s “Western Motel”
Chelsea Whitton
She asks me if I‘d like to draw the curtains. Don‘t that big sky make you lonely? No. I am not looking at the sky. But I am lonely, standing here. She turns to me, but not to find me. Her eyes, her mouth her hand, resting on the baseboard, all the shapes that onetime made her holy, tighten slowly into lines and angles. And I am trying not to look at the sky. Instead, I see loneliness, her years of waiting by windows in rooms like these, of green roadsters, and red desert and the cold blue sky. How her eyes don‘t see the suitcase in the corner, anymore, and why she always turns her back against the door. I see now, how these years have worn her down, how life with me has made her ugly. So I look away, beyond her, at a sky too big to care. And I say, Yes, darling. Draw the curtains. It‘s too damn bright in here.
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View to Bass Hole – Yarmouth Port, MA. By Chad Finer
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The Entrance
Charlotte Beard
At your home I began to understand the origin of smells. Your grandfather lived with you. He died right over there, in that chair. I said I didn't mind standing. On the sill of the rain-spotted kitchen window, I saw a bushy rosemary plant in terra cotta, discovered a garden just outside greeted with rain hatched rather than pushed from the clouds. I twisted my finger around the chipping purple beads of your hanging curtain. You came through with the casual avoidence of its strands, suggesting you'd walked there thousands of times, but for me it was the first.
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The Scientist
Charlotte Beard
Unlike a scent that fades or only occasionally strikes a memory, you are more intense once removed. Beauty is an abstract concept, and because you are a scientist of words I should choose something more concrete: Acoustic levitation. The little floating pearl starts to lift in my chest at any memory of conversation. When you greet me and say you have to pee, it rolls around a bit, encaged in a congested lung. I realize I could have gotten away with a longer hug. "Asthma is just allergies in the lung". The pearl jumps into my throat, there's nothing I can say to that piece of information genius.
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Nancy Devine Who Knows Best? Back when she thought things made sense-carbon with oxygen, meat and cheese, red wine with read letters--and the moon had a glow she thought she could taste hanging ripe in the sky, she was certain she‘d some day touch with hand or knee, and the stars, they were allies, sparkling, cheering so that she‘d get the universe she deserved: a present on a dark pillow of infinity. Today, the above and all its cohortssun, trees, fish and wind- appear indifferent, gliding dismal along. Maybe there is some way to save it, let the ocean tides retract their creations, devour what no longer works. Still she dances at the end of a dock; the boats drift by and call her name, memorizing her silhouette as if it were law.
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Four Months
Lindsay Faber Chiat
Like a huge puddle to be acknowledged I see me looking up at me, looking down at me— a canary with its eye. Each morning the color of coffee. I bathe my fingertips in the beaker. True: I don‘t always reflect. But I know the cold is cold. Don‘t we all go on awhile, drenched in our own making, prancing across cement, licking tar? We say there will be no fear. There is always fear. And when the canary makes her move— perhaps she is called, perhaps she her own initiator, this must be the reason I am awake at 4 a.m.— to hear your song, to deliver to you. It was so dissimilar before you, my child. I thought I was perfect by myself in this enormous spectade of the world.
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The Flicker of Days
Joshua Liebowitz
The flicker of days a hiss in the grass now settling down for good. In cool wood cicada resists the wind. ...Needn‘t oil the hatch old-vane spins in humidity: chair is sturdy enough to weather the flicker.
Two hands wrapped around a dog‘s throat, no. Hands merely rummaging the air. Ah yes the great afternoon and its patience. Cradled, less restlessly cradled in dry grass; in unbounded arms of the giant. Composed or resigned aboard the second hand.
You are the soil that stands still. I am the: ―it won‘t be taken away from you, everything that‘s led to this.‖ If I am this, I am something to depend on.
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Anything that Tears
Lisa Zimmerman
is what the sign says above the recycling bin in the building where I carry a book of elegies upstairs to my poetry class. The sign means paper but I'm thinking of thin blades of grass between my horse‘s teeth, my favorite jeans rent at the knees, wind tossing water out of the gutter, the arm torn from the body: how bone and muscle obey the shrapnel. Anything that tears could mean the hawk‘s beak working on the rabbit in the weeds, or the pages of the journal that need to be burned, or our gaze from the accident at the side of the road. But what if the sign means anything that tears? That would account for the student rushing from class during the poem about a sister. How no one got up right away to follow. But then somebody did.
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What’s Left by Susan Black Page 18
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Be`la Bart`ok
Zara Raab
for my daughter, N.
Shall we do naming the pairs, scissor-thread, clipper-nail, two-car, pencil-sharpener? In my village of damp firs, loggers treemute, and grass greener, we‘d see straggling along, shuffling dust among the weeds, a couple––mother and son?––bundled up, his large head, her flaming hair, his wide eyes. They flew mottled moths past the car window where I slumped pressing nose against the glass. A life ago I lost the cold Lost Coast; yet on Fillmore in San Francisco, still, you and I retain old-country habits, coming to cohabit these two small rooms, the never-mind-what-people-think upright pushed against the wall like a narrow bed. On this piano, flower child, petalskinned-being, you lie down with your long hands in eiders of Bela Barto‘k and dream. At first, we placed a screen between our cots, but after some months, you folded them up, and put them away. What do you call this, disabling the labels: machine-made man? So nourish easy silence, food, and light. Two women, young, old, odd-bundled with our trinity of worry: hunger strike, ice, loneliness––distant now as stars; like stars shining from a deep past, and no less real.
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Houdini Comes to Gillette, Wyoming
Lois Marie Harrod
Later you called him wiry and I said grimy and he would have escaped if city folk like me had tied him up, but among us on the street were leathered cowboys used to binding calves so we stood and watched— you, the fugitive from the sage, I your eastern other and our kids. The Houdini was just a boy, eighteen maybe, soiled and stringy the way circus offspring grow– a boy trying to thrum up audience for the big tent come to town, and we saw the buckaroos knot him down on his square of filthy tarp and knew no clenching of his muscles or relaxing afterwards could Houdini him from their knots. How those wranglers gibed and jeered as he begged release until one, a little kinder I suppose, said enough, enough. So maybe it was guilt at the humiliation we had seen or hope that the boy would vindicate himself that made us buy tickets that afternoon to his Big John Circus
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where our children saw the sidewalk Houdini become trapeze artist, trickster and high-wire walker too. That evening they played at lion-tamers on the lawn, elephants, horses, clowns and acrobats while your mother told us again how on Sunday afternoons your family used to drive downtown to laugh at flatland touristers in their high-pants, cuffed and I begin to see the role I played in her circus and wondered if she would ever see enough.
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Emily Hayes Coldwater Mandolin Club
We had driven an hour in Kent Woolfolk‘s pick-up, past Paruna Baptist Church, Punch Town, and the Halfway House, beyond the ruins of Comanche City, to be greeted by squawking chickens and fallen fence posts, a lonely Herefordthe skeleton of my great uncle‘s home, just across the Oklahoma line. Thought you might want this. Kent motioned in the direction of my past, a mystery, like Kiowa Creek rushing behind usa mandolin, without strings, propped up against the side of the coop.
The Coldwater Mandolin Club Page 22
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Available for Engagements K.H. Fulton, Mandolin, Vocals
Late that night, Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring was the still song over the prairie, the year 1899, and I knew him, long before I had ever walked this ground.
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Euphotic
Louie Crew
Your match-drawn dagger and my stick of liquid fire are the same. It's just the voiced nudge of our brains that names our difference. There is here. Then is now. Gone is arrived. Sound is silence, like the funnel of the forests which hold the whining whistles of the train.
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Roman Spring By Joan Leotta T he M eadowland R eview Fall 2010
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The Meadow
Anna Catone
First, there is the meadow, innumerable wildflowers, grasses. The cabin‘s lights in the windows behind us. The meadow goes out and out— no place we've been but the true myth of all the places. Then all the losses begin to rise up over the field. Children in bare feet at summer camp, painted clay, red rock, a buck in a lightning storm. They rise up in the body now— fog canopies the field. A tree gathers its limbs, leaves…. We‘ve turned into lichen and bark.
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Fiction
Locked Up By Marri Champie T he M eadowland R eview Fall 2010
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To Have and To Hold
Kristen Gentry
Dude‘s grin is the first thing I see when I walk in the pawn shop. I can‘t even play it off and say the ring belongs to some distant auntie who lives out of town or something. As much as me and Sheila have been in this pawn shop lately giving our stuff away with the enthusiasm of kids asked to share their new Christmas toys, I know he knows it‘s hers. The first time we came into his pawn shop I watched him watch Sheila‘s breasts plump up in her red V-neck sweater like Ball Park hot dogs right before his eyes as she folded her arms under her chest and leaned over his glass display case, waiting for his appraisal of the watch she‘d given me for my birthday two years ago. I saw him lick his lips that were pinker than a man‘s lips should be, nearly fluorescent set against his skin that‘s the same brassy yellow color as the branches or vines or whatever the fuck designs those are on all of those played out, wannabe Gucci, I‘m-in-the-Mafia looking silk shirts that he wears with gold chains like his name is Guido and not Leroi. Even though he tries to make out like the name Leroi is something exotic. He sits on a throne in his TV commercials. ―Le roi means the king in French,‖ Sheila explained after I asked, ―Who the fuck does he think he is?‖ crunching hard on a bag of potato chips that didn‘t taste as salty as I was feeling about just pawning my PlayStation. I watched Leroi hand some bad actress, with an even worse weave, a bag of money for turning in her ―antique‖ vase. ―I know that, Sheila.‖ I cracked into a big, burnt chip. Sometimes I think she forgets that I went to school, too. That I could have gotten all A‘s and be getting my Masters like her right now if I wanted. ―If his mama had used a ‗Y‘ he‘d be a regular nigga just like everybody else.‖ Leroi stared at the ring on Sheila‘s finger like all the broke motherfuckers that walked into his shop stared at the shit they had to give up. He complimented her smile, the fat curls that bounced on her shoulders, her black boots with the killer dominatrix heels, that she insists on wearing even in snow when she could fall and bust her ass, as if he were offering nothing more than excellent customer service. I would walk out, but he offers the best rates in town, and sometimes I really hate the motherfucker for it. He knows he has me and nearly everything I‘ve ever loved. He knows I‘ve become the loser I‘m sure he told Sheila I was when he took her out for ―Just a drink, Damon, damn‖ (as Sheila had explained in the below-zero tone she‘s taken to using especially for me) when I scoot the tiny, black velvet box across the glass counter. I don‘t try to hype up my merchandise
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like I usually do, working my hustle about so many carats of gold and silver and shit. My heart isn‘t in it. Besides, he knows how much that ring means to me. Just the way he holds it in his thin fingers makes me want to jump across the counter and start whooping his ass. I plan to whoop his ass anyway, but after I get my money. I won‘t need him anymore after this. There‘s nothing left to sell and I don‘t want the ring back. Not after his hands have been all over it. ―I‘ma buy you another one,‖ I told Sheila two weeks ago when she convinced me to take her engagement ring so we could put something down on the mortgage. I couldn‘t even look at her when I said it. I just rubbed her arms wrapped around my waist. We were standing in the kitchen and I was looking out the window at the snow falling, lost between wanting her to leave so I could sniff away the tingling in my eyes and not wanting her to ever leave. ―I know you will, baby. I know.‖ She kissed my neck, and I know she meant to be comforting, but it made me feel so retarded that I didn‘t know what to do with myself.
We
probably would have stayed in front of that window forever, but something hissed and Sheila went to turn down the heat on her pot of Ramen noodles. I didn‘t take the ring that day, though. It was too much. Everything was too much. The brown overdue LG&E bills, parking my truck in my boy‘s garage around the corner to avoid the repo man, not having any cable, watching her stuff her purse with her own plastic bags to go to some ultra cheap grocery store and come home with these sorry bags of nacho cheese tortilla chips that she‘s convinced herself are as good as Doritos. Two nights later, I was hustling again. I had to give my lawyer everything I had to keep from going to jail when I caught a case. Everything. All my savings. The money for me and Sheila‘s wedding. Shit. But I was like maybe it‘s for the best. Sheila had been on me for years about getting a ―real‖ job, working all her sociology stuff about having a better life like I‘m one of her cases. She was kind of calm about it the first two years we were together. We were in high school and everybody was hustling. But five years later, even though everybody‘s still hustling, we‘re not in high school anymore and she says she‘s not going for that shit anymore. Right before I caught the case she hemmed me up and gave me an ultimatum. Said it was her or the streets which made me laugh because I was like, ―What are we in some movie or something? ‗The streets‘?‖ It just sounded so dramatic, but she was dead serious and I sh ould have known it. She‘s quick to ignite with an attitude, especially about someone‘s lost potential. I think the reason she goes off on me so bad is because she can‘t do that at work because the kids at the residential treatment center are so fucked up. Those kids have been beaten with irons and fucked their little sisters with hot dogs, and you can‘t just yell at kids like that so she comes burning through the house like a lit trail of gasoline, lashing at me. But she‘s right. I‘m a smart
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brother and I don‘t want to be hustling when we have our kids, but I want to quit on my own terms. The money I make at Soulful Fashions ain‘t shit. I was selling my ass off, hyping up all those fake plastic Nikes and cheap sweatshop Baby Phat jogging suits with th reads coming loose on the thighs to brothers and sisters with something to prove and few resources to do it, until I found out we didn‘t even get paid on commission or with checks. You‘d think the Korean people who own the store would be more progressive about business, but I guess they figure it doesn‘t matter since they‘re in the hood. I don‘t know how Sheila knew where I‘d been, but she did. Maybe it was the swagger in my walk, the confidence of a man with real money in his pocket. But she didn‘t even say thank you for the bag of Doritos that I tossed to her on the bed. ―Where you been, Damon?‖ It was one in the morning. She knew I hadn‘t been at work. ―Over Dre‘s.‖ I faked a yawn as I fell onto the bed next to her. ―You a lie, Damon. I talked to Stacey earlier.‖ Damn. I didn‘t know what to say. Sheila sighed and attempted to roll over. ―Get up,‖ she commanded, and I reached for her because I thought she wanted me to get up and out of the bed and I didn‘t feel like sleeping on the couch, but she tugged at the comforter I was lying on. ―Get up!‖ I obliged, and she cocooned herself under the covers. ―Baby, we need the money. It‘s just for a little while, O.K.? I‘m gonna keep my job, but I just need to get a little stash so we can get out of this hole.‖ Through the comforter, I rubbed her back and kissed what I assumed to be the top of her head. I almost fell off the bed when she exploded out from under the covers. She squinted her eyes into death rays. ―That. Is. The. Dumbest thing I have ever heard. Damon, you…,‖ she began to explain but stopped. ―Didn‘t you just lose all your money because you were hustling?‖ She sighed like I was a lost cause. ―Just stupid.‖ She flipped her sweatshirt hood over her hair scarf and pulled the covers back over her head. The high ceilings that we loved in August became a bitch in the February chill. We walked around in two pairs of socks, waffle leggings, and anything fleece we could find. It took nearly ten minutes to take off all the shit so we could have sex. The last time we did it I didn‘t know if she was holding me so close because she loved me or because she was grateful for my body heat. ―You sure you want to do this?‖ Leroi looks me dead in the eye. ―Don‘t ask me stupid questions. Just do your job.‖ Page 30
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He raises his hands in a mocking pose of surrender. The hand with Sheila‘s engagement ring pinched in his fingers looks like he‘s giving the O.K. sign. ―All right.‖ He smirks. I know he‘s trying to make me look irrational. Like there is no reason for my hostility. Like the angry black thug he thinks I am. Fuck him. He doesn‘t know shit about me. I‘m smart. Me and Sheila used to have deep conversations all the time about God, politics, racism, life after death, what we‘ll do in certain situations when we have kids. Sometimes we‘d be talking and I‘d say something that would make Sheila pause and smile at me the way people do after they taste something new and they like the flavors melting on their tongue—if they‘re the type of person to allow themselves to enjoy their food that way instead of ―Mmm mmm mmmph‖ing and grunting all over the place— and they think, Where has this been? Why haven‘t I been eating this all my life? I‘ve always been good in science. In school, I loved doing experiments and watching the chemical reactions.
Elements combining to make new things.
Stuff fizzing, dissolving, or
crystallizing because of two drops of this or five minutes of heat; it‘s amazing to me. But how are you supposed to get a job as a scientist? They don‘t ever post those jobs. I check the paper sometimes. I have never heard a regular person say, ―I‘m a scientist.‖
Especially never in
Louisville, Kentucky. Even if there is a regular person scientist in Louisville, I can guarantee they‘re not black. You gotta be white to get jobs like that and be in their inner circle and whatnot. Leroi reaches under the counter and pulls out one of those things. I don‘t know what they‘re called—the things people push up to their eyes to appraise diamonds. He‘s getting all up close on the ring, turning it around and looking from every angle like he really knows what he‘s doing. He didn‘t go to school for that shit. The more he‘s twisting and turning and inspecting t he ring the more I can‘t wait to beat his ass. ―Two carats, princess cut, no scratches or flaws.‖ He takes the thing out of his eye. ―This is a good diamond.‖ I‘m surprised because I was waiting for him to take the thing out of his eye and say, ―This ring is flawed,‖ all snooty and fruity-like so he could get in a jab, but I‘m impressed by his professionalism. ―Where‘d you learn how to do that?‖ My genuine curiosity catches me off guard. Leroi shrugs. ―Read a couple books, looked on the internet, got a certification.‖ His whatever kind of answer makes me mad again. Like everything is so easy and I‘m just lazy. Last night when I was laying in the bed next to Sheila tuning out my promises I felt like one of those ―I‘m gonna‖ niggas who everybody knows are never gonna do a third of the shit they claim. Her best friend Anita‘s got one of them dudes. She‘s always coming over carrying her sack
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full of dreams, a metallic, granny-sized purse stuffed with celebrity magazines, People, Us, Them & Em. She‘ll flip through five magazines with the same exclusive photos from some famous couple‘s expensive wedding with extreme close-ups of the bride‘s ring. ―Look at that, girl.‖ Anita will point at a picture with her ready-made, airbrushed plastic nails that are always glued on crooked. ―That is all that,‖ she says excited like a kid before she realizes the kinda nigga she hooked up with, the kind who will never buy her anything like that, not even the cheaper knock off advertised on the bottom right corner of the page. Yesterday, she was creaming all over some reality show star‘s pink diamond when I saw her eyes land on Sheila‘s ringless hand wrapped around a glass of grape Kool-Aid. She didn‘t say anything about it. She did, however, say something about our generic snacks and the fact that she had to keep her coat on during her visits, but not like she was pushing us out on Front Street, just calling attention to how close our situation had gotten to hers. She‘d be like, ―When‘d y‘all start buying Happy Snack oatmeal crème pies? I be tearing those up. I like those better than Little Debbie‖ or ―I‘m t rying to keep my gas down, too. Shit, LG&E better get out of my face talking about a two hundred dollar bill.‖ I guess she thinks that makes Sheila feel better, like she has a broke ass soul sista in her struggle, but I don‘t like the way she tries to lure Sheila into her fantasy world and get her to hope for something better than I can offer her at this moment right in front of my face. ―Ooohwee, I want a kitchen like that. You see that? Ya girl from Young & the Restless‘ kitchen? She got all that open space with the island. I don‘t even know what I‘d do with a kitchen like that that wasn‘t filled with Lavar‘s dirty dishes. But I‘d do something. I‘ll tell you that. I‘d be one Betty Crocker baking, Martha Stewart Living bad bitch.‖ That‘s where Anita always thinks Sheila‘s going to take the bait and start dreaming about copper cooking sets and plasma TVs built into exposed brick walls, but Sheila always says, ―I told you to leave his ass. You don‘t need him,‖ and gets up from the table, usually to wash our dirty dishes, busting through all of Anita‘s fantasy talk. And that‘s what scares me. Sheila does not take shit. Really, I‘m surprised that she didn‘t leave me a long time ago. She‘s threatened thousands of times, and each time I‘m just as scared as the first time because Sheila is not an empty threat kind of girl. She‘ll chop a string and never look back. That‘s why I never worry about her creeping out with dudes she used to date. The ―X‖ in ―ex‖ is way capital with her. Ain‘t no ―I‘m lonely‖ booty calls or flirting on the sidewalk with lingering eyes. When it‘s over, it‘s over. Not in a bitchy ―I‘m too good‖ or ―I hate you‖ way, but in a busy, friendly ―Aw‘ight, let‘s just keep it moving. I‘ll holler atcha, partner‖ kind of way. But Leroi. Page 32
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She‘s digging him, and she hasn‘t officially made the threat but it‘s as real and in my face as the white breath that came out of her mouth when she sighed at me last night. I don‘t even know how she could like him. He‘s way lame. Like I said, there‘s the played out shirts and corny commercials. I guess she thinks he‘s cultured because of the whole French thing and the fact that he told her all about some expensive, antique Japanese tea kettle brought in by some Native American midwife. I told her he was an asshole for taking the kettle from probably the only barely working Indian midwife left in the South. Sheila‘s always talking about how drugs ruin lives, which, yeah, they do, but she never wants to talk about how King Leroi is getting rich taking from the poor. Heirlooms and stuff. History. ―It‘s not the same,‖ she said. ―They have a chance to get it back. Besides, most of the people that go in the shop are pawning things to get money for what?‖ She cupped a hand behind her three hole-pierced ear, waiting to hear the answer that she delivered personally with a hard nod and a disapproving look thrown my way, ―Drugs.‖ One point against me. ―But not the midwife,‖ was my pussy ass response at the time. Th e next day, I came back and said that Leroi was just fueling the problem by giving the crackheads money to support their habit. ―But he didn‘t start it,‖ Sheila answered. Five more points. Adding to the whole lame as hell thing is the fact that he‘s giving her information for her thesis on emotionally disturbed teens and running some old helping-her-with-her homework type bullshit. He‘s a big time volunteer at Brooklawn, another residential treatment center for kids, so he gives her the scoop on a whole building full of troubled tales for her analysis, including his little brother, who as luck would have it is a crackbaby. Score about a thousand points against me. Sheila doesn‘t even care that Leroi has two daughters. Their pictures are all up on the wall behind his counter. Two copper-colored girls in puffy pink coats, smiling and showing big Chiclet teeth. Sheila has never dated anyone with kids because we‘ve been together for seven years, but I gather from her reactions to friends shacked up with baby daddies that she wouldn‘t have it. ―A son?!‖ she‘ll ask, stopping her friend in midsentence like she‘d just said her new man had a one year-old swamp monster. ―Aww, naw. That‘s baby mama drama right there. Fresh baby mama drama.‖ But she‘s all ―They are too cute‖ over Leroi‘s daughters and asking how one of them did in the winter play and how Leroi is handling the other one who‘s getting a little too fast at nine, piling on the play makeup and giving boys her number to call her on the phone. ―So, how much?‖ I ask Leroi with an attitude, watching the ring pinched between his fingers, trying to get things moving, but the words are covered up by all the shit in my throat, so I
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have to clear it and ask again. I‘m angrier this time. ―How much? Come on, man.‖ I‘m impatient, nervous, and fidgety like the crackheads that come in here with TVs and DVDs. Leroi‘s mother was probably acting like that in some other shop across town when she was big and pregnant with his brother, itching to buy stuff from some dude like me who had to leave the hot spaghetti dinner his girl made to answer her call. I‘m glad when his phone rings so I can get myself together, but I huff like I‘m agitated. ―One second,‖ Leroi assures me with one finger raised, all about customer service despite the tension thick in the shop air. The place always smells stale and dusty like every secondhand shop in the world despite the hint of Windex that lingers from Leroi‘s efforts to keep everything in the store gleaming. Leroi faces the wall in the corner behind the counter where he keeps the phone. He talks low. I wipe my hand down my face to clean the slate of this confrontation and start fresh —be cool, collected. Leroi‘s hand that‘s not holding the phone to his ear is tucked under his armpit. I hear him make plans for Saturday at seven thirty. My blood is hot, making tiny bubbles just thinking that he might be talking to Sheila, then he says, ―O.K., see you then, Sheila,‖ and chuckles. A short moment of breathy bass, exactly the kind of laugh you use when you‘re running game. He broadcasted her name just for me. Thousands of chemical reactions are exploding beneath the surface of my skin, pushing out against my ribs. I‘m ready to end the waiting and start the beat down right away, but I need the money. I gotta wait. ―Where you taking my girl on Saturday?‖ I ask, almost threaten. ―Sheila and I are meeting at the treatment center. Afterwards, I told her we could go out for a drink if she likes. She seems stressed out.‖ He looks me di rectly in the eyes. ―I‘ll give you twelve hundred for the ring.‖ I paid twenty five hundred cash for it, but I nod. ―My girl doesn‘t need a drink. She‘s not a big drinker. I‘ll help her relax, all right?‖ ―She‘s not your possession.‖ Leroi places the ring in its case, snaps the box shut, and places it on a shelf behind the counter. My palms are sweating. I rub my thumbs against the slick skin and my fingers, itching to fall into fists, curl tight over them as I watch Leroi move to the cash register. He‘s right. Sheila isn‘t mine, and I‘m becoming more aware of that fact every day; every time she walks out a door or picks up a phone like she did the other night. She was laughing hard as hell while I was trying to watch TV in the living room. I mean, holding her stomach, gasping for air, tears and all. I thought she was talking to Anita so once she hung up I was ready for her to launch into something like, ―So Anita met this guy and….‖ And I was looking like the biggest Page 34
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jerk, man, just waiting to laugh, already smiling and everything when she started talking and hit me with the real punchline, ―O.K., so Leroi….‖ All I heard was his name coming from her mouth over and over while she laughed. ―Ain‘t nothing funny about the kids at that center,‖ I said after Sheila had finally finished. Sheila‘s face straightened up. ―I wasn‘t even talking about the kids. What are you talking about?‖ ―That‘s what y‘all are supposed to be talking about—those kids—not all that other stuff.‖ I fluttered my fingers to indicate the frivolity of ―other stuff.‖ ―Oh God. Don‘t start.‖ ―Start what?‖ I asked even though I knew what. ―All that jealous stuff. I‘m with you.‖ ―You tee-heeing all on the phone with that nigga, I can‘t tell.‖ Usually we‘re about ten minutes into an argument before I cross the line that makes Sheila explode. ―You can‘t tell?‖ Sheila asked in a disbelieving tone that let me know I was about to be begging for a retreat behind that line. ―You can‘t see I‘m staying with you in this cold house when I could be at my mama‘s?‖ She gestured to the window covered with clear plastic puffed out with freezing air. ―You can‘t see me taking all my shit to the pawn shop for you—‖ ―I didn‘t tell you to—‖ ―—cause your dumbass caught a drug case when you should have been working a real job in the first place, theeen, you go back to do the same shit?‖ ―You can‘t see this?‖ She thrust her empty ring finger in my face like she was flicking me off with her middle finger. ―You can‘t see that? You won‘t find another woman who‘ll take that.‖ ―You told me to take the ring, Sheila. It was your idea.‖ ―I know. That‘s what I‘m saying. That‘s love. That‘s me.‖ She smacked her chest buried beneath a flannel robe. ―And you‘re sitting there saying you don‘t see that shit.‖ But I feel it right then standing in Leroi‘s pawn shop surrounded by all of the things that people have given up for other things, habits, and people they wanted and needed more than guitars, game consoles, earrings, food, and memories. Sheila‘s not mine, but she‘s trying hard to be. She‘s fighting harder for me to become the person I‘ve always wanted to be than I have ever been willing to fight for myself. She‘s been the one making sacrifices for a dream that she isn‘t sure will come true, but she‘s willing to risk everything for it. I feel the shit so strong it‘s almost overwhelming. ―Damn,‖ I say, and I guess Leroi thinks I said this because I‘m torn up about giving up the ring and thinking about how I‘m going to lose Sheila and wants to rub it in in his punk ass way so
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he picks up one in a stack of what looks like about a hundred daisy-shaped pieces of paper beside the cash register with the Brooklawn name on them and asks me if I would like to give a donation to help the kids go on a trip for spring break. This is his formal way of reminding me that I‘m not shit because I sold the drugs that helped some of those kids end up in that home. He‘s screaming for a beatdown that I want to give now more than ever because I know I‘ll win in every way—the fight, Sheila. I know I‘ll take them both. But I can see him calling the police with the taste of his own blood thick and sweet on his tongue like the top layer on a homemade Popsicle, happily adding another case to my record. I won‘t give him that satisfaction. I won‘t do that to Sheila. I guess Leroi thinks I won‘t say no to an invitation to help the kids I may have helped fuc k up because I‘ll feel guilty, but I‘ve paid enough for the shit that I‘ve done. ―Naw, man. I need my money,‖ I say before I correct myself, ―We need the money.‖ In that ―we‖ I hope he sees me and Sheila shivering in the bed together, eating bowls of Ram en noodles and taking trips to the library because we‘ll both get tired of her shouting instructions at me to get the rabbit ears just right so we can get a picture on our TV without cable and really start liking reading books out loud to one another, even the ones about science, even though Sheila could not care less about science and I will never get to read more than a paragraph before Sheila will straddle me and start shedding my layers. Leroi puts the daisy back on the stack without a word and opens the cash register. Even though I don‘t want to, I open my hand and let him count out each bill and lay it in my palm because I know I need everything he has to give.
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The Ghost Cat
Rachel Monroe
So: I turn thirty and the ghost cat is there, like a birthday gift from the universe. I‘m combing my hair—is more than usual falling out, or is it just my birthday paranoia?—and when I turn, there she is: lying on the bed, transparent but factual. ―Hello,‖ I say. She doesn‘t say anything back, and I feel silly for trying; you can tell just from looking at her that she isn‘t thatkind of ghost cat. But her mouth opens and something not quite a sound comes out. I wouldn‘t say that I hear it, exactly, at least not with my ears. She has thin ghost whiskers and an elegant ghost face, and I can see right through her to the spot on my blanket where I‘d spilled red wine earlier today in my private birthday celebration. It is true that I‘m a little bit drunk, still, maybe, yes, I think. Maybe this is what happens when you get drunk in your thirties: you see things. Maybe that‘s why old people in bars always look so distressed. The thing to do, it seems, is to touch her. Even when I stand and walk toward the ghost cat, she doesn‘t move much. Twitches an ear, maybe. I stretch out my hand to touch her—I have on this silly new birthday nail polish, hot pink with sparkles, young-colored, I‘d thought it might cheer me up—that had been after the birthday wine, the birthday manicure—and my hand shakes a little. (Everything happening in slow motion, is how it seems to me.) You really can see right through her. So then comes the part that‘s hard to explain: I can‘t. I get close and must lose my nerve or something. She looks up at me, the ghost cat, bored and a little haughty. I try again, but I just can‘t touch her. My hand gets close, but — would I call it a resistance in the air? I might. You‘d think it would be hard to get anything done with a ghost in the house, but she‘s so quiet. Also I suppose I am drunk. I watch her out of the corner of my eye: it‘s hard to say what color she would‘ve been, but probably something mottled— there‘s an inconsistency about her shimmer, denser patches around her middle and tipping her tail. This, and the generous way she yawns—eyes closed, ears flattened, totally vulnerable—makes me think we might be able to be friends. It‘s Tuesday and I should be at work. I haven‘t missed a day in three years, and I have no idea what people do on Tuesdays. On TV it‘s Ellen or people in velvet-curtained rooms exchanging meaningful glances. I look at my birthday list again: give yourself a manicure!, it says. Drink wine for breakfast!! It is three o‘clock; if I‘d gone to work they would be ushering me into the fake meeting, pretending I was in trouble. ―It‘s Mr. Melton,‖ someone would say. ―And it doesn‘t sound good.‖ And then the cake on the conference table, Mr. Melton clapping me on the back, the
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presentation of the Olive Garden gift certificate, Mr. Melton‘s teeth khaki-colored under the fluorescent lights, the yellow crumbs clinging to suits for the rest of the day like particularly persistent dandruff. All of it so predictably horrifying. But no!, I‘ve made a decision: my thirties will be the decade of decisiveness. Now the ghost cat is by the window, perched on the arm of the chair. Her reflection in the window‘s glass is an even thinner shimmer. I watch her watch me. We stand there together for what feels like a long time; with anyone else, it would‘ve been awkward. But there isn‘t anything awkward about the ghost cat; if anything, she seems more elegant even than the regular version, free of the indignities of fur and kitty litter and metal cans of tunafish. I can feel us getting used to each other. Outside, a friendly pack of sweet voices starts to serenade me with the birthday song: Oh there, I think, finally, it‘s my surprise! But of course it isn‘t: it‘s just the children at the school across the street, and it‘s Flynn or Phinn they‘re singing to. Someone else who was born today. I lean forward over the cat for a better look—he‘s a neat little man in a miniature pea coat, a thatch of blonde hair. He graciously accepts a cupcake from the teacher. The other children crowd around him, raising their little fists in a cheer. From here he looks popular and I wish him the best, my birthday twin. Since I get home late most days I‘ve never seen the schoolyard occupied like this, all bustling with little bodies. I decode some of their complicated running games and I‘m in the midst of trying to figure out who the mean ones are when I realize I‘m touching the ghost cat —or, rather, the ghost cat is touching me. Not lying on me, but next to me. Close. I try to keep calm as I marvel at the sight of it, our parallel legs: mine wide and solid, hers small and furred and see through. Can I feel the smallest touch of cold through my jeans? I‘m deciding when I hear the key in the lock. My boyfriend, Jonathan, doesn‘t believe in ghosts, just like he doesn‘t believe in God or four-leaf clovers or marriage. It‘s understandable: he‘s a prosecution lawyer, so his job is to take things apart. He has a beaked lawyer face and wears expensive suits. Everyone‘s always giving him gift certificates to steakhouses—that‘s all anyone ever thinks a lawyer wants, that or white gold cufflinks in the shape of dollar signs. We let the gift certificates pile up, and sometimes we make paper airplanes out of them, since Jonathan‘s been vegan for eleven years. My last boyfriend played the banjo and had a policy of trusting everything that anyone told him. ―It‘s important to be open to the world,‖ he would say. He stayed at my apartment while I worked, since in his, pieces of the ceiling were always randomly collapsing. When I came home I‘d make us pasta or rice—we couldn‘t afford anything else—and he‘d pour me a cocktail (we loved Page 38
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cocktails) and play me the song he‘d written that day. They were always sad, sad songs. At the end of the month when there wasn‘t any money or much food and only tiny dredges of alcohol left in the bottles, we‘d have Creative Day. Once he made a cocktail out of gin, Kahlua and orange juice, since that‘s all there was; my contribution was small sandwiches made of Triscuits and olives and peanut butter, with an appetizer of baby carrots sliced thin as I could get them. The rule for Creative Day was that you had to finish everything, no matter what. We opposed waste. It sounds romantic now, but there were always crumbs in the bed and I remember crying every day. We‘ll call this boyfriend Vladimir, just because. When I‘d ask Vladimir if he loved me, he‘d say yes, and when I asked him why, he‘d say that it wasn‘t something he could put into words, and when I asked him please, he said I didn‘t understand. It didn‘t seem so at the time, but I think this is why we broke up. If I ask Jonathan why he loves me, he‘ll lay down his fork and sketch it out for me in the air. It‘s simple, he‘ll say. Then he makes three or four points. I can never help nodding along; everything he says is so neat, so clearly correct. Usually it‘s comforting, his certainty, but I fear the ghost cat would fade out in the face of it—that he could, I don‘t know, not-believe in her so strongly she just logically wouldn‘t be able to exist anymore. She seems to feel the threat, too — she dashes into the closet and fits herself in with a pile of sweaters I‘ve neglected to pick up off the floor. She‘s visible only if you know to look. In the kitchen, Jonathan is pink-cheeked and handsome from the cold. He‘s brought me two vegan cupcakes, one carrot-flavored and one chocolate. He doesn‘t tell me they‘re vegan, but I can tell just from looking at them—the icing is too decadent, like it‘s trying to make up for something. ―Birthday girl,‖ he says proudly. ―Tell me all about your birthday day.‖ I tell him about the wine, and about Ellen, and about little birthday Flynn. The ghost cat feels viscerally absent in my account, and I‘m half-sure he‘ll figure me out—he really is quite good. But all he says is, ―What a bourgeois name.‖ I tell him that maybe it‘s Phinn, but he rolls his eyes at that, too. I hadn‘t really thought about it before, but I guess I have to agree. We‘re both tired but we have half-hearted birthday sex anyway, because we know it would be weird not to. Afterwards he pets my hair to be nice; I know he thinks I‘m sad about my birthday. ―Welcome to your fourth decade,‖ Jonathan whispers. ―May it be your best one yet.‖ I try to ignore him. As I fall asleep, I imagine the ghost cat tucked neatly among my winter sweaters, dreaming wispy dreams. Things go on like this for a while—that is to say, I stop going to work. It‘s easy enough, once I‘ve started; Mr. Melton only calls a few times before he seems to give up. They have the
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things I‘ve left—my favorite pen, a cardigan I don‘t much like, and a framed photo of Jonathan and me—so maybe they‘re calling it even. I‘d expected them to put up more of a fight, but I‘m surprised to find that it doesn‘t bother me when they don‘t. Jonathan doesn‘t notice, though I suppose that eventually he might. But who‘s to say I won‘t go back, someday? For now, though, I have the ghost cat to fill my time. We both prefer the window seat, where we curl into each other and watch the children, keeping our special focus on the birthday twin. He‘s Flynn when he‘s charming and Phinn when he‘s being bad or bad-ish, sneaking behind the Dumpster to play mysterious, private games. The ghost cat allows me to touch her now, though she‘s barely there at all. Her weight on my lap is like the idea of pressure: if I closed my eyes, would I even know she was there? On the sixth day, my father calls me—he wants to talk about weddings again. If Jonathan and I lived in Rhode Island, he informs me, we‘d already be married, technically. Over the phone he reads me the Wikipedia article on common-law marriage: ―three years cohabitation and the parties‘ conduct is of such a character as to lead to a belief in the community that they were married,‖ he says. ―Sounds like somebody I know!‖ He doesn‘t ask why I‘m not at work, which is too bad, because I‘ve come up with a good excuse: cholera. For the marriage question, I‘m less prepared. I think about offering him some Jonathan phrases, like the actualization of the individual, or entering into mutually beneficial alliances without the imposition of constraining societal norms. The way Jonathan says them, they sound like a beautiful thing. ―I just want you to be happy,‖ my dad sighs. I look at the ghost cat. She‘s asleep on the bed, curled neatly into herself. Her sides don‘t lift because she doesn‘t have to breathe. I enjoy the impossibility of her. ―I am happy, Dad,‖ I say. Nights I stay awake next to Jonathan and listen to the house‘s small shiftings, wondering if it‘s her paws making the floorboards creak like that. Sometimes I wish she would cry out so I could go and calm her, but most nights the secret of her is enough. Jonathan sleeps on his side with his mouth drooping open. He looks smooth and young and clueless. ―There‘s a ghost cat in the house,‖ I whisper into his sleeping ear. Out loud, the words sound strange, a little crazy. ―She‘s definitely a ghost, but we‘re friends. I think you‘d like her, if you would give her a chance.‖ Jonathan turns over; his eyes are open. Oh fuck, I think, but he just pets my hair. ―Shhh,‖ he says. ―You‘re having a bad dream.‖ In the morning he makes fun of me for talking in my sleep. I should just let it go, I know. It would be the smart thing to do. Instead, I say, ―I wasn‘t asleep. I remember.‖ Page 40
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He gives me a long look. He‘s got this breakfast oatmeal and a big glass of soy milk in front of him, and he‘s reading the comics. He doesn‘t look lawyerly at all—he‘s much less frightening to disagree with this way, I‘m discovering. ―What are you talking about?‖ he says slowly. ―I meant what I said,‖ I say. But that‘s not enough; I know the real words need to be said. Having spoken them once before should make it easier, but it doesn‘t. ―There‘s this ghost cat,‖ is how I end up putting it. ―Really. She‘s been around for a little bit. It‘s no big deal.‖ He‘s still eating his oatmeal, which means he isn‘t angry, at least. ―I don‘t get it,‖ he says. ―Is this some sort of reference to a TV show I don‘t watch?‖ I tell him it isn‘t, and we leave it at that. On his way out the door he tells me I have a funny imagination. He shakes his head fondly as he says it, but lets the door slam behind him. When he comes home from work that night, he sneaks in extra-quiet. The ghost cat and I are playing chase-the-balled-up-paper on the living room floor—we don‘t hear his key in the lock, her usual cue to hide in the closet. He just appears somehow in the doorway, briefcase in hand, staring down at us. We freeze in the middle of the room. The ghost cat looks at me and I look at Jonathan. ―What are you doing on the floor?‖ he asks. ―And why do you look so guilty?‖ ―Um,‖ I say. ―Is this that ghost cat thing again?‖ he says. ―Because really, I don‘t get it.‖ But she‘s right there, squinting at him suspiciously, sniffing in the direction of his shoes. I point; there‘s no reason to deny it any longer. Jonathan‘s eyes slide right over the space where she sits; he has an ugly, confused look on his face. For him, there really isn‘t anything there, I realize. ―Whatever it is, it‘s not funny,‖ he says, turning away. ―Just stop.‖ The next day he‘s sorry. He brings me vegan fudge and big hothouse flowers. ―Okay, okay,‖ he says. ―You‘re right. I see the ghost cat.‖ He swoops his hand across a cat -sized space of air, even going up a bit at the end to account for the tail. ―Pretty little kitty,‖ he says, swooping again. In my lap, the ghost cat pretends not to watch him, but I see the very tip of her tail twitch. Maybe I‘m projecting, but I think she looks annoyed. I rest my hand on her flank to quiet her. ―I‘m sorry,‖ I say, ―But it‘s not like that at all.‖ I nibble at the fudge and sniff the flowers, but he can tell I don‘t mean it. After dinner he sprawls on the carpet in front of the television like a little boy, watching a sport I know he doesn‘t care about. I watch him watching: his eyes don‘t even follow the golf ball. The ghost cat jumps on
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his chest and brings her face up to his, so close that I can see his breath lifting her whiskers. His face doesn‘t even twitch. We sleep on the couch together that night, the ghost cat and me. We are our own complete unit. Could we run away? I picture us in a log cabin, on the prairie, with wheat-haired Phinn there too, for good measure. The ghost cat hunts ghost mice, or real mice—whichever is her preference; Phinn and I churn the butter. In this daydream I‘m wearing a bonnet, and I am incredibly happy. Jonathan tries to kiss me goodbye when he leaves for his lawyering the next morning, but I‘m fake-asleep with my face buried into the couch. The best he can get is the back of my head. I keep still, but the ghost cat shifts nervously. She nudges my chin with all the force she can muster, which isn‘t much. Even after I hear the door shut behind him, she won‘t let up; I‘ve never seen her nervous like this before. She spends the morning trying to scratch up the furniture and, when she doesn‘t get anywhere, slinks under the bed in a sulk. Phinn fails me too, by being absent. The other children play one long, tedious game of duck duck goose, but I watch them anyway. I don‘t know what else to do. I try to coax the ghost cat out to play, but she ignores me. Maybe she‘s pretending that I‘m the ghost today. I stare at the children: they‘re racing in useless circles. I call Vladimir, just to have someone to call. ―I have a ghost cat!‖ I announce. ―She found me, and now we‘re best friends.‖ ―Cool,‖ he says. ―I‘m into it.‖ We haven‘t talked in six months; I‘ve forgotten how slowly he speaks. ―So, do you want me to come over and play with your ghost cat?‖ he says, so I hang up on him. When she comes out from under the bed, she‘s faded—at first I think I‘m imagining it, but no—there‘s definitely less of her there. She sneaks into the closet, settling onto one of Jonathan‘s sweaters this time. I try not to take this personally. If she doesn‘t move, I can‘t see her at all. I try to give her a scratch on the chin, her lucky spot, to reassure both of us. I stick my hand out to where I think she might be, but when I get close, there‘s that push back in the air again —she‘s not letting me touch her. I try to pretend it isn‘t happening, the fading, but she gets more insubstantial every day and nothing I do seems to help. Phinn is gone from school three days in a row, and it‘s hard not to think of this as some sort of conspiracy. Jonathan and I share tense, wordless dinners, and I go to bed early, like a child. It gets to the point where I can‘t tell if the ghost cat is sleeping with me or not—she‘s weightless now, almost imaginary. She fades in parts, like the Cheshire cat, until the only things left are her eyes and the sharp white slivers of her claws. Jonathan smoothes my blankets, brings me tea on a tray. But I‘m not an invalid; I‘m just lonely. At night he sits by me while I lie on the couch and think about how huge my loneliness is, how it has its own topography: Page 42
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I am lonely like a desert, or an ocean. When I start to cry, I turn my face away from him. What would he do with a feeling this big? On the day her eyes start to vanish, I lose it completely. And so when Jonathan comes home I admit that maybe he finds me collapsed on the couch, and that I might be cryin g, the littlest bit. He takes one look at me and loosens his tie. When he sits down on the couch, it sighs with his weight. He is solid, a thing that takes up space, and it almost makes me angry. ―I was going to leave,‖ I tell him. He brings his eyebrows closer together but doesn‘t say anything. ―But then Phinn hasn‘t been in school all week, so I couldn‘t. And then I called Vladimir. And I think my dad hates you because you won‘t marry me. So I don‘t have anything.‖ The words come out of me and they won‘t stop coming. Maybe it‘s not angry that I feel, but jumbled. Like I‘ve been shuffled, and my pieces are in all the wrong places. ―And the ghost cat is real, but now she‘s disappearing again, and no one will ever believe me.‖ ―I believe you,‖ he says. I‘m all snotty and the breaths coming out of me are ragged. ―I haven‘t been going to work,‖ I say. ―For, like, weeks.‖ ―It‘s okay,‖ he says. ―It‘s going to be okay.‖ I notice a waver in the air by his elbow, a ghost cat–sized waver. This is more of her than I‘ve seen all day. I watch her nudge his arm toward me; he places his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I can‘t stop staring at this new wrin kle he‘s got between his eyebrows. It makes him look incredibly wise. ―Prove it,‖ I say. ―Give me some evidence.‖ His face is serious. He looks ready to try very hard. ―Okay,‖ he says, and takes a deep breath. ―Here we go.‖
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Contributors Charlotte Beard is a writer and learning clinician in the bay area. Her poetry is generally contemplative but whimsical and based around the concept of self and of the other. Charlotte‘s work has been published in New Forum, the Undergraduate Creative Writing Journal at UC Irvine. Susan Black is a watercolor painter who seeks simplification and distillation, focusing on what she hopes is her unique personal expression. After spending her early years as an East-Coaster, Susan has been living in San Francisco since 1996 and has been painting since 2003. Previously, Susan had a 20-year New York-based career in corporate communications and holds a BA in Literature from Connecticut College. After having made her living for so long using words, Susan found that California's light, scenery, attitude and whole way of life awakened in her a desire to communicate in visual terms. Her work has appeared in local, regional and national juried shows since 2005. ―What‘s Left‖ is one of Susan‘s many meditations on sea shells, which are powerful personal metaphors for her. Shells represent shelter and movement, life and death, what (and who) flees and what (and who) stays behind, beauty and utility. Anna Catone’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals, including the Boston Review, Caketrain, Commonweal, The Los Angeles Review, and Post Road. She was selected as a finalist for the 2010 Ellen La Forge Poetry Prize. She is poetry editor at The Cortland Review and lives in Southborough, Massachusetts. Marri Champie has an MA and a BA in English Literature, Writing Emphasis from Boise State University, a minor in Art, photography emphasis, and a minor equivalent in Earth Science. She taught college English composition. As a technical writer she wrote fish and wildlife habitat assessments and studies. Marri won three Dell Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy writing, an Anderson Fiction Writing Award, and was a runner up in the Hewlett Packard Fantasy and Science Fiction Story Writing Contest. She is a published poet, amateur photographer, and essayist. Marri completed three Fantasy novels and is in the process of writing a collection of short stories about contemporary, rural women. Marri is a fishing fanatic, photography aficionado, and horsewoman. An award winning cook, she sells artisan breads, eggs and honey, and home-canned jellies and condiments at the local summer Farmer‘s Market. She lives on a small ranch overlooking the Great Basin of Idaho with her horses, and Jack Russell terriers . Lindsay Faber Chiat is a college counselor who lives in New Jersey with her husband and baby daughter. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tar Page 44
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River, Front Porch, Oak Bend Review, The Literary Review, Fourteen Hills, Barrow Street and The Salt River Review. Louie Crew, 73, an Alabama native, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers. He lives in East Orange, NJ, with Ernest Clay, his husband of 36+ years. As of today, editors have published 1,975 of Crew's poems and essays. Crew has edited special issues of College English and Margins. He has written four poetry volumes: Sunspots (Lotus Press, Detroit, 1976) Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990), and Queers! for Christ's Sake! (Dragon Disks, 2003). The University of Michigan collects Crew's papers. Geordie de Boer, a rambler and wrangler of rhyme (internal), lives in southeast Washington (state). He‘s been published most recently by Mobius, Commonline, The Naugatuck River Review, The Centrifugal Eye and Miller‘s Pond. Visit him at Cockeyed Fits (geedeboer.wordpress.com/). Nancy Devine teaches high school English in Grand Forks, North Dakota where she lives. She co-directs the Red River Valley Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project. Her poetry, short fiction and essays have appeared in online and print journals. Chad Finer has had a passion for photography since 1960. He continues to carry his camera with him wherever he goes, and with it he documents his surroundings. Self taught, Chad has been digtal since the 1990‘s. Kristen Gentry is a Kentucky girl who lives in Rochester, NY with her dog, Zadie Morrison, and teaches creative writing at SUNY Geneseo. Her work has been featured in Crab Orchard Review and A Cocoon for the Pages: A Matrix Anthology of Literary and Visual Arts, Vol. 2. Margaret Gilbert is a writer living in New York City. Daniel Hudon, originally from Canada, teaches natural science at Boston University. He has had recent poetry appear in The Wilderness House Literary Review, Clarion, The Antigonish Review and Diagram. A new chapbook of his prose and poetry, Evidence for Rainfall, was just published by Pen and Anvil Press and a nonfiction book, The Bluffer’s Guide to the Cosmos, was published in 2009 by Oval Books (UK). He lives in Boston, Massachusetts and his writing links can be found at people.bu.edu/hudon. Lois Marie Harrod's chapbook, Cosmogony, won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest, and her book, Brief Term, poems about teaching, is forthcoming from Black Buzzard Press. Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Press Poetry Prize. Previous publications include the chapbook Firmament (2007); the chapbook Put T he M eadowland R eview Fall 2010
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Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backward (2000); the chapbook This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); the chapbook Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991) Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She won her third poetry fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts in 2003. Over 350 of her poems have appeared in online and in print journals including American Poetry Review, Blueline, The MacGuffin, Salt, The Literary Review, Zone3. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. Emily Hayes received her MA in English Literature from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and continued post graduate work in creative writing at SIUC and Quincy University. Currently, she teaches American literature at Carbondale Community High School and is the poetry editor for The Village Pariah, a new literary journal sponsored by the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. Her works have previously appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including Review Americana, Paterson Literary Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Ruminate, Naugatuck River Review, and Broad River Review. Blake Leland has had poems published in The Atlanta Review, Commonweal, Epoch, Indiana Review and The New Yorker. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he lives in Atlanta and teaches in The School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech. Joan Leotta has been writing and performing since childhood. Her ―motto‖ is ―Encouraging words through pen and performance.‖ Her articles and photos have appeared in many newspapers and magazines including the Washington Post and Woman’s Day. She has performed at venues up and down the east coast from schools and libraries to museums, fairs and festivals. She takes pictures to accompany articles and as an art form in itself. Her photos have been exhibited in the Washington DC area and in Wilmington, NC and her landscape shots have won several awards. Joan‘s short stories have also won awards and have been published in St. Anthony’s Messenger and CrimeStalker among others. Her books include Massachusetts (Scholastic),Christmas Gift (Warner), Complete Guide to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia (Norton) and Tales Through Time: Women of the South. Her photography graces the cover of Tales Through Time and is interspersed throughout the Shenandoah Valley book. Joshua Liebowitz is a poet residing in Brooklyn, NY. He is currently at work on two chapbooks concerning the history of violence and segregation in Chicago, and the contemporary role of the fool. Rachel Monroe is an adjunct instructor of creative writing at Johns Hopkins' Writing Seminars, where she received her MFA. Rachel has had work published in Page 46
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the New York Times and recently won second place in the Baltimore City Paper's fiction contest. Zara Raab’s poems appear in West Branch, Arts & Letters, Nimrod, Spoon River Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has literary reviews now (or forthcoming) in numerous journals, including Poetry Flash, Rattle on-line, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Colorado Review. Her Book of Gretel came out this spring from Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length collection, Swimming the Eel, is due out in 2011. She lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Francis Raven’s books include Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shiftingthe Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox 2005) and the novel, Inverted Curvatures (SpuytenDuyvil, 2005). Francis lives in Washington DC. you can For more information check his website: http://www.ravensaesthetica.com/. Wendilea is an astral nomad traveling around the country somewhere. Chelsea Whitton recently received a BA in Literature from the University of North Carolina, Asheville. Her poems have been published in Headwaters Journal and Metabolism. Lisa Zimmerman’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Many Mountains Moving, Indiana Review, River Styx, Colorado Review and other magazines. Her most recent poetry collection is The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press, 2008). Her poems have been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado.
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