Issue 3 (Spring 2016) by The Paper Street Journal

J OU R N

T HE PA

S TR R E E

ART LIVES HERE

THE PAPER STREET JOURNAL IS PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR, IN THE SPRING AND AUTUMN. ISSN 2369-8225 CONTACT The Paper Street Journal thepaperstreetjournal.com info@thepaperstreetjournal.com

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF James Puntillo Jesse Dorey Eric Tarquinio CREATIVE DIRECTORS Rachelle Waterman Jenna van Klaveren

The Paper Street Journal seeks to publish and promote works of exceptional short-fiction, poetry, art, photography and music. We look for work that is engaging and illuminating. For information about how to submit, please visit thepaperstreetjournal.com/submissions. For inquiries and additional information, please write to info@thepaperstreetjournal.com. Cover Art by Sam Estrabilllo. Additional Photography by Eric Tarquinio, Rachelle Waterman and Jenna van Klaveren. Copyright ÂŠ 2016 by The Paper Street Journal All Rights Reserved Published in Canada Please respect the rights of our contributors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.

SHORT-FICTION EDITORS Nichole Fanara Katie Luke Kevin Malton POETRY EDITORS Julia Empey Alex DePaulo Nichole Fanara Jesse Wright Miguel Sa ART EDITORS Jenna Shamoon Rachel Dengate Alex DePaulo Stephanie Ionni Katie Luke PHOTOGRAPHY EDITORS Stephanie Ionni Alex DePaulo Katie Luke Jenna Shamoon MUSIC EDITORS Eric Tarquinio Alex DePaulo Greg Cain Jesse Wright DESIGNER Jenna van Klaveren

CONTENTS MISCELLANEOUS 8 72 74 79

A Note From the Editors Under the Cover Contributors One More Thing ART + PHOTOGRAPHY Joe McGreal, Untitled Hira Nadeem, Switzerland Deborah Kanfer, Untitled Deborah Kanfer, Spring in Central Park Jen Roosevelt, My Musings Sydney Nikulka, Conceptive Sunrise Sydney Nikulka, Bittersweet Sydney Nikulka, Sovereign Žana Kozomora, Manipulated Print Žana Kozomora, Silkscreen Print SHORT FICTION Charity Blaine, The Unnamed Baby Karen Kates, Ringo Starr’s Golden Drum Katie Luke, Mirrors POETRY Vicki Iorio, Stockholm Syndrome Peter W. Van Dyk, Eternal Evening Zachary Aasman, The Wilderness Pierced MUSIC Camille Inston Naked House Brannigan

10 24 32 66 45 31 49 50 47 48 18 34 51

16 30 48

68 70 70 7

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS Words, sounds, and images all have a way of conjuring up meaning by simply being the things that they are. Put more simply: a book is a book, just as a a building is a building. But they’re also a collection of their parts, and there’s great joy in discovering how these parts work in orchestra to make a whole, but also how beautiful they can be on their own. Sometimes, when you break something down, get right inside it and look at its constitutive parts—its colours and shapes and textures and sounds—you discover a new kind of empty canvas, one that is available for our minds to freely associate on and do things with. If you dwell on something long enough, it has a way of giving-in to a new meaning. It’s inscribed with a different way of being. The art is where you are. It’s where it’s always been. Our new look began with a colour. Our colour. But also not our colour. We’re only borrowing it from the side of a building in Hamilton, Ontario. If you dwell on something long enough, it has a way of giving-in to a new meaning. We’ve taken from the community, and we plan on giving it back as something that’s been repurposed and reimagined. Our updated look and feel is just one of the ways we're repurposing and reimagining the ways you interact with the The Paper Street Journal during your day. Our website has undergone a radical facelift so that all of our content is now seamlessly and efficiently at your fingertips when you need it. Our blog, for example, is the ideal place to read, listen, watch, and experience the different events in our community. Our new calendar is the quickest and easiest way to catch up on all of the local (and not-so-local) events in the arts world. If events are what you’re after, our team has been working hard in collaboration with the talented people at Black Lake Media Co. to bring together artists, musicians, poets and writers, activists, and entrepreneurs in our flagship video initiative called the Spotlight Series. This channel brings you into the world of live performance and striking, thought-provoking interviews.

Now, of course, a word about the journal in your hand (computererr-hand). The layout of this season's publication is another of the bold steps we're taking to change things up. Our goal was to make this copy of the journal as simple, beautiful, and lithe as a clear glass of water. The predominately white pages are meant to mimic the same unobtrusive experience of an art gallery, so that the art retains its authenticity and vibrancy. Beginning with the cover, which shows off a beautiful commissioned print by Hamilton-artist Sam Estrabillo, the pieces in the pages that follow share a propensity for quality and “movement.” This latter theme is captured so wonderfully in Joe McGreal’s photographs, which you can see on page 10, in which he distills the mundanity of the world as it passes us by. His work isn’t a counterfeit observance of the private lives of the people he’s photographed, but, instead, shows how dynamic the perimeters are between the public and private spheres. At its most basic, his photographs show life that's honest and organic and simple. “Movement” was a fitting metaphor for all the “moving” we’ve been doing behind the scenes, as well. As always, we’re indebted to you, our communities, and the artists who submitted for the ongoing and forever-moving inspiration. Other things haven’t changed. Our team has worked as vigorously as ever to curate an issue that’s true to who we are. I strongly believe that the poems, photographs, visual art, music and short stories are some of the best that the community has put forward. As always, we’re excited to share this—and everything else on our horizon—with you. With warmest regards, James Puntillo & the Senior Editing Team

JOE MCGREAL, Series of Untitled Shots 11

VICKI IORIO STOCKHOLME SYNDROME Blue crab trapped by fi(ni)shing line big claw surrendered to the wire desiccated carapace one with his captor When you were just days old Anthony brought me blue crabs to cook I forced those Atlantic swimmers Into the covered stockpot with one hand while the other guided your mouth to my breast to stave off hunger

CHARITY BLAINE THE UNNAMED BABY

We lined up outside, waiting for doctors to inspect us. I coughed, drawing attention that I was sure I did not want. I had heard about these people who took Inuit from their families, to faraway hospitals, to use special medicine to cure us of awful diseases. I had my turn, being examined by a man that I did not know, while a woman stood nearby fetching him his tools. It was not an enjoyable experience, but bearable, until they told me I had tuberculosis. It wasn’t just me. My brother and sister were also to be treated for the ailment that made our lungs hurt and our coughs spew up blood and mucus. The three of us clung together in the boat that took us away from our camp, just outside of Pangnirtung. I had never seen an airplane before, and it frightened me. It wasn’t like we could argue though. Lucy started crying almost immediately. I held her tight. She whispered to me that she was very thirsty. I knew the English word for water, but I was much too afraid to ask. Besides that, I couldn’t imagine that they had water on this contained boat that moved through the sky. Lucy was taken away from us when we boarded a train that would take us to Hamilton. Thomas still clung to me. At least on the train we had water to drink, so I knew that Lucy would be okay. She would probably fall asleep out of exhaustion. I stared at the tall, strong walls of the hospital. This place, from which the qallunaat came, overwhelmed me. Hamilton was a large, busy place, even the sanatorium. Then they took the children from me. That was the moment I broke down. I cried after the nurses that led them away, but no one understood, and even if they had, they would not have brought them back. They herded the remaining Inuit, the adults, into another building. They took my clothes. I was more infected than the

others, but I didn’t even realize I was that sick. My insides hurt, but not from tuberculosis. I was aching for my family, for the two tiny people who must be terrified and were without me to soothe them. They finally told me I had a baby inside me when I started to grow a tight round belly. I didn’t even know I was pregnant, when I had to leave the north. It won’t have mattered to them if I had; they would have brought me here anyway - away from my parents, my language, and then finally, my brother and sister and own wriggling newborn. “Where are you taking him? Where are you taking her?” I cried out each time, but there were never interpreters, and even most of my fellow patients spoke different dialects, so conversation was basically impossible. I gave birth at Chedoke to a screaming baby boy with a full head of hair, but I was never allowed to see him after that, and no one seemed willing to give me answers as to why or where he was, at least, not that I could understand. I thought that it was because I was sick and told myself that I would have him again when I was cured. I knew there was nothing wrong with him, the boy I hadn’t even named yet, because I had seen him. Even through the agony of bringing him into the world, I had seen him, yelling and red, still attached to my body, but healthy and strong. I relaxed exhausted as the doctor finally held him out away from my body, assuming I would have him in her arms in a matter of moments. Instead, the nurses had cleaned me up, returned me to a sterile room, and continued with their quiet, calm sanatorium routine. I could feel myself settling into despondent blackness, and I didn’t try to stop it; even in my dreams at night, I was alone. I returned to

my home, outside of Pangnirtung, but everyone was gone. The camp was abandoned, only the bloody spatters of sputum showing that the bodies with the glazed over eyes lying around the icy barren land had ever been living, breathing people. The dreams woke me up, soaked in chilled sweat, and indulging wishes for death, as quickly as possible. How could I continue to live in a world so empty of anything familiar? A girl with dark, soft eyes snuck nervously into my room shortly after I arrived, before my baby was born. When I smiled at her, she started pointing at various things around the room, including the jar beside my bed. Eventually I realized I was to spit blood and sputum into that jar; but I didn’t know that’s what she was trying to tell me. Her dialect was just so different from mine. She ran out of the room in embarrassment. I saw her occasionally after that, but she never tried to talk to me again. Gradually I learned to understand a few words in English, or other Inuit patients interpreted the information I needed to know. I learned my baby had been placed with a local Hamilton family, not Inuit, that an organization dubbed “C.A.S” had taken charge of my baby. I hoped, and expected that when I was healthy, I would have my son back. Then I decided to fight. Not so much the sickness, as much as to stop the blackness I felt devouring my soul, with no respite. I watched the older Inuit die, with no one to tell their relatives, and it made me sad, it made me wonder about my parents, but once the tears started to form in my eyes, and the loneliness grew in my chest, I would abandon the thoughts, until eventually living and dying just became part of the routine. I had my chest x-rayed on a normal basis. That’s how the doctor could chart what the tuberculosis was doing to my body. They kept promising I would go home soon, I kept picturing my baby’s face,

becoming a toddler, his tiny legs becoming strong as he learned to walk. Eventually I pushed those thoughts away too, because they brought too much pain. After two years, I finally saw Thomas and Lucy; they had lost teeth, and much of their baby fat. I had always imagined they would call out, “Sarah!” and run to me, but neither was quick to hug me. I embraced them tight anyway. Then I realized that they were coming to say good-bye to me. Both of them were strong enough to return to our family, but neither of them remembered Inuktitut. They spoke to each other in English sentences, and I realized how much time I had lost, and worried about my baby. They made it home safely, I was told. On rainy days, I made crafts. I had never been an artist at home, but here, with nothing to do; I made whatever project the facilitator requested. She told us that people all over Canada liked to buy our crafts, because it made them “feel connected to a simpler time”. I didn’t ask how or what that meant, I just focused on the task of stringing beads, or sewing leather. It felt good to doing something useful, and I liked to imagine that the people who had my baby bought the things that I made, and placed them around their house, and maybe, my baby would see them, and somehow know that I thought of him, even despite all my determination to not. I wanted to get healthy so that I could get out the hospital and take my baby into my arms. I stopped even wanting to go back home. I didn’t care about anything but getting better so my son would know me. I met my husband. He excelled at soap carving and sometimes worked helping the Anglican minister who counselled us, and taught us to pray. Then I was healthy enough to move to another hospital in a place called Toronto. They took me from the one person I had in this world,

who was my family. I had made friends in Hamilton too, and I very nearly lost the fight with the darkness once more. I spent as much time as I could outside in the fresh air at this new place. In Hamilton I had only been indoors. I heard there were monkeys in Toronto, and I was not curious to meet them, so I always stayed close to the building. I know now that no monkeys live in Toronto, other than in the zoo, but please understand, this world, your world, was still so foreign to me. Eventually, I was better. The antibiotics took away the tuberculosis, or made it dormant, or my body just got strong enough to fight it, I never really questioned their methods. My husband was allowed to visit me in Toronto on occasion. He would kneel by my bed and say aloud the prayers the minister had taught him. The visits were so short, and it’s hard being in love when you are constantly watched and expected to follow routines. I had to leave him in Hamilton, when I was allowed to return home. I was excited to see my parents again, although I had this haunting premonition that my dream would be true. I would get off the plane and then the boat, only to find a camp covered in sputum and blood and dead, frozen bodies. They would not let me have my baby. I could not even go and visit him. The records were sealed. It had been too long. Plus they assured me, he would be happier with his qallunaat family, and not at risk of contracting the disease. They did not say his qallunaat family; they called them “his Christian family”. I was a Christian now too, so I realized they meant “his not Inuit family”. I didn’t even cry this time. I was so use to the pain of separation. It was in the 1960s, because Simon, my husband came to Hamilton in 1965. It was after that that I left my child in Hamilton, in the arms of someone else, and went back to the north, and the whales, and the ice.

I would like to tell you this story has a happy ending. Perhaps I could write that by some act of magical realism, I ended up being re-united with my child. In reality, the tuberculosis came back, and I was again separated from my parents, and this time my husband and two small children, who are strong and healthy, or as much as they can be in our village, living in the north. I returned to Chedoke Sanatorium, only this time with much more experience. While there, I learned to be a nurse, and worked to bring comfort to any patients, but particularly, the sad, scared Inuit in this unfamiliar world. They aren’t all scared when they arrive; some come with fire in their hearts, and fight in their fists. I know those ones will be okay. It is only when the light goes out in their eyes that I worry. I remember being on the edge of death and darkness not so long ago. Also, I’m not that unwilling to be back this time. I know somewhere, in one of the homes outside the hospital walls, there is a growing boy, who has my blood in his veins. He is not a qallunaat boy. He is an Inuit boy. I am his mother, and if I can’t see him, at least I have peace knowing I’m as close to him as possible. My other children are safe with their father; I know that. I cannot be near them, so instead, I hope that one day, somehow, I will find him – visiting the hospital perhaps, buying an Inuit sculpture from the gift shop, I don’t know, but I will never let go of my Hamilton boy.

HIRA NADEEM, Switzerland

PETER W. VAN DYK ETERNAL EVENING Tremble and quiver in the eternal evening To the hallowed, humid hymn of rhythm The universal pulse unceasing While reflecting seasons take their toll Immaculate body, unflinching passion Desiring moral and divine Naked angels speak in layman’s terms And lay tracks to endless destinations Anthropic visions seem everlasting But the illness is still sustained Scowl and disagree About the nature of misery The absolute barren conflict deepens The dust claims another body Smoke and ashes fill the sky above the bay Not even the eagle will spread its wings But the vultures have no qualms about tearing flesh “Give us carrion, or give us death” Another wretched soul in search of rest Do not look for solace In the mercies of your limitations Fool’s gold is best left buried To be found by those who are Afraid to face what is genuine Truth is a burden not lightly borne And wisdom is the mother of sorrow Chained hopelessly to time

SYDNEY NIKULKA, Conceptive Sunrise

DEBORAH KANFER, Untitled Shots 33

KAREN KATES RINGO STARR’S GOLDEN DRUM The theatrical agent, a beefy, silver-haired guy named Cal, sat at his desk across from Jane and her daughter Miran. Headshots of his clients crowded the walls. He told Miran, “You came close. They said your singing voice was too sophisticated.” “I’m disappointed, but I’m good with it,” said Miran, who was fifteen, small and blond. Jane, too, had believed in the possibility of her daughter passing as a gorgeous twelve-year-old, the new lead in a Broadway show that had been running for decades. Good with it? Ever since Miran pleaded for acting and voice lessons in fourth grade, Jane and her husband Sam had been paying for the classes, as well as, eventually, instruction in jazz dance, tap, and ballet. Lately, opera had been added to the roster. Was it surprising that Miran’s singing seemed mature? And not once had the girl been chosen for a role on Broadway-- never mind Off- Broadway or Off-Off -- which especially wounded Jane now, after so many years. Miran performed frequently with local theater companies in New Jersey, where the family lived. Nice exposure, Cal, a legend in the business, who still had faith in Miran, insisted. He said, “Of course, we’re waiting for that HBO callback which could change everything.” “Don’t count on that,”Miran warned. At least her daughter was being realistic, Jane thought. She and Sam fell in love during college, married a week after graduation. They’d long ago come to terms with remaining childless when Jane discovered that she was pregnant, on the heels of their twentieth anniversary. Of course, the surprise of Miran had a lot to do with their indulgence of her, added to the fact that the baby was in peril just before the delivery, refusing to be born, as if she had reconsidered

making a grand entrance into the world. The obstetrician needed to use an instrument that resembled a spatula to scrape Miran from Jane’s womb. This dilatory birth caused Jane to mistakenly assume that her child would be timid in life. She hadn’t anticipated a girl happiest at center stage, who was also a kind person, and a good enough student. When Miran’s boyfriend went off to Dartmouth, she accepted Jane’s dictum that she could not visit him on campus overnight. As for drinking, Miran claimed there weren’t enough hours in her day to lose any. Now as they passed through Cal’s reception area, Miran said, “Hi ya, Yvonne,” to another teenager. Jane recognized her from a Progresso soup commercial. She’d breakdanced through a bowl of noodles. Yvonne commented, “That has to be your mom. You two look alike.” “Don’t we?” Miran agreed, affectionately looping her arm through Jane’s . Jane’s hair was still blond, but short, not waist-length, like Miran’s, and she also had the furrow between her eyebrows that befitted a woman who’d taught high school art for over thirty years. While many teenagers slouched around in black jackets, her own daughter wore a red coat that made her seem even more glamorous, such an abundance of golden hair, spilling down on the bright-colored garment. Jane understood how dependent she’d been on Miran’s energy and good nature for solace after Sam confessed to almost having an affair. When they were younger, and Sam became so successful as an international banker, Jane used to tease that he was a fat cat. Now he actually was fat, and bald too. Although there was plenty of money early on, Jane believed that she should be employed, even if it was only teaching at a private school-- a place she would never send Miran. She’d enjoyed the work, however, until recently, because the school began an Advanced Placement Art track, a sure-fire Grade Point Average

booster, or so the snobby parents thought. Students admitted that they had art tutors for the major projects. Jane made herself unpopular by phoning parents to protest that no way had their teenagers chiseled busts, unassisted, and besides, the sculptures weren’t comparable with their sons or daughters’ in-class endeavors. She’d made herself a pariah with the principal, too, when one day she’d brought in finger paints, and told the delighted kids to go to town. For once, there’d been some fine, spontaneous creations. A week ago, last Friday night, Jane was finishing a glass of wine at the kitchen table when Sam came home after dropping Marin off at a babysitting job. He sat across from her, propped his elbows on a placemat, and touched the tips of his fingers together, peering out at her from the arch he’d made with his hands. Jane was about to say that he looked as if he were imitating the blind man in Raymond Carver’s short story, Cathedral; it amused her how they’d been married all this time, and she had no idea whether he’d read that classic piece. Then Sam revealed that just a few hours before, he and an office temp from his firm had undressed at her apartment, after some kissing. “I’ve been at the company for over three decades, and there have always been temps there,” he added, obviously knowing that this was irrelevant. “In other words, you hadn’t been tempted. How old is she?” Jane pictured a lithe young thing. Sam dropped his hands on the table, and answered, “Thirty-eight.” “Thirty-eight! There should be a ten year post-college limit to flitting in and out of an assortment of offices, before you settle down and attempt a real career.” Jane wanted to know her name. “Eliza,” he said, sorrowfully. “Oh, Eliza, emphasis on Do Little.” “Enough, Jane, please. This never happened before, and it won’t again. I love you!” She thought of her aging and overweight husband as decomposing, fine prey for a female vulture afraid of not having enough retirement

income. A man like Sam would be a life raft. “There was a party with alcohol late in the afternoon, because someone is transferring to the Boston office. She mentioned that she was a chess fanatic too. I went to her apartment to play her.” “Lay her,” Jane said. A chess-obsessed boy, he’d continued to enter tournaments long after they married. He’d tried unsuccessfully to get both her and Miran excited about the game. When she was seven, Miran had dumped the pieces from his prized chess set into her bucket of toy princesses and heavy wooden blocks. Jane had loved him for laughing about the knight that had somehow ended up beheaded. Soon after, their daughter became preoccupied by theater. With a career that required long hours and traveling, as well as a child that needed escorting to New York auditions, Sam gave up his hobby. Although she would never say so, Jane had felt a twinge of scorn; after all, she insisted on family treks through the art museums that always fascinated her, even if Miran and Sam were usually bored. He said, “When I came to my senses about carrying on further, she threw her boot at me.” “In other words, she’s a temp with a temper!” For Miran’s sake, they slept in bed together. Sam flew to Rome on a business trip the following morning. After leaving the agent’s building, Jane suggested that since it was a Friday afternoon, and Miran wouldn’t have homework due the next day, they should take in the new Pierre Bonnard exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her daughter rolled her eyes, but agreed. As they walked through the crowded corridors of the museum, Jane felt annoyed by all the people carrying shopping bags with the Met’s blue logo; sometimes the place reminded her of a mall. She wasn’t entirely placated by the Bonnard rooms, which held less paintings than she’d anticipated. Of course she knew that her irritation was caused by Sam, and that it should not be transferred to Miran. Nevertheless, she asked her daughter, “At what point are you going to stop these auditions? What

if you end up only with a collage of headshots, and weekly visits to a physical therapist for all that wear and tear on your tendons?” “At least, I know I tried. These oil portraits are nice. They’re so much less aggressive than headshots. See me! Cast me! You actually wonder why the woman in this picture is sad, and if she has any good friends-down the country road out the window behind her.” Jane wrapped an arm tightly around Miran’s waist and thought: who was she to question her daughter’s passion for the stage? She herself had been a wild teenager; she and her aspiring artist boyfriend used to pose for each other, nude. Often, when they’d drunk too many tequila shots they would paint each other. Jane, with a secret thrill-- or should she say with a clandestine chill-- expected her breasts, colored purple like a pair of ripe eggplants, to show up on Face Book or YouTube. By college, she’d turned more serious. When she boarded the plane to Chicago with her big sketchbook, she observed the apprehension on other passengers’ faces: as a seatmate, would she inadvertently whack them with that thing? She and her friends had earned money during warm months by having art fairs, setting up their easels on the shore of Lake Michigan-- white papers snapping in the breeze like sails on the boats. Passersby could pay for a portrait, or an impromptu drawing lesson. At twenty-one, newly married to Sam, living in Greenwich Village then, she paused in Washington Square Park to watch an old man with ragged clothing and missing teeth paint an autumnal forest-- how boring she’d thought, at first. Yet staring at the canvass, she could see the veins of each red leaf, sense the velocity of the wind, ripping foliage from trees. She felt absurdly that if she held out her palm one of the leaves would land there, crimson as a drop of blood. Gazing closely, she observed a gun on the ground, nearly camouflaged among fallen branches. The discovery made her reflect on her own weakness as a painter; she concentrated on technique, rather than the suggestion of narrative. As a child, had the artist, proud to be taken on his first hunting trip with his dad, accidentally shot his little brother? Or was the weapon symbolic? Had someone he’d loved-- perhaps his mother-- been murdered, and the clue was obvious, in plain sight, or almost. What good was her thesis on Gloss in the Works of Johannes Vermeer? She would think, as she brushed her teeth, more realistic about the limits of her talent, Floss in the Life of Jane.

She’d asked the man if she could buy the painting. He’d grinned at her, and shoved his easel away. Someone told her that he refused all offers, that he brought everything back to his subsidized Single Room Occupancy unit-- people spoke with less political correctness in those days. Still, Jane had imagined the walls of his tiny home crammed with beautiful paintings in bronze frames. Once he was alone, he would wear a tuxedo and carry a plate of fancy cheese, as if he were at one of the pretentious gallery openings that, in her fantasies, featured her newest work. As soon as Sam finished his MBA at Columbia, Jane contacted the private school in New Jersey that had been advertising for an art teacher, and she and Sam bought a house a few towns away. Miran, standing by Bonard’s The Checkered Tablecloth, said, “Mom, if I get that HBO part, I don’t want it.” Jane raised her voice. “But this is a job I approve of, with just a few days of filming. You’ll barely miss school. And you might be cast—isn’t it down to a choice of three girls?” “I’m not comfortable with the role.” “A drive-thru shake-shop waitress in the nineteen fifties? What, you object to Thunderbirds as gas-guzzlers? You’re serving ice cream instead of tofu?” “Shh!” said someone, near them. When was the last time anyone asked Miran to quiet down, Jane thought. Her singing, the incessant pecking of her tap shoes on the ceiling, the clarion call of her line readings. “Really, could you two keep your voices down?” a woman asked, with irritation. “Why?” Jane asked her. “Will talking damage the paintings? You’re not in the audience of a Broadway show. You can move on to another room. By the time you come back here, we’ll be gone.” Miran touched Jane’s wrist, and said to the woman, “You’re chastising the artist Clarissa Calderone. Her husband just-- cancer. Cut her some slack, will you?” Jane heard murmuring as they left the area. She glanced behind, and

saw flashes from cell phone cameras, like fire flies soaring through the dim space, before the guard cried, “No photos!” At home, Miran went into her bedroom for a while. When she emerged, it was obvious that she’d been crying. Jane extended her index finger, and wiped a tear away. “Honey, the decision about the TV role is yours to make. You just caught me by surprise.” She realized that she’d made a tactical error, providing a reasonable reason for Miran’s behavior. “Also, I was wrong to drag you around the Met. We should have gone out to celebrate how close you came-- how theater professionals always admire your talent.” “Haven’t I heard this speech before, Mom?” When Miran returned to her room she shut the door emphatically-not exactly a slam, but close to it. Jane brought her laptop down to the basement, out of her daughter’s earshot. It was after midnight in Rome, but fortunately she and Sam had agreed to Skype. If she’d kept him up too late, he would stay online tonight because he was in disgrace. Earlier, she’d intended to tell him not to return to the house right away. The image of him and Eliza, the temp, as naked as the sculpted figures in the Met outraged her-- although no artist would employ Sam as a model unless the piece was called Flabby New Jersey Man, Circa 2015. He wore an undershirt, and whiskers sprouted from his chin. She thought that he looked like the sort of cartoon man in advertisements that appeared at the bottom of her Yahoo home page when she turned on the internet. “I’m waiting, and of course alone,” he said, kindly. He moved his computer around a generic hotel room, showing her the inside of a closet, the bathroom, under the bed. “Stop it,” Jane said, as he brought the laptop to a window. She saw a dark street that could be anywhere. What was she expecting, the Parthenon? He’d been married to her for so long that he anticipated her way of

thinking. He said, “I could make a toga out of my sheet and seem more Roman.” “Cut it out. I’m worried about Miran.” “Nothing came of the call-back? She practiced so damn hard, especially the dancing.” “Something else is bothering her. Suddenly, she won’t take the role in the HBO film, then waited until we were at the museum to tell me, so we couldn’t have a loud fight.” “There’s probably a logical explanation. If she’s unhappy with her performance those movies are rerun for eternity.” He paused for a moment, and squinted. “Are you in the cellar? Since you’re down there, could you see if there’s enough water in the gage by the boiler? I forgot to check before I left.” With a flick of a finger she could-- poof-- get rid of him. She would go back to her Yahoo page where, in the right corner, there were probably flashing photos beckoning her to date singles in her area, ages 21-25: Brandon, Zack, Connor, and Justin. Her server had her demographics wrong. Sam said, “I’ll be home tomorrow night. We’ll sort it all out. I love you, Jane. Always.” She realized that she loved him too, because a severe thunderstorm with dangerous winds was predicted, and she worried that his plane would crash. For so many years of their marriage, when she called his office, a secretary-- exactly like those pretty women in old black and white movies-- would buzz Sam, and actually say, “Your wife’s on the phone, Mr. McCarthy.” Sam would pick up and sing out, “Hello Darling!,” as hearty as Cary Grant. “Please call me Jane,” she’d always told the assistant. Angry as she was at Sam, she believed that he had no tawdry email history with the problematic temp, Eliza, no separate iPhone only for Eliza’s frantic late-night texts, a gadget he might lose, so that when it

was inadvertently returned to her, Sam’s wife, she would regard it like a white-hot coal. Jane sincerely believed that her long marriage was devoid of such dramatics. The first time she saw Sam, he’d been leaving the college library, carrying a stack of books that was tall and haphazard enough to defy the principles of physics. Jane had observed an orange, untied sneaker. “Wait!” she’d yelled, then she bent down to knot the lace. Cal the agent (actually Miran referred to him as my representation) phoned the next morning to say that the producers of a Michael J. Fox mini-series wanted Miran to read with a Michael J. stand-in. He said, “That means the guy will monotone his way through a couple of pages of script.” “She went off somewhere, and her cell’s off too.” “Well, teenagers.” But Cal and Jane agreed that Miran was an unusually responsible girl These days, it was no longer acceptable for Jane to call the parents of Miran’s friends, who used to say things like, “Oh, they intended to study chemistry--they all had their books out-- but they’re dancing to Maroon Five.” Similarly, when the boyfriend was home from Dartmouth he didn’t ring the bell, but texted about his presence in his car at the curb. This afternoon she would probably have lunch with a group of kids, then manage to get herself to her voice coach; an older girl who used a different teacher in the same studio complex often gave Miran a lift. During mid-afternoon Miran texted: RU panicking? I’ll B home 10:30 Jane interpreted the message as don’t interfere. Late in the evening, Sam arrived by taxi. He was clean-shaven, and looked handsome to her. She accepted his tentative kiss. Within a few minutes Miran was in the house, hugging him. Jane felt no resentment about this; she was immensely relieved by his presence. “I couldn’t think of a gift for you, Kiddo,” he told Miran. “It was easier during the doll days. I don’t know what jewelry you and your mom would like. Both of you have such classy taste.”

“Did you have a nice trip?” Miran asked. “Productive meetings, rough plane ride.” He took a DVD of the movie Roman Holiday out of his carry-on bag. “There were dozens of these, in different languages, at the Rome Airport. I was contemplating getting one with Chinese subtitles. Let’s stay up for a while, and watch together.” Miran drew in her breath, then exhaled, yoga-style. “I need to talk to both of you first.” She gestured for them to sit on the couch; she perched on its arm. “The writer of the HBO movie is also producing it. He wanted to do the line readings with the girls he was considering. He sat across the table wearing a Yankees shirt, but when he got up he didn’t have anything else on.” “The bastard!” Sam exclaimed. “We’ll prosecute!” “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Jane asked. “That tryout was a week ago.” “Last Friday night both of you seemed— let’s call it crabby.” Of course, Jane knew that she hadn’t been particularly attuned to her daughter; she’d been sulking about Sam. Miran said, “There’s no way I can prove what happened, Dad.” Jane asked, “Have you spoken to some of the other girls?” “They said that nothing was out of the ordinary, but who can tell? They’re all actresses.” Jane believed that despite Miran’s own gift for portraying imaginary characters, in the end she was no one but herself. Funny, spirited, loving, intelligent. A child worth the wait of over twenty years. The next morning they called the agent, who immediately said that there were appropriate channels to pursue. Jane thought of Gertrude Ederle, a New Jersey girl who was the first female to swim the English channel, sometimes singing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to the rhythm

of her free-stroke. Then Jane decided that if she ever again visited someone’s house where the TV was turned on to HBO, she would change the channel, if not wrench the plug out of its socket. The idea of a shower of sparks was satisfying. Sam insisted that they should spend the day trying to be the family that they were until so recently, that they should aspire to be again. “We stroll around museums a lot,” Miran said. “No complaint intended, Mom. I actually wouldn’t mind going back to see the old musical instruments at the Met: the lutes, the zither, the Lyre guitar, and the square piano.” Indeed, the familiar hallways of the Metropolitan soothed them. They held hands, Miran in the middle, as had been their custom when she was a younger child. When they used the stairs, single file, Sam kept his palm on Jane’s hip. Among the harpsichords, transverse flutes, and Jane’s favorite-the walking-stick flageolet in A-- there was a special exhibit, Ringo Starr’s gold snare drum. A plaque explained that the Ludwig company of Chicago had given Ringo the drum as a gift because he’d made the manufacturer famous, by playing his Ludwig base with The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Although a sign prohibited photos, smiling guards allowed everyone to snap away with their phones: there were circumstances when broken rules harmed no one. Sam asked an elderly man if he could get a shot of the family, flanking the drum. As the man returned Sam’s phone, he told Miran, “You’re a natural. There’s no way you’re not a Broadway star! “ His wife said, playfully, “Oh, stop flirting, will you?” She seemed puzzled when Jane and Sam frowned. Eventually, Jane framed the picture, and propped it on a bookcase in the living room among other photographs. After a time, it had little significance other than being an occasional conversation piece - yes, they’d chanced upon Ringo’s drum in the bowels of the Met.

JEN ROOSEVELT, My Musings

Ĺ˝ANA KOZOMORA, Manipulated Print on Vinyl 46

Ĺ˝ANA KOZOMORA, Silkscreen Print on Japanese Paper 47

ZACHARY AASMAN THE WILDERNESS PIERCED The wilderness pierced by the pursuits of wayward poets. Nature's beauty to unfold. 'Lo, golden atmosphere, behold!' While the fractal fingers of the limb flinging foliage breathe their claim against native sky. While the tumbling autumn leaf finds no rest upon the skin of snow or on their lives left untold.

SYDNEY NIKULKA, Bittersweet

SYDNEY NIKULKA, Sovereign

TRIGGER WARNING: “Mirrors “ deals with subject matter that may be triggering to some readers, including strong language and portrayals of sexual violence and abuse.

KATIE LUKE MIRRORS

He always liked it when I whispered to him, hot breath on the lobe of his ear, not speaking words but sighing them, as if the clean beauty of him whittled me down to such a wearied husk that I could barely move my mouth to enunciate. Of course, no man bears the blessed curse of a face so divine it could steal words from mouths, and certainly not he: he was fair, but not spectacularly so, with the gap in his front teeth and the slovenly way he would wander around with one flap of his shirt untucked. “Stop trying to fix me,” he would snap, if ever I tried to fix him, and that untucked shirt. “I don’t need to be fixed.” I would recoil as if burned, and what would follow was as common and as certain as the sun rising in the east. A rainstorm of accusations, my tears, his anger; the bigger questions, my fear, his panic; his apologies, and then my clothes on the floor, followed by his. It seemed that when we spoke, it was either in a whisper or a shout, for we were either sly in our hiding, or explosive in our fury. The first time I saw him, he was leaning on the hood of his car, smoking in the way that one does when one would rather be anywhere else. He held his cigarette like there was an artery attached to it, and it must have been a bad day, a day for being bad, because when I walked by him, he looked at me without a shadow of apprehension. He looked at me like a dog looks at a big, fat, bloody steak. I did not look big, fat, or bloody: I looked like a thin, poor, chalky creature from a cockroach-infested high-rise in the molasses heat of young sixties Memphis. I looked like that because I was like that, with a bucket and a wet rag, taking pennies for car washes. In fact, he watched me doing my meagre business, grovelling for a run at a black impala parked without a lick of shade and belonging to a man who offered me six dollars to douse the whole thing and dry it too. I had no choice, so

I seized it, and he watched me—not the seller, but him, him—as I did so. It was like sluicing paintwork on the surface of the sun, and with every dry wipe, drips of my sweat would fall into the path of the rag, making for twice the work at twice the effort. When I was done, I was exhausted, and it was an exhaustion worth far more that six dollars. But the man who owned the impala was already gone, and I’d pushed my luck as far as it would stretch. So I picked up my bucket and began to walk away, my back itching not just with the tributaries of sweat that cut paths down the length of it, but by him, and the way he was looking at me, with such intent that I felt it under my skin. “Hey,” he called, and when I turned, it was there. The look. As if I were big, fat, and bloody. “Hey, you.” I stopped and held my hand up like a visor, for the sun was pitiless and accusatory. Yes, accusatory. I think the sun knew before I did that what he was doing was wrong. “What?” “You’re supposed to say, ‘yes’. Not ‘what’. Where are your manners?” “Where are yours?” I shot back. I had meant to smother the flames with the retort, but it only fanned them. He leaned away from the hood of his car, flicked away his cigarette, and held out a twenty. “How about you give my girl a little polish and shine?” I looked at his car. It was spotless. “Your car is clean.” “Is it? Oh. I guess you’ve no use for twenty dollars, then.” And so it began, the endless tirade of my bending and breaking to his every small will and wish, a thin, powerless hair of grass, slave to his wind, which blew with cataclysmic force. I washed his car, and he did not give me twenty dollars. He gave me a long string of numbers, which he wrote on my arm. I stared at the numbers, uncomfortable. They looked like the numbers my parents had on their arms, except their numbers were tattooed on, and they’d gotten them in lands far

away, behind barbed wire fences, expecting not to survive. Sometimes I think it’s funny how history repeats itself, again and again, as if it’s sure that the next time it’ll get it right. It won’t. As a professionally unemployed youth, I had more cobwebs than dollar bills in my wallet, thus lived with three roommates with whom I was fairly close, but not so close that if I went missing, they would care. Or perhaps it wasn’t that they wouldn’t care, but wouldn’t know. Our apartment, with bare plaster walls and a grey-green carpet, small scatterings of furniture we stole from the curbside, and a kitchen so neglected that if one were to enter it, tumbleweed would meet them, hung with the constant skunky fog of pot smoke. Sometimes we would lie for days on the floor of the living room and talk over the crackle of vinyl on turntable, reaching into our souls and unearthing questions that shook the very fabric of the universe. “But if, like, the world is round,” drawled Veronica, in the middle of a smoky epiphany, as we lay side by side on the hallway floor to the sound of oxford town and how the sun don’t shine above its ground, “then how come we don’t slide around it, like, I don’t know, like a slide?” “I don’t know,” I replied, with moving sincerity. “I truly don’t know.” “That’s what I fucking love about you,” she breathed. “You’re so fucking honest. You’re like a fucking angel, straight from heaven. I love you. I love you so fucking much.” “I love you too,” I said, and her words touched my waffling soul so deeply that I welled up. It was as if I were floating, high in space, eons above the earth. “You’re so special to me. So fucking special.” “You’re like…you’re so amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You and me, we’re the same. Like, we match, you know? Like, when I’m walking around it’s like I can hear your soul or some shit calling to me, like, cooing. Like one of those pigeons. A carrier pigeon, fucking flying, and…like, my heart is the coop, you know?” “I know. I fucking know,” I said tearfully. “God, you’re so fucking in tune with…like, you’re like Allen Ginsberg.” “Like…what?”

“You’re a poet,” I said, with a high, tight desperation in my voice, as if it was the most important thing she’d ever hear. “You’re a fucking poet.” “I love you so much. God, I love you so much.” We lay on the floor for the rest of the afternoon, confessing our love for one another, while Jax and Yvette—our other roommates—toiled at their jobs, various positions in diners and food trucks that they seemed to rotate every week. In exchange for not working, Veronica and I were supposed to keep house, and we did, if keeping house involved spacing out in it. By nightfall, we were somewhat sober, but kept close to the turntable, all four of us wordlessly puffing tobacco while Mr. Cash told us all about getting rhythm. My mother always said to me that, when addressing grown-ups, I should use their prefixes and their last names, and I carried it with me still, even in the small hours of my twenties. That evening, I called him on the rotary dial, and while I waited for his answer, a dark and slimy thing reared its head in the pit of my gut. I knew I was adding fuel to the flames that we both had fanned back in that parking lot, but pure compulsion drove me, as it did in all things. “Hello?” “It’s me.” “Oh, hey,” he said, too loudly. “What can I do for you?” “Come see me.” “I thought I filed it before I left. Are you sure?” In the background, someone said something, and I heard him reply, too calmly, “It’s Paul, from the office.” The voice faded away, and then he spat tacks. There came a harsh hiss of, “Why are you calling me? Don’t fucking call me unless I say so.” “Come over. Please.” “No,” he snapped. “No, I can’t come over.” “Why not?” “Because.”

“Because what?” “Are you dense?” I was glad we weren’t face to face. He sounded ready to choke the life out of me. “Pam’s still up.” “Tell her you have to go to the office, or something.” He paused. I pushed it, because we had been pushing it for a long time, and I had forgotten the elastic rule of things—that lies can only stretch so far before they snap. “Please. Please come and see me.” He said nothing, and put the phone down. But I knew his silence, the defeated sort. Well, perhaps ‘defeated’ is the wrong word for it. He could never be swayed to do anything, but he would let me think he was, so that the guilt was left imprinted upon me. “This was all your idea,” he would roar, when we, the titans, were clashing. “It was all you. You’re the one who calls me and pesters me. You trap me. You constantly trap me.” I would say that I was sorry, just as I said I was sorry that night when he showed up after midnight, when my little band of misfits had retired to their futons. He was dressed up too nicely, in a pinstripe suit and his shiny work shoes. Had he really convinced her that he was going to the office this late at night? “I’m sorry,” I said, when he berated me, and “Yes,” I wailed, when he fucked me, on top of my bare mattress and the yellowish blanket I found at a yard sale. At first, in the few months after the car wash incident, we had laughed and sighed and moaned and sweated through latenight trysts, inventing new and exciting ways to be bad, and smutty, and secretive: he felt me up in the launderette, I made him wear my underwear to work, he put my hands up against the wall in the filthy elevator of our apartment block. “Tell me what I should do to you this afternoon,” he would say, on the phone, when he’d call me between the acceptable hours of two and four in the morning. And I would tell him, always careful what I said, because when he arrived at our meeting place that afternoon, he truly would do as I had asked. This time, we did snow, snorting it off my bedroom floor through a

cut-off Icee straw to my shitty scratched Frankie Valli single. I could tell he hadn’t done it much, even though he was very much older than I was, but when I asked him about it, he snapped, “There wasn’t fucking time for me to do that shit. When I was your age, I was knee-deep in French dung with a gun in my hand. I was shooting krauts. Did you ever shoot a man?” I glowered, suddenly feeling infantile. “No.” “Then shut the fuck up.” I did shut up, then, and lay under his weight while he did what he wanted. I was miles away, in my spirit, lost in the words he’d spoken. Was I sleeping with someone who’d killed people? I was. The hands he was running all over me had pulled a trigger, and the mouth he put all over me, all over the secret parts of my body, had yelled orders at kids younger than me, and someone had probably shot them too. I shut my eyes and tried to picture it, the blood and the snow, the sound of foreign voices, and gunfire. A lot of gunfire, some of it nearby, deafeningly loud, and some far away, with the blunt patter of rain on car windows. How afraid had he been? I couldn’t imagine him being afraid. “What’s wrong with you?” he said, and stopped moving. “You’re lying there like a starfish. This isn’t what I was promised.” I didn’t promise him anything. “Well?” he snapped. “What is it?” “Nothing.” “Then put your back into it. I didn’t sign on for this shit.” I tried a little more after that, and it seemed to sate him. In the broken mirror across the room I watched his face, creasing and relaxing in steady rhythm, like a beating heart. I looked impassive, too much so. When he looked up and saw me in the mirror too, I set my mouth and shut my eyes, and hoped my performance was good enough. Whether or not it would be was a hit or a miss. I was never as good as he was at fakery. He, on the other hand, was a terrific actor, worthy of a thousand academy awards.

Afterwards, we lay side by side, passing a joint back and forth. I felt nothing from it, and wondered if perhaps I had maxed out my drug quota for the day. “Are you okay?” I asked. “I’m not here for a fucking therapy session,” he replied, and passed me the joint. “Who do you think you are?” “I was just asking.” “Well, I’m fine. Is that what you wanted to hear?” “I was just asking,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.” He said nothing, only grunted in reply. I had the strange urge to bend my arm and thrust my elbow into his face, but knew that if I did, I would never live to tell the tale. “So what are you doing tomorrow?” “Work.” The word was gruff, impatient. As if answering taxed him greatly. We descended back into silence. I didn’t say so, but was heinously uncomfortable, with the heat of the night filling the room like a swarm of locusts. We were barely touching, but he brought my skin out in a sticky, unpleasant sweat. Back at the beginning, we would never lie like this, merely coexisting, but would entwine together in a tangle of limbs and sweat and breath. Foreheads touching, exchanging kisses here and there. He would smile, in the dark way that he did, and I would be putty to him, simple, movable, malleable. I was still putty now, but in a sharper way, as if the putty I was had fallen into a bed of sand, and all of it had been folded in together. There were no smooth surfaces now, only bumps and ridges and uncomfortable things. “Do you ever wonder what everyone would think of you, if they knew?” He stiffened. “If they knew what?”

“Well, about this.” “What do you mean?” I paused, and that slimy, wretched creature that had curled up in the pit of my gut swelled into my throat. I did my best to choke it back, the encompassing knowing that I had said something wrong, and that there were few ways to correct my monumental mistake. “Well?” he demanded. “If they knew what?” “That…” Crouch, deflect, control. He was a bomb, ready to explode, and I had to defuse him without blowing myself sky-high in the process. “That what? What the fuck are you saying?” “That you’re queer.” The gong rang, and it let fly a ripple, wide and free, that shook not just the air and the land and the birds in the sky, but time itself; aftershocks rattled through me, and him, and they lit the fuse that I had tried to snip, so carefully as to avoid bloodshed. And there would be bloodshed. There would be rivers tonight, flowing between the cracks of my wooden floor. “What did you say?” Nothing waited on my lips, but I lost it. It fell free and clattered across the floor when he sat up, his naked skin shiny under the eyes of the bare bulb that hung from my ceiling, and said, “What did you just call me?” I lay where I was, frozen, mouth slack. “I didn’t…that wasn’t what I meant.” “Did you just call me queer?” “No.” “You did.” “I didn’t.”

Slowly, too slowly, he stood and pulled on his underpants, and his slacks. I wanted to dress too, but like a rooted tree I was bound to that sordid spot, and could not move for all the life within me. But I couldn’t lie here like a starfish, so I sat up. I was trembling, and hoped he couldn’t see that I was. “I didn’t mean it.” He was facing away from me, lighting a cigarette. I watched the muscles in his back move and shift under his skin, and wondered if he was as strong as he looked. Why was I wondering? I knew that he was strong. I knew he was. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean that.” He turned to me, and blew a mouthful of smoke up to the ceiling. And then he said, with a small smile on his face, “You think that just because I fuck you, that makes me queer.” I did. That was exactly what I thought. But I said, “No.” “Yes, you do.” “I don’t. I don’t think that.” He moved so that he was standing directly in front of me, and so that his large shape blocked the light from the bulb above. He was like a moon, a great dark satellite, blocking the daytime sun. In his shadow, I was cold. “You think you’re something really special, don’t you?” “No,” I said. It was true. “I don’t.” “Yes, you do. You do, don’t you? You think you’re a big man because you smoke and swear and let someone twice your age nail you.” I didn’t reply. I was sure that if I opened my mouth to speak, nothing but vomit would come out. He crouched down, as if he were speaking to a small child, and said, in appropriately condescending tones, “You’re a little boy. You’re an infant.” “Then…” I swallowed the rock in my throat, and croaked, “Then why are you with me, and not your wife?”

I saw Pam once, only once, at the beginning, when I used to follow him around town like a hollow, desperate shadow. As far as I knew, he was still unaware that I had played stalker, prowling around behind him when he wandered in the park, or the record store, or the supermarket, buying milk and bread and liquor. She was never with him, save for one time, when they were walking back to their car, across the very parking lot where I had met him. When I saw her, I was flooded with a desire to feel betrayed, as if they were violating the sacred place of his and my first meeting; alas, when I truly looked at her, from a safe space behind a Volkswagen, she was just a person, small and meek and pale in colouring. She wore her wispy hair around her collarbones, and dressed in pale yellows and greys, in shapes that belonged in a decade gone by. He barked something at her, his words swallowed by the wind, and she only nodded in reply with her little head bowed and her eyes downcast. It was the first time that guilt—actual guilt, not the thrilling sting of naughtiness—had joined the wheel of feeling that our affair set to spin. Her meagre mouth, the pins in her hair, the silent way she walked on the flat soles of her leather shoes. It all lived with me, when I leaned back against the Volkswagen and let hail the sudden understanding that there were stakes in this. Sharp stakes, that one or two or all of us might fall and impale ourselves on. I suppose I impaled myself, when I uttered the word I was never to utter: wife. He jerked as if I had slapped him, and then I jerked because he slapped me, with his hand, not with his words. My cheek was suddenly aflame, but the pain shifted to the back of my head, where his hand was fisting a chunk of my hair. I feared he’d pull it out, so clawed for his wrist, trying to pry him off me. “Don’t say her name!” he roared, into my face. “Don’t you dare!” “I didn’t say her n—” “Shut up!” Panic assaulted me, a shelling of sorts that I could not take shelter from. He was tearing at my scalp, and the pain crept forward to the edge of my lips. I feared what he would do, not admitting to myself what exactly that was, and so gathered the debris that the explosion

had scattered with a sob of, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” “You’re a fucking liar.” “I’m sorry.” “No, you’re not.” “I am. I am. Please, please. I am.” “Do you think I’m going to leave my wife for you? Is that what you think?” “No. I don’t.” “You think you’re my first? You think you’re anything special? You’re a pastime. That’s what you are. You’re a hobby.” I was that, and more. I was a pastime, a hobby; I was a smutty little secret, and had always been. A secret is only as thrilling as the danger it poses, and the danger of me, of us, of all of us, was rich and thick and serious. Most were simply afraid, and that was why we locked our doors. We feared prison, or vitriol, or for our lives. But not him. No, he enjoyed the danger. He enjoyed knowing that a thousand people would believe his story before a single one believed mine. His fist grew tighter, and his voice was a whittling knife, hacking away at my skin. I bled fear, and my only defense was weakness. “I’m sorry. I should never have—” “Who do you think you are?” he snarled. “Huh? What do you think you are? You’re my shame!” “Please.” I was begging now. What was I begging for? “Please. Please.” “What are you? A dog? Begging from me?” His hand came across my face again, and knocked me aside. I saw it, an opening, and took it with both hands, lunging to my feet and snatching on my underpants. Why was I dressing? Where was I going? Outside. The street. I would go screaming.

But when my hand touched the doorknob, his grabbed my neck, and I was torn asunder. The floorboards hit the back of my head and for a moment, my vision snapped to grey. He was muffled, but my blood was not, pounding and pounding past my ears like the beat of a snare drum. And then a great weight came upon me, upon the hump of my throat. I was—I was choking, and his hands were starving me of air, crushing and squeezing with all of their might. I clawed at his wrists, at his elbows and collarbone and his eyes, leaving a sharp scratch on his cheek that he spat and swore in the wake of. I could not scream, could not call my stoned, sleeping friends. How had they not heard it, all of this ruckus? Because they willed themselves to sleep with a pipe, and that sleep was like the sleep of the dead. The world before me—just his face, set in scarlet fury, and the whirling ceiling fan—began to bleed inwards from the edges, like a burning photograph. Mouth dry, lungs heaving; hands numb, body leaden. I lay and let it happen, or he made me let it happen. Either way, it happened. Blue, black. Wide river at midnight, starless sky, black hole swallowing a bright, plump star and crushing, crushing. No smell, just a sight, a sight of darkness. Cold chasm, no skin, blind eyes and still tongue. He was, and I was not. And then it was over. I took a breath, opened my eyes. I was standing. Standing? Yes, on two firm feet. Standing. By the window, now. How? When? It was dark outside, still dark, still night, still a sprawling city beneath a sugared sky. Floorboards, wallpaper. The turntable, and it told me I was someone. Or that he was. One of us was a runaround. Runaround Sue. When I looked to him, where he crouched on the floor, I was surprised to see that he wasn’t alone. Someone was with him, some thin body sprawled on the floor in nothing but underpants, blue lips and open, unseeing eyes. He cupped his hands over his mouth, and it was the first time, and the last time, I would ever see him cry. Whether or not he was crying for me remains mysterious. Part of me thinks that perhaps he was only crying

for himself, like a child cries when a teacher scolds them. Either way, it lasted only for a blink. One blink, and then he was himself, the man with all the answers. Attorney, liar, actor, cheat. So many things, but not stupid. Never stupid. I watched from afar as he dressed himself fully, then stripped the yellowish sheet off my bed and trussed up the body on the floor. The sound of my vinyl, still playing a merry melody, was almost hilarious, but also beautiful in its mockery of him and this silly, silly mistake he had made. I followed him, and moving was a strange feeling: my feet were touching the floor, but they made no sound. My chest rose and fell with the swelling of air, but I was not breathing. I saw clearly, smelled and heard and tasted the acrid funk of pot smoke in the stairwell, and then the city and all of its filth outside. I was, but I was not. He scrambled for the front door, but paused on his way to smash the glass by the fire extinguisher and snag the axe that hung behind it, sharp and unused. When he opened the trunk of his car and stuffed his shame inside, I could see him panting, as if he had run a marathon. The welt on his cheek was bleeding, and he pawed at it with one clumsy hand, smearing a long red line. At the wheel, he was sweating like a pig. He kept chanting, over and over, “Oh, god. Oh, god. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Yes, fuck, I wanted to whisper to him, in the way he had always liked. Panic, and let it be lovely. I was oddly calm, despite this great and monumental twist of my fate, and his. Part of me thought that perhaps I was dreaming, and should simply follow and see where the illusion led me. It led me to a parking lot. Not our parking lot, but a drabber one, unlit and unoccupied. It was really nothing but a scrap of asphalt on the very edge of town, next to a sawmill that hadn’t opened its doors since I had been in diapers. That pig, that sweating pig, lurched out of his car, and before he opened the trunk, he stripped down to his underpants. Once again, we were undressed. And from the trunk he took his shame, wailing faintly when the weight sagged into his arms. He crossed the lot and dropped the bundle; the sheets sagged apart, and there it was, that dead and bluish face. A nearly-naked body that even I barely recognized. There was little to show for his crime but the faint ring of red around the neck,

but that would quickly change, when he plucked the axe from the back seat of his car and held it tight in his clammy hand. And so there he stood, in the city’s half-dark, over his shame with a blade in his hand. I watched him from across the way, willing him to do it. For a beat, I thought he might not. His face was creased, perhaps in pain, and he gave a sharp whine, like a dog that had met the toe of a boot. Would he, or wouldn’t he? Of course he would. He swung the axe, and with a retch of effort, brought it down on bone, on flesh. The head detached first, then each hand and foot. Then each limb, until he was splattered red. In the dark, it looked almost black, as if the evil were seeping out of him. What was left looked like no more than the remains of a broken mannequin ready to be assembled another day. Gasping, but not breathless, he stuffed it all into a few garbage bags, and then heaved it all back into his trunk. He did not dress, but lay another garbage bag down on the driver’s seat. Smart, smart man. He drove to the river, and I imagine what he felt was relief, when he slung his cargo over the railing and let it sink. He watched it fall, still undressed. He watched it, until he saw his shame no more. The rest of the story is simple. He went home, took a shower, and washed his clothes. He climbed into bed with his wife, and slept. Three weeks later, when he heard through the gaps in the grapevine that unidentified body parts had been found in the Mississippi River, he said, “That’s terrible. I hope they catch who did it.” They never did. I watched the world whirl by, all the years that I missed. Decades upon decades. War and disease, the rise of the machines, the fall of two towers. Pam had one daughter, and then another. He aged, not well. Often, people would remark fleetingly on the grey of his hair, which came upon him early, at the dawn of his forties. He would smile and say, “There ain’t nothing wrong with a little salt and pepper.” Salt and pepper. No, not salt and pepper. It was not salt and pepper that turned his dark hair white. It was the bathroom mirror, hung over

the sink. He would rise from his bed at night and traverse the hallway, en route for the toilet, and when he washed his hands afterwards, he would look up and see that he was alone in the silent pit of night, but also not. Yes, I saw him cry only once. But I have seen the fear in him a thousand times, when he looks in that mirror, at the space over his shoulder, and sees my face. Afterwards, he will stagger back to bed. The stagger grows deeper and slower with each passing year. After the millennium, people would say that he was old. Some small people called him by a new name: Grandpa. Some others would say, “He’s a nice old man. Been married sixty years. Isn’t that sweet?” He climbs back into bed, ungracefully, for he’s pushing ninety. Pam still looks small and pretty, meek and pale. I look at her, and the way the dark’s light touches the white in her hair, and settles into the wrinkles in her face. She is asleep, but he lies awake. He stares at the ceiling, trembling faintly. What is he thinking? What does he regret? Sometimes I wonder this, when I look at him. I wonder how he feels when he sees me in the bathroom mirror. In shop windows, in the television screen. In the rearview mirror of his new, modern car. What is he feeling? How did he do it? Was he relieved, or did he feel sick? Did he feel sick inside his skin? I lie down beside him, now. The bed does not sink beneath my weight, and his skin is not warm and sweaty on mine. But I know what he sees, reflected in the glass of water at his bedside. In the standing mirror on Pam’s side of the bed. Her, and then him, and then me. Three is a crowd. Three is a magic number. He used to like it when I whispered to him, hot breath on the lobe of his ear, not speaking words but sighing them, as if the clean beauty of him whittled me down to such a wearied husk that I could barely move my mouth to enunciate. But I don’t think he likes it anymore.

DEBORAH KANFER, Spring in Central Park 2015

CAMILLE INSTON REQUIRED LISTENING: Pipe Dreams and Open Seas TRACK OF CHOICE: “The Edge” ROOTS: Camille is a musician from Hamilton, Ontario. GET ACQUAINTED: Camille has been playing and promoting her music locally since 2013 in various venues such as My Dog Joe, Louder than a Bomb Canada, Hesstival Arts and Culture Festival, as well as numerous prose/poetry events and open mics. Her original songs have been played on numerous internet-radio stations, with “Goodbye July” snagging the #1 spot at the top of the international FabChart last summer. Recently nominated for Choice Female Artist and Choice Original Song, as well as for The Hamilton Music Awards’ 2015 Rising Star Search, Intson has collaborated with various local and international artists. FURTHER LISTENING: www.camilleintson.bandcamp.com

NAKED HOUSE REQUIRED LISTENING: Hail Fellow Well Met TRACK OF CHOICE: “Crybaby Crisis (I Don’t Care)” ROOTS: Naked House is Damon Guyett, a Canadian Lo-fi/Rock/NoisePop artist based in Waterdown, Ontario, and born in Hamilton, Ontario. GET ACQUAINTED: Damon Guyett has performed as Naked House for 5 years since his 2010 self-released debut, Cough Cough/Naked House. The moniker is meant to convey comfort in one’s own skin, abnormalities and all. Naked House is releasing an LP – where you can find his most recent single, “Crybaby Crisis (I Don’t Care)” – as well as writing another score for a short film. Details abound! FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE: www.nakedhouse.bandcamp.com

BRANNIGAN REQUIRED LISTENING: Hello Future TRACK OF CHOICE: “Sincerely Yours” ROOTS: Domenic Orsi started the band Brannigan as a side project band in the dying days of Hamilton band Halfway Heroes, in which he was apart of. GET ACQUAINTED: The idea behind Brannigan was never to be a complete solo project, although Domenic is the main writer and producer of the songs. Instead, he writes with the mindset of featuring different local musicians. The first album, Moments and Memories, was recorded in Woodstock, NY and released in 2014. The second album, Hello Future, was released in 2015 and featured Domenic Orsi on Guitar/Keys/Strings/Midi, Steve Cascao on Drums, and James Gould on Vocals. The current live line up is Domenic Orsi, Steve Cascao, James Dewar, James Gould and Christian Gould. FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE: www.brannigan1.bandcamp.com

Left: Photo of Domenic Orsi of Brannigan by Eric Tarquinio

UNDER THE COVER WHO: Sam Estrabillo is a freelance illustrator and painter born and raised in the former "Steel-City" of Hamilton, Ontario - and, he’s this issue’s cover artist. WHAT: This issue’s cover art is titled “Cross Walk.” SAM SAYS: “The Hamilton I've always known is a rich and diverse place from it's architecture, history, art but especially the unique qualities of the people that make up this beautiful City. I wanted to emphasize on the incomparable characteristics that each Hamiltonion has and an emphasis on pride we have to display our true selves. This image in a combination of tradition line work and digital colouring that displays a snapshot of four different characters caught at road cross.”

VIEW THE PORTFOLIO: www.sam-estrabillo.com

GET SOCIAL: Instagram.com/sam.estrabillo

A COUPLE (MORE) REASONS TO FOLLOW SAM:

Photo of Sam by Holly McMurter (www.hollymcmurterphotographs.com)

CONTRIBUTORS JOE MCGREAL is a self-taught Photographer from Hamilton, Ontario. Joel first started taking photos documenting his friends skateboarding and was drawn to shooting the candid moments within the group and culture. He continues to follow the same approach to his work, which enables him to explore and spontaneously express the passing moments of everyday life and document the world around me. While he does experiment with all forms of photography, he primarily use analogue equipment. VICKI IORIO Poetry is what Vicki Iorio does. Poetry is how she sees the world. Everything in her life goes into the poetry stew-trauma, drama, belly laughs and belly slaps. It’s all there, it’s a process, an issue and like they say, it’s complicated. You can read Iorio’s work in various on line and print publications such as Hell strung and Crooked, Great Weather for Media anthology, I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand, The Brownstone Poets Anthology, The San Pedro Review, The Mom Egg, Crack the Spine and Hysteria. Poems from the Dirty Couch is Iorio’s first full length collection. Her chapbook, Send Me a Letter will be published by dancing girl press in the spring of 2016. DEBORAH KANFER Originally from South Africa, Deborah Kanfer lives and works in Hamilton, where she is pursuing her career in photography. Her latest photographic endeavours include images surrounding a theme of ‘Cityscapes and Living Spaces’. Here, she captures eclectic neighbourhoods, tourist attractions and city quirks from various angles and perspectives of places and spaces she has visited and lived. Her focus is currently on capturing Hamilton, as this is her current city of residence. Among the latter, she also extends her work into themes of ‘Momento Mori’, ‘Interiors’ and ‘The Humans’ Need for Consumption’.

CHARITY BLAINE was born in Hamilton, but grew up in Dunnville, Ontario. She wrote for a brief time for the Sachem, the Haldimand and Glanbrook newspaper. Blaine studied the Inuit experience at Chedoke Sanatorium while working on her Master’s Degree in Canadian History. She is currently a photographer and assistant librarian. ŽANA KOZOMORA is currently a student of the Mentored Studies program at the Dundas Valley School of Art and a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo Honours Fine Arts program. She utilizes strategies of archiving and instruction to examine the preservation of cultural heritage, specifically in dialogue with migrant narratives. By translating archived material through digital film, print, and installation, a distorted gesture is formed to survey how displaced objects harbour and reinforce complex structures of identity and trauma. HIRA NADEEM is currently studying Engineering at McMaster University. When she isn’t drowning in homework, she likes to freeze time with her camera, slam poetry she writes in her bedroom for strangers, and stare into the universe from her backyard. She wants to save the world someday. SYDNEY NIKULKA is a young abstract painter from Ancaster, Ontario. She graduated from Brock University with a B.A (Honours) in Visual Arts. When viewing her paintings, her goal is for you to feel something within. Whether it is joy, confusion, relaxation or even an aversion. It is important to connect with these natural emotions. Art is meant for people to think and to feel. If her paintings do that, she has accomplished what she has set out to do.

KAREN KATES holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including: Other Voices, Wind, Cottonwood Review, Descant, Words Wrights, Timbercreek Review Green Hills Literary Lantern, Stone Boat, Bluestem, The Chicago Quarterly Review Redbook, and the Mademoiselle Prize Story anthology. Her work has received a National Magazine Award Nomination and a Pushcart Prize nomination. KATIE LUKE is a freelance author, photographer, and cat whisperer. She writes fantasy and science fiction novels for young adults, recognizing the need for diverse representation and feminist discourse within the genres. When she’s not saving galaxies and wielding dark magic, she’s into Italian food, fresh tattoos, and tiny footwear. Originally from the United Kingdom, she moved to Hamilton and spent a few years here before moving back to the United Kingdom, but is most at home when she’s travelling somewhere new, camera in hand. Her short story “Primrose” was featured in the Inaugural Issue of The Paper Street Journal and some of her photography was featured in the second issue. PETER VAN DYK is a poet, musician, insurance professional and resident of Hamilton, Ontario. He has been writing poetry and music since his early teens and is a member of the writing collective “Ceramic Dog”. Peter attended Mohawk College where he studied business. Some of his favourite poets include Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman and Arthur Rimbaud. ZACHARY AASMAN is a poet, carpenter, and song writer from Hamilton, Ontario. He pulls inspiration for every facet of his creativity by immersing himself in nature, or from the meditation found when the hands can build of their own accord while leaving the mind free and unfetteed. JEN ROOSEVELT is a self-taught abstract visual artist from Hamilton, Ontario. Finding inspiration in the binaries of the world--the balance between beauty and destruction, for instance--Roosevelt’s art is a very personal reflection of her feelings towards life, and thus are expressions of her inner self.

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ONE MORE THING A great deal of thanks goes out to our partners, volunteers, editors, and staff for their hard work on this project. The gears continue to turn at the Journal, and as they do, it helps to have individuals and friends working with us to keep the machine well-oiled and tightened. We’re eternally indebted to Matt, Cam, RJ, and Till at Black Lake Media. A big "thank you" goes out to Pretty Grit, Grey Water, and Paper Box Studios for their recent collaborations. While we would all like to feign an act of personal brilliance, none of this would actually have been possible without the tireless work of Jenna van Klavern, whose perseverance and professionalism are second to none, and who's brilliance is undoubtedly authentic. We’d also like to welcome—and in doing so thank—the newest member of our executive team, Rachelle Waterman, who has the beat on everything in this city and greater arts community. (Don’t believe me? I dare you to try to stump her.) Her wisdom and experience have been a shining beacon in the night when we lose our way. And to you, our reader, this journal continues to be possible because of your kindness and admiration for the arts. Fittingly, the last word of thanks goes to you.

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