Aura Literary Arts Review Vol. 46 Issue 1

Spring

Vol. 46|Issue 1

Literature

ANNOUNCEMENTS #1 RED PERIL #3 JUMPING IN #3 SECRETS SECRETS #4 DISTANCE #6 PHANTOM PAIN #13 THERE IS SOMETHING SEXY #14 ANOTHER PLAY WORD #15 ARS CANALICA #15 BIG EARS #18 BLACK MAN #18 BLUSH #20 DO YOU KNOW WHAT MADNESS MEANS #21 HOW TO MAKE LIGHT OF DARKNESS #21 SPOILER #22 VOICES #23 LIBERTY ATOMS 1 #29 SCORPIONS SCURRYING #29 NOW #30 LAST PRAYER #30 ON OXYGEN #32 “A TRIBUTE TO THE COLOR YELLOW” #33 INTERIOR #33 BLACK REALITY #35 LIBERTY ATOMS 5 #35 SEVEN #36 SNOWFLAKING #36 INNER LIFE SCROLL #37 CLOTHES #38 HE SAID MADNESS LIES THERE #38

Art & Photography

09WAVES #2 CONFESSIONS FROM DEFILED AMERICAN INFRASTRUCTURE #4 FAMINE & FEAST #5 CAMERON MCPHAIL #8 THE DIRTY MYRTLE GULAG BLUES #11 BIGGERBEAR #14 VIDIT JAIN #16 BOWTIE #17 SPLIT ENDS #19 KATIE JUSTICE #22 CAMERON MCPHAIL #28 SAMEER PUNJANI #30 DEFILEME.BREAKME.DESTROYME #31 MADONNA #33 AMY SINGS #34 CITYSCAPE #35 MOD027

Announcements Terrorists have occupied the bar and grill for a week when children dressed in camouflage fatigues patterned digitized blue and grey cloudy shapes start to hand out fliers covered with trembly running script and a lot of stick figures drawn in various poses.

To the curious at first, who ask, and then to those who own or work for local businesses; then to people on important and, finally, in the end, critical, unavoidable errands that are truly matters of life and death.

Even once martial law's declared the children carry on, taping fliers to doors and windows of shops, utility and light poles.

Backhoe and bulldozer derelict at the corner, orange nylon ribbon tied to stakes flutters and flickers on both sides of bright, newly-poured sidewalk and a little further on a neat path of turned iron-rich earth.

Cloth-back tape squawks and screaks, yanked off rolls.

A delivery truck beeps in the alley behind the restaurant.

According to a flier printed on electric blue stock and slipped under our apartment door the terrorists like mozzarella cheese.

My girlfriend huffs on the stair machine and asks me, “Shall we move the bed?�

She's taken off her denim jacket, she's wearing her white denim and rhinestone bra.

The window facing south propped open with a seven-day Adventist candle jar, the change from summer to autumn is taking a long time.

In the daytime a lookout patrols in the window above a marquee jutting out over the sidewalk and hung with rectangular panels of block-lettered clear plastic evenly spaced and announcing a band that was scheduled to play but then never performed:

01

his assault rifle slung over one shoulder, the sentry smokes cigarettes, dropping his butts on the stage he then peers at a moment before he emphatically steps on each smouldering stub, an abundance of caution blonde paneling backdrops, foreshortened cylinders of stage lights accented with the trapezoid flaps of soft-cornered hinged metal barn doors as dark shapes battened above.

After the rains start, walking past the restaurant one night I stop to study chasing lights reflected on wet asphalt road, my head at an angle, the way a fish once caught will flex and arch in hand as if looking at the water would bring it to, until my canted neck grows stiff, and I recall‌nothing else, except the terrorists not giving me a gun, prior to giving me a gun, because it's my turn to keep the vigil.

The observation window cracks a web around the hole the bullet makes when a bullet comes to take me (as a bullet must), breaks refracting to shiny ribbon magnetic tape a dopey-looking cityscape of faded office blocks and apartment buildings across the street.

Mark Parsons

Jeremy Szuder “09waves”

02

Red Peril

adapted from Low Bridge!: Folklore and the Erie Canal by Lionel D. Wyld

The slow grind of history may erase my name.

Red’s will live on like this canal.

I trained and raced my share of cockroaches, grasshoppers, frogs…, but I believed Red would be the fastest caterpillar of them all.

At race time, I set Red alongside his competition in the middle of a three-foot circle drawn in the bankside dirt. The first caterpillar to make it outside the circle wins.

By rule, a trainer’s allowed to poke his racer once with a needle to get him moving.

Needles didn’t work with Red. The only thing that scared him enough to run was butter.

One morning before digging, I found him trapped in a crock of it.

The way Red moved across my calluses after I saved him showed me he had a worker’s will.

Red won every race he was in.

Against the Horned Demon of Rome, Red slumped still on the chalk line.

His big heart gave out.

My own felt tiny then. It fluttered as if it held the trapped ghost of a moth.

Antonio Vallone

Jumping In Pigs whistling, crickets gasp, a fat lady sighs after her song, hinges creak, and one tree falls, alone in the forest, screaming, without a friend, a lover, but your friend jumps in a mostly frozen river without a sound and you notice some lichen on an interior wall and spray it after you wind your mother’s clocks.

The particles of mist shoot out like last ships leaving earth in search of another home in the stars.

Peter Waldor 03

Secrets Secrets Secrets, secrets that you keep.

Secrets,secrets not even a peep Why so secretive may I ask?

It’s just a simple task Are you embarrassed Afraid?

Have you any shame?

The door of your interests locked shut and tight As it collects spider webs during the night.

For us outsiders we may never know What lies behind that chamber door.

Secrets, Secrets all so well Secrets, secrets never kiss and tell.

My secrets, my secrets, do you want me to tell?

Never ask again, stay out of my hell.

Secrets, Secrets you continue to store I will ask NeverMore!

Anonymous

Lol oh x oh X, why So invasive?

The thoughts In my head are not to be said or taken.

Once you enter my head there will be no escaping, there’s a dark room in your head that I’ll take my place in.

Brett Stout “Confessions “Confessions From Defiled American Infrastructure” 04

Peter Dellolio “Famine & Feast” 05

Distance

As a young man in my early-twenties, I wished for many things. I wanted a job that would make me rich. I wanted to move to the coast. I wanted adventure and risk.

I wanted love, sure; but this was secondary to my other aspirations. It was something I felt I could do without, at least for the time being.

It was during this period of my life that I knew Jane. In the spring of my senior year of college, I had told Jane that she could visit that following summer. I would be on campus all by myself, after all. I imagined spending my evenings on the couch, watching baseball on tv, empty beer bottles littering the table. I knew it would be nice to have a visitor.

She lived in Chicago, which was only a state over but still hundreds of miles away. We had started seeing each other more during the weeks leading up to graduation. I don’t know why I let myself go along with it. I had been there before: a period of transition, impending change, a person I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. I knew the risks involved, so I was hesitant to get caught up in anything serious.

But I liked Jane.

It had only been two weeks since graduation - since everyone went home - when she appeared again. The plan was for her to stay for a few days - Sunday to Tuesday. I met her at the curb outside my apartment on Sunday evening.

I stood and watched her sway towards me for a moment, her arms full of bags, her hands clutching the handles of suitcases, before lurching forward to help.

“I overpacked,” she said, her face a scarlet red.

“You can make fun of me if you want.”

I laughed, attempting to convey that I thought her joke was funny, though she didn’t mean it as a joke, and I knew this. She was truly embarrassed. She had packed clothes for every occasion that she imagined could possibly take place during the few days she would be here.

After moving her two suitcases and two large bags into to the empty room vacated by my old roommate, I gave her some time alone to change for dinner. After ten minutes, she walked into the living room wearing jeans and a white blouse. She stopped in place and scrunched her shoulders when I looked up at her.

“You look beautiful,” I said. Jane blushed, a wide smile spreading across her lips. She shrugged and did a sort of curtsy.

“Stop it,” she squeaked. “I brought you something.” She raised the brown paper bag she was carrying

then placed it on the kitchen counter, pulling out two wine bottles and a green plastic box with a note taped to the top.

She placed the three items on the counter.

“The wine’s for us. I didn’t know what kind you liked, so I got both. I hope it’s ok,” she said. Then she motioned towards the box. “This is for you; for your birthday.”

She removed the lid to reveal what looked like square blocks of hardened cookie dough. “It’s a blondie cookie.

My mom and I made it for you.” She flashed another girlish smile and scrunched her shoulders again.

I looked at the cookie and then back at her, then wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to my chest.

“Thank you,” I said, kissing her temple.

She turned to put the green box inside the fridge along with the bottle of white wine, leaving the red on the island. Then she did a little skip. I looked away - her excitement made me nervous.

Those days, I felt uneasy around women who showed interest in me. It was a terrible way to be, but it stemmed from a general knowledge of who I was as a person, as a lover. I had the tendency of getting too excited too quickly. The moment I felt myself falling for a girl - even just the slightest bit - I dove in headfirst. I would rearrange plans for the future to accommodate a possible one with her if I didn’t catch myself. It was no way to live, and it made me weary of any girl who might prompt me to act this way.

We decided we weren’t hungry yet, so we walked a couple blocks down to Kirkwood Avenue to get a drink.

Upstairs Pub was exactly what it sounded like: a bar on the second floor of a building. An exterior staircase located in an alley led up to a porch where a carder stood beside the door. Inside was a three-sided bar with tv’s situated around the bartender. A couple round tables stood in various places around the central bar as well as on the porch that looked out onto Kirkwood. In the back was a pool table, a dart board, and a pop-a-shot arcade game.

I ordered a beer for myself and a vodka soda for Jane, then we found a table on the porch. It was still early - the sun a couple hours from setting and the bar mainly empty. There were a few middle-aged men sitting quietly around the bartender. Two young couples sat together at a table inside. They looked to be about our age. I noticed one of the girls sizing up Jane and I as we walked in.

I liked going out with Jane. She moved with a sort of grace, and there was a certain tenderness that shined through every step. She was unassuming, despite her beauty - confident, but also bashful.

06

This is what hooked me. Over the years, I got to know many different women. Some were confident, others were apprehensive; very few were both. Jane was both.

I watched as she looked out onto the sidewalk below, holding her drink in front of her, both hands cupped around the glass, her elbows resting on the wooden table. She was biting her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on something below.

I tried to find what it was she was looking at. I watched the evening crowd meander along the sidewalks on either side of Kirkwood, enjoying the last golden light of the fading weekend. It was hot, the year’s brutal winter giving way to a humid summer. The women wore shorts or sundresses, little purses strewn over their shoulders. The men wore baseball caps and t-shirts. They walked side-by-side, hand-inhand, peering through the windows of the shops and bars that lined the street.

Kirkwood was the entertainment epicenter of Bloomington. The locals - or the “townies”, as we students called them - roamed the street during the summer. They did the same during the school year, though it seemed they kept to a strict curfew. By sundown, it was undergraduates only.

There were three bars within twenty yards of each other, and we stumbled between each of them from Thursday night to Sunday morning, when it became time again to straighten up and resume our studies.

I met Jane at one of those bars. It was a Saturday morning in January. MLK Day. Just a few months before she visited that summer. We were up early drinking because it was a holiday, and no one had class. This was a good of reason as any to go to the bar at eleven o’clock in the morning.

I was hungry because I woke up too late to eat breakfast (operating on a tight schedule as we were). I had just gotten to Kilroy’s and was waiting by the bar to order a drink and some food when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and there she was, standing beside a friend, a white sock hat pulled just above her eyes, her straight brown hair falling out from underneath. She wore a black sweater and checkered leggings, both matching her hat.

“I’m Jane,” she had said, introducing herself. “Can I buy you a cheeseburger?”

Her move was charmingly unconventional and impossible to turn down. I was hungry and she was offering me food. Her timing was perfect.

An hour later we were back at her place. Two hours later we were back at the bar, her shirt turned inside out, our faces red from laughing.

Now she sat to my right, at a table across the street from where we met just a few months back. She turned her empty glass around in her hands and looked at me.

“Could we go inside?” She said. “It’s hot in the sun, and I don’t want to sweat through my shirt.”

07

I rose from my stool and followed her back towards the bar inside. She insisted on buying the next round, and as we waited to order I noticed a familiar face sitting on one side of the bar.

“Victor?” I said, taking a step towards the balding man to our left. His mouth opened into a wide smile when he saw me.

“Mitchell!” He said, extending his hand towards me.

I shook it, the two of us blinking at each other for a moment.

Then I pulled my hand back and placed it on Jane’s shoulder.

“This is my friend, Jane,” I said. Then, looking at her, “This is Victor, my dad’s old college friend.”

Jane nodded her head and smiled.

“Another pretty one, I see,” Victor said. I noticed Jane turn her head towards me.

“How have you been?” I asked, pushing past his comment.

“Well,” he said before pausing, looking down at the beer in his hand. He raised it to his lips and lowered it before continuing. “I’m getting by. Same old shit. My sister tried killing herself last week.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I glanced towards Jane. Her wide eyes focused on Victor, her mouth agape.

Victor squeezed his eyes shut a couple times - a nervous tick, it seemed - before waving to the bartender for another drink. “She’ll be alright, I think. You guys want anything?”

He said.

I looked to Jane again. This time her eyes met mine, and she made a small motion towards the door with her head.

“Jane and I have to get on our way,” I said, shifting back and forth on my feet. “We’re late for a dinner reservation.

How about we get a drink sometime this week?”

“Yes, yes. I’m buying. You have my number,” he said.

I nodded and we shook hands. Then Jane and I walked past the carder, out into the sun and down the stairs, my hand resting on her lower back.

I had lied to Victor. We did have plans to get dinner, but we hadn’t yet picked out a place to go. There was certainly no reservation. It was just that Victor could be a bit depressing to be around back then.

We chose an upscale Mexican restaurant, the kind of place where they serve fancy margaritas and expensive tequila cocktails. They called it the Social Cantina, and it was a common downtown spot for couples on dates and the kind of people who took pictures of all their meals.

The restaurant was located on the square facing the courthouse. Jane and I asked for a table outside, under the awning. When the waitress came by, we ordered tacos to share and a pitcher of sangria. Then we were quiet for a moment as we

took in the brilliant orange light the setting sun casted over the limestone buildings across the square. It was calm in the downtown area, the sidewalks mainly empty - a typical Sunday evening during the summer months. But it was a pleasant night to sit outside, the air comfortably warm with no flies to swat at.

“So,” Jane said, breaking the silence. “What’s the story on Victor?”

I leaned back in my iron wrought chair and looked down the road at the cars waiting at the stoplight. The light turned green and the cars crept forward, their brake lights going out one by one.

I said, “He and my dad were close while they went here back in the Eighties. He lived in our basement for a year or so when I was little. I called him Uncle Vic.” I paused to take a sip. “I don’t think my mom was a huge fan of having him down there. I barely remember it, though.”

“Do you see him often?” She said.

“Usually just tailgates in the fall, or every now and then at the bar,” I said.

“Is he always so morbid?”

“Usually not so dark, no,” I said, stopping to search for the right words. “But he is kind of a bummer to talk to

most of the time. I feel bad for him.”

“Does he have a wife?”

“No. I’ve heard a bit about his dating history,” I said.

“He dated a couple girls after college who my dad says he should have married. But he didn’t.”

“He must be lonely,” Jane said.

“I’m sure he is.”

As the sun continued to set and the shadows grew longer across the square, we were starting to feel the sangria. I noticed that my hand had drifted down to her thigh, so I gave her a squeeze. We leaned in close as we spoke, both of us smiling dumbly, her eyes glancing down to my lips every few minutes.

“Sometimes, I catch myself staring at you as if you’re not looking at me, too,” she told me.

The waitress - a girl our age, pretty like Jane - broke our conversation abruptly when she sat the food down on the table. She blushed and apologized for startling us. I told her not to worry then looked at Jane, who was holding back a laugh. We each grabbed a taco as the waitress walked away.

“What’s the plan for tonight?” She said, her mouth half full.

“I’ll do whatever,” I said.

“A band I know is playing at the Bluebird.”

Cameron McPhail

08

“We should go.”

We made a plan to go back to my apartment after dinner and change into more appropriate going-out clothes, but the first thing we did after walking through my door was pour two glasses of wine. With each sip it became less and less likely that we would actually go out. There was nothing for us out there, anyways. We had no friends who were still in town, and neither of us really liked going out that much in the first place.

She had driven all those miles to where I was so we could see each other, talk to each other, spend time together, and the prospect of a crowded, sweaty bar did not sound conducive for accomplishing those goals.

So, we sat on my couch drinking wine and queuing up songs to play through our phones. After a while, I kissed her. Soon we were in my bedroom, our clothes on the floor. Any evening plans were officially cancelled.

09

The days slipped by us. I had to go to work during the week, but she knew this would be the case.

She busied herself by sleeping in, jogging, and perusing the boutiques on the square. Upon arriving back to my apartment in the evening, she would give me the rundown of all that she did.

Pacing around the room, eyes shifting, arms gesturing, she spared no detail. “I woke up at eleven and took a shower in your roommates’ old bathroom. It’s cleaner in there. Then I met my friend for lunch. He’s so funny. He was showing me the dating profile of this guy he likes. After that, I came back to change and then went for a run on the B-line. Do you know the B-line? It’s nice except for the homeless people. This one guy tried following me today but then he ran out of breath.”

I stood leaning against the refrigerator. Every few steps she would stop and look at me with wide brown eyes, urging me to react to the things she told me. I nodded encouragingly.

“But now you’re back! How was work?” She said.

“It was alright. The kids were a little crazy today.”

That summer I worked as a glorified gym teacher for kids from low-income families. My days were more or less spent calling out 1st through 6th graders for cheating while they played tag. Every now and then I had to make an ice pack or slap a Band-Aid on a crying child. I liked kids, but - as I came to find out - preferably just a couple of them at a time. They got ornery when put in big groups, especially when there was a large, open space to run around and only one adult (me) trying to keep them calm.

It was nice knowing someone would be in

my apartment when the day was over. But by Tuesday morning, Jane was driving back to Chicago.

It seemed extra quiet when I walked through the door that afternoon. I went about my normal routine now that I was alone again. I changed my clothes and climbed the stairs to the roof to smoke a cigarette in the hot sun. Then I made my dinner of choice: chicken and rice; a simple meal that was hard to mess up.

I cleared space on the living room table for my bowl of food and turned on the tv. I would go through four different shows on Netflix that summer. There wasn’t much else to do at night. I tried to write when I could, but after a long day with the kids, it was a struggle to do anything productive.

A few days went by. Work, then Netflix. Work, then Netflix.

After work on Friday, I was preparing for another slow weekend when my phone buzzed with a text.

It was from Victor. Mitchell. It’s Uncle Vic. $2 Corona time at Upstairs. U in?

I paused for a moment. Meeting him there would be a commitment I wasn’t sure I was ready to engage in. He had the ability to rope you in and keep you at his side all night. It would be easy to make up an excuse. But I knew what I would be doing if I declined his offer: absolutely nothing.

I’ll walk over. I texted back.

The weekend crowd was beginning to settle in at Upstairs when I handed my ID to the carder. The bar counter was nearly filled with patrons and some of the tables were occupied as well. Victor was at his usual spot on the short side of the counter, an open stool to his right. He lifted his arm and motioned me over when he saw me.

He ordered me a beer when I sat down, and we traded greetings.

“How’s the woman? Jess, right?” He said.

“Jane,” I said.

“Right, right. She’s pretty,” he said, nudging my arm with his elbow. I let out a small laugh.

“She’s a very sweet girl.” I said.

“If that’s true, then don’t let her go. Beautiful sweethearts are hard to come by. When you have them, keep them. Or else you’ll regret it forever.”

I nodded my head, knowing this was offered as genuine advice. Victor knew what it meant to live alone.

He knew how it felt to miss a woman for many years.

“What have you been up to?” I asked, though his answer to this question never changed.

“Another day, kid. Another day,” he said. He often spoke in a low, faraway voice, spewing out the same catchphrases like “another day” or “just getting by”, always referring to me as “kid” or “son”. It gave me the

feeling that he was trying to sound both wise and mysterious, as if his life contained hardships that I could never understand at my young age.

He asked about my brothers and sisters, my mother, my father; especially my father. He wanted to know how his business was doing, if he still met up with his adult friends for beers.

“There was a time when I was his go-to drinking buddy,” Victor said, his eyes focusing on a baseball game playing on one of the tv’s above the bartender. I nodded and prepared for one of his nostalgic rants.

“Those years after college, when your dad and I were living in Chicago,” he paused, remembering. “Those were good times. Your dad was a different man back then. But I was right there with him. Batman and Robin, Bert and Ernie, Tom and Jerry, you name it. We were joined at the hip. But that was years ago. Things have changed, haven’t they?”

“I guess they have.”

“Do you remember the days when I was in your basement?”

“Of course, I do,” I said.

“You and your brothers were so little. Your sisters were older. I’m sure they remember it well.”

“I remember.” I said.

We were quiet for some time, our eyes shifting between the multiple tv’s around the bar. I peeked over at him every now and then. His eyes were on the baseball game, but he wasn’t really watching. He was thinking about days gone.

He was thinking about a life he once had, a friend he once had. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. I even felt a brief sense of anger towards my father for losing touch with his old friend, though I knew my father had done nothing wrong. He had simply progressed down the highway of life, taking exits where he must.

“Your father is a complicated man,” Victor said after a time. I waited for him to elaborate, but he said nothing more on the subject. We went another few minutes without speaking.

By then the sun had set and the bar was crowded.

We had put down three or four beers.

“What do you say we check out Kilroy's?” Victor said, a grin returning to his face. “We’ll see what all the coeds are up to.”

We paid our tab and headed down the stairs and across the street to the most popular bar in town. It was different in the summer - still crowded, but far from shoulder to shoulder. The outdoor patio that during the year was always filled to capacity was still lively, though tables and chairs occupied some space in order to give the impression that the bar was still full, that no one had left at all.

To get there, one had to elbow their way through the groups standing around the indoor bar tops until they

reached the back door. During the year, there was often a thirsty mob of impatient drunks waiting to push through to the outdoors, their path blocked by two staff members tasked with the job of maintaining a safe patio capacity. There was no such mob at this time in May. We walked through the back door onto the wooden floor and up the couple steps to the main area, which was square in shape with a line of semi-circle booths lining the opposite wall from the door.

Two bar tops faced each other on either side of you as you made your way up the stairs.

I followed Victor as he snaked his way through the patio, watching his neck crane to look at all the women we passed. He ordered two beers at the left-side bar - the larger of the two - before scanning the patio again.

“Girls these days,” he said, shaking his head, “they don’t look like they used to.” I cringed at his comment but nodded along politely. Or was it an attempt to sympathize?

Was I trying to understand him for the man he was? All broken and hollow? It was hard to say.

Victor paid for the beers and we found an open spot by a wooden rail in the back corner, in between the last booth and the edge of the smaller bar, practically halfway out the back door they used to escort out guys who were too drunk.

We talked for some time about my plans for after college.

Having just graduated, they were plans for my immediate future: I would finish out the summer in town working as a gym teacher before moving briefly to California, where I would undergo job training for the fall. Around Christmas, I would move to the East Coast for the real thing. It was all very exciting or terrifying or heartbreaking, depending on which lens you viewed it from.

There was, of course, the situation with Jane. What would we be, exactly? What could we be? In any case, I had always wanted to leave the Midwest, to travel, to move. That’s why I took the job in the first place. Corporate America never sounded too adventurous, but training on the West Coast and placement in the East sure did. I would be a fool to let a girl stand in the way of that. A damned fool. I was almost certain of this.

Victor listened quietly as I vocalized my thoughts, refraining from interrupting to offer bits of advice or warning. It was nice to bear my mind freely, but it made me wonder what his reaction to it all was. Was he proud of me?

Jealous? Indifferent?

When I finished, he made a grunting noise as if to confirm he absorbed it all but said nothing in one direction or the other.

We drank our beers in silence for a moment.

Then he spoke. “Will you and Jane stay together?”

“I don’t know. She’ll be on the other side of the country.”

“What difference does that make?” He said. I gave him a puzzled look. He put his beer down on the wooden

10

11

Brett Stout “The Dirty Myrtle Gulag Blues”

rail. “In this day and age, it doesn’t matter how far away you are. You can text, call, video chat… people didn’t always have those forms of communication, you know.”

His voice was rising. I was confused as to why he sounded so offended. “I know that. But it’s not the same,” I said.

“Listen,” he said. I could feel a long-winded speech coming on. “I knew a girl once, a long time ago. I was young, like you. Which means I was stupid, like you. You can’t help it. But this girl - she was beautiful, kind, charming. I should never have let her go.”

He stopped for a moment to gather his thoughts, squeezing his eyes shut and then opening them again, that nervous tick of his. I could tell what I was hearing was insight kept inside for too long. Victor had been longing to tell this story for years, decades maybe.

“We met during my last year of college, her Junior year. When I graduated, I joined the army. They sent me off to Carolina for basic training. But we sent letters back and forth, this girl and I. For two years.”

He paused and looked around the bar before looking at his glass and tapping it a couple times with his finger.

“The point is, if we could make it work, then you and Jane can, too.”

I wanted to tell him that he and this girl didn’t make it work; that they eventually broke up, for one reason or another, or else they would still be together. But I decided to spare him from having to tell the painful details of however it ended.

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said quickly. Then he finished the rest of his beer. “You want to get the next round?”

I agreed, accepting this as the end of the conversation, and left to get the next two beers.

“I’m thinking,” she said each time. So I let her think.

We were silent for minutes.

Then, finally, she said, “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“I know,” I said.

“But you’re ending it, anyways.”

“I am. I’m sorry.” There wasn’t much else to say, or so I thought.

She was quiet again. I could hear her stifling tears.

“You know I adore you, Mitchell,” she said after some time.

I adored her, too, and I should have told her so. But I didn’t.

After I said goodbye and ended the call, I sat alone in my apartment for what could have been an hour. The evening light shining through the windows grew dimmer and dimmer until it was no more and everything was black.

I thought about texting Victor and telling him what I had done. What would he have said? He would have been disappointed, surely. Possibly even angry. He would have suggested we meet at Upstairs Pub, order some beers, discuss how I could fix the situation. He would have been honest with me, advising me as he saw fit. And before we parted, he would have told me that he was here for me, that he would help whenever and however he could, and maybe even that he loved me.

But I did not text Victor. I did not see him that night, nor any night during the rest of that summer, nor any night for a long, long time.

Marshall Farren

Jane and I continued to talk more or less every day.

She wanted to come back as soon as I said she could. She worked part-time at her aunt’s cafe, who was flexible with giving her time off. She said she could make the drive at any point, with little warning to whoever might miss her. All I had to do was pick a weekend, and she would come.

Jane was a sweet woman. She was a caring woman; she was loving, generous, an impossibly beautiful human being. Too much so, I think. I was too young for that kind of perfection. If I were older, maybe I would have known what to do. I hope she is happy, wherever she is. I hope she is loved.

I ended it over the phone, blaming the distance as the main reason. After I said what I said, she was quiet for a long time. I said her name every now and then to make sure she was still there.

12

Phantom Pain

~ for my father

PERHAPS WE DON’T TAKE ENOUGH MOMENTS TO REFLECT ON THE WONDER OF OUR EXISTENCE‌ ~ James W. Falciglia In a stack of old papers, your thoughts haunt a page, sage words typed hunt-and-peck, resonating in uppercase.

I remember the wooly feel of your sweater vest against my cheek, the whiff of Skin Bracer as I hugged you goodnight.

Downstairs, your stout hands danced over ivory keys as I drifted toward sleep, every song, note committed to memory, echoing, down to the occasional flat plink always in the same place.

I have heard those who lose arms, legs, speak of ghostly sensations, an odd itch, persistent pain in absent limbs.

Years later, I am still awash in this ocean of silence, aching.

Leslie Parker

13

There is Something Sexy There is something sexy about a somnambulant staircase sending sententious arithmetic menus to the guillotine because of course there is much cruelty in such a sentence since everyone knows that menus and the staircase have a love-hate relationship forever charged with carnal cravings.

Peter Dellolio

Mikayla Hammock “biggerbear�

14

Another Play Word If you could Which word Would you become? Which?

I would as lief Be ‘life’: I may well turn out a ‘lie’ Without f--, but possessed in this word My spelling contains many an ‘if ’

Yes, to live a life is to Go through as many an if As you might wish to wish

Yuan Changming

Ars Canalica

adapted from Low Bridge!: Folklore and the Erie Canal by Lionel D. Wyld

Every poem is a canal 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and 4 feet deep.

Every poem is dug out from imagination’s dirt and rock where even the poetry gods hadn’t thought to put a poem before.

Every poem, its author believes, is one of America’s greatest feats of poetry engineering, accomplished without the guidance of a single poetry engineering school.

Every poem is dug out as if by shovels, picks, and sledge hammers, sweat, spit, skin, and blood, using wagons, horses, mules, barrels of whiskey, and a little dynamite.

Antonio Vallone

15

Vidit Jain

16

Jeremy Szuder “bowtie”

17

Big Ears In a Virginia field, satellite dishes, hundreds, cup to the sky, listen for space sounds, wait to hear a galactic pin drop, maybe our neighbors whispering.

Leslie Parker

Black Man Black man, Why do they hate you?

Why must they treat you this way?

Criticizing everything you do, Is it because you are stronger than them?

Or is it because you aren’t the same?

All they believe is that you’re a crook or a thief, Never a hero, what a shame, They never see the real you, And they’re at fault, Because you’re handsome, Talented and smart, Why do they even hate you?

Black man.

-Hate is a strong thing turning good ideas into wrong things.

Zeisha Bennett

18

Peter Dellolio “Split Ends”

19

Blush I hope that when I die I go to Hell so that I can battle Satan, after all he’s bothered me all my life so far and I’m only 10 and there’s no reason to believe that he’ll lighten up on me in the years to come, if I live them, if I live them on Earth I mean and if there’s no time in Eternity or at least no time like we know it down here, not that I mark time well enough, I’m always late to Sunday School but at least I know that much and with my lousy luck even if I get saved before I die and of course the sooner the better, to get saved I mean, but then again maybe dying soon will mean I won’t have sinned as much and so I might just go to Heaven, they say I’m cute down here, at regular school they do and I’ve almost got a girlfriend even though when I’m a man I’m not going to marry anybody but Mother, she knows how I like my eggs and not to feed me Cream of Wheat or Malt-o-Meal or All-Bran or corned beef and cabbage or pickled beets or any gross chow like that, she even irons my socks and underwear--how’s that for devoted but I can’t lock her up so to speak unless Father dies, could be I’ll have to kill him myself but that’s a sin and might make Mother sad to boot and Jesus swore that if I even think about that, killing somebody, then I may as well have done it in reality, or is that lusting for a woman is just as bad as actually doing it, what -ever it is? I’m not too sure but then who can be saved? I don’t even know where babies come from--I think we get that in seventh grade so I hope I don’t fail the fourth grade now, that would set me back a year behind and my friends already say they

ridiculous and I don’t see how it could feel as nice as they say, that would kill me, one time I ate too many Easter eggs, the solid-chocolate kind, and lived to regret it, I threw chocolate up all night, too much of a good thing, like what’s called sex, it made me what I am today or what I was to begin with, whatever that was, I can’t recall and neither can my folks, when I ask ‘em they say I was a cute baby but when I ask how I came to be they just blush and tell me that one day I’ll learn everything I need to know and in the meantime try to be patient but I think the secret’s inside Mother and one day I’ll pry it out if it takes twenty years and if I have to eliminate Father in the process, except for going to work and mowing the lawn I’m not too sure what he’s good for.

Last month I dreamt, in fact, that I told him so while he was sipping a Moosehead and watching The Game of the Week and he started to cry not just because the Braves were losing again, the tears running down his cheeks were sudsy but anyway I realized that I’d hurt his feelings and then apologized and he blew his nose on my shirt when I held him close and laughed and laughed and laughed, Father laughed I mean, so for the sake of Mother he’s got to go and I’m to take his place and Mother hates sports but I can do better at winning her over and I’ve still got all my hair and no potbelly and don’t like cigars and I'll be the man Father should've been, and if not Father then I'll be Mother.

Gale Acuff

know and tell me stories but they must be kidding, making a baby can’t be that

20

DO YOU KNOW WHAT Just promise me one last shared cigarette, a walk at 4 a.m. through MADNESS MEANS the streets of hell to end up at a diner Do you know what madness really means?

I tried stopping you from grabbing the bottle of pills or alcohol, you pick your vice.

But you saw this 25 year life as the best it was ever going to become.

Do you know what madness really means?

You told me you could never pick up your guitar again, though you’d been a musician your entire life.

Stuck in a glitch, you thought the glue would forever stick, but you’ve been in cobwebs before and spun your way out, tell me why it’s different this time.

to eat the food to fill our empty souls that madness starved.

Do you know what madness means?

An impulsive pack up and leaving NYC with your arms bleeding, your brain on fire, guitar on back, telling some kid on the train, “No I’m not a musician, I just carry a guitar.”

Lying to the world and yourself, that is madness.

So cut the crap I adore you, you’re the best friend I have I refuse to see our friendship go down in flames due to madness.

Do you know what madness really means?

You black out, wake up 2 a.m. too early, falling out of dreams, telling yourself it’ll be the same as yesterday, the day before, before, before, before

Do you know what madness really means?

Do you fucking care?

Madness would mean I’d let you go on being miserable and not have the guts to say

Before—before—do you know I know what madness really means?

A life of highs of conquering and lows of despair, scars along our tattoos, burns on wrist, thighs cut open for shattered hearts are easily seen, but these wounds are not.

you don’t have to feel this way.

Do you know what madness really means?

Hell, we’re killing ourselves off slowly.

You say the doctors can’t help us the pills will only do so much, but I’m telling you to help yourself because your music sings, the notes can sweep off the crap bothering you if you just stay patient.

So leave this fucked up city if it’s what’s holding your sanity back, I promise I’ll stay in touch even if madness keeps yanking on my pen and lips.

Meira Bienstock

How to Make Light of Darkness in a world always half in darkness your body may be soaked deep in a wet nightmare, rotting but your heart can roam like a synchronous satellite in the outer space, leaving the long night far behind as long as your heart flies fast & high enough, you will live in light forever

Yuan Changming 21

Spoiler For ten years, I’ve read your story cat-scratched on grimy cardboard.

I want to believe you dumpster dive for dinner, sleep in woods, shiver under a threadbare blanket, a tarp, head pillowed on a backpack, or belly up to the soup kitchen, catch some shut-eye at the city shelter before staking out this corner on sunny days.

You are not like the girl, eighteen, twenty maybe, I saw only once red-faced, sleet-pinged, trembling in a hoodie, jeans, sneakers

beside the exit ramp on Highway 29.

I emptied my wallet for her.

Your ragged sign reads: Homeless God Bless Anything will help BONE CANCER yet you smoke an expensive chain of cigarettes, talk to God knows who on an IPhone.

Turn that phone over.

See the Apple?

Eat it.

Leslie Parker

Katie Justice 22

Voices

Sally heard voices. She didn't hallucinate, she heard real voices, but more intensely, more acutely than other people. Some voices made her feel sad, even if they were saying something positive and happy or delivering good news. Others made her feel sleepy, even if they were relating something exciting. She couldn't remember not hearing voices that way, but she remembered how surprised she was to learn that other people didn't hear voices the same way she did.

She made that discovery at the age of eleven, and the affliction, or talent, grew steadily during her teens.

Some voices could make Sally feel happy, even when they delivered bad news or read the obituaries. Some voices sounded so beautiful she felt like weeping for the sheer joy of getting to hear them.

Some made her want to cover her ears or run away to avoid their rebarbative sound. Others made her want to run away out of fear. A few made her damp between her skinny legs.

Sally, like the rest of her family, enjoyed bluegrass more than any other form of music. Oh, they listened to other kinds of music—or, as her dad sometimes said, “We like both kinds of music: country and Western”—but they all preferred bluegrass. Sally liked Western Swing almost as much as bluegrass, and her family liked it OK. Except for the pedal steel on a Western Swing number or a good country song, she didn't much like electric instruments. She had a particular soft spot for the mandolin and fiddle or a good dreadnought guitar but enjoyed a good singer's voice more than any other instrument.

Bill Monroe's singing left Sally feeling mildly aroused, and his speaking voice made her feel happy. Jimmy Martin and Del McCoury affected her in much the same way but slightly less; Red Allen, too, but with a little more arousal. The Osborne Brothers sometimes moved her to tears with the beauty of their harmonies, but Bobby’s voice made Sally feel businesslike, clinically detached.

Tommy Duncan's voice never moved Sally, but it left her feeling a longing for…she could never quite identify what. Tommy's voice always produced a vague feeling that something—something not at all sexual or romantic, something unspecified—was missing from her day or from her life. Bob Wills's voice always made her happy. Ray Benson's speaking voice made her drowsy in a pleasant, peaceful way, but his singing voice made her wish he employed a singer.

23

Leonard Cohen's voice evoked mild nausea, while Jimmy Durante's quite similar—although more musical—voice made Sally feel like a child being tickled. Rod Stewart, with a number one hit at the moment, and Bob Dylan both made Sally laugh or at least giggle. Freddy Fender's style made her laugh but his voice made her sad. She never could find any pattern to which voices produced which effects.

Sally never regretted that she experienced voices the way she did. Indeed, she thought other people's lives must be poorer for not experiencing voices that way. She didn't even mind that hearing voices the way she did made her different from other people.

The only real downside was that the intensity of her responses to some voices sometimes affected her relationships.

She rejected fellows tall, dark, and handsome, fellows tall, fair, and athletic, fellows big, gorgeous, and rich, because she didn't enjoy their voices. She'd suffered five totally inappropriate boyfriends—no shared interests or no shared values or no shared either one— in four years, because she liked hearing their voices.

Fortunately, and with no little effort, she managed to develop the ability to make more rational choices and even to use her responses to gain some insights into both herself and people she heard.

One of her new skill sets involved making herself get to know people, get to know a little about them, before letting a voice impel her behavior. Less useful, and less important, with negative responses— because she usually ended up not wanting to spend time around those people anyway—the skill may have saved her some heartache and maybe some bruises, in instances of strong positive responses.

The summer after Sally's graduation from high school, she worked part-time in her father's music store, more or less by default. Sally thought maybe she'd enrol at the local community college in the Fall; Sally's mother thought Sally should get a job; and Sally's dad thought maybe she should enrol at the local state college. Absent any other responsibilities, she accepted with gratitude her dad's offer of part-time work in his shop filing, cleaning up, and generally helping out. Her father generously allowed her time off pretty much whenever she asked, so she spent most of that summer going to as many festivals, jam sessions, and fiddle contests as she could reach without her own car.

Sometimes, Sally's dad could persuade her mom to watch the store, and he'd go with Sally to a festival. Since he usually sold at least one or two instruments and a lot of accessories, those trips rarely failed to return a decent profit. Sometimes, when

the filing and cleaning were all caught up and there were no customers in the shop, Sally might pick up a guitar or, less often, a mandolin, and she and her father would play and sing together.

Only three voices Sally had encountered evoked no exceptional responses—those of her older brother, her younger brother, and her sister. She loved her siblings, but their voices were nothing but their voices. Uniquely, Sally heard her father's singing voice and speaking voice exactly the same: they made her feel safe. Her mother's speaking voice made Sally feel safe, too, but also frustrated. Sally rarely heard her mother sing, but that voice made Sally feel anxious.

One hot but not oppressive Wednesday in the latter part of August, Sally heard someone enter her father's store.

Sally continued filing the paid bills and invoices, while she listened to the man introduce himself to her father. She guessed the speaker's age at mid- to late forties. His voice made her feel not exactly aroused but all warm and cuddly. Finished with her filing, she walked out to verify her guess and found she'd missed by a decade. The man couldn't be older than his mid-thirties, and his friendly smile made him look even younger.

When Sally's dad introduced them, she missed everything the man said because she concentrated entirely on enjoying the warm cuddly feeling of his voice. The sparkle in his eyes made her wonder if maybe he hadn't even turned thirty yet. She pulled herself together and told the man she was pleased to meet him—and meant it.

Sally's dad asked the man if he'd like to jam, and the visitor said, “That'd be great, but do you have any left-handed instruments?”

“Whaddayou play?” her dad asked.

“Whaddayou have?” the man replied.

“I always keep one left-handed guitar in the store,” Sally's dad said, looking around.

“You sold it last Thursday, Dad,” Sally said, “and ordered a left-handed Takamine dreadnought Friday.”

“Has it come in?”

“No.”

The man with the cuddly voice listened to this exchange, then said, “I'm staying at my friend Albie's place, right around the corner. I'll just run over and get my instruments.”

With that, he hurried out the door, returning a few minutes later with a guitar case and a mysterious rectangular case. When Sally's dad took a Martin D-28 guitar down from the wall, the man opened the rectangular case to reveal an F-5 mandolin and a fiddle. He removed the mandolin and slung the strap over his shoulder, then removed a pick from under the strings.

“That looks like a Loar,” Sally's dad said.

“It's a copy. Bob Givens made it for me six years

24

ago.”

“That's the guy up in Idaho.”

“Yeah, he was in Southern California then, but he's in Sandpoint now, I think.”

They talked about what songs to do, and Sally's dad said, “You said you been workin' with Monroe, so we oughta do some of his songs.”

“Sounds good. How 'bout 'Sweetheart of Mine'?”

“One of my favorites,” Sally's dad said with a big smile, and she knew that was true—it was one of her favorites, too.

Their visitor asked if he might set his instrument case on the workbench, and both Sally and her dad hastened to assure him that was OK. He took the F-5 off his shoulder and stood it upright in the case, after he removed the fiddle.

The man then tightened his fiddle bow and rosined it and played an acceptable replica of a Chubby Wise kickoff. As he sang the first verse Sally thought, If heaven really existed, that's what angels would sound like. While he sang, he set his fiddle upright in the case and put the mandolin's strap over his shoulder again. After the two men sang the chorus, the visitor played an authoritative break on his F-5, then swapped instruments again as he sang the second verse.

Sally's dad and the man played and sang several songs together, and her panties were wetter than damp before the end of the second song. By the time the man put his mandolin away and her dad hung up the D-28, she could feel moisture on her legs.

About those legs. Sally's mother said they were skinny, too skinny. Sally's most recent ex-boyfriend said they were skinny. Her father disagreed—he said they were “just fine”—but, then, he always defended Sally and took her side against her mother. Many of Sally's girlfriends said her legs were beautiful, and several said they envied them. Sally thought her legs were skinny but didn't much care. They were her legs, and she felt OK about them.

She did not feel OK about this amazing man walking out the door and out of her life. Usually demure, Sally surprised her father by saying, “Will you be around for a few days? We could probably round up some other pickers for a jam tomorrow.”

The man's blue eyes looked directly into her green ones, looked straight into her heart, she thought, almost shivering. “Ummmm...y-yes,” he began. He hesitated, and Sally's heart seemed to stop. He continued, “Yes, I'd really like that,” his eyes never leaving hers. Her heart resumed beating, so loud she was afraid he and her dad might hear it.

She tore her eyes away and turned to her dad, who said, “Good idea.”

The man and her dad chatted for a few minutes, while Sally enjoyed the residual arousal and the warm, cuddly feeling of the man's speaking voice. The man said he was free pretty much the whole day and could drop by about two to Corey Cassey || Mass

find out the plans.

After the man left, Sally said, “Gee, he's good.”

“You're not wrong, girl,” was all her dad said.

“He's better than Del McCoury.”

“Might be.”

“Where's he from?”

“Up north somewhere,” her dad replied.

“Chico? Redding?”

“Oregon, he said.”

“I wish he lived here,” Sally said.

“Me, too. It'd be nice to have somebody around here who can pick'n'sing like that.”

While Sally served a woman who came in and bought a set of guitar strings and a capo, Sally's dad began 'phoning musicians in the area. He began by ringing Vern Williams and saying, “Vern, we just had a red-hot picker and singer in here. He's left Monroe and come back out here from Nashville.”

Sally couldn't hear Vern's reply, but her dad said, “Yeah, that's right. How did you know?”

Vern apparently agreed to come down for a jam session, and Sally's dad asked, “You want to ring Keith, or shall I?”

Half a dozen 'phone calls later, they had a solid bluegrass band for a jam the next afternoon—and maybe evening, too.

Both the cuddly feeling and the arousal lingered, as one guitar sale and a couple of low-spending customers completed the shop's afternoon. Sally's dad locked up, and father and daughter joined the rest of the family for dinner. After the meal and after Sally washed and her brother dried, she retired to her room. She continued to feel a residual arousal and toyed with the idea of finding out where this Albie lived, so she could sneak in and crawl into the man's bed. Her learned restraint persuaded her to pick up Slaughterhouse-Five, which she was half-way through, and read in her own bedroom. Later, Sally lay awake and restless until she substituted a finger for what she really wanted and gave herself the release that allowed her to relax into sleep.

The visitor, whose name turned out to be Brett Jakes, arrived the next afternoon a little before two and chatted with Sally and her dad for most of an hour. They told him they expected the other musicians to begin arriving about half past four, so he said he'd run a couple of errands and grab a bite to eat. Sally fought down the urge to follow him out the door.

Settle down, girl, she told herself, He'll be back in an hour—and he was. In the forty-five minutes before the first of the other musicians arrived, Sally quizzed Brett Jakes about his background. She did want to learn more

25

about him, but she also wanted to keep him talking to enjoy the warm cuddly feeling his voice engendered in her. She felt suprised, and pleased, to find he held a degree in physics and mildly disappointed to discover he made most of his living playing commercial country music.

“Like, the stuff that’s popular now?” Sally asked.

“A few. “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”, “Good Hearted Woman”, “Remember Me”, “Don’t The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time”—that sort of thing, y’know?”

“Not the country-pop stuff,” she asked, with the question mark in her eyes rather than her voice.

“Nahh! I’ll do an Eagles song occasionally, ‘cause I like their harmonies, but I don’t like the so-called Nashville Sound. Mostly, I do older country, ’cause that’s the stuff I like.”

That made Sally feel better. “But you’re so good at bluegrass. Why don’t you do bluegrass all the time?”

“The only gigs I can get that don't require half a day's drive in each direction are country gigs. Of course I'd rather play bluegrass or Western Swing, but—”

“You play Western Swing, too?”

“When I get the chance, which isn't all that often.”

“Which is your favorite?” Sally asked.

“Some days I like playing Western Swing as much as bluegrass.”

“Fiddle?” Sally asked.

“Yeah, but not hot like Johnny Gimble or Joe Holley or even Jesse Ashlock or Frankie McWhorter. I just kind of play the melodies.”

I'll bet, Sally thought but said, “Could we get a Western Swing jam together? Could you stick around for that?”

Brett Jakes’s disconcerting practice of looking steadily into her eyes whenever he spoke to her or she spoke to him coupled with the warm, cuddly feeling emanating from his voice, almost made her miss his reply.

“I could do that. I don't have any gigs for a couple of weeks.”

“No family to get home to?”

“Nahh. I don’t have much of a family—I’m not close to my parents or my siblings. I mean, I'd like to get home, but only ’cause I like to be home.” His smile broadened as he added, “I like to jam, too.”

Sally hoped Brett wasn't staying around only because he liked to jam, but she'd settle for that. As she pondered whom to call to arrange a Western Swing jam, Vern Williams walked in and greeted Brett Jakes like an old friend.

The two men chatted, and Sally seized the opportunity to ’phone Rags Ragsdale, who seemed to know every Western Swing musician in the Central Valley. He gave her a couple of ’phone numbers, and said he’d ring a few people and get

back to her. By then, Keith Little had arrived with his banjo, and everyone looked ready to begin making music.

Once started, nobody wanted to quit. Sally and her dad expected the jam to run from half past four until eight or nine, but Brett and Vern finished up with “Sitting Alone in the Moonlight” long after eleven. By then, Sally felt happier and more excited than at any other time in her whole life. She went to bed aroused, dealt with her arousal the best she could, and fell asleep smiling.

The next morning, the UPS man and another courier arrived simultaneously. Sally received the goods, signed the necessary documents, and logged in the items received—a new protocol she had instituted at the beginning of the summer, because her dad never seemed to know what he had in stock and what he didn’t. He was on the ’phone the whole time, straightening out an order that was supposed to have arrived two days earlier. As soon as he hung up the ’phone, he went to deal with an early customer. Once he'd sold a large order of violin accessories to that customer—head music teacher at the local high school—he leaned around the corner and put his head into the office.

“You like our Mr. Jakes, do you?” he asked in a casual tone.

“What do you mean, Daddy?” Sally replied with wide-eyed innocence.

“You never took your eyes off him all night.”

I wish I could’ve kept my eyes on him all night, Sally thought. What she said was, “He is awfully good.”

“You ain’t wrong there,” her father allowed, then added, “He did a little better job of movin’ his eyes around than you did, but I think he likes you, too.”

Sally’s heart lurched. “Naww,” she started to say, “he’s just frien—”

“Don’t get silly with me, girl. I saw how he looked at you—and how you looked at him.”

Sally blushed and sat, silent for a moment, then asked, “Are you mad at me?”

“Mad at you!? Why should I be mad at you?”

“Are you mad at him?”

“Hell, no. He’s a damn sight better’n most of the boys you’ve gone out with this year.”

“You got that right.”

“I think he’s a pretty decent guy. We don’t know ’im all that well, though, so you be careful.”

“Oh, I will, Daddy.”

“You aren’t known for that,” her father replied.

“I’m getting better,” Sally responded with a little petulance.

Her father chuckled and said, “Yes, you are. J—”

“Do you really think he’s interested?”

“Honey, you’re so beautiful—how could he not be?”

“Oh, Daddy. That’s sweet of you, bu—”

“He said he’d drop in about noon. Let’s see if he asks you ++out.”

They both got back to work and enjoyed a productive and fairly lucrative morning, interrupted only by irregular ’phone calls from Rags Ragsdale and a varied cast of Western Swing musicians. Ten minutes before noon and twenty minutes after the last ’phone call, Brett Jakes entered the shop and greeted Sally’s dad. They chatted for five minutes before Sally left the office and joined them. She and her father gently probed for a biography of Mr. Jakes. Although he married at twenty-two, he’d been single for six years. No, he didn’t have any children. This time it was her dad’s turn to be surprised at Brett’s physics degree.

“Sally was the top student in physics both years,” he told their new friend.

Brett smiled at Sally, and she said, “I’ve always liked science—all the way through school. I’ve actually thought of maybe becoming a science teacher.”

“Cool!” Brett said. “A difficult and frustrating job, I expect, but admirable and rewarding. I’ve thought about becoming a teacher myself.”

“You!” Sally’s dad said in wonderment.

At the same time, Sally thought, I bet you’d be a damn good one, but said nothing.

Turning toward Sally’s dad, Brett Jakes said, “Yeah, because I’m well and truly tired of being on the road. I want to stay home. I’ve tried a couple of times to get out of the music biz, but the money has lured me back.”

Sally’s dad shook his head and said, “You ought to live in Nashville then.”

“I did, Buck, remember? I just came back from there. It’s a terrible place.”

“But you’d have a lot of work without travellin’ far.”

“Yeah, more than out here. But let me ask you this: would you rather be in Tennessee or here?”

They quickly reached an accord on that topic, and Sally told the two men about the Western Swing jam session arranged for the next evening. Buck then said, “You can take your lunch break whenever you want, Sal.”

Brett turned to Buck, Sally’s dad, and asked, “Do you close up shop, or do you take turns watching it?”

“Both,” the other two said in unison, then laughed.

“Good!” said Brett. “Then close it up and let me take you both to lunch.” They did and he did, and all three enjoyed both the meal and the conversation. Sally and her dad quizzed Brett about his life in Nashville and on the road.

He asked about their background and about Sally’s interest in science. They talked at length about musicians they all knew—or knew of and listened to—and liked, and father and daughter interrogated their new friend about some of

26

their favorites. On their way back to the little music store, Brett said, “Whew! That was a big lunch. I think I need to walk some of it off.”

Seeing an opportunity, Sally said, “Me, too!”

Ever the indulgent dad, Buck said, “I’ll go ahead and open up, and you two go get your exercise.”

The other two continued to the corner, crossed McHenry, and walked along Morris toward Enslen Park. From the tumult in Sally's mind came the thought, It isn't just his voice and his talent. It isn't just physical desire. There's something very special about Brett Jakes. As they strolled through the park, she made a risqué suggestion.

“Not sure your dad'd like that,” Brett said.

“Besides, you couldn't be more than sixteen.”

“I'm seventeen, and I'll be eighteen in two months.”

They argued good-naturedly about propriety and legality for twenty minutes, as they walked about the park, then headed back to McHenry via Stoddard.

On the way, Sally renewed her earlier suggestion.

“I don't want your dad to kill me for fooling around with his little girl,” Brett said. “Hell, I don't even want him to dislike me—he's a nice guy.”

“He isn't going to mind us getting together.

He knows I'm going to do what I want anyway, and he trusts me to make good choices. Besides, he likes you.”

Brett chuckled. “He just wants another musician in the family.”

“That, too. But I think he really does like you.”

“Good! I’m glad of that. But d’you think he'd want me for a son-in-law?”

Sally’s heart leapt. She smiled at her companion and hesitated a moment before asking, “Shall I take that as a proposal?”

Brett laughed and said, “Does kinda sound like one, doesn’t it. Take it as what business people and bureaucrats call an expression of interest.”

Only slightly disappointed, Sally smiled at Brett again and said, “OK, I will.” After a short pause, she continued, “I guess my task is to increase the level of interest.”

“Not sure that’s necessary. But don’t ya think we need to get to know each other better? And we’ll have to wait until you turn eighteen.”

“Not my first choice—the waiting part—but I can live with that,” Sally replied. “I like the part about getting to know each other better.”

They continued back to the store with a mix

27

of good-natured banter and serious sharing about a range of personal and other topics. Sally’s dad looked up with a questioning glance, when they walked through the doorway.

In response, Sally just beamed.

The three of them jammed and chatted between customers, until the hour compelled Brett to leave for a dinner date with Albie and Albie’s wife—after promising to return late the next morning. The next day brought Brett Jakes back to the store for more visiting, before Brett surprised his hosts by greeting Rags and several of the local musicians by name. Everyone in attendance thoroughly enjoyed the Western Swing session that followed. As Brett put his instruments back in their case, he said, “I’ll come by to say ‘Good-bye’ and have a visit before I head north.”

Sally followed him out the door and threw her arms around his neck.

“Wait!” Brett said, “Turn me loose."

Stung, Sally unwound her arms from around his neck and backed away. With a catch in her voice, she asked, “Don’t you want me to hug you?”

As soon as Sally released Brett’s neck, he bent and set his instrument cases on the sidewalk. As he straightened up, he smiled at Sally and said, “Of course I do, but I want to be able to hug you back.”

Sally fell into his arms, and they embraced for several minutes. As they relaxed their arms, Brett placed a remarkably chaste but affectionate kiss on Sally’s lips.

After he departed, followed to the corner by Sally’s gaze, she walked back into the shop feeling at once aroused and dejected. Her father watched her walk in but said nothing at first. As she began tidying up and putting things away, he said, “You’re not thinking about climbing in Albie’s window, are you?”

“Daddy!” Sally said but didn’t look at him.

He said nothing, but, when she finally dared peek at him, he was watching her with raised eyebrows.

“That isn’t fair. You know me too well,” she said.

Buck nodded without saying anything, and Sally said, “Thinking about it, yes. But he told me not to.”

“He what!?”

“He said not to do that, if I was thinking about it.”

“Good for him, but why'd he do that?”

“He said he didn’t want to begin a relationship by breaking the law—and he said he didn’t want to get you mad at him.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah, and a lot more.”

"Like what?"

He said, if we were going to get together, he didn’t just want some fun in bed. He wanted something that would last.”

“What is he, a saint?”

Cameron McPhail

“Probably not, but he’s a good man, an exceptional man.”

“I think you might be right, Sal.”

Her eyes downcast but shining, Sally nodded but said nothing.

“So what’re you gonna do?” her father asked.

“Wait.”

“Until?”

“Until I’m eighteen.”

“That isn’t long.”

“Thank goodness for that.”

Buck laughed. Sally chuckled a little and shook her head. They locked up the shop and went upstairs to their beds as quietly as they could.

The next morning, Brett Jakes entered the shop about half past ten carrying both instrument cases. He chatted with Sally and her dad for half an hour then jammed with them between customers for another two hours. After replacing his instruments in their cases, Brett turned to Buck and said, “Buck, I’ve become very fond of your daughter. Is it OK if I take her to lunch and then maybe for a walk before I leave?”

Buck smiled and said, “Brett, I reckon you’re a good man. You’d better take her for a walk and a talk, ’cause she’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Sally, still aroused from Brett’s singing, felt

herself blushing and said, “Daddy!”

Her dad replied, “Am I talkin’ the truth?”

Sally, still blushing, nodded, then turned and smiled at Brett. He took her hand, and they walked out of the store, with her father smiling and waving behind them.

Over lunch and again as they walked to Kewin Park and along the inappropriately-named Dry Creek to Creekside Golf Course and then back all the way down the creek to its confluence with the Tuolumne River, they talked about everything under the sun, about music, about themselves, about each other, about their burgeoning relationship, about what each and both of them wanted in their lives, about politics, about their feelings, and dozens of other topics. They continued in the same vein as they walked back up Burney and 17th to McHenry. As they walked back up McHenry, Sally told her companion, “If you aren’t here on my birthday, I’m catching a bus to Medford the next day.”

“Grants Pass,” Brett said. “I can’t be here for your birthday, much though I would like to. I have a commitment in Eugene that night and the night before.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Hell, no! A gig, for goodness’ sake, with a contract signed almost a year ago. I could drive down that next day though.”

“You could meet the bus in Grants Pass.”

“Yeah, I could do that. I could drive down after

28

the gig and be there waiting, when the bus comes in.”

As they walked the last few blocks to the music store, they talked about seeing each other in two months and Brett told Sally he would ’phone her whenever he could until they could be together again. He said he’d spend that night in Chico at the home of an old friend.

When Sally tensed, he put his arm around her shoulder and said, “Male!” then added, “Musician—not bluegrass though.”

“Country?”

“No, Irish.”

“Like jigs and reels and that sort of stuff?”

“Yes, exactly. He's really good.”

“Do you play that stuff, too?”

“A little. I know a few tunes, not many.”

Yeah, probably only fifty or a hundred, Sally thought, as she said, “I've never tried any of those. I s'pose they're just like regular fiddle tunes—I mean, old-time tunes.”

“Some of the same tunes even. Your dad mentioned you play mandolin—you ever play 'Old Molly Hare'?”

“I fool around on the mandolin. I can't play it like you do, b—”

“You could, though. It's just practice.”

“Mmm… But, yeah, I c'n play 'Old Molly Hare'.”

“The Irish fiddlers call it the “Fairy Dance”, but it's the same tune exactly.”

“Cool! I know an Irish tune.”

Back in the store, Brett said good-bye to Sally’s father, who discreetly retired to the office while Brett and Sally shared a lingering embrace and several kisses. With one last affectionate kiss, Brett picked up his instrument cases and walked out the door and around the corner to his pickup at Albie's place.

As good as his as his word, Brett ’phoned Sally the next evening, and they talked for almost three hours. He and they repeated that pattern for three days, then missed three, while Brett was away at gigs. He ’phoned her again the next Sunday and through the week until gigs again took him away.

He and they did much the same for the next eight weeks. In the course of that time, they discovered that Sally would have to change buses in Medford, so Brett said he would meet her there instead.

As she said she would, Sally caught a bus to Medford the day after her birthday. As Brett said he would, he sat waiting at the bus depot when her bus arrived at five minutes to three that afternoon.

Cora Tate

29

Liberty Atoms 1 Sun defaults at climb.

Winged viper hulks In nipping twitchgrass To Maisie’s prompt.

Her teardrops firm up no lifeline.

Stencilled on boiled egg: “One night – this time – You do understand”.

Christopher Barnes

Scorpions Scurrying Scorpions scurrying across the copper hallway tails lifted up bent backwards like a group of drunk debutantes pulling up their gowns revealing lace bloomers an angry chef grabs a handful of scorpions drops them into an emerald blender the copper like the surface of a latte bubbles a bit with a sprinkle of cinnamon the chef slips on the fine brown powder his fall startles the debutantes into propriety as they take out their ebony etiquette manuals.

Peter Dellolio

Now Breathe in lavender soap scents as you shower.

Wallow in warmth raining clean upon you, the benevolence of dry towel, pajama softness. Breathe in today’s tiny blessings.

Wrap your life’s loves in comforting arms.

Feel the swaddle of blanket, bed cradling you in rest. Breathe in now, before moment becomes memory, before memory is lost forever.

Leslie Parker

Last Prayer Jesus my dear Lord!

Were I Really to have an afterlife I hope to become a wolf, or A fir, for instance Just to be a bit more, or

human

Sameer Punjani

even less Than a

Yuan Changming

30

31

Brett Stout “DefileMe.BreakMe.DestroyMe”

On Oxygen Sometimes oxygen refuses to enter my lungs. I blink and my mouth fills with saliva. I shrink, and desperately attempt to expand my lungs. Still, I get nothing.

Nothing makes sense; nothing stops the hyper-speed of my incoherent thoughts; nothing feels quite as solid as it should. People have described their depression and anxiety with metaphors of shadows or the feeling of drowning. It’s something like that, but much less romantic. I can’t always paint with my anxiety. Usually, it just is, and I am with it.

One of the symptoms of an anxiety disorder is “excessive worry”, which often comes in the form of racing thoughts. With anxiety, everything is connected. A small fight with a friend means that I will lose that friend and I will always make everyone mad and I will lose all my friends. Another symptom of anxiety is sleep disturbance, which is why I wake up feeling unrested, why I grit my teeth together throughout the night, and why I often feel too exhausted to move or think. Sometimes anxiety is triggered by something and I will have a “panic attack”, which ranges anywhere from collapsing in tears and hyperventilating to an absolute shut down, during which I cannot think, say, or do anything. Sometimes my anxiety manifests itself in forms of stomach pains, or indigestion.

Growing up, I felt that my excessive emotions and my stress were caused by trivial things like PMS, school pressure, or relationship struggles. In high school, I assumed all my problems were situational and that, if I just exercised more or journaled more, they would all work out. I broke up with an emotionally abusive, pushy boyfriend and expected life to suddenly fill with rainbows. Instead of rainbows, I began to struggle with panic attacks and self-harm. I went to see a therapist at my mother’s old church, and we figured I could manage my stress levels with more yoga and prayer. Amen.

I went to college and prayer turned into a bottle of Bacardi mixed with sweet tea. I struggled to keep up with course work, cried a lot, and gained weight rapidly. I knew I was falling apart and was unconsciously punishing myself by dating people who were unhealthy for me and never sleeping. I looked fine on the outside, though. I was managing to stay above water, until it came time for finals week, and I was once again collapsed on the ground, my half-finished essays creating a cage around me. Once again, I was walking into my professor’s office a day after my essay was due, pleading for an extension, wishing people

understood, while wishing people would not treat me any differently because I had a “mental disorder.”

Before the fall semester of my senior year of college, I finally submitted the paperwork to bring my fluffy terrier mix to school with me. To do this, I had to accept the label of “Generalized Anxiety Disorder”. Recognizing I had an anxiety disorder significantly improved my health. At first it was just a label, but eventually I became more proactive about my mental health. I now see a (more helpful) therapist regularly, take medication, walk my dog, actively work to manage my schedule and sleep habits, and now there are more green foods in my refrigerator than ever. I realize now that for about five years I was cutting myself off from resources, because I was afraid of how much it would cost or how it would appear socially if I sought professional help.

It really bothers me now that it took five years of knowing I had anxiety before I felt desperate enough to seek help, especially once I was in college. We allow our college years to be “the time we can make mistakes”, which turns into “the time we can feel wretched every single day for four years and pretend it is okay.” I have watched many students drop out, because their mental health became so poor, they could not function anymore. We have normalized this suffering and turned it into a communal activity.

When I reminisce about college, I usually think of the times between classes when I would return home. I remember the summers and Christmas vacations, when I would curl up on my parents’ couch with my best friends and watch one of our favorite movies. When it came time to leave, none of us wanted to. We knew we were going back to the months between the smiles, where the stress of school and the stress of waking up in the grown-up world was nearly too much for us. I always thought it was cheesy when I was pulling out of the driveway to return to school, and my parents yelled out the door loudly, “We love you!” I think they knew how quickly I would forget that. Living with an anxiety disorder or living without one, life is hard. It’s scary, messy, and mean. Yet, as humans, we will always find a way to survive, a way to get oxygen. I take a deep breath. I just am, and my anxiety is with me.

Ashley Tippit

32

“A Tribute to the Color Yellow” Yellow is my favorite color, but I don’t know if you’re supposed to play favorites. I like it though because it’s the brightest but most grotesque hue.

Yellow is one of the first colors that the eyes can recognize.

It’s a primary color, and its complementary color is a deep purple. It’s third in the rainbow.

Yellow is the oversized knit sweater I bought from Old Navy that I love to wear. It's a little itchy, and I was told that it washes my face out.

Yellow is Sunshine, the nickname that my parents gave me decades ago. And sunshine is the tattoo that I got with a questionable sewing needle and noir ink from a glass jar.

Yellow is fuzzy goslings, marigolds, and the pollen in charge of announcing Spring. And it’s the crunchy golden leaves beneath your feet in the dead of Fall, or the patch of grass in the lawn that can’t be revived.

Interior The noise of poker and debris louder than the traffic going past the median ditch, the convict's day begins.

A flat styrofoam cup whispers hoarsely along the nail.

The nail scrapes a v-notch cut in the rim a five gallon bucket.

The cup falls. Ball bearings slide home with dry clicks from tip to the handle and back.

An aluminum can pierced sounds like a woman's been pierced, depends on how much both can and woman retain their original shape.

The martial strains of withdrawal likewise correspond.

Mark Parsons

Yellow is the sweet, minuscule drop of nectar from a single honeysuckle. It’s the endless vine of honeysuckles woven into the fence that surrounds the house that my mom died in.

Yellow is the bile that projects from the shallows of your belly, especially when you’ve been too sad to eat in the last couple of days.

Yellow is the middle of the traffic light when you contemplate darting through or coming to a screeching stop.

Yellow is the wallpaper that consumes the mind of Gilman’s heroine.

Yellow is the submarine that Paul, George, John, and Ringo sing about. It’s catchy, and I’m sorry that I didn’t get to see it performed live.

Yellow is the soulful eyes from a stray black cat that has single handedly given me purpose.

Bailey McKay 33

Katie Justice “Madonna”

Yellow is my hair after I put lemon juice in it during the summer, because pretty girls have yellow hair.

Peter Dellolio “Amy Sings” 34

Black Reality

Liberty Atoms 5

Black reality, One suffers as the rest carry on casually, Guilt unclear in his eyes, As the “victim” speaks lies, False claims surround the boy, More so like children with a toy, The snarls, hisses, and roars break down his confidence, Fear and pain subjected in his countenance,

Boulder-snaplink choker Would not be donned.

Gala day scrapped.

Amelia whomped Maisie, Floundering oysters.

Cloud ruptured – In glazed shoreline: “Do you imagine that you can save the world Simply by proving that it is possible?”

A BANG! of the gavel silences the millions chattering, Freedom soon mocks the misunderstood and hated weakling,

Christopher Barnes

Though his innocence is clear, At the end of the day, his end will be near, He is just a casualty, Of his black reality.

— Innocence is within. It is harder to see it when one only pays attention to the skin.

Zeisha Bennett

Katie Justice “Cityscape” 35

Seven Trust those Intuitions, hailing from the void within, Lord Krishna travelled through red zones to reach them to you – Combating with all that’s lazy.

Glossary : Dhritarashtra – Name of a blind king in the Hindu epic called Mahabharat.

Narad Muni – Messenger of the Gods in Hindu Mythology.

Lord Shiva – God of Destruction.

Ganesha – Obstacle Remover God. Krishna – God of Maintenance.

Creativity daunts Emotions, to spurt out as a liquid, Held back only by guilt; Simply overcome, by keeping an orange coral.

Chant ‘Ram’ touching your naval region – Feel the determination within; Refueling yourself by fasting intermittently.

Smell the freshness in the green Jungle, like Lord Ganesha your heart lies therein Don’t let greed shut the doors to your breath: That keeps you alive and human.

Voice gratitude to the almighty, Like Narad Muni gain knowledge and thrive, Let water do the cleansing, of all deception and lies.

Meditate like Lord Shiva, anger drives one blind, See the depths of life within – Acquisition it through patience astride.

Snowflaking

Listen with an open mind, be the king you deserve to be, Remember, Dhritarashtra was engulfed in pride making unwise decisions; Addressed, wearing an Amethyst.

Akshay Sonthalia

In the wild open west, snow flakes keep falling Like myriad baby angels knocked down from Paradise Blurring the landscape behind the vision Hunting each consonant trying to rise above The ground. The day is brighter, lighter & Softer than the feel. Soon there will be Dirty prints leading to everywhere (or nowhere) & no one will care how the whole world will collapse In blasphemy. The missing cat won’t come to Trespass the lawn, nor will the daffodil bloom

To catch a flake drifting astray. Nobody bothers even to think About where the season is held up on its way back, how The fishes are agitating under the pressure of wintry Water, why people wish to see more and more snow

Yuan Changming 36

Inner Life Scroll 1.

Naked out of the ditch of tall, overgrown weeds, I feel the lawn soft as deep pile under my sooty feet, but my soles continue to pound with the memory of blacktop, and the building I couldn’t find then, in my dream, I can’t, following the same directions, find now, the well-watered lawn soft as deep pile, soft as the carpeting in the corridor his directions were to follow.

The corridor was lined with doors and made of breezeblocks painted white, just like the whitewashed building I was searching for in my dream when he gave me directions, his ruddy complexion bled ashen by deep forest green shirt.

3.

How cold I am inside her house at dusk, after the sun’s gone down but it’s yet light out on the lawn, how objects and colors withdraw outside floor-to-ceiling windows: red tile of patio and dirty stucco wall I can’t see over to see the lawn sloping down to the man I can’t see.

What would one of her guests say if they walked in and saw me standing naked in her kitchen?

Her kitchen broken into and entered?

4.

Not expected by the guests who have gathered to listen to her play her guitar, I find the quilt she’s left folded in half behind the planter filled with plastic bamboo and white rocks that sparkle in the little available light.

I find an opened pack of cigarettes missing only one cigarette.

2.

Still wearing the green shirt. Still standing at attention As the tempo picks up on the manicured, rolling lawn.

I know I can wait for her guests to leave.

He gives no sign of having seen me earlier, Hearing the tempo pick up, when I walked out the door will her girlfriend take the hint and leave? and dazzled by the pool’s expanse of choppy glare Take the hint and stay? looked over my shoulder at where he was standing on the terrace, laughing.

5.

His wet, curly red locks across white as alabaster brow, he leaned forward, over the banister... an expansive, sweeping gesture— Going back the way I came, the carpet in the corridor again... even though the doors aren’t numbered I know I’m not in the building I’m looking for.

37

In the morning I discover she’s made the quilt into a summer robe and sash.

During the pregame ceremony on tv, dutifully standing erect as he waits, one in a row at midfield: his white hair a stiff, spiky, moussed shock, his bright polished brown leather brogues dipped in sharp blades of high-contrast, smooth meadow lawn grass: the green shirt he wore bled his flushed features; he looks better in a navy blazer and khaki pants.

Mark Parsons

Clothes You’ve got a pile of clothes in your attic room.

I love seeing arms or waists sticking out like a glove from a closed glove compartment.

You have cut the necks wider in your children’s old shirts and one pair of pants has a row of green sequins.

It’s a small pile but a theatre troupe could put on a production with them, especially if they were from Dharamsala India.

Now that I have seen you wear all of them I can’t wait to see you wear them again like watching a great movie over and over, only this time I am sitting next to you and we have time to talk afterwards.

Peter Waldor

He Said Madness Lies There he said madness lies there

Jeremy Szuder “mod027”

like going into the wrong

room only the door shuts

behind you kind of like the

post office scene from 1408 and Cusack

thinks he’s out of the nightmare

what a shock when the

room emerges like screaming disfigurement after cosmetic

surgery gone terribly wrong

Peter Dellolio

38

Contributors Mark Parsons Mark Parsons’ poems have been published in Chariton Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Iodine Poetry Journal, subTerrain, Emerge, Mad Hat Lit, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere.

Journal, Veronica, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Green Hills Literary Lantern, and been accepted by three others. Also, one of my stories recently won the Fair Australia Prize.

Gale Ac.uff I have had poetry published in Ascent, Chiron Review, McNeese Review, Adirondack Review, Weber, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Poem, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. I have authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). I have taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.

Meira Bienstock Meira Bienstock previously worked for Time Inc. in NYC, and prior, interned at ELLE magazine. Her work has appeared in The Huff Post, The Jerusalem Post, 34th Parallel Magazine, Badlands Literary Journal (2020), New York Dreaming Literary Journal, The Herald Bulletin, and more.

She lives in NYC.

Sameer Punjani

Cameron McPhail

Marshall Farren Marshall Farren is a writer, poet, and photographer from Indianapolis, Indiana. His fiction has been featured in A Midwestern Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Albion Review, and Blue Route, and is forthcoming in the Sucarnochee Review. When he is not writing, he is usually agonizing over his beloved Indianapolis Colts.

Brett Stout Brett Stout is a 40-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates mostly controversial work usually while breathing toxic paint fumes from a small cramped apartment known as “The Nerd Lab” in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. His work has appeared in a vast range of diverse media, from international indie zines like Litro Magazine UK to Brown University.

He is tired of talking about himself at this point and prefers that his artwork speak for itself.

Peter Waldor Mikayla Hammock Vidit Jain Christopher Barnes

39

Cora Tate As you must know, most editors and literary agents in this second decade of the Twenty-first Century seem to look for “edgy” fiction, “magical realism”, and conventional story arcs requiring the main characters to suffer physical and/or emotional torment throughout most of a story.

These three stylistic modes dominate the literary market, as if they somehow made stories better. Such devices don’t improve stories, of course; they only make stories fit current fashion. I challenge and defy convention, not because I like to provoke but because I aim to broaden what is considered fashionable or at least acceptable for serious publication.

In the three years since I began writing short stories, my short fiction has appeared in more than two dozen literary journals, including the Galway Review, Indiana Voice

Peter Dellolio

Bailey McKay

Ashley Tippit Ash is a first-year master’s student studying English Literature with a Creative Writing concentration. She aspires to become a professor and a published author. Her interests include feminist literature, Harry Potter, sexuality and gender studies, chocolate, and her absolutely perfect dog, Oddball.

Jeremy Szuder Jeremy Szuder is a born and bred California native, raised with a tender and dedicated loyalty to the arts. His works have been published in Fine Print Literary and Visual Arts Publication, several issues of L.A. Record Magazine as well as the 15 years of art shows from galleries and organizations such as; Cannibal Flower, La Luz De Jesus, Copro Nason, CoLab Gallery, and many more. Szuder lives in Glendale California.

Yuan Changming Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.

Senior Staff Taylor Graves || Editor-in-Chief Hello, my name is Taylor Graves and I am a senior majoring in Psychology and English with a concentration in Linguistics and a minor in Philosophy. I have been apart of Aura since my freshman year and Editor-in-Chief for the past 3 semesters.

I have enjoyed putting this magazine together with the help of my amazing staff and advisors. Aura has always been an advocate for the arts not only at UAB and in the Birmingham community but also for our supports around the U.S. and internationally. I hope everyone who sees this issue loves it as much as I have enjoyed this amazing experience.

Alice Grissom ||

Copy Editor

Alice Grissom, a senior majoring in History and English (linguistics concentration), is thrilled to spend a fourth year on the board of Aura Literary Arts Review. In addition to Aura, Alice also serves on the editorial boards of the Vulcan Historical Review and Sanctuary Literary Journal, and has previously served on the editorial board of Inquiro Undergraduate Research Journal. Alice has a passion for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences, as evidenced by minors in Economics and Women’s and Gender Studies. Outside of academic interests, Alice works with the Desert Island Supply Co. to provide creative writing and poetry workshops to students in the Birmingham City Schools System, and tutors at the University Writing Center. “

Will Jetter|| Copy Editor Kafui Sakyi-Addo|| Contributing Editor Kafui Sakyi-Addo is a first year student at UAB. She is studying Psychology with a minor in film and creative writing, and finds that helping with Aura is a creative outlet for her. She enjoys writing in her free time, aswell as film photography and hopes to write and direct a film one day.

Katie Justice|| Contributing Editor Katie Justice is a graduate student studying Art Education. She enjoys working with mixed media, primarily creating portraits. After graduating, she plans to teach art at the high school level.

Special Thanks to Dr. John Jones Patricia A.R. Martinez Jackie Alexander Rhys Finch

is printed by Advance Local in the quantity of 250 copies per issue. This issue is 46 pages in length. The editorial process is performed with Adobe InDesign CC.

AURA LITERARY ARTS REVIEW

Cover || Mikayla Hammock “sunhatcolor�

Layout Design || Taylor Graves UAB Student Media Staff- Jackie Alexander, Director || Rhys Finch, Assistant Director of Student Media Copyright 1974-2020 Aura Literary Arts Review. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way, shape, or form without the express written consent of the artist. All rights to the work revert to the original creator after the publication in this magazine. To reach an artist regarding republication of material, contact the UAB Office of Student Media, HSC 130, 1400 University Blvd, Birmingham, AL 35294

Spring Vol. 46|| Issue 1