City Brink, Literary Magazine

City Brink

City Brink Harry S Truman College Literary Magazine

Fall 2019

Editors: Faramade Francesca Oladapo Ruby Tortuga

Faculty Advisors: Christine Aguila Carlo Matos, Ph.D.

City Brink is a student-run publication published annually by the Communications department at Harry S Truman College, City Colleges of Chicago, 1145 W. Wilson, Chicago, IL 60640. The publication date is early fall semester of each academic year. Unsolicited manuscripts of fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and drama are welcome. Art and photography are also welcome. City Brink is a non-profit magazine and distributed for free.

All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Permission must be obtained from both contributors and City Brink.

Contributors receive First North American Rights.

Views expressed in the individual works are solely those of the respective contributor and do not in any way represent the views of City Brink, the Communications Department, or Harry S Truman College.

Copyright © 2019, City Brink. All rights reserved.

Cover art: “Englightened Woman” by Jerry Kirk

Table of Contents Prose and Poetry Connie Bacchus: “Untitled” Drew Pisarra: three poems Laurinda Lind: three poems Niles Reddick: “Unraveler” Todd Mercer:

“The Slight Temptation of Benny” Alexandre Ferrere: two poems Jordan Potter: three poems Bruce McRae: three poems Noam Jacobs: “Untitled” John Baum: two stories linda m. crate: “a broken man” Adrian Slonaker: “Arizona Bound” Shawn Anto: two poems Bob McNeil: “En Route to Inhumanity” Christian Mietus:

“The Japanese Photography is Covered in Dust” Dimitri Reyes:

“A Feather on the Puerto Rican Obituary While

Watching a Charlie Brown Christmas” Faramade Francesca Oladapo: “The Student” Seth J. Berens: “I’ve Seen Few Darker Days” Katherine Karls: two poems Hsa Lar: three poems Jasper Morrow: “Mook Marriage” Ruby Tortuga: two poems Patricia Walsh: “Freak Show Saga” Glen Armstrong: two poems Aremu Adams Adebisi:

“We Forced Mother To Say The Name

Of God Before She Died”

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8 10, 11, 12 14, 15, 56 17 18 20, 32 38, 40, 44 46, 47, 48 49 50, 58 54 55 62, 63 64 65 66 67 68 70, 71 72, 73, 74 76 78, 79 81 82, 83 84

Prose and Poetry Lynn White: “Cover the Mirrors” Brooke Bergan: two poems Laura Lee Washburn: two poems Steve Bogdaniec: “Jim is a Good Guy” Steve Denehan: “Sarah Goodwelles”

85 86, 87 88, 89 90 92

Art and Photography Jerry Kirk: four pieces Faramade Francesca Oladapo: two pieces David Tortuga: two pieces Bill Foster: Erin Elizabeth Smith Portrait Claire Telomere:

“Melody Asleep in the Dark Night Clover Field” Peter McDaniel: “#5”

9, 37, 45, 61 13, 93 16, 80 24 57 75

Special Sections

Featured Poet: Erin Elizabeth Smith: six poems

Submission Guidelines Contributor Notes

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 93 94

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Untitled

by Connie Bacchus

the people could make you cry they could they could make you cry when you don’t expect it they could make your heart wonder where did they come from & they could make you cry when you go when you do & do what you do when you do & don’t cry but I wonder if they know when I cry & if it’s a happy cry or a sad song

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Jerry Kirk, Chaos Troubador (March of the Republicans)

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Beryllium

by Drew Pisarra

The one time I slept in a waterbed, I’d gone home with an eyebrowless drag queen who’d kept me awake by grinding her teeth.

Despite the shrill alarm clock, I stayed dead to the world, both hands gripping a lightweight steel frame as ballast, my tongue thick with paste.

At least, I hoped it was paste. I could taste the night’s toxic cocktails and an ashtray of pre-cancer. My breath fairly reeked of regret yet what had I done wrong? Before I could parse my myriad sins from dreams, my host returned all suited up in dove gray: gone the lollipop-red wig and four inch heels but bearing strong coffee. With cream.

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Helium

by Drew Pisarra

Sorry to say we maxed out at two dates ‘cause you made me laugh real hard with those “bad kiss” impersonations, three silly-sad sendups of men who weren’t that great with pucker-and-press: a stoner too high to retract his tongue then a CEO with cryogenic lips too stiff to show true passion. Last but not least: a drunk guy, so drunk he belched inside your mouth, my mouth in your copycat crime: That sudden burp had the taste of burnt balloon rubber and triggered a shriek in falsetto loud enough to shatter unbreakable glass.

That real gag gave me pause. And so I passed.

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Hydrogen

by Drew Pisarra

You had no scent or maybe I smoked way too many cigarettes at the time so everything tasted like street meat fried in cheap beer or rum-glazed pork. I don’t know how you were both my tall glass of water and a plate of thick chops but oh my dear you were. I slathered and slobbered over you in bed, my tongue all sloppy and slurred, exploring, whoring, roaring drunk into blackouts I couldn’t fathom or see outside memory’s anonymity and a recall that splinters into two on a single bed strictly made for one ‘cause you kicked me out after we were done.

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Faramade Francesca Oladapo, Untitled

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Earthwork

by Laurinda Lind

Air stolen from another mouth as if it were some secret but sad garage as if by a shovel as if it were gravel as if you get everything into your grabby hair even keep coals like they had been lit by your blood and later you sit furious in the cellar of the world with me while I fight for air and wait to see whether you have run out yet too.

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The Backdrop

by Laurinda Lind

So the children hide down in holes since they’re smart enough to stay there if what’s above doesn’t sit right. Afterward they’d be adults and mostly out there, where they’d have to grow into their automotive expectations, and they couldn’t be one-shot wonders.

They’d say breaking even is sexy, not scary. They’d say, what’s wrong with loving our close caves and the way light wants to break over them? And clothes are only objects, and for a while the air quality was improving. The word socialism is not quite as toxic as it used to be.

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Unraveler

by Niles Reddick

When Toni walked in to complain to me about the email she’d received from the home office’s administrative assistant, she pushed her eyebrows together, grimaced, and her cheeks bubbled out like a squirrel’s full of nuts.

I told her, “I don’t know what she meant in her email to you. It seems to go against policy and practice. Maybe she was expressing herself, letting you know how she feels about it. Yes, she could’ve softened the tone. Why don’t you email her and ask her nicely what the hell she meant?”

Toni stomped off like a child who didn’t get her way, and while I knew it wasn’t in character to get an email like that from Frances, I figured she might be hungover, having sinus issues, dealing with a sick cat, a misdirected teen, or an elderly parent. Maybe she’d had a seizure or was angry at God for her pathetic choice of men multiple times over. Maybe she was worried about her weight, watching carbs and protein intake to drop those ten pounds she found and can’t seem to lose. Maybe she was worried about monthly bill payments, how little she made, how that credit card bill seemed to get larger no matter what she sent, or maybe she was worried she can never make it a week without hating something about life, not being grateful for what she had, accepting she was a mortal, and won’t win the lottery this side of death.

I don’t know what the hell was behind the woman’s communication problem. I don’t have time to unravel bad communication for everyone in the company. If I did, I’d never get anything done.

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The Slight Temptation of Benny

by Todd Mercer

“When you’re young the world is alive with possibilities,” Johnny said, waving at the Loopscape view out the window of his twenty-second floor office. “Any reasonably together five year-old could grow up to be President. Am I right?”

“Check,” Benny said.

“But now, my rapidly-aging friend, your range of possibilities are down to only two.”

“Johnny, if you whack me, they’ll look at you first. Everyone knows how much we hate each other. We’re like Siskel & Ebert.”

“Duly noted. Regretfully, that’s so. Since I can’t erase you without drawing negative interest, I’m offering you a job instead.”

“The fuck?? You’re a confusing dude. I already have a job on the desk at the Palmer House. It’s a weekend fill-in sub temp gig.”

“Impressive. What’s that set them back?”

“Eight-seventy-five an hour. No benefits since I’m contingent.”

“It’s a hard city to come into cold. How much rent you paying on that new shoebox of yours in Chinatown?”

“Fourteen hundred. Because the landlord likes me.”

“Benny, I need a tow-truck driver to run a dedicated route between my ramps and the Impound.”

“Not doing it. That’s not ethical work. Bad mojo towing cars.”

“Hey, fella. The cars will be towed. We’re just deciding who should get paid for that, you or whoever I hate next most. You’re new here so you don’t understand how much revenue one wrecker can generate.”

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“Doesn’t matter to me.” Benny got up from his chair and aimed a shoulder at the office door, which Johnny then partly blocked. “Benny, I’ll pay you five hundred.”

“Kudos on your confusing jujitsu, but five hundred a week isn’t shit these days.”

“No, five hundred a day.”

Benny had his hand on the doorknob but when he heard that he sat back down. He was glad nobody saw him fail to leave.

Johnny’s grin was nauseating. “You’re a man of reason. There might be even better work around here that needs doing. For a reliable employee.”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty ugly. We’ve been bent on ruining each other all year. We both made good progress at it.”

Johnny picked a paperweight from his desk, a miniature scene of a much simpler town dominated by a church and a school. He turned the scene over to make a swirl drop snow. Benny wondered how the makers of paperweights get that stuff in there. Johnny flips it, rights it again. The man has the power to control the weather on a hyper-local basis.

“I’ll pay you eight hundred dollars a day, eight hundred, if—” “Here we go. The small print that invalidates the large print.”

“—if I can be assured of your personal loyalty.”

Benny laughed, because surprise is the catalyst of humor. He started for the hall before he transformed into a person who was not himself.

“Or,” Johnny held up a hand. Or Cook County officials who know about loyalty will put you on the South Shore train, and you’ll be done in Chicago.”

“You would run me out of town?”

“Damn right I would. It’s the job or the highway.”

Oh man, Benny didn’t want to go.

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An Isle as a Whole is a Lie

by Alexandre Ferrere

Unfathomable cradle of details, islets of concerns, of ideas.

Ideal of pageless books

soaked, wide forever

always open.

The Island, protected

by its blunt questions & onomatopoeias

of its puzzled aborigines

abhorring origins: prayers!

From the guts of their own dusty dry ground.

Here, is the absolute, the kernel, invisible: soleil still froid.

Under, blows a primitive wind, hooting the birth of flexibles reasons, crashing against rocks of illustrative visions, pure,

pure in the Oceanic lost stretch of pacifying faith. The whole Island, then, a grand hole.

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Roughness is washed away, thus the complicated structures after erosions, after frowns, after doubts.

Legitimately,

axis curve themselves under their own weight under their own traditions under their own desertions.

Here,

facing infinity at last,

teeth of the mind sharpened, (swell still strong and still),

arises evolution: a sense, the senses, sensibility,

here (at least).

Sensual seem the coarse lines,

soon skies of close dots to interpret.

Thin state of grace, razor reasons horizons.

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Then the long perfect hair,

scents of marine & algae, pressing their wet thickness

on well-built bodies’ backs, after having spent times

fishing for new geometrical starfish

in the ever-extending deep waters

of a calm, burgeoning Eridanus

(sun still striving

at the edge of Times); on its shore, exhausted, sputtering in his (and in her) brand new dreams, Apollo sure still sleeps.

Distorted streams of involuntary sounds from mechanical brains: soon words reproduced

reproduced their tongues’ moves,

giving them life anew,

in an ab ovo evolving,

ab ovo unfinished, circle.

Lost, in battering waves of gestures,

torrents of anarchist codes

drowning stunned spectators far from the fertile soil of basis, too far.

Now, the sun is white

(muffled in the coldness

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of frail seasons) but is inviting

for discoveries

and imaginative depths hidden

under the swollen observations.

Katabasis into the real, enlarging chorus, explorations: making each time weaker

the cynic pulses of Thanatos.

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Poet: Erin Elizabeth Smith Photographer: Bill Foster

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Featured Poet

City Brink is happy to present featured poet, Erin Elizabeth Smith!

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications and The Wardrobe. She is the author of two full-length collections, The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake, 2011) and The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles, 2007). Her third collection, Down: The Alice Poems, will be released by Agape Editions in 2019.

Smith is the editor of two anthologies, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity and Not Somewhere Else But Here: Contemporary Poems on Women and Place, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Ecotone, Guernica, Mid-American, Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and teaches in the English Department at the University of Tennessee. In 2017, Erin Elizabeth Smith was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame.

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Before Nora,

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

Before Nora, the nights were wet with boys, fratty ones in their violet button-ups, townies who smoked Parliaments and bought her popcorn in wood-paneled dives. Classmates Dot thought were almost friends, who didn’t understand her poems when they weren’t about them.

Before Nora, it was just Keystone and broken condoms. Wandering Main St. in the fishbowl dark dizzied with ginny stars.

Before Nora, there were nights when all Dot dreamed of was the sound of her father’s belt clasp slitting her back. The way cut irises die on their stems. How Pennsylvania seemed all she could be.

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Dear Nora,

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

At the bowling alley, I saw a woman who looked like you did five years ago.

She was smoking with three fingers, clutching a bottle neck in the dark bar.

I watched her stare past the filmy mirror as she lifted the bottle but did not drink.

I keep thinking about Allegheny—foggy mornings when the world was a chimney in snow. About you in your River Foxes jersey inhaling jalapeno poppers after a game. Or the night you caught the heel of your shoe in cobblestone, how we drank barefoot in every bar.

I look for you in everyone, Nora, but the Austin women won't dance at concerts, a sea nodding flannel and jean. I need you to wear sundresses with too-big belts, twirl in the indie twang, beat your fists on the man who tried to feel me up like you did once at a townie bar senior year, when the world, for that moment, made a certain kind of sense.

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Before Nora,

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

Sometimes this city is a cage drawn in Gauguin orange.

Sometimes it makes a sound across the shaggy night that is almost a gasp, almost a name. I think of the loneliness of Echo— turned to a voice that wants until it is gone. I think of how wisteria dressed that park we loved, how everything beautiful suffocates.

I am writing to tell you I'm leaving. My car is tight as new shoes. Going east.

Toward a place where things rise, where black crickets pop in the lawn.

I have sent you that dress you always loved—it's too small for who I need to be. *Previously published in Ovenbird Poetry

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Before Nora,

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

There is no autumn here.

I know it's October because everything is pumpkin.

But maybe that's August too.

I cannot ground myself outside semesters, what is fall but 14 weeks bookended with fear? I bought a coat that I will probably never wear but it made me think of yours, the green one that buttoned past your throat. Your little nose red with November.

I sometimes miss the cold hands kindling in the sharp morning or how warm bourbon felt. Here, every day is sushi weather, oysters on an icy tray.

When will I stew again?

Without winter, where will I hide?

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Before Nora,

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

There is something startling about the sun, the kicked light like the flare in a girl's skirt, a lucky cat in ceaseless wave.

The sky here is inkblot blue, a stain that bleeds to each tumbled horizon.

You would hate it.

The flatland strip malls, banana-colored beer.

How wind twists dresses like umbrellas. I think of you when I think of cold— your boxed sweaters sighing beneath a bed. The blue that was winter in you.

Here is only jalapeno green, life bright as a Cyndi Lauper song.

Enclosed, find a picture David took of me. I've tried to make my face as Pennsylvania as I can.

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Dot Crashes with Nora After the Party

by featured poet Erin Elizabeth Smith

While Nora is in class, Dot thumbs her magazines for perfume samples, clawing open their papery scent. She should go home, but there is so little space for her with the spiders, the walls smoky with their crawling.

She misses her pillow though, the one new thing she bought last year, and her own clothes, which did not grip so tight, whispering stories of other bodies.

But here at least she eats, orange cheese and pickle spears, and watches whole seasons of Buffy and shows with lady spies.

Here the spiders made dusty webs that catch nothing, and the house creaks its rental lullabies as if it knew the still she needed

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Yet, Yet

by Alexandre Ferrere

Like the tiny fish lost in a too encompassing sea, too wide to be aware of it all, yet too “here” to avoid its whole.

As the lonesome fish

is puzzled in a plain void,

mind is made of minds in the ocean of summertime blues. *** & yes, I,

I watched those boats

vanish

behind the line

the eye

leaves its anchor deep in. *** I saw them disappear but but then they would come back, yet never the same

in the middle of sun’s colorful whispers. ***

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The sound of waters, likewise,

is eternal, yet never the same.

O, I wish

O, I wish my eventide would stay still. *** Identity comes in

waves of anxious sweat

of being anxious the same, yet never the same. ***

It is still early in the summer, yet

yet it is already the end of it; the door has been left open by the wind. *** A boat fades away, devoured by the hands of a watch,

& seaweeds

grow thin, cold, sticky

on my mouth, on my eyes, on my (…)

Still

it is time to leave the docks; still it feels it is for real. ***

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Fish swim in schools;

I return to my own,

the smoky dreams of stillness

bowing my back, each time more; yet

yet I am the same. ***

But there’s kindness on bearded faces in starry eyes;

it’s not just mine:

it does not fit.

O, useless days, your pity falls at every corner.

Life is absent because unlived, made barren;

no one left; everyone uses the wrong net

thinking everybody uses it right.

(O, you:

unknown yet powerful over me

as I am over you;

networks of you in which

I am as confused as you, different, yet

yet the same,

waiting for the building

of a new fabric

unto unchanged Fates) *** I can feel the raging

vibrations born in eyes craving

for interactions; I can feel it.

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It’s time to leave.

Admit the sky chains

of mad hearts pierced by their own unwillingness from Paris to Santiago. *** The strange shimmer

of a convicted summer aborted, already,

by the negatives of landscapes decided, already,

to sink into tedium depths

while flowers still open (yet still a mystery). *** Flawless angst angst angst in ex instantaneous of present stretching into memories, soon distorted soon altered soon beyond

recognition.

Yet a future uncoils its images

on a retina screen.

A dream is even more active: in it, freewheels real free will

filled with feels—ill.

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The sameness of two pictures,

taken minutes apart, identical / identical,

is obvious; yet yet the change is the same as now and then, as then and now.

Now you read what I now write.

Then you’ll end the poem yet yet then

it was a summertime blues

crammed in an ending dot.

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Jerry Kirk, Enlightened Woman

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When the Warheads Launch

by Jordan Potter

someone will have just finished their coffee and will glance across the street at a blinking crosswalk sign, not knowing where else to look, perhaps, because they were avoiding a text, or because they needed to reevaluate what they really wanted, the flashing red hand a private omen, deserving attention.

Someone else has lost faith in another’s god for the wrong reasons, and a woman rises from that dream she had again, wondering, in that split-second chasm of our world and hers, whether or not what happened has happened.

There will be shoes, too, millions going millions of places, pressed shirts and Windsor-knotted ties thirty-thousand feet in the air, traveling faster than any textile ever hoped.

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Favorite and least favorite songs played and tolerated, a hundred thousand lovers meeting and two hundred thousand people saying goodbye.

Others are talking about the fires, others aren’t. A man reaches for his gun, but convinces himself, whatever it is, it isn’t worth it.

Nearby, anywhere, a child pretends not to hear what his parents are saying.

They are talking about someone who, right now, is looking for her keys, who can’t lose this job; they’re talking about how she needs that job.

About how everyone deserves a second chance. And there will be a few, too, impossible to find on a map, a fraction of a fraction who have made the decision, hunkered down in anticipation, avoiding the faces that wear each other’s private knowledge of what is to come.

It is imperative we not forget about them.

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Persona

by Jordan Potter

I’ve been seeing the same man everywhere. Digging, a lot of the time, when I pass him on my way to work.

He wears the same hard hat at the same construction site which moves every so often, like a tide, up and down the same street.

He takes his time driving in front of me.

He’s a busy man, after all, his attention skewered like

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a shish-kabob.

On tv, even.

On tv, he’s yelling at his wife, Or he’s firing or being fired or fired at.

Everyone laughs at him like he’s some kind of fucking idiot.

Scrolling the news, he stands behind the field reporter.

He will be there when pieces of the earth go missing, or when the hurricane has subsided— he’s the man to ask. Or he’s in parking lots, idling his car, not waiting

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for anything, meaning, what then, was the hurry?

At the grocery store, yesterday, he was examining a pear, massaging its bulb in such primitive ways that one could nearly see ligaments of our ontogeny pursuing their own evolution.

I hate to see him cry, and he does.

He waits for everyone to go to sleep before he can feel truly human.

Or he’s there when I’m dreaming, he’s the one fucking my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend,

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whoever; he’s the one I’ll never beat because I’ll never know his name.

I’ll not step five feet from my house before I encounter one of his many representatives. I know, even now, he is near.

What I hate most about him?

Above all, he is good.

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Quitting Poetry

by Jordan Potter

She asks me "Don't you know me by now?"

The affair having endured more than enough Relationships between the both of us, Though we could never be together.

I know your temperance, I say, Your inhibition, your doubt. I know The way you would hold a knife, yes, or yell At your mother when you've done nothing wrong.

Of your many flaws, I’m sure I could name A few, but would it mean a thing to you?

"Alright..." lopes out of her mouth, a muffled Obscurity. It's funny. All these years And I've only now just realized That poetry is only ever heard When it's expected.

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Jerry Kirk, This is Why the World Will End

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Love is a Simile for Metaphors

by Bruce McRae

My love is like an empty building.

But that’s not right.

My love is a kettle whistling.

A solitary footprint in the snow.

A machine not yet invented.

You see how difficult it is.

Love is a colour beyond description, emotion bounded by the infinite.

I’ll try again.

Love is a coin dropped in the dark.

It’s the plaintive cry of the manatee.

A bundle of kindling. The number seven.

My love is anything but the rose.

Although it has a thousand feet it does not wander.

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Rule of Thumb

by Bruce McRae

We don’t know what the thumb doesn’t know.

Brigand of the hand, the thumb goes its own way, relishing the difference between itself and others.

One knuckle shy of being considered a finger, the thumb acknowledges approval or disapproval, its reputation smeared in the courts of law.

“Opposable,” they slander, unable to fully grasp the uncompromising depths of its convictions.

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To Rest Softly

by Bruce McRae

Never wake a sleepwalker, my parents warned me, their eyes clenched like fists, like blackout drapes drawn in the Blitz.

Their eyes closed like mouths of condemned prisoners.

Their eyes shut like locked doors, doors into rooms you’ve never been, their unspeakable secrets guarded.

My poor parents, always tired.

Who claimed a dreamless sleep was all they ever imagined.

Who woke footsore and weary, the coming of night their flag and anthem.

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(Untitled)

by Noam Jacobs

A giant moth In the middle of the road You swerved to avoid it as I Coughed stage blood All over the mirrors Upholstery I’m sorry I’ve been feeling strange all day These shapes are not okay they’re Wrong But Oh my Oh Well I think I’ve lost my body Can’t Comfortable I’m sorry Upholstery I’ve been feeling In the middle of the Strange All day

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Marble Boy Catches a Break

by John Baum

The economy was in the dumper and buying a house worried Ashley, but soon after their wedding, a huge, late-summer affair, Mike and Ashley moved into a white cape cod with enough problems to make it affordable, at least on the front end.

Mike didn’t believe in signs like Ashley did—he was more of a curse and conspiracy kind of a guy.

While they unpacked, the widow who lived in the house behind theirs fell down her stairs to the basement and died. She was eighty-two.

They joined the group of neighbors on the sidewalk in front of the widow’s house, watching as the EMT workers took the body away. A cop asked them questions. Had she been out at all? Had anyone spoken to her? Her children?

Mike told the cop that their yard abutted the widow’s.

“Did you hear anything?” the cop asked. “See any lights on or off during the night?”

“Do you think someone might have pushed her?” Mike said to the cop. “Foul play?”

“Mike,” Ashley said.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” a youngish woman in an exercise outfit said.

Later, as she sliced through packing tape on a box marked Living Room, Ashley said, “Less than twenty-four hours and someone dies. Terrific.”

Mike said, “Not a big deal, cosmically speaking.”

On the back porch, they ate cold pizza from the night before, and while they ate, a photographer from the local community newspaper asked permission to take some pictures from their backyard, a mess of ivy and stunted trees, explosions of weeds and honeysuckle that threatened to choke the widow’s yard, a clean rectangle of des-

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iccated, straw-colored grass.

“I follow the police blotter,” he said when Ashley asked how he knew about it.

He walked to the fence and his feet disappeared in the carpet of dark green English ivy.

“Our first guest,” Ashley said. “Death photographer.”

“Just about twenty-four hours ago when this pizza was fresh,” he said, looking at the house. “She was still there.”

“Don’t be so morbid,” Ashley said. “This is awful.”

“Would we have seen some sign if we’d really been paying attention? Maybe a shift in the air, a momentary cooling? Something, I don’t know, otherworldly?”

“Momentary cooling would be nice,” Ashley said.

Their air conditioning, an ancient system, hardly emitted a breath from the vents while wallpaper the color of boiled cabbage seemed to radiate humidity.

“The House of Tragedy,” Mike said, looking at the widow’s house through the scrim of overgrown brush. He smiled at Ashley and with some hesitation, she smiled back.

“So wrong,” she said. The smile stayed put.

When Mike and Ashley were living in an apartment and shopping at Discount Grocery, they named people they saw routinely—joggers, the grocery checkout girl, dog-walkers— and discussed them as if they were acquaintances: “Intensity Joe was squat thrust lunging across his front yard today.”

“I saw Russian Big’uns at the store, organic food aisle.”

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“Vet Lady Di got a new bike.”

This playful tic in their relationship had been nudged from their conversations by the tension of planning a wedding, buying a house, teeing up a life.

Now they had a name for a house.

Later in the week, an ambulance wailed into the neighborhood just before sunrise and stopped at a ranch two doors down from The House of Tragedy. The delivery guy had found the old man who lived there, a lifelong bachelor, slumped over on the bench where, each morning, he waited for the paper.

Mike suggested they’d unpacked a curse from one of their boxes. “In the tranquil suburban world of casseroles and PTAs, lurks the curse of the new neighbors. No cul-desac is safe, no strip mall secure.”

Ashley said he was not funny, but there, again, was that smile.

That night, Ashley dreamt. She walked out the back door and beyond the reach of the outdoor light and its cloudy halo of moths. She walked through the English ivy to the widow’s house, up the steps to her back deck, where she looked in to a clean kitchen and saw the two people who had died that week, sitting at the table, a half-empty wine bottle on the table between them. They looked dusty. When she tapped on the glass, they didn’t turn her way. That was just fine. If they had looked her way, she may have screamed even if it was only a dream.

The next day, a neighbor who resembled Meryl Streep in a distant kind of way brought them the welcome gift of a peach pie, and told them about the baby down the street, barely a year old, who turned blue when a marble lodged in his throat.

“There was some confusion about administering the Heimlich,” she said. “He’s fine, it was over a week ago, but the mother hasn’t slept at all, checking in on him every five minutes. She’s practically delirious.”

After she’d gone, Mike and Ashley briefly tried to recall the woman’s name. Sharon?

Shannon? They couldn’t remember but it didn’t matter—she was Peach Pie Meryl.

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They sat on their front steps after dinner and ate slices of the pie with vanilla ice cream.

“If death happens in threes,” Mike said, “then Marble Boy caught a break.”

“Our first house,” Ashley said.

Mike waited for her to say something else.

They went on as before, labeling lives they did not yet know, the tension of that missing third hanging in the air like the final note of a symphony that ends a measure too soon.

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a broken man

by linda m. crate

the sky was a dark gray bruised with black, and the rain fell upon my skin in cold breathless kisses; and a part of me wished i could wash away to some place beyond the grasses of days i've known— i don't remember what you said that incensed me, but i do remember that you were cruel inflicting your nightmares upon me as you so often did; mother doesn't believe that you were ever so cruel to me but your words were weapons you launched through my heart like javelins— you can fool the rest of the world into thinking you're a good man, even my own kin, but i know better than that; you were a broken man who broke a girl instead of shattering the cycle.

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Arizona Bound

by Adrian Slonaker

Sucking a sepiatone sassafras drop, his mouth vacuumed up vintage flavors as he blinked at a pink suitcase on creaky wheels and wondered whether it was light enough to limbo under the bar of baggage fees since he needed every dollar to launch his midlife move to the Valley of the Sun and harvest a home from a minuscule hotel room in snooty Scottsdale now that he'd

lost

the

weight.

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Confessional Publications

by Laurinda Lind

C o n f e s s i

o n a l P u b l i c

a t

i o n s \/ \/ \/ \/

\/ \/ ----- don’t change what happened but they are a way to wear yourself inside-----l l l l l l o u t a n d challe nge a nyone annoy ed by your need to read your self in what you’re showin g them as if they also might suffer down underneath where it won’t always rise to the surfa ce like dark troubled wate r, like di rty lov e that at lea st is love regar dless of how much it mess es you up while you are endur ing so much joy in secret and also out there in the air

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Claire Telomere, Melody Asleep in the Dark Night Clover Field

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The Clown Priest and the One Who Likes Roller Coasters by John Baum Walter Luckdale worked birthday parties as Lucky the Clown, gouging parents on prices because there weren’t many other clowns in the area. When a few affordable clowns showed up, he moved to hospital work which eventually led him to the priesthood. He donated his possessions and settled in as a history teacher at a Catholic middle school in Atlanta, but couldn’t bring himself to give away the red bulb noses and makeup he kept in a green tackle box under his bed.

Father Gallagher was never not a priest, but for a long time he was a member of the National Roller Coaster Enthusiasts Club until he tripped over a backpack while teaching adverb clauses to seventh graders and ruptured a disc in his lower back. He prayed for healing after the first surgery, and believed it would come, but by the third surgery, the murmured prayers did not fill the hole within him where hope had once pooled. Pill bottles gathered in his medicine cabinet. Pain stabbed him awake each morning. He did not give up the priesthood, but somewhere a light had grown dim. His first name was David, but most everyone called him Father Gallagher. His Roller Coaster Club Membership lapsed.

They lived in the rectory with the other priests who worked as teachers and administrators at the school. In the mornings they all gathered for Mass and then breakfast and made their way down the small hill to where the school sat by a creek the city called a river.

Everyone knew of Father Walter’s clowning past, but none knew that sometimes he dusted off the tacklebox and sat at the small mirror in his room, brushing on a ghostly layer of setting powder, sponging on grease paint, and then, after affixing a nose, made spectacular faces in the mirror—grimaces and silent laughter and joy and exaggerated fear, sadness—as if his jaw were double jointed. In his second year of teaching, he surprised everyone and came down from the rectory as Lucky the Clown during field day, but the local archbishop, on hand to bless the events, asked that he curtail the clown activities because they did not seem to be in the best interest of where the Catholic church was at the moment. A couple of decades slipped by.

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Father Gallagher’s back grew worse. Pain knifed his neck and knees and he moved through his rickety days with the help of a cane. Another surgery with a long recovery loomed, but according to this new doctor with the unlined face and straight-shouldered confidence, life would get easier. This doctor did not call him Father anything, just David. Sometimes to lose the title was a long slow breath. David Gallagher, not yet sixty, still felt he was a young man by many standards.

One night in the rectory, Father Walter sat in the common room watching football when Father Gallagher trudged in and sat heavily in a large brown chair. A Monday night game in Green Bay, a snowstorm added a sloppy, chaotic energy to the game, but the fans, bundled and red faced, looked loony with joy and enthusiasm.

After a few minutes, Father Walter said, “I’ve never been to Wisconsin, can’t imagine it’s an easy place to live.”

“I studied for a time at the University in Milwaukee. Fine town, actually,” Father Gallagher said. He tapped a rhythm on the floor with the cane.

Father Walter liked that phrase. Fine town.

Father Gallagher shifted and winced at a lightning strike of pain. He hobbled from the room for a pill.

One of the Fathers died and after those remaining celebrated the requiem Mass and interred the body and shuffled to their rooms in the quiet sadness that followed such events, Father Walter knocked on Father Gallagher’s door. He was holding a bottle of Irish whiskey and wearing his clown makeup.

“Goodness,” Father Gallagher said. “I’ve never seen you with your makeup on.”

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“Another rough night for the back?” Father Walter said. He poured two glasses of the whiskey and handed one to Father Gallagher, propped in bed on a mountain of pillows.

“I’m tired of it,” Father Gallagher said.

“I’m happy to make you laugh,” Father Walter said. “It’s what I do.” He was standing pigeon-toed, leaning slightly with his arm propped on the corner of the dresser.

Indeed, he look prepared to break up a Big-Top audience. “But I’ve never heard you talk much about the roller coasters.”

Father Gallagher sipped the whiskey. He said, “I miss the wooden coasters, the classics. Just terrific names: Giant Dipper, Thunderbolt, Jackrabbit. There were moments when you simply knew you’d be thrown clear of the whole contraption, but before the fear could touch you, the ride was over, you were safe, and some kind of exhilaration would seep in.”

He sipped again, tasted smoke and butter, and remembered the quaking horizon from the front car of a coaster hurtling down that first hill.

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Jerry Kirk, We Still Remember the Day the Optimist Came to Town

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An Opening

by Shawn Anto

son when the time comes these people who left us for more are going to ask you to pay with your body with your mind pay as much as they feel you owe them.

I was told the harder I close me eyes me wishes never came true

the stronger wishes would be.

I still loved doing it.

which is to say the ending was never the part that stuck to my skin or the wishing painted a hope I did not possess but start seeding. you can lie to yourself all you want so many times before they wrap you up and smother. me dad says I’m being tossed into a collection of puppets reminding me the only move left is to accept that I’ve been deceived with the wishing with the wishing with the wishing.

I wake up every night haunted with an idea of debt or I’m making deals with forces bigger than my body I’m lost or I can’t be helped since my actions are incongruous. but this is a reminder for I will remain intact if I manage light a tiny crack of glinting to move toward, some sort of aperture I see the opening a way out so I linger.

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Assimilation Map by Shawn Anto

inspired by FOX’s Legion

there is this maze in the desert shaped from laterite and granite a gigantic web of trails awaits you fourteen thousand six hundred twenty kilometers long nine thousand eighty-five miles wide heaving sculpture of helixes and stalemates You walk. You run. & finally at the end: a house with vegetation You realize it’s the house you grew up in. & at once, stands Camael, unsure his gaze locked onto me Wait, stop for a second Can you see this maze?

Yes Congrats. this labyrinth you’ve constructed is its own little puzzle, weaving dead end pretend suffering between a past and the now figured out where you’re headed engulfing every sleep and wake there is no escape

emerge on the other side of who you thought you were, you anticipate a rush of old-self, welcome to the States.

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En Route to Inhumanity by Bob McNeil

Schedule-ruled people Walked on concrete Often enough to Obtain the coldness Of concrete, Used trains Often enough to Obtain 600 volts For tempers, Passed the homeless Often enough to Obtain the apathy of shoes Above germs, And worked in steel skyscrapers Often enough to Obtain the inflexibility Of metal.

On their commute To obligations, Schedule-ruled people Hid charitable sympathy In sealed wallets.

En route to inhumanity, Schedule-ruled people Mirrored rotten onions.

Their moldy classism And insensitive rot reeked.

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The Japanese Photography is Covered in Dust by Christian Mietus

Japanese photography in black and white— faceless and abstract.

I dig in a shroud of dust on the lusterless frame uncovering green-gold sides. My reflection mirrored as if taxidermy or in fire.

An anonymous stranger unfurls shabby eyes and voice. Unwrapping young face like twine through photograph.

A swirling mushroom-like torso returns me to childhood.

Above, Foreign lettering is crossed out— guillotined. The dense black oil is spillage.

Clocks-stopped.

Near shadows of umbrellas, golden dust, many rocks, and an invisible photographer.

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A Feather on the Puerto Rican Obituary While Watching a Charlie Brown Christmas by Dimitri Reyes

On the dim and glow of this new world, a pigeon is an afflatus of the alphabet. On the stamp of every newsprint he is the glue that shits on consonant blends. On page 6, a convenience store is robbed and every Caribbean grandmother on the block (including my own) reports the crime t 9-1-1 as a burgery.

Upon opening the second page there is another plume dividing the deaths of Juan, Miguel, Jennifer, Jayden, and Jennifer.

I read their causes of death and they leave behind their mastercards—the ink still wet at the end of a check.

They will die again tomorrow, these perfect characters having their profiles nailed to the doors of each letter’s serif. Grouped into words they are the last whispers of dead names they echo.

Their services will be held on the thresholds of a culture so I pluck this feather out of an entire sheaf.

I’ll purposely prick my finger on the slightest tip of a page. This piece of wing will bookmark the Funnies, a calamus filled whole with Christmas to draw in the music of Linus and Lucy. Their saddest song covers the deceased with Linus’s single blanket. *The Puerto Rican Obituary refers to Nuyorican poet, Pedro Pietri’s 1969 poem by the same name

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The Student by Faramade Francesca Oladapo

I am the water Calm one second and then raging against itself another Blue like twilight Then sudden darkness Clashing and roaring The future unknown like a far away land The waves quickly pushing the land away Then begging for it to return.

I am the water My skin is liquid My face is a whirlpool One eye opens in The center But does not see.

Books and pens All at the center—dropped in the water My choice paused As they all swirl down the middle, To an ultimate explosion I am water, trapped in the current The eye shuts to the tide The body washes up ashore I am the water, I am the student Walking away from class with my back curled up as waves.

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I’ve Seen Few Darker Days by Seth J. Berens

Marriage entombed, Embroidered on a dress Embalming the flowers, The gift, sewn to an unsuspecting Engagement of metal and skin.

Men and women, walk into the light Expect Marriage Saves Saves cities, Speaks threats veiled By the pulse of an individual.

Speech could never manage a tongue: I do is not consent, is not consummation.

I do is Is bound ahead like choice, Choice forged like anvils.

Clanging hammers One, another Screaming, fanning Against walls, The anvils Shatter, like psyches

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I do is ripped, half Served papers Lost love letters long misconstrued Farewell, sweeter The sorrow, happy Fear, rearing as a Grizzly Mute Swan, clamped and graceless Each tale, unraveling The dress, unsewn.

Flowers, cracked Marriage, stolen.

I don’t.

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Now by Katherine Karls

Homage to “Red Shoes” by Michelle Bitting (Atticus Review, 2017)

I jumped.

Only that I had cast my whole self Toward desire And survived: I can feel the budding renewal Of learning patience, and how To feel pain.

Remembering him . . .

Perpetual But resurrected from the waves.

Still, the familiar glint.

I let go So I can fall.

Fall, bravely up.

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Acceptance by Katherine Karls

I should be damned, Dissolved into the background Like a junkie in the concrete’s Gaping eye . . .

Judged by those with better sins.

I suspect myself.

I said what I didn’t mean to say, Not knowing what I meant to say.

I use my life; It is all cliché: I am The suburban girl with the dope problem Calculated, confused.

Nothing is better, almost Became nothing; her hands Stopped early on.

Lets make things easier for now . . .

My head is smoke, At moments contained.

I am getting used to this.

I am the one sitting still, but Wringing my hands.

I am wondering if you notice The trouble creeping in As I concentrate on you And your perception of Me, once again The words don’t come.

It’s okay, I can get older now.

Spare me from being sorry, From The torn painting, The forgotten dress, The empty song.

You are my steadiness; I am here.

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My Karmic Curse

by Hsa Lar

After D.R. Shipp “With Each Passing Day, The More” I sleep deep like a heavy black muddy pond: Body paint to natural earth bond, Body temp cold and leucistic as a dead fish.

Flesh evaporates a drop like sea swish.

Happiness falls in a well.

Everything in a quick sand hell.

Time is precious. Wisely spend it with precious one.

Stand tall, pose knifelike until the verbal curse is scabbed.

Black vortex of depression and sorrow.

Fuchsia flame dissolves in the blue sky morrow.

My incarnation spirit will sprout like flying wings.

My incarnation will forever unite with earth springs.

Like a fate of red thread. Ruby Jade of night.

Like a trace of white path toward future light.

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Tension of Aura

by Hsa Lar

Transmutation to an obscure curse, I can feel the heat of the chapel.

Like an intensity of volcano standing in the middle, I felt the danger welding the crowd of a wedding hall full of bitterness.

Jealous eyes flow alongside my every move as I walk down the red aisle, it feels like walking down a path of molten lava boiling up.

Envious praise kicks down my spine, Tangles and traps my heart with fear, tension turns to a heavy hell.

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Rioting Soul by Hsa Lar

Sits alone with hard wooden chair, alone with empty breezing cubicle as she is trying to look outside the bright window.

Alone in the dirty, old, gray, room, dull old ashen room, it is the room. Blue soul under beautiful bright outfits trying to merge wounded body in the texture of a fabric; painted body with the comfortable thin fabric. A purple doll, that time of life, helpless hope unfulfilled toward future light. Yet, the body still tries to bathe under the evening lights with a desperate gaze along the isolated square room.

Yet, she needed water to nourish the root of the lifeless woman.

The room itself is the reflection of the sickening soul-like mirror. Everything is nothing, nothing is something, something is one thing that challenges the jigsaw with the roots of future life. There is always a big steel wall to break down to see one light.

What a fragile soul, unable to stand up on its own feet, hopeless expression with the eyes of a dead fish, no magic to cure her corpse, though, black magic undeniable break misery life, crawl down up hell with black thorn side by side push way to reach destination.

She is the artwork, the artwork created her.

Energy life disappear, no urge to continue, no motivation to live, everything is gone.

Nothing matters when you knew it was impossible to push forward into the fruiting life.

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Peter McDaniel, “#5”

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Mook Marriage

by Jasper Morrow

Minute 0 Thomas lets bet, I'll give it Three months, before she's gone Scratch that 10 bucks, says you wont last 1 week

Thomas, She's not even that sexy, She bends over and sucks in all with her dark hole

he launches a Purple burp into the night sky.

he puts Rat Poison in his poncho that night Thomas Let me tell you: Uncle David had…..

A wife once you know……...

Tall, dark and scary 2 weeks was enough………

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he picks up a Scorpion and hid it in his back pocket

Minute 1 Arlean, He had a Girl once Minute 1 1/2

she tried to cut the Gown with a machete Arlean, Me and his uncle slept around a campfire for 9 months straight

Minute 5

she saw the mysterious Liquid, but didn't fall for it

She and him Fell down a well that night None of the guests screamed or gasped The rain dripped down and swept the wind away to commemorate hail Minute 7 1/2 Tell me, what did you think about that campfire Arlean Minute 8 1/2 Tell me, what did you put in my drink Thomas A lil scorpion tail Minute 9 1/2 Thomas Climbed out of the well, The cardboard guests stare back at him Minute 12 Arlean had turned back into a cardboard box

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Homage by Ruby Tortuga

His tired eyes are sunken canyons littered with pain.

The smile and polished sparkle Has changed the old man smell, A groan, then creaking joint Whenever he stands.

And I am grateful to have Someone to take my gnarled Hand and guide me home Though some days I wish to be A 20 something putting on cheap mascara In the graffitied bathroom of A loved concert venue.

This chair contains me But my mind, strong as A ballerina, spins me Around my memories, Whispers stories in my ear.

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Women Who Dare to Bicycle in Pakistan by Ruby Tortuga

My breath quickens before I touch the pedal.

The firm bike seat Finds a home between my legs And we ride, slowly at first.

In sync, we begin to speed Past the men frightened by Our pleasure.

Today I’m blind to Lyari’s unwelcome paths As it turns its nose, We accelerate, faster Faster Faster !

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Freak Show Saga by Patricia Walsh

Being quiet on delicate matters, love permitting white flowers cascade on the windowsill the designated day off calls the blink missed this artisan audience knows better than that watered and fed under cover of critical mass.

Fearing ruin over breakfast, newspapers as well, coffee sunk slowly, more lukewarm the better, sharpening appetite on a watery diet purchasing freedom on back of a blood test loving, like a rock, caring little for decorum.

Called by the wrong name, invited to a table apologised to, the dark veins of a friend, cracking down on entitlement, this allowing producing books only the select will read that is enough, as is said, for another day.

Being looked after is all that truly matters, seethed though Facebook, awaiting the train, inexistent crises rummaging in losing handbags conserving food in face of disastrous teeth looking pregnant, unproductive, in an age’s heart.

Typing up bygones, the better for wear, again startled out of time, being the more mature accepting oneself as per se, free travel abound as much on the one page, constraints being destroying all knowledge of previous incarnations.

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In the Air by Glen Armstrong

You’ve called out for someone to wipe the blood from my lip.

Because you need my hands in the air where you can see and admire them.

I get it.

You need me to be your beautiful tree.

Lay down your service revolver and climb me.

Rise above this slurry of red and blue light to a better place where you can swat down zeppelins, box kites and the hummingbirds that have hurt and confused you.

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The Year of the Sea Monkey XII by Glen Armstrong

We continue to walk, and the road’s edge softens so gradually that the elsewhere we imagine comes early, and though it takes hold gradually, it comes on strong.

It curls our hair.

And knocks our socks off.

I offer my sweetheart a toffee.

A rescue drone buzzes overhead.

We could really go for a field of red flowers or a city off in the distance about now.

This is the wreckage of something never built.

Each fork in the road thus far has been a kill switch for half of that which avails itself to us.

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We Forced Mother To Say The Name Of God Before She Died by Aremu Adams Adebisi

Angels were on break that night where we all gathered in a room.

Fears were attributes of sorrows, our hearts beating in funerals, awaiting her grave, and if unlucky that she should become grains in the wind.

Heaven watched on as a lone dugout, time was a young girl who never grew.

The clock chimed in barrels of gloom, descending on us like falling mist.

We asked for safety. We churched, shrined, and tekbir-ed, we combined all the names of God, and hoped one would tickle him, and the angels would come rushing like flowers in her mouth, and Noah would build a new ark where the unfaithful do not have to perish in the flood.

My atheist mother died in her curse that night, and it became manifest how Pharaoh's redemption was wrung from his tongue by an angel at the sea; how God gets angry when he is made the last resort, or when it seems the infidels want to steal from him.

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Cover the Mirrors by Lynn White

All the mirrors were covered every night in my grandmother’s house draped with coloured cloths like the budgie’s cage.

She was worried that a soul might wander and be sucked into the reflective glass and she thought the souls of dreamers were very vulnerable.

I thought that the budgie must be covered because at night even with the door closed, his soul might fly the cage and disappear into the mirror.

Sometimes she forgot to cover the cage, though never the mirrors and then I would examine the mirrors carefully to check that it was me in there and not his feathered soul.

Then I would check his cage to make sure that he was still inside with his soul intact She told me not to worry that his cage was only covered to make it dark so he would sleep.

But I didn’t believe her.

It made no sense if it was dark anyway.

So I always checked the mirrors.

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Marriage Is

by Brooke Bergan

reverse redshift inside-out Doppler close distortion distance lending enchantment even from the self that seems always approaching / receding like the wrong train till you think you may never get back or be carried away

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What Next

by Brooke Bergan

Surrounded by food he decides against rebellion in favor of counterrevolution, a tactic decidedly retrograde and yet surprisingly effective in the way that pickup basketball confers dignity on the merely accidental inclusion of what’s to hand or the feminization of certain concepts as if life were just one big Romance language, though turns out it’s not that simple/binary, none in Basque, numerous in Bantu for all that you may think only three possible, and yet nostalgia seems the purview of those who keep the memories, seeds, rituals & recipes however attenuated, diluted, debatable.

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Lena’s Garden by Laura Lee Washburn

Lena can't keep hers from going yellow.

It burns Lena up how her mother had whiter hair, too.

Lena in her room that smells, where powder and the make-ups are mildew growing over the sill.

Lena in her window.

Nobody thinks she isn't a curtain.

She wears her gown up against the glass.

People walk past her.

Lena keeps an eye on them.

She spends days in her garden where in a corner for luck Delmar always planted one sunflower.

You can imagine that sunflowers hang down like extra breasts, the skin on her upper arms, or her without underpants.

All her parts are the tomatoes on her kitchen table, still half-green and yellow.

She is a strange mix without rows.

Lena plants peppers in the front flower beds of herself.

She wears gowns at night, the gowns wherein the plants tangle stems.

She’s a whole festival of red circles, beefsteak tomatoes all summer ripening—tomatoes on the table, for three months reddening fruit— Lena wrapped in her underclothes.

Her nipples, you know, you could see them there, out on the line, only a little yellow, from the back alley.

They’re a kind you've seen.

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Saving Yourself in the Brush A primer for certain self-righteously motivated attacks by Laura Lee Washburn

Carry enough cash to appease but not enough to tempt. Let dimes jangle in your pocket when you walk.

Put the dog on his retractable leash.

Let him range ahead but not out of sight. When he stops to scratch, lean down, pretend to tie your shoe.

Claws and teeth might glint from behind the fronds. Keep a vine handy. Beware the beehive hairdos and the overstout stomachs of the harridans. Keep Kleenex in the passenger seat. Look, the attack is coming. You can live in the treetops, drop down only to pocket the quick nut, carry your child in the abdominal sling, you can cover your cave entrance with bush and brush, camouflage even your teeth with an exaggerated grin, but they’re coming for us, every one.

Curl up, duck, possum, make yourself infant and shivering stone: inherit the earth or what’s left. There are times when in spite of the roar and the spear and the dangerous drum, believe me, you don’t fight back.

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Jim is a Good Guy

by Steve Bogdaniec

Jim is a good guy. And even suggesting otherwise proves that you are not. You are a dirtbag. Jim is a saint compared to you. You know what, Jim is a saint compared to other saints, with their bullshit miracles like talking to God and turning things into other things. Jim is a guy who can actually get things done.

You think you are so smart. Don’t make me laugh. Jim is an incredibly smart man, but he isn’t a genius and doesn’t claim to be. And that’s what makes him a genius.

Also, Jim gives up his seat on the bus to old ladies. He doesn’t even need to ride the bus because he's got a car, but hello: carbon footprint. Ever hear of it? Once in a while, Jim is glad to do his part for environment. And old ladies. What have you ever done for the environment or old ladies? Do you go over to your Grandma’s house every Sunday to take out her recycling? Of course not.

I ought to break your jaw for tarnishing Jim’s good name like that. You deserve to choke to death, you filth. That’s something you would never hear coming out of Jim’s mouth because he is such a decent, peace-loving man. But me? I don’t mind wishing you a lengthy and painful and ultimately unsuccessful fight against bowel cancer.

Unlike you, Jim isn’t a sexist neanderthal who thinks of all women as “girls.” Do you know that many of them don’t like being called that? I sure didn’t, but I do now, thanks to Jim. Feminists have come up to him and asked to shake his hand out of respect and a love of humanity. I’ve seen it.

Plus, Jim gives money to charities on a regular basis. He’s so humble that he doesn’t tell anyone else, but I wormed it out of him one night. Jim doesn’t even report it on his tax return. You think Jim is trying to help the less-fortunate so he can chisel off a few bucks out of Uncle Sam each year? No sir.

You are a loser. I once saw Jim win over 900 straight games of Connect Four. The only reason he stopped was out of respect for 9/11. I bet you would never do anything as noble as that, you un-American piece of crap.

You said what you said about Jim because of your own insecurities. Jim says we can’t

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let our self-worth be wrapped up in the toxic thinking of others. Jimmy tells me lots of stuff. He is honest and communicative about his feelings without getting weird about it. I’m sure you wouldn’t know about this, but thr feelings of two straight men can be discussed without giving in to the prevailing heteronormative paradigms of modern society. And you know what else? Jim doesn’t make people feel bad for drinking domestic light beers. You don’t have to be some frontrunning hipster who only drinks craft beers with cutesy Mad Libs names around ol’ Jimbo. We make fun of those people. Not mean fun, because Jim would say, “Cool it, dude. Those people may be wearing flannel and ridiculously large glasses, but they’re still people, you know?” Just light fun.

And he doesn’t play favorites between chunky and creamy peanut butter. Jim understands that it’s only a preference in texture, and he’ll take whatever you’ve got. I bet you're the kind of guy who makes someone run out to the store when they offer up PB and Js. What a creep.

You know what, you better not say anything like that ever again. In fact, I want you to go out of your way to praise Jim in the future. Really lay it on: his clothes, his hair style, his stance on being pro-Oxford comma but completely against acting like a total dick about people who still use it because they probably grew up doing it the old way and changing something as ingrained as language can be really jarring to people, and really, what does it hurt—can you really not figure out that it’s a list sentence and the thing after the “and” is the last thing in the list and not a weird addition to the next-to-last thing in the list? Do you really think we’re saying we should go eat Grandma?

The next time I see you, you better have on a custom navy blue t-shirt with white letters saying, “Jim is the Best Guy in the History of Guys,” or so help me, I will cut off your hand, fry it up with tempura batter and eat it in front of you, your mother, and Jim. Jim is such a decent human being that he’d be frowning the whole time. I know Jim would be disappointed in me. I’m sure he’ll give me a good lecture after eating your hand in front of your mom, but I’d risk it just to shut you up.

Now get out of here before I start Googling places to buy chloroform.

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Sarah Goodwelles

by Steve Denehan

A friend request popped up Sarah Goodwelles, a chef from Paris living in Texas supposedly she didn’t look like the others wasn’t posing coquettishly seductively as-good-as-naked-ly Sarah Goodwelles was pleasant faced wore a dark grey, slightly formal raincoat and stood awkwardly before a field of tulips blue as her young eyes she sent me a message in sweetly broken English Hi, how are you?

Do we know each other?

Not soon, but I note you are a writer. I like to reading.

Me too.

I am from France but live to Texas two years.

Someday I hope to visit Texas.

Do you like sex? she didn’t look like the others but she was she was probably a middle-aged man like me sitting somewhere far away with other middle-aged men or women trying to get people on the hook I didn’t mind money is tight all over Who are you? Who are you really?

Does it matter?

Maybe not.

I closed the laptop and went to bed 92 City Brink

Faramade Francesca Oladapo, Untitled

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Submission Guidelines City Brink accepts fiction, creative non-fiction, drama, poetry, art, and photography.

City Brink does not accept work that has been previously published either in print or on the web.

All work—prose, poetry, and art—submitted to City Brink must include a cover letter, which introduces the work, includes a short third person author biography (including previous and forthcoming publications), and contact information: address, phone, and email.

Prose and Poetry For prose, please submit no more than one short story, one creative non-fiction piece, or one short play. For poetry, submit no more than three - six poems. Work must be submitted as WORD documents and follow the standard professional submissions guidelines: double spaced (prose), one inch margins, 12 pt Times New Roman font, and page numbers. The author’s last name and title of work should be included in the digital file name.

Art All art submissions must be high quality, high resolution JPEG files of at least 2000 pixels on the long end of the digital file. The artist’s last name and title of piece should be included in the digital file name.

Send all submissions via email to Christine Aguila and Carlo Matos at citybrinkmagazine@gmail.com

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Contributor Notes Adrian Slonaker works as a copywriter and copy editor. Adrian’s work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in Pangolin Review, Aerodrome, WINK: Writers in the Know and others.

Alexandre Ferrere is 28 and lives in France. After a Master’s degree in Library Sciences and a Master’s degree in English Literature, he is now working on a PhD in American poetry.

His essays and poems appeared or are forthcoming in Beatdom, Empty Mirror, Rust+Moth, Lumin Journal, Riggwelter Press, Barren Magazine, Isacoustic, armarolla, Lucent Dreaming, Kissing Dynamite, Porridge Magazine and elsewhere.

Aremu Adams Adebisi is a boy among five older girls, who explores the themes of equality, liberation, womanism, boyhood and existentialism. He has works published on Mistymountain Review, Kalahari Review, Poetica Magazine, and elsewhere. He likes to call himself the Plateau Indigobird which is endemic to Nigeria and one of a kind.

Bob McNeil is the author of Verses of Realness. Hal Sirowitz, Queens Poet Laureate, described the book as “A fantastic trip through the mind of a poet who doesn’t flinch at the truth.” Bob was published in The Shout It Out Anthology, Brine Rights: Stanzas and Clauses for the Causes (Volume 1), San Francisco Peace and Hope, and The Self-Portrait Poetry Collection, etc. Furthermore, Bob’s work as a professional illustrator, spoken word artist, and writer is dedicated to one cause—justice.

Brooke Bergan has published three books of poetry, Windowpane and Distant Topologies (The Wine Press) and Storyville: A Hidden Mirror (Moyer Bell). Her other publications include essays, translations, reviews, and poems in journals, anthologies, and books. She has a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where she was the director of Publications. Dr. Bergan has taught creative writing at UIC, Lake Forest College, Harold Washington College, the Newberry Library, and various other venues in the Chicago area. She was the literary editor for Private Arts Press and helped run its readings program. Currently, she is working on a new collection of poems as well as a word-and-image collaboration with three women photographers.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle, and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) Like As If (Pski’s Porch), and Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

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Christian Mietus is an undergraduate at Lewis University studying English, Film Studies, and Russian Language and Culture. He is a lover of everything to do with literature, cinema, the arts, and diverse culture and opinion. Currently, he is the blog and fiction editor for Lewis University’s literary journal Jet Fuel Review and has been published in Lewis University’s fine arts magazine, WINDOWS. He is the recipient of the Dr. Stephany Schlachter Excellence in Undergraduate Scholarship Award for 2019. In the future, he hopes to become a writer and filmmaker.

Claire Telomere is a multimedia artist from Chicago. She creates poetry, songs, drawings, photography, videography, embarrassing diary entries, and occasionally puppets.

Connie Bacchus was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Currently she lives near Grand Coulee Dam in a small scenic community and often writes. Her work is in or forthcoming in Sobotka Literary Review, Euphony, Wire Harp, Black Bough Poetry and Them Dam Writers online. She blogs at www.constanceschultz. poetry.blog David Tortuga is a furniture mover by day and prose writer by night. He has received an Illinois Arts Council Award for Poetry, had a play produced at Den Theatre, was a Ragdale resident, and a finalist in 2019 for the Masthead Residency in the Berkshires.

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan poet, educator, organizer, and YouTuber from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets, and a finalist for the 2017 Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. His work is published or forthcoming in Vinyl, Kweli, Entropy, Cosmonauts, Obsidian, Acentos, and About Place among others. You can find him documenting the poetry community at: http://www.youtube.com/c/dimitrireyespoet.

Drew Pisarra partners with Molly Gross as a conceptual art duo Saint Flashlight—finding playful ways to get poetry into public places via O, Miami Poetry Festival, Free Verse: Charleston Poetry Festival, and Capturing Fire’s International Poetry Summit & Slam in D.C. His first book of poetry Infinity Standing Up, a collection of sonnets, came out in early 2019.

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications and The Wardrobe. She is the author of two full-length collections, The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake, 2011) and The Fear of Being Found (Three Candles, 2007). Her third collection, Down: The Alice Poems, will be released by Agape Editions in 2019.

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Contributor Notes Faramade Francesca Oladapo is a full-time student at Harry S. Truman College with a passion for reading and exploring the world around her through photography. Currently, her favorite poets are Sylvia Plath, Rudyard Kipling, and Michelle Bitting. When she is not at school, she is either travelling or volunteering at various nature centers.

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has two new chapbooks: Simpler Times and Staring Down Miracles. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit, and Cream City Review.

Hsa Lar lives in Chicago, IL where she attends the City Colleges of Chicago. She is currently enrolled in a poetry class at Truman College in Chicago. She is majoring in Math. When not writing poetry, Hsa enjoys reading Japanese Manga and watching Anime.

Jasper Morrow is a Truman College student in the city of Chicago, who is enrolled in a poetry class. When not writing bizarre poetry, he enjoys watching people struggle to write good poetry, plays soccer and children’s card games.

Jerry Kirk is an Expressionist Painter who has won numerous awards, most notable being an Emerging Artist Grant from the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg. His work has been exhibited in dozens of galleries throughout the east coast, including Ward-Nasse Gallery in NYC, Waterworks Gallery in Salisbury, NC, R.J. Reynolds Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC, Center of the Earth in Charlotte, NC, and The Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC. His work is included in private collections around the world.

John Baum’s work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Blue Mesa Review, The Saint Anne’s Review, and elsewhere. He was recently awarded a two-week writing residency at The Hambidge Center in North Georgia. He teaches high school English in Atlanta where he lives with his wife, two sons, and three dogs.

Jordan Potter is an actor and amateur mathematician from Huntington Beach, California. He has recently quit writing poetry.

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Katherine Karls loves to write and appreciates the works of poets like Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath. In May of 2019, she completed a creative writing poetry class at Truman College in Chicago. Besides writing poetry, Katherine enjoys practicing yoga, learning about psychology, spending time with her family and friends, and being in nature. While some of her poetry speaks to the personal nature of addiction, Katherine has been sober since April 18, 2017.

Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor, the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as New Verse News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Harbor Review, and Valparaiso Review. Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri. She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women. https://www.facebook.com/sekwhw.

Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country. Her works has been published in Blue Earth Review, Comstock Review, New American Writing, Paterson Literary Review, and Radius; also anthologies Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan (New Rivers Press) and AFTERMATH: Explorations of Loss and Grief (Radix Media). Last year, she won first place in both the New York State Fair poetry competition and the Keats-Shelley Prize for adult poetry.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has six published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press), splintered with terror (Scars Publications), and More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books).

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud “War Poetry for Today” competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook. com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/.

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Contributor Notes Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in eleven anthologies/collections and in over two hundred literary magazines all over the world including PIF, Forth Magazine, Spelk, Cheap Pop, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, With Painted Words, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds was just released. Reddick works at The University of Memphis, Lambuth, in Jackson. Website: http://nilesreddick.com/. Twitter: @niles_reddick. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/niles.reddick.9 Noam Jacobs is a fledgling writer and musician from Evanston, IL. In 2017, he released his debut album under the guidance of Chicago-based musician Matty Witney and singer/songwriter Ezra Furman. Noam currently lives in Portland, OR, where he goes to school and studies music.

Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork, Ireland. To date, she has published one novel, titled The Quest for Lost Eire, in 2014, and has published one collection of poetry, titled Continuity Errors, with Lapwing Publications in 2010. She has since been published in a variety of print and online journals. These include: The Lake, Seventh Quarry Press, Marble Journal, New Binary Press, Stanzas, Crossways, Ygdrasil, Seventh Quarry, The Fractured Nuance, Revival Magazine, Ink Sweat and Tears, Drunk Monkeys, Hesterglock Press, Linnet’s Wing, Narrator International, The Galway Review, Poethead and The Evening Echo.

Peter McDaniel (1980, Chicago) is an artist who works with photography and print media. By exploring the concept of landscape in a nostalgic way, McDaniel investigates the dynamics of landscape, including the manipulation of its effects and the limits of spectacle based on our assumptions of what landscape means to us. Rather than presenting a factual reality, an illusion is fabricated to conjure the realms of our imagination.

Ruby Tortuga is an editor at City Brink. She is also a student in Carlo Matos’ poetry class at Truman College in Chicago. Ruby is working towards a degree in environmental science and in her spare time plays the violin in a community orchestra.

Seth J. Berens is currently enrolled at Harry S Truman College in Chicago, IL. When not writing poetry, he likes to read fantasy novels such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings and George Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice. He also likes to take care of animals, studies psychology, and works out.

Shawn Anto is from Delano, California. He’s originally from Kerala, India. He currently studies at Cal State Bakersfield looking to receive his B.A. in English & Theatre. He was last seen on stage in Dreamers: Aqui y Alla. Past theatre credits include The Profane, “Gasoline,” and SubUrbia. His writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Reed Magazine, O:JA&L, Genre: Urban Arts, Mojave Heart Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Bakersfield with his mini-rex rabbit, Elio.

Steve Bogdaniec is a writer and teacher, currently teaching at Wright College, Chicago, IL, U.S. Steve has had poetry and short fiction published in numerous journals, most recently in Eclectica Magazine, Silver Birch Press, and Jellyfish Review. His work can also be found in the Nancy Drew Anthology: Writing & Art Inspired by Everyone’s Favorite Female Sleuth. Check out stevebogdaniec.com for links to published work and updates on new stuff!

Steve Denehan lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin. Recent publication credits include The Irish Times, The Phoenix, The Blue Nib, The Opiate, The Hungry Chimera, Evening Street Review, Ink in Thirds, Crack The Spine and The Cape Rock. He has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and his chapbook, Of Thunder, Pearls and Birdsong is available from Fowlpox Press.

Todd Mercer of Grand Rapids, Michigan was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018. His pre-owned Italian ties, purchased for $2 each, are probably the most bad-ass pre-owned Italian tie collection outside of Italy.

Recent work appears in A New Ulster, Blink Ink, Clementine Unbound, The Lake, Raconteur Literary Magazine, and Softblow.

In This Issue Adrian Slonaker Alexandre Ferrere Aremu Adams Adebisi Bob McNeil Brooke Bergan Bruce McRae Christian Mietus Claire Telomere Connie Bacchus David Tortuga Dimitri Reyes Drew Pisarra Erin Elizabeth Smith Faramade Francesca Oladapo Glen Armstrong Hsa Lar Jasper Morrow Jerry Kirk John Baum Jordan Potter Katherine Karls Laura Lee Washburn Laurinda Lind Linda M. Crate Lynn White Niles Reddick Noam Jacobs Patricia Walsh Peter McDaniel Ruby Tortuga Seth J. Berens Shawn Anto Steve Bogdaniec Steve Denehan Todd Mercer

Fall 2019