a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing
featuring lost and found the carnival of living and an interview with Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh
Cover art: “First Thought” by John Fitzsimmons first published in Stone Canoe
The staff of Glassworks magazine would like to thank Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Program and Rowan University’s Writing Arts Department
Cover Design & Layout: Katie Budris
Glassworks is available both digitally and in print. See our website for details: RowanGlassworks.org
Glassworks accepts literary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, craft essays, art, photography, short video/film & audio. See submission guidelines: RowanGlassworks.org
Glassworks is a publication of Rowan University’s Master of Arts in Writing Graduate Program
Serial Rights for publication in our journal and First Electronic Rights for reproduction of works in Glassworks and/or Glassworks-affiliated materials. All other rights remain with the artist.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Katie Budris
MANAGING EDITOR
Cate Romano
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Alexia Breeden
Briar
Cecilia Combs
Natalie Rush
Austin Schuh
Shannon Van Meter
FICTION EDITORS
Ethan Gross
Sophia Nigro
Rachel Yuro
NONFICTION EDITORS
Jordan G. Avery
Stephen Harrison
Joshua Wilson
POETRY EDITORS
Briar
Alexa Diamant
Jamie M. Roes
COPY EDITORS
Editing the Literary Journal Fall 2025 students
glassworks
Fall 2025
Issue ThIrTy-One
MASTER OF ARTS IN WRITING PROGRAM
ROWAN UNIVERSITY
Issue 31 | Table of ConTenTs
arT
JOhn FITzsImmOns, FIrsT ThOughT | cOver
sTeven OsTrOwskI, hIerOglyphIc rOmance | 7
JOhn FITzsImmOns, runnIng wOman | 18
wIlly cOnley, DIsappearIng lInes | 23
wIlly cOnley, curbeD | 31
kelly Dumar, snOwy TraIl, ghOsT ranch | 35
JOhn FITzsImmOns, a sense OF mOTIOn | 42
wIlly cOnley, JOhn bOaTs awaITIng | 46
kelly Dumar, ghOsT ranch labyrInTh walk | 58
sTeven OsTrOwskI, The baFFleD kIng | 63
sTeven OsTrOwskI, grOwn In Flame | 67
FIcTIOn
vIcTOrIa large, nOT anymOre | 8
rOb baIley, TwO Funerals anD a cubs game, sO Three Funerals | 36
kaT echevarría rIchTer, The TOp up | 47
nOnFIcTIOn
eThan grOss, sOphIa nIgrO, & rachel yurO, TensIOn Over seven ThOusanD mIles: an InTervIew wITh suzI ehTesham-zaDeh | 24
DebOrah sakI, hOw TO lIve as a FOreIgner In amerIca: waTch OuT FOr yOur heaD | 60
pOeTry
TIm mODer, cOyOTe wakes TO The amerIcan Dream | 3
alIsOn hIcks, sweDIsh hOrses | 4
aIr FrOm The ThIrD FlOOr | 6
al magInnes, eulOgy | 19
Terry savOIe, The black-speckleD angel FIsh | 20
alIsOn sTOne, eTernal ghazal | 22
JIm DanIels, mIssIng The plaTes | 32
DenIse uTT, new yOrk cITy subway, here I cOme | 34
Ds maOlalaI, peep shOw | 43
paT Daneman, snapshOT | 44
gIrls whO FIsh | 45
alex carrIgan, yahweh In a can | 59
James b. nIcOla, learneD laTely | 64
aDvanceD TelepaThy | 65
rOb harDy, lasT rIghTs | 66
The hIsTory of Glassworks
The tradition of glassworking and the history of Rowan University are deeply intertwined. South Jersey was a natural location for glass production—the sandy soil provided the perfect medium, while plentiful oak trees fueled the fires. Glassboro, home of Rowan University, was founded as “Glass Works in the Woods” in 1779. The primacy of artistry, a deep pride in individual craftsmanship, and the willingness to explore and test conventional boundaries to create exciting new work is part of the continuing spirit inspiring Glassworks magazine.
CoyoTe wakes To The amerICan Dream
Tim Moder
It starts with a flag. It always starts with a flag. The mannequins who make brass casings create sly guns, make thirsty blood-soaked bandages, make ice-cold clamps for operations, build flesh-colored prosthetics, stretch silk to line bronze coffins, they slick clear oil to clean the barrel’s bore, hiss bold sermons to stupefy expectant mother’s hearts, plant acacia crosses, sew ripe flags to fold and finish. It always finishes with a flag.
Inside me are no wolves, only blood that winters in hard ground, a nest of wasps. Blood-spoiled milk saturates turned soil. Rancid meat muscles the heart’s dry wells. Explorers said gold, which weighs out as blood in chiefdoms. Pilgrims cried freedom, which translates to fields tilled in blood. Preacher says heaven, but always brings blood to communion, blood that is hidden, blood that has lost its way, blood that waits.
sweDIsh horses
Alison Hicks
Swedish horse on my mother’s side of the bookshelf at the head of my parents’ bed. Orange, with designs in yellow and green along the saddle and mane. My fingers curled around its back, gripped it like a rider’s thighs.
White dove on the bookshelf too, wood unexpectedly light.
My mother so strong, I thought it impossible to topple her, running fast as I could to the fence.
Drawn to color, we shared fondness for the rustic: Fiestaware, Raffaelesco blowing favorable winds, glass fisherman’s floats from Cost Plus hanging in our living room.
Curlers, perms, old fashioned, go-to jewelry too symmetrical: Greek choker, square circle square, clasp that disappeared inside, silver tarnished I keep in a box and never wear.
On the dresser, portrait of her mother, Nana. Paralyzed by MS, she could wiggle her nose. Like a bunny, she said.
Weakness and strength stood over my young life, demanding, Whose side are you on?
I bought a Swedish horse for myself, in my color, blue. The original came to me in a flow of other items, with bite marks from when the dog got hold of it. Maybe the dove as well. Time blew them out of my life.
I was timid, afraid of what I didn’t know. Judged myself too weak to do damage, which gave me license. I believed the virtuous could do no violence.
aIr from The ThIrD floor
Alison Hicks
You can tell they’re awake when her laughter spills down the stairs. They’re sight-reading, stacking notes into chords, lining up runs, passing the melody back and forth, keeping the pulse.
Remember your early twenties? Driving in the wake of the plow between walls of fresh snow. Hours on the pull-out bed, venturing out late, hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans. Bar with ninety-nine types of beer, fish and chips. The job that didn’t require much left time for improvisation.
Should the duet break down, the pulse fall off, they lose their place, lines diverge and knock air out of them, what but to hope they will surprise themselves, as you did.
Steven Ostrowski
noT anymore
Christa checked her watch again, and somehow it was still 7:12 p.m. A minute could stretch for so long if you were watching it pass. She was in the Commuter Café, waiting for her classmate Lacey to show up to discuss their English project, and her irritation was building. She had actually experienced a kind of low-level irritation with Lacey ever since Professor Tucker paired them up for the project.
When Tucker announced the pairs, selected via what he called a “mysterious process,” Christa turned and saw Lacey texting under her desk. Tucker had just spent several minutes detailing the assignment and explaining why he felt it aligned with the course learning objectives and, indeed, the overall goals of a liberal education.
“What are we doing?” Lacey asked a few minutes later, dropping heavily into the seat beside Christa. “Seriously, I have no idea.”
Still, it could be worse. Christa liked solitude, and she liked the feeling of being in the Commuter Café at night. There was something about the contrast between the neon lights in this high-ceilinged room and the dark February night outside. That, and the food smells and sounds— tater tots and pizza and bad coffee and clacking trays and clinking
dishes and falling silverware. It was strangely cozy.
The Commuter Café would be open until 9 p.m., and Christa didn’t have any other plans, so the issue was that Lacey was not respecting Christa’s time. They had agreed to meet at 7 p.m.
Kids, Christa thought.
She was thirty-three, older than most of her classmates. The younger students interacted with her haltingly, she thought, compared to how ably they seemed to get along with each other. Maybe she was just self-conscious. She checked her watch again and it was now only 7:14 p.m. She took a sip of the hot chocolate she had been nursing. It turned out to be the last sip, thickly syrupy and only lukewarm. She had arrived at the café ten minutes early, and so had been there for nearly half an hour.
“Hey,” a voice said while Christa still had the cup tilted to her lips. Lacey sat down and dropped her backpack on the floor, rummaging through its contents. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she added. “I got mixed up and thought we said 7:30.”
“That’s all right,” Christa said. “I still have time.”
“Great,” Lacey said. She slapped a Dover Thrift Edition of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot—
the subject of their group project— on the cafeteria table.
“God this fucking poem,” she said, flicking the book’s cover as if trying to send an origami football sailing. The cover had started to curl from mistreatment, and it bounced right back after she flicked it. “If Tucker asks one more time whether we see any parallels to anything we’re going through in 2018, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Christa shrugged and decided to laugh. She actually liked Tucker’s Introduction to Literature class. She was still undeclared in her third semester as a part-time student, having returned to school simply because she knew that she didn’t want to work retail forever. She was in Tucker’s class because it was required. Still, sometimes during discussions Christa would think, Yes! I like this! Is there a way to keep doing this?
Lacey picked up her book. “What section is he having us do again? ‘The Game of Chess’?”
Christa nodded. “‘A Game of Chess,’ lines 111-138.”
Lacey started rifling through the pages of her book. “Like, why is everything in this class weird and depressing? Like that thing with the swimmer guy when we did the short story unit. Why does weird and depressing make it good?”
Christa shrugged again. “It doesn’t, I guess.”
“Exactly,” Lacey said.
Christa opened her copy of the poem, scanning the pages. Basically, Tucker had asked them to stand in front of everyone and read their assigned lines aloud, then offer some kind of interpretation, working in at least two of the literary terms that they had studied in the class. They didn’t get to choose their lines, but the haunted war veteran in this part reminded her of her Uncle Joe, who fought in Vietnam, and the woman who said, “What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?” reminded her of most of the people she knew.
Christa glanced from her book to Lacey, who was now staring down at her phone, but nevertheless began to speak without looking up.
“You know, they used to let you get away with taking Introduction to Film as your literature class, since film classes are in the English Department,” Lacey said, whisking a stray hair from her face with the hand that wasn’t clutching the phone. “My boyfriend is a junior and he got to write, like, a four-page paper on Kill Bill for his entire literature requirement. They changed it for people in our year. I even double-checked with the registrar, but you can’t do it anymore.”
“That’s too bad,” Christa said. “I remember seeing Kill Bill Volume 1 the night it came out. The whole theater groaned at the cliffhanger ending and then burst into applause. It was great.”
Lacey gave Christa a surprised look but only said, “I’ve never seen it.”
Christa realized her mistake. Lacey couldn’t fathom the idea that one of her classmates was old enough to see a first run R-rated movie in 2003. Things like this happened a lot. Without thinking, she would reference an old SNL sketch or mention a celebrity who was at the height of their fame fifteen years ago, and then be met with a startled, blank, or slightly embarrassed look.
Christa changed the subject. “I brainstormed some of the literary terms that we can use for the presentation. There’s imagery, obviously, and, like Tucker said, there’s an allusion to The Tempest. So we can maybe talk about how those things fit with our interpretation of the lines.”
“That sounds good,” Lacey said. “So what’s our interpretation of the lines?”
The way Lacey asked the question made Christa feel certain that she was going to be doing basically all of the work on this assignment, even though Lacey would get equal credit.
“Well,” Christa said. “Tucker said Eliot alludes to lines from The Tempest that describe the aftermath of someone drowning. So maybe we could talk about how this section relates to drowning. The people aren’t actually drowning, but maybe they feel like they are.”
“Oh god, that’s so smart,” Lacey said. “Tucker is going to eat that up. Are you an English major?”
“I’m undeclared,” Christa said. “What about you?”
“Marketing,” Lacey said. “I figured that way I could be creative and make money too.”
“Makes sense,” Christa said.
“Do you have a job?” Lacey asked.
“ So maybe we could talk about how this section relates to drowning. The people aren’t actually drowning, but maybe they feel like they are. ”
Christa smiled at the blunt wording of the question. “Yes,” she said. “I work at Shelton’s, the furniture store, as an assistant manager.”
“That’s cool,” Lacey said. “I probably need a job,” she added, chewing her lip. “Do you know if Shelton’s is hiring?”
They actually were hiring, but the thought of working with Lacey mortified Christa. She didn’t want this part of her life colliding with any of the others.
“I don’t think they are right now,” Christa lied. Lacey’s disappointed expression prompted Christa glassworks
to add, “I’ll let you know if I hear something.”
“Thanks,” Lacey said. She looked down at her book again. “Hey! I found one!”
“What?” Christa asked.
“A literary term we can use. Repetition. It keeps saying ‘nothing.’ Like this: ‘Nothing again nothing.’ There’s tons of nothing here.”
“That’s a good one,” Christa said, liking Lacey a little better. “Let’s try to fit it in with the other stuff.”
They wrapped up after about forty-five minutes and a series of conversational digressions about cafeteria food, prerequisites, and Tucker’s overuse of the word “fascinating.” Christa promised to type up a script for the presentation and email it to Lacey. It was Thursday night. The presentation was due the following Tuesday, so there was plenty of time to finalize everything.
Christa noticed her purse vibrating with text notifications on her drive home. Once she was back at her apartment, she collapsed into a kitchen chair and checked her messages. It was her oldest brother Toby, texting her again about the progress of his crowdfunding campaign. Things were going well, and the texts were dotted with upbeat emojis.
“Approaching my stretch goal!” he enthused. “This is really happening!”
Christa’s tired smile was genuine, but she felt unable to construct a proper sentence after her time spent
analyzing modernist poetry with Lacey. She sent an intensely grinning emoji in lieu of words.
Toby was raising money to self-publish an art book, a collection of photos he had taken at Boston rock shows while in his teens and early twenties. He had reconnected with many current and former local musicians on social media to help drum up support. Like Christa, Toby had drifted into retail over the last decade—he was a manager at Harlan’s Hardware—but he began revisiting his photo archive and dreaming up this project shortly after Christa went back to school. It made her wonder if modest ambition was contagious.
“You know that Rick is in a lot of the photos,” Toby disclosed early in the fundraising process, after Christa made her hundred-dollar pledge.
“I mean of course Rick is in photos,” Christa replied. “His band was huge, and you were at practically every show they played in Boston.”
“So you’re fine with it?”
“Of course.”
Truth be told, calling Rick’s band, The Shipwrecked Survivors, huge was somewhat generous, but they did claw their way up to headlining locally, and they toured the East Coast multiple times. Rick’s picture
had been in The Boston Phoenix more than once, and The Shipwrecked Survivors could be heard late at night on WBRU and WBCN. Once, when Christa was riding shotgun with Rick, a car with a Shipwrecked Survivors bumper sticker cut them off. Rick laughed gleefully while he laid on the horn.
The relationship felt so cliché to Christa now. She was nineteen when she met Rick through mutual friends; he was five years older. He was her first real boyfriend, and without being entirely conscious of it, she made her life about his. Her vague journalistic ambitions manifested as Shipwrecked Survivors reviews and tour diaries in photocopied zines with tiny circulations; she took a break from college to travel and run his merch table and didn’t return to school for over a decade.
At the time it all felt right. There was this show in Providence. Christa had just put school on pause. The club was packed. The Shipwrecked Survivors kicked into “Not Anymore”—a fan favorite— near the end of the set. It felt like everyone in the room started shouting along, like every surface was vibrating. Rick was bathed in red light, slick with sweat and singing his heart out. Christa, holding down the merch table even though everyone’s attention was on the stage, felt a rush of certainty that she had done the right thing, choosing music and adventure and love.
Fast forward and Rick ended things after three years. Christa moved back home and went to work at Shelton’s, first to save up for an apartment and then because change was hard. The Shipwrecked Survivors lasted a few more years, but never got really famous. From what she knew, Rick was happily married now and involved in some kind of bar or microbrewery or something down the Cape. Christa didn’t long to be with the man he was now, who was essentially a stranger, but their relationship stood out in her memories as exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.
After responding to Toby’s texts, Christa sat at her kitchen table thinking about Rick and every bad decision she ever made. She wished she could put her feelings into words for someone younger, like Lacey, to understand.
Sometimes she imagined that there were people out there, measuring everything you did and deciding that you had done it wrong. But the thing was, you could follow your heart and try not to become someone you despised, and yet you could still wake up and find that time had passed too quickly and all of your passion and energy had not carried you very far at all. People couldn’t understand heartbreak or disappointment unless they lived it themselves, she knew, but she wished there was another way.
“What shall we ever do?” she said glassworks
aloud, rising from the kitchen chair so she could shower before bed.
Knowing that she would have to stand in front of twenty people offering her non-expert opinions on poetry, Christa took extra time getting ready on Tuesday morning. She worked weekends at Shelton’s and had Tuesdays and Thursdays off for school, which meant the presentation in Tucker’s class would be the most important part of her day. She ran a lint brush over her black cardigan, white blouse, and black pinstriped pants, carefully assessing the results in her bedroom mirror. She had emailed the presentation script to Lacey—who did not reply—on Friday last week.
It was a cold, windy day on campus and Christa was sniffling and disheveled by the time she made
“
came to class each week with only a briefcase full of books annotated by hand and stuffed with post-its and bookmarks. Today he was paging through a thick poetry anthology that Christa hadn’t seen before.
“Good morning,” he said without looking up.
Christa wished him good morning and asked what he was reading.
“It’s for the class I’m prepping for the summer,” Tucker said, raising his eyes. “I’m teaching a poetry writing workshop.”
“Is it just for English majors?” Christa asked.
Tucker shook his head. “It’s for anybody who passed Writing 101. Lots of non-majors take it, actually. Do you write poetry?”
People couldn’t understand heartbreak or disappointment unless they lived it themselves, she knew, but she wished there was another way. ”
it from the commuter parking lot to Brooks Hall where Tucker’s class met. She stopped off in a restroom to get cleaned up. She nodded to herself in the mirror. You got this. Tucker was already sitting at the head of the classroom when Christa arrived. Unlike some of her other professors who relied heavily on laptops or tablets, Tucker
“No,” Christa said. “I mean, I don’t anymore. I did, growing up, like everybody did as a teenager. But not now.”
“Well,” Tucker said, “You can always start again.”
“True,” Christa said. She might have asked something more, but a classmate came hurrying in and began asking Tucker questions.
Christa pulled out her printed copy of the presentation script and skimmed it again, looking up occasionally to see if Lacey had arrived. Five minutes after Tucker took attendance, Lacey still wasn’t there. Christa discretely checked her phone for emails or texts while the other groups presented, but there was nothing from Lacey. She felt her cheeks getting hot.
When it was time for the presentation on lines 111-138, Tucker looked at Christa. “Christa, you were supposed to present with Lacey, who appears to be absent,” he said. “Do you need to wait until next week?”
Christa took only a moment to consider. “No,” she said, rising from her seat.
After class, Tucker handed the presenters folded pieces of paper with their grades and his comments as they exited the room. Christa got an “A,” and Tucker had used the word “insightful.” There was nothing to be upset about. Still, as she drove home after her last class, she thought of emailing Lacey. I hope you’re feeling okay and that nothing’s wrong, but a heads-up would have been nice, she would write. I was the only one who presented alone.
She never sent the email. She imagined Lacey lounging on a beanbag chair in her boyfriend’s dorm room.
“Remember how I was supposed to do, like, a poetry presentation with that older lady in my class? I missed
it and now she’s all pissed,” Lacey would say with a peal of laughter before reading the email aloud in a mocking tone. Christa decided she would just talk to Lacey the next time she saw her in class.
Lacey didn’t appear on Thursday, though. Weeks passed with no sign of her.
For Christa, the rest of the semester went smoothly. Tucker seemed to like her essays. She signed up for the summer poetry workshop after confirming that it could fulfill one of her elective requirements no matter what she majored in. In the short stretch of weeks between the end of the spring semester and Tucker’s poetry workshop— an intensive that would take place entirely in the month of June—Christa had extra time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She caught up on her laundry and stayed caught up on it. She had time to read for fun. She even tried to get started on some poems.
Meanwhile, Toby’s crowdfunding efforts were so successful that he was now planning to pay a graphic designer friend to create a professional layout for the book. The designer asked Toby if he had any artifacts from the scene—ticket stubs, flyers, zines—and Toby proceeded to ask his friends the same thing. So one Thursday with little else on her schedule, Christa dug into the shoeboxes half-forgotten at the back of her living room closet. glassworks 14
She swiped a thin layer of dust from the lid of the first box and opened it, feeling a surge of nostalgia at the tangle of mementos that greeted her. There were buttons, postcards, handbills, bumper stickers, newspaper clippings, lucky pennies, and dried flowers. She hadn’t realized she kept so much.
She found a photocopied zine called Stealing the Scene at the bottom of the third and final box. The last few pages were dedicated to record reviews, several of which she did not remember writing. Indeed, they seemed to be written by an entirely different person, a person who used the word “squee.” She wondered about the people who made the records—great local musicians who never became famous. She remembered reading about the death of one of the singers a few years ago. A motorcycle accident. She decided to take a break and call Toby.
“That’s amazing,” her brother said after Christa told him about the trove of memorabilia. She had organized the interesting stuff for him in a single box.
“Would you be okay with me scanning some of the zine reviews that you wrote?” Toby asked. “It would provide good context, especially for the lesser-known acts.”
“Sure, if you want,” Christa said.
“Maybe you could write an intro for the book,” Toby added. “Some reflections from a chronicler of the scene.”
“I’m sorry, a ‘chronicler of the scene’?”
“Well what would you call it?”
“A pathetic hanger-on?”
“That was never true.”
“Okay, chronicler of the scene,” Christa agreed. “Yeah, I could try to write an intro. What does this gig pay?”
“Um—lunch sometime next week?”
“Deal.”
They planned for Toby to come over on Sunday morning before work to pick up the box.
When Sunday arrived, Christa had a buoyant feeling. When she kept these boxes of stuff, she had a vague sense that someone, one day, would want to see the contents. She loved that it was true, but she also didn’t care whether Toby brought any of the stuff back. She checked her watch. There was time to get Toby a coffee, a show of appreciation for making her part of his project.
Waiting in line at the donut shop, Christa ran words through her mind. She was thinking about the people and places she used to know, and how she would describe them now, through the scrim of memory, without using the word “squee.” Then she caught a glimpse of the cashier.
It was Lacey, of all people.
She looked tired, and acne dotted her forehead. Christa
debated whether to say anything about Lacey’s disappearance from class. She wondered if she should even acknowledge that they knew each other, but when it was Christa’s turn, Lacey’s eyes immediately filled with embarrassed recognition.
“Lacey,” Christa said. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” Lacey said, her smile weak and wry. “May I take your order?”
Christa ordered the two coffees and shifted her weight from one foot to the next as she waited for them. She thanked Lacey as she crumpled a five-dollar bill into the tip jar.
to Tucker, but I wanted to say sorry to you and explain.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I missed the presentation. The interview for this job came up and I obviously should have rescheduled it for a different time, but I just—needed the job.” It was a windy morning, and the hair that had come loose from Lacey’s ponytail was swirling around her face as she spoke. “My mom has Parkinson’s. She worked as a receptionist for a long time but she got sick enough that she had to retire, and we just needed more money. I was stressed and started taking all
“ ...she knew what it was like to be young and end up somewhere different than you expected. But she wasn’t sure how to say it, or how it would make anything better. ”
She had already crossed the shop’s parking lot and secured the coffees in her car’s cupholders when she heard her name being called. Lacey was jogging toward her with a paper bag.
“Hey,” Lacey said, “You forgot your donuts.”
“I didn’t order donuts.”
Lacey shrugged and held out the bag. “They’re chocolate.”
“Thanks,” Christa said, accepting them.
“Look,” Lacey said. “These aren’t excuses and I didn’t say any of this
these hours here. School just kind of fell away.” Her face was flushing in patches like she was going to cry.
“I’m sorry that’s happening,” Christa managed after a pause. “And—it’s okay. I got an ‘A’ anyway.”
Lacey laughed.
“Are you going to stay in school?” Christa asked.
“I’m kind of trying to figure that out.”
“Sure,” Christa said. She wished she could explain. She didn’t want to deliver a lecture about how quickly time passes or how life disappoints glassworks 16
you—she just wished she could explain that she knew what it was like to be young and end up somewhere different than you expected. But she wasn’t sure how to say it, or how it would make anything better.
“Life sucks sometimes,” she said instead of everything she actually meant.
“Totally,” Lacey said. They both laughed and Christa saw tears clinging to Lacey’s lashes.
“I have to get back to work,” Lacey said. “But it was good seeing you.”
“Good luck with everything,” Christa said.
Lacey thanked her and dashed back across the parking lot. Christa watched her disappear into the donut shop, then checked her watch. Toby would be over soon. She dropped the bag on the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel.
Christa’s last time seeing The Shipwrecked Survivors play was a few weeks before the breakup with Rick. Deep down she already knew it was ending. It was in the way they spoke to each other, the way Rick looked at other women, the way they didn’t talk about a distant future together anymore. She had spent another night behind the merch table, and was watching another show nearing its conclusion with a raucous performance of “Not Anymore.”
Christa was usually fairly reserved if she was working at a show, but that night she squeezed her eyes shut
and sang along with the simple chorus: It was, It was, For so long it was, But not anymore, Not anymore, Not anymore. Something sad and liberating and sorry and true blossomed in her chest. After the final squall of guitar feedback, she opened her eyes.
runnInG woman
John Fitzsimmons
glassworks 18
euloGy
Al Maginnes
Afterlife is a stone buried in a riverbed. You must be willing to grope blindly in order to find it.
My friend who died for thirty seconds saw nothing. No bright light. No voice urging him back. Just nothing.
Imagine yourself a skeleton carrying flowers, raising a long hand to rap on a door. Does the door open? Why?
Some nights it’s easy to believe we were invented by the moon, shaped by gentle palms of wind. Some nights, we believe nothing.
If I walk into a temple tonight, will there be candles to light so I can be glad my friend’s name is not ready for fire?
The blaCk-speCkleD anGel fIsh
Terry Savoie
ascends near the surface of the aquarium in the cardiologist’s waiting room. She—I imagine a she, but who’s ever certain?—
’s simply napping & floating like a whispered dream to assist me in untying knots I have in my gut. I watch her for several minutes while continuing to read a few more pages of Simone Weil, not knowing what else to do but pick up at the place I left off last night, what I read by nightlight & now by this harsh, glaring aquarium light.
I look up occasionally to view that poor captive, a blackspeckled angel fish, gently suspended, apparently able, I surmise, to grasp the concept of Solitude.
This fish might vaguely comprehend Weil as a sympathetic Other also out of water, a beautiful & solitary Other who only wished to swim back to the home she never really knew.
eTernal Ghazal
Alison Stone
We wipe tears on our sleeve. The dead stay dead. No matter how we grieve, the dead stay dead.
Do angels guard us? Are birds souls of those we’ve lost? Don’t be naive. The dead stay dead.
His brother, tanned, in swim trunks, reaches out. Despite a dream’s reprieve, the dead stay dead.
Naked, pre-apple, were we immortal? Too easy to blame Eve. The dead stay dead or else come back in bodies we won’t know. Judged by what we perceive, the dead stay dead.
Robot surgeons, men on the moon. Even with what science can achieve, the dead stay dead.
Moved by his song, Hades gave Orpheus permission to retrieve the dead. Stay dead,
Eurydice wished as she walked. He turned. In the sad myths we weave, the dead stay dead.
Is that her voice? His sneakers on the stairs? Our dumb senses deceive. The dead stay dead.
How can some sky kingdom be paradise if we can never leave? The dead stay dead,
though Stone sees her mother come back in her daughter’s face. Won’t believe the dead stay dead.
DIsappearInG lInes
Willy Conley
TensIon over seven ThousanD mIles: an InTervIew wITh suzI ehTesham-zaDeh by
Ethan Gross, Sophia Nigro, and Rachel Yuro
Western media’s portrayal of Iran has always been complicated, to say the least. There are a pile of stereotypes and misunderstandings that still run rampant in our culture.
Writer Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh breaks down these notions in a series of touching and grounded stories in her award-winning, debut short story collection Zan. As an Iranian-American, she reflects on the complications that arise when the cultures you stem from are “different in every conceivable way.” In this interview, Ehtesham-Zadeh explores the complexities and difficulties of her dual heritage, along with what she hopes readers take away from her stories.
Glassworks Magazine (GM): In your short story collection Zan, there are many references to the numerous differences in the cultures between America and Iran. How does your dual heritage influence the way you talk about both countries? Does the tension between them and/or your feelings about the conflict bleed into your work?
Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh (SEZ): I’m a firm believer in the human family, and I do believe there is more that
unites us than divides us. That said, “numerous differences” is a bit of an understatement when describing the cultures of America and Iran. It’s hard to imagine two cultures that are more unlike one another. They are different in every conceivable way, from the obvious (language, government, food, religion, clothing, customs) to the not-so-obvious (philosophical and ethical framework, attitudes toward individualism, humane orientation, gender definition, ontological perspectives). Americans and Iranians might be part of the same human family, but they are like estranged third cousins twice removed.
I hover somewhere in between the two cultures, which is not always a comfortable place to be. Someone once said that those of us who have dual heritage find ourselves sitting between two chairs, and this analogy describes me perfectly. As soon as I begin to grow comfortable in one of the two chairs, the other one beckons to me. It doesn’t help matters that Iran and the United States are quite literally on opposite sides of the globe.
The tension between my two cultures does more than just “bleed into” my work—it is the very meat
of my work. The external conflict between Iran and the U.S. turns into a kind of civil war that rages inside of me. I’m a seasoned culturestraddler, and that condition informs everything I write. Although it can be bewildering at times, culturestraddling is not a curse. On the contrary, I regard it as one of the greatest gifts I have received as a writer, and one that continues to open deep wells of inspiration for me.
GM: We noticed a theme in the stories “The Daughters” and “Dying in America” of losing part of one’s identity, specifically in terms of becoming more American and less Iranian. Have you felt a disconnect between yourself and Iran because you live in America, or is this something you’ve seen in many Iranian-Americans?
we navigate that by learning to live comfortably inside the gulf. It’s its own thing—a whole new kind of identity—and it has its own set of challenges and rewards.
GM: There’s a lot of traveling in between America and Iran in your stories. Do you think it’s important for people with dual heritage to have this type of physical connection with both countries they stem from? Do you think someone can still have a strong connection with that part of themselves if they can’t/don’t travel to the country often?
SEZ: It goes without saying that people with dual heritage should spend as much time as they can in each of their countries. There is no substitute for the total rousing of the senses that only physical presence can supply. In my story
“ We are divided selves in some ways, but we navigate that by learning to live comfortably inside the gulf. It’s its own thing a whole new kind of identity and it has its own set of challenges and rewards. ”
SEZ: There is most definitely a disconnect between me and Iran, but I’ve grown used to it over time, as have many Iranian-Americans. I’m guessing all hyphenated Americans feel a similar disconnect. We are divided selves in some ways, but
“The Daughters,” the senses are shocked when the daughters return to Iran after a long absence. When that happens, something has been irreparably lost.
Unfortunately, travel between Iran and the United States is not glassworks 25
easy. The two countries are more than seven thousand miles apart, and tickets are extremely expensive, which is an obstacle for many Iranian-Americans. An even bigger obstacle is fear. There are hundreds of horror stories about dual nationals being interrogated, incarcerated, and even abducted and summarily executed upon arrival in Iran. Although they are far less horrific, there are also stories of Iranian-Americans being held for hours by U. S. border control agents and subjected to intense questioning when they return to America after being in Iran. Even when they are not detained, they are regarded with suspicion upon re-entry, and they can feel it.
As for the ability to remain connected to Iran without physically traveling there, I suppose it is possible, and Iranian-Americans have devised many creative ways of keeping their culture alive in America. Because I now reside permanently in the U. S., I dedicate a lot of energy to nourishing my Iranian roots so that they won’t die. One of the driving forces behind Zan is the desire to remain connected to Iran. The book is both a product of this desire and an expression of it.
GM: In a lot of your stories, you strike a balance between seeing the good and the bad in Iran. However, in “Pride and Broom” you fully condemn Iran for its ideals regarding same-sex marriage. What drove that
decision to focus on this specific experience for this story, and how did you feel as you wrote it?
SEZ: It’s good to know that some positive features of Iran shine through in my stories. On balance, I believe there is more good than bad in Iran, even under the current regime. I’m defining good here not in political or practical terms, but in humanistic ones.
“Pride and Broom” is not supposed to be an angry story, but rather a sad one. The same goes for the other story that features a samesex couple, “Coming Out, Going Under.” These two stories are loosely based on the experiences of my older sister, who came out to our parents when she was around twenty and got married to a woman when she was in her forties. Both stories are greatly fictionalized, but I believe—or hope—that they accurately represent some of the struggles queer Iranians face. It goes without saying that there are as many queer Iranians as are there are queer people in any other population in the world.
I want to believe that both stories, while sad, offer a ray of hope. In “Pride and Broom,” the upshot of the story is that Parveen has found love, and no one and nothing will stop her from going for it. In “Coming Out, Going Under,” Leila experiences a powerful epiphany when she suddenly remembers glassworks
who she is, realizes she is not alone, and sees a viable path forward. Although her devotion to her father is so deep as to be nearly crippling, she will not allow herself to remain his prisoner.
I won’t deny, however, that there is some anger in both stories. Both are meant to condemn the Islamic Republic’s strictures regarding samesex relationships and its unjust and inhumane targeting of same-sex couples. On top of governmental repression, Iranian lesbians also face deeply ingrained, age-old taboos against homosexuality that persist today, especially among older Iranians. I’m also trying to express in these stories that there are millions of queer Iranians who are bravely working, in both subtle and overt ways, to change these attitudes— and that at the end of the day, love conquers all.
GM: When reading “The Baboon,” it almost felt as if we were hearing an actual story about your grandfather. Through the nuanced characterization and the very specific experiences portrayed, we began to question how much of this was fiction. How are your stories and characters influenced by your real-life experiences and the people you know?
SEZ: Whoever framed this question is a very astute reader—or perhaps I’m not as clever at sublimating and fictionalizing as I thought I was!
The grandfather in “The Baboon” is indeed based on my real paternal grandfather, who we called Pedar-jaan and who had a bagh in the countryside about four hours from Tehran. He was a bit of a prankster, like the grandfather in the story. Most importantly—and this is a confession—he was, in fact, given a baboon by a worker returning from the IranIraq War, and the baboon did run wild in his orchards for a time.
I didn’t make that part up.
There are many stories in Zan that are purely made-up, but most of them have at least a basis in real people and real events. A few are nearly autofiction, but I won’t say which. I’ll leave that to the astute readers to decide.
GM: In the title story, you describe the relationship between the narrator and Iran as one of “mother and daughter.” Is this a common way Iranian women view their country, or is this how you personally view your relationship with Iran?
SEZ: I’ve never heard any of my compatriots refer to Iran as a mother, but I doubt any Iranian, regardless of their gender, would object to that appellation.
Most people have tangled feelings toward their mothers: a mixture of love, respect,
gratitude, fear, anger, and more. A similar tangle of emotions can be felt toward one’s country. The word motherland dates back to the 16th century, and it was coined for a reason. The feelings toward both mother and country are especially tangled for contemporary Iranians. The mother figure has always been sacred in Iranian culture, and pride in Iran’s rich history has always been deeply embedded in the Iranian psyche. But thanks to the abuses Iranians have been subjected to over the past few decades, these traditional views have been shaken, and they haven’t been replaced with comfortable new ones. When the speaker in the title story refers to Iran as her mother, she then goes on to describe the many ways her mother has confused and disappointed her. This is an attempt to capture the changing and colliding concepts of both mother and country that Iranians are currently grappling with.
There is something else I hope to capture when I refer to Iran as a mother: a kind of reverence, not just for mothers, but for women in general, that is ingrained in Iranian culture. Women inspired Iran’s greatest classical poets, musicians, and thinkers, who saw them as symbols of perfection, courage, rationality, and wisdom. This reverence is still present in Iranian culture, despite the outward misogyny of the Islamic Republic.
GM: In “Venus Furtiva,” we see the narrator perform a dance that’s meant to express her feelings regarding Iran and her body. However, she’s upset when no one seems to get what she was trying to express. Do you worry that people won’t fully understand the complex thoughts and feelings you’re trying to convey regarding Iran, much like the narrator of this story?
“ Like all women, Iranian women laugh, dance, fear, think, and love. They are not stereotypes—they are just people. ”
SEZ: This is a great question, but it’s a sensitive one. At the risk of offending my American friends, for whom I have the utmost respect, I have to say that not one of them, even the most highly educated or well-traveled, can fully understand my feelings about Iran. This is partly because Iranians have been portrayed in the media as angry people clad in dark, shapeless clothing who hate America but somehow still want to be American. Iran itself has been portrayed as the “bad guy”— the bogeyman of the region, and perhaps of the world.
Zohreh/Venus, the protagonist of “Venus Furtiva,” faces these glassworks
misunderstandings, with the added layer of being an Iranian woman living in America and engaging in an art form that is misunderstood and scorned in both cultures. She designs a dance that she hopes will embody her complex feelings, but she realizes after she has performed it that it has backfired. She has delivered exactly the wrong message and has succeeded in confirming all the attitudes she was trying to erase.
I’m not a dancer, but I have often felt that I am similarly misunderstood. Yes, I worry that my book will confuse some readers and rub others the wrong way. I worry that it will be branded as anti-Muslim or anti-American when neither of those is my intention. To tell the truth, I worry that my responses to the questions in this interview will be misunderstood too.
GM: Because Zan is a collection of short stories, you have a large number of characters representing many different backgrounds. Yet, each character is developed with their own set of ideals and struggles. Presumably, your readers come from a variety of backgrounds as well, and you’ve given readers many characters to potentially relate to. What are you hoping readers will take away from this book?
SEZ: I’m delighted to hear that my characters represent many different windows into what it means to be
an Iranian or Iranian-American woman at this moment in history. Iranian women are too often seen through a very narrow lens, and this results in a skewed, incomplete, and inaccurate picture. One of my goals in writing the book was to widen this lens.
Iranian women are usually regarded in one of two extreme ways: either as suffering beings in need of “saving” or as fearless fighters who do nothing else in their lives but stand up against their oppressors. While both depictions contain elements of truth, there is obviously more to the picture. Like all women, Iranian women laugh, dance, fear, think, and love. They are not stereotypes—they are just people. This is perhaps the most important message I hope my readers will take away from the collection.
There are lots of hijabs in my book, but I hope readers will come away with the understanding that the rebellion Iranian women engage in is about far more than the hijab. The hijab is certainly a symbol of female repression, and the Iranian government certainly uses it as a weapon. But I hope I have managed to show that the hijab can also be a weapon in the hands of Iranian women themselves, as it so clearly was during the Zan, Zendegi, Azadi movement.
Ehtesham-Zadeh
Good fiction should not be didactic, but I do confess that I hope my readers will learn something from my book. Many have told me that they found themselves pausing their reading to look things up, and this makes me happy. Even if my readers don’t come away with new information, I hope they will come away with new appreciation for a rich and layered culture that is so often misrepresented in literature from the Western world.
Finally, while I don’t want to glamorize, exoticize, or simplify Iranian women, it is my goal in the book to pay tribute to them. I had the privilege of growing up with many formidable Iranian women as my role models, and Iranian women continue to be a source of inspiration to me. I hope my readers will also feel inspired by them and will come away with a sense of our common humanity.
Ultimately, I hope Zan will expand my readers’ hearts as well as their minds.
CurbeD
Willy Conley
mIssInG The plaTes
Jim Daniels
I stumbled onto a church fair on a green hillside near a tiny village of old stone buildings. The steeple dominated the lush landscape— the point of steeples: to reach toward heaven, to pierce the sky, to find a way through.
Though I could have been anywhere. Already drunk, mid-day. Though I could have been sober. If I’d just awoken. Thick gray clouds veined with rain marched over the hillside.
No one ran to take shelter. It would blow over, the man said. He held three scuffed balls in each hand. Plates leaned against makeshift boards behind him. One pound for three balls. I counted out change, and the man took my coins.
He flinched at my breath. I flinched at my empty pocket. I studied the three balls in one hand. The size of baseballs, but not baseballs. Wooden, smudged, nicked with dents and cuts. I keep saying three, but it could have been four.
My hand shook, but I held on. I reared back and let go of the first ball. It sailed high over the plates and onto beautiful green grass awaiting rain. Maybe the balls were too light. I was used to baseballs and hard liquor. I could have used
something to eat. Breakfast had been fugitive. Ah, hell. The other two balls sailed just as far. You’re supposed to try to hit the plates, he said. He looked for someone to exchange looks with. Hell, I was used to that. Fuck off, I wanted to say
but it was a church carnival. He extended his other handful of balls to try to entice me to spend another pound. The rain started aslant in the wind. People sheltered under the food tent. Pies and breads. I could have used some to soak up my sins. The man stood still. Later, he’d have to wander through wet grass to search for my errant throws. Not even close, I know. I should at least have gotten closer with each ball but could not adjust the trajectory of my anger. I throbbed with thirst and hunger. Pouring now, but the two of us stood. He wore a bowler hat and a bright red vest. A minister in black waved him toward the tent. I should have said something. He should have said something. I’d broken no dishes. I needed a plate. Just a carnival game. Though it could have been the rest of my life. I could have been anywhere. I don’t know what I was aiming for. There with the rain, the steeple, the row of silent plates.
new york CITy subway, here I Come
Denise Utt
I fancy a subway where lofty straps hang with jamming partners doing the swing, twist, or jerk. A subway with a crowded floor and a seated band, rumps shuffling, mouthpieces simpatico to the train’s clang.
Inside this B to Brooklyn car, pumps, sneakers and rubbers hoof-stomp the floor, bang freely until my spinning wheel, iron-tight fists, and hollow inside rhythm in and join up-, down-, and outof-towners. Do-re-mi . . . terra firma to the skies.
Scale: a quick lick by subway, I’ll hit more vistas. A bus waltzes. A taxi bunny hops. A cyclist prances the minuet— forward balancing, bowing, and toe-pointing— then drags his partner aboard to rest while he shakes a leg in a salt-of-the-earth conga.
I fancy a subway, the spunky, bluesy roots to an improv composition: the City, where eyes with varied views lace the same step-on-it shoes, keeping time. At the end of my beat, I fancy a jazzy kick that wiggles from hot tracks, one cool body out the door.
snowy TraIl, GhosT ranCh
Kelly DuMar
Two funerals anD a Cubs Game, so Three funerals
Rob Bailey
The last time I saw Thomas, I threw him a bounce pass from the point, and he muscled through the paint, pivoting on the block and banking a layup off the glass—three the hard way—after which Coach Tim, his hair gray and his eyes yellow from the jaundice, rewarded the success by benching him. Did it every time, and the strategy after fifteen years is no less dumbfounding. The best defense is a masochistic offense. Thomas found humor in it, as he always did, but I was furious. He was the only guy on our winless team whom I could trust. One kid would dribble into the corner with his head down. Another would immediately shoot and consequently airball. A third—these were the starters, mind you—was actually talented, but his dad, Coach Tim, would shout at him to pull up his skirt or dig his panties from his ass crack, which, far from motivational, elicited from his son a nervous twitch, his eyes shifting around the gym in embarrassment, looking fruitlessly under the fluorescents for somewhere to hide. Wait. That was middle school, but Thomas and I went to high school together, though admittedly, we drifted apart. I didn’t tell anyone that my dad moved away, not even him,
and he was too busy getting laid to indulge in teenage angst. He traded his high-top basketball shoes for a closet full of SB Dunks, the overflow lining the baseboard around the perimeter of his bedroom. Each pair was a different color and had a matching pair of Beats by Dre headphones, brand new at the time. He brushed waves into his hair and wore a durag for the first time in his life. He hit the gym. The chubby comedian I knew as a kid vanished in a Monte Carlo. His torso distorted to an upside down triangle for which no one made shirts. His father was fifty when Thomas was born, perhaps explaining why he was wise enough to embrace his youth.
The next time I saw Thomas, his father had died. His locks hung like his eyes from the pain. He wore a black suit and tie, and so did I. The weight of the moment crushed all but my slightest anxiety over how he would want to hug. To dap up would be far too cavalier, but a full embrace might be too intimate for him, even now. Not so. Over his right shoulder, I saw the open casket, flanked by the red, white, and blue flags of the Chicago Cubs and the United States, the latter folded into a triangle and framed in gold. We pulled back and our eyes met.
“How’s your mom?” I said. “She’ll never leave the house again.”
I walked slowly down the center aisle, his high school girlfriend in the front pew, and kneeled before his father. The same could be said for my mom, except for two trips to the grocery store and an ambulance, though I didn’t know it yet. I didn’t know why she wasn’t there, presumably some combination of pride and privacy. I didn’t know that in exactly two months, I’d be in his shoes.
Her last words were written. I hear it in past, but I feel it in present. I stretch a mask from ear to ear and sanitize my hands.
“Good morning, Mom,” I say, loudly but gently. “How are you feeling?”
She can’t answer and doesn’t need to. I look at my sister Kelly, standing on the other side of her bed, notebook in one hand, Mom’s swollen palm in the other. Kelly purses her lips as if to say trust science. I look back at Mom. It’s too hard. I look up at her vitals like the screen is a scoreboard, but I’m illiterate. I walk with jitters around the foot of the bed and attempt to steady myself on the air conditioning, hands wider than shoulder-width on the thin metal ledge at my waist, where the single window pane begins, a panorama of the Chicago skyline to the north.
The sun rises over the lake, a midsummer morning, cloudless save the white scarf that wraps around the spears of the Sears Tower. Today is—who the hell knows. Hospital-time, they call it. Clinical quicksand. The analog clock in her room is stuck at 6:07 p.m. The digital one: 7:06 p.m. The numbers bleed into pipettes and pool in graduated cylinders. The board game Sorry! sits on a shelf below the white board, mocking us all.
“ Today is who the hell knows. Hospital-time, they call it. Clinical quicksand. ”
I turn back to Mom. Our faces are so similar, it’s like watching myself die. She lifts her free hand, swollen and sweating for the first time in her life, fluid that leaked into no man’s land. She pantomimes writing. Kelly hands her the notebook and a pen. Mom, nothing if not consistent, writes in all caps, the letters growing in size:
GET THE KIDS AND BRING THEM H—
“Here!” Kelly and I say. Liam is three now, and her second is six months. She steps out of the room to ask the doctors if they’re allowed. I take Mom’s hand like a baton, a torch I’m begging her to keep burning. You can’t have it both ways.
I bounce from foot to foot like a bench player, full of useless energy, ultimately powerless.
“You’ve got this, Ma,” I say. “We’ve got this.”
I find myself praying. They’re out of blood pressure medicines, and I’m out of practice. I convince myself that I believe. Mom believes. That’s what matters. When I was young, she and I always held hands during the Our Father, and when she squeezed mine, I squeezed back. I squeeze her hand. She squeezes. There’s hope. She was intubated two nights ago, when they rushed her to intensive care, and was extubated yesterday, ahead of schedule. But between last night and this morning—
Kelly returns. They can bend the rules for Liam, but the infant is at serious risk for infection. Kelly FaceTimes her mother-in-law. The baby’s bright blue eyes shine like Earth itself. Kelly says, “Hi Gommy!” with a smile on her face and a tear magnified by her glasses. Mom waves. My heart and stomach switch places. Liam arrives with Kelly’s husband, Jim, a limit on the number of visitors. I leave.
Dad sits in a ball in the waiting area. He looks up when I enter. I nod sharply down once: we’re still in it. He looks ready to bawl; I feel ready to scream. Neither of us has any idea what we’re doing. I pace around the waiting area, bouncing on my toes, furiously tapping the
sign of the cross, like a woodpecker at my forehead.
A scratchy voice on the PA:
What is this flesh I purchased with my pains
This fallen star my milk sustains
“So they re-intubate,” I mumble, still pacing. “It’s not over. We just gotta fight. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded. If anyone can do it, it’s Mom.”
Jim and Liam come through the door. I stop pacing, and Dad perks up. “Gommy didn’t get me a car,” Liam says with a sigh.
Dad clenches his fists and scrunches his face and retreats back into a ball. Gommy always gets Liam a Hot Wheels car. Except last time, Dad says, when she intentionally didn’t because Liam misplaced the previous one, and she wanted to teach him a lesson. But now the loose end hangs over her head. Jim holds Liam’s hand as they walk down the hall to the elevator, not to leave but to take a break in Purgatory Cafe.
“Was I brave?” Liam says.
“You were brave,” Jim says.
I buzz back through the door and rush into her room. Kelly’s holding her right hand now, so I circle around to her left and slide my fingers under her slick and swollen palm.
“Mom,” I say.
A slight nod.
“Look at me.”
She does, summoning enough strength to turn her head.
“I’m going to get Liam a car.”
She claps my hand vigorously. It’s all wrist, but it’s a far cry from paralysis, a fire beneath my feet. I run outside and look at Dad: “Don’t let them leave!”
I sprint to the elevator and ride it down to two. Sprint through the bright lights of the hall, past the security guard, into the dark and humid parking garage. Sprint across the concrete, down the exit ramp, and onto Cottage Grove. Jump in my car, slam the door, and forgo a seatbelt. Whip a U-turn and gun it down the street to CVS, the first spot I find. And again sprint across the blacktop, through the automatic door, and into a room that’s far too calm for the moment. My feet and eyes alike dart around the store, down the aisles and up at the signs, but no. Finally, I find a person in a red polo and fail to catch my breath: “Where are your toy cars?”
They do a double-take: “Straight back.”
I sprint down the aisle to the display stand and waste precious moments picking the right one: a ‘57 Chevy, the year Mom was born. I bolt back down the aisle, tap at the self-checkout, and fly through the automatic door. I have to make it. I catch the green arrow at Woodlawn for the first time in my life. Gun it back to Cottage Grove, where spots are open only because it’s Sunday. I throw it in park, cut the engine, and sprint—hotrod in hand—back up the entrance ramp (the car hill, Liam
would call it), channeling Mom’s fire and praying I’m not too late. I pull my torn visitor badge from my back pocket and flash it at the security guard as I run down the hall to the elevator, which arrives immediately, but it’s going down. The next one drags. I bounce on my toes and stare at the descending numbers. Finally, a ding! I enter alone and press nine. It stops at seven, and someone enters with a burger from Purgatory Cafe. I barf. At nine, the doors slowly open, and I sprint down the hall to the waiting area, where Dad is sitting with Liam. I almost blow it, almost give him the car myself.
“Why don’t you give it to Mom?” Dad says.
Holding it behind my back, I buzz into the ICU.
She gives me her strong, stoic gaze and the thumbs up of a satisfied general.
I nod. I look at Kelly: “I didn’t sanitize it.”
“It’s OK,” she says, pursing her lips again, less resolute this time, more resigned.
When we were kids, Mom often told us that she loved her mother, but she didn’t like her. She never elaborated. As I aged, our relationship strained and all but severed. Our increased communication since her diagnosis was but a faint gesture.
I turn back to Mom: “I love
Rob Bailey | Two Funerals and a Cubs Game, so Three Funerals
you, Mom,” I say. “And I like you.”
And I leave. I’m not strong like her. I know it’s over. I know, even as I refuse to accept, even as I listen to the doctor warn us about re-intubation; if it goes wrong, she’d need CPR, which would crack her ribs, which would be one of the worst ways to go, drowning in your own blood. Even as I snarl: then don’t fuck it up. Even as I hear him say DNR. Even as I walk, a ghost of myself, through the hall to the elevator, down to two, past the security guard, to the parking garage elevator, and back up to the roof of the garage, where I approach the garden of six-foot sunflowers, climb exhausted onto the concrete ledge, and lie back, letting my eyes close in the late morning sun. She’s standing outside my bedroom, brown curls, bright smile. I swing my feet to get out of bed, open my arms to hug her, and stand, plummeting eight stories to a black hole in the sidewalk. ~
A month after his dad’s funeral and a month before my mom’s, Thomas and I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. The Cubs scored all their runs before we arrived in the bottom of the second. We sat by the old bullpen in foul territory on the right field side. The Cubs wore their home jerseys: white with blue pinstripes, blue numbers, blue caps. St. Louis wore their gray away jerseys with two red cardinals perched on a
bat, red numbers, red caps. A light rain fell in our plastic pints, his water and my hazy IPA. The tarp would not be needed. The Cubs had a new kid with a cannon and a windup like Dontrelle Willis.
“Remember him?” I said.
“Of course,” Thomas said. “He kicked as high as you during Irish dance.”
“You would never catch me with my knee bent like that.”
“Do you still dance?”
“Not really,” I said with a sigh. “But Kelly runs McDowell, the group we grew up in.”
“ My point is: a lot of people have disappointed me over the years, but no one more than myself. ”
“How has she been?”
“Married with kids.”
“I’m sure she’s a great mom.”
“I always thought you two would end up together,” I said.
“You were always delusional.”
We laughed. The young Dontrelle Willis kicked his knee to his nose and fired a fastball. The left-handed batter launched a double into the right-center gap, where the ball bounced off the brown ivy. Not dead but dormant, waiting for the sun to enliven it. By July, it would be a vibrant green, as if it always glassworks
were. The Cardinals fans behind us cheered. The right fielder caught it off the wall and threw a rainbow over the second baseman, the cut-off man. Thomas and I shook our heads.
“I’m about ready for kids myself,” he said.
“I half-expected to meet them at the funeral.”
“Half of me was nervous to come back.”
“What, why?”
“I haven’t become the man everyone expected me to be.”
“But this is still your home,” I said, panning across the bleachers. The ads and screens were all new, but the yellow foul poles still said Hey Hey; the wind still blew; the flags still flew atop the manually operated scoreboard. “Everybody loves you.”
“Would they still love me if they knew how much I drank?”
“I—”
“Would they still love me if they knew what I did when I drank?”
“What did you—”
“Would they still love me if I wasn’t funny?”
His plastic pint of water caught a raindrop, and he took a sip.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I didn’t exactly stick to the plan either.”
“You seem to be doin’ all right.”
“See these shoes?” I lifted my left foot and rested the sole on the back of an empty seat.
“They’re too clean for beer and
peanut shells if ya ask me.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I told Kelly and everyone else at McDowell that I wouldn’t get a new pair until I toured with Riverdance. That was six years ago. Six auditions. I wore my sneakers down to rags, settled for a high school teaching job, and broke my promise.”
“That pales in comparison—”
“My point is: a lot of people have disappointed me over the years, but no one more than myself.”
“Is that supposed to be comforting?”
“I’m always gonna accept you.”
With that, we were ten years old again. Forty thousand fans cheered and chanted. Let’s. Go. Cubs. Let’s! Go! Cubs! LET’S! GO! CUBS! The crack of the bat. The pop of the glove. It didn’t matter that they never scored. Dontrelle’s descendent struck out the side to start the seventh and was subsequently benched.
“Remember Coach Tim?” Thomas said.
“That shit pissed me off.”
“Your cheeks were as red as our knock-off Bulls’ jerseys.”
“It was all so serious.”
“So brief.”
Bailey | Two Funerals and a Cubs Game, so Three Funerals
Rob
a sense of moTIon
John Fitzsimmons
peep show
DS Maolalai
this happened on the train a young woman sits next to me. unbuttons her coat, then opens the cup of a pocket. shows me in there a little bird.
snapshoT
Pat Daneman
She looks into the camera, starting to smile, shadows of leaves on her shoulders. A black and white girl with a name no one wrote on the back of this photo. A girl wearing gloves, a brooch on her collar. Tomorrow she’ll get a job selling perfume at Macy’s, the man holding the camera will take her to dinner, confess he’s met someone else, get down on one knee with a velvet box. Tomorrow she’ll go on vacation and drown. Someone will buy her a fur, steal her purse, break her nose, tell her she’s smart. One day she’ll own clothespins. One Fourth of July
she’ll get drunk on a beer, step off a curb, snap her ankle. She’ll walk with a twinge the rest of her life. Captured: the dimple in her cheek, the frizz humidity puts in her hair.
She never married. Her husband adored her. She was an only child, one of four girls with four girls of her own. She was her mother’s angel, her stepbrother’s past-midnight secret. She’s dead now, or the whiskered great grandma of a boy with a ring through his eyebrow embarrassed she lives in his house.
GIrls who fIsh
Pat Daneman
Don’t mind rowing out alone, are not afraid of barbs or slime, don’t waste worry time on what happens underwater.
Ache for the sudden strike, the wheeze of line, the thrash and strain, the captive wrestled like a weed from the salt furrows of the bay. Dream the creak and sway of docks and keep their knives close by and clean because they love the glint of scales shed from a blade, the quieting of gills, as shadows lengthen on dark water.
John boaTs awaITInG
Willy Conley
The Top up Kat
Echevarría Richter
Phoebe was on the bus to Knightsbridge when her grandfather finally had the decency to die. His nine grandchildren, of which Phoebe was the youngest, had been making their way back to New York in fits and starts for the past three days, ever since he had decided to drive himself to the hospital while having a heart attack and crashed his car on the way there. Train tickets were purchased and then canceled, flights booked and then rescheduled, as the grandchildren, all grown now, jockeyed to be the first to arrive without inadvertently spending any more time in upstate New York than was absolutely necessary. But the old man, as far as Phoebe could tell, relished the attention and kept them all in suspense: rallying and then flagging again, almost but not actually dying.
She had always hated him. It might have started with the teal nail polish she loved to wear in third grade—he disapproved—or it might have been something else, but by the time Phoebe turned ten, she’d grown brave enough to flip him off from the back seat of the rental car during their annual visit to the retirement community. If she did it just right, none of the grownups could see her in the rearview. But she was a grownup now, living in London,
and the only one, by her estimation, who was doing anything interesting with her life: a postgraduate course (as graduate degrees were called in the UK) in textile conservation. She was, in fact, on her way to the Victoria and Albert Museum to visit the new Ballets Russes exhibit, which had been mounted to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the dance company’s London debut in 1910. Bartosz from the coffee shop hadn’t wanted to accompany her, but she told herself it didn’t matter. He had been distracting her from her dissertation long enough.
For the past three days, Phoebe’s mother had been sending updates. The first text came on Monday morning and instructed Phoebe to come home immediately because her grandfather was dying. But then, an hour later: No, don’t book the flight just yet. On Tuesday: He might come through. Then, on Wednesday: It doesn’t look good, and your father’s a mess.
Each of the texts from her mother cost Phoebe £0.05 to receive, and another £0.05 to send a reply. By the third day of her grandfather’s stay in the ER, she had already gone to the corner shop twice to top up her mobile: first adding £10 to her account, then another £5. Like most international students, she had a pay-as-you-go plan, and in London
her life had come to revolve around top ups: her mobile, her Oyster Card, even electricity for the flat she shared with three undergraduate students in the southwestern outskirts of the city, halfway between the university in Roehampton, where she was on scholarship, and the shopping center in Putney, where she worked part time at a shop called Julian Graves that sold dried fruit and nuts.
They were either drunk or hungover, the undergrads. And it had been no different on Tuesday morning. Although they were all meant to take turns topping up the electric, £10 each, the lights wouldn’t turn on when Phoebe woke up and everything in the fridge was spoiled.
her bedroom door looking like a feral raccoon in a pleated miniskirt, Phoebe saw that she hadn’t even changed out of her clothes or taken off her makeup.
But it didn’t matter. “It was your turn to top up,” Phoebe informed her.
“Now?” Regina whined. “It’s so early. It’s still dark out.”
“It’s not dark out! We have no lights because you forgot to top up!”
She retrieved Regina’s coat from the floor and sent her down to the corner shop. Julian Graves was like a smaller version of Harry & David back home, which had been one of her favorite stores in the mall because they gave free samples in
“ She had grown accustomed, martyr-like, to sacrificing her time. It was the only way to make the numbers work. ”
“Regina!” Phoebe had shouted down the hall. Sometimes Phoebe felt bad for Regina—she wasn’t very bright and their two other roommates mispronounced her name on purpose to make it rhyme with “vagina”—but it had been the girl’s turn to top up the electric and she had forgotten.
“Whaaat?” came Regina’s muffled response. There had been an undergrad bop the night before—“Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes” was the theme—and when Regina opened
little paper cups. Now, Phoebe was allowed to take home anything she found that was past its expiration date. She now kept an emergency bag of macadamia nuts in her room (they were high in protein) along with a private supply of toilet paper because she was the only one who ever bothered to restock the bathroom.
Phoebe had just boarded the bus on Thursday afternoon when the latest bevy of text messages from her mother arrived. Her grandglassworks 48
father was finally dead. Officially this time. And she needed to come home. There was a flight out of Heathrow the next morning that would get her to JFK. From there, they would all drive upstate together. But because Phoebe would be flying at the bereavement rate, she would have to call the airline herself to book the ticket, and there were only two seats remaining.
Phoebe sighed. She knew she ought to feel sad, and she did feel genuinely bad for her father, but mostly she was annoyed because when she clicked through to the last of her mother’s texts, she saw she had only £4.90 remaining.
The quickest way to get from Roehampton to the V&A was to take the bus to Putney and then the District Line to South Kensington. But this route would have deducted £4.55 from her Oyster Card, so Phoebe had caught the 430 bus instead, which cost only £1.75. The journey would take over an hour because there were thirty stops between Harbridge Avenue and the museum, but she had grown accustomed, martyr-like, to sacrificing her time. It was the only way to make the numbers work.
From her seat in the front row of the upper deck, Phoebe dialed the airline. She now had £4.85 remaining on her mobile. She pressed one to Make a New Booking. £4.75 remaining. Pressed two for International Flights. £4.50
remaining. Pressed zero to Speak To a Representative. £4.25 remaining. Got bounced back to the Main Menu. £3.50 remaining.
The bus inched along the Putney High Street. The V&A, like most museums in London, was free to visit. But special exhibitions cost extra and Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, on top of her mobile, on top of her Oyster Card, on top of electricity for the flat, was going to cost her £18.
As she waited on hold, Phoebe wondered if Bartosz was at the coffee shop already. His full name was Bartłomiej, which no one in the shopping center could pronounce. As such, he always introduced himself using an Anglicized abbreviation of his last name, but Phoebe knew better. Her best friend in high school had been Polish, so she could pronounce both his first name and the proper nickname without having to be told: Bartosz, the “sz” translating on her lips to a soft “sh.”
On mornings when her shift at Julian Graves coincided with his at Café Nero and neither of their bosses were around, he’d slip out after the breakfast rush and bring her a cappuccino, served in a white ceramic mug atop a white ceramic saucer. He would wear his boyish smile, the one that made her forget that
he was nearly twice her age. And his blue eyes would twinkle, and his biceps would bulge in his flannel button-down shirt as he set the mug down on the counter, leaving her to wonder what on earth he was doing working at a coffee shop.
On mornings that he remembered, on mornings that he was paying attention—on mornings when he wanted her to meet him in the storeroom on the second floor of the shopping center during her lunch break or invite him back to her place after work—he would pile the saucer with extra treats: a square of dark chocolate wrapped in gold foil and a cube of caramel-colored raw sugar instead of the usual white. But when he was distracted, as he had been ever since finding out his exwife back in Poland was pregnant, he brought her milk chocolate instead of dark, which she didn’t like, and white sugar instead of raw.
Phoebe told herself it didn’t matter. Seated on the bus, she pressed two again for International Flights. £3.25 remaining.
She had seen the ex-wife once, when a photograph slipped from the pages of a book on Bartosz’s nightstand. It had been a few weeks ago, the first and only time he’d invited her back to his place. He shared a room with another Polish immigrant, so there was never any privacy. But Bartosz had told her he had plans: when he first arrived in the UK, he’d had to share not just
a room, but a bed. They had slept with their heads at opposite ends— this he repeated several times to Phoebe, gesturing with his hands to make sure his meaning was clear: nothing gay going on here—but now he had his own bed. And he was going to get his own room soon. And then his own flat.
He had explained to Phoebe that he was already making extra money on the side as both a personal trainer and a tutor. He taught Polish students who wanted to learn English and English students who wanted to learn Polish. Taped to the wall above his bed was a piece of green construction paper where he doled out grammar lessons to his roommate. The top line asked, “IS she hot?” The bottom line replied, “She IS hot.” In English, he explained with pride, you only had to reverse the order of the words to answer the question.
Bartosz’s ex-wife, by all accounts, was hot. Phoebe had tried not to stare at the photo.
“I am sorry,” he said, scooping the picture up from the floor and tucking it away out of sight. “I forget— I forgot I have this.”
But Phoebe had already seen everything: the woman’s pale skin, her straight black hair, her bare breasts, which weren’t nearly as impressive, size-wise, as Phoebe had feared. She was wearing a lacy thong, though, and white heels with laces that crisscrossed all the way up to her knees,
like trashy pointe shoes. She was thin too—definitely thinner than Phoebe—and lying on her side, facing the camera, her lips just barely open. Had Bartosz taken the photo?
Phoebe couldn’t fault him for keeping it. She had kept letters, necklaces, and the odd photograph too. But she had left them all behind in the States instead of dragging her baggage to London along with her. Sometimes, in small moments, Phoebe allowed herself to wonder just how much of an ex his ex-wife really was.
“ She suspected her classmates were right when they warned her that this wasn’t going to end well. ”
She suspected her classmates were right when they warned her that this wasn’t going to end well. Hadn’t Bartosz already told her that he was never going to fall in love again? But Phoebe couldn’t help herself. She met him after work sometimes at the Green Man in Putney Heath: the journey cost £1.75 on the bus, or, better yet, nothing at all deducted from her Oyster Card if she walked there and back. In the weeks since they’d first met, Bartosz had grown,
if nothing else, quite protective of her, and would always insist on walking her home after they left the pub. She would use her student ID to swipe them both in at the university’s gate so they could take the shortcut to her flat, then kiss him goodbye, and swipe him back out again once he’d seen her safely inside.
On Monday night, she had found him at the bar reading the Evening Standard to pass the time. He was wearing jeans, slightly flared, slightly out of style—but perhaps not in Eastern Europe?—and his usual Adidas sneakers. She wondered what she was doing with a man who wore flared jeans and Adidas sneakers. He wasn’t even particularly tall. But then he shifted his weight, and his thigh muscles bulged and his broad shoulders strained against his shirt and she remembered.
His blue eyes were bright and attentive as he leaned forward, eager, as always, to improve his English. “Is this why you bring me cappuccinos?” She asked. She had learned of her grandfather’s heart attack earlier that afternoon.
Bartosz had looked up from the paper, startled. Stood to pull up another stool.
“Do you like me because I speak English?” she repeated, needing suddenly, for reasons
she didn’t quite understand, to pick a fight.
“No. That is not all,” he hurried to assure her. “You are young and pretty and men like pretty girls.”
She told herself that was enough—that she was content to be young and pretty and capable of correcting his grammar—but that hadn’t stopped her from hoping she meant more to him when he asked if there was going to be a funeral, if she would need to fly home, if she had told her parents about him.
black blouse back into place before hurrying downstairs.
Now, as the bus crossed Putney Bridge, Phoebe was still on hold with the airline. A recorded voice thanked her for waiting for the next available representative. She had £2.95 remaining. She considered getting off at the next stop, walking back across the bridge, back to Putney, and finding Bartosz. She could
“ But if Bartosz said something nice, if he held her, then Phoebe might finally cry and she didn’t want to give either of these men—Bartosz or her grandfather—the satisfaction of her tears. ”
“No,” she replied. She had not told her parents about him. She was a student, yes, but not a child. “Why? Did you tell your mother?”
“What, that you—that I have a friend? A girlfriend?” He shook his head. “No, it would be a bad idea. She would ask how old you are.”
She had kept their relationship a secret for that very same reason: he was nearly 40, and she was only 24. Still, it was better this way. The stolen kisses. The darkness of the storeroom on the second floor of the shopping center. His arms, his hands, her back against the cardboard boxes. Pulling her
top up her mobile, go to the storeroom, and make the call in private. He would meet her as soon as he could slip away, and he would take her in his arms and whisper something in Polish to make up for the night before, which she wouldn’t understand. In the two months that they had been together, she had only learned to say “proszę” which meant “please,” “dzień dobry” which meant “good morning,” and “dziękuję” which was how she thanked him for her daily cappuccino. But if Bartosz said something nice, if he held her, then Phoebe might finally cry and she didn’t want to give either of these men—Bartosz or her grandfather— the satisfaction of her tears.
It had been fun, this thing with Bartosz, as long as he winked at her behind her boss’s back, leaning forward on the counter, his blonde hair coaxed into the gelled spikes that always made him look younger. It had been fun as long as he waited for her to close shop, greeted her with a kiss, and coaxed her, glass after cheap glass, to abandon her studies for the night. It had been fun as long as she cooked the frozen pizzas he paid for and they ate in her room, with pound coins fallen from his pocket and half-drank bottles of red wine framed by dark crimson circles on her desk.
But all that had changed the night before, because on Wednesday, after he’d walked her home from the Green Man for the second time that week, she finally asked him to stay. She hadn’t been planning on it— it was the wine talking—but she was glad that she had shaved her legs and worn her good underwear just in case: black briefs with lace at the waistband, bought on clearance at the H&M in Oxford Circus. Still, they had stopped just shy of having sex, and this was more his idea than hers, which didn’t make sense. Bartosz had been unable to sleep, even after he pulled the second-hand duvet cover up over them in her twin bed. Phoebe had fallen asleep listening to the rise and fall of his chest but awoke to feel his fingertips tracing the curve of her hip.
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.
“I can’t sleep,” he complained, “You are too sweet, I swear.” His stilted English made everything he said sound quaint and old fashioned. He was almost charming in his distress. But Phoebe, on account of the Green Man, on account of Bartosz, had started falling behind her classmates. She knew she needed to stop.
“Close your eyes,” she suggested, turning onto her side to face the wall. But he turned with her, pressing his body into every fold of her tall frame, his knees into hers, his sweaty chest to her back. He wrapped his arms around her. The tenderness of it surprised her—delighted her, even—but suddenly he pulled away.
“No,” he said. “I cannot stay. I must go home now. You need your rest. You are working tomorrow. And you have class, yes?”
“Fine,” she had told him. “But I’m not walking you out.” This meant he wouldn’t have her student ID to take the shortcut through campus, so he’d have to climb the gate and jump back down again. With any luck, he’d split the crotch of his stupid Eastern European jeans.
The next morning, which was Thursday, Phoebe stopped at Starbucks on her way into work and bought her own
cappuccino. Then she decided to skip her afternoon lecture—she hadn’t done the reading anyway— and go to the V&A instead.
At the start of her shift, she put the cappuccino next to the cash register on the counter where she knew Bartosz would see it because all of the shops had big glass windows and Julian Graves was directly across from Café Nero. She refused to look at him, but neither the Starbucks cup nor her own resolve made any difference because as soon as the breakfast rush died down, he appeared with another cappuccino and two squares of chocolate.
“Those are milk chocolate,” she said. “You know I don’t like them.”
“Yes. You tell me this every time. But this is why I bring you two.” He winked at her.
When she didn’t respond, he set the saucer down and lowered his voice. “You are angry with me, yes, for last night?”
She shrugged and reached for the Starbucks cup.
“You are young. It is complicated. How can I make it up to you?”
She shrugged again. “I’m going to the Ballets Russes exhibit this afternoon if you want to come.”
“I thought you have class, no?”
“I’m skipping it.” She hadn’t meant to tell him, but now that she thought about it, a proper date might make a nice change to the storeroom and the Green Man. And why shouldn’t he come with her?
He sighed. “Don’t skip your classes, Phoebe.”
“I’m an adult,” she informed him. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”
“Fine, fine. As you like. What is the exhibit? The Ballets Russes?”
“Yes, the Russian Ballet.” She allowed herself a sip from the Café Nero mug. “They performed in Paris mainly, but the dancers, the choreographers, they were all from Russia.”
“This was when, recent?”
“No, not recent. Not recently. The exhibit is for the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. But the Ballets Russes performed all the way through the 1920s. With costumes by Picasso and Coco Chanel. And backdrops by Henri Matisse and Léon Bakst.” She was about to list the composers—not just Stravinsky, but also Debussy and Prokofiev— when Bartosz interrupted her.
“Proszę, you go,” he said. “Please. I must work. And you will like it more if I am not there.”
“Couldn’t you change your shift? There’s a piece in the exhibit— a costume—that’s from Poland actually!” She had read all about it in The Guardian: a dancer by the name of Leon Woizikowski had been the last to perform the role of the “Chinese Conjurer” in the ballet Parade, which was choreographed by Léonide Massine and designed by Pablo Picasso. During the war, the dancer had buried the costume glassworks
in a trunk in his native Poland to keep it safe from the Nazis. Now, for the exhibit, it had been dug up and restored to its former glory: a brilliant kimono-inspired jacket with a quilted applique of gold spirals set against bold, triangular rays of yellow sunlight. The matching pants featured an asymmetrical design of swirling black and yellow stripes, like snakes slithering in the sand. Phoebe couldn’t wait to see it.
“Don’t you want to come?” she pleaded. “Don’t you want to see what I’m going to be writing about for my disserta—”
“
family back home in the States, and there were her classmates here in London. When the lines between these worlds blurred, as they did wherever Bartosz was concerned, things got messy.
“Come here, maleńka.” He had said, glancing quickly over his shoulder before he leaned across the counter and nuzzled his chin in her hair. “You go to your museum, and you have fun, and you tell me all about it after, okay?”
She had finished her shift at lunchtime, left the shop-
Upstairs, though, in the rain, London revealed itself like an Impressionist painting: gray skies over the Thames suddenly awash in monochromatic glory. ”
She stopped. She had crossed a line. Though she couldn’t say exactly why, she knew he didn’t care about her dissertation, and she didn’t really want him to. It was bad enough that she had overslept last week and nearly missed the lecture at the London College of Fashion, “Choreographing the Avant-Garde: Sergei Diaghilev, Bronislava Nijinska, and the Jazz Aesthetic of the Ballets Russes.” Phoebe knew that she lived her life in separate worlds: there was the university, and there was the shop; there was his place, and there was hers; there was her
ping center without saying goodbye, and gone home to change before boarding the bus to Knightsbridge.
Now, it was raining. Phoebe was still on hold with the airline, £2.50 remaining, but the rain made everything better because the 430 bus was a double decker and she had managed to snag a seat in the front row of the upper deck. There was simply no novelty in sitting down below. No romance. Upstairs, though, in the rain, London revealed itself like an Impressionist
painting: gray skies over the Thames suddenly awash in monochromatic glory. Pastry shops with blurry pastel confections in the window. Haberdasheries with wide-brimmed hats and chic, asymmetrical feathered fascinators she could never afford. It was enough to make Phoebe forget all about Bartosz. To make her feel that there was something quite magical, after all, about the life she was living in London.
Of course, Phoebe always queued politely with everyone else, but then, after swiping her Oyster Card, she would make a beeline for the stairs. Only two things could keep her from the front seat on the top deck: alcohol and children. If she was coming home from a night out dancing at Tiger Tiger in Picadilly Circus, neither she nor any of her girlfriends could make it up the steps in their stilettos. And if there were children queueing for the bus, Phoebe always let them go ahead of her, because it was the mature thing to do.
Now though, as the bus crawled through Fulham and West Brompton, Phoebe didn’t bother to look out the window. She had £1.50 remaining. By Earl’s Court, she was down to £0.75.
Her phone buzzed with a text. She clicked on the message icon, hoping it was Bartosz texting to apologize, but it was only Regina.
R there any loo rolls??
“Fuck’s sake,” Phoebe muttered under her breath. It had cost her £0.05 to open the text and she wasn’t going to waste another £0.05 on sending a reply, not when Regina was perfectly capable of buying her own toilet paper. If only she had gotten off the bus in Putney. Then she could have walked back to her flat and booked the flight on her laptop instead of wasting all of her remaining credit on hold with the airline. Surely she could have found some way to complete the bereavement paperwork online? Her father was going to be heartbroken if she didn’t make it home in time for the funeral. And her mother was going to kill her.
Finally a pleasant voice greeted her from the other end of the line.
“Hello? Yes, yes, I am here.” Phoebe stammered.
“How can I help?”
“I’m trying to book the 10:00 a.m. flight to JFK. From Heathrow,” Phoebe hurried to explain. Then, remembering her mother’s directive, she added, “It’s a bereavement flight.”
“Of course,” the voice replied. “Very sorry for your loss, ma’am. I’ll just need to verify your details to get started on the booking. Can you please spell your surname for me?”
“Please, is there a direct number where I can call you back if we get disconnected?” She dug through her purse for a pen. “I’m almost out of credit.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a direct line,” the woman replied, “but you’re always welcome to book your ticket at our website. Would you like the address?”
“No, I’m on the bus. Please, just keep going.”
She rattled off her date of birth. £0.35 remaining. Her passport number. £0.25.
“We’ll need a copy of the death certificate,” the woman explained. “Or a coroner’s statement?”
“Yes. My mom is having them sent over from the funeral home.”
“Very good. I’ll just add a note to the booking. Now, would you prefer the window seat or the aisle? Oh, actually—” the woman paused. Phoebe could hear her nails clicking against the keys of her computer like a miniature hailstorm. “I’m sorry. There’s only one seat remaining. It’s in the middle. Will that be alright?”
“Yes! I don’t care. Can you please just process my payment?”
“Of course, ma’am. Bear with me just a moment.”
£0.05 remaining. But she was almost there. All that Phoebe needed to do was to pay for the flight and get the confirmation number, then she could find somewhere to top up on her way into the museum and text her parents to let
them know that she had done it. Maybe she would stop at one of the charity shops near the museum and buy a hat. Yes, an obnoxious black hat to wear to the funeral. No one would know that she’d bought it second hand, and wouldn’t that show them? Her parents, her cousins, her late grandfather, and especially Bartosz. She would come home from London victorious.
But then, as Phoebe pulled her debit card out of her wallet, her phone buzzed with a text. i am sry we fight. come by after museum. chocolate u like back in stock and boss not here. xx
She had opened the message icon without thinking and just as Phoebe realized her mistake, an automated voice greeted her from the other end of the line: We’re sorry but your call has been terminated. Zero credit remaining.
Kelly DuMar
yahweh In a Can
Alex Carrigan
title from Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode “Laserblast”
It was the only can you found in the abandoned bomb shelter. It had no label, only a chrome shell that felt like a dying stove. The light reflecting off the chrome threatened to blind you if the light from all those warheads hadn’t already.
You feel around for a tab, but the can is welded shut. You move the can around in your hands, its weight hinting at its abundance if you could get past the aluminum gate.
You take the can, smash it against the nearest rock, but the only dents come from how the fingers in your hand begin to bruise and break with each bash.
You finally give up and drop the can, letting it roll away from you and under the remains of an altar. You feel desperate to reach for it again, but more blasts from the Heavens rain down, and you know it will stay out of reach.
You’ll cower in silence, waiting for the mayhem to cease, and only then will you paw your broken hands around the floor in hopes you find that can again.
how To lIve as a foreIGner In amerICa: waTCh ouT for your heaD
Deborah Saki
I lap up words from philosophical essays my friend shares with me— theses on the morality of the right to sex and arguments against travel. At night, I fold myself into a ball. There is a coldness that the covers do not conquer. Something within lacks fire. I browse through cheap fast fashion, promising to land at my door the next day with a simple click. Even on a skeletal budget, I cannot resist the urge. There is something about America that turns you, first and foremost, into a consumer.
There are other things I do. I try to watch shows, fast-paced comedies, melodramas, psychological thrillers. But my inner state forbids the stillness of focus. Visual entertainment does not suffice amid the weight of being unknown in an unfamiliar place.
I try to pray when I lie in bed at night. It was in The Covenant of Water that I first read that there are people so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of food. Maybe that is why my prayer does not work. There are people like me, so bereft, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of gentle companionship.
The man at the place where I worked said that leaving family behind when you move to America
does not matter. He said we come here to this country to help everyone back home. But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? I wonder. And what help does he refer to? What is it about America that sounds like help at home? No. I came here in selfishness. A selfishness that turned on me; a selfishness that became a poisonous viper of rootlessness and listlessness.
In “The Case Against Travel” by Agnes Callard, whom my philosopher friend tells me other philosophers dislike, an argument is made that travel does not change you. She refers here to the touristy kind of travel, not the kind undertaken for art, study, or benevolence. “We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting a change,” Callard argued. I appreciated the distinction between different kinds of travel because this kind, the kind that involves leaving kith and kin, has changed me. It has changed my head, and so, watch out for yours.
The first thing it did to my head was make it used to pillows. The woman who first picked me up from the airport when I arrived, who offered me a place to sleep, went shopping for pillows. She came back with two. “Oh,” I said, wondering why she had gone through all
the trouble. One would have been enough. Back at home, I did not even sleep with one. To move from that to two soft and comfortable ones seemed excessive.
“Don’t worry about it. They weren’t even expensive,” she said. “You know Americans. They love to be comfortable.”
“
I learned that being in America meant being comfortable. Big cars. Big drinks. Big plates of food. ”
I learned that being in America meant being comfortable. Big cars. Big drinks. Big plates of food. Later, when I would huff and puff going up the stairs and then remember how I had fallen into the trap of driving everywhere. I didn’t get out for the bank. Drive-through ATMs did the trick. I didn’t have to stand under the hot sun, bargaining for the prices of fish, smoothing my hands over blood-red tomatoes to identify blemishes. I strolled into mega shops which were bright, stocked, and intimidating, picking up vegetables that possessed only a quarter of the bursting flavors back home. It all started with the pillows; it started with my head.
The next thing moving does to your head is twist memory and place, so that you no longer know
where you are. When I ride the trains from one part of the city to another, I silence the boredom and avoid the inner recesses of my thoughts with books. But sometimes, when I suddenly raise my head, I panic, because I do not know where I am. I am disoriented. The sudden sight of grass and the sun through the train’s windows transports me to bright April picnics from home. Sometimes there is something about the wind, as if it blew all the way from Ghana to me. And if it did, am I in Ghana, or am I here, in America? Other times, I walk through the streets—the arrangement of trees, the gait of a person, a scent, a cadence of speech—creating sharp longing that pierces the heart. But the reality does not come; instead, there are moments of vertigo, where I forget where I am. In one city, I wake up and, for a second, think I am home. I close my eyes again, willing the illusion to hold, but it does not. I am here. And yet I am not. That is what America does to your head, so reality and memory alternate, they take turns to be, they confuse you. You’re always checking for your head.
The third thing America does to your head is open your ear. Your ear is in your head, so this qualifies as an effect on your head. It is a land of immigrants, they say, and so you hear it. You hear the Chinese, the Yoruba, the Spanish with the “th.” You hear the lilts, the cadences, yours
also, mixing in the symphony of the country. You learn to hear and to understand because the burden is on the hearer. But it’s more than accents and dialects you pick up on. You can hear microaggressions now. You can hear bile masked as sweetness. You can hear polite hostility as clearly as you understand language now. You can tell how the elderly couple’s request for a picture of you and your friends was for museum, like you and your foreignness needed to be preserved for display. You hear the gushing over your dress, your food, your skin, and now you hear it differently than you did before.
So, when I do the things I do, scrolling through fast fashion, watching shows I don’t finish, praying prayers that take a weight to be lifted, and wishing for gentle companionships, I do all as distractions from what has become of my head.
So, this is how to live as a foreigner in America: watch out for your head. Watch out for your head so you aren’t wrapped in a system where consumption masquerades as well-being; so you aren’t seduced with comfort and forget what ties you to land and sea and air. You need sun. You need from the walk what the drive cannot give. You need the burst of flavor in the outdoors. Watch out for your head, so when the past and present try to tangle you, and when your displacement is not just physical but mental too, you can stand. But also watch out for
your head, so you learn to close your ear to the language that does not lift, that does not edify, that does not remind you of how big, beautiful, and brave you are.
The baffleD kInG
Steven Ostrowski
learneD laTely
James B. Nicola
I learned at an early age, when I did not know and knew I did not know, to ask. School was expensive: so was conversation whether at home; on buses, trains, or planes; or at some hotel or a summer cottage. Attention should be paid. Like fares. Like rents.
The wayward and the wastrel wake some where, get dressed, and eat to get to where they share their outlook and experience with you, and you, yours. Conversation costs a lot; to waste it, then, is sin. And I believe we’re here to help each other think, learn, grow, and so forth; parents, teachers, uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, nuns, priests, and the soul you meet on a park bench. You ask, you learn.
I also learned at an early age when I did know—and knew I knew—not to speak, sometimes. Not everybody wants to know, particularly older brothers who are twelve or so, and evangelicals who have lost their capacity for awe regarding, above all, the numinous.
However, when you know and know you know and speaking up could save another’s life or soul, you can’t stay silent, can you? No. Not when you love, and I love everyone, or at least I am trying to. So I have learned how genial Socrates was, not to state a fact, or that a person’s wrong, but craft a question that creates a crack. And then, if they respond, to pose another, another and another and another. Because the lynch mob member is your brother.
aDvanCeD TelepaThy
James B. Nicola
When the family of rays arrived and put on a show for the sailors and the boat, twirling like swimmers synchronized at some theme park in Florida back when I was a kid, the men were not afraid.
In unison as well, they realized the dance was one of thanks because one ray caught in a snarly net was saved today by one of the sailors who saw the poor thing, jumped in the ocean, and pried him loose.
It took a while. The dance did, too. And then the sailors clapped and went their merry way, as did the family.
Telepathy, it seems, enjoys increased accuracy through context.
If you’ve never read the mind of human, animal, or plant and wonder Why, just ask yourself—then ask your friends:
What creature’s lives have we saved recently; what persons’ peace inveterately imperiled?
lasT rIGhTs
Rob Hardy
We’ve reached the age when we start to think about how we would like to die. Not that we can preorder for delivery in the still distant future. Death is a box of parts delivered at birth, a thing we assemble without instructions, not even knowing what it will be, until at last we’ve assembled a flight of stairs and we’re lying at the bottom. If we could preorder, we would choose to die in our sleep from natural causes. A nurse or an aide would enter the room and find our bodies laid aside like a book we finished just before we turned out the light. But these days we think more often of dying in protest, not in bed, but under a banner, because death is the last right that can’t be taken from us. And sometimes we even think we’d like to know the last thing we’re humanly capable of knowing, a knowledge so final, so pure and impractical, it can never be used to make a poem or a bomb.
Grown In flame
Steven Ostrowski
a rT work
Willy Conley has photos featured in his books Photographic Memories, Plays of Our Own, The World of White Water, Listening Through the Bone, The Deaf Heart, Space is deaf like me, and Broken Spokes. He has published in numerous magazines and journals including Drift Travel Magazine, American Photographer, Arkansas Review, Baltimore Sun, Carolina Quarterly, Big Muddy, Folio, The Ilanot Review, Metonym, San Antonio Review, and IMAGES ARIZONA. Conley, born profoundly deaf, is professor emeritus of theatre arts at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. During an earlier “lifetime,” he used to work as a biomedical photographer at some of the top hospitals and medical schools in the U.S. To learn more about his work, visit: willyconley.com
Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator. She’s author of four poetry collections, and her poems are published in a variety of literary journals. Her images have been featured on the cover of Josephine Quarterly, Brooklyn Review, About Place, Cool Beans Lit, and more. Her plays have been produced around the U.S. Kelly has been teaching creative writing for four decades, including the International Women’s Writing Guild and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Kelly produces the Featured Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Reach her at: kellydumar.com
John Fitzsimmons is a painter born in Fulton, New York in 1953. His work is representational using the figure as “raw material” and is interested in the non-verbal narrative, i.e. the narrative that is exclusively visual. He works in oils on either panels or canvas, and currently lives and works in Syracuse, NY. johnfitzsimmonsart.com
Steven Ostrowski’s artwork has been published in many literary journals, including Lily Poetry Review (cover art), Stone Boat (cover art), Another Chicago Magazine, Gulf Coast Magazine, Aji, Drunk Monkeys, and The William and Mary Review. He is also a widely-published poet and fiction writer. His poetry chapbook Persons of Interest, winner of the Wolfson Prize, was published in 2022 by Wolfson Press. His first novel, The Highway of Spirit and Bone, was published by Lefora Books in 2023. stevenostrowski.org
fICTIon
Rob Bailey earned his MFA from California College of the Arts. He has published fiction, essays, and poetry in The Under Review, On The Premises (prize), The Write Launch, Allegory Ridge, and Bridge Eight, among others. He has been awarded residencies at NES in Iceland and Craigardan in the Adirondacks. He lives with his girlfriend and their two pets in Chicago.
Victoria Large is a Massachusetts native who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her short fiction has appeared in various print and online publications, including Blink Ink, Carve Magazine, Crack the Spine, Monkeybicycle, and Painted Bride Quarterly.
Kat Echevarría Richter (she/her) is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Camden. Her work explores themes of matrescence, Puerto Rican identity, and American historiographies, often with a side of humor. Prior to returning to school, Kat danced professionally for two decades and taught dance studies at Stockton University. Her research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited anthologies and her creative writing has appeared in Apiary, Glamour, and Skirt! magazine . She lives in Philadelphia with her spouse, their child, and a neurotic but loveable rescue dog.
nonfICTIon
Suzi Ehtesham-Zadeh is an Iranian-American writer and educator who grew up in Tehran under the Shah. She moved to the United States to attend university, returned to Iran to witness the Islamic Revolution, and later spent several years in Europe before settling in the United States. A lifelong English teacher, Suzi has taught in schools and universities on three continents and in three languages. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Her debut collection, titled Zan, was awarded the 2022 Dzanc Short Story Prize and was published in June of 2024.
Deborah Saki is a Ghanaian researcher, writer and poet. Her nonfiction has appeared in Brevity Mag, and her poetry in IceFloe Press, The Kalahari Review, and Tampered Magazine. She is a PhD candidate researching Comparative Politics, and has written essays for Inside Higher Ed and Times Higher Education. She also writes a monthly newsletter on Substack at: bluebookbydeborah.substack.com
poeTry
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, Virginia. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has appeared in SoFloPoJo, Cotton Xenomorph, Bullshit Lit, HAD, fifth wheel press, and more. Visit: carriganak.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @carriganak
Pat Daneman’s poetry is widely published, recently in Mid-American Review, Naugatuck River Review, and PoetrySouth, and Common Ground. Her full-length collection, After All, was runner up for the Thorpe-Menn Award and finalist for the Kansas Book Award. She is a board member for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and an assistant editor for their publication Touchstone. She lives in Exeter, New Hampshire. Visit: patdaneman.com
Jim Daniels’ first book of nonfiction, An Ignorance of Trees, was published this year by Cornerstone Press. His latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published by Michigan State University Press. His latest chapbook of poems, Ars Poetica Chemistra, was published by WPA Press. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
Rob Hardy lives in Northfield, Minnesota, where from 2016 to 2023 he served as the city’s first Poet Laureate. He’s the author of a fulllength poetry collection, Domestication (2017), and two poetry chapbooks, The Collecting Jar (winner of the 2005 Grayson Books Poetry Chapbook Competition) and Shelter in Place (2022). His writing, both poetry and prose, has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including the Best of the Net.
Alison Hicks’ fourth collection of poems is Homing (Sheila-NaGig Editions, 2024). She was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, and a chapbook Falling Dreams. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, an Editor’s Choice selection for the 2024 Philadelphia Stories National Poetry Prize, and is a three-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops. www.philawordshop.com
Al Maginnes’ 15th poetry collection, Second Line, is forthcoming from Redhawk Publications. His new and selected poems, Fellow Survivors, came out from Redhawk in 2023. New poems appear or are forthcoming in Lake Effect, Rattle, National Poetry Review, and several others. He is retired from teaching and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent.” His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016), Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019) and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022)
Tim Moder is a poet from northern Wisconsin. He is an enrolled member of The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Cutthroat, South Florida Poetry Journal, Sho, One Art, and others. His most recent chapbook is The Angel of Coincidence (Inkfish, 2025). Find him at: timmoder.com
James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.
Terry Savoie’s poetry has been included in more than two hundred literary journals and anthologies over the past five decades, journals such as American Poetry Review, Poetry (Chicago), Ploughshares, North American Review, Sonora Review, American Journal of Poetry, and The Iowa Review.
Alison Stone has published nine full-length collections, including Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2019), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, others. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot: stonetarot.com
Denise Utt is a songwriter and poet who lives in New York City. Her poetry has appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, The MacGuffin, The Strategic Poet, and elsewhere. She wrote the lyrics to the R&B hit, “What I Wouldn’t Do (for the Love of You)” and the jazz song, “I Don’t Want No Happy Songs.”
