MiddleGray ISSUE #01
Middl
www.middleg
Catalina Piedrahita
Visual Arts Editor & Co-Founder
Alvaro Morales
www.catpiedrahita.com
www.alvaromorales.net
Music Editor & Co-Founder
Middle Gray Magazine is a quarterly online various disciplines including, but not limi and Performance Arts.
This arts journal is part of “The Middle Gr emerging artists by giving them space and o being fairly compensated. Our intent is to connections and collaborations that nurture an online-based organization with expectati space. © MiddleGray 2013 All Rights Reserved info@middlegraymag.com Cover Art: “Luna Meets Maria” by Sophie Bonet Back Cover Art: “Luna and Maria in transit” by Sophie Bonet
We want to welcome you to our community and are very eager to have you as part of The M
Special thanks to all the artists who are b our friends for having the courage to belie Much love, The Middle Gray
Graphic Design: Catalina Piedrahita
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leGray
graymag.com
Alina Collazo Assistant Editor
Dariel Suarez Letters Editor
www.darielsuarez.com
publication featuring emerging artists of ited to, Visual Arts, Music, Literature
ray,� an arts organization that supports opportunities to showcase their work while build a place that encourages the social e a vibrant creative community. We are ions to grow and evolve into a physical
d we hope you enjoy this experience. We Middle Gray.
being featured in this issue and to all eve in this project.
All contributors to MiddleGray retain the reproduction rights to their own words and images. Reproductions of any kind are prohibited without explicit permission of the magazine and relevant contributor.
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INSIDE: Eileen Clynes 6 Sandra Jean-Pierre 12
Unlimited Perception 16
Jonathan Escoffery 24
Laura Knapp 28
Videri String Quartet 38
Natasha Hakimi 44 Joseph A. Lapin 47 Michael Gray 50 Erick Castrillon 56
Sophie Bonet 60
Fausto Barrionuevo 68 “The Mad Doctor” Michael Gray
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“Saint Ortho”
Eileen Clynes www.eileenclynesphoto.com
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Exceptional Holiness “The series “Exceptional Holiness” was inspired by growing up Catholic and having a fascination with religious art. We had an image of Jesus Christ whose eyes would follow you, and a Saint Jude statue on top of our television. Our dysfunctional family was always protected by the divine. I am now what you’d call a “recovering Catholic” but still appreciate religious art and enjoy collecting tchotchke style religious art. The work is a modern take on traditional Roman Catholic Saint cards, drawing inspiration from trinket style religious art such as hologram last suppers and lightup Virgin Marys. I approached this work using a style similar to that of traditional portrayals of saints and icons, while addressing political and social issues to explore what modern holiness might look like.” Explains photographer Eileen Clynes, whose work has been considered controversial. “Some of the saints in my series are made up, and some are tributes to traditional Saints and their stories. However, each piece is personal and reflects my own life experiences.” Clynes’ artistic process has been developing and strengthening throughout the years, and her artwork reflects some of the personal experiences and struggles she has faced and dealt with. She continues to tell us how this series began and how it evolved into the images we see now; “One of my first pieces was Saint Ortho, The Patron Saint of Restoration for a Woman’s Choice (Opposite). I came up with this idea last year when religion and birth control became heightened issues. It also happens to be a self-portrait. I photographed my birth control and in post production, I surrounded myself with pills and finished off with the days of the week dial that we all know so well. After finishing this piece, I decided I also wanted to keep working with the traditional saint cards and write prayers that go along with the pieces.”
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“I have always been interested in Joan of Arc, partly because one of my favorite Morrisey songs gives a shout out to her. But also because she is portrayed as a warrior and a woman with strength. This piece also gave me an outlet to include some of my editorial work into this series. My editorial project the “Battle With Cancer” stems from losing my mother and step mother to this illness and my father being a survivor. My friend, who modeled for Joan, was
part of my cancer project. I photographed her going through chemo and her experience dealing with the process. In my saint series, it was great to show this in a different way, showing her as a warrior in the battle she’s fighting. Joan’s armor is made of my grandmother’s silverware and her flames are made of my cat’s fur.” - 8 -
Left “Joan of Arc”
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Right “Saint Sebastian”
Middle “Saint Agatha”
“With my experience being in the Army and coming from a military family, I decided to do a tribute piece to Saint Sebastian, the Patron Saint of Soldiers. In old imagery, he is usually shown being killed with arrows. My modern version has Sebastian with bullets holes in his body, a camouflage loin cloth and bullets shedding blood detailed with poppy flowers all around him. I feel that this is timely given the decade of war we are in and the number of soldiers we have lost.” - 9 -
“Weeping Mary”
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Originally from Albany, NY, Eileen Clynes received an Associate Degree in Applied Science with a focus in Photography in 2002. After serving in the US Army, she moved to Boston in 2009. There she attended the New England School of Photography, where she graduated in 2012.
“Jesus”
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Sandra
Jean-Pierre
Sandra Jean-Pierre is a long time spoken word poet and author of several self-published ebooks of short fiction. An avid amateur photographer and afghan maker, her exploits and insights can be found on her website. www.sandrajeanpierre.com
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Mopping I’ve been mopping the floors of my home for fourteen years. I generally start at the front of the house, at the threshold of
the front door and work my way back to the Florida Room. The breadth of my mopping exploits can stretch from my bedroom bathroom clear across to the breakfast nook - the entire width of the house. I’ve mopped through funerals, a birth and after parties. I’ve mopped up juice, milk, blood, throw up, pee and ice cubes, melted from the heat expressed by the fans at the bottom of the fridge. I’ve mopped early in the morning before anyone was awake and late into the night, while most everyone was asleep. I’ve mopped with a bucket full of water and either bleach, Mr.Clean, Fabuloso, laundry detergent powder (even liquid) or just when I had enough cleaner to wash out the mop and then to fill my bucket with plain water. I’ve mopped with professional janitor mops, using 8, 10 or 12 inch cotton hairs, flimsy plastic covered, metal handled mops and unconventional shammy haired mops. I’ve mopped when the floor was pre-swept or when it wasn’t. I’ve mopped during the winter when it would take the floor longer to dry and during the summer with the front and back doors propped open. I’ve mopped using old washed out paint buckets, short pinny-anny buckets and wringer buckets where you place the mop hairs in a chute and squeeze out the water using a lever on the side.
I’ve mopped when my arms were at their strongest, allowing me to reach, with my then obedient fingers, into the murky, semi-soapy Kool-Aid/ sour milk/bathroom smelling water. I’d cradle the thinning hairs between my fingers and wring out the water with the knowing of a bereaved and bereft mother, missing her child, mourning her life. I’d mop out sections of the different floors in the different rooms, using the strength of my upper body, until I no longer could; when arthritis in my chest began to get so bad that I had to find another way. Till my upper body could no longer support the back and forth motion and the weight and drag of the mop. Till my muscles and coordination became too weak to cooperate. I’d mop with my legs then, when my legs were capable enough to allow me to pivot from my chair to my bed with assistance; I’d hold the mop handle in my left hand, drive my chair with my right hand and use the muscles in those same legs to guide the bottom of the mop across the tile, wiping away the filth, making the floor glisten. I’d mop with my slippers on, with my work shoes on or barefoot. I’d mop in my “good clothes”, without my foot pedals, with my purse still on or straight home from the doctor, grocery shopping or back from the Food Stamp appointment. I mop now, with the aid of my Nephew, washing and wringing out the mop, changing out the bucket water, setting things up. He mainly hates it, so I don’t do it as often as I would like. I leave my foot pedals on now, I usually have my shoes on too.
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Mopping our floors has been my meditation. When there wasn’t enough money to pay our bills or buy food, I’d have someone run the water hot and I’d seek out the steady and deliberate repetition that mopping brings. It was a way to think through my depression, our hunger, the lingering and collective worry. The clean smell of bleach and Fabuloso was generally all I would need to calm me down, while the back and forth sway of cleaning the floor reset my emotions, my thinking, my heartbeat. When I would be done, I would emerge a more centered, calmer version of myself, full of ideas, full of new hope, full of determination.
I’ve mopped with tears streaming down my face and pain creaking through my body. I’ve mopped with a heart full of ache and a mind full of confusion. I’ve mopped post-overdose, post-house getting fixed up, post-family being spread out. I’ve mopped when everyone who needed to, realized the importance of living, fighting, sticking and staying.
I’ve thrown out buckets of water black as tar, stink as sin and full of death and longing. Rinsed out buckets lined with a thin slick film of sorrow. I’ve washed away scum, mistakes and incidental indiscretions. My My siblings would think me crazy for mopping so fingers have been pricked by shards of glass, slivers of much and so often. They either didn’t realize the disappointment as thorny as steel wool and malevolent amount of mess they made or maybe I just needed splinters entangled in deceivingly thin cotton strands. that time to be by myself, in myself. In all the things that weren’t, mopping made sense. It made more sense I’ve mopped when the mop hairs have begun to give than court dates and guardianship papers or dejection way, rotten and disintegrating into the very water that and fear. There is a science to it, unlike any other un- was to make them clean. certainty in life, that typically ensures that what you put in, you get exponentially more out. Water, buck- I’ve mopped till family has come back, grown up, et, bleach, some type of soap (but not too much), mop grown older, gotten better. and time would give me clean floors and new understandings, peace of mind and worth, while the happenings I will mop until there is nothing more that needs to be out side of our doors, would by and large rob me of those things. cleaned. I’ve mopped the tiles when they were vibrant faux marble looking, with pink and gray veins running though their More of Jean-Pierre’s Work on Page 22. patterns. I mop them now when the shiny glaze has been worn away by foot traffic, wheel traffic, life traffic. I’ve mopped through tile changes, bursting a/c pipe works, painting mistakes and regrets. I’ve mopped through arguments, despair and a rodent infestation. I’ve mopped when it didn’t make sense to,when things would have been made better by lighting a match and not looking back.
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“Lethargic Sleep” Sophie Bonet Pg. ?
Unlimited Perception
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Unlimited Perception was born in 2012 as a community of artists and creators . Its members hail from different parts of the world; Turkey, Israel, Colombia and Japan. The collaboration between them took place while attending Berklee College Of Music in Boston. This generated a harmonious, eclectic and earthy sound due to their diverse backgrounds. The music features a blend of South American rhythms such as Bambuco and Cumbia, with microtones and lyrical melodies. The band emphasizes the elements of improvisation and musical conversation during their performances, which invite the listener to an exciting experience.
“We want to inspire people to move forward with their purpose and the deep wishes of their creative soul without limits, psychological barriers or fears.” Explain the members of the group.
Miguel Angel Lous - Medellin, Colombia (Composer, Producer, Saxophone and Flute Player.)
Andres Fonseca - Bogotá, Colombia (Drummer, Percussionist, Composer, Arranger & Producer)
He won a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music (Boston) specializing in Composition and Contemporary Harmony. Nominated as one of the best young composers of Latin America in contemporary music.. He has recorded four solo albums, and performed at some of the most important Jazz Festivals in Colombia and Latin America.
Fonseca has played all around Boston for a few years now while writing music for projects internationally. .He won the Berklee Scholarship achievement award and studied with great musicians such as Ian Froman, Victor Mendoza, Jamey Haddad, George Garzone, Hal Crook, Ed Tomassi & Leo Blanco among others, and has attended workshops with Victor Wooten, Jack DeJohnette & Dafnis Prieto. - 17 -
Utar Artun - Ankara, Turkey (Composer, Arranger, Film Scorer, Pianist, Percussionist and Producer) He has written and arranged scores for many plays and movies and has been in workshops, concert performances and clinics with Bobby McFerrin, Maria Schneider, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Simon Shaheen, Kenwood Dennard, Jason Linder and David Fiuczynski. Artun is involved with the Rhythm of the Universe Project as an Arranger, Performer and Orchestrator, and is part of Planet MicroJam Institute at Berklee College of Music. He is currently a JRR artist and a staff member at Berklee.
Robert Taylor - San Francisco, CA, US (Bassist) At the age of 16 he began to study on the acoustic bass with bassist Glenn Richmann of the Bobby Hutcherson quartet and Charles Chandler of the SF Symphony Orchestra.. He is currently working in the Boston Are as a freelance bassist while studying for degrees in Bass Performance and Music Education in Boston’s Berklee College of Music. - 18 -
Victor-Andres Cruz - Bogota, Colombia (Percussionist, Multi-instrumentalist, Composer) Victor is an interpreter of traditional Colombian music and its instruments. He has recorded, played and toured with jazz musicians such as bass legend Cecil McBee (Miles Davis), Saxophonist Kelly Shepherd (Curtis Fuller) and pianist Alan Palmer (Jackie McLean), among many others. He’s an active performer and arranger for different projects ranging from rock to jazz to world music..
Burcu Gulec - Ankara, Turkey (Voice, Educator)
Hagai Perets - Kiryat Ata, Israel (Composer, Arranger, Jazz Guitarist, Educator)
She started singing at the age of 6 and performing since she was 9. She studied Child Development in Turkey and worked with Deaf and hard-of-hearing children. She has performed internationally and worked with Simon Shaheen, Bobby McFerrin, Jeannette Lovetri among others. Gulec has recorded several works internationally, including Jazz Revelation Records in Boston, MA.
Graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston as a scholarship recipient. He is a Jazz Revelation records artist and studied with Mick Goodrick, Tim Miller and Bret Willmott to name a few. His original tunes were chosen to perform at the prestigious Jazz guitar nights at the Berklee Performance Center and he actively writes and arranges original music, which has led him to great international exposure. - 19 -
Band Members Burcu Gulec: bgulec@berklee.edu Hagai Perets: hagaiperets@hotmail.com Miguel Angel Lopez Usma: mlopezusma@berklee.edu Andres Fonseca: afonseca85@gmail.com VĂctor-AndrĂŠs Cruz: vicandres86@gmail.com Utar Artun: artunutar@gmail.com
Band Art by Dino: www.artofdino.com
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Contact Information www.unlimitedperception.net unlimitedperceptionmusic@gmail.com
Bookings bookingunlimitedperception@gmail.com (+1) 857 222 1647 (+1) 617 401 6109 (+1) 857 753 0200
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Sandra
Jean-Pierre
See Page 12
Long Horizon
...there but for grace and mercy... I’ve walked the thousand steps, by the thousands before me, in this thousand moments journey. Favored children, sleeping restless sleeps, eating fetid dreams of those unaccustomed to dreaming, much less eating, never you mind sleeping. Preying demise and not life for existence, leaving a trail of the fallen.
These eyes had grown accustomed to shielding against endless horizons by slow and steady hands, with slow and steady understandings
of character mind, or intent.
of miracles with what was left, to make anew. Life truly is for the living.
Even I have not been exempt.
that no man had words enough to breathe life against such wanton desolation
There leave me keep me looking, hoping, pushing beyond what charmed belongings stayed buried behind
So this journey commences, not without cursed malice or treacherous harm, like blisters against no longer guarded eyes. Fractious intentions chanting like choir offer little enticement oh quarrelsome, bothersome divisions I still see you. And today will not be That day. “Guadalupe” Eileen Clynes
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Jonathan Escoffery
Jonathan Escoffery is a Miami-based writer of Jamaican heritage. He is currently studying Fiction as a MFA candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing program, and holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University. He is the current Fiction Editor at dislocate Magazine. His writing has appeared, or is forthcoming in Interrobang?! Magazine, The Coffin Factory, Radioactive Moat Press, Sliver of Stone Magazine, and elsewhere. His songwriting is featured in the movie, Totally Baked. Jonathan is currently working on a novel.
The Pickle Kirk Sherman always knew he would be shot one day—of this he was certain. It was his response to being shot, when that day finally arrived, that astonished him. He’d been positive up until that very moment that when it happened he would release a harrowing cry, before slumping to the floor, dead. If the wound didn’t kill him outright, he would unload an arsenal of obscenities upon his shooter, he’d imagined. He had compiled lists of his favorite curse words over the years, even providing subsections for the foreign words he’d picked up from the servers and cooks he employed at the Am-nest-eat Diner—words that had usually been directed toward him. But when the day came, and he heard that fateful blast—felt the force of metal penetrating his abdomen—all he had in him to muster was a shallow, pithy Oh, my. He had heard his grandmother use the phrase, when her body had been ravaged by gas attacks—attacks that shook her to the core. Being shot made Kirk Sherman feel like a gas-stricken, ninety-year-old lady. “Oh, my.” Kirk clasped his belly and hobbled through the kitchen to his back office. He crawled under his desk, and closed his eyes, pondering his new-found fragility. Kirk Sherman was not the only one who realized Kirk Sherman would be shot one day. His servers knew. His kitchen staff often pondered it aloud. “I don’t know how dat muddascunt made it this long on Earth,” Kirk’s head cook, Raj, said repeatedly. “Somebody ought to shoot dat breda.” Even some of Kirk’s most faithful customers were awaiting the day. Only fourteen-year-old Sally Johnson, Kirk’s sole Anglo employee, seemed oblivious to the fact, which, perhaps, lead to Kirk Sherman’s shooting. The story goes as this. Sally was sitting out back, having a smoke one night when what she thought was a meteor shot down from the sky and crashed into the field behind the diner. When Sally approached the crash-site what she found stuck in the crater of dislodged dirt and cow dung was a smashed space module and a disoriented, though otherwise unharmed, extraterrestrial being. Sally, having been brought up in northern Florida, before running away to the outskirts of Miami, decided this was no time to lose her Southern charm. Sally’s first words to the space alien were: “You all right there, suga’?” Subsequently, the alien’s first words to an Earthling were: “Do I look all right to you?” Sally stood slack-jawed. She’d never been very apt at discerning sarcasm, plus, though the alien spoke English, his words came out in a slow, choppy rhythm, as if through a voice synthesizer, so his tone didn’t give her any hints. To complicate matters further, Sally thought the space alien, who was more or less humanoid, closely resembled the figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Sally said, “Well, did you look like that before the crash?” To which the alien said, “Just take me to your leader.” Kirk Sherman, the only boss Sally had ever known, seemed to best fit the position. So she led the alien back to the diner and made the introduction. When Kirk learned of how and where the space module had landed, he said, “Son, you just destroyed two tons of the finest soil on the planet.”
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The alien inquired what kind of soil was so valuable. Kirk responded, “American.” Kirk removed the calculator he liked to carry in his back pocket, and the pencil and pad from his shirt pocket, laid them out on the diner counter, and began working out a complex equation. “Let’s see,” he said. “For the soil replacement, the therapy those cows are going to be needing before they’ll milk right again, the INS telecommunication deferment, entry fees, space metal removal, HAZMAT inspections, delousing, and for oxygen displacement you owe me, well, I’ll just round it down to $178,123 even. That’s U.S. currency. None of that monopoly money you people are always carrying around.” The alien explained that he had no money, American or otherwise, that his visit was strictly of an exploratory nature for his planet. “A window shopper? In America there’s a saying we entrepreneurs of the mercantile type live by—you break it, you buy it.” When the alien inquired how he was supposed to pay such a debt, Kirk Sherman’s lips twitched up into what some might call a smirk. “It’s just your lucky day,” he said, patting the new arrival on the back, walking him to the restaurant’s entrance. From the threshold, he swept his hand across the surrounding fields, as though introducing the alien to Kirk Sherman’s kingdom. Kirk Sherman’s hand directed the alien’s attention first to the field at the far side of the highway. “Beans,” he said. Back on this side, beyond the herd of grazing cows, Kirk Sherman pointed out a row of barracks. “Home sweet home.” Finally, Kirk Sherman pointed up the road to the tall, gray wall topped with barbed wire spindles. A tower poked up over the wall on which men armed with assault rifles stood. Search lights chopped at the surrounding grounds, sweeping the parking lot, crisscrossing in and over the wall. “Krome Detention Center,” Kirk said. “Just in case.” Back in the kitchen, the space alien was being introduced to his night job. Kirk Sherman handed him a tattered black apron. “You should feel right at home here,” he said. “We got ourselves all kinds of aliens at Am-nest-eat. Tonight you’ll be working with a Mexican, a black Frenchie, and a Hindu from Jamaica, if you can believe it.” He shot a thumb toward Raj, who spit into a garbage bin, before stomping back to the walk-in freezer. “Say, what’s your name?” The alien told him his name, which sounded a lot like Phlanktootweewee Bertkaikoko to Kirk. Kirk said, “Hell, I can’t pronounce that. No one can. We’ll just call you Bert.” The alien tried to explain that his was a proud family name, a name that had survived a millennium and was now held
by him alone, to which Kirk replied, “It won’t fit your nametag.” “I’m from Trinidad,” Raj was saying over the hiss of the grill. “Carapichaima. I told this scunting ras Hector is Guatemalan. Somebody ought to shoot Kirk Sherman in his backside.” Bert was too busy chopping onions to answer, but he’d also noticed Kirk’s attitude toward those he deemed foreign. There was a hierarchy in the kitchen. Or maybe it was just coincidence. But it appeared that the better one spoke English, the better the position one held. Since Bert’s arrival, Hector was demoted back to dishwasher, and Pierre was made exclusively to mop the floors and clean the toilets. Only Raj remained unaffected by the new-hire. Bert made a mental note, which he etched into that part of his brain charged with managing his survival; that part in the human brain that flashes food sex sex food sex run! sex sex. Bert’s mental note went like this: enunciate. Bert also noticed that his break into midlevel foodservice was not without some backlash. Pierre must’ve run the mop three times over Bert’s space boots that night, and every time Raj sent Bert back to the stock area for more mayonnaise Hector sprayed water down his back. When Bert came back to the grill sopping wet, mayo bucket slipping in his hands, Raj shook his head, saying, “Ah. The trickledown effect.” Thus was Bert’s introduction to the United States of America, Earth. He would work the fields from sun-up to sundown and work in the diner overnight. Having no money to his name, Kirk Sherman extended him a diner credit and an extension on the rent for his living quarters, to be taken directly out of his future pay. This, Kirk Sherman assured Bert, was called charity. When things were slow in the kitchen later on that first night, Bert thought it might be a good idea to smooth things over with his coworkers. He approached Hector, who was scrubbing at the prep bowls Bert had dropped off earlier, and asked, “What’s it like in Guatemala? Tell me about your home.” Hector said, “Chupamela, maricon,” and reached for the hose. Bert’s Spanish was muy malo, but he knew enough to retreat back to his prep station where he bumped into Raj. “Listen here, boy,” Raj said in his sing-song way. “You want to know about home? I’ll tell you what home means to me.” You might expect that Raj told Bert about miles of clear blue coastline, of palm trees and rolling green mountains. Raj did none of this. Instead, he reached
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deep into his apron pocket and pulled out a glossy paper he’d ripped from a home décor catalogue. He unfolded the paper and handed it to Bert. “Satin sheets, boy. The softest thing you’ll ever touch on this Earth. An’ when I come in to this scunting shithole, they’s the onliest thing that get me through the night. Knowing they’re waiting in my bed. A real bed, boy. Not that shitting cot Kirk gives you barrack boys. Find something to work towards,” Raj said. “It’s the onliest way you’ll make it here.” Bert stared at the sheets. They did look soft. Bert’s barrack was dark, damp, and dingy, and he had no intention of actually spending a minute inside it, especially since, unbeknownst to Kirk Sherman, Bert needed only five minutes of naptime each day, which he took atop the restaurant’s toilet after Pierre finished cleaning it. Thus, he had no personal use for Kirk’s cot. So he went to the public library at his first opportunity, found an available computer and built a webpage advertising the room as a youth hostel, specifically targeting anthropology students interested in studying the lives of migrant workers. His advertisement read: Unique Study Abroad Opportunity. By week’s end Bert’s room was booked through the next six months. When his first room deposits arrived a few days later, Bert went back to the library and built a second site, a food-delivery page for Am-nest-eat, and set the hours of delivery during his off hours, listing his disposable cell phone—Bert’s first purchase—as the number for deliveries. He used his restaurant credit to purchase the orders, and was reimbursed, plus delivery fees and tips, upon delivery. Conveniently, some might say ironically, the guards at Krome Detention Center were his primary clientele. Bert’s profits added up especially quickly because he himself never ate. His biology was such that he survived by a similar process of photosynthesis as the bushes he picked beans off during the day, which is why he felt energized at the end of a blistering shift under the South Florida sun, while most of the workers felt exhausted. Bert wanted to feel sympathy for the others. Mostly he felt lonely, disconnected. The idea of returning home nested in the rear of his mind; a rescue or a technology or something that would reunite him with his planet. What worried him was that he was forgetting what home looked like, or maybe he was forgetting what it was like to believe he would ever see home again outside of his thin imagination, since after a surprisingly short span of time the confines of his reality seemed to exist between the field, the diner, and Krome’s prison walls, and no knowledge of the Universe’s vastness seemed to deter this feeling. If he could forget this soon, if he could adapt so easily to the situation he’d been forced into, would he remember what it was he was working toward once his debt to Kirk was paid? In his apron, he began keeping a folded sheet of paper. At first, he’d tried to draw something that might
represent what home meant to him, but when he finished each time all he saw were even poorer representations of the poor representations he’d seen while on his planet, rather than what he knew his home to be. Then, he simply wrote the word for home on the paper, deciding this would have to suffice until he pictured something better. There was one night, though, when the picture changed. A band had stopped at the diner on the way back from a show. The show had gone well. The band was on a high. One of the members refused to put his instrument down. He strummed it over his plate, letting his steak go cold. They didn’t have string instruments where Bert was from, but something in the melody made him homesick. Home, Bert realized, was not a picture of a place, but a feeling. Bert had been dicing tomatoes when the melody reached back to the kitchen. He staggered out into the dining room, and fell breathlessly to his knees, letting the sound pass through him. “What is it?” he cried out, when he could take no more. Several diners turned from their plates, witnessing Bert quivering down on the shiny tiles, but the melody continued. “What is it? What is it? What is it?” Some noted the desperation in his tone; like a baby crying for his mother’s milk. But very few noticed the red liquid dripping down his apron, puddling below his knees, or the tomato throbbing in his fist, squeezed to a heart-shaped pulp. There were nights Bert cried, alone in his bathroom stall. These were the nights he would reach into his apron, and pull out the folded paper. Under the word for home he’d sketched the instrument. He’d started with the dark hole in its center, then brought the lines down over it to create strings. On nights like these his fingers would pluck at the lines, and he would hum himself to sleep. ...Continues on Page 34
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“The Business End” Michael Gray
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Laura Knapp
www.laura-knapp.com I wanted to create a visual diary to document the places I have always been enamored with on the drive to Vermont. Although it’s next to a highway, the drive still provides some of the most beautiful and peaceful scenery I have ever seen.
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Most of the drive is through rural farm towns in eastern New York that border the edge of Connecticut and Massachusetts.
I have made this drive almost every month of my life since I was born twenty years ago, and every second of this particular route has captivated me and held my constant attention.
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Text by Laura Knapp
I suppose the reason I finally photographed this journey was because I wanted to go past the experience of viewing this isolated beauty, and actually take the chance to photograph it with my 35mm film camera so I could show other people how easily beauty can be overlooked when you’re traveling 60 mph down a road to get from point A to point B as quick as possible.
Of course, some of the excitement and overwhelming feeling comes from the fact that you’re going 60 mph in a moving vehicle, which I tried to capture in a few of the images.
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Jonathan Escoffery’s “The Pickle” - Starts on Page 24.
It didn’t take Kirk Sherman too long to recognize Bert’s extraordinary acclimation. He wasn’t exactly aware of Bert’s business ventures, but when just over three weeks had passed and Bert already had a thousand dollar payment ready for Kirk, Kirk Sherman became alarmed. Kirk was especially surprised since he hadn’t paid Bert yet, and even if he had he paid his employees, who lacked the legal documentation to secure employment elsewhere, well below Florida’s already substandard minimum wage. At this rate, Bert would be out of Kirk’s debt in a few years. Kirk decided to put Bert on the accelerated track to long-term employment at Am-nest-eat. Now, I wish I could tell you Bert shot Kirk Sherman in defense of civil liberties, or that it was an act of retribution for the way Kirk treated the employees of Am-nest-eat. I’d like to tell you he made a grand speech about the wrongs and indecencies Kirk enacted against immigrants. The truth is, Bertkaikoko shot Kirk because he was hopped up on the juice. Listen, this is how it went. One night, when Bert showed up for work Kirk surprised him with an all-expense paid excursion to The Sugar Shaker, a club in Homestead of which Kirk Sherman held fifty percent ownership. The pair entered The Sugar Shaker, and approached the bar, Bert following Kirk’s lead. On the other side of the neon-lit bar-top bopped a woman with cardinal-colored hair. She wore a see-through mesh cat suit, and shook her hips from side to side, swinging from one customer to the next. When she swung her head too low the thin black strip parting her two red halves became visible. Behind her, at bar-level, a colorful catwalk led out from behind a purple curtain and ran the length of the bar, glowing orange, then pink, then purple. Two women marched along the catwalk, stepping vibrantly, bouncing to the booming bass, wearing nothing more than high heels. Bert watched as the one with the long, dirtyblonde hair bent at the waist, and grabbed her ankle with one hand, sending her free leg straight up the side of a metal pole. She held this pose for several seconds. Then, still gripping the one ankle, she grabbed the pole with her other hand, and lifted herself, circling, circling, her legs creating a perfect V shape. Bert leaned forward, mesmerized, until a tongue flicked at him, flicked close to his eyeball. Too close. It was a strange tongue. A strange tongue indeed, being impaled through the tip by a silver bar, capped at both ends with silver balls. And red, it was red, unnaturally so, belonging to the woman with red hair, like her hair color bled through her head to her tongue, and it flicked at his
eyeball like it wanted to taste him. “Who’s your friend, Kirk?” “Bert,” Kirk said. “Hi, Bert.” She flicked her tongue at him again. Bert stepped back. “This one speak English?” Kirk said, “More or less.” “What’ll it be, Bert?” “Two whiskeys,” Kirk said. “Know what? Better make his a whiskey ginger.” “Bert’s sweet, huh?” “Go easy on him.” Kirk Sherman put his hand on Bert’s shoulder. “See anything you like?” Bert looked back up at the catwalk. The blonde had disappeared, possibly behind the purple curtain that made up the back wall. The second woman was on the pole, climbing it, snaking her way up. Her hair was long and black. Her skin was black satin, satin pulled taut over muscle, with only the slightest ripples above her shoulder blades where the muscle showed through. Bert felt his hand raising, pushing forward, though the pole—the woman—was far out of reach. He let his hand drop on the bar-top. “They are quite talented,” Bert said. “Quite,” Kirk said, and he laughed, slapping Bert on the back. “There’s plenty more where she came from. Candy, you have our drinks yet?” “Here they are.” She set two glasses on the counter. The liquid in Kirk’s was light brown, but Bert’s sparkled like gold. Or human urine. Kirk raised his glass and looked ahead at the back curtain, like he was staring down something unseen to the others, destiny perhaps. “To the talented tush at The Sugar Shaker. That includes you, Candy.” Bert watched Kirk down his drink in one gulp, and as custom seemed important to Kirk, Bert did the same. “Sweet enough for you?” Candy asked. Bert nodded. Sweet. Yes, it was sweet. Sweeter than water, if sweet meant thicker. Harder to pull through the veins. “Another round. Straight up this time. Both,” Kirk said. “None for me, thanks,” Bert said. “Keep ‘em coming, Candy.” Candy hesitated a moment, looking back and forth between Kirk and Bert. Kirk leaned forward. “Are you going to make me pour my own drinks, Candy?” “No, Kirk, no, of course not. I heard you.” Two short glasses were placed on the counter. The liquid was darker, more sinister without the ice. “Now you see this here,” Kirk said, picking up and handing a glass to Bert. “This is good. This is what you do at the end of a work day.” He lifted his drink and emptied
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the glass, knocking it on the bar-top. Kirk waved at Candy who had danced her way to the far end of the bar to help two customers. She came back and reached for Kirk’s glass. Kirk grabbed her wrist. “Just leave me the goddamn bottle.” Candy reached for the bottle of whiskey with her free hand, lifted it, and slammed it on the counter. “Now let go of me, damn it.” Kirk held her wrist a moment longer, then released her. Candy pulled her arm into her chest and shook her head, stomping back down to the bar’s far end. Bert’s eyes fell on the drink in his hand. He had no desire to taste it. He didn’t feel any different from when he had come in with Kirk, but Kirk somehow seemed meaner, less in control of himself. “Let me teach you something about manners where I come from, Bert. You see, I own this club. Far as I can tell, I own every goddamn thing in it. So if I tell one of these long-haired, long-legged women to come make you feel nice, they’ll do it, no questions asked. But it’s common courtesy to drink with a man before he extends such favors to you. You see what I’m getting at?” Bert saw that black satin was sliding down the pole, as slowly as she had gone up, head first, hands out, legs wrapping metal. A new girl emerged from behind the purple curtain. She took the catwalk barefoot. She was shorter than the first two, and broader somehow. She had the same long hair, but was shaped different. The other girls’ bodies were elongated, clinging close to their spines, stretched straight like the number 1. This girl was wider on top and on the bottom too, but her middle was small. Her flesh wrapped the number 8. The curves were drastic. Bert liked this shape. It was like the instrument. Bert knew its name now. Raj had told him. It was the acoustic guitar. Bert put the glass to his lips and chugged. They went back and forth for the better part of two hours, Kirk Sherman and Bert, shooting whiskey, then tequila, then whiskey again. Kirk kept slipping off his stool, but every time Bert asked if maybe they’d had enough, Kirk said, “One more. Just one more. Then, the pick of the litter. All yours, my friend.” Bert remained relatively unaffected. He kept looking around for his guitar-shaped beauty, but he hadn’t seen her since she stepped off stage. A few of the girls had come by to solicit tips, but when they saw Kirk’s condition they quickly retreated. Kirk’s head was planted firmly on the bar when Bert finally let out a gush of air and said, “It’s probably for the best. I know I’m not likely to ever see home again, but I’m afraid I’ve behaved quite improperly tonight.” “Well, hell, Bert. Just ‘cause it ain’t proper don’t mean it ain’t right.” Bert stood. “Thanks for showing me your customs,
Kirk.” He turned to leave. Kirk grabbed his arm, and held up his palm. “Candy!” he yelled. “Tell Alexis to get her ass out here.” Candy disappeared behind the curtain then came back. “She’s coming, Kirk.” “Pour us two last shots for the road, Candy.” He turned to Bert. “I bet you never heard of a pickle back where you come from.” It was a silly question. Bert had never heard of most of the things he had been introduced to since he’d crash landed, including debt and landownership, liquor and sugar shakers. But being Am-nest-eat’s prep cook, Bert said, “I know pickles.” Though he’d never actually tasted one. Candy set up the shots. Two with whiskey. Two with pickle brine. The whiskey went down smooth. Bert had gotten used to it. The pickle brine went down hot. It burned in his stomach and made him light-headed. Alexis came out just then, hips wide as ever. She took his hand and led him to a private room with a couch, separated from the others by a black curtain. She was naked still, except for a clear, plastic choker. Six strings stitched to the choker extended down the middle of her torso, extended to her crotch and seemed to disappear inside her. As she laid Bert down on the couch she began to strum herself with long, delicate fingers. The fingers plucked at the chords gently in even rhythms. Sound emanated. From her parted lips maybe. Lovely sounds. They embraced Bert, making him feel better. Soon the chords grew into melody, the same as before in the diner. She had been there that night and before, he decided. She must have. She’d been with him when he left home and with him the entire trip over. She’d been there at his birth and had softened the blow of his landing in the field. He sunk into her melody, cradled in the womb she encased him in. He slid into her, sinking deeper, deeper. He no longer had to worry—her melody would sustain him—so deeper and deeper he sank. When Bert awoke in his barrack for the first time ever, it was also the first time more than five consecutive minutes of his life had passed without his being conscious for it. Waking up in his cot was especially strange because last he remembered a renter had been occupying the room. He found his space pants crumpled under the cot, and found they’d been emptied of his phone and the pack he kept his money in. “Kirk said you were good for it, and man you’d better be.” The voice startled Bert. It was Alexis. She leaned in the bathroom’s darkened threshold, smoking a cigarette. Sweats draped her, concealing her figure. “You know how long I’ve been waiting for you to wake?” Her voice was rough, like when Bert’s arms got tired while grating cheese, and he let the grater drag across the cut-
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ting board. Her voice was the pull of jagged metal over his skin. Her words made little sense to him. They brought him no comfort. “Good for it,” he whispered, absently. “Kirk said.” Bert felt he had a dark hole in his center. It needed filling. He noticed his hands were shaking. He dressed quickly, and might have responded to Alexis’ demands had something more pressing not been on his mind. It was dark out, and as he left the room he couldn’t be sure if it was early morning or the start of a new night. Bert trekked across the cow dung field toward the diner. He nearly knocked Sally to the ground as he burst through the double doors. The tray she carried clattered to the floor, drawing applause from the less compassionate patrons. Bert entered the kitchen and saw Hector at the prep station chopping tomatoes. Raj emerged from behind the grill. “You’re late, boy,” Raj said. “Two whole days.” Bert side-stepped Raj, walking back to the freezer. He threw open the door and scanned the shelves, scanned the containers and their labels. Whole tomatoes, diced tomatoes, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, olives, celery, and so on. “Where are they?” he said. “Looks like we’re going to have to work out a new payment method,” Kirk Sherman said from the freezer’s doorway, and he began laying out a schedule that allowed Bert to work exclusively for pickle brine, one glass every third Friday of the month. Bert would continue his side ventures, but one hundred percent of the profits would go to Kirk. As a precaution, Kirk had locked the pickles in his office safe. As Kirk Sherman spoke, Bert had a difficult time concentrating on all of this. Numbers, schedules, labor, commodities—none of this registered. “The pickle,” he said, trembling. “The pickle.” “In due time.” Kirk smiled and made like he would pat Bert on the shoulder. A pop and a sudden pain in his stomach made him reconsider. In Bert’s tremulous hand Kirk noticed a rather primitive looking space gun. A single line of smoke exited the barrel. “The pickle,” Bert said. “Oh, my,” Kirk said.
“Ritual”
Sophie Bonet Pg. ?
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MiddleGray • 1
www.viderisq.com
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vi·de·ri \vi-ˈdā-rē\ vb [Lat.] 1 : To be seen 2 : To see and understand The Videri String Quartet is a classically trained string quartet that decided to branch out into other genres of music, specifically video game music. When Roselie Samter founded a video game string quartet, she recognized that matching this invigorating new form of music with the classical format of the string quartet would help people see and understand music in a new way. Videri formed In March 2012, after Jeff Williams, composer for Red vs. Blue (an award-winning, animated science fiction internet series), asked Rosie to organize strings for his April concert. Jeff suggested that Rosie’s quartet open the concert with a few video game arrangements. Not one to pass on an incredible opportunity, Rosie recruited the players who now form Videri. In July 2012, Videri was invited to play at the Rooster Teeth convention in Austin, TX, where they opened for the Jeff Williams’ Freelance Orchestra for 900 people. In September 2012, Videri launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to record a CD, which they recorded in February 2013. Also in September 2012, Austin Wintory, composer of the video game music score for “Journey,” asked Videri to include an arrangement of “Journey” on the upcoming album. - 39 -
The Videri String Quartet is made up of four musicians from all over the country with backgrounds in all different styles of playing. Pamela Cumming (violin) joins the quartet from the great white north. Growing up in Williamstown, Ontario, she was trained in classical and fiddle. Pamela attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA studying violin performance. Aubrey Holmes (violin) is a classically trained player from Pennington, NJ with a masters from the Boston Conservatory. Rosie Samter (viola) grew up in Northern Idaho playing classical music and attending the Boston Conservatory to study classical music. Jeremiah Barcus (Cello) comes from Philadelphia, and is currently in his final semester at the New England Conservatory.
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Musicians Aubrey Holmes - violin (Pennington. NJ). The Boston Conservatory, Boston, MA. Jeremiah Barcus, violoncello (Philadelphia, PA). New England Conservatory, Boston, MA. Pamela Cumming, violin (Glengarry, Ontario, Canada). Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA. Roselie Samter, viola (Naples, ID). The Boston Conservatory, Boston, MA.
Collaborators Bora Kim: Marketing Manager Jenka Eusebio: Publicity & Artistic Manager David Peacock & Chelsea Treglia: Arrangers Eli Bishop: Arranger & Guest Collaborator Catalina Piedrahita: Photographer
Performances November 18, 2012: Showa Boston’s 23rd Annual Japanese Cultural Festival. Boston, MA November 17, 2012: Concert for Bayridge. Boston, MA. July 7, 2012: RTX2012 (Rooster Teeth Convention), opened for the Jeff Williams’ Freelance Orchestra. Austin, TX. May 9, 2012: Collaborated with Video Game Music Choir for their spring concert (Boston, MA) April 7, 2012: Opened for Jeff William’s Freelance Orchestra at Estate. Boston, MA.
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Arrangements “Beloved Hearts/Simple and Clean” from Kingdom Hearts by Yoko Shimoura and Utada Hikaru, arranged by Chelsea Treglia “Donkey Kong Country” by David Wise, arranged by David Peacock
“Sonic the Hedgehog: Green Hill Zone” by the SEGA Team, arranged by David Peackock “Super Mario” by Koji Kondo, arranged by Eli Bishop “Working Together” from Kingdom Hearts II by the Square-Enix composers, arranged by David Peacock
“Journey” by Austin Wintory, arranged by Eli Bishop
“To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X by Nobuo Uematsu, arranged by Chelsea Treglia
“Halo Medley” by Martin O’Donnell, arranged by Chelsea Treglia
“Zelda: Ballad of the Goddess” by Koji Kondo, arranged by Daniel Jimenez
“Mightiest of the Pirates” from Monkey Island by Michael Land, arranged by Julia Seeholzer
“Zelda: Ocarina of Time Medley” by Koji Kondo, arranged by Chelsea Treglia
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MiddleGray • 1
Contact Information: www.viderisq.com www.soundcloud.com/viderisq www.facebook.com/VideriQuartet
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Natasha Hakimi Natasha Hakimi holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and B.A.’s in Spanish and English with a creative writing concentration from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has received several awards for creative writing, including the 2008 and 2010 May Merrill Miller Award for Poetry, the 2010 Ruth Brill Award for short fiction and the 2010 Falling Leaves Award. Most recently she was awarded the 2012 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship and was a semifinalist for the Dzanc Books / Guernica International Literary Award. She has worked as an Editorial Assistant for AGNI, Los Angeles Magazine, and Truthdig.
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MiddleGray • 1
Relics
F
rancisco Franco will make you think of the heavy hand of dictatorship— terror, death, oppression—the price paid for order. And though you will not think of love, he did love. Santa Teresa de Jesús’ right hand, the skin and only the skin of Spain’s martyred scribe, slept next to him every night as he spat his padrenuestro and turned off the gas light. Sometimes, when his wife was sound asleep dreaming of olive orchards her husband irrigated in blood, Franco would jam his generalissimo falanges into Teresa’s epidermis, praying his fingers fit grace. Forty years he wore the santa mano, the incorrupt shell his glove, but when he died his cataracts swam as he realized the hand would outlive him. Past vineyards sprawling the arid hills of Spain, behind pebble walls enclosing Ávila even today, scrolls of Teresa’s love poems unfurl behind glass, and there, in the same vitrine, her left pinky.
Honey Mead
Y
ears later now I unpack to find quarters stuck to euros, unopened condoms, brochures from the castle in Meath we toured, “The Origin of Honeymoons” scrawled on shopworn sheets. The Celts made lovers gulp honey mead for the first month they were married; a man would hide away his wife, lock her up, watch her belly grow gibbous for thirty nights. Since our rainless June slept behind Do Not Disturb signs, eagerly swallowing your fabled fluids, I’ve learned that like so many tales we were sold, honeymoons are not from Ireland, but more likely from Deuteronomy, the Indian subcontinent, or from Norse barbarians: Voyage à la façon anglaise, say the French.
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Rumba Jinetera
Y
ou ride men by beaches, clubs— the scenes of all mulata fantasies, sold as amor turista sans HIV in all those TV ads paid for by years of free Yoruba hands. All the good literacy does you now, as you wander La Habana under cheap spells your voodoo wouldn’t undo. Men who woo you, coo at you: roosters, you’re their hen. You won’t lose, nothing’s loose yet, they cup your teenage boobs in their foreign palms, flip their handkerchief, try out their vacunao. Old fools, they don’t know you’ll fly away, luchadora. This is your dance, your rules, your move— so blind them with your skirt, let the rumba take your soul and leave behind your bones. Dance, your mother is a candle. Dance, your father’s in Miami. Ride, ride, ride Lorca’s horse into the Cuban sea. There’s a visa for you soon if you forget the flow of Rumba Guaguancó.
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J
MiddleGray • 1
Joseph A. Lapin www.josephalapin.com Joseph A. Lapin is a journalist, author, and poet living in Los Angeles, California. He is a contributing writer at the LA Weekly, and his work has appeared in Salon, The Rattling Wall, Pacific Standard, OC Weekly, Sliver of Stone Magazine, The Village Voice, and Literary Orphans. He blogs at josephalapin.com, and his twitter handle is @josephalapin. Originally, he’s from Clinton, Massachusetts. He graduated from the MFA program at Florida International University.
Tastes like a Bullet In the faculty lounge where I taught ESL to Koreans, the sugar bowl next to the coffee pot was empty. So we all sat around drinking black coffee —a pool of tar in a Styrofoam cup. None of us wanted to work that day, or any day, because we were stranded, sipping the fuel needed to punch the time to pay the bills and to wonder where we went wrong. Paul, the oldest, had worked on Long Beach Boulevard for 7 years, and every day after his shifts, he drove a beat-up Honda to Koreatown to teach more hours and punch more clocks. So he drank the most coffee, seeking the energy of Sisyphus in order to roll his stone of child support and back taxes, leaving behind a trail of bones and destruction. And I wanted to know why and how he had come to this place, in this life, and how much longer we would share it? How much longer until the promise of sovereignty? Black coffee— I took comfort in the liquid which tasted like blood oozing out of my cheek. Paul downed his cup, looked at his watch, and said, “it tastes just like a bullet.”
IRiding My Red Beach Cruiser It’s Veterans Day, so I go on a bike ride among the docks where triangles and rectangles float on the water. First, I drink a glass of whiskey at Scotty’s where I talk with a Cuban carpenter— came here in 1968, father a carpenter too, a Marlins and Dolphins fan, Castro’s concentration camps— about the game tonight between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat. Lebron, Garnett, Shaq, Dwayne Wade, maybe one day I can talk of them the way my father talks of Bill Russell and Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain. Then back through the marina. Light is dancing on the hull of a blue trapezoid. Just shapes. I look at married women walking. There are dogs wandering the streets. On to downtown Grove, where money ka-chings in drawers and homeless men and women sit on a table in the middle of Peacock Park, a place where University of Miami students and lawyers and poets play kickball near the ocean. Once a place for folk music and political demonstrations. Now I am small near these watchtowers. But they have come from our own image. People live in giant penises! A purple man sits in a blue Ferrari smoking
a cigar. Fuck him and all his money that I don’t have and secretly want. But don’t tell anyone. This is a secret. It is 2:00 p.m. between Wednesday and infinity. Paradise in daylight is a great pleasure, mangroves, bougainvillea, so many beautiful people too, and I have to pick just one! That’s okay. Love is beautiful. There are several families on the avenue today. I go to watch a movie but everything sucks. I bike home and my roommate Chris is killing people on the television screen virtual world. Wells Fargo sends me a letter of collection. I play the guitar. I sing a song. I write a song. I see abstractions. I taste the sky. I float on wax wings. I write a poem. I do something. Then I do something else. O what a world, to ride my bike through a city I can’t really afford, love a woman I can’t touch, and thank all of you men of war.
Lunch in the Financial District I am at a coffee shop, thinking about Diego Rivera at the MOMA. His frescos from The Great Depression: the blacks, reds, and grays of frustration harmonize my lunch hour in the financial district. Plastic seats are empty as commuting sojourners order the special. Suddenly, a vision strikes: I see a horizon of skyscrapers, red cranes hoisting and fastening clouds to the blue sky, stick figures bustling through train corridors and subway staircases, pushing and shoving through Great Depression to stand in line for food. I see a police officer walking up and down aisles of homeless men and women kept in an underground vault of vagabonds. I see Eleanor-Rigby women, counting money in a bank, licking their fingers with each new bill: one hundred, two hundred, three hundred. I see an image of myself, commuting to work on some galactic highway, some ancient dream of a city where the sky is black and the city’s old bones are exposed, revealing the architecture of class. And I am thankful to be here, on this rotating plastic chair, writing down this poem.
Michael Gray
“The Caldecott Chronicles”
“Uncle Charles in the Cellar”
Left “Petunia in the Bear Traps”
Michael Gray is a Miami artist working in several fields of design including Fine Arts, Illustration, Graphic Design and Web Design. His main passion is illustration and drawing and he works mainly with the figure and focus on body language. Gray studied at Miami International University of Art and Design and is currently working as a Graphic Designer in Downtown Miami. w w w . i m a g e c h e m i s t . c o m
“The Z Cart”
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“Mrs Simmonds and her Broken Fingers”
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MiddleGray • 1
These works are illustrations for a short mini series of graphic novels called “The Caldecott Chronicles” a fictional story of a man trying to reach his son through the zombie apocalypse in the early 1800s. Inspired by the writing I used ink on paper for this series to capture the feeling of the era and created the images in a bleak, sickly grey tone carried throughout the book.
“Target Practice”
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Strange Spaces Screenplay Excerpt by
Erick Castrillon
Erick Castrillon was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, but lived most of his childhood in Bogota D.C. At the turn of the millennium Erick and his family immigrated to the US during the Colombian Diaspora, displaced by the civil war. He lived in South Florida where he graduated from university as a Bachelor of English. Soon after, he abandoned his music aspirations of becoming a drummer in a metal band and traveled abroad to China, where he lived for a year and completed his third short film and a collection of short stories. In 2012 he was admitted to the prestigious school of cinematographic arts at the University of Southern California. He’s currently completing his M.F.A. in writing for the screen and television.
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EXT. THE SPEZIALI VILLA, THIRD FLOOR - NIGHT SUPER: TRESIVIO, ITALY Heavy boots pace up and down a snow-covered terrace. We hear a phone line RINGING. The wind HOWLS. BYRON ALTRO, 35, balding, brown skin, indigenous features, intense eyes, a head shorter than most people, clad in heavy winter clothes, stops pacing at the edge of the balcony. The architecture of the villa screams affluence. He looks below. A pretty long fall. Byron holds a cellphone to his ear and looks out into the snowy Alps. In the foggy distance, the valley is lit by streetlights and scattered houses. Not a soul moves. NOTE: EVERYTHING IS SPOKEN IN SPANISH UNLESS SPECIFIED OTHERWISE. MONICA (O.S.) (Agitated) Hello, Byron. BYRON How is he? MONICA (O.S.) It looks bad. The doctors said they have to operate tonight. There’s something wrong with one of his valves. I’m not sure what the-
Byron looks around, desperate.
MONICA (CONT’D) Hello? BYRON Let me talk to him. MONICA (O.S.) I’ll try. They’re about to take him in. Hold on.
We hear the CHATTER of an emergency room. Byron walks around the bend of the balcony - 57 -
EXT. BACK OF BALCONY - CONTINUOUS Byron reaches the edge and gazes at the other side of town. More mountains. More frozen forest. DON CARLOS (O.S.) (Extremely frail) Son? BYRON Dad. How-- how’re you feeling? INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - DAY SUPER: BOGOTA, COLOMBIA DON CARLOS ALTRO, 75, emaciated, chapped lips, tubes strapped to all parts of his body, holds a cellphone to his ear. DON CARLOS Like a rolled up piece of shit. What do you think?... I think this is it. BYRON (O.S.) Don’t say that, dad. Come on. You have to fight through this. DON CARLOS Cut the crap, Byron. This is the third time-- This is it. I know this is it. The connection goes bad. INTERCUT BYRON Dad? DON CARLOS Listen. Did you sell the damn thing? BYRON Yes. I got the money. DON CARLOS Don’t lie. Your voice says it all. You didn’t sell it.
BYRON Dad, please. It doesn’t matter any- DON CARLOS Of course it matters. You don’t know Segundo. You know what he does? BYRON I know what he does. Silence. BYRON (CONT’D) I know what he does, pa. INT. HOSPITAL ROOM, COLOMBIA - DAY A team of NURSES walks inside and start preparing Don Carlos. NURSE #1 Don Carlos, it’s time. Don Carlos SIGHS. DON CARLOS Remember. I want you to blend my remains into a liquid and flush them down the toilet. I don’t want to be cremated. Take care, son. I love you very much. Don Carlos offers the phone to Nurse #1. She takes it from Don Carlos, who has started to tear up. BYRON (O.S.) Dad! Dad? I’m coming back as soon as I... Hello? They take him away through the double doors. SLAM. EXT. THE SPEZIALI VILLA, BACK OF BALCONY - CONTINUOUS DIAL TONE. Byron lowers the phone and looks into the mountains as the moment sinks in.
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Sophie Bonet Sophie Bonet is a Miami based visual artist. Her creative education started
very early in life influenced by her grandmother, who also paints. As a child and young adult Bonet explored a variety of contemporary dance forms and Visual Arts disciplines including drawing, painting and sculpting. At the age of 21 she decided to pursue Fine Arts as a professional career, obtaining a Bachelors degree in Visual Arts from Miami International University of Art & Design. There, she refined her own visual and conceptual vocabulary through experimentation with mixed media/collage and non-conventional photographic techniques like the process of creating Photograms; a camera-less technique used by Man Ray in his exploration of rayographs. Sophie is currently working on her series “Via Onirica”, creating human size photograms. She also works as a teaching artist for non-profit organizations such as Arts for Learning Miami, leading classes for children and young adults and developing long term art projects in the community.
www.sophiebonet.com
“Luna Dreaming”
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“Luna meets Maria”
Via Onírica “Via Onirica” was born in 2008 and the concept originated from Bonet’s
curiosity about symbols, their nature, and their function. Through her creative process, Sophie Bonet observes the faithful journey and the evolution of her experiences and formulations. She investigates the idea of the Macro-Micro cosmos and the different levels of existence and consciousness. Bonet is also interested in concepts of mystical and anthropological nature such as dream-like experiences, life and its processes, and the afterlife. She explores the ideas behind theories about time, space, and expansion, which suggest that we are all connected to each other, to nature and to the universe. Bonet believes these are all attempts to answer the golden questions of all times: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? All these elements come together as a celebration of existence in Bonet’s work.
The Method Sophie Bonet approaches art through the experimentation of the medium. It is during the process that she calls “the strainer” that ideas are filtered, with their meanings and contradictions, to finally merge into one. Bonet explains, “I think it is so far the purest method to translate complex energy into a palpable symbol; a graphic representation and a clear picture of w hat was indistinct before” “A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera, consisting in placing objects or elements directly onto the surface of a photosensitive material, such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light.” In “Via Onirica” Bonet chooses to expose the human figure, especially from women and children, as the pure representation of the “vehicle” that takes us through the different states of consciousness, existences and frequencies.
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“Immersion”
“Shared Dream”
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MiddleGray • 1
“Sexes”
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Fausto Barrionuevo
Fausto Barrionuevo has poems published or forthcoming in several journals, such as Off the Coast, decomP magazine, Rougarou, and Sliver of Stone and was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2011 for his poem “Ground.� He recently earned a Masters in Fine Arts in poetry at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and has been awarded a full-time lectureship position at this same institution. A native to Miami, Florida, he is concurrently working on his first full-length collection of poems and a feature-length screenplay. His literary interests include, but are not limited to, surrealism, narrative poetry, and dramatic monologues.
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Take a Load off, Danny
A week later, my head is steaming, and you are outside smoking a cigarette, we see each other from across the street. And at your station, I ask you to shave it all off. You don’t argue, but mention how blistering hot this summer has been. The breeze of a fine razor skims the lumps like a dust tornado clearing the mounds, thrusting the cold with its blade. Then you begin; tell me that you have a date this weekend. You lean in; let me know that she’s almost thirty years younger than you.
You’ve been doing this for over 20 years, making conversations with strangers like myself. This a place of chatter and dirty jokes while you cut hair. On the table beside your clippers soaking in a blue cleansing liquid, pictures of Maggie, your dog, whose broken hip made her immobile. And you the kind soul who took her outside, every several hours so she could relieve herself ‘til the day she passed away. How a young lady neighbor thought you were so sweet.
The weekend passes, a couple of bristles spout, time to call you, Danny. I have to pay you a little extra to use a special set of trimmers. You mention it might pinch the skin, but not to worry, you have a story or two to keep away the pain.
The next day she made lobster soup and kept you company on your back porch. On my next visit, you repeated that same story, this time she was in her bathrobe hanging her bra and panties. “Laundry Day.”
But then you say, “Maybe you should tell me about yourself. I mean, with your height they must be begging for it.”
I laughed when you said it. The humming of a double blade shifting near my ear, cutting down my sideburns. You tell me that will fix it, the unevenness and go on with your story, mention how sometimes you stay up late to watch her prance naked around her bedroom, better than a cold glass of milk.
I look up at the mirror, searching for ways to top your story, noticing how oddly-shaped my head is. “A gentlemen, huh?” you whisper in my ear, trimming only skin, and tell me the kind of details an old man hopes to remember.
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Thin Air After much practice, pilots of Holy Smoke break the weightless blue sky with a message, “Jesus Saves.” White fluffy letters high above Orlando, Florida cast temporary shade for street corners and repossessed homes, table tops with plates left empty. Their sign spreads across hundreds of church roofs, the altars kept clean and tidy for worship. The propeller, flying low, startles children in a theme park. Some with balloons lose their grip. Tourists exit onto the parking lots, and overhead, the pilots take their victory lap. Meanwhile, the lake reflects only a smudge.
Box of Air With her daughter crying in the incubator, in that pale green room, my mother pulls at the stitches in her sleep. At five months, my sister is no bigger than a thumb. My mother can’t help but trace the seams along her belly, wish she could check the Velcro seal of the crib’s plastic casing. And for a year, my sister hid under a white blanket, her tiny arms empty under a quiet knitted sky.
Spoonbending A gone hungry voodoo queen, out of thread, prepares for her show by etching zigzags on the silverware. She welcomes people to surround her in Jackson Square. They crowd between her thumb and the backbone of the spoon. She sews their gaping mouths shut with her concentration and begins to press forward on the spine, till the handle digs into her palm. The tiny grips of her thumb print mesh with the cuts in the metal. The tip of the bowl bows as with our heads to her feet. It’s a con. Not real bayou magic. Yet tourist and locals litter the brick dust circling her body with nickels and dimes, breaking the silence she wedges into them.
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MiddleGray • 1
“Untitled Photograph” Laura Knapp
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MiddleGray
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MiddleGray • 1
THE
MIDDLE GRAYCafé
On Etsy
The Middle Gray Shop on Etsy was born in an effort to support the The Middle Gray project by integrating Visual Arts and Culinary Arts and forming a sustainable Arts Café. All The proceeds from our Etsy Shop go towards funding the growth of The Middle Gray through various projects.
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