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MiddleGray ISSUE #04
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Middle Gray Magazine is a quarterly online publication featuring emerging artists of various disciplines including, but not limited to, Visual Arts, Music, Literature and Performance Arts. This arts journal is part of “The Middle Gray,” an arts organization that supports emerging artists by giving them space and opportunities to showcase their work while being fairly compensated. Our intent is to build a place that encourages the social connections and collaborations that nurture a vibrant creative community. We are an online-based organization with expectations to grow and evolve into a physical space.
© MiddleGray 2014 All Rights Reserved info@middlegraymag.com Cover Photograph by Robert Gallegos Graphic Design: Catalina Piedrahita
We want to welcome you to our community and we hope you enjoy this experience. We are very eager to have you as part of The Middle Gray. Special thanks to all the artists who are being featured in this issue and to all our friends and followers for your support. Much love, The Middle Gray
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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and geese feed in the grassy median
If you don’t remove your birds from my sky at once, I will complain to the keeper of the birds.
I’ve been serving mass for the new priest for two months.
“Maureen,” someone said, a few inches from Maureen Campbell’s face. “Do you remember what happened?”
The mill. Swathes of green and white and grey that sting the horizon’s edge. Stars caught in tree branches. Parasol pines. A cool 14C.
Blinded by early Christians who gouged out her perfect almond eyes, Aphrodite blinds them in turn
In the hour traffic holds, light after light,
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Inside Johanna Pittman 6 Robert Gallegos 8 Mekiya Walters 22 Nick Schietromo 26 Bill Vernon 40 Susan Wicker 44 Jasmine Odessa Rizer 58 Marisa Burns 64 Philip Kobylarz 70 Sango Groove 72 Natalya Sukhonos 76 La Tomatera 80
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Johanna
PITTMAN Johanna is an MFA candidate in poetry at Boston University. Previously, she earned an MA in English Literature from the University of New Hampshire and coordinated a community college writing center. Her poetry has appeared in Jabberwock Review and Memorious.
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Nga Truong’s Confession
In the hour traffic holds, light after light, and geese feed in the grassy median; in the hour you return home, sift the day’s mail, all junk, and make dinner—beef and vegetables, maybe, or garlic soup; in the hours, no, years, when power lines hiss along the tree line, high, barely audible—something incredible happened, incredible as a television switching on by itself while you sleep, a death in your family, a death in your arms, but someone has an explanation for it— incredible. It was me. No other way out of those hours, that one hot room.
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River Crossing
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ROBERT
GALLEGOS www.robgallegos.com
Robert Gallegos is a lens-based artist currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. His work explores the complexities of his Mexican-American identity through photography and video in an attempt to better understand his cultural heritage and his place within it. Selections from the series “Auténtico” and “Calaveras” have been shown in Boston MA, Brooklyn NY, and Grand Rapids MI.
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Me (Picking Fruit)
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Me (as a Landscaper)
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My Back (La Virgin)
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Me (Jumping the Border)
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Auténtico “A mostly American-influenced upbringing has left me wondering what exactly is the Mexican in me. In past projects, I’ve documented my family in hopes to gain clarity about my place within our culture. Challenging my process with the series titled Auténtico, I work to explore a collective identity of Mexicans in the United States (from a non Mexican viewpoint). This project is a portrayal of popular perceptions and misperceptions of my heritage. Taking on these ideas, I perform for the camera, acting out different tableaux that have either been suggested to me or inspired through media. Personally, the ideas inspiring the photographs and videos are potentially offensive, while the act of performance proves therapeutic. In the end, the piece leaves me with a sense of closure and scrutiny of Mexican stereotypes. I do not wish to dictate the opinions of my audience. Rather, I hope to illustrate broad perceptions of the culture I belong to, but never felt a part of.”
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- Robert Gallegos
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Mug Shot
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Me (as a Cholo)
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Una Cerveza
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Me (in a Mariachi Band)
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Me (Drug Bust)
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Me (Sleeping Mexican)
MEKIYA
WALTERS Mekiya (rhymes with Papaya) Walters is an aspiring author and poet studying Creative Writing and Psychology at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He has lived in Asheville, North Carolina and Hyderabad, India, enjoys cooking and funny hats, teaches Tae Kwon Do periodically, and will someday institute a global revolution using only double-ply color-changing merino wool and size 2 knitting needles. His work has appeared in Atlantis Magazine, Gulf Stream Magazine, and Diverse Voices Quarterly.
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Personal Birds
If you don’t remove your birds from my sky at once, I will complain to the keeper of the birds. You will have your avian privileges revoked. Is that what you want, now? These are origami beaks. These are origami mouths, and these origami bonfires lick the dirt from our feet like apologetic dogs, and brush their own ochre tongues on our faces. For this— would you give up your birds for this? You go to sleep beneath a sky full of snails. I go to sleep beneath the silent televisions through which the prepubescent world stares, inquisitive and naked, into grainy living rooms of space bursting with useless weather systems. You dream submersible dreams of sailboats and misplaced hurricanes, while high above your spinning world, the pockmarked moon sits contentedly. I dream of remote skies— I dream American, birdless dreams. You—too dangerous in waking—sleep. Take off your paint, take off your million feathers. Hide your shortages and your mute geometries. You, a tree under a sky full of snails— I, a blind man trapped in a television— You, a spermless whale, beached on a shore of decimated shells and oil. Your fingers fall upwards toward black lips, but the water is immutable. Please reign in your birds. They do not belong in my sky. Let us relocate them, like black boys whose red noses run from the sound of dawn cracking— but I should not touch your birds. I should not touch your wings, the sinewy feathers, the blood-ink— your flight is yours. My flight - 23 -
is also yours. I have the flight of the cleaned bone, I have an army of ants in my skull, I have a head full of Africa. Blood veins tracing a diamond mind, piles of spare hands heaped in the corners of forgotten countries, drier than bone origami— please remove your birds. Please remove your sky from my head, please remove Africa. I’ve no more use for dirt, I live in a television, prefer remote-control birds, pixelated people, white snail shells— I want the surgery. If you remove your birds from my small sky I will never again try to read your face, or search for your origami tongue, which gave me paper cuts and then got lost among the terraformed cushions of memory. Your promise is yours. My promise is also yours. I’ll turn my attention to innocuous screens and make a pixel of the moon beneath my eyelid, and I shall know Seurat’s scorn— in his wisdom, he would edit all my images and assign me as a draft to his drawer. I, trapped in the acute angle of America— You, a sky with no birds— I, a pixelated sky with no moon, a paper wall, a clear sky, a camp, an astronomer with no telescope, a moon’s eye view, a snail on the Atlantic, a screen, a storm door, an empty design— The army ants climb softy out of Africa and steal America’s fingers so that they might, just once, swim in the Atlantic, unafraid to drown— and you took your wings but left behind your birds.
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The Jackhammers They turned my water off today. Now my head sits drying on my shoulders like a fruit. My brain has lost weight, and my skin has cracked. Brain, skull, Russian dolls— one inside the other, and useless. When will the water come back on? They don’t tell me these things. I turn faucet handles like motorcycle brakes, and listen for distant sputters. Copper drops sit in the sink, audacious as baby birds, daring me to drown them. Listen: When no one watches, the water will come back on and sit in the pipe, chuckling, as we assume the spigot slack. It will come out sharp and muddy, strangled on its own pride, tasting of business and chrome, and leached-out earth. I must have missed the pamphlets. From my porch I watch the road crews: jackhammers biting pavement under sun. Chips of asphalt spatter wavering air. God, my throat is parched. Coated with that thick flour dust of roadwork and summer. Hard orange hats beat back the sun. Yellow vests arch under the weight of sweat. They lean on angry machines and melt. They never send pamphlets.
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NICK
SCHIETROMO www.nicholasschietromophoto.com www.nicholasschietromophoto.tumblr.com
Nick Schietromo is a fine art photographer residing in the Boston area. His work deals with various aspects of domesticity, with one series focusing on his grandparents and another using found vernacular photography. He is a recent graduate from the New England Institute of Art and currently works as the Assistant to the Director of Gallery Kayafas in Boston, a framer at Panopticon Imaging in Rockland and an intern at the Nave Gallery in Somerville.Â
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Years Later “Each trip to a flea market, yard sale, or thrift shop is a unique find. Rummaging through shoeboxes and hand woven baskets to find precious memories of socioeconomic domestic pasts via an anonymous photograph. These prized possessions, once intended to be stuck to fridges, thumbed through in albums with intimacy and care, are now displayed for all to pillage through in post-humanist estate sales. Now void from their original context within the home, these dehumanized objects exist with bent corners, faded coloring and patinas offering endless narratives. The more antique images I discover, I wonder what photographs from present day would look like in the future. Will we treat the digital decay of a photograph as fondly as a well-worn print corner or a faded and stained image in a frame? Through digital manipulation via binary code corruption of found vernacular photographs, I am reassigning image value within a social archive. The new image creates a questioning of the societal shift from storing and exchanging analogue images to the storing and sharing of the digital files, and ones intra/interpersonal relationship to this imagery.”
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- Nick Schietromo
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BILL VERNON
Bill Vernon served in the United States Marine Corps, studied English literature, then taught it. Writing is his therapy, along with exercising outdoors and doing international folk dances. His poems, stories and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and Five Star Mysteries published his novel OLD TOWN in 2005.
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TAKING LIBERTIES I’ve been serving mass for the new priest for two months. After my Dad died, the old one took me hunting and fishing several times. This new guy, Father B, isn’t an outdoorsman, but after a Sunday mass he invites me somewhere. I ask my mother if I can go. “The priest called it an excursion.” “Where to?” “A seminary north of Dayton.” “Who all’s going?” “Al and the Ottke brothers.” “How much will it cost?” “Nothing. It’s a program the diocese sponsors. It’s to help us see if we have the calling.” Mom asked me only last week if I still thought I had a vocation. I always tell her maybe. At least going to this place would be something to do. She smiles, probably imagining me as a priest like her two nephews and her brother. “Have you noticed how fastidious he is?” “Father B?” I shrug. “I don’t know what that means.” “He’s so careful. Like he said he’d take me home after the Women’s Organization met on Wednesday night, but it wouldn’t be proper.” “Why not?” “People might get the wrong idea. Him alone with a woman.” I shake my head. Big deal. Mom touches her hair in back. “It was an off-handed compliment. Made me feel like a vamp, you know?” “Sure,” I say, another odd word losing me. The next Saturday afternoon with the Ottkes and me crowded on the Ford’s backseat and Al in front, the man behind the wheel impresses me. Not with his driving, he drives way too slow, but his energy. He keeps us talking the whole time. What do we like about school? What’ll we do when we graduate? Are our grades all right? Do we have girl friends, are they Catholic, and what do we do with them? By the end of the ride he knows as much about us as we know. Some religious order runs the three brick buildings that are the seminary. The guy who shows us around wears a brown outfit like a monk’s, but he seems pretty normal. He says he’s from Cleveland and all the other seminarians are home for the summer. He shows us their cells or bedrooms, the study and class rooms, the kitchen and dining hall, then the chapel. There, Father Somebody talks about vocations and other stuff that nearly puts me to sleep. In fact I don’t catch what’s going on when Brother Hubert shows up in a regular bathrobe and leads us outside. We go through a garden, downhill through some trees to a pond. Then he drops his robe, runs across a board sticking out above the water, and dives in. Strangely, he’s naked. I’m fully awake now. He surfaces ten feet out facing us, says the water is perfect, and we can
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come in too. Father B laughs. “This is my surprise, fellows. You all told me you’re swimmers so let’s go in. Nothing like a healthy swim on a hot day.” He takes his clothes off, folds and lays them on a bench, then wades in wearing a bathing suit with legs to his knees. Father Hubert wades out of the water, takes measured steps to the end of the board, and does a perfect jackknife. “Oh, this feels so good,” Father B says. He’s farther out, the water up to his chin. “Don’t you all want to come in?” Paul says, “We didn’t bring our suits.” Father Hubert has surfaced. “Most of us never wear suits. Who’s to see us out here?” Al says, “I’m going in,” and takes off his clothes. It feels weird, but the Ottkes and I go in too. We spend an hour diving off the board, racing across the pond, swinging on a rope off a big tree and dropping into the water. It’s fun, but we don’t wrestle around, trying to dunk each other, as we normally do. We keep a distance between ourselves. At the end we lie in the sun and air dry. Father B stands off to the side, shaking himself once in a while like a dog drying off. When we leave, Brother Hubert says he hopes we’ll come again. Driving back, somebody says he thought swimming naked like that seemed odd. Father B says he did it all the time growing up. He and his friends belonged to a Boys Club that prohibited swimming with suits on in its indoor pool. Everybody swam nude. So he got used to it and now it seems very natural. A little later he says, “Maybe we can all go there sometime. I visit my old mother several times a year so it wouldn’t be anything special. She still lives in the neighborhood. We could visit her, have a bite, then go to the Boys Club.” “Okay,” somebody says, and I doze off. Of course Mom asks about the trip and I tell her the highlights. “You swam nude?” “Yeah.” I tell her what the priest said about it being healthy and an everyday thing at the seminary. I tell her about the Cincinnati Boys Club’s swimming policy and how Father B grew up swimming there. I really don’t know what to expect. She got mad at me for swimming naked in the creek with my neighbors Kenny and Gary, but that was mostly because it was dangerous. The creek was high and dirty and we could’ve gotten sick or worse. Also, if somebody’d seen us, they might’ve called the police. This time I was with adults, including a priest. She says, “Well, I hope you thanked Father for taking you. It sounds like a nice trip.” “Yeah, I thanked him.” I don’t tell her what happens the next day after I serve mass. The other altar boys are gone when I take off my cassock and surplice. I’m hanging them up when Father B appears beside me. He puts an arm across my shoulders. “We’re pals, aren’t we?” “Sure,” I say. “You’re a very good person.” He squeezes my shoulder so I have to lean against him. “Your mother ever tell you that?” “I guess so.” “You and your brother dress very well. I can see she takes good care of her sons.” While he says this, he undoes the top button of my shirt, and the fingers on his left hand touch my chest and make a little circle just below my neck. He undoes the next two buttons and his whole palm makes circles on my chest and stomach. When the 4th button comes loose, his hand circles my chest, comes down to my trousers, and his fingers reach down under it. “Bill, I enjoy saying mass with you on the altar behind me. I like you. You are such a
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good person.” I stand there silently, letting him be friendly. I smell the wine from the mass on his breath. What he’s doing seems odd, and my stomach spasms as his fingers plunge under my belt. I guess I’m wondering what’ll happen. When they brush the upper part of my hair down there, he jerks his hand out of my trousers, out of my shirt, and steps away. He looks at me funny. “Well, you better get on home. Your mother will be wondering if you were kidnapped. Will I see you next Sunday?” I nod and button my shirt. “I’m scheduled for eleven o’clock mass again.” “Good. See you then. Or do you need a lift home?” “Thanks, but I have my bike.” I pump the pedals and fly down Orchard Avenue. The air washes across my exposed skin as if I were being cleaned. The Eisners’ Boston bulldog Daisy comes roaring into the street after me as usual, and this time instead of veering off I kick her. She rolls over and gets back up barking. I laugh and pedal on. I don’t tell Mom about the priest’s way of showing appreciation and, I guess, affection. It’s odd, yes, I know that, but he’s a priest. For somebody else, I might call it taking liberties. Mom might too. But Father B. knows right from wrong. Mom trusts him and so do I.
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Power Up
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SUSAN WICKER www.susan-wicker.com
After completing her Illustration studies in 2012 at the Arts University Bournemouth in the United Kingdom, Wicker continued her career as a freelance graphic illustrator. She creates collages using found material from old or vintage magazines, books, weathered papers and deteriorated record covers. She includes unusual forms, shapes and colors that come together to present emotionally charged imagery that deals with female strength, power and identity.
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Filigree Fancy
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Sin
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Hollywood In the “Hollywood” series Wicker uses contemporary graphic illustration and silk screen printing. This combination results in a bold and raw aesthetic that allows her to create compositions within a very particular atmospheric environment. The images are inspired by the young starlets of the 1950’s. These pieces depict their path to stardom, which turned out to be very different from what they had come to expect. Some of the images suggest the idea of the “Femme Fatale” and explore the concept of vulnerability among this community.
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Eye to Heaven
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Sharp Eyed
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Firelight
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Night Lightt
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Say It With Flowers
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Rush
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Jasmine Odessa Rizer Jasmine Odessa Rizer is a serials cataloging librarian. She hails from Kentucky and lives in Athens, Georgia. Previously, her work has appeared in The Blotter, Wilderness House Literary Review, Drops of Crimson, Orb, and Stillpoint. She has contributed artwork, fiction, and non-fiction to the arts-based e-zine Moonshine. She also served as a section editor and regular contributor of fiction, reviews, and feature articles, to the e-zine Mosaic Minds. Her erratically-updated webcomic can be read at www.damnfoolgirl.tumblr.com.
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Fall
“Maureen,” someone said, a few inches from Maureen Campbell’s face. “Do you remember what happened?” Maureen opened her eyes. A skinny boy in jeans and a sweater was standing in a tiny room, looking down at her where she lay on a bed. He looked a little older than her, and vaguely familiar. She said, “Whatever happened, it ended up with me in an enclosed space with a cute boy.” He backed away so fast that he knocked himself backward onto the room’s other bed. “Maureen, ew. I’m practically your stepfather.” “Oh,” said Maureen, remembering. “Sorry. I forgot.” “Forgot?” Maureen, sitting up cautiously, regarded the man sitting across from her in what she now recognized as her dorm room. Ted Madison. Adjunct professor of drama. Twenty-fiveyear-old boyfriend of Maureen’s glamorous, free-spirited mother. Maureen had met him once only once before, and certainly hadn’t noticed how cute he was, and decided, now, to un-notice it. “Sorry, Ted. Dr. Madison.” He leaned forward. “Maureen, we think somebody spiked your drink at the freshman orientation social.” The “freshman orientation social” had been seventy-six college freshmen in a basement conference room under the supervision of a glassy-eyed R.A, who had not noticed when an innocent-looking blonde had produced a bottle of rum from her huge purse and started pouring shots from it into people’s cups of punch. The girl had knelt on the floor behind the sofa and doctored drinks, and when Maureen, clueless, had nearly stepped on her, she had giggled and asked, “You want some?” Maureen had been raised on legends of her alcoholic grandfather. Her mother, her father, and every health teacher from the eighth grade up had talked about how the children and grandchildren of alcoholics should never drink, because the odds were in favor of their becoming alcoholics, too. Maureen, thinking about this, looking at the girl with the bottle, had thought, I am more than the product of some gene pool lottery, held out her plastic cup and said, “Sure.” Now, looking into the trusting eyes of her practically-stepfather, Maureen more or less wanted to die. “That’s terrible,” she said. “Did I do anything stupid?” “No,” Ted assured her, “You just fell down.” Maureen, who genuinely couldn’t remember what had occurred between her second trip behind the sofa and the present conversation with Ted, was relieved to hear this. But her head was throbbing. “Where’s Mom?” she asked. Ted said, “She was pretty upset and wanted me to talk to you first.” “Is she mad at me? It’s not my fault,” said Maureen, amazed and appalled by her own capacity for lying. “No, she just – ” Ted winced. “Well, you know how scary your mother is when she’s angry. She thought you should come home with us, though, just for the night.” “No,” said Maureen. Her mother was the one person she could not lie to. After lengthy plea-bargaining, Maureen was allowed to stay where she was. “But call us if you start to feel funny,” Ted admonished.
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As he was leaving, he let in Maureen’s roommate, Lucy. Lucy said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Dr. Madison. I’ll take care of her.” The moment door had shut behind Ted, Lucy put her hands on her hips, glared down at Maureen, and growled, “I can’t believe you got drunk at that stupid freshman thing.” Maureen moaned, “Don’t you think I feel guilty already?” “Not guilty enough. What were you thinking? Isn’t everybody in your family an alcoholic?” “No,” said Maureen. “Not everybody. Just one grandfather.” “All I know,” Lucy said, turning away and rummaging through her desk, “is that I’m not lying to your hot stepfather for you again.” Maureen, not looking at Lucy answered, “First, you didn’t lie to him; second, he isn’t my stepfather; third, you are the worst lesbian ever.” “I’m not made out of stone,” said Lucy dismissively. “Anyway, I’m not going to keep my mouth shut for you again. Next time, I’m calling your mother myself. I’d call your dad, too, if he weren’t already not speaking to you.” “My father is not not speaking to me. We just don’t talk that often because everything I do seems to irritate him.” “I wonder why,” Lucy said under her breath. Maureen knew without looking that Lucy was shooting pointed glances at her pink hair and at the tiny pig tattoo she had already begun to regret. “We can’t all be the perfect daughter with the perfect GPA and the perfect girlfriend,” Maureen said unkindly. Then another wave of nausea washed over her, and she threw up in the trash can. “Serves you right,” said Lucy. It was true that Maureen felt vaguely jealous of Lucy’s home life at times. Lucy’s parents were accepting not just of their daughter’s hypothetical gayness but also of her actual girlfriend. It made Maureen’s father’s moral panic over Manic Panic hair dye seem pretty small-minded. Lucy had been dating the same rich girl since the ninth grade. In the eleventh grade, when the romance had been discovered and the girlfriend’s parents had chucked her out of the house, Lucy’s parents had taken her in. It had all been very chaperoned, and the girlfriend, Greer, had had to sleep at the opposite end of the house from Lucy. But still. Lucy and Maureen were at the state university, and Greer had gone off to an art college out of state. There were telephone calls, and thick letters, and postcards with pictures of the student center on front and, “Wish you were here! XOXOXOXOX!!” written on the back. If Lucy had had a long-distance boyfriend, Maureen could have been jealous, and pretended to vomit into the trash can under her desk, but as it was, she had to be supportive. Late one afternoon in November, Maureen huffed and puffed her way uphill to her dorm, after spending an unpleasant half hour in a first-year poetry class, listening to her classmates hazard guesses about the meaning of a poem entitled “Down, Wanton, Down.” After class, in the hallway, after the poem’s true meaning had been explained, Maureen heard one classmate saying to another, “He made us read a poem. About a guy’s wang. Nuh-uh. I am so suing this school.” When Maureen got to her dorm room, she heard the Smiths playing through the door. Maureen was glad, because she had been eager to recount the story of “Down, Wanton, Down” to Lucy, and to conclude it by saying, “If I’d wanted to hear poems about penises, I could have stayed in high school and listened to Steve Harper’s dirty limericks.”
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However, once Maureen opened the door, it was clear that Lucy wasn’t going to be in the mood for clever observations about college. She was crying, and had obviously been crying for some time. Her eyes were red. Her nose was red. Mascara and glitter eye shadow were streaked down her face. Maureen said, “What’s wrong?” “Ask my bitch girlfriend,” sobbed Lucy, holding out a sheet of stationery. Maureen took the paper and read:
October 2, 1995
Dearest Lucy,
There is something I should have told you some time ago, but I knew how much it would hurt you. When I came down to State with your parents to help you move in, I spent some time talking with a girl down the hall. We have been writing to each other, just as friends at first, but now we are in love. I’ll be transferring to State next semester so that we can be together. You are such a good and non-judging person that I know you will not try to make this harder for me than it is. I know you will not for instance make it awkward if I run into you on campus. Maybe we can even be friends again someday.
Yours always, Greer
Maureen said, “She dumps you in a letter, and then she signs that letter ‘Yours always’? Those are some weak-ass composition skills.” Lucy stared at her. “So the worst thing about this situation is Greer’s weak-ass composition skills? Not her smashing my heart into rubble? Not her giving up her place at art school for some lesbian-until-graduation she met for five minutes in this dorm? Not the fact that I’m going to have to see them playing huggy-hug all over campus? But her weak-ass composition skills? You’re heartless,” said Lucy. She doesn’t really mean it, Maureen told herself, and sat down at her tiny desk to do homework. Later, when The Queen Is Dead had played through to the end, Lucy wiped her eyes on her comforter and said, “I didn’t mean it. About the heartlessness.” “I know,” said Maureen. “You know what we should do tonight?” Lucy asked. “We should go out. I mean, not you and me on a date, obviously.” Maureen rolled her eyes and said, “I realized that. And you’re right,” she added, liking Lucy of Action better than Tearful Lucy. “We should go out.” Reaching for her copy of the free local newsweekly, she started leafing through it. “They’re showing Midnight Cowboy at the Rusk Student Center Theater.” “Vetoed,” Lucy said with a frown. “Depressing.” Maureen had to agree that now was probably not the time to watch Midnight Cowboy, which she had never seen but which she understood was not exactly a laugh riot. “Okay,” she said. “How about the drama department’s production of Dancing at Lughnasa? It’s three dollars for students.” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to see a bunch of assholes dancing around.” “I don’t think there’s actual dancing involved,” said Maureen, vaguely remembering
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having read part of Dancing at Lughnasa in an anthology of Irish literature. “I’m not willing to take the chance,” Lucy insisted. “Fine,” Maureen sighed. “There’s a band called the Megavixens playing at the Rusty Nail. I’m sure you’d like to see some Megavixens.” “That’s just the name of the band,” Lucy protested. “How do I know they’re not a bunch of dudes?” “Because there’s a picture of one of them here,” said Maureen, tossing the paper onto Lucy’s bed and pointing to a picture of a voluptuous blonde with a guitar slung across her body. “Even I can tell that she actually is a megavixen.” Lucy studied the picture. “Does it say what kind of music they play?” “It says ‘Wanda Jackson meets Roxy Music.’” “Aren’t you glad your mother let us listen to all her grown-people records when we were inappropriately small? Otherwise we wouldn’t recognize either of those references.” “I still don’t understand what it’s supposed to mean.” Lucy said, “There’s one way to find out.” She seemed to be feeling better already. She bounced over to her tiny closet, considering its contents. “I want to wear something that says, ‘Hey, ladies, I’m available,’” Lucy said reflectively. “What should I wear?” “A sandwich board? That says, ‘Hey, ladies, I’m available’? I don’t know. You always look great no matter what you wear.” Lucy eventually settled on an outfit that made her look like Keith Richards, circa 1972, only with daintier features and much prettier hair. In fact, when Lucy shook her hair out of its braids and let it spill around her shoulders, Maureen opened her mouth to say, Hell, I’d make out with you right now, but decided this remark would irrevocably complicate a friendship that had worked perfectly for thirteen years. The process of picking out an outfit, whipping herself up into a good mood and staying there, and then badgering Maureen into changing clothes – “at least change your shoes,” Lucy had whined, staring reproachfully at the black canvas sneakers Maureen had been wearing all day – took hours. Bars and clubs and restaurants were actually starting to open by the time Maureen zipped up the motorcycle boots that passed for haute couture in her world and both the girls gathered up keys, IDs, wallets, and the pointless Swiss Army knife that Maureen carried in her purse just because it was a present from her dad. Once at the Rusty Nail, they joined the crowd milling around waiting for the show to start. Lucy was not very talkative. The black cloud seemed to have descended again. The Megavixens were three pretty women who didn’t look to Maureen much older than herself. They sounded to Maureen very much like the Dillard and Clark records she had heard at her father’s house as a child. After about an hour, Maureen made a visit to the bathroom, where the stalls had to be held shut with one hand because someone had ripped all the hook-and-eye closures out of the plywood. When she came back out of the ladies’ room, the Megavixens had launched into a feedback-laden version of “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and Lucy was dancing with another girl, chin on her shoulder, crying huge messy mascara tears that Maureen could see even under the dim lights. Watching them instead of watching where she was going, Maureen bumped into a broad, tall redheaded boy. “Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.” He laughed down at her and said, “It’s all right. Buy you a drink?” She probably would have asked him to buy her a Coca-Cola if the baseball-hatted troll next to him hadn’t said, “Dawg, ain’t you ever hearda statutory rape? You’re gonna get ten years.” “Yeah,” Maureen said to the redhead. “I’ll have a Jack and Coke.” She had a sud-
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den conviction that drinking would make her seem more sophisticated, and would make the redhead’s friend sorry he had mistaken her for a silly sixteen-year-old with a fake ID. “Ten years, dawg,” Ball Cap Boy said. The redheaded boy ignored him, and steered Maureen towards the bar. Although the bartender was forbidden to serve liquor to anyone whose hand stamp indicated they were under twenty-one, there didn’t seem to be any rule that prevented his serving it to anyone who promptly handed it to someone underaged. The next thing Maureen would later be able to remember, the glass in her hand was empty, and she was being incredibly charming. She had never known she could be such an extrovert. She was telling a lot of funny stories about high school, and Red and the bartender were laughing. The redhead put his arm around her shoulders. Nothing like this had ever happened to Maureen. Boys didn’t like her. They never had. Thrilled, elated, Maureen felt her eyes sliding back to her empty glass, and she asked Red, “Can I have another?” He laughed and squeezed her and said, “I don’t think you want another one just yet.” When he said that, Maureen realized that she was drunk, that something bad could easily be happen now, and that by no means the least bad thing that might happen could involve Lucy’s being outside on a payphone talking to her mother and Ted. Maureen pictured her mother storming into the Rusty Nail and dragging her out as if she really were sixteen. “I have to go,” she blurted, sliding off her barstool, her knees buckling ever so slightly when she hit the floor. “I have to find my friend.” The band was playing a Zombies cover now. Maureen wondered if they had any songs of their own. She wondered if they had about a million excellent songs of their own, all of which she had missed because she was busy getting drunk. Again. Maureen realized that even if Lucy hadn’t seen her drinking or staggering, she would smell alcohol on her breath and call her mother There would be a scene, if not now then later. Maybe Ted would be present, as if he were any kind of credible father figure instead of an adorable creature Maureen would gladly have dated herself if her mother hadn’t seen him first. Another possibility hit Maureen as she pushed through the crowd: Maybe her mother would call her actual father, and he would look at her with her pig tattoo and decide she was just like his own father and really quit speaking to her. Permanently. Maureen elbowed her way back to the bar, where she paid a dollar for a cup of ice water and drank it slowly, leaning on the bar, rinsing her mouth out before swallowing each mouthful. As she stood up to walk away, she heard someone ask, “Who’s th’ funny little pink-haired lady?” “Oh,” she heard the redhead answer, and when she turned toward the sound of his voice, she saw him with his arm around the shoulders of a new girl, “that’s just some drunk girl I met earlier.”
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Marissa BURNS www.behance.net/marissaburns
Burns recently graduated from Wells College with a degree in Visual Arts. Her work is an abstraction of her own memories, which she represents visually with the use of watercolor. Her process consists of selecting one memory, pulling all the colors she can remember from it, and then laying them on paper.
Candy
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Marissa’s paintings are quite small and intimate, a representation of the artist’s own self. These images depict times in her life that she has chosen to share. “I want people to feel comfortable and relaxed, not overwhelmed and uninvolved when they look at my work,” explains the artist, whose intention is for the viewer to stand up close to these paintings and really contemplate the intricacies in them.
Ribs
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Waterfall
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Beach
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Bars
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Philip KOBYLARZ
Philip Kobylarz is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a journalist and film critic for newspapers in Memphis, TN. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry series. The author of a book of poems concerning life in the south of France, he has a collection of short fiction and a book-length essay forthcoming.
Recollection of the Fortifications
as Daudet
The mill. Swathes of green and white and grey that sting the horizon’s edge. Stars caught in tree branches. Parasol pines. A cool 14C. Air winding the blades of wood spinning in stone. Flock of birds making their way to Morocco. Letters left on a desk, rattling. The crease of the shutter (cedar) and of the window (arranged nothing). Eucalyptus leaves circling the footpath trying to get somewhere or lost. A place beyond the mountains. Where a city wakes in a vale of steam, scarves of smoke flung from chimneys, black carriages, dull and dark geometries of buildings without signs. Ink of India drying. Swirls of clouds paint sea and land a mute hue of no color in particular. What’s behind the seams in the clouds: legions of angels or whores of Babylon. Chiaroscuro signature and the date: an etching of characters.
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“. . . merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Just like the glove of raw tongue on a rooster’s head symbologies are hidden in glass jars: dried pens, screws to nothing, dead batteries, pennies, crushed rosebuds. What we put into drawers: to remember later. A stack of newspaper piled near the door, rain wet and leaning out of its frayed strings of Babel. Leaves are in the eaves and snakes are whispering– which means morning in the fields of yellow husks of straw turning dirty blonde at the first release of ions before a storm. The front forms as if clouds haven’t been seen in these parts for summers. Trees distanced by hillock gather in groves, arms entwined, not standing but harvesting shadow. Nimble as lizards, moss grows unabated. Nature’s secret, the shy twin of Narcissus, is kept by the tall grass as it is in the crabapple’s exposed brain, in a hollow where a doll’s body lies dismembered with plastic eyes still open.
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SANGO
GROOVE www.sangogroove.wix.com/sango www.soundcloud.com/sangogroove www.facebook.com/sangogroove
Sango Groove es un grupo basado en Cali, Colombia que se describe a si mismo como un “sancocho”: una mezcla. Nacido en el 2012 a partir de sesiones improvisadas de Jazz y Folklore Colombiano, y liderado por el pianista y arreglista Victor González, Sango es un recorrido musical por Africa, New Orleans y la costa pacífica Colombiana. Este proyecto musical combina la energía de la música callejera, la sensibilidad armónica del jazz, el groove del Afrobeat y el Funk, la potencia rítmica de la música tradicional del pacífico colombiano y la espontaneidad de la improvisación. Sango Groove is an ensemble based in Cali, Colombia. Its members describe their own music as a “sancocho”: a stew, a mixture of seemingly disparate elements. Born in 2012 out of improvisational sessions in Jazz and Colombian Folklore, and led by pianist and arranger Victor González, Sango is a musical journey through Africa, New Orleans and the Colombian Pacific. This project brings together the energy of street music, the harmonic sensibilities of Jazz, the groove of Afrobeat and Funk, the rhythmic power of Colombian Pacific music, and the spontaneity of improvisation.
Sango es / Sango are: Frank Rentería Heriberto Bonilla Jefry Obando Carabalí Julián Carvajal Walter Mendoza Cristian Muñoz Camilo Rengifo Víctor González
Photo by Pablo Gallego
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La música de Sango es una exploración del legado musical resultado del encuentro entre Africa y America. El pacífico Colombiano está habitado principalmente por descendientes de Africanos, y estas raíces se hacen evidentes en las tradiciones musicales de la región. La combinación entre la música de la costa pacífica Colombiana y la de la costa del golfo en Louisiana podría parecer dispar, pero la mezcla revela la sorprendente cercanía musical de estas dos regiones. Sango pone en evidencia el hilo común de la rica tradición Africana que une a estas culturas.
All Photos by Damien Lepretre
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Sango’s work is an exploration of the musical legacy resulting from the encounter between Africa and the Americas. The Pacific coast of Colombia is inhabited mostly by descendants of Africans, and these roots are readily apparent in the musical traditions of the area. The combination of the music of the Colombian Pacific and that of the Louisiana Gulf Coast might seem disparate, but the mixture reveals the striking closeness in the two musical traditions. Sango makes evident the common thread of the rich African tradition tying these cultures together.
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NATALYA Sukhonos Natalya Sukhonos grew up in Odessa, Ukraine and Brooklyn, New York. She has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. Natalya is a poet, academic, and educator. She lives in San Francisco with her husband Ian Singleton, who is a writer. Natalya enjoys Russian and Latin American literature, long bike rides, art, and great conversations. She has lived in Odessa, Brooklyn, New Haven, Spain, Boston, Rio de Janeiro, and Istanbul. Two of her poems have appeared in Dr. Hurley’s Snake Oil Cure and the Yellow Medicine Review.
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Aphrodite Blinded by early Christians who gouged out her perfect almond eyes, Aphrodite blinds them in turn when they speak of agape and ignore eros – but soon enough they’ll learn of Abelard and Éloïse, then Dante’s Paolo and Francesca, when they forget Love and War were ancient lovers – yet the birth of Christ – God’s love – spawned Herod’s ploy to kill off all male infants in Judaea, when they ignore Love’s matrimony to the god of Fire – “One of my names is devouring fire,” spoke Jesus, but no one remembers. Blinded, Love’s force has now become abstract. It pulls us closer to the earth, like gravity. It stretches across the continent, floating on the flimsy thread of city lights seen from an airplane, flickering on the violet vertebrae of mountains as we approach California in the seaside dark, it is in the vastness of all the miles between us. It is this vastness. Suddenly, it finds a home: your opal half-moon fingernails, the way you grasp an apple or leaf through a book, all because Love was blinded 1700 years ago, all because I just flew over Nebraska and only you will remember the town of Gothenberg, its layered greenish-pink unearthly sunset, our drunkenness after driving 1500 miles for me to kindle that fire on our campsite by poking a few sticks in the middle of America where we had seen each other with her blinded eyes for the very first time.
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August 25, 2012 From treetops screaming with joy And the house of green To the city of grey dawn and latticework bridges – Across 285 miles of New York State I become companion messenger guardian To a single flower: My mother’s present to my dad After 42 years of marriage. This sunflower is not a sign. It guards its aureole of empty space With gentle jealousy Every petal a testament Of unrelenting sweetness That is for no one And belongs To no one. The heart of the sunflower A cluster of warblers All ready for flight. (But my father might scare them off With his timidity.) Its fuzzy stem a rough caress. (But will his fingers even touch the flower?) Wrapped in a wet paper towel, Will the sunflower survive The five-hour bus ride the New York City Metro this poem his indifference? Years ago, He gave her A kilo of fresh strawberries at the city market A two-week boat trip on the Volga A wealth of illegal samizdat poems Laughs, letters, a dacha, a dog, two daughters A home for her parents The desire for movement And a new country. Now he gives her a promise And she returns it to him in bloom, Always the wiser.
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Lipstick ‘n Leather by Susan Wicker
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www.facebook.com/latomateragaleria
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Después de 5 meses de trabajo en el diseño, exploración, experimentación y montaje, La Tomatera Galería Café abrió al publico el pasado 28 de noviembre en el bario san Antonio de la ciudad de Cali, Colombia. Nos complace anunciar que, a partir de esta edición, Middle Gray Magazine incluirá una selección del arte actualmente en exhibición en La Tomatera. La Tomatera Galería Café, es un espacio pensado y diseñado para los amantes de la ilustración, la fotografía, el diseño, el arte y la buena cocina. El objetivo es ofrecer un lugar para la exposición y promoción de artistas locales, brindándole al publico obras que se ajusten a diferentes presupuestos -- bajo un modelo rentable para los artistas -- así como una oferta gastronómica variada, con el fin de ofrecer experiencias diferentes en la ciudad. “En La Tomatera estamos comprometidos con la diversidad y creación constante de nuevas opciones para nuestro público. Para esto siempre estamos en búsqueda de nuevos artistas, fotógrafos y sabores.” explica el fundador Iván Salazar. The Middle Gray y La Tomatera seguirán trabajando juntos buscando formas de beneficiar y acercar a nuestras respectivas comunidades. After 5 months of design, exploration, experimentation and set-up, La Tomatera Gallery Café opened its doors on November 28 of last year, in the historic neighborhood of San Antonio, in Cali, Colombia. We’re pleased to announce that, starting with our current issue, Middle Gray Magazine will include a selection of the artwork currently being shown at La Tomatera. La Tomatera is a space designed for enthusiasts of illustration, photography, design, art and good food. They have built a place dedicated to showcasing and promoting local artists, providing their audience with artwork for every budget in a model that’s profitable for the artists. This, in addition to a diverse food offering, aims to offer a new experience to their community. “At La Tomatera we’re commited to diversity and to bringing new options to our public. We’re always in search of new artists and new flavors.” explains founder Iván Salazar. The Middle Gray and La Tomatera will continue to work together, seeking new ways to benefit our respective communities and to bring them closer together. - 81 -
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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.
Thank you for reading!
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