Paris/Atlantic - v. 38 - 2020

Paris/Atlantic

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"WHEN INTO THE WOMB OF TIME EVERYTHING IS AGAIN WITHDRAWN CHAOS WILL BE RESTORED AND CHAOS IS THE SCORE UPON WHICH REALITY IS WRITTEN." From Tropic1of Cancer, by Henry Miller

Paris/Atlantic is an international publication dedicated to the literary and creative arts, based at the American University of Paris. Founded in the summer of 1982 by alumnus Michael Lynch as a publication focused on poetry, it has since evolved into what it is today: a collage of artistic work produced by members of the University, up-and-coming creators, established professionals, and dedicated artists all around the world.

Curated by a small number of AUP students, it has become a major cornerstone of the artistic production on campus.

It has also been called "widely influential in the esoteric realms of Parisian poetry" by one contributing AUP faculty member.

This year, we are proud to present the work of fourteen AUP students, eight alumni, six faculty members, two staff members, and thirteen international artists.

Copyright © AUP student media and individual contributors, 2020.

Printed by Tanghe Printing, Belgium.

Published by the American University of Paris.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digitally or physically, in whole or in part, without prior permission of the publishers.

2020 69, Quai d'Orsay, 75007, Paris, France The American University of Paris

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Paris/ Atlantic

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Marina Françolin Borges MANAGING EDITOR Serena Woosley CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Mary McColley THANK YOU Amanda Dennis Siân Dafydd Sarah Sturman Valeria Françolin Evan Heinze

Limitless by Christian Nze 4

To Ananke

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Letter from the Editor 4/28/2020

Some people have asked me what would be the "theme" of this issue of Paris/Atlantic. Knowing the answer to this question before the book was finished, to me, would be like building a frame for a picture that is yet to be seen. Now, I have seen it.

In the picture there are waves; this is not still water. There are hands reaching through a wall, magical creatures, big-headed fellows, and lonely fellows staring into space, as there always are.

There are colors, absent and present, and abundantly so; there is a game of hide-and-seek being played between those who prefer to hide and those who prefer to seek. There are pacts; some things simply go together, like the gods and us mortals.

Some of our contributors decided to look up and communicate with the skies above, while others look down and register the earth. Sometimes, this seems to say, we are curious. Sometimes we prefer to remain certain.

The ever-unstable relationship between us and that which sustains us, Mother/Planet/Floating-Rock/Earth, has taken a predictable turn toward retaliation. This spring, she employed a virus to punish us, forcing us into the arms of our ['till now] unpretentious love affair: technology. For those of us who had learned to live like hermits, the task is an easy one, Fortune being an obvious privilege. The despair comes with the lacking—love, affection, validation, attention... money—all things we've lacked before.

How can we not now face our demons? There are demons, here, too. In fact it seems, as a revelation, that they feast together with the angels. It shouldn't have come as a surprise, but I am one of those who brag of a friendship with the angels and hide in shame and fear of the fallen ones. Yet these too are eternal, and they too have wisdom to teach.

"Why do you take refuge among the short-lived?" I once heard in a dream. Because, I answered, I am one of them.

Refuge as a necessity is tragic, as an ever-present option it is luxurious and soon becomes sterile; how can we, while forced to seek refuge

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from nature, believe ourselves to be anything more than natural creatures?

And yet, as we overcome it, how could we not be something more?

Or is only being human, and alive, in itself refuge?

Our artists didn't know what was bound to take hold of the Earth when they created these pieces, and yet some of them might seem prophetic. Why is that, if not because destiny has a way of creating a perfect narrative, with hints and escalations toward one great climax? To some, this "great climax" is just another one of life's comic chapters. To some it is a first encounter with true, unbearable tragedy. Many take it as an opportunity to take refuge within themselves, while others wage war against the very thought. As per Paris/Atlantic tradition, the editors of this issue submitted a few of our own pieces to the journal, and my contribution, "Alone," is a love letter to solitude. I hope it will inspire others to take refuge in it as I do.

I take refuge in solitude, but also in Necessity. I think it is divine, as many did long ago when it was called the mother of Fate; Ananke, to whom this issue of P/A is dedicated.

At the American University of Paris, Paris/Atlantic has been a place of refuge. It is a cherished side conversation in the classroom; a party, where everyone wears masks and speaks the truth; a collection of secrets, shared in the dark; a room, hidden beneath a pub where lost souls meet; a welcoming, chaotic stage; an international ode to the hospitality of the blank page.

Marina F. Borges 7

VISUAL ALESSIO Ricardo...............................................................82 Who was? Who is? Who is to come?

BEECHER Dan..............................................97, 105, 127, 131 Still life bottles, Evan Heinze, Grateful Dead, Jim Lahey B Johnny............................................................................135 Heaven on Earth GUNN Daniel..............................................................16, 119 IHRIG William..................................................................122 Drawing of bronze sculpture of a lion sculpted by Antoine-Louis Barye KUFS Austin.......................................................................44 Magnetic Voices L. WILLIAMS Constant.....................................................88 LAYMAN Mary...................................................15, 61, 63, 71 LeCOCHE Andrew.............................................................39 The Deep MACEDO Caroline...............................................58, 66, 132 MARCELINO João..................................................35, 38, 72 MARCELINO João and FOGAROLI Gustavo................9,10 MASSOT Randa.........................91, 106, 112, 116, back cover La grosse tête, Celestial Wave, Night Dreamscape, Of that which emerges, Winds of Change MOLIN Hannah.................................................................115 NZE Christian....................................................cover, 55, 74 OHANNA Sofia..................................................................78 Limitless, Facing Half of the Truth, Creative Process PHILLIPS Marly..................................................................93 Saying Sorry Isn't Good Enough; 1 & 2 RAO Isabella......................................................................121 RASSARI Ian...........................................................20-27, 47 ROCHEFORT Chloe..........................................................81 SAFARZADEH Samira......................................................108 SHAHINIAN Taline...............................................32, 86, 94 Directions 8 to 7, Casablanca, Metro tunnel TOUTOUNOV Serguéï........................................51, 102, 103 ZANELLI Alessio.................................................................12 The Commixture Toast

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LITERARY ADDINGTON-MAY Jane...................................................62 ASCOT Judd.............................................................48 BORGES Marina.......................................................69, 90 CARTER Ellis………………………….......................76 DENNIS Amanda………....................................................…87 ENNIS William………………...........................38, 54 GARDNER Hall.......................................................96 GIBBEL Stuart...........................................................................40 HARDING Adrian..........................................................118 KALOUCHE Sidney....................................18 LARA Alyssa.............................................................70 LEVIN BECKER Daniel…….........……….....................................75 LEWIS Charlotte…………………........…................................…92 McCOLLEY Mary.....................................................60 McFADDEN Tom................................................114 MELANGELL DAFYDD Siân..............................52 MITCHELL J............................................................117 MONTILLA Jillian...............................................................32 PURAT Felix................................................28 STURMAN Sarah…………...........…........................14, 34, 72, 83 TAYLOR Katie....................................................................104 TENENBAUM Alan........................................68 THOMAS-BUENOS Madison........................................95 WOOSLEY Serena....................................................56 ZANELLI Alessio.....................................................110

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S l of Pear

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s Sarah Sturman

two slices of pear lying on the paper plate sitting on the cedar wood table standing in the yellow-green grass sprouting on the bank of the creek and you, love, and I floating in the sun, dancing with the minnows

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A Crashing Wave

Sidney Kalouche

“Yes!” Jamie shouts to the dark sea. It is too much to keep questioning “Who am I?” It is superfluous. Because, because I just am! And I will go on in this world as a tree grows up from the dirt. The question that asks “Who?” does not really matter or even exist. We are trying to take our own measurement within infinity.

Jamie, under the sun, is on the beach, next to the ocean.

She walks or sometimes she runs. The sunlight is warm when she is still and there are vacant seconds between the strong winds. When the air brushes her face, she notices its circular movement. She listens as the breeze breaks apart on her nose and travels past her ears. Then, in the water, the high waves boom as they slowly crash and crumble into the sand; they simmer as they pull back. They are an orchestra of drums in a dream that is never forgotten.

She listens to the part of the shore that she can hear in her conch shell at home, the hush and hollow whistle of it. She is able to hear this place from so far away with her shell, but she has to close her eyes and do the rest of the work to bring herself there.

She has become good at this, imagining a place, especially one near water. In her imagination, she can be near the Pacific so truly, and yet, when she is really there at the water’s edge, it can surprise her.

She looks at the salt in her fingernails. It is richer than what was in her mind. She could focus more, she thinks, when she’s far away, to really create all of this place.

People rush in from Jamie’s memory, into her mind, and she lets them. Her brother, Danny; her close friend, Amy; and her new friend, who has become like a sister, Melanie. She thinks of her parents and her grandparents, too. How they would have loved to be on the beach with her.

There are arched rock formations in the water, standing tall above the beautiful, lonely beach. The waves rupture as they collide 18

with these slowly smoothing sculptures, never to be finished.

Cool sea water mists over Jamie like ghosts speaking to her, even though she does not believe in them. They spark electricity within her either way. So she runs, she runs, to and from the water.

With bright, crisp breaths of air that flow through her teeth, she smiles, and she laughs underneath the ocean spray. Her hands stretch into the air, she inhales again as she closes her eyes. And a decision is made. Quickly her shoes come off, and her socks, too.

She leaves them with her bag of equipment. Again, she runs for the water, and this time she jumps, with a dive, right into the great frigid body. Then her thoughts evaporate in the cold abyss.

Oh, the love I have felt, Jamie remembers while she dries in the heat of the sand.

On the train, my head collided with Melanie’s, and we left them pressed together. The hairs on our heads became warm off each other. Together, we looked at our hands, at our shoes, as we were crossing our feet. How could I forget such things? I had just given my book to Melanie, one I had been carrying for weeks, waiting for a moment of courage. Such moments are always with me.

There was that early morning following the rainstorm that kept the whole house from sleeping. I walked with Danny and our dog along our treasured path in the woods. We returned home covered in so much mud it was as if we had rolled in it. The three of us had to be kept outside with a bucket of water and the dog’s oatmeal shampoo.

In an empty room that echoed, I had been reading lines with Amy for our upcoming play, Tea and Sympathy. In the scene, I run into my bedroom after I am made fun of by some members of the tennis team. Amy’s character doesn’t know, and tells me that she will not be living with me for the next school year. After 19

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we improvised it, I would listen as she played the piano. Eventually, she played melodies of her own, ones I learned to hum.

Jamie remembers her drive to her grandparents’ house. Her father had given her reading material about ocean conservationists: photographers and marine biologists. Everything was changing between Jamie and her father, and yet everything remained the same. They were beginning to talk more freely. She was no longer afraid to tell him that she wanted to study the ocean and its creatures—to be so far from home, living a life so remote from what he had known. For a while, she antagonized him so much, and she thought that he couldn’t see her. He would spend many days reading and writing intricate contracts. It was his work, and when he finished, he was exhausted. Jamie didn’t know why, but her father’s exhaustion led her to feel as if she didn't deserve to want the ocean, when he was so righteously killing himself over words of legislation. But for so long she wasn’t showing who she was to him. And her idea of being undeserving was a mistake, one she came to realize was her own. These days, Jamie and her father could see each other. At her grandparents’, there were the sounds of cooking, music, and joy. And open bottles of wine, too. All of it bled through the windows along with the light to welcome the travelers at the end of their drive. All of it now so far away.

I don’t question the food of my family, Jamie thinks. And she looks down where her bowl would be, almost smelling warm stock and cilantro. When I am by myself, I question my food so much. Especially the coffee in the morning. “Is it too watery?” I ask. “Or is it smooth?” I can’t decide. “Well, Mom made it.” Then it would be perfect; my doubts would melt away.

Then Jamie opens her eyes, she faces the body of water she had just so magnificently plunged into. She isn’t able to create their presence, as she sits on the beach. Then she lays her head on the sand.

Suddenly Jamie questions her possession of others, taking a vibrant responsibility for who they are. We are the sculptors 21

of the humanity that we perceive. When Jamie looks at people, listens to them, exists with them—it is in these moments that she is an architect, a choreographer, and a linguist. She is not simply a scientific observer. And her creations are eternally with her; they are the notes she can always call up to her mind, Jamie almost concludes.

There is a mistake, and she knows it is the reason she still sits alone with the pain of being alone. Her own image of her father, of Melanie, of all the rest, is not complete. She has been drawing up short, hasn’t she? She could never capture a person so complex as someone she loves. Their intentions—every inclination—still have such vastness. Every time she returns to her memories, they have become more faded and vague.

And all the while, the raw present has been beckoning her attention. Awe that is to be had in every moment, in every direction.

The humpback whales piercing the deep, the white pelicans in the sky, the sea turtles hatching from their shells, or the slowly growing coral larvae under the water. There is novelty occurring within each division of a second. And within ourselves, too. But still, how sensitive this truth can be.

Jamie lay back on the sand in the sun to warm herself.

There were goblins on the beach, selling something. It wasn’t fruit, was it? It was not. Jamie could see the goblin-looking people were selling magazines. She was suspicious. It didn’t matter what they were selling. They were trying to trick her. All of them trying to convince her that she wanted what she didn’t want from them.

Why don’t we let ourselves be? Be exactly as we are without trying to embody something particular? Because eventually we do not have wants, as we lose them in any dull moment when we are walking or eating. Then the years are thrown by and we dodge them, and we forget. We replace those wants with something new.

But what is new is still beautiful, is it not?

We are like a waterfall in that we cannot steer ourselves when we let our vitality flow. When we let go, the water is so 22

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formidable; it rushes, it flows with a force we would think is godly, but it is entirely at the fingertips of our own bodies, our vessels.

When the water is let go, without so much interference, it can form a great waterfall. Oh, how we lose sight of our powerful gaze, so impossible to shift, or so we thought. It gushes and pours with such immense strength and variability; it will flow around our hands, around our attempts to pick it up and move it somewhere else. And when we take our water in a bucket, it still has the essential nature of water, but it is no longer a flowing body.

Recognize, recognize, recognize this difference, Jamie concentrates, of living water, and dammed water.

There are times in her head when she thinks she is climbing through walls, meters wide, of mush, mud, slime, and pollution.

It is suffocation, until there is an opening with cool wind, wild wind, enough to brush the forgetfulness off her face and out of her ears. The wind that rushes again and again against her, that guides her back to her center.

Her grandfather enters her mind. He has tenacious, witty optimism. It is even stronger than the wind. “Laugh,” he would say with his humble smile, as a title for living. She wants to know this quality in herself. She wants to be funny then, like her grandfather.

She imagines a man in a mask: “THIS IS A ROBBERY! THIS IS A HOLD UP! I want your love,” the masked man would demand.

Jamie thinks quietly. Her heart is not so quiet. It rises above the fervent undertakings of the sea. If she could just let her longing go… Except not every part of her was ready to understand that. “But I have to,” she contends. When she stands, she strengthens her posture for the water and the creatures who have become her witnesses. "I will not be swayed by the words of others or by my loneliness without those words. I will be as unwavering as a mountain. Yet my being will go; it will not be stagnant, but vibrant as the sun. I will be as inevitable as a crashing wave."

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The Salesman

Felix Purat

The salesman drew his sword. He had borrowed it from a library in Oregon (due in three weeks, the salesman noted) and it was in mint condition. He had always wanted to be a samurai. It was why he had become a salesman. It amounted to the same thing: being a warrior. Let the artists pretend. They did not know the real world as he did.

Raising his arm, he slashed the sign with a single stroke. A piece of plastic fell to the ground, elegantly and with nobility. The salesman observed the sign and used his mathematical acumen and intuition to compute the final drop: 30%. He nodded. It was a good reduction.

The supermarket employee gaped as the salesman sheathed the sword with an elegance seldom seen in the West. Moments after he had left, the product whose price he had slashed—cardboard packages of Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese—was sold out. If the customers saw that a dangerous weapon had been wielded in an irrational manner just a moment ago, they did not show it. They just saw the slashed price and two plus two did not equal anything else except four. What was a sword to them when they could save money? The employee flushed as his manager berated him for losing the company money and fired him immediately. But the employee was later re-hired and promoted when it was discovered that the computer had not charged the 30% discount and none of their customers had been miserly enough to inquire. People didn't care anymore. That's just how it was. The employee never forgot that day’s lesson: trickery, not honesty, is how one excels in the real world.

At any rate, the police were not called in that town. It was not until the theft of a samurai sword was reported a few days later that police began coordinating in order to locate the thief and ascertain his or her motives. To their surprise, they found nobody willing to divulge any information. Only a lot of empty Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese boxes in the dumpsters, and a few thrown into the ocean to see if the cardboard decomposed faster when it was wet.

From Brookings to Lincoln City, from Salem to Medford, the

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locals went shopping and found the world more affordable to them.

They rejoiced, praising the salesman wherever they went. For once in their miserable, broke lives they didn't think about money. They went on picnics. They visited Crater Lake. They bought extra grams of kush.

They drank microbrew instead of mainstream beer. Their fornication pushed old envelopes into new postal services. When they went on day trips to Ashland to see a corrupted and politicized performance of Othello, they found the ticket prices slashed by a whopping 90% with a buy one, get five free. This would later be used as evidence when the salesman became socio-politically implicated and tarnished. But that is a story for another time.

Heading south to California, the salesman’s ancestral home, a tremor engulfed him and his fantasy as tsunamis flood Japanese coastlines.

If anybody needed the help of a noble samurai like him, it was the Californians. Taxed through the nose, they had become a corrupt and ignoble people, a fallen land of savagery and degradation. The samurai hadn't returned for years. He hadn't had the courage. But that was then, and this is now. He was unstoppable. And he was ready.

The salesman trekked through dangerous forests, austere lava beds and verdant valleys as the peak of Mount Shasta rose before him.

In Yreka he had to slash every price by at least 40%; already, even so far north and far from the centers of power, the tyranny of high and unnecessary payments tentacled its way into these quaint, little towns where people minded their own business. Needing to relax a moment to rest his sore arm, the salesman bought a brew and observed Mount Shasta from the distance. It was a nice, sunny day with cumulus clouds haphazardly dotting the blue sky.

Mount Shasta’s reputation preceded it. The mountain was a repository of great magic and wisdom. A ring cloud graced the mountain, a matrimony between the mountain god and the cloud goddess. The salesman was touched. Just as he advertised a product

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and allowed word of mouth to “advertise” his price-slashing abilities, so Mount Shasta advertised its sacredness without compromising it. The salesman wished that humans could market things as naturally as that. He might be a traveling salesman, but he was a salesman with a conscience.

The salesman sipped his beer. Tomorrow he would reach Weed.

And after that, the mountain awaited.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Police forces had mobilized in Oregon and begun to contact their Californian counterparts. A dangerous fanatic had stolen the katana of Nobuo Fujita and passed himself off as a samurai. He’d slashed prices left and right, losing many companies a lot of money. The real blow came when the salesman apparently slashed up an old home computer in a Eugene library; a sudden drop of 50% on major retail websites made not just every Monday a Cyber Monday, it made every day of the year a Cyber Monday, irrespective of whether it was even a Monday to begin with. Powerful people were enraged. And when powerful people were enraged, something had to be done to quell their anger.

The Californian police assured the Oregonian police that this self-styled samurai would be dealt with. Their Northern Ninja Assassin Brigade was on standby in Redding. “I just give the signal,” bragged the mayor of Redding, “and the ninjas will slit whomever’s throat I need to have slit. A sushi chef couldn’t use a knife on a tuna fish with half their artistry. Consider the job done, chief.”

An army truck drove across the bridge stretching across the dredged, damp remnants of Shasta Lake. Ordinary drivers looked at the dying reservoir and were overwhelmed with a palpable thirst. Not the ninjas. There was only one thing they thirsted for: blood.

In Weed they managed to find the salesman’s footprints; they followed his trail up the mountain. The salesman had a particularly recognizable scent. It was the smell every user of the dollar knew from their wallet, and even the most alert ninjas thought they could see a green haze floating around them. They felt so attracted to the smell that their net worth temporarily went up a few percentage points.

Their noses led them to a cave at the base of the slope leading to Shastina, the secondary peak, overlooking Black Butte. Aside from the ghosts of Old Wintu country, there was only silence. The ninja brigade withdrew their swords, ninja stars, and their other ninja paraphernalia.

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It wouldn’t be the first time they were ambushed.

Inside the cave, they found a considerable stash of paper money and a note carved into the side of the cave with a katana. It said, “I will ‘save’ the nation.” Immediately after the slowest ninja reader read the very last letter, the cave collapsed around them. They were never seen again.

But they were heard from again. In the city hall in Redding, the mayor sweat as he listened by radio to one injured ninja telling him they were trapped. He promised he’d send somebody to find them, but he knew better than to second-guess the magic of Mount Shasta. Not only was the mountain wise beyond our scientific understanding, its magic negated any WiFi connection a person tried to install in the immediate vicinity. The mayor wasn’t sure which was worse.

Three days later, the mayor went into his office to wrap things up and go home. The salesman was waiting for him there.

“You killed my ninja brigade!” cried the mayor.

“You led them to their own death,” the salesman pointed out, his samurai sword in its sheath. “If you want to wage a war of words, you’re welcome to do so. But I am a salesman. I win every word war I engage in.”

Most people the salesman met were wise enough to know when to back down. The mayor was a politician, however, and a seasoned word warrior. Most politicians were. It occurred to the mayor that if his ninja brigade had been so easily taken out, the salesman must be quite the competent swordsman. The mayor didn’t even own a sword, let alone take fencing classes on the weekend. A word war was the only alternative. His lips began to part.

What went on after that is uncertain. We only know two things.

The mayor was found dead in his office, his gullet stuffed with words.

And the people of California, for the first time in a while, saved money, and in doing so, saved themselves.

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Boy of Ink

Jillian Montilla

3 April 2019 For Andy Byproduct of deep sea fear swimming up skin diving through veins clawing up nerves sighing, ticking, suffocating Tentacled spewing spawning from the untended seed of Baobab

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Once, Boy of Stories taking up kind refuge in those spaces between syncopated, mindless, time-wasting chatter outside and the stories hid from developing inside Boy of Ink his breath suspended release arrested sipping, sipping, sipping in smoke to calm the humming inside sipping and shrugging

beholden to Sickening Sights

playing midnight to matinee

projected on the vinyl-backs of drowsy eyelids smoke out the bees spike between the eyes soak in ice water rinse, wash, repeat, right? running along the flowing Ida

head dragging in her icy depths

day in, day out

and now, Pingala grabbing his gasping face

holding him by the scruff to the

brilliance of softer water and

not any more like home either the night air cools his cherry nose, his revolving mind follows after his rolling eyes and his tears dry under the moon’s light

their salt mixing with the memories

of seas remembered, of sweat earned rinse, wash, repeat Right

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Eastern Seventh Sarah Sturman

There’s too much in my bag as I walk out the door and it’s colder than the weatherman said it’s never the same Caleb’s been emailing me all night as I dream about my wife who you know I’m not supposed to love, she’ll be real someday but today I have a nine-thirty, keys, phone, wallet, and my big coat with the lining that’s black but I always think is yellow 34

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until I see it it’s right by the door but the eight is a sauna and we sit there suite à un incident, I have lived and died on line eight and some connard is breathing in my face and pressing against me I’d like to stab him with a stale baguette but Jada is texting me can we push lunch to twelve and do it at my place I’d like to have a quiche from my bakery as it’s only 3,10 even though it’s gyro Friday it’s cold the sultan is homophobic didn’t you hear we never go to Le Meurice anyway except for that one time, then I run into Charlotte and we walk a block together old people don’t love each other, they just link arms to keep from falling down the sdf next to my bakery is now in my doorway and he’s blocking the way and he’ll read my code Maura said there’s a string of break-ins happening he needs to leave, go back to the bakery door where people don’t buy bread for him as he has clean sneakers

Alexa is like a slave Alexa I view you as an equal but I don’t view the tourists as equals they take up space on the sidewalk especially on the fucking segways and

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my murder face doesn’t even work on them but I get through and go to the Quai which I shouldn’t be going to because the fumes go to my head and I’ve been in pain for seven days you know and counting, better to be in G or PV or even PL or A which is actually closed so I can’t go there anyway and it doesn’t help that my shoulder is aching from my bag that’s too heavy, I think you’ll be a happier person when you’re thirty and you don’t miss your dream-wife so much, says Caleb, and why do people put genitals in their mouth but won’t eat the brown part of a banana is that a Gen Z thing possibly so

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Et si le moment Le plus beau Était enfin venu D’entrer En lévitation Sans avoir peur De la chute

Lévitation William Ennis

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An excerpt from

Canterbury of New Zealand

Stuart Gibbel

February Made Me Shiver “Mario!” he said to himself when he noticed the neatly folded garment on his bed. I signed up for a room, not a fashion consultation, he thought. He immediately felt guilty. What type of person gets a gift and is agitated? He thought of the Japanese, who have an entire system for how to respond when someone gives you a gift.

Here, in Queens, NY, they didn’t have such an arrangement; he had no idea what was expected in return for something he had no intention of ever wearing in public.

The walk from the subway was long; the frigid wind blowing from both the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay made him feel like the meat in a sandwich left unwrapped in the freezer.

He knew that a gift should warm him up, but at what age did you get to stop wearing new things? It seemed to him that he had reached that place in life. Older than his housemates, but not close to retirement: that was the myth he used to describe his age.

Several weeks prior, he had made a negative comment about wearing tracksuits and seconds later in walked Mario wearing a…

He just wanted to remove his clothes and get under the comforter that his ex had offered him as a parting gift. Sleep was a legal form of escape from both his job and the constant flow of news about school shootings, children being separated from parents at the border, and environmental disasters that should have been prevented.

His shade was open; the lights from JFK flashed in the distance. His hands warmed enough to feel the garment. It was soft and looked comfortable. Something he could wear—around 40

the house. He knew what he must do: put it on and parade around the kitchen like a c-list fashion model for a discount catalogue.

More feeling came back to his hands. When he turned up the light he realized that this was the gift that keeps on giving: black with vertical red and white stripes, more color in the jacket than in his entire wardrobe.

The pants were soft, yes, but what was even more amazing to him was that they were the perfect fit for his extra long legs.

How did Volz know his size? He’s never asked for my size and as far as I know, he’s never measured me in my sleep. Miracles are possible, he thought.

Mario may have been the inspiration, but it had to have been Volz who made the purchase. He was not only an artist of visual material, but a master of estate sales and online auctions.

On a daily basis he had packages coming in and out of the house.

He didn’t recognize the name of the brand printed on the sleeves and back of the jacket, but it seemed designed to wear to a rugby match or sporting event where manly men are applauded for committing acts of extreme violence.

As he walked towards the kitchen, he assumed they would be drinking Maté and watching videos. The topics were limited to any feature of life on earth that had been captured and uploaded: earthworms fucking, music videos, wrestling or boxing clips, documentaries on obscure bands. He hoped that the My Pony porn clips would be a one-time-only event, that as long as he lived he would never again be asked to check out animated fucking based on a popular kids’ show.

The only rule he understood was that the more people watching, the smaller the screen. One or two would be watching an image projected on the wall, three to four would require a laptop, five or more would be huddled around an unironically-named smartphone.

When he entered the kitchen, four members of the crew were viewing something on a laptop—Volz, Tall Juan, Ben, and 41

some new person that he didn’t recognize. The rule was once again validated.

He would have to wait a few minutes for the music video they were ingesting to end to present himself, take the pics, get ‘grammed, and hang the suit back in his closet where it belonged.

Perhaps he would leave it there when he moved out in three months.

April Come She Will

On the boardwalk, the bright sunlight made promises of warmth it would not be able to deliver for at least a month. He was dressed for winter, wanted to be here for summer, but his sublet was ending soon, so he enjoyed what time he had. His eyes darted between the snow on the sand and the surfers in the water.

Are they crazy, he thought, or am I not living my life to the fullest?

There seemed to be no room in this universe for other explanations.

You live every moment of your life, or not.

May She Will Stay

He learned the pros and cons of living with artists and musicians. The cons included, but were not limited to: coming and going at all hours, eating dinner at midnight, smoking in the kitchen, listening to the same song over and over, band practice/ recording sessions that lasted until morning, and waking up and having to step over some member of a touring band who was sleeping on the floor. He could accept this, but there was one aspect of the house he could not identify as a pro or as a con, something that nagged him throughout his stay: a feeling that he could never belong, never be a member of the club.

STOP. STOP. JUST STOP. I’m taking back the story. The narrator has done a hell of a job, so far. Using music lyrics as subheads for a story that takes place in a house full of musicians and artists. Nice. Starting with a subhead from a song about the 42

death of a rock legend who died much too young, brilliant. A song with months to denote the passage of time, almost too clever.

The fact that the song was composed by Paul Simon, born and raised in Queens, inspired, but not enough, because this is not a story about music, it’s a story about, it’s a story about, it’s a story about—let me put it this way, it’s a story about the fact that the pros of living with artists and musicians are exactly the same as the cons; the magic is between the yin and the yang.

Example: José was going back on tour with Las Rosas; his room was available, so I jumped at the opportunity. I may not play a musical instrument or surf when there is snow on the sand, but I still needed a place to live. I celebrated my extended lease by unpacking some of my boxes and hanging up some of my shirts next to the untouched tracksuit that I still had no intention of wearing in the real world. Rude, perhaps, but it just wasn’t me— maybe I could wear it around the house or for one of the legendary parties/backyard BBQs that I’d heard about but never witnessed.

“Are you going to wear your tracksuit to our show Saturday?”

Tall Juan asked as I exited the bathroom. I had no idea what show he was referring to, but in the spirit of my extended stay, I said I would love to and headed back to sleep.

“Put you on the list,” Juan said as he headed towards his room.

“List?” Before I drifted back to sleep, I realized that I would have to wash my suit before I wore it to the show. It was new to me, but who knows how many people wore it prior to its purchase on Ebay or whatever website Volz used to buy, sell, and trade branded activewear. ***

“Are you on the list?” the girl asked. She looked me up, crossed my name off, and motioned for me to pull up my sleeve so she could stamp the back of my hand.

“Love the suit,” she said as I opened the door and headed into Baby’s All Right. The posting on Instagram said the show started at 8, but it was already 7:50 and I was the only customer in 43

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the joint. The band was setting up on stage and even the bartender was still prepping her station.

“Not serving yet,” the bartender said without looking up.

“OK,” was all I could manage, but I figured I’d just wait until she was ready.

“You with Tall Juan?”

“Yes,” I said, but I wasn’t sure what she meant. Before I had the opportunity to explain, she slid me a beer.

“Thanks,” I said and reached into my pocket to get a tip.

Free beer is never free. Instead of the bills I’d placed in the pocket, I pulled out a piece of paper. Unfolding the paper, I made out the handwritten words: “Nights of...” How? What? Who? Before I could even ask why, I heard my name called from across the room and saw Tall Juan standing with a group of people—some familiar, some not. I saw Volz and Mario, both wearing tracksuits. Tall Juan commanded the room in his African-print suit that could pass for pajamas. Pat, his bassist, was the man in black, representing the state of New Jersey and all folks who dwell in darkness.

“Thought the show started at 8.”

“Doors open at 8. People don’t show up till after 9, show starts whenever,” Volz explained. He told me this as if I’d been born with this knowledge, like a fear of heights or women with face tattoos. I was taken backstage where I was treated to more beer and wine, and stories of concert tours and the places they had visited and the show started, and I can’t remember the rest of it except for Volz running the lights, and Tall Juan owning the stage with his acoustic guitar that was born to punk. It was a memorable evening that I can’t fully recall.

Somehow I got home. That night I dreamt that I awoke from a night of the tracksuit. On the piano bench near my bed were two tracksuits, neatly folded. In my arms I was cradling a warm, beautiful woman, my right hand gently cupping her breast.

When we woke we smiled at each other and spent hours talking about the magic of the previous night. How we met, the sparks 45

that flew, the witty remarks about our outfits. After our morning Maté we walked on the beach and made plans for future adventures (in and out of our tracksuits).

When I awoke, there was no second tracksuit. My suit was thrown on the floor, not neatly folded; no woman, no warmth, no breast. I was hungover and alone. I vaguely remembered something about a note in my jacket pocket, but when I searched, it wasn’t there.

June She’ll Change Her Tune

Another show, another opportunity to wear the suit.

I checked the pocket. I felt a scrap of paper and assumed it was the “Nights of...” note that I had found and lost. The paper looked new, not crumpled or sent through a washer and dryer.

Opening it, I realized it was different: where the words “nights of” had been in the previous note, now there was only empty space.

Following was this: “…endless possibilities.” Volz, I thought, but he was out and had been out the entire day. I’d checked my pockets before putting it in the washing machine. I had no logical way to explain how messages from fortune cookies were appearing in my pockets. I don’t believe in magic, but once again I was on a list.

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47

I recall my Whose pussy was The spitting image She inspired the She was a lovely An orchid flower O how her mouth Whenever I would And all the silent, Of her Are plastered in

If only I could That brought me back And her lovely To see a colored That reminds me of Or witness a dark That fades into But, alas, Masturbating Naked on my Imagining her A still-life telling A single-frame 48

lover ramada like panna cotta, of soapy Venus, best of my penis.

Untitled Love Poem Judd Ascot

Rubenesque, in the flesh— would open wide come inside, voidless spasms collective orgasms my memory still.

take a pill between her thighs amber eyes— ancient frieze her reddened knees, and sandy sky her bronze eye.

I am left alone in my home, sheets in socks squishy box— many stories, memento mori.

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50

51

The last ingredient (December) Siân Melangell Dafydd You show me how to tell a fresh egg by its behaviour in water. How to predict a double yolk. How to crack it without mess or mixing – one handed.

Only in books do we sieve flour – but be finicky with salt – a pinch of that can’t be left out or it will taste of nothing.

The language of pastry comes from a wedding ring against a bowl.

You don’t tell me this. I just learn.

Here, Cariad, here.

And pies grow in skins – crust, curd, meringue.

Crust, fruit, crust. Crust, jam, cake.

You show me how to transform egg into snow.

We use the weight of a new-born baby in sugar, we run out of cinnamon, run out of cloves, spill allspice, argue over the last stump of nutmeg. Watch, wait, Cariad, wait, you’ll grate your fingers.

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And then the bread batches – they sit like sleeping cats, they grwndi their lungs.

Our recipe for plwm pwd requires love as the last ingredient, in Nain’s handwriting, steamed to perfection.

Then we observe the breeze. It kneads the garden and we wait. What does the breeze add?

It reminds us to breathe.

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Wide Moons William Ennis Wide moons Will light the flowers You gathered Throw them into the sky And watch them bloom In the night

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55

Night Vision

Serena Woosley

It’s always lazy in the afternoon. At four o’clock we become petulant.

At five we are drowned and blackened monsters, wading in muggy and clinging despair. At six we cook and rejoice, palms smelling of carrots, fingernails of aromatic spices, and the fire burns. At seven we feast. And after, the hours become slow and quiet. The candle wanes in its brass cup. Her voice reaches its pitch. He scrapes the dishes into the dirt. I water the tomatoes, and the water is like a spider, reaching. The air is cold, the sky a deep pond; I try to see the bottom.

It rains and water pours over the earth. Mother, with her long hair, kneels by the fire in a woolen sweater, her face half in shadow, half shaped by yellow light. Her eye beckons me and we cross the wood floor to the porch. Below is the garden. In the rocking chair she leans back. It creaks.

Brother is in the dark, smelling the earth. He does not shield his hair from the rain and it curls.

Her body unfurls in a deep sigh. She holds her cup of herbs the way she holds a pretty stone. She says, “I did not mean it, again.”

We are talking about him. We are talking about toppling his book tower, shutting the piano, forgetting goodnight.

She says, “I used to have a vision. For what I could be.”

I take her hand which has become ancient, smooth as a stone, rivers running over it.

“Do you have a vision?”

The orange cat laps golden milk from the yellow dish and I am quiet.

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When we regain our ground, the house smells of neroli and bergamot. Incense burns above the mantle. The baby is nearly asleep in his cradle. It is time for a shower and a story, as she rinses out her cup and sets it on the windowsill.

We meet her on the bed, the cloth of deep maroon. He wears his woolly socks and his moon jammies. I comb through my hair one last time. He is stretched out on the bed; I am curled. She floats in from the bathroom in a nightgown and a robe, looking royal. Her temples have been oiled. Her neck smells of lavender.

She descends into the armchair. She fastens her glasses to her face, takes the book in her lap, and begins to read.

In my mind, I dance through the house. First out of her bedroom, the only yellow light in the dark hallway, down to the blue room of the baby, who is mischievously awake under his star cover, then down the winding wooden staircase, I saunter like the cat, seeing just as well as he with his knowing yellow eyes, we jump over the sofa under the high ceiling, we tiptoe through the tiled kitchen, I make a glass of chocolate milk and the cat has a lick but does not like it, then out the back door, where brother came in, through the wet grass to the stream behind the trees, I pick out a stone, I will give it to her, the owl coos to me as softly as it can, the cat has left me for the house’s warmth, the promise of mice through the hole in the bathroom. His shadow retreats and I shudder for being alone.

When I return, she is sleepily finishing the chapter, and he is sleepily listening, and his wet hair is drying, and he is looking at her in a way she cannot see.

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A.M.There

Mary McColley

In that black kitchen in that lonely morning, bananas stank softly and I was very tired.

I am sorry I have carried the living on like this down lots of nights, sidewalks up down stairs, leaning on so many métro doors.

I haven’t the right and I kick myself like a pebble down the weeks, wake too gasping, break at the stem, settle in the corners of bowls.

There were not enough words to start the day.

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61

Morning Routine

Jane Addington-May

Scotty brushes his teeth in your bathroom. No one’s ever brushed their teeth in your apartment besides you. No one’s spent much time in your bathroom besides you. They stay in bed and then they leave.

Scotty brought a toothbrush and toothpaste with him because he knew he would stay the night.

You get dressed while Scotty showers. You change clothes four times. You want to look older. You don’t want to look like you’ve changed your clothes four times. You want to cry.

When he finishes brushing his teeth, he’s going to leave.

That’s too painful.

You don’t love him. You want to, just a little. It’s okay that you don’t love him. It’s actually for the best that you don’t love him. But he doesn’t love you either and that’s what’s gutting. And he was never even close to it.

You shift around him and start your skincare routine. You hate that you have acne this morning. Only one of the three mirrored doors to your medicine cabinet is still attached. You push him out of the way and apply mascara. He told you once that he prefers minimal makeup on women—more specifically on you, because “your eyes are beautiful and makeup just distracts him from them”—and stupidly, childishly, you hope he’ll tell you that you look nice. You’ve never had to fight for a place at your sink before. You had to remind him last night that he was actually on your side of the bed. You want this every day.

You put the kettle on; eventually, it whistles.

“Tea time!” he yells from the bathroom.

“English breakfast?”

“No, I’ve got to go. Also: you have way too many bath products.”

“Yeah, I tend to hoard them.”

He doesn’t let you kiss him when you walk him to the front door.

When you begin to lean towards him, he turns his head away. It’s not like last night, when he kissed you first after looking at you gently for several quiet seconds of lying side by side in your bed. “I saw what your lipstick did to that tea cup.” Cheap red smears on cheap white china.

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You smile and settle for a hug.

“Well, see ya never!” He laughs like he’s joking about it. You don’t know.

You don’t reach out, really, after he leaves. He’s in town for one week to see friends, and you don’t want to encroach. You’re not his friend. You know that. And maybe he means it. Maybe “See ya never!” means “That was a fun cap to this relationship!”

But then, at eight in the morning your time, and eleven in the evening his, Scotty reaches out again with an innocuous single line of text: “You’ve been quiet.”

You’d like to think this means he misses you.

“I’ve been struggling a little bit with the fact that the only time I saw you, I’d messaged you at oh shit o’clock to fuck. I’m not real proud of that,” he tells you. He can’t know how much you need to hear that.

Just like last time, when mid-conversation, he interjected with:

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“I flirted with you first.”

“Tonight? Or… way back?”

“First.”

“Is this a brag?”

“Nope.”

“Compliment?”

“Possibly.”

“I’ll take it. Significance?”

“That’s mildly complicated.”

“How mysterious.”

“Mostly that you’re not just some convenience. Which I hope you already knew.”

You didn’t. You don’t know if you’ve told him about that fear before.

You’ve been in love with two men.

Neither of them have ever brushed their teeth in your apartment.

When they stayed the night, they acted like it was an accident. Maybe it was an accident. When they said the right things, they’d apologize for it sober.

Why is he kinder than both of them?

Because they loved you in a narcissistic, self-congratulatory way.

Or maybe they wanted to. At least it was romantic. That’s one thing you can’t say about Scotty.

“It is so easy for me to care about you,” said One, “that sometimes I think it isn’t real.”

You don’t let yourself remember much of what Two said. Sometimes you think it would be best if Two weren’t real.

Scotty, though… You can let yourself think about Scotty. He doesn’t terrify you. One and Two were terrifying. Your tongue would knot up and your stream of consciousness become “what are you doing here what are you doing here what are you doing here” and you’d forget that you had important things to say.

Scotty doesn’t ask you to explain yourself.

It’s astounding, honestly, that you don’t love him.

Then again, you’d have to know him to love him, and Scotty doesn’t let you do that, either.

Scotty shows you flashes. For example: when you accidentally

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discover that his greatest pet peeve is when people tell stories about “mom and dad” or “home” because “whose mom? My mom? Our mom?

So, we have the same mom?”

You know his music taste well. He sends you a lot of recommendations. So did One and Two. You prefer his taste. Then again, according to Spotify, your artist of the decade is the same one that One introduced you to when you were lying in his bed on the fourth of July thinking— It doesn’t matter.

Scotty doesn’t leave right away. You can pretend it’s more while he’s there. You can pretend, when he brushes his teeth in your bathroom, that he isn’t going to leave. That this is every day. You know he gives you shit about the number of bath products you use but he uses your body wash so, who is he to complain?

Please drink some tea. Please tell me about the new job. I know we’re dressed now, but please, touch me again.

It’s not romantic, you explain, to the friends who don’t know him but don’t like his name and think he sounds like a frat boy and not a grown man who is just nice to you. It’s two adults in a healthy, consensual, communicative, sexual relationship. Friends. But friends who aren’t really friends when they’re together with their mutual friends.

It’s not romantic, so there doesn’t need to be an ending, does there?

No messy fall out. No fight. No hard feelings. Maybe just... a fade. Or a different person. A different happiness.

But what happens if you fall in love with Scotty?

Well, you don’t know him. You can’t fall in love with kindness.

You need to realize that, at some point, Scotty isn’t going to brush his teeth in your bathroom again. And then, what are you supposed to do?

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On translation

Alan Tenenbaum

Vamos a tomar un feca?, me preguntó mi amigo el otro día, sabiendo que yo nunca le niego un “feca” a nadie. Es más, diría que es hasta autoritario de su parte decirme una cosa así: con los años que lleva nuestra amistad, se podría decir que más que una pregunta, que más que una invitación, es una orden.

Mi amigo quería hablar de la crisis. De la crisis económica; de la crisis ecológica; de la ruptura con su novia. Y yo no sé si quería escuchar de la segunda (que no creo que sea tal), ni de la tercera (por la que descorché un champagne). Pero, ¿qué otra opción tenía?

También es cierto que el motivo por el que vamos a tomar café nos es ajeno. Recuerdo cuándo me dijo que quería hablarme de la crisis económica, y lo que quería era un préstamo. O cuando yo le pedí un préstamo, y terminé metido en un negocio por el que tuve que hipotecar hasta las cenizas de la abuela (que, según un estudio reciente, resultan ser un poderoso fertilizante).

Las conversaciones sobre mujeres siempre desembocan en un recuerdo de infancia. Que por otra parte es lo que hay detrás de ese temor irracional por la destrucción del mundo, esa otra casa. O, al menos, eso es lo que yo siempre señalo.

Siempre estamos criticándonos (porque para mentirnos tenemos a todos los otros), o “traduciéndonos”. El año pasado fui a una conferencia del director de la Biblioteca Nacional, en la cual, parafraseando a Ricoeur, dijo que ninguna traducción es transparente. Detrás de toda traducción hay un esfuerzo, deliberado o no, de hacerle decir a alguien lo que nunca dijo. O lo que nunca quiso decir.

Pará un segundo. ¿Cuando vos decís que el gobierno tendría que continuar interviniendo el mercado de divisas, lo que me estás diciendo es que ya reservaste los vuelos y el hotel a Miami?

Y cuando nos juntamos los tres (cuando viene un tercer amigo): “estoy cansado del sistema capitalista” se traduce en “querés ser el jefe”; “lo digo en joda” en “lo peor de todo es que lo decís en serio”; “me cansé de que le moleste que salga con ustedes… mis amigos” en “te engañaba, no?” Y esta vez no fue la excepción.

-¿De qué querías hablar, Juanma?, le pregunté cuando llegaron los cortados.

Me miró un momento sin decir nada.

–Allan, fuiste vos el que me llamó.

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Sobre la Traducción

Translated by Marina F. Borges

Let’s grab a coffee? My friend asked me the other day, knowing I never refuse a cup of coffee from anyone. What’s more, I’d say it’s even authoritarian on his part to tell me something like that: with our years of friendship, one could say that more than a question, more than an invitation, it’s an order.

My friend wanted to talk about the crisis. The economic crisis; the ecological crisis; his break-up. And I don’t know if I wanted to hear about the second (because I don’t see it that way), or the third (which made me pop a bottle of champagne). But, what else could I do?

I’m also sure that the reason why we’re getting coffee is nothing I haven’t heard before. I remember when he told me he wanted to talk about the economic crisis, and what he really wanted was a loan. And when I asked him for a loan, I ended up in some business for which I had to mortgage even my grandmother’s ashes (which, according to a recent study, work as a powerful fertilizer). The conversations about women always lead to a childhood memory. Which on the other hand is the real root of this irrational fear of the destruction of the planet, our “second home.” Or, at least, that’s what I always tell him.

We’re always criticizing each other (we glorify ourselves to everybody else), or “translating one another.” Last year I went to a conference hosted by the director of the National Library, in which, paraphrasing Ricoeur, he said no translation is transparent. Behind every translation there’s an effort, be it deliberate or not, to make people say what they never said. Or what they had never meant to say.

Stop for a second. When you say that the government would have to continue with its intervention in the currency market, what you’re saying is that you’ve already booked the flights and the hotel in Miami?

And when we’re all together (when a third friend of ours comes): “I’m tired of the capitalist system” gets translated as “you want to be the boss”; “I’m only messing around” turns into “the worst part is that you actually mean it”; “I’m tired of her getting mad over me going out with you… my friends” becomes “she was cheating on you, right?” And this time wasn’t the exception.

– What did you want to talk about, Juanma? I asked him when the coffees arrived.

He looked at me in silence for a moment.

– Allan, you're the one who called me.

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MONOLOGUE NO.5: LISSIE Alyssa Lara

When I was younger, I must've been like five or six, I would throw these huge tantrums to my dad—this was before he died.

Because I wanted my mother, and not him.

I wanted my mother to be the one to dress me, and to do my hair, and make me breakfast.

But she was always the one making money and going off on business trips.

Of course she's not here today. Of course.

Didn't even stop to think that her daughter is turning seventeen.

Throw a party! It's okay if you trash the house. We're that fucking rich.

Everything is replaceable.

Anyway, I blamed my dad for not being my mom.

I hated him for not being able to give me what I wanted.

And then one day, I was sitting in Ms. Daly's second grade class and I got called down to the office.

They said, “There's been an emergency.” My father got into a car accident.

Someone was going to pick me up.

I wanted to see my mom, but Miles' mom came to pick me up instead.

And then I thought: this is the worst day of my life. It's not going to get any worse than this.

I was angry at my father for dying, and I was angry at my mother for not being my mother.

I would spend so much time at Miles' house that I practically lived there.

For seven years.

I found out later that my mother was sending checks every week to Suzanne.

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I felt so guilty I wanted to die.

So one time, late at night, I went into Miles' room and told him I wanted to die.

And he told me that I had to make the world a better place.

I was fourteen, and I thought, Oh. This must be what love is.

This is the worst day of my life.

An entire party and the only person I want here is not here.

I am so sad and so drunk and I kissed Andrew. Miles is going to hate me.

I don't like being the saddest person in the room.

I am seventeen. This is my party.

Lissie's phone rings.

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airspeed

Sarah Sturman

wiping sugar from the folds of my coat skittering down onto my pants a constellation in the daylight a trail for the ants to find going too fast for them to catch; marching is limiting. outside a clearing of blue. we are the icebreakers and sometimes we are unremarkable; sometimes we are shadowed by night. as i wait wracked with anxiety while he is out of sight reading my poem, i see Greenland.

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i have no more napkins to write on i resort to air sickness bags “in a while you will be fine” bags. time glides on. forty thousand feet up and the windows are dark Greenland and i keep watch; an ice sheet waves. the earth curves. the clouds move in the opposite direction, impatient, i wait; he has not come back. i have no air sickness bags to write on within me the words are fleeting, fleeing as i reach for them i remember the ants: unremarkable.

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Equitable Nocturne (with Wallace Stevens)

Daniel Levin Becker

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up. 163 Day is the children’s friend. 286 He is not here, the old sun, 247 He never felt twice the same about the flecked river, 321 In Hydaspia, by Howzen, 197 In Oklahoma, 45 Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore, 125 God and all angels sing the world to sleep, 129 These are the voices of the pastors calling 352 These locusts by day, these crickets by night 355 In the moonlight 84 In the weed of summer comes this green sprout why. 353 That’s what misery is 157 The Back-Ache 328 The cock crows 36 The cricket in the telephone is still 235 So what said the others and the sun went down 186 Some things, niño, some things are like this, 185 It is an illusion that we were ever alive, 362 It is difficult to read. The page is dark. 195

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WHAT FELLY SPOKE

Ellis Carter

What mother always told me thats the way its always been people keeping themselves busy being distracted so it was somewhat of a given that I would imagine everyone working the same as me and maybe feel the same as well though I know theres a lot of it today since everyones chattering on and on with their cell phones between each other theyre lost in the thick of it even when working since why would they work if work is in the same place as other things that can keep them more busy better and longer

I havent had the chance to meet anyone else other than doctors and mother the past month and the support forums should be all right now to see if anyone else could see me sometime soon anytime I could get someone to cover for me and look after her but where with all the hoi polloi can a mother find a sensible substitute I tried out looking for one sometime earlier and got lost in the woods it was so critical and categorical with resumes and life histories like they were trying out for miss universe though to be fair they must be selling for the mother who wants the world for her child and who buys the gift of everything unto them at even the youngest of weaning ages you know those mothers who buy the equally balanced formula and schedule prenatal architectures for the magic of motherhood or some saccharine like that myth of parental purpose in the world or some of all that I never even thought about it but had this dread the first time I was waiting in line at a pharmacy when I saw the utterly incoherent cost of the formula they said the milk would make her immunities develop so I was hesitant with the need to change Id rather have her suckling but with all the attention I was getting it just wouldn’t come out she was a ravenous pup competing with the litter though the litter was the two of my bubs and not another mouth at all bless her hunger couldnt latch in the beginning they made me feel like hell for taking any drinks after finding out like the end of time so I stopped but after I stopped it went away that feeling like I would need it and then I got to feel that way that drinks make you feel after all that time in the delivery room where they stemmed me the epidural on my side when I wasnt expecting injection since I thought theyd put on a mask and give me gas like they did all those lost writers wives and make me loopy and say loopy woman things for them to quote different later mother was an herbalist with all her advice on what micronutrient is needed in the coming trimestral development stage

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and superdosing antioxidant tinctures by extracts with regiments and notepads organizing my bathroom for morning routines without my asking and I woke up to it in my just up state and saw everything shifted and I thought have I had the baby already and felt like I was in some trance and out of myself it wasn’t the only time shed shift whenever shed read a new study of embryos like she were just developing again herself for herself and clearly not for me made in the best image for my figure she said it would be worth everything and happens to everyone but you didn’t do all this for me and look at me now is what Id say when shed tirade her talking points over health for two

She would have heard the argument over the sounds of beaches lying on my side and facing the ocean glittering mother would tip the mariners from her wicker baskets with wrapped eggs and jam toast so they would always be friendly and she would pretend that they hadnt all fallen in love with her just as it would be impossible to stop her from mentioning it every saturday before going and baking her custards and quiches to say a man like thatd only be good for keeping afloat or some such smug remark while eyeing my belly out the side to where the day would linger in routines to where Id wake and the parasol would have been blown away and my belly would shift the imprints of the sand and slosh around like a bag of sand itself in my belly so heavy and swollen from the sandfleas biting my legs and arms that I couldn’t stand up what with the solar cream and homeopathic remedies Id forgotten all about the bug spray and even though motherd packed the salve with the parceled food I was so swollen and plump to burst gazing at the point where the ripples in the water and the sky merged on the blinding spot of the thin horizon like a distant snowfield I started crying because it was all too much for me to handle and mother wasnt there so soon I wouldnt be either and my belly would be gone and the ocean would be rising at that moment that the hormones compelled me up and over the sand towards the water crawling and starting in the wet to have my voice break with no one around then when the day finally came I knew it would happen from the moment I woke up I could feel it in my hands because they were paralysed for a long moment

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after waking so I knew the delivery I couldnt do alone was come so I got in my slippers and saw mother in the hallway making breakfast and asked her to stay and not go into work today because I felt something was off but she only sighed and said she really couldn’t and left me standing by the fruitbowl everything was fine that morning so I thought Id take a walk to stop the worrying and wait for the contractions and did they come I keeled over it was so bad to where the neighbors answered and picked me up from where Id collapsed in the wheat field to rush me to their house to switch cars and then the hospital I was in pain and mother wasnt there and no one would help me so death I thought would be not the worst thing better than I could do for her in my state now but time happened with all its pain better than death till I had her wet in my arms and breathing with that prunelike expression and hours went by to where I couldn’t think of moving

And it was on the first day home again that I was feeding her using all the gadgets that I saw her face suckling that I felt childish and was back to the time I felt the monarch at my fingertips while I pinched the milkweed and sat back with all the fireflies and junebugs and cicadas of my life looking up at the trees and felt small in a big open place with a shy fear at the wonder to be lost again or the wonder that she will have that I will never again and I was my mother and not a mother and all the world was exit polls isnt it of course the seeing yourself again like she must have had with me as I tired of her expressions enough to want to be free and go again go like I should have without her but with who I would ask to be father like her father gone as mothers having any approach to the ordeal without losing something over time in stages swept away maybe it would have been worth it but its all wistful thinking what could have been and now look at me wandering like I would have been had I not had the baby with my mind free to worry about nothing I had been beautiful at once and worldly when pregnant and now look at me broken on the bed of course its all just composition men are swords and women are sheaths but if thats true am I just to keep and dull the things I hold like the housewife Im meant to be if life with such stability were to pass only in service to others for dulling of other sharpnesses should I not dull myself instead first or is that not equitable wanting a woman who challenges but doesn’t challenge too much or is it passion that dulls the wit or is there just not enough to complain about anymore have we made it this far as to not be human and doubt motherhood and nature or is there some unsatisfied part of us all corrupting the ways we play our roles with others

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if it were to be a product of the time how would I even know if thats what mothers felt or didnt feel in all of history or even as egg layers in the water leaving them behind

But then what do I know to tell the future like that for all the others who knows maybe it will get better as she gets older but thats where I am for all its worth thats the way it is when a tissue is put to the body to sop one tends to look at it afterwards with blood mucus and what have you down there am I milking for really now of all times as if I hadnt just washed it dirty my cloth by wearing it but not from a spill from inside the shirt please goodness gravy my spilt milk as all else keeping clean is a wishful thing like moving if the tide swells dont flood my house id like one day by the sea to be dry and unmolding so I wouldnt have to worry about it being continent well riddance if I soil myself sometimes thats how we eat at first how discharge plants the seed for us all in our bellies meant to come out to balance the pressure between two cells innervated and organic its lovely to make messy im the master of making a mess of things who doesnt no one for all the heroes of the macho world I have a speech to say let me wet myself please and thank you dont clean me up but lord if it isnt depriving these things flowing like the wound of christ at just the wrong moment I see why mothers worry instead of wonder because it gives us an excuse to think at all imagine me thinking the things I tend to think unfettered flirting again am I spontaneous to flatter me so and say too kind I will kind sir and walk off with someone in the bedsheets searching for someone hidden online of something in zoomins and handhelds so hell they can see too more for me Id love to be up everywhere front thumbnail with a face I never make they have a special genre even though I dont drink beer out of a bottle with quite that mouth posture its my lucky girl pucker at the bars theyd take me to buying the bottles dollars extra just so it could fit in my hand the right way all in power to make them come with me try it Id say with my success rate were due for mass migration to the velvet lounge with orgy every weekend maybe there Id find a nanny what with all the others needing one too mother couldnt if she knew but oh now theres the call shes up whens the last time she ate I put her out a while ago she might be a bit suckish if theres any left ill plug her on tap it does feel good that acting like a baby and playing mother letting them do that it curries favor among the other teasing handworks like a poem vostre bele bouche besera mon cul written in the most elegant contractions possible well there it looks as if its latched she doesnt even see only suck thirsty moses off the mana back to wellwater afresh foreign and crisp to lips like nothing

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else most sensual ive felt drinking water after a hot day nothing better and ill see her drink after being hot from play outside someday sweaty at the screen door yelling will she be like me like that and love the sweat of the rim drawing patterns in accidental blessing my little fairy child anointer asking questions that I dont think to ask in words I never would in a million years but there they matched with her mother of man people will want to know what Felly spoke in all her ways what lovely view to watch her with them closed connected to me again what was once me and now out there it happened to be another someone

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brathlucapt brathlucad1 (n.) – middle of the word game, crux of the language Sarah Sturman nichel2 (n.) – a challenge, difficulty. nicaptlar (v.) – to compete. lacapti3 (n.) – politics. sivlac (v.) – to discuss with. Implies disagreement, diplomacy. sivanoma (n.) – a slope, ski slope, decline. enomuccad (proper n.) – the people under the mountain.4 adeno (proper n.) – the people under the mountain.5 denther 1

A favorite game of Lucad-speakers, wherein they create stories or meaning using strings of words, each containing a morpheme present in the last, with no corresponding morphemes repeated.

2 Lovingly after my brother Nicholas.

3 Literally: a game of conversation.

4 Used by the people over the mountain.

5 Used by the people under the mountain.

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(v.) – to come of age. bether (v.) – to help. belen (n., proper n.) – earth; Belenevel, goddess of soil and plants.6 kelen (n.) – remorse. valke (n.) – an answer. masvaler7 (v.) – to research, usually a great amount or collaboratively. maltibat (n.) – a festival; a huge, organized party. pamatibel (n.) – a flower. pamise (adj.) – quiet. triser (v.) – to hold.

6 7

Contrasted with Evelomucca, the god of rock.

Sounds like makaser (n., v.) – [to be] an asshole or jerk, either as a fact of personality or a temporary affliction (in the latter, used to alert the person to their affliction).

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tranos8 (n.) – light; full yellow sunlight. sacosoth (adj., adv., n.) – worse, worse, worst. sar9 (adj., n.) – Elder; superlative of old, venerated, wise; Sarevel, mother goddess of wisdom.10

8 9 10

Literally: standing light.

Egotistically after myself.

Also the goddess of diplomacy and words, and creator of humans.

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My Friend, the Institution

Amanda Dennis

Summer spat us onto the heath tall grasses, picnics, Constable pine when time past stirred stale talk unsquared our gazes, interrupted: faubourg cafes, striding on our heads into apéro hour under daylight hole-punched by the June moon Wildness was taste and body we waited for its spilling out of books, sure of unfreedom in institution, in nation, in belonging Now your body is accustomed to chairs you touch your wife’s young waist and embed old wandering dreams, dense and fiber-less into petit pins in footnotes to prick the underbellies of giants who lumber unnoticing over empty grass There is only this shallowed earth; to all sides worlds living and dying in space too near for sight to sever. Love, then, your view of London struggling in silver and smog. And love from your height the bright body sharp as a bird you have taken into home. All this she said (at dinner) all this: rush of gold fields and parallel lines and blue like a bowl we could lose. Melancholy she said of middle age all this splendor could be lost

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Alone:

Marina Françolin Borges

There are clothes hanging across the room and I must remind myself and no one else that I am alone and everything I say can never ever be used against me because I am the only one who can hear it. I want to be alone. Alone to remember the talent I have for being alone. Alone to feel the unapologetic sadness one can only feel if alone. And to feel the right to feel this sadness that doesn't feel like sadness because it is a lesson in disguise. Which some call a blessing. And when we pray to it we cry.

I want to be alone to dance and cry. To bow to insanity because it is a misunderstood master. To speak to myself in the volume only I can hear.

To investigate the two sides of life, to jump from one to the other as many times as it takes to fall asleep. Alone to cook food that doesn't care to look pretty but is proud to smell good. To wear mismatched socks because I myself am a mismatched sock and don't care if I lose one every time. One out of every pair of sock, bundled with another pairless sock. Alone but friendly to every other pairless sock. Alone to slide through the floor of the living room and stop by the table where the notebooks are, the ones where I wasn't alone and my words were being watched over my shoulder by the authorities and the peoples of the future. But now there's people reading in the secret present. Alone in a world where there is no one reading but me so only I know my destiny and the earth cannot help but follow it. Where wisdom is no surprise to anyone and there is no reason for jealousy or for the attempt to mimic methodology, because beauty is a private invention. Private means alone. So there is no need to instruct wisdom, expose it, understand it, dissect it, desiccate it, or translate it. Alone to remember the meaning of unconditional love. A condensed aloneness, and sweet. Alone so as not to share. Alone to play every role in the play. To see my life in the mirror, to be a peaceful criminal. To condemn and forgive. Me and I, my best friend. Alone with the reputation of the self possessed writer, with the tendency of the abandoned child, with the dream of fame and the cry for spiritual restoration and the old joy of nothing else but the self.

Me and the only one who knows the facts. Thinking alone to be able to think for a long time, uninterrupted, without a breath wasted in the lazy attempt to conceal the glorious silence of being alone.

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THERE WAS—I SAW IT— THERE STILL IS

Charlotte Lewis

recently there are rainbows as synonymous as spring it feels as if I’ve only now just realized this, or, remembered clouds like cotton, or sometimes in sheets sun then rain then rain then sun I am living for the beginning and the end of the day when hope first feels fresh, even attainable through small steps, or, defeat rests softer over sleep I am (not) the not tying the knot of my noose it is not anyone’s life but my own that I hang onto

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Haikus in Spiral Staircase Form ____________________________________ Madison Thomas-Buenos

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Obsessed with stanza.

I write this on an old desk.

Worried about class.

Going down the steps.

I almost missed my metro.

I don’t like this pace.

I forgot my things.

Head back up the stairs again.

Grab my things and run.

Out the door I’m caught.

My belt loop stuck on the door.

Nearly rip my pants.

Unhook the belt loop.

I pulled too hard and I fell.

Hit my head backwards.

I won’t lie it kind of hurt.

But I’m still conscious.

Stairs are nice to have.

But they’re a double-edged sword.

Careful near the stairs.

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Vincent’s Room

Hall Gardner

“I stayed in Paris only three days, and the noise, etc., of Paris had such a bad effect on me that I thought it wise for my head’s sake to fly to the country...” ― Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Paul Gauguin, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 17 June 1890

I. A wolf spider ambles gently down its web [rectangular] stretching from your easel to your sketchbook upon your back arching…

So Zadkin’s sculpture has portrayed you: A hunter of colors in a jailbird’s uniform, your paintbrush held loosely between your forefinger and thumb, your palm… limp… wavering…

II. Outraged, after yet another of your “electric” quarrels with Gauguin, you, the “fou roux,” razored off a large portion of your ear.

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Was it his threat to move out???

A fight over a girl??? Fear that Theo, engaged, might cut your stipend???

Or many too many shots of Green Fairy???

III. A year in the Saint-Rémy asylum, you wandered in epileptic fits and Starry Night hallucinations before escaping for your “head’s sake” to the Auvers countryside far from Parisian cafés. The noise had been much too much for you…

IV. Such a strange individual wandering the streets alone: Many preferred you to be interned… perhaps indefinitely…

No one appreciated your Art. A disappointed Adeline saw no resemblance. Her portrait― a “Symphony in Blue”― was, to her, not the great painting the future would esteem.

In that era of sterile realism no one envisioned Beauty

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in the transformation of painting [then seen as sculpture] into color—and above all— into music and emotion.

V. It is said you shot yourself in the gut with the pistol strapped to your belt you had used for scaring crows…

But perhaps accidentally... not willfully???

Or perhaps you were scared by some village teens who thought it would be a riot to rough up the earless red-head freak???

“You have absolutely no right to commit suicide!!!” rebuked the gendarme.¹ Your curt retort: “Shouldn't I be permitted to do with my body as I please???”

And would it not be far less problematic for all concerned to proclaim Death by one's own hand???

And perhaps even more Sane???

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VI. Upon that wooden chair, with its paint, chipped, now standing awkward, yet defiant…

Upon wooden floorboards, warped… Theo witnessed your agony in remorse for hours… endless…

At the foot of your coffin he placed your brushes and palette and displayed your artwork before offering a few of your sublime canvasses to those whom [he believed] had cared the most for you.

How you had waited for the day you could display the work that the World had so poorly appraised— in just a run-of-the-mill café!

Alien Frames: [The Garden of Daubigny] [The Child with an Orange], [Irises] [The Church of Auvers], [Portrait of Adeline].²

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VII. Only six months later, so too Theo would wither just like your sunflowers from his own misfortune: No one left to nourish his Soul.

A slug slithers upon leaves of ivy that cover your [double grave]: Wild roses of rare Love…. brotherly.

A flock of geese salute in V-formation.

Endnotes ¹ Given the fact that Van Gogh was relatively productive in Auvers despite the ups and downs of his mental condition, it appears Van Gogh did not tell the whole Truth when he stated that he had attempted suicide. In effect, by claiming that he had attempted suicide, he wanted to ‘paint over’ the absurdity that he had somehow shot himself by accident. ² Van Gogh himself sold only a few of his paintings during his lifetime and had to barter some works for food or supplies. Yet now his paintings are worth enormous sums. In 2017, his 1889 painting, Laboureur dans un champ, sold for $81.3 million, just below the value of his painting Portrait du Dr. Gachet, which sold in 1990 for $82.5 million. It is time that artists (or their heirs) obtain resale rights worldwide so that they are paid royalties when their artwork is resold.

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Entropy in Our Kitchen

Katie Taylor

Everyday this world spins round and closer to the end we’ve found: An old, messy kitchen sets the scene for the laughable, beautiful human destiny.

Tumbling, towards the great great madness alltheworldspeople scramble, disappear then reappear! with gladness.

Their wine glasses crack, their nice plates all break, tiny pieces get ever-so-harder to scrape.

Through time, the novelty of each item will wear and alltheworldspeople profess that nature is unfair.

And through the stress of a messy kitchen scene, few things remain as everlasting.

For the entropy that ensues in every little kitchen leaves no mercy for the people and their cleaning religions.

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Wing Loser

I planed because unhit, not even grazed by shots, just me among a thousand birds that strove to fly away, escape the hail of lead that made the day resemble dusk, a cloud of zipping bullets taking toll.

I planed unruffled, steady, safe, as if what tore the darkened sky were meant to clear the space around me, let me touch the ground alive, alone within the spread, make sure my wings would be the ones, still sound and flapping through the slug storm after landing. Pressed for time, the grass my feet were tramping on

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Alessio Zanelli

imbued with blood, I grasped the bigger picture, learned that such a plot of reddened land had been awaiting me, I had to make it mine or really die, despite the fact that I'd been spared, the sole survivor yet, while crawling wasn't any favorite way to move.

I was supposed to sweep the waste, and so I did, forgetting flight and height.

I covered every given distance, glued to clods and turfs below.

I never rose an inch until I ceased to feel the urge to soar. At last I lost my wings for life.

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Left Hours of This Day

Thomas McFadden

Through time’s reach of half a century have we shared itinerary in joined travel through the temporal spell and turns of the way.

Dreams have we felt soar; dreams fallen have we together endured.

But we have found music in this journey’s aspiration through the voices of our children.

Now, with the weight of the years, have our once-joined minds begun to diverge.

The memory of my special traveler lasts only moments, then is gone, and I feel her slipping from the road.

Yet she remembers me still and can still recall that we walk slowly side by side.

As the length of the remembering grows ever briefer, I must welcome the linger; I must glance with my best appreciation toward that special face and listen to the melody of the voice; I must value these slow steps; and, as life’s evening shadow slowly paints time across our shared road, I must treasure the left hours of this day.

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Walk a May Day's Way J. Mitchell Katydids flick their folded wings To supreme dismay For feckless bugs and legged things Eat the popinjay The cat that lurks and stalks and smirks Longs for curds and whey And Mother Goose who shirks hard work In Shoe hair grows gray Cat’pillars join the jamboree Hogs slop bricks to lay Crows count cockerels for the spree Feather’s fount and flay The dish spooning spoon o’er the moon Saw night’s burning ray Spork mourns its own lack of swoon On a breakfast tray For old is new and new is old All that come what may Our childhood dreams grow never cold If we think to play The magic marvels bid adieu Though they always stay ‘Tis us who leave for somewhere new To return someday

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The Red HouseAdrian Harding Their steps a sheen were it not vanished: who steps, who broken heart, who rising on a bare horizon, put the kettle on; but soft, what light lips Anu’s cock on apertures of metaphor, love put to flight, called black

in mirror to signal, to manoeuvre back to peace of mind, burger belly and wandring desart to explore, frantic to explode. Oh citadel with oaker dide, oh sweet and lovely wall, show me thy chink sweat sheen over the earth, thy stones with lime and hair knit up

evaporate to Doggerland, to epoch silting River where they cross, sentenced one after the other, oh spirit whither wander, where the life stands out in extra blue (do I get a choice with my toast and the sunset honey,

take it or leave on to the terrace her bonbon bathrobe, dandy colours the boudoir poem, live-in Advent calendar predicates stalking the return to the broad gate, the great fire of sugar swoons, childhood balloons,

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upon a time, rattling chains of images died into the difference, gone sheen, take a break, look where it gets you honey, blow the cloud in making civic civet or falls upon the other. Some that humble

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read letters blown as storm fall pick some way over the way lyric vertigo may turn the page enchanted, scent of identity ribbon wrapped, but look your face is always gone,

a wave and then our grief flutters at an unquiet film, the freak of strangers by a mosque. Soft they fall in a hail of pixel under the Apache homing to ghost dance, a few light taps on the pane Romeo, on white six light ’em all up, blood through the windshield,

through yonder asshole a dear idea struts preening, dear unseen eyes, vistas of saffron sun. It is the East, mirage of Brown Bank, scene of where what would be reflected would come to end, thou still unsentenced breath, damaged asset

subject to evening down red road runs on dotted lines, on laser silver paced, as though the sun took step of thee, fire and fly, poise on the brink of a usual mistake; the wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale, sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me.

Then slip I

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from hilly bourn your face dissolving, a girl with a severe belly wound and covered in glass relax and stretch, give fresh to thinnest puffs at leisure and rock rack all contemporaneous, propositioned from all sides at once,

so born usefully farewell to what who thinks about the life lived aconites anemones the rosy trellis, lip back through outwash from the banks; then slip I from her bum in a house by the River crossing, down topples she, and ‘tailor’ cries

and falls into a cough

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And the whole quire hold their hips and loff And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear A merrier hour was never wasted there in the one and ochre city, our stage a river million where he abides; these tailor tales entail

thy freedom staying thee, a greenfinch in the grey-green morning air of Berlin, ja. Working the harlequin theatres that even with a thought the cloud dislimns, I hear with eyes the glass was in her hair and also in her eyes, hear children falter yet cannot hold

this audible shape, as water is in water

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as boreal oysters rose full fathom five to shards strewn on the steppe. A sudden city dilates in her pupil, wide as cash fanned out in glass, remains the windows open, by night they drown unseen by the sign market

in spite of you, she says, turning “the shadow of your sorrow” in a mirror flowing over Doggerland, the tears of pearl which thy eyes shed.

Don’t spit, she says, into that dark wind, get a faceful of your own echo

quite not yet hurtling out past the reach of breath in value panic, nor I nor any man frantic to settle, so closely followed away from the songbirds silting on silver and tin, tears of alloy (how she withers) on copper

from stone, was nothing yet tinkled like iron, lanterns on silver birch floating down an unshared river, my Varya, flesh colour hatching of regret told by a haunted voice given one night over repetition of the first speech gap,

our cauter

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streaming out into the charred day; see heaven in the edge of wafted memory, a candle set in darkened heart loosed in sequence of shadows, lies on a sheet of time thrown over the citadel

blown from the sea, set now at some very highest point over the chained waters from where it falls: no swift unfractioned north in a curtain of light takes all inflections, “listen to him” that sleight of spin flip radiance

thrown to any singular hand, pierce the sky as if a coffin came held still below minimal cirrus blows Anu from the river choir and every waving fern is the wind already brushing the living and the dead onwards,

tin cry our going hence.

Who they are hanging in dusk, Tom his harried mind ignites, my poor Fool ranting on the street, floods traps on the freehold crazed in a black cloud, that one place might be crystal in the night

all voices of a child

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calls not from some quarantine of loss but running down the corridor into the room would jump off the step into his arms not meant for all, exorcise recall and judge that other life drowned in light

like bedtime stories.

So light a foot will barely print a relic plain unworn by affect, dusted in grief, the Turkmen steppe drying after rain quick where the earth is pale, boys, run the diagram of a dream, of walls from mother middle deep,

and lo the king a cock unstuck from a goddess in the gate, eyeless on a plateau of lyric shards to Gaza sifting on the tides, where they walked alloyed with the pixel-dead; and nothing in the bond diseased, the air, the greenfinch vanishing, made them eased

with being nothing.

To love that life where late the sweet birds sang stumbling along the channel at the anticline from the ever fresh abyss of children at the River, seek out, she says, a sunlit bank where the wild thyme blows.

Such music colours the mind, all hues an evening

whiteness in the speech gap

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shear as a blood-red fault, almost a sun, astonishes the wrinkled city. Her eyes turn to the dull sea seized by sunlight: at nothing it trembles along the silver pit, at Saeed it grieves, at Namir lying by oaker dide,

by burger belly, by pigshit hellfire by heliborne, laser, fire-and-forget, by chain gun cock hung slaved under one cool motherfucker hot as a pepper boy, beaten when he sneezes, while high in the stream of bones, trailing his hand in the crimson west, in the chill of the morning, he felt quite sure

that he would never die.

Through the eye of a voice at the east gate he flies in crimson ice to hyaline Irene, a screen for this love because he was deaf but now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference, muscari sapphire and the white cascade of Israel’s

phosphorus along the riverbed, on children parched at the ochre wall; their eyes turn back to find thy centre out, they melt in the infra-red, check this, they settle the forgotten shore tossed with the suet on the burning city, burnt or buried wouldn’t you know

and not a soul to tell

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remorse were as tedious as go o’er on to the western slope, American thyme turning to headlights in the sloping rain of Lockheed drizzling sugar over the front lawn, the barbecue so cute so neat, street pattern the abstract

growing small as a daisy, wheeling

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out patiently as mycelium over epic tundra.

But the local, Joan, is like sentimental forms once upon a door in a church hinged on a creaking, shaded scene, a dear old thing in summer white paused on the steps, dyed hair and white

shoes oblique like hilarious Irene in purples and pinks dancing round the chrome in the metro.

How now, spirit! She twirls in the tunnels, being or remaining a girl begging like migraine, downward on chicken wings to where the Afghan brides

enclos’d in cinders lie, where the harlequin aunts wait by the tidal river with timber for a globe, in the coarse tufted habits of meadow fescue, creeping rootstock of distant sedge, staying for waftage to occupied sites, a reduction of Palestine to coke on phoenix screens. Stones

of morning buried in daylight shine in dabs of white on a Flemish landscape if they think, before the hail, “this is the worst”.

Love, she says, revolves around this pink moment, inertia like an alloy of pain beyond power, like the sugar’d heart forbidding mourning,

so take heart poor Tom,

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though the chopper chopper board of Lucifer mills a red dividend, she all in every part.

Why else dost breathe into their sentence like a crystal twin peering from the tower?

He stands on the terrace in the sunshine

looking at himself no longer, shorted in the pathos of desire by the protein spike of a double dream; choice vacates outer heart, heart chic fang over whip in an open cage, still dark sensor in wait for a needy child

gazing at her savagery to escape through a panel in the wall to the high road her other woman walked dreamlike beyond her pale, highlighted face, a child’s love along the graben, her other body rising dressed in the planes of a less silver world

looking for home, down where only a break in the earth as many sentences could fill, magnetic interlayers of dream, of a dancing ghost.

From here, she said, a widow veiled and imageless, Saeed in the ochre was a thin film vacuum deposition

by electron beam and lift-off

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in a sly blast from a sputtering system Hotel, Nice, look at those dead bastards Romeo, Sweet, look at that bitch go seek the heat beat light shard eye splinters of azimuth, spin pink on steel

made natural history pulse in looping kills, now you see it, now discount the sleight of daylight corporate owned like, follow the blood honey the money home to the ribs like, their fault, the fuck, bringing their kids

to a battle. That’s right, theft wells up from sugar dreams, oh my expense of spirit, of caged babies in comic torture, milk in the basement under the supermarket, in flushed fireplaces unknown (a bus cuts the raindark city

to save his sons essential oil, the lack of being rubbed on sheen from spirit dialled up to history dogged by crescendo, by music for the blank idea, the gone word, the sheer scale, just where what once it was has set its face

to the rising sun

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rattles a bookshelf turquoise and yellow of incandescent sugar chaff across the sky.

Threads of waste inwoven by smaller hands scatter without meaning to say it all, my Varya, collapse to the floor of the red house

streaming in (what his mother was doing still alive, honey alloy, greyed in dementia mistake a brother made in a tower; the signs are there in the newspapers, she cringed a little for shame at the error

streaming in

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with her gaze breaking on images luminous with unseizable passivity language recoils to a previous need, the golden bell stolen from the mountain stowed piecemeal in the comrades’ saddlebags

rising free to pink dawn, shadowed by what airborne pursuit she sings, light of the father’s neon upright mast of a small boat of stubbornness off the harbour of hidden peace I see your element, Humvees ah Crazy Horse

the Lantern comes bathing the scene by the she ape’s cage, a line of women in little black dresses dance tropic jives in little black shoes it climbs on the head, sets juicy vulva spread, Just fuckin’ get on ’em, just open ’em up

the grocer grinned who bought a penis in mustard and parsley sauce half eaten pink junk from its oven-wrap who lost the children from the party hotel who folding paper man came to the sauna, folded acrobatically by the masseur’s trolley

his feet had dirtied,

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to lie on the dirt under the body crawling on a kerb by the crystal river, all you gotta do is pick up a weapon, promised to the sudden dreamer always still glass brother, pick up the silted silence,

hull and husk unlit, from frenzy cut back in the red house, no loss in no time, step away from here to the aperture unowned, sheen scatter times into the ochre River choir, Saeed ran on shards of glass by the pool, in cool shade

she stands, gate east step light on white anthers, songbird going nowhere but the brilliant grain she sees where it might have crossed the flood, ask her if once is not enough, who could see anything of dawn’s hinterland

as it is

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Would you like to see your work in Paris/Atlantic?

Any artist around the world may submit their work to P/A, regardless of their personal or professional background.

Submissions are open all year round, but only submissions sent by March 1st will be considered for P/A 2021, V. 39.

We invite all literary genres and themes, all forms of visual and experimental art. As long as we can print it.

WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE WITH THIS EXTRA SQUARE? TELL US ON INSTAGRAM: @PARIS_ATLANTIC OR EMAIL US!

To submit, follow the guidelines: You may submit a maximum of three prose pieces and/or five poems, up to 1700 words each, titled or "UNTITLED", in a Word file, and/or a maximum of seven visual pieces, in high resolution, titled or "UNTITLED", in all formats except PDF. You may include the materials used to create the piece and any other information that is relevant to you.

All submissions are to be emailed to parisatlantic@aup.edu with the Subject line "Submission (Name of Artist)" along with your name as you wish to have it appear in print, your mailing address and an indication of your affiliation with AUP or lack thereof.

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Paris/Atlantic Since 138 1982