SAND Journal Willibald-Alexis-Str. 16 10965 Berlin, Germany
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Jake Schneider MANAGING EDITOR
Simone O’Donovan EMAIL:
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR
info@sandjournal.com
Matthew Deery FICTION EDITORS
WEBSITE:
Ashley Moore
www.sandjournal.com
Melissa Richer POETRY EDITOR
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SAND Journal TWITTER: @sandjournal INSTAGRAM: @sandjournalberlin ISSN 2191-429X Copyright © SAND Journal, November 2019. All authors, translators, and artists retain their copyrights to the respective works. SAND e.V. is a registered nonprofit association (gemeinnütziger Verein) under German law. Printed in Latvia by Jelgavas Tipografija on Muncken Pure 90g paper.
Crista Siglin ART EDITOR
Ruhi Parmar Amin NONFICTION COORDINATORS
Simone O'Donovan Matthew Deery DESIGN
Dimitris Gkikas WEB EDITOR
Sarah Coughlan COMMUNICATIONS & OUTREACH
Ruby Mason Dasom Yang EVENT COORDINATOR
Özgecan Kesici-Ayoubi VEREIN COORDINATOR
Christina Wegener OUTGOING TEAM MEMBERS
Joey Bahlsen (Events) Lieke Kessels (C&O) Natalie Mariko (Poetry) Jennifer Neal (Fiction) READERS
Fonts: Helvetica Neue designed by Linotype and Max Miedinger and Cormorant by Catharsis Fonts.
Susan Graunke Anna Linetsky David Lynch Cindy Juyoung Ok Helena Ruß
Cover image: from the series "Exorcise Me" (2013) by Sookoon Ang
Andrew Scheinman Paul Sullivan Charlotte Wührer
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EDITOR'S NOTE
TABOO JAKE SCHNEIDER
[1]
Inside the taboo, the taboo is invisible. The word itself is a surprisingly recent import into English, given England’s famously elaborate social cues. It was not until the 1770s that Captain James Cook, sailing the South Pacific as a scout for British conquest, “discovered” the idea of taboo – a sacred, social prohibition – in the religious practices of Tongans. The word’s far-flung etymology, dating from before the missionaries arrived to impose their own list of sins, shows us something basic about taboos. The rules in Tonga were obvious to the Tongans, just as the rules in England were obvious to Cook. So obvious that he didn’t have his own word for them yet. So obvious they were invisible.
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This issue of SAND looks at taboos head-on. In artistic transgressions and exceptions, we find patterns we never noticed in the wild. Taboos about nudity and age, for example, are all over this issue’s fiction – and as with every taboo, their disruption provokes all sorts of emotional reactions in readers. Children encounter a naked adult neighbor and two naked mothers, besides a third mother in “Nine” (→ p. 96) who turns her sex life into a bedtime story. In “Sweeps” (→ 53), thirty-two-year-old Ted lives and socializes in a nursing home, essentially de-segregating its age range as he reminds us of intergenerational continuities. On a broader level, taboos reflect a culture’s evolving inner logic, which defines the structure of gender, sexuality, and relationships. With its title Feminicid (feminicide), Guilherme Bergamini’s mystically indistinct photo series (→ 84) affirms the trans subjects’ womanhood – even as it publicizes hate crimes against their fellow women. “Pray the police don’t catch you making love / to a man,” warns a character in “A Shorter Note on My Coming Out” (→ 37). Let’s pray they make love anyway. In the essay “Svalbard” (→ 75), set in the Arctic Circle, Sara Anwar tries to rationalize her partner’s wandering eyes, even as she finds it difficult to break the script of monogamy: “Far from disturbing me, it gave me a certain triumphant pleasure, knowing that he in turn had pleasure.” Finally, the teenage girls of Sookoon Ang’s “Exorcise Me” series are indifferent, confident, defiant. These aren’t the kinds of bodies that go on magazine covers. Our shameful bodies – their hidden parts, furtive actions, and skin-deep differences – are the core of forbidden language. This issue is full of those kinds of words, deployed thoughtfully but sometimes gleefully. The opening poem, “Essay on Causation,” uses versions of “fuck” fourteen times – and earns every instance. “A handsome headless man” (→ 67), written in thirteenth-century France, makes us blush today with the phrase “hairy cunt.” In her prose poem, Quinn Rennerfeldt shows us the elegance of
Taboo
on The Hunters in the Snow,” inspired by a painting from 1565 (→ 68), sacrificially burns the same label. Our cultures teach us to fixate on these taboo moments and words, and therefore to overlook the rich landscape they live in. Leaving out forbidden words would make things easier, but at the cost of subtleties that transcend our shock. Speaking about a taboo is taboo, too. Even to publish portrayals of deplorable acts can be confused with endorsing those acts. But literature and art are legitimate places for negotiating the full range of human experiences, including physical intimacy, brutality, suicide, bullying, incest, and sexual assault. And not publishing difficult pieces would only maintain the gaping silences around such taboos, which can cause yet another generation of pain. So here we are, breaking those silences. This is your trigger warning. The posthumous insertion of two non-Jewish writers into a concentration camp in the poem “Tautologies” (→ 16) – writers who were confined elsewhere during the war – was one moment that challenged us. Who may invoke the Holocaust and under what conditions? In the end, we are proud to be publishing a poem that gave us pause – a constructive pause. The greatest failure of European civilization needs to be written about, even now, and not only by representatives of the victims. We realize this issue of SAND would be censored in many times and places. Here in Berlin, we no longer answer to the Kaiser’s imperial police, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, the occupying US Army, or the East German Ministry of Culture. It is our privilege to be able to publish the best writing and art that crosses our desks. In featuring “June 21,” a poem from this year’s protests in Hong Kong (→ 41), we know that our freedom to communicate at will and to express all sides of life is hard-fought. If we don’t flex it, the taboos will keep insisting on their silences.
Jake Schneider
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a “puckered asshole” (→ 107). Ben Miller, a queer writer, reclaims “faggot” in his story (→ 119), while the poem “Thirty Observations
CONTENTS
→ 37 CHISOM OKAFOR A SHORTER NOTE ON MY COMING OUT
→3
→ 38
JAKE SCHNEIDER EDITOR'S NOTE
CHRISTOPHER LINFORTH INITIATION
→8
→ 41
ADELE ELISE WILLIAMS ESSAY ON CAUSATION
TIM TIM CHENG JUNE 21
→ 10
→ 42
MARIA A. IOANNOU PILLARS
SHANNON T. SMITH UNDER THE ACKEE TREE BOTTOM-SIDE BEECHWOOD
→ 14 ANNETTE C. BOEHM SELECTIONS FROM E.D. LIBERATIONS
→ 43 HEIKKI HUOTARI BE SPECIFIC / WHEN WORDS COLLIDE
→ 16 JUAN ROMERO VINUEZA (TR. KIMREY ANNA BATTS) TAUTOLOGIES
→ 44
→ 18
SEMYON KHANIN (TR. KEVIN M. F. PLATT AND EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY) UNTITLED / SAMYON KHANIN
MILVA MCDONALD NAKED
→ 46
→ 36
JOY WALLER ESTELLE IN 17 PARTS
SAYA ANNA IS MY FLATMATE AND SHE DON'T KNOW THAT I WROTE THIS POETRY
→ 53 ADAM PETERSON SWEEPS
→ 66
→ 107
UNKNOWN AUTHOR (TR. TED BYRNE AND DONATO MANCINI) SELECTIONS FROM THE FATRASIES D’ARRAS (C. 1280–1300)
QUINN RENNERFELDT THE TONGUE IS A DISGUSTING MUSCLE → 108 MARY-LAURE ZOSS (TR. SARAH-JANE MOLONEY)
→ 68
IN SEARCH OF WHAT
BLAKE HACKLER THIRTY OBSERVATIONS ON THE HUNTERS IN THE SNOW BY PIETER BRUEGEL
→ 112
→ 71 JESSICA BLOOM BANNIK → 74 MICHELE REESE THE FLOOD → 75 SARA ANWAR SVALBARD → 80 ART SECTION SOOKOON ANG GUILHERME BERGAMINI KHAIRULLAH RAHIM ELLA WALKER
T. PERSON BEGINNING OF A NEW POEM → 113 MEGAN SUNGYOON MORNING → 114 L. REEMAN ODE TO THE PIT-STOP → 116 TERENCE YOUNG THE PARTY → 119 BEN MILLER TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART
→ 96 EMI BENN NINE
SAND #20
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FICTION
PILLARS MARIA A. IOANNOU
[2]
“We should also try it in public.” “Are you out of your mind?” “Julie said it saved her marriage.” “With Bill?” “No, her first marriage.” “We agreed to keep it in the home. Didn’t you enjoy the wardrobe fantasy yesterday?”
ting them hard onto each other. They stayed mute for three days. On the evening of the fourth, returning from work, he searched all the rooms, even their usual places – the wardrobe, the fridge, the dining table. No sign of her. He shouted out her name a couple of times, really acting it out, pretentiously in panic, and even called her mobile phone, which vibrated on the bedside table. The feeling that you have mysteriously lost someone can be very arousing, they said. It opens up a door towards rediscovering both yourself and your partner. He took off his jacket and placed it on the coatrack by the door which looked more overcrowded than usual. A scarf stirred. And then a finger popped out. “There you are,” he whispered, as he peeled away jackets and coats one by one. Her arm appeared first, then one of her breasts. He couldn’t wait – he sucked it, the sleeve of one of the hanging jackets pushed his head downwards, made him shove his face even deeper, uncovered her skinny thighs, and he sucked them too while unzipping his trousers. He crawled in on all fours and pulled her newly-bought thong with his teeth. “It’s addictive, isn’t it?” “I’ve learned to like it.” He covered up her standing-naked body with all the clothes he had tossed on the floor. Soon, no part of her body was visible. He then stood still right next to her. That was one of the couple therapy rules: staying like that, still and silent, looking lifeless, for several minutes after it was all over. If they were both pretending to be objects, like that time they were chairs, one of them had to willingly retreat and leave space for the other to contemplate their thoughts. It’s an act of sacrifice, they said. And they were right, it did take their relationship to the next level. “Stop spooning me.” “But you’re a carpet!”
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She muttered a long reply which included the word “weak” and pulled herself back into the kitchen. She started on the dishes, hit-
12
“You’re right, I’m a carpet.” “Are you my fucking carpet?” “Yes, yes, I’m your fucking carpet.” The consultants had also provided them with an object-related Kama Sutra book. Some positions were a real challenge, especially the ones that had to do with hanging objects, Aerial yoga can help you with that, they said. The book came with a glossary suggesting role-play dialogues and words. They’d added an appendix in the new edition too, which included more edgy scenarios and tips, as well as philosophical quotes like objectify yourselves to “subjectify” your marriage. Julie the neighbour called one day and said she was giving the whole thing up, they were getting carried away, Bill could no longer take it, wasn’t anything like her first husband. “You should give it up now that it’s early,” she advised. She heard Dino went nuts, decided to literally turn into a statue, covered himself in plaster and couldn’t move an inch. Nikki found him in the backyard with his penis sticking out—“Can you believe it?” He had plastered his whole face too; he could barely breathe. The consultants were closing all their branches, just keeping the headquarters in the capital. “Maybe this place is too conservative for them,” she said. “They will continue their couple consulting services online though, if you’re interested.” She’d told them she and Bill were no longer interested. Julie’s words echoed in her ears. Julie could do that to people. She hung up feeling sorry for Dino. Things to avoid: plaster, glue, tape. They had used tape once to shut their mouths, they couldn’t stay quiet, especially in the beginning. The consultants called it “silent intercourse” – Learn to listen to your bodies and not your mouths. Wasn’t he in the living room a minute ago? Is this a new game? He’s a real player. She never thought he had this in him when it all started, it’s changed their lives alright: made him return earlier from work, made her more confident, more femme fatale, more passive
Pillars
Really looking at someone. She had missed that look. It’s the first thing that goes away, the consultants said. Couples no longer dive into each other’s eyes. She had searched everywhere, even under the bed, hated the bed fantasy, too claustrophobic— Was he finally taking it to the next level, IN PUBLIC? She could feel the craving on her chin and cheeks. She rushed into the garden, moving plants and flowers to the side like a frantic swimmer, then to the sidewalk, the park, the neighbouring shops, under a bench, in a bin – she searched for hours, feet aching, libido gone. At some point she just had to call the police and report him missing. They found him half-naked by the zebra crossing next to the pharmacy. Julie was also half-naked. They were both standing opposite each other, backs straight, necks slightly drooping. He had an erection when the police found him. They gossiped about it at the station, she could hear them even when they lowered their voices. She remembered Julie’s voice echoing after that phone call, yes, Julie could do that to people. They must've been an exhibit for quite some time before the police arrived, their bodies facing each other, orange lights on their heads. Must’ve been twinkling too, motionless on each side of the zebra crossing, staring at each other, desiring each other until they could no longer hold it – We follow unconventional therapy techniques but we have saved a lot of marriages – pretending to be light pillars at the zebra crossing, Julie’s breasts tighter than hers, nipples hard, perfect thighs. The gap between them must’ve been filled with lust. She knew that feeling well – the gap, the gap between them.
Maria A. Ioannou
13
maybe, but in a good way – definitely in a good way. And that look.
Ariel Gonzรกlez Losada, Babel (2016)
Ariel Gonzรกlez Losada, Manifesto (2015)
36
POETRY
ANNA IS MY FLATMATE AND SHE DON’T KNOW THAT I WROTE THIS POETRY poem by SAYA
After I lost my shoes, I had to walk in bare foot. Nothing has left in my flat, but Anna and sofa bed. “It feels like, this world has already ended” Anna said. “But look, you and I are here” I replied It was extremely hot summer, and she just stares me asking she couldn’t understand what I mean
37
POETRY
A SHORTER NOTE ON MY COMING OUT poem by CHISOM OKAFOR
Not even these flickering lights could hide the hunger in her open palms angling towards mine from a distance; fingers arrowing into an untouched dark. So you love a man now, she says. Not even mine, as I thrust a bottle of Tequila into them, as I make her soak up her own life in a mound of silence. Here is a toast to the young horses burning in your tongue. Here lie the remains of us, sautéed and spread in the dark as seedlings scattered in a barren cornfield. Pray the police don’t catch you making love to a man, she says. But sometimes, all you need in lieu of survival is a change of names, then to keep indifference as a disused whiskeyglass at a deserted pub. You’ll soon find the ugliest scar to be a constant circumvention of things whose beginnings and endings are marked with flames.
42
POETRY
UNDER THE ACKEE TREE BOTTOM-SIDE BEECHWOOD poem by SHANNON T. SMITH
Nothing good to eat ever falls from the top of a tree. Dem seh de tree curse, that this one wasn’t the first the tree shake off. But I seh it wasn’t the tree that kill him it was poorness. For only poorness coulda mek a man risk him life on a limb fi try reach a dozen.
POETRY
BE SPECIFIC poem by HEIKKI HUOTARI On reading Wikipedia’'s Waggle Dance To the scientific method acting badly add an epicycle – the duration of the waggle indicates the distance to the pollen and my pollen probability is the reverse of yours. To cantilever is to contemplate sans address as there surely is some somewhat undeveloped panorama that the water wanted. If you were selected and perfected and selected and perfected would you ask for details too?
WHEN WORDS COLLIDE poem by HEIKKI HUOTARI I may drunkenly press SEND and say, To learn from a mistake first make one, and if that with which I’m smitten is recessing I may take that personality of mine to an assessment yesterday. Writhe as I might, the center of my mass traverses its prescribed parabola and in what seem to be collisions, information is exchanged.
43
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FICTION
ESTELLE IN 17 PARTS JOY WALLER
[6]
1
“My kundalini has fallen down my insides,” Estelle tells me. 3 a.m., a club called Distortion. “It scraped me of everything, everything, on the way down, its fangs you know, its scales, and now it’s reversed itself, pointing to hell like a demon – it’s how I orgasm now,” she says, as she points to the floor, “this upside down serpent.”
I should have shoplifted that chunk of Sedona rock from the gem and mineral show last weekend. It would have been nice to watch Estelle hold it, watch her feel the heavy desert sunlight of it in her hand, watch her perceive how solid a thing could be outside of herself. 3
“It’s hard being an earth sign,” Estelle says, “everyone thinks you’re so boring. But I’m like crystals, goddammit. That’s what they don’t get.” 4
Estelle and I are in the back seat of a taxi, her head in my lap. She’s crying, neon and rain on the other side of the window, stoplights dripping chakras – sometimes she does it with girls, she says; do I? 5
“I miss being young,” Estelle writes in an email marked Urgent. “The day I was twenty-two and ate a cheese and potato chip sandwich with the edges dipped in ketchup, I was seriously so happy I thought I would die.” 6
A man at Distortion buys her a drink. She likes him but she doesn't like his slacks. “I get so mixed up,” she tells me in the toilets. "I never know if I should stop, if the next one will be enough."
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2
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POETRY
THE F L O O D poem by MICHELE REESE
I have heard gods whispering in the corn and wind. –Sherwood Anderson
After cotton molded on the stalk, peanuts rotted floating in rows of water, and the muck abated, too late for winter wheat, farmers sowed their fields with corn futures.
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NONFICTION
SVALBARD SARA ANWAR
[9]
It was early fall when Liam and I decided to go to Svalbard. We arrived in the smallest of airports, and we only knew that in Svalbard, polar bears outnumber people, and you must never venture outside of the small strip of the one street which is the town. And that if you do leave the town, you must always have a working rifle in your hand. Over the years global warming has altered seasons and food patterns, and polar bears have become increasingly skinny and hungry. They will eat anything. I spent all my time on that trip haunted by the thought of a polar bear behind me. In the Arctic the sun never sleeps, and we wore heavy black sleep masks at night to hide from the midnight day. We had rooms in a converted coal miner’s cabin. Svalbard was originally a coal town, and many miners had died in piteous conditions before the mines were shut down.
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It was rumoured that some mines had been closed with the miners still inside. The shaft entrances stood on the hills surrounding the town on either side, wraiths of weather-worn wood and canvas breathing softly in the Arctic air. I reached for Liam’s reassuring hand often on that trip, and he always gave it to me. Liam had a body like a human polar bear. A giant well-padded chest and arms, and bear-like fur everywhere. He was the most comforting physical embodiment of a person whose actions sometimes made me horribly uncomfortable. For the two years we had spent together, every time a passably attractive woman looked at Liam, he would be thrown into a tizzy and then we would have The Talk, where he asked if, perhaps, I would be okay with him being with other women. I would bite my lip and shake my head and he would withdraw like a warm polar bear now turned into a glacier, and then when I, filled with remorse, said – yes, Liam, yes, we don’t own each other’s bodies, of course you may do as you please, I trust you – he’d envelope me once again and draw me close, and it was like coming home after a long day in the sleet to a warm fire and soft rugs at your feet. And so it went, and we often played this game, it was our cat-and-mouse way of remaining close, all whilst driving our own selves miles apart. In Svalbard everything costs as one would imagine it does on the Norwegian mainland, but more. Liam took me out to a fancy dinner where we ate reindeer steak and one tiny, square centimetre of cured polar bear meat. Hunting was not permitted, so animals would only be eaten if they had died of natural causes. The fancy dinner was served in a tiny wooden shack, which used to be the miners’ mess hall. We were the only patrons there aside from a large group of women, ostensibly a hen party, all drinking and having an excellent time. I asked Liam to sit facing me and them because I knew he enjoyed looking at women, especially a large group of individually beautiful Scandinavian women. Over
Svalbard
the group again and again, and far from disturbing me, it gave me a certain triumphant pleasure, knowing that he in turn had pleasure. It’s the little things, I thought as I stabbed at my square of polar bear meat, that keep people together till they grow old. On the walls of the restaurant hung rusted and reclaimed coal-mining equipment, and while Liam made eyes behind me, I imagined dead memories of the miners watched us eat, a part of the walls in their black stained clothes, their eyes pierced out of greyed faces. We went back to the hotel and I was amazed when Liam reached for my body. This was a rare thing, hardly ever spoken of, and even more rarely performed – sex was a ritual not of physical pleasure, but of reassurance – we’re still a couple, I would think, as he stabbed at me unfeelingly. It ended as suddenly as it began, with his orgasm, and I rolled out of bed to take a shower. The next day we watched the heads of beluga whales slip in and out of a fjord so far below a cliff that they seemed like silverfish skimming across the page of some rotted book. A shoal that big, said the guide, was rarely ever seen. That night Liam and I were chosen by our guide for the first polar bear watch of the group. One finger cocked on a flare gun’s trigger, I watched the coiling dark mist give way sometimes to fresh rain, sometimes to milky clouds, and then suddenly blue sky. But all the while, watching the horizon for polar bears, I stayed locked in my mind, thinking of how each day I spent with the man I loved who sat next to me cheated me of true intimacy. Every so often I would freeze, a distant cloud on the line of sky seemed to take a bear-like form. No real bears came that night, though my fear stayed. In the day-lit Arctic night I couldn’t fall asleep. I could see the faces of the miners floating above the belugas in the sea. Reproachful, unsung, left out, they asked me: Why are we here? And I asked myself the same thing.
Sara Anwar
77
dinner I saw, or imagined I saw, his eyes stray from my face over to
80
SOOKOON ANG 80–83
GUILHERME BERGAMINI 84–87
KHAIRULLAH RAHIM 88–91
ELLA WALKER 92–95
Right page: Sookoon Ang, Immortality III (2018)
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82 Sookoon Ang, Exorcize Me (V) (2013) Sookoon Ang, Exorcize Me (VI) (2013)
Sookoon Ang, 4PM (2016)
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Exorcize Me is a photography, videography and live performance project addressing coming-of-age anxiety, alienation and the metamorphosis between childhood & adulthood. The title Exorcize Me speaks about the unease within one’s own skin and the yearning to get rid of newfangled fears and unfamiliar emotions. The goth makeup, baby language, school setting, and uniforms are juxtapositions of reality and fiction, interior work brought out to the exterior.
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Guilherme Bergamini, Feminicid (2015)
85 Guilherme Bergamini, Feminicid (2015)
92 Ella Walker, Dragon under feet (2019)
93 Ella Walker, View of Piazza Del Priori (2019)
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FICTION
NINE EMI BENN
[10 ]
97
“Nine,” the mother says. “Is that a lot?” the daughter asks, pulling back the sheets. “I sleep with you and all my stuffed animals. That’s already maybe a gazillion.” “I’m not counting stuffed animals. Do you want a bedtime story or not? If you just want to ask questions, you can go right to sleep, bunny. You know I have to go to a lot of trouble to tell you about the nine.” “Story, please.” “Have you done your teeth and toilet?” The daughter nods so the mother begins. ⁂ The first was just for a night. Her boarding school was an alien place where she never felt she belonged (she had a full scholarship). The bed was hard and narrow and creaked whenever they moved. Though the mother had slept on it all year in the small room of her dorm, she hadn’t noticed how uncomfortable it was until he was there sharing the bed with her. He was older and had come to visit his girlfriend, her classmate, from his Ivy League college nearby. “What was he like?” “He was black. If I brought him home, Grandpa would have said bad things to him.” “Why did you sleep with him, Mommy?” The mother shrugs. “We were drinking. People do foolish things when they drink.” “He’s the one who kicked the blankets and twisted the sheets.” “Yes,” the mother says, “We both made a huge mess.” ⁂ Number Two happened the summer before she started college. She knew him from school, but he never talked to her. It was only in the
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quiet of summer when they ran into each other at the drugstore that they had their first conversation. Her immigrant parents encouraged her to see him. “They practically shoved me out the door and sold me to him,” the mother says, but mildly and without bitterness. “He was white and came from a rich family. That kind of guy who will always be alright, no matter what they’ve done.” He drove them to the beach and then he just wanted to sleep. “He just fell asleep? Isn’t that weird?” The mother shrugs. “Why did you sleep in the car with him? Were you tired?” “I was. Very, very tired of it all, especially my parents. Never sleep in a car with a boy you don’t know that well. It’s uncomfortable and you don’t want to be thought of like that.” “Like what, Mommy?” “Like the kind of girl who would sleep just anywhere. You want to be a girl who only sleeps in a feather bed and sends boys all around the world just to fetch you a silk pillow.” “Why would they have to go so far to get a pillow? Couldn’t they just buy one at the store?” “Because you want someone who’d get you something so special that it won’t leave creases on your cheek.” The mother sighs. “You have to understand, if I didn’t sleep, there would’ve been nothing else to do. And I was kind of excited, too, before I went. I liked him before that.” “Did you have bad dreams sleeping in the car?” “Yes. Terrible dreams and nightmares about monsters who lurk in the dark.” ⁂ “Wait,” the daughter says, holding up her little hand before the mother can get to Number Three. “Do the monster check.” The mother hangs her head over the side of the bed until her
Nine
stuffed animals that have fallen through the crack between the bed and the wall. “It’s clear.” “Then why do I still have bad dreams?” “Sometimes monsters are invisible. They hide in the crevices of things and even in people, behind the faces they wear every day. They feed on secret things, the things you can never tell anyone, like this story. If you repeat it, you might invite monsters in. Do you understand?” “I won’t tell. I don’t like monsters.” “Good.” ⁂ She was in college by Number Three – a state school with financial aid, she was the first in her family to go. He was in her American History class. He took long, hot showers after they slept, as if he wanted to wash all the sleep away. “Did he wash the sheets, too?” “Maybe. From the way he washed himself in those showers, he probably had a lot of laundry.” “Didn’t you sleep with Grandma and Grandpa? Why weren’t they the first two?” “I never slept with them,” the mother says as she stiffens but seems to rise taller, even though they’re both lying on the bed. “I always slept on my own. Even at sleepovers. I never got too close to anyone. I never shamelessly climbed in the way you do. I don’t know why you bother. You have such a lovely bed.” “Yes,” the daughter says, fluffing her feather comforter and resting her head back onto her pink pillow, safe under her net canopy. “But it’s cozier with you. And I get scared.” “You should stay in your bed,” the mother says. “My number is one,” the daughter says.
Emi Benn
99
dark hair brushes the floor. All she sees in the dim light is dust and
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POETRY
EN QUÊTE DE QUOI from Le noir du ciel
poem by MARY-LAURE zOSS
depuis la chambre du haut rêvent les morveux, s’écorchent les mains aux galeries de bois, leur âme retournée rase la pente des champs, par dessous l’herbe les yeux du mort piquent le ciel, accrochent le ventre boueux des renards en quête de proie, eux se perdent, les pieds dans la terre molle où se défont les os, dans leurs jeux poussent des échelles contre les arbres, ils écoutent la nuit s’égoutter sous l’écorce de l’orme, les chemins sont plein de trous, ils cherchent toujours à remonter à travers les paquets de nuit qui leur restent dans la gorge, s’inquiètent des cavités noires dans les murs
POETRY
IN SEARCH OF WHAT translated from the French by SARAH-JANE MOLONEY
in the upstairs bedroom the little snots are dreaming skinning their hands on the wooden galleries their upside-down souls skimming the fieldslope beneath the grass the dead man’s eyes prick the sky hook onto the muddy bellies of prowling foxes they get lost feet in the soft earth where bones come undone in their games pushing ladders against the trees they listen to the night drip under the bark of the elm the paths are full of holes they are trying to climb back through the lumps of night stuck in their throats fretting over the black cavities in the walls
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POETRY
THE PARTY poem by TERENCE YOUNG
They were told the party was on. They were told everyone would be at the party. They should come. They should really come. But they were of two minds. It’s a party, they said in one mind. It’s a party, they said in the other mind. Both statements were equally true. It was a question of timing. It was a question of distance. But it was neither of those things. Do we go to parties, they asked themselves. Do we like parties, they asked themselves.
117 Now they were getting somewhere. (They had been to parties. There were pictures.) Parties are like Christmas, she said. I know exactly what you mean, he said. She went on to tell him why parties were like Christmas. He listened politely, saying only, I know, I know and thinking parties are like sand, parties are like water on level ground parties are like the wind beneath a door. When she was finished, she asked, Aren’t we done with parties? What do you mean by done, he asked. You know what I mean, she said. True, he did. But he didn’t like the idea of being done with anything. What’s the point, she asked. Does there have to be a point, he asked. I knew you were going to say that, she said. It’s a celebration, he said. All parties are a celebration, she said. I knew you were going to say that, he said.
118 The celebration isn’t important, she said. It’s the excuse. The excuse for what, he asked. Parties are for getting laid, she said. Getting laid is like sand, he said. Getting laid is like water on level ground, she said. Getting laid is like the wind beneath a door, he said. Getting laid is like Christmas, they agreed. In the end they chose not to think about the party. In the end he came upon her washing her hair. In the end she interrupted him shaving. In the end they had a good time. In the end they left early. In the end they drifted home.
119
FICTION
TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART BEN MILLER
[11]
134
Contributors
SOOKOON ANG is an artist living
and working in Singapore and Paris. Underpinning her work is existential anxiety and the desire to represent the condition of flux and momentariness. Centring around intangibles and their co-existence with the rational world, Ang creates from a fundamental belief that there is no singular, objective reality and responses to the transient and imperfect nature of things, emotions, and ideas. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Palais de Tokyo; Art Basel Hong Kong; International Film Festival Rotterdam; International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen and Festival du Films sur L’Art in Montreal.
journals. Book-length translations include the short story collection Matracide/Matar a mamá (La Caída, Ecuador, 2015) by Santiago Vizcaíno, Casabe Lands: Binational Anthology of Stories, Ecuador-Nigeria, compiled and translated with Juan Romero Vinueza (La Caída, Ecuador, 2017), Every Day Behind/Todos los días atrás by Antonio Ramos Revilla (Argonáutica, Mexico, 2019), and the poetry collection Ambushed/Emboscada by César Eduardo Carrión (Artepoética Press, New York, 2019). EMI BENN’s fiction has appeared
in Joyland, Monkeybicycle, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and other places. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
SARA ANWAR was born and raised
in Karachi, and has since lived in Montreal and now in Berlin. She writes poetry and nonfiction and is currently focused on a novel which considers the ideas of belief and mental illness, and how they are entwined with the experiences of her protagonist. KIMREY ANNA BATTS is originally
from East Tennessee. She resided in Ecuador for 12 years and currently lives in Mexico, where she works as a professional translator. Her translations of poetry and narrative fiction have appeared in numerous literary
GUILHERME BERGAMINI was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He graduated in journalism and has been working with photography for 22 years. Through this art, Bergamini intends to express his experiences, worldview, and anxieties. He has received awards in national and international competitions and festivals, and has taken part in group and solo exhibitions in 21 countries. He has had his work published in several Brazilian and foreign media outlets. He publishes part of his photographic journey on guilhermebergamini.com
135 JESSICA BLOOM is a Toronto-based
writer. Her writing has appeared in Pithead Chapel, New York Magazine, McSweeney's, VICE, Playboy, and more. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria and an MA in Media Studies from Ryerson University.
have been published in Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, GuGuGu, and The Bauhinia Project, among others. She is one of the co-founding editors of EDGE: HKBU Creative Journal. She has been a featured reader of the Cha Reading Series. BLAKE HACKLER is an actor,
ANNETTE C. BOEHM is a queer poet
from Germany. She is the author of one book of poems, The Knowledge Weapon (Bare Fiction, 2016) as well as two chapbooks: The Five Parts of Love (dancing girl press, 2012) and E.D. Liberations (dancing girl press, 2019). She serves as a poetry reader for Memorious.
playwright, and professor. He has appeared in productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatres throughout the country as well as in TV and film. His plays and musicals have been seen in Dallas, Chicago, and New York. He currently holds faculty positions at Yale University and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
TED BYRNE is a poet, essayist and
translator who lives in Vancouver. He was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective for many years. For the past decade he has been an active member of the Lacan Salon. His most recent book is Duets (Talonbooks, 2018), a book based on translations from the sonnets of Louise LabĂŠ and Guido Cavalcanti. Previous books include Aporia (Fissure-Point Blank, 1989), Beautiful Lies (CUE books, 2008), and Sonnets: Louise LabĂŠ (Nomados, 2011) TIM TIM CHENG teaches at a secondary school in Hong Kong. Her poems
SEMYON KHANIN is an author
of the books Tol'ko chto (2003), Opushchennye podrobnosti (2008), Vplav' (2013), A vam ne kazhetsa, chto eti vashi p'at' minut kak-to slishkom sil'no zat'anulis' (2015), and No ne tem (2017). He is a translator of Latvian and American poetry into Russian, and editor of numerous poetry collections of Russian and Latvian poets. He has authored the anthology Poems in Russian Written by Latvian Poets (2011). His books of poetry appear in Latvian, Czech, Ukrainian, Serbian, Georgian, Spanish, and Italian translations.
136
Contributors
HEIKKI HUOTARI in a past century
attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower, is now a retired math professor, and has published three chapbooks, one of which won the Gambling The Aisle prize, and two collections, Fractal Idyll (A...P Press, 2017) and The Knowable Emotions (Lynx House Press, 2011). MARIA A. IOANNOU is a writer
and creative writing tutor based in Limassol, Cyprus, where she is the organiser of the SARDAM festival. She studied literature in the UK and she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing, having won the Vice Chancellor's Excellence in Research Award 2019 and the Emerging Writer State Prize in 2012. She has published two short fiction collections and a fairytale in Greek, and is currently writing her first short fiction collection in English. ARIEL GONZĂ LEZ LOSADA is a com-
poser and visual artist. He was born in Buenos Aires, the city in which he currently resides and develops his professional activity. As a composer, his musical works have been played by many ensembles and soloists. As a visual artist, his works have been presented in collective exhibitions such as at the Cultural
Center of the Bank of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, AC Institute, New York, and in various graphic magazines across the world. CHRISTOPHER LINFORTH has
recently published fiction in Fiction International, Notre Dame Review, Day One, and Descant, among other magazines. He has been awarded fellowships and scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. DONATO MANCINI holds a PhD from the Department of English at the University of British Columbia. His published critical writings include the monograph You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2011), Loitersack (2014), and the co-edited, co-authored volume Anamnesia: Unforgetting, on poly-temporality in the archive of cinema. As a poet, he has published numerous books, including Buffet World (2011), Fact 'N' Value (2011), and Ligatures (2005). Same Diff, his most recent book, was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Prize. MILVA MCDONALD's writing has been published in The Beloit Fiction Journal, The Boston Globe,
137 Mothering Magazine, Clean Sheets, and the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. She is the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant, and the co-author of Unschoolers (Sophia Sayigh, 2017). BEN MILLER is a writer and historian
in Berlin whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and other venues. He is currently at work on a novel and is represented by Doug Young at PEW Literary in London. benwritesthings.com SARAH-JANE MOLONEY is an Irish playwright and translator living in Lausanne, Switzerland. Following a degree in English Literature and Classics at the University of Lausanne, she studied theatre practice in London and now works as a dramaturg and playwright, writing in both English and French. She is the latest recipient of the Stück Labor award, a Swiss fellowship for emerging playwrights. “In Search of What” is her first literary translation. CHISOM OKAFOR is a poet and
nutritionist who was shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Award for Poetry in 2018 and the Gerald Kraak Prize in 2019. His works have been pub-
lished or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Rattle, Palette Poetry, The Heart of the Matter - The Gerald Kraak Anthology (Jacana Media, 2019), Kikwetu, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Single Story Foundation Journal, Praxis, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Brittle Paper, and elsewhere. He is currently co-editing 20:35 Africa, an anthology of contemporary poetry. EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY is the author of The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi (NYRB, 2017), a poetry novel about challenges in communication between a pirate and a parrot. Translated into German by Uljana Wolf and Monika Rinck, it was published by kookbooks as Der Pirat, der von Pi den Wert nicht kennt. T. PERSON is a poet and performer who focuses on the literal elements of communication – language as letter and sound; and they enjoy the unknowing confusion that appears as a consequence. More poetry is available at Lune Journal, OfZoos and Ulmer Textshop. Current projects are a DFA application in poetics of walking at Glasgow University and a pamphlet on food called Delicious.
138
Contributors
ADAM PETERSON is the author
of the flash fiction collections My Untimely Death (Subito Press, 2008), The Flasher (Springgun Press, 2012), and [SPOILER ALERT] with Laura Eve Engel (Dzanc Press, 2012). His short stories have appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. KEVIN M. F. PLATT is a professor of
Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the founder of the periodic poetic translation symposium Your Language My Ear, and has published English translations of poetry by Dmitry Golynko, Osip Mandelstam, Artur Punte, Sergej Timofejev, Vladimir Svetlov, and others. He recently was lead translator for the poetry collection Orbita: The Project (Arc Publications, 2018) and editor of the volume Global Russian Cultures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). MICHELE REESE is a professor
of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter and author of the poetry collection Following Phia (Word Tech Editions, 2006). Her poetry has also been published in several journals and anthologies including Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, The Paris Review, Poetry Midwest,
Ezra’s Book (Clemson UP, 2019), Found Anew (University of South Carolina Press, 2015), and Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). L. REEMAN is the author of multiple
chapbooks, including INVENTION OF THE MOUTH (Dream Pop Press, 2019). They have work in the 2017 Bettering American Poetry anthology, were the final Grand Slam Champ of Loser Slam, and co-won Sundog Lit's inaugural collaboration contest in 2018. Currently, they are surviving small-town America and want to hear about your favorite bridge. QUINN RENNERFELDT studied creative writing at the University of Colorado at Boulder and currently lives in San Francisco. Her heart is equally wed to the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. Her work can be found in Slipstream, Bird’s Thumb, Mothers Always Write, Punch Drunk Press, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Q/A Poetry, a journal promoting women poets. SAYA is a contemporary poet, based
in Seoul. Currently reading French language & literature at Yonsei University. He is an Arsenal fan, pursuing borderless literature, writing and self-translating his poetry
139 on English. His poetry stands on present which is faster than a future. DEREK SETZER’s work currently
revolves around themes concerning internal emotional processing, utilizing the human figure and abstracted forms as a sort of symbol. A lot of the imagery he works with involves feeling removed from one’s self, represented by imagery dissolving and reforming. SHANNON T. SMITH is a graduate
of the University of the West Indies, Mona, where she received her undergraduate degree in International Relations, minoring in Film Studies. She is a part-time vegan who currently works as an editorial assistant at Blue Banyan Books. Her poems were previously published in Susumba’s Book Bag series. Shannon was also shortlisted for the 2018 Small Axe Literary Competition. MEGAN SUNGYOON has been living
in between two languages – English and Korean – and is temporarily living/writing/translating in New York. KHAIRULLAH RAHIM (B.1987) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine arts (Painting, with a First Class Honours) from LASALLE College of the Arts, in partnership with Goldsmiths,
College of London in 2013. Though formally trained in the field of painting, he also creates assemblages and sculptural installations. His practice explores stories that are concerned with experiences of oppression and prejudice against communities whose identities do not fit within society. In response, survival and thriving strategies have emerged as recurring points of discussion and consideration throughout his works. While his idiosyncratic works may evoke a distinctive joyful demeanour, they are however loaded with stories of loss and marginalisation. JUAN ROMERO VINUEZA studied
Literature at PUCE in Ecuador. He is currently pursuing an MA in Hispanic American Literature at the University of Guanajuato (Mexico). Co-editor of Cráneo de Pangea. In poetry, he has published Revólver Escorpión (La Caída, 2016); 39 poemas de mierda para mi primera esposa (Turbina, 2018) and Dämmerung [o cómo reinventar a los ídolos] (Ediciones Liliputienses, 2019). With Abril Altamirano he compiled Despertar de la hydra: antología del nuevo cuento ecuatoriano (La Caída, 2017). With Kimrey Anna Batts he compiled and translated País Cassava/Casabe Lands (La Caída, 2017).
140
Contributors
ELLA WALKER lives and works in
London. Her large-scale watercolor paintings and frescoes draw inspiration from medieval narrative and the occult. Her abstracted depictions of traditional subjects such as parades, processions and scenes of hunting explore medieval narrative and costume. Imagery found in the series “Human Monsters Running with Bells, after Conrad of Megenberg” is inspired by Megenberg's beautifully illustrated manuscript “Buch der Natur” showing 14th century discoveries of the natural world. JOY WALLER is a Canadian writer and editor based in Tokyo. She is the author of Pause :: Heartbeat, a collection of poems (2019, ToPoJo Excursions). ADELE ELISE WILLIAMS is a poet from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is currently an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech where she recently served as Poetry Editor for the minnesota review and now works as an assistant editor for Noemi Press. She is a Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize finalist, winner of the Emily Morrison Poetry Prize and a Hindman Settlement School poetry fellow. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Still: The Journal and elsewhere.
Her current goings-on can be found at adeleelisewilliams.com. TERENCE YOUNG lives in Victoria, BC, Canada, and is a co-founder and former editor of The Claremont Review, a literary journal for young writers. His most recent book is a collection of short fiction, The End of the Ice Age (Biblioasis, 2010). The poem in this issue of SAND is from a forthcoming book of poems called Smithereens. MARY-LAURE ZOSS lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has published several books including Le Noir du ciel (Empreintes Suis, 2007), which won the 2006 C.-F. Ramuz Poetry Prize as well as the 2008 L-A Finances Foundation Prize for Poetry. She has also published an artist's book, Route (éditions du frau, 2012), as well as pieces in the Revue de Belles-Lettres, N4728, and Fario.
141 Endnotes
[1] [2] [3] [4] [6] [8] [9] [10] [11] Artworks by Derek Setzer. [5] An Auspicious Day for Demonstrating. Protest poster by anonymous Hong Kong artist as parody of daily horoscope calendar (2019). [7] The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565).
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