“So he scraped the snow away, and while he was thus clearing the ground he found a small golden key.”
“Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest.”
Once in the wintertime when the snow was very deep, a poor boy had to go out and fetch wood on a sled. After he had gathered it together and loaded it, he did not want to go straight home, because he was so frozen, but instead to make a fire and warm himself a little first. So he scraped the snow away, and while he was thus clearing the ground he found a small golden key. Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock, so he dug in the ground and found a little iron chest. “If only the key fits!” he thought. “Certainly there are valuable things in the chest.” He looked, but there was no keyhole. Finally he found one, but so small that it could scarcely be seen. He tried the key, and fortunately it fitted. Then he turned it once, and now we must wait until he has finished unlocking it and has opened the lid. Then we shall find out what kind of wonderful things there were in the little chest. —Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “The Golden Key”
Table of Contents 07
Susan Anspach, Carlea Holl-Jensen, & LiAnn Yim
10
Anne Lacy
EDITORS’ LETTER
28
JIM TALKS TO THE MOON
Anne Marie Basquin
WATER LILY MONSTER
30
Phedra Deonarine
DAUGHTER OF THE MAMMOTH HUNTER
38
THE RULES OF UP AND DOWN Grant Tarbard
THE RING
40
Grant Tarbard
HOW TO WALK A TIGHTROPE
42
Barbara Christina Witmer
KITES IN OBLIVION
44
Shannon Sweetnam
OCEAN BEACH, LATE NOVEMBER
46
Thank you for reading!
12
John Brantingham
14
Rebecca Hurst
16
Emily Rose Cole
18
Trevor Shikaze
24
Janna Layton
ISSUE ART B by Priscilla Boatwright
THE PRINCESS AND THE RIVER QUEEN
WHISPER OF THE MOTHS
DAPHNE, RESURRECTED
JUBILEE
CONTRIBUTORS
06
Issue 5
THE GOLDEN KEY
2014
Editors' Note W
elcome, readers, to The Golden Key’s fifth issue: Things that Float. Inside you’ll find five poems and seven stories that speak to this issue’s themes of suspension, buoyancy, and resiliency. Space loomed as a large consideration in many of the submissions for this issue; in as much as floating objects were considered, the places they floated—in air, in water, in outer space—received equal attention. This issue is a study in sustainability. In how things persist. Where they turn up. In Rebecca Hurst’s story, “The Ring,” a piece of gold passes hands, stomachs, and water systems. “Water Lily Monster,” a flash fiction story by Anne Lacy, peels back the petals of a sustained craving, turned rotten the longer it’s left to sit in the swamp. Janna Layton’s poem, “October Beach, Late November,” showcases whole macrocosms left to shimmer in life after the death of what’s been washed ashore. What these short stories and poems have in common is a relationship with floating: There is a motion to it, and often a slipperiness. Kites bob and weave, fish swarm, the moon speaks, and not always things we want to hear. To float, to stay afloat, cannot always be easy, or arbitrary. This issue would not have been made possible without the phenomenal talent of illustrator Priscilla Boatright (http://cargocollective.com/boatart), who supplied the delightful artwork within, or without your continued support of our journal. If you are able, please consider supporting us through a donation. All gains are put toward our goal of payment for all our contributors, and our continued commitment to better showcase their work.
— Susan Anspach, Carlea Holl-Jensen, and LiAnn Yim December 2014
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ANNE LACY
Water LilY monster 1 When night comes, the crocodil mamma rises to the surface and wakes her goblin babes. They stir at the sound of her song, unsticking themselves from the bottoms of lily pads, water-drunk and thick with sleep. They swim in her wake as their hoard assembles. The youngest pull themselves onto her back, where they watch the moon, noses itching from her rumbling song. 2 Mamma’s back is hard reptilian hide, but her legs are long, soft, dimpled. From time to time, the things that live below mistake those legs for human. From time to time, she lets them bite, to remind the babes she will not last forever. But the lesson never sticks: her jaws are so quick, her blood a sticky poison; the water always heals her wounds. They believe it always will. She is their mamma.
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3 A gathered hoard means a feast and a frolic. They skim one another across the water’s surface, catch fish and frogs with silver needle teeth. Mamma has taught them: “Bring me the eyes and heart.” She locks these things in emptied nutshells, seals them with her spit, sinks them to the bottom of the lake. Tomorrow, the shells will open. Up will float new goblin babes. She tells herself it is more than a fair trade. She tells herself she doesn’t know any other way. 4 On the far side of the lake, is a bright yellow lily. Each petal a warning. The crocodil and her children stay far away. The stalk of this lily is thick as Mamma’s arm. Follow this appendage down to the muddy bottom, and there, in a nest of roots, lives the water lily monster. 5 Once, the crocodil and the water lily monster were lovers, friends. There was a sandy bank where they liked to bake in the sun. The crocodil would fall asleep, snoring loudly, unaccustomed to life during the day. The water lily goes there alone sometimes and remembers. Without warning she’ll be overwhelmed with memories. The crocodil frantic for the taste of the water lily’s poison. The crocodil’s rumbling laugh and how it set the water lily’s whole body shivering. Without warning she’ll be overwhelmed with fantasies of ways she’ll hurt the crocodil if she ever lays eyes on her again. The water lily is a monster. Do not forget. 6 When night comes, the water lily monster forces herself to stay awake. She watches the moon and counts the minutes. She listens for the crocodil song. She only wants to hear it. The tendrils off her hands feel it first. They have always been her most sensitive part. Then, all of her hears it, feels it in her ears, her mouth, that hard little knot at her center. Tonight, without warning, she is moving, gliding beneath the surface with twisting strokes, unable to obey her own commands of “Stop, stop.” She gets closer, and then, above her: long, soft, dimpled legs. They are so familiar. So close.
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12 THE GOLDEN KEY
JOHN BRANTINGHAM
Daughter of the Mammoth Hunter
From the top of the hill, they look like dogs to her, so she jumps up and down between her parents and yells her word for dog again and again. She likes the way that when they step on the ground, she can hear them as long as there is no wind and the birds have gone to sleep. That night, they walk past the camp and wake her from her dreams. She holds her breath in the dark. She yells her favorite word into the moonlight wisps of fog: dog and dog and dog.
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14 THE GOLDEN KEY
REBECCA HURST
The Ring She gave her ring to the river on the day a certain anniversary crept round again. The ring was gold, bright as her hair. She pitched it high into the air and the river swallowed it: glock. The river carried the ring for a while, puzzling it against rocks, the muddy bank, a rotting wooden quay where a fisherman sat, dangling his line into the silty, wandering water. Beneath the quay a fish was swimming along with its mouth open and it swallowed the ring absentmindedly. The gold gleam was lost in a deeper darkness. The ring gave the fish a stomachache. It saw a hook, a worm, near the cloudy surface of the water, and forgot it knew better, bit down hard. The fisherman sliced the fish open, found the ring, tested the gold between his crooked teeth, and tied it in a knot in his handkerchief. The next day the fisherman gave the ring to his lover. Her hair was red gold. She had a freckled nose and had just that moment nicked her thumb peeling potatoes. (She was making chips to go with the fish.) She was surprised how glad she was (felt her heart would explode with joy) when the fisherman pressed the ring into her hand. “It’s nothing,” he said. “The river gave it to me.” She tossed the chips into the deep fat fryer, and the oil hissed like a flock of angry geese: it’s nothing. When she slid the ring onto her finger it fitted perfectly, lying snug in a shallow groove above the second knuckle. The chips were just right: crisp, golden, and perfectly seasoned. But to punish the fisherman she overcooked the fish. Later she tossed the skin and the potato peel into the river. That night a fish swam back and forth in the silty, wandering water beneath the woman’s house. It sang to her in a voice that was crisp and golden. She had never heard anything so beautiful. The song filled her head, flooded her room, the house, poured through the deserted streets and out into the surrounding fields and water meadows. At last, in the darkest hour, just before daybreak, the woman left her bed and walked down to the riverbank. The tide was flooding in, the river as high as she had ever seen it. There was the thumbprint of a moon above the rooftops. Hitching up her skirt, the ring glinting on her finger, the woman waded into the cool water, let the river hold her, and then let it sweep her away.
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EMILY ROSE COLE
How to Walk a Tightrope
16 THE GOLDEN KEY
Start on the ground. Walk across a wide board. Take long, confident strides. Observe sparrows. Float on water. Attend the ballet. Stand on one leg for three days straight. Fall in love with a rich boy. Crust your throat with rubies. Weight your wrists with gold. Ten times a day, ask him to lift you, broad fingers choking your waist. Thread a rope between low stumps. Cut your feet. Succumb to gravity. Watch children spread their arms. Dive with your eyes closed. Fall in love with a poor girl. Fill your pockets with empty shells. Weave rust blossoms into your hair. Ask her to teach you the language of crows. Swallow stones to improve your accent. Ascend the highwire. Keep your spine straight as a spindle. Breathe into your feet. Make it halfway. Stagger. Listen to the audience pawing their chests. Fall in love with the air. Understand that you have calloused your own skin. Grow wings. Clip them. Walk.
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TREVOR SHIKAZE
Kites in Oblivion The air here is thick, almost a fluid. I’ve seen discarded newspapers rise up and hover just above the ground, swirling on the eddies from the legs of passersby. Sometimes, when the trash is bad and the conditions are right, a knee-high fog will rise—cigarette butts, bottle caps, gum wrappers, all the variety of Saturn’s rings. From far off the haze of trash is beautiful like those rings, especially when it rains. Then the top layer glistens. I’ll miss that. I came into exile because I wanted to give the people around me some time to forget. I wanted to get better and I wanted everyone I knew to be better off without me for a while, so I came down here where the air is thick, where the harbor is an edge overlooking an abyss, where a strong wind blows up the side of the vent and carries the lighter things with it. I’d heard it was hard to find a place down here, but I found one right away. I saw a sign in a window, pushed the buzzer, went up. A wiry man with a big beard welcomed me at the top of a flight of stairs. “I’m just looking for something small,” I said. “Oh, thank God.” He was ready to leave, didn’t even take the furniture. He hastily packed some books and clothes. “One comes in, one goes out.” I helped him carry his baggage down to a waiting car. “A word of advice,” the old tenant said as I handed him a suitcase. “If you think of one reason to stay, go.” I didn’t like the advice and maybe my eyes showed it. Maybe I didn’t reflect the gratitude he expected. He fit the suitcase into the trunk. He closed the trunk and came so close to me I could smell his beard. It smelled like ants. “That’s your neighbor.” He pointed to a mad-faced person leaning over the hedges and parting them with one hand. In the other hand the neighbor held a bucket. “He’s happy to stay. He found a reason. Ask him about it.” The old tenant got into the car, which pulled out. I approached the person squatting in the hedges. “Whatcha got there?” He looked up at me with surprise. Maybe he wasn’t used to being acknowledged. He held up his bucket. In the bottom were two grimy pairs of scissors. I left the mad-faced collector to his task, climbed the stairs, fumbled with the keys. There were two doors at the top of the stairs, door one and door two. I was door two. I went in, looked around, opened all the cupboards and closed them, opened all the closets and closed them. I checked the toilet tank. I ordered Chinese food from the phone book and sat tapping my finger on the table till the buzzer rang. I ate from the cardboard boxes and washed it down with a quarter bottle of scotch that the old tenant hadn’t seen fit to pack along. Something scraped at the window. I scooted back in my chair and saw a large-eared animal. It looked a bit like a dog, a bit like a cat, but most like a fox. Yet it wasn’t a normal fox—too small, too gray. The animal pawed the glass. I opened the window. The animal said, “Where is the man with the beard?” “He moved out. Do you want in?” “No.” She licked her arm. Her snout was as small as a clothes peg; her ears were as big as mittens. “Will you come hunt with me?” I finished the scotch. “Okay.” “I’ll meet you in the alley. Wear sensible shoes.”
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20 THE GOLDEN KEY
I only had one pair, so that’s what I went with. I passed my neighbor on the stairs. He seemed glum, so I patted his arm. The little fox waited in the alley, perched on a trash can. “Try to keep up,” she said, and she trotted off. I followed her down to the harbor, where people stood on a grassy ridge overlooking the great vent. They flew kites in the updraft. I’d never seen anyone fly a kite at night before. My little vixen kept her nose to the ground, sniffing along the sidewalk seams. “What are we hunting for? Rats?” “No.” “Mice?” She didn’t answer. She circled a streetlamp. “Every light casts a shadow,” she said. “What does that have to do with anything?” “Look up,” she said, so I did. I saw stars. “There,” she said, and I turned to watch her chase a pitch-black thing and pin it against the curb. She caught it in her mouth and chewed it. I couldn’t make out what it was. I looked back up at the sky and one of the stars winked out. She picked up a scent and sped off. I jogged alongside her. “Dying is like the shadow of a mad sun,” she said, as if that explained anything. “What do you mean?” “I can sense you’re uneasy.” “Are you eating up stars?” “Don’t worry,” she said, “there’s trillions of them,” and she cornered another shadow and ate it. Another star winked out. She jumped into my arms. I carried her down to the seawall that bordered the abyss. A boy ran up to us: “Hey mister, fly a kite! Fly a kite, five bucks one hour!” “No, thanks.” The boy returned to his stall, which held racks of tatty silk. I looked to the flyers. They all seemed happy, smiling up at their kites. But the kites made me sad. What fun is a kite? It’s like a bird on a leash. I carried my vixen back to my place. I thought maybe the old tenant had left some tuna, something for a pet to eat. We got in and she bit my thumb hard enough to draw blood, I guess to remind me she was no kind of pet. “Now you must help me,” she said. “You must turn on the oven as hot as it goes. I would do it myself, but my paws can’t handle the knobs.” I turned on the oven. I turned it to broil. The element glowed orange. “Now you must switch off the lights and look away while I remove my skin. And then you must put my skin in the oven, and then you must burn it till it’s nothing but ash. I will leave through the window. Once I am gone, you must place a single grain of salt in a glass of water, and then you must drink the glass in one gulp. And we will do this every night from now on.” “Okay.” I switched off the lights. “Look away,” she said. “You must make a promise. Will you make a promise?” “Sure.” “You must promise to never, ever look at me without my skin on. Do you promise?” “Okay.” “Hold out your hands.” I held out my hands and received a warm parcel. Her skinless paw brushed my knuckles and left a smear of gore. I heard her hop up on the windowsill. “I will see you tomorrow,” she said. I waited for her to leave. Then I placed the fur in the oven as she’d asked me to, and I dropped a grain of salt in a glass and filled the glass from the sink, and I sat at the table as the fur burned up and I gulped down the water without taking a breath. The fur burned quickly, flaming white and then crumbling to ash. I turned off the oven. I upended the bottle of scotch over the glass and caught a thimbleful of drink. I knocked that back. I pulled down the wall bed. I ended my first day in exile.
— The next morning the sky was dark. I discovered that I lived above a stationery store. Rain fell as I explored the narrow floor-to-ceiling aisles. I browsed all the various kinds of paper, all the envelopes, all the pens and inks. At last I brought my selection to the front. The clerk began to ring me through. I told him I lived above. “Well, then,” he said, “shall we just start a tab?” Which was odd, but he said it so casually that I agreed. Really, though, how much stationery would I need? I ran into my neighbor on the stairs. “Oh, you’ve been to the shop,” he slurred, eyeing my bag. He licked his lips. “How was the scissors selection?” “Good.” He rattled his bucket at me and continued on down. He wore a long yellow raincoat and black gumboots. I got in and spread my purchase over the kitchen table. Suddenly it seemed extravagant. I’d bought a lot of stationery. I watched the rain on the window for a few minutes, made myself a pot of coffee. I kept trying to walk away from the table but I kept sitting back down, arranging and rearranging my stacks of paper, my envelopes, my pens and inks. I thought I should write a letter. The people back home would be wondering about me. I thought I should write to tell them where I was and how I just wanted to be better. It was a simple thing, my reason for leaving. One word: better. But sometimes the simplest reasons are the hardest to justify. I began the letter like this: I have an idea about how the world could work. I sat at that table and wrote and drank coffee. I made more coffee when the pot ran out. I reused the grounds. I ate a pickle, staring thoughtfully out the window as I crunched. The rain hadn’t let up. I went back to my letter but it was all wrong. Too something. Not enough another thing. I tried again. I made new coffee with fresh grounds. What was I trying to say? I wanted to say, This is why. This is why and why is what and what is everything, and now you understand. How hard could that be to put down on a page? Oh, pretty hard. I worked at it though, right up until I heard a scratching at my window. “Come hunt with me.” There she was, her coat as thick and firmly attached as ever. “But the rain.” “Rain makes for good hunting. It flushes the shadows from the holes where they live.” I considered that. “What’s a hole without shadow?” She smiled at me. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.” So out we went. We passed my mad neighbor, who was flat on his stomach with his arm down a storm drain. “Scissors,” he hissed at us. I guess he’d seen a pair wash down. I turned up my collar and pulled my coat tight, but the rain soaked through. Every step was like pumping the bilge. At last I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, and walked around that way. My little vixen was right about the shadows: the rain had flushed them out. They slid around underfoot like oil droplets in a hot pan. We passed by the kite vendors, who huddled under the awnings of their stalls, playing cards. The updraft from the abyss sucked the rain back into the sky; the rising runoff made a sheet, a reverse waterfall. We watched that for a bit. I thought about catching a newspaper, folding it up into a boat, sending it off. I thought about hopping into the stream myself. But a body was too heavy for the wind from the abyss—I’d just fall. My vixen jumped into my arms. I carried her back to my place. Once we got inside and I got dry, she told me again what I must do. “Just promise, please promise, to never, ever look at me without my skin on.” “I promise.” We turned off the lights and she pulled off her skin. I listened to her leave and fed the skin into the oven. I drank my grain of salt. I went to bed.
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I spent my days in exile following this same routine. I rose, made coffee, sat at my table and tried to work. I ran out of paper and went to the store downstairs. I progressed, I filled pages, but with each page I filled, the end of the letter seemed to get further away. What I wanted to say was so simple—so I thought. So I felt. I felt it simply, what I wanted to say. Now if only I could make a feeling sound right on the page. I tried. Yet the deeper I got into explanation, the more I found to explain. My vixen visited nightly to take me on her hunt. Nightly I saw the kite flyers and pitied them. Sometimes I hated them. Why fly kites? It doesn’t get you any closer to where you want to go. My vixen chased shadows and the boys hawked their kites, and I thought about the simple things I would say if it were easy. Then we’d go back to my kitchen and she’d pull off her skin—but only after I’d promised not to look. Every night I would turn away and switch off the lights and do her bidding. “You must never see me without my skin on! Never! Never!” “The oven is ready.” She would leave and I would gulp my grain of salt. I settled into exile without really meaning to. The clerk at the store came to know my favorite paper gauge and always kept it stocked. I paused on the stairs with my neighbor and described the scissors on sale in detail, and he shifted and drooled and clutched his bucket before continuing on his way. My letter grew longer. I stacked it on the chair across from where I sat. I watched the stack grow. I made a little goal for myself: finish the letter, and then you can leave this place, you can go home. It seemed like a reasonable goal. “Now look away. Switch off the lights.” She didn’t have to tell me. I knew our routine. Yet she told me every night. “And promise not to look at me without my skin on. Promise!” Dutifully, I burnt the skin. I drank the salt. I went to bed and woke up and wrote at my kitchen table. The letter grew longer and longer. A year passed by. Then one night my vixen didn’t show. I heard my neighbor howling. I ran to his door and banged on it, shouted his name, but he howled over me. I tried the knob. It turned and clicked. His place was small, even smaller than mine, just room enough to lose your head in. He stood at his open window, howling. I took him by the arm and he came to his senses. “Foxhounds,” he said. “The hunt is on.” I listened to his howls echo in the streets. The echo redoubled. It was no echo. I heard the howling of hounds in the streets. I ran into the night and followed the howls, but the hounds stayed ahead of me, always just ahead of me. I called for my vixen. I wandered the empty parks where the shadows were long, where I knew she often hid. I found her in a thicket. She was mauled, near death. “Take me in your arms,” she said, “and carry me back to your kitchen. There, you must shut off the lights. You must act in the dark so you do not see me. You must stop up your ears so you do not hear me. You must find a sharp knife. You must cut off my skin in one piece. You must cut out my tongue and eat it raw. I will talk then inside you, but you must not listen. You must sing a song in your mind to cover up my voice. You must take me apart. You must chop me to pieces. You must boil me down to a soup. And then you must eat me, all of me, even the bones, wasting not a scrap. Then you must hang my skin outside your window and nail it to the sill. When this is done, I will return to you again. Then all will be as it was.” So I did those things. I carried her to my kitchen and shut off the lights. I knew my eyes would adjust to the darkness, so I tied a rag over them. I pushed paper into my ears. I felt my way. She struggled as I sliced off her fur, she bit me and scratched. I butchered her in a bowl so I wouldn’t lose a drop of her blood. I cut out her tongue and ate it raw. I sang a song to drown out the voice now in my
head. I took her apart. I chopped her to pieces. I boiled her down to a soup. Then I ate her. I sucked on my fingers to make sure I didn’t waste her. I licked the spoon. I licked the pot. I took off my blindfold and saw that the sun was just coming up. I opened the window and nailed her pelt to the sill, where it hung like a sock. I turned to my table and sat. I looked at the stacks of paper on the chairs, on the floor, up the walls. Sincerely yours. I knew how to end it. I just didn’t know how to get there from here. In all the world I wanted one simple thing: I wanted to be better. Why was the formula so complex? I went downstairs and told the clerk I’d like to pay off my tab. He showed me a stack of receipts. I told him I’d send him a check from wherever it was I was going. “Are you going?” he said. “Eventually. When I figure out what I came here to say, and figure out how to say it completely, and send it off to the people I know, the people waiting for explanations.” “For a moment there, it sounded as if you planned on going today.” I left the stationery store and walked around the block. All the familiar views made me want to cry, made me want to mourn them. It’s a different way you look at a place when you’re thinking you might leave. I walked until a certain time. I turned into an alley. I followed the alley to my window where I saw my vixen sitting on the ledge, pawing at the glass. She lowered her paw and sat there, waiting patiently. I left her like that. “Mister! Hey, mister! Paper lantern, five bucks! Fly a paper lantern!” “Now that sounds like a deal.” I chose a lantern and the boy handed me a candle and a tiny slip. I asked him what the slip was for. “That’s for you to write your wish on.” “My wish?” “You always get a wish! Didn’t you know that?” He pointed to his stall’s awning. The awning said WISH, painted right on, then next to that was a hook where the boy had hung a sign that said LANTERN. I presumed that the sign normally said KITE, but today was special. I climbed the grassy ridge overlooking the great vent. I joined the smiling people. I watched others light their candles, watched them hand off their lanterns to the updraft. The lanterns made a twinkling rising stream. I had an idea about how the world could work. I wrote it on a slip of paper, and then I let it go.
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JANNA LAYTON
Ocean Beach, Late November 24 THE GOLDEN KEY
The Pacific has killed several boaters this week. Today not even surfers dot the waves. We’ve been told to stay away, but this is the sea, this is the shore, this is the sky, all met on the western border of San Francisco with the cypress trees of Sutro Heights, the row houses sunny even in fog, the snowy plovers and cracked sand dollars, the bare backs against the black of unzipped wetsuits. Everything below is washed up in the roughness. Dogs examine the headless log that is the dead sea lion. Jellyfish look like solid glass paperweights on the sand, but touched, they quiver like desserts.
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ANNE MARIE BASQUIN
Jim Talks to the Moon Q: Where do the people live who don’t live here anymore? A: They might live on the moon. I’ve heard my father say things about the moon: man-made, hollow, pulled there by tugboats beyond our reckoning. That you can see lights on its dark side: language carved into the moon like roads. Like the moon wasn’t love or capable of loving the tides and our warm insides. What has man ever made that was moon-like in its composition? A thing which would beat like a heart in circles around the earth, that could pull all the oceans at once in great ovals, that could render all the women barren or fertile with its light and with its pull. A thing that would shake the water in us like rivers in a dull throb at our eardrums. A thing that would lay its cycles so neatly across such long swathes of time that it would be studied, marveled and admired by all humans throughout the ages without the need for signs or instructions, only the quiet contemplation of a body moving across such a large sky. —
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Each person here has a mother who is a star, a mother who holds a star in her fist. — The moon loves Jim. The moon is hanging in the sky thinking about Jim. Jim is very sick. “Terminal” is what the doctors tell him and what his family try not to say but hear in their heads like a drum. The moon is thinking about Jim in his own dark sky, suspended, just as the moon, neither tied to anything nor free to move in any direction. Terminal is not a velocity in Jim’s life though it offers him the perception that he travels at a new and hurried speed towards the end of his life. The future, once open and promised, now lies beyond the moon’s darker half. — Jim sits in the night sky and watches the stars. Jim is all the ages at once that he has ever been sitting and watching the stars. It is summer, winter, spring and autumn all at once. There are lightning bugs, fireworks, snow; the Big Dipper is there and all the constellations he knew as a boy and forgot later. He and the moon talk about where the dead live. The moon tells Jim that the dead live here, on the moon. “But you are not a star yet. First a star, then the moon. All of the stars are mothers,” says the moon. “You have a future yet.” Jim asks the moon if his mother is a star. The moon shrugs. “The stars are mothers until they aren’t anymore and then they come here. You must pass through life to understand the house I live in. Then you may live here also. But you may not be a mother very soon. There are other manifestations to pass through first, but you will have to ask the sky.” — It’s high tide on the moon, love. The tide carves roads into the low moon like cities. The cities on the moon are made of ice, rock, dust and love which has a long reach. Gravity is one name for love; light another. There are many other names. The cities there are not cities like you think. They are deep wells
of cold water that are pushed around the moon in circles. Our lives are too short to see the ice shift and change and carve new channels. Under the ice live warm things, bodies, with great thick hair and fur. They live deep under, at the center of the moon where it is still hot and liquid. They are golden and breathe steam. As yet, we have not named them, but we could call them love. They turn and turn and pull and pull and swim through the golden center. Each planet, each body of rock that hangs in the black world without sound has a golden center. These centers call one another and swim and pulse and pull us all in circles. Dancing is one name for these circles; orbit another. Whatever the name, we spin and move. — Hello, mother–star–I’ve missed you. Hello, Jim, my bright boy. Hello, father–rock like a moon–I missed you in the last days. Hello, son. I’ve missed you also. You know I still drive trucks on these roads? Except the roads are timelines and the trucks are trajectories, memories, pulses of light. I’m learning. Isn’t your mother bright? She is, and you are, too. And you, son. Where to? I’m not sure what you mean. The star mother says, You get to choose this time. You get to choose where and when and who. That’s easy. Julie, Molly, Luke. Jeannine, Jane, Joyce. North Manchester. Indianapolis. Indiana. The woods. The highways. The deer. The 4th of Julys. The hot summer nights. All the numbers. The deepest snows. All the car trouble. All the love and all the fights. Mack. It won’t be exact, says the father-rock like a moon. Is it like that every time? Mostly. People usually choose what they love. But it takes time. You’ll want to rest and wait a while, get to know the place. How? Just think of rest and it will come. Think of a map and it will unfold before you. You thought of your mother and I and we came. Do you feel tired? No. Just light. Explore then, go watch a supernova. Let all that color fill you up. If you need help, just think of us, any one of us. There’s a long line of ancestors out here. — There’s a woman on the grass about to give birth, she’s splitting open like soil, I can see through to her red earth, that true one, that flesh-pink one. Hello, flesh-pink earth, the world says. Goodbye, flesh-pink earth, the new one says. Hello air, rough as rocks on my skin. The cells split and form, cluster in the flesh-pink and the grass-green. There’s love. — The blue sky swallows the moon to welcome the morning. Only the sea knows it’s still there.
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30 THE GOLDEN KEY
PHEDRA DEONARINE
The Princess and the River Queen There was no road to Savatri’s house, only a dirt track lined with marigolds. The house was small and made of teak because it was good in the rain and termites disliked it, and also because the trees were everywhere in the forest in the centre of the tropical island. Savatri was her parents’ only child. They never received visitors because her mother hated strangers, and because her mother kept Savatri’s father in the basement. Ever since her mother put Savatri’s father in the basement, her mother started planting flowers in the kitchen garden. Now lilies sprouted among the eddoes and cassava, oleander grew among the peas, and morning glories curled up the walls of the house alongside passion fruit vines. Her mother loved the vines most of all. She didn’t care how they choked the house, or how they wrapped around the foundation beams with their fine but plentiful climbers. The vines made the house pretty and smell delicate like a proper lady’s handkerchief, even though they were a family of bush coolies. Savatri’s mother didn’t look like a bush coolie. She reminded Savatri of that every supper. She showed Savatri how she’d kept the slim hips and slender thighs of her youth, as well as her pelvic bones, which were strangely prominent for a grownup woman, and her long pointed nose. No amount of soaking in milk would soften her mother’s hands or lighten her dark circles, but those, along with long-faded thumbprints on her inner thighs, she blamed on Savatri’s father. Her mother was beautiful. Her hair was soft, even when she missed her weekly oil scalp massage. Savatri loved to watch the gentle sway of her mother’s hips while she cooked or walked down the track to the marketplace miles and miles away, bringing back coffee and sugar for cakes and ice-cream, and cloth to make dresses for herself. Savatri had to feed her father. Her mother always made her father his favorites, like sancoach soup made with succulent beef, curried pumpkin and soft roti, and pitchers and pitchers of cool sweetened tea, everything garlanded in dry oleander blooms. He never ate until Savatri had a bite, but once she did he’d sink back into the plush cushions on the basement floor and eat his fill among the falling morning glory vines which grew in the basement. Many times he’d complain to Savatri. “Tell your mother to pull out these vines from here. They attracting too many insects.” Or he’d tell Savatri stories of catching fish in the river near the house, and planting crops on the hillside, and selling produce in the marketplace. The stories were dull, but they seemed to soothe him, so Savatri pretended to listen while tracing patterns in the vines with her eyes. It didn’t matter that her father didn’t like the flowers, because Savatri never told her mother to pull out the morning glories from the basement. The vines covered the walls and hung from the ceiling, and unlike the purple buds outside, the flowers inside the house were a pale pink. The kind of color princesses would wear. Savatri’s mother loved the flowers, and Savatri loved her mother. She couldn’t bear to tell her mother to tear out the beautiful vines and risk losing her love. —
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Once, her mother ripped Savatri’s father’s soft cotton shirt to strips. Savatri cried because she loved that shirt. She’d washed it the day after they locked her father downstairs and now it smelled of sunshine. She wondered if her mother bothered to smell the fabric, or if she only felt how stiff the shirt had become after it’d dried outside. It was the first time that Savatri ever complained about her mother to her father. He tried to adjust his covers over his legs because the vines made the basement extra damp, but the shackles stopped him. Savatri arranged the coverlet. He leaned forward, speaking with his mouth full of crab and dumplings. “Throw the strips into the wind and tell it that I’m still here. Don’t use a loud voice. It’ll fix the shirt for you.” Savatri didn’t believe him at first, but then remembered how quickly the flowers had blossomed in the basement, and how bloodied her mother’s mouth had been that night, and thought that her father must know some magic for those changes to work so quickly. She gathered all the strips of the ripped shirt and tossed them out of the kitchen window. “My father is still here. We keep him in the basement. The room is very pretty but his shackles are getting rusty.” When she went to draw a jug of water from the well near the river she saw her father’s shirt draped across the well’s opening. She wore the shirt while she drew the water, splashing her worn rubber boots on her way up the narrow path to home. The shirt wasn’t as handsome as when her father wore it. It was patched up like a hastily drawn map with large stitches everywhere, and it smelled of dirt. Still, it was as soft and as large as she remembered. She wore the shirt throughout supper. She wanted her mother to look at her brightly and say, “How handsome you look! Just like a man!” But her mother didn’t comment on the shirt. All she did was plop a fat pink and white square into Savatri’s hand. “Take this sugar cake down to your father, Savatri. You know, he has the worst sweet tooth.” Savatri put the square of sweetened coconut flakes on a plate. She didn’t want her mother to see her face because that would make her cry. Her mother never looked at her as more than just a child, even when she wore grownup clothes, took care of grownup men, and ate grownup food. Her father didn’t seem to notice that she was wearing his old shirt. He only said, “This sugar cake is dry. Thank God it has a wet centre.” He sunk his teeth into the damp middle. “Make sure and tell her that I said that. Now, tell me, do you love me?” “Yes,” she replied, because this was the right answer. She hugged him. The chains hanging down her back from his wrists didn’t stop her imagining her slender mother’s body, nor her mother’s soft hair dripping down her shoulders. “Yes, I love you.” — Dawn was quick in the tropics. Savatri had to collect the water soon or it would lose the crispness of having been just drawn from the well. Savatri savored the fact that she and she alone got the first taste of water from the well. Still, she dawdled. She didn’t want to see her mother, who looked so pretty in the morning. Her mother wouldn’t see Savatri as equally pretty because Savatri looked like her father, with the exception of her lips. Her lips were as thin as her mother’s and had none of the low-class fullness of her father. She leaned against the edge of the well, chewing on a bit of sugar cake she’d kept from her father’s supper, and almost skidded on a ring of cream-colored mushrooms. Suddenly one of the mushrooms turned and squawked, “Watch what you’re doing!” The ring of mushrooms started to move. They weren’t really mushrooms, but little children no bigger than her thumb. She grabbed the little boy nearest while the others got away. He was lovely, with deep black skin and large brown eyes, but his feet were backwards and he wore a tiny conical hat which made him look like a mushroom when he was still. “What are you?” she asked. “I am a douen.” “What is that?” “Someone who lives here, like you, I suppose. Now, put me down. I’m late. I’m supposed to meet the River Queen.” Savatri held on tighter. “A real queen?”
“Yes. And I have to be on time.” “I want to come with you.” He hesitated, so she added, “I can take you there faster.” “Go down to the river, there is a large rock in the middle. She’ll be there.” On the rock was the strangest and most beautiful creature Savatri had ever seen in her eleven years. She, for surely it was a woman, had long black hair covering firm breasts covered with deep green seaweed. The bottom half of the lady looked like the gleaming tail of an anaconda. She was propped up on her tail, which was wrapped in three tight coils. Her eyes were honey-colored, and her lips were thin and pink. Savatri smiled because the woman half-looked exactly like her mother. — The douen in her hand addressed the queen. “I’m sorry, my queen, but she said she could get me here faster.” The queen smiled and stretched out her hand for him. He stepped onto her palm, and she licked him like a cat before popping him in her mouth. Savatri started, but the queen remained impassive. “He is a douen. It is what he was made for. They have short lives. He, at least, was eaten by a queen.” The queen tilted her head to the side like a child. “Are you eating sugar?” “Sugar cake. It’s made with coconut.” The queen looked greedily at her, making Savatri feel surprisingly grown up. Savatri liked the feeling, and felt bold enough to say, “If you tell me your name, I’ll give you a piece.” The queen smiled. Her white teeth gleamed. Her lips looked even pinker in comparison. “I am Madame Glo and I am the River Queen.” Savatri held out a fat piece of the sugar cake. “Are you a real queen?” She smiled and swam towards Savatri by whipping her tail. “Yes, I am the mistress of this river.” “A mistress isn’t a queen.” “I am the queen.” “If you are a queen, then why do you want this sugar cake? Won’t you have too much of it already?” Savatri couldn’t imagine a queen having limited sugar. The River Queen snapped, “Sugar is rare in the water. Every creature knows that. Besides, we have things that you have never seen before.” Savatri bowed her head. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d like to see the river very much.” “Give me the whole cake and I shall let you see my queendom.” “When?” The queen slithered up to Savatri and balanced herself on her tail until they were eye-level. “Come to me on the first night of the full moon. Go to the well and I shall send a guide to meet you. Without him you will not be able to see me.” The queen held out her hand. “Will you make me beg?” Savatri dipped her head. Her cheeks were hot and she was sure that the queen would think that she had bad manners and that she was unaware of proper conduct. She was just a little coolie girl, after all, and this was a real queen. “No, Your Majesty.” She put the square cake in the queen’s hand. The queen chewed a bit off the edge. “If you bring me more sugar I will make you my princess.” “Can you do that?” “I am the queen. I can do whatever I want. Meet me again at the full moon.” — Savatri didn’t tell either of her parents about the River Queen, nor did she want to. The next day Savatri’s mother strolled back from the marketplace with a tiny black and white monkey on a leash with a metal collar. She gave it to Savatri. “You’d like it as a pet. It eats sugar cake and meat. You can feed it on your way to your father. But don’t tell your father. Keep this a secret. Your father doesn’t like living things.” Savatri petted the monkey’s rough fur. She didn’t name it. Instead she fed it bits of sugar cake
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and roti before she gave her father his meals. She didn’t tell her father about the monkey. She didn’t like it when the monkey climbed into bed with her. Nor did she like its chattering, nor its smushed face, nor its hands which looked suspiciously like her own. And she really didn’t like how often her mother asked about the monkey, and how often her mother stroked its fur and sniffed its face. Still, she was sad when the monkey died three days later. Savatri had just fed her father and was going up the steps, stuffing her pockets with leftover sweets for the River Queen when she came across the stiff body of the monkey. She told her mother, and her mother touched the cold body and smiled. A real smile which showed her white teeth, and which spread her pretty pink lips. “We should get this out of the house.” She sewed the eyes shut with golden thread. She made Savatri stuff a stone in its mouth and bind its snout with a strip of silver silk. They threw the little body into the river. “The stone will make it sink,” her mother said, patting the river and making it ripple. Savatri nodded but hoped that the River Queen wouldn’t see the body and think ill of Savatri for untidying the queen’s river. How different it would all be once she became a princess! Then everything she did would be right. —
34 THE GOLDEN KEY
On the day that Savatri was to meet the River Queen, she was so excited she could barely eat her supper. Her mother wanted to know what was wrong with the food. She kept ladling out more and more of the soup she had made for Savatri’s father, asking, “Does it taste funny?” “No, it doesn’t, Mother. I haven’t had any.” “Then why won’t you eat some?” “I’m just not hungry.” “How could a chubby girl like you not be hungry? Do you want to hurt my feelings? It’s your father’s blood in you. It’s not enough that he gave you that flat nose, or those splayed coolie feet. He had to give you his bad mind as well.” Savatri didn’t answer. The food did look wonderful. The soup was steaming hot and smelled of cooked beef, corn and onions. Savatri felt guilty and ate it. Her mother smiled. “Isn’t it delicious? Tell me it’s delicious.” “It is delicious, mother.” Her mother smiled and ate her usual nuts and greens. Savatri thought she would be too full by nightfall to go meet the queen, but her stomach had settled itself by the time she heard her mother’s gentle snores coming from the only bedroom in the house. She pulled out the small sack of sweet treats she had hidden under her pillow. She wasn’t afraid of her mother coming after her, because her mother had started bolting the bedroom door since that night so long ago when Savatri found her bloodied and bruised on the floor. Still, Savatri tiptoed to the door and closed it gently behind her. — The moon was bright and bathed the little track to the well in silver light. She met a tiny winged douen sitting on the well. He glowed green like a candle-fly and had a high-pitched voice. “Are you here for the queen?” “Yes, I am.” At that, about twenty other little douens lifted up from inside the well and formed a glowing garland around her head. “We are so pleased to meet you! Are we bright enough for you?” “Yes! How pretty you look!” “Thank you. We are here to light your way to the River Queen.” The riverbank was alive when she got there. Many douens, both winged and wingless,
glowed around tiny shells and stones which served as tables and chairs. They shared plums and drank nectar straight from flower buds. Some douens danced in the air, and all the trees were lit with dewdrops that glowed silver in the moonlight. In the middle of the river Savatri saw the River Queen wrapped again around the rock. She flicked her tail and met Savatri at the edge of the bank. “Did you bring the sugar?” Savatri nodded and handed her the sack. The queen covered the sack with a green cloth. “This will keep the sugar dry underwater.” She hefted it up and all the douens from the riverbank eyed the sack greedily. The queen held out her hand. “Come. I always keep my word.” Savatri took her hand and followed her into the river until only her head was above the water. The queen pulled Savatri under. The water was black, but the moon on the queen’s body made her visible in a pale blue light. She grinned and Savatri recognized her mother’s face, but the look was one she had never seen. The River Queen leaned forward and kissed Savatri on her neck behind each ear. Savatri had never been kissed before. She felt her face grow hot and was sure that the queen could hear her heart beating. The queen only smiled and stroked the sides of Savatri’s neck. “See, I’ve given you gills. Now you can stay with me.” She pulled Savatri deeper. Savatri was happy to follow. They swam outside a hole at the bottom of the river. “Come in.” Savatri went in after her and was surprised to see that it was completely dry. It was a large circular room with five doors around the perimeter. “Please, sit,” the queen said. Savatri sat in the only chair in the centre of the room. The queen wound herself around a branch directly above her. Savatri looked up and saw the river through the hole they had just entered. Douens swam and chattered, while seaweed and bits of branches drifted along. They all glowed and Savatri was again surprised. She hadn’t noticed any of this because she had only looked at the River Queen while they swam to the hole. “What a lovely queendom you have!” “It suits its purpose. You should look into those rooms.” Savatri didn’t want to leave her spot, but she did as the queen suggested. She opened each of the doors. Four of them led to large rooms all filled with things Savatri had seen before, though never in such large quantities. One was full of sugar, the other with coffee beans, another with cocoa pods, and the last with people hanging on chains. “They help me when I want nice things for supper and tea,” the queen explained. Savatri nodded and opened the last door. It led to a large bedroom with a four-poster bed in the centre. It faced the grandest mirror Savatri had ever seen. The walls of the bedroom were carved to look like a purple and gold forest, and the roof of the room was hung with oil lamps which burned dimly. Savatri turned and saw the River Queen perched on her coil next to her. The queen stroked Savatri’s shoulder. “Shall we sleep now?” Savatri felt her throat turn dry and her stomach fill with air. She lowered her gaze from the queen’s eyes. She kept her gaze on the queen’s hands which looked soft and then gazed at the queen’s slim wrist encased in a delicate rose-gold braid. Savatri shook her head. “But I am not tired. I would like to see the river. It looks so pretty in the moonlight.” “You can see it in the morning, my princess. It will be waiting for you.” “But it won’t look the same. It looks so pretty in the moonlight, and this is my first night here.” The queen stroked her cheek and again Savatri felt her stomach fill with air and her throat go dry. “I know it is your first night in my queendom, my princess. The river will be the same in the morning as it is now. But I am tired, and I shall not be able to sleep unless you are next to me.” “I thought queens would be too old for bedtime.” The queen scowled for a moment. “I am as old as the river, but you probably cannot tell. Even queens get tired, and this conversation is boring me. Come see the pretty nightgown I have for you.” The River Queen pulled out a beautiful gown out of the large wooden wardrobe in the bedroom. It was pure white with lace edges and pearls sewn into the bodice. “It will look beautiful on you because you are so dark.”
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Savatri put it on with her back to the queen. Savatri knew that the queen was watching her dress. She didn’t want to see the queen watching her because that would make the queen think less of her. She didn’t want the queen to think that she was unaccustomed to people watching her. Royalty probably did that, especially royalty which ran the rivers and ate douens for snacks. The queen was in the bed when Savatri turned around. “Now, come and kiss me. You look like a real princess.” And that made Savatri smile, so she kissed the queen, and let the queen stroke her hair and kiss her neck, though she couldn’t help it when her stomach started back filling with air. She wondered if the queen was right about the river looking the same in the morning and wanted to ask, but the queen didn’t seem to want her to talk. So Savatri looked in the mirror instead, but she could only see the back of the queen, and the queen’s flicking tail. Then the queen gathered Savatri into a tight embrace, clutching her to her chest. “Shall you stay with me in this room?” “Yes, my queen.” “Will you stay with me forever? And only stay with me? I made you a princess and you owe me.” “Yes. I will stay here with you.” Savatri felt the queen’s smile on the side of her cheek, but the queen didn’t reply, only continued to stroke her hair and her arms. “Roll over and let me stroke your stomach.” And Savatri did, because the queen had made her a princess and Savatri had never been a princess before. — Later in the night, after the queen had fallen asleep, Savatri gently removed herself from the queen’s embrace. She wanted to see the river in the moonlight, and she wasn’t sure it would stay the same without the moon. She tiptoed towards the door and opened it as quietly as she could. She was too afraid to shut it completely behind her because it was far heavier than the door at home, but she pulled it as closed as possible without locking it. She climbed up the tree above the chair in the centre room and pulled herself up into the river, pleased that her gills still worked even without the queen’s kiss. All around her the river glowed pale blue. Fish and turtles swam by. Two pieces of driftwood kept batting a stone back and forth while little douens cheered. She spotted a fat manatee which winked at her and continued on its way. She saw the little pet monkey her mother had dropped in the river. It waved at her with the strip of silk and went off to ride a small tropical fish. She waved back and started to move upwards and felt as if she was walking up an invisible staircase. Most of the douens were smaller than her, but some were as large as she was. They either danced together or swam in large groups. One of the douensswam up to her and asked her to dance. She smiled and swam off to dance with the douen among the others. They gave her bits of seaweed to put in her hair, and tiny cups full of a sour but tasty drink. They taught her how to dance in their floaty style. It was so much fun that she didn’t realize that the light above was turning less silver and more rose. Still, the douens continued to dance and make Savatri laugh, but some swam away, and a few asked her to follow them for more of the sour drink. She followed one who had smiled and danced with her, and who said “How charming!” when she clapped while she laughed. She
didn’t feel the gentle coil around her neck, nor the gentle pressure on her gills until it became too tight. Savatri clutched at her neck and turned to see the queen with a snarl on her face. Her tail stretched out to coil around Savatri’s neck. “I told you not to leave me. Did you think that you were better than me? I brought you here and let your breathe.” Savatri tried to scratch away the queen’s hand but couldn’t. The queen only coiled her tail around Savatri tighter, while the little douen she’d wanted to follow tried to pull her free. The queen easily batted it away and hissed at Savatri, coiling her tail even tighter around her neck. “You were ungrateful. You should not have left me. You said I could keep you.” Savatri clawed at the queen’s tail again and saw the queen’s blood spilling from beneath her fingers. She wanted to claw again, but saw her mother’s face snarling at her. Savatri felt her hands grow weak. Her arms grew heavy and she closed her eyes, seeing nothing but the glowing river blocking the shadow of her mother’s face. — Savatri’s body floated on the river facedown with her hair waving around her head. She was naked and her neck was covered in navy rings. Her body seemed light as wind, but was heavy when Savatri’s mother pulled her to shore. Her mother closed Savatri’s eyes and laid her next to her father’s body. Both were equally stiff. Her mother cut their palms and massaged the dead blood out. She sewed their eyes shut with gold silk and stuffed stones in all their openings. She flung Savatri’s father in without a word. But she brushed Savatri’s hair aside and tied it with a pale pink ribbon, and whispered in her ear, “Tell your father that wet centres can be poison if you hurt them. You tell your father that. Now, both of you can go and I shall have no more need for stones.” She dumped Savatri in the water and waited until she sank to the bottom. She returned to the house and watered her plants, and marveled at how her house seemed to glow with flowers, and how quiet the house would be now. Savatri’s mother would never know that for one night Savatri was a real life princess. And that was the truth, because who but a princess could spend a whole night dancing with douens? And who but a princess would try to fight off a real life queen with her very hands? And who but a princess and her father could be worth poisoning, when all they held were the remains of a wooden house in the middle of the forest in the centre of a tropical island?
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GRANT TARBARD
The Rules of Up and Down 38 THE GOLDEN KEY
We talked about the rules: don’t chase things that are out of reach, a man chased a balloon up to the Moon’s cheese and found only dust, pawn and solitaire. Don’t follow rabbits through their holes or you may come across a sweating dragon’s nest or Persephone, she twirls her pastel hair, a lighthouse for the lost and kidnapped.
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40 THE GOLDEN KEY
GRANT TARBARD
Whisper of the Moths Rust beneath grey, the hour of black and white, Within a moth’s fluttering drone there lies Two blue balloons and an unstrung box kite Keeping afloat a nightmare, used as spies On an inert town. The moths exchange quick Messages in a sighing language of The dead and explode, a conjurer’s trick Settling with the white feathers of a dove. Setting under the last sun, moths baptise Murder on a rock with a strange pallor. A stone of crows with a magpie disguise Hoarding milk bottle tops, silver colour, Pecking holes in a map drawn by the last Surveyor in the dead hand of the past.
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BARBARA CHRISTINA WITMER
Daphne, Resurrected
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The breeze flows through me as if I’m no longer here. I feel like a moth-eaten flag, drooping on a pole. At the café, I ask the waitress for outdoor seating anyway. People try not to stare, but I know the children can’t help it. My body hums like a human pan flute as I order an iced tea and hover an inch above my chair, unable to plant myself down. I wrap my flower-printed dress about my legs, thinking about how this didn’t used to happen. How I used to feel more solid. A paper butterfly flits off a boutique store window display. It swoops and flutters across the cobbled street and comes to rest on my knee, on one of the flowers of my dress. The paper wing contains a piece of a vintage ad with a woman’s face folded in the center. One of her eyes gazes at me. I can’t see her lips, but I know she is smiling below her folded caption: Dr. Wrigley’s Every-Ailment Syr— Cure coughs, heada— A tasty mint fla— Like magi— I have no desire to touch the butterfly, to let it crawl on my finger, to level its eyes with mine and exchange a moment in which I will feel something, a connection, and in the next moment let it fly away and leave me alone with something I will fail to describe. I touch the paper butterfly anyway, and it wilts and falls to the ground without fanfare. What once was magic is now a scrap of trash. The waitress comes by with a broom and ushers it into a dustpan with some flecks of food and hair and street dust. As predicted, I’m still left with something that I fail to describe. Something that leaves a memory residue on my finger that shudders up my arm into my mind like an itch that can’t be scratched. Like a ghost who cannot feel the chair at her back. I run my fingers in the grooves of my table, admiring the sturdy wood, burnished by the oils of a thousand hands resting upon it over the years. A ring of water collects around my glass, staining the wood darker as the sun warms my iced tea. A woman at a table near mine stretches out her arms and bathes in the sun, somehow embracing something that is even less solid than I am. Envious, I stretch out my arms as she does. I don’t feel
the light or the warmth as I once did; that memory of limbs and foliage is as vague and weightless as the butterfly. Instead, I feel the sensation of something heavy on my knee. Isn’t there always something heavy on a person’s knee? The weight of a crossed leg, the hand of a lover, a child bouncing to the tune of Yankee Doodle, the ache of arthritis … the weight of emptiness left behind when the hand of the lover is gone or when the child grows too old to bounce. The weight I feel is none of those things. It is the little flower on the pattern of my dress giving way to a burgeoning fruit. At first it is a small bump swelling, stretching, filling itself with fabric flesh. It reddens like the parts of a girl that grow into a woman. When it is ripe, I pluck it from my dress and dig in my fingers. It’s moist inside, and the sweet scent entices me to squeeze it over my open mouth so that the juice drips onto my tongue. As I swallow, a seed bursts forth from the flesh and shoots into my mouth. As I swallow, the fabric seed sticks like a lump in my throat. I cough and gag and my eyes water. It goes down hard. Even the adults stare now. In shame, I throw the fruit to the ground and smooth out my dress. There’s a hole where the flower used to be. The waitress comes around again with the broom and sweeps up the fruit scrap of my dress. I finish my tea, feeling the flavors wrap around my tongue. I wave the waitress for another. She brings it. And then another and another. The more I drink, the more solid I feel, like a kind of strength surging, slowing my pulse, hardening my lungs. The breeze curves around me like ribbons. I sink into the chair for the first time. Roots shoot out from my feet and burrow into cracks in the sidewalk until their hairy tips reach the earth, anchoring me to my spot. It’s not a bad spot, after all. A spot where people will hold out their hands to catch petals flying in the wind, making it look like snow in the springtime. A shell of smooth bark closes around me, and I’m swaddled in my true skin. My body no longer sounds like a pan flute, and by the time the waitress brings my check, I have only flowers to pay her with. She plucks one from me.
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SHANNON SWEETNAM
Jubilee
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It was still dark when the chauffeur drove them from their plantation to the airport. The King and Queen were on their way to the other side of the country for their annual August get-away. They rode past ostrich farms, cotton fields, farm houses and silos silhouetted against the night sky. Then the whole of Main Street appeared on the horizon, a trickle of light nosing its way out the Piggly Wiggly. When the King and Queen had first married, there had been great hope in their jurisdiction. Yet, before long, the marriage began to fail. The King and Queen’s affairs were no longer secret. Even those citizens having their own affairs felt horribly wronged. By mid-morning, they arrived at Lighthouse Point, with its cold, rocky beach and wind-worn cottages. The Queen set shop at the beachside bar, downing frozen margaritas, her mind on the birthmark high up Jimena’s thigh. The King, slumped on the stool beside her, hummed a popular country tune. He was tired of being King and all the properness the position required. He wanted to raise hell in the bars come weekends, enter catfish eating contests, go to rodeos and Monster truck shows, walk around shirtless and beer fisted whooping it up. All the Queen wanted was Jimena. The little Prince woke soon after his parents’ departure and stood by the window waiting for the chauffeur to return from the airport. There was a school picnic at the beach that morning, and the Prince was eager to go. “Hurry! Everyone is waiting for me,” the Prince shouted when the chauffeur pulled up the long shell drive. He burst out of the house, deck shoes in hand. “Ain’t it a perfect day!” he shouted, as he dove into the car. “Hurry,” he urged the chauffer. “Faster!” The royal car broke to a gallop on the smooth road, gathering so much energy that it became airborne for seconds at a time. The car flew through the turn for the picnic and stumbled over the grassy lawn of card tables and peopled hammocks toward the bay’s sandy edge, where it splashed its way into deeper and deeper waters. “Faster!” the Prince cried, the warm water sloshing around him. “Àndale! Àndale!” The picnic-goers raced, barefoot, to the beach, gazing out over the water until the car could no longer be seen. The fish began a revolution, what the locals would call a jubilee, angrily, fiercely, swiftly, as the tide wrung itself free of water. The shrimp, the crabs, and all the various fishes that lived in the bay hurried to the shallow edges of the inlet and threw themselves up upon the burning sand. I am sorry to report that the young Prince drowned. As for the chauffeur, he swam until he reached the Mexican border. As for the King and Queen, they buried their son in the intolerable heat of summer and lived unhappily ever after.
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Contributors
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JOHN BRANTINGHAM is a professor and directs the creative writing program at Mt. San Antonio College. He is the writer-in-residence at the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona, California, and the president of the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival. His latest collection is The Green of Sunset, Moon Tide Press. Asked what person or thing gives you a sensation of floating, he replied, “My wife and jazz. When we open the windows in the evening, turn on the radio and listen to it and the music of the Los Angeles freeways, life is everything I need.” PRISCILLA BOATWRIGHT is an illustrator and writer working in San Antonio. She is fascinated with myth, magic, and the connections between cultural identity and art. Priscilla received her BFA in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. See more of her artwork at http://www.priscillaboatwright.com. ANNE MARIE BASQUIN lives by the ocean in Dunedin, New Zealand, but spent most of her childhood in the United States. She is 29 years old and splits her time between showing up to the page, digging in soil, and working to make ends meet. She loves to plant trees, swim, and write fiction. Her poetry has been published in a compilation celebrating women artists called Let’s Roar Loudly. What word, English or otherwise, seems to lift off the page? “Heart, river, canyon. They shimmer over the page like threads to the heart of the story. These words lead me somewhere and they come from somewhere. They might come from a place I haven’t been to in a long time or a place I think I might be going. Words like: Georgia, the woods, oceans, savannah. Words that start something, that are the hearts or the tips of things.”
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EMILY ROSE COLE is writer, folksinger, and MFA candidate in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her debut solo album, “I Wanna Know,” was released in May of 2012 and is available on iTunes and Amazon. Last spring, she was honored to receive the Nancy D. Hargrove Editor’s Prize and the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Stream, Weave Magazine, Jabberwock Review, and Ruminate, among others. What person or thing gives her a sensation of floating? “Before I knew how to hold a pen, my first love was music. In church, when the organ blared and everyone rose from their seats, I felt like all those voices were lifting me up.” PHEDRA DEONARINE lived in Trinidad before moving to Canada. Her work has appeared in Indiana Review, MIEL, and on the Canadian Broadcasting Company website. She has been long-listed for a Canadian Broadcasting Company Literary Award in Fiction. What person or thing gives her a sensation of floating? “The night sky because my father taught me about the planets by pointing them out to me as a little girl in the Caribbean.” REBECCA HURST is a doctoral student at the University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing, where her research focuses on Russian and Soviet literary fairy tales. As well as writing fiction and poetry, she is a dedicated doodler whose work often combines words and images. Her writing has appeared in SWAMP and Cricket Magazine, and has been broadcast on NPR. The thing she floats away on is opera. Specifically, the opening bars of Dvořák’s “Rusalka” played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Glyndebourne in Sussex. Sitting in the front row of the stalls during a rehearsal, she remembers a wave of music crashing over her head, pouring past her seat, and flooding the house with sound.
ANNE LACY holds an MFA from American University, where she received the Myra Sklarew Award in Prose. Her work has appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Crazyhorse. Asked what person or thing gives you a sensation of floating, she replied, “Cold medicine. One dose and my head is on the ceiling.”
JANNA LAYTON is a writer and office worker getting by in San Francisco. Her poetry and fiction have been published in various literary journals, including The Rag, Up the Staircase Quarterly, REAL, and The Pinch. She sporadically rambles on at readingwatchinglookingandstuff.blogspot.com. What word, English or otherwise, would she say seems to lift off the page? “Balloon. The l’s give the impression of lift-off, and the o’s mimic the shape. Plus, it’s a fun word to say. I especially love hot air balloons for their daring, beauty, and whimsy. I’ve been in one once, in Paris, and if you’re ever in Albuquerque, I definitely recommend the Balloon Museum.”
TREVOR SHIKAZE’S short fiction has appeared in Lackington’s, Lightning Cake, Lakeside Circus, and elsewhere. He writes from Canada. What word, English or otherwise, would he say seems to lift off the page? “Aurora borealis. I mean wow. Who named that thing? It’s a perfect name.” SHANNON SWEETNAM is a Chicago-based fiction writer whose stories have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Dominion Review, Georgetown Review, Literal Latte, The Pinch, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments, and NANO Fiction. She is winner of the 2010 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize and two Illinois Arts Council grants. Asked what word, English or otherwise, would she say seems to lift off the page, she replied, “Anything you’d find in a decent bakery, especially when written in its native language–macaron, mille fueille, tarte de pomme, tiramisu, croissant chocolat.” GRANT TARBARD has worked as a journalist, a contributor to magazines, an editor, a reviewer, and an interviewer. He is now the editor of The Screech Owl and co-founder of Resurgant Press with Bethany W. Pope. The thing that gives hims a sensation of floating, other than anaesthetic or alcohol, is a mindfulness technique. You concentrate on the branches of a tree and your body sways with them. It makes him calm and gives a floaty feeling.
BARBARA CHRISTINA WITMER is a New Jersey native with a degree in English: Creative Writing from the University of Rochester. Her work has been previously published in Xenith, Whole Beast Rag, Eunoia Review, and Farther Stars Than These. She can also be found on Twitter via @bwchristina. What person or thing gives her a sensation of floating? “‘Interlude’ by Maxfield Parrish. I am in love with portraiture and neoclassical paintings, but when I saw “Interlude” in person, the Parrish blue sky was intoxicating. It was almost like dreaming, as if the painting could have swept me from my feet and absorbed me into the scene. I’ll never forget that moment.”
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Staff EDITORS
Susan Anspach Carlea Holl-Jensen LiAnn Yim COVER ART & ILLUSTRATIONS
Priscilla Boatwright www.priscillaboatwright.com DESIGN
LiAnn Yim MASTHEAD ILLUSTRATIONS
Libby Burns WEB DESIGN
Lang Born COLOPHON
Built in Adobe InDesign. Fonts used: Archer, Waverly, Horsewallop, and Articulat.