The Madison Review Spring 2022

The Madison Review

Volume 48 No.1, Spring 2022

We would like to thank Ron Kuka for his continued time, patience, and support.

Funding for this issue was provided by the Jay C. and Ruth Halls Creative Writing Fund through the UW FOundation.

The Madison Review is published semiannually.

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Copyright © 2021 by The Madison Review the madison review University of Wisconsin Department of English 6193 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI 53706

the madison review

POETRY

FICTION

Editors Nina Boals Sam Wood

Editors Hannah Kekst Matthew Bettencourt

Associate Editors Madeline Mitchell Milly Timm

Associate Editors Kora Quinn

Staff Aidan Aragon Esmeralda Rios Ev Poehlman Lucia Macek Matthew Rivard Phoebe Omuro

Staff Anna Watters Eleanor Bangs Nadia Tijan

LAYOUT

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Hannah Kekst Kora Quinn Madeline Mitchell Nadia Tijan

Tim Sands

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Editors’ Note Dear Reader, The Madison Review is thrilled to release our spring 2022 issue.

This issue features stunning works of poetry, fiction, and visual art, including the winners of our Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in Poetry and our Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction. We’ve had the pleasure of reading work that is sharp, funny, tender, and moving—work that pushes boundaries, spanning a wide range of styles, forms, and content, from contributors whose voices we found fresh and distinctive.

We want to thank all of our contributors for trusting us with their work, and for allowing it to find its home in The Madison Review.

This issue would not be possible without their care, craft, and talent.

We would also like to thank our program advisor, Ron Kuka, for his constant support and encouragement, along with the UWMadison English department and the Program in Creative Writing.

Many thanks to our staff for their hard work and dedication to the journal. Finally, thank you, dear reader, for your continued interest and support. We hope the work included in this issue is as moving, engaging, and thought-provoking to you as it was to us.

Warmly, Editors of The Madison Review

Table of Contents Phyllis Smart Young Prize James Kelly Quigley | Penélope Cruz

Shopping on South Broadway After a

Massacre

Sometimes the Sky

2 4 6

Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction Kipling Knox | Downriver

8

Fiction Bess Henshaw | Before the Flood Stephen Spicehandler | Rotten Apples Brett Werenski | Self-Defense

26 44 64

Poetry Ashley Kirkland | I Fall Asleep While Driving Lilacs Jenny Keto | Her Name is Katherine Gray Daisy Bassen | Vermeer’s ‘Lacemaker’ is the smallest of his paintings Mara Grayson | Papillon Matthew Valades | Self-Portrait Having a Picnic Les Bares | In Light of Love

22 24 38 43 60 62 82

Art Güliz Mutlu | Insignia Columbarium Edward Michael Supranowicz | Housebound Steven Labadessa | Hijikata 1

Damnatio Memoriae VI Shaun Haugen | Mind the Hallucination

Minds Eye

Cover 41 ii 39 40 42 59

Contributor Biographies

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Penélope Cruz

James Kelly Quigley Some of us paint sunflowers because we’re psychotic others try to tell you what the painting is “about” when I’m drunk I miss the toilet on purpose it feels like revenge dabbing up my cold piss in the morning that giant spike at the Beacon plunged like a crossbow bolt through my simple mind of crushed snow and sparking steel sometimes I just want to help a squirrel bury his acorns give tourists directions and sign people’s petitions though I am not a revolutionary I’m a fucked up little boy who got old trudging through the soft meat of the brain I have no luck with ouija boards they answer YES to everything so I try scraping the hot night off the wall like one of those subway mosaics they replaced with a TV obelisk nothing has ever worked except closing my eyes and breathing then smoking much too much weed and firing up that soapy flick Penélope Cruz cries and cries and cries and the ghosts are winking at the camera the first time I smoked weed I was eleven years old call me dramatic but this has had terrible repercussions totally diffuse bright green leaves in a black and white photograph despite all I know I’d like to be Penélope Cruz shimmy out of some dainty négligée and feel what it’s like to pull the thread of your fame until you’re just a mess of shoulders and elbows shipwrecked in the darkness the smoke the satin spread eagle on the bed in a scene with no lines aimless grandiose and completely misconceived but honest

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Shopping on South Broadway after a Massacre James Kelly Quigley

haven’t shaved in weeks slipping into hundred and twenty-eight dollar shirts two boys in the dressing room are trying on black kimonos saying the most ordinary things about the work of Ocasio-Cortez though we are nearly 1,800 miles from New York’s 14th Congressional yesterday I met a frog named Jupiter who sings (I am told) he looked extremely dead not just normal dead but his master assured me of his vitality as she snipped brown leaves off the slowly writhing amaryllis when dawn is a gray evening turned upside down make a left that’s how you get to the mezcalería this bracelet is Icelandic lava rock two nights ago across the street that tattoo parlor was subject to the world as will and representation ain’t that right Artie? five dead three wounded there is a dignity in flamboyance I have learned through the accumulation of volumes and volumes of my favorite tweets not to mention the first few moments of hail reluctance bears a passing resemblance to vainglory don’t get your vainglory all over my zipper put me in your finest crushed velvet it’s possible to feel ugly every second of every day and still be delighted by simple pleasures

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silver white violet mountains in shawls of mist good sturdy men crying about their children slim cut bright blue jeans

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Sometimes the Sky James Kelly Quigley Sometimes the sky tries to pick you up by the armpits like a small child.

It’s okay to want to be taken very far away, or simply in the bathroom at a party.

Let the trees gossip. There was a storm and now there’s not.

Earth, honey, I’m attracted to your whiplash.

How is it that New York can go on forever until suddenly you’re in Greenwich Connecticut having a croque madame and cognac with a friend of a friend of a friend who hates you justifiably and the sun is fucking

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gushing through the windows?

By which I mean— why this, and not that?

Why anything at all?

I’m afraid I will never be alone again to write the few poems given me at birth.

Sometimes the sky tries to help you drive right into the river scorched by ice and it’s okay to be curious. But life is coming back in style.

Hadn’t you heard?

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Downriver Kipling Knox

After 17 days of thunderstorms, the skies finally clear, and I see the old farmer Hanacek floating over the nettles at the edge of our field. He floats because he’s a ghost, of course, and so are his two mules. All that rain drowned the crops we planted--everything’s pretty much dead now. Not to complain, I mean, I guess it could have been worse. But the most frustrating thing was that Hanacek, that stubborn son of a gun, didn’t show himself the whole time. Through all the storms, and the river flooding, and the trash piling up, he was just gone. It could make you gloomy if you let it. I actually thought he’d abandoned us. But now he’s here, thank goodness, just in time to save my marriage.

I need to run back to the house to get Morgan so she can see our ghost farmer has returned, on a beautiful, clear morning. So I give him a one-finger gesture, like Hold on a second, I’ll be right back. He hooks a thumb in his overall strap and nods once, tipping the brim of his felt hat below his eyes. One mule shudders his skin against ghost flies and the other mule flaps her ears. I figure they’re not going anywhere soon, so I jog up toward the house.

On the way, I do a quick scan to see if any junk showed up overnight. You could say it’s not uncommon for us to find, say, oil cans, or punctured tires, or baby cribs--that sort of thing--in our yard or on our field. Mostly the neighbors leave these things for us because our little 6-acre farm used to be their collective dump. I haven’t caught anybody doing it yet, but still I asked about it one time at the Rural King and the cashier said, I wouldn’t make a stink about it if I were you--around here people value their freedom. When I pointed out that wasn’t exactly how I’d define freedom, she shrugged and handed me my receipt and said, Suit yourself. You ain’t the first and you won’t be the last.

So I’m still thinking about next steps on that issue.

Sometimes, though, I think the junk comes right up out of the ground, especially with all this rain, and a lot of times you see it first thing in the morning, like a chunk of food on a baby’s chin. But regardless of the source, Morgan doesn’t like it. In fact, to be accurate, she hates it, and she’s at her wit’s end having her dream home treated

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like a dump. So I get up early and try to tidy best I can.

This morning things look pretty good except for one beautiful old tractor transmission emerging from a field where we tried to grow corn. It’s rusty red among the yellowed corn stalks. Morgan is definitely going to notice this, so while Hanacek waits, I grab a shovel to pry it from the muck. The shovel handle splits, so I reach down and try to roll it out so I can get it with the tractor bucket. I’m still in my jammies, though, so my slippers don’t hold well in the mud and my arms are bare, and when I hug the transmission a rough edge makes a nasty cut and I start bleeding. I stop by the garage and tie up the wound with some yellow hazard tape and scoot back to the house.

Morgan’s still in our bed, where I haven’t slept for 16 days. I pull back the cover from her head, carefully, and she smells like warmth and honey. I want to slip in there with her, but I don’t because that move hasn’t gone well recently. Also, Hanacek is waiting! Morgan grabs the cover back and buries herself.

Sorry, sweetie, I say. But you have to see something.

She doesn’t reply. I can see the outline of her ribcage rise and fall with her breathing.

Seriously, honey, I say. We got to go right now--you have to see this.

After a pause, Morgan drops the covers and shows her face. She blinks and rubs her eyes and squints at me. Her voice is a little croaky when she says, Can we not make today any harder than it has to be?

Okay, Arthur? Let’s just get through it.

She is talking about moving out, which is of course ridiculous. That can’t happen and that isn’t going to happen, and especially now the skies are blue and the morning is gorgeous and Hanacek is back.

I reach down, very cautiously, and brush her hair back from her forehead. Her expression is a lot like when she sees junk in the field-like there’s no fight left in her.

You love me, I say. This is what we say.

Arthur, she replies.

Come on… I say.

She closes her eyes and waves a hand and mumbles, You love me too.

I want it to be a surprise, but I can’t help it, so I say, Hanacek is back! It’s a beautiful day. That’s what I have to show you--sorry, I can’t help spoil the surprise. So let’s go, let’s go!

She exhales loudly and begins to argue, but then she sees my arm.

Secretly I’m glad, I have to admit, because I know she can’t stop

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nursing even when it’s not her shift, and this will get us past the snag.

It’s worked before. And sure enough, in a minute my cut is properly bandaged and I’ve brought her a coffee and rubber boots and we’re ready.

I’m doing this, she says, as a good faith gesture. Okay? Do you understand what I mean?

She takes my wrist and secures a piece of tape over my bandage.

Of course, I say. Of course.

Outside the sun makes purple highlights in Morgan’s hair and the breeze presses her nightgown against her legs. Six turkey vultures wheel above us, probably looking for kill from all the rain. Morgan stops to sip her coffee and sees the transmission. She winces, sighs, and shakes her head. I can see she’s thinking.

You know, she says, you don’t have to stay here. You could find another place too.

But not with you…

Well, like we talked about…

Why would I do that, I ask. Just abandon everything we have here for some random rental place somewhere?

Forget it, Morgan says, and turns into the bright sun.

I realize we’re having the same old conversation again, which was certainly not my goal, so I return to my goal.

Come on, let’s hurry while he’s still there. Isn’t it gorgeous out? You look nice in this light.

I take her free hand and it’s limp, but doesn’t pull away. So that’s progress.

We march down the slippery path along the field toward the woods and the river. Half way there, Morgan sees something under the honeysuckle bushes along the path. I missed it this morning. She covers her mouth with both hands.

Oh, Arthur! Why?!

It wasn’t me, I protest. Not this time.

There is a pile of rabbit carcasses heaped under the bushes, maybe a dozen tumbling over to the edge of the path. Their leg meat has been stripped, but the rest remains, like bloody hand puppets. Flies gather on their eyes. This is what the vultures are after.

Who would do this? Morgan asks. Why would they just kill all those rabbits and then come over here and dump them? It’s just not… logical.

Maybe the vultures dropped them, I suggest. It sounds dumb when I

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say it out loud. We both know that’s not how vultures work.

Morgan turns once again to the sun and closes her eyes. She mutters, as if to herself, Why am I bothering? This isn’t my problem any more. Not my problem. I’m done.

Then, apparently recovered, she turns back to me and says, Okay, I promised, so show me your farmer and then I’m going back to the house to pack.

We walk, separately now, toward the trail into the woods where I saw Hanacek over the nettles. We slip on the wet grass. No one speaks.

This is not going how I planned.

When we get to the edge of the field, the farmer and his mules are gone.

On this very spot, where the path into the woods begins, on our first day at the farm, we saw a doe and two spotted fawns. Ten minutes after that, we saw a red fox strut along the edge of the field, and then we saw a barred owl staring from the crook of a white oak. That was a little more than a year ago. Morgan had a huge sketchbook and colored pencils, to draw a map of where all the crops and livestock would go. It’s a beautiful illustration--now crumpled from when I pulled it out of the garbage--because she drew the chickens in their yard, and the goats on top of a garden shed, and rows of corn and pumpkins, and a grove of pines we’d plant, near another grove of oaks and hazelnut and prairie flowers. At the end of that morning, Morgan sat down in the grass with her sketchbook on her lap and added to the map the three deer in the woods, and the fox along the hedge, and the owl in the tree and said, Oh my god Arthur I don’t think it could be any more perfect. And I said, You mean your drawing? And she laughed and said, You know what I mean. I leaned down and kissed her and she kissed me back and then she stopped abruptly and said, Later! We have work to do! She raced up the hill in her blue dress with her sketchpad and tin of pencils and I watched, not knowing how to cope with the gratitude I felt.

It’s been a rough year for those animals. The chickens disappeared, one by two, despite our best attempts at fencing. It might have been the fox, but he appeared later on the road with a tire track through him. The three goats died from eating car batteries someone dumped here. We haven’t heard the owl call in months. Only the deer remain, now large enough to wipe out a row of beets in one night. So, you could say it’s been a challenge--for us and the animals! But still.

For those first few weeks, we realized we weren’t reading books

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or watching videos about simple farming--we were living it! Every morning we’d get up before dawn and walk right out of the house to our projects, not because we felt bound but because we loved it. We fell asleep each night looking forward to the morning. Twice I found Morgan gone from the bed in the middle of the night. She was outside standing at the edge of the field under the moon just looking. Just looking, you know?

Well, now as we stand, this spot brings back all kinds of unproductive memories for Morgan. We can’t linger here or things will really go south.

Hanacek! I say, He’s killing me. He must have drifted back into the woods. You know he’s usually right along the river bank, like we saw him that one time.

Morgan starts to say something and then stops herself. Instead, she says, I’m not going back there.

Oh, sure you are, I say. I just mowed the path. It’ll be fine.

I smile, but I know I’m blinking too much. She notices these things. I keep talking.

I just want you to see him again, like that time, because it’s been a long time and I know things have been a little… tricky. I mean, I listen to what you’ve been saying. I know. But this is something really good, right? I mean, who else has a little farm with a ghost farmer, like a real ancestor who haunts the woods sort of benevolently? Right?

This all sounds strange, as I hear myself speak. But you can’t deny your senses--that’s all we have.

I’m not going back there, Morgan says. We came down here, like I promised. But he’s… Your, um, farmer is not here. And I don’t really like being in this spot, as you know, so I’m going in now, okay?

She gives me a weak wave and then wraps her arms around her torso and marches up the hill in large strides. I stand still, groping for a new strategy.

It was dusk when we saw Hanacek together, just a week into our new life. We sat on a bench swing I’d repaired and perched on the bluff that overlooks the river. The rusted chains groaned as we moved back and forth. The wind came from the north and you could barely hear the Interstate. A wood thrush called from across the river. I had my arm around Morgan and she was playing with my hand absentmindedly.

We just sat.

She broke the quiet, whispering, What is that? Somebody, right over

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there.

I saw it too. There were lumpy forms moving among the trees that leaned along the bank. I could feel Morgan’s pulse race. I could feel my own, just as quick. These shapes moved steadily, but so slowly, as smoke drifts through woods on a still night. The moon was out, and there was urban glow from Middling, but this little light seemed to have no effect on these creatures. What was visible about them came only from themselves. Unlike the trees they passed, they cast no shadows. It was like a photograph you know is wrong but don’t know why.

But then as they moved down the bank, they appeared to grow brighter, and it was plain there was an old man leading two harnessed mules. The man wore striped overalls and a felt hat and Wellington boots. They came down to the water and entered the river, in the shallows that form at the bend. But their feet made no ripples.

I felt Morgan’s breath on my ear as she whispered, Should we say something?

I wasn’t able to speak. When we first saw the shapes, I thought it might be neighbors. That was good, because we hadn’t met anyone yet--no one had come to welcome us with some home baking, as is usual in this part of the country. I thought perhaps this was how we’d meet our neighbors, who were maybe just giving us some space. But now, as the farmer and his mules became more visible, it was plain that they were spectral forms, not members of the living. Ghosts. I had a strong physical reaction, in which my blood surged to my head and my throat seized up and my arms and legs got cold.

Morgan, now looking at the side of my face, said, Are you all right?

I managed to nod. She turned back to the forms. Just then, Hanacek looked up and his gaze fell on us. Even at that distance, you could see in his eyes the weariness and sad amusement. I looked back at him and we remained that way for who knows how long and in those moments I came to understand. Later, in the library and on the county website and in the archives of the historical society, I confirmed it all. But it seems to me Hanacek told me everything that very first night.

What the heck was that, Morgan said.

I was still staring and she broke me out of my trance. I turned to her, probably looking a little perplexed, and said, They were spirits.

Ghosts. I don’t know what’s the right word, but you know.

Morgan shuddered and leaned into me. Come on, don’t be silly, she said. It must have been some neighbors. It’s getting cold. Let’s go in.

You saw them, right? I asked.

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Morgan looked into my eyes, first one and the other. I could tell she was thinking. Then she said, Sure. Yes. Of course. Let’s go in okay?

But if you saw them, then you saw how they didn’t have shadows and didn’t disturb the water. So, not just neighbors?

I don’t know, she said. She stood up and rubbed her arms vigorously.

Let’s make some tea.

Also, no one has mules any more. We don’t have neighbors with mules.

Morgan’s chin darted back in surprise. Mules? she asked. And then, before letting me reply, she grabbed my arm and interlaced my hand and led me out of the woods and up the path toward the lights of our kitchen.

Afterward, she never said exactly what she thought happened. And she says she never saw Hanacek again.

I have seen him a dozen times, at least.

When I get back to the house, Morgan’s muddy boots are on the deck and through the open door I can see her pulling books down off the shelf.

I say, That’s my copy of Blood Meridian.

And she looks at the cover, shrugs, and puts it back on the shelf.

I’m kidding! I appeal to her. You can have it. You can have anything you want. In fact, if you stay, you can leave it all where it is.

This sounds better than I had planned. Morgan lets her arms drop and stares at me, her face distorted and suppressed.

Just as I’m about to build on this success, a horrible sound comes from back in the woods. It’s some tremendous motor, maybe an unmufflered truck and it roars like someone tearing a hole in the sky.

Then we hear a man’s voice yell, rapidly, Go-go-go-go-go! And then the motor roar carries away and then turns and continues to fade on the county roads. Strange how sound carries here.

What the fuck was that? Morgan asks.

I realize this is another opportunity. I say, We should go see.

It was right in the back of our property, she says. She’s looking out the window now.

Yeah, it was really close.

What would someone be doing back there? There’s no reason to be back there.

I am remembering how she said, just this morning, ‘Not my problem,’ and I’m thinking please don’t say that again. But she’s concerned now. When there’s an emergency or a threat or a wound,

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she can’t help herself. It must be triaged and treated.

Let’s go, I say. And we do.

We walk quickly, trying not to slip, Morgan takes a course around the spot where the path opens into the woods. I wonder if she’ll ever forget about that spot, the moment 16 days ago, when it was littered with dead grackles--all black on green grass, like a fabric pattern.

All shot with a single blast of a 12-guage, which I can still feel in my shoulder. The birds were gorging on strawberries, the only crop still living, the only thing not drowned by rain. (And who knew another 16 days of rain was yet to come?) I would like to forget that spot, too.

After the boom, when the maddening chorus stops, when the ravenous beaks hang limply beside yellow eyes in a contortion of feathers --immediately the rage vanishes and you’re left with something else.

I can’t explain what that is. It had to be done, I said, it’s the reality of farming, and that’s true, but Morgan disagreed. I’m hoping it all passes in the flow of time, washes downstream, for both of us.

I follow Morgan down the path into the woods toward the river, where the old gravel road dead-ends into our place, just short of the river. I scan the banks hoping Hanacek is down there. Morgan stops and I bump her back. She breaths in hard and grabs my arm and I turn to see where she’s looking.

A human body lies in the mud just past the end of the old road. He is face-up on his back, but his hips are twisted and his legs are curled sideways. Like a yoga pose. I can see his face has an ancient look to it, sharp facial bones and copper skin.

No, Morgan says. No, no, no. She turns and bumps back into me and I try to gather her in my arms but she pushes away. That’s fucked up, she says. That guy is dead.

Well how do we know, I say. I start moving to get a closer look but she stops me.

Don’t be naïve, she says. I know what a dead body looks like. Look at the contusion on his face and he’s got a broken clavicle bleeding right through his shirt. We got to go.

Okay, but don’t we have to do something? That’s our property, where he’s lying.

I don’t know, Morgan says. She puts fists to her eyes and says, We just have to think. And then she flaps her hands like they’re wet and asks the sky, Why today? Just one day is all I need. Why this now?

I look at the man and then at Morgan. Is it bad that I’m thinking maybe this will help? If Hanacek won’t come then maybe this incident

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will connect us, give us a common goal. People die every day--150,000 they say, every day. This is just one, who happened to die here. It could be worse, right?

I say, We should check if he’s really dead. You’re the expert, I know, but you can’t really tell from over here right?

Morgan has her arms crossed in thought, her head down. She glances at the man, then down again.

I ask, Don’t we at least need to call someone?

Who are you going to call, Arthur?

The cops?

Which cops?

I don’t know. Middling?

They don’t cover this area.

Then the Sheriff? The county police?

And that’s worked for us before? With the shooting? Or all the junk and the dumping?

Not exactly, but this is a dead man.

You said maybe he’s not dead.

Maybe not! We should check.

Now Morgan raises her palms up, outward, like a dancer and says to the woods, No! No, no, no! I didn’t see this. You hear me, Arthur? I will swear under oath I did not see this and I am walking back to the house. I’m supposed to pick up the trailer. I have to pack. You said you’d help me.

I know, but we can’t just leave him there, I say. Priorities have changed.

Morgan drops her arms and says, Actually, we can. We can just walk away. Because priorities haven’t changed--not for me.

She stops abruptly and half turns, draws a finger precisely under each eyelid. I go to her but she keeps me away.

I’m leaving now, Morgan says. I’m walking back to the house. Are you coming to help?

All I can do is shrug. She turns and walks with big strides.

I look toward the river. God damned Hanacek’s never there when you need him.

The first time I saw Morgan walk like that up to the house was on our fifth anniversary last summer. We had brought a picnic down to the old bench swing. I remember our white wine glasses balanced on the boards between us. In the surface of the wine reflected the leaves of the canopy overhead. A woodpecker rapped and a wren sang.

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When the first gun shot fired, Morgan jumped and the wine glasses fell. It might have been all right, but the shots continued, not far into the woods across the river. These weren’t hunters, or farmers taking a shot at a varmint, or sportsmen sighting in a rifle. These were people shooting for the sheer thrill of shooting--dozens of rounds from semiautomatic weapons. After five minutes, when I said, Maybe they’ll stop soon, Morgan left me with the picnic set and made that first march up to the house.

I ran after her while the gunfire continued and, sensing an emergency, I led her to our car and drove to Middling and checked into the hotel where we’d had our reception and booked a suite on the top floor. We drank two bottles of champagne and finally Morgan’s face relaxed and she lay against the pillows looking at her bare feet and said, God it’s nice to just be in Middling. Some kind of civilization. Just where there’s… you know, reasonable people. And no flags! I’m so sick of all those god damned flags.

Then she closed her eyes, and I took the glass from her hand and covered her in the blanket. Later, we woke up and drank water and stared at each other in the vague light of the town below and Morgan said, Thank you for bringing me here. And later, when she was asleep again, I stood at the window and looked past the lights of the town, beyond the lights of the grain elevators, toward the river and wondered what was happening on the farm.

Standing in the woods as Morgan leaves again, an inspiration strikes me.

He’s breathing! I call out.

Morgan stops half-way to the house. She turns and tilts her head and squints.

He took a big breath! I say, and wait. I can see her shoulders slump in defeat, but then she jogs back toward me.

How many times, she asks, did he breathe?

Before I can respond, a vulture descends through the canopy and lands on the gravel road. Three more follow, and the first one hops on the dead man’s chest.

Oh god! Morgan turns away. Did you just lie to me? Did he really breathe?

I run a few steps toward the vultures and clap my hands to scare them off. We can hear their wings rustle in the silence.

I’m done, she says. I’ll tell you what--this is your problem. I don’t have to fix this. I don’t have to do anything. You discovered the guy…

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Actually, you did, I say.

What?! Her voice is elevated.

You saw him first. You discovered him.

Why are you saying that? Are you trying to trap me somehow?

Without considering, I say, Well yeah of course I’m trying to trap you. I’m trying anything I can to keep you from leaving.

I can see this did not land well. Morgan holds her hands up in a kind of deflection and says, not exactly to me, That is messed up. You just said you are trying to trap me into staying in this horrible, horrible place, by lying to me about a dead man who some redneck murderers just dumped on our property. That’s what just happened, isn’t it? Oh my god this is unbelievable.

Now Morgan begins to walk away for the umpteenth time, saying, I’m not the one losing it. I have to remember, I’m not the crazy person here.

I call out to her. He might have breathed! I’m going to check his pulse.

She turns abruptly and yells, Stop! Don’t touch him! Your DNA for fuck’s sake!

She has raised a good point. I look down and see a line of blood running from my bandage.

A wave of emotion comes over me and it’s extremely difficult to view it constructively or philosophically. So I say to her, What am I supposed to do if you leave? What am I supposed to do?

Morgan makes fists and stamps a foot and says, Exactly! You don’t have to be left! You can recognize this for what it is and cut bait and come with me and we start over. In fact, we probably hide that dead guy so the police report doesn’t show up on our property listing and we get what we can for the place and start over. Not to be morbid or calculating, but that’s surviving, right? That’s all we can hope to do out here--it’s a fucked up place with fucked up people who are unredeemable. It’s not our job to fix them.

Then she pauses, breathing hard, and says finally, So. This is it--your last chance. Are you coming with me?

I look at the dead man and the vultures, who have returned, and then up at the canopy of leaves above us, and then down toward the river and then back toward Morgan. But I can only look at her boots.

I say, Maybe it’s not our job to fix these people but isn’t it our job to fix the land? Like we said we would? I mean, if we give up on that aren’t we admitting that it’s all a wash and who can live in a world like that? Who can love in a world like that?

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I’m too agitated to know how logical this sounds, but it’s all I have.

Morgan leaves, holding her face in her hands. I don’t follow her.

Now Hanacek has returned, that old bastard. He stands facing me between his two mules just across the river.

Too late, I say to him.

He crouches down, with an arm on his bent knee, and studies the ground. I’m guessing he’s looking for mushrooms. Although I don’t suppose he could eat them, so maybe it’s out of habit? Honestly, I don’t know a thing about ghosts. There are lots of mushrooms back here in the damp woods--morels, puffballs, coral fungi, hen of the woods. Hanacek would know. It was his farm originally. You can see a photo of him at the historical society museum. He was the last farmer in the county to stick with mules when tractors became de rigueur.

He wrote a little book about it, which he printed and bound himself.

He fed six kids and seven grandkids on what he grew on ten acres, including our parcel, and made enough profit to put half of them through college. You might say that backfired on him, because the college-educated kids wanted nothing to do with this place. So when he died, they collectively sold the land to a tractor dealer, who sold it to a trailer park builder, who let the neighbors use it as a dump and subsequently sold it to a lawyer who never set foot on the place and quickly flipped it to a family who ran a religious day care, who didn’t last a year before selling it to us. But Hanacek? He never left.

What am I supposed to do? I ask.

Hanacek, still in his crouch, turns his head to look downriver, where the trees make a long corridor until the next bend. This river winds in countless turns like an intestine through a narrow strip of trees and brush. Beyond those trees, just thousands and thousands of acres of corn and beans. This river is a little remaining oasis of wildness.

Abraham Lincoln canoed on this river, no shit. He wanted to make it navigable, and it’s probably good he failed, because that left it wild, though at this point, I don’t know if it matters. If you walk the bank of this river, as I have, sometimes with Hanacek walking nearby, you see all kinds of things people have left. There was a whole motorcycle buried so deep in the mud all you could see was the crankcase. There was a bunch of barrels and heating elements where someone cooked meth. There was a dilapidated ferry still hanging from cables. There was a miniature gallows complete with noose. And there is, always, gathered in every snag, along every curve, piles of plastic trash compressed in neat designs along with all the driftwood. I don’t mean

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to paint a gloomy picture. I mean, still, there’s lots of wildlife. It’s all we’ve got.

A south wind picks up, bringing high wispy clouds and I feel the barometer fall. More rain is coming. I look at the dead man, still twisted in his yoga pose, spotted with flies, and he seems to be flattening. Eventually, the vultures and coyotes will take care of him.

But like Morgan said, there’s still a chance someone will discover him, and then it will become a thing that needs explanation. It will become a recorded incident. Morgan always knows. When I look back, Hanacek has vanished with the mules.

Up at the house, she’s gone already. Piles of books remain on the living room floor. A trailer rental contract lies on the counter. A single wine glass from last night remains in the sink. I don’t know whether this is bad, because she left so suddenly, or good, because she’ll have to come back. But for now, the house is silent.

The tractor engine drowns out everything in the woods, including my thoughts. When I try to slide the bucket under the man, it just pushes him away. So I lower it and scoop up a couple of inches of mud with him, and then he comes up easily. I tilt back the bucket and see him in there, folded like a bug in your palm. I drive through poison ivy and nettles along the bank until I have the bucket high over the water. It feels like there should be some ceremony, but those kinds of things seem strange now, small and pathetic in a world like this. So I just push the lever and tip the bucket forward until the man drops into the river.

He splashes, submerges, and then floats to the surface. His body swirls, dancing extravagantly in the swift current and then straightens out, like a canoe, and bumps around a snag, and floats downriver beyond where I can see.

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I Fall Asleep While Driving Ashley Kirkland

My husband thinks I drove my car off the road on purpose, and it takes him years to ask me about it. I imagine for him it goes something like this: my postpartum is raging, and after returning to work, and managing breastfeeding, I can’t handle the pressure. As I’m cruising down Route 50 through cornfields and farm houses in the September heat on my way home from school, where I’m overwhelmed teaching freshmen, I drive my car right off the road. That simple.

I ignore the rumble strip and hit the embankment head-on. I go airborne. What he doesn’t know is the warm comfort I sink into, moments before, as my eyes close and everything disappears into nothing. What he doesn’t know, is that as I’m careening through the air, as I’m flying upside down, I’m thinking please don’t die. Please, don’t die. What he doesn’t know, is that when the stranger woman comes to help me after the car

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has landed, the first words out of my mouth are I have a baby. I have a baby. Which only serves to confuse her because she thinks I have a baby in the car, but I don’t.

What I mean is I’m so tired.

I’m so tired, and I have to be okay because I have a baby.

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Lilacs

Ashley Kirkland I am teaching my son to love the lilacs, too.

They smell good, come here.

And he shoves his diminutive nose into the lilac bush, violently, the way toddlers move, in jerks and tumbles. It is difficult, trying to teach someone else to love what you love. To him it is a purple flower that smells nice (just purple—he speaks in absolutes, so the flower is not a light or pale purple, it is purple as if its petals could identify with plums or violets, the ever-aging

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prune). To me it is a day in May in my childhood home and my mother has washed my hair. She runs a comb through it and works out the knots as I lean back in her lap and the sun dapples the floor. A breeze flows through the open window; it carries the lilac scent from the tall bush below. I take my son’s hand, gently, and rest the other hand on his small back as I try to show him the proper way to smell the lilacs– slowly, softly, the way you pull a comb through wet hair.

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Before the Flood Bess Henshaw

It doesn’t rain.

Adelaide’s mama has told her that since she was a baby. You go forty miles north, there’s a good thunderstorm once a month. You go south, Mama says, and there are hurricanes so mighty they decimate trailer parks like theirs.

If Mullins is a tiny pin on a large map, God has erected a fortress to protect them from rain. It’s a blessing, they say. When the reckoning comes and levees break, the sinners will drown. What makes Adelaide a saint, she doesn’t know.

The rain took. Or, maybe, the lack of rain took. She knew that she was the smartest girl in the fourth grade, and that her mama used to work at the strip mall before it was bought by the Oil Men, and she knew that dryness that invaded the Carlota River and desiccated the acres of forests was to blame.

But Addie didn’t miss what she didn’t know.

Addie pulled on the strings of her backpack, wet with the lemonade leaking out of her cracked water bottle. The schoolhouse was a mile away from Oceanview Trailer Park and Addie spent most of the walk home attempting to kick a single rock from the playground to her front steps without losing it.

“Hi, Mama,” Addie said as she pushed open the screen door of her trailer.

Brenda sat at the linoleum card table in the middle of the living room, watching Miami Vice on the box TV sitting on the floor. A bible and tabloid magazine were stacked under the antenna. She mumbled in response, and handed her half-eaten microwave dinner to Addie.

She sat down on the carpet, just a few feet from the TV, close enough to see the color of the pixels. “We had a spelling bee at school today.”

“Hmmm,” Brenda said. She was wearing her green Go Mart shirt that she hadn’t taken off after work.

“Jenny Parsons beat me, but her mom is the second grade teacher,” Addie said.

“Can you turn the volume up?”

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Addie clicked the volume button on the television before pushing herself off the carpet, collecting pieces of shag on her hands as she stood up. The whole trailer was slick with sweat. It didn’t matter if Addie was in the bathroom or lying on the floor trying to usurp the coolness from the tiles, the odor remained.

There are days like these when the heat gets unbearable, as though there are coals lodged underneath Addie’s skin, turning into blood diamonds in the searing heat.

On these days, Adelaide was honey. She moved with no vigor of an eight year old, but as though molasses found home in her bones, like her body was one of a drowned miscreant permanently resting in the water logged soil. It didn’t matter if she was destined to be saved, on those days, Addie would have rather been one of the sinners.

Pauline took a puff of her unfiltered cigarette before tipping the end into her ashtray, watching the cinders glow red before settling to the bottom of the electric pink receptacle. She would stop one day, one day soon. She took another huff.

Grey clouds roll in over the horizon. But the clouds, however gray they happened to be, would roll over her one story ranch, just a few plots down from Addie’s own trailer, leaving her cracked soil and dying grass without the pleasure of rain.There was a cool breeze, a tint of yellow covering Oceanview Mobile Home Park like a sepia film.

Why it was called Oceanview Mobile Home Park, Addie didn’t know.

Mullins was a hundred miles from the nearest ocean and the only thing it overlooked was the town dump.

“Ms. Reilly! Oh, Ms. Reilly!” Addie called from the end of Pauline’s driveway. Three buzzards flew from their branch on the dead tree in the front yard.

Pauline leaned her head back stretching the tight muscles in her neck before putting the cigarette out a final time.

Pauline had watched Adelaide knock on the doors of several of their neighbors before stopping at Pauline’s house. She did this most days when her mother wasn’t home, roaming around looking for some for adults to bother or other children to drag to the playground.

“Ms. Reilly, my mama says a storm is coming.” Adelaide had her hands shoved in the pockets of her bright blue shorts. The ends were ragged and stained red, probably from the popsicles Pauline watched her endlessly suck on. There was a red ring around her lips, too, proving Pauline’s hypothesis to be correct.

“Your mama doesn’t know rain from her own spit,” Pauline said

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Addie rocked back and forth on her heels. “Isn’t it exciting?”

Pauline pressed her knuckles into her palm, a gross cracking noise that reverberated across the trailer park. “It rained plenty when I was a kid.”

“What was it like?” Addie asked.

Pauline started the girl down. If this was her daughter she’d never let her out looking like she did, with her unbrushed hair and feet so dirty it looked like the mud soaked deep into the folds of her skin; if Pauline went out like that in her day her mother would use the backside of a hairbrush on her.

“Oh, God, it was a long time ago,” Pauline said. She pointed to the skyline. “I wouldn’t count on it. The clouds are already breaking up.”

Addie pursed her lips and groaned. She dramatically laid her head on the wooden railing in front of Pauline door, pretending to slam her head on it. “God damnit!”

“Watch your mouth,” Pauline said.

“Sorry.” Addie picked her head up and rested her chin on top of her palms, her elbows placed on the railing. “You don’t have a job.”

Pauline clicked her tongue and lit another cigarette.

“Which means you’re not doing anything today,” Addie said. “What do you want?”

“Well, Mama is at work. And my bike doesn’t work very well. And according to the man on the radio, Bigby is getting a storm no matter what.”

Pauline glanced at Addie, who was using her tongue to get the popsicle remnants around her lips.

“Get in,” Pauline dug her keychain out of her pocket and the car doors clicked open.

They rode in silence for a long time, passing green highway signs and billboards that read GOD IS THE ANSWER in different fonts.

Coins in the drink holders bounced around whenever Pauline hit the brakes too hard or ran over a pothole.

Addie opened the glove compartment and took out a handful of white McDonalds napkins and an unwrapped lollipop, the same kind the school nurse gave out when Addie puked all over the pea-gravel on the last day of second grade. Addie shoved the sucker into her mouth.

“Got any music?” Addie asked.

Pauline pressed on the radio and clicked through channels before settling on one of eight country stations. As they left Mullins, the music faded in and out. Addie pounded her first on the top of the

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stereo, causing more static to fizz.

“Stop that,” Pauline said, batting Addie’s hand away. “Pull that map outta the glove box.”

“This one?” Addie held a large paper map of the state of Texas.

“Yeah, now look at what exit leads to Bigby,” Pauline said.

“I’ve never read one of these before,” Addie said, turning the map sideways. “But I think it’s exit 127.”

“That’s coming up. You sure?” Pauline asked.

Addie took the lollipop out of her mouth with a satisfying pop.

“Nope.” Pauline veered off. *

*

*

The rapping on Pauline’s front door caused the picture frames to shake. She sighed, pulling her body from the sunken leather couch and set the oven on her way over.

Through the side class window, Addie stood, stiff like a board, with her hands balled into fists. She lifted her fist to knock again before Pauline swung the door open.

Addie walked in without speaking.

“Sorry I’m early,” she said.

Pauline turned around and closed the door before following Addie into the kitchen. She sat herself at a stool and was peeling a clementine covered in brown splotches around the top with her own dirty fingernails.

“That’s fine. But I haven’t put anything in the oven yet,” Pauline said. You don’t have any homework?”

The green bean casserole was sitting in the family pyrex on the counter, one that her mother had passed down to her when Pauline moved out.

Pauline wasn’t much help with homework. She didn’t know much, and what she did know was how to break up fights between the tenants at the trailer park or siphon gas from beat up cars at the junkyard.

But Addie didn’t care. She would sit across from Pauline and do her arithmetic, tapping the end of her pencil on the card table until Pauline would tell her to stop being so fidgety.

“It’s done.” Addie sighed and set the orange down in front of her, harshly neon against the linoleum.

Pauline put the pyrex in the oven and set her egg timer. “Are you going to say what’s wrong?”

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Sunday night dinners were part of their routine now, but three years ago, when Addie showed up with two missing front teeth and a growling stomach, Pauline only half-heartedly invited the girl in.

“She lost her job.” Addie didn’t need to say who it was for Pauline to know. “And she said she needed to get gas but she didn’t ask me. She just took my money.”

Pauline nodded. Brenda wasn’t known to keep a job for much longer than a few months. She had a revolving door of brightly colored uniforms and name tags in different fonts. Customer service, Addie assumed, was just not her thing.

“I wanted to get a typewriter,” Addie said. She bit her bottom lip, the flesh turning white. “Or buy some books. Or whatever. But it was my money.”

“I’m sorry.”

Addie thought she was about to burst into tears right there.

“It’s fine,” she organized the orange peel into different piles.

“Why don’t you get a job yourself ?” Pauline asked.

Addie was young, probably too young to get a job anywhere that mattered, but Pauline knew a few places that would take a body if they could get their hands on a willing worker.

“I’ve never applied for one before,” Addie said.

“That’s an excuse.”

Addie sighed, folding her hands together and setting them on the table. “I do want a job.”

“Northshore is always looking for people to clean golf clubs,” Pauline said.

The golf course was Mullins’ only luxury, one built on the backs of old money and at the price of community. They brought in water from the coast, on big semis paid for by the owners of the country club.

“Northshore is gratuitous,” Addie said.

“You don’t even know what that word means.”

Addie had read it off of her teachers daily word calendar that she kept on her desk the day before.

“I don’t have a way to get there.”

“I have an extra bike,” Pauline said.

Addie sharpened her eyes, “How much would I make?”

“More than whatever you make now.”

“Fine,” Addie said.

She brushed the orange peels off the counter and into her open hand and tossed them in the trashcan by her feet. The egg timer chirped and Pauline pulled the casserole out using a threadbare oven

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mit, quietly cursing to herself as she set it down.

“I’ll take you there tomorrow, 8AM sharp,” Pauline said. “You have an alarm clock, yeah?”

“Thank you,” Addie said, her eyes trained on the casserole.

Pauline nodded, “Now go wash your hands. You’re filthy.” *

*

*

In June, Mullins was hot. The auditorium, filled with the fifty-three graduating seniors, all dawning hand-me-down red gowns, sitting in the folding chairs typically stashed in the church basement, felt like the inside of a dog’s throat. Adelaide would have rather been anywhere else.

Mr. Steinert read her name aloud. She was the third one called. In the graduation pamphlet there was a small asterisk next to her name.

Outside of the auditorium, leaning against the dilapidated brick structure, Addie held the bulletin in her hand, her finger stroking over her name once, twice, three times over. Her mom had left after Addie’s name was called, but Addie didn’t care. Brenda listened to her daughter’s name read aloud, she held the pamphlet that declared all of Adelaide’s hard work in her own two hands, and for Addie, that was enough. And if it wasn’t enough for her mother, she thought, then nothing would ever be.

“Your car is all packed?” Pauline was wearing high heels and walking uncomfortably from her car to the bench. She took a seat.

Brenda told Addie that if Pauline was at graduation, she wouldn’t be.

So she stayed home, listened to the radio broadcast of all the names being read, but as soon as she heard Addie’s she got in her car and rode down the three mile stretch to the high school.

Addie nodded and then handed her the brochure, “Look at this.”

Pauline flipped open the piece of paper, scanned her eyes down the list of names and smiled. It was a tight, thin-lipped smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Valedictorian,” Pauline recited back.

Addie blushed, and turned towards the football field, which was just one hundred yards of yellowing grass and red dirt.

“I’m scared,” Addie said. She felt her shoulders relax as the words left her mouth.

“In that car? I don’t blame you.”

Addie didn’t know anything about Michigan. She didn’t know what kind of jacket she’d need, or how to drive in snow, if her roommates

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would laugh at her drawl or what to say when they’d ask about where she’s from.

Addie pressed the back of her hands to her cheeks, soaking up the scattering of tears.

“It’s a long drive,” Addie said. “What if something happens?”

“Just use your head, you have a good one of those.”

Addie tapped her foot against the concrete as she tore a flap of skin from her cuticle to the tip of her finger.

Addie could count on her fingers the people she knew who left Mullins and never came back. There was a girl a few years older than herself who had left a day before graduation. She went to California, said she was going to be a star, and came back six months later with plenty of debt and a cocaine addiction. Most of those who left joined the military, went somewhere overseas and left crown-shaped Mullins County in their rearview mirror and never looked back.

“I don’t even know how to read the map,” Addie said. Pauline hadn’t ever left Texas either.

“You knew how to read a map a decade ago,” Pauline said.

Addie had spent nights standing in front of her bathroom mirror, practicing how to introduce herself without her syrupy accent. She spoke like her tongue was playdough, mushy and malleable and able to switch her intonation at the drop of a hat.

“My mom needs me,” Addie wrung her fingers together. “With her arthritis. She can hardly cook.”

Pauline gnawed down on her bottom lip before turning to face Addie. “It is not your job to take care of your mother. It is her job to take care of you.”

“But Northshore, they don’t have anyone else to–” “Now, stop your crying,” Pauline said. She flipped the brochure open and laid it in Addie’s lap. “Look at all these names? Do you think they’re going to college? You are a lucky girl, Adelaide. You’re smart, but you are lucky. And I know you’re too smart to stay here.”

It was luck, Addie believed that much. It was luck that it never rained in Mullins, that her little town, stuck in time, evened the playing field for every child born within the county lines. It was luck that she grew up doing crosswords with her neighbors and went into third grade knowing more words than the children around her. It was luck that she spent her weekends washing golf clubs while other kids drudged through hours at the foundry. It was luck, Addie was sure of it, but it was also the deep fear that blazed in the pit of her belly at the thought of things staying the same.

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Words sat unsaid Addie’s tongue. You would never thank a mother for taking care of their child, and Addie had never thought to thank Pauline for the solitude she provided. So she settled with a promise she could keep.

“I’ll send you postcards,” Addie said. “I’m sure they have funny ones. With wolverines, or something.”

Addie rested her head on Pauline’s shoulder, looking out to the empty field in front of them. Pauline took Addie’s hand in her own and gave it a gentle squeeze, a foreign intimacy.

“I’m proud of you,” Pauline said, and Addie believed her. *

*

*

All of downtown Ann Arbor was lit up by dusty beige street lamps.

Still drunk from the pints that a pretty girl from across the counter kept buying for her. Addie leaned her head against the window of the taxi cab, feeling the cool air from the glass spread across her forehead.

The condensation dripped onto the door handle, a single droplet that dissipated onto the denim of her jeans.

Addie handed the driver a handful of mixed dollar bills before jiggling the handle until the door swung open. Her front yard was swathed in the dull light from fresh snow. If she listened closely enough, she could hear the muffled thud of the flakes floating to the ground. She wrapped her jacket around herself as she pressed her boots into the ice, clawing her way up the driveway with a newly learned determination.

On her doorstep was a punctured cardboard box with Addie’s own handwriting finely writing out Pauline’s address. Addie crouched down and picked up the box, shook it once and heard the clamor of the stuffed wolverine that Addie had packed inside a week earlier. On the front, inked in black letters, read RETURN TO SENDER. On Addie’s nineteenth birthday, Pauline sent her a single bottle of beer. Not a note, or a card, or a check. The only thing revealing it was from Pauline was the return address. Later that year, Addie sent her back cherry fudge that her roommate’s mother made. Sometimes it was a postcard, or a letter written on Northshore stationary, but there was always a package.

The clock on their oven glowed green. It was just past midnight back home. Addie pulled her contact book out from her purse as if she didn’t have her phone number etched into her muscle memory.

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Addie twisted the cord around her finger. The line beeped once, twice, six more times before Brenda picked up, coughing into the receiver.

“Hello?” Her voice had a softness to it before she realized who was calling.

“Mama, it’s Addie,” the tip of finger turned purple and she dropped the cord.

A beat of silence. Another cough.

“It’s late,” Brenda said.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just--have you heard from Pauline lately?”

Brenda laughed into the receiver and Addie pulled the phone from her ear, “She didn’t tell you?”

Addie didn’t respond.

“She retired, not workin at Oceanview no more. Margie said she’s into some new-age shit, like gardening.”

In her last postcard, Pauline had mentioned that the office staff finally got a new assistant and they were planning on opening an Oceanview Community Center for the trailer park kids before and after school.

“How is she doing?”

“I don’t know shit about how she’s doing,” Brenda said. “What do you think I do all day, spend my time wondern’ what bitch is doing? I work, I have bills to pay.”

Addie tapped her foot against the hardwood floors, the thud reverberating through the kitchen monotonously.

“Jesus, Mom, stop it,” Addie said. She would have received an open handed slap if she said that under her mother’s own roof. “Is she okay?”

“If you care so much, call yourself. Stop buggin’ me with your bullshit,” and the line died.

Addie held the phone in her hands for a moment before shoving it back into the receiver, shaking the picture frames of Addie and her roommates. She flipped her contact book to Pauline’s number and dialed.

The answering machine responded: “The number you are trying to reach has not set up their voice mailbox. Please call back again later.” *

*

*

Adelaide slammed an open fist on the dashboard of her 1983 handme-down Chevrolet given her as a high school graduation present, the

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only present she’d ever received from her mother. The radio putzed on, spewing out static before going silent all together.

Pulling into Oceanview Mobile Home Park did not, in fact, feel like returning home. Addie used to spend her mornings drawing designs into the grime with her finger tips, believing the filth in her living room was a result of the filth from the outside soaking in through weak metal paneling. As her car roared into the gated community, Addie was alien among the white and blue paneled homes dawning nautical decor out of a TJ Maxx catalogue.

She laughed reading the articles she read about Mullins in the years after she left for the midwest. After learning of Mullin’s miraculous half a century without rain, a beat writer at Coastal Living wrote a small article about a “whimsical beach town with a bizarre meteorological phenomenon that will steal your heart.” The rest was history.

Suddenly, Mullins wasn’t America’s Trailer Trash Capital, but a modern marvel. The hottest spot for retirees. A town with 365 days of sunshine.

That didn’t stop 567 Oceanview Road, Trailer No. 3, from halting in time. A familiar heat rushed to Adelaide’s cheeks as the car quieted and she stepped onto the sand parking lot in front of her mom’s RV. Even in the midst of February, it still felt like a thick tarp fell upon Mullins, trapping it in an arcade of warmth.

Across from her own trailer was Pauline’s house, Christmas lights still adorning the drought-resistant oleander she’d been growing for a decade. In the driveway was her old red pickup truck with more rust around the hubcaps than Addie remembered.

Brenda Coleman took one big, fat puff of her cigarette before spitting a lob of grey spit into the sand.

“Was wonderin’ when the next time you’d come around here,” she stubbed the cigarette into the wooden porch railing.

She was wearing a ferocious orange shirt with an oil stain right under the collar and a darkened coffee spot on the lower hem. It was her old work uniform when she was a waitress at the diner a half mile down the street.

“I’ve been busy, with work, and with school. I’m graduating this May. It’s been hard to find a time to come back,” Addie said. She had rehearsed the list of excuses on the car ride down. School and work, easy enough.

It was Margie, her old boss at Northshore, who had called Addie to tell her of Pauline’s death. She told Adelaide that it was quick, and painless. It was a heart attack, Margie said, and that Pauline suspected

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it was coming for weeks.

Brenda nodded her head half-heartedly. “You come back for that hag’s funeral but not to see your own mother?”

It would have been just as easy for Addie to come back to town, pay her respects, and leave the next day without stepping foot onto her mother’s property. The voice in her brain told her that maybe this time something would be different, that maybe her mother would invite her in for a meal, or a drink, or even a cigarette. Maybe she’d ask about school, or her job, or her girlfriend.

“You know, I’m gonna get going,” Addie said.

“Uh huh,” Brenda leaned over the railing and spat into the sand before turning towards the screen door.

Addie bit the skin on the side of her fingernail until she tasted blood.

It was a quiet service, one with a handful of people, probably nieces and nephews, maybe a few work friends or caddies from Northshore.

Pauline never married, never had kids, as far as Adelaide knew, but it was clear from the arrangements of flowers that she was well-loved.

“How did you know Pauline?” A woman stood aside as they both looked at a display of pictures from decades ago. She was wearing scrubs and had a badge that read Mullins Retirement Home.

“She was my neighbor when I was a kid,” Adelaide said.

“Must have been some neighbor for you to come all the way back here,” she said.

“She would cook me dinner,” Adelaide said. “Every Sunday.”

“She was a terrible cook,” the woman laughed.

Adelaide never thought so. Her evenings spent at Pauline’s house were the evenings she went to sleep with a full stomach. It was dinner at first, and then a load of laundry, and then a lunch or two during the week when Adelaide’s mother forgot to get groceries.

Weaving through the thin line of visitors, Adelaide pulled a cigarette from her purse and brought it to her lips before noticing the No Smoking sign on the column holding up the parapet.

The clouds gathered at the horizon, now filled with towering condominiums and hotels. If Adelaide didn’t know better, she’d think it was going to rain. *

*

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Bigby was hardly much bigger than Mullins. But there was an emergency room and a Kroger, so for all intents and purposes, it was a metropolis.

Overhead, the clouds gathered in an inky conglomeration. Pauline pulled over into an empty field behind the Kroger and her car lulled to silence. She dug into her purse for her pack of cigarettes, and cussed when she found a smushed, empty cartridge.

“Those things are no good for you, I read,” Addie said as she got out of the car and settled onto the hood, still hot.

“And where did you read that?”

“The Gazette,” said Addie.

“Your mother reads the Gazette?”

“No, but Mr. Rowley does. He always leaves it on his porch after he drinks coffee. Sometimes he just gives it to me,” Addie said.

“You’re a smart girl,” Pauline said, “Reading the Gazette and all.

Your mama must be proud.”

Addie smiled sheepishly, a deep red glow covering her cheeks, “I don’t know a lot of the words.”

Thunder cracked, and a hot breeze rolled over them. Behind them, Kroger’s employees in their lime green uniforms congregated under the awning of the liquor check-out, watching the storm roll in.

“It will sprinkle, first, then pour. By the looks of it, really pour,” Pauline said.

There was something in the pit of Addie’s stomach, an exciting ache that grew from her gut up to the base of her throat. She watched the sky eclipse, the buzz of elation all her own.

Addie kicked her legs too and fro, her bubblegum pink flip-flops almost neon against the evening. She had finished the sucker a while ago and was now sucking on the paper stick like a dog chewing on a twig.

“I don’t ever want to go back home,” Addie said.

Her legs slammed against the bumper with a ting. She kicked a little farther and a little faster. Ting, ting, ting, ting.

And slowly, it began to rain.

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Her Name Is Katherine Gray Jenny Keto

I remember she teased me for not knowing the meaning of sarcasm. Like those Magic Eye prints of my childhood, I had to cross my eyes to see what she meant.

My parents never taught me about people who say and mean in opposites.

What she said to me seemed always to be dressing up for Halloween. Mom and Dad did as parents do and warned me not to take candy from strangers, but she was young enough to think nothing of her knocking on my door.

She was old enough to teach me things I should not know. She was young enough not to know what she was teaching me. She taught me more than sarcasm and how to split my nails. I wonder if she knew she taught me how to split my body from my body. I don’t remember her face. I remember her name. This strikes me as odd. A name is usually the first to fade from me. I remember I did not want to remember her name. I did not want to remember—her name in bodies of water—her name touching—her name wet on me—her name cornered against—her name a cold ladder— her name I could not climb away from. Crayola colored floaties should not remind a girl of sinking in her skin. Whenever people ask me now why I don’t get in the water, I tell them I’ve never been a strong swimmer. She knocked on my door one more time after it happened. Mom must have let her in. I was counting coins in my bedroom. A soft knock, knob turn, then her name pushed through. The carpet chlorine waters—a chill as she crouched next to me. I don’t remember what she said to me. I remember I could not look in her direction. I don’t remember doing anything but stacking coins. I remember the moments like water lapping—a twitch in my lower lip, a twinge of metal in my wet mouth. I don’t remember saying anything to her. Then she left—with my breath. Years later, I remember Mom mentioned her once. Whatever happened to your friend? What’s her name again? The girl whose aunt lives up the hill?—Great-aunt, I said, then nothing more. Or maybe I said nothing at all, like I said nothing when it happened.

I wonder who taught me to say nothing. Who taught me to push her name down? Who taught me to keep pushing it down until her name became a word in my chest? Keep pushing that word down, until it became nothing between my legs. Keep pushing myself down as I would my foot into a can full of trash. Keep pushing down, until I forgot for a time, until— I could not forget.

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Vermeer’s “Lacemaker” is the smallest of his paintings Daisy Bassen

I say it’s a day when the sun never came up But I know better; this is all the light there is And we’re lace-makers, sitting beside a window That might as well be oiled paper, at greater risk Of ignition than breach of darkness. We go blind Young, our hands made into briars, the lace A series of silk knots that could individually hang A man, little nooses, made to look like frost Or flowers, winter or sex, our two unmakings.

We’re lace-makers and we know the stuff Isn’t strong enough for a dress, wouldn’t hide What anyone would like hidden; veils folded away Are shaken out to show what passes through, Beautiful the way a cloud is, breaking up, a deceit.

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Rotten Apples

Stephen Spicehandler So I’m, as usual, with the Mother Superior, this time climbing up the stairs of 967 Rivington to call on the Pope, and the Mule—who I call the Sicilian Jack-Ass but only “Chuch” to his face—is playing lookout.

Now you might think that the Mother Superior would be trodding up these tenement stairs to genuflect to a Pope, but you’d be dead wrong.

Because this Pope is just your average Lower East Side John (it says “J./C. POPE” on his mailbox) and this Mother Superior is just a plain Mother, one who bears gifts, except they’re the kind of gifts you have to pay for. My job is to collect. Sometimes I got to collect with the use of my blade and frankly I’m kind of hoping today is one of those days because I’d really enjoy sinking it into this phony Papa, Mr. GoodyGoody who’s just not that goody. Yeah, he’s a Pope like I’m a ripe apple. Go ahead, Johnny, bite me, you’ll soon find out how sweet I can be.

No, I’m not feeling sweet today. My shoes are soaked through from this miserable downpour and I’m all chilled as if I’m in stage one withdrawal, which I might soon have to be in, what with this latest crackdown. I’m wet, I’m cold, the hallway is dark and clammy and the rain is going machine guns on the metal roof door. And so I say, fuck you, Mr. Pope.

But then, here’s the thing: we’re outside Pope’s apartment door and there’s voices there, way back from the door and none of them are Johnny’s: a man and a woman’s but I don’t know them, and her voice is somewhat between a girl’s and a mother’s and his is gruff and has that song I recognize even though he’s not actually parlando-ing Italiano as you’d figure he would be, so I knock less loudly than I’ve got a mind to, which is stupid, but still it’s sharp enough to cause chairs to scrape the floor. So my face goes blank, because it’s now business and not the time to sink a knife into an asshole’s belly. And then shuffle, click.

The door moves and I’m staring at—I don’t know—Farley Granger and his family or something because he does look a bit like that sap from the Hitchcock movie, my good friend who greets me like an old neighborhood buddy, which he ain’t. He puts his arm around me like a faggot and bends over as if to kiss my neck except he doesn’t, he’s just up close and personal, muttering the beginnings of some excuse in his

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pillow talk voice.

“Tell your friends to come in, Johnny,” and he steps back so that Donna Reed has a chance to welcome the nice neighborhood drug dealers into her lace-and-doily home.

“Yeah, come in,” he says, “but don’t stay too long” except he never says this last part, but we get it. Even having gotten invited in is a fuckup from my point of view. We’ve been trying to be invisible all day doing business, and now we step forward into the brightly-lit “parlor” of Apartment 3B. This is not my planet and I don’t belong here. And that’s why I don’t want to be here. Their railroad flat has been made all nice: spicand-spanned, with decorations and stuff like it’s not even part of this goddamn slum. It’s like a room from an Andy Hardy movie except put together with spit and polish and the hands of some immigrant carpenter. There’s an opened ironing board, some used plates and glasses on the dining table, the smell of vanished mashed potatoes; there’s someone’s Old Man and there’s Wife and politeness. Much too much like a home. Me, I just need four walls and a cot and no rats in the bathroom.

Mother starts to beg off when Pope extends his arms to make introductions, which is exactly what we don’t fucking want. But then Pope’s father, Pope Senior, grabs Mother’s thick hand to shake it and suggests we all sit down and get to know each other. “Take off your sunglasses,” he says and if I wasn’t actively hankering for the shadows of a hallway, I might have found the idea of Mother, all dripping wet, hiding behind his shades under the glare of all this wholesomeness, but far from the glare of any goddamn sun, funny.

“I’m sorry,” says Wife, “I didn’t get your names?”

I can’t even look at her, forget give my name. She makes me feel ugly, like a deformed cripple. She’s so beautiful without even any make-up, blond and friendly, as if if I made myself at home and took off my raincoat I wouldn’t be the son of a whore underneath it. I’m tall and thin because it can be hard to get fat on dope, and she’s got all those rounded curves and looks like she wants to give us coffee and pastries, but if I can’t just give her a poke up against the living room wall, what else could I do in her company? So I stand there dickless, staring at my shoes.

“I’m getting your floors wet. Maybe . . .” and I start to fade towards the hallway apologetically.

“Yeah, we’re all getting your floors wet,” says Mother, but not because he’s so considerate. “Johnny, can we talk to you in the hall

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maybe?” Mother’s kind of an ape and he shuffles like an ape in mourning towards the door.

“Nice to meet you,” says Wife, though there was nothing nice about it, because, let’s face it, there is no meeting here. Mother, Chuch and me are never going to be in no Donna Reed movie and she’ll never be in ours.

So it’s a goddamned relief to get out of there, and we’re back where we belong now, in the hallway, the No Place that leads to Wherever You’ve Gotta Be Next, which is never home since there’s no place like that. But there are a lot of those No Places. OK, my favorite’s the No Place where I got a bed, some syringes, my own private shit hole and a nearby fire escape where I can hear the kids’ voices taunting each other (better the torture be outside the window than in).

That’s my sunlight: the distant sound of kids exploding around the neighborhood.

And now Johnny comes out to play, carrying a light jacket as if he’s got somewhere to actually go, but that’s a joke, because there’s no place. Chuch is hanging off the ladder that leads to the roof, the one that Mother owns because he’s leaning on it, the way he leans on Chuch and me, with patience and some kind of contempt or something.

Johnny draws Mother towards the stairway, away from his apartment door, away from his marriage, too, and maybe from Chuch and me, I think. Maybe so he can seduce Mother with his bullshit. I can hear him trying to disguise his whining like he’s coating it with cool, but it’s still whining. He’s been trying to find us, he’s saying, to let us know . . . what? That he needs more time? Of course. We all need more time, especially junkies.

“Yeah, everybody’s trying to find us,” I say, uninvited, indifferent to whether Wife or Daddy gets wind of me. “Junkies all over town are after us. But so are the cops.”

“This is the big one,” says Mother. “They’re shutting the lid on the whole business.”

“Or they’re trying to,” I jump in. I don’t like being excluded from their conference. “You can’t find us because they can’t find us. We’ve gotta find you.”

“We’ve always been a shadow operation,” says Mother. “Now the shadow’s in shadow.” And from the shadows, he whispers, “So what do you got?”

Johnny’s such a handsome Italian boy, but he’s fidgeting now like he’s peeling inside, like soon his handsomeness won’t show, it might

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leak from the pores of his skin, escape from his raised shirt collar which serves to hide him from the glares of those who haven’t the faintest idea he’s leaking.

These, these are the moments I really like, the moments that make us all equal. Four junkies in a hallway.

But only three of them are living off it. Which is why Johnny’s reply to Mother’s “What do you got?” is— “I got this problem.”

“We know that, “ I laugh. “We’re not stupid.”

“Unfortunately, now is not the time to talk about your problems,” Mother says softly, as if he could be sympathetic on some other occasion, which is his sales style. “What I need to hear about now is how much you have for us.”

“You see, my father showed up in town,” Johnny whispers, as if his father might overhear and learn, oh my God, that he’s in town! “So I got distracted. I haven’t had a chance . . .”

“No no no. Maybe you misunderstand,” says Mother. “This isn’t a favor. This is an obligation. The deal is you get something and then I get something in return. It’s a business. And for my business to remain a business, it depends on timely payment.”

“What have you been looking for us for if you don’t have the money?” I ask. “To invite us to your family dinner?”

“That’s just it.” Johnny’s talking to the floor, the only sympathetic listener. “My father’s going to be here for a few days and I need some stuff to tide me over. And then I can pay you back everything I owe you after he leaves.”

“Likely story,” I chime in. “What’s going to be so different then than now?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

“Listen, my friend,” Mother places his paws on Johnny’s shoulders, leaning on him, man to man, his confidante, his boss, his coffin. “Pay what you owe me and then we can discuss something to tide you over.

I can help you out, but you gotta play by the rules, right?”

“I’m sick, Mother! I don’t think I can make it until tomorrow.”

Mother steps back as if he’s done, but he isn’t. With just a little nod of his head he can send whole telegrams and he’s just sent one to Chuch who gets off his jungle gym and manages to surprise his old neighborhood friend by twisting his arm behind his back with one hand while headlocking him with the other.

“You’re going to feel a lot sicker if we have to keep coming back for the dough. But here’s something that might help you to feel better.”

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Mother snaps his fingers. My cue. I lift the hem of my jacket to pull the cold revolver from my pants waist, freeing my belly and leg from the comforting constriction of a dangerous weapon.

“Here, Johnny,” I say.

Chuch pushes Johnny towards me and the gun, but Johnny recoils as if it was a knife I was holding.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” I say. “Not before you pay Mother!

What sense would that make? The gun’s for you.”

“I’m not giving you a loaded gun,” says Mother. “I’m giving you a prop. Something to help you make your payments. You’re an addict, Johnny, and your habit’s going to get more and more expensive. So you might as well face it: you’re not going to be able to afford it any other way. But, hey, whatever you decide, if you don’t have the dough for what you already owe me, I wouldn’t worry about where to get your next fix.” Mother pauses, as if waiting for Johnny to see the light.

But from the darkness that is now Johnny, there’s not a glimmer. “I’d worry,” Mother says, “about how to deal with all your bones that are going to be broken.”

And then, what I love about Mother, his uncanny salesmanship.

He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a packet, no larger than a tea bag and extends it towards Johnny as if they had agreed to a transaction. Johnny’s eyes light up in relief, he’s been graced by a great big god, now he can take all the beatings we might dish out. He reaches out to grab it.

“What am I doing?” says Mother as he quickly withdraws the offer, holding the bag up as if keeping it out of the reach of some minor or of some barking dog. “I’m not thinking. I originally was so sure you’d have something for me that I was going to advance you a bit. What a disappointment. For everyone.” And he re-pockets the stuff.

Johnny makes as if he’s pulled by some wire towards Mother who knees Johnny with a thud to the balls. As Johnny slowly struggles to stay on his feet, I do the only merciful thing. I sucker-punch him so he can rest comfortably on the grimy hall floor. Although he’s the only one making noise, he says, “They’ll hear us in there!” in a really agonized moan, which he’s having trouble suppressing, poor thing.

“Then shut the fuck up,” is my friendly advice.

“I know you’ll have the money for me tomorrow,” says Mother.

“Because you’re a smart guy. And then I’ll show you how nice I can be.”

“You can be real nice, Mother,” I testify.

Anyone who’s got the dope on them can be real nice. Real real nice.

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Like Mother. He who nurses us all out of our conditions. And like the nurses who nurse the “nurses,” the benevolent hospital thieves in white, and the neighborhood wise guys who milk the nurses who nurse the “nurses,” all experts in relieving the Lower East Side of the Lower East Side.

Mother and I, having done all we can for our patient, descend the stairwell, Mother having dispatched Chuch to the rooftops so that our operation is less susceptible to the prying eyes of cops. Me, I’m glad to be out of there. I’d rather be out in the dirty New York City rain than around the four-square members of the Pope family. Of course, by that I mean to exclude Polo, Johnny’s baby brother. He’s not there today. Must be at Polly’s Place, shoving deadbeats to the street as usual. Polo knows what’s real. He sees it all and takes his step back.

He knows how to walk these streets without getting sucked into the sewer. Of course, it helps he was too young to get tortured in Korea, saving him from getting that sweet introduction to dope on his way to recovery. But you don’t need to land in Korea to fall. Who knows, maybe one day Polo too’ll succumb to the good old slum remedies.

The way I see it, we’re all going to go for the remedies at some point, because, face it, this is one big fucking relentless slum. Even north of Fourteenth Street. Don’t try to tell me that uptown people aren’t living in the same slum. They still have to deal with human nature, it’s just that on the Lower East Side, there’s more human nature to go around. People are too worn out trying to make a buck to disguise it, is all. So everyone finds their remedy for their own particular reality. And for me, being part of the sales team for the remedy I dig the most makes the most sense. I’ve found my little cubbyhole in the system, and its easier access to the big nipple suits this babe just fine. Even if it comes with days like today, when the cops are breathing down your neck. Hey, I’m sure every job has its down side.

The other thing about this job is it’s dependable. Junkie behavior is just not that variable. Mr. Pope is going to need Mother’s blessing no matter what. I guarantee you that later tonight or tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest, Mother’s going to have to throw a delusional, shivering mess of a man named Johnny Pope over his shoulders onto some bed and feed him with his hypodermic. The only question is how much pressure we’ll have to put on him or his family to pay up for the medicine. But I know Mother is a good businessman. I know that Mother knows just the right amount of blood that’ll need to be spilled to get the greenery to our wallets and the fairy dust to our veins.

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* * * * * So now it’s two days later. We’re parked on Ridge under the Williamsburg Bridge, in our little inkwell of darkness. And we get what we need: a sharp little lullaby beneath the skin courtesy of our Mom. Now we can finally feel one fucking moment of peace, having almost been caught by the cops three times already today. At this point, we’re better off consuming the stuff rather than having it on our person.

Which brings to mind the fact that this luxurious Packard serving as our shadowy home away from home comes courtesy of someone who currently has nothing on her person, other than a beige trench coat and a pair of heels. Man, we’re so lucky! Here inside our roomy little caboose parked under the low grind of all those cars making their way to Brooklyn and we even got our own little Putski for the night (“That’s not my name, you dumb wop.” “I know, I know, you’re a fucking Vanderbilt.”). And tonight Mother, Chuch and yours truly, Lord Apollonius, got reservations in Connecticut at our very own Little Gloria’s parents’ place, the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Putski, where we will float along the hallways of Putski Vanderbilt Manor, maybe all of us having nothing on our person other than, maybe, raincoats.

But one last thing before we go. True to form, young Mr. Pope didn’t have what it takes to jump off the moving boat—let’s call it the U.S.S. Dependence—and his baby brother had to beg Mother for a little powdery compassion. Mother has very little compassion, powdery or otherwise, but knowing Polo’s desperation made him a good bet for quick paybacks, Mother couldn’t resist. So Polo had to—I don’t know, cut off another arm or leg, sell his old Ford, do a little hustling himself so that he could give Mother his due this evening.

Mother wants to take care of business before we all start feeling too good to care about taking care of any business. So pretty Little Gloria needs to stay put since she’d only be in the way and a kind of distraction. Better she stay in the deep shadows of the Packard’s back seat.

Mother gives her her un-marching orders.

“You’ll be safe here if no one can see you. I can barely see you, so you’re OK. But if you start traipsing around the streets like some barefoot contessa . . . .”

“What’s a barefoot contessa?” asks Chuch.

“Ava Gardner,” I tell him.

Mother’s starting to get his mellow on so he sounds almost sweet and

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fuzzy as he bosses us around. “Eh, shut up, you guys.”

“I’ll stay put,” she says (being a Putski). “I don’t want any more surprises today. I would have more than this on if it even occurred to me that The Albert would be raided. It’s not like I was in Harlem,” she pouts.

No, she was just in a Greenwich Village hotel, home to the other kind of delinquents, the intellectual kind, the privileged kind that shouldn’t pay for their filthy habits like we do down here on the Lower East Side.

“It’s not like she was in Harlem,” I’m parroting incredulously to the two other Mother Brothers as we start to swim up Ridge in slow strokes, one block—one long block—to Rivington. The street—is it quieter than usual? Are the bambinos all on cough medicine? Could it be Mother’s little helper has already kicked in, giving this scabby trap of a neighborhood its Vaseline glide on this glorious (Gloria’s!) evening? Maybe so, maybe so and Mother clangs like a bell, his laugh echoing up ahead of us to help us find our way. Because tonight is going to be very rich, a little joy juice in our veins, some Putski in the back seat and some unaccustomed luxury for us bums so we can taste our bliss out of some rich fancy teacup.

And yet, as we turn on Rivington, I sense the tenement stone is kind of smiling at me, kind of hailing me, “Yo, Apples!”

I know this place, I think to myself. I love this place. This is my brother stone.

I fall into his arms, the arms of the tenement’s stoop.

“Look at you,” admonishes Mother. “Get off the fucking stoop, you dumb cluck,” and he wraps his beefy arms around me as if he loves me. We start laughing. It’s some kind of recognition scene in a weepy movie. It’s too funny for words.

We marshal our forces and embark on our necessary adventure into the magic hallway.

There will be no bad blood, the magic hallway promises.

No broken bones. No trampled skulls. No knife to the face inscribing “Bill paid,” no Farley Granger huddled around any of our fists.

So me and Mother shove each other forward, like we’re plunging into this river of dumb cluck love.

Mother finally steps up to the apartment door and knocks. He’s big, a baby King Kong, his back broad enough to support someone like me who still can’t manage to chase this long stream of giggles out of my mouth. He’s my staff, my truck-wide-shouldered father, this Mother.

You know what I love about you?

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Chuch, who’s been bringing up the rear, walks past us, past the Pope’s apartment door and is escaping to the roof.

“Chuch, where you going?”

“I told you, Mother, I don’t want to hurt Johnny.”

Mother floats the universal sign for “Come back down, you idiot.”

It’s a slight jerk of the head as if reaching for a pillow.

You know what I love about you?

Mother embraces the door. It’s his mattress and he engulfs it.

“Johnny, open up. It’s Mother!”

“He ain’t home,” I say. The nerve of that guy.

“Chuch, you want to go to the roof so bad, go in through the fire escape and open the door.”

You know what I love about you, Mother?

“What do you love about me, Apples?” He’s not even looking at me, because I got his back, he doesn’t need to. He’s somewhere inside Motherland in this close, dark hallway, inside his self. No visitors allowed.

“What I love about you . . . .”

I thought I knew. What was it? Something about the way the day goes, something about time, the time and the music, I can’t think of the words. Something about how just being in this hallway and waiting to get into Apartment 3B feels like eternity, but the kind you want to be in. Because it’s always now in this eternity.

“You got all the time in the world,” I say, “because you make your own time. Like music. You make your own music.”

“Hey, Apples, didn’t know you could sing scat like that.”

“I scat alright. I scat.” I hear the sound of the window being forced open. I hear scoo dobbity bee bop. I hear the tom tom approaching on the other side of the door. I hear Chuch and the door pushes open.

Enter! We tumble in. Light bulbs beckon. The apartment is warm and sunny in spite of the sun having folded ages ago. Come to me, cries the dining room table up ahead, abandoned as if in mid-meal.

I say, Sure thing, and find bowls half-filled with soup, cool and wet to my fingers. I lick them looking for the essence of Miss Donna Reed and I find it in a pinch of mom, a dash of pussy. I dawdle in the bowl for a second helping, leaving my autograph for Donna to discover. I think, hey, nobody here except a whole kitchen I can raid to my heart’s content.

I can hear Chuch mention my name. He’s whining to Mother who tells him, no, you look after Putski while we do business, and if she keeps groping you, well, that’s the cost of business, handle it like a

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man. Someone’s got to keep an eye on her, not a bad assignment if you ask me, if only she’d keep her trap shut, you know which one I mean.

Chuch stalks out with a pout—he’s been pouting all day—and now I have the fridge to myself and I’m pulling shit out of it like I’m a surgeon removing vital organs. I find an unopened milk bottle, tear off its bonnet and glug a nice portion down my suddenly greedy gullet, wiping the plenty that lands on my lips with the back of my hand. No Nedick’s orange soda anywhere in sight, but ooh! a pitcher, half filled with orange juice, teeming with torn little pieces of pulp.

And then I find their little family secret, a sorry cup of coffee. What the fuck? Donna Reed reheats coffee. And it’s probably even instant!

Dingalingle ling!

It’s loud and brassy and jingles like an alarm across the room. This isn’t pleasant like a Good Humor Man hawking his popsicles to the kiddies, no this is irritating. I’ve got no patience. I’d rather listen to “How Much is That Doggy in the Window” while on weed. Where is that damned phone? I find it right outside the kitchen on a coffee table and I steal the receiver from its cradle.

“Hey!” cries Mother, but I forget to care.

“Wrong number!” I announce with authority into the phone, because, obviously, any number would be the wrong number and I’m about to laugh at my giddy self when, before clanging the receiver down, I kind of recognize the voice on the other end. It’s Ginnino, from Polly’s, going “Polo? Polo is that you?”

“Ha!” I bark into the phone. “Jimmy Ginnino?”

“It’s Ginnino!” I laugh to Mother.

“What do you know! Jimmy, it’s Apples! Hey, long time!” and now I’m on a roll, unwinding around the living room like a tapped billiard ball slowly ricocheting around the table. “Oh, Polo and me, we go back ages. Uh, no, he ain’t here right now. He’s somewhere. So! How’s it going? You OK?” There’s a little commotion coming from the doorway and now I see Putski’s naked gams broaching the sanctity of the Popes’ apartment.

She and Chuch are going through some kind of drama, griping to Mother about who’s groping who, like a bunch of goddamn squirts.

Stop groping and start fucking, I’d say if I gave a shit.

“Any sight of the old bitch?” I ask Jimmy. He doesn’t seem to like that. “Well, she’s my mother, after all. If anyone can call her that, I guess I can. You always did have a soft spot for her, Jimmy, didn’t you?

Soft and not so soft, if I remember correctly. I’m just kidding! . . . Well,

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if you see her, tell her Louis says ‘mangiare gazzo!’ No, maybe you better not, unless you want to give her some ideas of your own. Man, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

Mother has separated his squabbling children. Chuch is standing by the door in his safe corner and Little Gloria has found a spot to spread her legs at the dining room table, quite a blood-rushing distraction, I must say.

“Oh yeah. Polo. I don’t know. Should be back any minute. I certainly hope so. Any message? ‘Call Jimmy pronto.’ OK, got it. Not a problem. You, too, my man.”

I let the phone wire lead me back across the room and into Putski’s court, where she awaits me with stoned indifference. So I grab one of the dining room chairs and place it so that I can get a nice view of the spot where her raincoat reveals the dark path between her legs, and wouldn’t it be nice to probe it? It would be so nice! So nice.

This is the reason I’m here, it seems to me now, so I can serenade that sexy resting place. And so I do, becoming each instrument in the Miles Davis group as it contributes its part to “All of Me.” Doo doo doop . . . Mother seems to catch my wave. doo-doo-doo doo doo doop.

He’s nodding his head to the beat, floating back and forth to shore.

Meanwhile, the sweet bitch is ignoring me, pretending that she’s not hearing my call to be consumed, to be taken, taken whole. No matter.

I take her with my song instead. Not that she knows it yet.

“Now what’s going on?!” Chuch wails. He’s got no imagination. A quiet room is just a quiet room, a naked girl is just a naked girl. He sees no possibilities. So he’s bored. Like he’s just awakened from a brain-dead dream.

“What’s wrong with you! You don’t like music?” I ask. You don’t like women? I’m thinking. Mother has grabbed a book from one of the Pope’s shelves, a big block of one with its library wrapper still on it and is sunk deep in the first page. Why not take each moment to improve one’s lot? You know what I mean?

“I like music. It just depends on who’s singing,” Chuch mutters. “I mean, why are we waiting around?”

I’m not waiting around. I’m busy. Exploring the Black Forest with my penetrating mind. And Mother’s boning up on his education. I remind His Muleness that any minute now some money is going to come walking through that door.

“Oh yeah. That’s right. The money.”

Putski’s now had enough. With a sigh of disgust, she embraces the dining room table like it’s her pillow, her thighs shifting and pushing

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against her raincoat.

Mother’s in love with his book. He doesn’t even hear us. Although it’s not like he’s found page two. I guess page one is too good for words.

“What are you studying?” I ask him. “The Bible? ‘And then there was light!’” I recite. “Right? There was light or something.”

“Yeah, keep it up.” Mother seems awfully moody. He’s wallowing in Motherland. I should let him be. But for some reason, I can’t.

“Oh, you see, I’m getting Mother mad, Chuch. You know how much he likes the Bible!”

Chuch shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head in despair. “Who reads the Bible outside church?”

“You know,” I say to Mother, “you’ll go blind if you read too much.

Reading and other things.” Chuch snorts, shaking his head, as if I’m saying something stupider than even he would.

Without lifting his eyes from the page, Mother finally gives in. “Hey, where’s that gun you gave Johnny?”

“I don’t know. Why?” “So maybe you’d do me a favor and suck a bullet.”

Instead, I take a big suck of air, a hard laugh knocked out of me.

“You want me to suck a bullet?!”

“Yeah, but it’ll be from my gun!”

Chuch is chortling away but I’m not laughing any more.

I remember this wise guy my mother once brought home. He didn’t like my crying, it was interfering with his fucking concentration. He unhooked from the saddle (my mother), found his shoulder holster and put his revolver in my face.

“Open your mouth, you little twerp.”

My mother, the bitch who introduced me to this motherfucker, starts to scream her bloody head off.

I remember the taste of the gun metal as he threatened to blow my head off if I didn’t shut up and go to sleep. I remember it tasted good.

I’ve got so many fond memories of home.

But now, I’m not home. In fact, no one’s home. That’s the point.

And this home feels emptier than empty right now.

“What’s so special about your gun?” I ask.

Mother’s still on page one. “You’ll find out.”

“You know what? I don’t think I’ll find out.” I put my hand in my pants pocket, looking for my switchblade.

“You don’t, huh?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

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“Hey, guys,” Chuch whines, “cut it out, will you?”

“Don’t worry,” Mother says. “Apples can take care of himself, right, Apples?”

Yeah, I can take care of myself.

“He don’t need me.”

No, I don’t need nobody. And nobody needs me. I know all that.

Still, I feel like a foundling Mother’s leaving on someone’s doorstep.

I’m not a foundling and Mother can’t leave me on nobody’s doorstep.

Mother’s relentless. He goes on. “You can always go back to hanging around subway men’s rooms with your hat brim pulled down to your chin. And clobber poor guys for small change towards your next dope supply. How many poor saps did you have to do each day to get your day’s worth?”

Now I’m pissed.

“Hey, Mother, since when did you become a charity organization?

And those ‘poor saps’—half of them were goddamn pervs! Hey, I was doing it for the kids, right, Chuch? Doing it for the sake of the kids!”

“Don’t get me involved in this. I don’t know nothing about pervs in rest rooms.”

“Naah, you wouldn’t know a perv even if he had his dick all the way up your ass.”

Now I did it. The mule is riled. He stands up and squares his shoulders, aiming his chin in my direction. He looks like Dondi, but thick with muscle, not the waif-like war orphan drawn in the comics.

Dondi in Benito Mussolini position.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “What’s wrong with you, Apples? Why can’t you give me a break?”

“Cool it,” Mother coos, looking up slowly from page one. “It looks like he’s got his dick up your ass now.” Then he says to me, “You know what that makes you.”

Now I’m not the one so happy. I stand up, my hand in my pocket clenched around the handle of my blade, ready, in fact, to be a Mother fucker.

But I’m the one who’s motherfucked. Before I know it, Mother’s mug’s risen from its library stupor and is in my face. He’s managed to twist my knife arm behind me, throwing me over the back of the Pope family sofa, my knife and my long legs hitting the ground together.

Then he grabs my hair in his fist, pulling me backwards onto the sofa and back under his sweaty domain. There’s nothing left to do but succumb to the no-choiceness of it, and maybe that’s what I want all along. Kind of the way it feels to be family, a kind of numb belonging.

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Somewhere outside the numbness, I can hear Chuch and Mother going at each other. Chuch is sounding all stressed from the ruckus; he doesn’t want any trouble. Then he’s off on these tangents. Some kind of nonsense about puppies and old ladies, but without the words it just sounds like a junkie whining to his pusher. The stupor I long for has started to make its home in me and I don’t care about banter or wise cracks or any kind of city traffic whatsoever. I want to stay right here, feeling the stress on my scalp where my hair is pulled. It reminds me of something. And though I can’t figure out what it is, that’s OK, too, because I like the searching, I like the searching for something familiar.

“Take it easy, Chuch,” I hear myself say, trying to keep his agitation away from me, but that doesn’t stop him, he gets even louder and more pathetic and I hope Mother slugs him one. If I have to take sides between the two of them, I definitely will choose the spigot. All good things flow from Mother. I catch Mother’s eye to let him know there’s no harm done here, that we two are still a killer team.

But before Chuch can get his whupping, another candidate for a little discipline stumbles through the door.

It’s Mr. Johnny Pope. Before he can get his bearings, Chuch slips behind him blocking his panicky exit. Well, well, Johnny, where are you off to? I saunter back to the dining room where, overlooking the balcony of Putski’s long legs, I can sit back and watch the scene in comfort. I’ve seen this movie before. I know what’s coming. Johnny isn’t going to look so pretty anymore.

“How did you guys get in? Where’s Celia?” Johnny shouldn’t look so confused. He knew there was the devil to pay.

“Where’s my money? Screw Celia.”

Putski suddenly sits up high, roused as if from a deep sleep by some puppeteer pulling her strings. “Who’s Celia?” she says like the princess puppet under a mighty spell.

“Yo!” Mother delegates to me. “Pull her together and get her out of here!”

It looks like I’m going to miss the fun. But the buzz is still fine, and suddenly witnessing the climax to the action no longer seems important. I’ve got Princess Little Gloria to handle and handle is what I intend to do. I tug the skirt of her raincoat around her legs, getting to sneak the tiniest touch of her silky, inner knee. I try to guide her from her chair with a little help around her waist, but she’s doing the lindy and unwinds from my grasp as if from a turn on the dance floor.

Now she’s found pretty Johnny and she looks taken with him, a little flustered kind of and very prettily announces, “Please don’t get any

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wrong ideas about me. I’ve only just met these gentlemen. We have but the merest acquaintance.”

“Let’s go find a dress for you,” I say as a way to lure her out the door.

“No, no,” she says, “you’re not the shopping kind of guy. I know your type. You just do the selling.” She tries to straighten out her raincoat with her available hand. “Just so you know, there will be no transactions tonight. Of any kind.” And then, to Johnny, “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

“Come on!” I give her a yank and pull her offstage, ending her drawing room drama with a little good-old-fashioned burlesque.

And now, the garbage-ridden streets of the Lower East Side are expecting our entrance. Come out, you players, they cry, you hypnotized piles of bones, you victims of atomic immigrant fallout, come out to our lamp-lit cobblestoned alleys, our stadium of traffic farts and radio overflow seeping out of our tired, winking windows.

Dance through this junkie graveyard while you can. Way in the distance, in one of many possible directions, lies the magic land of Connecticut, and if we can make it that far in our metallic hulking gondola, maybe we can have one of those humming, happy nights free of electric shock cop jitters, with only sea breezes travelling through our brains. The slutty princess and I walk our bones down the wormhole tenement stairs, indifferent to the darkness, comfortably lost to ourselves. Tonight Johnny has a price to pay and he will pay it.

We’ll pay one of these days, but who gives a fuck? Paying is what we’re used to. We steal the night and pay all the tomorrows, right?

Inspired by characters from the play “A Hatful of Rain” by Michael V. Gazzo

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Papillon

Mara Lee Grayson There’s a sputtering as he notices it, an ignition not yet turning over, a key he keeps trying to catch. I’ve seen this movie before: Steve McQueen plots his escape.

I squeeze my body in between a green paper curtain and a gurney, a portable monitor measuring my father’s vital signs. He lets me past the sphygmomanometer, the pulse oximeter, and the IV woven through the folds of his right hand.

It’s the redundancy of the endotracheal tube he can’t abide, and the ventilator’s imprecise performance, barely more than mimicry, of unembodied respiration. I think I touch his arm.

Most remakes are shit, my father would say, reminding me that Paul Muni was the original Scarface, but that every actor who plays Montague must find newness in Romeo and Juliet, and remaking what is made already makes something new of all of us. I wonder if he knows some orchids too are shapeshifters: wearing costumes made for other flowers to attract the butterflies, dressed in drag to lure libidinous bees, enticing flies with the smell of stale flesh. Actors are only living

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in the presence of the audience, never anywhere but always in the process of becoming.

I feel the question in his eyes as he observes the tube in his throat, blooming like an orchid.

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Self-Portrait Having a Picnic Matthew Valades

People don’t know this about me, but I walked from China, coastal China, to the Horn of Africa just because my nephew said I couldn’t.

Now I get his allowance and lucky socks.

He has cried and I have won, a boon for me but death to the family picnic.

A lawn nouns to life, a life made flesh as I sit and strum the grass, neither alone or haunted, a pain to keep this green, I’m told.

I love the breeze and sun, the way I ring inside of them like a tiny bell.

My hand is a fork, larger than average, divining water and metals, and brings the touch where grass grows. My lovely, bright strawberries beg for just a bite or two.

Without me they would all go bad!

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Self-Defense Brett Werenski

From: Cook Harwell To: Washington State Bar Association Disciplinary Board Subject: In re Disbarment Proceeding against Cook Harwell Members of the Board: I’m here because I care. The irony of this is not lost on you, I’m sure. Attorneys usually face disbarment because they’ve sacrificed their clients at the altar of greed or vanity or victory, deserting their principles in service of their passions. This is not one of those cases.

Now I’ll be the first to admit I spiraled out of control. It would be pointless to say no one was hurt. But what you must understand is that in the beginning—and the very end—I was standing up for a client.

All clients, really. I was defending a certain standard of lawyering, which is something you—the gatekeepers of our profession—can surely appreciate. It’s only later that a man went to the hospital.

One note before I begin: at the moment, I have only a single NoShank Super Flex Pen at my disposal. According to DOC 470.355(4) (b)(iv)(M), inmates like myself at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton are allowed up to two nonlethal ballpoints a month. Last Thursday, however, the man working the commissary refused to sell me a second pen. When I reported this code violation to the officer who oversees my Living Unit, he speculated the commissary was probably just running low on pens. I said even assuming, arguendo, this is what happened, inventory shortfall does not excuse a contravention of the Washington Administrative Code. He told me to stop shouting and said he’d “look into it.” That was 8 days ago. Since my informal attempt to resolve this issue was unsuccessful, I will opt for a more adversarial route—yesterday, I filed a written complaint with the Grievance Warden. While I wait for a reply, I’ll write slowly and judiciously, laboring over each word to conserve ink. If my plea for relief should fall on similarly unsympathetic ears, my first draft may well be my only draft.

Now to the genesis of my case. On May 13, 2020, Mr. Paul Spitters, a public defender from Seattle, posted to a ListServ thread maintained

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by the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (WACDA). Mr. Spitters had a bit of a dilemma. A month prior, the Supreme Court of Washington suspended jury trials until July 6 due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Order No. 25700-B-615. His client, however, wanted a trial right away, which is understandable considering that is his right. See U.S. Const. amend. VI; Wash. Const. art. I, § 22. Because Mr. Spitters could not solve this problem on his own, he reached out to the ListServ for help.

Before I get too deep into the facts, I think it’s important to note that before May 13, I’d never had any personal interactions with Mr. Spitters. The jurisdiction in which I practice is three hours away from Seattle, so I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to run across him in a professional setting. I was vaguely familiar with him from the ListServ, as he was a serial abuser of the WACDA ListServ policy, which states, “Do not post unnecessary comments.” WACDA, Limitations on Use, www.wacda/resources/limitationsonuse. Mr. Spitters rarely, if ever, engaged with any of the substantive legal issues broached by his WACDA counterparts. Rather than respond in earnest to his colleagues’ questions, he was content to post ironic asides, treating the ListServ as if it was a Twitter thread.

I make this slight detour into Mr. Spitters’ character because it informs his initial post. For the sake of accuracy, I’ll quote directly from his email titled “Motion for Speedy Trial: Human Waste Edition”: My client has shit for brains. This has been confirmed by a forensic scatologist I hired to assist me on the case. As it turns out, having a brain made of entirely of human excrement correlates strongly with both stupidity and obstinacy, and my client presents with both symptoms. I’ve told him—on multiple occasions, in several different ways, and at an escalating volume— that trials are suspended because of COVID and that under no circumstances could he have a trial even if he wanted one. But he is demanding one anyway and insists I object to a continuance of his trial, which is set on Monday. I’m looking to see if anyone has a speedy trial motion handy? Have to file by tomorrow. Please kill me. TIA. This email initially shocked me because of how blatantly Mr.

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Spitters violated the ListServ’s ban on “defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal . . . language.” WACDA, Limitations on Use, www.wacda/resources/limitationsonuse. He obviously had no respect for the ListServ curators’ clearly posted guidelines. More astounding, though, was the fact that he’d publicly denigrated his client and appeared to feel no shame about it. Did he think the client was unworthy of his efforts? Did he think all his clients were unworthy of his efforts? If he was willing to broadcast such brutish opinions to every criminal defense attorney in the state, what sort of latent depravity lurked in the twisted recesses of his mind? It was these thoughts and others like them that led me to respond with the following: Shame on you, Mr. Spitters. It’s this kind of CALLOUSNESS that gives us a bad name. Your client is a human being who deserves your RESPECT! When you speak in such a way, you degrade your client, the bar, and YOURSELF! Within a few minutes, Mr. Spitters responded to my post: Is this guy fucking serious?

I replied in kind: Why would I be joking, Mr. Spitters? You didn’t treat your client with basic human DIGNITY. He has rights and it is your DUTY to defend them! There is no shame in standing up for your client and filing the motion. It is an HONOR to do what we do!

Mr. Spitters didn’t respond to my post, although much to my surprise, several other attorneys jumped to his defense. One poster told me there was no need for me to “act like an anal rind” because, “[w]e all know Spitters gives a shit about his clients.” Another ListServ member sought to justify his behavior: “He didn’t say he wouldn’t file the motion, just that his client was a fucknuckle. We’ve all been there.”

A third simply told me to “pump the brakes” before I had a “stroke.”

These responses disappointed me, as our legal community was essentially sanctioning disrespect. This is basically what I said in my next email:

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We are defense attorneys! That means we must DEFEND our clients! Once we give in to the temptation to call our clients “shit for brains” and “fucknuckle” we start sounding like PROSECUTORS. If you aren’t willing to talk the right way, Mr. Spitters, you might as well find a DIFFERENT JOB. I was pleased with my message; others were not. They again rushed to the aid of their friend Mr. Spitters, claiming that he was “one of the most intelligent and committed and dedicated advocates you’ll ever meet.” They also attacked me personally: “Dear Jackass: While you’re sitting at home, waiting to be offended, Spitters is working fulltime during a pandemic, risking his health for his clients. GET OVER YOURSELF.” I responded with the following: How am I to know that Mr. Spitters “gives a shit” about his clients? That he’s a “committed and dedicated” (words mean the same thing, btw) attorney? Language is IMPORTANT, people! And just because I’m a part-time public defender I can’t say anything? BAD ARGUMENT! LOGICAL FALLACY! After a noticeable absence, Mr. Spitters reentered the discussion: After minutes of intense soul-searching, I’ve decided to keep my job so I can spend less time with my family. So can someone please send me what I asked for? Like I said, I need to file by tomorrow.

I was discouraged Mr. Spitters didn’t take the opportunity to apologize for his poor word choices. I was also confused as to why he was trying to get others to do his work for him. I responded with this: How hard is it to write a simple, bare bones MOTION? Do it yourself.

Also Mr. Spitters, I have to say I am offended that you have not addressed your choice to disparage your client on this PUBLIC FORUM. I press this issue because

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when you start sounding like THEM, there ceases to be an US. And when no one is defending people from the government there is only one thing: TYRANTY!!!

People really had fun with my misspelling of “tyranny.” One person wrote that Tyranty was a French surname that, roughly translated, meant “deafening ignorance.” Another claimed to be a direct descendant of the late Ty Ranty, the man who pioneered screampowered technology. A third went so far as to create a dictionary definition for the term: “TY • RANTY. adj. Particularly disposed to uncontrollable verbal outbursts about Ty, the American multinational corporation headquartered in Oak Brook, IL // my Beanie Baby’s factory defect made me Tyranty AF.” By the time this humorless riff ran out of steam, it’d been an hour since someone addressed the substantive issue, and I assumed the thread was dead. But then Mr. Spitters sent “The Email.” I’ll quote his message in full to ensure its accuracy: Hi Meg, I thought the stupidest person I was going to deal with today was my client, but I guess one thing this job will teach you is that there’s always someone dumber out there. That man is like the black swan of idiots.

I know I should ignore him, but it’s so, so, so hard not to engage. Magoo might not have anything better to do than get up on that high horse he’s also probably fucking, but we shouldn’t have to listen to his endless sermons from the Church of the Manichean Gospel.

Anyway, you’re right—I should unplug. If I don’t I’m going to end up reaching through the screen and choking that halfwit with his own Caps Lock key.

As you no doubt know by now, this message was intended for a woman named Meg Waxman, not the entire WACDA ListServ. And as you also know by now, I’m “Magoo.” I’m the “halfwit” who is “probably fucking” his horse. I’m the “black swan of idiots.” To be completely honest, I’ve never been so hurt in my life. In my 16 years as an attorney, I’ve suffered some heart-wrenching defeats. And on more

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than a few occasions, I’ve been verbally attacked in open court. But in those instances, at least I could see the blow coming. At least I could prepare for impact. Mr. Spitters’ email was the professional equivalent of being pantsed in front of the class while reading a book report.

Public humiliation is indeed a cruel punishment. And I’ll remind you that at this point, I’d committed no crime.

To make matters worse, Mr. Spitters didn’t respond. He was “offline.” His absence created a vacuum into which the other members of the ListServ rushed. I don’t have to tell you that what filled this void was ugly—I’m sure you could’ve expected that. For starters, even though hundreds of attorneys from around the State of Washington post to the ListServ every day, not one of them stood up for me.

Instead, they used the email for their personal amusement. What follows is the string of responses to Mr. Spitters’ hateful message: 2:03: So . . . who’s going to tell him?

2:12: I’m gonna hide under this rock real quick.

Someone hit me up when it’s over.

2:34: That thing’s just lingering like a fart, isn’t it?

3.18: *winces* Maybe he wasn’t talking about Cook?

3:24: It was a perfect email.

3:37: I think you mean it was a PERFECT EMAIL!!

4:56: Funny part is that’s the nicest thing someone’s said about Cook all day.

4:58: Nicest thing someone’s ever said about Cook.

JK, Cook!

5:02: No you’re not.

7:48: How long do car crashes usually last? And how long are you supposed to watch?

8:01: Don’t think it’s like looking into the sun. You can watch as long as you want, but you might get awkwardness poisoning.

10:02: I’m starting to think Spitters doesn’t know.

I stayed up well past midnight, refreshing my email every few minutes. Mr. Spitters had yet to address his mistake when I fell asleep at my keyboard that evening. I woke up at 7 and scoured my Inbox, thinking there would almost certainly be a carefully worded apology buried somewhere in my early morning deluge of spam. But there was nothing. I must admit, I found Mr. Spitters’ silence to be almost as cruel as his slight. It was if he was saying, “I know I hurt you, Mr.

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Harwell, but I really don’t care. And you’re the black swan of idiots for thinking otherwise.”

Ten new ListServ threads popped up by 9 a.m., and Mr. Spitters’ transgression was in the rearview mirror. I thought he might be more willing to address the matter privately, so I rang his office. My call went to voicemail. I tried a few more times just to make sure the receptionist wasn’t in the bathroom. But when those calls went unanswered, too, I surmised his office was closed. I pulled out my laptop.

I’m not confrontational, although I can be. Perhaps I’m more willing challenge people now that doing so is a part of my job. I’ve learned, however, that locking horns with someone is not always the must fruitful tack. More often than not, I take the softer approach and allow people the opportunity to explain themselves. So I sent Mr. Spitters the following: We don’t know one another, but we both know what you did. I understand your email may have been sent out of frustration, so I want to give you the BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. Please get back to me so we can get to the bottom of our differences. There’s no need for us to BUTT HEADS. I pressed send at 10:03 a.m., then forced myself to take a walk because I knew waiting on a response would be torture. When I got back at 10:30, I saw Mr. Spitters had read the email, but had yet to reply. Suitable apologies are rarely composed off the cuff—an appropriate account of one’s behavior and accompanying plea for complete and total forgiveness can take time to craft. The wording has to be just right. When I checked back in at 11, there was still nothing. At this point I was beginning to develop a respect for him, as I believed he was giving his response deep thought. I imagined him sitting in front of his computer, agonizing over the sentences on his screen. I held out hope that by 11:30, I’d see his name in my Inbox. I had that same hope in my heart when I checked back at 11:35.

By midday, I understood. I understood that if I was going to get my apology, I was going to have to drive to Seattle and ask for it. I didn’t think—and still don’t—that this was an unreasonable request.

What is unreasonable is how the ListServ thread has been used against me. To say it has been overinterpreted would be the understatement of the decade. Although I can’t deny Mr. Spitters’

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email was the reason I drove to Seattle that day, it’s a stretch to use this as evidence of a “motive” for my future crimes. Was I frustrated with Mr. Spitters? Yes. Did I want him to say he was sorry? Also yes. Was I fantasizing about what I might say to him as I drove there? Sure. But was I planning on breaking the law once I confronted him? Absolutely not.

In what follows, I will address each of the charges the Board has levied against me. What I hope to make clear is that even when I did commit an offense, it was not done with malice aforethought.

Before I transition into the grounds for my disbarment, though, I must briefly return to the ongoing pen dilemma in which I find myself. My first formal complaint was returned without a ruling— the Grievance Warden indicated I’d filled out a Form 21-473 when I should’ve filled out a Form 05-165. I resubmitted the complaint on the correct form, but this, too, was returned to me. Apparently, I’d forgotten to include my inmate number. I tried to file a third grievance, but was informed that the prison had run out of 05-165 forms. Under these circumstances, an inmate may submit a complaint on notebook paper, which I did. But the Grievance Warden rejected my complaint because I’d composed it in on 8 ½ x 14-inch standard legal size instead of the required 8 ½ x 11-inch standard letter size.

I wanted to throw something against the wall, but I had nothing to throw—prison guidelines prohibit inmates from possessing any kind of personal item that can be “thrown, hurled, heaved, flung, launched, or otherwise propelled in any manner, either manually or by way of makeshift contraption, e.g., catapult, slingshot, flingstick, etc.” I was left to channel my anger into my writing. With the fire of bureaucratic resentment flowing through me, I wrote a scathing rebuke of the prison’s systematic attempts to deprive me of due process under the law. After double-checking that the complaint was written on the prison’s precious 8 ½ ” x 11”-in. paper, I filed it with the Grievance Warden. I await a reply.

The tragedy of all this is that I’ve been forced to spend a great deal of ink on an attempt to get more ink. Ah, the double bind!

Nevertheless, I must pursue this challenge. I will only be able to truly defend myself when my mind is free of worry and my pen is full of ink. I respectfully request you take this into account when judging the quality of the argument infra.

Count 1: Mr. Harwell violated RPC 8.4(c) by misrepresenting himself.

Dishonesty was the furthest thing from my mind on May 14. All I

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wanted to do was have a heart-to-heart with the man who publicly eviscerated me.

I looked up the docket online and saw Mr. Spitters had a motion hearing scheduled at 3 p.m. in King County Superior Court. I figured I could make it if I didn’t stop, so I jumped in my car and drove as fast as I could, careful to obey all posted speed limits. Before I left home, I put on a suit and tie out of habit, an ensemble that looked a little formal once I caught a glimpse of myself in the side mirror. After arriving in Seattle and finding a parking spot, I left my jacket and tie in the car and walked up to the mostly empty courthouse at a quarter after 3, mask snug over my nose and mouth. I found the courtroom and pulled the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. I heard voices— muffled, but distinct—on the other side of it, so I pulled again. The rattle of the stubborn wooden door echoed in the lonely hallway.

“That’s attempted burglary,” said a voice from behind me. It was Mr. Spitters—I recognized him from his LinkedIn profile. He’d just come out of the bathroom and was wiping his hands on the front of his suit pants.

His eyes were indignant. At some point I realized this was his default facial expression—it always looks like he’s staring at something incredibly bright. He stood there for a moment, considering me, and then walked off without a parting word. It took me a few seconds to realize I’d just come face-to-face with the very man I’d been hoping to meet, so he got quite the head start on me. I put a little pep in my step and tried to catch him as he shuffled past the elevator and the clerk’s office and the metal detector. Once I got outside and my eyes adjusted to the light, I spotted him walking down 4th Ave. I jogged along the tree-lined sidewalk and closed the gap between us, eventually getting within a few feet of him just as he was getting ready to cross Jefferson.

When I reached out to touch him on the shoulder, he whipped his head around and scowled. Mr. Spitters—now bug-eyed—asked me “what in the mother of fuck” I thought was doing. The sun was warm on my neck, the wind cool on my face. My feet were heavy. I cleared my throat, pulled my shoulders back, and stood up straight. I said I was looking for him. When he asked why, I didn’t respond for what felt like a minute, maybe more.

You’ll have to take me at my word that I wanted to be honest with him. My opening line was crouched in the starting block—I’d practiced it a hundred times on the drive there. But something about the way he was holding himself told me candor would backfire. His whole body was playing defense. When I played it out in my head,

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any conversation that began with the day before was going to devolve into a screaming match, and that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t about to shout my objections in the street. Mr. Spitters needed to hear—really hear—how much he’d hurt me. I suppose I could’ve tried approaching him on a different day when I would’ve been more likely to get a sympathetic ear, but when would that be? When was the next time I’d be in Seattle, alone with this man? And how many other people would he hurt in the meantime? If I didn’t cut this thing off at the pass right then and there, who knows how many colleagues he’d humiliate, how many clients he’d demean, how much dishonor he’d bring to our profession? So I told him I wanted to interview him for the newspaper.

I understand how sinister this sounds, but I can assure you it wasn’t some nefarious plot to ingratiate myself with Mr. Spitters so I could eventually undermine him. The identity I created in that moment— Franklin Tucci, crime reporter—was a spur-of-the moment reaction to an unexpected confluence of events. I’m as surprised as you are as to what came out of my mouth. I’ll defend my actions only by saying that I wasn’t trying to hurt Mr. Spitters, just bypass his initial resistance.

Tucci was a shortcut to an amicable resolution.

After I introduced my fake self, Mr. Spitters’ shoulders dropped. His eyes returned to their resting clench. He asked me why I wanted to interview him, and I said I was writing a story about public defenders during the pandemic. He said he didn’t understand why I’d come all the way down to the courthouse when I could’ve just sent an email.

This was a good question, and I told him so. I explained that I was already at the courthouse gathering documents for another story and stopped by the courtroom to see if I could kill two birds with one stone. So to speak. He paused, looked me up and down, and asked where the documents were. I told him by the time I got to the courthouse, the clerk’s office was closed. He took a step closer, cocked his head. He asked me where my recorder was. I pulled out my phone.

He stood and blinked. Then he hit the button for the crosswalk and told me to follow him. While we crossed the street, I asked if going to an enclosed space with a stranger was a good idea considering there was a deadly virus on the loose. He said he thought I was reporter for the Seattle Times, not the Pussy Post-Gazette.

Count 2: Mr. Harwell violated RPC 8.4(c) by engaging in subterfuge.

I will concede that part of Mr. Spitters’ willingness to open up to me was due to the fact that I told him we were “off the record.” Obviously,

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there was no record—on, off, or otherwise. Still, I don’t think you can discount the alcohol. Once we got to Mr. Spitters’ office and I settled into my chair, he asked me if I wanted a drink. I told him I didn’t drink so early in the day. He called me “Straight Edge” and poured himself “two fingers” of brown liquor, which he swallowed in one gulp. Before we finished talking, he downed at least six more fingers.

Mr. Spitters’ office was somehow both empty and cramped. Folders were tossed about hither and fro, and the drawers to his file cabinets hung open like empty mouths. Unlike the floor, which was covered in paper, his walls were completely bare. Nails stuck out of the drywall, reminders of what wasn’t there. I scanned Mr. Spitters’ bookshelf and saw he had the newest edition of Karl Tegland’s Courtroom Handbook on Washington Evidence. I asked him if he’d found Tegland’s as useful as I had, a comment I wish I could’ve jerked back like a yo-yo. Mr. Spitters inquired as to why I’d be reading Tegland’s, seeing how I was a reporter, and I said because I didn’t know the first thing about trials and I’d just started on this crime beat anyway. He leaned back in his chair. It creaked. “You’ve got a weird way about you,” he said. Then, after a drink: “Ask your damn questions.”

I interviewed Mr. Spitters just as I would a client. I assumed that like an attorney, a reporter would try to make the subject feel comfortable.

He’d guide them slowly along. He’d creep closer to the truth. So I acted like I was doing all those things. I said it must be hard to do his job now that the justice system had been put on hold. He said his job was always hard—now was no different. I asked him if he experienced any discomfort coming in to work. He said he was worried at first, but then he stopped caring. I asked him when he thought things would get back to normal. He said the criminal justice system is inherently abnormal, so never. He didn’t open up until I asked him what was the hardest part of his job was.

My sense was that Mr. Spitters had been waiting for someone to ask him this question for a long time, maybe even before the pandemic began. He said being a public defender was like running an uphill race with no finish line. I thought his answer was trite—an uphill race sounded an awful lot like the proverbial uphill battle—but since I’m skilled in the art of nonjudgmental listening, I simply nodded and asked him to tell me more about that. He said his day consisted of various forms of self-debasement. He kowtowed to obviously biased judges who had a tenuous grasp on the law at best. He sucked up to self-important prosecutors so he could get better deals for his clients.

(Prosecutors, he said, were the legal profession’s equivalent of what

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you might find after you drag a river—the sludge drawn from lowertier law schools too stupid to realize their victories were the product of institutional advantages, not their own acumen.) Then there were the clients—the whiny, resentful clients—whose incarceration was somehow his fault and only his fault, even though he didn’t arrest them, charge them, or write the laws that put them there. The cops, the clerks, his boss—they all got a turn in the grinder, too.

Mr. Spitters told me that on top of all the nonsense he usually had to deal with, the day before he’d been dragged into a fight with “some douchesicle” from the WACDA ListServ. I tightened my mask over my face and asked him to tell me more about that. He read his initial email out loud and when I didn’t laugh, he said I’d understand if I ever met his client. I asked him how common it was for attorneys to use that kind of language. He said, “This is a contact sport.” I asked him if he ever regretted calling his clients names like that, and he said, “Well, I’m not lying. A lot of them are shitheads.”

When he read my response to his post, he cackled. I asked Mr. Spitters who sent that, and he said it was some defense attorney from a town I’d probably never heard of. Mr. Spitters read my second and third emails and was equally amused. I said I really didn’t understand why he found this Cook Harwell fellow to be so objectionable—he seemed to care a great deal about his clients, at least. Mr. Spitters told me Cook was like a puppy—he starts off with a chew toy, and then before long, he’s eaten everything in the house. I said that even if he didn’t agree with Cook—or even if he took things a little too far— could he at least understand his point? He looked me straight in the eye and said, “That man is too dull for a point.”

Mr. Spitters asked me if I was OK—he said I was breathing funny. I told him I was fine and asked him how everything ended. Mr. Spitters said he didn’t realize he’d sent “The Email” to the whole ListServ until he got to work that morning. I asked him if he’d responded, and he said he hadn’t. I asked him why, and he said Cook wasn’t worth his energy. I looked around the office. There was a stapler, a coffee mug, a stainless steel water bottle. There were pens—good ones, sharp—and a pair of scissors. I also had my own two hands. I was shaking. “I have to go,” I said.

Mr. Spitters said he’d walk out with me. I didn’t want him to, but I had no choice. This is what Tucci would’ve done. When we got to the parking garage, Mr. Spitters let loose a string of curse words and said he’d left his keys in his office. I told him to check his pockets and after rummaging through his coat and pants for what felt like a full

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five minutes, he found them. He fumbled them onto the ground, then almost fell over trying to pick them up. I said he might be over the legal limit and told him it’d probably be a good idea if I gave him a ride home. Mr. Spitters, for the first time, agreed with me.

Count 3: Mr. Harwell violated RPC 8.4(b) by committing the crime of kidnapping (RCW 9A.40.030).

I took a left out of the garage, just like he asked me to. I took a right on Cherry St., just like he asked me to. And I headed north on I-5, just like he asked me to. I even let him pick the radio station—Seattle’s only alternative, 107.7 The End. I honestly had every intention of driving Mr. Spitters home, but once one thing starts leading to another, it’s easy to lose control.

After I passed the off ramp for Olive, Mr. Spitters said it wasn’t much further, just another couple exits. I was running out of time, so I got straight to the point. I asked Mr. Spitters that even if he didn’t think it was worth his energy to respond to Cook, could he at least acknowledge that what he wrote might have hurt him? He said he could. I asked him if he could go back in time, would take it back?

He said he would. I asked him if he was in any way sorry for what he said. His exact words: “I guess I feel bad if I ruined the guy’s day or whatever.” I almost bit through my tongue. I told Mr. Spitters that wasn’t an apology, and he looked confused. I explained that he hadn’t actually taken responsibility for what he’d done; all he’d said was that he felt bad because someone else felt bad. Mr. Spitters told me that at some point, I’d need to get in the far right hand lane.

I can be intense. It’s one of the qualities that’s served me well in the courtroom. On more than one occasion I’ve cross-examined someone with such vigor that by the time they crawled off the witness stand, they were physically exhausted. People have told me that when I get like this, I look like a kid playing a video game. I don’t know what I looked like when I was driving with Mr. Spitters that day because I was trying to pay attention to the road, but it certainly felt like I was back in the courtroom. There was that same swell of determination that starts in your stomach and rushes up to your head.

I asked Mr. Spitters—again—if he understood the difference between feeling bad for hurting someone and recognizing he made a mistake. He asked me why I cared so much, and I said I was a journalist and I respected language. Mr. Spitters said what happened wasn’t a big deal—he sent an email, the guy saw it, so what? He told me to let it go. And to take the next exit.

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I told Mr. Spitters it was a big deal because Cook was probably questioning his competence as a professional and his intelligence as a human being. It’s highly unlikely anyone would ever take him seriously again, I said. I then told Mr. Spitters he could probably fix everything with a public apology, which didn’t even have to be that long, maybe a few sentences max, perhaps a little blurb at the end about how dedicated an advocate Cook is and why such dedication is an asset to the profession. He said the time had passed and I was going to miss the exit if I didn’t slow down. I pressed the pedal to the floor and sped past the off ramp.

It’s hard to say what I was thinking. I suppose I wasn’t. Employing more colorful language than I’d care to quote, Mr. Spitters told me to turn around immediately. I said I’d take him home, but first he’d have to admit he was wrong. He shifted in his seat so he could look straight at me. He said I was a lunatic. I told him “lunatic” was an outdated and offensive term that disparaged the mentally ill. He said I sounded like “him.” Then he said, “Oh my God—you’re him.”

In an outburst punctuated by epithets, Mr. Spitters managed to let me know I was a bigger idiot than he’d ever imagined. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket, but as soon as he did, I reached over and slapped it out of his hand. He picked it up off the floor and tried to dial, but I slapped it to the floor again. We both grabbed for it and because I couldn’t keep my hands on the wheel while I was trying to scoop the phone off the floor mat, I started swerving all over the Ship Canal Bridge. That’s about the time I saw blue lights in my rearview.

“You’re fucked now,” Mr. Spitters told me.

Count 4: Mr. Harwell violated RPC 8.4(b) by committing the crime of attempted murder (RCW 9A.32.050 and RCW 9A.28.020).

This is the one charge I’ll forever deny. If you examine the record from my criminal cases, you’ll see I took full responsibility for each of my charges except the attempted murder, which I pled guilty to under North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 91 S. Ct. 160, 27 L. Ed. 2d 162 (1970). In my plea colloquy, I gave a detailed confession and offered a full and complete apology, but I was clear that while it may have appeared to outside eyes that I tried to kill Mr. Spitters, this was the furthest thing from the truth. What most people forget is that the facts were on my side—other than my driving, of course. I’ll be the first to admit that I was going rather fast.

Even though I had to the pedal to the floor, I was able to win the battle for Mr. Spitters’ cell phone, as he was rather drunk. He pouted

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and told me he was keeping a running tab of how many felonies I’d committed. He said by his count, I was good for kidnapping, robbery, and attempting to elude a pursuing police vehicle, to which they’d probably tack on the 12-month endangerment aggravator. I said I didn’t agree with him on the eluding charge because one of the elements of that offense is reckless driving, and I wasn’t driving recklessly, just well above the speed limit. Mr. Spitters asserted that driving over the speed limit can be reckless, but I said the court held otherwise in State v. Randhawa, 133 Wash. 2d 67, 941 P.2d 661 (1997).

He said I’d read that case wrong, and on top of that I was psychopath.

I said I’d have to go back and read Randhawa again.

The blue lights behind me doubled and tripled and quadrupled.

It looked like I was being followed by a rock concert. I tried to give the car some gas, but there was nothing left to give. Mr. Spitters encouraged me to make things worse for myself. He said he’d like to see how many years in prison I could get. I said I didn’t want to take things any further; I just wanted him to acknowledge, however briefly, that he’d done something wrong. Mr. Spitters used some choice words to let me know what I could go do to myself. I asked him why he was being so stubborn, and he responded with a chuckle. Behind me, the cops were gaining ground; out in front was nothing but more of the same. I eased off the gas and the engine sighed. It’s an awful thing, realizing you’ve taken something too far.

I told Mr. Spitters he was right—I was just as hardheaded as he was, maybe more. He thanked God and asked me to pull over. I told him no—I still needed an apology. He said it seemed like it was me who didn’t understand what taking responsibility meant. I said I didn’t want him to apologize to me—I wanted him to apologize to his client. I said I might not deserve anything, but the man he publicly disparaged sure did. Mr. Spitters looked out the window. His jaw muscles flexed. He didn’t say anything for a long time, so I repeated myself—I told him so long as he promised to apologize, everything would be fine. He took a long breath, sank into his seat, and mumbled.

I couldn’t hear what he said, so I asked him to repeat himself. He sat up and turned to me and said something. I can’t remember what it was. Right after he answered, I swerved to avoid hitting a hunk of burnt out tire and ended up skidding straight into a concrete barrier. *** I will begin again with the pen.

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I heard nothing for two weeks after I filed my complaint, so I began to plot my next steps. First, I’d file suit with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleging—at a minimum—a violation of my constitutional rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. If denied relief in that forum, I’d appeal, leaving it to the esteemed jurisprudential minds of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to determine my fate. A petition for certiorari with our nation’s highest court, I figured, would not be far behind.

Then Tuesday of last week I was laying in my bed with my eyes clamped shut when the door to my cell began to open, roaring as it ground along the metal track. I rose from my bed and saw a man standing backlit near the threshold. The door closed slowly behind him. He was dressed in a jacket and tie, but I could barely make out a face. I asked him who he was, and he didn’t answer.

He walked along the wall of my cell, scanning the perimeter as if he was looking for bugs. When he got to my desk, he picked up my books and started to shake them. I said, “Sir, if you don’t tell me who you are, I’ll be forced to strike you with a closed fist.” He turned to me and said, “You know who I am.”

The Grievance Warden had a far off way about him. He looked at you and he didn’t. “You have it on you?” he asked as he stepped closer to me. I said that I did. I pulled the nearly spent pen from the chest pocket of my blue scrub top and handed it to him. He looked it over and handed it back. “This the one you started with?” he asked.

I nodded. “How can I be sure?” he said. I told him he could check the commissary records—they’d show I received only one this month.

“You could have stolen one,” he mumbled. I implored him to check the records.

The Grievance Warden went silent. Standing chest-to-chest with him, I noticed the top button of his shirt was undone. His tie was loosened and he had yellow stain on his left lapel. A thick layer of stubble covered his face. The Warden exhaled. He reached into the inner jacket pocket of his coat, pulled out a brand new No-Shank Super Flex, and presented it to me. I didn’t take it from him—my mind couldn’t process the gesture. He pressed the pen into my palm and said, “Maybe this’ll shut you up for a few hours.” Then the door roared open and the Grievance Warden shambled off into the din of the prison, leaving just as incomprehensibly as he’d come.

This visit changed me. For the first few months I was in prison, I spent most of my time trying to remember what happened in the moments before I hit the wall. I’d lay there with my eyes shut,

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meditating on Mr. Spitters’ wordless lips, slowing them down so I could study the contours of his mouth. The more I failed to remember, the harder I tried to bring it back—I’d fasten my lids tighter, zoom in even further, play time back one frame at a time. (Honestly, getting that close to his mouth was fairly revolting.) These days I’m more likely to drift off once my head hits the pillow. Not because I’m satisfied—the meals here at Shelton have a violent intestinal effect—but because I suddenly realized how tired I am. Like the Grievance Warden, I’ve stopped shaving. Like him, I shrug my shoulders at what I sincerely hope is a mustard stain on my shirt.

I want you to know that at this point, I’ll accept what comes my way. My transgressions were manifold and egregious, unbecoming of a man who was named one of SuperLawyerMagazine.com’s Rising Stars from 2011 until 2014, the year I had to cut the subscription out of my budget. I understand I have no legal defense. All I can do is ask for grace.

Please remember that I’ve already lost almost everything. The criminal case took my freedom. The civil suit left me penniless. The press coverage thoroughly tarnished my reputation, and the upcoming podcast about my case, “Scary Mason,” will likely make these blemishes permanent. When it comes to my punishment, please be merciful. Please be forgiving. Please remind yourselves that when you cast a person out, you take authorship of his future.

So please don’t take my pen.

Sincerely, Cook Thomas Harwell, Esq. (for now)

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In Light of Love Les Bares

That peckerwood dashboard Jesus saved me from speeding tickets many-a-time. Cop sees that bleeding heart shit, thinks I’m a believer bound for glory.

But his wanna-be muscle car was warm.

The night spent under a picnic table at the snow dusted rest stop drove my thumb to look for a savior. Who knew the voice of God would be at the speed of sound amphetamined banter spilling from the lip smacking mouth of a black haired duck tailed prophet with the cadence of a strung out preacher?

But the car was warm, well worth an amen and I nodded as he loved to talk but only to someone enraptured.

His plastic Sacred Heart of Jesus was not a good listener.

He rocked in the driver’s seat gearing up to proselytize.

Spent the night side of the road changing the clutch plate on this sons-a-bitch. Hell of a job. Hell of a job. Hell-of-aaa-job!

But the car was warm and if repetition made it true, would lead me to believe, then I wanted to believe in Jesus there on the metal dash magnetically hanging on for dear life, standing on a world surrounded by wires that led to a nervous aftermarket tachometer, its needle bouncing indecision like the secret soundtrack from the little religious statue that spoke to me in whispers. And I followed its hand pointing at its lanced bleeding heart circled by a crown of thorns, topped with a cross emanating beams of divine love.

But the car was warm and my messiah went on yammering.

Contrary to what that broken hearted Jesus would have you believe, there is but one true religion, beer, NASCAR and women.

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By my count that was three but I said nothing. Who was I to deny his trinity? And on he went, chorus after verse, until I was a kid again riding in dad’s station wagon listening to nuns saying the rosary on their way to the motherhouse.

I was sitting in the rear back seat wedged in with the luggage, seeing the road fade away as I heard the Hail Marys, a kind of insurance for safe travel. And I found comfort in their belief that prayer gave them an edge. And I wondered if I could remember the Hail Mary? Could I hedge my bet with this good Samaritan as his litany lulled me to sleep.

His car was so warm. He woke me with a shake and asked, Sure you don’t want to come along to Nags Head? Tell ya, stringless bikinis all over the beach. Poontang for the asking.

For a moment, the mechanics of stringless bikinis threw me, but looking at the noonday sun I felt an unspecified pull southward.

East led to sand and the ocean, but every hundred miles south yielded ten more minutes of daylight. Leaving behind gray winter, late sunrise, early sunset, the dark North’s cold congealed blood.

Not even stringless bikinis could substitute for light.

And though his car was warm, and his Sacred Heart of Jesus beckoned me to stay, I got out at a Waffle House parking lot, thanked him, placing two bucks for gas at the feet of Jesus.

You have to admire such a man. A man who knew where he was going and what he wanted. A man filled with desire.

A man looking for carnal love. Unlike me, chasing some vague notion of light. Who had no name for where he was going. Who even with the help of pictures, couldn’t decide what to order from the Waffle House menu.

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Contributors Güliz Mutlu loves the carved images on the early Minoan seal stones, they are inscrutable, grotesque. Mediterranean is her culture, heritage. Is she in love with art? Since she has been drawing. She draws on the newspaper or a book page, listening to the kitchen radio, rainfall. She draws to love, she draws to do and she draws to hope for.

She keeps her imagination close to her heart. The real art in life is between hanging on and letting go. She hangs on art in life. Is this her gratitude? She believes in life and art is at its core.

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking.

Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet.

James Kelly Quigley is a Pushcart Prize and two-time Best New Poets nominee. His manuscript Aloneness was a finalist for the 2022 Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry. Recent work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, New York Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, SLICE, The American Journal of Poetry, and other places. He received both a BA and an MFA from New York University, where he taught undergraduate creative writing and was an editor of Washington Square Review. He works as a freelance writer in Brooklyn.

Kipling Knox is an author, illustrator, and conservationist with roots in western Washington and Illinois. In the past year his short stories have been published or recognized in Narrative Magazine, the TulipTree Review, and the Bellingham Review. ‘Downriver’ is part of a collection of interconnected stories, set in an old Illinois town, where ancestors meddle in the lives of troubled people.

Ashley Kirkland teaches high school English and writes poems in Ohio, where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in 805 Lit + Art, Cordella Press, failbetter, among others.

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Bess Henshaw is from Neenah, Wisconsin and is a currently at student at the University of Wisconsin studying English Creative Writing. When not reading or writing, Bess spends her time canoeing, rock climbing, and painting for her job as a camp counselor in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

Jenny Keto is a poet, psychiatric nurse, former actress, and an origami enthusiast. Much of her poetry grapples with the space between the heart and the intractable psyche. Her most recent publications appear and are forthcoming in Ponder Review, Gris-Gris, Open Minds Quarterly, Write Launch, Stanchion Zine, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Ms. Keto will attend Ole Miss’s creative writing program as an incoming poetry candidate this Fall of 2022. She looks forward to new adventures in Oxford, Mississippi with her fiancé, three dogs, two cats, and of course, lots of love.

Steven Labadessa, a native New Yorker (Brooklynite), whose work exacts a preference for hyperbole and psychological texture within the twisted confines of self-portraiture. Prominent influences and sources of inspiration (non-exhaustive) include; Japanese aesthetics (i.e., wabisabi), fringe and popular culture from Butoh to Manga), Western High and Low Brow Art (e.g., the Northern Renaissance, the Baroque, 19thcentury French Art and Marvel Comics (Silver Age in particular)).

Labadessa has taught and exhibited throughout the US, Europe and Japan. He received an MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior studies included studying at SAIC, SMFA at Tufts University, NYAA, SVA, the Arts Students League and Brooklyn College CUNY. Presently, lives, teaches and maintains an active studio practice in Providence, RI. Shaun Haugen was born in Austin, TX (1986). He is a summa cum laude graduate of Texas State University majoring in Studio Art with a minor in English Writing. He has also studied and conducted research at the experimental School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, NC. He has exhibited in NYC, London, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Oklahoma, and throughout Texas. His art and writing have been published in multiple literary journals and received awards.

He is a Pratt Institute MFA Painting and Drawing candidate 2023.

Daisy Bassen is a poet and community child psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and

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completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Salamander, McSweeney’s, Smartish Pace, and [PANK] among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Erskine J Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 and 2021 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.

Stephen Spicehandler is the author of the novel “Run Away on the Heavenly Express” which grew out of the short story he wrote entitled “To Calvary” published by The Iowa Review.

Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Mobius, Slippery Elm, Poetry Northwest, West Trade Review, and Sierra Nevada Review, among other publications, and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Grayson is the author of two books of nonfiction and an assistant professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Website: maragrayson.com. Twitter: @maraleegrayson.

Matthew Valades has had poems published in Subtropics, The Moth, New Ohio Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Shore, Indianapolis Review, Five South, and The Pomegranate London. He has also had book reviews published in PN Review and Quarterly West. A graduate of the MFA writing program at UNC-Greensboro, he currently works at the MIT Press and lives in Salisbury, MD. Brett Werenski is a lawyer and writer who lives in Tacoma, WA. Les Bares, the son of a Wisconsin milkman, now lives in Richmond, Virginia. His work has or will appear in New York Quarterly, The Cream City Review, The Evansville Review, Stand Magazine (U.K.), Southword (Ireland), The Midwest Review, Parhelion, Glassworks and other journals. He won the 2018 Princemere Poetry Prize.

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Güliz Mutlu Edward Michael Supranowicz James Kelly Quigley Kipling Knox Ashley Kirkland Bess Henshaw Jenny Keto Steven Labadessa Shaun Haugen Daisy Bassen Stephen Spicehandler Mara Lee Grayson Matthew Valades Brett Werenski Les Bares