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The Fish
At first, / the bags of water / walked: / through red deserts, / through green forests, / through gray cities.
At first,
the bags of water
walked:
through red deserts,
through green forests,
through gray cities.
And then,
the bags of water
talked:
about race,
about gender,
about equity.
And then,
the bags of water
balked:
over history,
over liberty,
over private property.
And then,
the bags of water
stalked:
demanding homogeneity,
demanding retribution,
demanding silence.
And then,
the bags
of water became unstopped:
drowning libraries,
drowning classrooms,
drowning cattle, chickens, and pigs.
And when
the bags of water
were empty,
they danced in a circle,
and prayed for a river.
The dark sky answered
and afterwards,
it just
rained
and reined
and reigned:
soaking our yards,
soaking our bread,
soaking our shirts,
soaking our shoes,
soaking our soil,
until all that was left were the fish.
Brett Stout
The art that I’m submitting has the basic overall theme of “creative destruction.” I’ve taken my own photographs that I mainly take while walking the streets of my town, while on vacation, or riding my bicycle late at night.
The art that I’m submitting has the basic overall theme of “creative destruction.” I’ve taken my own photographs that I mainly take while walking the streets of my town, while on vacation, or riding my bicycle late at night. Then, I get prints of my photographs made, and I take the original prints of various sizes and defile and deform them into something different. I almost exclusively do this with an assortment of random and common household items and products, as varied as drywall screws, nails, cleaning bleach, staples, watercolor paint, duct tape, etc. I transform and make new art from already existing photographic art. Nothing I make will be perfect when partaking in the chaotic creative process, nor is it meant to be. I don’t go into making this kind of abstract art with a plan or any sort of idea of how the finished product will truly look. The new art could come out in the end as anything. It truly is random and sporadic chaos, which adds to the appeal and originality of it.
52 Pick-Up
Dad always said I didn’t have to pay him back for everything, but I knew that was a huge lie, the way that beautiful people wearing long wool coats say, “Sorry, no cash,” when I asked them if they want to see a card trick.
This story won the 2023 Anthony Grooms Short Fiction Prize.
Dad always said I didn’t have to pay him back for everything, but I knew that was a huge lie, the way that beautiful people wearing long wool coats say, “Sorry, no cash,” when I asked them if they want to see a card trick.
“You haven’t even seen the trick yet,” Dad would protest in Chinese, breaking his cover as an elderly deaf-blind gentleman sitting three seats down the subway car, and I would have to stop shuffling and say, “Shhh, Dad,” except I didn’t want to blow our cover even more, so I would change course mid-word, say, “Shhh, dear sir.” But sometimes he would be so mad and say, “Let’s go, Sammy,” and drag me out of the train car.
He wore a yellow armband of old caution tape that we’d modified to say “DEAF-BLIND: PLEASE BE PATIENT.” On top of that, he had old drugstore glasses that we’d Sharpied black to look like sunglasses and a beanie pulled down over his ears.
“Why do you have to be deaf and blind?” I asked him every so often.
“That way, there’s no way people would think we’re related,” he said, swinging me onto our kitchen counter so that I could practice pulling cards from behind his ears. “And that’s what you want, right Sammy?”
“Don’t say it like that,” I scolded him. “You know people pay more if they think I’m on my own.”
He still insisted on coming to watch me perform every weekend morning until he needed to leave for work, and people were sometimes alarmed to see a man wearing a DEAF-BLIND: PLEASE BE PATIENT armband spring up at Grand Central to kiss me goodbye and transfer to another train. I always had to switch to another train too, partly because people were staring at me, partly because I was so nervous when he left that I would try to do a thumb fan but my hands would shake all my cards to the ground. I had to walk the whole tunnel to Times Square to calm down.
Dad hated that I did street performances, but he still thought everything I did was amazing; and, I reminded him constantly, I did it for him. I didn’t like it either, but these performances were the only realistic way that I was ever going to earn enough to pay Dad back. If I waited until I was of legal working age I would be indebted beyond recovery. Plus, with my round cheeks and short legs I could shave a few years off when people asked me how old I was, which would almost always make them fork over more.
But I had to be careful of how deeply to discount my age. “Where are your parents?” the tourists would ask when I went too young, reaching into their tight jeans for their phones and dredging up ticket stubs and hop-on hop-off brochures. I would help them collect those scraps, smile my roundest-cheeked smile and say, “Don’t worry, I’m meeting my dad in a few stops.”
“Oh, sorry, I don’t have any cash,” they’d say, meaning, so why doesn’t he take care of you, and I’d hold out my hand with their wallet in it and say, “Credit card is fine too,” meaning, he does, why else would I be here, and by the time they’d realize I was joking and the wallet trick was all part of this show, the whole row of passengers would be staring. And I would have to switch trains then, too.
But it was all worth it when I got home and shoved the bills and coins in an old deli container and stuffed the container in the back of the freezer so that I couldn’t reach it without a stool. I labeled it DAD’S MONEY: DON’T USE. The words had to do. Dad and I had once tried to stop ourselves from spending money by freezing it in a block of ice, but eventually we wanted cheung fen for dinner and instead of waiting for the money to thaw, we’d brought the ice cubes to the cart downstairs. The old lady cooking inside shook her head and put the cubes on the griddle where they hissed until the dollars unfurled. We all looked closely to confirm it wasn’t a trick.
~
I started out just singing on the subway because it was the easiest to practice. We didn’t have a radio but on hot nights the neighbors who loved 92.9 FM Oldies would open their windows, and Dad and I would sit on our fire escape and sing into bowls so the sound would echo toward us. I told Dad he should go inside and relax, but he insisted he needed to be there to cover my ears when there were inappropriate lyrics. I used to sing, Take me down to the paradise city, where the hmm hmm hmm and the girls are pretty, before I realized that Dad didn’t know enough English to properly censor songs. After that, I still let him sit next to me on hot weather music nights, but when he fell asleep mid-chorus I wouldn’t disturb him.
“Sammy, why didn’t you wake me up?” he demanded whenever he woke up on his own, because his legs had gone numb from sitting on the grate or he’d drooled a rope of saliva long enough to lower us to the ground.
“I tried, but you were so tired,” I explained. “And if you help me, it just means I have even more to repay you for.”
“Dummy,” he would chuckle, swatting me upside the head. “You don’t need to repay me.” But I thought about the grass is green and decided he had it wrong.
It was actually my cousin Julia who gave me the idea of switching to card tricks because that’s all we played in her backyard: 52-card pickup. Uncle had so many free decks from visiting Atlantic City all the time, though the cards all had holes punched through or clipped corners. Julia would count down from ten and then toss the desk up into the air, and we would both try to collect the most. Back then I sang so much, both practicing and performing, that my diet was just Halls lozenges that Dad swiped from streetside stands for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and my cheeks were constantly chipmunked with one lozenge on each side. It meant that Julia and I had very boring conversations.
“Do you want to play this game my dad taught me?” she asked, and I nodded because I would have leaked Halls syrup if I opened my mouth.
“Do you like it?” she asked me after we played a few times, and I shook my head.
“Do you know any other games?” she asked. Here, too, I shook my head, sucking hard on the lozenges, so she threw the cards again.
Dad and I visited every few months because Uncle didn’t know how to care for Julia as Dad did for me. Instead, Uncle had a lot of women visitors who would help take care of him and Julia until they realized Uncle wasn’t going anywhere, in the worst way, and they would abandon him in disgust. Uncle made Julia help prolong the relationships by pretending to be very precocious, but even that didn’t keep them around. She was like that the first time I met her, when we rang the doorbell of their apartment and she opened the door with glasses on and a very yellowed copy of The Prince in her hand.
“Oh, right,” she said when she saw us. She replaced the book on the milk crate that they used as a shoe rack, and took off the glasses, rubbing her temples.
“Brother, come in,” called Uncle from inside the house, and Dad went into the kitchen, leaving me with Julia. The house smelled like cigarette smoke and grass clippings. She eyed the notebooks and pencil case that I was carrying and came closer, hungrily.
“Can I see?” she said, already reaching out.
Dad got the money for my school supplies that year by making his hands a gun and sticking up the bodega down the street. They didn’t give him any money but they did call some hotline that summoned two counselors who escorted him back to our apartment. When I opened the door for him he produced a wad of wrinkled twenties and a Starbucks gift card. “The counselors linked arms with me as we came back, one on each side,” he said. “Left counselor had dirtier pockets but more money.” I was so proud of him, but mentally wrote it down as another entry in my checkbook, which brought me to sixty-four more weekends of singing on the train. When we went into the kitchen Dad was already explaining this all to Uncle.
“You just need to commit,” Dad explained to Uncle, smacking his palm with the back of his other hand. Uncle, who looked like a faded, oily version of Dad, paled even more at the thought, but still set down his cigarette to try it.
“Put your hands like this,” said Dad, showing Uncle how to interlace all his fingers except the pointers, and aim them at an imaginary head. “Now say stick them up!” Uncle could do it for a few seconds, but when Julia pretended to be the frightened cashier, he would unlock his hands and wave them in the air, saying, “It’s not real, it’s just a trick.”
“I know,” Julia would say, rolling her eyes and opening the sliding door to the backyard. Uncle’s ashy face froze like a mask, angry red diamonds blooming on both cheeks.
“Pathetic,” she laughed to me later, as she snatched the six of clubs from under my scrabbling fingers. We played in the backyard because Julia hated the smell of smoke. “He’s not even trying.”
“Well,” I said, feeling guilty for some reason, “you aren’t really trying either.”
“At what?” asked Julia.
I told her about singing on the train and the Sharpied sunglasses and PLEASE BE PATIENT. She laughed even more.
“Getting even is for people you’ll never see again,” she said. “I read it in that book.”
“I’m not ‘getting even,’” I said. “What would you know about that anyway?” But it was too late; I was already imagining Dad running out the closing subway doors on his way to work and the train falling off the tracks. I sat there thinking for so long that she eventually waved her hand in front of my face and said, “Hello? Sammy?” She had collected the whole deck on her own. Through the sliding glass door we could see that a small woman with a short perm had joined Dad and Uncle, and I think I saw Julia flinch, but she tossed the cards again and we watched them wag and flutter in the air.
~
It was a good thing I got the idea to switch to cards because my voice had started to sound like a cat’s tongue. We didn’t see a doctor, but we described my symptoms to one of Uncle’s lovers who had health insurance, who went to a doctor complaining of a sore throat, and a few weeks later she said her doctor thought she might have vocal cord nodules. “Stop singing,” she said, in her own raspy voice, fried from too many menthols.
We looked it up. Dad hotspotted our laptop by leaning off of our fire escape with his cellphone in his hand, which would just barely connect to the free city wifi.
“I’m no doctor, but Dad is a genius in other ways,” he had bragged when he figured this out. He was always beet-faced and white-knuckled with his eyes closed and I worried that when all the blood had finally gone to his head he would let go and fall into the street.
Once we learned that singing had knotted the strings in my neck, I snuck a deck of cards from Uncle’s stash and watched instructional videos at double speed and memorized them by repeating the words to myself to relieve him of internet reception duty as quickly as possible. For him, because I didn’t want him to fall into the street, but for me as well, because this was yet another service he provided me. And for the landlord, who would slip threatening notes under our door saying that we had to stop our hazardous behaviors.
“How’s my girl,” said Dad when he came in from the fire escape, and I said, tongue caught between my teeth as I practiced my pinky break over and over, “Very indebted, Dad, very behind on my bills.”
“You’re a child,” Dad laughed. “You have no bills.” As if that wasn’t my exact problem.
I practiced until my wrists were sore and then steamed them over the rice cooker to relax them, but my tricks always felt flat, somehow. I would fan the cards, ask Dad to pick one, take the card back, bring it to the top of the deck. “Is it the eight of clubs?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Dad, solemnly from his chair, as if swearing an oath.
“You don’t seem excited,” I said. “I found your card.”
“I knew you would find it,” he said. “You’re my amazing girl.”
“That’s not the point,” I told him, throwing the deck across the room in frustration, and in a few hours I would find the deck re-stacked, in order, clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. I had explained to him before that I didn’t want the cards ordered, that I would just need to reshuffle them so that people didn’t think I had somehow organized the deck to help me find their card. He’d tapped my forehead and said he wanted to make sure he had picked up every card.
“It’s easy to miscount,” he’d said, “but it’s hard to miss the order of things.”
When I asked Julia about the card pickup game the next time we visited, she laughed in my face. “That’s such kid stuff,” she said, tossing the deck of cards back to me, messily so that I only caught about half and had to scramble for the others.
“Why then?” I asked. But she was already stalking down to the kitchen and asking Uncle where her bookbag had gone.
“I don’t know,” said Uncle, busy stroking his new lady’s hair. She had tattooed eyebrows and very red glasses. Julia stopped short once she saw that they were both smoking indoors. She’d told me that he used to leave the house to smoke to try to protect her baby lungs, and he would walk all the way to the city and back smoking an entire pack. At some point he’d gotten tired of leaving.
“I said I don’t know,” said Uncle, looking up and seeing Julia still there. “What else?”
She just stared, which made Uncle look down at the cigarette in his hand and then wave dismissively at her, but she was already opening the sliding door and disappearing into the backyard. I thought she sounded like she was about to cry, but when I caught up to her she was sucking air like crazy and I realized she’d been holding her breath.
“Want to see a card trick?” I asked after a minute of her gasping, not knowing what else to say.
“What are you talking about?” said Julia in a carefully normal voice, and I started explaining the card tricks and fire escape to Julia, and she narrowed her eyes and snorted.
“You’re still on that?” She left me holding the pack of cards in the middle of the grass and went to sit on the concrete steps by the house. I went back inside.
She did eventually play with me that evening, as the sun started oozing all over the backyard. I found her squatting over a patch of grass, her head almost between her knees, her shadow dribbling long across the grass. When I got closer I saw she was arranging a handful of periwinkle stems and puffball dandelions around a dead bumblebee.
“What,” she said, looking up when my noodle of a shadow licked over her. It was less a question and more a greeting. She glared at me for a second before continuing to knit her daisy chain, which snaked around her feet.
“That’s such kid stuff!” I crowed, towering over her.
“No, it’s not,” said Julia. “I’m decorating his grave.”
“What,” I said, echoing her. I waited for her to explain but she kept arranging her pile of flowers.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s the game?”
“Not a game,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. Then she ordered me to collect more dandelions and more of those weeds that dripped white sap when we broke the stems, which I did because it seemed so important to her. She piled them up until no one would’ve known that there was a bee inside.
“Now we pay our respects to our dearly departed, but we do not cry,” she said in a voice that said she had read more books than me. She squatted down and nudged the back of my knees so that I would do the same. After a minute of squatting my toes were numb and my knees were screaming, but Julia did these deep breaths with her eyes closed. Her exhales ruffled the grass and made the tufted seeds twirl on the dandelion head.
“Hello? Julia?” I said, but she didn’t open her eyes. I knew it was on purpose because she swatted in my direction. “What are you doing?” I asked, louder, but then she just started ignoring me. By the time she was done praying or whatever I was sitting on the grass just studying her legs, which were plumper than mine: the tendons in her ankles ropy, her calves and thighs squeezed tightly against each other like unopened hot dog buns. She stood up and shook her head at me, looming against the sky from my place in the grass.
“I got tired,” I protested.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking out her legs. “Who’s not trying now.”
~
“How did you get Sammy to fear you?” Uncle asked Dad. A few months later he was smoking indoors again, so Julia was outside even though it was raining. She stood against a section of the under the eaves, but the rain was light enough to blow at a slant, so she was rain-dark all down her front anyway. I was crouching by the open sliding door, nose poked out so I could breathe clean air, too.
“Sammy doesn’t fear me,” Dad said. I heard the clink of a teapot lid and then the hollow knocking that meant Uncle was taking out a new cigarette. “Sammy thinks that she’s indebted to me somehow.”
“Same thing,” said Uncle, coughing lightly. “How do I get Julia to think that?”
Dad was quiet for so long that I thought he’d left somehow without me hearing. “I don’t think you want that,” he said eventually.
“Don’t I?” said Uncle. They were quiet for a few more minutes and I turned Dad’s sentence over in my head. Why wouldn’t Uncle want that? I ran through all the ways in which Julia and Uncle owed each other: Julia, beholden to Uncle for his card packs and tolerance for her sour spells; Uncle, beholden to Julia for making her stay outside all the time and wearing glasses that made her head hurt. They were much closer to even than Dad and I were, I thought, but because neither of them made any attempts to resolve their debts, I would likely repay Dad first.
“Remember when we were young boys, waiting for Ba to come home from work, and you threw a rock into the window trying to hit me?” Dad asked.
“You threw it at me,” said Uncle, and they both laughed. From the sound of it, Dad smacked Uncle across the chest, or maybe the other way around. I had a sudden vision of Dad and Uncle sweaty and skinny in dust-stained shirts, chasing each other around a rock-lined backyard.
“He cleaned up the glass himself,” said Dad. “Straightened up the whole room. Didn’t even say anything to us. And then he slept in the living room because he said the wind would stunt our growth.”
They didn’t say anything for a long time, and my legs started to fall asleep again. I tried to stretch them one at a time but my ankles gave out and I thudded onto my back.
“Sammy,” said Dad, walking around the kitchen island to discover me. “Why are you hiding here?”
“I’m not hiding,” I said, offended that he thought I would trick him, and I slipped outside to stand beside Julia.
Julia and I stood silently until I decided to pick a fight, because I was in a bad mood from listening to Dad and Uncle, and because I was suddenly sick of Julia acting better than me, like she deserved what she had. Of course I started by telling her that she never tried being nice to Uncle, no wonder he hated her, that I would be so angry if I were him.
“I heard him say that he wanted you to be more like me,” I said, leaving out the part where Dad said that Uncle wouldn’t want that.
“At least my Dad doesn’t force me to beg on the subway,” said Julia, barely looking at me. She kept shredding pieces of crabgrass between her fingers, like sticks of string cheese, and the wet strands clung to her fingers.
“I’m not begging,” I said, too late, flabbergasted at how wrong she had it. My mouth flapped for words for so long that I swallowed some rain. “I’m working. I need to be there.”
“Whatever,” said Julia. She made a face and wound her hands around each other a couple times, and then bowed weirdly and looked up at me with puppy eyes. “Let me show you a card trick,” she whined, “don’t you want to see a card trick?” She shook her hands and some grass fell off like confetti. “You think that’s what normal kids do?”
On the bus home, I almost told Dad what Julia said. I always told him everything, to avoid keeping anything from him that would be valuable. But I didn’t want to ask him
“Would you be mad if I stopped doing card tricks,” I whispered in his ear.
“No,” he whispered back. “I would be happy.” At this I rolled my eyes and hummed the paradise city song.
~
A few months later, Dad came back from work and told me the news: Uncle had gone for a walk again, but he hadn’t come back for a week now. We found out because Julia had waited to be picked up from school until it was dark and then slept on one of the couches in the principal’s office. As he told me about Julia, Dad had his bare feet in the dishwasher which had just finished running, so all the steam washed around his heels. He had been laid off last month, so he was temporarily working as a loader at a warehouse, where he said the conveyor belts moved faster than our wifi.
It was my turn to lean off the fire escape so that he could search for jobs. I didn’t realize that the hardest part was locking my feet under a metal bar to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally fall off, how numb his feet must have gotten when I was learning my card tricks. But I got through it just by thinking about how much I still owed him. The time he jumped down into the subway tracks to retrieve the eight of diamonds that I’d accidentally dropped. The time we ran out of hot water so he poured warm water through a colander for my shower. The time he got a plate of free samples, but was turned away because they recognized him, so he used his pocket-knife to hack off half of his hair, got a second plate, and then hacked off the other half for a third. I thought of so much that I often started to cry, big sobs that made my body buck up off the railing. When he finally heard me and came to investigate, he declared that he would stop searching for jobs.
“No, no,” I begged. “Just tell me what you do.”
“I just close my eyes and wait,” he said. That night I recycled another note from the landlord that said that this was our LAST WARNING.
We picked up Julia and on the train I told her that she was going to live with us from now on. She picked at her food at the dinner table and used her phone data, which made me resent her even more. I made room for her in my bed, taking a string and running it down the middle of the mattress. When she saw that she laughed and immediately put her feet over it, and I stormed to the bathroom.
I came back after brushing my teeth with toothpaste that I bought for Dad, and I was running my tongue over my front teeth when I heard her breathing hard under the blanket.
“Julia? What’s wrong?” I asked, burrowing under the blanket to find her curled up facing away from me. Her breath stank, steaming up the whole blanket. It smelled like she hadn’t brushed her teeth in a while.
“What’s wrong?” she shot back, thickly. “Oh, nothing.”
I sat quietly for a few minutes, trying only to breathe when I absolutely had to. I thought about Uncle asking Dad how to get Julia to fear him, and how Dad and Uncle had smashed open a window but Grandpa had cleaned up the glass silently, with Dad and Uncle maybe sheepishly standing in the kitchen with their hands behind their backs, not offering to help but feeling as if they needed to stop what they were doing.
~
When we woke up the next morning Julia was gone, the rumpled dimple next to me barely warm. Dad and I ran outside to try to find her but couldn’t. The cheung fen lady said a girl came to buy a box of zhaliang with freezing cold quarters, and I almost screamed. I ran back up the stairs just to check what I already knew was true: the deli container lid was askew, and the insides were empty as they were when we’d drained it of its original wonton soup.
“Julia is a thief,” I fumed to Dad, and he pinched my ear sharply.
“Julia is your cousin,” he said. He stared at the empty container, and I almost waved my hands, trying to bring him back. But I waited instead, watching his eyes glaze over, the same way he looked at the sky when he was hotspotting me, the same way Julia looked at Uncle when he was smoking. We stood there until his eyes started to water, and then he said, “Oh, Sammy,” like he was choking, and reached out and squeezed my hand.
Julia called from an unknown number a week later. I was filming myself for practice, trying to stop wrinkling my eyebrows and holding my breath whenever I did the double-lift, and when the phone rang I ran outside so that we could call over wifi, another of Dad’s tricks to save on a phone bill. I leaned all the way off the fire escape, which the landlord had blocked off with caution tape a few days before, and turned the phone on speaker so that I could hold it closer to the reception spot.
“Tell your dad that I’m okay,” she said, staticky and faraway, my arm and her voice waggling high above the street. “And also that I borrowed the cash he’s storing in the freezer to print some ‘Reward: Missing Person’ fliers.”
“The cash I’m storing!” I shout into the phone, nearly slipping my foot from the railing. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, and I could hear the smirk in her voice.
She said see you later and I was too late to answer because I was trying to remember what she said that one afternoon, how small the bee was in comparison to the pile of flowers, how Julia breathed so hard it started to bald the dandelion puffs that we’d stuck in the roof of the crypt like little fairy globes, how when I looked outside the next morning, the pile was scattered all over the garden like confetti, the bee nowhere to be seen. Julia was already outside with her hands on her hips, like she’d volunteered to clean up a party to which she hadn’t been invited. And I knew, remembering the sturdiness of her legs and the way our whole family spent so much time staring into the distance, that she could be out there waiting for so, so long, just looking at nothing forever.
This story was featured in Volume 2, Issue 1. Click here to explore other stories from this issue.
Kreative Kwame
I work in mixed media, printmaking. This usually involves several of these: acrylic paint, ink, marker pen or color pencil, paper weaving, collage and printmaking and performance.
Traditional healers and “sorcerers” have over the years claimed that people with albinism are “ghosts” who never die but merely disappear. In many parts of East Africa, people with albinism are targeted for their body parts, which some believe hold magical powers and bring good fortune. Albinism is a genetic condition that causes a deficit in the biosynthesis of melanin, a pigment that colours the skin, hair and eyes. “banaoroko” is an aspiring artist. I met him at a theatre close to where I work. He was there for rehearsal for a talent show due the next day. I introduced myself to him as an aspiring photographer and said I’ll love for us to make visual statements together. He opened up to me about dealing with colorism. “Dealing with stares from birth sounds a bit tough, but you get used to it” he said. We went on to plan a creative shoot which was so fun! I learnt a lot from him. Here is our visual statement.
The year 2019 was revolutionary for me. Amidst an internal conflict in my country Cameroon that had been going on for 3 years, changing the very way we live, I found the courage to share my love for art and created my IG page where I hoped to share my creations.
I could never imagine this journey will lead me here. It was an escape from the realities we faced. I remember searching “how to edit cinematic photos that tell a story” on YouTube. I immediately went out with my then iPhone 7 and began shooting expressive photos. I’ve always liked the idea of creating photos in a series accompanied by an essay on the theme chosen. The interpretation of these often thought provoking photos that touch on different subjects is left for the viewer to decipher for themselves.
Lior Locher
I work in mixed media, printmaking. This usually involves several of these: acrylic paint, ink, marker pen or color pencil, paper weaving, collage and printmaking and performance.
I work in mixed media, printmaking. This usually involves several of these: acrylic paint, ink, marker pen or color pencil, paper weaving, collage and printmaking and performance. I just launched my first film. I love bright colors and media that dry quickly so you can add more layers. Printmaking adds science, whimsy and cool kit, elements that are fixed and yet vary from print to print. Collage was my first love and still plays a prominent role. It started with travel ephemera and a fascination with Japanese origami paper and traditional patterns while living there, and has since expanded to anything that’s flat and sticks. In my other life I trained in personal development, coaching and psychotherapy as well as teaching different styles of yoga. I continue to be fascinated by our inner lives as humans, how we make sense of our own journeys and experiences, and how our mind and body come together. Our lives always involve picking up what already is, at that point in time, and recombining it to move forward, adding our own flavor. Often ripping things up and starting again, layers and sedimentations that form over time into something uniquely ours. That applies to life and art. Mixed media work is a great way to capture this.
Letter from the Editor
When Andy Plattner asked me to join the editorial team of The Headlight Review in the spring of last year, I brought along my history of editing literary magazines in the Midwest. Although I was prepared to find the South different from the Rust Belt, it didn’t occur to me that even the literary magazines here might be just a little bit different.
Dear reader,
When Andy Plattner asked me to join the editorial team of The Headlight Review in the spring of last year, I brought along my history of editing literary magazines in the Midwest. Although I was prepared to find the South different from the Rust Belt, it didn’t occur to me that even the literary magazines here might be just a little bit different.
At least according to its mission statement, THR does not focus on regional literature. And, yet, by virtue of our place, our staff, and our contributors, we find hints of the New South in the pieces of this issue. Without seeking them out, we have stories of racial tension and progress here in the South, poems of southern music, food, and masculinity, and, of course, we have southern ghosts. The pieces of this issue explore our struggles to come of age, to understand ourselves, and to wrest language into authentic service.
The editorial team and I are proud to present this collection of fiction, poetry, and artwork as a testament to the brilliance of our authors and our own efforts to serve authentically in the last six months. In that time, we also awarded the 2023 Grooms Prize, judged by Anna Schachner. Begun to honor Anthony Grooms for his service here at KSU and his contributions to literature, the Grooms Prize awards $250 and a bespoke publication to a piece of quality short fiction. This year’s winner, Anita Lo’s “52 Pick-Up,” reveals a bold new voice confronting the difficulty of family and growing up. It appears in this issue alongside our two other finalists for the prize.
We have restructured the journal’s masthead for this issue, and I want to thank our guest editors, Gregory Emilio and Melanie Sumner, who edited our poetry and fiction sections respectively. Their hard work and insight have shaped those sections, and we’re immensely fortunate to have the benefit of their contributions.
Brittany Files, our Managing Editor, has been essential to sustaining THR as I came into this role. Brittany designs and publishes the website, works with our authors, and, in short, makes this publication possible, and I thank her for her service.
We also benefited this year from the hard work of Antwan Bowen, who serves as THR’s Social Media Manager, and I thank him, too, for his dedication to learning the ins and outs of publishing and for advocating on behalf of the magazine and our activities.
Finally, I want to thank Andy Plattner for offering me the opportunity to join this team. Though he will deny it, his dedication to THR has driven the journal from its inception. I’m happy to report that Andy and I have undertaken many exciting initiatives to carry his vision into the future. We’ve begun producing interviews with authors, planning a series of critical writings, undertaking some community service activities, and even designing a print edition of the magazine. About all of which, more in the next issue.
With this issue, we recommit ourselves to our mission to promote new creative writing that demonstrates the persistent value of imaginative literature. I’m especially excited to emphasize the diverse perspectives of this issue and to encourage many more new and emerging writers to join us in exploring what it means to find ourselves in a new place and a new time still haunted by the legacies of our past.
Sincerely,
Kurt Milberger, Editorial Director
A Love Note
Our arrangement was simple enough. I was with Gloria the first and third weekends of the month; Ollie and Gloria were together the second and fourth weekends. Weeknights were infrequent and scheduled ad hoc.
Our arrangement was simple enough. I was with Gloria the first and third weekends of the month; Ollie and Gloria were together the second and fourth weekends. Weeknights were infrequent and scheduled ad hoc. Gloria and I had regular dates at a few bars, with an occasional wedding when called upon. Ollie and Gloria mainly frequented American Legion halls and maybe some family gatherings, as far as I knew. Nothing fancy, but enough to keep us all interested.
We settled into our routine with a regularity that made it difficult to remember our previous, more independent, lives. Of course, there were bumps in the road: Ollie occasionally wanted Gloria on one of my weekends or we had a conflict around a holiday, but not often, and we always navigated any obstacles smoothly. It seemed as if we could go on like this forever.
It probably helped that Ollie and I had been longtime friends before Gloria came on the scene. We had known each other practically our whole lives, growing up in a small town in North Dakota. We ate barely edible school lunches together and had sleepovers in elementary school. We navigated the complexities of middle school at each other’s sides. We even sat next to each other in the high school band, with Ollie on the tenor sax and me on trumpet, our instruments mirroring our stature in the class photo. We lost touch for a time after high school, but we never stopped being friends.
Now, many years later, after separately moving to Minneapolis, we had become reacquainted through the small world of gig musicians. Our friendship picked up where we left off, easy-going and without drama, close in the sense of men who have no desire to talk to each other of difficult things. We maintained our connection by watching sports on television, or by drinking cheap beers around a bar while talking about sports we had watched on television. True to form, we did not discuss details of our time with Gloria or really anything related to Gloria, other than changes to our schedule.
All of which led to my confusion at lunch one day when Ollie asked, “Don’t you think it’s time one of us moved on from Gloria?”
The question hit like a gut punch, made worse by his breezy inflection that implied, in his mind at least, the matter already had been settled and I’d be the one moving on.
“What do ya mean? End it . . . just like that? I don’t under—”
“I don’t think there’s a formal process for this sort of thing.”
“That’s not what I . . . I mean, how do we decide who ‘moves on?’”
Ollie did not respond, so I filled the silence: “Anyway, I like sharing. That way we can both look after her.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Ollie said. “I just think it’s time for a change, that’s all . . . it’s not like we’ll stop being friends if we don’t share Gloria.”
That was it. I jerked our conversation to more comfortable ground. First, baseball—“Do you think the Twins will make a move at the trade deadline?”—and then, music—“Have you seen any jazz at the Dakota lately?”—talking rapidly and more than usual, afraid of what Ollie might say to fill any gaps in the conversation.
As is often the case, the end of this whole affair was not immediate. Gloria and I had a number of beautiful weekends together. I remember one night at a German American bar where it seemed we could do no wrong. We swayed in harmony on the dance floor to the Snow Waltz, kicked up our feet a bit to the Tipsy Polka, and even tried a tango. The night seemed to last forever and pass in an instant, as only the most memorable times do. Of course, Ollie had his time with Gloria too. And, of course, I continued to remain in the dark about where they went together.
Everything seemed back to normal, yet I could not shake the feeling that we were all on borrowed time together. Toward the end, I found myself holding Gloria more tightly, moving together for an extra song or two, under the harsh glare of the overhead lights and the occasional wary glances from staff as they scrubbed the glassware and did a cursory wipe of the bar and tables at closing time.
Of course, I regret my inaction in the moment. Looking back, I had plenty of opportunities to avoid the disaster that ensued. I should have been proactive. I should have fought for Gloria like a true literary hero. I am not one to blaze my own path, though, and there are not many love stories involving our triangle of two musicians and an instrument. You see, Gloria is not a woman; she was—she still is—an accordion.
It is possible this revelation may mitigate your empathy for my tale of heartbreak. If that is your reaction, I feel nothing but pity for you. On the contrary, as only the lucky souls who have held an accordion can attest, it makes my account more profound.
Unless you have played your own accordion—actually hugged one to your chest as you felt her breath move in and out, matching the rhythm of your heartbeat—I can’t expect you to understand the relationship an accordionist has with his instrument. The way other instruments are played—the pursed-lip kiss of a trombone, the soggy taste of a saxophone, the plunking of cold piano keys, the violent banging of a drum—make them simply inanimate objects in your hand.
An accordion, on the other hand, comes alive as you gently massage her keys, warmed by your own hands during an hours-long embrace in which she continuously changes form, gracefully expanding and contracting. Like any desirable woman, an accordion is both welcoming and independent, granting you the opportunity to join your voice with her melodic tones or to simply enjoy her sweet music.
I’m not ashamed to admit that I remember my first time with Gloria as vividly as I remember my “first time.” When I first held her, I knew we were made for each other and that her music would be the sweetest I could ever hope to play. When I looped in Ollie to help pay for Gloria, I assumed he would feel the same way. I guess I cannot expect most people to understand the connection that I felt with Gloria, but Ollie, he should have known. We were a part of a small but vibrant community of accordion players enjoying a renaissance of sorts—at least in our small part of the world—driven by the improbable convergence of the elderly yearning for tradition and young people embracing the retro irony of a good polka or waltz.
Perhaps none of that matters now. What does matter is that I called Ollie one Friday morning to arrange a time to pick up Gloria. I asked when I could stop by, and I was answered by a long pause. Finally, Ollie said the five words that always presage doom: “You had better sit down.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t have the accordion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have Gloria. I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”
“Yesterday? When were you planning to tell me?”
“I was hoping to find it.”
It. A subtle, yet significant, shift in terminology, like switching to the past tense when discussing a person who is chronically ill or gone missing.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so Ollie continued, “I had the accordion in my car when I stopped by the grocery store, and when I got home it wasn’t in there. I must have taken it out of the trunk to make room for my grocery bags and forgot to put it back in.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t process my life without Gloria. I knew that I could scrape together enough money to buy another used accordion, as I eventually did, but it was Gloria I wanted. Anyway, what was she doing in the trunk? And dammit, she’s not an “it.”
With no idea how to respond, I started peppering Ollie with obvious suggestions. “Did you go back to the store parking lot? Did you check inside the store to see if anyone turned it in? Did you ask any of the other customers?”
We did our due diligence, of course. Ollie and I returned to the store together, and at least in my case separately on numerous occasions, to see if anyone had turned in Gloria. I walked through the parking lot nearly every day, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gloria next to a parked car. The store employees grew to know me, although the recognition that showed on their faces as I approached the customer service counter gradually evolved from welcoming to exasperated as the days passed. After a time, I started shopping at another grocery store to avoid reminders of Gloria’s absence in my life.
We even stopped by the local police station for help, where we were politely informed that, based on the facts, the accordion was considered abandoned, such that there was “no potential violation of the criminal code requiring investigative action.” When I took it upon myself to seek surveillance video from the parking lot a city official efficiently closed the bureaucratic loop by requiring a search warrant to view any footage.
While pursuing the dead end of police assistance, we sought help from our community. We took refuge in the new town square and posted notices on Facebook and our neighborhood social networking site next to announcements of lost pets, yard sales, and complaints about neighbors not picking up after their dogs. We tweeted about our plight and scoured Craigslist multiple times a day for a post listing our beloved Gloria for sale, presumably at much-too-low of an asking price.
Leaving no stone unturned, and having no success with our online posts, we appealed to our actual town square. We tacked up handwritten signs around our neighborhood anywhere we could, including a Starbucks, a bookstore, a diner, a liquor store, and the grocery store where Ollie last had Gloria:
LOST ACCORDION!!!
Reward for Return!! Two free performances of your choosing!!
Last seen Thursday afternoon in the Lunds parking lot.
The accordion was in a soft backpack case, root beer brown color, torn on one edge.
If found, please call Ollie (612-xxx-xxxx) or Pete (612-xxx-xxxx)
No Questions Asked! Just a Reward!!!
Even as we went to all this effort, we knew none of this would work. We had a sense of obligation, but never a feeling of hope. It was obvious, at least to me, that Gloria was gone forever; anyone lucky enough to have her now would be a fool to give her up. Knowing that, I moved on eventually, at least in the way that we all convince ourselves to go forward after suffering a loss. I suppose I even stopped thinking about her as much, although it was harder when I played at some of our old spots.
Around this time, after I had remade my life without Gloria, I was on a long winter walk one evening and ducked into a small corner bar to warm up and have a whiskey. I heard her before I saw her. Her sound was unmistakably pure. I looked past the bar muddled with aging regulars sitting next to young hipsters and saw Gloria in the hands of another musician. He was about my age, and he was seated comfortably on a small stage in the corner of the room. My first impulse was to rush toward her and wrestle her away from the man holding her, but something about the music made me stop. I had never heard such lyrical sounds from her or from any accordion for that matter. I sat near the door and listened transfixed.
When the set finally ended, I approached the other musician warily. “You sound great,” I said, cringing at the sound of my rising inflection. “I play as well . . . I really enjoyed your music.”
“Thanks,” he answered. He was sipping on a bottle of Grain Belt, his other arm draped over Gloria as she rested on his lap. “Oh, I’m Bill.”
“Pete,” I said with a nod. I longed to reach out and touch Gloria. Bill set his beer down on a side table and we shook hands. “That’s a beautiful accordion. Where did you get her?”
“I bought it a few weeks ago . . . at that music shop on Lake Street. It was used but had clearly been well cared for.”
“I don’t—”
A group of young women brushed past me, each holding a rum and coke that was clearly not their first of the evening. They crowded around Bill and Gloria for a selfie. Bill shrugged his shoulders as they retreated to their table to post their photo.
“I was going to say . . . I don’t think I’ve seen you playing before.”
“Probably not. I just moved here from Wisconsin a few months back. I’m substitute teaching now . . . but I’m trying to get a full-time music job at one of the elementary schools. Since substitute’s pay is for crap, I decided to supplement my income by playing some accordion again. I haven’t played in a while, but it’s helping pay the rent for me and my boy.” He looked down. “Times have been leaner since my wife left us.”
I paused. I thought about telling him the whole story and demanding that he return Gloria, perhaps selling my own accordion to pay him off or working out some sort of trade. But then I remembered the beautiful music Gloria made as I listened to her that evening. It was clear that he needed Gloria more than I did, and perhaps, she needed him to reach her full potential. As if by Divine Providence, at that moment I heard Sting singing over the bar’s speakers, “If you love someone, set them free . . . Free, free, set them free . . . .” Dammit. Sting was right.
I pulled out a five-dollar bill and stuffed it into Bill’s tip jar. “From one musician to another.” He tipped his beer in my direction as thanks. “Good luck landing that teaching job. And take care of that beautiful instrument, will ya?”
With that, I took a last look at Gloria. I impulsively reached out my hand to feel her smooth wood case before I turned and quickly walked out of the bar. As I stepped outside to walk home, I paused to breathe in the crisp winter air, my mind as peaceful as the night sky filled with falling snow.
Madeline O’Neill
In my work, I strive to highlight the hardships many minorities endure at the hands of American society and the modern world.
In my work, I strive to highlight the hardships many minorities endure at the hands of American society and the modern world. Typically, this inspires me to use my platform to emphasize the resilience and passion of the Indigenous population of North America, also those of the Muslim religion. It is important to bring forth the power and impact Indigenous cultures have on modern society, as we are advanced because of their diverse and inclusive culture. We should strive to have such diversity in our lives as well!
Tyrone Mckie
Drawing pencils capture fleeting ideas from my inner world and the world at large. These then transform into surreal digital paintings brought to life in Photoshop.
My artistic practice delves into the complexities of human experience, using digital paintings and digital collages as my tools of exploration. Drawing pencils capture fleeting ideas from my inner world and the world at large. These then transform into surreal digital paintings brought to life in Photoshop. With my digital collages, I curate fragments from various media sources, weaving them together to build a rich tapestry of imagery and often typography. As in our lives, where seemingly disparate elements coalesce to form our unique narrative, this artistic process reflects the interconnectedness of reality.
At its core, my art fuels a journey of self-discovery and a yearning to understand the world and universe around me. It's a visual conversation that invites viewers to explore their own emotions, ponder their place in the grand scheme, and engage with the questions that lurk beneath the surface. My work doesn't often offer easy answers, but instead invites contemplation and reflection, encouraging viewers to appreciate the beautiful complexities and contradictions inherent in being human.
Self Portrait as a Blushing Petal, Nestled into the Melt
My cousin told me he found / Jesus, which was the easy part / since he couldn’t find his way / out of Brooklyn. Then this morning / it was so quiet you could hear / a cat walking. By noon the wind / kicked in making the trees swing / like Count Basie and the traffic / sounded like his horn section.
I felt the seams of sky loosen and balloon over us the day I pedaled to your house, / my white skirt billowing behind me. Before, the ache did not disturb. Before, I clung to my / wake, vermilion and veined. I don’t know why the sun raked at my back, intensely begged me / to make my way to you. Does a crocus question / its readiness to bloom? Del Playa stretched open—this is where we kissed, the saltiness sealing familiarity on our lips. How many blackflies / have swarmed us since the night, digging us a ditch, / picking up next fight? Rousing our panic / like scattering field mice? But we floated / above this traffic, our bodies satin / in suspension, the tendrils / of our fingers irreversibly / and invisibly tangled, / and I can’t / and won’t / explain / this enigma, / a sweet fragrance / of red hibiscus / glazing over us / This stem, aerial, and erect. / These stipules, present, and free. / Our fusion protects a younger leaf— / look how she collects the dew, drinks in light / every time laughter shakes our joints. She may never know / how we suffered and recovered from two hard frosts. The blight crystallized, / thought never hardening us. I prefer this side of the story, how we came out warm. / and a bit weathered on the other end. I want to cup the syrupy smell in my hands again.
for her, an offering / of what love can cocoon. / Maybe now it’s plumeria / perfuming this place, / interlaced with the urge to love you / harder, love you even when / the biggest freeze of all towers over us, / livid and lethal. And yet-this stem, deep-rooted. / This blushing petal, nestled into the melt- / shivering in the delicate spring wind. / when you cradle me, heat flares. / When the stars spin / in wild directions, / you say, Burn, burn, / and explode into everything / you touch.
Sanctuary
Not enough of us in that neighborhood / to make teams, but we had two patches / of woods straddling the road that led
Not enough of us in that neighborhood
to make teams, but we had two patches
of woods straddling the road that led
maybe a quarter-mile from our corner
to the drive-in. Only a few acres, but enough
for a world of exploration. Unlike our own neat
yards, with careful trees and well-tended
aromatic roses. No one tended the woods.
If my father wanted firewood,
I could lead him to the windfalls.
Otherwise, none of the adults ventured
into our woods. Mostly the place was abandoned
except for me and maybe another kid,
never more than three of us,
poking around in the familiar wild.
The boggy smells, some fallen trees, wild blackberry canes,
and the remains of old kid-projects that might have been
meant as forts, or clubhouses, but forgotten
by some earlier generation of explorers, or by us.
Cars whizzing by on the raised highway, on the edge
of what we could choose not to hear.
Now the road passes a sports complex
on the way to extended parking for the shopping mall.
Our woods have vanished, from the Parkway
to where the drive-in was, familiar to
memory and imagination,
respite from the neat imagined lives
of our parents.
First published in Peacock Review.
Song for Cassiopea
Leaving polyp form, you are medusa, / telltale bell and arms but no platonic ideal, / moons backlit in aquaria.
for Kaden, marine biologist
As a child, you were nothing but stalk—
polyp form emerging, latching
onto nearby structures, your body
neither male nor female, still
you create your clones, proliferate
in mangrove swamps—
too warm for many, too polluted—
you are easy in that way.
Leaving polyp form, you are medusa,
telltale bell and arms but no platonic ideal,
moons backlit in aquaria.
Among your jelly peers,
you seem confused, pulsating
upside down, elaborate tendril arms
forever seeking.
Swimmers who know are not afraid.
Your sting is mild—not like the man o’ war,
but you hold a secret. Under stress,
you will release your stinging cells, tiny bombs
awaiting prey, distant from your rococo arms
pretending to be coral.
My child, future scientist, picked you of all creatures
to examine. After navigating stinging waters of school,
carrying a body mischosen by fate. Unloveable jellies—
bane of bathers, enemy of engineers, useless
nuisance, beauty of the deep.
Now, this child, transitioned,
buries himself in science, studies
how you protect yourself,
disappearing so easily—
thinner than a contact lens.
I see you stretching back into Cambrian fossils,
doing the hard work of evolution, organizing cells
into your chosen bodies, accomplishing
miraculous survival.
Of the Macho
A no ignition Johnny Blaze. / Now he places a white plastic lawn chair / in his shower. Safer, if you sit.
Mi hermano says he can’t change flat tires on his bicycle
anymore. His wrists too weak, can’t leverage the tire’s bead over
the rim. In high school he was the State all-around gymnastics
champion. His body flying over bars and mats.
A no ignition Johnny Blaze.
Now he places a white plastic lawn chair
in his shower. Safer, if you sit.
One summer afternoon when we were unchecked
college students, our lifeguard friend unlocked
the diving bay at the local public pool for
our romanticized athletic desires.
We bounced on the high dive, happy after some beers,
sending each other into the atmosphere.
Admiring our splashes
that exploded over the wall. Our friend
shaking her head,
our horsing around a real danger,
she claimed. And maybe,
because we both wanted to kiss her, we dared
each other in a contest of the macho. Who could
leap off the high dive board and come
closest the pool’s edge on the opposite side.
The entire pool in the shade of the early evening now, and
he launched first. His entire body embracing
the wilderness moment. A leap of redemption,
of joy, of middle-class boredom,
because they never let you howl. He landed like a perfect
arrow, un clavo, en punto, feet first, a daring splash two feet
from the edge. I swam over to him, and told him he was
crazy. He was the winner. No question, no contest.
I climbed out and watched him
glide through the water to the other wall.
He pulled his body out of the pool, the water
released him to the air. A wind of calm rushing over
the surface. The water returning to glass.
First published in Gigantic Sequins, June 2020.
Itemized Checks
There’s a coyote’s skull at Hurricane Creek / there’s a new table in your section / your life, sectioned
There’s a coyote’s skull at Hurricane Creek / there’s a new table in your section / your life, sectioned / an hour of each day in each canine eyeball / a new set of fangs / sun-bleached / the customers / sun-bleached / coyote could run but eight hundred miles / four highways / alley smoke break / cool-running river for paws to dip / don’t stop a ruptured lung / internal wounds / essential / contained / your stress / contained / paws hit stone & entrees hit table / & you’re still moving / & you haven’t hiked in months / & breath still comes / shallowing / tumbling / a fall forward / gravity’s grace / you wonder, what kills a coyote? / you wonder, will you always be only passing through? / there’s a high turnover at this restaurant / there’s a copperhead in the water / biding time / binding time to the instant of / strike / sink / release / breathe in / release / if you call out, will they fire you? / if you die somewhere, is it finally Home?
Nostos
Birds circle: / rich entertainment / and in the middle of it / nature not quite dead.
Birds circle:
rich entertainment
and in the middle of it
nature not quite dead.
The sun’s blade makes
one last stab
across my back.
I am leaving you,
October of my grieving—
your gray head
your orange skirt flouncing
round your ankles.
I drive east in low gear
along the unmuscled arm of Ohio
heading toward November.
And as the sun falls behind me
trees huddle to mask
disaster. Darkness, unwelcome
takes over the sky.
I thank the stars for making
a colander of night.
I look up and ahead
through heaven’s perforation.
The landscape shrivels past—
I am Orpheus in a dress
and Eurydice blind.
I drive under an overpass.
Lights strain, headlights on the bridge
gleam like the eye
in the head of an oracle.
Elegy as a Writing Instructor in State Prison
I want to know the god these men know, / pounded to life on the chapel piano.
2022 Chapbook Prize Finalist
I want to know the god these men know,
pounded to life on the chapel piano.
I want to disguise myself in desert air
and follow the hymn between each keyhole.
There’s a rebirth I’m missing as I exit
the guard kiosk & accelerate. I want to know
yearnings on the yards too violent to walk,
the single ember in a cell of one
who still believes in the god I want to know.
Mardi Gras
“Mardi Gras… Isn’t that the most euphonious appellation?” I closed my eyes and pronounced each syllable slowly, showing off my English and French skill to my brother, Kevin.
“Mardi Gras… Isn’t that the most euphonious appellation?” I closed my eyes and pronounced each syllable slowly, showing off my English and French skill to my brother, Kevin.
My initiation into the amalgam of cultures of America.
“Mm,” from the other end of the line. That’s it? Just an “Mm”? But I’m not done yet…
I continued, “It’s an ancient holiday, preceded by Lundi Gras the Monday before. Fattened ox, boeuf gras, to indulge in before fasting. You know, a religious holiday. Celebrated in Rome and Venice in medieval Europe…”
Quiet.
His vague grin when he categorized my comments as rubbish flickered.
I was about to tell him that my apartment is a short distance from Elysian Fields, the site of Blanche DuBois’s tragic end in A Streetcar Named Desire, but then I remembered he had forbidden me to watch A Streetcar Named Desire at the Art Theater in Taipei.
I stopped talking and jotted down the arrival time of his flight from Los Angeles. After hanging up the phone, I drove down to Woolworths on Canal Street to get new sheets, pillows, and a blanket for the Murphy bed in my one-bedroom efficiency for his stay.
I couldn’t believe Kevin was taking off from work to visit me.
Growing up in Taiwan, I had been invisible to Kevin, the golden boy, the favorite son. I carried our lunch pails to and from school. He walked in strides ahead of me, his tall figure and handsome long face leading us into each school day. On the days we had sports, he had the first bowl of noodle soup. While I waited for the maid to fix a second one, he slurped next to my rumbling stomach. When he went off to college in America, we were uncommunicative till it was my turn for college at Tulane. Three weeks after my arrival in New Orleans, he announced he was coming to visit me.
I was elated. Eighteen long years waiting for his attention.
My studio apartment sat on top of a three-car garage at the back of a mansion on Magazine Street. My wealthy landlady, Adelaide, lived alone in the mansion with her maid.
Weeks before the holiday, pounding drumbeats and the winding Jazzy pitch of trumpets filled the air. Adelaide had party after party in her mansion. Universities closed on Mardi Gras as nobody bothered to attend class.
New Orleans’s antiquated cobblestone streets and wrought-iron-fenced balconies stuffed with crowds from all over the world. The hordes wandering up and down the lanes, some with open drinks, some already inebriated. The French Quarter jam packed; the early spring air stunk of urine, alcohol, and Cajun spices. Bodies covered in flashy costumes, faces behind mysterious masks. Heads adorned with jeweled crown pieces, turbans with feathers. Massive flamboyant floats, ensembles of dancers, color guards, and drum bands sashayed on main avenues. City crippled for days.
On the sidewalk of Canal Street, Kevin and I caught purple and gold strands of beads, chased after pink plastic cups with prints of Zulu King.
I should at least be grateful for Kevin buying us fancy dinners: Cajun Barbecue shrimps, crab etouffee, Andouille sausages with red beans and rice. On Mardi Gras day, Kevin slept till noon, went out by himself after lunch. I didn’t see him till the wee hours of the next morning, reeking of spirits and cigarette smoke. He was not in the state to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, so I drove myself to church.
He had left my car with an empty gas tank. I wanted to say something to him, but he was asleep from his liquor induced stupor.
“A wild horse” my mother calls him, while I am “a gentle bunny rabbit.”
After I dropped him off at the airport, I didn’t hear from him. No thank you note. No inquiries about my school. Not even a Christmas card. A silent year. Until the next Mardi Gras. Yet I believed, or chose to believe, that Kevin wanted to see me at least once a year, and what better days than Mardi Gras to get us out of gloomy winters?
Years of life flew by in between many Mardi Gras. I graduated, worked, and married. My husband, Emilio, and I bought a large old house in the Garden District of New Orleans. In my starry-eyed view, a neighborhood close to the famed universities of Tulane and Loyola was a superb area to raise a family.
Big house, New Orleans, Mardi Gras. Kevin and his wife, Carrie, and his son, Joshua, came every Mardi Gras. Emilio and I became a popular couple. One year, Carrie invited her families to our house for the occasion. Suddenly, twenty some guests crammed our house, some we barely knew. They didn’t mind sleeping, or passing out, on the carpet, on the hallway, on the kitchen floor. At the end of the visit, they expressed gratitude exuberantly for a wonderful Mardi Gras holiday. Congratulated us on our good fortune living in a lovely historical home.
“Love you. Thank you for such a great time.”
“Oh, yes, love you. You are such a kind and gracious hostess. And you have a beautiful house.”
“Bye, love you, see you next Mardi Gras.” Joshua covered my face with smacking kisses.
They always said “love you” when they left. Love you, love you, love you, until the words sounded hollow.
For nearly fifteen years I had let myself believe that Mardi Gras was a sign of the real relationship between Kevin and me. A new milestone, a new tradition for our fledging families in America.
We enjoyed our new home. Our popularity fed our vanity.
Then we moved to the slow-paced, friendly, green foothills.
Greenville, South Carolina.
Our new house clutches the Enoree riverbank like a mollusk. The back yard slopes down to the winding waterway, tall trees overlooking the murmuring rock-strewn stream. I was planning to walk along the river path with Kevin’s family and share the view from my second-floor veranda with them. Kevin loves to eat. We could enjoy South Carolina Barbecue, Frogmore stew, corn bread, and collard greens.
The week before Mardi Gras, I stuffed the guest bathroom with toilet papers and towels, blew up air mattresses in the bonus room and packed the fridge, cleaned the house. Joshua adores chocolate milk, so I bought a large jug of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and a bag of marshmallows.
No phone call came to announce the arrival time.
Mardi Gras arrived, but Kevin never did.
Our neighbor, Brenda, invited us to watch a Mardi Gras parade in Greenville downtown Main Street.
On that Mardi Gras, the sky was cloudy and grim, a biting drizzle. Gray.
We stood on the sidewalk with an umbrella gifted by Greenville News. The parade was a relatively short entourage started with a big red fire truck, a high-flying American flag. Two white-haired gentlemen wearing Clemson baseball caps maneuvered two green and yellow John Deere tractors after the siren blaring fire truck. Behind the three vehicles, a band of children scrambled with American flags in their hands. It was a different parade from the ones in New Orleans and a different Mardi Gras celebration. Patriotic. Sober.
“No wonder Joshua didn’t come.” Zoe, my eleven-year-old, pouting. I was daunted by her brutal honesty.
Joshua. Rotund arms and legs, always with a good-natured smile.
I bite my lower lip, uncertain what to say.
“Let’s clear up the bonus room. Help me fold the air mattresses.” I held Zoe’s hand and lead her upstairs.
…better divert her attention… The move from New Orleans was tough on her.
“Uncle Kevin is bad.” Zoe said.
…Had I made it worse? Why clearing an unused bonus room now?...
“He is not bad. He is just inconsiderate. You don’t want to be like him.”
Yeah, Kevin could have called, saved me all the preparations. I was also wounded by missing a visit from his family. Worst, I had naively planned to take everyone to get ashes, hoping that we be reminded of our mortality and come to treasure what we have. But this inkling, like a premonition, was always at the back of my mind: Kevin and his family only wanted to be in the crescent city during carnivals. I was the convenience.
“That parade downtown was fun, wasn’t it?”
“Yea, it was ok. That boy gave me an American flag.”
“Oh, yeah, where is it?”
“Here, I’m going to put it in my room.”
I vacuumed the bonus room alone, sucked up all the dust. A family relationship is not like a business contract that you can terminate with a hasty signature. It’s not like Kevin had died, but it felt like it. Or I wished he had died. It would have been easier.
“Zoe, do you want some chocolate milk? The new chocolate syrup is in the pantry.”
“Yeah!!” Zoe skipped downstairs. Forgot about Joshua. Left me holding the old grudge.
“Let’s take a walk on the river path when you are done with your milk.”
We went out from the back porch. The earth was damp and the grass tender. Late afternoon sun peeked out, orange hue reflected on the soothing ripples around the glossy pebbles.
“I’m going to run. Do you want to run too? Mom?” Zoe had put on her tennis shoes.
“No, I can’t. I am just going to amble behind you, slowly.” I wiped her chocolate milk mustache, slightly relieved.
“We should go out for pizza; I don’t have energy left to prepare dinner.” I shouted to Zoe.
“That’s great, Mom.” As she ran, her voice became distant, wavering.
I meandered down the river path.
As I strolled, the illumination of the auburn sun, and the darkness of shade, alternated under the canopy of tree branches. I felt myself seeping gradually back into my own identity. Formed a new awareness. Finally, lost in the lulling whispers of the water, couldn’t even conjure up the image of Kevin, Carrie, or Joshua.
The Spin
you are a gyrating top, all giddy sin / I am nothing more than / evasive abstractions, void in the concrete
you are a gyrating top, all giddy sin
I am nothing more than
evasive abstractions, void in the concrete
the means to influence an audience
selecting facts to suit your argument
the perceptions, the conclusions
whether truth or lies
are effected by my scaffolding
loading language with luggage
I am not here to manipulate
common sense, prejudice, stereotypes
with rational argument
engulf the public with feeling
and propagate
the pull of emotional response
conforming views that comfort
smother all contradictors
people will believe anything
cover them with calumny
tell them often enough
one-sided messages
tell them emphatically
delivered by all media
I will change their understanding
The New House
In the old house, the swarms of flies / you sent clouded the bathroom mirror / and swam in the puddles of wine
In the old house, the swarms of flies
you sent clouded the bathroom mirror
and swam in the puddles of wine
on my nightstand. A spider left
a red painful rash on my right calf
after I rocked in the pink recliner
which used to sit in our daughter’s
nursery. The silverfish, hiding beneath
the white laundry basket, set
my skin afire, so I moved away.
This house is newer and bigger.
No more pests.
Two months pass and I finally relax—
I’m a new woman without you.
Poised at the keyboard, ready
to write, a fly bounces along
the ceiling fan’s blades. Its fat body
drunk on your spirit. I exit the office
and spend the day in the kitchen.
I’ll never see that fly again.
Seven days later a brittle spider
corpse waits in the closet corner.
All your tricks are meaningless.
You can’t speak to me.
Self-Portrait as Shakuhachi
How easy to let air / slide through oneself.
How easy to let air
slide through oneself.
Or, being air,
complete those brief
tasks, a song of many
whispers weaving through
tall grass, sculpting regrets
from that caressed cheek,
beyond dance and speech,
where words go for comfort
and nothing contains us.
Not joy, not contrition.
Neither hope nor peace.
Not even love.How easy to let air
slide through oneself.
Or, being air,
complete those brief
tasks, a song of many
whispers weaving through
tall grass, sculpting regrets
from that caressed cheek,
beyond dance and speech,
where words go for comfort
and nothing contains us.
Not joy, not contrition.
Neither hope nor peace.
Not even love.