Chimeras

April 2020 | nonfiction

The phone is ringing I am sure the phone is ringing somewhere in the dark cave of my bedroom in the black void of sleep I know the phone is ringing.

The phone is not ringing. The phone is in the other room, plugged into its charger. It is not ringing. The phone is not ringing.

Something is wrong with the kids I know something is wrong with the kids deep in the fissures of my brain I know that something is wrong with the kids.

Nothing is wrong with the kids. Go back to sleep. It’s 3 a.m. Nothing is wrong with the kids.

*******************

Thirty-two years ago, as I lay asleep and unsuspecting after a glorious night, nature worked the way it often does, and I was invaded by another human being. Hospitably, I opened my womb to a developing life–my baby, our baby, a temporary visitor, a sublet for nine months or so.

I did not know he was colonizing. I did not know he was going to stick with me forever.

While I thought I was gestating, he was moving in. Fetal cells crossed the placenta into my blood stream, into my cells. Like stem cells, fetal cells can morph and change into the tissue they inhabit. Scientists discovered this when they found cells with Y chromosomes–male chromosomes–in a woman’s brain tissue.

Her son was right inside her head.

Further research has shown that this is much more common than anyone had previously believed. Apparently, we give birth, but apparently, they never quite move out.

*******************

They call them micro-chimeras, little bits of other people living inside of you, making cell lines, taking up residence in your head, in your heart.

These chunks are all mashed up like the chimera of Greek mythology—a monster with a lion head, snake for a tail, and rising out of the back of the beast, a goat head. The chimera breathed flames. It was an omen of disaster ahead—fire, shipwrecks, volcanoes.

The chimera was, of course, female.

*******************

Later, a sister, another colonizer. As her cells crossed the placenta into my blood, as they latched and landed and became one with my tissue, did they meet her brother’s cells? Did they wrestle, like Jacob and Esau, in my brain, in my heart? Or did they link up, united in their intrusion into my body?

How do they mingle, co-mingle, with each other and with me? Which one is the lion head, which one the snake? Which the goat head rising up from the center, bleating its dismay?

******************

Now they roar inside me in the middle of the night. Wake me in a blaze of panic because I know one or the other child is in trouble–struggling, despairing. Sometimes I am right. The phone is ringing, the kids are in trouble.

But my heart always knows before the phone rings. My brain knows before I am even fully awake. My boy, my girl, they will not let me go.

Kit Carlson

Kit Carlson is an Episcopal priest and a life-long writer with work appearing in publications as diverse as Seventeen Magazine and Anglican Theological Review. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, recently published in Ponder Review, Bending Genres, and The Windhover. She is author of “Speaking Our Faith” (Church Publishing, 2018). She lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her husband Wendell, and Lola, a nervous rescue dog. Find her at www.kitcarlson.org.

Claire Scott

April 2020 | poetry

Another Poem About Liberals

 

Some of us use paper straws & take two minute showers

others schlepp coffee cups to Starbucks

to be filled with almond milk lattes

many of us separate paper & plastic for recycling

then yank plastic bags from the dispenser at Whole Foods

& fill them with crème fraîche, avocados & pine nuts

a few tell the server they will keep their plate, thank you

no need for a clean one for their entrée

of Atlantic salmon or T-bone steak

several car pool if convenient, maybe once a month

then fly to the Barbados or Cancun or Kauai

for lavish vacations in five star hotels

air conditioning blasting in each room

one of us planted a tree, another bought an LED light bulb

all of us feel virtuous about our choices, our laudable intentions

that leave us with a taste of piety on our tongues

none of us wants to look at islands of trash

floating in the Pacific, forests burning in Brazil

none of us wants to hear the thrum of extinction

marching steadily behind

finger bones pointing at our backs

 

Grey Witches

 

Three ancient sisters huddle together

passing one rheumy eye between them

each taking a turn, ten minutes max

bickering since only one can see the clock

each sister with a different perspective à la Freud

depending on how she was treated by her mother (never her father)

Deino afraid of everything, gulping Xanax by the fistful

staying home at night, watching sitcoms with curtains closed

Enyo a woman of rage, marching for gay rights, trans rights, squirrels’ rights

throwing fire bombs into right wing protesters, cheering as they explode

Pemphredo a visionary sending out alarms of rising waters,

bones on bleached deserts, wars fought with iron spears

three stygian witches who rule a swamp

three me’s with one eye between them

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Escape from L.A. in a Tube Elevator to The Green Cave

April 2020 | poetry

Los Angeles energy and diversity

sometimes combined with a sort of

malevolence and I needed an escape

At first I had closed the blinds to the

sea, visitors asked me why, I said it

just served to emphasize I’d gone as

far West as I could go and Alger’s

advice was meant for younger men

and it saddened me. Then I came to

find The Tube. In moments before

sleep, I would enter a pneumatic

tube of copper and glass and it sent

me deep into the earth with a quiet

whooshing sound, and I’d descend

smoothly with a growing sense of

calm, down, down, down until the

elevator came to a slow, non-jolting

stop, and the doors slid open to

reveal a scene: walkways, panorama

of depths and finished walls chipped

out of cavelike structures, softly lit

but well-lit, the light was green but

greenish gold in areas, industrial

machines whirred and performed

generative tasks and men in hard

hats walked about checking things

and took no notice of me. The big

machines, made of one foot pipes

bolted together with flanges were

all industrial green on concrete

pads, with gauges and louvered

sides, and I knew they supplied the

power and light for the complex, a

seemingly endless cave of tranquil

energy, there for me whenever I

needed it for restoration and deep

green sleep to face the L.A. day.

 

Guinotte Wise

Guinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Five more books since. A 5-time Pushcart nominee, his fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review, Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com

Boundaries

April 2020 | poetry

I am a stranger

 

I am not your bird

I am not your sea

 

I am not your inspiration

I am not your tree

 

I am not your ear ear

I am not your flirt

 

I am not your overseer

I am not your dirt

 

I am not your Ledbetter

I am not your Freud

 

I am not your fairy tale

I am not your every wish for

 

I am not your Prophet

I am not your favor and favor and favor

 

I am a

stranger

 

Wendy Gist

 

Wendy Gist was raised in the forest of the Southwest on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in For Women Who Roar, Fourth River, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, Sundog Lit, The Chaffey Review, Tulane Review and other fine journals. Gist has worked as a professional contributing writer for many leading publications including Better Nutrition, Caribbean Travel and Life, eDiets, New Mexico Magazine, Pilates Style, Today’s Diet and Nutrition, and numerous others (national and international). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.

Michael Hower

April 2020 | visual art

Dome

Eden

Michael Hower

Michael Hower is an abandonment and graffiti photographer from Pennsylvania. His experience with digital photography began seven years ago. Over that time, he has explored numerous abandoned places over the Mid-Atlantic. His work has been displayed widely in over a hundred and fifty exhibitions and publications, featuring in shows at the Biggs Museum of Art, DE; Pennsylvania College of Technology, PA; Pennsylvania State Museum, PA and Marshall University, WV. The artwork is not just the photograph. The process starts before the photograph and continues after it is made. It begins with historical research and ends with the telling of forgotten stories. Michael photographs history by looking for places of deep significance, like the place featured here in the series “Perspectives in Eden,” the Irem Shrine in Wilkes-Barre. The Irem Shrine, an example of Moorish revival architecture was long home to the Shriners and had been a preeminent public events space in Northeast Pennsylvania for decades. The building’s doors have been shuttered for many years, but new ownership hopes to breathe new life into this forgotten jewel. “Perspectives in Eden” focus on the expansive main events hall along with its antechambers.