21 Minutes

October 2018 | nonfiction

I note the time on my phone as I ring the bell. It’s 2:12 p.m. As I put my phone back into my purse, the door opens, and I force myself to smile. I enter the old house and the familiar warm, stale air envelops me.

I am pulled into an awkward embrace. The stink of cigarettes and unwashed hair assaults my senses and I squeeze my eyes shut while suppressing the physical urge to gag.

We pass through the room with the thousand books. Now we are in the kitchen. Now I am sitting at the round wooden table, sipping shitty, cheap coffee from a dirty cup.

I’m pretending to listen, but the complaints and stories have been soliloquized verbatim for years. I am sitting back from the table

(crumbs everywhere, smudges of jam and butter)

holding the mug handle with my right hand while my left awkwardly holds the side, as if I’m posing for a commercial.

I’m disgusted and for just a moment the disgust softens into concern, almost caring, but the moment passes, it won’t stick. I know from a thousand attempts that it will not stick.

My mind starts going back, and I know I need to get out of here.

(Please stop telling me about your uncomfortable bra. Please stop telling me about your friend from 75 years ago.)

“Here, here, take this.”

I take the folded white envelope from the wrinkled, mottled hand and shove it into my purse.

A hundred dollars cash, in twenties. From a lonely, fragile old woman who doesn’t realize she’s paying penance for an absolution she will never receive.

I hope it was worth it.
I know it wasn’t.

But I’m not giving it back.

I glance at the dash of my car as I back out of the driveway. It’s 2:33 p.m.

 

by Anne Alexander

Anne Alexander is a native Houstonian. She is a writer, wife, mother, autism advocate, and rescuer of animals, not always in that order. In a former life, she was a travel writer, correspondent and managing editor of a small town newspaper. She holds a BA in Psychology from Texas A&M University and is currently working on a collection of essays about families, mental illness and other delights.

 

 

Whose Voice?

October 2018 | nonfiction

When you left last night, pieces of sorrow drifted in your wake like lazy snowflakes. Some the wind caught and blew away. Some stuck to my sleeve. They remind me that what I need to say to you I need to tell myself.

Whose voice is it inside you pretending to be your own and telling you that who you are and how you are and where you are and what you are doing right now is not good enough?

That voice needs to be still.

Listen to your own heart. Do you hear passion and compassion, sorrow and joy, generosity and need, vulnerability and strength? These make you human – complex, contradictory, beautiful.

Why are we told we should want more or should be more? What more can there be than sharing our humanity with others? That alone may be the affirmation of our worth.

Some will not understand. Some will not care. Some will resent and malign. Some will say you have erred. That is their impoverishment, not yours.

Still, it will hurt. That will pass if you let it…if you don’t have someone else’s voice inside you ripping off the scab.

As for those who claim they speak only truth, you can measure the value of their words by the love you hear in their voices or see in their eyes. If the love is not there, it’s just noise.

Stand in the river. Embrace the good. Let the rest flow by you.

 

by Phil Gallos

Phil Gallos has been a newspaper reporter and columnist, a researcher/writer in the historic preservation field, and has spent 28 years working in academic libraries (which is more interesting than it sounds). Most recently, his writing has been published in Thrice Fiction, Sky Island Journal, The MacGuffin, and Stonecrop Magazine, among others, and is forthcoming in The Wire’s Dream and Carbon Culture Review. He lives and writes in Saranac Lake, NY.

The Machinery of the State

October 2018 | poetry, Pushcart nominee

A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,

Flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,

Mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,

Ripples the lone unarmed security guard’s shirt

As he waves concentration camp employees

In and out of the unremarkable office park parking lot.

 

Outside the Casa El Presidente tender-age detention facility

Where children as young as one-month live in cages,

I wonder: How durable is the machinery of the state?

How many of us would it take

To brush past the guard in blue short sleeves

And blue shorts set against a darkening blue sky,

Bald, or head shaved—I can’t tell which with the sun

Dipping lower and lower into the night’s waiting grave—

And set free the children?

One? Ten? One hundred?

 

Does America’s strength reside in this man’s

Minimum-wage-routine, his indifferent pacing?

Do they that hired him have children, believe in love?

How does he feel standing there as darkness falls

And he becomes an inhuman shape silhouetted

Against an inhuman panorama of wind-tossed stars

And a low-slung office building where little children

Sleep the sleep of those who have lost everything?

 

I came here to bear witness.

I came to take a sabbatical from business-as-usual.

What I’ve found is the unimaginable turned banal,

Like a nuclear detonation mentioned in passing

Before CNN cuts for a commercial break.

 

The sun disappears. No one bothers to reach for a flashlight:

Nothing to see; the office curtains are drawn.

The night-shift staff arrives to relieve the day-shift

Like nameless mechanics just doing their job,

For in America we all have jobs, we do them well

And without complaint,

And we quiet our minds with the faith

That hard work can set us free.

 

 by Andy Posner

Andy Posner is a resident of Dedham, Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Culture from California State University, Northridge. He moved to New England in 2007 to pursue an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown University. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides small personal loans and financial coaching to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, cycling, and ranting about the state of the world.

 

Rodrigo Etcheto

October 2018 | visual art

White Log Gray

Emergence

Floating in Gray

 

by Rodrigo Etcheto

A native of the Pacific Northwest, Rodrigo began his excursions into the forests, mountains and coast as an exercise in philosophical contemplation. Spending time alone in the wilds turned from a therapeutic endeavor into a passion for capturing the unique moments he saw. An avid reader and student of philosophy, Rodrigo derives much of his inspiration from the works of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans. He is obsessed with the flow of time and themes of change, impermanence, life death & rebirth, and tranquility. As a father of three young children, he has a daily reminder of the incredibly rapid flow of time and the incessant change deep inside each of us.

Jedi Grad

October 2018 | visual art

Jedi Grad

 

 

by Terry Wright

Terry Wright is an artist and writer who lives in Little Rock. His art has been featured widely in print and digital venues, including “Chaleur Magazine,” “Glassworks,” “Queen Mob’s Tea House,” “Riddled with Arrows,” “Sliver of Stone,” “Third Wednesday,” and “USA Today.” Exhibitions include the 57th Annual Delta Exhibition. More work on view at cruelanimal.com.