October 2017 | poetry
Albany
for a while he worked at a school up the road
and told us not to talk to the boys who lived there
but trouble started inside our house
the hole in the rug
the beet-stained cloth
the dark-winged insect in the unslept night
haste hid his plan
and a dearth of kin
like the letters in the glovebox
from friends who fed our animals
and doubted our return
the unclasped necklace
the bruise on the knuckle
the heat of the day trapped in the car
at a gas station pay phone
in a town we didn’t know
see the bend in the river
where he longed for the coast
and numbered the things he could part with
stand on the porch
of the house near the train tracks
where we curled on the floor
in one room together
and outgrew our clothes
by the end of that winter
Sift
In summer we walked through the woods,
picking wild strawberries and naming the trails as our own.
The remains of a homestead lay half-buried, roof joists rotting around rusty cans,
books frail and dusty as moth wings. Grass seeds clung to our clothes.
Can you stop time so we can stay together?
In town, he drove with his arm across the front seat
to keep us from hitting the dashboard at intersections.
Leave your coat on when we get there.
He knew these people before he was married. Sad to see us, they asked us to stay.
But by then we’d seen dead animals and fires at the edge of the garbage dump,
smoke lingering in the orange peels and eggshells, cigarette butts and toys.
We’d heard arguments through the floorboards, moved into houses with dirty sinks
and medicine abandoned behind the bathroom mirror.
We’d departed together, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the school year,
to sleep in campgrounds and fields.
We’d listened to the snow muffle our voices as it lit the night sky,
tree boughs soft and heavy and quiet.
We felt the inward pull of family,
like underwater branches against our legs in the lake.
Will you leave us some clues before you go?
We need to know fool’s gold from the real thing,
the names of the people who broke your nose,
and should you kiss the girl on your right when you see a car with one light?
Lament, 1971
Put your feet in the creek,
sit next to me in the shade.
Do our voices idle between the books and clothes and dishes we left behind?
Unlock the secrets of the language we used to speak.
Hold on, even as meaning unravels.
Laundry swings on a clothesline, blocks out the sun. There is a storm coming.
Keep still.
We make a circle, five of us, like fingers on a hand.
Bees swarm where the faucet drips.
Pull away, baby boy, from the gestures we inherit.
Refrain
In smoke-scented, threadbare coats
they’d walked through frozen fields and empty streets
toward whispers of work and pickles, fresh bread and fish,
an address in a port city, yellow flowers at the base of a mountain.
See the curve of her cheek as she turns from the pier,
seagulls loud in the charcoal sky.
They’d dreamt of fruit trees and a food grinder for the new baby.
Between tanks of tropical fish, he eats a sandwich at his workbench
in the hazy pungent air.
Short sleeves show Navy tattoos, the arms of a tinkerer, an appliance repairman.
Branches heavy with plums obscure the potholed alley.
Doorbell. Cars on Orchard Street. A neighbor’s sprinkler.
Turn the radio on.
Were they led by bravery or hunger?
The men who knew him then turn to each other now.
Signal and refrain.
Samantha Malay
Samantha Malay was born in Berlin, Germany and grew up in rural eastern Washington State. She is a theatrical wardrobe technician by trade, a writer and a mixed-media artist. Her poem/collage ‘Rimrock Ranch’ was exhibited at Core Gallery in Seattle, Washington in January 2017. Her poem ‘Gather’ was published by The RavensPerch in May 2017, and her poems ‘Rimrock Ranch’ and ‘Homestead’ appear in the summer issue of Sheila-Na-Gig.
October 2017 | fiction
Azalea Martine’s Daily Schedule
Every morning at 6:30, Azalea Martine wakes up and throws back the covers. She opens the blinds and windows before freshening up in a bathroom with walls the color of sun-bleached grass. At 7:10 John Martine watches his wife, Azalea, make oatmeal and bacon for breakfast while he taps his fingers on the tabletop and debates telling her the nightgown she’s wearing makes her look fat.
At 7:30 Azalea Martine cleans up the breakfast dishes and turns her cheek to the side when John kisses her goodbye. He didn’t come home last night, but she doesn’t complain to him. At 7:40 she showers, does her hair and make-up, and gets dressed. She doesn’t complete the 10-minute exercise routine her sister, Agnes Merchant, suggested two days ago while Azalea sucked on her third cigarette in two hours. John wouldn’t notice if her hair caught fire while she stirred brownie batter in her pink slip.
At 8:05 Azalea Martine picks up a basket and begins straightening the living and dining room. She takes John’s slippers and throws them into the garbage pail because it’s the third time in two days he’s left them beside his chair. She ignores the ashtray, it’s hers.
At 8:25 Azalea Martine makes their bed and fluffs the pillows. She decides not to wash the sheets because they haven’t shared the same bed in four days and his pomade hasn’t dirtied the pillowcases. She steps on John’s blue suit jacket on her way to the door and doesn’t stoop to retrieve it.
At 8:30 Azalea Martine stops paying attention to the time, drops her basket in the middle of the hallway, and wanders back to the kitchen.
At 8:31 Azalea Martine opens the cabinet underneath the sink and pulls out a half-empty bottle of red wine. She uncorks it and takes a big swallow.
She will drink until 10 and then wipe down the kitchen work surfaces. She might even pour boiling water down the sink to flush the pipes.
The grocery shopping will have to wait until tomorrow.
Azalea Martine makes a mental note to pick up flour. She only has half a cup left.
A Bottle of Daddy’s Laughter
I tore Daddy’s bedsheets five days after he died, and his birthday card I tossed into the trashcan with the banana peels and spoilt pork chops.
“They’re doing a lot with wax dummies,” Aunt Mamie said with a cigarette gripped between her fingers. “Didn’t look a thing like your daddy. Hair’s different, that ain’t his hair.”
I ignored Aunt Mamie. To her the world hadn’t been right since Elvis and Priscilla divorced.
“Bet your mama buried him with that gold ring.” Mamie whistled through yellow teeth. “It’d fetch some big cash at Pete’s. You know Pete, don’t you? We used to date way back when dirt was new.”
Yeah, I knew Pete. The filthy old man shoved his hands up my pleated skirt when I was seven, but I never told Daddy.
“It was your mama that killed him.” Mamie flicked ash onto a cracked green saucer. “Your mama worked him to death, worked my brother right into the grave. I told him Audrey was bad news. Don’t trust them girls with red hair, they’re evil.”
I unscrewed the cap on the vanilla extract and drank. The taste smelled like Daddy’s laughter.
Rebecca Buller
Rebecca Buller is a native Oklahoman. She was the Second Writing Prize Winner of the Dream Quest One – Winter 2016 – 2017 Contest and a Semifinalist in the 2016 New Millennium Writings competition. She works for an insurance company and enjoys writing fiction and poetry in her spare time.
October 2017 | poetry
Guidelines for Eating
Do you like peas?
Do you like rice?
asks the little girl in her highchair.
Maybe it’s when we are her age
that we first learn the truth about food.
It’s when we make our choices to be
eaters or starvers in times of crisis.
“Maybe you didn’t grow up that way,”
he says, but “I’m European….”
Do you like cheese?
“I made that soup for you!
I know you love meatball soup—
would you cry if I told you to go
in the kitchen and fix yourself a bowl?”
Do you like ham?
We had ham for Easter.
“Why are you crying? It’s not like
an airplane has crashed. It’s not like
your mother has been hit by a bus.”
Do you like peas?
Do you like rice?
“You shouldn’t eat that bread and butter.
Butter is all fat. It will kill you!
Go ahead—here, take this!”
Two pounds of butter tumble
across the counter.
Do you like cheese?
There are times when a woman
wants salt or chocolate,
at least comfort in the form
of bread or peas.
And there are times when this man
eats an entire can of condensed milk.
“It’s a treat,” he says, “Where I grew up
this stuff was over two dollars a can.”
Do you like ham?
We had ham for Easter.
I know the planning, the time
and preparation that go
into making ham for Easter
or into a bowl of homemade soup.
I know how hard it is
to taste a gift when it comes
with words so often repeated,
words that pass through the filter
between brain and mouth
as easy as water through a colander.
Do you like peas?
Do you like rice?
Walking in Circles
If blindfolded and told to walk
a straight line in the desert,
we cannot do it.
In a forest, where the canopy
of leaves blocks the sun,
we will find an invisible wind
blowing us off course.
It is ingrained in us
to walk in circles.
Perhaps this is why I wake
each morning, surprised
that there is no head
on the pillow beside mine.
There is a need to check my phone
for a message from you,
as if I simply slept so soundly
that I did not hear you
returning in the night.
But I woke seven times–
the cat was running a circle
from the windows on the east
to the windows on the west.
She is curled up now,
a nap-circle beside my knee.
It doesn’t seem to bother her,
to accept that circular nature
of nose to tail.
But I feel myself, orbiting moments,
reaching backwards
for when you were here.
Everyone’s advice would be–
Move on.
As if I could control (or would want to)
the emotion circling
through arteries and veins.
It is only natural
to remain unable (unwilling?)
to follow a linear path.
Pica
I remember exactly what my crib tastes like—
a sort of plastic-wood, the way I imagine
a fresh snapped birch twig to taste.
These days, as an adult, I try to be choosier
about what I put in my mouth.
As children, we explore and discover,
almost forget how to stay alive.
We leave the safety of children to adults,
who install crib sides upside-down
and inadvertently allow our heads to get trapped.
Maybe it’s because I understand that imperfection
that I crave the creamy texture
of plastic Risk troops on my tongue.
I have the inter-generational habit of idly chewing
the ends of hair, while pondering
some kindergarten question—
Some of us always return to taste
as the basic means of understanding.
Even the cat is drawn to circles of elastic,
lying in wait on the kitchen table
or on top of the clothes hamper.
And somewhere, someone in this neighborhood
is trying to overcome the need to gnaw and chew—
I found a metal spatula with bite marks on its handle.
It is lying, lonely, on the sidewalk under a pay phone.
It makes me wonder if its surrender was forced or voluntary.
I can picture this cooking tool flung out an open window
by a cook weary of seeking from utensils
what can’t be found in food.
Maryann Wolfe
Maryann Wolfe teaches creative writing, composition, and food writing at Bridgewater College. She has had work published in The Bluestone Review and Earth’s Daughters and placed in contests run the VA Poetry Society.
October 2017 | poetry
The first time she fucked a machine, there was some uncomfortable pinching. But it was momentary, corrected after a few thrusts by a data-driven recalibration. The second time was much better. The machine had measured her depths, tested her temperature, listened to the tempo of her breaths, and now it slid into her with the smooth precision of a crescent moon turning in circles for the sun. And the money was incredible. Impossible to beat. She could show up for two study visits a week and spend the rest of her time lounging around the hacienda with her fat black lab, Queero, painting and having languid encounters with lovers of the human variety.
But lately, something was different. She was starting to crave the feeling of the machine’s slithery suit sliding across her skin—the softest organic polymers yet, they said. The other night, Juno came over and seduced her. As they fell to the bed with mouths full of blue agave, tonguing the circles of tequila’s heat, she caught herself listening for the soft purrs of the machine’s sensors transmitting data back to its central server, missing the rhythmic hum of cooling fans spinning behind glassy eyes. After Juno left, she sat on the porch in an old flannel robe, feet tucked under Queero, staring out across the bay. The night was clear, no fog, and there were thousands of drones flying above the waves in coordinated fashion. Manufactured by the same company as the machine. Her machine? God, only two more days until she would see it again. Queero started to snore and she decided there was nothing wrong with drinking alone.
Farley Thompson
Farley Thompson is an attorney, educator, and writer who hails from Salt Lake City and currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. They spend their free time beachcombing, gardening, quilting, and thinking about thinking.
October 2017 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
High School Lunch
My father made me a sandwich for lunch every day,
carefully put the turkey, cheddar, lettuce and mayo
on the sourdough, then zipped it up in a Ziploc.
And every day during orchestra, I slipped the sandwich
into the whooshing plastic of a black trashcan, or palmed
it off to a friend. Those feinted days, when I almost fainted
in the hallways, eating less than three hundred calories.
Once, my father made a spaghetti dinner—the last
he’d cook for us as a family—and I refused to eat
anything but Special K. His dish crashed into the sink
and my mother ran after him (then, she still could).
I held the shards in my hands; the pasta sauce
coated them like coagulated blood. That was
the first time in my life that I felt regret,
true regret, the kind that’s parasitic
and coils up in you like a tape worm,
eating through your intestines,
inside out. The kind that swims
around in your stomach when you wake
covered in the lilacs and butterflies
of your childhood bed, to come downstairs
and find your mother, alone, crying.
The kind that feels like the frozen lace
of love covering your heart
when your aunts are waiting for you at the airport
in Seattle, instead of your mother’s friend,
and they sit you down in those grey vinyl chairs
by baggage claim. You don’t want to look
at them. You want to watch the carousel
until it’s one with painted horses that never
stops spinning. You hop on, grab
a magenta mane, and hold as tight
as your tiny hands will let you.
Visiting my mother’s memory on a stormy Friday night
I stare at the reflection
in the candle, aimlessly,
until it hits me—it looks
like my mother’s eye,
dark as the sea in a storm,
grey and sad but inquisitive.
Then I realize, it’s actually
the matting of our portrait
that I took in college,
in the reflection, of us
in matching outfits,
mounted on my wall.
The cancer had gotten worse
then; she’d started fearing
death for the first time.
When I asked her
that winter where
she wanted her ashes
spread, she said
she didn’t know,
maybe the Grand Canyon,
where she and my dad
were wed, maybe
Bandelier, where
she spent much
of her childhood,
just outside Los Alamos,
then looked me
in the eyes
and just cried.
I held her until
she fell asleep;
her short
blonde hairs
stuck to the pillow
with static.
The next morning,
when I kissed her goodbye
and flew away,
I refused
to know
it would be
the last time
I’d see her smile.
Kelsey Ann Kerr
Kelsey Ann Kerr has a great interest in loss: holes both metaphorical and physical of the heart, holes in life left by the loss of parents, cauterized by love. She teaches writing composition at the University of Maryland and American University, and holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Maryland. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming, in “Stirring,” “New Delta Review” and “The Sewanee Review,” among others.
