October 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
“The Marrow of Zen,” one of the sutras of Shunryu Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, relates zen practitioners to four horses, with the fourth horse responding only after the pain of the whip penetrates to the marrow of its bones. If alcoholics need to hit rock bottom, I have some sense of what that means. I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind thirty years ago, yet it took the onset of chronic neurological pain in order to commit to something I had only dabbled in for decades.
When looking out became impossible, and I could reflect but not imagine, I retreated within. At times, breathing was the only thing I could manage. What I found looking within was a life thrown out of balance, like a load having shifted in the back of a pick up with nothing securing it to the bed. Having seen myself for so long as a good guy, it was unsettling to realize how vain, shallow and self-indulgent I could be. Meditation became the ropes to re-anchor the load.
Who knew that pain could teach so much? Not me, but I now admit to being a slow learner. Someone might question whether I’m glad for the headaches. Make no mistake, I would like to be free of the symptoms that stifle me and keep me from enjoying all of my days. In fact, my search for a cure continues. Yet, looking back, I don’t think I would have otherwise learned things about my life and I’m glad to have found a teacher who speaks my language. Pain has finally penetrated so that I know in my bones what once I only thought in my mind.
by Charles Varani
Charles lives, writes and teaches in Oregon. He is also a shodan at Open Sky Aikido and rides his bicycle. Like most people in the Willamette Valley, he usually has something fermenting.
October 2015 | back-issues, fiction
Wordlessly, she positions him beside her, leaning against the boat’s railing for support. She is now somebody’s wife. She is satisfied with their pose—only slightly more intimate than a prom photograph. Even now, twenty-five years later, I can hear the tension in her mouth. Her gaze is direct, flat. Her thoughts are elsewhere. The photographer fiddles with the aperture, trying not to overexpose the fleshy whiteness of her skin, a princess in her past life.
My father is my mother’s contrast. He is brown and complacent. No matter how many times the photographer counts to three, advances the film, my father’s lips stay a stodgy tan line. His eyes are narrow behind the enormity of his glasses, three years out of style.
I try to imagine the moment my mother has described in detail, the one the photographer captured and my father later destroyed—the only time she ever saw my father cry. The newlyweds drop their arms, turn away. Bride and groom, shoulder to shoulder at the rail, contemplating the churning water below. A cork pops behind them. After a moment, he lifts his hand. He wipes his face. His head dips slightly. Her eyes do not turn to acknowledge his movement. Her hands grip the wood in front of her. A small breeze catches his hair, flutters her veil. They are quiet, their bodies stiff. The boat skips over a wave, lurching like a subway train. They stand together. They do not flinch.
by Moriah Howell
Moriah Howell was born and raised in Penns Valley, a rural community outside State College, Pennsylvania. She is currently an MFA student at Temple University, focusing on fiction. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction as well, but feels she was meant to write fiction. Her dream job would be an editor at a publishing house, as well as an author, and she hopes to make those dreams come true.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I never told anyone but
I’ll tell you.
About the fire
Folding up my tongue,
The last counted hour
With my stomach shrinking
Toward my graveyard spine.
My body wanted to be pins
And needles,
Balancing voided meals with
Cigarettes. Burn marshmallow
Fat like burning up
S’mores,
Campfire chocolate,
Childhood knobbles
In my rounded knees.
My body was statistical.
It was burned and tarred
And feathered. Monster me,
An under-the-bed story.
Cool dinnertime untruths,
Tamed, lightheaded.
Bless
The daily dizzy shrivel, the
Ribby abdomen poke, the
Airbrush collapse. Spark,
Sear, scissor open
The new pack.
by Alison Lanier
Alison Lanier is a Boston-based writer and graduate of Wellesley College. She recently joined the editorial team at The Critical Flame. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Counterpoint Magazine, and The Wellesley Review, where she also served as editor.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The ticks I pick from your flesh
have the verve of John Donne’s flea
but much more adhesive
with the fervor of Lyme Disease.
The garden’s a death trap,
the primrose and forget-me-nots
funereal and dungeon-breathed.
Spreading composed mulch to conceal
the yawn of a hundred open graves
I tire of myself and slacken
almost enough to lie down
and allow the grubs to engage me
in their shy waxen petulance.
Meanwhile in pale innocence
you punctuate yourself with ticks
by kneeling to yank the weeds
eager to elbow out the flowers.
Something about our seasonal
bloodletting lingers. Sprains,
torn tendons, even broken wrists
spike the long dark winters. Blackflies
riot in spring, summer features
splinters from stacking firewood
to season before the cold arrives.
But the ticks linger all year long—
their hard metal bodies, springy
eight legs, driven by blood-thirst
ripe as a rage for celebrity.
Arachnids, not insects, they deploy
their motivation so adroitly
we feel them crawling through our sleep.
In the north, they gang up on moose
and kill with a quarter million
individual nibbles per pelt.
They stick to us both, but lately
you’ve been sporting them the way
ex-smokers sport nicotine patches
on parts of the body that matter.
I flush them into our septic tank
where they probably thrive and plot
a future so bloody no one
but ticks will survive, draining
the blush of sunset to leave
a fog-gray landscape writhing.
by William Doreski
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
She believes the snow is a mirror
Turned upwards toward her face,
A catalyst for the frigid light
Burning in the old, dappled pines.
She believes that love
Is one or two canoes
Drifting in soft degrees
Over dark, polished waters.
She believes the young boy
Carrying his notebook beneath her shadow
Is a lost star following home
Her wintry beckons.
She believes we will one day remember
Her cold serious heartbeat,
Sending up bright untethered rockets
She pretends are prayers.
by Seth Jani
Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has appeared throughout the small press in such places as The Foundling Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.
