Mission Report: El Eclipse de la Grande

October 2023 | fiction

La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico, Thursday, July 11, 1991

10:50 am

I am writing in a thatched hut a half mile down the beach from the village. The surf crashes on the shore.

Supplies

2 jugs agua pura

2 cameras

Tortillas

1 can chicken meat which tastes like dog food

1 can Vienna sausage which IS dog food

2 granola bars

1 can Herdez salsa

 

We have traveled here from Lubbock to witness the greatest full eclipse in decades, using an Eclipse Monitoring Station fashioned from a Johnnie Walker box with a hole cut in it. The hole is covered with foil from a cigarette pack, with a smaller hole poked via a safety pin in the foil. It’s a Camera Obscura, a pinhole camera. Jimbo read about this design someplace. He is a friend from high school and has joined as a Mission Specialist.  He wears a straw cowboy hat and a red Speedo. He has a portly frame.

 

11:00 am

We have not pinpointed what time El Eclipse will begin, having heard many different accounts. Mission Specialist Jimbo was supposed to be on this. One local said it would not occur here in this part of Mexico at all. We discounted his opinion immediately.

The man told us this last night as we sat at a table on the dirt street in front of a little store lit by a bare bulb. A large man with a cleaver, shirt open, was chopping pork on a board, then frying it in a pan over a propane flame.

“El carne?”  I said.

“Si, es porco. Taquitos.”

“Dos, por favor,” I said.

He fried the chopped pork and scooped it onto two steamed tortillas.

“Frijoles?” I asked.

He handed me a Tupperware bowl with cold beans floating in it. The taquitos were mas fina. I considered my potential disablement from the mission after consuming the frijoles.

12:45 pm

A hen with six chicks has disappeared from around the shack behind us. El Eclipse underway.

12:55 pm

Eating Herdez salsa out of a can. Smoking a cigarette, peering into Camera Obscura. The earth-rending blackness we expected has not yet materialized.

1:18pm

Sort of like a cloudy day at the beach.

1:30pm

The sky seems to be lightening up. A rooster crows behind us. I believe El Eclipse is over. Jimbo reports that the whole universe has now changed and that his fillings hurt while the spectacle was underway.

A long moment of silence, as the surf crashes.

“Mine, too.” I replied.

 Conclusions

The next night, drinking pulque at Hermana Hortensia in Mexico City, Jimbo and I found an English-language newspaper, showing the path of El Eclipse.

We were several hundred miles off course, far from the dark zone, figuring that the moon was really big and would black out the whole country. As the mildly hallucinogenic pulque kicked in, we closed the mission, agreeing we are clueless specks of sand on the beach.

 

David Fowler

David Fowler has lived in New York, San Francisco, and on a ranch near Penelope, TX. He writes from journals kept during his travels and lives in Jackson, MS. This is his first published fiction.

A Romance to Night

October 2023 | poetry

In the crisp death of summer, a cat

falls from a broken branch.

The moon sings, amused by paw

half-crushed under the stares of a passing car.

 

Vacant children drive purposely

through the blaze-maze of gilded cul-de-sacs

scattered with condoms and crushed fireball nips,

numb to clouds adulting overhead.

 

Outside the bar a couple try to kiss for the first time.

 

On the fire escape, some woman hums anxiously sweeping.

Waiting, I stare into my scotch

as the glow from an RCA television

and smells of ammonia suffocate the pub.

 

Above the bar, the moon reflects a rooftop coop.

The pigeon sits upright in its wired grave, cooing

as a priest doubles over.

 

Ed Gaudet

Ed Gaudet is a writer who lives in Hanover, Massachusetts, where he is a cybersecurity software entrepreneur in healthcare. He has written for Forbes Magazine. His journey with poetry began at an early age and grew during university where he studied under poet Ruth Lepson and was greatly influenced by Robert Creeley. While attending Bentley University, he was the Editor-in-Chief of its literary magazine, Piecework. In 1999, Ed was awarded the grand prize for his poem, “Sitting Shiva,” which appeared in Into the Sun. His work has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Panoply, Clade Song, and Book of Matches, Lit.

Stanley Horowitz

October 2023 | visual art

Covid Winter

Covid Winter

Illuminated Thoughts

Illuminated Thoughts

 

Stanley Horowitz

Stanley Horowitz’s work was exhibited in the 2008 Heckscher Museum Biennial show on Long Island. During the past two years, he was a featured photographer for The Wayfarer, and covers have been published for Rattle, Buddhist Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Kestrel, Off the Coast, Stand Magazine, and Burningword Literary Journal.

Girl #4

October 2023 | poetry

Back there, someone crowned me.

Yes, me! — Where do you think

I got these carnations?

 

I’d like to unclaim candidacy,

but there’s already a Klimtish woman

threading my hands with rings while

someone calls for shin ribbons.

A man cradling five pincushions

coaxes my sclerae to bloom.

 

I enter on a bridge of hands.

Dozens, it seems, press my midriff,

and thumb my hair.

 

What’s this? Only halfway

to the stage, and they’re dragging

dimes from my curls. Too much

tugging, clinking,

I feel myself kick —

 

When I find my way home,

you’ll have many questions, like:

Out so late? Tea, my love?

Darling, where are your shoes?

 

I’ll promise to explain later,

complain of a headache —

could be the cold, or the hour,

or maybe the wind,

 

rattling the coin slot

wedged between my eyes.

 

Christianne Goodwin

Christianne’s chapbook “Oracle Smoke Machine”, a collaboration with painter Stephen Proski, is forthcoming with Staircase Books (Cambridge, MA). Her work has been published by Rust + Moth, The Lakeshore Review, Fahmidan Journal, and Panel Magazine. She is a graduate of the Boston University MFA program, the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.

Lila Byrne

October 2023 | visual art

Boom

Boom

Knock Knock

Knock Knock

Universe of Thought

Universe of Thought

 

Lila Byrne

Lila Byrne’s passion for art began as early as she could hold a pencil. She has since taken many art classes, including programs at RISD, Pratt College, and Stamps at the University of Michigan. She has designed logos for various businesses in the area and has been an assistant teacher for an art school. She is always looking for ways to learn more about the art world and is excited about this opportunity. She creates her pieces using as many mediums as possible to help her learn exponentially.