Weird in a Normal World

October 2023 | nonfiction

The table is long, filled with empty plates, glasses, and a steaming pitcher of coffee. Everyone is smiling, and grandpa has an eyebrow cocked in a sassy way at the camera. The plates are red, and they nearly blend in with the teak table. A light on the wall shines behind the family, just above grandpa. A stone fireplace sits to the right of grandpa, and his daughter, my boyfriend’s mother, sits in front of the fireplace, snuggled up close to her father– grandpa. In front of her sits my future brother-in-law, his blonde hair parted in the middle to look straight out of the 90s. The swinging door to the kitchen is far behind everyone, slightly skewed to the left. In front of the door and to the left of grandpa sits grandma, her body hunched just slightly. She leans into my boyfriend, her youngest grandchild, just as his mother leans into grandpa. Closest to the camera is my boyfriend, soon fiancé. Everyone is smiling, probably because they are full of breakfast foods, but more likely because they are enjoying the company. It’s grandpa’s 93rd birthday, and he’s going strong. I’ve heard stories about him, about the farm he owns and continues to run. My boyfriend told me all about it, about the times he worked on the farm. I can listen to stories, but that is it. There’s an empty chair at the table, and I wonder if I could ever fill it. I imagine coming with my boyfriend, or maybe fiancé, or maybe even husband one day to visit his grandparents. I want them to smile at me, offer me a hug, and eat breakfast with me. I want to sit at that table. But I know I can’t. I can’t because they are old and can’t handle change. I can’t because their grandson, my boyfriend, is the normal one, the one not married to a man, but in reality, he is. He is in a relationship with someone who looks like a man at face value but was born a woman. If he told his grandparents? Who knows. He wants to keep them safe in their old age and keep life simple. But my life, and now his life, is not simple. We are two men in a happy relationship. I have a vagina, but strangers don’t see that. We’re nearly engaged, we’ve bought the rings, and we have started the process to have a child. Yet his grandparents will never know this, never know me. And so, at night, as I’m alone in my bed, I find myself hoping my life wasn’t so complicated, that I could be normal, that I could sit at the table and enjoy breakfast.

Aarron Sholar

Aarron Sholar’s book, The Body of a Frog: A Memoir on Self-Loathing, Self-Love, and Transgender Pregnancy,is forthcoming from Atmosphere Press, and his essays have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He holds an MFA from MSU, Mankato, and a BA from Salisbury University. He serves as the Prose Editor for Beaver Magazine.

Behind the Garden Wall

October 2023 | fiction

A cracked skull the constables told me, must have happened when I hit the flagstone walkway. And the bruises, obviously caused by my convulsions. There was no doubt in their minds that I had succumbed to a fit of hysteria, which was perfectly understandable considering the recent spate of molestations in area. The dark stains on my bodice they attributed to a bloody nose, a matter of a weak constitution to be sure. They weren’t concerned about the volume of blood and didn’t seem to notice that there wasn’t any of it around my nostrils. They also didn’t seem to notice the rumpled grass at the edge of the walkway—or that it continued to the garden.

It was an uncivil hour, and he made quite a racket banging on the front gate and yelling that the beast had been seen prowling the lane. He said he followed its curious spring-heeled footprints to our garden wall where they simply stopped, as if it had leaped straight up into the air and over the top. If I could just spare a candle, he could continue the hunt.

From what I could see of him, he wore a long, dark cloak and carried a bullseye lantern that was spent. As I opened the gate, I offered a candle fetched from the kitchen—but instead of accepting it, he threw off his cloak with a sudden jerk revealing a devilish visage and claws that glinted in the moonlight as if made of metal.

He seemed surprised that I didn’t immediately faint at the sight of him or run as he belched out a gout of blue-white flame and clawed at me. He seemed equally surprised at what else I had brought from the kitchen—and at just how much blood a dinner knife could draw.

I wonder if, after I rolled his body off me and began dragging it to the garden, the thought crossed his mind that I might have been expecting him.

Francesco Levato

Francesco Levato is a poet, professor, and writer of speculative fiction. Recent books include SCARLET; Arsenal/Sin Documentos; Endless, Beautiful, Exact; and Elegy for Dead Languages. Recent speculative fiction appears in Savage Planets, Sci-Fi Shorts, and Tales to Terrify. He holds an MFA in Poetry, a Ph.D. in English Studies, and is an Associate Professor of Literature & Writing Studies at California State University San Marcos.

Jim Ross

October 2023 | visual art

Maltese Cross

Maltese Cross

Black Parrot

Black Parrot

 

Jim Ross

Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in eight years, he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, interviews, and plays in nearly 200 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Alchemy Spoon, Barnstorm, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Feral, Phoebe, Stoneboat, Stonecoast, and Whitefish. Text-based photo essays include Amsterdam Quarterly, Barren, DASH, Kestrel, Ilanot Review, Litro, NWW, Paperbark, Pilgrimage Magazine, Sweet, and Typehouse. He recently wrote/acted in a one-act play and appeared in a documentary limited series broadcast internationally. Jim and family split time between city and mountains.

Holly Willis

October 2023 | visual art

Peony 2

Peony 2

Peony 3

Peony 3

Holly Willis

Holly Willis is a hybrid artist/theorist working primarily in film, video, and still photography. Her work often examines the materiality of the image within a broader context of new materialist philosophy and the histories of experimental film, video, and photography with the goal of designing encounters with media that spark an embodied sense of curiosity and wonder alongside critical reflection about our relationship with the matter around us.

Only real bitches play bingo.

October 2023 | poetry

I’m talking the bitches who bring

their own dotting pens—the variety

pack that includes the bonus

glitter pen in fuschia. The bitches

who bring their own refreshments

and candies for when their blood

sugar inevitably drops

when the bitch across the room

yells bingo on a 30 dollar crazy L

card. Of course the bitch gets it.

She was winking at the caller

so of course the ball that came

next was a gift from him. His

balls. That’s what the real bitches—

my grandma and her friends say

when they lose. That, or they shit

talk the ugly Christmas sweater

that wasn’t ugly at all, even though

they’re all wearing gas station souvenir

shirts from tropical trips they took

years ago “before the ‘Vid hit.”

I ended up winning big—about

150 dollars richer but about 10

years lesser for it, but I was the bitch

who won three rounds while

the bitches were busy bitching.

Abigale Tabor

Abigale Tabor is a somewhat-recent college graduate living in a somewhat-decent town in northern Florida who writes poetry that echoes her life.