July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Charles Rafferty
He stole the stars above her house, pulling them out with a claw hammer. She wouldn’t love him anymore, so he left her with a blue-black vault of night — the color of the grackles he used to throw rocks at as they crowded out the other birds around their backyard feeder.
He wanted her to see that the sky had been looted. She never noticed though, because already she had taken a lover, and why would she need the sky and its Rorschach of light when she had a man to pin her to the bed each night?
Meanwhile, the stars were back at his place. It was hard to sleep with the glow of them leaking out of his dresser drawers and the bed too big without her. So off he’d go to the couch, which at least reminded him of the times when she had lived there.
Some nights, he’d get up, walk across town, and climb into the crook of her backyard maple — the one with a view of her curtains and the shadow play of bodies.
One night he waited for the other man’s car to leave. Then he reached into his pocket for the pebbles. The first one hit the window and the light came on. She peered into the night, and didn’t seem to notice it was a tiny bit darker. He tried to order his loneliness, to give it a shape so it could fit upon his tongue, but it only slid back and choked him. Then the window came down with a decisive thud, and the light went off again.
He knew he’d be up in her tree forever, and for the first time since taking them, he wanted to return the stars, to make beautiful the sky he would wait beneath.
Charles Rafferty is primarily a poet. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker and The Literary Review. In 2009, he received an NEA fellowship. His most recent book is A Less Fabulous Infinity. Currently, Charles directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
At yon round table sprawls a rake,
A dissolute, belov’d by girls
Who cannot but great notice take
Of how that handsome flaunts his curls.
For nothing draws a maid like hair
On heads or chests or arms or cocks,
Or makes the fair sex wish him bare
So much as long and golden locks.
The lad kicks back and quaffs his wine
While ladies hasten to undress;
He’ll have them here if he’s inclined,
There’s not one craving he’ll suppress.
It’s almost midnight by the clocks
When he espies a spirited mare
Of ivory breast and ruddy hocks
And silken cheeks and ankle fair.
Soon thinks he of the sounds she’ll make
When once beneath him she’s supine:
Moans and sighs, she will not fake
The thrilling trembling down her spine.
But as he dreams, this other pearl—
Her hand maneuv’ring in his shirt
To toy with all his hairy swirls—
Does show herself a worthy flirt.
“You are some wench,” he says, “a fox,
I’d like you, both, I must confess,
And if I did not fear the pox,
‘Tis a desire I’d soon address.”
Thus Hogarth did with Beauty’s Line
Portray an Orgy for our Rake:
All youthful flesh, and joy divine,
And time well-spent for pleasure’s sake.
Why pass the time with other jocks
At checkers, horses, cards or chess?
This lad will say when old age knocks,
“I fondled girls, and thus, progressed.”
– Susan Pashman
The poem, “On Hogarth’s…” was composed upon viewing Hogarth’s “The Orgy,” from his series, “A Rake’s Progress.” Susan Pashman’s first novel, “The Speed of Light,” was published in 1997. In addition to novels. she has also published stories and essays in such journals as The Texas Review, The Portland Review and Dan River Anthology.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I. 23 January 2010
I spent the year learning to live without you.
I braced myself for ice breakers asking how many siblings I had,
for moments when someone would call me by your name,
for the times when facebook told me I hadn’t communicated with you in awhile,
for when I heard “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” or saw gummy peach rings,
for Burberry scarves, Dracula, and passing references to typography,
and I would weigh that moment against the reserve of tears and the reserve of my heart.
Today: Rivulets of tears streak and stream “dramatic black” mascara and
“smoky brown” eyeliner betraying…
Last year, you and Mom took me to the mall for this makeup, for a professional look.
You were the one who told me not to wear yellow,
who made me try on strange pants and shirts that I bought—
You were the artist whose eye I borrowed when arranging, when making cards.
Twenty-one years and three hundred-fifty days, you were here.
Three hundred and sixty-five days later, I have come to realize
my tears are not grief—no, they are separation anxiety,
a different sort of salt that forms as unnamed sighs are uttered to Heaven.
Until we meet again–
II. April 4, Resurrection Sunday
My mother called early on a January morning last year:
Where are you right now?
I was on the couch, about to leave for work.
You didn’t watch the news, did you?
There was a car accident victim from our town—I saw the ticker on the screen.
It’s your sister; she didn’t come home—she won’t be.
I threw my cup of yogurt in the trash and spilled my tea in the sink.
We know where she is.
I raised my head to the ceiling, invoking giving and taking and blessing.
My mother called last week:
Where are you right now?
I was planning lessons, reading emails, folding laundry.
You didn’t hear the news, did you?
My grandmother came up from Florida; diagnosis: multiple myeloma.
She won’t be coming home.
She is living with my Aunt Lisa, here in Massachusetts, indefinitely.
We know where she is.
I raise hope: she has a good doctor, and we saw her Easter weekend.
Still: I want to lose my phone.
III. June 29
When Mummu, my grandmother, had her own house in Massachusetts,
she always had flowers:
roses, dahlias, daffodils, tiger lilies, and poppies, lining the front yard,
along the edges of the back yard, and in a flower bed around a boulder,
the site for family photos, cousins perched on the granite, between blooms.
Before Mummu left to live in Florida permanently, she gave Myja, my sister,
a paper bag of bulbs that yielded grapefruit-sized blossoms and cast a heady fragrance.
Myja took a picture of herself grinning next to the circular cloud of petals.
When Mummu lived in Florida, she always had flowers.
After a hurricane blew through, I called to check on her.
She said she was fine—the electricity would be out for three days.
She and her older Finnish friends were cooking over sterno.
All was fine, except for her ruined rosebushes.
Now Mummu is back in Massachusetts, resting on the couch at Lisa’s,
accompanied by a black cat and a vase of supermarket flowers that I brought,
and the other bursts of color and petals, offerings from her other callers.
IV. October 24
I wish I was past the inevitable;
I am forced to carry clumsy, boxy uncertainty, jumping when the phone rings.
I whisper a greeting and my heart pounds at the tentative “So…”
on the other end of the line.
There is that line, between me and my phone, and other lines as well:
one from my phone to everyone,
one from me to her, and
one from me to Death.
Death plucks at the string between me and her now and then, a bassist tuning
the low resounding note, ready—
not proud, but bound to remind me that he slips in when he pleases,
leaving indelible memories of botched final lines and greetings:
“I’ll talk to you on Friday; I have to get some work done.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day”
“It was good to see you.”
or, asking once it’s over, “Did he get to see my card before—“
swallowing back the notion that the shade, the spirit was ready to split from the body.
And so I sit, waiting for the inevitable.
I refused to be cheated by a poorly made final greeting,
but I will be robbed of peace with every call and conversation
that begins with “So…we’re still waiting.”
V. November 8
The waiting game is over
VI. November 14
I hum the refrain of a Five Iron Frenzy song: “We are blessed./ We endure.”
Vaguely familiar older faces blink back tears and offer: “Sorry for your loss.”
I shrug. “It was all for the best.”
I sit on the front pew, a wooden creaky structure,
listening to cousin Eric’s wife play hymns on the organ.
“It is well, it is well with my soul.”
The pink casket is front and center.
I resolve to remain a stone, like the monument we will be going to on Forest Hill,
the smooth façade already carved with her name and “Beloved Wife.”
I attribute the retrieval of tissue from my cardigan to congestion—not Emily’s eulogy.
As we intone “I come to the garden alone,”
I stifle laughter at the quivering vibrato of the soprano voice behind me
reaching for Heaven itself with her absurd vocal cords.
There is no fear in Death.
The burial is a strange formality—aunts and cousins demur sitting in the
graveside seats by the green Astroturf and brass rails lining the hole.
A few words, the distribution of pink roses, and we depart for
a deli platter, an arrangement of fruit, church basement coffee, punch,
chicken salad on rolls, and cake.
I hum: We are blessed. We endure.
–Mia L. Parviainen
Mia Parviainen teaches high school English and creative writing.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I made spaghetti for supper.
A bad day, you said. You needed a soak.
Your last words
as you breezed past me.
Moments later the bathtub faucet came on
an army of water pouring out
marching through your windpipe
and seizing your soul.
With a shaky hand, I twisted the doorknob.
You, in your work suit
overturned in the overflowing mess,
and I dropped to my knees
and shrieked like a dying hawk.
A week after, I stand to face the bathroom mirror,
glaringly memorizing my pale complexion.
Flicking away the tears
Rolling
down my raw red cheeks.
I touch the limp strands of hair
clinging to my face like refrigerator magnets.
Vodka oozing from my skin,
the soles of my feet black as the coffin they buried you in.
With a jagged fingernail, I scrape
the dirt from my face leaving a trail of pink skin beneath the scum.
I want to scour the dead cell layers,
the grease, the grime.
But you died in that white coffin.
I walk around to the backyard and twist the hose faucet
until icy water spews from the metal mouth
down my frail legs and back.
Goosebumps rise over my body and I gasp
from the shock of cold, the icy hands,
stinging my back
taking my breath away.
– Annie McCormick
Annie holds a Bachelors degree in Creative Writing with a specialization in Poetry from Ohio University.
