January 2024 | poetry
Between 1860 and 1939, thousands of poor young women
from Eastern European shtetls were sold into sexual slavery
by the Jewish-run Zwi Migdal crime syndicate which controlled
highly profitable brothels in Brazil, Argentina and the U.S.
How to pry open the iris of footnote.
As they stooped around rickety tables
on dirt floors they imagined an orange
a day and gold capped teeth. So peasant
girls with milky skin and luscious hair
left their hardscrabble shtetls sleeved
in promise from so many visiting Prince
Charmings in patent-leather shoes,
tailored trousers, and silk handkerchiefs
soaked in rose water to temper poverty’s stench.
By ship or train, the new air of a new world
was double-dealing, empty of marriage,
seamstress careers, or taffeta finery. Instead
the air was burdened with fear and sadness,
immigrant streets of trapped women in the many
“convents” of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, or
New York’s Lower East Side. Yoked by greedy
pimps to another kind of assembly line with rape
the often tool of the trade, each Eve did
their bidding, merchandise of the counterfeit kind.
And so the bruised skin of days and nights
began—the who’s your daddy in a labyrinth
of rooms with flimsy plywood partitions
in dilapidated clapboard brothels, to feel
the not feeling of pressure at their napes,
stale breath of sugarcane alcohol, rough
hands to paw their breasts, pry open
their thighs, the insignificance of release.
These transplanted sisters forced and entered,
counted and discounted, dank scent of lavender
struggling to find their no’s.
Forged letters back home to Odessa,
Lodz, Krakow, Kiev. I’m afraid your daughter
is lost forever. She’s a woman who belongs
to everybody now. Yiddish rhymes from childhood
whispered to soothe their cheap camisoled sleep.
The spit at their heels, hushed children crossing
cobblestones when their red lipsticked, heavily rouged,
high-heeled clicks came by. These colonized flower buds
that rotted in shame and syphilis, beatings and stabbings,
yellow fever, tuberculosis, or the exhausted swallow
of carbolic acid.
How to heal the script for these women of footnote long gone—
the Bruchas, Rebeccas, Sophias, and Rosas, the Klaras, Olgas,
Lenas and Helenas, the Berthas, Isabels, Rachels, and Fannys.
Today, we perform your tahara cleansing your bodies with
cascades of sacred water to comfort and purify you at last.
Rikki Santer
Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year. She is currently serving as vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association and is a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council. Her twelfth poetry collection, Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me, is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. Please contact her through her website, https://rikkisanter.com.
January 2024 | poetry
Specifically,
the girl falling
hard enough from the saddle
to clack her teeth.
Just under my favorite tree.
The man: lean into it.
(He does, the tree.)
Unicycle’s like walking
on your hands. You’re
always in a state of almost
falling. Lean into it
or you land on your ass.
So she sets up again,
white lip knuckle-crook
contact, whole earth
like a pendulum.
I never got the hang
of that either, she says.
Generally,
what passes for summer
in these parts. A golden crown
sparrow hops clear,
watches her wobble
by in broken light like
it was nothing new.
Keith T. Fancher
Keith T. Fancher is not a poet. Born in the California redwoods and raised in the Blue Ridge foothills, he holds degrees in computer science and film studies. Nonetheless, his work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Red Ogre Review, OPEN: Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco.
January 2024 | Best of Net nominee, fiction
Bernadette lives in a flat house in West Texas. She often forgets being old until she walks past a mirror or a window and sees the skinny, slightly hunched, somewhat wrinkled body she knows is now hers. She ignores it by keeping busy, tending to the flowers and trees in her yard which seems to get a little bigger each year.
“Hello, kitties,” she coos as she comes outside to sit under her patio awning, shielded from the relentless sun. She listens to them mew as they slink around her, making overlapping curvy trails that crisscross her legs and each other as if they are weaving a tale.
“Here’s your dinner, my sweets,” she says, wishing she was serving watermelon to grandchildren and not stray cats looking for Meow Mix. The cats stop crying and eat without fighting when she puts all the aluminum pie plates down.
I’m still here at ninety-one, she tells herself. My legs work and brain work and I have a roof over my head, owned free and clear. I have my telenovelas and Lester Holt every evening. I have leftover barbecue chicken and a fresh peach from my neighbor. I am fine.
The warm breeze dries the sweat on her face and arms, cooling her. She leans back in the lawn chair and closes her eyes for a few minutes to rest. Bernadette sees someone walking in her yard, coming toward her from the road so far away. It’s a woman who is very small at first but keeps getting bigger as she comes closer. She appears gray and nearly transparent but gradually becomes bright and solid, and the old lady gasps, seeing the woman wearing a multi-colored dress.
Bernadette remembers that dress from long ago, recalls buying the fabric and carefully cutting it out, using a special pattern begged from her older sister. Bernadette pinned the parts together and sewed the seams one by one, fit each of the sleeves into the arm holes, which was always tricky and took patience, something Bernadette had little of then. It took hours to set in the zipper and make it smooth and even. Finally, she ironed each seam flat like her mother had taught by her.
This dress was for a dance. A nice young man had invited her, and her mother had said okay. It was her first dance and her first date. The dress had to be perfect. She could still feel the fabric resting on her arms, soft and clingy. The skirt cascaded from her tiny waist, hugged her hips, and fluttered against her knees.
Bernadette was sixteen. She had long black hair and eyes so dark people swore she had no pupils. Everything was brilliant and new and special that night. She danced for hours, and her feet didn’t feel the floor. He held her gently like she would break if he let her go.
Suzanne C Martinez
Suzanne C Martinez’s fiction has appeared in Vestal Review, The Citron Review, Gone Lawn, and The Broadkill Review, among others, and was nominated for Pushcart Prizes (2019, 2020), The Best of the Net (2020), and Best Short Fictions (2022). She was a finalist in the 2023 Tartts First Fiction Award for her linked story collection. She lives in Brooklyn. Website: www.scmwrites.com X: @SuzanneCMartin3 • IN: s.martinez1441 • FB: scm1441
