October 2024 | poetry
In response to Hieronymus Bosch’s The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things.
If William Tell’s arrow missed
and the child was struck almost clear through the head,
his hat would look like the one on this wall,
crown pierced instead of the apple.
Take that most primal of fruits.
Wedge it into a slaughtered pig’s open mouth.
The cauldron is laughingly small, but somehow a full feast
is laid out—plump chickens, chowder bowls to the brim,
the largest drumstick you can imagine,
and a cavernous jug of wine upturned for one long gulp.
Drink it all down. How could you be blamed
for wanting it now, apt as this world
is to launch arrows at your head,
a mere blink between the quick and dead.
Jennifer LeBlanc
Jennifer LeBlanc earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. Her first full-length book, Descent, was published by Finishing Line Press (2020) and was named a Distinguished Favorite in Poetry (2021) by the Independent Press Award. Individual poems have been published or are forthcoming in Consequence, Solstice, Nixes Mate Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, and J Journal. Jennifer is a poetry reader for Kitchen Table Quarterly. She was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize and works at Harvard University.
October 2024 | fiction
The thing about meditating with other mental patients is that they are mental patients. Yeah, you’re a patient too, but I get it, they’re annoying.
The woman beside you sucks on a baby pacifier.
Helpful Tip: Breathe in and out at the same rate as she sucks.
Your group counselor says, “Now think of a conveyor belt and put your thoughts into boxes that go down it….”
You breathe in and out and wonder where do the boxes go? Do they spill onto the linoleum floor?
Helpful Tip: Distract yourself by squinting at the pacifier woman, commend yourself for not needing one to suck on. Do not ponder that this is a very low bar. Instead, imagine the conveyor belt turning and turning….
Do not think of your thoughts strewn across the linoleum floor like limpid half-dead octopi or like spilled magnetic refrigerator word tiles. I see you open your eyes. The man sucking his thumb stares at you. There are bars on the windows reminding you, reminding all of us, that we’re in a mental institution. A nice one, but still people try to escape. The weird man stares at you; he has a Calvin and Hobbes tattoo on his neck.
The therapist says, “Now imagine boats going down river, and put your thoughts into each boat….”
Oh, Jesus, what kind of boats? Rowboats? Tankers? Skiffs?
The woman smacks on her pacifier. Smack, smack, smack.
Put your thoughts on a damn boat, any kind of boat will do.
Dig down deep, Patient 89. Remember the story you told us in group, how you were on a real boat a month ago; this was back when everyone thought you were okay. You’d straddled a gunnel, one leg in the Dominican ocean. You’d breathed in and out, fishing line cast until the mate hurled you into the boat because he saw a water snake—beautiful, many colored— so venomous it could have killed you in fifteen seconds. It hadn’t seemed such a bad fate to you. The sky was a perfect blue, your tears made no sense. At least that’s how you described yourself on that boat that afternoon.
Breathe in and out, Patient 89. Soon they’ll give you a capsule, a sip of water. Patient 89, you’re no different than the pacifier woman, the Calvin and Hobbes man, than me. Your brain can’t be trusted any longer, so breathe in, breathe out… And know that I’m watching your every move.
Signed,
Patient 52
Laurie Lindop
Laurie Lindop holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has published nine non-fiction books with Lerner and Simon and Schuster. Her short fiction has been published by Redbook Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere.
October 2024 | poetry
Bombed apartments lie open,
windows shattered, spears of
jagged glass, broken teeth
biting into vacancy.
Torn net curtains flap,
wave, signalling into emptiness.
No neighbours to spy on
No secrets to conceal.
In flattened playgrounds
twisted slides, slaughtered serpents,
still emblazoned in blue and yellow.
Swings sway in the freezing wind;
the haunting cry is heard
of dead children’s voices.
In ruined shopping malls
corpses clutch in frozen fingers,
plastic bags of untouched bread.
Cratered roads leave villages
names on maps, virtual destinations,
no more reachable than
Shangri-La or Camelot.
Stray dogs ravage the dead
Loose horses graze
in someone’s garden.
In a bombed-out cottage
an old woman cooks potatoes.
Behind her, two flower-papered walls,
half a cupboard, a china elephant,
the remnants of her bedroom, shown
on the evening news in Paris, New York, Delhi.
The village classroom,
a tangled mess of broken desks,
a single shoe, an open book,
a child’s sketch of a burning tank.
A boy crossing a pock-marked road,
automatically looks for traffic.
A ghostly line of phantom waggons
passes the unburied dead.
Stuck in muddy ditches, tank guns
point skywards at the rising moon.
A bomb explodes, a flash of red,
the dreadful beauty of instant flames.
In London, Washington, Moscow, Beijing,
they roll the dice, again.
Sarah Das Gupta
Sarah Das Gupta is an 82-year-old writer from Cambridge, UK, who has been writing since last year when an accident left her with very limited mobility. Her work has been published in many magazines and anthologies in over 25 countries, from New Zealand to Kazakhstan. This year, she has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Dwarf Star Award.
