January 2021 | fiction
Naked, a cut is her left breast, an empty sack her right. The deep breath I take lasts ten years.
(I didn’t go to you, I didn’t ask you. I only exhale today; when I’m old and you are married.
I should only write about her)
The Breastless Queen, how she stood there looking at herself. Absolute presence.
– “Ojalá hubieran cortado el otro también!” (1)
She had filled her breasts four times, three times with milk for us, her children; once for vanity.
Disgusted with doctors, she won’t have them fill the empty breast, nor reconstruct the other.
She put on her white linen shirt without a bra, her flat chest a statement. No breasts needed, just the woman.
Her naked image, her scar, it’s what I wanted to write; I kept overwriting, you.
Her breasts, our love. Gone. Her sagging right breast. We dried too. And she’s gone.
Two women in the mirror, three breasts, one empty.
– “Ay Bambi. ¿Porqué estás desnuda frente a mi en el espejo?
– Para que vieras: ya fui más allá del miedo. Mi cicatriz, mi pecho vacío no importan, sólo que puedo mirar!” (2)
—
(1) “I wish they had cut the other one too.”
(2) “- Ay Bambi, why are you naked in front of me, in the mirror?
– So you could see: I have gone beyond fear. My scar and my empty breast don’t matter, only my gaze.”
Viviane Vives
Viviane Vives is a finalist of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry, semifinalist of the American Short(er) Fiction Contest by American Short Fiction, and a nominee for Best of the Net Anthology, 2018. Recent publications include Tupelo Quarterly, Litro Magazine, Burningword, and The Sixty-Four Best Poets Anthology by Black Mountain Press.
January 2021 | Best of Net nominee, fiction
1974
Every time Robert pulled the starchy, white surplice over his head, he thought of watching his ma help his grandma into her nightgown, even though hers was flannel with pink flowers on it. He knew the other boys got to watch Hawaii 5-0 on the color tv in the rectory on Tuesday nights and the housekeeper made them chocolate chip cookies, and sometimes Father Ignatius gave them private catechism lessons in his study. The other boys gave each other nicknames based on the show but they called him Porkie, which he knew had nothing to do with Hawaii 5-0. His ma told him he was lucky to stay home and watch tv with her instead, but he felt sure that father Ignatius left him out because he was fat.
1978
In the locker room after the game, Victor Viccarelli flicked a towel at his butt and called him a name he would never say out loud himself. He’d known most of the team since elementary school and St. Augustus days, although he’d stopped going to church when his grandma died, but he still wasn’t one of them. Robert hated showering in the mildewed open shower room where he felt his size was not an advantage, like it was on the field, but an excuse for others to pummel and pinch, as if he were made of clay, not flesh. He laughed it off but sometimes let the shower stream longer on his reddened face to obscure the tears.
1982
He never thought he would become friends with Victor Vic, but from the day they sat next to each other in the molded plastic chairs of the Marine recruiting office, under a dog-eared poster claiming, “We Don’t Promise You a Rose Garden,” they had learned to appreciate and protect one another. One evening at chow, when Robert was picking out the stringy cubes of pineapple from the fruit cocktail and pushing them to the side of his plate, Victor made a joke about watching Hawaii 5-0 at St. Augustus, as if they’d both been there. “Those were some days,” he said. Robert shrugged and said nothing, feeling that pit-of-the-stomach weakness that still lurked beneath the armor of his camouflage uniform.
1986
It was his ma who spotted the obituary in the local paper, circled it in red magic marker for him and left it on the kitchen table, so he saw it when he got home from work. Victor had hung himself with his standard issue Marine mesh belt in a Holiday Inn in Manhattan, Kansas. That wasn’t in the obituary, of course; another old classmate who worked at the airport with Robert heard it from a friend of Vic’s sister. Robert thought about going by the Viccarellis’ house to pay respects, but he had never really known the family.
1990
No one in town besides Robert seemed surprised by the story about Father Ignatius, who was long gone now, anyway. Sandra Viccarelli wrote a rambling, angry letter to the editor about her brother, but people said she was a drug addict and a drama queen and just wanted attention for herself. Robert spent days watching reruns of Hawaii 5-0, his bulk pressing down, down into the brown plaid couch, his calloused fingers picking at the wiry upholstery. His ma asked him to come to mass with her, just this once, and he said no.
Theo Greenblatt
Theo Greenblatt’s prose, both fiction and nonfiction, appears in Cleaver, The Columbia Journal, Jellyfish Review, The Normal School Online, Tikkun, Harvard Review, and numerous other venues. She is a previous winner of The London Magazine Short Story Competition. Theo holds a PhD from the University of Rhode Island and teaches writing to aspiring officer candidates at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, RI.
January 2021 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
An Exploited Body
You claim it’s a dwelling grasp. I still fall
out of a tree—naked & thick,
hauling myself to beat
exposure. I fill myself in
in desperate clusters. Unable
to find a deep hole for my body,
I turn over the earth & rip the ocean
floor—give a final blow
to deprivation, hunt dead & run large
in the streets. I lurk
in hives, collect & attach you
like an eyeball—a blind silence.
I search for bony bundles
& drain my body—an empty constant.
The Day of My Wedding
I stayed inside because of the rain.
From behind the bay window
I watched a funeral & a family
grieve.
I watched a wild horse
run away from the field—
gaining freedom to ground
itself.
The grass webbed with dew
for the rest of its days.
Sewers overflowed
& cars stopped passing
through.
For the rest of my days
I watched a child
fall backwards at the bottom
of the staircase, just out of my
reach.
Annie Elizabeth
Annie Cigic is a second-year student in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies PhD program at Bowling Green State University. Her research interests include critical pedagogy, community-based learning, advocacy writing, and student agency in writing assessment. She received her MFA in Poetry from BGSU. Her poem “Afterlife of a Dumped Body” is nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize by Driftwood Press.
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