New Haven Review AUTHOR 2 3 REVIEW AUTHOR 4 Alex Greenberg Is Anonymous 6
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1 REVIEW New Haven Review AUTHOR 2 3 REVIEW AUTHOR 4 Alex Greenberg is anonymous 6 Amy Alvey moves into a van 10 David Leo Rice succumbs to hate 18 Kathleen Balma offers supernatural advice 42 Nick Mamatas signs a compact 46 Jim Cory gets older 62 Michael Diebert has an out-of-body experience 90 Matt Salyer rues being clever 92 Elisabeth Lewis Corley gives full honors 112 In dreams, Laurence Raphael Brothers walks with you 116 Douglas W. Milliken combs the beach 124 Donald Brown says goodbye to David Bowie 144 Shaunda Holloway won’t give up the dream 168 Anonymous Alex Greenberg For Gabriel Reyes, 14 years in solitary confinement Each day, I enter my life at the same moment: the guard with the leaden boots is slipping bread through a slit in the door, his nails the color of burnt glass rotting the honey wheat, his mouth inventing a sin out of silence. This is the same man who lost his youngest boy to child services and appropriated my body for parenthood: disciplined & upbraided me, bruised my hands so well they still fall lake-wide whenever I try to make a fist. He starved the other inmates for days. I was the far-off field who was just spared of the fire. Now, I am alone in the corner trying to teach myself how to love the inanimate: I dip my head between the shoulder blades of the wall but emerge shivering. I bend light over the objects in my cell to make shadow people who I undress until there is nothing left. It is not a mistake to want this. 7 POEM After my prayers have clotted so thick they trigger the smoke alarm in the cell four doors down. The guards relocate us, we frantically try to recarve the tally marks into the stainless steel tables without embittering our fingers. You ask about torture? Last night, they smogged the windows from the outside. They wore black gloves when they delivered our food, played an interment song on mail day. Speak to the others. We haven’t asked much of our religion. A window, or better yet, a piece of edgeless glass we can carry in front of our faces stand with our backs against the door, and pretend we are on the outside of this cruel & dismal exhibit. Tapping the glass with our tooth-chiseled nails to coax out whatever poor animal is inside. GREENBERG 8 Home Is Where You Park It The hows and whys of living on the road, full-time Amy Alvey This morning I wake up at a rest stop near Kansas City to the sound of diesel truck engines snarling. It’s a far cry from the peaceful mornings in Bishop, California, where I was only a month before. Back then I could rely on the morning sun to gently stir me awake, until it showed its impatience by threatening to turn my van into an oven. The engines snarl again. I grab my toiletry basket and walk out to the rest stop bathroom in slippers, not at all concerned with hiding my lifestyle to others using the facilities. In fact, these folks more or less understand. They too are passing through, catch- ing some quick shuteye before their next drive. I’m a full-time musician, part-time dirtbag rock climber, and I’m living the dream out of Irene, my 2008 Chevy cargo van. Since March 2016 I’ve been lucky to call Irene my home. When I’m on tour, I play shows every night in a different town. Between tour runs I post up in cragtowns, small towns in Buttfuck, Nowhere that have little to say for themselves except for the climbing: Oran- geville, Utah; Stanton, Kentucky; Victor, West Virginia. I’ve lived in these places very cheaply for weeks at a time, with the little money spent going toward nominal campground fees, groceries, and gas. All this is to say that even though I sleep, change clothes, and some- times cook in Irene, much of my life is spent outside of her. As you can imagine, this kind of life is not for everyone. If you’re the type who unwinds from your steady, full-time job with overpriced Chinese takeout while you Netflix and chill, there’d be an adjustment period. Those of us who’ve decided to live this way have learned a lot from the roving lifestyle: how to be frugal, accept income instability, and find the best places to sleep. For most of us, it’s about reducing our overhead so we can spend as much time out- side as possible. Unless we’re pulling a Class-C RV that’s got all the plug-ins, or a tricked-out Airstream, when we’re not driving it, the vehicle is just a place to lay our heads. 11 ESSAY So how did a girl like me end up at a rest stop parking lot like this? It took nine months of planning and some monetary help from my parents for vehicle purchasing power (thanks Mom an Dad). But all that was driven by a love for one thing that came out of nowhere and completely took over my life: rock climbing. And how did I get into climbing? When some personal friend-cest entanglement made clear to me that I needed a different social circle, I searched for a new activity. One where I wouldn’t see my ex and my best friend happily together; one where I could make a group of friends that, you know, wouldn’t date my exes. I also needed to lose weight, at least accord- ing to the irrational part of my brain. So I signed up for a climbing gym membership in July 2013, not completely understanding just how it would ruin my life. First I made the new friends. Then came some new muscles. The obsession grew as I got stronger and chased my new limits, measured by number grades in the gym. When I started climbing outside, I became a full-blown addict. Spending a whole day in nature, working one isolated move on a route just to get a little higher, was just enough purpose to give my healing heart what it needed. The thought of living on the road full time to climb didn’t mate- rialize until the early spring of 2015, shortly after I sublet my apart- ment to hit the road with my duo Hoot and Holler. After that tour, I pursued my first proper climbing trip, meeting my friends Gabi and Brandon in El Paso, Texas to climb at Hueco Tanks State Park. They were on their ninth month of a year-long road trip. For a month the three of us lived in their 1979 Shasta trailer, and I floated easily on the extra cash I had in my pocket from tour. We climbed with reck- less abandon, ate burritos, and talked about the climbs while eating said burritos. We were all realistic enough to know that we would never be paid to climb, let alone sponsored, but there was never a question that what we were doing was worthwhile. It felt good in the soul. It felt right. ALVEY 12 When I arrived back in Boston that March, I craved the freedom of a car, but not the stress of having a car in the city. Rents were skyrocketing, even in once-affordable suburbs like Somerville, and showed no promise of slowing down. Hoot and Holler was look- ing to spend more time out on the road. You’ve heard this before, but it’s pretty damn hard to make a living as a freelance anything, especially a musician. Thanks to Spotify and YouTube, consumers are used to streaming their sad boy/girl breakup song playlist for free. If you want to make money you either 1) sell your soul, roll the dice, and write a pop song that heavily alludes to sex, without actu- ally talking about sex, or 2) hit the road and hope for the best. Until my acoustic old-time duo pens our sexiest Americana single, I’ll take what’s behind Door Number Two. Immediately the scheming began. I had to figure out a way to combine my two passions. How could I split my time between music and climbing? What sort of rig would I travel in? Would performing alone when Hoot and Holler wasn’t on tour bring enough cash flow to sustain myself? Where would I sleep, or shower for that matter? These details became all-consuming, even as there were times that the excitement for my new life path turned into doubt of my sanity. My parents weren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of their twenty-six- year-old daughter stealth camping alone, vulnerable to every chance of petty theft or assault. But as a seasoned traveler, both nation- ally and abroad, I felt confident with my personal awareness of my surroundings, and considering the circles I run in as a fiddler and rock climber, sketchy situations were unusual and easily avoided. I started sending Craigslist ads to my parents every day of different vehicles within my budget (under $4,000). They learned that I was going to live in a van whether I had their approval or not, and I’m forever grateful that they eventually embraced my plan, and even stepped in when we found something over my budget. To them, it was worth it to spend some of their money to make sure I got some- thing reliable that was built out professionally.