Typehouse Magazine
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Issue 10, January 2017 Typehouse Literary Magazine Editor in Chief: Val Gryphin Fiction Editor: Lindsay Fowler Non-fiction Editor: Lily Blackburn Poetry Editor: David Midkiff Visual Art Editor: John Koch Typehouse is a writer-run literary magazine based out of Portland, Oregon. We are always looking for well-crafted, previously unpublished writing and art that seeks to capture an awareness of the human predicament. If you are interested in submitting, visit our website at www.typehousemagazine.com. ©2017 Typehouse Literary Magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced in any form without written permission. Typehouse Literary Magazine is published triannually. Established 2013. Cover Photo Secrets in the waters by Dr. Ho Cheung LEE (See page 24) Summer 2015. My young companion pondered as he waded into the wrinkled waters of a southern beach of the Hong Kong island. His family matters were unreadable on his face. Yet, this moment, his lowered head and stillness against the calm ocean seemed to be telling that there was more being hidden in his mind than the undiscovered in the buried castle under the seabed. Table of Contents: Fiction: Anatomy of a Cloud Nancy Au 10 Leaving Arizona Justin Hunter 27 Going Home Nicholas MacDonnell 44 An Honest Conversation Christian Sanchez 61 We All Think We Can See the Trajectories of Each Other’s Lives, But Tend to Lose Interest / Rosemaling / Appropriation Starts Here Robert Kaye 68 An Excerpt from Red Sun Rogue Taylor Zajonc 80 Volary Delynn Willis 99 Careful What You Look For Heather Luby 114 What Comes With Will Radke 117 A Long, Dark Moment RM Graves 126 The Bridge Troll Cory Saul 138 A Trolley Ride into the Morning Herbert Cady 164 Non-Fiction: Mirrors Within Books Camille Mireles 15 People's Ink January Focus Member: An interview with Taylor Zajonc 76 Poetry: Rhonda Lott 1 Ho Cheung LEE 24 Hillel Broder 41 Ben Kingsley 64 Melanie Stormm 94 Dawn Trowell Jones 112 John Grey 130 Robyn Schindeldecker 136 Lisa Bubert 158 Visual Art: Ho Cheung LEE Cover Manit Chaotragoongit 36 Jon Beight 104 Nasos Karabelas 132 Fabio Sassi 157 Rhonda Lott’s work has appeared in a variety of national and international publications such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among others. She has also served as an editor for Iron Horse Literary Review and Sundress Publications. Rhonda received her M.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Writers and her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in creative writing from Texas Tech University. After graduation, she worked as a writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, Tennessee where she facilitated poetry workshops, designed book covers, and fed a donkey named Jayne. Now, she teaches as a lecturer at the University of Tennessee. The Donkey in My Apartment Rhonda Lott The night we came home from the Gertrude Stein convention and found the donkey standing in the bedroom of my fifth-floor walk up, and he would not take the stairs down, I knew. I dialed and redialed the landlord, touring somewhere much warmer than here, while you led the donkey to the kitchen, chopped my last Honeycrisp apple into neat wedges he could not choke on. I tried to open windows, looked for a rope, estimated his height and weight. You told me I should pet the ears because they were the softest things Issue 10, January 2017 1 in the world. What the hell is wrong with you? I snapped. You brushed flies from his eyelashes. This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever found in a kitchen, you shrugged. When I touched one ear, my forearm’s length, with a pinky tip, it felt as soft as the cheek of a first crush before he grew up Mennonite, soft as chiffon pie left in Mississippi July, soft as the violet velvet of a whiskey pouch locked in a mother’s nightstand, and all I could think of to say was that you owed me another apple. 2 Typehouse Literary Magazine The Donkey in My Apartment Watches Zebras on TV Last Sunday night, my downstairs neighbor knocked. Are you working out now or what the hell? she half whispered, half yelled. I don’t know how someone so little sounds so big. Just then, the donkey brayed from the bedroom. What’s that? Her hair, blonde gray, stood stiff as hay. I looked past her lavender terrycloth toe socks, puffed pink like her eyelids, stitched with sparkling skulls less human, more equine. Discovery Channel, I said. She came back Monday night, same slippers, same robe. You must have big dogs, she apologized. My husband just died. It’s good to hear big feet. I don’t know what I’d do with quiet anyway. I called animal control. When vans came Friday, I sighed, shut the blinds, let them drive away. Issue 10, January 2017 3 The Donkey in My Apartment Runs for President You might assume he marches to the left because his ancestors posed as Andrew Jackson for Thomas Nast cartoons or since they invented the first green energy, but he’s running independent. He hates the car companies for taking his jobs, and ever since that time he ate the wrong wild mushroom, he pulls the cart for the war on drugs, so to speak. He’s lived here three weeks now in my apartment, and even though his fans circulate a certificate that declares he was born in Ohio, his opponents cite the mark on his back as proof he’s a Jerusalem donkey. Never mind that Akron is spelled Akorn, all standard donkeys carry the shadow of the cross. Even the atheist ones as dark as the gray of the lowercase “T” itself carry it for their children, yet he brays in a foreign accent, and no one knows why or how he moved in with a woman twenty-eight years older in a fifth-floor walk-up in Tennessee. When reporters ride cherry pickers up 4 Typehouse Literary Magazine to my window and knock, I shut the blinds to save him from a scandal. He’s in deep enough already since he’s never prayed on TV, so who knows if he believes in the deity of the dollar bill or worships a donkey god that transmutes the hair of petting zoo children to grass, their eyes to bloodshot peppermint candies. All I can tell you is he won’t back down in a debate, won’t even trot downstairs if I harness him, so I let him stay like the raccoon that slept in my ceiling all winter. I feed the donkey carrot ends, clean up his messes, and hope he’ll find his way out to the pearly pasture where he’ll reincarnate as a unicorn— bucktoothed, somewhat short—and lead a parade of seventy-three silver-winged fillies in a chariot bedecked with apples, drawn by the richest, most selfless of men. Issue 10, January 2017 5 The Donkey Becomes T.S. !"iot “Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs.” —T.S. Eliot, on his inspiration There was something wrong with the donkey’s bray today—a whisper through the haw, tongue tight on the teeth of hee—half mantra, half plea. Pretty boy! I called. Did you just shanti? He said, Shanti, shanti. Should I gloss it in a footnote for you? I took a swig of coffee. Am I asleep? I wondered. Am I alive? Am I in hell? he asked. I answered Tennessee. What of these hooves? I asked to be a pair of ragged claws. His back hoof kicked at the ram behind him. Maybe you should have eaten more peaches, I offered. Have you got any? He snapped. Just peppermints. Donkeys like peppermints. I would like a martini, stiff and dry. I had no vermouth. A gin and tonic. How about a fresh trough of cold water? I suggested. Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs. I had no gin, so I filled a pail with ice and bourbon. Good enough for Faulkner, I thought, but he just snorted and tossed his head. April may be cruel in London, I said and shooed flies from his ears, but she should meet July in Tennessee. 6 Typehouse Literary Magazine The Donkey in My Apartment Is a Hero in Guatema"a He’s been here eight months now. Grass sprouts from cracks in the tile. Flies adorn his eyelashes. Tuesday, a guinea flew in through bathroom window while I bathed and spilled my red wine before I could shoo her out. As I lie down for the night, someone knocks. I pull on a cardigan over my nightgown, inch open the door. A woman in yellow cotton embroidered with scarlet orchids holding a saddle and satchel and leans on a wooden leg. Have you seen this donkey? She slips me a snapshot: a sunny rain forest where she rides a gray donkey weighed down with books in burlap pockets. A sign, hand-painted, reads Biblioburro Dos. I tell her to come in, and the donkey ambles into the room. Don Quixote! the woman coaxes. Why didn’t you name him Rocinante like the horse? I ask. She plucks a pouch of wintergreen candies from her satchel and offers one to him. Steinbeck called his camper Rocinante, The name’s no good now. She hands me the mints. I just call him the donkey, I confess. Issue 10, January 2017 7 She nods. Don Qui for short.