Backyard Poem #10

“PEREGRINATION”

ISSUE 3

HERMENEUTIC CHAOS LITERARY JOURNAL

Hermeneutic Chaos is a non-profit literary journal founded in 2014 publishing the best contemporary poetry and prose. All rights reserved. The authors retain the ownership of their respective works published in this edition. Cover art: © André Kertész No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of its author(s) Contents

Editorial Note

POESY

Three Poems Heather Fowler

I Am Sorry I Love You Rachel J. Fenton

Two Poems Simon Perchik

Five poems Sheila Murphy

Three poems Alessandra Bava

Two poems Scherezade Siobhan cavestorm Aaron Wiegert

Something is different Jon Simmons

Sailor of the metolious Rhiannon Thorne

Three poems Jennifer MacBain- Stephens

Installation Vik Shirley

Dialogue w/ an insomniac Jack Peachum

Two Poems Mandy Pannett

Contents

PROSE

Two Fictions Sally Stevens

Liriope’s daughter Sara Cleto

Two Fictions Jen Knox

Two plays Rachel Bublitz

Blue eyes Heather Bell Adams

Sugar Amarie Fox

Hangnails Alex Vigue

Bullocks Alison Lock

Two Fictions Melinda Giordano

A Good night for Maali Elizabeth Brown

Editorial Note

We welcome you to the July 2014 edition of Hermeneutic Chaos, featuring some of the outstanding poetry and prose by writers both upcoming and established. We are confident that you will enjoy this new collection of literary artifacts, as much as their respective authors enjoyed composing them.

The last few months have been tragic for the literary community. We lost Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mary Angelou, Walter Dean Myers, Frank Robinson, and many other writers who taught the world how to appreciate the value of art, how to make the stone faced words discover their malleability while interacting with human emotions, and how to employ it to create an impact on the dominant culture, and perhaps even teach it a thing or two. And most importantly, to fight for art, no matter what. This edition is a tribute to all of them.

So sit down on your most comfortable cushion, grab a glass of wine, and begin reading. It will be a stellar journey, we promise you.

Warmest Regards,

Shinjini Bhattacharjee

Editor

Poetry

HEATHER FOWLER

______Sonnet of Where One Always Walks Alone

“…are all a wreath of love, bed of one wounded, / where, sleepless, I dream of your presence.” Lorca

No one visits this house on the hill. The poplars

Stretch as sentries up and down lanes. Bored morning yawns

At the steps of a lone woman at the splayed door

Left open the night before (since no one appears).

This has gone on for centuries, for years. This house

Beside the sea holds just one bed, one olive stone

Of being. It is the house of solitude, where

Multitudes have passed, paused, as audience of one.

If the current inhabitant goes to town, dons

Slitted smile for new lover to take her away,

This dwelling will disappear, with all its markings,

And quietly make ready to seal its next wound.

The house of solitude views departures poorly,

Si, preserves earth-sky-hour of apartness to thrive.

HEATHER FOWLER

______

Sonnet of Inestimable Wealth

“silver coins / sob away in pockets.” Lorca

After you‘d gone, I wanted none I‘d done for love

As reward. Long ruby hair, sold for wigs. Hands mute.

Even the corsage pinned to your portrait—laid waste.

It took the stars calling, look, see, to drag me up

Into the nighttime sky so full of dark and them.

Shining was a thing I would learn only later,

Was already mine they said, with or without him.

They poured me down into a fountain at the dawn,

Told me bathe, bathe—the battle for your soul‘s not done.

Once you have shivered nude in miasmas of tears,

Once you have dried yourself in Seville‘s hot morning,

The suitors will come in a line for a dance, beg.

Everyone wants the girl who has given all for love, received none.

She shines brighter than moons in silver coins. Pure gold.

HEATHER FOWLER

______Sonnet of Rivers and Leaves

“Never let me lose what I have gained/ and adorn the branches of your river / with leaves of my estranged Autumn.”

The leaves of my Autumn have filled the banks beyond

The calls of what we measure as seasons, secure

Beyond a shadow of a doubt in detritus.

They do not worry that their faces will crack and break

Nor that the walking lizard prefers the sweet grape,

Nor that the orange trees refuse to claim their orphans.

The leaves of my Autumn care not about disgrace,

Clear that they come only to green, fall until gone.

The branches of your river hold them without qualms

Until there is a separation of living and non

When your shore or the rush of your current

Becomes the place in which they go to court decay,

Like elderly men, in dotage, arrive at homes

To stay where loved ones live, to love the more, to die.

RACHEL J. FENTON

______

I Am Sorry I Love You

SIMON PERCHIK

______

Untitled

You show up late as usual

need more darkness

though you wait

the way each star

smells from dirt

and her eyelids

–the mouth you return to

is already weeds worn down by the silence

that‘s lost its balance

can‘t escape

and won‘t let go

–some nights

further than others smaller and smaller.

SIMON PERCHIK

______

Untitled

You piece one night into another

as if these constellations

would leave nothing to chance

and the sky you play it safe with

stay black waiting for air

by not counting, though this time

for flames that fit exactly

lock on the way letters from home

are saved in a metal box

to complete the picture –all night under the kitchen table you shuffle cards and some mindless jigsaw game unfolds

on the cold floor, trying to remember

those stars all together their first morning and their last

though the Earth is covered

with this breeze still taking away the only thing that matters.

SHEILA MURPHY

______Noggin

Root words

line the caveat.

A hearing

claws the surface,

pores over future

obvious reclassified

conveyor belt elan,

until the snow drops gather,

one cell turned

into a whole

collective sunlit

craft, precursing

foreloft, whose criteria seep

through music

dispatching hinges, one upon the next.

SHEILA MURPHY

______

Stop Saying Journey

Stasis is more like it.

Maybe not wholesale maybe

quieter surrender, estranged

If on the papal mark.

A year ago inflections faded

referents, and fists broke

homes with steel staccato

prominence, as though

a fraction tinged with gravel

demanded lane change

in the wake

of trades exchanging

one life for one vat

of nomenclature deemed

not guilty in this surreptitious line of code.

SHEILA MURPHY

______

Detour

Not that you winter near

philanthropy, the earth

watch licensure abbreviating

worsted fabric.

Light squeals through scissors

Crimped, chiseled, stipulating

Loose work, higher

blame, in hot pursuit of

patient zero clasping intonation,

as if rafters cave when

facts invert the tables

grading force field.

Thistles brave a whispered

call for threaded vases

taller than the summer call tone dialed at once.

SHEILA MURPHY

______

Reprimand

Petrified retreat

amounts to a summation claustrophobic as a slump line

bridled fast and fatuous,

to wit, the kindling

raises splintered light

to eye level tracked

by number.

Torsion blanches

uppity blond traction,

its portion still

varietal as grasp trained

fuel and froth condoned

to be full sway in indulgence

indivisible conforming versions of the notary.

SHEILA MURPHY

______

Ex Post

Mind equals fall back

pose I need.

Stern weather

locates correspondence

coursing through

a moment's

nuance

broken

and awake

the full-toned

orchestration jars

the will along the coast,

while light broth casts

hypothesized

fresh lines that very nearly touch.

ALESSANDRA BAVA

______

Incubus

“The box is only temporary”

– Sylvia Plath

Entwined in a narcoleptic sleep and flower stems, I dream an incubus in shape of

queen bee surmounting me. ―You have neglected your bee-box. You‘ve not tended

your bees. You‘ve casted honey to swine,‖ she buzzes in my ear. Remorse lies deep within me. All I wanted was to steal the amber secret from them. To feed my nib with their gold. To sweeten the edgy words of my poetry. To spy the dwellers of wax and

shape my own syllables with their craft. They have left. I cannot own them, as they

cannot own me. Their stings are my sole cohorts. I let their venom tinge my dream.

The honeycomb swarms with new figment now.

ALESSANDRA BAVA

______

The Nest

The nest that beats amid the ribs

holds a blue egg about to crack; when poetry will be

be born out of it, I‘ll put a leash around its polished

beak and let its claws inscribe my heart

ALESSANDRA BAVA

______

I Am Disintegration

for Frida Kahlo

Even the walls here have

learnt my motto:

―Yo soy disintegración.‖

This is what I tell myself

as I lean over my own body‘s

debris and talk the language

of life-in-death to the

skeleton covered

in strings of fireworks--

flaming rosary beads--

atop the canopy.

I have learnt to disdain

piety and sanctimony.

Golgotha means

waking up to the cross

of my umpteenth plaster

corset, a new

white canvas

to fill with my dreams.

I have painted the most beautiful son of woman on the latest one, a child

I will never bear to full

bloom.

That‘s how you crucify me every morning

with what I crave most

your nails, dear Art,

mi hermana.*

*my sister

SCHEREZADE SIOBHAN ______

The Process is Null

the poem came as --

the gray speckled iridium of snow & bitumen

the auroral scorpion of every persian midnight

the thousand and one rosaries of earthbound staccato

the asymptote linger of the last lightbulb a tablespoon of shrapnel dust in the cold clutch of an infant

the hip gene paradox snapping its fingers by the jukebox

the spindling, the spit, the shiv of a tampered pendulum

the gutted garden of babylon

the skulls of small animals under the frozen december

of a lily pond — unsparing in its new siberian bulk

the milkweed clouds stripping off their gauzy corsets

to expose the ichor soma of the sun

the polished seismograph of your schizophrenia

the marigold philtre teasing the anise swallowtails

the handicraft of wave-crashed conch shells

a nomenclature of haunted postcodes a locution of lettered bees setting up libraries in a goethe oak

a carnival of shivers inside a breath darker than hashish

a desire that writhed like daggered fish a home pulling its bricks one at a time from the denouement that is my body now

the silences teeming between us as though ghosts rendered in daguerreotype

a father who rents every mirror i have found

SCHEREZADE SIOBHAN

______

Alkaline

embark the trespass of a zodiac speak eye, in the molding of a garnet

that she should be invented into

an eagle‘s iconography

a nail claw czarina

a penscript of cuesta

banishing the breastwork

of your odious locus

you with a face as plain

as mourning of vaudeville

acolytes of Daedalus

ecclesiast, let my anteroom come

slivered from its vulgar parenthesis

its oak fence impostors

its hellward corona

let the wretched thing be

let the wretched thing see

what wombs the witch shall house what plumes the pitch shall gauss

little by little, let the drowning

bring me back

to the beginning

i was once orphaned of

AARON WIEGERT

______

Cavestorm

Avoiding Platonic metaphor, bats

and human temperament,

there is a blizzard of stalactites

carving obscenities of the sub-conscious

into walls just as thick as to go unpenetrated by the life of a chisel.

Not a question of Language

or a quest in the least

Romantic sense, but a Kafka parody

built upon the dogged aesthetics

of Dostoyevsky.

Each hour, morning or night

No matter,

The cave moans, telescoping into darkness,

constricting to spaces

not fit for a casket,

Always four crumbling walls squat like a sculptor‘s forgotten supply,

unmoved and unmoving

along the sepulcher of space-time.

JON SIMMONS

______

Something is Different

A caveman walks into a food court,

and toddles toward China Express.

Somewhere the fabric of time has ripped.

A brontosaurus sunbathes

on a country road in Croatia.

The tar warms its belly.

A car will soon speed around the bend and fold itself around the steely skin of the dinosaur,

the driver dead on impact.

A woman with a yellow paper hat,

stands in front of China Express holding a tray,

handing out sample sticks of teriyaki glazed meat

in two-ounce wax paper cups.

―GEICO caveman,‖ says the woman, and laughs.

She offers the tray to the caveman.

The caveman takes all of the samples from the tray. He eats them in fistfuls, spitting out

the toothpicks and wax paper cups,

burps, grunts, and walks away.

That night the China Express employee dies

in bed from loneliness.

Her last thought is of the caveman, a feeling of jealousy of someone she knew nothing about

rushing through her body.

In a distant nebula, on a planet much like Earth,

the China Express employee and the speeding driver

find themselves on opposite ends of a vast jungle.

Both hear screaming and a soft, pulsing thump.

They realize instantly something is different,

by the sound of their heartbeat.

RHIANNON THORNE

______

Sailor of the Metolious

After, Momma recounted it: They let you sift

through the air, ashes and dust, four siblings

of a hard man confronting a hard man's

love of life.

And the fish danced.

The years have passed and all I've ever had

are wildflowers to leave you

drifting

on the river

you came back to year after year to cast a line, tall legs swimming in high-waist waders,

your long arms reaching back and forth,

swaying out the fly.

The man who carved me apple slices

and wore long, starched sleeves in the shade

while us children flipped through a summer pool. The smiling man

who'd stand outside at night on the cool slate patio with a surgeon's patience

marking out a queen's throne

in the sky. Now you,

like so many of your lost flies:

caught in the current; the sailor

churned slowly north and west

back to sea.

JENNIFER MACBAIN-STEPHENS

______

Backyard Poem #10

Slime creek dribbled behind the ranch in Ohio. Lichen smothered the earth. It was never a child‘s place to play. The tree canopy kept the swamp dark and buggy. I swear

I saw predator birds. It was the hot spot for night crawlers. When not reorganizing his mix tapes, my brother collected long purple worms in a dirt filled jar. Like the scientific name, vitalis, implied, these ribbons of muscle and goo wiggled like viruses in

a palm, never ceased. My brother was going to sell them to a hardware store owner.

At the end of the summer, the owner offered to pay a fraction of what was offered.

My brother dumped the worms near the creek, stepped on some, watched the wiggly bodies thrash and attempt to rebury themselves into mud and darkness. A partial view of my friend Jessie‘s back yard with an oxygen tank upright in the dust. Jessie‘s mom takes a hit from the tank, calls in the pug. A bat flies out of our cat‘s mouth.

JENNIFER MACBAIN-STEPHENS ______

Backyard Poem #11

After camp, Grandma would go inside the house for a glass of wine and I was left alone with Jessie. The pine tree was our lookout point. Jessie and I could see into the

McNeil‘s back yard pool. Sweaty and nine years old with popsicle smeared faces, we clung to the branches of the pine, swatting at mosquitoes in that humid Michigan July.

Nothing was more fun than spying. If Black Sabbath was playing, we knew there was something to watch. The lilac bushes bloomed in front of us, creating cover. We watched the two sisters lay on colorful beach towels and rub suntan lotion on their arms and each other‘s backs, comb their long straight hair into slick sections.

Sometimes they talked or painted their nails hot pink. Sometimes they did summer school homework. When boys came to the pool they acted different, alert, sitting on the poolside edge, speaking in higher voices. The boys dove in, not caring who got wet.

JENNIFER MACBAIN-STEPHENS

______

Backyard Poem #12

On Tuesdays and Thursdays it was off to the dinosaur lady‘s house. She was an albino dinosaur who always wore velour, liked sugar puffs. I rough housed with her little dinosaur offspring. The offspring was named Eric. I played the part of the caveman.

Eric would slam into me and punch me in the sides and gut. The elementary school was just a ten minute walk through a dirt path in the woods behind their lair. I’ll chase you through the woods, if you get to school first, I won’t throw you over my shoulder, skin you like a potato. One day I threw my elbow up into his teeth. Both of us spilled our prehistoric blood. At ten, I masked my fire breath walking into home room, my razor-like claws raked the wood desk.

VIK SHIRLEY

______

Installation

Room I

There are abstract objects hanging from the

ceiling. Visitors are encouraged to try and

create a meaning for the objects. To give an

example, one idea might be: 'This strange

collection may represent unimaginable and

unforeseen incidents hovering in wait.'

Room II

A recorded voice tells visitors that there

are untold tales in the textures of a painting

displayed. The voice says: 'The secret stories

can be excavated and exposed if the layers

are removed.' It then adds: 'But, as there is often

great beauty in ambiguity, it is fine if visitors

would prefer to opt out of this activity.'

Room III There is a large screen, on to which a film montage

of people's childhoods is projected. If visitors

wish, they can get in touch before they visit, so that

footage of their own childhood can be integrated into

the film to enhance their own personal experience.

Some visitors may not find this a particularly pleasant

prospect though, so please note that it is only optional.

Room IV

There is a wall, which hundreds of butterflies have been

stuck to and varnished over. There is a designated area

where visitors can catch their own butterfly with a net.

Inside this large, glass container, classical music is

played. Many visitors enjoy this activity and can be seen

wreathed in smiles, giggling rapturously, whilst running

around with the net. However, some consider this to be

unbearably cruel and are not quite as enthusiastic.

Room V

In central position is a circular tower that, in its vast

circumference, dominates the room. As the tower reaches

right up to the ceiling, visitors are encouraged to use the

ladders provided. Attached to the tower are thousands of paper scraps bearing words, phrases, proverbs and quotes.

Some are French, like Jean Anouilh's 'Rien n'est vrai que

ce qu'on ne dit.' (It means 'Nothing is true except what isn't

said.') This is often visitors' favourite part of the installation

and they are known, on occasion, to spend hours here, their

eyes like prison search lights scouring the tower up and down

for more quotes they can relate to in some way - quotes they

will enjoy, quotes that will make them feel happy.

JACK PEACHUM

______

Dialogue w/ an Insomniac

I prefer the night– I do! I‘m one of those creatures whose energies are kindled by moonlight. But when I must sleep in the darkness– when I must!– the night in my room brings me terrors– such fears! The slightest sound–a stray gust against the window– a creaking board– a bit of laughter outside– is apt to wake me– and then come all those pitiless demons of earth and air– swirling round my head, pulling my covers off– sprites and gremlins who poke and prod in playful awful glee– sticking tiny pitchforks in my rear!

– You have too much imagination!–

Here gather horrid souls who‘ve died and suffer pains of hell– visiting their vexations on the living! See– they come marching in– flesh rotting, ragged clothes hanging off their skeletal frames– smelling of pitch and cinders and the grave!

– But why do you let them bother you? You know they‘re not real– only creatures of your imagination conjured up in an addled brain– the product of– as Mr. Dickens‘ Scrooge will tell you– a bit of undigested cheese!–

But if that were all– if only imaginary figures came to me in the darkness– but there‘s more! The Monsters of Memory! I also see the faces of those close to me who‘ve died– those whom I‘ve loved and lost! Alas, I‘ll never see them again– save in dreams– oh, the things I would‘ve said to them if I‘d known! I‘ve not been a good person! And here are those I‘ve disappointed, those I‘ve wronged– I‘m peopled by a hundred failures in my lifetime– I visit and revisit old defeats! Mistakes I‘ve made– lovers lost, friendships broken– maltreatments I‘ve suffered and given! I am insulted at every turn in the gloom– I meet again those who‘ve belittled me and those to whom I‘ve been unfair!

– But these too are imaginary– they‘re not real!–

Oh, but they are– they‘re real– to me! As real as the day they happened! And then there is the greatest fear of all– the one that hangs about my neck– my heaviest albatross!

– What is that?–

The fear that I may never sleep again!

MANDY PANNETT

______

Remember when we tried

We tried to protect the growing grain

by killing off the sparrow, once,

in a landscape swarming with men and boys

all running, shooting, shouting, beating

the air with fists. So hard a chase and the birds

so tired they fell in scores from emptying skies

while locusts, free of claws and beaks, hovered

above the succulent crops then plummeted

down, more after more, like a biblical plague

foretelling death, like a blinding, shocking rain.

MANDY PANNETT

______

Spice of Time

We‘ve counted hours in candles and water, the ringing

of bells, sundials, sand – and once there was this –

a joy of a clock, each hour a spice, not a digit in sight

but taste on the tip of your tongue.

Imagine waking and trying to guess

if your finger is dipping in anise or caraway, nutmeg

or mace (or maybe it‘s brassica alba

mustard hot on your gums).

But if your paprika lips are henna

and the street outside is frosty and dark

then you may doze for two more hours until the saffron sky is bright and it‘s half past ginger o‘clock.

Prose

SALLY STEVENS

______

Brothers

Tonight my brother is taking me to his favorite restaurant, a rather tacky, down-at-the-heels steak house left over from the fifties that he considers a ―literary‖ hangout, where we will proceed to argue about the menu, disagree on the quality of the ―well‖ vodka, and eventually see which one of us can avoid picking up the check. He will do some verbal swaggering, and I will let him. He will tell me again that the loud drunks at the bar are all famous writers and I will tell him again that he is full of shit. We go there fairly regularly, when I can no longer think of a reason to be busy on the night he suggests we go. It is always thus, with my brother and I. We are not well suited for kinship. He is gruffly artistic, a shabbily dressed intellectual who prides himself on being ―out of the main stream‖, which, if you are a writer, is another way of saying ―unpublished author‖. I on the other hand, could care less about art or intellect. I am a weaver of dreams, and my dreams never even have to come true. Few of them have. They just have to engage the dreamer for that period of time until the next dream comes along. One of my dreams is never to have to come with my brother to this fucking restaurant again. Even though tonight I am convinced that, like most nights, I shall out maneuver him, and will come out the winner when the check comes. I can humor him, this one more time. I have enjoyed a just a few tokes before hopping on the Harley, and I can now fake my way through all things intellectual.

I try a lot harder than my brother does at this kinship thing. He consistently refuses to come with me to the strip club where my girlfriend works. Nor will he ever join me in smoking a doobie. He will not enter my world. So be it. I must tell you by the way that though I have not been able to get behind his writing all these years, he is currently working on something that has the grain of genius within it. He is writing a book about a guy who is without ambition, a drifter, a pot- smoking, Harley-riding sleazebag who never picks up the check, no matter who he‘s with and whose entire romantic relationship boils down to a once a week visit to the stripper bar, where he fantasizes about one of the broads.

I think it has a good shot.

SALLY STEVENS

______

Margit

“I have forgotten my words, ―she said, as William opened the passenger door. ―It‘s not a problem dear. You may use some of mine. ―Who are you?‖ she said, and then regretted it, for he looked offended. ‗Oh yes, I do remember you now. But your eyes used to be brown. We spent some time together in Egypt, I think.‖ He said ―Here, try some of these,‖ and handed her a tray full of memories. She sorted through them and came up with the Nile River, four grandchildren, a scholarship to Otis Art Institute, and a first marriage that went terribly awry. He threw in a couple of extra-marital affairs, and wondered if that might have upset the apple cart. But what do you know about apple carts when you‘re young and horny? Then he remembered having stepped on a couple of apples on his way through the seventies. She put a few of the words in her pocket, noticed her jacket was too small, and that it had someone else‘s name on the label. He said never mind, and they turned left, down the street where their house was. It looked familiar, but she didn‘t have the right words. He said, ―Wait right here.‖ But she didn‘t. She wandered off, and came back years earlier, having forgotten everything in between. He didn‘t mind. It shortened the day. Sometimes it‘s good to go back and start at the beginning. ―I have forgotten my words,‖ she said, as William opened the passenger door.

SARA CLETO

______

Liriope’s Daughter

When the sun slants low, smirking in the Los Angeles sky, I drink champagne by the pool of the Mondrian Hotel. The lounge chairs swoon beneath sleek, clinging silks, bright fields of poppy and turquoise on which I recline with the proprietary grace of a sigil.

I am the monochrome photograph of a forties starlet given dimension, given flesh. Sable hair curves against my cheek with the sweet proportion of a bell, and my skin is oleander white, pallor heightened by the dark splash of suit. A fluke of genetics preserves my fair skin while precluding a tan or burn. Oiled, my legs gleam, ice over milk in the afternoon light. I dip them into the pool to cool them—they rest still and verdant in the water like calla lily stems in a vase. A wide brimmed hat—black— crowns my hair, and white-framed glasses shadow dissonant green eyes. Once or twice, I wore lipstick—play acting Little Snow White, but red kisses and bites marred the clarity of the glass flute in my hand and made something low in my stomach uncoil. I licked my own lips, sucked away the redness for myself.

Boys and girls drift round the pool, uneasy as loose petals. They press against me, a calyx that might embrace them anew. Sometimes, I accept the drinks they offer me.

As they speak, I watch their eyes with an intensity that makes them believe I want/ hear/ love them—but I am looking only for the brightness, the luminous width that offers my own reflection back to me, twice, trapped inside an expanse of iris and pupil. If I see myself clearly on those tiny mirrors, I take them to my room and allow them to give me back to myself.

My sheets, they tell me, smell of daffodils—they call them by an older name—but, to me, the scent remains elusive.

More often, I remain beside the water, traversing a diurnal pilgrimage to the edge. My reflection is bigger, darker in the pool, and I can adjust the angle of her knee, the line of her throat to perfection. She smiles at me, and I see past her teeth to the redness inside her mouth. When I take off my sunglasses to absorb the color, I perceive that her eyes are black as onyx/ requited love/ time. I tilt back my head and close my eyes, the sting of jonquil heavy in my tongue.

Soon, I will join her, the monochrome witch in the water. Our hair will uncoil and tangle like snakes, and our legs will mingle like stalks in a jar.

JEN KNOX

______

Elaine

“You have to pick the places you don't walk away from.” –Joan Didion

My train departs at ten, and I keep my ticket close by. Grandma disapproves, says my father is the reason the sky is gray, always gray like everything else in Benton County, including our dog. I pat the floor beside me. Ash ambles over, nudges my hand with his wet snout, and I scratch his ears. ―Your father could suck the color from everything he touched, aging it on the spot. He‘s the reason I‘m old,‖ she says with a satisfied chuckle. ―Might want to return that ticket.‖

―Maybe I should have bought a one-way,‖ I say.

She stands and, without grabbing her cane, limps over and lifts my chin with two thick fingers. I watch as green and gray clouds collect around her pupils. Her eyes move to my ticket, so I grab it and tuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. Mom emerges from the kitchen, carrying two spoons heaped with brownie mix. She hands me one, winks, looks at Grandma and says, ―Elaine has to do this.‖ Grandma‘s coarse hair is falling over her large, plastic-framed glasses. I stare at her as I eat the brownie mix, swallowing the earthy dark chocolate in clumps, fighting the urge to gag. She clears her throat. ―Have we looked into etiquette school?‖

―Have we looked into the nursing home?‖ We stare at each other for a long time, battling without word or action. Finally, I give in, smile. Grandma sets up a chess board. I count the minutes, the moves.

The train is empty, as it would be in a movie. This is my transitional scene. My thoughts whirl; my nerves eat time, and before I know it I am knocking on an apartment door. I try to ignore the smell of damp carpet and patchouli incense. My father wears dark jeans and a darker shirt. A woman dressed in sequins, whose upper thighs show as she moves, is in the kitchen. I say hello.

―E—‖ he says.

―Elaine,‖ I say, ―but you can call me E.‖

―Little Elaine took the train,‖ the girlfriend sings. She stumbles forward to shake my hand. My father is both old and young. I can see the snake tattooed on his arm; it seemed brighter in pictures, more impressive. He says they were about to head to the bar. ―Want to tag along?‖ I sip sparkling water as my father hands men and women small bags of pills under the bar. He tells me that he came to my track meets but ducked out before I saw him. Grandma taught me how to detect lies—the glance up and to the side, the restless hand movements.

I stare at the moon from the hazy bus window. Grandma smiles when I arrive home, and in the smile is not smugness but a rare semblance of warmth. Ash sits with me on the floor, and I ask Grandma what‘s next. She suggests Canasta, and so we play.

JEN KNOX

______

Oscar

I am forty-three today, up early and standing near an oak tree. I lift my gut and let it fall, jiggle like hair gel. The air is already growing thick form the South Texas heat that will blister fair skin and fade dark car upholsteries by noon.

I am an innovator, in the middle of the park. Deer stand around like twitching statues, as though they are waiting for something to happen. Feeling the slight breeze on my skin every now and again, allowing the open air to embrace me, I become pure energy. I spread my arms out wide.

A woman screams, and there is a familiar jolt. The first reaction is electricity that shoots from belly to throat and back down, settling with a tingle, a buzz. It is for mere sensations that I disregard social norms. I have tried to explain this to my case worker, but he doesn‘t understand. He reminds me that I have a good job, a supportive spouse.

I am not here to upset joggers. My enemy is the societal constraint that mandates clothing, clothing often manufactured in factories where child laborers are forced to work under grueling conditions. Clothing that will itch or rub against the skin, cause reactions, shrink in the dryer, wear out too fast, deaden a vibrant skin tone, accentuate the wrong parts. It‘s about freedom, I tried to tell them: my wife, a therapist, the judge.

Today, I‘m going full-on, full-force, and I set out to walk across the street toward my condo. I will remain free for two full blocks. I bend over and squat—I‘m a relatively big man, so I grunt a little as I do—and I roll up my t-shirt and shorts, stuff them in my sneakers. I ignore the woman who screamed, who is now cursing at me from behind and calling the police, she says, waving her cellphone. She says this, but they will not come. The police are busy, and the only time they bother with a man like me is if I am in a public place or near children, which I would never do. The blacktop of the road is hot and gritty. When I arrive at the pale door to my home, I shake out my shorts and step in, one foot, then the other. My shorts are up and almost buttoned when I hear the familiar whoops of warning sirens. I see the soft lines of my wife‘s face in the window. Those warm, rich brown eyes. This was my last chance; she will leave me, her eyes say. I think about opening the door anyway, sitting down to breakfast and laughing over the ridiculous things people do that make the news. As the police approach, I remember that it is my birthday. I remind myself that I am here to fight. I lift my arms, and my shorts fall. I am unshielded, unsure, and wondering how long it will be till I can return to nature.

RACHEL BUBLITZ

______

Rewind: A one-minute play

Characters:

Man, m, any race

Woman, f, any race

Setting:

A bare stage.

MAN and WOMAN stand at opposite ends of the stage.

WOMAN

I want a divorce... It‘s not going to get better.

MAN

I know.