6 6 H i .

E v e r y o n e d o i n g o k a y ?

I t ' s a l l s t a r t i n g t o f e e l a b i t l i k e a l o o p r i g h t ?

P u s h i n g t h a t b o u l d e r u p t h e h i l l a n d w a t c h i n g i t r o l l b a c k d o w n .

W a k e u p t o m o r r o w a n d d o i t a g a i n .

I t ' s n o t b a d s o m u c h , i t ' s j u s t , y o u k n o w , a l o o p .

T o c o u n t e r a c t t h e o n s e t o f s t a l e n e s s , o u r g o o d f r i e n d L a u r a J a y e C r a m e r i s c o m i n g o n a s o u r f i r s t e d i t o r o f o u r f i r s t n e w s e c t i o n :

T h e B a c k P a g e

I t ' l l b e s h o r t a n d s w e e t . A n d p r o b a b l y w e i r d a n d f u n n y . O r m a y b e j u s t w e i r d .

T h e r e m i g h t b e p u z z l e s .

A n y w a y , n e w s t u f f .

I t ' s l i k e a l i f e l i n e r i g h t n o w .

U n t i l n e x t t i m e .

- N o a h S a n d e r s T h e R a c k e t

T H E R A C K E T : Q U A R A N T I N E J O U R N A L N O . 6

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 2 0 T h e R a c k e t

C o v e r I m a g e :

F l o r d e c a l a b a z a ( S q u a s h B l o s s o m s )

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 8 L i z H e r n á n d e z

" I n T h e B e g i n n i n g " b y A n d y S a n o o r i g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d i n T h e B l u e N i b .

P r o m o t i o n a l r i g h t s o n l y .

T h i s b o o k , o r p a r t s t h e r e o f , m a y n o t b e r e p r o u d c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m i n d i v i d u a l a u t h o r s .

T h e s c a n n i n g , u p l o a d i n g a n d d i s t r i b u t i o n o f t h i s d o c u m e n t v i a t h e i n t e r n e t o r a n y o t h e r m e a n s w i t h o u t t h e p e r m i s s i o n o f t h e a u t h o r ( s ) i s i l l e g a l .

W e n e v e r t h o u g h t h o w m u c h w e ' d s p e n d t h i n k i n g a b o u t t h e s m e l l o f a m a s k .

W W W . T H E R A C K E T S F . C O M

W E H A V E A P A T R E O N

W e a r e n ' t i n i t f o r t h e m o n e y . B e l i e v e u s . F u n d i n g o r n o t w e ' l l f i g u r e o u t a w a y t o k e e p g e t t i n g g r e a t w r i t i n g a n d g r e a t a r t i n t o y o u r s w e a t y p a l m s a t n o c o s t w h a t s o e v e r .

T h a t s a i d : t h e r e a r e c o s t s i n d o i n g w h a t w e d o .

A n d a n y h e l p w i t h t h o s e c o s t s ( a n d w i t h t h e c o s t s o f f u t u r e T h e R a c k e t e n d e a v o r s ) w o u l d b e g r e a t l y a p p r e c i a t e d .

I f n o t , w e g e t i t a n d w e s t i l l a p p r e c i a t e y o u . T H A N K Y O U T O T H E S E F O L K S

H A L L I E Y O U N G J U S T I N S A N D E R S J A M I E E N G E L M A N N D A N I E L L E T R U P P I A N G I E M C D O N A L D K U R T W A L L A C E Q U Y N H - A N P H A N J U D Y W E I L S P E N C E R T I E R N E Y

O U R P A T R E O N : w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t h e r a c k e t r e a d i n g s e r i e s S U B M I T Y O U R W O R K

p o e t r y p r o s e a r t

7 5 0 w o r d s o r l e s s

S e n d t o : t h e r a c k e t r e a d i n g s e r i e s @ g m a i l . c o m C O N T E N T S

A N D Y S A N O I n T h e B e g i n n i n g 1

L O I S B I E L E F E L D M o n d a y : N u c o . 2

C H E R Y L D U M E S N I L T h r o u g h 3

C H E L S E A D A V I S n o t e a r s l e f t t o 4 c r y , s o A L I D A D G A R I s o l a t e 7

S U N N Y L Y N N o t e s f r o m a 8 T H I B O D E A U X F i r e E s c a p e : 1 7 . i v . 2 0

A N N S H E R M A N e v e r y b o d y ' s 9 t o a s t

T H E B A C K P A G E B Y L a u r a J a y e C r a m e r

C U R A T E D B Y : N o a h S a n d e r s 6 I n T h e B e g i n n i n g A N D Y S A N O

They tried everything, evoking birds and repeating the names of favorite trees while ransacking adjectives for moisture and heat. A few turned over dead leaves from some past year’s fall as if they could decipher peril while the band played gaily on without a drummer in sight but it’s the natives now who worry about restless things, and fear, without a pith helmet, stalks the wire. Many tried grandmothers and walks around the block, to the park, alone at last yet far from happy about how things had turned, not necessarily out or in but, without a compass, map or tiller did it matter? A new world, unsought, sat before them erasing the shape of their days and drawing bare, ghostly sketches on tingling nerves, of what was to come.

-1 M o n d a y : N u c o . / L o i s B i e l e f e l d / 2 0 1 4

2- T h r o u g h C H E R Y L D U M E S N I L

The river is frozen. We are skating down the center. Horrible things are happening on the banks. On both sides. Terror is a vapor rising off the rocks, off trees. I'm not looking. I'm blurring my peripheral vision. I'm focused on the spot ahead. The place where perspective narrows the river until the banks kiss.

The vanishing point. I don't know where we'll be when we get there.

3- n o t e a r s l e f t t o c r y , s o C H E L S E A D A V I S

What song will be the diary of this, our plague year? What lament could possibly plumb the depths to which the virus has brought our species? And what if such a song were already here? What if that song, in fact, was released two years ago by a doe-eyed and doe-leggèd pop star as famous for her vertiginous ponytail as for her high Soprano trills? What I’m telling you is that the hymn this pandemic has been waiting for is Ariana Grande’s “no tears left to cry.”

The basic gist of “no tears” is as follows: the singer is so happy because she is so sad. That’s it, that’s the headline. However, if we dig a bit deeper into this paradox, we begin to see a poignant logic at work. The singer describes her elation as follows: “Right now, I’m in a state of mind / I wanna be in like all the time / … We’re out here vibin.’” So far, so average pop single about a night at the club. But it’s what comes next —the question of where the singer’s joy comes from—that makes the song revelatory: “Ain’t got no tears in my body / I ran out, but boy, I like it.”

These lyrics evoke a body emptied out by its own suffering, made alien to itself through prolonged ordeal. Can

4- you imagine how much you’d have to cry for your body to literally run out of tears? Can you even conceive of a sadness so crushing it makes of you a desiccated husk, a waterless martyr in the desert? It’s a body horror vignette pulled straight out of Se7en, that movie where Kevin Spacey slaughters his victims in grisly imitation of the seven deadly sins. But in the eyes of the Christian God, Grande’s song names a sin even graver than the seven deadly ones: despair. To despair, to have no tears left to cry, is to allow yourself to be brought so low that you abandon hope. In so doing, you also abandon faith in the Lord’s ability to save you. And that, friend, is heresy.

But Grande has a different take on despair. Despair is not a bottomless hole into which we fall endlessly, she protests. It is a beginning. The song’s most important word is the single “so” that anchors the chorus: “Ain't got no tears left to cry / So I'm pickin' it up, / I’m lovin’, I’m livin’, I’m pickin’ it up.” It is precisely because of her abject brokenness that the speaker becomes completely and finally unbreakable.

But probably, at the end of the day, the reason I can’t stop humming this particular piece of pop is fundamentally a selfish one: it reminds me of something a beloved therapist used to tell me. I was seeing this shrink because of the migraines that I used to get. From about 2018-2019, the same sacred years during which Grande released her ode to

5- suffering, I would get these screaming four-day headaches. The intensity of the pain would build hour by hour, and by day 3, they were often simply too much to bear. I don’t know how else to say it: too much to bear.

In those moments, the therapist told me, I should simply… give up. First, she said, you’ll struggle against the pain: you’ll sob, you’ll collapse, you’ll throw up again and again (as one does with migraines). But then, when there’s nothing left in your body—no sounds, no vomit, no tears—you will have no choice but to accept the sensation in your head. To treat it not as an assault to be resisted, but a neutral fact to be held up to the light, and considered, and shrugged at. And, batshit as it may sound, she was right. The moment I surrendered was often exactly the moment the migraine would go away. I think the reason for this is that in the dregs of surrender like that is born a power all its own. A power you would not have thought possible before that instant of freefall, of abandon.

Anyways. All I’m trying to say—all Ariana is trying to say—is that despair is the end of something, but it is not the end of you. Nor is despair simply another waystation on the idiot mobius strip of life that shuttles us all endlessly between joy and suffering, joy and suffering. What despair means is that if you have no tears left to cry, your eyes are now forever, ruthlessly clear.

6- I s o l a t e / A l i D a d g a r / 2 0 2 0

-7 N o t e s f r o m t h e F i r e E s c a p e 1 7 . v i . 2 0 S U N N Y L Y N T H I B O D E A U X

An order came through the phone messaging system last night requiring masks but most people on the street are without electric scooter riders and millennials in headphones L-O-V-E sprawled in the crosswalk tires streaking the edges

8- e v e r y o n e ' s t o a s t A N N S H E R M A N

here’s to the spectral bag of tricks that makes the sky look French blue, trees shake off quadrennial thirst in ecstatic green amnesia so immediately transmissible, the susceptible heart momentarily gladdens in gratitude before the buzz kill thought perhaps I’m just another stupid sucker for atmospheric duplicity

9- T H E B A C K P A G E B Y L A U R A J A Y E C R A M E R E A T M Y S H O R T S

A N I L L U S T R A T E D H A I K U

N i g h t D r i v i n g

I j u s t h a v e t o l a u g h . T h e m a n c r o u c h e d i n m y b a c k s e a t ? L i k e , w h o i s t h a t g u y ? C O N T R I B U T O R S

A t o u r m o n t h l y e v e n t s i n s t e a d o f i n t r o d u c t o r y b i o s , w e a s k o u r r e a d e r s a q u e s t i o n a n d t h e n s h a r e t h e i r a n s w e r s .

W e ' d l i k e t o c o n t i n u e t h e t r a d i t i o n .

Q U E S T I O N : D e s c r i b e t h e s i x - f o o t s p a c e b e t w e e n t w o p e o p l e .

L O I S B I E L E F E L D I t ' s a c h a r g e d s p a c e w i t h a f r a u g h t a w a r e n e s s t o i t . L A U R A J A Y E C R A M E R S i x f e e t o f s p a c e i s l i k e h a l f o f a h u m a n c e n t i p e d e , p r o b a b l y . A L I D A D G A R L e n g t h o f f e a r a n d d e s i r e o f t h e u n k n o w n i n o u r h u m a n i t y ! C H E L S E A D A V I S K e e p i n g s i x f e e t f r o m s t r a n g e r s h a s a f e e l i n g o f a m e l a n c h o l y a g g r e s s i o n t o m e . I t ' s l i k e a s h o w d o w n b e t w e e n t w o d a f t c o w b o y s s o b e n t o n h i d i n g t h e i r l o v e f o r o n e a n o t h e r t h a t t h e y e n d u p d r a w i n g t h e i r p i s t o l s i n s t e a d . C H E R Y L D U M E S N I L I t ' s a m e a s u r e o f l o n g i n g , a n i n v i s i b l e m o u n t a i n , a n e a g l e ' s w i n g s p a n , t h e d e p t h o f a g r a v e . I t ' s a n a w k w a r d d a n c e , a b l o c k e d r u n w a y , h a l f t h e l e n g t h o f m y r e a c h . I t ' s t h e d i s t a n c e b e t w e e n a b l a c k b e r r y ' s b l o s s o m a n d i t s j u i c e s t a i n i n g m y l i p s . L I Z H E R N A N D E Z A N D Y S A N O T o o f a r t o t o u c h b u t c l o s e e n o u g h t o s h a r e a n d s e e m o s t o f w h a t w e n e e d . S U N N Y L Y N T H I B O D E A U X a v o i d o f l o n g i n g W E E K L Y

Y O U R M O M

C H R I S T I N E N O D A V I D P E R E Z P A U L C O R M A N - R O B E R T S J U L I A H A L P R I N J A C K S O N 5 . 1 4 V I A Z O O M W E B S I T E w w w . t h e r a c k e t s f . c o m N E W S L E T T E R w w w . t h e r a c k e t s f . c o m / n e w s l e t t e r I N S T A G R A M @ T H E R A C K E T R E A D I N G S E R I E S P A T R E O N w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t h e r a c k e t r e a d i n g s e r i e s

S U B M I T Y O U R W O R K :

t h e r a c k e t r e a d i n g s e r i e s @ g m a i l . c o m Y O U D I D I T ! Y O U R E A D A L L O F I T ! O R D I D Y O U . . .