VOLUME ONE The Staff T Managing Editor Andrew Keating Fiction Editor Rafe Posey Nonfiction Editor Samantha Stanco Poetry Editor Tabitha Surface Special Thanks Danielle Peterson Jill Williams Cynthia Schatoff Michelle Junot Kevin Walls Tiffany Teal www.cobaltreview.com ©2012 by Cobalt Review No element of this volume may be reproduced without the written consent of Cobalt Review and/or the artist or author. All publication rights belong to the author(s). For all inquiries, please email [email protected]. CONTENTS Cobalt Fiction Prize WINNER: Sandra Hunter Modern Jazz Parade 1 FINALIST: Eileen Kelley Pusser 36 FINALIST: Mark Wagstaff Ms. Smith 51 Cobalt Nonfiction Prize WINNER: Chelsey Clammer I Have Been Thinking About... 13 FINALIST: Cindy Zelman Stuck in the Middle 28 FINALIST: Marissa Korbel Drawing Blood 70 Cobalt Poetry Prize WINNER: Steven Leyva Rare in the East 11 FINALIST: Sandra Kolankiewicz Grief Game 18 FINALIST: Kevin McLellan About Our Beginning 80 Fiction Dave K How to Adopt a Cat 19 Aubrey Hirsch Rachel Garrett 81 Nonfiction Hayley Hughes Montreal 45 John FitzGerald Humans Learn Beliefs 64 Poetry Brian Russell Preface 27 Panika MC Dillon if it was fate, we wanted it 60 Martin Willitts Earth-Creator 69 Interview Excerpts Excerpts from the Cobalt Interview Series, running from September 2011 to July 2012, are included throughout this issue. We have selected some of the highlights of the first year of interviews, including Rick Moody, Steve Almond, Paul Lisicky, Patricia Smith, and others. Full interviews with each of these authors, as well as many others, are available at www.cobaltreview. com/interviews. Volume One Sandra Hunter 2012 Cobalt Fiction Prize Winner Modern Jazz Parade If you will it, it is no dream. —Theodore Herzl In the dream Basem told himself: I am not dreaming. Boom-lack boom-lack boom-lacka boom-lack. This was the dancing in Noo-Allins, U.S.A. Dixie-music blaring over his shoulder, sousaphone scoring holes in the sacred air above them, people laughing, dancing on the sidewalk and showers of popcorn. Everyone he knew waving and clapping. His ears glory-loud with trumpets and saxophones and clarinets, long, silver-throats tilted up to the sky, where Allah received their music as a blessing. A strange noise curdled on, dragging at him, hauling him out of the US parade and into his bed: home, Hama, Syria. Phone. Stopped just as he grabbed it. 5:30am. Saturday. May 7th. Thirty-one days to the end of final exams. Forty- nine days to his eighteenth birthday when he could officially join up and march, side by side, with best friend, Ziad, in the glorious Syrian Army. Two steps to the window. Checked between the sagging blinds. To the right, in about three hours, one neighbor would dodder out of her back door to pick tomatoes. On the left, the other neighbor would stand under her fig tree, pre- tending to look for fruit but nosing over the fence. Imagined for a moment he was aiming a sniper, picking them off at 50 yards. He flattened the blinds with one long palm. Listened. Mama wasn’t up yet. His two sisters and Father would sleep until eight. Just a quick walk. Dressed, gently let himself out of the apart- ment. Ran downstairs and almost tripped over the small figure sitting on the last step near the door. “What are you doing up, Antoine? Does Chef know you’re here?” “Ai, Basem. No sleep anywhere. Chef is in the kitchen doing bread.” Head drooped against the stair railings. Five years back, Chef Seroob found Antoine, Allah-knew-where, and brought the four year-old back to the Hot ‘n Tasty Restaurant. The left side of the boy’s face drooped, two teeth missing on the upper left jaw, a squint in the left eye. The east-side Hama neighborhood sucked its narrow street, yellow-stone cheeks, probed its tongue along its rubbish tip alleyways, mumbled its cracked apart- ment building teeth. The fence-gazing widows, the rug-beating housewives, the chess-playing antiquities under the fig tree on the street corner. They found they agreed on something: the child had nerve damage, possibly trauma to the head. 1 Even if he’d wanted to Chef couldn’t have answered any questions about An- toine. His only expression was the trademark aaaaaoooo that ranged in pitch and volume, standing in for everything. And Antoine, now nine, had nothing to say, either. Basem fitted the MP3 earbuds into Antoine’s ears. American Idiot. Antoine’s face became empty, arms relaxed. He leaned against Basem’s shoulder. Basem checked his phone. Nothing. Best friend Ziad: Dropped out of high school at 16, lied about his age, and enlisted. Sudden shock of short hair and a startled-looking stare. The Ziad who forgot his books, his lunch, his keys, was gone. In his place was a man in a uniform with many pockets: knife, cigarettes, phone, phone card, hand warmers, and what-all. And Ziad knew exactly to which pocket each item belonged. The Army had also taught him how to tie his boots. Ziad and his shoe-laces: stuck in doors, caught in shop displays, jammed under someone’s briefcase. Basem and Ziad, scuffed-knees-scraped-elbows, fighting at the end of the street, racing across the back of someone’s house to grab apricots from the tree, stand- ing in front of the headmaster to receive six-of-the-best for banging their books on the desk in Science. Ziad’s arm over Basem’s shoulder, walking the evening streets, inhaling roast chicken and warm bread and sfouf, sweet almond cake. Antoine held out one earbud and Basem took it. Metallica. Where the Wild Things Are. Antoine sat up. “Basem? How much does it cost to go to Istanbul?” Basem removed his earbud. “A lot. Why?” “I’m going to live there.” Basem sighed. “Insha’Allah.” “But Allah doesn’t pay the ticket to Istanbul.” Antoine yawned. “Come, Basem, I will tell your fortune. The neighbor-with-the-half-foot showed me. Wait here.” Antoine disappeared through the restaurant’s side-door. Basem stood up and stretched, opened the front door to the building. Morning light filtering through the lifting fog. Rrrrup rrrrrup, metal shutters being rolled up, shop-owners calling greetings, shouting for coffee, small boys with small trays sliding past each other like eels. Ponderous procession of giant snails stopped, threw off their shells, and became kiosks for fried beans, green plums, corn on the cob. Two dueling cassette stalls on opposite sides of the street that sold virtually the same music. Each owner insisted that he, not that trickster over there, had the newest and best songs. You’re the one that I want, ooh, ooh, ooh, honey… Scooter zithering across the still-tepid traffic: father, mother, two kids and, tied on the back, grandmother holding a chicken. Antoine returned and stood at Basem’s elbow, looking up at the roof-top op- posite for the kite so often birthed from between the drying sheets. I wish I could fly that kite. They stepped back for the tall Senegalese pushing his grilled chestnut cart, and sat on the bottom step. Antoine handed him a small shaving mirror. “Now, look into the mirror. You are going to marry Sabeen.” “What are you talking about? How do you know Sabeen?” “The one with the glasses. I’ve seen you look at her when she comes by with her mother and the three short sisters.” “How do you know who I’m looking at? And what are you doing spying on me?” 2 Grabbed at Antoine. “It’s not my fault!” Antoine jumped back. “Don’t drop the mirror!” “It isn’t your fault you’re a spy?” “Eh. Basem. It’s the way you look.” Antoine did his moony-eyed impression of Basem looking at Sabeen. Basem swatted him on the shoulder. “I don’t look like that.” “You are a big man, seventeen and all, but still you do this way when she comes.” Antoine took the mirror and held it up. Basem’s face like his mother’s: dark eyes, long thin nose, wide mouth. “Look at the nice eyebrows. Big and bushy. Girls like eyebrows like that. And teeth also are nice. Girls look for good teeth.” He tilted his head to one side. “But why pick one with glasses? This one can’t see properly. How will she know she is with the right husband?” “You little-” Basem jumped off the step and caught Antoine. “Alright, alright. She’s going to marry you. She will. Ow, Basem. Let go.” Aaaoooo. Chef playing pan-lid cymbals. Basem ruffled the short hair. “See you later.” Sabeen, sitting behind his school on a low wall under the big tree. Black and white head-scarf. Black-rimmed glasses sliding down thin nose. Beneath the burquah, thick boots. Small, tough-looking hands. Didn’t even look up as he passed. Who was she anyway? Their family owned a bakery. Sighed. Time to go up these shaky stairs to the apartment above the restaurant. The warm scent of baking bread. In the distance, the sepulchral moaning of the Noria dragging up water from the Orontes River. Mama and the girls were in the kitchen. The living room door was open and Father beckoned him in. “I have received a call from my old friend the Chancellor at Cairo University. I emailed your grades and last report. He agrees to waive a formal application. You’ll report there for the summer term after your exams in May.” Father nod- ded.