Collateral Issue 4.1 Fall 2019 With thanks to our past supporters: Editors: Abby E. Murray Jenny L. Miller Eric Wilson-Edge In this issue Poetry Diana Cole Casey Cromwell Jack Giaour Robin Gow Stuart Gunter Lynn Houston Emma Johnson-Rivard Mateo Lara Jonathan Andrew Pérez Tess Thiringer Jordan Williams Creative Nonfiction Eric Chandler Rebecca Evans B.A. Van Sise James B. Wells Fiction Tiffany Hawk Tanya Whiton Visual Arts Feature Interview with Miles Lagoze, maker of Combat Obscura Poetry Diana Cole “Violets at Verdun, France WWI” Diana Cole, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has had poems published in numerous journals, including Poetry East, Spillway, the Tar River Review, the Cider Press Review, the Christian Century and the Main Street Rag. Her chapbook, Songs By Heart, was published in 2018 by Iris Press. She is part of the editorial team for The Crosswinds Poetry Journal and is a member of Ocean State Poets, whose mission is to encourage the reading, writing, and sharing of poetry, and to create opportunities for others to find their own voices. The inspiration for this poem came from her trip to France in 2016 to retrace the footsteps of her grandfather, Major Edward B. Cole, a highly decorated hero, who died in the battle of Belleau Woods. During this trip, she visited PC Moscou, where he was encamped. In his letters home, he described the beauty of the violets that spring of 1918. Violets at Verdun, France WWI Diana Cole The woods here are full of wild flowers, violets and many other pretty varieties. One could pick a bouquet for the table in a very few minutes. Major Edward B. Cole I stand in the very place my grandfather watched them bloom. Drawn up through dead leaves, a constellation of violets explodes every spring. Not even the wounds the earth took, the fox holes and mortar shells, dugouts still visible, can stop these flowers from retaking the ground. The few hundred yards occupied by one side and then the other. The rootstock bore its own trench as boots crushed each purple face. Casey Cromwell “The Night Before Dad Packs His Camo Bag and Flies 7,000 Miles Away” Casey Cromwell is an MFA student and successful blogger at Casey the College Celiac. When she isn’t writing about her Marine brat upbringing, living with two chronic illnesses or other adventures in her life, Casey enjoys long walks with a podcast, experimenting in the kitchen and reading all the mystery books she can get her hands on. This particular poem was inspired by her dad's deployment for Operation Iraqi Freedom and combines her love of narrative poems and surprising line breaks/form. The Night Before Dad Packs His Camo Bag and Flies 7,000 Miles Away Casey Cromwell I place it in his palm carefully, watching as callused fingers cover the pebble of blue polished glass in a blanket of scarred skin and veins. Now you see it; now you don’t. Just like him. Tomorrow. “It’s to keep you safe,” I say, biting my lip to keep from crying. Twelve months is a long time for a twelve- year-old, and Iraq, a world away. Yet I feel frozen in the heat of his hug by thoughts that clamor, Isthisit?Isthisit? Now is our last chance to share a year’s worth of goodbyes. But the good luck charm is nothing but cold glass. And my hand, already empty. Jack Giaour “self-portrait” “trans* man is discharged from the rosegarden” Jack Giaour lives in Massachusetts. His poetry has been published in or is forthcoming from Juked, Jelly Bucket, and Broken Plate, among other journals. These poems were written in response to the trans military ban that took effect in April 2019. As a trans man, much of the author’s work is concerned with the intersection between trans bodies and the cultures they are housed in. These poems are an expression of anger and frustration, but they are also an attempt to examine how trans (and especially trans male) bodies function in a culture that simultaneously values military prowess while actively marginalizing many of the populations to which its soldiers belong. self-portrait Jack Giaour “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” —Donald Trump surprise self self- protest with briefcase with mug with gun with combat boots with guilt self-hiding with blood- painted toes and dog tags portrait with disruption portrait as burden portrait last with price tags self-portrait with my rage self-made head with beard and adam’s apple self-portrait voodoo trans* man is discharged from the rosegarden Jack Giaour “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” —Donald Trump here i funeral here i romance here i family here i friendship here i worship here i serve here in the rosegarden my hair is full of thorns here in the rosegarden my throat my fingers my bones are full of worms and full of holes i wonder where the worms go when the ground is frozen i wonder where i go when there’s an angel at the gate with my own sword burning in his hands knowledge is a burden but it doesn’t have to be knowledge is disruption but it doesn’t have to be i have been here i have been here i have been here living in the garden dying in the garden fucking in the garden loving in the garden hating in the garden and i have been eating the fruit the entire time forbidden or not i have known my manhood and i have fought abroad for the garden and now you want me out you crown me with your own thorns and complain my blood is a burden to clean you demand my death and call the execution a disruption i am a burden but i don’t have to be i am a disruption but i don’t want to be i have been here in the garden as long has you have i have glutted myself on the fruit of the tree i know myself i know my manhood and leaving me in the desert won’t change that Robin Gow “Beam” “The Gods of Dead Animals” Robin Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, the Gateway Review, and tilde. He is a graduate student at Adelphi University pursing an MFA in Creative Writing. He is the Editor at Large for Village of Crickets, Social Media Coordinator for Oyster River Pages and interns for Porkbelly Press. He is an out and proud bisexual transgender man passionate about LGBT issues. He loves poetry that lilts in and out of reality and his queerness is also the central axis of his work. About these poems, he writes, “I was thinking about how a body in space might witness violence on earth and feel powerless. There's a lot about body / absence of body and this is something I feel when considering the massive amounts of violence we witness at war that permeate all aspects of our life. There's an undertone of this kind of fracturing.” Beam Robin Gow I make an “O” shape of my mouth— remembering a boy who ate spaghetti all wrong— no twirled fork just the strand thrashing with sauce. That’s how I eat strands of light when they try to reach another galaxy—I tell them they’re part of my family now. There is a dinner table that I have to keep snapping apart—at first it was out of anger but now I return to it in the hopes it will have more chairs. In the hopes that someone else will show up and make little table settings for a family that I might have broke along with the table. What better metaphor for all this than a table but that’s just the problem it’s not a metaphor— the table really floats out there no matter how many times I crumple its density. I spit out beams of light on the table and pretend they’re my children—I tell them that I love them as long as they don’t run away and as long as they never leave the table. Yes, I think there was a boy and he set the table and light came in the window and sat at each of the seats and he hated the light and he hated the table and he didn’t want there to be any tables or any chairs just a blank kitchen floor a mouth in the shape of an “O” to swallow strands of window. The Gods of Dead Animals Robin Gow The worst part is the book shelves keep falling and, inside myself, I spend all day re-stacking them. They have to be alphabetical. There was that boy and he would distract himself from wanting to dissolve by alphabetizing his books. I’m doing the same thing only I don’t have the choice to melt. I’m stuck here with no body and all this energy. It would be unwise to say dying is a choice and maybe I only feel like that because I’m young and full of too many book shelves. I go alphabetical by title, not author. None of my books have authors anyway. I start with A: Absalom Absalom, Animal Farm, As I Lay Dying a falcon wrote two of those I think or at least I might remember.