‘Acid Graduation’

Photographer- Tall Eric

Acid Graduation

When the Youth Pastor of our Bible Study Team encountered LSD
at age 17
the evangelical fervor he'd developed sharing the word of God
shifted to a new savior

Our Oklahoma panhandle town held 7,000 souls
serviced by 11 churches and
a high school with 78 people in the Senior Class
74 of which our former Youth Pastor managed to convert
to acid
at the commencement ceremony in the florally decorated gym
where one speaker after another
including the valedictorian and students' choice winner
assured the congregation
we will all eventually be redeemed
because good news
they could personally testify
there really is a true path to heaven

MK Punky is the co-founder of the 80's hardcore band The Clitboys and author of thirteen books of fiction, memoir and journalism, MK PUNKY is the creator of the 365-poem interactive art experience "The Year of When."

‘LITTLE HUMAN’

Lizzie Falvey is an artist and professor from Boston, Massachusetts. Her photographs, videos, ceramics, and monoprints have been shown in galleries across New England. She takes photos on an old Nikon film camera and enjoys capturing images that evoke a sense of the vastness of time and geographical space.

LITTLE HUMAN

The world ended two thousand years ago, yet here I sit with my legs dangling over the edge of it. Davis was right, even a manufactured reality can be fulfilling if the details are convincing. In these final moments, I've realized that life will happen to you whether you ask it to or not.

***

Davis and I met in a Las Vegas casino. Still in my wedding dress from the day before, I woke up on the floor of a bathroom stall. The last thing I remembered was taking a sip of that awful tea and spilling it down my chest in the middle of my wedding ceremony. I called out for Alex, my new wife, that I met a mere 48 hours earlier, but she didn't answer. I shouldn’t have been too surprised she’d abandoned me. That’s what you get for marrying someone you’ve known for less than a week.

The rancid smell of sick filled my nostrils - I'll never forget it, and snapped me out of my mental fog. I needed to find someone who could tell me what had happened. I could worry about Alex later.

"I can help with that," a man said. How long has this guy been here? Is he the reason I’m here? I could only see his bejeweled shoes from underneath the bathroom stall. Every purple rhinestone sparkled in the dim light reflecting off the linoleum floor.

"This is the women's bathroom," I said, trying to feign confidence I didn’t have. There was no way I was going to trust a man comfortable enough to come into the women's bathroom. I wasn’t in a good state, how was I supposed to fight him if he tried to grab me?

"You wished for someone and now I'm here. No need to think me a man trying to take advantage of a poor woman," the voice said. The purple shoe sparkled even more as it started tapping against the floor. I had no choice; this man was the only person who was suspiciously enthusiastic to help me. I stepped outside of the stall to find a tall man who had not only bedazzled purple shoes, but an entire bedazzled purple suit. At least one of us was put together enough to compensate for the other.

"We can fix that, little human," he said. He grabbed my hand and spun me around, carefully inspecting my stained attire. He let out a dissatisfied grunt and turned me to face the mirror.

“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of yourself. Imagine what you'd wear for a day with the girls."

A day with the girls? My social circle was comprised of myself and a few older women from my crochet group. Still, I humored him and imagined myself in what I wore on my first day in Vegas, the day I met Alex.

The man let out a shriek. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I was wearing the exact outfit I’d imagined, and my wedding dress had vanished. Still, my surprise had a bit more decorum; it was only a small gasp. Regardless, it was starkly disproportional to my slipping grasp on reality.

"Crocs and socks?" the man said, his mouth turned down in utter disgust. "That explains why you were proposed to with a Ring Pop."

"How did you know that?" I asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"It was stuck in your hair when I found you. I took the liberty of taking it out before you woke up," he said.

“So, you found me, took a Ring Pop out of my hair then stuck me in here?”

“That’s exactly right! I thought you’d want some privacy when you woke up.”

He stepped out of the bathroom and into a large casino before I had a chance to argue. How was it possible to not have any recollection of being here? I was at a chapel before I woke up. None of this made sense.

"My name is Davis," the man said, stopping in front of a slot machine. He reached out to shake my hand. This guy couldn’t be serious.

"I'm very serious," he said. "Just shake it."

"How do you know what I'm thinking?"

"You'd know if you shook my hand," he said. I grabbed his hand and shook. A mischievous grin spread across his face, then everything froze. The music stopped and the flashing lights froze, painting the room in hot pink. It looked like someone pressed a pause button, only I didn’t get the memo. I pulled my hand back, but he didn’t respond. That’s when I knew it was official – I was losing my mind.

"You're not losing anything," Davis said. The world suddenly returned to normal and he started eyeing the slot machines. "I just needed that to update the code."

"What code?” I was becoming more and more confused with every word that left his mouth. He took a seat in front of one of the many slot machines and motioned for me to sit next to him. As much as I didn’t want to listen, I had no choice. I was in the middle of a casino I’d never been to and had been abandoned by my wife. Davis was the only anchorage to reality that I had right now.

"What do you notice about this casino, little human?" he asked. He looked around the room in awe, like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Why do you keep calling me that? Or is that another question I only get the answer to when I do what you want?"

He nodded like I was finally catching on to what was happening. I looked around the casino and immediately started counting the colors in the tie dye carpet. There were four. Each of them my favorite color. The music was loud, but bearable because it was an instrumental version of my favorite song. Everything was vibrant, but I handled it because it was all based on the things I loved. It was a saccharine fever dream, but I could tell I was missing something. This was a place that should've made me overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion, yet here I was, stable as stone. "It’s just us here," I said. How could I have missed that?

"Bingo," Davis said. "I noticed that many of your anxious memories were just so because you were in a crowd. I thought it best that we start on the right foot, so I didn't fill the place with people. The machines are still moving and the poker chips are still being shifted from invisible player to player, but they're all moving on timers. I wanted to create a realistic ambiance for you. How did I do?"

"You're not making any sense," I said. My eyes shifted to the bar. A cobble shaker danced in the air then tipped itself over to fill a glass. The sight was both horrific and captivating. "You're implying that you built this place to suit me, but that doesn’t make any sense. Even if that were true, why did you do it?”

He had no response, of course. He turned to face the slot machine, and I understood to follow suit. Upon closer inspection, the slot machine didn't look so ordinary. Instead of the usual lucky seven or themed icon, it had symbols of my life. There was a crucifix, the Eiffel Tower, and my wedding dress. If what Davis was saying was true, I had to commend him on his attention to detail.

He looked at me and pointed to the lever. I wasn’t keen to revisit any of these places, but I had a feeling that I was going to get a three-way match no matter what I did.

"I think you mean a hit," Davis said.

I rolled my eyes and pulled down the lever. The images spun so quickly that I lost focus, but I couldn't look away. I leaned in closer, dipping my face into a kaleidoscope of the most crucial memories of my life. I couldn't decide which was a place I could face, for they all held a sliver of poison in their cracks. The images spun faster and faster until, well, they didn't. When they settled, Davis sat across from me at a café in the middle of Paris.

"I was hoping we'd end up here," Davis said. He looked around the street, clearly pleased with our new surroundings. It was spring, and the cool air was refreshing but not overwhelming. Much like the casino, everything was moving, but there were no people here. The air was filled with the soft ensemble of newspapers flowing in the wind and footsteps on concrete.

"Please explain what's going on," I begged.

"You're kind of dead," Davis said.

"What does that mean? I'm either dead or I'm not dead," I said.

"Oh, it's never that simple, little human," he said.

"Is this heaven, then?" I asked, pathetically failing to steady my voice. I deconstructed years ago, so if this was heaven then I’d be faced with an eternity of “I told you so” from my family.

"Not quite, but based on the ancient religions that humanity followed before going extinct, I can imagine that it's pretty close," he said. "You 'died' a very long time ago. You were… suspended in a white light when I found you. I created this world for you, to make you comfortable."

The idea seemed so preposterous that I didn’t even stop to consider that it may be true, even though all the signs pointed to just that. There’s no way the streets of Paris would be empty in the middle of the afternoon. It’s also impossible to teleport the way we just did. I must be in a coma. "Do you realize how absurd this all sounds?"

"I do," he said. "Can you imagine some cappuccinos please? My throat is dry."

His unbothered tone made me wonder if I was the one with the twisted priorities. Regardless, I imagined two cappuccinos and croissants, which instantly appeared on the table. He closed his eyes as he took a sip, clearly enjoying the silence alongside me.

"One more thing before we continue," he said. He walked over to a newsstand and grabbed a random fashion magazine. "You've got to get rid of those Crocs – this is Paris! Pick an outfit from in here and visualize yourself in it.”

I obliged, not because I wanted to, but because I was at his mercy. A blink passed and I was a new woman. My hair stretched down my back, and I had made sure to change into loafers. The relief on Davis' face could be likened to finding out your phone wasn’t cracked after dropping it face down.

"You technically died two thousand years ago," he began. Now it was my turn to be tense. "Most of humanity did. There was a war between countries, I forget what they were called, and it wiped most life from Earth.” He leaned in and lowered his voice, “If I’m being honest, I thought humanity was a myth before I found you on my little weekend trip visiting ancient planets."

"How did I die 2,000 years ago and then appear here? Where is here? And if you're not human then what are you?" I couldn’t stop the questions from coming out of my mouth. I needed a proper explanation now, not more comments of Crocs and cappuccinos.

"You did a tea ceremony at your wedding, yes? I think whatever was in it protected you from the bomb that hit the courthouse moments after you took a sip. You still had the cup in your hand when I found you."

"How could tea possibly protect me from a bomb?" I asked. "If that were true then I shouldn’t be in one piece."

Davis leaned back and crossed his legs as if there was a camera trying to capture his elegance.

"That is a mystery that even I cannot figure out, but I suspect it is safest kept in the past. That kind of power is very dangerous for any species, no matter how evolved they may be."

A black hole opened in my chest as I realized what was going on. I was in the middle of Paris by myself. There was nobody else here. There was nobody else in the casino back in Las Vegas. There was only Davis and I, and I had been the last living human being. I had outlived everyone. I was completely, and utterly, alone. I imagined two glasses of red wine, because I didn’t know how smart it would be to hear the rest of his explanation with a clear mind. I was in desperate need of a clouded head.

Davis took a sip and immediately spat it out, painting the sidewalk in red.

"Don't like it?" I asked. A small laugh escaped from my lips. This was the first time I’d smiled since I woke up.

"It tastes better in theory than in practice," he said while wiping his face with a napkin. Then I noticed that he didn’t handle his body with grace. He moved like a young child who was capable of caring for themselves but didn’t have the fine-tuned motor skills to do so. This body must have been very different from whatever his true form was.

"Where am I really, Davis? You talked about fixing code earlier. Are we in a computer?"

He rocked his head from side to side as emphatically as if I’d just asked if he’d prefer a bedazzled suit in blue. "In theory, you're in the same place you've always been. You're in your head, but with a bit of intervention from me. Everything here is based on your memories and desires. All the people who will eventually appear will be generated from images you’ve seen before. Same goes for all the places. This may not even be what Paris looked like. I built it based on your memory and some research I did. You can also control everything. I've limited some settings for now, like controlling other people and the weather, but when you’re ready, you’ll have full authority.”

Not quite reality, not quite death. This was a small pocket between the two.

“Exactly,” Davis said. “The real world, my world, would be unsettling for you. According to my research, we look similar to your greatest common nuisance – the fruit fly.”

My face twisted up in disgust before I had a moment to consider how offensive it would be, but he just laughed. And he had been right. I had no interest in living in a world of fruit flies. In fact, I had spent one summer hyper fixated on killing them when they infiltrated my kitchen. It was, admittedly, not a great look for a lone traveler benefitting from his kindness.

“Exactly,” he said. “You wouldn’t like our kind, and I don’t know how our kind would feel toward you. Given the time period you’re from, I believe you know that humans don’t respond kindly to things they do not understand.”

I nodded. He was right. Humanity wasn’t known for our table manners with strangers.

“Where is my body now?” I asked.

Davis’ eyes stayed glued to a bike without a rider moving down the street. “Your body didn’t respond well to the air in this atmosphere. It started to decay quickly after you left Earth. I suspect whatever was in that tea only protected you in Earth’s conditions.”

“Where is my body?” I asked, decidedly more demanding this time. My ability to handle the unknown quickly eroded in the little time I’d spent in this world. My world. It’s scary how quickly the power went straight to my head as I grabbed Davis’ face and turned it to face me.

“It does not exist anymore,” he whispered. “I’m not familiar with the ancient medicines for your body, and I was running out of time, so I just transferred your consciousness into this place.”

“And what is this place?”

“A world inside a computer on my bedside table,” he said. I let him go, and he sat back in his chair. The bravado he wore like a necklace started to rust. The adrenaline in my stomach morphed between shock, confusion, and anger. I hadn’t been real this entire time. I wasn’t in a computer - I was a computer.

"Why didn't you let me die? Did you stop to think what it would be like to be the last of my species?" I yelled. Two thousand years of grief rushed through my body, and I understood why he withheld my ability to control the weather.

"I didn't think it'd be fair to let you die. Of all the stories I've heard about humanity, the continuity was your resilience. Your kind always did whatever necessary to survive, even at the detriment of your own. You were a brutal species, but an admirable one." Davis said, his voice shaking as he grappled with the guilt I threw at him. "I shouldn't have been the person to decide the fight was over. It was not my choice to make."

Davis sparkled while he cried. The light reflected off his suit and straight into every emotion passing through me. I tried to untangle them from one another, but they were indistinguishable.

"When will I die in here? How does a mind die?" I asked.

"When you're ready," Davis said. He wiped a tear from his cheek and took another sip of his cappucino, which perked him up. "In theory, you could do it now."

He pulled a television remote out of his pocket and carefully placed it on the table. His finger hovered over the power button.

"When you're ready, push this button. It will ask you multiple times to avoid any fatal mistakes because I won't be able to bring you back once it's done. You're also the only person who can press the button. Nobody else, not even myself, can choose that for you."

I grabbed the remote and inspected it more closely. It was scary to think how much power laid inside that piece of plastic.

"Okay," I conceded, because what else could I do? This was an existential crisis served with red wine, but it was all I had now. Davis sensed my acceptance and stood from the table. I rose with him. I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving. I didn’t want to be alone.

"Don't be scared, little human,” he said. A smile inched across his face, but I could tell he was scared too. I got the sense I was not the only one who was alone. “If you ever need me, just switch to Channel 13."

He started walking down the street, and it slowly filled with other people. I tried to keep up, but he moved much quicker than an average human would.

"And what about when you die? I'm a computer, so I'm bound to outlive you," I said. The realization, along with the growing flocks of people, made me lose grasp of my own breath. More people appeared at a restaurant around the corner. It was a family that looked a lot like my old group of high school friends. In fact, everyone looked eerily familiar, but I couldn’t confidently identify anyone.

"I won't die before you, trust me. Time moves very differently for me out there than for you in here. I built it this way so you'd never be alone," he said. "I'm a compassionate creator, am I not?"

His bravado was back. It looked good on him. I pulled him into a hug and held him close. He was the first and last real visitor I'd ever have. He was gone before I let him go, off to whatever world he came from. A raindrop hit my cheek, then another, then another, mirroring the growing discomfort inside of me. This was real. I was a God. The streets filled with people speaking languages I didn’t understand, so I shut my eyes and imagined myself back home with Alex on my couch. She grabbed my hand and we started dancing in the living room. Although it was all my doing, it was nice to feel chosen a second time.

***

Those were the days when my world was vibrant, but the excitement of utopia quickly dulled. It became grey and manufactured, much like the remote in my hand. Davis hasn't been on Channel 13 in a few hundred years. He would be happy to know that he was right, humanity will destroy itself to retain its grasp on life.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 22-999-33.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 555-444-8-8-555-33.

Power button activated. To confirm, press 44-88-6-2-66.

Confirmed.

Goodbye, little human.

Danielle Roberson is a writer living in Texas. She writes poetry, short stories and is currently working on her first novel.

‘Silver Gelatin Prints (an Exhibit)’ & ‘Santorini’

Photographer - Chase Bradburn

Silver Gelatin Prints (an Exhibit)

The light invited me between the birch trees

A vigilant Moon

Consuming many prints in his white light

The bones, the dogwood blossoms,

The ladder pulled up to the roof of the Taos pueblo

So no one can climb to the entrance

Chilis rustling like windchimes

The tension of high crags and the shadowy lag

Of light on the sensitive page

A piano forte of storm clouds

Fighting over Half Dome

Cali sands falling from hands

Aspen spending its gold in autumn’s hold

A red filter to fill in the sky

Slopes relying on the white snow

To juxtapose imposing landscapes

Mountainous clouds draped in loud brightness

So the rest of the world seems dark

I am a cloud burned in under light filament

I am a slope poked and prodded in footsteps

I am a silver aspen asking to be seen in the forest

The photograph made by hands so dazzled in a moment

It becomes an art before it ever forms a memory

A man plays piano as the stop bath impedes further change

A fire smolders in a boy’s dream, the cliffside Cali house

Doused long ago

A tripod rests against a yew tree as a valley waiting for the slant of shadows

As the meadow mewls for the mule deer to part the tall grass

I pass the time winding my fingers in the weather

The optic eye my wife, while I lie waiting

For Moonrise

Santorini

The eruption of Thera—heard 3,000 miles away—changed the face of the island from Sun to

Moon.

Solar Island,

You trembled, and

The Great Sea wrapped over you

Loving you with lunar liturgies,

Illuminating the phases of patience

In your crescent resilience

Cliffside vigils still shiver

Reverent to who you were

Seven monk stars observe

A sustainable silence

Cobalt exalted crosses

Gloss religion over the architecture

The volcano textures the beaches

In fracture rapture

Chalk-white pumices collect dew

Spreading it to grape vines, twisted

And guarded against the heat of their origin

Again the mule transports a savior—

In the form of freshwater—

Hoisting life up 300 steps

Again the sea blankets

Quivering shores

Again Rooster boasts its anointed voice

So the clergy of palms calmly fan

Arched houses

The Three Sisters twist their ringing song

Brass tongues beckoning

One and all

Then night descends and

The lunar island extends the olive branch

To the sea, strumming the waves in lullaby

One day will Thera break her pact of peace

Urging the Great Sea to claim Moon, too,

And call herself savior?

Corrie Thompson is a poet and photographer from the suburbs outside Chicago. Her writing appears in Eclectica Magazine, Mantis, In Parentheses, Poet’s Choice, Good Life Literary Journal, Haiku Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine. She would love to become a birch tree in her next life and be one with the natural world she loves so much. Her instagram is @mis.underwood.

‘Dinner Party of Ex-Bosses’, ‘Requirements To Be A Pig’, ‘Manqué’, & ‘The Toilet and the Coffin’

Daniel Wood Adams is a multifaceted creative with a passion for blending visual aesthetics and craftsmanship. As a graphic designer, illustrator, and woodworker, Daniel’s work reflects a unique intersection of artistry and skill. Daniel’s creative journey began with degrees in Illustration and Graphic Design from Pratt Institute in 2012. Those formative years were a thrilling rollercoaster of art, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and caffeine-fueled all-nighters, setting the stage for what would become a dynamic career. Before moving to Austin, Daniel navigated the cold climates of Connecticut and New York City.

Dinner Party of Ex-Bosses

The heart rests on an oval plate atop the mahogany dining table. It beats still—over ice. Rosemary, sage, and thyme over the epicardium. Orange slices and cloves adorn the fibers. A voice comments about the freshness of the organ. Marlon, it’s you, he raises an eyebrow. And there’s Nicholas, Deanna, Becky, Matt, Amanda, and Tom too. The white wire tangled on the floor leads to my body, connected to the hole in my chest, it does something God-like and keeps me breathing on the surgical table away from the feast. A man wearing dark sunglasses and a tuxedo plays the piano nearby. My body is numb as the rest of the dinner party anxiously await with knife and fork in hand. Shimmery silverware and wine glasses click…click click click. The guests rise in unison over the heart. It is as though I watch them from within the chambers, feel their hungry eyes and their salivating glands. And then the cut—every slice on the muscle is felt through the taunting of their pleasure. Moans of ecstasy erupt, the guests come alive through “oohs” and “aahs,” euphorically intoxicated smiles, full mouths of fresh flesh, tightly indulging, revealing pieces of me scattered over the table, bones ripped of their muscle. I forgot how to scream, I forgot how to be a human. Tom burps, cleans his blood-stained mouth with a white napkin and leans back, his elbow hanging over the backrest of the chair. “Let’s touch base again next Monday.” He proposes a toast. The waitstaff clears the table and serve dessert.

Requirements To Be A Pig

The pig does not have time for fun. The pig is on the run. It must be bred of artificial insemination in a tight crate. It must be taken from its mother, it must grow up alone but surrounded by others—all wondering and questioning the same thing, cramped in the foul room where their tails are cut off, it will be castrated (that’s where the flavor is). It will grow into a fat one. Then there will come a day in which it will be stunned, slaughtered, its throat cut open, bleeding out for all of its delicious meat, it will be dipped in boiling water to rid of its disgusting hairs and any parts that make it living will be only matter. It will be dismembered and its parts will be packed beautifully and sold at different prices in different stores under names such as bacon, pancetta, prosciutto. It will be picked up by a random person, devoured within seconds between bread slices with mustard and mayonnaise, and it will be defecated and flushed down a toilet. The life of the pig is meaningless, it serves no purpose but to feed the starving bellies of humanity. The pig does not feel pain, it does not wail, it knows no love, it knows nothing more than what it knows. The pig knows its purpose; it is happy to die for you. The pig knows its life has no meaning; the pig knows its death is humane. The pig doesn’t know life. The pig with a heart is just food.

Manqué

I accept this failure;

the world needs more ordinary people.

I relinquish this losing battle,

I’ve been at war for too long,

time has run out and I am worn out.

I fought when I wasn’t whole,

and when I was falling apart,

I fought when I bled, when I cried, when I screamed,

but I no longer can withstand the beatings,

perhaps—perhaps—this wasn’t my battle to fight,

and how many beautiful singers

will the world never hear?

how many talented writers

will the world never read?

how many gifted dancers

will the world never see?

it’s a bitter pill to swallow that these dreams

will never prosper here, not in this lifetime

so I give up, I give up, I give up,

none of it was meant for me

but I tried, o how I tried, and you—

you should see!

they were great in my mind!

they were grand!

o, were they grand!

o, they were beautiful!

The Toilet and the Coffin

I watch them wither into wisps of smoke—

collecting ashes of what once was a desire for everything,

and a settlement for nothing, now I want none of it,

it is ok to be the same as everyone else,

it is ok to be…nothing, to be ‘no one,’

the television lies again and again

to tell us what they want us to hear,

and it is ok to not listen,

no one gets to dictate the truth

not the politician, the monk, the priest, the queen,

the ceo, the famous actor, the famous singer,

no human is worthy of worship, no human is almighty,

no flesh escapes the claw of death,

the toilet unites us, the coffin too

they are the true testaments of equality.

Lázaro Gutiérrez’s work can be found in several publications, such as Tint Journal, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Vermillion, Latino Literatures, Discretionary Love, Molecule - A Tiny Lit Mag, Somos en Escrito, Barzakh Magazine, Frontera Lit, Azahares Literary Magazine, SOMOS Latinx Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in BarBar, and Blue Gaia..

‘Tales from a Place Where You Can Feel All Your Selves Crawling On Your Skin’

Joel M. Scinta is a photographer from Buffalo, NY

Tales from a Place Where You Can Feel All Your Selves Crawling On Your Skin

I wake up building ancient cities in my heads...

one of dazzle

pulling strands from the sun into my fingertips, I enliven the universe. I wake up

with sand in my eyes and dust drifting in beams of light, things falling out of

balance and into place. I wake up to the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen (I’m

pretty sure I imagined it.) I wake up to buildings beamish and brilliant, and a

future built in bone marrow and crystal. Everything I’ve ever wanted is on the tip

of my tongue the tip of my tongue the tip of my tongue so close I can taste it. It

tastes like cardamom. (It tastes like hope.)

and one of decay

shielding my eyes from the insistence of morning, I submit to the weight of my

body. I wake up with sand in my eyes and dust caking my bedroom, things falling

out of place and into balance. I wake up to the darkest nightmare I’ve ever had.

(I’m pretty sure it’s real.) I wake up to buildings stagnant and fixed, and a future

built in splinters and cinder. Everything I’ve ever feared is so close I can taste it I

can taste it I can taste it on the tip of my tongue. It tastes like pennies. (It tastes

like blood.)

One day I tremble and the next I shimmer.

Tales from a home like a pendulum

like a wave

like a moan,

an echo

the person you used to be...

haunting you.

Amelia Clare Wright is a recent graduate of Columbia's MFA program in nonfiction creative writing. She has work appearing in Oyster River Pages, Variant, and The Hunger Journal, among others. She grew up in Baltimore City and now lives in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a memoir about pain and trying to decide if she wants to be a coral reef or a tree when she dies.

‘Field Day’

Photographer - Chase Bradburn

Field Day

Breakfast was boiled tapioca and flat rice stirred in red tea, and an abundance of bananas from the plantation. We sat on the porch where the farmer’s heavy hats and coats hung amongst his scabbed shovels and boots, and watched the wooden cottages slope down the hill in different colours. There were men pushing wheelbarrows and motorbikes down the alleys towards the main road, watching us with little or too much interest. The North-East wasn’t uniformly picturesque, though the hills were unlike most of rural India.

    The farmer dropped us in the middle of a highway running across a vast golden gorge. He told us that he had a meeting at the cooperative society about pork rearing, and that we should hitch a ride back to the village before nightfall. Enisha said that her picture of the village headman had been everything but soft-spoken and unopulent, and that she hadn’t envisioned him carrying a barrel of gasoline in the back of his pickup-truck and complaining about the cost of labour. I shrugged and adjusted my SLR camera across my chest as the pickup rattled into the distance till it could no longer be heard, though it was a long time before it faded out of our sight.

    The hill on top of the mountain looked exactly like an apple eaten around its core. It was starkly different to the untouched gorges and their gentle slopes of grass. The conical hill had long eroded and crumbled clumsily over itself into a giant pile of dusty, yellowish boulders. A row of dump-trucks lined the crusty bay around the hill, like insects perched inside the crater of a moon. A scattered group of men, women and teenagers were hunched across the pile, wrapped in faded towels, makeshift turbans and caps. We heard a rhythmic crunch of spades as workers plumbed the mountain for limestone, turning it into a massive quarry.

    Enisha had wandered off to find the woman we had met the previous day. She worked with her two-year old child bundled into a cloth on her back and slung around her forehead. The base of the hill had been hollowed into a row of caves and I waltzed through their large entrances, watching the drivers chain-smoke bidis and chew an endless supply of betelnuts. A drilling machine faced the cavities as though it had a mind of its own, and the caves were cooler and quieter inside. The workers had clearly tunnelled through the earth for years, though they migrated every season. The ones who weren’t local came from Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, Nepal and Bangladesh. Our documentary focused on a village beyond the quarry. Its geography was rugged and barren owing to its higher altitude and acidic soil. Agriculture was sporadic and the nearest school and clinic were miles away. The village we were accommodated in was close to a valley with a stream running through, and a road that led to the highway, making it easier to grow crops and transport them to bigger markets.

    The woman wore the same clothes as the previous day and sat around a pile of rocks, breaking them one at a time and dumping them into a steel container. The rocks were sold to construct roads and embankments, unlike the lucrative limestone boulders. She sat deep inside the cave where the darkness made it seem like it was night outside. An electric lantern hung in the corner and buried the world in a silent opera of shadows. She smiled at us and held her gaze, and asked us to sit down in her throaty language. Her eyes questioned us with a hint of mischief and she didn’t pay much attention to her baby. She was muscular unlike the men outside, and she seemed to behold a secret. Her Hindi was as bad as everybody else’s. We had grown accustomed to the tribals’ general disdain towards outsiders, and the special affection we enjoyed for being young and from a region unknown to them.

    We had spent the previous night arguing over whether it was too soon to ask the woman for permission to film her. Enisha said that the mine and its activities wouldn’t take long to film, and that it was important to capture the woman in her element, speaking in her tribal language. She reminded me that it was absurd to think of the hill people as isolated, and that filming the woman by herself would misrepresent their community. I picked up a rock and a worn-out hammer and sat down beside the pile. The woman looked at me and then at Enisha, and asked her to sit beside me. She had an air of calm and a childlike seriousness, and her thoughts did not stop her from beating the rocks. Enisha asked her if she carried her lunch and she laughed. She looked embarrassed and eager to tell us about her domestic life, and Enisha listened without interrupting her.

    ‘Sometimes my husband gets the pot ready while I cut the vegetables. It saves time,’ she grew serious again.

    ‘I have a small field of potatoes and cabbage and in the winter I spend my time there. This work pays us a daily wage and it’s helpful for our expenses, but the harvest we get at the end of the year give us what we make in two months here, and we also eat some of it. But mostly we rely on our chickens and cow.’

    Her eyes gleamed at me.

    ‘Are you making videos about the mine for a foreign company?’

    Enisha blushed. She hadn’t anticipated the woman’s knowledge about documentaries. We had orchestrated our entry into the quarry under the pretext of a research project, and had obtained a letter from the local university in return for the film. The department head frequently collaborated with independent activists and she convinced the principal that a film about illegal mining would propel the university’s research. The letter stated that the ‘students’ were required to document the tribals’ culture as part of their curriculum. The supervisor at the quarry was often inebriated, and the formal letter and our youthful appearance helped avoid any suspicions. I was anxious to start filming before somebody intelligible came along, but I finally understood Enisha’s plan.

    ‘It’s for a college project.’

    The woman smiled again and looked at us with her big eyes. I could tell what she was thinking.

    ‘After college, will you be marrying him?’

    The innocence in her voice almost made me grin, but she was looking at Enisha the whole time. She smiled politely and told her that we were thinking about it but our focus was on college. I shook my head and watched her as she drew the conversation back towards food.

    ‘I always used to make my lunch in the morning and carry it with me. But these days my baby keeps me up at night. My husband leaves later in the day to drive the trucks in a different quarry and he drops the food for me and the baby in the afternoon.’

    She looked around as if to search for their food and discover that it wasn’t there because her husband hadn’t arrived yet. And then an idea came into her.

    ‘I will be going home after five ‘O’ clock. You can eat with us and see the village. Until then, you can go around the mine, nobody will have time to bother you.’ She stopped beating the stone at last and sat with her elbows on her knees. ‘I’ll see if I can get a chicken, or maybe even a chop of pork.’ She said the last line to herself in her language and I felt a wave of guilt as I recognized the words, but Enisha sprang into action without moving an inch. She grinned at me long and hard and I knew that it was time to switch on the camera.    

Abhishek Udaykumar is a writer, filmmaker and painter from India. He graduated from Royal Holloway University of London with English and Creative Writing. He writes short stories, novels and essays and makes documentaries and fiction films. His narratives reflect the human condition of rural and urban communities. He has been published by different literary journals, and has made thirteen films and several series of paintings.

‘A Bust of Bernie Taupin’, ‘Effigies’ & ‘Movie Love’

Jill E. T. Bemis is an aspiring photographer, landscape painter, and writer. Her photography may be viewed at https://jetbemis.com. A career public servant, she lives in Minnesota with her husband Michael, son Nate, daughter-in-law Julia, and Tiger the cat.

A Bust of Bernie Taupin

Hail beats down on the secret

service.

Hail beats down on the vice

president,

his hateful rhetoric,

his cotton brief,

his weird side of beef . . .

It takes a while,

but our concerns return to music.

We have our own agenda

to discuss and a bust of Bernie

Taupin to unveil.

It takes a while to separate

the pellets of ice

from the feathers and fragile

bones a snake

vomits as he passes through,

the song a bird sang

from the song his descendants

are singing.                                                  

Effigies

People can be made from twigs and rope. We call these people “effigies.” These people are born for ritual, beautiful and strange. Moving with the grace of a summer storm or Greek goddess, allowing one eye to widen slightly, they save the world again and again. They let us watch as they make love, and we destroy them.

I have a reoccurring dream that I am playing Percy Shelley, that I am on stage interacting with Lord Byron having never learned my lines. Somehow, what needs to get said, gets said. Improvised. Believed. During the afterparty, someone steals my car.

Movie Love

The working title of her novel

is The Evolution of Movie Love.

She may change it to Eyes Are Never

Private or Eyes Are Disobedient

Children. She may change her own name

or hide it behind enormous initials.

A master of revealing something

other than what she reveals, she sticks out

her tongue. Rolls her eyes. I rice a giant

cauliflower and add green curry paste

to organic coconut cream. She says

no actor alive could play us in the film

adaptation and dreams of resurrecting 

the late Meena Kumari and Burl Ives.

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.

‘Betrayal’

Ricardo Jose Gonzalez-Rothi is an academic physician, internationally known amateur photographer and writer, Ricardo has had his work awarded, published or forthcoming in Black and White Magazine, Light, Space and Time Gallery, Northwest Review, Fusion Art Gallery, London Photo Festival, Wanderlust Travel Journal, Grey Cube Gallery, Hispanic Culture Review, Ilanot Review, and About Place journals among others. Gonzalezrotheiphoto.com

Betrayal

That’s the same face he used to make. I was always such a disappointment, and he never hid his distaste, but it’s been nearly a decade. I shift in my chair as the memory of the battle that tore my Mind and Body apart washes over me. I try to shake his image from my head, but it’s thrust to the forefront of my Mind. My stomach starts to turn and my eyes ache, demanding to release the tears I desperately hold at bay. Not again. Not now. Not here. I’d become all too familiar with the torment of my Body’s relentless determination to have me relive what I put Her through all those years ago.

I’m sitting with friends as they recall the silly stories of the past week, but I’m assaulted with the memories. It starts with the feel of him moving inside me which overpowers every other sensation. I take a drink of water to calm the storm of nausea brewing. I cross my ankles and clench my knees together trying to minimize the physical memory that has haunted me since my therapeutic journey through the wreckage of my failed marriage began. I stare at the table and pray that no one is watching me relive the death of who I once was.

I shift in my seat and wonder how long it will take to end this time. She is my Body, so why does She collude with him to torment me years after the oppression ceased? I’d been warned that things would get worse before they got better and that the only way out of my internal hell was to push through and face everything that happened, but I’d never anticipated having to relive the past in this way. I’d drifted through our marriage in a hazy fog. For years I lay in the cave, numbed by mindlessly watching the shadows dance on the wall. When I finally found the nerve to crawl into the sun, I clung to its warmth and buried all that happened before beneath a willow. Standing under her soft branches that swayed in the breeze, I’d asked for her protection, and she’d vowed to keep them for me so that I could build a new life, but when I learned of his impending return to my hometown, Pandora dug into the grave and unleashed its fury.

The memories swirl through my Mind. It had started so simply. He’d spent years demolishing my self-worth and I was desperate to please him, so when he stumbled to bed in a drunken stupor and was angered at my inability to climax from his jarring and twitchy attempts to make love, I feigned desire and gave him what he wanted to avoid the acidic accusations he regularly spewed at me whenever I fell short of his expectations. It didn’t feel like a big deal; just a white lie to appease his ego. Over time, my Body grew tired of the show becoming a regular occurrence and turned off the tap to the true desire that used to flow freely. For years, my Body taught me what She liked, and I learned how to adjust myself to maximize Her pleasure. I intuitively tilted and twisted my hips to just the right spot, and he always enjoyed Her enthusiasm, but now I forced Her to mimic Her moments of desire to avoid his wrath. But every submission to his will empowered him to demand more.

When his movements evoked pain, he could sense my Body reflexively seizing for an instant, and it started to feel like he enjoyed eliciting such a response. His fingers would press into my skin, holding my Body in place when She tensed. His slack mouth and icy gaze told me he could do far worse if he wished. My Body was poised for a fight, but I knew better. I held Her in place and ignored Her protests until he was satiated. The more I learned to force Her to give in and bear his feverish delight, the more brazen he became, moving me into positions that would maximize the pain. My Body would scream for relief, but I couldn’t relent, fearing the reaction he would unleash if I were to defy him.

Echoes of the vow I made to love, honor, and respect him pounded through my Mind during the final year of our marriage. There had to be a way to salvage the life we shared. I was determined to find the road that led to happiness. If I could give him everything he wanted, then there’d be no room left for the complaints that darkened each attempt at joy. There was one act that I’d refused him for years, but the boundaries I’d managed to maintain were nothing more than rotting wooden fences, made vulnerable after years of exposure to the raging storm of his disdain, so I decided to give in.

Determination flushed through my veins, calming the icy flow of fear that my Body sent in its final protest as I prepared to offer Her on the altar of his desire. Surely this would satisfy him. When he approached, his selfish touch felt cold and foreign. He was consumed with lust and all he needed was my Body, so I did my best to detach my Mind and leave him to his devices. Upon his initial thrust, my muscles tensed and readied themselves for battle, each fiber releasing a war cry. When the soldiers recognized that they wouldn’t be allowed onto the field of battle, they melted into the submission their general demanded. The pain faded but I was repulsed by the sensation that remained. My Body howled in protest as I waited patiently for it to end, without letting him see an ounce of discomfort. Any twitch or quiver would be steadied as I softly led my Body to take slow, measured breaths to soothe away the revulsion until we finally felt the conclusion of his efforts. I waited on the bed for him to leave before going into the bathroom to clean up.

Now that we were alone, all the objections that I’d been subduing poured forth. My hands shook and my stomach twisted and turned. I dropped to my knees by the toilet in case it made good on its threat. My skin broke into a cold sweat and my heart thumped wildly. I couldn’t catch my breath, so I wedged myself between the toilet and tub and pulled my knees into my chest. Muted sobs interrupted my erratic breathing leaving me lightheaded as tears rushed forth with brutality. I rocked back and forth but the tension in my chest was growing until I fully collapsed and pulled a towel over my naked Body as the floor tiles cooled my cheek. The chaos ceased when my energy had fully depleted. Exhausted, I peeled myself off the floor, got dressed, and went to sit with him in the living room where he’d been watching television.

I shake my head to try to focus on the present. The memories alone are painful, but my Body demanded retribution, so I sit in the presence of friends who laugh and share stories as my Mind is forced to feel what I’d put Her through all those years ago. She hates me. We were meant to be allies, but as far as She was concerned, I’d committed the worst of crimes. I try to act normal as I bow my head in defeat. I can’t argue against Her logic, so I quietly endure the attack. Eventually, Her fury ceases, and I am free to ignore the wounds that have festered for over a decade. Over the coming months, She stealthily strikes at the most inopportune times until my Mind is fully broken. I weakly wave a white flag and accept that I am nothing more than a villain in my own story.

The war took everything from us; no one feeling like the victor. Each move was self-sabotaging, and, in the end, we knew we had to join forces. As we met to go over the treaty, we were brutally honest, and a curious compassion entered the conversation. Every act that sparked the war had been done in fear. Pain influenced every battle plan between my Mind and Body and in time, we realized that we had been so busy fighting each other that we let the true perpetrator escape unscathed. I never felt like I had a choice, and I used whatever power I could muster to force my Body into a submission She never would have agreed to, all to appease him. His only power came from incessant tantrums and impotent threats of violence. Youth made him seem bigger and stronger than he truly was. We smiled as we imagined the ways in which we could defy him now that we had the strength of time and wisdom, but after a while, the joy of our imagined revenge wore thin. We embraced and agreed to lay it to rest. We relinquished the memories to the dry barren lands of our youth and vowed to forget, but we would never forgive.

Lindsay Thurman hopes to share her story to give other women who have suffered similarly some context for their pain. She has been published in a recent issue of Sophisticated Living Magazine (Louisville).