Evening Street Review Number 40

Number 40 Winter, 2023
EVENING STREET REVIEW
Published by Evening Street Press

Oakland, CA
EVENING STREET PRESS
A SHORT HISTORY
When Gordon Grigsby and Barbara Bergmann met “across a crowded
room” in Malaysia, Dec. 1987, neither knew the other had a desire to publish a
literary magazine. It was not until 1997 that the dream came true with a leaflet
printed on Barbara’s computer for a freshman English class she was teaching at
American River College in Sacramento, CA, for which Gordon presented a poetry
reading. They used “River House Press” as the publisher in honor of Gordon’s
home in Mt. Air, OH, on the Olentangy River (see front cover). The name
“Evening Street Press” came about in part from Gordon’s conviction that
women’s rights were beginning to emerge, spelling the evening of the patriarchy.
In 2007, Evening Street Press was made possible when Kip Knott, a
former student of Gordon’s, came to the Columbus, OH, area and with his
expertise, Gordon’s knowledge and connections, and Barbara’s computer skills,
the press had what it took to get started.
The press expanded to honor individual writers with book contests: the
Helen Kay Chapbook contest (2009 named for Gordon’s maternal grandmother),
the Sinclair Poetry Prize (2009 named for Gordon’s paternal grandmother), and
the Grassic Short Novel Prize (2011) named after Lewis Grassic Gibbon)
In all, 15 Helen Kay Chapbooks, 9 Sinclair Poetry books, 4 Grassic short
novels, 40 Evening Street Reviews, and 22 other books were published by Evening
Street Press. All but two of them were printed by the Inkwell in Columbus, OH.
Their owners and staff made the beauty of each possible.
In 2016, Gordon’s health began to deteriorate and Barbara asked what
should be done with the press. Early members of the press community advised
calling it quits: Gordon was its life and soul. Gordon didn’t want to see it end, so
Barbara became the editor in addition to managing editor. “What the Future
Holds” in #22 details what we hoped would follow.
Through the years, former students, interns showing up at the River
House, friends and family, and the generous willingness of writers who stepped
up when asked, Evening Street Press has flourished. It has allowed countless
voices to be heard, some for the first time in print.
The press vision: Evening Street Review is centered on the belief that all
people are created equal, that they have a natural claim to certain inalienable
rights, and that among these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. With this center, and an emphasis on writing that has both clarity and
depth, it practices the widest eclecticism.
While Evening Street Review will no longer be published, The DIY Prison
Project will continue as a way to provide a venue for incarcerated writers to find an
online outlet for their views.
NUMBER 40, WINTER 2023
…all men and women are created equal in rights to life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
—ElizabethCady Stanton, revision of the

American Declaration of Independence, 1848
Evening Street Press recognizes that all people are created

equal in rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
PUBLISHED
BY
EVENING STREET PRESS
Editor & Managing Editor: Barbara Bergmann
Associate Editors: Donna Spector, Kailen Nourse-Driscoll, Patti Sullivan,
Anthony J Mohr, L.D. Zane, Stacia Levy, Jeffrey Davis, Clela Reed,
Matthew Mendoza, Matthew J Spireng, Ace Boggess, Kristin Laurel,
Jan Bowman, Joanne Durham, Maple Davis
Founding Editor: Gordon Grigsby
Evening Street Review is published in the spring and fall of every year
(with additional issues as needed) by Evening Street Press. United States
subscription rates are $32 for two issues and $62 for four issues
(individuals), and $38 for two issues and $68 for four issues (institutions).
Cover photos: Front cover, “Beginnings, Mt Air, OH” Gordon Grigsby

Back cover: “Endings, Oakland, CA” Barbara Bergmann
ISBN: 978-1-937347-81-9
Evening Street Review is centered on the belief that all people are created
equal, that they have a natural claim to certain inalienable rights, and that
among these are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
With this center, and an emphasis on writing that has both clarity and
depth, it practices the widest eclecticism.
Evening Street Review will no longer be published after issue #40, winter
2023. Hard copies are available for purchase through the website and as
Kindle editions on Amazon. Evening Street Press will continue to accept,
vet, and publish online works from incarcerated people.
All published work, chapbooks, short novels, prose collections, Sinclair

poetry books, DIY Prison Project works, and all issues of Evening Street
Review, can be read on the press’ website as well as on Google Books and
Scribd.
www.eveningstreetpress.com.
© Copyright 2023 by Evening Street Press

415 Lagunitas Ave #306
Oakland, CA 94610
All rights revert to the author upon publication.
PUBLISHED BY EVENING STREET PRESS
NUMBER 40, WINTER 2023
CONTENTS
POETRY
AMANDA NICOLE CORBIN hereditary 15

MICHAEL MINASSIAN Baby, You’re So Cruel 16
The Next Storm 17
ALAN SWOPE A Piece of Work 18
Witness 18
ASHLEY KNOWLTON Camping at Prairie Creek 30
CATHERINE COUNDJERIS The Rings of Saturn 31
RIKKI SANTER Stepsisters At Large 32
CARLA MCGILL Ancestry 36
Pal 37
Scenes from the Day Grandpa Died 37
CAROL EVERETT ADAMS Girl Finally Invited to
Leadership Camp 38
PATRICIA L HAMILTON Help Me 39
MARTY KRASNEY History Lessons 43
Watch 44
MARK THALMAN Power Outage 45
Attendance 46
The Announcement 47
Year After Year 48
Resignation 48
SCOTT BLACKWELL MITCHELL Infinity 54
ROBERT RICE Every Bird Knows That* 55
DAN FITZGERALD Forgive My Ingratitude 56
ELIAS KERR Trans (Re)incarnation 62
What Runs Through the Family 63
SHERRILL ALESIAK Thursday Morning Weather 63
To the Ears of My Bones 64
J R FORMAN Spring Sleep (original Bùi Minh Quốc) 65
POETRY (CONT)
CHASE D SPRUIELL the fetal position 72

the other side 73
MARTINA REISZ NEWBERRY Church 74
… Unless Soul Clap Its Hands and Sing…75
The Fifth Season 76
Pillars of Creation in a
Star-Forming Region* 77
ETHAN ALTSHUL A Harvest Moon 85
LEE LANDAU I Miss You, Ellen 86
DANIEL A RABUZZI Hidden in Plain Sight 87
AL MAGINNES How Salvation Worked 94
CAMERON MORSE Marvel 95
STEPHANIE KEEP Empty Cup Full 96
Blinds 97
JO-ANNE CAPPELUTI If there be any praise...in memory of
American, middle class 97
MARK JACKLEY Paul Sinegal 105
Dream of Indian Summer 105
RICHARD LEVINE Albuquerque 106
ALICE G WALDERT Annual Childcare Visit 106
Huntington Street 107
ELLEN GOLDSMITH Mid-March Rain 108
JOAN E BAUER Alcatraz 110
The Apple Pan on Pico 111
FRANCINE WITTE The World Is Finished 112
Hello from Old Times 113
Have You Seen? 113
RUBY HAWKINS Truth 114
Sister Is a Working Fool 115
Christmas at Sister’s House 117
VICTOR PEARN green onions 119
YAHYA AL-DEEN Came to My Senses 125
CYNTHIA RAUSCH ALLAR Circling the Fire 126
HEATHER KENEALY January Sixth 126
CHARLENE LANGFUR Making a Go of It 128
POETRY (CONT)
DANA STAMPS, II Sound Alone 138

Losing at Checkers to Grandpa 139
HANNAH RODABAUGH Last Sighting of the Dodo
(Mauritius Island) 140
Habitat Diorama | Great Auk 141
WESS MONGO JOLLEY Taste of Spring in an Early
Winter Chill 142
JOHN ZEDOLIK Uncertain License 151
JENNIFER DOTSON Sequoia’s Secret Strength, a Cascade 152
Sequoia and Fire, a Sweetelle 152
PATRICIA (TOVA) MCMILLEN Passing Time 153
HOLLY DAY Live Bait 154
GREG MOGLIA Against the Light 155
RICHARD ROBBINS Subtraction 156
FRANK JAMISON Japanese Maple Close beside the House 164
Honey 164
JOAN PRESLEY Parade Rest 165
JUDITH AMBER The Dormouse in the Gin Bottle 166
Measuring My Life 167
We Are the 99 Percent 169
JOANNE HOLDRIDGE Summer’s End 170
NICOLETTE REIM Tattoos 183
JIM DANIELS The Fountain of Youth 184
Salting 184
ARTHUR GINSBERG Life in the Balance 186
MICHELLE HARTMAN Drowning 187
One Woman’s Treasure 188
KAT BODRIE Pulling Teeth 195
Little Boxes 197
Injections 199
WILLIAM OREM For my parents, both deceased,
from this my fifty-fourth year 202
Nauset Light 203
Night Song 205
Lightning Strike 206
POETRY (CONT)
ADRIAN S POTTER The Best Place to Store Hope

Is in a Hope Chest 207
KATHRYN DE LEON This Poem Is About 219
JOSCELYN WILLETT still do 220
JACOB FRIESENHAHHN grief 221
haystacks 222
KEN AUTREY Mount Arab 227
Lesson 228
Tending Fire 229
MITZI KIRKBRIDE Youngling 230
BRUCE TAYLOR Know Thy Selfie: Google Scholar 230
Some Not So Famous Photos
from History 231
MARTY WALSH We Drink from the Same Cup 232
NONFICTION
SUE ALLISON The Last Dream Essay 40

KATHRYN BROWN RAMSPERGER Taming My Words 50
BECCA BAISCH Pretty Knives 98
PRESS STAFF AND ASSOCIATE EDITORS
KAILEN NOURSE-DRISCOLL 38
CLELA REED 65
JOANNE DURHAM 71
AARON FISCHER 72
DONNA SPECTOR 73
PEGGY TROJAN 95
L.D. ZANE 104
PATTI SULLIVAN 138
ANTHONY J MOHR 156
MITZI KIRKBRIDE 188
MATTHEW J SPIRENG 218
FICTION
AMELIA COULON The Call 8

ANDREW C MILLER Cuz 19
MARTE CARLOCK Mexican Food 33
BRIAN CHRISTOPHER GIDDENS Peaches 56
FRANK RICHARDS Things People Made 66
DEBORAH S PRESPARE Bumbo 78
M A PHILLIPS Grosgrain Taffeta 88
KEVIN BROWN The Sweetest Scent 109
RON TORRENCE Love in the Afternoon 119
STANTON YEAKLEY Watching Bird 128
MARCO ETHERIDGE Billy and Joey Give Up on Halloween 143
BEATE SIGRIDDAUGHTER Domestic 153
MARIA WICKENS Food Chain 156
GC ROSENQUIST The Wig 172
STEPHEN IVES Manasota Key 189
DAVID DESJARDINS Pieces of a Life 207
ZARY FEKETE Mirrors 223
CONTRIBUTORS 233
8 / Evening Street Review 40
AMELIA COULON
THE CALL
It happened on a Tuesday.
Willa and her sister, Paula took their children to the local aquarium
during school vacation. The two older ones, Isabella and Katie ran herd on
the youngest, Kara, as they watched sharks and stingrays. Paula recounted
her latest adorable story about her little one’s newest accomplishment
while Willa listened with amused fondness. Willa's phone buzzed for what
seemed like the hundredth time. In exasperation at the interruption, she
dug it out of her purse, believing it was her husband, Clive, again asking
for pictures. She already sent him some twice.
The readout on the face of her phone caused her to freeze.
“What is it?” Paula asked. “Naughty pictures from Clive?”
“No,” Willa answered distractedly, hollowly. “He wouldn’t. It’s
someone calling from Angie’s phone.”
“Angie?” Paula repeated, startled. “As in, our cousin Angie?”
Willa nodded slowly. “What do I do?”
“Are you afraid it’s actually her on the line?” Paula teased.
“Yes,” Willa answered, agitated. The phone announced for the
final time, then stopped.
“Maybe she’ll leave a message from beyond the grave,” Paula
speculated in an eerie voice. “Willa, save me.” Paula laughed when her
sister smacked her on the arm. “You’re into all that ghost stuff.”
“Ghosts appearing, yeah,” Willa agreed grumpily. They shifted to
follow their children to the penguin exhibit. “I know ghosts talk to people
in person, although usually it’s in a dream. Not calling on their old cell
phone. Which, by the way, should be disconnected, since she died ten years
ago.”
“Did it occur to you the number could have been kept by someone
in the family. Maybe that’s who’s calling you?”
“Logical,” Willa allowed, considering. “Someone who knows me
and my cell number? It’s believable.”
Her phone vibrated again to let her know the caller left a message.
“Play it,” Paula encouraged. “I want to know who it is.”
“I don’t,” Willa objected. “I’m still freaked out.”
“You really do think it’s Angie!”
“I think someone could want me to think so. What if they set it up
with recordings of her voice to make it sound like Angie? I’ve seen movies
2023, Winter / 9
where they do that to make people think they’re going crazy.”

“Two things,” Paula offered, holding up her first finger to
emphasize. “One, you’re already crazy. And two,” her second finger joined
the first, “no one thinks about you so much they’d target you with such an
elaborate prank.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You can always count on me for the bare-naked truth. Now play
the message.”
Willa reluctantly went to her voicemail box and queued up the
thirty second message left by someone using Angie’s number. She pressed
the speaker icon and adjusted the volume so they could both hear. Then
she pressed play.
“Hey, Will! What’s up? I wanted to see if you’d have dinner
tonight or tomorrow. I’ll be in town. Let me know. Okay? Love you.”
Angie’s voice, clear as a bell, smooth as glass, sounding as if she
had actually just called to set a dinner date. Willa shivered hard. Paula
recoiled from the phone.
“What was that?” Paula whispered, shaky and visibly upset.
“That was what I was worried about,” Willa grouched, not too
steady herself. “Someone wants to mess with me and they’re using our
dead cousin to do it.”
“That’s sick,” Paula determined, swallowing hard.
“If it’s just a prank, it’s in seriously bad taste,” Willa agreed. “But
if it’s meant maliciously, the questions are simple. Who despises me
enough to want to hurt me like this? And how would they get ahold of
Angie’s recorded voice?”
“Could she still be alive?” Paula speculated. Willa looked at her
sideways.
“The wake was an open casket,” Willa reported, as Paula nudged
her sister to follow the kids to the interactive starfish exhibit. “I was there,
remember? She died. I guarantee it.”
“Okay, judgey-pants. You know why I didn’t go. After what she
did to you, I had no reason to drive five hours to Connecticut to pretend to
feel sorrow over her death. She betrayed you. She was already dead to me.
I know you felt the same way.”
“To some degree,” Willa admitted grudgingly. “But I missed her.
When she died, I missed her more. Even though I knew I couldn’t put
myself through her betrayals anymore, there was always the chance she’d
change. I thought, maybe we could have gotten another try at being
friends. Her death ended that permanently.”
“You would have been friends with her again?” Paula asked in
disbelief and a hint of disappointment.
“Maybe,” Willa speculated. “I always hoped someday she’d
change.”
“You’re more forgiving than I,” Paula commented with a shrug.
“Tolerance isn’t the same as forgiveness, Paulie,” Willa explained.
“I can put up with a lot. That doesn’t mean I don’t hold grudges.”
“What are you gonna do about the call?”
“I don’t know,” Willa wondered. “Should I go to the police?”
“What are they going to do?” Paula demanded with a snort of
dismissal. “They’ll just treat it as a prank.”
Willa sighed. “Let’s put this on hold and get our kids lunch.”
“Good idea, actually,” Paula concurred. “I think I just saw Kara
trying to eat a starfish.”
###
On the drive home from the aquarium, Willa received the second
call.
She felt a strong temptation to answer it, but they had all three kids
in the car. That made it a very bad idea. She let the buzzing call go to
voicemail. Paula glanced away from the road to look at her.
“What was that?” Paula asked suspiciously.
“What you think it was,” Willa replied. “Should I try calling back
when I get home?”
“Why would you do that?” Paula questioned, worry creeping into
her tone. “What if she answers? What are you going to say? ‘Who is this?’
We both know what that answer will be. Don’t engage this psycho.”
“If it’s just her recorded voice, then they won’t be able to answer
every question,” Willa argued. “They can’t have a pre-programmed
response for everything I say.”
“At least do it on speaker with Clive there then,” Paula insisted.
“Your husband won’t let anyone mess with you.”
“That’s a good idea,” Willa agreed with a nod.
“Ask her why she did what she did with your ex-husband all those
years ago,” Paula suggested snidely, aware of little ears within hearing.
“I’ll bet there’s no pre-programmed response for that one.”
“Oh, I’m sure the generic, ‘I’m sorry’ fits for someone who’s
trying to play me. But I really don’t care why. Even though I hated him,
he was still my husband. I was faithful. He should have been, too. She
never should have even thought of doing what she did. That’s not
something a person can explain away.”
2023, Winter / 11
“No, it’s not,” Paula agreed gently. “I didn’t mean for it to sound
that way.”
“It’s not you,” Willa exclaimed in frustration. “This brings up so
many mixed memories for me.”
Paula nodded with understanding and sympathy.
For the remainder of the drive, they discussed other subjects, but
the call nagged at Willa until she felt worn down when they arrived home.
Her daughter went straight to bed and Willa cornered her husband,
explaining what happened. She played the eerie first message for him and
then played the second for them both.
“Look, Will, I get it. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. You
might not want to see me. But I’m going through a lot right now. I don’t
know if you heard, but Rick died. He overdosed on something. I just need
a friend.”
Willa stared at her phone. “It’s her tone, her cadence. I don’t know
how they managed it. I have to call my mom.”
“Why?” Clive asked lightly. “You gonna tell her Angie’s alive?”
“No. I need to find out if Rick really OD’d. This is getting really
specific.”
Willa dialed her mother and she picked up right away. After the
typical greetings, Willa asked about Angie’s brother, Rick.
“Oh, right,” her mom answered. “Did I forget to tell you? He died
from a drug overdose. You know, he struggled his whole life. Drugs finally
took him. It’s pretty horrible. They had the funeral in Wisconsin, so it’s not
like we could go or anything. I guess I didn’t really think it would be a
very big deal to you. You weren’t close. For you, it was always Angie.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“How did you learn about it?” her mom wondered. “Did Patty call
you, too?” She referred to Rick and Angie's sister.
“No, a friend of Angie's told me,” Willa exaggerated. “It was just
out of the blue.”
Willa spoke to her mom for a few more minutes before she finally
wished her goodnight.
“So is it true?” Clive asked as soon as she got off the phone. He
drew his attention away from his video game to look at his wife. “Is he
really dead?”
“Yes, exactly like the voicemail said,” Willa confirmed. “I think I
should call the number back.”
“Why?” Clive questioned. “You know it’s a hoax.”
“If I agree to meet them, maybe I can find out who’s behind this,”
Willa ventured. “I have to try.”

“You’re not going alone,” he stated firmly.
“I figured as much. I’m gonna put the call on speaker. You can
jump in if you feel you need to.”
“You’re doing this now?” he inquired, surprised.
“I need to get it over with,” she explained.
Willa put the phone on speaker and hit the number for Angie. It
dialed and rang.
“Willa!” Angie’s relieved and excited voice came across the line.
“Thank you so much for calling me back. I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Well, I would’ve picked up earlier, Ang. But….” Willa paused
and then finished with, “you’re dead, honey.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Angie’s voice pleaded with audible
hurt. “I know what I did was unforgivable and I don’t expect you to want
me back in your life. I just need you right now.”
“Okay,” Willa said slowly. “How do I go about meeting a ghost,
Ang? Can you explain that to me?”
“Just come to Haptown’s tomorrow at five for dinner and drinks.
I only want to talk.”
“Where will you be sitting?” Willa pressed.
“At the bar,” Angie’s voice promised. “Do you need a rundown of
what I’ll be wearing, too?” Willa could hear a bit of humor in the tone.
“I won’t be able to see you anyway, since you’re dead, Angie,”
Willa asserted again. “But I’ll come. I’m bringing Clive as well.”
“Oh,” the voice sounded disappointed. “Can he sit a few chairs
away so we can girl talk for a little while?”
“We’ll worry about it tomorrow,” Willa answered wryly. “I have
no idea how you think this is going to work. I’ll wait fifteen minutes for
you, Ang. That’s it. When I still can’t see your ghostly form, I’m going
home. Or, hey, Clive and I will have dinner together. Why waste a night
out?”
“I swear, I’ll be there,” Angie’s voice promised. “I’ll see you
tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Willa ended the call and looked at her husband. “What did
you think?”
“That’s a person,” he said bluntly, “There’s no way those are
choreographed responses. Someone was speaking to you in Angie’s voice.
I don’t know if it’s a voice changer or an imitator, but that was a live
person.”
“And they’re going to show up tomorrow night with some sort of
2023, Winter / 13
agenda,” Willa surmised. “I have no idea what I did to deserve this.”

“Whoever it is, they know Angie. They know she had an affair
with your ex-husband and it ruined what was a very close relationship
between you two. Who has access to that information?”
“Her two living siblings. Maybe her dad, though doubtful. They
were never close after the divorce. Especially when he remarried and
moved to Brazil.
“Her mom’s dead. Her nieces and nephews might have a clue,
although why they would care I don’t know. Her ex-husbands are both
dead. She had two daughters and a son. I don’t know who else. She got
around, you know that.”
“Would you recognize any of those people?” Clive wondered.
“Siblings, yes. Her dad, probably. One niece and nephew, yes. But
the other two, I met once. And I’d know her daughters, but not her son.
What if it’s none of them?”
“Well, if it becomes a hassle, we involve the cops.”
“Paula said they won’t do anything about it.”
“Maybe not,” Clive agreed. “But I think phone harassment is still
a federal offense.”
“Okay,” Willa said, sighing. “You and me tomorrow. We’ll see
what we see.”
“And eat,” he slid in silkily. “You promised me dinner.”
###
5 pm came fairly quickly the next day. Willa felt rather nervous.
She had no idea what she expected to find, but some part of her thought
she’d see someone dressed up to look like Angie. It put butterflies in her
stomach.
They arrived at the restaurant precisely on time in order to
minimize their wait. They didn’t wish to give their tormentor the
satisfaction of seeing them sit and squirm a moment longer than necessary.
Willa led the way over to the bar and as she got closer, she slowed, catching
sight of a recognizable head of reddish blonde curls. She grabbed Clive’s
arm.
The woman must have sensed her, she turned around and smiled,
rising from her bar stool. She motioned for the two of them to join her.
“Clive,” Willa pleaded in a choked voice.
“It’s not her,” he answered. “It has to be one of her daughters.”
Willa took the final steps forward to stand beside the living
embodiment of Angie’s ghost and found herself enveloped in a warm
embrace. The hug stirred familiarity and Willa found herself hugging back.
“It’s so good to see you,” the false Angie gushed. “It’s been too
long.”
“And you haven’t aged a day,” Clive inserted rudely, from behind
his wife. “In fact, being dead actually gives you a youthful appearance. So
which are you? Terry or Grace?”
He threw out the daughters’ names to garner some sort of reaction
from the stranger, but it didn’t faze her. The false Angie wrinkled her
forehead the tiniest bit and said, “I’m Angie, Clive.”
She grabbed her purse from the bar and dug out her wallet. She
pulled out her license and handed it to him. Willa peered over his shoulder
as he read it. The information looked official. It confirmed who she said
she was, Angie’s correct birthdate and year, and an address in Connecticut.
“No,” Willa stubbornly shook her head. “I went to your funeral.
We went to your funeral. We saw your body. Angie is dead.”
The false Angie sighed. “Why do you have to make this so
difficult?” she asked. “Why can’t you just accept it’s me?”
Willa had a strange moment of clarity. “You’re Terry. You were
devastated when your mom died. I tried to talk to you at the wake and you
dismissed me. There were pictures of your mother and I all over the place.
She must have spoken about me a lot. You probably hated me for showing
up to her funeral like I did. I’ll bet you thought I had a lot of nerve. But
your mother was the one who caused the rift between us, not me.”
“She made a mistake,” Terry spat, unintentionally revealing
herself. “You couldn’t just forgive her and move on, after everything you’d
been through together.”
“Everything,” Willa murmured, pleased to have uncovered the
truth. “Like when we were eleven and she told everyone how I wet the
bed. Or when we were sixteen, she started the rumor at the religious school
we attended, saying I was a lesbian and I was almost expelled. Then, she
came to live with me in California when I first got married and I walked
in on her and my husband in the middle of foreplay. Or how about, when
she left California and stole my things and my credit card, charging
hundreds of dollars. Is that what you meant?”
“She wouldn’t do those things,” Terry hissed angrily, defensively.
“You knew her,” Willa said gently, not without sympathy. “When
she couldn’t handle being a mom, she left you with your step-dad and
moved in with a new boyfriend. She didn’t even die with family at her
side. She couldn’t help but betray you in the end.”
Terry started to cry, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I found some
of her diaries,” she confessed. “She loved you so much. She missed you
2023, Winter / 15
every day you were gone from her life. She tried to move on, but she
needed you, she reached out to you and you ignored her.”
“Yes,” Willa admitted, laying a soothing hand on Terry’s arm. She
took the handkerchief Clive passed her and gave it to the girl. “It was the
hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. Because the truth is, I loved her,
too. Despite everything she did to me. I wanted her back. But she wasn’t
good for me. She hurt me too many times. I knew she would keep hurting
me. And I would let her.”
Terry threw herself into Willa’s arms and clung to her while her
tears fell. Though she tried to compose herself, she seemed very shaken.
When she finally got a handle on her emotions, she backed away. “I’m
sorry I tried to hurt you like this.”
“Have a seat, Terry,” Willa offered with a sigh. “Let’s have a drink
and some dinner. I’ll tell you all the good things I knew about your mom.”
She and Clive took stools next to Angie’s daughter at the bar. Willa briefly
rested a motherly hand on the back of Terry’s head.
“Did she ever tell you about the time we thought we could make
a rap video? Worst Salt-N-Pepa lip-sync ever. But damn, did we have some
moves.”
AMANDA NICOLE CORBIN

HEREDITARY
I.
my mother once told me that sweet, decadent chocolate swirled
inside of each and every green bean in an attempt to get me to taste
them, but i’d never had a sweet tooth, anyway.
II.
the sugar in alcohol, like many of its elements, is disguised.
III.
suddenly: recovery: ice cream. limitless. an endless search for sugar,
dopamine, release…an endless search for satisfaction. sobriety forces
a mean sugartooth–right through the bottom of your jaw.
IV.
i will take my daughters face and tell her i promise the vegetables
taste better than crow. Corbin
MICHAEL MINASSIAN
BABY, YOU’RE SO CRUEL
We travel down the highway,

riding as if we’re stuck in some
mid-20th century country music song,
all twangy guitar & fiddle
playing on the car stereo
with one busted speaker;
a persistent hum coming
from the passenger side—
I’m not sure if it’s the radio
or you speechless with anger.
I ask you to check the map

one last time, but you say no,
the place we are going
isn’t on any map,
and I should have known better
or at least stopped to ask directions
at the last town; yes, the one
with boarded up storefronts
and a post office with no zip code.
When we get to another fork

in the road, the signs point
in every direction, like fingers
on an abandoned scarecrow,
and the next time I look over,
you are gone, that hum I hear
nothing more than the wind
whistling through the top
of the window I left open a crack,
hoping you might still
slip back into the car.
Minassian
2023, Winter / 17
THE NEXT STORM

“A ladder. Quick a ladder.”
– Gogol’s last words.
I carry the ladder to the backyard
and lean it on the roof of the garage,
climb the dull aluminum steps,
swing up onto the red clay tiles.
My neighbor watches from his side
of the fence, pulling deep on a bottle of beer,
then belches. That satellite dish you got
interferes with my TV, he complains.
But I tell him it’s not hooked up
and I’ve brought my tools to remove
the dish, getting ready for the next storm;
Besides, I call down to him,
we don’t watch much TV anymore.
Your wife’s oriental, huh? he asks.
Asian, I correct him
but its already too late—
And you like those Japanese cars, he adds.
I shrug my shoulders and grunt,
thinking of my wife’s two-seater from Osaka,
and don’t remind him I drive a Mustang.
Around sunset, he knocks on my door,
complains his wife threw the car keys
up onto the roof, and asks to borrow my ladder.
I get the ladder and climb up,
surprised when he joins me,
carrying a bottle of beer for each of us.
Forget the keys, he says,
and clinking our bottles in a toast,
we watch the moon rise,
spilling light on the palm trees
turning them silver in the night. Minassian
ALAN SWOPE
A PIECE OF WORK
Titanium dental implants grind

delicately through breakfast sausages.
Nestling in my arteries, steel stents
keep lifeblood flowing, pulsing
pacemaker steadies the beat,
cholesterol thwarted by busy statins.
As I step outside into the jade-green

forest, ceramic hip ball swivels fluidly,
chromium knee joints creak, but work.
Tiny juncos, black-hooded, easily spied
at twenty yards by my acrylic eye lenses.
Wavering trills of a mockingbird alive
in my rubbery hearing aid.
All over improved,

bone, ears, eyes, heart…
born again, piece by piece.
Not born into Christ’s love

and forgiveness, as I was told long ago
in a church with stained gray carpets.
But mended, rebuilt for certain joy.
Beside my wife, I push deep

into breathing woods, lope
with the wind like a boy,
scamper from the incoming tide,
and find the high C in a Pavarotti aria.
Swope
WITNESS
Dense clouds of passenger pigeons eclipsed

the sun. A massive herd of shaggy bison,
three hundred million of them, spread
twenty miles wide across the Great Plains.
All this before my time. (cont)
2023, Winter / 19
I can recall driving into a snowstorm

of insects that splattered
on my father’s windshield.
He cursed as he scraped them off.
The slime was disgusting.
But that abundance is gone.
I also remember our sunny July garden,

many years ago, full of zigzagging butterflies,
monarchs, tiger swallowtails, painted ladies,
western pygmy blues, northern checkerspots,
their fluttering wings making graceful figure
eights.
Last July, the sight of a single butterfly drifting

in that same garden drew a yelp of discovery,
like spotting a gray whale breaching.
I have witnessed one tiny frame of the extinction,

but the grim movie is speeding up,
time-lapse images accelerating,
the reel spinning wildly
as the film unspools into space.
Swope
ANDREW C MILLER
CUZ
Ben had just settled onto the couch with a glass of red wine when
his mother called. Since he and Veronica divorced, she phoned at least
once a week. She wanted to know if he was dating, when he would be
promoted at Jablonski & Associates, and what he was doing next weekend.
She'd bring the conversation to a close when he'd ask about their volunteer
work at the food pantry or Dad's golf game. But today was different.
“It’s your father,” she said.
Dad had collapsed while practicing with his pitching wedge in the
backyard. Sebastian, his Australian shepherd, barked for 15 minutes
before she investigated. The Emergency Medical Technician said he had

a massive stroke, and there was no reason to take him to the hospital. Ben
pressed the glass against his forehead. Dad collapsed. Like scaffolding, a
building, or a bridge. A key component fails, then everything tumbles
down. Her tone was terse, almost accusatory, as though Dad could have
chosen a better time and place. Come on, he thought, the backyard wasn’t
all that inconvenient. It might have happened while they were driving or
eating in a restaurant.
The following day, Ben called Skeeter, who had recently been
appointed Section Chief. As they talked, Ben could picture Skeeter’s
freshly carpeted office: plush chairs for visitors, windows on two walls,
his desk shining like an alpine lake, void of reports, papers, and books.
Skeeter wanted to know if the interns were up to speed on the Wilmington
Project. Ben said yes and added that he’d keep in touch while he was away.
A long silence followed. Skeeter was likely leaning back in his chair,
smoothing his tie with one hand. Ben knew he’d better call the interns right
away. Otherwise, Skeeter would have them in his office, quizzing them
about his projects.
“Sure, take all the time you need,” Skeeter said.
Ben drove to Nashville International Airport and boarded a two-
stop flight to Traverse City. He hadn’t been to Michigan since the divorce.
If Dad were there, he’d want to know why he and Veronica split. Ben
wouldn’t know what to say. Veronica didn’t seem to have a reason; she
just wanted to call it quits. She was going to Delaware, look for a job, start
over. That’s what she said.
Ben stared down at Grand Traverse Bay as they approached the
airport. Dying, he thought, must be like the last few minutes of flight. The
engines throttle back, ground speed reduces, those around you make
hurried preparations. But not for his father. He was swinging a pitching
wedge one minute, sprawled on the grass the next.
When he parked in the driveway, his mother was on her knees in
the flower garden, dead-heading petunias. They embraced. She seemed
smaller than he remembered.
“Where’s Sebastian?” He expected to be greeted by the shepherd.
She stripped off her work gloves and slapped them together. “I
had to give him to the Winstons.”
“Had to? What do you mean, had to?”
His mother shrugged. They walked back to the gazebo. Dad had built
it several years ago but didn’t maintain it. The trellis was overgrown with
morning glories, and the garden was out of control; tomatoes, beans, and
2023, Winter / 221
too many years ago we chose to

be together and those vows still
ignite everything–our love and
hatred, equally
we walk with our whole feet between
these lines, pressing all our skin and weight
into them all of the time
you still hold me tight inside yourself
in a deeper spot than I
can ever find and I still want more of you
the soot and cinder of every mean
thing said marking us like warriors
burning the nettles and keeping the smoke
steadily rising from our stupid heads
we know nothing we think we do about
each other but we know everything else
that doesn’t and will never matter
in the night I squeeze you tight before the babies
we made come to lift and separate
us and the irony
is never lost on me
tomorrow you will bring me coffee
and eggs and real joy will fizz
over as we start again
dusting off another
chance to become some
thing or fondly remember when
we could
Willett
JACOB FRIESENHAHN
GRIEF
it was her hands

that told me
(cont)
purchased two bottles of wine. He wished he had a glass in hand right now.
He sat on the grass next to the garage.
“Ready for a swim?” The words burst out of him.
She laughed deep in her throat, almost a chuckle.
“Are you drinking?” she asked.
He could hear her breathing. “I will be later.”
“That time in Lake Michigan?” She laughed again. “I sneaked a
couple of peeks through the leaves but didn’t see much.” She paused,
“What I mean was—I saw you from the back. You have cute buns, Cuz.”
She had seen more of him than he had of her. That didn’t seem
fair. He remembered her clothes draped over willow branches. He was
glad his mother was inside.
“I never told anybody, did you?”
“You were 16 then—right?”
The next-door neighbor, a man about Ben’s age, dropped a couple
of black plastic garbage bags next to the tomato cages. He raised his hand
in a somber wave. Ben knew he should go over and speak to him. Mom
would know his name.
He wondered if she was still married. “How’s Lawson?”
“Still into NASCAR.”
He picked up a slight hitch in her voice. Like she didn’t think that
was too neat. Why had he lost touch with her? It wasn’t intentional. He
hadn’t seen her since the reunion.
She asked what he was doing tomorrow.
“I’ll rent a kayak, float down the Betsie River.” He flicked a black
ant off his pant leg.
“Is your mom okay?”
He thought about Sebastian. “Yeah, considering. Dad was tough
to be around.”
“Sometimes it’s harder that way.” There was a muffled
conversation at her end. “Hey, things are happening here and I’ve got to
go.” Her voice turned sharp, a little edgy, “And Cuz—don’t get drunk
tonight and call up old girlfriends.”
#####
Ben packed sandwiches and water into a cooler and drove to a
kayak/canoe livery on the upper Betsie River. He considered stopping to
see Sebastian but decided against it. Dad dies, Mom gives away his dog.
What a deal.
While sorting through his father's filing cabinet, he found a letter-
sized envelope stuffed with bills. Twelve hundred and eighty dollars. He
2023, Winter / 23
counted it twice. A few hundreds and fifties, mostly twenties. A reserve

for unexpected crises? For women? Ben considered keeping it, not telling
Mom. If he gave the money to her, she’d know Dad had been skimming
the household account.
He had just set his cooler in the kayak when two vans pulled up
and discharged a bevy of teenagers and half a dozen adults. He pushed off,
anxious to get ahead of them. He'd paddle a while, then stop for a quick
dip. He'd drunk too much wine last night, and a cold plunge would cure
his headache. He turned and watched the teenagers cast off. They were
about the same age as he and Phil when they met at the reunion nine years
ago. The two of them had stood at the sign-in table and read the schedule.
The following two days were packed: breakfast get-togethers, picnics, a
trip to the historical museum, skits put on by the younger cousins.
“This sucks,” Phil said. “Let’s you and me go somewhere
tomorrow.”
He held his breath. She seemed so…exciting. And they hardly
knew each other.
They left right after breakfast. Phil drove her father's car and
followed the back roads to Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes. They slogged up
the first and second dune, then sat in a loose grove of poplars to watch the
climbers. After lunch, they drove south along the coast and stopped at a
high bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. They slipped and skidded down
the steep, eroding path to the beach and kicked off their shoes. After
walking along the water’s edge, they stopped and sat on a partially buried
log. Ben pulled water bottles out of his pack and handed one to Phil. She
scooped up sand with her toes and flung it into the air. She asked about his
plans for next year. He hadn’t chosen a college but wanted to stay in
Michigan. Dad said he should go into business or medicine, but he was
undecided. She slipped off the log and lay back on the sand. Bank
swallows swooped overhead, snapping up gnats. A warm breeze stirred.
She poked him with her knee. “We should have brought our suits.”
Ben nodded, not sure what to say. A couple of sandpipers skittered
along the water’s edge. Farther offshore, a raft of gulls rose and fell with
the waves.
She sat up and dropped one hand on his knee. “We could still go in.”
Ben felt a tickle of sweat in his armpits. Did she mean…without
clothes? Or…in their underwear? His underpants were white, and saggy,
also, had holes in them; he’d been meaning to throw a bunch away but
hadn’t gotten around to it. He pressed his fingers deep into the sand.
She stood up. “Tell you what, Cuz.” She pointed to a brush pile.
“See that?”
A section of bluff had collapsed, knocking loose a wedge of clay
jammed with rooted birch and willow saplings. It had slid into the water
and formed a tiny peninsula.
“I’ll go on the other side, and you stay here. It’ll be private.” She
scrambled through the branches.
Feeling giddy, he pulled off his shirt, pants, and underpants and
piled everything on the sand. He heard splashing on the other side as he
edged into the water. Cold, it took his breath away. What if he got turned
on? Without a suit, that would be embarrassing. That happened last year
with his then-girlfriend. A buddy told him later that some girls did that on
purpose—gave a guy a hard-on in public. But not today; down there he
was his usual shriveled self. He could hear steady arm strokes on the other
side of the brush. Likely she would soon turn and see him creeping toward
deep water, stoking the courage to plunge in. Did she take off everything?
Maybe she was in her underwear while he was naked. He took a deep
breath and submerged. When he surfaced, she was beyond the brush pile.
He could only see her head.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” She folded her arms over her breasts and
bobbed up, almost to her navel, then sank out of sight. A few seconds later,
she surfaced, laughing.
Unbelievable, he thought. Un-be-lieve-able. He turned toward
shore. She had suspended all her clothes, even underwear, over a clump of
willow branches. He had never done anything like this with any of his guy
friends, certainly not with a girl, never mind his second cousin. For several
minutes they tread water, staying some distance apart. His eyes snapped
back and forth between her and the beach.
She splashed water on him. “I’m getting out.”
He waited until she disappeared behind the bush before he swam
toward shore. As his feet touched bottom, he glimpsed her through the leaves.
She was scrunched down on the sand, arms wrapped around her knees.
For days he couldn’t get that swim out of his mind. He began to
worry the memory would go stale, like listening to favorite music over and
over. Years later, he and Veronica rented a condo with a pool. One night
he suggested they go in without their suits. Once he spoke, he could sense
her body stiffening. She shook her head and looked away. He was glad he
never talked about that swim with Phil.
Last night’s phone call spun through his mind like a Möbius loop.
He pondered the change in her voice when he asked about Lawson. He let
2023, Winter / 25
the kayak drift. A red-bellied woodpecker chattered as it swept by, dipping

and flapping. Ben closed his eyes. He could see Phil bursting out of the
water, auburn hair tight against her head, water cascading down her face.
He had first-time sex with a girl in his AP English class during his
senior year. It happened one Saturday afternoon while her parents were
grocery shopping. It unnerved him how she yanked off her bra, how her
breast catapulted out of the fabric. They did it twice in quick succession
on a gray couch in her basement. A few weeks later, they broke up.
Once well ahead of the teenagers, Ben beached the kayak. As soon
as he slid underwater, his head-throbbing melted away like crushed ice on
hot asphalt. He breast-stroked to the other bank, clutched a handful of
cattails, held motionless against the current. A few hours later, he stopped,
ate his sandwiches, and swam again. He kept thinking about Phil. He
should be reminiscing about Dad. But he had enough of that yesterday.
#####
At the end of a long straight reach, Ben spotted a boy on the bank.
He was poking in the water with a stick. Probably about 16 years old, wore
tennis shoes, blue jean cutoffs, and an old baseball jersey. Two other boys,
probably twins and about six years old, stood nearby. A white-haired
woman sat some distance away, her back against a beech tree.
When the older boy saw Ben, he dropped the stick and cupped his
hands around his mouth. “Can you help us?”
Ben glided toward shore. “What’s the problem?”
“Can’t get up the hill.” He pointed toward a grove of sugar maples.
Ben followed the boy to a sandy two-track lane that wound up a
steep hill. A faded orange pickup sat at the bottom in a field of jewelweed.
Angry scrape marks snaked along one side, and colonies of rust grew
around the wheel wells.
“I just bought it,” the older boy said. “It was my Uncle Bart’s.”
“He can’t shift the gears worth crap,” said one twin.
The other twin swatted at a fly. “Call Uncle Bart; he'll pull us out.
He just bought a new Chevy 4x4.”
The older boy shoved both hands in his pockets. His shirt was too
small and exposed part of his belly. Looked like he needed a haircut. Ben
stared at the hill, then back at the truck. He dropped to his knees, pressed
his hand into the sandy soil. If they smoothed out the tire tracks, covered
the churned-up sections with branches, and got a running start—they
might make it.
The woman got to her feet. “We should have studied it before we
came down.” She wore a plain blue dress, pink tennis shoes and had a
baseball cap perched on her head. Ben wondered if she was taking the
blame, had encouraged the boy to drive down, and now regretted it. Or
maybe she told him not to and was covering for him.
“Okay,” Ben said. “Let’s give it another try.”
He and the older boy smoothed the ruts while the twins collected
branches and laid them over the bare soil. Ben walked to the top of the hill
for a better look. The curve at the top was gradual, but the road sloped the
wrong way, away from the hill.
Years ago, his father got stuck on a dirt road one Sunday
afternoon. Their car hit a slick spot and fishtailed into a ditch. His father
had jammed the accelerator down and spun the tires. They sank lower into
the mud. Finally, he and Ben got out to push, and Mom sat behind the
wheel. Dad told her to rock the car. She tried several times but couldn’t
get the hang of it. Dad finally brought both fists down on the hood of the
car.
“Goddamn it, rock the car!”
Ben stepped toward his father. “Quit yelling at her—you’re the
one that got us stuck.”
His father turned and shoved Ben backward, knocking him off
balance. Ben sat down in the mud with a splash. He scrambled to his feet
and shouted, “Go push your own damn self out.” Head down, fists
clenched, he sloshed down the road. Fifteen minutes later, their car crept
up behind him. A farmer had pulled them out with his tractor.
Ben realized the woman was talking to him.
“I said, do you want us to push?”
She could have been 60, but it was hard to tell. Arms tanned and
muscular, a few creases on her face. Teeth straight and white, eyes a light blue.
He shook his head. “Ride in the front with me.” He looked at the
older boy. “You and the twins sit in the back. Make sure they don’t fly
out.”
Ben started the engine, checked the rear-view mirror. The older
boy had both feet braced, one arm across each twin. They could be his
kids, the woman, an older version of Phil.
The woman snapped on her seatbelt. “His dad said he could get
the truck since he did so well in school. Plus, playing baseball."
“What’s your name?”
“Frances,” she said.
“We’re going to do this, Frances.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have put the boys in the back. But they needed
weight over the rear wheels.
2023, Winter / 27
“Damn straight.” She gripped the armrest with one hand and the
back of the seat with the other.
Ben backed up as far as he could, revved the engine, and released
the clutch. It didn’t engage until the pedal was nearly out. Not a good sign.
He hoped it wouldn’t fail before they reached the top. He brought the truck
to speed in low gear, then snapped into second as they approached the
slope. Tires churning, boys bouncing, they skittered over the branches.
When the engine started to labor, Ben rammed into low and swerved into
the turn as fast as he dared. Dirt spewing behind them, Frances chanting
come on baby, come on baby, come on baby, they rounded the bend and
arrived on top.
The twins leaped out, whooped and yelled, tossed handfuls of dirt
in the air. The older boy shook Ben’s hand, clapped him on the back. He
said folks called him Zack. Frances told him her name again. She hugged
him twice, once tentatively, then again with more strength. Her chest was
bony, her arms strong. He imagined her exploding out of Lake Michigan
on a spring day. They walked him to the river. Zack and the twins steadied
the kayak while Ben climbed in. He paddled a few strokes, turned, and
raised his hand. The boys waved. Frances stood in the water. The bottom
of her dress was wet.
He and Veronica had talked about having children. But she was
always busy. After getting a BS in Biology, she started teaching at a local
high school. From the start, she got into arguments with the principal about
teaching Evolution. The principal wanted her to add Creationism to the
syllabus. Other teachers got involved in the controversy. Veronica finally
quit, decided to go on for a Ph.D. She’d research better ways to teach
Evolution, make it less controversial. Ben didn't disagree with her. He just
thought it was a waste of time. Biblical literalists don’t want to accept
Evolution. They wanted to believe in Adam and Eve and everything else
in Genesis.
Ben wondered if Veronica knew Darwin had married his first
cousin. He had read that first cousins had a genetic similarity of 12.5%.
For second cousins, it was about three percent. He didn’t know if Phil and
Lawson had children.
#####
Ben leaned forward, squinted through the leaves. A few hundred
yards downriver, a bare-breasted woman sat on the bank, can of beer in
one hand. He stopped paddling. She must have heard him because she
quickly slipped into a sweatshirt. Ben continued to drift. Sitting next to her
was a man wearing a yellow fedora. He waved.
“Need a cold one?”

They were eating pistachios, tossing shells over their shoulders.
Ben paddled toward the bank. A cold beer would taste good.
“Come on,” he said, “we got plenty.”
The man handed a tall can to Ben.
He popped the top and took a drink. “That is cold.”
“Salt.” The man pointed at the cooler. “I add salt to the ice. It
keeps the beers extra cold.”
No canoe or kayak in sight. They must have parked close and
walked in.
“I’m Harvey. This here is Glenice.”
Harvey stepped in close, grabbed Ben's hand in both of his, and
squeezed. He was tall, wore only maroon shorts and sandals. Swirling blue
and red tattoos flowed down both arms.
“Don’t they make those boats for two people?”
Ben told him it was a kayak and said they did. Some held more
than two.
“Thought you might have some young thing with you—or
following behind.”
Harvey ambled a few feet away, flipped down the front of his
shorts, and hosed down a stand of bracken ferns. “Don’t mind if I do,” he
said, looking over his shoulder. Seemed a bit informal for having just met,
especially with his wife or girlfriend sitting there. Harvey began to whistle,
shook off for longer than necessary, then turned around before stuffing
back into his shorts. Ben took a long drink of beer. They were older than
he first thought—maybe in their fifties. Harvey’s biceps sagged like fresh
dumplings.
“Now me and Glenice—we’ve been together eight years come
next weekend. We do everything as a couple. But sometimes we get
together with others.”
He sat on the blanket, looked up at Ben. “Know what I mean?” He
turned to Glenice, squeezed her thigh. “Agree, don’t you, Hon?”
Harvey started shelling pistachios, accumulated a pile of meats in
his palm, then tossed them down like a shot of whiskey. He held up the
bag. Ben shook his head.
“How about some salmon? Got a couple of cans. Excellent with
saltines.”
“Maybe the man’s not hungry,” said Glenice. She lit a cigarette.
“I’ve never been in a kayak.” She leaned back and crossed her ankles.
2023, Winter / 29
"Well, Darlin'," said Harvey, "I bet Ben would be glad to give you
a lesson in paddling.” He laughed and poked her with his elbow.
“I’d love to learn.” She turned her back to Harvey. “Is there
something biting me back there?”
“I’ll look.” He lifted the back of her shirt. “I don’t see anything.
Of course, it might’ve crawled down your butt.” He snapped the elastic on
her shorts.
Ben motioned toward the river. “I better get going.” He took
another drink. “Thanks for the beer.”
Harvey stood up. "Well, hang on, no need to be running off. Me
and Glenice hardly got to know you.”
Ben wondered if they had a plan. Maybe he was supposed to make
it with Glenice while Harvey watched. They’d end up as a rollicking
threesome on the blanket. Ben turned his head as he glided into the next
bend. They were eating pistachios, staring at the river.
#####
Kayaks and canoes were lined up along the bank like felled trees.
Most were red, but a few were green or blue. Now the trip seemed too
short. It was fun: swimming in the river, helping Zack and his family. Later
he'd call Phil and tell her about it. He could go farther since the sun
wouldn’t set for hours. Except the next take-out point was miles
downriver. And Mom was holding dinner for him. Likely she had a
chicken in the oven.
He had decided to give the cash to her. It wouldn’t be right to keep it.
A truck and trailer from the livery rattled into the parking lot. A
boy and girl in their late teens climbed out. A golden retriever pup trotted
to the river for a drink. He rolled around on a sandy spot, then raced back
to pee on a kayak.
“Good trip?” asked the girl. She wore faded blue jeans with fake
rips. Two long black braids reached to her waist.
Ben thought they might be a couple. They loaded the trailer,
starting with the two-person kayaks and long canoes. Her braids snapped
back and forth like riding crops. She was as strong as the boy. They
gathered up life jackets and paddles. Ben grabbed his cooler and hopped
into the truck.
Maybe he wouldn’t call Phil. It could be awkward.
Baked chicken, just as he figured. And green beans and corn from
the farmer's market. Mom didn’t ask about his day. Instead, she talked
about next year’s reunion. Her cousin and his wife—Phil’s parents—
would stay at the house. When Dad was alive, they used to put guests in a
motel. But things had changed. After dinner, Ben opened a bottle of wine.
He wouldn’t drink as much as he did last night. His mother took her glass
into the bedroom to watch television.
She had taken the envelope of cash. Ben thought she might split it
with him.
Ben turned off all the lights and sat in his father’s chair. Tomorrow
he’d finish sorting through Dad’s things, take several loads to the Christian
Rescue Mission. He’d salvaged a few items for himself. The pitching
wedge, a mug from Central Michigan University, a few CDs. He poured
another glass of wine.
Sad business. That’s what Phil said. Sad business.
Phil's parents would come to the reunion. Maybe they’d bring Phil
along. Would Lawson be with her?
Ben swirled his glass. He held it up and watched the legs creep up
the sides. He set it down and looked through a stack of his father’s CDs.
He would be nice to listen to stuff Dad liked. He took another sip of wine.
It would be okay to have another glass. And he would call Phil. Not now,
but later. Before going to bed. He didn’t have her number written down,
but it had to be on his phone from when she called yesterday.
ASHLEY KNOWLTON
CAMPING AT PRAIRIE CREEK
Before the morning sun peers

through gaps in the leaves
high in a canopy somewhere
one long-winded bird starts whistling
prompting another bird to chit
and others to chatter–
and so on.
Soon the whole forest is loud
with a cacophony of awake birds
telling you it's your turn.
Knowlton
2023, Winter / 31
CATHERINE COUNDJERIS
THE RINGS OF SATURN
I gather that aging means you know a secret.

Things that you thought would last forever
Fade away from memory becoming shadows
And phantoms of forgotten yesterdays.
We must hold on to what matters.
The rings of Saturn are vanishing and one day
The world will not even know they existed.
Butterflies seem scarcer this year than last
And I haven’t made the acquaintance of many
bees in my small garden. Will a pill have
to suffice instead for greens and fruits?
Will that taste of summer tomatoes
salted to perfection go the way
Of the dodo bird? I used to think
my mother and father would always
be there for me to go and seek advice and comfort.
Now they are gone and my brother, too.
Their stories in fuzzy focus in my memory.
I thought Nick’s explorations of nature
would always be an option for me
but now our adventures are fond stories to tell.
I used to believe the constitution was written in stone
like Mt. Rushmore, but now I know
our rights are only as real as our votes allow.
We must hold on to what matters.
Do you recall there once was a place called Camelot?
No, there once was a place called America.
We must hold onto what matters; we must fight
to remember; we must fight to hold on.
Coundjeris
RIKKI SANTER
STEPSISTERS AT LARGE
for Claude Cahun (1894-1954)
and Marcel Moore (1892-1972)
Fueled & fused

by enigma & art,
you were one,
you were the other,
Lucy & Suzanne,
more Claude & Marcel,
your lifeblood paired—
truth uncanny
plus rebel muse.
girls>>grok
garnish>>gamble
In cafe culture
you became a couple of foxes
who could display & hide
in simultaneous wonder,
tantalizing bait,
irritating charm,
you made a body speak
in hundreds of ways,
signs within signs,
montages dreaming
more montages,
masquerade as bedrock,
masks with no eyeholes,
arms spidering out
from stone,
human rag doll
tucked into a shelf,
female dandy dandy
in chessboard coat,
stars on cheeks,
nipples on shirts,
heads inside bell jars,
Gildas of trousers,
Sapphos in love. (cont)
2023, Winter / 33
You were sacrifice,

test of moral argument,
crafted nodal points
of confrontation, subversive
tracts poking out from
barbed wire fences,
cigarette packets
stuffed in your old lady
pockets, all bets on for
agitating Nazis, prison,
the fait accompli.
reprieve>>retrieve
taboo>>redo
& here we are

in the lobby
of what you left behind,
of what was long lost,
& of what’s beside
your timeless,
unnerving,
persistent points.
Santer
MARTE CARLOCK
MEXICAN FOOD
Mexican food—that’s their only contribution to civilization.

Enchiladas, tacos, burritos, Fritos. Mexicans in person, forget it.
But I do like the food. I discovered this place near us, Taco
Grande, not long after we moved to town. Not only good food but the best
margaritas on the planet, made with blue curacao. I try to limit myself to
one, but some days, what the hell, I just need one more.
Susan and I started going there right away, and we kept going even
after she got sick. Maybe once a week, but often enough the people seemed
to consider us regulars. Me, they all looked alike to me.
It embarrassed me how Sue would get all chummy with them. She
even started trying out her Spanish, which dated from junior high school
and I don’t think was all that great. But what do I know. My Spanish starts
and ends with adios. She would say, “Hola, Rita, que tal?” and the waitress
would spew forth some gibberish. No matter what, Sue would end with
“Muy bien, gracias,” whether things were bien with her or not. Okay, I do
know bien means good. And everything got less and less good until the
day Sue couldn’t go there with me at all. Couldn’t eat at all, in fact.
I spent a lot of time in the hospital, as long as she knew me and
knew I was there. But then she stopped waking up very much. She might
open her eyes, and I’d squeeze her hand and say, “Love you, babe.” She
would smile and squeeze as best she could. I could feel the squeeze less
and less every day.
The nurses began nagging me to go out. “She’s on a lot of
morphine,” they’d say. “She won’t be waking up for hours. Get a shower.
Get some dinner.”
I sure as hell didn’t want to go home to an empty house. Where
the hell could I go? Without thinking about it, I ended up at the Taco
Grande. I wasn’t hungry, so I ordered a margarita.
The owner delivered it. He wiped the table after he set it down,
draped the towel over his arm, and hesitated. “Dónde está la señora?”
I understood that much. I took a big chug of my drink and sighed.
“In the hospital.”
He slid into the empty chair across from me and I was surprised
to find I didn’t mind. “Hospital? Very sick?”
I stared into my drink and nodded. I didn’t want to say out loud
how sick.
He looked at me for a full minute. “You need to eat, Señor Roy.”
How did he know my name? While I was pondering that, he
reappeared with my go-to order, fish tacos. “I am Raul, señor. I am patron
of this place. Call on me if you need anything,” He turned back. “Your
comida is on the house tonight. Come here again tomorrow. Hasta luego.”
When Sue died, Raul came to the funeral. Not only Raul, but five
of the girls I had seen waiting tables at the Taco Grande.
I ate there a lot. It was closed over Christmas, so I went to my
daughter’s even though it’s a long trip and we never got along too good.
Holidays are not a good time for people who live by themselves. Even if
you have some place to go, it all just reminds you of what’s missing.
Who’s missing. I felt like a fifth wheel. So I was glad when Taco Grande
opened up again.
Raul stopped by my table. “Señor Roy, how was your Christmas?”
2023, Winter / 35
“Not great, to tell you the truth, Raul.”

He pondered a few seconds. “My family has a big fiesta for the
new year. For the whole family. We would be honored, Señor Roy, if you
would join us.”
I thanked him and said I would think about it. I mean, a bunch of
Mexicans. Who knew what kind of squalor they lived in? I didn’t want to
do it.
Then one day it hit me. I’d been eating their food for years and I
wasn’t dead yet. I liked Raul. It would be real rude not to go for no reason.
I would show up and I figured if it was intolerable, I’d say I was too old
to stay late. I bought a quart of tequila and took it with me.
The place was on the edge of the city. I found myself driving
through a pretty decent neighborhood. I had to double check to make sure
I had the right address. I was in front of a real nice house. I could’ve lived
in that house. Its clapboards looked freshly painted. The grass was cut, and
there were flowers of all kinds—orange nasturtiums, sunflowers, pink and
red geraniums—in front of the place. In the back yard I could see a bouncy
house, kids swarming all over it. At the front door I could smell those
spices, chili and garlic and cilantro
Raul greeted me. “Bienvenido, Señor Roy. Mi casa es su casa. Not
many are here yet, senor.” He drew a margarita from a vat and invited me
to help myself. I recognized some of the girls from the Taco Grande,
tending a gigantic pot of chili, rolling enchiladas, and feeding ingredients
into a machine that spat out tamales.
I’d guess there were fifty or sixty people there when we sat down
to eat at 10 or 11 o’clock. Not counting the kids, who fell asleep wherever
they felt like it, on the stairs, the couch, the floor. Nobody tried to put them
to bed. Raul stood up and made a gracious little speech, thanking me for
coming and saying it was an honor for them. The party was still going
strong when I left at 3 a.m.
After that Raul invited me to every party the family had, and they
had them often. Birthdays, Confirmations, Quinceaneras when a girl turns
fifteen. Not to mention regular holidays like Easter, Fourth of July, Cinco
de Mayo. Somehow they found out when my birthday is and surprised me
with a cake and a nice polo shirt in my favorite color, Kelly green. The
kids started calling me Abuelito. Abuelo for grandfather. The “ito” on
anything makes it a familiarity, a nickname. I took little presents to the
kids and tried to learn some Spanish, but I didn’t have to. Once I pointed
out a passing monarch to a six-year-old.
“Es una mariposa,” I announced.
“It’s a butterfly,” she corrected me. “Speak English!”

They became my family. I started thinking about how I could do
something big for them.
What I came up with was a mystery trip. We piled into five or six
cars, seven adults and a coupla dozen kids. They followed me to the gates
of Six Flags. Bilingual cheers went up. Our cars looked like clown cars,
spilling people out.
I bought tickets and made sure everybody rode everything, even
the adults. Whatever they wanted to eat was fine with me; I took care of
it. At the end of the day we collected tired people and counted heads. Raul
sought me out.
“Gracias, Abuelito. This was the best day of my life.”
I surprised myself. I said, “Mine too.”
CARLA MCGILL
ANCESTRY
Bald men, blue eyes, southern.

The qualities: clean, mean.
Clean as in every counter
wiped, every porch swept,
a high gloss to furniture,
all containers in garage
placed to exact measurements.
Mean as in shooting a man’s
dog that was blocking
the bar doorway, smacking
wives who wondered
why another woman’s
perfume lingered in the air.
Grandpa passed when I was ten.
What I recall: an old man
with a spit can, chewing tobacco,
watching the day’s end
out the big window,
earsplitting train horns
putting him to sleep.
McGill
2023, Winter / 37
PAL
Golden retriever, with me on every

junket beyond the tracks.
Leaning against the pepper tree,
I petted his soft face
and when the winds started
up, he wedged his nose under my
arm, then again, until I rose
and we headed back
to the family ranch, where
sufficient unto the day
is the violence thereof; our
daily ceremonials, our
glances into the toolshed, races
across the gravel, his zealous
laps of water after finding
me behind the door
of the washroom, never
once thinking of his grave,
which would be just beyond
the swings, or of the large river
stone Grandpa set upon it.
Or of the times I stood
there in heavy shadows,
late afternoons in the shallow
peace they offered.
McGill
SCENES FROM THE DAY GRANDPA DIED
Outside the hospital, flecked light,

waving at him through the window,
his unsteady hand, sunken face.
Glancing inside the toolshed,

long silent worktable, pearl
handled pistol, wrapped in cloth.
(cont)
Granny napping on her side

that afternoon; scent of morning
ham and biscuits, train whistle
getting louder, startling telephone

rings, Pal’s head lifting from sleep,
then a house full of people, murmuring low.
Barefooted, stepping on gravel, wandering

past swings, looking west, beyond the palms,
the burning amber sun pulling down the day.
McGill
KAILEN NOURSE-DRISCOLL: I originally came on with the Press as an

intern after I graduated from college, over 10 years ago now. I met with Gordon
and Barbara in person because they lived right around the corner from my parents'
house at the time. I remember hearing stories about fighting the patriarchy over
tea and cookies, and knowing these were my people. Reading submissions and
proofreading later on for the Review helped me feel like I was putting my creative
writing degree to good use, even when my day job had nothing to do with writing
or publishing. I'm so grateful for the time I've had with Evening Street Review.
CAROL EVERETT ADAMS

GIRL FINALLY INVITED TO LEADERSHIP CAMP
Breakfast ends, someone else clears the dishes.

Double doors swing—she gets a glimpse
of big kitchen: huge fridge, giant stove.
How many grilled cheeses have fried here,

how much bread & butter? Calculations fill her.
Dining Hall deer speak wisdom from the walls.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 39
At last, this camp! Leadership! Leader.

Ship. Camp! Steep as the mountainside,
taller than old pines. She’s here with the boys!
Marksmanship, climbing, knot tying, high ropes.

Map reading, star charting, first aid.
She’ll save somebody from snake bite.
She hugs her thick coat tight, steps

out the door, they’re all jostling, brushing
crumbs from hands, bangs in her eyes,
and Camp Counselor says, he turns

to her and says, Honey, why don’t you
go on in and start the sandwiches for lunch?
Adams
PATRICIA L HAMILTON
HELP ME
A vivid memory, no reason: Spring sunshine,

lazing on the lawn behind the band room after lunch,
bees bobbling in the clover, Joni Mitchell crooning “Help Me.”
Days drowning in duty: High school French,

chemistry homework, Bach partitas on the piano,
clarinet lessons every Friday, no thought of crying, “Help me!”
Joni’s voice a starry sky: Deep midnight

spiraled with light, her highest notes sparkling
diamonds to make you forget she’s pleading, “Help me.”
The heavens a hopeful blue: A cloudless canvas

awaiting a skywriter who’ll dip and swoop overhead
to tell me who I might become, never once scrawling, “Help me.”
(cont)
Joni’s lyrics a revelation: A curtain parted

on a couple swaying to a lazy riff in smoky light,
the woman, knowing all the signs, murmuring, “Help me.”
My future unfathomed: To break free, how much

must I unlearn, unknow, undo? And will anyone answer
when I look up to that same mute sky and whisper, “Help me?”
Hamilton
SUE ALLISON
THE LAST DREAM ESSAY
These days, in my post-reporter life when, in the absence of

writing about other people, I took up fiction, I write for the same reason
other writers write: to find out what happens; how the story ends. It’s
usually a surprise. Or else I put a pen in my hand to figure out what I think.
I don’t know how other people think, but I think with a pen in my hand,
word by word. But since I know how this story ends and I know what I
think, I am obviously writing for another reason. I’m writing in
celebration. I’ve been dreaming about my brother for decades, each dream
getting me closer, I suppose, to recovery without ever getting there. Thirty
years after his sudden illness and his precipitous decline into certain death,
I finally had the dream that put paid to this grief, a grief that left him behind
in a walk-up on the Lower East Side when it was an immigrant
neighborhood and took me from a studio in mid-Manhattan to a farmhouse
in rural Virginia, from being single to being married, a mother to a college
graduate. Why such a prolonged grief? That part’s coming, but before I
tell you about the last dream about my brother, I need to tell you about the
penultimate one—but even before that, a little background.
My brother had moved to New York for acting school and was
living there when I was getting divorced after an early and quick marriage,
and after leaving my then-husband, I moved in with him for several
months. We were both in our early twenties and both loved New York. He
worked on his career, I worked on mine, and ten years later—I had moved
to London for a few years and then moved back—we were watching a
Vaclav Havel play at the Public Theater, the one where the protagonist and
his girlfriend and his ex-wife are living in the same cramped apartment.
2023, Winter / 41
When it began and the house hushed, the noise of his rumbling stomach
drew glares. He tried to shrink into his seat. He shrugged. He had no idea
what it was. It wasn’t like anything I had ever heard. And then he pulled
up his sleeve to show me the sores that wouldn’t heal. Did they hurt? He
shook his head and shrugged again, and we went back to watching the
play. Nine months later he was dead.
It took me a long time to get over my brother’s death. Dreams had
played a crucially helpful role. They were mostly of him drifting
amorphously around in some innocuous ether-world, telling me I couldn’t
come with him. But they weren’t enough. They weren’t enough because
my “prolonged grief syndrome,” as the latest DSM describes any grief
lasting more than a year, was not just sadness at losing my brother, but (I
just recently became aware) it was post-traumatic stress disorder.
But before that, this is what happened. My grief was so old. It was
so ridiculous. I didn’t even know why I was still “grieving,” so when I
found myself in a new city, with no one I knew, I said to myself that I
could think of my brother on my morning walks. He could keep me
company. I wrote that in my journal. “My dead brother has become my
companion.” I thought this was pretty benign, but then I had a dream in
which Claudia, a friend of my brother’s who is now a friend of mine (and
doubtless, in the dream, taking his place) said, “He never really liked you.
He thought you were interesting because you were such a nerd.” The
dream made me laugh. What was this, tough love? But the message was
clear: he was dead; he had a good life; he was fine; I needed to move on;
he wanted no part of this insanity. It wasn’t healthy.
I told my husband this dream. He likes dreams. Without
addressing the dream itself, he said that traumas we experience as children
return throughout our lives. He was talking about himself but I sat up
straight. That was it—I had PTSD! That explained everything! It explained
the years of unexpected bouts of grief that would body-slam me. Walking
down the street. At a coffee shop. At something someone said:
uncontrollable sobbing that left me exhausted. My husband volunteered
the emotions triggered: fear, helplessness, abandonment.
Now for the final dream. I go to his apartment. There’s a lot of
stuff, a lot, piled high. I see a collection of rope-tow grippers. We grew up
skiing at an area that had rope tows. There are two portable typewriters,
one new, which I think I had given him. I think of taking it. I’d been
wanting a manual typewriter. My husband gathers up a pile of blankets.
Claudia, my brother’s friend and, in my mind, his alter-ego, he being mine,
or something like that I guess, is there, too. I had recently been in contact
with her, arranging details about meeting up in D.C. All these things are
helping me. Coming upon a cache of cards, she exclaims, “Look at all
these letters!” I look. “Thank-you notes for all the gifts you gave him!
Thank you for this, and for this, and look! For a silver bracelet!” In the
dream I feel embarrassed. I don’t know if it is a good thing or not a good
thing. I don’t take the typewriter. I take nothing. That was the dream, about
which I gave no further thought until the next day, when I was walking
into the living room with my first cup of coffee, when the words of the
dream stop me in my tracks: thank-you letters for all the gifts I gave him.
Imagine that.
Thank-you letters.
For all the gifts I gave him. Thank you, Billy, I say as the strangely
long grief disappears in a poof and never comes back. Talk about gifts.
Suddenly rather than being hit by grief, all I could do was smile. Who
wouldn’t love a guy who wrote you thank-you notes for gifts you gave
him, gifts that weren’t gifts at all, just living. Who sent you this dream.
Suddenly all I could think of was not loss but how lucky I was and
wondered how I could ever have been sad. What was I thinking? What
was wrong with me?
My parents, who had retired to Nevada, came east to pick up and
scatter his ashes. His friends held a memorial service. I didn’t attend either.
I didn’t want to see his ashes. I couldn’t face a celebration of his life. So,
because I refused these rituals of mourning, I remained stuck in the rut of
never-ending grief, of spinning my wheels, of repeating over and over the
emotions I had suppressed as well as the memories I retained: hanging out
in his hospital room after work; spending Sundays in his apartment with
The New York Times. I did his laundry. I brought him milkshakes and
grilled cheese sandwiches. For a long while I wished I had done more for
him—taken him to Italy, or just to the Hamptons for a day, or for a taxi
drive up Park Avenue as the lights were just coming on—but I didn’t, not
because I rejected the idea but because I didn’t even think of it, of doing
something “while there was still time” or “one last time.” Perhaps if we
had recognized, if I had recognized, if I had realized is what it comes down
to, the gravity of the situation rather than continue to act as normal as
possible, which is what we did (and what could be better, really?), I would
have addressed rather than suppressed the terror through which I was
living.
A month before he died, he made me a surprise lobster dinner for
my birthday. “Claudia helped,” he said. When I got to where he was
staying, which was at a friend’s apartment, one that had a kitchen and an
2023, Winter / 43
extra bedroom and an elevator, he recounted, as if it was funny, that as he

was crossing the street with his groceries, a homeless man asked if he
could help. I’m sure there was cake.
Though we all experience death, what we experience is unique to
each of us. As all experiences are, the same but not the same. It is like love.
Love has innumerable permutations, from one individual to another,
throughout one’s relationship with the beloved. But while love comes with
a brain-flood of happy chemicals, grief is the withdrawal from them. The
journalist Don Lemon, following the publication of his memoir, said that
losing a sibling—he lost a sister—is a particular pain because it is the loss
of your reflected self.
My first story, for the London Observer magazine, was on the
annual celebration of the Day of the Dead in a small, remote village in
Mexico, where it is still celebrated as it has been for centuries. I don’t
believe in returning souls any more than I believe in Santa Claus, but I
would welcome having a day once a year during which I could pretend,
could imagine, along with everyone else, that our beloveds came back to
eat of the feast we laid out for them, to take their place we set for them at
the table. Just for a day. That would be nice.
MARTY KRASNEY
HISTORY LESSONS
Five men, one woman, in somber black––

Sick to my stomach and pierced to the heart––
Joe gave us Clarence and, sadly, Ruth: Brett
Our nation stolen, now might not come back
Joe’s got his White House, Ruth maybe heaven.
We’ll sign petitions, jostle at rallies,
while new blood flows in sordid back alleys.
Oh, say can you see what can't be forgiven

Drinks in Georgetown, opera with Antonin
Let’s not forget Clinton's complacency.

(cont)
Lied to us calling it land of the free.
Never for dark, now even white, women.

Watch out for Number One, Team USA,
It’s collateral damage. The American way!
Coda
Homage to William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
the rad just

ices
crazed with men

’dacity
beyond the blue

chickens
Krasney
WATCH
J- called me today to tell me that E-

was stopping his meds—mind still clear enough
to make the decision. I remember
years ago, Fourth of July, watching E-
fall in love with the woman who became
his wife. Actually watching it happen,
watched him watching her walk across the room,
knowing before he knew it, and of course
before she did. Everyone should have that—

not the falling in love—well, yes, that too,
but knowing someone else is—that power,
a Garden of Eden kind of power—

(cont)
2023, Winter / 45
getting to name it, right before my eyes.

I said that to my own wife driving home,
remembering the fireworks from the deck.

Now we're watching again, knowing again,
and knowing that this watching will end soon
and that our time to be watched is nearing.
Krasney
MARK THALMAN
POWER OUTAGE
We get a new principal on the average

of every three years. The district uses
our middle school as a stepping stone
to the high schools and district office
better known as The Death Star.
As my ninth principal passes by my room,

I ask, “Are you ready for the power failure?”
He looks at me completely puzzled
as if he is hearing a prophecy.
I tell him for the past five years,

the power fails in the last few weeks
of October. Downtown, squirrels
are storing filberts, and they blow a transformer.
You’ll want to make sure every room

has a working flashlight, and of course
all the computers will be dead.
Reporting attendance,
will have to be done
the old fashion way
with paper slips.
(cont)
The inner hallways

will be cave black, because this school
was built using a California plan with no windows
to save money. It will be dangerous for students
to change classes and use restrooms.
If the power isn’t restored in twenty minutes,

the poor air quality will increase,
so consider dismissing classes
to the commons or outside
if it isn’t raining.
His face—tight with worry—

says, “Thanks!”
He walks away
through the throng
of pubescent adolescents,
shaking his head
as if he didn’t have enough
to worry about.
Thalman
ATTENDANCE
I tell my students
if I am ever absent,
I am either in the hospital
or at the district office.
And, if I am in a boring meeting,
I wish I was in the hospital
or here with you.
As for students, they go on vacation

whenever their parents can get away
from their high-tech jobs. It used to be
the only students taking extra vacation
were at hunting season—
a family tradition,
or they needed the meat
to ward off winter. (cont)
2023, Winter / 47
Then there are always a few

who only make “guest appearances”.
They attend once every ten days,
so not to get dropped from the rolls.
There was also a seventh-grade girl

who missed every Thursday.
I only later learned
she was sexually abused
by her dad
on his day off
while mom
was at work.
Thalman
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Walking into class, dazed, not knowing

I would be this way, always trying to prepare myself,
as though I could study for the test, thinking
she has been dying for seven years—
Now it has finally happened,
come to this.
I stand in front of my students,

and instead of instructing them on the difference
between simile and metaphor, I begin to explain
why it is so difficult for me to speak
like someone who has never given a speech.
Words stumble from my mouth.

The room quiets as if empty.
“A substitute will be here shortly.
My mother died from Alzheimer’s this morning.”
Thalman
YEAR AFTER YEAR
There are many students who have good grades,

then stop working the last two weeks in the quarter.
I tell them to visualize they are winning a race.

With a hundred yards left, they stop and walk
and come in last.
The most vocal say, “That’s crazy!”
I tell the class to visualize

themselves being in a boat
rowing from one side of the lake to the other.
Half way across, they find a drill under the seat
and start putting holes in the bottom of the boat.
Again, they complain, “No way!”
And I say good luck swimming to the other side,

because you’re doing the same thing to your grade
when you don’t turn in your work.
There are some that think middle school doesn’t count.

This is a vacation before high school. For them high school
is a mirage. Once they get there, they will still be lost,
with no hope of rescue in sight.
Thalman
RESIGNATION
I am resigning my teaching position

effective tomorrow, the beginning
of summer vacation.
I believe it is unrealistic to learn

the 8th Grade English curriculum
in two months, only to teach it once
in what I intended to be
the last year of my career. (cont)
2023, Winter / 49
Administration is ignorant
if they don’t understand
being handed a curriculum
and designing great materials
to teach that curriculum
are two different things.
Also, I am extremely disappointed

that the district is cancelling
my highly successful Creative Writing class.
As in a classic Looney Tunes Cartoon,
I metaphorically built the plane on the runway
as it was taking off, since there was nothing
written down and no materials to teach this class.
Please note that the attendance for this elective
maxed out at 36 each semester,
Three weeks ago,

at back-to-school night,
many parents were excited
to have their student
take my course in the fall.
I wanted, but couldn’t tell them
the “reality” of the situation.
My principal told me I can only teach 8th grade next year,

because the 7th grade curriculum is being redesigned.
The writing curriculum usually gets redesigned
every three years. This means
I’ve seen the curriculum get redesigned
a minimum of eleven times.
The only other addition for next year

is a novel written in poetry form,
Under the Mesquite, which I intended
to teach having already purchased a copy.
(cont)
I hope you can appreciate the irony

that I’ve been publishing poetry nationally for 40 years,
and have three books out, with two more on the way,
and I am not being allowed to teach this new novel.
Furthermore, I was the one who designed
the last 7th grade district writing assessment
for our school.
What stinks worse than a surfeit of skunks

is that this is age discrimination,
but it’s legal by offering me a position
no one with one year left would want.
We all know for what I get paid
the district can hire two teachers
who have zero experience.
My principal told me that the district

would only hire for the 7th grade position
and expects me to move to 8th grade,
which leaves me with no choice.
This is not the way I intended

to end my 35-year teaching career.
It has been an honor
to work with all the teachers and staff.
I wish everyone who is left the best.
Thalman
KATHRYN BROWN RAMSPERGER

TAMING MY WORDS
I was looking through my Andrew Lewis High School senior

yearbook, searching for fun facts about famous pioneer Andrew Lewis,
when I found Mr. Johnson’s inscription on page 57. He’d taught me World
Lit my junior year.
It’s amazing when a high school English teacher notices you. He
loved my words. He praised my strong voice. He complimented my
2023, Winter / 51
writing. He called me Miss Brown. I’m pretty certain he nominated me for

the high school English award. I was his reader in class who played all the
female roles or read sonnets aloud. He credited me as the motivation to
prep for his classes. He said he expected much of me in the future. I’ve
treasured his note.
We can never predict how our gifts will play out. Or whether we’ll
make the most of them. I did become a writer, and I did end up traveling.
Yet probably not the way either of us expected.
My work with an international humanitarian organization took me
to Switzerland in the 1990s. Due to working permits, I’d been living apart
from my husband for an entire year. When he finally joined me in Europe,
I was eager to get home to him, catch up on old times. And more.
When the office assistant buzzed and asked if I had time to see a
visiting delegation press officer, I said yes. As we disconnected, I let out
a sound between a growl and a sigh. I didn’t have time for this meeting. I
closed the HIV/AIDS manual I was editing, resigned to finish at home that
night.
Probably just someone wanting to pitch a feature to the magazine,
I rationalized. Part of my job was liaising with people from other segments
of my organization. I enjoyed meeting and helping people. I might even
get a new story idea to follow up on. I just hoped the meeting didn’t take
long.
I could hear his light, energetic steps because my building had no
elevator, and I was in the highest office, a coveted space with a skylight. I
was surprised he was middle-aged when he appeared in the doorway.
We started with small talk, normal office etiquette, but I kept
waiting for his pitch. Finally I asked him how we at the Secretariat could
support his delegation.
His eyes grew wide. He put his hands flat down on his thighs and
stared at me, his mouth open as if he couldn’t find the right words.
I was ready to tell him we didn’t have any available space in the
magazine, that we had no staff openings. If he wanted to leave his CV with
Human Resources, we would keep it on file.
But he spoke first.
“It’s actually not the delegation I’m here for,” he said. “I wanted
to meet you…personally. Because you’re American.”
I hesitated; being American could mean two different things,
depending on the person you were speaking to. It could mean they admired
you or that they thought you were hideous. Just the other day my boss’s
boss had said that I scared him. I didn’t represent myself alone anymore
when I stepped into this humanitarian role; I represented the USA, and to
some that meant United States of Assholes. We were already getting that
reputation. Most people wanted to bring me down a peg just because of
where I was from.
But I could tell from his eyes that this man liked me. His smile
was feeble but genuine. If he had been a friend, I would have asked him
what was wrong, but in this office, at this organization, in this role, I
simply couldn’t.
“Oh, thank you for wanting to meet me,” I said. “It’s a pleasure to
meet you too. But now I must get back to my editing. My deadline’s
tomorrow.” I stood.
He still sat there, his eyes fixed on my face. “Please,” he almost
whispered. “You must get my family to your country.”
I froze. He froze. My heart ached in every beat. I don’t think our
eyes locked for more than a minute but it seemed like years. I’d seen the
photos from countries in his region, the video footage that media kept to
themselves because the public couldn’t handle them. I sifted through them
every day to see which ones were mild enough to publish yet dramatic
enough to pull at the heartstrings.
“If not me, then my wife and children,” he said. His country was
on the precipice of violence, and I was certain that torture had always been
a part of his life, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to snare his loved
ones.
I tried to gently decline. I told him I couldn’t help him. I gave him
other resources, some contact numbers. I told him that my position didn’t
allow for me to get him out of his country and into my own. I didn’t have
the clout or means to get him asylum. I suggested he call the American
headquarters directly. I knew how desperate he must be to resort to telling
a complete stranger his family’s circumstance, to ask for help. But hell,
I’d barely been able to procure an apartment in Geneva.
Plus it was against the rules.
I could’ve used my words, taken risks, to try to save his family. I
could have at least tried to get him a meeting with my secretary general.
But I was trapped in a system of neutrality and universality, wed to the
structure of an ideology that spouted procedures that taught me to get the
best outcome, I must follow step A with step B. Which, by the way, is still
the best system to help vulnerable people in danger out there.
“Please don’t mention our meeting to anyone,” he said, shaking
my hand again. He thanked me; I wished him the best. I heard his light
footsteps descend the stairs, step by step. I never heard from him again. I
2023, Winter / 53
never spoke of him. It was a confidence.

But this morning, looking at my yearbook, I decided it was time I
broke my silence. I’d blocked his name and country from my memory,
along with so many hurting people I’d interviewed that I wish I could have
helped, so I could go on with life without a meltdown. So often we say,
“Not my department,” “Let me refer you,” or even “I don’t have the
authority.” All my words were true. Not much I could have done to get
him out. I wasn’t even able to get a meeting with my organization’s
secretary general, let alone the designated country head at the State
Department.
The point is: I didn’t use my words to try.
I’ve written so many words in the name of peace. Mr. Johnson
might be proud of me, but people are still killing other people. For no
reason I can see. If I saw Mr. Johnson on the street today, I’d remind him
of the characters I played in class that year, the women who were
browbeaten into compliance.
“Remember?” I’d say. “You cast me as Othello’s tragic
Desdemona. Not the shrewder Kate, the woman Shakespeare almost
couldn’t tame into obedience. These days I’m trying to be more like her.
Loyal but strategic. Not a blind rule-follower.”
I’d tell him the story of this man, this colleague, this family, and
how I could have done more. Used my words and aligned them with
action. Words have power but unless somebody, somewhere, acts on these
words that we write from our ivory towers, nothing happens.
He might try to console me with the end of his inscription, a quote
from Khalil Gibran:
Yesterday is a dream;
Today, life itself;
Tomorrow, a great vision.
I still have that vision for a better tomorrow, but I’ve sometimes
lost sight of the future, mired in today’s details. I continue to write but I’m
still searching for my true compass point to guide me toward my next step
of personal right action. I’m using my words to write books that offer some
new world perspective. I’ve written a novel about a humanitarian on the
edge of going rogue to save a child. I speak. I teach.
Both Mr. Johnson and the man who dropped his pride, risked his
job, his life, to try to do his best for the people he loved are part of my
past, that dream that moved me to write about the world’s problems. I’ve
seen tragedy, I’ve witnessed what war can do, I’ve known people who are
running for their lives, yet I’ve always been able to return to the safety of
my cushy chair in suburban America.

I trust Mr. Johnson had a great vision of a life. I send him gratitude
for seeing who I was and who I could be at seventeen. To the colleague I
spoke to in the 1990s, when I sat pregnant but unaware of my child and
his future, I send my apologies, my prayers, and my hope. For what it’s
worth.
That he got his family out alive.
SCOTT BLACKWELL MITCHELL

INFINITY
It’s an elegant
little sign
at least the look of it
slightly squashed
8
toppled
like any edifice ripe to fall
suddenly defying
the mathematical certainty
of 4 + 4
containing everything
in an endless Mobius strip
ice skater’s
unbroken arabesque….
call it
eternal recurrence
mother’s milk
division of a cell
the road to nowhere

forever
Mitchell
2023, Winter / 55
ROBERT RICE
EVERY BIRD KNOWS THAT*
Above me, the wind is whispering

heat to dry branches, promising
a blistered future. Somewhere
a river is trespassing in
someone’s house.
The world has dying on its mind

and the sounds in our ears are
nothing like hope.
An influencer opines
our future will be just graffiti
carved in the earth’s crust.
That may be true; I don’t know.

We have always been impossible
yet here we are.
I should be thinking of this

but among the conifers
a thrush is singing the only
song it has. The only one.
When it stops
it leaves a silence deep as aquifer
and something else, inaudible
but still here, like a silent G.
And I am thinking instead

how that song eases despair. How,
gone silent, it still spins a thread
to the morning of the world.
*(the title is a line from Clarity Is Freedom by Teresa of

Avila. Trans. Daniel Ladinsky)
Rice
DAN FITZGERALD
FORGIVE MY INGRATITUDE
It is not your thoughts

I need right now,
nor any prayers
you wish me to hear.
I want none of those today.
I need to see my loved one
coming through a door,
saying hello, telling me of their day….
I want to see their eyes full of the life
that was there the day before.
Fitzgerald
BRIAN CHRISTOPHER GIDDENS

PEACHES
“We need to talk about what your brother would want us to do,”
the social worker told Bea, as they sat in the family room just down the
hall from Russell's room. “Did the doctor talk to you about his prognosis?”
“Prognosis?” Bea asked. “What do you mean?” Bea had listened
to lots of doctors, residents, and interns since Russell had been found down
in his apartment a week ago. She had been at the hospital every day, and
he still wasn't waking up.
The social worker paused, sighing deeply. Her whole body
seemed to slump with sadness. Her name was Milly, but Bea had trouble
associating such a happy-sounding name with the depressed-looking
woman in front of her. Bea was going to give her youngest son that name,
if he had been born a girl. Bea wondered if Milly was always like this. She
could be an attractive girl, Bea thought, if she could just sit up straight and
manage to smile now and then.
Milly spoke slowly, as if Bea was having trouble understanding.
“Your brother does not appear to be recovering from his stroke,” she said.
“And if he doesn't recover soon, decisions need to be made as to whether
2023, Winter / 57
we keep him on life support. I thought the doctors had reviewed this with
you?” she asked.
“They tell me every day how he is doing,” Bea replied. “But they
always seem to be trying something new.”
Milly sighed again. “Sometimes the doctors have trouble sharing
the details,” she said. “And they do try different things to make patients'
better.” She leaned in. Bea smelled peppermint tea on her breath. “But we
are at the point where what they are doing is not making a difference, so
there are some choices that need to be made. And you are your brother’s
power of attorney. Would it help if I arranged a meeting with his
attending?”
Bea didn't want to make it harder for Milly. And she didn't know
the attending from all the other doctors coming into the room throughout
the day.
Even though Bea knew the answer, she just had to ask, to be sure.
“What are the choices?”
Milly scrutinized Bea's face, as if to assess whether Bea was truly
following her. “There's really two paths that are followed in these sorts of
situations,” she said. “One would be to transfer your brother to a nursing
home, keeping him alive with the current artificial means of life support.”
She inhaled deeply before going on, her eyes continuing to track Bea's
reactions. “The other is to discontinue life support here in the hospital,
which would result in his death.”
Bea nodded, but didn't respond. What was there to say, she
thought. She didn't like the choices.
“What do you think your brother would have wanted? Did he ever
share his wishes to you about what he would want you to do if this were
to happen?”
Bea wondered about what Milly’s family was like. In Bea and
Russell's world, this was not something they talked about. But she was his
sister. They had another sister, Mae, but Bea was always the responsible
one. It would be her decision.
“Can we talk about this later?” Bea asked. She wanted to go back
to Russell's room, to be with him as she thought through her decision.
Maybe call her daughter.
“Of course,” Milly said. “I'll check back with you this afternoon.”
Bea wondered how many other people Milly needed to talk to that
day. What a job that would be, she thought as she walked slowly down the
hall to her brother's room in the ICU. Having to get so personal with
strangers, trying to move them to do things while being overwhelmed,

scared, confused.
#
Bea felt all those emotions as she sat down on the orange plastic
visitor chair in the corner of Russell's room, and though she had been there
every day for a week, she looked around the room as if for the first time.
Antiseptic. Bea mouthed the word to herself. That’s what this
room is, she thought. Clean, glaringly bright, antiseptic. Even the muted
blue color of the walls was sucked out by the glare of the hospital lights
overhead. There were lots of blue gadgets attached to Russell, in his bed
on wheels. Suction pumps, IV pumps, blue plastic wires attached to other
gadgets which had purposes unknown to Bea. She liked the color blue, but
navy blue, not bright blue, or sky blue. Bea believed navy blue evoked
class. Her sister Mae would love the brighter shades, the oranges, and the
fuchsias, but that was Mae. Mae would never be accused of having class.
Bea always wanted to be classy. Not in a stuck-up, nose-in-the-air
way, but more like Grace Kelly class. There had not been many Grace
Kelly moments in hers, Mae’s, and Russell’s lives, she thought as she
gazed at the weather-beaten face of her brother. His face was a maze of
broken purplish blood vessels cascading over a pock-marked nose and a
sunken pair of cheeks. Russell was only two years older than Bea (Mae
being the oldest of the three siblings) but Russell had lived harder. A rough
life had brought him here, at the relatively young age of sixty, transported
from his government-subsidized apartment where he had been living
alone.
Russell was alone here too, thought Bea, except for her. His
children had long since given him up, because he had beaten their mother
several times when he drank, and she left him years ago. Bea never liked
the wife, but she saw the bruises, and understood why she left. Russell’s
second and third wives got beat too, though the third one seemed to hit
back as often as she was hit. Mae wasn’t visiting her brother because she
too was a drinker, and when she heard Russell was ill, she immediately
went off on another binge. She calls Bea several times a day and leaves
long teary messages about how terrible she feels because she loves her
brother so much and doesn’t want him to die.
Bea took a deep breath, closing her eyes against the brightness of
the room. Even her own children have made up excuses not to come visit.
For three months, when Russell was having trouble holding down a job,
he stayed with Bea, her second husband Jim, and her three kids. Russell
played cards with the kids and when he didn’t win, he’d cuss, throw down
2023, Winter / 59
the cards, blame the loss on somebody else. The kids stopped playing cards
with Russell, begging her to have Russell move out.
“Russell wasn’t always like this,” Bea had told them. She talked
about how protective he was of her when they were children. How he
would fight their dad whenever he threatened to hit Bea or Mae, only to
be hit harder for it himself. But until he ran away at the age of seventeen,
Russell always jumped in to protect her.
Bea pulled a Kleenex from her leather handbag, dabbing at her
eyes. She wondered what had happened to that sunny, red-headed brother
of hers. He became the man he most hated, their father, a bully and a drunk.
Probably too much of a fighter, she thought. After he left home, he joined
the navy, and when he came back, he acted as if everybody was out to get
him. Someone would say something to him in a bar and before you know
it, Russell would be in a fight and thrown out to the sidewalk. He always
acted so tough on the outside, Bea thought, but she only saw the scared
young boy who took on his father to protect his sisters.
Bea looked at the shrunken body, seeming even smaller amidst all
the contraptions keeping him breathing, and knew time was running out.
She could see Russell’s imminent demise in the faces of the sympathetic
nurses who would greet her as they came into the room to adjust the
gadgets, pushing in or pulling out the wires and the tubes and the drains,
as if he wasn’t there. Her brother’s body was just a work surface, she
thought, keeping nurses busy and machines alive. She had prayed daily for
God to save him. But now she was thinking God may have other plans.
What were those plans, she wondered, and why would God leave such a
decision up to her?
#
Bea had dreamed of being a nurse when she attended Catholic
school and the nuns talked about helping the sick. Instead, she married
right out of high school to a dashing dark-haired sailor who had come into
town, and by the time he left ten years later, she had three kids to support
on her own. There was no time or money for school. She was trained by
the welfare office to be a keypuncher for the County. Not long after, she
met Jim, who promised to take care of her and the kids in exchange for
marriage. She didn’t love him, but she was tired of trying to make do with
a paycheck that would be spent before she got it, and he was the best option
she had.
Every day, Bea regretted the marriage. Jim didn't beat her. He
didn't interfere with the raising of her children. But his constant presence
reminded her how she had given up her hope for anything better when she
married him. She had settled, and soon rebelled. She drank like her
siblings, and then picked fights with Jim. She spent his money and racked
up debt, causing her to feel more imprisoned. Eventually they managed to
reach an unspoken truce, staying out of each other’s way as much as
possible, and learning to be, essentially, good roommates. Her drinking
became quieter, more of a way to soften the reality of her world. But six
years ago, when she was diagnosed with cancer, she realized she was not
ready to die. She prayed hard to her Catholic God that if she were to live,
she would quit drinking. She kept her promise.
#
A nurse came into the room, startling Bea from her thoughts. “We
have to turn your brother and clean him up a bit,” the young woman said,
cheerful and efficient. She was a pretty nurse, with wavy brown hair not
unlike that of her daughter. She wished her daughter was there, but knew
how busy she was, and how impatient she sometimes was with Bea. It was
as if her daughter, her oldest, had never forgiven her for her dad going
away.
“Why don't you get a cup of coffee,” the nurse suggested, smiling
sympathetically. “We won't be long.”
#
Bea got confused trying to find the cafeteria. The hospital was
such a big place, and all the hallways looked the same. She allowed herself
to be lost, to wander in the halls. She looked out the window of the first-
floor corridor to see two children playing tag. She wondered if they were
brother and sister, like her and Russell. They looked happy, she thought,
tagging each other, and then running away.
She sat down on the bench in the hall, watching the children. As a
child she got lost walking downtown with Russell. She hadn’t realized
they were lost until her big brother told her so, because she was enjoying
the journey and assumed, like so many children her age, all was well unless
she was told differently. They spotted a police station and went inside. She
must have been about four and her brother six, and Bea remembered to
this day how friendly the policemen were. Russell was trying to be serious
and adult-like, but Bea lapped up the attention, laughing at the policemen
who would pass by and make faces at her. When one of the policemen
asked her name, she proudly gave him her full name, Beatrice.
“Peaches?” the policeman said, with a big smile.
“No, Beatrice!”
“Sure sounds like Peaches to me.”
Bea shook her head. “No. I’m Beatrice.”
2023, Winter / 61
The policeman knelt on one knee in front of Bea. “I’m going with
Peaches. What’s wrong with Peaches?” He winked at his colleagues. “I
think we’ll keep it.”
From then on, to this day, her brother called her Peaches.
#
“Code 199, ICU, Room 5405. Code 199, ICU, Room 5405.” The
words were blaring through the loudspeaker, but it took a moment for Bea
to realize this was an overhead page pertaining to her. Room 5405 was her
brother’s room.
Bea started back to the room and realized she didn’t know where
she was. She had languished too long in her wandering state, and she was
off course. It took her several minutes to find her way back. When she got
there, there was a sea of blue-clad doctors and nurses surrounding Russell,
shouting things in a language Bea didn’t understand, running in, out, and
around in the room. Milly arrived, efficiently moving Bea to the side, away
from her brother, and from the team of professionals who were doing God
knows what to his body. Milly sat her down in another plastic chair,
pulling an identical one up next to her, and kept patting her hand.
Suddenly, the frenetic activity inside the room just stopped. The
staff shook their heads and backed away from the bed, talking in hushed
tones and giving each other comforting pats on the back. Milly stopped
patting her hand and sighed. One of the doctors came out, took Bea’s hand,
and told her he was sorry. The nurse who had told her to get some coffee
came by and asked if she needed anything.
Bea asked to be with her brother, alone for a few minutes. She felt
terrible she had left him at the wrong time. Or maybe he was just waiting
for her to leave. Waiting for her to leave so he could make the decision for
her, as to whether to end his life. Protecting her until the very end. Bea
missed him already.
“Russell?” she asked of the body, disconnected finally from all the
fancy gadgets. Bea leaned over to kiss her brother on his forehead. She
caressed his cheek, a cheek so ravaged by a life some might call wasted.
“Russell, it’s me, Peaches,” Bea said, her eyes unable to focus
from her tears. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you when it happened,” she
said, patting his cold hand. “I’m glad you were my brother, Russell, and
I’ll miss you so much.” Bea leaned her head back to stop her tears and her
nose from flowing. She tried to blink her eyes to better focus. She held her
breath in to keep from sobbing, because she knew if she were to start
sobbing the social worker would have to come in and fix things so the rest
of the staff would not feel helpless and face the fact someone had just lost
their brother.
That’s what Grace Kelly would do.
Bea continued to sit in the room for a few more minutes, watching
her brother’s face become more rigid, more pale, so quickly. She took one
more fresh Kleenex out of her purse and went out to thank the nurses and
to sign whatever it was she needed to sign to put an end to this day.
The nurse asked her for her full name, as she completed the form
to authorize disposition of the remains.
“It’s Peaches. Peaches Wilson.”
“Peaches?” the nurse asked, thumbing through the chart, and
alighting upon an admit form. “We had you down as Beatrice Wilson. Was
that a mistake?”
“Oh yes,” Bea said, gently. “That surely is a mistake. My first
name is Peaches.”
ELIAS KERR
TRANS (RE)INCARNATION
I.
I am home again and this body
found ways to make meat
and connective tissue nourish it-
self for so long, a cadaver
I won’t take back. My mother
wishes I’d put what god gave me
to good use, and when I trusted a scalpel
over his plans, she made it
her devotion. She devoured me
like scripture, fixated on sins and saving
scraps of that carcass, collecting cuts

of rib and breast, offering sacrifice to a god
I will never meet, instilling the fear
of an expiration date.
Kerr
2023, Winter / 63
WHAT RUNS THROUGH THE FAMILY
my grandma doesn’t know

i’m homeless, i’m a boy
living in her granddaughter’s body—this foundation

needs to be laid again. she won’t recognize me
the next time i see her, and i don’t know

when that will be. my mother taught me
how to make skin cry, weeping

into my bed every night; the roof was
leaking, and i won’t mention my father,

because he never tried to fix it (so how can i).
my father taught me how to be weak

moraled and let my mother beat virtue out of him,
and out of virtue my mother beat me

into drywall, left indentations
of my shoulder blades, holes

where i once called home.
Kerr
SHERRILL ALESIAK
THURSDAY MORNING WEATHER
The sky offers nothing more

than gray faces of clouds
peering through the blinds.
If I could see the blue of their eyes,
I bargain, then I would rise.
Alesiak
TO THE EARS OF MY BONES
Dear declining bones,

diligent and devoted slaves,
stiff in the guardhouse of skin,
yet tenacious in the quest
to kneel in prayer,
check under the bed
for that errant sock, and
cart watering cans
to quench the garden plants.
Feeble, obedient bones,

unyielding to titanium or cadaver
replacement parts, relying on
imagination to stay ageless,
to rock and roll
to simple songs of love and loss,
from an era when priests and doctors
were perceived as good,
and perception decreed our decisions.
Tattling bones, accusing the disk or the joint

of un-neighborly pain. They, in turn,
jostle for space, while the invasive species
slows the motion and spurs the cries,
until we relent and agree
to props embedded in knees and hips
we must confess
to the TSA agent at the airport
for all to hear
that we are no longer pure,
but relying on second chances,
we are forgiven.
Alesiak
2023, Winter / 65
J R FORMAN
SPRING SLEEP
Original by Bùi Minh Quốc (Vietnamese, born 1940)
To all comrades of my generation
You lull our baby, and I will lull you.

Late in the garden the sound of sad dew
I lull and drive far into the deep night
while the baby sleeps softly and her mother too.
As the angels above sleep softly I see

them bathing in scents of dreamland’s sea.
I pray they keep me wakeful and safe
and from all memories of shock waves free.
Da Lat, early winter 2002

Forman
CLELA REED: Evening Street Press and Review have played such a
generous and supportive role in my development as a poet, I felt privileged
to serve as an associate editor on the review’s staff for several years. After
a number of my poems had been published in the review and after the
second time I had won the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize (that publication
receiving Georgia Author of the Year recognition), I was glad to say yes
to Barbara Bergman when she asked me to join the staff. It was a way to
give back. Reading the submissions kept me aware of poetry trends, what
made successful writing, and what didn’t work. It often inspired. And what
a fine editor Barbara was to work with! She wanted to publish as many
worthy writers as she could and produced hefty (and beautiful) issues
throughout the year. I only wish we could have cloned her so that we could
continue to benefit from her amazing work ethic, her wise discernment,
and her genuine delight in publishing. Thank you, Barbara, for making
many writers’ dreams come true. https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-
author/clela-dyess-reed/
FRANK RICHARDS
THINGS PEOPLE MADE
It’s Monday and I’m hard at work on our latest computer effort at
Apple—named Lisa, coincidentally, just like you—when I get a phone call
from Ron Foster, the real estate agent who sold us our San Lorenzo Valley
home.
“I don’t want to alarm you, Jack,” Ron says, “but I’ve lived here
all my life, and I’ve never seen the river this high. Maybe you better come
on home.”
We moved there eight months ago, when spring had faded into
summer. Our weekends had been spent on a hammock strung between two
giant madrone oak trees, sipping wine, or in the hot tub we situated in the
center of a circular stand of thirteen redwood trees. We often slept
outdoors on the hammock, first making love to the murmur of the water
trickling over rocks in the little stream below and then falling asleep while
watching meteorites flare overhead.
Because we drive down from the mountains together every
morning, I pick you up from your job at the Santa Clara Bank of America
and we head home. The rain hits us when we take the exit off State
Highway 17 onto Bear Creek Road. It is an eleven-mile drive along the
winding road up into the mountains and back down the other side, into the
little river valley, the rainforest, and home.
I turn on the wipers.
You put your hand on my knee. “Do you have to drive so fast?”
You give your seatbelt a little tug.
I smile. I pride myself on my driving ability. I know every bend
in this road. Up and downshifting the purring engine of the black Porsche
911, I enjoy negotiating the twisting, weaving mountain road. Most of the
locals drive like me, maniacally, spurred to even greater speed when
another car happens to show up behind them.
A harder rain now falls. Little rivulets and tiny waterfalls run
down the face of the mountain beside the road. The mountain itself seems
to be oddly crumbling in the rain; occasional stones come loose and tumble
down, bouncing across the road in front of us as we drive along.
“Seems strange to be going home while it’s still light out,” you
say. You run a hand through your hair. You have that pale skin that comes
only with the true blond, a skin splashed with the faintest hint of freckles.
“Yeah. Almost like the weekend isn’t over after all.”
“Something terrible happened this morning at work, Jack. You
2023, Winter / 67
know Tina, that new teller I trained last month?”

I don’t remember and I shake my head. You have a sometimes-
irksome ability to recall and recount your entire day: the conversations
with people you work with; slights real and imagined; who is mad at whom
and who isn’t speaking to whom. You often demonstrate this ability on
our drives home. I usually tune it all out.
“You know, the shy one, the one who keeps to herself all the
time?”
Then I remember the woman. I’d met her a couple weeks back at
the bank’s Christmas party. I’d tried to strike up a conversation with her,
but she answered my conversational questions with monosyllable yesses,
noes, nods or shakes of her head. She didn’t look directly at me when I
spoke to her either. A real wallflower. I gave up. Her husband had seemed
intense. He wasn’t talkative either.
“Anyway, her husband, Larry, is always putting those electronics
kits together—you know the ones you see in some magazines? Build your
own radio receiver. Build your own television. Stuff like that?” You take
a deep breath. “Anyway, he spends all his spare time putting them
together. Thing is, once he finishes, he can never get them to work. Tina
used to tell me how frustrating it was for him. He would put a kit together,
turn it on, and then nothing.
“Two cops came into the bank this morning about eleven. They
told Tina that her husband was dead. He climbed up one of those electrical
power line towers, you know, the one over on North Street you always say
looks like a man with his arms folded? Climbed all the way to the top and
jumped off. Isn’t that ironic? I feel so sorry for Tina. She was always
talking about her husband, and she always seemed so dependent on him,
and now she’s alone.”
“Guess she didn’t know her husband as well as she thought.”
You open your mouth to retort, but then you spot the boulder.
“Look out!”
I swerve too late, grazing the tire-sized rock rolling out into the
center of the road. A high-pitched scraping sound rakes along the right
side of my car and claws at my nerves.
Damn. My car is no longer like new. It is flawed in some
irreparable way.
I pull over to stop and check out the damage.
As I get out, you lean over my seat. “Jack, it’s only a car. Let’s
go. I’m scared.”
This probably isn’t the best place to stop. “All right, we’ll go.”
As we pull away, I look in the rearview mirror to see more debris

slipping down the side of the mountain and onto the road. The way we’d
come is now closed off.
I fume the rest of the way home, wondering about the damage to
my car. I hadn’t really gotten a good look in the storm.
Our home is a redwood-sided, one-story cabin at the end of a long,
asphalt driveway off Bear Creek Road. Thick, Kelly green moss covers
the roof’s shingles. From the top of the driveway, it looks like an elves’
house dwarfed and shaded by monstrous trees. On the left three Douglas
firs soar hundreds of feet in the air. I have never seen the tops of them. On
the right my thirteen stately redwoods grow in their perfect circle. An L-
shaped deck, next to the redwoods, runs around to a front door that faces
the river.
I park in the carport at the rear of the house and get out to examine
the right front fender area of the Porsche. The metal is dented and torn but
it isn’t too bad. Even so, I still have that sick feeling that comes with the
first serious damage to a previously unblemished car.
“Damn,” I say, this time out loud. I open the passenger door for
you.
We can hear the heavy, laboring sound of the river before we see
it. I grab our coats and pull my Samsonite briefcase from the back seat,
and we go around to the front deck and look down.
Apparently tired of criticism, the river is now the real thing. The
throaty, locomotive roar of it surprises me. Like the monsoon rivers I had
seen in Vietnam, the stream had been a trickle of water and then, one day,
a flood. People had built their little houses on the sides of the cut of those
rivers every year, blissfully unaware that the river would rise in the next
monsoon and sweep their house and all their possessions away. Gone with
the monsoon.
“The water is higher than it has ever been,” you say, your eyes
pooled with concern.
“Yeah, it’s a real river now, all grown up, but don’t worry, we’re
safe up here, even if it rises further.” I turn away, toward the front door.
“Tell you what. Let’s have some wine with dinner. Maybe we should open
that new cabernet? I’ll start the fire. We can move the kitchen table over
here to the front picture window and keep an eye on the river.”
Over a candlelight supper of grapes, Brie, and crackers, we watch
the river continue to rise. Floating debris shoots past the window, heading
downstream and out to sea. Lumber, boxes, and trees speed by. Like
watching a movie. And we have great seats.
2023, Winter / 69
“Geez, that water’s really moving,” I say. “Looks like over thirty
miles per hour.”
The river cut is fifty, sixty feet wide and the bank maybe thirty
feet down to where the bottom had been only a day before. I estimate it is
now fifteen feet deep. I wonder how many thousands of gallons of water
are passing our doorway each second. Our home is located on the first part
of a series of S-shaped bends in the river. The full force of the river is
hitting the other side, where the river turns off to the left. People on the
other side of the river have been adding on to their house over there, and
it looks like the addition now stands a lot closer to the edge than it did
yesterday.
As dusk falls, we watch, a little awed, trying to name the things as
they flow by. A fence. A doghouse, sans occupant. A garage door. More
trees.
“Look at that,” I say. “Part of someone’s house.” Things are
breaking up, things people made.
“That’s such a shame. You don’t think the water’ll come up to the
top, do you?”
“No,” I say. “Those Douglas firs have been here about five
hundred years, so in all that time, the water’s never come over the top.”
Nevertheless, I walk over to the stereo and turn on the radio. Maybe I can
get some news about the storm. What’s happened to the weather satellites?
Where is the severe storm warning?
What we hear is reassuring. According to reports, the heart of the
storm is hitting a couple of counties up the coast, north of San Francisco.
“See, we’re just getting the southern edge of the storm. Everything
will be all right.”
“Let’s do something else besides watch the river.”
“Good idea. How about some video pinball?”
Tiring of Pac-Man, you’d given me this pinball game for my Atari
as a Christmas present. We laugh as each outcompetes the other, aiming
to top the previous score. The game is a good distraction.
Then the power goes out.
I feel my way in the semidarkness. The fire in the fireplace
provides enough light to get to the kitchen for the lighter. I relight the
dinner candles.
“Here’s the flashlight. Where are the C batteries?” I rummage
through the designated junk drawer in the kitchen. “I’m going out to check
on the river.”
“I’ll get more candles,” you say.
“On the radio they keep talking about a massive storm way up
north of San Francisco,” I say. “This must just be the edge of it. Don’t
worry.”
But I see the stress of helpless worry tense your neck and line your
forehead with fear.
I go outside and shine the flashlight down at the river. I’d put
twenty steps down there the previous summer, and the water is now all the
way up to the tenth step. It is still rising, about ten feet from the top of the
steps and the house.
After shaking off the umbrella, I come back inside.
You come out of the bathroom. “The toilet won’t flush. There’s
no water.”
I laugh and you join in. Nervously.
“This’ll do it.” I put a yellow, plastic bucket outside to catch some
of the rainwater to flush out the toilet.
You stand, back to me, arms crossed in front of you, staring out
the window. “Our neighbors are leaving.”
Through the sliding glass door on the deck to the side of the house,
I see the neighbor family’s line of evacuation lights moving in the darkness
of the storm. I can just make out the mattresses over their heads. They look
like a line of carpenter ants carrying leaves back to the nest. Where do the
idiots think they are going? The nearest town is five miles away. It will be
more dangerous on the road than staying in place. There’d been that
landslide, after all, and probably more since. I wonder why they haven’t
checked on us or we on them, but then I don’t even know my neighbors.
In the eight months we’ve lived in the mountains, I’ve never spoken to
them, only waved from a distance. We’d been too busy with the wine and
the hammock and the hot tub.
“You don’t think it’ll come up to the house, do you?” you ask.
“Maybe we should leave too?”
“They are lower down there than we are up here,” I say. “They’re
closer to the river. Like I said, our old Douglas firs have stood on the banks
of this river for five hundred years, and they haven’t washed away in all
this time, so I don’t think our house is going to wash away. Tell you what,
though. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll check the level of the water every
fifteen minutes. If it gets to the top step, we’ll leave.” If we do have to
leave, where the hell will we go?
We sit on the couch and listen to the tinny voice coming from our
little red transistor. The weather people still babble on about a storm hitting
the coast far to the north of us. There are no evacuation bulletins or
2023, Winter / 71
instructions to pack up and leave as the neighbors had so foolishly done. I

always consider decisions made in a panic generally unsound.
That’s when it happens.
There is a wood-splitting, crunching, grinding, breaking sound,
like the sound you hear on TV after someone has cut down a tree and called
out, “Timber.” It must be falling right on top of us for the crashing to be
heard like that over the roar of the river. As the tree slowly falls, the sound
gets dangerously louder.
We bolt toward the sliding glass door.
I get there first.
I fumble with the latch.
I slide the door open, but you push me aside and stumble into the
rain as I fall back into the room. I try to get up again but what is the point?
You say nothing to me as I come out onto the deck into the driving
rain. You are breathing hard; your breath is coming in quick little gasps. I
step past you and look around to the back of the house but can see nothing
of the fallen tree in the dark.
We stand apart, each buried in our solitary thoughts.
I know what had happened, yes. You pushed me back.
I follow you inside and we sit on the couch and stare into the dark
while the thunderous roar of the river continues to shake the house. Stress
hangs in the air like a fog.
You fall asleep there, curled up on the couch, exhausted.
I struggle to stay awake. Every fifteen minutes I check the water.
It is almost to the top step. It is almost time to leave. Almost.
I hear another tree go down, this one farther in the distance.
Expecting to see the water at the top of the steps, I go out again
and look down. The rain has stopped. I stand on the deck, and I watch the
storm water. At first it fights to hold its place, then it gradually recedes to
the second step. Much like some alien thing that climbed the steps, it was
losing its grip and reluctantly sliding back down, away, leaving us. But the
damage has been done.
First light comes; the gray, pearlescent light of a false dawn
suffuses from clouds luminous above. Stillness leaves the air. The wind
picks up and more wind comes. The big trees sway across the sky like
stalks of wheat swaying in wind, and then the trees bend over like saplings.
Never in my life have I seen trees of that size bend like that.
Behind the house a great madrone oak has fallen through the
kitchen of the neighbor’s house across the river and split that house in two.
The falling madrone must have been what we heard the previous night.
The top of the tree extends across the river, forming a bridge of wood
pointing right at our house.
I don’t know what I’m going to do now.
AARON FISCHER: I’m very curious about what the other associate editors will
say about their tenure with Evening Street Review. For me it was mostly drudgery.
Some of it was my fault: committing to proof too many pages on too tight a
schedule, putting off starting until the job became a slog. But mostly it was the
poetry. I found the poems flat: The poets never seemed to push themselves to find
anything but easy, cliched language. Mostly they mistook a simple statement
about how they felt (sad or angry or jealous....) for the poem, when it was really
the place to start. I didn’t know why Barbara was publishing most of these poems.
I'm not talking about misspellings or grammatical errors or misusing a word.
These are all things that can be fixed easily. They don't deter us from recognizing
a real poem when we see it. If you need some evidence that I’m a biased judge
or need to defend the canon (whatever that is): I’m a white, straight man in my
early ’70s. If knowing that makes it easier to dismiss what I’ve said, feel free.
CHASE D SPRUIELL
THE FETAL POSITION
my moments of weakness define

the breadth of my loneliness
the inescapable churn of dis

con
nec tion
finds me hiding in the dark
disrupts my knowing stride
a fluid gait is a gift

not guaranteed
(cont)
2023, Winter / 73
it is a polaroid to burn
it is a face in a cloud
a moment has the power

to change everything
or nothing at all
Spruiell
THE OTHER SIDE
as in winter,
I long for summer
in summer,
I long for spring
as in silence,
I crave commotion
in chaos,
I covet stillness
I suffer the wait

of a nameless thing
desperate to
uncover
its name
Spruiell
DONNA SPECTOR: I have loved working with Barbara Bergmann and

Gordon Grigsby and other Evening Street Press poets and writers! The writing in
each issue and in the published chapbooks has always been excellent, the writers
and editors are politically unafraid to speak the truth, and the books are unfailingly
beautiful. I feel honored to be included in this writers’ world.
https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/donna-spector/
MARTINA REISZ NEWBERRY

CHURCH
If, one Sabbath morning,

you sit in your regular sitting place,
hands folded, eyes closed, face upward–
if they’ve passed round

the gold plates or the velveteen-lined baskets,
if, you gaze around you and see only stained windows
of wondrous color, statues, sculptures next to you
imagining they are real people, candles lit
and gladiolas trembling in the air conditioning,
If, the music there is finely-tuned, glorious in its praise

or grief or guilt or thanksgiving and sung by a choir
whose voices are blended and choreographed as if
conducted by John Eliot Gardiner,
and finally, if you don’t find yourself floating above your normal
sitting place–elevated, levitated by the smell of Paco Rabanne
or Drakkar Noir or whatever cologne God is wearing
these days, I suggest you have come
to the wrong place to worship.
Maybe it is time you knelt on the cracked foundation

of a burnt-out building, one that is a shell
surrounding ashes and rubble and smouldering items
no longer recognizable.
Maybe you must look

for some sort of God in a place
that smells failed and torched.
Maybe it is time for you to continue your search

in a building with no windows, only the occasional mirror–
broken, oxidized, dark–flooded floors, warped boards.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 75
After the fires are out and the flood waters recede,
and whatever priestess or acolyte enters,
in her raggedy toga, soiled black at the hem,
after she wipes her dirty feet on the damp moss

grown over crumbling stone steps,
after you kiss her grimy hand and receive
her strange feral caress, then you may see the God
you wish to see. Then you will be welcomed.
Newberry
“... UNLESS SOUL CLAP ITS HANDS AND SING…”

~for Dr. Victor Okada, PhD, RIP
When Dr. Okada taught Poetry 201,

he began by telling us that his favorite poem
was and always would be
“Sailing to Byzantium,” a state-of-the-soul poem:
four stanzas in ottava rima,
eight 10-syllable lines,
stately and worthy as pleas and prayers ought to be.
He said that no poem since that one ever touched him

as deeply. There was, at that time,
a flood of existential blah-blah
and tidal waves of postmodern critique
in the minds and hearts of Dr. Okada’s bleary-brained students.
There were eye-rolls and side-eyes and small, smarmy smiles

exchanged when he explained his affection for the poem.
He taught in a world of Sextons and Plaths,
Brautigans and Bukowskis.
The slap-your-face poems of popular poets earthquaked the literary
scene.
(cont)
We of the blurred brains believed that we knew almost everything

about the mud wrestling of words to turn them into poems
of enlightenment and excellence. What we did not know,
needed to know,
and had yet to learn
was that beauty and profundity can only be found in poems that begin
“...in one another’s arms,”
and end with “...what is past, or passing, or to come.”
Title and quotes are from WB Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium, written 1926.
Newberry
THE FIFTH SEASON

for Beth Copeland
Time has taught me that you can take faith

away from a woman, but you can’t keep
the gods out of her hair and you can bet
your sweet ass that those gods are made up
of an astonishing mix of belligerence
and vagaries. For us, compliance
is what we pay to live our lives.
One average day at a time is what we’re given–
sometimes not even a full day if we don’t behave.
My friend, every woman I know deserves

a medal for braving love time and time again;
a medal for every son of a bitch who hurt her
because he could, because another woman
was prettier, younger, had a better body,
a more enviable CV, a bigger bank account.
We are born with the threat of turning

out to be nobody–a blank space in time,
a semi-colon in a sentence written by a man.
We are elemental and still ignored, disenchanted
and still creating our spells and charms. How can that be?
Where is reason, where is reward?
(cont)
2023, Winter / 77
Freddy Mercury said that too much love

would kill us and so it does and so it has.
That being said, I guess it’s better for us
to live now than to agonize over the pain
of going back into the mystery we came from.
It seems, after eons, we are to die in the arms
of anyone who will hold us.
But here’s the thing and it’s the important thing,

maybe the only thing: We, my sister, are the ruin
of sailors, the birdsongs after hurricanes, the shards
of all broken hearts, the sweet sometime,
the miraculous maybe and, never doubt it,
whether or not we are welcomed,
we are the fifth season.
Newberry
PILLARS OF CREATION IN A STAR-FORMING REGION*
Was there ever a better gift to the sky

than the birth of new stars?
Somewhere, in the faraway blackness,

where the sky becomes deep space,
there are secret places–stranger and lovelier

than our dreams could ever dream.
We think birth and picture a tiny wet creature

struggling to open its eyes, its tiny fists.
Or, in the matter of “other” animals, endeavoring

to stand on stilt-ish legs or trembling tree stumps.
(cont)
Imagine, if you will, what Hubble sees—an image

of a birth: Pillars of Creation,
images of strange gaseous things—natal, alive,
eerily forming in the Eagle Nebula.
Pillars—incubators for new stars.
Already hot and bright, there are newborns nearby;
they stay close to vaporize gasses and dust,
to erode the granite edges of these monuments
and free what will be brilliant, unfathomable,

irredeemable as drunken nightmares.
They do not emerge from a tender and pulsating place;
they emerge from stalagmite wombs, from immense,
dark hydrogen clouds. Redemption and birth,

purity from ash. Creation. All of us—bright remnants.
* https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/hubble-top-
12/#.XqMJyEmif18.facebook
Newberry
DEBORAH S PRESPARE
BUMBO
Nature’s play at mimicry only went skin deep. While one brother
clung to their parents with fear and trembling words, the other leapt into
the realm of adulthood with certainty and unabashed questioning, leaving
their parents, the idols of their childhood, behind in the twilight of youth.
The Brooklyn brownstone was left to the twin who stayed, Adam.
The other twin, Ajax—Jax, people called him—didn’t balk at their
parents’ decision to will the family home to his brother. Still living at
home, so stuck in his routines, Adam needed the brownstone to survive.
Jax understood this. To Jax the brownstone was a physical representation
of Adam’s self-imprisonment. Everything was a serious risk to Adam. His
anxieties kept him from doing much in life. Even his career was risk-
focused—actuarial science. So when Jax got a wedding invitation from
Adam, he was floored that his reclusive twin brother was claiming a
2023, Winter / 79
partner in life—the biggest risk-taking venture of them all, in Jax’s

opinion.
Adam’s wedding was the first time the brothers had seen each
other since their father’s funeral. Months after their mother had succumbed
to cancer, their father died of a heart attack. Like their parents’ funerals,
the wedding was a small affair. From their mother’s side there was an aunt
and uncle who always came down from Boston for big events. Their
father, an only child, didn’t have any other living branches in his family
tree.
Besides this aunt and uncle and Jax, Adam’s other wedding guests
included a coworker from his actuarial firm and a few friends from
families who lived in Brooklyn as many years as their own. Through the
years, as developers’ pitches became too enticing and condo buildings
supplanted old family homes, the number of these friends dwindled.
Adam’s new wife, Carlene, a recent transplant from Idaho, didn’t know
many people in the city yet, and most of her family couldn’t afford to
travel, so she, too, had only a handful of guests.
At the wedding, Jax learned that Adam met Carlene at the corner
bodega. Carlene was buying cigarettes. Adam was buying his weekly
gallon of milk. Carlene saw him looking at her, so she held up the pack of
cigarettes and said, “I know these are going to be the death of me, but you
know that milk will kill you too, right?”
Somehow that exchange led to coffee. They married soon after
that and she moved in. Living together, they each absorbed some of the
other. He accepted more risks. He agreed to fly to Europe for vacations
every couple of years and was willing to eat out more (only after careful
review of the restaurants’ health grades and violations). She took fewer
risks. She gave up smoking and negotiated with her favorite nail salon to
use the nail tools and polish she brought from home (so many things could
go wrong otherwise—paronychia, follicular infections, warts—the list
went on). They decided they wanted to be together for as long as they
could, so they transitioned to a plant-based diet and even had a child, five
years after their wedding, so they could continue being in him when they
were gone.
It was the birth of their son that made Adam wonder about Jax
after years without much thought of him. Adam remembered how
devastated their parents were when Jax left after high school. Looking
down at his sleeping son in the crib, Adam remembered standing on the
stoop, watching their parents put Jax in a cab for the airport. Jax had no
interest in attending college in the city like Adam. He wanted to go to
school as far away as he could. When the cab drove off, their father
comforted their mother. Adam needed no comforting. He was relieved.
Gone was the constant goading to do things that were unsafe. Earlier in
their childhood it was racing bikes down the busy streets of their
neighborhood, climbing trees that overhung the same streets, and running
through handball courts mid-game, enraging the men at play. Then it
became stealing snacks from bodegas, tagging building walls, or sneaking
out of the house at night to meet up with other teenagers in abandoned lots
or construction sites to smoke cigarettes and sometimes weed.
The ridicule was ceaseless until Adam accepted Jax’s dares, and
once Adam performed the dares, the ridicule resumed, focused no longer
on his cowardice but rather on his poor or awkward execution: “You
should have seen your face. Could you have looked more scared?”
Adam touched his son’s hand, and instinctively the baby grasped
his finger. Although at the time he couldn’t comprehend it, now, holding
his own son’s hand, he understood his parents’ grief when Jax left. He
couldn’t fathom a day when Bertrin would grow up, possibly into a person
who might want to leave.
What makes a person? Adam wondered as he studied the long
lashes of his sleeping son. Because he and Jax were twins and raised by
the same parents, both sides of the nature-versus-nurture equation, on the
surface, were equal. But the differences between him and Jax were proof
that a person was more than their DNA. And because Jax was a bold
person right from the start (he was a crib escape artist as soon as he could
walk), the nurture part of the formula was uneven for them too. Their
parents worried about Jax’s risk-taking, but they didn’t hesitate to voice
that Jax may have a richer life for putting himself out there. They
encouraged Adam to be more daring like his brother, which Adam, looking
down at his son now, recognized had the opposite of the intended effect.
The more they wanted him to go out and play, the more he wanted to stay
home and read. There was no way he could compete with the audacity of
his brother.
Adam first became keenly aware of this when their father read
them Treasure Island and, inspired by the story, Jax insisted that they play
pirates. Jax commanded the game like how the pirates in the book
commanded the sea. Adam could never run a ship of gruff, sea-battled
men, but his brother ordered men like that into being during their
imaginative adventures.
Then their first day of school arrived, bringing with it new friends
who were more entertaining to Jax than games of make-believe with
2023, Winter / 81
Adam. Gone were the days of the fearsome brother pirates.

Thinking about his brother, Adam knew he needed to inform Jax
of Bertrin’s arrival. Despite how different they were, Jax was family, and
family deserved to know when there were additions to (or subtractions
from) the family tree, so Adam pried his finger free from his son’s
surprisingly strong grip and went to his former childhood bedroom, which
served now as the study, to write a letter to his brother. A letter was better
than an email because a letter bought time. There wouldn’t be a rapid reply
that necessitated a rapid response.
He pulled out paper and readied his pen. For a moment he
contemplated expressing regret that they weren’t close but the sentiment
rang false. He was content and he imagined Jax was too. They were who
they were, and they were each living the life they wanted. So, instead,
Adam wrote a brief note to announce the birth of their son, say they were
all doing fine, and express that he hoped that was the case for Jax too.
When Jax received Adam’s letter, he was once again floored. First
his brother somehow had the courage to commit to a life partnership and
now there was offspring. Jax had no desire for either type of relationship,
but as he sat on his back patio, overlooking the dazzling lights of Los
Angeles, nostalgia scratched at his throat. Sipping his scotch, he began to
reread the letter but the phone rang. He was expecting the call. Another
big project was underway. Making a mental note to send a gift to his
nephew, he folded the letter and answered the phone.
Birthdays and Christmases. Cards and gifts (mostly in the form of
checks). Jax’s relationship with his nephew was facilitated by greeting
card companies, banks, and mail couriers. He first met his nephew when
Bertrin, during his junior year of high school, was visiting potential
colleges on the West Coast with his parents. Jax, curious to see his
nephew, insisted on them all meeting for dinner when Bertrin mentioned
this West Coast interest in a thank-you note for a birthday check. The
dinner wasn’t as awkward as Jax imagined it would be. They had Bertrin’s
potential to fill the night’s conversation. If they hadn’t had that, Jax
imagined the most interesting sounds that evening would have been from
their silverware scraping their plates.
Bertrin ended up picking a college in Massachusetts. Jax learned
this when Bertrin emailed him to thank him for the graduation money and
told him he was excited to start school in the fall. Jax congratulated him
on the good school choice, and as he typed that he realized he was
disappointed. He understood, as he drafted the congratulatory email, that
his thoughts of looking in on his nephew if he went to school near LA had
been hopeful ones. He didn’t dwell on this, though. His nephew was sharp
and going places. That was all that mattered.
And Bertrin did go places. College graduation with the summa
cum laude distinction. Law school. A job at a good firm in Manhattan. Jax
smiled at each of Bertrin’s accomplishments and knew Adam and Carlene
must be proud.
His phone rang one evening. It was a number Jax didn’t recognize,
but that didn’t stop him from answering. His business was all about
making new connections where there weren’t any before.
“Uncle Jax?”
“Bertrin? What a surprise.”
“I’m sorry I’m calling so late.”
“It’s only nine o’clock.”
“Right. The time difference.”
There was a long pause. He could hear Bertrin breathing on the
other end.
“Is something the matter?” he asked his nephew.
“Mom and Dad, they….” Bertrin’s voice broke.
“What is it?”
It took a moment for Bertrin to gather himself.
“What’s wrong?” Jax asked.
“They were in an accident. They are—were on vacation. In the
UK. It was bad. Their rental—” Bertrin took a deep breath. “They died.”
Jax could barely make out his nephew’s words but he felt them.
“I’m coming.”
The aunt and uncle from Boston had passed years before. The
headcount at Adam and Carlene’s joint funeral didn’t suffer, though, from
their absence. Adam and Carlene’s friends had multiplied through the
years, and there was Bertrin, his girlfriend, Dolores, and their friends.
After the funeral, Bertrin and Dolores hosted a reception at the
brownstone. Jax hadn’t stepped inside the home since Adam and Carlene’s
wedding. Like then, it was as if time never flowed within these walls.
There were touches of Carlene and Bertrin—a few new paintings and
photographs of them interspersed with childhood pictures of Jax and
Adam and their parents—but things were largely as Jax remembered them.
Standing in the doorway to his old bedroom upstairs, Jax smiled,
appreciating that Adam and Carlene had made it Bertrin’s room. The
furnishings had changed. Different posters adorned the walls, but the old
Victorian leaves-and-branches wallpaper remained. Albeit the paper was
more yellow now. And still in use but sun-faded were the heavy, forest-
2023, Winter / 83
green drapes that Jax remembered hiding behind during rainy Saturday
afternoon games of hide-and-seek with Adam and their parents.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with this place.”
Jax turned to find Bertrin standing in the hallway. The mourners’
hushed voices floated up from downstairs.
“Mom and Dad left me the house,” Bertrin said. “It’s so much
upkeep. And Dolores and I—our money is tied up. We just put a bid on a
place in the city. Before—”
“Bert?” a voice called up.
“I’ll be right down.” Bertrin gave his uncle a sad smile. “Would
you be upset if I sold it?”
The question didn’t surprise Jax, but his lack of immediate
response to it did.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung that on you. Not so soon after….”
Bertrin cleared his throat. “We’ll talk later.”
Jax nodded. Watching his nephew descend the stairs, he thought
of course it should be okay for Bertrin to sell this place. The upkeep costs
and property tax were too much for someone starting out in life. He moved
to return downstairs too but hesitated when he slipped into nostalgia again.
There was Adam’s old room, which looked to be a study now, and the
bathroom they shared. There was their parents’ room, which Adam and
Carlene had claimed as their own. And there was the closet where the
board games and sports equipment were stored when he and Adam were
growing up.
He opened the closet door. No sports equipment but the games
were still there—Pirate and Traveler, Monopoly, Clue, Life, Candy Land,
Chutes and Ladders. Also crammed in this space were clear, plastic bins
filled with arts and crafts supplies—ribbons, glitter, glue sticks, beads,
buttons. Additions from Carlene, Jax surmised. All these years and he
didn’t know much about his brother’s wife.
His heart heavy, he closed the closet door and went downstairs.
He lingered as guests left. Soon it was just him, Bertrin, and Dolores.
“We’re engaged, by the way,” Bertrin said as he took a seat next
to Dolores on the couch.
“I didn’t know,” Jax said. “Congratulations.”
“We were planning to send out announcements after we told
Adam and Carlene….” Dolores looked at her lap. “Anyway, you’re the
first to know.”
“We should celebrate,” Jax said. “That’s what your parents would
have wanted.”
“Maybe another time,” Bertrin said. “It’s getting late. And we

should clean up.”
“Let’s have a drink at least,” Jax said.
He went to the piece of furniture on wheels their parents called
“the watering hole” when he and Adam were growing up. Decorated with
carved scenes of high waves and majestic ships, the dark-wood cabinet
transformed into a bar when the top flaps were lifted and propped on the
open cabinet doors. Jax remembered how his father used to roll the
watering hole out into the middle of the living room and ask, when they
were young, “What will it be? A round of bumbos for everyone?”
To which he and Adam would shout, “Yes!”
Their mother would laugh and say a glass of wine would do just
fine for her.
“Coming right up,” their father would say. He’d pour their mother
her wine first. Then he’d get to making the twins their drinks. In tall, amber
glasses he’d first pour foamy cola.
“As good as rum,” he’d say to the boys with a wink.
He’d then add lemon juice, grenadine, and nutmeg.
“I hope this pleases you, sirs,” their father would say, placing the
glasses before the boys on the bar. “I can’t have displeased pirates. Not
when there’s treasure to be found. No, sirs.”
Adam would growl then. His pirate’s growl didn’t sound like a
pirate’s arrr. It always came out like a lion’s roar, and this made them all
laugh. Jax remembered laughing so hard that the bumbo would flow out
his nose, and he couldn’t tell if the tears springing from his eyes were from
laughing or crying from the stinging pain of frothy bumbo in the sinuses.
“A round of bumbo for everyone,” Jax said as he traced the outline
of a sail on one of the cabinet’s wood-carved ships.
“Did you say ‘bumbo’?” Bertrin asked.
Jax, remembering where he was, laughed softly. “It’s a drink our
father used to make us.”
Bertrin nodded. “Dad used to make it for me, too. He said it was
a pirates’ drink. He told me how you guys played pirates when you were
little.”
“We had some good times.” Jax looked inside the cabinet and saw
the old glasses his father used. There was the grater too. It was still dusted
with nutmeg.
“Bertrin,” he said, “I’d like to buy this place from you. And
everything in it.” He was surprised by the words leaving his mouth but
didn’t regret them.
2023, Winter / 85
“Really?” Bertrin asked.

“Maybe someday you two will have kids. It’d be nice to keep this
place in the family.”
“But you’re based in LA,” Dolores said.
“Nothing says I can’t have two homes. And I’ll buy it at market
rate.”
Jax pulled an amber glass out of the cabinet and smiled. The heft
of the glass was as he remembered.
Bertrin squeezed Dolores’s hand. “Are you sure?” he asked his
uncle.
Holding the glass, remembering how the brother pirates once
fizzed with life like the bubbly bumbo their father made them, Jax
answered, “Of course. We pirates must protect our treasure, mustn’t we?”
ETHAN ALTSHUL
A HARVEST MOON
Baby, light scatters

Over our heads. Your mom
says it’s hazy outside.
From our window I see
she’s right. The sky
drips with dim red
like the blood grafted
from a scraped knee.
It’s my brother’s birthday

Can’t you tell? September.
The moon celebrates
with autumn again. Every year
You can look for it. I’m
here. In your room
saying I love you. I mean,
I love my brother.
Altshul
LEE LANDAU
I MISS YOU, ELLEN
-those days
we shared home schooling, plus

those days spent playing
endless games—
Monopoly, and Canasta

with four decks of cards.
You in your straitjacket mind

and me in shades of
blue-lipped smiles.
To save on tutoring costs

our mothers paired us together
like two peas in a pod, only we weren’t.
I remember Monopoly for your

cheating ways, sly ownership
of prized real estate and banking.
I never knew your sickness,

believing all your comments like
Pat Boone was your boyfriend.
And Lorna Luft was your true

girlfriend who sent you tickets
to all her singing venues.
I remember towards the end

how healthy you seemed—
together we had improved
over time and pills.
I left you homebound but

healthy, I thought. Little did I know
how blight molded you, how
(cont)
2023, Winter / 87
my leaving shifted you

into an alternate reality,
where the sun always reigned
in your fantasy world of
Gary Player, the golf pro boyfriend,
Liza Minnelli a weekend guest and
Lorna’s complimentary tickets
to all her shows.
Landau
DANIEL A RABUZZI
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
“Human anatomy still has a few surprises in store for us: researchers have
discovered a previously overlooked section of our jaw muscles and described
this layer in detail for the first time.” December 20, 2021, in ScienceDaily.
We still don't know much,

Even things right under our noses.
Plain as the nose on our face!
What else don't we know
In the grip and the grasp of our pride?
I know it like the back of my hand!
The toy left behind by a child at the border.
The line (it's snowing) for food at the pantry.
The shoes (still snowing) neatly placed
Next to a box called home.
A woman falls asleep on the bus, enroute to the swing shift.
The shopping cart with a life's belongings, flying the American flag.
We know this all by heart!
Yes? Rabuzzi
M A PHILLIPS
GROSGRAIN TAFFETA
Grosgrain taffeta twirling under a bloodshot moon. Summer gone,

autumn chill in the air, wild geese gathering in their flight pattern. The
sound of a fiddle, Virginia reel. Promises given under the influence of
Darwin’s incantation.
He set off for the gold fields, promising to send for her as soon as
he struck it rich.
When that winter she realized she was with child, her father told
her, "You find a husband, and do it right now!" A minister’s son, who was
afraid of his own shadow, took her hand, said he would be proud to raise
her child. So they married quickly, and moved into the house he shared
with his father. His mother had died some years before, up in her room,
where, they say, she stayed most of the time, embroidering grosgrain
taffeta twirling under a bloodshot moon. They say she lost her mind,
though she was careful to present in public the proper image of a minister’s
wife. So when her son and his new bride came to live in the minister’s
house, the new bride used that room to hide her sorrow, and make clothing
from grosgrain taffeta left there.
She finally got that letter, all the way from California. Her true
husband, the lover of her dreams, had struck it rich, so included in his letter
a train ticket to California. The letter had arrived at her father’s house, and
her mother brought it to her secretly at night.
So she snuck onto a train, with her new son, and got to California
to discover her lover was poor and half-broken, sweeping a floor in a
saloon. But he threw his arms around her, and they both cried, with the
baby gurgling in between them.
She found work as a seamstress. She had brought along two trunks
of grosgrain taffeta; women would be twirling under a bloodshot moon.
When the minister’s son learned where she had gone, the minister
said to him, "Are you not a man? She is your wife. Go get her!"
But he was afraid, so he bought himself a gun, just a little one he
could hide in his vest. Then he got on a train, with money in his pocket his
father had given him. Though he had worked in a bank, he had lost that
job, under suspicion he’d been taking small amounts from the cash drawer.
When he got to California, he found that man, snuck up on him
late one night, shot him dead, got back on the train, went back home, and
waited. He was betting his wife would become desperate, some back to
2023, Winter / 89
him. What he didn’t know was she had a nice little business going making
beautiful dresses for ladies from grosgrain taffeta, and when her mind was
uneasy, she would go out twirling under a bloodshot moon.
As her son grew, he knew what his mother knew: that the
minister’s son was the killer who had taken his father. Though his mother
did not need to say so, it was understood he would be the one to avenge
his father.
And when he got there, no one knew who he was, so he could
mingle in the town as a stranger. He went to the church where the
minister’s son was now minister, as his father had finally passed away.
The patient son, vengeance warming his heart, befriended the new
minister, wanted to be sure, wanted a confession.
So late one night, at the point of a pistol, he brought the man to an
isolated spot, and revealed who he was, said he would spare the man’s life
if he would confess what he had done.
Crying, trembling in terror, the minister said he was so sorry, he
had lost his head that terrible night, would give anything to be able to go
back, have a second chance.
So the young man left him there, went back home, told his mother
what he had done. She assumed he had shot the man dead.
And, as the years passed, he thought maybe he had.
When the old woman died, he cleaned out her room, gave all the
material to a young seamstress who had recently moved into town.
The young woman had come here to start a new life, to escape the
shame that had befallen her family when her father lost his life at the Little
Bighorn.
She opened her shop right there on Main Street, and soon her
reputation for making beautiful dresses spread throughout the region. Even
the prostitutes who had rooms above the saloon wanted to look their best.
Young men wanted to make her a wife, but she couldn’t get her father out
of her mind, her father who had blood on his hands. She was afraid for
what part of him might be in her.
When she had free time, she rode her pretty mare out into the
surrounding hills. She hoped to befriend some Cheyenne, show she was
ashamed of what people such as her father had done.
Finally one day, as cold winter was setting in, she came upon a
raggedy little camp of raggedy people. She gave these natives what little
food she had brought with her, and with the bit of their language she knew,
told them she was so sorry—for everything. She told them she didn’t
blame them for what some of them had done to her father, confessed that
as a child she had even thought of doing something similar to that. She
knew they understood little of what she was saying, but still it felt so good
to be getting this off her chest.
And she returned the next day, with a wagon of supplies; but two
men from town suspicious of what she was up to followed her there, saw
everything, hidden up in the hills. They returned to the town without
revealing themselves to her, and waited for her to return.
They were the cattle baron’s only sons, raised to believe the world
more or less belongs to them. Simon, two years older than his brother,
Caleb, thought to ingratiate himself with the pretty seamstress by offering
to help her now, showing his heart is big, showing he feels sorry for these
poor people who lost everything. The town never suspected his father had
a heart, knew he believed the natives were inferior, so were getting what
God knew was right for them. But Simon, the older son, had his eye on the
seamstress, was willing to stretch the limits of his upbringing, at least in
her eyes.
So he entered her shop, told her he knew what she had done, and
now wanted to help her help those people.
Money was no problem for him, so Simon loaded his wagon with
supplies, and accompanied the seamstress, the following week, back out
to where the poor natives were camping. His brother Caleb didn’t at first
know what his elder brother was up to, but discovered soon enough.
Though Simon did not know, Caleb too dreamed of nothing but the pretty
seamstress with the gentle ways.
So the next day Caleb went out alone to see the natives, brought
them cases of new rifles, told them they had to fight or they would lose
everything forever and ever, told them he was their friend, wanted to try
to help make this right. He told them the first thing they would do,
together, was burn down his father’s house.
Most of the Cheyenne knew such a thing would be suicide, but
there were a few—just enough—who knew for sure they had nothing more
to lose.
So when the father and the older brother, Simon, were killed,
Caleb came into full possession of the ranch, called in the U.S. Cavalry,
who massacred the remaining Cheyenne.
So Caleb proposed marriage to the pretty seamstress.
But she was nobody’s fool, couldn’t help seeing what was going
on, so consented to the marriage after she had figured out a plan.
And when her husband, Caleb, disappeared, a few months after
the wedding ceremony, the whole town suspected what had happened; but
2023, Winter / 91
the young lady was a powerful woman now. The ranch was big, but in that
large house she kept a room upstairs where she continued her seamstress
work. Women from all the surrounding region came out to be fitted.
One girl, who lost her parents to consumption, went out to the
ranch, offered to work there as a maid.
The seamstress, Lilith, took her in, began teaching her to sew. And
the girl showed such talent that before very long she surpassed her teacher,
and took over filling all the orders for the dresses. Lilith lost track of time,
riding her mare all through the wilderness.
Years passed, and the girl grew into a fine young lady. The town
came to think of her as Lilith’s daughter. And when Lilith went out riding,
and didn’t come back, and the ensuing search for months turned up no sign
of her, she was at last assumed to be dead, so her will was opened, and no
one was very surprised she left the young lady everything.
And though the girl could have stopped working as a seamstress,
she wanted to continue with that. Her dresses were the rage all around.
She finally married, had a daughter of her own, so the legacy could
be passed on. Then she had a son as well, and he had such gentle hands,
he was the one who finally took over all the seamstress work. Some men
made fun of him, calling him a seamstress, when they knew he called
himself a tailor. But the young man did his best to laugh it off, and did
such fine work everything more or less turned out to be alright.
Some in town suspected he preferred men, but in time he married
and produced a daughter, who was eager and had a natural talent for the
intricate seamstress work.
And she was the one with true ambition, wanting to turn this into
something big. So she visited San Francisco, and before long set up a shop
there that employed a dozen women. Soon she was celebrated in fashion
magazines, and church authorities helped with sales by claiming her
dresses were indecent, showed too much of these women. When asked
about this in an interview, she said women must use what power they have.
She said the fashion industry is a tool for making women more powerful.
And the nightclubs celebrated, twirling their power under the
bloodshot moon.
Till that terrible night the Earth went insane, shaking, and it all
came crashing down.
The young woman was lucky she survived. But her shop was
entirely gone. Everything she had worked for was buried.
She straggled back to the ranch eventually, isolated herself in her

room. Her father tried to be patient with her. There was no mother. Mother
had run off when she became convinced her husband preferred men.
The ranch was being run by a worker who lived there and ran his
crew. Father had almost nothing to do with the day-to-day running of the
ranch. He seldom went into town either, as everyone there looked upon
him as being queer.
He would stand outside the closed door of his daughter’s room,
speaking gently to her. But she seldom responded at all, other than to
occasionally say she just wanted to be left alone. She loved him, but
wanted to be left alone.
He would say, again and again, “We’ll set up another shop. St.
Louis is becoming quite a city. It’s not that far away.”
But the young woman knew what she had to do. She would go to
New York City. She knew dreams either grow or shrink, never stay the
same.
Her name was Lilith, in memory of the woman who had started
all this, long ago.
The reputation this young woman had earned in San Francisco
opened doors for her in New York City. But her spirit was twisted, she
knew that. So she went to all the nightclubs where flappers, as they were
called, were all going wild, celebrating the fight that had finally been won.
Nineteenth Amendment: women could vote. Prohibition would start seven
months later, thanks largely to the efforts of conservative women, who
were sick of having to deal with drunken husbands.
But what could have made alcohol more attractive than for the
government to forbid it?
Mobsters went looking for legitimate businesses to launder
money. Lilith was by then twisted enough to feel she didn’t know quite
what she was doing.
Before long, she was in too deep to have any hope of ever getting
out. She was celebrated internationally in the world of fashion though.
She married a gangster, had a baby girl, who took to the fashion
business from the moment she realized she was alive, it seemed.
And she came about as close as a woman might to having a perfect
body and she enjoyed nothing more than the power this gave her. She
helped her mother remember what fashion was about, and this helped pull
the broken woman partway back.
2023, Winter / 93
She thought women’s bodies will no longer appeal only when we

at last realize human sexuality is evil, because we are the creature that is
ruining the Earth.
This strange woman gave her daughter her name, though called
her Lily as a child. As a woman, Lily took back her full name.
In ancient mythology, Lilith was the first woman, made at the
same time, and from the same soil, as Adam. But when Adam insisted on
trying to dominate her, she left. The Master replaced her with someone
willing to submit to his Adam.
So Lilith took back her full name, and began designing clothing
that might offend everyone. Her goal seemed to be to make men stop
desiring women.
This proved to be a marvelous campaign. Women were getting
studs in their tongues.
Men were dressing as psychopathic killers.
When Lilith, she-demon, became a grandmother, she became
convinced she had succeeded. So she squatted over empty maternity
wards, dripping poison.
Yes, this was embroidered into the wall hanging at the Museum
of Contemporary Catastrophe. Some who saw the hanging were shocked.
Some were amused. Some said it was outrageous to blame the woman for
the poison dripping from her. They said look at the historical record. They
said the abuse of women is the history of the world.
Lilith smiled at this, and went on to make a second embroidery.
This one showed the dripping poison being bottled and sold, as a medicinal
palliative. A palliative relieves pain without dealing with the cause of the
condition.
Both of these wall hanging embroideries were so popular the
demand for dresses that incorporated them became so great that Lilith gave
in and set up a factory to mass-produce these dresses.
Some said drip the poison into the political system to kill it. Some
said be more careful and drip it into only those places that are sick. These
said there are healthy regions that must be preserved.
So Lilith began bottling a substance she called Poison, which
some suspected contained a secret hallucinogenic substance. The reason
the authorities were not sure it did was because some people had no
reaction whatsoever to it. Some in fact demanded a refund.
But some had experiences from imbibing the substance which
they said changed their lives. Many women, after taking the substance left
their husbands. One tore her husband’s scrotum off while he was abusing
her. There were other instances of abusive husbands incurring serious

injuries.
But it’s just a story. You can go back to reality now. Just be careful
whom you tell that American Fascism is based upon the abuse of women.
And ten-year-old girls raped by their fathers who must be forced to bring
the fetus to term. And scream their sorrow late at night twirling under a
bloodshot moon.
AL MAGINNES
HOW SALVATION WORKED
Every spring a few classmates would claim

to be saved right after the revivals rolled
through town, hosted by traveling ministers who didn’t
have a TV show yet. My friends’ eyes gleamed
with all the miseries waiting in hell, tortures

that those unsaved—me—would be cast to
if I did not kneel and embrace the watered-down
word of the sharp-dressed evangelist,
a man so holy he should be wearing wings. It could

get very confusing, the greased slide
to hell and all the ways to step on it. Confusing enough
that it all fell behind me. Years later, when
I heard the Mormons performed rituals to save those

who died unsaved. Now I don’t know—or even care—
what salvation really means as long as it doesn’t mean
the grin of the classmate who told me I was going to
hell.
Maginnes
2023, Winter / 95
CAMERON MORSE
MARVEL
I cannot pull out my lap

top or my note
book and insert it
into this moment I am
standing in
without shattering the moment
it is so delicate
precarious
with the leaf light of late morning
flashing
on the desk corner and my son's
Marvel
coloring book.
It is marvelous after all

all of it
I try standing
perfectly still but I'm really
shaking all over.
Just another leaf grabbing

at the breeze.
Morse
PEGGY TROJAN: Writers of prose and poetry will miss the polished
issues of Evening Street Review. Reading Issue 38 is a visual example
of the work that goes into producing a volume of 300 plus pages. I
enjoyed editing poems for the Review years ago. I know from personal
experience how much time and attention is given to each submission.
Compliments to all the staff! https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-
author/peggy-trojan/
STEPHANIE KEEP
EMPTY CUP FULL
You will never be welcomed

to my wilderness
where silence reigns.
From far off

a deer spots me walking
and we mind one another.
If I were not alone I would not hear

the shifting of the wind in the grass,
that sound echoed in my own hair.
If I were not alone

there would be no mouse-rustling to note,
no pinecone known before being seen.
If I were not alone

your presence would draw out my silence
—your mind’s magnetic field too close
and interfering.
I go walking in that emptiness,

full. As in
sated. As in
content. As in
satisfied.
I like the emptiness

when it fills me
always.
Keep
2023, Winter / 97
BLINDS
I will buy her a prism,

I think.
I like the way my own
spreads light like magic
extruding hidden color.
I try to remember how

her house orients itself
and then remember that
while the rising sun can enter
she never lets it in.
Keep
JO-ANNE CAPPELUTI
IF THERE BE ANY PRAISE…IN MEMORY OF AMERICAN,
MIDDLE CLASS
I remember that chorus of hammers hitting and missing nails into

redwood one Saturday morning in SoCal in the 1950s, when all of the
fathers, blue and white collar, built fences in our brand-new, middle-
class neighborhood, giving to us behind-the-scenes kind of folk the
luxury of private backyards and barbecuing once a week, eating outside,
watching clouds as we dreamed of our inalienable rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness
for my four brothers and me a dream of college one day, a dream that
began at age six for me, perched in an orange tree every day after school
reading my Puffin Book of Verse. My favorite was Keats’ praise to a
nightingale—a bird like its song that knows immortal means not meant
for death—which according to two of my brothers and me—the middle
three—meant earning PhDs and teaching at universities—my brothers
back east
(cont)
and me out west and retired now, living with hubby in a house 100 years
old with add-ons from the 70s, on a street with two McMansions, one at
each end, one expanded from a house built in 1980 and one built from
scratch in 2016—along with a house rebuilt six times, only recently
occupied—and a long row on one side of lower-income, one-bedroom
rentals, overflowing with growing families, and an endless array of
Mercedes-Benz and SUVs, and once in a while faded RVs with out-of-
state plates
and a mishmash of fences, from brick to chain link—as hubby and I go

for afternoon walks—often hearing some kid hitting and missing his way
through “Taps” on his trumpet, sending me back to myself walking home
from second grade in my sailor dress, humming “Anchors Aweigh”
neither poor nor rich

just an immortal cloud inching west—
Cappeluti
BECCA BAISCH
PRETTY KNIVES
The unmarked letter arrived in early June.

It was my first summer break home in Minneapolis, two
thousand miles from the small, private, California college I had
attended freshman year of 1998. I opened it and slid out a single-page
typed letter with a company logo in the corner: Vector Marketing.
Dear Becca, you’ve been referred as a highly desirable candidate
to consider employment at our company...
I read further.
Rare opportunity…Only a few are selected….
At the end of the letter was a phone number.
I dialed. Perhaps it was my stoked ego that did so, that rush of
adrenaline from the promise of money.
On the other end of the line, the feminine voice was polite but
vague, and we settled on a date and location for an interview. I told my
parents, who shrugged and replied, “Doesn’t hurt to check it out.”
2023, Winter / 99
A few days later, the afternoon was bright and hot with stark blue
skies. The ten-minute drive brought me to a business district, and I parked
my red ’87 Cavalier convertible. The car that my father, who’d worked as
a kid on his family’s salvage yard, gifted me, a not-yet-licensed fifteen-
year-old, for Christmas and said I could drive it if I promised to follow the
speed limit and not tell my mother. My mother, had she known this
enigmatic job interview was located at a nondescript office warehouse,
may have retracted her “doesn’t hurt to check it out.” She was the type to
lose sleep over irrational kidnapping fears.
I was dressed in khakis and a pressed button-down. My sun-kissed
blonde curls wilted under the heat and nerves. Sweat budded and snaked
along my ribcage. Inside the building, the harsh air conditioning, sterile
gray carpet, and white windowless walls swallowed me. I followed the
signs for Vector Marketing and entered a room with rows of fold-out
chairs, a setup not unlike the church fellowship hall that held my past piano
recitals. A woman greeted me, and there was a man next to a podium in
the front. He was short but held himself with pulled-back shoulders and an
erect head as if working to appear taller, flexing his wrist as if to show off
his shiny watch. His buzzed hair was gray, surely a premature gray
because his white face, with frameless round glasses, looked young.
Maybe thirties. The room filled with other young adults, each with that
brief flash of panic on their face that comes with choosing a seat amongst
a sea of strangers. I focused on the solo wall decoration: a framed poster
with the same logo on my letter, an upside-down pyramid with three blue
arrows shooting off the sides.
The man introduced himself as Kevin, and he had a voice to match
his arrogant posture. As he spoke, I didn’t hear his words as much as I felt
them. Words like important, successful, more money, and pay for college.
College? My parents had paid for it. I was spoiled in that way, but not
without the guilt and gratitude birthed from the constant knowledge it was
their ultimate dream to pay for their children’s college. Still, that didn’t
prevent me from wasting money on Bath & Body Works lotions or fancy
dresses one size too small.
But—but—Kevin emphasized this job was meant for a select few.
I pictured Kevin as a Marine and heard echoes of those commercials I grew
up watching, The Few. The Proud …. My back straightened. I was
capricious, sure, but also competitive as hell and addicted to praise, and I
crumbled under disapproval. That previous summer, after graduating high
school, I’d accepted an interview for a lifeguard position at the nearby
country club. I’d forgotten my commitment to read a Bible passage at my
cousin’s wedding in North Dakota that same day. When I flippantly told
my father I could skip the wedding, assured someone could easily replace
me, he’d sneered with a puce face, and bellowed, “Look at you! Are you
proud of what you’ve become? Someone who shirks responsibility? What
are you doing with your life?” I hadn’t wanted to drive six hours to attend
the provincial wedding. Maybe that explained the buried commitment, but
my father’s stabbing words had scarred me despite his later, groveling
apologies.
With the rapt attention of one consumed by a hellfire and
brimstone sermon, I listened to Kevin’s finale; he left no opportunity for
questions. “All of you will take a short test, and as we come around and
read your answers, a few of you will be asked privately to return this
evening for further training and instructions.” A hush fell, and I circled my
eyes, sizing up the competitors.
The questions on the half-sheet of paper were standard. What
made me special, what were my strengths? I attacked them in the same
manner I did my Blue Book Essay Finals the past year in college. I’ve
never considered myself smart, more like a creative bull-shitter. Especially
when I could write down all that B.S.
I was one of the last persons chosen, probably because of my
spurious and copious writing. The same woman that first welcomed me
tapped my shoulder, and I accompanied her to a private cubicle. She said,
“You would make an excellent addition to our team. Would you be willing
to return tonight for orientation?”
Would I?
Hours later I did so, buzzing from the spell Kevin had cast. I
pictured myself doing administrative work. Vector. I would wear oxford
shirts and pencil skirts, a pair of classy heels and pearls, and sit at a desk
answering phones: “Vector Marketing, this is Becca speaking, how may I
direct your call…?”
The first arrow of doubt pierced me as the room filled with the
same amount of people it did during the selection process—to determine
who was special. Kevin shed his suit coat, rolled his white dress shirt
sleeves, and congratulated us, reiterating the promises of this job: flexible
hours, independence, and lots of money. I was working twelve-hour days
as a lifeguard and swim instructor at the country club. The money was
good. What wasn’t were the entitled pubescent boys who thought it funny
to keep swimming after we’d cleared the pool for thunderstorms, and when
I told one to pick up his trash, he’d said, “Isn’t that your job?”
2023, Winter / 101
Like a sleight of hand, Kevin whipped out the word, “Cutco,”

along with a slew of knives. Knives? I’m going to be doing administrative
work for a knife company. Okay. Cool.
No.
“You are going to be selling these. They are the best knives in the
world.”
My pulse spiked. Sales? I got fired from my last sales job when I
was sixteen at a tween girls’ clothing store. The manager scheduled me
during Spring Break over what I deemed a miscommunication. I’d never
deliberately not shown up for an obligation, even if I hated it. But oh, was
I relieved! No more long hours on my feet, listening to talk about target
numbers, and the store’s overhead soundtrack on repeat. I would get jolts
of dread every time I heard The Cardigans on the radio. My parents had
given me a stern lecture. “But it wasn’t my fault!” I insisted. Yet both of
them, born into poor families, had earned their M.D. and Ph.D.
respectively and found that to be a very sorry excuse.
Kevin, however, made it seem easy to sell the knives, despite their
hefty price tag. “Your clients are getting a bargain,” he insisted with the
authority of a televangelist. Cutco Knives had a FOREVER
GUARANTEE. “Not a Lifetime Guarantee. Those only last seven years.
Your great-grandchildren will be using these knives and if one of them
breaks—unheard of—they get a free replacement.” These knives would
practically sell themselves! People need to eat! People cook! People need
good knives!
By the end of the training, drawn over a couple of days, I was
released into the world as an emissary to save the American dinner hour
and rid the world of dull knives that increased injuries and back pain. Who
knew?
My mother, raised on a North Dakota farm with no running water,
often told me her childhood fantasy was to pay for someone to clean her
house, and she hated cooking. We owned a couple of paring knives that
sufficed for all our chopping needs, heated frozen dinners bought from the
Schwann’s man, and mashed tater-tot hotdishes together with Campbell’s
cream of mushroom soups. Our happiness and nutrition persevered
without quality cutlery.
Armed with this cognitive dissonance, I set out to sell those
goddamned knives.
I was instructed to practice with family first. What pretty knives!
was usually the first reaction. They were indeed pretty, and unique with a
patented double-edge blade. Their smooth, luminescent, ergonomically

designed handles were like piano keys on my fingertips.
My parents bought a set, so did my German grandmother (who
skipped the presentation altogether and sent me a check in the mail), and
my dad gifted me with a large phone list of his private medical practice
partners. He buttered them up beforehand to accept my solicitation,
knowing every phone call I had to make induced a small bout of dysentery.
I’d rehearse my speech, channel Kevin’s enthusiasm for ridding the world
of bad knives, and mentally flinch at his fist punching the air: I hate
quitters! If you’re a quitter, leave now!
At our weekly Vector meetings, the ones meant to rally the troops,
I was the most impressive salesperson, though I had my father to thank for
the contacts, and for having rich neighbors. Upon informing everyone I’d
sold a set of Cutco knives to the professional football player across the
street from my parents, Kevin’s jaw hit the floor, and he high-fived me.
“Did you get the numbers of other players?”
I shook my head at him in disbelief and restrained an eye roll. “No.
I did not get personal phone numbers of the Minnesota Vikings roster.”
Kevin frowned, his glasses slipped a notch. It was the first instance
it dawned on me. The knives weren’t expensive because they came with a
FOREVER GUARANTEE. They were expensive because Kevin took a
cut of my earnings. His gruff, motivational speeches meant to extract our
untapped greatness had a bottom line.
My referral list dwindled. I resorted to asking my pastor’s wife if
I could practice my presentation with her. Kevin’s foot-in-the-door hook
came with a script: I wasn’t selling her anything. Just practice. She was a
doughy woman, twice the size of her pastor-husband, with a cherub face
and choir voice. At the end of my presentation I said if she’d like, I’d let
her purchase anything. With a shrewd eye and folded hands, she
responded, “You did a wonderful job. I don’t want any of your knives.”
My face went hot and my rapid heartbeat sank along with my ego.
I left with a blank order form for the first time and sat motionless
in my convertible. Why did this rejection hurt so much? It’s not like I’d
flushed with humiliation at all the dismissed sales of my previous retail
job at age sixteen.
I had one person left on my list that day. My former piano teacher.
Like the pastor’s wife, she was robust in body and spirit. Her stick-straight
mousy bangs skimmed her outdated glasses. She also had a child with
severe autism who needed twenty-four-hour supervision.
2023, Winter / 103
Under her tutelage, she encouraged me to participate in

competitions, and every year when choosing pieces, I’d sit on the couch
while she presented the options. She’d unfold the sheet music onto the
stand, inflate her chest, and poise her curled fingers over the keys. The
universe held its breath along with me in anticipation.
And then she’d release the beauty. The bench would groan under
her swaying weight and emotion, she and the music melding into one
resplendent entity.
And then she’d abruptly stop, breaking my trance. What did you
think of that one? she’d ask, and my slack-jawed reaction was always, I’ll
never be able to play that, never ever ever …. And every year, she’d
whittle a masterpiece out of me with that fine balance of encouragement
and discipline. And the years I won? She’d claim no credit for my
accomplishment when I felt like a fraud. I’m not a great piano player! I’d
wanted the judges to know. I just have the greatest piano teacher!
She invited me into her home with a gushy hug, and marveled,
like many did that summer after graduating high school, “I still can’t
believe it, already in college!” She had a modest home. The grand piano,
her livelihood, filled the entire family room. You had to shimmy past it to
get to the couch. Her husband was a blue-collar guy, and they had little
income that mostly went to their son’s medical needs. I didn’t do the
scripted Cutco presentation. We were two friends reminiscing, and I
basked in her presence. As I stored away the knives, a deep groove
appeared on her forehead. “Becca, I want to buy the full set.”
My heart shriveled. “Oh, no, that’s okay, you don’t ….”
“This will be a great investment. I’ve been saving money, and I
can afford it.” She literally pulled out cash stuffed in a ceramic sugar jar.
Stuck for words, my conscience railed and dove into my gut, but
I nodded, thanked her, and took her money.
I drove straight to Vector’s building, biting the tears, and walked
into Kevin’s office, body shaking, preparing to announce my resignation.
I quailed at my parents’ impending disappointment and Kevin’s previous
speech on quitters: My children are never allowed to quit something—
ever. Do you know what’s wrong with today’s generation? They think they
can just quit when something gets difficult!
My small presentation kit of shiny, pretty knives was nothing
compared to the massive psychological stash I’d been amassing since
childhood. Those invisible blades sold me false promises of perfection: Do
better! Be thinner! Prettier! Sexier (but not too sexy!) Popular! Nicer!
Faster! Smarter! Practice harder—longer! One. Sharp. Self-critical cut at

a time.
“I’m…going to—take a break,” I blurted to Kevin.
He replied with a slap of the air and a patronizing chuckle. When
I remained unmoved, he followed with a sympathetic pout and a chin-up
speech. I began to cave. Was I overthinking this? Another cut: What is
wrong with me?
My piano teacher once held me as I sobbed before a lesson in ninth
grade, as I repented for bombing the piano competition a week earlier, the
one my parents drove seven hundred miles for me to perform in the day
after my grandmother’s funeral in Montana. I relayed the story to her: a
middle-of-the-night phone call brought news that at fifty-nine, my dad’s
mother had suddenly stopped breathing, how we packed up that morning
and left immediately for the twelve-hour drive. Convulsing in her arms,
the possibility of failure, of disappointing her, blended with my grief. She
patted my hair until I calmed. Upon releasing me, still holding onto my
shoulders, her eyes glistened, reminding me of my father’s eyes that night
he learned of his mother’s death. In a conspiratorial whisper, she told me
I’d been selected as one of the winners. But it was her smile, more than
those words that marked me. The same tearful, trembling smile my father
had given me when he gently touched my hair, speechless in his sadness,
though his words were unmistakable: I’m so happy you’re here with me.
I looked at Kevin, sitting in his air-conditioned office shooting
hoops into the plastic Nerf backboard taped above the doorway. Next to it
hung the Vector poster, its logo resembled less of a V and more like the
sharp point of a blade.
I stopped selling knives that day. And I stopped buying for myself
those invisible ones, too.
L.D. ZANE: Serving as an associate editor at Evening Street Press has

been one of the most challenging—yet rewarding—experiences of my
writing career. I have indeed been fortunate, and blessed, to have had so
many of my short stories published, along with an anthology of my short
stories. I have always known that whether or not a piece is accepted for
publication is subjective in nature, but never really appreciated how
difficult that process was until I sat on the ‘other side of the desk’ as an
Associate Editor. It has truly been a humbling experience, and I now have
2023, Winter / 105
more empathy for any editor who has to make these decisions. I thank
Barbara Bergmann for her trust, and confidence, in my abilities, to serve
the Evening Street Press. https://eveningstreetpress.com/?s=L+D+Zane
MARK JACKLEY
PAUL SINEGAL
thought of you when I saw
the yearling’s antlers zip
across a country graveyard-
looking circle of stumps,
fluid as your licks on Bogalusa Boogie, dancing
into consciousness
one late October morning,
cold sun cracking through
the bummer clouds, a kid
showing me what it means
to miss New Orleans
Jackley
DREAM OF INDIAN SUMMER

in it
I was free to be
the runway
and the plane
and the
blind pilot
of a dust mote
floating
in a plank
of sinking
afternoon
light
resembling
an airstrip, not
that a dust mote
needs it Jackley
RICHARD LEVINE
ALBUQUERQUE
Above the Spirit World, where time began,

above the black-rise sprawl of Los Sandia,
above all the risers in desert-flat Albuquerque,
the sun comes out of December as bright
as the Bethlehem Star, to light scooter-swift
roadrunners and lamed beggars, offering
the gift of giving on this December
day before the birth of the Christ-child.
Holding out cups or bags or just the ask

of empty hands, they offer a kind
of salvation to drivers in their cars
and trucks and buses, waiting their turn
in the turn-lane onto I-25.
Even motorcyclists, behind their dark
visors that mirror the faces that dare
to look, may apply for this silver lining.
So speak to me of mountains still budging

up out of beginnings, though winds and time
pulverize and sink them into the spirited
sand and rock that is Albuquerque.
Levine
ALICE G WALDERT
ANNUAL CHILDCARE VISIT
When the blind mice come to the house,

they nibble on my foster mother’s cookies
and drink the coffee she serves.
With sharpened pencils and clipboards,
they note the polished kettle,
spotless ironed tablecloth,
(cont)
2023, Winter / 107
and my freshly laundered bed.

She displays me with curled hair,
in clean clothes, and polished shoes.
When they ask me a question

she speaks for me: sweet girl
she’s shy and has little to say.
They do not see me wince

when she raises her hand
to pat me on my head,
nor the weight of fear

that keeps my eyes
fastened to the floor.
Waldert
HUNTINGTON STREET
She was supposed to arrive

at a quarter to three
but two hours have passed
and my foster mother says
—Your mother must be lost—again!
Gazing out the living room window,

I usually see her tower of hair,
walking past the geraniums
on the garden path, or just beyond
the hip-high shrubs in the yard.
Perhaps she’s wandering

the city unable to read signs,
or asking strangers
—How do I find Huntington Street?
Last time when she arrived late,

I asked her—were you lost?
She said—Yes, but I found my way.
(cont)
This time, a thought quivers like a hand

poised to question—Is she lost?
I prefer my mother is lost.
Waldert
ELLEN GOLDSMITH
MID-MARCH RAIN
You ask about the weather

and I answer even though
I don’t want to talk
about the weather.
I want to talk about Ukraine.

Not really.
But it’s a spill on the tablecloth,
blotting out the everyday.
Instead of bird song,
I hear the rumble of tanks,
cries of children.
I feel the pain of leaving
everything behind.
My eyes close against

the uncertainty ahead.
I go back in time
to my grandmother’s kitchen table
in Brooklyn, bite into her challah,
sip my coffee-milk, listen
to the Yiddish I don’t understand.
Again and again, The Ukraine, The Ukraine.
What’s the Ukraine? I ask my mother.
A place that didn’t want your grandmother.

Goldsmith
2023, Winter / 109
KEVIN BROWN
THE SWEETEST SCENT
My father died of heart failure the same Chinese New Year girls
began to draw my eye instead of ire. I wasn’t present for his death but
figured it even since he wasn’t present for my life.
We all lived in Kowloon, but we no longer lived together, though
mom claimed that the case even when we did. When he roamed within the
same walls instead of a few kilometers away, he worked for people who
only spoke to him in snaps. One snap for tea. Three to open the door, five
to get out and close it behind him. He never looked at his superiors because
his eyes were always closed as he smiled and bowed until they passed.
They never looked at him because they were superior.
He smiled so much at work his face molded into a frown at home.
He never talked to us when he spoke aloud, and never spoke aloud when
he talked to us. Orders were given with grunts and snaps. If we ever caught
his eye, we had gotten in his way.
Nights, he’d drink bottles of baijiu, then snap his fingers for his
jacket. Slam furniture, slam doors as he left amidst my mother’s pleas to
not. He’d return the next morning smelling nothing like her fragrance and
carrying a bottle of Dynasty XO a few sips shy of dry. Mother would weep
in pain, then rage as she’d scream that he’s nothing but a disgraceful
eunuch. I always tried to look away before she hit the wall, and I always
failed to plug my ears before she hit the tile. Then all was silence and sobs
as we waited for his snore.
The end began with what I didn’t know was his way of bonding.
Drunk, he told me the proudest moment of his life was as a boy he’d
smelled Bruce Lee in person. He’d had the opportunity to shake his hand,
but when the star approached, he could only smile and bow, his eyes
clenched in what would be his greatest ability. “The scent of cologne was
so strong,” he said, eyes closed to stanch the welling. “It was the smell of
a great man.”
Then he left without a grunt or snap and never returned. It took
forever to clear his stench from our home and hearts.
The last time I saw him alive was a Sunday morning Mom and I
had yum tsa in Tsim Sha Tsui. Afterward, we walked the Avenue of Stars,
and I saw him standing in the shadow of Bruce Lee’s statue. Staring out at
the junks crossing Victoria Harbor, the South China Sea like dragon scales
in the chop. I yelled his name several times, but he closed his eyes and
lowered his head, then faced the statue and walked away.
Heart failure was listed as the COD my mother said, because
“failure” was insufficient on a death certificate. At his wake, a family
wearing white cried. Mom and I wore red and did not.
In Chinese tradition, if a son is not present at his father’s death, he
must crawl toward the coffin wailing for penance. With Taoist chants
around me, I lowered to palms and kneecaps and crawled toward the man
who’d always ran away from me. Every millimeter neared left more of
him behind. Clenching my eyes, I wept with laughter at the proudest
moment of my life. The scent of formaldehyde was so strong. It was the
smell of a failed man.
JOAN E BAUER
ALCATRAZ
When I was teaching junior high in Pinole,

near the last Jack-in-the-Box before Vallejo,
I was friends with vice principal Jack Akins.
He was lean & friendly with cropped white hair.

At the same lunch table
I’d devour a heaping plate of spaghetti
while he chewed slowly through melba toast
& cottage cheese.
Then Jack would say: One day—

it will be melba toast for you.
We shared an adventure.
Eighth grade field trip: museum first, then Alcatraz.
Another teacher, Tom, made arrangements.
I asked Tom again & again:
Could you please
give me the schedule, departure times?
He brushed me off: Don’t be so uptight. (cont)

2023, Winter / 111
Tom’s busload of kids saw Alcatraz.

My busload missed the ferry.
Eighth graders get grumpy when they’ve missed

the ghosts of ‘Birdman’ Stroud & Al Capone,
the Rock’s rusty prison bars & chains.
But Jack saved me:

Let’s take them to Ghiradelli Square.
Just let them run around for an hour.
We got everyone back unscathed.

I don’t think you could do that today.
Bauer
THE APPLE PAN ON PICO
When you are seeking greatness, turn to the Apple Pan, a

homey 1940s institution imitated everywhere from Duluth, Minn., to
Bahrain.
— Jonathan Gold, Los Angeles Times food critic, 2013
We found a fixer-upper with a front yard waist-high

with weeds & the original 1934 kitchen. It was close
to Ray Bradbury’s house & we could go on Saturdays
to Apple Pan on Pico then browse the HO model gear
for Paul at Allied Model Trains on Sepulveda.
We’d maybe catch a movie.
In the Thirties, our neighborhood had been a studio hub.

A courtly neighbor had done publicity for Hepburn & Garbo.
I’d drive daily along Motor Avenue which was abutted
north & south by 20th Century Fox & MGM.
A nearby park with tennis courts. Magical & lovely.
But after Paul died I sold the house to a professor
who turned the yard into a Jurassic jungle.
Four years ago, our cottage was re-sold & leveled,
making way for a fortress-like two-story
with pool, air conditioning, six bathrooms.
(cont)
The train store is gone, Jonathan Gold is gone,

but the Apple Pan survives.
One story with a sloped green roof & Fifties signage.
Still famous for smoke-sauced hickory burgers.
There are new owners. For now,
the pecan pie, divine—
Bauer
FRANCINE WITTE
THE WORLD IS FINISHED
And not with lacquer, like my mother’s

vanity table, set with a city of perfumes
and night creams. No, the world has
a blackened veil waiting to drape down
on us, and snuff us sharp and quick. Not
like the lace veil of my mother’s favorite
hat, her pose in a 1940’s photo, her mouth
the one that kissed me into existence.
plumped with red, red lipstick that
my father must have swooned for.
I don’t have proof but there were dinosaurs

once. Maybe even standing where I am
now. Girl dinosaurs, boy dinosaurs
stomping around, seducing one another.
And then one day, an asteroid, fast
and sure and aimed at them, like a gun
gone out of control, like a fire eating
up the California coast, sharp and insistent
like my mother’s come-hither look
aimed dead on at my father.
Witte
2023, Winter / 113
HELLO FROM OLD TIMES!
The past shows up like a postcard. Comes in the form

of an overhead song as you shop in the CVS. You can’t
remember the last time somebody sent you a postcard.
It feels as random as this particular song that sends you
back to your mother asking if you’d like waffles or eggs.
Your father is in his crisp morning shirt, extra starch
on the collar. Your mother stands there, same age you
are now, and she’s sorting through the morning mail—
the bills, the coupons, a postcard from a friend in California.
Your father is behind a newspaper and your mother is saying
into the kitchen air, Oh Doris and Arnold bought a place
in Santa Barbara. Maybe we should visit. Of course, you are
there, too. Your hair in curlers, your cheeks with a roadway
of tears you cried over one boy or another. This song that’s playing
right now, was number one back then on the radio spinning again
and again for its time on the charts, went on and on the way you
thought your teenaged years would, that you would never get over
that boy and your mother would never forget your face, forget
you in her Alzheimer haze, never thought your father would
crumple over one day, folded up like the evening edition.
How everything got piled into one faceless heap
like a song no one would ever hear again without it being
an oldie. And you hear this song and you just keep shopping—
toothbrush, shampoo, bandaids, the last notes fading like the past
being put back on its shelf, but wants you to know it’s having
a wonderful time, and sometimes wishes you were there.
Witte
HAVE YOU SEEN?
Have you seen the mountains

that used to be? They upped
themselves out of earthcrust. All rockfacet
and sometime branch.
They were here and gave us shadow.
We climbed and scaled and bellied up
to their cold vanilla snowtops.
(cont)
Have you seen the trees

themselves out of dirtstuff.
They shimmered their leafheads whenever
it rained. Whenever it didn’t, they shaded
us from too much sun. We scratched
and chopped and broke them into campfire
fingers, their light orange-glowing
our faces.
Have you seen the humans

themselves out of spermswim and ova,
all fingertwig and hairforest.
They squinted their eyes to look harder
at what they didn’t understand.
We scrunched up against them in subway cars.
We smelled their Listerine breath.
We could see the reflection of clouds
in their glasses, they looked into
one another’s eyes.
Witte
RUBY HAWKINS
TRUTH
I do not know my truth in whole

It’s buried in my soul
It shows itself in bits and parts
But deep inside
I know
I know
Hawkins
2023, Winter / 115
SISTER IS A WORKING FOOL
Honey, Sister is about the queerest cuss you will ever see. Now I ain’t
saying there ain’t plenty
more out there but they are not in our neck of the woods. And child, I am
so glad. I couldn’t stand
another one like Sister. Take this morning, sister come down here
banging on my door. I thought
sure as hell she was going to break the dad-blamed thing down. And I
wouldn’t want Roy coming
home after a hard day’s work and find the door off the hinges. He would
cut as many didos as
Sister.
Well, Sister had her hoe in her hand and she was ready for bear. Get your
tail end out here Sister,
she said. We’ve got to get your garden in the ground. Here mine is
already sprouting and you
ain’t got seed one in the ground. I’m plum ashamed for the neighbors to
come by this house and
see your garden patch is covered up in all them old weeds.
Well, they wouldn’t much I could say about that. I’ve been aiming to get
out there and chap all
them weeds down and get my saved seeds out, but Child I just ain’t had
time, and I told Sister so.
But would Sister listen to a word I had to say? No child, that ain’t
Sister’s nature. She glared at
me and said, Yes Sister I know how busy you’ve been. Setting in there at
that computer writing
your foolish articles. You could’ve had your garden out and I see you let
your compost bed dry
plum up to smithereens. Now Roy will have to go buy fertilizer because
of having a lazy wife on
his hands. I feel right sorry for Roy.
(cont)
You ought not to waste your time like you do. What are you gonna do
with the few pennies you
make writing that trash. You don’t get enough to buy you a coca cola.
You are the silliest thing I
ever seen. I don’t know why Roy don’t pick up that computer and fling it
down the side of the
mountain. And you know every word l’m saying is the pure-d truth. Why
you could find all kinds of
useful things to do. You’ve got all that material that you’ve been buying
from the thrift store and I
know for a fact that Aunt Almer brought you down a whole tow sack full
of real pretty material.
You could be making quilts or clothes for them kids of yours. It wouldn’t
hurt you to make me a
new dress, seeing as how I’ve been out working while you set on your
lazy butt. Sister give me a
good chewing out and I thought for awhile she was gonna slap me
halfway to breakfast. It ain’t
past Sister to do that very thing. What could I say? I couldn’t think of
one thing to take up for
myself.
Sometimes you just have to keep your mouth shut even if you got
something stuck in your craw.
But to make a long story short, I did go get my garden hoe and Sister
helped me clear out last
Year’s weeds, and I got started planting my garden. I wouldn’t let my
Sister know for the world,
and don’t y’all dare tell her, but that was the very thing I was waiting on.
I knowed she couldn’t
stand staring at that weed patch for long. Sister can get mean and onery,
but that girl can work.
And I ain’t too proud to let Sister help me. Maybe next fall she’ll get to
thinking about all that pretty
material just laying there and we’ll start making us a quilt.
Hawkins
2023, Winter / 117
CHRISTMAS AT SISTER’S HOUSE
Children, Christmas is over and I’m glad. You might think I’m just an
old curmudgeon for saying
such, but you don’t have to put up with Sister. I’m so tard I can’t hardly
drag one foot in front of
tother. Me and Sister had to get ready for the whole blooming family.
Now that wouldn’t be so bad
if our family wasn’t as touchous as a nest of hornets.
Guthrie and Roy have tried their best to stay out of the way. I feel kinda
sorry for them old boys
for having to put up with me and sister and all the family. But they ain’t
always a picnic either and
we still put up with their foolishness. I tell Roy, Roy I say, there ain’t no
quicker way to bring the
devil to your door than begrudging your kin folk.
Well honey, we duded up Sister’s house up to a fair-the-well and cooked,

honey, we cooked till
we was ready to drop. We roasted turkey, we baked ham, we cooked
cakes, we baked pies, and
vegetables, honey, we cooked pots of them. We had vittles running out
of our ears. Brother was in
his element. He come swaggering in just like always. He said, Sister are
you sure you got enough
food for this crowd?
Sister give him one of them old go to hell looks and said, Brother if they
ain’t enough food here,
you can take them all over to your house and feed them. That shut
Brother up putty quick. He
wasn’t about to take nobody to his house. But Brother is a good old boy.
He does like to cut his
monkey shines and it tickles the fire out of him to needle Sister.
(cont)
Uncle Buford and Aunt Lily brung a whole passel of their grandkids.
Sister told me to set up a
couple of folding tables on the porch for all the kids. She wasn’t about to
have them around the
main table, and honey I was glad. I did want to get a plate of food
myself. I was gettin hungry. We
was so busy getting everything ready I hadn’t had time to grab a bite. My
stomach was grumbling
something terrible.
Uncle Bud and Aunt Fannie was giving everybody the evil eye. They are
persnickety. You do
have to be careful what you say when they are around. They belong to
the Holiness church and
honey, you can’t hardly open your mouth without them calling you
down. Sometimes they make
me so mad I could spit
Sister has to hide all her magazines and turn the TV to the wall or they
will be giving her a
lecture. 0f course they give us all a lecture anyway. They are afraid we
are all going to hell in a
hand basket Uncle Bud told me he was afraid I wasn’t going to heaven
with him. I patted the
pore old teller on the back and told him not to worry, that I was going the
same place he did.
Now Brother’s kids are just like mine and Sister’s but you’d never guess
it at Christmas. Brother
says theirs more ways than one to skin a cat I think he threatens to take
all their Santa Claus
back if they cut any didoes. Brother is as wise as a tree full of owls, I’ll
give him that. Sometimes
he can’t help but knock the wind out of Sister’s sails and, honey, it just
makes my day. Sister’s
always in need of being taken down a peg or two.
Hawkins
2023, Winter / 119
VICTOR PEARN
GREEN ONIONS
our colors are

green and white
in junior high
the local y sponsors
a weekly dance
in a large white square
one story building
girls wear dresses
guys wear sports jackets and ties
a live band plays in a dimly lit corner
of a room with a tasteful
grand dancefloor
a few tables and chairs and along
the western wall is a counter where we enjoy
fountain drinks sumptuous with vanilla syrup
and long slender pretzels
the girl I ask to dance is a cute blonde with
pink rosy cheeks and a mischievous smile
you might ask what is your favorite tune
green onions by booker t & the mg’s
as the dance band plays slower tunes
the evening drifts with the tide
we draw near hold each other close
she rests her head upon my shoulder
we coast along exclusively I guess
once we touch we touch intimacy
Pearn
RON TORRENCE
LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
Jessica ran her fingers along the graceful curve of the antique
rocker that had caught her eye soon after she’d entered the store. She
looked up to see husband, Jonathan, lean over to study a smoking stand.
Jessica shook her head with a wry frown. It wasn’t the smoking that
attracted his attention, that’s for sure, but the sherry glass coasters on top.
At fifty, his auburn hair was beginning to show pronounced strands of
gray, but the puffiness of his cheeks and around the eyes aged him much
more, as well as pointing to the problem if you knew what to look for,
which, sadly, she’d learned only too well.
She returned to the rocker. It was like the chair that her ninety-
five-year-old grandmother sat in the last time they’d talked years ago.
“Grandma, the doctor said you need to eat more so you can get
your strength back.”
Grandma had rested her gray head against the cushion of her old
rocker.
“No,” she said. “My long journey has come to its end.”
Her answer had floated off into the silence of her nursing home
room. Grandma’s favorite oriental rug and the rocker had been brought
there. Pictures selected from a lifetime were arrayed on the dresser of an
otherwise institutional setting, though her eyesight was so bad she couldn’t
see them. At the center was the fiftieth wedding anniversary photo of
Grandma and Grandpa standing together.
A few weeks after that visit, Grandma died quietly in her sleep.
Jessica studied the handmade construction of the chair. The price
tag seemed reasonable for such a nice piece, but the thought of owning it
made her want to throw up.
A sudden movement by Jonathan pulled her attention from the
chair. He’d looked up from the smoking stand to stare out the front
window. Without further hesitation he headed for the door. Jessica quickly
joined him on the porch to see him gaze intently at a tavern across the two-
lane country road.
He licked his lips.
“Think I’ll repair to the tavern for a little refresher.”
“Must you?” Jessica pleaded—once again—with a glance at her
watch. “It’s only two o’clock….”
“You know how such a warm day dries the throat. A cold frosty
will elevate the spirits,” he said, patting the gourd that extended generously
over his belt. “No chance,” he began with a smile that quickly faded to a
clouded frown, “you’d join me.” His voice trailed off.
“You know better than that.”
He nodded glumly.
“Please don’t do this.”
Jennifer tried to hold him back by the arm. He gently patted her
2023, Winter / 121
hand as he moved it away.

“Not to worry.” He stepped off the porch to start across the road
with a gay wave. “Just a refresher,” he tossed back over his shoulder.
How much more could she endure? She’d first asked herself that
question years ago, and here she was still asking. Jessica turned on her
heel to reenter the store, stepping into such a profound silence, she heard
the antique clocks tick. In the center of it all was the antique rocker.
Jessica joined Aunt Anna in the kitchen to help clean up after the
family reunion. Jonathan had joined the men on the porch for after-dinner
drinks while the women at Anna’s insistence had gone for a walk on the
beach, the younger children traipsing along with them, the older
dispersing throughout the cottage.
“I’ll never forgive him,” Anna had said as she scooped leftovers
into plastic containers for the fridge.
“Who?”
“My father, your grandfather,” she’d said sadly, as if dark secrets
of the family’s past could now be revealed to Jessica, who was thirty-two
and had a family of her own. Jessica had stopped midway in rinsing the
plates and utensils for the dishwasher to wait for Anna to go on.
“Mother was such a deeply religious woman. To her, drinking and
gambling were terrible sins.” Anna vigorously tapped a serving spoon on
the side of a container to shake off the mashed potatoes. “But Father liked
his booze too much. And, of course, he would never give up his poker
games with the boys at the club.”
With an almost imperceptible shake of her head, Anna fell silent.
The rustle of waves on the shore outside was the only sound.
“I had no idea,” Jessica said. “They were simply our nice gramps.”
“You were just kids. And it was never talked about in the family.
Different sides were taken, you see. Your mother was the oldest and such
a great beauty! She was always Dad’s favorite. Besides, you were always
a bit of a dreamer. A lifetime of acceptance would never do for you. But
for Mother it was a deep wound that troubled her all her adult life. And he
refused to give in, not even just a little bit!”
Anna snapped the lid shut on the last container as if that were that.
Some months later Jessica found the old anniversary photo from
the party she’d attended as a teenager. She remembered how her
grandparents had stood in front of the fireplace before an admiring family
(ironically at the City Club, where Grandpa played his poker with his
businessman buddies). The photo showed how a benign-looking gray-
haired couple, after fifty years together, stood without touching—not an
arm on an arm, not a hand holding a hand—the four-inch space separating

them, Jessica now knew, shouting out their bitter discontent.
Jessica browsed distractedly among the variegated chairs, tables,
cabinets, an array of ticking clocks, paintings, artifacts of all kinds. The
remains of an assortment of human moments frozen in time. She paused
to examine an old trunk that had promise as a coffee table. But faced with
all these antiquities from how many other sad pasts, she was in no mood
to decorate for a future intolerable to contemplate.
Why had it taken so many years to come right out and say that to herself.
Intolerable.
But doing something about it seemed paralyzingly hard.
Jessica looked through the front window at the tavern.
If only she could prick this! Slash it with a knife.
She left the store to cross the street, but her pace slowed as she
neared the door. What’s the use? She knew the drill—Jonathan would
leave when he was ready. But like the tide of a mountain river, the
momentum of life carried her into the dank beer smell of a dimly lit bar.
Jonathan was at the bar of course. Deep in conversation with the
bartender of course. He was sure to have downed two drafts already, and
the bartender was just pouring another. Neither of them took the slightest
notice of her.
As if clicking off a movie she’d seen once too often, Jessica
slipped outside. What would Aunt Anna say about that little dreamer now?
She wandered up the short street of antique shops and old homes. She
came to the one country store. She entered to buy a Diet Coke. Braced with
a cold sip, she went back outside to turn down the only intersecting lane,
which was made up of a few old homes and an old barn that had been
converted into an equipment repair garage. Several old plows, two rusted
tractors, and some ancient harvesting pieces populated an adjacent field
that was overgrown with weeds.
As she walked slowly through the drowsy warmth, Jessica was
tormented by the voices of the recent past:
“You’re the enabler.”
“Get him to a treatment center!”
“Form a loving circle.”
“He’s just a fun-loving guy.”
“Never saw him drink so much he fell down.”
(Well, she had!)
“Let Dad have his fun,” son Rick.
“Mom you’re almost fifty! When will you have a life?” daughter Sara.
2023, Winter / 123
Jessica put her hands to her ears. No avail, no avail. Year after
year to no avail! Shushing the voices for the moment, she continued to the
last house on the lane, surely the oldest in the village and long since
abandoned. The front suggested a once cheerful face now overgrown with
weeds and vines. The rest of the house had crumbled, the top floor long
since collapsed, leaving only a chimney still standing tall.
She paused in front of the old house to look down the lane, which
trailed off into the fields toward a farmhouse just before rounding a distant
bend. Jessica stood mesmerized by the solitude in front of her. Like these
old houses, like a clock in the antique store that had ceased to tick, round
and round her life had gone. A carousel with the calliope silenced, always
returning to the same spot.
Fifty in two days, was the substance of her life simply decay?
So different than the path she’d set out to pursue. From an early
age she’d been an avid reader. People began calling her “that serious girl.”
In high school she wore round-framed glasses and hung out with fellow
brainy kids. Albert Camus was a topic then, and she fell in love with the
man and his philosophy. She envisioned herself sitting in a Paris café,
beret at a sexy angle, discussing rebellion over wine and cigarettes.
“A woman philosopher?” Her mother’s face had actually
blanched. Father simply sniffed disdainfully as he turned a page in the
financial news, as much attention as he would ever give her. But she was
too determined to let their absence of support stop her, and off she went to
college, ever the dreamer Aunt Anne had so admired.
It was only after years of therapy that she understood her father’s
indifference. He simply didn’t want her. He’d wanted a son to follow his
footsteps into the family law firm. A daughter was of no use to him. A
woman attorney was unthinkable.
Jessica turned to walk back toward the main road, only to stop again.
She knew full well what knocked her off the gender-bending
pursuit of a professorship in philosophy. It came in the form of a smooth-
talking, unbelievably good-looking faux intellectual named Pete, who
swept her into a dreamscape of artists, actors, and musicians that only a
big university could provide. And six months of all the sex and passion a
romantic heart could want, replete with talk of, yes, the Paris cafés and
writing of novels (her) and composing of songs (Pete).
Of course Pete never wanted to use condoms. Love would hold
them together no matter what. So when the inevitable happened not a
month before graduation, he simply disappeared. There she was barefoot
and pregnant, so to speak, and in a deep, dark hole of guilt and degradation
that lasted for years. A couple of good friends took charge of her. They
arranged an abortion, which only made the self-denigrating hole darker
and deeper, and provided the moral support to keep her from hurting
herself. She shucked her dreams of Camus and philosophy, as if it was the
treacherous path that had led her too far away from where she was
“supposed” to be.
Enter Jonathan and his sweet smile that had so charmed her when
they were young college graduates. He seemed to open a doorway to
regain a happier life. His jovial personality and good looks enabled him to
be a very successful salesman, which he still was.
And what did she do instead? Ultimately managed a small
insurance office! Settled for something mediocre to fill up the time. But
her mind never shut off. She never stopped reading voraciously.
Philosophy of course, but science, too, and literature. Not that anybody in
their social crowd ever had a philosophical thought. To them science
meant hi-tech business where you could make a real bundle.
And as Jonathon was out drinking more and more, and going to
sleep earlier and earlier, she read more and more. Jessica pursed her lips,
realizing that without living people to talk to, her reading had enabled her
to converse with some of humankind’s greatest minds instead. Looking at
it that way, her life hadn’t been such a merry-go-round after all.
Jessica approached the tavern to be greeted with the all-too-
familiar sight of Jonathan, blinking in the brilliant sunlight. Pudgy as she
was slender, he tripped down the steps toward her.
“What can I buy you?” he slurred with that sweet smile once again.
But that sweet smile now seemed more like the façade of the old
house she’d just stood in front of. Only a trace of the style and grace of
years ago and now fronting an inner life of decay and ever-increasing ruin.
Bathed in the afternoon light, she stood on the curb of this old town, staring
at Jonathan. The years of struggle and despair fighting his alcoholism rose
up so intensely she thought she’d vomit. Instead she continued to stare at
him, finally absorbing the entirety of what he’d become.
Jonathan’s smile faded as he sensed, this time, she wouldn’t
respond to his offer.
“How about that rocker? I noticed you were fascinated with that
old rocker.…” His voice trailed into the nauseating wheedle he used when
trying to defuse the slightest sense of anything wrong with their life
together. If she would just smile, everything would be all right.
Jessica’s heart leaped right into her throat at the vision of her gray
head leaning back in the rocker, as if he’d just offered her a coffin to sit in
2023, Winter / 125
for the rest of her life.

“Not this time!” she retorted.
Jessica spun on her heel, leaving a bewildered Jonathan in her
wake to stride down the main street. She turned on the lane, past the old
homes, past the crumbling facade of the last house. Giddy and lightheaded
as if she’d just jumped off a bridge, she set out on the long walk to the
distant house at the bend. She had her credit cards and enough of her own
money set aside in her bank account. She’d call a cab from that house, no
matter the cost, and set out to recapture the life she’d set aside so many
years ago. She had no illusions—this was going to be very, very hard.
As she trudged away from life with Jonathan, her thoughts
emerged with each step. After years of solitary struggle, the little dreamer
had fought her way back to reemerge. But youth was all about marching
for causes and painting placards. At midlife it’s about fighting for one’s
own identity.
Sure, it wasn’t just her parents who thought a woman philosopher
was some kind of mutant duck. Almost everyone thought that, especially
the male professors in philosophy departments. She was no naïve fool.
What about Simone de Beauvoir, her existential idol? Or Iris Murdoch?
And Susan Sontag and Joan Didion—talk about influential.
So take that, doubters!
In the previous turning point of her life, she’d hitched herself to a
charming man, subjugating her own sense of purpose to his because she’d
totally lost any self-confidence. The result had been heartbreak and
misery. Now Jessica was marching toward what she’d left behind.
This time she’d place the bets on herself.
YAHYA AL-DEEN
CAME TO MY SENSES
I see hate in the news

I hear the jazz
I feel the blues
I smell the smoke
I taste the booze
Sensational.
al-Deen
CYNTHIA RAUSCH ALLAR

CIRCLING THE FIRE
Because pleasure is possible

sometimes, I choose from the menu
an item with a tiny red
pepper next to it. Just in case. Pleasure—
or pain, depending on whether
I’m able to appreciate sweat
dewing the forehead, sinuses blown wide,
all the tongue’s buds open to the heat.
Sometimes I crave
fear’s skin-crawl—something real
is about to happen. The thrill
ride and me with my phobia
of falling,
roller
coaster
with its rush.
I know the gush of pleasure in the pepper,

of adrenaline in the rush and how hard it is to stop
before the stomach lining’s charred
or the coaster
jumps the tracks.
So I turn and turn, circle

the fire, its warmth and its blister,
so I turn, try to remember unmoving
earth beneath my feet.
Allar
HEATHER KENEALY
JANUARY SIXTH
As I watch the NBC Nightly News, standing, remote

in hand, in my family room as dinner stews, a man waves
his red-and-white flag on the steps inside the Capitol. (cont)
2023, Winter / 127
His PVC flagpole pushes into his yielding abdomen.

His left hand disappears into his black messenger bag,
the only sinister shred about him, other than his position
on the staircase near the Senate chambers.
I freeze the frame and can just make out his worn-down
brown shoe, untied. This patchy-bearded man-child wears
an open, surprised expression and I am surprised right back,
struck by his humanity, a notion I’d rather not regard.
But I want to understand how he got here today,

understand which truth he was taught. From my California dusk,
he feels as far away as a brownshirt in a bunker on a beach.
I imagine when he, no longer emboldened, gets home,

some uncle or father or brother will offer backslaps and close calls.
He will be pulled into a fold, regaled with belonging (ho, ho,
well done!), having heeded some call, fulfilled some storyline.
I remember my jovial, widely loved, salesman grandfather,

the one who, with a knowing knock, sold refrigeration
to speakeasies. The one who always told me if I walked
into a place, acted like I owned it, people would assume I did.
I taught this to my own children, enfolded them in our fable

to give them confidence to do hard things. But we are white,
and we are privileged, and this cannot be undone.
And yet, somehow, this must be undone.
I remember walking on that same grandfather’s South Carolina beach

after he retired, the hard sand barely giving way under my weight.
I compacted memories of those days. I created sound bites
and thumbnails, built traditions and rites of passage, reveled
in those relationships and echo chambers of my own creation.
But really, it wasn’t his beach, was it?

Kenealy
CHARLENE LANGFUR
MAKING A GO OF IT
This is never as easy as I think.

Finding work, paying the rent, dreaming of
how my porch is a flowering garden in the desert.
I grow giant aloes, sunflowers taller than I am,
nasturtium the color of the morning light,
what helps me make it to another day, what
teaches me about survival and the need for hope.
Even now the pandemic comes and goes again,
and always there is more to avoid and more love
to relearn. I make a dinner of yellow squash and eggs,
black beans and brown rice with garlic and pepper.
Nothing could be better now. I wear my best blue shirt
to cheer me, wake early, pick a rose on a walk to place on
the morning table, its flower petals exactly like little wings.
Langfur
STANTON YEAKLEY
WATCHING BIRD
Eldon pumped the pedals of his bicycle, his coat puffing at his
back as if to hide burgeoning gargoyle wings. He wove in and out of light
hung crooked by the trees. Decades ago, Eldon would have made this ride
alongside screaming children, each racing home to beat the dark. Now they
cowered behind locked doors and screens, tucked into cul-de-sacs like
bedsheets.
After a few blocks, Eldon abandoned the neighborhoods and
turned left on Arthur Lindsey Lane. Steering off the road, he pedaled
slowly through a grove of cedars until he came to the clearing. When he
reached it, Eldon eased his aching legs off the bike and stood in silence.
The trees around him arced and contorted in the wind. The stars were
brighter outside the city, the quiet deeper. Only here, in the emptiness,
could he feel her—see her if he waited long enough. He stared upward and
2023, Winter / 129
felt his body sway with the breeze. For a long time he waited. Then
something rustled in the underbrush.
Ahead in the grass was a shapeless creature. Shallow chinks of
light flickered from its eyes and Eldon heard the low rumble of a growl.
His heart beat slowly. He looked around for her, but she did not come.
Eldon stepped forward with his hands out.
_________
The next day, he woke to the creaking stop-and-release of the bus
picking up the Hemenez children outside the trailer park. He lay in bed as
light eased itself into his room. He fought the urge to remain asleep,
surrendering himself to dreams. Reluctantly, he rose and microwaved
yesterday’s coffee, glancing at a week-old paper. The headlines meant
little to him—they might as well have been dispatches from another
country—but the people were filled with so much life, in color there on
the front page. They cut ribbons and scored touchdowns and got married.
Theirs was such a tight-knit community. They all looked familiar even if
none of them knew Eldon’s name.
That morning, at city hall, he spent most of his time collecting
trash in beige offices. Occasionally, he would nod to faces that had become
familiar to him over the years, but he mostly kept to himself. By the time
he reached Public Relations on the third floor, a familiar inertia had settled
in Eldon’s bones, and he was surprised when Glenn Roberts, the principal
of Fairland High, rushed past him and slipped inside Sherry Thompson’s
office.
Curious, Eldon shuffled to an empty cubicle nearby and bent his
head to listen as the two spoke behind Mrs. Thompson’s half-closed door.
Their whispers were frantic.
“The boy, Dylan Lark, hasn’t been to school in four days,” Mr.
Roberts said. “Not since Monday.”
“And the girl?” Mrs. Thompson asked.
“She was absent for two days but came back yesterday. She’s
saying something happened to him.”
“What’s she saying happened?”
“She’s saying someone took him. Something ….” Mr. Roberts’s
voice wavered. “Look, I don’t know, Sherry. This is why I’m talking to
you. So we can get out in front of this. Connie Lark goes to my church,
and she’s been absolutely hysterical. It’s going to be a citywide issue after
today.”
“I understand, and my office appreciates that,” Mrs. Thompson

replied. “But we need to know exactly what we’re getting in front of.
What’s she saying took him?”
Glenn paused and took a deep breath. Eldon stepped closer.
“That’s the crazy part,” Glenn whispered. “She’s saying it was a
giant or something. Said it was over seven feet tall and that it just ripped
the boy out of the car they were parked in—like he was being sucked into
a black hole.”
“You’re kidding me,” Mrs. Thompson said. “That seems a bit
much.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you,” Glenn said. “That’s the story
I got.”
“Jesus,” Mrs. Thompson whispered. “Did the girl give any
indication of what the abductor might have looked like?”
“Nope,” he said. “According to her, the thing was absolutely
faceless.”
Mrs. Thompson took a quiet breath and didn’t reply.
_________
As Glenn exited the office, he nodded at Eldon but said nothing.
It probably didn’t matter to him if Eldon heard anything or not, even if
Eldon worked afternoons at Fairland High as a second job. Eldon imagined
that, as a janitor, he was almost decorative to Glenn—a bird rambling
noisily in the tree above as you tell a secret.
In the days to come, Dylan’s story dominated the news. He was a
junior at Fairland High and a straight-A student who had already been
accepted to seven different universities, two of them Ivy League. An
article in the paper mentioned that Dylan was a first-chair trumpet player
in the band and slated to be drum major next fall. The reporter lamented
how Dylan had been a bright light in a town full of them, all young and
streaking across a sky now one star dimmer.
In the article, the girl he was with—Suzy Brenowitz—recounted
how, on Monday night, they had been parked off Sandusky Road when
there was a loud thump on the roof of the car. Suddenly, the side door
flew open and Dylan Lark was dragged screaming into blackness. Suzy
was sad about the whole situation, she said. So utterly heartbroken. They
hadn’t been dating long, but Dylan was just so nice. She repeated this ad
nauseam through endless rounds of questions and TV interviews, as if to
justify her role as pre-coital witness to the crime.
Seeing her on the news, Eldon wondered if he’d ever looked so
young. He remembered those awkward, backseat encounters well. He
2023, Winter / 131
remembered how cold it was in his father’s car as he and Regina James sat
with what felt like miles between them, too scared at first to use each
other’s bodies for warmth. He felt so naked and vulnerable back then, even
though he nearly laughed thinking about it now.
Eldon watched from behind a mop as students filtered through the
high school hallways and he lingered on those hesitant, rapturous nights.
He remembered the smell of Regina’s shampoo and how his hair caught
in her earring when they finally kissed. He remembered ducking beneath
the window every time they heard a car and he remembered the fear and
how that fear melted with the first touch of skin. He thought of those nights
and he thought of another, just a year later, when his daughter was born.
Innocence lost for innocence gained. Seemed like a fair trade at the time.
_________
That evening, the sheriff’s department organized a group to scour
the hills stretching from Sandusky Road to Steve Cowen’s land. Eldon saw
them as he rode his bike home. In the cold, their lights blinked like
grounded stars.
As the days ticked by without any sign of the boy, Eldon watched
as Mr. Roberts rounded up teachers at five o’clock, asking them to join the
expanding search parties. Eldon would wave a consoling goodbye to the
groups as they piled into their sagging vehicles. He pitied their hopeless
efforts. He really did. But he had learned a long time ago that once a child
was lost, they were lost.
Of course, there had been no search for his daughter.
Probably because her disappearance lacked much mystery. A few
men had pulled her waterlogged body into a boat as Eldon and Regina
watched from the shore. There had been no need to organize search parties
or put her face on milk cartons. Her death was absolute, leaving little room
for argument.
Maybe what drove these searchers, Eldon thought, as they sank
into the night looking for Dylan Lark, was that there remained hope they
could find the boy. Shirtless with black, frostbitten toes. But alive
nonetheless.
_________
Eldon didn’t hear about the next disappearance until over a week
later. He was lingering around a Fairland High common area with a mop
and a bucket when the school secretary told Dana Holder that her mother
was gone.
Dana was silent at first, her eyes hovering in the middle distance.
Then she let out a bobcat scream and crumpled to the ground as if someone
had sliced the flesh behind her knees.
Mimi Holder always told folks in town that she worked in real
estate, but really she sold Tupperware. She traveled house-to-house in a
pink car covered in stickers that said things like, Jesus Drank Wine. No
one wanted her to pull up in their covered drive, yet when the news of her
disappearance spread, people mourned as if they had lost a family member.
Another one of their own gone—ripped from the cresting peak of her life.
Unlike Dylan Lark, however, Mimi hadn’t been dragged from her car in
the dead of night. She had been taken from her own home, plucked from
the one space she thought was safe.
Mark Roy Lee had reported her missing. He never explained what
he was doing there. He could only describe the assailant: small and wiry,
something that could slither through your air vents and slip its hands
between your bedsheets. Something that could wriggle between the cracks
of this world and snatch you where you ate or where you lay your head to
sleep.
Nowhere was safe, Mark repeated like a mantra. Nowhere.
_________
Eldon wondered about the disappearances as he pedaled toward
the trailer park after work. Fairland’s tree line was a modest bouquet of
brown, green, and rust red, but the colors were mostly drowned in the blue
sky. As he worried about who might vanish next, he felt his bike lurch
forward with a deflating rush of air. Steadying himself, he got off the
bicycle and stooped over. A roofing nail was stuck in his front tire.
“Damn,” he whispered.
Although he wasn’t close enough to walk home, he knew someone
on this side of town who might have a tire he could jerry-rig to his wheel.
Lifting the front of the frame, he guided his bike down the uneven
sidewalk, passing through a world of caged storefronts and weeds that
grew through gas pumps like silent taunts.
It was dark by the time Eldon reached Geno Rodriguez’s pawn
shop. The shop bell rang as he stepped into the green-lit room. Inside, the
store held every manner of trinket and treasure. False jewels, welding
helmets, and firearms of every kind and caliber spilled over onto folding
tables set out in makeshift aisles. A collection of tires and tubes lined the
far wall and Eldon nodded to Geno as he made his way to the back. Geno
rose from his spot at the cash register and limped over.
2023, Winter / 133
The two had known each other for a long time now—since before
Eldon’s daughter died and well before Regina left him. Even Geno was
married back then. Now they were both old men. Sporting a faded flannel
and paint-stained jeans, Geno’s entire person seemed to collect as much
dust as his trinkets.
“What are you looking for?” Geno asked. “The bike bust a tire
again?”
“Yeah,” Eldon replied, “ran over a nail on Fourth Street. You have
the same size tire I got from you last time? I just need something that can
get me back home.”
Geno nodded. “Think I got something in the back, let me go get
it.” He reappeared a minute later with a tire and an old inner tube.
“That looks a lot like the one that busted on me last time,” Eldon
said.
“”Cause it is,” Geno replied, eyes wrinkling under his glasses. “I
patched it though. Should be fine.”
Eldon nodded. “Well, I’m calling you to come get me when it
starts running flat halfway home.”
Geno laughed. “Shit, I know you ain’t got a cellphone. You ain’t
calling anybody.” Geno had a mild lisp and some of his more serpentine
consonants slipped out with pillowy softness.
Eldon shrugged and headed for the door before turning back to
Geno.
“You know about that boy going missing, right?” Eldon asked.
“Well, I just heard about a new one today. Might want to tell Carrie Anne
to be careful when she’s walking home. Sounds like people are getting
snatched.”
Geno shook his head ruefully. Carrie Anne was his youngest
granddaughter and he’d be damned if anybody snatched her up.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Only one I heard about was the boy trying
to park over on Lover’s Lane. Didn’t hear about any others.’Course, I
don’t get a paper here anymore and no one comes in, so don’t know how
I would’ve.”
“I’ve heard it around the school and city hall is all,” Eldon said.
“No one really knows who’s doing it, so just tell her to be careful.”
“I will,” Geno replied. “Hell, I’ll follow her around with a baseball
bat if I have to.” He adjusted his glasses. “I’m sure they wouldn’t find
Carrie Anne if she got snatched though. Remember my grand-baby,
Miracle? You know how she was missing and the sheriff and police didn’t
do shit about it?”
“I remember she was with her daddy those four weeks and that her
momma knew it too.”
Geno shrugged and pointed at Eldon. “Maybe so. But remember
your little girl? Didn’t see the town getting all up in arms about her.”
Eldon nodded. His daughter had died on a late September
afternoon. She was swimming in a lake surrounded by a gentle
outcropping of rocks and small pines while Eldon relaxed on the shore. He
had been so relaxed, in fact, that instead of watching her, he drank six
beers and fell asleep, only waking when he heard the sound of distant
thunderclouds rolling in hot and electric from the south. His daughter had
drowned in the interim.
“She wasn’t missing,” Eldon said. “We knew right where she
was.”
“Maybe so,” Geno replied, “But all of them were gone. I don’t see
much of a difference in that.”
_________
When the disappearances continued that November, it became
clear to the citizens of Fairland that there was a monster prowling their
streets.
Michael Adly disappeared walking back from Homecoming while
his twin brother, Malcolm, drunkenly pissed in the bushes. Malcolm said
he saw something carrying Michael over its shoulder and, though he
couldn’t be sure, he swore it was a man with the head of a fox.
Days later, Cynthia Prothro was taken in broad daylight while
running south of Fairland High. She had been training for her second
marathon. No one saw Cynthia’s abduction, but Karen Hackbush,
treasurer of the Fairland High Student Council and starting midfielder on
the lacrosse team, swore she heard a woman scream and beg for mercy
right around where Cynthia was taken. In fact, Karen said she couldn’t
stop hearing those screams—that they wormed their way into her head.
Karen’s mother would say it was likely those voices that caused her
daughter to quit student council a week later.
Finally, there was Aaron Ridley. Aaron was the junior partner at
a boutique firm in the process of persuading the minor league football
outfit in Sioux Falls to move to Fairland. Aaron was dragged out of his
office late one night. The only difference between his and the other
abductions was that for the first time since the kidnappings began, there
was blood at the scene. It was as if someone had painted slathers across
the hallway with a thick brush. Unsurprisingly, security cameras captured
no usable footage of the assailant.
2023, Winter / 135
Mr. Ridley’s disappearance was what tipped Fairland’s bubbling

fear into a full-on frenzy as far as Eldon could tell. The town’s terror
became wild and devouring, saturating the community with questions like,
Are you safe in your own home? and Are you doing enough to protect your
children? Eldon missed the days when he could ask such questions.
After Mr. Ridley was taken, the first precaution the city took was
to issue a mandatory curfew. Next, the schools implemented a rigorous
monitoring system to make sure students were present and accounted for.
Finally, despite a City Council debate where there was much shouting
about personal freedoms, the town began conducting “alibi” checks on
certain individuals. These checks subjected anyone deemed suspicious to
a “random” trip down to the police station where they were grilled about
their whereabouts the nights of the disappearances. Eldon and Geno were
some of the first pulled in.
“You know,” Geno said when Eldon came to return his twice-used
bike tire, “I hope it gets me now. Or you, I guess. If it got another one of
us real quick after these interrogations, it’d show them. They’d feel like a
horse’s ass for assuming it was one of us.”
“What do you mean, another?” Eldon asked.
“Well, I haven’t heard for sure or anything, but Crystal went
missing a few days ago and this ole’ boy she hangs around with, Quinten,
he says she got abducted just like the rest of them.”
“Crystal who?” Eldon asked.
“Just Crystal,” Geno said. “As far as Quinten and I know she ain’t
got a last name. She was just this girl who used to come in and trade me
for some used garbage she’d find out on peoples’ lawns or steal from
garage sales. Real nice girl, but no one who’d make any sort of news. Must
of been why you hadn’t heard about her.”
“Shit,” Eldon said.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean to wish it got you,” Geno continued. “I
just think it’d be ironic if I turn up swinging from an underpass tomorrow,
right after they thought it was me.” He chuckled grimly.
“You stay away from underpasses then. It can have me,” Eldon
said. “You’ve got your grandkids.”
Geno stopped laughing. “Man, Eldon, I was kidding.”
“I know. But it can have me if it wants. I don’t mind.”
Geno looked at his friend from behind his bottle glasses and shook
his head.
“Dumbass.”
___________
Eldon pedaled his bike toward Arthur Lindsey Lane in the

swallowing kind of darkness that hoards entire neighborhoods. He didn’t
see a single lamp-lit window on his ride. All of those gaping, orange peel
mouths had been shuttered. When Eldon turned onto Apache Avenue, the
road was empty save for a pack of boys walking down the sidewalk,
carrying plastic bags full of groceries. Curfew had started hours ago. Eldon
waved silently as he passed. The young ones among them waved back,
their arms sagging with the weight of the bags. He heard a child’s voice
shout from the sidewalk:
“Hey mister, aren’t you afraid of the monster?”
Eldon slowed, turning the bike’s handle bars in a wide arc. An
older boy chided the kid for bringing attention to them.
“No,” Eldon replied, closing his loop and turning back down the
street. He peered over his shoulder at the boys. He wanted to reach out to
them—to shoo them inside where they could be warm and safe with all the
other children. But he could not.
“You?” he shouted.
“Hell no!” the older boy yelled, holding up his plastic bag. “Gotta
eat!”
_________
Around one in the morning, Eldon opened the trailer park gate and
pedaled down the gravel lane to his single-wide. After a quick shower, he
crawled in bed and lay awake under scratchy sheets while the bunched
arms of a hemlock made dancing shadows on his wall. He watched them
ebb against his window until he shut his eyes and began to search his
dreams for his little girl.
Suddenly, the door handle of his trailer began to rattle. The sound
dragged Eldon back into the world of the living and he opened his eyes.
Was it The Thing, he wondered? It. The monster of Fairland, finally come
to claim its most meaningless victim? The aluminum door handle jostled
like a dervish globe and he lay his head down and closed his eyes again.
He would not fight, he decided. He would not flail or kick or
scream. He would let it be.
At the sound of the lock coming unlatched and the door flinging
open, Eldon returned to his dream. He pictured the lake and his little girl
swimming in it—hair plastered to her forehead, parted like a curtain down
the middle of her scalp. The sound of heavy feet stomping across linoleum
nearly distracted him from the way the light bounced across her in fits and
starts as if she were a stray diamond. Eldon focused, and as the footsteps
drew closer to his bedroom, he imagined the sound of her laughter echoing
2023, Winter / 137
up the tree line. He made himself think of all the good, beautiful things
about her as he heard the sliding door of his bedroom open and heavy boots
track toward him. The images left him as soon as he felt hands on his neck.
The hands were cold and when they clasped around Eldon and
lifted him from his bed, he shivered and gagged. The force of the grasp
snapped Eldon’s eyes open and he stared at the creature. Even in the
darkness, Eldon could see that the monster’s shadowy silhouette was not
that of a fox or a gargoyle. And even though it was momentarily faceless,
when his eyes adjusted, he saw that the thing indeed had a face. The face
of a man. A large, strange looking man with white shocks of hair and
smooth, baby skin that curved softly and rose in round puffs like cream.
The man had yellow eyes, and those yellow eyes sparked with joy as he
threw Eldon on the bed and mounted him, clutching Eldon’s throat with
animalistic force.
As Eldon twisted in and out of consciousness, he strained to think
of his little girl in the sunlight, reaching for her memory as he lay limp on
the mattress. Yet even minutes from death he couldn’t be with her. Only
blackness pinged across his vision.
He began to grow impatient. He opened his eyes to look at the
man, who was now sweating in his brutal effort.
“I’m ready,” Eldon choked. “Hurry.”
The blonde monster seemed not to hear him. He continued to
squeeze Eldon’s neck. Then, after a moment, he stopped and looked at
Eldon, as if seeing him for the first time. The man loosened his grip and
air rushed into Eldon’s lungs. He sucked it in greedily despite himself. The
man leaned into the moonlight and looked away, pondering the request.
Eldon could see his face with devastating clarity.
After a moment, however, the man must have decided he would
not be deterred and he lunged back at Eldon, fighting him to the ground
like a calf.
“Hurry,” Eldon gagged. “Please.”
This time, the man let go of Eldon instantly. He scoffed as he rose
from the bed and walked calmly to the door. He looked back at Eldon one
last time, his snow banks of skin glowing moon-blue. With a sigh, he
turned and walked through the broken door and into the night from where
he came.
Eldon lay on the bed and wheezed in ragged half-breaths until air
filled his lungs. When his dizziness subsided, he opened his eyes and
found he was in the same room—in the same trailer—where he had gone
to bed before this dream. And it was so much like a dream—almost a good
dream. Lying there on the bed, he felt he was waking to a nightmare, and
he trembled with rage and sorrow having been deprived his chance at
death. His chance to be with her. He lay there for hours, rendered inert by
the indignity of an unwanted life. Then, when the first signs of light
painted the corners of his window, he called the police.
“I can give you a description of the monster,” he said. “I saw him
clear as day.
“Yes, I am sure. This is what he really looks like.
“Yeah, I can come down now. Let me get my bike.”
PATTI SULLIVAN: My experience with Evening Street Press began when I

received a phone call from Barbara Bergmann telling me I had won the Helen Kay
Chapbook Prize for my manuscript At The Booth Memorial Home For Unwed
Mothers 1966. I was so happy to see Evening Street Press publish that book in
2015. Shortly after I was invited to work with the press as an associate poetry
editor and also have had my art featured on the covers of numbers 16, 24, 27, and
35. Working as an editor has brought a deeper understanding and enjoyment of
poetry and short stories. The editing/reading process will remain a highlight in my
writing and art life. I’m proud to have been part of this stellar publication and I
wish all the best to Barbara, my fellow editors, writers, and artists.
https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/patti-sullivan/
DANA STAMPS, II
SOUND ALONE
“I am interested in my music lasting only while I am alive.”
—Sonny Rollins
With Sonny’s smooth bamboo reed

wet as a French kiss
as he sets and rises on a rusty, rickety Williamsburg
Bridge, a tenor saxophonist,
alone, playing not too far from the Lower

East Side where he
pays the rent,
(cont)
2023, Winter / 139
practicing (or is it performing?) only

where he wouldn’t bother
his neighbors—practical, not romantic—for it is
a serious, spiritual, jealous
jazz Sonny plays, nothing ever written

down, or planned, just
a great saxophone
commotion for the city lights,
the moon … and Saxophone Colossus,

the 1956 album
spins away, for me, listening, alone, so I wonder
if Rollins performs best
solo, wailing for the pulsing river.
Stamps
LOSING AT CHECKERS TO GRANDPA
My grandpa McKean taught me how to play

checkers when I was about 4 or 5,
and he beat me almost every game we ever played.
But he never taught me any strategies.
I don’t remember why we stopped playing

when I got older, 12 or 13 maybe.
I wonder, could I beat him now? Somehow win
if I could go back to childhood—no,
to just before he passed—red or black, play

him man to man, which is impossible, so I imagine
heaven, he and I again together there.
But what would we say? He never said much.
Retired since I can remember, he worked in a factory.

But I have no idea what he made there.
Mostly, he watched TV while I lived with him,
just game shows, soap operas, the news.
We never talked. My fault? How could I

know I’d miss Hugh so much, his latest move. Stamps
HANNAH RODABAUGH
LAST SIGHTING OF THE DODO (MAURITIUS ISLAND)
By the last sighting of the dodo,

sailors thought it was a mythical
creature. They forgot it had been
real once. They lost their memories

of its wingless body nested on
the beach, until they doomed it
into nothingness. It became a

gesture they made to each other
in passing—a kind of dream
they did not remember upon

waking—so that after a hundred
dwindling years, when they saw
the last one walking toward them,

it troubled them, made them worry
that the earth was spouting out
its monsters, worried what

might next come out of the earth—
how our dark fears come alive
only when we least expect them,

until seeing it again became
something uncalled for, uncanny
in its jeopardizing quality. Other

species soon followed it into
nothingness, past all their haunted
gestures—a giant tortoise, owl,

flying fox and parakeet—but by
then, the sailors didn’t notice them
(cont)
2023, Winter / 141
or their absence—how things that

are unreal are often unremarkable
if we tell ourselves enough.
Rodabaugh
HABITAT DIORAMA | GREAT AUK
Now we have
whole prisons
dedicated to
the lost.
We call these
habitat dioramas,
these memories
of what
is passed.
Only we
put the others
on display.
Our own, we bury,

we give away
to the earth.
We don’t make
example and
call it ecosystem.
Surrounded
by concrete,
painted walls,
verdant shades
of ugliness,
are malformed
(cont)
specimens:
a great auk
over plastic eggs,
its glass eyes

leaden and dull,
less dead,
and still more dead,

than everything
around it.
Rodabaugh
WESS MONGO JOLLEY

TASTE OF SPRING IN AN EARLY WINTER CHILL
When I was little I yearned to be big.

But I got big all too fast, and soon I was dreaming
of what it would be like to be little again.
When puberty chased me down I celebrated
becoming a man, until I began to sense
what it required. As a young man
I lusted after the gray bearded sages
and balding biker men who rolled through
town every spring. Now my beard is catching frost
and I see my lost youth in the eyes of the kids
at the bar, who only want to drink and fuck
all night long. I am big now, dreaming of
being little, and so I retaste my youth
on the lips of an eighteen-year-old
who doesn’t yet know who he is.
I know who I am, and I remember who I was.
But in his embrace the two are not
as separate as I supposed.
Jolley
2023, Winter / 143
MARCO ETHERIDGE
BILLY AND JOEY GIVE UP ON HALLOWEEN
Joey is the big, brave, stupid kid and I’m Billy, the smart, loyal
sidekick, which goes a long way toward explaining why we’re
leapfrogging pumpkins in a sleet storm. Running away from a murdering
psycho is an after-dark activity, so a working flashlight, that’s top of your
list. Not your dad’s old Boy Scout flashlight that you gotta smack with the
heel of your hand because falling over frozen pumpkins sucks. Did I say I
was the smart one? I guess mostly smart would be more honest. Okay, so
Joey and I messed up. Joey messed up and I went along with him.
Whatever.
It’s not our fault, not completely anyway. I mean, we are ninth
graders, right? We’re supposed to get into trouble. Ask any of our junior-
high teachers. But when a psycho killer moves into the creepy old
farmhouse across the pumpkin patch from your best friend, that takes
things to a whole new level.
The first clue that Joey’s new neighbor was a murdering maniac:
his name. No honest farmer names their kid Claude. Kids named Claude
are tortured in school, and for sure at Taft Middle School. Then those
tortured Claude kids grow up to be serial killers, which was obviously true
about this new guy. And psycho neighbor Claude was single, as in no wife,
no kids to do the chores. No farm tools, not even a tractor. We know that
for sure because Joey and I took turns with my binoculars, and we didn’t
miss a lick.
So, when Joey grabs the binoculars and asks me what I think, I
tick the point off my fingers, which always impresses him.
“A guy named Claude, no wife, no kids, and no tractor, moves
into the creepiest old farmhouse in the county. No doubt about it, your new
neighbor is a psycho.”
Which explains why I’m running full tilt, dodging huge, slippery
pumpkins while beating on my flashlight. Joey’s ahead of me, hurtling
pumpkins like a track star, which he is, the big jock. Then he goes down
hard like he’s been shot, so I look over my shoulder for Claude the Psycho,
which is a mistake when you’re running through a pumpkin patch. Bang!
Face-down in the crusty sleet with my legs tangled in pumpkin vines.
When I wipe the cold grit out of my eyes, I see the beam of Joey’s
flashlight stabbing up into the falling sleet. I whisper-hiss in his direction.
“Joey!”
“What?”
“Turn off your flashlight.”
“Oh, right.”
The light goes out and we’re hunkered down in the frozen furrows
behind our respective pumpkins.
“Billy, is he following us?”
“Naw, I don’t see him, and the house is dark.”
There was a pause. Joey usually needs a pause to gather up his
thoughts.
“Dammit, Billy, that’s just not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“Who the hell installs an alarm system on a hundred-year-old
farmhouse?”
“Someone who moves in across from two nosy kids, I guess.”
“You’re a funny guy, Billy. I ever tell you that? Listen, we better
crawl on out of here. I don’t wanna get caught, but I don’t want to freeze
to death either.”
Joey sets off crawling across the half-froze earth and I’m right
behind him. This is the sort of thing that might be fun if we had a bunch
of elementary school kids to scare, but we don’t, so it sucks.
At the far edge of the patch, we’re up on our feet and running,
sprinting for Joey’s barn. Normally, the old barn is one of my favorite
places on earth. But not tonight.
We’re chilled to the bone, caked in mud, and, yeah, scared. I admit
it, okay? I stick that worthless flashlight in my pocket and look down at
my muddy overalls. Joey looks just as bad, with cakes of mud on him thick
as football pads.
“Jeez, Billy, what am I gonna tell my mom?”
Sure, because it’s always my job to come up with a story.
“A raccoon in the henhouse. Wait, no, a badger. Yeah, a badger.
We chased it away, saved the hens, and then we tried to dig the badger out
of his den.”
“Wait, why not the raccoon?”
“Joey, Raccoons climb up trees. Badgers dig underground. We’re
covered in mud, not tree bark, right?”
“Yeah, whatever, a badger then, smart guy. Man, it’s a good thing
you saw that blinking red light.”
Two idiots standing at the cellar door, me and Joey, with Joey
poised to yank it open. Just then I spotted an alarm module mounted on
2023, Winter / 145
the wall, red light blinking like an evil eye. I grab Joey’s hand, point at the
alarm, then we panic and start running across the pumpkin patch.
And something is still bugging me about the alarm system.
“Joey, you think that alarm is hooked up to video?”
“What do you mean, video?”
“Lots of these new systems have a camera. You can monitor your
house from your laptop or cellphone. Shit, what if he caught us on video?”
“Naw, don’t worry about it. He’s barely got a pot to piss in. When
he was moving in, I didn’t see any computer gear, zilch, not even a tablet.”
“Yeah, maybe. I hope you’re right. C’mon, let’s scrape this mud
off and try out our story. I’m freezing out here."
Ø Ø Ø
A few days later, an October ice storm knocks out power across
the whole county and Joey appears in the darkness outside my window. I
wiggle the window from the inside and Joey shoves on it from the outside.
Finally, the crust of ice cracks and we push it open. Before I can ask what’s
what, Joey’s inside my room, his face all excited.
“Can you get out?”
“Sure, I guess so, but where to? Everything’s turned into a skating
rink out there in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I notice everything. That’s part of my plan. No power, right, so
no alarm system. Get your crap and let’s go.”
I’m yanking on clothes and doubts at the same time.
“What if he’s home?”
“Nope, I checked. His van is gone, and not a light on in the old
house. Because, duh, the power is out.”
I forgot to mention that Claude has a creepy black van instead of
a normal pickup truck.
“You sure about the no power, no alarm thing?”
“Of course, genius. No electricity means no blinky red light.”
“I think those systems have backup batteries.”
“You know what your trouble is, Billy? You worry too much.
Everything’s coated in ice. Cameras, sensors, everything. Hurry up,
already. No Claude, no van, no problem. One quick look inside that weird
cellar and we’re back here before you know it.”
Of course, Joey was wrong. He usually is.
Even on the gravel road, I’m slipping around like a hog on ice.
The whole world is glazed slick and silver. The farm lights are black, so
there’s no need to sneak through the pumpkins, which is fine by me.
We get to psycho Claude’s place with no trouble. Sure enough,

it’s dead as a tomb. No sign of his van and not a light anywhere. Before
Joey can grab the handle of the cellar door, I get ahold of his wrist. Then I
eyeball the wall above the door, but there’s no blinking red light. I can’t
even spot the alarm module.
I let go of Joey’s wrist and give him the nod. He yanks open one
half of the cellar door and it flops over with a bang so loud I almost crap
my overalls.
“Jeez, Joey, we’re trying to be sneaky, remember?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
Then he shines his flashlight down into that black hole. I thump
my Boy Scout light with the heel of my hand. That’s when things start
going all wrong.
Before I get my stupid flashlight working, Joey starts down the
cellar stairs. Typical. He gets two steps down before he goes ass over
teakettle and bounces the rest of the way down. Icy boots, I guess.
His flashlight goes with him, only it stays lit. The flashlight
bounces and rolls across the dirt floor, shining on bits and pieces of Joey
doing the same.
I’m still standing at the cellar door, banging on my piece of crap
flashlight. Joey’s flashlight has rolled off into the corner, so all I can see
are shadows. Meanwhile, I hear Joey thrashing around in the dark trying
to right himself. Then there’s the sound of clanking chains, which is weird
for a root cellar.
“You okay, Joey?”
“Yeah, I got ahold of something. Get your light working while I
pull myself up."
One more good thump and my old flashlight flares to life. I shine
the light down the stairs into the dark cellar. The beam of my flashlight
illuminates a bunch of old chains hanging down from the ceiling beams.
Joey is standing in the middle of the chains, his hand still latched
onto the one he used to pull himself from the floor. There are manacles at
the ends of the chains, the sort of thing you see in a dungeon. The manacles
gape empty and open, all except for one.
Dangling from the chain in Joey’s face is a human arm severed at
the elbow. The arm is manacled by its dead wrist, swaying back and forth
in front of Joey’s staring eyes. Fresh blood drips onto the dirt floor at his
feet.
2023, Winter / 147
Joey screams like a banshee. Then someone else is screaming and

I realize that it’s me. I drop my damn flashlight and the useless thing goes
bouncing down the cellar stairs. Thunk—thunk—thunk.
Crazy light flashes all over that black pit and I hate everything I
see. Joey still screaming, the severed arm dripping blood, then my
flashlight is shining into the far corner and things get worse.
The beam of light falls on a stack of scary-looking implements:
scythes, axes, a pitchfork, and a wicked-looking blade with a long wooden
handle. The perfect tool for lopping off people’s arms.
Then everything is happening at once. Joey lets go of the chain
and starts scrambling after his fallen flashlight.
“Get down here and help me, Billy!”
Loyalty wins out over smarts, and I half climb, half fall down the
cellar, the old boards creaking and groaning. Joey’s got his flashlight by
now and mine as well. He’s shining both beams on the pile of torture tools.
I grab him by the shoulder to drag him out, but he shakes me off.
“What’s that big knife thing?”
“I think it’s a flensing knife.”
“How the hell would you know that?”
“Moby Dick. Whalers used flensing knives to cut the blubber off
the whales.”
“Wait, you actually read that?”
I yank his shoulder, hard.
“Later for that. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I try not to look at the dangling arm as we head for the stairs, but
I can’t help myself. Slipping and sliding back home, it’s all I can see.
Ø Ø Ø
Never get the adults involved. You’d think I’d learn my lesson
because it never works out. But try to understand. Joey and I are freaked
out, tumbling into the house yelling about how the new neighbor is a
murderer. He’s got body parts hanging up in his cellar!
Pop calls the sheriff even though he only half-believes us. The
sheriff says he’ll check it out. In the meantime, the parental machinery
spins into action. Joey’s dad gives him an ass-warming and grounds him.
My pop is holding off on smacking me, but only until he hears from the
sheriff.
The next morning, Sheriff Jackson calls back and it looks grim for
the home team. I only get Pop’s half of it, but that’s enough to know that
Joey and I are cooked.
“Thanks for checking, sheriff. Right, I understand, a haunted

house. Sounds like Mister Cutter is just trying to be a good neighbor.”
The new neighbor’s name is Claude Cutter? Are you kidding me?
I swear, sometimes adults are dumber than sheep.
“You bet I will, Bob. I’ll be having a real heart-to-heart with the
boys, you can count on that. Gonna be a whole lot of extra chores for ’em,
too. Too much time on their hands, and that’s my fault.”
Sure, because farm chores are the answer to everything.
“Right, good idea. I’ll send them over to apologize when Mister
Cutter has his little haunted house. A good lesson in neighborliness.
Thanks again, Bob. Sorry for the trouble.”
Ø Ø Ø
“It’s freaking me out, Joey. He’s been sitting out there on his
porch for hours.”
“Try to be cool, Billy. Tell me what he’s doing.”
“He’s sitting on his frozen porch, smoking a cigar. Can’t you see
him?”
“Wait a sec, I gotta move to the other window. Shit. Yeah, I see
him.”
“I can’t believe our parents are gonna make us go over there.”
“Right? I mean, c’mon, Billy. I want to stop this psycho, but I
don’t want to get killed doing it.”
“Me neither, Joey.”
“Crap, I gotta hang up, I hear my mom. Talk to you later.”
Three days can last forever. It’s like being on death row, I guess.
The hours fly by fast and not at all, both at the same time.
Slow or fast, the days zip past and here we are doing the dead
man’s walk over to Psycho Claude’s place. Worse yet, Joey and I are
wearing stupid Halloween costumes. The parents say it’s all part of being
a good neighbor.
There’s a sign mounted on a new post outside the cellar door. The
sign is shaped like an arrow. Haunted House is painted on the arrow in
drippy blood letters. The sign is tilted so the arrow points down into the
open cellar doors.
I stop when Joey stops. He elbows me and I elbow him back. He
shrugs his shoulders.
Somehow, we end up standing at the brink of the cellar door,
looking down into a weird glow. A voice rolls up out of the cellar, all fake
friendly like we don’t know better.
2023, Winter / 149
“Welcome to my haunted house. Don’t be scared kids, come on

down.”
The stairs creak under our feet. Two floodlights flash on from
somewhere down on the dirt floor, and everything in the cellar is
illuminated from the ground up. The floodlights throw creepy shadows
onto the low timber ceiling. When our feet hit the dirt floor, the cellar
doors slam shut. That’s when I realize this is where we die.
Four sets of chains and manacles swing from the ceiling beams,
bloody mannikins hanging from two of them. The other two pairs of chains
are empty and ominous, ready for new victims. Psycho Claude is laughing,
any trace of fake friendliness long gone.
“You think I don’t recognize you two little nitwits? How many
other nosy brats are there out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Another round of evil laughter and I’m about to jump out of
whatever skin I’ve got left.
“Well, you won’t be telling any more tales. As you can see, I’ve
got two vacancies for you big-mouthed punks.”
Joey is pissed. I can feel his anger pulsing like a red mist.
“You’re not hanging me from any chain, you evil bastard!”
More of that annoying evil laughter.
“Who’s going to stop me?”
Then I feel the heft of that old Boy Scout flashlight in my pocket,
and I get an idea.
“Joey, the lights!”
I yank the flashlight out of my pocket and heave it at the nearest
floodlight. Bingo, direct hit! Joey snatches an arm off one of the dead
mannikins and uses it like a club. Light number two goes dark.
Now there’s just the red glow that doesn’t light anything above
knee height. I don’t know where Psycho Claude is, and I can’t see Joey.
Then I’m yelling at the top of my lungs.
“This way, Joey, up the stairs!”
I make a break for it, but I run right into those iron manacles and
knock myself silly. I roll over to my hands and knees and feel blood
dripping into my eyes. I wipe my face with my sleeve, but that just blurs
everything worse.
Psycho Claude is chasing Joey around the cellar. I see Joey’s
sneakers flash by in front of my face, followed by big work boots. They
do a fast lap in the dark and I try to push myself up. Before I can get my
hands under me, Joey leapfrogs over my back, then I get a kick in the ribs
as Claude stumbles over me.
Psycho Claude goes windmilling off into the darkness. There is a

huge clatter of metal on metal, then a sickening wet thunk. I start to crawl
across the floor and my hand closes on my old Boy Scout flashlight. I give
it a whack and the thing lights up. I spin the beam around and then almost
drop it.
“Holy crap, Joey, you killed him!”
In the beam of the flashlight, Psycho Claude is sprawled across
the dirt floor with the flensing knife sticking out of his chest.
“I think you mean we killed him. What do we do now, Billy?”
I shake my head to clear it. The adults said there was no psycho
killer, just a misunderstood new neighbor. Fine, let the adults and the
sheriff figure it out.
“Joey, did you touch anything?”
“Naw, I never.”
“Okay, find your flashlight. Make sure you put it in your pocket.”
“Right, flashlight. Got it.”
“Now grab that ax and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Joey snatches the ax and scoots back out of range in case dead
Psycho Claude comes back to life.
“What about him, Billy?”
“Psycho Claude can go to hell, where he belongs. C’mon, let’s
chop our way out of here.”
Ø Ø Ø
Sure, we were in the shit for a while, but only until Sheriff Jackson
called in the state cops. Then someone got suspicious and brought in a
cadaver dog. They say that mutt went half-crazy down in dead Claude’s
cellar. The cops dug up two bodies that were most definitely not
mannikins. The cadaver dog sniffed out two more shallow graves under
the pumpkins.
After that, Joey and I were out of the manure pile and into the
spotlight. Being a hero is okay, I guess, but it’s not as good in real life as
it looks in the movies. Our dads seemed slower to give us a whack, so
that’s one good thing. I guess maybe they were sorry about not believing
us.
I had some pretty gnarly nightmares for a month or two, but the
shrink said they would fade with time, and he was right. One thing for sure
though, no more cellars for me, no way, no how.
Joey and I don’t do Halloween anymore. We’re too old for it, for
one thing. After all, this is our last year at middle school. Next year we’re
starting high school together. Joey plans to go out for football and I’m
2023, Winter / 151
hoping to get on with the school newspaper. Who knows, maybe I’ve got
a few stories worth telling.
JOHN ZEDOLIK
UNCERTAIN LICENSE
First day of trout fishing, and my

dad was still on the banks of the stream,
so grandpa drove me home, a mis-

understanding, to our house empty
of mother or other to supervise me,

at six, so I kept the doors locked
and kept to the kitchen, not fear

exactly but just never before
on my own in any abode, the shock

of the new as I looked at the trees
from the window in early bud,

an innocent green to grow deep
in the season’s course, just taking

a while to overcome the chill and wind
safe, at least, from the blades of winter,

soon summer would shed the tattered
memory of a tenuous time, a cool stretch,

and seven would come warm to me.
Zedolik
JENNIFER DOTSON
SEQUOIA’S SECRET STRENGTH, A CASCADE
Tree height is no indication of root depth.

Towering sequoia roots are broad and shallow.
Intertwining roots with other giants gives them strength.
White Oak is not as tall as the distance between first and second base
but its taproot descends deeper than sequoia into the Earth.
Tree height is no indication of root depth.
The General Sherman Tree is almost as tall as Lady Liberty.

Surprising that it isn’t knocked down by wicked winds.
Towering sequoia roots are broad and shallow.
Link limbs, sisters and brothers, like sequoia!

Roots together, we share support and withstand storms.
Intertwining roots with others gives us strength.
Developed by Udit Bhatia, in the cascade poem, each line in the first stanza becomes the last line in
the subsequent stanzas.
Dotson
SEQUOIA AND FIRE, A SWEETELLE
Wildfires in sequoia groves are both friend and deadly foe.

After thousands of years sequoia are adapted to fire.
Flames kill smaller trees, devour trash, generate ash.
Seed cones open in beds ready for young saplings.
Faster, hotter, larger fires destroy groves weakened by drought.
Wrap tree titans with protective foil, a desperate defense.
Monarchs with scorched crowns left dead or dying, no coming back.
Will we save sequoia or bear witness to destruction?
The Sweetelle is a poetic form invented by Alison Joseph consisting of ten 14-syllable lines with a
refrain at lines 1, 5 and 10.
Dotson
2023, Winter / 153
PATRICIA (TOVA) MCMILLEN

PASSING TIME
At my age some days rush past

without even a wave from a gloved hand,
like they’re in a hurry

to get someplace else,
looking for new companions

or better weather. Sure, they’re busy
fighting forest fires in Greece,

running for President, waving guns
in the faces of Afghan children stranded

outside an obsolete airport, deconstructing
high-rise apartment buildings in Florida.

But I say, slow down, stick around for a bit.
Relax with me on a lakeside beach

watching waves creep up on sand, clouds
collect in the sky. Read a newspaper, eat a peach.

Don’t make such a spectacle of yourself.
McMillen
BEATE SIGRIDDAUGHTER
DOMESTIC
It isn't as though Dad hits her or anything. And I know when he

puts her down, she's embarrassed, so I don't want to be too obvious about
it from my end. Later I will sometimes find some way of being with her,
volunteer to dry dishes or something, even though, per Dad, that's not a
boy's job. Or I'll put something up on a tall shelf or get something down
from somewhere high she can't reach. Or take out the garbage just because,
even when it's not my turn. It's the best I can do. I could talk to Joey about
it, I suppose, but we never do.
And maybe that's how it simply is in the world. Maybe she is just
a little dumb. Although when it comes to anything practical, like doing the
taxes or remembering important dates and deadlines, she's the one who
always gets it right. I know she's not overly happy. How could she be?
Sometimes when he's particularly sarcastic, I look at Joey and hold his
eyes for a moment: shouldn't we do something? Say something? But, like
I said, she's not bleeding, and we don't want to draw any extra attention to
whatever it is that's just been said and whatever it is that she must be
feeling. You can tell by her slack lower lip and by the film over her eyes
that it hurts. It feels like she is getting smaller. I remember that feeling in
myself. He used to be like that with us, too. But she defended us, and
eventually he stopped picking on us. So maybe we should defend her too.
Of course, she doesn't really get smaller. It happens so regularly, if she
would really get smaller, she'd have entirely disappeared by now.
Sometimes I wish I could undo her sadness. But like I said—
maybe it's simply the proverbial it is what it is. In any event, it feels
normal, even harmless in a way. If it were really, really bad, she would
leave him, wouldn't she? I'd go with her, that's for sure. Well, maybe I'm
not all that sure. Would she even want me around to always remind her of
everything by my presence? Anyway, it doesn't come up, and I don't think
it ever will. I sometimes wonder what would happen if she ever turned the
tables on him, put him down somehow. But of course she never does,
though there are things she could say to him. Like that tax stuff and worse.
But she doesn't. And we don't either. Nobody wants to be in his line of
fire. She'll be okay.
HOLLY DAY
LIVE BAIT
The gas station advertises “Live Bait” in its window

so I take my daughter inside with me when I pay for the gas
tell her there might be some kind of fish she can look at, leeches,
or perhaps even earthworms. She sounds the words “Live Bait” out for herself
hops and skips along beside me as we cross the parking lot
already imagining a wall full of rainbow-colored minnows
baby fish darting in a tank, undulating nightcrawlers in clumps of wet dirt.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 155
Instead, two disappointing blue trays of water sit on the back counter
one filled with brown and gray inch-long fish, mostly floating belly-up in the water
a soggy mass of waterlogged worms in the other.
My daughter stands on her tiptoes so she can look right into the buckets
wrinkles her nose at disgust and confusion before asking
if we can take some home.
Day
GREG MOGLIA
AGAINST THE LIGHT
At 8th avenue and 34th street I saw him at his best

Cars at a crawl he sidesteps between them
He takes on the danger with an ease
his hurry so fluid, so natural
A DiMaggio chasing down a ball
out of reach to others—not him
My father is a night clerk at general post office Manhattan
On this night I see him at the corner Nathan’s around midnight
This the start of his work and he looks up and sees me
What the hell are you doing here?
I say no more than Hi
To see Dad is a surprise for both of us
I’m a teacher at Dawnwood Jr HS—60 miles east
with a class the next morning at 8 a.m.
What the hell was I doing there?
I don’t tell Dad that I’m in love
So in love I picked up Rose after her class downtown
I’m driving her to her family’s Bronx apartment
I need her kisses and hugs in the middle of the week
I’ll remember them when I try to teach class
I say I’m picking up a friend and taking her home
Dad with a nod an ok then off to work he goes
Strange what the world throws at us
As Dad hurries off I think of what he offers
Life is what we came here to do
and I see how good he is at it
Moglia
RICHARD ROBBINS
SUBTRACTION
On warm days I sit on the top step and watch cars and the dog-walkers
go by. Sometimes a wave. Sometimes a hello. Mostly I disappear
behind the plantain lilies. They’re green with shade, without ambition: They
thrive when paid no attention. Neighbors blocks from here curse the deer who sail
up the ravines each morning to breakfast on their plants. Instead, I paint

my healthy camouflage, green with never-asked-for sun, and what’s past it:
What beauty I could make of you, World, if I tried a little less.

Robbins
ANTHONY J MOHR: Endings are always bittersweet, but this ending is just
bitter. Working on Evening Street Review has been a pleasure, also an education.
There’s something about reading submissions—even the ones we don’t take—that
helps you become a better writer. And finding that diamond in the rough is
invigorating. Barbara, you have been an editor extraordinaire. Thank you for
publishing me and then taking me onto the staff. It’s been an honor and a
privilege. https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/anthony-j-mohr/
MARIA WICKENS
FOOD CHAIN
The option of eating the cats has presented itself. I doubt I will get
buy-in, but if the children are hungry enough, they might just go along with
the suggestion.
A quick stock-take of our remaining provisions reveals how well
our cats ate before the plague shut the world down—duck and chicken broth,
mackerel and prawns, tuna and seaweed, chicken melting soup…. With my
husband no longer foraging supplies from the outside world, we are running
2023, Winter / 157
low on food and are so, so hungry.

Easily desperate enough to eat cat food.
From there it’s a quick step and heel-turn to contemplate eating the
cats as well. In fact, it’s humane. Rather than let them starve, surely we have
a moral obligation to eat them before their food runs out and they starve to
death. Then we may feast on both cat and their exotic cat food.
We are not starving but the provision of food occupies most of my
waking thoughts.
The children are hungry enough for me to raise the topic, but when
they hear the plan, they are aghast. Even Toby is rattled out of his usual
teenage surliness to protest.
“They’re family,” he insists.
“You don’t eat your friends, Mum,” says Ollie, echoing a
conversation from a lifetime ago in a movie theater when we watched Peter
Jackson’s reconstructed WWI footage documentary They Shall Not Grow
Old.
It was at the point that the soldiers shot the horses that would not be
making the voyage home I tried to cover his eyes, but Ollie pushed my hand
away and surprised me with his pragmatism and understanding of military
logic, asking why, when the soldiers were starving in the trenches,
Command hadn’t shot the horses then to feed the soldiers. Why shoot them
now, wastefully leaving carcasses on a French beach to rot.
“Those horses were the soldiers’ comrades. You never eat your
friends,” I had told him with the confident tone of somebody who had never
been this hungry.
Trust Ollie to remember and use it against me.
“We might as well eat Dad,” says Toby sullenly, stroking his cat
with considerably more affection than he ever shows toward his parents and
younger sibling.
Ollie gapes in horror at his brother’s words. I’m grateful Ollie still
has the capacity to be shocked, even at the end of days. I love him for his
empathy, but I am also desperately afraid for him because a fine-tuned sense
of empathy will just slow him down in the forthcoming apocalypse.
“Your father occupies a slightly more precious position in our
family than your cats,” I snap at Toby.
Toby shrugs. “He’s going to die anyway, why not make the best of
things.”
Toby is in no danger of being hindered by empathy. That is one of
nature’s survival mechanisms implanted in teenage boys, I suppose.
My husband lies upstairs shivering, drowning in his own mucus, his
throat swollen as phlegm coagulates as he coughs weakly with froth-

corrupted lungs. I’m reminded of the horror of the chlorine gas from the
Peter Jackson documentary. Captain Trips is so vile a suffering, surely it is
man-made, just like the chlorine gas.
Despite Hamish’s infection, my boys and I remain healthy, without
so much as a hint of a sniffle. Hamish’s death will be painful and miserable,
but it appears, with their superior immune systems, his children’s demise
will be more prolonged—although just as inevitable.
We do not eat the cats.
We do not eat Hamish either, for that matter.
When the cat food runs out, the cats’ natural instincts kick in. They
become the bird world’s most wanted serial killers. It turns out these lazy
beasts do have purpose when they prey on all manner of rodents. The fatter,
angrier cat dispensed with a stoat the other day. They eat just as well now
as they ever did, with more sport attached to the chore of regular
consumption.
I wonder if Hamish knew what was coming before it happened. He
had a knack for precognition that he excused as frequent coincidence, but
his sudden decision to move us from New York halfway across the world to
a South Pacific coastal town, claiming he had always wanted to explore the
notion of self-sufficiency, was perfectly timed.
We beat the border lockdowns by a good month or so. He told me
of his plans after he had already quit his job at The Institute. For all I know,
the plague was a concoction cooked up by the clandestine laboratory he used
to work for.
Hamish knew cities fall first and are overrun by rabid dogs; cholera
stalks those who dodge the initial wave of death. He probably foresaw it.
We are lucky he moved us to a rural idyll half a world away in the South
Pacific before the world went to hell in a handcart, but on a bad day I regret
it will draw out our pain, living like this. Without him. Without people. I
worry what it will do to my children, growing up in this new world alone.
Hamish didn’t expect the plague to move so fast or so far. The death
rate in our adopted country became a daily update from the prime minister
of Aotearoa and her chief medical officer soon after our arrival. The updates
featured a very nervous man in Air Force uniform hovering in the
background. His job was to manage the quarantine centers we had narrowly
avoided. Eventually the nervous air commander was replaced by a confident
man in army uniform and, finally, a female brigadier, also in army uniform,
whose expression screamed weary defeat and whose eyes seemed to be
silently warning us to run.
2023, Winter / 159
The prime minister and her doctor provided some consistency until,
eventually, the microphones picked up a suppressed sneeze. The death rate
hit 3.5 million by the time the television stopped broadcasting. Seventy
percent of the country dead. Including the military commanders, the prime
minister, and her medical advisor.
By the time the plague caught up with Hamish, our self-imposed
isolation had bought us enough time to divine a well, set up a wind-powered
generator providing refrigeration for my insulin, and plant crops. Hamish
picked clean the remnant dry supplies of the nearest city, but now cornstalks
shyly push through the earth; carrots, spinach, and (to his youngest child’s
dismay) beetroot are ready for harvest.
With this in place, he died and we are absolutely alone. No
neighbors. No internet. No television news or radio.
For a while I hoped there might be an indestructible Homer
Simpson keeping the buttons pushed and the dials turning, but there is no
outside world now. Instead we have an endless list of chores to accomplish
during daylight hours to stay alive a little longer.
Night brings the nightmares of what next. All three of us cry out in
our sleep, and in the morning, I find Ollie curled up at the end of the bed,
apparently thinking I can offer him protection against the rough beast
slouching its way toward us. William Butler Yeats had the same
precognition as my husband. He knew the center would not hold. Things
have indeed fallen apart.
Although we are human and, because we know no better, we
persist.
Toby taught himself to drive and evidently inherited my immunity
and his father’s mechanical abilities because the generator continues to
harvest gales that frequently blow through, and he has kept the ancient farm
truck running. Once a week Toby leaves us and returns with whatever he
has foraged from nearby farms. He promises to be home by nightfall, which
limits the distance he can travel, but over time he has brought home
chickens, calves, and three goats.
Ollie desperately wants a dog, but Toby says every dog he sees has
reverted to wolf.
Even before the plague, when I look back, it was obvious we were
facing apocalypse pretty soon and here we are. Apocalypse now. Mankind’s
time is up.
Several chicks run around a coop as the cats eye them up. The
concept of family does not exist for our cats. I suspect they will eat me when
my time comes. Toby maintains an admirable emotional distance from the
farm animals and has added butchery to his self-taught skills. He is only a
boy, sixteen; it breaks my heart what this has done to him. But Toby’s efforts
and self-imposed emotional armor will ensure that we survive long enough
to see the next species dominate on this merry-go-round of existence.
We live a long way from any centers of technological excellence,
so we have not seen the rise of artificial intelligence. Yet. I’m no kick-ass
Sarah Connor. Humanity really has no future if I’m the last female warrior
left on the planet.
Toby has not seen any live humans on any of his expeditions,
although a helicopter passes overhead twice a day, so we know we are not
the only survivors.
Before the plague tore through the village of Makara, there were
rumors of a foreign military base on one of the islands off the coast. The
marking on the helicopters is US military, although once I caught a glimpse
of a familiar logo on the side of the chopper: The Institute, the same shady
company Hamish used to work for. It had military ties and a close
connection with the Agency. Yes, that Agency.
If The Institute are searching for human life, I can imagine what
they plan for us next. When they find us The Institute’s scientists will
harvest our immunity. Drain us of our blood for the greater good.
On Toby’s first trip months ago, he returned with a supply of
insulin, and when that supply is exhausted, I will die because in the outside
world, there is no refrigeration. Any insulin stock has spoiled by now.
I have deferred the conversation about whether to eat Mommy, but
I would not hold a grudge against my children if they barbecued me to stay
alive.
I might object if they fed me to the cats. Toby has a strong sense of
irony and a pitch-black sense of humor, so it’s a strong possibility.
Lately the helicopter is passing by more slowly, circling as if
searching for something specific, like a hawk centering in on three small
rodents. I warn Toby not to be careless, but as winter turns to summer, he
stays away longer and explores farther. He still hasn’t encountered human
life, but he returns with only slightly weevilled flour and rice, bird-pecked
fruit and rodent-chewed vegetable crops, and more chickens. Our little farm
grows weekly. Eventually he finds a piglet.
Ollie squeals with delight and immediately names it Boston.
Toby and I look at each other in dismay as thoughts of pork ribs and
crackling vanish. You can’t eat anything that has a name. That’s the second
rule of farming.
The first rule is never name the livestock.
2023, Winter / 161
Boston is, without doubt, the ugliest piglet imaginable. No Babe or

Wilbur, he is a rust-orange color with tiny little eyes and an oversensitive
snout. He will eat anything and eats a great deal, so he grows rapidly. The
cats sensibly keep out of his way, but Boston and Ollie are inseparable.
Ollie asks if they can go with Toby on one of his expeditions to find
a library or a bookstore to learn how to raise pigs. Toby only agrees because
he is looking for a book with instructions on how to build a whisky still. He
claims it is a backup for when the petrol supplies run out so we can convert
the truck to run on ethanol. I make him promise he will not go blind on wood
alcohol and overlook the fact he is a teenager, and his moonshine endeavor
has nothing whatsoever to do with alternative fuel options.
Ollie learns that Boston is a Duroc pig and as intelligent as a
chimpanzee. At which point Toby comments Ollie and Boston have a lot in
common.
Without warning Boston charges at Toby. Toby leaps out of the
way. I put this down to coincidence, not intelligence, but afterward Toby is
careful not to antagonize his brother when the pig is listening.
Ollie insists that Boston must stay in his room. I agree so long as
Boston is toilet trained. Ollie calls my bluff, rewarding Boston with slices
of apple every time he uses the litter box, and thus Boston becomes Ollie’s
roommate as well as his best friend.
Boston nears four hundred pounds when he finally stops growing. I
try not to convert Boston’s weight to bacon rashers.
And it is Boston who gives the warning, like a well-trained guard
dog, when danger approaches. He suddenly gazes skyward and emits a
louder-than-usual grunt. He hears the helicopter before we do and gives us
the warning to hide.
The helicopter passes overhead. Toby planned a different route
today, around the coastline. He is searching more widely for a hospital or a
pharmacy in the hope some emergency generator is keeping the insulin cold.
Our insulin stock is depleted. I follow the helicopter’s path and realize it is
heading in the direction of the old coastal road.
The cats noticed Toby packed up the fishing net, so they are home
by dusk, pacing anxiously, waiting for Toby and fish tails, but as it darkens
to night, there is still no sign of Toby. The cats make do with a starling and
a wood pigeon. My concern at Toby’s non-arrival is not as easily alleviated
as the cats’.
Lighting the candles, I sit at the table, enduring an agony of waiting,
and try to hold back my worst thoughts. Perhaps the truck got stuck in sand;
perhaps, seeing darkness approach, he decided to stay the night in the next
town and travel back tomorrow.

The pictures looping in my brain imagine the helicopter spotted
him, and his life is slowly draining away as Institute scientists look for a
DNA sequence that will give them a cure too late. Civilization is extinct but
they are more military than science and will follow orders regardless of the
futility of their actions.
Oh, Toby, you promised to be careful. Without Toby we will not
survive. Without Toby I don’t want to carry on.
Boston lays his head on my lap, feeling Toby’s absence and my
worry. Then he gives a loud grunt and trudges back to Ollie’s room. I fall
asleep at the table, awaking only when I hear a truck pull in at dawn.
I race to the door and fling it open to demand a promise to never,
never make me worry this way again, but it is not Toby. It is a black,
armored vehicle and a man in US Army camouflage gear. He exits the
vehicle and approaches the house, not surprised to find us here.
“I come in peace,” he says with a wide smile. His teeth are too
white. He is not local.
“That usually means shoot to kill,” says Ollie, materializing next to
me.
“My name is Captain Hollister; my friends call me Cap.”
“Pleased to meet you, Captain Hollister,” I say, drawing a line
immediately. He is not a friend.
“We have been looking for survivors. There are not many of you.
We can offer you shelter and decent grub.”
“I’d prefer to stay here,” I tell the captain.
“Let me rephrase,” he says. “You and your child will come with me
now.”
He reaches for the rifle slung over his shoulder as Ollie flings
himself toward the man, thinking to protect me, before I can hold him back
and remind him his mother does not need protection. Captain Hollister picks
him up and throws him to the ground.
Boston’s hooves clatter down the hallway at a fast pace. I step out
of the way as he heaves himself at the man who harmed his boy. I tell Ollie
to wait inside. He should not see how this will play out.
Ollie weeps with worry for his pig, but the pig is in no danger
whatsoever. Captain Hollister has no chance to reach for his weapon, and
the echo of bones cracking as Boston tramples back and forth over the body
is horrifying.
Finally Boston moves away from the trampled wreck of human
flesh in search of Ollie inside. A truck pulls up and Toby leaps out.
2023, Winter / 163
“I stayed hidden last night. I knew they were coming, and I didn’t
want to lead them here.…” Toby comes to a halt. “Oh,” he says, looking at
the body, and adds, with classic Toby understatement, “That doesn’t look
good.”
“He assaulted Ollie,” I say.
“Big mistake,” says Toby with a chuckle.
“We should hide the body in case more come.” I lean against the
house, shivering as shock kicks in. Although it’s not shock. My mouth is
dry. My breath is sweet. A headache beats at my brain. It’s been about
twenty-four hours since that last shot of insulin.
“I’ll take care of it,” says Toby. “Did he tell you his name?”
“Only his rank,” I answer. “We weren’t on first-name terms.”
“Well then,” says Toby matter-of-factly, “he’s not a friend and he’s
not family.”
He drags the body toward Boston’s trough and whistles to Boston.
“Chow time, piglet.”
I weave my way inside and collapse on my bed, breathing fast. I
couldn’t imagine how Ollie would survive if I wasn’t here to protect him.
Now I don’t need to worry. Toby made it back and so long as
Boston is nearby, Ollie has a 400-pound devoted protector.
As I lie on my bed, feeling weaker and more confused every
moment, Boston makes his way into my room and nuzzles my hand.
I look him straight in his beady little pig eyes. “I will haunt you if
you eat me, pig.” Boston snorts a grunt that could be mistaken for a laugh.
“Look after my boys.”
He licks my hand. I take his intent to be friendship rather than
anticipation of another human smorgasbord.
I close my eyes. Toby has his father’s instincts. He will know it is
time to leave, and he will take Ollie, Boston, and the cats. They need to run
fast and run far as evil approaches.
I slip into darkness. Unconscious in a diabetic coma, I see glowing
red eyes, and a shadowy male form beckons me from the shadows, his wolf
snarls daring me to turn away.
I have no intention of turning away from a fight against evil.
If it buys my children a few extra hours to run further away, I will
resist. After all, if my pig can take down a captain of the US military, I am
confident I will be able to go a few rounds with evil incarnate. The local
language of our adopted home has a name for a female warrior—Wahine
Toa. I try it on for size, and I like the fit of the name.
I roll up my sleeves and dig in for the fight ahead.
FRANK JAMISON
JAPANESE MAPLE CLOSE BESIDE THE HOUSE
The shape is the set of a soft bend of branches,

beckoned groundward as we all are,
rooted in the infinite, or so it seems.
And just at evening, when dusk

starts its turn toward dark and small winds
eddy around the house and the last wren
goes to roost, the feeling is of stoppage.
The world goes on hold, the branches

lift and settle like fingers on black and white
keys, pianissimo then diminuendo
to a rustle, and soft scrapes against the house
like mouse feet in the lathing.
Memory bends like this across time,

from earth to earth, so to speak,
beckons across that small space
between now and then to hold us.
Whatever we can recall, we reach to touch.
We rise up in the morning, and at night,

when the wind whispers, we lie down
to dream our dreams and replay our days,
to rescore our music to the soft brush
of maple leaves against the siding.
Jamison
HONEY
I am baking bread sweetened with honey.

The jar on the counter is lustrous in the slant light.
Its contents drip, lush and warm, and I swipe a drop with my finger.
My eyes close in bliss at the taste, as if lips and tongues are met in passion,
bodies clinging in the warm, honeyed moment of hearts spilling sweetness.
Jamison
2023, Winter / 165
JOAN PRESLEY
PARADE REST
We stand beside our bunks in the dark of early morning, recruits

in basic training, week two of twenty-four. We fold panties—tighty-
whities, female version—into triangles four inches at the hypotenuse in
accordance with Army standards and place them just so into lockers for
inspection. Drill sergeant on board, says the recruit nearest the door, the
door that never closes so he might catch us unaware; although we hear
him, always hear him as he yells at one room then another, building
tension as he flanks us on maneuver, crawling closer inch by inch. We
cock our heads to listen as he berates our cohorts down the hall. He
sounds angry, always angry, and we know that it’s an act, but it’s
convincing, so we try, we really do, to make him happy. We hang our
blouses buttons east above the T-shirts, Gestapo brown, that we wear
beneath our uniforms, battle dress, a camouflage mostly drab, mostly
baggy, most unflattering to us as women, our natural curves.
Except we are no longer women; the Army calls us females, as
pejorative, or because woman means wife and mother, the person they go
home to when they’ve finished with us for the day. We are females, little
bitches, Army dogs. We are the lost. We are the lonely. We are the
nothing-left-to-lose, and they tell us we won’t make it, but we will.
We rise, we shine, we tuck trousers into boots, boots that give us
blisters because they’re cheap and the wrong size. Yet we keep
marching, we keep shooting, we keep crawling through the mud. We
sing cadence, left, right, left. The ritual grounds us, makes us whole, but
we don’t know that (yet), don’t know the power of people come together,
based on movement and its music. We just do what we are told, first one
foot, then another, and the marching soothes our bodies, and the singing
soothes our souls, and by the end of these long, very long, twenty-four
weeks we could be run over by a tanker, and we’d pop up, the whole
platoon, and march forward double time or backwards with precision like
Ginger Rogers.
When we graduate, because yes we do, we wear a solid, olive
green, a uniform that hugs our bodies, our natural curves. We look good
and we know it as we stand proud at full attention in front of families if
we have them and they can afford to travel on icy roads from the deep
south or the rustbelt wastelands where most of us come from, the Army
the quickest or the only way out of our going nowhere.
(cont)
The head drill calls Parade Rest real slow and loud. We move
our right foot away from our left and clasp our hands behind our backs.
We stand, semi-relaxed and silent, while we listen to the bigwigs, whom
we haven’t met and never will, tell the audience that we are soldiers and
will go far in today’s Army, which isn’t true, and we all know it. It is
1983. We are non-combatants, always subordinate to those who do the
fighting, the few, the brave.
Afterwards, we meander—for the first time since we got here—
to the commissary, where we buy beer if we are old enough, donuts if we
are not. Then we pack our Army issue onto our backs, march one last
time together, and board busses to far-flung bases primed for battle, the
familiar kind.
Presley
JUDITH AMBER
THE DORMOUSE IN THE GIN BOTTLE
Stop drinking! We all said that,

No effect, another ice cube hit
The double gin and tonic.
Stop drinking, I miss you!
You’re not listening. Don’t
You know Cathy is my best friend?
I cried last week at lunchtime
When she wouldn’t eat with me.
Do you know I love red scarfs,
And pray for blonde hair, no freckles?
Stop drinking, I hate you! Did I say that?

No, never, but we all took potshots:
The dormouse fell into the teapot again
And the Jack of Diamonds has gone missing.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 167
Stop Drinking! For the hundredth time

As Mom hid your drug of choice
Which you found in just ten minutes.
I picture you plastered and snoring
On the living room floor, with your night shirt
Hitched up around your balls,
And you in your law office,
Protected by your alibi,
“I never missed a day of work.”
I love you, did I say that?
Yes, once in the hospital
Where you lay in chemo-poisoned dreams,
Of floating down the Hudson River
On a toilet seat saying, “Why am I here?”
And “Get me off this thing!”
I waited until your nurse left and
As your eyes fluttered open,
I told you that I loved you
And that you were a great father.
That might be a white lie, I still
Don’t know, but no harm was done,
And it sure was easier to part.
With a kind word since next morning
You were gone.
Amber
MEASURING MY LIFE
I measure my life in garbage bins

Blue, brown and green
Rolled to the curb each Wednesday at dusk,
Retrieved on Thursday at noon, empty.
Blue is my favorite, to recycle

Objects headed for reincarnation.
They leave as beer cans, stacks
Of newspapers, plastic milk jugs
And return, miracle of miracles,
As printer paper, shoe soles,
Shiny containers of soft drinks.
(cont)
The green bin holds garden scraps—

Rose bush prunings, grass clippings,
And these, too, may get another life,
Decomposing into the earth, spreading
Their nutrients, nourishing again.
It's the dull brown bin I dislike, holding

Chicken gizzards, clumped cat litter,
Indigestible stalks of brussel sprouts,
Things that can't be shoved down
The garbage disposal to magically vanish.
Once gone, they are out of sight, out of mind
Doing no earthly good and smelling Vogue and
Gentleman’s Quarterly e brown bin and have them
Forever removed, obliterated.
And things that need correction

Like a careless word that stung
Or a job poorly done.
These would be whisked away,
Then returned as a kind comment,
A job well executed; a friendship mended.
And if the clippings of my life,
Such as skills no longer used but
Helpful to others (the French I rarely
Speak but still remember,
Or how to plant tulip bulbs in fall)
Were deposited in the green bin
Rolled out on Wednesday
And returned on Thursday
To those waiting to speak French
Or plant bulbs come October
I could measure my life in bins
And be content.
Amber
2023, Winter / 169
WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT
It's sure not us, babe,

Running those lucrative scams
Like Madoff's or betting on derivatives
Hoping people's home values tank.
We don't gamble on the price of corn
Or pigs or gold.
We're not the ones with pads in Paris,

Santa Fe and Manhattan.
We don't wear Ferragamo shoes, sport
Rolex watches, don't live our lives
According to the gospels
Of Vogue and Gentleman's Quarterly.
We're your average K-Mart shopper,

Frequenters of Smart & Final.
We thrive on clearance sales, thrift shops
And bargains at Good Will.
We teach, preach, dig, deliver and sell.
If and when we go to college, we pay
The piper ’til hell freezes over.
Each nickel rise in gas threatens

To end our driving days.
We know the “joy of cooking,”
Not Coq au Vin a la Julia Childs,
But a Redbook chicken casserole
That can feed six and last a week.
Our vacations, when we can swing them,

Are a trip to Disneyland or Mexico,
Not cooking classes in Tuscany
Or hot air ballooning
Over castles in the Loire Valley.
(cont)
All this is not to say that some of us

Don’t read the New York Times, watch
PBS, or occasionally splurge
On a chocolate-stuffed croissant.
It is to say that we, the 99 percent

Will not be dismissed,
Discounted or dissed.
We occupied Wall Street and by the same token,
We will occupy the White House, the FBI,
The Pentagon and Congress.
Watch out, one percent
We are coming soon to a location near you.
Amber
JOANNE HOLDRIDGE
SUMMER’S END
It’s funny though I don’t like peppers

at all and they don’t much like me
bother my stomach so much
I can still taste them and not in a good
way for hours after consumption
but my son & husband love ’em
all peppers all kinds, even the ghost
ones that make them sweat
and cry in a kind of pained ecstasy
and I love our pepper plants
growing green, yellow & red ones
I don’t dare eat, but I weed
and water them all summer
any day we don’t get rain
put coffee grounds and crushed up
eggshells down by their roots
to keep the aphids away
(cont)
2023, Winter / 171
feel sorry now late in August

when they look sad & bedraggled
enough so I know they’re done for
past growing even one more
puny pepper
Until the middle of September arrives

and my end-of-season-sale bathing suit
appears on the back steps to replace
my favorite twenty-year-old one
whose shoulder straps are so stretched
out they droop and fall
with every breast stroke & crawl
I pull the new one on to see if it fits

suddenly remembering my grandmother’s
old-lady bathing suit, though this one
doesn’t have a full skirt and cover 85%
of my body, but once I’ve checked
myself out in the full-length mirror
I laugh thinking of our pepper plants’
woebegone state
and suddenly I’m no longer sad or sorry
don’t want to wave a magic wand
and return them to their former
glossy splendor since what have I got
against old and bedraggled
the pepper plants gave all they could
maybe I have too

this is how I look now
isn’t it glorious
Holdridge
JOANNE DURHAM: I was drawn to Evening Street Review by its clear

stand for equality and justice, and for writing that delves deeply into the
important things in life while remaining accessible to all. I was thrilled

when five of my poems were accepted in 2021. In January 2022 I got one
of the nicest phone calls ever! Barbara Bergmann called to tell me I had
won the Sinclair Poetry Prize for my poetry book, To Drink from a Wider
Bowl. Throughout the process of moving from manuscript to published
book, Barbara always promptly responded to my questions (and I had
many!) and was flexible and helpful, and I love the finished product. In
February 2022 I was honored to be asked to become an associate editor
for Evening Street Review. For the next year and a half, I read so many
wonderful poems and made recommendations about which ones I would
most want to see in the Review. I learned a great deal from that experience,
especially that there is no objective measure of a good poem. It all has to
do with the impact on the specific reader, at a specific time in that person’s
life. Many thanks to everyone who has made such meaningful
contributions to contemporary writing through Evening Street.
https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/joanne-durham/
GC ROSENQUIST
THE WIG
My mother taught me how to wear make-up when I was seven

years old, and she never knew it. My bedroom was closest to my parent’s
bedroom at the end of the hall, so every morning before the sun came up,
I watched her quietly from my bed in the dark through two cracked-open
bedroom doors as she sat in her nightgown at her extensive vanity and
performed the special kind of magic that transformed her into one of the
most beautiful women in Le Croix, Michigan.
I can still remember the deep concentration she summoned as she
stared into the giant mirror with the bright lights all around it, dabbing this,
wiping that, powdering there. On this vanity were bottles of flowery-
smelling fragrances, colorful aerosol cans with names I couldn’t
pronounce, jars of mysterious white creams, atomizers with those puffy
balls you squeezed to activate fine mists. There were tiny make-up
applicators that looked more like match sticks, there were brushes of all
sizes and shapes, lipsticks of every conceivable color and shade. There
were miniature scissors, silvery tweezers, sponges, massagers and
2023, Winter / 173
something that looked suspiciously like a doctor’s operating instrument

which she brought up to her eyes and used on her eyelashes. Day in and
day out, without fail, my mother commanded this strange, ethereal dance
over all these elixirs, potions and tools like a sorceress casting a spell.
And it worked. Every morning I would watch wrinkles disappear,
blotches fade, dark bags under eyes shrink to invisibility.
One thing I always enjoyed watching her do was her eyebrows.
She opened a small compact that had a mirror in the lid, brought it up to
her mouth, then spat into it. Using a small applicator, she stirred the brown
tint around in circles the way she stirred the chocolate milk in my glass
when I got home from school, then she tapped the applicator twice against
the compact and brought it up to her left eyebrow. With a single, confident
swipe, the brow appeared above her eye, gracefully arched and completely
natural looking. She repeated the process with the right eye.
But the thing I loved to watch the most was what I called “The
Hair Thing.” She had dozens of curlers in her shoulder-length brown hair
that were so warm sometimes I could smell the faint bitter odor of burnt
hair all the way into my bedroom. She left them on throughout the entire
morning ritual and at the end of it, one by one, she carefully unclipped and
unrolled them out of her hair. Then, with a brush in her hand she threw her
head forward so that her face was between her knees and she began
brushing furiously, as if she had ants in her hair. After a minute or so of
this, she swept her head back up in one grand gesture and there she was—
my mother, fully restored, perfect and ready for the day.
***
My father was, at the time, the only practicing veterinarian in Le
Croix which meant he was extremely busy and wildly successful. It wasn’t
long before he was well-off enough to build his own clinic and purchase a
fully stocked and operational vet van for home visits. And our home was
one of the largest in town; built on a high hill and made of red brick, it had
an indoor pool, was two stories high (not including the basement) and
boasted four tall white pillars in front, closely resembling the White
House. The only way you could miss our house was if you were blissfully
unaware of our nation’s history.
This success also meant that my mother had inherited certain
responsibilities as the wife of a pillar of the community. So, along with the
responsibility of raising four children, my mother joined the local chapter
of the League of Women Voters and also the Ladies Rotary, both of which
held meetings once a week. The rest of the week, while we were at school,
she spent painting in her basement studio.
I was always amazed at how she could seemingly make something

out of nothing on a blank white canvas or even more amazing, capture the
essence of a piece of fruit or a plant in a still life portrait...more proof of
her magical powers. She painted and sketched family members, pets, the
tree-studded field in our backyard, always using bright, happy colors and
I always loved when she came up from her studio wearing a colorfully
smeared smock, smelling like oil paint and thinner.
She was so talented the local bank let her hold an art show one
Friday afternoon in early summer in their lobby. My father actually took
time out of his busy schedule and was there with his young, lovely, blonde
veterinary assistant, Rachel Derringer, who used my father’s brand new
8mm Kodak color film camera to document the day. My mother was
beyond proud as people came in and perused her work. She introduced
herself and shook their hands, answered their questions and did her best to
sell herself, but no one bit. Worse, I remember when Father brought the
developed film home a week later and showed it to us on the white wall in
the living room. It was so dark we could barely make out what we were
watching. Apparently Miss Derringer forgot to adjust the indoor light filter
on the camera.
I could see the subtle disappointment on my mother’s face but she
kept her chin up and her mood positive. She was always so good at
protecting us from her true feelings.
***
Then came that horrible day in late August when my brother Dan,
the oldest of the four of us, went off for the Air Force.
Dan had just turned eighteen and had spent the entire summer
working at Jerry’s Pizza—that and arguing with Father. From the day Dan
graduated high school, Father was on him about what he wanted to do with
his life; their arguments got so heated curse words were shouted and doors
were slammed. I could see, as we all stood there in the airport wearing our
finest church clothes waiting for Father to come, that Dan couldn’t wait to
get on that airplane.
“He’s not coming, Mom,” he said, holding a suitcase.
“Of course he’s coming, dear,” Mother comforted. “He’s your
father. He wouldn’t miss this.”
Dan checked his watch. “I only have a few minutes,” he said.
“See? They’re boarding passengers now.”
“I know, dear,” Mother agreed.
Marina, who was fourteen, and Regina, who was twelve, both with
their long golden hair pulled back in ponytails, desperately looked around
2023, Winter / 175
for Father, their wide eyes begging for him to appear through one of the
many entranceways. Me? I was bawling my eyes out. Dan was my big
brother, my hero, the sibling I was closest to. Dan was the one who
bandaged my scraped knee, he was the one who made silly faces to make
me laugh when I was in a bad mood, he was the one who read a bedtime
story to me every night. Now he was leaving me, he was going to see the
big, wide world, and forget about me. I had become so upset with emotion
I felt thirsty, dizzy and lightheaded. My legs were going rubbery, but I
forced them to be hard and strong.
Dan knelt down and hugged me. “Hey! It’s gonna be all right,
kiddo,” he said in his most soothing voice. I loved it when he called me
kiddo. “I’ll be home for Thanksgiving. We’ll eat lots of turkey and
pumpkin pie together and then we’ll puke it up all over the backyard so
we can eat some more!”
“Eeeww! Like the Romans used to in olden times?”
“That’s right, kiddo.”
I giggled. “Promise?”
He crossed his chest with his finger. “I promise,” he said. “But
you have to be a big girl for me until then, OK?”
I wiped my eyes, nodded quietly then hugged him back. I held him
tightly around the neck, never wanting to let him go. He gave me a kiss on
the cheek, stood up, and looked at his watch again. “Time to go,” he said,
glancing once more around the room for my father. He hugged Marina and
Regina, gave my mother a kiss, picked up his suitcase then boarded the
airplane.
That’s the last thing I remembered until waking up at the hospital
that evening.
When I opened my eyes I saw my father, handsome, thin, fit and
distinguished-looking with a smattering of silver hair above his ears,
looking down at me through a pair of black rimmed glasses. I was in a bed
that had a metal railing on the side and there was a persistent beeping
sound coming from somewhere far away. He smiled at me. “She’s awake,”
he said.
I heard a shuffling of many feet and saw Marina, Regina and my
mother, still wearing their Sunday finest, crowding around my bed. They
looked more relieved than happy to see me.
My mother forced her way through my father, took my hand,
leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “You’re in the hospital,
honey,” she said, her eyes glassy with tears. “You fainted at the airport.”
“Fainted? But, why?” I asked. I remembered feeling thirsty,

lightheaded and wobbly but nothing as serious as to bring on a fainting
spell.
“It appears you have diabetes, Serina,” my father said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The doctor will explain it to you very soon,” my mother
answered. “Something inside your body isn’t working properly. But,
you’re going to be fine. You’ll see.”
The doctor, a portly, bald man with glasses that made his eyes
appear way too big, did finally come and told me what diabetes was and
how I had to eat right from now on, no more sugary things. Then he gave
me a shot in my stomach with a long needle. It burned as it pressed into
the skin of my belly, I wanted to cry out but I had promised Dan I would
be a big girl while he was away.
My mother, still holding my hand when it was over, kissed me
again and whispered in my ear: “My brave little pin cushion.”
***
Later that night, as I lay in my bed, I heard short, heated, muffled
voices coming from my parent’s room. Once in a while I heard Dan’s
name called out and then there was more arguing, stomping, and banging.
It was the first time I could remember my parents ever fighting with each
other, and it marked the first hint to me that this gloriously happy family I
lived in was just an illusion.
***
It was agreed at the hospital that my father, being an experienced
veterinarian, would be the one to teach me how to take care of myself. So,
in the morning, promptly at six, my father got me out of bed, made me
pee, then gave me a gigantic glass of water to drink.
“But I’m not thirsty, Daddy!” I whined.
“It doesn’t matter, Serina,” he said. “In order to get a true test of
your blood sugar, you need to drink some fresh water.”
Testing blood sugar back in the sixties was completely different
than how we do it today with all these test strips, meters, pumps and
computer diagnostics. Back then, a half hour after drinking the gigantic
glass of fresh water, I had to pee into a little yellow plastic cup. To make
me feel special and comfortable about peeing into it, my mother bought a
yellow cup with silvery sparkles in it because: “It’s the cup only a princess
is allowed pee in,” she said sweetly.
After I peed in the cup, I had to pull off a length of test tape from
a medical spool then dip it into and out of the urine very quickly. If the test
2023, Winter / 177
tape turned yellow, I had very little glucose in my bloodstream. If it turned

dark green, my blood stream was saturated with glucose. Then I had to
learn how to give myself an insulin shot, not an easy thing for a seven-
year-old to do, but my father was patient with me and I came to master it
in a few months.
After taking care of me, Father went off to work, my perfectly
beautiful mother magically appeared from her bedroom, and another day
began.
***
As the days went on, I noticed some subtle changes in my
mother’s behavior. She began smoking, and it had become some silent,
unbendable rule that she have a drink ready and chilled for my father as
soon as he walked into the house after work. It was something called a
Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet which consisted of whiskey, bitters, cherry
juice, sugar and water; apparently Father loved them above all other
drinks. They retired to the living room while dinner finished cooking, had
their drinks, smoked their cigarettes, talked, and laughed. No children
were allowed in the living room when this went on. Suddenly, it was very
important to Mother that life was absolutely perfect when Father got home,
and no rough-housing or arguing between us children was permitted.
And Mother, who usually served us what she served Father for
dinner, began serving us buttered liver when she made him steak, or grilled
cheese when she made him grilled salmon. None of us could understand it
at the time and it hurt our feelings.
Mother’s paintings changed, too. Now, when she painted a pair of
cats, instead of showing them preening each other, they were hissing at
each other and the bright colors she often used had become darker,
moodier browns and greys. It seemed to me as if all the joy and love had
gone out of her art and I didn’t like to look at them anymore.
***
In mid-September, Father performed successful open-heart
surgery on a newborn calf. It was the news of the town; people, especially
the farmer who owned the calf, talked about it for weeks. Newspapers
published countless updates about the continued health of the animal; there
was even a local newscast about it. And Mother had the brilliance of
forethought to have filmed the whole surgery on that 8mm Kodak color
film camera.
Proud and wanting to celebrate his success, Mother organized a
party at home where everyone could come and watch the film of the
surgery on the white wall in our living room. All our neighbors showed
up, some of Father’s other clients, important businessmen from town,

reporters, the mayor of Le Croix and of course, the beautiful Miss Rachel
Derringer, Father’s assistant.
Our house was so full of people there was hardly a place to stand.
Highballs, martinis, and every other drink under the canopy of Heaven was
served from the big bar in the living room, cigarette smoke choked the air,
tiny hot dogs and crackers with cheese and salami on them were passed
around. It was Marina’s, Regina’s and my job to mix the drinks (it was a
very different time back then) and make sure everyone had something to
eat while Mother hosted the event, mingling with people like a queen bee
lording over her nest.
Miss Derringer, her blonde hair glowing like threads of gold in the
sunlight, even in the dimness of the smoky room, never strayed too far
from my father the entire night. She boldly sat next to him on the couch
when Mother began the film and it seemed to me that Father didn’t mind
that at all. Throughout the entire film they whispered to each other and
giggled like school children in heat whenever they appeared in the film.
Mother saw this too, but she never betrayed a single emotion. As Miss
Derringer followed everyone out of the house at the end of the night, my
mother treated her with proper respect and decorum as she said goodbye.
More muffled, heated voices, stomping, and banging came from
my parent’s bedroom that night.
***
After that, my father started coming home from work late. My
mother had his Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet waiting for him in the living
room and his warm dinner waiting on the dining room table, but he didn’t
get home until his drink was warm and his dinner was cold. Some nights
he didn’t get home until after we were in bed.
And the later he came home, the darker my mother’s paintings
became. In a work she titled “Black Is Black,” she created an all-black
canvas where she used the technique of texturing to bring out the main
focus of the tortured shapes that made up the work. Hitting it with light at
different angles was the only way to see it. In another work she
experimented with 3D relief for the first time and created a dragonfly
caught in a spider’s web, the web itself made of fishing line. Both were
very clever works but deeply heartbreaking when their true metaphorical
meaning was understood. I couldn’t truly understand them until I left for
college, but at the time I did suspect that she was trying to express
something that affected her deeply and her art was the only outlet for that.
2023, Winter / 179
Father continued to arrive home from work later and later until
one night he didn’t come home at all. I remember Mother weeping softly
in her bedroom until the sun came up the next morning.
This happened on and off a few nights a week for a month.
Mother, realizing Marina, Regina and I noticed Father’s absence, did her
best to cover for him with one excuse after another, ranging from “Your
father had to stay over in farmer Ellison’s barn last night to take care of
that old mare that keeps getting sick,” to “He had a veterinarian’s
conference in Grand Rapids.” These excuses seemed reasonable to our
immature minds so we thought nothing of it. You see, Mother knew that
when your father is your knight is shining armor, you only saw the best
things in him. And we did. Until one stormy afternoon in late October.
As Marina, Regina, and I stood on the top step in front of our
school’s main entrance waiting for Mother to pick us up, I noticed the sky
above suddenly erupt with boiling, dark clouds. A cold swirling wind
swiftly rose and hissed like a wave in the ocean, ripping brightly colored
leaves off of trees everywhere I looked. Lightning flashed above us and
thunder rumbled the ground. The chaos of kids running to waiting buses,
some screaming, some losing precious pages of their homework to the
howling breath of the wind made it seem as if the end of the world was
here. Schoolbooks went skidding across the pavement, shoes became
dislodged from tiny feet and tumbled across the courtyard this way and
that. To my left I saw Joey Simone, the strongest kid in school, trying to
walk into the wind, fighting it with every ounce of strength he had. With
his body angled at nearly 40o his coat flared backwards like Superman’s
cape and his usually long curly black hair was pushed straight back, his
face burned red from wind shear. But step by step, he forced his way
forward and made it to the safety of a waiting bus. Our principal, Mr.
Hendrickson, did his best to corral children and their wind-surfing
homework lessons, but the gale was too strong for him to accomplish this
task efficiently, and I must say, he looked rather silly chasing after pieces
of paper that seemed in his grasp one instant then gone the next.
Marina, Regina, and I were protected from this onslaught by the
walls of the school. We watched the circus play out before us with great
zeal, laughing riotously. Regina was laughing so hard, in fact, she had tears
in her eyes. But this laughing was soon silenced as the wind brought with
it the scent of rain and yet Mother still hadn’t arrived. She was usually the
first vehicle in line. Once the courtyard had been emptied of kids and all
the buses pulled away, the principal saw us and stood with us until finally
Mother’s silver station wagon finally appeared in front of the school and
parked with a screech.
But the woman that stepped out of the car wasn’t Mother. This
woman had a tight crop of golden blonde hair, a blazing pink dress with
shoes and a purse to match and those stockings with the line up the back.
Fighting the wind, she held down her skirt as she rushed towards us. I
thought for a moment it was Miss Derringer.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, girls!” she said. “I was stuck at the salon!”
We didn’t say a word. We just stared at this woman’s over-made-
up face, trying to figure out who she was. But, it sure sounded like Mother.
“Come on, let’s hurry, girls,” she said. “Thank you for staying
with them, Principal Hendrickson!” She took my hand and pulled me into
the cyclone.
***
The three of us couldn’t take our glares off this strange woman.
Finally, Marina, sitting up in the front seat with her, was the first to break
the silence.
“What did you do?” Marina asked.
“What do you mean, honey?” Mother asked.
“Your hair....”
“What? Don’t you like it? It’s a wig. I thought it was time for a
change.”
“It looks like you have a yellow wasp’s nest on your head!”
Regina joked.
Oh, how we all laughed and laughed at that. Regina even made
funny buzzing sounds and pretended to tickle me.
“That’s not very nice, dear,” Mother said. “I’ve spent the entire
morning getting ready. Do you think your father will like it?”
“Does he like wasps?” Regina countered. We laughed and laughed
again.
I saw my mother lock her jaw.
She drove on in silence until Marina spoke up again.
“Wait! You missed our street!” Marina shouted, pointing at the
back window.
“No I didn’t,” Mother said. “I have to stop and see your father first
before we go home. I’m sorry I have to bring you girls with me, but I didn’t
count on being stuck at the salon this late.”
She drove us clear across town and onto a street where all the
houses were closely packed together, where all the bushes were perfectly
trimmed, and all the grass was neatly cut. Halfway down the block she
2023, Winter / 181
slowed the car then turned up a long, winding blacktopped driveway. Tall
red cedar trees swayed wildly in the wind on both sides of the driveway,
nearly breaking their spines. A small, quaint white brick house with a large
picture window in front sat at the end. Father’s vet van was parked in front
of the garage as Mother stopped the car and turned off the ignition.
“But this isn’t Daddy’s work,” Marina said.
“I know, dear,” Mother said as she checked her make up in the
rearview mirror. “I’ll be back out in a few minutes. You girls can do your
homework while you’re waiting.”
Before we could ask another question, Mother had that pink purse
in her hand and was outside fighting to keep her skirt down as she hurried
towards the front door. After a few knocks, the front door opened and she
went inside.
I was too curious about where we were to concentrate on my
homework, so I watched the world outside sway and howl, rumble, and
tumble instead. My sisters did the same.
It was much longer than a few minutes before Mother came out
again. She slammed the front door of the house behind her, took out a
hanky from her purse, and blew into it. When she lifted her head, I could
see that her mascara was running terribly, sending long black spidery
streaks down her cheeks...yet it hadn’t rained yet.
As soon as she stepped off the porch the wind picked up as if
wanting to sweep her away, and a drizzling sideways rain began. She came
towards us in stops and starts, trying to keep her balance as the wind blew
and the rain grew heavier. She fought through it as best as she could, arms
out, fingers splayed, her face angled down trying to avoid the stinging rain,
not caring if the wind blew her skirt up and the whole world could see her
privates. For some reason she reminded me of Jesus as he carried the cross
through Jerusalem, being whipped, kicked, and spit on. Just as she reached
the car, the wind rose again with a terrible moan and that blonde wig flew
off her head like a baseball cap. That was when Marina and Regina started
laughing and pointing at her.
Immediately, Mother’s hands went up to her head, which was
covered in a black hairnet and she screamed as the wind nearly toppled her
over the hood of the car. She looked at us through the rainy windshield,
and I knew she could hear the laughing and see the pointing. Her face had
broken into a hundred pieces, her make-up was smeared and running as if
her face was melting. But underneath all of that horror I saw a sadness,
and a humiliation, the depths of which I’d never seen before, and it
frightened me. It was like watching an embarrassed naked person standing

on the stage in front of a million people.
Then Mother looked away from us, and she made a fist. Visibly
weeping now, her shoulders trembling, she drew her face up towards the
pregnant swirling clouds, opened her mouth, and let out the most gut-
wrenching wail I’d ever heard. It lasted for an eternity and it made my
heart ache and burn. She smashed her fist into the hood of the car and was
off, chasing the blonde wig as it tumbled down the driveway.
Marina and Regina were still laughing and I didn’t know why.
Didn’t they see what I saw? Didn’t they see Mother’s sadness and her
pain? I looked at them and it occurred to me right then that I didn’t know
these people. These weren’t my sisters, these were evil, unfeeling,
uncaring imposters from another family.
That was when I saw my father standing in the giant picture
window of the house watching my mother as she frantically tried to
recapture her dignity. Rachel Derringer was standing next to him, her hand
over her mouth trying to quell a laugh. It was at that moment, seeing the
two of them standing together watching and pitying my mother, that
everything became clear to me; the morning ritual, the meetings with the
League of Women Voters, the dark paintings, the muffled arguments in
their bedroom, the cigarettes, the chilled Brandy Old Fashioned Sweets,
the liver for us and steak for him, the parties, the weeping in her bed and
the wig. It all made sense to me now. It was desperation...desperation to
keep the thing she loved most in the world together—our family.
And there was my father, letting the mother of his children
humiliate herself in front of his mistress. Every wonderful illusion I’d kept
and cherished about my father shattered like a crystal ball. I would never
feel for him again like I used to after that.
And my sisters still laughed and laughed. “Let’s lock the doors!”
Regina suggested. Marina giggled.
“Shut up! Shut up!” I screamed. My sisters jolted backwards at
my outburst. They stared at me probably the same way I stared back at
them, and I knew that trying to make them see the truth of this situation
was a waste of time. I turned away and looked through the car door
window at my mother desperately trying to catch the blonde wig as it
rolled down the driveway. She had lost a shoe somewhere along the way
and it made her lose her balance several times, causing her to fall on her
knees, getting her new pink dress wet and muddy. I couldn’t bear to see
my mother like this any longer. I opened the door and jumped out. My
sisters shouted at me to come back, but my place was with my mother.
2023, Winter / 183
Now it was my turn to brave the whipping, kicking and spitting. But I
didn’t mind, she’d done it for me countless times before. When I made it
to my mother, I grabbed her arm with both my hands and pulled, stopping
her from chasing after the wig. She glanced down at me, her face nearly
unrecognizable at this point and she began crying again. She slowly
dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around me so tightly I could
barely breathe.
“My brave little pin cushion,” she wept into my ear.
Holding each other, we stayed there in the middle of Miss
Derringer’s driveway, in the rain and the howling wind and watched the
wig until it blew so far away, we couldn’t see it anymore.
NICOLETTE REIM
TATTOOS
Ringing up groceries at Trader Joe’s

a young, nice-looking man
tattoos peek from shirt sleeves and collar
I like the tattoo on your hand, I say
and plunk down the bring-your-own carrier bag
eyes swivel from scanning
I add, for some reason, My son has my picture on his arm
Oh, he says, my mother is here (clutches below his heart)
Really, I’m not the only one, I say—
he arranges items carefully inside the tote
Were you mad when he did it?
Yes—didn’t want him doing something harmful
I push in the credit card, punch the prompts
My mother was mad, too, but lately
she says, I realize times have changed
Tell your mother, I say, times are the same, sons do
whatever the hell they want no matter what you say
shopping bag lowers gently into cart
You know your son loves you, right?!
Reim
JIM DANIELS
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
Fifty years later, and I’ve never drunk any

thing as wordlessly profound as that water
pouring from a small pipe stuck
in cement at the end of a narrow
nearly overgrown path through
the woods near Croswell, Michigan,
beside my grandfather
as we filled glass gallon jugs
that had once held apple juice
to take to his cottage—well
water only good for flushing—
as we had waited patiently
while two others had filled
their jugs—it felt like a secret,
the communal silence and smiles
I’d never seen even back in Detroit’s
rough twisting hurry of daily faucets
or even at solemn holy communion—
all of us patient among swaying
wind-blown trees, the slight gurgling
comfort of that icy water.
At last, a period.
The cold sparkle of water
down my throat, straight
from the pipe, spilling over
my cheeks and down my shirt
as my grandfather winks at me
and at whoever stands behind me,
whether they’re still alive
all these years later, or not.
Daniels
SALTING
Near the seashore, prehistoric man started extracting salt, a practice that
continues in the Camargue today.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 185
Driving through the Camargue in a rented van to fit the whole family, my
parents visiting from Detroit, my father buckled in the passenger seat,
my kids and mother and wife in back. The men up front, even in France.
My father astounded by fear as I navigated the two-way one-lane paths
called roads in the dusty countryside of rural France. In Detroit, they kept
adding lanes so no one ever had to slow down and be polite. The clank of
machinery, our livelihood and music—so, what were we doing in France
with two little kids for four months? They came to see—to see a place
where even the earth spoke a different language. My father, retired from
Ford, and reticent about time as my mother’s walk crumbled into a
beggar’s dance, the botched surgery, the desperate lunge into
acupuncture and less reputable cures. We drove on water through
marshes and lakes, green fronds, pink flamingoes, a bird we knew in
plastic form with metal rods for legs because why not, because PINK
BIRDS! Real as maraschino cherries after all! In fearful awe of
untethered horses and bulls without enclosures. An expanse dwarfing the
only equivalent flat space he knew, the factory parking lot with its
yellow lines and barbed-wire fences.
My mother still had sight then, though she wore orange-tinted glasses to
try to fend off damage, take in the brilliance of the ragged green rug
unfolding its pulsing array of birds, the rising of those bulls and horses
from below sea level. The kids dozed in car seats while I drove, while the
rest of us pointed everywhere: Look! Look! Until we quietly settled
enough to lose our exclamation and take it in, the surreal expanding
landscape merging out into the sea—the sea, a final exclamation! The
white horses—Camargue horses—and the black bulls, graceful dots
roaming in their natural choreography around us while we stayed on
narrow roads, nearly invisible, almost hovering, until we landed at a
small car ferry to carry us across a lake—and the children awoke and we
stood on deck outside the van under the immaculate conception of the
cloudless blue BLUE sky above Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and my father
held my mother’s hand and they each held a tiny child’s hand on that
short endless voyage and my wife and I stood on each end and took the
children’s other hands and no one commented on it or took a picture as
the wind caressed our hair, as we emerged from the womb of the world
and no one was dying quite yet as we stood in our ragged line, though we
knew we must get off the boat eventually—one at a time, as we knew
was the way, salt against our faces.
Daniels
ARTHUR GINSBERG
LIFE IN THE BALANCE
Dear childhood friend, for Boris Brott

you blundered from a curb this morning 1944-2022
without a glance left or right,
and forfeited your life, sweet
and fragile as spun sugar. Left behind
tears bitter as horse-radish root.
You were the maestro, wielding a baton,

loved flamboyant bow-ties, Puccini
and Verdi operas, and you greet them now
in heaven’s celestial orchestra. There are
no words to say or notes to play
to your beloved wife and children,
your brother who weeps on his cello,
to embrace this Coda that ends with a Finale.
We seek equipoise—a calm, joyous journey

along the balance beam of our lives,
unaware death hovers with beckoning arms.
Take, for example, one base pair substitution

in the double helix: seizures, blindness, low IQ.
A rogue wave that arrives without warning,

sweeps you away in a thunderous rush
leaving no trace in its crushing embrace.
The assassin dressed in a spiked coat

who suffocates your lungs and sends you
in a body bag to the morgue.
Why do we cling so mightily

to the inexorable onslaught of sorrow
that is to come? Wobble, wobble as a top
spins to its end, to lay itself down.
My old friend gone, never knowing
the last music from the last wave of his baton.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 187
Yet & still,

our mechanic keeps the motor purring—
the eye never has its fill of seeing.
Ginsberg
MICHELLE HARTMAN
DROWNING
I met evil when I was only a child.

Its name was mother and we
were very good because

no one wanted
to anger the thing wearing

mommy skin.
Growls bring back memories

of blacked-out rooms, and broken bones.
Never trust a survivor until
you find out how they survived.

I wonder if the dead come back
and water the living?
Do you think she’s proud?

Hartman
ONE WOMAN’S TREASURE
She finds the key in deep hollow

behind loose stone in the wall
just as note says.
Through the gate, she stands transfixed

an effusive garden grows between
flagstone path and house.
Foxgloves wave brightly

daisies and violets chatting
over paving stones’ edges. The jasmine
covers garden wall spreading
across the house’s front, to tangle
with the voracious yellow flowers
of honeysuckle creeper.
The garden so alive

with insects and birds
frames the house entrance.
Just inside door rests

glass casket replete with body
of young man, bedecked
in jeweled finery, a sliver
of apple soils his lips.
This is truly a princess’s

lucky day. The medical school
pays so much for corpses.
Hartman
MITZI KIRKBRIDE: For the past 7 years I’ve been with the Evening Street
Press (ESP); first as a sounding board then as the chairperson. I’ve seen the
ESP grow at a steady pace without loss of quality. The ESP editor, Barbara
Bergmann, is responsible, with the help of all the volunteers, for that steady,
quality growth. In addition, the covers have been outstanding. Through the
years, ESP has continued to produce clearly-written, positive, poetry and prose.
2023, Winter / 189
STEPHEN IVES
MANASOTA KEY
On the morning of the day he died, Brian Flowers reclined in the

oversize Adirondack chair on the west coast of Florida. He seldom slept
well the night before an early flight. Plus, it had been an emotional moment
saying his final goodbye to his brother.
He opened his journal and stared down the length of Manasota
Key. A woman walked toward him on the narrow beach, barefoot in the
early morning light. He set his coffee mug on the wooden armrest. His pen
hovered above the blank page. If he continued to ruminate about his flight
from Sarasota to LA, and finally to Eugene, he’d never write anything.
His brother’s three-year fight with cancer had finally worn him
out. His brother claimed he no longer minded his final destination, but
traveling to get there was definitely painful. Now he was ready, partly
because Brian had spent his two-week vacation helping amend his will. It
had been a painful lesson. As soon as he got back to Oregon, he’d put his
own affairs in order. Unlike the long, slow decline of prostate cancer, one
never knew, the end might come suddenly.
***
At the conclusion of her midnight emergency room shift at
Sarasota Memorial, Dr. Anna Moreno retrieved her backpack and car keys
from her locker. She closed the locker door and removed the folded note
from the pocket of her scrubs. After reading it a half-dozen times, she still
smiled. Her anonymous beach poet—that’s what she now called him—
had unexpectedly given it to her that morning on the key. Six lines of text
elevated her above the chaos of assisting the orthopedic surgeon with a
compound tibia fracture, followed immediately by an accidental gunshot
wound. The police were called. Interviews lasted well past the end of her
shift.
She’d walk Manasota Key again tomorrow. If her poet wasn’t
sitting in his Adirondack, she’d inquire at the nearest hotel. She wanted to
reciprocate, leave him a note, but it was difficult to reply in the same vein.
His words were simple, yet they conveyed feeling, like her cat sleeping on
the windowsill in the morning sun conveyed relaxation, or the final
exhalation of the coffeemaker anticipated clarity.
Maybe she’d write it in Latin?
She shouldered her pack and exited through the waiting room. The
red banner of a Breaking News report appeared simultaneously on all the
TV monitors. The sound was muted, but the text scroll on the bottom of
the screen said a 737 had crashed in southern Oregon. Delta flight 1422,
originating in LA and bound for Eugene, had disappeared over the
Siskiyou range. The plane had first made an unplanned stop in Fresno, due
to an unconfirmed technical issue. Anna wasn’t sure where the Siskiyou
range was. At the same time, she felt a twinge of guilt for being relieved
that she didn’t know anyone from Oregon.
***
Only halfway home to Eugene, Brian stared out the window wall
of the Fresno International Airport. His connection in LA was so tight, he
needed to sprint from terminal one to terminal three. Now that effort
seemed wasted, because instead of an on-time arrival in Eugene, Delta
flight 1422 had made a precautionary landing in Fresno. No doubt because
of the hard left bank and sudden loss of altitude the plane experienced forty
minutes outside of LA. Brian doubted it was a controlled move; the pilots
weren’t avoiding migrating birds at 33,000 feet. After three seconds of
panic, the pilots regained control, but not before the beverage cart spilled
into the laps of the passengers one row ahead. The moment the plane
dipped, Brian had been staring out his window, wondering why he hadn’t
asked the beach-walker her name. The flash of sunlight on the wing had
temporarily blinded him.
Once safely on the runway in Fresno, it felt anticlimactic when
they announced it was a simple computer problem. Brian didn’t believe it.
The explanation seemed far too benign for such a dramatic move.
Ironically, his elevated heartbeat making an emergency landing in
Fresno was surprisingly similar to the feeling he had stopping the beach-
walker that morning on the key. Why hadn’t he asked her name? Sarasota
Memorial Softball was embossed on her ball cap. That was a big clue. A
first name may have been enough to find her, to ask her out and to have
dinner with her smile.
That's what his brother would have said. Instead of being
consumed with your teaching, ask her name.
***
“Anna?”
Anna heard Sid call her name, but she didn’t turn. Being Sid’s on-
again, off-again girlfriend—he was an oil-painter by trade— was getting
old. They were lunching on the deck of Snook’s Bayside Restaurant, in
spite of Sid’s vow to live in poverty.
“Anna!”
She turned away from the Gulf. “What?”
2023, Winter / 191
He sipped his beer. Sid’s fingernails, often stained with red acrylic
paint—he loved all shades of red—looked to her like so many bleeding
cuts. She had to remind herself there were no cuts, no risk of infection,
that he was an artist, a calling as far away from medicine as one could get.
Their differences attracted her at first, but now she was starting to
experience a numbness. Underneath his laid-back exterior and his
sleeveless flannel shirts, he was controlling, possessive, and unnecessarily
inquisitive.
He smirked. “Anybody home?”
“I’m just tired.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you be?” He took another sip. He waited too
long to wipe away his foam mustache. That was another thing. “You work
a twelve-hour shift. Residency is a form of slavery. Plus, you still wake up
at the crack of dawn and walk the beach.”
She thought he wanted her to admit more, that she wasn’t just
leaving to walk the key; she was avoiding him. On the nights he stayed
over, he probably wondered why there was never any time for sex. She
came home late and woke up early.
“I need my solitude.”
He couldn’t know about the note because she was touching it in
her pocket, underneath the tablecloth. Without Sid in her life, she’d tape it
to her refrigerator or to the bathroom mirror.
“But not tomorrow,” he said. “Remember? My mother’s taking us
to breakfast.”
Anna frowned. His mother, a self-proclaimed visionary, a seer,
believed everyone knew or was related to everyone else in a past life. It
felt invasive to be in her presence.
Anna looked back at the pale blue Gulf.
“I can’t tomorrow.”
“Why not?” he whined. He glanced in the direction she was
looking, trying to see if the real answer was floating like a boat on the
water.
“I can’t.”
“My mother predicted you’d say that.”
She raked his face with a frown, because now he was mocking
her, or his mother, or women in general.
“She anticipated you’d be struggling. Unhappy, because you don’t
even know what your struggle is.”
“Did she?” Anna pushed her crab salad away as if it smelled bad.
In spite of her aversion for Sid’s mother, that pretty much summed up her
current feelings about Sid.
“Also, your chief of staff hassles you.”
He was making her a better doctor, she wanted to say,
manipulating the note between her thumb and forefinger like a string of
mala beads. If anyone asked, and she didn’t care if they did, she’d say she
found the note on the beach. Or, more accurately, that it found her. Sid’s
mother would like that.
***
Sitting in his Adirondack, Brian still hadn’t written a single word.
Instead, he watched the woman walking toward him. She carried her
sandals in one hand, studying the beach immediately in front of her, as if
being careful not to step on a shell or a piece of driftwood. The brim of her
pink hat, with lettering too small to read, shielded her face. A long white
chiffon blouse trailed in the offshore breeze, a contrast to her shoulder-
length dark hair.
As she drew closer, he doubted she’d look at him. Solitary women
seldom acknowledged solitary men, a common disappointment he was
nevertheless used to, more the result of inappropriate or downright
dangerous members of his own gender than anything else. Because she
wouldn’t look, he felt safe admiring the casual swing of her walk.
Passing directly in front of him, she abruptly turned her head and
caught him looking. Confident in her aim, she pitched him a no-look smile,
her entire face brightening. Now he could see the tiny beads sewn into her
white chiffon, like pebbles on the bottom of a clear-running brook. A shift
in the wind carried the scent of gardenias, or maybe he just hadn’t noticed
them before. Her smile would not have been seen without a hat containing
her dark hair, hair flowing in the wind, dancing with the chiffon, a
counterpoint rhythm to her sandals swinging at her side, the slight twist of
her bare feet in the sand.
The waves fell quiet. A pinkish reflection colored the surface of
the water. She tipped her head once, acknowledging her approval of him
holding a pen and a journal instead of a smartphone in front of his face.
Amused by his surprise, she never slowed down.
For Brian, seeing the beach-walker was similar to seeing the
Grand Canyon for the first time, especially since his brother had described
it as a big hole in the ground. Instead, it was an overwhelming reality, and
he was as captivated by it as he was by the gentle upward curve of her
mouth. He’d no doubt try to describe her to the next ten people he met,
2023, Winter / 193
beginning with the hotel clerk, the shuttle driver, the Delta ticket agent,
the poor sap occupying the seat next to him on the plane.
She’d planted this metaphorical kiss on his cheek at the very last
moment, delivered in a way that made him look for someone standing
behind him, believing her smile couldn’t possibly be for him.
She continued down the beach, never breaking stride. He felt
prickles of sweat on his brow. He ran his fingers through his hair, knowing
he hadn’t combed it or even looked in the bathroom mirror in the cabana.
He planned to shower before he caught the hotel shuttle for Sarasota-
Bradenton. He watched how easily she compensated for the incline of the
sand. Did everyone naturally do that? He imagined her singing to herself,
the surf occasionally keeping time. He closed his eyes, embarrassed that
his younger self would have leapt up and chased after her, a Labrador
trying to make small talk, with no thought for how he was interrupting her
peace or spoiling the moment that just occurred.
Instead, he wrote “thank you” in his journal. He underlined the
words. Thank you for your presence. In this precipitous moment. He
crossed out precipitous. She didn't need to know about his brother. Third
person might be better. He wrote, “A woman walked barefoot down the
beach. She turned and smiled.”
Eventually she disappeared around the point. He sipped his coffee.
Was that it? Was she gone for good? As the sun rose, the shadow of the
palm tree on the beach grew imperceptibly shorter. He’d intended to write
one final memory for his brother, the one about their shared joy as kids
when Santa left identical F-4 Phantoms under the Christmas tree. Instead
of writing his brother, he revised his note for the beach-walker. Life had
to go on, his brother would agree. Go ahead and tell her. If she comes back
this way, get up and give her the note.
He closed his eyes and listened to the surf. He counted twenty
slow breaths. When he opened his eyes, a figure had reappeared around
the point. He couldn’t tell if it was her. He sipped his lukewarm coffee and
felt a slight chill in the shade. The anticipation of her return rumbled his
stomach. In ten minutes, she’d be next to him. Again. He sketched his
clearest observation about her smile, then revised it on the facing page. It
still wasn’t good enough.
This time she might look away, stare out at the Gulf. He didn’t
know her. She didn’t know him. His delightful feeling could just as easily
become a full-on rejection. Also, wasn’t it risky to share a personal note
with a stranger? Her six-foot-five boyfriend might be waiting a mile away
in the parking lot, reading box scores from the night before, nursing a
vodka hangover.
If he didn’t seize the moment, if his brother passed on in the next
few days, if he stayed in his chair, paralyzed, that would dishonor his
brother’s three-year fight. His struggle. Sitting was too easy. Now, she was
closer than he expected, splashing through the ebb and flow of the Gulf.
He was out of time. He ripped the page from his journal.
He pushed up from the chair, held his breath, and walked down to
the hard sand. If his brother had taught him anything, the time to do
something crazy was always now. He exhaled, folded the page once, and
waited for her to acknowledge him. She glanced up with an almost furtive
look, a look meant only for him, and he was suddenly too parched to clear
his throat.
She waited.
“I wrote something for you.” His voice came from him, but it
didn't sound like him. His inflection made the statement sound more like
a question. He balanced on the ridgetop of sanity. Something had
possessed him, but now, caught in the open, in his awkwardness, he could
fall either way. Suddenly it was clear that by giving a note to this woman,
this day would be no ordinary day.
She raised one eyebrow. “Something for me?”
He gave her the folded page. She took it like she was used to
people handing her things. Under the brim of her hat, her angular
cheekbones were glowing, which disappointed him somewhat, because his
note was about the radiance, the luminosity of her smile, not pure beauty.
Her cap read Sarasota Memorial Softball. She unfolded the page.
“Please,” he said. “Wait to read it.”
A wave washed around their ankles.
She gave a playful shrug. “Thank you. Very much. The last time
someone gave me a note, I think I was in fourth grade.”
She clutched the paper and walked away. She said thank you a
second time over her shoulder. He resisted staring at her, but couldn’t help
himself. After twenty paces, she began to read. She jerked to a stop and
laughed, no doubt having just read the line, “She turned and smiled at
him.” An accidental prophecy that was just luck.
She gave him another little wave, walking into the sunlight,
reading the note a second time, disappearing in the light that reflected off
the white stucco of the beach homes, the sand, the water, and abruptly
merging everything into an inverted weightlessness. He and everything
around him was falling. Dizzy, he felt no shame for his naked presence,
2023, Winter / 195
his bent hair, his baggy shorts, his half-zipped sweatshirt. A walk in the
sun was a walk into the sun, that familiar warmth casually traveling
millions of miles without purpose. He wondered, when was the first time
his mother let the sunlight touch his newborn skin?
The sand, far below, surrounding his feet, resembled a mountain
range from twenty thousand feet. A baby in the arms of his mother, the
intense light was hurting his eyes. His mother reached for a peach at the
farmer’s market, and the shadow of her floppy sunhat no longer protected
him from the glare of the world.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
He gripped the armrests of his seat.
KAT BODRIE
PULLING TEETH
in tenth grade we learned

about the Holocaust, traveled
to the D.C. museum to see
the fallout for ourselves:
piles of faded
leather-soled shoes
jars of gold and silver

teeth fillings
all the ways they stripped

a human body
of its valuables
like a car on its way to demo

__
seventeen years
with a death sentence
next month
(cont)
capital punishment with an emphasis

on punish
not just “off with his head”
not just a hand escorting to gas chamber
solitary is mandatory when you first arrive
to sever your will and all
connection
to people
to sanity
to self
I imagine guards leading someone in chains
out of that hell for the first time
in one year, two years
the feeling they must have
of dragging this vegetable
into population
or whatever other cell
they’ve been oublietted into
it’s like fucking pulling teeth
__
one of the ways I know
I’ve gained empathy:
to be more human
a TV vampire decides
to yank his fangs —
the pain I feel when his
elongated
canines rip from root
my flinch from screen
__
leave it to white america to see
Black and Brown bodies
as grit between its teeth (cont)
2023, Winter / 197
to be flossed out, tossed

into trash. seventeen years
and you press your palm
against the visitation window
but before I go
I tell you how I offered
a loaf of bread
to the man on the corner
before he asked
for a milkshake.
as you weep with laughter
I wonder
did you ever have fangs?
whether you like it or not

whether it was fate or free will
they de-teethed you.
Bodrie
LITTLE BOXES
for George
if your mind is a box

and your body is a box
and this cell is a box
and this pod is a box
and this building is a box
and the prison is a box
within the box of a culture
that peels strips of humanity
from your body-box
then will your self be

alive or dead when I
open the lid?
__
(cont)
you tell me how a few years ago

the prison snatched away
all the programs helping you men
believe in yourselves, learn
about yourselves, find hope.
you took those lessons
that had opened Pandora’s box
and unleashed your love
your creativity your wisdom
upon the world.
__
we go a week without speaking

to each other
and it’s exactly how I feared:
this is the most imprisoned you’ve felt

in fifteen years, since
arriving there. what about
those prisoners on other pods,
in other prisons,
with less phone access, fewer
ways to reach and touch
their moms, their friends? shut boxes

shuffle toward all they have
to look forward to — med call,
chow hall, lights out —
bumping into each other like on conveyor
belts
in an Amazon warehouse.
__
two million or more

incarcerated today,
two million or more
boxes within boxes . . .
(cont)
2023, Winter / 199
global logistics has nothing

on the criminal justice system.
if the point is to warehouse boxes
for as long as possible — some
for half a century — then prisons
and politics can fistbump, write it off
as a fucking tax deduction
for the Prison Industrial Complex.
__
governor, when will my loved one

come home? when will you
release him from this white-washed
stark demoralizing anti-home?
as a kid, he played in cardboard
boxes, cutting holes for arms
and taping wings for aerodynamics
not knowing one day he’d be

trapped in a concrete and steel
box, taping essays and proclamations
and poems to the sides, trying
to take flight.
Bodrie
INJECTIONS
grab a fistful of skin

and fur, jab the needle in
horizontally. Be careful,
the vet tech tells us.
She has thin old kitty skin
so you don’t want to go out
through the other side.
__
at the center of my nervousness
an emptiness
(cont)
I’m driving to Central Prison in Raleigh

two hours away
and I want to make sure I’m on time.
if a car travels east at 80
miles an hour on I-40 what are the chances
a cop will pull her over
because she’s white?
__
my husband squeezes the bag of yellow
fluids above his head,
just like they taught us. it squirts
everywhere, needle popping out
because she turns in her carrier.
“Just stay still!” I scream,
getting ready to jab her again,
toweling off excess medicine before
it bubbles under her skin.
__
his arms are bare but covered
in dark black tattoos.
he’s taken off the top part of his
red jumpsuit to show me:
Hebrew characters meaning “God,”
crosses, thin outline of a soul.
his skin is hairless, half-
Korean. his white co-defendant
got life, not death.
__
the odds were stacked against her too:
abandoned, deaf, found
in a parking lot, schlepped
to shelter. she was three,
a grown gray tabby by then.
they shaved her belly
to spay her, stopped after finding
a black “S” tattooed
on her young cat skin.
(cont)
2023, Winter / 201
__
the two Chinese characters

on his neck mean “bad boy,”
tatted when he was a drug dealer
addicted to his supply. it was
a joke, mostly — at heart, he was
a good man caught
within his own skin.
__
kitty dialysis will be her life

if she continues to live,
if she eats anything, finally.
she hasn’t had a bowel movement
in four days. they’ll tell us
if her kidney values have gone down,
tell us when the right moment
will be to kill her.
__
considering his circumstances, he’s the most

positive person I know, injected
with joy. studious, intellectual. I’m leaking
praises of him to a stranger on the way
to the parking lot, all the reasons
why he shouldn’t die.
__
on the phone, the vet says
euthanasia will make her feel
euphoric. Not like what they give
to people, she adds.
in Oklahoma, executions have started again.
the last guy was convulsing
and foaming at the mouth.
People get this; pets do not.
I leave the examination table,
the visitation booth
empty-hearted, sorry
I’m walking away. Bodrie
WILLIAM OREM
FOR MY PARENTS, BOTH DECEASED, FROM THIS MY
FIFTY-FOURTH YEAR
somewhere is the sound of your mother’s voice

made before you knew the trick of words
and her speaking was just bright shapes of comfort
cast around you;
somewhere is the hesitation of your father’s fingers

scented of burley tobacco and
newsprint, as he found himself touching
your crib-nestled head
and did not understand his own emotion
somewhere
before the rest: the rage, and absolute desire

to separate—the way she mistook your
leaving her for little bits of death, the war he fought
to keep you small; somewhere
still, despite it all, this certainty

not smell not taste
just two young people—partners in a marriage

only ever partly understood, entire lives
now strangely merged
in this, but trying,

with all their blemished partial gifts,
to brighten that child in the fresh-painted crib,

to soften the sleeper’s rest,
to bless your way,
announce your time,

invite you toward the vivid room that is today.
Orem
2023, Winter / 203
NAUSET LIGHT
Hot breeze bent against chalky brilliance,

sea horizon made sharper by one sail. I,
easing thighs into a clothwood chair,
brushing down sand

in the low aural rush of the Cape,
watched thoughtless, for a time, that furrow
where blue lines precisely with blue

under the glorying pivot of gulls.
Three girls, squealing in a clutch,
marched toward the hardest strip of sand. Each

kissing incursion trembled their feet;
waves-lips jumped the shrieking toes.
The two on the outside held one in the middle,

forearms curling girlish waists, girl-hands gripping
waists and hips. “She’s blind,” my wife said.
I raised cautious sunglasses: true. Middle walker

had those bruised-looking sockets you sometimes find
in those many years without sight, as if eyeballs
collected their own darkness.

Her sisters—girlfriends?—adolescents, anyhow,
all three in candypink suits
too young now for their fresh-blooming bodies

led her slowly into the surf:
now foamy at her uncertain knees;
now shoulder-height;
and now a blind girl, swimming in the ocean.
My heart began its incredulous worry.
(cont)
She paddle-kicked out

as far as I could follow,
brown head bobbing, tricked twice by cruel blows,
invisible legs reaching still-deeper water.

“She’s all right,” I reported to my wife’s
indifferent crossword, feeling I needed
some partner in this. Both friends
lost touch then, too, swept in their own

green directions, and my lungs lost all feeling:
terrible washes were coming,
riptides and inhuman currents

I wanted to shout.
But laughter across distance formed buoys
out there, well past all salty breakers—

voices, it could only be, an unseen line to grasp.
Eventually all three came out, slick as seals,
reformed their love-clutch to climb back

toward silvering dune houses. What is that moment,
I thought, released,
where such trust is given—
where one hangs and can’t discern—

not swells, nor the black breadth of miles—
not wave heads nor tumbling shell-grit nor fathoms

beneath unseeable feet,
only the cries of accompaniment

now dim, now nearer, within the obscurity roar:
we’re here,
here we all are, we are floating together.
Orem
2023, Winter / 205
NIGHT SONG
I wake well into night, some three or four

AM, and rise quietly and walk around
the dark house,
black as a bell on a table,
all the unfamiliar rooms lonely

to be themselves again,
the hallways that can’t quite remember
their dimensions.
Perhaps the cat roused me

with his soft
insistent mittens,
or the large owl
who moved last Autumn into the pine—
“Great Horned,” the neighbors think—
his query, dim,

beyond the winter fence.
Perhaps, some nights I suspect
it was just the refrigerator rumbling ice

into dutiful bucket,
a rubber trash lid
swaying loose
in black wind.
But it was you, my death.
In truth
it is you I rise expectantly to see

between moving swells of dreams,
you for whom I look about

(cont)
my home when nothing of my home

can be seen,
close corners bunding their dusk,
even the front porch stilled,
the yard
before any leaf has tasted color,
only the tiniest fragments of starlight whispering:

I don’t know,
I don’t know.
Orem
LIGHTNING STRIKE
For just this wedge of time, the world

reveals its metal skin. Air flushes wild
with mercury,
and everything is surprised.
The avalanche of sound

comes next and all at once, proclaiming
what the moment was—
cataracts of skynoise,
the Roshi striking quick your neck:

awake awake,
Atman is Brahman and one is one—
and then the walking-off.
It’s dark again

between the minutes, and the man
spread-eagle on wet grass

is quite outside himself. You notice
there his fallen satchel, arctic blue.
But for this moment, you
yourself are here, some ten feet up,

and he is lying there, deprived
almost of life,
(cont)
2023, Winter / 207
but happy like a newborn

in soft tumbles of collapsing rain.
Orem
ADRIAN S POTTER
THE BEST PLACE TO STORE HOPE IS IN A HOPE CHEST
and the worst place to hide the truth

is inside your mouth, as it tucks itself
silently beneath the tongue, diffuses
through membranes, sprints carelessly
through capillaries, evading the stomach,
the kidneys, the liver, anything that could
filter it naturally or dilute its potency,
and instead mainlines itself directly
into the bloodstream and circulates
everywhere, delivering uncut doses
of a reality that aches, that gnaws,
that preoccupies and terrifies since it
might alter everything, might remedy
and dissolve all the angst and uncertainty
that lives alongside the secrets we keep.
Potter
DAVID DESJARDINS
PIECES OF A LIFE
The morning in early July that he heard that Janey Shea had been
hired to work on the assembly line at Paramount Cards, Thomas Kaminski
was already two pulls into the Popov’s that he packed to work each day.
“Wait. You’re talking Henry’s kid, right?” he said, pulling his pen
from its perch along the greying temple of his right ear. “Carrot top,
tomboy, he’d bring her in Saturday mornings?”
It was Harriet from Payroll who’d let it slip about Janey. Thomas
had run the warehouse for nearly two decades, and Harriet came round
every Thursday morning with paychecks and gossip. She handed Thomas
the rubber-banded envelopes, her reading glasses dangling from their
lanyard onto the slope of her bosom, and let her eyes wander to the red
plastic thermos cup holding the vodka, set neatly on Thomas’s desk next
to a coffee mug full of pens; her glance was as much a part of her Thursday
routine as the paycheck delivery.
“That’s the one. Little red-haired girl, we called her. Not so little
now. Not quite the same red, either, come to think. Must dye it.”
This was momentous news, although only the few remaining old-
timers at Paramount could appreciate it. Back in the day, Henry Shea had
had a bright future at the Pawtucket greeting card company, looked to be
on a fast track to upper management. He’d turned a GI Bill education into
an MBA, studying nights at URI, all the while supporting a wife and kid.
Had the common touch too. Played on the factory’s softball team with all
the peons, in the outfield right alongside Thomas, who for years afterward
would make it a point to sit down the pallet mules he supervised in the
warehouse and force them to relive the glory days with him. “Man, did we
murder the ball, Henry and me,” Thomas would say. “Like Rice and Lynn
back when they first came up from the minors. What are you laughing at?”
As he signed for the paychecks, Thomas shook his head. “I'm
surprised they let her in the building, considering.”
“Yeah, me too, but the new management, that’s ancient history for
them. What can I say?”
Thomas tried to remember where he was when he first heard that
Henry Shea had skipped town with $377,335 of the company’s money.
Funny how the exact amount still stuck in Thomas’s head. He’d been with
Sandra then, in that apartment she’d rented above the Portuguese market
in Providence. This was when it was fresh and crazy-good between them,
their first go at it—the first of many he and Sandra had managed to screw
up over the years. She’d had that Maine Coon cat, made a mess on the
living room carpet for weeks after Thomas moved in. He remembered
Sandra teasing him from her vanity mirror with a pretend pout that day
when Lester from Shipping called, wondering whether Thomas had any
good ideas as to who should play center field that evening for the playoff
game against Decorator Fabrics, since Henry clearly wouldn’t be showing
up.
Bad news comes in threes, they say: Paramount lost the game that
night, and worse, Sandra kicked Thomas out two weeks later, blaming the
2023, Winter / 209
lying and the drinking, her usual refrain. As if she didn’t like her wine
coolers.
Thomas tucked the paychecks into the top drawer of his desk to
be handed out later and rode the freight elevator with Harriet down to the
second floor, where the boxed-set assembly line ran like a long suture
between pallets stacked high with envelopes and greeting cards, its
conveyer belt rumbling nonstop with an unending parade of dancing
snowmen and genuflecting Magi. Thomas made the trip repeatedly every
workday, it being his responsibility to keep the line stocked with
Christmas cards for the girls to count and box.
His route took him past the paper cutters, who maintained and
operated the massive machines that guillotined the sheets into individual
cards. This was precision work: Screw up while cutting the card stock and
it would cost thousands. The machine operators still wore the standard
military-green monkey suits that the company once required of all its
employees. They stood arms akimbo, watching the machines like drill
sergeants reviewing a new company of enlistees, alert to the slightest
incompetency or insurrection. One of them—Francis Murray, a primo
ballbuster—watched Thomas stroll by. He lifted his chin toward Thomas:
“Hey, Kaminski, your mom pack you anything good for lunch today?”
Thomas walked on, ignoring the snickers behind him. He’d tried
to keep it a secret that he’d had to move back in with his mother, but
Francis’ aunt was one of the regulars over at St. Adalbert’s, as was
Thomas’s mom, and who ever knew old biddies not to blab.
His recollection of Henry’s kid was a bit fuzzy; after all these
years, he wondered if he’d be able to pick her out? Well, that shouldn’t be
hard: Janey would be the new girl on the line. Thomas knew all the others,
most of them high schoolers employed just for the summer to help get the
Christmas product ready to ship. Janey would be older than the rest of
them. He did the math in his head. It had been 17 years since Henry flew
the coop, leaving wife and daughter behind. That would make Janey 22 or
23 years old now. What does something like that do to a kid’s head? he
wondered.
Turning the corner, he could see the long line of card and envelope
counters, distributed every three feet on either side of the conveyer belt,
slapping down 25-counts of cards and envelopes on the dingy, grafittied
canvas. The girls wore rubber finger grips—condoms, some of the guys
joked—to help count out their piecework, and tied their hair up to avoid
accidental snagging by the relentless belt. The sight of so many exposed,
curving napes slowed the pace of many a male employee here, Thomas
included.
He spied her immediately, his eyes drawn to a blue paisley
kerchief that funneled her exotic burgundy hair into a ponytail. Was a time
when almost every female employee at Paramount corralled her hair up
like that, but it had been years since he’d seen that look on any woman
younger than the babushkas attending the daily 7 a.m. Mass at St.
Adalbert’s. As he approached, Thomas found himself recalling those old
WWII posters that showed some tough babe flexing a bicep. He wondered:
Did Janey remember that outdated style from when she’d skipped down
the warehouse aisles behind her father those many years ago?
Stopping near the front of the belt, Thomas took the inventory
clipboard from its shelf and pretended to study it. Then he grabbed a pallet
truck and tugged a load of red baronial envelopes into a slot near Janey’s
work station. Janey sat near a trio of chattering high schoolers but did not
join in their talk. He could see her face clearly, see her strong chin and
thick eyebrows. There was a steeliness in her unfocused gaze, as if she
were hearing something she was tempted to laugh at but instead saving it
up for an appreciative audience. He’d seen that look, that Mona Lisa self-
containment, on Sandra. What was so funny? he wondered.
XXXXX
When Thomas arrived at his mother’s second-floor apartment
hours later, his hair damp from an evening cloudburst, he found her in the
pantry, balanced precariously atop a small stepladder, breathing hard, her
arm deep inside one of the top cabinets.
“Ma! The hell you doing?”
He lifted her from her perch and set her on the floor; she was like
a six-year-old in his arms. At 73, his mother seemed to dwindle a little
each year, although he had to admit she’d always been a tiny lady.
“The cocoa powder. I can’t find it.” Her face was red from her
efforts, and she tugged a feather of white hair from her eyes. “You’re
always moving things around, Tomko. I can’t find anything anymore.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. She was always alert to the
slightest condescension. Pulling open the adjoining cabinet, he plucked the
cocoa powder from its usual position.
“Look. Right here.” He put it in her hand and she stared at it,
suspicious, aggrieved.
Thomas grabbed a Narragansett from the refrigerator and fetched
from the oven the plate that his mother had prepared for him, wrapped in
aluminum foil. He walked his meal over to the table near the window.
2023, Winter / 211
“You already eat?” he asked, popping the lid on his beer, although
he knew the answer. For as long as Thomas could remember, his mother
had grabbed her meals in brief, solitary interludes like a harried waitress,
often standing with her plate near the pantry window and watching cars
and children pass by in the streets below.
“Of course. You think I can wait all hours for you?” It was 6:30.
She did, however, enjoy watching her son eat, and she sat opposite
him now, her hands on her lap.
“So what’s the cocoa powder for?” Thomas asked, flipping the
newspaper open to the sports and draping it over the salt and pepper
shakers.
“For the brownies, Tomko. Did you forget already? Father
Raymond’s anniversary? It’s tomorrow. The girls and I have a little
surprise prepared for him after Mass.”
She frowned. “Something wrong with those carrots?”
Thomas stabbed a few and ate them. “No. See?”
His mother had lived alone since a heart attack caused Thomas’s
father to drive his truckload of auto parts off the Hartford Turnpike nearly
four decades ago. Most of Thomas’s memories of his dad were from his
days playing Little League ball, when Mr. Kaminski would sit in the
bleachers at Macomber Field, a pint bottle tucked in his jacket pocket,
waiting for his son’s turn at bat. Sprinkled through the apartment were
black-and-white photos showing a thin, nervous man with long, thin
fingers resting wraithlike across the shoulders of either Thomas or his
mother, sometimes both. Thomas often tried to imagine what his father
would look like were he still alive, but the only image he could ever
summon was a gaunter version of his mother.
“I saw her at the Almac’s today, Tomko—Sandra, I mean. In the
pet food aisle. Must still have that cat, I suppose.”
Thomas flipped the page over to check the standings.
“I guess so. That one or some other.” He glanced at his mother for
a second. “How’d she look?”
His mother shrugged. “How she always looks. Kind of lonely, you
ask me.”
She paused. “But good.”
Again, she waited before adding: “Clean.”
Thomas offered a noncommittal grunt.
“There was a child, a little boy there, helping his father. I saw her
watching him, how she looked.”
She straightened her placemat, as if it were a picture on the wall.

He knew what was coming next, but kept his eyes on the paper. The Sox
had dropped nine games back of the Yankees, he noted.
“Why you don’t just call her, Tomko, I don’t see it. Stubborn like
your father.”
Thomas finished his meatloaf, draped his napkin over the
remaining carrots. In the pantry he scraped his plate into the trash, then put
it in the sink. She was relentless, always had been; his father had often
paced the apartment with a pinched expression, he remembered. Still, he
knew it was hard on her, being the only one in her circle without
grandchildren.
“It’s not like it was my decision, Ma. What am I, going to twist
her arm?”
He walked back out to the table and massaged her shoulders
gently, a trick he remembered the old man employing. She always lost her
will to fight in the face of any hint of tenderness.
The rain on the windowpane softened the lights outside into red
and white blurs. Watching the streaks meet and diverge, he thought: She’s
of a generation that just can’t comprehend a woman’s not wanting to have
kids. And then there was his own resistance to going deeper into Sandra’s
rationale: that Thomas was simply too risky a gamble. What mother can
see her son through another’s eyes?
Feeling his mother relax, Thomas glanced at the wall clock: The
Red Sox game would start soon. He took his beer, and two more from the
refrigerator, and headed into the parlor. From the kitchen, he could hear
her starting to assemble her baking tins.
“Hey, Ma,” he called over his shoulder. “I was thinking: Can I
take a couple of those with me to work tomorrow? You know, with my
lunch?”
He turned the TV on and lay back on the couch. Feeling something
sharp against his ribs, he jumped up: his mother’s rosary beads. She recited
the prayers incessantly, probably mumbled Hail Marys in her sleep. He
didn’t need to ask her for what intention.
His mother appeared at the door, her eyes narrowed.
“Since when do you like sweets?”
Loosening his laces, he pried off his work boots and let them fall
on the floor. On the TV he saw the tarp still spread out on the diamond; it
must be raining wherever they were.
“Hey, you’re the one says I’m so stubborn. Well, here you go.”
XXXXX
2023, Winter / 213
At noon the next day Thomas screwed the cap back on his red
thermos and walked down the long aisle that ran past Occasional. Each
row of stock bore a placard: Valentines, Graduation, Bar Mitzvah,
Thinking of You. Above him, banks of tall grey windows were rimmed
with paper chaff like dusty snow, as if beset by endless blizzards.
He made his way down to the factory’s first floor. He knew that
most of the assembly line crew usually spent lunchtime out on the grassy
slope facing Pine Street, patronizing the various lunch trucks that peddled
meat pies and BLTs outside the factories of Pawtucket and Central Falls,
but it was still drizzly, so he thought he’d try the cafeteria.
Near the time cards were some vending machines, and as he
stabbed the buttons that spat out a black coffee, the racket of the girls’
conversation gave him pause. Who could have a conversation amid such
noise? Still, he turned and scanned the tables, blowing on his drink. There
she was, sitting alone, a plastic spoon poised over her yogurt and a
paperback spread on the table before her.
Thomas folded his lanky frame onto the bench across from Janey
and undid the metal clasp on his lunchbox. He placed the sandwich and
hard-boiled egg on his napkin; the brownies he unwrapped but kept hidden
from view. Janey nudged her book closer to her own lunch but otherwise
didn’t acknowledge him.
Hoping to kick off a conversation, Thomas strained to make out
the book’s title: “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” He could not
imagine what the book might be about: philosophy? physics? As she
concentrated on it, Janey twisted her oddly colored hair between her
fingers. Almost purple, the girl’s hair was itself as confounding to Thomas
as her book. Who had hair such an eerie shade? A comic book character,
maybe, or a supermodel. He noticed too for the first time that a silver stud
pierced one of Janey’s nostrils, and he became even more uneasy, as if he
had totally misunderstood her nature, her essence.
Suddenly she slammed her book shut in exasperation.
“What?” Her eyes were on him, hot, fierce.
“I...well....” Suddenly Thomas understood how he must appear to
her. And not just to Janey—a few of the high schoolers had turned to watch
the old letch hitting on the new girl. He was appalled to think anyone could
think such a thing of him. How could he have not anticipated such a
reaction?
“It’s just that.....” Panicked, he struggled for something, anything,
that might make her understand he had no interest in her that way. “I...I
knew your father.”
“Yeah? So?”
“He was my friend.” This was a lie—or at least, a stretch—but he
was desperate to disarm her fury and dispel her mistaken perception of
him. “I remember him bringing you here when you were just little.”
Her eyes narrowed, but he could see her anger start to ebb. She
folded her hands over her book and stared down at them. Thomas could
tell she wanted to hear more but would never say so.
“Oh God, you were such a charmer, running up and down the
aisles. Just a little scamp, scooting up to folks all through the building. A
real crowd-pleaser you were, with these little red curls.” He had her now,
her eyes on him with a faraway wistful gaze, as if she could almost see
these things herself.
“And your pop watching you—it’s Janey, right?—him watching
you, anyone could see you were his pride and joy.” He was laying it on
thick now, maybe even making some of it up, he couldn’t be sure. He had
no idea why he was feeding these memories to her but he couldn’t stop
himself.
She was quiet for a while, and then seemed to shake herself, as if
coming out of some daydream.
“Yeah, well, pardon me for saying this all seems just bullshit.”
She scraped the inside of her yogurt container and held it before her, as if
it were some bitter medicine. “Presumably you know what he did to us.”
“I do.” He saw he had pushed too hard, had reignited her bitterness
when he’d hoped to douse it. “So, you and your ma never heard anything
from him, all these years.”
“Nope.” She finished her yogurt, and stuffed the cup and spoon
into her lunch bag. She stood up. “So thanks for this trip down memory
lane. And who are you, anyway?”
Thomas stood up with her. He held out his hand.
“Thomas Kaminski.” She didn’t move. “Janey, I’m really sorry. I
should mind my own business. I just thought...well, I don’t know what I
thought.”
He lowered his eyes, but seeing his lunchbox, raised them again.
“But look, I brought these. My mother made them. Won’t you
have one? They’re really good, I can swear to that.”
Janey looked at the brownies. It took a moment, but slowly that
smile returned, the one she’d had yesterday as she listened to the girls
talking on the assembly line.
“Really. Your mother.” She looked back up.
2023, Winter / 215
She’s laughing at me, Thomas thought. That’s okay, let her. Better
that than the other thing.
He slid the brownies toward her. He himself was indifferent to
chocolate, but he knew he was strange that way.
XXXXX
Their lunchtime meetings soon became a routine, with Thomas
making sure to always bring something sweet for Janey. His mother was
glad to bake anything Thomas requested, and on those rare days when she
couldn’t, he stopped off at Korb’s bakery on the way to work, taking a
ticket and waiting for the saleslady to carefully nest his strudel or tarts in
a waxed paper bag. He was like a suitor arriving with flowers, and Janey
played her role accordingly. When he would produce his confection with
a flourish, she accepted it with a mock-regal entitlement, “Ah, my just
desserts.”
Over time, he coaxed her story from her, the insult and injury of
life with her mother after Henry’s abandonment: their sudden indigence,
the forsaking of the cushy private school; the investigators nosing about
for any covert funneling of stolen dollars back to Janey and her mom. Then
later, in high school, Janey’s pregnancy and the arrival of little Paige. Only
over the past year had they started to dig out a bit, with Janey earning her
GED and lining up nursing classes for the fall.
For his part, Thomas fed Janey tidbits about her father, pieces of
a life, all invented spontaneously: How Henry had carried his daughter’s
photo in his wallet and pressed it upon his teammates for them to admire
during postgame drinking sessions at the Le Foyer club. Or how, like Babe
Ruth himself, Henry promised her a home run and made good on it that
very evening. With each tale, Thomas felt a reproach stir within himself
that he recognized as Sandra’s: You're doing it again, more lies. But
they’re white lies, he argued. They make her feel good. Look at her;
anyone can see that. You could tell by her stillness as she listened, by the
reverie settling upon her, like motes in a snow globe when you stop
shaking it.
One day, Thomas arrived in the lunchroom to spot Francis Murray
across the room sitting alongside Janey. Francis seemed to be talking and
Janey listening, frowning, as she poked her fork at a salad. When Thomas
joined them, Francis smiled sourly at him, swept up his sandwich, and
walked off.
“What did he want?”
Janey took her time chewing. “Nothing.”
“I hope he wasn’t bothering you. Guy’s an asshole, excuse my

French.”
“I know what he is.”
Later that week Thomas drove his mother to her doctor’s
appointment. In the car, she pressed to her lap the list of medications she
took each day—13 scrawled lines worth. Picking at a dog-eared corner,
she glanced coyly at her son.
“The girls asked me about your new friend.”
When Thomas frowned uncomprehendingly, she plunged
forward.
“At work. A lady friend. I had to pretend I knew about her,
Tomko, everything’s such a big secret with you.”
He tightened his grip on the wheel. Francis. What a dick.
“It’s nothing, Ma. Just talking, being friendly at lunch is all.
Christ, she’s like twenty.”
“Twenty?!” His mother was scandalized. “Tomko, you could be
her father! What are you, Onassis?”
They would never get it, none of them: Francis, his other
coworkers, even his mother. He couldn’t blame them; he himself had never
had a simple friendship with a woman, never known any man who had.
But it was more than that, anyway. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt
connected to Janey in some way. Maybe it was simply because their
fathers were each no more than faded memories, smudges that dissolved
whenever you tried to conjure them up.
One morning in August as he was walking one of the new
Colombian kids through the basics of stock inventory, it occurred to
Thomas that he’d forgotten to pack the Popov’s to work, not just that day
but also the previous day. The discovery caused him an immediate stinging
grief but also a sense of wonder, as if he’d stumbled on some latent
aptitude at golf or chess. Packing his lunchbox the next morning, he
resolutely ignored the bottle of vodka that sat beneath the sink with the
Pine-Sol and the Comet and left the house with a sense of his own
audacity.
Leaving work later that day, Thomas spied Janey’s auburn hair,
dazzling in the late-afternoon sun, as she stood alongside a faded-blue
Ford hatchback in the Paramount lot. Leaning against the front bumper
and holding a squirming child, Janey spotted him and waved him over.
She leaned toward the driver’s window.
“Ma, now be nice: Remember I told you about that guy...you
know, from way back. This is Mr. Kaminski.”
2023, Winter / 217
The woman behind the wheel had steel-gray hair and wore a blue-
checked Friendly’s waitress uniform. She leveled a tired, guarded gaze at
Thomas, as if he were a security guard telling her to move her car, but
finally nodded toward him.
“She says be nice, I’ll be nice.” She turned to caress the little girl’s
hair. “Right, monkey? Gramma be nice, won’t she?”
Janey rolled her eyes and turned to Thomas.
“And this is Paige. Paige, say hi to Mr. K.”
The girl ignored Thomas and continued squirming till Janey let
her down. She toddled over to a grassy area and looked back, taunting
them all with her impishness.
“So Mr. Kaminski, Janey says you and my ex- were like this.” The
woman held up two fingers, pressed together.
“Well, not quite,” Thomas said, glancing at Janey. “It was mostly
just...we were on the softball team together—”
“Paige!”
The little girl had bolted down the grassy slope. Janey ran to
intercept her, but her mother kept her gaze on Thomas.
“It’s funny, though; I don’t remember you at all. And here you are
with all these pretty stories about Henry being such a good dad, and I’m
wondering: Who is this guy? And the stories—like you’re Walt Disney or
something. What’s with all this crap, Mr. Kaminski?”
“It’s not—” Thomas paused. How could he explain when he didn’t
understand it himself?
“Look, she doesn't need all this in her life. She’s doing just fine
without any of your fairy tales. Stop fucking with my little girl, do you
hear?”
She stared at him fiercely, then sighed and looked over toward
Janey and Paige. Janey had caught the girl, and was dangling her upside-
down and blowing on her belly, producing gleeful squeals. Thomas
watched too but the scene pained him, and he turned back to Mrs. Shea.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The last Friday in August came, a day that Thomas had been
dreading: Janey’s last at Paramount. She would start up her nursing studies
at the community college immediately after the Labor Day weekend.
Instead of using the cafeteria, they sat in brilliant sunshine on the grass
verge outside the warehouse and gorged on Mrs. Kaminski’s brownies.
Janey presented Thomas with a Paramount greeting card showing a cat
clutching a bouquet of roses. Her daughter had roughly crayoned every
square inch of the card in yellow and orange.
Before Janey hurried inside for the rest of her shift, she stood
before him.
“So. Mr. K: You should take care of yourself, okay?”
He searched her face for a clue to what she meant but saw none.
They promised to keep in touch but Thomas knew—even hoped—that
Janey would never return to the warehouse. When the 12:30 bell rang and
the last lunchtime stragglers sprinted inside, he sat back down on the
grassy sward, plucking handfuls of blades, tossing them onto the asphalt,
and yearning for a bottle of something.
Finally, Thomas stood up. Instead of heading inside, he found his
car and drove slowly around the city, past Macomber Field, past the
medieval-looking tower that sat atop Jenks Park like a cherry atop a
dessert. He felt like a teenager, tossed by unnamed urges. Why had he
stayed in this rundown mill town his whole life—even worse, at the same
job? Everyone else seemed to move on, toward or away from something.
Why not him?
At last he pulled up in front of a triple-decker on Japonica Street
that looked like all the other triple-deckers on the block. In its front yard
was a large maple tree with grey muscled branches, a thick-roped swing
dangling from the broadest. It seemed a miracle on this last day of summer
that no child was playing on this swing, and he turned off the ignition and
strolled into the yard, studying each second-floor window, their curtains.
He tested the ropes; they seemed strong enough to handle his weight, and
so he sat on the swing and launched himself into what in a few seconds
became a vigorous, chirruping arc. He felt a tremor in his stomach that he
couldn’t recall ever feeling as a child, and after a few minutes the triple-
decker’s front door opened and a calico cat emerged, stretching paw after
dainty paw onto the porch landing. It watched him intently, like it would
any unpredictable animal.
MATTHEW J SPIRENG: As I recall, I was first asked by Barbara if I could

possibly copy edit one or two items for an issue several years ago. I told her I was a
retired copy editor, so send a whole bunch. She did, and has been ever since (never
demanding, but asking if I could do another one): I usually copy edit half an issue. While
it’s often a pleasure discovering voices I haven’t heard before, copy editing isn’t about
enjoying what one’s reading, but about catching the mistakes, often little things. And
once it was pure hell when a story kept changing tenses. I finally gave up on that one
2023, Winter / 219
and suggested to Barbara she send it back to the author to fix the tense problem. I don’t
know if that’s how it was fixed or if she tackled it herself. And it’s always wonderful to
come across a prose piece or poem that needs no fixing at all. Even better: a piece that
needs no fixing and is so good you want to reach out to the author and tell them. There
were several of those. https://eveningstreetpress.com/book-author/matthew-j-spireng/
KATHRYN DE LEON
THIS POEM IS ABOUT
This isn’t a poem about how my friend Gloria and I

went trick-or-treating when we were in our thirties.
This isn’t about how we threw white sheets,
with very small eyeholes
so our crowsfeet wouldn’t show,
over each other.
This isn’t about how when doors were opened
in response to our white-gloved hands’ knocks,
we pushed our “trick-or-treat!” and “thank you!”
into high-pitched young-girl voices.
This isn’t about how we fooled them all
except for a man who looked at his wife
as he closed the door, and puzzled
“How old were they??”
Nor is this about the last time I saw Isabel,

her Latina face thin and pale, at her house.
It’s not about how we discussed our busy lives
and reminisced about our high school days.
Or about how she ordered dinner from Lascari’s,
the very old and excellent restaurant in our neighbourhood.
It’s not about how even though we discussed
her final attempt to cure the cancer with cannabis tablets,
the house felt warm, blanketed
with a spicy-tomato smell of spaghetti,
the pungent odour of garlic bread,
and vinegary Italian dressing.
(cont)
And this is certainly not about how I found

a fifty-one-year-old colour snapshot
of a boy I was crazy about in high school.
It’s not about how he’s marching in the high school band
wearing a red and gold uniform
with “LSH LANCERS” on his chest.
It’s not about the white fur shako that is tall on his head.
Nor is it about the fact that he knows his picture is being taken,
that he stares straight ahead, that a trumpet
is cradled safely in his arm.
It isn’t about the dark hair, eyebrows and moustache
that must surely now be all pure white.
This isn’t about any of those things.

This poem is about the clothes in my closet
that wait for my arms and legs to fill them,
to take them out of the closet’s darkness
and go with them into daylight.
It’s about my bed that holds me up while I sleep,
drops me like a seed into another morning.
It’s about the ceiling that hides the night sky
like hands covering my eyes,
then pulls away with a yellow surprise of sunrise.
It’s about the unread books on the shelf,
about Ecuador, Washington D.C., Greece.
It’s about the September leaves still on the tree,
not about those that have fallen.
de Leon
JOSCELYN WILLETT
STILL DO
today we don’t talk but plenty

of other days we don’t stop
we’ll light up and hose down
the steps in silence
planning dinner and the next four
decades in the quiet, empty space
between our bodies (cont)
2023, Winter / 221
too many years ago we chose to

be together and those vows still
ignite everything–our love and
hatred, equally
we walk with our whole feet between
these lines, pressing all our skin and weight
into them all of the time
you still hold me tight inside yourself
in a deeper spot than I
can ever find and I still want more of you
the soot and cinder of every mean
thing said marking us like warriors
burning the nettles and keeping the smoke
steadily rising from our stupid heads
we know nothing we think we do about
each other but we know everything else
that doesn’t and will never matter
in the night I squeeze you tight before the babies
we made come to lift and separate
us and the irony
is never lost on me
tomorrow you will bring me coffee
and eggs and real joy will fizz
over as we start again
dusting off another
chance to become some
thing or fondly remember when
we could
Willett
JACOB FRIESENHAHN
GRIEF
it was her hands

that told me
(cont)
it wasn’t what
I said
it wasn’t the question
I asked
it was so much more
it was everything
they flew to her face

like two frightened
white birds
in trembling flight
as they covered
her face
the backs
of her hands
were weeping eyes
with protruding veins
that ran down
like the tears
I knew
she was crying
the thin creased skin

that covered
those delicate hands
that covered
her face
said everything
Friesenhahn
HAYSTACKS
Painters love a handful of haystacks dotting

an open field just before dusk, maybe a line of trees
or an old farmhouse in the distance, sometimes no
one but the crows to take it all in. Poets know when
to keep quiet.
Friesenhahn
2023, Winter / 223
ZARY FEKETE
MIRRORS
His text sound beeped, and he looked down at his phone. It was a
message from his sponsor. There was a couple across town who had a
donation for the Salvation Army. His sponsor asked if he had time. He did.
These days he had plenty of time.
Nick considered his recovery to have officially begun four months
ago in February, but, in reality, it probably started earlier. Probably on
Christmas morning when his wife had asked him to run down to the
apartment storage unit in the basement of their building for the Nerf guns
that were hidden down there for the boys.
Nick had grabbed the keys and taken the steps in threes. He had
about 5 minutes before his wife would get suspicious. He ran out the front
door to the liquor store around the corner, the only one that was always
open in Bloomington, even during the Minnesota winter. He bought a half
liter of vodka and a half liter of Sprite. While walking back he chugged
half the vodka in his right hand while emptying half of the Sprite from his
left into the gutter next to the sidewalk. He stood in the front door to the
building long enough to pour the rest of the vodka into the remaining
Sprite. He stooped down and dropped the empty vodka bottle down the
street drain. There. That would get him through the morning. This kind of
behavior was standard operating procedure until a few weeks later when
his wife found him passed out on the toilet, and he knew he couldn’t
pretend to hide things anymore.
The downtown Minneapolis Salvation Army AA group met every
Monday evening. Nick had learned a bit of the lingo since he began to
attend in February. He started taking Antabuse, the preventative drug that
would make him violently sick if he drank. He also began to meet with his
sponsor, William, a British ex-pat in his 70s. It was William who texted
him the address of the couple across town with a donation.
Nick grabbed the keys to the delivery van from the shared kitchen
table in the dining room. The first two weeks at the Salvation Army were
free, but then they wanted you to start doing something to earn your keep.
First he washed dishes. He moved on to cleaning the bathrooms and doing
laundry, and, once the leadership realized he was serious about his
recovery, they gave him the keys to the delivery van and he started picking
up donations.
Most donations were furniture items, things like old mattresses or
bed springs. Sometimes it was clothes, knotted up in oversized plastic
garbage bags. Once or twice a month someone had a stack of records they
wanted to get rid of or a rack of used books. Nick brought them all back
and logged them into the front store’s book. Then the stuff went on sale to
bring in some additional income for the Salvation Army halfway house
where he was living with the other guys.
His phone beeped again and a second text arrived from William.
Apparently, this donation was going to be different. Nick was supposed to
pick up some wall length mirrors and deliver them to a different address.
He shrugged and hopped into the van, threw the stick into reverse, and
carefully backed out of the lot. Soon he was motoring past the used
furniture lots on either side of the street. He waved to a couple of the guys
on the street. Then he was on the freeway headed south.
The first few nights in the Salvation Army had been tough;
William said they were for everyone. Nick’s body wasn’t used to sleeping
without liquor and he stared up at the ceiling for the first week listening to
the belches and farts of the other 50-odd guys he shared the dorm with.
The sleepless nights had also given him plenty of time to think. He didn’t
think about any of the cliched stuff like picturing his wife or boys alone
without him. Truth to tell they were probably relieved he was gone. He
figured they wanted him back but not halfway back. If he was going back
this needed to work. That first week as he stared at the ceiling he thought
about himself. He imagined the alcohol molecules draining out of his
blood, floating out into the air around him, mingling with the other smells
of the dorm. He started to work up an image of a steel door in his mind;
the door he was slowly closing and locking against any future relapses.
The door was going to stay closed this time. However long he needed to
stay at the center before returning home…three months? Six? Over a year?
He was going to do it.
The pickup location was in South Minneapolis. He had been to
this general neighborhood on more than one occasion with the van. The
houses there were nice. Not mansion-nice like in some of the outer
suburbs, but definitely upper-middle-class-nice. He took the freeway exit
after driving for about 10 minutes. Two turns later he was pulling up next
to a nice yard. The lawns here were small but very trim. The streets each
had a neighborhood watch sign posted. “Our neighbors are
watching…Zero tolerance for crime.”
He got out without locking the van doors and walked up to the
front door. The door opened before he could ring the bell. It was an older
couple and they were all smiles. They invited Nick to follow them to the
2023, Winter / 225
basement. He slipped out of his shoes and followed their stream of chatter
to the downstairs stairway.
“We your first ones today?” the older man said.
“That’s it,” Nick said. “Not going to give me any trouble are you?”
The lady thought this was very funny and suddenly launched into
a story about something that happened last summer with her and her sister.
Nick let most of the story wash over him while he grinned, “gotcha’d,”
and nodded.
“Yep, it takes all kinds,” he said when she was winding down. “So
now, you’ve got some mirrors to get rid of?”
The older man gestured to the stairs, and Nick followed him down.
The basement was unfinished but spotless with lots of good overhead
lighting. The mirrors were stacked against a wall.
“There they are,” the man said. “We had been keeping them for
our niece. She dances at the Children’s Theatre Company downtown…but
turns out she didn’t need them. Where will you take them”
Nick said, “Someplace up North Minneapolis.”
When he mentioned North Minneapolis the couple both hummed
and nodded and acted like he said something serious. The man helped
Nick move the mirrors back up the stairs and out onto the street one by
one. Nick could probably have managed two mirrors apiece if he was
working alone, but he didn’t want the guy to feel like he was ungrateful
for the offered help. That was one of the lessons from the big AA book
that William had drilled into him for several week: Always deal in
gratitude. People want to give, but they also like people who are grateful.
Nick thanked the couple and then sat in the van for a second with
the engine idling. He checked his phone and another text from William
had already arrived with the address for the drop off. A couple seconds
later he was back on the highway, heading north this time. By the time he
was entering North Minneapolis a thin drizzle had started. The yards he
passed were bare and muddy. The drop off location was for an apartment
building sandwiched between a shabby Arby’s and a concrete supply
company. There was no place to park, so Nick turned the hazards on and
inched the van into a tight squeeze by a fire hydrant.
He rang the buzzer at the front door and was surprised to hear a
kid’s voice in the speaker. The speaker was crackly but he heard the kid
say something about the 6th floor. Nick took three quick trips with the
mirrors until he had them all stacked outside of the elevator. He re-parked
the van a block away on a side street, beeping the doors locked and
manually checking with his hand that they were locked and then jogged
back to the apartment building. He carefully moved the mirrors into the
elevator.
The elevator door shuddered closed and after a few deep creaks
the entire unit began to shiver its way upward. As he rose he could smell
different smells as each floor passed, giving him an idea of who lived in
this building: curry, garlic, onions, saffron…and finally, as the door
opened on the sixth floor, the deep, high, acidic tang of cat pee.
The smell grew stronger as he exited the elevator. There was a
bare lightbulb above him in the hallway, and no other lights. He used his
phone to inspect the first few apartment numbers and found his target three
doors down. He knocked and waited.
A moment later the door opened and the owner of the young voice
was standing in the doorway. Nick guessed that he was probably 12. The
kid was all smiles and beckoned for Nick to follow him. Nick shouldered
the first two mirrors and stepped into the apartment.
It was filthy. There was a tiny kitchen closet on the right, the sink
clogged with dirty dishes and crawling with flies. The fridge door hung
ajar, the lower hinge clearly broken, the smell coming from the kitchen
was thick with rotting chicken and mold.
The rest of the apartment seemed to be all one room. Every inch
of the floor looked covered with dirty laundry and crumpled magazines.
Nick counted five cats, but there might have been more. There was an
ancient couch on the left with wiry springs poking up from the cushions.
A pillow carelessly teetering on the arm of the couch seemed to confirm
that this the only room and that the couch was the only “bed.”
The kid was standing in the middle of the entire mess, still
grinning his huge, bright smile.
Nick tried to return the smile, but the cat urine made him wince.
“This your place?” he finally managed to say.
The boy nodded.
“Well, then these guys are yours,” he said, patting one of the
mirrors. “Where do you want them?”
“Over here.” The boy said. He quickly kicked a few socks out of
the way and pointed at the back wall, across the way from the couch.
Nick carefully navigated the crowded floor, standing the mirrors
against the bare wall. He couldn’t wait to get out of the smell. His eyes
had begun to water.
When he finished he looked back at the boy who was still smiling
but was now admiring himself in the shiny surfaces of the mirrors.
“Where’s your mom?” Nick said.
2023, Winter / 227
“Arby’s. Working,” the boy said.

“Your dad?”
The boy looked up, “He’s at hospital again.”
Nick gave a sympathetic nod. He turned to leave, but then stopped
and looked at the boy again. He was standing in front of the mirrors, poised
in a kind of ballet stance, admiring himself in the reflection.
Nick said, “Were these your idea?”
The boy nodded and did a quick pirouette turn in front of his
reflection. “Mom said that if I practiced a lot that I might be able to get
into some schools.” Then, lost in thought for a moment, the boy stopped
moving and just stared at the wall of mirrors. “Wow,” he finally said, “It
looks like such a big room now.”
A moment later Nick was outside, walking back toward the van.
He got in and sat there for a few moments without turning the ignition.
Then he pulled out his phone, tapped his way to his wife’s number, and
wrote: “Four months today. A few more to go. Can’t wait to see you guys.”
He hit send and then drove off.
KEN AUTREY
MOUNT ARAB
Young beech trees thin

into a high meadow.
The sun hits a fire tower
rising like a missile.
Nearby, a cabin, vacant
three decades: a cot, chair,
scarred table, charred logs
in a stove. Years back,
a bear drawn by sardines
leaned against the door
until from inside
the ranger’s pounding
drove him away.
Hikers climb the tower,
look down on Eagle Crag Lake
and abandoned rail tracks.
(cont)
Planes call in sightings

of suspicious smoke. Once
a kilted bagpiper atop the tower
blew “Amazing Grace” into
the biosphere. Notes left
behind skirled up like smoke.
Autrey
LESSON
The heat comes on early, but

the room still shivers when I
arrive with my cluster
of books and papers.
The listeners wait, some
murmuring in their chairs.
Many check their phones,
confirming that phones
are more than phones
these days. The phones
hold us back. Turn them off
I say to the assembled
faces. Turn them off,
and let them speak
to themselves. Let’s release
our words into the air
where we can all hear
them bounce against one
another like colored balls
of various sizes, some
resounding loudly on impact,
others deflating with a sigh,
still others nudging one another
like cows at the trough,
in common purpose.
Where in the world of phones
is there room for such commotion?
We come here for this, then leave
the room warmer, filled
with a virtuous silence. Autrey
2023, Winter / 229
TENDING FIRE
My grandson draws near the backyard fire

I’ve built on a clear, chilly evening.
He shies away at first, as though it will
spring at him without provocation.
But slowly he warms to the heat, senses
it will contain only itself unless
given a means to spread,
engulfing its surroundings.
I show him how to ease a dry stick

into the heat, hold it there a minute,
then pull it back, now tipped by an ember
or a splash of flame that may last
a few seconds. He tries this
but cannot steady it in the furnace
for long. He sees that fire is
a powerful thing, but also
not a thing at all, even as it
consumes what it touches.
My grandson’s face glows

as he stares into the depths.
He is too young to know how
fire can brand us, or hollow out
spaces we can never fill,
though maybe he grasps
how the glow, indefinable
and transient, draws us together,
offers something to turn to
when the cold presses at our backs
and the dark closes in.
Autrey
MITZI KIRKBRIDE
YOUNGLING
Cancer killed my son.

Soul-eating truth.
My youngling gone.
My world’s askew.
French speaking, card playing,

Gamer too.
12-year-old published poet,
Though only a youth.
He fought with bravery

Till his strength was through.
He went on to glory.
My loss unsoothed.
Cancer brought an early end,

but he faced the truth.
Oblivion comes too early
For some youths
Autumn sun rises

Lethe comes for youth.
Spring sun rises
Life renews.
Kirkbride
BRUCE TAYLOR
KNOW THY SELFIE: GOOGLE SCHOLAR
45,700 results
Virtual Portraitist: An Intelligent Tool For Taking Well-Posed Selfies

Notes To Self: The Visual Culture Of Selfies In The Age Of Social Media
Luxury Selfies In The Attention Economy
(cont)
2023, Winter / 231
Factors Behind Offline and Online Selfie Popularity Among Youth in India
Empowering the marginalized: Rethinking selfies in the slums of Brazil
Problematizing empowerment and gender-diverse selfies
Selfie framework for care for multi-morbidity: Development and description

The gestural image: The selfie, photography theory, and kinesthetic sociability
Beware of Selfies: The Impact of Photo Type on Impression Formation
Selfies at funerals: Mourning and presencing on social media platforms

Death tourism, Auschwitz selfies, and online souvenirs Selfies
Death in a flash: selfie and the lack of self-awareness
Taylor
SOME NOT SO FAMOUS PHOTOS FROM HISTORY
People pose at the Statue of Liberty as it’s unpacked

Hitler rehearsing his speeches in front of a mirror
Salvador Dalí and Coco Chanel share a smoke
Puppy sleeps comfortably between Russian soldiers
The winner of the "Miss Atomic Bomb" pageant.

Teaching gun safety in the classroom
Buying cigarettes from your hospital bed.
Showgirls Playing Chess Backstage
Dog Following the Pope Soaks in an Adoring Crowd

The US rover, Curiosity, Takes a Selfie on Mars
Taylor
MARTY WALSH
WE DRINK FROM THE SAME CUP
There must have been something

in the water the first hominids
to walk upright scooped up
in cupped hands. Everything
from cave painting to star gazing,
physics to metaphysics, mythology,
religion, science, culture and the arts
followed from that first glimmer
of recognition of their own face
in the water they lifted to their lips.
Something in the water

in rain clouds and snowmelt,
in rivers and streams, lakes and ponds,
in tropical storms and desert oasis, in
cisterns, water tanks and wells, some-
thing passed down from their lips to ours
Their stories are my story.

Their dreams and fears and anxieties
I cup my hands under-the faucet.

We drink from the same cup.
Walsh
2023, Winter / 233
CONTRIBUTORS
CAROL EVERETT ADAMS (she/her) writes poems about Disney theme parks,
organized religion, UFOs, and other topics. She lives in the Midwestern United
States and works in the tech industry. Her poems have been published in
California Quarterly, Crack the Spine, Euphony, FRiGG, Ghost City Review,
Hawaii Pacific Review, The MacGuffin, The New York Quarterly, The Virginia
Normal, and others. She earned her MFA in writing from the University of
Nebraska. You can connect with her at caroleverettadams.com.
YAHYA AL-DEEN By print time, we had not received a bio note from this incarcerated
writer who publishes under the name Yahya al-Deen. This is a portion of the submission
letter: “…collection of short poems, which is my niche…. I have a ‘least-is-most’ approach
to writing, by attempting to paint a great and inclusive picture with as few words as
possible.”
SHERRILL ALESIAK began writing at age ten, pumping out stories about Elvis and
musings in a bulging diary. She has taught college writing along with writing in
advertising. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Dunes, Creosote, Muse,
Clockhouse, and the poetry anthology, Eating her Wedding Dress. A big bow to her
readers. She and her husband live in Michigan, along with their furry clan, Jack and Chips.
CYNTHIA RAUSCH ALLAR studied under Molly Peacock and Greg Pape,
receiving her MFA at Spalding University. Her thesis, “‘A Snake Lies Hid:’
Aphra Behn’s Poetry and the War Between the Sexes,” appeared in Allegorica: A
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Poems have appeared in Myrrh,
Mothwing, Smoke from Tupelo Press, The Cancer Poetry Project, The Boom
Project, Two Hawks Quarterly, Naugatuck River Review, Evening Street Review,
Off the Rocks, Paper Street, Bloom, and others.
SUE ALLISON was a reporter for Life magazine; her writing has also been
published in Best American Essays, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, Threepenny
Review, Fourth Genre, The Diagram, River Teeth, and a Pushcart Prize collection.
She holds a BA in English from McGill University, an MFA from the Vermont
College of Fine Arts, and an MLS from Georgetown University.
ETHAN ALTSHUL is a 16-year-old writer whose work is forthcoming in the I-

70 Review and the Broadkill Review. The grandson of two published poets, he
currently works as a poetry and prose editor for Kalopsia Literary Journal. When
not writing, he constructs crosswords and plays baseball. He lives in West
Chester, PA, with his family.
JUDITH AMBER’s work has been published in the San Luis Obispo Tribune (annual
poetry contest), Tolosa Press (creative non-fiction), Transitions Abroad (online), The
Oregonian, Oregon Coast Magazine, The New Times (San Luis Obispo) and the
literary journals Talus and Scree, Raven’s Perch, and Fishtrap Anthology. In August,
2023, she received a scholarship to attend the Elk River Writers Workshop in Montana
and was a member of a poetry workshop led by poet Sean Hill.
KEN AUTREY taught English at Francis Marion University (SC) and now lives
in Auburn, AL. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review,
Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has published four
chapbooks: Pilgrim (Main Street Rag), Rope Lesson (Longleaf Press), The Wake
of the Year (Solomon and George), and Penelope in Repose (Helen Kay Chapbook
Contest winner, Evening Street Press). He helps curate the Third Thursday Poetry
Series at Auburn University.
BECCA BAISCH (she/her/hers) is a Minneapolis-based pediatric psychiatrist

and co-manager with her spouse of their children’s active pursuits. She quiets her
busy days and mind by writing books, short stories, and essays. Her work can be
’Heart of Medicine. A recovered perfectionist, she still can’t resist trying to craft
those Pinterest-worthy birthday cakes.
JOAN E BAUER (she/her) is the author of three full-length poetry collections,

The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008), The Camera Artist
(Turning Point, 2021), and Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023). For some years, she
worked as a teacher and counselor. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review,
Paterson Literary Review, and Slipstream. Three of her poems have been
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives mostly in Pittsburgh, PA, where she co-
hosts and curates the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
KAT BODRIE is a professional writer and editor based in Winston-Salem, NC.

Her poetry has appeared in Poetry South, Wild Roof Journal, West Texas Literary
Review, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere. She is president of Winston-Salem
Writers and works with prisoners on their creative writing to elevate their voices
and spread awareness of the subjectivity and injustices of the carceral state. Read
more at katbodrie.com.
KEVIN BROWN has published two short story collections, Death Roll and Ink
On Wood, and has had fiction, non-fiction and poetry published in over 200
literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. He won numerous writing
competitions, fellowships, and grants, and was nominated for multiple prizes and
awards, including three Pushcart Prizes.
JO-ANNE CAPPELUTI’s poetry and short stories have been published in a

wide array of journals over the last 40 years. Her Ph.D. in English comes from the
University of California at Riverside, and she has published numerous essays in
her area of expertise—on the imagination-driven, creative process in Romantic
and Modern poets. She lives in SoCal with her husband, Tim Reilly, a writer and
former professional tubist.
2023, Winter / 235
MARTE CARLOCK spent almost 20 years chasing facts as a Boston Globe

stringer; now she finds it’s more fun to make things up. Her poems and short
fiction have appeared in some three dozen publications. She is author of a poem
collection, How It Will Be from Now on Out.
AMANDA NICOLE CORBIN has had her short form prose published in a variety
of magazines and journals including Thrice Fiction, Nano Fiction, the Notre Dame
Review, and more. She currently lives in the Midwest, and spends her time writing
little snippets, creating miniature things, and playing Magic: the Gathering.
AMELIA COULON is the author of six full-length romantic novels and over one
hundred short stories of various genres. She is fifty, the mother of two and has
been married to her soulmate for twenty-two years. Her work has been published
by Aspen House Publishing, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Page &
Spine, and Evening Street Review in addition to numerous other outlets.
CATHERINE COUNDJERIS’ poetry is published in literary magazines

including Paper Dragons, Kaleidoscope, Honeyguide, Zephyr Review, Phare,
Blue Bird Word, Life and Legends, and Jonah Magazine. She also has stories
published in Proem, Quail Bell, and KeepThings on Instagram. She has recently
published an essay, “Éowyn as Light Bearer,” in an anthology from Luna Press
called Not the Fellowship Dragon’s Welcome. She is passionate about adult
literacy and ESL learning.
JIM DANIELS’ latest poetry collections include two chapbooks, The Human
Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, and Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University
Press. His latest fiction collection is The Luck of the Fall, Michigan State
University Press. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the
Alma College low-residency MFA program.
HOLLY DAY’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review,
and Appalachian Journal. She currently teaches at the Loft Literary Center in
Minnesota, the Richard Hugo House in Washington, and WriterHouse in Virginia.
KATHRYN DE LEON is from Los Angeles, CA, but has been living in England
for thirteen years. She is a teacher and lived in Japan for six years teaching English
to Japanese university students. Her poems have appeared in several magazines
in the US including Calliope, Aaduna, Black Fox, Trouvaille Review, and
Neologism Poetry, and in several in the UK including London Grip, The Blue Nib,
and The High Window, where she was the Featured American Poet.
DAVID DESJARDINS is a journalist with roots in Rhode Island, having worked

at The Boston Globe, The Providence Journal, and other newspapers. His short
stories have been published in Ruminate, Roanoke Review, The Worcester Review,
and elsewhere. He loves mountains and basketball courts, and lives in Arlington,
MA, with his wife.
JENNIFER DOTSON (she/her) is the author of two collections, Late Night Talk
Show Fantasy and Other Poems (Kelsay Books, 2020) and Clever Gretel
(Chicago Poetry Press, 2013). She is also the founder and creative engine behind
www.HighlandParkPoetry.org. She’s been practicing her French on Duolingo
since 2019 and hopes to have occasion to use it in halting and embarrassing
conversations with actual French people soon.
JOANNE DURHAM is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl (Evening

Street Press 2022) and On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). In 2023 she won
the Third Wednesday Annual Poetry Contest and the Mary Ruffin Poole Poetry
Prize. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry South (Pushcart
nomination), CALYX, Writers Resist, Whale Road Review, and Sky Island Journal.
She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard
MARCO ETHERIDGE is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-

time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in
more than seventy reviews and journals across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the
USA. U6 Stories: Vienna Underground Tales is his latest collection of short
fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, he is a contributing editor and layout grunt
for a new ’Zine called Hotch Potch. https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/
ZARY FEKETE has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China,

and Cambodia. He lives and works as a writer in Minnesota. He has been featured
in various publications including Zoetic Press, Bag of Bones Press, and
Mangoprism. His books are a chapbook (Things I Can Change) from Alien
Buddha Press and a novelette (In the Beginning) from ELJ Publications. He enjoys
books, podcasts, and long, slow films. X(Twitter): @ZaryFekete
AARON FISCHER’s poems have appeared in the American Journal of Poetry, Five
Points, Hudson Review, and elsewhere. He won the 2020 Prime Number Magazine
poetry contest, 2023 Connecticut poetry prize, was a finalist in the Able Muse 2023
poetry contest, and won top sonnet twice in the Maria W. Faust sonnet contest. His
first full-length collection, My Shabby Afterlife, was published in 2022. Work in
Evening Street Review: https://eveningstreetpress.com/product/evening-street-
review-number-34-summer-2022/
DAN FITZGERALD is a retired printer, and an award-winning poet. His work

has appeared in many journals and anthologies. He lives quietly in Pontiac, IL,
tending to home and garden.
J R FORMAN’s (lecturer, Tarleton State University) work has recently appeared

in West Branch, Agave, Perceptions, Brief Wilderness, Talking River, SLAB, Glint,
Matter, Press Pause, Visitant, The Round, Streetlight, Stirring, Borderlands, and
anthologies by Clemson University Press. He has been a finalist for the Julia Darling
Memorial Poetry Prize. An alumnus of the University of New Orleans’ Pound
2023, Winter / 237
Center Writing Workshop, he received a BA from St. John’s College and PhDs from
the University of Dallas and the University of Salamanca. drjrforman.com
JACOB FRIESENHAHN teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady

of the Lake University in San Antonio. He serves as program head for Theology
and Spiritual Action. He is the author of The Trinity and Theodicy (Routledge). His
poetry has appeared in Litbreak Magazine, Canary (Hip Pocket Press), Calla Press,
and Burrow (Old Water Rat Publishing). His interests include philosophy,
mysticism, and ufology.
BRIAN CHRISTOPHER GIDDENS (he/him) is a writer of fiction and poetry.

His writing has been featured in Raven’s Perch, Litro Magazine, Bluebird Word,
Silver Rose, On the Run Fiction, Glass Gates Collective, Roi Faineant, Flash
Fiction Magazine, Hyacinth Review, and Rue Scribe. He is a native of Seattle,
WA, where he lives with his husband, and Jasper the dog. His work can be found
at https://www.brianchristophergiddens.com.
ARTHUR GINSBERG is a neurologist and poet from Seattle. His work appears
in the anthologies Blood and Bone and Primary Care from University of Iowa
Press. He received the William Stafford prize in 2003. He earned an MFA degree
from Pacific University where he studied with Dorianne Laux and Marvin Bell.
His books The Anatomist and Brain Works were published in 2013 and 2019. He
teaches a course, “Brain and the Healing Power of Poetry” at the University of
Washington.
ELLEN GOLDSMITH (she/her) is a poet and teacher. Her books include Left
Foot, Right Foot, Where to Look, Such Distances, and No Pine Tree in This Forest
Is Perfect. Poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Professor
emeritus of the City University of New York, she lives in Cushing, ME.
ALICE G WALDERT (she/her) is a poet, creative nonfiction/fiction writer, and

visual artist. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Misfit Magazine,
Prometheus Dreaming, Survivor Lit, and other journals. She is working on a soon-
to-be-completed full-length collection about surviving childhood traumas rooted
in war. She holds an MA from Carleton University and an MFA from
Manhattanville College. (Instagram is AliceGreenWaldert)
PATRICIA L HAMILTON, the author of The Distance to Nightfall (Main Street

Rag Press), is a professor of English in Jackson, TN. She won the Rash Award in
Poetry in 2015 and 2017 and has received three Pushcart nominations. Recent
work has appeared in The Windhover, Broad River Review, Bindweed, Ibbetson
Street, and Slant.
MICHELLE HARTMAN is the author of four poetry books, all available on

Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Also, the author of four chapbooks, her work has
been published in numerous journals as well as in various other countries. She is
the former editor of Red River Review as well as the owner of Hungry Buzzard Press
and recent winner of the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest. She
holds a BS in political science-pre-law from Texas Wesleyan University.
RUBY HAWKINS writes poetry and short stories. She has been published in
magazines and chapbooks. She writes poetry about life, love, heartache, and
happiness. She writes sister stories in the dialect of her mountain background.
JOANNE HOLDRIDGE lives in Devens, MA, and has recently published

poems in Coal City Review, Illuminations, Poem, Talking River Review, and
Willow Review. She has work forthcoming in Atlanta Review and has been
nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. Prior to Covid-19, she spent winters
on skis in northern NH and taught poetry and literature classes to ESL students at
Bunker Hill Community College for thirty years.
STEPHEN IVES has been published or is forthcoming in Allium, Mississippi Review, Sortes,
South Dakota Review, Wisconsin Review, Pacifica, and has been anthologized in Popular Fiction
by Oregon Authors. He owned a custom homebuilding business and was an adjunct instructor in
the University of Oregon Architecture Department.
MARK JACKLEY lives in northwestern Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue

Ridge Mountains. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House
Review, The Cape Rock, Natural Bridge, and other journals.
FRANK JAMISON was born in West Tennessee. He is a graduate of Union

University and the University of Tennessee. His poetry, essays, and children’s
stories have won numerous prizes. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2006.
He lives and writes beside the Tennessee River in Roane County, TN. You can
see more about his writing at jfrankjamison.com.
WESS MONGO JOLLEY is a Canadian novelist, editor, podcaster, poet, and

poetry promoter, based in Montréal, Québec. His work has appeared in journals
such as Off the Coast, PANK, Danse Macabre, The Chamber, decomP, Dressing
Room Poetry, Apparition Literary, and in collections such as the Write Bloody
Press book The Good Things About America. His supernatural horror trilogy, The
Last Handful of Clover, (featuring a gay protagonist) is available through his
website: http://wessmongojolley.com
STEPHANIE KEEP is a writer living in Montana. Most recently, you can find
her work in the Tipton Poetry Journal. Her poetry practice has come as a welcome
surprise borne of long walks, first along the streets of San Francisco and now on
the trails of her native Mountain West. In every creative venture, she’s looking
for interesting, not perfect.
HEATHER KENEALY (she/her/hers) holds a minor in English composition

from the University of Arizona and is pursuing an MFA in writing at Pacific
2023, Winter / 239
University. She has also studied creative writing at The Writers Studio and
Stanford Continuing Studies. Her work has been published in California
Quarterly and The Phoenix. She enjoys traveling, hiking, and creating sculptures
and jewelry.
ELIAS KERR (they/he) is a transmasculine poet, who has been published in

Esprit and Rappahannock Review. They are a recipient of the inaugural 2022
Stemmler/Dennis LGBT& Award. Their poetry focuses on how the literary arts
can be used to explore and represent identity. They study occupational therapy
with double minors in English and creative writing at The University of Scranton.
They write using the pen name E Kerr.
MITZI KIRKBRIDE is a retired CEO and past director at Guide Dogs for the
Blind, the largest guide dog producing school in the world. Involved in business
writing during her career, she currently is writing creatively in both prose and
poetry. She spends her free time on the board of directors of several non-profits.
When not so busy, family and friends fill her days.
ASHLEY KNOWLTON has a BA in comparative literature from CSU Fullerton

and an MA in English composition from San Francisco State University. She
writes poetry for enjoyment. Her work has been published in Pomona Valley
Review, DASH Literary Journal, and Abandoned Mine, with work to be published
in Cobra Lily and Trajectory. She lives in Crescent City, CA, with her husband
and sons, along with their cats, chickens, and dog.
MARTY KRASNEY’s poetry and short stories have been published or are
forthcoming in Areté, Innisfree, Frost Meadow Review, Marlboro Review,
Missouri Review, Mudlark, The MacGuffin, Tricycle, and Witness, and he has
completed a novel, The Bees of the Invisible. His long and varied career as an
organizational executive culminated with ten years as the founding executive
director of Dalai Lama Fellows, a global network of contemplative, young social-
justice activist leaders, now based at the University of Virginia.
LEE LANDAU’s chapbook of poetry, Knotted, takes you on a journey from her
childhood and adolescence. The journey is about an abusive mother and passive
father. The poems startle, the images and metaphors sparkle and add depth.She
thanks Evening Street Press for this inclusion. Her work has been published in
journals: New Millennium Writings, Poetica Magazine, RavensPerch, Cathexis
Northwest, plus elsewhere.
CHARLENE LANGFUR is an LGBTQ and green writer, a southern Californian

and organic gardener, and her poems and essays have appeared in many
magazines and journals including Room, Poetry East, Weber-the Contemporary
West, The North Dakota Quarterly, and Evening Street Review.
RICHARD LEVINE is a retired NYC teacher, and the author of Richard Levine:
Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019), Contiguous States (Finishing Line
Press, 2018), and five chapbooks: The Cadence of Mercy, A Tide of a Hundred
Mountains (winner, 2012 Bright Hill Press Chapbook Competition), That
Country’s Soul, A Language Full of Wars and Songs, and Snapshots from a Battle.
He was co-editor of BigCityLit.com, and continues to serve as an advisor.
richardlevine107.com
AL MAGINNES is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, most recently

Sleeping Through the Graveyard Shift (Redhawk Press, 2020) and The Next Place
(Iris Press, 2017). He has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Plume,
Terrain.org, Tar River Poetry, and Lake Effect, among others. He lives in Raleigh,
NC, where he has recently retired from teaching and wonders what comes next.
CARLA MCGILL’s work has been published in The Atlanta Review, Bryant
Literary Review, Shark Reef, Crack the Spine, Westview, Common Ground
Review, Caveat Lector, Door Is A Alembi, Jar, Euphony Journal, The Hungry
Chimera, Carbon Culture Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, DASH Literary
Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, The Summerset Review, The
Penmen Review, Cloudbank, Paragon Journal, Burningword, The Alembic,
California Quarterly, Waxing & Waning, Broad River Review, and others. She
lives in Southern California where she writes poetry and fiction.
PATRICIA (TOVA) MCMILLEN is a retired lawyer, folk musician and clown-

in-becoming. Born and raised in Illinois, she briefly practiced commercial law
with a Chicago-based firm but threw that over in 1992 for the practices of banjo
playing, poetry, and freelance advocacy. Her first full-length collection, Running
Wild, is in 2024 from Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, KY.
ANDREW C MILLER (he/him) retired in 2013 from a career that included

research in aquatic systems and university teaching. Recent fiction and nonfiction
have appeared in Front Porch Review, Blue Lake Review, The Meadow, The
River, Northern New England Review, Maine Homes, Toastmasters Magazine,
and Fatherly. He lives in Florida, volunteers in prisons, restores antique stained-
glass windows, and writes. His website is http://www.andrewcmiller.com/.
MICHAEL MINASSIAN is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual, an online

poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A
Matter of Timing are all available on Amazon. A new chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit,
was published in 2022. For more information please visit: https://michaelminassian.com
SCOTT BLACKWELL MITCHELL is a former resident of San Francisco and an

MFA graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He is an award-winning poet, a Pushcart
Prize nominee and has most recently had poetry published in New York Quarterly, Coal
City Review, Straylight, Avalon, and others. He lives with his wife Barbara in an old fixer-
2023, Winter / 241
upper in Champaign, IL, always trying to get back to that poetry and novel thing.
GREG MOGLIA’s poems have been published in over 300 journals in 10

countries. He is a 10-time winner of an Allan Ginsberg Poetry Award. He is now
a full- time poet writing about the foibles of mid-life dating, the challenge of aging
parents, the sweetness of lovers both old and new, and just published from Cherry
Grove Collections—The Lover from Nowhere.
ANTHONY J MOHR’s memoir, Every Other Weekend—Coming of Age With

Two Different Dads, (Koehler Books) was published in February, 2023. From
1997 until 2021, he was a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court. He now sits
on the bench part-time. He is a 2021 fellow at Harvard University’s Advanced
Leadership Initiative and is now an editor of the Harvard ALI Social Impact
Review. his work has appeared in, among other places, The Christian Science
Monitor, Commonweal, DIAGRAM, Hippocampus Magazine, The Los Angeles
Review, North Dakota Quarterly, War, Literature & the Arts, and ZYZZYVA.
CAMERON MORSE is senior reviews editor at Harbor Review, a poetry editor

at Harbor Editions, and the author of six collections of poetry. His first, Fall Risk,
won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley
Press, 2020). He holds an MFA from the University of Kansas City-Missouri and
lives in Independence, MO, with his wife Lili and two children.
MARTINA REISZ NEWBERRY is the author of seven books of poetry. Her

most recent book is Glyphs (Deerbrook Editions). She is also the author of Blues
for French Roast with Chicory (Deerbrook Editions), Never Completely Awake
(Deerbrook Editions), Where It Goes (Deerbrook Editions), Learning by Rote
(Deerbrook Editions), and Running Like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire (Red
Hen Press). Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, she currently lives there with
her husband, Brian, a media creative. Her city often is a “player” in her poems.
KAILEN NOURSE-DRISCOLL, associate editor November 2013-present. She

is a writer and editor based in Newark, Ohio, where she lives with her husband
and two cats. She works in educational publishing by day and is writing a novel
in whatever time she can find.
WILLIAM OREM writes about spiritual issues. His first collection of poems,
Our Purpose in Speaking, won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize and the
Rubery International Book Award. His novels, short story collections, and plays
have been honored with the GLCA New Writers’ Award, the Eric Hoffer Award,
the Gival Press Novel Award, and others; currently he is a Senior Writer in
Residence at Emerson College. Details at williamorem.com.
VICTOR PEARN’s poems have been published over 200 times in an assortment
of works, including: Caribbean Writer, Chiron Review, Long Islander, Midwest
Quarterly, Mind Matters Review, Negative Capability, Sulphur River Literary
Review, The Seventh Quarry, and Whole Notes. He has authored over 13 books.
These poetry books are currently available on Amazon: American Western Love
Song, Apricot Harvest (poems written in China), and Cattails and Sagebrush. He
lives and writes in Colorado.
M A PHILLIPS grew up on a family farm in Pennsylvania. After graduate

school, he explored America for some few years in a VW van, eventually settling
in Southern California, where he is now managing a self-storage facility. He’s had
stories published in Rosebud, Iconoclast, Red Rock Review, The Charm Bracelet,
and others, and poetry published in The American Dissident.
ADRIAN S POTTER (He/Him/His) writes poetry and prose in Minnesota. He is

the winner of the 2022 Lumiere Review Prose Contest and author of the poetry
collection Field Guide to the Human Condition (CW Books, 2021) and the
forthcoming And the Monster Swallows You Whole (Stillhouse Press). Some past
publication credits include North American Review, Collateral, Obsidian, Paper
Dragon, The Comstock Review, and The Maine Review. Visit him online at
http://adrianspotter.com/
JOAN PRESLEY grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and has lived in Reno,
NV, for many years. She is a veteran and a retired fire marshal. She graduated from
the University of Nevada, Reno with a BA and an MA in English and, during the
pandemic, finished an MFA at Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR. Her work
has appeared in The Brushfire, Evening Street Review, The Meadow, Painted Cave,
and Slab Literary Review. She loves Bichon Frises, pickleball, reading, writing,
movies, travel, her friends and family, skiing, and hiking–maybe not in that order.
DEBORAH S PRESPARE (she/her) lives in Brooklyn, NY. She completed her

undergraduate studies at Cornell College and received an M.A. in writing from
Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Menda City Review,
Potomac Review, Red Rock Review, Soundings East, Scoundrel Time, Third
Wednesday, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and several other publications.
BÙI MINH QUỐC is a Vietnamese poet known for “Up to the West,” which
inspired generations to rebuild the war-ravaged highlands, and for “A Poem on
Happiness” about his first wife, the writer Duong Thi Xuan Quy, who was killed
in 1969. “Has It Ever” was voted one of the 100 best Vietnamese poems of the
20th century. Hei served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Quang Homeland and
founded the newspaper Lang Biang. He was expelled from the Communist Party
in 1989 for mobilizing writers to demand freedom of speech, for which he was
twice placed under house arrest.
DANIEL A RABUZZI (he/his) has had two novels, five short stories, 25 poems, and
nearly 50 essays/articles published (www.danielarabuzzi.com). He lived eight years
in Norway, Germany, and France. He has degrees in the study of folklore &
mythology and European history. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner
2023, Winter / 243
and spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A Mills (www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com),

and the requisite cat.
KATHRYN BROWN RAMSPERGER’s (she/her) writing has appeared in

National Geographic and Kiplinger magazines, The MacGuffin and Willow Review
journals, Your Tango and Thought Catalog online. Her first novel, The Shores of
Our Souls, was a DC Librarians’ Choice and a Foreword Indies winner. Her second
novel, A Thousand Flying Things, is a Faulkner-Wisdom finalist and a Pulpwood
Queens feature. She also spent two decades as a humanitarian journalist for the Red
Cross & Red Crescent. Learn more at kathrynbrownramsperger.com.
CLELA REED is the author of seven collections of poetry. The most recent, Silk
(Evening Street Press, 2019), won the 2020 Georgia Author of the Year
recognition. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has had poems published in The
Cortland Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Atlanta Review, and many others.
A former English teacher and Peace Corps volunteer, when not traveling, she lives
and writes with her husband in their woodland home near Athens, Georgia.
NICOLETTE REIM is a poet and translator published in Pittsburgh Poetry

Review, Poetic Sun, The Rail, Glint Literary Review, Mojave River Review, Rue
Scribe, and other publications. She has a master’s degree of Fine Arts in Poetry,
with a concentration in translation from Drew University. She studied art at the
New York Studio School and is a member of NohoM55 Gallery in NYC,
exhibiting abstractions from writing and topography.
ROBERT RICE’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary

magazines, including Manoa, New Letters, The North American Review, Quiddity,
Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. He is the author of four novels and a memoir.
He lives in Montana on the ancestral homeland of the Absaalooke (Crow) people.
FRANK RICHARDS writes fiction. His work has appeared in publications such as
Avalon Literary Review, Euphony Journal, O Dark Thirty, Menda City Review, The
Penmen Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The MacGuffin, Sanskrit Literary-
Arts Magazine, The Virginia Normal, and War, Literature, & the Arts. He is assistant
nonfiction editor for Village Square Literary Journal. He holds a doctorate in Public
Administration and an MFA in fiction. Frank and his wife live in Central Virginia
along with an assortment of rescued cats and German shepherd dogs.
RICHARD ROBBINS (he/him/his) has published six books of poems, most

recently Body Turn to Rain: New & Selected Poems (Lynx House Press, 2017).
He has received awards from The Loft, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the
National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Society of America. From 1986-
2014, he directed the Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University
Mankato, where he continues to direct the creative writing program.
HANNAH RODABAUGH is the author of three chapbooks, including We Don’t

Bury Our Dead When Our Dead Are Animals, a collection of ecological elegies.
Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, Berkeley
Poetry Review, Camas Magazine, Glassworks Magazine, Horse Less Review, and
elsewhere. She’s been an artist-in-residence for the Bureau of Land Management
and National Park Service. She teaches at Boise State University and The Cabin
Idaho, Idaho’s only literary center.
GC ROSENQUIST was born in Chicago, IL, and has been writing short stories
since he was 10 years old. His 12 previously published books include horror,
poetry, a comedic memoir, and science fiction He works professionally as a
graphic artist. He has studied writing and poetry at the College of Lake County in
Grayslake, IL, and currently resides in McHenry, IL. For more information on GC
Rosenquist, you can go to his website at gcrosenquist.com.
RIKKI SANTER’s poetry has received many honors including six Pushcart and
three Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eleventh poetry collection,
Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series, was
recently published by Luchador Press. (she/her) www.rikkisanter.com
BEATE SIGRIDDAUGHTER (she/her), www.sigriddaughter.net, grew up in

Nürnberg, Germany. Her playgrounds were a nearby castle and World War II
bomb ruins. She lives in Silver City, NM, where she was poet laureate (Land of
Enchantment) 2017-2019. In her blog Writing In A Woman’s Voice, she publishes
other women’s voices.
DONNA SPECTOR is a playwright as well as a fiction writer and poet. She received
two National Endowment for the Humanities grants to study theater and Ovid in
Greece. A program of her poems aired on Australian national radio, and her poems,
plays, stories, and monologues have appeared in many literary magazines and
anthologies, including The Greensboro Review, Poet & Critic, Sycamore Review,
Gaia, Notre Dame Review, Parabola, Rattle, The Connecticut River Review, The
Pedestal Magazine, The Paterson Literary Review, and American Life in Poetry.
MATTHEW J SPIRENG’s book What Focus Is was published by WordTech

Communications. His book Out of Body won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award
and was published by Bluestem Press. He won The MacGuffin’s 23rd Annual Poet
Hunt in 2018 and is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is the winner of the
2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize for Good Work (Evening Street Press 2020)
CHASE D SPRUIELL attended Southern Arkansas University under a full athletic

scholarship and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in digital cinema. Rather than
continue his basketball career overseas, he moved to Austin, TX, to pursue music and
the arts. He has since toured multiple countries writing songs and performing music. He
currently resides in the Austin area where he operates his own exotic reptile business.
2023, Winter / 245
DANA STAMPS, II is a poet and essayist who has a bachelor’s degree in

psychology from Cal State University of San Bernardino, and has worked as a
fast-food server, a postal clerk, a security guard, and a group home worker with
troubled boys. A Pushcart nominee, his poetry chapbooks For Those Who Will
Burn and Drape This Chapbook in Blue were published by Partisan Press, and
Sandbox Blues by Evening Street Press
PATTI SULLIVAN’s chapbooks are At the Booth Memorial Home for Unwed
Mothers 1966 (Evening Street Press, 2015), Not Fade Away (Finishing Line Press,
2014), and For The Day (DeerTree Press, 2012). Her poems appear in Spillway,
Chiron Review, Solo, Miramar, Glimpse, Raising Lilly Ledbetter, and several other
anthologies and journals. She is a California-born abstract painter and collage artist
living on the central coast, continuing to enjoy a life engaged with creativity.
ALAN SWOPE’s poetry has been published in Fort Da, Roanoke Rambler,
Perceptions, Front Range Review, Mixed Mag, and Poetic Sun. He is a practicing
psychotherapist and an emeritus professor with the California School of
Professional Psychology. He enjoys singing, acting, travel, cinema, and gardening.
BRUCE TAYLOR is the author of Poetry Sex Love Music Booze & Death
(Upriver Press 2018). His work appears in The American Journal of Poetry, The
Chicago Review, The Nation, Poetry, Rattle, and on the Writer’s Almanac. He has
won fellowships from Fulbright-Hayes, the National Endowment for the Arts, the
National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Bush Artist Foundation. He
lives in Wisconsin with Patti See. https://people.uwec.edu/taylorb/
MARK THALMAN is the author of Stronger Than the Current, The Peasant
Dance, and Catching the Limit. His poetry has been widely published for the last
four decades, and has appeared in CutBank, Pedestal Magazine, and Valparaiso
Poetry Review, among others. He received his MFA from the University of
Oregon. After 35 years, he retired from teaching English and creative writing in
the public schools. Please visit markthalman.com for more information.
RON TORRENCE published his first short story at 50 and his first poem at 80.
Even so his fiction, non-fiction, and poetry are pretty widely published. the
prophet bird, a poetry collection, was published in 2021, and Julia’s War, a
chapbook of four interrelated stories, has just been published.
PEGGY TROJAN published her first poem when she was 77. Widely published,
she is a frequent poet on Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge and Your Daily Poem. She
recently finished a chapbook about being ninety. Her husband, David, died in 2020.
She still lives in the house they built in northern Wisconsin, with her eldest daughter.
She enjoys making jam from her raspberry patch for family and friends. Evening
Street Press published her chapbook, Homefront: Childhood Memories of WWII and
Free Range Kids, memories of growing up in a small town. She has published two
full collections and five chapbooks. Her books are available on Amazon.
MARTY WALSH lives in Winterport, ME. His poems have appeared in

numerous literary magazines, among them, Beloit Poetry Review, Atlanta Review,
and California Quarterly. He is the author of Furniture Out in the Woods and is
currently working on a second collection of poetry.
MARIA WICKENS’ short stories have featured in Apricity Magazine, Penman

Review, Press Pause Press, and the Dead Unleashed series. Her first published
novel Left of Centre (Secker and Warberg) won the Reed Fiction Award. She has
lived in the UK and the US but now makes her home in Aotearoa, New Zealand,
near Makara Beach with her husband and two sons.
JOSCELYN WILLETT's poetry and short fiction can be found in places such as
Third Wednesday Magazine, Spry Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Sundog Lit,
and a vintage suitcase beneath her bed, among others. A San Francisco Bay Area
native, she works in video games as director of communications and enjoys hiking
with her kids, camping, and all manner of trashy television.
FRANCINE WITTE’s (she/her) poetry collections include Café Crazy and The
Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books) and Some Distant Pin of Light (forthcoming from
Cervena Barva Press, 2023,) as well as chapbooks Not All Fires Burn the Same
(2016 first prize winner, Slipstream,) and First Rain (Pecan Grove Press.) She is
also a flash fiction writer. She lives in NYC.
STANTON YEAKLEY is an attorney who lives in Tulsa, OK, and writes

between cases. He has been previously published in BULL, Epilogue Magazine,
Haunted Waters Press, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, New Plains Review, and
Poydras Review, among others.
L.D. ZANE served in the Navy from 1968 to 1975. Five of those years were aboard Fast
Attack submarines. He’s been published in over two dozen literary journals. His anthology,
It’s Always My Fault & Other Short Stories, has recently been published by Pretzel City
Press, and is available on Amazon.com. He is pursuing publication of his first novel, Un-
Becoming. L.D. is a member of Bold Writers, and was an associate editor at Evening Street
Review. You can view where L.D. has been published, and read his published stories on
his website: ldzaneauthor.com.
JOHN ZEDOLIK has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore
Review (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates
(CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Transom, and in the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. In 2021, he published his second collection, entitled When the Spirit
Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), which is spiritually-themed and available through
Amazon. John’s iPhone is his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of it
to craft this ancient art remains fruitful.
BARBARA BERGMANN, EDITOR
WHO I AM
Photo on the cover of #4 (I successfully removed myself from the Issue 3 cover.)
I was born Baarbara (mother’s mother’s name) Bergmann in Beloit, WI,

on Valentines Day. It was the day before my mother’s birthday, just before the baby
boom era. The second of two daughters, at some point after my next sister was born,
I decided that I was my father’s son and could do anything a boy could do. That
didn’t change when my brother was born. It may have been a bit shaken when a boy
beat me for the 4th grade marbles championship and I went to the nurse’s office to
say I had something in my eye. Well, I did: tears! The belief let me go on to earn a
PhD.
When I was about six, my parents and older sister went to visit my paternal
grandmother in Switzerland. (On the ocean voyage over, my mother went careening
across the dining room because she couldn’t hold on to the table and eat at the same
time: she lost her entire left arm to gangrene shortly after her mother died in the
1918 flu pandemic.) My little sister and I spent a month on the farm of family friends
and then a month with an aunt, uncle, and cousins. When the others returned, I had
no idea who those strangers were, but my little sister (four) ran right to them. I have
gained a lot of respect for people who survive childhood trauma and understand
how people who disappear from my life might turn up at any unexpected time.
I learned about justice when my father fined me for throwing a shoe at and
breaking a window because I thought it unfair that I had to polish all seven pairs of
family shoes at the bottom of the basement steps all by myself. He knew that I kept
track of every penny that crossed my palm. (That boy who beat me at marbles? He
still owes me a dime according to the ledger I kept.) I did get a spanking for pestering
the family relaxing in the living room while I washed the supper dishes. (Family
chores were equally shared according to age by all five children.) In sympathy, my
mother and older sister joined me; it was then I learned to use tedious tasks as a way
to find more efficient means of accomplishing an end.
As for my relationship to Evening Street Press, the technician in me
reveled in finding and executing the most efficient way to complete a task; the
linguist in me admired the use of language, particularly the dialects; the citizen in
me welcomed the revelations of wrongs needing righting; and the rebel in me
cheered willingness to go out on a limb to espouse the cause of justice.
As I compile the last issue of Evening Street Review, I recognize the names
of previous contributors, am astonished at the age range of writers over the years
(16 to over 90), and I am grateful for the willingness of so many contributors to step
up and keep the press going. Comments from some of them are scattered throughout
the issue with links to their pages on our website, eveningstreetpress.com
ISBN 9781937347819
51600 >
9 781937 347819
Evening Street Press

Oakland, CA

Evening Street Review Number 40

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Evening Street Review Number 40

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Number 40 Winter, 2023

EVENING STREET REVIEW

Published by Evening Street Press

…all men and women are created equal in rights to life,

—ElizabethCady Stanton, revision of the

Evening Street Press recognizes that all people are created

Founding Editor: Gordon Grigsby

Cover photos: Front cover, “Beginnings, Mt Air, OH” Gordon Grigsby

All published work, chapbooks, short novels, prose collections, Sinclair

© Copyright 2023 by Evening Street Press

AMANDA NICOLE CORBIN hereditary 15

CHASE D SPRUIELL the fetal position 72

DANA STAMPS, II Sound Alone 138

ADRIAN S POTTER The Best Place to Store Hope

SUE ALLISON The Last Dream Essay 40

PRESS STAFF AND ASSOCIATE EDITORS

AMELIA COULON The Call 8

where they do that to make people think they’re going crazy.”

Willa ventured. “I have to try.”

agenda,” Willa surmised. “I have no idea what I did to deserve this.”

AMANDA NICOLE CORBIN

We travel down the highway,

I ask you to check the map

When we get to another fork

THE NEXT STORM

Titanium dental implants grind

As I step outside into the jade-green

All over improved,

Not born into Christ’s love

Beside my wife, I push deep

Dense clouds of passenger pigeons eclipsed

I can recall driving into a snowstorm

But that abundance is gone.

I also remember our sunny July garden,

Last July, the sight of a single butterfly drifting

I have witnessed one tiny frame of the extinction,

before she investigated. The Emergency Medical Technician said he had

too many years ago we chose to

it was her hands

counted it twice. A few hundreds and fifties, mostly twenties. A reserve

the kayak drift. A red-bellied woodpecker chattered as it swept by, dipping

“Need a cold one?”

Before the morning sun peers

I gather that aging means you know a secret.

Fueled & fused

You were sacrifice,

& here we are

Mexican food—that’s their only contribution to civilization.

“Not great, to tell you the truth, Raul.”

“It’s a butterfly,” she corrected me. “Speak English!”

Bald men, blue eyes, southern.

Golden retriever, with me on every

SCENES FROM THE DAY GRANDPA DIED

Outside the hospital, flecked light,

Glancing inside the toolshed,

Granny napping on her side

getting louder, startling telephone

Barefooted, stepping on gravel, wandering

KAILEN NOURSE-DRISCOLL: I originally came on with the Press as an

CAROL EVERETT ADAMS

Breakfast ends, someone else clears the dishes.

How many grilled cheeses have fried here,

At last, this camp! Leadership! Leader.

Marksmanship, climbing, knot tying, high ropes.

She hugs her thick coat tight, steps

and Camp Counselor says, he turns