April 2019
Issue 02
poetry
fiction
Talking in Metaphors Is Sometimes The Only Tool We Have
At times I think I am the Mariana Trench,
a place once thought empty
because life shouldn’t survive in a sunless place.
But of course, it is the horrific
creatures that thrive here. The ones
with poisonous tentacles,
and gnarled faces, and no names,
except for the most notorious.
One scientific team in 1985
spent three hours wrestling
with the line of their underwater research craft.
When their mangled vessel saw the light of day again
one of its scars held the tooth of a Megalodon.
The team lied in their reports,
for fear their revelation might be true.
Scientists say if Megalodon
or any of the trench’s inhabitants
were forced to the surface
they would turn into bombs,
exploding before they ever saw the sun,
and cause incalculable ecological damage.
So long as we resist the urge
to plumb the depths, we are, supposedly,
safe from the horrors long thought extinct.
No, I am not so understood
as a fact of science. I am
a historical matter, subject to interpretation.
I am the 26th of July,
a day when Fidel and Company
failed to take the Moncada Barracks,
and were arrested
and, possibly, won the revolution when Fidel
martyred himself as Bautista’s prisoner.
Ask ten historians about the twenty sixth of July,
and you will get thirty-six answers
about politics and perspectives
and questions that exacerbate your questions
and you will question the definitions of words
like “revolution” and “victory” and “freedom.”
Some say Cuba won its freedom that day,
but if a machete and a bayonet can both
kill you, is one better than the other?
A bayonet has one purpose, to slice
through a heart, but a machete wears
the camouflage of utility
while the sugar canes cheer
and clear a path for him to roll into their capital.
No, that’s too grand
for me. I am stagnant and translucent
and I do not warrant this much scrutiny.
I am a town in Montana full
of empty Mexican restaurants and lacking any culture
besides a poverty of motivation,
where the sun blinds from its place in the sky,
and threatens to melt the ranchers
through the holes in their moth-eaten jackets,
and all signs of modernity
seem transported from a future of abundance
that will come soon, but not soon enough.
The land is hungry here, threatening
with every step to swallow
the town’s inhabitants
in hopes vegetation will live again
without the help of alien chemicals.
The land throws animal waste
into the water in desperation, but the bodies
humanity returns are inedible, tasting of
disappointment and formaldehyde.
The living people here trade hollow smiles
at the drive through window
and niceties in the firearms section
of the Walmart. All Walmarts
look the same but nobody here knows that for a fact
because they’ve only known one town’s Walmart
because they’ve only know one town.
Nobody has a heroic journey story here.
Nobody remembers how they arrived here.
Nobody is from here, but all anyone remembers is this town.
Lindsey Zawistowski
Wide-eyed Abandon
After Eduardo Corral
Masked intentions and naïve innocence danced in the late December moonlight
I trail the outline of your scarred, shark bitten arm
I wish that it was a rattlesnake that had latched
Onto my calf – instead of you.
Leaving a visible scar, a treatment plan
Instead of a worn, tattered heart
Masked intentions and naïve innocence danced in the late December moonlight
Your residual venom lingers in my vein, seeping
Into muscle, bone, marrow
I trail the outline of your scarred, shark bitten arm
Snakes act out of necessity –
I think you just liked the adrenaline rush
Masked intentions and naïve innocence danced in the late December moonlight
An oxygen thief – your pleasure, my pain.
I catch glimpses of you
Hiding in myself
When I treat them how you would have.
Masked intentions and naïve innocence danced in the late December moonlight
I trail the outline of your scarred, shark bitten arm
Rachel Martinez
Motion
1. An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force.
Sometimes for sentimentality you need a catalyst so I turn
the key but all that follows is that tick tick tick of refusing to
start I know your ticks I know how this ends I’ve seen it
before the trend with mending is that it doesn’t it is much
more profitable to sucker up for scraps than to pay for
fixed problems my problem is I always pay with knots of
balled up hair twisted in carpet count them like pennies I
always invest in that negative trend ignore that tick tick
tick that warning your car won’t start your bomb will
explode my problem is I used to think that our love was
electric but it was not enough to power a car battery you
tell me my problem is hearing I’m inclined to believe you
all I hear all I fear in my heart is that
2. Force equals mass times acceleration.
Before I write the first word I know the ending I know my
pencil will fragment splatter shards marked by a dark dot
please blot before a sniper rifle is aimed between my eyes in
that period that deep sleep that black hole in those infinites
between our instants I want to dive in rotate towards that
singular vortex crush my lungs in dark matter break my back
into an infinite curvature ensnare me in your event horizon
where we’re past now already in the then truthfully I’m already
dead but perhaps I’ll speed up to escape your gravitational
pull it is impossible to outrun light even when broken down
into all my atoms I want to be the apple embedded in your
throat like you are in mine the unfortunate gravity of my
situation is that I want to be so close your eyes become two
dark holes become one
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
You are simply settling but I love to watch your pupils
dilate and pretend it is because of me and not chemicals
but your subdued sorrow is a chemical combination too
stronger than any love I could brew it soothes my moods
like the tablespoon of coffee I take every morning hoping I
wake up from last night when I was red minced words I
said I didn’t care what happened but you cared enough
that your words choked and hiccupped you cared enough
to cry tears branded hot white onto your skin please help
me skin my scars because all I can think when you cry is
which witch would I be if I couldn’t concoct crocodile tears
real enough that when I wipe them they gleam
Skipping Stones on the Schuylkill
Skipping stones on the Schuylkill, I am nearly nineteen when we
scramble down the slope-side of a muddy cliff. There is dirt etched
into the soles of my sneakers. On the riverside yellow ribbons mark
trees to be cut. One limb juts out of the earth like a question. At the
end of its most slender spindle hangs a frayed summer rope. It
swings in the cut of March winds. Still winter. We pass. My feet stick
fossils into soil. Look:
This is the tree we bent by pulling with all our
weight. This is the bridge where young teens edge each other into jumping. I
am unsure how they survive the fall into shallow water. He is unsure how they
survive the impact. If their bodies fell completely flat, would they bounce like a
stone? Yes and no. They need the right angle.
The right angle, he says, swaying back and forth on his
heels like a batter waiting for the pitch. The right angle, he leans back, then
throws a stone like a frisbee. It chips off the water, bouncing three times. He looks
at me expectantly. Nice throw. Thanks. He buries a stone into my palm. My turn?
Yes. I lead with my left foot, twisting my heel into the soft bank to feel more
legitimate. Weak shadow, cloudy day. I toss the stone effortlessly into the river. It
buries itself with an unsatisfying sink.
I don’t have his hands. My fingers aren’t calloused. My
tones are unbalanced and jaunty. He laughs, then plunges his hands into
the winter water, tossing stones over one another until he unearths the one.
He holds it up to show me, balancing the stone between his thumb and first
finger. Perfect shape, one that fits into my blunt palm. Flat, but with rounded
edges. Imperfect ridges on one side. Not like slate. Weathered rock,
knowing.
I take it in my hand and face water again.
Tuck my elbow back. Lean, but not too much. The right angle. I
toss my stone again. Watch as it drops like a
child leaping off a bridge, clumsy.
A hand at my shoulder. Blunt, capable
experience. Calloused, one that can pluck out a tune and send a
baseball flying. Visualize the trajectory. Imagine the slant of a rooftop, or
a lazy landscaped path. Behind him a stretch of sun gradients the river
brown, then back again. I tilt my head towards his, but I am not listening.
Gari Eberly
Backseat Driver
We’re mobbed up—Six deep in a midnight blue ’93 Buick Century with the windows up and multiple blunts going.
Bauer fronted everyone. He’s sitting shotgun wrapped up in a black bubble goose and Polo jeans with a Notre Dame skull cap topping him off.
Mike’s in the captain’s chair. His unmarked, royal blue sweatshirt is too tight of a fit. The shit should have been donated to the Salvation Army a decade ago when we were all still caged in at South Scranton Intermediate. The shirt’s lack of demarcation matches his non-existent hairstyle—a thick mass of brown strands, about two inches in length, combed straight forward, the split ends resting just above his eyes.
I’m getting crushed between the right-rear door and this girl named Kate that I have never met before today. I’m driving from back here.
“Take a left at the light!”
When we reach the intersection of Vine and Jefferson Mike does as he is told.
I say, “Alright now take a right, not at this stop sign coming up but the next one.” Chris is somewhere to my left, next to Nicole. I can’t be certain though. This girl Kate is half sitting next to me, half sitting on my lap. She’s obscuring my line of vision. For all I know his existence in the car is a figment of my imagination. All I hear is his voice.
“This kid’s dad play for the fuckin’ Yankees or somethin’? Jesus Christ, look at these houses!”
Green Ridge looks like an east coast Beverly Hills minus the media fanfare. The Buick crossed its unofficial border a mere three blocks ago and it has yet to pass a house that doesn’t have a professionally landscaped lawn that screams PEASANT! at everyone who drives by.
At least that’s how I see it.
I feel the need to correct Chris.
“Nah his dad’s dead, man. Lung cancer I think.”
Out of nowhere, he jolts forward, becoming visible to me for the first time since we crammed ourselves into the backseat. He clutches his chest, coughing uncontrollably as smoke billows out of his mouth and lingers above his head like a mushroom cloud. He holds the remainder of the blunt away from him, gesturing for somebody, anybody, to take it. Nicole rises to the occasion and carefully pinches it between her thumb and forefinger then extinguishes it in the overflowing ashtray that is located between the two front seats.
She says to Chris, “You’re ugly when you smoke.”
He sucks his teeth, says, “You’re ugly all the time,” then kisses her on the cheek.
Nicole’s eyes and mind are out the window. She’s decked out in a baby pink hoodie and slim-fit blue jeans. Her hair is wrenched back in a ponytail, the hair tie with a death grip on her brown locks. She’s probably thinking about that scholarship to Syracuse she gave up to remain in her comfort zone. She’s probably losing hope that she can have some kind of impact on the world.
She says, “Can we roll down a window you guys? I can’t breathe.”
Chris backs her up, sort of.
“Yeah guys roll down a window. I’m dying of lung cancer back here!”
Mike says apathetically, “Hi-Yo,” like he’s the Ed McMahon to Chris’s Johnny Carson.
He turns around in the driver’s seat and passes me the blunt that he has been sucking on, but I wave it off. He turns back around, cracks his window and drops the roach out into the unseasonably warm, January air.
Kate winces at Chris’s mention of lung cancer and mutters what sounds like “That’s horrible” under her breath.
Chris reacts immediately. His head jerks to the right and he glares at her, sizing her up like he’s an animal about to feed.
I lean forward to get a better look at him. The weed slows everything down and I believe I can tell what he’s thinking by the expression on his face. If I know him like I know I know him he’s thinking, my dad shot himself when I was ten and I found the body. You have no idea what horrible is.
I notice how uncomfortable the joke makes her. I say, “Calm down. He’s just kidding.”
She doesn’t respond. She is staring ahead, avoiding eye contact with everyone. I’m taking her in; her soft, straight blonde hair draped over the fur-covered hood of her North Face jacket, her black yoga pants tucked into a pair of grey wool socks that are climbing out of her Ugg boots. I’m trying to analyze her the way I analyzed Chris. I know there is something there with her. I can’t identify what it is though.
Mike hangs a right and now we’re more than halfway to Joe Doherty’s house.
*
We were up in the church parking lot on Davis Street when Bauer got the phone call. Nicole was playing liaison between Kate and me. I didn’t know I’d be meeting somebody. I left my mom’s house wearing sweatpants and a dirty-ass hoodie thinking the outfit would convey the message that I didn’t want to meet ANYONE, that I wanted to stay within my hemisphere, but Nicole ruined it.
She said, “So Matty, Kate’s brother washes dishes at Smith’s. Didn’t you used to work there?”
“Yeah. I got fired. I stole a bunch of Filet Mignons from the walk-in.”
I ditched them before they could respond and moved over to Chris who was skating around the parking lot. I watched his backfoot pop the Creature deck’s tail, making it flip underneath him. He botched the impossible. The board landed grip tape-down on the pavement and he was thrown to the ground, face-first. His hands softened the blow. He sprang up like nothing happened then hopped on for another try, his black denim vest flaring out behind him, distorting the canvas Negative Approach patch that adorned his back as he pushed away from me.
His physical energy was too much to take. I had to get away.
Bauer and Mike were haggling over weed sales.
Mike said something like, “Come on, just front me today and I’ll pay you half this Friday and half next Friday!”
Bauer yelled back, “Mike ya can’t pay in installments! This isn’t BowFlex!”
Then his phone rang. He walked away from the group so we wouldn’t hear him, but he didn’t go far enough.
“Yeah…What’s up?…Who?…No why?…Are you serious?…No… Wait, what was his name again?”
He pulled his cell phone away from his face and yelled over to me.
“Yo Matty, you know Joe Doherty, right?”
Joe Doherty. I hadn’t seen him in years.
I said, “Yeah why?”
Something clicked in him. He looked at me dead-eyed.
“You know where he lives?”
I thought about that big, obnoxious house I used to go to when I was a kid.
I said, “Yeah. Over in Green Ridge. On Quincy”
He quickly put the phone back to his ear and said. “I’ll get him.”
I hung out with Joe a decade ago—John F. Kennedy elementary, fifth grade. We went our separate ways in junior high. Not everyone is meant for each other.
Bauer had that menacing look on his face, the one that people feared him for. He walked over to Mike and said, “We’re going for a ride. I’ll front you whatever you want.”
The mood shifted.
Mike asked, “Why what’s up?”
Bauer was already opening the passenger-side door when he answered.
“This kid doesn’t want to pay me.”
I hurried over to the Buick and caught up to Bauer before he could get into the car.
I was telegraphing my moves. Before I could ask, Bauer said, “Yeah I’ll front you something just show me where he lives.”
I heard Nicole let out a soft, “Oh my god.” She looked at Kate in a way that made me feel like she wanted to warn her.
But she didn’t. She is just like us, no matter how much she refuses to believe it.
*
It’s just starting to get dark as we turn down Quincy Avenue. We pass the hospital my mom and Joe’s dad worked at when I was a kid.
I was latchkey after the divorce. Mom took on more hours at Moses Taylor. Hospice unit noise helped her block out reality—The man she married wanted to have sex with young women in their physical prime. Joe’s parents felt bad for us, offered to take me in for a few hours after school so I wouldn’t spend all that time alone. Mom accepted their help begrudgingly. She took it as condescension.
At least that’s how I saw it.
I’m staring out the window, in a trance, remembering everything, then Bauer abruptly shouts out, “Matty, is that him?!”
I snap out of it, push my head forward and to the left so I can get a better view between the headrests of the driver and passenger seats. Kate adjusts her upper-body so I can get through.
I don’t think she has any idea what is about to happen.
The Buick is moving towards two human forms at the top of a driveway that leads to a two-car garage attached to a fucking mansion. One is dribbling a basketball, driving to the hoop.
The other is playing defense. There’s too much distance. I can’t tell if one of them is my old friend Joe.
I say to Mike, “This street’s a dead end. If it’s him, you can turn around and come back.”
Mike nods.
Bauer is impatient.
“Well if that’s his house, it’s probably him, right?”
I want to be sure. As we get closer, I shift my position until my back is pressed against the seat. I look out the window as we pass and I get a perfect view of the two basketball players. One is wearing black mesh shorts, a plain white t-shirt and Jordans. The other one, the one who just missed the lay-up, sports the same outfit only the mesh shorts are swapped with a pair of fresh-off-the-rack grey sweatpants, like the ones I’m wearing without the cigarette burns and lowkey cum stains. He turns around and trots away from the basket and I get a good look at his face.
It’s him. He’s had a growth spurt, height-wise and muscle-wise, but his face is the same. Those high cheek bones. The broad chin, well-sculpted blonde hair and near perfect facial symmetry. It’s the kid I watched WrestleMania with back in ’98 because my mom couldn’t afford pay-per-view. The kid with the dad who supported him while mine was doing the bar scene, trying to pick up girls half his age, too drunk and in the middle of a mid-life crisis to realize that he was all washed up. The kid who eventually told me we only hung out because his parents made him.
I say to Mike, “Turn around and park.”
He pulls a u-ey at the end of the block then parks as inconspicuously as possible behind a silver S.U.V.
Bauer puts the hood up on his sweatshirt, peers through the windshield and says, “Which one?”
I notice Kate looking at me. She has obviously connected some of the dots. Her hands are in her lap, clutching the hemline of her coat. Now I can read her face. I know she regrets coming here. I know that she’s hoping I won’t tell Bauer which one Joe Doherty is. I know there is something in me that hopes I won’t tell Bauer either. But I rationalize instead. Maybe if she witnesses something traumatizing, she’ll understand that lung cancer jokes aren’t that horrible in the grand scheme of things.
I look directly at her and say out loud, “Sweatpants.”
Bauer says to Mike, “Keep it running. I won’t be long.”
Then he is out of the car, moving quick with his head on a swivel, keeping an eye out for spies.
Kate looks away.
Nicole says to her, “I’m so sorry about this.”
Chris jumps in. “Come on Kate, look! Watch this kid get fucked up!”
Bauer is in Joe’s face now. The teammate stands by, holding the basketball against his hip, looking like he’s looking at a ghost. Even from the backseat of the Buick I can see that he is trembling. Nicole should introduce Kate to him. They’d probably get along.
The whole thing is taking too long for Mike. He’s frantically looking around for cops, kids, old ladies, anybody who can jot down his license plate.
He says, “C’mon hit him. I wanna get out of here.”
On cue, Bauer swings. His closed fist goes from six o’clock to twelve o’clock in milliseconds. The haymaker meets flesh, cartilage and bone. Joe drops, his whole body flat against that perfect blacktop. Bauer pounces on him, connecting with blow after blow to his head and body. When Joe stops moving Bauer runs his pockets, finds some bills, stands up, spits. He lunges at the teammate but the kid bolts inside the house before he can do more damage. He yells something unintelligible then runs back towards the car as fast as his short legs can carry him. He jumps in the front seat and pants out directions.
“Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!”
Mike does as he is told and goes, tires screeching and everything.
There’s electricity in the Buick now. The scene gave Chris an adrenaline rush and he’s throwing awkward right jabs at the driver’s side headrest that are so poorly executed I’m afraid he’s going to break his hand.
Nicole tries to calm him down.
“Stop!”
Mike adds his two cents from the front.
“Yeah man stop that. Seriously.”
Chris lays off the headrest. He says, “Sorry, sorry. That shit was cool though. Bauer, you get your money back?”
Bauer looks like the grim reaper. His hood is still up, and the night takes away all his features. He’s focused on counting the bills he snatched from Joe’s pocket.
“Yep.”
“How much did he owe you?”
The grim reaper’s head turns slightly to the left and I get a glimpse of that unmistakable profile.
He says, “I don’t even know.”
And that is that.
We’re halfway back to Davis when Kate says to Mike, “Can you take me home? I live pretty close.”
It was the most she had said all day. She seems more mentally intact than I expected her to be, like the violence pieced her together instead of tearing her apart. When Nicole questions her intent, she says, “Don’t talk to me.”
Mike takes the right. Kate is in command from back here. She’s leaning forward with her hands on both headrests, barking out orders all of a sudden.
“Go to the top of the hill.”
We’re coursing through South Scranton’s jugular vein; Palm Street. After it intersects with Prospect it goes semi-
vertical at an almost impossible angle. We’re closer to home now.
Joe Doherty and Green Ridge might as well be in another state.
I look over at Nicole. I get a clear shot of her with Kate leaning forward in the seat. Her arms are crossed.
Once again, she has failed at broadening her world and ours. We boxed-out her interloper, protecting ourselves from the positive unknown. Chris lights the blunt roach she put out for him earlier and blows smoke in her face to get her attention. She doesn’t budge. I see her blink, shake her head, then I lose her in the fog.
The Buick bottoms out at the top of Palm and Kate says, “Up here on the right.”
We’re in the “rural” part of South Side now. The degenerated wooded area behind the Valley View Housing Projects where nobody goes. I didn’t even know there were houses up this way.
We creep up to a decrepit, off-white single-frame duplex that sits right up on the street; No landscaped lawn that screams Peasant! at everyone who drives by; No driveway that leads to a two-car garage attached to a fucking mansion. The only thing between the Buick and the front porch is a chipped-up sidewalk. A man sits beneath the glaring porch light in a plastic lawn chair with his head down and his hands dug into the pockets of his oversized Carhartt jacket. His being there seems to have alarmed Kate. She doesn’t get out immediately.
Chris can’t help himself. He says, “Damn look at that dude dip,” then adds sardonically, “Kate, that your boyfriend?”
She leans over, opens the door herself. Before I can step out to let her leave, she climbs over me and throws herself out of the Buick.
Chris won’t quit. “Don’t be scared girl. Bauer wasn’t gonna hit YOU.”
Kate spins around and says, “Get the fuck out of here,” then slams the door.
Mike begins to pull away, but Bauer stops him, says, “Wait a second.”
He is glaring at Kate through the window as she makes her way to the front porch. She is moving slow and deliberate like she doesn’t want to wake the man sitting there.
I can just barely hear her saying, “Dad. Dad. Dad.”
She grabs him by the shoulder and shakes. He comes to life incrementally. He lifts his head up, turns it toward her, opens his eyes. He’s ugly as sin. He’s got a pale-green face, a heroin frown. He’s looking at her but he’s not there. He might as well be over in Green Ridge, unconscious on the black top with Joe Doherty.
Bauer’s glare softens and if I know him like I know I know him he is thinking, Kate, just give up. Once they go that far it is too late. You can’t help your dad just like I couldn’t help mine.
Kate is struggling to lift her father up out of the chair. His head dips again. He’s back to square one.
Chris can’t shut up. “Alright let’s go. I don’t wanna look at this scumbag anymore.”
Mike shifts the Buick into drive, but Bauer stops him again.
“Wait.”
His head is cocked to the right. His facial features come back stronger than ever and I see how much he looks like his own dad. I think it might be the nose or the shape of his head. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m just high. I don’t know.
I’m starting to feel something though. Something is trying to connect me to the world outside my own. Something about Kate’s way of dealing with her pain that doesn’t involve cancer jokes or violence.
I instinctively push the feeling away, propping up my pessimistic outlook so I can remain in my comfort zone. I’m thinking, Kate let that dope fiend go. You will never change him.
She counteracts my thought process and sits down in the empty lawn chair next to her father. She puts her hand on his back as he sinks even lower into his junkiedom.
I think Bauer is starting to feel something too, but he’s not ready for it.
He says to Mike, “Alright let’s go.”
And the Buick goes.