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Cover
Table of Contents
Editor's Notes
Donations
Submission
Guidelines
Website
Stories
& Essays
...gone
tomorrow
_ By
jp Rodriguez
Barbie
and the Burn Scars
_ By
Dion OReilly
Bright
Lights
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Cricket Theory
_ By
Sophia Alev
Dieciseis
_ By
Kate Delany
Fines Double In Work Zone
_ By
Brian Stumbaugh
Guy and Doll
_ By
John P. Loonam
Lake
_ By
Erlynda Jacqui Chan
Lala's Diner
_ By
Nicole Exposito
Laundry
_ By
Allison P. Boye
Love Story
_ By
Cynthia Burke
Magic Bags and Forgotten Princesses
_ By
Ken Goldman
Squirrels
_ By
Benjamin Buchholz
Poetry
Baking Bread and Other Subtleties
_ By
Leland Jamieson
Corpus Christi
_ By
Taylor Collier
Early Cold
_ By
Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
Ekphrasis at the Mall
_ By
James Owens
Games In Your Uncle's Den
_ By
Robin Stratton
My Spanish Rose
_ By
Jose Rivera
Northern Lights, Southern Soul
_ By
E.F. Kramer
Posted on Fifth Avenue
_ By
J.R. Salling
Sirens
_ By
Naiya Wright
Summer Sojourn
_ By
Cheryl Butterweck-Bucher
The Himalayan Sunset
_ By
Rohith Sundararaman
Time Decays, Clots
_ By
Kristine Ong Muslim
Turn
_ By
Terrance Schaefer
Where You Rest
_ By
Stephanie N. Barnes
Art
& Photography
Bissan Alhussein
_ Paintings
E.W. Hung
_ Photography
Papa
Osmubal
_ Drawings
Linda
Pakkas
_ Drawings
Anastasiya Tarasenko
_ Paintings
Filip Wierzbicki
_ Paintings
and Digital Photography
Nancy Xu
_ Paintings
and Drawings
_
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...gone
tomorrow
By
jp Rodriguez
The
fall winds muscle through the branches of the birch and pines,
tantalizing the leaves with promises of freedom in return for the
release of a grasp, a leap of faith. The most easily convinced zip
madly along on the swirling currents, eyes on the sky and ignoring
the fate that awaits them below. Others are hesitant, beguiled but
suspicious, clinging. A few, green still and brazenly contented,
stubbornly refuse to believe that anywhere could be better than
home.
Though
the honest cold is late this year, the winds work their way in and
May’s grateful for the seclusion they afford. As she presses on
through the trees, alone along the path edging the creek, she swims
lazily in a flood of nostalgia and a delicious sense of restoration.
This is a homecoming, but there’s a resonance to her affection
that the banal phrase cannot convey.
It’s
been four years—four years since she left this serenely complacent
town pinched between a seemingly endless sea of trees and the head
of Lake Superior; four years since she traded nature, tranquility,
and horizon for the seething city with its vertical cement and
sideways sunset and rise; four years since she broke away seeking
something better; four years since she felt in place.
As
the living land she was shaped by pervades her thoughts, she feels
herself wholly consumed, indistinct, a collection of bonded
particles inseparable from the surrounding life. She blinks away the
sting in her eyes, perceiving for the first time the passion of
those who kill and die for their soil. Despite trying, never has she
been able to see more than a hazy trace of this emotion that lays so
many in premature graves, but here it is in her head: bright,
shining, and as clear as a window with no pane. Accompanying the
insight is a stab of anger, but she’s thankful to taste some of
the wisdom promised with age.
Rounding
a corner, she sees a ways up the path a figure, a man. Tall and
thin, slow and determinedly he walks, as though dragging along
something heavy. Jerky, defined by inertia and rigidity, stiff and
rusted, he’s wrought iron come to life. Only just. A khaki jacket
hangs from his coat hanger shoulders and his black slacks long to
break free of his frame to dance with the promiscuous winds. Rather
than support him, the cane he pokes along stabs him in the back with
its lamentation of irrevocably lost vigor and ability.
Out
of nowhere the sun whips off its billowing blanket to suffuse the
scene with such loving radiance that for a moment, the beauty stuns
May—the immanent beauty of existence. It stops her still in her
mental step, sealing away all awareness of other-than-now. As the
man’s legs buckle beneath him and he crumples to the asphalt like
scaffolding, she refuses to believe that such a thing could happen
at such a moment, like bird-droppings landing on Mona Lisa’s lip.
And then the sun, as though sensing its own complicity, hides itself
once again deep within its covers, pretending to be asleep.
She
runs to the man, afraid of what she won’t find. He’s on his
side. The cane is clutched still in his veiny hand and strands of
silver hair leak from a bloodless wound. His eyes are closed. His
jaw’s clenched. She kneels down by his side.
“Sir!
Are you all right? Hey! Wake up! Come on, wake up!” She hesitates,
then puts her hand on his shoulder and gives it a tug. He feels
empty. She feels a heartbeat, but it’s her own beating
double-time, working for the both of them. “Sir. Sir! Wake up! Come
on, wake up damn it!” She’s shaking him more urgently.
Suddenly she pulls away, fearing she might break him. Or desecrate
him.
“It’s
okay. (deep breath) I’m all right.” The feeble voice emanates
from him as though the trees are ventriloquists and he their dummy.
“Please, (deep breath) just let me lie here a moment. (deep
breath) Won’t be...” His voice is hollow and airy, scratched and
chipped. Vocal chords scored by a million haughty howls of delight
and groans of disappointment labor on with their moldings of the
air.
His
unstirring figure commands space like a still life, and May wonders
that the sturdy wind can’t live up to its task of hurrying along
to the lee of stones all spent forms. The looser sections of his
clothing flutter like flags of surrender flapping on misshapen
poles. She waits for him to say something more, but he holds his
words close to his chest. She thinks of calling an ambulance and is
disturbed by the thought—the stern intrusion of reality it ushers
in.
But
still, “I think maybe I should phone an—”
“No,
I’m okay.” His eyes open and she wonders what scenes they’ve
judged. “Maybe you can, (deep breath) just...” He tries to
gather up his iron limbs and May gets behind him and under his
shoulders to help him sit up. He grimaces in pain and groans. She
wonders how many times in his life he’s made such a sound. She
panics at the thought that perhaps he never has.
“On
second, (deep breath) thought, (deep breath) (deep breath) maybe
I’ll stay here just a, (deep breath) just a touch longer. (deep
breath) If it’s all the same...” He eases back, and May finds
herself with a near-death old man propped up in her lap. Just like
that.
And
then, like an actor scripted to step on stage, a woman appears.
(Turn
the page)
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