Risë Kevalshar Collins

adumbrate

8  24  2019 
on a lightless night elijah
mcclain 23-year-old black 
masseur and violinist 

who plays for sheltered animals
listens to music hums walks home
from a store after buying tea 
anemic he wears an open- 

faced ski mask for warmth 911
brown caller thinks he looks weird  
suspicious 140 
pounds 5-foot-6 night in white 

aurora colorado black 
innocence guitarist walking 
sketchy unarmed not accused
of any crime denver blue line

where domestic terror foments
three achromatic officers
tackle elijah to ground 
chokehold him down in that special 

suite of white hell reserved for black 
men my name’s elijah mcclain
i can’t breathe please stop—they do not 
three depigmented law men 

two of whom are former u s a
marines randy roedema and 
nathan woodyard plus one jason 
rosenblatt cuff black elijah’s

hands behind his back i was just 
going home i’m an introvert 
i’m just different i have no gun 
i don’t do that stuff i don’t do 

any fighting i don’t kill flies 
i don’t eat meat forgive me he
vomits gasps for air i‘m sorry 
i wasn’t trying to do that 

i can’t breathe correctly 
this night sans light hushed white hot fascist
winds whirl alt right blood rushes swirls
blanched paramedic jeremy 

cooper takes lieutenant peter
cichuniec’s order injects 
slender elijah mcclain with
500 mg ketamine 

post heavy sedative dose
on his vomit elijah chokes 
heart attacks declared brain dead
pray tell how the hell did all three

body cams fall off during 
the arrest our best supremacists
three more on duty officers 
erica marrero jaron

jones and kyle dittrich arrive 
at the scene where elijah was stopped
they pose for selfies smile laugh joke 
they reenact the same chokehold 

used on elijah by righteous
sworn officers of law jason 
rosenblatt even sends ha-ha texts
mocks black elijah’s death 

 

blue passionfruit

in mirrors mama looks back at 
me i’m older than she was when 
she died in february my
head shaved for months years i wear black 

my soul in freefall through foothills
tall sahara roses fry in
triple digit may june heat i
wrestle pen to paper to purge

for black elijah mcclain whom
three white colorado cops and
two white paramedics slayed
cold ketamine injected

under a headlight moon indicted
for the death they mocked 
my stomach churns a sea tide turns 
far right far white storms forewarning

civil war looms smoking gun grey 
sky red mars black sun rising white
supremacy seeks to suppress 
the vote semi-welcoming war-

driven afghans as white border
boys beat back expel black haitians 
catastrophe-driven they’ve walked
apocalyptic miles dreamed post-

apocalyptic nightmares a
white idaho woman confessed
no masks were worn at her baby 
shower she caught covid gave 

birth on a ventilator they cut 
the baby out amid vaccine
hesitancy hoarding unhoused 
neighbors can’t quarantine friends need 

healthcare chemo nurses drag ass
to therapists we’re unhinged i 
leave food money notes blue kisses 
ruby orchids at their doors black

rickia young today received
two million dollars after she 
was pulled from her car and beaten
by lawless white lawmen sans love

in philadelphia though our
cars are dented swiped swastikaed
keyed we don’t call boise p d 
our olivia lone bear found 

drowned among thousands of amber
black girls gone missing i deep-seed
lily lotus amaryllis
visions of equal justice rise

i see mama’s eyes unflinching 
our voices ring i’m older than
she was in my late september
garden mama looks back at me 

 

Risë Kevalshar Collins is a writer living in Boise. She studies creative writing at Boise State University where she has served on the editorial staff of Idaho Review. Risë earned an MSW at University of Houston. She holds a BFA in Drama from Carnegie-Mellon University. Her poetry appears in ANMLY, The Indianapolis Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Minnesota Review. Her creative nonfiction appears in Michigan Quarterly Review and is forthcoming in Texas Review. Rise’s fiction appears in The North American Review. You may read and/or listen to Risë read her poetry online in Tupelo Quarterly (“Decrescent Moon” and “Threnody”) and The Indianapolis Review (“Passion Flowers” and “Pauli”).

 

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KP Kaszubowski

Destroy me June Jordan I need it

I hope you know it wasn’t me that twisted your ankle / how could you regret anything more than what you didn’t even do / I gave my wrist away to play table hockey / falling through the table falling through /  I gift myself the chance to sleep for a whole year 

I remember that June where all I could do was be awake in a bed / I could feel the oil inside of me begin its boil / the origin of snakes under the peritoneum / I heal it I heal it I heal it / what do I have to do to get the snakes back / please just tell me I can’t keep guessing on the quizzes / I was told I pour boiling oil over people 

but I know in my snakes / I know inside the snakes of my snakes / that it was the oil they wanted / the boiling oil all over their skin / and of course it burns / it is oil / why am I made liable for the burn / I’m just taking quizzes over here hoping to find the results to where my snakes have gone 

I blush at the thought of forgiving you / keep me away from granite table tops my head falls down so violently / checking the spoons for the sharp splice / giving up forgiving for Lent / giving up going home for Lent / the bemusing of a snake pile Lent / the mastery of somethinghood for Lent / give me a break for Lent / giving everything up for Lent 

how many times do I have to tell you I don’t have anything for you / I don’t have anything for myself but today I feel like I found something / I want to keep and she looks like June Jordan 

and she looks like wind blowing up leaves / as fifty people circle a tree we call June Jordan / and she looks like a clock striking three June Jordan / and she looks like me if I looked at myself June Jordan 

don’t take my June from me / I have got a hold of her / could she be the snakes I’ve been penciling in the circles on the quizzes for / could it be the snakes are back 

they’re looking for my Easter June Jordan  / crack my knuckles for me / it’s 
time / my snakes 

 

Don’t let the violence stay inside your body

I own this type of cloud that sobs next to me whenever I need a lift. She sounds like static after some time. This morning, she burst open a whole new brook. I’ve always wanted to live where I could hear the water– 

::

I ask Jenna what flower she’d be if she was a flower just today (“Lilies.”) but I don’t think she understood the violence of the proposition. (“What color lilies?”) She didn’t catch that she would be thrown into the whole life of a flower (“Tiger.”), subjected to the pluckers without a lampshade, a crescent mouth, or incisors to protect herself. (“What flower does your danger feel like?”) I’ll keep my eyes to myself, even if her violets look so good when they’re breaking open her tears. 

::

What would a pelvis smell like if it was fried outside in Liberty Park? Would pelvises differ in the way they’ve been smote? The knife makes magenta contact. Translate this as a body seized from the self. Enter the BBQ with the sole purpose of “punish” for the people who gather. It doesn’t matter how flat you sit at the rain-soaked table if everyone there has added to the loom of shadows that left you to solo, left you to hunger for a colossal care. Colossal as in chasm.  Colossal as in natatorium. Drowned before you were able to fit into the ice cube tray of love. Something about too much vodka. Something about it becoming the same as water after a point. It’s not a family, but it’s certainly a crowd. Wefted breasts who were never a cup.

::

I often open around this time,
enough hurt pulsing behind my ears

how aquatic of me
to invite you to my body

::

Today I want only $17mil so that I can fly to Chicago, to Milwaukee, to Monterey, to Cape Cod, to San Fran every weekend.  The way it’s looking right now is that I am able to cry only if I’m a millionaire, first class seat on my way to the people that can draw it out of me–

would you think I deserved the money more or less if you believed me? I’m so full of water and I’m afraid of what will happen if I can’t get it out. If only my rain was a season. If only I knew how to make myself into a body of water. I could ask the Ocean for tips on how to charge admission.

I could ask the Ocean how much money it would cost to
gun down intruders–

 

KP Kaszubowski (she/her) is a poet, filmmaker, playwright, and writing instructor. Her debut poetry collection somnieeee was published in 2019 by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, and her debut feature film Ringolevio premiered in 2020 at Dances With Films in Los Angeles. Her previous poetry has been published (as Kristin Peterson) by pitymilk press, Great Lakes Review, dancing girl press, Juked, Flag + Void, ICHNOS, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Eastern Washington University where she teaches rhetoric, composition, and creative writing courses and is pursuing a graduate certificate in Disability Studies.

 

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Hiyoowi Hamainza

Summer Morn

I (you?) descend the cave through it’s stalactite incisors: pungent trollgoblins, thundering shadows and midnight grumbles – Bloodrot of fresh kill – ugh, the reeking mossgrot and quiet shh shh your bloodnoise they will grok and their bellows will topple my preyerful musque so stand rockstill Allow healing rivers to replenish daylight to (y)our splintered granite slopefalls… 

[the trumpeteering towncrier abreast a weathervane]: a rose, a rose, my strawberry Summer… has arose?

Dawnlight trickles from dry waterfall sky.
Gentle lover with cracked lips, 
will you allow my tears as balm?
accept this lonely morning psalm?

“He loves me, I rust and rot.
I hunt him, he lusts me not?” 

Petals droop tearfully
in sleepy sinking hammock-swings… 

V: I heard-
O: -what?-
V: I heard that – I heard- I heard-
O:-what!-
V: Won’t you shhh? There were thunderbolts.

As my gaze rumbled
& undressed the trembling stembrush—
stumbling storm-strirred eyes. 

(Uh-oh)

Rising from loam her blooming iris painted the clouds in whirlpool watercolours –
(my pirouetting sunrise, how you were mist) – directly spy-swirling their (over-there!) inner-eye.

“Will you help rescue my beloved?” 

… Okay?

And so we breeze the promenade, 
haunt the hillsides,
overcast sheep in suffusions of mist.

When the Seer, Ms. Hawthorne VII, 
Daughter of the Gnostics Temple,
summon(ed?) them/us to family dinner,
the invite is (was) by windswept crow.

Now entering the applecottage pie quaint English hamlet
– deer on the mantel, blackberry eyes 
opaque and oracle –

Ms. Hawthorne II, tragically perished, wrapped me with cackling voodoo beads and thus were her deathwords: 
“Oh what is it to be loved?
A snare, a snare, look at my rabbit paws.
They bring luck.”

Hypnotic hearth, hypnotic heart, 
in the warm-rug warm-rum library of Mr. Haardt… 
her eternal heartthrob.

His eyes are accusations. “Have you ever fired a rifle?” 

I’m swinging my neck across the horizon, 
so we pulse through the vein, fluid hunters,
brandy hemoglobins preserved in amber… 

boozed (wobbling) scope 

     drowssy crosshairs slurrrring skyward:

[clangclanging churchbells] Dinner dinner for all you carnivorous sinners! Dinner up(on) the clouds in the giant white wintercrowned poplar with popular vegan guests and tables carved in artisan-flavored cherrywood.

And on the menu, my dear whoms and whomstresses (inc. bodies and nobodies):
some strawberry
Sum Myrrh

(where did she go?)

Chiming tinkling cutlery, guests quiet like sorrow:

V: … But papa, truly you are fowl.
O: Yes, I am a monster, little chicken.
V: I am no longer little, papa.
O: Ah, but we are specks to the sun –

The hunter that flings incandescent spears, 
flaming battlechariots of barbarous heat – 

At this her face speckled,
freckled pomegranate seeds;

(slicing kitchen knife & wooden cutting board)
“I’ll be out soon with slices of lemon.”

Lunar-yellow crescents, 
heavenfruit fumes waft from bubbling stars
stirred in the night cauldron.

Occult astrology on the barnyard roof,
shuffling tarot decks hosted in the wine cellar:
rotting calendars & desiccated dates.
I stretch for the pulp,
you stoop for the pip.

“Please, don’t sulk, we’ll be back in a bit.
He must learn to shoot.”

But I & we & you turned the cards over
in that basement crypt, intoxicant grapevines:
The Silent Archer and The Juggernaut,
The High Priestess and The Tangled Lovers.
(crystal-dark cave)
A most stormful forecast, indeed.

“Okay, be careful, my beloved.”

During the Sagittarius eon of Brontosaurus Rex,
silent-toed they crept with axe and club,
meat for cavern.
“Look, look!”

There’s two of them, fullchested and loinclothed,
circling the other like twin flames,
lightningforged blades
crisping to spark.
They duel for ripe daybreak.
To pluck the wallflower
from between unruly heap.

Sobbing rain mourns the clouds. Rotating garlands of our children circling skipping chanting around the campfire: I am you and you are me, in perspectives of eternity…

 

Hiyoowi Hamainza is an emerging poet who resides in Cape Town, currently working on his debut novel. He works as an English Editor, studying Psychology and Philosophy part-time.

 

 

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Nadine Hitchiner

Self-Portrait as Tinder

You part your hair zigzag again, so I can’t ghost you. 

I swipe across your scalp & perch on its dandruff—

it snows mid-August & I feel so super special 

without my seasonal depression. 
Had such small wavelength, no true imagination. 
& so, I theorise about the green thumb 

of my mother; the lilac pyramids in her front yard 

& the headlights of her car, atomising 

the dark. I was only myself, trying music—

who is only me 
in motorised skin—& thought:
a pianist is only a prison 

guard holding a key & thought, now this music 

had made a good woman 

of herself & still, you break my heart. 

& so, I waited for it to rain
my lover’s beard—he’d cut the hedge 
& flushed the stubble.

Shaved the chin

into the wheelbarrow.

Roller skated to the street sign 

with his razor—looked so boyish:
wish I’d known him. Found a neon 
seed, a smoke of worms.

Found the stencil 

of a six pack shape a lovesong

like a turtle—found it in his hair 

like curlers,
& you got so jealous.

& so, the lanterns baptise 
their light. I heard a god invent hibiscus 
in Alaska, & it all happened in my body.

Pinched two things that exist 

like they did not, & so now they’re woke

like me: a praying 

mantis on a popsicle—aren’t you absurd? 
Something outran my childhood like a cyst 
on a kitten & it was just a prototype.

They tell me to fix it, or else—

& so, was my own death only fiction?

For everything behavioural 

there’s a thesaurus, there’s archeology. 
I couldn’t hear god 
think that day, couldn’t replace it,

& so, the ferris wheel in my Babylonic

head, so the language. & so, you are 

& aren’t you a dynamo, spinning on air.
& aren’t you just artificial grass in snow.

 

Canoe

Hey, I’m back. Came here closed        atlas, peppered             light—
            swung beneath a disco ball,                                              didn’t feel it.
                          Watched the robbery:                 everyone hunched 
                                                                     their hips           under the laserlight, 
            smeared across their skin                     like green 
lipstick on St. Patrick’s.                                                                   Didn’t feel it
                                            wear off. Came here 
because the street was pouched in light                        and I had no clutch
to go with my shoes, yet.           Came here asking people       in whose image
you were made—                       silly me, 
                                                         forgot you didn’t have to be made twice 
to be remembered.                     Came here        and then the music
                             was clueless. 
                                                         Came here because the street lamps were low 
pyramids—                    so ancient,        but I still wonder            who’s the dust,
who’s the museum and 
                                            where                is           the dance floor? 
            Pre-electric light only had one                emotion: a single longing to dissolve
            in darkness— 
                                                         came here because there was a silencer 
                             screwed onto my lanterns. 
Thought you might know something about the body                  that isn’t bodiless,
                             that isn’t 
                                            somehow 
                                                         a migration. 
            Know I’m only soft                      at a distance,       only brutal to myself up close.
I’ve got a blindfold     between my shoulders—              I only measure uneven
                             5’6 but hear you’ve got a ladder, 
hear you’re a forest and I’m returning                in my head-lit canoe.

 

Nadine Hitchiner (she/her) is a German poet and author of the chapbook Bruises, Birthmarks & Other Calamities (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2021). She was a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published in Midway Journal, GASHER, Red Ogre Review, and others. She lives in her hometown with her husband and their dog. Find her on Twitter: @nadinekwriter.

 

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Rachel Litchman

Step Therapy

-in honor of Carrie Ann Lucas and Dr. Bill Peace

The way you play this game is simple: there is a boy 
on a skateboard and the boy has four lives. The goal of 

            the game is to get the boy on the skateboard to the end
            of the racecourse. The racecourse is not an oval 

                           or a circle; it’s a city. Miles translate into a pixels. The
                           pixels may be counted. The counting, of course, is not 

                                         a requirement, but a strategy: 

                                                                                  the math works like this: a clinitron bed,
                                                                                  which
could relieve the pressure on bedsores,
                                                                                  costs
upwards of 40,000 dollars. Less than one
                                                                                  milliliter
of infected blood may lead to sepsis. If
                                                                                     septic I
would be hospitalized and placed in a
                                                                                     clinitron bed.
Once sepsis is cleared I would be sent
                                                                                     home and to
the same bed that caused my wounds.
                                                                                     An obvious
pattern would emerge.[1]

The city is blocked off by buildings. The stairs 
supplemented by railings. The ramps are 

            fashioned into figure eights. To take the stairs would crack
            the skull. To ride the railings would break a leg. To risk

                           the ramps would lie to gravity. The skateboard boy
                           has four lives and with each death he can experience

                                        partial revival. The funding for complete revival floats at the end
                                        of the racecourse in a pot of stars. The pot of stars is surrounded by

                                                       a pit of fire and evil wizards. The evil wizards hold
                                                       both the wand of Sudden Death and the Key to Level Up

                                                                                      The concept of step therapy is simple: just
                                                                                      because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s
                                                                                      the best option. A medication made out of dirt is the
                                                                                      same as a medication made out of chemicals. Both
                                                                                      drugs have capsules. Both drugs are dissolvable.
                                                                                      The idea is not to dwell on differences but to be
                                                                                      grateful for your temporary survival.

In a simulated attempt to Level-Up, the skateboard boy calculates
the inertia needed to conquer the ramps. The skateboard boy

            succeeds the figure eight but on the way down gets shocked
            by the wizard’s wand of death. The boy loses one life, revives

                           inside the pit of fire and loses a second life. The skateboard
                           boy bleeds from his neck and stomach. He can see

                                        the pot of stars, but, oh, are the wizards laughing.

                                                                                 The concept of step therapy in practice: Because
                                                                                    Carrie Ann worked for the state, she had to use
                                                                                    state insurance…. In January of 2018 she got a cold
                                                                                    which turned into a trach and lung infection. Her
                                                                                    insurance company UnitedHealthcare, refused to
                                                                                    pay for the one specific inhaled antibiotic that she
                                                                                    really needed. She had to take a less effective drug
                                                                                    and had a bad reaction to that drug.[2]

To revive from the second death is to not to be confused
with the revival of Jesus. The body quivers with

            electricity. Nerves tingle. Burn marks fester
            and bleed. Bacteria crawls into open sores

                           and tissue necrotizes. Stars blur into the retina, 
                           begins visual snow. Lack of blood flow to the brain…

                                                                                    Bouts of sepsis, an increasing number of wounds     
                                                                                    and hospitalizations. Over the period of time my
                                                                                    body will weaken, sepsis will become increasingly
                                                                                    difficult to treat and recover from.[1] In this state,
                                                                                 the wizard shocks the boy again. 

Of course, there are strategies: trick the wizard,
take out the middleman, start a go-fund me, grow 

            a rich uncle, a relationship with the president, unblock
            the buildings, throw the wizard into the fire,

                           fix the ramps, find the bug, rewrite the program.

                                                                                      My name is Carrie Ann Lucas. I am here today on
                                                                                      behalf of Not Dead Yet … If I were to become
                                                                                      depressed… and this bill passes, I could go to my
                                                                                      doctor and ask for a lethal prescription. Because I
                                                                                      have a disability, and because physicians are
                                                                                      terrible at evaluating quality of life of people with
                                                                                      disabilities, I would likely be given that lethal
                                                                                      prescription.[3]

                           The doctor comes into your room in the hospital at night
                           and shares the math with you: 

                           this medication, bed, treatment, pill, stars, Level-Up 
                           will costs 2,000 dollars. Not to mention the cost
                           of wound care is astronomical.

                           It’s your choice how you would like to proceed,
                           he says gently. He tells you he can make you very comfortable. 

[1] Peace, Bill “Worse Wound Care Woes” Bad Cripple. 24, April, 2019,
        http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2019/04/worse-wound-care-woes.html

[2]Lucas, Carrie Ann. Carrie Ann Lucas Death. Facebook. 24 Feb. 2019
        https://www.facebook.com/CarrieAnnLucasPersonal/posts/10217145330961609
        Accessed 26, Oct. 2019

[3] Lucas, Carrie Ann. “Carrie Ann Lucas Testimony in Opposition of Colorado SB 16-025.”
        Not Dead Yet, 3 Feb. 2016, notdeadyet.org/carrie-ann-lucas-testimony-in-opposition-of-
        sb-16-025. Accessed 27 Oct. 2019.

 

Rachel Litchman (Rachel DL) is a queer, disabled artist, writer, and member of the Dane County Youth Action Board. Her work centers themes of survivorship, trauma, chronic illness, disability rights and justice. She has been published in Colorado Review, Rooted in Rights, Redivider, and Black Warrior Review, among other places. She is at work on a graphic novel about being hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find her on twitter @wordcalculator or on her website racheldl.com.

 

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Laura Nagle translates Monique Debruxelles

The Chimera Pavilion

As they did at around four o’clock every Sunday, the brass band was setting up for a performance in the town park. Pauline Chartreux packed the chairs tightly just beside the pavilion, where nothing impeded the sun’s rays; no need to set them under the black locust trees for shade on this cool April afternoon.

“What a glorious spring day!” said Madame Socovic, handing her a coin. “It was about time we saw some nice weather again.”

The attendant mumbled only a vague pleasantry in response, for a stranger had caught her attention: an amiable-looking man in his forties, tall and thin, with dark hair. You could see in his eyes that he was compassionate and curious about his surroundings. He wore a well-tailored suit and stylish shoes.

Mayor Bergeron stood on the podium in his capacity as bandleader, whispering last-minute reminders to the musicians. By now nearly all the chairs were occupied, and people were turning around to comment on each other’s clothing and share their news.

Pauline Chartreux observed the newcomer out of the corner of her eye. She wondered what he might be after.

The mayor’s wife arrived, in a muslin dress that was too lightweight for the season, and took her seat beside Madame Socovic. Her husband raised his right hand, as though her arrival were all he’d been waiting for, and the band launched into “Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka.”

The stranger, who had been leaning against a tree trunk, now walked slowly around the pavilion. He looked to be in shock, but the attendant couldn’t imagine why; she saw nothing out of the ordinary about the concert or the audience. He came up to her, handed her a coin, and took a seat.

Pauline Chartreux sat down well behind the audience and crossed her hands over her belly, like a shepherdess minding her flock. The musicians performed fifteen pieces or so—an indiscriminate mix of classical repertoire, military marches, and recent pop tunes.

After the concert she started folding up the chairs. She noticed the stranger, still glued to his seat, keenly eyeing the musicians as they put away their instruments.

“Did you enjoy the concert, sir?” she called out to him. “The band is good, don’t you think?”

As if waking from a dream, the man said, “Beg your pardon? Oh, yes, of course. Do they play often?”

“Every Sunday. Other musicians play here sometimes, too. On Saturdays. Next week we’ll have a folk group from Limousin.”

But the man’s mind was clearly elsewhere. Smack in the middle of her sentence, he wished Madame Chartreux a pleasant day and left the park.

She saw him again every afternoon that week, scrutinizing the passersby for an hour or two. At the pharmacy one morning, she learned that he was a doctor by the name of Daniel Pile and that he’d just taken over a local practice upon the previous doctor’s retirement.

That Saturday, he arrived right on time for the folk music show. The audience took up only three rows and consisted mostly of young moms and little kids. As the performers began singing and dancing, the attendant observed Dr. Pile glaring at the audience members with evident annoyance. He got up and left during the second song.

*

As he walked briskly to the back of the park, Daniel Pile was thinking about the four patients who had come to see him that morning, making this his busiest day yet. Either all the local residents were in excellent health or they were reluctant to trust a doctor who was new in town. Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else.

Pile noticed a man near the swan pond, dressed in blue, with an even, expressionless face. He started up a conversation and observed the man as they discussed the weather forecast and the bakers’ strike. His mouth moved only to let words out; it didn’t budge otherwise, neither to smile nor to frown. His eyes were a blank page. There wasn’t a wrinkle on his face, even though his gray hair suggested he was a man of a certain age. The doctor wanted to touch the man’s unlined cheeks but couldn’t think of any pretext to do so. Four of the musicians from the brass band in the town park, whom he’d initially taken for brothers, had that same face—featureless and free of scars or, indeed, of any distinguishing features whatsoever. And in the audience at the previous Sunday’s concert, Pile had spotted a half-dozen people suffering from the same anomaly.

Night was starting to fall; he thought it was time to go home. Then he saw a young woman approaching, her stride constricted to baby steps due to the tightness of her long green dress. Her straight brown bangs were long enough to cover her eyebrows, which made her look rather peculiar. She was making her way down the path, vigorously shaking a soda can. She stopped near the puppet theater and seemed to be looking for someone. Her gaze rested for a moment on Daniel Pile before settling on a red-haired young man sprawled on a bench. Affecting an inscrutable pout, she headed resolutely toward him across the park. Out of curiosity, the doctor followed her. The brunette held the can in her right hand, behind her back, and kept shaking it. 

An old man was sitting at the foot of a sycamore tree. Beneath the brim of his off-white canvas cap, his face simply radiated impishness. Daniel Pile had a soft spot for faces like his, creased with the vestiges of childhood laughter. The old man looked up calmly at the woman, who was holding the soda can out to him.

“Could you help me? I have tendinitis and I can’t get this can open.”

He smiled and pulled the tab. The soda shot out of the can and splashed all over his face. The old man closed his eyes.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” the woman cried. “I must have jostled it too much. Here, I’ll dry you off.”

A white towel appeared in her hand. She unfolded it and placed it over the old man’s face. With her fingertips she traced the curve of his eyebrows, his eye sockets and cheeks, his nose and mouth and chin; she swept her fingers across his forehead. And then she gathered together the corners of the fabric, which remained stiff and rounded. She walked away, apologizing once again, upon which the man replied that the pleasure was all his.

Daniel Pile looked at the old man’s face and was astonished by what he saw: not a single feature, no expression whatsoever. It would be impossible to guess his age. The charming air of mischief he’d had just moments before was gone. There was nothing left of him on which to pin a description, aside from his notably large ears.

Pile went up to him and said, “I saw what just happened to you, sir. I’m a doctor. How are you feeling?”

“Very well,” the man said, showing neither surprise nor interest. “No big deal, just a few drops of soda.”

“But what about your face?”

“What, are you afraid the sugar will attract wasps?”

Up close, the doctor couldn’t see a single hair or pore on the man’s face, nor even the tiniest of capillaries. The face was human, but it was as though it were covered with a taut layer of soft silk. The old man left, taking tiny steps, and Pile followed behind him. The park was about to close; security guards on mopeds were chugging along on the paths, asking folks to leave.

In the weeks that followed, Dr. Pile returned frequently, bringing books and medical journals with him. He exchanged pleasantries with the attendant, then spent long hours sitting on a bench near the main entrance. Now and then he saw featureless beings pass by. Aside from a few clues as to their age, gender, and (in some cases) occupation, there was no telling them apart. 

It took three weeks of waiting, but finally he saw the young brunette again. This time she was wearing a white tulle skirt and a long yellow tunic. Holding a soda can, she walked past the doctor without so much as a glance in his direction. No one would call her a beauty—her nose was a bit too prominent for that!—but her eyes were distinctive enough to compensate. She took the circular path alongside the swan pond. A woman in her fifties, knitting in the shade of a linden tree, looked up at the sound of someone approaching. Her pink complexion was a perfect match for the yarn she was using. The strange brunette held out the soda, pointed to her right hand, and said she couldn’t open it.

Pile hurried over. “Allow me,” he said, grabbing the metal cylinder.

The young woman looked at him, first with surprise, then with rage. Without breaking eye contact, he slid his index finger over the tab.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “why don’t we have a soda together, at the café across the street?”

Sitting in the sun outside Le Caboulot, the stranger seemed more wary than aggrieved as Daniel Pile explained who he was and how things had gone for his first few months in town. Her name was Alice Lespovy, she told him, and she’d always lived in the neighborhood. She’d gotten married young, to a piano teacher. He’d disappeared two years later, never to be heard from again.

Upon hearing the word “piano,” Pile took a harmonica from his jacket pocket. He put it to his lips and played a few muted notes. Alice’s eyes went misty.

“Stop. Please stop. I hate the harmonica.”

He immediately put the instrument away.

“My father was a country doctor,” he said. “He’s the one who taught me music.”

She quickly pulled herself together and said, “You followed in his footsteps, then?”

“I was a florist first, then an insurance underwriter. It wasn’t until my wife and son died that I took an interest in healing people. That’s when I enrolled in medical school.”

Silence.

Alice was starting to stand up when Daniel Pile asked her, “Why do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. You wipe your victims’ faces and take them with you.”

She snickered. “My ‘victims’! That’s a bit much. I don’t hurt them. And I certainly don’t ‘take their faces’! They still have all their human characteristics: a nose, a mouth, a pair of eyes—”

“But not what matters. Not what makes them unique, what makes them distinctive. I’ve spoken with several of them. It’s not just that blank mask they all wear; their minds are empty too. They take no interest in anything. They come and go, they work and eat and keep busy, but they have no emotions.”

“And don’t you think they’re happier that way, Dr. Pile?” she said, emphasizing his title.

“What’s your goal?”

She shifted her weight and nibbled on her lower lip.

“Come along with me, Daniel. You’ll understand.”

They climbed Trois Grenadiers hill, up toward the water tower. Pile took the young woman’s hand. She didn’t pull away, but her smile was noncommittal. She led him to a cul-de-sac and opened a gate, revealing an elegant stone house surrounded by high walls. They entered, walked through a dark passageway, and came out again through another door. To Pile, it seemed like he was back where he’d started. In the middle of the yard was a band pavilion. Several musicians had already taken their places; some audience members were seated as well, patiently awaiting the start of the concert. A bit farther away was the cabin where Madame Chartreux stored her chairs. The doctor went up to an old lady in a purple dress—or, rather, a mannequin dressed in purple. Her face was wrinkled to perfection. Daniel touched it with his fingertips and found it warm and alive. Then he spotted the man with the off-white cap, the one whose features he’d watched Alice steal. There was a wax figure of a standing woman, dressed like the park attendant, but her face was just a smooth mass.

“That’s right,” Alice said. “Madame Chartreux is one of my clients.”

While they drank tea together on the veranda, Pile’s curiosity got the better of him.

“On a technical level, how do you do it?”

She threw her head back and burst out laughing.

“What, you really think I’m going to tell you?”

“That towel you use to take away your so-called clients’ features—it must be soaked in some kind of substance. You could tell me that much, at least.”

“It’s a family secret. My mother was a chemist; I can’t say any more about it. But there’s no greater mystery about it than there is in, say, photography.”

“But why—”

“Shut up and kiss me, Daniel. I’m dying for you to kiss me.”

*

Pile got used to seeing the wax figures installed in the garden. Sometimes he even helped his girlfriend freshen them up. They were sheltered by an electric tarp that automatically unfurled at the first hint of rain, but even so, they took a beating from exposure to the wind. There were leaves to pick off of them and dust to remove from their clothing; their hair needed primping now and then. Madame Chartreux’s double still hadn’t gotten her human face. The attendant had twice refused to open Alice’s soda can, on the grounds that “those chemical drinks are bad for your health.” Daniel Pile thought she might be smarter than she looked. Joining the crowd around the pavilion were Madame Socovic, the watchmaker, and the hairdresser, and two musicians had joined their colleagues on the bandstand.

*

The first time Alice went to the little house behind the town hall, Daniel Pile showed her around his living quarters, the examining room, and even the cellar.

“And what’s in there?” she asked, pointing to a door next to Daniel’s bedroom.

“My butterfly collection.”

“Show me.”

He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. This small, square room with the shutters drawn housed the most stunning butterfly specimens Alice had ever seen. They were arranged by color. To her right were the blues, ranging from lightest to darkest, followed by the purples and pinks; to her left, yellows and oranges, greens and browns. In the center were blood-red and black butterflies, one of them a giant. There were only a few white butterflies, but their wings had a satiny sheen. Alice expected the labels beneath each specimen to be in Latin, but instead there was a first name, followed by an initial and a date.

“Why do you give them names?”

“Why do you put real faces on your wax figures?”

In a display case near the door were two magnificent butterflies. One was a tiny specimen, pale green with glints of white; the larger one was midnight blue with specks of gold.

“Why are they kept separate from the rest?”

“They’re the first two I caught. A special souvenir.”

“Where do you catch them? In East Asia? There are no butterflies around here with such gorgeous coloring.”

“Oh, they’re around,” Pile said breezily, “if you know where to look.”

On her way home, she stopped by the town park and asked the attendant her opinion of Daniel Pile.

“Is he a good doctor? What are people saying about him?”

“That he’s trustworthy enough,” Pauline Chartreux told her, “if you’ve got the flu or a nail infection. But apparently he has some awfully strange methods when it comes to caring for the dying. He insists on staying with them, alone, and playing music for them right up to the end. But, hey, maybe that helps them get to the other side!”

*

Daniel was more tender toward Alice here at his house, more relaxed than he was at hers, where he was always afraid he’d fall asleep and she’d take advantage of the opportunity to steal his face. In his own home, though, he felt secure. One day he told her as much.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a laugh. “Your face is of no interest to me. You haven’t been living here long enough.”

He understood then that she was in it for revenge.

“Nobody in town seems surprised to see well-known people suddenly walk around with blank faces. Don’t you find that odd, Alice? And why no reaction from the families of the faceless?”

“You don’t know them, Daniel. We live among apathetic people. Lacking in intelligence, if you ask me. It’s like they’re all bathed in blissful, self-satisfied ignorance. Before and after my treatment, there’s hardly any difference.”

Pile had noticed this phenomenon before. This place had no character to speak of; the town planning was vague at best, and the population was chockablock with morons.

*

One evening he returned home to find Alice standing at his door, shivering in the light drizzle.

“I’ve been here for an hour,” she complained. “Where were you?”

“With one of your ‘clients,’ as you put it. Monsieur Granier. He just died.”

She followed him into the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of wine.

“Are you in a bad mood because you couldn’t save him?”

“He didn’t have a butterfly!” he blurted. “Just like last week, with Madame Leplat. This maddening compulsion of yours is impeding my work.”

Alice asked him what he meant, but he demanded she leave.

By the time Alice returned the next day, he was in a better mood and treated her with kindness. After they made love, she asked him, “What do you play for your patients who are, you know, transitioning? Are we talking ‘Camptown Races’ or ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee?’”

He took his harmonica from his jacket pocket and put it to his lips. A melancholy tune filled the room. Alice ran, screaming, out to the hallway, her eyes wild and her hands pressed flat against her ears. He caught up to her in the living room and held her close.

“What are you afraid of? You think the tune kills off everyone who hears it? If that were the case, I’d have kicked the bucket long ago.”

“You know I hate the harmonica. It sends shivers down my spine. The very thought of you playing it at moments like those . . .”

Later, while making coffee for her, he began to tell his story.

“It was nighttime. We were driving back from Italy. My wife and my son were asleep. It was raining. I don’t remember what happened. When I opened my eyes, the car was in a ravine. A tree had broken its fall. I managed to make my way out. My leg was injured. My wife and Frédéric had been ejected from the car. They were lying farther down the hill, a few yards apart. I crawled down to them. We were on a mountain road; I had no chance of getting help for them in time. I instinctively took out my harmonica and played them the tune you heard earlier, to comfort them. I don’t know who wrote it, but my father used to play it for me when I was sick. He said he’d learned it from a fairy. Frédéric died right away, with his head on my knees, illuminated by a headlight from our car. That’s when I saw something emerging from my son’s right eye. It was hesitant, quivering. I kept blowing into my instrument. It was the only thing I could do to contend with my fear and despair. Something came detached from the eye—just a shiver of pale green. I couldn’t understand. I grabbed hold of the thing and saw that it was a butterfly. My son kept a small tin box in his pocket for his marbles, a whistle, all his little-boy treasures. I emptied it out and put the insect inside. And then a few minutes later, his mother died too. At the sound of my harmonica, a butterfly slipped out of her right eye. A gorgeous one, the deep colors of midnight.”

When Alice left, the doctor understood that she wouldn’t want to see him anymore.

*

A few weeks went by. His patients presented with insignificant maladies: sore throats, gastritis, sprains. Nothing to suggest an impending influx of Lepidoptera. He’d only been present for five or six deaths since he’d set up his practice here, and two of those didn’t count. As winter approached, Pile hoped that the damp cold would bring its fair share of germs to town, but the natives were a sturdy bunch. He’d come to the wrong place for butterfly hunting.

One Sunday afternoon he went to the town park. Madame Chartreux, who noted what a long time it had been since last she saw him, was all smiles. The brass band’s concert was about to start. More than half of the musicians on the bandstand, the conductor among them, were identical. Pile looked around at the audience. He recognized the mayor’s wife by her jewelry, the pharmacist by his goiter, and the parish priest by the prayer book sticking out of his pocket.

He ran to Trois Grenadiers hill in a rage. No sooner had Alice opened the door than he was ordering her to put an end to her activities and threatening to report her to the police if she persisted.

“I suppose you find it more proper to lie in wait for people to die so you can pin some poor creatures for your collection?”

“You’re so self-centered. You know you’re putting me at a disadvantage when you steal faces. It’s even occurred to me that you’re purposely targeting the old and the weak, the ones most likely to die soon, just to make me watch them for nothing.”

Her only reply was a disdainful smile.

“This collection matters so much to me,” he continued. “In the end, I’m not even doing anything wrong; I just play music for the dying. I make it easier for them.”

*

Dr. Pile’s office was closed for over a month. As luck would have it, he ran into Alice in the street as soon as he returned to town.

“Been away?” she asked, gesturing at his suitcase.

“Indeed. I was in India.”

“On vacation?”

“No. I was training at a medical research lab.”

“Oh,” she said indifferently. “I’ve heard people die in the streets there. I suppose you must have dozens of butterflies with you.”

During his absence, Alice had been busy as a bee. Plenty of folks had agreed to open the can. It was high time he intervened.

Two weeks after his return, he was called to a young man’s bedside and was unable to save him. The boy’s mother died shortly thereafter, followed by his sister. Once the tally of the dead had risen into double digits, newspapers started running headlines about this mysterious epidemic. The symptoms resembled those of a few diseases endemic to Asia, but specialists couldn’t reach a consensus about which one this was. At last Daniel Pile had the practice of his dreams. His collection kept growing.

One day a lady came to fetch him for her neighbor, who had been sick for several days but refused to see a doctor.

“Especially not you,” the lady said. “But she’s in a very bad way this morning, and the other doctors are busy, so I came anyway.”

He was not surprised when she led him to Alice’s house. Upon entering the bedroom, he saw that the neighbor wasn’t mistaken: Barely a glimmer of life remained in the young woman’s eyes. Nevertheless, Pile sensed that she could recognize him. He took her hand and began keeping watch.

Knowing how she abhorred the harmonica, he waited until the last possible moment to play his melody. When it was all over, he went down to the garden for a final visit to the band pavilion and its habitués. A violent wind had been blowing for several days, and most of the wax figures looked the worse for wear. A few had fallen over and broken in half, their faces vibrant as ever despite being covered in dust. He returned home, now and then patting the little tin box in his pocket. It contained one of his finest butterflies: orange, with streaks of gray and brown.

 

Translator’s Note:

Like much of Monique Debruxelles’s short fiction, “The Chimera Pavilion” is set in a funhouse-mirror version of rural France. These small towns may appear quaint and postcard-perfect from a safe distance, but a closer look reveals them to be rife with hazards. Upon arrival in any of Debruxelles’s fictional villages, tourists and newcomers ought to be given fair warning: If the supernatural forces don’t kill them, the local gossip and long-simmering resentments between neighbors just might.

When we first meet Daniel Pile, he is getting settled in a new town and struggling to keep his newly acquired medical practice afloat. Many residents seem to be avoiding treatment even though they suffer from a novel affliction characterized by a “faceless” appearance; worse still, he seems to be alone in noticing the preponderance of expressionless faces and vapid personalities among the local population. Just when the reader might expect him to investigate whether there’s something in the water, Dr. Pile discovers instead that there’s something in the soda cans: a mysterious chemical used by a grudge-holding local woman to wipe away her neighbors’ facial features. But saving his new neighbors from the threat hiding in plain sight isn’t a simple matter for him, in practical or ethical terms. He’s a perfectly capable physician, but his preferred medical device is the harmonica he plays when patients are on their deathbeds—and that music is intended for his benefit, not theirs.

In addition to Debruxelles’s hauntingly visceral imagery, the pleasures and challenges of translating a story like “The Chimera Pavilion” extend to its pacing. The revelation of Dr. Pile’s ulterior motives is gradual, and so is the change in tone—a vague unease that intensifies almost imperceptibly into a pervasive sense of dread. Word choices naturally contribute to that effect, but in the process of translating this story, I found punctuation and paragraph breaks to be just as important.

One key example of this falls early in the story, when we learn that Dr. Pile has concerns about the viability of his practice: “Either all the local residents were in excellent health or they were reluctant to trust a doctor who was new in town. Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else.” Looking back at this passage with the knowledge we’ve gained by the end of the story, Dr. Pile’s meaning is brutally clear—his “butterfly hunting” would be easier in a place where more people were both sick and trusting of doctors—but without that context, it seems harmless. The reference to the locals being “in excellent health” initially sounds like a joke rather than a complaint; their supposed reluctance to trust an outsider would provide a logical explanation for his business troubles. Moreover, I think it’s natural that we as readers fill in some context that isn’t strictly on the page: “Maybe he ought to leave and start over somewhere else” because he needs to make a living or because he wants to find a community where his services are needed and appreciated. While the original French text has no paragraph break after that sentence, I’ve inserted one in the English translation to make this brief passage more visible on the page and encourage readers to linger on this brilliant moment of subtle misdirection.

 

Monique Debruxelles is the author of four short story collections and co-author of three crime novels. Her short fiction appeared for the first time in English in 2022, in The Southern Review. Retired from a career in the civil service, she lives in a suburb of Paris and writes the mystery and magic that lie beneath even the most mundane routines.

Laura Nagle is a translator and writer based in Indianapolis. Her translations of prose and poetry from French and Spanish have appeared in journals including AGNI, The Southern Review, and The Los Angeles Review. Songs for the Gusle, her translation of Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla, is forthcoming from Frayed Edge Press.

 

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Eros Livieratos

DATA ENTRY 001//TRAUMA_MAPS

Asceticism: 

       1) Autodidactic  

orange rinds and hoops after school 
wandering hands in that void of a closet 
got big teeth like a beast, sinking— 

fires in my chest; I am eating the last 
of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves 
against the caverns—these damned walls are thick. 

You’re straight like an octagon. A million tiny dots  
on that globe                                I can’t shoot. You’d laugh,  

you ever hit it from the back?
 

       2) Database Animal 

                                                                                                          I am [ ] 
I’ve been chewing at the moon—barking. 
Fucking on Wednesdays. Resting on Fridays. 
On one at the Turkey Hill—drinking 
gasoline                          some guerilla shit. 

Eat till full, molars crush rinds.  
Seraphs too, wings and horns, 

all bodies are [mine] 

Y2K deathmachines; factory farm  
sonata.                          You better meet me in the middle. 

            Listen                        moment                static hits. I’ll meet you there.                 Bring the  goods.
                                                            You’re a god today.  
            Bring everything.  
                                                I’ve/got/the/cash/in/my/screen 
                                                bring the goods to the drop spot.  

                                                                                                                                                                   // error

            4)                               trauma maps

                                                                     a)    ontologies

                                          Trauma

            Acceleration 

$$$$
                                          Data

                                                                                                             $$$$

                                                                                    Autonomy

                                                       Uprooting
                                                                                                            Blood

                          Quarks

               Parts

Simples
                           Theism

                                                                      b)  [memorytype]
                                                                                   the gig
            fucked
                         up
                                        club
                                                                                 oldheadwithhands               onmyback

                                                                   seehisfaceintheevenings,
                                                                   tracingoutlinesonmyback

5) Repeat

                                            does the void speak in tongues or the queen’s English?

             a)  Autodidactic

orange rinds and hoops after school
wandering hands in that void of a closet
got big teeth like a beast, sinking—

fires in my chest; I am eating the last
of you. Little pounding nymph. Boxing gloves
against the caverns—these damned walls are thick.

Been drinking gasoline in the mornings
fucking on Wednesdays, resting on Fridays—
watching market trajectories like blood-sport.

                I am [  ]

Eat till full. Molars crush rinds.
Seraphs too, wings and horns,

all bodies are [mine]

Y2K deathmachines; factory farm
sonata. The hot silence pre-Disaster Engine.
Machinelearning into hyper-capital—

technoanimalia, I am
a legion on the face of advancement,
the vanguard to a dying day.

Phenomena:
              1)   Café
Let’s fuck during the Zapruder film.
We can drive a ‘74 Cadillac off desert roads
till your trauma catches up to you.
If we unravel, I call dibs on the brain.
The font of the organs spread like
                                                         d r e a m s

              2)   Home
Singsong advertisers, sing me to sleep.
Tear me into quarks, spread me thin;

eat me whole as I whistle that church bell
melody, the death tone.

Guide me down the roads where
I found love on blacktops and

you—are one, and all bodies subsist
in their solipsistic glow—O’ melodrama!

Got four walls and I’m screaming—
head into plaster, chewingonthumbs.

             3)   The City
overlapping
traumamaps
noise.noise.noise.
                           fuzzy                                   warm 
                                                                                                [blankets]

                                                                                                                                                        screaming.

             4)   Everywhere
                    repeat.
             5)   Nihilism
                    fuck that.
                           a) Ontology
                                                                                     Roots
                                                                                                                      Sex
                                                                      Love                      Body

                                                                                     Rest                                      Labor

                                                                                                                                                                 //error

[start up: init //002]

What’s the harm in lips?

I read an article on the calisthenics of communism and the inherent freedom from capital that comes with lifting oneself via branch or bar. Parallel bars rooted in concrete utopias—where the body defies gravity, where each second is a fight. It’s all in the control. The tearing

of muscles, when shoulders become planets—when the body, reacts to the abuse. A feeling of flight in the muscle-up, a communal celebration in the park across the elementary school where shells sleep on pavement like an ocean landscape in the evenings.

X-ActoTM knives, boxcutters, and anything with some grit—it’s all in the control. The tearing of epidermis. Those fascists want blood. Predatory opportunists, they slept in backpacks and drawers, cunning friends when his hands grasped my face.

It’s all in the control—of breakbeats and vibrating fluorescents. Make the people dance. Kiss the boy with long sleeves and hands tucked in pockets. What’s the harm in lips? Repeat these words. Talk about time like liquid and not like a carved out stone.

In Calisthenics, one aims for hypertrophy, growth from the conjunction of time and tearing.
It’s all in the control of repetitions, of breath. The control of repeated pain in hopes of accessing

something new. More control, more strength, the shaping of the self into something else—
it’s all in the control of etymology to create long words like calisthenics. The conjoining of
beauty and strength, the image of Plato wrestling boys before his hands spun sophistry down their chitons—the definition of justice is justice and the world is a series of shapes like puppets

in a cave where control is key to the shadows they make. You are not like Plato and your hands still move. Like shadows in a cave—I’ve been seeing you in the evenings. The silhouettes of time shapeshifting on my walls. My hands move differently now. No longer grasping sharp

edges, or any boy with some control fantasy. My hands curl into fists clutching rings and
branches and bars. It’s all in the control of moments, holding my breath, engaging my core as the blisters form and your face starts peering in like the violence in daylight or an email, something

so normal. Out of my control. I found a picture of us, two pleather jackets and my half-smile, a face like a car wreck. You still make people dance. The boy in that photo would leave and dig into drawers and backpacks, the normal things. He would reek of the cheapest bodega liquor.

He wouldn’t really read Plato, he’d carry some dialog sometimes. He’d dig into himself without the growth, just fascist edges and a marked up outer layer. He wouldn’t expect to spend days in the sun, grasping at branches— totally in control. Trauma mapping, not deconstructing—

init[repeating error][error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error] [error]

DATA ENTRY 002//BODY

In 1998, Serial Experiments Lain debuted. The series featured a series of adolescent suicides. Children abandoned their bodies to become one with “The Wired,” an early symbol for the world wide web. The first time I thought strongly about suicide was in 1999— I was four years old.

I read a chain letter on AOL and believed that if I took my life first, I would be saved from the haunting an adolescent suicide victim would bestow on me (per the email). My breathing accelerated, my mind was racing, I spent an evening in the ER with my first panic attack.

Recurring thoughts into catatonia—my time in the self-harm haze was controlled. Household objects repurposed—I became one with space. Evenings spent in thrash den paradises, learning to socialize in isolation. I met flame with

hazy eyes, greasy hair and love which only flowed outward. Everything passes.
Mitigated voids, held hands through the worst of it. Vomitfire nights—talked of songs, hummed melodies under motel moonlight, cigarette butts in the parking lot ballroom.

Mixed Lexapro with clear liquor and concave brain—smashed my head into walls until the lights went out. I wanted so badly to swim. Nerves at white corners, all my connections are fractured. Tying knots, trying to tighten my connection—every second is a reminder—is a stall tactic.

Every time I pass a diner, I think of a friend who used to bus tables. She took her leave at
twenty-eight after a man systematically maimed her. We met in Pittsburgh; smoking cigarettes outside of a Super-8 when I was young and taking the long road to decay. While having coffee or

when a morning breeze is too calm, I think of hanging bodies. Like the swaying of leaves, or Suzuki Izumi alone in her apartment. Dissociating in motion or mid-conversation; I have yet to find words grounding enough to keep me here. I wonder what she thought of before the leap?

Before me, my father served time in solitary confinement. The minutes kept adding up like
centuries. When I was five, he told me he tried to starve himself to death. I pictured his big hands smashing against concrete; his face gaunt, and my body disappearing.

My body is a survived future. My hands are automated machines, they clutch at my neck or
pinch at thumbs, I paw for a pulse to remember something about autonomy while someone,
somewhere else is abandoning themselves entirely.

There is a targeted ad promising
to press cremation ashes
into a record with all your favorite
songs burned to the remnants
of your loved ones.
I heard Facebook is working on a deceased
section: and I think I am still alive
on a Myspace page or AOL chatroom
where a man wants to fuck my seven-year old
brains out. I am alive everywhere
eternally, and with my feet
on the ground and my throat wilting—
do I need to have a body?
My flesh might fertilize honeysuckle
on a patch of green or glutton
the plastic-full seabream
off the coasts of some island,
only one maxxxed out credit card away.
Do I need to have a body
in order to subsist on a heating globe
or for my loved ones to remember
my face now that my prints
are digital, should I wait for the revolution
in virtual reality when my sprawled out flesh can be re-
animated. How many times does a symbol
have to shatter
before the simulacra
is enough?
Do I need to have a body/

//error_corrupt_file
//exit initiated.

 

Eros Livieratos (he/they) is a currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at The Ohio State University. Eros’ writing tackles topics of identity, capitalism, art, and the Anthropocene—their poems seek to deconstruct theoretical and systemic frameworks. Eros is a harsh-noise artist and can often be found yelling about aesthetics & automation in your local basement. They’re on Instagram and Twitter, as well as his website, eroslivieratos.com.

 

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sterling-elizabeth arcadia

estrogen, progesterone, spironolactone, estrogen, progesterone,

I need a new tattoo. A bird in the shape of an angel on my back, a form that rolls and folds against my own – that moves both with and for me

What has preserved me these last few years is the feeling of being stitched, point by point, into a new body, one made up by the body of my body and the hands of another. To feel a foreign art carefully attached to my own

And if I am in this moment, it is not those wings that brought me here. My first respite from the world was not my mothers womb, but a trap: a snare that gnawed and gnawed until I was no longer whole. I have scars across my shoulders from the things I have escaped, and I am ready to see them burned

I want to be abandoned by god in reverse

//

I need a new tattoo. A bird in the sh
ape of an angel on my back, a form that rolls and folds the feeli
point by point,
into a new body, one mad

the hands of another To fe
el a foreign ached to my own
brought me h My first respite
from thnot my mothers womb, bp:
a snare that gnawed no longer wh scars across mythe things I have escape

d, and I am ready to see them burnedtndoned by god in reverse

//

                                                                            |
,. I      a   m            a             body                      
.,.foreign          to my own          mother  :  ||
    a     scar  across         god                        I /
                                                                             |

 

sterling-elizabeth arcadia (she/they) is a trans poet and lover of birds. her work has been published in poetry.onl, HAD, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. she is a first year MFA in creative writing at Rutgers–Camden. this poem is part of a series of burning haibuns (a form invented by torrin a. greathouse), the first of which can be read here: https://www.poetry.onl/read/ster-el.

 

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Allison Thung

Which of course makes me a hypocrite for only falling in love with people unbothered by clothing tags

As a child buying new clothes I had to be told repeatedly to note just the fit and material when asked if I was comfortable, because otherwise (and really, even then) I’d jump to no, I don’t want it, because XL (100% Polyester) was digging into my back, and the security tag into my side, and no amount of exasperated assurances that they can and will be removed would be enough for me. But the truth was that I just didn’t trust my judgment, because what if the dress still sucked even without the tags? Then I’d never hear the end of how it was a complete waste of time and money, and nobody needs that, so it just seemed easier to fixate on the ephemeral scratchiness and say no altogether. I mean for god’s sake, I was 6, and $44.95 could probably buy a house. And I mean for god’s sake, I am 30, and what if I looked past the surface irritants and took a leap and it turned out to be a complete waste of time, honey? 

 

Twice my mother doesn’t speak her mind

I

I am washing my hands for the fifth time this afternoon. While they announce the loosened restrictions and celebrate The End of Covid, I receive a delivery from a polite courier with his mask hanging below his nose, and now I am washing my hands as if they are stained with blood and faeces, like I am trying to polish my bones. My mother looks like she wants to comment on the handwashing, but all she says is “Remember to drink some water.” I will, right after I almost apply for this “work from home” job that will turn out to require 10% international travel and regular in-person meetings with clients. It’s been two years since I’ve left the house for fun. Sometimes I think about that Friday I cut my lunch short so I could stop by the Kuan Yin temple ten minutes from my office to get my fortune told with sacred oracle lots. Did you know they call it lottery poetry? I didn’t, until I was writing this poem.

II

My face does that thing it does where people can’t tell how old I am, which is a good thing in this case because nobody needs to know I am three from thirty waiting seven hours in the cold to get barrier at a gig. The wind is chilly enough that my hair looks good, but damp enough that running my fingers through will rip strands out. My mother drops off grilled fish from a fancy restaurant down the road and cutlery from the hotel, and comes back again later to hold my spot in line so I can do a toilet run. The person behind me remarks that my sister is nicer than hers would ever be. Some girl on Instagram with a seated ticket/more sense than me asks if I’m the one in the leather jacket. Some guy who looks like he should be backstage with the band joins the queue. A few metres away, some bomb-sniffing dog does its job. The lead singer/love of my life doesn’t reply to my DM, but he does accidentally drool from opening his mouth too wide to catch my favourite note, and nobody but me and two other girls at the front notice his surreptitious glance down at his shirt. I don’t remind him of it when he comes out to meet fans after the show, and he thanks me for following this leg of the tour. My mother says he looks best in our last photograph together. 

 

Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Emerge Literary JournalBrave Voices MagazineRoi Fainéant Press, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @poetrybyallison or at allisonthung.com.

 

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Zach Goldberg

The Plane Lands at Ben Gurion and Every Passenger Bursts Into Song

tradescantia

from the mundane root. an oyster plant.
a spiderwort. its variegated purple across
nearly every flowering inch of the world.
sweet Moses-in-the-cradle-lily. amethyst
Angel of Doubt. o Lucy, Saint of Sight,
blind me to etymology, the perse plum pit 
in every story about G-d. what wildflower
deserves this wandering? to be buried in
a grave so violet? a name so violent
it once curbed the crucifixion. yes, cursed
to roam until Christ returns. sisyphean
in our ignorance. my aunt gave cuttings
away each winter as a Hanukkah gift
(we all need a little Jew in our lives)
terracotta exodus. tangles of it end-
lessly growing. creeping across oceans.
spreading over continents. the lurking
of a lesser theology. o Lord, leave us
to our legs, our purple leaves. Lord,
where we grow, so do the conditions
for surrender. look us in the root. o Lord, 
Lord, let even the seed of affliction bloom 
into a blessing.

 

Matryoshka

Zach Goldberg is a writer, educator, and arts organizer from Durham, NC. He is the author of XV (Nomadic Press, 2020) and is a 2021 MRAC Next Step Fund grantee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Washington Square Review, New South, and elsewhere. He lives on occupied Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Find him online @gach_zoldberg.

 

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