‘Dead Mango Trees Go to Heaven’

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d's universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s poetry and art collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024, Forthcoming), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Dead Mango Trees Go to Heaven

I sat on the floor with my arms wrapped around my knees, feeling the coolness of the crimson tiles under my bare feet. Freshly sucked lychee seeds lay clustered atop a copy of Prothom Alo, the ink of its headlines oozing into the juices that dampened the front page. A slumberous silence blanketed the summer afternoon, perforated only by the television’s dim murmurs and the faint grating of a saw against wood.

“Can you come to lunch tomorrow, Ma?”

Her whisper of a voice almost melted into the rhythmic sawing outside. It was the first thing she had said aloud in some time.

“Yes, Nanu.” I hoisted myself off the floor, making my way to the adjoining kitchen. “Yes, I can.” Letting the lychee seeds slide off into the trash, I twisted the tap and let a smooth stream of water drum onto the steel sink. My palms lingered in its coolness, a brief respite from Khulna’s throbbing heat. The dark curls my grandmother had gifted my mother and my mother me clung to my forehead. I loved my hair, and I loved that I had gotten it from them. I didn’t know if I had ever told them that. But I had a feeling they knew.

As a child, I used to stoop by the door and peek in, hoping to catch a glimpse inside the bustling, steamy, seemingly cavernous kitchen, back when it had been the beating heart of my grandparents’ home. The whistling of Calcutta tea kettles and sizzling of over-easy eggs in the morning; the wispy tendrils of smoke reaching for the ceiling and scraping of knives against cutting boards that soundtracked the readying of a family meal; the hushed, giggling exchanges of local gossip as pots were scrubbed clean after dinner. Habib Uncle, a smiling man who always smelled of molasses and somewhat resembled Bob Dylan with a Khulna tan - and he leaned into it too, the fluffy-headed scamp, with his pearwood harmonica that he could barely even play - used to slip me orange slices whenever I had tried to peer in.

I could almost still hear it all, even as the sawing outside grew louder by the minute. The kettles from Calcutta had been long sold off. Habib Uncle had died of cirrhosis four years ago.

“Hot day, huh, Nanu?” I returned to the living room, two glasses of water in hand. My grandmother responded with a blink and a blank stare. Her hands gripped the sides of her wheelchair, the veins running up her forearms prominent and blue against her graying flesh. Her upper lip quivered ever so slightly, as if she was constantly teetering on the precipice of breaking into tears.

“See, I knew you should’ve let Umna Auntie help give you a bath this morning,” I chided her, placing one glass on the floor and the other on the table next to her. “Just let me know when you want some lunch, okay? I think the cabbage is almost ready.”

Her orna had slipped down her bony shoulders. Two decades ago, she would have playfully wrapped the same shawl around me as I giggled underneath its soft, checkered canopy of cloth. It had seemed gigantic back then, like I could get lost within its green and golden folds, enmeshed within its faint scent of citrus. Today, it could barely stay on her shrinking frame.

“Ma,” she said finally, speaking up a little over the sound of the sawing. “Can you come to lunch tomorrow?”

My grandmother’s Bangla was faint, fragmented, and faltering. She hesitated between words, her crinkling voice briefly trailing off before making its way back; with each pause, I could almost see her eyes dancing aimlessly across the floor, as if grappling for the direction her question had been heading in.

“Yes, Nanu. Of course I can.”

She seemed content for a little while.

“Ma,” she spoke again. “What is that sound?”

The caustic grinding of steel on wood had indeed grown more aggressive, as if repeatedly catching on something and tearing right through it. The sawing, once smooth and systematic, now sounded like an act of violence.

“Nothing, nanu. Let’s turn this up.” I reached for the remote to the TV, a thick gray box that made everything on its fuzzy screen look like it was older than the country of Bangladesh. Not too tall a hurdle, given that most of the furniture in this house was. Heck, the house was considered old when my mother’s first cries bounced off its walls, and that was the year of the war. The television, five decades and the birth of a nation later, hadn’t budged. It was on this screen that my grandparents had listened to the midnight declaration of war as the first tanks began rolling down the street outside; had scanned maps and tracked the continuous fighting to determine when it was safe to get baby formula for my infant mother; had read the name of Nanu’s brother on a list of soldiers whose bodies had been identified; had watched as the first flag of independent Bangladesh was unfurled from rooftops nationwide. It was on this screen that my mother had grown up watching Bangla dubs of Star Trek and, thirty years later, I watched the English reruns. A series of framed photographs lining the top of the television, reaching across generations and the color spectrum, showed my grandmother, my mother, and me each in our early twenties. If the world around it had changed, the television certainly hadn’t noticed.

“How’s this, Nanu?” I asked, landing on a channel airing a wildlife documentary. I turned, and my grandmother’s eyes weren’t on the screen at all.

“I don’t like the sound, ma,” she whispered. Her gaze was fixed on me.

“Nanu -”

She lifted her hand off the arms of her seat, and I watched its slow, shaky climb to meet mine. The warmth of her colorless grasp was so startling that my wrist almost jerked back in reflex. The softness of her palm pressed my fingers into a fist and held it there.

“They’re cutting down the tree, Ma.”

The last time my grandmother had been able to hold my hand like this, she had still had her smile. It had been a crooked and toothy and pure smile, one that felt like the sun peeking through the clouds just to look at you. It had been a little lopsided to the left, just like mine and my mother’s.

“They’re cutting down your tree. You live there, Ma.”

But time had changed her face. Her skin sagged as if slowly melting off of her skeleton. Her eyes, perpetually glazed over in silent exhaustion, drifted to the floor even as she faced me. Her lips were pursed in a tight, thin line. 

“They have to, Nanu. They need the space.”

The sawing lacerated the air with its unruly, arrhythmic screeches. Barbaric sounds that could not and should not be natural.

“No,” she said simply, her voice strained and guttural. Her hand, clasped around my fist, shook to and fro. “No, it’s your tree, Ma.”

“It’s okay, Nanu.” I reached for her other hand, but she squeezed the arm of her wheelchair in a quivering grip that drained all color from her wrist. Her mouth crumpled, and she began blinking profusely. I grabbed her head and pressed it against my stomach just as she released her bated breath in a hauntingly unfamiliar cry, a sound I had never heard her make. An almost animal sound, wrenched from her lungs and strangled by heaving sobs. I slipped my fingers into her hair, staring at the wall as her face trembled against my ribs. “It’s alright.”

The sawing seemed to have grown deafening by now. It was impossibly loud and ridiculously close.

“Tell them to stop, Ma,” she begged, her words almost swallowed by choked whimpers. “You live there.”

I refused to take my eyes off the wall. She pulled aimlessly on the sides of my shirt as the sawing dug into our ears, refusing to subside.

“I don’t live there, Nanu. No one does.”

The sawing cut into my head, my neck, my chest, all tightening in convulsions of agony. I wrapped my arms around Nanu’s face. The blades couldn’t get to her.

“You live there, Ma.”

The horrible screeches crescendoed, enveloping us in the unforgiving wailing of a tree being gradually torn from limb to limb. The sawing was now screaming - piercing death cries that rattled the windows.

“Ma,” she uttered, but the rest of her words were cut off by a noiseless snap that plunged the world into momentary silence. For a vanishing moment, every sound stopped. The hollow, lifeless thud that came after sounded distant and decisive. 

I cradled my grandmother’s head, listening to the sobs of her soul seeping out of her body.

*

I sat on the soil with my arms wrapped around my knees, feeling the coolness of the grassy dirt under my bare feet. In the subdued moonlight, the garden looked black. The leafy canopy I used to disappear into had been razed, the ghosts of my childhood lurking among the headless stumps scattered around me. The winding gravel pathway my grandfather had carved with his bare hands now belonged to weeds, vines, and debris. The single lamppost in the dead center of the garden, the humming glow of which used to illuminate our walks here after big dinners, had melted into the dark.

Against the moonlight, the dead mango tree was a looming sentinel, a leafless cadaver towering above the other occupants of the garden. Its lower branches had been amputated, including the one that had been sawed off this afternoon, the husk of which looked like it had already begun its slow, rotting descent into the dirt. I hadn’t spoken to the developers in some time, but I figured the rest of the tree would be gone by the end of June. Half the garden already was.

Even in the dark, I could see the shallow, grainy patch in front of the tree where my mother’s grave had been. We had been given about a month to exhume her remains before the developers began their work. If we had known we would have to sell the property so much sooner than expected, maybe we wouldn’t have buried her here in the first place, although that wasn’t a very productive train of thought at this point. I wished we could’ve kept her here longer. At least until she had seeped into the soil and there was nothing left to dig up and haul to a cemetery she had never set a living foot in. For what it was worth, she had been buried at the base of the tree for most of Nanu’s decline, so she hadn’t had to see the worst of it. She had left under the impression that her own mother still knew who she was.

The sandy patch seemed bizarrely small, like a grave for a child. How my mother had ever slept there was beyond me. I almost felt the need to apologize for the discomfort. Sorry, Ma, we should’ve dug a bigger hole. But I liked to believe that for her, it was like coming home. She was, after all, back under the tree whose branches she used to swing from as a child, her little feet scraping the very same dirt and soil. My grandfather used to talk about the tree as if it were the house’s sibling - “They grew up like this,” he would say, holding up two fingers pressed firmly together - and it felt only right to call it family. My mother had been buried with family.

I lay my hand where she had been. I wish I could say I felt something - some warmth, some stirring, a disembodied heart beating deep in the dirt - but the ground was cold, dry, and dead. As if no one had ever been there at all.

I’ll be back, Ma. I didn’t know if I said that aloud. But I had a feeling she knew.

The house was dark apart from a single window illuminated by rapid flickers of color. As I slipped into the living room, leaving the door ajar behind me, the murmurs of the television were almost imperceptible. Nanu sat in her rocking chair as it rolled to and fro with rhythmic groans, her head bobbing along with it. Her chest ballooned with each sharp breath and sank with each whistling exhale. Nanu’s dozing face was cast in the alternating green, orange, and pink of the television’s pale glow. The February issue of Prothom Alo, the same edition she read every day, had slipped out of her fingers and lay face down on the floor.

I sat down next to her, her hand dangling inches from my face. The television was on the same news channel she used to watch with my grandfather every night until one of them was snoring away. My mother used to tell me how she wasn’t supposed to watch the news until she was older, and how this had only encouraged her to sneak in and watch from the floor whenever both of them had dozed off. She now watched me do the same from her picture on top of the television, tucked in between her mother and daughter. In the room’s dimness, one could be forgiven for thinking we were the same young woman who had been excused from ageing for half a century. Our flowing black curls framed our angular faces and rested on our shoulders, slightly pinched together the same way. Although I had seen neither in a long time, our smiles looked the same, too: the toothy grin that was a little lopsided to the left.

“Ma.”

The snoring had stopped. Nanu’s hands stirred next to my face. 

“Go back to sleep, Nanu. I’m sorry.” I rose to leave. She raised her hand, stretching out her empty palm, and I paused. 

“Have you had dinner, Ma?” Her voice was low and groggy.

“Yes, Nanu.”

“Will you sleep soon?”

“Yes, Nanu.”

She fell silent. Her palm was quivering. She looked at her outstretched hand for a moment, then raised her head, meeting my eyes. I placed my hand in hers, and she closed her fingers around it. 

“Do you know my name, Nanu?”

She continued staring at my hand in hers. Her orna had once again slipped down her shoulders. In the fleeting colors of the television, she looked white, then red, then green. Her brow creased as she seemed to study the top of my hand, running her thumb gently along my skin.

It’s okay. I didn’t know if I said that aloud. But I had a feeling she knew.

“Ma,” she spoke finally. “Can you come to lunch tomorrow?”

She opened up her fingers. My hand didn’t budge. I wanted to soak in the warmth of her palm for as long as time would allow. 

“Yes, Nanu. Of course I can.”

From my angle, it was hard to tell, but it almost looked as if she smiled. It was a little lopsided to the left.

Adeeb Chowdhury is a 22-year-old aspiring writer from Chittagong, Bangladesh. He is a graduate of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, where his written works of fiction and nonfiction have received the 2023 Feinberg Undergraduate Research Prize, 2024 Skopp Award on the Holocaust, 2024 North Star’s Best Nonfiction Writing Award, 2024 James Augustus Wilson Award on an African-American Topic, among others. His personal essays and nonfiction papers have been selected for preservation on the SUNY Open Access Repository (SOAR), a collection of notable work by students and faculty. He has also written extensively for publications such as Brown History Magazine, Pluto Literary Magazine, and Shuddhashar Publishing House, which received the 2016 Jeri Laber International Freedom to Publish Award from the Association of American Publishers. Adeeb works as an investment advisor representative in Binghamton, New York and is also a weightlifting enthusiast.

‘Monsieur!’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

Monsieur!

Up at the crack of dawn, pays homage to the Sun, splashes water on his face and sets out. Tea nor water; brush nor comb. Perched on the saddle, heading out. Jacket, helmet and a cycling suit. In the age when everyone owns a car, a nondescript bicycle and its countless repairs of the break-handle-puncture trinity is all he bothers himself with. Indeed, Monsieur and his boundless majesty! 

Each morning, after he’s strangled the bicycle for a couple hours, he dives into kitchen. Is there a dearth of servants, you’d ask? Non, sir! ‘Why trouble others?’ he’d say. Bageuette, croissant, café au lait, bon apetit! And locks himself up indoors right after. Besotted with changes in life due any moment now. Like before. Speaks of Paris and its many Rue with a glint in his eyes. As though he’d mapped them all on his one visit years ago. Tongue starts rolling the R’s. Rue de la hue, mon cher – stuff only he can make sense of.

Not that he speaks often. But seems particularly invested in the language of trees and its leaves. On a morning he supposedly ran down a butterfly with his bicycle, he spent an hour wailing on the side of the street. ‘How could I, mon cheri?’, ‘A cold-blooded murder! A life stolen!’ he’d go on. ‘Wait,’ I said, ‘supposedly? Why didn’t you turn back and check if it actually died?’ ‘Couldn’t find the strength. I must repent. I shall fast over the weekend,’ he declared. About right, I thought. Pestering yourself might revive the supposedly-dead insect. At any rate, when he eats, he barely does. Neither does he stay back a second more when finished. To find out what everyone else’s up to. Nope, no chance. His lean frame disappears in a flash.

Won’t visit the family garden or their village farms. Won’t splurge on fuel, driving around aimlessly. Won’t even be cross with a servant. A proponent of modern thought, Monsieur hates orthodoxy like the plague. ‘No one’s the servant, no one the owner, we’re all equal,’ he proclaims. Detests theft; advocates fervently for the upright. Suppressing someone is out of question. 

‘Whatever little we may have – is all yours. You must look after it all, soon,’ his father called for him and declared. 

‘Pray, don’t trap me in worldliness. This isn’t for me,’ he says and storms off on his antique palace on wheels. For the empty streets. No chateau, no heir!

Alright. Don’t be the caretaker. Maybe find a job? But the boss man’s reprimand never sat well with Monsieur. Undue criticism or uncalled for behaviour never got his approval. Doesn’t have enough perils or financial troubles to turn him into a Yes man. How does one explain to a man of his ilk, that this is just the unwritten code of the society – the social fabric, if you will. Anger trickles down one to another; now foes, now chums; a rebuke this moment, camaraderie the next – I mean, that’s not the sort of stuff one explicitly lists out to the other! Such stuff just exists and flourishes. Since time immemorial. Now, now, don’t you get so worked up, Monsieur! But such stuff doesn’t sit well with him either. He packed his stuff, cleared his desk and handed in his papers on his way out. Of course, the Boss Man couldn’t care less – any man worth his salt would’ve hung his head and stayed; good riddance, the man was a temp at best, he thought. Of course, Boss Man returned to the said temp’s door twice, but Monsieur’s flat refusal couldn’t be overturned. It’s set in stone. 

Been ages since he last cut his hair. Or beard. The salon master waits anxiously for that fine morning when Monsieur shall grace his small outlet with his highness’ presence. And give him a chance to play with the scissors that lies rusting in a corner. Or gift Monsieur’s moustache the handlebars it deserves. When he roams the street with a swagger after, everyone knows there was only one man in the whole village who coulda-done-it. The latter can then step out his house, comforted with knowledge that soon there’d be people queuing out front. The former could glance at the newspaper and explain with intrinsic details to entertain the said queue. The outlet could turn into a franchisee overnight, even, but Monsieur – has ruined his earnest business plans. 

Doesn’t fancy clean shoes or slick suits. No wining-dining or Cuban cigars. No hedonism. Character purer than water, top notch behaviour, no arrogancy or greed. Can’t tell the boundaries of his land, has no need for a woman. Many a suitress and their fathers had to return empty-handed. ‘I can’t handle these relations,’ he’d say. What does that even mean, one may scratch their head and ask? What’s one got to do to handle – these things pretty much handle themselves! ‘Don’t make me responsible for another human, now.’ What responsibility – who in this godforsaken world considers themselves responsible for another? People come and go as they please. But you can count on Monsieur to string a necklace of excuses.

‘Why must you while your life alone? And how?’ The wise old men cautioned.

‘Why’d a woman find in her heart a place for a man like me? Why should I have to beg for love? Plead for love? If somebody had wanted to, she’d have stayed. Why shall I impose?’ Pearls of wisdom for each question. A gift hamper, if you will. Seals off every mouth. You can’t school someone who doesn’t want be schooled.

Monsieur was once known for his roaring laughter. Never the life of a party at any rate, but a man that knew how to entertain himself. Though now, even the tears have dried up. Couldn’t he just crack up for no reason? Laugh at the expense of someone – isn’t that the cornerstone of friendship? Gather around, spin yarns in praise of an adventurous life? Just make something up on the spot and let others lap it up? Ain’t no flying squad coming in for inspection. Or, maybe– take someone’s case. Lose his temper. Bicker, worse misbehave, if not enjoy. Get crossed with someone and swear on him to never cross paths again; pledge enmity, in fact. Frown and yell so much, the man in front pees his pants and falls to his feet scampering for mercy, and be pleasantly surprised with former’s nobility. ‘Oh, what a noble come to justice,’ the man would find himself saying, even if just for the sake of it.

If he’s sleeping, we’d like him to rise; if hasn’t slept in days, pray take a nap, wreathe a garland full of dreams by his pillow. That’s all everyone asks of Monsieur. But he’s so within himself, he’s nowhere to be found. Earlier, at least he used to sit by his window, with the account of his years. Gained this, lost that; plus, minus. He harboured grudges, entertained complaints or found questions to answers. Then threw away the ledger in frustration to look out the window, admiring the night sky. Let alone plead with life, he now won’t even knock the door to that court. The stars that twinkled several nights in hopes he’d come looking for them, had no choice but to fall into a black hole. 

If it was an ailment, you’d take him to a doctor, but what does one do about nothing?

Still; motionless. He lives the same day each night. Time is slipping out; life is rushing albeit his snail pace. Boyhood is giving way to old age. The eyes are turning baggy; forehead full of meandering rivers and the dimples on his cheek an oxbow lake. The innocence on face is under siege – grey hair on beard leading the hostile takeover. 

A pain in the arse for his brother in or out of law, uncles and father and forefathers. They watch with bated breath Monsieur’s next step. What’s it going to be? Why wouldn’t he just commit a mistake – grave or otherwise? Give someone some grief? Take up something – anything, even vile? An order, a request, advice, gripe, a fight, a debate, vandalism, war, love – just about anything this world has on offer. Let something take its course. How long will he tread with caution, with such calculated moves? Or maybe renounce everything and head for the woods. They’d probably feel bad, maybe even guilty, but at least heave a sigh of relief. At least he’s done something – finally!

Well, it should be brought to notice at this point that Monsieur lost his mother almost a decade ago. And who doesn’t? In this day and age, who doesn’t die? Everyone meets their fate anyway, sooner or later, fully or partial, more or less. But Monsieur took it to heart. ‘This shouldn’t have happened, this wasn’t right,’ he kept mumbling, ‘it didn’t have to be this way.’ Now, now, is that how things will go on from here on? Are you in charge now – will you decide if the Sun comes out from the West going forward? It happened because it happened. Ain’t no letter in your mailbox will pre-notify you of what’s going to happen or ask your wellbeing. How long will you sit with it; how long will you sit out? So, you fell once; it’s not as though you’d limp the whole way. A million explainers have not turned the tide yet for Monsieur.

And it’s not as if Monsieur isn’t a man worth his salt. He topped his university back in the day. Curriculum or co-curricular. People never got tired of saying he’d make it big someday. Monsieur would laugh it off. People have been getting tired for some time now. Monsieur hopes someone would say it again but also dreads someone would say it again so he steps outside with caution.

I stated very matter-of-factly, in fact. Not everyone makes something of their lives. It’s not etched in stone. It’s not a rule or a law; no one’s going to jail you if you don’t make something of it. If you don’t, then so be it. Crisis aside, mid-life is gone; the other half shall too. When the lungs run out of air, so will the breath. But if someone doesn’t even like to be damned, what does one help them with?

For years, he kept trying. Maybe does too, behind closed doors. Wonder what direction he’s been rowing this boat of dreams; for he’s further away from both shores. His peers are not his peers anymore; nor are his juniors. Wonder if he rues it? Doesn’t show though. If someone asks, he’ll just lecture them about the dangers of materialism or capitalism. You either give up or give in, wondering who the joke’s on. ‘Everyone must prosper; I’m happy for them,’ is all he says in response. Wonder if he knows his own cart of happiness is empty. Does he not feel it? Can he not be bothered? Shame, guilt, regret – does nothing pay him a visit? What is he – a stone?

‘What is it that you want to do?’ I balked one day. 

He just stood in silence. Inching further away, while still. Didn’t bat an eyelid. Didn’t mutter under his breath. The sky fell to the ground and the birds forgot to chirp. 

I walked out. 

Wonder what’s going on inside his head, heart, whatever he still has. In the age where everyone claims to be a God, all he desires is to be a tree. As though he’d plead the next instant – I shall give you shade, fruits, flowers, bark, wood. I shall look for the Sun and rain. I will be there just in that corner; don’t cut me down, that’s all.

He’s here and he’s not. Monsieur has pledged his allegiance to the oblivion. Even this time of the day, you’d rather find him plugging life into that lifeless cycle of his.

‘But who the heck are you to taint his honour?’ you might ask of me. 

Me?

Monsieur.

Vishaal Pathak writes short stories and poems, mostly about memories and travel. Some of his work has appeared in ARTS by the People, Five on the Fifth, The Kelp Journal, Vermilion, The Rush, The Rainbow Poems, Open Minds Quarterly, Antonym Mag, Good Printed Things and Metonym Journal.

‘MEETING WALTER’ & ‘MINGLING AMONG THE THRONGS’

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet.

MEETING WALTER

I am in denial of my aging process. I have been blessed with enviable family genes which  include my still having all my hair, thick and dark. Expanding on that good fortune, I look  younger than the years I’ve accrued. I’m 65. Not that I do this, but I can get away with saying  I’m 50 without having anyone doubt me. But 50 isn’t considered “young” by young people. I  know men who, at age 40, look older than I. Yes, it’s subjective, but it’s not misplaced ego. I am  aware and grateful. 

==== 

Several years ago, while on vacation at a picket fenced-in guest house in Key West, Florida, I  met a man named Walter Stern. At the time, I was somewhere in my early 30’s. Walter was 71  years old which, if I remember correctly, was the same age as my mother. He looked quite  weathered to me. Tall and thin, sparse grey hair with a ghostly pale white body and deep lines on  his face. He thought he looked young for his years. Though I was happy that he believed that to  be true, he was wrong. And in my opinion, Walter was not a handsome 71. Arguably dignified, there was nothing physically attractive about him and no signs of his having once been a catch.  Obviously, I could be off about his appearance in his younger days.  

==== 

Walter was a German Jew. As a boy during Hitler’s reign, he was wheelchair bound, afflicted  with bone cancer. People spit at him. For so many reasons, I can’t stand visualizing that.  

His family owned a farm in the Bavarian area of Germany. All their land, buildings and goods  were confiscated and sanctioned as “government property” by the Nazis. I don’t know the history  of his relatives: who survived and why. Who didn’t and how. Perhaps their not living in a city  made it less difficult to hide, or not be hunted like rabid animals.  

I can’t remember Walter telling me when he came to the United States. He didn’t speak with a  German accent. By the time we met in the 1990’s, he was a retired textile worker, living well in  an apartment in Forest Hills, a lovely, Tudor strewn area of Queens, NY. I believe he worked his  way up to ownership of the Seventh Avenue company in New York City’s Garment District for  which he was employed his entire adult life. His lover of many years had been an African  American man, living in Harlem, uptown on the west side of Manhattan. He had passed away  some time before Walter and I met.  

==== 

Returning home to New York, the following month I invited Walter to join me for drinks and an  early dinner in Soho. I had landed a job at a large, grey walled gallery on West Broadway, across  from a high-end clothing store called the Gallery of Wearable Art. They featured a beautiful,  living mannequin in their display window — a woman — who posed for hours at a time. I loved  watching her stay absolutely still: making small, strategic movements every once in a while. If  you stood directly in front of the window for a few moments, she might wink at you. How she  stayed motionless and emotionless is a rare skill and must have been something she was  schooled to do. Reminiscent of the frozen stance and expressionless face held by British guards  outside of Buckingham Palace. Men dressed in their uniform finery, as if they had stepped out of  “The Nutcracker” ballet.  

==== 

Walter and I dined at a trendy restaurant a few doors down from the gallery. When the weather  was clear and warm, which in this case it was, there were tables placed outside on a serrated  black iron platform the width of the building. The floor-to-ceiling windows folded into  themselves and seemed to vanish, exposing the cavernous space and opening the front wall for  guests to view the theatricality of the street scene. This was during Soho’s hey day, before the  elite Manhattan galleries moved north to an undeveloped piece of Chelsea.  

One memorable restaurant in that desolate far westside area was Florent, named for it’s French  born owner. Years before Chelsea embarked on her evolution, Florent was open 24 hours a day,  hidden in plain sight among warehouses as well as gay bars that, at that time, had been  strategically placed at the edge of the city’s foreboding fringe. On a cobble stone street across  from a bagel factory and beneath a decaying trestle, lived this diner/bistro where truck drivers,  club kids (of which I was one), celebrities and drag queens congregated to capacity during the  black hours after midnight.  

==== 

On West Broadway in Soho, as we casually dined, Walter and I talked about his business and his  late boyfriend. I remember feeling an affection for him that I still cannot categorize. What I  mean by that is he didn’t feel like a father figure to me, nor a friend who happened to be twice  my age. I was attentive to his story-telling as he relayed the details of his life when he was  young, during a period of time that was now chronicled in history books. As genuinely interested  as I was, I had no agenda as far as forming some lasting friendship with him.  

I have a fascination with what occurred in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. I find it incredible, the  depths of hate and cruelty humans can unleash when permission is encouraged in society. Walter  was more than an historical witness. 

As a Jew, I’ve never had to suffer the ripple or overt affects of anti-semitism. Less than 2.5  percent of Americans are Jewish, yet there is a significant population in New York City: the  largest in the world, outside of the country of Israel. Though I was not bar mitzvahed, a ritual  considered a right-of-passage for a Jewish teenage boy, I am a Jew by culture on all sides. I’ve  become militantly proud of my heritage as I’ve gotten older. When I was in high school, I didn’t  think it was “sexy.” That may seem like an odd adjective. To strangers, I sometimes pretended to  be Italian. I now see that self denial as self-hatred. And frankly, my last name reveals my  background, even after having been Americanized at Ellis Island, when my grandfather  emigrated from Russia.  

I can’t say I celebrate my culture with any religious fervor, but for me, it is part of my identity.  And I owe it not just to my family, but to people like Walter, on whose shoulders I proudly rest,  without thinking on the privileges I am able to take for granted. Walter Stern. A Jewish man who  survived 20th Century European horrors, to embrace a new life in a world an ocean away. A  country in which he would call home.  

MINGLING AMONG THE THRONGS

When Neil walked into the bar on 10th Avenue, though it had been years since I’d seen his face, I  recognized him immediately. I estimate that he and I are about the same age. We are what I term  as the “last of a certain breed.” Possibly fascinating but not to be envied. We are single, gay men  of an “advanced” age, out on the prowl. At least that’s how I presume we are judged by those  watching from the sidelines.  

In an historically short time, things have progressed for the better, particularly if you are young  and don’t struggle with what came before, if even aware of the shoulders on which you stand.  And though there is a thriving business in gay bars, places to see and be seen, most are not  patronized for the purpose of finding men of my years. Unless they are establishments that  invite briefcase carrying Sugar Daddies in loafers and suits, where money is exchanged for  companionship and services rendered, in the short or long term.  

==== 

Neil and I are dinosaurs that can be found mingling among the throngs of young men drinking  garnish clad cocktails and domestic beer from a tap. Nothing exceptional and not all that rare, at  least here in this city of millions. Years of experience can lead to good conversation, as long as  we initiate, and the younger man is either cornered and polite, or willing to listen. There are  places more accepting of our kind but I don’t find stimulation there, nor persons I might want to  date or fuck. It’s not that I’m adverse to meeting a handsome man near to my age, but almost all  of those bachelors are trolling for youth. Or they aren’t bachelors at all.  

The domino effect that applies, travels back many decades to a time when a personally  complicated AIDS-related destruction altered all that would follow for me. Though I moved on  long ago, something or things subconscious became road blocks to what might have been healthy  pairings (that’s when I probably should have returned to therapy). Finding or choosing the safety  of considering myself a father figure or repair man doesn’t open up opportunities for an equal  relationship. Wounded masculinity is very attractive to me, since the focus tends to be on the  other one. A deflection I have mastered.  

==== 

Though not at another man’s request, after almost 40 years, I put away the photograph of  Stephen — the one person from my past where dreamlike memories still affect my mood. If he  were alive, he would not be anything like the picture I looked at everyday. It was taken before we  met, when he was in his early twenties. As my imagination took flight visualizing what I decided he might currently look like, I no longer wanted to see him as he had been in a  photograph shot when he wasn’t yet 25. He would now be close to 70. Around the age his  parents were when I met them. 

I don’t spend my life comparing others to my memory of him. Though I’d be lying if I said that  what happened doesn’t influence my present day behavior. Being unsuccessful in my finding  committed love is not blamed upon the similarities to or differences from who came before. I  know of a good many people, straight and gay, who survived unhappy endings to bravely pick  themselves up and embark on subsequent pairings. As for people who decide to remain in  damaged relationships, I guarantee there are those who settle in order not to be alone. 

==== 

I know almost nothing about Neil. I don’t remember why I know his name. I have no idea  where he lives or what he does for a living. I don’t even think we’ve ever had a conversation. 

My obsessive fascination with Neil lies on my wondering how we both ended up in this state.  He may not think about it like that, if he thinks about it at all. He represents something to me that  probably has nothing to with who he is as a human being.  

Whether I live an additional 25 years or leave Earth tonight, I don’t want to end my days with  unaddressed regrets. One of the great privileges of my life is knowing that nothing was left unsaid between my mother and I before she passed away. The only guilt I feel is the convenient  distraction of wishing I had been at her side on the day she went to sleep forever.  

==== 

One thing Neil and I arguably share is that we have both aged well. But that’s not necessarily a  reflection of anything more significant than misdirected vanity. What I mean by that is, from a  distance, you might mistake us for being 20 years younger than we actually are. Come close and  you will uncover the truth. In my case you may discover the love handles I strategically keep  hidden, or the noticeable sagging beneath my chin that cannot be camouflaged well, or the loss  of youth in my facial expression. I have managed to deflect lines on my face usually associated  with age. But I chalk that up to genetic fortunes. 

Other than dropping dead, there is no escaping getting older. When I see someone who is 60 and  has had a facelift, I think of the sentiments my friend Margie once said. I’m paraphrasing. “Yes,  she’s had a facelift but she still looks like she’s 60 — with a facelift.” That may seem like a  hypocritical comparison coming from a man who still works out with weights religiously. It  helps in my fight, but the shape of the body as I get older, unequivocally changes. So much for  defying gravity. For Neil and I, I wonder how long we will go on in this delusion of unrealistic  denial. I shouldn’t put Neil in the same category as I find myself, since I know almost nothing  about him.  

When I was 39, I had a year long relationship with a gorgeous man who was married to a woman  and had two teenage daughters. We met in the bleachered seats of a concert at Madison Square  Garden. He was standing in front of me and kept turning around to stare at me. And though it  couldn’t last, most of my friends made up scenarios of what was going on in my private life.  Since I didn’t talk about it, no one really knew. I still fight the urge to contact him, as if there  could be some seductively desperate future we might share. I haven’t spoken with him in years,  yet I still miss what we never had.  

What is it that Neil has? A lover no one knows about? A choice he made not to opt for anything  serious? Still searching for something he can’t seem to find? I haven’t a clue. And though I  write about him, it’s none of my business. 

Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 75 short stories (website: www.andrewsarewitz.com. Substack access is @asarewitz) as well as having penned scripts for various media. Mr. Sarewitz is a recipient of the City Artists Corp Grant for Writing. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter, Nancy Wake, the “White Mouse”) garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA; produced with a multicultural cast and crew. Member: Dramatists Guild of America.

‘First Breath’, ‘No Magic in the World’ & ‘What You Left Behind’

Alfonso Keller-Casielles

First Breath

quietly lying beneath the dew of an awakening
journeying into lands yet to be
she is still, within the smile of a warmer solstice
given to the universe in her vulnerable pose
fingers bent upon the soft palms
her chest heaves below the gentle cocoon
patiently awaiting in the uncommon bliss
her features teased by the rays of a new star
she remains listening for the sign of a new life
in perfect restful unison, he too is alert
to the imperceptible motion
a change in the heat of the season.
the aroma of far-away lands tickles her senses
her hand seeks reassurance
together they feel a gentle trepidation.

No Magic in the World

Chaos and a few lucky encounters
and she walks up the aisle in her gown
maybe royalty perhaps a borrowed miracle.
It’s time now to fly to northern climes
from the warm hearth of a mother’s nest
she twirls in a waltz she invented.
Soon to be alone with the little one
the future is easy to predict
when the light will grow dimmer at home.
Matriarch of these two mere decades
she will settle in worrisome rest
contemplating her image in duplicate.
It is time now for the girl to walk on
quickly gazing back at the reassuring smile
woman she too will build an estate.
Friend and mom she sees her image
so young yet so confident in the flesh
there is no turning back the silly hands on the clock.

What You Left Behind

I watch the garden change my mother
where the earth has been turned many times since
you walked away from your beloved fields
a world you could enter with unending grace.
Into the barn it seems every corner recalls
the sound of the hammer and the saw
as you built my father another shed to
those furry animals you cared for like no other.
Near the hearth I recall the fragrance
of those meals you imagined for my childhood
granny as you aged in timeless decades
your braided hair often wild as a teen’s.
I seek you in every room dear siblings
when you return to your home so far away
to find but a few lines in the dust of my road
abandoned rappers of a sweet delight.
Your lives are saved in layers of time
like coats of paint in an ageless palimpsest
a quilt visible only to those who knew you
with every piece a jolt to a slowing heart.

Fabrice Poussin’s work in poetry and photography has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide. Most recently, his collections of poetry In Absentia, If I Had a Gun, Half Past Life, and The Temptation of Silence were published in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 by Silver Bow.

‘The Crafty Raft’

Photographer: Tobi Brun

The Crafty Raft

Alexis de Tocqueville never visited St Louis but Charles Dickens showed up and so did I. These names spurt from the mouths of children who are with their parents on the 630 foot tram ride to the top of the Gateway Arch. No Tocqueville in my resume outside of a vague recall of him and democracy but I did read Dickens’ Great Expectations in high school. I threw around the Pip name for a while, pip this, and pip that. Oh, I have toked. Kon-Tiki and Huckleberry Finn were the other two I conquered. Mark Twain certainly spent some time here, no idea about Thor Heyerdahl. Maybe the watery pages of the second and third inspired me to join the Navy but they didn’t prompt me to someday visit the piece of the Mississippi waterway here in St Louis. I drive a fuel oil truck. An elderly chatty customer inspired me. She regrets never visiting 2 of the 7 Wonders of the U.S.: The Gateway Arch and Disneyworld. I had no interest in the rodent trap. I plan to gift Milicent with a few postcards. The kids, - he’s Drew, she’s Quinn - are focused on a marbled notebook page. I figure her age is 10 and the boy, 8. Mickey and Minnie watches stand out on their small wrists. They are dressed casually except for his mauve bowtie. Her jumper is subdued madras. The cursive writing is small. Quinn has intricately braided honey blonde hair. Drew is freckled. His brown locks have a few streaks of red. I wonder about the unisex names. They strike me as precocious the way they annunciate or maybe just well schooled. “The Arch is as high as it is wide,” Quinn says. Their dad, Bruce, has scary tattoos; the largest are three crows with human skull faces. On the back of each hand is a purple star, law and order man or a Cowboys fan? His arms are muscular and his cheeks are puffy. His cap advertises “Titleist.” I bet he’s able to drive a golf ball into orbit.

“It doesn’t look so to me, Quinny,” he says.

“You are the victim of an optical illusion, trust me, Pop,” says Quinn.

“Shucks, I forgot to pack my tape measure,” adds Drew.

“It is 192.024 meters,” says Pop, with a half baked Brit accent. He gets three “wows.” I almost joined in. The cute, very pregnant wife, Audrey, is busy knitting. The yarns are a couple of shades of blue. Her raven hair is short. She wears a maternity outfit. It’s white with tiny pink tulips scattered over it. 

When we reach the top of Arch, and debark at the Observation Deck, the kids are of course tour guides. “Look, there’s a wedding,” shouts Quinn.

“Will they throw mice?” asks Drew.” Quinn taps on her watch crystal and gives him thumbs down then points out the Old Courthouse where slavery triumphed she says which brings Huck and Jim to mind. Audrey asks if the groom is blindfolded. Drew didn’t forget binoculars. He has a small pair. He reports no peepers are hidden. “He can see what he’s getting himself into,” he quips. Pictures of a wedding party are being snapped. The bridesmaids are matched in yellow and gray. The girl reminds her brother that his eyes were yellow when he had jaundice last year. She says hers are gray but she’s lying. They are a pale blue. Quinn tells Mom that they have decided the baby’s name that she suggested is just fine. I imagine the child being born in minutes and named Lewis after explorer Meriwether, or Louisa, hell, Lou fits them all to with the same gender deal.

“Tommy is a winner,” adds the boy. Audrey looks quickly at me, swallows hard. She’s the one, green eyes. Glancing down I see her fingers are crossed. 

We met outside the West Bend Bar and it was about 9 months ago. I’d noticed her checking me out inside. She sat a couple of captain’s chairs away. I didn’t make a move due to the wedding ring. I figured she was waiting for her hubby, not me. Did these two kids have off the street fathers? If so, could this be filed under ultra Democracy, Alexis?

Dickens would have them on a street begging. She was waiting outside the Bend Bar when I left. “Take me to the river, “she said, eyes sparkling. The streetlight alerted me that the wedding ring had disappeared and cast a glitter on the jeweled doodad that held her dark black hair in a ponytail. What the hell, I had no commitments. Jayne, the woman I’d been with won a motorcycle in an American Legion raffle and joined a female gang. I was left in the dust. I learned later that the dust and the bike had come from the maw of a fortune teller who went by Lady Luella, another Lou for Christ’s sake! I’d bought Jayne the winning ticket. I opened the passenger door of my eight-year-old Pontiac and brushed some McDonald’s fries off the passenger seat. My new friend slid in and wrapped herself in her arms. She was wearing a long black skirt, light pink blouse and a maroon shawl. She didn’t bother with the seat belt. I put on a golden oldies station. Del Shannon was singing “Runaway.” After we parked under some pines I got out and held her door. I realized I’d left the headlights on. I turned to step away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

She took my hand and we walked to the river. We sat on the cement bank. I heard an owl. I heard a bullfrog. The moon made eerie tree branch shadows in the slowly flowing water. She reached in her purse and pulled out a handful of Popsicle sticks. “Make something,” she said, counting out 15. I did the only thing I ever knew how to do with this timber. I weaved a raft. Were they from actual popsicles, fudgsicles or ice cream bars or an arts and crafts store? I had one left that I called a paddle. She inspected my work. She took the paddle, inserted it to make a handle of it and demonstrated a fan.

“Cool me off,” she whispered. Was that request misplaced? On a patch of lumpy grass she laid down, made minimal clothing adjustments and spread her arms as if she were crucified but her legs were tucked and parted in a fleshy welcome. I entered Wonderland with crazy thoughts of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, spikes and hell. Her breath smelled like vinegar. There was no lingering when the weirdness was done. She held the raft to her chest, hurried to the Pontiac and said nothing but an Act of Perfect Contrition and resumed her scrunched position as far away from me as the door would allow. I remembered the prayer. If death were imminent and no confessor near you could squeeze through the heavenly gates. I couldn’t recall if any purgatory time was involved. Before I dropped her off where I’d found her she freed her hair. She broke down the raft/fan, bound them in the ponytail maker and returned them to her purse. Enough strands fell helter-skelter across her face to make her look like a woman possessed. She wasn’t through with the sticks. She pulled the kindling from her purse with a flourish. She tapped my shoulder with them as if knighting me. I recalled Twain’s conman royalty fake that Huck and Jim rescued.

She offered her hand to shake. I did; a quick squeeze. “Oh, what’s your name,” she asked.

“Tom.”

“Take care, Tommy,” she said.

“And you,” I asked.

“I’m anonymous. Remember me as the stick lady.”

The tram trip return is quiet. Drew, Quinn and Bruce do some yawning. Audrey and I communicate via eyelid semaphore. Audrey bumps into me when we are exiting. I walk around for a while in a daze, lost in the hordes heading to the Cardinals game. I get lucid in front of a store devoted to left handed people. Window posters read:

“De Tocqueville And Dickens Were Southpaws.”

“Rheumatism Forced Twain To Join Us.

“Stan Musial Smote Homers Port Side.

Righties Quinn and Drew probably knew all this. I wonder if Bruce is impotent or they’d discovered serial killers in his bloodline. Were the tattoos the monsters manifesting themselves? Had he’d gotten a vasectomy but wanted a family, didn’t want to adopt? Would her tale of me be treasured between them along with the other two? Did her sperm hunting accounts act as an aphrodisiac for them? How did Audrey know I would be in St. Louis? Is she a friend of Milicent’s? Did she know the biker’s seer Luella?

I pick up some postcards at Walgreens and stroll to a Luke’s Bar. There is a big Lewis & Clark print, a man poling a keelboat. They’ll send Milicent greetings their best too. I order a pitcher of native Bud, sit at a corner table and start my Milicent chore. I sign the first one Thor Hyerdhal, Alexis on the last of the 10. I choose a Suey King House for dinner, but got Chow Mein. I do not use chopsticks. Waiting for my meal I ponder whether Tommy will be a serious know-all like Quinn or one with a comic side like Drew who might describe the Arch as a giant mouse house entry, the world its wall.

On the way to drop the mail my Milicent’s mementos, I put my hands in my jacket pockets. In the starboard one I discover the kink baton. Immersed in another fog I rush to the Mighty Miss. A riverboat is preparing to depart. I sit in the sand, free the Popsicle gear. I rebuild the raft and almost launch it with a silly vision retrieving it from the Ten Mile someday. I break it down then think better and reassemble. What harm can it do? The ponytail gizmo will be my St. Louis souvenir, a dashboard charm. Maybe next oil delivery at Milicent’s house, I’ll fake finding it in her driveway and gauge her reaction when I ask if it’s hers. 

Maybe it’s Audrey’s religious antics that cause me to suddenly view the River as a holy water font. I dip my fingers and cross myself before crashing a figment of bubbly on it. I poorly mimic a ship’s horn signaling underway.

A passing foot cop gives me a $20 ticket for littering. Now that’s a pip!

Thomas M. McDade resides in Fredericksburg, VA. He is a graduate of Fairfield University. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran . His fiction has most recently been published by The Story Sanctum and Double.

‘Maltese Smuggler’

KJ Hannah Greenberg uses her trusty point-and-shoot camera to capture the order of G-d's universe, and Paint 3D to capture her personal chaos. Sometimes, it’s insufficient for her to sate herself by applying verbal whimsy to pastures where gelatinous wildebeests roam or fey hedgehogs play. Hannah’s poetry and art collections are: Miscellaneous Parlor Tricks (Seashell Books, 2024, Forthcoming), Word Magpie (Audience Askew, 2024), Subrogation (Seashell Books, 2023), and One-Handed Pianist (Hekate Publishing, 2021).

Maltese Smuggler

I’m a smuggler. A female smuggler. Disguised as a man in the year of 1780, I accrue lucrative bounties, guiding helpless ships to dash apart against Malta’s rocks, believing they are close to shore and safety. A weaved beard hangs from my face, disguising my feminine wiles, stitched together from the hair of shipwrecked bodies, bearded men thrown against rocks. I’m heartless. Ruthless. I brandish a true smuggler’s heart, charred and blackened by sinful greed. 

My name, San Pawl, is deceptive, duping others to believe in a holiness and devout religion that I shall never bear. My crew of male smugglers trust me, unconditionally, for I have brought them many bounties, riches that far exceed what they could make selling caught fish at local Maltese markets. Within me, they see a saint, one made from rock salt and the turn of tides. A symbol of constancy and fortuitous pathways. I’m fluid, bending in their wake, fulfilling desires of wealth and power. 

Smugglers’ Cave is where I wile away daytime hours, readying to attract ships to false light at night. I bob within a tied fishing boat, brightly painted in red, yellow, green and blue: the Maltese colours of fortune, but I’m hidden by the black cloak of the inlet caves, obliterated from view. I sleep in the boat, tucked in a cocoon of blankets, dreaming of freedom and love – tendrils of daytime pleasures to weave amidst my hungry hands, enclosed and sheltered as I am within a floating womb of wood, boasting primary hues. Green for vegetation, yellow for sun, blue for water and red for the soil of the island and its russet flares like a hare’s fear as it dashes to save its life. These colours protect me, ensuring ships with high bounties, sail, without suspicion, into my awaiting clasp.

Translucent blue is my sea blanket, protecting me outside the caves, surrounding as a watery halo. My band of smugglers return to the mainland by day leaving me mostly alone except for my odd trips for supplies, but I am blissfully alone. Harbouring wives and children, they seek to sell their illicit wares, but most hold a candle for me, a dim one, for it is not easily forged, a love affair between men, not in strict Roman Catholic households. They do not suspect me a woman. A woman knows such things. So, I buoy myself to sleep, left to guard our stolen treasures from chests that glint in streaks of sunlight like opening eyes, when the sun strikes its blade, as they tend to human duties. 

My recent shipwreck belonged to Italian royalty, bringing great wealth to Maltese shores. To me. Crowns, diamond rings, pearl necklaces and pendants line the perimeter walls of the cave, seeking a new wearer, feeling unseen in charcoal shade next to absent human flesh. I sleep turning a ruby ring, a bright large stone, within my thinking fingers, turning in repetitive circles as I drift to realms where I imagine the life of the true owner. Regal robes, grand feasts, awaiting servants, palatial courts, performing jesters, and pomp emit an aura, telling me a story of the ring’s past. I imagine that a young queen bore its gilded circle upon her slender finger, eyeing her reflection in its pomegranate sheen, ripe and fresh at court, betrothed to a much older, grey-haired king, finding only dissatisfaction in its reflection.

Such trinkets speak to me, channelling a new lifeline of sorts. For this ring, the wearer is shackled by familial bonds to a king she can never love for her heart is already locked to another, left behind in a land she can never return to. I sense its yearning as a pulse within my own veins, channeling a passage to my beating heart. For I, too, love an unattainable other. A woman. A siren. A maiden of the sea. By night she visits me here, as I ready to smuggle after an afternoon of mostly rest. Her tail powers her to this exact cave, shimmering with iridescent slices of the sun – a travelling light, is she. My own lamp. 

On her arrival, the cave illumines instantly by her presence, dancing glimmers of metallic skin reflect on the ceiling, beautiful spots of colour. Holding a large pearl held within her hands, she sings the song that I have grown to know, like a childhood lullaby. I have no semblance of her language, but am lulled by her dulcet notes, becoming synchronised with her as she emits a siren call. The melody laces my throat, spiralling into my essence: every bone, vessel and organ reverberates, enlivens with each note she brings into being. Securing herself with her anchor tail, she presents a closed shell, large and pearlescent, wearing a coral peach sheen; she slowly opens it to reveal its hidden treasure. An illuminating pearl, ethereal and mythical – nothing like the pearls I catch from shipwrecked boats. Its light permeates each cavernous space of me, filling my watery home, radiating to ships, far into the watery distance, far flung from the island. 

My men await the nightly light which beckons a new shipwreck, positioned strategically as we are as a band of smugglers along the northwesterly coastline. They know nothing of her sorcery, her dark magic upon me, nor do they care, as long as bags of coin become theirs to spend.

As a particularly large ship fastens on her emitting light, it steadies its course towards the shards of sharpened rock, its unbeknown stony shroud. Duped, it courses straight, drawn as a fish upon a meaty lure, headstrong and determined to secure its safe passage to sandy shores. As of every night, once a ship is doomed, placed on its path of irreversible destruction, she lifts herself to me, weaving her ebony locks into the boat. As is tradition, she invites me to kiss her, undressing my false beard, peeling back masculine layers that are not rightly mine. She knows too much, always has. I too, like a fish on a hook, succumb to my fate: her damask soft lips as velvet meet with mine, whilst her caressing hands hold my head. Instantly, I’m spellbound, intoxicated by marine beauty. Her eyes lock upon mine, deepest emeralds of the sea, telling me soundless tales of her origin and otherness. I drink each tale in, wishing for her to be truly mine, to lift her into my fishing boat, and for the world to stop spinning, with only the two of us locked in a timeless embrace. 

Yet, the kiss is always curtailed, distracted by the commotion of crew and ship, both blasted into the fangs of steel, the rocky outcrop of Smugglers Cave, and not as the sailors had hoped, onto the expectant slope of sand. Hollers and panic cries of help resound, ricochetting off the walls of the cave, until my love can bear the din no longer, quickly shutting closed her pearl, and disappearing into inky waters, swimming swiftly out to the deeper Mediterranean Sea. 

Back to seclusion. Back to her safety. Her kind. 

Sunken without her, left in echoic darkness, I tuck my feet to my body, rocking myself gently in the boat’s bowels, trying to break myself free from her happy bewitchment of my soul. Reapplying my façade of a beard, I ready to oar my way to the detritus outside, picking the ship’s great wares of wealth from atop the sea’s surface. My men await me, all hidden within the dark mouths of caves, readying to swim to claim barrels and treasure chests. 

The process repeats, night after night, week after week, until one-night changes my fate forever. 

As soft dusk, bruised purple skies, fall upon Smugglers’ Cave, I awaken, readying to prepare for another stolen meeting with my siren of the sea. I sit and wait. Plum sky forming to ebony rolls outside my cave, eradicating any last wisp of pearly light from within the cave. Hollow and alone, I continue to wait, summoning her from my soul to quickly arrive and begin our lovers dance as is nocturnal ritual. 

Time passes. 

More time passes. 

It stretches like malleable love. 

Bereft, I wallow, sinking into the underbelly of the boat, desperate to find a means of light, wanting only to search for her. My absent siren. So embroiled in love have I become that I nearly forget about the ensuing shipwreck, so fixated have I become on her lips, her tender kiss and caress. Everything that is her has poisoned my mind. 

Fumbling carelessly in pitch black waters, I find a disused gas lamp, and light it with shaking fingers, sweat streaming into my eyes from the blind struggle. As the oil ignites, a familiar world undresses itself to me: my rocky lair. 

Yet, alas, all is not as it once was.

The cave’s walls and stores are no longer lined and filled with treasure but lie empty, hollow from theft. Theft of the most grievous kind. Nausea rises in my throat as my heartbeats treble in speed as the sad realisation dawns: my love, my siren of the seas, has taken all from me and my merry band of smugglers. Our wares are depleted except for one object that glints lamentably as if in apology by the struggling light of the gas lamp. A tear instantly falls from my eye as I see what is left: the mark of the thief, wanting their identity to be known. 

On a single outcrop of rock lies her empty shell - without its pearl. Devoid of its heart and light source, my trade is over. No gas lamps could ever emit the same fantastical light to beckon ships to these traitorous rocks. Oaring my way shakily to the empty shell, I gulp away intense guilt and embarrassment of my gullibility to fall for her lies and deceit. 

Yet perhaps we are more suited than I thought: both thieves, stealers of others’ hearts and wealth. Clasping the shell, I tuck it into my c-shaped body, leaking sorrow onto its pearlescent glow, dimming now in her absence and abandonment of me. 

Slowly, the nighttime waves lull me to broken sleep where I dream of her ghostly fingers caressing my face: the true Maltese smuggler. 

A lover that I shall never see again. 

Emma Wells is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She writes flash fiction, short stories and novels. She is currently writing her sixth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 with ‘Carbonito de Sophie’ and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Recently, she won Dipity Literary Magazine’s 2024 Best of the Net Nominations for Fiction with her short story entitled ‘The Voice of a Wildling’.

‘THE KINDS OF POEMS’, ‘OTHER PEOPLE’ & ‘TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM’

Rich Spang was born in San Francisco, living in many places usually near water and on islands. His scientist father was an award winning photographer and was never without a camera. Neither was Rich. Largely self taught, Rich was trained as an architectural draftsman, has been an art show roadie for a successful painter, a musician, a Scuba Instructor in Los Angeles and Maui and also a volunteer diver for the Seattle Aquarium. Rich’s “day job” was as an electronics technician and he has recently retired from Seattle Children’s Hospital where he provided IT support for the medical staff. Besides Photography, Rich is an avid reader and obsessive gardener.

THE KINDS OF POEMS
There are love poems
and there are death poems.
The former are odes
to young people.
The latter are elegies
to the old.
But slowly
and inexorably,
the young age
and the poems
eventually teeter between
the grace, the elegance,
and the inevitable.
Eventually.
the love poems
and the death poems
merge into
the substance and consequence
of life poems.
Those are the ones
I’m writing now.

OTHER PEOPLE
They point at me on the street,
shout, “He’s the one! He did it!”
They don’t give chase.
They don’t call a cop.
They figure pointing and shouting is enough.
Others join the chorus.
Some lean out of windows.
Others cry out from passing cars.
I have done so much to fit in.
I dress like others.
I comb my hair neatly.
I hold down an ordinary job.
I join in sports talk.
I even laugh at the same jokes,
Yet, there’s something about me.
Even I can sense it.
I point and shout at myself sometimes.
“He’s the one! He did it!”
That’s nothing I haven’t said already.

TEACHER IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM
He writes his name on the blackboard.
Then chalks up a map.
And then a formula,
followed by an equation,
some historical dates,
and a parsed sentence.
There are the people in the world
who need to see this stuff,
to remember it,
and, if they and he are lucky,
to understand it.
He stares out the window.
He looks at his watch.
Now where are they?
he wonders.
Now where is anyone anymore?

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

‘Back to War’

Carol Radsprecher is a Brooklyn-based painter and digital printmaker. She earned her MFA in painting from Hunter College, CUNY, in 1988. Her work has appeared in several solo shows and numerous group shows and has been published in many publications. Carol is always eager to voice her opinions on everything, even things about which she knows very little. She loves cats and other animals (as well as doing nothing, watching TV and movies, reading, fulminating about what’s happening in our country and world, and sleeping). In her work she combines distorted figuration with abstraction. Her website is https://www.carolradsprecher.com.

Back to War

June 25, 1944

I know Morse check.  I can hand-send check.  It’s climbing back into a B-17 I’m not so sure of.  First training flight on the radio in the morning so it all comes down to this.

I’m thinking about that Red Cross girl back at the flak house. My last day there she’s in the dining room off at a table by herself so I sit down.  She tells me her RAF husband went out over France the day before.  No chutes but it’s night and no one sees his plane go down either.

I tell her that last part is good.  Guys go out all the time and then show up weeks later in a POW camp.  And then some never get caught at all.  I tell her how we got agents all over Europe working to bring these guys home.

She asks about me and I say I’m off to radio school.  She listens real close but that don’t match up with what she just told me.  Then I get it.  She’s still trying to do her job even with what she’s going through.

She’s no quitter and I ain’t either.  Thing now is not to forget it.

June 26, 1944

Sorriest excuse for a B-17 ever.  No name.  Peeling paint.  An old E series used only for training.

Pilot out on the tarmac says we’ll be fine except for the flak over Long Island.  Lousy joke but the trainees all laugh.  Most never even been on a B-17 and this thing’s got them even more worried than me.

I climb in and take a look out the waist port.  So far so good.  Lift off is smooth.  Then all us trainees take our turns at the radio.  Checklists switches frequencies.

We all do some hand-sending and give our position over the headset.  Then they open the bomb bays and we learn about hang-ups.  How to pry bombs loose with a six foot crowbar while standing on the catwalk between bomb racks.  Looking down at Long Island Sound it somehow don’t seem near as deep as that Channel.

Everything goes better than I expect and I wonder if it has to do with this notebook last night.  I was a nervous wreck before writing here but then after I fell right off to sleep.  Who knows but it sure can’t hurt to keep it up.

Back at the flak house in my last meeting with Spencer he asks how I feel going back.  I say it reminds me of football in high school.  How after the first practice I’m covered in bruises but then after a few more the bruises are all gone.  I say there has to be something inside us that tells our muscles to toughen up and not show the hurt.

Spencer says primitive brain and I laugh.  Then he talks about how each cell in our body is a living organism unto itself and how they all work together to keep us alive.

I tell him how at one practice my arm swole up to twice its size but then the next day I’m back out on the field like nothing happened.  That’s how it feels going back.  All my cells are working together now to make me stronger.

June 27, 1944

Still haven’t written Betty.  It was up on the deck of that ship bringing us stateside when I figured out why.

Those last letters between us were all about our plans for the future but now I think that’s where it went wrong.  All I really need to do is climb back into a B-17 and finish my tour.  And I ain’t even started yet so that’s when I stopped even trying to write.

Staring out from that deck.  Waves just go on and on and on and on.

It was on that deck when news of our landing at Normandy came over the loudspeaker.  Some of those yahoos think it means the end of the war but I say all it really means is if we’re still on that beach in the morning we’re staying.

One report has the Luftwaffe going AWOL.  Funny how they always told us our job was to destroy the German war machine but we all suspected it was really to lure up their fighters so our new Mustangs could get a crack at them.  Live bait some said.  So now I think maybe being bait ain’t so bad if it cleared the sky for this invasion.  And so maybe something is finally making sense.

One nice thing here at Mitchell is all the newspapers.  New York Times and five or six others.  My first week here all the headlines were about Normandy.  Now they’re all about trying to break out from those beachheads.  And casualties.  Lots of casualties.

Another trainee asked if I want to go into New York City if we get the chance.  Says he knows this club where they blow some smooth horn.  That’s how he says it.  Smooth horn.  I say sure if we get the chance but it don’t matter.  Only thing now is getting back to England.

July 2, 1944

Cornwall.

We did a refuel in the Azores so I go take a look at this little town next to the airfield.  Dirt streets.  Wooden wheel carts.  I mean those people are poor.

This church has a sign out front saying Columbus stopped here so I go in.  A priest is setting up the altar so I’m there in a pew when what has to be the whole town starts crowding in.  They fill up the church and then the coughing starts until the whole church is hacking away.  I finally have to push my way out afraid I might catch double pneumonia.

Off the English coast we get some weather.  Big boomers and lightning.  My stomach flips and I can’t figure it.  Storms never caused me a problem before.

Then I think maybe it was those numbers running through my head.  Back at Mitchell I heard that a B-17 crew member has a fifty percent chance of making it.  Since I’m a quarter of the way through that means until now I only had a twelve point five percent chance of going down.  Not so bad but then every mission after that the percentage goes up until it’s nothing to bet the farm on.

Need to avoid that stuff in the future.

Train to London in an hour.  Switch there and then on to Kimbolton.  First I’ll find the guys.  No old home week.  Just see how they are.  And then Betty’s letters.  I’ll write after I see what she says.

On the other hand there might be a Dear John waiting but I can’t think about that.  Can’t think about any of it.  Just have to see when I get there.

July 5, 1944

A Corporal checks the active crew list.  Then he checks another off to the side and there they are.  Last mission to Hamburg a week ago.

Talk about a kick in the gut.  It’s not like they were long lost buddies but we were crewmates together for over a year.  Guess I just wanted to see someone I knew for a change.

They got me in an orphan barracks.  No set crews.  Just guys to fill in where needed.  It’s different here.  Everyone off in their own world.  Reminds me of boot camp.  Back then it was my cousin Burton on my mind.

He was six years older than me and took me around in his hot rod.  Still remember the time he stops at his girlfriend’s house and she comes running out in just her bra.

Then he’s off to the army.  I get a letter saying he needs two hundred bucks.   Mom says I’ll never see it again but I send it anyway and then every month after that a nice new twenty shows up in the mail.

He’s in the Philippines when the Japs overrun it.  About two years later Aunt Leeya gets a letter from this guy who escaped saying he and Burton were on the same prison ship when they see an island in the distance.  Burton jumps overboard trying to swim to it and the Japs shoot him dead in the water.

I enlist in the Army but then the Air Corps needs volunteers.  Never could land a heavy so they sent me off to gunnery school.  Got those wings on my chest.  Who the hell did I think I was?  But then Betty liked them so I guess they served their purpose.

One night at Jefferson Barracks outside St. Louis her brother Babe takes me home with him for dinner.  She’s the youngest of five so we all go out to this Italian place for drinks.  Hard to believe it was only a year ago.

I got some letters here on my bunk.  I’ll start with the oldest first and work my way up to the latest.  That way I’ll find out where I stand in her own time.

July 8, 1944

Full bird Preston is at his window when I walk in.  He says have a seat and then sits down across from me.  He mentions me being on Schweinfurt Three.  I say yes sir and he says I flew lead that day.  I say yes sir.  I know.

He stares at me a second and then touches my file on his desk.  You know I played high school football too.  Quarterback.  California State Champs.

If that’s what he wants I can talk football all day so I say tight end.  Memphis City Champs.

He asks about my training.  I go through it all but see him glancing out that window more and more often.  No mission today so it’s not B-17s he’s looking for.  He turns back to me.

Guess you want to know why I called you in.  There’s been some changes since you were here.  Crewmen come in younger all the time and it would be a big help if you could give these new guys the benefit of your experience.

He searches my eyes.  Is this what he wants?  I say I’ll help where I can.

He says good and eases back in his chair.  So how was MItchell?  I answer they kept me busy.  And now you're back.  Ready for work?  Just waiting on my name to be called.

Well we’re even busier now since Normandy so that shouldn’t take long.  Glad to have you back Sergeant.

At that he stands and I get up to salute but instead he reaches over and shakes my hand.  Then he says something I don’t expect.  If anything comes up stop back here to see me.  Anything at all.  You know where I am.  I say yes sir and pull the door closed behind me.

At a distance Preston is all starch and creases but face to face like that he’s okay.  And no one can accuse him of leading from an armchair.  He flies lead on the toughest missions and you don’t mind following someone like that.

So any time now.  Feels like I’m finally where I should be.  Just a little behind schedule is all.

July 14, 1944

Three straight days to Munich.

Funny how they bunch them like that.  No time to think.  And it works too.  You eat.  Fall in the sack and next thing you’re back in the air.

We flew middle position all three days.  Day two we lost a fort on the edge but none on days one and three.  I didn’t even fire my Fifty until day two but those Focke Wulfs were so far off it was mainly practice.

Every half hour I send out coordinates.  About half way there the target’s cue signal is triangulated from England and I pass it along to the navigator.  He guides us in and then hands off control of the plane to the bombardier who sights on the target and releases our bombs.

I see what Preston means about these new guys.  Before take off this rookie waist-gunner is looking for his chute so I tell him I put it in the radio room.  He thinks I’m trying to steal it so I ask if he wants to trip over it while on the Fifty.  He still doesn’t get it so I finally yell at him I got my own.  How the hell can he get this far without even knowing where to stow his chute?

But then I feel bad so I go back and offer him a stick of gum.  He takes it and I give one to the tail gunner and bottom turret too.  Then I figure why stop there so I make a trip through the bomb bay and up to the rest of the crew.

All three days my hands are okay so maybe Spencer was right.  Eleven down and nineteen to go.  It’s okay to keep count so long as I take them one at a time.

July 16, 1944

In Betty’s last letter she says she hasn’t heard from me in so long all she can think is that I’m too busy to write.

In my letter back I say I’m sorry.  That I was thinking about us and our plans so much I got distracted and it was dangerous for me and my crew.  I tell her how I went through a rough patch but I’m past it now and want to be with her more than ever.

I don’t say what that rough patch was but here’s my take.  I froze on that Fifty because our plans for the future didn’t line up with me being dead the next few seconds.  I can be either here or there but not both places at once.

Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter because so far it’s working.  There might be a future out there for me but for now it doesn’t exist.

July 21, 1944

Two days ago the train hub at Frevent.  Then yesterday Leipzig.  Number thirteen.  I never paid much attention to that number before but maybe I should have.

A thousand heavies with a five hundred fighter escort.  FWs and Me109s harass us all the way there.

On the runway before climbing up the tail-gunner tells me he has a bad feeling about this one.  He says these 17s feel like a coffin to him and he’ll bail out at the first sign of trouble.  I say we all will but only as a last resort.  But he’s not listening so I shut up.

We’re on our bomb run when the other waist-gunner calls out over his headset he’s hit.  I look back and see a four foot hole where my waist gun was.  Then I see him down on the deck holding his leg.

It’s a gash below his knee but the artery’s okay.  I flush it out and sprinkle some sulfa.  Then I press a bandage to it and motion for him to keep up the pressure.  That’s when I see that tail-gunner hovering behind me so I wave him back to his gun.

When I get back to my headset the pilot’s yelling for everyone to shut up and give him a head count.  We all sing out except for that tail-gunner.  Pilot tells me to check on him so I start back.  That’s when I see him.

He’s sitting motionless in the back of the plane like a statue so I get back to my headset and tell the pilot but he goes quiet.  Guess he decides to just let it go until we get back.

Some morse comes in that fighters are massing over the Channel so we should take the North Sea route back.  I pass along the new coordinates and we brace for the long ride home with that hole in our side dragging us back.

I take a hypo to check on the waist-gunner.  His face looks like a kid who just got slapped and don’t know why.  No pain though so I skip the morphine.

Our engines rev overtime to keep up with the others.  Then just before the North Sea flak starts up and their fighters meet us.  I hear FIRE over the headset and see flames shooting back past that hole in our side.  Pilot says prepare to bail out so I grab my chute but then he says DO NOT BAIL OUT!  IT’S THE FORT IN FRONT!  I REPEAT!  DO NOT BAIL OUT!

I look down the fuselage and see that tail-gunner hooking into his chute.  He’s got his emergency hatch open with his eyes glued on those flames streaming past.  He looks ready to jump but that don’t make sense until I see he’s not wearing his headset.  He can’t know those flames aren’t coming from us.

I yell and wave but he don’t look.  I beat on the fuselage with a wrench but he still don’t look so I start back to him.  Then he does look.  He looks straight at me and goes out the side.

I scan below for his chute but see only the North Sea.  Survival time down there is maybe a minute.

I report he’s bailed out and send the coordinates.  Coming into Kimbolton I shoot a flare out my top hatch to signal we have wounded but it’s not just us.

A fort skids off into a field with smoke pouring out.  I see men piling out running for their lives.  That fort on fire in front of us didn’t make it back either.

Yesterday put a stop to any idea I had about a quick end to the war.  Seems like it just started all over again.

Harvey Huddleston's short fiction has been published in The RavensPerch and Mystery Tribune among many others.