‘Cosmic Suggestion Box’, ‘SNAFUBAR’, ‘Public Transit’, ‘Partygoers’, ‘In Rubens’ Umbra’ & ‘Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge’

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections. She has exhibited on both coasts, extensively in the Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, SPU, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the Pacific Science Center. She is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association and COCA.

Cosmic Suggestion Box

Sometimes the world seems like

a rough draft that never got revised.

Yet what might humankind propose

on its own behalf to the divine playmaker

who scants all knowledge of His nature

among beings yearning yet benighted?

With all due respect, in all humility,

perhaps for starters one could recommend

the nullification of evil and free rein,

whose marriage guarantees injustice

and mocks the assumed goodness of the great?

One could, modestly, advocate

a swift end to natural disasters, cataclysms

indelicately termed by insurers

acts of God, who is, after all,

ultimately responsible even if not culpable.

I, for one, could readily do without

meaningless and undeserved suffering,

meaningless and undeserved struggle,

and the bitter misery these engender.

But, admittedly, it occurs to me that

we ought to refrain from passing judgment

on what we can’t begin to comprehend;

should we not give the benefit of the doubt

to the One from whom we seek the same?

Sometimes I wonder whether the one thing

that the Creator can’t possibly know

is what it’s like to be only human…

SNAFUBAR

It seems to us unexampled, though we know better,

even as we huddle in household bubbles,

ensphered in comforts as denizens of the Great Indoors.

Nightly on the tube the newscast leads with mortality tallies

parading death, the original and ultimate product recall.

Out of doors, amid the Bewilderness, seekers of natural light

stroll paths with circumspection and sidle as they near

one another, partly courteous, partly paranoid,

inly speculating of whether a virus symbolizes

the foretold return of the repressed.

Across the canal, in tumble-down downtown,

I note a colourfully fenestrated house of worship

once a hive of humanity, lately suffering a dearth of habitués,

nowadays a makeshift mass clinic

where the masked queue for mRNA jabs

like well-mannered junkies in need of a fix.

This indeed is a collective déclassé,

humankind made to bend the knee.

I wonder of the future, suspended and inexplicit;

at times I'm tempted toward prayer,

though I question how pervious heaven

would be to pleas from the skeptical and aggrieved.

Surely, in the fullness of time, this moment

will be deemed a challenge to the conscience politic,

a mandatory opportunity to confute self-centeredness,

to walk each other home in the spiritual sense,

to inhale as we contemplate the ultimates

and, like those uniformed seraphs

dedicated to the relief of misery,

to strain every sinew toward grace,

at once the least and the most any might attain

while yet among the living.

Public Transit

Suspicious passengers give each other

the stink eye, certain there lurks among them

a perpetrator odious and opprobious

because culpable for befouling their midst

with a lactic and noisome fetor, some casually

self-indulgent (and evidently lactose-intolerant)

miscreant worthy therefore of the reprobation

of fellow travelers now lunging for windows,

desperately gasping for fresh air in lieu

of suffocating fumes, and even as the feeble

and elderly swoon then collapse

the durable rue the routine contretemps

and crudities commuters encounter

while crammed together, seated or upright,

their hands grasping dangling straps,

their nostrils pressed into unfamiliar armpits,

a mass of wearied individuals normally lost

in thought else attuned to blaring earbuds,

though just at the moment universally

hypervigilant if not downright Sherlockian,

hounds sniffing hither and thither,

keen to detect the culprit and definitively solve,

please God, now and for all time, The Case

of the Unprovenanced Flatulence.

Partygoers

Behold the hall, elaborately decorated,

host to ebullient celebrants indulging

in hors d’oeuvres and spirits as they swap

exaggerated facial expressions

and embellished anecdotes between

mouthfuls of herbed cream cheese and crust.

At the open bar, the unattached but hopeful

sip from vinous glasses, appraising prospects;

by the dessert table loiters a man of appetites,

prone to fondling a woman with one hand

and a pastry with the other.

It seems all the world in miniature is here,

spruce clotheshorses flaunting their finery,

praters blathering despite unsubtle eye rolls,

prepossessing belles clad in sard

necklaces and diamantine bracelets,

suitors employing japery or cajolery

to leave a favorable impression,

belly laughers and gigglers alike.

Bless them all, I say; long may they

animate one other and vitalize shared days

while their journeys and fortunes unfold,

while time and chance conspire.

In Rubens’ Umbra

An adolescent prodigy, he enters the reigning

master’s studio in the heart of Antwerp

—as an assistant, mind you, not as a student—

and anon astounds with seemingly effortless skills,

a God-given gift not even his father-rival figure

enjoyed in his own less precocious youth.

He gleans composition techniques

from Europe’s greatest living artist,

a renowned painter-diplomat whose

charmed life reads like a catalog of triumphs,

in whose shade he shivers despite a talent

(if not an education or imagination)

matching his mentor’s.

Only with the exemplar temporarily aside

on official embassies at the monarch’s behest

can the mentee emerge and flourish;

with the field to himself and room to breathe,

he garners attention and comment, befitting

his magisterial abilities with brush and canvas.

Favored and self-assured, he bristles at being

reduced to portraiture (little better than still lifes!)

instead of braving historical scenes, with rare

exceptions evincing his command of that mode;

he limns the master’s young wife, apparently

a protégé’s tribute, though it stokes

rumors of illicit romance, which perhaps,

as he strokes his Van Dyke,

he prefers to neither verify nor refute.

Alas, there was nothing for it but to fly the coop;

heeding the call of his passionate patron,

Charles of England, he migrates to Albion

to become court painter and knighted,

then flatters the vanity of royal sitters,

beautified by specious brushstrokes.

Upon the master’s demise, to Flanders

he repatriates (now phlegmy as well as Flemish),

defiant in his refusal to finish commissions

commenced by his illustrious forerunner,

thereby blemishing his twilight with ingratitude.

Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge

Semi-crippled by stunted legs, the draughtsman

roams the Champs de Mars and, naughty boy,

peeks up the skirt of the wrought-iron lattice tower

rising skyward as dusk cues his return

and he saunters back to his stomping grounds,

Montmartre, to haunt its cafés, cabarets,

nightclubs, and bars, becoming such a fixture

in the pleasure palaces of le gai Paris that he seems

a part of the furniture, drawing as he drinks,

while the floorboards of gaslit stages groan

and creak beneath high-kicking cancan dancers.

By day he hobnobs with Van Gogh or Degas,

but nightly he gulps and observes fellow sensualists

indulging in the bohemian life, bon vivants

who share his taste for the demimonde

with its tempting strumpets and hard liquor;

his fetish for auburn-haired sirens impels him

to frequent brothels until soon he inhabits one,

a strange arrangement easing his urge to befriend

its denizens, which comes at the cost of syphilis.

Wild living can’t keep him from his craft and fame

will be his thanks to pioneering poster work,

though he dreams of the theatre, opera, circus,

arenas of spectacle, fora of imagination,

each better still than the booze that afflicts him

with delirium tremens; at length he finds himself

quivering behind locked doors at a mental hospital,

brushstroking his way to freedom, and senses

his end, nearing and premature, grateful to be

relieved of wracked body and mind, sorrowful to bid

adieu to what have proven to be, at least in his case,

the solacing excesses of La Belle Époque.

‘Fancy Caskets, Sparkly Lamps, and Unspoken Pain’

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, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Fancy Caskets, Sparkly Lamps, and Unspoken Pain

My mid-twenties are haunted by thoughts of my grandfather, who died in 2006, when I was six. At first, it felt like delayed grief set on by guilt that, due to my age when he died, I remember being rather indifferent to the entire ordeal. Another part of me felt robbed of a chance to know an integral part of myself: the person who raised my father, an even further extension of my bloodline. I began asking lots of questions: to my mom, dad, grandma, aunt, siblings, anyone in my life who could tell me more about him. Sure, they had spoken about him since his death, but I wanted to know who he was as a person, not just their favorite memories they would share from time to time. What I came to learn caused me grief in a much more visceral and complicated fashion, and highlighted the way the past bleeds into the present, but not without time transforming the circumstances.

On February 24th, 2004, the New York Times reported that the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) would be expanding its exhibition space and performing renovations on existing galleries in a ten year, $155 million project that would bring back its collection of Classical art on display in a new Roman- style court. As well as bringing back collections that had been in storage for decades, they would be renovating the portion of the MET with windows facing Central Park (an area previously closed to visitors for decades), marking a period of rejuvenation for the MET as an institution.

Twenty years later, I found myself wandering the product of this large renovation project, after what could be called a six year rejuvenation project of leaving Michigan and moving to New York, to maintain a complicatedly loving, but necessarily distant relationship with my family. I was almost immediately struck by a large intricately carved marble sarcophagus. What struck me was that, while made to house the dead, the sarcophagus was carved like a mosaic, made up entirely of living things. It had over 40 figures representing panthers, Gods, men, babies, plants, dogs, intentionally woven together in a piece that felt all-consuming, without seeming overdone. On the front side, there was a central figure seated atop a panther, surrounded by four young men, equal in size and stature. They were surrounded by several different human and animal figures, some a mixture of the two species, all varying in size and shape but fitting into the whole scene perfectly. On the left side, there was a beautiful female figure lying wrapped in a sheet, holding fruit, surrounded by babies and two young men, peering across at the scene at the front of the piece. On the right side, there was an equally pristine bearded male figure lying in the same fashion, surrounded by babies and angels, looking at the scene unfolding in front of him.

According to research from the MET, the central male figure is Dionysos, and he is surrounded by the Four Seasons depicted as strong young men. The woman on the left side is Mother Earth, and the male figure on the right is thought to be a representation of a river God of the time . The piece was incredibly well preserved, only missing its lid and a few minor extremities, but appeared whole and complete nonetheless due to the extreme amount of detail still present. It was purchased for the MET in 1955 from the Dukes of Beaufort, who had purchased the piece and had it on display as part of their collection since 1733. It originally came from 260-270 CE in the Roman Empire, likely purchased from an incredibly wealthy member of Roman society, given the costs associated with commissioning a piece as large and ornate as this one.

I was, honestly still am, in awe of this piece. I’ve gone back to look at it multiple times. There is something so awe-inspiring about ornate detail etched into stone, and this sarcophagus embodies that feat to me. While it’s striking to look at, the placement of all of the different figures together in this living mosaic felt very representative of life to me; especially with two Godly figures looking on and watching, as if waiting in the shadows of a lifetime. Coupled with the fact that this imagery is captured on a sarcophagus, it felt deeply meaningful to me. This is why I was so surprised to learn that this design was a preset in the sculptors portfolio, depicting a well known scene centering a God many formed cults around at the time, so it didn’t hold nearly as much individual meaning as I had originally thought. It’s almost funny, to me, that this final resting place that seemed so representative of the most fruitful parts of living likely wasn’t purchased with the same thought. What made this piece important to the commissioner? And realistically, it can’t have been in the dirt that long if it was ever buried, given how pristine of condition it is in and the lack of lid, so I can’t help but wonder how that came to be. If someone was buried in it, where do their bones lie now? If it was never used, what was used instead? Most importantly, why were those decisions made? They likely weren’t made by the person who commissioned the piece, but the people he left on Earth after death.

It brings me back to the memories of my grandfather’s death. After the funeral all of the family got to go through his house and choose what they wanted to keep to remember him. I chose a pair of boxing gloves, a beautiful orange glass lamp decorated with hanging crystals all around the base of the lampshade and a wallet-size black and white photo of my grandfather around his high school graduation. My mom got an ornate looking silver frame to display in my room, and my aunt wrote the message I instructed her to on the back to mark the occasion

“Leon Rodney Boyce

My grandpa, he praised the Lord with all his heart! I love him!!

Cheri, Mallory, Doll, Scott, Stephanie, Alex, Joe, Grandma Boyce”

Whether it was the decision to keep the sarcophagus or sell it opposed to using it for its intended purpose, is a mystery of history that can never be known, but was most certainly a circumstance at some point in time. And nearly two thousand years later, it’s sitting on display for millions of people to see, with no way to share the story of how it got here, except for what’s been displayed on the front and sides and a small inscription on the back.

In researching the piece, I came to learn that it was depicting a scene deemed a roman “triumph,” which was a ceremonial parade through the streets put on by leaders to celebrate a specific event or accomplishment, from the Olympic Games to military victories (Boardman, 2014). “Dionysos’ Triumph,” in particular, was seen as the triumph of the living over death. With this knowledge, coupled with the socioeconomic status of the commissioner, it’s likely that they chose such a grand and ornate depiction of an immortal scene as a way to commemorate how they feel their accomplishments in life would sustain them in their death. In a lot of ways, it’s sad, because I know it’s not true. His grand sarcophagus is on display for millions of people to see all this time later, but any recognition or claim he or his family held over this art is long gone, as well as their memory.

Aside from the memories around my grandfather's death, the only memory I have of him was a giant stuffed cheetah and karaoke machine he got for me and my sister one year for Christmas. It was the only Christmas, hell, the only holiday I remember seeing him, but I ranked him highly as a child because of this. Even as a child, I knew my paternal grandparents' relationship was different from my maternal ones’. Grandpa and Grandma Yost lived together at their house, and Grandma Boyce lived with us, and I had no idea where Grandpa Boyce lived. Until I had to miss school to see him lie in bed at this mysterious house. And then he was dead, and I didn’t think about it much. He wasn’t a big part of my life before, not nearly as much as the rest of my family, so his death didn’t hold a big part in my life either, and this seemed normal to me. If I had to guess where the cheetah and karaoke machine are right now, I’d say they’re probably lying in a landfill somewhere, covered by layers and layers of other people’s plastic.

While Dionysos is meant to be the focal point, I believe the way in which everyone is intertwined around him is really what caught my eye, and what makes the piece feel so complete. I see it as a panoramic timeline of life, and the impact one individual can have on their environment throughout it. On the left side, we see Creation, curiously watching the fruits of Her labor, and the right side seems to me to be the masculine side to that coin, some overseer of death, waiting for His time. In between is the fruit of that labor. Gods and people and babies and animals, all fitting in together and relating to each other in a way that creates a perfectly cohesive picture. All of the lore and religious meaning behind Dionysos aside, I see him at the center of this as the architect, as if the people branching out are the generations of people his existence founded, for better or for worse.

On another day out at the MET, in the middle of all my research about this piece, I was wandering around the museum with my friend Nicole when I brought her to the Roman Court to see it, and she was astounded by the craftsmanship as well.

“I can’t even imagine all the kinds of tools it must’ve taken to create all this detail, or how they went about making them in the first place.”

We were standing in front of the sarcophagus, just staring in wonder. Her words of amazement validated my hyperfixation, but her next thought as we walked around the piece gave me a lot of pause throughout the next couple days.

“Where are all the women? All I see is male figures, besides the left.”

She was right, and it was unusual, even for the time. It was commonplace for the Four Seasons to be represented as fully grown, robust women in Roman art, so the switch to young men was both novel, and served to drown out the feminine energy within the piece. I can’t help but wonder if this change was intentional too, given the peak physical form the men surrounding Dionysos are, and the knowledge that this sarcophagus was likely the resting place for an aging man. Sitting with the feelings this brought me caused a lot of internal struggle too. How was it that I could extract so much meaning about the complexities of life from this piece, when I can’t even see myself represented within it? It’s not an ideal I want to emulate in my life, given the centuries upon centuries of people like me having to make space for the egos of the men in their lives. I think this long held truth is still so upsetting to me because I didn’t have a real understanding of how closely it’s impacted my life until relatively recently, when I learned something that caused me to hide the frame holding my grandfather’s picture in a shoebox in my closet, and make plans for a cross country road trip to Michigan to drive back the fragile lamp from my mom’s house to promptly sell it for the cash.

What’s funny about being a kid is that the chaos of what’s happened before you is ever present in the words, actions and circumstances of those immediately around you, but you don’t get a clear view of what’s actually going on until you’re old enough to understand it. A lot of the time, people will try to make that decision for you. My grandma never actually told me my grandfather was abusive. I had to come out and ask. After several attempts of prying into the reasons for her divorce and getting veiled, polite answers, years after I had moved from Michigan I was back on a visit and we had gotten into a long discussion about her marriage with Leon.

“Did he hit you?”

“Yes.”

For every other question, my grandma had no concern for brevity in her answer. She held specific memories from decades back, remembering what she said, what she heard, what she cooked, and all I got was “yes.” That wasn’t an invitation for further questioning, it was an answer and a line. ‘Yes, he did, no I will not say more.’

The rage this knowledge unleashed in me is a rage I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling throughout the years. Over the span of civilizations, societies, and all the progress we’ve been able to make as a human race, we still hurt each other the same. And, much of the time, that harm and hurt never gets to be addressed, all in the name of upholding an intangible sense of honor. We strive to remember people for the best parts of themselves, while ignoring and pushing away the parts that horrified us. What we leave behind when we leave this Earth are the material possessions that will outlive us, and the relationships we built with the people around us. Death doesn’t heal the wounds we inflicted on others, it only leaves them open to rot without being able to confront the source. We want to project this legacy of victory, of accomplishment and success without truly reconciling the harm that remains whether it is named or not.

My grandfather hurt my grandma, his children, and the generations of people that resulted from that union, but above all, he sabotaged himself. One of the most fascinating parts of this deep family shame is how much love exists in my family despite it; and it is a love that I didn’t see my grandfather get to know or experience in a meaningful way. The people he hurt, while imperfect, managed to learn to grow and love in ways that didn’t cause so much pain and dysfunction, but he didn’t seem to grow with them. I don’t know if it was shame, or some other deep seeded emotion that kept him from us until his very last days, or if I’m projecting emotions onto a man that was never connected enough with his own to be aware enough to name them. Realistically, it can’t be known, but I do know that the product of this dysfunction, while requiring work to grow stronger and more stable, is still a beautiful family that I am proud to be a part of.

Nearly two thousand years after the creation of this piece, the sarcophagus stands in one of the most significant museums in what’s considered the capital city of the world, completely disengaged from its roots an entire ocean away. Its stone has and will outlive anyone who sees it, and as such, it holds far more memories than we ever could. Eighteen years after my grandfather's death, I finally did get the chance to bring the orange glass lamp from Michigan to New York City, and it proudly sits in my living room. With all the complicated feelings I have around my grandfather and the legacy he left in my family, this lamp stands outside of it. I chose it at age six, yet it perfectly fits the eclectic vibe I’ve fallen into as an adult better than anything I could reasonably afford now. Something also tells me a woman in my family picked it out, with the bright orange color and borderline gaudy dangling crystal pieces, so it feels like a familial heirloom that I picked out for myself years ago, almost prophesying the person I was meant to become. The boxing gloves are shoved in my closet, because after learning just a few details about my grandparents' marriage, choosing them back then feels like a sick joke, but I can’t imagine donating them or giving them to another family member for the same reason. The photo with the writing on the back is in the back of the frame now, which displays a photo of my boyfriend and I. Part of me thinks I’ll grow out of this hatred at a man who’s been dead well over a decade, but the way every other person in my family just swallowed the shit makes me want to hang onto it forever. Someone has to. I haven’t decided yet, so the photo stays.

I may be projecting my specific pain onto this relic, but familial circumstances aside, it stands perfectly encompassing the range and effect one person can have on their environment over the course of a lifetime, while telling nothing of the person it was meant to hold. This piece could and likely does hold a range of different meaning to all of the different people who have seen it over its lifetime of being displayed in different places in different eras, and none of those could be aligned with the true history and meaning of this piece, which died with the people who were there to live through it. There’s such an alluring mystery within that, but that mystery can be painful when you’re a part of the mosaic. And, realistically, the only actionable way to make that mystery special and impactful in a positive way, is to recognize the impression you will leave on others and work to leave a presence you can be proud of, before it fades away like we all inevitably do. I can’t affect my grandfather’s legacy, only my own. For everyone’s sake, I don’t intend to make the same mistakes.

Samantha Boyce is a Michigan native who moved to New York City at eighteen years old. In her youth, she was a Staff Writer for Affinity Magazine, having multiple articles published, all centered around social justice and mental wellness. In 2020, she began schoool, and is currently designing a Bachelor in Arts degree in Restorative Justice and Dispute Resolution through the Cuny Baccalaureate for Unique and Individual Studies program at John Jay, set to graduate in the winter of 2024.

‘A Minstrel’s Tale’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

A Minstrel’s Tale

The tale begins on a lonesome day just as the birds awoke and the sun began to peek above the distant tree line. The wind blew softly, bringing with it the air of adventure. A grand quest lay ahead that would cost the hero greatly. Dangerous beasts of legend walked along the path he would have to take and guarded the way to the treasure of mythology as spectacular as the holy grail. Lions of unnatural strength and power wandered those woods, ever searching for their next prey and hideous sea serpents wove through the poisoned waters that crossed the route.

And if the hero were brave and strong enough to pass those trials and make it to the cave where the treasure lay, he would have to face the greatest threat of them all. The dragon with shining scales like the gold he horded and with teeth as sharp as the swords that guarded the entrance. Getting past that creature would be the most terrifying trial of them all and the hero was sure to meet certain death.

“What are you doing?”

“I am telling your story.”

The hero of this tale was a man named Lothar. Contrary to his name, he was fairly weak and not at all warrior-like. His dark hair fell in butchered locks to his shoulders and his thin face displayed sharp bones of his cheeks and jaws, but not necessarily in a handsome way.

“Shut up, Emil.”

Ignore the rude comments emanating from blank space of this document.

“What are you going on about?”

The poor man crudely named by his desperate mother in hopes of a great savior packed his bags as he prepared for the journey that lay ahead of him.

“What did you say about my mother?”

“Just pack your bags Lothar.”

A difficult journey he would soon trek, and so for many days’ adventure he must prepare.

He packed up dried fruits and bread and tucked away his bow and a quiver full of arrows. How he planned to draw the bow with those feeble arms, one would never know.

“Now you’re just being mean.”

The trunk in the corner of the room, though already mostly bare, he emptied as he carefully folded away his worn trousers and shirts and pulled around his shoulders a thick woolen cloak. With everything all nicely packed, he stood and took one last scan around the room. His moldy bed and itchy blankets were crumpled to the side and in front of the fireplace where he had comfortably slept through the winter. His cozy home, bright with the spring sun with greenery bursting in bright colors through the windows would be difficult to leave and greatly missed. He took one last final breath, drawing in the sweet scents of spring, the sharp aroma of smoke-stained brick, and the musty familiarity of a leaky roof.

“Must you be so dramatic?”

“Yes.”

He reached down and in one smooth motion swept his pack onto his back and in the same smooth motion went tumbling into the soft dirt floor.

“I didn’t fall.”

“I said you tumbled.”

Regaining his balance, the lean Lothar strapped on his pack and set out into the rising sun. The darkened sky lightened to beautiful violets and golds as the bird awoke to bid farewell to the lonely traveler.

“Not lonely enough. Must you insist on following me?”

“Yes, a minstrel must always accompany a quest for it is their duty to remember the tale.”

“What nonsense are you uttering?”

“I am a minstrel, and it is my duty, as a minstrel, to accompany you on your quest.”

“No, it’s not. And if you’re a minstrel where’s your instrument?”

“I don’t need one.”

The dirt path he followed wound its way through the cheery town, unaware of the dangers that lurked so near, for the village was surrounded by a darkened forest where only misery lurked. Shadows haunted the grounds and bathed the woods in its dreadful glare. Guarded was the entrance by two towering oaks and overgrown were the paths that lay for none dared to traverse through its treacherous gates.

“Seriously? It’s just a normal forest.”

“Of death.”

“Well then you are more than welcome to stay behind.”

“I will not hear of it, for who else will recount your gruesome death?”

“And who will recount your justified murder?”

Still on the brave traveler went through the gates of death, for if he had nothing of strength or dignity, he had bravery bordering on stupidity.

“I hate you.”

The darkness wrapped around him like a cloak and extinguished the light from above as the branches wove a thick tapestry overhead. This was a darkness you could feel, clenching at your chest and straining the frail heart, making even the slightest breath difficult. The air was thick and moist, smelling strongly of a trickling stream and of freshly blooming leaves that offered some comfort in the fog. Vines reached out their sly hands to wrap around the unfortunate victims that fell into its grasp and the growth flowing along the ground stretched its limbs to tangle and trip.

The farther into the woods he journeyed the bushier the growth sprouted and the more closely knit the trees became. Talls weeds ran over the trampled dirt and threatened to choke out the path until it was no more, and the traveler would be lost to the vastness of the wilderness.

A series of howls echoed and bounded, growing gradually louder then fading to a soft whisper in hopes of confusing the listener on its whereabouts. Heavy crunching of twigs and leaves signaled the approach of something bigger, something far more terrifying than the distant howling of wolves. A lion was surely lurking ever nearer in the foliage, creeping upon his lonely victim, and ready to grip its prey in its razor-sharp teeth.

“A lion, really?”

“Yes, a lion. Now stop interrupting, you’re ruining the story.”

“You mean my story which is currently happening while you uselessly narrate.”

“I am not uselessly narrating. I am saying it out loud so may remember the adventure later and be able to properly write it down in a book.”

“Just continue your stupid story.”

The leaves rustled and the bushes shook violently. Nothing small could have made that great of noise, so something big was lurking not far behind, tracing his very steps. With the terrifying leap the beast bounded out of the shrubs and out into the open to face its enemy.

“That’s a deer Emil.”

“It could have been a lion.”

“There are no lions in the forests of Medieval England.”

Lother let his shoulders relax and released a sigh. He steadied his cumbersome pack and continued on his journey.

“You know what, now seems a good time for a rest.”

“How can you say that when I just said you continued on your journey. Fine, be that way.”

The weary hero dropped his pack deciding that this was a good and not at all terrifying neck of the woods to have a brief respite. He searched through his pack and brought out some dried strips of fruit and a handful of nuts to snack on. His rest was long and refreshing as he savored his precious time and ate his food painfully slow.

“Could you go any faster?”

“Nope.”

Lother chewed thoughtfully on his mouthful of fruit, his sharp jaws working at the tough leathery skins. He stared down the minstrel with his frightful gaze as he clumsily twirled the knife in his hands as a silent threat to the innocent storyteller. Having finally finished his food and tucking the blade away in his belt he was at once ready to…lay down and take a nap?

Seriously?

This is correct, contrary to Arthurian Legend. However, I highly suggest searching Medieval drawings of lions. They are quite something.

Well now this lonely minstrel must learn to occupy himself by composing exciting poetry to later share with a crowd of curious onlookers as he received his fame for his lively performance.

Upon these haunted ground must trek

The brave and fearless hero…named Jeff?

To start a journey so profound

That its tale shall ever resound.

A heavy burden laid on his neck.

And his pride he must keep in check.

“You suck at poetry.”

“I’m sorry, who is the literary expert here?”

“Obviously not you.”

The journey continued the next day after the hero had arisen, and with terrible bed head I might add.

“Why are you still here?”

On he went through the thick of the woods, his heavy pack weighing his shoulders and slowing the already difficult journey.

“If anything is slowing my journey, it’s you.”

The slender trail marked out by the hooves of a deer wound in twisting patterns around the bulky trunks of trees and led up to a rushing stream. Water rushed over moss covered stones and threatened to carry away the grassy weeds clinging to the bank. Lothar examined the slippery rocks and shallow straight for the best route to cross. It might very well prove to be difficult.

“Or we can use the bridge that is not even ten paces away.”

“But that doesn’t sound at all heroic.”

“Well, you are welcome to try crossing the stream this way, I’m taking the bridge.”

The hero, taking the easy way out, chose to take the treacherous rope bridge extending out over a deep cavern where heavy rapids lay below.

“You’re unbelievable.”

The bridge wobbled precariously under his foot and each step could very well be his last.

“We are literally three feet above the little stream.”

The bridge swayed dangerously in the rough wind and the hero gripped the ropes for dear life, his hands getting scraped and burned as his delicate grip slipped. He cried out for help, but none was to be found. The bridge jerked and he almost went over the edge.

“If anyone is going over the edge, it’s you.”

His bravery waned and his spirit gave up. He began to sob.

“Ack.”

“How’s the water?”

“Cold.”

“I did warn you.”

H-having b-barely made it to the end of the b-bridge, the hero c-collapsed.

“Hard to speak when you’re shivering, ay.”

The arrogant hero pranced along, placing the near-death experience out of his mind as if he had not been miraculously saved by God himself.

“Would you stop blabbering already. We’re almost there.”

And so, the hero trekked on, quickly approaching his doom as the great and terrifying cave lurked menacingly in the distant mountain.

“What mountain? It’s a cottage.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m literally just visiting my grandmother.”

“You’ve ruined my story.”

“Just say the end and be done.”

“Fine.”

He reached the treasure safely for the dragon had already been written out of the story.

And they all lived happily ever after.

THE END!!!!

“Happy?”

“Very.”

Ariel Chenowith recently graduated with two bachelor’s degrees and hopes to pursue a career in writing. She enjoys learning new things and exploring new art forms.

‘The Gilded Edge’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

The Gilded Edge

Wispy fingers partially prise themselves free of a glass shield of a framed family portrait:  translucency acting as a barrier. Elsie is stuck, yearns, longingly so, to reach beyond gilded edges.

Haunting the circumference of the portrait frame, depicting her once whole family, she is curiously feral - a wild cat. Each, and every moment, she casts into possessing framed distance, bullying her way to thinking, that she holds some power, even though she is perpetually lost in a gold-kiss of forgetfulness as a sepia shadow.

Her curse.

His punishment.

Elsie’s spirit tracks perpendicular sides, haunting an enclosed box of a world. Blearily, she eyes and is cognisant of, there being more to life than smudged, charcoal tendrils, for she is a wispy trail of a ghost.

Her lived years as an infant and young woman, within the very bones of Ordsall Hall, are her only memories, tinged with each passing of a dusty year. Filmy relics of truth, exist as echoic remembrances.

If she garners enough strength and bitterness within her prisoner soul, she can, it has been known, fling her portrait from its hanging place in sheer defiance. Such a freakish occurrence is often blamed by servants as the work of a draught. For months, Elsie has endeavoured to conjure ways to allow vexation to purge like water released from a hard pressing dam, but in countless ribbons of flimsy time, a flung picture is all that she has mustered. An almost silent form of revenge, not parallel with the palpable venom that pulses, pushing at framed edges.

All such puce curses are directed at one hated figurehead: her stepfather, Esquire Jeptha Lindquist.

In his lifetime, he bore an elaborate name, titled, wealthy, pompous and full to the brim of prestige, allowing flouncy cuffs of lace to flatter the minds of others, duping their senses. Elsie’s mother, more than most, came to know of certain truths and the extent of his powers of forgery before she met the grave.

When Elsie’s beloved father died, the estate passed to Elsie’s mother. Her mother having given birth, painstakingly, to two male babes whose rosebud mouths never opened, christened with a blue veil of woe. The loss of each having done something irreparable to her mother’s soul, chinked and gasping, it always remained after these tragic newborn deaths.

Once Clara was the talk of the county: a rich, carefree maiden with bounteous waves of auburn hair. When she fell into the arms of Elsie’s father, Samuel Ellington, an orchestra of men had been equally bewitched by Clara as Samuel had been. Samuel loved greatly, willingly, always putting affairs of his estate behind attentions placed upon family. The Ellington family were small in size but perfectly formed and well protected by its patriarchal figurehead.

The last Christmastime spent together as a family had been in 1882. Frigid, fanned faces of ice implanted against parlour windowpanes as Elsie sat upon her father’s knee watching a steady snowfall outside. Her mother handed her a stocking from the fireplace containing small opulences. The first gift, a glass bauble, bore handiwork of a painted poinsettia; ruby-red petals reaching out. Inspired by sublimity, she took the trinket, proudly placing the orbital beauty on the Nordic spruce. Its pine aroma filling Elsie’s nostrils as she did so.

Outside, the view was wintery, picture-perfect. Elsie gazed, mesmerised by plains of virginal snow. A soundlessness attended Christmas morning – not even a stir from servants was discerned. The silhouette of the moon flung on its back, lingered in the stillness of dawn– soon to be erased by golden stretches of lifting sunlight. The sun: a gilded rose buoying in the distant horizon above fields of skittish stags.

Dear Diary,

The Christmas of 1884 has passed drearily. I write tonight to alleviate troublesome stirrings. My new stepfather, Esquire Jeptha Lindquist, is a devil.

Eyeing me over his glass of dark-amber brandy, he toys with peace-hood. Winking when mother is not looking or stroking my hair. His closeness and cloying breath are enough to stifle my once clear senses.

I hear him in the stables torturing the mares with liquid whips of anger. They have learnt, like me, to cower.

I fear for mother.

This new marriage, in haste, and cloudiness, was not wise. I think she knows not what she does, losing grip on tangible workings of life. A sweetness hangs too often upon her lips since the untimely death of father; a sickly vine weaves itself deeper, day-by-day. I note it in her glassy eyes, dilated but barren of life.

Sometimes, he laces her drink with it. He thinks I note him not.

I must hasten. I hear his footsteps, hellbent ones, creaking floorboards…

From infancy, Clara would read to Elsie, it fast becoming a favoured pastime. Nestled within the downiness of her mother and father’s bed, Elsie thrived. She had listened to classic tales from Greek mythology, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Austen’s novels and a host of other literary laces, wove themselves, bolstering Elsie’s enkindled imagination.

There was one particular proverb that had always remained, disregarding woe cast upon her. It was the words of Leo Tolstoy from Anna Karenina:

"All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow."

As a growing young woman, Clara encouraged an academic mind-bent, greatly praised by private tutors of her daughter. Astute, perceptive and intellectually intrigued, Elsie was. Being read aloud to, whether huddled by fireside warmth of the parlour, or cocooned in bed, Elsie never forgot her mother’s lyrical tones of voice, nor the truth that resonated, crystalline-clear, from Tolstoy’s written words.

Under the clutches of her stepfather, a horse owner and gambler, she learnt only too doggedly the malignant alacrity of darkness and its silent savagery. She had escaped such darkness as a child, standing tall in pools of puddled light, when under the protection of both her parents. But life had changed, shapes known and comforting, now morphed to discernible sneers as gargoyles; wide smiles tormented themselves into fanged promises whilst her stepfather steadily took charge of Ordsall Hall, demolishing all that once flourished under its roof.

Dear Diary,

I fear my life is in danger. Mother sleeps more and more during the day. Gloaming afternoons sweep her up into tight shrouds of despair, as corrupting drops of opium continue to lace her teacups. She moves farther from me as her eyes glisten over with false animation. Once ensnared, she sleeps as if dead upon the couch, leaving me alone – exposed - to him.

He has not, as yet, found my journal, and I rejoice in small pleasures, for his eyes track all, following me to lost recesses, in an attempt to try and free myself of his unwanted attentions.

Today, he groped his manhood whilst stood a-front of the fire, drunk with brandy; puffing ominous rings of smoke as cloudy nooses towards me as I sat, doing my best to escape his hold by reading.

I hate the very bones of the man.

I believe he is in league with Beezlebub: smiting blessed memories of father; he acts as lord in the same places where father once placed his true, regal feet. A moral, good-natured man that loved both mother and me.

A most blessed father.

I am always yearning for his paternal attention, feeling its keen, sharpened absence.

Again, he comes. I smell the waft of putrid cigars: the smoky, leathery tang creeps into my senses, strangling fast any pure air and free breath.

His coarse hand is on the doorknob. I hear it shudder intrepidly at his cold, inhuman touch.

The horses whinny in fright in the stables, using a sixth sense to detect my darkened peril – a peril that they are I both share.

He is here again.

The handle turns…

Clara gave birth to a healthy baby son but bears no memory of such a trial. A dream-like, haunting mask coats all she does, gliding from one room to another over the years since Samuel’s death. The forced betrothal to Jeptha has sucked away at her life force.

Her father had wanted the familial line of Ellingtons to continue, in hope that a male heir would fruitfully bless her womb, therefore ensuring longevity of the estate at Ordsall Hall but she had long ago forgotten about any such duty. Laudanum had, by the time of birth, quite eclipsed Clara, taking her to an underbelly of grey chimeras and taunting faces, keeping her firmly bedridden. She held the bundle within arms, barely cognisant of the weight that she dimly sensed was a son.

Jeptha had been swift to steal new life from her quivering arms, securing a wet nurse. If he had allowed lamenting drops to diminish their rigid hold upon Clara, she would have perhaps had a chance to regain motherly instincts, softening blows that the child would have to bear with such an untamed beast for a father. But, if anything, ghostly drops increased, vining her blood with nightmarish, waking visions, and painful memories of Samuel and Elsie, when they had been a most loving and united family.

I fear my life is limited. He stalks me day and night around perimeters of the hall, oftentimes inflamed by drinking. Servants scurry at the sight of him, female ones in particular, and I have taken to attic rooms, piercingly inhabitable as they are, to escape him.

Fast Rider died today, his prized racehorse. I know he beat her to death for losing a race. She was such a gentle soul.

I write this sat atop of a worn portmanteau bearing initials of my father: S.E. I spend time coursing my fingers along raised, stitched markings, remembering his open face. I crave his presence - so very greatly. It is a sorrow almost unmentionable.

Finding woven coverlets from generations before, I curl into a tight C shape, shivering but mildly safe under their warmth, hidden between foist-ridden, dust-soaked detritus from previous ancestors.  Here, in this oubliette of an attic space, there exists a shard of protection - a little edge of comfort.

Days pass. I am cold. Lifeless. Husks of sourdough bread lay stale. The only comfort I have is in reading when daylight finds me, funnelling light, from uppermost rooftop panes in bent shafts towards wobbly lines of fiction.

Dear Diary,

Mother has gone. Laudanum stole her. He cares not. The fiend. Time is draining for me too. I feel a further tightening of my breath; a skip in each heartbeat, unsettled as adventurous kittens; feverish as burning coal. I keep a fixed monitoring of the attic door. Perhaps he is too drunk or too stupid to calculate that I hide here, believing me dead or vanished?

Ordsall Hall shall then be his, falling exactingly into his sharpened talons, as he always planned. It was clearly a marriage forged with deceit: a falsehood that allowed him to claim her inheritance from father – nothing more.

The nib of the pen scratches so tonight - mirroring my distracted frenzy.

Ennui. 

Fear.

Palpable fear is a heavy lozenge on my tongue, stoppering any free passage of breath. My breaths are laboured, ragged as ripped cloth.

Christmastime of 1871 had been the best. Samuel had commissioned a local artist to paint the family. It was a gift to Clara, my beloved mother, but also one to the hall, claiming their rightful placement as a growing family in the long line of Ellingtons that preceded before them.

The morning of the first camera shots bode well: a northern flung light cast stoic rays across dew-dusted pastures of Ordsall Hall. Pin-pointed dewdrops appeared as diamonds, glistening in sunbeams. It was on this stage that the staged family photographs begun – Samuel, Clare and Elsie positioned before the grand windowpane of the finest reception room; scarlet damask curtains helping to frame the contented family within the fold of the house.

Immediately, Clara fell in love with the dappled light: the stretching fields of cast jewels that dazzled amidst elm and oak trees. Elsie’s face, aglow with a joyous smile, shined forth. All were full of festive spirit – a marvel it was to behold.

The chosen family photograph was then chosen, processed, framed in gild, before it was placed, in prideful position, above the roaring fire of the parlour. The heart of the hall.

Diary,

Daylight hours shorten and I sense dreaded footsteps nearing ever closer to my attic bolthole – each, and every, damnable and sleepless night that I must endure.

I dare not write more in case the scribblings of ink and nib alert him to my hiding spot.

My mind misgives. The root of paranoia has already settled within me, funnelling a thwarted anchor to hook my soul.

There is no longer time left for me here, the truth of such knowledge trills up and down my spine as a constant alarm bell.

I can write no more.

Elsie

The night of fate presses its heinous face of arrival against heaven- tilted windows, near blinded by cobwebs – webs formed from centuries of spinning silk threads of spiders.

In spite at being played a fool, he storms the attic, hurling boxes and trinkets as he enters. 

“You have kept me waiting, Elsie. You useless brat – just like your mother. What a curse she was until the drops took her. You women are thorns in my side. I have tired of your games,” he bellows. Spittle hangs repulsively from his chin with bedevilled, hot-coal eyes burning within in his anger-framed face.

In haste, Elsie runs from the attic, up the spindly staircase to the rooftop, pushing heavy walls of cobwebs that have weaved tight tapestries across the stony walls.

Eventually, she reaches a door, and throwing all of her weight into its firm hold, Elsie releases herself into a heap onto the stony ledge: the tallest part of Ordsall Hall.

Stumbling, as drunk in her wake, Jeptha catches up, flaring hot crimson with rage. Grabbing the scruff of Elsie’s collared dress, he raises her from the ground, shaking her meagre body in frenzied pulses of aggression – a part punishment for the days and weeks that she has eluded his detection.

“You shall pay for evil doing, Elsie,” he slurs before biting a chunk of tender flesh from her cheek – his feral attack mimicking that of a savage beast - devoid of humanity. Heady fumes of port drench each exhalation, near enough to drown Elsie in a suffocating stupor.

With blood dripping profusely onto her pale rose dress, she takes no note of pain. Without delay, she boldly steps over the walled rooftop precipice, choosing to simply fall to her death.

All Jeptha can do is to sway with building Arctic winds, howling, chiding in protest at evildoing, not daring to look down to witness the bloodied, mangled corpse of his stepchild.

With blood-soaked lips, he returns to the ice-cold stairwell, making his way back into the empty shell of Orshall Hall, bereft of life and a now bereft of its beating heart: Elsie.

Weeks pass with Jeptha drinking his fill of the hall’s fine vintage wines; beating the horses into stupefied frenzies. One day, he decides to gather nobles and the elite from local villages, eager to capture a new wife for himself.

On one particular evening of April, he had been entertaining, before returning to the parlour, to drink a brandy and smoke a cigar alone. Placed above the fireplace, he failed to remove the family photograph. The girl’s eyes, bear down upon him, unblinking in a fierce, nocturnal glow. Fully diluted in knowing of his evil, stretching each twisted, jarred memory. He tries to dispel the notion as ridiculous, drinking heady gulps of swirling nectar, that he holds ever so slightly tighter, in a crystal glass.  

Alarmingly, glass within the framed photograph of the Ellington family begins to shatter, cracking into duplicitous shards; sharp edges lift from the matte surface. Without being able to rise from his armchair, afore the fire’s flames, a thick shard, with a fanged, gilded pinpoint, spins in strong swoops, flinging itself at full pelt, gleefully lacerating his throat. Gurgles of blood well into thick puddles, coursing into his upheld glass and lap. A scarlet slash tattoos itself across his white shirt.

And there, in the photographed picture, Elsie smiles.

Revenge is wholesomely hers.

A chanting lilt of “Happy Christmas” echoes, as her released spirit dances. It is a celebratory occasion. With ghostly fingers dipped into Jeptha’s deadened blood, her smile widens, stretching as taut elastane. For in this moment, Elsie has finally found her revenge and it is golden like the gilding of her family’s portrait. It gleams in the fireside flames as Elsie courses an outstretched, silent fingertip over the faces of her much-missed mother and father.

“I am home,” she whispers to their flickering silhouettes as they ghost the parlour doorway in search of Elsie, a truly loved daughter.

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 fifth novel. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 with her poem ‘Carbonito de Sophie’.

‘When Do We Become Naked?’, ‘Laika’ & ‘no one mourns the wicked’

Photographer - Tobi Brun

When Do We Become Naked?

After a woman’s lips dripped with sweet juice
down her breasts, to her feet
They locked her away, and make her submit
leaving the snake unscathed
Eve is not my mother. but in a way
i know her, i know her
I know what it is to realize
that you are naked
At four, I stood on a chair
gleefully mimicking the dancing waiters
Before a tight hand grasped my wrist
and pulled me back to my seat
A knot in my stomach twisted
in a dreadfully similar fashion
The day a man took inventory of my body
and hollered out the window of his pickup truck
We are born naked, we die clothed,
and somewhere in-between we are made small
A little girl who whoops loudly and takes up space
shrinks quietly into the corner
But today, I find myself alone quite often
my body free of fabric
So when I wash my face, I allow water to drip
down my breasts, to my feet
And there are no snakes to bite my ankles.

Laika

Was it cold on the streets of Moscow
foraging for crumbs of sustenance
when they found you and brought you home
to the labs, shrinking your cage smaller and smaller
When they shoved you into the centrifuge
spinning while they played scary noises,
cut open your body, and shoved in tubes and wires
just to smile and sew you up, sealed as tight as fate
When one of them took pity on you
and brought you home to play fetch
with laughing children in a lazy green field
the last sunset you would ever see?
They chose you for your wagging tail
your naivety, your blind trust
longing for something greater
than scouring the trash for scraps
Something greater than you could imagine
cowering in the frozen alleys, playing
hide n’ seek with the cruel neighborhood boys
hidden, when all you wanted was to be seen
Just to be imprisoned and inspected for their senseless war,
man-made horrors you would never understand
displayed like the statue they would erect in your memory,
fifty years after your fall from grace
In your last moments, floating among the stars
just four little paws and a wagging tail
wondering where everybody had gone
for the first time, were you finally warm?

no one mourns the wicked

i suppose embalming was a waste
visiting hours are empty and my picture
is cut out of every smiling collage
yet from my open casket, i gaze upon
the twisted agony in your eyes,
the hesitation in your dissociation
wishing i could smear the blood
from your wounds onto my face
beg for absolution and grace
but haunting cannot bring us together
so i do not rattle my chains
when your clock strikes midnight
instead, i sink into my coffin
and three ghosts visit me instead
the past, the present, and the mistake i have not yet made
imagining what it would be like
to call your mother
and tell her i love you more
than i’ve ever loved anyone
who has touched my bare chest
or whose lips have brushed my own

Vivianne Clark resides in Omaha, Nebraska. Her creative work explores themes of feminism, depression, and intimacy. She is currently studying English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Clark loves playing the saxophone in the Cornhusker Marching Band and cozy nights inside with a good book.