‘Dinner Party of Ex-Bosses’, ‘Requirements To Be A Pig’, ‘Manqué’, & ‘The Toilet and the Coffin’

Daniel Wood Adams is a multifaceted creative with a passion for blending visual aesthetics and craftsmanship. As a graphic designer, illustrator, and woodworker, Daniel’s work reflects a unique intersection of artistry and skill. Daniel’s creative journey began with degrees in Illustration and Graphic Design from Pratt Institute in 2012. Those formative years were a thrilling rollercoaster of art, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and caffeine-fueled all-nighters, setting the stage for what would become a dynamic career. Before moving to Austin, Daniel navigated the cold climates of Connecticut and New York City.

Dinner Party of Ex-Bosses

The heart rests on an oval plate atop the mahogany dining table. It beats still—over ice. Rosemary, sage, and thyme over the epicardium. Orange slices and cloves adorn the fibers. A voice comments about the freshness of the organ. Marlon, it’s you, he raises an eyebrow. And there’s Nicholas, Deanna, Becky, Matt, Amanda, and Tom too. The white wire tangled on the floor leads to my body, connected to the hole in my chest, it does something God-like and keeps me breathing on the surgical table away from the feast. A man wearing dark sunglasses and a tuxedo plays the piano nearby. My body is numb as the rest of the dinner party anxiously await with knife and fork in hand. Shimmery silverware and wine glasses click…click click click. The guests rise in unison over the heart. It is as though I watch them from within the chambers, feel their hungry eyes and their salivating glands. And then the cut—every slice on the muscle is felt through the taunting of their pleasure. Moans of ecstasy erupt, the guests come alive through “oohs” and “aahs,” euphorically intoxicated smiles, full mouths of fresh flesh, tightly indulging, revealing pieces of me scattered over the table, bones ripped of their muscle. I forgot how to scream, I forgot how to be a human. Tom burps, cleans his blood-stained mouth with a white napkin and leans back, his elbow hanging over the backrest of the chair. “Let’s touch base again next Monday.” He proposes a toast. The waitstaff clears the table and serve dessert.

Requirements To Be A Pig

The pig does not have time for fun. The pig is on the run. It must be bred of artificial insemination in a tight crate. It must be taken from its mother, it must grow up alone but surrounded by others—all wondering and questioning the same thing, cramped in the foul room where their tails are cut off, it will be castrated (that’s where the flavor is). It will grow into a fat one. Then there will come a day in which it will be stunned, slaughtered, its throat cut open, bleeding out for all of its delicious meat, it will be dipped in boiling water to rid of its disgusting hairs and any parts that make it living will be only matter. It will be dismembered and its parts will be packed beautifully and sold at different prices in different stores under names such as bacon, pancetta, prosciutto. It will be picked up by a random person, devoured within seconds between bread slices with mustard and mayonnaise, and it will be defecated and flushed down a toilet. The life of the pig is meaningless, it serves no purpose but to feed the starving bellies of humanity. The pig does not feel pain, it does not wail, it knows no love, it knows nothing more than what it knows. The pig knows its purpose; it is happy to die for you. The pig knows its life has no meaning; the pig knows its death is humane. The pig doesn’t know life. The pig with a heart is just food.

Manqué

I accept this failure;

the world needs more ordinary people.

I relinquish this losing battle,

I’ve been at war for too long,

time has run out and I am worn out.

I fought when I wasn’t whole,

and when I was falling apart,

I fought when I bled, when I cried, when I screamed,

but I no longer can withstand the beatings,

perhaps—perhaps—this wasn’t my battle to fight,

and how many beautiful singers

will the world never hear?

how many talented writers

will the world never read?

how many gifted dancers

will the world never see?

it’s a bitter pill to swallow that these dreams

will never prosper here, not in this lifetime

so I give up, I give up, I give up,

none of it was meant for me

but I tried, o how I tried, and you—

you should see!

they were great in my mind!

they were grand!

o, were they grand!

o, they were beautiful!

The Toilet and the Coffin

I watch them wither into wisps of smoke—

collecting ashes of what once was a desire for everything,

and a settlement for nothing, now I want none of it,

it is ok to be the same as everyone else,

it is ok to be…nothing, to be ‘no one,’

the television lies again and again

to tell us what they want us to hear,

and it is ok to not listen,

no one gets to dictate the truth

not the politician, the monk, the priest, the queen,

the ceo, the famous actor, the famous singer,

no human is worthy of worship, no human is almighty,

no flesh escapes the claw of death,

the toilet unites us, the coffin too

they are the true testaments of equality.

Lázaro Gutiérrez’s work can be found in several publications, such as Tint Journal, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Vermillion, Latino Literatures, Discretionary Love, Molecule - A Tiny Lit Mag, Somos en Escrito, Barzakh Magazine, Frontera Lit, Azahares Literary Magazine, SOMOS Latinx Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in BarBar, and Blue Gaia..

‘Tales from a Place Where You Can Feel All Your Selves Crawling On Your Skin’

Joel M. Scinta is a photographer from Buffalo, NY

Tales from a Place Where You Can Feel All Your Selves Crawling On Your Skin

I wake up building ancient cities in my heads...

one of dazzle

pulling strands from the sun into my fingertips, I enliven the universe. I wake up

with sand in my eyes and dust drifting in beams of light, things falling out of

balance and into place. I wake up to the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen (I’m

pretty sure I imagined it.) I wake up to buildings beamish and brilliant, and a

future built in bone marrow and crystal. Everything I’ve ever wanted is on the tip

of my tongue the tip of my tongue the tip of my tongue so close I can taste it. It

tastes like cardamom. (It tastes like hope.)

and one of decay

shielding my eyes from the insistence of morning, I submit to the weight of my

body. I wake up with sand in my eyes and dust caking my bedroom, things falling

out of place and into balance. I wake up to the darkest nightmare I’ve ever had.

(I’m pretty sure it’s real.) I wake up to buildings stagnant and fixed, and a future

built in splinters and cinder. Everything I’ve ever feared is so close I can taste it I

can taste it I can taste it on the tip of my tongue. It tastes like pennies. (It tastes

like blood.)

One day I tremble and the next I shimmer.

Tales from a home like a pendulum

like a wave

like a moan,

an echo

the person you used to be...

haunting you.

Amelia Clare Wright is a recent graduate of Columbia's MFA program in nonfiction creative writing. She has work appearing in Oyster River Pages, Variant, and The Hunger Journal, among others. She grew up in Baltimore City and now lives in Los Angeles. She is currently working on a memoir about pain and trying to decide if she wants to be a coral reef or a tree when she dies.

‘Field Day’

Photographer - Chase Bradburn

Field Day

Breakfast was boiled tapioca and flat rice stirred in red tea, and an abundance of bananas from the plantation. We sat on the porch where the farmer’s heavy hats and coats hung amongst his scabbed shovels and boots, and watched the wooden cottages slope down the hill in different colours. There were men pushing wheelbarrows and motorbikes down the alleys towards the main road, watching us with little or too much interest. The North-East wasn’t uniformly picturesque, though the hills were unlike most of rural India.

    The farmer dropped us in the middle of a highway running across a vast golden gorge. He told us that he had a meeting at the cooperative society about pork rearing, and that we should hitch a ride back to the village before nightfall. Enisha said that her picture of the village headman had been everything but soft-spoken and unopulent, and that she hadn’t envisioned him carrying a barrel of gasoline in the back of his pickup-truck and complaining about the cost of labour. I shrugged and adjusted my SLR camera across my chest as the pickup rattled into the distance till it could no longer be heard, though it was a long time before it faded out of our sight.

    The hill on top of the mountain looked exactly like an apple eaten around its core. It was starkly different to the untouched gorges and their gentle slopes of grass. The conical hill had long eroded and crumbled clumsily over itself into a giant pile of dusty, yellowish boulders. A row of dump-trucks lined the crusty bay around the hill, like insects perched inside the crater of a moon. A scattered group of men, women and teenagers were hunched across the pile, wrapped in faded towels, makeshift turbans and caps. We heard a rhythmic crunch of spades as workers plumbed the mountain for limestone, turning it into a massive quarry.

    Enisha had wandered off to find the woman we had met the previous day. She worked with her two-year old child bundled into a cloth on her back and slung around her forehead. The base of the hill had been hollowed into a row of caves and I waltzed through their large entrances, watching the drivers chain-smoke bidis and chew an endless supply of betelnuts. A drilling machine faced the cavities as though it had a mind of its own, and the caves were cooler and quieter inside. The workers had clearly tunnelled through the earth for years, though they migrated every season. The ones who weren’t local came from Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Assam, Nepal and Bangladesh. Our documentary focused on a village beyond the quarry. Its geography was rugged and barren owing to its higher altitude and acidic soil. Agriculture was sporadic and the nearest school and clinic were miles away. The village we were accommodated in was close to a valley with a stream running through, and a road that led to the highway, making it easier to grow crops and transport them to bigger markets.

    The woman wore the same clothes as the previous day and sat around a pile of rocks, breaking them one at a time and dumping them into a steel container. The rocks were sold to construct roads and embankments, unlike the lucrative limestone boulders. She sat deep inside the cave where the darkness made it seem like it was night outside. An electric lantern hung in the corner and buried the world in a silent opera of shadows. She smiled at us and held her gaze, and asked us to sit down in her throaty language. Her eyes questioned us with a hint of mischief and she didn’t pay much attention to her baby. She was muscular unlike the men outside, and she seemed to behold a secret. Her Hindi was as bad as everybody else’s. We had grown accustomed to the tribals’ general disdain towards outsiders, and the special affection we enjoyed for being young and from a region unknown to them.

    We had spent the previous night arguing over whether it was too soon to ask the woman for permission to film her. Enisha said that the mine and its activities wouldn’t take long to film, and that it was important to capture the woman in her element, speaking in her tribal language. She reminded me that it was absurd to think of the hill people as isolated, and that filming the woman by herself would misrepresent their community. I picked up a rock and a worn-out hammer and sat down beside the pile. The woman looked at me and then at Enisha, and asked her to sit beside me. She had an air of calm and a childlike seriousness, and her thoughts did not stop her from beating the rocks. Enisha asked her if she carried her lunch and she laughed. She looked embarrassed and eager to tell us about her domestic life, and Enisha listened without interrupting her.

    ‘Sometimes my husband gets the pot ready while I cut the vegetables. It saves time,’ she grew serious again.

    ‘I have a small field of potatoes and cabbage and in the winter I spend my time there. This work pays us a daily wage and it’s helpful for our expenses, but the harvest we get at the end of the year give us what we make in two months here, and we also eat some of it. But mostly we rely on our chickens and cow.’

    Her eyes gleamed at me.

    ‘Are you making videos about the mine for a foreign company?’

    Enisha blushed. She hadn’t anticipated the woman’s knowledge about documentaries. We had orchestrated our entry into the quarry under the pretext of a research project, and had obtained a letter from the local university in return for the film. The department head frequently collaborated with independent activists and she convinced the principal that a film about illegal mining would propel the university’s research. The letter stated that the ‘students’ were required to document the tribals’ culture as part of their curriculum. The supervisor at the quarry was often inebriated, and the formal letter and our youthful appearance helped avoid any suspicions. I was anxious to start filming before somebody intelligible came along, but I finally understood Enisha’s plan.

    ‘It’s for a college project.’

    The woman smiled again and looked at us with her big eyes. I could tell what she was thinking.

    ‘After college, will you be marrying him?’

    The innocence in her voice almost made me grin, but she was looking at Enisha the whole time. She smiled politely and told her that we were thinking about it but our focus was on college. I shook my head and watched her as she drew the conversation back towards food.

    ‘I always used to make my lunch in the morning and carry it with me. But these days my baby keeps me up at night. My husband leaves later in the day to drive the trucks in a different quarry and he drops the food for me and the baby in the afternoon.’

    She looked around as if to search for their food and discover that it wasn’t there because her husband hadn’t arrived yet. And then an idea came into her.

    ‘I will be going home after five ‘O’ clock. You can eat with us and see the village. Until then, you can go around the mine, nobody will have time to bother you.’ She stopped beating the stone at last and sat with her elbows on her knees. ‘I’ll see if I can get a chicken, or maybe even a chop of pork.’ She said the last line to herself in her language and I felt a wave of guilt as I recognized the words, but Enisha sprang into action without moving an inch. She grinned at me long and hard and I knew that it was time to switch on the camera.    

Abhishek Udaykumar is a writer, filmmaker and painter from India. He graduated from Royal Holloway University of London with English and Creative Writing. He writes short stories, novels and essays and makes documentaries and fiction films. His narratives reflect the human condition of rural and urban communities. He has been published by different literary journals, and has made thirteen films and several series of paintings.

‘A Bust of Bernie Taupin’, ‘Effigies’ & ‘Movie Love’

Jill E. T. Bemis is an aspiring photographer, landscape painter, and writer. Her photography may be viewed at https://jetbemis.com. A career public servant, she lives in Minnesota with her husband Michael, son Nate, daughter-in-law Julia, and Tiger the cat.

A Bust of Bernie Taupin

Hail beats down on the secret

service.

Hail beats down on the vice

president,

his hateful rhetoric,

his cotton brief,

his weird side of beef . . .

It takes a while,

but our concerns return to music.

We have our own agenda

to discuss and a bust of Bernie

Taupin to unveil.

It takes a while to separate

the pellets of ice

from the feathers and fragile

bones a snake

vomits as he passes through,

the song a bird sang

from the song his descendants

are singing.                                                  

Effigies

People can be made from twigs and rope. We call these people “effigies.” These people are born for ritual, beautiful and strange. Moving with the grace of a summer storm or Greek goddess, allowing one eye to widen slightly, they save the world again and again. They let us watch as they make love, and we destroy them.

I have a reoccurring dream that I am playing Percy Shelley, that I am on stage interacting with Lord Byron having never learned my lines. Somehow, what needs to get said, gets said. Improvised. Believed. During the afterparty, someone steals my car.

Movie Love

The working title of her novel

is The Evolution of Movie Love.

She may change it to Eyes Are Never

Private or Eyes Are Disobedient

Children. She may change her own name

or hide it behind enormous initials.

A master of revealing something

other than what she reveals, she sticks out

her tongue. Rolls her eyes. I rice a giant

cauliflower and add green curry paste

to organic coconut cream. She says

no actor alive could play us in the film

adaptation and dreams of resurrecting 

the late Meena Kumari and Burl Ives.

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.

‘Betrayal’

Ricardo Jose Gonzalez-Rothi is an academic physician, internationally known amateur photographer and writer, Ricardo has had his work awarded, published or forthcoming in Black and White Magazine, Light, Space and Time Gallery, Northwest Review, Fusion Art Gallery, London Photo Festival, Wanderlust Travel Journal, Grey Cube Gallery, Hispanic Culture Review, Ilanot Review, and About Place journals among others. Gonzalezrotheiphoto.com

Betrayal

That’s the same face he used to make. I was always such a disappointment, and he never hid his distaste, but it’s been nearly a decade. I shift in my chair as the memory of the battle that tore my Mind and Body apart washes over me. I try to shake his image from my head, but it’s thrust to the forefront of my Mind. My stomach starts to turn and my eyes ache, demanding to release the tears I desperately hold at bay. Not again. Not now. Not here. I’d become all too familiar with the torment of my Body’s relentless determination to have me relive what I put Her through all those years ago.

I’m sitting with friends as they recall the silly stories of the past week, but I’m assaulted with the memories. It starts with the feel of him moving inside me which overpowers every other sensation. I take a drink of water to calm the storm of nausea brewing. I cross my ankles and clench my knees together trying to minimize the physical memory that has haunted me since my therapeutic journey through the wreckage of my failed marriage began. I stare at the table and pray that no one is watching me relive the death of who I once was.

I shift in my seat and wonder how long it will take to end this time. She is my Body, so why does She collude with him to torment me years after the oppression ceased? I’d been warned that things would get worse before they got better and that the only way out of my internal hell was to push through and face everything that happened, but I’d never anticipated having to relive the past in this way. I’d drifted through our marriage in a hazy fog. For years I lay in the cave, numbed by mindlessly watching the shadows dance on the wall. When I finally found the nerve to crawl into the sun, I clung to its warmth and buried all that happened before beneath a willow. Standing under her soft branches that swayed in the breeze, I’d asked for her protection, and she’d vowed to keep them for me so that I could build a new life, but when I learned of his impending return to my hometown, Pandora dug into the grave and unleashed its fury.

The memories swirl through my Mind. It had started so simply. He’d spent years demolishing my self-worth and I was desperate to please him, so when he stumbled to bed in a drunken stupor and was angered at my inability to climax from his jarring and twitchy attempts to make love, I feigned desire and gave him what he wanted to avoid the acidic accusations he regularly spewed at me whenever I fell short of his expectations. It didn’t feel like a big deal; just a white lie to appease his ego. Over time, my Body grew tired of the show becoming a regular occurrence and turned off the tap to the true desire that used to flow freely. For years, my Body taught me what She liked, and I learned how to adjust myself to maximize Her pleasure. I intuitively tilted and twisted my hips to just the right spot, and he always enjoyed Her enthusiasm, but now I forced Her to mimic Her moments of desire to avoid his wrath. But every submission to his will empowered him to demand more.

When his movements evoked pain, he could sense my Body reflexively seizing for an instant, and it started to feel like he enjoyed eliciting such a response. His fingers would press into my skin, holding my Body in place when She tensed. His slack mouth and icy gaze told me he could do far worse if he wished. My Body was poised for a fight, but I knew better. I held Her in place and ignored Her protests until he was satiated. The more I learned to force Her to give in and bear his feverish delight, the more brazen he became, moving me into positions that would maximize the pain. My Body would scream for relief, but I couldn’t relent, fearing the reaction he would unleash if I were to defy him.

Echoes of the vow I made to love, honor, and respect him pounded through my Mind during the final year of our marriage. There had to be a way to salvage the life we shared. I was determined to find the road that led to happiness. If I could give him everything he wanted, then there’d be no room left for the complaints that darkened each attempt at joy. There was one act that I’d refused him for years, but the boundaries I’d managed to maintain were nothing more than rotting wooden fences, made vulnerable after years of exposure to the raging storm of his disdain, so I decided to give in.

Determination flushed through my veins, calming the icy flow of fear that my Body sent in its final protest as I prepared to offer Her on the altar of his desire. Surely this would satisfy him. When he approached, his selfish touch felt cold and foreign. He was consumed with lust and all he needed was my Body, so I did my best to detach my Mind and leave him to his devices. Upon his initial thrust, my muscles tensed and readied themselves for battle, each fiber releasing a war cry. When the soldiers recognized that they wouldn’t be allowed onto the field of battle, they melted into the submission their general demanded. The pain faded but I was repulsed by the sensation that remained. My Body howled in protest as I waited patiently for it to end, without letting him see an ounce of discomfort. Any twitch or quiver would be steadied as I softly led my Body to take slow, measured breaths to soothe away the revulsion until we finally felt the conclusion of his efforts. I waited on the bed for him to leave before going into the bathroom to clean up.

Now that we were alone, all the objections that I’d been subduing poured forth. My hands shook and my stomach twisted and turned. I dropped to my knees by the toilet in case it made good on its threat. My skin broke into a cold sweat and my heart thumped wildly. I couldn’t catch my breath, so I wedged myself between the toilet and tub and pulled my knees into my chest. Muted sobs interrupted my erratic breathing leaving me lightheaded as tears rushed forth with brutality. I rocked back and forth but the tension in my chest was growing until I fully collapsed and pulled a towel over my naked Body as the floor tiles cooled my cheek. The chaos ceased when my energy had fully depleted. Exhausted, I peeled myself off the floor, got dressed, and went to sit with him in the living room where he’d been watching television.

I shake my head to try to focus on the present. The memories alone are painful, but my Body demanded retribution, so I sit in the presence of friends who laugh and share stories as my Mind is forced to feel what I’d put Her through all those years ago. She hates me. We were meant to be allies, but as far as She was concerned, I’d committed the worst of crimes. I try to act normal as I bow my head in defeat. I can’t argue against Her logic, so I quietly endure the attack. Eventually, Her fury ceases, and I am free to ignore the wounds that have festered for over a decade. Over the coming months, She stealthily strikes at the most inopportune times until my Mind is fully broken. I weakly wave a white flag and accept that I am nothing more than a villain in my own story.

The war took everything from us; no one feeling like the victor. Each move was self-sabotaging, and, in the end, we knew we had to join forces. As we met to go over the treaty, we were brutally honest, and a curious compassion entered the conversation. Every act that sparked the war had been done in fear. Pain influenced every battle plan between my Mind and Body and in time, we realized that we had been so busy fighting each other that we let the true perpetrator escape unscathed. I never felt like I had a choice, and I used whatever power I could muster to force my Body into a submission She never would have agreed to, all to appease him. His only power came from incessant tantrums and impotent threats of violence. Youth made him seem bigger and stronger than he truly was. We smiled as we imagined the ways in which we could defy him now that we had the strength of time and wisdom, but after a while, the joy of our imagined revenge wore thin. We embraced and agreed to lay it to rest. We relinquished the memories to the dry barren lands of our youth and vowed to forget, but we would never forgive.

Lindsay Thurman hopes to share her story to give other women who have suffered similarly some context for their pain. She has been published in a recent issue of Sophisticated Living Magazine (Louisville).

‘When we die, can we become mycelium?’, ‘Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful’, ‘I’m keeping my hands busy lately’

Alicia Garrett is a nature enthusiasts who is looking for a creative hobby to justify her antisocial behavior.

When we die, can we become mycelium?

In constant communication?

A new form of regeneration?

I hope your consciousness remains a constant companion.

This is not quiet reincarnation, but

unbecoming to become intertwined with what already exists.

My shoulders used to shudder at the thought of smoldering into ash

or being packed beneath 2,597 pounds of earth.

Now I hope we are devoured by the same worm colony,

deposited in the same soil, that we sprout the same mushrooms,

feed the same flowers; to nourish into eternity.

Our hearth has become my heaven

and our dirt is the afterlife

being tended to today

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful

without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

After Douglas Adams

My lover wraps his arms around me, crushing me into the couch cushions, my scowl tunrning into railleries;

why does my body fall back into the past like a warm lake in the summer rain? When my head breaks the

surface, it is sleeting and I am shivering; why do my toes keep stretching to the sandy bottom? He holds me as

the shudders subside, wipes the deluge from under my eyes, and my insides feel crystallized. If only there were

life rafts for the resivoirs of trauma. If only there were daisies beckoning from shoreline. If only the bank wasn't

covered in snow. If only I could see the icicles as nature’s ornaments instead of another danger to avoid,

slinking into more devastating waters. The fae keeps me up late, dancing in a pool of my own destruction; my

lover hangs on as I do summersaults through surrealism.

The fairies are having a ball at the bottom of the lagoon, whispering invitations I know will lead me astray. I

bolt the doors with iron and shelter myself harbor of my lover. We exist in crackle of a candle, the light from the

flame, the shadows on the wall; we frolicked in the future, and I find him shrewn through every version.

I’m keeping my hands busy lately

Digging into dough, my mind needs me to knead

until my arms are numb and memories are subdued.

This is not quite dissociation or distraction;

the smell of freshly peeled apples assails my senses

and the crust crumbles between my forefinger and thumb.

Soft serenades drift from the stereo

and I hum along, not quite absently.

There is no outrunning the past, so I decided to bake with it.

We laugh in the kitchen and I fold it into a new recipe, taking my time.

The weather is warming and bread is rising faster.

Early spring flowers are blooming

and we plant herbs in the thawing garden beds.

I make a blueberry pie and you tell me it tastes just right.

Maggie Bowyer (they/he) is a poet, co-host of the podcast Baked and Bookish, and the author of various poetry collections including Homecoming (2023) and When I Bleed (2021). They’ve been published in Chapter House Journal, The South Dakota Review, Wishbone Words, and more. Find their work on Instagram @maggie.writes

‘Traps’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

Traps 

It’s a good thing no one lives upstairs now. I’ll bet this whole fucking building smells like weed.

Amy took another pull off her joint and set it down on an ornate blue and white china plate. The plate had served as an ashtray for some time, years actually, but only for weed. The plate was regularly cleaned so it looked as though someone could very possibly have eaten off it just the day before and had none of the yellow stains that might give away regular use.

 She almost never smoked cigarettes in the apartment. As long as she had been a smoker and as much as she liked it, she could not abide the smell in her home. Besides, Daniel would never tolerate it. While most of the time she would never care what Daniel could or could not tolerate, this seemed like a fair ask on his part. On the rare occasion when they had a party or a substantial gathering of people, he would concede to putting a fan in the window of the kitchen and allow smoking there, but only if the weather was disagreeable.

Her eyes felt dry and heavy, her back stiff, her arms had a slight chill and the skin was even slightly cool to the touch. She wrapped the flimsy robe tight around her and sunk a little deeper into the big orange armchair. The chair had been with her for so long, had been moved from one apartment to the next, at least a dozen times. She could feel spots where the stuffing in the cushion had loosened or wadded up, making hard knots. Springs or wires or some piece of the internal structure could be felt through the upholstery, but the chair remained a comfortable place to retreat from the realities of life for someone on the cusp of 40 years old.

She squeezed her eyes shut and held them closed tight several times, yet there was still the sensation that no matter how much she blinked the dryness would not abate, and in a sort of distant way wondered if it was possible for one’s eyelids to stick to their eyes. She certainly felt as though hers might. She lingered on the thought for a moment at what a medical anomaly that would be.

Well, the treatment is probably pretty easy, and relatively pain free.

Amused, she giggled imagining Daniel drunk and stumbling in the door to find her unable to blink. He wouldn’t believe her at first. Who would blame him? It did seem an absurd thing, eyelids stuck to your eyeballs. But eventually he’d believe her and then he’d pack her up into her car and bring her to the hospital. Once there she would regain her credibility when a doctor would tell them that this sort of thing was more common than one might realize and was easily treated with some eyedrops. He’d say something like, “oh yeah, at least a couple times a week,” or “happens aaallllll the time.”

What the fuck is wrong with me? Jesus, I’m really fucking stoned.

 She shook her head, pushed her glasses up her nose. She reached for a few loose sheets of paper and refocused on the essay in front of her. It was perfect reading for the stoner art enthusiast. She could buy into the idea of Jackson Pollock as a cubist. It was a neat idea and had a certain unique appeal to her. Just the sort of idea that seemed fringe enough that not everyone would know, but not entirely out of left field either.

 Plausible.

In any case, it was just one more idea to add to the mass of knowledge she had spent years accumulating. One more point of reference for when she started to paint again.

If…

If that ever happens.

The room was lit, but just barely, by a single small lamp, placed on the floor rather than on an end table as it should have been, wedged between the wall and the chair. A full third of its potential illumination was lost to the wall, and another third blocked out by the chair, casting a long shadow across much of the room. While the lamp did surprisingly little to actually illuminate the room, the light was blinding if the bulb was within sight, even if only in one’s periphery. Most people would find this arrangement unpleasant, but Amy thought it had a sort of gritty charm.  Yet now, stoned and uncomfortable, she began to feel the unevenness amplify as her mind fixated on external annoyances. Despite her efforts to focus on her reading, and as interesting as the subject was, she was having difficulty engaging her attention fully.

Something else was distracting her though, a nagging feeling of…what? A lack of inertia? No motivation?

Ennui

So it was, she was realizing more and more, when she read her histories and essays. More frustration. Anxiety, anger, doubt and disappointment. It ate at her, gnawing at the edges of her attention. She told herself it was going to pass, even if it got a little worse for a little bit. She would do that from time to time: obsess over some mundane nonsense only to turn her attention to some other insignificant issue. She was sure that being high only served to excite this tendency. Yet she reached for the joint again.

I’ll chill out eventually…

She never smoked as much as she had been recently, and her drinking had picked up as well. Most of her life she had only had a passing interest in getting stoned, but the stagnant regularity of her routine left her with a growing boredom and more and more the answer seemed to be getting high. It didn’t help that Daniel smoked all day, every day. He was enjoying her newfound interest and actively encouraged her substance intake. At least it made the usual shit more interesting.

Well, sometimes. I think “tolerable” is more the word I would use. It amplifies the minutiae of the banal is all. Or maybe those are the things we should be noticing all the time.

She let the pages drop to the floor with a sigh. She couldn’t think or concentrate through the haze in her brain. It was as though she inhaled the smoke directly into her skull, gathering, increasing in density until it became a fog so thick that signals would no longer be able to navigate a way from one nerve to another. The cognitive fog cast a shade over the already dark room. She didn’t like this feeling of uselessness and was surprised to be overcome with a feeling of disgust for letting herself become so… pointless?

That is exactly the word. Pointless. There is no point to any of this. It all leads nowhere. What the fuck am I doing?

She went to the bathroom and studied her bloodshot eyes in the mirror, blinking constantly to fight back the cloudiness growing in from the edges of her vision. Tears welled up and she marveled at how the redness around her irises made the blue of them deeply vivid. She found the faucet handle and turned it all the way to the cold side. When the water met her eyelids, her head cleared a bit. She rubbed her eyes and looked again in the mirror. Seeing the redness recede and her cheeks flush made her feel a touch more composed. She pulled her long, curled mess of hair back into a loose bun, sighed and strolled back into her studio.

Studio, office, whatever…

Standing there in the sparsely furnished room, surveying the gathering dust on her drafting table, boxes of art supplies and reams of unused paper, she suddenly and surprisingly felt lucid in a way she hadn’t for some time. As though she had willed away the effects of the half-burned joint and the fog of ennui. And she felt worthless, but no longer hopeless. Anxiety was giving way to possibility. It was weak, but it was there. She knew that if she didn’t seize this sensation it would retreat into the hazy recesses of her brain.

I’ll start now. If I don’t, I know where this will end up. I’ll get more and more out of practice and I’ll be too scared to start again. I’ll just keep putting it off. I have to do something. Even if it isn’t very good. Pointless isn’t worthless. Now, while I’m alone. Daniel’s not here to distract me. Now!

            Amy walked swiftly to the kitchen to retrieve another beer. Alcohol didn’t have the same tranquilizing affect the pot did.

            At least not nearly as bad.

            …and it would loosen her up a bit and help break down her reluctance.

 And she was reluctant. Almost to the point of fear. She didn’t want to fail, to try to produce something of value and have it fall short, which she knew was likely, almost a certainty, especially after all this time. But she knew that this was like building a fire. She had a spark, now she had to gently and deliberately tend to it. It would require all her attention, for a time. But, if she did it right, if she could keep this focus, she could build that fire and maintaining it would require only the occasional stoking and fuel.

 I’ve been giving up ground inch by inch to my own complacency. Not every failure is obvious. But I’m going to stop now. If I’m going to fail, it’s going to be a spectacular failure of action, not a weak fizzling of laziness. It’s the best time. What the hell else am I doing? Sitting around all the time getting stoned and reading. Sleeping all day. I hardly work. Music… I need music!

Jackson Pollock painted to music.

            The conviction of the truth of this thought was so insistent, it demanded action. She selected a record from the line of them against the wall, carefully pulled it out of the sleeve and placed it reverently on the turntable. Her skin tingled as the pops and fuzzy crackling of the needle on the spinning record floated out of the single ancient speaker. The music started suddenly with a jolt of guitars and drums. Even expecting it, she was briefly startled. She turned the volume up as high as she could without making the music clearly audible outside the building. She really had no idea what that threshold was but made a guess anyway.

            It’s a good thing no one lives upstairs.

            She started with the paper.

 Amy had spent some short couple months working at a failing art supply store. It was failing because the owner exhibited none of the aptitudes one may need to run a business. He was controlling, short-tempered and a terrible manager, speaking down to his staff at every opportunity. He showed more contempt for his customers for taking up his time than interest in taking their money. He inspired no respect in his small staff, all of whom he paid very poorly. So, most of them swiped a tube of paint here, a sketchpad there, a misplaced paintbrush every now and again and maybe, just maybe some canvas that “didn’t show up with the shipment” in an attempt to makeup the shortfall in their monetary compensation. Amy took paper. She took a lot of paper.

Paper bordered on something like sacred to Amy. Good paper is something artisans crafted with meticulous care. Paper is responsible for the advancement of civilization; the recording of laws, thoughts, ideas on the nature of existence and being, divine inspiration, grand gestures of love and disdain, imaginations accessible to billions, and untold numbers of works of art and learning. Amy wondered often at the number of lost pages that could contain unseen truths and beauty, an unquantifiable tragedy. Humanity owed a lot to paper and the weight of this history was always in her hands when she went to make a mark. She knew that this played some small part in her hesitation, a feeling that whatever she might put on the page ought to be worthy of the contribution that flattened wad of cotton has made to the world.

Tonight though, she didn’t let herself stop to consider the weight or texture, after all, she had wasted enough time already. She tore open the closest folder and pulled out a blank sheet. With a forced sort of theatrical conviction, she slapped it on the surface of her drafting table. She yanked off the delicate robe, balled it up and tossed it into a heap on the floor. With a bit of self-conscious melodrama, she shoved the frayed cuffs of her sweater up to her elbows.

Paint?crayon?pastel?char…Charcoal! Perfect! Back to the basics. No erasers. The most primitive of methods! Walk before you run, or crawl before you…oh what the fuck ever… This is how I’ll do it. Nothing pretentious, just simple, naked, honest. Nothing to use as a crutch, no hiding behind concept.

She rifled through the box of charcoal not caring that her hand had quickly turned black from dust of years of jostling and storage. Very much the opposite really, she felt quite empowered by it. And while the sensation of her nails scraping against the sticks and the hollow, metallic clattering of the sticks colliding was on its surface physically unpleasant, there was a certain romantic charge she got out of it.

The sounds of the stick scraping across the paper yielding to a smooth hiss as the point of the charcoal stick rounded off, the vibration across the rough paper surface, the smell of paint and turpentine rising in the room like a slowly filling bath from the boxes and drawers of supplies she had upset in her search for the right medium. All of it satisfied her somewhere deep in her chest. Guitars howled and shrieked, and drums rattled somewhere in the periphery of her consciousness.

 Every so often Amy stepped back to view the gradually sharpening image. She pulled her sweater over her head, dropping it straight to the floor. Dark streaks crisscrossed her forehead as she brushed hair away with blackened hands. As yet, the sketch had little discernable form, and all she could really understand was something to do with train tracks and skyscrapers. Lines upon lines, overlapping curves and uneven grids. The most complex forms of human achievement depicted most simple and understated.

“Hey babe, that looks amazing!”

Amy jumped with a start. What time was it? How long had it been? Surely not so long that Daniel would be off work yet…

“Oh, hi. What time is it? Are you off already?”

“No, I just swung by to grab some records.” Daniel did in fact have a dozen or so records under his arm. “You should come up. Everyone’s there.”

“Yeah, maybe. I dunno, I’m really into this right now.”

“Okay, yeah, well if you change your mind…” He hastily closed the distance between her, gave her a perfunctory kiss on the forehead, turned on his heels and walked out in a couple long strides.

Amy stood there for a time, bewildered. It seemed the moment had been broken and her attention shattered. She felt the pull of her friends and the seduction of the easy thrill that always went with staying up far too late and drinking a little too much. Without summoning it, the image of Daniel slapping the bar jovially across from Doug wiping tears, Justin reeling and gasping, Janie and Adrienne leaning against each other, teetering precariously on their stools as the whole lot of them laughed deep intruded into her mind. The laughter was a light that glowed like a halo around them, golden and radiant. Warming. All of this was there and gone in an instant, followed closely by the usual sleepiness.

She wasn’t tired or exhausted, but the abrupt interruption of the flow state jarred and disappointed her and she just felt weary. So quickly all the doubt came back, and she knew that this time there was no recovery. Suddenly aware of what she might look like, she trotted to the bathroom and again peered into the mirror.

Her face was a mess of charcoal smudges. Tiny dots shown where the dust settled into pores on her forehead and nose. Almost-clean lines followed the contours of her cheeks where tears had cleaned them. She couldn’t recall crying and wondered if she had just not noticed or if the persistent dryness she felt in her eyes had caused them to water. Large strands of hair had fallen out of the knot, splaying out from her head like solar flares from the sun. Wisps stuck to her forehead. The front of her shirt was marked with grey smudges as well.

While it seemed far to late to concern herself with the idea of cleanliness, Amy turned on the faucet to wash her hands. No reason to get any more charcoal on her clothes after all. The sight of the grey water running down the drain was surprisingly pleasant. The amount of it and how long it took to clean her hands thoroughly seemed to remind her that she had accomplished something, marginal though that accomplishment may be.

With clean hands she loosed her hair from the knot. She shook her head and her hair fell into a sort of lofty halo. The mirror was starting to fog over. She peeled her clothes off and in doing so became aware of the musty odor coming off her. It wasn’t yet offensively sour, but she did notice that she was unable to easily recall her last shower. Happily, the fogged mirror saved her from seeing her naked body in the mirror.

I can hate my body some other time.

She pulled the curtain back. The metal curtain rings made an abrupt screech as they slid across the bar. Steam poured out from the shower. She inhaled deeply as she stepped in.

The hot water was invigorating, and she felt sober, or sober enough. Only in the warm stream did she realize that she had been cold. Maybe cold wasn’t the right word. She had worked up a sweat after all, but there was a chilly clamminess that had been with her. The drafty, old apartment often meant that fall and winter would have an attendant chill throughout, no matter the ambient temperature inside.

 Feeling again clean and refreshed she turned the water off, stepped out and dried herself with a clean towel. She brushed her hair, enjoying how the brush glided through the long, curly strands smoothly and without much resistance from tangles and knots. She didn’t bother to wrap the towel around her to retrieve some fresh clothes. Amy had little compunction about walking around the apartment naked and never gave much thought to if any neighbors or passers-by could see.

The bedroom was fairly spartan relative to the eclectic potpourri of furniture and artwork that decorated the rest of the apartment. A queen size bed sat on a frame with no head or foot board in the middle of a long wall opposite the door, flanked by two small tables that did not match. One was a wide but short end table meant to go next to a couch while the other was very much it’s opposite: a tall stand with just enough room for the small lamp which sat upon it and a glass of…whatever.

In the corner to the left of the door was another lamp that stood about four feet tall. The paper shade, the obvious focal point of the lamp, was an uneven geometric shape with several sides of all different sizes. A foot switch turned it on and off and it gave off a bright pure white light that could illuminate the entire room. The light built into the ceiling did work but the bulb had burnt out years ago and was never replaced, nor was it missed for that matter.

Along the wall to the right of the door was a simple, but large dresser and a metal rack for hanging clothes, all of which were Amy’s. The top of the dresser was a heap of clothes, makeup, jewelry, CDs and cassette tapes. A small boom-box style stereo lay half-buried under the mess. Several strips of electrical tape kept the cassette deck face affixed to the rest of the unit, a trivial detail since the stereo gave off a perpetual soundtrack of indie-rock, jazz and blues from a local public-access radio station. The floor was worn hardwood and random heaps of books, clothes and shoes rose up like foothills to the bed and dresser, increasing in size and number closer to the furnishings. Fluffy tufts of dust clung to the edges of most anything on the floor.

Amy crossed the room to the dresser, again keeping her eyes from the mirror. Once dressed in fresh underwear and a tank top she went back to the office in search of her robe. The idea of going out hadn’t been completely discarded. Her tall black boots were toppled over on the bedroom floor and she imagined slipping them on and lacing them up. They came up almost to her knees…

 and would go so great with that pleated skirt I have. The one that was longer in the back. And that new sweater I bought the other day. I could wear the lacy bra under it and maybe let the sweater fall off one shoulder. I could wear my makeup a little more neutral and understated but with slightly darker eyes. If I start now it will probably take me just under an hour but would be so worth it.

 She could get looks if she really put her mind to it and that was always a bit of a charge.

She picked the robe up and shook it out. The thing had been with her for so long, and if she was at home alone she was probably wearing it. Sometimes it was a cape, sometimes a towel, sometimes a cocoon. Sometimes she wore it over just underwear and a bra and strutted around the apartment, as she imagined herself as some glamourous woman of leisure; cigarette hanging from her lips or held gingerly between the tips of her fingers, a glass of wine in hand, legs crossed and dangling over the arm of a chair. She pulled it on and wrapped it around herself as one would a blanket. The robe was far too thin to offer any significant measure of warmth, but she felt warmer none-the-less. And with the growing feeling of security coming over her, the desire to seek thrills receded.

It’s so late already. Everyone will be drunk but me. I’ll probably get there, and everyone will just leave and what’s the point of sitting there and watching my boyfriend serve drinks while I sit by myself.

She sighed and resolved to go to bed.

 Not bothering to remove her robe, she peeled the covers back and slid between the sheets feeling that refreshing coolness on her legs. That was the best part, it’s all downhill from here. As soon as the heat started to radiate from her body it would be an unending dance to keep herself cool. She propped a couple pillows up behind her back and sat up against the wall. Neither Amy nor Daniel watched television and she didn’t often miss it. They both had tablet computers they would watch their separate shows on but that wasn’t much good for falling asleep.

 Most nights she would read until she dozed off. Science Fiction and Fantasy. Daytimes were for smart things; essays, classic literature, poetry, but bedtime was for escape. An easing into dreams. She always felt like she slept better when she read before bed rather than falling asleep with the tinny, empty sound of the tablet or the tethered restraint of headphones.

Tonight, she missed television though. She wouldn’t mind falling asleep to something funny. Maybe a good sitcom or sketch comedy. She wouldn’t mind being woken up later from the light and noise. There wasn’t much to do, and Daniel would be out most of the day.

She turned the lamp off and sank into the bed. She crisscrossed her fingers and laid her hands on her chest. Her hair was still damp, but she didn’t mind, it helped to keep her cool. Looking up at the ceiling of the room, she could make out small cracks in the plaster. The room wasn’t completely dark. A streetlight outside the window projected two large squares onto the ceiling on white light. The light used to be more yellow, warmer. But Amy supposed that the bulb had been changed to one of those new bulbs that last forever and saves energy. While that was all well and good, she found the new color harsh and cold. It put her in a sour mood as she lay there missing the warmth of the past.

Reflecting on the evening she wondered if she might be able to capture that same energy at another time, or would it be months again before she did anything else. She resolved to give it a try at least once a day.

I wonder what time it is.

But she did not want to look. She worried that if she looked it might somehow distract her from her current project of getting to sleep. While she lay there in bed, her anxiety grew and she became more and more restless. She felt as if she may not be able to sleep, yet seemingly just moments later Amy opened her eyes to full daylight. None of her anxieties were present in her mind as she staggered toward the kitchen to start the coffee. Her mood was upbeat, and she looked forward to a relaxing day, free of commitment.

Matthew Derouin is an author, musician and artist from Saint Louis, Missouri. A former student of philosophy, his work across all mediums is concerned with free will, the search for meaning, creativity and aesthetics, and identity. His literary work has appeared in Waxing & Waning. His art can be viewed at www.mattderouin.com or at https://www.saatchiart.com/matthewderouin. His band, Future/Modern appears on El Gran E Records out of Dallas, Texas, and can be streamed on Apple Music, Spotify and Amazon Music

‘Amphibious’

Lizzie Falvey is an artist and professor from Boston, Massachusetts. Her photographs, videos, ceramics, and monoprints have been shown in galleries across New England. She takes photos on an old Nikon film camera and enjoys capturing images that evoke a sense of the vastness of time and geographical space.

Amphibious

…borrowed from Greek amphibious, "living a double life"…-Merriam-Webster

i.

Salamanders regenerate limbs and tissue

Without scarring

& afterwards no one questions

What they learned

The trauma unapparent

ii.

I ain't quite ready for war

Two years from retirement

Our garden needs tending

& my parents are getting old

I am getting old

But when they set fire to the world

To burn us out, we'll scatter

Submerge just beneath the surface

& gather like we do

Until it's time

For sons of mothers who were sons

& asphalt heroes turn

As one to face the hounds

Match them tooth

For bloody tooth

& we know our bodies might betray us

Forget to breathe

Enough of us remember

There are other ways

To survive

Ghosts of the good queer

Poets sing

We are divine, molecular

& hate has no power

Past our skin

iii.

None of us will know them

Who come next

But we know

They will continue

As if we never left

Jason Clemmons is a Tar Heel poet and long-time university administrator with works appearing in several publications, such as Slippery Elm, Havik, and Fifth Wheel Press. His writing reflects his experience as a gay man in the US South, often touching on themes of memory, family, and resiliency. Jason lives in central North Carolina with his husband, Peter.