‘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).