Author: Editor

Nevertheless, She Persisted

By Carolyn Norr

I followed her to the sea,
she placed ripe pineapples
in the frothing waves that had swallowed
her ancestors and were still swallowing.

The river led to the sea and was laced
with mine tailings
that silenced the frogs and swelled
her son’s bones till he burst.
I followed her to the courthouse to tell.

We knew what was going to happen.
I winced before the bullet hit.
It was her daughter who dragged her
to a quieter place and tended the wound,
chanting under her breath, mami, mami
her brow wet and salty.

I followed her through the broken streets
of the city, walking not fast, not slow
because she held also the hand of her nephew
and the scarves we wrapped around our faces
didn’t quite keep the sting of the gas out
so when tears dripped to the corners of our mouths
we swallowed them.

I followed her through the desert,
hung on her back and tried
not to be too heavy. You are not
too heavy.  She told me. But
I could smell her sweat.

I sat with her in the patch of garden
she tended, along the side of the painted apartments
below the orange pine the bark beetles feasted on
the long hot winter. She brought buckets of water
to the seeds, and the seeds, after all
opened. She sighed.

I held her with a cord finer than a hair,
held her lightly in my womb
almost not touching.
I told her what was going to happen.
I warned her. I gave her a choice.
Nevertheless, she persisted.

 

Carolyn Norr is a mother and youth worker in Oakland, CA. In chewing over the recent accusation of persistence, she thought of the many women in her neighborhood and around the world who persist in seeking life. She also thought of her own children.

Photo credit: Neville Wootton Photography via Visualhunt / Creative Commons license

The Violence of Ageism

By Margaret Morganroth Gullette

 

As the entire world now knows, Dr. David Dao is the passenger who was dragged off a United Airlines Flight on April 9th by Chicago police who broke his nose, gave him a concussion and smashed two of his teeth. He may need restorative surgery. Some media have treated this as a horror perpetrated by a single airline that bullies passengers, or by a business model that forces overbooking. It is a mistake to look so narrowly at the sources of harm. A few reports, and many Asian American social media users, have mentioned the possibility of racism. As I write, no mainstream news source or commentary has mentioned ageism.

Dr. Dao is 69 and from Vietnam. Both ageism and racism, I suggest, played a role in the quick decisions of the aviation security personnel as to how much force to use against him when he refused to leave. Dao is not just old, not just “Asian,” but “old Asian,” read as “weak, passive, handles without fuss.” Not likely to be strong and obstreperous, like a husky football player. When Dao refused to leave the fully-booked plane to give his place and his wife’s to airline personnel, explaining that he was a doctor, police manhandled him, crashing his face against an arm-rest. One dragged him down the aisle by the arms.

Stereotypes may be “compound” (as Carrie Andreoletti and her colleagues call them, in the International Jour­nal of Aging and Human Development 81). Like many complex or intersectional biases, they are less well studied and often disregarded. In this case, Dao’s appearance of vulnerability was doubled, or perhaps, given that he was wearing glasses, trebled. This might have stopped ordinary decent people from touching him with intent to dominate, but security men are trained differently. Indeed, his triple vulnerabilities may have led the police to expect that he would let himself be led away.

Each reductive assumption, as so often with stereotypes, is inaccurate. Old men are not always weak (if 69 is old) or, for that matter, docile. My grandfather, an immigrant iron worker in his youth, had powerful hands into his eighties, and a strong sense of dignity. Dr. Dao, who left Saigon on a raft in 1975 as a refugee with his family, appears to be a fierce survivor of calamity, resistant to oppression. At 69, on that airplane, he fought back, screaming and protesting. The security forces over-reacted, very likely startled and outraged by finding their expectation of a submissive ejection a failure. We see this with cops who beat or shoot suspects long after resistance has ended.

After being dragged away Dao returned to the passenger area with the blood from his teeth on his face. He might have been shamed by the beating, but without shame, he went up and back down the aisle to expostulate. It was a brave resistant gesture, to share his pain and grievance with the horrified passengers who had already been vocal about what they saw as it was happening. He showed respect for his own person, that he expected to be shared by them. It was a remarkable gesture. Despite the trauma he had endured, Dao made an appeal to fellow passengers for solidarity. When tyranny is powerful, collective emotion may be all that saves us from despair.

In an attempt to protect itself from charges of racism, United has said its system for selecting David Dao and his wife and two others is an algorithm that takes into account issues like disabilities and connecting flights. Use of the technical term “algorithms” can stymie the common reader by making such choices appear unknowable, but almost certainly passengers’ ages are known and weighted as an input, like gender; and data on race may appear or be inferred from names. In the process of selecting four people to be ejected from the plane, racism and ageism may both have operated as well. It would be worth asking about the algorithm.

Here is an obvious act of violence, legal assault and battery. Although some may think that ageism is limited to elder abuse, ageism is often violent. And its precipitating cause is, simply, a person who looks, to the perpetrator who is taking time for a mere glimpse, vulnerable. Sociologists tell us that seeing categories like gender, race, and age—what I call the body-based categories—we allot time for little more than a glimpse, a mere glimpse. So if stereotypes pre-exist, they are activated instantly. Aging, whatever else it is, can also be the trigger for ageism.

Some commentators think the violence was racism alone, even though Dao is 69. But that analysis again, would be to obstruct our view of the harms. An older person who looks weak can be white. My friend “Daniel” is white, Harvard-educated, a high-level public servant and head of a huge NGO, retired: at eighty, a big six-foot-two, over 200 pounds, well-dressed. From the back, though, a careless passerby might see only white hair, cautious walking—insignia of age. What does that sight trigger? Kindness, often enough. But a reckless man hurtling down the stairs of the subway kneed Daniel from behind. He wasn’t seen, he didn’t stop. Daniel fell. He endured a painful knee operation, hallucinatory opioids, weeks of rehab; then a cascade of ongoing problems. His condition is now being called “aging” rather than the results of depraved-heart battery. “Depraved heart” crimes are those where the perpetrator displays indifference to the strong likelihood that he will do harm.

In this new hit and run, victims can also be female and supposedly sheltered by their profession. As feminist age critic Leni Marshall has written, on college campuses, students walk into their professors. Female professors as young as fifty find that (mostly male) stu­dents bump into them on campus sidewalks or in hallways. And anonymous victims can be doing errands out on the public street. One tall white woman I know, only seventy-three but slender enough to appear weak, says, “They are playing chicken with you. They want the sidewalk. ‘Make that old lady move out of the way.’” Conscious that this is a chronic urban danger, she avoids main streets.

It would be misleading to call the source of danger simple rudeness, as if just anyone were now vulnerable to this experience—as if a distracted young man on a cell-phone were just as likely to crash into Hulk Hogan. Bullies and trolls are careless, but only when they feel safe.

Historically, in the United States, in the evil days of slavery and Jim Crow, a person of color was expected to abandon the sidewalk if a white person wanted the space. Walking while black can still be risky, even lethal. Now, a brand new compound assault is where (brown, black, or white, male or female, in any combination, but always older), you better stop, or step out of the way, when a younger person is about to walk through you. A new crime. Walking while old. On a plane, in the street, on the campus, by looking old you are taking up space that someone more favored feels entitled to.

The vulnerable-looking by reason of age, a minority, can be offended without receiving harsh reproof. We are scapegoated by pundits. Writers in mainstream media berate their old parents for getting expensive medical procedures that saved their lives. We are mocked by comics. Advertisers consider us targets; but as models for products, most avoid us. Web trolls—mostly men in their 20s—wish we would vanish. In some colleges, midlife faculty are belittled as deadwood, just as employees in other lines of work are considered “too old.” Some students think we smell. Scientists define our “aging” as a collection of diseases. The terror of Alzheimer’s—inflated even by the well-meaning Alzheimer’s Associations—makes growing into old age seem an unavoidable disaster.

It behooves us, who have eyes to see and hearts to be moved, to be vigilant about this bias, too.

 

Margaret Morganroth Gullette describes a wide array of ageisms in her forthcoming book, Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (Rutgers University Press, August 2017). She is the author of prize-winning books in age studies, Agewise and Declining to Decline. Gullette is a Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.

Originally published by the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Photo credit: Angus Fraser via a Creative Commons license.

Vandals Desecrate Jewish Cemetery

By Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

Not that it’s such a fancy graveyard,
just a hill, a mess,
stones leaning on each other
like the fathers of the bride and groom
after the wedding.
Our names are almost gone,
covered by a weeping moss.
I begged my son before I went, just burn me.
Do they listen?
Under all this dirt, tattooed numbers glow
like fireflies.
My Yacob used to say:
They’re never done with us.
And I would think, so dark an eye
in such a handsome man?
Now his headstone’s cracked like an egg.
Desecration?
Let’s face it.
Small animals and even bears
have squatted on our sacred ruins.
That’s not what drags my bones
here, as if fear were a wolf’s tooth.
No, it’s that I let myself believe
the world was getting better.

 

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski writes and teaches yoga in a small town in Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Minerva Rising, Hunger Mountain, Pilgrimage and other journals. Her grandparents were immigrants fleeing persecution.

Photo credit: Chany Crystal via a Creative Commons license.

Something There Is That Doesn’t Love

By Olga Livshin

…people like me. Does not like our sweatshirts,
pilled, our backpacks, full of bric-a-brac,
us, detained, on the floor, airport animals.
Something has claimed that my adopted
country’s autobiography of openness
is finished. Something opens the mouths
of my Jewish immigrant family to mutter:
good for those terrorists to wait,
hope their turn doesn’t come.
So thank you to all of you,
who sprang to protest when something
forbade people who are like me. Thank you
for translating your memory of Babcia, of
Abuelita, into this mom, traveling home.
Your act of translation climbs over walls,
a prankster with tired eyes. It helps us
know each other. Gently it joins our hands
with Mr. Frost’s, asking, just one more time:
why would anyone help? What
doesn’t love a wall? And the cheeky poet
goes on hinting: “It is not elves, exactly…”

Olga Livshin is a poet, essayist and literary translator. Her work is forthcoming from The Kenyon Review and The International Poetry Review, and it has appeared in Jacket, Blue Lyra Review, Mad Hatters’ Review, and other journals. Livshin is commended by CALYX journal’s Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, Cambridge Sidewalk Poetry Project, Poets & Patrons Chicagoland Poetry Competition, and the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize (twice). She is the founder of White Oak Workshop, a collective that teaches creative Top of FormBottom of Form writing through responses to literature outside the Anglo-American canon. She lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania with her family. Visit her website at www.olga-livshin.com.

Photo credit: K-B Gressitt © 2017

I Still Am

By David Martinez

 

I’m reading Open Veins of Latin America—because I’m writing my South-American book—when the woman in the parking lot starts to scream. The man’s screaming, too, and it’s violent screaming and I can’t see them. But I know they’re both red-faced and she’s crying. She’s shrieking. They’ve both been shrieking for a lifetime, but I couldn’t hear them. Can only hear them now, like it’s a veil been lifted.

I go over to my apartment door and the noise comes in louder. The baby in the mix is wailing like he’s hurt. But I stand there and peek though the cracked-open door. I don’t want them to see me, because I don’t want them to go inside, because I don’t know what apartment they live in and closed doors are more dangerous than open ones, and apartments are more dangerous than parking lots. That’s what I tell myself, but maybe I’m just scared. I leave the door cracked, fall back in, and call the police. I’m terrified of police. But there’s a raging man and a raging woman and a baby, and I have no power, so I have to call.

What’s the emergency? The woman on the line says.

They’re fighting outside.

•

He’s my fucking child, the man says. He’s my blood.

There’s a slam against a car, a thud, a clamor.

•

Do you know the couple? the dispatcher asks.

No, I say. But I’ve seen them before.

•

The woman is pleading. The man shouts.

He calls her a cunt. He calls her a bitch. He calls her a whore.

•

Are you outside? the dispatcher says. Can you see them?

No, I say. I’m inside. But I can see the car and their heads. The guy is half in the car.

•

She sobs. She pleads. She yells, Get the fuck out of my car! You’re not right. Please, please get the fuck out of my car.

Another drunk thud and a splatter.

Yeah, he yells. Swing at me! Swing at me! I dare you, you fucking bitch. Think I won’t swing back?

No! No, please! I have a baby in my arms.

•

Sir, they’re next to what kind of car? the dispatcher says.

A grey one, I say.

And can you tell me, she says. Are they Hispanic? Are they Mexican?

They’re white.

I pace up and down. It’s tiring. It’s tiring to be on the phone with her. It’s tiring to hear the violence outside, and I think of the history of violence and of U.S. bombs and the whole world while listening to the woman talk on the phone. That viciousness is far, and this viciousness is near and pathetic.

I walk outside and see the woman. Her face is red. Makes her older. She’s in her twenties—I know, because I’ve seen her before—but she looks like she’s carrying forty years. The man runs up to an apartment. I can’t see him. He’s a shadow. She follows with the baby.

•

There’s a giant, white, Styrofoam cup shattered on the ground, and soda splashed and running into the asphalt—like blood—and the screaming on the street has died out.

•

I don’t remember walking onto the parking lot, but I’m here, and the group is still looking at the now-empty space where the fighting had been. There’s a guy on the phone with the police.

He knows more than me—watched them walk into the apartment. He knows where the violence is continuing.

As I walk by the group I hear, Mr. Martinez!

There’s a student here, and I can’t comprehend it because this is not a student’s place. Their place is in the classroom on the far side of town.

When I turn, there’s John surrounded by a small swarm of his friends, the most disruptive, funniest seventh-grader I taught last year. One who came from the reservation. One of the most problematic. One of the most hurt—with a sometimes abusive, sometimes apathetic mother, and a father he once told me he’d like to kill. One of my favorite kids.

But John isn’t supposed to be here. John is from a different life from over a year ago. John should be a dream.

Oh shit! I say, and I know it’s not the best greeting for an old teacher to give a thirteen-year-old, but it’s what comes out. What was all this? I say, thumbing toward the grey car and the poor remains of a struggle because I don’t know what to say or what to think or how to feel.

Some bitch about to get beat, he says.

He wants a response, and I want to tell him not to say that. I want to tell him not to talk about people like that, not to be sexist and mean. But he articulates it like he’s proud. Because he told me once that I’m one of his favorite teachers, one of the best he’d ever had, probably ever would have because he was going to drop out as soon as he could, because he wanted to shock me. He wants to prove that he’s bad, that he’s lost. I don’t say anything, because he wants me to, because he knows I don’t approve, because I know I don’t have to.

You’re still working over at the school, huh?

Yeah, I say. But I teach college now, too.

He needs to know this information, because sometimes people get to do what they want to do. He needs to know sometimes lives can work out all right, for a while. He needs to know that it doesn’t have to be like the lives of the students at school, where too many families are terrified of deportation and live in fear. The school whose kids have parents who threaten them not to talk about their abuse. The school that is in constant threat of losing its funding.

The cops show up.

One of the kids says, Hey, aren’t we going to my house? My mom’s not home.

We got to go smoke, Mr. Martinez, John says to me, and offers his hand. He doesn’t fist bump. He shakes my hand, then floats away into the swarm, moving toward the houses behind my apartment complex.

One of the neighbors, the guy who was on the phone with the cops, comes over to me and keeps talking about how he was just walking outside to go get a haircut when he saw the fight. Seemed pretty excited about it.

I had to get my brother and get out here, he says. My brother and I do mixed martial-arts.

Right, I say, and wonder if this is a guy who scares people back inside apartments, a guy who doesn’t know what to do with feral people, or a guy who does what he’s supposed to, who acted right.

His brother is nowhere to be found.

Who was that kid you were talking to? he says.

I don’t know why he cares.

He was my student last year, I say, pointing to the direction John and his friends went.

Yeah? he says. I’m studying to be a probation officer. He’d better watch out. He was saying some pretty nasty stuff over there. I’d like to show him and his buddies that being hooligans doesn’t pay. I’d straighten them out in a minute.

The neighbor points up at the cops banging on the couple’s door.

That’s what happens when you do drugs, he says.

His eyes aren’t level, like his skull is crooked.

Some chain-smoking woman with her stomach spilling from her tank top comes over and starts chatting with another neighbor. The crooked-faced neighbor takes off to get that haircut, and I see John again, close to another building.

•

John, I yell out. I don’t want him to go yet. I need to find words of wisdom. I have no words. But when I called him he stopped. Is this power? Is this responsibility?

So, I say. You live around here, then?

No, he says. I live down 75th.

John has the same bowl cut he had last year, crooked and cut badly in the same places. He looks the same. Still carries himself like he’s not part of his swarm, like he’s cooler, seen more shit, the way he did last year.

How’s things been for you, man? I say.

All right, he says. How’s everyone at the school?

All right, I say. You should watch out for those guys out there.

Shit, he says. They got to watch out for me.

Look, I want to say. Don’t be screwing around. You know you’re going to get yourself in trouble. I want to say something like that, but that’s not right.

Instead, I ask if he remembers that part he played in The Glass Menagerie last year in class. I had all the kids switch up for different scenes. He asked to play two scenes as Amanda. Thought it was funny.

Yeah, he says, and laughs. I remember everything from your class, and all them stories you made us read, and how you didn’t care when we cussed. That’s why we like you, Mr. Martinez. You’re not fake like the others. You don’t front.

He smiles wide, but this is not a joke and this is not what I want to talk about. This isn’t what I want to say.

Listen, I told you my brother’s in prison because of dope, right? I say.

I want to talk about the miracle of being alone and sober in an apartment, writing a book instead of on the hunt. But I don’t know how to say it.

Yeah. You told us. But my brother? he says and attempts to grin—as if he’s trying to act like he’s in a movie. My brother was killed because of shit I did, he says—says it like it’s nothing.

And since you last seen me I been to prison, Mr. Martinez, he says. For robbery. And I’m probably going to go back, too. I’ll probably fail my drug test.

Why? I say. What’s the point?

I don’t care, he says. Makes no difference.

What, I say. You like being locked up? You think juvey is fun?

Doesn’t matter, he says. In there. Out here. I got people inside. It don’t matter. I got shot since I last seen you, too.

You ain’t got shot, I say. Bullshit.

He might be lying. But it might all be true. At least he’s talking like it’s true.

I did, he says. I swear. Swear on my life. I did. I got shot. In the shoulder.

Okay, I say. Didn’t ask him to show me. He needs me to believe him. Whether it’s true or not, he needs it to be true, and he’s looking at me with those eyes. He wants to believe he has no faith in anything, because to think otherwise would crush him. There’s nothing else to be done. Nothing I can think of.

He used to call me Dad last year. Thought it was hysterical. I thought it was weird, and told him to stop.

I don’t think to give him my number, don’t point to my apartment and say something like, Anytime you need, don’t hesitate to come by. I don’t do anything like that.

I say, John, don’t do anything stupid.

You know me, Mr. Martinez, he says.

I know, I say. Don’t do anything stupid.

Before he leaves I say, You were always one of my favorites.

I still am, he says, and smiles. He disappears with his swarm down the streets where I always get lost, because all the houses look the same. The woman screams—muted—in the apartment above, and the cops are hammering on the door.

•

I have to leave to pick up my wife, and on the way home we drive toward the setting sun that catches fire in the desert—the great and terrible monster of the West—and it’s fine. We give ourselves to it, and all we can do is watch.

 

David Martinez has an MFA in Creative Writing from the UC Riverside Low Residency program in Palm Desert. He has dual citizenship between the United States and Brazil, and has lived in Puerto Rico and all over the United States. David has conducted interviews for The Coachella Review, and his fiction has been published in Broken Pencil. When he is not teaching at Glendale Community College in Arizona he substitutes in elementary and middle schools. David is currently working on his first novel.

Photo credit: Rennett Stowe via a Creative Commons license.

Alt-Majority Nursery Rhymes

By Marvin Lurie

Every time I think I’ve gone too far,
I read the paper and realize I haven’t gone far enough.

Baa Baa Donny
have you any money?
Yes sir. Yes Sir,
full banks many.
Some for my gold door,
some for my pompadour
none for the little boy
stranded on the shore.

Donny Donny quite contrary
how your orders do grow,
with midnight tweets, rash deceits
and craven Republicans all in a row.

Chatty Donnie
sat with his cronies
predicting a terrorist doomsday.
When big bad Putin
started shootin’
he frightened Chatty Donnie away.

Pussy-Grabber pudding and pie
groped the girls and made them cry.
When the lawyers came out to play,
Pussy-Grabber ran away.

Donny had such little hands
they couldn’t help but show
and everywhere that Donny went
his hands were sure to go.

They grabbed a woman’s crotch one day,
which is against the rules.
He said it’s just locker room talk
besides they’re minuscule.

Old mother Hubbard
went to her cupboard
to get her blood pressure meds.
She didn’t have any pills.
There weren’t more refills.
Obamacare was repealed by the feds.

 

Marvin Lurie is retired from a career as a trade press editor, president of an association management and consulting firm, and senior executive in an international trade association. He began writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. In 1998, anticipating retirement and with the desire to reinvest time and effort writing poetry, he took several week-long and shorter poetry workshops taught by established poets and started over. He and his wife moved to Portland, Oregon in 2003 where he has been an active member of the local poetry community including service on the board of directors of the Oregon Poetry Association for two terms, as an almost perpetual poetry student at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland and as a participant in several critique groups. Visit his website at marvlurie.com.

Some Poems

By Nancy Dunlop

                  Brutal Things Must Be Said  –James Baldwin

 

Some poems reside
in oven mitts, opening
the stove and reaching
for the pan with the leavened
bread flowing over its edges,
the mitts pull it out, piping
hot. A safe and soothing thing.
We are okay.

Some poems are like an arrow
in a bow, pulled taut, held
with great control, and then
released, the point
searing the air, straight
to the bull’s eye. Such poems
can be hard to watch without
flinching. You
avert your gaze before
the moment of puncture.

But what is the Poem to do? Not
hit its mark? Not speak?

Some poems wait
to be written on
the Reporter’s notepad, upon
arrival at the scene of
an accident. Yes,
it can be that acute
and chaotic and hard
to get the words to dribble
down the page, what with the
flashing lights, the mix
of bloodied coats, limbs
akimbo, sharp spikes of metal
and glinting glass. Just
getting through the barrier
of Yellow Tape surrounding
this type of poem can be
daunting.

But some poems
demand that much of you.

Some poems are loaded
guns, standing
in the corner of a Lady’s
bedroom. You will look
away from these poems,
unless they are tucked
in an anthology, padded by other,
softer Literature. The Professor
turns to this Emily
of a poem, asks
the class, What
does the gun represent? The students
come up with flailing
answers, or they don’t. Every
semester is different. The bell
rings, and it’s on to Psych 101.

Some poems contain
a knife blade, a bottle, a needle, a taser.
some poems rush their sick children
to the ER. Again. Some poems
are raped and constantly
interrupted. With flashback. Flashback. Flashback.

Such poems make it minute
to minute, if
they are lucky. They do not
have the luxury
to protest a Pipeline a trillion
miles away. Or, for others,
a Pipeline is the only thing they have
in front of them, getting
closer, bulldozers trenching
through their land. Tell me,
what is coming through
your front door?

Poems are like people. Each one
has a story, a dark thing they
carry.

You’ll see these poems lying in Hospice beds
when the Chemo stops working.
They use walkers, because their limbs
are dying. They are propped up in institutions,
alone and waiting for some nurse,
to bring a meal, so they can say hello
to someone today. Some poems
have distended bellies and parasites
crawling on them. Some crouch
on sidewalks, covered in cardboard.
Some poems are soldiers
home from combat, never finding
their words, never trusting anything, anybody
ever again. Some poems have survived
concentration camps and are branded
into the skin.

Some poems are typed
on Brown paper, Black paper,
fearing for their safety. Some
poems love other poems,
but are told they shouldn’t.

Such poems expect silence when they appear. Or
brutality. Never sure
of which. They have always
known that they will be
pushed to the margins,
until they fall off the edge
of the page on which they cling.

Some poems are called Nigger,
Cunt, Pocahantas, Fag, Irrelevant,
Wrong, No room
at the Inn.

But some poems can be found
in oven mitts, reaching
into a stove, pulling out
the finished loaf. Your family’s
favorite. You sit around the table,
and break bread, newly
nourished. You bless the world
inside and out your kitchen window,
a hum and patter of words draped
on the counter behind you,
in the oven mitts still warm, still
holding the memory of the shiver
and pop of the yeast, the stretch and
rip of the leavening
that makes way for the release,
the Rising. The final fruition.

 

Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist who resides in Upstate New York, where she has taught at the University at Albany. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in print journals including The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine, Works and Days and Nadir, as well as in online publications such as Swank Writing, RI\FT, alterra, Miss Stein’s Drawing Room and Truck. She has forthcoming work in Free State Review and the anthology, Emergence, published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her work has also been heard on NPR.

Photo credit: Guru Sno Studios via a Creative Commons license.

First 100 Days: Recipe for Disaster

By Kelsey Maki

 

In a mixing bowl, combine three cups of intolerance with two cups of ignorance. Add one cup of charged rhetoric and two tablespoons of alternative facts. Stir until smooth. Pour into a bulletproof, non-stick pan.

Topping: In a separate bowl, combine one cup of self-satisfied sugar (GMO) and three cups of concern for corporate America. Add two tablespoons of coal slurry and a pinch of fracking wastewater.

Bake while you watch Hannity.
Let cool for ten minutes before serving.
Eat at your own risk.

 

Kelsey Maki writes travel articles, literary fiction, and magical realism. She is an English instructor at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. Her fiction has appeared in Mosaics: A Collection of Independent Women—Volume I. Visit her website at kelseymaki.wix.com/Kelsey and check out her blog Syntax Surfing: A Sentence-Lover’s Blog about Books, at kmakiblog.wordpress.com/.

First 100 Days: Two Trump Heads Are Better Than One?

By Marleen S. Barr

 

Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction scholar who teaches at the Metropolitan University of New York, could not ignore the persistent pain in her molar. Thus it came to pass that she found herself sitting in an oral surgeon’s chair about to have her tooth extracted.

“Do you want me to put growth material in your gum, to facilitate implant insertion?” asked Dr. Doogie Horowitz.

Sondra, who was scared as hell that she was about to be decapitated, nodded her head affirmatively.

When she returned for her post-operative check-up, she asked for details about what had been inserted in her mouth.

“Bone,” Dr. Horowitz said.

“What kind of bone?”

“Bone from a cadaver.”

“What if the cadaver wasn’t Jewish? I might have goyische bone cells reproducing in my jaw.”

Sondra went home and fell asleep.

Upon awakening, she felt a weird sensation on her shoulder. She looked into a mirror and saw a second head attached to her body. The head did not look like a normal head. It had a small pursed mouth, steely eyes framed by white makeup, and a very strange orange haircut. Yes, Trump’s talking head was pervasive in the all-Trump-all-the-time media circus. But having Trump’s head attached to her body right next to her own head was the limit. Sondra immediately phoned the surgeon.

“I have an emergency. The cells grew into Trump’s head, not new jaw bone.”

“Oops,” said Dr. Horowitz. “The cells I used came from Trump’s deceased parents who were buried locally in New Hyde Park. Instead of simply generating new jaw bone cells, these cells grew into a completely formed Trump head.”

“Will I gain weight? Trump is not thin and he eats—I can barely say it—fried taco shells. And if he has access to my hands does that mean that he can grope my pussy?”

“The Trump head has no control over your body.”

“How do I get my normal Trump headless body back?”

“I need some time to research this unprecedented question.”

Sondra decided to get a heads up on the situation by seeking an audience with Trump himself in Trump Tower. She put on a burka to disguise the Trump head. Politically correct New Yorkers, loathe to stare at a burka-clad woman, would not notice the covered shoulder protrusion.

Sondra entered Trump Tower and asked to speak to Trump. Fearing that a woman wearing a burka had to be a terrorist, Secret Service agents swarmed around her. Frantically frisking her in search of a gun or a bomb, they instead closely encountered Trump’s head.

“I’m not a terrorist,” Sondra insisted. “I obviously have a huge problem. Trump has a swelled head. Maybe he has a suggestion.”

The agents escorted Sondra to Trump’s apartment. He became enraged when he saw his head attached to Sondra.

“Get me a guillotine,” screamed Trump. “Two Trump heads are absolutely not better than one.”

“Sir, presidents are not allowed to behead people,” said a Secret Service agent.

“Trump began to tweet: “Dr. Sondra Lear doesn’t know how to use my head. Not.” He then continued to shout. “I’ll use the nuclear codes to explode the hell out of the imposter Trump head.”

“Sir,” implored the agent. “It is not advisable to deploy nuclear weapons simply because the second Trump head hurts your ego.”

“Can’t we blame the Mexicans? Initiate a travel ban to prevent any other Trump head from entering the country.”

Trump’s real head—not his alternative head—suddenly exploded. Flying cranium shards became projectiles, which hit the Trump head attached to Sondra and severed it.

Dr. Horowitz closed the hole in Sondra’s shoulder. She recovered completely and survived four years of President Pence. Although she did not agree with Pence, she was grateful that he was not sick in his head.

 

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and she teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.

Marleen also has a piece in a new anthology, Alternative Truths, just released by B Cubed Press. “Alternative Truths is a look at the post-election America that is, or will be, or could be.” Read more about it here.

First 100 Days: We the People Who March

By Yun Wei

We walk because that is all to be done
all our bodies can do
when so much has been done to us.

We walk because it’s not done: the work
of hands pressed against stone
and monuments, the work that hands must do

when there are no more parts
to assemble, just an endless sorting
of hows and whys, punctuation marks

that can’t contain the content,
as if brackets could stand for windows,
as if a parenthesis could pronounce justice,

inclusive, resistance – all the words
we need in stone. (No need to pull down
the monuments: these were already written)

We walk because gravity is sliding past,
because backwards is not a road,
and when the pavement slides too,

and the lampposts and stop lights,
the freeways and ways to freedom,
we will find a rise in morning light

that casts lines as wide as roads
because rising is all our bodies can do
when there is so much to be done,

so much to make bright.

Yun Wei received her MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College and a Bachelor’s in International Relations from Georgetown University. Her writing awards include the Geneva Literary Prizes for Fiction and Poetry and the Himan Brown Poetry Fellowship. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in decomP Magazine, Roanoke Review, Apt Magazine, Word Riot, The Brooklyn Review and other journals. For the last few years, she was working on global health in Switzerland, where she consistently failed at mountain sports.

First 100 Days: Protest Poem in Two Acts

By Zigi Lowenberg

 

I.

saturday, january 21, 2017

she’s got the whole world…
holding Mom’s hand, their fists raised in West Palm breeze
while her stepdaughter and grandsons march in Hawai’i
her cousins throng Fifth Avenue
as her Oakland tribe rings Lake Merritt.

only later she learns,
another big lie floats, his number bloats
for Langley his facts are phooey
he signals, he gloats.

II.

street alchemy

making poems with her hopeful feet
gutter balls of fire, the heat—the heat
burning railing throats, running sore
we’re chanting sparks that bite and fuel
crowdsourcing for that asphalt elixir “Justice!”
surely it must come
on our hot sweaty insistent heels
of THIS. 

 

 Zigi Lowenberg, performance poet and co-leader of the jazzpoetry ensemble UpSurge!, has appeared at music festivals, rallies, clubs, bookstores and universities from NYC to New Orleans to San Francisco. Zigi’s acting credits include The Lysistrata Project, the Stein-Toklas Project, and John Brown’s Truth, Zigi is a member of the National Writers Union, and Radical Poets Collective. Her poetry has appeared in the poetry journal rabbit and rose. Her essay, “Support the Edge!” will be published in a book Creative Lives (spring 2017). Zigi and her husband, Raymond Nat Turner, are executive producers on UpSurge!’s two independent CD recordings, which have garnered critical acclaim. They live in Harlem and Oakland.

Photo credit: Dennis Hill via a Creative Commons license.

First 100 Days: Sanctuary

By Jennifer Hernandez

Border fence
divides
barbs catch
rip
prevent
free range
prevent
migration
of wildlife
of many lives
gaps
allow glimpses
of el otro lado
amber waves
blue blue skies
gauzy clouds
floating elusive
storms brew
on the horizon

 

Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota, where she works with immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative nonfiction. Much of her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Recent work appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, Dying Dahlia, New Verse News and Yellow Chair Review, as well as Bird Float, Tree Song (Silverton Books) and Write Like You’re Alive (Zoetic Press).

 

First 100 Days: Power by Adrienne Rich

By Tarra Stevenson

Living in a white fog of patriarchy/phallocentrism/misogyny

Today a class of teenage girls
radiant
discussed the power
of Marie Curie
her sacrifice to birth knowledge
even in the face of her own death. A radio-
active superwoman.

Today a vice-president eliminated
possibility
potential
denying their rights
denying her fights

and the teenage girls understand this
toxicity.

But they are tired
of sacrificing,
of seeing
(ElizabethWarrenMaxineWatersHillaryClintonHenriettaLacksZeldaFitzgeraldMarinaAbramovicMothersSistersDaughtersJaneDoeUnnamed)
themselves
Sacrificed.

They refuse this half-life.

 

Tarra Stevenson teaches at an all-girls school, where she is an agitator, educator and feminist. She has fiction in Shirley Magazine and poetry in Vinyl Poetry and Prose. She earned her BA from UC Davis, her MA from Loyola Marymount University, and is currently pursuing her MFA in fiction from UC Riverside’s low-residency program.

Photo credit: Loran via a Creative Commons license.

First 100 Days: March of the Millennials and Grandmas

By Candy Schulman

Editor’s note: Trump’s inauguration initiated a series of public demonstrations that have continued throughout his first 100 days—including, challenging his refusal to release his taxes, in support of science and the environment, in defiance of his bigoted attempts to limit immigration and, as this essay reminds us, to make clear the power of women inspired to action by racism, misogyny, xenophobia, Islamophobia and injustice. 

“Does this bring you back to your protesting days of the sixties?” my 22-year-old daughter asked me.

We were gathered with a group of writers in my friend’s apartment to assemble for the Women’s March the day after the inauguration, a short walk from our larger group’s meeting place. Even more importantly, she had two bathrooms where we could eliminate our bladders one last time before chanting, “This is what democracy looks like!”

“I never thought I’d be marching again,” a friend remarked after her final bathroom run. She was a grandmother, her thoughts reflecting signs we’d later see: I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO PROTEST THIS CRAP.

My daughter’s friends gave our posse diversity. I was thrilled to share this event with her, the way we’d voted last November, posting a Facebook photo saying, “We’re voting for the first woman president of the U.S.!”

Now my daughter wanted to know if today was like the past.

“Yes,” I told her, “but the drugs are different.”

My comrades discussed how much Xanax they’d ingested. I tended to reduce anxiety through meditation and swimming laps. Today, I wanted to fully feel the vibrations of sharing my daughter’s first protest march.

She wasn’t sure how many friends would come until the last minute, texting her social circle.

My host had sent out official invitations and instructions for weeks, and we’d RSVP’d to meet at her place as though responding to a wedding invitation. She snapped a photo before we left: three generations ranging from 14 to she-who-has-never-revealed-her-age. We dressed according to assorted maladies and hormonal spikes. A mix of original knees and replacements, we were a rowdy arthritic bunch: eager, hopeful, filling our pockets with tissues in case we found ourselves someplace without toilet paper.

It was unseasonably warm, temperatures approaching 50. A cool breeze whipped up. Noticing my daughter’s friend in a gray turtleneck and thin hat, I refrained from saying, “Are you dressed warmly enough?” I didn’t want to sound like her mother. Besides, she was from Maine.

Arriving at our designated starting corner, we found peaceful chaos. Crowds had grown so thick, we were gridlocked on East 48th Street. Occasionally the crowd roared, as if we were starting to move, but it was the kind of cheer you’d see at a baseball game when the stands erupt in an impromptu wave.

My daughter and her friends posed for a selfie. They looked so innocent and fresh, yet I worried that the rights they’d always expected might now be eroding. And I realized that those rights would mean much more to them once they had to fight for them.

A friend photographed the two of us, holding the sign she had crafted: WE HAVE TO START TALKING ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE WOMB.

“Look at that adorable little girl,” my daughter said, pointing to a three-year-old on her father’s shoulders, holding a sign: NEXT POTUS.

Ninety minutes passed and we still hadn’t moved. “We’re going to push ahead,” my daughter said with the impatience of youth. “Do you want to come or stay?”

I wanted to march with her, but I was supposed to remain with my group. The organizers urged us to follow the rules for crowd control. I was no longer that sixties antiwar protestor, unafraid to be tear gassed, bailing friends out of jail. I’d turned into an adherer of the rules, a college writing professor who taught students to abide by attending classes and meeting assignment deadlines.

I told my daughter to go and kissed her cheek, hiding my disappointment.

An hour later we were still stuck in place. I worried about my daughter being trampled if the crowd grew impatient. Life without Xanax.

“Let’s reverse direction,” my group suggested.

That’s when we splintered into three subgroups. And I ended up alone. I began to feel claustrophobic the way I do in airplanes. I pushed my way through throngs of shoulder-to-shoulder people, all remarkably calm, waiting their turn. All 400,000 of us. The mall in D.C. is spacious. New York streets are narrow and dark.

“I’m having a panic attack,” I explained, forcing my way through bodies, signs and babies. When I reached Grand Central, thousands were spewing from subways and trains, and I went the opposite direction, downtown toward home.

Landing in Union Square in the sunshine, I felt my blood pressure lower. I ended up sharing the march with my daughter the way Millennials communicate all the time:

“We reversed direction and found our way to the march,” she texted. “We’re on Fifth Avenue!”

“Store employees keep waving at us!”

“I think I just saw Senator Schumer!”

She kept the texts and photos coming. This wasn’t how I’d expected to share my daughter’s first protest march, but technology allowed us to do it together after all.

That night we cooked lasagna, craving comfort food. We formed a group message, sharing photos of protest messages from one edge of our country to the other. One of our favorites: NOW YOU’VE PISSED OFF GRANDMA. That was how I felt, a bit old to be protesting this crap anymore, but doing my part as much as I could. I was passing the protest torch onto my daughter, but I’d always be there to cheer her on.

 

Candy Schulman is an award-winning essayist who has published personal essays and political Op-eds in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, Salon, and elsewhere. She is a creative writing professor at The New School. As an anti-war protestor at Ohio State University in 1970, she published an essay about the four students who were killed at Kent State, illuminating how peaceful student protests were combatted with tear gas and guns, whereas post-football game drunken brawls were overlooked by police.

Photo credit: Thomas Altfather Good via a Creative Commons license.

First 100 Days: Wiretap Tweets—Defined

By Charles W. Brice

 

Terrible (tĕr′ə-bəl): n. A salutation. Syn.: dear, my dear, hi, hello

Just (jŭst): n. & v. A statement of absolute truth. Ex: Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped.”

Found Out (found out): tr.v. To receive an incontrovertible revelation of indisputable fact from a minor entertainment personage on Fox News.

Wire (wīr): n. A force aimed at crushing narcissism.

Tap also Tapp (tăp): n. A euphemism for the shattered fantasies of a tyrant.

Lawyer  (loi′yər): n. Someone who will teach everyone a lesson.

Sacred (sā′krĭd): adj. A term used to depict something as being religious when one is wholly ignorant of religion or spirituality. Ex: sacred toothpicks, sacred cornflakes, “sacred election process.”

“Wiretap” (wīr′tăp′): tr.v. To watch, surveil, or look at. Ex: “Wiretap that girl, Billy, and pass me a Tic Tac.”

Bad  (băd): adj. A dyspeptic global emotion experienced upon waking in the early hours and relieved only through tweeting before breakfast or by experiencing a huge, laxative induced, bowel movement.

Sick Guy (sĭk gī): n. Any member of the entire world who disagrees with the tyrant.

Sad (săd): adj. 1. Whatever inhibits grandiosity. 2. n. The present state of affairs in the United States of America.

 

Charlie Brice a retired psychoanalyst living in Pittsburgh. His full length poetry collection, Flashcuts Out of Chaos, is published by WordTech Editions (2016) and his second collection, Mnemosyne’s Hand (WordTech Editions), will appear in 2018. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Hawaii Review, Chiron Review, The Dunes Review, SLAB, Fifth Wednesday Journal, and elsewhere. Read about Charlie’s collection Flashcuts Out of Chaos at The Borfski Press.

Note: Wiretap Tweets-Defined was previously published in Tuck Magazine.

Going Limp

By Ruth Nolan

It was your favorite story, the one you most loved
to tell me, from the days when you were the star
of your high school football team, MVP, you’d say:

It’s important to go limp after throwing a pass
because you know you’re going to get hit
and that way you’re less likely to get hurt

It was the story you loved to share, long before
I’d left the game. We’d drink beer after beer after
a day on the fire crew, over and over you’d tell

the winning story that became the best advice
I’ve ever heard, although I turned it around
to work for me, it became the rules for how to

receive the pass when you threw the ball, hard.
It became more and more important, each time
that you slugged me and cracked open my lip,

when you snuck up behind me and put me in a
chokehold, just to see how I would react, when
you threw me against a wall, our baby in my arms.

I got so good at going limp that for all these years,
I just knew I would deliver that ball all the way to
touchdown, never getting hurt, never going down.

 

Ruth Nolan, a former wildland firefighter in the Western U.S., is a writer and professor based in Palm Springs, CA. She’s the author of the poetry book Ruby Mountain (Finishing Line Press 2016). Her short story, “Palimpsest,” published in LA Fiction: Southland Writing by Southland Writers (Red Hen Press 2016), received an Honorable Mention in Sequestrum Magazine’s 2016 Editor’s Reprint contest and was also nominated for a 2016 PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Ruth’s writing has also been published in James Franco Review; Angels Flight LA/Literary West; Rattling Wall; KCET/Artbound Los Angeles; Lumen; Desert Oracle; Women’s Studies Quarterly; News from Native California; Sierra Club Desert Report, Lumen; The Desert Sun/USA Today and Inlandia Literary Journeys. Ruth holds her M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside. She may be reached at ruthnolan13@gmail.com and via Twitter @ruthnolan.

Photo credit: Foxcroft Academy via a Creative Commons license.

And Then He Moved On

By William Aime

 

On his first day, his boss gave him a pair of t-shirts. She asked his size, which was extra-large, but she only had large or medium. She gave him two larges and told him that she’d give him the right size when more shirts came in. He wore the shirts once or twice until he realized that no one else wore them. They were not a uniform. They were just a pair of fairly ugly shirts, with some joke about gluten intolerance on the back that he wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t offensive. Either way, he never wore the shirts again, nor did he ever think about them.

That is, until he got his first pay-stub two weeks later. This was not his first job, so the deduction for taxes came as no surprise. Still, he idly scanned the stub, looking at all the places his money was going—federal taxes, Social Security, state taxes—the usual. But there was one more line, one he wasn’t expecting. “T-shirts: -$24.00.” It took him a moment to remember, and then he experienced the peculiar feeling of anger and shame occurring at once. Why hadn’t his boss told him about the charge? Would it have mattered? Could he have turned down the shirts? And if he ever did get the extra-larges, would he be charged for those?

As he contemplated this, he took stock of his situation. What had he lost? Twenty-four dollars off an already small paycheck. What had he gained? Two bad t-shirts that were already balled up in his bottom drawer and a new job. And then he moved on.

The first few weeks were hard on him. The food service industry has always been a constantly moving enterprise—people need to eat and food needs to be cooked, but many people don’t like to do it for themselves. He was expected to learn on the job, quickly. The more experienced prep-cooks showed him how to do something once, watched him do it to make sure he had it, then moved on. He needed to focus on what he was doing until his muscles memorized it, and he needed to watch the other cooks work on other projects at the same time. If he could learn from them without asking, then they wouldn’t need to waste time specifically showing him, and the kitchen gained some efficiency. He was a moving part in a large, difficult to control machine that was only useful when running at peak efficiency. He was a prep-cook, and he was making food for well over five hundred people a day. He sliced meat, he mixed toppings, he built salads so that customers could see all the ingredients at the top. At the end of the day, he collapsed into bed, his feet burning.

Slowly, day-by-day, he improved. He didn’t have to watch the other cooks work. He found shortcuts that no one had shown him. He learned how to slice ham as thin as paper, how to mix berry schmear perfectly. He learned how to peel a hard-boiled egg in two seconds while it was still hot, the vinyl of his gloves softly melting into the grooves of his fingertips. He worked and he worked and he worked, a part of him dripping into the food he made like sweat from his brow.

The more he worked, the more he began to think he wasn’t making enough. Those paychecks always seemed to be just a little too small, just a little too lean. At first, he thought nothing of it, hoping that with diligence and hard work, he’d eventually earn a raise. But then he was talking to one of the older prep cooks—one of those cooks who was so old his wrinkles looked like they were carved by knives, who looked like he salted his grievances so they’d store better—and he had a great many things to say.

I put lemons in with the eggs, makes them peel easier.

I once had a girl that looked just like that waitress, you know. It’d be good to stick my dick in something like that again.

You don’t need those oven mitts, just grab a towel and move quickly.

Don’t let that pretzel get dark like TJ over there. You’re aiming more for Diego.

Slice that melon down the sides, and don’t worry about leaving a little rind. We can take that off later.

Those bastards used to cut me short on my paychecks all the time. Still do, when they think I’m not looking.

And it was that last one that stuck out to him. It wormed its way into his mind and found a quaint little corner to snuggle up in, rearing its head every time he looked at his paycheck. Only then did it strike.

He devised a plan. He spent two weeks counting his hours, noting exactly when he clocked in and out. He added it up each day, noting with pride when he passed thirty, then fifty, then sixty hours. When the pay period came to an end, he had worked a total of eighty-two hours, and he felt proud. That’s a respectable amount of work, after all. He fed a lot of people working those hours. He should feel proud.

He waited the five days from the period ending to payday. He might have even forgotten about his scheme for a moment, caught up in fantasizing about what he could do with his especially big paycheck. He forgot that he ever doubted his employer.

But then he examined his next paystub—extremely carefully—and it was right there, out in the open. “Time worked: 79 hours.” The maximum amount that didn’t push him into overtime.

Like any sensible person, he went straight to the manager. Not his manager. The manager, the one who runs the whole shebang, reporting only to the owner. He pointed out the discrepancy, that he was sure he worked eighty-two hours. He did his best to not say, “wage theft,” but they both knew it was there. The manager was apologetic and extremely embarrassed and then let him in on a little secret.

“We’re too small a company,” she said. “We can’t afford to give everyone health insurance, and we always try to avoid overtime, because it might make problems for us. We’ll put the hours back on your next paycheck though, I promise.”

And she was so charming and so friendly that he forgot his outrage. He made the concession, and she thanked him for being so understanding. Sure enough, on his next paycheck, there were three more hours than there should have been.

It took him a while to see the problems. He remembered that thirty hours is considered full-time and therefore worthy of health insurance, not forty. And even though they gave him the hours back, he still missed out on time-and-a-half pay. He had been duped, plain and simple. But by then, it was too late. The manager had already dealt with it, the way she’d been dealing with the same problem for twenty years. So then he moved on.

Part of his complacency, he had to admit, was fear. He’d been on the job long enough to see some people get fired. That old coworker with salted grievances had finally gotten fired for saying something racist or sexist—nobody was actually sure which—a little too loudly. Another got fired for showing up late once, even though his manager had also been late that day. He learned that taking food is fine up until the sorority girl took the wrong apple and was fired on the spot. He heard about the co-manager being fired for refusing to cut a corner that could have broken a health code. Then the next week, the manager who fired the co-manager was fired and the co-manager rehired. In some sense, he knew that all these firings were “justified”—as in there was a stated reason that was legal. But he also knew that there were less savory reasons underneath, reasons that couldn’t be proven. The prep-cook who was fired for being late had been a good worker, smart, keenly aware of health codes, but he also had Asperger’s, and something about that had always rubbed the manager the wrong way. The sorority girl, a week before being fired, had refused to slice meat because the slicer was broken in a way that made it unsafe to use, something that everyone knew but had tried to ignore. And the manager had never seemed to mind the old racist and sexist cook’s many faults, until the old racist and sexist cook talked about his wages with the other cooks. But of course, none of these were the stated reasons.

Sometimes, he would wonder what happened to these people. He wondered if they ever found other jobs, if they managed to hold onto that one. He wondered if that one baker was able to get her daughter the toy she wanted, or if that dishwasher ever saved up enough to go to college. He wondered if it could happen to him. And then he moved on.

He can’t deny that the work did him some good, that it gave him experiences he’d never forget. His skin turned brown in the face of a roaring oven. He ate a pretzel that had been drenched just a second too long and cooked just a second too short, so that the leftover lye tingled on his tongue and his gums bled for a week. He collected knife scars up and down his hands. He made something truly delicious, and then he repeated it. The work, though hard and mindless and grueling, never crushed his soul.

Inevitably, one day, he got sick. It started as a cough—a plain old cough. But slowly it grew. Eventually, he had a full-blown fever, was coughing his lungs out, and was throwing up in between. There was no way in hell he was able to work. So, he called in and let his manager know. Even then, though, he was given another task.

“Find someone to cover you,” his manager said, “or bring a doctor’s note.”

The second task was particularly unfair. The company didn’t give him any kind of health insurance and his state insurance covered jack shit. His manager herself had complained to him about how she couldn’t go to a doctor to look at her jaw because it cost too much. Now, on top of having to miss work—for which he’d get no sick pay—he also had to get a doctor’s note? Instead, he called people.

The first person he called had class. The second was out of town. The third was working a second job, as was the fourth. And so on. There were only so many replacements he could call, and all of them were busy. So he called his manager back.

“I can’t come in,” he repeated, “and nobody else can cover me.”

“Get a doctor’s note,” his manager said.

He held his head in his hands. “I can’t afford a doctor,” he said. There was a moment of silence from the other side. “Look, I’m throwing up,” he continued, “I’m coughing, I have a fever. It’s the flu. You don’t want me anywhere near the food. I’d come in if I could. Trust me.”

“If you can’t get a doctor’s note,” his manager said, “then don’t bother coming in tomorrow either.”

“What?” he asked.

“You heard me. I have to let you go. You’re not reliable anymore.”

No amount of pleading could save him. He told his manager that this was bullshit. He told her he was just sick, that it happens to everyone. He promised to work just as hard as always in the future, that he’d get well as soon as he could. Nothing. He tried the restaurant manager too, with the same result. He begged. He pleaded. He bargained. No matter what, he could not get his job back. He tried to tell himself it wasn’t his fault, but believed himself less and less each time.

And then, just as everyone always does, he moved on.

 

William Aime is an American writer whose work premiered in November of 2016. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist in the 2016 Fiction Vortex Contest. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana, with his partner, Rachel.

Photo credit: Paul Sableman via a Creative Commons license.

Uprising

By Janey Skinner

 

Pink pointed ears popped up everywhere. Skeins in pocket, women knit as they marched, constructing together the greatest pussy hat of all, its oval opening frilled in coral, cinnamon and crimson yarns, too soft and too strong to tear.

Some say the Golem emerged from that hat, a bud of damp clay and fury that shot to full size in a flash, but I suspect it had long slept among us.

Was it us it pulled in its wake, or we who propelled it? Trouncing toward Washington with the pussy hat on its head, a confection of our relentless resistance.

 

Janey Skinner is a writer, teacher and activist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her story “Carnivores” appeared in Best Small Fictions 2016, edited by Stuart Dybek and Tara Masih. She is at work on a novel about resistance to the war in Colombia, when she isn’t fighting for public education or fuming about encroaching fascism. Check her out at writer.janeyskinner.com.

Der Golem movie poster, 1920, in the public domain.

American Signs

By R.M. Engelhardt

Dead crow in the middle of the road,
Black as death and dark

In the cold November air
When all the trees all sigh

“Remember”

Where there is a change in the scenery
Something different
Like God has suddenly left
The building

A winter without snow
Where a part of your soul

Has departed
From the light

R.M. Engelhardt is a author, poet and writer whose work over the years has appeared in many journals and magazines in print and online, including, Rusty Truck, Thunder Sandwich, The Boston Literary Review, Full of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Dryland Lit, The Outlaw Poetry Network, and many others. He currently lives in Upstate NY and is the creator of such groups as The Troy Poetry Mission and Poets And Writers Stand Against Trump. Visit the poet’s website.

Photo credit: “Fallen” by Rob Nunn via a Creative Commons license.

Impressions of the USA

By Cong Tran

Editor’s note: Cong Tran, or Tran Quoc Cong in Vietnamese naming convention, paid his first visit to the United States in 2007, an invited guest at the memorial service for author and Pulitzer Prize winning Vietnam War correspondent David Halberstam. Mr. Tran had guided and ultimately befriended the journalist during a return visit to Vietnam by the author some years before his death. Mr. Tran was so moved by his invitation to the memorial from Mr. Halberstam’s widow, and so honored to be among the literati in attendance, he saved the printed program (see below). Recently, Mr. Tran shared the messages he sent home from his 2007 visit and gave us permission to share them with our readers, which we are delighted to do. His observations of U.S. culture in contrast to that of Vietnam are insightful and entertaining—at reminder of our national character beyond the context of the Trump regime.
Mr. Tran suspects his first visit to the U.S. was also his last.

Dear Friends,

Good morning, America!

SEAT BELT makes me feel clumsy like spaceman in the spaceship. Trying to remember. It takes some time.

Crossing the streets here is a skill, not an art, like in Viet Nam. Press the button. Magical!

I borrowed a digital camera, but my mind still analog.

In Viet Nam, eat to live. Here, live to eat.

I have a dream. My dream comes true.

Thanks for all your help,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear America,

Descartes in America: “I DRIVE therefore I am.”

You have driving license, you are somebody. You have wings like angels. I feel disabled because I cannot drive. In Heaven, the angels fly, not walk. My mind, eyes, body in Heaven, but I cannot fly, just borrow the wings.

Mr. Don Giggs offers me a car. Just looking, not driving. How can I change lanes? In Viet Nam, the lanes are built-in and invisible. Very happy to see the sign “Drive Less, Live More.”

House/home is really a castle, fortress. Cars are moving castles, fortresses on freeway.

Best,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear America,

You are the XXXL country; your meal is, too. A cheeseburger is so BIG, it swallows me, not I it. If I keep on eating like this, I do not think I can walk through the door at the customs counter with the slogan “Keep American’s Door Open and Our Nation Secure” on the day I leave the paradise.

Things are expensive.

In the announcement for the memorial service for Mr. David Halberstam in NYT: “In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Teach for America in the Mississippi Delta.” Flowers for David, food for me. Teach for America, Teach for my children. Mississippi Delta, Me Kong Delta.

This is an open eyes and mind trip for me.

Thanks for all your help,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear America,

Memorial Day, Sunday 27 May. Riding bike in Westminster Cemetery, I agree with Thomas Jefferson that “All men are created equal” and buried, cremated equal.

“Flat” means equal in some way, in many ways. In Viet Nam, the graves are not equal at all. In Viet Nam, the hill is for the tombs, death, resting place. Turning your head to the mountain means “pass away.” Flat, low land is for villages, life. In U.S., in reverse.

Now, I know why you are “The Quiet American.” You do not blow the horns when you drive.

I sleep with the sound of click in my dream. “Click It or Ticket.” Seatbelt, please.

See you,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear America, Good morning, Sun Valley!

Vietnamese local bus from Little Sai Gon to Phoenix, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Heaven to Hell. Just hot, not humid, like home. No sticky. Anyway, 5-star Hell. Just compare, not complain.

The pages of my high school textbook, Practice Your English, McGraw Hill, appeared along the road. The first time in life I saw desert, cactus, sand, small bushes, hot and dry. Before, I only see dessert, fruits, ice cream, sweets, caramel, after meals. I felt thorny, like cactus when coming to Arizona. Cowboy films 1965 to 67 replayed.

CARPOOL LANE = Mahayana Buddhism. You live, pray, do whatever to become Buddha, and help the others to become Buddha, too. The other lanes on freeway = Theravada Buddhism. One vehicle, one driver.

In the U.S., I live to be delivered. I cannot drive. Thanks for all help. I come to the U.S. with JFK Inaugural Speech, MLKing’s “I Have A Dream,” the image of Apollo 11, and all my high school textbook in mind.

It is my America.
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear Phoenix, Arizona,

Wooh! Grand Canyon, Great Wonder of Nature, so grand.

“No one should die before they see Angkor,” Somerset Maugham wrote somewhere. To me, “No one should die before they see Grand Canyon.” Coming to Angkor, we stretch our necks UP to see how high. To Grand Canyon, we crane our necks DOWN to see how deep. Angkor, the hand of Man. Grand Canyon, the hand of the Creator.

Riding bike in and around Phoenix in June, I know why the Phoenix puts its head in the ash. To hide from the HEAT.

Buying something, I have to pay tax. I feel itchy. You don’t, do you? Just the system.

See you,
CONG

 

Dear Old Town Scottsdale, the West’s Most Western Town,

I rode my Iron Horse—bicycle—to the frontier town 113 years after the first settlers came. I met again my boyhood with the cowboy films in my mind, Arizona Colt, Bonanza, The Wild Wild West.

I clicked my camera as fast as the sheriff shot his Colt to stop the bandit coming to town.

I pumped air into my bike tyre in front of the Cavalliere’s Blacksmith Shop, like the cowboys changed horseshoes.

I locked my Iron Horse at the rusty ring once used for horses and mules.

I sent two postcards home from Scottsdale’s first Post Office, where every founding father gathered at mail time, twice a day.

And, I had an ice cream in Sugar Bowl Ice Cream Parlor, to cool down the notorious Arizona dry heat. I am the Man from Nowhere. A really good day.

Bye bye, from Where the Old West Comes Alive,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear South California and Arizona,

Walking in Mission San Juan Capistrano, I saw Silent Night, so quiet.

Standing in front of Crystal Cathedral, I heard Jingle Bells, so loud.

The bronze sculpture of a woman caught in adultery, “Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone.” They mean tons, tons of glass of the cathedral, neither Magdalene nor adultery.

Thy kingdom comes. Maybe. Looking at all stuff in the U.S. so far, I have felt the Middle Kingdom comes. Everything made in China, except the Cowboys in Rawhide Steakhouse and Saloon.

How come? Hey, folks!
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Good morning, New York,

You are Grand Canyon turned downside up.

MANHATTAN, I dropped my HAT 3 times while looking at your skyscrapers, you made my neck painful. I became a MAN without HAT or sunTAN, you are my sunblock buildings.

I saw 3D New York vertically, on Top of the Rock and in subway. First time in my life subway, like guerrilla Củ Chi Tunnels. New York, you made my provincial heart choke.

Early morning walk in Central Park, the lung of NY. At home, when getting angry at somebody, we shout madly, “You are a dog!” Watching people dog-walking here, from now on, I will not shout like that. It is so nice. Will find something else, worse.

Oh, my God! I said, Oh, my Dog! I heard the echo from the bench behind. You made me confused.

CONG

 

Dear 13 Original States,

Promenade in and around Brooklyn (Broken Land), Greenwich, East Hampton, New Canaan. I wonder how many Gods you have. Only one, right? So, why you have so, so many different churches? It doesn’t mean that you are more religious than us. Maybe less. You make God lose his identity. Holding the banknote, I read “In God We Trust.” Singular? Walking around here, I see plurality.

Riding bike around East Hampton and Connecticut is like in the Anderson fairytales. Nice landscape, golden sunshine like honey, green forest, the weather just perfect. I wonder if we need paradise in the next life. God is unfair. Now, I know why you often end your speech, “God bless America.” You bribe Him?

Since coming here, I have had the feeling I am spewed out of the Horn of Plenty together with food. How can I control the temptation?

Forgive me,
CONG

 

Dear New York,

Welcome to Paradise. We know that even Paradise is not perfect. Spewing out of the subway, woo! Times Square, the Crossroads of the World, not easy to cross due to the crowd. Your five senses are raped by the Most Crowded on Earth, the Call of the Wild.

NEW York is new to me, but OLD to the immigrants in the Lower East Side tenements.

GRAND Central Station engulfs you.

GREAT Depression still in some corners I walked through.

BROADway is really broad.

LONG Island is a long drive, just like your common question in Viet Nam: “How
long to Ha Long?” So long to Ha Long, so long to Long Island.

Burger KING swallows you like King Kong does.

CENTRAL Park right in the center you never miss.

TOP of the ROCK is top of tops.

SUBways like submarines.

WALL Street is only WALLs and GLASS, which makes the TRINITY church so TINY, so PITY.

TIMES SQUARE is not square, but like the hands of octopus.

HOTline 1-888-NYC-SAFE is extremely HOT at Times Square to fight terrorism.

DEAR New York, you are very DEAR, not cheap to live.

Looking at Lady LIBERTY, I think of Lady Buddha. This with FIRE, that with WATER. Two basic things for life. (Lady Buddha with the flask in her hand pouring water down to extinguish the inferno of our life).

New York, you are XXXL. Forgive me, the frog, for the first time, leaving the pond for the ocean. How can I see you all, let alone understand you?

Take care,
CONG

 

Good Morning, Washington DC,

The bright sunny day: All the monuments, domes, spires, statues rise up to the sky, soar to the heaven, except Viet Nam War Memorial. Black, like the pin, goes deep to the soil. The White House is white. The Black Marble is black.

In the morning, coming to National Cathedral on the hill, I do not see God nor congregation. Emptiness.

In the evening, sitting in the baseball stadium, I see the holy congregation. Their religion is Baseball, singing like church choir. Eating and drinking like sharing the Communion. The 12 Apostles down there bring their spirits up to Heaven with Bats and Balls. When a ball flying to the seats, many people rise up trying to get it like holy blessing. At the back, food and drinks are their “daily bread” they pray for. Some people concentrate on the pamphlet of statistics like Psalms. Baseball caps everywhere like halos. Red and white T-shirts for sale like angel robes. Everyone is happy as they are in Heaven. The first time in my life I watch a baseball game right in the Baseball Cathedral.

I have some books on Baseball Saints by David Halberstam, whose death is the Visa for me to be here. Both Baseball Bible and Baseball Service in Baseball Cathedral are completely dark to me. But I enjoy the Touch of America.

Baseball Bless You, America. Baseball is with you, and you with Baseball.
CONG

 

Dear Philly, good day Atlantic City.

Woo! The Cathedral of Gambling with the double-ten commandments advised by American Gaming Association. Oh, my God. GAMING looks like GAMBLING. This is that. I wonder if caSINo has SIN within itself. Hope not. But I doubt. And I didn’t see any SAINT here.

Looking at the stream of people coming, focusing their eyes to the slot machines, I heard the words “free to pursuit of happiness” echoing. Losing, return to win back your losses. A win, return to win more. E-Z Pass. Go faster. Go ahead. No clock. Neither day nor night in casino. No-Times Square.

You are in Heaven with thousands of colorful neon lights, make everything DOUBLE, TRIPLE, One four Four. Ecstasy. Drinks are free and welcome to lure you to the dream of winner. Gambling is GAME and BLIND. Knowing when to stop?

Responsible Gaming means Irresponsible Gambling, doesn’t it?

A mime tried to be machine-like. Robot tried to be human-like. Foot Massage and Palm Reading next to each other.

SIN City Mt. Holy Town. The young smile, the old napping.

White, Black, Yellow, Brown skin, the Sun makes all shadows the same on the white sand.

Atlantic City always turned on.

On the drive back to Philly, I saw the sign STAY AWAKE! STAY ALIVE! Otherwise you die. You intend to gamble your life? BOARDWALK is life.

Horn of Plenty.

Food, Fun and Friendliness.

We the People, Pursuit of Happiness.

CONG

 

Dear Atlantic Ocean,

The first time in life, I dipped my hand into Atlantic Ocean. Just over there is Nantucket, where the ashes of David Halberstam will rest. May my soul hitchhike the ferry across. Should I take some ash and drop it into Me Kong Delta, so he can meet his youth again?

One Very Hot Day. I stopped by the house of Home Sweet Home in East Hampton, and the
birthplace of the author, America the Beautiful in Falmouth.

I walked step-by-step on Boston’s Freedom Trail, not crazy rush like on the Freeway.

In Boston, I slept in the bed of a Marine who was moving from Kuwait to Iraq. I saw all his high school and college pictures, books, souvenirs on the shelves.

In Falmouth, I sent a letter to SPC. Johnson Stephen, who was now somewhere in Iraq, telling him about his beautiful Falmouth village, lighthouse, fishing, swimming and wishing for his safe return, not mentioned the bullshit war at all.

During Viet Nam War, at 15, I found many Xmas cards handmade by primary students in the States, in the Rear, sent to the GIs in the Front. Those were my boyhood toys, which I found in the garbage dump near my school.

Goodbye, Boston. Farewell to the navel of American Revolution. My body is in Jacksonville, Oregon, now, digging gold, but my soul still somewhere in New England with golden memories.

Many American-Vietnamese here never touch the navel of U.S. history and Revolution. They just do nails, run barbershops, and mow the lawns, trying to make $$$. Gold Rush no longer rushes. Hair, nails, and grass keep growing. We cannot stop them. The longer they grow, the more $$$ my friends make. Their American Dream fulfilled. The streets are paved with gold.

Up near Crater Lake , the first time in my life, I touched snow. Two little girls threw snowballs to me. I sat and lay on it. I walked, doubting my feet like Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon.

Goodbye, Boston. 4 July. I left the Cradle of Liberty, Birthplace of American Independence right on her 231st birthday. I ate hot dogs, potatoes salad, baked beans on the East Coast, and watched fireworks in the West, Oregon.

I am in Arcata, CA now.
CONG

 

Dear friends,

Good evening America. I set foot in LAX at 6:25 PM 21 May. Like Neil Armstrong stepped out of the spaceship walking on the Moon, like the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, I stood in line at Visitors Counter, Customs, at Tom Bradley Int’l Terminal in high spirit of Apollo and Mayflower. I giggled like the angels had the new wings ready to fly in Paradise.

My wife feels proud and happy back home in Viet Nam. At long last, at least once in life, her husband goes to America. The Promised Land, Paradise, Heaven, Something Number One.

She boastly told all the villagers, “My husband saw a pumpkin as large as a house in America.” All the villagers listened, mouths and eyes wide open.

Another lady said, “My husband also saw a cooking pot as big as the Village Commune.”

How come! What for?

The answer: “My husband’s pot is used to cook your husband’s pumpkin.”

Best,
Tran Quoc Cong

 

Dear America,

My soul and mind are untidy like NASA in Florida the day Apollo 11 returned from the Moon.

My visit to the U.S. Paradise is the reincarnation to me. I still have East-West jetlag. Climatically, Paradise. Purgatory, jet lag. It is The 0001 Place (not 1000) to see before you die. 101 Things to Do in life. Not many people have their dreams come true in this lifetime. I am one of the few. Out of more than 3000 photos taken during 90 days in the New World, the Dreamy Land, I had to choose the best, iconic 10. And if only 3 chosen, which ones should I pick out? I told my family, friends, neighbors, colleagues what I have seen:

  • the button to cross the streets
  • the subway in NY and Washington DC.
  • the snow in July at Crater Lake
  • the Atlantic Ocean
  • the Central Park in NY, desert in Arizona, Redwood Forest …

What I have tasted:

  • the biggest burger
  • the brownie and trail mix
  • the blueberry and yoghurt
  • the corn and salmon

What in USA scared me:

  • I almost burned my finger with the hot water tap in the kitchen.
  • the alarm at my classmate’s house. He gave me his house key, but his wife set the alarm as usual. I opened the door, and the siren barked fiercely. So scared, I just stood at the door holding my passport, just in case the police came. … Goose bumps. “Ask not what American will do for you, but what together we can do.” But, I am alone then.

Yesterday, my daughter asked me if I had any dream, dream to go visit somewhere, somewhere else.

No, I have no dream now. It takes time to have another dream. I feel full, my five senses.

Many thanks, USA,
C O N G