You see, my parents were always picky about their food. They wouldn’t eat this, they wouldn’t eat that. Very choosy. Which sometimes got them in trouble. That’s why it was particularly peculiar on Thanksgiving Day that they ate the whole meal themselves. My mother does not like turkey, but she ate the thing whole… My father hates cranberry sauce, yet he satisfyingly licked the sticky remains off his fingers. They did not even tell my brother and me to come down to eat.

Summer was when their “habits” really set in. On a hot Saturday afternoon, we all decided to go to the community pool to cool off… My parents had other ideas. We arrived, and they drank all the water in the pool. Nobody could swim.

That Sunday, we went to the cathedral in town. The sermon was about gluttony. How ironic.

The next day, the weather was terrible—storms everywhere. So, my father stole the lightning from the sky and ate it whole. One day after work, my mother came home and ate the patio. I was afraid she would start on the whole house. This continued for months… They were ravenous.

Their worst episode was at our cousin’s wedding… Everyone dressed in their Sunday’s best. At the reception, guests cheered on the newlyweds while my parents made their way to every table… More importantly, they ate every plate and wiped them clean. The caterers did not have extra food to spare.

One day, we were watching television. I asked them, Why are you like this? The pool, Thanksgiving, the wedding—why did you consume everything?

They said, We are not sure.

I replied, You know you are gluttons?

They said, We have the right to do anything—but we will not be mastered by anything.

I said, If you are given to gluttony, I should put a knife to your throats.

They said, We are scared, something consumed us.

I said, What?

They said, Open us.

I said I would not.

They said, You have to see, we are not your parents.

I said I would be convicted of murder and I am too young to go to jail.

They pleaded, Please, please open us and see. Pretend we are gifts. We are afraid. Save us!

I said, Don’t be afraid (even though fear consumed me).

They started screaming, Save us!

I slit their throats. Red spilled all over the floor like a river running through a valley. As did my tears. I heard something in the other room. I saw my parents, but not in their mortal state. They were beings but not humans.

My mother smiled and looked down at the table. Thanksgiving dinner was served.

Grace Reed was born and raised outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. She attends Towson University and plans on graduating with a degree in Mass Communication on a Public Relations and Advertising track in 2021. Her writing speaks louder than she does.

Featured image: Frank Lindecke

I performed a speedy pre-scan of Beth Ann Fennelly’s 52 micro-memoirs, Heating and Cooling.  I stopped at page 63.  The word Beyoncé caught my eye at the top right-hand side of the page.  I knew this book and I would be great friends. I was curious to see where America’s national treasure would show up in Fennelly’s life.  

I was surprised to find Beyoncé tucked between the lines of Fennelly’s memoir, “The Neighbor, The Chickens, and The Flames.”  It’s a short, fascinating read about a rogue chicken, stolen eggs, a chicken coop caught on fire, and the brief mention of a monopoly match.

I devoured Fennelly’s memoirs.  I read the book over again.  I enjoyed myself.  Why not?  It was like having drinks at the bar with a good friend—you know, the fun one.  The one who always has a story to tell.  You sit behind the bar in a tall chair, one hand cupping the thick wet glass of a cold pint, legs crossed, facing her, phone in purse, never touched during time spent together.  It isn’t needed because this is Beth Ann.

She takes you to a game of pool in a biker bar, to Barcelona, to a living room where she discusses false teeth with her father-in-law, to her nail salon, her bed post, her marriage, her children—yes, even marriage and children, which can be so incredibly boring in Facebook posts, become entertainment when Fennelly shares them.

You snort, almost spitting out your beer when she tells you about the dead cat in plastic wrap next to the vodka in her friend’s freezer. 

It’s not always fun and games.  Sometimes you get serious, as close friends do.  She recalls the strained confession of the words “I love you” to her father.  Those words were hard to say.  You lean in close, touch her arm, you’ve been there too.

 But then she shakes the heaviness of the moment off with an eye-roll of a story about the “commodification of art,” and some other small grievance about an obnoxious “rival poet” she remembers from grad school. Other writers can be so annoying. 

I drank all of Heating and Cooling in.  Over-served—52 rounds.  I stumbled home—giddy, warm, smiling.  Happy to have had the honor of a riot of a time with Beth Ann.

 And now, it’s your turn.   

I have a gynecologist appointment today. I’m scared, strangely. And I’m just now realizing that I’m not scared of my doctor per say, or the sterile smell, or the plethora of expired magazines, or the bubbled-bellies of the women sitting next to me, or the crinkle of the paper under my naked lower half, or the way my youthful blue toenails look next to a graying head, or the way I feel I’m being pulled open and explored like a crime scene often disrupted. But I’m just now realizing that I’m scared of what lives between my legs. We share a heartbeat.

I remember all of my friends getting their periods. I remember girls whispering about how Sarah uses tampons, not pads like the rest of us – of them. I remember girls shuffling off to the bathroom with their little purses wrapped around their bodies, like sashes of womanhood draped across their chests. How desperately I wanted to wear the same, display the same.

It’s almost comedic, how many times I’ve told men I believe I’m infertile. It’s just a feeling, I say – to myself or to them. It’s because I don’t understand what shares a heartbeat with me. And if I can’t understand that, how would I ever understand a child inside of me?

I thought getting my period would make me feel in sync with my body. It might help me understand. Why do my elbows ache when I put my weight on them? Why do my thumbs swell up in the morning? Why do my teeth feel scratchy when I chew on ice? Why did my body tremble when I climbed the rope in gym class? I quake at the thought of anyone else exploring the part of me I share a heartbeat with. You don’t have to do that, I always offer. Maybe it’s more so Please let me understand that part of me before you do; let me explore this uncharted territory on my own.

My aunt and uncle have a big house on the outskirts of the city. Old and beautiful and complete with additions. They’ve owned it my whole life, and yet I still have dreams where I’m exploring dark corners of the house. I never manage to construct a complete correlation between corridors. I think I idolize its enigmatic appeal. But if given the opportunity to pass through each doorway, I’m unsure if I would.

My period has never been normal. “You’re lucky,” I recall my friends telling me. “It’s always once a month for me, and like floodgates.” They wanted the way my body rarely decided to mourn its loss of possibility. And somehow I found myself sobbing in back bathroom stalls because my body refused to evolve. I don’t understand why I still find myself crying, though I’ve achieved this sense of womanhood I so desperately cried out for. Why do I suddenly stumble upon myself sitting in the shower like that? Or why am I standing at the gas pump like that? People can see you, I have to tell myself. And still, I’m crying. I’m happy, there’s nothing for me to be stressed about. And still, I’m crying in the grocery store. Maybe I need to talk to somebody.

“I had my period every other week when I was living in Florida,” I told my gynecologist once while staring at the porous ceiling tiles, looking for a pattern when there was only chaos.  She didn’t have an answer. “No real reason to be concerned,” I recall her saying as she closed my legs like she was done with her afternoon reading.

Perhaps my fear of that part of my body could be attributed to a violation. Or violations. I wonder if there’s a place they’re piling up, like parking tickets on a dusty dashboard. Like a dusty dashboard left abandoned in an otherwise empty lot on the edge of a dense wood. Like a dense wood that holds a needle in the haystack, abandoned and waiting to be sorrowfully discovered. A body once kissed and touched and held and loved, now swinging like drying meat on display.

I keep desperately trying to pay these violations off in whatever ways I can. Three glasses of Hendricks and a desperately generous tip. A desperately warm smile at the stringy girl waiting in my therapist’s office. A collected face and back turned to the funeral, desperate handkerchiefs stashed up my sleeves. The desperate clown. Desperate to understand and possibly distract.

I think I’ve digressed. I’m terrified of the creature that lives between my legs, the thing I share a heartbeat with. The monster and victim all in one. I want to love it, to proudly march down a crowded D.C. street for it. But here I am, telling myself I’m scared of the sterile smell that tugs to attention the hairs on my arms, of the magazines haphazardly stacked waiting for someone to make a move, of the tiny babies struggling to win their little wars in the womb, of the vulnerability of my station on that damn paper, of the practically faceless who’s searching for the details of my personal fortress, of the tool being prepared to pull me apart, of the way I’m being held open and explored like the crime scene I am. All instead of admitting I don’t understand the thing that supposedly defines me. We share a heartbeat.

Christy Kato is a 2018 Acting and Theatre BFA graduate from Towson University. She maintains a “very personal” blog that serves as a cathartic outlet for herself, but was created to encourage others to share their personal stories of struggle and growth. This is her first publication.

Check out her blog below!

https://www.christykato.com/?fbclid=IwAR3JyzPEjJoRY0HLbPYrAUgTUmXRYiAkiXdC-ROE5Tp5jxvFgYuh5aKAy-A

I am writing to ask if you’d like

to dance again in the kitchen.

I have never been much for a phone

call, as you know. I was thinking

I could bring boas and peacock

flumes for our shoulders and the waists

of our pants. All the times you’ve tried

to teach me the Charleston 

with my eyes closed—this time,

I’d like to open them. We can put ice

in the beer because you prefer it

that way. We can smoke

your Slims as we make our way

through six rounds of gin

rummy. At midnight, we could eat

half-truths as you tell me how you fell

in love. I’d like to fall

asleep in that bed while you play

solitaire at your desk—just once more.

Carmelita, this could be read

as atonement but I must live

with the choice I made, having never sent

this letter. They called me an hour ago

to tell me that you had died.

Yesterday I sat beside you,

you still able to hold my hand.

I heard you mumble along

to the song we once circled

our hips to and I could only sit dumb

and cry. Carmelita, they’ve told me

that you’ve died and I can only sit here

pouring over a letter I never intended on sending you. 

Alison Hazle is a poet/writer and art school survivor. She plans to pursue an MFA somewhere far away from Baltimore.

Let’s speak of the grizzly bear

in the middle of the room.

Thick black rambutan branches

dripping citrus under the sun.

What extra powers are suppressed

beneath? Lulling opponents to sleep

with each bend against the wind. Hope

is lost if you stare directly into the void

because by then, arms will outstretch

to consume its prey & what other

response is justified when under

direct attack & the focal

point is to stifle the air around you.

Any creature backed into a corner

remembers they have to survive &

remembers that they have skin

beneath their fur that can be penetrated

unless they quickly realize that

it isn’t the hair that wards off defenders

but the hidden keen teeth that refuse

to help another man’s hunger.

Joshua Nguyen is a Kundiman Fellow, collegiate national poetry champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He has been published in The Offing, The Acentos Review, Rambutan Literary, Button Poetry, The Texas Review, Gulf Coast, and Hot Metal Bridge. He is currently an MFA candidate at The University of Mississippi. He is a bubble tea connoisseur and works in a kitchen.

Those of us hailing from that oddly shaped mid-Atlantic state haphazardly carved into the east coast of America are probably familiar with the strange phenomenon that coincides with traveling either north or south from our homeland. I’ve been as far as Massachusetts in one direction and the tip of Florida in the other. At a bar in South Carolina, I got called a “Yankee,” one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War’s conclusion. In an upstate New York antique mall, a gentleman described me as a, “good ol’ boy.” Being a Marylander is sometimes confusing.

You could blame the Mason-Dixon Line, a demarcation that resulted from a land dispute between Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware during the latter half of the eighteenth century, one that would have tremendous and far-reaching consequences after becoming the de facto border between North and South, Freedom and Slavery.

For being a relatively small patch of land, Maryland held enormous strategic importance during the Civil War. Considered a semi-loyal “border state,” the territory remained technically in Union hands. Though most of its population was initially sympathetic to the North, there was certainly a strong contingent of Confederate separatists as well.

With its proximity to the nation’s capital, the Old Line State (a nickname bestowed by George Washington) became at times a hotly contested battleground. The Battle of Antietam, the single bloodiest day of the conflict, was fought on Maryland soil. Abraham Lincoln further stoked tension in the region by suspending the right of habeas corpus, which remained a widespread source of animosity even after the War ended. The sixteenth president is much better associated with a different Latin phrase: sic semper tyrannis, the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth, assassin, Marylander.

As a kid growing up in the 1990s, this period of American history became a big part of my educational experience. We’d be loaded onto a rickety, old, yellow school bus and carted off to sites like the Monocacy Battlefield, just outside of my hometown Frederick. In fifth grade my class re-enacted the Battle of Antietam. Donning period appropriate garb then pitching tents in the softball field, we fashioned rifles and bayonets out of construction paper and ate hardtack as we awaited further orders.

Our teachers eventually arranged us in formation, Rebels positioned atop a small hill with Yankees lined up in ranks at the bottom. Everyone was given a number. Our hulking gym teacher, Mr. Bentley, a vein bursting from his forehead, rallied the troops with a booming call to arms, “Charge!”

In retrospect, the set-up was historically accurate if not slightly unsettling. During the final phase of the battle, Union troops marched against a division of Confederates entrenched along a ridge. With dense woods and large rocky outcropping, the Rebels had ample natural cover in addition to holding high ground, making for the perfect defensive position. The boys in blue, on the other hand, were forced to cross a creek over a narrow stone bridge during the assault, leaving them bottlenecked and completely exposed to Confederate fire from above. One survivor described the scene as “a valley of death.” By the evening of September 17, 1862, almost 23,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing.

During our re-enactment, I’d been enlisted to the Confederacy, a fact that in retrospect deeply troubles me. In the wake of the 2017 Charlottesville attack, the catalyst of which was the proposed removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, recalling my ten-year-old self clad in gray and shouting, “Die, Yankees!” makes me feel physically ill.

I remember crouching in the grass on that tiny hill pretending to fire my paper musket. Mr. Bentley shouted out random numbers, “Seventeen! Four! Twenty-two!” If your number was called, you were supposed to drop dead. I watched in a gleeful sort of awe as droves of my friends collapsed into the earth, crying out in imagined agony, their faces contorted in pretend pain. Near the battle’s end, a bird shit on my hat and I started to cry.

Like my time spent masquerading as a Confederate infantryman, the current state slogan for Maryland is so cringeworthy I almost hesitate to write it: “If you’re looking for a merry land, go to Maryland!” It’s trite to the point of embarrassment, almost as bad as the state motto, a blatantly sexist sixteenth-century quip attributed originally to Pope Clement VII: “Fatti maschii, parole femine.” This translates from the Italian as, “Manly deeds, womanly words.” Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to modify this saying to the more gender neutral, “Strong deeds, quiet words,” but these efforts have gone in vain, despite the fact that no one seems able to concretely explain why this quote was even added onto the Maryland state seal in the first place.

I much prefer the old slogan: “More Than You Can Imagine.” As if the little microcosm of America we inhabit is some sort of abstraction, an impossibility  beyond the scope of human comprehension. It’s true that I don’t understand exactly what attracts me to this place, keeps me tethered here. I suspect this inbetweenness, this duality, fits with the way I view myself, Janus-like, a multiplicity, Yankee, Rebel, both, neither.

Matt Lee is an actor, teacher, and writer from Maryland. His writing has appeared at Sleaze Mag, Tragickal, SOFT CARTEL, Philosophical Idiot, and fluland. He has also written and produced numerous original works for the stage. Visit mattleewrites.com for more info.

                                          *
 
Not the first time I loved you, just the first time I met you.
Your breath like dead fish pickled in your alcoholism.
Your knuckles raw from beating someone up the night before.
Your long hair greased from stress and hours.
A single word etched into each of your twelve teeth:
 
I  was  born  to  die  alone  these  thoughts  are  not  my  own
 
I made you smile three times to read the whole poem.
It wasn’t hard to do: smile first
and laugh at a thing you said. I don’t remember what it was.
That makes me a bad person. Worse than you maybe.
I don’t usually fall in the dark
but in the freak of the night I had a pang—
a longing to believe that we are more than they claim
or at least that one of us might be.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you but when I was deep in love with you.
My hand, caught in a bad dream, running across the metal plate
that the doctors placed above your burning brain;
the times you tried to drain the ghosts yourself
through the holes someone made in your skull.
 
But  they  could  not  see  you  so  the  help  was  only  hurt
 
And if I’m being honest, there might have been a sliver of me
that wanted to believe certain people are unlovable
so I might could maybe call myself a miracle worker.
Your swollen foot pressed deep into the gas pedal.
The speedometer breaking; the ignited city pulsing through us.
You screaming at the windshield that you wanted to murder the whole world.
And it would be easy enough to be horrified but instead
I only whispered in your ear that crows don’t fly south for the winter.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you, just the first time I doubted you.
When you tried to drown me in the bathtub, calling it the ocean.
Calling it a baptism or a long time coming.
Your skin turned lizard beneath the bathroom lighting
and as I lay there, supine and scared, I began to notice:
 
All  this  violence  was  too  vague  all  these  fears  were  too  specific
 
And what scared me wasn’t you and it wasn’t dying
but something threatening in the underbelly of the water.
My reflection choking on the air above me.
I wanted to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
I wanted to rise to the top of the atmosphere.
Then you let go of my chest
and I rose to meet myself in the space inside the surface tension.
I took a breath and saw you wrapped up in yourself crying on the floor
and I pulled the plug and watched the water flow down the drain.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you but the time that I left you.
We drove all night and lay in the dying dark;
I, drunk and hungry, you coughing up blood onto the side of the freeway.
As daylight suffocated the stars
I ran my aching tongue along your teeth:
 
I  was  born  to  die  alone  these  thoughts  are  not  my  own
 
The birds began to sing the morning and I felt your breath turn heavy
and my left hand pulled the keys from your pocket
as my right hand circled the broken circle of your face.
The engine humming, the road passing beneath me, you alone in that ditch.
This makes me a bad person, worse than you maybe.
I didn’t think about the first time I loved you.
I didn’t think about anything at all, only stared ahead.
The planet curved with cruelty, carrying me with it.
 
                                                *

Trevor Plate spent his childhood on the island of Guam before moving to the mainland at eighteen. Now he lives all over the country while he continues to write poetry. His poems have previously appeared in Maudlin House, Boston Accent, and The Ilanot Review.

Melt the gold between your palms
and smear it on everything you love:
your hips, your lips, the soles of your feet.

This month I am sick of sand and sun and callouses;
in my dreams I am new skin, tender and thin.
The fluttering of my heartbeat rises in every place
my angles meet, and anyone could see
how desperate they blush to be touched.

A fist I took once to make me ice
has instead made me fire, reduced cinder,
liquid in the rains, the shade of dried blood.

I bite the open hand, climb the fence instead of going though,
lie on my back and close my eyes to imagine it differently.
I cannot be made into granite no matter how long I stand still;
the bees and blooms crawl up my knees and drape me in honey
too heavy to bear, too sweet to eat. 

Melt the gold between your fingers
and press it to everything you hate:
the curve of your stomach, the length of your throat,
the lines time has carved onto your face.

I breathe in black and blue until the bruises bloom and then wilt,
the fat sunrise rests its face against the ocean, tired too,
in a better world the dawn remakes me,     new.
 
 

A.M. Kennedy is a writer and painter from Tampa. She specializes in precariously stacking books and half-finished tea mugs. She has been previously published in 3Elements Review,Popshot Magazine, and The Burningword.

Leah: Did you see Beth got her hair cut?
Cecelia: No. Let me see this. -pause- oh no.
Leah: I know, tragic. And she was supposed to have her date with Oliver on Friday.
Cecelia: We’ll see how that happens. If that happens.

Leah: Oh this is a cool picture.
Cecelia: What is it?
Leah: It says it’s from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
Cecelia: Wow. It’s so empty. It is beautiful, though.

Cecelia: Why did Suze post a picture of a horse?
Leah:  It’s the new horse her dad got her.
Cecelia: Her dad got her a horse?
Leah: Yeah, he felt bad that he hadn’t seen her in a year after he lost custody in the divorce.
Cecelia:  If only my parents were divorced.
Leah: I think he might have had to go to rehab.
Cecelia: Still a fucking horse? Imagine what else she can get.

Leah: Did you hear about all the cutbacks to student loans? Now, like, practically no one can get financed.
Cecelia: LOL, there goes college.
Leah: Like we ever had an actual future to hope for.

Cecelia: Oh no, Denny has to go to court.
Leah: Not Denny, no! What did he do?
Cecelia: He was texting and driving. Again.
Leah: I saw his snap-story. He was actually snapping while driving last time.
Cecelia: Ah, Denny. Is there any hope for him to ever learn?

Cecelia:  Did you see the news this morning?
Leah: Are you talking about the townhouse fire in the city? My mom told me about that over breakfast.
Cecelia: No, the mass shooting in Des Moines. 21 people were killed; they were saying about 40 others were wounded.
Leah: Another one?
Cecelia: Yeah, another one.
Leah: People need to chill the fuck down. Love each other. Stop shooting.
Cecelia: Tell me about it.

Leah: I took that “choose your dream shopping spree and we’ll tell you how old you really are” quiz.
Cecelia: And? What did you get?
Leah: Well, according to this, I’m a senior citizen.
Cecelia: Seriously?
Leah: “You are an old soul at heart. Your care for others is deep and grandmotherly to its very core. Your ideal day includes baking, watching birds, spoiling your grandkids, and watching some ‘Judge Judy.’ You might not admit it, but you have that stash of strawberry hard candies tucked away in the bottom of your bag. Everyone looks to you as a source of wisdom and cookies.”
Cecelia: I can’t. No. I just can’t.
Leah: Hey. Respect your elders.

Cecelia: Carter just posted a picture. His dad is in the hospital.
Leah: What happened?
Cecelia: Apparently he swallowed a bunch of pills and overdosed. They aren’t sure if he was trying to kill himself or what.
Leah:  Wow. I wish there was something we could do.
Cecelia:  I know. But what can we do?
Leah: I don’t know. Everything I can say at this point has already been said. And besides it’s all stupid, meaningless clichés.
Cecelia: Oh well. I sent him a text. I used a bunch of those little praying hands emojis.
Leah: Yeah, that’ll definitely help.

Leah: Did you see Karie got a new little dog?
Cecelia: A puppy? Let me see this cutie.

What am I if I am not
a girl? The pulpy body
of a dead sea mollusk,
dissolving?
             Am I crunchy?
                          The shell it left behind,
                          rotted in,            shouldering
                          deception?
What if I am made
from other shells, who
were made from mother shells,
who were stepped on so often
             that the gravity of their woman
           bones             collapsed in, made dust
                                  of themselves
                                                  beneath
                                                  the boot of a man I have
                                                  never met but can feel
                                                  still in the tips of my hairs
                                                  anytime someone asks me
                                                                              what I am?

Micaela Walley is a graduate from the University of South Alabama. Her work can be found in Oracle Fine Arts Review, Occulum, and ENTROPY. She currently lives in Hanover, Maryland with her best friend—Chunky, the cat.