Fall Issue #5

september 2011

from "Heart-Eye" - A Himalayan folk tale

Poetry

Ishita Basu Mallik Version(sonnenizio on a line from Shakespeare)Against that time, if ever that time comes, let me pretend my back on your floor, incumbentwith several shades of gravity. No colder comfortthan the way my voice is locum for your words, the nameI wear in lieu of touch. I'm going commandounder these jeans. You're welcome. They're pre-fadedand beside the point. I don't doubt that you're combustible,that you've already become an electric remnantbombarding my bones with wavelengths. I'm committedto communication - the trick is not to listen between the lines.The DJ allots an entire playlist and you can't recommendmy cummerbund, my big blunt wrist, my Mafia princebut this is my take, uncommon or garden; how farI've been going for years; where I go. /Come back/.-------Visiting HoursYou don't ask for much: graphpaper. The dry sweet press of a hand.An orange, peeled. Time.I push my pencilthrough the sockets of a housestill brown in its bones& gather the numbers you recitelike so many seeds, smoothand not a little bitterTwo hawks anchor the sky,their backs to us. The solidityof their wings irrefutable.Ishita was born in Calcutta and lives in Kolkata. She sometimes likes to write poems about pop music.

Aseem Kaul In My EyesIf I could see you just onceI would close my eyes foreverI would see nothing but you,I would hold you unseen.- KabirWho dares come betweenthe darkness and the dream?Who dares imagineyour beautymore fragile than sunbeamsthat break against water,shyer than wavestouching their first shore. You eclipse me with light, Beloved,as though the world were shadowand my heart a blind diamondrefracting your name. Always you escapethe traps of my mirrorsas the light escapesmy eyelidsturning shapes to oxygencolors to flameyour memory to ashyour image scatteredacross the galaxieslost among starsI cannot reach;my one true faithan invisible absencewider than longingdeeper than speech. --------In the GardenA taste for hungerconsumes itself. Adam crouches in the shrubberygnawing on a rib,his desire namelesslike the tongues foldedin the mouth of a rose. Elsewhere, the tree growsinto a semblance of handsthe moon is a bruiselonging to be fingeredwhat the mind prohibitsthe flesh demands. -------To Stand in a WindowTo stand in a windowis to be discovered by light:loveneither fall nor heightbut a clarity of warmth;not how far you can seeor how fair the view,but the way the sun streamsinto your room,touching each objectout of its gloom,turning it precious,making it new. Aseem lives in Minneapolis, where he is Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Aseem's poems have appeared in Mascara, Blood Orange Review, The Cortland Review, RHINO and nthposition, among others, and a collection of his short fiction, études, was published in 2009.

Magdalawit Makonnen Gray on GrayGray on gray (secret girl)cut alongback into speech again. Sudden turn: strays I find in it. Courage pulsating, beating of any seawhere old tree, unwinding upon grass,days and years, time and timeback into speech again, will not watch anything go. Will instead wait for vast takings. And kisses on barks of trees, therewhere direction yields its stones.-------ElectricShe was a girl, before she was a name. Gut braider, skipper. Catching a bird was easy-waiting in the yard. Orbiting song and catch with pieces of food, unawares. Dark mouthed, she eyes him. But his largess could only measure and tear. A home she couldnt feather or round with beak. Girl out of line and separated from him by decades. Seeking his electric, through the left, out she went. Saying: but please doctor, could you do more of make, why merely stitch the pain up.There is always a going back. If she refuses to cry, theres always a caved in garage and under it, a ruined Fiat. For those working with worms and city bugs, flight is cruel, a midwife.Magdalawit did an English BA from UCLA, and is currently a Poetry MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her poems have appeared in The View From Here (UK), SubtleTea Magazine, MiPOesias, The Bijou Poetry Review, The Talon Magazine, Volt, and other journals. She is Associate Poetry Editor at Splinter Generation, and resides in Echo Park (LA), CA.

Pianta Dreamwalk dreamwalk dreamworlddo you still hear and see me? or are we merely inch-wide verticesglimpsed through closing elevator doors? just particles rattled in throat boxeswords talking usnot us talking the wordsdreampeoplemore real in sleep than in wakingBorn and raised in Honolulu, Pianta currently teaches and writes in San Diego, California. Her work has appeared in literary journals in Hawai'i and most recently in publications such as Ekphrasis and terrain.org. She also does occasional projects as a member of MAE (Movement Artists Ensemble), which integrates movement improvisation and film.

Alan Kleiman No SubjectsI wrote lots more poemsbut there were no subjectsavailable todayso I returned the words to theirspaces in the dictionaryand put the letters back in thealphabetuntilsuitable subjects arisethen I need to just whistleand the wordswillcome togetheras before.Alan's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Criterion, Moniques Passions, Lyrical Lip Service, and The Bashful Beaver Literary Magazine. He lives in New York City and works as an attorney. When not practicing law or writing, he spends as much time as he can on bicycles and sailboats.

Rushnaf Wadud I Dream of TrainsI dream of trains, and the impending emptinessOf the hearts and eyes watching the railroadBeing calm, and quiet, and cruel. I dream of trains, of empty compartments,Rooms that don't remember you, blitzing awayTo towns you'll forget the names of, anyway. I dream of trains, and things that whistle awayWith your someones and somethings, and returnWith someones and somethings else, and sometimes, nothings. I dream of trains; I put my ear to the metal tracksAnticipating the coming of them that I remember,Until the weight of rememberance's wheel crushes my head.-------My Grandmother Speaks of CavesMy grandmother speaks of caves,And caves within caves,With hidden streamsAnd underground lakes. She exclaims in thrilled wonder,O my son's son!What an amazing land it was! They call it The Land of the Free,And one day, o my son's son,You will live there too,And like my other sons,You will be free! I go to my grandmother's kitchen,And bring back a sharp knife,To cleave out my heart, andShow her that there are caves,And caves within caves,And lakes and streams hiddenDeep underneath my skin. As my blood spills onto her white sari,Red, and fierce, and steaming with anger,And love,I see reflected in the shock in her eyesA glimpse of how truly fearsomeTrue freedom is.---------Rushnaf is a singer, songwriter, (wannabe) prophet and rock star all rolled into one. He divides his time between New Delhi and Bangladesh.

Sohini Chattopadhey PiecesLemon TeaBlack coffeeThe single flower leftpressedBetween the pages of a hardbackThat one songhummedunknowingly at firstlovingly, laterits true what they showat the moviesits the little things that remainthe favourite actorsthe flavour of ice creamand so I find myselfon empty afternoonswatching the films you lovedchuckling aloudat your favourite actorsa cup of teain my handand another brewingin the kettleas if youd walk inany minuteand watch with me---------PYTwhen almost most the complexes had dried uplike ignored pimples often doand I had made me peace with me mirrori found meself laughingan awful silly lotand buying a great deal of pinkuseless stuff that is suddenly sweetsomedays i wear emand passing traffic smiles bythough those are not alwaysthe days I get compliments in the officebut sometimesthat happens tooand then I dance a little jigto P.Y.T.in the cramped looand somenightsas i tap away at my laptopunannounced compliments land on my phoneinspiring happiehippieuntethered verse------Sohini spends most of her working hours dreaming up and writing stories for the OPEN magazine. The remaining waking hours she pretends to be a poet, and a cook.

Monica Mody Tethered Shove horsesfrom the sleeping breath of babies. Treat of sugar croonscleaves their tongues. Tamed into a sinecure gallop by a polite audience.Whose are those fat lips? Who is pulling them into the sea?------by our own standardsthat are old standards rhymes misjoinedgrab & go this heart beats too mucham I to knock it downbuild over step up stones stacked love me mostriser lynch a secret you endearedright off the sky climbing giant geese------On Stones Dedicated to Leslie Feinberg and the Delhi Quartzite That lazy lowlife stone, following you aroundwith its eyes as you walk down the length ofthe park, knows no arts of affection. Has neverclimbed on a lap to be petted, or purred, normoaned with pleasure. Its dignity lies in being benign, steady, square, slow. We expectso much from stones. And they only want --stones seek feet as much as feet seek stones. Those soft salty cells cast off in their crevicesturn them wet with wanting. They only want. And so they sprout loversevery second: sitting on sun warmed orlying on moon cooled stones, or drunk holdinghands. And mynahs with fecund throats sing ofenamelled stairs and hopes locked in chests, desires locked in cunts of stone.Stone swish stone sroo. Stone swish stone sroo.You pause at your front door and listen.The straight-limbed, clear-thighed young stonesurvives, finally calls out his blues. Once the wishes you make ignitethe air and the sky is streaked with stones;when your heart opened its wings and flew up,they all looked, mouths open eyes wide,having never seen a heart or held it.Monica's work has been published in the Boston Review (Poet's Sampler), West Wind Review, apocryphal text, horse less review, Cannot Exist, LIES/ISLE, Wasafiri, and Pratilipi, among other journals. She is the author of a chapbook, Travel & Risk, from Wheelchair Party, and has a book forthcoming in Fall 2012 from 1913 Press.

Avantika Vardhan Haiku & Tanka(i)Silent summer nightA full moon. For company,Thirty thousand stars. (ii)Where will the cloud float,This way or that way?Even the wind might not know. (iii)On the moonlit porchListen, to tales of his youth. The breeze carries scents Of hidden flowers. Between words, nostalgia creeps.(iv)An old ballad plays;On the pane, a perched starlingBolts, scattering notes.Avantika is currently a Phd student living in Salt Lake City, USA. She recently started writing poetry and was published in the journal Kritya.

Arjun Rajendran PāhoehoeThis is the sagging flesh of the elephant a comet drove mad, the geometry of a nausea, these are the dark ropes of the sun I saw through x-rays of grandmas lungs fromthe corners of an afternoon, the velvet rivers under the surface of dreams.This is a stretch mark of the universe growing healthy in Krishnas mouth, the anatomy of a doubt spreading through mountainous towns on railroads leading into the rings of Saturn. This is the invisible urn holdingthe ashes of a fiery ouroboros.--------Waikoloa SunsetWe are two shells on a beach. The half-eaten peach rolls to the tip of a fronds shadow. The sky oozes the blood of slaughtered pigs. We are almost the ticking spirits of clocks buried alive, farm hands loosening twilight ropes that hoisted the sun. Hearts grow rooms watching these daily baptisms. Waves break their spines on our hunch-backed minds. The air breathes through crimson footprints. A sinking feeling grabs the elbows of silhouettes, the squid nets heavy with a lonelytrain of thought. Dolphins play into a blanket of stars.These pieces are inspired by a recent visit to Hawaii. Arjun has been previously published at Asian Cha, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Reading Hour Magazine, Switched-on Gutenberg and has poems upcoming at Nether Magazine, WLA Journal and The Mascara Literary Review. He works as a technical writer in Austin and is originally from Bombay.

Laura Eppinger SuffocatingAfter my first muggingon my front doorstep at duskI stopped sleepingwith the windowsopen. Everyonesaid this seemed sensible. It happened again just a blockfrom home. I refusedto leave the house at night.Living alone, this damagedmy social life, but I was determined to keepmyself safe. The third knife threat of these ninemonths in Cape Town happenedanyway. I never cracka window anymore. Not during cooking,after a showeror even on a hot day. My landlord spottedsome black mold on the ceiling, some mildewcreeping along the windows.He told me I'll suffocate if I won'tunlock the windows. I told him it was too late.--------The Bed in the BasementOn humid dayswith our backs to a sea-level windowwe stretched out our lips like workers gloves.They were so new, they nearly snapped.My heart was a kitchen spongethat germinatedsaplings, lithe and cold. We were smothered on the mattress,all pillows and curvesin that sickly yellow light. The soil turned to clayand eventually dried to dust. Months laterwhile winter was still in meI found an infestation of beetlesbetween the window and the bed-board. As Mom handed me the vacuum cleanerI wondered what else was hiddenbehind that bed in the basement.Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism. Her poetry, fiction and photography has been published at The Camel Saloon, Bacopa Literary Review, the Battered Suitcase, orion headless, danse macabre, and the Houston Literary Review. In early 2011 she relocated to Cape Town, South Africa to earn a Masters in Social Development from the University of Cape Town, and more importantly, to live with PJ, her one true love. You can find her online at http://lolionthekaap.blogspot.com.

Michael Caylo-Baradi Their Mutual Silenceis smooth glosson their windshield, takingin sky, trees, buildings,or street-signs,all fusing intomutating reflections.Acceleration controlsthese mutations,to ensurethey're never fusedfor too long, to showa unified form.Michael lives in California. His work has appeared in Asia Writes, BlazeVox, Metazen, PopMatters, Prick of the Spindle, Tertulia Magazine, and elsewhere.

Ishita Basu Mallik
Aseem Kaul
Magdalawit Makonnen
Pianta
Alan Kleiman
Rushnaf Wadud

Ishita Basu Mallik
Aseem Kaul
Magdalawit Makonnen
Pianta
Alan Kleiman
Rushnaf Wadud

Prose

Nick Thaler Prologue Slaughter in Sato Village(An exclusive first-look excerpt from Nick Thaler's novel Fox and the Peach published by Madness Books in early October 2011)To the casual eye they would have been invisible, three figures slipping through the brush and trees without so much as a rustle. With the grace of herons, they ghosted down the slope toward the tiny camp and paused at a ledge overlooking a sheer white cliff. A stream trickled through the valley below, where little mud huts lay peacefully along its banks in neat rows. The moon was full, brightly illuminating the still night, but it did not matter to the three figures standing together in their black masks and padded clothes - they were shinobi, and they had come to this village to kill.One of them flashed a hand signal to the others: "Filthy animals," it said. Though his face was hidden beneath his hood, the other two could read his contempt. The Yan Tribe was the only ninja clan that developed its own hand code for silent conversation. "We should have done this long ago." His name was Kawaru, the youngest of the group. This was his third mission, but he had first tasted blood years ago and had found it much to his liking.The other two glanced at each other. Only the young upstart's prodigious abilities stayed Rinji's hand at that moment. The older shinobi quickly banished his anger and raised two fingers. Tsukimi, the woman of the group, gave a brief nod as her body shimmered and faded away. The others heard her soft tabi boots pad to the east. Rinji gestured to Kawaru and pointed to the river. "Strike from there," he signaled. Kawaru grinned wide beneath his thin cloth mask. He closed his eyes and summoned the chi needed to form his invisibility shield. As always, there was a brief tingling on his skin, as if he were stepping into drizzle, and then the slightly unsettling sensation of floating. Once he was unseen, he impulsively signaled to Rinji, "Of course, My Lord." If Rinji had seen that sign, he might have struck down Kawaru immediately - the idea of master and vassal among the Yan was a filthy notion that only lesser humans possessed. To the Yan, all within the tribe were equal except for the Dai-Yan, their Shadow Lord.Rinji didn't see what Kawaru had signaled, but his heightened senses picked up the rustle of the younger ninja's fingers. As he switched his own invisibility on and dashed down the sheer ledge, he briefly reflected on Buddha's lesson on patience. Kawarus time would come.*A small brown rabbit hesitated as it reached the edge of the rice paddy, its nose twitching urgently in the cool air. The night was still and the sky was clear of predators, but something seemed amiss. The creature barely had time for a muffled squeak before a boot darted out of the rows of rice stalks and slammed down hard onto its head. Kawaru laughed silently as his heel crunched and pressed down harder. A warm wetness seeped up his cotton leggings and sent a chill down his spine. He flicked the remains into the bush, uncaring that villagers might smell the blood with their own heightened senses. The residents here may have appeared fearsome to some, but to Kawaru they were as insignificant as that rabbit, small lives that were his for the taking. He slipped into the rice paddies banking off the river and passed through them without letting a single stalk sway. Crouching in the shallow paddy water, Kawaru unsheathed his kodachi and waited. Two minutes passed before he heard the trill of a great egret. The signal. He rose and gracefully flowed into the village. Inside the first hut was a lone old man, likely a hermit, resting comfortably in a hammock with a pipe slowly smoking by his side. A brief jab to the throat finished him instantly. Kawaru flicked the blood off and observed the corpse - it remained still. Ah, a real human then, hiding out among these tanuki. Kawaru had heard that some eccentrics actually liked living among the othermen, but he was nonetheless disappointed; he had hoped to witness a transformation right away. Still, there were so many yet to kill.The second hut proved to be far more interesting. A young couple - perhaps the farmers of that rice paddy - slumbered, blissfully unaware. Both died soundlessly. Kawaru watched the bloodied corpses sag and sink like wet cotton dolls, compressing upon themselves to revert back to their natural animal form. The dead tanuki was bestial in its natural form, a hybrid of dog and raccoon. Their pointy teeth were bared in silent snarls as they met death, and their brown fur was blackened by blood. Kawaru gleefully laughed out loud - this was far more entertaining than killing mere humans.Suddenly a cry went up and the camp came alive. Kawaru cursed under his breath and wondered which of his companions had been careless. It did not matter, the tanuki would all die tonight. The ninja closed his eyes as his practiced hands flew into motion. He summoned a body double that split from his body and immediately dove out of the hut and into the battle. Through his double's eyes, he saw tanuki, in various states of transformation, running around in panic and disarray. He couldn't see the other ninja. Kawaru quickly restored his invisibility and followed his double outside, lurking carefully behind its shadow.A large bearlike tanuki reared up and struck at the double with a mighty blade that jutted directly from its shoulder blade, as if it were an actual arm. The double dissolved into a black fog and then Kawaru was upon the creature, stabbing deftly upwards underneath its chin. The sword bit through flesh and the creature let out a roar before abruptly slumping over, still standing in front of Kawaru. Its blade-arm faded into a small claw and the body shrank to its normal proportions as the tanuki died.Kawaru heard a faint wail and rolled under the incoming throwing knife. It sizzled past his ear and buried itself in his enemy's corpse, still dangling from his sword. Kawaru turned and studied the little child before him. This tanuki had turned herself into a beautiful girl, nine or so, perhaps trying to instill sympathy in the attackers. Kawaru only laughed and plucked out the knife with his free hand, casually flinging it back at the thrower even before she could ready a second one. The girl caught it in the eye and her head flopped back. The shinobi didn't bother to watch the transformation this time - it had suddenly become a boring affair.*

Page 2

Nick Thaler01 He slid his sword free and sent out another body double. Once again, he waited until a tanuki attacked the illusion, and then countered with a vicious blow. Some of the tanuki were starting to group together now, combining their transformation powers to create great visions, images of ghosts and demons designed to baffle their attackers and send them fleeing. A giant red-fanged devil leered down from the sky and shot a burning fireball toward Kawaru. He merely sheathed his sword and closed his eyes. All ninja were trained to meditate in the heat of battle as a method of dispelling trickery, and few were as adept at teaching it as the Yan. When his eyes were open again, the swirling mists and half formed demons that had begun to emerge were gone, replaced by a dozen or so small, furry animals huddling together in a circle. He suppressed a derisive laugh as he snatched a small clay bomb from his belt and tossed it into the center of the group. Only one tanuki noticed the round object roll toward them and as he knelt down to pick it up, a large explosion sent his body flying. The smoke cleared, revealing the burnt and bloody corpses of the others. Kawaru whipped out his sword and twirled it triumphantly in his hand before slamming it back into its sheath.*Tsukimi was on the east side of the village, surrounded by her kills. Kawaru nodded once to her and signaled. "How many are left?""None, here. Rinji is taking care of the last few, north," she responded. Kawaru gleefully noticed that the kunichi had only slain half a dozen. Besides the grenade and the initial kills, Kawaru had killed three more of the animals, bringing his total to seventeen. It seemed proof enough that few Yan could match his abilities, and none as young as him. "So you killed six. We were informed that thirty lived in this wasteland. That means Rinji should have handled seven." Tsukimi ignored the implied boast and turned away. She found no joy in slaughtering helpless creatures, no matter what the Dai-Yan had ordained. Justice, she reminded herself, was the code of the Yan, and these animals were the vassals of that monstrous Oda Nobunaga, warlord and scourge of Japan. Although Makoto felt otherwise, she wholeheartedly agreed that these devious creatures had to be eliminated. Only one daimyo had hired the Yan to eliminate this potentially troublesome village, but all men, great and small, whispered fearfully of Nobunaga's bloody war and the countless lives it cost. And yet, she could not help but feel some disgust at herself. She didn't spend eight years training just for this sort of butchery and didn't enjoy it as some others apparently did. She eyed Kawaru carefully. The young shinobi was restless, scanning the horizon for more tanuki. He abruptly stopped and stared at someone in the distance. It was Rinji, swaying slightly, as if injured. He appeared to have lost his sword and wielded a crudely fashioned iron hammer. "Stay there," he called hoarsely. "There are more of them around us. We must regroup." Kawaru couldn't help but laugh at the blatant trickery as he flung a throwing knife at the man. It flew thirty paces and buried itself neatly in Rinji's chest. The ninja stumbled to his knees."Traitor!" he screamed. "Kill him now!" In an instant Tsukimi's blade was out of her sheath. She regarded the distant figure cautiously."Are you certain?" she signaled."Kill him! What are you waiting for? He has betrayed us!"Rinji clawed at the knife in his chest and let out loud wheezing gasps. Tsukimi hesitated and the two shinobi warily eyed each other. Kawaru frowned. Could he have made a mistake? Would they both have to pay for his carelessness? He struggled to control his fury and instead focus on the problem at hand. He would have to strike first, before Tsukimi could make up her mind. He slipped out the poisoned needle tucked in his upper right sleeve.Suddenly, Rinji's head flew off in a bright spray of blood.Both shinobi stared aghast as the corpse shriveled and twisted, brown fur sprouting out to reveal yet another tanuki. The real Rinji appeared behind the corpse."That was foolish, Tsukimi," he signaled. "I would never speak out loud when there is danger about. Kawaru was right to strike first."Kawaru felt an impulsive grin rise. "But!" Rinji added. "Kawaru, always aim for the head of shapeshifters. You thought you struck the chest, but you only hit its shoulder. Such is their devious nature."Tsukimi bowed low. "Forgive me Rinji. I was careless.""Both of you were careless today," Rinji responded. Before either could respond, he darted forward and rammed his sword's hilt deep into Kawaru's stomach. As Kawaru doubled forward, Rinji drew the youth into a tight headlock. "Who do you think alerted the tanuki, you fool?" Rinji signaled with his free hand, each motion accentuated in slow, deliberate jerks before the youth's eyes."Your penchant for finding our work amusing is well noticed, rest assured."He released Kawaru with a kick and the shinobi fell over retching. Tsukimi nodded to Rinji in silent approval but the other shinobi merely shook his head. "We are done here. Return."The other two ninja bounded away as Kawaru lay on his side, each breath a painful gasp. Several minutes passed before he could stand. When he could, he walked over to the corpse of the beheaded tanuki and looked down with his pale gray eyes, regarding the creature carefully. Then he took his sword and methodically hacked the body to pieces.---------------Nick was born in Santa Monica, CA. He spent much of his childhood visiting Japan, his mother's homeland. There he first fell in love with the vast mythology that the culture had to offer. He currently resides in Las Vegas, NV working on his PhD in psychology. This is his first novel.

Christopher Patterson CraziesShe sat with her legs bent back on the old industrial train towards Missal, her feet fettered together with glittered silver irons that may have appeared as a dominatrix's dream but were, upon closer inspection, clearly a new fashion-forward symbol, one that perhaps went a bit too far in the bound seasonal thematic. She finally kicked her legs upon the adjoining seat, saddling herself between a railway worker and her grey Ur-Dragon, who she had squeezed onto the train despite its illegal presence there, as Missal police had been dutifully recalled since the Lother War. As the train came to a halt, her eyes rested on the benighted town hundreds of feet below her, a greying city in the center of an extinct volcano which had evolved into a crescent of rock, opening into the bay. She moved her Ur-Dragon between the shuffling crowds, galloping the beast off the rock-cliff, diving in three twists into the Missal City Square.Braving the crossing of the ideal state of alert inebriation that's something like the urgent dizziness of a head injury, Mac ordered another scotch on ice from the bartender. He was a surly and tall fellow, quite soft, grainy hands, and tapped Morse code on the bar, in tune with his thoughts. She took a moment to look around the square, that onus of unremembered fishing villages, retractable artillery batteries, and of course, the offices of Amy Rican. Despite all this, there would be no sign of Missal's famed underwater reactor, certainly not, as the device was always kept underwraps, with a tacit complicity. She waited sitting upon her Ur-Dragon for nearly a minute, an infinite amount of time for her, and after being touted twice with proffers of flags and patriotic Missal pens, she dismounted from the Ur-Dragon, her sharp purple jacket swaying the heads of a squad of military men marching by, her silver chains clinking against the red brick of the city square. She entered a nearby tavern shaped as a war room, and sat next to a man she presumed to be a marine. "Vodka, why not?" she told the tender. The tender's look was one of frank hospitality. Years serving nothing but military men, twice having put a gun into his mouth and feeling worse for not pulling the trigger, made her an honored guest at his dump of a bar. Both he and Mac froze themselves in place a moment, the tender with a ridiculous smile, Mac gazing into a half-empty glass. At once the bartender began a move toward the bottle, and at the same time Mac waved a hand in her direction, unsure himself whether it was one of welcome or dismissal. She read their faces, expecting to find the same equanimous dispositions that she had seen on the boys in uniform. Suddenly her sullen frown turned to a buoyant alacrity, and she feathered her dark hair with a grin: "So whats the title in the pits, so far? Any good ugly? As for me, Im just being waiting for my friend, but not sure if thats really the town square." She unhooked a button on her purple jacket, revealing a black bolero, loose and waist-length, opened at the front. "Crazies." Mac pulled her hand away from her jacket, shook it, militarily. It looked for a moment like he was going to salute but his attention darted back to his drink. "Crazies around. Not good for you, tree-living types. Good for us moderns. Experiments never gone so wrong. So inadmissible to the larger construct." A wicked smile played on his lips, as if arisen by an inside joke. "I'm Mac. Talluns Mac. Guy in the corner staring at you is Bill. You can't see him, on account of his jacket. He's due for a repair any day now, and once that thing runs out of juice he's not as ugly as you'd think. Glossy mirroring stuff. I used to understand it. Crazies probably erased my memory." His voice once had the power of a general; weakened by age it still pushed out of his abdomen ardently. Her foot kicked at the bottom of the bar for the tender's attention, as she scanned the wooden counter with a device on her right forearm. She was under the impression that the man next to her was indeed crazy, and by scanning the metal she could determine how much alcohol had lain upon it, and therefore, how much he had imbibed. "They erasing your memory, all those old lovers, you have to be asking them again and again." She scanned the liquor on the cabinet and clicked on her forearm device, injecting herself with a more respectable tongue. "Who took your memory? The corporation? Is this a serious accusation you mean to make, or do you feel a latent, volitional guilt from having neglected your responsibilities towards those in the neighboring towns suffering by the amount of eco-waste your company has managed to accumulate here?" Somehow the kick to his own bar didn't make an indent on the tender's smile. Something girls just do, he guessed, placing a vodka glass in front of Seein, and handing her the late-night menu. Mac stared into the distance until her words echoed enough in his mind to become coherent. "Yes," he said, his eyes brightening. "Lover's not in here anymore," he said, knocking a rock-hard fist against his temple. He was an old man, in a black chrome body suit built for someone much taller and much stronger. "Pits!" she nearly shouted as she read the limited menu items. "Don'tcha got anything a bit more, I guess, goodly sickly diseased, somethin' to leave me on the cusp. More exotic, I'm meaning." She laid her right wrist on the bar's surface, revealing a bracelet made of yellow wheat. "No, niang." she said, letting slip her foreign tongue. She sat on a barstool that made a grinding sound as it twisted. Give me whatever you having, she said.

Christopher Patterson01 Twin bald spots on the peak of Mac's gray head stood exposed, while a silver rag tied around his hair from the base. His green eyes lingered on her. "Nothing endures," his voice spoke a cold fact of the world, and he told it like a waiter listing the specials, "not the trees, not love. Not even a violent death." Another five minutes, she counted, leaning her head onto the iron bar bordered with patterned hammers. She kept her eyes on the tender's hands, as he handled the stovetop where four black frying pans were held above a pit of fire, bursting forth from dropped oil like the crash of ocean waves upon rock. There were dark spots in the rusty, paint-scattered ceiling, where the steam had bruised it. Mac continued to tap sweet remorse in morse-code, though only Bill could understand it. Mac watched the tender shake the pans of boiling oil and mix in a small bowl of mixed vegetables, the kind Mac had seen imported from Derradia on one of the companys steamships. The smell of oligen wafted through her hair and she felt the cleansing power of it, that herb from Streama's lore, that taste that had once purified her great ancestor. As the tender tossed the vegetables, he took another pan from a stack of dozens, and poured inside a repugnant black liquid mixed with spoonfuls of oil, water and vinegar. Mac finished his glass as the tender prepared the mour, adding a pinch of sea-salt as Mac had seen him do a hundred times before. That black gravy-like mixture that he had eaten as a child only as a dessert, a specialty of the region because it looked like oil and grew from flowers deep within the Missal mines. The plate stood before her, the scent of that pure oligen now disintegrated by that pulsing black gummy substance nearly dripping off her plate. She had heard rumors of moderns killing off her kind this way, perhaps out of revenge for the ancient wars still talked about by government bullies like Miss Rican. She lifted her silver fork, her hand shaking, and brushed back her shoulder-length hair. "Dont mind if I stick one off the pot?" Mac said, forking into a piece of Mino's flesh on top of the womans plate. He took a quick bite. Startled, she put her hand to her bolero and exhaled. She watched him eat it with his eyes closed, savoring the taste. Outside the march of soldiers permeated the still air of the bar, and she could hear the tender washing the two pans he had used to cook her meal. She moved the plate between Mac and herself, and they ate from it in silence. -----------Christopher is currently a graduate student at the University of Washington pursuing a Ph.D. in Literary Studies. He has been published previously in Phantom Seed, Danse Macabre, and Hando No Kuzushi under his pen name, Kawika Guillermo.

Graham Tugwell The RacingThe smell...And I remember... Crush me through the brakebrush, Mammy.(Her fingers in my hair)And make me see whats wonderful:The runners.And their race... And scraps of memory come, each memory birthing memory. And this is how I came to be the thing I am -- "It's time...Dawn made all my bedroom grey, walls angled long in lengths of cold, and my mother leant, a looming thing, shaking me wakeful, waking to see her staring eyes, those hanging drapes of clammy hair framed by slants of ceiling light.My mouth was dry; tongue too thick; sluggish cheek to gum, no longer feeling like my own. My lips, slowly ungummed, cracked open; silent, cold.And softly hoarse she spoke again."It's time..."The cover had fled from my feet in the night and, stretching, I burrowed heels under the corner quilt, dumbly hunting for the last of warmth. My eyes fell closed and I lost sight of the shape of her but then her hand pressed heavy on my breastbone --"Get up. Get dressed."Stern--tenderness gone from her voice, I knew what would happen if I turned away, let myself be taken by sleep.Her nails through the thin material on my chest. Rise.Rise to the cold and grey of dawn and strip and shrug inside the chill of clothes and smell the clot of porridge cooking And remembering then another memory: Boiled over.Air thick with the stink of clagging porridge, bubbled over on the stove.And mother sitting, her hair in black swathes through her hands, tumbling like dirty cloth, her face a weeping, hidden thing.He was gone.And stood in the doorway there I smelt the smell of burning. Hot and tasteless slurry, slopped malignant in a plastic bowldead sounding; thick and steaming grains."Eat," she says, "You'll need your strength."Scooped fleshwounds in the pale stuff, bleeding slugs of milk, gulped on hotpith rolled by tongue to cool and squallowed sighing.I would need my strength.Sun moved in the window and shone upon my mother autumn light. Watching me eating heavy rimmed eyes, unbrushed hair, red lips broken round a pool of black and thin arms clasped upon her chest, pale elbows, knuckles blue.Waiting.Watching.Scum left on the curve of bowl I pushed the gutted thing away and turned and looked at her; darkness in light.Her hand reached out and took me wordless, led me to the garden's end and the fields beyond. Another piece of memory, then:Six months or a year or a year and six months before, picture my father and I, standing by the wall at the garden's edge, watching the sun die in orange melting over broken fields, losing itself in the wash of darkening glow behind the thing we called Black Hill.Waking in an angled slump, a wild thigh of land across flat and tamed farmland, dark with crowding trees and loud with nesting crows.His voice, the rumble before rain: "Never go there.""Promise me you'll never go there." And curled inside that another memory:Martin Sweeney, kneeling over the frozen pothole, stick in hand:"He saw him out by Black Hill. The Long Dog of the Woods. "And coming home, his hair was white as that." And he tapped the ice with the stick and grinned. And Father's fingers were dull and smelled of clay.And in the dark I could not see his face.A scrap of memory; my last of him.And Mother lifted me over the wall and together crossed the field, towards the sharp slopes of Black Hill. Sky-arched boiling bellies of storm, mutely rolled over each other, turned blunty by the wind to break in lingering agony.Each shred of air spat thin uncertain rain that did not slow my mother's stride."Keep up," were cold words thrown, and I made run through the grass beside her.Father's voice, the rumble before rain:"She doesn't mean it. She loves you. She doesn't want to hurt you."My forehead kissed, he pulled the warmnight covers up, closing over my mouth."She loves you."Close were the trunks at the hillfoot, stood in brakes of nettlemusk, straight and smooth and branchless grey, guarding their darkness against the dawn and she placed a hand upon the smallcrease of my back.Through the nettles: onwards, into the dark.And so an hour of struggle; the slow gaining of the flanks of Black Hill to come at last upon a ragged hedge, a bleakness low, slung through a clearing like a neck at rest. I looked at her, she looked past me."Kneel," she whispered. (Martin Sweeney, kneeling, tapping, smiling, "That colour. Just exactly that colour.")

Graham Knelt and faced the darkgreen snarls of hedge.The suck of the mud stretched underneath wet ground weeping through my knees, making them cold painful things, unfleshed them till they seemed just bone.And they... cracked.My whole body a tremble - "I'm scared.""We all were," - and she made a breath - "We all were..."Her hand on the back of my head, her fingers in my hair."Don't," - I murmured. "Please."Soundlessly, she pushed my face deep into the darkening tangle of hedge. The smell...And I remember... Twigs broke, snapped upon my cheeks; branch and leaf along my lips and pricked the wings of my nose. Too late I closed my eyes and mouthblackgreen leaves and spiderwebs between my teeth and rough under eyelids now stung and wet with tears.The heavy stink of darkness, the sound of softly straining, softly breaking things.And I struggled, tried to pull free.But Mother was too much for me.On into the crackling bowels of hedge. The rumble before rain: "She doesn't mean to hurt you." And rushing, parting, I was through.Opened eyestook a long and needful breath. Sunlight on that other side, a summer thing, and breezing freshly broken branches stroked my neck.Before me a space of pollen-glimmer warmth, held perfect still a barrow-track of dirt carved between high banks of meadow grass a peace heaviness, a fresh and smelling full-lunged place. Why had I been brought there? What had I been brought to see? (Her fingers in my hair.)Then: the sound of feet, ringing slapping meat upon the cracking sundried path.And coming round the bend they came the runners. And so I saw the race.Summersun slime of light on muscle pink, gathering wet on crests of flesh and down the blue vein deltas thick, ribbing struts of sinew meat, running to the split-round head run round with rolls of forehead skin.Armless tubes of thundermeat, their legs bent wrong like running birds, long delicate feet splaytoed sharp and ridged with desiccated lizard skin. A sagging mass swung behind, a dark and wrinkled goitre-thing, heavyseamed and stumped with hair, wet and slick.Jostling down the rut before my face; an inch away, wheezing, pushing things, slamming slapping shoulderlflanks in frantic salmon spawning crush, straining heavy-veined to pass and on the breeze I smelt their heat and heaving sweatand fluid from my nose, warmlicked tasteless from my lip.And I saw they had no faces.Blank their pink and purple bulbs, surmounted by a ring of pale, the pallor crumble of fingerflesh too long submerged.I saw they had no faces.Pressed through the hedge, my eyes on the throstling rout of running things, my tongue slathered with musk, I thought:Dont stop.Dont stop and turn to me.Dont stare at me with faceless skinPressed through the cutting sharp of hedge, my face a soft and vulnerable thing, again and again a filthy length of translucent skin across me hot, and I gave voice to little bursts of shock-oh-oh-oh-Smearing me, the blunt pink things, and running faceless on breathing, straining, stinking, breathing, straining thingsOh awfulness.Such awfulness.And the hand on my head once a softness now sharply gripped again; fingers working the curls of my hair, a pain wrenched in the roots of me.Hauled backwards through the needle nails, the runners and race lost to me, folded by leaf, by branch into a closing dark.Pulled free of it to lie in the cold uncaring Black Hill muck, a gasping thing, doubled panting in her lap.So full and sore from what I'd seen.Found strange words in my mouth then, too large for my throat to bring and hurting, my voice made roughness dull - "I love you, Mammy," guttural from my depths, my voice a thing unknown to me - a man's voice, my Father's voice -A heaviness rolled unswallowly numb in my mouth - "I love you."And the sky rumbled.And it began to rain.My Father's voice.She smiled; a black crack open on her face.(Her fingers running, running, running through my hair)And the smell teased from my tangled hair."I love you." That smell.And I remember...---------------Graham is a PhD student with the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches Popular and Modernist Fiction. The recipient of the College Green Literary Prize 2010, he has work forthcoming in Kerouac's Dog magazine, Jersey Devil Press and Anemone Sidecar.

Shayla Hawkins Scheherazade She leans closer to the Caliph, her words like the silver hooks of fishermen along the Tigris, baiting him until he not only believes, but craves, Scheherazade's impossible tales of tasseled carpets flying through the starry Baghdad nights; of a mighty djinn unleashed by Aladdin's rubbing a lamp; and of Sindbad's travels to islands with valleys of diamonds and beaches overflowing with ambergris and gold. This is perhaps the 87th, or maybe the 563rd, or the 900th night that Scheherazade has settled next to the Caliph and tucked her legs beneath her embroidered green skirt, spinning her stories so that each word shines like the pearls in her hair. Always, she is cautious, knowing those words are all that stand between her head and the Caliph's sword, which he even now he holds in his hand. But more interesting is the activity of the Caliph's other hand, his fingers splayed like an odalisque's fan along the curvaceous rise of Scheherazade's bottom, his lingering touch a testament to his immutable lust for a woman's flesh. Like her freedom, time and any sense Scheherazade had of it disappeared the day she became the Caliph's wife. In his palace, yesterday and forever blended and vanished on the horizon. Still, Scheherazade remembers that morning the palace guards came for her neighbor, Munirah. A large garden hedged with medjool palm trees separated their houses, yet Munirah's screams sailed with clarion resonance across the aloes and pomegranate bushes and pierced Scheherazade's heart like a thorn. Munirah was 19, just a few years younger than she was. Both women were prodigious in their beauty; and since her first menses the sinuous calligraphy of Munirah's body, visible even beneath her burqa, had an almost hypnotic effect on men. But though they could have been twins of the flesh, Munirah possessed none of Scheherazade's mental acuity or spiritual fortitude. Instinctively, Scheherazade knew Munirah wouldn't live long enough to get beheaded the next day: Her fragile, hysteric nerves most likely would kill her the instant she set foot on the palace grounds. And as cruel a death as the Caliph's edict was, Scheherazade believed that Munirah's falling prey to her own fear was even worse. Scheherazade's moment of truth had come. She couldn't stand by and let her neighbor die. So, just as she and her parents had discussed in case such a nightmare should present itself, Scheherazade approached the Caliph's guards soon after they arrived at the wooden gates of Abdul-Basir Halim, Munirah's father, and offered to go in her place. Scheherazade and her parents devised the plan, which called for her father, Haroun, who knew Baghdad's travel routes like the back of his hand, to take Munirah under the cover of night to a departing caravan that would lead her across the desert into Syria. Munirah and her family knew nothing of this until Scheherazade appeared and left with the guards. Then Munirah, instead of fainting from terror, collapsed in disbelieving joy. She didn't want the Caliph's death sentence on Scheherazade anymore than she wished it for herself. But Munirah knew firsthand of Scheherazade's unparalleled gifts for storytelling. She knew also that if a female existed in Baghdad who could survive the Caliph's terrors and turn them into her glory, Scheherazade was that woman. The soldiers gave just enough time for Scheherazade's mother, Inaam, to whisper through her daughter's burqa into her ear, "The Caliphs sword is lethal, but it is no match for your mind. Sharpen it each day, and use it on him every night." Before she could say more, the guards snatched Scheherazade away, set her on one of the Caliph's stallions, and rode off. Only after Scheherazade vanished into the distance did Inaam let her quiet agony tear through her heart. Only after they had returned to the interior world of their home did Haroun embrace his wife as tears spilled down her eyes like fresh oil.*** As the Caliph so clumsily straddles the line between a king's power and his pleasure, so Scheherazade walks the knifes edge between fantasy and reality, her fictions the anchors that have cemented her place in the Caliph's palace and his heart, and have stopped her from vanishing into death's abyss.The Caliph's attraction to Scheherazade radiates from his body like shimmering bands of heat in a Saharan mirage. Everyone who holds audience with him, from the accountants to the captain of the ships fleet in Basra, can feel its magnetic pull, even if they don't know its cause. For a man accustomed to controlling and crushing his feelings with an iron fist, this new reality of being dominated by his most primal yearnings reminds the Caliph too much of the wives before Scheherazade whom he stripped of free will, whose beauty he used to slay them.And so, in a feeble attempt at redemption, the Caliph grants Scheherazade the limited freedom to leave her chamber and move through the palace's east wing, provided she is veiled, accompanied by two guards, and speaks to no one. But to tame any radical notions she may have of escape, the Caliph commands the guards to conclude each of Scheherazade's walks with a view of the scaffold, so that even from the palace halls she can see the cool silver sheen of the executioners axe and imagine just as vividly the blood and bone fragments from her severed neck gleaming along its edge.

Shayla A virtual prisoner in her own skin, Scheherazade, with the guards close behind, steps slowly through the corridors on certain afternoons, the lacquered marble floors cooling her feet, a comfortable contrast to the moist, hot air she breathes beneath her hijab. Occasionally on these walks, Scheherazade imagines new characters and strategies for her storytelling. But more often she meditates on how the same life force that guides the Shamal wind to sculpt the desert sands and propels the seas has alchemized the fragile vessels of her voice and memory into a living book; how every day, faithful as the sunrise, that force speaks life to her body as she through her stories speaks life back into the Caliph's deadened heart.Though she will never tell him, Scheherazade is almost grateful the Caliph has made the stakes of her storytelling so high. With the threat of beheading hanging over her each day like a noose and the execution scaffold visible from her room, Scheherazade has been forced into excellence. The Caliph's cataclysmic humiliation from his first wife's betrayal and his homicidal resolve by taking a new bride each night and having her killed the next morning to ensure that it never happens again, compels Scheherazade to marry her intellect to her imagination, to make each of her tales more sumptuous than the one that preceded it, and to make every word her best word, as if it will be the last she ever says.Scheherazade takes all of Baghdad - its splendor, its aromas, its contradictions and intrigues - and infuses them like blood into her characters. It's the best way she knows of preserving herself and honoring the savagely ended lives of the wives who came before her.But now, despite her immaculately camouflaged fear, Scheherazade knows, and can almost feel the gravitational tilt, of Fortune's balance tipping in her favor. For now when the Caliph looks at her, Scheherazade can see, like a far-off lamp in the desert night, a flimmer of reverence and desire behind the ice in his eyes. She can almost touch the courage forming in him, wiping clean the hatred from his cuckolded heart. The Caliph's own body - the way it softens and glows at the sound of her voice - coupled with the force that will help Scheherazade spin unbroken for a thousand and one nights her wondrous stories, tells her that she is the last of the Caliph's matrimonial slaves and will one day be crowned Baghdad's malika, its new queen. On that day, Scheherazade, draped in ocean-blue silk trimmed with Egyptian gold, will walk to the marble terrace that adjoins her queen's chamber and, looking beyond the palace walls to the city's marketplace, bless the silversmiths and spice merchants; the musicians and snake charmers; the sailors and carpet weavers; the caravans from Cairo, Jerusalem, Mecca, and Timbuktu; even the thieves. Scheherazade will bless and thank them all for inhabiting her stories and, thereby, saving her life.And on that night, with the crescent moon slung like a hammock in the Eastern sky, after the muadhdhin's final ululating call to prayer, after the servants have lit the palace's brass lanterns and retired to their quarters, the Caliph will enter Scheherazade's bedchamber. He will marvel at the beauty of Scheherazade's body and her mind, and he will ask the unanswerable question: How, year after year, night after night, did she spin all those marvelous stories?Scheherazade will smile, lead the Caliph to her Farasha sofa, and laying her husband's head in her lap, tell him that her ability to take words and change them into worlds is a gift that she can no more explain to herself than to him. Light as a swallow's wing, Scheherazade will stroke the Caliph's face and tell him that her talents, like the invisible air, like love itself, defy description, their powers far beyond human reach or reason. Scheherazade will lean over to kiss her husband's inquisitive eyes. And then she will tell him a story.-----------Shayla is a poet and fiction writer whose recent publications include poems in Torch, tongues of the ocean, Magnapoets, Solo Café, and Pyrta. She lives in Michigan.

Nick Thaler
Nick Thaler01
Christopher Patterson
Christopher Patterson01

Photo Essay

On the Red River & Beyond

The splish-splash of the river dolphins, the steady staring game between a rhinoceros and a wild Asiatic buffalo, the trumpeting of an elephant, the smile of a Mishing tribal girl, and the mystical dances of the monks at Majuli. What makes the Brahmaputra so special? In addition to being the only male river in India, it presents a unique opportunity to travel through Kaziranga National Park, a world heritage site that is home to over 500 species of birdlife, the endangered one-horned rhino, the royal Bengal tiger, and a bevy of butterfly species. The river system in itself has a very healthy population of the elusive river dolphins. Not only is the cruise a treat for nature lovers, it also presents an opportunity to visit the largest river island in the world. This is no ordinary cruise, but a voyage of big proportions.Rohit Barooah is a freelance photographer from Assam. He is keen on wildlife, and at present also delving into a little street and people photography, and in the bargain doing some travelling as well. He was recently invited by the South African board of tourism to cover the Western Cape.

by Rohit Barooah

Sketches

A Himalayan folk tale set in Sikkim

story by rimpoche ringu tulku text & illustrations by pankaj thapa

Heart-eye

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