Month: May 2020

Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (9 of 10)

by Sarah Sousa

 

 

 

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press.

 

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Dowsed

by Michael Credico

 

My father dug a well in the backyard. There was nowhere else the water was going to come from. We let buckets down, length by length of rope. The buckets clanged against the stone walls, came up empty every time. I complained about the smell emanating from the well. It was like dead fish. My father said it must be that we are close to the water. But suppose the fish were dead because they were out of water too. I looked into the well. Its insides were fuzzy black and filled with dust. I started to cough. My father gave me his handkerchief, stiff from dried sweat. I wiped my mouth. It scratched my lips. I tasted dead fish. When my father was not looking, I wadded up the handkerchief, dropped it down the well. I listened for it to hit bottom. Nothing.

“Dust,” my father grunted. He couldn’t understand it. “A well is a well is a well.”

My mother called us in for dinner. She set five glasses on the dining room table, each filled with vodka. She told us to pretend it was water.

We said grace, our hands around the glasses. I asked for something to tuck into my shirt collar. My father patted all his pockets looking for his handkerchief. He swallowed his vodka. My mother swallowed hers, then mine. She sighed. Her breath made my nose tingle. She told us about the neighbors. They had lost their boy.

We were lukewarm on the neighbors. We each went, “Oh.”

My mother was upset there was no word for parents who had lost a child, no equivalent to widow, widower, and orphan. “Bereaved,” she said. “Imagine living the rest of your life modified like that.”

My father reached for one of the two remaining glasses.

My mother slapped his hand away. “I invited them to dinner.”

“Who?”

“The bereaved neighbors,” my mother mocked.

By time the neighbors knocked at the door, the vodka was gone, and my parents were passed out beneath the dining room table. I answered the door. I asked them if they were thirsty. They examined the empty glasses on the dining room table, the stains my parents’ lips left on the rims.

“I am sorry for your loss,” I said.

“The bottomlessness,” they cried, knocking the empty glasses off the dining room table.

When suddenly we heard crying coming from the backyard. The well.

The neighbors stuffed me in a bucket, let me down. There was a bottom to the well, but here things get fuzzier and fuzzier. I told the boy the bucket couldn’t carry us both. Looking up at the pinprick of light that was the opening of the well, I told him to go first. He felt through the black for my hand, gave me the handkerchief.

Later, my father called down and asked if I was wet.

“No,” I said. “I need the bucket.”

“Are you sick?”

I told my mother the boy wasn’t dead, the neighbors weren’t bereaved, and the well really was a well was a well was a well. She wasn’t listening. She was picking pieces of glass off the floor, tasting them. My father held up the empty vodka bottle. He called this his divining rod. He told me he would teach me to dowse. He pointed the bottle at my mother. The bottle shook. My mother cut her tongue on a piece of glass. I gave her the handkerchief. She tied it around her tongue. When she talked, we couldn’t understand it. But when she talked, I think it was: find me.

 

Michael Credico is the author of *Heartland Calamitous* (Autumn House Press, 2020). His fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol, and others. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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Framed Papers

by Foster Trecost

 

He fished a tissue from a hidden pocket and dabbed his forehead, then called the cops. Red dots spotted the otherwise white cloth and when police arrived, he displayed his blood like a court-ordered indictment. He demanded her arrest and she, in turn, demanded his. The police looked at each other, then at the therapist, who looked like he needed a therapist. They opted against arresting anyone, but feeling compelled to take official action, wrote her a warning: Don’t throw binoculars at people.

And they weren’t pocket-sized binoculars, bearing little resemblance to those used for spying on birds in the backyard. These were military-grade and seemed better suited for a battlefield. They struck him just above the eye. Gashed him good. A scar-leaving laceration.

Before that he’d drug her to a hypnotist who may as well have been a palm reader. She didn’t throw anything but when they went to an intimacy clinic, she threw slurs and slights one after the other, but nothing that wasn’t true. If he was going to call the cops, that’s when he should’ve done it. Instead they went to a therapist who, in the name of clinical remedy, put a weapon in her hands.

She said it wasn’t working, that she couldn’t see anything and the shrink, always quick with comment, said it’s because she was looking at the wall. He had gone to the University of Michigan, was certified in just about everything. Framed papers told the story. But that’s not where she was supposed to look. She was supposed to look at the man sitting across the room, the binoculars pulling her close, but still a safe distance away. So she looked at him. Then she looked for him. All she found was someone who needed to pluck his eyebrows. Then she saw something else:

A woman crouched in a corner, tears smeared across her cheeks. A hand offered itself. She hesitated but took it and was helped to her feet. Seconds later the same hand struck again, and she fell back to the floor.

That’s what she saw.

When the binoculars left her fingers, she knew they were on a good path. They tracked across the room with baffling precision. He watched from behind a disbelieving smirk, like there’s no way she’d flung a pair of military-grade binoculars at his head. She could barely believe it herself.

Deciding she wasn’t a detriment to society, the police let her leave. She meandered through the city, mostly aimless but with a hint of intent she couldn’t place, but could tell was there. She passed a café that called to her, but not loudly enough. A tavern beckoned with a different voice, but she kept walking. Shoe stores and bookshops offered not the slightest temptation.

When she came upon it, she knew without knowing it had been her destination all along. She walked in with restored self-assurance and made her way to the counter. She smoothed a sheet of paper onto the worktop and asked, “Can you frame this?”

He looked at the paper, then at her. “That’s what we do. Choose a frame.”

“You choose it. The frame doesn’t matter.”

He complied with a slim black border, one unlikely to detract from what it outlined. She waited while he worked and smiled when he was done.

Framed papers really do tell the story. The warning, an important part of hers, has graced the living room wall ever since.

 

Foster Trecost writes stories that are mostly made up. They tend to follow his attention span: sometimes short, sometimes very short. Recent work has appeared in Spelk, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, and New World Writing. He lives near New Orleans with his wife and dog.

 

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Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (8 of 10)

by Sarah Sousa

 

 

 

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press.

 

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Girls

by Mary Lou Buschi

 

In Catholic uniforms,
plaid pleated skirts,
white blouses dangerously
unbuttoned to the edge
of our bras, we chase
her through the planted
tomatoes and Marigolds.

When we punch her –
a Thrush from an unlocked
palm waves out of her ribcage.
There is no sound,
only an imaginary ocean
that raps inside my ears,
as my friend starts to run.

A blue car driving slowly past—
the width of sky torn
from a girl’s tablet.

 

Mary Lou Buschi’s poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Thimble, Thrush, Radar, Cloudbank among others. Mary Lou’s full-length collection, Awful Baby, was published through Red Paint Hill (2015). Tight Wire, her third chapbook, was published by Dancing Girl Press (2016).

 

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Sundown Town

by Adrian Potter

 

Everything begins to feel like a sacrifice. Finding vague threats at the property lines – wilted Black-eyed Susans, dead blackbirds, empty shotgun shells. The wind becomes a caveat, a sign. Caution lodged under weary tongues, haunting the intention of every explanation. On the kitchen table, we trace highways on a roadmap, outline each stop before departing. The out-of-the-way detours that unravel our patience one by one. Mind the stream that traces its way back to its origin. The identities we must lose to get there. The women that go missing every spring. The strangers following us to the city limits from the farmer’s market. Their rage fills creek bottoms. Beware of truck stops, hanging trees, the ditches thick with fear and bluestem. Don’t be brown and around when the sun comes down. Places where the moon pulls darkness over us like a blanket until we escape or suffocate.

 

Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and prose in Minnesota. He is the author of the poetry collection Everything Wrong Feels Right and the prose chapbook The Alter Ego Handbook. Some publication credits include North American Review, Obsidian, Jet Fuel Review, and Kansas City Voices. Visit him online at http://adrianspotter.com/.

 

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Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (7 of 10)

by Sarah Sousa

 

 

 

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press.

 

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Penance

by Jeanie Greensfelder

 

I’m at the post office,
mistake in hand:
wrong magnesium,
carelessly ordered.
In Mexico, a woman
crawled up
cathedral steps
for her misdeeds.
In Pismo, a man
with a sign Sinner
on his back, traversed
the beach on all fours.
They sought mercy.
I seek to quiet a brain
that won’t shut up.
I add a little prayer.

 

Jeanie Greenfelder’s poems have been published at American Life in Poetry, and Writers’ Almanac; in anthologies: Paris, Etc., Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems; and in journals: Miramar, Thema, Askew, Persimmon Tree, and others. The San Luis Obispo County poet laureate, 2017,18, Jeanie’s books are: Biting the Apple, Marriage and Other Leaps of Faith and I Got What I Came For.

 

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Four Little Stories

by Townsend Walker

 

A Day in the Life

It was not a day like any other day, not for Annie Richie, not for Ralph Simmons. She landed the lead in Wicked, a fresh face up from the chorus. He was let go by the Knicks, too short to play inside, couldn’t nail a three. They wandered the streets, she in radiant glee, he in lonely gloom and, as fate would ordain, found their ways to Rose’s Bar where Annie drowned his sorrow in song. Ralph never felt so tall.

*

Looking out the Window

I died today. Didn’t want to. Wasn’t supposed to. Girl I’ve been spending time with, saw her down on the sidewalk. Even from here, on the 10th floor, can’t mistake that hair, those curves, that swivel. Leaned out, “Hey Melissa, lookin’ fine.” Must not of heard, she kept on walking, about to turn the corner. Really wanted to catch her eye, leaned out further “Hey, Melissa.” Too far. Hope she didn’t see me. She thought I was cool.

*

Her Smile

Sometimes I will be in a place I was before and doing things I did before, but that was yesterday. Today I am in the hospital looking at the nurse I looked at yesterday when I was carted in on a gurney. She has the same smile today as she probably will have tomorrow. A smile that is kind and says: I-will-help-you-but-don’t-get-any-ideas-or-you-will-find-I’m-not-the-person-you-think-I-am. Too out of it to be tempted yesterday; tomorrow may be too late.

*

Hospital Time

5:21 p.m. The nurse left the room.
5:30 p.m. The nurse and doctor entered the room.
6:00 p.m. The doctor called the patient’s wife. She did not answer. The doctor did not leave a message.
6:15 p.m. The doctor called the patient’s wife. She did not answer. The doctor did not leave a message.
6:30 p.m. The patient’s wife called the hospital. She asked to be connected to her husband’s room. He did not answer.

Townsend Walker draws inspiration from cemeteries, foreign places, violence and strong women. A collection of short stories, 3 Women, 4 Towns, 5 Bodies & other stories was published by Deeds Publishing in 2018. Winner of a Book Excellence Award, an Eyelands Award, a Silver Feathered Quill Award and a Pinnacle Award. A novella, La Ronde was published by Truth Serum Press in 2015. Some ninety short stories have been published in literary journals and included in twelve anthologies. Short Story Awards: two nominations for the PEN/O.Henry Award, first place in the SLO NightWriters contest. Four stories were performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Hollywood. During a career in banking, he lived in New York, Paris, London, Rome, and San Francisco and wrote three books on finance: A Guide for Using the Foreign Exchange Market, Managing Risk with Derivatives, and Managing Lease Portfolios. His website is www.townsendwalker.com.

 

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Fractured Tarot for the Anthropocene (6 of 10)

by Sarah Sousa

 

 

 

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf, named a 2019 ‘Must Read’ book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Split the Crow and Church of Needles, as well as the chapbooks Yell, which won the Summer Tide Pool Prize at C&R Press, and Hex which won the 2019 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Massachusetts Review, North American Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Verse Daily and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. Her honors include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. She is a member of the board of directors of Perugia Press.

 

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Swept

by Frances Badgett

 

The wind raged against the windows, broke windows, tossed debris from the yard against the house, knocked a fence into the chicken coop. The wind told us who it was and what it wanted, and didn’t wait for us to be ready for it. It simply took us, one-by-one, until only the largest were left, the saved ones, their heft a mighty power, a worshipful thing. The wind came on some days and not others, came in a flash at times, quiet rolls at others, finding a crescendo that could pluck a cow from the field, a man from his yard.

The wind slid dogs from collars, cats from trees, the worst of it the children—unbearable. We watched them go like balloons, strings slipped just beyond our fingertips. Babies were born into it and lost, wars were fought about it and soldiers sucked into it like dandelion fluff, indistinguishable armies.

My mother was a giant—saved. My father was one of the first to go, clinging to a hay wagon, his shirt ripped clean first, then pants, then his bare body lifted, sprawling into the sky. Mother sank to her knees and offered herself instead, but it was too late.

I hid in a spot mother dug just for me when I was born, a burrow under the porch that she carved bit-by-bit as I grew. She dug me into my hollow where the wind couldn’t find me. No one knew where I hid. For nine years, I bedded in this hollow when we heard the wind. At the first sign, I would crash through the house, race through the fields, drop the milk pail and eggs and dive into my safe spot.

To the village, my living was a testament that some survived. I was a magic girl, wrapped in the wind’s favor, and offerings were pinned, tied, staked to our porch, little dolls I might like or ears of corn for roasting, or long, fine bolts of cloth flapping like flags, my secret hiding beneath the wooden boards that my father had nailed into place with giant iron nails, the earth my mother had moved to save me.

When it vanished, the village came from their huts and sang, gathering the debris, tree limbs, clothes of the departed. They placed these things in a pile in the center of town and burned them. I watched the flames flicker in my mother’s eyes and I knew she was thinking of him, the man she loved, stripped from us.

All summer, the wind stayed away. All summer we gathered flowers and napped under the oak trees. All summer we watched the lambs grow and chicks hatch. It was a warm summer, and we swam in our river and fed the goats raspberry canes. But once the wind found us again, summer felt distant, out of reach, like our lost ones.

This time it came for me. Unexpected, howling from the clear fall sky, it raced down on us so fast, I didn’t have time to find the burrow. As it lifted me, my hands scrabbling at the air, I tried to hold it steady, tried to stop its hands, but I was so high up, until all I could see was the peak of our roof. I reached for my sturdy, unmovable mother, but my grasp was met with only the whites of the clouds, birdsong, a moan, then nothing, and with it the scrub of all known things from my mind. Memories slid from my ears, my eyes smeared with blankness, as I, too, became the wind.

 

Frances Badgett is the fiction editor of Contrary Magazine. Her work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Anomaly (formerly Drunken Boat), Word Riot, Matchbook, Atticus Review, JMWW, Salamander, and elsewhere. Two of her stories have made the Wigleaf 50 longlist. Her story Half Hitch has been selected for the 2019 Best of the Small Fictions from Sonder Press. She grew up in Lexington, Virginia and has a B.A. from Hollins University and an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband and daughter, and is currently working on a novel set in the Pacific Northwest. Her website is francesbadgett.com, her Twitter is @francesbadgett, and her Instagram is @FrancesBad.

 

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CNF: The Hidden Owl

by Alisa Golden

 

Our owl doesn’t say who but a kind of scratchy what. We had been searching the tree for years, waiting for it to declare, warmer, warmer as we circled the base where the pellets lay, decorated with fur and tiny bones. But the owl, except for a few night calls, had eluded us. A chance meeting with a neighbor pointed us skyward. See that clump hanging down? And the smaller clump? Now go a foot to the left. We scanned the tree and found a set of tail feathers, toned Earl Grey and café au lait.

I went back daily to check the spot and was soon rewarded with the barn owl’s heart-shaped face, eyes closed, blanched almond nose quietly in place: the “nodding” owl a friend called my photograph. I caught a stranger and pointed up, but he looked the other way. Two twenty-somethings were as excited as I, and they took their own iOwls. Another man said, “Don’t tell anyone. They’ll throw sticks at it.”

Mystical Judaism whispers of thirty-six righteous people hidden in the world, unknown even to themselves. If they were missing or known, the world would come to an end. We must not reveal them, and each of us must behave as if we might be one. Perhaps, too, there are thirty-six hidden animals to watch over. This is the catch, the pause, the sadness that mingles with the find; one has to be restrained when sharing is part of the wonder.

 

Alisa Golden works with words, ink, and fibers, and is the editor of Star 82 Review. Her book art may be found in the special collections of libraries across the United States, and her stories, poems, and artwork have been published in Blink-Ink, Diagram, Nanoism, and The Pedestal, among others. She is the author of Making Handmade Books (Sterling/Lark). www.neverbook.com

 

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Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.

Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.

Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.

Submissions

Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2023. Submit here.

Upcoming

09/09 • Rae Gourmand
09/16 • Chiwenite Onyekwelu
09/23 • TBD
09/30 • TBD