Month: April 2024

CNF: Hüzün

by Sybil Baker

 

I’m in a body of water far from home. My brother, who lives here in Turkey, has found a spot of beach with white sand and trees for shade and a shallow entrance to the ocean that only the locals know about. The rocks underneath my feet are worn smooth, the water is clear and calm. Turkish families set up picnics, with couples and young people lounging on towels. I play with my seven-year-old nephew, the child of two empires, in the calm water of the Aegean Sea.

Somewhere, it is 1630 and my ancestor seven-year-old Jeffrey Baker is on the Mary and John headed to the British colonies, never to see his homeland again.

 

Nobel Prize winning author Orhan Pamuk writes of Istanbul, “Here amid the old stones and wooden houses, history made peace with its ruins; ruins nourished life and gave new life to history.” Pamuk calls this melancholy about Turkey’s lost greatness, “hüzün.” Surrounded by the crumbling ruins of its former empires, the Turks are surrounded by visual reminders of a past that will not return, even if their leaders want it to. It is, Pamuk says, a uniquely Turkish feeling.

Americans seem to be stuck in a restorative nostalgia Svetlana Boym writes of in The Future of Nostalgia that “manifests itself in the total reconstructions of monuments of the past,” while Pamuk’s hüzün as a reflective nostalgia that comfortably “lingers on the ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time.” With this reflective nostalgia, Americans could live in peace among the ruins instead of trying to re-construct them, allowing us to envision a future we cannot yet dream of.

 

My dad’s dream for us was not necessarily the American Dream of the next generation doing better financially than the last. That none of his three children followed the traditional corporate path that he himself had become disillusioned with pleased him. It pleased him that all three of us and our spouses earned advanced degrees. It pleased him that I lived in Korea and my youngest brother had moved to Turkey, even if he wished we were closer. It probably would have pleased him that our own marriages—to a Jew, Muslim, and White man from South Africa—and their progeny have diluted the Bakers’ White supremacist legacy.

It was my dad’s dream to pass on the desire to pursue knowledge and to always be curious of what life is about. As my dad said, “If there were no longer questions then there would be no hope, no dreams, no unknowns, no visions, no tomorrow, no future.”

We are living in my ancestors’ future; one they could never have imagined.

 

Soon I will be on a plane back to the States, leaving Turkey’s hüzün behind. Like Odysseus, I will return to my ancestral home. But unlike him, when I return I will not slay the suitors or hang the women servants for their acts of resistance. When I return, I will gather the threads of Penelope’s funeral shroud she weaves and unpicks every night. With my loom, I will weave the threads of stories into a shroud that will be large enough to bury and honor the dead so that we can begin life anew.

And like Odysseus, like my ancestors, I will dream of the sea, of leaving my homeland once again.

 

Sybil is the author of five works of fiction, which have won Eric Hoffer, Foreword, and IPPY awards. Her nonfiction work, Immigration Essays, was the 2018-2019 Read2Achieve selection for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and required reading for all first-year students. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Guernica, Electric Literature, Glimmer Train, and Critical Flame. She was awarded two MakeWork Artist Grants and a 2017 Individual Artist’s Fellowship in nonfiction from the Tennessee Arts Commission. She is a professor of English at the University of Tennessee and Chattanooga, Director of the Meacham Writer’s Workshop, and on faculty for the Yale Summer Writer’s Workshop.

 

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Gretel and Me

by Beth Sherman

 

On day one, I heard a noise. Louder than my mice, Esmerelda and Dorothy. A murmuring really, like a brook splashing over rocks on a cloudy day. Words floating on water. I hadn’t heard words in 55 years. Trail breadcrumbs witch candy. It comes back to you, the listening, if you concentrate hard enough. They were dismantling my house, piece by piece. Taking things. My home is all I have. Without it, my body shrivels and fades. I put the boy in a cage. Don’t judge. I have my reasons.

On day two, Gretel and I played catch the gumdrops. Boysenberry, blueberry, cherry, gooseberry. We threw them in the air and they dissolved on our tongues. A lovely child – flaxen braids, curious lips, trusting eyes. She reminded me of me before.

On day six, we baked a plum cake. Talked about our favorite things. Hers was dancing between raindrops, mine was baking coconut cream pie and stuffing the entire thing in my mouth.

On day twelve, we baked Red Velvet cake. While measuring sugar and flour we shared our biggest fears. Hers was going hungry, mine was stepping foot outside the house.

On day nine, we baked Black Forest cake. After whipping cream for the icing, we discussed our hopes for the future. She said she wanted to grow up, meet a man, get married, and have four children. I said I wanted to be left alone.

On day sixteen, we baked upside down cake and traded secrets. She said she never liked her stepmother. I said I never got undressed till after dark.

On day twenty-three, I told her how I used to be pretty as a princess, cherished by all who knew me until one day walking alone in the woods a woodcutter happened by and grabbed me by the chin. We baked a gingerbread man and ate him, starting with his raisin eyes, ending with his crumbly toes.

On day twenty-nine, I decided to let them go. Gretel missed the boy. She’d been feeding him secretly. She loved him. There was that. I wanted them to taste my Mandel bread before they left. I opened the oven door, peered inside to check whether the bread had risen. Felt someone shove me in. Dying didn’t hurt. Had happened to me once before in the woods. That familiar pain. Shame. Flesh turning to bone. Blood in the ashes.

 

Beth Sherman has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her stories have been published in Portland Review, Blue Mountain Review, Tangled Locks Journal, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, Flash Boulevard, Sou’wester and elsewhere. Her work will be featured in The Best Microfictions 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached at @bsherm36 or https://www.bethsherman.site/

 

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CNF: Come Back

by Robin Turner

 

It’s spring & I’m thinking of the things that come back—macrame & low-rise blue jeans, the scissortails & the ruby throats, wild primrose & thistle & thyme. I have seen them. Old gospel songs & Polaroids, the first & the last days of school, &—so they tell us—Jesus. I am waiting for the coming of some late summer rain, the return of the red resurrection flower, its strong-tender stem, its intricate blossom a year’s dark, deepening. I am waiting for my mother.

 

Robin Turner is the author of the chapbook bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press). Her poems, prose poems, and flash fiction appear in DMQ Review, Rattle, Rust + Moth, The Texas Observer, Bracken Magazine, and in many other journals, anthologies, and community poetry projects. Her work has been honored with nominations for Best Spiritual Literature, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Currently a poetry reader for Sugared Water, she lives with her husband near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.

 

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The Woman in the Peach Dress

by Lu Chekowsky

 

The thicker my braid, the more fertile I will appear to the people who need to view me as fertile, which, by my estimation, is everyone. My braid is as thick as a Coke can. I don’t drink Coke. I do drink La Croix. My hair is the only thick thing about me. I am slim because I know the secret to eating; small plates, small bites, plenty of sips of ice water between swallows. My thick hair sprouts from the health I have accomplished via Pilates and squash. My wrists are small. I wear my bones like a necklace around my neck. My neck is tall but my posture takes work. My mother told me once to stand up straight if I wanted boys to like me. Of course I wanted boys to like me so I always imagine a pole in my back. I wish there was a doctor to put a pole in my back. It’s summer, so I dress from the summer closet. I wore this peach dress to a polo match once. Prince Charles was there; he winked at me. I ride horses, admire horses, own horses. I want my hair to shine like a well-groomed horse. I hold my arms like a Barbie, square at the corners. I’m always rushing somewhere, carrying something light; ready to model a new dress, a new bag, a new me. My lips curl up at the corners; glisten with pink gloss. I am the most gracious when seething. I ask the woman who works behind the counter about the taste of their pastry because I want to appear relaxed about pastry, but I am not relaxed about pastry. I hear women eat pastry, but I don’t know any personally. Another woman behind me – who has no business at all eating a burrito – is eating a burrito. I could definitely tell you how much all the women around me weigh. I always know how much smaller I am than everyone else. It’s helpful. I don’t want much, just to pretend to eat crustless egg salad sandwiches at parties, to dab my lips with a linen napkin. I want to provide my weekend houseguests with soft sheets, ice cold tea, a version of me that they can tell people about while smiling. I want to fluff pillows and to laugh effortlessly. I want to be thought of as effortless. I order a black coffee. It will erase my hunger. I leave, the bells on the door jingling, my braid swaying left to right, right to left as I trot. My mind is buzzing with to-do’s. I will volunteer at a banquet. I will carry a wicker basket with a ribbon laced in the handle. I will buy art at an auction; something modern – like me. I will delight in my bones. I will post a photo of myself smiling.

 

Chekowsky is an Emmy-winning writer and creative director who built a successful career in media through gut, intuition, and addiction to approval. Lu’s essays and poems have appeared in journals including: The Rumpus, Pigeon Pages, The Maine Review. Her work has been supported by Mass MoCA, Tin House, SPACE on Ryder Farm. She is a 2023 New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Nonfiction Literature.

 

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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