Three people think in Treptower Park

April 2021 | nonfiction

She hoped the couple beside them in the park wasn’t listening to their fight. They, the other couple, were so obviously into each other and so obviously on a first date. They were speaking English, so there was a decent chance they didn’t understand German—so many people don’t in Berlin. They used to be like them—a couple with nothing on the record but hope. This is what they were adding to their record today: A fight, filled with disproportionate rage given the subject matter—surfing.

“Have you ever noticed how many couples you see arguing in the park on sunny days?” She is directing this question towards the man she is on a second date with on her second day in Berlin. Really, it’s a first-and-a-half date. They’d met the previous evening, not even twenty-four hours ago. She’d forgotten what it was like to feel this kind of hope. It surprised her. She no longer went into dates expecting to find a spark—the kind that left you falling asleep imagining what it’d be like to have someone around again. Someone really around, not just as an occasional guest appearance in your life. She’d spent that morning, her first morning in the city, walking around aimlessly, wondering what he’d say about everything she was seeing. He was the only person she knew in Berlin.

When she asked him about the couple’s argument, he used it as an excuse to lean closer to her and translate. “It’s about surfing and whether the best waves are more dependent on the phase of the moon or the time of year.” Then he kissed her.

 

Laney Lenox

Laney Lenox is a PhD candidate at Ulster University’s School of Applied Policy and Social Sciences. Her research examines the role of archives documenting incarceration in societies affected by conflict. She conducted fieldwork in Berlin, Germany, working with memorial and archival spaces as well as interviewing former political prisoners incarcerated in the GDR. Her work falls broadly into critical theory with an anthropological approach to fieldwork. She’s particularly interested in viewing linear time as a social construct and in understanding how this relates to power structures when discussing ‘dealing with the past’ and democratization processes in conflict-affected sites.

Bitters

April 2021 | poetry

Take your sorrow soup,

sour mash of sand

that slipped through

your mother’s hands on

days spent resenting a husband’s

regretful weakness.

Trickle in the salt from old

wounds, sprinkle an ounce

of onion tears over whatever meat

you can trim from the fat

on her old chopping block.

Stir in the shadow of the owl

that passes overhead

whispering that necessary question

who cooks for you?

 

Kelley Jean White

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Bad Memories of the Good Old Days

April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

The darkest hour is just before

the middle of the night.

Mishka Shubaly, “Destructible”

 

I climbed the infinite staircase

that leads nowhere;

it took me almost a decade,

a fractured ankle,

a fractured rib,

a broken tooth,

my peace of mind,

and half of my soul.

 

I played the eleven games,

those were happier days.

But I remember the rejection,

the taste of blood in my mouth,

the humiliation,

a pitch-black bottomless pit

of youth and sadness.

 

I know how it feels to be depressed

at your aunt’s birthday party,

to think about death at the dive bar,

I know the strange looks you get

when you make jokes about misery,

I know how it feels

to spend the entire weekend

under a fortress of shadows and blankets.

Endless Sundays,

unnerving Mondays,

Advil and beer for breakfast.

I know.

I know.

There, there.

 

Black and white movies,

empty bottles of cheap white wine,

broken glass on the carpet,

suicidal fantasies at the supermarket,

tears at the airport,

cold sweat at the parking lot,

hot coffee and antidepressants,

shattered dreams and broken hearts.

That’s all that’s left:

Bad memories of the good old days.

 

Juan David Cruz-Duarte

Juan David Cruz-Duarte was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He lived in South Carolina for 10 years. In 2018 he earned a doctorate degree in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina. His work has been published in Five:2:One, Fall Lines, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Jasper Magazine, Blue Collar Review, Burningword, Escarabeo, Máquina Combinatoria, and elsewhere. He is the author of Dream a little dream of me: Cuentos siniestros (2011), La noche del fin del mundo (2012), and Léase después de mi muerte (Poemas 2005-2017) (2018). He lives in Bogotá.

John J. Zywar

April 2021 | visual art

Frost 043

 

John J. Zywar

John J. Zywar is a retiree in Central Massachusetts who enjoys pursuing his interests in photography, cooking, family history research, prose and poetry. His interest in photography grew out of a 4H program in photography which included darkroom experience when he was in high school. His photographic art interests run from macro photography of frost to landscapes, all intended to spark a reaction from the observer. Art is a presentation to the senses to elicit an emotional response. Transforming photographs to artistic images through digital means is a current area of exploration. He has taken a number of workshops with professional nature photographer Harry Collins. His photos last appeared in a show at the Logansport Art Association (Indiana) with art by his wife (watercolors), and two daughters (ceramics and metal).

 

Eminence

April 2021 | poetry

The land in Nevada seems barren

like evil witch skin until you get

a better view. Start with a

 

close-up of crater valley, five shades

of brown, the ochre lip of serious

plummage, cracked ridge,

 

circular but not perfectly so, its irregular

features staring up at feathery wisps

of malnourished clouds.

 

Something as forceful as god rearranged

what once was, what once lay dormant,

dehydrated rivers, quivering

 

with geologic memories, nothingness pre-

served, dead sea, land succession bolted,

flat-lined except for mountain

 

ridges, curved, curling up toward bleak sky.

Ancient birds, vectors of pestilence, rise

from pink ash beds, illuminating

 

the very place I stand. I reach out, I reach

up, grasping at history’s breath, pulling it

in on top of me, seeking resurrection

 

of soul, spirit, body; acknowledging

the eminent passing of all that I am

into the hot mouth of time.

 

John Dorroh

Whether John Dorroh taught any secondary science is still being discussed. He did manage, however, to show up at 6:45 every morning with at least three lesson plans and a thermos of robust Colombian. His poetry has appeared in about 80-85 journals, including Dime Show Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Os Pressan, Feral, Selcouth Station, and Red Dirt Forum/Press. He also writes short fiction and the occasional rant.