Because the Night

October 2024 | nonfiction

That was when Paul McCartney sang Venus and Mars are all right tonight, and we yelled, “Wings suck!” and punched chrome buttons to change the station on the Dodge Dart’s radio. But some nights we were all right, driving on a dark desert highway, cool wind in our hair, except it was Florida in August and you could swim through the humidity, and the smell of boiling oranges oozed from the Tropicana plant.

That was when we rigged an 8-track under the Dart’s dash, and blasted our own music—screaming along with Patti Smith singing “Gloria,” as we thundered down I-75 from Gainesville to Tampa, to the theater where Patti had fallen off the stage the year before and broken her back, but this night she refused to stop singing and howling and flinging her marionette body around, even as the lights came up and the loudspeaker complained that we should all exit the building immediately.

That was when we drove back through shadowed cow fields, headlights dangerously dimming because an alternator belt had broken. We fired accusations: “What’s wrong with your stupid car?” “Why don’t you help me figure out what to do, instead of giving me shit?” We found an all-night truck stop that could help us out. The radio behind the greasy checkout counter moaned, don’t it make my brown eyes blue?

That was when we returned to the hovel in the student ghetto, to the bed with tangled sheets that never got washed. We put on “Aqualung,” drying in the cold sun, watching as the frilly panties run sounding wrong and dirty and hot. Then, one of us said it. It just slipped out.  And the next album dropped with a flat clunk down the record changer, and the needle hissed as it hit the first grooves.

That was when 10cc sang, I’m not in love.

Kit Carlson

Kit Carlson is an Episcopal priest and a life-long writer with work appearing in publications as diverse as Seventeen Magazine and Anglican Theological Review. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of Short Fictions. She has recently published in EcoTheo Review, River Teeth, Rooted 2: An Anthology of the Best Arboreal Nonfiction, Wrong Turn Lit, and Burningword Literary Journal, among others. She lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her husband Wendell, and Lola, a nervous rescue dog. Find her at kitcarlson.org.

Decorum

October 2024 | poetry

I take in a terrific piano concert: classic

ragtime, boogie-woogie, rhumba-boogie

from New Orleans, a couple of blues numbers.

Professor Longhair tribute. A boogie version

of the national anthem; it never sounded better.

 

The pianist’s fingers blur; from his left hand

the bass rumbles like a train under the street.

Beside him a drummer sits on a box-drum

he beats time on, and

I’m grooving,

moving

my body all over along with the drumbeat;

doing a jitterbug

sitting down.

Big smile all over my face.

Keeping time with every beat. If only

someone else would stand and dance!

 

The Texas town that I moved here from, lots

of people would have been up and dancing—

in the aisles, down front, at the back, anywhere

there was room.  Shouts and whistles

between numbers, hair and feet flying.

 

This Midwest audience: the woman next to me

wears a cautious smile. A couple behind me

peer studiously at the pianist. A few people

tap feet or joggle their heads. That’s it?

After each number, polite applause.

 

I’m totally frustrated! And damn!

That curly-haired drummer is so hot

perched there on his cajón

with his twice-pierced ears

and the stud at the side of his nose.

 

Lynn D. Gilbert

Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems have appeared in Arboreal, Bacopa Literary Review, Blue Unicorn (Pushcart nomination), Consequence, Footnote, The Good Life Review, Sheepshead Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in a suburb of Austin and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.

Pillow Talk

October 2024 | fiction

We just had sex. But I wasn’t thinking of you.

When you pulled me to your chest, your head resting on my hair, I was thinking of my old physics professor. Wondering how he’d have fucked me if given the chance. When you breathed a sigh over my face and whispered, That was amazing, I wondered how he’d have spoken to me in an after coitus-glow, if he would have noticed that I wasn’t feeling it with you because there was still so much hurt tangled in the sheets of our shared bed. You kissed me, but it wasn’t gentle.

I think that guy from the record store would have kissed me softly, with his fingers playing silent songs along my spine. Perhaps then he would have pulled me closer if I tried to move away. But you just let me roll over to my side of the bed. It’s a familiar position for me, my back turned to you, and I wonder how you can bear not to see my face. Aren’t you curious about what’s running through my mind?

My friend from the restaurant would be. He would have been tugging my hair and saying, Please let me into your head, and I would’ve said, Of course. Because I’d want to let him in, to feel that intimacy with someone who doesn’t want my back turned, who doesn’t let me turn my back. Is that so much to ask?

But you would say, yes, it is actually, because there is nothing more that I need to know about you. I have checked all of the boxes and seen the necessary disclosures. But what you don’t see are the men shuffling through my head like a deck of cards, or the ones I swipe on when I hide in the bathroom with my phone. You don’t know about the people I kissed, and how they tasted sweet after we shared a chocolate souffle. Although none of that matters. We just had sex, and you’re not thinking of me. But I’m thinking of you.

Sophia Carlisle

Sophia Carlisle is a creative currently living in the Midwest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Diet Milk Magazine, Erato Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, and elsewhere. She enjoys wistful stories of all kinds and has a particular soft spot for the ghosts we let linger.

Ernst Perdriel

July 2024 | visual art

Lethocerus americanus

 

Water Flower

 

Ernst Perdriel

Ernst Perdriel is a multi-field artist (visual art, photography, writing), designer, and horticulturist based in Cowansville (Quebec, Canada). His mission is to transmit his passion for cultural and environmental heritage through the arts, lifestyle, and knowledge-sharing. Learn more at www.ernstperdriel.com.

Ellen June Wright

July 2024 | visual art

Watercolor Abstract 78

 

Ellen June Wright

Ellen June Wright lives in New Jersey. Her work revolves around the power of color and the emotions and memories they evoke. She is inspired by the works of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and Frank Bowling. Her art has most recently been published online by Gulf Stream Magazine.