October 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
“The Marrow of Zen,” one of the sutras of Shunryu Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, relates zen practitioners to four horses, with the fourth horse responding only after the pain of the whip penetrates to the marrow of its bones. If alcoholics need to hit rock bottom, I have some sense of what that means. I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind thirty years ago, yet it took the onset of chronic neurological pain in order to commit to something I had only dabbled in for decades.
When looking out became impossible, and I could reflect but not imagine, I retreated within. At times, breathing was the only thing I could manage. What I found looking within was a life thrown out of balance, like a load having shifted in the back of a pick up with nothing securing it to the bed. Having seen myself for so long as a good guy, it was unsettling to realize how vain, shallow and self-indulgent I could be. Meditation became the ropes to re-anchor the load.
Who knew that pain could teach so much? Not me, but I now admit to being a slow learner. Someone might question whether I’m glad for the headaches. Make no mistake, I would like to be free of the symptoms that stifle me and keep me from enjoying all of my days. In fact, my search for a cure continues. Yet, looking back, I don’t think I would have otherwise learned things about my life and I’m glad to have found a teacher who speaks my language. Pain has finally penetrated so that I know in my bones what once I only thought in my mind.
by Charles Varani
Charles lives, writes and teaches in Oregon. He is also a shodan at Open Sky Aikido and rides his bicycle. Like most people in the Willamette Valley, he usually has something fermenting.
July 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
I haven’t said my skin is ash. I hyperpigment where the band of my sports bra rests, where a racer back runs rigid between my blades, where my favorite strand of pearls wants to lay. I sliver tiny shavings of my skin where these polka-dots amass. I fragment, and I flake, but I fold myself in scarves and sweatshirts so nobody sees.
I haven’t said this collects on every person’s skin, just better on mine. It appreciates the four hours every weekday I spend outside, where it can absorb the hot, humid air. It appreciates that I sweat when I work out, that I moisten it, that I quench its thirst. It appreciates that I supply it with neighbors too—like asthma and celiac. Yes, this appreciates me.
I haven’t said my skin is scales. Fine scales. Pale scales. Pink scales. In the shower, when I exercise, after sunlight. My flesh courses itself into rigid plates. On my back, they look like uneven roof tiles arranged in concentric layers. Patches overlap from head toward toe. Between freckles, they sink their uneven edges like teeth into my ribcage. They indent and project and flex and multiply, and multiply, and multiply.
I haven’t said Malassezia furfur. Since this inhabits my skin, it will return. Since this can’t leave, I can only hope the pale pigment patches on my right shoulder and the russet spots on my spine blend with my natural Band-Aid colored tone. Since I can’t seem to shake this species that shadows me, I’ll keep itching.
I haven’t said my skin is rash. I apply lotion, shampoo, cream, foam, soap. I want to control this, to keep it from growing. Over-the-counter, prescription, topical, homeopathic, breathable, non-greasy, hypoallergenic, who cares. This is here to stay.
by Ruth Towne
Ruth Towne is an emerging author from Southern Maine. The Literary Yard recently featured her piece “Four Passages” on their website, and Blotterature published her short “This Is More Than Homesickness” in their Winter 2015 issue. She currently studies Professional Writing and Information Design but loves creative writing. When she is not working, she loves to visit her family’s camp and explore the New England woods.
July 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction, poetry
The Dying Sister
You fell in slo-mo like a mimosa petal caught in a small breeze, sprawling, nearly soundless, on our parents’ speckled linoleum. I, five years younger, didn’t know you held your breath to make yourself faint. I didn’t know you’d whittled yourself down to taut skin over sharp bones by spitting meals into your napkin. I cried because I thought you had the “C” like Aunt Ceil. When you slept until 4:00 p.m. and Mother put a mirror to your parted lips, I never expected breath. Those “slashes” on your wrists, grazes that didn’t need stitches, healed to pearly stripes.
Black widow spider, you wove us all into your worry-web, yet went on to outlive a husband and three live-in men. How old were you when you first fell in love with death?
Somewhere I remember you and me leaping from your twin bed to mine, the bottoms of our nightgowns ballooning, your chestnut hair flying up from your shoulders. You, airborne, born of air. We had to grip your arms to stop you from throwing yourself into Father’s open grave.
When a doctor would tell you to see a psychologist, you’d switch your doctor. I changed my phone number, returned your letters unopened. Then Mother would say, “But she’s your sister.” I would phone, and soon your silky thread would begin to spool itself around me.
Hatching your latest death, you bought a mobile home in a trailer park smack inside a hurricane belt. I startle at loud noises, as if your house had just blown here from Florida and thunked down in my yard.
Last night I dreamed you were laid out in a coffin on palest blue satin, your hair in tendrils on the lace-edged pillow. Dry-eyed, I felt myself take full breaths.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Eating With Ghosts
Here I am, eating with my son, daughter, husband,
reminding myself to chew, to not cup my hand
at the rim of my plate to shelter my food,
as if my dead father could reach for it again.
In Russia, he sucked on bark, even stones.
Here I am, asking everyone about their day,
leaving some food on my plate
to please my mother’s ghost.
“This way you won’t get broad in the beam.”
Her hand pinches the small fleshy roll
at the waistband of her girdle.
At night, when everyone is in bed,
you can find me in the dark kitchen,
bending into the open fridge,
the glow of its cold bulb,
eating leftovers with my fingers,
choking on unchewed food.
Shh, don’t tell.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Rochelle’s novel, Miriam The Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2004), was nominated for the Harold U. Ribelow Award. Her short story collection What I Wish You’d Told Me (Shebooks, 2014) is just out in audio. She’s published essays in NYT (Lives) and Newsweek-My Turn. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines such as The Iowa Review, The Doctor TJ Eckleberg Review, Stone Path Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Stand, Inkwell Magazine, Amarillo Bay, Poet Lore, Crack the Spine, Compass Rose, Controlled Burn, The Griffin, Los Angeles Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, The MacGuffin, Memoir And, Moment, Negative Capability, The Louisville Review, Amoskeag, Pennsylvania English, Rio Grande Review, RiverSedge, Peregrine, Gulf Coast, Existere, Passager, and Willow Review. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and I won the Branden Memorial Literary Award from Negative Capability. Currently, she teaches writing at UCLA Extension.
April 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
To the Man Who Was to Be My Gardening Companion for Fifty Years
You used to love that I see the fierce beauty in a little chaos. I first cleared that web of woodiness cautiously. I pruned instead of hacked the curious entanglement of Greenbrier and Wisteria. The roots seemed to reach as deep as our own. Coiled arms weaved and roamed within a contained jungle; unaware of their confusion. Wherefrom were the clustered blooms and the source of those thorns? I trimmed the entwined vines and branches to create a negative space. The lofty window then was in view.
A too-early spring bestowed a lavender waterfall. You should have seen it. The Wisteria’s light-green leaves were infrequent, and the blooms hung like grape clusters. The pods of the flower were velvet, and when I ran my hand underneath them, they felt like delicate mala beads across my palm. The sweet smell of baby powder hung in the air, and I longed to be near them. I sat on the steps of my front porch to hold the impermanence of a Florida spring.
In the Fall, you came and took measure. We dug perfect beds in the sun. You replanted shy-yellow lilies. To flank a much-better laid path. But, the vines. Our bare limbs bled from thorns. We have to get at the roots, you said. You pulled hard and we cut underground. You wielded shovel and saw. To conquer Mount Parnassus’s Pythons. All roots were exposed and then gone.
Now the rusty swing squeaks in the nearby park. The squirrels’ throaty barks fall from the Laurel tree. A sliver of lavender peaks through pale- green buds on the spiraling vine that hugs the Crepe Myrtle trunk like a gentle rebel.
by Johanna Lane
The Voice of the Withlacoochee
To see colors along the Withlacoochee River, you must be there in the slanted light. Walk with her there. Let soft shoes touch the path like a shushing finger to the lips. Notice longleaf pine needles gilded from the sun’s glow. The sinking light unmasks a lapis sky. See the soppy, pine-needled path become maroon, like the underside of a great blue heron’s wing.
Don’t worry if you are out of step with your companion.
Separate the stiff palmetto fronds for her and step down to the riverbank. Don’t fall. Walk closely to the roots and stay on solid ground. As the sun descends, watch how the tannin-stained river appears copper. Be mindful of shin-high cypress knees, so you don’t trip. See them scattered like old faces in a crowd. Focus in on one. Study the intricate lines like those around our eyes and mouths. They reveal our sad and happy stories.
Imagine the deep, gentle flow of a raised river when you see high water lines on Cypress tree trunks. But the shallow reveals gnarled roots grasping the bank; its knuckles protrude and fingertips sink into the soil.
Plan to return. As the setting sun erases the lavender hues in browned grasses, recall what wasn’t said.
by Johanna Lane
Johanna is an adjunct instructor of English at Saint Leo University. She writes personal essays that focus on the diverse and complicated natural environment of Florida and how this can mirror the dynamics in our most intimate interpersonal relationships.
April 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
‘Time to count it out,” said Tommy the gay black manager. I always liked Tommy, he was not stupid, he was good to us and not needy or demanding. The black girls started counting out the chicken pieces and talking shit as usual, I listened in because they were blunt and funny. Some of them didn’t mind pocketing money from customers. I walked across the greasy floor and started counting out the leftover pieces of chicken and bucketing them, planned to take home some original recipe and red beans and rice. One last group of customers appeared at the register, a black dude ordered a two piece chicken and biscuit, by accident he got two boxes but paid for one, a white dude in the crowd called him out, they went out to the parking lot and squared off, the black due took off his belt and started swinging it at the white, this went on for a couple minutes then Tommy told us to stop watching and get back to work.
by Joel Rook
January 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
27 February 2013.
She said:
Gentlemen, excuse me, gentlemen. Gentlemen. You’re such nice looking gentlemen. Gentlemen. I don’t mean to bother. All I have to give you [rustle of a plastic bag] is this flashlight. Gentlemen. I’m a pastor. I’m Pastor Patricia Smith. This is a high crime area. I was just beat down the other day. I’m the victim of sexual abuse. I broke these two teeth. I need: to get them fixed. Gentlemen I’m not a bum, I’m a pastor. Pastor Patricia Smith here. There was a murder up on Broadway. I’m the only witness. My mother. My mother: I’m just trying to get back to where my mother is. To New Brunswick, New Jersey, where my mother lives. I’m trying to get to New Brunswick, New Jersey, gentlemen. Gentlemen. Thank you, gentlemen. You can have this flashlight. Oh, you’re such nice gentlemen.
by Adam Morris
Adam Morris is a writer and translator in San Francisco.
