The Pawn Shop on Putnam Ave.

The pawnshop faced the traffic of Putnam Avenue. The people who went inside usually ducked their heads and moved with quick movements, but my dad liked to go in and wander around and buy things like old VCRs and televisions and dishwashers – a purchase he would forever regret after our house became infested with roaches. But Dad’s biggest regret came not from purchasing from the pawnshop but from selling his most prized possession to it.

I don’t know what lawsuit or worker’s compensation claim landed my dad with the money to buy that Gibson Les Paul. What I do remember is him giving each of us kids $100 when the windfall came down. I held the money in my hand, vowing to save it, but over the course of a week bought $100 worth of pickles instead because those Big Papa pickles were the shit.

He had guitars before but none as beautiful as that dark green Gibson. I watched him open its case and run his hands over the red velvet interior before picking it up and stroking its strings. One thrum and a dreamy sort of faraway look passed over his face.

Dad loved that guitar but pawned it on the regular because on the regular, we were broke. He always managed to round up the cash to get it out of pawn before they kept it. Then one time, he didn’t, and when we drove by the pawnshop, his Gibson was sitting in the window with a for sale sign slung around its neck. One day we drove by again, and the Gibson was gone.

Each time Dad drove by the pawnshop, he cringed a little until eventually, he wouldn’t look at its windows at all.

April Pride Sharp

April Sharp is an English instructor at Felbry College School of Nursing, and a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program. She often writes of her childhood growing up in Southeast Ohio. Her work has been featured in The Devil Strip, Rubber Top Review, and Appalachia Bare. When not writing she can be spotted stomping through the woods with her two dogs.

Figs and Snaps

Karen Carpenter was emblazoned into my retinas in the mid-1970s. I see her as the delicate, elfin creature who tiptoed into the spotlight inside the Hersheypark Arena and simply said “hello.”

That night, Karen wore a bell-bottomed, lace pantsuit and a metallic gold belt. Pantsuits were the rage then. Everyone was wearing them from Gloria Steinman to Charlie’s Angels. But this pantsuit! Fashioned entirely of beige lace. I imagined an elderly, nimble-fingered woman from Bruges, pins pressed tightly between her lips, toiling under weak candlelight with her loyal, calico cat by her side. The lace maker had read the measurements sent by the famous American pop star to a tee. That pantsuit fit like an elegant glove.

As soon as I sat down in my seat eight rows from the stage’s lip, I pretended my concert companion wasn’t there. I vanished the form of her body inside a navy pea coat perched loosely around shoulders into thin air. I blockaded her Shalimar perfume scenting our section like an old flower delivery inside a closed room and concentrated instead on the hopefully intoxicating qualities of second hand pot smoke.

I have no idea how or why my mother and I came to be sitting at that concert together. It was out of our ordinary. We never transcended. We never became more than what we were by blood. We almost never did “friend things.” It wasn’t meant to be. We were too different, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Even with the attendant mystery of why my mother and I attended a concert together once, I remember what a good performance it was. In addition to Karen Carpenter’s outfit, I have a permanent recording of her unique and beautiful voice inside my head: deeply resonant, pure, strong. But when she sang of being on top of the world, her smile was staged, a Cheshire grin on a thin face. Her brother Richard, seated at the piano, had the opposite problem. He was too consistently perky, bobbing his head every second note even during the sad songs like the one about rainy days and Mondays and having the blues.

It’s raining on a Monday. My mother forgets what day it is now. Her short-term memory has gone missing and the other parts of her, her distant memories, her sense of humor, are frequently on the fritz.

Today, she has forgotten more than usual. The index card standing at attention in the middle of her kitchen table is waiting in vain to learn: “TODAY’S DATE IS…” The Lilliputian billboard offering a daily reality check has taken the place of traditional, cheerful seasonal centerpieces and candleholders. I pick up the nearby red pencil and print: “Monday, October 7, 2019.”

“Here is your tea, Mom. No sugar, right?”

“I don’t want that milk.”

“Tea requires a drop of milk, remember?  To protect teeth enamel. How about a cookie?”

“What kind?”

I open the “sweets cabinet” underneath the toaster oven, noting the blackened toast crumbs and frozen pizza cheese coating the bottom tray like an ugly scab. Some changes about this kitchen of my childhood I will never get used to.

My mother’s sweets cabinet never harbored much promise while I was growing up in that house. Not today either.

“Fig newton or a gingersnap. Unless you want a Saltine or a box of golden raisins.”

“No chocolate chip?”

“No chocolate chip.”

“Forget it then.”

I give her one of each kind of cookie. She bites and chews.

“These cookies are stale. I can’t believe your father hasn’t inhaled them yet. Still good though. These are the classics, figs and snaps. Stick with the classics, Virginia. You’ll never be sorry.”

My mother stands. Limps. Retrieves both cookie boxes. Leaves the cabinet door open in a wide yawn. Takes one more of each variety for he paper plate. I put up my hand in protest when she reaches in for more. She hands over two fig newtons anyway.

“Speaking of the classics, Mom, how about pea coats. Remember those? People still wear pea coats.”

“Those were smart. Nice, big buttons with embossed ship anchors I think. Sailor coats.”

“Remember when you and I saw The Carpenters at the Arena? Remember the lace pantsuit Karen Carpenter wore?” I ask.

“I don’t really like pantsuits on women. Pantsuits make them look like astronauts.”

“What’s wrong with women being astronauts?’

“Nothing, I guess. If you want to fly to the moon, go ahead.” A rare laugh erupts from my mother, but it doesn’t succeed in changing the flat expression that has come to reside on her face.

“Do you remember that, though, Mom, when you and I went to the Hersheypark Arena and we saw The Carpenters? We sat really, really close to the stage?”

Outside, the rain intensifies. In the street, drops dart earthward, bounce off the standing, trampoline puddles. A red bird waits under a grey shrub, twitching nervously. Down the cement sidewalk, across the street, and up an identical walk, Mrs. Milhimes’ has arranged her customary, autumnal display of rust and yellow mums. The straw-hatted scarecrow stuck in one of the pots doesn’t like cold rain on his face. He’s slouched forward. He’s waiting it out.

My mother blinks, smiles weakly, swallows cookie.

“Yes, I do. I surely do,” she responds. “Didn’t we have a lot of fun together.”

I open my mouth and close it. Outside, the red bird decides she can’t wait huddled underneath shelter forever. She leaps, lifts her wings and flaps silently away.

 

 

Virginia Watts

 

Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found or upcoming in Illuminations, The Florida Review, The Moon City Review, Palooka Magazine, Streetlight Magazine, Burningwood Literary Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal among others. Nominee for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 2019 in nonfiction, Virginia resides near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Drawing session

This story is about drawing my mother’s portrait in a twenty-minute timed session. She is in her late sixties, but I am not sure of her birth year or birthdate. She has changed. She has mellowed out over the years.

Capturing likeness is the aim. She is a willing model. She wants to please. She sits down and I begin. The forehead does not move. Facial muscles around the eyes don’t move. Eyebrows don’t move. They are thick, as they are penciled-in dark.

Eyelids move. Eyeballs move.

Her eyebrows point up; they didn’t before. The end of her eyes where the eyelids meet also point up; they didn’t before. That’s one botched botox job. She is frugal.

Her husband of fifty years wants to leave her. She chewed his ass growing up. He withdrew. She pursued. He withheld.

Old people break up the same way young people do. There is back and forth. There are acts designed to cause jealousy. There is reluctance. There is attraction. There is repulsion.

She lost weight. He lost weight and fixed his teeth. Divorce papers are drawn up, but not filed. Fifty years is a long time.

I am down to her chin now. She has facial hair. She didn’t before. They are bleached but not removed. That double chin can be captured with shading. Time’s up.

 

Hooman Khoshnood

Hooman Khoshnood began his artistic career five years ago, after practicing law for over a decade. He began painting at an early age. But his approach to art-making became more conceptual while studying with Laura LLaneli, a sound art artist, and Marc Larre, a photographer. Mr. Khoshnood was also mentored by Giancarlo Bargoni, a renowned Italian painter in painting and theory. They also explored possible connections between painting and poetry. Mr. Khoshnood continued his studies in art at the Art Students League of New York where his painting “Unknown to me” was published as exemplary student work in the League’s 2017/18 catalog. Mr. Khoshnood obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Doctorate in Law both from the University of Georgia. He is also an avid reader focusing on Linguistics, Literature, and Art History. He was born in Iran and has lived in Iran, Italy, Canada, France, Spain, and the United States. He is fluent in English, Farsi, and Italian. He considers Atlanta home.

Charlie Brice, Featured Author

The Truth About Eternity

The happily ever after is the return to the disenchanted life. —Ruth Daniell

 

Check the refrigerator door,

the photos of your son at six, at ten,

graduating from high school,

gone, lost to the skirr of time,

 

of your wife before the pain set in—

the hikes, the ski trips, vacations

to lands with grapes and siestas,

 

yourself fifty pounds ago holding

a little boy on your lap, your arm

around a gorgeous woman with hair

the color of a midnight fairytale,

 

of Fred and Toots in Michigan standing

in front of the largest birch tree you’d

ever seen, cut down by Fred shortly

before time’s timber felled him and Toots,

 

of Dave Fick, your wife’s sailing instructor,

whose swim trunks slid south exposing sailors’

crack when he launched his boat from your dock,

and whose ashes now mix with sand and soot

in the depths of Walloon Lake,

 

of Art and Cee Culman, multimillionaires who spent

a summer laying tile in their kitchen only to realize

that what they’d learned was useless since they’d never

use those skills again before they died—and they didn’t—

 

of Bill Mackinen who taught you that no politician had

the right to define a “family” as a man, a woman, and

their children only—Bill who died watching the Tigers

route the Braves on his hospital TV, and

 

today, photos of Chuck Kinder, the best writing teacher

you ever had who, in the midst of criticizing a boring story

you’d written, fell into a raucous coughing spasm and,

once recovered, proclaimed, “that’s what happens

when you smoke seven joints in a row.”

Your refrigerator door gives the lie

to eternity—the door from whose surface

someone, someday, will remove your photos,

put them into a shoebox, and store them

on some disenchanted shelf.

 

 

The Truth About Conspiracies

 

What about those nitwits that won’t vaccinate

their kids against measles—the same screwballs

who criticize climate change deniers because

they denigrate science? Didn’t god invent jail cells

for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children?

 

What do you think happens when an

antivaccine ninny gets wheeled into

an emergency room gasping for breath

and holding her chest? Does she shout,

“Don’t touch me with that EKG!” Or,

“Keep that oxygen away from me!” Or,

“Don’t you dare take my blood!” No,

once in the ER, she becomes a big booster

of medical science. Just as there are no

atheists in foxholes, there aren’t many

antivaccine nutters in cardiac care units.

 

What about extended warranties?

A company has so little confidence

in its product that it sells you a warrantee

on top of the warrantee that already

comes with the oven, iron, refrigerator,

or the most shameful appliance of all—

the electric can opener. Isn’t a sign

of adulthood, of entrance into what Lacan

called the “Symbolic Order,” the ability

to operate a manual can opener? Doesn’t

that old-timey can opener allow us to assume

our place in Western Civilization? The truth

(and this poem is about the truth) is that

the company knows these gismos will last for years.

They play on our insecurity and incompetence: sell us

warrantees that make us pay twice as much for the widget

than it’s worth. Thank you P.T. Barnum!

 

Speaking of what lasts—every day I put cat poop

in the plastic bag my newspaper comes in

and it will stay in that plastic bag as long

as the plastic bag exists, which is forever.

Think of that—the only proof we have of eternity—

a plastic bag full of cat poop! Wait, there’s more—

 

I shave with the Gillette razor my father bought

in the thirties and used all through World War II.

Stainless steel doesn’t rust! The Gillette company

realized in the sixties that, if they kept making

this quality product, something that never needs

to be replaced, they’d go broke. So they turned to

the plastic disposables they make today that occupy

our landfills and compete for space in our oceans.

 

What about expiration dates? I get it with mayonnaise.

When green spores or brown splotches spoil its virginal

perfection, it’s time for the garbage bin. No problem there, but

everyone knows that salsa and Tobasco sauce never go bad.

They’re too hot to go bad, like my wife whose body may

be gnarled in places and is often wracked with pain,

but her essence, her bedrock goodness, her passionate

kindness and understanding will outlast any date etched

on a tombstone or printed on a death notice.

 

 

The Truth About Obituaries

 

The one time you absolutely must read

the obituary column and you can’t

because you’re dead! You will never read

what the amorphous “They” wrote about you.

And no fair writing your own obit. That’s cheating.

Talk about a conflict of interest!

 

The point of reading your obituary

is to see what others thought about you.

After all, as Sartre said in rebuke to Heidegger:

My death is not only not my ownmost possibility,

it isn’t my possibility at all. I’ll be dead!

No, my death, wrote Sartre, is some other

poor sod’s possibility (I’m paraphrasing here).

 

Someone other than me will discover my body—

maybe my sweet wife as she struggles to

find warmth in our bed only to discover

the cold hulk that was me; or some overworked

cop, called after a neighbor saw too many

newspapers bunched on my front porch;

or some luckless EMT who has to pry

my broken body out of twisted metal.

 

Will that final scribe highlight my kindness,

my fortitude in resisting the government as

a conscientious objector during Viet Nam?

Or will she focus on my disgust with academia

and the ever-dwindling psychoanalytic mirage;

my disappointments about growing up

in Cheyenne, Wyoming—a dusty, backward,

one-horse town that might as well have been

in the deep South—with an alcoholic father

and a mother who chose an alcoholic man?

Will she emphasize how ill-tempered I am

after my daily walk? How crabby I get

before dinner? Will she find some scandal

I’d forgotten or didn’t even know about?

 

As I rethink this now, it will be good

to be dead when my obit appears.

I’m with Sartre’s—let the other

deal with my demise.

 

Charlie Brice

Charlie Brice is the author of Flashcuts Out of Chaos (2016), Mnemosyne’s Hand (2018), and An Accident of Blood (2019), all from WordTech Editions. His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Permafrost, The Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.

 

 

She’s My Lady Friend

Grace lives up the street. Every morning she gets into her mint condition 1982 Plymouth Reliant and drives two blocks down the street where she spends the day with Gary, her gentleman friend. Grace is a spritely 89. She is robbing the cradle a little with Gary who is only 78. Gary is homebound. Diabetes took his vision. They both have grandchildren and great grandchildren of children who left this little town long ago. Widow and widower, they spend their days together. She cooks for him. “Having someone to enjoy the food is the only fun in cooking anymore.” They are intimate. “Our children think we should marry but phooey on that!” They never spend the night. “I need my beauty rest!” She takes him to church and to the Elks club for pinochle and for coffee and pie at the little café so they can get the gossip from the coffee clutch.  Gary always has pie, diabetes be damned. She reads the local paper aloud and plans their attendance at funerals. She has a little box of sympathy cards at the ready and an envelope of laundered and pressed five dollar bills. She always gives one in memory of the deceased to the church’s radio broadcast, unless a memorial fund is specified. She includes Gary’s name with her own on the card.

Late one afternoon, after she divvies the roast, mashed potatoes and gravy into separate containers for their meals throughout the week, and puts a couple in the freezer as well, Grace tells Gary she needs a nap before driving home. While she dozes in the floral print recliner, he listens to a cooking program on television. The woman cooks from her kitchen on a ranch, and a husband, children, and a widowed father-in-law are always brought in to eat what she makes, usually after chores or school or some play activity. They are always happy. He likes the show for the stories of ranch life that go with the food. It puts him in mind of his life, before the kids grew up and moved away, before Nettie died, before he’d sold the ranch and moved to town, before he’d lost his vision.

He says, “I was listening to the Pioneer Woman and thinking on the old times.” He says this over and over in the next couple of days to anyone who will listen, to his children, to himself while he waits in the corner of the family room at the church. He thinks on it during the Psalm and the hymns, and still beside the grave where disturbed soil gives scent to his sightlessness. His daughter helps him find the casket with the flowers he’d asked her to buy. The people whisper in the church basement over casseroles and bars, “Grace was always so good to him,” and “What will Gary do now?”

 

by Tayo Basquiat

TAYO BASQUIAT is a writer, teacher, adventurer, scavenger, and Wilderness First Responder. He gave up tenure as a philosophy professor to pursue an MFA in creative writing at the University of Wyoming. His work has appeared in Superstition Review, On Second Thought, Northern Plains Ethics Journal, the Cheat River Review, Proximity Magazine, and in a growing portfolio as producer of Wyoming Public Media’s “Spoken Words” podcast.