July 2018 | nonfiction
My children will beg me to carry them all over San Francisco, their bodies sticking to me, their voices question marks and exclamations.
My heart will roar like a train when I see my father, yet I will stay pleasant, quiet, impenetrable. My brother, who never asks anything of me, will ask me and my mother to pose in nuclear family photos. As the camera clicks, I will grind my teeth down into short, flat plains.
My mother will pace in high heels, perpetually sipping Diet Coke. Her friends will encircle her, a tragic queen, create a shield around her so that she won’t need to see my father or remember that he is there.
Halfway through dinner, I will give a speech about the buoyant nature of love. I will dance all night. I will bring back disco. I will spin my children in the air, and the flame of their joy will launch the dance floor into a plane of happiness.
When my husband carries our children away to sleep, his twin will corner me. He will find a reason to call me a frigid bitch to my face. And I will tell him that I am not frigid, and he really should look up that word. I will keep speaking to him because he is kind to my children, nicknaming them and looking at them the way he wished someone would have looked at him when he was a boy.
I will run miles until I turn into a bird and fly away but I won’t fly away; instead I’ll just stop hitting the pavement with my body. I will fall in love with the fresh salty air and rolling hills and $7 coffee, and then I will board a plane and go back home.
by Jamie Wagman
Jamie Wagman is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies and History at Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana. Her creative work has also appeared in The Adirondack Review, Newfound, Hip Mama, and Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues.
July 2018 | visual art
Nighthawks on the Bus
by A.C. Koch
A.C. Koch works almost entirely in black and white, because colorblindness predisposes him to see the world in contrasts. Architecture and streetscapes offer an interplay of shapes and textures that can create a great sense of depth and drama in an ordinary scene. His photography was recently featured in a Westword article during a show of black-and-white prints at St. Mark’s Coffeehouse in Denver, CO. More of Koch’s photography can be found on Instagram @henry_iblis, and his photo blog: invisiblepony.blogspot.com.
July 2018 | poetry
The chainsaw revs, wakes us to falling
limbs and pulping. Not the birch,
I pray, to what God of no
mercy, I know not. For it is the birch,
too close to the power lines, being
carved out. My son squeezes my
hand. People fear roots, I mumble—
which sounds creepy— maybe
the tree was sick, I add.
The comfort-lie, we both know— leaves
gusting down the picture-perfect block.
Joey told me entry-level jobs are being
replaced by artificial intelligence.
This shit is real, my son blurts.
(Joey: his best friend’s older brother.)
Typically, I would chastise this shit
is real. And lambast Joey.
Instead, I ruffle the top of his cherished
head. When did he start using hair
gel? My fifth-grader trying
to be tough, to take my eyes of what was
once my favorite tree, to comprehend
this irrational world. After drop-off,
I drag back home— only the trunk is left.
Goggled workers, in bright orange, feed
the silver branches to machines.
Someday, robots will do this. They will
also drive trucks cross country, scoop
ice-cream cones, walk our dogs.
The city trucks are a jolly green.
Emblazoned across their sides:
Yes, cultivation is good here.
by Rebecca Irene
Rebecca Irene is a graduate of Swarthmore College, and recently received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work is published, or forthcoming, in Eunoia Review, Sixfold, Amaryllis, Dime Show Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2018 fellowship from the Norton Island Artist Residency Program. A Poetry Reader for Hunger Mountain and The Maine Review, she lives in Portland, Maine, where she supports her word-addiction by waitressing.
