marina blitshteyn is the author of Russian for Lovers (Argos Books) and the chapbook $kill$, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She works as an adjunct instructor and occasionally curates the la perruque performance series.
This poem, “Gender is Body,” has previously appeared in El Aleph Magazine Volume One, published by El Aleph Press.
Every night before bed Clara sat in her nightclothes in front of the old clouded mirror of her dressing table, while her friend, Gussie, stood behind her and brushed Clara’s hair. While Gussie brushed her hair, a velvet drape fell around her, closing out the room, the children, the neighing of wagon horses passing on the street—like the raising of a bridge, with no crossing over. Inside this sheltered space, the brush warmed across Clara’s head and down across her neck, and down. Back and forth, the breath of the brush, warm as the bed on winter mornings, warm with sleep and dreams, warmer like melting chocolate, then hot, hot as steam, but pleasant. Pleasant heat. Heat like running.
One night, a slight bead of sweat slipped between Clara’s breasts from this pleasant heat, enough heat to want to slip off her heavy robe, and pull up the cotton night dress, up and up, sliding out the right arm, and then the left, and then pulling it, in a flutter of fabric, over the hair. Enough to want the brush to hold its breath while Gussie stepped out of her skirt leaving it in a pattern on the floor matching the circle of her waist. Enough to want to stand there unaware of time, looking at Gussie clothed in skin the color of the candle flame, drinking in the shape of her, noting how smooth her revealed skin was compared to her weathered face, loving that weathered face, observing her left breast slightly smaller than the right, remarking how her nipples stood, shiny as if already wet, and then Clara, bending her head to suck, finding the taste of peaches in her mouth.
But wanting wasn’t doing.
Wanting wasn’t doing.
So Clara, shocked by her thoughts, said nothing to Gussie and the brush kept brushing the same, brushing Clara’s hair. When she finished, like every night before, Gussie set the brush on the dresser and went away alone to her room.
When Gussie left and the door thumped into its frame, the latch clicked into the jam, and the flame smothered out, its smoke slithering up into the night air, Clara shook off her night dress and went to bed with the brush. Lying in the dark, she touched the brush to her naked skin, sliding its soft hairs across her breasts, pressing the side of the ivory handle into her belly. Then she moved the brush down and crushed the brush between her legs. She rubbed the brush against her again and again. She bit her lip bloody, holding in her scream.
Afterward, she drew the brush up toward her mouth and put her lips on the brush—as if the brush were a living thing, someone to fold your hand around, make love to, love.
“Snow Jewel [5:1] 2014.”
Jeanne Althouse lives in Palo Alto, California. Her flash fiction and longer stories have appeared in various literary journals, including Shenandoah, Pif Magazine, Pindeldyboz , Flash, The International Short Story Magazine, Madison Review, Redlands Review, So to Speak, Porter Gulch Review, Red Rock Review, The MacGuffin, and others. Her story, “Goran Holds his Breath” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. “Children Left Breathing” is her first novel.
One beautiful spring afternoon full of sunshine and pollen, we had Shawn and Deb over. We barbecued out on the patio, burgers and sausages and whatever the women were having. Plenty of potato salad and baked beans. We drank beers and watched some of the Giants game. We told stories and joked at each other’s expense. While Supreme Leader was distracted, we laughed and laughed and laughed.
We hadn’t thought to run our little shindig by him. He was still only seven or eight years old, going on forty-five. Some days, today included, he seemed perfectly content to play with his toy soldiers by himself down in the rec room. (He had hundreds of them; maybe it wasn’t just play.) Still, he eventually heard us clanking dessert plates and clinking beer bottles. He marched outside, glaring at us, each in turn. He wore tiny, black jackboots polished to a high gloss.
Jon-Davis! he screamed.
I took a long drink of beer and said, Yes, son?
He balled his fists. His face went stony.
No son, Jon-Davis! You call Supreme Leader!
Shawn chuckled. He sure is a feisty bugger.
And cute as a cupcake! said Deb.
Supreme Leader fumed but said nothing. I thought his fat little head might pop off.
Honey? said Maggie. Would you like a cheeseburger? Daddy made one for you on the grill. Come sit down. I’ll get a bun and fix it just the way you like it.
Silence! yelled Supreme Leader.
We all sat up straight in our chairs, holding our breath.
No bugger, no cupcake, no honey! You call Supreme Leader!
Always fidgety, Maggie shifted in her chair, fingering up cake crumbs.
Imperialist pigs! he hollered. Stuffing faces!
Don’t get excited, I ventured. It’s just a little Sunday cookout among friends.
It’s a family tradition, said Shawn.
So know-it-all! Supreme Leader shrieked. Yet know nothing!
He paused to catch his breath. He was more worked up than I’d ever seen him, sweat beading on his fat upper lip. He was starting to worry me. Maggie, too. I could see it in her eyes.
Soon you learn, he said. Supreme Leader will teach.
He waited for his words to sink in, though none of us had a clue what he was talking about. We wouldn’t have taken him seriously anyway. No one said a word. We listened to the happy chirp of kids playing in the park. Across the street, the neighbor was washing his Corvette in the driveway. The awkward silence grew like a throat cancer.
Does he talk like that all the time? Deb asked when she couldn’t stand it any longer. It’s adorable!
We laughed our nervous laughs.
We can’t figure out where he picked it up, said Maggie.
Shawn finished his beer and cracked another, gazing at Supreme Leader the entire time.
Know who he reminds me of? he asked. That what’s-his-name over there.
Could you be a little more specific, sweetie?
Hold your horses, he said. I’m getting to it. It’ll come to me.
We waited. Supreme Leader looked dour.
You know, that Kim Something Whatever?
Where we had the war all those years back? said Deb.
Exactly.
Maggie sipped her lemonade. That’s what we were going to name him, she said. If he was a girl.
What? said Shawn.
Kim, I said.
Deb smiled and said, That’s a beautiful name.
I’m telling you, said Shawn, he’s a dead ringer.
Supreme Leader’s expression softened. He flashed his pointy teeth and said:
I so happy you notice!
We looked on, nonplussed. It didn’t faze Supreme Leader.
Now we ready, he said.
For what? asked Shawn.
Supreme Leader snapped a salute.
You see, he said.
Yet for almost a week, nothing changed. Not really. We went about our daily routine. I filed stories, Maggie cleaned teeth. We only got one call from Mrs. Wallace and none at all from Principal Vernon. Supreme Leader still gave orders and demanded strict discipline, but he seemed less edgy in his drill sergeant routine, his screaming softer, his grimaces less disparaging.
Maybe we weren’t paying close enough attention.
Because Saturday morning a cargo plane landed on our front lawn. We usually would’ve mustered for PT at dawn, awakened by Supreme Leader’s bullhorn screech. We would’ve run eight miles, then sipped bad coffee after cold showers. Today Supreme Leader let us sleep in. But the roar of jet engines outside our bedroom window was disconcerting. The panes rattled, the four-poster shook, Maggie’s collection of ceramic elephants clattered to the floor. We thought it was an earthquake and hunkered in the bathroom, adrenaline pumping though we were still half-asleep. Then we heard Supreme Leader shrieking through his bullhorn:
Wake, capitalist dogs!
Soldiers in drab green uniforms with scarlet collars hustled us down the hall and out the door. They shouldered AK-47s and gripped M68 pistols and screamed at us in a language we didn’t understand. Supreme Leader gave orders the soldiers followed.
Where did he learn to speak that? Maggie wondered.
Our boy is a genius! I said, glowing.
It was a beautiful morning, clear and cool. Fingers of fog stretched over the mountains. The blooming azaleas smelled sweet and heavy. We stepped across the decimated lawn, rutted with landing gear tracks. In the driveway, my Ford and Maggie’s Chrysler had been crushed like aluminum beer cans. So had the neighbor’s Corvette. We trudged up the cargo ramp. The soldiers followed us, and Supreme Leader followed them, still shrieking through his bullhorn.
Once we were airborne, I asked, Where are we going?
On Supreme Leader’s signal, the soldiers broke into an anthem of sorts. Not the most melodic in the world. Maybe it was the singers.
Where you think? said Supreme Leader when they’d finished. He grinned his pointy-toothed grin. The Fatherland!
J. T. Townley has published in Collier’s, Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Istanbul Review, Prairie Schooner, The Threepenny Review, and other places. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University, and he spent time at Fundación Valparaíso, Spain as a fiction fellow. A Pushcart Prize nominee and Fulbright Scholar, he teaches at the University of Virginia.
Photo by Nicolas Amara
Almost5Q is the finalist blog of Five Quarterly, an online literary journal that publishes five pieces of fiction and poetry each month, with each issue edited by a new editorial board composed of five guest editors. The finalist blog showcases those pieces which reached the final editorial reading. Our assistant editor, Nicolas Amara, was recently featured there. Check out his poem, “River,” over at Almost5Q!
Thomas Cook lives in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, where he’s completing a dissertation on the novels of David Foster Wallace and editing the latest issue of Tammy.
The preppy hombre
ferried the sunlight on his shoulder
but didn’t speak to it
trotting through the wrestling
signatures of such and such
I have been his age
legible in the rorschach
insensible to the provenance
of flourish or giant
absence of giant Nightingale
with a tweed lid in a cedar
closet The dollar
vans are singing of home
on the Fulton Mall
The world has been resurrected
through its furnishings
I will have added
dogwoods leaning over the fence
with some foolishness and the sycamores
in the sky in their rapture
Ben Gantcher’s recently completed manuscript of poems, Snow Farmer, was a finalist in the 2014 Omnidawn Open book contest. His first chapbook, Strings of Math and Custom, was published in 2013 by Beard of Bees Press. If a Lettuce, his first manuscript of poems, was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Bright Hill Press contests. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Tin House, Slate, Guernica and The Brooklyn Rail. He is a 2014-15 fellow at LABA. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a resident at Ucross and Omi, a correspondent with the Hyde Park Review of Books and a poetry editor of the online journal failbetter. He teaches math, Language Structures and an interdisciplinary writing and visual art studio course at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, NY, where he lives with his wife and three children.
“You have to start identifying triggers,” my counselor said. “Tell me more about community service.”
I situated the Nicorette behind my gums on the left side of my mouth and waited for the area to numb up.
“It’s a nightmare,” I said.
“My narcissistic mother was a nightmare,” she said. “You’re cooking food for homeless people.”
“I’ve never actually cooked anything over there.”
Liz raised her eyebrow.
“I’m no innocent person, but there are people there who committed serious crimes,” I said. “But the guy who runs the place is cute, so at least I have something to look at while I’m slinging loaves of bread.”
That was supposed to be a joke. Not really. I mean, it was a joke but it could also be real. Her cell rang. She put one shiny nail to her lips. “Hi,” she said seductively, smiling into the phone. I knew it was a man on the other end. “Can you hold one moment?”
She put the phone to her chest and motioned for me to meet her in the space between us. “I have to take this. He might be suicidal.” She twirled her finger in the air and rolled her eyes. “In the meantime, think about the men you’ve chosen and how you got involved in your mess because of them.”
And then, as if to make sure I totally got was she was saying, she mouthed crazy and pointed to the phone. I leaned my head back, looked at the crown molding on the ceiling and tried to make my mind go blank. The harder you try not to think, the more you think. Thinking is where you make fear. Fear is where you start blowing yourself up. Every time I drink or do drugs, I fall in love. Until the next morning when I wake up and think: there is no such thing as love. We’re all just getting by until we can’t anymore.
“So sorry about that,” she said, referring to her caller after she hung up. She took in a breath. “We were talking about the food place. Give me some details.”
I began. “The walls are the color of mustard. There’s a girl that smells like Vienna sausages. The lines in the parking lot have faded, so no one knows where to park. Someone thought it was a good idea to paint the brick building white. I think mold is growing in the carpet in the main dining area. Jesus, who puts carpet in a dining area? It’s this horrid green color that looks like an infection. Everything is damp. It’s like an old basement.”
She’d been staring outside the window at a bird on the ledge. It looked at her through the glass, then flew off. She turned to me.
“Are you sleeping with this guy?”
“What guy?”
“The cute one.”
“No.”
“Let’s try this again. Are you sleeping with him?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sleeping with him. I just said he was cute.”
She jotted something else down then set her pen against the pad and placed it on her lap. “You’re here because you’re addicted to love,” she said, “and now you’re lovesick. Love addiction is the worst kind of addiction. It’s the hardest to overcome.”
I think about the last conversation I had with my public defender. Judges like remorse, she’d said.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Liz.
I waited for her to write that. Patient was sorry. Patient was very fucking sorry.
Liz smiled at me like I was an insufferable child. “Honey, you never have to apologize to me.”
The air conditioning clicked off. The room downshifted. Liz picked up her pad again. Outside, it was still light. It was late September, and summer was trying to leave, but the humidity—the kind that didn’t give a crap about anyone but itself—seemed desperate to hang on.
—
Stephanie Austin’s short fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Fiddlehead, Washington Square Review, the South Dakota Review, fwriction: review, Eclectica, and numerous other online and print publications. Her creative nonfiction has appeared at Used Furniture Review, Extract(s), and as part of the New England Review’s Digital Series “Secret Americas“. She is an alum of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and holds an M.F.A. from the University of Nebraska – Omaha. She lives and teaches writing in Phoenix, AZ.
Maureen Alsop (Mantic, Augury Books, 2013) has recently had several new pieces published online for the month of November. Spanning across text, sound, and video, as well as authorships and continents, they are a testament to the creative volume of Alsop’s work. See (and listen) below to receive a rounded view of her poetics.
Read a poem in Constraint, issue 48 of Australian poetry review Cordite.
A six-poem collaboration with the late Hillary Gravendyk has recently been published at The Volta in Arizona.
Listen to “Ensign March,” a poem from Mantic, translated into sound via telephone for Chicago-based Weird Deer.
View two video poems, “Vetiver” and “Thou,” at The Continental Review, an online journal devoted to video poetry and poetics.
—
Detail from “Le Vrai Patineur” (The True Skater) by Jean Garcin. Courtesy of The Public Domain Review
The Story Prize, founded in 2004 by Julie Lindsey and Larry Dark, annually highlights collections of short stories published in the U.S. Halina Duraj, as part of a contributor series, recently had the opportunity to talk appropriation in regards to The Family Cannon (Augury Books, 2014) on TSP’s blog. She speaks briefly about how the writing process becomes unconsciously driven, taking things directly from casual experience.
Maybe somebody had asked me what I was working on, and I said something about neighbors, and my friend told the anecdote about two neighbors sharing a property line on some land in Colorado. One neighbor was so angry about something the other neighbor had done that he situated a cannon, a real, working cannon, in his yard and aimed it at the offending neighbor’s house. I remembered laughing, and thinking about the anecdote’s resonance with my own story. But by the time I’d sat down to work on the story a few days later, I’d completely forgotten my friend’s anecdote—I’d forgotten that my friend had told it, and I’d forgotten that it ever existed outside of my own brain.”
Read the full post here. The Story Prize is currently accepting submissions of books published (or forthcoming) between July and December. See their website for more details and guidelines.
A year ago this month, friend of Augury Suzanne Guillette (Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarassment, Atria Books, 2009) published an essay on memoir in Tin House. Dealing with the roles of perspective and content, Guillette navigates personal experiences which help us to rethink whether or not plot needs to be “memoir-worthy.”
Though Rushdie and Auster may have gone on the record with other reasons for stepping out of the first-person memoir convention, other motivations were probably also at work: not only does crafted distance in memoir inure the writer against calls (internal and otherwise) of self-importance, but it also sets us further adrift in a dreamlike state, allowing the intersection of present consciousness with past events to be, indeed, a very trippy place. Quieting the memoir-worthy debate, writers can go granular, entering a uniquely conjured, not to mention lived, world.”
We think this essay is worth a revisit. Read the rest of it here.
