“Country roads
Take me home, to the place where I belong.”
-Bill Duffy, Taffy Nivert, John Denver
Anne Elliott was delighted to see her father smiling. At her. If she was not mistaken, Sir Walter Elliott was absolutely beaming.
“My dear,” he said, as he escorted Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney into the salon of his new residence at Allan Ramsay Gardens. “I knew that moving to Edinburgh would be good for all of us—your sister Mary benefits from the clean air, and yes, we do have an advantage, being so high up Castlehill, and with Lady Russell’s Firth of Forth manse just a cairn away what better remedy could be bestowed—but I never expected you to achieve the impossible. Dare I say it? You have beaten me to the Baronetage. Not only have you failed to read its contents—too stuffy, too boring, for your plebeian taste—but you have also managed to outwit me in the (un)enviable task of gathering up ALL of Debrett’s favoured sons and daughters. As if the very pages of this hallowed tome have come to life and spilled out their dusty contents into physical embodiments of blue-blooded pulchritude. Who would have thought that within one fell swoop of Postgraduate Matriculation at Adam House, that you would manage to make the acquaintance of every one of the aristocratic heirs of the British Isles! I never thought I’d say this, but my darling Anne, I am truly impressed.”
Henry Tilney smiled the wan smile of one caught eavesdropping, and he nodded at Anne, while fiddling with his muslin waistcoat and matching cravat—all worn over a Black Watch kilt (muslin was not a favourable substitute for Scottish wool). He twitched a little: a man so used to genuine Indian muslin found it difficult to adjust to the itch and stitch of a ewe’s clothing. Catherine was poker-faced and gripped her fiancé’s hand tightly. He felt her elbows digging into his ribs. She extended her gloved hand.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Elliott.”
“And a pleasure indeed, Miss Morland, Mr. Tilney, to welcome you to Allan Ramsay Gardens.”
“Will you not be joining us at the Assembly Rooms? Our Gothic Ceilidhs are the biggest social events in the city. The talk of the town. Tatler will be there, as well as London’s finest paparazzi. Genuine artists of the camera obscura. Acrobatics of architecture and ancient poplars: could teach chimpanzees a thing or two about contortionism. The National Trust’s office in New York is bringing over their American delegation: you know how much the Yanks—especially the South Carolinians—love a good round of Gay Gordons.”
“I’d be most delighted, my dear, but I am dining with the Duke of Rothesay, we are securing funds for the restoration of Cawdor Castle.”
“Cawdor Castle?” mused Henry. “My textiles company once hosted an international conference there.”
“And what a superb entrepreneur you are, Mr. Tilney. You are one of the top LLC’s on the FTSE index. It won’t be long when you and your soon-to-be-spouse will be honoured by Her Majesty with an OBE. I do expect to see you at the grounds of Holyrood Palace when Her Majesty pays her summer visit to Scotland. You hear that, Anne? Make sure that you mark that on your social calendar, you won’t want to miss a single opportunity to mingle. And though I’m indeed surprised, I must give you credit for being able to round up all the unusual subjects of pomp and circumstance in Auld Reekie.”
Henry Tilney couldn’t take it anymore. His urge to fidget made him do a spontaneous jump in the air.
“Henry!” Catherine resisted an avalanche of giggles.
“Henry does a fine jig, father,” Anne explained.
“Did Anne tell you that she has joined our Quidditch Team at Edinburgh University?” Henry was feeling better now, and managed to sit on one of the eighteenth century chairs—circa Culloden—which, to his chagrin, itched even more than his kilt, and caused a rash to climb up his leg. He did another jig.
“No. Anne has been so modest lately. If it wasn’t for your visit—and Lady Russell’s Victorious Circle telling me of my daughter’s social whereabouts on Heriot Row—I would never have guessed how far she has ascended the social ladder.”
“She’s fantastic at the game, Sir Walter. A beginner, yes, but with an innate talent that will one day merit her the role of Captain.” Henry smiled the broad smile of one being tickled (by a midge? Oh, those pesky insects indigenous to the Caledonian hills).
“I admit I’ve never heard of that oddly-named pastime,” Sir Walter confessed. “Who invented it?”
He didn’t like to admit openly to being in ignorance of something, especially if it was fashionable and pertinent to one’s social status, but Quidditch eluded him: it was never mentioned in Debrett’s Baronetage. Tedious as the task would be, he reminded himself to look through the Oxford English Dictionary when no one was at home. He didn’t like to be caught browsing through such a Philistine volume, but if there was any place that would list such a ludicrous moniker, it would have to be that one. He did recall, however, that Lady Russell had mentioned the role that Samuel Johnson had played in the creation of that dictionary, and after hearing of Johnson’s sojourns through the highlands—as well as the behemoth breadth of his Scottish estate—Sir Walter resigned himself to the fact (comfort?) that perhaps this Samuel Johnson wasn’t so bad after all. At least, he could never be as downright horrible as Thomas Carlyle. That self-righteous curmudgeon, reading books that nobody—even himself—ever read. Though he did have a pastry named after his home: Ecclefechan cakes. Or was it Eccles pies? Whatever. Now as for his bloody wife—what was her name? Oh, yes. Jane. Jane Welsh. But not Jane Austen. Nor Jayne Mansfield, nor, the horrors—Jane Eyre. Oh, those abominable bluestockings! England was so densely populated with them, he was hoping that the few in Scotland would immigrate to Australia or Cuba (it was rumoured that most of the Gaelic bas bleu had exiled themselves to Jericho, Oxfordshire). No one irritated Sir Walter more than pince-nez-ed men and women who shamelessly revelled in their incurable addiction to footnotes, fine print and dust mites.
“A woman named J.K. Rowling takes credit for its inception.”
“Never heard of her. I hope the ‘J’ doesn’t stand for ‘Jane’, that has become such a common name; I believe Kipling is to blame: didn’t he glorify those Janeites? I doubt that a woman with such initials, and with such a dubious sporting pedigree, would be listed in Debrett’s.”
To my knowledge, sir,” assured Henry, “she is not a part of Debrett’s circle.”
“Just what I suspected.”
“Nor would she like to be. She’s not quite Bohemian, but she may appear to be, at least in your eyes.”
“Very peculiar indeed. But I guess that as it’s a game invented by a woman, it wouldn’t be too hooligan-ish.”
“Not anything you should worry about, Sir Elliott,” said Catherine. “It isn’t a rough game. But neither is cricket. We never wear white, though.”
“No rugby ruffians. No hurling hoo-rahs.”
“Not at all,” piped Henry. “In fact, our particular version—unique to Edinburgh University, I am proud to say—employs a scoring system based on Fibonacci numbers.”
“Italian? Bah! Glasgow is full of Italians. Milanese designers. Edinburgh, too. Sculptors. Fringe impresarios, fish and chip artisans.”
“No Castle of Otranto in sight, Mrs. Radclyffe would protest. Our passion for Maths is in homage to the God Particle of Sir Peter Higgs. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics. A great honour for Edinburgh University. He was just knighted, you know.”
“Of course.” Actually, he didn’t know what they were talking about, but he dared not admit this, especially as knighthood was sacred to Sir Walter, and as soon as they left he would consult the Baronetage for details on this elusive Mr. Higgs.
“Papa,” Anne started. She had not called him Papa in years, and this endearment, though almost whispered, startled Sir Walter. Turning abruptly, he almost tripped over the ancient carpet he was proud to inherit from several generations of Elliott. “Catherine, you know, is the President of the Gothic Literature Society.”
“Indeed. Perfect for your doctoral thesis work. Are you still keen on studying the symbolic roles of abbeys in literature?”
“More than ever.”
“Tintern, Downton, Holyrood, Northanger, Linlithgow, Whitby, Abbey Threatre-Dublin, Dear Abby, Westminster.”
“Amazing, Papa, it shows that you’re reading far beyond the Baronetage. I am delighted.”
Did he blush? Anne wasn’t sure if her father was ashamed, embarrassed, or—was that a wrinkle in the eyes—a silent pride in his own liberal progress.
“But as I was saying, Catherine is an incredibly clever girl, she not only organizes charity events—such as the Teviot Row Crystal Ball at The Witchery, Black Cat Animal Rescue Masquerade on Calton Hill—but her propagation of Gothic Literature and its Variations, from the Druids to Harry Potter, has encouraged literacy, imagination, and surprisingly, a love of Maths amongst the youth of Edinburgh.”
“A love of Maaths? That is indeed a remarkable accomplishment. A great way to learn about making money. But tell me, what is the connection between ghost stories and Maths?”
“Oh, Anne, please, you’re making me blush. I wasn’t always clever, Sir Walter, I’ve come a long way from when I just read Gothic novels for the sake of escapism and frivolity, but Henry has really believed in me, and assured me that just as his passion for muslin and textiles could bring him vocation and prosperity, so I too, could follow such a path. And this was when I decided to matriculate at University, and not only read Gothic Literature, but create a Society in alliance with the Quidditch Team, to consecrate a marriage of true minds, tor, to bring education back to the Liberal Arts, as it was studied by Plato, Kepler, Eriugena, Ibn Arabi, Joachin of Fiore, among others.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Four Classical Liberal Arts of Number, Geometry, Music and Cosmology, or, The Quadrivium. First formulated and taught by Pythagoras as the Tetrakys circa 500 b.c. A time when all were equal, materially and morally and women had equal status to men. This is why our Quidditch team is co-ed, and we employ the Fibonacci sequence to score the game.”[1]
“Fibonacci? You’ve mentioned that twice. Must be very important. Explain this conundrum to me.”
“Uh,” Henry began. “I do believe, but please don’t quote me on this, I do believe that we chose the Fibonacci sequence because it is the closest thing we have to a mathematical illustration of reincarnation, which, when taken in the context of Gothic literature such as the Harry Potter series, is quite pertinent, especially if you want to discuss such dubious persons like The One Who Shall Not Be Named.”
“Yes!” exclaimed Catherine. “Just as reincarnation is one life plus the next one, Fibonacci illustrates the overlap—the layering and bleeding—of a past life onto the present one.”
“Rubbish!”
“Sorry, did I say something unseemly?”
“No, Henry, not at all.”
“Rubbish!” shouted Sir Walter. “I am a Christian man, I will not stand for this New Age/Sorcery nonsense!”
“Please come to our game, father,” pleaded Anne. “That will be the best way for you to see the Fibonacci sequence in action: much better than any abstract attempt on our part to explain it. Saturday. The Meadows. We will be playing against Strathclyde University. Lady Russell and Mary in proud attendance.”
“Brooms?” Lady Russell sniffed. “You actually ‘ride’ on these, as you try to score? Harrumph! Channels of Enchantment, I must leave at once, I cannot be seen by my respectable friends to be witnessing such a spectacle of sorcery—which, I thought, we had eradicated entirely in England after the Second World War—I am an esteemed Christian woman and will not tolerate such fiddlesticks.”
“Lady Russell,” Catherine spoke calmly. “Please take a deep breath and think about this objectively. Brooms, cauldrons, kettles, scythes, pitchforks, fiddles and sticks—these are the tools of Domesticity and Agriculture, they are associated with women and farmers: hardworking folk who excel in the underrated arts of fertility and foraging. Do you not think it strange and unfair that such tools of housekeeping, cuisine, and harvest, should be unjustly demonized and assumed by the patriarchy to always be symbols of alchemy?”
“Tradition deems them evil, and I don’t challenge sacred dogma.”
“Well, I can’t say I have an opinion,” declared Mary.”I’ve never held such objects in my hands, thank goodness.”
“Anne,” asked Henry. “What do you think?”
Unbeknownst to them, Anne was quite nervous. Her starched-ironed Quidditch uniform was moistening with sweat. She had noticed the Captain of the Strathclyde team eyeing her. He had spoken to her father, and introduced Sir Walter to his teammates.
“Anne? Anne”
“Oh, sorry. I am a proud Quidditch player and Gothic Literature scholar. The Mission Statement common to both is the propagation of heroism, the realisation that I am the Heroine of my life, a defender of all heroic/quixotic paths. It is high time that we question the malevolent connotation that tradition has granted to such arbitrary feminine symbols and admit that without brooms, fiddles, sticks and cauldrons we would all starve. What is so wrong with a broom? It sweeps the floor. What is so evil about a pitchfork? It gathers up hay. Fiddles we associate with gypsies and the demonic Paganini, but also, with ethereal Bach and the heartthrob Joshua Bell. Why have we taken such humble, mortal instruments for granted? Within their patterns is proof that as above, so below. The broom, for instance, is like a pineapple, which, to quote the Quadrivium “displays a kiveky 5:8:13 phyllotaxis at 5 near-horizontal spirals, 8 45 degree spirals and 13 verticals….Humans use the same numbers (in a fourfold manner). We have 5 fingers/toes in each quarter, a pattern repeated in our mouths as 5 milk teeth in each quarter, replaced by 8 adult teeth, 13 in all per quarter.”[2] Alas, the Fibonacci numbers in practice. On that note, let the Games begin.”
Score: Edinburgh University. 1+1=2. The opposition’s captain faced her, ready to score. 1+1=2. One man, one woman. Anne Elliott. Captain Frederick Wentworth.
Score: Strathclyde. 2+3=5. Herself. Wentworth. Plus Lady Russell, her father, her sister. A man, a woman, plus the persuasive influence of family. Pervasive, persuasive. Anagrams of each other.
Edinburgh: 5+3=8. God in three persons. The Quadrivium writes: “Five marries male and female—as two and three in some culture, or three and two in others—and so is the universal number of reproduction and biological life. It is also the number of water, every molecule of which is a corner of a pentagon. Water itself is an amazing liquid crystal lattice of flexing icosahedra, these being one of the five Platonic solids, five triangles meeting at each point….Dry things are either dead or they are awaiting water.”[3] Praying for Frederick’s return. 8 long years of her life.
Edinburgh: 8+5=13.
“Anne?”
“Frederick…..”
“I’ve been away, Anne, working in Santo Domingo, teaching Maths, Physics and Sailing to the youth of the Dominican Republic. I competed in several regattas over the years. I am the Captain of the Casa de la Trova yacht. I have purchased an estate in Cramond. What I’ve always wanted: to live by the water, to see the swans in front of my window each morning. I am reading Physics at Edinburgh University. The God Particle fascinates me.”
Game at a standstill. 8+5=13.
Eight is two times two times two, and as such is the first cubic number after one. As the number of vertices of a cube or faces of its dual, the octahedron, eight is complete…Within architecture the octagon often signifies the transition between Heaven and Earth, as a bridge between the square and the circle…Eight is particularly revered in the religion and mythology of the orient. The ancient Chinese oracle, the I-Ching, is based on combinations of eight trigrams, each the result of a twofold choice between an unbroken or broken line, made three times.[4]
Her life at a standstill. Two times two times two. The possibility of her and Wentworth married had lingered on her mind. Almost eight. Seven years had gone by since she had last seen Wentworth. Where did time go? Why could one only move forward in time but never backward? Why could one not retrieve the lost time, the stolen time? She thought of her father’s obsession with ancestry, pedigree. Climbing a social ladder, but never climbing down.
He handed her a flower. Robinson’s daisy. Li patterns that would have made Alan Turing swoon.
Wentworth?
Anne, watch out!
Henry, help, she’s been Snitched!
Anne woke to see Sister staring at her. The nurse was smiling, cooling her feverish face.
“You’re at the Royal Infirmary.”
“But Frederick.”
“Lady Russell and your father want you to be moved to your sister Elizabeth’s estate in the landlocked borders. No protests!”
Anne feigned sleep and waited for Sister to leave. She found the bag containing her Quidditch uniform and cleated footwear. She walked to Frederick Street and took the bus to Cramond.
Right there, near the dock which ferried tourists to Dalmeny House was the Casa de la Trova. She rowed towards the yacht and once there stripped herself of the uniform, showered and dressed in a wooly jumper and twill trousers. Frederick’s clothes. Still smelling of Caribbean rum, salt, and fish.
Anne wanted to be ensconced in water, cocooned in its tides. Catherine had talked about selkies, sea people, how humans had drowned during the Great Flood, and those who had survived, transformed themselves, into mermaids and mermen. How P.T. Barnum managed to capture one of these sea creatures—a statuesque mermaid—and preserved her body in his museum; then one day that museum burned down, without a trace of the selkie DNA for posterity to study or appreciate.
“That which is familiar,” mused Catherine.
“What?”
“That which is familiar, that’s what Barnum wanted to do to the sea people—imprison them in his museum, so that they would become familiar, so that they would lose their uniqueness and just become a part of the ordinary lives of humans. Anytime they wanted, people could just walk in and gawk at the mermaid. Take her for granted, strip her of all sea-ness, Greenwich scars, maritime roots, until she got so grounded in her glass cage that she’d be persuaded into believing that that’s what she was—that which is familiar.”
Henry smiled: “That which is familiar, rhymes with The Witch’s Familiar. Our ubiquitous Black Cat!”
Anne thought of her father’s house, which was so much like a museum, with his antiques and near-blasphemous idolatry of the past. She could see, for the first time in her life, just how much her father, siblings, and Lady Russell had moved her further inland and landlocked, away from the water, currents and intrepid winds that might have carried her Leeward towards Wentworth, and his Dominican shores. She thought of her tears, drying and flicked away, scorned by her family. She thought of her wish to go swimming, diving, fishing, all wild notions brushed off as ‘common’ and beneath her class. The fluidity of her gait, stunted to mere dances at Kellynch. It was only Quidditch, with its synthesis of flight and fish-choreography, that saved her. Dry things are either dead or they are awaiting water.
What did Wentworth tell her about the God Particle? Excitation/Persuasion. That moment before the Snitch hurled towards her head and knocked her down. The moment you become overwhelmed by that which surrounds you. Similar to The Witch’s Familiar, but an active engagement, not just a passive surrender to a stifling force.
He used an Ogden Nash poem to explain it to her—
Is time on my hands? Yes it is, it is on my hands and my face
and my torso and my tendons of Achilles
The clock has stopped at Now, there is no Past, no Future,
And oddly enough also no Now.”[5]
This is why she came to Edinburgh. Redemption. The God (Particle) of forgiveness, of leveling all lost time to Now, so that her awkward feet and naïve eyes caught up with her Old Soul and hyper heart and –now!—in Wentworth’s arms, as he held her tightly and steered the yacht called Casa de la trova in the rhumba-wave of the water where Cramond kissed the shore at the very moment when his heart kissed her heart and the air lost its grip on the birds which lost their grasp on the fish and Time became fluid in her hands his heart her hair his chin her lips her cheeks his ring finger of Eternal Reckoning.
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[1] John Martineau has edited a modern version of THE QUADRIVIUM: THE FOUR CLASSICAL LIBERAL ARTS OF NUMBER, GEOMETRY, MUSIC AND COSMOLOGY (New York: Walker and Company, 2010).
[2] P. 324
[3] P. 20.
[4] P. 26
[5] From the poem, “Thoughts thought while waiting for a Pronouncement from a Doctor, an Editor, a Big Executive, the Department of Internal Revenue or any other Momentous Pronouncer” by Ogden Nash. The Pocket Book of Ogden Nash. With an Introduction by Louis Untermeyer (New York: Pocket Books, 1959). P. 154.
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About the Author:
Leonora Rita V. Obed resides in West Trenton, New Jersey and has lived in Scotland and Canada. She was born in the Philippines.
We all want to believe
in our future.
I keep coming back to that stunning couplet that ends Elane Gutterman’s poem, “Big Windows and a Patio to Catch the Light,” published in our current issue, Kelsey Review 35.3. This being our Spring issue, that couplet speaks with all the hopefulness that accompanies the season, but not without a hint of irony and melancholy. After all, the poem is about an elderly woman’s wish list for what she desires to have in her newly-designed home, which includes the most modern amenities and none of the typical accommodations that one would expect in the house of an eighty-four-year-old. The ending then, is both hopeful and sad: our human nature won’t let us stop hoping for the future, even when it is probable that we have only a short time left. The poignancy of this poem is shared with many of the other amazing works published in this issue.
We are lucky to have two poems from Yamini Pathak, the gorgeously described “Paper Birds of Prey” and “Shedding the Skin,” in which the speaker’s mother is in the process of getting rid of old photographs, urging the speaker to “let go.” The ensuing collage of photographic memories suggests that the speaker cannot let go of the past, or at least urgently resists doing so. It seems that in cleaning house (metaphorically or literally), the speaker’s mother is suggesting that to make way for the new we must let go of the old, but the poem also raises the question of whether that is even entirely possible. The speaker in Dave Vogtman’s poem, “Piss-Yellow Row Home,” inquires about the past in much the same way. While addressing the speaker’s childhood home and grasping at memories of the place, he wonders “what it’s like to be/ grounded, fully immersed in the geographical/ coordinates” where the house still stands after all these years. The answer to this question, of course, is that we will never know what it is like to remain unchanging and in the same place, because it is the nature of life to be constantly moving forward and transforming.
Indeed, transformation is a theme in this issue, present in Mason Bolton’s exquisitely crafted poem “When the Boy Ran for Freedom” and Sofia Bae’s short story, “Growing Up.” Bae is a young writer, new to these virtual pages, and it occurred to me while editing this issue that we have quite a few young(ish) writers here, a fortuitous connection to the season. Aaron Campbell, a recent graduate of Rider University, shares with us his story “Vampire Teeth,” which is full of twists and turns and humor and good old fashioned high school drama. Our art, as well, comes from a young artist, Corrina Creekmur, who shares with us her beautifully twilit photograph, “Sunflowers.” It is an honor to be able to publish a few of the up-and-coming generation of writers and artists in this issue.
Harvey Steinberg’s short story, “What’s to Become of Harold?” features a member of the younger generation, a boy named Harold Klompit, who ends up as both patient and pupil of the unique and funny Doctor Zalman Blott, who fumes that “correction [is] needed” after reading an article claiming young Americans are uneducated, uncultured, and unequipped to “keep the world together.” The story is a thought-provoking read, by turns strange and funny and dark, even if our own young writers and artists above disprove Dr. Blott’s thesis.
We have a great nonfiction piece in this issue, too: Rodney Richard’s “Bike Slide,” which is exciting but also (see our buzzword of the day above!) poignant. Trust me—read the piece to the end and tell me you don’t feel gutted by the story-within-the-story, which shows us just how short and precious life can be.
Life! That is what spring is about, isn’t it? New life, rebirth, the present moment. Our shortest poem in this issue may just speak to that idea most precisely. In Joseph Dresner’s “To Do Today,” the speaker asks, “If yesterday is like a dream/ and tomorrow like a vision,/ what shall I say about today?” The speaker of this poem has his own interpretation of what “today” means, but the question is one we can all ask and answer for ourselves. What can we say about today, the present moment in our lives, in our country, in the world? Today, friends, I hope you will read and enjoy this issue, brought to you from the minds and hearts of writers and artists from the larger Mercer-County area.
And as we go through this present moment in our world together, let’s not forget the words of Emily Dickinson, who said that hope—that “thing with feathers”—is “sweetest—in the Gale.”
Jacqueline Vogtman
Editor
I’m never gonna grow up. Never ever ever. Grownups are tired and serious. And sometimes sad. A lot of grownups are sad and serious and tired all the time. Mommy was tired all the time. Mommy was tired of being Mommy and playing all our old games together. We don’t play tag in the park anymore. I miss the park. The park was big and green and beautiful, and sometimes there were dogs and there were a lot of brave squirrels that would come really close to me if I had food. Mommy used to let me feed them, but one day Mommy got serious about squirrels and tired of the park and sad at looking at all the young couples walking around and sitting and kissing. I wasn’t sad about them. But I don’t ever want to fall in love. Mommy told me falling in love was scary. Mommy told me I would hurt.
But now we don’t have tickle fights, even though those were unfair because Mommy wasn’t ticklish anymore. I asked Mommy why and she said that’s what happens when you have siblings: you become tickle-proof. I asked why I didn’t have any siblings once a long time ago, and Mommy got so sad and so serious and so tired I thought the bags under her eyes grew bigger, and her spine bent and she sat down and almost cried. I read somewhere mommies weren’t supposed to cry. I read that mommies were supposed to be strong and nice and caring and that whenever I was sad Mommy was supposed to help me feel happy. And she did. Or she tried. And we used to color outside the lines in coloring books because Mommy said the lines were how people controlled other people, and Mommy and I prefer to draw when there aren’t any lines at all.
And I don’t want to grow up at all. Grownups need to do taxes and have crappy bosses and bad friends. Mommy says so all the time. And grownups do bad things too. They drink and smell like alcohol too many nights every week, and they get really mad, really really really mad and they throw things around the room and break plates and topple over cabinets and throw things out the window that hit people on the sidewalk outside, and say curse words Mommy tells me not to say when she’s good and not a whirlwind. Mommy is a storm. Everyone is a storm I think, but Mommy is a big one. She stretches on for miles and miles of rain and tears, and when she drinks the storm gets darker and the winds get rougher and she explodes in a fury of lightening and thunder and noise and rain the likes of which have never been seen before, even though she does this a lot.
I think I’ll stay a child forever and ever and ever, like the angels in heaven who never get older and are always carefree and pretty and smiley. If I were an angel, I would fly and laugh and be nice to everyone. Curse words and alcohol won’t exist in heaven, so everyone up there would be happy. Except maybe Mommy, because she told me wine made her happy and without it she was sad and tired all the time, so I guess maybe Mommy wouldn’t be in heaven. Maybe no grownups would be in heaven, because they’re all so sad and serious and tired all the time. Maybe grownups are just people. Maybe sometime in their lives the angel inside them died and left whatever it was Mommy and all the other sad grownups were. Maybe Mommy was just human, and maybe she would go “down there” and maybe I would go to heaven and be happy, and Mommy would be happy too with her wine.
One time, when Mommy drank too much the night before, she came home in the morning and started crying. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood by her bed and asked over and over how I could help. She got so mad that time. So mad she decided we should play a new game. I was scared, because Mommy had stopped crying all of a sudden and looked so empty and so far away it was like she didn’t see me at all. Only past me. To a long time ago, when she had Daddy and I wasn’t born and the house was quiet and she didn’t drink and people were friendly and she didn’t have to deal with crappy bosses, she looked past me and saw all that and I was scared. But I wanted to play a game. It had been so long. She promised me that we would play this game a lot and it would be so much fun because it was a grownup game. I was so excited to play this game with her, even though it was for grownups. She led me to my closet, and she said it was like hide-and-seek, and she put me in my closet and she closed the door, and she walked away.
…
I crawled out a long time later, and the sky was dark and I must have fallen asleep and Mommy must have forgotten about me. I crawled out of the closet and into her room but there were a lot of wine bottles and beer bottles and it smelled gross and I wanted to throw up, and I ran away back into the closet so Mommy wouldn’t know I left. I missed my children’s games, coloring and tag and tickle fights. I didn’t like Mommy’s grownup games, but nowadays that’s all she wants to play. I don’t like alcohol and love and grownups, and taxes and storms and bosses and friends, and I really, really don’t like Mommy. I don’t like her at all.
So I’m going to be an angel and I am never going to grow up. Never ever ever.
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About the Author:
Sofia Bae is an aspiring author who just started submitting work early this year. She is a VIP member of Teen Ink, has won a gold and silver key, as well two honorable mentions in the Scholastic Writing and Arts awards, and she is an editor and active contributor to her school’s literary magazine as well as a writer for her school’s newspaper.
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
-Hart Crane
I don’t remember you as much
as I tell myself I do, or, more importantly,
as much as you’d like to believe.
There are fragments I grasp,
not for dear life, but just enough
to hang there gently.
I won’t let you cease to exist, for that would be impolite–
just as I’ve changed and grown,
you have too. Who knows
if you’d recognize my façade?
After all, you can’t look for me
how I can for you.
Always knowing where you are
might be the one thing
that keeps me away.
At times I wonder what it’s like to be
grounded, fully immersed in the geographical
coordinates where you remain.
To those who inhabit you now,
I hope they are sufficient, and if they leave
one day, may they remember you not for
what you were, but for what you’ve become.
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About the Author:
Dave Vogtman is a 2015 graduate of Rowan University, where he studied Radio/TV/Film and Creative Writing. His work has been published in Avant, as well as receiving honors in the Denise Gess Literary Awards for his poetry, and the RTF Media Fest in the category of Best Screenplay. He works and resides in New Jersey, spending his free time writing & producing music and crafting screenplays.
Doctor Zalman Blott should have been exhausted by this late in the afternoon, but he wasn’t. He had emigrated decades ago from Eastern Europe and still had an Old-World constitution. When he was angry – when a social cause fired his anger – his Old-World constitution forced him to go straight ahead and act out his aggravation, sometimes at the expense of his medical practice.
And just now he was fuming. A magazine article whose contents he had scrutinized in his anteroom while he waited for his next patient seared his breast. Its conclusion: young Americans of today didn’t have the foggiest on what it takes to keep the world together, and wouldn’t be equipped to know when their turn came. This condition, which Blott accepted as truth because of the editor’s celebrated reputation, was anathema to him, a loyal American citizen who had originated in dysfunctional, war-weary Europe. The gravitas of the article: American pupils were not thoroughly taught in school the grand sweeps of history, the cultures of others, the languages of those cultures modern and ancient. Why, the very vicissitudes of learning even one of those languages would enlighten them about the complexities of civilization.
Correction was needed. Foreign languages must be learned; as for English, in which Blott knew he himself was deficient, precision must be inculcated: America too was a civilization, he devoutly believed.
So when Harold Klompit was pushed into his office by Gloria, his mother – the boy had a rash – Blott had something on his mind more crucial than Harold’s blemish. He began with,
“Do you study Latin in school?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know? Either you study it or you don’t.”
Harold was stumped. “Maybe what they teach me is Latin. They didn’t really say.”
Harold peered through his new eyeglasses at the doctor.
“I asked you an easy question.”
“Arrhhh,” Harold grumped.
“Answer the doctor! There must be a good reason for what he asks,” his mother said, although she couldn’t imagine what that might be. “Harold,” she added, “don’t start in.”
Harold started in. “If I study Latin, but I don’t know if it’s Latin, do I study Latin?”
“Hmm,” the good doctor intoned.
“He goes to a special school for smart children,” Mrs. Klompit interrupted. “It’s been the death of us.”
“Hmm,” the doctor said, “there is thinking in this boy.”
Harold was uncomfortable, which caused him to mutter, “Leave me alone already.”
The doctor rubbed his chin and walked the floor. “This is serious,” he said.
“Serious? He doesn’t have to go the hospital, does he, Doctor?” Mrs. Klompit implored.
Blott pivoted around. “No hospital, Mrs. Trumpet!”
“Klompit,” she corrected.
“Surely, Klompit! What am I, wrong? Listen, come back tomorrow when we will talk Latin. Never mind the rash, it’s nothing. Your son will be a somebody yet. I know what I’m saying. Didn’t I get my medical degree in Roumania?”
“Yeah, Roumania,” the boy said under his breath.
The next day at the office Dr. Blott was eager.
Harold’s every nerve was on edge.
Zalman Blott whipped out his ancient Ingersoll pocket watch that fit into its vest pocket under his jacket. He would test the youth’s facility for the English language.
“What is this?” he demanded of Harold.
Harold’s eyes wandered.
“Hey, pay attention,” the doctor ordered.
“What is this?” he demanded again.
“An old watch,” Harold answered.
“Look close now,” the doctor said, bringing the timepiece in front of the bridge of Harold’s nose. Zalman exhorted the boy, pointing to its watch fob. “What do you call this?”
“A chain.”
“What else?”
“What?”
Mrs. Klompit interrupted. “What does a doctor need to know this for?”
The physician stuffed the timepiece back in his jacket.
“You must learn words,” he instructed Harold. “Watch fob is this word. Things are words. Words are things. Both ways,” he instructed. Was the encounter the day before a fluke? Did young Klompit have what it takes to defy common routines, to lead?
Still, Harold had seemed uncommonly promising even for personal purposes. Dr. Zalman Blott was at that stage of life where he wanted to confer his mantle on a young man whose attributes would memorialize his own posthumous image.
But what unique talent was in the boy?
Blott did not have to speculate further about this.
Suddenly, Harold Klompit’s torso froze stiff, his presence remote while his head shook in abandon. The boy’s glasses flew off and his mouth yawed open. From within it a baritone ranged up and down and around in Gregorian chant:
“If I stu-u-dy Latin but cannot kno-o-w if it is Latin, that is not I who stu-u-dies Latin. Quod erat demon . . .stran-dum.”
His eyes crossed.
Was this a spirit? An animal? A geist? A dybbuk?
“So-o-o, the premis-ess telll that if a seed of Latin is unru-uly planted, the harvest shall barren be. Let this ini-quity be revelation unto thee-e and thi-i-ne.”
The doctor took hold of his courage. “Your reasoning is not authorized!” he loudly exclaimed.
“What wa-ays are perrfect and tru-e-e ev-erywhere? Man-n breaks not from his yoke of the roun-nded fur-r-row in the fields of Zor. Yea, a rake that incises the trunk of Gomor-r-rah!”
Then the boy’s upper lip curled to show the whites of powerful incisors.
“In sooth be the sayer.”
And the voice ROARED.
Harold’s eyes ceased rotating and he looked about him to escape his beast that had roared.
Mrs. Klompit had fainted at the roar; the doctor had jumped a foot in the air. Paying no mind to the woman, Blott put his hand to the youth’s forehead and searched his vital signs.
He stepped back. He paced the floor back and forth and back.
“This is the beginning,” the doctor murmured in hushed tones. “THIS BEGINS!” he shouted. “You know what?!” he poked at the boy. “I don’t want you in my office. I don’t want you here. YOU ARE SCARING ME TO PIECES! You are a Wasteland all over again! Go home, go someplace else, you are from the dark woods, you have something in you not even Harvard Medical School knows! Pack up, Mrs. Frankenstein, take this thing with you!”
“Klompit,” she sniffed, having revived.
“Frankenstein I said!” and he whisked them out of his office, keeping back as far as he could.
On the walk home Mrs. Klompit said to her son, “I think it is good we don’t see Dr. Blott again.”
“I think so too.”
“He is not right for us.”
“No, he is not.”
“I don’t like fakers,” she added.
“No, no fakers.”
She stopped square in the street and faced Harold.
“But what will you ever be?”
“I already am,” Harold said.
She pleaded, “I mean, what will become of you?”
Mrs. Klompit couldn’t miss the sparkle in her boy’s eyes. “I can write scripts for TV, Ma. I can write very spooky dialogue.”
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About the Author:
Harvey Steinberg is a very senior citizen and long-time resident of Lawrenceville. His poetry has appeared in many literary journals across the country, he won a regional prize for playwriting, and he and his wife Marcia have been researching and writing about late 19th century industry in America.
Even eagles stand down
when kites come out
to play
They ride the currents
of warm orange winds,
tails streaming like comets
in the face of the setting sun
In the old days
dragons and snakes
and other fanciful shapes
wheeled and dipped,
fluttered and tugged
on strings razor-edged
coated in glass, ground fine
to a glistening, sharp powder
Poems in the wind
engaged in battle, rubbing
up against each other
in violent love-making,
slashing and sawing until
the snap
of string set one free
snatched heavenward
a sunspot,
mere speck in the eye
of the earthbound
Once the sport of kings
now only a fancy for children
and rooftop poets
who dream in the gathering
dusk
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About the Author:
Yamini Pathak is a former software engineer who has recently started writing poetry and short fiction. Her writing has appeared in Literary Mama, Indian newspaper, The Hindu, and education portal Noodle.com. She was born in India, and she lives in West Windsor, New Jersey.
About the Artist:
Corrina Creekmur is a high school senior from Northwest New Jersey who enjoys writing and art.
My friend, the architect, is designing
her eighty-four-year-old Mom
a new house.
Her Mom ready now
to eschew space and place
down palm-lined suburban lanes
and secluded pathways,
for somewhere in town
compact and mostly on one level
within compass points
of her daily life.
Like a lively wine or robust cheese
her Mom has aged well
adding new friends and activities
to augment fallen away
people and pursuits,
resolved to remain
in the comfort of her sun
drenched surroundings,
though her daughters
and other family
are far afield.
The new home
will have a sleek kitchen
with energy efficient appliances,
yet subtly feature
a ground floor with no
barriers for a walker or
wheelchair, and grab bars
to help personal care or bathing.
There will be an upstairs bedroom
with a private entrance
from outside.
Her Mom says things like,
I need a large sink in the small
laundry to rinse out mops,
hand wash delicates.
We all want to believe
in our future.
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About the Author:
Elane Gutterman is Chair of the Literary Arts Committee at the West Windsor Arts Center, where she was a founding board member. Her poems have been published in The Kelsey Review, Patterson Literary Review and the US1 Summer Fiction Issue.
Kelsey Review 