Cover image: "moonside" by Erin Connorton
Gallery 2
time like an accordion
Ashley J.J. White
Knives
Where are those people now—
who fell into love like a
child jumps into a pile of
autumn leaves?
The ones who would wake early
to make love,
play games and laugh,
folding up into intimacy like origami?
They’ve been unfolded now,
smoothed out, repurposed into
to-do lists and calendars.
So much earth has coloured in the hole,
filled it in so perfectly
I can’t find the marker.
While I’m down here,
I might as well dig around.
Clawing at the sides of this earth cage,
and what do I finally find, but the capsule we hid.
It exists.
Proof we were people
before we became parents.
And not just any people, either.
Passionate ones, and spontaneous.
That sharpness has dulled,
like even the best knives do in time.
But we don’t throw away our knives, do we?
When they soften around the edges?
No—we sharpen them.
Ashley J.J. White is an English student and poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction writer from Canada. She has had several poems, short stories and essays published in various magazines; she loves to read and write about philosophy, human nature, the natural world, and relationships. You can find her on Twitter & Instagram @ashleyjjwhite.
Jessie Lian
Love, a shapeshifter
I have wasted the whole day
comparing love to loaves of bread.
I tried saying sliced, broken, staple, crust,
then versatile, variable, vessel of jam,
But love doesn’t seem to want to be
like a loaf of bread
Nor does it want to be
the belly of a sky
or the diving of a starling
or the peck of a new leaf
or a rose, or swan, or moon
Still my mouth mutters on, trying
green flood wide rush little plum
slow feet heavy plunge soft being—
And for a moment it purrs,
arching in the light
of my aching scrutiny
Then it flutters
winged creature
spilling shadows
shaped like questions
Jessie Lian is an LA-based poet who spends much of her time cloud-watching. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Press and Star 82 Review, and has been nominated for Sonder Press’s Best Small Fictions anthology. You can find her on Instagram @yessietojessie.
Julie Weiss
However Broken You Feel
After Ellen Bass
there’s no wrong side
of the bed when the planet
of your body is teeming,
vibrant and wild as a terrain
yet to be explored. Forget about
last night’s quarrel, caught
in your throat like a too-big chunk
of beef, or the way a glass of wine
can waver on the cliff edge
of silence, any wayward draft likely
to send it crashing. One glance
through the window of your hideaway
is plenty vantage to fathom how
some creatures grow wings strong
enough to carry the sky’s magnificence
to your doorstep every single morning,
and that’s good. Remember the day
the rickety old table in your garden buckled
under the plummet of a freak storm,
the rubble in which you longed to tomb
the worn limbs of your grievances,
as if surrender were a symbol of ecstasy?
And remember the choir of stray kittens
burrowed beneath the planks, how they
lapped milk from a ceramic bowl you’d once
nearly hurled against a wall, envisioning
the colors falling through your skin
in shards. How the kittens purred
in your lap, and you kept leaning further
and further against your life as if it were
a childhood friend, home at last.
As you drift from room to room, don’t
take your memories for gospel. If anything,
eavesdrop on the ghosts reminiscing in the kitchen
of your desolation, who would no doubt
trade in their golden harp strings, cast off
their eternal fluff for those two exquisite eggs,
sunny side oozing over the edge of your toast,
uneaten. Those thick tomato droplets,
glistening. That avocado bliss.
A half-read letter of apology, kneeling
for attention. A shot of espresso
fired through your blood like a revival.
Julie Weiss is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection (Kelsay Books, 2021), and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her poem “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a finalist for Sundress’s 2023 Best of the Net Anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig’s editor’s choice award for her poem “Cumbre Vieja,” was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite’s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in Rust + Moth, Orange Blossom Review, ONE ART, and Sky Island Journal, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.
Amy Marques
The Other C Majors
My old math teacher saw me. I should have been in class, not in the hallway, but I was stretching my wings. Testing my boundaries. I waved cheerfully, hoping she’d assume I was just going to the restroom.
The first month of my freshman year she’d told me, “You’d be an A student if you stayed in class more often.”
“I’ll still be an A student.” Had I said it out loud? Probably.
With the acumen of adolescence, I’d found that hardly anybody cares when you cut class as long as you say your pleases and thank yous, and the occasional of courses and with all due respects. It helps when you remember to turn in your homework and smile with your eyes and mostly do well on exams. Then, when they do notice your frequent absences, they pretend not to.
It’s not like I was cutting class to smoke or drink or make out against the half wall behind the library. As I said, I was exploring. Testing. And, of course, there was the grand piano in the auditorium.
Every day, hundreds of students swarmed into the auditorium to sit on wooden church pews and sing, listen to announcements, and learn the tenets of character and citizenship. While clergy occasionally added a word, in a stroke of brilliance the school hired a musician to host the meetings. We’ll call him Alec.
I wouldn’t have grasped it then, but it was an artist’s dream job. There were only a few assemblies a day, so Alec spent the remaining hours practicing in the auditorium, which soon became the gathering place for a motley group of would-be musicians with varying degrees of talent and expertise. I was the only one with any formal musical training, the only one with no talent for playing by ear, the only straight-A student, the only one who played piano, and the only girl. They let me stay.
Alec’s bandmate, Joel, was around a lot. He looked nothing like a rockstar. More like a stick man with a giant Adam’s apple poking out of his neck like an arrow. A high-school dropout who worked a nondescript night job, he hardly ever talked, and didn’t look anyone in the eye when he did. But if he was there during assembly, Alec would hand over the guitar and relinquish the microphone. The minute he stepped on the stage he held us in his spell. He was a natural performer with a sweet singing voice and the kind of stage presence most people don’t even know to dream of.
They fascinated me: no recitals, no sheet music, and, blissfully, no metronome. Hours were spent poring over favorite songs, rearranging snippets, and exchanging solos. They played like it was a conversation, like the instruments were an extension of their bodies, like they could somehow unravel the knots lodged in my chest and answer questions I hadn’t even begun to ask. I yearned to do the same.
I had played the piano since I was so tiny my toes barely reached the pedals. As a well-behaved child who did as I was told, homework and practice had never been an issue. But unlike math, unlike books, music was a challenge. I read sheet music like most kindergarteners sound out words. It never got much better. Not even with practice. It remained in the realm of laborious decoding. Note by note, as if reading a novel by sounding out letter by letter, then repeating it over and over and over until it morphed into words, then sentences, then paragraphs. It took so long for me to hear flowing melody that, by then, I’d drained much of the magic from a song I’d once loved.
To compensate, I translated music into math and fine motor skills. I learned to play piano as one would paint by numbers. My fingers repeated tricky bars over and over and over until they sounded the way instructors deemed they should. At every missed note, I stopped and sighed and started over. In the rigidity of the cage of perfection I had allowed myself to be locked into, I was forever falling a little short of the mark.
Joel played by different rules. Playing with him was like peeking through a keyhole into a whole new world. He felt the music in a way I could only dream of.
“There’s something missing,” Joel would say.
“You said C major.” I could hear the defensiveness creeping into my voice. The fear of failing him. Of failing.
“It’s the other C major.”
My face likely gave me away. What other C major? How many C majors could there be? But he didn’t know the theory. He just knew it didn’t sound right. He played one. Then the other. His fingers moved back and forth on the frets, Adam’s apple bobbing as he hummed under his breath, eyes urging me to replicate the sound even though we both knew the piano required a different touch. A different shape.
It took a while. In an age before the internet and ubiquitous YouTube tutorials, our strategy consisted of persistent trial and error. We picked out notes, one by one, until we came close enough to satisfy Joel’s ear. And, in that patient repetition, I slowly learned what was meant by other chords. The sevenths, the sixths, the diminished chords. The D flats that were C sharps but not really, because he actually meant an inverted A.
In music, it’s not enough to play the right notes: you must play them at the right pace and you must vary the intensity. You must own it. It’s like life that way. And, like life, it’s forgiving of improvisations.
I was less forgiving of myself. The chasm between what I could create and arrange by ear—even with help—and what I heard in the music I admired was enormous. And I never bridged that gap. Much as I loved music, I would go on to spend a lifetime saying I don’t really play piano and I’m not actually a musician. I felt inadequate at the task. Instead, I chose an art that seemed easier to master: I went to medical school.
Medicine is learned through dissection and microscopic attention to detail. Diagnoses are reached through recognition of patterns and identification of unexpected alterations in rhythms and presentations. In a process not unlike learning to read music, novice physicians use scripted questions and emulate the tone and cadence of admired mentors. It takes time for the words to flow naturally.
I began to learn that imitation is best used as a steppingstone towards creation. A kind of study. A dissection. Apprentices observe their masters’ processes or sometimes deconstruct masterpieces, breaking them down only to build them back up. The initial attempts are to understand. In time, the rebuilding incorporates change: a shift in pace, a borrowed beat, a new language, an added spice, different lighting, or mosaic combinations that morph into a new and unique creation. Eventually, all that we consume is who we become: experiences so intrinsic to our identities that we hardly know where we acquired the pieces that shape our own art. Our own lives.
Only recently, over two decades later, did I return to the piano with the spirit gleaned playing in that school auditorium. The old metronome that uselessly decorated my piano for years found its way into my child’s toy bin and was finally destroyed by an invasion of plastic dinosaurs that severed its torturous ticking wand. Hanon’s book of exercises, The Virtuoso Pianist, mercifully disappeared somewhere into the boxes of storaged childhood. My taste in music grew and matured, as did my appreciation for variation. And imperfection.
I’ve learned that there’s enjoyment to be had in making art, even when (perhaps especially when) the process is valued more than its outcome. As I sit at the piano now—the piano of my childhood, the one that has traveled so many miles and been a fixture in all my homes—I have tempered expectations. I’m learning—in music, in life—to sound like myself.
Amy Marques grew up between languages and cultures and learned, from an early age, the multiplicity of narratives. She penned three children’s books, barely-read medical papers, and numerous letters before turning to short fiction and visual poetry. Her work was nominated for Best of the Net 2023 by Streetcake Magazine and Pushcart 2023 by MoonPark Review and is published or forthcoming in journals, including Jellyfish Review, Gone Lawn, and Sky Island Journal. You can find her at @amybookwhisper1 and read more of her words at amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.
Chris D’Errico
A Love Supreme
All music is in the understanding of one note
Said the Indian master
Sarod player Ali Akbar Khan
Romanticizing mystical Oneness,
Wind instruments,
Darkness as a myth,
Guilt worn like a hat.
The roundness of an old vinyl record
Turning clockwise under dust
Gathering around the head of a silver needle.
No need for robes or doctrine
When the saxophone blows.
The blues is all the stuff going into growing up,
Said John Coltrane.
Rising metal modal tempo,
Minor key riffs and the gospel release,
Fractured into polyrhythms.
A cane to the head,
A broken lip.
Zen-like weightlessness.
Wise word from a woman in a pink hat
Heavy with desire for liberation.
Voices from the margins
Sing from the diaphragm.
The art of a bygone day is no less valid
For being an orphan,
Said music historian Dennis McNally.
Human lips subjugate the reeds,
Reeds whip tender flesh,
The chest holds the heart
And most of the blood.
Publishing in print and online journals for 20+ years, Chris D’Errico is a visual artist, musician and writer who lives and works the nightshift as an exterminator in Las Vegas, Nevada. The social media he allows to rob his soul and twist his mind these days is Instagram: @christopherlouisderrico.
Jennifer Christgau-Aquino
What bird
A kite hawk, white crown with raisin eyes, shows up in the neighbor’s tree, screaming from her tips. Below her winter exposes itself in flat, wet grass and leafless twigs. Every few hours she turns desperate circles. Sometimes she’s strong and expanding with a penetrating cry. Other times she drifts down, like dirty, falling snow, hollow, hopeless. I think she’s casting for her baby. Maybe he’s lost on the ground; maybe he fell; maybe he left her. I feel her pain in the back of my groin. It goes on for days; wavering in the wind, through the window. Her screams sit on my pillow, my coffee table, on the rim of my sink. I let them because it’s less haunting than the quiet in my house. I get the step stool and hunt the binoculars from the shelf above my daughter’s empty clothing rod. I watch the hawk until my arms grow so heavy I rest them on the tops of the fence boards. At night, I lay in bed and listen for morning to yell through the curtains. A week later, the morning is silence. Overnight ice forms on the fence. The tree is an empty skeleton. I knock on the neighbor’s door. Perhaps she fell. Perhaps they saw her leave. Perhaps they saw her fledgling return. They look at me sideways, two babies on their hips and say: What bird?
Jennifer Christgau-Aquino is a fiction writer, poet and journalist who focuses on the human condition. Her work has appeared in First Wednesday, The Dime Show Review, BrainChild, Huffington Post, and Ruminate. She’s a 2022 Craigardan resident, and she holds an MFA in fiction writing and poetry.
Willa Carroll
Score for the Body in Geologic Time
Report weather from the interior | extreme heat index | thunder in the middle distance | contaminated rain & wind | We go further in | stretching time like an accordion | as coral filters an ocean | as kelp sways in the punctual moonlight | Shed the exoskeleton | of sleep | as the clock glints its teeth | as four walls grow a membrane | around the nuptial bed | Sirens begin again | as my hand find the gills of your ribs | Wake us | first vertebrates | floating in shallow seas | Let our fins | find dry land
Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works, 2018) and Demolition Suite (Split Rock Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Poem-A-Day, The Slowdown, Tin House, and elsewhere. She won Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest, Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize (judged by Brenda Hillman), and the 2022 Split Rock Press Chapbook Competition. Her poetry videos and multimedia collaborations have been featured in Interim Poetics, Narrative Outloud, TriQuarterly, and several international film festivals. Carroll was awarded Best Poetry Film at the 2021 International Migration & Environmental Film Festival. Website: www.willacarroll.com
Erin Connorton
Erin Connorton is a non-binary film photographer based in Rochester, New York. Their work can be found on Instagram at @erinecx.
Kathleen Calby
I am Raccoon, Crow
The gloss, the glaze, the spark
of shard or diamond, the metaphor—
the shine is what attracts—the sharp crack
of sun against pane at noon, or ache
of moon dripping the trees’ leaves.
I’m easily distracted by this, by that.
Call me Raccoon, Crow. Both
at once: nocturnal, diurnal.
Four legs and wings. Foragers, us.
My beak swivels: that glitter there
there there. Oh, look. This sequin
now this bottle cap no, this ring! Grasping
at a tiny flash
of a word I must polish, polish.
See this brilliance? Let me take it
in my claws,
examine it for clarity
or flaws,
take it skyward,
dip it
in the stream,
try to break it
with my beak.
Must tuck it among leaves.
But what, what if I invite
you to my nest, my tree, my porch and say
here is a poem, my most precious.
Would you grin, your eyes dart,
your fingers steal toward this glint?
Kathleen Calby traded in her corporate writing hat for poetry in 2019. Her work appears in San Pedro River Review, Susurrus, and the 2021 Pinesong Awards Anthology, among other publications. Named a 2022 Rash Award Poetry Finalist, she also received a 2021 Gilbert-Chappell mentorship with Jessica Jacobs. Her chapbook Flirting with Owls will be published in 2023 by Kelsay Books. Kathleen enjoys playing singing bowls, a short hike and a long cup of tea.
Sydney Crutch
La Plata
Where the aspen and spruce trees meet
You can find me there
Nestled between moss and mushroom
Where the loudest sound is the white topped river rushing rushing
rushing
And the lime green spotted wings of a mountain grasshopper
You can find me in the dappled shade of teal teardrops
with burnt sienna and sunset, sea foamed butterflies
Sat upon twisted root, fallen trunk with eyes
watching god
becoming her
The rains always come at midday to keep the colors
You can find me in the stillness of the forest where time neither passes
nor dies
And the light touches leaf tops in the wind
Sprinkle sparkle sky medicine
Where the moss and mushrooms speak
Where the aspen and spruce trees meet
You can find me there
Sydney Crutch, a North Carolina native, is traveling out of her ’96 Toyota Rav4 in the western US states, and is currently based in Taos, NM. Sydney is a heARTist and writer who draws deep inspiration from our natural world. She is a believer in feeling to heal and expression as medicine, and an advocate for our connection to the planet. Her art inspires and empowers the reader to live in their truth and find freedom inside themselves. Her words are vehicles to unlock the buried pieces that hold keys to our individual and collective liberation. She creates greeting cards using her poetry and photography, and is working on her first book, Golden Threads. Find more of her words, art, and links to other platforms on Instagram @sydneycrutch.
Susan E. Baer
surfacing
the earth shakes
it opens and spits me out
an owl’s eyes flash
as a lone apparition appears
lichens thrive and
they cover the deep forest
i crouch in fearless weeds
as winds pelt me with debris
day breaks cruelly and
light brushes my face
i struggle as i rise to my feet
as i rise everywhere
Susan E. Baer holds a Ph.D. She lives in Pennsylvania where she is an author and an educator. She has published poetry in Literature Today. One of her plays has been performed in Washington, D.C.
John J. Zywar
John J. Zywar is a retiree whose interest in photography grew out of a 4H program which included darkroom experience when in high school. Transforming photographs to artistic images through digital means is a current area of exploration. He has had eight photos published over the last two years. His photos have appeared in competitions and literary publications including Mass Audubon, Closed Eye Open, Burningword Literary Journal, Fusion Art, and Light Space & Time Gallery. Two photos and a poem will be published by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire in 2023.
Paul Smit
The Green Glow of the Sea Urchins
Eons had passed since a pulse of any kind had been felt on that arid Greek island. A small bird had stopped to feast in peace on a tamarisk seed found earlier on its journey. Yet, when the time came to ingest the kernel, the feathered traveler found itself unable to break through the outer shell. In possession, but inaccessible, like the wings of a dove when a hawk lords over the skies. The bird flew to a dizzying height in frustration and released the seed, willing the fall to decimate the last line of defense. Unfortunately for the bird, the fall only ceded the treasure to the wind, who chose instead to carry it out of sight…eventually leaving it on the edge of a barren cliff.
There the seed grew into a tree, the first of its kind on the island. Despite the harsh saline conditions, it clung to life, buoyed each day by the shimmering light of the Greek horizon.
But, as so often happens in life, early ambition doesn’t always lead to fulfillment. The boundless sky proved to be an empty promise: birds flew by but did not stop; boats appeared in the distance only to vanish shortly thereafter. Even the chalky soil began to feel inhospitable.
The tree set a new course towards the shore, sending its branches snaking over the edge of the cliff in a desperate search for new horizons.
Only one person ever laid eyes on those warped branches: Chamenos Prásinos. She once sat under the overhang of the tree, allowing her feet to dangle over the perilous edge. Her hands caressed the branches in front of her, sympathizing with their forsaken existence.
In the early 1920’s, her father was a modest fisherman. He returned each day with fresh fish and stories: stories of hopeless deckhands, wayward crabs, and monsters of the sea. What the Prásinos home lacked in luxury it made up for with laughter. How many times had Chamenos been hunched over, cackling or gasping for air, hanging on to her father’s every word? And when he wasn’t making her laugh she was spellbound by his memories of her mother, memories he loved to revisit.
One night, the stories stopped.
Why hasn’t he come home?
In the midnight hour, when fear was reaching for the heights of the moon, she mustered up the courage to walk down to the docks.
Everyone was gone.
Stars twinkled, boats rocked gently back and forth.
This is wrong…something has happened. She could feel it: change, hiding in the shadows, waiting to release the tension in its bow.
Where is he?!
For hours she sat, waiting for the first fishermen to arrive. Instinct warned her to imprint his smile in her mind, to etch the outlines of his face in her psyche. When men began to arrive for the day’s fishing, she approached each one. Who of them knew her father? Those who did, knew very little about his whereabouts. The slow march of an exodus – a journey of time from the world – began to form in her small heart.
A man approached her. Chamenos recognized him. Vassilios. A few years prior, she’d met him with her father.
He’d been to her house that morning, he said, staring at her before speaking. Even at sixteen, Chamenos had a striking appearance: elongated black eyes that seemed to look into, and not onto, the world; thick black hair that framed her sharp features as if she were a statue from Athens. Striking as she was, he didn’t seem to remember meeting her. Have I changed so much?
Vassilios explained that they had stopped at a nearby island to look for sea urchins. Sea urchins can be found just below the surface of the water, in clusters on the rocks – the deep reddish or chestnut brown female ones are what you want…her father was known for finding the best.
The island was very big, said Vassilios, and all the men had gone in different directions to search. They had searched for sea urchins many, many times before…nothing bad had ever happened. Chamenos looked him in the eyes and asked him flatly if her father was dead.
Yes and no are two simple words most fishermen have a superior command over. Keep this fish? Yes. Go back to shore? No. They live by it. Not Vassilios; he couldn’t bring himself to utter either. Men had already left on their own smaller boats, early in the morning, to search for her father, he assured her, but nobody had found any sign of him. Chamenos had been there all morning and spoken to every man who had come near a boat. They’re vile, she thought, for not telling her what they were doing. She asked which island it was. Vassilios hesitated, fearful of the desperation in her eyes, before stuttering its name.
Vepos.
An hour later, with nothing but a map in her hand and a black cloak for warmth, Chamenos stole a boat. It was the first time she had sailed without her father. She knew where she had to go. It was far.
His body. I have to find it. Find him. It had to be somewhere. He could still be alive.
The journey to Vepos almost killed the young girl. She heaved through her throat, every ounce of moisture stripped from its walls by the sea. Her lips cracked and bled, wincing at the touch of the salty mist. Finally, she found the island Vassilios told her about.
He’s here.
For two days, Chamenos frantically explored the island. There were very few trees for him to be sitting under, and no homes for him to be sleeping in. He was nowhere on land, of that she was sure. It had to be in the water. He must be here!
She searched for sea urchins, diving off rocky outcrops without fear or hesitation. Where there were urchins, he may be nearby.
A sea urchin is not an extraordinary sight, yet for Chamenos it became the most violent image of her young life. An urge to rip every single one of them off the rocks, to wipe them all from the face of the earth until her father was returned, coursed through her veins.
She dreamed of the moment she would find his body, of the prayers she would offer it.
For six months, Chamenos scraped by on a nearby island, where she lived as a quiet recluse at the mercy of a few kind villagers. Over and over, she returned to search for her father on Vepos. It took time to gather rations, and time to heal from each excursion.
Chamenos never found her father.
By the time she returned to her old home, almost everything inside was gone. Looted. The simple, ‘good’ people who had known her father had taken anything of value. In her bedroom, a dusty mattress leaned against the wall. In the kitchen, the table she used to eat at had no chairs. Cutlery lay strewn across the counters.
Where is it?!
Chamenos’ mother died when she was born. Only a few objects confirmed the existence of the woman she’d only ever spent nine months with. One of them, a dainty gold chain with a miniscule emerald, had been promised to Chamenos by her father. He’d promised it would be hers when she was old enough to treasure and keep safe.
No! Where is it?!
Each day, Chamenos drifted into the market like a benign spirit, selling sea urchins to survive. She watched from behind the cover of her cloak, burning her eyes into each neck that passed by, scanning for the necklace. Perhaps they thought she would never return. A few people knew the house of the dead fisherman was occupied again, and yet nobody had come to offer her help. For Chamenos, every visitor to the market became part of a pattern, every child became a match for a parent. Men smiled at her, while women fought for her urchins.
Although it had only been half a year, very few people seemed to recognize her. Seeing her own reflection at the bottom of a steel bucket, Chamenos wondered how they could forget so quickly. Have I changed so much? There was no point in lamenting the fact that nobody remembered the tragedy. Life goes on. To them, she was drowned with her father. Forgotten.
While securing her boat late one afternoon, a man approached her. Vassilios! He’ll remember me…remember us.
Vassilios struck up a conversation about her sea urchins, his words full of energy and life. His eyes bore down into hers, and still there seemed to be no recognition of who she was. Widening her gaze, Chamenos tried to draw him in, hoping to share the horror of searching for her father. She hoped he might glimpse into her aching heart, that he might recoil from the bloodbath pooling behind her eyes. But Vassilios kept smiling. He did not see a hemorrhaging life; he saw the mystery he wanted to see: the secret recesses of the ocean and the storied wonders that lie undisturbed there. How can he not remember me? He knew us! Did we mean so little?
The sight of Vassilios thereafter, almost every day, prompted her to consider moving to the next island, away from the bitter reminders of her hometown. Just when she was sure it was time to make her exit, a ray of good fortune – so it seemed at the time – crossed her path.
Her mother’s dainty necklace.
A woman staring into her basket of urchins was wearing it.
Chamenos blinked a few times – the sight unsettled her. Suddenly her body felt heavier than the concrete block she was sitting on. All feeling left her legs. Even if she had wanted to, there was no way to summon the strength to reach for the necklace.
Instinctively, her sweet voice took over.
“Hello. How many would you like?”
The thief smiled back. It was a smile that betrayed its nature. Chamenos knew the buttery, custard-like texture of a sea urchin’s inner roe wasn’t what this woman was after.
“Those urchins look…old. Where did you get them?” asked the woman, still hovering. The frown lines on her forehead were deep trenches of disdain.
“They’re fresh. I found them this morning. How many are you looking for?”
The woman loomed over her, blocking the sun.
“Oh, I’m not looking to buy. I’m just looking. My husband sells sea urchins, too. Do you know him?”
“I’m not sure. A few of us sell them. Can you describe him to me?”
“He’s the captain of the Palinouros. Do you know the boat?”
Chamenos did know the boat. It belonged to Vassilios.
“Yes, I have seen that boat. They find some of the best sea urchins.”
“So, you do know him?”
“I know the boat.”
“My husband knows you.”
“He does? How?” Chamenos fought the urge to answer her own question. She wanted to position her face right up against the woman’s, close enough to bring their noses to touch, and spit the answer out.
“He’s mentioned you a few times…and your sea urchins.” The woman’s bushy brown hair seemed electric.
“I hope he’s mentioned good things,” replied Chamenos, wondering if they ever mentioned her at all when she went missing.
“He has, although I don’t know why. Those sea urchins look sickly to me.”
“Mmm, you never know,” answered Chamenos, “sometimes the good-looking ones disappoint you once you crack them open. Some of them can leave the taste of mercury in your mouth. Not very different from people, is it?”
The woman’s smile disappeared. She turned and walked away.
Chamenos vowed to get the necklace back, whatever the cost. Mama.
Late that night, a salty breeze wafted through the alleyways and open spaces. Chamenos could feel her father in it, gently crossing her path, playfully greeting her. When a gust suddenly swirled inside her cloak, she knew it was him asking her not to do it. I’m sorry, Papa. My gut says I must, the same way it told me to go looking for you long before I did. I should have listened. It’s all I have now.
An hour passed before she found herself in front of the faded blue door she was looking for. They had seen her a few times over the years. A part of Chamenos hoped they would wake up and remember – remember her, remember her father.
The front door creaked loudly as she entered, the salty breeze sliding in behind her. Eventually, she came to the bedroom. There they were, sleeping soundly with a clear conscience. It only took a few moments for Chamenos’ eyes to locate the gold chain lying on a side table next to the bed. Mama!
Elation coursed through her when the thin chain finally lay nestled in her palm. The fragile memory of her mother had been recovered.
She left: that house, that island, that night. And never went back.
Chamenos moved between islands, selling sea urchins at different markets. People received her without suspicion: her gentle eyes and graceful movements fostered a calming presence, and the way her wavy hair rose off her forehead made her seem approachable. But the face Chamenos gave to the world belied the sentiment she held for it. Life had unceremoniously thrown her into isolation, doing so without regard or malice, leaving her estranged from the gravity of heaven and hell. There is only what is. No rhyme, no reason. All we have is our gut, where it wants to go. To follow that feeling is to exist with the living, with the world. To ignore it is to pave the way to the underworld.
While gazing out onto Greek life around her, children stomping their feet, husbands hugging their wives, women hanging their sheets, dogs burying bones, she rubbed her forefinger against the dainty gold chain resting peacefully around her neck. More than a few times a day, she would glance down at the tiny emerald and be comforted by its lush green glow, an oasis in the rocky paths and arid hills of the Cyclades. Soon a strong yearning to harvest more stones took hold. She would visit the big cities and compliment the store owners on their stones, and then watch their movements: where they ate, where they drank, where they lived…when their homes were vacant. When approached for sea urchins or olives, depending on the season, Chamenos would drop her head in a display of subservience, a convenient position to get a better view of the hands and wrists nearby.
Emboldened by the first few emerald pieces she stole, she felt her mother’s spirit growing in tandem with her collection, a collection legend would have sung about had anyone ever been fortunate enough to see it in its entirety…Chamenos went to great lengths ensuring nobody ever did. Eventually she found more pleasure in hiding each piece away from the world than she did in stealing it. She walked miles in search of desolate landscapes, climbed sharp cliffs looking for crevices no man or animal would scale, and dove deep into the waters where her father had disappeared, reveling in the emancipation of these treasures. No rhyme, no reason. She followed the feeling, deferring to it as if it were its own entity.
Hermes, God of trickery, grinned as he looked upon her. Humans are capable of great schemes when pain molds their minds, he thought. They become unpredictable when they escape the clutches of reason and repercussion; and only then can the true nature of their humanity be studied.
Decades after reclaiming her mother’s necklace, Chamenos found an island nobody had cared to set foot on before her. Its coarse dark sand was sought after by no one. Its lack of trees and infertile soil deterred almost all living things. This island is like me, she thought. Forgotten, but not gone.
Chalky beige paths weaved around the small island, often leading to dead ends or deadly falls. Jagged cliffs arched inwards. Where the path was very narrow, the air between the rocky overhangs was cool, existing like a vacuum in the heat of the Greek sun. Time seemed to exhale in those spots. The stillness held her captive; somehow, there was a beauty to its loneliness, the kind she’d been unable to find in her own.
In exploring this island, the sharpness of her own breathing forced her to question why she’d stayed out of sight and out of mind for so long. Was drifting from town to town, taking and then discarding, a meaningless life? Was it any different to a dishonest one? The sudden migration of intention to a new world forced Chamenos to question her methods. Did releasing the treasures discharge her from guilt? It was easy to stay out of sight, but there on that island, knowing life would never be simpler, she no longer wished to be out of mind. I am strong. I can be a bridge for the world we imagine exists and one that does.
She found her way to yet another new island, this time determined to stay. Most of them will not know me, but almost all of them will remember me, she mused.
Chamenos watched them all for months, taking note of their movements before making her own.
An unusual catch, by a young boy, marked the first day of her meddling – a give and take of havoc, an injection of odds into ordinary lives.
Men rushed towards the boy to see the fish. Their interest, in turn, alerted all the loitering children to the commotion. Everyone huddled around the boy, ooh-ing and aah-ing as they took in the sight of his prized catch. A Dorado!
Golden sides, bright blues and greens streaking down its back, pearly blue fins, a forehead so prominent it looked perpetually lost in thought – Chamenos caught glimpses of the creature through their pushing and shoving. The young boy was standing on a small crate, holding the fish by its tail as it flip-flopped while flashing its colors in front of the gawking crowd. She’d seen one of these before; her father once brought a smaller specimen home. When the proud boy couldn’t hold the fish up any longer, he dumped it in the large saltwater trough the admirers had filled for him. There the fish twisted and turned, its sweeping forehead searching for a way out.
When the young boy came to gaze upon his conquest the next day, he was pleased to see a crowd had already gathered. But this time the talk was all hushed tones and whispers. Looks of confusion spread like wildfire.
A bright flash, dispersing the rising sun’s rays, caught his attention. A checkered ruby and emerald bracelet had been clasped below the caudal fin, transforming the catch of the day into a treasured pet. The young boy stared in awe, like the rest of the crowd, wondering how it came to be there. Poor as they were, they knew the look of something valuable. He assumed someone had come to claim the fish, and by right the wealthier person could do so. Who was it? Could he take the bracelet?
Chamenos watched him wrestle with this inner monologue. She thought back to that day when she first started to worry about her father, having had no reason to worry when he left for work. One day had changed all the others. The young fisherman would be changed by her meddling, maybe for the better, maybe for worse. A small opening in the mind can lead to the land of the living. She believed that when large questions in life arose, the window to a soul opened for a brief moment. In those moments, if the human followed their gut, they had a chance to leap into life. Real life. But if the jump was at the command of another faculty, it was merely a springboard into a different sphere in the maze of madness. To betray the gut is to skin the spirit.
She walked away from the spectacle. Having seen this type of fish before, having seen it rifle through hues before settling on an anemic yellow color when the flip-flopping stops, she’d seen enough. Hermes watched Chamenos from the crowd, amused by her antics, curious about the mechanics of her moral compass.
From dog collars to baked goods, no object was too important or too mundane to be reimagined by Chamenos. Children and fellow thieves joined in on her games. She would leave a small satchel lying open, a sparkling bauble jutting out for all to see, baiting someone to steal it. It would be stolen, and she’d steal it back, sending the fellow thief scurrying to a new town.
After befriending a retired jeweler, she commissioned him for a special project: a pair of dice, the cubes carved from solid mother-of-pearl and the dots made from emeralds.
The old man stared at her inquisitively. He’d crossed paths with many women and their precious stones, but Chamenos was the first to possess the same intrinsic beauty as the materials she required him to work with. Because there was protocol around owning these stones – protocol a woman like her had long forgotten – he knew it must have been unsavory means by which she’d come by them. He held his tongue; the provenance of certain stones is better left unknown.
With the dice in hand, Chamenos changed her game. You never know…that’s the beauty. Rolling a two, she might stuff a pair of stones into the eye sockets of a dead octopus hanging out to dry. Rolling a six, she might gift and re-steal a ring half a dozen times. Sometimes she let people keep her gifts, sometimes she lost track of them. The older she got, the more she lost track.
Every year, on the anniversary of her father’s disappearance, she would return to Vepos and roll her dice, using the number to recount the memories she was grateful for. For Chamenos, her father had died by unfair chance, but still lived in the odds she generated. She felt him in the salty breeze, playful at times, apprehensive at others.
Hermes watched her from afar until she was an old woman, gaunt but still compelling with her mane of silver-grey hair and reticent smile. He visited the most obscure sites she’d used as tombs for manmade treasures to atrophy in, each time feeling a kindred appreciation for her work. Futile as much of it may have been, the lawlessness of her thinking was dominion itself, a concept long prized by his own kind. Before good, before evil, this power existed unabated. In exile it found refuge in this woman, and others scattered across the world, waiting for the day false strongholds would fall and pave the way for a return. The pantheon of virtue is built on the ruins of peace.
Until she was very old, Chamenos was still able to find the best urchins. The satisfaction she felt when ripping them from the face of the earth never waned. But she did eventually grow tired of meddling in the affairs of other people. With aging came doubts, and eventually fears. Her dice had meant so much, for so many years, that she decided they wouldn’t be found on her, not in a small concrete hovel where nothing extraordinary would happen after she left the world. They wouldn’t be out in the open for a human vulture to seize. There was a cliff, one she had seen many years ago on one of her hiding expeditions, where they’d be safe.
She stocked her boat, the same boat she’d had for almost sixty years, and set off towards the island. A feeling of nostalgia swelled inside her, even when remembering the horror she’d lived through on the small vessel the first time she manned it. The loss of her father would always be the adjudication over her life; she’d made peace with that.
The cliff’s ascent was brutal, even for a seasoned hiker like Chamenos. She made it to the summit with grazed palms and burning calves. It was just as she remembered. The plateau was a small clearing surrounded by clear skies on all sides. A tree curling over itself stood on the far edge, not a blade of green to be seen on its forlorn branches. Despite its warped appearance, its bark looked hardy, strong enough to stand for decades still.
Chamenos didn’t see a tree; she saw an ancient relic. Only something with great power could speak so truthfully to her. There is the living, there is chance. And what is.
She bent over and let her wiry fingers undo the buckles on her sandals. Her tired feet found comfort in the soil, knowing that the journey was almost over. I am what is.
Chamenos approached the tree. Lowering to her knees, she began to crawl, settling on a spot between the hanging branches and the trunk. Resting her back against the trunk, she inched her feet forwards and maneuvered them through the branches until they hung over the perilous edge.
For a while she sat there, thinking about luck, both good and bad, about manipulating odds, about being torn away from a normal life. Maybe she could have been a jeweler…or a mother. I am what is. Staring through the branches, she found comfort in their futile reach for the unknown. From the position of her seat, the blue canvas of the sky was rendered a mosaic. Living does the same thing to a soul.
The palm of her right hand found itself resting on her heart while her fingers slid upwards towards her collarbone, feeling for the thin chain resting so lovingly in its groove. The habit of toying with it was deeply ingrained. She thanked it for helping to assuage the longing she could never escape. Then she wished it well, wherever it might lie in the years to come.
She undid the clasp beneath her silver hair for the first time in decades. Thinking back to when she’d first put it on, Chamenos felt just as sure about removing it. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes. The chain lay nestled in her palm, engulfed by her warmth.
She lay there for a while, the lullaby of the wind rising and falling around her. True power comes from nothing. Restoration comes from reduction.
Retrieving the mother-of-pearl dice from the velvet pouch tied to her waist, Chamenos slowly rolled them in the pit of her other palm. The intoxicating passion for chance still seduced her.
Letting go would not be easy; for the first time, her children of chance weren’t the mischief in waiting…they were just two defenseless precious eggs.
With great care, she gently tied the dice to her mother’s gold chain, creating a metal harness around each one.
I am what is.
She tenderly hung the chain on a sturdy-looking branch. Blades of green had finally come to the barren tree. There is the living, there is chance. And what is.
A gentle breeze arrived from beneath her feet, playfully swirling around her dangling ankles, massaging their inside grooves, flitting between her toes and legs. Chamenos smiled. There was so much about the passing of time on earth that she’d never understand, and while that may have once muddied the veil of her sanity, it now comforted her. The myriad of truths that would remain hidden to her was also the right to the few she’d uncovered. While they were few, they were hers.
I am what is.
It was enough that a salty breeze could be the reprieve from the enigma of life, and that a tree bending over itself could provide support for her aging body.
Paul Smit grew up in South Africa and now lives in New York, where he works in the music industry. His short story “Burnt Avocado Toast” appeared in the March 2020 edition of Wild Roof Journal. “The Army Nestled in our Shadows” appeared in the March 2019 edition of The Write Launch. He’s had additional stories placed with The Stardust Review, Vois, and Untenured. Paul has completed his third novel, titled The Secrets of Sea Cliff, and is happily on the hunt for an agent.
Kristine Narvida
Kristine Narvida is a Latvian academic visual artist. She graduated in 2006 as a Magister at the Latvian Art Academy in Riga. She lives and works in Germany in Berlin and Potsdam. She is an active member of the Brandenburg Association of Artists. She presents and sells her fine artwork throughout Europe and globally with online galleries. Kristine prefers working with oil on linen, using models as her subjects. Website: www.narvida.com / Instagram: @narvida_art
Julie Nelson
At 88, Mom Rakes Leaves at Dusk
Low clouds tumble overhead,
as we bundle up,
root around the shed
and find them, stacked
in a corner, rusted
but sturdy, a cache of rakes
flaking brown handles
of brittle, aged oak
splintering
our hands.
She bends with the birches,
her face bathed in bronze,
flinging her rake
over the heap
with both arms, steadying herself
before hauling in a stash
when she stops, a forkful
of leaves midair, lifts
her head and stands
still to hear
a church bell
ring the hour.
And whatever time
there is, and whatever
time we have, we gather
falling leaves and watch
as the sun
lingers
and lengthens
our shadows
on the lawn.
Julie Nelson is a creative writer and educator who lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with her partner of 36 years. She has published poems and stories in various literary journals including Cathexis Northwest Press, East by Northeast Literary Magazine, Critical Reads, Passengers Journal, and Passager.
Nicholas Olah
The End as a Metaphor
Look around you;
winter is unspooling.
The sparkled snow
blankets the ground—
and our love.
Nicholas Olah has self-published three poetry collections, Where Light Separates from Dark, Which Way is North and Seasons. Nicholas’s work has been published in Humana Obscura, Free Verse Revolution, Querencia Press, Duck Head Journal, and Resurrection Magazine. Check out more of his work on Instagram at @nick.olah.poetry or visit his Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/nickolahpoetry.
