Wheelchair

"Afia! My dear, why are you sitting in the dark room? Ayesha said while turning on the light in the room. "I love being in the dark, Mama!" Because this darkness hides my disability in itself.” Aafia said while turning her wheelchair towards Mama. 

Mama, why am I like this? Why can't I run like other kids? I also want to play hide and seek like Raima, Ayeza, and Ahmar, ride a bicycle, play badminton like them. Aafia started crying about her disability while mentioning her brother and sisters. Ayesha quickly moved forward and hugged Aafia. Ayesha herself was saddened.

Twelve-year-old Aafia was the eldest daughter of Shahbaz and Ayesha. Aafia's parents were very happy when she was born. Allah Ta'ala blessed them with the happiness of children after five years of marriage. On Aafia's birth, sweets were distributed throughout the neighborhood. Aafia was the star of everyone's eyes in Dadhyal and Nanhyal. She used to walk around the house. When Aafia was two years old, she fell victim to the polio virus, due to which Aafia was destined to be disabled for life. Undoubtedly, it was a great test for Shahbaz and Ayesha. With the passage of time, Shahbaz and Ayesha had accepted the bitter reality that their beloved daughter Aafia could not walk again for the rest of her life, but Aafia was still unable to accept this fact. Aafia's uncle, who was a school teacher, started taking Aafia to school with her. In the beginning, Aafia was very excited to go to school, but gradually she started shying away from going to school. Now she used to try to skip school on some pretext.

"My dear daughter! If you don't go to school, how will you get an education? Ayesha said hugging Aafia. 

"Mama!" 

All the kids in school look at me strangely. Sometimes they make fun of me. Sometimes they copy me. No one wants to be friends with me because I can't run like them," Aafia said while crying. 

"Hey! My daughter is very brave. Brave people face their circumstances bravely, they don't cry. The day you stop considering yourself disabled, people will also stop considering you disabled, and then every human being is tested by Allah Ta'ala. Allah Ta'ala wants to see whether His servant fulfills the test given by Him or not. Ignore the visible flaws and look for the hidden qualities within you. Then one day everyone's tongue will not mention your disability but your virtues," Aisha explained to her daughter.

Aafia also understood this very well. She had accepted the fact that this "wheelchair" was now a part of Aafia's life. Now Aafia not only started going to school regularly but also started participating in various academic and literary programs. He no longer cared about people's attitudes. Aafia had learned to be happy and contented. Day and night she started thanking Allah Almighty that Allah Almighty had blessed her with the ability to think and understand. He had given wisdom and consciousness. Aafia's painting won the first position in the International Painting competitions, and Aafia got a lot of recognition in the domestic and foreign media. Now everyone wanted to meet Aafia. Wanted to talk to him. Undoubtedly, the words of Aafia's mother had been proven true that one day there will be a day when people's tongues will mention Aafia's performance.

Welcome to mid-December’s issue!

We encourage you to come on out to Metamorphosis, our New Year’s Eve gathering and benefit show for the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan and Sacramento’s Take Back the Night. This will take place in downtown Davis, CA, at 2pm in the fellowship hall of Davis Lutheran Church (all are welcome, we’re simply using their room as a community space). 4pm Pacific time is midnight Greenwich Mean Time so we can count down to midnight. Please sign up here to attend.

The theme “Metamorphosis” refers to having people there from different generations to speak and read and learn from each other, challenging us to honor the wisdom of our parents and ancestors while incorporating the best of the world’s new ideas in a thoughtful “metamorphosis.” We’ve got comedian Nicole Eichenberg, musicians Avery Burke and Joseph Menke, and others on board as well as speakers from different generations.

Second, our friend and collaborator Rui Carvalho has announced our Nature Writing Contest for 2022.

This is an invitation to submit poems and short stories related to trees, water, and nature conservation between now and the March 2023 deadline. More information and submission instructions here!

This month explores various forms of life and death, and how and when we pass through the veil or cross the famed Styx of Greek mythology. Our theme is quite appropriate for the solstice a week after this issue’s release, a time of natural passage from one season to another.

Natasha Leung explores the impermanence of seasons and sensations through a meditation on a burn from a candle. Chimezie Ihekuna’s poem celebrates the festivities of Christmas along with the opportunity for renewal presented by the new year.

Sophia Fastaia shows the sun and moon finding each other’s light in a joyful, childlike encounter.

Mary Croy voyages through the vastness of nebulae in space and also fields and meadows here on Earth. Channie Greenberg presents images of trees, a mashup of vista shots of the whole tree and closeups of a few branches or trunks.

Robert Stephens highlights the power of memory to contain a lush panoply of disparate scenes and to bring life to the dead. Norman J. Olson reflects on appreciating centuries of human history by traveling with his wife.

Lachlan McDougall sends us atmospheric moments of subtle natural or supernatural tension. Fernando Sorrentino crafts a compelling caricature of a man immobilized and slowly decimated by fear.

Ashley Mann’s pieces lament the artificiality of the culture that she sees as replacing whole natural foods and authentic human connection. J.J. Campbell reflects on the ways we anesthetize ourselves in an uncertain world: substances, eroticism, fantasy, perhaps even cynicism itself.

Marley Manalo-Landicho mentally dissects himself, wondering who he really is under the constructions of his ego and his physical body. John Culp’s poem describes the dissolution of ego to make way for loving connection with another person.

Vernon Frazer’s poetry pans out to the edge of human consciousness with a dizzying array of linked words. J.D. Nelson arranges words and syllables to evoke and distill meaning and thought in pieces specifically designed for our publication. Sayani Mukherjee draws on mythology, fantasy literature and nature to conjure a wild dream. Alan Catlin’s characters and settings teeter in and out of sanity, drawing on Ouija boards, psychedelics, fevers and outer space.

Jim Meirose’s surrealist piece draws on a children’s trope, with an anthropomorphized rat and mouse loose in the library, but then goes in a more adult and ludicrous direction. Daniel De Culla contributes his signature earthy humor to the issue, with a story of a gentleman’s bodily functions.

Beth Gulley renders ordinary life in short haiku-like poems, exploring weather, public swimming, and home repairs through wit and careful observation. Damon Hubbs sends up scenes of imaginative speculation and drama within domesticity, characters who stand out in pink earmuffs or flowing robes amid their daily environs.

Peter F. Crowley harnesses only slightly exaggerated humor to describe the end of dysfunctional relationships.

Z.I. Mahmud laments the tragedies of both Creon and Antigone in Sophocles’ famous play, highlighting the quixotic quests of each character for law and order or romantic or familial love.

Exploring family tragedy in a different way, Jaylan Salah probes the power of the calm, understated themes of loss and mortality in Satish and Santosh Babusenan’s new film The Husband, The Wife and Their Dead Sons.

Mykyta Ryzhykh’s poem illustrates how war steals a society’s innocence as well as its people’s lives. Ahmad Al-Khatat’s dark piece also mourns wartime losses, so extensive the sun itself could lose its fire.

Alison Owings’ piece highlights the small and large hopes and dreams people have for a better world. Jeff Rasley looks to the work and lives of gifted but tortured writers and artists to explore how ordinary people might resonate and ultimately find their way to wholeness. Charley De Inspirator shares his journey towards spiritual healing and salvation through religious faith.

We hope that this issue represents a way forward for you, through curiosity, wonder, healing, dreams, connection, or transformation.

Not Another Holiday Poem

grandmother’s 
annual holiday poem
was nothing like The New Yorker’s 
annual holiday poem

the top bard of Walton, NY
poet laureate of St. John Street
wouldn’t think of starting a poem
with “Greetings, Friends!”

she was more 
Miss Havisham 
than Grandma Moses 
in those later years 

when the wraparound porch 
on her black & white Victorian 
collapsed like a poorly measured 
fruit cake 

and the delivery man 
who dropped off groceries 
& cases of Genny every Friday 
would find her 

on the old wooden swing 
kicking out 
over 
the abyss

noting the times & the season
hark, with each pump 
of her schoolyard legs. 


 
Suburb

such a fuss 
was raised last night 
by the chickens 
in the neighbor’s coop 

you would have thought 
kids were staging boxing matches 
in the foreclosure
on the corner 

or Mr. Connolly was finally 
putting the misery 
out of his sour puss 
wife

or a delivery man 
who knows that evil 
works against us
on a daily basis 

was fighting 
the high-casualty event 
of middle class 
life

by arranging 
a tufted boudoir chaise 
in a perfect pelt 
of moonlight. 

 
Mount Vision

it’s a small town
nothing to do
but fantasize
so when news 
cropped that the radio tower
on Mount Vision
had picked spectral music
out of the sky

the disappointment
was as sharp
as finding
a plastic toy saucer
at the bottom 
of a technicolor
cereal 
box
 
the rise and fall of the west

‘You’ve gotta’ be fucking kidding me,’ 
I say, half under my breath ‘are you 
sure that’s right?’ 
The woman 
behind the cash register 
is wearing pink earmuffs. It’s December 
but there isn’t a bite to the air 
or as much as a flake on the ground. 
The pink earmuffs are her way 
of saying ‘sorry, fucker 
I can’t hear you bitch 
about the cost of potatoes
because my ears are huddled 
in pink earmuffs.’ 
I’m so pissed
about the cost of potatoes
I wanna’ tell the woman 
that her pink earmuffs 
make her look like she feeds 
on the homeless.
But she won’t hear me anyway,
so what’s the point. 
Then, in a mock hospitable voice
she adds, ‘sir, potatoes fueled 
the rise of the West.’  
The last item scans, chirps. 
‘Paper or plastic?’ 
‘Plastic,’ I say 
doing my part to hasten the fall. 

 
the last roundhouse on dead end street

south 
of the rib, in the flatlands
dram shops & the 
roundhouse, upstate’s 
industrial colosseum 

the Canadian Pacific 
razed it in 93’ but demolition began earlier 
36 of 52 brick stalls 
scattered like a game 
of pick-up 

amongst the ruins 
& rotting Pullman mail cars 

a woman 
with a dismembered 
goat hoof between her legs 
says to an ex-con: 
tastes are becoming hard to satisfy. 

                                            Dump

     From the early afternoon light filtering through the tavern’s off-white shades, Sharon’s frown had become apparent. She sat there watching Daryl eat an enormous pulled pork sandwich after finishing her grilled tempeh and arugula salad.
     “What?” Daryl asked, taking off his baseball hat and wiping the sweat from his brow.
     It was over 90 degrees. From where they sat in the back, not a trickle of air from the doorway fan was palpable.
     Sharon’s lower jaw sunk low as she started to open her mouth. She placed her pointer finger to her lips and thought for a moment before putting her shoulder-length, red hair into a bun.

     “He’s not a bro but he’s different from me,” she thought. “He doesn’t get the details of my paintings and how it’s really only them that matter. Kara even said that the details ‘overwhelm and inform’ the whole. But the last portrait I did of an old woman, all that Daryl said was, “Very cool.” Did he even look at it? I tried to show every skin cell of the woman’s face to depict the dark circles around her eyes and all her wrinkles.”
     “Not talking again?” Daryl asked.
     The waiter came by and asked if everything was ok. Sharon responded that all was well, as Daryl had just taken another large bite from his sandwich. 

     Did they want the check? Sharon shook her head.
     It’ll be ten years before he finishes that sandwich. He eats so goddamn slow and look how he chews! Like a cow chewing on grass all day. Hurry up, cow!
     Sharon tried to remember if Daryl had asked her something. He must’ve, but what?
    “How’s your sandwich?”
     “It’s good.”
     Sharon raised her eyebrows and nodded.
     “Why do you always have to be so sarcastic about everything? You don’t have to look down on me for eating meat.”

     “I don’t.”
     Actually, I do, but not that much. If you just ate chicken and beef occasionally, it’d be different. But you eat beef or pork every day. Don’t you realize how bad that is for the environment? Methane is worse than CO2, dude. And you say you care about climate change. That was probably just to get into my pants.
     “I have to say: I’m really loving this conversation we’re having.”
     “Me too.”
     “See what I mean? And I don’t even know if you mean it or not. But I guess not, right? Because we’ve barely spoken all through lunch.”

     “That’s because you’re eating.”
     “We’ve both been eating. You’re just done.”
     “Yep, I was done like ten minutes ago.”
     “Is it a race? I can’t help it if this place makes ginormous sandwiches.”
     “You don’t have to eat all of it.”
     “Come on, this kind of thing would taste horrible the next day. It’s eat it all now or waste it, you know?”
     “Interesting.”
     Was he always so boring? He couldn’t have been. Or maybe I was just blinded by his good looks and how into me he was.

     “Really? You don’t find that interesting. You shouldn’t say stuff that you don’t mean. It almost seems like you’re just responding to me on autopilot and you’re really just way off on another planet or something.”
     That would be preferable to being with you.
     Sharon got up and went to the bathroom. A thick cigarette smoke pervaded the air. The stall she went into had an empty Heineken bottle floating in the toilet. 

     “Figures,” she thought. “He always likes divvy places. Maybe that was cool when you’re 21 but not when you’re 35!”
     When she returned, Daryl was lying on the floor underneath their table, with his head popping out at the end. The plate of pulled pork sandwich, of which there was still ¼ remaining, was on his stomach. She rested her feet on his ribs as she sat down, and it felt particularly comfortable. The White Stripe song “Stop Breaking Down” came into her head and she tapped out the beat with her heeled shoes.
     “I think I got it! That’s Green Day’s “Basket Case,” right?”
     “No.”

      “What is it then?”
      “Why does it matter?”
      Daryl peered up at her, trying make eye contact and asked, “Don’t you love me anymore?”
     “Did we ever say we loved each other?”
     “Yeah, we both did. Remember? We were in Brooklyn at your favorite restaurant in the whole world.”

     Sharon thought back to a year ago, four months after they had met. They were seated outside at a narrow row of tables next to a dozen-story brick building. It was an Indo-Chinese vegan place. She ordered an amazing Gobi Manchurian appetizer; he just sat there with a coffee, saying that he wasn’t hungry. He looked into her eyes and said those words. When she replied in kind, his eyes hazel eyes beamed. 
     Love is weird. I thought I loved you then, but did I? Maybe? But maybe I was just really horny and lonely. I definitely don’t love you now.

     “Why do we always have to talk about these kinds of things?”
     Why, really, do we have to talk at all?
     “I don’t know. I guess that it’s nice to reminisce about the nice times that we’ve had together.”
     Sharon looked straight across the table to where Daryl had been sitting and said, “I’ve been thinking. We’ve been together for almost a year and a half now. Don’t you think it’s time to give ourselves a little space and maybe see other people?”

     “You mean like an open relationship?”
     “No. I just mean us not see each other anymore. Ever.”
     Daryl stopped chewing and looked up to the ceiling fan, which had finally whirred on.
     “…I don’t think that’s something we need to do.”
     “I do,” Sharon said, shoving her heels deep into his side as she pushed herself out from the booth. 
     She stood up, looked down at him as he masticated on a mouthful of pulled pork and said, “I’m dumping you, Daryl.”

                                       Nanny

     “Good timing,” Giselda thought, taking off her shoes. 
     Jimmy, the 13-month old she was hired to watch, had fallen asleep for his morning nap just before she arrived.   
     Giselda looked out the window, from the dried-up grass on the expansive front lawn to a sign in the neighbor’s yard across the street that read “We’re proud of our Christian Academy student.” 
     She took out her phone and scrolled through Facebook. Her friend Adriana and her new American husband had posted pictures from a fishing trip to New Hampshire. But Giselda knew that Adriana didn’t even like fishing. Giselda’s mother had finished reading the Harry Potter series for the fifth time. Her São Paulo high school classmate, Luiz, posted something new against Bolsonaro.

     “Would you like a coffee?” asked Lisa, Jimmy’s mother, who Giselda had responded to on a local Nannies/Babysitters community page seeking childcare. 
     “No thank you.”
     “Good, because I’d have to charge you for it.”
     Lisa laughed and stood over Giselda, watching her look into her phone.

     “How long are his naps, usually?”
     “What?” asked Lisa, unaccustomed to ESL speakers.
     “Jimmy’s naps, are they usually for one hour? Two hours?”
     “Oh, I don’t know. They could be anywhere from 15 minutes to three hours.”
     “Wow, quite a range!”
     Lisa nodded and walked away. 

     Giselda fished out a hair tie from her purse and tied her long, silky black hair into a ponytail. She looked to her phone and saw Rodrigo’s number pop up. They had broken up two months ago, but he kept calling her to “check on her health.” It was around the time that she had Covid when she stopped taking his calls. She had been symptomless for over a month and a half but the only foods she could taste were Guaraná and her roommate’s barbeque beef.
     Giselda texted, “I’m fine. Stop calling me all the time. Ok?”
     A few minutes later, just as she heard fussing coming from Jimmy’s upstairs bedroom, Rodrigo texted back, “Ok. But I care about you. If the feeling isn’t mutual then I’ll just go back to São Paulo.”

     “No, stay. Not because of me though. I don’t think we’ll ever get back together. But the money you make at your fancy job, it doesn’t make sense to leave now. Your family needs that.”
Rodrigo was a software engineer at a Boston financial firm. Although he didn’t make as much as his American colleagues, he was fairly content with his salary.

     Giselda felt a tap on her shoulder.
     “Umm, excuse me. Did you hear Jimmy?”
     Lisa looked down at Giselda with small, squinting blue eyes. Her dirty blonde hair was parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears. When she bent over and tapped Giselda, the right side of her hair fell across half of her face.
     “Yes, but it just sounded like a little fussing. Do you want me to go and get him?”
      Lisa stood upright and leaned towards the staircase with a tilted head.

     “He quieted down. Never mind.”
     Lisa went back to the kitchen and began chopping vegetables. She turned on the radio to her favorite soft rock station.
     “Just as an fyi, I don’t pay for the time when he’s napping.”
     “Are you serious?”
     “It wouldn’t be fair to us. I can’t pay you to just sit there. We aren’t loaded.”
     “It doesn’t matter if you’re loaded or not. This is my time that you have to pay for.”
     “It’s your time to go on Twitter or text your boyfriend. I won’t pay for that.”

     Lisa opened the freezer and took out a plastic bag with several pizza crusts from weeks ago. She placed them into the microwave to defrost, then put them in the toaster until they got warm and crispy and started chewing on them while chopping celery.
     Giselda remained seated in the family room and stared at the Persian rug. It had multiple gilded boarders, each one smaller than the others. In the center, there was a detailed depiction of a king seated on a throne. A woman wearing a wimple clasped his leg with both hands.

     “I like that we can still talk,” texted Rodrigo.
     Giselda started to text back when her phone was snatched away. Lisa stood over Giselda wagging it in her face. 
     “Hey, we provide free internet service for you here and we aren’t a public library. So, drop the sour face, k?”
     Giselda gritted her teeth as Lisa handed her phone back. She looked back to the picture of the king and woman. The king had one of his hands on the woman’s head, as though he was petting a dog.
     Giselda clutched the phone, put her arm back and hurled it at Lisa as she walked away.

     “Ouch, fuck!” said Lisa, holding the back of her head where the phone had hit. She pointed towards the door and said, “Get the hell out of my house!”
     Giselda walked slowly towards Lisa and picked up her phone from the off-white linoleum kitchen floor.
     She looked into Lisa’s eyes and said, “Gladly, you miserable woman.”

As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry and academic essays. In 2020, his poetry book Those Who Hold Up the Earth was published by Kelsay Books and received impressive reviews by Kirkus Review, the Bangladeshi New Age and two local Boston-area newspapers. His writing can be found in Middle East Monitor, Znet, 34^th Parallel, Pif Magazine, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both) and The Opiate.

. . . urger (b)

roadside peaches
bro + ken androids




spock’s legendary green

ape
far-flung




the sound of the tree

machine box
momentary ember

one sparrow




barthroom

tart frog famished
rose hat head

santa fe
nm




2 eyes made

co    rn
co    b

p     i
p     e



-------------



bio/graf

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net. Visit http://MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at http://JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.

Panning Out



the ontological panacea

galloping airbrakes their launching

moles against angry vibrations



     inveighs awful reverb to

     orange scrape dentures

     and beefburger eyeballs



 the reveries of memoriam putting

 darkening the screwdriver period



                     harkening sonic calcification



         negative zoom: sternum 

         curls tight in tumid sector breath



the cornered moonbeam’s communique



                     latent in seawater

                     softened the homecoming eardrum



          while

                   victors 

                               bubbled



                         driveway claimants



                  stepped where clichéd glitter

                  stoked thoughtful commotion

                  drenched by deuce dropping



     narrowed diaper compartment fairgrounds





Day Turning Dark for the Night


daylight drifting

intones the scented patois

its daydream stolen



     the mixture

     a bartered abandon 



         disposed the grim fret

         holiday eponym aggression



               the firestorm boiled 

               at empty eyebrows



 to rapture in firecracker roadhouses 





                     (     )





a subterranean temptation

glinting retorts umder caliper vessels



      nominal venom prefixes

      nuance eyebrow tactics



repentance blueprint blown last

off the walks, a despair tankard

covered in a thermostat virginal



           cowered before posse moonlight





                (     )





numbered breakthroughs 

catapult the thought, not the few

     the insight rushing



          sycophantic mezzanine colors



                   docket tension

                   wayside caring



the chance phonemes neon remedial leave





The Loyal Backing Away


spectral allegiance

sampling

               the legendary obscure



     a rugby phantom

     gone missing in the rain



              a dalliance 

              dripping slippery breath

              over wet tentacles



periphery bursting a drunken glow



    no motto left

    to have or habitate

                       over

                              each



nomenclature cufflink suicide undecided



          beyond the reach

          of any tonic’s clef





                   (     )





at root

a sonic declamation

amply 

         scuttled



the celebrity rumor gloss thickened 



          its equivocal moss 

          festering essential time legions





              where lingering denotes

              chronic enervation in keeping



                             up with



                                         a rumored sample

                                         under a hiding sun 



                                                   a traitor shadowed




Under the Weathered



the rain needs certificates 

abducting a marginal soufflé

process merchants acquired 

a projective conditioner view

that shuttered trough tests

to pace their slow sharking

over clustered frustration 

their regions remembered

decorations bare for the rite

fossil taxes renewed raking

over the scrotal oration cloud 

a weary gabble once it left

phylum rafters a cartilage city

warring below sweatshirt fringe

benefactors plaster the known 

parameters vomit members

shopping becomes undone

for the wetter energy barking

commotion to terminal daylight

a tractor-lined euphoria danger 

factored when foundations air

footed barbarity notwithstanding

clamor swim coincidence taunts

lunging turned danger a force 

as voltage pits looted their colors

from omelets deleted as savage

the wary pain of practical turmeric

their savage daylight left unfilled

a mudslide flavored the movie