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54
2014 Quiet Lightning
artwork Maga Rincon
magarinconart.tumblr.com
Dating a Somnambulist by Kate Folk first published in Hobart
In Real Life by Kara Vernor first published in Revolver
book design by j. brandon loberg
set in Absara
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CONTENTS
curated by
Lapo Guzzini, Emma Smith & Evan Karp
featured artist Maga Rincon
SIAMAK VOSSOUGHI The Honest Con 1
KELLY EGAN Etymology: To Write 9
KATE FOLK Dating a Somnambulist 11
KARA VERNOR In Real Life 15
IVAN HERNANDEZ To Destroy All Worlds 19
KELLY EGAN Cuts and Cul de Sacs 25
DAVE GREEN A Cutting Board 27
JILL TYDOR Mixed Tape 33
KELLY EGAN These Things That Thought
They Could Be Poems 37
ASHLEY WARREN Painbirds 41
Q
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l a g u n i t a s . c o m
QUIET LIGHTNING
A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet
Lightning is to foster a community based on literary
expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL
produces a monthly, submission-based reading series on
the first Monday of every month, of which these books
(sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.
Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the board of QL is
currently:
Evan Karp founder + president
Chris Cole managing director
Josey Lee public relations
Meghan Thornton treasurer
Kristen Kramer chair
Sarah Ciston director of books
Katie Wheeler-Dubin director of films
Kelsey Schimmelman acting secretary
Sidney Stretz and Laura Cern Melo
art directors
Lisa Miller, Rose Linke, and RJ Ingram
outreach directors
Sarah Maria Griffin and Ceri Bevan
directors of special operations
If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in
helpingon any levelplease send us a line:
evan@qui etl i ghtni ng. or g
- SET 1 -
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They came out of the movie, and Pete was quiet. He
had only just met the girl, but he felt comfortable
being quiet around her.
What is it? Laura said.
Theres something that worries me, Pete said. I like
these con men movies a lot.
It was a very good movie, she said.
Yes. But I mean more than it being good. I mean it
seems like the only kind of movie worth watching.
She laughed. You seem like an honest person, she
said.
I am, Pete said. I thought I was. But if youre going
to go to a movie, you should dream, right? And if
youre going to dream, you should dream of how
youd like to move through the world. Alert. Id like
to move through the world in a way that is alert.
Do you have to be a con man to do that?
2
Well, no. In the movies you do. But I dont think I
can do it by staying here in Sandusky and becoming a
teacher and all of that.
He had just told her that it was over, that something
that had just started was over. She knew that a young
man talking about how he wanted to move through
the world was a serious thing. But when she felt her
heart, it was not sad.
Do you ever feel that way? Pete said.
I feel pretty alert here in Sandusky as it is. I dont
think I have to leave to feel alert.
I guess I mean every little thing. Every little thing
from the moment you wake up to the moment you go
to sleep. Id like to think about every little thing and
its effects the way those guys did it in the movie.
Even they didnt do itallthe time. They didnt do it
when it was just the two of them in a room.
Maybe. Maybe they were conning each other.
Now youre overthinking it.
Okay. Im overthinkng it. But Id like to see what
itsliketo do it all the time. Except I dont want to
con anybody. I dont want to lie to anybody.
SI AMAK VOSSOUGHI 3
An honest con man.
Yes. Do you think there are any openings?
I havent seen any. I havent seen any here. Maybe in
other places.
Maybe.
Maybe New York. Youre going to go there at the end
of the summer, arent you?
Im signed up to start the teacher certification
program here.
I know. But youre not going to do it. You cant con
anybody doing that.
Id like to not feel like conning anybody. Its
frightening when I watch those movies.
It is?
Yes. I didnt know I wanted to be a con man, even an
honest kind, until I watched them.
The girl did not know what to make of the young
man. He was more sure of his feelings than anyone
she had ever known and he hesitated about them
more than anyone she had ever known too.
4
Would you have rather I didnt ask you to the movie?
Pete said.
No, Laura said. Im glad you asked me to see it.
I didnt want to lie about anything. But I also wanted
to see the movie with you.
Im glad.
What Im hoping, he said, is that its not a con if
you let other people in on it.
But its not a con then, is it?
I dont know. I feel pretty alert when I am with you. I
feel like I am conning something, even if its not you.
Thank you.
Youre welcome.
Youd make a terrible con man, the girl said.
He smiled. Thank you. He knew that she was
talking to the part of him that wanted to be a terrible
con man.
Do you hate it here? she said.
No, I dont hate it. I feel sorry for it. But sometimes
SI AMAK VOSSOUGHI 5
that feels worse, because I dont know why I feel
sorry for it.
Do you think youll find out in New York?
I dont know. I wont feel sorry for New York. Thats
a good start. Its good to not feel sorry for the place
where you live.
Why?
So that you can walk down its streets and not be
doing anything else when youre doing that. You can
wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night.
I can do both, the girl said. I can walk down the
streets hereandfeel sorry for the town.
You can?
Yes.
The young man didnt know what to say. She was
telling him that it didnt have to be over. That he
could stay here and become a teacher and if he did,
they could walk down the streets together and just be
walking down them, and they could feel sorry for the
town together too.
How do you do it?
6
Feeling sorry for a place is part of living there.
The young man didnt think he could ever feel sorry
for New York.
I know you have to go, the girl said. You have to
go and throw yourself into a situation and see what
happens.
Yes, he said. I do.
But the kind of conning youre talking about, you can
do it anywhere.
I can?
Yes. There are all kinds of people who are doing it
without knowing it. But what youre doing, youre
being honest about it.
What is the con?
That when you fall in love, youre not alone any more.
Oh, he said. The serious one.
She smiled. Yes.
I dont know how to let everybody in on that one.
Sometimes its enough to let one person in on it.
SI AMAK VOSSOUGHI 7
They walked three blocks without saying a word.
It isa beautiful town, he said.
Yes, she said. This time of day. This time of day and
this time of year.
You know the place pretty well, dont you?
You have to know something.
Dont you want to see every place in the world?
She shrugged. Some day, she said. Theyll still be
there.
Im sorry, he said. I feel too sorry for this place. I
like walking down the street and feeling only a little
sorry for it with you. But I have to know how it is to
not feel sorry for it at all.
I know.
But I am very glad that we watched a movie with con
men in it together. You saw what I am trying to do.
Only in a nice way.
If theres anyone who can do it, Pete, she said.
Thank you, Pete said. That means a lot.
9
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Dialogue is ten percent of a film, they say. Likewise,
when I say I am writing, I might be scrawling words on
a page but I might also be staring at a bird, sipping
tea, crunching, avoiding the phone, walking slowly in
the morning or late afternoon, or sleeping very lightly
with the window cracked open. In some African
cultures, I have heard, the word for music refers not
only to the playing of instruments, but also to the
dancing that goes with.
And why not? Lets say the etymology of the word
dates back to a cold night in a cave when the sound
of a flame caused a foot to thump and someone to
feel happy, amused, in spite of the terrible silence.
Word encompasses moment. Nouns are sounds,
shape, and color. And verbswell, the word itself
means something like breath in a forgotten language
native to the moment fresh from the womb. Which,
if you knew, you would always get the impres-
sion when I say I am writing that I am reaching for
glimpses of those proto-meanings, those gossamer
cinematographies.
11
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One night your boyfriend sleepwalks to the kitchen
and brings a handful of M&Ms back to bed. You
wake to bleary chocolate splotches on the sheets.
Youre annoyed because theyre your nicest sheets.
Your boyfriend says hell buy a replacement set with
a similarly high thread count. This makes you feel
better. Its kind of cute, after all, that your boyfriend
eats M&Ms in his sleep.
Each morning you wake to a new object. A pinecone.
A snow globe. A plastic lawn goose.
On the fifth night, something soft and warm tickles
your calves. In your fumbling dream-state, you think
its the black cat you had as a child. Her name was
Midnight and she liked to hang out under the covers.
You lift the sheet to pet Midnight, but the furry
mass turns out to be the raccoon youve seen rooting
through bins in the trash atrium. The raccoon bites
your finger, then scurries into the closet.
While you wait in the emergency room for a
tetanus shot, your boyfriend agrees to go to a sleep
clinic.
12
The clinic is blue-walled, piped through with piano
music. The doctor is a small, nervous man with white
hair and wide dewy eyes. He asks your boyfriend
pointed questions about his somnambulism, a fancy
word for doing weird shit in your sleep. He prescribes
your boyfriend drugs to deepen his slumber. Youre
both in good spirits on the drive home. You hope the
drugs will fix everything.
The next morning, the sleep clinic doctor is nestled
in bed between you and your boyfriend. The doctor
is bound and gagged, his moist blue eyes blinking up
at you. Your boyfriend must have sleepwalked to the
car, sleep-driven to the doctors house, and sleep-
kidnapped the doctor. Presumably he first had to
sleep-look-up the doctors address.
Your boyfriend allows you to shackle him to the bed
frame with handcuffs, but he winds up sleep-picking
the lock with an unfolded paper clip like Linda
Hamilton in Terminator 2. On the seventh morning,
you wake to a brand new microwave. From the
receipt taped to its side, you learn that your boyfriend
sleep-drove to the 24-hour Walmart and sleep-chose
the model of microwave that would best suit your
needs. Youre still disturbed, but pleased that you now
have an easy way to heat up leftovers.
On the eighth morning, you wake hugging a famous
urn from the Asian Art Museum. Youve seen
pictures of the urn on the sides of buses. You are
KATE FOLK 13
worried about the criminal implications of a sleep-
museum-burglary and suggest that your boyfriend
sleep at his own tiny, windowless apartment until
his somnambulism settles down. Your boyfriend
admits that he started renting it out on Airbnb, since
hes always at your place anyway. A middle-aged
German couple is presently staying there. Additional
European couples have booked the apartment
through July.
On the ninth morning, the bed appears empty. You
and your boyfriend celebrate by heating frozen
mini quiches in the new microwave. But when you
make the bed you discover, tangled in the sheets, a
highly venomous box jellyfish native to the tropical
Indo-Pacific. Your boyfriend puts on yellow rubber
gloves, removes the dead jellyfish and feeds it into the
garbage disposal.
On the tenth morning you wake to frantic nudges
from your Great Aunt Renetta. You havent seen her
in fifteen years. She is disoriented and upset. You take
her to dim sum, show her your city, then buy her a
plane ticket back to Pennsylvania.
Your boyfriend finally remembers to pick up his
sleep prescription at Walgreens, but the drugs only
make his nightly acquisitions more bizarre. An
airplane flight recorder, battered and corroded by
seawater. The slashed silver top worn by model Gisele
Bndchen in Alexander McQueens groundbreaking
14
Spring 1998 fashion show. Three passports of
Americans born on August 18, 1973.
On the fourteenth morning, you wake to a wormhole
squirming at the center of your mattress. Lord knows
where your boyfriend sleep-acquired a hypothetical
feature of space time, but there it is, a roiling purplish
vortex the approximate diameter of a basketball. You
climb out of bed, careful not to touch the wormholes
iridescent rim.
You and your boyfriend spend the rest of the day
sealing the bed and its wormhole in a wooden box.
While you build the box, you drop tools and planks of
wood into the wormhole. You imagine these objects
will pop out in a parallel universe and prove useful
to parallel versions of yourselves. You imagine your
parallel self is like you, but better. She probably bakes
gluten-free pastries that taste just like the real thing.
She probably makes her own dresses and has a killer
record collection.
You consider jumping into the wormhole and
emerging in a universe where your boyfriend doesnt
bring terrifying things to bed in his sleep. But the
parallel boyfriend might have some other, even more
upsetting defect, such as snoring, so for now you stay
where you are, in a sleeping bag on the floor, waiting
for your boyfriend to sleep-ferry home another object
that will make you shudder at the arcane puzzle of
your own existence.
15
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He was all like, Yeah, I dig this song. It was Tuesday
at The Alibi. He was drinking beer from a can.
I was like, Yeah, this is The Smiths.
He was like, Yeah, totally, you like The Smiths?
And then pretty much we were set for marriage.
For two weeks we texted each other at least every
other day. He texted, I put too much garlic in my
stir fry and Sometimes my roommate is a douche. I
texted, My cat looks cute right now. We were like
big, yawning mouths, the way we were opening up to
each other.
The texting led to follows on Instagram, and not
three days later he suggested we have a coffee at the
same time and place. He even sat at the table next
to mine. A guy named Wyatt stopped by to give
him some weed, and I was like, whoa, hes already
introducing me to his friends. After Wyatt left, we
had a few minutes to ourselves. Mostly he listened
to his headphones while I IM-ed with my sister
about how he was listening to his headphones
16
and I was IM-ing. The romantic part was when
he held out an earbud and said, Want to hear my
band? I put it in my earhole while the other was in
his earhole, and we were sitting there, like, actually
connected. I told him he could move in with me if he
felt like it.
After living together for a few hours we had our first
fight. I wanted to start season three of Mad Men, but
he wanted to watch The Walking Dead. He said, Mad
Men is so slow, and right then I knew how it felt to
be run over by a Fiat. Like it looks like it shouldnt
hurt, but actually it does. Bad. I said, But The
Walking Dead is so loud, and I could tell by the way
he squinted a little that I burned him back. He said
sorry by handing me his bag of Sriracha-flavored Lays
while there were still a few chips left inside.
Its been almost a day since he moved in, but we still
have so much to look forward to, like learning each
others middle names and meeting each others exes.
Mine lives in the back bedroom. I hope it doesnt
cause any drama because that is not what I need right
now. What I need right now is to enjoy the romance.
Soon enough it will be all, How was your day? and
How was your day? and ugh.
I know, Ill play that Smiths song, our song, and
when he hears it hell remember how we met, and
it will all come back to him, how much we have in
common. I might even FaceTime him from the other
KARA VERNOR 17
room and flash my tits. If he wants to see them in real
life, I wont let him. That could lead to sex, and I have
a rule about waiting 48 hours for sex. My friends say
its old-fashioned, but in this fast-paced world full of
guys who like the bands you like and eat the chips
you eat, you need something that helps protect you
from Chlamydia.
Still, I went ahead and started our wedding registry
at Target because its hard not to think about the cool
stuff we could get if we got married. Like that shower
curtain with a pirate ship on it, so funny.
What Im trying to say is, Ive got a good feeling about
this guy. Or at least Ive got a feeling. Or something
that feels like it might be a feeling.
19
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They had erased his universe with a press release,
murdered those hed considered friends and family
with nothing but a headline: Disney Erases the
Expanded Universe from Star Wars Continuity.
Bobby Phelpss initial reaction was to slip into a
catatonic state, his mind and bodys meager attempt
to insulate him from the awareness that hed wasted
two and a half decades of his life following a now
lifeless dimension. He dropped to the floor, the
organic, streaky crust formed on both sides of his
underwear breaking his fall. Later, he would only
regret that instead of taking those first moments to
hit the message boards and rally the fan community,
he had lain sprawled upon the floor in a pool of his
own drool and piss. The piss pool was a better use of
his time.
His compatriots at the comic book store had been no
more uplifting.
Fuckin Lucas, that salt and pepper fuck! Stevie
Riggs yelled, I told you, man, once they took
the license back from Dark Horse, this was
the beginning of the end! Stevie routinely
demonstrated more knowledge of the various
20
legal apparatuses of corporate licensing than he ever
demonstrated knowledge of the human heart.
This is the worst thing thats ever happened to me,
Donald James muttered, shoving his parents divorce
to the number two spot.
Eddie Collins, who claimed to be in a psychic meta-
fictional marriage with the Hapan warrior princess
Jedi Tenel Ka, sat crying over a stack of Justice League
Detroit back issues. They killed her! he sobbed,
Shes dead, and I didnt even get a chance to say an
in continuity goodbye! The stores owner callously
ordered him to shed his tears over a pile of books
nobody cared about, in the independent press section.
They owe us! Bobby yelled, preserving the covenant
between uncaring corporate interests and entitled
fans, Weve supported Lucas for all this time, and we
deserve better!
Well, the upside is that they can start fresh without
decades worth of contradicting storyline bogging
them down, said a woman no one recognized whod
overheard the conversation, After all, for every good
expanded universe story, there were five Darksabers.
They looked her over, spending most of that time
focused on the small, yet perky breasts which were
covered by a homemade Magneto Was Right t-shirt.
Fake! Donald yelled.
I VAN HERNANDEZ 21
Fake geek girl! Stevie added.
Do you even know who General Thrawn is? Bobby
asked, not waiting for an answer before lobbing more
questions at her, What about Dash Rendar? I bet you
cant tell an IG-86 from an IG-88!
MY WIFE IS DEAD! Eddie Collins screamed.
The woman left before a replica of Thors hammer
could be lobbed at her head. When Trekkie Dean,
a nerd so pale that you could see every individual
surface vein in his thin, sickly body, came by to gloat,
the fanboys nearly went to blows.
You Star Wars twats dumped on me so hard for the
original series being shunted to the background for
an alternate timeline, and now whatve you got?
Not even a tribbles worth of shit left in your stupid
canon!
Eddie had to be restrained before he could rip the
plastic Vulcan ears out from under Trekkie Deans
stupid bowlcut. But it all stopped when he entered
the store.
Ken Miller was a creeps creep, the kind of creep
that other creeps looked at and went Man, thats
a creep. He would loudly discuss inter-continuity
slash pairings; how hard a Ninja Turtle would kiss
a Samurai Pizza Cat, if Ultimate Captain America
22
would be a power top for the comparatively mild
bottom of 616-Universe Captain America. Ken would
proudly display his portfolio of drawings, a variety of
Japanese catgirls in salacious poses, the figures often
being sixty percent more cat than is comfortable.
You need to open your eyes, he said in that low,
froggy tone of his, You think the Expanded Universe
has been taken from you, but theyve given it to you!
All you have to do is reach out and take it.
H-how? Eddie Collins asked.
Dont listen to him, Eddie, Stevie said, This guys a
Wormtongue, a pure, extended edition Wormtongue!
Silence, fool! Ken shouted, Its all there for you in
the world of fanfiction, Eddie. Theres no more novels
to get in your way, no more wookies dying for the
sins of others. You and Tenel Ka can be together,
writhing in infinite pleasure upon the golden fields
of Mandalor! Join me, and we can rule the expanded
universe as fanfiction author, and guy who sits in his
lap!
Eddie looked back at the group, who werent his
friends, but were the only people who shared his
mutual interests. Donald James silently mouthed
Dont do it, but Eddie turned his back on them. He
left the store, climbed into Ken Millers 1998 Toyota
Corolla, the unofficial car of creeps, and they never
I VAN HERNANDEZ 23
saw him again.
Bobby couldnt stand it any longer. He gathered
every bit of Star Wars merchandise in the store, every
graphic novel, every action figure, every bit of plastic
which was supposed to add meaning to an otherwise
meaningless reality, and bought it. It costed him
about two grand, but this was worth the peace of
mind. And besides, because of his mostly sedentary
lifestyle, he would not live long enough to worry
about nor pay off his credit card debt.
They piled it onto parking lot asphalt in front of the
store. Stevie flipped alive his Fuck Communism
lighter, put it to the edge of a Timothy Zahn book,
and stepped back as the mountain of garbage took
flame. They were free, the yolk of the universe they
once cared for finally removed from their pimply
backs. It was worth inhaling the fumes from all that
burning plastic.
As the bonfire grew, a man in a Lamborghini passed.
He squinted at the activity in front of the store and
scratched at the salt and pepper beard which rested
atop a number of necks. Fuckin nerds, he growled,
and drove to the office where he resumed work on
Howard the Duck 2.
25
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Film editing is deception. Disconnected stepping
stones create an illusion of story, linear time with
interstitial space cut out. Suggested reading
disregarded. To include everything would be the long,
messy way, would be of shifting focal points at best.
Splice, play, pause. Give us a clean minute. Nay, give
a whole strand. A two-hour string theory, fleeting
flipbook sense of one out of many possible worlds. A
collection of taut notes arranged into one quivering
chord.
Cul de sacs, on the other hand, are isolated side
moments of uninvolved people. The camera left on
after the scene. Off the path of stones we go and into
the tangled garden. A brief foray. Reminder of shifting
focal points, endless foils. But mostly of the endless
concurrence that we moderns fixate so upon, what
with our cloistered homes, our repeating decimal point
suburbs.
27
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The man leasing her the penthouse is already upstairs
when she arrives. The woman is here to pick up her
keys and sign the lease and after today the place will
be hers. She enters the lobby of the tall glass building,
approaches the front desk and calls the doorman by his
name, but he stops her before the row of elevators and
has her wait while he calls up to the mans apartment.
The diligence doesnt bother her. Soon the doorman
will know her name and it will be her visitors
facing the same level of scrutiny. She almost cant
believe it. The woman has wanted to move into
this neighborhood for years and it was never even
close to possible but she received another raise and
promotion at work: Vice President at a Fortune 500
company. Deep down she still thinks she might run
for office one day, after she convinces her boss that
she is going to be the next COO. After she is able to
start a family and save enough for a campaign, all
of which she can start, just as soon as she gets this
apartment.
In the empty elevator she catches a glimpse of
herself in the polished chrome doors and cuts
a brief smile short when she realizes security is
28
probably watching her and that soon they will be
forming an impression of her. It is overkill, she knows,
as she pulls out her phone to check her companys
email, but she has cultivated an image of herself for
years and no chance is worth a crack in the faade.
It is how she is here. Playacting.
The penthouse door is open when the woman arrives
and the man calls her when he hears her come in.
The man is out of sight and the woman knows, even
now, that she must be careful. She realizes that even
though she is here to sign the lease, nothing is final
until her name is on paper. The woman has waxed her
legs, is how serious it is. She knows that the man likes
to feel as though he is in power and so though he will
be wearing shoes, she takes her heels off at the door.
As she steps down onto the floor she pulls her hair
over her ear and straightens her back. She adjusts
one black bra strap until it is just visible at the wide
neckline of her blouse. She smoothes her skirt.
In the kitchen, the man holds a chefs knife. It rocks
through tomatoes on a wooden board. He tells her he
is making them sandwiches. She has already eaten but
will eat one anyway. The woman holds her questions
until he asks for them. He cuts fast and with the
blade close to his fingers, his back to her, and she
tries not let her nervousness show. The lease is on the
counter, to his right, but she does not approach. He
catches her eyes in the glass of the cupboard and asks
DAVI D WESLEY GREEN 29
how her recent business trip was while he cuts. Not
looking down at his hands, she answers calmly. The
knife scrapes tomato juice to the side of the board;
he examines a red onion and places it in the center.
Smiles back at her.
The man is renting her the apartment because he has
bought a new, more extravagant place in a slightly
trendier part of the city. The woman hasnt asked
him why he is renting his place and cant imagine
why he would ever want to move out, but in a few
years she will start to hear the name of the mans new
neighborhood whispered around her firms offices.
The man likes the way the woman looks. He turns
around and lets his gaze feel its way across her body,
from her bare, pale feet to the Kelly green skirt high
across her waist to just the suggestion of her breasts
under her loose blouse and stopping at the black bra
strap just peeking out over her collarbone before
letting his eyes slip down to her smooth legs again.
The woman breathes carefully and does not look
away. She smiles at him. She is used to being looked
at or touched. A thick skin is necessary if youre ever
going to rise. The man is holding a knife, but he is not
thinking about what it means to do so.
The man has worked hard his whole life and he
thinks this makes him special. He used to be the CEO
of a technology company, he used to be a lawyer, he
used to be a congressional representative, and some
30
day the woman might be any of those things, but he
will have moved on to something new by then. He
smiles at this.
The man asks her another question to break the
silence. Her mouth moves as he examines the clear
line of her jaw where it meets her ear. The woman
gets the feeling he isnt listening to her but finishes
her thought anyway and looks neither at him nor
away. She is imagining the view of the park out the
corner apartments floor-to-ceiling windows. He is
imagining her up against a wall. He likes the way she
looks. Her full, pink lips are moving and briefly, in
between sentences, her tongue darts out to wet them.
The man is waiting for it to happen again.
The man is not a rapist. He does not have to be. He
can exercise his power in other, more subtle, ways and
besides, the man thinks, she will be a good tenant. He
imagines her cooking food on his stove, entertaining
guests in his dining room, bathing in his shower, and
the man likes the idea of it. It seems somehow quaint,
like a child in a playhouse. He is getting hard.
The man could put cameras in the apartment, if he
wanted to. There is still time for him to make an
excuse like he needs to spray for insects. But the
man does not need to do this. The man has paid two
women to have sex in front of him, on his bed, and he
has paid someone else to wash the sheets afterward.
The man has, but only once, paid two truck drivers to
DAVI D WESLEY GREEN 31
participate in a stabbing. One paid to stab, the other
paid more to be stabbed, and neither paid very much.
The man suspects, deep down, that other people are
not really people in exactly the same way that he is a
person.
The man is still looking at her, but her voice has
trailed off without her realizing it. His teeth hold
his bottom lip tight between them. The man takes
a couple absent steps toward her, then looks back
at the wooden cutting board and then down at the
hardwood floor and smirks at some private thought.
The woman assures herself that the world is a fair
place and reminds herself that she will do what she
has to do for this apartment. Later tonight, she thinks,
she will take care of a couple pressing problems at
the firm, and then she thinks about how once she has
this place she can finally invest some more time in
starting a family like shes wanted to for so long.
The man does not need to stab her. Her hand, resting
on a hip, trembles visibly. His hand steadies it. The
man, if he wanted to, could give her the knife and
ask her to stab herself and she would. The woman
looks up at him and slyly smiles. She is trying to turn
things around. Somehow she must suspect what he is
thinking, in some vague intuitive way. The knife sits
in his left hand and he lifts it just slightly, offering
it to her. He wants her to stab herself, she thinks as
she looks up in his blank eyes. She is even thinking of
doing it.
32
She thinks about taking it from him, but she is
not sure what she would do then. She imagines
brandishing it at him and leaving, running back to her
old apartment. She imagines sliding her skirt up and
driving the knife into her thigh, hoping that would
be enough. She even imagines ripping it across the
mans throat, the spray: halting red objections issuing
from his neck. But the woman cannot think of
anything outside of these options. It seems to her like
there should be something else, some fourth option,
but she cannot think of it, or it is too late.
She puts her hand over his and then slips the knife
into her hand. This is not what she thought the world
was like, that someone could think of someone in
this way. She is grasping for a fourth option, some
way to have a family and keep her job and not end
up in jail or back in her old, ugly duplex. Some action
that could stop this from ever happening to anyone,
somehow. Maybe something she could have done
earlier, she decides, but it is too late now.
I know what you are, she says. And it is true, now.
The man smiles down at her in a way that could be
confused for kind. She smiles back and breathes in,
tightens her grip on the now shaking knife. Slides up
her skirt. She is imagining the view of the park below.
33
J
I
L
L
T Y D
O
R
M
IXED TAP
E
Track 1: Ray of Light
When they were young, they strung up two soup
cans joined with string like they did in the movies.
And she would whisper secrets into her end. And
he would make up stories that grew in volume and
ridicule. But all he ever heard was the soft rumble of
her voice like rain on the rooftop. And all she ever
could decipher was something about a blue goose
named Dan. Later, they would purchase two flash-
lights and begin a nightly correspondence with ru-
dimentary Morse code. She would nestle in bed and
watch his messages beamed across her ceiling like
falling stars shooting through the blackest parts of
space. And he would wait by his window, letting her
clicks write words made of light across his naked face.
Track 2: The Space Between
When they grew older, he would meet her in the park
at the end of the block. And under a watery moon
they would make plans for the future. They would go
to the school with ivy that covered brick buildings
like a downy newborn. And study romantic things
like philosophy and art history. She would let her
34
hair grow long and loose, that it would envelop her
like a curtain while she read, a little private sanctuary
of words and silence. He would write papers on an
old typewriter found at a library rummage sale for
five dollars, meting out each letter with a heavy hand,
letting the rhythm of metallic key strokes fill the
space between them.
Track 3: Going to the Chapel
When he asked her to marry him, she picked up his
hand and held it tight to her chest, letting it grow
warm against her pink cotton blouse. She would find
a dress made of baby blue lace, he a brown suit. And
as they walked up the steps of the courthouse, he
could hear her heels clicking against stone, echoing
with each step. They would make promises of fidelity,
longevity, honesty and passion. She would look into
his eyes and remember the boy, the beacon of light.
He would slip the ring on to her little finger thinking
of the girl whispering to him in the dark.
Track 4: Life in Technicolor
When she felt the first kick, she decided to take up
knitting. She would spend hours under the glow of
the yellow lamp winding strands of indigo, vermil-
lion and coral-colored yarn back and forth against
the tinny needles. He would spend hours in the
garage constructing boxes filled with powdery sand
or tiny bicycles balanced precariously on small,
uneven rubber wheels. At dinner, they would conjure
J I LL TYDOR 35
pithy, poetic names from the peas and potatoes, and
share slight smiles at the thought of how much their
world would change.
Track 5: Clean Getaway
When baby girl was four, they took a trip to the
Grand Canyon and watched the great cliffs leach all
the color from the sun. They would camp out under
the stars, telling stories with no distinct beginning
or end. She would run her hands through baby girls
blonde hair, leaving a trail of curls upon the red
woolen blanket. He would carve pieces of wood
found by the fire into bears and horses and fish
suspended in motion. And in the hot summer sun,
they would strip off all their clothes and wade into
the cool, dark blue lake, sending ripples of excitement
and wonder further down stream.
Track 6: Run Devil Run
When he hit her for the first time, she took two steps
backward until her spine felt flush against the wall.
He would reach for her hand in apology. She would
try to forget everything in the morning. A purple
bruise would blossom across her right cheek like the
cherry trees in spring, which she tried to hide with
the translucent face powder she kept for special
occasions. He would bring a bouquet of budded
tulips home in the evening, but the flowers remained
tightly bound until they eventually died two weeks
later. She slowly withdrew into herself until they
36
would navigate around each other like ships on a
black sea looking for light, afraid of jagged rocks.
Track 7: Into the Mystic
When things didnt change, she finally left him,
swaddling baby girl tight against her chest and
dragging a battered green suitcase across the gravel
driveway behind her. He would stand in the doorway
of their first home promising to change, begging for
another chance. She would sit behind the steering
wheel of her car for a moment, trying to suppress the
tears, before maneuvering into drive and heading
west, putting miles and miles between them until it
was time to rest. She would wake before dawn and sit
on the hood of her car in the darkness and wait for
the sun, a sign that things would be different.
Track 8: Rhythm of the Saints
When baby girl was ten, she asked about love. Her
mother took a deep sigh, looked at her small, pale face
and smiled a little. She then told the story of a blue
goose named Dan. And the boy across the street. The
beacon of light. She talked about the promises and the
hopes and the plans they had made for the future. And
the adventures they had shared. And the colors they
had seen. And the way they had laughed, but also how
much she had cried. And how the boy and the girl in
the window were gone. But that the love was real and
true.
37
K
E
L
L
Y E
G
A
N
T
H
E
S
E

T
H
IN
GS THAT TH
O
U
G
H
T
T
H
E
Y

C
O
ULD BE
P
O
E
M
S
There are triggers for poems and then there are the
poems themselves. In my experience, if a trigger has
any chance of being involved with the writing of a
poem, the two must occur nearly simultaneously.
if a whale were to blink at you
the holy disorder of life with a toddler
the evolutionary ancientness of alligators and why
this makes them scary
You cant put a trigger in a jar and save it for later.
Only very occasionally can you manage to let it sit for
an amount of time, hovering in the ether. And then
you cant look at it or think about it too hard. If you
do it will die. If it has any chance, it must stay safely
in the corner of your eye, like a spirit.
the timelessness of love vs. the immediacy of wanting
what Google thinks youre looking for
38
the horror of finding something foreign growing on
your body
For the most part, all triggers are fallen leaves dead
on the scene. The very idea of having an idea for a
poem is ludicrous. Poems do not emerge from plans
but from presence.
bus rides in Ecuador and the patience of the Ecuado-
rian people
pipelines
the helplessness of animals without arms
Hopelessly I am compelled to write these triggers
down, as though Ill be getting to them soon. They sit
in my notebooks like jars on shelves. These stillborns.
These formaldehyde curiosities.
stage directions
instructions for a spell or ritual
emergency
Maybe some day or in some other hands their death
will wear off and theyll turn into prompts. I hope
they disguise themselves and come to me again, like
ghosts that only show up in photographs.
KELLY EGAN 39
the word catholic, lowercased
the exquisitely threadbare quality of love
remoras
41
A
S
H
L
E
Y W
A
R
R
E
N
P
A
INBIRD
S
Its family hour with a series finale,
the stew still warm in our bellies, bodies
slumped.
I watch the clock, anxious
for this invasion to end.
But her meds have worn off
and her day is shutting down.
With disgusted eyes, I look
at her the way a child
might observe a burn victim
for the first time
grimacing and confused.
Her head is back, mouth gaping, shrunken
like a skeleton propped up
after lifetimes of lying in
the dirt.
I know shes still in there.
If I touched her, the flesh
would be soft.
And yet all I see
is a corpse before
theyve picked out the pretty dress.
42
Only 64 years and yet how
could she possibly
look older than this?
If she breathes in ten years,
what will she be then?
A wounded bird?
With two broken wings,
her words merely chirps,
her body weak and molting?
If she breathes in fifteen years,
what then?
An earthworm without a voice,
headless and blind,
her route a jerking wind,
her days merely a dark
tunnel in the dirt?
God save us if she breathes
in twenty years.
What then?
A puddle in the street
that survives so long
as the sun never shines?
But even still, Id sit with her
in those final days, the repulsion
now convulsions.
Id lap up what little there is left
and brush away the fallen leaves
until the ice crawls in.
Until everything is still.
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