a good man, a sorry man, a bad man

by Ashton Politanoff

My wife was still at work. My son didn’t want to go to the park, but I needed to get outside. He had a fever, so I gave him a glass full of ice cubes and told him to suck on them during the drive. His school wouldn’t take him back until the fever was gone. I drove in a direction until we found a park. The park was one we hadn’t been to. The grass around the playground was tall, uncut, and I followed him down the concrete path. The sky was orange, with only a few clouds as the sun set in the distance. A girl was on the swings. She was self-sufficient, tucking her legs behind her and straightening them forward, building momentum. My son was not self-sufficient. He still needed me to push him. The swing the girl was on was silent on the way up, but it sounded like a bird’s chirp on the way down. It was rusty. The girl was alone. My son climbed some steps leading to a red slide, and I took a seat on a wooden bench with chipped green paint. Directly across from me, behind the playground, were two tennis courts. They looked slick and worn from use, and the nets sagged down the middle. On one side of the nearest court was a young man, a towhead, my guess would be eighteen, and on the other side was an older man, presumably his father. The young man took his racket back for a forehand with a quick shoulder turn, all the time in the world, his feet making tiny little squeaks as he moved. He sent the yellow ball in a clean arc deep to the other side of the court. The father with the sport sunglasses was competent. The rally continued. The constant percussion of the ball being struck with trained perfection by the young man sent a vibration through me. I could feel it inside of me. I found myself walking toward the fence, the sound of the ball, the flick of the wrist, feet stepping forward like daggers, then tumbling back like leaves, the ball hailing and then collapsing missile-like onto the hard court. Then, I heard a cry behind me. It was my son.


I put a Band-Aid on his knee in the bathroom and then turned on the TV. In the kitchen, I peeled the skin of a pear with a potato peeler. Then, I sliced it with a large knife.

I want a peach, he said when I handed him the small rectangular Tupperware holding the fruit.

We don’t have any peaches in this house, I said, walking away.

Where are you going, Dad?

In the garage.

Why?

I’m looking for something.

But I’m scared, he said to me.

Be brave, I said. I held out his blue eiderdown, the one he would disappear under.

In the garage, there wasn’t a kept car. There was a dining table with broken legs, toys my son had outgrown, electronics that no longer worked. I found my old Slazenger somewhere in the back. The overgrip was denim blue, faded and feathered. It felt soft and innocent in my hands. I heard my son calling me. I squeezed it hard. I started swinging, cutting the still air in the garage—whoosh! Forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. My son. I kept swinging.


When I was ten, I had trouble sleeping the night before a tournament. When I closed my eyes, I saw it. It had girth to it, and my nose would be right up against its shiny underside. I could see the scales. It was taller than me, hovering above me, standing upright, and I would watch something swallowed, something oversized, sink its way down its belly. One time I saw a hand, another time a head—the mold of a face frozen in a silent scream—being consumed, making its descent in the body of this thing.

I didn’t want to close my eyes.

I haven’t seen the snake for a while.


This way, I said, guiding with a flat hand. I could feel his bony shoulder blade under his T-shirt. I put on his backpack for him at the gate of the school. Have a great day.

My son is blond, blue-eyed, fair skinned. I have brown hair, light brown eyes, and I could be described as swarthy. My wife, she is blonde and green-eyed, and although she tans easily, she looks Irish. Sometimes people ask me if my son is my son when I’m with him alone. When I tell them yes, they ask me again as if I’ve misunderstood the question. Don’t they see his chin? my wife says to me. He has your chin, she tells me.

I got back in the car. I had an appointment.


At the entrance of the club, the fountain spat limply. Inside, behind the front desk sat a young woman with a waterfall of shiny black hair. She was wearing a forest-green crewneck sweatshirt with Wind & Sea Tennis Club printed on it.

Good morning, she said. How can I help you?

There were columns on either side of the desk, and a large bowl of flowers behind her. The flowers were stiff, fake. As soon as the name Ken left my lips, a man appeared from behind one of the columns as if he was waiting for me. He was tall and thin and red from the sun and he had thinning brown hair. I noticed the white door of the side office next to the front desk. The door blended in with the wall, and even the knob was painted white, a detail I found tacky. They were trying to hide this office. He shook my hand firmly, and had I had the opportunity, I would have washed it due to the sweat of his grip. He had his other arm in a sling. I asked him what happened. Elbow surgery, he said. Had he had a black eye, I would have been suspicious of this answer.


Ken led the way. We weaved around the twenty-two courts and the groomed grounds. There was a gym, a lap pool, a kiddie pool. There was a bar and lounge, locker rooms with sauna and steam. There was the pro shop where rackets were strung. There was a balcony with seating that overlooked the club, a gazebo for weddings. In fact, not much had changed.

When’s the last time you played tennis? he asked by the jacuzzi. The water had a green hue to it.

Fourteen years, I said.


Back in his office, Ken took a bite of his Long John donut, wrote some numbers on a legal pad, and then ripped out the sheet. The yellow custard inside the Long John oozed out onto a white napkin. I folded the piece of paper into my pocket and told him I’d let him know.

On the way out, I had to use the bathroom, and the urinals were wall-installed at a rather high height, as if made for giants. They made me feel like a small man.


For a time, the club was under a shroud. There were some incidences of disappearances, and the first involved a love triangle. A former tennis star, Larry Schiffer, was married to a Mrs. Schiffer. They were separated, but they both played tennis at the club. Larry more often than not could be found upstairs at the bar while his wife played tennis with their family doctor, a bachelor. Mrs. Schiffer wanted a divorce, but Larry did not. He did not want a legal separation—only that they eventually live apart. One night, after playing in a mixer together, Mrs. Schiffer and the good doctor went to his medical office to x-ray her ankle—she had given it an accidental twist on the court just prior. After careful examination, he wrapped it for her in a support wrap—the ankle was fine—and they proceeded to the gated community he lived in and played more tennis under the lights, followed by cocktails at the pool. She didn’t leave his place until 1 a.m. The next day, the good doctor didn’t hear from her and he grew concerned, so he drove to her home, the one she still shared with Larry. When he arrived, her car was parked in the driveway. Inside the house she was found painting her toenails near the freestanding tub. That’s why she couldn’t hear the phone. She had been in there for a while. Where’s Larry? There was no sign of Larry. A week later, Larry’s car was found abandoned at the edge of a hiking trail, and a murder inquiry was opened. A shallow grave was found at the Schiffer home only to reveal the bones of a dead dog. There was no further evidence and the case remains unsolved.


The second incident involved a set of twins and the club stringer. The stringer was obsessed with natural gut. One day, the twins had observed the negligent disposal of chemical waste when the club was under different management. There were drums of toxic chemicals being poured out into the gutter of the parking lot. The twins weren’t the only ones to make this discovery. The club stringer also discovered these drums before maintenance had disposed of all of them. A few members had disappeared—a teacher, a minister who liked to swim early in the mornings, and the owner of several local knitting mills. The chemicals were lethal, and this stringer smuggled a couple drums and used them for the concealment of murder. He lured the victims to his home. He was convinced that natural gut coming from a human rather than an animal would have optimal performance as a string bed in a racket. It is said that he strung one of Ivan Lendl’s rackets, the one he won Wimbledon with, with this very set of strings. The stringer disposed of the body parts he didn’t need in these lethal chemical tubs, and he was eventually discovered as a murderer. The club naturally tried to cover their tracks and the twins only caught them in the act. Nothing happened to the twins.


When I picked up my son from the after-school program, the light was dying in the west with a sheet of dark clouds encroaching from the east. The field and playground looked doomed in the strange glow. It looked like the end of something. My son’s fingernails were long and caked underneath with dirt. They needed cleaning. They needed cutting. I strapped him into his seat and put the car in reverse.

I really want a toy, Dad, he said.

Dad, he said.

What.

Can we get a toy from Target?

No.

You promised.

I didn’t answer. A few heavy drops of rain splattered against the windshield, thudded against the roof. My son, he began to cry.


There was a parking structure underneath the Target, but I parked outside.

I’m getting wet, Dad, he said outside the car. I made a roof over his forehead with my hand.

Inside, my son led the way. The floors looked like a hospital’s. I followed him to the toy section, and we started in the Lego aisle. He pointed at some things.

Too expensive, I said.

Next was the action figure aisle and then the puzzle and board game aisle. He didn’t point at anything this time. We returned to the Legos. I told him the budget was twenty dollars.

Dad, this Target doesn’t have anything I like. Can we go to another Target?

The other Target is closed.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is, I said.

You’re lying.

They’re remodeling.

I want to go to another Target!

No.

My son, he sat on the ground. He began to whimper, and a store employee, a woman in a Target team shirt appeared.

Can I help you? Is everything okay?

Yes, we’re fine, I said. Thank you—but the woman, she remained. She took a few lingering steps, looking at me, looking at my son, looking at me again.

I’ll pretend you’re not my father again, my son whispered.

Don’t you dare.

Then get me that! he said pointing at a Lego box, a shipwreck and island set that cost $79.99.

I shook my head.

I want my mom and dad!

Stop it right now.

I glanced down the aisle and the woman was still there. I had no choice but to pick him up.

Put me down! You’re not my real dad! I draped him over my shoulder and headed for the exit. The employee, she was on her walkie-talkie. She said something I couldn’t make out as she trailed behind, and there were lines of people in the front with baskets and carts, waiting to check out. The sky was black outside. My son was screaming.

It wasn’t until I made a right onto Artesia that I noticed the cop car behind me. I told my son to calm down. I told him the police were here.

You’re going to jail! he said. The squad car strobed its lights, let out its little tune, and I did as I was commanded. 

The rain was coming down now, and I turned off the windshield wiper. The windshield bled red from the stoplight, from the massage parlor neon, and I lowered my window where I met the eye of a flashlight.

Driver’s license and registration please.

I reached into the glove box and handed over the documents, including a copy of my son’s passport.

I assume you think this is an attempted kidnapping? The officer didn’t respond.

This has happened before, I added. It’s his way of bribing me to get what he wants. My wife and I are working on it.

The officer was blond and blue-eyed. He could have been the father.

I don’t want my dad to go to jail.

The officer studied my license, then me, then my son. A big truck rushed past, and I could feel its draft.


When we got home, all the lights were off, the house empty. From the freezer I removed a package of mac ’n’ cheese. I punctured the plastic cover several times with the tip of a small knife before zapping the whole thing in the microwave.



Ashton Politanoff is the author of You’ll Like it Here, published by Dalkey Archive. He is a frequent contributor to NOON.

ART
Reclaimed – Howard el-Yasin

FICTION
The Magazines – Bipin Aurora
The Emergency – Stephen Cicirelli
City Clothes – James English
Winter – Scott Mashlan
a good man, a sorry man, a bad man – Ashton Politanoff
Continuous Aspect – Julian Robles
Miching Mallecho – Richard Pels

GUEST FOLIO
Writings of Gunnhild Øyehaug
Translations by Kari Dickson
To Write Or Not To Write
Miniature Readings:
– Realism as Magic
– To Whistle with Madam Bovary’s Belt
– A Shy Bird

NONFICTION
The Calm Hiss of Bided Time – Jonathan Perry
Fire Story – Robert Walikis
Rain – Alizabeth Worley
Cok Güzel – Madeline Jones
Syllogisms – Lou Maxwell Taylor

POETRY
Suburban Eclogue – Brian Simoneau
Famous Housedress + Garage Band + Jalopy + The Weight of
Days
– Dorianne Laux
Robert Hayden Reflecting on Those Goldenrods of his Childhood – Deborah H. Doolittle
Banff Trail Station + On ‘The Wrongs of Woman’ – Chelsea Dingman
The Abortion Question + My Jewish Soap Opera – Susan Rich

To Write or Not to Write

Gunnhild Øyehaug

Translation by Kari Dickson

First published in Draumeskrivar (Kolon forlag, 2016)

Victoria can’t decide if she should write or not write to him. His name is Njål, and she met him at an interiors trade show. She was exhibiting furniture, he was a sound technician. They only spoke briefly to each other a couple of times, over the yellow sofa that attracted so many people who couldn’t decide if they were daring enough to make the statement that having a yellow sofa would be, to have it standing there screaming yellow, yellow, yellow in the living room, but both felt something happen, both times. Something happened inside their eyes. If love at first sight exists, this was it, she thinks. She wasn’t able to talk to him on the last evening, at the last party, she said she had to go home, and he said: I’d hoped you’d stay, and she said: Me too, but I can’t. And that was the last time she spoke to him, and now here she is, sitting staring at the email she’s received, which has all the email addresses of all the exhibitors and all the technicians and all the manufacturers in the email field, and she’s found his email address, and she’s found the tunnel out of her present existence, where she’s married and sells furniture and lives in a house, the tunnel she didn’t know she was looking for, she thought she was happy, she thought life was simple and good, that the problem of convincing people to buy a yellow sofa was the biggest problem she had, but now she sees the light at the other end of the tunnel, and it’s Njål. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the Don Juan, Juan Antonio (in the form of Javier Bardem), says of his love for the wild and impossible Maria Elena: “We are meant for each other and not meant for each other. It’s a contradiction. I mean, in order to understand it, you need a poet like my father….”, and that’s how we might understand this sudden tunnel in Victoria’s life, she hasn’t asked for any of it, she’s married to Ottar, he’s a good man, he’s planted a plum tree in the garden, her favourite plums from her childhood so she’ll be reminded of home, so she can smell the plums in autumn and always remember home; she gets up from the computer and goes into the bedroom where her children are asleep, in bunk beds, their bare feet sticking out from under the duvet, she will forever be in this restless state, this state will never leave her, it is who she is, she feels, as she stands there looking at the children, who are hers. She runs back to the computer, she must write, dear Njål, she writes,

I don’t actually know why
I’m writing this to you
and certainly not
why I’m doing it
in the form of a poem
but there was something
about you that made me think
that if I ever were
to write to you
it would be in the form of
a poem,
so there you are.
This is the poem
I thought I would write
if I ever were to write
to you.

She deletes the email. The Dickinson quote is too obvious. She hasn’t written poetry for years now. She suddenly started to question the line breaks, and that was it. No more poems. Two hours have passed. It’s midnight. A deer walks by on the road below, she sees the lonely deer walk down the hill under the streetlights, the clatter of deer hooves on asphalt, its horns turning to the left as its head turns to the left to see a car coming up the hill, it’s her husband, she recognises the car. She hastily writes in prose this time:

Dear Njål,
I have managed not to write to you for six days now, but suddenly my ability not to write has shrunk to zero, frustrating. A deer is walking by my window on the road, as though he were going into town, and my husband is driving up the same road, so I’ll stop writing to you now, after all.

She deletes the email. Downstairs, the front door opens. She writes, furiously fast, as though her language will be lost forever if she doesn’t write something right now:

But dear N,
oh, dearest, dearest N,
how is it possible to meet someone, fall in love, and then never meet again, like a flame tears open the immense darkness for a second only then to let the dark become darker, as dark as all eternity?

She deletes the email, walks down the stairs, feels her nightdress brushing her legs, a cold draft running up the stairs, a blast from the night outside. She hears the car keys being dropped on the chest of drawers, Ottar taking off his shoes, he goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water. She reaches the bottom of the stairs and it’s not Ottar who’s standing there, but Njål, he gulps down the final mouthful of water. He looks at her and smiles, have you not gone to bed yet, no, she says, and tries to hide her surprise, tries to pretend that everything is normal, tries to pretend that this is her life, and that Njål is her husband, not Ottar, no, she says, I wanted to wait, she says and feels a rising panic, where is her husband, where is Ottar, where is her life, for you.


Gunnhild Øyehaug was born in 1975 in Norway, and is an award-winning essayist and fiction writer. She teaches at the Academy of Creative Writing in Vestland, and has an MA in comparative literature from the University of Bergen. Her story collection Knots was published by FSG in 2017 in Kari Dickson’s English translation, followed in 2018 by the novel Wait, Blink, which was adapted into the acclaimed film Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts. In 2022, FSG published her novel Present Tense Machine and in 2023 the story collection Evil Flowers.

Suburban Eclogue

Brian Simoneau

Walk with me down the block. Notice
the rows of maples, perfectly
straight, evenly spaced from the road
and one another, precise lines
running yard to yard, remainder
of careful plans, prosperity’s
spread to what once was forest, once
farm—every golden age remade
over and over, parceled out
and subdivided when footpath
turned bridleway turned turnpike turned
trolley turned traffic. History
sped up with each expanding step
but look: I have found in my house
a spot where, lying on the floor,
I can see no other house, no
poles, no wires stretching away
along the road, no road at all
but only tree, only sky, bare
limbs framed in my window the way
the first name on the deed thought his
prospect would always stay unchanged
in all the ways it changed with him.
We can utter our every wish
and scrutinize all the old maps,
but we must come to understand
there is never a going back
and too: future versions of us
will walk this very block (ruins
unearthed from layers of fallout
or avenue of steeples, steel
and glass) and they will imagine
this moment of chalk-drawn sidewalks
and mulch-bordered lawns, worthy days
to recall, a glimpse of something
a new angle might help them find.


Brian Simoneau is the author of the poetry collections No Small Comfort (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and River Bound (C&R Press, 2014). His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, the Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Salamander, Waxwing, and other journals. Originally from Lowell, Massachusetts, he lives near Boston with his family.

The Face is a Wild Land

Cameron Darc

It was one of those Parisian heat waves where hundreds of old people evaporate, leaving their apartments to their children or grandchildren.

When my grandfather died, Maman purchased a one-way ticket for me to attend the funeral. It had been years since I last saw her.

The périphérique traffic snakes in front and behind. Exhaust leaks. Charles De Gaulle airport wavers like a ghost in the rearview. I wake from a premonition in the passenger seat of Maman’s car.

(Men in business suits lie on a black marble floor like a starry sky. IVs keep them alive. The men tell me about luxury. Liars, they never grew up. The mask changes. We are in a dank basement. They are seven-year-old boys who murdered their sleeping fathers. They draw rudimentary animals, make paper flowers, try to offer me ants as gifts.) Relief and sadness compete inside me.

            — I need to pee, Maman. I need to pee.

            — There’s nowhere to pull off. Maybe there’s an empty bottle somewhere.

I squirm, dig around on the floor.

            — I drank too much too fast.

When I find a bottle, I pull down my corduroy shorts and underwear and squat, pressing the glass mouth to the place where it wants out, bare feet on tattered leather. It’s complicated to maneuver, easy to spill. But I have practice. I empty myself. The bottle fills. It still hurts. My urine is unnatural (chrome yellow) saturated as it is with alcohol. I roll down the window and pour it out. I fill the bottle again, empty it. I feel something and look up.

            — Dirty bitch. Espèce de connasse.

A man glowers at me from the car next to us, smoking. He spits a long stream into the river of urine on the asphalt between us.

Maman slams the horn and calls him a cunt. I’m seventeen and nonconfrontational. I close my eyes.

This is my old home. The land of Maman’s tongue—which I speak horribly—Maman’s home. We crawl forward in the sea of cars. 

Maman doesn’t cry at all. It isn’t a funeral like I imagined. First, we gather at the crematorium with a few members of Maman’s somewhat estranged family that I have never met or don’t remember meeting. Women mostly. One beautiful child with long straight hair. A heavyset teenage boy with yellow teeth who seems to have something missing. Like a too-large child.

When I look at the body of my grandfather, it looks more like cardboard or wax. It is more like looking at a table, a chair, or any other inanimate object. But that isn’t true. His weight and matter are there—but he isn’t anything. He isn’t a table, like a dead tree might be, or meat like an animal. He is not transformed. He is heavy. Death is a weight in the room pulling all the life down. I need to sit. It makes no sense because Maman isn’t crying at all. At first, I think I’m crying for Maman, the receptacle of her unexpressed, muddled feeling. Then I wonder if I’m crying because of the body. The foreign impenetrability of my grandfather’s body. A layer of innocence that I had not known was inside me. Some mind picture in which the dead retained something of the living. So maybe I’m crying for my future dead body.

After the viewing he is cremated. This for some reason I can’t picture. I remember doors shutting. I remember my mother receiving his ashes and putting them in his old car, which for the moment belongs to us. Then we all go to a crummy café and eat gelatinous French fries and drink café crèmes.

— How much?

I cough up a sparrow of smoke, spit feathers. It flies crooked across the alley, disappears. I don’t turn around.

            — I’m not a prostitute.

I’m wearing a black dress—for the funeral—and black knee socks and black loafers. I chew on my fifth cigarette, avoiding my mother’s need upstairs. I feel like an old woman. The beauty supply store keeps everything lit up. There’s a mirror on either side of the window display. I have black eyeliner on and mascara and used a lipstick on my cheeks for blush. I learned about my face by seeing it reflected in other’s eyes. It only gives me happiness when I’m alone. The kid watches me from across the alley. He’s gangly. I look at him through the mirror.

            — Too bad.

He lights a cigarette.

            — Well, how much do you have?

He takes a fold of bills from his pocket and asks me what my accent is. I tell him I’m Polish.

            — How long have you been here?

            — Two weeks already.

            — Come.

Sixth floor. Narrow stairs.

            — You go first.

His eyes are on me. I wore big black underwear under my dress. All I have is granny underwear. I try to walk with one leg in front of the other so that my skinny hips dip and sway. I want to cough the whole time but hold back until we get to the top.

            — Hush.

He unlocks the door and holds it open. Inside, it’s the smell of loneliness. I recognize it. I open the window, stick my head out. There’s broken glass in the street.

            — Sit down, have a drink with me.

I plant myself on the ledge. There are VHS tapes stacked up to the ceiling and two small mattresses. The mattresses form a moat between us.

            — You have a pretty ass, he says. Pretty face; pretty ass.

I blow smoke and look at the floor.

            — What’s your name?

            — Virginie.

He finds two glasses and washes them out in the sink, comes back with a brown bottle.

The feeling of being in a body fills the room. I wait for it to start.

He takes my hand: it looks foreign, a small mouse. Then he grips my thumb between his thumb and forefinger and pulls. His fingers slide off and back around. We’re close. Neither of us looks the other in the eye.

I swallow my drink and take his, swallow that too. The dark fire slides down my throat like a little dragon. He laughs. I lick my lips and look at him and look away. His mouth brushes my cheek. His hands are gigantic butterflies.

            — Turn the lights off.

He fumbles the wall behind him. The room goes black except for the windows. There is a pulse I’ve felt only once or twice before. It’s the thing that doesn’t understand the line at the post office, that makes us forget the point of names and what our mothers look like. I pull him down on the mattress and he pulls my underwear down and I open my legs, and he rests his elbows tight under my shoulders. His head hovers above my eyes.

I force my mouth to go lax and take his lips and then his tongue. He tastes like dirt. It’s not unpleasant. I’m a sleeping baby. I open my whole body and go soft, slack. That familiar taste, a headrest, a parked car, crying mouth pressed into a thick wool sweater. Always the same one. I try to forget. I try not to leave my body. This first time, I resist. I let the sweaty mattress climb into my nose. I put my hands on my head. Don’t fly away. Stay. I try to feel the stranger’s chin as he smashes his face into my hair. I see a snake. Maybe it’s him.

I’m not afraid.

Swimming. What was his name? — pulls me under. It feels like a fever. I will think about it when I’m alone. Something stabs me fast then smooth and slow. It doesn’t hurt. When my eyes open, he breathes. My eyes shut. White slashes, headlights on a dark road.

            — Was it the stockings?

            — Mmmm?

            — That made you think I was a whore?

            — Mmhm.

I slide my socked feet under his. Our knees touch, separate.

            — It was my grandfather’s funeral today.

            — My poor girl. Ma pauvre petite pute. (My poor little slut.)

My grandfather swam on his back so he could look up at women’s legs when they walked around the pool. He invented a technique for it. You propel your arms backward like a butterfly.

The boy is breathless rolling off me.

He takes a piss. I hear everything. There’s an open window, more like a square without glass, from the tiny bathroom into the rest of the studio. He’s singing an old song. T’es folle mais je t’aime. T’es folle mais je t’aime. (You’re crazy but I love you.) He turns on the shower.

Blood turning brown between my thighs. I pull my underwear back up. This was my first time.

The money is on the counter by the sink. I fold it inside my fingers. Having done this thing, I can never undo it. And it gets easier.

The blow-up mattress deflates during the night, and I wake up on the ground next to Maman gasping, oblivious under her blanket. I kick her stomach, not hard. A headache knocks on the door, but I won’t let it in. I feel my way to the bathroom, palming the walls.

The pee stings between my legs. A little blood falls into the toilet bowl. The box cutter lies on the tank behind me, and I take it and flick it open and closed. The toilet doesn’t flush.

(It stings inside also. A little burn or hollow rawness in a place that never existed before now. It’s nice to feel something.)

We use the toilet in the bar across the street when it’s more than pee. Yesterday we shared a bag of cherries in the park, staining our shirts. Yesterday we passed a burned-out car.

Afterward we got sick. We went back and forth from the chrome countertop to the toilet. Maman wouldn’t leave the café until she was sure she was done, so we stayed another half an hour. The bartender glared at us.

The best part was watching the John and his date having an awkward café crème, the lime green fish-netting stretched across her tube-topped breasts in the sun.

When we got home, Maman shaved my legs in the bath. She washed my hair with shampoo that smelled like apples. She combed the long tangles out like I was still a child. We left all the windows open and watched the sun sink and the sky go orange then purple. You are mine, Maman said, dressing me in pajamas.

My pad is long and thick. It makes me waddle like I have a diaper on. I put an ice cube in my underwear before lying down. Now I am not hers. I have a secret.

Maman snores so loud she chokes on air. Her eyes open.

            — Why are you smiling?

            — Péking Duck, I say. I’m hungry.

            — T’es folle, toi. Tu sais ?

            — Roll over.

Maman stands in her silk robe, her breasts spilling out. I put my mouth to the plastic spigot on the mattress and blow.

            — I told you we need to buy a pump for this.

I hold the rubber mouth shut, pull in air, blow again. The mattress inflates a little. Then deflates a little when I let go.

The ashes sit on a shelf. I feel grandfather’s weighty head floating in the room. Maman tells him to move on; There’s nothing to be done here. She says he doesn’t want to move on because he can’t let go of some spiteful feelings and is worried about his dog. Maman doesn’t want the dog.

The windows have sheets instead of curtains. Grandfather blows them around the blue-black room like skirts. A tangled blonde ball floats all the way into the room. It’s not magic. There’s lots of salons on this street. Molted tumbleweeds, red, black, orange, white, roll in the gutters every morning. The women step over them in made-in-China heels. My money rustles on the kitchen counter. If we move too much the air escapes from under us.

            — Stop shifting, Maman.

We go with the boy and the dog to spread the remains in a place I choose because Maman is not able to decide what to do. Where did he love being when he was alive? I ask. Somewhere outside? The park, where he took his dog. But when we arrive, it seems like an inappropriate choice. He sat here every day, the boy says, holding the little dog’s leash. The dog seems happy with the boy, but the boy says the dog doesn’t understand what has happened. The dog sits by the door at night, expectant, while the boy watches television.

We empty handfuls near this bench grandpère used to sit on, but the ashes do not disseminate. The grey and white chunks sit in the mud and weeds around the bench, moving among wrappers and dog waste and butts, and blowing into the cobble stones.

Let’s try the trees over there, I say. We scatter the remainder under a group of baby cedars, which only looked a little pretty and bucolic from afar. Up close, they seem temporary. The trees are young. They sit in little round plots of fresh soil, littered with detritus.

I don’t understand why I couldn’t have just kept him, the strange boy says, his little dog sniffing garbage, In a vase in the living room, over the television or something. So that he could stay with us.

But the boy was only a neighbor, and yesterday, it didn’t seem right.


Cameron Darc is earning her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, where she received a Grace Paley Fellowship in fiction. Her translations from French have appeared in publications by NumeroArt, Le Monte-en-l’air éditions, and Les Requins Marteaux, among others.

Four Poems

Dorianne Laux

Illustration by Will Dowd

Garage Band

for my brother, Jack

My brother had one, my boyfriend.
Every man I have loved loved music.
Each song a pearl threaded onto a necklace
I have worn all my life.  I see them,
sitting on crates, guitars strapped
over their chests, tools hung
from rusty nails behind their heads,
oil stains at their feet.  A drum beat
so loud every mirror in the house
shook, every window a glass prism
of fragile light.  Was I sixteen
when I first heard them? Saw them
trapped in the boxed garage surrounded
by oily engine parts, coiled hoses,
shovels leaning against battered trash bins,
the air smelling of gas and dust
and stale cigarettes? My brother’s fingers
shuttled across the organ keys,
all of them singing a cover of Jimi’s
“Are You Experienced?”, a guitar string
strangled toward heaven, a compass
crushed under the bass drum’s pedal,
a cousin refusing to go to war, a lapse
in the fabric of time.  My life
has been blessed by these visits
through the gauze of the past.
And weren’t they what we deserved?
Their music booming down
the suburban streets, reminding us
who we were and who we could be,
their beauty and truth, their youth
and exuberance, crashing into
the chronic silence of our lives.

Famous Housedress

My mother’s should be preserved
in a museum, though not pressed
and hung behind glass, a glossy
placard spelling out her name, place
of birth, the years she wore it,
a tiny hyphen floating between them,
but amid a crumpled pile on top
of the washing machine, crushed
flower, her scent rising from
the neckline when a patron lowers
her face to look more closely, to see
the smear of egg yolk along the bodice
like a gold badge pinned above her breast,
or the burn mark on the edge
of the cotton belt she tightened, grime
along the hem where she got down
on hands and knees to scrub between
the tiles with a toothbrush, the skirt a mottled
map of the bathtubs she scoured, the roses
she clipped, stretch marks from the pillows
of her pear-shaped hips, the mushroom-shaped
buttons she lassoed into their holes
encrusted with grease.  The patron
would have to imagine her standing
before a mirror, staring straight ahead
with the eyes of a sphinx, certain
of nothing, her boredom a desert
beyond her shoulders, her lion’s body
buried in eons of sand, her sigh
almost audible in the high-ceilinged room.
This image would haunt each one that saw her,
smelled her, finally understood her mystery
and power, and would henceforth be heard
in the bleachy, airy, musty or oniony
rooms of their days, the only thing
holding them to the earth. 

Jalopy

Under the blown out stars
sounds the lone horn
of the Cucaracha car

the slow rolling music box
of the ice cream truck
rising from the muck

Trumpet vine
ball of twine
yours/mine…

Dig yourself out
from your house
in the ground

flick the dimes
off your eyes
and come dance with me

through the streets, your feet
between sidewalk cracks
twist my back low

twirl and dip and
flip them off
the ones who don’t know

how to bop with a ghost
my holy host
stop with me beneath

the stop sign
it’s red hexagon
a heart chopped down

like a stolen car
parked along the curb
loading and unloading

the gun in your pocket
Lets jump off the dock
unlock the flame inside us

float over to the waters
of Mexico, heave ho
heave into me, weave

me into the singing
of the ringing phone
alone on the pier

swim into the going-gone
sun, our bodies turning rose
as night comes on

smother my wet face
with underwater kisses
I miss you so much

I could drown

The Weight of Days 

Sometimes the months can be weighed
like pounds, twelve in a year.  What weighs
twelve pounds?  One chair. One dog.
Seven crates of tomatoes. One month old
baby.  A double neck guitar someone
shreds ruthlessly, the band behind
trying to keep up.  Sometimes the months
drag, drug like a chair across the dry dirt
of days.  Some years come at a price.
Some marked down, on sale, tagged
“as is”.  Some days line up like siblings
against a wall, each waiting their turn
to be smacked with a ruler.  Or time
can be a beam of light which travels
faster than sound, fastest through air,
slower through water or glass.  A dog
lies on the grass, wagging its tail
until someone comes along
and frees the chain, a key
pressed into the metallic dark.
A year can be a truck on the interstate
loaded with seven crates of tomatoes,
the driver’s wife at home
holding a month-old baby.  Some days
there’s no room for another minute. 
Some years there’s not enough room
for the days.


Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems is available from W.W. Norton as are her award winning books, Facts about the Moon and The Book of Men. A text book, Finger Exercises for Poets, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton as well as in January, a new book of poems, Life on Earth. She is founding faculty at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA and a chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. https://www.doriannelaux.net/