Issue 01

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

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.

It Is Illegal to Enter the Graveyard

Ben Loory

It is illegal to enter the graveyard if you are not dead. That’s the way it’s always been; that’s just how it is. When someone dies, we put them in a coffin and push it through a hole in the gate. And when we come back and check the next day, we can usually see the new grave.

But sometimes it doesn’t work that way; sometimes the coffin just lies there. And sometimes—and this is even worse—it inches back toward the gate. And when that happens, we know what’s wrong: whoever’s in the coffin isn’t dead enough. So then we have to get a stake and a hammer, lasso the coffin, and drag it out.

This happened to me once with my very own mother. No one else would even open the lid. It took me hours of kneeling there, praying for strength, before I did.

And when I finally did lift the lid up—hammer and stake raised in my hands—I gasped when I saw: she wasn’t even there.

The coffin was empty.

My mother was gone.

As far as we knew, this hadn’t happened before—usually it was just the matter of the stake. But this was something else entirely.

Where could she be? someone said.

But none of us knew—least of all, me—so finally, we all just shook our heads. And in the end, we simply poured gas on the coffin, lit a match, and watched the smoke rise up.

I don’t even remember the rest of that day—it was like that smoke became a fog. I have no idea where I went, what I did, or how I even got home.

But that night I found myself in my mother’s room, just standing there in the dark. I was looking at the bed where she used to sleep. Then I looked at the pictures on the wall. And then I found myself walking to the window, staring out at that moon in the sky. And then, as I watched, something like a cloud—something like one— came floating by.

For some reason I thought that cloud was my mother. I know, it doesn’t make any sense. But I did—I was certain, I didn’t have any doubt—so I opened the window and stepped out.

I followed that cloud up and over the hedge, and then across my neighbor’s lawn. It was too high to reach, though I leapt and stretched.

I had to run—the wind carried it on.

I ran and ran through the streets of the town—after my mother, my mother the cloud—until finally I came to the gates of the graveyard.

And they opened, and I went inside.

And once inside, it was like the cloud spread out—it became a mist all around. I didn’t know where to go, or what to do.

And that’s when I heard the song.

It was a quiet little song my mother used to sing to me as a lullaby at night. And I followed that song to an open grave and looked down.

My mother was lying inside.

But Mother, I said, what are you doing here? It’s cold out; you’ll catch a chill.

So I climbed down into the grave to lift her up.

And next thing I knew, we were home.

We were sitting there quietly at the kitchen table—just as we always sit there now. And we’re drinking our tea, and eating lemon cookies—just the two of us, her and me.

And we talk about this, and talk about that, and we look at old picture albums, and remember things that happened to us—or people we knew—and reminisce.

And sometimes at night, when my mother nods off, I push back my chair and go out. And I walk through the streets of the sleeping town.

I walk past the windows, gazing up.

And sometimes I go and I knock upon a door—or I tap on a windowpane. And I stand there and listen, and if I hear something—even a rustle—I tap again.

Hello? I say, in a faraway voice. Remember me? Would you mind if I came in?

And I can hear them then, on the other side, scared.

But then the door creaks back, and I go in.

Ben Loory is the author of Tales of Falling and Flying (Penguin, 2017) and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin, 2011). His fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Fairy Tale Review, and READ Magazine, and have been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Scar

Robert Lopez

This Deborah talks out of the left side of her mouth, as if she’s trying to keep what she says secret from her own right ear. She wears three or four earrings in each one. Two hoops of equal size and little silver balls that trail up her lobes like tracks.

I see the tracheotomy scar immediately. She leaves the top two buttons of her blouse undone like she’s saying, Here I am, beaten and scarred, take it or leave it.

I’ve decided not to say anything, pretending either not to notice or care. Whichever she decides.

She talks a lot out of the left side of her mouth, which is good. The little I say I’m tired of hearing myself say it. And this Deborah doesn’t seem to care one way or the other, which is even better. Match made in heaven.

Just as we are pulling up to a red light she says like she is accusing me of something, You’re not wearing the seat belt. I answer I only put it on when it rains. Out of the left side of her mouth comes, You’ve never gone through the windshield.

There are only a few cars on this road to wherever it is we’re going. Some exotic barbeque place well off the beaten path. She spends most of the ride going through her purse like she is looking for something. She pretends to be preoccupied most of the time, I think. Otherwise she is preoccupied most of the time and I’m making her out to be clever in a way she isn’t. I turn the radio on and scan the stations, pretending that finding a good song is important to me. She stops going through her purse without having pulled anything out of it.

I don’t know whether or not she is expecting me to defend myself, my position on car safety. I just keep going up and down the dial, pausing to hear the end of a Willie Nelson song and most of “It’s All Right” by the Impressions.

Because I don’t have a lot to say people tell me I’m a good listener. But I don’t think that’s right, either.

I haven’t gone through a windshield, never even come close. I’ve never been injured or seen anyone seriously injured. I was at a party once as a teenager where someone was killed in a backyard brawl but it happened after I had left. He got his shoulder or his neck slashed with a beer bottle and bled to death.

All during dinner I try to imagine this Deborah going through the windshield, the mechanics of it, what actually happens when one goes through the windshield. I try to see her head making contact with the glass and shattering it. I try to see her body careening off the hood and landing on the concrete.

The thing is she doesn’t look like someone who’d gone through a windshield. If anything she looks like someone who’d been robbed at gunpoint, maybe assaulted. (One of those women that takes a selfdefense class and carries a gun afterwards.) Nothing where she was hanging on by a thread, hooked up to machines with one foot in the grave. I’m just guessing about that part, but it stands to reason.

She wears a lot of makeup but not enough to cover up any facial scars. She flaunts the one on her neck like it’s a piece of jewelry.

We go back to her place, which has two bedrooms and hardwood floors. On the ride over I fastened the seat belt but I don’t think she noticed. She opened her purse but didn’t go through it like she did before, probably just making sure the gun was loaded and accessible.

This Deborah’s hair is thick, more or less straight and dry to the touch. There’s a spot on the back of her calf that’s irritated from shaving. I think her left leg might be longer than the right leg but that could just be my imagination making her more interesting. The feet are bony so I leave them alone. Stomach needs work. I’m guessing the nipples aren’t sensitive because she seems bored when I work them.

I try to decide if she reminds me of someone.

I don’t know what she sees in me, if anything. My body is smooth and unbroken. No runs, no hits, no errors. I don’t have anything to say and though I listen to people when they talk, I don’t know if that makes me good at it.

She searches me up and down, says, I’m exploring you. Who knows what she is looking for but her exploration feels good, so I let her explore me. I tell her to let me know if she finds anything worthwhile. For whatever reason the line, Close your eyes and think of England, comes to me. I am Queen Victoria or whoever it was with my eyes closed and she is Magellan in search of god knows what.

She pushes her tongue against mine like she’s angry at it. The sound she makes is between a moan and a sigh. Every so often she pulls back and has a playful grin on her face. Eventually I start mimicking her, so that each time our lips are about to touch I pull back.

She smiles, tells me out of the left side of her mouth that I’m the first one to pass her test.

I say, I guess you’ve met your match.

I start behind the ear. She makes her sound and grabs hold of the back of my head, digging her nails into my scalp. Eventually I get to where we both want this to go. I run my tongue back and forth over the spot. The skin feels dead.

Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River —named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. A new novel-in-stories, A Better Class Of People, will be published by Dzanc Books in April, 2022. Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere, his first nonfiction book, will be published by Two Dollar Radio in March, 2023. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction – Latino. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Call for Submissions: A Picture’s Worth 1000 500 Words

Between September 15 and October 31 2022, we’re soliciting flash fiction, lyric essays, prose poems or single-page comics inspired by the (untitled) image below by artist Mary Lum. This image will also appear on the cover of Issue 41, and Guest Editor Elizabeth Graver – in consultation with Post Road’s editorial board – will choose selections from the submissions received for that issue’s Folio.

Please click here to learn more about Mary Lum’s work, and here to submit your work to be considered for the Post Road 41 Guest Folio. We look forward to reading your submissions!