ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Chase Berggrun

July 21, 2014

Self-portrait

In the woods he is a woman, & she sleeps in leaves, her mother’s hand warm in her pocket, his neck bruised from his own kiss. Autumn calms down into dying, a fleck of rain on her chest, in the dream he grows a petrel’s wing. Flight follows the sea, where the only fist or fixture is the contour of a wave. Her undulate breath. Afternoon & in the woods she is a man, full of fear, thirsting for nothing. Forever bound in change. Forever unwrapped & emptied. Nudged softly by doe’s antler.

From the couch

For Dr. K

A circle of change

catching rain with

eager tongue

a catalogue of

each insult into skin

I spill

you say moving on

will be easy but never

asked how

I manage morning

my mother’s fists

coming in through

my little window in one

hand a bottle

the other grips

a seagull by

the broken neck

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Chase Berggrun is a poet from Yarmouth, Massachusetts. They are the author of Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, winner of the 2012 jubilat Chapbook Contest judged by Peter Gizzi, and their work has been published in Washington Square, Beloit Poetry Journal, Hanging Loose, Out of Our, among others; and in the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Under 25, edited and selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. Chase completed their undergraduate degree in English and Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where in 2013 they were the recipient of the Class of 1940 Creative Writing Prize. They are currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Shane Allison

July 18, 2014

Poem for Lee Ann Brown

I did not see you at the poetry reading or at the salad bar. I did not see you at the salad bar at the poetry reading Eating salad at the poetry reading where salad was served. Where were you? I did not see you at the poetry reading where salad was served, Eating salad. You were not at the reading, reading poetry or eating salad From the salad bar where salad was served at the poetry reading. I did not see you at the poetry reading or at the salad bar Where salad from the salad bar was served And poets, who read poetry, ate salad that was served at the salad bar. Were you there? If you were there I didn’t see you there. I could not find you at the reading where poetry was read, Where salad was served and eaten by poets who read poetry. I could not find you. I looked everywhere. I could not find you with the other poets eating salad from the salad bar At the poetry reading where salad and poetry was served. Critically acclaimed poets read poetry and salad was served From a critically acclaimed salad bar For critically acclaimed poets who read poetry that was critically acclaimed. I listened to all the critically acclaimed poets and you missed it. You were supposed to be there. I heard them read poetry and eat salad served from a critically acclaimed salad bar. The poetry was good. The poets were good and so was the salad. I thought of you while I ate salad and listened to poetry. I thought of you while I ate salad with Ron Padgett. You should have heard Ron Padgett read his poetry. You should have seen Ron Padgett eat salad. Ron Padgett had a big salad. I wish you could have been there to listen to poetry With me at the poetry reading. The poetry of the poets was as crisp as salad.

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Shane Allison is a novelist, poet, anthologist and visual artist. His writings have appeared in West Wind Review, Gargoyle, Fence, Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, Spork, and others. His debut poetry collection Slut Machine is out from Queer Mojo and his second collection I Remember is out from Future Tense. His debut novelYou're The One That I Want is forthcoming from Strebor Books. Shane lives in Tallahassee, Florida. If you would like to purchase copies of his books, he can be reached at sdallison01@hotmail.com

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Prose by PD Mallamo

July 17, 2014

HOMINID

pd mallamo

"Now the thing must take its course. It cannot be hurried. Dune"

Big-bellied Roscoe Larry is sole proprietor and chief operating officer of a company that exists in name only, and that name, “Mayfield Interiors,” is printed in six inch Constantia script across the sides and back of a white 1999 Chevy Astro minivan. Inside, amongst shoals and bumpers of fast-food detritus, pornography, and assorted impact-type tools, is a cardboard box containing glossy brochures which illustrate the wonders “Mayfield Interiors” will perform in Kansas kitchens and bathrooms: sleek new countertops; “cutting edge” high-velocity toilets; faucets that look like they were designed for spacecraft. This literature is the full extent of the company. There is nothing more

Today is the day Roscoe Larry’s sister, who works at ShamPoochie Dog Grooming Service in Lawrence, gives him the addresses of women who have made appointments for next week. Roscoe gives her one-hundred dollars for this information, which she attempts to produce in handwriting not her own lest such document fall into the wrong hands, namely, the sheriff’s

For said list is Exhibit A in a series of rural crimes common to a sixty-mile radius of Lawrence, i.e., burglaries in broad daylight

Q: What kind of day is a good day for a daylight B&E in rural Kansas?

A: Any day the dog gets groomed

Because if the dog’s not home it’s a good bet nobody else is either

One of the targets Roscoe Larry has chosen is a residence ten miles north of Valley Falls on a road known as West Valentine Way, an area known for expansive, well-mowed manors. Among many possible accomplices, Roscoe taps Jesse Jessop, not necessarily because Jesse is a skilled burglar, but because Roscoe received a gram of coke from Jesse on verbal a month ago and has yet to reimburse him. Jesse is threatening to kill not only Roscoe but Roscoe’s dog, a pit bull named Rooster23. To settle the matter, Roscoe offers this juicy plum of a castle owned by a four-poodle family named Broadstone

The plan is fabulously simple: drive up, drop off the accomplice, wait while he knocks on the door. If nobody answers, get him inside, then get the hell out of there; when he’s done, he’ll call. Pick him up

Today the mother ship is full, three other criminals besides Jesse, plus the pit bull Rooster23, all bound for rural households in the general vicinity of Valley Falls, up to and including Hiawatha, Nortonville and Oskaloosa. Roscoe has described a large county orbit in his plans for the day; everybody’s got just under thirty minutes to toss his house for cash, jewelry, handguns and drugs, especially benzos and Oxycontin, though Roscoe will sell (or snort) almost anything

One time an accomplice ran outside with a saddle and a new Stetson hat still in the box. This ain’t no horse trailer, Roscoe bawled, and you ain’t no fuckin’ cowboy. If you cain’t stuff it down your pants, I don’t wont it. Go put it back.

A large gold non-denominational crucifix legitimately purchased in Kansas City for almost a thousand dollars hangs by a gold chain from the mother ship’s rearview. It reaches almost to the dashboard. Roscoe’s got Christian issues. He does not believe the Lord God minds if he liberates only lucre, weaponry, drugs and “the palace jewels,” as he puts it; in fact, it is entirely possible that, from a social justice perspective, the Lord, if not actually blessing his labors, might simply but on purpose look the other way. Lord’s got better things to do

One of those better things is thwarting the homosexual agenda. You see any dicks in here? he asks, rifling through the porn on the floor in response to a comment Jesse made regarding same-sex marriage in California to the effect that Who the fuck cares?

Little shit, I care, that’s who! Homos get their own goddamn van, ain’t gonna ride in mine

Roscoe Larry is a career criminal from a family so bad it was less family than chain gang. Roscoe’s father was a one-night stand and his mother killed herself with meth and alcohol before he was six. He was raised by a grandmother who cooked everything in bacon and weighed four-hundred pounds. His grandfather was a caricature of every bad thing a man could become. One day in the shed behind the house Roscoe saw him rape a dog with a stick, then cut its throat with a buck folder and drag it out to a ditch where he soaked it with gasoline and set it on fire. Roscoe, who had also been violated by this creature, imagined himself similarly slit and immolated. Late that night while his grandparents and siblings slept he set the house on fire. He let it burn half down before dragging out a brother and two sisters. His siblings were placed into foster care and he never saw them again. Roscoe, presumed to have perished in the blaze like his grandparents, lived in the leafy copses and abandoned houses of rural Kansas for a full year till he set one of those on fire, too. He was eventually captured and placed in foster care himself. He bounced around almost twenty homes until he aged-out of the system at eighteen and drifted into a life of whatever

Roscoe leans around and says, You got something to tell us, Jesse?

Wut?

Queer, that’s wut

Shut the fuck up, Roscoe. Only queer in this car your thievin’ ass. Don’t change the subject

Homos walk. Not in my van

I say “Who the fuck cares” and that makes me a cocksucker? YOU the cocksucker, Roscoe. I don’t kill you ‘cause you stole my blow, I kill you ‘cause you stupid. Stupid as my stupid ass

What you care about queer marriage?

What the fuck YOU care about queer marriage? YOU the one makin’ the noixe up there, white-trash mutherfucker. Jesse points a finger at him- I tell you something else, shitwad: You ain’t off the hook yet. Wait till I see the house, THEN I tell you. Fuckin’ crook

Jesse Jessup is a career criminal who was raised as a fundamentalist (i.e., polygamous) Mormon on the Utah/Arizona line. When he was sixteen he was driven with five other sixteen-year-old boys to Las Vegas. They were given forty dollars each and told never to come back, the Lord has spoken

What happened? Jesse asked another boy when the van pulled away. What did we do?

Nothin’, the boy said, old guys want the girls. My sister Eliza gonna marry a man sixty years old from Parowan. She’ll be his ninth.

In Vegas, Jesse learned to hustle the hard way – the hard way because he was hustled himself and learned difficult lessons which usually began with his face in a couch cushion and his pants down. By age seventeen he was pimping six other boys, all outcasts from polygamous communities. By eighteen he’d killed two men and buried their bodies with quicklime in the desert north of Lake Meade. By twenty-five he’d developed a raging crack habit and was sentenced to eight years in Nevada corrections for manufacturing & distributing. By thirty-five he’d migrated to Kansas as a meth entrepreneur, developed and conquered a nasty crank habit, then settled down to relatively low-risk B&E’s and more or less recreational benzos

I tell you something else, Jesse yells up to the front of the van: I hear you killin whores

I hear you a niggerlover, so what?

Better than killin whores

Who told you?

Reliable source, that’s who

Pulled it out a your asshole cause you’re mad, that’s all

What I seen, you do just about anything

Percentage in off’n some little girl?

Get your rocks off maybe old man

Put your stupid ass out RIGHT HERE I didn’t owe you. Talkin bout a man like that! Tell ya one thing: Least I LIKE bitches

Back to that, says Jesse

Then why you always talkin about queer marriage?

I aksed ONE GODDAMN TIME you make this issue!

Far as I’m concerned you aksed for a reason

Wut reason?

Queer as a three-dollar bill

Know why I don’t believe in god, Roscoe? Cause I don’t believe god would make somthin fuckin stupid as you. That’s how I feel. Now we BOTH burn in hell cause you the one what made me doubt

One of the perks of working with Roscoe is a little pick-me-up right before the job go down. He makes lines on a piece of broken window glass he keeps in the glove, does one and passes them back

DOWN PAYMENT! he shouts to no one in particular. Shittin’ in HIGH cotton! Today’s gonna be a GOOD day, feel it in my bones! He twists around in his seat. Gonna offer up a little prayer, he says - safety, riches, clean getaway. Take from the rich, etc. Gonna pray with me might be a extra line in it for you

Jesus Lord, says Jesse to those around him, my shit’s bad enough already without I start prayin with Roscoe Larry

Rooster23 has chosen a victim in the center of the van, a young man with bad acne who lives in a trailer court in Topeka. He mounts the man head-on, paws on shoulders, slobbering his face and hard-humping his crotch

WooooEeeee! shouts Jesse, you got bigger proplems than California, asshole – your boyfriend’s cheatin on ya back here -

Roscoe turns in his seat and swats at Rooster23. Offa him, he shouts - Push him away gotdamit!

I cain’t, croaks the young man, well-pinned to his seat, trying to cover his face with his hands. Gonna bite hell out of me -

Roscoe reaches way back and grabs Rooster’s tail. He jerks it hard and the dog yelps. A turd pops out and the van begins to stink

Classy outfit you got here, yells Jesse, cracking a window. Very goddamn classy.

They do a drive-by of the Broadstone house, three-car garage and all. What you think, yells Roscoe over his shoulder - Fireworks on the TV?

No one home we’re good, says Jesse. I’m happy

Roscoe u-turns and rolls briskly up the driveway. Jesse jumps out with a brochure and rings the doorbell. Stands there two minutes. Runs back to the van for a crowbar and, as the van rockets out the driveway and down Valentine Way, circles to the back of the house where he jimmies a door to a mudroom. He cracks an inside door to the kitchen and pokes his head; listens for another two minutes before deciding the place is, indeed, uninhabited, and strolls right in

Jesse’s got a B&E routine he’s used for years, a protocol he follows unerringly after he’s unlawfully penetrated the dwelling of another human being: masturbate, eat, get high, steal

The first thing he looks for is a laundry hamper, which he empties on the floor and pokes through until he finds panties. As it so happens, la Broadstone’s are the size of a poncho and Jesse has a hard time keeping them on his face, the leg holes so big they keep slipping back down over his shoulders. He runs upstairs where he figures the master bedroom is and finds a bureau belonging to the man of the house. He jacks off over the sock drawer AHHHHHHHH then cleans himself up with the panties and hangs them over a lamp like he always does

Then down to the kitchen and into the refrigerator, hongry as hell! He finds roast beef and bread and makes himself several sandwiches, utilizing also uncommonly good (organic) brown mustard, lettuce and pre-sliced provolone. He has a beer or three

As he eats he wonders about, room by room, planning the house-toss. Last bite upstairs he breaks suddenly into action as if there’s not a second to spare, dumping drawers, sweeping shelves clean to discover what’s behind, throwing books off bookshelves – bathroom, bedroom, spare rooms, linen closets. He works furiously, methodically, and begins to find things: his and her Glocks, one in 9mm, the other .380; a small wad of cash ($635) hidden in an enormous black bra in the missus’ bureau; jewelry, including four nice diamond rings and an emerald brooch; prescriptions Lorazepam, Clonazepam and generic methylphenidate

He shakes out two Lorazepams, a methylphenidate and two Clonazepams. Using the end of a spoon he finds in a toothbrush cup, he grinds them to fine powder, mixes them up, lines it nice&clean on the counter, and, in one mighty snort, vacuums off the whole affair. The last thing he remembers is admiring a 1960-ish family photograph downstairs above a couch: mom, dad and nine grown children, four of them women, three quite attractive

He wakes up someplace cold, dark and quiet. In a moment he understands he is naked; a moment later he also understands that he is shackled

Jesse Jessop blinks his eyes and sits up. He hears the sound of ignition, a whosh of gas-fire, and realizes he is affixed to the water heater, probably in the basement

He feels for the wall and leans back. Ho/hum, chained buck naked to a water heater in someone’s basement after he masturbated in a sock drawer, tossed all the closets, stole stuff, got high and passed out. In a life like Jesse Jessop’s nothing could be more natural. Where is god, he wonders lazily, in times like these? Where is the god of Roscoe Larry - or does He just sit up there on the rearview, swinging from that heavy gold cross, laughing at the fools? Still benzo-drowsy, he nods his head, closes his eyes and falls back asleep

The lights are on. He’s suddenly looking at two huge Anglo-Saxons, a man and a woman he correctly identifies as the ruling class. They appear to be in their fifties; the man has a trim little mustache; the woman is wearing a flowery dress the size of a tent. They are sitting in folding lawnchairs in the middle of a room which, indeed, appears to be the basement. The man is reading the Wall Street Journal; she is knitting. Jesse Jessop blinks blinks blinks

The man drops the newspaper to his lap, smiles and says, Well good morning! The woman does the same with her knitting and also smiles. We’re the Broadstones, the man says, George and Mary – but you already know that. Brother Roscoe Larry and his merry band! Would you like to introduce yourself?

Jesse laughs. You catch Roscoe?

Sure did

Then you know who I am

Sure do. Just want to hear you say it

Roscoe make a deal?

God only knows

That’s interesting

Accident

I’ll bet

Terrible accident

No doubt

Won’t be the last

Good. Get it over with

Broadstone smiles. He reaches behind his seat and tosses a mop bucket, which bounces and slipslides till it hits his legs. Do your business in that, he says. If you mess on the floor I’ll make you eat it

Next morning he hears them clomp down the stairs, George Broadstone carrying a thick green folder, Mary a tea service with cups. Before they seat themselves in the folding chairs Mrs. Broadstone asks if he’d like some tea. He nods his head and she brings him a cup, which he holds to his lips with cuffed hands

George lifts the folder. This is your dossier, Jesse. Do you know what that is?

Shakes his head

Your life as interpreted by various law enforcement agencies. You may wonder how I have come into possession of such a thing?

Nods his head

At one time I was a district attorney. Then I was judge

What you do now?

Whatever I please

Must be nice

Not when you come home and find what we found

I’m sorry

You’re sorry you got caught. However – he hoists the dossier to the level of his eyes – this certainly sheds light on the situation. May I ask a few questions?

Can I have another cup of tea?

Mary rises and pours

What’s the point?

It’s part of the process

What process?

The process by which I make decisions

Shit. Do what you’re gonna do

Why were you expelled from the community?

What community?

Southern Utah

Old men didn’t want the competition

For?

Girls, of course

How did you survive?

Any way I could

Did you kill people?

Obviously a “yes”

Take it any way you want. Wasn’t going to live like a roach

Which means you weren’t going to do honest work – and I say all this taking into account the odious circumstances under which you were raised. However, it‘s a character issue, Jesse. Character shines through no matter what

If by honest work you mean 5 bucks a hour, you damn right I wasn’t. How much you make a hour?

That’s not important

What your daddy do?

He laughs and looks at him for a moment. Why, he was a judge, too!

Shit, he says, and glares at him. You got some fuckin’ nerve aksing questions like those. You know that’s wrong

It’s not wrong, says George Broadstone, it’s the way the Redeemer made this world. Take it up with Him if you don’t like it. Tell Him he made a mistake

My father sent his wives out to work. He sat home and watched TV. Do the fukkin math before you start throwin shit around

Some hours after the Broadstones returned upstairs Jesse hears a fight. There are slurs, slaps, shouting, curses, crashes. Some additional hours later Mrs. Broadstone descends barefoot in a white bathrobe carrying a pot of coffee and chocolate cake. You must be hungry, she says. How about some dessert? Her face is swollen and her eye sockets are going blue-green with highlights of black-red. Blood is visible in her nostrils. She smells of whisky

What’s goin on up there?

Mr. Broadstone has an alcohol problem, that’s what’s going on up there. She seats herself on the floor beside him, breaks off a piece of cake and lifts it to his mouth. I’ll feed you if that’s alright. Is that alright?

Don’t much care what you do

What you want to say is, “I don’t care if you shove it up my ass!” Isn’t that right, Jesse? You opened Pandora’s box, him coming home to a house like that. Do you know what that means, Pandora’s Box?

Not completely stupid, lady. Listen, you gonna shoot me or cut my throat why don’t you just go ahead and do it. Tell him you got raped or same damn thing

She breaks off another big chunk and slowly stuffs it into his gaping mouth. He lifts the coffee pot with both hands, drinking carefully in case it’s hot. When he’s done Mrs. Broadstone loosens the tie on her robe and lets it drop. Jesse gasps at breasts the dimensions of the mop bucket. She smears a bit of chocolate icing over her plate-sized nipples and shoves these also into his mouth

Sometime after this encounter George Broadstone himself descends, similarly barefooted, wrapped in a bath towel, obviously drunk. He is carrying a belt

That whore come down here? There it is goddammmit! – he points to the remnant of the chocolate cake and the coffee pot. He lifts the belt: I’ll ask you the same thing I ask her: You want the buckle or the tongue?

He gets the buckle, without first making his preference known. George goes at him with wild fury though he misses at least half the time and finally falls down and lies on the floor with Jesse. Mary, now fully dressed, appears a few minutes later, gently helping George to his feet and, without a glance at Jesse, assists him slowly up the stairs

You people ain’t dis-functional or nothin’, Jesse observes when Mary pays him another visit, this time stripteasing just out of reach. Here I’m thinking your kind holds the world together

We DO hold the world together, she says, just not the way you think we do

What way, then?

Our way. Trust me

She moves to cover him with her bulk. I haven’t had sex in twenty years. This is like Easter and you’re the bunny. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

When George and Mary again appear before him he wonders truly if he’s not losing his mind. They are dressed in Sunday best; George carries a Bible. Mary is heavily made-up and wears large round sunglasses. There are four little white poodles jumping around. They sit down in the lawn chairs and George says, Well it’s been quite a holiday, hasn’t it, Jesse?

Get them fuckin’ dogs away from me. I hate poodles

I’ve got a little something for you, George says. He pulls Roscoe’s crucifix from his jacket pocket and dangles it before him. He throws it on the floor just out of reach, its long heavy chain chiming as it tumbles across the concrete

Something to think about, he says, then offers a hand to his wife and assists her tenderly up the stairs

The drinking starts right after church. George again descends the stairs with the belt, this time completely naked except for Nike runners, and beats Jesse for ten minutes. As before, most of his shots fall short or wide of the mark. When he’s done he falls heavily in a lawn chair which collapses with a loud snap. Help! he cries, Heeeellllllp! When Mary does not respond, George crawls up the stairs and out of the basement

A few minutes later Mary comes down still dressed in her church clothes. She hitches up her skirt, removes her queen-size panties, and straddles him as he leans against the wall

Bang! This time George sneaks up while Jesse’s sleeping and lands a good one with the buckle. Stars and streaks explode across Jesse’s field of vision and he does his best to cover up

Where’s that cunt? shouts George. I can smell her. Tell me where that filthy cunt is or I’ll kill you

Jesse is alone now for several days. No sounds issue from upstairs and Jesse figures they’re holed-up on the second floor. He is half sleeping when he hears the basement door creak open. George wears a white tennis outfit; his knees are scarred and swollen. He is hobbling, and does not appear fully ambulatory, much less a recent player of tennis. He stands before him for several minutes

Roscoe was a poor soul, says Jesse finally. He made my life look like a goddamn picnic no matter what you think or what you do

I know that

Then why’d you kill him?

Great men whom god hath consecrated for great purposes are subject to great passions.

What about the rest?

Off somewhere I guess. Old Roscoe never showed up

The dog?

He loved old Rooster23, didn’t he?

How’d you know that?

Old dog-fighter from way back. Named all his dogs Rooster

George takes the crucifix off the floor, wraps the end of the chain around his hand, and whirls it over Jesse’s head

Queer, he says. You don’t think I know what you are? Queer as a three-dollar bill

There’s another fight upstairs, a bad one, and Jesse wonders if he’s killed her. An hour later, in the now blood-soaked bathrobe, she staggers downstairs

He’s going to strangle us both and burn the house down, she croaks, that’s what he said. He drowned my poodles in the bathtub

In the FUCK’s his problem?!

He’s Catholic, she says, but he likes men

What you mean he likes men?

Just like it sounds

Sex?

Yes

Then why’s he calling me queer?

Same reason he’s calling me whore

But I’m not queer

And I’m not a whore. He thinks you found his pictures

What pictures?

Man pictures

Queer pictures?

The ones with Roscoe Larry

What?

They go way back

Jesus god

That’s the truth

Why don’t you leave?

I’ve had abortions

And?

I don’t do what he says, George tells the bishop

So?

Bishop sends me to hell

This the same Bishop pokin’ little boys in the asshole?

Probably

Then why do you believe anything he says?

Can’t help it

God damn, he declares. God DAMN! He shakes his head. Fukkin SCARY world when I’m the normal one

Shortly after Mary goes back up, George comes back down, wearing nothing but white socks and the crucifix

You fucking queer, he says. What have you done to my wife?

I was queer I wouldn’t do nothin with your wife

George goes at him with the crucifix, swinging it in wide arcs across the ceiling, smashing it down on Jesse’s hands which are covering his head, upon his legs and knees, upon the hot water heater, upon the wall, upon the floor. He gashes Jesse’s head and blood pours between his fingers and over his face. Xhausted, George falls to the concrete and stretches full length. In five minutes he’s snoring

Mary walks halfway down the stairs and surveys the scene. She goes right back up, snaps off the light and shuts the door

What a life, Jesse mumbles. I think this takes the cake

When George wakes up, Jesse hears him crawl toward the stairs. Halfway there he falls heavily back to the floor and doesn’t make another sound

When the light comes on again George is gone. Jesse, who has been wide awake the whole time, has not heard him so much as breathe, much less climb back up the stairs

There is another fight, the worst yet. The door flies open and Mary comes screaming through. George’s follows and kicks her off the landing. Mary’s great volume is briefly airborne, then collapses on outstretched arms halfway down, somersaulting the rest of the way to the floor. George shuts off the light and slams the door

Oh God, she finally groans. Oh God help me

Can you crawl?

Ooooooooooooooooh

Come over here

When she finally reaches him Jesse examines her head to foot. Right arm broken at the wrist, one kneecap obviously shattered, huge knot on her forehead, drowning in blood

He discovers a small bracelet on the wrist not broken. There is something attached and it feels like a key. He fits this into the keyhole of his manacles and they open right up

Mary dies in his arms, which is to say as much of Mary as he can get in his arms

George, outfitted in a crisp business suit and brandishing his Glock, descends the stairs. He sits in the undamaged lawn chair and crosses his legs

Do you know what I like best about myself?

No tellin’

Even after all this – he sweeps his Glock around – I still retain the capacity for disgust

By the way, your wife’s dead

Life is a paradox, he says. She was eating herself to death anyway. Were this a television show – George again sweeps the weapon, pausing momentarily at Mary’s body - how would it end? A cheap device, deus ex machina? Miraculously slip your bonds and clobber me with a pipe you’ve somehow loosed from the water heater? Reunite with your six-toed kin in Utah?

Jesus looks down on you and pukes. Me he just shakes his head; you, he pukes

Burning the house. Five minutes. It’s 2AM and I’m in St. Louis. He lumbers back up the steps and at the landing turns and says, Screaming in the flames makes a saint a saint. You’re in good company

He does not close the door. Fifteen minutes later Jesse smells smoke and makes his way upstairs

There are two cars left in the garage, both with keys in the ignition. Jesse checks each to see which has the most gas, a black Toyota. He runs upstairs to the bedroom and opens the drawer with the colossal brassieres; as he had hoped and expected, the wad of cash has been restored

The fire is really going now and he makes three tries through smoke & flame before he’s able to re-enter the garage. He starts the Toyota - it is indeed two AM, 2:18AM to be exact - and pulls out onto Valentine Road. He checks left, he checks right, and, as George correctly predicted, points it west, straight for Utah. He turns on the radio, tuned already to NPR and BBC World News: Continuing hostilities in Congo; simmering tensions in Bosnia Herzegovina; a plane crash in New York. All around him, across the dark and tumbling countryside, he knows people dream oceans, ice cream, sex, falling. He finds music, opens the sunroof, vows to quit Kansas before daylight. Bless your soul, he says aloud to dead Mary, now roasting like a pig in the basement of her own home. If there’s such a thing as Jesus, He will crush you to his heart

☼

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PD Mallamo has appeared in, among other journals, Lana Turner, Granta, Barcelona Review, Sunstone, decomP, Eclectica, Conte, and the anthology Fire In The Pasture. He is a MacDowell fellow, has degrees from BYU and the University of Kansas, and lives with his family in Lawrence.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Carina Yun

July 16, 2014

Reading Edna St. Vincent Millay,

I think about the mornings muezzin woke me at four forty, his song solemn, I’d stumble out of bed

and bend my knees on the soumak rug not knowing whether to repent for those mornings spent under

the fragrance of her umber hair, the Turkish paper sprawled over us as she read, or the mornings waking

to the smell of thick coffee poured into a ceramic mug painted with her celadon eyes; it seems

her eyes follow me by deserted walks over the Galata Bridge, the fisherman’s line pulling by the fence, a trapped fish,

I wouldn’t ever know why she threw her pearls into the sea, I should have forgotten her already, but her eyes,

I miss them, her breath I miss, how to think of those days, as now, when Millay describes the knots

that bound her beneath the earth’s soil, and sounds of renewed rainfall beating on the thatched roofs.

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Carina Yun was born in San Francisco, California. She is a MFA candidate in poetry at George Mason University. Her poems have appeared at Fourteen Hills, Folio, The Feminist Wire, Poet Lore, Switchback, Verdad, and others.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by John Bonanni

July 15, 2014

A door in a room half ajar

I found the format of his presentation difficult to understand. There were too many sparks of light flailing against the lantern sky, pretending so hard to be the firmament, too many ink blots to fondle.

Everyone huddled together in corner rooms to find themselves in mirrors so conveniently placed in the ribs of each other. I squinted hard at that light against my chest. And those rooms were so small.

I had to step away from the interior of Sammie's Toyota, it was giving me a migraine. The sky fell on me in brief pools of light. I'd rather smoke outside. I took the upholstery with me.

At the dance, I gyrate with the upholstery. I juggle the disco balls on a floor made from Sammie's Toyota, and each ray of light places pins in my pores. I look for allies.

There was nothing I couldn't do after I took the Ken doll back to his bedroom. The bedroom's walls expanded, the sky snuck in through the window. The afterlife is the Ken doll, back up and palms down shifting an iron grill stomach. The afterlife is short.

Dancing the Vandercook

I could stitch my name into your letterpressed eyes

I could take this table and cover it in ink

the color of your retired jersey drifting to the ground in reds

I found you standing on an open-mouthed face in the feathers of an old cockfight

your skin dripping the e-waste remains of my old computer

What was it you said when we first met? Your lips departed in a speech balloon

and all I remember was the exclamation point how I wanted to lick it, feel that lead protrusion against

my face, your machine

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John Bonanni lives on Cape Cod. He is the recipient of a scholarship fron the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a residency from AS220 in Providence, RI. His work has appeared in Verse, Assaracus, monkeybicycle, and Hayden's Ferry Review, among others

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Jory Mickelson

July 14, 2014

Small Zeros

Nestled in a tractor tire, in that dark ovate cave, Cecile and I waited. Above us, boys bounced and chanted about what took place below with the girl

who drew invisible zeros as placeholders in math class, whose red hair hung nerveless in a braid. This girl I first kissed. Her lips, small circles

against my own. What I learned to do in that dusk: to mimic the shine in front of other boys, to pin the approximation of desire against my chest. I clutched that and other

girls as if a harder grasp was truer, as if after I pushed them to the wall and fixed them with certain kisses there would no longer be

a divisible zero in my chest, that hollow where desire was supposed to whorl.

After

His hesitation was years of kindness allowing desire to settle in

my body. Nothing more than this. Gentle as pulse he raised pleasure from

the fear of my skin until I hovered above the small horizon of his bed

and reached into that unknown for the first time with him. Momentarily

struck and fallen back into the gravity of bone but after, fledged.

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

Jory Mickelson was born and raised in Montana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Carolina Quarterly, Superstition Review, Sundog Lit, Weave Magazine, The Collagist, The Los Angeles Review, The Adirondack Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, and other journals. He received an Academy of American Poet’s Prize in 2011 and was a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry. He is the 2014 Guest Poetry Editor for Codex Journal.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Visual Art and Interview with Angela Jimenez

July 11, 2014

Angela Jimenez is visual storyteller based in New York City and Minneapolis, Minnesota. CutBank asked her to select work for "All Accounts and Mixture" from two photography projects: Welcome Home and Same-Sex Ballroom. She was also kind enough to answer a couple questions. Notes on the images follow the interview. Enjoy!

Ayla and Crew raising the Diana sculpture. 2006.

Night Stage raising crew, listening. 2006.

K.C. testing the Night Stage lights under a full moon. 2006.

Bros walking in Festieland: Andy and Dug. 2004.

***

***

CutBank: These two series are stunning. Can you say a little about how “Welcome Home,” and “Same-Sex Ballroom” each came about?

Angela Jimenez: Thank you. I started both these projects while working as a photographer/editor with VelvetparkMagazine, which my friend Grace Moon founded in Brooklyn. It is still online velvetparkmedia.com and the print version no longer exists. I was working as a newspaper intern, then professional freelancer, in New York City and Velvetpark was this amazing outlet where I could cover queer culture/subculture. I really credit Grace, and Velvetpark, for creating a space that valued this work that was too out there for mainstream newspapers.

Years later the New York Times published both these projects in some form. Things have come a long way.

Welcome Home: Building the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival started with me and Grace going to the Festival to do an article for the magazine. It took me awhile to understand how special it was, and how to approach it, and how to get access. But it turned into a book project that I did over the course of the next 6 years or so. It is a visual poem about the worker community that builds the Festival every summer. I self-published the book in 2009. The first edition is just about sold out.

“Same-Sex Ballroom” started with another Grace Moon road trip, this time out to Chicago where we were photographing athletes at the Gay Games in 2006. I had first seen this in Australia, because I went and competed in the Gay Games with my soccer team from Brooklyn and we saw there was gay ballroom dancing. I mean, how cool. So, I was curious.

CB: Can you discuss what “home” meant to you in the first project?

AJ: The title "Welcome Home" is not something I made up. It is something that the womyn at the Festival say to each other when they first greet each other on the Land of the Festival as they arrive each year. I found a home there too, a very beautiful and complicated community that is full of herstory. And that is what the book is about.

CB: In “Same-Sex Ballroom,” where did you travel to capture images? What captivated/surprised you most about the project?

AJ: That summer in Chicago, I decided to set up lights and shoot the same-sex ballroom the way I learned to shoot high school basketball games when I was interning at the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey. Which I find hilarious in retrospect. But, I felt really clear about it. I started shooting and I thought it was really breathtaking. The pageantry is sort of funny, but people are serious about it, and I respect that. They are doing something totally subversive. It is also really visually rich- there is emphasis on the sameness of the couples in the costumes and the dancers more fluidly change and switch gender roles. Dance, in all cultures, is such a powerful metaphor for gender roles and relationships. I was tired, I think, of the way gay relationships were visually depicted. Where was the fun? The passion? The character? This had it. And I found this pamphlet for the next world championships to be held in Budapest. I was like Budapest? Wow. That was the beginning of an obsession. I followed this subculture from Chicago to Budapest to New York to Antwerp...eventually I had to stop. I shot it through like 2010 and it has been on the shelf for awhile. You never know, I might go back to it...I am still in touch with some of these wonderful dancers.

CB:What are your goals for yourself as an artist? What do you hope viewers of your photographs take away?

AJ: I really want to communicate something about the lives of my subjects that makes a viewer connect with that subject. I come from that school of thought (I studied photojournalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia) that all the small moments of people's lives have value and that you can change the world by telling stories so people understand each other better. I really do believe in that. I feel really overwhelmed and powerless about all that is wrong sometimes. Visual stories is what I have found as a way to put something out there, to contribute to change and evolution in some small way. I am really drawn to stories that can crack open some rusty, old door of thinking in someone's mind. Because that is what photographing them does for me.

CB: You designate yourself as a “visual storyteller.” Can you say a bit more about that?

AJ: I use photos and video and sound to tell stories, stories that you see. I work a lot as a photojournalist, but I am not always working in traditional journalism. So, storyteller is the title I am most comfortable with. I also write songs (which I am sort of closeted about) as a hobby and I think folk musicians and other storytellers are amazing. I am trying to associate myself with that tradition.

***

Image Notes

Welcome Home

All Photos: From the book project Welcome Home: Building the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, self-published First-Edition 2009. All Photos by Angela Jimenez. Copyright 2009 Angela Jimenez Photography.

Same-Sex Ballroom

1. Same-sex ballroom dancers Lee Sharmat, rear, and Melinda Kay, foreground, compete in the women's standard dance at the 5 Boro Dance Challenge on May 5, 2007...The locally produced 5 Boro Dance Challenge, New York City's first major same-sex dance competition, was held at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan from May 4-6, 2007.

2. Choregrapher and professional opposite sex dancer Tony Scheppler leads a same-sex Viennese Waltz segment Dance Times Square in Manhattan, during a rehearsal of "A Show Unlike Anything on Broadway!" on March 18, 2007. The show was the entertainment portion of 5 Boro Challenge event.

3. Defending World Champion same-sex ballroom dancers Robert Tristan Szelei, left, and Gergely Darabos, talk to Hungarian television journalists in their dressing room at the Korcsarnok arena in Budapest, Hungary, after a disappointing round in the Latin category during the 2nd annual World Championship Same-Sex Ballroom Dancing competition on October 21, 2006...Darabos was overcome with a leg cramp while trying to defend their title in the Latin event and the couple dropped into fourth place. The pair, however, went on to win the mens Standard division...Darabos and Szelei, known as the "Black Swans," have been training and preparing to host the 2nd annual World Championship and the Csardas Cup, the first-ever Eastern European same-sex ballroom competition. This is the pinnacle event of the blossoming same-sex ballroom scene...The event was organized by the US-based World Federation of Same-Sex Dancing, which hosted the first World Championship Same-Sex championships in 2005 in Sacramento, California. The Black Swans did a large amount of the coordination and planning in Budapest, a city that had never seen an event of this kind. When government funding fell through, they secured funding from patron Desire (accent on the “e”) Dubounet, owner of the local Club Bohemian Alibi drag club...The World Championship events are newly recognized, but same-sex dancers have been competing on a national and international circuit for a number of years, especially in Europe, including at the Eurogames, the Gay Games, the London Pink Jukebox Trophy and the Berlin Open, among others. Countries including the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and, now, Hungary, hold their own national same-sex championships. Hungary held its first national championships in April 2006...Szelei and Darabos spent three months at the Sacramento Dancesport same-sex dance school in California this summer, on the first scholarship offered by the World Federation.

4. Gay ballroom dancers Bradley Stauffer, left, and Soren (umlaut on the "o") Kruse, both of London, England, clap for the female dancers during the Dancesport (ballroom dancing) competition at the Hilton Hotel and Towers in downtown Chicago during Gay Games VII on July 19, 2006… Over 12,000 gay and lesbian athletes from 60 countries are in Chicago competing in 30 sports during the Games from July 15 through 22, 2006...Over 50,000 athletes have competed in the quadrennial Games since they were founded by Dr. Tom Wadell, a 1968 Olympic decathlete, and a group of friends in San Francisco in 1982, with the goal of using athletics to promote community building and social change...The Gay Games resemble the Olympics in structure, but the spirit is one of inclusion, rather than exclusivity. There are no qualifying events or minimum or maximum requirements...The Games have been held in Vancouver (1990), New York (1994), Amsterdam (1998), and Sydney (2002).

5. Lesbian ballroom dancers Petra Zimmermann, center left, and Caroline Privou, right, both of Cologne, Germany, compete during the Dancesport competition at the Hilton Hotel and Towers in downtown Chicago during Gay Games VII on July 20, 2006...The couple won the gold medal in the standard A division for women.

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

A long-time regular contributor to The New York Times and a contract photographer with the Getty Images creative department, Angela Jimenez works on assignment and develops & produces short & long-term documentary projects. Her work has been honored by the Magenta Foundation as a Flash Forward Emerging Photographer in 2010, New York Press Photographer's Association, Review Santa Fe and the Communication Arts Photo Annual, supported by grants from The Alexia Foundation student award and The Puffin Foundation, and acquired into the permanent collection of the Leslie Lohman Museum for Gay & Lesbian Art.

Cover Photo by Angela's wife, Ashley Harness

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Prose by Rachel Ambrose

July 10, 2014

Butter and a Whole Lot of Need

My mama Eudora was a champion pie baker; her chocolate pecan pie could bring a woman to orgasm after three bites. I saw it happen clear as day in my kitchen when I was eight years old. Formative stuff, that kind of thing, hence my appreciation for beautiful, breathless women and a good piece of pie. Sometimes you can’t tell one from the other.

She died when I was twenty three, and like all good witches, she didn’t leave her recipe book behind. I have no idea where she put it, and neither does anyone else. It poofed into thin air when she did. Maybe the book never really existed in the first place, and it was all in her head. I call her a witch, but that’s not strictly true; there wasn’t any sorcery in her crust, just butter and a whole lot of need. Feminine need, like the itch to run your fingers down someone else’s spine to just feel their skin, to taste it with your thumb. And there was longing. If my mama couldn’t get my father to kiss her that night, she’d sweat it out in the kitchen, 3 AM in the middle of July with the sweet smell of strawberries hanging heavy in the air. And we all knew when she and Daddy were having a fight. That was the only time she’d make blueberry pie, his favorite. The chocolate pies were for her lady friends, and I viewed them like I viewed lipstick and moisturizer: a welcome reward for the backbreaking task of getting through motherhood unscathed.

When she died, at the moment of her passing, I was in the kitchen in my fancy apartment uptown, and inexplicably, the air was filled with the smell of cinnamon and peaches, and I knew. I ran to my car, shoes clacking against the pavement, heel straps flying undone behind me, and drove home like I had the fire of the Devil inside me. I honked my horn all the way there, because it was better than letting my screams echo in my own ears, and when I tore myself out of my seat belt and stumbled inside, it felt like the pilot light on the oven had gone out. There was no more warmth. There was only a cooling pie on the counter, chocolate and pomegranate, as if to mark my ascent into womanhood as she passed into the underworld. After the doctors and medics came, after arrangements had been made, after I had pressed my last kiss into her gray skin, I allowed myself to cut a slice. Bitter and sweet and dark and rich. I added the salt from my tears as a final flourish. Mama always did like a little salt.

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

Rachel Ambrose is a twenty-something writer from Connecticut. She enjoys reading and writing about powerful queer ladies, eating cake for lunch, and cooking eggs for dinner. She can be found @victorywhiskey on Twitter and victorywhiskeyjuliet on Tumblr. Her work has been previously published in 2014: A Year in Stories, Crack the Spine and The Colton Review.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Caitlin Mackenzie

July 9, 2014

We are leaning creatures

drinking bright pilsner in a dark kitchen. The party oscillates in endlessness as we ease ourselves into the idea of each other. Beer the color of cymbals— crash and linger. A pulley, windows open in November.

There is no after to wanting. It is endless,

the rooms we find ourselves in. We stare at our naked feet, then at each other awake in lamp light. Limes dry into exoskeletons on countertops. A tongue burns.

We flinch from self-awareness, covet what flies, nests, though we’re without a branch, without a song long-evolved that screams I am eternal! and I am worth fucking!

It’s no wonder we’re drunk, that we blush and brace, that our pattern of staring begins inverted then corrects itself. We escape ambiguity, bother with a question and then another.

We hang pressed shirts in the darkness of uninhabited spaces. We shave and toss what’s spoiled. We worry and invent alphabets.

Unearthing

We went slow to cut stone, cattails whipping our thighs as we gave our bodies to the sleeve of lake and night. Swollen memories are a dream’s jurisdiction— us in the smaller body, cove of fresh water, clothes abandoned by campfire. We gathered duckweed in upturned palms to avoid touching, staring too long. Cottonwood bloomed and deserted in a dense scatter. Cranes circled, crushed against summer’s county. I wished it for myself— the firmament, escape into long harvest, body and plain nourished by laboring hands.

Fortune

You will not turn your head toward the closing door.

You will travel far and wide for pleasure and business.

Adapt to each abandon, as the sun sets two minutes early one evening and three minutes the next.

Learn to keep a tight fist of air in the lungs.

Renovate your needs. Refinish the floors.

Crab fish on your birthday. Throw the clicking keys back to salt. The sun will set in the rear window on the drive home.

You will always feel the spin. It will be enough to throw you into outer atmospheres—quick burn like a meteor.

You will always love too fast.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it.

Remember the sound of your heart in your ears: percussion of blood and cartilage.

Heat climbs in the transfer.

Each return will be less than the one before it.

I Didn’t Know to be Jealous

We drove to the coast, through towns desolate,

to trade overcast sky

for humidity.

The ocean is good for this,

for waiting, which isn’t always like holding

your breath. Don’t try, as I did,

to hypothesize the number of seconds

or molecules

between parallel bodies, legs stretched

toward shoreline.

Lungs are like skin, she said,

intimate with oxygen, and as tender.

Starlings flew in unison over inerrancy and line—

charge of intuition. Tide.

I didn’t know

to be jealous.

When she collected agates upshore

I thought of following,

but didn’t, fingers in sand,

counting. I touched my hair again

like an instinct to be clean,

or cautious.

When she returned, stones dropping wet

from her linen scarf, I studied each

while water drained, changed the color

into something subtle, concealed.

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

Caitlin Mackenzie is a writer living in Eugene, Oregon and working in book publishing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Fugue, Colorado Review, The Rumpus, HTMLgiant, and Structo among others, and one of her poems was recently nominated for the Forward Prize. She has a MFA from Bennington College, a passion for vinyl, and a single-speed bicycle she rides every day.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Prose by Eric Longfellow

July 8, 2014

Countless Tiny Windows

“You took my cello,” I went on. And before I could finish the sentence, I saw the recognition in the skin around his eyes—little creases that deepened when he smiled. “And I remember you lifted it up like a violin. Even made for a child, it had to be three times as big. You pressed the endpin into your neck.” For years I had thought back about the impression that it made in his skin and how painful it looked.

When I got there the place had been full of people, but by the time I went up to him the crowd was starting to thin out. He was friendly and apologetic for not recognizing me, but I couldn't blame him. By now my own wrinkles had begun to set in around the eyes, the skin around my neck was a little looser, but I had still kept my figure for the most part. He took me to an office at the end of a well-lit hallway, and we chatted like old friends. At one point he asked about my parents and I told him they passed away in a car accident. It wasn't true. I couldn't tell you why I said it. He reacted with a stern nod of sympathy that might have been enough given the context. They weren't close. They didn't keep in touch. If it weren't for a chance encounter I'd had with him, I doubt he would have remembered them at all. He asked if I still played the cello, and I said that I didn't.

I'd read in the paper that he was in the city for an exhibition, a small gallery in the Mission. The photographs were mostly landscapes, hills and remote villages that I didn't recognize, the occasional farm worker. I had to walk around for a while before I worked up the nerve to approach him. He was with a young woman who couldn't have been more than twenty-five.

The first time I met Edward was when I was a little girl. My parents would often play host to visiting Romanian artists—a succession of painters, sculptors, writers, and other musicians. He was there for two days, but he stood out to me because of how quiet he was. My father was given to making wild declarations that I, at around nine years old, couldn't really argue with—and really I had no reason to argue. He would say things that I didn't understand about the revolution. He would make emphatic claims about Ceausescu that could have been supporting or condemning him for all I knew. The things I remembered were the swings of emotion when he talked—the loose, expressive movements meant, perhaps, to counteract the years of constraint. Edward, though, had these tempered mannerisms. He would nod his head or set his napkin down and nothing else. It wasn't a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but a kind of removal that, in thinking back, I imagine was cultivated by a desire to see things from a different perspective. It was a bit like a puzzle when I would think about him over the years—each fragmented memory with its own ebb and flow of connection.

They were both musicians, my parents. They moved to San Francisco just before the December revolt, and as I grew up that fact always felt poignant to me. This idea of a turning point, a crescendo—where the cacophony of existence can hang for a moment, suspended, and we never see what could have gone another way. My father had been a pianist for a small orchestra, and my mother was a sweet and mild woman who gave cello lessons out of our apartment, including my own lessons. Both my parents would shower me with affection whenever I so much as showed an interest in music. It wasn't until age twelve or thirteen that I began to consider how uncomfortable it all made me. This exposure to the arts from such a young age, and regardless of how little attention I payed, how many times I skipped practicing to go and hang out with friends, they always told me how beautifully I played, how proud they were of me. But it was all too much, and I think I started to recognize that fairly early—this notion that I was special, that I could be special, was something I only ever wanted to push away.

It was just the three of us in a small two bedroom apartment in Bayview. When the men came to visit they would stay for a night or two nights. I would build a fort in the living room using chairs and blankets, while some strange man would sleep in the small bed in my room. The men and my parents would talk and drink; I remember losing interest in the conversations, my mind wandering off. I'd get lost in some piece of clothing—the intricate weave of a jacket or tie. Then a word would be spoken, one that I recognized, one that might have been animated, and my attention would snap back. Firing squad, internment, Timișoara—I began to feel as though I was perpetually entering into the middle of conversations.

Edward had been a stout young man, and he looked much the same the second time I met him. I was away at college. It was a small liberal arts school in Oregon, and he was giving a talk about photography at the auditorium. I was studying history, but I went because I was seeing this girl who was getting her degree in media arts. Before her I had only dated boys, but I liked how she was a little standoffish. She didn't get jealous if I kissed someone at a party, didn't complain if we went a few days without seeing each other.

At the talk, I recognized him instantly. I don't know how to explain it other than to say I have a thing for faces. He hadn't changed much, though. He had the same broad face and black hair, and he spoke with the same measured cadence that seemed to rise up a little at the end of each sentence as if to create a hint of uncertainty. After it was over I went up to him and told him who I was. He didn't recognize me, but I hadn't expected him to.

That night, the three of us went out for drinks. The college put him up at a little motel just off campus, but we invited him back to my dorm room to spend the night. We'd all had a lot to drink, and I remember he sat on the bed when we got there and watched us start to fuck on the floor. The gag and the spit dripping off lipstick. Wrists held together and the brittle rope. The riding crop she used to use on me. At some point the blindfold went on, and then it was all quiet and nerves and anticipation. In the morning the three of us had breakfast together, and we talked about Hedda Sterne and Tristan Tzara.

After that night I didn't see him—it had been, maybe 20 years. We'd exchanged phone numbers, but back then I would have never thought to call him. I traveled a lot after college, working different jobs. I lived for a time in Paris and Istanbul and Krakow, but had moved back to San Francisco a few years ago. I thought about him often, though. I had the impression that for Edward the time we spent together had passed in hours or days, while for me I had lived a number of lifetimes.

By the time we walked back into the main gallery space, all the spectators had gone. Empty, the room felt somehow smaller. Without a crowd of people moving and buzzing around one turned to the darkened photographs—all the landscapes, all his memories, like countless tiny windows. We passed a partition and saw the girl sitting, but she didn't hear us. I held my hand out in front of Edward's stomach to stop him, and I felt my knuckles brush against what could have been the fabric of his shirt or his soft stomach underneath it.

We stood in silence watching her for what felt like a long time. Her back was turned to us, and we could see her gaze shift periodically as people passed by on the sidewalk outside. She was sitting on a bench made from the same oak as the wood floors—her slow movements a play of shadows that seemed to give off their own light. She was holding her heels by the straps on two outstretched fingers, her palm up the way an aging movie star might hold a cigarette. At some point one of us breathing must have become audible because she seemed to stiffen a bit, and the heels began to sway back and forth. She didn't turn around, but I got the sense that she knew we were there. It was the type of subtle shift one only picks up on when there aren't any other distractions around.

After a moment of this, she changed her position to lie down flat on the bench, her legs crossed at the ankles just barely hanging over the edge. How long have you... Not long. We were only just... of course. You could have... I know. But he watched her a little longer, the change in posture not enough for us to concede our presence. Maybe a minute passed.

“Did a man come to see you?” he asked, to which she didn't respond, but hung her neck off the side of the bench so that she was looking at us upside down.

“He would have had indistinct features. Likely nothing you'd be able to pick out. He might have been difficult to understand—his voice muffled sounding.” She still didn't answer, though—her only movement was to lace her fingers together over her ribs. Her hair, now in a pony tail, rested on the floor in the shape of a long S, and she continued to look at him.

“He wouldn't have been upset. Floating there in his barrel. Buoyant, buoyancy, bouncing. He wouldn't have been angry that you used your heel to rip a hole in the netted blanket. How else were you going to escape, after all?” It was at that point that I realized this was some kind of game they were playing. I felt as if I were trespassing, but in a way that wasn't entirely unwelcome. I was there, but I wasn't—this stranger, a little like a mirror, to take in their performance and feed it back to them through the subtlety of my working through it. Another conversation of which I'd come into the middle.

“Did he come to see you?” Edward asked, again. “Stinking of coconut and cinnamon?”

“No,” she answered. Sitting up and turning to face us—to face him. “He smelled like a fruity kind of gum. Rubbery and chewed up.” She was smiling a bit at that point, but it was with a certain amount of hesitance. I noticed the way that when she gave in, it seemed like a calculated choice that had little to do, I thought, with what he was saying, or the game they were playing. I wondered what my role was in it all.

“We were only just talking,” I said. It was a statement that didn't need to be said. She could have taken it as defensive or possessive, though neither were my intention. It did come out a bit awkward, though. And so, on instinct, I took a step toward her, the strangeness of which caused her to fix her gaze on me with a determined skepticism. Here was this seemingly sweet girl who probably knew very little about who I was or what my relationship with Edward had been. Through the prospect of ignorance she took on a childlike quality.

“Can I touch her?” I asked. Even before I said it I knew that it would come off strange, but I thought maybe she would detect the gentleness in my tone, my offer to show her that even though we didn't know each other, our lives had overlapped across a number of years. The thought that this was all just some romantic notion I'd concocted didn't seem to matter. I think a part of me was just trying it out—testing whether walking this interaction into a corner would produce something strange and new, or if it would be met with the brisk dismissal we've all been trained to recognize as authentic. I'd become accustomed to the latter, but I hoped that we might leave it all open just a little, not wanting the ritual of intention to be subsumed by any perceived idea of formality.

Edward nodded. He seemed more comfortable than I was. He seemed like he had expected this even. The girl didn't move, though. She remained frozen in a state of reluctance, which having lingered too long began to take on the sharp edges of anticipation. I had the feeling that there was something I could communicate to her. Something that might normally take years of slowly chipping away at an exterior hardened by... by what? Any number of things to be filled in or not.

When I got close to her she blinked. First impressions are an interesting phenomenon because one must invariably ask from which point a first impression is to be gauged. The argument could be made that it's the first time you notice the color of someone's eyes because surely that's no more arbitrary than any other moment we might choose.

By my own actions I had set up a scenario where I was the one on display. This girl, paralyzed by circumstance, appeared to me as no more than another audience member waiting for the inevitable anticlimax—a collection of movements on the street mimicking their various coughs and twitches. Of course, none of this was real, but the myriad complexity of possible imaginings seemed to play out like slow music. And so I ran one finger from just above her knee up the slit in her dress nearly to her waist, playing my part, as it were.

When I raised my hand to her cheek she might have blushed. I was close because I wanted to smell something on her—cinnamon or coconut, something to flesh out the dreamlike quality she and Edward had prompted me to consider. Her eyes were green or brown or blue, but it was too dark in the room to know with any certainty. She still hadn't moved; I'd begun to think of her as a statue. One that I could admire, taking deliberate steps around—the grace of which an economy of movement. But I didn't. I brushed her hair from her cheek, the stone I was expecting replaced by the reality of each relaxed lock, my own hand, nervous, giving way to something of a compromise in the shaky pluck of strings. With her hair brushed back I could see the little dimple where an earring used to be—the spike of a heel pressed into a thigh or a stomach. Just as easily a freckle. I could smooth her out because I could. Squint to make her glassy and still, and watch her eyes glaze over, slowly—the way a picked scab fills up with blood. That is what stood out to me.

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Eric Longfellow is currently pursuing a PhD in English Studies. He holds degrees from New York University and Illinois State University and has worked in the publishing industry doing book design for the independent press FC2. While his main focus throughout doctoral study has been fiction writing, his research interests include queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, and kink studies. He is currently at work on a novel that takes place in New York City and is set to the backdrop of the global uprisings of 2011.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: Poetry by Joy Ladin

July 7, 2014

Learning to Say “I”

I like a tree in a walking forest

walks slowly over a mountain toward a city

where fourteen million I's brush branches and root

in one another's soil.

Sunset purples half-opened windows.

I smokes on the sill in short-sleeved tee,

smoldering self-destructively.

I is nothing if not sexy.

I knocks on I's door, asks to borrow

full fat milk.

I is a mammal, so is I.

Let's not talk about that.

When I is alone I will will shave I's legs.

Sometimes I is pregnant.

I wishes I could stop saying “I.”

“I” is a lie. Or is I?

I looks inside, excavating versions

of I within I, each unearthed I

larger, cruder, than the I it hid inside.

I pixellates,

dissolves into blurry cells of I,

a swarm of stars or fireflies. I is too close

to appreciate the swarming beauty of I.

I has had it with searching for I,

blessing I, regretting I, fingering I's privates,

feeling shamed

beside slimmer, smarter avatars

of I's idea of I.

Sometimes I stops fingering, excavating, blushing,

smoking, swarming, lying.

I realizes that whatever I does,

I is always walking

in a forest whose collective sigh

expresses something I

hasn't learned to say,

something other than “I.”

The Water We Are

The water we are: the stream of you

braids the stream of me. Braided,

we wash stones toward the sea.

The water we are wills itself thicker.

Whitens; ices over. We trade flow

for crystalline structure. Clarify

how thoroughly we've merged;

the strain

of flowing together.

The water we are – something's changed,

some tilt of earth toward sun

melts our grip on one another, unbraids us.

The water we are

abrades the bed that shapes us,

the forks of dirt that break us,

you into you, me into me,

separate streams, separate directions,

that share a source, a destination, a sea.

Similes for Sentiment

Like a flower deflowered by a 12-year-old,

one petal a pop, despair and hope,

I'm stripped to stem and center.

Like the 12-year-old, I don't care

that I keep getting the wrong answer.

It's June, school's out, the whole wide world's in flower.

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Joy Ladin, Gottesman Professor of English at Yeshiva University, has published six books of poetry, including Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life and Lambda Literary Award finalist Transmigration; her seventh collection, Impersonation, is due out in 2015. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in many periodicals, including American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and North American Review, and has been recognized with a Fulbright Scholarship.

ALL ACCOUNTS AND MIXTURE: A Summer Web Celebration of LGBTQ Writers and Artists

May 6, 2014

A CutBank Literary Magazine Summer 2014 Web Feature

Design by: Susan Reahard

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Taken from Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and the poem “Rooms,” our series title appears in the line: “Cadences, real cadences, real cadences and a quiet color. Careful and curved, cake and sober, all accounts and mixture, a guess at anything is righteous, should there be a call there would be a voice.”

Please enjoy the series from July 7 through August 23, when we will celebrate at the ZACC in Missoula, MT. We hope you can join us!