Stefan Stoykov is a film student in Frankfurt, Germany. He spends his days watching, reading and listening. He considers himself a lazy perfectionist.

My Grandfather Who Never Came Back

I was named after my grandfather- Stefan. For all my life I had heard stories about him. He was for me the living legend I thought I would never get to see. I had heard about him fighting with the militia because they didn’t let him have his picnic in the park. I had heard about him smuggling rock vinyls and adult movies over the border. I had seen his photo in my grandmother’s apartment- tall, thin, bushy eyebrows and although it was in black and white I could recognize the bright blue eyes. Just like mine.

One rainy October day in 1985, when I was 15, my grandmother came bursting through the door with a smile on her face as wide as the Berlin Wall. “They are letting him go. He’s coming back.” Could it be true?  The man who spent more time locked up in a labor camp than me being alive is finally free? I felt uneasy. I was damn straight afraid. I was afraid to meet the man I knew from the letters, the pictures and the collective conscious of my relatives and their friends. The man with no fear, the man with the quick feet, the man whom I had to impress. He surely knew about me, his eldest grandson, but what had he heard? He had never seen me, and I had never seen him. Were we all that alike as the stories suggested?

One sunny day in May of 1968 a group of young men and women came marching on the streets holding hands and raising banners of freedom and love. They were walking in unison and shouting in one voice the words one man was directing to them through a loudspeaker. That man was my grandfather. That sunny day in May of 1968 was the last he saw as a free man.

And so the groundwork for his return began. For two days straight my grandma took no seat. Her heart was beating ever so faster with every room she cleaned and every dish she prepared- potato salad, spinach meatballs, stew and herself to see her husband once more. The poor old lady. What had she seen throughout the years? Nobody dared to ask. My dad and his sister, my aunt, got their stories straight. They had so much to tell him. How would he recognize them? How would they fit the 17 years he was gone into one single story to bring him up to date with all of the new members of the family? How would my aunt explain to him how she turned into a full grown woman and how would my dad tell the tale of me and my brother being born?

Of course, bad things had happened in his absence too; his brother had died of stomach cancer and grandma had to move from their old house to the cramped little apartment on the fourth floor in a building in a newly constructed part of town. The theater he once loved so much had burned down and no money was found to restore it.

The day came. Grandma, her sister, my grandfather’s sister, all of their kids, my aunt and her husband, my mom and my brother and me were all seated at the table in the living room, waited for my father to drive the man back to his home.

The bell rang.

My grandma jumped with the athleticism she had long lost and opened the door. From my spot I could see my father entering and behind him a dark figure in scruffy clothes. Grandma threw herself in his arms and we all watched them in silence. Quiet, like a dead man, he walked in. Everyone stood up and greeted him. Hugs and kisses all around. When my turn came he shook my hand, firmly and said “are you the one named after me?” A silent “yes” was my retort. I could see myself in him, but he was different from the photo. He seemed not as tall as I had imagined. His back was hunched and his bright blue eyes were nailed to the floor. They seemed dim and uniterested.

All the people in the room were on him like worms on a corpse. Gently and swiftly, he paid attention to everyone, finally sitting on his chair at the end of the table.

“How does it feel to be back on the outside?”

“I can tell you it’s better here” he replied.

“Did you make new friends?”

“The friends you make in a labor camp are like army buddies, forever.”

“Did you try to escape?”

“No.”

“Did anyone try?”

“Yes.”

I sat across the table from him and listened to this one-sided cross examination. I noticed he didn’t eat anything despite my grandmother’s attempts to make him taste the pork chops. I noticed he did not look anyone in the eyes. I noticed him fiddling with his fingers. I noticed the years spent away by the wrinkles on his face. So many things came to my mind that I could ask him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know where to begin. Did you get beaten? What did you eat? Why did they let you go, after all? What are you going to do now? Where do I fit in your world view? I felt it wasn’t the right time. I felt he wasn’t comfortable with all the attention. Soon the rest of them came to the same conclusion. They let him breathe.

“I beg to be excused.”

My grandfather stood up and left the room. We were left in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things I wanted to hook out of him. I stood up and walked out a few minutes after him. He wasn’t in the bathroom or the bedroom. I opened the kitchen door, and there he was- the one man who had turned into urban fiction. The fierce and restless legend was sitting alone by the kitchen table eating soup in the silence of his own company. The image struck me. I couldn’t believe he would run away from his family. Who does he think he is, I thought. I believed he would be this magical figure filled with stories of adventure and suspense, and what do I have in front of me- a blue, emotionless old man. There is a great deal of power and sadness in the image of a once great man quietly throwing pieces of bread in a bowl of soup.

I stepped out before he could hear me. I was disappointed. I was angry. I’ve been lied to. I didn’t want him to be like me. I didn’t want to be like him. I went back to the living room where the rest of my family was and sat down next to my father. I didn’t speak for the rest of the day, trying to hide my discontent. When he came back I didn’t even look at him. I could see him clearly now. No longer could any story about him excite me. No longer was I a child.

Three years later he died. He died in a hospital bed from a brain hemorrhage. We didn’t bury him. His wish was to be cremated and scattered over the valley where the city was. And so we did. We climbed to the highest peak of the mountain and held a wake for him. Hundreds of people came by, and everyone had a story to tell. My grandma told the one where she met him. My dad and my aunt about him punishing them by making them perform Chekhov plays in the living room, his sister about his energetic and eventful childhood, and his labor camp buddies about how he helped them stay alive and motivated during tough times. When my time came, I told the crowd I had no tales of wisdom, adventure or greatness. This was the first time I told the story of him eating soup alone in the kitchen. That was how I remember him to this day- a fallen idol in the dirt.

Antony Fangary is a Coptic-American who lives in San Francisco. He is a MFA student of Poetry at San Francisco State University and was the Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize. He curates his own reading series called Tenderlovin in the TL, which doubles as a charity event for vulnerable individual in the Tenderloin of San Francisco. His debut Chapbook, Haram is forthcoming with Etched press (2018) You can find his recent work in Welter, Waccamaw, Left-Hooks Magazine, Metonym, Mantra Review, Paragon Press and more.

Khanzir

The only coptic neighborhood in Cairo is located on the dump                                      Zebaleen, which translates to garbage people 

Yet, my grandfather left Tetelaya before the soil staled and the governor of Cairo decreed the pigs unclean, sending the pig farmers to the live and work on the dump; the coptic Falaheen became Zebeleen

Yet, I’m afraid to order something without bacon on it                                                     as someone will always ask, Oh, Because you’re muslim right?

Yet, I won’t always correct them, because some people just need a Muslim friend

Yet, the fear of scorpions and snakes would keep my grandmother’s eyes unlatched, she would lock on her children like an Ostrich watching her eggs; my father tells me he remembers hearing the other mother’s crying every time they lost a child

Yet, adolescents pigeons are killed just before flight so that their bones are tender enough to chew

Yet,  my father bought a golden necklace after 9/11, he said, When people see my cross, they won’t think I’m a terrorist

Yet, my grandmother speaks better English than both of my parents. She came to America in 2011, she said the people of Egypt are perplexed

Yet, my father was there to ask one of his customers, “Please stop calling my son a nigger”  as his brown skin purpled

Yet,  the pig is depicted in different hieroglyphs, licking the faces of pharaohs, locked in limestone forever

Yet, adolescent bones crunch with concession

Yet, the other customers simply said “I don’t know why she didn’t say ‘Sand’ nigger”

Yet, sleep is a privilege

Yet, bacon ruins the taste of everything and I’ll eat it anyways

Yet, we laugh, Dad, the type of person to attack you, isn’t the type to notice the cross around your neck

Yet, Cairo’s dump is located on a Coptic monastery

Yet, Morsi killed all the pigs in egypt, the only meat most copts can afford

Yet, my father remembers watching three houses burn and six men die for their faith in Tatelaya one night

Yet, God doesn’t die

Yet,  snakes and scorpions chiseled my grandmothers focus to a string

Yet, I sleep

I sleep knowing bacon is my biggest fear

Nicole is a writer and photographer based in Portland, OR. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a certificate in translation theory from CUNY. She has poems, translations, essays, and reviews published in numerous journals over the years, including Volte, Gulf Coast, VOLT, Full of Crow, Quarterly Conversation, Two Serious Ladies and others. Her chapbook, The Friction of Distance, was published in 2011 by Bedouin Press.

Going Home

They all had somewhere to go, the people streaming past her as she sat on the bench waiting for the bus. She did, too. Home. You can never go home. Where had she heard that? The Wizard of Oz? What nonsense. Dorothy made it back and she would, too.

The people disappeared when she closed her eyes, almost. She could feel them the way you feel trees when you are in the woods at night. She peeked—yes, the world still streamed. For the tenth or hundredth time, she checked the little packages stuffed in her backpack making sure she could account for each carefully chosen Christmas gift. The bright tissue paper packages nested between tightly rolled bundles of sweaters and jeans. They were mostly good intentions; she was broke.

It doesn’t matter, Mom said when she complained that she didn’t have any money for gifts this year. All that matters is that you are coming home.

Of course I’m coming home, Mom. It’s Christmas. Racking coughs swallowed her mother’s reply.

At last the bus rasped into its spot. Accordion doors jerked and people disembarked,  pausing on the landing to gather their bags and gird their loins for the big city. Not that long ago, Emma had been one of those people.

Hoisting her backpack, she stepped into line. Without a glance, the driver took her ticket and she disappeared into the belly of the bus. Immediately, the city racket ceased. She slid into a window seat and exhaled. She didn’t understand why people disparaged traveling by Greyhound. After a few months in New York, the interior of a Greyhound seemed almost luxurious, insulated and clean. As long as there wasn’t a fussy baby, the next few hours promised to be a needed respite—a mini-vacation nested within her vacation. Like a puzzle making itself, people assembled into the seats of the bus. When it was full and the driver was ready, the bus lurched out of the station and into the traffic river.

Cool glass smoothed her forehead and the city unraveled between blinks. The buildings and people and cars seemed to wave good-bye, the way a crowded dock waves to a passenger ship. Don’t miss me too much, New York. I’ll be back. After they surpassed the city, she settled into herself and dozed off to sleep over the susurrus of voices from her podcast.

Minutes and hours became a continuous unfurling ribbon until something tugged the ribbon, bunching it up. She twitched her body toward the window. Her eyes flew open when she felt from behind a hand reaching between her legs, a finger extending into the vale of her jeans, searching for her hole.

What the fuck are you doing? she hissed, flipping to face him. His hand sprang back as if from a trap. Holding his wrist, he remained silent.

Move, she said, rising to pass.

He sat statue still. Not wanting to press her body against him, into her seat she lowered herself. What now? Should she scream? Call 911? Punch him? What? What? In the watery dim, she fixed her eyes on him. She didn’t blink.

I’m…I’m sorry.

What? She couldn’t believe he had the gall to address her. What did you say?

I’m sorry. I’m sorry I woke you. I’m sorry.

You are sorry you woke me? What the fuck?

Please, please. Lower your voice. I said I’m sorry.

Lower my voice? She didn’t mean to, but she lowered her voice. She pressed her back into the wall of the bus and kept him pinned.

I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’m not…I’m not a pervert.

You are a pervert. Obviously.

No, I’m not. I’m an architect. I don’t know what to say. Please forgive me. I’ve never done anything like that before.

Her silence loosened his tongue and he spilled words into the space between them. She tried to block them. She imagined her ears a fortress and his words puny pebbles cast against mammoth stone walls. Some words, like the cold, seeped in. Suicide. Son. Architect. Washington. Funeral.

Fuck you, creep, she interjected and toward the window turned her body. She had heard enough and she didn’t give a shit about any of it. Not one single shit. Was she supposed to feel sorry for him? As if his dead son gave him permission to be a perv? Once a perv, always a perv. Maybe your son killed himself because he had a perv for a father, she thought. Maybe he was a perv, too. Maybe it’s inherited. Anger like magma burned the column of her throat. She couldn’t swallow. She wished she had punched him, drew blood, cracked teeth, made a scene. Next time bring your knife, she told herself. She imagined flipping over and stabbing him in the throat. She imagined the look of surprise as out of his neck blood gurgled and bubbled. Next time, she would be ready. She would be ready next time. In the glass her reflection flickered and she held her breath between the pools of streetlight. Her heartbeat slowed to normal. She could swallow again.

The bus wheezed into Hartford and the pervert shambled off. She thought about getting up and telling the driver, but didn’t. What could he do? She squeezed herself against the window trying to occupy as little space as possible. Nobody sat next to her. She reinserted her headphones and turned the volume up. A few minutes later, the bus regained the highway and headed north. Emma kept holding her breath in the dark spaces between streetlights until the spaces became too wide and she couldn’t hold her breath that long. Almost home.

Peter Shaheen has been writing for thirty years in a variety of genres. He does not consider himself an academic poet,  but still does write mostly poetry.

Spaghetti Sauce

Tomatoes: six of them
Three heirloom; three regular reds
Onions: two
Or maybe one big one
Vadella the best.

Cut ‘em all in half
Peel the onions first
Maybe core the tomatoes
You decide
You’re the chef.

Lay each face down
One at a time
And slice eight or ten times
Long ways is best
Careful: to hold the shape.

Now sideways slices
Steady hand and sharp
Knife. Cut fine in small sections
not to offend tastes–
I like chunks but not all do.

(Note to self:
Sharpen knives–
Ones too dull tear
The skins. Funny,
I know I won’t.)

Cooking sauce is not life
Even if poets insist
Metaphor makes it so
But it cannot sustain souls–
Heat burns.

Insatiable

Law maker —
the who who know rules,
and when to break them.

Legs apart shoulder width, toes straight
firm in the firmament, fearless and foreboding
unswaying, unswayed.

The destroyer of ancient, forgotten kingdoms
Askum, Kush, Yam, Yuezhi
dealer in destruction, death.

In caves, across rivers, through trees and into night.
chest beater drumming echoes…
Resounding on earth

appetites breed appetites
Certain and immortal,
Time.

On the Road from Douma

After CAROL FROST’S ALIAS CITY

 
Along the river
Shaded by olive trees, euphorbias, mimosas,
Yet this is no place for emissaries.

A tentative traveler or two,
Merchants, Bakers, University Students,
Fugitives with thirsty revolvers,

Dusty palms and minarets in the distance
Not far from the war shattered shores,
And gassed out homes.

Fleeing caravans–refugees
Words burnt off tongues
Never to speak.

Shoebills, white-bellied storks, and hope
Have taken flight.

City Boy Here

City boy here—not much for fishin’.
Once on a river somewhere–
Once for Salmon in dad’s boat.

My old buddies fished all the time.
Found pleasure in it—when pleasure was to be had
fishin’ in Michigan lakes.

They’d catch bass, pike, even perch
They fish with a bow, spear and yes, a pole.
Ice fish in winter.

I’d be invited but stay back at the cabin
Thinking about dinner
Or maybe, reading this or that,

Snack on an apple, or pie,
turn pages and fall asleep.
Till they all clamored back.

Never any doubt it was them–
Came roaring in laughing and hootin’
Louder than Hades—full of fish stories.

Once Bob pushed Mark into the lake,
Mort poured a beer on Artie
And Penie got a ticket for swearing.

“Penie, just what the hell kind of name is Penie?”
That’s what we asked him once.
“It’s my name,” he said as if that settled it.

In the evenings we sat out back
Smoking and drinking beers, using rifles
To Shoot the heads off snapping turtles.

About the closet I’ve come to fishin’
Was once while bathing in the lake
I took a dump.

It was an accident,
A leach lighted on Artie’s balls
And I laughed so hard I pooped.

Penie said he would cut the leach
Off Artie’s balls. Everyone laughed;
I was the only one to crap.

The girls never went fishin’ with us,
I wonder why.
Maybe we never asked.

A graduate of the University of Toronto, Sem Megson’s work has been published in American, British and Canadian literary journals and produced by theatres in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, England. For more information, visit semmegson.com.

Dilation of Time

Languid words in Einstein’s book claimed time
rushes faster away from a source of gravity,
as if lovers hadn’t written of relativity first
that an hour spins past itself when they’re apart
and slows its hands when they’re together.
The theory of dripping moments didn’t begin
with time is distance divided by velocity,
but longing is distance multiplied by desire.
Understood by romantics without an equation,
they intuited the law a scientist proposed:
A body contracts in the direction of motion
measured by the affections of an observer
until their diverted libido begins to approach
the speed of light where all promises obliterate.
So a dilation of time describes the differences
sensed by two within a gravitational field,
yet it cannot explain why their yearning exists
to travel back and forth to each other in time.

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.  

Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com   Instagram: @acoatforamonkey

For the Record

“For the record Sir, at what point would you snap? At what point would you react?”

He pulled hard on his roll-up and pondered the question.

“Come on now Sir, when? When you lose your low-paid dead-end job? When the money runs out? When the food has been eaten? When the drink has been drunk? When you’ve had to sell what little you have? When your welfare payments have been stopped? When you’re evicted? No? You still wouldn’t react?”

He smiled and shook his head.

“Not bad. Not bad. So, how about when you then have to live outside of the law to survive? No? So, how about when the warrants go out? How about when you’re now on the run? When you can’t trust a soul? When your only friends are also your enemies? When you don’t know who you are any more? When everything is just one more lie piled on top of another?”

He laughed and shook his head again.

“OK, you’re doing great. Better than most. I have to say I’m impressed. But what about when you’re arrested then? When you’re detained? When you’re restrained? When you’re beaten? When your nose and your ribs are then broken? When you are forced to confess? When your lawyer’s thrown out of court or doesn’t even turn up? When you’re tried in your absence? When the laws are changed? And all of your appeals finally run out? You still wouldn’t snap?”

Inhaling and then exhaling slowly, he stepped over to the window.

“Jesus… Honestly, you must be Jesus… So, OK then, what about when they make you sign away your rights? When you’re processed? When they throw away the key? When you don’t dare look anyone in the eye? When nobody cares any more or wants to hear anything you say? When you are raped in the showers? When you hold a blade to your wrist? When you’re locked up in solitary on suicide watch? When you are taken out to shit and to piss in a plastic bucket? When you’re transferred from C to B and then on up to A? No? Seriously? You wouldn’t react? You wouldn’t snap? No? Why not?”

His face flushing red, he put out his smoke and stared out through the bars of the van window at the people in the street, as the van approached its destination.

“Oh right, of course,” he said, laughing, “Yes, you’re all innocent, aren’t you?”

Up ahead, he heard the rusted groan of the prison’s metal gates opening.

“Yeah,” he nodded, as he steeled himself for what he knew from experience lay in store for him, “We all say that people. Yeah, we all say that.”

Wendy Taylor Carlisle lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks. For more about her, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.

Short Prayer

God, if there is a god, bless Friday afternoon for the stack of wood I didn’t get cut, for the co-worker I unwittingly snubbed, for the party I skipped just because and for the sigh I heaved knowing it was three days until blessed Monday.

God, (same caveat), bless Monday for its upstart beginning, for the rejections stacked up over the weekend and for its optimistic heart, for its sentences that begin, this week I’m…. Bless this day since it has its tongue out for the first snowflake, its palm out for a raindrop. Praise Monday because there’s nowhere to go from there but on.

My Husband Asks, What Are You Thinking?

I’m pondering on
a rodeo man,
RCA belt buckle,
stiletto toes, arched back,
a tall skinny stranger
always waving
goodbye

I drank to drown my sorrows, but the damned things learned how to swim. 

                                  – Frieda Kahlo

Diego Rivera called his daughter, “Little Pinhead,”
Frieda Kahlo was barren

Rivera was a Mexican, a nationalist, a leftist.
Frieda was always in pain.

Rivera only painted her twice.
Frieda said, At the end of the day,

we can endure much more
than we think we can.

William, the Poem

When Stafford was asked
how he wrote a passable
poem each day, he answered,
Lower your standards.

After Great Loss

I have become the mistress of the unlit,
black dress formal, sad as a 2 car funeral.
What shall I do in all this somber dark
but dance and dance and dance
in my hallelujah shoes?

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. His favorite knife is Japanese, as is his tractor. His guitar is Italian. He’s sure this signifies something to someone. The author of five chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Riggwelter, Sleet, Eclectica, The Zen Space and elsewhere.

Worms

Yesterday’s cored apple buzzes with light,
another vessel stored in sadness.

I have swallowed vows.

I have replaced air with earth
and enjoyed tongued flesh.

To think is to live. To live is to delay.

Burrowing through the soil’s rich
decay, this body,

accepted. Absorbed.

Self-Portrait as Question

Walking hand-in-hand with what,
who presupposes why, and when
huddles with where before skittering
off to its murky corner. Sometimes
I present myself as a shy minute
or a cloud’s effigy streaming across
a scruffy field. Few suspect the truth.
Answers ricochet from the limestone
wall, but no one nabs them. I react
quickly and offer the unknown, the
life I claim, my name, in return.

Love Song for the Dandelion

When you scatter
I gasp

aware that the windborne
carry truths

too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear

What is your name
I ask

knowing the answer
all along

Pinecone on a Pedestal, Open Poet

Look deeper. Within that grain, a mineral,
inside that word, a book
folding into itself,
leaf by leaf,

and farther back,
the cone’s imbricated scales
spiraling in perfect
sequence, or pressed
through another
time, strand by
strand, looming
in shared
simplicity.

Looking through my window I see a hundred trees
growing in the shade of one.

The juniper’s
berry is
no berry.

Bamboo is a grass.

My floor
is not cork
but bears its appearance.

Two halves share this one body.
Open it. What will you find?

Clyde Liffey lives near the water.

Bench

“Where’d you say it is?” one of the men asked.

“Out back. Follow me.”

“You bet,” the younger man said as she swiveled down the hill.

“Nice place you got here,” the older man said.

She scrunched her nose. “You think so?”

She surveyed the unmown grass, the sticks and parts of branches scattered about it, the sickly trees, the untended flowerbeds. “I’d do more out here,” she said, “if he wasn’t so creepy.”

“Who?” the older man asked.

“My father-in-law: he just loves the bench you’re taking. He sits there all morning. He’ll be furious when he comes back from his walk and sees that it’s gone.”

“Looks like he didn’t get out today.” The older man poked the body prone on the bench. “Wake up, sir.”

She called her husband and recounted the above omitting the parts about the workman leering at her and the sympathy hugs.

They had a late cold supper. Their son was asleep in his chair. Her husband said, “Dad had a bad heart. It was time for him to go. At least he died where he loved to be, on that rickety bench. Do you remember how he said they’d have to take it from him over his dead body?”

The boy woke up. “But wasn’t the bench under his body?”

Desmond’s prose and poetry has appeared in the Tishman Review, HeartWood, Theme of Absence, and Whatever our Souls. He holds an MLA from Houston Baptist University, where he founded the student literary magazine Writ in Water, and he’s currently the editor-in-chief of Rune Bear, a magazine devoted to the strange and speculative. Desmond White lives in Sugar Land, Texas, with his wife and her two cats and the two thousand strays she feeds by the car.

Cuidado

A dónde vamos? she says
as he walks to her.
But he is not a train coming to station.
There’s something weird
in his eyes
and his feet are aimed
to take him past her.
He is a train in passing.
This station—quarantined.
Yellow ribbons of Cuidado, Cuidado, Cuidado
wrap her breasts;
abandonada stamps her head.

A dónde vas?
she says
before a black bottle
which reads: Tratar con cuidado,
which reads: No poner en los ojos,
and in sober black:
Sulfuric Acid
(ácido sulfúrico)
before this bottle appears in his hand,
or maybe it was always there.