DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR — LAURA TODD CARNS

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The first time it happened, Miranda was six years old. She found a sparrow with a broken wing in the garden. It was flapping its good wing furiously, while the other dragged in the dirt, anchoring the creature as it turned in frantic circles around the source of its pain. She kneeled beside the sparrow and reached out to stroke its head. She didn’t know to be frightened of an injured bird. She didn’t yet know the danger that could be wielded by someone in terrible pain. As her fingertip smoothed the feathers on the bird’s head, Miranda felt such a warmth in her finger that she thought perhaps the sparrow had a fever.
           But the heat was coming from her.
           The sparrow stilled its frenzy and stretched its neck up towards Miranda, like a flower straining towards sunlight. Miranda gathered the bird into the bowl of her hands, instinctively curling herself around it, her skinny dirty-kneed body seeming to expand into a curve of protection. The heat became nearly unbearable. And then Miranda felt the rasping rustle of wings and her body uncoiled suddenly, sprawling in the mud as the sparrow took flight, perfect and whole and startling against the opaque pewter sky.
           Delusions of grandeur. Those were the words the doctor used, and Miranda learned not to speak of her gift again. She used it quietly, holding this marvel inside her like a swallowed sun. Under her blazing fingers, a tumor on a stray dog’s leg melted away, the bones inside a squirrel’s twisted spine straightened like a jump rope pulled taut.
           As Miranda grew older, the glow began to weaken, and sometimes creatures would limp away from her apparently unchanged. She began to wonder if she had imagined those moments of heat and repair, the current of vigor moving through her. It seemed impossible, the more she grew and learned, that one small person could be any kind of bulwark against the careless cruelty of the world.
           Years from those moments of kneeling in the mud, another doctor’s words wheel through Miranda’s mind. Cancer. Inoperable. She is no longer a small child unafraid. She no longer believes in miracles. But she thinks, perhaps, that she can believe, for one moment, in her own grubby-kneed girlness. She curls around herself and reaches up to stroke her own forehead. She is as worthy as a broken bird.

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Laura Todd Carns is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has published fiction in Pigeon Pages and Flyway, nonfiction in Hobart and Electric Literature, and poetry in Mothers Always Write and Claw & Blossom. She lives near Annapolis, Maryland where her children and pets conspire to distract her from writing.

A BAR AT THE FOLIES-BERGÈRE — JORDAN HARRISON-TWIST

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Yesterday, I spat out the varnish. The varnish was from Branch of Peonies and Secateurs. It must have been, because that night I’d sat across the table from Manet, and I remember warning him I’d eat it.

Most people devour paintings with their eyes. Leave galleries all wan. I’d started with oils straight from the tube before I got onto the real stuff. They give them names like Cadmium Yellow to put you off, but if you're green, ochres and umbers are pretty palatable, sort of umami, butternuts.

In my defense: they don’t tell you not to eat the paintings.

It’s easy to grow tired of all the additives in Rothko and such. All sealed, caramelised, charred. Agnes Martin got me onto quieter platters. But the Peonies. Fat bechamel blooms, all lobster tail, Riesling. Forty dawn-bleached elders stirring white cauldrons on emerald flames. Talking of anointing, singing to one another about the wind, their grandchildren’s footsteps.

It’s a room full of secretions, a gallery. 

And they lie, they all lie. Eyeing it, muttering masterpiece. When to the eyes, a finished painting is a bereavement of all it isn’t. To the mouth, it’s as honest as the days from diagnosis to death.

Manet looked mournful, all petal-lipped, when I’d let loose. I’ll knock you up something else, be a minute, he’d said. Pointing over Picasso, who was playing with his beef, and Anthony Gormley, who was doing nothing of interest at all. But the secateurs had snipped me from the hinterland and I crawled beneath the tablecloth.

Once you're beyond the yellowed posterity, the milk cascades from your mouthsides. All of fifteen seconds you have to wash it back, the strokes, the pigment. You shouldn’t wish for longer.

I was stood at a yawning frame. My face was women shaking sheets off parapets.  

They look worried, but these people put their ears to shells, they kiss foreheads over wrists. It is about time they learned the truth. That it won’t grow back is precisely the point.

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Jordan Harrison-Twist is a writer and editor based in Bolton, UK. His essays have appeared in 3:AM Magazine, The Double Negative, iiii Magazine, and Corridor8. In August 2020, he won the Retreat West micro fiction competition, in which he has been variously shortlisted and long-listed; he has also been long-listed in the Reflex Press flash fiction competition and the Flash500 competition. His words appear in No Contact magazine, Daily Drunk Mag, and Between the Lines, an anthology published by Comma Press. In October 2020, his story Longitudinal was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His forthcoming chapbook A Few Alterations will be published by Nightjar Press.

TIMBER — KELSEY ENGLERT

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I spend Saturday morning alone on the sofa watching failed trust fall compilations on YouTube. One rigid body after another timbers to outstretched arms. Most begin okay, but there are so many ways to fail. After an hour, the productivity app on my phone locks me out. I override it and browse Facebook.
           At the supermarket, I see my therapist. She retired two months ago. At our final session, I joked that it must have meant that I was fixed and wondered aloud if she would enjoy retirement with all of our problems in her head. She said she would. She booked a European riverboat tour. I pictured her on the Rhine wearing sunglasses and scarf while explaining to a balding tourist with binoculars around his neck what cognitive dissonance might have to do with his preoccupation with the barista and suggesting that he try intention logs or self-love diaries. But she is in the deli aisle in a hard cast balancing on crutches while ordering two pounds of thinly-sliced honey ham. She tries to avoid eye contact. I approach her anyway in case I can get a free mini session. “Wait. How did I get to Europe?” I ask. She laughs and explains that she broke her leg at CrossFit a week before her trip. Fortunately, her travel insurance refunded her. I have never heard of travel insurance. I do not understand how some people know all of the ways to win.
           This woman knows that my boss put his hands on me, but the HR department is one person, and he is my ex and hates me because I cheated a little when I thought he was, too. She knows that I can never find the right balance between humor and sincerity on my online dating profile and that I honestly never considered that the hot dog detail would be taken as sexual innuendo and that watching the news in these (fill-in-the-blank) times turns my neck blotchy and makes me call in sick to work. I need her to know that I saw my neighbor mow her lawn in a perfect spiral until she got stuck in the center, and I can’t stop thinking about it. My ex-therapist holds the ham and fumbles a crutch while I joke about trust falls, but I need her to open her arms again. They are essential.

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Kelsey Englert’s writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Passages North, Jellyfish Review, The Citron Review, and Gone Lawn, among other literary magazines. She is a Pennsylvania native and earned her M.A. in English from Ball State University and M.F.A. in creative writing from West Virginia University. She teaches at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. For more information, visit www.kelseyenglert.com.

NEW RELEASE — ABIGAIL OSWALD

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That summer Hollywood hits us with a horror movie so repulsive people pass out in their seats during festival screenings. I groan aloud scrolling early reviews in the box office, words like intestine and viscera—I know what’s coming. I become reattuned to the plop of the mop in its timeworn yellow bucket, already reaching for it when someone hurries out halfway through the runtime, their eyes watery and apologetic. It’s probably good that people can still find it within themselves to be disgusted, I remind myself as I clean puke off the bathroom tile again. It’d be worse if no one was reacting. If they all drained out of the theater looking unamused and vaguely bored after the credits rolled.

*

Another action flick premieres. Usually I’ll watch anything—and I have a soft spot for the genre as a whole, the poetic choreography of a climactic one-on-one fight scene, the beauty of a roundhouse kick unfolding in slow motion—but this one I actively avoid. I can already tell what kind of story it is and who it was made for; needless to say, I am not the target audience. In the end, I’m subjected to it in pieces, the way I always am, but still never manage to suss out a connecting thread from the fragments. It seems like a montage of women being murdered, slowly and brutally, to a soundtrack of dated nu-metal. Every time the hero and his gun arrive just a little too late. When I drop in there are never more than a few men scattered throughout, hands moving mechanically from popcorn bucket to mouth as the women scream. 

*

A new romance features a sex scene so explicit that it just barely scrapes by with an R rating. The director vehemently protests any further edits; surprisingly, her efforts pay off. I overhear two of my coworkers arguing about whether it’s really any more pornographic than the average sex scene, if the sticking point might instead be the unabashed focus on the female participant’s pleasure. When I can, I try to pop in around the time the scene begins. Most people are aware of the hype before even purchasing their ticket; any discussion of quality in the writing or acting has been drowned out by in-depth analysis and outcry about a scene that makes up a mere fraction of the runtime. Occasionally, though, there are mothers who have missed the memo, who begin to squirm, wince, even try to cover up their girl’s eyes. And every girl I see pushes that hand away, embarrassed and eager. 

*

Once you’ve seen a movie enough times—once you’ve memorized its scares and twists and fractures, beat for beat—it becomes infinitely more interesting to watch the audience instead of the screen. A true spectrum of human emotion, illuminated only just by the dim theater lights.

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Abigail Oswald is a writer whose work predominantly examines themes of celebrity, crime, and girlhood. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and currently resides in Connecticut. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Wigleaf, Matchbook, Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Split Lip, and elsewhere. You can find her online at abigailwashere.com. 

DELETED SCENES FROM THE POLAR BEAR KING — JESSICA HUDSON

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after Ola Solum's 1991 film

 Alternate Beginning

The Princess of Winterland narrates. Begins with her mother who died when she was six. Her father’s favoritism. Her sisters’ jealousy. Her take on all three: unnecessary yet inescapable. Considers the political dealings of her father’s kingdom. The ecological highlights of the region. Lists her loves. Books. Snow. Skiing. Flowers, although she’s never seen a real one. Her name.

 Long Journey South

The Princess rides bareback on the King of the South. Keeps quiet when the sun is up. Pictures the flowers in his eyes. He’ll be a polar bear for seven years. Realizes she forgot to bring a change of clothes. She’d planned to sleep beside him throughout the frigid nights, curled against his warm belly. His thick white fur her only comforter. She forgot he turns into a man at midnight. Forgot he’s just a man. He doesn’t travel with clothes.

 Honeymoon

When he enters her bedchamber, the Princess turns her face away. The curse: you must not see his face. When he enters her bed, the Princess looks at her hands flickering in the firelight. Closes her eyes. When he enters her, the Princess turns herself into a plum blossom. Touches his chin. Fingers his chest. Listens to him breathe.

 Alternate Ending: Southern Kingdom 

Her father arrives at dusk. Rides through an orchard for the first time, the castle coated in sun-gold. Suddenly thinks he understands his daughter more. Meets his three sun-brightened granddaughters the next morning at breakfast. Eats a pear for the first time. Unwraps a satchel of furs. Hands each girl a glowing snowball. They touch the cold spheres. Glisten in the heat.

Alternate Ending: Winterland

She teaches her husband to ski. Harness wild reindeer. Talk to arctic foxes. They have sex on piles of bearskins in her childhood room. Candles flicker madly. Afterward, they lay on the damp fur. Recall the early years when they had to make love blindly, arms draped over soft chests, thighs cool. Later that night, their youngest tiptoes in to sleep between them. A bad dream about a white bear. Endless winter. A princess with no name.

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 Jessica Hudson is a graduate teaching assistant working on her Creative Writing MFA at Northern Michigan University. She is an associate editor for Passages North. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Fractured Lit, and perhappened mag, among others.

FEMALES OF THE SPECIES — JARED POVANDA

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I shove my husband’s clothes in boxes. The sweatshirts still smell of his cologne. I press one to my face, and I suddenly want to be the rain. The sweatshirt goes in the box. A Hawaiian button-down—orange orchids on a field of navy. Flamingo swim trunks. Glossy ties. It’s too cold for rain. I stand with a groan. My back hurts. I try to pinpoint when that started while walking to the kitchen. Last year? The year before last? A long time and no time at all. 
           Our son won’t stop painting doors. There are doors tacked everywhere. Yawnings opened to darkness, blueness, starness, thingness. Indistinct and almost animal. Almost light. Almost vanishing. I fill a small pot with water. I bring the water to boil. I steep a teabag in the boiling water. My husband hated tea. Hands braced on the edges of the counter, my palms are soft poetry unfolded one too many times. Outside the window, a Northern cardinal lights upon a telephone pole. He cocks his tiny head. Flashes a bright wing. I know what they say about cardinals and the departed, but I don’t believe them. I don’t believe the doors will take our son anywhere. I don’t believe he will escape his teenage years with healthy coping mechanisms, and I wonder what to do about it. Snow swallows the cardinal as I watch him watch me. The kitchen is silent, and I am surrounded by dead ends. My husband’s clothes pile in boxes upstairs. When we buried him, our son turned to me, face stung with tears, and said, Mom, I can’t do this. Maybe I should have said we have to be brave, he wouldn’t want to see us like this, everything will be fine, but I toed the dirt and said I couldn’t do it either. 
            Our son is somewhere right now. With his friends? Having sex? Getting high? Reading books and resting by a bonfire on the lakeshore? I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t breathe. The chair is in my hands, and then it’s through the window, a better metaphor for death than the cardinal. Cold blasts me. Snow in my hair, in my mouth. There’s glass everywhere. I’ll have to sweep before our son gets home. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll sleep on a bed of glass in this castle of doors. Turn my hands to rainfall to see if miracles exist between the drops. Is red the metaphor or is it the bird? Not all cardinals are red. Only the males. Only the females of the species are forgotten. Left behind. I curl on the kitchen floor. A sliver of glass cuts ear-adjacent. I let it pierce, open, wondering what will step from me into the dark. 

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Jared Povanda is an internationally published writer and freelance editor from upstate New York. His work can be found in Pidgeonholes, Maudlin House, Ellipsis Zine, Bending Genres, and Hobart, among others. Find him @JaredPovanda and jaredpovandawriting.wordpress.com.

BLUE RABBITS — MONIQUE QUINTANA

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The white spot leaps through the grain as we eat on the terrace, overlooking the knots of trees. This night, the pale older woman made us salmon trapped from the stream, the butter warm in our mouth, the meat of it pinked and new. This is her house, and we are her guests. My love has a red blanket draped over his shoulders. His eyes are like black rabbits caught in a cage. He told me once that he believed that he and I lived below chinampas in another life. We had many children that revered the maíz. We learned to irrigate the land, with birds bleating in the air the same way that lambs do. That woman who cooked our meal, she is the kindest woman person we have met this week. This is her house, and we are her guests. We can hear faintly humming off in the distance. We can smell the soap that she runs over her body in hot water. We can see her floating in her tub, so blue and radiant. We have not been treated well in the city, the city underneath the trees. Our brown skin shimmers in the lights, and they can see it. They detest the curve of our eyes, the resistance to the way they mangle our surnames in their mouths, a linguistic butchery. They eye our clothes, our oversized jackets with the patterns of our people. My love had to stop me from telling off the cashier at the airport after she gushed over the other people in the shop but barely looked in our direction. They see us. I know that they can see us, I tell him. He hooks his arm in mine, he hums softly, and I can smell his skin as if it's burning. He drums his fingers on the wheel of our rental car while he drives us to the older woman's property. She lets us pay her with our credit card, swiping it on a machine, leaning over. She smells like cold flowers like her skin is made from the lake. We stay in a rectangular tent overlooking the water, sleeping in a bed of gold, my love's cold mouth on my sharp coat buttons, on my throat, the honey and sugar rising in the air from the pale woman's kitchen. When she calls us up to the house for dinner, she tells us about each piece of food that she has prepared for us. There are blessings in all the things that we give, but more in the things that we take. She says she has made these things in the old way, in the form of her ancestors. Looking out, there are tall blades of grain, and I know, my love and I are far from our ancestral land, the grain, tall and bright, the trees hung over in blue, deeply, the white spot leaping, nearer and nearer and nearer to us still. 

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Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and the author of the novella Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her short works have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and the Pushcart Prize. She has also been awarded artist fellowships to Yaddo, The Mineral School, Sundress Academy of the Arts, the Community of Writers, and the Open Mouth Poetry Retreat. She is a contributor at Luna Luna Magazine, and you can find her at moniquequintana.com.