FALL 2013

It doesn’t feel real that I lived in Cairo, but the evidence is scattered around my apartment. It sits on my bookshelf, hangs on the wall in a green frame. There are digital files of photos I don’t look at. But they are there, and the man who saved my life lives one town away whether or not we speak.

Several years ago I received a beautiful backgammon board as a parting gift. Inlaid with mother of pearl, the white spaces alternate with thick black enamel in geometric patterns like tiles in a mosque. We played on it before I knew it was mine. The game pieces are dime-sized tokens of smooth wood. They made satisfying clacks as we navigated them around the board until I lost, again.

“Damn,” I would curse under my breath, as we downed the last of our foreign beer and takeout koshary from Felfela.

My American boyfriend would sit back and laugh. He was tall, and smart, and he spoke beautiful Arabic. He lived with a roommate on the sixth floor of a dusty gray building off Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Ahmed, one of the doormen, had a problem with our unwed state and wouldn’t let me in the building. The other’s morals could be bent in exchange for baksheesh, either alcohol or a wad of Egyptian pounds.
One night Sam snuck me in while Ahmed slept on a cot beside the stairs. I waited outside the building while Sam scouted.

“Coast is clear,” he said with a bright grin. “But you’re gonna need to take off your shoes.”

I climbed the stairs in panic mode, clutching my heels in a sweaty palm.

“What kind of reporter are you?” I demanded back in his apartment. “That you didn’t notice your lease had a no ladies clause?”

“One of us didn’t come here for dates.”

“Hey! You asked me out.”

“Yeah but you were asking for it.”

“Perv,” I said, but this city did feel easier with a man of intimidating height around.

We’d met at After Eight, one of few clubs that didn’t close for Ramadan. Expat camaraderie ran high and I’d worn a sleeveless dress under my jacket, which yes, in Cairo, is asking for it.

From my first week in Cairo we’d been sitting in plastic chairs at a local café drinking sweetened Turkish coffee or hibiscus juice, puffing on a flavored water pipe, where I would lose more rounds of backgammon. Our dating had happened so quickly it felt like my Cairo life. Eat falafel. Smoke shisha. Go to Sam’s. I let him handle any necessary conversation. Teshrubi eh? A server might smile in my direction, but Sam would step in to help. He knew I was afraid. Afraid to draw attention to myself. Afraid of what I’d do when he left.

I hugged his gift to my chest and helped him to a cab for his flight back to the states.

“Take care.” He said, and that was it.

December nights in the city were still warm, but I was dressed in heavy loose layers, an attempt at camouflage. I ducked into my own cab and directed the driver in curt Egyptian Arabic to New Cairo, my expensive verdant campus in the middle of the desert. Our walled and lonely oasis was safe, but not much else. New Cairo had been envisioned as a solution to Cairo’s crowding, but for now only skeletons of houses and duplexes lined imagined cul-de-sacs. Men in traditional robes would dangle their legs off the sides of balconies and chain smoke for days. Development was stagnant.

The campus rose out of the desert like an eerie shrine in a Hayao Miyazaki movie. A system of fountains kept us cool during the daytime, but we were exposed to the nighttime’s chills. A Texan friend and I would sneak out of the residence to watch episodes of the X-Files on the roof of a lecture hall, the desert laid out before us like an endless frozen ocean. We would pull our wicker chairs close and try to hear our laptops over the wind without disturbing campus security from their naps. Unofficial policy frowned on students of the opposite gender huddling for warmth on rooftops, but no one else shared our love of 90s conspiracy theories; the lounge was 24/7 football. The fake kind, as the Texan would’ve said. The sleepy guards were hardly intimidating. The only building off-campus within walking distance was a Chili’s in an unfinished mall that served shisha until 3:00 A.M. Our entertainment options were limited and our work load was light.

There were two dorms, one for men and one for women, with a small open-air living room in between where we were allowed to interact. The suites were organized with four single occupancy bedrooms, two bathrooms and a shared kitchenette. Maids came to clean them regularly. Grime and sand accumulated quickly on the tile floors. The only residents were foreigners and a handful of Egyptians from outside Cairo. Schoolwork was painfully easy. We had plenty of time to flee to the European style beaches at Dahab, Herghada and Sharm el Sheik. One of the first trips organized for students in the Arab Language Institute was a David Guetta concert on the Sinai Peninsula. AUC presented Egyptian culture in its most Photoshopped light, but not even all the Armani sunglasses on campus could hide the inequality and tension that escalated in the months leading up to the Arab Spring.

My first weekend away some Egyptian classmates invited Mandolin, a study abroad student, and me to Marina 5 on the Mediterranean. We lounged under a cabana while the host’s butler served us oysters, Stellas and hash. The neighborhood had mass-produced artificiality to it, trying hard to mimic the other side of the Mediterranean. I was surprised to see how quickly the desert turned into ocean, not buffered by vegetation.

On the way back to the city my friend Mischa’s car got a flat tire. The Alexandria (or “Alex”) highway’s three-lane current rushed past us like rapids. Lanes were only painted on Egyptian roads for show. There wasn’t any consensus about whether you’re supposed to drive on top of the white dashes or in between them. The roads were either completely gridlocked or a recreation of Frogger. After the tire was replaced, our student caravan pulled back into the stream of traffic. We were nearly back on campus when Mischa asked if we wanted to see real Egyptian driving, teasing Mandolin and me for our queasy expressions. He didn’t wait for an answer to begin accelerating. We flew across the smooth pavement, approaching two trucks that began drifting in towards the center lane.

“Shit,” Mischa floored it, recognizing we would not be able to break in time, or swerve around. We sliced in between the two trucks. The rear view mirrors smashed off with a metallic tear and thudded off the roof of the car.

He shrugged. “That was nothing.”

Egypt was thrilling. Because every drive felt like a car chase. Because I was speaking a new language. Because I was living in beautiful Cairo, spending weekends at my new friends’ beach houses. Later this would change. In one of many stunning displays of injustice an AUC student would be fined about 15 USD for driving his BMW into a crowd of pedestrians, killing twelve. Later my friend would be hit by a cab in a hit and run and spend months in a wheelchair with two broken legs. Later I would be assaulted and ignored by the police like others before me.

AUC began to feel like a playground for rich young Cairenes. Most students were chauffeured from their family homes and spent the day in clusters smoking and drinking iced coffees from Cilantro, Egypt’s answer to Starbucks with European portions. Only half the women students on campus wore hijabs. The Spanish style was most common, leaving the neck exposed, unlike in downtown Cairo, where women were commonly cloaked in black abayas and niqabs, if they were leaving home at all.

“Keep an eye on the veiled girls,” an Egyptian girlfriend remarked. “They get less and less modest each year. At the beginning of the year ankle-length A-line skirts were a common sight, then straight denim skirts until they were replaced by above the knee tunics with leggings.

A friend from Riyadh, Sara, panicked every time her father was visiting, “No one mentions that I’m not wearing the veil. It’s worse than awkward.” AUC was not real Cairo. AUC was a rumschpringe. Sara and I signed up for all the touristy Cairo events together. We have pictures together on Nile felucca rides, astride underfed horses at the pyramids, outside the mosque Al-Azhar.

Most of the other residents in the dorms were older study abroad students. My roommates came from Cyprus, from Germany and one from Japan. The only two other American freshman had Egyptian family. “Are you seriously planning on spending four years here?” Everyone I met asked.

“Well I was until I got here,” I would joke.

#

“I’m going to Egypt,” I announced to my mother and college counselor in September 2009, my senior year of high school.

“No, you’re not,” my mother said.

“How about Ohio?” My college counselor contributed.

“Not willingly,” I said. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to go to Egypt. Egyptian university seemed like a good compromise.

Excellent Google skills had brought me to advertisements for the American University in Cairo’s brand new campus. It was perfect. I was going to learn Arabic, and I would bypass all the first-time away from home nonsense. No falling down drunk through small town USA. I was moving to Arabia, were everything would be a fun adventure.

That’s right. Where other people saw religious conflict and safety issues, I saw “fun” and “adventure.” Without my parents knowledge I began completing the application. I had sent off the requisite negative HIV test, my recommendations. The only thing left was a short essay.

Then my parents found it.

“No, no, no, no, no,” my mother said. “You are not going there.”

I accepted defeat and left my application incomplete. In March I received a thin cream-colored envelope telling me I was in. I hadn’t even written my essay and they were offering me a hefty scholarship. I concentrated my 18 years of whining expertise into just “a year or two” in Egypt. Like a gap year. Only with credit. And it worked, though in the end I would spend only a semester in the Nile Delta.

#

I said goodbye to my parents at the airport.

“It’s not too late to stay. You don’t have to go,” my mother begged.

“I’m good,” I rolled my eyes and ducked into security.

#

I would take a campus shuttle to Sam’s place after school and walk the two longest blocks in the world to his place. I wished he would meet me at the bus stop, but I didn’t want to concede my weakness. It was two blocks. Two blocks. Things don’t go wrong in broad daylight in Wust El-Balad.

Surprising no one but myself my fearlessness faded each time I left campus. Constant harassment shredded my sanity. I was stalked by two men and got lost trying to get away from them before a stranger distracted them and I hailed a cab to flee to Sam’s.

“What took you so long?”

“I got lost.”

He laughed. I wanted to cry.

I didn’t go to Cairo to live like a foreigner, but that was the only world open to me if I wanted to be safe. I was jealous of my boyfriend, that he would be welcomed to strangers’ weddings and parties. Asked to talk politics with the café regulars. I would have my ass, my chest grabbed by sneering men, walking two blocks by myself.

It was the Texan, not my boyfriend, who saved me in Alexandria. My boyfriend texted me on my cheapo drug dealer phone to tell me he’d gotten an assignment last minute.

“What are you guys doing tonight? Last chance to join me for a little road trip!” I interrogated a table of my friends at lunch as they downed shawerma.

“We went to Alex last weekend.” Maja supplied. “Come to Dahab! We’re gonna do yoga with the hippies and bask in the sunshine.”

“Spoiler alert: the Alexandria Library is super depressing. You don’t need to go,” Mo said.

“I’ll go,” the Texan said.

“Hooray! Can you ask your classes and see if anyone else wants to go?”

The Texan was a grad student on a Boren scholarship from the Department of Defense. We sat next to each other on the train didn’t notice the two-hour delay, while Stephen and Naz from the Texan’s Arabic class suffered behind us.

He held a crumbling copy of Robert Jordan’s “The Eye of the World” but didn’t open it.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sci-Fi.”

“Nerd.”

“I have a degree in Math.”

“Wow.”

“But I play basketball.”

He did have the body for it. “I don’t think you can be redeemed.”

“You’re the one who never leaves the dorms.”

“I do! My boyfriend lives in the city.”

“Ahh. Well maybe I’ll let you borrow the book. I bet you can be converted.”

“I do love me some George R. R. Martin.”

“So it’s not a lost cause.”

“Have you ever watched the X-files?”

“Yes.”

“I have every season on my computer.”

“Ha ha. I’d stay in my room too then.”

“I don’t hide in my room. I have a boyfriend.”

“Allegedly.”

We dropped our bags at the New Capri hotel and left to wander the corniche and sip sobia in wicker chairs before a glittering Mediterranean.

“If you make me sit with her again, I will strangle you two,” Stephen whispered as Naz giggled with a guy named Mahmoud she seemed to know from Cairo.

“I’m the one who has to room with her,” I said. The Texan gave me a look. “He invited her.”

“Why did you invite her?” Stephen asked.

“I invited the class. Because Miss Anna here asked me too.”

“I think she likes you,” I said, admiring her healthy layers of brunette frizz.

We transferred the party to our hotel, laughing as we climbed the stairs. I nodded a greeting towards two somber men behind the desk. Naz and my room had a broad balcony overlooking the sea. The Texan had stocked up on Auld Stag at Drinkies and we passed the bottle around for a couple hours, cramped together in chairs we pulled out from both of our rooms.

“That’s not what drone use is about,” Naz argued with the Texan about defense policy I understood less and less with each swallow.

“Where did you guys wanna go tomorrow?” Stephen interrupted.

“The catacombs! I have a list in my guide book,” I realized I was talking a little too loudly. I could feel the Texan’s leg against mine and a blush creeping into my cheeks. “We should probably call it a night.”

“Goodnight boys,” Naz’s voice sounded like a constant whine.

“See you in the morning.”

We left the chairs on the balcony. The door shut with a soft click behind the guys as Naz and I changed into pajamas. I collapsed in the bed closest to the door, and felt my brain pulse against my skull. Ugh.

“G’night,” I said as my head swirled.

“You are probably gonna have to shake me awake in the morning.” She groaned.

“Hah. Don’t worry. I have an obnoxious alarm. Get pumped for sightseeing!”

The digital clock glowed a green 4:17 and I feel asleep.

I’d had nightmares where I’d found myself paralyzed before an approaching monster. Dinosaurs. Burglars. It took me too long to realize that the heavy shape on top of me was not a dream. There was something there, someone there. I felt his knees against my legs through the blankets. And saw someone else standing by the door. Don’t move, don’t move and they won’t notice you’re here. I thought and lay petrified, unable to scream, until I realized I was the reason they were there. I gasped. The form thrust a hand over my mouth and I screamed—choked out a pathetic sound and bit down on his hand. He grunted and the other form moved closer.

“Naz, run, help!” I shrieked and tried to push him away, but I couldn’t raise my knees and my one free arm wasn’t strong enough. “Help, help, help!”

The form by the door slipped out of the room into a flash of light that illuminated the receptionist’s face above me. “Help, help, help,” I choked against his fat hand, and used my free arm to bang at the wall. I heard a scream beside me and thumps as Naz began to bang at the wall.

“Stephen! Jake! Help!” I heard her rasp.

“Anna? Anna!” The Texan was the first to rush in. He grabbed the receptionist by his collar and yanked him backwards off the bed so that the receptionist fell towards him and they both tumbled to the ground.

The receptionist got to his feet, tripping over his unbuttoned pants. The Texan moved to follow him.

“Jake, Jake, help,” I sobbed. He came to the bed and put his arms around me.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Naz came over and stroked my hair, “Oh my god. You’re okay. Thank god.”
Stephen entered the room panting. “I…lost…him…upstairs…”

“Nothing happened. Nothing happened,” I muttered for myself and the others. “Nothing happened.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Jake held me tighter. The clocked glowed 5:46.

“I want to be asleep,” I said.

“We’ll stay in here. Stephen can you get our blankets?”

“Can you stay with me?” I held onto Jake.

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes and Stephen came back into the room and fluffed up his comforters on the floor. Naz had gone back to her bed. After a few minutes I felt Jake’s arms relax around me. I stayed awake until my phone went off at 8:00. Jake was lying beside me in his boxers. I was braless, in booty shorts.

“You’re okay,” he whispered, too quiet for Stephen or Naz to hear.

#

“Nothing happened,” I explained to Sam when I told him the story.

“Nothing happened,” he agreed.

#

What happened was we packed our bags and walked down to the lobby, the Texan holding on to me.

“He was in the room.” I spotted the smaller of the two forms behind the desk as we came down the stairs.

“Are you sure? I didn’t see him.”

“He was in the room.”

“Fuck. Stephen go ask him some sightseeing questions while we get the cops.”

Naz, the Texan and I walked out of the building. We had passed a police station only a few blocks away the night before, but had to circle around several times before we found it. An officer squatted out front, smoking a cigarette.

“We need help,” Naz was the closest to fluent. “Two men broke into our hotel room. They tried to hurt her.” She pointed to me.

“Okay,” he said and got to his feet. “Where are you staying?”

“New Capri.”

He stubbed out his cigarette and opened the door of the station to shout something.

“Yalla,” he started off.

Stephen was there at the desk with his back to us as we entered. The receptionist blanched. Stephen kept talking, pointing to something in a pocket language guide.

“Him,” I told the police officer. We approached.

The officer began to speak in rapid grunts I didn’t follow. The receptionist feigned shock.

“He says he wasn’t in the room. He says he heard a lot of noise.”

“He was in the room.”

They spoke again. “He was in the fucking room,” I yelled at the officer. “This piece of shit and his fat friend broke into my room.”

“That language is not necessary. He says he was not in the room. You can come to the station and file a report.”

“I don’t want to go to the station. You need to take him to the station.” I looked at Jake.

“We can go to the embassy in Cairo. It might be better to go through them.” This scene is the worst to remember. My friends looking at me as if they weren’t sure he had been in the room. The cop looking at me with the same blank gaze as the man behind the desk. The man who stood in my doorway while his friend climbed on top of a sleeping girl.

My body didn’t feel big enough to contain the hate pulsing through my blood. “Fine. Let’s go.”

#

“This isn’t a fun adventure,” I told Jake on the train.
He squeezed my hand, “I know.”

#

U wanna watch some Xfiles? Jake texted me. U shouldn’t b by urself.

It seemed like a good idea, a distraction from the anger festering under my skin. We started spending nights together, picking out movies for each other. The chair arms formed a thin barrier for wind to slice through. I still went to Sam’s on Thursdays and Mondays.

One night in December after we’d watched Scully and Mulder track down a liver eating immortal, Jake sighed and shut the computer abruptly.

“Okay, no smoking man, but still a good episode—”

“Anna,” he paused. “Will you come with me to Beirut? I think—”

“I can’t.”

“Then we need to stop doing this.”

“I can’t.”

He pulled me out of my chair, “Please. I want to be with you. Why are you doing this if you don’t?”

I didn’t have an answer so he tugged me closer and put his mouth on mine.

A few days later, I left with Sam for Amman. He was going back home to New York on the 22. Jake had left by the time we got back.

#

I spent my last two days in my new apartment on Maadi’s Road No. 9. It was beautiful and bright and all I could think was how will I come back here? One month later, the school closed indefinitely and I didn’t have to. I transferred back to the states where I can almost feel safe alone. My only reminders of fear the gifts from those who kept me safe: a worn copy of “The Eye of the World,” and a backgammon board I can hold my own on.

Danger Panzer’s work has been featured in Word Riot, Punchnel’s, The Millerton News, Marco Polo Arts magazine and others.

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I watch Molly’s gaze lift to the bowling alley’s stained ceiling tiles, eyes edging wider beneath shimmering blonde bangs, peach-glossed lips parting as if she is about to lick them, but she doesn’t. She only blinks and sees me staring. With an apologetic grin she returns her attention to the orange-swirled ball cradled atop her hip, its hard curve pressing into her softer one. That reminds me how I confused intersection of circles with union in my freshman Analytic Geometry quiz. For a heartbeat there is silence.

Her beauty is in her face, the marmoreal smoothness of her skin, the radiant gleam of translucent blue eyes, a symmetric smile. Flesh. Why is my instinct to focus on flesh? Surely hers is not the sort of beauty age will steal. There’s something deeper to it, something I am too dense to interpret. I think of the soft yielding of our kiss last night, her mouth parting, her sharp tongue teasing then reproaching mine. Not so fast. She ducked inside, putting the screen door between us. “See you tomorrow?” I said. She nodded once, eyes flitting from mine. The door clicked closed, leaving me to savor an afterimage of hair silvered by the moon’s light, and the vanilla sweetness of her body spray.

A clattering bang resounds from three lanes away. I watch the bowler, a chunky guy in a Green Bay Packer shirt walk back to the scorer’s table, doing his best not to smile. The air smells faintly of beer, the floor next to our lane sticky where the some frat guys got sloppy with their pitcher, but the lanes themselves glisten, reflecting the bright blue paint above the pinsetters.

Molly blinks again, almost looking up. Her fingers seek the finger holes, caressing their edges as if they are craters to be explored, craters inhabited by darkness.

I hoped bowling would put her at ease. A public place, I figured, a basically unromantic activity with lots of noise. That ought to diminish any thoughts of date rape or uncomfortable advances. She never seems at ease with me, never lets down her guard. How do I break through? How do I show her this is more than skin deep?

She starts her stutter-step toward the pins, ball swinging an imperfect arc beside her. I catch myself staring at her ass, the fabric of her white pants pulling taut, releasing. My pulse thuds and retreats. I glimpse us rolling in the gutter, my darker flesh pressed to hers, legs entangling while the orange ball rumbles past.

Is this more than skin deep? Am I capable of more than lust? I fidget, wishing for a cigarette. I quit smoking last week, long enough to know I’m serious, but not long enough for the nicotine stain to fade. It’s hard to change who you are in a week or even a month, but people do it all the time. Sometimes in a single instant lives are changed forever. At least that’s what I remember the M.A.D.D. speaker telling us from the auditorium stage the last week of high school. I remember her eyes glittering like marbles in the light illuminating her podium. The rest of the room was dark in anticipation of a slide show that never quite got untracked; some technical glitch or other. We ended up hearing about mangled bodies rather than seeing them, and going back to homeroom to finish out the morning.

When the ball finally reaches pins the strike looks promising at first, but quickly deflects, leaving four standing. This girl is different, I tell myself as she turns and slide-shuffles back to the ball carousel, eyes drifting skyward once again.

When she returns from her second ball — leaving two of four pins standing as the sweep descends — I stand reluctantly. She presses past, arm brushing mine. Is she playing me? Is some frustrated boyfriend watching from the snack counter? But when I look into her eyes, that radiant blueness of her gaze, I cannot believe betrayal. She is pure. It must be me who is flawed.

Her ball bumps mine, bringing to mind those click-clack balls my teacher in third grade took such pride in. But they were silver, not black and orange. Why should I think of that now? Clack and click, click and clack, back and forth, forth and back, trying so hard for union, never managing more than momentary intersection.

She gazes into my face, waiting. It seems every girl I date does this at some point; I’ve yet to solve the riddle. With Molly even this ritual seems different, her gaze quietly open rather than accusing. She makes me want to talk, not scream.

“Look,” I say, gulping my nervousness, “I don’t know what’s going on here, you know, between us or whatever. I’m sorry I tongue-kissed you last night, if that’s it.”

She smiles. “No, that was nice.”

Then what? “If, well, you know, if you’ve never been with a guy, I mean that’s okay. I–”

“No. It’s not that.” Her eyes drift, following a mote floating upward through the fluorescent lighting. If I can’t even hold her attention now, what hope is there?

“Or if some dude treated you bad, you know? I’m not like that. Tell me his name and I’ll break his legs or whatever.”

She laughs at that, an unscripted giggle that lights my emotions.

“There’s going to be an eclipse tonight,” she says. “I was hoping…”

“What?” Anything, my thoughts whisper.

“Would you like to see it? There’s a hilltop gazebo over by Harmon Hall. I thought maybe we could go there and watch.”

“Sure. Why not?”

The last three frames fly by. I don’t even recall what my score was.

#

We stroll, hand-in-hand, beneath a full moon. In its light she seems weightless; her smile is a comet. I watch her lips as she talks, teeth so white they leave afterimages. I want to kiss her. I lean toward her, but she leans away, not rudely; enough to send a message.

She stops abruptly. “Would you really break his legs?”

I search her face for laughter. She seems serious, or almost so.

“Sure. I mean… yeah. If he hurt you.” Our eyes meet head-on, deflect. I try to lighten the mood. “Unless he’s, like, six-ten or something.”

She laughs, the moment shattered, having served its purpose. I feel like a rock climber scaling a sheer cliff, one more pinion planted, one more foothold made. She squeezes my hand and we continue.

“Would you break your own legs for me?”

“What?” It’s my turn to stop abruptly.

“If you hurt me,” she says. “Say you hook up with someone else, break my heart. Would you shatter your own kneecaps to protect me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“My last boyfriend told me I was beautiful.”

“You are.”

“He said he loved me.”

I do, I think impulsively. It’s too early for that.

“When I broke up with him, his love turned to hatred. You know? He started spreading gossip behind my back, turning my friends against me. It got ugly.”

I think of my high school girlfriend telling me on the phone that we should date other people in college, open ourselves to the new experience, my mind substituting ‘my’ every time she said ‘our’. Emotions roiled, smoky and dark like cigarette smoke held deep in my lungs, leaking only slowly through my nostrils. I hated her in that moment between comprehending her words and my tongue managing,”Sure,” into the mouthpiece. “I understand.” It had only lasted the night. I could not imagine hating her the next day. Whenever we passed in the halls that final week we smiled, we touched, but we never again connected.

“How could he love me one second and hate me the next?” Molly says, voice lower than usual. “That’s not love, is it?”

“Did you love him?” Jealousy colors me long enough to make me squirm. A silly impulse. Everyone has a past.

Molly’s forehead creases, opens, creases again.

“I wanted him to love me. Is that what love is? Is that it?” She glances into the night sky. “I used to daydream about living on the moon. You can jump into the sky whenever you choose, but there’s still enough gravity to bring you back down if you want. It’s not like Earth.”

I look into Molly’s eyes. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Cross your heart?” Her face is unreadable, but I see a new softness in her gaze. It makes me smile.

“I like my kneecaps too much.”

She giggles and pulls my hand closer, nearly touching her hip. I feel like I could kiss her now, but I don’t. That’s not the point.

She tugs me into motion. We walk without speaking. There was a time when that would not have been possible, when I felt a nervous impulse to fill every silence, but I feel comfortable with Molly. Even if she’s a little strange. My father used to call my friend, Eric, eccentric when he ate dinner over or spent the night. I’ve always liked the flavor of that word.

By the time we reach the gazebo, there are others there, singles and doubles, people with telescopes awash in silvery light.

We stand silently, watching the moon give way to blackness, two circles intersecting, one bright, one dark. I watch Molly vanish with it, her silvered hair, unblemished skin, her over-whitened teeth… her perfect ass.

And, suddenly, I get it, as if the night has fluoresced, as if a spotlight has shined down upon my sleeping mind. Click and clack, clack and click. My arm slips around her shoulders, but it is not her flesh I feel. Emotion rises through me, verging on tears. Maybe I’m eccentric too. Maybe.

I watch her watching, and smile.

Stephen Ramey’s work has appeared in various places, including Microliterature and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

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i

“Sorry, but quite frankly you don’t have a snowball’s chance,” said Shelton, his lawyer. Shelton had advised Henry and his wife five years before on the sale of their home in Crystal Springs and their subsequent purchase of their downtown condominium overlooking the lake. But he also had considerable experience dealing with commercial real estate developers and municipal zoning officials, so his counsel was not to be taken lightly. “A snowball’s chance in hell, that is. I can draw you up a blue-ribbon petition, and you could collect signatures from every householder within a quarter-mile radius. I can draft appeals to the Zoning Board and to Historic Preservation, too. But the Bucik Brothers are about as connected as you can get in this town without being family—no, wait, there’s a nephew married to His Honor’s sister-in-law’s daughter, but that’s inconsequential given that the Bucik Brothers developed City Front Homes, financed Harrison Place, and are major equity partners in the construction of the new Convention Forum. Besides, their current interest in Lot 24 is the core of City Hall’s master plan to attract 20,000 new residents to center city, and do you have any idea of what that translates to in annual property tax dollars, over and beyond the sales tax revenues from the increase in transactions and consumption? Dear God, they even got the city to turn its back on the demolition of the Old Mercantile Building, Tiffany dome and all, despite the opposition of the Preservation Council, the City Beautiful League, and the Association of Architectural Historians, and you think you’re going to stop them from building the Bucik Tower simply because you want to keep your unobstructed view of the lake? Besides, they’ve always coveted your block, and they would’ve had it, too, if your condo board and the Preservation Council hadn’t made an end run around the city and gone direct to the Feds. And, believe me, that won’t happen again.”

“One small victory for our side,” said Henry.

“Right, and don’t think the Bucik Brothers have forgotten either! Listen, I’ll be happy to spend a couple of $250-per-hour hours researching your options, but frankly, and now I’m speaking against my own best interests, it would be a waste of your hard-earned retirement savings, because even if you had a leg to stand on, which I’m pretty sure you don’t, the Bucik Brothers would bury you, level you quicker than a flea-bitten flophouse.”

Of course, Shelton was right. But Henry was not yet ready to admit defeat, and since municipal regulations and the zoning code would provide no relief, he decided to seek extra-legal support and visit Madame Tamara.

Admittedly, this was an extreme measure, but he regretted not having resorted to extreme measures when faced with hopeless cases before, in particular when his wife was dying of ovarian cancer. Angela had always said that her grandmother—born in Bukovina and said to be a hundred at the time of her death—swore by the “cures and curses of the gypsies,” and during Angela’s last days, as Henry sat by her bedside holding her hand, he was certain that he had heard her whisper once or twice, “the gypsies, the gypsies.” He doubted that Angela had Madame Tamara in mind or that she thought any good might come from a visit, but he regretted not having then sought her out–or, at least, another of her kind–if only to reassure himself that he’d done everything in his power to save her. Now he would leave no regrets behind, although this time he intended to visit Madame Tamara not for a cure but for a curse.

ii

A hand, with stars trailing behind it and an extended finger pointing upward, directed him to the second floor where he could have his palm read, his spirit cleansed, or his body massaged. Madame Tamara shared her building with an adult bookshop, a discount liquor store, and a shop selling pizza by the slice, all the final vestige of the ramshackle district into which the neighborhood had sunk before the abandoned warehouses and tenements had been transformed into condominiums and lofts, before the sales sheds and derricks sprouted in every corner parking lot.

A dark, narrow staircase led to a dark, narrow corridor, and Henry found himself under the observation of a woman in a bathrobe leaning against a doorjamb as he approached Madame Tamara’s office at the far end of the hall. Another young woman was sitting behind the desk in the reception foyer of the office, and if it weren’t for the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and the sagging skin beneath her deep-set eyes, Henry would have assumed she was hardly twenty. Her pale complexion led him to doubt that gypsy blood coursed through her veins, although she was wearing a multi-colored peasant blouse, sufficiently unbuttoned to expose some cleavage and sheer enough to reveal that there was no bra underneath.

“Sit down and lend me your palm,” she said as soon as he entered.

“I’m not interested in having my fortune read,” said Henry.

“Maybe not read, but improved, and your immediate love problems solved, if you so choose. You have been referred here, haven’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, give me your hand, anyway,” and this time, after sitting down across from her, he did.

“Oh, yes,” she said, stroking his palm lightly with the tips of her fingers, “I foresee all your tensions going away. And for just a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars!” he exclaimed, quickly pulling his hand away. “For what?’

“To have your tensions removed. Or your love problems solved.”

“I’m not here for that!”

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, then, if you’re not here for that, just what are you here for?”

“A curse,” he said. “A gypsy’s curse. Are you a gypsy?”

“I’ll get Madame Tamara,” she said and rose from her chair.

A moment later, a heavy-set woman, also wearing a peasant blouse, replaced her at the desk. Henry would have preferred, in addition, a colorful scarf wrapped around her temples, gold rings dangling from her ears, and costume jewelry up and down both arms, but she did have the requisite bronzed complexion and burning black eyes.

“Fifty dollars,” she said. “Fifty dollars for a gypsy’s curse.”

He reflected for a moment and agreed to her price.

“And who’s the unfortunate target of your wrath?”

“Not who, but what. I want you to curse a building site, one that may soon be under development.”

“No problem,” she said, and she handed him a notepad and a fountain pen. “The address, please.”

He wrote down the address and the name of the future development and drew a crude map of the site.

“Ah,” she said, “The Bucik Brothers. This won’t be the first,” and then she left him alone for a few minutes, returning with a candle and a small plastic vial, the remnants of a prescription label still attached to its surface. After lighting the candle, she stripped the page with its address from the pad, rolled it into a cone, mumbled a few words into the open end, and touched its point to the flame. Once it caught fire, she dropped it into an ashtray, and then after mumbling a few more inaudible words, she poured the cinders into the vial and stuffed it between her breasts. “It’ll stay nice and warm there,” she said, “like an egg in an incubator, and after forty-eight hours, your curse will be hatched. That’ll be fifty dollars, please. Cash.”

He counted out her fee in fives and tens.

“If you should change your mind,” she said, “and wish the curse to be removed, it will cost you another fifty dollars. But don’t wait too long. After forty-eight hours, it’ll be too late. Here’s my business card. There’s an emergency number there where I can be reached night and day.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Henry.

“Think about it. Curses often have unforeseen consequences. And sometimes they bite back, and harder than you’d expect.”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said, leaving his payment and the card behind on the desk.

But he hadn’t really thought deeply enough about it. Otherwise, he would have been more explicit. A simple bankruptcy, a surge in interest rates, a failure of one of the Bucik Brothers’ riskier ventures, anything that would prevent the obstruction of a view he and his wife, when she was alive, had awakened to every morning since he had retired and moved back to the city. Certainly, he didn’t want to cause anyone physical harm, and, of course, even if he had heard about it, he would not have felt responsible for the freak accident—the bouncing cinder block that broke the leg of a worker–on that first day of demolition. Nor was anyone at fault for the scores of falls and mishaps, as well as the three fatalities, that plagued the site during construction. Spot inspections and investigations from the city and the Occupational and Health Administration slowed progress, but no negligence could be found on the parts of the developer, contractors, or subcontractors. A bolt of lightning, a swinging beam, a crazed pigeon, acts of God and bad luck, and it wasn’t until the Bucik Tower had become the Bucik Center, the Eighth Wonder of the World, and he learned that a newspaper columnist had suggested that the site may have once served as a mass grave for Confederate prisoners of war and therefore may have been cursed, that Henry again thought of Madame Tamara. But by then the columnist had been silenced by the threat of a lawsuit, and Henry had already been confined to his bed, from where no more than shadows could be seen.

iii

By the time the crews arrived one fall morning to demolish the vacant warehouse and the parking garage across from him, Henry had resigned himself to the inevitable. “I suppose,” he thought, “it’s a blessing Angela’s no longer here to see this,” and he recalled the pleasure she took in viewing the sun’s iridescence at dawn, and the slow white sails and sleek tour boats multiplying across the surface of the lake as the summer advanced, and the full moon trailing its silvery wake as it rose above the horizon.

“And I suppose none of that would be quite so precious,” he thought, “if we weren’t fated to lose it all some day,” and even though there was still an autumn chill in the air, he settled down on the terrace outside his bedroom, a tray of freshly baked scones and Angela’s best tea placed on the small garden table in front of him. He had resolved to take full advantage of every last day that remained.

But just as he was pouring his first cup of tea, the eastern wall of the warehouse across the street below collapsed and its roof imploded, driving a billowing cloud up from the ground. An updraft accelerated its climb, and although it became thinner as it rose to the twentieth floor, it still drew a fine, translucent veil between Henry and his view. A powdery film fell across the hot tea in his cup and black fragments of dirt speckled the butter melting on his scone.

Eventually water would be sprayed across the lot to control the dust, but still there always seemed to be a cloud, like the unexorcised phantoms of the old warehouse and parking garage, hovering above it, and there was little Henry could do to soften the pulsating racket from the jack hammers, the sledges, the rivers of brick and stone tumbling down chutes, and the roaring engines of the trucks hauling away earth and rubble and the steam shovels that had already begun to excavate even before the old walls had been flattened and the debris removed. Rivulets of yellow water flooded the streets and the gutters.

Now, to insulate himself from the dirt and the noise, he would keep the sliding doors to his terrace shut. But still he could feel the vibrations from pumps and compressors as caissons were bored and drained, and hear the muffled percussion of steel piers and sheet-piling being hammered through the sand and clay to the limestone bedrock below. Convoys of trucks—honking, braking, idling—arrived day-after-day, bearing their loads of steel beams and plates, bricks and blocks of granite, pipes and reinforcing rods, bales of cable and coils of wiring, mixing their exhaust fumes with the clouds of dust they stirred. Concrete mixers churned and steam engines chugged, it seemed, around the clock.

One morning he awoke to find what first seemed to be the huge triangular eye of a monstrous skeletal stork staring at him from above his terrace. A steel girder hung from its gigantic pointed beak, and when he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, the beak became the beam of a derrick, one of three poised at the corners of the block. By the end of the week, a tall forest of steel had been fixed into place, beams and joists running between the columns like interlocking branches.

As the girders rose upward, immense slabs of reinforced concrete were laid down, floor-by-floor. Pipes, ducts, and wire circuitry sprouted and coiled about the girders and then the joists like ivy and foliage, and teams of welders, riggers, fitters, stonecutters, electricians, plumbers, and plasterers populated the floors. Masonry stretched across the tower’s base, growing row-by-row, then sheeted with granite and marble, and above this foundation huge plates of structural glass were fixed into place.

As winter and spring turned to summer, Henry continued to avoid his terrace, but one late afternoon, as the sun was falling behind his building, the steel pillars rising like spikes beyond his twentieth floor, he ventured outside to see extended beneath him across the uppermost level, a latticework of small-gauge railway tracks, like those he and his father had spread across his basement on Christmas week. Hoppers filled with workers and artisans, lumber and tile, sheets of fiberboard and terrazzo, appliances and fixtures of every sort, trundled back and forth, as if here, too, a tiny village were being fabricated, although the glow coming from the open furnaces and forges scattered about lent to this miniature world something of the infernal.

Or perhaps this last vision was merely a dream, or something Henry had imagined, for the next day—weighed down with groceries, struggling to extract from his pocket the key to the temporary entrance in the parking garage—he suddenly became short of breath, and before he could set down his bags, he fell to the ground, unconscious.

iv

Although his father had died of a cerebral hemorrhage and there had been several strokes in his family, Henry had always been in good health. But walking over and through the wrecked sidewalks, the muddied streams, the boarded ramps and scaffolding, and the narrow plywood passageways was often difficult and slippery, and when the entrance to his building was blocked by excavations to reinforce its foundational underpinning and to replace an antiquated sewage system, even the simplest of errands required a long detour through the parking garage. Along with the disturbances next door, Henry attributed his constant headaches, his physical exhaustion, and his eventual collapse to these long dirty walks and to the noxious exhaust fumes that permeated the garage.

Whatever the cause, his doctors could not agree on the precise physical reason for the collapse or his debilitating weakness or the difficulty he had breathing when he regained consciousness. They were concerned, however, and when he was finally discharged from the hospital after weeks of inconclusive tests, he was ordered to remain in his bed until his breathing improved and he had regained enough strength to walk without assistance. Miss Morgan was hired to accompany him during the day, to see that his physical needs were met, his oxygen tank replenished, and that his medication was administered properly. Sometimes she sat by his bed and read to him.

Of course, by then the direct rays of the morning sun had been obscured by the progress of the rising Bucik Tower, and his bedroom lay in shadows almost the entire day. The hibiscus in the corner of the room, which he and Angela had transported from their porch in Crystal Springs and which had bloomed season-after-season whether placed inside or outside on the terrace, died.

From his bed, though, he could still see the open sky unobstructed, and even on an overcast day, the low, rippling cloud cover reminded him of the gray surface of the lake in winter, and sometimes the sun, setting from the other side of the building, cast a streak of orange or purple across the clouds, and the reflection from the new glass curtain wall of the Bucik Tower filled his room with a spectral light.

But one morning he awoke to find a thick, linear shadow stretching across his field of vision, as if someone had painted a black streak across the sky, and Henry asked Miss Morgan to step outside to see what it was.

“No need to step outside,” said Miss Morgan. “I already know what it is.”

“You do?”

“It’s one of the girders of the Bucik Center spanning the roof of your building.”

“The Bucik Center? I thought it was the Bucik Tower?”

“It was, until they purchased the air rights over your building and the lot on the other side, to the west. They’ve already hoisted the derricks up to the twentieth floor. Quite a sight to see, I must say.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That girder above is the first to support the bridge floor, extending over your roof, from the east to the west, and across the streets on either side. Both streets, in fact, will actually run through the Bucik Center. Otherwise, your building will be fully enclosed.”

“But that’s unheard of!”

“Not really. It’s been done before,” explained Miss Morgan, who had studied architecture before entering nursing school. “Grand Central Station in New York, about a hundred years ago, and then there’s the Gothic San Francesco in Rimini which, in the fifteenth century Alberti encased almost entirely inside the Tempio Malatestiano. Of course, that isn’t quite the same thing, and you are right in one respect. The scale of the Bucik Center will be unprecedented. One critic even called it the Eighth Wonder of the World, straddling our city block, he wrote, like the Colossus of Rhodes was said to have straddled the entrance to the Mandraki Harbor.”

“But that’s a fiction, isn’t it?” asked Henry, “A myth?”

“Sure, but the Bucik Brothers liked the idea anyway and have decided to incorporate the other Seven Wonders of the Ancient World into their structure. Very post-modern, don’t you think? Let’s see, the entrance will be designed after the Temple of Artemis, and there’ll be a Hanging Garden of Babylon on one of the setbacks. From a distance, the central structure will look something like the Great Pyramid of Giza, although topped with a navigational beam reminiscent of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. The towers to the east and to the west will be based on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, although, of course, now there’ll be two of them. I don’t know what they’re planning to do about the Olympian Statue of Zeus, though. Perhaps one of the Bucik Brothers . . . ?”

“Nobody told me anything about this!”

“You haven’t been reading your mail, then. It was all approved at a special meeting of the Board. And permission has been granted from the National Trust to run elevator banks through your building’s roof to what will be the floor above. It’ll be disruptive for a time, but it will eventually give residents here complete access to the retail concourse above, the gardens, the casino, the sky lounges, and the bird sanctuary. You’ll also be offered discounted memberships to the Bucik Center Health Club, with its gymnasia, natatoria, weight rooms, and running track. And now that the most recent investigation has been completed and construction resumed . . .”

“Investigation . . . ?”

“It was determined to be an accidental decapitation. A swinging beam. No one to blame, just like all the others.”

“The others?”

“You haven’t been reading your newspapers either, have you. There has, unfortunately, been several other fatalities on the construction site and God knows how many nasty injuries. One of the columnists even started a series on it. Something about a curse and the Confederate dead. It’s all very hush hush now.”

“No,” said Henry, remembering, “not the Confederate dead. The gypsies, the gypsies.”

“What’s that?” asked Miss Morgan, but Henry had already turned away to again concentrate on his breathing.

Before long the orange-purplish haze that had filtered into his room from the sunsets was gone, and so many girders and beams cross-hatched above him the sky vanished completely from sight even before the floor panels were laid. The lamps in his bedroom were now lit all day, and if it weren’t for the presence of Miss Morgan—or Mrs. Campbell, who now occasionally sat by his side at night—he would not even know whether the hour was A.M. or P.M. when he glanced at his clock.

Perhaps it was the noise of the construction—increasing now with the installation of the new elevator banks almost right outside his door—or the vibrations that seemed to be continuously in the walls around him or the impurities that he sensed were always in the air and seemed to have penetrated even into his oxygen tank or the absence of natural light or his inability now to swallow solid food or a simple lack of will—in any case, Henry became weaker and weaker, and could not leave his bed and, sometimes, even raise his head from his pillow without assistance. Miss Morgan, however, kept him informed of the progress on the Bucik Center.

“Extraordinary progress!” she said, “I know you’re skeptical, but the Bucik Center is really a revolutionary construct, perhaps the first of its kind, to deconstruct, rearticulate, and harmonize the obsolete hierarchical homogeneity characteristic of the vertically stratified and ideologically colonized higher structure and to replace it with a multivariate, spatially continuous built-form within a three-dimensional planning matrix that replicates the spatial articulations and morphologies of the urban landscape, complete with boulevard and galleria, piazza and agora, nucleus and radius, node and knot. In any case, that’s what the Bucik Brothers seem to be trying to do, while still, of course, optimizing net-to-gross spatial efficiencies. Did I tell you, by the way, that I’ve decided to go back to architectural school? Anyway, they’ll soon be giving ticketed tours to introduce current residents here to the public areas and the model homes. I’ll make sure a ticket’s reserved for you.”

But before the tickets were distributed, Henry had been returned to the hospital. Mrs. Campbell told him, as he was being moved from his bed, that a glorious day had been forecast, and he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the clear blue sky as he was being transported, But even though he was awake most of the time, he was taken through an interior corridor to the freight elevator, which brought him down to the parking garage and the ambulance that was awaiting him. From there he was driven into the fortress-like garage of the hospital, where he was delivered to another freight elevator, and that was all he remembered until he awoke in his bed one morning, surrounded by curtains, Miss Morgan by his side.

When she saw he was awake, she put down her book to tell him of the gala celebration that had taken place on the Esplanade to commemorate the opening of the Eastern Tower of the Bucik Center. She had gone back to his home the previous evening to water the few plants that were still alive and return several books she had borrowed from him when she noticed that a huge section of the opaque glass sheathing had been removed from the Eastern Tower, exposing an open loggia several stories tall and stretching almost the entire width of the structure. She slid open the door and walked out onto his terrace.

“It was as if a curtain had been raised on a stage,” she said, “exposing a vast, open space, right there in front of me, and extending all the way through the building. I don’t know what they’re going to use it for, but it seems now to be a permanent element of the structural design. In any case, last night it was a wonderful open ballroom, with bars and tables and an orchestra, and all of the women were in evening gowns and some of the men wore tuxedos, and you could easily see clear through to the lake, as if there were nothing in between. There seemed to be some kind of festival going on at the lakefront, too, since the sailboats were lit up like Christmas trees, and they were sailing across the lake, almost as if in a procession, their colored lights reflecting against the water, which suddenly was all lit up by a burst of fireworks, and when the fireworks were done, the orchestra on the Esplanade began to play, and they began to dance, and some of the dancers saw me standing there up on your terrace, and they raised their glasses to me, and toasted me, and beckoned me to come over. Of course, I wasn’t dressed for the occasion, and I’m not a resident, either. But you are, and perhaps when you’re better, they’ll hold another gala, or a first-year anniversary, and you’ll be invited, too.”

Henry could almost see the dancers in their evening gowns and tuxedos, and the lake sparkling behind them and the sailboats, but before he could raise his head to get a better look, he fell back into the coma from which he never awoke.

J. Weintraub has for the last thirty year published fiction, essays, poetry, and translations in all sorts of literary reviews and periodicals, from The Massachusetts Review to Modern Philology and from Gastronomica to Bluestem. Many of his pieces have been anthologized, and he is a recipient of Illinois Arts Council Awards for fiction and creative nonfiction. He’s been an Around-the-Coyote poet, a StoneSong poet, and has had one-act plays produced by the Theatre-Studio in New York City, the Summer Place Theatre in Naperville, Illinois, and Theatre One in Middleboro, Massachusetts. He is currently a network playwright at Chicago Dramatists. For further writings, his website is here: http://jweintraub.weebly.com.

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Say there are little answers
in the way leaves form
at the bottom of a cup

like an age old family saying
about the cool of blue porcelain
dating back a hundred years
to my grandmother’s poise

Imagine that she stands over you
telling you they are the shapes you have become

David Lee was born in Loma Linda, California, but was raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lee studied at Louisiana State University where he recently received his Bachelor of Arts in Literature. His future plan is to continue pursuing poetry in a graduate setting.

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            with wires
tunneling through the skin
bent in more degrees
than possible
with bones
            posing on a shelf
            in her picnic outfit
my flatsy covers another
            flat hand
with her own

each flatsy comes in a frame
with a flat bed
or a flat wagon
            my flatsy backstrokes
            down the dresser

i fold and unfold her
while she waltzes
            with my thumb
i draw a small pair
            of eggs
for her in the morning

Matthew Sharos is a Poetry MFA candidate at Columbia College Chicago where he teaches first-year writing. His work is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review and Eratio.

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Here is where you died.
I could be pointing
at my center. But I mean

family porch. The smallest fractures splitting
cement.

Two pillars stand

guard over Mother’s cat decorations
and blooms

of flowers–aloe vera ready to split
open, liquid salve. Children’s toys, scooters, bikes and

such, some worn to metal bone from years
of play.

Here is where

I choked on hope. Here is where
your childhood

friend comes to talk
to you and drink
beer. He sips
from can, says

he knows it’s you
he’s speaking to
because sometimes
you give shitty advice.

Here is where we hurt,
where I wish our blood

stain that marked us good
and quick could be seen by
all. Where blood-hurt snips

at spine. All the bits
of crumble we cling to,
scooping
up for one last taste of life
before bullet.

Here is where
I would point

to your body and tell you
what I know now:

Mourning is such a rough
wave–a seasonal
monsoon–always returning,
bringing a torrential ache.

Casandra Lopez was raised in Southern California’s Inland Empire and has an MFA from the University of New Mexico. She has been selected for residencies with the Santa Fe Art Institute and the School of Advanced Research where she is the Indigenous writer in resident for 2013. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in various literary journals such as Potomac Review, Hobart, Acentos Review, Weber–Contemporary West, and Unmanned Press. She is a founding editor of As/Us: A Space For Women Of The World.

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Two hundred years ago
two walls and a floor
were smoothed
by the disciplined love
of the lathe.

The hands that held it
did not know
they were joining
the axis
of heaven and earth
to give comfort
to those in fear.

One hundred years ago
a soldier returned
from his prison,
but could not bear
the open space
of a room.
He turned
to the corner
for solace
and sat for hours,
cradled in its lines.

Fifty years ago
I stayed there too.
First, I stretched out
my arms to you,
holding them forever
in the perfect shape
of a triangle.
But you walked away.

And I stopped
my exercise
in human geometry
and settled
into these walls.
Their golden wood
embraced body
and cheek
and tired bone.

“Keep walking,”
I said to you
from the corner
as you became
smaller and smaller
in the distance.

The joining
of heaven and earth
would have to wait
for another day.

Laurie Patton earned a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is serving as professor of religion at Duke University. She teaches early Indian religions, comparative mythology, and religion and literature. Her scholarly interests also include the study of women and Hinduism in contemporary India. She is the author or editor of eight books and articles in this field.  She has had two books of poetry published: Fire’s Goal: Poems from the Hindu Year (White Cloud Press 2003) and Angel’s Task: Poems in Biblical Time (Station Hill of Barrytown  2011). Her poems have been published in Nimrod International Journal, Calyx, CCAR Journal, Compass Rose, Confluence, Fox Cry Review, Grey Sparrow, Kerem, Phoebe, Plainsongs, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Studio One, and Women’s Torah Commentary (United Reform Judaism Press).

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It’s when the tulip loses its cup:
    the petals fall back
          like a skirt raised up,

and the interested are able
    to see the genital stamens,
          the stigma—no, not that,

not the stain of disgrace,
    but the receptive apex
          of the flower’s pistil.

To stare at the apex is to
    observe denuded composure,
          is to meditate on containment

and all that upends it. What trips
    the vaginal tulip, for instance?
          Sibilant snakes? Biblical blame?

What else does one do
    at the golden sunrise of a centerfold,
          but witness?

The stigma of the tulip I inspect
    for this poem is in the shape
          of a cross—no, not that,

of the nailing and gnashing,
    but x-like, or how I prefer my cross:
           in the form of a kiss.

M. Nasorri Pavone’s poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, New Letters, Harpur Palate, DMQ Review and elsewhere. She also writes plays. Her latest, Feeding Time celebrated its world premiere at last year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival.  She is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and lives in Venice, California.

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Diane Webster’s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life or nature or an overheard phrase and to write from her perspective at the moment. Many nights she falls asleep juggling images to fit into a poem. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Illya’s Honey, River Poets Journal and other literary magazines.

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Anna Lowe Weber’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Ninth Letter, Iowa Review, and Florida Review, among others.

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Kelle Groom is an author of the memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster) and three poetry collections, most recently, Five Kingdoms. Groom’s work has appeared in Agni, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Best American Poetry 2010. For more information please visit her website here (http://www.kellegroom.com/).

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