The Battered Suitcase
September 2008
Volume One - Issue Four
Published by Vagabondage Press LLC
Copyright 2008
Copyright for all art, poetry, lyrics and short stories in
The Battered Suitcase are owned by their authors
and their work is published by permission.
The Battered Suitcase - (c) September 2008
Published by
Vagabondage Press, LLC
https://www.vagabondagepress.com
PO Box 3563
Apollo Beach, Florida
33572
The Battered Suitcase
Volume 1 - Issue 4 - September 2008
Contents
Letter from the Editor
Breaking in Mid-Flight ~ Townshend Walker
Help Me Silent ~ Jennifer Viets
Fissure ~ Laury A. Egan
Poetry ~ Darryl Salach
Revisions ~ Tom Underhill
Short Story Outline ~ John Carroll
Poetry ~ Jason Jones
The Dead Air ~ Brandon K. Brock
Lyrics by Paul Jarvis
Poetry by Marc Alan Di Martino
Poetry by Nick Masesso
The Forty-Seventh Ronin ~ Ash Hibbert
Poetry by Kristine Ong Muslim
Poetry by Josh Siegal
Reciprocity ~ Aaron Polson
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Staff
Letter from the Editor
Per Ardua Ad Astra
Greetings from the UK side of our battered but well-travelled suitcase. It's been a strange old month, my friends. Personal difficulty and technical disaster have stalked the corridors of Vagabondage Towers testing all and sundry. But as the old saying goes, when the going gets tough...
Indeed, one could ask what is creativity but mankind's response to disaster? A sweet balm for the ongoing wound of not knowing why we are here or what lies ahead. It's our imagining of other worlds that gifts us comfort in troubled times. And future reality is born consensual from our common dreams and the imagery we create.
We come to you in a slimmer, streamlined suitcase this time around, but there are many great gifts inside.
Townsend Walker weaves a soaring tale around one man's struggle with the shattered fragments of the past, Laury A. Egan holds a failing relationship up to the harsh light of analysis and finds freedom there, while Tom Underhill effortlessly skips through time to face the Void and jump.
Brandon K Brock's meditation on past friendship comes with a painful twist in the tail, Aaron Polson sensitively examines the inherent difficulty of being a different kind of normal yet finds redemption and self-confessed 'writing degree junkie' Ash Hibbert makes the very salient point that, "Japanese is best spoken when it isn't".
The power of what's not said also fascinates our musical guest Paul Jarvis of cult underground UK band Slab! He brings the strictures of Carver-esque storytelling to the art of lyric writing, a match struck to fire the imagination of the listener.
Meanwhile, waiting for you in Poet's Corner, you'll find high school senior Jennifer Viets, new voice Jason Jones and London performance poet Josh Seigal rubbing shoulders with published veterans Darryl Salach, Nick Masseso, Kristin Ong Muslim and Marc Alan di Martino.
But what's a journey without a little laughter along the way? The vagaries of life are best faced with a smile. This issue, John Carroll provides the chuckles with a tale that will resonate with anyone who's ever stared at a blank page or canvas for longer than is medically advisable.
There are so many stories out there waiting to be told -- as many as there are stars in the sky but to quote from Ash Hibbert's contribution again, "Every good story needs someone to tell it".
And we are all tall tale tellers, fellow travellers stumbling along the same ancient, well-trodden path.
From hardship by endeavour to the stars.
Maggie Ward
Assistant Chief Editor/Art Director
Vagabondage Press LLC
Townshend Walker
Breaking in Mid-Flight
I fell asleep reading Flaubert and my head plopped on the desk and the book fell on the floor; it's still there and I don't remember how far I read. When my head went down I was too tired to feel the pile on my desk: loose change, paper clips, watch, pencils, headphones. Now, half awake, my eyes won't focus. I get up from my chair, go into the bathroom, look in the mirror and shudder at how the damn scar on my cheek still looks raw, months later. But it's more; I feel queasy, like the cheese I ate for lunch was bad, that in-a-minute-you-could-toss-em feeling. And then I have this I'm-not-supposed-to-be-here-I'm-supposed-to-be-somewhere-else gnaw in my gut. Nothing on my calendar. And the sun is glaring through the windows and Leonard Cohen is singing "Suzanne" and where is this all going? I don't know. I can't swallow, like something back there is blocking the swallow, back where the tongue attaches. I think I'm not supposed to be here, but I don't know where.
I call Dick; he doesn't know, has no clue, and insists on being chipper as a jay bird. Hell.
Then my eye falls on the ceramic penguin my brother's wife made, with its ratty black stubby wing feathers. It's sitting there on the floor, about ten feet from me. The wings look like they've been moldering in an attic for the last twenty years. The tail feathers are worse; they were plucked from a baby black bird, I'm sure. The bird has white high top sneakers with untied yellow laces. If it could walk, it would surely trip. The bird's eyes are egg yellow slits. Its head and open orange beak are arched at an angle, cawing about some indefinable un-sated injustice, though it's probably just my sister-in-law. Actually I avoid touching it, though sometimes I have to move it to vacuum the rug. The surface is pebbly, like the kiln was fired too high or the color applied unevenly. I put on garden gloves when I have to move it.
Cohen is now singing "The Sisters of Mercy." We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right. I've always wondered: like that? like what? but have been comforted by the thought that it would still be all right. One year, at the end of the season, I was sitting with my lover, sitting on a swing at the Kingsleigh Inn in Maine, looking at the sail boats in the harbor. The boat we sailed yesterday, sails now furled, was where we'd left it, left it with our promise undisturbed. I remember the porch was glassed in, large unnatural sized panes fastened between the porch columns; even so, the glass buckled when a gust of wind kicked it. We were holding hands the way we did then, laced, thumbs playing on palms. We were warm from bed and I know I started to think about what-do-we-do-from-here-that's-not-a-comedown. The dreamy glaze that settled over her half-closed eyes made me believe the same thing was on her mind. I think she was the first to notice the gulls over the water. We counted ten of them chasing a large black bird. Later we found out it was a raven. It was faster than the muddy brown gulls, and could break mid-flight, soar high, or dive. The gulls were clumsy but relentless. The birds kept moving inland, closer to the porch, and closer. They dipped low, to eye level. Suddenly a sick crunching noise: the raven had smashed the window and itself. The red and black carcass slid slowly down the window to the grass. The chasing gulls wheeled and headed back out to sea.
She doesn't know this, but years later, I was looking through a shop near Tikal in Guatemala and found a piece of sand-casted glass. Some of the local pink sand was embedded in the object. The glass was about three inches square and warm in the hand; the surface, rough and pebbly. And the design was a Mayan hieroglyphic of a quetzal bird flying over waves. I remember my first thoughts: her, the raven, the water, death. I asked the shop keeper what the hieroglyphic symbolized.
He said, "Bigin ha yetel kaan hun ut om. When sky and sea are one, it will happen."
I bought the piece of glass and slipped it into its leather pouch. When I got back to my hotel I put it in my suitcase and went to the bar. It was a long night. After that she disappeared from my memories, crowded out by two tours in Baghdad. I forgot about that piece of glass.
A year or so after my last tour, in a bar in San Antonio, I thought about the quetzal. When I got home I rummaged through my closet, found the suitcase, found the leather pouch, found the glass with the quetzal and waves. Something hit me, emptied me out. My muscles no longer held me. I slumped to the floor and cried. I was there long enough for my ducts to go dry. Then I slowly raised my head and crawled out of the closet. I stood by pushing my back up the wall. I hugged the surface all the way down the hall, then sat down on the stairs. I spent the next two months trying to find her. I didn't.
The ceramic penguin, its angled head and squawking beak, feels like an echo now. The bottom half of the penguin, except for the feet, is circled by a plaster body cast that cracks open as the bird lurches forward. Birds, the memories of birds. I get up from my chair and hurl the glass quetzal against the ceramic penguin. Both shatter. I look at the pattern of the pieces on the floor: black feathery wings are hovering over glass glinting red in the sunlight.
Townsend Walker's stories have appeared in L'Italo-Americano, Crimson Highway, Static Movement, 971 Menu, The Aggregated Press; Raving Dove, AntipodeanSF, Neonbeam, Amazon Shorts, The Write Side Up, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, and are forthcoming in This Zine Will Change Your Life and Cantaraville. On the non-fiction side, he published three books, and several journal articles on derivatives, foreign exchange, and portfolio management. After a career in finance, he went to Rome in 2005 and started writing short stories.
Poetry by Jennifer Viets
What the Bird Lady Sees
Sometimes the floor reflects the sky, even when the roof is closed...
I watch the snow forming a film across the skylight,
making it darker here, although I know outside is blinding. I peek in even more.
She builds wooden birdcages when she's sad,
or when she's happy or angry,
hungry, lazy, or wishing for more.
They sit in her living room,
on her kitchen counters, at the foot of her bed. They hang
from the ceiling, line the garden outside, rest on her wooden deck,
all of them with open doors.
They appear to be empty, but
she can hear the birds inside, birthed from the wood
shavings, singing all together in a beautiful cacophony,
free to come and go, slip through the walls,
spend a night on a tree branch.
They choose to stay,
and she feels their light footsteps across her arms,
finds their feathers in her cereal bowls.
She knows their colors, natural tones without Crayola names:
grey-blue that makes the bottoms of storm clouds seem heavy,
the dirt that cakes to bare feet by the Bay after it rains,
the yellow of a daffodil's underside after three days of April sun.
They are the colors of weather.
They sing reassurance to her hands as they work,
urging wood to bend,
carving tiny designs,
coaxing more invisible birds into their homes.
Help Me Be Silent
stay here and help me be silent;
be the thorn that nests in my throat.
I feel a lump forming, your body
that I can not swallow,
and the tears bring relief to my eyes.
an empty can tumbles through the dust
and the crack in the window sill grows.
stay here and help me be silent;
clutch the words that squirm from my stomach.
these people are figments and marionettes
that disappear with the shadows at dawn.
the crickets stop and the steady beating of Earth slows.
everything is still for an instant
with none of the silent noises
that make rest what it is, the creaking
of a hammock, the settling of old bones,
the clenching of milky thighs.
stay here and help me be silent;
tie the world in a knot around your ring finger.
I cough and the spell is broken;
you escape my skin, the clouds continue
to press against the sky.
my hands fly to my neck to tell you
I wish to be choking, wish for my words
to be entangled in your hair.
you turn away, and I see the flowers
springing from your footsteps;
"stay here and help me be silent"
I pray to the weeds that wish to be more.
Jennifer Viets is a mildly entertaining high school senior who spends too much time on her writing and too little on homework. She has lived her whole life in a small town where there's not much to do if a person has no imagination. Therefore hers was, from an early age, maybe a bit too nurtured. The majority of her life is devoted to writing, gay rights activism, and sleeping. She is convinced she will become very widely known for two of those activities.
Laury A. Egan
Fissure
Lying on the bed, arms under head, staring through the window at the sea. The sea, deep blue, sky lighter. Clouds haunted with lavender shades. Wind from the northeast, driving white waves onto the distant yellow beach.
"Julia... "
My name like a hollow echo.
"Julia... "
I stand. A woman's voice, below the house, somewhere. To the window, without expectations of seeing anyone.
"Julia... "
A trick of wind whistling through the teeth of trees? No, I see a face reflected in a scrim of water. She is gray-haired, bemused, calling me. Diane's voice. We've never met, yet I know her well. Phone, internet, blends of words with a photograph apiece passed between us. Diane, who lives far away.
I throw covers over the unmade bed. The house is a mess. I fuss about, but there is no time. I rush past the half wall by the stairs, past the forest of potted plants to the door. I grasp the brass knob and stop. A tiny gray bird hides amidst the green leaves. But the bird is not a bird. It stares with sharp eyes and slowly unfolds gray wings. A bat.
Horrified, I open the door wide and hurry out. The bat hesitates and then flies through, swallowed by sky.
"Julia... Julia... "
I stand in the front yard, staring at the portico, which is supported by square columns carved with hieroglyphics and symbols: eye of Horus, vulture, half moon, papyrus, etched insets in ivory marble. I've never noticed them before.
Julia... "
I follow the voice around the side of the house. Sturdy rock bluff and windswept, stiff green grass. A chill crisps the air. Like a searching ghost, Diane comes toward me, arms outstretched. As she approaches, I study her face, familiar because of the photograph, strange because she is animate, frowning and smiling, expressions of light and dark, seconds apart.
Diane places her hands on my shoulders. "You must understand," she whispers. Her eyes are hazy blue. Her hair is the color of the bat. "Please understand."
I listen, wanting to help, unsure of her. Be kind, my mind says.
She points to the columns. "The symbols will tell us."
I shake my head. Confusion.
"About your dream," she says in an urgent voice. "You need to understand. If we add the numbers, the equation will explain it all."
I look at the carved column. 222. "Six?" I don't believe this is the answer.
She smiles. "Two of us and two of us and two of us."
"You and me?"
"Yes. And me and Paula and me and my daughter."
"Too many of us," I reply and mean it. Diane's relationships are boxes into which she often vanishes.
"That all depends on your perspective," she replies. "For me, for now, it works."
Diane guides me toward the hill. The scent of ocean salt mixes with the husky dryness of oak. Sun is bright and blinding.
"Are you okay?" I ask. One question plucked out of thousands.
"Yes."
"How did you get here?"
"Does it matter?" She is serene.
I envy serenity. Yet, as always, I throw pebbles in the still pond. "Why did you come?"
My question spins into silence. We walk. I can't see anything except for her gray hair wings, blowing around my head. I am lulled. Going along. Time seduced.
Then I fall. Backward into space and darkness -- into earth, a fissure in the black rock. My shoulders pressed under stone. Narrow crevice with blue rectangle high above. Locked tight, held down by the weight of forty feet of cracked mountain.
Diane leaps over the patch of sky and disappears.
I scream.
Did Diane push me and then jump down the hill, leaving me to die? Or did she lose her balance and fall to her own death? My eyes shut out the inner sight.
~
Yellow sunlight stripes my knees, follows my wool trousers to the floor, and crosses the nubs of beige carpet to the tips of her black boots.
"At the very least she abandoned you," she says.
A frightening possibility. "I don't know."
"Or was she trying to kill you?"
My throat tightens. "Maybe."
"What feels like the answer?"
"Like both. I was left alone... "
"Your usual state."
"Yes, it is. It terrifies me." I hate admitting this. She knows.
"So Diane left you there, unable to move."
Analysis is more comfortable than feelings. "But the equation... two of us together... equation of two... that meant... " My mild protest fades into realization. "That the equation adds up to... I don't know... falling."
The Battered Suitcase September 2008 Page 1