Neon Literary Magazine #38

by Neon Books

   

  -

   

  The next morning, Hallie found that the day was glowing. The sky was luminous; it even pulsed sometimes with a kind of flash, like a sun flare, only it was a sky flare and you didn’t have to blink, you could look right at it. In fact, if you didn’t look right at it, you became a little disoriented, as if your air wasn’t quite right and your lungs skipped a beat.

   

  There was an undercurrent, a real current, a little buzz of electricity that ran along the ground and started seeping upwards. You wanted to lift along with it. It was the merest wind, the spirit of uplift.

   

  She could tell who felt it and who didn’t. There, across the street, was a woman leaning out the window, her face upraised. She felt it. There, on the corner, waiting for a light, three people were singing; one of them even had a good voice. There was a child climbing up a lamppost, he felt it. There was a mother wheeling her child; she did not. There was a policeman in the middle of the street, waving the traffic forward. He was beginning to feel it; his arms were raising up too often and confusing the flow.

   

  There were groups emerging from the crowds on the street. These groups felt the sun on the right side of their faces and they moved to the right. They saw a stairway and they took it. They came out of the subways as if they had reached heaven.

   

  Over in the park they were climbing on the rocks. A group was singing “Your Love is Lifting Me Higher.” On each repeated phrase of “higher”, another person joined in, pushing the group a step up the rock, compressing them. She watched their mouths move, saw their eyes raised.

   

  She could see people on the tops of the low buildings now, they were lined up with more lines behind them. On top of one building they were singing the Ave Maria. They brought a terrible passion to it, raising their arms on the most splendid notes. There was a camera van and a reporter, but the reporter was starting to sing.

   

  Hallie’s heart was amazed at the sounds. She would love to sing; each song appealed to her until she heard another song. She wavered at each group, wanting to blend with the sounds, to feel her heart ache upwards into joy. It wasn’t overwhelming, it was pleasant and euphoric, a yearning mixed with anticipation. Like a woman on her way to her lover.

   

  She listened to the songs with her head tilted, her eyes half-closed. She had never felt such pleasure before, such good will; but the upshot was that she was late. She didn’t really care about that. She went to the window to see the rooftops and there, right across from her, were people standing together, faces up and singing. She could hear them through the closed windows. There were men and women and a few children. The children were raised in their parents’ arms, looking upward. They were singing “O Happy Day.” As soon as they finished they began again. Hallie looked and listened and thought that never, never had there been anything so mystical, so supreme, so complex and spiritual. How had the world gotten so good so suddenly? How had the spirit risen so high? How had God graced them, so generously and exquisitely?

   

  She ignored the buzzer and the knock on the door, but someone came in anyway, came up behind her and started speaking.

   

  “I was here earlier,” the woman said. “I waited. Henry was supposed to meet me, but he didn’t show up. I tried his cell phone. No answer. I tried his office and it took so many rings before anyone answered.” The woman’s voice was sad. “They said half the people didn’t show up, and Henry was one of the ones who didn’t. Why doesn’t anyone know what’s happening?”

   

  She stood beside Hallie, looking out the window. “I heard it on the news,” the woman said. “They’re saying it’s all over the city. People are lining the rooftops, they’re climbing the bridges. But I don’t know why.” Her voice trembled. Hallie could see no reason for a voice to tremble, except in exaltation. The world was filled with exaltation; it came floating everywhere as motes in the air, motes made golden by the sun, motes swept up again to rise, to rise splendidly, ornately, making delicate kaleidoscope-like patterns, like tiny jewels in the air.

   

  Alina Rios

   

  Image by Pedro Sostre

   

  Déflorer

   

  If you touch me once more,

  I will scream, mister.

  You know it’s not right.

   

  Hush.

   

  Your hand travels

  crisp sheets of my camp bed,

  finds my girly heart.

  Then down, pulls aside

  the elastic and finds another heart

  beneath a barely grown garden.

   

  Your hand rests there,

  as if exhausted by the journey.

   

  I open my legs to fit

  all of your hand,

  let it cradle me,

  let its warmth warm

  the other heart.

   

  No. Please.

  I spread myself wider.

   

  Your weight is tipping my bed

  into a steady downfall. In the morning,

  I miss the warmth.

   

  At a bonfire on the beach

  in the crowd of

  kids like me, adults like you,

  I find your lap.

   

  I cannot stop myself.

   

  Your hand snakes

  my faded swimsuit bottom,

  finds its cradle.

   

  I will scream.

   

  No one will see.

  Hush.

   

  I spread my legs

  and the world falls away.

  With it, my innocence,

  my hope for normalcy.

   

  When I think of firsts,

  it is you I think of,

  how you picked my fruit

  before ripe, sucking

  the essence out of the pit.

   

  Oh mister, touch me once more

  and I will scream.

   

  Please.

   

  *

   

  Crow’s Feast

   

  If I were a crow,

  I’d look for the succulent shine

  of your grape eyes

  and pluck them.

   

  Then I’d look for your dreams

  glimmering in a bird-nest halo,

  and snatch them,

  taking each strand to a remote country

  each with a different name.

   

  *

   

  Calling

   

  In the darkness,

  I feel for you,

  smell for you.

   

  But your shape shifted

  so much over the years,

  I don’t know what I’m looking for.

   

  Bones and softness. Tall,

  my neck aches from looking up. Our

  eyes even, but not if I wear heels.

  Your collarbone pressing into my throat,

  nearly strangles as we embrace.

  Pillowy stomach against my clitoris.

  Long narrow cock, short and thick,

  sheathed and bare.

   

  I can build an exotic perfume store

  out of your scents. It would be popular

  in Japan. I’ll label each bottle

  in careful black ink: fresh laundry,

  too much cologne, sour armpits,

  wet wool, after sex, after sun,

  after ocean and sex and sun.

   

  Today, I feel for you,

  and find my shoulders,

  breasts, mouth �
�� it’s open

  in a silent call.

   

  *

   

  Totems

   

  You rescue beached wood,

  clean its wounds,

  polish its skin

  removing layers of memory.

   

  Paintbrush in hand,

  you sit cross-legged

  before your new God,

  a maker to a Maker,

  a blasphemy.

   

  Rusted nails, torn cloth,

  string and wire

  found in packed dirt

  of old houses and

  life-washed sidewalks –

  the offerings.

   

  What would this God want?

  You pause, listen.

   

  A splash of color across her brow?

  Waves moving in pattern on his torso?

  A wire crown so thin it cuts?

   

  I live in the cold

  among your totem Gods,

  unseen.

   

  What else have you promised

  them? I ask.

   

  Your breath comes

  in cloud puffs

  your mouth shaping words

  I cannot hear.

   

  I nod and walk once more

  through your temple

  before I’m gone.

   

  Sam Preminger

   

  Image by Teresa Howes

   

  Poem In Which You Unfriend The Dead Girl

   

  because what else were you supposed to do

  wait for her to check-in at the pearly gates

   

  just because she was your one

  cigarette per day that summer

   

  because she grinned like a slinky

  could unbutton your jeans without breaking eye

   

  contact you’re supposed to wait – some sailor’s

  ghost in your desk chair – the distant creeping of

   

  a newsfeed the crinkled

  firmament beneath your skull

   

  *

   

  Hesitation Wound

   

  fathers are certain / there’s going to be time

  enough for carousels and piggybacks, / one

  more family cruise / more handheld footage

  / of miniature golf.

  / of a homesewn Peter Pan production.

  time / his dry lips on the crest of her /

  cheek after / the long night

   

  at his office, but high school comes on like

  / leukemia (a way of saying we didn’t

  remember / how bad, how quick), blood

  suddenly / so eager to leave and many

  decades / before it does. how boys like fingers

  all/ wrapped up around her, all stealing

  parents’ liquor; all coffee / and

  aftershave.

   

  between periods, briefly she pauses to

  reflect / on the glaciers – what bony  beaches

  they left, grasping deep and

  slowly, dragged away.

   

  *

   

  Ilan Who Works In The Bagel Shop

   

  opens a tab to facebook and

  stares at his wall. Ilan who works

  in the bagel shop opens

  a tab to facebook, reads

  his likes, favorite movies, and

  tv shows, can’t remember

  plots,

  Ilan opens a tab to facebook, but

  doesn’t

  know why, x’s it out, googles his

  name, searching for any trace

  he might exist. |

   

  Remembrance Of Flings Past

  teenage hours how they’d

  kissed like burglars, sparked all

  cigarettes against the expressway.

  rain trapped by streetlamps,

  moon in its steady, suspended

  decline. when we turn back; his

  dimensions collapse,  she lifts herself up

  by the hair and is gone.

   

  Huang Kaishan

   

  Image by Shannon Pifko

   

  The Death Of The Motherless Kitten

   

  I saw it from across the road, while waiting for the green man. It was mewling for its mother. Lost, I thought.

   

  Everybody, in their suits and ties and pencil skirts, turned to look, but they never slowed their strides.

   

  A mother and child might have stopped for a few seconds, passingly interested.

   

  I probably should have picked it up there and then and brought it to a vet, but I was on my way to work and late. That morning's meeting was too important to miss.

   

  What was I supposed to say to the boss? That I stopped to save a motherless kitten?

   

  Next I saw it, it was lunch hour. A patch of bloodied fur on afternoon tar. It might have been moving.

   

  It might have been the wind.

   

  I walked away and I let it die.

   

  -

   

  I carried the kitten in one hand. It struggled, but it was so small, with such threadbare flesh, I could almost loop thumb to ring finger around its chest. I brought it to a vet my colleague recommended. She'd laughed when I said I was saving a kitten.

   

  The vet's office hadn't been cleaned in ages. The vet was smoking and he used the sink as an ash tray. When I said it wasn't mine, he paused just long enough to make his point. He gave me a price I wasn't willing to pay. Then he suggested we put it down. "It'll feel better," he said.

   

  I felt better that way too, so I said yes. But there wasn't any more morphine on the shelf. He'd forgotten to re-stock. So I had to use my hands.

   

  Its neck was tiny. Thumb to forefinger.

   

  -

   

  I brought it home. My wife and I named it Bobby, after the child we'd lost.

   

  My wife loved it so much. She became one of those cat crazy people who would dress their pet up in human clothes and take pictures.

   

  One day, I forgot to make sure Bobby was still inside before I left the house. As I backed out of the driveway, I heard a small yelp. So I knew what had happened before I even got out of the car. I had the lie already composed in my head by the time I got to the hood; Bobby had escaped and got knocked down.

   

  But when I looked under the car, Bobby was still alive. I'd only crushed its legs. But I couldn't imagine how my wife would be able to bear the burden of a crippled animal, no matter how much love she thought she had for it. So I backed up a little more.

   

  -

   

  My wife was always the first one up whenever Bobby cried.

   

  Bobby was smart. Bobby knew he could get anything he wanted, with the mere suggestion of possible discontentment from a downturned mouth. Bobby was filled with my wife's love. He didn't have any room left for mine.

   

  One night, my wife finally got so exhuasted from waiting on his every whim that for the first time, she slept through Bobby's crying.

   

  How he cried and cried. You could hear his demands escalating in the tone of his wail. The rising urgency, from the diva's siren call to a full-blown teenage tantrum: Why aren't you here yet? Now I'm annoyed. Now I'm outraged. Now I really mean it.

   

  I lay in bed and I
listened. I let it go on for a while, and then I got out of bed and I took it out with me in a stroller to a park. In the playground, I sat down on the swing opposite the stroller and I just let the thing whine.

   

  With each fresh wail, I could hear its panic rising.

   

  Why aren't you comforting me? Why aren't you smothering me in your frantic love, your sobbing contrition? Why? Why? I thought you loved me! Didn't you say you loved me?

   

  I let it cry and cry and cry until it wouldn't cry anymore.

   

  -

   

  Bobby was holding my hand. Small, tiny prehensile pads closing around one hairy thumb.

   

  Wait here, I said, and I went in and I got a drink. Two drinks. Maybe three.

   

  When I came out, he was gone.

   

  It was less than a minute, I said to the police officer. I just turned around for a second and he was gone. My breath tasted sour as I said it.

   

  We searched high and low for Bobby. Everybody helped. And sooner or later, one by one, they each came to me personally to offer words of comfort.

   

  They knew. They all knew.

   

  I could sense it from their replies. That half beat of hesitation between the moment I told them this is my fault – and the moment they told me, of course it isn't. Their mouths moved out of sync with their eyes, like goldfish.

   

  Less than a minute, I told them. He might have been taken, I said. It's hard to tell. It could have been anybody. Anybody but me.

   

  My wife wouldn't speak to me. She couldn't even stand to look at me.

   

  Neither of us had slept in two days.

   

  I felt constantly nauseated.

   

  When they found the body, they didn't let me see it at first. I didn't understand why, until I did see it. It was a splat on the road, a Looney Tunes character rolled down to an inch and flattened against tar. There was a comic explosion of violent colour all around the frame of its body, like a sound effect on a page.

   

  I said what is this?

   

  "It's your son", the police officer said.

   

  Isn't it road kill?

   

  "No, it's your son," he said. "It's not your fault."

   

  But he was lying, of course, because he knew as much as anyone that I'd killed him.

   

  My wife knew it too, but she didn't say it. She let the lawyer say it.

   

  I was an alcoholic and an irresponsible father who couldn't even love his own son. And I'd walked away and I'd let him die.

   

  -

   

  Sometimes, at night, I have this funny dream.

   

  I'm in a car with my wife. My wife is asleep. We've just had a long night out and it's been great. It's been very romantic and now I'm driving home and feeling full of love for the world. I'm listening to The Strokes on the radio – that's how you know it's a dream; they don't play their songs anymore.

   

  And as I'm cruising down the road, something shoots out of the bushes behind the crash barriers and barrels into my path. There's a terrible huroomph sound as it goes under my wheel. I slam the brake, but because this is a dream, the car goes into a spin, like in a Hollywood movie, until it stops with the windshield facing whatever it is I've hit. My wife doesn't even stir.

   

  I peer over the dashboard. And there – right in the middle of the road, in the yellow glare of my headlights, squashed flat beneath black tyre tracks – is a small kitten.